Loss of a native land

An old Toronto man tells of his life in Palestine and his impossible dream of returning to Jerusalem. It's too late for Sami Hadawi.

HICHAM SAFIEDDINE - Toronto Star August 31, 2003

Let death first lay me low, and Death free me from this daylight There is no sorrow above The loss of a native land

— Euripides, 485-406 B.C.

In a recurring but blurry vision, the walls of a Jerusalem Christian cemetery beckon Sami Hadawi to lie under their shade and fall into a deep slumber. But Hadawi will never return home to Jerusalem. Like his wife before him, he leads his life in painful reminiscence and will carry the grief with him to a grave dug in a foreign land.

The 99-year-old Toronto resident's dilemma is inextricably linked to the thorniest of all issues at the heart of the Middle East conflict: Palestinians' right of return.

Israel denies it. Palestinians insist on it. The failure to reach a compromise has meant a continuing loss of opportunity for a resolution of the conflict.

The beginning of Hadawi's story, like those of other Palestinians, is buried under decades of displacement and yearnings for restitution.

He was born in West Jerusalem in what was then Ottoman-ruled Palestine. Growing up in his grandfather's house in the Jewish quarter of the city, he worked for the British government during its mandate of Palestine and at age 44 moved to a house he built for his own family in the Christian quarter.

Little did Hadawi know that the days following his move would usher in a period of homelessness for his family and coincide with the beginning of an era of regional wars and political unrest in the Middle East.

It was 1948, the year of the partition of Palestine and the creation of the State of Israel.

Sitting in his room at the Gibson Retirement Residence in Toronto's northeast end, Hadawi recalls the harsh circumstances of his departure.

"I spent all my life building a house and I lived in it for six or seven days. The house was taken away from us. We were thrown out ... I never wanted to leave ... I left everything ... I was left with nothing."

Hadawi says the pain of parting with his homeland, and the memory of losing his wife shortly after, remains undiminished after all these years.

"I try not to think about the past, because the past hurts a great deal. You don't want to hate people; you don't want to curse people ....

"I had nothing against the Jews all my life ... but what was done (in Palestine) was unforgettable."

Hadawi's account of his family's exodus from the land of his ancestors is representative of stories of many Palestinians now living in the diaspora. What was seen by immigrating Jews at the time as the realization of a dream of nationhood was viewed by displaced Arabs as a catastrophe of deliberate depopulation.

The native population of Arabs regarded the new-found colonies of Zionists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a precursor to full Jewish nationhood at their expense.

These fears were deepened by the famous Balfour declaration in 1917, a pledge by the then British foreign secretary to support the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine.

The definitive turning point for both peoples came in May, 1948, when the British Mandate ended, Israel was officially proclaimed a sovereign entity and Palestinians, supported by neighbouring Arab states, took up arms in resistance.

To Hadawi and more than 700,000 other Palestinians, this marked the inauguration of their lives as refugees — stateless people who lost their normal place of residence, property and means of livelihood.

Fifty-five years later, their population has grown to approximately 4 million, including a second wave of refugees displaced from the West Bank and Gaza after the 1967 Six Day War.

Based on statistics compiled by the United Nations Relief Works Agency for Palestine refugees, 1.3 million of them live in 59 recognized camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and Gaza.

Most of the land on which these makeshift communities were constructed is leased to the U.N. agency by the host governments. The refugees do not own it. Living conditions of these camps are generally poor, with a high population density and an underdeveloped infrastructure.

Issam Al-Yamani, who moved to Canada in 1982 and now lives in Mississauga, was born a refugee in Lebanon and has experienced these conditions.

I remember how every day as a child I had to leave my grandfather's house in the Burj Al-Barajnah refugee camp to use the common washrooms.

"Washrooms were built in a yard with no running water and no doors. Each person brought his water with him. Each block of 10 houses — four walls topped with a zinc sheet — had one washroom. Children would go to do what they have to do in the morning and wait until their parents come and take their places.

"At night, most people used to defecate in holes they dug near their home and cover them with sand. It was a very humiliating experience.

"Inside the so-called houses — in most cases one room — husband, wife and children used to sleep on the floor. I can't imagine how married people used to make love, but I am sure it was not romantic."

Al-Yamani's family comes from Suhmata, a village near the city of Acre in northern Israel.

The family's story of how villagers were forced to leave their houses and belongings in 1948, with the exception of his father and other men who decided to stay and defend the village, has become a tale passed from one generation to another.

At night, after dinner, children sat around their parents and grandparents. They listened to stories about the village in Palestine, how beautiful it is, how tasty the olives, the figs and the grapes are. Palestine became the hope, the dream home for these children.

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`I would like to be buried in Jerusalem, but I have no choice. Once I am dead, it is all finished'

Sami Hadawi, 99-year-old Toronto resident

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But for some families, parents raising their kids in a new country for a new future usually avoided the narrative of parting with the native land.

The Canadian Kafieh family is a case in point.

Ottawa's James Kafieh knew something was always missing about him and he wanted to learn where he came from.

He set out to educate himself and enrolled in a course on Middle Eastern history during his years as an undergraduate at the University of Waterloo.

At age 23, he was highly influenced by a book, Bitter Harvest: A Modern History Of Palestine, written by a former official land valuer during the British Mandate who also worked with the U.N. Palestine Conciliation Commission and later became director of the Institute of Palestine Studies in Beirut.

The author's name was Sami Hadawi.

Soon afterward, Kafieh began a series of trips to the Middle East during which he visited his family's village of Ein Karem on the outskirts of West Jerusalem in what is now Israel. He looked for the house of his father but couldn't find it.

"I looked for it in 1984 and again in 1990, 1996 and 1997," he says.

"Finally, on a trip in 2001, I saw it. My father had found a photograph of the house. The pattern of the bricks and the mould growing on parts of it were like a fingerprint.

"When I compared the photo to the house, I found it was a DNA match. After all these years, I stood in front of the house — built by my grandfather — my connection to time immemorial.

"Kafieh says he traced ownership of the house to his family using archival records kept at an Israeli government registry office in Jerusalem.

His exhilaration at his discovery did not last long. The house was now listed as an asset of the Israel Land Administration, an agency that has control over most Palestinian refugee lands confiscated after its owners fled or were expelled in fighting during the spring of 1948.

Kafieh finds it unjust that while Israeli law clearly states that "every Jew has the right to come to this country" — even if he or she was not born there or owned any land — people like him and his father seeking to reclaim what was theirs are denied title.

"We constantly hear about the Jewish community seeking the return of dormant assets, unpaid insurance and other forms of reparation for their losses in WWII.

"And they are right to do so. But why are Palestinian homes any less important?"

He also points out that thousands of Jewish families migrate to Israel every year and argues that if the Israeli government only had the will, it could accommodate Palestinians wishing to return.

The counter-argument that such reparation will threaten the Jewish character of Israel is dismissed by Kafieh as a violation of Israel's claims to democracy.

Kafieh's opposition to the current state of affairs in Israel largely stems from his strong belief that any country, including Israel, must be based on secular foundations that treat all its citizens as equal before the law.

"I don't think it was right to build a Jewish state, and I don't think it is right to build an Islamic state or a Christian one," he contends.

He argues that in the long run, the only just and morally acceptable peace settlement must involve a secular one-state solution in which people of all religions co-exist under one set of non-discriminatory laws.

"Any other compromise, such as the currently proposed model of two states for two peoples, is bound to trigger more bloodshed and political strife," he says.

Although the prospects of a one-state solution are hard to imagine in the face of a rising tide of extremism among Palestinians and Israelis alike, Kafieh is convinced that it is only a matter of time before it becomes inevitable.

For now, he is working hard to find the means of retrieving his father's property in the latter's lifetime. His father, Khalil, 77, today resides in Richmond Hill.

Will the fruits of James Kafieh's toil stand, in contrast to Hadawi's?

Twelve years after Kafieh read Hadawi's book, the men's paths crossed in person when Kafieh accompanied the Palestinian scholar on a trip to Jerusalem.

He urged Hadawi to drop by his old house. Hadawi refused for fear that the sight of it standing metres before him and yet so far out of his reach would be too much to handle.

The obstacles facing Kafieh's struggle to win back his family's property may also prove to be too much.

"Would you like some ice cream, Mr. Hadawi?" a young waitress at the Gibson dining hall asks the weary old man. He shakes his head and stares at the cold salmon sandwich on his otherwise empty plate.

The passage of time has robbed him of the ability to recount his daily activities.

Whatever is left of his memory is reserved for the outlines of a tale of dispossession and his Sisyphus-like struggle.

When asked where he wants to be buried, Hadawi says:

"I don't care. I am sure I will be buried here. I would like to be buried in Jerusalem, but I have no choice. Once I am dead, it is all finished."

Like many aging Palestinian refugees, his memories soon will disappear like the shade of trees at midday.

Nothing will remain.

Israeli who killed seven Palestinians at bus stop in major traffic accident 16 years later

(Bethlehem) Najib Farag
18 January 2007

Many Palestinians were not sorry to see Ami Popper be injured and suffer the death of his wife and child in a traffic accident Thursday morning. On 20 May 1990 he used his own gun to shot and kill seven Palestinians and injure several other at a bus stop.

They were all day laborers from the Gaza Strip, working inside Israeli boundaries. Israeli police sources say he was sentenced to seven times life, but was allowed to leave the prison.

He was driving his car while on furlough without having renewed his license since entering prison 16 years before. His wife and son were in the car and were killed.

Ayman Ghaneim works in shop inside the Israeli section of Jerusalem and knows what it is to suffer from the actions of the occupiers. He said, “What happened to Ami Popper this morning, considering the number of citizens, particularly workers who suffer every day from the actions of the Israeli occupation and the threats of extremists, this seems like a kind of retaliation.

Young Mahmoud, who did not want his family name revealed, told PNN, “I feel glad this happened to the butcher who killed workers in cold blood who were trying only to feed themselves and their families. They should not have to risk death at the hands of an assassin who killed them only because they were Palestinian.”

Palestinian workers interviewed said they were pleased at the media attention the incident is getting, and that they are glad no one has forgotten what this man did. For that comments includes the ideas that he was a butcher and that a curse fell on him “from the skies.”

Palestinian who died in Israeli jail is buried, other prisoners are still suffering medical neglect

Jamal Hasan al-Sarahin, 37, a Palestinian prisoner who has died in an Israeli jail due to medical negligence

January 19, 2007

Al-Khalil – Humdreds of Palestinians, on Thursday, took part in the funeral of 38-year-old Jamal al-Sarahin at his home town of Beit Ula, west of the southern West Bank city of al-Khalil. Sarahin died at an Israeli prison last Tuesday as a result of medical neglect.

The corpse of Sarahin was transported by an Israeli ambulance to the Tarqomia roadblock where it was received by tens of his town's people who carried it to the deceased's home for a final farewell before taken to be buried.

Sarahin's death brought to 14 the number of Palestinians who died in Israeli jails since the start of the Aqsa intifada in September 2000.

Meanwhile, the family of another prisoner called on local and international human rights organizations to pressure the Israeli prisons authority to facilitate medical treatment of their son.

The mother of Rabi' Harb told PIC that her son suffered gunshot wounds to his back and abdomen as well as shrapnel lodged into his kidney and despite the fact that he was paralyzed in the lower part of his body the Israeli prisons authority is not allowing him access to proper medical treatment and his life is in danger.

There are currently around 11,000 Palestinian captives in Israeli jails, about a 1000 of them suffer various ailments and are victims of intentional medical neglect by the Israeli prisons authority.

Relatives of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails attend the weekly demonstration at the Red Cross headquarters in Gaza City, 13 November 2006. (MaanImages/Hatem Omar)

Palestinian refugees and exiles must have a say-so

A relationship that comes at the cost of Palestinian refugees: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas meets with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the Palestinian Authority headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah, 14 January 2007. MaanImages/POOL/PPO)

15 January 2007

Today, Palestinian refugees outside the occupied territories and Palestinian exiles feel completely excluded from the body politic and national debate currently taking place in the occupied territories. They listen to the feuding emanating from the territories in helpless dismay. They watch those on the inside who are caught up in a carefully engineered web of power struggles and passionate rifts that seem incomprehensible in their intensity and misdirection.

This fragmentation in the Palestinian political process has long been in the making. The Palestinian National Authority, courtesy of the Oslo negotiations, is designed to represent only Palestinians living in the occupied territories and to function as no more than Israel's administrative arm.

The advent of Hamas on the Palestinian political scene has forcefully brought to the fore the question of adequate forms of representation for the Palestinian people. Far from enhancing democracy and representation, the elections of the Palestinian Legislative Council exclude Palestinians outside the territories. As it turned out, these last elections were also deemed by the international community as irrelevant.

The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), the sole legitimate voice of the Palestinian people as recognized by the United Nations and the Arab League in 1974, is now separated functionally and structurally from the Palestinian diaspora. Its links with the outside were weakened and marginalized when the core elite of the PLO moved to the West Bank and Gaza as a result of the Oslo negotiations in 1994.

What all this means is that the vast majority of Palestinians are disenfranchised. The number of Palestinians worldwide as of the end of 2006 was estimated by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics to be 10.1 million. Of these, only 39.2 percent (or 3.95 million) live in the occupied territories.

A participant in one of the public meetings conducted by CIVITAS, a research project on Palestinian communities living in exile, expressed her feelings of being shut out of the political process thus: "Before the peace treaties, Palestinian political parties were more effective, and we had a voice: we worked properly! We made our voice heard to the entire world. But the world now only hears the voice of the Palestinian president, and his prime minister. As a citizen, I no longer have a voice. His voice is enough. But before the peace process my voice was heard. If this peace will silence me then I don't want it!"

The national aspirations of Palestinian refugees on the outside and inside are driven predominantly by a single, uncluttered historical agenda: their right of return. Both groups must contend with poverty and severe health and education challenges. But whereas the refugees on the inside are in daily bloody confrontations with their dispossessor, those on the outside have their own crosses to bear based on where they happen to have been planted. Lack of legal documents, passports, travel documents or identity papers, unfair electoral systems, denial of the right to work, and lack of entitlements for ownership and inheritance are but a few of the hardships they face.

In spite of being clearly impotent to represent Palestinians outside the occupied territories or those inside for that matter, the Palestinian National Authority runs ineffective consulates around the world that simply raise false expectations and frustrations among Palestinian exiles as well as those allowed by Israel to reside in the occupied territories: "Any citizen who has another nationality would resort to his Embassy when seeking protection or help. Therefore I demand my Embassy offer me this as a Palestinian. We don't want money from it, we just want it to defend us, and we want to feel that we belong to this Embassy which can protect us when we need protection. This is all what I ask from my Embassy, which is my country" (CIVITAS Participant, Meeting, Cairo, Egypt).

Throughout the past decades, international efforts to help the Palestinians have come in the form of their conditioning Palestinians to accept "painful" compromises, and to de-historicize the conflict by ignoring the rights of those outside the occupied territories and treating them as humanitarian aid beneficiaries at best. Even the United Nations Relief Works Agency, supposedly at the forefront of pressing refugee rights, has been reduced by its funders to a service provider and imposes restrictions on how Palestinians express themselves in refugee camps: "As UNRWA teachers, we are forced to sign a document which prohibits us from discussing politics, especially the Palestinian refugee issue, with students, directly or indirectly. Whoever refuses to sign is fired. It is illegal to hang anything in schools that has a reference to the Intifada, or the [Palestinian] revolution, or expressing your right as a refugee."

What's on the table currently by way of a "peace plan" is an Israeli unilateral plan that has US backing for a putative Palestinian state. This plan means the Israeli annexation of a further 15 percent of the West Bank and the vast majority of its water aquifers, a plan whose essential features are already "facts on the ground". On the Palestinian side, there is a proposal based on a referendum drafted by the leaders of Palestinian prisoners of various factions in Israeli prisons. This plan drops Palestinian territorial claims beyond the 1967 borders and promises full Arab recognition of Israel. It is a proposal that has only partial legitimacy, because it does not include consensus from Palestinians living outside the occupied territories in the far-flung diaspora. Needless to say, neither the Israeli side, nor the Palestinian side, even in its partially-formed and troubled current consensus, accepts the plan of the other.

But continuing to give precedence to the concerns of West Bank and Gaza residents over those of non-resident Palestinians means the planting of a time bomb in the heart of the peace process. Their inclusion guarantees that the historical roots of the conflict, something that Israel has spent its monstrous state apparatus denying for decades, will be taken into consideration, as it is the right of every Palestinian that they should be. Israel must understand that Palestinians will never forget these roots. Here is what one CIVITAS participant in a public meeting in Toronto, Canada has to say: "Young Palestinians should go and visit their towns just like the Zionists do through their Birth Right program; after all, there are a lot of Palestinians in the world with foreign citizenship. So why not plan visits to Yafa in an organized way and sponsor the youth to go back to their homeland?"

Palestinians must start building political infrastructures that go all the way to the top for Palestinians now outside the West Bank and Gaza who have never relinquished their right of return. These Palestinians must have active and constructive involvement in the decision making process.

Rima Merriman is a Palestinian-American living in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

Carter Doesn't Tell the Half of It

How Israel Enforces "Demographic Separation"

January 19, 2007

By JONATHAN COOK

Nazareth


When I published my book Blood and Religion last year, I sought not only to explain what lay behind Israeli policies since the failed Camp David negotiations nearly seven years ago, including the disengagement from Gaza and the building of a wall across the West Bank, but I also offered a few suggestions about where Israel might head next.

Making predictions in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict might be considered a particularly dangerous form of hubris, but I could hardly have guessed how soon my fears would be realized.

One of the main forecasts of the book was that Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line -- those who currently enjoy Israeli citizenship and those who live as oppressed subjects of Israel’s occupation -- would soon find common cause as Israel tries to seal itself off from what it calls the Palestinian “demographic threat”: that is, the moment when Palestinians outnumber Jews in the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.

I suggested that Israel’s greatest fear was ruling over a majority of Palestinians and being compared to apartheid South Africa, a fate that has possibly befallen it faster than I expected with the recent publication of Jimmy Carter’s book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. To avoid such a comparison, I argued, Israel was creating a “Jewish fortress”, separating -- at least demographically -- from Palestinians in the occupied territories by sealing off Gaza through a disengagement of its settler population and by building a 750km wall to annex large areas of the West Bank.

It was also closing off the last remaining avenue of a Right of Return for Palestinians by changing the law to make it all but impossible for Palestinians living in Israel to marry Palestinians in the occupied territories and thereby gain them citizenship.

The corollary of this Jewish fortress, I suggested, would be a sham Palestinian state, a series of disconnected ghettos that would prevent Palestinians from organizing effective resistance, non-violent or otherwise, but which would give the Israeli army an excuse to attack or invade whenever they chose, claiming that they were facing an “enemy state” in a conventional war.

Another benefit for Israel in imposing this arrangement would be that it could say all Palestinians who identified themselves as such -- whether in the occupied territories or inside Israel -- must now exercise their sovereign rights in the Palestinian state and renounce any claim on the Jewish state. The apartheid threat would be nullified.

I sketched out possible routes by which Israel could achieve this end:
* by redrawing the borders, using the wall, so that an area densely populated with Palestinian citizens of Israel known as the Little Triangle, which hugs the northern West Bank, would be sealed into the new pseudo-state;
* by continuing the process of corralling the Negev’s Bedouin farmers into urban reservations and then treating them as guest workers;
* by forcing Palestinian citizens living in the Galilee to pledge an oath of loyalty to Israel as a “Jewish and democratic state” or have their citizenship revoked;
* and by stripping Arab Knesset members of their right to stand for election.

When I made these forecasts, I suspected that many observers, even in the Palestinian solidarity movement, would find my ideas improbable. I could not have realized how fast events would overtake prediction.

The first sign came in October with the addition to the cabinet of Avigdor Lieberman, leader of a party that espouses the ethnic cleansing not only of Palestinians in the occupied territories (an unremarkable platform for an Israeli party) but of Palestinian citizens too, through land swaps that would exchange their areas for the illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

Lieberman is not just any cabinet minister; he has been appointed deputy prime minister with responsibility for the “strategic threats” that face Israel. In that role, he will be able to determine what issues are to be considered threats and thereby shape the public agenda for next few years. The “problem” of Israel’s Palestinian citizens is certain to be high on his list.

Lieberman has been widely presented as a political maverick, akin to the notorious racist Rabbi Meir Kahane, whose Kach party was outlawed in the late 1980s. That is a gross misunderstanding: Lieberman is at the very heart of the country’s rightwing establishment and will almost certainly be a candidate for prime minister in future elections, as Israelis drift ever further to the right.

Unlike Kahane, Lieberman has cleverly remained within the Israeli political mainstream while pushing its agenda to the very limits of what it is currently possible to say. Kadima and Labor urgently want unilateral separation from the Palestinians but are shy to spell out, both to their own domestic constituency and the international community, what separation will entail.

Lieberman has no such qualms. He is unequivocal: if Israel is separating from the Palestinians in parts of the occupied territories, why not also separate from the 1.2 million Palestinians who through oversight rather than design ended up as citizens of a Jewish state in 1948? If Israel is to be a Jewish fortress, then, as he points out, it is illogical to leave Palestinians within the fortifications.

These arguments express the common mood among the Israeli public, one that has been cultivated since the eruption of the intifada in 2000 by endless talk among Israel’s political and military elites about “demographic separation”. Regular opinion polls show that about two-thirds of Israelis support transfer, either voluntary or forced, of Palestinian citizens from the state.

Recent polls also reveal how fashionable racism has become in Israel. A survey conducted last year showed that 68 per cent of Israeli Jews do not want to live next to a Palestinian citizen (and rarely have to, as segregation is largely enforced by the authorities), and 46 per cent would not want an Arab to visit their home.

A poll of students that was published last week suggests that racism is even stronger among young Jews. Three-quarters believed Palestinian citizens are uneducated, uncivilized and unclean, and a third are frightened of them. Richard Kupermintz of Haifa University, who conducted the survey more than two years ago, believes the responses would be even more extreme today.

Lieberman is simply riding the wave of such racism and pointing out the inevitable path separation must follow if it is to satisfy these kinds of prejudices. He may speak his mind more than his cabinet colleagues, but they too share his vision of the future. That is why only one minister, the dovish and principled Ophir Pines Paz of Labor, resigned over Ehud Olmert’s inclusion of Lieberman in the cabinet.

Contrast that response with the uproar caused by the Labor leader Amir Peretz’s appointment of the first Arab cabinet minister in Israel’s history. (A member of the small Druze community, which serves in the Israeli army, Salah Tarif, was briefly a minister without portfolio in Sharon’s first government.)

Raleb Majadele, a Muslim, is a senior member of the Labor party and a Zionist (what might be termed, in different circumstances, a self-hating Arab or an Uncle Tom), and yet his apppointment has broken an Israeli taboo: Arabs are not supposed to get too close to the centers of power.

Peretz’s decision was entirely cynical. He is under threat on all fronts -- from his coalition partners in Kadima and in Lieberman’s Yisrael Beitenu, and from within his own party -- and desperately needs the backing of Labor’s Arab party members. Majadele is the key, and that is why Peretz gave him a cabinet post, even if a marginal one: Minister of Science, Culture and Sport.

But the right is deeply unhappy at Majadele’s inclusion in the cabinet. Lieberman called Peretz unfit to be defense minister for making the appointment and demanded that Majadele pledge loyalty to Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. Lieberman’s party colleagues referred to the appointment as a “lethal blow to Zionism”.

A few Labor and Meretz MKs denounced these comments as racist. But more telling was the silence of Olmert and his Kadima party, as well as Binyamin Netanyhu’s Likud, at Lieberman’s outburst. The centre and right understand that Lieberman’s views about Majadele, and Palestinian citizens more generally, mirror those of most Israeli Jews and that it would be foolhardy to criticise him for expressing them -- let alone sack him.

In this game of “who is the truer Zionist”, Lieberman can only grow stronger against his former colleagues in Kadima and Likud. Because he is free to speak his and their minds, while they must keep quiet for appearance’s sake, he, not they, will win ever greater respect from the Israeli public.

Meanwhile, all the evidence suggests that Olmert and the current government will implement the policies being promoted by Lieberman, even if they are too timid to openly admit that is what they are doing.

Some of those policies are of the by-now familiar variety, such as the destruction of 21 Bedouin homes, half the village of Twayil, in the northern Negev last week. It was the second time in a month that the village had been razed by the Israeli security forces.

These kind of official attacks against the indigenous Bedouin -- who have been classified by the government as “squatters” on state lands -- are a regular occurrence, an attempt to force 70,000 Bedouin to leave their ancestral homes and relocate to deprived townships.

A more revealing development came this month, however, when it was reported in the Israeli media that the government is for the first time backing “loyalty” legislation that has been introduced privately by a Likud MK. Gilad Erdan’s bill would revoke the citizenship of Israelis who take part in “an act that constitutes a breach of loyalty to the state”, the latest in a string of proposals by Jewish MKs conditioning citizenship on loyalty to the Israeli state, defined in all these schemes very narrowly as a “Jewish and democratic” state.

Arab MKs, who reject an ethnic definition of Israel and demand instead that the country be reformed into a “state of all its citizens”, or a liberal democracy, are typically denounced as traitors.

Lieberman himself suggested just such a loyalty scheme for Palestinian citizens last month during a trip to Washington. He told American Jewish leaders: “He who is not ready to recognize Israel as a Jewish and Zionist state cannot be a citizen in the country.”

Erdan’s bill specifies acts of disloyalty that include visiting an “enemy state” -- which, in practice, means just about any Arab state. Most observers believe that, after Erdan’s bill has been redrafted by the Justice Ministry, it will be used primarily against the Arab MKs, who are looking increasingly beleaguered. Most have been repeatedly investigated by the Attorney-General for any comment in support of the Palestinians in the occupied territories or for visiting neighbouring Arab states. One, Azmi Bishara, has been put on trial twice for these offences.

Meanwhile, Jewish MKs have been allowed to make the most outrageous racist statements against Palestinian citizens, mostly unchallenged.

Former cabinet minister Effi Eitam, for example, said back in September: “The vast majority of West Bank Arabs must be deported ... We will have to make an additional decision, banning Israeli Arabs from the political system … We have cultivated a fifth column, a group of traitors of the first degree.” He was “warned” by the Attorney-General over his comments (though he has expressed similar views several times before), but remained unrepentant, calling the warning an attempt to “silence” him.

The leader of the opposition and former prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, the most popular politician in Israel according to polls, gave voice to equally racist sentiments this month when he stated that child allowance cuts he imposed as finance minister in 2002 had had a “positive” demographic effect by reducing the birth rate of Palestinian citizens.

Arab MKs, of course, do not enjoy such indulgence when they speak out, much more legitimately, in supporting their kin, the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza, who are suffering under Israel’s illegal occupation. Arab MK Ahmed Tibi, for example, was roundly condemned last week by the Jewish parties, including the most leftwing, Meretz, when he called on Fatah to “continue the struggle” to establish a Palestinian state.

However, the campaign of intimidation by the government and Jewish members of the Knesset has failed to silence the Arab MKs or stop them visiting neighboring states, which is why the pressure is being ramped up. If Erdan’s bill becomes law -- which seems possible with government backing -- then the Arab MKs and the minority they represent will either be cut off from the rest of the Arab world once again (as they were for the first two decades of Israel’s existence, when a military government was imposed on them) or threatened with the revocation of their citizenship for disloyalty (a move, it should be noted, that is illegal under international law).

It may not be too fanciful to see the current legislation eventually being extended to cover other “breaches of loyalty”, such as demanding democratic reforms of Israel or denying that a Jewish state is democratic. Technically, this is already the position as Israel’s election law makes it illegal for political parties, including Arab ones, to promote a platform that denies Israel’s existence as a “Jewish and democratic” state.

Soon Arab MKs and their constituents may also be liable to having their citizenship revoked for campaigning, as many currently do, for a state of all its citizens. That certainly is the view of the eminent Israeli historian Tom Segev, who argued in the wake of the government’s adoption of the bill: “In practice, the proposed law is liable to turn all Arabs into conditional citizens, after they have already become, in many respects, second-class citizens. Any attempt to formulate an alternative to the Zionist reality is liable to be interpreted as a ‘breach of faith’ and a pretext for stripping them of their citizenship.”

But it is unlikely to end there. I hesitate to make another prediction but, given the rapidity with which the others have been realized, it may be time to hazard yet another guess about where Israel is going next.

The other day I was at a checkpoint near Nablus, one of several that are being converted by Israel into what look suspiciously like international border crossings, even though they fall deep inside Palestinian territory.

I had heard that Palestinian citizens of Israel were being allowed to pass these checkpoints unhindered to enter cities like Nablus to see relatives. (These familial connections are a legacy of the 1948 war, when separated Palestinian refugees ended up on different sides of the Green Line, and also of marriages that were possible after 1967, when Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza, making social and business contacts possible again.) But, when Palestinian citizens try to leave these cities via the checkpoints, they are invariably detained and issued letters by the Israeli authorities warning them that they will be tried if caught again visiting “enemy” areas.

In April last year, at a cabinet meeting at which the Israeli government agreed to expel Hamas MPs from Jerusalem to the West Bank, ministers discussed changing the classification of the Palestinian Authority from a “hostile entity” to the harsher category of an “enemy entity”. The move was rejected for the time being because, as one official told the Israeli media: “There are international legal implications in such a declaration, including closing off the border crossings, that we don't want to do yet.”

Is it too much to suspect that before long, after Israel has completed the West Bank wall and its “border” terminals, the Jewish state will classify visits by Palestinian citizens to relatives as “visiting an enemy state”? And will such visits be grounds for revoking citizenship, as they could be under Erdan’s bill if Palestinian citizens visit relatives in Syria or Lebanon?

Lieberman doubtless knows the answer already.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist living in Nazareth, Israel. His book, Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State, is published by Pluto Press. His website is www.jkcook.net

Israel hands Abbas frozen funds

The Palestinian Authority also faces an international aid boycott

18 January 2007

Israel has transferred to the Palestinians $100m (77.2m euros, £50.7m) of tax revenues withheld since Hamas won elections last year.

The money has been paid directly to the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, and not the Hamas-led government.

It represents a sixth of the total collected on behalf of the Palestinian Authority since the election.

The money comes from taxes on Palestinians working in Israel and other tariffs.

'Crippling effects'

Analysts say that the money is part of Israel's bid to strengthen moderate Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in his power struggle with Hamas.

Rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas have been locked in conflict following Hamas's election victory which prompted an international aid boycott.

The BBC's Rachel Harvey in Jerusalem says however the money is distributed, it is desperately needed.

The Palestinian government has been crippled in part by the lack of tax revenues but also because of a continuing international financial boycott.

The move comes just days after US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice held meetings with both the Palestinian and Israeli leaders.

She has said she plans to host a three-way summit with Mr Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert early next month.

Source

Look Towards Both Side's

by Housewife4Palestine

To take one side without hearing the other side
Is unjust.

To accuse with out kindness or knowledge
Is barren.

To condemn with out all truth
Is forsaking humanity.

To say you walk in truth with hidden sin’s
Is to lie to yourself
And God sees.

For he who walks the straight path
Has not fear of God

The question’s He may ask
No need to lower the head in shame.

‘US, Israeli Failures Caused ME Instability’

Barbara Ferguson, Arab News

WASHINGTON, 18 January 2007 — The failures of the US and Israeli wars in Iraq and Lebanon have undermined the deterrent strength of the Washington-led alliance while exposing the entire region to increased insecurity, reports an Israeli-based think tank.

The Middle East Strategic Balance, 2005-2006; an annual assessment of regional security released last week, concludes that threats to regional stability worsened in 2006, primarily due to the inability of the United States to stem the ascendancy of anti-Western, Islamic extremism.
“The Lebanon war actualized Israel’s strategic problems and instability, damaged its deterring image, and exposed IDF weakness in decision-making in Israel,” added the survey, which was written by experts at Tel Aviv University’s Middle East Strategic Studies Institute.

The institute also stated that the failure in Iraq hurt the United States’ position and that Israel had nothing to gain from the American presence in Iraq.

Authors of the report from the Institute for National Security Studies, INSS, formerly known as the Tel Aviv University Jaffee Center, cited Israel’s war in Lebanon, the lack of progress toward a resolution of the Palestinian issue; Iran’s progress in reaching its nuclear goals, the absence of significant achievements in the war against global terror and Islamic extremism; and the failure of American efforts to stabilize the situation in Iraq.

The report said the war in Lebanon underscored the problematic and fluctuating nature of Israel’s strategic environment; damaged Israel’s deterrent image; and exposed weaknesses in the IDF and the decision-making process in Israel.

INSS also noted that the threats to Middle East security and stability worsened in 2006, as a result of “the American failure in Iraq (which) has hurt the standing of the US in the Middle East.”

Israel’s fighting in Lebanon was perceived by many, friends and foes united, as an Israeli failure, noted the survey writers. The war also exposed the issues of Israel’s vulnerability and the lack of an effective solution to the Qassam rockets.

Israel suffered other setbacks this year: Former US President Jimmy Carter strongly criticized Israel in his new best-selling book “Palestine Peace Not Apartheid,” and a recent international consumer survey found that Israel has the worst “brand name” of any country in the world.

So perhaps it is not surprising that Israel — whose international image is of a country in continuous conflict — would engage in a serious long-term effort to reshape global perceptions of itself. As part of its “re-branding” strategy, according to a report in the Washington Times, Israel is turning to “the wisdom of Madison Avenue.”

Hamas: "We will not release Cpl Shalit unless Palestinian prisoners are set free"

January 18, 2006

Gaza - Ma'an - The Hamas movement has said that they will not release the captured Israeli soldier, Corporal Gil'ad Shalit unless Israel releases Palestinian prisoners, including high-ranking leaders.

The spokesperson of Hamas, Isma'il Radwan, stated, "We will not [financially] bargain over the Israeli soldier, whatever the consequences may be."

In his address before a Hamas crowd in front of the Red Cross headquarters in Gaza City on Thursday, Radwan declared that Hamas will not abandon the prisoners' issue, "under any pressure or blackmail".

The spokesperson sent a message to the Arab and Islamic worlds, calling on them to support and show solidarity with the Palestinian prisoners' cause. They also sent another message to the international Quartet and the American administration, telling them that "it is time that Palestinian prisoners are released, after suffering enough insults, debasement and deliberate murders".

What happened to Moh’d Saleh?

Moh'd Saleh, was a Palestinian only 23 years of age, when this incident occurred.

I had looked for this picture for a little time, because I felt people should see this, if you had not. Please enlarge to get a better view and read the captions.

Soldiers taunt crippled dog in Iraq

January 16, 2007

The poster of a web site said, they found this horrible video on a blank CD in the Green Zone, Baghdad.

What is the saying, if someone would harm and animal; imagine what they would do to you?

Please be warned, this is disturbing.

Body of Saddam Hussein in the Morgue

Warning: Extreme Graphic Content

I came across this video and while it is extremely graphic it does show the following: Saddam's body on a gurney, in the morgue. A large and gaping wound is visible on his neck.

Hamas Denies Gaza Tunnels Dug to Kill Fatah Leaders

17, January, 2007

Hisham Abu Taha & Agencies

GAZA CITY, 17 January 2007 — Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, said yesterday the tunnels dug by Palestinians under the Gaza Strip were aimed at foiling possible Israeli ground offensives and not at killing prominent leaders of the rival Fatah faction.

Fatah, locked in a power struggle with the governing Islamist Hamas movement, said on Monday the tunnels ran under roads and some homes of some of its top officials and were rigged with explosives that could have been used to kill them.

Al-Qassam Brigades spokesman Abu Ubida said the tunnels, discovered in recent days by Fatah-led security forces, were built to confront the “Zionist enemy,” a reference to Israel.

He denied any tunnels had been dug underneath the homes of Fatah leaders, describing the accusation as “politically motivated.”

At least 30 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip since President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah called for fresh elections last month, raising the stakes in his bitter power struggle with Hamas.

Abu Ubida told reporters that “Al-Qassam brigades will not let those who leading the coup current to uncover the resistance plans that been set to confront the occupation.”

He added that Hamas would not dig tunnels to assassinate the symbols of coup and the followers of the occupation but “We will let the people, the nation and the history to bring those followers to the account.”

Meanwhile, a survey published yesterday found that Fatah faction would defeat the Hamas group if parliamentary elections were held now.

The poll, conducted by the Ramallah-based independent Near East Consulting, also showed that a majority of the Palestinians want the Islamist group to soften its position toward Israel.

The survey showed the once-dominant Fatah faction winning 40 percent of a parliamentary vote and its rival Hamas 23 percent. Remaining voters said they would back other factions or refrain from casting ballots.

If presidential elections were held now in the occupied West Bank and in the Gaza Strip, the moderate Abbas would win 38 percent of the vote compared with 18 percent for Hamas’ Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, the poll showed.

Abbas shocked Palestinians last month when he called for new parliamentary and presidential elections in a bid to break a deadlock with Hamas after inconclusive talks on a unity government.

Hamas was voted into power in January 2006, drawing Western sanctions over its refusal to recognize Israel, renounce violence and embrace existing interim peace deals. The sanctions have deepened economic hardship for many Palestinians.

34,452 Iraq civilians said killed in '06

Iraqi soldier walks through the site of powerful blasts outside Al-Mustansriya university in Baghdad, Iraq, Tuesday Jan. 16, 2007. Two minivans exploded near a university as students were leaving after classes Tuesday in a predominantly Shiite area of eastern Baghdad. (AP Photo/Karim Kadim) KARIM KADIM: AP

"United Nations reported 34,452 civilians were slain last year, nearly three times more than the government reported."

"This is not a bomb, I just bought this shampoo from the Airport gift shop.”

January 16, 2006

by Housewife4Palestine

With all the prejudice that is occurring in the West, to try to bridge the gape between Muslim and non-Muslim a show along these lines seems to have popped up called, "Little Mosque on the Prairie.” From the first show, it seemed to be an instant hit.

While I do not agree with some of the representations in this program, I have to admit I did laugh.

While some people may say this program is making a political statement, the creator Zarqa Nawaz say’s no, that it is strictly entertainment.

It is a program coming out of Canada, on station CBC. It actually seems to be taking a humorous look at what it is like living in the West as a Muslim.

In addition, I would hope not all people who are not Muslim would think we quite do things and look this way.

The clip I am presenting here, why it may seem a little exaggerated, I have had it almost this bad in American airports.

“We see a Muslim, turn on the attack dogs, the security wands and the over head light with the rubber hose. This is not a bomb, I just bought this shampoo from the Airport gift shop.”

Therefore, if you see this show and think we are like this as Muslim’s, the joke is on you.



Watch the whole Program

Israeli interrogators offer sweets to Palestinian detainee after killing his brother

January 16, 2007

Bethlehem - A Palestinian detainee held in Israeli occupation jails has revealed that Israeli interrogators offered him sweets after an IOF unit assassinated his brother.

The detainee, Maher Sawafta, 29, told the lawyer of the Palestinian prisoner's club that he was arrested on 10/11/2006 and held in Jalama prison since then. His brother Salahuddin and another resistance fighter, Hussam Al-Issa, were assassinated on 19/12/2006, he elaborated.

In a testimony under oath, Maher said that on the eve of his brother's murder the interrogators held him in isolation and told him that they would kill his brother.

The next day they (interrogators) came to his cell with sweets, which they distributed among themselves and offered him some, after telling him that his brother was killed.

Maher has three other brothers, Sa'ed, Noor and Hussam, in Israeli occupation jails.

Haneyya: Rice's visit to the region perilous to the Palestinian question

January 16, 2007

Gaza - PA premier Ismail Haneyya has warned that the visit of Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, poses grave danger to the future of the Palestinian question as it was purposely designed to protect Israel's interests in the region.

Heneyya added, "Rice's visit clearly aims at reinforcing Zionist interests in the region through her administration's vision of a temporary state [Palestinian state with temporary borders], which the Bush administration can achieve or lay the foundation for during the time left for this administration in office."

Haneyya pointed out, in a press statement on Monday, a copy of which was received by the PIC, that the present US administration is left with less than two years in office and is trying to do something in this period.

"It is clear that the Bush administration will not put any pressure on the Zionist entity to make substantial concessions to the Palestinian people, rather would attempt sedate the Palestinian situation," Haneyya added.

The sedation, the premier opined, would take the form of easing IOF restrictions on barriers, releasing some of the PA money seized by Israel and putting it in the hands of the PA presidency, in addition to supporting "moderate" Palestinians to bolster their position in the Palestinian arena among other facilities.

"We view as dangerous Rice's political and security recipe for the Palestinian situation. It is not true that she carried nothing with her, rather, we view what she carried as dangerous to everyone. Talk of a state with temporary borders and arming the Presidential security forces are main features of [Rice's] future recipe," he said calling on Palestinian people to be cautious and responsible regarding the reverberations of Rice's visit.

Visa crisis unresolved for the 45,000 foreign nationals in the occupied Palestinian territories

A Palestinian-American's 'last permit'(MaanImages)

January 16, 2007

Ma'an - Thousands of foreign passport-holders residing in the occupied Palestinian territory still risk falling victim to Israel's "abitrary, abusive and internationally unlawful" practices despite reported changes to Israel's policy of denying entry to foreigners en route to the Palestinian territories.

According to the Campaign for the Right of Entry/Re-Entry to the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) in a press conference held on Tuesday in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Israel's proposed changes are being dealt with on a "case-by-case" basis, leaving thousands of foreign citizens at risk of expulsion. There are 45,000 foreign nationals residing in the oPt who face such restrictions, the campaigners say, and the vast majority of these cases would leave behind spouses, children, businesses and property.

In December, the Israeli Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), Maj. Gen. Yossef Mishlev, announced to Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat that "the policy regarding entry of foreign nationals from countries maintaining diplomatic relations with Israel has changed, and entry of these foreign nationals into the West Bank is now possible".

The change in policy added that "Entry of aformentioned nationals will be permitted through means of the military commander's consent". In addition, the order states that "The 'last permit' stamp has been cancelled. People who have this stamp on their passport may leave the area, and their return will not be preventled solely on the basis of this stamp".

As a result, many foreign nationals who had previously encountered problems on Israel's borders, such as receiving 'last permit' stamps on their passports, decided to take the risk and attempt to renew their tourist visas by leaving Israel and returning. Fadah Thum, a Brazilian citizen married to a Palestinian and the mother of a five-month-old baby, is one example. Fadah had been renewing her visa every three months since 2001 when she came to reside in the West Bank. Then in September 2006, like hundreds of others, she received a 'last permit' and, in December, she was forced to leave behind her home, husband, baby and university studies. Following COGAT's announcement, she tried to re-enter and was denied entry.

The Campaign for the Right of Entry/Re-Entry said that another 13 or 14 similar cases of denial of (re-)entry have been reported to them in the last week alone. Many of these foreign nationals continue to be held at the detention facility in Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv awaiting a decision. Included amongst these foreign detainees were a couple in their sixties, who arrived on 10 January and who were forcibly deported to Amman after six days' imprisonment. To add insult to injury, all such deportees have to personally bear the cost of their return to their country of nationality.

According to widely distributed consular information, a contact person from COGAT was stationed at the Allenby Bridge crossing between Jordan and the West Bank in mid-December, and another was expected to be stationed at Ben Gurion "within weeks" in order to prevent such problems at crossing points. However, the Campaign for the Right of Entry/Re-Entry informed that no such agents appear to be in place.

In addition, there are clearly no procedures in place for the thousands of foreign nationals who have chosen to make the Palestinian territories their home and 'centre of life'. There are 120,000 families in the occupied Palestinian territory whose applications for 'family reunification' since 2000 have been ignored by the Israeli authorities. These foreign nationals face a constant threat of expulsion, deportation and forced separation from their families and livelihoods.

There are also many whose details have gone astray in the depths of the Palestinian and Israeli bureacracies. Subha Ghanam is a US citizen. Her husband, Samer, is a Palestinian ID holder. They married in April 2006 and since then, they have resided together in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Subha is expecting their first child, a daughter, in March. In November 2006, Subha applied to the Palestinian ministry of interior for an extension to her visa. Since then, she has heard nothing about her application or her passport. She is now forced to remain within the West Bank with no papers as, if she leaves, she will likely be denied re-entry. Against her will, she has been forced to outstay her visa and, thus, violate Israeli law.

Subha told the press conference that this leaves her and her blossoming family with a "sense of instability and an unpredictable future"

The campaigners said Subha's is just one of over 150 similar reported cases. In accordance with Israel's stated instructions, some further 150 foreign passports have also been submitted to the Israeli interior ministry representative at Beit El since October and nothing has been heard of their applications or documents since.

The campaigners stressed, however, that this number represents just a fraction of the problem as many are too afraid of punitive measures by the Israeli authorities – such as deliberate denial of re-entry or visa extension – to report their case.

Charles Shubash, a legal advisor to the campaign, explained that the central issue is that Israel is not the sovereign power in the occupied Palestinian territories and thus, only international humanitarian and human rights law can be considered the point of reference in the territories. As a result, Israel does not have the legal right to do as it pleases with the population of this territory.

The crisis clearly remains unresolved.

The Sons and Daughters of Iraq

Remember, the people of Iraq, had nothing to do with 9/11!

We live in a war; we resist the slaughter, you raping us, all in the name of “Your Oppressive Democracy!”



Is Israel worth it?


Note:

There are some children now fighting in the resistance against the Americans, because their parent’s where murdered by the American’s.

Obama takes 1st step in presidential bid

U.S. Sen Barack Obama looks out over the congregation of St. Mark Cathedral before speaking at a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. birthday celebration in Harvey, Ill., Monday, Jan. 15, 2007. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

A Message From Barack

About Barack

January 16, 2006

By NEDRA PICKLER Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Democratic Sen. Barack Obama said Tuesday he is taking the initial step in a presidential bid that could make him the nation's first black to occupy the White House.

Obama announced on his Web site, http://www.barackobama.com, that he was filing a presidential exploratory committee. He said he would announce more about his plans in his home state of Illinois on Feb. 10.

"I certainly didn't expect to find myself in this position a year ago," Obama said in a video posting. "I've been struck by how hungry we all are for a different kind of politics. So I've spent some time thinking about how I could best advance the cause of change and progress that we so desperately need."

Obama, a 45-year-old with little more than two years into his Senate term, is the most inexperienced candidate considering a run for the Democratic nomination. He quickly rose to national prominence, beginning with his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention and his election to the Senate that year, but still is an unknown quantity to many voters.

Two best-selling autobiographies — "The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream" and "Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance" — have helped fill in the gaps but have still only touched a fraction of the public.

Nonetheless, he ranks as a top contender. His appeal on the stump, his unique background, his opposition to the Iraq war and the fact that he is a fresh face set him apart in a competitive race that also is expected to include front-runner Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

Other Democrats who have announced a campaign or exploratory committee are 2004 vice presidential nominee John Edwards, former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd and Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich.

Obama's announcement was comparatively low-key, banking on the hype building up to his decision to drive the buzz rather than a speech or high-profile media appearance. He was in Washington on Tuesday but did not plan any public appearances.

Obama tried to turn his biggest weakness — his lack of experience in national politics — into an asset by criticizing the work of those who have been in power.

"The decisions that have been made in Washington these past six years, and the problems that have been ignored, have put our country in a precarious place," he said.

"America's faced big problems before," he said. "But today, our leaders in Washington seem incapable of working together in a practical, commonsense way. Politics has become so bitter and partisan, so gummed up by money and influence, that we can't tackle the big problems that demand solutions."

He said Americans are struggling financially, dependence on foreign oil threatens the environment and national security and "we're still mired in a tragic and costly war that should have never been waged."

Barack Hussein Obama was born in 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii, where his parents met while studying at the University of Hawaii. His father was black and from Kenya; his mother, white and from Wichita, Kan.

Obama's parents divorced when he was two and his father returned to Kenya. His mother later married an Indonesian student and the family moved to Jakarta. Obama returned to Hawaii when he was 10 to live with his maternal grandparents.

Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the first African-American elected editor of the Harvard Law Review. He settled in Chicago, where he joined a law firm and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago's Law School. He also helped local churches establish job training programs for residents of poor neighborhoods and organized a major voter registration drive in the 1992 election.

While working at the corporate law firm Sidley Austin in the summer of 1989, Obama met Michelle Robinson, then an associate attorney at the firm. They married in 1992, and have two daughters, Malia and Sasha.

In 1996, he was elected to the Illinois state Senate, where he earned a reputation as a consensus-building Democrat who was strongly liberal on social and economic issues. He backed gay rights, abortion rights, gun control, universal health care and tax breaks for the poor, but set himself apart from others by working with opponents to resolve policy disagreements and refusing to become a rubber stamp for his allies.

The retirement of Republican Sen. Peter Fitzgerald of Illinois in 2004 drew a raft of candidates to the Democratic primary, but Obama easily outdistanced his competitors. He was virtually assured of victory in the general election when the designated Republican candidate was forced from the race by scandal late in the election. His GOP replacement — conservative gadfly Alan Keyes, who is also black — garnered less than 30 percent of the vote.

Obama insisted during the 2004 campaign and through his first year in the Senate that he had no intention of running for president, but by late 2006 his public statements had begun to leave open that possibility.

Last month, he traveled to New Hampshire, the first-in-the-nation primary state, and drew rock-star size crowds to a speech and book signing.

What did you learn in school today?

American soldiers shoot at a civilian bus in Iraq

(Click on picture for extra video link.)

Doctor talks about what happened about the bus.

What is Silence?

You say you wish the truth, it slaps you in the face everyday, it is just so horrifying you cover your face.

It is time to look up…



...Stop blaming the REAL victims!

Two Saddam aides executed; One beheaded

Awad Bandar was the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court and Barzan Hassan was Hussein's half-brother and a former chief of the secret police.

January 15, 2006

Video

Video

By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's attempt to close a chapter in Saddam Hussein's repressive quarter-century in power, by hanging two of his henchmen Monday, further enraged Sunnis when the former leader's half brother was decapitated on the gallows.

Barzan Ibrahim's stout body plunged through the trap door and its head was snapped off by the jerk of the thick beige rope at the end of his fall toward the execution chamber floor 18 feet below.

A government video of the execution screened for reporters showed Ibrahim's body passing the camera in a blur, after the decapitation. His body came to rest on its chest, with the head a few meters (yards) away, still covered in the black hood that was put there by one of his five masked executioners only moments before.

Awad Hamed al-Bandar, head of Saddam's Revolutionary court, swung lifeless at the end of the rope that hanged him. Both men met death at 3 a.m. wearing red-orange jumpsuits.

Prosecutor Jaafar al-Moussawi, who witnessed the hangings, said Ibrahim looked tense when he was brought into the chamber. He quoted him as saying, "I did not do anything. It was all the work of Fadel al-Barrak," a reference to the man who ran two intelligence departments in Saddam's feared Mukhabarat.

They were taken to the gallows two weeks and two days after Saddam was hanged in a pitiless execution during which Shiite witnesses taunted their former tormentor in the last minutes of his life. All three hangings occurred in a Saddam-era military intelligence headquarters building in the Shiite north Baghdad neighborhood of Kazimiyah.

By day's end at least 3,000 angry Sunnis, many firing guns in the air, others weeping or cursing the government, assembled in Ouja for the burial of Ibrahim, who also served as Saddam's intelligence chief, and al-Bandar.

"Where are those who cry out in demands for human rights?" Marwan Mohammed, one of the mourners, asked in grief and frustration. "Where are the U.N. and the world's human rights organizations? Barzan had cancer. They treated him only to keep him alive long enough to kill him. We vow to take revenge, even if it takes years."

People pray beside the coffins of Barzan Ibrahim, Saddam's half brother and former intelligence chief, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, former head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court who were executed at dawn Monday in Baghdad, in the town of Ouja, 115 kilometers (70 miles) north of Baghdad, Iraq, Monday Jan. 15, 2007. (AP Photo/Bassem Daham)

Ibrahim's son-in-law, Azzam Saleh Abdullah, said "we heard the news from the media. We were supposed to be informed a day earlier, but it seems that this government does not know the rules."

He said it reflected the hatred for Sunnis felt by the Shiite-led government. "They still want more Iraqi bloodshed. To hell with this democracy," he said.

The executed men, at their request, were buried in a garden outside a building Saddam had built for religious events in the town of his birth and in which the former leader was interred on New Year's eve in a grave chipped out of an interior floor.

Ouja, just outside Tikrit — the former leader's Tigris River power base about a 90-minute drive north of Baghdad — witnessed not only Saddam's birth and burial, but was the scene of his December 2003 capture by American soldiers. They found him hiding in a tiny underground bunker near the town nine months after he fled the blitzkrieg U.S.-led invasion from Kuwait toppled his regime.

Saddam, Ibrahim and al-Bandar were sentence to hang after they were found guilty of crimes against humanity for the killings of 148 Shiites after a failed 1982 assassination attempt against the former leader in the city of Dujail.

Saddam was executed four days after the appeals court upheld the verdicts, reportedly under pressure from al-Maliki who wanted the former leader dead before 2006 was out.

The execution video shown to reporters Monday, an obvious attempt to prove that Ibrahim's body was not intentionally mutilated after death, was muted as was the official video of Saddam's execution.

The Saddam execution pictures were broadcast by television outlets worldwide. But Ali al-Dabbagh, the government spokesman, said there would be no public distribution of the video of Monday's hangings.

"We will not release the video, but we want to show the truth," he said. "The Iraqi government acted in a neutral way."

"No one shouted slogans or said anything that would taint the execution. None of those charged were insulted," the spokesman said.

The official video of Saddam's hanging was quickly pushed aside by a second one taken with a cell phone camera by a witnesses and leaked to Arab television stations and Internet Web sites. It showed the gallows floor opening, Saddam falling and swinging dead at the end of the rope.

But before he died, some of those in attendance could be heard chanting "Muqtada, Muqtada," the given name of a radical Shiite cleric whose Mahdi Army militia is believed responsible for the deaths of thousands of Sunnis in the past year.

The unruly scene drew worldwide protest and calls for Ibrahim and al-Bandar to be spared the hangman.

Last week, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani urged the government to delay the executions. "In my opinion we should wait," Talabani said Wednesday at a news conference with U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad. "We should examine the situation," he said without elaborating

A spokeswoman for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he "regrets that despite pleas from both himself and the high commissioner for human rights to spare the lives of the two defendants, they were both executed."

A lawyer for the two men told The Associated Press recently that they were taken from their cells and told they were going to be hanged on the same day Saddam was executed.

Issam Ghazawi, a member of Saddam's defense team, said he met individually with Ibrahim and al-Bandar and that Ibrahim told him they were escorted from their cells and told they were also going to be executed.

He said the two men were also told to write their wills, but were taken back to their prison cells nearly nine hours later.

After Saddam's execution, Human Rights Watch released a report calling the speedy trial and subsequent hanging of Saddam proof of the new Iraqi government's disregard for human rights.

"The tribunal repeatedly showed its disregard for the fundamental due process rights of all of the defendants," said Richard Dicker, director of Human Rights Watch's International Justice Program.

On Monday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the executions were mishandled and said she hoped that those responsible for making cell phone videos of Saddam's execution would be punished.

"We were disappointed there was not greater dignity given to the accused under these circumstances," Rice said during a news conference with her Egyptian counterpart in Luxor, Egypt.

Across Iraq on Monday, authorities reported at least 55 people were killed or found dead, and the U.S. military announced the deaths of two more soldiers, both killed in Baghdad.