Note to the U.S.: The View from the Arab Street

When the U.S. and the West wallows in heartfelt indecision on Libya, and decisive ambivalence about Mideast democratic revolutions in general, it sends a clear message to the Arab "Street" - as opposed to the Arab "throne", from which emanate winks, nods, and solemn, secret applause. The message is that the U.S., and the West,
WANT, NEED, tyrants in the Middle East. The U.S. and NATO want to avoid "instability". They can't "interfere" in "civil wars". The West will help with "humanitarian efforts" - the band-aids. But to get at the cause??? Well, everybody loves a tyrant!

Arabs on the Street see the West has adopted their much-loved "domino theory". If one tyrant goes, others could fall. And the U.S., apparently, NEEDS tyrants.

Oh yes, we condemned Qaddafi. Reagan even tried to assassinate him back in the day. And we have no problem with regime change, assassination, fomenting civil wars in other countries, or even occupying them. Just look at Iraq, and don't forget Vietnam. But Libya?? Heavens, no!

Why? Simple. We're not calling the shots. We didn't start the revolt. Libyans did. Therein lies the issue, the trigger-finger block. We loathe any revolution that wasn't, shall we say, "made in the U.S.A." If it wasn't our idea, to tell with it.

But...let's look more closely at this domino theory. We're not talking about nations falling to communist revolutions. We're talking about repressive regimes falling to democratic revolutions, about fights for freedom, democracy and representative government - the West's rhetorical ideals. We're talking about the very sorts of revolutions we've been blaming the Arabs for not having for decades, the lack of which has been brought out ad nauseum as proof of Arabs' "backwardness" and lack of "readiness for democracy". And now, here's your true-blood, liberal, Western-style revolt! These are not Islamists. They want a real, free democracy. They want out of dictatorships.

Yet the West gives credence to the worst of all regimes, buying into Qaddafi's "civil war" story, buying into his propaganda that his people "love" him. The West doesn't quibble with this, presumes - for their own convenience - that he has loyalists who have not been bought or terrorized into submission, and that these loyalists are fighting for what they conceive of as a legitimate cause.

The U.S. backed Mubarak until it became openly hideous to do so, and now backs Qaddafi by allowing him to decimate his population and call it a "civil war" instead of a massacre. It seems the U.S. is also trying to shore of Yemen's Ali Saleh, and OMG don't mention the Saudi regime - now there's one hell of a repressive regime if there ever was one! Let alone...please don't say it... the unmentionable, the sacred, the fetus-in-a-jar...Israel. (When Israel openly supports fellow democracies in the region instead of trying to decimate them in some way as per Lebanon, I'll stop calling it a fetus. A democracy that doesn't support democracy is not a democracy, but some kind of hybrid. Is the US trying to rebrand itself, too?)

So what is the Arab on the street to presume? That the West loves democracy? That they believe in human rights and freedom? Or that they only impose, by force of arms, "freedom" when it suits their needs, when they are in full control of that freedom. But isn't "freedom under someone's control" an oxymoron???

Israel Needs Moral Compass - And This Is a Tough Sell?

First post in what seems like a century. Have changed my priorities and am blogging less, if at all. But some important things still keep popping up. Like Israel's inhumanity. And look at where U.K. weapons go:

UK weapons are still being used against civilian populations.

Ministers confirmed to the MPs that British-built components were almost certainly used as part of Israeli weapons systems against the Palestinians in Gaza.

What about U.S. weapons? Goes without saying. And what is Israel defending? Children, perhaps? Read this post:

Former Israeli military commander Efran Efrati recently testified to the BBC that Palestinian children are ‘routinely ill-treated’ by Israeli soldiers:

“You take the kid, you blindfold him, you handcuff him, he’s really shaking… Sometimes you cuff his legs too. Sometimes it cuts off the circulation.

“He doesn’t understand a word of what’s going on around him. He doesn’t know what you’re going to do with him. He just knows we are soldiers with guns. That we kill people. Maybe they think we’re going to kill him.

“A lot of the time they’re peeing their pants, just sit there peeing their pants, crying. But usually they’re very quiet…

“When the kid is sitting there in the base, I didn’t do it, but nobody is thinking of him as a kid, you know – if there is someone blindfolded and handcuffed, he’s probably done something really bad. It’s OK to slap him, it’s OK to spit on him, it’s OK to kick him sometimes. It doesn’t really matter.”

When will the lessons of the Holocaust ever be learned? When will people ever learn anything? I guess power is a very addictive drug, and it kills the conscience.

Why "Invisible" Geno-Rape in Africa Is Everyone's Disaster

Now that the world is mostly connected by internet, satellite, air travel and more - now that the economy's meltdown means the global economy's meltdown - now that drought in, say, China, is a concern to people in, say, Kansas - and party affiliation is irrelevant - now when doing what's "good" for America has to also be somehow "good" for the rest of the planet - now we look at the "Invisible War", the unreported war, the conflict in the Congo where mass atrocities are a way of life, in a manner so unspeakable that it defies language.

The object of these atrocities are women. Women on a scale of sheer totality. The Democratic Republic of Congo's roving militias have essentially declared war against the Female in her totality. Any and all women are fair game. There appears to be no rhyme or reason to it, except unabashed, drug-fueled, abuse and poverty-driven, depravity and cruelty. In Bob Herbert's NYT op-ed, he describes some of these horrors:

This sustained campaign of mind-bending atrocities, mostly in the eastern part of the country, has been one of the strategic tools in a wider war that has continued, with varying degrees of intensity, since the 1990s. Millions have been killed.

Women and girls of all ages, from old women to very young children, have been gang-raped, and in many cases their sexual organs have been mutilated. The victims number in the hundreds of thousands. But the world, for the most part, has remained indifferent to their suffering.

How much coverage has this gotten in the media? How much outrage? A few articles last January, overwhelmed by economic and election news, not to mention the ugly Israeli massacre of Gazan civilians. These women have no spokespeople, no connections to us. When you read a title displaying the word "Congo" or "Congolese", do you seriously jump on the link, or, riveted, read the article? It's on the planet, but not particularly significant to most people's worlds. It's time for that to change. This is not just a war. It's a holocaust.

The war itself, between many groups, is over control of the country's wealth, and has been going on since the '90's. It is also directly linked to the famously genocidal war in Rwanda. In fact, news surfaced awhile back of its child soldiers, and at this moment war trials are being held in the Hague over previously reported atrocities. But the extent to which the war has brutalized women and families has just been released in a report by two humanitarians.

The report, "Women's Rights Violations During the Conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo," was written by Lisette Banza Mbombo and Christian Hemedi Bayolo of the Association for the Rebirth of Human Rights in Congo, based in Kinshasa, the capital. It might have gone unnoticed outside the country had it not come to the attention of the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development in Montreal, an independent body created by the Canadian Parliament.

Women almost never get redress for rapes, and the devastating effect on children and families cannot be quantified, let alone remedied, avenged, or somehow alleviated.

The Congo report describes graphically the horrific abuses of a war fought out of sight, where the number of international peacekeepers is impossibly small. Mass rapes, often to demoralize enemies, seem to take place everywhere, the authors found. In the eastern region of South Kivu, the report said, a Congolese rebel army allied to Rwanda had buried women alive after ramming sticks into their vaginas, to terrorize the local population.

International organizations estimate that 2 million people may have died in the Congo war; this report speculates that women account for many of the victims.

The goal of the perpetrators was to humiliate and torture their victims, but also, apparently, to annihilate their humanity. And in that sense, their humanity's annihilation is ours - if we ignore it. The brutalizers cannot be left to gain power or get away with such atrocities. This goes beyond what most people think of as criminal behavior. It is the unspeakable - about which we should, in all conscience, be compelled to speak. Or as Bob Herbert reported,

“These women are raped in front of their husbands, in front of their children, in front of their parents, in front of their neighbors,” said Dr. Denis Mukwege, a gynecologist who runs a hospital in Bukavu that treats only the women who have sustained the most severe injuries.

In some cases, the rapists have violated their victims with loaded guns and pulled the triggers. Other women have had their organs deliberately destroyed by knives or other weapons. Sons have been forced at gunpoint to rape their mothers. Many women and girls have been abducted and sexually enslaved.

It is as if, in these particular instances, some window to what we think of as our common humanity had been closed.

It not only destroys the women's sense of their own humanity or worth as beings, but it does the same for everyone around them.

“The second consequence is that the whole family and the entire neighborhood is traumatized by what they have seen. The ordinary sense of family and community is lost after a man has been forced to watch his wife being raped, or parents are forced to watch the rape of their daughters, or children see their mothers raped.

“Neighbors are witnesses to this. Many flee. Families are dislocated. Social relationships are lost. There is no more social network, village network. Not only the victims have been destroyed; the whole village is destroyed.”

As we read this report, we too become witnesses to an unspeakable crime, about which we must speak. Our very humanity, our bond with eachother and with the earth, has been hainously violated. It must not pass without consequence to the guilty.

All this horror for wealth and power? Is this not the "profit motive" gone awry? Is this not the anarchy at the end of extreme anti-government ideology? With the world's resources vanishing under a prolifirating horde of humanity, we need to get honest about values, what is sacred and what is ridiculous. Or we too, may be fighting a war against ourselves, our families, against women, against children, against anything that has real meaning or purpose.

This is your world without "liberal" compassion, without functioning government, all guns, guts, and "glory".... all dysfunctional holocaust.

Am I Not Human? When Security Trumps Compassion

In considering human rights abuse for the "Am I Not Human?" campaign, instead of focusing on one group, I will explore a number of examples of a pattern that appears in such abuse, and one America, as well as other powerful nations, must come to grips with: the conflict between security and compassion, between looking at others outside one's "group" as fellow human beings, or as threats.

One of the most obvious cases where this conflict is played out is in the War on Terror. It's easy to simplify the War on Terror as a conflict between Good - us, people who believe and claim they love democracy and freedom - vs. Evil - them, people we claim hate democracy and freedom, aka, the "terrorists".

But if one examines this issue more closely, it's obvious that there's more to it than that. In my last post for this blog campaign, I examined the inhumane treatment of Palestinians by the Israeli government, and also by those countries who ignore the plight of the Palestinians, especially in Gaza. But many argue that the Palestinians support and foster terrorism, attacks on civilians by suicide bombers in peacetime situations, such as markets or theaters or, famously, the Olympics. The Israelis' treatment of Palestinians, they argue, is directly a consequence of those terrorist acts, which Israel must defend itself and its people against. It's a security issue. The apartheid wall, the collective punishment of entire families in Gaza for the acts of a few, the constant checkpoints, the deprivation of jobs, income, or basic food and other supplies, are all explained as necessary security measures.

The War on Terror was begun after 9/11 as a security measure. Suddenly we were attacked, unexpectedly, by Islamic terrorists, in the most horrific way. To defend ourselves and our country, Bush initiated a war against terror - with a huge backing of popular and congressional support. The creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the surveillance of all communications coming in & out of the country (as much as that is possible, and with certain perimeters), allowing the torture of terror suspects, the establishment of military tribunals and a detention center at Guantanamo Bay, detaining terror suspects indeterminately without legal recourse, extraordinary rendition, prison ships, the invasion of Afghanistan and ultimately the invasion of Iraq, Somalia and other lesser-known places - all these measures, now widely criticized as violating people's basic human rights, were enacted in the name of security.

Air strikes on targets that may include civilians - not just mistakes, but knowingly - are also allowed in the various battlefields in the war on terror. This is a deliberate calculation to gain the greater "good" - victory in war and then they hope enactment of "higher goals" such as democracy or access to oil - at the expense of the value of human life.

These air strikes have many strategic reasons - such as minimizing the risk to U.S. soldiers. That is all well and good. But it doesn't necessarily remove the "sin" of taking innocent lives. We're talking about children, women, families. These people did not ask the U.S. to invade. They do not understand exactly what's going on. And their support for the U.S. "mission" is shaken every time civilians are killed. Of course, the Taliban and al-Qaeda are killing civilians, too. Their concern for humanity, is touted as the reason for their war. They say the U.S. and Israel kill Muslim women and children, and so these extremist groups justify their attacks as a "defense" of "their people" against the American "aggressors". It's a matter, to them, of "security".

Saudi Arabia is extremely security-conscious. They are run by a sort of "benevolent" Mafia, the Saudi royal family, including thousands of princes, who get the lion's share of the country's substantion income from oil revenues. They use religion to maintain the loyalty of their citizen-subjects, and try to "modernize" their country in order to keep people happy and obedient. But women in Saudi Arabia, as showcased by the case of the girl from Qatif who was sentenced to whipping for being gang-raped, supposedly because she was with a man who was not her husband or brother. Only public outcry caused the King to ultimately pardon her, but without such publicity she would have had to endure punishment for being the victim of a heinous crime.

This is because in Saudi Arabia, women are still largely considered the "property" of their husbands or male relatives, and have few rights, not even the right to drive a car (unlike some other Muslim gulf states, for example). They are not allowed to appear in public except when covered completely from head to foot in black robes. Although many justify this as "Islamic", many more Muslims would disagree. There's nothing in and of itself wrong with head-covering - as long as it's voluntary. But morality-police enforce these laws, and women are severely restricted in their movements, ability to work or do much of anything outside the home, since they must always have a male relative escort. Many women in Saudi Arabia are huge Oprah Winfrey fans, as she discusses issues that women face in a compassionate way, helping some of these women deal with their lives and feel they have a purpose. Sometimes, under these conditions, women wonder if men believe they are in fact human.

Men in Saudi Arabia justify this attitude with what amounts to another security issue. They want to protect their privileged position in society and their ego-pumping "superiority" without the bother of "uppity" women, who pose a huge security risk for such men. Apparently the men do not think compassion for women involves consideration for their personal needs and pride, or just the ability to support themselves in the event their male relatives should die.

From Hitler's unspeakable atrocities which were justified by a need for security and "superiority", to slavery in the U.S., also justified by the need for "security" and prosperity in the agricultural South, to racist behavior around the world, often justified by the need to "protect" the supposedly "superior" group from some imagined destruction, invasion or "adulteration" by the "other", "inferior" groups, to the latest fear of "terrorists" which title is frequently applied to anyone Muslim... all these represent choices in favor of security and self-protection over compassion and consideration of the rights of others.

Even on a lesser scale, whenever security trumps consideration for the human element, oppression begins, and oppression is the greatest obstacle to true democracy and free society.

First, a free society cannot be created, maintained, inspired or made by force. That means war is out as a means of achieving it. Therefore, the War on Terror is doomed to failure, if its goal is making the world safe for democracy. War cannot make the world safe for anything except war.

Second, excessive infringement on human liberty cannot promote security, if it only acts on rigid, written laws and doesn't have the flexibility to act on the ground in a human way between human beings.

Here's an example of this in Dahr Jamail's lates article as he describes the situation he saw at an airport:

TSA is one of several security gifts from the Bush administration, or rather, from the twisted conjunction of corporate business and state power that oversees and safeguards our "freedom" and "democracy" through an elaborate system of control mechanisms.

Immediately in front of me, an elderly gentleman in a wheelchair was trying to reason with the security guard who was asking him to take off his sandals. "What do you want me to do? I didn't wear socks so you could see my feet since I'm unable to bend over and take off my sandals."

"Sir, you must comply with policy," the guard said in a raised voice, as three other TSA agents moved in behind him, arms folded ominously across their chests, and surrounded the elderly man in the wheelchair who requested their assistance, doing what he could to "comply." None of the guards stepped forward to take off his sandals for him in order to check his feet.

In exasperation he shouted, "I'm asking for help, and you won't do it, so what do you want me to do? What the Hell am I supposed to do? What are you afraid of? I'm an old man in a wheelchair! Are you afraid of my sandals?"

The guards would not allow him through the x-ray until he eventually lowered his voice. We must never upset the status quo, because that is an important pillar of a system that holds change in dread. Do not rock the boat, and don't you dare speak up, lest it indicate that something is wrong.

It requires no crystal ball to see that we are embedded in a system that has no qualms about harassing old men in wheelchairs or making pregnant women walk through x-ray machines. It is the same system that is killing scores of Iraqi and Afghan civilians daily, and killing the planet systemically. It is a system that requires us to be sleepwalkers, rather than alert and sensitive humans.

Sometimes the security-frenzy can taint people on the ground who act as vigilantes, as in this attack by Israeli settlers against Palestinians:

Last night 40 Jewish settlers went on a rampage in the long-suffering Palestinian city of Hebron, throwing rocks, smashing windows and slashing tires. One Palestinian resident reports:

“The stone-throwing tonight was not rioting, it was with intent to kill … Settlers threw stones at us from the fifth floor. I picked one up and it weighed at least a kilo…

“We’re eight families, 60 people in all, and we are constantly threatened … Yesterday huge stones just barely missed two of my cousins. If they had been hit they would have been killed.”

Why not turn to the IDF for protection?

“He claims his family had asked Border Guard officers to form a separation between them and the settlers, but that the latter had continued throwing stones indiscriminately at both parties.

Al-Jabri went on to say that after a settler had threatened to slaughter his entire family he complained to IDF soldiers, but they didn’t respond. “He took out his gun, put it to his mouth, and said, ‘Deir Yasin, Deir Yasin’, referring to the massacre in the village of Deir Yasin in 1948,” he said.

“I was shocked to hear a soldier tell me, ‘There’s nothing I can do, and there’s no use complaining, the settlers and we are one,” al-Jabri added.”

And, indeed, none of the pogromists have been arrested so far, despite many of them undoubtedly being repeated offenders.

In this latter case, the police (enforcers, protectors) and vigilantes unite against the "other" group, who have been branded as a threat, and hence, in security terms, fair game.

It's telling that Israel refuses to attend the U.N conference on racism, where they reasonably expect they would be castigated for their human rights violations against the Palestinians. But others make a valid point that this is not the only case of racism or denying human rights and should not somehow be showcased to the detriment of help for other oppressed people, such as those in, for example, Myanmar, or even North Korea, both of which nations seek a high degree of security and power concentrated in the hands of a very few.

It seems that militarism often clashes with compassion, and it is that very conflict which played out in the 2008 election, where Barack Obama's election signified to many a mandate for compassion instead of hyper-securityism or militarism that the GOP ended up signifying after the Bush administrations many misadventures. Let's hope this really does become Obama's legacy: the triumph of compassion over fear, which is the only true road to lasting security.

"Am I Not Human?" Blog Campaign: Gaza & The Palestinians

Electronic Village has initiated a blogging campaign for human rights, touching such crucial issues as the genocide in Darfur, held on the 27th of each month. Thinkbridge blog is proud to participate in this campaign, featuring today the human rights debacle that is Gaza in the Palestinian Territories.

Israel's continuing policy of collective punishment is in effect destroying Palestinian families' health and welfare, preventing them from making a living or even living. It is like living in a prison without being fed, clothed, medically attended to and denied access to all of the above. It is like slavery to a master who does not even acknowledge one's usefulness as, say, a worker. It is to be a community of pariahs, hated and condemned simply for being Palestinians, the original inhabitants of the lands including Israel. It is an occupation that grows like a cancer in the form of settlements, homes built for richer and more powerful Israelis who simply decide to bulldoze a couple, or a dozen, of the 4th-class "sub-human" Palestinian ancestral homes, in order to make way for what for all practical appearances looks like the Master Race, or at least the first-class citizens.

Of course, this kind of discussion is absolutely forbidden. From some of the history, many fear they could be targeted by a hit squad just for stating that this policy is racist, cruel, inhuman, oppressive, immoral, unfair, unjust, and despicable. It defies belief that the very people, the Jews, who suffered the most horrendous mass murder and torture and humiliation that anyone could have imagined under the Nazi regime in Germany, could now treat an entire people as sub-human, denying them basic human rights for medical care, trade, food, water, and fuel - all under the guise of "anti-terrorism". The Nazis, too, considered the Jews a "threat" to the German nation. They were a "security threat" in a way hauntingly parallel to the way Palestinian Arabs are seen as a "security threat" to the state of Israel.

Except the Jews were not the original inhabitants of Germany and were not displaced by German immigrants. This point is lost on most people, though.

In fact, the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians is in itself a type of Holocaust denial. What possible lessons could one gain from the Holocaust, if not the moral depravity of racism and of singling out one ethnic community for slaughter, torture, and denial of the right to basic human rights? Of course, Israel is not slaughtering or torturing Palestinians on the same scale the Nazis did to the Jewish people. But it is nonetheless absolutely denying Palestinians' human rights. And this, in fact, creates more enemies, hence a far greater security risk. Aside from the humanitarian issue. Are not Palestinians, too, human after all?

It seems the United States does not truly consider Palestinians human in the sense that Israeli Jews are human, except in carefully worded rhetoric. Whenever a single Jew is threatened or injured, the U.S. government is quick to condemn the "terrorists". Whenever a group of Palestinians are killed, even if they are children or minors, they are always depicted as "terrorists" or "militants" or, at best, "suspects". The word "terrorist" is the newest racist tool to deny a community its humanity. If they are "terrorists" or even "terrorist suspects", they are immediately and completely denied any right to be considered human.

Aside from that, the rest are, at best, "collateral damage". So the inhabitants of Gaza are "collateral damage", forgotten at the moment, their lives, sorrows and troubles are not our business, not of our interest. They have nothing to offer us, the idea goes. They are "terrorists", they are "Islamic militants" - another new term to deny humanness in others - and any attempt to defend themselves or their dignity is considered a "threat" which must be "subdued", usually by guns or air strikes. It is the very threat to their peace and the denial of their right to make a living or trade or even seek medical help that kills hope, the hope of being thought of as human.

While the Presidential candidates hold the world riveted until election day, places like the Gaza strip are very much forgotten and very much in the same progressively worse misery they were when some attention reached them. Thankfully, human rights groups inside Israel, and in other parts of the world are trying to do something.

A group of international experts Sunday blasted Israeli authorities for denying their entry into the Gaza Strip for a mental health conference, urging the international community to end Israel's actual occupation.

"We strongly protest the decision by the Israeli authorities to deny entry permits to 120 international academics and concerned professionals" who had been invited to attend the "Siege and Mental Health, Walls vs. Bridges" conference originally scheduled in Gaza City, said Professor Alice Rothschild from U.S. Harvard University at a press conference.

The Oct. 27-28 conference, sponsored by the Gaza Community Mental Health Program (GCMHP) in cooperation with the Gaza office of World Health Organization (WHO), is aimed to examine the impact of the conflict in the Palestinian enclave on local children, families, and communities and to support the development of appropriate mental health and psycho-social services, said GCMHP in a statement.

The group said the WHO office handed over its request for entry permits for 80 experts and health professionals, mostly from Europe and North America, in late September, and 40 others submitted their applications via other channels.

In mid-October, the Israeli military authorities informed the WHO office that all requests were turned down, without giving any reason, according to the conference organizers.

Israel holds a knife at Palestine's throat, and anyone who wants to get in has to pass by that knife. Very few ever get past.

Miri Weingarten, a spokeswoman of the Physicians For Human Rights-Israel organization, said that her group contacted the relevant authorities and found that the denial was a political rather than security decision.
Meanwhile, the press conference also said that 16 doctors from Britain who planned to enter the poverty-stricken strip in November to treat local patients have also run into a closed door.

Note that many Jews are furious at this policy. It is not, certainly, a Jewish policy, but rather a right-wing Israeli policy. Note that the right-wing Israelis are aligned with the neocons in the Republican party in the U.S. It's time that these two right-wing movements stop being the Party of the Mean-Spirited and Cruel and face up to the fact that these policies are totally counterproductive.

And the cease-fire between Israel and the Palestinians has not improved the conditions of Palestinians in Gaza from a humanitarian standpoint. The only beneficiary of this cease-fire has been Israel.

“If anything, existing evidence discloses a harsher regime of confinement and siege imposed on the Gazan population,” Richard Falk, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, told the General Assembly’s third committee (social, humanitarian and cultural) yesterday.

He said Palestinians continue to face difficulties in obtaining exit permits to receive specialised medical treatment in Israel or elsewhere that is not available in Gaza.

“Such delays and denial of permission has resulted in a growing number of tragic deaths, severe mental and physical suffering, and constitutes a violation of the duty of the occupying power under the Fourth Geneva Convention to take all reasonable steps to protect the health and well-being of the population under occupation, with exceptions only to the extent absolutely necessary for upholding security.

“These restrictions appear unrelated to credible security claims, and hence a punitive form of collective punishment, which is consistent with the overall maintenance of the siege that has been applied to Gaza since July 2007.”

Israel's claim of "security threats" seems excessive in this case, and the tragedy that is Gaza is unconscionable. Meanwhile, some Israeli settlers continue their violence even against Israeli authority when it curtails their extremist behavior. Just yesterday, October 26,

Israel's outgoing prime minister on Sunday called for a crackdown on extremist Jewish settlers who attacked and threatened Israeli troops and vandalized Palestinian property.

The settler rampage on the outskirts of the West Bank city of Hebron came after Israeli forces demolished an illegal settlement outpost that had been set up by a well-known ultranationalist extremist, Noam Federman.

But it's not an isolated incident - it's a movement.

Settlers also vandalized a nearby Muslim cemetery and slashed the tires of two dozen Arab-owned cars, the Israeli military said.

Israeli human rights groups and senior military officials have expressed concern about growing violence by the most militant among the about 300,000 West Bank settlers in recent months.

The Israeli army commander in the West Bank, Maj. Gen. Gadi Shamni, warned in a newspaper interview earlier this month that the number of settlers engaged in violence has ``grown into the hundreds.''

Critics have long complained that settler vigilantes are allowed to act with impunity and that the security forces often look the other way, particularly when it comes to settler violence against Palestinians.

And it is this very movement that the less-extreme in Israel have to make concessions to, or at least think so. And act on that thought.
And so, when it comes to Gaza, things like education are almost an impossible dream:

The right to education is a fundamental human right - one not often honoured in the occupied Palestinian Territories, where thousands of students are blockaded by the Israeli authorities who refuse them the right to freedom of movement.

Rami Abdu, who last month succeeded in crossing the Rafah border to take up his PhD in finance at Manchester Metropolitan University, is one such victim. “I got a full scholarship to Manchester one and a half years ago. I tried to cross the border four times and I sent messages to human rights groups, but like many students I was unsuccessful.

Meanwhile, death is all too often the result of denied human rights. More than education or trade, the very right to live is being denied to an entire people.

At least 255 Palestinians, including approximately 100 children, died in Gaza awaiting Israeli-issued permits to leave for outside treatment. Medical facilities in the Strip are subpar with a lack of supplies, medicines and working equipment. Without imports repairs cannot be made and simple treatments are difficult to administer.

In Gaza, 81% of residents are living below the poverty line. And as for justice, picking up Palestinians or attacking their families and then arresting them is commonplace. After arrest?

According to B’Tselem some 85% of Palestinian detainees have been tortured during interrogation.

And in one year alone, 68 Gazan children were killed as a result of collective punishment by the Israeli government.

Since the beginning of the second intifada in September 2000, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) have killed more than 860 children in the OPT, the majority of them in the Gaza Strip.

In response to these IOF killings of children, and IOF consistent use of excessive lethal force against Palestinian children, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights is launching "Blood on Their Hands" -- a major investigative report on child killings perpetrated by the IOF in the Gaza Strip.

"Blood on Their Hands" examines IOF killings of children in the Gaza Strip from June 2007 through June 2008. During this period, IOF killed 68 children in the Gaza Strip. (For the purpose of this reports, PCHR defines a child as a boy or girl younger than the age of 18 who is not taking part in hostilities.) The report provides data, analysis and testimonies on the killings of these children, including detailed testimonies from eye-witnesses and bereaved families, which highlight the horrific nature of these IOF child killings. The report also examines the psychological impact of child deaths on other children in the Gaza Strip, especially those children who have witnessed IOF killings.

Is this the way the "Sole Democracy in the Middle East" is shining a "light" to the supposedly "dark" neighbors??? Is this America's best friend? Or is Israel the tin man, in desperate need of getting back his heart?

Undocumented Migrants Don't Evacuate Ike, Fear Ice Prisons

Even though there has been a declared "hurricane amnesty" for undocumented workers in Texas, even though the National Weather Service has issued a "certain death" evacuation order, many migrant workers are afraid to evacuate. ICE, the police arm of the DHS (Department of Homeland Security), has been known to deport people even after Michael Chertoff assured people they wouldn't be picked up for evacuating. ICE, as migrants will tell you, has a will of its own, an agenda.

An agenda like all of the DHS, where humanitarian considerations often take last place to the heavy-handed mandate for Security, fanned by "patriotic"-labeled mania and panic. So what's happened to those people?

It's happened before. As reported on Democracy Now!:

"...earlier this summer, despite assurances to the contrary from Department of Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff, Border Patrol agents kept open checkpoints and apprehended a van of people trying to evacuate from Hurricane Dolly. Last month, many undocumented immigrants in New Orleans did not evacuate during Hurricane Gustav due to deportation concerns."

As one of the Immigration Rights demonstraters at the DNC in Denver said:

In May of this year, ICE went in and rounded up about 300 to 400 workers, and right now the town has become a virtual prison for the women and the children. They can’t leave, and they can’t work.

So the fear is more than just being deported, which is bad enough, but of having whole families imprisoned as they have done in Texas, or of otherwise having their families broken up or being deprived of freedom or means of making a living.

Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez interviewed David Bacon, author of Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants. When Goodman mentioned the largest immigrant raid in US history just before the Democratic National convention, in which hundreds of people were rounded up, this discussion ensued:

DAVID BACON: That’s right, in Laurel, Mississippi. And then, what got even less coverage was that they took 481 people, and they put them in a detention center in Jena, Louisiana and just sort of left them there— AMY GOODMAN: In Jena.
DAVID BACON: —for two weeks. In Jena, right.
AMY GOODMAN: The Jena Six.
DAVID BACON: Right. In fact, that detention center is probably the biggest single, you know, source of employment for people who live in Jena now. But the problem with those workers is that they were—you know, there was no habeas corpus, there was no bail. There weren’t even any charges against those people for two weeks. It’s kind of like creating, I think, a Guantanamo-style of justice or injustice that’s excused because it’s being directed—you know, ICE mentions the word “illegal,” and then all kinds of things become permissible that they wouldn’t be able to do otherwise.

Bacon later discusses the government's motivation behind these raids, which have created an atmosphere of fear in immigrant communities.

I think the government has an agenda here. In fact, it’s pretty open. Michael Chertoff keeps saying it over and over and over, and that is that he says we’re going to shut the back door and open the front door. And what that means is that ICE is trying to push for the establishment of new guest worker programs, so that people can come here as workers, but only as workers, without rights, without eventually getting political rights, without becoming citizens, certainly without voting, but whose labor is going to be used in the economy. And so, these raids are a way of terrorizing people and saying to people: don’t think that you’re going to be able to come to the United States; don’t think that you’re going to be able to work in any other way other than through these programs.

So it's about more than simply "protecting our borders" or even "protecting our culture". It's about bringing in people not as equals, not as immigrants, but as a "worker class" who cannot have and enjoy the same rights "the rest of us" do. It's not about documentation or even assimilation, but about keeping the slavery-level work force at the same cheap rates but without the legal hassles.

The comprehensive immigration bills that we saw in Congress in a lot of ways were labor supply bills. These were bills that were really intended to supply guest workers to industry and then an enforcement program to kind of drive workers into those programs.

So, the difference of opinion, I think in the Democratic Party, especially, is between people who sponsored those programs and other people like Sheila Jackson-Lee, the congresswoman from Houston, who said instead of having a guest worker program, what we need is people to be able to come here with green cards and with permanent residence visas.

And also, the thing I think that she said that was really a pioneering idea, and that was that we also need a jobs program. We need to couple immigration reform with jobs programs. So she said, let’s take the fees that people pay when they’re normalizing their status and use that to set up job creation and job training programs in communities with high unemployment, so that all communities can have some kind of benefit out of these bills. You know, these labor supply bills, comprehensive immigration reform bills, what they do is they pit communities against each other over jobs, over wages and so forth.

Bacon also takes this observation a step further - blaming it on international trade agreements that screw the people on the non-supply-side, the workers and farmers of the world.

NAFTA allowed big US grain companies to dump corn on the Mexican market, which essentially made it impossible for small Mexican farmers to sell their corn that they were growing for a price that would pay for the cost of growing it. So you can’t farm any longer. What do you do? You have to support your family some way. And so, people become part of this migrant stream coming to the United States.
And it’s not just the US. I mean, these structural adjustment programs, trade agreements, it’s happening all over the world. There are 200 million people in the world who are living outside the countries where they were born.

So, you know, Congress passes these agreements, which sort of push people into migration, and then immigration bills, which are essentially trying to ensure that their labor gets supplied to corporations at the lowest possible price and that people have the fewest possible rights.

Where will this end? It would help if people understood the issues better. But as we've seen with Sarah Palin, wisdom and understanding are often trumped by loud aggressive voices and sound-bites that feed into peoples' prejudices. Ultimately, though, what America stands for, or thinks/hopes it stands for - freedom and justice - requires replacing simplistic "patriotism" with higher values that include giving a damn about what happens to our species, our planet, and who, in fact, we are.

Don't Like Gitmo, Torture, Child Soldiers as US Legacy? Here's Something You Can DO...

Mohammad Jawad was a child soldier in Afghanistan when he was detained by US forces there in the so-called War on Terror and taken to Guantanamo where he was subjected to various types of torture - recognized as torture, that is, except to the Bush Administration, who call it anything else.
You can sign this petition to help in his behalf here. Read more about him and the petition (at bottom) below:
He was featured last May in Salon:

The U.S. government claims that Mohammed Jawad is an unlawful enemy combatant who tried to murder two U.S. soldiers and their translator in Afghanistan by tossing a grenade into their vehicle in December 2002.

But Maj. David Frakt, his military-appointed attorney, argues that Jawad -- who was a teenager of 16 or 17 at the time of his alleged offense (Jawad doesn't know his birth date) -- is a victim. He says Jawad was a homeless teenager who was drugged and forced to fight with Afghan militia, then abused by the United States, which transported him halfway around the world and imprisoned him at Guantánamo for five years without charge and is now using him as a guinea pig to test a new system of military justice with no regard to his initial status as a juvenile.

When Frakt arrived at Guantánamo to meet Jawad, he said he found a profoundly disturbed young man who was reluctant to talk. "Jawad is in an extremely fragile mental state," Frakt said in an interview following the hearing. "He has been here for so long -- he has essentially grown up in Guantánamo. He has lost track of time, lost touch with reality, and suffers from severe depression. And he doesn't believe he can get justice from the military commissions."

The fact that he was a child soldier was deliberately ignored by the Bush Administration. The US bandies the words "freedom" and "justice" around as if they were purely propaganda tools. Care about freedom? So what about exposing a minor, whose transition to adulthood occurred in the worst of all possible conditions, to torture and human rights abuse? Is this the way the US fights for democracy and freedom?

The United States has acknowledged holding eight teenagers at Guantánamo, but although some of them were given special housing and educational opportunities and were eventually released, the U.S. has ignored Jawad's status as a juvenile.

But Donald Rumsfeld, talking the Cheney line, lied about this:

At a press conference in April 2003, when the “child prisoners” story first broke, Donald Rumsfeld pointedly described the juvenile detainees as “not children,” and General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that they “may be juveniles, but they’re not on the Little League team anywhere. They’re on a major league team, and it’s a terrorist team, and they’re in Guantánamo for a very good reason –- for our safety, for your safety.”

Safety? When we're becoming a human rights-abusing, rogue nation? It's worth taking a brief look at Jawad's life story, which has been largely ignored:

Jawad is an illiterate Afghan from a poor Pashtun family with no ties to the Afghan government. According to Frakt, Jawad's father died during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. His mother remarried, and the family fled to Pakistan. Jawad spent his childhood years in a refugee camp and was educated at a local madrassa where all the teaching is conducted orally. He never learned to read or write.

Frakt says that when Jawad was 13, his family kicked him out and told him he needed to find a job. He spent much of those years hanging around a mosque looking for work. Sometime in 2002, Jawad was told he could have a job helping eradicate land mines in Afghanistan, so he returned to his native country. Once he arrived, however, Frakt says he was recruited by the local militia, drugged and forced into combat. Soon after, he was arrested by the Afghan police and handed over to the Americans.
Unlike most of the detainees at Guantánamo, Jawad was never provided a "habeas counsel," that is, a civilian lawyer to file a petition of habeas corpus on his behalf. Until he was charged this year, he was virtually unknown to the world.

Frakt said that his meetings with Jawad have been difficult, in part because Jawad doesn't understand the legal process, and in part because Jawad doesn't trust anyone in a U.S. military uniform, which Frakt is obligated to wear when he visits his client. "It is difficult to establish a trusting relationship with a detainee who has suffered so much and been detained by the U.S. military for five years," Frakt said. "He has a natural distrust of me, and he is not sure that I am here to help him."
...
From the government's point of view, Jawad's is a seemingly straightforward case. The prosecution has located eyewitnesses who claim to have seen the Afghan teenager throw the grenade. In addition, it says it has a signed confession from Jawad.

But Frakt says the case isn't nearly as straightforward as the government alleges. He says that the prosecution chose to prosecute Jawad because it viewed his as a "sexy" case -- Jawad is a defendant with "blood on his hands," in the government's view, which is something the American public understands better than something more abstract, like charges of material support for terrorism.

In other words, this is a show prosecution, politically motivated. Its purpose is not the administration of justice - not at all! - but a tool to be used to convince the American public that Bush's policies are justified, that we are bringing "terrorists" to "justice" and hence "securing America". While in fact, what we are doing is the diametrical opposite: undermining the very fabric of our justice system, democracy, and the rule of law, especially as it is applied internationally.

While Frakt acknowledges that the prosecution has witnesses who saw his client throw the grenade, he says the defense has also located witnesses who say the teenager appeared to be drugged at the time. As for the confession, Frakt says it is in Farsi -- a language Jawad does not speak. And the "signature" on it is in the form of a thumbprint, because Jawad does not read or write.

Frakt hopes to be able to make these arguments on Jawad's behalf if or when the case goes to trial. In the meantime, Frakt says has serious reservations about Jawad's ability to aid in his defense because of his fragile mental state -- something that was evident when Jawad himself addressed the court this month.

When the judge asked Jawad if he would like to make a statement, the young man spoke for about 20 minutes, saying that he didn't understand why he was at Guantánamo and why he was being punished. As he described his ordeal -- of being flown from Afghanistan to Guantánamo, locked in a steel cage, moved from cell to cell in the middle of the night, and sometimes being kept in a cell that had bright lights on 24 hours a day -- he said he had lost track of time and couldn't remember when or for how long he was held in each camp. Sometimes he stopped to rub his head and seemed to forget what he was saying in mid-sentence.

When Jawad finished his statement, Frakt requested that his client be taken out of the maximum security facility where he is currently housed -- where he is confined to a windowless cell at least 22 hours a day -- and moved to a "quiet, restful place where he can rehabilitate." He also requested that Jawad be examined by a mental health professional.

The judge told Frakt to put the request in writing and said that he would consider it. But it remains unclear whether the judge at the military commissions has the authority to order military officials at the detention facility at Guantánamo to do anything.

Now, finally, there is something we can do about it.

Valtin has put up this letter and petition to sign as well as this article explaining what the petition is about and what it can accomplish:

Last week I publicized the extraordinary appeal campaign for Guantanamo detainee Mohammad Jawad initiated by his military attorneys. Jawad, who was arrested as a teenager in Afghanistan in December 2002, is the first child soldier to be tried as a "war criminal" in modern times. In U.S. custody, he has suffered beatings, threats, physical isolation, sleep deprivation, been subjected to 24-hour bright lights, and more. His attorneys have called for letters to be written to the Convening Authority at Guanatanamo, asking them to withdraw and dismiss the charges against Jawad.

Now, his attorneys have initiated an online petition campaign in his behalf. You can follow this link to go straight to the petition. Please sign it and pass the info on to whomever you can.

Please click the link above and sign the petition. It's a small thing we can do to try and unbuild the system of atrocities Bush/Cheney have put in place. It's a way we can try to save the life of a forgotten victim of that system, a system that puts America to shame.

Heathlander: Israel Gets License to Kill With Impunity

In spite of much-touted free speech in the blogosphere, it is still rare to find an eloquent advocate for human rights in that most unstable of border/nation disputes, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Heathlander is right at the top of those, in my view, and has brought up a critical issue: Israel's "free hand to kill" journalists, Palestinians, protesters, and other civilians who dislike its policies.

As you may recall, the brains heading up the British Israel Communications and Research Centre claimed in a recent(ish) letter to the Guardian that the death of Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana (pictured) was “accidental” (see my response here). Shana was killed by Israeli forces in Gaza earlier this year when a tank crew fired two shells at him as he was filming from a mile away. Eight other civilians aged between 12 and 20, including six children under 16, were also killed in the attack.

An Israeli military inquiry this week reached the same conclusion, exonerating the soldiers responsible on the grounds that they had “reasonably” mistaken Shana’s camera for a mortar or anti-tank weapon. As excuses go this is nearly as risible as Israel’s claim that Mohammed Omer, a Palestinian journalist who suffered a complete nervous breakdown and several broken ribs after being beaten and tortured by Israeli agents, merely “lost his balance and fell“.

So we're talking about a pattern of behavior, and a pattern of covering up that behavior. There is definitely an almost unwritten code with the mainstream media that Israel is off-limits: nole mi tangere. This unwritten code, translated into something of a phobia, almost a knee-jerk refusal to question Israel's actions, has led to Israel's upping the ante, continuing a policy of Security Sanctions All.

Reuters condemned the decision as “effectively giving soldiers a free hand to kill”, thereby “severely curtail[ing] the freedom of the media to cover the conflict.”

Also noted,

The effect of the ruling, Amnesty concluded, will be to “reinforce the culture of impunity that has led to so many reckless and disproportionate killings of children and other unarmed civilians by Israeli forces in Gaza.”

Read more...

"Preparing for Democracy": Mubarak Thugs Arrest, Torture Egyptian Facebook Activist

If you want to find an example of how "our allies in the Mideast" administer their autocratic thuggery, look no further than here - a horrendous episode courtesy of Our Man Hosny, whose "dreaded SSI" could have just left off the "I" to wake the sleepers.

When Egypt’s secular opposition groups called for a nationwide strike to support disgruntled factory workers last April, Ahmed Maher wanted to help. So he did what many middle-class 20-somethings here do: He logged onto Facebook.

Two weeks before the strike, he and a friend, Esraa Abdel Fattah, started a group on the popular social-networking site to support the walkout and invited friends to join. But soon they realized they had much more than just a new Facebook group on their hands.

In Egypt, a country still under the iron-fisted rule of President Hosni Mubarak, even something as seemingly innocuous as Facebook can run afoul of the red lines around unacceptable political activity.

And as the popularity of the page grew, Egyptian authorities took notice.

From 150 friends each to 3,000 to over 60,000 supporters by the time of the strike, the Facebook method was wildly successful in recruiting activists. But the strike never took place, nor did a second. At first, according to this report, he was defiant, “If we allow ourselves to fear them, we won’t do anything,” he told the BBC. “Then I would consider myself a partner in the crimes taking place in Egypt.”
But later under fear of SSI reprisal, Maher went into hiding until the SSI finally arrested him and subjected him to torture:

Even though the second nationwide strike never got off the ground, Maher was arrested in early May, just two days after he had returned home, by four carloads of plainclothes police.

In an interview, Maher says he was shackled, blindfolded, and stripped. He says the police dragged him across the floor and beat him for almost 12 hours. They demanded to know the password to his Facebook account and asked for information about the 60,000 people in the group, then threatened to rape him if he would not comply, he says.

The above picture of Ahmed Maher's back after the beatings was posted by award-winning blogger Wael Abbas and posted here.

This seems to be the MO for the Egyptian SS(I) and other Mubarak operatives, who famously intimidated female journalists in one protest awhile back by raping and threatening to rape or sexually humiliating them. Just Friends...???

After his 12-hour ordeal, Maher was put in a small cell where officers treated his bruises and tried to explain themselves. “They came to me and tried to apologize,” says Maher. “They kept saying ‘Oh, the men who beat you were just a few bad guys. We love Egypt, too. We love this country as much as you do, but Egyptians aren’t ready for democracy. Just look at what happened in Iraq.”

This is almost word-for-word what Prime Minister Ahmad Nazeef said a few years ago in an interview with Charlie Rose: "The Egyptian people are not ready for democracy." Seems to be a policy: impose an abusive autocratic police state enforced by draconian human rights abuse - all to "prepare" the "not-yet-ready" people for, eventually, "democracy". Is this the same kind of "preparation" we're offering the rest of the Middle East? Those guys at Gitmo just weren't "ready" for democracy yet! So we've got to "prepare" them. In fact, it seems most of the world isn't really "ready" just yet.

Meanwhile, some people insist on being "self-taught" when it comes to democracy, I guess.

Maher says that he still receives harassing phone calls and threats of rape from the Egyptian authorities, but remains intent on transforming his Facebook group, which is still online, into a real political organization. He recently met with opposition leaders to brainstorm ideas for a movement called “Facebook Youth.”

Although many say these grassroots efforts won't come to anything, I personally hope they do. Nothing is less effective than sitting back being intimidated. Many in Egypt agree. As long as the U.S. doesn't shore him up, Mubarak's days are numbered.

Israeli Soldiers Stand Guard as Settlers Tie Palestinian Farmer to Pole, Beat Him

Alerted by Heathlander at this post, you can also see the original article in Ha'aretz, with videos on both sites.

A group of West Bank settlers on Saturday beat a 31-year-old Palestinian man in the southern Hebron Hills, after having tied him to a telephone pole. Left-wing activists later videoed a settler kicking Madahat Abu-Kirash, the victim, as he remained tied up and was surrounded by Israeli security forces. The soldiers subsequently removed the settler from the scene. Hebron police opened an investigation into the incident after Abu-Kirash submitted a complaint, claiming that he had been beaten all over his body.

According to the left-wing organization Ta'ayush, whose members were close to the scene of the assault and witnessed part of it, the incident began when residents of the settlement of Asael accused Abu-Kirash of setting a field alight a few hundred meters away from their homes. Abu-Kirash, a teacher, told the settlers in response that he had come to perform agricultural work on land he owns. He denied any connection to the fire. Ta'ayush members said that the Palestinian's explanation was of no avail, and the settlers proceeded to forcibly take him to the bounds of the settlement, where they tied him up and beat him.

IDF troops who were called to the area gave him medical treatment on the spot, after which a Red Crescent ambulance took him to a hospital. Abu-Kirash later returned to his home from the hospital. "When we arrived at the scene there were already lots of the army's troops. I saw a settler approach him and kick him, as he was tied to the pole... [Abu-Kirash's] whole body was bound up, I saw they bandaged a head wound and he was half unconscious," said a Ta'ayush activist who was present during the incident. The chairperson of the South Hebron hills regional council, Zviki Bar-Hai told Haaretz that those responsible for starting the fire and setting the nearby fields ablaze were not from the area, rather they were either Palestinians or extreme left-wing activists.

A month ago, the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem released a video which it said showed the start of an assault on Palestinian farmers by masked, stick-wielding Israeli settlers.

Will this too be sanitized before people can see it?

Israel Uses Gunfire Against Gaza Protesters

Talk about Israel's "democratic ideals" and "peaceful neighborliness" - those quotes are presumed, not real - and here you've got it! Or check this NYT article.

Israeli troops used gunfire and teargas on Friday to keep more than 3,000 Hamas
supporters from approaching one of the Gaza Strip's main border crossings with
Israel, wounding at least six Palestinians,
witnesses said.
At least two of the wounded were in a critical condition,
Palestinian medical workers said.

Freedom of speech under the gun. I guess the right to protest, to express oneself, to speak one's mind, is VERBOTEN under an OCCUPATION. Wonder why they "resort" to violence? Since when did peaceful means work with Israel???? WHen????

Remember this in Iraq. Israel, the occupier, uses guns because in their minds, Palestinians are not people, they're terrorists! Nothing like a label to destroy human relations. Nothing like guns to destroy peace. It's all about "preemptive strikes", that right-wing catchall for paranoid nationalism. Gee, did anybody ever hear that Nazi Germany was into the same thing? Maybe you should mend some fences with the extreme right, Israel. You have so much in common.

Separately, Palestinian medical workers said a 65-year-old woman died on
Friday from wounds suffered a day earlier.
The Palestinians said the woman was hit during an Israeli army raid near her home in the southern Gaza Strip.

Ahhh, another day, another raid, another dead body, another reason to keep killing each other.

And America is doing the same in Iraq, only more heavy-handedly, unbeknownst to the press. Notwithstanding the dancing GI's with Iraqis celebrating their battle victory over an al-Qaeda "cell". Lots of people in Iraq say they are much worse off now, and democracy is far more difficult to achieve. When will the Republicans ever learn freedom is not by force?

Probably when the Israelis learn civility and peace is not by force, either. You don't get good neighbors by starving their children and bulldozing their homes. Duhhhhh....

What the World Thinks of Israel's Gaza Slaughter

This editorial from The Star so clearly points out the ruthlessness of Israel's treatment of Gaza that what I began as an idea to collect quotes from various world sources and personalities on this issue has ended with an urge to quote this in its entirety.

From Indonesia:

"Gaza a Stain on the World's Conscience" by Martin Khor

THE merciless Israeli air and ground assault on Gaza over the last few days has re-focused world attention on the massive suffering of the Palestinian people, particularly in Gaza.
On Saturday alone, at least 52 Palestinians died in the Israeli helicopter and tank attacks in northern Gaza. An even bigger ground assault is expected this week.

Israeli Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai threatened last Friday that the Palestinians “will pay for it, I’m sorry for their population” and said the Palestinians are facing a “shoah”, the Hebrew word for a big disaster as well as for the Nazi holocaust.

The Israeli justification for this latest round of assaults is that the Hamas-led resistance in Gaza are firing rockets into Israel. Last Wednesday one Israeli was killed, and the next day the Israeli attacks on Gaza intensified. More than 80 Palestinians have been killed since then.

(Note: The count is now at 116 and presumably the Israelis are shooting for a higher goal.)

This latest Israeli military assault on Gaza comes on top of months of intensifying economic and social strangling of the occupied Palestinian territories, especially Gaza, where electricity is switched off, and supplies of essential goods are blocked.
The breaking of many international laws by Israel and the pitiable situation of the Palestinians are highlighted in a news report by John Dugard, the UN’s special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian occupied territories.

It says that judged by international law, Israel is in serious violation of its legal obligations. The collective punishment of Gaza by Israel is expressly prohibited by international humanitarian law and has resulted in a serious humanitarian crisis.
The report adds that the human rights situation in the West Bank has worsened. Settlements expand, the construction of the security wall continues, and checkpoints increase in number.
On the issue of terrorism, the special rapporteur distinguishes between “mindless terror” and acts committed in the course of a war of national liberation against colonialism, apartheid or military occupation.
History is replete with examples of military occupation that have been resisted by violence, for example, the resistance in European countries to the German occupation in the Second World War, and how SWAPO resisted South Africa.
Acts of terror against military occupation must be seen in the historical context. This is why every effort should be made to bring the occupation to a speedy end. Until this is done peace cannot be expected.

The report says that Israel exploits the present international fear of terrorism to the fullest. But this will not solve the Palestinian problem.

Israel must address the occupation and the violation of human rights and international humanitarian law it engenders, and not invoke the justification of terrorism as a distraction, as a pretext for failure to confront the root cause of Palestinian violence – the occupation.

On Gaza, the special rapporteur said in the past two years 668 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli security forces in Gaza. During the same period, four Israeli civilians were killed by rockets fired by Palestinians, and four Israeli soldiers killed by attacks from Gaza.
The report details the difficulties faced by the Palestinians living in Gaza.

> Israel has closed most crossings from Gaza to Egypt and elsewhere. Trucks bringing goods into Gaza have dropped alarmingly – from 253 a day in April 2007 to 74 a day in November.

> Since September, Israel has reduced the supply of fuel and electricity to Gaza.

> The only two Israeli commercial banks dealing with financial institutions in Gaza announced that they would cut ties with Gaza.

> Over 80% of the people in Gaza are dependent on international food aid. Fruit and vegetables are no longer available to supplement the food aid. Few can afford meat, and fish is virtually unobtainable.

> The closure of crossings prevents Gaza from exporting its goods, while also preventing materials from entering Gaza, resulting in the end of most construction works and the closure of factories.

> Farmers are without income and some 65,000 factory employees are unemployed, as 95% of Gaza’s industrial operations have been suspended as a result of restrictions. Fishermen are likewise unemployed as a result of the Israeli ban on fishing along the Gaza coast.

> The United Nations announced that it has halted all its building projects in Gaza because it has run out of building materials. This affected 121,000 jobs.

> Those working in the public sector remain unpaid. Municipal employees in Gaza City have not been paid since March 2007.

> Over 80% of the population live below the official poverty line.

> Healthcare clinics are in short supply of paediatric antibiotics, and 91 key drugs are no longer available.

> There are frequent power outages as a result of Israel’s destruction of the main Gaza power plant in 2006. The supply of water is also affected, and 210,000 people are able to access drinking water supplies for only one to two hours a day. At present there is a real danger that sewage plants could overflow.

> Cutting off fuel and electricity will endanger the functioning of hospitals, water services and sewage, as well as deprive residents of electricity for refrigerators and household appliances. A humanitarian catastrophe is imminent if Israel continues to reduce fuel and carries out its threat to reduce electricity supplies.

Israel has largely justified its attacks and incursions as defensive operations aimed at preventing the launching of Qassam rockets into Israel.
But serious questions arise over the proportionality of Israel’s military response and its failure to distinguish between military and civilian targets.

It is highly arguable that Israel has violated the most fundamental rules of international humanitarian law, which constitute war crimes, said the rappporteur.
These crimes include direct attacks against civilians and civilian objects, and attacks which fail to distinguish between military targets and civilians and civilian objects, the excessive use of force arising from disproportionate attacks on civilians and civilian objects and the spreading of terror among the civilian population.

The Special Rapporteur has done a great service not only to the Palestinians but also to everyone else, for providing such graphic and up-to-date information. In other parts of his report he also argues why it was the responsibility of the UN Secretary-General as well as all states to act to end the Israelis’ violations of international law.

But the rapporteur’s call will not lead to Security Council action, due to the power of the United States. This will again open the United Nations to criticism that it practices double standards, in that the countries the United States dislikes are punished while its allies are protected from actions.

Before signing off, here's another article from medialens, a progressive UK site, on the subject, that also refers to John Dugard's work and his opinion that, as the article put it:

The report, authored by UN Special Rapporteur John Dugard, concludes that
Palestinian terrorism is the "inevitable consequence" of Israeli occupation.
While Palestinian terrorist acts are deplorable, "they must be understood as
being a painful but inevitable consequence of colonialism, apartheid or
occupation." Dugard, a South African professor of law, accuses the Israeli state
of acts and policies consistent with all three.

...

(Quoting from Dugard's report:)

“Above all, the Government of Israel has violated the prohibition on collective
punishment of an occupied people contained in article 33 of the Fourth Geneva
Convention.”
In the days that followed, as killings and injuries rapidly rose under a massive Israeli assault, we could find not a single mention in any UK national newspaper of this important assessment by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Territories.

Let alone US media, which is notorious for leaving out points of view inconsistent with the current Administration or "mainstream" (a misnomer that means "acceptable to those in power") opinion, policies, or views.

Who in "mainstream" US condemned the slaughter for what it is?

They Do Starve Children, Don't They?

The NYT takes the stance that although

The neglect and mistreatment of the 1.5 million Palestinians trapped in the
Gaza Strip is a disgrace, and a very dangerous one. They are pawns in the
struggle among Hamas, which controls Gaza and uses the territory to
bombard Israel daily; its rivals in the Fatah movement that run the
Palestinian Authority and the West Bank; and Israel.

Oops editors! You mentioned Israel twice, presumably because NYT readers might have missed it the first time. Anyway, as I was saying, after the NYT staff gets past this necessary bit of humanitarian-sounding jive, they get to the meat:

Hamas has turned a deaf ear to the Gazans’ plight, refusing to negotiate peace
or accept Israel’s right to exist.

Oh, those nasty Hamas guys! They "refused" to negotiate peace? Or refused to accept the terms of humiliation, not terms of endearment, that were offered as "peace" - or shall we say, force-fed? And for those who are force-fed propaganda, Hamas actually is willing to accept Israel's right to exist - but not as Fatah-defined and Annapolis-defined "Jewish state", because that opens the way, in their understanding, for Israel to expel thousands of Palestinians from their now-free-to-be Jewish-only state, causing even more refugees, misery, etc. The line that Jews would not be welcome in a Palestinian state (Wow, and I'll bet they feel real bad about this possibility) has been more or less quashed by the brave Daniel Barenboim's acceptance of Palestinian citizenship - before a state even exists...

Arab states, who for years have pleaded the Palestinian case and have
thrown their support behind the Annapolis peace process, must use their
influence (and their oil profits) to pressure Hamas’s leaders to halt rocket
attacks, renounce terrorism and align with Fatah in pursuit of a peace deal.
Egypt, whose stature as a peacemaker has withered under President Hosni
Mubarak, should take immediate, robust steps to shut down the tunnels that allow
arms and money to flow to militants in Gaza.

So it's the Arabs again who have to bear the brunt of responsibility because, as we all know, Israelis are innocent occupiers, pure as the driven snow, and totally incapable of acting any way other than as militant, robotic occupiers, being pure as aforementioned, and therefore it's the Arabs who have to do the dirty work of taking "robust steps". And since when have Arabs been noted to take "robust steps" except in the path of securing some petty dictator his little immutable world? And who is Hosny Mubarak except a petty dictator who takes very, very robust steps - or should I say "stomps" - in the path of securing his little immutable world? Which world is located in Sharm el-Sheikh, far, far from the madding crowds of Cairo and those other dust-ridden dirty enclaves of seething humanity.

Don't the Israelis see that the Arabs are just like them? The sheikhs in their crystal-pure palaces in Dubai and Saudi Arabia like to look at those messy, uncouth crowds as much as Israelis in their European-style luxuries like to get down with Palestinians. But all that uppity-ness and wealth has a price, the price of disconnect.

And the fate of Gaza is the responsibility of that irresponsible, floating decimal point-dream Israel, and that means Gaza's people's fate should be on Israel's conscience.

They do have a conscience ... don't they?

Everything You Need to Know About the "Peace Conference"

Here's your portrait of the Annapolis "Peace Conference". I'm sure there will be many more such portraits to come, knowing that the "Road Map" to destruction has been signed by all parties. Maybe that's why Hamas split off from Fatah - people are tired of their homes becoming mere "photo ops" like the one at left.

There was a photo op in Annapolis. As usual, Israel Antoinette took the cake. Palestinians, as usual, got screwed. Everybody's smiling.

But wait! If you want to know the truth, the very big hard truth, behind the facade, read Heathlander's post on this subject. As usual, it's well worth every minute of your time.

This paragraph succinctly points out the pointlessness of such "peace process" exercises, and of Israeli's bad intentions towards the whole thing:

What this all amounts to, then, is a demand that the Palestinians provide Israel with complete security while remaining under occupation. This is absurd - as a British MP recently put it, the Israeli position is akin to “that of somebody who stands on somebody else’s toes and says that they will get off only when that person stops screaming.” The idea that the Palestinian Authority - which, as the International Crisis Group points out, Israel has “all but destroyed” in the past seven years, to the point where it can barely move a hundred policemen from one town to another because of Israeli checkpoints - can provide Israel with security under conditions of occupation when the IDF, the fourth ranking military on the planet, is unable to do so is, as Daniel Levy puts it, “a nonsense”. It is an impossible demand, and deliberately so. It is designed to be unachievable in order to provide Israel with an excuse to string out negotiations indefinitely while continuing its colonial policies on the ground.

Heathlander further notes that: "it is particularly offensive to revert back to the roadmap like this given that Israel has been violating the agreement from day one."

He concludes:

That the Palestinian Authority and the Arab regimes have signed on to a process which ratifies the roadmap as the only framework for resolving the conflict in return for an agreement which addresses none of the core issues and which gives Israel a free hand to continue its oppressive and colonial policies in the Occupied Territories is nothing short of a betrayal of the Palestinian cause.

And then there's another view: In "Chasing a ghost," an article subheaded "Annapolis The 'viable Palestinian state' is an illusion, a deformed reality from which Palestinians must break free", writer Soumaya Ghannoushi says there are two basic limitations to this supposed peace conference:

The first of these is Bush's letter to former Israeli Prime Minister Sharon of 14 April 2004 which was ratified in both houses of the US Congress. The document confers full American backing for Israel's positions regarding refugees - who would be settled outside Israel's borders in contravention of UN resolution 194, which demands their immediate return to their homes - and illegal settlements, since as it states "In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centres, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949." In other words, Palestinians should accept Israel's expropriations as a fait accompli.

The second is the demand that Arabs recognise the Jewishness of the Israeli state. This would effectively wipe out the existence of over four million Palestinian refugees. It would mean the legitimisation of the forced expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians by Zionist gangs and militias in the lead up to, and after the establishment of the state of Israel and possible ethnic cleansing of the remaining 1.5 millions inside Israel.

So the right to a Palestinian State is not really that at all. In fact, as the author says, the tough issues are being sidetracked by a made-for-Israel "Palestinian Dream"...

Instead, we will hear much on the coming of the "viable Palestinian state", an amorphous shapeless and faceless notion devised to divert attention from the real issues on the ground. This is one of history's greatest fallacies; a "state" founded with no distinct boundaries, no coherent territory, no freedom of movement, no control over borders, water, airspace or communications, no economic viability, no military, and not even the right to forge alliances without Israeli permission.
A handful of scattered cantons enclosed by Israel from all sides, this "state" had been invented to fulfil a crucial task: the regulation of the indigenous population's movement internally - much like the colonial administrations of old. What it amounts to in the final run is a collection of security services devised to relieve the Israeli military machine of the Palestinian burden. Yitzhak Rabin used to wish that he would awake in the morning and find that Gaza had drowned in the sea. Oslo was his chance to do just that...

It is time they shook off the suicidal illusion of statehood. Had the Algerians, Vietnamese, or any of the nations whose lands were occupied throughout history viewed their reality through the prism of the "viable state", they would have never wrested land and sovereignty and never founded a state. Liberating land and freeing sovereignty are the way to the state and not the other way round.

But she does not say exactly what path should be followed next. And she shouldn't. If she did, I'm sure the map would be burned.

We torture, that they may torture

Bridgethought of the Day: Action speaks louder than spin.

An important piece in Democracy Now!'s website entitled "UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour: The U.S. War on Terror is Constantly Being Used by Other Countries as Justification for Torture and Other Violations of International Human Rights Laws" shows another sinister consequence of our foreign policy of War Without Reason, War Without End:

"Torture, arbitrary arrest, prolonged detention in violation of right tocounsel, incommunicado detention, any country that wants to equip itselfeither through legislation or just through its practices with these kind oftools uses the example of the United States," Louise Arbour tells DemocracyNow! "If I try to call to account any government, privately or publicly, fortheir human rights records, the first response is: first go and talk to theAmericans about their human rights violations." ...

Louise Arbour is a former Supreme Court Justice in Canada, she is perhaps best known as the chief prosecutor of war crimes for the international criminal tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.
In 1999, she indicted Slobodan Milosevic for genocide and crimes against humanity when he was still the president of Yugoslavia. This marked the first time a sitting head of state was indicted by an international court. ...

Arbour states in an interview with Amy Goodman: "There are claims all over the world that the human rights agenda is a carrier of Western values." But "we see this very, very severe, profound attack on the very concept of universality of rights. " An attack coming, of course, from the United States, from the Bush-Cheney pro-torture camp.

She sees the root cause of instability and war worldwide, including terrorist attacks, as being the "severe inequalities in access to wealth or wealth distribution" within & between countries and regions. Now there's an assessment I can bank on! At least someone is telling the truth. And, she says, "at the end of the day we have a very unjust, very unfair world and very few institutions that permit a peaceful forum to address these issues."

Wtih our client states Saudi Arabia, a veritable mountain of human rights abuse, and Egypt, ditto, and of course, Israel - need I elaborate? is it not intuitively understood yet? - there should be no surprise that the marginalized and disenfranchised are attacking. But to view them as "fascist" is a complete cop-out, a conspiracy-theorist's wormhole. And a bold lie.

She adds that " I think the current US place in the world is perceived as so adversarial to many aspirations, particularly in the Arab world, that I think it jeopardizes the capacity of the United States to carry the message that I don't doubt the US is still very committed to." She notes the U.S.'s long-standing commitment to human rights, democracy, freedom, and, to a lesser extent, social justice. But she condemns "renditions", the policy of kidnapping and punishing terror suspects without due process of law as "completely" undermining the legal framework that protects are protected against illegal activities.

When Amy Goodman brought up "the US ambassador to the United Nations at the time, John Bolton, criticized your remark, saying, “I think it’s inappropriate and illegitimate for an international civil servant to second-guess the conduct that we’re engaged in in the war on terror with nothing more as evidence than what she reads in the newspapers,” Arbour responds that " I think, as the United Nations Human Rights High Commissioner, not only I have the right, it is actually my mandate to ensure the safeguard -- I’m the guardian of the Convention Against Torture." She states that her opinions are based on the "obvious" and openly known facts regarding torture and the principles against its use.

Well, first, let’s make very clear: the United States is not a signatory to a lot of important international human rights treaties and conventions. Now, in a lot of cases, the US would say, “Well, we don't need to ratify these treaties. Our domestic laws are even superior in terms of their level of protection.” But, again, the signal that it sends, I think, is very problematic, when the US is one of a handful -- I think maybe just two countries -- that has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, for instance, CEDAW, the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women."

When asked about what effect U.S. policies have had on other countries, Arbour says it's used as a justification for others to do what we do: "the same thing: recourse to torture, arbitrary arrest, prolonged detention in violation of, you know, right to counsel -- incommunicado detention, essentially. Any country that wants to equip itself, either through legislation or just through its practices with these kinds of tools, uses the example of the United States.
The other consequence, of course, is, if I try to call to account any government, privately or publicly, for their human rights records, the first response is, “First go and talk to the Americans about their human rights violations. Then come and talk to us.” This is invariable, accusing me -- and generically me, my office -- of bias by being, quote, “soft on the US” and very hard on others who have less means and less ability to comply with their obligations. So that’s the cultural landscape in the advancement of human rights in the context of the war on terror."

Actions, in other words, speak louder than spin.

Pretty soon it looks like we'll be moving toward the direction of Egypt: you can dance all night, drink till you're smashed, eat till you explode, but please ... let the government do whatever it wants, torture, kidnap, assassinate, invade, pollute, violate, whatever ... power to the executive, entertainment to the People!

Unless some People stop spinning and start taking action. People who never torture. Ever.