A Good Deed Begets Expulsion

Sderot: How Its True Inhabitants Were Wiped From Israel's Maps and Memories

Robert Fisk sheds light on the Palestinian village of Huj (Sderot):

The inhabitants of Huj were all Palestinian Arab Muslims and, irony of ironies, they got on well with the Jews of Palestine. 

We have to thank the Israeli historian Benny Morris for uncovering their story, which is as grim as it is filled with sorrow.

Some Thanks

Morris elaborates: 

“Huj had traditionally been friendly; in 1946, its inhabitants had hidden Haganah men from a British dragnet. In mid-December 1947, while on a visit to Gaza, the mukhtar (mayor) and his brother were shot dead by a mob that accused them of ‘collaboration’. But at the end of May, ...  the Negev Brigade decided to expel the inhabitants – and then looted and blew up their houses.”

So the people of Huj had helped the Jewish Haganah army escape the British – and the thanks they got was to be sent into Gaza as refugees. 

But the present day Sderot, writes the Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi, was built on farmland belonging to another Palestinian Arab village called Najd, its 422 Muslim inhabitants living in 82 homes, growing citrus, bananas and cereals. They shared the same fate as the people of Huj. 

On 12 and 13 May 1948, the Negev Brigade of the Israeli army – again, according to Morris – drove them out. They, too, were sent into exile in Gaza. Thus did the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, as another Israeli historian, Illan Pappé, calls it bluntly, wipe from history the people who farmed the land on which Sderot would be built.

 Because the thousands of rockets that have fallen around them over the past 12 years come from the very place where now live the families that lived on this land. Thus does Sderot have an intimate connection with a date that President Obama may have forgotten about when he came visiting: 1948, the year that will never go away. 

Via: "The Independent"

Opposing Islamophobia Is Not A Defense Of Extremism

Standing Up Against Knee-Jerk Discrimination and Xenophobia

By CHRISTIAN CHRISTENSEN
Courtesy Of "CounterPunch"

#1: Islamophobia is an irrational fear of Islam, but radical Islam is, for example, anti-feminism and anti-gay. So, to fear the spread is not irrational, and, thus, not Islamophobic.

I’ve heard this one a lot. The problem is that this statement takes as a point of departure that Islamophobia is all about an opposition to radical, fundamentalist Islam.  It isn’t. If fear of radical Islam were the same as “Islamophobia” then a lot of secular Muslims in Turkey could (ironically) be classified as Islamophobic. They are not, however, because Islamophobia is an irrational fear of Islam and Muslims in general, not just extremists, and rooted in crude stereotypes by which all Muslims are lumped together as some kind of uniform mass. There are plenty of anti-feminist, anti-gay elements within Christianity, for example, but those elements are rarely portrayed as representative of Christians as a whole. The problem is that it is the radical fundamentalist image of the Muslim which is usually used as the “default” image for all Muslims. This is what I have called the “hegemony of Islam” perspective whereby, in terms of identity, being a Muslim is seen as trumping all other factors: be they economics, education, gender, family history, and so on. In other words, in this stereotypical view, if you are a Muslim, your identity is subservient to your religious identification, with all other influencing factors a distant second. This faulty logic is applied to all Muslims, whether fundamentalist or not. That’s Islamophobia.

#2: Criticizing the very making of “Innocence of Muslims” and/or the Muhammad cartoons has a chilling effect on free speech, and is a form of soft censorship.

According to this line of thinking, “Innocence of Muslims” and the Muhammad cartoons are protected by free speech, but to criticize their making and/or content is somehow borderline censorship. No. To critique the manner in which free speech is exercised is in no way the same thing as saying that the right should be revoked or the speech banned. To use another example: I am opposed to the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. I am also opposed to any bans on protesting against these occupations. If, however, anti-war protesters decided to stage a protest at the funeral of a soldier killed in the war, and did so with placards saying that the solder deserved to die, then I would question both the mode and content of their free speech. That does not mean I would want to ban either their right to gather or their right to speech. It just means that I am exercising my right to free speech to question how others have exercised that same right. That’s how, not if. The interplay is actually the crystallization of free speech in action. The same goes for the anti-Islam film and cartoons. If you want to make an inflammatory film/carton during a time of crisis: fine. But don’t then be surprised if others exercise their rights in response.

#3: Muslim fundamentalists do not respect the values of free speech: look at what happened to Theo Van Gogh and Salman Rushdie. Why should we worry about their being offended?

This goes back to the point I made earlier: no-one who opposes Islamophobia is worried about the feelings of small numbers of unrepresentative, violent extremists. To bring up Theo Van Gogh or Salman Rushdie is to suggest that most Muslims were/are somehow in favor of Van Gogh’s murder, or the fatwah against Rushdie. If anyone has any solid evidence to support those extremely broad suggestions, I have yet to see it. It is also a very convenient strategy: to bring up Van Gogh when discussing Islamophobia as it is so emotive. Is the suggestion that the vast majority Muslims are simply unable of being offended without an accompanying desire to kill the person(s) who offended them? Yes, his murder was a terrible crime, but who has ever said that murder is an acceptable by-product of opposing Islamophobic words and pictures? Few, if any.

#4: Free speech is part of democratic society, and so these riots proved that many predominantly Muslim countries are not ready for democracy.

This would be a great argument were not so utterly de-contextualized. The basis of this line of reasoning is that free speech is a beloved component of European and North American socio-political reality. People in these regions can speak their minds without fear of reprisal, unlike countries in, for example, the “Middle East” where religious dissent is met with violence or death.  Let’s not be naïve here: many regimes in predominantly Muslim nations are incredibly violent and repressive, and their commitment to freedom of speech (as well as freedom of assembly and fundamental human rights) is close to zero. But if you think that this type of repression is relegated to the “Muslim world” then I would suggest brushing up on post-war South American dictatorships (start with Chile); or the recent history of the Balkans.  And, closer to home (for me, at least), it would be worth having a chat about actual tolerance for freedom of speech in the United States with Americans who dared to utter some uncomfortable truths about US geo-politics on September 12, 2001. Saudi Arabia is often held up as the poster-child for free speech repression in the name of Islam.  Is that the same Sharia-loving, free-speech hating Saudi Arabia, staunch US and UK ally, who in 2010 purchased $60 billion in US arms and whose leader was warmly welcomed by the Queen at Buckingham palace in 2007? The one and same.

#5: Why should progressives spend time defending a religious group when there are far more pressing issues (such as poverty, gender inequality, etc.)? 

I don’t think of opposing Islamophobia as defending Islam any more that I consider opposing anti-Semitism as some kind of de facto support for Judaism.  Opposing Islamophobia is about opposing knee-jerk discrimination and xenophobia, dressed up as concern for “rights” (rights I rarely see addressed in other contexts) using vulgar stereotypes and crude generalizations. Finally, it is worth considering more precisely the role that poverty and inequality have played in the current unrest. While films, cartoons and religious fervor are held up as the main causes of the riots, I would suspect that a number of other factors have played into these events. If, however, we ignore these other factors in favor of the simple answer — “Muslim Rage” — then we contribute to an environment in which Islamophiobia, and thus discrimination, will thrive.

Christian Christensen is Professor of Media & Communication Studies at the Department of Informatics and Media, Uppsala 

How Fear Skews Our Spatial Perception

By Carol Clark, 

That snake heading towards you may be further away than it appears. Fear can skew our perception of approaching objects, causing us to underestimate the distance of a threatening one, finds a study published in Current Biology.

“Our results show that emotion and perception are not fully dissociable in the mind,” says Emory psychologist Stella Lourenco, co-author of the study. “Fear can alter even basic aspects of how we perceive the world around us. This has clear implications for understanding clinical phobias.”

Lourenco conducted the research with Matthew Longo, a psychologist at Birkbeck, University of London.

People generally have a well-developed sense for when objects heading towards them will make contact, including a split-second cushion for dodging or blocking the object, if necessary. The researchers set up an experiment to test the effect of fear on the accuracy of that skill.

The more fearful someone reported feeling of spiders, the more they underestimated time-to-collision of a looming spider.

Study participants made time-to-collision judgments of images on a computer screen. The images expanded in size over one second before disappearing, to simulate “looming,” an optical pattern used instinctively to judge collision time. The study participants were instructed to gauge when each of the visual stimuli on the computer screen would have collided with them by pressing a button.

The participants tended to underestimate the collision time for images of threatening objects, such as a snake or spider, as compared to non-threatening images, such as a rabbit or butterfly.

The results challenge the traditional view of looming, as a purely optical cue to object approach. “We’re showing that what the object is affects how we perceive looming. If we’re afraid of something, we perceive it as making contact sooner,” Longo says.

“Even more striking,” Lourenco adds, “it is possible to predict how much a participant will underestimate the collision time of an object by assessing the amount of fear they have for that object. The more fearful someone reported feeling of spiders, for example, the more they underestimated time-to-collision for a looming spider. That makes adaptive sense: If an object is dangerous, it’s better to swerve a half-second too soon than a half-second too late.”

The researchers note that it’s unclear whether fear of an object makes the object appear to travel faster, or whether that fear makes the viewer expand their sense of personal space, which is generally about an arm’s length away.

“We’d like to distinguish between these two possibilities in future research. Doing so will allow us to shed insight on the mechanics of basic aspects of spatial perception and the mechanisms underlying particular phobias,” Lourenco says.

Via: "eScience Commons"

WW III: The Unthinkable Cost Of Preserving The Petrodollar

As noted by many of our readers, one of the key topics omitted from our article on the inevitability of economic collapse was the petrodollar system. Due to its significance, we felt that this subject deserves its own article. If you have never heard of the petrodollar, don’t be surprised. There’s a good reason for this. No major news network will dare touch this subject because if this information was ever to become public knowledge, politicians would find it next to impossible to convince American people to support any more wars. Public approval of wars is only possible as long as people remain ignorant of the primary driving force behind our foreign policy. The reason you haven’t heard of the petrodollar system is because our government wants you to think that we start wars to spread democracy.

However, if you want to distinguish truth from propaganda, if you want to know the real reasons behind the global conflicts in our recent history, you must first learn about the petrodollar system. Without this crucial piece of info, you will have a hard time understanding what really happened in Libya, what’s happening in Syria right now and what’s going to happen in Iran next.

Why did NATO and the U.S. aid Libyan “rebels” in killing Gaddafi? Why was our government willing to support and arm the same terrorists that would later turn on our embassy and murder US Ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens? Why was killing Gaddafi so absolutely imperative?

Why are we now doing the same thing in Syria? Why are U.S. operatives currently on the ground in Syria aiding Al Qaeda to topple Assad? Why are we willing to work along side known terrorists just to destabilize Syria and overthrow the regime there?

Why are we willing to risk World War 3 by attacking Iran, a key ally to Russia and China?

Pakistan and North Korea already possess a nuclear stockpile, but Iran is years away from developing a nuclear weapon. Iran has no military capability to target the U.S. and it has not attacked another country since 1798. Yet the media is trying to convince us that we are weeks away from Ahmedinajad unleashing his non-existent weapons of mass destruction. Sound a little familiar? Have we heard this before, maybe?

So what is the petrodollar system and why is it so important? Why is the United States willing to trigger a new world war just to maintain the hegemony of the petrodollar? To get a proper perspective we need to start with a quick historical background:

Bretton Woods Conference

In July of 1944, as World War II was still raging, 730 delegates from all 44 Allied nations gathered in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to setup institutions and procedures to regulate the international monetary system and to establish the rules for commercial and financial relations among the world’s major industrial states.
The Bretton Woods Agreement established the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, which meant that international commodities were priced in dollars. The agreement which gave the United States a distinct financial advantage, was made under the condition that those dollars would remain redeemable for gold at a consistent rate of $35 per ounce. The fixed dollar to gold convertibility rate established a stable platform for global economic growth.

As the issuer of the world’s reserve currency, the United States promised to print dollars in direct proportion to its gold reserves. However, this promise was based on “the honor system” since the Federal Reserve refused to allow any audits or supervision of its printing presses.

The U.S. Defaults On Its Obligation To Convert Dollars To Gold

In the years leading up to 1970, expenditures on the Vietnam war made it clear to many countries that the U.S. was printing far more money than it had gold. In response to this and the negative U.S. trade balance, nations began demanding fulfillment of America’s “promise to pay” – that is, the redemption of their dollars for gold. This of course set off a rapid decline in the value of the dollar. The situation climaxed in 1971 when France attempted to withdraw its gold and Nixon refused.

On August 15, President Nixon made a televised announcement
referred to as the Nixon shock, stating the following:
“I have directed the Secretary of the Treasury to
take the action necessary to defend the dollar
against the speculators. I have directed Secretary
Connolly to suspend temporarily the convertibility
of the dollar into gold or other reserve assets,
except in amounts and conditions determined to be
in the interest of monetary stability and in the
best interest of United States.”

This was obviously not a temporary suspension as Nixon claimed, but rather a permanent default. For the nations of the world who entrusted the United States with their gold, this action was outright theft. Overnight, dollars transformed into fiat currency and the Federal Reserve was now free to print away. By abandoning the gold standard, the U.S. government removed all restrictions from the Federal Reserve. However, the ability to print money out of thin air comes with a pitfall.

This is because each new printed dollar devalues the existing money supply already in circulation.

That is unless there is a growing demand for dollars to counterbalance the newly issued currency.

So, under the direction of the Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, a brilliant political and economic idea was soon devised referred to as the petrodollar system.

The Birth Of The Petrodollar Leads To Global Domination

In 1973, President Nixon promised King Faisal of Saudi Arabia that the US would protect Saudi Arabian oilfields from any and all invaders. In return, Saudi Arabia and by extension OPEC, agreed to sell their oil in US dollars only. Essentially, this meant that all countries purchasing oil from OPEC had to do so in US dollars, or ‘petrodollars’. This forced the world’s oil money to flow through the US Federal Reserve, creating ever-growing international demand for U.S. dollars. As if that weren’t sweet enough, as part of the deal, OPEC countries were required to invest their profits in US treasuries, bonds and bills. This strengthened the US dollar, resulting in a steady US economic growth.


While other countries exchanged their currency for the dollar (forfeiting value in the process), the U.S. simply printed more money to match their needs and purchase their oil – essentially for free.

Of course rather than exchange currencies, many countries focused on exporting goods to the U.S. to maintain their constant supply of the Federal Reserve paper. Paper went out, while everything America needed came in and in the process the United States got very, very rich. It was the largest financial con in recorded history.

As the coffers got fatter and fatter, the U.S. military machine continued to expand at an accelerated rate. The arms race of the Cold War was a game of poker. Military expenditures were the chips and the U.S. had an endless supply of chips. With the Petrodollar under its belt, the U.S. was able to raise the stakes higher and higher, outspending every other county on the planet. Until, eventually, U.S. military expenditure surpassed that of all other nations in the world combined. The Soviet Union never had a chance.

The collapse of the Communist block in 1991 removed the last counterbalance to America’s military might. The United States was now an undisputed super power with no rival. Many hoped that this would mark the beginning of a new era of peace and stability. Unfortunately, there were those in high places who had other ideas.

Petrodollar System Must Be Maintained At Any Cost

That same year, the U.S. invaded Iraq in the first Gulf War. And after crushing the Iraqi military and destroying their infrastructure, including water purification plants and hospitals, crippling sanctions were imposed on Iraq, which prevented its infrastructure from being rebuilt. These sanctions, which were initiated by Bush Sr. and sustained throughout the entire Clinton administration, lasted for over a decade and were estimated to have killed over 500,000 children. The Clinton administration was fully aware of these figures.

Excerpt from a May 5, 1996 interview:
Lesley Stahl from 60 Minutes show, asks Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright about the U.S. sanctions against Iraq:
“We have heard that a half million children have died.
I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima.
And, you know, is the price worth it?“
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright replies:
“I think this is a very hard choice,
but the price–we think the price is worth it.”

What exactly was it that was worth killing 500,000 kids for? Let’s see if you can spot a pattern here.

Iraq… In November 2000, Iraq began selling its oil exclusively in euros. This was a direct attack on the petrodollar and it wasn’t going to be tolerated. In response, the U.S. government with the assistance of the mainstream media began to build up a massive propaganda campaign, claiming that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and was planning to use them.

In 2003, the U.S. invaded Iraq. Once the U.S. had control of the country, oil sales were immediately switched back to dollars. This is particularly notable due to the fact that switching back to the dollar meant a 15-20% loss in revenue due to the euro’s higher value. It doesn’t make any sense at all unless you take the Petrodollar into account.

Excerpt from a March 2, 2007 DemocracyNow interview: 

So I came back to see him a few weeks later and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said “Are we still going to war with Iraq?” and he said, “Oh, it’s worse than that”, he reached over on his desk, picked a piece of paper and he said:
“I just got this down from upstairs today (meaning secretary of defense office) today. This is a memo that describes how we’re going take out 7 countries in 5 years, starting with Iraq and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and finishing of Iran.” 

– Wesley Clark, Retired 4-Star General and Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO from 1997 to 2000

Libya… Muammar Gaddafi harbored the Lockerbie Bombers and allowed various terrorist organizations establish training camps in Libya. He tried to buy a nuke from China in 1972. In 1977, he approached Pakistan, then India. He sought nerve gas from Thailand. Then he did something totally insane. Gaddafi decided to move away from the petrodollar in favor of a gold-based currency. Seeking nukes and harboring terrorists is one thing, but threatening the petrodollar is quite another. Within a year, ‘internal’ elements rose up in rebellion against Gaddafi.

After taking control of the region, U.S. and NATO armed rebels executed Gaddafi in cold blood and immediately setup the Libyan Central Bank.


Iran… In 2005, Iran sought to create an Iranian Oil Exchange, thus bypassing the US controlled petrodollar. Fear that western powers would freeze accounts in European and London banks put an end to that plan. More recently however, Iran was able to secure agreements to begin trading its oil in exchange for gold. In response, the U.S. government, with mainstream media assistance has been attempting to build international support for military strikes on the pretext of preventing Iran from building a nuclear weapon. In his recent State of the Union address, Obama went as far as to say that when it comes to Iran and the insistence they dismantle their nuclear program, “no options are off the table”. By stating ‘no options’ this would include nuclear deployment as a deterrent. In the meantime, the U.S. established sanctions that, U.S. officials openly admit, are aimed at causing a collapse of the Iranian economy.

Syria… Syria is Iran’s closest ally and they’re bound by mutual defense agreements. Syria is currently being destabilized from within by the “Free Syrian Army” (FSA), in its intensifying effort to topple Assad. It is a well known fact that FSA consists of multiple terrorist factions from Afghanistan to Chechnya, most notably Al Qaeda. Yet this is not stopping United States or NATO from providing covert assistance to FSA. Despite warning from Russia and China to the United States, the White House has made statements within the past month indicating that the U.S. is considering military intervention.

However, it should be clear, that military intervention in Syria and Iran isn’t being considered. It’s a forgone conclusion, just as it was in Iraq and Libya.

World War 3: A Calculated Risk To Preserve The Petrodollar

The U.S. is actively working to create the context which gives them diplomatic cover to do what they already have planned. The motive for these invasions and covert actions becomes clear when we look at them in full context and connect the dots.

The petrodollar paradigm is saving the dollar from crashing by accomplishing two things. First, it creates a mandatory international demand for the Federal Reserve paper, preventing dollar inflation from going into hyperinflation. Second, the oil profits from OPEC pay for a portion of our ever expanding national debt, helping perpetuate a giant Ponzi scheme in the U.S. treasury market. Those who control the United States understand that even if only a few countries begin to sell their oil in another currency it will set off a chain reaction and the dollar will collapse. They understand that there’s absolutely nothing else holding up the value of the dollar at this point, and so does the rest of the world.


But rather than accepting the fact that the dollar is nearing the end of its lifespan, the powers that be have made a calculated gambit. They have decided to use the brute force of the U.S. military to crush each and every resistant state in the Middle East and Africa.

That, in and of itself, would be bad enough. But what you need to understand is that this is not going to end with Iran. China and Russia have stated publicly and in no uncertain terms that they will not tolerate an attack on Iran or Syria. Iran is one of their key allies, one of the last in independent oil producers in the region. And they understand that if Iran falls, then they will have no way to escape the dollar without going to war. And yet, the United States is pushing forward despite the warnings.

What we’re witnessing here is a trajectory that leads straight to the unthinkable.
It’s a trajectory that was mapped out years ago, in full awareness of the human consequences.

Who Is Pulling The Strings?

But who was it that put us on this course? What kind of psychopath is willing to intentionally set off a global conflict that would lead to millions of deaths just to protect the value of a paper currency?

It obviously isn’t the president. The decision to invade Libya, Syria and Iran was made long before Obama had risen to the national spotlight. And yet he’s carrying out his duty just like the puppets that preceded him. So who is it that pulls the strings?


Often the best answer to questions like these are found by asking another question. Cui bono? Who benefits?

Obviously, those who have the power to print the dollar out of thin air have the most to lose if the dollar was to fall. Since 1913, that power has been held by the Federal Reserve.

The Federal Reserve is a PRIVATE entity, owned by a conglomerate of the most powerful banks in the world. And the men who control those banks are the ones who pull the strings. To them, this is just a game. Your life and the lives of those you love are just pawns on their chess board. And like a spoiled four year old who tips the board on to the floor when he starts to lose, the powers that be are willing to start World War III to keep control of the global financial system.

Remember this when these wars extend and accelerate. Remember this when your son or your daughter comes back home in a flag draped coffin. Remember this when they point the finger at the new boogeyman.

So, What Can We Do About All This?

Today’s Geo-political climate, coupled with the desperation of the banking cartel to save the petrodollar, makes World War III a legitimate concern more than ever. If we’re lucky enough, maybe we will avoid a global military showdown between Russia, China and the West. But, we cannot avoid an economic collapse, regardless of whether WWW III is triggered or not. This is because no matter how many Mideast regimes we topple, we simply cannot stop China and Russia from dropping the dollar in the near future. Both of these countries have already signed significant agreements purposed to move them away from the dollar. Despite the best efforts of the banking cartel to preserve the petrodollar, this paradigm is starting to crumble.

So what can we do about all this? First, let’s admit the obvious. The power to prevent any of this is not in our hands. But, at the same time, we don’t have to just sit idly while the dollar is circling the drain. There are specific things we can and should do.

1. BE MORE DISCERNING

Critical thinking and common sense are in decline these days.

Rather than just swallow what we’re fed by the mainstream media, we need to question it.

Most people are just unaware that 90% of all American media is controlled by six global conglomerates that also hold assets in the military complex and oil industry, and are interconnected with major banking interests.

2. GET THE FACTS

Read both of the articles linked below and make sure to watch the videos on those pages.

Remember, be discerning. So crosscheck the info in these articles to make sure the facts are accurate.

a) Click here to see why the coming economic collapse is a mathematical fact.

b) Click here to see why “Obama vs Romney” is an illusion of choice.

The first article will convince you just how deep of a hole we’re in. The second will help you understand that we can’t depend on the government to get us out of this mess.

3. SPREAD THE TRUTH

Individually we are ineffective. But together we have a chance. The powers that be count on the sheeple to be asleep. They also count on our willful ignorance, because they know that rather than accept the unpleasant reality, people readily deny the obvious.

Still, the internet gives us a distinct advantage over the system. Social media makes it possible for information to spread among millions of people in a matter of days. We need to make articles and videos like this go viral by Tweeting, posting on Facebook, emailing everybody we know, posting on forums, etc. You can do your part right now by clicking on the floating “Share” button on the right and using some of the social media icons on that menu to share this information.

4. GET READY NOW

There’s a ton of online resources on this subject. Sometimes the information is helpful and practical, and other times it’s outdated or incomplete. Also, beware of the sites out there that try to scare the crap out of you just to sell you their eBooks on emergency preparedness. Still, if you take your time, you can find lots of good info online.

With that said, we are currently working on a free “how to” guide with an easy to follow step by step action plan. It will outline practical but critical actions you should take right now to get ready for the ensuing chaos, along with financial advice to safeguard whatever savings you may have. FYI, CrisisHQ.com does not sell gold or bunkers or anything else for that matter. Our single mission is to help you be prepared instead of scared.

To be notified when we publish the article on “How to prepare for the coming crisis,” please subscribe to our article notification list using the form in the box on the right. We hate spam just as much as you do, so we don’t sell or share your email or ever send out spam. Your info is kept absolutely private and safe.

Via: "Crisis HQ"

Israel Forced To Recognize A New Day In Gaza

Jon Elmer writes:

The True Game-Changer

The true game-changer in the region was Israel's defeat in south Lebanon in the 2006 July War. For 34 days, a seemingly unending stockpile of rockets drove Israelis into bomb shelters and halted daily life throughout nearly the whole country. When Israel's brutal air war failed to halt the rockets, a ground war was launched by the IDF.

If every war is to have its signifying battle - the July War was defined in Bint Jbeil. Israel's conscripted army and its reserves walked right into a prepared enemy that had changed the rules of the game - mixing guerrilla operations with conventional military tactics. In so doing, Hezbollah dealt Israel a psychological blow that carried the "spectacle" of defeat, as Israel's Haaretz newspaper characterised it.

According to Israel's Winograd Commission - tasked by the state with investigating the July War failings - the battle in Bint Jbeil was the turning point of the war, "a symbol of the unsuccessful action of the Israel Defence Forces throughout the fighting".

A successful model was in place, and Palestinians took note.

After Cast Lead, there was a switch in resistance approach in Gaza led by the Qassam Brigades. In short, away from the primacy of infiltration-type operations to a more dug-in position inside Gaza itself. And drastic upgrading of the rocketry, weapons and materiel.

It was Gaza's smaller-scale answer to Hezbollah, led by Qassam Brigades commander, Ahmed Jabari. Under Jabari, Hamas' armed wing transformed into a more structured and professionalised force. "This isn't a terror organisation anymore," said Minister for Home Front Defence Avi Dichter, two days before Jabari's assassination, "it's a bona fide army."

In addition to the rockets, Palestinians added anti-tank missiles of the sort that were used to devastating effect by Hezbollah in 2006. Anti-aircraft missiles looted from Gaddafi's caches during NATO's war in Libya emerged in Gaza across a well-trodden corridor from post-war Libya, through post-uprising Egypt and into the virtually independent Bedouin republic in the Sinai - where all roads lead to Gaza's lucrative tunnels network.

The tunnels were once hand-carved with trowels and only large enough for teenagers to navigate, but in recent years have become an industrial-scale project, large enough for cars and cattle, and various weapons-systems too.

And while it could be argued that Gaza's rockets were largely ineffective during the eight days of fighting, it takes some time to learn to use these weapons. Because there are nothing like test-ranges in the tiny enclave of Gaza, the rockets must be tested in battle. Still, as day after day of rocket barrages passed, it seemed inevitable that a deadly landing in a major city was getting closer.

That could not have been lost on Netanyahu, as the prime minister embarks on an election campaign that will be defined by this latest war in Gaza. A costly strike on Tel Aviv from Gaza would have been a problem for his campaign, and would have likely pressed Israel into a ground war against a transformed force with significantly improved capability.

Instead, Israel sued for peace with a ceasefire that reads very favourably to Palestinians. While Netanyahu avoided his Bint Jbeil moment, Israelis were forced to recognise a new day in Gaza.

Via: "Al-Jazeera"

Informant: NYPD Paid Me To 'Bait' Muslims

A paid informant for the New York Police Department's intelligence unit was under orders to "bait" Muslims into saying inflammatory things as he lived a double life, snapping pictures inside mosques and collecting the names of innocent people attending study groups on Islam, he told The Associated Press.

Shamiur Rahman, a 19-year-old American of Bangladeshi descent who has now denounced his work as an informant, said police told him to embrace a strategy called "create and capture." He said it involved creating a conversation about jihad or terrorism, then capturing the response to send to the NYPD. For his work, he earned as much as $1,000 a month and goodwill from the police after a string of minor marijuana arrests.

"We need you to pretend to be one of them," Rahman recalled the police telling him. "It's street theater."

Rahman said he now believes his work as an informant against Muslims in New York was "detrimental to the Constitution." After he disclosed to friends details about his work for the police - and after he told the police that he had been contacted by the AP - he stopped receiving text messages from his NYPD handler, "Steve," and his handler's NYPD phone number was disconnected.

Rahman's account shows how the NYPD unleashed informants on Muslim neighborhoods, often without specific targets or criminal leads. 

The AP corroborated Rahman's account through arrest records and weeks of text messages between Rahman and his police handler. The AP also reviewed the photos Rahman sent to police. Friends confirmed Rahman was at certain events when he said he was there, and former NYPD officials, while not personally familiar with Rahman, said the tactics he described were used by informants.

Informants like Rahman are a central component of the NYPD's wide-ranging programs to monitor life in Muslim neighborhoods since the 2001 terrorist attacks. Police officers have eavesdropped inside Muslim businesses, trained video cameras on mosques and collected license plates of worshippers. Informants who trawl the mosques - known informally as "mosque crawlers" - tell police what the imam says at sermons and provide police lists of attendees, even when there's no evidence they committed a crime.

The programs were built with unprecedented help from the CIA.

Police recruited Rahman in late January, after his third arrest on misdemeanor drug charges, which Rahman believed would lead to serious legal consequences. An NYPD plainclothes officer approached him in a Queens jail and asked whether he wanted to turn his life around.

The next month, Rahman said, he was on the NYPD's payroll.

In an Oct. 15 interview with the AP, however, Rahman said he received little training and spied on "everything and anyone." He took pictures inside the many mosques he visited and eavesdropped on imams. By his own measure, he said he was very good at his job and his handler never once told him he was collecting too much, no matter whom he was spying on.

One of his earliest assignments was to spy on a lecture at the Muslim Student Association at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan. The speaker was Ali Abdul Karim, the head of security at the Masjid At-Taqwa mosque in Brooklyn. The NYPD had been concerned about Karim for years and already had infiltrated the mosque, according to NYPD documents obtained by the AP.

Rahman also was instructed to monitor the student group itself, though he wasn't told to target anyone specifically. His NYPD handler, Steve, told him to take pictures of people at the events, determine who belonged to the student association and identify its leadership.

On Feb. 23, Rahman attended the event with Karim and listened, ready to catch what he called a "speaker's gaffe." The NYPD was interested in buzz words such as "jihad" and "revolution," he said. Any radical rhetoric, the NYPD told him, needed to be reported.

John Jay president Jeremy Travis said Tuesday that police had not told the school about the surveillance. He did not say whether he believed the tactic was appropriate.

"As an academic institution, we are committed to the free expression of ideas and to creating a safe learning environment for all of our students," he said in a written statement. "We are working closely with our Muslim students to affirm their rights and to reassure them that we support their organization and freedom to assemble."

Talha Shahbaz, then the vice president of the student group, met Rahman at the event. As Karim was finishing his talk on Malcolm X's legacy, Rahman told Shahbaz that he wanted to know more about the student group. They had briefly attended the same high school in Queens.

Rahman said he wanted to turn his life around and stop using drugs, and said he believed Islam could provide a purpose in life. In the following days, Rahman friended him on Facebook and the two exchanged phone numbers. Shahbaz, a Pakistani who came to the U.S. more three years ago, introduced Rahman to other Muslims.

"He was telling us how he loved Islam and it's changing him," said Asad Dandia, who also became friends with Rahman.

Secretly, Rahman was mining his new friends for details about their lives, taking pictures of them when they ate at restaurants and writing down license plates on the orders of the NYPD.

On the NYPD's instructions, he went to more events at John Jay, including when Siraj Wahhaj spoke in May. Wahhaj, 62, is a prominent but controversial New York imam who has attracted the attention of authorities for years. Prosecutors included his name on a 3 ½-page list of people they said "may be alleged as co-conspirators" in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, though he was never charged. In 2004, the NYPD placed Wahhaj on an internal terrorism watch list and noted: "Political ideology moderately radical and anti-American."

That evening at John Jay, a friend took a photograph of Wahhaj with a grinning Rahman.

Rahman said he kept an eye on the MSA and used Shahbaz and his friends to facilitate traveling to events organized by the Islamic Circle of North America and Muslim American Society. The society's annual convention in Hartford, Conn, draws a large number of Muslims and plenty of attention from the NYPD. According to NYPD documents obtained by the AP, the NYPD sent three informants there in 2008 and was keeping tabs on the group's former president.

Rahman was told to spy on the speakers and collect information. The conference was dubbed "Defending Religious Freedom." Shahbaz paid Rahman's travel expenses.

Rahman, who was born in Queens, said he never witnessed any criminal activity or saw anybody do anything wrong.

He said he sometimes intentionally misinterpreted what people had said. For example, Rahman said he would ask people what they thought about the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya, knowing the subject was inflammatory. It was easy to take statements out of context, he said. He said wanted to please his NYPD handler, whom he trusted and liked.

"I was trying to get money," Rahman said. "I was playing the game."

Rahman said police never discussed the activities of the people he was assigned to target for spying. He said police told him once, "We don't think they're doing anything wrong. We just need to be sure."

On some days, Rahman's spent hours and covered miles in his undercover role. On Sept. 16, for example, he made his way in the morning to the Al Farooq Mosque in Brooklyn, snapping photographs of an imam and the sign-up sheet for those attending a regular class on Islamic instruction. He also provided their cell phone numbers to the NYPD. That evening he spied on people at Masjid Al-Ansar, also in Brooklyn.

Text messages on his phone showed that Rahman also took pictures last month of people attending the 27th annual Muslim Day Parade in Manhattan. The parade's grand marshal was New York City Councilman Robert Jackson.

Rahman said he eventually tired of spying on his friends, noting that at times they delivered food to needy Muslim families. He said he once identified another NYPD informant spying on him. He took $200 more from the NYPD and told them he was done as an informant. He said the NYPD offered him more money, which he declined. He told friends on Facebook in early October that he had been a police spy but had quit. He also traded Facebook messages with Shahbaz, admitting he had spied on students at John Jay.

"I was an informant for the NYPD, for a little while, to investigate terrorism," he wrote on Oct. 2. He said he no longer thought it was right. Perhaps he had been hunting terrorists, he said, "but I doubt it."

Shahbaz said he forgave Rahman.

"I hated that I was using people to make money," Rahman said. "I made a mistake."

Via: "The Associated Press"

Israeli's Want Apartheid Without Guilt Or Shame

By Allison Deger,

... according to a new poll by an Israeli data firm a majority of Israelis don’t want to play—or study, live, eat or drive anywhere near an Arab. Rather, they want an Apartheid state.

In two articles by Gideon Levypublished today in Haaretz the results of a survey by Dialog are presented: 58% of Israeli Jews believe Israel practices apartheid in the West Bank, and they are fine with that. In fact Israelis are so comfortable with institutionalized discrimination that a third said they do not want Palestinians citizens of Israel to have the right to vote and 69% do not think Palestinians in the West Bank deserve to vote in the case of Israel annexing the occupied territory.

Such displays of racism, or the desire to live separately from Palestinians, or even transfer them (code for ethnic cleansing) is not new to Israeli society—or survey results. Over the past decade Israeli universities have published data showing a rise from around 60% of Israelis wanting Palestinians to disappear to 68% today. Even back in 1991 during the height of the first Intifada, a quarter of Israeli-Jews said they wanted to transfer the Palestinians citizens of Israel.

But what makes me feel like I’m being whacked across the face when reading both of Levy's articles is not the percentages, it's the arrogance. In great numbers, of the 503 interviewed, around half think they deserve to be treated "better."

Levy writes,

59 percent, wants preference for Jews over Arabs in admission to jobs in government ministries. Almost half the Jews, 49 percent, want the state to treat Jewish citizens better than Arab ones; 42 percent don't want to live in the same building with Arabs and 42 percent don't want their children in the same class with Arab children.

In his op-ed Levy calls this comfort and desire for Jewish privilege at the expense of Palestinians "apartheid without shame or guilt." Where his first article, the reported piece, is all facts and figures, his second is his heart, which too is having an arrhythmia over the "certain innocent candor" expressed in the survey results:

Among its terrifying results, the survey discovers a certain innocent candor. The Israelis admit this is what they are and they're not ashamed of it. Such surveys have been held before, but Israelis have never appeared so pleased with themselves, even when they admit their racism. Most of them think Israel is a good place to live in and most of them think this is a racist state.

It's good to live in this country, most Israelis say, not despite its racism, but perhaps because of it. If such a survey were released about the attitude to Jews in a European state, Israel would have raised hell. When it comes to us, the rules don't apply.

Or to put it more bluntly, Levy says the survey tells the world "We're racists," continuing, "we practice apartheid and we even want to live in an apartheid state. Yes, this is Israel."

Via: "Mondo Weiss"

A Sociopathic Defense Of Drone Killings Of Children

Reflecting The Obama Legacy and US Culture, The Time Columnist Says: "The Bottom Line Is: 'Whose 4-Year-Olds Get Killed?'"

By Glenn Greenwald,

Here are the relevant portions of the exchange, which was triggered when regular guest Mike Barnicle announced how amazing he found it that so little public attention and debate is paid to the fact that Obama simply kills whomever he wants "without any kind of due process":

SCARBOROUGH: "What we're doing with drones is remarkable: the fact that over the past eight years during the Bush years - when a lot of people brought up some legitimate questions about international law - my God, those lines have been completely eradicated by a drone policy that says: if you're between 17 and 30, and within a half-mile of a suspect, we can blow you up, and that's exactly what's happening . . . . They are focused on killing the bad guys, but it is indiscriminate as to other people who are around them at the same time . . . . it is something that will cause us problems in the coming years" . . . .

KLEIN: "I completely disagree with you. . . . It has been remarkably successful" --

SCARBOROUGH: "at killing people" --

KLEIN: "At decimating bad people, taking out a lot of bad people - and saving Americans lives as well, because our troops don't have to do this . . . You don't need pilots any more because you do it with a joystick in California."

SCARBOROUGH: "This is offensive to me, though. Because you do it with a joystick in California - and it seems so antiseptic - it seems so clean - and yet you have 4-year-old girls being blown to bits because we have a policy that now says: 'you know what? Instead of trying to go in and take the risk and get the terrorists out of hiding in a Karachi suburb, we're just going to blow up everyone around them.'

"This is what bothers me. . . . We don't detain people any more: we kill them, and we kill everyone around them. . . . I hate to sound like a Code Pink guy here. I'm telling you this quote 'collateral damage' - it seems so clean with a joystick from California - this is going to cause the US problems in the future."

KLEIN: "If it is misused, and there is a really major possibility of abuse if you have the wrong people running the government. But: the bottom line in the end is - whose 4-year-old get killed? What we're doing is limiting the possibility that 4-year-olds here will get killed by indiscriminate acts of terror."

There are several points worth noting about this exchange:

(1) Klein's justification - we have to kill their children in order to protect our children - is the exact mentality of every person deemed in US discourse to be a "terrorist". Almost every single person arrested and prosecuted over the last decade on terrorism charges, when asked why they were willing to kill innocent Americans including children, offered some version of Joe Klein's mindset.

Here, for instance, is what the Pakistani-American Faisal Shazad said after he pled guilty to attempting to detonate a bomb in Times Square, in response to an angry question from the presiding US federal judge as to how he could possibly be willing to kill innocent children:

"Well, the drone hits in Afghanistan and Iraq, they don't see children, they don't see anybody. They kill women, children, they kill everybody. It's a war, and in war, they kill people. They're killing all Muslims. . . .

"I am part of the answer to the U.S. terrorizing the Muslim nations and the Muslim people. And, on behalf of that, I'm avenging the attack. Living in the United States, Americans only care about their own people, but they don't care about the people elsewhere in the world when they die."

The mentality of Faisal Shazad and Joe Klein are completely identical and indistinguishable: it is justified for us indiscriminately to kill even your innocent children because doing so will help stop you from killing ours.

And here's what Osama bin Laden had to say on the same topic:

"The call to wage war against America was made because America has spear-headed the crusade against the Islamic nation, sending tens of thousands of its troops to the land of the two Holy Mosques over and above its meddling in its affairs and its politics, and its support of the oppressive, corrupt and tyrannical regime that is in control. These are the reasons behind the singling out of America as a target. . . .

"Besides, terrorism can be commendable and it can be reprehensible. Terrifying an innocent person and terrorizing him is objectionable and unjust, also unjustly terrorizing people is not right. Whereas, terrorizing oppressors and criminals and thieves and robbers is necessary for the safety of people and for the protection of their property. . . .

"The terrorism we practice is of the commendable kind for it is directed at the tyrants and the aggressors and the enemies of Allah, the tyrants, the traitors who commit acts of treason against their own countries and their own faith and their own prophet and their own nation. Terrorizing those and punishing them are necessary measures to straighten things and to make them right. . . .

"It is not enough for their people to show pain when they see our children being killed in Israeli raids launched by American planes, nor does this serve the purpose. What they ought to do is change their governments which attack our countries. The hostility that America continues to express against the Muslim people has given rise to feelings of animosity on the part of Muslims against America and against the West in general. Those feelings of animosity have produced a change in the behavior of some crushed and subdued groups who, instead of fighting the Americans inside the Muslim countries, went on to fight them inside the United States of America itself."

When it comes to justifying the killing of civilians, the only difference between the Joe Kleins of the world and Osama bin Laden is that they're on different sides. To the extent one wanted to distinguish them, one could say that the violence and aggression brought by the US to the Muslim world vastly exceeds - vastly - the violence and aggression brought by the Muslim world to the US. That's just a fact.

(2) Leaving aside the sociopathic, morally grotesque defense of killing 4-year-olds with a "joystick from California", Klein's claims are completely false on pragmatic grounds. Slaughtering Muslim children does not protect American children from terrorism. The opposite is true. That is precisely what causes the anti-American hatred that fuels and sustains terrorism aimed at Americans in the first place, as even a study commissioned by the Rumsfeld-era Pentagon recognized almost a decade ago.

The reason American 4-year-olds are in danger from terrorism - to the very limited extent they are - is precisely because those empowered in US government and media circles think like Joe Klein does. Soulless cheerleaders for indiscriminate killing like Joe Klein - who once went on national television and advocated that the US should preserve the right to launch a first-strike nuclear attack on Iran in order to stop their nuclear program, prompting host George Stephanopoulos to label that statement "insane" - are the reason there is a terrorism risk to Americans, not the solution for that risk.

If you want to understand why there is such a widespread desire to engage in violence against the US, look at Joe Klein's face and listen to his words. Every Muslim who has ever engaged in violence against the US will make that as clear as can be.

(3) This exchange is a perfectly vivid expression of the Obama legacy. Here we have a standard Democratic/progressive pundit who is one of the media's most stalwart Obama fanatics defending indiscriminate slaughter of Muslim children. Meanwhile, it's left to a former right-wing, Gingrich-era congressman to raise objections, call for more public scrutiny, and cite the moral and strategic dangers, one of the very few commentators on MSNBC - the progressive network - who has ever voiced such passionate criticism of Obama's ongoing killings.

Obama has led all sorts of progressives and other Democrats to be the most vocal supporters of unrestrained aggression, secret assassinations, and "crippling" the Iranian people with sanctions. It is completely unsurprising that the most sociopathic defense of drones comes from one of the most committed Obama supporters, and that it's now left to a former GOP Congressman to raise objections. As much as anything, that is the Obama legacy.

(4) One of the primary reasons war - especially protracted war - is so destructive is not merely that it kills the populations at whom it is aimed, but it also radically degrades the character of the citizenry that wages it. That's what enables one of America's most celebrated pundits to go on the most mainstream of TV programs and coldly justify the killing of 4-year-olds, without so much as batting an eyelash or even paying lip service to the heinous tragedy of that, and have it be barely noticed. Joe Klein is the face not only of the Obama legacy, but also mainstream US political culture.

Afghanistan

Speaking of killing children, the Afghanistan government said this morning that a NATO operation on Saturday killed three more Afghan children, ones who were tending to livestock.

UPDATE

There's one other vital point to be made here. Klein says that "there is a really major possibility of abuse [of drone power] if you have the wrong people running the government" - in other words, we can trust Obama with it, but not the big bad Republicans. This was precisely what Bush followers used to say about his claimed powers of due-process-free eavesdropping and detention: maybe this would be scary if Hillary Clinton could do this, but I trust Bush to use it only against the Bad Guys.

Leaving aside the authoritarian willingness to trust certain leaders with unchecked power, this is not how the US government works. Once a power is legitimized and institutionalized, then it is vested in all presidents, current and future, Democratic and Republican. That is whyThomas Jefferson warned: "In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." Those who cheer for the unchecked power to assassinate in secret because it's Obama who currently wields that power will be the ones fully responsible when some leader they don't trust exercises it - abuses it - in the future.

Via: "The Guardian"