Showing posts with label Israeli Invasion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Israeli Invasion. Show all posts

Sunday, March 01, 2009

Target Israel With Boycotts, Sanctions, Prosecution

Targeting Israel With Boycotts, Divestment, Sanctions, and Prosecutions

By Stephen Lendman
February 25, 2009
Courtesy Of Global Research

Enough is enough. After 61 years of Palestinian slaughter, displacement, occupation, oppression, and international dismissiveness and complicity, global action is essential. Israel must be held accountable. World leaders won't do it, so grassroots movements must lead the way.

In 2004, Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote:

"The end of apartheid stands as one of the crowning accomplishments of the past century, but we would not have succeeded without the help of international pressure - in particular the divestment movement of the 1980s. Over the past six months, a similar movement has taken shape, this time aiming at an end to the Israeli occupation."

In July 2008, 21 South African activists, including ANC members, visited Israel and Occupied Palestine. Their conclusion was unanimous. Israel is far worse than apartheid as former Deputy Minister of Health and current MP Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge explained:

"What I see here is worse than what we experienced - the absolute control of people's lives, the lack of freedom of movement, the army presence everywhere, the total separation and the extensive destruction we saw....racist ideology is also reinforced by religion, which was not the case in South Africa."

Sunday Times editor, Mondli Makhanya, went further: "When you observe from afar you know that things are bad, but you do not know how bad. Nothing can prepare you for the evil we have seen here. It is worse, worse, worse than everything we endured. The level of apartheid, the racism and the brutality are worse than the worst period of apartheid."

Activist Opposition to a Fundamentally Evil Occupation

In July 2005, a coalition of 171 Palestinian Civil Society organizations created the global BDS movement - for "Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel Until it Complies with International Law and Universal Principles of Human Rights" for Occupied Palestinians, Israeli Arabs, and Palestinian diaspora refugees.

Since 1948, hundreds of UN resolutions condemned Israel's colonial occupation, its decades of discriminatory policies, illegal land seizures and settlements, international law violations, and oppression of a civilian population, and called for remedial action.

Nothing so far has worked. Palestine remains occupied. Its people continue to suffer. Their human rights are denied. These abuses no longer can be tolerated. In solidarity, people of conscience demand justice and "call upon international civil society organizations and (supporters everywhere) to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to (apartheid) South Africa." Pressure is needed for "embargoes and sanctions....for the sake of justice and genuine peace."

Nonviolent punitive measures should continue until Israel:

-- recognizes Palestinian rights to self-determination;

-- respects international law;

-- ends its illegal occupation;

-- dismantles its Separation Wall;

-- grants Israeli Arabs equal rights as Jews; and

-- complies with UN resolution 194 affirming the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and property or be fully compensated for loss or damage if they prefer.

Dozens of Palestinian political parties, organizations, associations, coalitions, campaigns, and unions endorse the project, including:

-- the Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine;

-- the Palestinian Independent Commission for Citizen's Rights (PICCR);

-- the Consortium of Professional Associations;

-- the Lawyers Association;

-- the Network of Christian Organizations;

-- the Palestinian Council for Justice and Peace;

-- the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI); and

-- the US Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel.

PACBI

In April 2004 in Ramallah, Palestinian academics and intellectuals launched it by "buil(ding) on the Palestinian call for a comprehensive economic, cultural and academic boycott of Israel issued in August 2002 (followed by further calls) in October 2003."

In July 2004, its statement of principles read:

-- "to comprehensively and consistently boycott all Israeli academic and cultural institutions until Israel withdraws from all lands occupied in 1967, including East Jerusalem;

-- removes all its colonies in those lands;

-- agrees to United Nations resolutions relevant to the restitution of Palestinian refugee rights; and

-- dismantles its system of apartheid."

PACBI states:

"Boycotting Israeli academic and cultural institutions is an urgently needed form of pressure against Israel that can bring about its compliance with international law and the requirements for a just peace." Israel won't comply. Why should it when world governments are supportive and complicit and offer Palestinians no relief. Thus, grassroots pressure is crucial. That's why organizations like PACBI are essential.

So is the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (CACBI). It's comprised of US academics, "educators of conscience....unable to stand by and watch in silence Israel's indiscriminate assault on the Gaza Strip and its educational institutions." They call for:

(1) boycotting all "academic and cultural cooperation, collaboration or joint projects with Israeli institutions" not opposed to their government's policies towards Palestinians;

(2) "a comprehensive boycott of Israeli institutions at the national and international levels (including) all forms of funding and subsidies....;"

(3) divestment and disinvestment from Israel;

(4) academic, professional, and cultural groups condemnation of Israel; and

(5) support for Palestinian academic and cultural institutions.

Israel flaunts the rule of law, pursues violence, not peace, and discriminates against everyone not Jewish. Terror bombing Gaza and daily West Bank incursions illustrate its arrogance and intentions. CACBI "believe(s) that non-violent external pressure (through) academic, cultural and economic boycott" are crucial. Worldwide support and unwavering pressure must happen as well.

In solidarity with PACBI, CACBI, and non-academic bodies globally, Australian academics issued their own mission statement, calling on like-minded activists to join them. Others elsewhere have done the same.

Inception of the Academic Boycott Idea

On April 6, 2002, UK professors Steven and Hilary Rose first presented the idea in an open letter to the London Guardian. They wrote:

"Despite widespread international condemnation for its policy of violent repression against the Palestinian people in the Occupied Territories, the Israel government appears impervious to moral appeals from world leaders." For its part, America "seems reluctant to act. However, there are ways of exerting pressure from within Europe....many national and European cultural and research institutions....regard Israel (alone in the Middle East) as a European state for the purposes of awarding grants and contracts. Would it not therefore be timely" for a pan-European moratorium of all further support "unless and until Israel abides by UN resolutions and opens serious peace negotiations with the Palestinans" along the lines of proposed "peace plans."

By July, 700 signatures were registered, including from 10 Israeli academics, but not without controversy and opposition. Questions of ethics and effectiveness were raised. Academic freedom, anti-Semitism, and unfairly singling out Israel as well.

On April 22, 2005, the UK Council of Association of University Teachers (AUT - with support from 60 Palestinian academics) voted to boycott two Israeli universities - Haifa and Bar-Ilan. Haifa for wrongly disciplining a lecturer who supported a student's writing about 1948 Israeli attacks on Palestinians and Bar-Ilan for conducting courses in the West Bank, complicit with the occupation.

Criticism of the AUT was immediate and harsh by Jewish groups and its own members. Zvi Ravner, Israel's deputy ambassador in London, said the "last time Jews were boycotted in universities was in 1930s Germany." By May, pressure was intense, forcing AUT to cancel its boycott, but the idea stayed viable.

In May 2006, the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE) passed motion 198C, a call to boycott Israeli academics who refused to speak out against their government. As expected, criticism again was intense but those in support stayed firm.

On May 30, 2007, the congress of the University and College Union (UCU - created by AUT and NATFHE's merger) voted 158 - 99 on Motion 30 for a Palestinian trade unions boycott petition. It asked lecturers to "consider the moral implications of existing and proposed links with Israeli academic institutions."

On September 28, after considerable opposition, UCU abandoned its effort in a press release stating that lawyers advised that "an academic boycott of Israel would be unlawful and cannot be implemented."

Nonetheless, despite start-and-stop efforts and enormous opposition, the BDS movement remains viable and has taken root globally. In January 2009, the Ontario branch of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) proposed banning Israeli academics from teaching, speaking at, or doing research at Ontario universities unless they condemn Israel's war on Gaza. After CUPE national president's opposition, local branch officials removed the proposal from its web site but replaced it with a statement calling for a boycott "aimed at academic institutions and the institutional connections that exist between universities here and those in Israel." It will also introduce a resolution on the ban.

On January 31, hundreds of Irish activists ran a full page ad in The Irish Times condemning decades of Israeli militarism, oppression, occupation, and violations of international law. They called for the Irish government to:

-- "cease its purchase of Israeli military products and services and call publicly for an arms embargo against Israel;

-- demand publicly that Israel reverse its settlement construction, illegal occupation and annexation of land in accordance with UN Security Council resolutions and to use its influence" to achieve this;

-- "demand publicly that the Euro-Med Agreement under which Israel has privileged access to the EU market be suspended until Israel complies with international law;

-- veto any proposed upgrade in EU relations with Israel; (and for)

-- The Irish people to boycott all Israeli goods and services until Israel abides by international law."

On February 1, a new alliance of American Jews for a Just Peace issued this statement against Israel's war on Palestine:

"Israel recent War on Gaza resulted in worldwide popular condemnation. Perhaps this marks an important turning point in the relationship between Israel and the world community. We will not stand by while Israel instigates a war, annihilates civilian infrastructure, targets civilian shelters, blocks medical teams from reaching victims, uses chemical weapons," and commits various other atrocities and illegal acts. This isn't how a democratic state functions, one that respects international laws and norms. "On the contrary, they are actions of a rogue state....fully supported by the US government."

"American Jews for a Just Peace calls for:

-- immediate suspension of all US military aid to Israel pursuant to the Arms Export Control Act;

-- the US Congress to open an investigation into possible war crimes as violations of the Arms Export Control and Foreign Assistance Acts in the war on Gaza;

-- businesses and individuals to refuse to purchase Israeli-made products that originate in or support Jewish settlements in Occupied Palestine and the apartheid system of racial separation and oppression in Israel/Palestine;

-- the Israeli government to sign the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid that was adopted by the United Nations in 1973...;

-- the Israeli government to end the blockade and siege of Gaza and allow unhindered access to all humanitarian aid organizations as well as international journalists; and

-- efforts by all activists to promote awareness of and resistance to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, which continues through the ongoing blockade, siege, displacement, annexation, and Israeli state-sponsored terror."

On February 3, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported that "The only Palestinian university (Al Quds) to maintain ties with Israeli colleges and oppose international calls for an (academic) boycott....suspended contacts with Israeli universities in the wake of the war in Gaza."

Al Quds has 10,000 students on three West Bank campuses - in El Bireh, Abu Dis, and East Jerusalem. By unanimous decision of its board on February 1, it froze (but didn't end) 60 joint projects for six months, pending a policy review and possible change. Its statement cited no justification for continued ties and that cutting them "is aimed at pressuring Israel to abide by a solution that ends the occupation, a solution that has been needed for far too long and that the international community has stopped demanding."

Al Quds' board called on local, regional, and international academics to support its position by halting their own cooperation with Israeli universities.

On February 5, Durban, South African dock workers refused to offload an Israeli ship docked in the city's harbor. At the same time, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) called on "workers and activists for justice and peace to join the ever growing movement of people in solidarity with the suffering masses of Palestine." COSATU asked workers globally to follow their lead not to offload Israeli ships or handle Israeli goods in retail stores. It also affirmed its stand to "strengthen the campaign in South Africa for boycotts, divestment and sanctions against apartheid Israel."

Despite its efforts, the Port of Durban used non-union workers to offload the Israeli ship on February 6. On the same day, COSATU and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign affirmed their boycott initiative by protesting in front of the South African Zionist Federation offices in Johannesburg.

On February 6, stopwar.org.uk reported a "Wave of Gaza solidarity action on UK campuses" over the past two weeks at 22 universities and colleges so far. Student demands include:

-- providing scholarships for Palestinian students;

-- sending books and computers to Occupied Palestine;

-- condemning Israeli attacks on Gaza; and

-- divesting from Israel and BAE Systems that supplies Israel with arms.

On February 7, the Church of England announced that late last year it divested over 2.2 million British pounds from Caterpillar, a company whose bulldozers and equipment is used to demolish Palestinian homes. It's a small step but an important one, given the Church's importance. Hopefully it will inspire others to take similar steps and divest entirely from Israel and companies with which it does business.

On February 9, Hampshire College in Amherst, MA became the first one in America to divest from companies involved in Israel's occupation of Palestine. It marked a successful outcome of an intensive two-year Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) campaign that pressured the school's Board of Trustees to act. Over 800 students, faculty and alumni were involved. Their efforts worked and shows that other campus campaigns nationwide and globally may as well. This is an important first step.

On February 10, the Belfast Telegraph reported that the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) "launch(ed) a boycott of Israeli goods as part of a major campaign to secure a peaceful settlement in the Middle East."

Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) dismissed the idea but Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams expressed support in saying:...."Gaza has been the target of an all-out military assault by Israeli forces. Over 1300 people were killed, many of them children."

Northern Ireland's Social Democratic and Labour Party's (SDLP) Carmel Hanna said that her country's experience with the "Troubles" should inspire support for Middle East peace. "We have learned from the conflict here that violence does not work and creates bitterness."

On February 19, the Secretariat of the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee called on "all (globally) to unite our different capacities and struggles in a Global Day of Action in Solidarity with the Palestinian people and for a (BDS action) against Israel on 30 March 2009" - as part of a "Global Week of Action against the Crises and War from 28 March to 4 April."

March 30 actions will focus on:

-- "Boycotts and divestment from Israeli corporations and international (ones) that sustain Israeli apartheid and occupation.

-- Legal action to end Israel's impunity and prosecute its war criminals through national court cases and international tribunals.

-- Canceling and blocking free trade and other preferential agreements with Israel and imposing an arms embargo as the first steps towards fully fledged sanctions against Israel."

The time for these actions is now. It must be sustained until Gaza is free, the occupation of all Arab lands ends, the Separation Wall is demolished, Israeli Arabs have equal rights as Jews, and Palestinian refugees get their international law right to return to their homes and property or receive full compensation for loss or damage if they prefer.

On February 23, Amnesty International (AI) issued a press release headlined: "Israel/Occupied Palestinian Territories - Evidence of Misuse of US-Weapons Reinforces Need for Arms Embargo."

AI found evidence of US-supplied weapons and munitions and "called on the UN to impose a comprehensive arms embargo." It also accused Israel of using "white phosphorous and other weapons supplied by the USA to carry out serious violations of international humanitarian law, including war crimes. Their attacks resulted in the death of hundreds of children and other civilians and massive destruction of homes and infrastructure," according to Donatella Rovera, head of AI's Gaza and southern Israel fact-finding mission.

"As the major supplier of weapons to Israel, the USA has a particular obligation to stop any supply that contributes to gross violations of the laws of war and of human rights. The Obama administration should immediately suspend US military aid to Israel."

During the week of March 1 - 8, the fifth annual Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) will be held - last year in over 25 cities and this year likely many more in the wake of the Gaza war and subsequent world outrage. IAW is part of the growing global BDS movement - from Abu Dis to Atlanta, Barcelona to Bethlehem, Chicago to Copenhagen, Halifax to Hebron, New York to Nablus, Washington to Waterloo, and on and on in an effort to make it unstoppable.

Background Information and Member Global BDS Movement Countries

Organizations in 20 countries participate under the banner of the International Coordinating Network on Palestine (ICNP). Formed in 2002, it calls itself "a body of civil society organizations....under the auspices of the United Nations Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People."

Its mission "is to strengthen the role of civil society in supporting and demanding, of governments and international institutions, the full implementation" of all Palestinian rights under international law, including to self-determination, national independence, and sovereignty.

ICNP coordinates global campaigns; facilitates communication; aids local organizations; plans civil society conferences; and mobilizes global BDS support. In the spirit of internationalism, it strives for representation on every continent in many more nations than now.

Participating organizations are currently in the following countries:

-- Australia;

-- Belgium;

-- Canada;

-- the autonomous Catalonian northeast Spanish community and its capital, Barcelona;

-- Denmark;

-- France;

-- Egypt;

-- Greece;

-- Iceland;

-- Italy;

-- Netherlands;

-- Norway;

-- Scotland;

-- South Africa;

-- Spain;

-- Sweden;

-- United Kingdom; and

-- United States.

Formal Asian and Latin American representation is noticeably absent, but BDS leaders look for change. They also promote broad international BDS initiatives:

-- academic and cultural boycotts by "refusing to participate in cultural exchange, artists, and cultural institutions" to tell Israel that its "occupation and discrimination against Palestinians is unacceptable;" Israel promotes apartheid; non-Jewish voices are excluded; Israeli children are taught to deny a Palestinian identity; Israel monitors this closely and cracks down hard on non-compliers;

-- consumer boycotts of Israeli products and services through public awareness, bad publicity, pressuring stores to remove merchandise denoting Israeli origin, and encouraging companies to stop buying Israeli technology; overall, to create an inhospitable climate for Israeli commerce;

-- a sports boycott to highlight Israeli oppression and discrimination and to stop its self-promotion as a "fair player" by participating in bilateral and international competition; at the same time, to promote a Palestinian presence in these events to support their right to identity and self-determination;

-- divestment/disinvestment in Israel and companies globally that support its occupation and oppression; encourage and pressure individuals, businesses, organizations, universities, pension funds, and governments to shed their Israeli investments to provide pressure for change;

-- sanctions - starting with open debate and raising awareness on applying them; followed by implementing comprehensive economic, political, and military measures to isolate the Jewish state; ending Israel's membership in economic and political bodies like the UN, WHO, Red Cross, WTO, and OECD;

-- end cooperation agreements under which Israel gets preferential treatment on trade, joint research and development, and various other projects; Israel's Export and International Cooperation Institute reported in 2006 that participation of its companies in international projects in 2005 grew by 150% - from $600 million in 2004 to $1.5 billion in 2005; Israel is the only non-European country participating in the EU's Sixth Framework Programme for R & D and gets preferential treatment as a member; many international agreements have clauses that bind participating countries to human rights, international law, and democratic standards; Israel disdains them; it must be challenged and excluded as a result;

-- efforts at the local, regional, and institutional levels to build greater individual awareness and support;

-- ending military ties is also vital; Israel is a serial aggressor; militarism defines its culture and existence; despite its own technology, it's heavily dependent on America and other nations for hardware and munitions supplies; breaking that connection can curb its crimes of war and against humanity; raising public awareness is crucial toward accomplishing this goal;

-- involve faith-based bodies and institutions in the campaign; explain religion isn't the issue; morality and human rights are at stake; religious leaders can be enormously influential in building BDS support and enhancing its legitimacy; and

-- work cooperatively with trade unions; Palestinian ones faced Zionist attacks since the 1920s, especially from the Histradrut General Federation of Laborers in the Land of Israel; it's replaced Arab workers with Jewish ones; in 1965, the General Union of Palestinian Workers (GUPW) was founded to organize West Bank, Gaza and diaspora labor; in 1986, the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU) grew out of Occupied Palestine's labor movement; today it's ineffective given conditions in the Territories and Israeli discrimination against its Arab citizens, consigning them to low wage, few or no benefit jobs; Histadrut represents Jews alone.

The Global BDS movement seeks worldwide support for Palestinian liberation and self-determination. Its campaign continues to grow.

Calls for Prosecuting Israeli Officials for Crimes of War, Against Humanity, and Genocide

For over six decades, Israel has tried to eliminate a Palestinian presence throughout Greater Israel - through occupation, oppression, impoverishment, discrimination, isolation, displacement, aggression, and genocide. The time for accountability is now. Efforts are going forward and were pursued earlier.

On February 3, the Australian Sun reported that International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo "was conducting a preliminary analysis of alleged (Israeli) crimes during (its) recent (Gaza) offensive...." He received communications from the Palestinian justice minister, Ali Kashan, the PA, and over 200 from others, including NGOs.

He wasn't encouraging in saying that he'll "examine all relevant issues, including on jurisdiction," (but) preliminary analysis....is not indicative that an investigation will be opened." Earlier, his office stated that the ICC "had no competence over the Gaza situation." The court can only try individuals for crimes committed by a signatory to the Rome Statute. Israel is not. The prosecutor may also investigate at the behest of the Security Council or if a non-party state accepts court jurisdiction. A guaranteed US veto rules out the former. The PA is pursuing the latter even though Palestine is not an independent state.

Earlier in September 2006, Al Jazeera reported that "Three Moroccan lawyers said last month they were suing (then) Israeli defence minister, Amir Peretz, over the recent (Lebanon and Gaza) offensives. Israel Radio reported that a Danish politician also tried to have (foreign minister) Tzipi Livni detained and prosecuted during a recent visit to Copenhagen but the request for an arrest warrant was" denied.

On January 24, Iran Daily reported that 30 "International attorneys have filed war crime charges against 15 Israeli political and military officials including Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni and Ehud Barak." The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) believes the evidence is compelling, including IDF use of illegal weapons and large-scale atrocities in Gaza.

Names of those accused were submitted to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague, even though Israel isn't a member. Nonetheless, Israelis have been warned to check before traveling abroad to be sure no arrest warrants for them were issued.

French lawyer Gilles Dovers is involved and called for an "open investigation into war crimes" committed by Israeli forces in Gaza. He said 500 complaints were submitted by Arab, European and Latin American officials. Venezuela and Bolivia are preparing their own cases.

Iran Daily said "a group of French lawyers (intend) to file a complaint on behalf of French citizens of Palestinian origin to the French courts against Israeli officials," and this effort "is gaining attention" in Paris and eastern France. "Coordination with other lawyers in Belgium and Spain is (also) underway....in Brussels and Madrid."

On February 6, AP reported that a Turkish prosecutor "launched a probe into whether Israel's military offensive in the Gaza Strip counts as genocide, torture and crimes against humanity." The prosecutor's office proceeded after an Islamic human rights group filed an official complaint naming Shimon Peres, Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni. Turkish laws allow for trials against persons accused of genocide and crimes against humanity.

Other efforts are proceeding as well. The Sabra Shatila Foundation issued a petition to hold Israel accountable for war crimes in Gaza and urged people of conscience to sign it. The International Organization for the elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination (EAFORD), Tlaxcala Universal Petition, and International Lawyers without Borders also advocate Israeli war criminal prosecutions.

On December 31 in Global Research.ca, international law expert Francis Boyle called for "An Israeli War Crimes Tribunal (ICTI as) the Only Deterrent to a Global War." He asked the UN General Assembly to "immediately establish an (ICTI) as a 'subsidiary organ' under UN Charter Article 22" similar to the Security Council's ICTY for Yugoslavia. Its purpose "would be to investigate and prosecute Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide against the Peoples of Lebanon and Palestine."

It would provide "some degree of justice" and serve as a deterrent to future regional aggression and a potential "global catastrophe." Boyle also accused Washington of aiding and abetting Israeli genocide against the Palestinians. Instead of "rein(ing) in the Israelis (by cutting off all funding), the United States government, the US Congress, and US taxpayers instead support the 'Jewish' state to the tune of about 4 billion dollars per year...." He calls it "dishumanitarian intervention (or) humanitarian extermination" by both countries "against the Palestinians and Palestine."

"In today's world, genocide pays so long as it is done at the behest of the United States and its de jure or de facto allies such as Israel." Boyle wants Israel's UN General Assembly and entire UN System membership suspended. He also proposes imposing economic, diplomatic and travel sanctions and for "the Provisional Government of the State of Palestine to sue Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ)" for committing genocide in violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention.

In his 2003 book, "Palestine, Palestinians, and International Law," Boyle states that world governments and people of conscience should organize a comprehensive economic divestment/disinvestment campaign against Israel. It can be modeled after the successful South African anti-apartheid one. The 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid is the standard. It applies to Israel, defines apartheid as a "crime against humanity," and calls guilty parties international criminals.

In a May 20, 2002 Counterpunch article, Boyle wrote "In Defense of a Divestment Campaign Against Israel" and based it on his November 30, 2000 Illinois State University public lecture calling for a nationwide campaign. UC Berkeley Students for Justice in Palestine responded with their own. Others followed, including Palestinian students at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where Boyle teaches. Soon after, over 30 US campuses joined the effort and others later on.

Faculties as well, including at the University of California where 143 professors petitioned the UC system "to use its influence - political and financial - to encourage the United States government and the government of Israel to respect human rights of the Palestinian people" and for divestment until Israel complies with international law.

Last February, the London School of Economics Students Union (LSESU) voted overwhelmingly for its university and the National Union of Students (NUS) to divest from companies that have commercial and military ties to Israel.

On January 18 in the Electronic Intifada, Elna Sondergaard, Director of the Human Rights Program and American University (Cairo) Law Professor, said it's "Time for Israel to be put on trial." In the wake of the Gaza war, she cited atrocities and grievous crimes of war and against humanity that must not go unpunished.

"The crucial question is: To which courts of justice can Palestinian victims bring their claims?" Palestinian courts have no jurisdiction over Israeli crimes, and as stateless people can't adjudicate before the ICC. They're also denied "legal protection offered by classic interstate diplomacy," and pursuing claims in Israeli courts is fruitless.

Sondergaard suggests doing it in other countries on the basis of universal jurisdiction, even though past efforts in Belgium, Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, Switzerland, the UK and America were unsuccessful. She also suggests an "ad-hoc tribunal," similar to what Boyle proposes, and said doing so "would cost the international community nothing." Abstaining, however, would leave Gazans "without remedies and hope" and would encourage politicians and soldiers to think they're immune and can get away with anything. "Thus," she concludes, "we cannot allow these crimes to remain untried."

Nor can we abstain from boycotting, divesting, sanctioning, and expelling Israel from the UN System until it complies with international law, recognizes Palestinian self-determination, ends its illegal occupation, disbands its settlements, dismantles its Separation Wall, grants Israeli Arabs equal rights as Jews, and lets Palestinian refugees return home to their property or be paid just compensation if they prefer. A vibrant, committed, grassroots global BDS movement is crucial to achieving these goals.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday through Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening.

Stephen Lendman is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Global Research Articles by Stephen Lendman

Sunday, February 01, 2009

Israel Asserting Middle East Supremacy

From Gaza to Tehran
“The Israeli Defense Force is the most moral army in the World!”
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
By James Petras
January 31, 2009
Courtesy Of Information Clearing House

Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany bombed, invaded and annexed countries and territories as a prelude to their quest for World Empire. Israel’s drive for regional dominance has followed in their footsteps, imitating their style: Indiscriminate aerial bombings of civilian and military facilities, a savage blitzkrieg led by armored vehicles, disdain and repudiation of all criticism from international agencies was accompanied by an open, military buildup for a new and bigger war against Iran. Like the Nazi leadership, who played on the ‘Bolshevik threat’, the Israeli high command has set in motion a vast world-wide propaganda campaign led by its world Zionist network, raising the specter of ‘Islamic terror’ to justify its preparations for a military assault on seventy-four million Iranians. Just as Nazi Germany interpreted the passivity, sympathy and impotence of the West when confronted by ‘facts on the ground’ as license for aggression, the Israeli military machine receives a powerful impetus for new wars by the Western governments’ inaction and flaccid response to its invasion of Lebanon, the bombing of Syria and now its Nazi style blitz and conquest of Gaza. For the Israeli high command, the impotence and complicity of the Western states, marks the way to bigger and bloodier wars to establish Israel’s supremacy and dominance of the Middle East, from the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf.

Gaza Blitz: Dress Rehearsal for an Assault on Iran

Israel’s military victory in Gaza is a dress rehearsal for a full-scale military assault on Iran. In the course of their Gaza extermination campaign, Israeli political and military strategists gained a great deal of vital information about: (1) the levels of complicity and impotence of European, North American and Arab states; (2) the high degree and depth of material and political support obtainable from the United States government in pulverizing adversaries; (3) the high degree of internal support among the Jewish electorate for even the most brutal killing fields; (4) the massive unquestioning backing of an offensive war from all the biggest and most politically influential and wealthiest Jewish-Zionist organizations in the US and Western Europe; (5) the weakness and ineffectiveness of the United Nations and the incapacity of the entire range of humanitarian organizations to limit Israel’s extermination campaign directed at destroying the very existence of an entire people; (6) the unconditional backing of the entire mass media and news agencies in the US and most of the mass media in Europe and the rest of the world; (7) the willingness of the liberal critics to equally blame the victims of extermination and the exterminators for the ‘violence’, thus neutralizing any effective consequential condemnation of the Israeli state; and (8) the adaptation of practically all the journalists, writers, academics and politicians to the entire euphemistic vocabulary of the Israeli propaganda office.

For example, sustained total war is called an ‘incursion’. Ten thousand aerial assaults by hundreds of Israeli helicopters and fighter-bombers are equated with sporadic harmless homemade rocket attacks as ‘violence’. Israeli targeting of thousands of civilian homes, hospitals and basic infrastructure are labeled ‘terrorist’ targets. Resistance fighters are labeled ‘Hamas terrorists’. The bombing of the Red Cross, the United Nations relief facilities, hospitals, mosques are called ‘mistakes’ or justified as ‘launching sites for Hamas terrorists.

Israeli political leaders have drawn the lesson from their dirty little ‘war’ that they can totally destroy a nation, decimate a society and murder and maim 7000 civilians with impunity. Israeli leaders learned they can carry out an offensive genocidal war without suffering breaks in diplomatic relations (except Mauritania, Qatar, Bolivia and Venezuela). The Israelis have successfully tested the loyalty and submissiveness of the major Arab regimes in the region and secured cooperation and acquiescence from Egypt, the ‘Palestinian Authority’, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Israeli civilian-military leaders calculate that with this high degree of governmental complicity, combined with support from all the major Zionist leaders and mass media moguls, they can dismiss even large-scale street protests, repeated calls for boycotts and United Nations denunciations. Israeli leaders know that the criticism of major religious leaders and the growing number of Jewish dissidents, critical intellectuals and activists will have no consequential impact on Western governments nor lessen the fervor and loyalty of the major Jewish organizations.

Invisible Threats and Visible Impunity

The two potential threats to Israel’s genocidal offensive wars, namely, economic boycotts by important trading and investing countries and a cut-off of military aid, did not materialize. In North American the leading Zionist organizations ensured that the issue of a boycott was never even raised in the legislature and executive branches. In the US, AIPAC wrote resolutions and secured near unanimous passage (100% in the Senate, 90% in the Congress) of an AIPAC dictated resolution endorsing Israel’s invasion and slaughter. Moreover the Zionist colonized Pentagon authorized massive new shipments of missiles and 1000 pound bombs to re-supply Israel in the midst of its massacres of the Palestinians. Israel’s leaders gloated over the fact that Jewish Zionist Lobbies control over US policy went un-contested by the anti-war protestors. Few, if any, of the demonstrators around the world identified and denounced the role of the Zionist organizations in their own countries in making US, Canadian and European policy toward the Middle East.

Nothing exemplifies the total and blind subordination of the 51 Major American Jewish Organizations (see appendix #1) to Israeli foreign policy goals as two incidents during the Gaza Genocide. When the ‘51’ got wind that Secretary of State Condeleeza Rice was working to come up with a Security Council resolution calling for a cease fire in Gaza, to stop Israeli genocide, every major Jewish organization mobilized their entire membership to oppose her. As the Jewish weekly magazine, Forward, reports: “During a January 5 (2009) conference call with Jewish activists, Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of President of Major American Jewish Organizations, gave special priority to blocking the international body from taking a stand on the Gaza issue. ‘We need to work hard to ensure the Security Council doesn’t pass the resolution, Hoenlein said.’” (Forward January 15, 2009)

The second example of Zionist belief in Israeli supremacy over US Middle East policy and Presidential servility came in response to Israeli Prime Minister Olmert’s boast that he successfully dictated and imposed White House policy in the United Nation. According to the Forward: “Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert didn’t do anything wrong but he should have kept his mouth shut. That was the reaction of several Jewish leaders…’I have no problem with what Olmert did’, said Abraham Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League.” (Forward, January 15, 2009) Former AIPAC chief lobbyist Douglas Bloomfield, stated that he (an American citizen) had no problem with Israel dictating US policies but ‘it is a mistake to talk about it.’ (Forward, January 15, 2009). By talking about Israel’s power in Washington, it exposes the role of the Zionist Power Configuration in deciding US policies.

These examples demonstrate once again the indivisible links between Israel and its US-Zionist Fifth Column and their power to make US policy – even when it is a question of supporting genocide. These cases also illustrate the fact that the major American Jewish organizations will not tolerate the smallest White House deviation from any Israeli policy, even if it involves mass murder. It wasn’t enough that for 8 years, President Bush slavishly followed and funded Israel’s war machine: For US Jewish leaders it is 100% subservience up to and including his last day in office. As the Forward writes, “That tough words from Israel and the Jewish groups…serve as a message to the incoming (Obama) administrations…” (ibid).

In addition to capturing positions of political power, one of the highest priorities of all the major Zionist Jewish organizations in the US is to propagandize, apologize and fabricate stories on behalf of Israel. Even in the face of Israel’s most blatant violent crimes against Palestinians, condemned by the UN General Assembly, the International Red Cross and every humanitarian group, the principle American Jewish religious institutions and lobbies have demonstrated their loyalty to the state of Israel. The modus operendi as documented by their internal memos is to dominate the mass media through ‘plants’ – pro-Zionist journalist, academics, ‘experts’ and editors – who write and broadcast justifications and apologies for Israeli war crimes (parroting the line of the Israeli state) in the mass media. The Zionist propagandists then circulate the planted articles by their colleagues, giving the impression of broad public support when in fact they are reproducing prepared Israeli-Zionist propaganda. The style and substance of the Zionist propaganda operation is evident in its defense of Israel’s Gaza bloodbath. The style is the Big Lie, reminiscent of totalitarian regimes. It is worthwhile to sample a few examples from the main mouthpiece of the 51 Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations (PMAJO):

1. Denying Israeli war crimes and fabricating accounts minimizing the Jewish State’s killings. The Daily Alert (January 22, 2009) claimed that Israel killed only 600 Palestinians and “most were fighters.” The Daily Alert denied on site reports by major human rights workers, Red Cross officials, Palestinian and international doctors and medical workers and journalists, who risked their lives (and some died) documenting the nearly 1,400 deaths, over 2/3 of which were children, women and non-combatants.

2. Repeating Israeli propaganda justifying the bombing of the United Nations-run schools by claiming the schools were ‘infiltrated by Palestinian terrorists’ among the thousands of refugees (The Daily Alert, January 22, 2009). There was not a single armed resistance fighter found among the 40 bodies recovered from the rubble by the United Nations workers, International Red Cross and Palestinian medical crews at the girls’ elementary school; all were children, teachers and refugees. Every organization and individual eyewitness refutes the Zionist-American apology of the Israeli bombing of the school, including the entire European Union. The most bizarre fabrication printed in the Daily Alert is a headline, which read: “Hamas Shot from Civilian Neighborhoods” over an article by Rod Nordland (Newsweek), which, in fact, reports the opposite, “Everyone of the residents interviewed in eastern Jabeliya insisted that there had been no provocation from the area, no resistance fighters and no rocket launchings.”

3. The third lie is a whopper: “Israel Doing its Best to Help Gazans”, (Daily Alert, January 16, 2009). In fact, Israel blocked all medicine and medical equipment from entering Gaza, bombed hospitals, shot up ambulances, murdered doctors and medical aid workers and blocked all shipment of water, food and fuel. The Israelis bombed the main United Nations food and medical supply warehouse, destroying its entire contents. The US Zionists defended this bombing by citing Olmert’s blood libel that the destruction of thousands of tons of food was a “response to fire coming from the building.” The United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon was outraged by this barefaced lie as he visited the still smoldering UN warehouse to view the destruction while the US Secretary of State Rice crawled before the Israelis, begging them to “avoid (a repeat of) such incidents.” (Daily Alert, January 16, 2009)

4. Saving Gaza by Destroying the Heart of Terror” (Daily Alert, January 16, 2009). The Jewish propaganda sheet reproduces an article by the ultra-nationalist Natan Sharansky, who advocates expelling all Palestinian Arabs from ‘Greater Israel’. In an article published in Bloomberg, Sharansky defended the destruction of over 10,000 houses, damaging over 40,000 homes, roads, hospitals, power installations, water and sewage installations, 121 industries and commercial workshops, 30 mosques, 29 educational institutions, farms, poultries, dairies, small fishing vessels and the fishing port (according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights and cited in Stephen Lendman’s essay, “Israel Killed Everything but the Will to Resist”, January 25, 2009).

5. The Fifth Big Lie: “Israeli Pilot Tries to Avoid Hitting Civilians”, (Daily Alert, January 14, 2009). Photos published in all the international mass media refute this Zionist propaganda claim. The ghostly rubble of whole apartment blocks resembles a nuclear strike or an earthquake, according to the BBC reporters who finally made it into Gaza. Numerous European Parliamentary representatives and other on site visitors from throughout the world were shocked by the devastation. Not only did Israeli pilots target all civilian targets, but their ground troops assassinated unarmed civilians holding white flags and in some cases even small children attempting to flee. Surviving Palestinian children tell of their fathers executed in front of their families.

The Big Lie promoted by the leading Zionist organizations resonates from the Rabbinical pulpits, to their members and beyond: Informal phone surveys with rank and file members of local Zionists groups echoes the same lies and apologies, almost verbatim. In a word, neither facts, nor reports, nor universal condemnation, nor challenges by dissident rabbis, Jewish notables, writers and activists have made a dent on the major Jewish organizations and their agents in influential positions in the new Obama administration. They are the willing accomplices to mass murder in Gaza. They are active promoters of a pre-emptive aerial assault on Iran. They will unconditionally apologize for any crime against humanity that Israel perpetrates. Their academic apologists at Harvard defend Israeli Genocide as part of a ‘Just War’. In the face of universal condemnation they continue to cite the Holocaust and claim that they and their State are the only Moral People entitled to decide and judge, what is just and what is sacred Truth.

The Israeli leaders are perfectly aware of the ‘free hand’ with which their ‘Fifth Column’ operates, up to and including their prominent role in defense of genocide. Israeli leaders are assured that even when they launch a bigger, bolder and more destructive war (including the possibility of pre-emptive nuclear strike) against Iran or Syria/Lebanon, they can count on the million-member US Zionist lobby securing White House and US Congressional support. Israeli leaders now know for a fact that the anti-war movement will once again engage in inconsequential protests against the ‘shadows of power’ and not the real power wielders embedded in the Zionist Power Configuration.

Gaza: Testing the Subservience of the US Congress and the White House

By savaging Gaza with extreme brutality, Israel is testing the waters of US support for more offensive wars. Gaza allowed the Jewish leaders to measure the depth and scope of US Zionist political influence and their willingness to ‘go all the way’ when Israel decides to bomb 74 million Iranians in to the stone age. Or as the famous Israeli Zionist historian, Benny Morris, suggested in the New York Times July 18,2008, turn Iran “into a nuclear wasteland”.

Prime Minister Olmert’s public boasting that he pulled President Bush off the stage from an official public appearance and successfully ordered him to instruct the Secretary of State Condaleeza Rice to abstain from voting on her own authored resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza before the Security Council has many profound meanings. On the most obvious level Olmert’s revelation confirms the power of Israeli leaders over the White House. Secondly, the public nature of the exercise of power, tells the world that Israel can openly flaunt its capacity to humiliate and ridicule the President of the United States and later brag before Israeli officials with no adverse consequences. Thirdly it tells us that Israel has a greater say in US foreign policy than the American Secretary of State (or Foreign Minister). Fourthly it tells us that Israel decides how the US behaves, votes, vetoes and abstains in the Security Council, subject to Israeli approval.

Israel, the Zionist Fifth Column and Iran

Israel exercises power in the Middle East through its military weaponry. Its repeated threats and aerial and ground assaults on neighboring countries is a deliberate strategy to assert its regional supremacy. In recent years, Israel’s regional power has been enhanced by the Zionist Power Configuration in the US and Canada, who use the armed forces in their own countries to destroy any country that contests Israeli military supremacy. The classic case was the run-up to the US invasion of Iraq and the follow-up occupation, in which long-term Israel Firsters in the US Government played a deadly role in promoting the war.

From the late 1980’s to the present, the US Zionist Power Configuration has been in the forefront of a campaign to promote a US military confrontation with Iran in collaboration with Israel. The Zionist military proposals gained tremendous momentum during the 8 years of the Bush Administration. The ZPC mounted an unrelenting mass media propaganda campaign demonizing Iran, fabricating and disseminating falsified accounts of its nuclear programs, infiltrating and occupying key positions in the US Treasury Department (led by Stuart Levey) aggressively bludgeoning other governments, industries, banks and investors to boycott Iran. Zionist Treasury Department officials hope to strangle and weaken Iran’s economy in order to soften it up for a military strike. No other single or combined force in North America, or, for that matter, any place in the world (except Israel) has played as big a role in promoting an offensive war against Iran as the Zionist politicians and officials in the US government. They were aided and abetted by Jewish lobbies, Zionist propaganda centers, multi-billionaires and hundreds of Jewish community organizations.

Major Jewish religious organizations play a very influential role as conduits of Israeli propaganda and are an important force within the principle Zionist umbrella organizations (e.g. Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations or CPMAJO). Fully one-fifth of the Conference (see appendix for a full list)1 is made up of clerical-Zionist organizations, whose principle function is promoting Israeli goals through direct intervention in US politics at all levels. A memo from one group, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, issued on January 3, 2009, outlines their detailed strategy in defense of Israel’s Gaza massacre: “Every congregation should issue a statement supporting Israel. Solicit statements from elected officials at the city, state or provincial, or federal levels. Solicit statements from local religious, ethnic and other prominent personalities. Monitor and respond to media coverage. Whenever possible, enlist non-Jews as well as public officials and prominent spokespeople to demonstrate their support for Israel.” The memo then proposes a series of “talking points on the situation in the Gaza Strip” that repeats verbatim the identical propaganda fabrications of the Israeli political-military high command: Affirming Israel’s peaceful intentions, blaming Hamas as the aggressor and claiming that “Israel, as always, is doing everything within its powers to limit non-combatant casualties in Gaza.” The Jewish clerics in the United Synagogues tell their faithful congregants to ignore the more than 5000 civilian casualties and the 1,300 deaths, of which three quarters are women, children and unarmed civilians, the sixty schools and the tens of thousands of homes and the dozen mosques demolished, the condemnations of war crimes by the United Nations, Red Cross and every Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups.

The strategy paper issued by the religious Conservative Jews is very similar to that followed by the entire network of 51 religious and secular groups affiliated with the ‘Presidents’. This highlights the way in which a highly disciplined, well-financed minority captures and multiplies its power far beyond its own membership, ‘leveraging’ influential Gentiles, the mass media at all levels and public figures into a powerful juggernaut in defense of Israeli genocide in Gaza today and for war against Iran tomorrow.

Israel’s Military Threat to Iran

Israel, contrary to some leftist skeptics, had advanced operational plans to launch a massive aerial assault on Iran. On several occasions in the recent past, Israel has planned several aerial attacks on Iran, only to be thwarted by the Bush White House. The Jewish state has publicly announced that it will unilaterally strike Iran if it continues its legal, internationally recognized, right to enrich uranium. The most likely winner in this February’s national elections, Binyamin Netanyahu, has publicly stated that a military attack on Iran is at the top of his agenda – a message which has activated all the major Zionist-Jewish organizations in the US to redouble their efforts to secure US compliance, support and active collaboration. On January 7, 2009 The London Sunday Times, quoting several high level Israeli military sources, reported that, “Israel has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons. Two Israeli Air Force squadrons are training to blow up an Iranian facility using low-yield nuclear ‘bunker-buster’…Robert Gates, the new (sic) US Defense Secretary, has described military action against Iran as a ‘last resort’ leading Israeli officials to conclude that it will be left to them to strike. The preparations have been overseen by Major General Eliezar Shkedi, Commander of the Israeli Air Force.” (Times on Line, January 7, 2009). A subsequent article in the pro-Israel New York Times (January 11, 2009) by David Sanger, a prominent Zionist sympathizer, reported that “President Bush deflected a secret request by Israel last year (2008) for specialized bunker-busting bombs it wanted for an attack on Iran’s main nuclear complex…the Bush administration was particularly alarmed by an Israeli request to fly over Iraq to reach Iran’s major nuclear complex…The White House denied that request outright.” Sanger goes on to claim that the Israelis were furious at a detailed report by 16 US intelligence agencies (The National Intelligence Estimate) which demonstrated that Iran had halted development of a nuclear warhead in 2003 because it undermined Israeli efforts to secure US collaborations for a military attack on Iran. Sanger spends several paragraphs trying to bolster the Israeli unsubstantiated claims regarding Iran’s nuclear program framing the case for a unilateral Israeli attack…which he dates began “early 2008” but was stalled by opposition from the US military.

The forthcoming Israeli national elections (February 10, 2009) promise to accelerate Israeli plans for a massive military assault on Iran, as the polls indicate that the majority of Jewish voters will elect the ultra-militarist Zionist Binyamin Netanyahu, a favorite of the most influential Zionist-American organizations. In a very recent interview with the Wall Street Journal (January 24, 2009), Netanyahu speaks of Iran as the ‘terrorist mother base” and “that Israel cannot accept an Iranian terror base (Gaza) next to its major cities.” He then goes on to justify the Israeli murder of civilians because, he claims, the Palestinian resistance (“terrorists”) “hide behind civilians”. The Wall Street journalist, one Brett Stephens, in complete awe and wonder at the feet of the Israeli leader, writes approvingly of Netanyahu’s justifications for an attack on Iran, “the threat of a nuclear Iran poses a much greater danger to the world than the economic crises…this poses an existential threat to Israel directly…” Stephens goes on to sum up Netanyahu’s position toward Obama: “If diplomacy fails and the US does not resort to military force, Israel will decide to go it alone…”

Israeli leaders have temporarily backed off attacking Iran – launching, instead, the Gaza assault to weaken any possible resistance among Palestinians to an Israeli war against their Muslim ally in Teheran. The Israeli war plans toward Iran will be reinforced with the new Obama Presidency. With the rise to power of the ultra-Zionist Dennis Ross as Chief Adviser on to President Obama on Iran and Hillary (“We will obliterate Iran”) Clinton as Secretary of State, the question of a US backed Israeli preemptive attack on Iran looms closer to becoming a reality. As late as two months ago Ross signed on to a document, which provided a ‘roadmap’ to war with Iran. Zionist infestation of the entire policy-making apparatus of the Obama regime means that any official military or intelligence opposition to an Israeli attack on Iran will be blunted and their spokespersons marginalized.

The Obama Regime and Israel

The Obama regime is, if anything, even more penetrated from the top to bottom and from Executive offices to Congress with Zionists in positions to influence every strategic decision having any relation to Middle East policy.

The Jewish Telegraph Agency (January 20, 2009), the principle news agency of American Jewish-Zionist publications, provides a detailed list of the ‘pro-Israel’ Zionists in strategic Middle East positions in the Obama regime. The evidence of Zionist control is overwhelming and the consequences are deadly to any ‘balanced’ peace negotiations and extremely promising for Israel’s war ambitions in the regions:

1. Dennis Ross will be an influential adviser on Iran policy. Ross is an advocate of intensifying sanctions to undermine negotiations and force the military option.

2. Richard Holbrooke, appointed as Obama’s envoy to Afghanistan, is a prominent Zionist who served as UN envoy under Clinton. He has recently headed an ad hoc group called United Against a Nuclear Iran, which advocates military action against Iran if it does not submit to an Israeli-dictated cessation of its legal nuclear energy program.

3. George Mitchell, Obama’s envoy to the Palestine-Israel conflict, is one of the four co-chairs of the Zionist front group, Bipartisan Policy Center, which propose a step by step approach, from sanctions to embargo to naval blockade to a military strike on Iran.

4. Dan Shapiro and Puneet Talwar will collaborate on Middle East policy at the National Security Council. Shapiro, in consultation with Israel, was “key in shepherding the Syrian Accountability Act through the Senate (a measure that imposed tough sanctions on Syria). Shapiro drafted Obama’s cringing, belly crawling speech to the AIPAC conference in Washington on May 2008. Puneet Talwar will handle Persian Gulf issues – including Iran. He was a staffer of former Senator and current Vice President Joe Biden and was a close collaborator and conduit for AIPAC.

5. Eric Lynn is heading for a White House Middle East policy job. He started his career as an AIPAC intern in 1998 and continued as a staff person for Congressman Peter Deutsch, “one of the most committed pro-Israel figures in Congress.” Lynn spent a year in Israel, imbibing Zionist military culture and learning Hebrew.

6. James Steinberg and Jacob ‘Jack’ Lew have been named as Clinton’s deputies at the State Department. Steinberg has been in a ‘strong relation with the pro-Israel community’ and was a conduit for Israeli pressure on Arafat to capitulate to Israeli demands. Jack Law will direct economic stimulus overseas. He is an orthodox-Zionist, who will use American economic resources to back Israeli militarism and reward or punish its adversaries. A former head of a Citigroup investment unit, he holds between $50,000 to $100,000 in Israel State Bonds.

7. Samantha Power, once a critic of Israeli war crimes in 2002 for which the Zionist Power Configuration had her removed from the Obama campaign in March 2008. She was ‘rehabilitated’ and re-incorporated as a member of the Clinton transition team after an ‘abject apology’ to Israel.

8. Cass Sunstein, a lifetime Zion-Lib, is head of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs – a key propaganda arm of the Obama regime.

9. Rand Beers was lead national security adviser to Senator Kerry during his presidential campaign of 2004 and ‘built close relations’ with the pro-Israel political apparatus. As adviser to Homeland Security, he will ‘likely be a linchpin as Israel and the US forge a closer alliance’ (Jewish Telegraph Agency January 20, 2009).

10. Lee Feinstein and Mara Rudman are Zionist veterans from the Clinton Administrations. Feinstein is a lead adviser of Secretary of State Clinton and Rudman is Senior Foreign Policy Adviser of President Obama.

11. Susan Rice, UN Ambassador appointed by Obama, signed on to a Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) paper last summer calling for greater Israeli-US coordination for an embargo and military attack on Iran. WINEP is a well-known propaganda mill for Israel’s most fanatical, bellicose and unconditional supporters. In her Senate testimony, Rice denounced the United Nation General Assembly’s criticism of Israel’s Gaza bloodbath.

At the head of Obama’s foreign policy regime, Vice Presiden Biden (“I am a Zionist”), Secretary of State Clinton (“demolish Iran”) and Secretary of Defense Gates (a holdover from the Israeli-dominated Bush Administration) have put in place the most Zionist-infested Middle East policy regime in US history. This regime is neither by background, loyalties or commitments prepared to open serious negotiations with Iran, or to ‘broker’ an end of Israeli occupation of Palestine. On the contrary, their close ties with the Zionist Power Configuration and long-term commitment to Israeli militarism and expansionist policies ensure that the Obama regime will proceed toward collaboration with the Jewish State in a military confrontation with Iran. Everyone on Obama’s team supported the Israeli carnage in Gaza and endorsed Israel’s efforts to destroy the democratically elected Hamas government and prop up the discredited and corrupt quisling clique headed by Abbas.

The Obama Presidency has achieved what many observers thought impossible: It has placed more Zionist in more strategic power positions with a greater commitment to war with Iran than even the Bush Administration. Given Obama’s appointments and his own personal subservience to Israeli leaders it is difficult to imagine the 16 major intelligence services issuing a report refuting Israel’s fabrications about Iran’s nuclear program, as happened under Bush. Even more egregious, given the Zionist stranglehold on the White House, it is unlikely that Obama would block a proposed Israeli air assault on Iran as Bush is reputed to have done.

The Israeli war strategy toward Iran follows the ‘salami tactics’ of its Nazi forerunner: Attacks are designed for maximum destructiveness against civilian infrastructure, against countries and leaders opposed to any Israeli aggression toward Iran. Israel bombed and invaded Lebanon. It bombed Syria. Israel savaged Gaza. Its ‘lobby’ has extended and enforced global economic sanctions through the forceful intervention of a Zionist infested Treasury Department. Obama’s top economic adviser, the ultra-Zionist Lawrence Summers, promotes tighter sanctions, boycotts and embargoes against the designated enemies of Israel: policies pointing toward war.

‘Peace’ Negotiations Geared Toward War

The likelihood that the Obama regime will move the world closer to an offensive war with Iran is not based on idle speculation or selected quotes from his presidential campaign. No one can take serious President Obama or his Secretary of State Clinton’s advocacy of ‘negotiations with Iran’, when they are accompanied by conditions unacceptable to Iran’s sovereignty or national interests. The Obama regime openly threatens war if Iran does not accept unilateral disarmament with intrusive inspection of its strategic defense installations, allowing Israel and the US a unique opportunity for pinpointing vital targets for their first wave of attack.

What conclusively demonstrates Obama’s drive to war with Iran is his appointment of the most zealous Zionist militarist, Dennis Ross, to the key strategic position dealing with Iran.

Obama appointed Ross to the post of ‘Special Envoy to Iran’. He will act as Czar of Middle East policy. George Mitchell is his envoy on Israel-Palestine negotiations, a typical ‘good cop’ (Mitchell) strategy to counter the ‘bad cop’ (Ross). Ross, who is often called ‘Israel’s Lawyer’, is the ultimate Zionist, a crown prince of the US Zionist Jewish Lobby in all of its major undertakings regarding Iran. Ross is a founding leader of AIPAC, the principle and most powerful Israel First Lobby in Washington. He has been a lifelong and influential ZionCon ideologue, who successfully led the campaign in favor of the invasion of Iraq. He is among the most prolific and influential writers and propagandists at the Zionist-financed propaganda mill, WINEP (Washington Institute for Near East Policy), which has produced the most bellicose position papers pushing US military intervention in favor of Israel’s expansionist ambitions. During the Clinton years, Ross was appointed head of the US ‘mediation’ committee during the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations (1999-2000). In that position, he acted as ‘Israel’s lawyer’ according to a fellow US Zionist diplomat. He scuttled all possibility of any acceptable compromise by “following Israel’s lead.” He set up the conditions, which made Palestinian rejection inevitable while placing the blame on that embittered people. Ross has a profound influence on Obama’s politics to Israel.

Ross is a leader in a relatively new Zionist front group, known as the ‘Bipartisan Policy Center. The ‘Center’ recently published a report entitled, “Meeting the Challenge: US Policy Toward Iranian Nuclear Development.” This roadmap for war with Iran was produced by a task force, which included Ross and two other extremist Zioncons, the dual-Israel-US citizen Michal Makovsky and Michael Rubin. Ross’ endorsement of the ‘Report’ reflects his rejection of any possibility of a negotiated agreement with Iran, which would accept Iran’s legal right to a uranium enrichment program as recognized by international treaty.

A recently reported wrinkle in Dennis Ross’ appointment to the Obama Cabinet is his role as current Chairman of the Jerusalem-based Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, under the Jewish Agency, which is an official part of the Israeli Government. His current work for an Israeli government agency could place Ross at odds with the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), a Federal statute that requires individuals working on behalf of a foreign government to register as such - something Ross has never done.

The ‘Report’ advocates a preemptive Israeli aerial bombing and missile campaign against Iran should the US and Europe fail to strike first. This Dennis Ross-endorsed ‘Report’ proposes a total naval and air blockade and embargo of Iran as a prelude to a US attack on Iran’s vital infrastructure. This document called on Obama to ‘bring in troops and material to the region under the cover of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, thus maintaining a degree of strategic and tactical surprise.’ In other words, Obama’s forthcoming appointment of Ross to head his regime’s Middle East Policy Advisory Group places an unconditional advocate and promoter of genocidal war with Iran in a key strategic foreign policy position.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Dennis Ross will do everything in their power to promote and justify a US-Israeli joint attack on Iran. Ross and Clinton will begin with phony negotiations based on unacceptable ultimatums. This will be followed by acts of war in the form of Gaza style embargos designed to starve and impoverish the people of Iran, and conclude with a Gaza-style aerial blitzkrieg. Given the extraordinary number of Zionists appointed by Obama in every key level of his government, the possibility of any internal debate or dissent over the Ross roadmap for war in Israel’s interest is minimal. Obama has put together a policy-making elite so closely linked and loyal to the Israeli military that it precludes any type of meaningful negotiations with Iran.

Possible External Constraints on Zionist-Israeli-US War on Iran

The only effective deterrent to a Gaza style Israeli assault on Iran is Teheran’s capacity for military retaliation, especially accurate long-range missiles capable of reaching Israel’s principle military sites, infrastructure and related support systems. Given the Israeli leaders lack of any moral constraints and their immersion in a militarist ideology, in which brutal force and widespread violence are the primary means of projecting power and securing Israeli public support, a costly massive military counter-attack is probably the most effective deterrent to force its leaders to reconsider Israel’s military-driven foreign policy.

While Israeli militarists adopt a ‘defensive’ rhetoric, their strategy is to weaken Iran’s defense capability and make it more vulnerable to military threats and diplomatic pressure in a lead-up to a pre-emptive aerial assault. International inspections by United Nation agencies are only carried out of Iranian sites but not of US regional military instillations, including their nuclear-armed war ships and submarines, or of Israel’s nuclear weapons sites and nuclear weapon laboratories. The one-sided inspections provide a wealth of information on Iranian military capacity and defense locations and of advanced strategic research laboratories. UN inspections prior to the US invasion of Iraq identified key defense installations and Iraqi scientists, their places of work and homes, which were used in bombing missions and the subsequent assassination campaign against top Iraqi scientists. This kind of information was crucial in guiding Israel’s bombing and missile assaults and assassination of leaders and their families during its invasions of Lebanon and Gaza.

The Israeli dictated and US Zionist implemented economic boycott of Iran is clearly directed toward undermining both Iranian living standards and the performance of their economy, similar to what the Jewish state imposed on Gaza. It is part of the ‘softening up’ campaign prior to its all out attack.

To day however, despite a sustained effort by all top Zionist functionaries in the US government and the intense pressures of its lobbies on US pension fund managers, the embargo has not crippled the Iranian economy. Especially with the onset of the recession, the decline of world markets and the growing energy demands of China, there are numerous Western and Asian multinationals eager to trade with Iran and to ignore Israeli and US Zionist pressures.

Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has finally forced important cracks in the overseas Zionist monopoly over Jewish opinion. The leading Jewish communal organizations and their spiritual spokespeople continue to support each and every crime from the bombing of Red Cross ambulances and clinic to United Nations schools, food and medical supplies warehouses and refugee centers. This has finally provoked vigorous opposition among leading Jewish intellectuals, writers and other professionals.

New organizations and personalities have emerged within the Jewish community, which have forcibly repudiated Israel’s genocide. Some Jewish activists have taken bold direct actions, occupying Israeli consular offices in a few major cities and calling for a total boycott of Israeli goods and academic exchanges. Others have confronted Zionist apologists in public forums and press conferences. While the number and influence of Jewish critics of Zionist war crimes is small, their importance is found in giving legitimacy and encouraging millions of otherwise intimidated and silent Gentiles to ‘come out’. As a result, an unprecedented number of people in the West have voiced their horror and opposition to the Zionist military juggernaut and expressed their support for economic boycotts against Israel. While Jewish and Gentile mass opposition neither stopped or weakened Israel’s massacre of Gazan civilians, it has laid the political and organizational basis to launch a massive campaign against the US Zionist war plans against Iran.

Israel’s military successes have created an irrational triumphalist war fever among all of its leaders and their enthusiastic supporters in the million member Jewish-Zionist organizations in the US. This has led them to underestimate the catastrophic costs of a war with Iran. An Israeli-US sneak attack on Iran will unleash major military and political retaliatory action throughout the Middle East. This will certainly inflict major human, military, political and economic losses on many US military installations in the Gulf region. This is especially the case in Iraq and the adjoining client Gulf States, where US military forces are highly vulnerable. An Israeli assault might lead to the destabilization or overthrow of Arab client states. Moreover, Iran may retaliate by successfully launching accurate long-range missiles, which will target major Israeli military complexes and adjoining population centers.

Given the enormous worldwide disgust and horror at Israel’s war crimes in Gaza and the hatred evoked by the prospect of new aerial assaults on millions of Iranians, Tehran’s reprisals against Israel and the US are not likely to raise much condemnation. More likely, most people will feel a sense of righteous vindication, that finally the arrogant bully is finally getting paid back for its assaults on unarmed, imprisoned civilians in Gaza. Just as the British survivors of Nazi V-2 rocket attacks on English population centers cheered the firebombing of Dresden, vast sections of public opinion may greet an Iranian retaliatory strike on Israel as a valid deterrent for its serial atrocities against humanity.

One of the most effective threats to Israel’s genocidal war drive is the launching of investigations into Israeli war crimes, the establishment of tribunals to try Israeli military and political leaders for their crimes against humanity (Financial Times, January 16, 2009 page 5). Israeli leaders have advised their soldier-criminals they will be provided with legal protection. The leaders have expressed concern that they themselves may be subject to citizen arrests and tried by overseas courts. Several governments are filing war crimes charges before the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The problem with laying charges on Israeli war criminals is where to draw the line between military-political leaders who directed the war crimes and the field officers, who implemented the policies violating the Geneva Conventions. For example, identifying the officials who specifically barred medical and emergency workers for over four days from evacuating wounded and starving civilians, including small children, from the site of a horrific Israeli massacre of Gazan civilians. What about the great masses of Israeli Jewish citizens who were so elated by the bombing of whole civilian neighborhoods that some Israelis set up observation posts with picnic baskets to survey the ongoing carnage? The same Israelis “delighted in the images, splashed across the front pages, of smiling Israeli soldiers riding homes on tanks in victory post.” (Financial Times, January 26, 2009). Mass Israeli elation, political intoxication and embrace of the perpetrators of the killing of unarmed people may be repugnant to world opinion, but it is nor a sufficient offense to merit an international tribunal. However it is subject to the same moral repudiation, which many of us felt toward the German people who celebrated Hitler’s savage bombing of Soviet, Polish and Balkan cities. Even if the Zionist-controlled White House succeeds in using its veto on the United Nations Security Council to prevent a war crimes investigation of Israeli leaders, the presentation of charges and possible arrests in several European countries will force the Israeli leaders to reflect on their pariah status and might inhibit their push for a murderous war with Iran. We have included a list (see Appendix #2) of the names of Israeli military leaders, their rank and operational role and responsibility for war crimes in Gaza.

Israelis currently dismiss out of hand the opprobrium of world opinion as irrelevant to its ongoing military offensive. This causes the Jewish state to overlook the importance of world opinion in eroding strategic political support in the future. Many observers believe hundreds of millions of Arab citizens and multitudes of non-Arabs and non-Muslims are coming to believe that Israel and its overseas Zionist Fifth column will only understand the language of force since they routinely practice state terrorism to impose their interests on captive, impoverished people. As a result, many analysts argue that it is understandable that the weapons of choice for the victims of Israel will inevitably rely on sustained, organized and militarized people’s resistance. In these circumstances the current crop of anemic, impotent, collaborationist Arab leaders and regimes may be overthrown and a new combative and consequential leadership could emerge, one which consults and draws its mass support from the deepest feelings of national dignity and profound hatred of Zionist imposed humiliations.

Conclusions

Israel’s Gaza war is leading its leaders and its strategically placed overseas agents in the US political system to overreach and to pursue a new war with Iran, as part of a regional strategy to secure imperial power. The Obama Administration and the newly elected Israeli prime minister share more than overlapping policy-makers and long-term commitments to military-driven empire building. They have made it clear that they will proceed in setting in motion a series of diplomatic and economic moves destined to prepare the stage for launching a genocidal war against Iran. This will be in line with Obama’s rhetoric of recreating a Jewish-Afro-American alliance, one based on Israeli interests and American lives! The only deterrent to new wars of extermination is mass action, which increases the political, economic and military costs for Israeli aggression. Only when Israeli casualties mount, when Zionist exploiters and bankers suffer losses, when its academics and tourist sites are boycotted, then and only then will the Israelis and their US acolytes begin to rethink their blind adherence to militarist policies. It is only then that they will rethink their irrational Judeo-centric vision of a world made by and for the one Chosen People living in the Only Moral State in the world.

Unfortunately it may take some military shocks to dispel these tribal fantasies. History teaches us that there is nothing like a bloody defeat to end the Superman Complex.

Appendix #1

This a partial and growing list of potential war criminals compiled by a group of Israeli activists, despite Israeli government censorship, and as a challenge to the Israeli Attorney General Menachem Mazuz and his military counterpart, Judge Advocate General Brigadier General Avihai Mandelblit:

51 Member Organizations of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations:

1. Ameinu

2. American Friends of Likud

3. American Gathering/Federation of Jewish Holocaust Survivors

4. American-Israel Friendship League

5. American Israel Public Affairs Committee

6. American Jewish Committee

7. American Jewish Congress

8. American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee

9. American Sephardi Federation

10. American Zionist Movement

11. Americans for Peace Now

12. AMIT

13. Anti-Defamation League

14. Association of Reform Zionist of America

15. B’nai B’rith International

16. Bnai Zion

17. Central Committee of American Rabbis

18. Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America

19. Development Corporation for Israel/State of Israel Bonds

20. Emunah of America

21. Friends of Israel Defense Forces

22. Hadassah, Women’s Zionist Organization of America

23. Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society

24. Hillel: The Foundation of Jewish Campus Life

25. Jewish Community Centers Association

26. Jewish Council for Public Affairs

27. Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs

28. Jewish Labor Committee

29. Jewish National Fund

30. Jewish Reconstructionist Federation

31. Jewish War Veterans of the USA

32. Jewish Women International

33. MERCAZ USA, Zionist Organization of the Conservative Movement

34. NA’AMAT USA

35. NCSJ: Advocates on behalf of Jews in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic States and Eurasia

36. National Council of Jewish Women

37. National Council of Young Israel

38. ORT America

39. Rabbinical Assembly

40. Rabbinical Council of America

41. Religious Zionist of America

42. Union for Reform Judaism

43. Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America

44. United Jewish Communities

45. United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism

46. WIZO

47. Women’s League for Conservative Judaism

48. Women of Reform Judaism

49. Workmen’s Circle

50. World Zionist Executive, US

51. Zionist Organization of America

Appendix #2   List of Israeli Officials involved in War Crimes during the Gaza Invasion.  

1. Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minster

2. Ehud Barak, Israeli War Minister

3. Tzipi Livni, Foreign Minister of Israel

4. Yuval Diskin, Shin Bet security service chief

5. Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenazi, IOF Chief of Staff

6. Colonel Hartzi Halevi, Paratroops Brigade Commander

7. Commander of the 401st Brigade Colonel Yigal Slovik

8. Brig Gen Jonathan Locker, head of Israeli air forces

9. Maj. Gen. Ido Nehushtan, Israeli air forces

10. Colonel Ron Ashrov, Commander of the Northern Gaza

11. Brigadier-General Eyal Eisenberg - Commander of all the IOF

12. Colonel Yigal Slovik, commander of 401st Armored Corps Brigade convoy

13. Sho'alay Marom, Brigadier (res.)

14. Lt. Col. Yoav Mordechai, Golani infantry brigade's 13th Battalion in Gaza

15. Lt. Col. Oren Cohen, Battalion 13 in the Golani Brigade

16. Lt. Col. Avi Blot 101st Battalion Paratrooper Brigade

17. Lieutenant-Colonel Yehuda Cohen, Givati infantry Brigade's Rotem Regiment

18. Lieutenant-Colonel Ronen Dagmi, deputy commander of the 401st Armored Brigade

19. Col. Avi Peled, commander brigade in Battalion 51

20. Brig.-Gen.( res.) Zvika Fogel former deputy OC Southern Command

21. Brigadier-General Yuval Halamish, Chief IOF Intelligence Officer

22. Paratrooper Brigade commander, Hartzi Halevi

23. Col. Hertzi Halevy, brigade commander

  

24. Col. Tomer Tsiter, participated in the massacre in Gaza during "Operation Cast Lead", and previously he participated in the massacre "Operation Defensive Shield" in the Jeninrefugee camp in 2002.

25. Gur Rosenblatt, infantry reserve officer

26. Guy Ohaion, infantry reserve officer

27. Lt. Col. Erez

28. Maj. Nimrod Aloni

29. Lieutenant Colonel (res.) Shlomo Saban

30. Capt. Ron Vardi ,

31. Col. Pnina Sharvit-Baruch, head of the International Law Department, Military Advocate General's Office,

32. Major-General Yoav Galant, southern command chief

33. Richard Awizrat, Senior Warrant Officer,

34. Major General Amos Yadlin, Military Intelligence chief


Note: James Petras’ latest book, Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of US Power (2008, Clarity Press, Inc.)