Inside one Southern university, Christian missionaries are being trained to go undercover in the Muslim world and win converts for Jesus. Their stated goal: to wipe out Islam.
By Barry Yeoman
May/June 2002 Issue
Courtesy Of Mother Jones
At 8 o'clock on a warm Monday morning in January, 20 students file into Rick Love's classroom at Columbia International University in South Carolina. Eyes glassy from writing papers all weekend, they clutch Styrofoam cups of Folgers as they settle into their seats. In front, an overhead projector hums; it is hooked up to the instructor's laptop, ready for a morning full of PowerPoint presentations.
Outside, CIU's piney campus is quiet. Most of the student body has not yet returned from Christmas break. But these students, all evangelical Christians, have arrived two weeks early for an intensive course on how to win converts in Islamic countries. They're learning from the master: Love is the international director of Frontiers, the largest Christian group in the world that focuses exclusively on proselytizing to Muslims. With 800 missionaries in 50 countries, Frontiers' reach extends from the South Pacific to North Africa, with every major Islamic region in between.
Love is 49, a black-leather-jacket-wearing whirlwind of a man with a salt-and-pepper beard and a quick sense of humor. He's a chronic multitasker, routinely praying aloud while drinking coffee and simultaneously reviewing his lecture notes. Little known outside the missionary world, he's an icon within it-an evangelistic entrepreneur who wins admirers with what he calls his "middle linebacker" personality. His seminars are usually closed to the media and the public.
This morning's lesson is about going undercover. Many of Love's students are missionaries themselves, temporarily home from assignments in places ranging from Kazakhstan to Kenya. They know firsthand that evangelism is illegal in many Islamic nations, and they face expulsion if their true intentions become known. Love's lesson for today is how to mask one's identity while secretly working to convert Muslims. Evangelists, he explains, should always have a ready, nonreligious explanation for their presence in hostile areas.
Love fixes his gaze on a studious, spiky-haired missionary dressed in Patagonia clothing. "If people ask you, 'Why are you here?'" he asks, "what do you say?" The young man, on leave from Southeast Asia, squirms in his chair. His jaw opens but nothing comes out. "Bingo!" Love says with a smile. "You bite your fingernails, and people go, 'Of course he's not hiding anything.'" Love notes that before he went to western Indonesia to proselytize among Sundanese Muslims, he went back to school and earned his credentials to become an English instructor. That way, he says, he had an excuse to be in the country. "I could look someone in the eye and say, 'I am an English teacher,'" he explains. "'I have a degree and I'm here to teach.'"
That, he says, is the model for winning converts in the Islamic world: Find another pretext to be in the country. Build friendships with the locals. Once you've developed trust, then it's time to try to gain new believers. But don't reveal your true purpose too early. "How did Jesus explain why he was there?" Love asks the class. "Indirectly," volunteers a veteran missionary. "He'd say, 'Why do you think I'm here?'"
"Did Jesus ever lie?" In unison, the class says, "No."
"But did Jesus raise his hand and say, 'I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?'" Again, 20 voices call out, "No!"
There are lots of ways to camouflage yourself, Love tells the students. In Indonesia, evangelists ran a quilt-making business to provide cover for Western missionaries, allowing them to employ-and proselytize-scores of Muslims.
The students nod thoughtfully; they agree that Muslims must be reached by whatever means possible. Their zeal is helping to fuel the biggest evangelical foray into the Muslim world since missionary pioneer Samuel Zwemer declared Islam a "dying religion" in 1916 and predicted that "when the crescent wanes, the Cross will prove dominant." Over the past decade, evangelical leaders say, the number of missionaries trying to convert Muslims has jumped fourfold, from several hundred in the early 1990s to more than 3,000 today. Many are sent by the Southern Baptist Convention, with the rest coming from a network of church-supported groups with names like Christar and Arab World Ministries.
Missionaries work in remote villages in Afghanistan and Pakistan; former Soviet republics like Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan; Middle Eastern hot spots like Iraq, Syria, and Yemen; and African countries like Somalia and Algeria.
"We see Islam as the final frontier," says David Cashin, a professor of Intercultural Studies at CIU who used to don Muslim clothing and pursue converts in the tea shops of Kaliakoir, Bangladesh. Like many of his fellow evangelicals, Cashin regards the Islamic world as a hinterland that must be penetrated before the Messiah can return. "History is coming to an end," he says. "If you believe Christ is coming back, why has he delayed 2,000 years? We haven't finished the task he set out to do." That task, he says, is to win converts among all the world's ethnic groups.
The growing movement to hunt souls in Muslim lands-by missionaries who often pass as aid workers, teachers, or business owners-has raised hackles outside the evangelical world. Missionaries themselves acknowledge that their work endangers the lives of converts, and critics charge that it disrupts the delivery of humanitarian aid and fuels resentment of Westerners during one of the most dangerous moments in recent history. But to those at the heart of the movement, including Rick Love's students, any damage done by their work is outweighed by the importance of their mission: to wipe out Islam. "I believe it's a false religion, and I'd like to see it be gone," says Kim McHugh, a 36-year-old CIU student who is training to convert Iranian refugees in Turkey. Her husband Brent agrees. "If they don't have a chance to experience Jesus," he says, "they're going to hell."
For most Americans, the first glimpse into Muslim-world evangelism came last November, when the Taliban created heroes out of two fresh-faced missionaries named Dayna Curry and Heather Mercer. Incarcerated for three months on charges of spreading Christianity, the women made headlines after U.S. Special Forces helicopters whisked them away from a prison outside Ghazni, Afghanistan. "They had a calling to serve the poorest of the poor," President Bush said at a White House ceremony shortly after the Hollywood-style rescue. "Their faith was a source of hope that kept them from being discouraged." But Curry and Mercer were doing more than relief work: Once home, they admitted to violating Afghan law by showing "part of a Jesus film" and giving a Christian storybook to a Muslim family. Another missionary from their organization, John Weaver, also garnered wide-spread media attention for his refusal to leave Afghanistan despite the growing anti-American tensions.
Like many missionaries in Islamic countries, Weaver trained at CIU, one of three schools in the United States with a degree program specifically devoted to converting Muslims. A campus of boxy brick buildings located at the end of a wooded boulevard in Columbia, South Carolina, CIU has the look of a second-tier state college. But rather than publicizing frat parties and rock concerts, the colorful posters on its walls and bulletin boards announce prayer services and opportunities for overseas missions. In the student center, next to a wide-screen TV, a book provides Christian reviews of Hollywood movies. (Harry Potter? Amistad? Billy Elliot? All rated "very offensive.") Faculty and some 1,000 students eat together in the cafeteria, praying over smothered chicken and talking spiritedly about lessons from the New Testament.
During this two-week "winterim" session, it's hard to find anyone of traditional college age. Many of the students are from the front lines of missionary work, men and women who have spent years in Muslim countries. Christian Dedrick is squeezing in some additional schooling before returning to the field next year. A lanky 33-year-old with thick blond sideburns, a pageboy haircut, and oval, horn-rimmed glasses, he has an easygoing style and an enthusiasm for challenging conversation. Pass him on the street, and the first impression would be tweedy intellectual.
For two years, Dedrick worked in a small port city in Kazakhstan, teaching English and living with a local family, sleeping on a cotton bedroll in a sparsely furnished room he shared with his host's two sons. Although the family were devout Muslims-the father considered it a sin to leave the faith-Dedrick spent much of his time trying to persuade them to convert to Christianity. He read them the Bible and showed them a Kazakh translation of the "Jesus film," a Campus Crusade for Christ movie that graphically depicts the crucifixion of a blue-eyed Jesus. "We wrestled over that a few times," he remembers. "I'd say, 'I have to tell you what changed my life. You don't have to accept it, but I have to tell it.'" While the family didn't convert, neither did it evict the American, whose $50 in rent represented a sizable chunk of the monthly household income.
Like the other missionaries who have come to CIU, Dedrick is constantly reevaluating his evangelical technique. He rejects his old attitude as "pretty paternalistic," saying he'll ask more questions before making judgments about what he sees when he returns to Central Asia next year. But he still believes Islam is the work of the devil. "People cheer at baseball games," Dedrick says. "I cheer at worship services. And when I go to a culture 10,000 miles away and don't see that righteousness, that holiness, reflected in that culture, I get sad. Satan has deceived them away from a relationship with their creator God."
For all their work, Dedrick and his fellow missionaries win few new believers. That doesn't seem to faze them. "My goal is not to convert a Muslim," says Al Dobra, a 45-year-old with a gravelly voice and military haircut who befriends Muslim businessmen in Nairobi, Kenya, and then tries to convince them of Islam's fallacies. "My goal is to plant a tiny seed that will fester and gnaw and grow, so that eventually they will begin to question their religion. My prayer is that they will become restless sleepers and troubled by what they hear. That's a horrible thing to wish on someone."
That absolute certainty that Christianity is the only truth-and that other religions are satanically inspired-runs throughout the two weeks of Rick Love's course. One morning Tom Seckler, a dark-haired missionary with a bland face and thick black mustache, tacks the Cambodian flag to the classroom bulletin board and lays a map of the country on the overhead projector. Seckler's mission agency, World Team, has targeted the Western Cham, an impoverished Muslim minority group in Cambodia that was massacred by the thousands by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. Despite World Team's efforts, Seckler estimates there are only about 25 Christian converts, some of whom meet Tuesday nights in Phnom Penh. "Please pray for the Cham people," he asks his classmates. "There's a degree of self-righteousness among the Cham. They think they're okay. We don't see a big spiritual hunger among them."
The class begins to worship, eyes closed, each person offering a spontaneous request. "Lord, we come into your presence and we ask that you would give us a fresh sense of your burden and your love for Muslim people, especially the Cham," says Love. He falls silent, and then Brent McHugh takes over: "I pray, Lord, that the Cham people do hunger, and realize what they're missing in Christ."
The anti-Islam prayers reflect CIU's official attitude toward what it considers a competitor religion. Prominent on the university's Web site is an essay posted shortly after September 11. "To claim that 'Islam' means 'peace' is just one more attempt to mislead the public," it reads. "Muslim leaders have spoken of their goal to spread Islam in the West until Islam becomes a dominant, global power." The essay was written by Warren Larson, who directs the university's Muslim Studies program and served as a mentor to John Weaver, the Afghanistan missionary. A former missionary himself, Larson fears that Christianity might be losing the race for world domination. "Islam is biologically taking over the world," he says. "They're having babies faster than we are."
Before coming to CIU, Larson worked for 23 years in Dera Ghazi Khan, Pakistan, trying to convert Muslims to Christianity. He and his wife hosted prayer meetings, Bible studies, and informal gatherings where Muslims came for tea and Coke. Many of their neighbors showed up-some to learn about their religion, but most for more practical reasons. "People had the idea that foreigners have money," Larson says. "A lot of them would come because you might be able to help them get to America. Or they would come asking for help: 'My father, he's sick. Can you write a letter of introduction to the hospital?' Some of them would be willing to talk about Christianity. Most would not."
Larson was indeed rich by local standards. Not only did he hire Muslims for domestic help, but he also owned household luxuries like a refrigerator. And while the Larsons often engaged in community service-visiting widows, taking people to the doctor-they were still seen by some neighbors as the embodiment of the West. One morning, 200 armed Muslims stormed Larson's home, throwing bricks at his ministry's two Land Rovers, kicking down his door, and setting fire to religious literature. After that, Larson says, "whenever we would hear something that sounded like a riot, it would scare us."
The attack on Larson's home came in the midst of fierce anti-U.S. sentiment in the Muslim world, which culminated in the takeover of the American embassy in Iran in 1979. Now, in the wake of September 11, some critics say evangelists are again fueling distrust and resentment toward Westerners. Last October, Islamic militants opened fire on a church built by missionaries in Pakistan, killing 16 Christians, and Muslim rebels threatened to execute two missionaries kidnapped in the Philippines.
"The issue is the disproportional power relationship," says Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that works to promote a positive image of Muslims. "They use their resources to coerce people to do what they want them to do." Hooper remembers reviewing a proposal by a Christian agency to send veterinarians to help impoverished Fulani cattle herders in West Africa. But the plan had a caveat: "You don't get the veterinarian unless you take the missionary," he says. "When people are in desperate circumstances, they'll do things they otherwise wouldn't do."
Robert Macpherson, security director for the aid group care, remembers serving as a U.S. Marine in Somalia during the early 1990s, when some 200 organizations were working to stave off famine in the war-ravaged country. "It was dangerous, dangerous, dangerous," he recalls. Evangelicals only made matters worse, he says, by showing up at food-distribution sites and handing out Christian literature, giving the impression that food aid was contingent on conversion to Christianity. "The next thing we know, they got themselves in the middle of a riot," Macpherson recalls. Angered by the missionaries, Somalis climbed over one another to steal food and set trucks on fire. "They were desperate," he says. "They were dying. This was an emergency."
At CIU, missionaries-in-training learn to try to avoid such hostility by blending into the cultures they visit. In class one morning, Rick Love opens his Bible to the book of Acts, in which the apostle Paul takes on a disciple named Timothy. Before the two men go out to proselytize among the Jews, Paul takes Timothy to have his foreskin cut. "He says, 'Yo, Tim, you wanna join my team? You gotta get circumcised,'" Love tells his students. "How's that for high standards? Wow!"
Love is hardly suggesting that his male students undergo the knife. He's making a bigger point: To win converts in a foreign culture, you must take on the behaviors of that culture, even adopting the rituals of another religion. The practice is called "contextualization," and it's one of the hottest topics among missionaries. The idea is to get away from the old-fashioned practice of importing American-style Christianity, complete with wooden pews and Western hymns. Instead, missionaries today are more likely to take on Muslim names, dress in veils and other local clothing, prostrate themselves during prayer, and even fast during Ramadan. "We must become Muslims to reach Muslims," says Cashin, the CIU professor.
If a first-century evangelist can undergo circumcision to win converts, how far can a 21st-century missionary go? At lunch, Christian Dedrick takes a spoonful of his wife's homemade broccoli soup and ponders the question aloud. "Should we call ourselves Muslims?" he asks. "The old meaning of the word is 'one who submits.' In Jordan, the missionaries had 'Jesus mosques.' They called themselves 'Muslims of the Messiah.' We wrestled with that. We wanted to call God 'Allah' so we could be on that relational level with Muslims."
Dedrick drew the line at appearing too Muslim-but others haven't. "One team in the Middle East has a policy of not allowing missionaries to identify themselves as Christians," reports the journal Evangelical Missions Quarterly. Another team "called themselves Jesus-ists" and presented themselves as "one of many Sufi or dervish mystical orders." The journal Missiology says that missionaries urge Palestinian students to adopt Christian beliefs-but to still call themselves Muslim.
When pressed, evangelicals acknowledge that they often blur the distinctions between the two religions and fail to disclose their intentions. "The line between guile and withholding information is very, very thin," says one missionary at CIU who asked not to be identified for security reasons. He admits that he rarely tells his Muslim neighbors why he's living among them-demurely calling himself a "language student"-and that he's been forced to terminate friendships with those who ask too many questions. "To have integrity in that is a challenge," he says.
Many Islamic and Christian leaders alike believe that evangelical groups often fail the integrity challenge. "Once you have this kind of sneaky way, the respect for the holy is gone," says Sayyid Syeed, secretary general of the Islamic Society of North America. Sacred rituals, such as prostration and the Ramadan fast, are used to lure people away from their own religion. "The missionary," says Syeed, "is seen as someone who is stabbing you in the back."
For Donna Derr, the honesty issue is not an abstract one. She's the associate director of international emergency response for Church World Service, which provides aid in more than 80 countries while barring outright proselytizing. From her perspective, Christian evangelizing-particularly by missionaries who masquerade as humanitarian workers-makes it harder for legitimate aid organizations to relieve poverty, malnutrition, and disease. "Groups that have the need to proselytize color us all with the same brush," says Derr. As a result, she says, it's harder to win the trust of those communities her group is trying to serve. She recalls one Southeast Asian nation where rural families suffer from debilitating diseases. "It was difficult to get the local governments to allow us to come in," Derr says, "because they had somebody in the past who tried to start a Christian church. They'd say, 'Oh, your name is Church World Service. You're going to do the same thing.'" In other cases, she adds, evangelicals provoked so much resentment "that the other groups doing aid had to pull out, simply because it was too dangerous."
Derr and others note that there is another model for missionary work, one followed by many mainline Christians: serving those in need without actively recruiting new believers. For example, Catholic Relief Services delivers food and blankets to Afghanistan, builds drinking-water systems in Morocco, and promotes small-business development among Egyptian women-all without trying to recruit Muslims to Catholicism. "We reflect our beliefs in our actions, in our relations, in our respect for people," says Ken Hackett, the agency's director. "We don't ask even our own staff to convert. If you're a good Muslim, you're a good Muslim."
Rick Love admits that some evangelical groups "are unwise in how they share their faith." But even if it takes some stretching of the truth, he adds, it would be wrong to ignore the call to share the Word. "That is what the Bible teaches," he says, "so I could never be part of an organization that focuses on deed only." As Love sees it, the lack of religious freedom in many Islamic countries forces missionaries to conceal their intentions. "I want the freedom to share my faith with you and not be persecuted," he says, "and I want you to have the same with me. It should be a matter of persuasion, and not political power."
On the last day of the "winterim" session, things turn decidedly somber in Love's classroom. It's the lesson in which the instructor reminds his students that their work can have dire-even deadly-consequences for the people they try to convert. He refers to Curry and Mercer, the two Americans who were airlifted from a Taliban prison two months earlier. "What happened with Dayna and Heather is not typical," he says. "We do have people imprisoned, but usually you're asked to leave. We get a ticket out of the country-but the new believers, what do they face? Loss of job, children taken away, imprisonment, torture, even martyrdom."
Of all the criticisms launched at Christian evangelists, this is the one that's least disputed: Missionary work often puts local believers in serious danger. "It is common for mission agencies to be expelled from countries awash with persecution," reports an internal study by the Southern Baptist Convention based on 300 interviews in 45 countries. "Virtually overnight, local believers are left destitute and exposed." The study cites Indonesia, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, and Pakistan as particularly repressive. In one East African community, it reports, converts were "systematically hunted down and martyred by adherents to Islam. Other believers are displaced; they live in refugee camps; they reside in adjacent countries, or in the West." The common thread among the victims? "All those martyred had a relationship to expatriate Christians that contributed to their deaths." In another country unnamed in the report, "significant numbers of Muslim-background believers were arrested and tortured due to their relationship to the expatriate missionary."
Tahir Lavi converted to Christianity during secret midnight Bible-study sessions at a madrassah in Kashmir where he was studying the Koran. His parents disowned him, and he was forced to flee after a group of men threatened to kill him. For the past 13 years, he has lived in exile in a small house at the end of a narrow lane in a north Delhi slum. But despite the risks, he continues to preach to other Muslims, exhorting them in the words of Jesus: "Take up your cross and follow me."
Indeed, evangelical leaders encourage missionaries to continue proselytizing, even though converts might be tortured or killed. "Missionaries need maturity and spiritual toughness so that when the fruits of their witness are required to walk through the fire, the missionary does not automatically attempt to rescue them," the Southern Baptist study urges. "Persecution is Biblically and historically normative for the emerging church; it cannot be avoided or eliminated.... To avoid persecution is to hamper the growth of the kingdom of God."
In the end, say evangelicals, the earthly suffering of Christians pales before the eternal hell to which Muslims are sentenced. "It's hard for me to say, 'I have a passport out of here if things get out of hand, but you have to stay here and take it,'" says Raymond Weiss, a former missionary in Bahrain. "But that's what Jesus says: Sometimes it will be fathers and mothers against each other for his sake. If Jesus is cosmically, ultimately true, then whatever cost in this world is nothing."
With that shared assumption, Rick Love's students are returning to the field, to share the New Testament in the places they're least wanted. The class at CIU has inspired them to renew their efforts to save Muslims from what they consider a false religion. "Some Christians have said to us, 'They have their own faith; why do you need to reach them?'" says Brent McHugh, the evangelist bound for Turkey. "But if you lean your ladder against the wrong wall and you spend your life climbing up that ladder, when you get to the top, you'll find there's nothing there."
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
We Executed Japanes For WaterBoarding POW's
Yes, We Did Execute Japanese Soldiers For Waterboarding American POWs
By Jonathan Stein
Mon April 27, 2009 9:04 AM PST
Courtesy Of Mother Jones
By Jonathan Stein
Mon April 27, 2009 9:04 AM PST
Courtesy Of Mother Jones
It stuns me that we are still having a debate, as a country, over whether or not what the Bush Administration did to detainees in the war on terror was actually torture. I would hope that this helps settle things. The fact-checking outfit called PolitiFact confirms that a McCain statement from 2007, dredged up recently by Paul Begala, is accurate:
"I forgot to mention last night that following World War II war crime trials were convened. The Japanese were tried and convicted and hung for war crimes committed against American POWs. Among those charges for which they were convicted was waterboarding," [McCain] told reporters at a campaign event.
"If the United States is in another conflict ... and we have allowed that kind of torture to be inflicted upon people we hold captive, then there is nothing to prevent that enemy from also torturing American prisoners."
McCain is referencing the Tokyo Trials, officially known as the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. After World War II, an international coalition convened to prosecute Japanese soldiers charged with torture. At the top of the list of techniques was water-based interrogation, known variously then as "water cure," "water torture" and "waterboarding," according to the charging documents. It simulates drowning.
R. John Pritchard, a historian and lawyer who is a top scholar on the trials, said the Japanese felt the ends justified the means. "The rapid and effective collection of intelligence then, as now, was seen as vital to a successful struggle, and in addition, those who were engaged in torture often felt that whatever pain and anguish was suffered by the victims of torture was nothing less than the just deserts of the victims or people close to them," he said.
In a recent journal essay, Judge Evan Wallach, a member of the U.S. Court of International Trade and an adjunct professor in the law of war, writes that the testimony from American soldiers about this form of torture was gruesome and convincing. A number of the Japanese soldiers convicted by American judges were hanged, while others received lengthy prison sentences or time in labor camps.
You can argue that the techniques used by Americans on detainees were necessary and, because of the OLC memos, legal. I would disagree with you, but you could plausibly make that argument. What you cannot do any longer is pretend that those techniques do not meet the definition of torture that America has used in the past.
Update: The state of American law on torture.
The Danger Of An Israeli Strike On Iran
The US Needs To Make It Clear It Will Not Tolerate A First strike.
By Walt Rodgers
From the April 24, 2009 Edition
Courtesy Of The Christian Science Monitor
Oakton, Va. - The new Israeli prime minister recently appeared to give President Obama a blunt ultimatum: Stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons – or we will.
Benjamin Netanyahu's challenge (intimated in an interview he gave to The Atlantic magazine) smacks of unrealistic bravado and, worse, it appears to be a crude attempt to bully an American president into bombing Iran's nuclear installations.
The world should hope it's a hollow threat.
The consequences of a unilateral Israeli strike would be enormous if not disastrous. Mr. Obama cannot allow himself to be intimidated by Mr. Netanyahu, nor can he wink if the Israeli air force bombs Iran's nuclear facilities.
Israel has acted unilaterally to squash a perceived nuclear threat before. In 1981, Prime Minister Menachem Begin sent fighter jets to knock out Iraq's "Osirak" nuclear reactor. Israel claimed that Saddam Hussein was on the verge of obtaining nuclear weapons and that it had no choice but to bomb it out of existence. In 2007, Israel bombed a facility in Syria it claimed was a nuclear reactor.
Any strike on Iranian reactors would be a different matter entirely. Osirak was a lone, poorly guarded, and inoperative nuclear plant that had a year earlier been damaged by an Iranian airstrike. The Iranians have taken considerable precautions to build their facilities on something more solid than desert sand. At present there is but one facility, Bushehr I, but Tehran is gearing up to build an entire network of nuclear plants. Israel would be bombing until the Shah comes home to merely delay what is an unstoppable Iranian nuclear program.
The fallout from Israel's strike on Osirak was serious but limited. But a preemptive strike on Iranian soil would border on catastrophic. Consider:
•Iran has signaled that if attacked, it would close the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of the world's oil flows. This would plunge the world into economic calamity.
•Hezbollah, Iran's proxy army in Lebanon, is believed to have more than 42,000 missiles, according to Defense Minister Ehud Barak – enough to make Israeli cities such as Haifa and Tel Aviv burn like London did during the Nazis' Blitz. Hezbollah is believed to have terror cells in Europe and North America. It has struck in South America, and many terrorism experts believe it is potentially even more dangerous than Al Qaeda. Iran, using this proxy force, would probably unleash it on the world if Netanyahu were to bomb the Bushehr I reactor.
•It would trigger a tsunami of anti-Semitism that would inevitably translate into violence against Jews worldwide.
•Such a strike would be perceived as further evidence of a US-Israeli global war on Islam. Islamist fighters from Marrakesh, Marseille, London, Cairo, Karachi, and Tehran would enlist overnight by the thousands and march to Iraq and Afghanistan to wage jihad against the American troops there.
Netanyahu is no fool. He is keenly aware of these global implications. He knows that a unilateral Israeli strike would not only accelerate Iran's nuclear ambitions but also legitimize them. He also knows that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's threat to wipe Israel off the map is bombast. It is the country's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, who commands the armed forces and national security apparatus, not the populist president.
Domestic Israeli politics may have been a factor motivating Netanyahu's warnings. Talking tough soothes anxieties at home. Equally likely, Netanyahu was prodding the new Obama government. And in that sense he may feel the recent US-led invitation to Tehran to meet with Washington and five other major powers to discuss the disputed nuclear program was a result of his threat. Iran has agreed to "constructive dialogue," although it may be delusional for the Israeli prime minister – or any other Western leader – to believe that political or economic pressure can sway Iran's ruling clerics.
What's worrying is that Netanyahu had a record of bad judgment in his previous term as prime minister from 1996 to 1999. Not without cause did The Economist run a cover photo of "Bibi" in October 1997 under the headline "Israel's Serial Bungler." It described his governance of the Jewish state as a "calamity" for the peace process.
Iran has no need to nuke Israel. Its ruling clerics, whom Netanyahu described as a "messianic apocalyptic cult," believe time, history, and Allah are on their side. They believe the Jewish state, starting across the border in Lebanon, can be nibbled to death over the next century just as the Arabs did to the Crusader kingdoms 600 years ago.
It should surprise no one that Iran's mullahs want nuclear weapons. They live in a nuclear neighborhood: Pakistan, India, Russia, China, and Israel, which is estimated to have 200 nuclear bombs ready to use if it were attacked. The ayatollahs also remember Mr. Hussein's 1991 folly of going to war with the US without nuclear weapons.
Obama needs to do Netanyahu a favor and tell the Israelis: "No first strike." Keep the F-15s and F-16s at home. A messianic vision such as Mr. Ahmadinejad's is rife in much of the Islamic world. Bellicose rhetoric most often serves as an excuse for inaction. It does not denote suicidal inclinations on the part of Iran's more pragmatic leaders.
Walter Rodgers, a former senior international correspondent for CNN, writes a biweekly column for the Monitor's weekly print edition.
By Walt Rodgers
From the April 24, 2009 Edition
Courtesy Of The Christian Science Monitor
Oakton, Va. - The new Israeli prime minister recently appeared to give President Obama a blunt ultimatum: Stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons – or we will.
Benjamin Netanyahu's challenge (intimated in an interview he gave to The Atlantic magazine) smacks of unrealistic bravado and, worse, it appears to be a crude attempt to bully an American president into bombing Iran's nuclear installations.
The world should hope it's a hollow threat.
The consequences of a unilateral Israeli strike would be enormous if not disastrous. Mr. Obama cannot allow himself to be intimidated by Mr. Netanyahu, nor can he wink if the Israeli air force bombs Iran's nuclear facilities.
Israel has acted unilaterally to squash a perceived nuclear threat before. In 1981, Prime Minister Menachem Begin sent fighter jets to knock out Iraq's "Osirak" nuclear reactor. Israel claimed that Saddam Hussein was on the verge of obtaining nuclear weapons and that it had no choice but to bomb it out of existence. In 2007, Israel bombed a facility in Syria it claimed was a nuclear reactor.
Any strike on Iranian reactors would be a different matter entirely. Osirak was a lone, poorly guarded, and inoperative nuclear plant that had a year earlier been damaged by an Iranian airstrike. The Iranians have taken considerable precautions to build their facilities on something more solid than desert sand. At present there is but one facility, Bushehr I, but Tehran is gearing up to build an entire network of nuclear plants. Israel would be bombing until the Shah comes home to merely delay what is an unstoppable Iranian nuclear program.
The fallout from Israel's strike on Osirak was serious but limited. But a preemptive strike on Iranian soil would border on catastrophic. Consider:
•Iran has signaled that if attacked, it would close the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of the world's oil flows. This would plunge the world into economic calamity.
•Hezbollah, Iran's proxy army in Lebanon, is believed to have more than 42,000 missiles, according to Defense Minister Ehud Barak – enough to make Israeli cities such as Haifa and Tel Aviv burn like London did during the Nazis' Blitz. Hezbollah is believed to have terror cells in Europe and North America. It has struck in South America, and many terrorism experts believe it is potentially even more dangerous than Al Qaeda. Iran, using this proxy force, would probably unleash it on the world if Netanyahu were to bomb the Bushehr I reactor.
•It would trigger a tsunami of anti-Semitism that would inevitably translate into violence against Jews worldwide.
•Such a strike would be perceived as further evidence of a US-Israeli global war on Islam. Islamist fighters from Marrakesh, Marseille, London, Cairo, Karachi, and Tehran would enlist overnight by the thousands and march to Iraq and Afghanistan to wage jihad against the American troops there.
Netanyahu is no fool. He is keenly aware of these global implications. He knows that a unilateral Israeli strike would not only accelerate Iran's nuclear ambitions but also legitimize them. He also knows that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's threat to wipe Israel off the map is bombast. It is the country's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, who commands the armed forces and national security apparatus, not the populist president.
Domestic Israeli politics may have been a factor motivating Netanyahu's warnings. Talking tough soothes anxieties at home. Equally likely, Netanyahu was prodding the new Obama government. And in that sense he may feel the recent US-led invitation to Tehran to meet with Washington and five other major powers to discuss the disputed nuclear program was a result of his threat. Iran has agreed to "constructive dialogue," although it may be delusional for the Israeli prime minister – or any other Western leader – to believe that political or economic pressure can sway Iran's ruling clerics.
What's worrying is that Netanyahu had a record of bad judgment in his previous term as prime minister from 1996 to 1999. Not without cause did The Economist run a cover photo of "Bibi" in October 1997 under the headline "Israel's Serial Bungler." It described his governance of the Jewish state as a "calamity" for the peace process.
Iran has no need to nuke Israel. Its ruling clerics, whom Netanyahu described as a "messianic apocalyptic cult," believe time, history, and Allah are on their side. They believe the Jewish state, starting across the border in Lebanon, can be nibbled to death over the next century just as the Arabs did to the Crusader kingdoms 600 years ago.
It should surprise no one that Iran's mullahs want nuclear weapons. They live in a nuclear neighborhood: Pakistan, India, Russia, China, and Israel, which is estimated to have 200 nuclear bombs ready to use if it were attacked. The ayatollahs also remember Mr. Hussein's 1991 folly of going to war with the US without nuclear weapons.
Obama needs to do Netanyahu a favor and tell the Israelis: "No first strike." Keep the F-15s and F-16s at home. A messianic vision such as Mr. Ahmadinejad's is rife in much of the Islamic world. Bellicose rhetoric most often serves as an excuse for inaction. It does not denote suicidal inclinations on the part of Iran's more pragmatic leaders.
Walter Rodgers, a former senior international correspondent for CNN, writes a biweekly column for the Monitor's weekly print edition.
Israel's Secret Plan For West Bank Expansion
Palestinians Condemn 'Extremely Dangerous' Scheme To Grow Settlement
By Ben Lynfield in Jerusalem
Monday, 27 April 2009
Courtesy Of The Independent
Israel has taken a step towards expanding the largest settlement in the West Bank, a move Palestinians warn will leave their future state unviable and further isolate its future capital, East Jerusalem
The Israeli Peace Now group, which monitors settlement growth, said it had obtained plans drawn up by experts that the interior ministry had commissioned which call for expanding the sprawling Maale Adumim settlement near Jerusalem southward by 1200 hectares, placing what is now the separate smaller settlement of Kedar within Maale Adumim's boundaries.
The expansion is on a highly sensitive piece of real estate that both sides see as holding the key to whether the Palestinians will have a viable state with their own corridor between the north and south parts of the West Bank.
Israeli plans also call for expanding Maale Adumim northward in an area known as E1, but US opposition has thus far stopped Israel from building residential buildings there, although a police headquarters has been established.
The new plan, if approved by the interior minister, Eli Yishai, will help pave the way for the building of 6000 housing units between Maale Adumim and Kedar and on other lands to be annexed by Maale Adumim, says Peace Now staffer Hagit Ofran. "What they have in their minds is the expansion of Maale Adumim and this is one step towards that," Ms. Ofran said of government planners
The Palestinian MP Hanan Ashrawi said the plan was "extremely dangerous". She said that the new plan, combined with Israeli plans to build at E1, plans to demolish 88 houses in the Silwan neighborhood of East Jerusalem on grounds they were built without permits, the planned eviction of Palestinian families in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood and other steps reflect "a mad rush to expand settlements to complete the isolation and siege of Jerusalem. Israel is destroying any chances of an agreement."
Hizki Zisman, a spokesman for the Maale Adumim municipality, said making Kedar part of Maale Adumim is an administrative matter of uniting local authorities and does not involve expropriating more land from Palestinians. He said the panel recommendation was "professional, not political" and that there was a great need to expand the settlement because of young couples needing bigger apartments.
An aide to Mr Yishai said the plan to make Kedar part of Maale Adumim arrived on the minister's desk yesterday and he had not yet taken a decision on it.
Mr Yishai, from the ultra-orthodox Shas party, is supportive of settlement activity but the timing for expanding Maale Adumim may not be propitious given the international scrutiny of the new right-wing Israeli government. An official in the Prime Minister's office declined to say what the attitude of the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was to the expansion: "Prime Minister Netanyahu has ordered a comprehensive review on a host of issues including settlements and the attitude towards peace talks. This will take a few weeks."
Ms Ofran said expanding Maale Adumim to include Kedar was also aimed at making the route of the West Bank separation barrier that is still being constructed penetrate deeper into the occupied territory.
Israel says the barrier is aimed at thwarting suicide bombers but the International Court of Justice has ruled it illegal, for being built inside the West Bank.
The Israeli supreme court is deliberating on the route of the barrier in the Maale Adumim area and received a recommendation from the relatively dovish Council for Peace and Security – made up of former senior security officers – that Kedar should not be included within the fence.
"If the fence is supposed to become the border of Israel, than making Kedar part of Maale Adumim expands the border," Ms Ofran said.
Meanwhile, the Netanyahu government yesterday adopted a rejectionist approach to peace talks.
The Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, ruled out opening negotiations with Syria unless it dropped all its pre-conditions relating to the Golan Heights. Days earlier, he said that Syria was not a "genuine partner for peace".
Syria recently said it would be willing to resume indirect talks as long as they focused on a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights, which Israel captured in 1967.
By Ben Lynfield in Jerusalem
Monday, 27 April 2009
Courtesy Of The Independent
Israel has taken a step towards expanding the largest settlement in the West Bank, a move Palestinians warn will leave their future state unviable and further isolate its future capital, East Jerusalem
The Israeli Peace Now group, which monitors settlement growth, said it had obtained plans drawn up by experts that the interior ministry had commissioned which call for expanding the sprawling Maale Adumim settlement near Jerusalem southward by 1200 hectares, placing what is now the separate smaller settlement of Kedar within Maale Adumim's boundaries.
The expansion is on a highly sensitive piece of real estate that both sides see as holding the key to whether the Palestinians will have a viable state with their own corridor between the north and south parts of the West Bank.
Israeli plans also call for expanding Maale Adumim northward in an area known as E1, but US opposition has thus far stopped Israel from building residential buildings there, although a police headquarters has been established.
The new plan, if approved by the interior minister, Eli Yishai, will help pave the way for the building of 6000 housing units between Maale Adumim and Kedar and on other lands to be annexed by Maale Adumim, says Peace Now staffer Hagit Ofran. "What they have in their minds is the expansion of Maale Adumim and this is one step towards that," Ms. Ofran said of government planners
The Palestinian MP Hanan Ashrawi said the plan was "extremely dangerous". She said that the new plan, combined with Israeli plans to build at E1, plans to demolish 88 houses in the Silwan neighborhood of East Jerusalem on grounds they were built without permits, the planned eviction of Palestinian families in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood and other steps reflect "a mad rush to expand settlements to complete the isolation and siege of Jerusalem. Israel is destroying any chances of an agreement."
Hizki Zisman, a spokesman for the Maale Adumim municipality, said making Kedar part of Maale Adumim is an administrative matter of uniting local authorities and does not involve expropriating more land from Palestinians. He said the panel recommendation was "professional, not political" and that there was a great need to expand the settlement because of young couples needing bigger apartments.
An aide to Mr Yishai said the plan to make Kedar part of Maale Adumim arrived on the minister's desk yesterday and he had not yet taken a decision on it.
Mr Yishai, from the ultra-orthodox Shas party, is supportive of settlement activity but the timing for expanding Maale Adumim may not be propitious given the international scrutiny of the new right-wing Israeli government. An official in the Prime Minister's office declined to say what the attitude of the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was to the expansion: "Prime Minister Netanyahu has ordered a comprehensive review on a host of issues including settlements and the attitude towards peace talks. This will take a few weeks."
Ms Ofran said expanding Maale Adumim to include Kedar was also aimed at making the route of the West Bank separation barrier that is still being constructed penetrate deeper into the occupied territory.
Israel says the barrier is aimed at thwarting suicide bombers but the International Court of Justice has ruled it illegal, for being built inside the West Bank.
The Israeli supreme court is deliberating on the route of the barrier in the Maale Adumim area and received a recommendation from the relatively dovish Council for Peace and Security – made up of former senior security officers – that Kedar should not be included within the fence.
"If the fence is supposed to become the border of Israel, than making Kedar part of Maale Adumim expands the border," Ms Ofran said.
Meanwhile, the Netanyahu government yesterday adopted a rejectionist approach to peace talks.
The Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, ruled out opening negotiations with Syria unless it dropped all its pre-conditions relating to the Golan Heights. Days earlier, he said that Syria was not a "genuine partner for peace".
Syria recently said it would be willing to resume indirect talks as long as they focused on a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights, which Israel captured in 1967.
Palestinian DisUnity Is Israel's Great Triumph
Gaza's Separation From The West Bank Is Israel's Great Triumph
By Amira Hass
Monday, April 27, 2009
Courtesy Of The Daily Star
The total separation of the Gaza Strip from the West Bank is one of the greatest achievements of Israeli politics, whose overarching objective is to prevent a solution based on international decisions and understandings and instead dictate an arrangement based on Israel's military superiority.
In view of the violent rivalry between the two main movements competing for the upper hand in the Palestinian mock-government, Fatah and Hamas, it's easy to forget the effort Israel invested in separating families, economies, cultures and societies between the two parts of the Palestinian state "in the making." All that remained was for the Palestinians to crown the split with their dual regime.
The restrictions on Palestinian movement that Israel introduced in January 1991 reversed a process that had been initiated in June 1967. Back then, and for the first time since 1948, a large portion of the Palestinian people again lived in the open territory of a single country - to be sure, one that was occupied, but was nevertheless whole. True, there quickly emerged three categories of Palestinian residents: third-class Israeli citizens, residents of Israel (in Jerusalem) and residents of the "administered territories." Yet the experience of renewing old family and social ties and creating new modes of social, cultural and economic companionships proved stronger than the administrative distinctions. The dynamism, creativity and optimism of the first intifada (1987-1992) owe much to the reality generated by this freedom of movement inside a single country.
Israel put a halt to this freedom of movement on the eve of the first Gulf war. Since January 1991, Israel has bureaucratically and logistically merely perfected the split and the separation: not only between Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and their brothers in Israel, but also between the Palestinian residents of Jerusalem and those in the rest of the territories and between Gazans and West Bankers-Jerusalemites. Jews live in this same piece of land within a superior and separate system of privileges, laws, services, physical infrastructure and freedom of movement.
One day, when the archives are opened, we'll know just how calculated and planned this process was. Meanwhile, we cannot ignore the fact that it commenced at a time when the Cold War and South African apartheid were ending and the international community assessed that conditions were ripe for an Israeli-Palestinian two-state agreement based on the June 4, 1967 lines.
In parallel with the Oslo process, Israel took bureaucratic steps that rendered hollow the clause in the Oslo Accords according to which the Gaza Strip and West Bank are a single territorial unit. Gazans were forbidden to live, study and work in the West Bank without permission from Israel (which was rarely given, and only to favored applicants). Gazans were also forbidden to enter the West Bank via its border with Jordan. Friends and family live just 70 kilometers apart but Israel does not allow them to meet. Today, a Palestinian born in Gaza who lives in the West Bank without Israeli permission is considered an "illegal presence."
The devious unilateral Israeli disengagement of 2005 perpetuated a process that commenced in 1991: Gaza and the West Bank fall under different types of administration, with Israel cleverly presenting Gaza as an independent entity no longer under occupation. In the last Palestinian elections, Hamas proved more persuasive than Fatah when it attributed the Palestinian "victory" and the Israeli withdrawal to itself and its armed struggle. There followed Hamas' takeover of the Gaza security forces in June 2007 and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' directive to tens of thousands of Palestinian Authority employees to boycott their places of work in the Strip.
In the recent Palestinian unity talks, the substantive questions have not been asked: Has the public in the West Bank and Gaza given up on the link between the two parts occupied in 1967 until the distant realization of the dream of one state? Will the Palestinian leaderships be taken to account by the people for the assistance they gave Israel in severing the two territories? Is the link to the Arab and Muslim worlds more vital for Hamas than the link with the West Bank? Are ceremonial international standing and the perks of senior officialdom more important to the PA and the Palestinian Liberation Organization than the population of Gaza?
The answers must also come from the Israelis, and particularly those who claim to support peace. Prior to Hamas' election victory in 2006, the PA's center of rule was in Gaza. That didn't hinder Israel from perfecting the conditions of separation and severance that turned the Strip into the detention camp it is today while Israeli peaceniks in their multitudes sat on their hands. Even if a miracle happens in Cairo and the Palestinians unite, the government of Israel will not willingly forego its greatest achievement: severing Gaza from the West Bank. This achievement, which will only stoke the fires of a bloody conflict, is the disaster of both peoples.
Amira Hass is a correspondent for the Israeli daily Haaretz. Since January 22 of this year she has been reporting from Gaza. This commentary first appeared at bitterlemons.org, an online newsletter that publishes contending views of the Israeli-Palestinian problem.
By Amira Hass
Monday, April 27, 2009
Courtesy Of The Daily Star
The total separation of the Gaza Strip from the West Bank is one of the greatest achievements of Israeli politics, whose overarching objective is to prevent a solution based on international decisions and understandings and instead dictate an arrangement based on Israel's military superiority.
In view of the violent rivalry between the two main movements competing for the upper hand in the Palestinian mock-government, Fatah and Hamas, it's easy to forget the effort Israel invested in separating families, economies, cultures and societies between the two parts of the Palestinian state "in the making." All that remained was for the Palestinians to crown the split with their dual regime.
The restrictions on Palestinian movement that Israel introduced in January 1991 reversed a process that had been initiated in June 1967. Back then, and for the first time since 1948, a large portion of the Palestinian people again lived in the open territory of a single country - to be sure, one that was occupied, but was nevertheless whole. True, there quickly emerged three categories of Palestinian residents: third-class Israeli citizens, residents of Israel (in Jerusalem) and residents of the "administered territories." Yet the experience of renewing old family and social ties and creating new modes of social, cultural and economic companionships proved stronger than the administrative distinctions. The dynamism, creativity and optimism of the first intifada (1987-1992) owe much to the reality generated by this freedom of movement inside a single country.
Israel put a halt to this freedom of movement on the eve of the first Gulf war. Since January 1991, Israel has bureaucratically and logistically merely perfected the split and the separation: not only between Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and their brothers in Israel, but also between the Palestinian residents of Jerusalem and those in the rest of the territories and between Gazans and West Bankers-Jerusalemites. Jews live in this same piece of land within a superior and separate system of privileges, laws, services, physical infrastructure and freedom of movement.
One day, when the archives are opened, we'll know just how calculated and planned this process was. Meanwhile, we cannot ignore the fact that it commenced at a time when the Cold War and South African apartheid were ending and the international community assessed that conditions were ripe for an Israeli-Palestinian two-state agreement based on the June 4, 1967 lines.
In parallel with the Oslo process, Israel took bureaucratic steps that rendered hollow the clause in the Oslo Accords according to which the Gaza Strip and West Bank are a single territorial unit. Gazans were forbidden to live, study and work in the West Bank without permission from Israel (which was rarely given, and only to favored applicants). Gazans were also forbidden to enter the West Bank via its border with Jordan. Friends and family live just 70 kilometers apart but Israel does not allow them to meet. Today, a Palestinian born in Gaza who lives in the West Bank without Israeli permission is considered an "illegal presence."
The devious unilateral Israeli disengagement of 2005 perpetuated a process that commenced in 1991: Gaza and the West Bank fall under different types of administration, with Israel cleverly presenting Gaza as an independent entity no longer under occupation. In the last Palestinian elections, Hamas proved more persuasive than Fatah when it attributed the Palestinian "victory" and the Israeli withdrawal to itself and its armed struggle. There followed Hamas' takeover of the Gaza security forces in June 2007 and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' directive to tens of thousands of Palestinian Authority employees to boycott their places of work in the Strip.
In the recent Palestinian unity talks, the substantive questions have not been asked: Has the public in the West Bank and Gaza given up on the link between the two parts occupied in 1967 until the distant realization of the dream of one state? Will the Palestinian leaderships be taken to account by the people for the assistance they gave Israel in severing the two territories? Is the link to the Arab and Muslim worlds more vital for Hamas than the link with the West Bank? Are ceremonial international standing and the perks of senior officialdom more important to the PA and the Palestinian Liberation Organization than the population of Gaza?
The answers must also come from the Israelis, and particularly those who claim to support peace. Prior to Hamas' election victory in 2006, the PA's center of rule was in Gaza. That didn't hinder Israel from perfecting the conditions of separation and severance that turned the Strip into the detention camp it is today while Israeli peaceniks in their multitudes sat on their hands. Even if a miracle happens in Cairo and the Palestinians unite, the government of Israel will not willingly forego its greatest achievement: severing Gaza from the West Bank. This achievement, which will only stoke the fires of a bloody conflict, is the disaster of both peoples.
Amira Hass is a correspondent for the Israeli daily Haaretz. Since January 22 of this year she has been reporting from Gaza. This commentary first appeared at bitterlemons.org, an online newsletter that publishes contending views of the Israeli-Palestinian problem.
Middle East Spies
A New Front In Gaza's Conflict
By Ramzy Baroud
April 24-26, 2009
Courtesy Of CounterPunch
By Ramzy Baroud
April 24-26, 2009
Courtesy Of CounterPunch
The reverberations of the Israeli war on Gaza are still felt throughout the Middle East. One could in fact speak of a silent war being waged in the region.
Now that Israel’s clear intentions in Gaza - discrediting Hamas and ultimately ousting them from their democratically elected position - resulted in utter failure, Israelis are hoping to exploit regional conflicts to rein in Hamas and other such organizations through alternative means.
In the past several years, Israel has suffered what may seem like insurmountable losses in their barrage of military conquests. In July and August of 2006, Israel unleashed its military fury against Lebanon for several weeks, with one major objective: to permanently "extract" Hezbollah as a fighting force from South Lebanon and undermine it as a rising political movement capable of disrupting, if not overshadowing, the "friendly" and "moderate" political regime in Beirut.
While the Lebanese suffered blows from which it may take years to recover, the Israeli war in South Lebanon was recognized largely as an astounding military failure, defeat even for Israel, as several thousand fairly ill-equipped Hezbollah fighters forced Israel’s multi-billion dollar military machine to retreat.
While at the time, Hezbollah had strong backing by the poor and destitute population of Lebanon, including Palestinian refugees, support from official Lebanese institutions was, at best, lacking. But the war changed all of that. Today, Hezbollah is regarded by many as the guardians of Lebanon and enjoy an unprecedented level of moral and popular support.
Israel repeated its costly mistake in Gaza late last year and earlier this year. True, Palestinians in the Strip haven’t suffered the human casualties of the recent Gaza massacre since 1948. Thousands lost their lives, limbs, homes, entire families, entire neighborhoods. Concurrently, Israel and her backers were convinced that such vicious blows would certainly press a desperate population to turn on their elected government, whom Israel and the US claimed, got them into this mess in the first place.
And what a painful lesson it was. One would think that after 60 years of constant interaction with the Palestinian people, Israel would know them better. By now on might think that their durability and integrity would have been taken into strong consideration before taking such rash actions. In spite of the overwhelming death toll resulting from Israel’s butchery, Hamas garnered even stronger support and loyalty from the people of Gaza, but more, from Palestinians everywhere, the Arab and Muslim world, indeed from many places throughout the world that could no longer remain silent. Words of encouragement, admiration and backing echoed from Latin America to South Africa to even the United States itself.
But Israel and its allies are changing tactics. And they are getting a lot of help from their neighbors. This time, they are concentrating their efforts outside of these strongholds of resistance, and going after Hezbollah and Hamas members from remote positions. Out of the blue, this week the news was inundated with reports of “spies” being apprehended in various Arab countries and other tales.
On April 10, Agencies reported that Egyptian security forces had detained 15 people over accusations that they had helped in smuggling rockets into the Gaza Strip via border tunnels, security sources claimed.
On April 12, Palestinian security officials claimed that they had uncovered a bomb-making factory underneath a mosque in the West Bank. An interior minister claimed, "Many of the bombs were ready to use and many of them were of industrial grade."
The same day, it was reported that an Egyptian man was caught and apprehended in Sinai who was smuggling $2 million to the Hamas leadership in Gaza.
On April 13, Israeli news interviewed Shimon Peres, who commended Egypt’s efforts at apprehending individuals active in the Iran-backed Hezbollah infrastructure in Egypt. Peres was quoted as saying, "Sooner or later, the world will realize that Iran wishes to take over the Middle East, and that it has colonial ambitions."
Imagine that; such comments coming from a leader of a nation who up until this point, refuses to define its borders with designs on swallowing up all of historic Palestine. Colonial ambitions indeed.
The following day, on April 14, Egyptian officials accused Hezbollah Leader, Hassan Nasrallah of fomenting sedition and state media branded him an "Iranian agent."
One has to wonder if these sudden discoveries are related to attempts aimed at undermining various Islamic opposition groups in the region. Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood movement, for example, is already on the defensive, trying to shield itself from what is considered Iran-Hezbollah’s designs to ‘destabilize’ Egypt. Speaking to Al Jazeera, Abdul Munaim Abu al-Futuh, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood group's guidance bureau stated, "We have no relations with any of those (arrested)." One can only expect the situation to worsen, and could only hope such regime-induced panic doesn’t destroy the small semblance of democracy that these nations still possess.
In Jordan, similar discoveries are also being made, Hamas members sentenced, others apprehended.
The timing of these crackdowns, the nature of the accusations and the war of words that ensued as a result makes one question the nature of these arrests, whether they are genuine security measures, or political dealings, a new symptom of the ongoing cold war in the region.
Following the war in Gaza, and earlier in Lebanon, the Middle East’s new conflict has been that of defining the new discourse which will ultimately dominate the region’s politics: that of resistance or ‘moderation’.
The US, Israel and their ‘moderate’ allies in the region have clearly drawn lines in the sand, a notion that when reviewing recent developments simply cannot be denied.
Monday, April 27, 2009
The Investigation That Dare Not Be Uttered On TV
The Pulitzer-Winning Investigation That Dare Not Be Uttered On TV
(updated below - Update II)
By Glenn Greenwald
Tuesday April 21, 2009 08:27 EDT
Courtesy Of The Salon Media Group
(updated below - Update II)
By Glenn Greenwald
Tuesday April 21, 2009 08:27 EDT
Courtesy Of The Salon Media Group
The New York Times' David Barstow won a richly deserved Pulitzer Prize yesterday for two articles that, despite being featured as major news stories on the front page of The Paper of Record, were completely suppressed by virtually every network and cable news show, which to this day have never informed their viewers about what Barstow uncovered. Here is how the Pulitzer Committee described Barstow's exposés:
Awarded to David Barstow of The New York Times for his tenacious reporting that revealed how some retired generals, working as radio and television analysts, had been co-opted by the Pentagon to make its case for the war in Iraq, and how many of them also had undisclosed ties to companies that benefited from policies they defended.
By whom were these "ties to companies" undisclosed and for whom did these deeply conflicted retired generals pose as "analysts"? ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN and Fox -- the very companies that have simply suppressed the story from their viewers. They kept completely silent about Barstow's story even though it sparked Congressional inquiries, vehement objections from the then-leading Democratic presidential candidates, and allegations that the Pentagon program violated legal prohibitions on domestic propaganda programs. The Pentagon's secret collaboration with these "independent analysts" shaped multiple news stories from each of these outlets on a variety of critical topics. Most amazingly, many of them continue to employ as so-called "independent analysts" the very retired generals at the heart of Barstow's story, yet still refuse to inform their viewers about any part of this story.
And even now that Barstow yesterday won the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting -- one of the most prestigious awards any news story can win -- these revelations still may not be uttered on television, tragically dashing the hope expressed yesterday (rhetorically, I presume) by Media Matters' Jamison Foser that "maybe now that the story has won a Pulitzer for Barstow, they'll pay attention." Instead, it was Atrios' prediction that was decisively confirmed: "I don't think a Pulitzer will be enough to give the military analyst story more attention." Here is what Brian Williams said last night on his NBC News broadcast in reporting on the prestigious awards:
The Pulitzer Prizes for journalism and the arts were awarded today. The New York Times led the way with five, including awards for breaking news and international reporting. Las Vegas Sun won for the public service category for its reporting on construction worker deaths in that city. Best commentary went to Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post, who of course was an on-air commentator for us on MSNBC all through the election season and continues to be. And the award for best biography went to John Meacham, the editor of Newsweek magazine, for his book "American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House."
No mention that among the five NYT prizes was one for investigative reporting. Williams did manage to promote the fact that one of the award winners was an MSNBC contributor, but sadly did not find the time to inform his viewers that NBC News' war reporting and one of Williams' still-featured premiere "independent analysts," Gen. Barry McCaffrey, was and continues to be at the heart of the scandal for which Barstow won the Pulitzer. Williams' refusal to inform his readers about this now-Pulitzer-winning story is particularly notable given his direct personal involvement in the secret, joint attempts by NBC and McCaffrey to contain P.R. damage to NBC from Barstow's story, compounded by the fact that NBC was on notice of these multiple conflicts as early as April, 2003, when The Nation first reported on them.
Identically, CNN ran an 898-word story on the various Pulitzer winners -- describing virtually every winner -- but was simply unable to find any space even to mention David Barstow's name, let alone inform their readers that he won the Prize for uncovering core corruption at the heart of CNN's coverage of the Iraq War and other military-related matters. No other major television news outlet implicated by Barstow's story mentioned his award, at least as far as I can tell.
The outright refusal of any of these "news organizations" even to mention what Barstow uncovered about the Pentagon's propaganda program and the way it infected their coverage is one of the most illuminating events revealing how they operate. So transparently corrupt and journalistically disgraceful is their blackout of this story that even Howard Kurtz and Politico -- that's Howard Kurtz and Politico -- lambasted them for this concealment. Meaningful criticisms of media stars from media critic (and CNN star) Howie Kurtz is about as rare as prosecutions for politically powerful lawbreakers in America, yet this is what he said about the television media's suppression of Barstow's story: "their coverage of this important issue has been pathetic."
Has there ever been another Pulitzer-Prize-winning story for investigative reporting never to be mentioned on major television -- let alone one that was twice featured as the lead story on the front page of The New York Times? To pose the question is to answer it.
UPDATE: Media Matters has more on the glaring omissions in Brian Williams' "reporting" and on the pervasive impact of the Pentagon's program on television news coverage. Williams' behavior has long been disgraceful on this issue, almost certainly due to the fact that some of the "analysts" most directly implicated by Barstow's story are Williams' favored sources and friends.
On a different note, CQ's Jeff Stein responds today to some of the objections to his Jane-Harman/AIPAC/Alberto-Gonazles blockbuster story -- quite convincingly, in my view -- and, as Christy Hardin Smith notes, the New York Times has now independently confirmed much of what Stein reported.
UPDATE II: For some added irony: on his NBS News broadcast last night suppressing any mention of David Barstow's Pulitzer Prize, Brian Williams' lead story concerned Obama's trip to the CIA yesterday. Featured in that story was commentary from Col. Jack Jacobs, identified on-screen this way: "Retired, NBC News Military Analyst." Jacobs was one of the retired officers who was an active member of the Pentagon's "military analyst" program, and indeed, he actively helped plan the Pentagon's media strategy at the very same time he was posing as an "independent analyst" on NBC (h/t reader gc; via NEXIS). So not only did Williams last night conceal from his viewers any mention of the Pentagon program, he featured -- on the very same broadcast -- "independent" commentary from one of the central figures involved in that propaganda program.
On a related note, Howard Kurtz was asked in his Washington Post chat yesterday about Mike Allen's grant of anonymity to a "top Bush official" that I highlighted on Saturday, and Kurtz -- while defending much of Allen's behavior -- said: "I don't believe an ex-official should have been granted anonymity for that kind of harsh attack."
Currently in Glenn Greenwald's Blog
- David Broder and media culpability for Bush crimes
- Unanimous opposition among establishment journalists to investigations is unsurprising given their role in what happened.
- Sunday, Apr 26, 2009 17:34 EDT
- The U.N. Special Rapporteur explains why amnesty for torturers violates our treaty obligations and international law.
- Saturday, Apr 25, 2009 17:11 EDT
Bush Destroyed Dissenting Views On Torture
Adviser Says Bush Admin Collected, Destroyed Dissenting Views On Torture
By David Edwards and John Byrne
Published: Wednesday April 22, 2009
Courtesy Of The Raw Story
A onetime senior adviser to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says that the Bush Administration collected and destroyed memos by top officials arguing that torture methods used on detainees were wrong.
Philip Zelikow, former counselor at the State Department and a trusted adviser and deputy to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, revealed the allegation in Foreign Policy Tuesday. He expanded on his remarks in an interview with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Tuesday night.
Zelikow says he was told to destroy copies of his own memo arguing against the torture techniques ultimately approved by the Bush Administration, and averred that his views against the torture techniques was shared by his Rice, his boss. But he believes some copies of the dissenting torture memos still exist.
"I mean, we're trying to collect these and destroy them, and you have a copy, don't you?" Zelikow told Maddow. "But I know copies that were retained in my building, and as I mentioned, Secretary Rice understood what I was doing on her behalf. I was her agent in these matters. And the -- so I think copies still exist."
"Why would they destroy them?" he added. "That's a question they'll have to answer."
"Am I right in thinking that they would want to erase any evidence of the existence of a dissenting view within the administration because it would undercut the legal authority of the advice in those memos, the advice that those techniques would be legal?" Maddow asked.
"That is what I thought at the time," Zelikow replied. "I had the same reaction you did. But I don't know why they wanted to do it."
This video is from MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show, broadcast Apr. 21, 2009.
By David Edwards and John Byrne
Published: Wednesday April 22, 2009
Courtesy Of The Raw Story
A onetime senior adviser to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says that the Bush Administration collected and destroyed memos by top officials arguing that torture methods used on detainees were wrong.
Philip Zelikow, former counselor at the State Department and a trusted adviser and deputy to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, revealed the allegation in Foreign Policy Tuesday. He expanded on his remarks in an interview with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Tuesday night.
Zelikow says he was told to destroy copies of his own memo arguing against the torture techniques ultimately approved by the Bush Administration, and averred that his views against the torture techniques was shared by his Rice, his boss. But he believes some copies of the dissenting torture memos still exist.
"I mean, we're trying to collect these and destroy them, and you have a copy, don't you?" Zelikow told Maddow. "But I know copies that were retained in my building, and as I mentioned, Secretary Rice understood what I was doing on her behalf. I was her agent in these matters. And the -- so I think copies still exist."
"Why would they destroy them?" he added. "That's a question they'll have to answer."
"Am I right in thinking that they would want to erase any evidence of the existence of a dissenting view within the administration because it would undercut the legal authority of the advice in those memos, the advice that those techniques would be legal?" Maddow asked.
"That is what I thought at the time," Zelikow replied. "I had the same reaction you did. But I don't know why they wanted to do it."
This video is from MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show, broadcast Apr. 21, 2009.
Fates UnKnown
Dozens Of Prisoners Held By CIA Still Missing, Fates Unknown
By Dafna Linzer,
April 22, 2009 8:16 am EDT
Courtesy of ProPublica
By Dafna Linzer,
April 22, 2009 8:16 am EDT
Courtesy of ProPublica
Last week, we pointed out that one of the newly released Bush-era memos inadvertently confirmed that the CIA held an al-Qaeda suspect [1] named Hassan Ghul in a secret prison and subjected him to what Bush administration lawyers called "enhanced interrogation techniques." The CIA has never acknowledged holding Ghul, and his whereabouts today are secret.
But Ghul is not the only such prisoner who remains missing. At least three dozen others who were held in the CIA's secret prisons overseas appear to be missing as well. Efforts by human rights organizations to track their whereabouts have been unsuccessful, and no foreign governments have acknowledged holding them. (See the full list. [2])
In September 2007, Michael V. Hayden, then director of the CIA, said [3] "fewer than 100 people had been detained at CIA's facilities." One memo [4] (PDF) released last week confirmed that the CIA had custody of at least 94 people as of May 2005 and "employed enhanced techniques to varying degrees in the interrogations of 28 of these ".”
Former President George W. Bush publicly acknowledged the CIA program in September 2006, and transferred 14 prisoners from the secret jails to Guantanamo. Many other prisoners, who had "little or no additional intelligence value," Bush said, "have been returned to their home countries for prosecution or detention by their governments."
Bush did not reveal their identities or whereabouts -- information that would have allowed the International Committee for the Red Cross [5] to find them -- or the terms under which the prisoners were handed over to foreign jailers. The U.S. government has never released information describing the threat that any of them posed.
Some of those prisoners have since been released by third countries holding them. But it is still unclear what has happened to dozens of others.
"Making the Justice Department memos on the CIA's secret prison program public was an important first step, but the Obama administration needs to reveal the fate and whereabouts of every person who was held in CIA custody," said Joanne Mariner, director of the Terrorism and Counterterrorism Program at Human Rights Watch [6]. "If these men are now rotting in some Egyptian dungeon, the administration can't pretend that it's closed the door on the CIA program."
The Red Cross has had access to and documented [7] (PDF) the experiences of only the 14 people who were publicly moved out of the CIA program and into the prison at Guantanamo Bay.
Former officials in the Bush administration, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing classified information, said that the CIA spent weeks during the summer of 2006 -- shortly before Bush acknowledged the CIA prisons and suspended the program -- transferring prisoners to Pakistani, Egyptian and Jordanian custody. The population inside the program had been shrinking since the existence of the prisons was detailed in a Washington Post article [8] in November 2005. Renewed diplomatic relations between the United States and Libya in May 2006 made it possible for the CIA to turn over Libyan prisoners to Moammar Gadhafi's control.
One example may be the case of Saud Memon [9], a Pakistani national suspected of belonging to al-Qaeda and wanted in connection with the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Memon, who allegedly owned the shed where Pearl was killed, disappeared in March 2003. Four years later, he was dropped off, emaciated and near death, at the doorstep of his family home in Lahore, Pakistan, and died two weeks later of tuberculosis. Investigators at Human Rights Watch believe he was held in CIA custody before being turned over to Pakistani intelligence agents.
Marwan Jabour [10] may be an example of the type of prisoner Bush described as no longer having any intelligence value. Jabour, a Palestinian who spent two years in the CIA's prison system, was turned over to Jordanian intelligence agents, then to Israeli and Palestinian intelligence agencies, when the CIA began to empty out its prisons in 2006.
Until he was visited by the Red Cross in Jordan, and then provided with legal counsel in Israel, Jabour was a ghost detainee [10] in the hands of the CIA. The agency has never publicly acknowledged holding him, but intelligence officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that Jabour was jailed for allegedly helping al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters evade capture.
In June 2007, six human rights groups released the names of three dozen people [11] (PDF) whose fates remained unknown. We've updated that list based on the most current information available to Human Rights Watch.
We asked the CIA whether any of the people on the list were in CIA custody, whether any of them were among those detainees whom the CIA transferred to other countries for prosecution or detention, as former President Bush said had been done when he publicly acknowledged the program in September 2006, and whether the CIA is aware of and can disclose the current locations of any of these people.
CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano sent the following response: "The agency has not, as a rule, commented on these kinds of lists, which are typically flawed." We invited him to clarify those flaws but have not yet heard back.
"Until the U.S. government clarifies the fate and whereabouts of these individuals, these people are still disappeared, and disappearance is one of the most grave international human rights violations," said Margaret Satterthwaite, a law professor at New York University. "We clearly don't know the story of everyone who has been through the program. We need to find out where they are and what happened."
See the full list of the missing.Norwegians Target Israel For War Crimes
Norwegian Lawyers File Complaint Accusing 10 Israelis Of Gaza War Crimes Under New Law
By Associated Press
8:07 AM EDT, April 22, 2009
Courtesy Of The Hartford Courant
OSLO (AP) — A group of Norwegian lawyers filed a complaint Wednesday accusing 10 Israelis of war crimes in Gaza under the country's new universal jurisdiction law, officials said.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and opposition leader Tzipi Livni were among those named in the complaint, the lawyers said.
Chief prosecutor Siri Frigaard told The Associated Press that she will now determine if there are grounds for charges or a police investigation. It was not clear how long the process would take.
The Israeli Embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
One of the attorneys who filed the complaint, Bent Endresen, said a Norwegian law that went into effect last year allows foreigners to face charges in Norway for war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity committed anywhere in the world.
"There was a legal change that now gives a universal jurisdiction" for such war crimes, he said by telephone.
In a statement, the lawyers claim that Olmert, Livni, Barak and seven Israel military officers shared responsibility for "massive terror attacks primarily directed at Gaza's population."
Gaza officials say about 1,300 Palestinian civilians died in the Israeli offensive in December and January. Israel has said the toll was lower, and the "vast majority" of the dead were militants.
The lawyers' statement said the complaint also covered killing civilians, destruction of property, use of banned weapons and attacks on such protected institutions as hospitals.
The lawyers also claimed that Israeli leaders "knew about, ordered or approved the actions in Gaza and that they had considered the consequences."
Norway's Foreign Ministry said the complaint was a matter for the legal system and not the government.
By Associated Press
8:07 AM EDT, April 22, 2009
Courtesy Of The Hartford Courant
OSLO (AP) — A group of Norwegian lawyers filed a complaint Wednesday accusing 10 Israelis of war crimes in Gaza under the country's new universal jurisdiction law, officials said.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and opposition leader Tzipi Livni were among those named in the complaint, the lawyers said.
Chief prosecutor Siri Frigaard told The Associated Press that she will now determine if there are grounds for charges or a police investigation. It was not clear how long the process would take.
The Israeli Embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
One of the attorneys who filed the complaint, Bent Endresen, said a Norwegian law that went into effect last year allows foreigners to face charges in Norway for war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity committed anywhere in the world.
"There was a legal change that now gives a universal jurisdiction" for such war crimes, he said by telephone.
In a statement, the lawyers claim that Olmert, Livni, Barak and seven Israel military officers shared responsibility for "massive terror attacks primarily directed at Gaza's population."
Gaza officials say about 1,300 Palestinian civilians died in the Israeli offensive in December and January. Israel has said the toll was lower, and the "vast majority" of the dead were militants.
The lawyers' statement said the complaint also covered killing civilians, destruction of property, use of banned weapons and attacks on such protected institutions as hospitals.
The lawyers also claimed that Israeli leaders "knew about, ordered or approved the actions in Gaza and that they had considered the consequences."
Norway's Foreign Ministry said the complaint was a matter for the legal system and not the government.
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