06.28.09
‘Armchair’ Killing: A US-Israeli Trade-mark
Has anything changed since the massacre in My Lai?
By Stuart Littlewood – London
Reports of prisoner abuse at the US prison at Bagram air force base in Afghanistan come as no surprise. They are just the latest example of the world’s biggest bully behaving badly as usual.
As if that weren’t enough, I’m reading how some 83 people, mostly civilians, were killed and over 50 injured in three drone attacks within 12 hours in Lataka, South Waziristan.
The first strike killed several suspected Taliban. Later, a second drone fired three missiles into a crowd of funeral mourners.
One of the wounded commented: “If the Taliban are bombing the mosques and America is bombing the funerals, what is the difference between them? We are stuck between Taliban and US attacks and when we are killed, not only no one cries for us, but also we are dubbed militants.”
Since August 2008, over 40 US drone strikes have killed at least 410 people. US troops in neighboring Afghanistan are the only forces that deploy unmanned drones in the region.
The use of armed drones is a particularly cowardly form of warfare. These lethal “assets” are computer-controlled from the comfort and safety of an armchair a hundred miles away and guided by dodgy “intelligence”. Or, if the truth be known, no intelligence at all. The Israelis use them extensively in Gaza to unleash death and destruction on civilian targets by remote control. Engines for Israeli drones are believed to be supplied by a British manufacturer, although the government here pretends not to know the truth of the matter.
This trend in ’sofa slaughter’ has many variations. For example, during the 40-day siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem in 2002 the Israeli Occupation Force set up huge cranes on which were mounted robotic machine guns under video control. Eight defenders, including the bell-ringer, were murdered, some by the robotic guns and some by snipers.
The US and its allies are just as callous in their treatment of civilian prisoners. The British authorities deal with their casual killings by offering £4,500 in compensation, showing how cheaply we value the life of ‘Johnny Foreigner’. And when it comes to prisoner abuse the Israelis, whose every cruel excess the West defends, don’t even spare children, according to various reports.
Something very chilling can take hold of uniformed thugs – I won’t call them soldiers because what many of them do is not proper soldiering – in a war zone; and in the days before high-tech weaponry like drones and robotic machine guns they happily indulged their blood-lust by murdering civilians at close quarters. If you haven’t heard of the My Lai massacre, brace yourself.
In 1968, 150 men of Charlie Company, a US infantry unit, were sent on a ‘search and destroy’ mission into the South Vietnamese village of My Lai. Four hours later more than 500 civilians – unarmed women, children and old men – were dead. Charlie Company hadn’t encountered a single Viet Cong. Nevertheless the unit, led by Lt William Calley, rounded up villagers and machine-gunned them until the dead lay five-deep.
When Calley spotted a baby crawling away, he grabbed her, threw her back into the ditch, and opened fire again.
Helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson, flying over the area, was so sickened by what he saw that he landed his machine to shield villagers from the troops and began rescuing survivors. He ordered his gunner to open up on any American soldiers who continued to shoot civilians.
Some of the dead were mutilated by having “C Company” carved into their chests; some were disembowelled.
Official reports said the My Lai operation was a stunning combat victory, and General Westmoreland congratulated the men on their bravery.
The American people didn’t learn the truth until 18 months later … and then only because a Vietnam veteran, after hearing about the incident from friends who had served in Charlie Company, wrote a letter to his congressman and other prominent officials, including President Nixon.
An army photographer produced pictures of the carnage. Then freelance reporter Seymour Hersh managed to interview Calley and splashed the story over the front pages of American newspapers.
26 members of C Company were charged with criminal behavior but not convicted. Calley himself was eventually court-martialed and sentenced to life imprisonment. After serving just three days he was moved to a comfortable apartment under house arrest, on Nixon’s orders. He was paroled 3 years later.
Hersh said that many in Charlie Company “had given in to an easy pattern of violence” and were totally blind to the humanity of the Vietnamese people. He was awarded a Pulitzer Prize.
My Lai was one of many atrocities committed in Korea and Vietnam. Military training in those days set out to de-humanize not only the enemy but the local civilian population as well. Army culture encouraged its so-called soldiers to think they could treat them like garbage.
Has anything changed? The conduct of the Americans and their close buddies the Israelis is remarkably similar. They are the pace-setters (though not the only practitioners) in savagery and the casual art of killing Johnny Foreigner. It is now done at arm’s length – by remote video control or at the end of a sniper’s scope-sight or by DU tank shell, or from 35,000 feet. No need to personally check the situation on the ground, or look your unarmed victim in the eye, or get your hands dirty. No need to count the bodies afterwards or clear up the shredded and vaporized remains.
Apparently these high-tech killers, their commanders and their political masters have convinced themselves that everyone they don’t like is sub-human.
I’m reminded of a blistering attack by a church minister in Oklahoma after the shock-and-awe onslaught on Iraq, the point at which he discovered that his faith had been hi-jacked by fundamentalists who claimed to speak for Jesus but whose actions were anything but Christian.
“When you live in a country that has established international rules for waging a just war, build the United Nations on your own soil to enforce them, and then arrogantly break the very rules you set down for the rest of the world, you are doing something immoral,” he said.
”When you claim that Jesus is the Lord of your life, and yet fail to acknowledge that your policies ignore his essential teaching, or turn them on their head, you are doing something immoral.
”When you act as if the lives of Iraqi civilians are not as important as the lives of American soldiers, and refuse to even count them, you are doing something immoral.
”When you claim that our God is bigger than their God, and that our killing is righteous, while theirs is evil, we have begun to resemble the enemy we claim to be fighting, and that is immoral.
“We have met the enemy, and the enemy is us.”
- Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Visit: www.radiofreepalestine.co.uk.
06.25.09
We ‘Dirty Arabs’ Have Had Enough
Yitzhak Aharonovitch (right) with Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.
By Joharah Baker – Jerusalem
What unwritten law is out there that allows Israelis to sling racist insults at Palestinians with impunity? After all my years in this country and the absurdities that come along with it, this is one absurdity I still find hard to digest.
Obviously, my outrage has been most recently rekindled by Israeli Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch, who during a tour of the old central bus station in Tel Aviv called a Palestinian-Israeli policeman a “real dirty Arab.” Once the words were out, the minister was forced to apologize, saying his remarks did not reflect his worldview. A spokesman for the ministry also issued a statement saying that, “in a moment of jest, and using common slang, the minister said what he said, not intending to hurt anyone.”
If this were an isolated incident or if it were not an Israeli right-wing minister who said it, we might, just might, be inclined to believe this sorry excuse for an explanation. But in Israel’s history with the Palestinians, this can hardly be considered slip-of-the-tongue. Instead, such slurs are embedded in a historically-rooted relationship between Israeli Jews and their perceived Palestinian-Arab subordinates, a relationship that is so lopsided it allows room for those who wish to be verbally abusive against Palestinians to thrive.
This is certainly not the first time an Israeli political or religious figure insults Palestinians or calls them some degrading name. In 2001, the spiritual leader of Shas, Ovadia Yosef called Palestinians snakes and called on God to “annihilate Arabs.” In an interview with the Israeli daily Maariv, he said, “It is forbidden to be merciful to them, you must give them missiles, – annihilate them. Evil ones, damnable ones.”
Expecting that such remarks might not be received well by the public and the media, a Shas spokesperson at the time clarified that Yosef had only been referring to “Arab murderers and terrorists.” Doesn’t that make us all feel better?
Still, some may say Yosef was an overzealous, ultra-religious fumbling fool who should not be taken seriously. Fine. What about Israel’s prime ministers? Those who the Israeli public voted into office? In 1982, in a speech to the Knesset, Prime Minister Menachem Begin said, “The Palestinians are beasts walking on two legs.”
A year later, Raphael Eitan, then-Israeli army chief of staff told the New York Times, “When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle.”
At times, such blatantly racist statements embarrass Israel, not because many do not believe them but because Israel markets itself as a democratic country that treats all of its citizens with dignity and equality. We Palestinians here in the West Bank and Gaza are not Israeli citizens, but to mention that we have been under an Israeli military occupation for over 40 years just opens one more can of worms and adds to the explanations Israeli officials must provide as to why we are treated so badly.
The policeman who was insulted by Aharonovitch in Tel Aviv however, is an Israeli citizen, one of 1.2 million Palestinians living inside Israel. According to the law, this cop is to be treated like any other citizen of Israel, without discrimination. In reality, though, he and all the other Palestinians are treated as second class citizens, mostly because they live in a country tailored for Jews only. This is no secret. Israel was established as a homeland for Jews, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has set the recognition of the country as a Jewish state as a condition for talks with Palestinians and any Jew anywhere in the world has a right to make Israel their home under its Law of Return.
Add to this even more anti-Arab and Palestinian sentiment found in Israeli “common slang”. According to an article in Haaretz about the Salute for Israel Parade in New York City, young Israelis singing Am Yisrael Chai, (the Jewish Nation Lives), replaced the line “The People of Israel Lives” with “All the Arabs Must Die.” When asked by a fellow Jew whether the words of the song bothered him, one participant answered flatly, “This is Zionism.”
Apparently, that is all the answer needed to explain why Jews should reign over Arabs, why Palestinians should not be treated as human beings and degrading slurs such as the one made by the Public Security Minister are brushed off as a “joke”. This is also apparently why Israelis who call for death to the Arabs or call them beasts and snakes are not chided by the world or ostracized for their extremist views, even as those who call for the “destruction of Israel” are demonized and forever branded as militants, extremists and opponents of peace.
The problem is not primarily in the occasional slurs that are uttered by this or that minister or rabbi, regardless of how despicable. If it were not for a system that allows a breeding ground for such racist ideas, these officials would never have been given the chance to make their outrageous statements. But there is such a system and it is alive and well. A system that purports, according to the unnamed young man proudly singing “All Arabs must die” that all is justified in one sentence: “This is Zionism.”
- Joharah Baker is a writer for the Media and Information Program at the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH). She can be contacted at mip@miftah.org. (Published in MIFTAH – www.miftah.org).
06.20.09
When He Says Yes, What Does He Mean?
By Uri Avnery – Israel
“You must be celebrating,” the interviewer from a popular radio station told me after Netanyahu’s speech. “After all, he is accepting the plan which you proposed 42 years ago!” (Actually it was 60 years ago, but who is counting?)
The front page of Haaretz carried an article by Gideon Levy, in which he wrote that “the courageous call of Uri Avnery and his friends four decades ago is now being echoed, though feebly, from end to end (of the Israeli political spectrum).”
I would be lying if I denied feeling a brief glow of satisfaction, but it faded quickly. This was no “historic” speech, not even a “great” speech. It was a clever speech.
It contained some sanctimonious verbiage to appease Barack Obama, followed right away by the opposite, to pacify the Israeli extreme right. Not much more.
Netanyahu declared that “our hand is extended for peace.”
In my ears, that rang a bell: in the 1956 Sinai war, a member of my editorial staff was attached to the brigade that conquered Sharm-al-Sheikh. Since he had grown up in Egypt, he interviewed the senior captured Egyptian officer, a colonel. “Every time David Ben-Gurion announced that his hand was stretched out for peace,” the Egyptian told him, “we were put on high alert.”
And indeed, that was Ben-Gurion’s method. Before every provocation he would declare that “our hands are extended for peace”, adding conditions that he knew were totally unacceptable to the other side. Thus an ideal situation (for him) was created: The world saw Israel as a peace-loving country, while the Arabs looked like serial peace-killers. Our secret weapon is the Arab refusal, it used to be joked in Jerusalem at the time.
This week, Netanyahu wheeled out the same old trick.
I do not underrate, of course, the significance of the chief of the Likud uttering the two words: “Palestinian state”.
Words carry political weight. Once released into the world, they have a life of their own. Unlike dogs, they cannot be called back.
In a popular Israeli love song, the boy asks the girl: “When you say no, what do you mean?” One could well ask: When Netanyahu says yes, what does he mean?
But even if the words “Palestinian state” passed his lips only under duress, and when Netanyahu has no intention at all of turning them into reality, it is still important that the head of the government and the chief of the Likud was compelled to utter them. The idea of the Palestinian state has now become a part of the national consensus, and only a handful of ultra-rightists reject it directly. But this is only the beginning. The main struggle will be about turning the idea into reality.
The entire speech was addressed to one single person: Barack Obama. It was not designed to appeal to the Palestinians. It was quite clear that the Palestinians are only the passive object of a discussion between the President of the USA and the Prime Minister of Israel. Except in some tired old clichés, Netanyahu spoke about them, not to them.
He is ready, so he says, to conduct negotiations with the “Palestinian community”, and that, of course, “without preconditions”. Meaning: without Palestinian preconditions. On Netanyahu’s part, there are plenty of preconditions, every one of which is designed to make certain that no Palestinian, no Arab and indeed no Muslim will agree to enter negotiations.
Condition 1: The Arabs have to recognize Israel as “the nation-state of the Jewish people” (and not just “a Jewish state”, as many in the media erroneously reported.) As Hosny Mubarak has already answered: No Arab will accept this, because it would mean that 1.5 million Arab citizens of Israel are cut off from the state, and because it would deny in advance the Right of Return of the Palestinian refugees – the main bargaining chip of the Arab side.
It should be remembered that when the United Nations resolved in 1947 to partition Palestine between a “Jewish state” and an “Arab state”, they did not mean to define the character of the states. They were just stating facts: there are two mutually hostile populations in the country, and therefore the country has to be divided between them. (Anyhow, 40% of the population of the “Jewish” state was to consist of Arabs.)
Condition 2: The Palestinian Authority must first of all establish its rule over the Gaza Strip. How? After all, the Israeli government prevents travel between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and no Palestinian force can pass from one to the other. And the solution of the problem by establishing a Palestinian unity government is also ruled out: Netanyahu flatly declared that there would be no negotiations with a Palestinian leadership that includes “terrorists who want to annihilate us” – his way of referring to Hamas.
Condition 3: The Palestinian state will be demilitarized. This is not a new idea. All peace plans that have been put forward up to now speak about security arrangements that would protect Israel from Palestinian attacks and Palestine from Israeli attacks. But that is not what Netanyahu has in mind: he did not speak about mutuality, but about domination. Israel would control the air space and the border crossings of the Palestinian state, turning it into a kind of giant Gaza Strip. Also, Netanyahu’s style was deliberately overbearing and humiliating: he obviously hopes that the word ‘demilitarized” would be enough to get the Palestinians to say “no”.
Condition 4: Undivided Jerusalem will remain under Israeli rule. This was not proposed as an opening gambit for negotiations but presented as a final decision. That by itself ensures that no Palestinian, nor any Arab or even any Muslim, could accept the proposal.
In the Oslo Agreement, Israel undertook to negotiate about the future of Jerusalem. It is an accepted legal rule that if one undertakes to negotiate, one accepts to do so bona fide, on the basis of give and take. Therefore, all peace plans provide that East Jerusalem – wholly or partly – will be returned to Arab rule.
Condition 5: Between Israel and the Palestinian state there will be “defensible borders”. These are code-words for extensive annexations by Israel. Their meaning: no return to the 1967 borders, not even with a swap of territory that would allow for some of the large settlements to be joined to Israel. In order to create “defensible borders”, a major part of the occupied Palestinian territories (which altogether make up just 22% of pre-1948 Palestine) will be absorbed into Israel.
Condition 6: The refugee problem will be solved “outside the territory of Israel”. Meaning: not a single refugee will be allowed to return. True, all realistic people agree that there can be no return of millions of refugees. According to the Arab peace initiative, the solution must be “mutually agreed” – which means that Israel has to agree to any solution. The assumption is that the two parties will agree on the return of a symbolic number. This is a highly charged and sensitive matter, which must be treated with prudence and the utmost sensitivity. Netanyahu does the opposite: his provocative statement, devoid of all empathy, is clearly designed to bring about an automatic refusal.
Condition 7: No settlement freeze. The “normal life” of the settlers will continue. Meaning: the building activity for the “natural increase” will go on. This illustrates the saying of Michael Tarazy, a legal advisor to the PLO: “We are negotiating about sharing a pizza, and in the meantime Israel is eating it.”
All this was in the speech. No less interesting is what was not in it. For example, the words: Road Map. Annapolis. Palestine. The Arab peace plan. Occupation. Palestinian Sovereignty. Opening of the Gaza Strip border crossings. Golan Heights. And, even more important: there was not a hint of respect for the enemy who must be turned into a friend, in the words of the ancient Jewish saying.
So what is more important? The verbal recognition of “a Palestinian state” or the conditions which empty these words of all content?
The public response is interesting. In an opinion poll taken immediately after the speech, 71% supported it, but 55% believed that Netanyahu just “gave in to American pressure”, and 70% did not believe that a Palestinian state would really come about during the next few years.
What exactly do the 71% support? The “Palestinian state” solution or the conditions which obstruct its implementation – or both?
There is, of course, an extreme right-wing minority which prefers a head-on collision with the United States to giving up any territory between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. Along the road to Jerusalem one can see large posters showing a manipulated photo of Obama wearing an Arab headdress. (It sends a shiver down the spine, because it reminds us of seeing exactly the same poster with Yitzhak Rabin under the keffiyeh.) But the great majority of the people understand that a break with the US must be avoided at all costs.
Netanyahu and the right-wing hoped that the Palestinians would reject his words outright, thus painting themselves as serial peace refusers, while the Israeli government would be seen as taking the first small but significant step towards peace. They are sure that this could be achieved for nothing: the Palestinian state will not be set up, the Israeli government will not give up anything, the occupation will remain, settlement activity will go on and Obama will accept all this.
So the main question is: how will Obama react?
The first reaction was minor. A politely positive response.
Obama is not seeking a frontal collision with the Israeli government. It seems that he wants to exert “soft” pressure, vigorously but quietly. To my mind, that is a wise approach.
A few hours before the speech, I met with ex-President Jimmy Carter. The meeting took place at the American Colony hotel in East Jerusalem. It was organized by Gush Shalom, with several other Israeli peace organizations taking part. In my opening remarks, I pointed out that we were in exactly the same room where 16 years ago, while the Oslo agreement was being signed in Washington, Israeli peace activists and the leaders of the Palestinian population in Jerusalem met and opened bottles of champagne. The euphoria of those moments has disappeared without leaving a trace.
Israelis and Palestinians have lost hope. On both sides, the overwhelming majority wants an end to the conflict but do not believe that peace is possible – and each side blames the other. Our task is to rekindle the belief that it is indeed possible.
For this there is a need for a dramatic event, a kind of invigorating electric shock – like the historic visit of Anwar Sadat to Jerusalem in 1977. I suggested that Obama should come to Jerusalem and speak directly to the Israeli public, perhaps even from the Knesset rostrum, like Sadat.
After listening intently to the participants, the former President encouraged us in our activities and put forward some proposals of his own.
The decisive point at this moment is, of course, the matter of the settlements. Will Obama insist on a total freeze of all building activity or not?
Netanyahu hopes to wriggle out of it. He has now found a new gimmick: projects that have already started must be allowed to be finished. One cannot stop them in the middle. The plans have already been approved. The tenants are waiting for their apartments, and they must not be made to suffer. The Supreme Court will not allow a freeze. (A particularly ridiculous argument, like the court allowing a thief to spend some more of the money he has stolen before passing sentence.)
If Obama falls for this, he should not be surprised to find out belatedly that these projects include 100,000 new housing units.
This brings us to the most important fact of this week: the settlers did not raise hell after Netanyahu’s speech. On the contrary. Here and there some feeble criticism could be heard, but the large and armed settler population kept remarkably quiet.
Which brings us back to the unforgettable Sherlock Holmes, who explained how he solved one of his mysteries by drawing attention to “the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”
“But the dog did nothing in the night-time!” someone objected.
“That was the curious incident,” remarked Holmes.
- Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.
06.18.09
Shocking Testimonies: Brutalizing Palestinian Children
Israeli soldiers have been routinely using violence against Palestinian children.
By Jonathan Cook – Nazareth
The rights of Palestinian children are routinely violated by Israel’s security forces, according to a new report that says beatings and torture are common. In addition, hundreds of Palestinian minors are prosecuted by Israel each year without a proper trial and are denied family visits.
The findings by Defence for Children International (DCI) come in the wake of revelations from Israeli soldiers and senior commanders that it is “normal procedure” in the West Bank to terrorise Palestinian civilians, including children.
Col Itai Virob, commander of the Kfir Brigade, disclosed last month that to accomplish a mission, “aggressiveness towards every one of the residents in the village is common”. Questioning included slaps, beatings and kickings, he said.
As a result, Gabi Ashkenazi, the head of the armed services, was forced to appear before the Israeli parliament to disavow the behaviour of his soldiers. Beatings were “absolutely prohibited”, he told legislators.
Col Virob made his remarks during court testimony in defence of two soldiers, including his deputy commander, who are accused of beating Palestinians in the village of Qaddum, close to Nablus. One told the court that “soldiers are educated towards aggression in the IDF [army]”.
Col Virob appeared to confirm his observation, saying it was policy to “disturb the balance” of village life during missions and that the vast majority of assaults were “against uninvolved people”.
Last week, further disclosures of ill-treatment of Palestinians, some as young as 14, were aired on Israeli TV, using material collected by dissident soldiers as part of the Breaking the Silence project, which highlights army brutality.
Two soldiers serving in the Harub battalion said they had witnessed beatings at a school in the West Bank village of Hares, south-west of Nablus, in an operation in March to stop stone-throwing. Many of those held were not involved, the soldiers said.
During a 12-hour operation that began at 3am, 150 detainees were blindfolded and handcuffed from behind, with the nylon restraints so tight their hands turned blue. The worst beatings, the soldiers said, occurred in the school toilets.
According to one soldier’s testimony, a boy of about 15 was given “a slap that brought him to the ground”. He added that many of his comrades “just knee [Palestinians] because it’s boring, because you stand there 10 hours, you’re not doing anything, so they beat people up”.
The picture from serving soldiers confirms the findings of DCI, which noted that many children were picked up in general sweeps after disturbances or during late-night raids of their homes.
Its report includes a selection of testimonies from children it represented in 2008 in which they describe Israeli soldiers beating them or being tortured by interrogators.
One 10-year-old boy, identified as Ezzat H, described an army search of his family home for a gun. He said a soldier slapped and punched him repeatedly during two hours of questioning, before another soldier pointed a rifle at him: “The rifle barrel was a few centimetres away from my face. I was so terrified that I started to shiver. He made fun of me.”
Another boy, Shadi H, aged 15, said he and his friend were forced to undress by soldiers in an orange grove near Tulkarm while the soldiers threw stones at them. They were then beaten with rifle butts.
Jameel K, aged 14, described being taken to a military camp where he was assaulted and then had a rope tightened around his neck in a mock execution.
Yehuda Shaul, of Breaking the Silence, said soldiers treated any Palestinian older than 12 or 13 as an adult.
“For the first time a high-ranking soldier [Col Virob] has joined us in raising the issue — even if not intentionally — that the use of physical violence against Palestinians is not exceptional but policy. A few years ago no senior officer would have had the guts to say this,” he said.
The DCI report also highlights the systematic use of torture by interrogators from the army and the secret police, the Shin Bet, in an attempt to extract confessions from children, often in cases involving stone-throwing.
Islam M, aged 12, said he was threatened with having boiling water poured on his face if he did not admit throwing stones and was then pushed into a thorn bush. Another boy, Abed S, aged 16, said his hands and feet were tied to the wall of an interrogation room in the shape of a cross for a day and then put in solitary confinement for 15 days.
Last month, the United Nations Committee Against Torture, a panel of independent experts, expressed “deep concern” at Israel’s treatment of Palestinian minors.
According to the DCI report, some 700 children are convicted in Israel’s military courts each year, with children older than 12 denied access to lawyers in interrogation.
It adds that interrogators routinely blindfold and handcuff child detainees during questioning and use techniques including slaps and kicks, sleep deprivation, solitary confinement, threats to the child and his family, and tying the child up for long periods.
Such practices were banned by Israel’s Supreme Court in 1999 but are still widely documented by Israeli human rights groups.
DCI says it has been disturbed by reports from several children of a special tiny cell, referred to as No 36, at a detention centre near Haifa. The cell has no windows or ventilation, its walls are dark and a dim light is kept on 24 hours a day.
In 95 per cent of cases, children are convicted on the basis of signed confessions written in Hebrew, a language few of them understand.
Once sentenced, the children are held in violation of international law in prisons in Israel where most are denied visits from family and receive little or no education.
DCI also criticises “a culture of impunity” among the Shin Bet, noting that not one of 600 complaints of torture filed against its interrogators during the second intifada has led to a criminal investigation.
Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group, reported in November that soldiers too rarely face disciplinary action over illegal behaviour.
Army data from 2000 to the end of 2007 revealed that the military police had indicted soldiers in only 78 of 1,268 investigations. Most soldiers received minor sentences.
Academic studies suggest that Israeli soldiers have been routinely using violence against Palestinian civilians, including children, for many years.
In late 2007 Israelis were shocked by the testimonies collected by clinical psychologist Nufar Yishai-Karin from 21 soldiers with whom she shared her military service during the early 1990s.
The soldiers told her of incidents in which bystanders were shot or assaulted. In one of the most disturbing testimonies, a soldier said he had witnessed his commander attacking a four-year-old boy playing in the sand in Gaza.
“He broke his hand here at the wrist. Broke his hand at the wrist, broke his leg here. And started to stomp on his stomach, three times, and left … The next day I go out with him on another patrol, and the soldiers are already starting to do the same thing.”
Such revelations have grown in number since the Breaking the Silence began drawing attention to the army’s mistreatment of Palestinians in 2004.
- Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Visit: www.jkcook.net. A version of this article originally appeared in The National – www.thenational.ae – published in Abu Dhabi.
06.11.09
Obama’s Speech: Great Oratory, Wrong Message
Obama lectured the victims in Palestine on the morality of non-violence.
By Ramzy Baroud
If great oratory is a prerequisite to peace, justice, and human rights, then President Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo, on June 4, shall be enough to cure every ill afflicting every Muslim nation. But since rhetoric never solved any real problem, one is left to question the wisdom behind Obama’s touted speech, clear or vague language, and all other indicators.
It was clear that Obama’s speech was not aimed at delineating a clear US foreign policy towards Muslim nations. In fact, it was merely an image booster, not only to help the United States regain some of its tattered standing among Muslim nations, but also worldwide, for the US image is certainly tainted beyond the parameters of the “Muslim world”.
Misreading the Conflict
Obama’s words in Cairo were meant to reveal a clear divergence from the past. They did so, ever hesitantly.
“We meet at a time of tension between the United States and Muslims around the world, tension rooted in historical forces that go beyond any current policy debate,” he said.
Untrue. The roots of the tension are crystal clear: imperial arrogance, occupation of Arab and Muslim land, violent policies against those who fail to comply with US interests, the unconditional support of Israel, and the backing of corrupt, undemocratic Arab regimes; the demonization of Islam and Muslim culture are but a few of the reasons behind the hatred of US foreign policy.
Although Obama tried to address the relationship between “Islam and the West” in somewhat positive terms — those of “centuries of co-existence and co-operation, but also conflict and religious wars” — he deliberately failed to take responsibility for his country’s detrimental colonial designs in Arab and Muslim regions. He recycled the “clash of civilizations” discredited discourse, which gained credence under his predecessor. When millions of people are killed, wounded, and displaced by an unambiguous US agenda to achieve political and economic gains using violence, the issue then is much bigger than a simple perceptional problem that may have led “many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam.”
In fact, as unpopular as this may sound, violent extremists did not exploit “these tensions in a small but potent minority of Muslims.” The roots of extremism in the Arab world are largely related to the utter despair and anger caused by mass oppression, lack of democracy and economic and political equality, courtesy of the United States and its “friends and allies” in the region.
To confront extremism, even if symbolically, Obama should perhaps start with a few goodwill gestures: clearly apologize to and compensate the unfortunate prisoners of Guantanamo, cease bombing of civilian areas in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and call on Gaza’s border guards to allow some food and medicine in to the devastated population.
Afghanistan
“The situation in Afghanistan demonstrates America’s goals, and our need to work together. Over seven years ago, the United States pursued Al-Qaeda and the Taliban with broad international support. We did not go by choice, we went because of necessity,” Obama stated, adding, “Al-Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 people on that day [9/11]. The victims were innocent men, women, and children from America and many other nations who had done nothing to harm anybody.”
Only a pitiless person would question the innocence of those who were killed in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. But should that in any way justify the killing of many thousands of equally “innocent men, women, and children” from Afghanistan and Pakistan, who also had done nothing to harm anybody? Unfortunately, one cannot provide a specific figure regarding the victims of US violence in these countries, as that of 9/11 victims. The many thousands who perished there remain nameless and their victimization is effortlessly justified as “necessity”. Is this not the same logic used by extremists who argue that it was the US violent policies in the Middle East that forced them to respond in kind?
Iraq
“Although I believe that the Iraqi people are ultimately better off without the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, I also believe that events in Iraq have reminded America of the need to use diplomacy and build international consensus to resolve our problems whenever possible…”
No apology for the murder and displacement of millions of Iraqis, for a whole generation of orphans and widows, for the destruction of what was once one of world’s greatest civilizations. The Iraq war was a mere lesson in diplomacy, not modern history’s embodiment of brutality and torture. Clever oratory obviously has its uses: it conveniently minimizes grave war crimes and crimes against humanity of oneself, and augments the crimes of others.
Palestine
“The second major source of tension that we need to discuss is the situation between Israelis, Palestinians, and the Arab world.” Even if speaking from a Muslim capital in a message whose target audience was the “Muslim world”, Obama hardly failed to deviate from infusing his disclaimer, that of “America’s strong bonds with Israel are well known. This bond is unbreakable. It is based upon cultural and historical ties, and the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied.”
Obama went on to elucidate the entire Zionist historical context that helped create a Jewish state on the ruins of Palestinian towns and villages. He provided a fair account of the persecution of the Jewish people — by the West, not Arabs or Muslims, of course. His exposition was all true, of course, but the context in which such history was placed, was most unfair; for it is irrational to justify the establishing of a “Jewish homeland” on the land of another nation that had nothing whatsoever to do with plight of those who were “enslaved, tortured, shot, and gassed to death by the Third Reich.”
Then, Obama gets to his point, and vagueness, once more, revisited. “On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people, Muslims and Christians, have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than 60 years they have endured the pain of dislocation. Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead. They endure the daily humiliations large and small that come with occupation. So let there be no doubt: the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own.”
Correction: initially, Palestinian suffering was not an outcome of their pursuit of a homeland, but their ethnic cleansing — from their own land — at the hands of the West-backed, politically supported, financed and armed Jewish militants, who used — and still use — the Holocaust as a justification for their action.
Violence
Obama however, reached the heights of arrogance when he began lecturing the victims in Palestine on the morality of non-violence. “Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the centre of America’s founding.”
What a selective reading of reality and history. In fact, for generations Palestinians have used all sorts of non-violent means of resistance. Their violent responses are often desperate attempts at quelling the brutally violent policies of the state of Israel, again, violence that is largely financed by Obama’s government and passed administrations.
It would have been more appropriate for the United States to examine its policy of military funding to Israel, of weapons that are often used against unarmed civilians, illegal weapons of all sorts that are readily experimented against a vulnerable and besieged population, with Gaza being the stark example.
Last, Mr. Obama should consult with his speech writers over the palpable omission of relevant history, for afterall, US history books teach that the Civil War was largely fought to free the slaves, and that the Revolutionary War was fought by patriotic Americans to gain their freedom from the British crown; both were extreme acts of violence that cannot possibly be compared by Hamas’ Gaza rockets. Why the historical revisionism when it comes to oppressed people? Why the enthusiastic justification for violence in Afghanistan, and elsewhere, and the condemnation of violence when used by the oppressed?
Obama also touched on Hamas’s political rise to power. The terminology was most selective. “Hamas does have support among some Palestinians,” he said. Note the use of the word “some”.
Correction: Hamas was elected by a majority of Palestinians in a popular democratic election, whose outcome displeased the United States and Israel, resulting in the collective punishment of 1.5 million people for daring make a choice inconsistent with US foreign policy and Israeli interests.
Imposing Peace?
“America will align our policies with those who pursue peace, and say in public what we say in private to Israelis and Palestinians and Arabs. We cannot impose peace,” Obama said. True, but neither Palestinian, nor Arab or Muslim grievances and expectations from the United States ever including a call on Obama or any of his predecessors to “impose peace”, not in Afghanistan, not in Iraq, and certainly not in Palestine.
What Muslim peoples and nations want from the United States — as articulated in their chants, since they are denied democratic platforms to express such demands — is to bring its colonial drive to an end; to cease its imperial hubris; to quit standing on the wrong side of history by funding and justifying the Zionist colonial program in Palestine; by no longer identifying and backing corrupt rulers and self-serving elites — “our friends and allies” — by abandoning the persisting relationship that sees Muslim lands as strategic and economic assets ready to be plucked, exploited; by not suppressing genuine democracy projects, and foolishly imposing its own; in short, by leaving Muslims alone, so that they may heal their own wounds, resolve their own problems, and shape their own future.
It’s that simple.
- Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers, journals, and anthologies around the world. His latest book is, “The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle” (Pluto Press, London), and his forthcoming book is, “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story” (Pluto Press, London).
Story Copy Right Link
06.07.09
Obama’s Historic Speech – A Post-Mortem
Surely he had to have some hopeful surprise up his sleeve. Wrong. Nothing. (NYT)
By John V. Whitbeck
President Barack Obama’s much anticipated speech in Cairo was truly astounding. After all the months of lead-up and hype, few could have imagined that this speech would contain nothing of substance. Surely Obama would feel the need to announce some new initiative on at least one of the major matters of concern to the Muslim world. Perhaps a decision to develop a fully fleshed-out plan for a two-state solution, unilaterally or with the Quartet and/or the Organization of the Islamic Conference (King Abdallah of Jordan’s “57 Muslim countries” willing to make peace with Israel), dealing with all the difficult issues, and to present it to Israelis and Palestinians as the last best chance for peace based on partition and the acceptance of Israel by the Muslim world. Or perhaps an international conference involving all concerned regional parties to seek solutions to the interlinked problems involving Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and/or Iran.
Surely he had to have some hopeful surprise up his sleeve. Wrong. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
There were, of course, many eloquent mood-music paragraphs and a smattering of quotes from the Holy Quran (as well as the Bible and the Talmud). Obama obviously believes that America’s unchanged objectives with respect to the Muslim world are more likely to be pursued successfully by being polite and complimentary than by being rude and intentionally insulting. But the mood-music paragraphs dealt with atmospherics or the past. When it came to the present and the future and to concrete matters of American objectives and policies, there was nothing new. Nothing hopeful. Nothing.
He certainly offered nothing new or hopeful to the Afghans and Pakistanis, to whom he implicitly promised perpetual war, saying (in a verbal and intellectual formulation uncharacteristically childish for him) that American troops will keep fighting in their countries so long as there are “violent extremists in Afghanistan and Pakistan determined to kill as many Americans as they possibly can” — which there are guaranteed to be so long as the Americans keep fighting in their countries.
He certainly offered nothing new or hopeful to the Iranians, again adopting the views of the Israeli, rather than the American, intelligence agencies on the issue of whether Iran has a current nuclear weapons program and menacing that “when it comes to nuclear weapons, we have reached a decisive point”.
He certainly offered nothing new or hopeful to the Iraqis, opining that they were “better off” as a result of America’s invasion of their country.
Most certainly and emphatically, he offered nothing new or hopeful to the Palestinians, promising to pursue a two-state solution “with all the patience that the task requires” — i.e., with no sense of urgency (unlike his pursuit of Iran) and without any firm deadline, as would be essential for there to be even a miniscule hope of success. This commitment to infinite patience constitutes an effective promise to pass the problem on, in an even more intractable and hopeless condition, to his successor.
Gaza? It rated one mention: “The continuing humanitarian crisis in Gaza does not serve Israel’s security.” Israel’s security? Nothing about the holiday-season massacre of over 1300 Gazans? Nothing about the crippling Israeli blockade and siege? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Jerusalem? Obama expressed the hope that the city could become “a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together”. Mingle? In the context of Obama’s repeated references to two states, one might have expected a vision of the city as the shared capital of those two states living together in peace and reconciliation. No. No sharing. That would have contradicted his pledge in his speech to AIPAC’s National Conference last summer. Just a right to mingle, so long as Christians and Muslims did so “peacefully”, without raising awkward questions about any rights in or to Israel’s eternal and undivided capital.
And then, of course, Obama had to say this: “To play a role in fulfilling Palestinian aspirations, and to unify the Palestinian people, Hamas must put an end to violence, recognize past agreements and recognize Israel’s right to exist” — unbalanced, even in a speech ostensibly intended to reach out to the Muslim world, by any hint that, to be worthy of interaction with civilized people, Israel must renounce violence, recognize past agreements and recognize Palestine’s right to exist.
This tired, morally bankrupt American mantra essentially argues that only the rich, the strong, the oppressors and the enforcers of injustice (notably the Americans and the Israelis) have the right to use violence, while the poor, the weak, the oppressed and the victims of injustice must renounce violence, submit to their fate and accept whatever crumbs their betters may magnanimously deign suitable to let fall from their table — a principle dear to the hearts and minds of those who are happy with the status quo but not one likely to win hearts and minds among those who are not or, indeed, anyone who believes that justice should be pursued and injustice resisted.
As if that were not enough, Obama also felt the need to declare that America’s bonds with Israel are “unbreakable” — a statement one would expect in a speech to AIPAC or on the American campaign trail but one which one would not normally have thought essential to include in this particular speech before this particular audience. At least it is a statement consistent with one of Obama’s Quranic citations — “Speak always the truth”. It constitutes a proclamation (or admission) that America is not and will never be a truly independent nation and that this is just fine with Barack Obama.
If Israelis were looking for assurance that any public “pressure” from Obama to improve their behavior would be purely rhetorical and could be ignored with impunity, here was that assurance.
Nevertheless, one intriguing paragraph in the speech is worth considering: “Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America’s founding. The same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia.”
Comparing the position of today’s Palestinians to that of black slaves in America or native South Africans under that country’s apartheid regime can only be constructive. However, Obama has not thought through the context or his conclusion. As he rightly notes, those oppressed peoples and victims of injustice whom he cites were seeking “full and equal rights”, not the partition of their countries.
If the goal of an oppressed people is to convince a determined and powerful settler-colonial movement which wishes to seize their land, settle it and keep it (eventually emptying it of them and their fellow natives) that it should cease, desist and leave, nonviolent forms of resistance are suicidal. If, however, the goal were to be to obtain the full rights of citizenship in a democratic, nonracist state (as was the case in the American civil rights movement and the South African anti-apartheid movement), then nonviolence would be the only viable approach. Violence would be totally inappropriate and counterproductive. The morally impeccable approach would also be the tactically effective approach. The high road would be the only road.
Nonviolence is clearly morally preferable to violence. Democracy and equal rights are clearly morally preferable to apartheid and partition. The better goal and the better tactic are a perfect match, the only match that truly offers hope. If and when the current Palestinian leaderships, or the Palestinian people under a new and better leadership, draw the only rational conclusion from Barack Obama’s Cairo speech — that he offers them neither change nor hope and that they must rely exclusively on themselves in the pursuit of justice — they should courageously press their own “reset” button and unite to pursue democracy and equal rights by nonviolent means.
- John V. Whitbeck, an international lawyer who has advised the Palestinian negotiating team in negotiations with Israel, is author of “The World According to Whitbeck”. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.
