By Ramzy Baroud

Whether Barack Obama is or, at one point, was a Muslim should be a trivial matter in any society governed by secular, democratic dictates that apply to all, on equal footage, regardless of race, gender or religion. But in a society that is taking a turn toward the right, the matter is anything but inconsequential.

According to estimates, there are anywhere between 1.2 billion to 1.8 billion Muslims worldwide, 8 million of whom are Americans. But Muslims feel threatened, and for good reason. After the tragic events of September 11, 2001, Muslim communities have been shamelessly branded as the “enemy” to the point that in mainstream media today, the term “patriot” is juxtaposed with “Muslim” as if the two terms are irreconcilable.

The events of 9/11 have indeed politicized faith like no other past event — in a country where faith is already a powerful player in political affairs. Chris Hedges writes: “Dominionism, born out of a theology known as Christian reconstructionism, seeks to politicize faith. It has, like all fascist movements, a belief in magic along with leadership adoration and a strident call for moral and physical supremacy of a master race, in this case American Christians.”

Under these unfortunate circumstances, Obama’s faith matters greatly. The presumptive presidential candidate of the Democratic Party is vilified on the question of his faith, often accused of being a “closet Muslim” — thus, supposedly, bearing wicked plans to destroy this country from “within.” His detractors accentuate the claim, knowing fully that they have an audience, large enough to cause the energetic candidate some trouble along the way.

“Summarized, available evidence suggests Obama was born a Muslim to a nonpracticing Muslim father and for some years had a reasonably Muslim upbringing under the auspices of his Indonesian stepfather. At some point, he converted to Christianity,” concludes rightwing columnist Daniel Pipes, known for his ardent anti-Muslim views.

Such commentators seem entirely oblivious to the fact that by digging up the “dirt” of Obama’s past, as a third grader in Indonesia, to “prove” that at one point in his life he was raised a Muslim — thus should be disowned as a candidate of “change” in America — they compromise on the very nature of tolerance that America should be standing for.

They, although indirectly, envision their alternative view of the future of America, as one ruled by a religious fundamentalist intolerant group that would fight anyone who fails to adhere to their skewed ideology and preferred physical appearance. Also, considering how race and vote were intrinsically linked in individual party contests, one can conclude that being black, and a Muslim, are the antithesis of what these narrow-minded bunch stand for.

Obama, of course, is violating the very principles that he tirelessly preaches, by responding to “accusations” of his Muslim heritage as if he was warding off an incurable disease. Such claims are being deemed “smears” and “lies,” and according to a debate on MSNBC, Obama declared that he had been “victimized” by such claims. He has been so tireless and fervent in disproving these “smears” that his very own religious intolerance and racism has been shamelessly disregarded.

“I’ve been to the same church — the same Christian church — for almost 20 years,” he told a cheering audience last January. “I was sworn in with my hand on the family Bible.” One of the many pieces of literature distributed by his campaign in past months featured photos of Obama praying with the words “COMMITTED CHRISTIAN” in large letters across the middle.

It says Obama will be a president “guided by his Christian faith” and includes a quote from him saying, “I believe in the power of prayer,” according to an Associated Press report.

Speaking in a Florida synagogue, Obama tried to assure his Jewish audience that his name “Barack” has the same Semitic roots as the Hebrew name “Baruch.” His supporters contend that the origins of the name are African, not Arabic. Even the clearly Arabic roots of Obama’s name are now explained based on “African” and — as of late — “Semitic” roots. Obama was responding to a member of the audience who exclaimed that he would be more comfortable voting for someone named Barry, not Barack. Instead of lashing out at the man’s bigotry, Obama once again, “fought off rumors” this time reinterpreting his own name.

As for being a Muslim, Obama has spent much time, energy and resources fending off the accusations, even starting FighttheSmears.com to prove — among other things — that he is not a Muslim.

Then on June 16, two Muslim women who attended an Obama event in Detroit were told they couldn’t stand behind the candidate. One was told her head covering was an issue, and another was told that for political reasons they didn’t want Muslims appearing with him on TV, reported National Public Radio.

Of course, this is anything but an identity crisis for the savvy Harvard-educated politician of “change.” Obama must have comprehended, and early on, the implicit limits of tolerance in his country, and has decided to concede to the harbingers of racism and bigotry. Obama should have unapologetically responded to the speculation on his religion in a respectful manner, for example like this:

I would have been honored to be affiliated with the religion of Islam, one that is adhered to by one-fourth of humanity, and is the religion of my ancestors and millions of Americans.

But I am equally honored to be a member of a church, to be a Christian, a religion — like all great religions — that has taught me tolerance, peace and equality, principles that I will continue to cherish as long as I live.

Bush began by praising Sharon as ‘one of Israel’s greatest leaders.’

By Ira Glunts

In a talk eerily reminiscent of his “Axis of Evil” speech, President George W. Bush told the Israeli Knesset on May 15 of his commitment to vanquish any group that opposes his vision of American hegemony in the Middle East. He specifically included Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and Al Qaeda as the enemies in his “war against terror and extremism.” Oddly he did not include the Taliban, whom the US military is currently fighting in Afghanistan, on his list of Muslim enemies. Perhaps this is because his Israeli hosts do not perceive the Taliban as an immediate threat to their security.

It is difficult to know whether Bush’s exaggerated bellicosity derives from his desire to please the Israelis, play to his political base in the United States, or is simply another occasion for him to engage in the type of ominous saber-rattling that has been characteristic of his administration. President Bush emphasized his dedication and resolve to press on with his aggressive foreign policy by proclaiming that the war on terror is “an ancient battle between good and evil.” Considering the current unstable political situation in both Gaza and Lebanon, plus the diplomatic crisis in US/Iranian relations, one has to wonder if the President’s words signify that the US has immediate plans for an increased military engagement in the region.

Bush began his remarks by praising Ariel Sharon as “one of Israel’s greatest leaders” and reiterating his provocative statement that the former Israeli Prime Minister was “a man of peace.” Sharon, who is considered the major architect of the Israeli settlements, is reviled among Palestinians. Apparently oblivious to how his Sharon statement compromised his credibility, Bush compounded his flight of fancy by telling his listeners that “Israel has always worked tirelessly for peace.” I imagine that many of the members of the Knesset in their self-serving obtuseness may actually believe that this is true, but to the rest of the world this is simply a statement that Israel will not, at least under Bush’s watch, be required to make any concessions to its enemies.

The present practice among American politicians is to shamelessly pander to Israeli and Jewish-American interests as they are understood and transmitted by lobbying groups such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Bush, rising to the celebratory occasion, did not disappoint his listeners. First Bush substituted the name “Eretz Yisrael” for Israel. This biblical term is generally associated with the settlers who believe that Israel should retain all of the West Bank. He then reiterated the false argument, albeit popular among Israelis, that to be against a Jewish state is anti-Semitic. This is obviously not true, since all Jews do not support the State of Israel, especially as it is represented by its current policies of occupation and human rights violations. Bush further endeared himself to his audience by comparing the futility of negotiating with the groups he labeled “terrorists” with trying to negotiate with the Nazis in 1939. The Israelis often recall the British appeasement of the Nazis when attempting to counteract criticism of their own actions. Ariel Sharon famously employed the appeasement argument to criticize the US for opposing his 2002 reinvasion of the West Bank. In that case, President Bush backed down from his blunt admonitions to the Israelis to withdraw their invading troops from Palestinian-controlled areas.

The Palestinians were notably excluded from Mr. Bush’s speech except for one brief mention of a future state. In the context of this speech, such a state could be easily interpreted as the truncated mini-state that many in the Israeli establishment would be willing to consider. There was no mention of the so-called Annapolis Peace Process that the Americans are currently sponsoring, and which Bush occasionally trumpets as his Israeli/Palestinian plan for peace. There was no mention of the ongoing creation and expansion of settlements, which the Bush administration sometimes timidly proclaims are not helpful in moving the peace process forward. These omissions surprised and delighted many of the Israelis who were present. The fact that Bush was so effusive in his praise of the Israelis and basically neglected the Palestinians was a clear signal that the President is not committed to the peace negotiations in which his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is now involved.
The best Bush could come up with as a rosy future for the Middle East in 60 years was decidedly modest. He described the relationship among nations there by stating “it doesn’t mean Israel and its neighbors will be the best of friends.” The American President’s hope for the region in the future is a Pax Isra-Americana over which the Arabs will have no choice.

What was most startling about the speech was Bush’s aggressive talk about Israel’s enemies and how the US was ready to act against the many groups that both countries consider “terrorists,” groups that in the US President’s mind, are beyond redemption. One such group is the Iranian government. The US administration’s war drums are beating louder and louder for military confrontation against Iran. There have been reports that the neocons in the government feel that now is the time for at least a “surgical” attack against that country’s nuclear sites. In Lebanon there is an increasingly unstable political and security situation where Hezbollah forces are flexing their military muscle. In 2006 Israel, with American backing, tried to vanquish Hezbollah, but failed. Will Bush now use the American military in Lebanon or encourage the Israelis to do so? In Gaza, Hamas is gaining support due to the failure of its opponents to deliver on their promise to improve conditions and achieve statehood. Could this bellicose tone from Bush signal that the Israelis have a green light for a massive reinvasion of the Gaza Strip, as proposed by Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak?

In a speech filled with hyperbole and emotional appeals, Bush derided those who cannot “fathom the darkness in these men [the terrorists]” and those that harbor the “foolish delusion” that we can negotiate a peaceful settlement. This latter statement has been interpreted to be an implied criticism of ex-President Jimmy Carter who met with Hamas leaders recently. It has also been seen as directed against Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama, who, despite the pointed objection of administration officials and his Democratic primary opponent Senator Hillary Clinton, has continually expressed a willingness to negotiate with Syrian and Iranian leaders. Obama issued a statement which said that he has never advocated negotiating with terrorists. The Illinois Senator does not perceive the governments of Iran or Syria to be terrorists, as Bush does. Additionally, by criticizing those who want to talk to the terrorist enemy, Bush is again telling the Israelis that the US will not pressure them into engaging in meaningful negotiations with the Palestinians, since Hamas is part of the evil enemy. Unfortunately, like Bush Obama also considers Hamas a terrorist organization who is not an appropriate negotiating partner, despite its standing as a legally and democratically-elected government.

As we learned from the “Axis of Evil” speech, tough talk from George Bush can foreshadow disastrous consequences for both his enemies and the people of the United States who will be paying for his military adventures in countless ways for many years. Hopefully, Bush’s term will expire before he can act militarily against those whose names he called out during his speech. However, even if Bush does not order US forces into another ill-conceived military engagement, the next President will inherit not only the armed conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, but a huge war lobby with a very effective propaganda machine, that will make it difficult for any US leader to avoid staying the same horrific course.

Seth Freedman, The Guardian

In sharp contrast to last week’s Independence Day celebrations on the streets of West Jerusalem, the east side of the city took on an air of mourning Thursday, as the 60th anniversary of the Nakba (“catastrophe”) was marked. All over Gaza and the West Bank, demonstrations took place to commemorate the fate that befell the Palestinian people in 1948, and — despite their residing inside Israel proper — East Jerusalem residents were just as eager to make their voices of protest heard.

I headed to Damascus Gate on Thursday morning, to see for myself how high emotions were running amongst the demonstrators — yet before I’d even arrived I was already knee-deep in discussion about the conflict. Upon learning my reasons for crossing the divide into East Jerusalem, my Arab cab driver poured out a stream of invective against the Israeli authorities, bemoaning the situation he and his people had been forced to endure for 60 years.

Beginning with a scathing attack on George Bush — “He only cares about the Israelis; he’s not done a single thing for the Arabs in all his time as president” — he grew steadily angrier and more bitter as we circumvented the Old City walls en route to the protest. “We have no rights in our own land,” he muttered, “and even then the Israelis aren’t satisfied. It’s not enough for them to control us and humiliate us in our homes; now they want to drive us out of Jerusalem completely.”

“It’s a systematic program to get rid of us”, he assured me, sucking furiously on his cigarette. “They make our lives hell — they give us no (municipal services); they don’t let us build in our own neighborhoods, so people are forced to move out as the population grows; and they make us feel as though we don’t belong.” As I got out of the cab, next to a phalanx of border policemen fanning out to encircle the protesters, he beckoned me back to deliver his parting thoughts: “If you think I sound angry now, wait till the 70th anniversary of the Nakba. As long as Israel carries on behaving like this, our rage is only going to get worse.”

His words rang in my ears as I watched nine- and ten-year-old children stand defiantly alongside their parents at the protest. Several of them clutched cheap plastic poles with the UN flag flying atop them in the breeze; the words “Right of Return — 194” emblazoned across them in bold black letters. The children were under no illusion about what measures had to be taken to redress the injustices suffered by their forebears, and demanding the right of return suggested the time for talk of two states had been and gone.

A local shopkeeper told me just as much, asking me not to attach his name to his words, “since this country isn’t quite as democratic as they’d like you to think”. The right of return for Palestinian refugees was, he said, “something we can never give up on, not whilst every Jew on earth is allowed to move here without hindrance. Maybe if they said ‘no more Jewish immigrants — we’re full up’, then I’d consider it, but that’s not going to happen. They let people from Europe and Africa move here, yet refuse to discuss the issue of refugees (who came from here originally).”

“Any agreement with the Palestinian Authority must include the right of return, or at least significant compensation for those expelled. I know that Jews were kicked out of Arab lands too, and they should also be compensated, but on a much smaller scale. After all, they might have lost property, but we lost an entire country.”

At this point, his eyes glazed over and his tone took a marked shift away from the here and now and into the realms of fantasy born out of years of frustration with the status quo. “The truth is, my friend, that Nasser was right. He said that ‘What’s taken by force can only be returned by force’. We’re never going to get what we deserve from the Israelis. The only way we’ll have our dignity restored is when the Arab world stands up and fights for us and our rights.”

“And it will happen”, he declared forcefully, his eyes blazing as he spoke. “It might not happen in my lifetime, but it will happen in the next 50 years. I am one of the most moderate men around here, but — believe me — if an Arab army rises up to fight the Israelis, I’d join them myself. Not the groups carrying out suicide bombings, mind you, but a real army that had the power to take on the Israelis.”

“My son gets so furious when he is humiliated at checkpoints”, he went on. “He asks me ‘why should we deal with these kind of people at all? Better to live under the occupation, sign no agreements whatsoever, and wait for the Arab world to come to our aid’”.

His sentiments were distressingly similar to those of the embattled Jews in the shtetls of Eastern Europe, who bore their oppression at the hands of the Cossacks and others by falling back on waiting for messianic redemption. By retreating into an otherworldly shell, they were able to block out the injustice and iniquities that they were dealt, and focus on a time when they would be delivered salvation by a higher power.

For the shopkeeper, the “Arab world” is the messiah; the white knight who will ride in on his trusty steed to right all the wrongs and restore to the Palestinians their dignity and honor. Despite the last 60 years of history suggesting otherwise — that the Arab world is neither powerful nor interested enough to take serious action on the Palestinians’ behalf — he clings to this belief like a shipwreck survivor to a narrow plank of wood.

As each year passes, and the Palestinians feel ever more scorned by Israel and her allies, it’s no wonder that they seek comfort in droves in the arms of the extremists. Dogmatism and fundamentalism can promise them the moon, whilst the facts on the ground remain the same, and the longer the status quo persists, the stronger groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad grow. For them not to achieve utter domination amongst their people before the 70th anniversary of Israel’s creation, much must be done to convince the Palestinians that there is an alternative — but no one on the Palestinian side is holding their breath.

What are the underpinnings of Hilary Clinton’s threat to obliterate Iran?

By Robert Weitzel

“To misunderstand the nature and threat of evil is to risk being blindsided by it…An evil unchecked is the prelude to genocide.” - Dr. Mordechai: The Ezekiel Option

There are over 70 million human beings living in Iran, 17.5 million of whom are under the age of fifteen. Hillary Clinton vowed to attack Iran and “totally obliterate” the majority of the Persian race in a furnace of primordial fire should the Iranian government attack Israel with nuclear weapons, which they do not now possess or are likely to for some time - if ever.

Hillary’s “final solution” to the Persian problem bests Adolf Hitler by a magnitude of ten. Missing in Clinton’s campaign trail pandering to America’s pro-Israel lobbies and the mushrooming evangelical Christian Zionist movement is the “inconvenient truth” that Israel has the most modern and most deadly army in the Middle East thanks to an annual $3.5 billion in American aid - one third of the U.S. aid budget.

Israel is also a major nuclear power in the region - though it refuses to admit it - with up to 200 nuclear warheads and the inter-continental-range ballistic missiles to deliver them and, according to the U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment, also has an undeclared offensive chemical and biological warfare program. Israel, along with India and Pakistan are the only three nations not to have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran is a signatory of the NNPT, by the way.

The most inconvenient truth, however, is that Israel has a 60-year history of attacking - with American-supplied armaments - any Arab country it perceives as a threat, nuclear-armed or slingshot-armed alike. Israel’s bombing of Iraq’s Osirak nuclear facility in 1981 comes to mind as an example of the former, its shelling of Gaza the latter. Israel can and will “ pre-emptively defend” itself against Iran, the country that a February 2008 International Atomic Energy Agency report concluded has not diverted nuclear material to non-peaceful purposes.

Unfortunately for the 70 million Persians in Hillary’s bombsight, Iran’s biggest liability is its president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - but then the U.S. is equally burdened. So the real truth behind Clinton’s “final solution” to the Persian problem or John McCain’s “bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, Iran” off-key hyperbole is not simply a “David and Goliath” struggle for survival, but is instead a cynical exploitation of the unholy marriage of convenience between fanatical Jewish Zionists who want a Muslim-free Eretz Israel in order to fulfill Old Testament prophecy and bring about the first coming of their Messiah and fanatical Christian Zionists who want the entire Middle East in flames to fulfill New Testament prophecy and bring about the Second Coming of their Messiah. Jewish Zionists need the money and the political clout of the Christian Zionists. Christian Zionists need the Semitism and the chutzpah of the Jewish Zionists. Politicians need the votes that both groups can deliver, which in religion-drenched America is a hefty consignment. According to a 2006 Pew Research Center poll, fully 44 percent of Americans believe that “God gave the land that is now Israel to the Jewish people” and 36 percent believe the “creation of the state of Israel is a step toward the Second Coming of Jesus.”

Depending on which poll is the most accurate, there are between 105-135 million evangelical and born-again Christians in the United States. Of these Christians, a 2004 International Fellowship of Christians and Jews poll found that 31 percent identified U.S. support for Israel as their “primary consideration” in selecting a presidential candidate, while 64 percent cited it as an “important factor.”

Predictably then, when Hillary Clinton or John McCain threaten to obliterate Iran, or any predominately Muslim country in the Middle East, with nuclear weapons, the primary audience for their saber rattling is not the Muslim “evildoers” but is, instead, the pro-Israel lobby and the Christian Zionist muscle in America who are willing to see the “ultimate evil” committed to further their ideological and eschatological agenda.

Nowhere does “ultimate evil” play a more prominent role than in the End Time machinations of two well-connected Christian Zionists, Tim LaHaye and John Hagee.

Tim LaHaye is best known as the co-author of the blockbuster Left Behind series, which has sold over 60 million copies worldwide. The pulp fiction series takes the Book of Revelation as its inspiration and chronicles the tribulations that will occur between the Rapture of born-again Christians and the Second Coming of Jesus. The blood and viscera of millions of infidels and heretics—unrepentant Atheists, Jews, Muslims, and Catholics—are spattered on every page.

Tim LaHaye is least known as the founder and first president of the secretive Council for National Policy. The CNP was formed in 1981 as an umbrella organization to advance an ultra-conservative, right wing Christian agenda. LaHaye’s particular agenda items include replacing U.S. secular law with Old Testament biblical law and a Middle East foreign policy that expedites the Second Coming.

According to the New York Times, the CNP consists of “a few hundred of the most powerful conservatives in the country” who meet “behind closed doors at undisclosed locations…to strategize about how to turn the country to the right.” Though the membership of the CNP is a guarded secret, a list of those known to have been associated with it reads like a who’s who of Christian Zionists and neocon ideologues whose passion is to see the Middle East in flames and in chains.

A short list includes: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, former Attorney Generals John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales, former U.N. ambassador John Bolton, the late Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Phyllis Schlafly, and Oliver North - the guy who sold weapons to Iran using Israel as the middleman.

Do not be blindsided. The CNP is a major player in domestic and foreign policy decisions and the “evil” that results.

John Hagee, televangelist and pastor of the 19,000-member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, is the founder of Christian United for Israel. Hagee formed CUFI in 2005 following the publication of his book, The Jerusalem Countdown: A Warning to the World, which sports a mushroom cloud on its cover and argues for a pre-emptive nuclear strike on Iran to fulfill God’s plan for both Israel and the West.

Hagee’s theology - and vision of the future - focuses on selected apocalyptic passages from the Old Testament. He believes that a nuclear strike against Iran will cause Arab nations to unite under Russian leadership, as outlined in the Book of Ezekiel, leading to an “inferno [that] will explode across the Middle East, plunging the world toward Armageddon.” Consequently, CUFI exists to set the fires of the Apocalypse and bring about the Rapture and the Second Coming, but it needs Jewish Zionists to strike the match.

Christians United for Israel is the evangelical equivalent of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the powerful pro-Israel lobby courted and placated by every American politician who has national aspirations. John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and Barak Obama have each pledged their fealty to AIPAC.

John Hagee is not without his own short list of beltway benefactors. The list includes, but is not limited to: George W. Bush, House Minority Whip Roy Blunt, Senator Joe Lieberman—who called Hagee an “Ish Elokim,” a man of God—and John McCain who was “very honored by Pastor John Hagee’s endorsement [for president].”

When Christian Zionists with the stature of LaHaye and Hagee shill for fanatical Jewish Zionists who are promoting the ethic cleansing of Eretz Israel for biblical or nationalistic reasons or the pre-emptive “defensive” nuking of Iran, politicians with the stature of Hillary Clinton and John McCain, along with a hefty consignment of the electorate, are their willing dupes. It’s just the politics of religion as usual in America.

But Jewish Zionists need to understand that the difference between Christian Zionists and Muslim suicide bombers is scale, a nuclear warhead versus a backpack bomb, and a willingness to let others do the killing - and the dying - for them.

Jewish Zionists should also keep in mind that Christian Zionists have no intention of being around when the sands of the Middle East are turned to glass in a furnace of primordial fire. They will have been Raptured and out of harm’s way in Paradise. Their Bible tells them so.

- Robert Weitzel is a contributing editor to Media With a Conscience. His essays regularly appear in The Capital Times in Madison, WI. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Contact him at: robertweitzel@mac.com

Next Stop Iran? Part of the cover page for the Economist in 2007.

By Stephen Lendman

Led by Dick Cheney, Bush administration neocons want war on Iran. So does the Israeli Lobby, but it doesn’t mean they’ll get it. Powerful forces in Washington and the Pentagon are opposed and so far have prevailed. Nonetheless, worrisome recent events increase the possibility and must be closely watched.

Recall George Bush’s January 10, 2007 address to the nation. He announced the 20,000 troop “surge” and more. “Succeeding in Iraq,” he said, “also requires defending its territorial integrity and stabilizing the region in the face of extremist challenges. This begins with addressing Iran and Syria. These two regimes are allowing ‘terrorists’ and ‘insurgents’ to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq. Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt (those) attacks….we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.”

That was then; this is now. On May 3, Andrew Cockburn wrote on CounterPunch: “Six weeks ago, President Bush signed a secret ‘finding’ authorizing a covert offensive against the Iranian regime that, according to those familiar with its contents, (is) ‘unprecedented in its scope.’ ” The directive permits a range of actions across a broad area costing hundreds of millions with an initial $300 million for starters. Elements of the scheme include:

– targeted assassinations;

– funding Iranian opposition groups; among them - Mujahedin-e-Khalq that the State Department designates a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO); Jundullah, the “army of god militant Sunni group in Iranian Baluchistan; Iranian Kurdish nationalists; and Ahwazi arabs in southwest Iran;

– destabilizing Syria and Hezbollah; the current Lebanon turbulence raises the stakes;

– putting a hawkish commander in charge; more on that below; and

– kicking off things at the earliest possible time.

These type efforts and others were initiated before and likely never stopped. So it remains to be seen what differences emerge this time and how much more intense they become.

More concerns were cited in a Michael Smith May 4 Times Online report headlined “United States is drawing up plans to strike on Iranian insurgency camp.” It refers to a “surgical strike” against an “insurgent training camp.” In spite of hostile signals, however, “the administration has put plans for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities on the back burner” after Gates replaced Rumsfeld. The article makes several other key points:

– “American defense chiefs (meaning top generals and admirals) are firmly opposed to (attacking) Iranian nuclear facilities;”

– on the other hand, they very much support hitting one or more “training camps (to) deliver a powerful message to Tehran;”

– in contrast, UK officials downplay Iranian involvement in Iraq even though Tehran’s Revolutionary Guard has close ties to al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army; and

– Bush and Cheney are determined not to hand over “the Iran problem” to a successor.

Earlier on April 7, Haaretz reported still more stirrings. It was about Israel’s “largest-ever emergency drill start(ed) to test the authorities’ preparedness for threats (of) a missile attack on central Israel.” Prime Minister Olmert announced that the “drill (was) no front for Israeli bellicose intentions toward Syria” and by implication Iran. Both countries and Hezbollah see it otherwise and with good reason. Further, Israeli officials indicated that this exercise might be repeated annually because they say Iran may have a nuclear capability by early 2009, so Israel will prepare accordingly.

No one can predict US and Israeli plans, but certain things are known and future possibilities can be assessed. Consider recent events. In mid-March, Dick Cheney toured the Middle East with stops in Israel, the West Bank, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Oman, Afghanistan and Iraq. It came after Centcom commander Admiral William Fallon “resigned” March 10 (a year after his appointment) after reports were that he sharply disagreed with regional administration policy.

Public comments played it down, but speculation was twofold - Fallon’s criticism of current Iraq policy and his opposition to attacking Iran. Before the March 10 announcement, smart money said he’d be sacked by summer and replaced by someone more hawkish. It came sooner than expected, and, even more worrisome, by a super-hawk. One with big ambitions, and that’s a bad combination. More on that below.

First, recall another Pentagon sacking last June, officially announced as a “retirement.” George Bush was said to have “reluctantly agreed” to replacing Joint Chiefs Chairman Peter Pace because of his “highest regard” for the general. At issue, of course, was disagreement again over Middle East policy with indications Pace was far from on board. He signaled it on February 17, 2006 at a National Press Club luncheon. Responding to a question, he said: “It is the absolute responsibility of everybody in uniform to disobey an order that is either illegal or immoral.” He later added that commanders should “not obey illegal and immoral orders to use weapons of mass destruction….They cannot commit crimes against humanity.”

These comments and likely private discussions led to Pace’s dismissal. This administration won’t tolerate dissent even by Joint Chiefs Chairmen. It’s clear that officials from any branch of government will be removed or marginalized if they oppose key administration policy. Some go quietly while more notable ones make headlines that omit what’s most important. For one thing, that the Pentagon is rife with dissent over the administration’s Middle East policy.

For another, the law of the land, and there’s nothing more fundamental than that. The administration disdains it so it’s no fit topic for the media. Law Professor Francis Boyle champions it in his classroom, speeches, various writings and books like his newest - Protesting Power: War, Resistance, and Law.

Boyle is an expert. He knows the law and has plenty to cite - the UN Charter; Nuremberg Charter, Judgment and Principles; Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide; Universal Declaration of Human Rights; Hague Regulations; Geneva Conventions; Supreme and lower Court decisions; US Army Field Manual 27-10; the Law of Land Warfare (1956); and US Constitution.

He unequivocally states that every US citizen, including members of the military and all government officials, are duty bound to obey the law and to refuse to carry out orders that violate it. Doing so makes them culpable. Included are all international laws and treaties. The Constitution’s supremacy clause (”the supreme law of the land” under Article VI) makes them domestic law. General Pace, Fallon and others on down aren’t exempt. Neither is the president, vice-president, all administration members and everyone in Congress.

Before Fallon’s sacking, things were heating up. Three US warships (including the USS Cole guided-missile destroyer) were deployed to the Lebanese coast - officially “to show support for regional stability (and over) concern about the situation in Lebanon.” It’s been in political crisis for months, and it’s got Washington and Israel disturbed - because of Hezbollah’s widespread popularity and ability to defend itself.

Any regional US show of force causes concern, especially when more is happening there simultaneously. Russia’s UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin criticized it, and Hezbollah said it “threat(ened)” regional stability - with good reason. It believes conflict will erupt in northern Occupied Palestine close to the Lebanese border. It’s also preparing to counter Israel’s latest threat - an Israeli Channel 10 News report that the IDF is on high alert “inside and outside Israel” and is prepared to launch a massive attack if Hezbollah retaliates for the assassination of one of its senior leaders, Imad Fayez Mughniyah, by a February 12 Damascus car-bombing.

Then came Cheney’s Middle East tour with likely indications of its purpose - oil, Israeli interests and, of course, isolating Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas further, and rallying support for more war in a region where Arab states want to end the current ones. What worries them most, or should, is the possibility that Washington will use nuclear weapons. If so, consider the consequences - subsequent radioactive fallout that will contaminate vast regional swaths permanently.

After Cheney left Saudi Arabia, the state-friendly Okaz newspaper reported that the Saudi Shura Council (the kingdom’s elite decision-making body) began formulating “national plans to deal with any sudden nuclear and radioactive hazards that may affect the kingdom” should the Pentagon use nuclear weapons against Iran. It’s a sign Saudi leaders are worried and a clear indication of what they discussed with Cheney.

Saudi, Iranian and other world leaders know the stakes. They’re also familiar with Bush administration strategy and tactics post-9/11.

Exhibit A: the December 2001 Nuclear Policy Review; it states that America has a unilateral right to use first strike nuclear weapons preemptively; it can be for any national security reason, even against non-nuclear states posing no discernible threat;

Exhibit B: the 2002 and hardened 2006 National Security Strategies reaffirm this policy; the latter edition mentions Iran 16 times stating: “We may face no greater challenge from a single country country than Iran;” unstated is that Iran never attacked another nation in its history - after Persia became Iran in 1935; it did defend itself vigorously when attacked by Iraq in 1980;

Exhibit C: post-9/11, the Bush administration scrapped the “nuclear deterrence” option; in his 2005 book “America’s War on Terrorism,” Michel Chossudovsky revealed a secret leaked report to the Los Angeles Times; it stated henceforth nuclear weapons could be used under three conditions:

– “against targets able to withstand non-nuclear attack;

– in retaliation for attack with nuclear, biological or chemical weapons; or

– in the event of surprising military developments;” that can mean anything the administration wants it to or any threats it wishes to invent.

WMD echoes still resonate. Now it’s a nuclearized Iran. Preemptive deterrence is the strategy, and Dick Cheney places the Islamic Republic “right at the top of the list” of world trouble spots. He calls Tehran a “darkening cloud” in the region; claims “obviously, they’re heavily involved in trying to develop nuclear weapons enrichment….to weapons grade levels;” cites fake evidence that Iran’s state policy is “the destruction of Israel;” and official post-9/11 policy identifies Iran and Syria (after Iraq and Afghanistan) as the next phase of “the road map to war.” Removing Hezbollah and Hamas are close behind plus whatever other “rogue elements” are identified;

Exhibit D: former Defense Undersecretary Douglas Feith’s new book, “War and Decision;” in it, he recounts the administration’s aggressive Middle East agenda - to remake the region militarily; plans took shape a few weeks post-9/11 when Donald Rumsfeld made removing Saddam Hussein official policy; the same scheme targeted Afghanistan and proposed regime change in Iran and elsewhere - unnamed but likely Syria, Somalia, Sudan, at the time Libya, removing Syria from Lebanon, and Hezbollah as well.

On the Campaign Trail - Iran in the Crosshairs

John McCain is so hawkish he even scares some in the Pentagon. Here’s what he said about Iran at a May 5 campaign event. He called the Tehran government the gravest danger to US Middle East interests and added: a “league of nations” must counter the “Iranian threat. Iran ‘obviously’ is on the path toward acquiring nuclear weapons. At the end of the day, we cannot allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. They are not only doing that, they are exporting very lethal devices and explosives into Iraq (and) training people (there as) Jihadists.”

It’s no surprise most Democrats have similar views, especially the leadership and leading presidential contenders. Obama calls Iran “a threat to us all.” For him, a “radical (nuclearized) Muslim theocracy” is unthinkable, and as president he won’t rule out using force. Nor will he against Pakistan or likely any other Muslim state. Obama also calls his support for Israel “unwavering.” He fully endorsed the 2006 Lebanon war, and it’s no secret where Israel stands on Iran and Syria.

Clinton is even more menacing. One writer calls her a “war goddess,” and her rhetoric confirms it. On the one hand, “Israeli security” tops “any American approach to the Middle East….we must not - dare not - waver from this commitment.” She then calls Iran “pro-terrorist, anti-American and anti-Israel.” She says a “nuclear Iran (is) a danger to Israel (and we’ve) lost critical time in dealing” with the situation. “US policy must be clear and unequivocal. We cannot and should not - must not - permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons.”

Worst of all was her comment on ABC’s Good Morning America in response to (a preposterous hypothetical) about Iran “launch(ing) a nuclear attack on Israel.” Her answer: “I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran. And I want them to understand that. We would be able to ‘totally obliterate’ them (meaning, of course, every man, woman and child).” She then added: “I don’t think it’s time to equivocate. (Iran has) to know they would face massive retaliation. That is the only way to rein them in.”

At the same time, she, the other leading candidates, and nearly everyone in Washington ignore Iran’s official policy. The late Ayatollah Khomeini banned nuclear weapons development. Today, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Ahmadinejad affirm that position, but western media won’t report it. They also play down IAEA reports confirming that no evidence shows Iran has a nuclear weapons program or that it’s violating NPT.

Media Rhetoric Heating Up

It happens repeatedly, then cools down, so what to make of the latest Iran-bashing. Nothing maybe, but who can know. So it’s tea leaves reading time again to pick up clues about potential impending action. Without question, the administration wants regime change, and right wing media keep selling it - Iranian leaders are bad; removing them is good, and what better way than by “shock and awe.”

Take Fouad Ajami for example from his May 5 Wall Street Journal op-ed. It’s headlined - “Iran Must Finally Pay A Price.” He’s a Lebanese-born US academic specializing in Middle East issues. He’s also a well-paid flack for hard right policies, including their belligerency. He shows up often in the Wall Street Journal (and on TV, too) and always to spew hate and lies - his real specialty.

His latest piece is typical. Here’s a sampling that’s indicative of lots else coming out now:

– “three decades of playing cat-and-mouse with American power have emboldened Iran’s rulers;

– why are the mullahs allowed to kill our soldiers with impunity;”

– in Iraq, “Iranians played arsonists and firemen at the same time; (it’s) part of a larger pattern;

– Tehran has wreaked havoc on regional order and peace over the last three decades;”

– earlier, George HW Bush offered an olive branch to Iran’s rulers;

– “Madeleine Albright (apologized) for America’s role in the (1953) coup;”

– all the while, “the clerics have had no interest in any bargain;” their oil wealth gives them great latitude;

– “they have harassed Arab rulers while posing as status quo players at peace with the order of the region;”

– they use regional proxies like “Hezbollah in Lebanon, warlords and militias in Iraq, purveyors of terror for the hire;

– the (earlier) hope….that Iran would refrain from (interfering) in Iran (was) wishful thinking;” now there’s Iran’s nuclear “ambitions” to consider; the “Persian menace” has to “be shown that there is a price for their transgressions.”

Sum it up, and it spells vicious agitprop by an expert at spewing it. He’s not alone. Disputing one of his assertions, a May 5 AFP report quotes Iraq government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh saying no “hard evidence” shows Iran is backing Shiite militiamen or inciting violence in the country.

Consider the Arab street as well. It’s unconcerned about Iran but outraged over US adverturism. Recall also that on March 2 Iranian President Ahmadinejad became the first Iranian head of state to visit Iraq in three decades. Prime Minister al-Maliki and President Talabani invited him and welcomed him warmly as a friend.

That doesn’t deter The New York Times Michael Gordon. He’s taken up where Judith Miller left off, and his May 5 piece is typical. It’s headlined “Hezbollah Trains Iraqis in Iran, Officials Say.” The key words, of course, are “Officials Say” to sell the idea that their saying it makes it so. No dissent allowed to debunk them or other administrative-supportive comments.

This one cites supposed information from “four Shiite militia members who were captured in Iraq late last year and questioned separately.” For Gordon and “Officials (who) Say,” it’s incriminating evidence for what Washington has long charged - “that the Iranians (are) training Iraqi militia fighters in Iran,” and Hezbollah is involved. The Pentagon calls them “special groups.”

Gordon goes on to report that Iran has gotten “less obtrusive (by) bringing small groups of Iraqi Shiite militants to camps in Iran, where they are taught how to do their own training, ‘American officials say.’ “

Once trained, “the militants then return to Iraq to teach their comrades how to fire rockets and mortars, fight as snipers or assemble explosively formed penetrators, a particularly lethal type of roadside bomb….according to American officials.”

As usual, the “officials” are anonymous and their “information has not been released publicly.” Gordon continues with more of the same, but sum it up and he sounds like Ajami, Judith Miller, and growing numbers of others like them.

On March 17, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) put out an Action Alert headlined “No Antiwar Voices in NYT ‘Debate.’ ” It referred to The Times March 16 “Week in Review” section on the war’s fifth anniversary featuring nine so-called experts - all chosen for their hawkish credentials. Included were familiar names like Richard Perle, Fred Kagan, Anthony Cordesman, Kenneth Pollack and even Paul Bremer. On May 4, The Times reconvened the same lineup for a repeat performance that would make any state-controlled media proud.

No need to explain their assessment either time, but NYT op-ed page editor said this on July 31, 2005: The op-ed page (where the above review was published) is “a venue for people with a wide range of perspectives, experiences and talents (to provide) a lively page of clashing opinions, one where as many people as possible have the opportunity to make the best arguments they can.” As long as they don’t conflict with official state policy, offend Times advertisers or potential ones, acknowledge Iran’s decisive role in ending the recent Basra fighting, or mention the (latest) 2007 (US) National Intelligence Estimate that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 - even though it’s likely one never existed and doesn’t now.

With Iraq still raging and hawkishness over Iran heating up, it’s disquieting to think what’s coming, and it’s got Middle East leaders uneasy. Not about Iran, about a rogue administration with over eight months left to incinerate the region in a mushroom-shaped cloud and no hesitation about doing it.

Enter the Generalissimo - Initials DP, Ambitions Outsized

Fallon is out, and, in late April, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said David Petraeus is being nominated to replace him as Centcom commander. General Raymond Odierno (his former deputy) will replace his former boss as Iraq chief. New York Times reporter Thom Shanker said these “two commanders (are) most closely associated with President Bush’s current strategy in Iraq,” so are on board to pursue it and maybe up the stakes.

Besides being a Latin American expert, James Petras writes extensively on the Middle East and how the Israeli Lobby influences US policy. His 2006 book, “The Power of Israel in the United States,” is must reading to understand it. Petras has a new article on Petraeus. It’s incisive, scary, and unsparing in exposing the generalissimo’s true character, failings, and ambitions.

Competence didn’t make him Iraq commander last year. It came the same way he got each star. In the words of some of his peers - by brown-nosing his way to the top. It made him more than a general. He’s a “brand,” and it got him Time Magazine’s 2007 runner-up slot for Person of the Year.

The media now shower him with praise for his stellar performance in an otherwise dismal war. So do politicians. McCain calls him “one of (our) greatest (ever) generals.” Clinton says he’s “an extraordinary leader and a wonderful advocate for our military.” Obama was less effusive but said he supports his nomination as Centcom chief and added: “I think Petraeus has done a good tactical job in Iraq….It would be stupid of me to ignore what he has to say.” It would also hurt his presidential hopes as the right wing media would bash him mercilessly if he disparaged America’s new war hero with very outsized ambitions and no shyness in pursuing them.

He got off to a flying start after being appointed to the top Iraq job last year. The White House spin machine took over and didn’t let facts interfere with its praise. It described him as aggressive in nature, an innovative thinker on counterinsurgency warfare, a talisman, a white knight, a do-or-die competitive legend, and a man able to turn defeat into victory.

Others like Admiral Fallon had a different assessment, and Petras noted it in his article. Before his removal, he was openly contemptuous of a man who shamelessly supported Israel “in northern Iraq and the Bush ‘Know Nothings’ in charge of Iraq and Iran policy planning.” It got him his April 16 promotion, and his week earlier Senate testimony sealed it. He was strikingly bellicose in blaming Iran for US troop deaths. That makes points any time on Capitol Hill, especially in an election year when rhetoric sells and whatever supports war and Israel does it best.

Petras adds that Petraeus had few competitors for the Centcom job because other top candidates won’t stoop the way he does - shamelessly flacking for Israel, the bellicose Bush agenda, and what Petras calls “his slavish adherence to….confrontation with Iran. Blaming Iran for his failed military policies served a double purpose - it covered up his incompetence and it secured the support of” the Senate’s most hawkish (independent) Democrat, Joe Lieberman.

It also served his outsized ambitions that may include a future run for the White House. His calculus seems to be - lie to Congress, hide his failures, blame Iran, support Israel and the Bush agenda unflinchingly, claim he turned Iraq around, say he’ll do it in the region, and make him president and he’ll fix everything.

He (nor the media) won’t report how bad things are in Iraq or the toll on its people. They won’t explain the “surge’s” failure to make any progress on the ground. They won’t reveal the weekly US troop death and injury count that’s far higher than reported numbers. By one estimate, (including weekly Pentagon wounded updates), it tops 85,000 when the following categories are included:

– “hostile” and “non-hostile” deaths, including from accidents and illness;

– total numbers wounded; and

– many thousands of later discovered casualties, mainly brain traumas from explosions.

Left out of the above figures are future illnesses and deaths from exposure to toxic substances like depleted uranium. It now saturates large areas of Iraq in the soil, air and drinking water. Also omitted is the vast psychological toll. For many, it causes permanent damage, and whole families become victims.

Consider civilian contractor casualties as well. They may be in the thousands. A February Houston Post report noted 1123 US civilian contractor deaths. It left out numbers of wounded or any information about foreign workers. They may have been affected most.

Several other reports are played down. One is from the VA about 18 known daily suicides. The true number may be higher. Another comes from Bloomberg.com on May 5 but unreported on TV news. It cited Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health on an April 2008 Rand Corporation study. It found about “18.5% of returning (Iraq and Afghan) US soldiers (afflicted with) post-traumatic stress disorder or depression (PTSD), and only half of them receive treatment.”

Much of it shows up later, and many of its victims never recover. A smaller psychiatric association study put the PTSD number at about 32%, and a January 2006 Journal of the American Medical Association put it even higher - 35% of Iraq vets seeking help for mental health problems. A still earlier 2003 New England Journal of Medicine Study reported an astonishing 60% of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans showing PTSD “symptoms.” Most victims said their duty caused it, but over half of them never sought treatment fearing damage to their careers.

The same Rand study said another 19% have possible traumatic brain injuries ranging from concussions to severe head wounds. About 7% of vets suffer a double hit - both brain injury and PTSD or depression. It’s a wonder numbers aren’t higher as most active duty and National Guard forces serve multiple tours - some as many as six or more in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. Surviving that ordeal in one piece is no small achievement.

Patraeus’ calculus omits these victims and all other war costs abroad and at home. They’re consigned to an over-stuffed memory hole for whatever outs the facts on the ground or his PR-enhanced image.

Petras strips it away and calls him “a disastrous failure” whose record is so poor it takes media magic to remake it. This man will now direct administration Middle East policy. He supports its aims, and if neocon wishes are adopted it means continued war and occupation of Iraq, stepped up efforts in Afghanistan, and making a hopeless enterprise worse by attacking Iran. No problem for Petraeus if it helps his ambitions. They, of course demand success, or at least the appearance, the way Petraeus so far has framed it. It remains to be seen what’s ahead, and how long defeat can be called victory.

And one more thing as well. Congress will soon vote on more Iraq-Afghanistan supplemental funding. Bush wants another $108 billion for FY 2008. In hopes a Democrat will be elected president, Congress may add another $70 billion through early FY 2009 for a total $178 billion new war spending (plus the usual pork add-ons) on top of an already bloated Pentagon budget programmed to increase.

It’s got economist Joseph Stiglitz alarmed and has for some time. In his judgment, the Iraq war alone (conservatively) will cost trillions of dollars, far more than his earlier estimates. That’s counting all war-related costs:

– from annual defense spending plus huge supplemental add-ons;

– outsized expenses treating injured and disabled veterans - for the government and families that must bear the burden;

– high energy costs; they’re affected by war but mostly result from blatant market manipulation; it’s not a supply/demand issue; there’s plenty of oil around, but not if you listen to industry flacks citing shortages and other false reasons why prices shot up so high;

– destructive budget and current account deficits; in the short run, they’re stimulative, but sooner or later they matter; they’re consuming the nation, and analysts like Stiglitz and Chalmers Johnson believe they’ll bankrupt us; others do as well like Independent Institute Senior Fellow Robert Higgs who last year outed the nation’s trillion dollar defense budget; in a recent May 7 article, he wrote: “As the US government taxes, spends, borrows, regulates, mismanages, and wastes resources on a scale never before witnessed in the history of mankind, it is digging its own grave;” others believe we’re past the tipping point and it’s too late;

– debts must be serviced; the higher they mount, the
greater the cost; they crowd out essential public and private investment; need growing billions for interest payments; damage the dollar; neglect human capital; and harm the country’s stature as an economic leader; the more we eat our seed corn, the greater the long-term damage;

– debts also reduce our manoeuvring room in times of national crisis; limitless money-creation and reckless spending can’t go on forever before inflation debases the currency; that’s a major unreported threat at a time monetary and fiscal stimulus shifted financial markets around, and touts now predict we’re out of the woods; they don’t say for how long, what may follow, or how they’ll explain it if they’re wrong;

– add up all quantifiable war costs, and Stiglitz now estimates (conservatively) a $4 - 5 trillion total for America alone; watch for higher figures later; both wars have legs; another may be coming; leading presidential candidates assure are on board and have no objection to out-of-control militarism;

– Stiglitz will be back; his estimate is low; before this ends, look for one of several outcomes - trillions more spent, bankruptcy finally ends it, or the worst of all possible scenarios: an unthinkable nuclear holocaust that (expert Helen Caldicott explains) “could end life on earth as we know it” unless sanity ends the madness.

The generalissimo is unconcerned. He’s planning his future. He envisions the White House, and imagine what then. Like the current occupant and whomever follows, look for more destructive wars to serve his political ambitions and theirs. They fall right in line with the defense establishment, Wall Street, and the Israeli Lobby.

Decades back, could anyone have thought things would come to this. Hopefully, good sense will gain currency and stop this madness before it consumes us.

Sami Al Hajj and his son: freedom at last (Photo: Aljazeera)

By Aijaz Zaka Syed

My youngest one is as old as the young son of Sami Al Hajj, the Al Jazeera cameraman who was carried home to freedom on a stretcher this week, after seven years in the Guantanamo Bay.

Watching a shockingly emaciated Hajj shower kisses on his son at a Khartoum hospital, where he has been admitted after freedom from the high security prison in Cuba, I couldn’t help think about my own kids.

I put myself in Hajj’s shoes and wonder how I would fare if I ended up in Bush’s gulag. What would happen to my own children and loved ones? And what chance would I have at freedom, if I got picked up by America’s friends and allies and ended up in the Bay, just as Hajj had been?

You might think I don’t have to end up in the Bay. I am not a terrorist. And I haven’t done anything except hold a mirror to the US and other big powers once in a while. But then Hajj is not a terrorist either. He did not fly any planes into the symbols of America’s might. He did not try to blow himself up near the White House or Pentagon. The only crime he ever committed was work for Al Jazeera, the television channel the Americans seem to think is run by Osama Bin Laden.

Hajj was on his way to Afghanistan to report for Al Jazeera when he was picked up by the authorities in Pakistan in 2001 and handed over to the US. Despite holding a valid visa to work as a journalist in Afghanistan, he was bundled off as an ‘enemy combatant’ to Gitmo.

Today, reunited with his family in Khartoum, Hajj is understandably emotional. Articulating his happiness at finding himself among his loved ones and sense of outrage at what he has been through at the same time is almost overwhelming for him. And more than the relief at his freedom, it is the thought of those left behind that torments him.

Watching the homecoming of Hajj, shown live on Al Jazeera for hours and watched by an outraged Arab world, a senior colleague comments: “I find it hard to believe this can happen in our age and time. And that too by the world’s greatest democracy and champion of human rights! I mean, how could you lock up a guy for years without a trial and charges and get away with it!”

Exactly. How could they do this to an individual in this age? Especially doing this to a journalist, working for a prominent media organisation as Al Jazeera, is a little hard to stomach. Yet that’s precisely what happened to Hajj. Repeated appeals and campaigning by human rights agencies and media groups failed to persuade the US authorities to let Al Jazeera man go.

If they are capable of doing this to a renowned journalist backed by a big organisation, I shudder to think what ordinary and nameless individuals picked up from around the world could go through at Gitmo. And there are hundreds of ordinary and nameless individuals languishing in the hellhole called Guantanamo Bay.

This is what Sami Al Hajj was trying to point out after his release. Fearing for those left behind, Hajj repeatedly appealed to the world’s conscience - if there’s such a thing as the world’s conscience - calling for justice and urgent efforts by the international community for freeing those still held at the Bay in most horrific conditions, without a trial, without a charge and without due process.

I don’t know how many people paid attention to what this distraught man was saying. But this is something that no human being with any belief in humanity and human dignity can ignore.

“Conditions in Guantanamo are very, very bad and they get worse by the day,” Hajj told the media from his hospital bed. “Our human dignity was violated and the US administration went beyond all human values, moral values, religious values. There are people from more than 50 countries who are completely deprived of all rights and privileges. They will not give them the rights that they give their animals.”

Strong words! And a damning indictment of the US and all that it stands for. But there’s no reason to doubt Hajj’s claim. The journalist himself is a walking proof of all that is wrong with the Gitmo. The Al Jazeera man was in his early 30s when he was captured. Today he’s in his late 30s but looks like a man in 80s. So much so his own brother Asim couldn’t recognise him when he was brought out of the aircraft.

It’s believed that by targeting Hajj, the US was trying to punish Al Jazeera for trying to show the alternate reality of the war on terror that the US media can’t or dare not. Al Jazeera, with its refreshingly bold approach and daredevil team of reporters, offers you the perspective you won’t find on CNN.

David Remes, a lawyer fighting for the Bay detainees, says there was also an element of racism in the way Hajj was treated and abused at the Bay. “The Europeans would never receive this sort of treatment,” Remes points out. As a result, Hajj is today “psychologically damaged” and might never recover from the trauma he underwent over the past seven years.

You would think those responsible for this would at least be repentant, if not offer a sincere apology to Hajj and his family. But as if responding to the outrage in the Muslim world over Hajj episode, a US spokesperson says Al Jazeera man was pretending to be ill when the aircraft carrying him landed in Khartoum. The official told ABC News Hajj was a ‘manipulator and a propagandist’ and was “faking illness” on his homecoming.

Hajj was in such a bad shape that the Sudanese and US officials accompanying him were alarmed. Sudanese minister Kamal Obeid says that “Hajj was exhausted, with very slow heart beats and low blood pressure”.

Only after he was drip-fed that the journalist was able to regain strength.
And there are still hundreds of Sami al Hajjs out there languishing in the biggest gulag of our time, waiting for their turn and waiting for freedom and justice. Contrary to the US claims, most of those individuals are innocent people who happened to be at the wrong place at a wrong time. Except for an odd militant or two, most of them are ordinary men like you and me.

This has been repeatedly argued by rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch and several courageous lawyers and activists in the US. The Washington Post ran a whole series proving why most of the Bay detainees are innocent people picked up by booty hunters in Afghanistan and Pakistan who were turned over as ‘terrorists’ to the US for a cash price.
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And the world has forgotten these innocent men. After all, it has enough of its own existing problems, from shooting oil prices to worsening food crisis. Who cares for nearly 300 faceless individuals, especially if they happen to be Arab or Muslim? There’s not a greater sin than being a Muslim in the time of terror war.

When will the US and the world wake up to the shame of Guantanamo Bay? Because this gulag and all that goes on in there fly in the face of all that America and the civilized world believe in. Freedom, justice, democracy, the rule of law and human rights; everything is at stake in the Guantanamo Bay.

Nicolas D Kristof of New York Times says, “it would take an exceptional enemy to damage America’s image and interests as much as Bush and Cheney already have with Guantanamo.”

They certainly have. The Guantanamo Bay violates everything that the US once celebrated and epitomised. And it’s not the terrorists and so-called enemy combatants who are incarcerated there. It’s America’s ideals that are imprisoned in the Guantanamo Bay. Free them, Mr Bush!

-Aijaz Zaka Syed is a Dubai-based journalist and commentator. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Contact him at: Aijaz.Syed@hotmail.com.

Iraq accounted for 60 per cent of worldwide terrorism fatalities.

By Ramzy Baroud

The data provided in the US State Department’s annual terrorism report for 2007 points to some interesting if puzzling conclusions. The much publicised document, made available 30 April via the State Department’s website, makes no secret of the fact that Al-Qaeda is back, strong as ever. It also suggests that violence worldwide is nowhere near subsiding, despite President Bush’s repeated assurances regarding the success of his “war on terror”.

Will the report inspire serious reflection on the US’s detrimental foreign policy and its role in the current situation?

Let’s look at some of the data. To start with, take Pakistan. Al-Qaeda or Al-Qaeda-inspired attacks in the country more than doubled (from 375 to 877) between 2006 and 2007. These attacks have claimed the lives of 1,335 people, compared to 335 in a previous report. That is a jump of almost 300 per cent.

Then there’s Afghanistan, which was supposedly “liberated” shortly after 11 September 2001. The number of attacks reported there increased a sharp 16 per cent in 2007. Some 1,127 violent incidents killing 1,966 people represent a significant surge in violence compared to 2006’s 1,257 deaths.

There have also been many other violent incidents around the world, including but not limited to North Africa, the terrorist bombings in Algeria in particular.

But this is barely half the story — or 40 per cent of it, if we want to be as specific as the terrorism report. Iraq accounted for 60 per cent of worldwide terrorism fatalities.

Considering the fact that the horrifying violence currently witnessed in Iraq was unheard of prior to the US invasion of 2003, will the Bush administration take a moment to connect the dots? Even a third grader could figure this one out: the US occupation was a major, if not sole factor, in Iraq’s relentless bloodbath. In order to right the wrong in Iraq, the US military should clearly just withdraw, and Bush — or whoever next claims the White House — should stop fabricating pretexts to justify a prolonged mission.

On 1 May 2003, President Bush declared the end of major combat operations in Iraq. As he stood on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln a huge banner behind him bore the words “Mission Accomplished”. The New York Times then wrote, “the Bush administration is planning to withdraw most United States combat forces from Iraq over the next several months and wants to shrink the American military presence to less than two divisions by the fall.”

Instead, more than five years after Bush’s speech, the administration seems determined to maintain a military surge, having added 20,000 soldiers. Making no apologies for the war’s contribution to an increase in terrorist activities, Bush’s officials continue to rationalise the surge as a commonsense response to ongoing violence, conveniently omitting the US’s own part in this violence. The State Department report doesn’t classify any of the thousands of innocent victims killed by US or coalition forces as victims of terrorism.

Russ Travers, deputy director of the Counterterrorism Centre, stated on the day the report was published, “It’s a fair statement that around the globe people are getting increasingly efficient at killing other people.” While Travers’ assertion is undoubtedly true, there seems to be no intention of providing any context, no connection drawn to the US’s direct invasions, or indirect but equally devastating role in campaigns of violence, whether in Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan.

But what the State Department’s terrorism report didn’t fail to do was once again identify Iran as the world’s “most active” state sponsor of terrorism. As reported in the Associated Press on 1 May, Iran was responsible for “supporting Palestinian extremists and insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq, whereÉ elements of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps continued to give militants weapons, training and funding.”

The irony is that the report further contributes to the US’s long-touted case for war against Iran; ironic because the report’s findings, if viewed responsibly, substantiate the claim that the Bush administration’s policies have only made the world more unsafe. Wouldn’t a war against Iran hike up the number of violent or terrorist incidents?

It also remains unclear how powerful Al-Qaeda really is, and how much of its capabilities were hyped in order to enable the Bush administration to continue its mission. Consider the two occasions Al-Qaeda was back in the news recently.

News media cited official Afghani reports attributing the recent assassination attempt on US-ally Afghani President Hamid Karzai to Al-Qaeda. In other reports, the US rationalised its own assassination of a leading Somali militia leader Aden Hashi Eyrow on 1 May as targeting a key Al-Qaeda member. It’s not the logic of the assassination that is key here, but rather the fact that while Al- Qaeda has reached a position of strength that can penetrate several layers of defences in Afghanistan, the US is getting itself involved in a regional feud in Somalia. Why would the Bush administration be chasing Al-Qaeda in Somalia, as in Iraq, if the group is reportedly in the most powerful position in Afghanistan?

Moreover, if Al-Qaeda indeed exists on such a large and influential scale in so many countries, isn’t it time to question the logic used by the Bush administration’s “war on terror” that was meant to weaken and destroy Al- Qaeda in the first place?

It may be, of course, that Al-Qaeda’s power and outreach is inflated for political reasons, where every conflict the US is involved in becomes immediately reduced to those who support, shield or host Al-Qaeda or Al- Qaeda inspired groups, thus justifying US military intervention anywhere.

Instead of dealing with the obvious truths that the terrorism report highlights, the authors of the report have resorted to another logic that places blame squarely on external circumstance, never holding the US government accountable for its actions.

Finally, is there really a need for lengthy reports that cost large sums of money and thousands of work hours if the lessons gleaned are always the wrong ones, leading to more blunders that prompt more violence, and more terrorism reports?

-Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers and journals worldwide. His latest book is The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle (Pluto Press, London).

Linda Heard, sierra12th@yahoo.co.uk

It doesn’t look as though Americans in Iraq are going anywhere anytime soon. Officially Iraq’s sovereignty was handed back to its rightful owners years ago, which means the occupiers remain in the country at the invitation of the Iraqi government. OK, try not to laugh!

Fact is the occupying power is digging in for the long haul and there is little the Iraqi leadership can do about it even if it wanted to. When challenged about their supersized, superfortified embassy sprouting on prime land — which one must assume was sequestered rather than gifted by Iraq — and their mushrooming permanent military bases, the Americans cite the postwar German/Japan models.

In other words, they are saying the victor has a perfect right to hang around the necks of the vanquished in perpetuity.

In this case, I don’t blame Arab governments for refusing to send their diplomatic personnel into the jaws of danger merely to hobnob with Iraqi officials for the purposes of affording them legitimacy when, as we know, the real decision-making takes place in Washington.

It could be that the Pentagon’s new plan to transform the so-called Green Zone into a walled-off oases of 21st century Western luxury is, in part, an attempt to lure reluctant ambassadors into lending credibility to the game with their mere presence and encourage their own diplomats to put their lives on the line.

According to the Associated Press, the US has a $5 billion, “five-year development ‘dream list’ to create a zone of influence around the new $700 million embassy to serve as a kind of high-end buffer for the compound”. In fact, it is now likely to cost more than $1.3 billion as we know from an emergency supplemental funding request delivered by President Bush to Congress in 2006.

The article quotes US Navy Capt. Thomas Karnowski, whose team conceived the plan, as explaining, “When you have $1 billion hanging out there and 1,000 employees lying around, you kind of want to know who your neighbors are. You want to influence what happens in your neighborhood over time.”

Unfortunately, we still don’t know the purpose of such a gigantic embassy, dubbed “Fortress America” that will house 1,000 permanent staff, a 3,000-strong security contingent and a substantial Marine detachment over 104 acres. To give this context, it is six times bigger than the UN headquarters in New York.

But we do know that it will contain its own power station, water and sewage treatment facilities, school, office buildings, apartment blocks, clubhouse, swimming pools and a cinema.

So how did the US take possession of 104 acres back of prime real estate smack in the center of the capital? Surely, the Iraqi government lodged its objections. Certainly the British would be up in arms if, say, the French decided Hyde Park would be a suitable site for its diplomatic mission and it’s doubtful the Egyptians would acquiesce to any extension of the US Embassy that would demolish their historical upmarket Garden City district.

Yet, according to reports, an interim Iraqi government actually transferred these 104 acres to the US in 2004 lock, stock and barrel. This is scandalous. No government would willingly sign away their people’s assets, let alone to an enemy responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of its innocent citizens. This is just another indication that the Iraqi leadership is not in charge.

Returning to the Green Zone, Capt. Karnowski envisages shopping malls, luxury condos, state-of-the-art hospitals, an amusement park and five-star hotels featuring in the blueprint.

The Marriott is already signed up, he says, although Marriott International is reluctant to confirm or deny this claim.

Are we, therefore, to construe that the Green Zone is slated to become a sort of embassy extension where Americans, elite Iraqis and visiting dignitaries can pretend they’re in Manhattan, at least when they are not actively ducking rockets and mortars?

It’s surely bad enough that the Americans effectively destroyed Iraqi culture during the 2003 invasion when they stood back as museums were looted and libraries ransacked. Are they now going to be allowed to superimpose their own “culture” onto Iraq’s very heart?

Moreover, there is something horribly elitist about this plan. What about the rest of Baghdad that is still suffering from power outrages and still resembles a war zone in parts?

Rather than construct multistoried malls for the benefit of diplomats and generals, the US should be working to restore the power/water treatment plants and reequip the hospitals it destroyed.

Take a good look at the ugly face of 21st century imperialism folks, for this is surely it. Whether they’ve got 5,000 troops in country or 150,000 the Americans have moved into Iraq and they’ll stay there as long as they can.

McCain criticises Carter’s meeting with Hamas, calling it ‘a grave and dangerous mistake for an American leader.’ (Photo: Reuters)

By Stuart Littlewood

I don’t know about you, but Hillary Rodham Clinton scares the pants off me.

“I want the Iranians to know that if I am president, we will attack Iran,” she ranted when asked what she’d do if Iran launched a nuclear attack on Israel. Not only that, she’ll “totally obliterate them”… 70 million people.

Jeepers… what kind of lunatic would drag us all into World War 3 to defend a lawless, racist regime like Israel?
I see the Council on Foreign Relations helps keep tabs on the stooge-for-Israel inclinations of each presidential candidate, so how’s Hillary doing? “Clinton co-sponsored the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act of 2006,” says the CFR. “She also sponsored a Senate resolution in 2007 calling for the immediate and unconditional release of soldiers of Israel held captive by Hamas and Hezbollah.”

Was she concerned about the 9,000 Palestinians, including women and children, abducted from their homes and held in Israeli jails? Apparently not.

Since taking office in 2000, Clinton has regularly supported military and financial aid packages to Israel. In a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) she spouted the now-compulsory mantra: Hamas should not be recognised “until it renounces violence and terror and recognises Israel’s right to exist.”

She supports Israel’s ‘security wall’ and its declared purpose of preventing terrorist attacks. Does she support the wall’s undeclared purpose - which has nothing to do with security - and the way it bites deep into Palestinian territory?

Barack Obama has said the United States must isolate Hamas. He also co-sponsored the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act of 2006 and called on the Palestinian leadership to “recognise Israel, to renounce violence, and to get serious about negotiating peace and security for the region”. OK, why don’t America and Israel get serious about implementing the dozens of UN resolutions on the subject? He doesn’t say.

He called Carter’s meeting with Hamas leaders “a bad idea”, so what’s his pledge to talk with US adversaries without preconditions worth? If elected, Obama will insist on fully funding military assistance to Israel. Does this mean paying them even more billions of US tax dollars so that they can fire even more high-tech munitions at Gaza, vaporize more women and kids and knock out more infrastructure that Britain and the EU paid for?

John Sidney McCain the Third says he’s “proudly pro-Israel” and argues that there can be no peace process “until the Palestinians recognise Israel, forswear forever the use of violence, recognise their previous agreements…” Has he asked Israel to do the same? No.

He criticises Carter’s meeting with Hamas, calling it “a grave and dangerous mistake for an American leader”. And he wants the United States to continue providing Israel with whatever military equipment and technology it needs. If elected McCain would “work to further isolate the enemies of Israel”. Surely his time would be better spent worrying about why half the world hates the US.

McCain even thinks Israel’s military action in Lebanon in 2006 was justified. He’s willing to use military force against Iran if it acquires a nuclear weapon and poses a “real threat” to Israel. Well, we know from past experience what “real threats” boil down to. And guess what: he too co-sponsored the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act of 2006.

What is this Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act they all so desperately wanted? It doesn’t make nice reading. The idea is to heap misery on any Palestinian government in which Hamas has a hand, ignoring the fact that the resistance movement is democratically elected and shows no sign of running away. The Act demands everything from the Palestinians and nothing from Israel, which can do no wrong in Washington’s eyes but, as everyone outside America knows, is the biggest terror organisation and law-breaker in the region.

Palestinians are perfectly entitled to put up armed resistance against illegal military occupation. Nevertheless the US requires them to end their struggle, get on their knees and publicly kiss their tormentors’ ass. They must re-commit to the Road Map and the two-state solution even though the ‘irreversible facts on the ground’ Israel is hurrying to establish and the impoverished, fragmented leftovers of land the Palestinians will be left with (less than 20% of what was originally theirs) are not a recipe for peace.

The plan is plainly to support Israel’s lust for prime land and strategic resources and end all hope of Palestinian viability and self-determination.

So the three main presidential candidates are singing off the same hymn-sheet and running neck-and-neck for the job of Stooge-in-Chief. Whichever finally makes it into the White House can count on us Brits being equally well prepped, thanks to the Israel lobby’s energetic string-pulling on this side of the Atlantic too.
Israel’s prime minister Olmert says AIPAC is “the greatest supporter and friend that we have in the whole world”. It is certainly busy, claiming that “through more than 2,000 meetings with members of Congress… AIPAC activists help pass more than 100 pro-Israel legislative initiatives a year… procuring nearly $3 billion in aid critical to Israel’s security.” Lobbyists meet every member of Congress and cover every hearing on Capitol Hill that touches on the US-Israel relationship.

Ariel Sharon is famously quoted as saying: “We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it.” (1) Had he been available for comment today he’d probably be saying the same about the UK where AIPAC’s little brother, Friends of Israel, has succeeded in embedding itself deep inside British politics and at the heart of government. Its stated aim is to promote Israel’s interests in Parliament and sway policy.

Conservative Friends of Israel, for example, claims 80 percent of Conservative MPs and provides a programme of weekly briefings, events with speakers, and delegations to Israel. It also operates a ‘Fast Track’ for parliamentary candidates fighting target marginals at the next election.

According to senior Conservatives Israel is “a force for good in the world… In the battle for the values that we stand for, for democracy against theocracy, for democratic liberal values against repression - Israel’s enemies are our enemies and this is a battle in which we all stand together”.
Are they mad? We’re talking here about a ruthless ethnocracy with racist policies, an apartheid agenda, advanced skills in state-terrorism and contempt for the UN Charter and international law.

Nevertheless MPs of all parties, and ministers, are basking in Israel’s hospitality, absorbing the propaganda and allowing themselves to be persuaded to push the interest of this foreign military power sometimes at the expense of our own. Such conduct is at odds with the second of the Seven Principles of Public Life, namely Integrity – “Holders of public office should not place themselves under any financial or other obligation to outside individuals or organisations that might seek to influence them in the performance of their official duties.”

Efforts are being made to have the influence of the Israel lobby investigated, but the people’s watchdog - the Committee on Standards in Public Life - is itself infiltrated and refuses to act.

This week former Serb officers went on trial at The Hague for ethnic cleansing. They face life sentences for murder, persecution, forced deportations and inhuman acts during the 1991-95 Balkan wars. Many people feel it’s time Israelis faced charges for similar crimes during the 60 years of occupation and catastrophe they have inflicted on the Holy Land. The list includes

• torture
• collective punishment
• targeted assassinations
• house demolitions
• wholesale slaughter
• use of indiscriminate and prohibited weapons against civilians
• land theft
• engineering humanitarian disasters
• creating medical and public health crises
• the wanton destruction of key infrastructure and public & private property
• restrictions on movement and trade
• illegal detention
• suppression of education
• denial of basic human rights
• denial of the right of refugees to return
• illegal settlements
• violation of every convention and code of conduct.

Speaking of the Holy Land, are the three stooges aware that Christian communities under Israeli occupation are being oppressed and crushed along with their Muslim neighbours?

It was heartening to read in The Guardian this week a letter signed by more than 100 prominent Jews saying they cannot celebrate the 60th birthday of a state “founded on terrorism, massacres and the dispossession of another people from their land… and that even now engages in ethnic cleansing.” They’ll celebrate when Arab and Jew live as equals in a peaceful Middle East.

So there you have it. Hillary/Barack/John the Third, you would do well to steer a different course in the Arab-Israel conflict. Quit stooging, kick AIPAC into touch, back off and re-think US foreign policy.

How much support do you think you’d get for annihilating 70 million Iranians?

-Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation.

A hospital worker shows journalists the bodies of four children after their house was shelled by Israeli tanks in the Beit Hanoun neighborhood of Gaza Strip on Monday [April 28 2008] while they were having their breakfast. (Reuters):

In this April 25 photo, Palestinians chant slogans against the Israeli blockade of Gaza. (AP)

Siraj Wahab, Arab News
JEDDAH, 30 April 2008 — The headlines coming out of Gaza daily stun people as women and children are slain by Israeli airstrikes and the plight of the Palestinians worsens through blockades and embargoes of food, fuel and freedom. Pick up any newspaper, turn on any news channel and the message is the same: Gaza is a war zone — a war zone with only one army and an entire population of victims, struggling to stay alive and wondering if they will be alive tomorrow.

Arab News recently gathered four young Saudis to voice their views on the current Palestinian situation, and their assessments were both brutal and often pessimistic about the future of the Middle East as long as Israel disregards human rights and seeks to isolate the Palestinians instead of reaching consensus with them.

“Israel is meting out collective punishment,” said Badria Modeer, who is studying international relations at Dar Al-Hekma Women’s College. “The whole population is being attacked. They are killing infants; they are killing children. Why? And the worst part is nobody can stop them. What has happened to the conscience of the world? Where is humanity? Do other people in the world not see what we are seeing on our television screens every day and every night?”

“The whole Gaza Strip is surrounded by Israelis,” said Ahmad Sabri, 21, who studied political science at Jeddah’s King Abdul Aziz University. “Why did they cut fuel supplies to the entire country? Why did they cut electricity? Power cuts led to dozens of patients dying in hospitals. Isn’t this a massacre? If those patients had been Israelis there would have been a flurry of condemnation led by the United States, but when it’s Palestinian patients who die quietly in the night because there’s no electricity nobody talks about them. This is mass murder.”

Most took a dim view of US foreign policy and its unflagging support for Israel and the failure of the United Nations to act effectively.

“I am not optimistic. Israel is a bully,” said Khaled Yeslam, 25, a graduate of Jeddah’s College of Business Administration who now works at a PR firm. “Israel came into being by force, and it will not listen to reason. American politicians are completely subservient to the Israeli lobby.”

“I don’t believe in the UN; it is not fair,” said Hidaya Abbas, 20, who is a student at Dar Al-Hekma College. “The UN can’t do anything. Instead of being busy putting pressure and sanctions on Iran just because it is allegedly in the process of producing nuclear energy why don’t they impose sanctions on Israel, which has 200 nuclear warheads? Iranians are not at war with anyone, but Israel has no qualms about bombing civilians. Why can’t the UN slap sanctions on Israel? It is a useless organization.”

“America is directly responsible for what is happening in Gaza today because they support the Israeli occupation morally, financially and militarily,” Sabri said. “They also support Israel in the United Nations by blocking all resolutions that condemn Israeli massacres. More specifically, the American government’s foreign policy is the problem.”

“I am for peace. I fully support King Abdullah’s peace initiative that calls for the creation of Palestine on pre-1967 borders,” Modeer said. “If we can’t have the entire cake, we can have some piece of cake — at least we have something rather than having nothing. Saudi Arabia is a rich country. It has good relations with the Americans, and if we pressure America, then Americans can pressure Israel to give up its occupation.”

Not everyone shared Modeer’s conciliatory perspective.

“I think peace can only be between two equal parties,” said Sabri. “I’m against the peace initiative, because it gives legitimacy to the occupation. It lends dignity to thieves. Yes, the Israelis are thieves. They stole our land. According to the international law, Palestinians have the right to resist occupation just like all the wars of liberation in history. Nobody can deny them the right of armed resistance. This happened everywhere.”

“Anybody who is talking about peace with Israelis does not make sense to me,” Abbas said. “Israel is occupying Palestine; how can we make peace with them? Let me simplify it. I have a house, and suddenly someone comes and tells me ‘I will take your house and then I will kill you’. So will I say: ‘OK, OK. Don’t kill me; take half of the house?’ That doesn’t make sense to me. Peace treaties are like that. If somebody wants to kill me and take my house, I don’t give him half of my house — I fight back. They are Zionists at the end of the day, and they are occupying our lands. They are taking something that doesn’t belong to them. They are killing children. So it is the right of the Palestinian people to fight back, and they are fighting. They are not terrorists — the occupiers are.”

The extreme events in Gaza are leading to worries about a conviction among some young people that the horrific situation requires a violent response.

“Islam stands strictly against killing civilians, but any occupier is not a civilian,” Sabri said. “He is stealing my land; he is stealing my water. There are five million Israelis living on my land, and there are six million Palestinian refugees all over the world. It doesn’t matter whether he is holding a gun or not. The most important fact is that most Israelis are reservists and will be called to service whenever required. So every Israeli has to be resisted.”

“This is creating a new generation of extremists,” Yeslam said. “We see blood being spilt in Palestine, and here are our people talking about business, economy and peace. So naturally, they are getting attracted to the extreme point of view: that of violence. You can’t blame the youth. They are frustrated — very, very angry at their helplessness. Remember, the Bin Ladens and the Al-Zawahiris emerged out of this chaos. They exploited the frustration of our youth. The world should wake up and tell Israel to stop its barbarity.”

All of them long for the rarest commodity in the Middle East, which is peace.

“Those Israeli settlers have the right to live in Palestine like all Christians in Palestine and like all the Jews in Iraq, like the Jews in Tunisia and Egypt and the Christians in Yemen,” Sabri said. “They have the right to live as Palestinian citizens like all the Jews and Christians living in the Islamic world. There are a lot of Christian Palestinians. They are our brothers and sisters. They are not occupiers; they are part of the country. This is what should happen. There should be coexistence. But the Israelis came as an armed force, so they are occupiers, and they need to be resisted.”

“Every European and every Americans should log onto IfAmericansKnew.org website to know what is happening in Palestine,” Abbas said. “All of us would stop thinking in a selfish way. This earth belongs to all people. We are all brothers and sisters in this world and share this world, and it is important that we find solutions for our grandchildren.”

“Israel should lift the siege immediately,” Modeer said. “Commit to the peace deal — open the borders. Let there be free trade. Let the Palestinians live in peace.”

Iraq: The Israeli Agenda
Neil Berry

Last week’s fifth anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq war occasioned much debate in the British media. But the contributors to the debate conspicuously did not include the war’s principal British proponent, Tony Blair. As little inclined as ever to admit to culpability over the Iraq debacle, Britain’s former prime minister has “moved on” and is now preoccupied with a dizzying a