What is Israel's Motivation in Sealing Off Gaza?

Amira Hass may have an answer...

Let's not be dragged into calculating how many tons of rice, flour and cooking oil there are in the Gaza Strip 10 days after Israel once again hermetically sealed all the crossings into the enclave. Let's not count the number of children who wait for a nutritious meal at UN Relief and Works Agency schools, and the number of families to whose doorstep Hamas delivers boxes filled with grocery staples. (There are those who swear that these groceries are only given to Hamas members and supporters.) Let's not calculate the number of people dependent on their families for sustenance. There is food in the Gaza Strip, and there will continue to be. Does anyone really think that Israel, the state of the Jews, would allow 1.5 million people to be tossed, crowded and crammed, behind the barbed-wire fences and watchtowers surrounding the narrow strip and starve to death.

Let's leave aside the stories of darkness, of how children do (or don't do) their homework by the light of a candle or kerosene lantern. Let's even put off the discussion on the serious environmental hazards - pollution of the groundwater and sea - posed to the people of Gaza and Ashkelon alike as a direct consequence of the intentional fuel shortage, or of Israel's refusal to permit the entry of pipes to upgrade the water and sewage infrastructure. Let's not go now into descriptions of how the sewage flows directly into the sea because there's not enough electricity to operate the sewage treatment plant. Let's not talk about fears that sewers will back up in the winter and flood residential neighborhoods because parts needed to fix the treatment plant were not brought in.

Let's not get dragged into that number crunching, into reducing the Palestinians' lives to a near-animal level, to a humanitarian problem that is easy to prove is not as bad as it can be.

The deliberations over the Palestinians and the methods of coping with the blockade should be converted into a discussion about the Israelis - about those who make policy and the many diligent people who carry it out, about the many citizens who support and encourage it. Instead of discussing quantities of diesel fuel and flour, the talk should be of the logic behind the siege and those who impose it.

People in the Israeli cabinet, Defense Ministry and Shin Bet security service know full well what they are doing when they prohibit anything other than essential food or medicines from passing through the checkpoints, when they prohibit the entry of raw materials and the exit of agricultural and industrial products and prevent normal human traffic for studies, medical care, work or family. Don't underestimate them and don't belittle their judgment. They knew perfectly well when they decided more than two years ago on the tightest closure of the Gaza Strip since the closure policy began in 1991, that industry would collapse, agriculture would wither, tens of thousands of young people would join the jobless and hopeless, that it would be hard for schools to operate and education would suffer, that sewage would back up and seep into the drinking water, that water would no longer reach the upper floors of apartment buildings.

This policy was presented to the Israeli public in a semiofficial manner as a justified punishment of the Palestinians for electing Hamas (and to hell with international law). "Quarterofficially" we know there was an expectation, or a prediction, that the siege would cause the Gazans to loathe Hamas and end its government in Gaza (after it lost its official grip on the West Bank). That was certainly the hope of the Ramallah government.

Gazans have a bellyful of complaints, and rightfully so, about the Hamas regime. It has already proven itself - mainly to Fatah members - as a regime of fear and repression. But the kind of punishment tactic currently in force is exactly what strengthens Hamas. Instead of the movement being judged according to its ability to run a government and meet its governmental obligations to ensure its citizens' welfare, it can blame the emergency situation created by the siege for every manifestation of immaturity and unprofessionalism.

The public feels that the government is part of it. Like the public, the government is a target for the occupation's cruelty. The brutal siege also saves Hamas from having to cope with the contradiction between its platform (the liberation of all of Palestine) and its integration, despite its denials, into the institutions created by the Oslo Accords. If Israel jeopardizes the lives of premature babies and causes business owners, including supporters of Oslo and Yasser Arafat, to go broke, the Hamas government can present itself as resisting the occupation by its very nature. The extraordinary conditions of the extreme siege and the disconnection between Gaza and the West Bank (another intentional Israeli policy) have made the possibility of holding new Palestinian general elections a very distant one. Hamas can thus bolster its rule with coercion, wages, charity and the consoling power of religion.

And perhaps that is exactly what the Shin Bet, Israel Defense Forces and government want?

Congo Crisis

POLITICS-DR CONGO: The Devil You See...
Analysis by Charles-M. Mushizi

These women at Kibati, are among the 250,000 people estimated to have been displaced by recent fighting. Credit: Les Neuhaus/IRIN

KINSHASA, Nov 26 (IPS) - Few Congolese believe Laurent Nkunda is the man with whom to negotiate peace in North Kivu. The crux of the matter is economics and geopolitics -- both greatly influenced by Western interests.

And yet because of the security issues in North Kivu, there seems no way around Nkunda, leader of National Congress for the People's Defense (CNPD), if peace is to return to the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Ahead of a cabinet reshuffle in Kinshasa last month, then-Minister of National Defense Tshikez Diemu dismissed Nkunda's declaration of a unilateral ceasefire and call for political negotiations as "childish babbling". Tshikez did not make it into the new government.

Since then the CNPD has advanced steadily in North Kivu, displacing tens of thousands more civilians.

A Congolese deputy, a member of the Alliance for a Presidential Majority (known by its French acroynm, AMP), argued that despite the political significance of a a meeting between Presidents Kabila and Paul Kagame of Rwanda at the Nov. 7 summit in Nairobi to discuss the Kivu crisis, "the core issue of the Nairobi meeting was economics."

The rebel leader serves "as a kind of blackmail or constraint against Kinshasa for failing to protect the interests of Western investors in the DRC, especially in mining," said the deputy, speaking on condition of anonymity.

In 2006, the DRC received substantial technical, logistic and financial aid from the West to organise elections after the civil war (1998-2002) which caused over 4 million deaths in this Central African country.

But a few months after his election, Kabila's government signed a slew of mining contracts with Chinese conglomerates, handing over a wide swath of mining rights in the DRC, including sites that have yet to be evaluated. The contracts were valued at nearly 10 billion dollars over approximately 30 years.

A number of mining contracts were signed earlier with Western investors during Congo's transitional government (2003-2006). However, these contracts have since been submitted for re-evaluation and renegotiation to "balance the parties' interests" since the investors received the lion's share of the profits, according to Victor Kasongo Shomari, Deputy Minister for Mining.

The presence of Hutu combatants in North Kivu, sought for their alleged participation in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, remains an excuse for Kagamé to intervene in the Congo "to protect Rwanda's Congolese borders."

Regional peace depends also on Kinshasa's political sincerity, a committed diplomatic effort on their part and the FARDC's credibility, according to analysts.

The leaders of the Cadre de concertation des notabilités des Kivu (CCNK), a group of top politicans, economists and other members of civil society, suspect that officials in Kinshasa have deliberately muddied the waters on security and military matters, specifically in terms of the arming of the rebels and providing political reinforcement.

In September, two members of parliament from the governing AMP joined the rebellion, granting it a certain level of political legitimacy. Their suspicions are strengthened by the fact a former high-ranking member of the Rally for Congolese Democracy-Goma (RCD-Goma), Déo Rugwiza, is in charge of managing the DRC's borders; Rugwiza was close to Nkunda when the RCD-Goma was still an armed force during the previous civil war.

Echoing the sentiments of a number of parliamentarians, the CCNK has said that negotiations between Kinshasa and the rebellion now would be "ill-timed".

On the military level, the DRC's army, the Forces Armée de la Republique Démocratique du Congo (FARDC) are neither adequately equipped nor combat ready. Soldiers haven't been properly paid for several months and their families are living in near-poverty. The immediate consequences of the lack of morale has been seen in troops fleeing the enemy and pillaging civilian goods.

According to analysts, FARDC's ability to regain combat strength depends on the current leadership of the Congolese army. Gabriel Amisis, the chief of FARDC's ground troops, commonly known as Tango Fort, is another former high-level officer of RCD-Goma. He too fought alongside Nkunda in the rebellion against the Laurent-Désiré Kabila regime and then that of Kabila the son until the inter-Congolese dialogue in 2003 which resulted in the creation of a transition government.

Tango Fort, who is the key voice on matters of armament and troops, is accused of being unable to fight his former brother-in-arms Nkunda. But in addition, authorities have no control over the wholesale embezzlement of military salaries.

HLF Investigation Went On For Years

Reminds me of the Venona Project - I wrote a paper on this in graduate school, discussing the findings of John Earl Haynes and other scholars on Soviet espionage during the Cold War. But there are many differences here, largest of which is that these guys weren't spies, but financiers of charities that were likely funneling money to Hamas. Shady stuff nonetheless.

Holy Land investigation dates back to 1993

The Holy Land Foundation first came to the attention of U.S. authorities 15 years ago, when an Illinois man detained in Israel told his interrogators that the largest American Muslim charity was really a front for Palestinian terrorists.

The year was 1993, and Holy Land, started a few years earlier as the Occupied Land Fund, had just relocated from California to Richardson.

Holy Land’s founders, all of whom were either born in the Palestinian territories or spent time there growing up, made it their mission to help poor and war-stricken Palestinian families devastated by the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Or that’s what was printed on their pamphlets.

Muhammad Salah, a Palestinian-born Illinois businessman, described the charity differently.

Although he would later claim he was tortured into talking, he told Israeli agents in 1993 that Holy Land was the chief fundraising arm of the then-6-year-old Islamic Resistance Movement, better known as Hamas — which sponsored suicide bombings targeting Israelis in protest of their occupation of Palestine.

He said Holy Land was so designated by a powerful and politically savvy Palestinian immigrant living in the U.S. named Mousa Abu Marzook.

Investigators would later learn that Mr. Marzook, a doctoral student at Louisiana Tech University, was actually the head of Hamas and helped start Holy Land with hundreds of thousands of dollars in seed money. He also was married to a cousin of Ghassan Elashi, Holy Land’s board chairman and one of its founders.

Mr. Salah was acquitted last year on charges that he supported Hamas, but was sent to prison for lying about his terrorist ties in a civil suit. It was his initial tip that prompted the FBI to open an intelligence investigation on Holy Land.

While monitoring Salah’s phone calls, the FBI learned of a meeting in October 1993 at a Philadelphia hotel between Holy Land organizers and other Hamas sympathizers. The FBI recorded the participants talking about how to continue to raise money for Hamas without drawing the attention of U.S. authorities.

By late 1994, Mr. Salah’s information began to leak out and was the basis for national television news accounts linking Holy Land to Hamas.

The Dallas Morning News also began an investigation of the group and wrote stories uncovering ties between Holy Land and Hamas activists. Muslim groups were outraged and denied the links. They organized protests at the newspaper’s downtown Dallas offices. Meanwhile, investigators were learning that Holy Land was flying in militant clerics, many with Hamas ties, to headline U.S. fundraisers. Those gatherings often featured calls for violent jihad, or holy war, against Israelis.

Investigators estimated that Holy Land raised more than $57 million between 1992 and 2001.

For years, U.S. authorities focused on using Holy Land to gather intelligence, rather than launching a criminal case to shut it down. At the time, before the Sept. 11 attacks, the FBI was under much less pressure to make terrorism arrests, and there was a great reluctance to use evidence gathered during an intelligence operation in a criminal case.

In 1996, the Israelis closed Holy Land’s Jerusalem office, and they pressured the U.S. to do the same to its Texas headquarters. American authorities declined to move against the charity, even though a 1995 presidential order made it a crime for anyone inside the U.S. to send money or support to Hamas.

Around 1997, the Commerce Department learned that a Richardson-based Internet service provider and computer services firm had contacted Saddam Hussein’s government about setting up the “.iq” domain name. It was never activated, but by 1999, investigators began to suspect that the firm had been violating export laws by doing business with customers in Syria and Libya, both of which the U.S. considered state sponsors of terrorism.

The firm was InfoCom, run by Mr. Elashi’s family and also the beneficiary of Mr. Marzook’s money. InfoCom and Holy Land were located across the street from each other in Richardson.

Investigators would work the InfoCom export law case for another two years — all the while continuing to monitor Holy Land — before a federal terrorism task force moved in on Sept. 5, 2001, and shut the company down.

In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, agents were able to pull together eight years of intelligence and evidence on Holy Land and prepare warrants to search the charity’s offices and seize its assets.

In December 2001, President George W. Bush announced at a Rose Garden news conference that Holy Land was shut down.

Holy Land and seven of its former officers and volunteers were indicted in July 2004 on charges that they funneled money to Hamas.

Authorities believed that between 1995, when supporting Hamas became a crime, and its closing, Holy Land sent more than $12 million to charity groups under Hamas control.

The first trial of five of the defendants — two are fugitives — ended after 19 days of deliberations. U.S. District Judge A. Joe Fish declared a mistrial on Oct. 22, 2007.

Over the next 11 months, prosecutors re-tooled their case, adding more learning aids and witnesses while cutting down the amount of admitted evidence.

Opening statements in the re-trial began Sept. 22. Jurors began deliberating Nov. 12.

Busted: HLF Guilty on All Counts

Holy Land Foundation officials were found guilty of all charges today in the high-profile terrorism funding case. The questions surrounding this case still remain: where was the money really going - to charities or to Hamas's military wing? Was there too much Israeli influence? The jurors decided that the money was going to the militant branches of Hamas. No matter what anyone thinks, whether Hamas is a terrorist organization like al-Qaeda or a political party that engages in violence from time to time, the law of the land here is that you can't send Hamas any money or aid.

If only the Ikhwan realized that violence brings them nothing but trouble - whether in the Occupied Territories or in America - maybe they would be better off. Certainly the Palestinian people would be better off. The cause of the Palestinians is of course a noble one, but the ones engaging in that cause have little nobility. Instead, they're just men with anger, but no vision.

We need an indigenous, authentic American leadership that will be a part of this nation - not seperate from it. I pray the days of immigrant uncles leading our community will come to an end soon. The leadership of our major Muslim organizations needs to be overhauled. We need new leaders who are from here, born here, and think about this nation and what ails it rather than worry mostly about what occurs overseas.

Why the Israel Lobby Wants Finkelstein to Shut Up

The reason is quite obvious: he is not only eloquent, but logical, reasonable, and lethal. I was looking over a lecture he gave in 2006 regarding Hamas and Hezbollah. He captures the essence of the debate, and then proceeds to smash the pro-Israel position into a million pieces. We all saw what happened to Dershowitz when he attempted to debate NGF - that's probably why he's ignored by the pro-Israel pundits altogether - better to call him a fraud than to get into a debate with him (I wonder if Horowitz would be willing to discuss the issue with him, or how about Daniel Pipes?). I can understand the fear - NGF is fearless himself, demonstrated clearly by giving up his livlihood to speak out against tyranny and hypocrisy. It's a shame for the Palestinians that their best spokesmen are non-Palestinians (except of course for the late Edward Said).

Anyway, below is an excerpt from his talk delivered in 2006. I agree with most of what he said. The demands on Hamas are of course perfectly legitimate, but similar demands on Israel are also just as legitimate, and for the interest of peace, absolutely necessary.

Let me begin with the... [inaudible] of the most recent course of events, which begins January 2006 when Hamas, the Islamic leadership, is elected to power in the West Bank and Gaza. They were elected in January 2006 and in March 2006 they took office. Immediately, as they took office, the United States and Israel, and then the European Union, inflicted on Hamas a quite brutal sanctions regime... [video glitch]... and the sanctions were conditional on Hamas doing two things. The two demands which were imposed on Hamas were:

1. they have to renounce terrorism or renounce violence and

2. they have to recognize the State of Israel

[video glitch]... those two demands, the economic sanctions against the Palestinians would continue. So first of all, let's look at those two conditions. On their face, it seems to me, the two conditions are perfectly legitimate. The bargaining [poor audio quality] of civilians for political ends is the basic definition of terrorism and any State or organization, or movement is legally bound and morally bound to renounce the resort to terrorism. That seems to me a legitimate demand. The number two demand, that Israel be recognized within its borders, the right, as the language has it, to territorial integrity and political sovereignty within its borders. That demand seems to me perfectly legitimate also, in fact it's, frankly, uncontroversial.

So the issue is not the demands that were put on Hamas, those, as I've said, I think are pretty much uncontroversial. The question is the uniformity of those demands. That is to say -- are they applied across the board to all the parties in the conflict? Or are they being applied to one party in the conflict? If they're applied across the board then we can call them moral principle, if they're applied to one side, the proper word is to call it hypocrisy.

Read the rest.

Zawahiri a Racist Moron

It's been reported by the AP that al Qaeda #2 Ayman al-Zawahiri called Obama a house nigger or negro. He also reportedly said Malcolm X was an honorable Black American and quotes Malcolm X regarding the differences between house slaves and field slaves.

This is the same Zawahiri who has no problem saying other Muslims are kuffar for this or that political or religious opinion that is not in agreement with his views. It's highly likely if Malcolm X were alive today that he would not only call Zawahiri a savage, but that Zawahiri would not be calling Malcolm X honorable, but a kafir. In addition, he ridicules Colin Powell, the only African American leader with the guts to speak out against the anti-Islam hate that had been running parallel with the presidential campaign. Good going, Ayman.

This is clearly an attempt by Zawahiri to recruit Black American Muslims to his cause by bringing up Malcolm X. It's a pathetic attempt, but an important one that will likely fail. He doesn't realize that most Black American Muslims aren't in to the whole blowing themselves up for political causes draped in religious cloth thing.

Zawahiri, coming from the Arab world of all places, where Black Muslims are treated like garbage, has little right to discuss the honorable-ness of someone like Malcolm X. He may be right on about Obama's foreign policy, that things won't change much, but Obama would do us all a favor by capturing this criminal and alleviating us all from these ridiculous comments.

More on Joe "the Joke" Kaufman

A very detailed and informative article was written about Kaufman's ties to Israeli extremists on M.T. Akbar's blog. Akbar has long been demonstrating the shady ties that Kaufman has with Israeli extremists.

http://mtakbar.wordpress.com/2008/10/31/mccains-new-campaign-mascot-joe-the-terrorist-supporting-kahanist/

Kaufman Shows His True Colors

I had written some time ago that Joe Kaufman had blatantly lied about what Altaf Ali, executive director of CAIR-South Florida, had said in a radio interview right after 9-11. Kaufman, the anti-Arab and anti-Muslim extremist, had accused Ali of refusing to answer his question whether the 9-11 victims were innocent or not. After I called Kaufman out as a liar and posted the audio of the interview here, Kaufman refused to acknowledge his guilt.

He has now changed his stance. Though only tacitly.

Once the audio of the interview was finally available Kaufman had to change the writing on his blog , CAIR Watch. Kaufman has changed the language to now read that Ali "was hesitant about answering the question of whether or not he believed the people that died during the attacks on the World Trade Center were innocent."

Ali never hesitated, the radio interview is clear and the link to it is available on my previous post regarding this controversy. Ali repeatedly said that whoever was responsible for the acts of terrorism on 9-11 against innocent people should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Ali repeatedly said this statement, but Kaufman could not seem to understand that when Ali said innocent people he obviously meant the people who were murdered on 9-11. Who else could he have been referring to, the terrorists themselves?! Kaufman's behavior in that interview was childish and incomprehensible. Finally, Kaufman decided to blurt out the question in a more basic format asking Ali if the people who died inside the towers on 9-11 were innocent and Ali immediately yelled back, "of course!"

In addition, Kaufman claimed that Ali derided him for being Jewish. The quote Kaufman has on his blog reads that Ali asked Kaufman if he was Jewish, where Kaufman replied that he was. Ali then said, "okay, no wonder." That's all Kaufman has on his blog regarding this exchange, but typical of Kaufman's reporting style, facts are left out. I guess if Kaufman asked me if I was Muslim then I could accuse him of "deriding" me for being Muslim.

The host of the radio show, Steve Kane, asked Kaufman if he knew anything about CAIR. Kaufman then began to read from an article written by Morton Klein of the Zionist Organization of America (but of course). Ali immediately said the source was biased and asserted the ZOA article was just opinion and not fact. He reiterated that the article was written by a Zionist organization, noting an obvious bias in the source Kaufman was reading from.

Kane then mockingly asked Ali if the Wall Street Journal was a Zionist publication (because Kane later discussed an article written by Steven Emerson, the well known fraud of terrorism experts, that was published right after 9-11 in the WSJ). Ali then asked Kaufman if he was Jewish, to show the obvious bias Kaufman had regarding CAIR. Interestingly, as soon as Ali said "okay, no wonder," the interview abruptly cut off into commercial. Kaufman is obviously just fishing here. He wants desperately to make Ali look like an anti-Semite. All he ends up doing is making himself look like a cry baby.

Kaufman has sunk to a new low when faced with the truth. Instead of admitting he was wrong and apologizing to Ali (and showing some class by doing so), Kaufman instead has attempted to tweak his own words a bit to lessen the damage to his reputation. He has yet to apologize to Ali for the slanderous lie that was on his blog for years. But acting like a weasel is common place for Joe Kaufman.

Too bad for him though. The proof is in the pudding, or more accurately, in the screen shots below of what his blog looked like a few months ago and the way it looks now:

Gaza in trouble

And all the Israeli government is saying is "nothing to see here, move along." Well, there is something to see and it's pure human misery justified by a sick sense of justice.


UN on Gaza: "People are going to start getting hungry"

Gaza – Ma'an – The situation in the Gaza Strip is shifting from "collective punishment to genocide," said Jamal Al-Khudari, member of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) and head of the popular committee against the siege in Gaza.

The trickle of humanitarian aid previously allowed into Gaza, on which 80 percent of the population depended, has now been stopped for nine days by the Israeli army. The delivery of medical supplies and industrial fuel donated by the EU has also been blocked. The fuel was needed to power Gaza's sole power plant, which has now shut down, leading to rolling blackouts throughout Gaza.

UNRWA storehouses in Gaza are empty and Israel has refused to let emergency supplies through to the UN agency, which is responsible for providing basic goods to 750,000 Palestinians in the Strip.

Aid from the UN, the WHO and other Palestinian, Arab and international relief organizations are the main source of food for the 80% of the population in Gaza that live under poverty line and the 140,000 Gazans who are unemployed.

"People are going to start getting hungry," said U.N. spokesman Christopher Gunness.

As the crisis escalates and bakeries close due to power cuts resulting from the Israeli refusal to allow fuel into the area, the international community has come out with a wave of condemnations against the Israeli closure.

Ban Ki Moon

The office of UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon released a statement on Saturday saying he is "concerned that food and other lifesaving assistance is being denied to hundreds of thousands of people, and emphasizes that measures which increase the hardship and suffering of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip as a whole are unacceptable and should cease immediately."

Oxfam

Oxfam International, one of the large international organizations that work regularly in the Gaza Strip, has condemned the Israeli decision to close the borders into Gaza.

Oxfam International Executive Director Jeremy Hobbs sent the following statement to the international press on Friday:

"World leaders must step up and exercise all their political might to break the blockade of Gaza. As a matter of humanitarian imperative, Israeli leaders must resume supplies into Gaza without further delay. If Israelis and Palestinians alike don't exert every effort now to maintain the truce which has held since last June, the result could be catastrophic for civilians both in Gaza and in nearby Israeli towns."

The European Union

Commissioner for External Relations of the European Union has also condemned the renewed Israeli blockade.

"I am profoundly concerned about the consequences for the Gazan population of the complete closure of all Gaza crossings for deliveries of fuel and basic humanitarian assistance," she said in a press statement.

"I call on Israel to re-open the crossings for humanitarian and commercial flows, in particular food and medicines. Facilitation of fuel deliveries for the Gaza Power Plant should be resumed immediately."

The EU statement further stated that "International law requires the provision of access to essential services such as electricity and clean water to the civilian population," and demanded that restraint be exercised by all parties to avoid an escalation of humanitarian suffering.

Amnesty International

The most through and to the point condemnation so far has come from a report released by Amnesty International, which called the current situation in Gaza "nothing short of collective punishment."

Amnesty urged Israeli authorities to allow the passage of vital supplies into Gaza."Israel's latest tightening of its blockade has made an already dire humanitarian situation markedly worse," the deputy director of the organization's Middle East and North Africa Program, Philip Luther, said on Friday. "It must stop immediately," Luther added.

Israeli response

Meanwhile, Israeli authorities have been denying international journalists access to Gaza for over a week. On Thursday, a convoy of European diplomats was likewise refused entry.

"Gaza is cut off from the outside world. Israel is seemingly not keen on the world seeing the suffering that its blockade is causing to the one and a half million Palestinians who are virtually trapped there," Philip Luther from Amnesty said.

The breakdown last week of a five-and-a-half-month ceasefire between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants in Gaza has generated a renewed wave of violence. The killing of six Palestinian militants in Israeli air strikes and ground attacks on 4 November prompted a barrage of Palestinian rockets on nearby Israeli towns and villages. At least six other Palestinian militants have been killed by Israeli forces and others have been injured in recent days.

But Palestinian rocket attacks have continued. No Israeli casualties had been reported until Friday, when one Israeli was lightly wounded by shrapnel in an attack on the Israeli city of Sderot.

Prior to the ceasefire that began on 19 June, some 420 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli forces in the Gaza clashes, half of them unarmed civilians, including 80 children. In the same period, Palestinian armed groups killed 24 Israelis, 15 of them civilians, including four children, Amnesty International reported.

Popular Committee Against Siege(PCAS),
PCAS Manager,
Sam AKi
Gaza - Palestine
Mob:00972598273960
Freegaza.ps@gmail.com
Freepalestine.ps@gmail.com
Website: www.freegaza.ps/english
www.freegaza.ps/french
Videos: http://freegaza.blogspot.com/

This applies to Muslim Americans as well

Arab-Americans and Obama

How to Vote Against Your Own Interests

By JAMES G. ABOUREZK

During my first year as a U.S. Senator, I was visited by a member of the Brazilian parliament. He was in the opposition to the dictatorship in Brazil, and that he was sick because of what he knew about the torture the military junta undertook in order to stay in power.

“What can I do?” I asked.

“You have the ability to expose, to publicize what’s happening there.”

“I don’t think I have enough influence to put a stop to it,” I countered.

“You don’t understand,” he said, “if those people who are in prison for political crimes know that someone outside knows of what’s happening them, they will feel hope. As it is now, they despair of anyone ever knowing of their suffering.”

I had not known about conditions in Brazil, but what he said was enough to galvanize me into trying to publicize what the dictatorship was doing. I began introducing amendments to foreign aid legislation that would cut off funds for any country that tortured its own people. I was never able to pass such an amendment, even though, amazingly, the Democrats controlled the Senate back then. I was able, however, to close down the “School for Torture” that was being operated under the name of the School of the Americas, but it was only later that Tom Harkin, after he was elected to the Senate, was able to pass an anti-torture amendment.

I relate this anecdote to remind readers how important it is for people under occupation to know that someone is aware, that there are people who care about what’s happening to them. This sentiment is especially true for those Palestinians who have lived under Israeli occupation since 1948, and the years following. There is a feeling by those people that the world doesn’t care what happens to them. That is why it is doubly important that voices of protest over the illegal Israeli occupation continue to be heard, despite the seeming hopelessness of their condition.

The backbone of protest here in the United States has been, by and large, the Arab American community. This is a group of people who, by virtue of their special knowledge of what is happening to the Palestinians on a daily basis, have been able to articulate to the American public at large what is going on. Of course, overcoming the political power of the Israeli Lobby has been extremely difficult; the knowledge by those under occupation that someone cares and that someone is trying to do something about it sustains hope when it looks the darkest.

That hope grew dimmer this election year. In spite of the fealty paid to the Israeli Lobby both by Obama and by McCain, and in spite of Ralph Nader doing his best to publicize the brutality of the Israeli occupation, a great many Arab Americans abandoned Nader and his message in favor of the other candidates.

Of course, we all understood that Nader would not win the election, but the movement of Arab Americans away from him regrettably deprives him of the political influence he might have gained to press his positions, including his strong criticism of Israel’s illegal occupation. His voice is considerably weakened because of the movement of Arab American voters to other candidates, which is unfortunate for those Palestinians who live in desperation on a daily basis. The same is true for the people of Lebanon and Syria who are in constant fear of being bombed by U.S. warplanes flown by Israeli pilots.

In this election, a great many Arab Americans joined Obama’s winning coalition, despite Obama’s clear indication that he wanted nothing to do with Arabs, either Christian or Muslim. We saw, during his campaign, that his staff prevented Muslim women with head scarves from sitting behind him in view of the television cameras during his campaign rallies. He visited Christian churches and Jewish Synagogues, but he refused to visit even one Mosque during the campaign. And, finally, joining John McCain, he made the obligatory bow and scrape to the Israeli Lobby—AIPAC—during that group’s 2008 convention. He made no attempt to hide any of these clearly pro-Israeli actions from Arab Americans. Had he done the same toward any other ethnic group, we would expect that the group would find another electoral home for their support and their votes. But that, apparently, is not what happened this year. Arab Americans voted overwhelmingly in support of Obama, rushing right past Ralph Nader, who has articulated the community’s feelings about the Israeli occupation.

This is a continuation of the self-destructive attitude held by people of Arab descent. We see it in the Arab world, and we see it among the Arab diaspora. We see the urge to defeat or to overlook one of our own in favor of catering to those we think will are certain to hold power.

Someone once said that when the Zionists looked around for a place to organize an exclusive Jewish state, they chose their target wisely. When Arab Americans, and Arabs as well, learn to act in their own interests, then the day will come when politicians will begin to listen to what they have to say. Arab Americans desperately need to learn to reward their friends. Failing that, all that remains for them will be their enemies.

James G. Abourezk is a lawyer practicing in South Dakota. He is a former United States senator and the author of two books, Advise and Dissent, and a co-author of Through Different Eyes. Abourezk can be reached at georgepatton@alyajames.net.

Obama: the sober reality

Hope he has brought, but change will be a more formidable task to accomplish. Let us, as Americans, not fool ourselves about reality. Yes, an African-American has been elected to the White House, but along the way he had to mold himself into what the powers that be would accept as tolerable. A nation for the people and by the people is still a goal that eludes us.

Election Night Fun

Nader Speaks Out Against Obama's Lack of Courage

Enough of Joe Kaufman. Let's listen to a real American, whose heart bleeds for the betterment of this nation.


An Open Letter to Barack Obama: Between Hope and Reality

11.03.2008 | CounterPunch
By RALPH NADER

Dear Senator Obama:

In your nearly two-year presidential campaign, the words "hope and change," "change and hope" have been your trademark declarations. Yet there is an asymmetry between those objectives and your political character that succumbs to contrary centers of power that want not "hope and change" but the continuation of the power-entrenched status quo.

Far more than Senator McCain, you have received enormous, unprecedented contributions from corporate interests, Wall Street interests and, most interestingly, big corporate law firm attorneys. Never before has a Democratic nominee for President achieved this supremacy over his Republican counterpart. Why, apart from your unconditional vote for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, are these large corporate interests investing so much in Senator Obama? Could it be that in your state Senate record, your U.S. Senate record and your presidential campaign record (favoring nuclear power, coal plants, offshore oil drilling, corporate subsidies including the 1872 Mining Act and avoiding any comprehensive program to crack down on the corporate crime wave and the bloated, wasteful military budget, for example) you have shown that you are their man?

To advance change and hope, the presidential persona requires character, courage, integrity-- not expediency, accommodation and short-range opportunism. Take, for example, your transformation from an articulate defender of Palestinian rights in Chicago before your run for the U.S. Senate to an acolyte, a dittoman for the hard-line AIPAC lobby, which bolsters the militaristic oppression, occupation, blockage, colonization and land-water seizures over the years of the Palestinian peoples and their shrunken territories in the West Bank and Gaza. Eric Alterman summarized numerous polls in a December 2007 issue of The Nation magazine showing that AIPAC policies are opposed by a majority of Jewish-Americans.

You know quite well that only when the U.S. Government supports the Israeli and Palestinian peace movements, that years ago worked out a detailed two-state solution (which is supported by a majority of Israelis and Palestinians), will there be a chance for a peaceful resolution of this 60-year plus conflict. Yet you align yourself with the hard-liners, so much so that in your infamous, demeaning speech to the AIPAC convention right after you gained the nomination of the Democratic Party, you supported an "undivided Jerusalem," and opposed negotiations with Hamas-- the elected government in Gaza. Once again, you ignored the will of the Israeli people who, in a March 1, 2008 poll by the respected newspaper Haaretz, showed that 64% of Israelis favored "direct negotiations with Hamas." Siding with the AIPAC hard-liners is what one of the many leading Palestinians advocating dialogue and peace with the Israeli people was describing when he wrote "Anti-semitism today is the persecution of Palestinian society by the Israeli state."

During your visit to Israel this summer, you scheduled a mere 45 minutes of your time for Palestinians with no news conference, and no visit to Palestinian refugee camps that would have focused the media on the brutalization of the Palestinians. Your trip supported the illegal, cruel blockade of Gaza in defiance of international law and the United Nations charter. You focused on southern Israeli casualties which during the past year have totaled one civilian casualty to every 400 Palestinian casualties on the Gaza side. Instead of a statesmanship that decried all violence and its replacement with acceptance of the Arab League's 2002 proposal to permit a viable Palestinian state within the 1967 borders in return for full economic and diplomatic relations between Arab countries and Israel, you played the role of a cheap politician, leaving the area and Palestinians with the feeling of much shock and little awe.

David Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, described your trip succinctly: "There was almost a willful display of indifference to the fact that there are two narratives here. This could serve him well as a candidate, but not as a President."

Palestinian American commentator, Ali Abunimah, noted that Obama did not utter a single criticism of Israel, "of its relentless settlement and wall construction, of the closures that make life unlivable for millions of Palestinians. ...Even the Bush administration recently criticized Israeli's use of cluster bombs against Lebanese civilians [see www.atfl.org for elaboration]. But Obama defended Israeli's assault on Lebanon as an exercise of its 'legitimate right to defend itself.'"

In numerous columns Gideon Levy, writing in Haaretz, strongly criticized the Israeli government's assault on civilians in Gaza, including attacks on "the heart of a crowded refugee camp... with horrible bloodshed" in early 2008.

Israeli writer and peace advocate-- Uri Avnery-- described Obama's appearance before AIPAC as one that "broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning, adding that Obama "is prepared to sacrifice the most basic American interests. After all, the US has a vital interest in achieving an Israeli-Palestinian peace that will allow it to find ways to the hearts of the Arab masses from Iraq to Morocco. Obama has harmed his image in the Muslim world and mortgaged his future-- if and when he is elected president.," he said, adding, "Of one thing I am certain: Obama's declarations at the AIPAC conference are very, very bad for peace. And what is bad for peace is bad for Israel, bad for the world and bad for the Palestinian people."

A further illustration of your deficiency of character is the way you turned your back on the Muslim-Americans in this country. You refused to send surrogates to speak to voters at their events. Having visited numerous churches and synagogues, you refused to visit a single Mosque in America. Even George W. Bush visited the Grand Mosque in Washington D.C. after 9/11 to express proper sentiments of tolerance before a frightened major religious group of innocents.

Although the New York Times published a major article on June 24, 2008 titled "Muslim Voters Detect a Snub from Obama" (by Andrea Elliott), citing examples of your aversion to these Americans who come from all walks of life, who serve in the armed forces and who work to live the American dream. Three days earlier the International Herald Tribune published an article by Roger Cohen titled "Why Obama Should Visit a Mosque." None of these comments and reports change your political bigotry against Muslim-Americans-- even though your father was a Muslim from Kenya.

Perhaps nothing illustrated your utter lack of political courage or even the mildest version of this trait than your surrendering to demands of the hard-liners to prohibit former president Jimmy Carter from speaking at the Democratic National Convention. This is a tradition for former presidents and one accorded in prime time to Bill Clinton this year.

Here was a President who negotiated peace between Israel and Egypt, but his recent book pressing the dominant Israeli superpower to avoid Apartheid of the Palestinians and make peace was all that it took to sideline him. Instead of an important address to the nation by Jimmy Carter on this critical international problem, he was relegated to a stroll across the stage to "tumultuous applause," following a showing of a film about the Carter Center's post-Katrina work. Shame on you, Barack Obama!

But then your shameful behavior has extended to many other areas of American life. (See the factual analysis by my running mate, Matt Gonzalez, on www.votenader.org). You have turned your back on the 100-million poor Americans composed of poor whites, African-Americans, and Latinos. You always mention helping the "middle class" but you omit, repeatedly, mention of the "poor" in America.

Should you be elected President, it must be more than an unprecedented upward career move following a brilliantly unprincipled campaign that spoke "change" yet demonstrated actual obeisance to the concentration power of the "corporate supremacists." It must be about shifting the power from the few to the many. It must be a White House presided over by a black man who does not turn his back on the downtrodden here and abroad but challenges the forces of greed, dictatorial control of labor, consumers and taxpayers, and the militarization of foreign policy. It must be a White House that is transforming of American politics-- opening it up to the public funding of elections (through voluntary approaches)-- and allowing smaller candidates to have a chance to be heard on debates and in the fullness of their now restricted civil liberties. Call it a competitive democracy.

Your presidential campaign again and again has demonstrated cowardly stands. "Hope" some say springs eternal." But not when "reality" consumes it daily.

Sincerely,
Ralph Nader

Joe Kaufman Can't Get Me Out of His Mind

Joe Kaufman, the notorious anti-Arab, anti-Muslim Kahane-ist, can't seem to get me out of his brain. Me? I long ago forgot about this loser, but Kaufman apparently had nothing to write about so he decided to write a lengthy article on my comments about Rashid Khalidi and my opinions on Hamas and Hezbollah.

There's nothing for me to clarify, except one thing: Kaufman accuses Khalidi of being a PLO spokesman, something Khalidi himself has denied. That's between Kaufman and Khalidi.

As far as what I have said about Hamas and Hezbollah, that they are not solely terrorist organizations, is supported by the words of the ex-Mossad Chief Efraim Halevy. These are his exact words as quoted by Mother Jones Magazine: "Hamas is 'not solely a terrorist group,' but a political one as well; it has aspirations 'to be part of the system and not, as Al Qaeda aspires, to destroy it.'"

I have said nothing different regarding Hamas. I have never agreed with their ideology, and in fact have repudiated it. I have acknowledged and condemned their terror attacks as without merit both in light of international law and Islamic jurisprudence.

In addition, my references to CAIR on this blog were taken down because I no longer work for CAIR. I have gone back to school full time since August. Sorry not to update you on my personal life, Joe.

But allow me to shine some light on Joe. Unlike me, Kaufman is just fine with killing innocent people, even suggesting that Syria be nuked right after 9-11. He is a rabid Kahane-ist. The movement he is a part of is a militant and radical Jewish extremist group based out of Israel and on the teachings of Rabbi Meir Kahane. Kahane's political organization is listed as a terrorist organization in both Israel and the U.S. No small achievement, indeed.

Kaufman has made a living off of harrassing and terrorizing the Muslim and Arab American communties for years with outrageous lies and guilt by association tactics. He is a hate monger with the sole objective to deligitimize the Arab and Muslim American communities here in the U.S. and to prevent rational and peaceful dialogue on the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

He accuses Muslims and Arabs of dual loyalties, or even of being spies and agents for foreign groups. Yet, for Kaufman, "country first" means "Israel first." By draping himself in the red, white, and blue Kaufman thinks he can trick people into thinking he's a patriot. It's obvious where his heart lies, and it's not with America. America is simply a means for people like him to legitimize Israeli aggression in the Occupied Territories, and then blame Palestinians for Israeli occupation and terror.

Kaufman, keep staying up until 4 AM reading my blog. It's flattering, but I have better things to do than hold a conversation with a known bigot who wears hyper-blue contact lenses.

NYT on Khalidi

Political Storm Finds a Columbia Professor

By MARC SANTORA and ELISSA GOOTMAN

Rashid Khalidi had been bracing for the storm for months, friends said.

Since an April news report detailing his relationship with Senator Barack Obama, Mr. Khalidi, a Middle East scholar and passionate defender of Palestinian rights, had waited to see himself caricatured by Republicans as part of a rogues’ gallery of Obama associates, which has come to include the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. and William C. Ayers, a former member of the Weather Underground.

He was surprised, the friends said, that so little criticism came — until this last frenzied week before the election, when Senator John McCain cited the April article in The Los Angeles Times about a dinner Mr. Obama attended in Mr. Khalidi’s honor in 2003, and questioned Mr. Obama’s commitment to Israel.

In recent days, Republican partisans have accused Mr. Khalidi, a professor at Columbia University since 2003, of everything from anti-Semitism to baby-sitting for Mr. Obama’s children.

For Columbia, the firestorm is the latest episode in a string of messy, public controversies regarding Middle East politics. In 2004, pro-Palestinian professors were accused of intimidating Jewish students. Mr. Khalidi was not one of those teachers, but he was barred the next year from lecturing New York City public school teachers for having used the words “racist” and “apartheid” in discussions of Israel.

“It just seems really ironic to me that Rashid would be singled out as a figure in the trumped-up controversy,” Alan Brinkley, Columbia’s provost and a friend of Mr. Khalidi’s since 1985, said in a telephone interview Thursday. “In a field that is often politicized, he is respected by people on the right as well as the left.”

Ariel Beery, a former Columbia student leader who was involved in a pro-Israel group’s film about the 2004 controversy, said Mr. Khalidi was different from those accused of intimidation.

“In terms of his role as a professor, he was excellent,” Mr. Beery said Thursday in a telephone interview from Israel, where he lives. “He was provoking, he always allowed for different opinions, he had an open zone where people could voice their disagreement.”

Mr. Beery did criticize Mr. Khalidi’s leadership of the Middle East Institute at Columbia, saying it was “highly politicized” and “not promoting a diverse view of the Middle East.”

Mr. Khalidi, who is on sabbatical, declined to comment.

Mr. Khalidi, the Edward Said professor of Arab studies at Columbia, was born in Manhattan in 1948. His father, a Palestinian Muslim born in Jerusalem, worked for the United Nations, and his mother, a Lebanese-American Christian, was an interior decorator. He graduated from the United Nations International School and earned his bachelor’s degree from Yale in 1970 and a doctorate from Oxford University in 1974.

He taught at universities in Lebanon until the mid-’80s, and some critics accuse him of having been a spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization. Mr. Khalidi has denied working for the group, and says he was consulted as an expert by reporters seeking to understand it.

He was an adviser to the Palestinian delegation during Middle East peace talks from 1991 to 1993. From 1987 until 2003, he was a professor at the University of Chicago, where he became friends with Mr. Obama.

At Mr. Khalidi’s farewell party in 2003, according to the Los Angeles Times article, Mr. Obama fondly recalled their many conversations, saying they provided “consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases.” But Mr. Khalidi told Harper’s Magazine that a report in National Review Online that he had baby-sat for Mr. Obama’s children was nonsense.

Daniel Pipes, who directs the conservative Middle East Forum, said: “If one’s talking about American political life, he’s at the extremes, at the margins. If one’s talking about the field of Middle East studies, he’s in the middle of it. But the field itself is dominated by professors who do not permit other points of view.”

Oh yea, and Dan Pipes is a moderate. Moron.

In 2005, after a New York Sun article highlighted some of Mr. Khalidi’s statements, the New York City schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein, barred Mr. Khalidi from a teacher-training course. In an interview with The New York Times, Mr. Khalidi said then that he “may have used the word ‘racist’ about Israeli policies,” and acknowledged saying in a speech that if the movement of Palestinians continued to be restricted, “it would develop into worse than the apartheid system.”

Addressing an accusation that he had endorsed the killing of Israeli soldiers as legitimate “resistance” to occupation, he said: “Under international law, resistance to occupation is legitimate. I didn’t endorse killing Israeli soldiers. These people will take anything out of context. Anyone who knows me knows the last thing I am is extreme. I’ve called suicide bombings a war crime. I’m a ferocious critic of Arafat.”

Rabbi J. Rolando Matalon of Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, a liberal synagogue on the Upper West Side, said he has known Mr. Khalidi for years and called the allegations “completely absurd and uncalled for and malicious.”

Referring to comments he had seen on blogs and television, he said, “In no way has he ever indicated that he favors the destruction or disappearance of Israel,” and added, “He has always been consistently in favor of dialogue and common ground.”

At Columbia, Mr. Khalidi is known as a gregarious scholar who takes a special interest in students, often meeting them for lunch near campus and hosting dinners featuring Palestinian food cooked by his wife, Mona, an assistant dean at the university. After he came under attack this week, students created a Facebook group called “I stand by Rashid Khalidi,” with 205 members by Thursday night.

“He makes history entertaining,” said Maher Awartani, 24, an Arab student leader who has taken his class. “It’s like a grandfather telling his grandson a story of what happened.”

Mr. Awartani criticized not just the McCain campaign but also the Obama campaign’s tepid response, saying, “It should have been like, yes, I know him, and I’d like to know more Middle East experts, because that’s an important thing when you’re making policies.”

Karen Zraick contributed reporting.

I'm a Mac Man

Just got the new Macbook. It's a fine piece of equipment. Anyone considering the move from PC to Mac should know that the operation of a Mac is nearly flawless. Stuff pops up when you click on it, it doesn't lag, and it's just plain fast. No complaints... yet.