via [ Max Blumenthal ] IDF Releases Apparently Doctored Flotilla Audio; Press Reports As Fact

(original video - released by the IDF on May 31)

(doctored video - released on June 4)

Thomas International

via [ The Hindu ]

In this photo taken on Saturday, former South Africa president Nelson Mandela is reunited with The Elders, three years after he launched the group, in Johannesburg. Photo: AP

“The Elders have condemned the reported killing by Israeli forces of more than a dozen people who were attempting to deliver relief supplies to the Gaza Strip by sea,” the 12—member group said in a statement issued in Johannesburg, where it met over the weekend.

The group, which was launched by Mr. Mandela on his birthday in 2007 to try to solve some of the world’s most intractable conflicts, called for a “full investigation” of the incident and urged the UN Security Council “to debate the situation with a view to mandating action to end the closure of the Gaza Strip.” “This tragic incident should draw the world’s attention to the terrible suffering of Gaza’s 1.5 million people, half of whom are children under the age of 18,” the group said.

Israel’s three—year blockade of Gaza was not only “one of the world’s greatest human rights violations” and “illegal” under international law, it was also “counterproductive” because it empowered extremists in the Palestinian territory, they said.

The Elders includes six Nobel peace prize winners — former UN secretary general Kofi Annan, former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, former US president Jimmy Carter, detained Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi and Mr. Mandela and Tutu.

Thomas International

Thoughts:

via Paul Kane from comments [ The Messenger ]

This was a bloody slaughter, a bloody slaughter with global implications for the relationship between each of us and our goverment, for the utter bloody impunity of government.

via [ Matthew Yglesias ]

Gaza doesn’t contain nearly enough arable land to support the Strip’s population as subsistence farmers. Which of course is true of many other places on earth. But the effect of the embargo is to make meaningful commercial activity in Gaza nearly impossible, pushing living standards down to what would be a below-subsistence level were it not for the trickle of aid that flows in. The Hamas authorities exercise some fairly rough justice over the area, extremist groups burn down summer camps and Israel launches airstrikes periodically sometimes injuring dozens sometimes hurting no one. The overall situation is incredibly bleak. Construction supplies aren’t allowed into the area, so it’s been impossible to rebuild since the war there from a couple of years back, and all the physical infrastructure is just degrading over time.

via Steve Clemons of [ The Washington Note ]

From a distance, what seems to be happening is that Israel is ratcheting up its test of what it can do in the confines of the US-Israel relationship. It is testing to see whether there exist any limits or conditionality on Israeli behavior at all. Israel believes that the Obama team is weak — and is pushing aggressively to compel the US to tolerate anything the State of Israel does as a signal to the rest of the Middle East that is itself clamoring for any sign that the Obama administration is willing to put some muscle and substantive action behind the President’s Cairo speech and other comments to the governments and people in the Arab world.

The flotilla may have been populated by peace activists who really did want to get humanitarian supplies to Gaza — but the leadership of this flotilla was trying to expose the “false choice” contradiction that the US and other powers were making between Israel’s interests and the interests of the rest of the Middle East.

This was a strategic flotilla — designed to elicit exactly the response that Israel gave. This flotilla knew which button to push to animate Israel’s military response. It is not dissimilar from what al Qaeda did by attacking New York and Washington and drawing the US military to intervene in the Middle East.

Israel, like the United States, showed itself incapable of nuance and of outmaneuvering this flotilla by resorting to means that would not have helped the activists succeed in their objectives. At the Doha Forum, I am speaking to Arabs, Jews and Christians who represent senior governmental and non-governmental organizations in their home countries — and no one here that I have found thinks that the Israeli government responded to the flotilla sensibly — even if one buys the argument that the blockade of Gaza is justified.

The U.S. really can’t afford to make the choice of Israel over the Arab world. There will be enormous geopolitical and geoeconomic consequences if it does

Thomas International, Misc

Israeli forces have attacked aid ships attempting to break the blockade of Gaza. Commandos lowered themselves from helicopters and onto the Mavi Marmara - the lead ship in a flotilla of six vessels which are carrying humanitarian aid for the Palestinian territory

Thomas International

There is not doubt I tend to conflate the political economy on the southern shores of Lake Michigan with Israel’s occupation & settlement of Palestinian land. Granted there are significant limits to this comparison. Yet, it is clear the concentration of negative externalities attributable to our nation’s heavy industrial base seriously impairs our fence line communities and is very much a scar on the values of Democracy we hold dear. Simply put, Democracy does not exist here.

Existing Conditions:

• Arguably the most polluted waters in the country - the Indiana Harbor Shipping Canal (IHSC): The only waterway to fail all beneficial uses.
  • Joerse Beach: most contaminated beach in the Great Lakes and third most in the country.
• Arguably the most polluted air-shed in the country - Lake county indiana’s air-shed ranks as the 9th most polluted in the country (of 3140 counties) with the sources of pollution attributed to the three big industries concentrated on East Chicago’s lakefront - BP, Mittal Steel, and U.S. Steel.
• A Gated Industrial Community with >80% of East Chicago’s land-use is dedicated to heavy industry - ~50% of these industrial lands are out of productive use and considered contaminated, e.g., brownfields
  • 14% of East Chicago’s land-use is dedicated Residential - ~17% of these residential properties are apart of a superfund site.

When I look at the impact our nation’s heavy industrial base has had on the local populations, culture, land, air, water and biology in my community, I see a misapplication of rights and justice - environmental justice. This prompts me to identify the problems with the fragmented pattern of land use, populations, and the expression of political will seen in the mapping of Palestinian lands.

From the [ American Friends Service Committee ]

via [ Matthew Yglesias ]

One of the lessons I took away from the Carter controversy was that the use of the term “apartheid” seems to shut down people’s critical faculties and make them defensive. So I generally prefer to set it aside. The point is that there’s a political system in the West Bank where the Jewish residents have the right to vote, have privileged access to water, have exclusive access to some roadways, have privileged rights to travel, etc., none of which are shared by the non-Jewish residents. You can call it what you like, but it’s not democracy.

Thomas International

via [ NY Times ] “Guantanamo Reunion, by Way of BBC” by Brian Stelter

New to Facebook, Brandon Neely was searching the site for acquaintances in 2008 when he typed in the names of some of the detainees he had guarded during his tenure as a prison guard at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Captor and Captives Meet Post Guantánamo - NYTimes.com.

Thomas International

via [ Democracy Now ]

Thomas International

From what I can gather from Frontline’s documentary is that the Afghanistan War is as much about managing agrarian market forces as it is about battling an insurgency. A problem I see is in this short piece is that America is once again relying solely on forces trained to deliver and manage overwhelming violence. Granted they are trying to put on their best face for the local farmers, but it is not ringing true.

This may sound ridiculous, but it appears to me that America would be more effective if it relied more on cultural agents that were similar to the small Afghan farmers and villagers - a kind of peace corp. I realize America has classified this region as a war zone, but for locals it is home, and to a certain extent life goes on normally, so it ought not to be crazy to suggest using a normalizing force that they can identify with and gain trust in more quickly.

America is a complex culture. It has many people and farmers with similar lifestyles as these people. I suggest sending in a peaceful force of agrarian faiths including Muslims. The Mennonite Central Committee immediately comes to mind, and there are many more organizations doing similar work. Many of these groups have been doing this kind of work for decades throughout the world. I am thinking of the Mennonites because central to their faith is the doctrine of pacifism. In areas of conflict this makes them honest agents of good faith. They are also known to build relationships through concrete hands-on work to address basic human needs such as water and food supply.

Thomas International, National

Steve Clemen’s article is about the best articulated piece I’ve read today on Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize.

Obama’s ‘unclenched fist’ won the prize

Cynics will say that Oslo was jealous that Copenhagen, Denmark, scored a visit from President Obama, and giving him a Nobel was the only way to get him to Norway.

But the Nobel Committee’s decision to make Obama the only sitting U.S. president since Woodrow Wilson to receive the Nobel Peace Prize shows the committee’s clear-headed assessment that Obama’s “unclenched fist” approach to dealing with the world’s most thuggish leaders has had a constructive, systemic impact on the world’s expectations of itself.

Obama has helped citizens all around the world — including in the United States — to want a world beyond the mess we have today in the Middle East and South Asia. They want a world where America is benign and positive, and where other leaders help in supporting the struggles of their people for better lives rather than securing themselves through crude power.

Commentary: Obama’s ‘unclenched fist’ won the prize - CNN.com.

Ruffled Feathers
I went looking for a media clip that treated Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize as news and not something to spin suspicion, or asked if he deserved it. I had to resort to a foreign news outlet - ITN news out of the UK.

Thomas International

[ Max Blumenthal ] In Jerusalem on the eve of Obama’s speech in Cairo. 

Thomas International

via [ The Independent ]

One strategy of an intelligent society to gain territory is to attempt to embed meaning and cultural significance in a particular place. This is what Israel is doing with plans for a Jewish Archaeological Theme Park in Palestinian territory. 

On the eve of President Obama’s visit to the Middle East and his speech in Cairo. Max Blumenthal propels himself again into the middle of (it). Like many of his video reports Max places himself in the middle of his opponents power celebrations with a fearful and driven edge in his voice he again struggles for composure on the issues. Some of this composure may come from editing. Regardless he relies on the tradition of a truth to power journalism, a tradition that may not be as well respected in other parts of the world, not that it is so respected here in the U.S. 

Video journalist Max Blumenthal talks to many in the Jewish settler movement who put it all out there. Winners of the Moskowitz Prize state frankly that they want to continue the ethnic cleansing of Occupied Territories — and young kids parrot the meme that Palestinians have no right to lands that are Israel’s holy lands.

This cult of land expropriators needs to be rolled back. I understand the realities that there are certain settlements that will remain part of Israel when a Palestinian state is created — but in a fair land swap.

But the expansion of settlements that “bingo tycoon” Irving Moskowitz keeps pushing is undermining the security interests of all parties in the region — particularly Israel’s.

Blumenthal’s work is some of the most vital and creative journalism out there today.

- Steve Clemens

Thomas International

From this mornings (04-10-09) headline “Top US General: We May Have to Ignore Iraq Deadline: at the Huffington Post.

There is no better way to bring some of the reality of this war home to Americans and create the sense of a comfortable domestic setting being pierced by an very violent force than to use familiar visual and graphic cues like the “put your trash in the garbage.”

Thomas International, Visual Culture

[ NYTimes article ]

When asked why that elderly woman was killed, a squad commander was quoted as saying: “What’s great about Gaza — you see a person on a path, he doesn’t have to be armed, you can simply shoot him. In our case it was an old woman on whom I did not see any weapon when I looked. The order was to take down the person, this woman, the minute you see her. There are always warnings, there is always the saying, ‘Maybe he’s a terrorist.’ What I felt was, there was a lot of thirst for blood.”

 

Amir Marmor, a 33-year-old history graduate student in Jerusalem and a military reservist, said in an interview with The New York Times that he was stunned to discover the way civilian casualties were discussed in training discussions before his tank unit entered Gaza in January. “Shoot and don’t worry about the consequences,” was the message from the top commanders, he said. Speaking of a lieutenant colonel who briefed the troops, Mr. Marmor said, “His whole demeanor was extremely gung ho. This is very, very different from my usual experience. I have been doing reserve duty for 12 years, and it was always an issue how to avoid causing civilian injuries. He said in this operation we are not taking any chances. Morality aside, we have to do our job. We will cry about it later.”

Aljazeera English Corroborates the Story:

Thomas International

“What would happen if Christians devoted the same discipline and self-sacrifice to nonviolent peacemaking that armies devote to war?”

- Christian Peacemaker Teams

via [ Peter Miller ]

Thomas International

From the [ American Friends Service Committee ]

<About>

The American Friends Service Committee carries out service, development, social justice, and peace programs throughout the world. Founded by Quakers in 1917 to provide conscientious objectors with an opportunity to aid civilian war victims, AFSC’s work attracts the support and partnership of people of many races, religions, and cultures.

AFSC’s work is based on the Quaker belief in the worth of every person and faith in the power of love to overcome violence and injustice. The organization’s mission and achievements won worldwide recognition in 1947 when it accepted the Nobel Peace Prize with the British Friends Service Council on behalf of all Quakers.

The AFSC is directed by a Quaker board and staffed by Quakers and other people of faith who share the Friends’ desire for peace and social justice. 

</About>

Thomas International, Planning Mishaps

Thomas International, Multi-media

If you take Netanyahu for his word, It doesn’t appear he accepts Palestine’s right to exist. This from Haaretz.com “ANALYSIS / Why isn’t Netanyahu backing two-state solution?”

“Netanyahu seeks to deny the Palestinians four rights of any sovereign state: control of its airspace; control of its electromagnetic spectrum; the right to maintain an army and to sign military alliances; and, most importantly, control of the border crossings where arms and terrorists could pass. Netanyahu believes Israel must retain all of these. Netanyahu’s model is based on the work of Stanford University political science professor Stephen Krasner, who was director of policy planning in the State Department under Condoleezza Rice. Krasner developed a “restricted sovereignty” model for problematic state structures.”

Do I have to say, if an Arab refuses to concede Israel’s “right to exist” the U.S. government considers them an irrelevant radical promoting terrorism against a sovereign state.

UPDATE: “pursuit of a peace agreement that includes a Palestinian state seems inescapable.”

- Hillary Clinton

Thomas International

In The Middle: Hopeful Signs from Peter Miller

Hampshire College

On Saturday, March 10, 1979, Hampshire College became the first American college to divest from Apartheid South Africa. Although Apartheid wasn’t ended for another 15 years, Hampshire College’s decision was a critical first step. Hampshire was the first of 155 American colleges and universities to eventually divest from South Africa. The divestment movement grew to include individuals, cities, corporations, and even the U.S. Federal Government. As billions of dollars of capital were pulled from the economy, the South African government was forced to engage in negotiations that eventually led to the end of the Apartheid system. 

On Saturday, February 7, 2009, Hampshire College became the first American college to divest from companies that benefit from the Israeli Occupation.

The effort to divest from Israel is gaining steam. Click here or here for links to a few of the campaigns that are underway. I find the denominational campaigns to be the most interesting. As a Mennonite, I’m particularly fascinated by what the Mennonite Church is saying. In 2007 a Mennonite delegation visited Palestine and Israel and issued a statement that called for people “to avoid investments which violate international law and promote violence.” As far as I know, the church has not yet made a binding decision on this point. But I do find their words heartening. I pray that the Mennonite Church will have the courage to turn these words into action.

How quickly things get mucky. Hampshire College issues statement of clarification about investment fund and responds to an Alan Dershowitz’s article “Stop contributing to Hampshire College” in the Jerusalem Post.

Thomas International

UPDATE (April 3rd, ‘09): Since being visited upon by an agent from Tel Aviv-yafo, Tel Aviv three days ago, this post has been receiving spam every 2:10 from that address.

Netanyahu: Train Wreck for Israel, Middle East; Looming Disaster for United States

The selection of rightwing expansionist Binyamin Netanyahu to form the next Israeli government is being greeted with dismay by the Egyptian government, which remembers him for having derailed the Oslo peace process in the late 1990s. 

Netanyahu has vowed to abandon negotiations with the Palestinians, and says he will expand the program of Israeli colonization of the Palestinian West Bank. 

Since even before Netanyahu’s coronation was announced,the Israelis had been busy stealing more Palestinian land and planning more colonies on the purloined territory,Netanyahu will just be accelerating an already inexorable process.

Despite today’s faintly ridiculous attempt in the NYT to depict Netanyahu as a born-again pragmantist, in fact he rejects any withdrawal from the Palestinian West Bank by Israeli squatters, despite Israel’s commitment to pull back in the Oslo accords. Since the West Bank looks like Swiss cheese with regard to administration and settlement patterns, there isn’t a Palestinian state to be had there without an extensive Israeli pullback, and Netanyahu has never shown any interest in either pullback or Palestinian state. 

Now his people are trying to revive this bizarre idea of giving Jordan some sort of vague authority over the West Bank Palestinians as a way of denying them statehood in their own right. Jordan’s government has been under severe pressure to expel the Israeli ambassador over the brutal Gaza campaign, and any such active collaboration with Israel to repress the West Bankers would risk toppling the Hashemite throne. King Hussein once accused Netanyahu of single-handedly destroying every positive thing the Jordanian monarch had worked for.

Netanyahu is a train wreck for the Middle East. He is willing to ally with Avigdor Lieberman, an open racist who is gunning for the 20 percent of Israel’s citizen population that is Palestinian. Netanyahu wants a war with Iran, and when the Israeli Right wants a war nowadays, they usually want our children to fight and die in it for them. The 1996 “Clean Break” Neoconservative policy paper advocating a war on Iraq was written for Netanyahu. (They are not satisfied with picking our pockets for their weapons and colonization projects). Netanyahu will further oppress and brutalize the Palestinians, which he will keep in a slave-like condition of statelessness, and from whom he will steal what little property they have left. Last time he was in office he went around poisoning his enemies, for all the world like the Bulgarian KGB in the old days.

Netanyahu is the devil’s gift to international terrorism, which his policies will provoke. Fifty years from now, the turn of Israel to the hard right will be looked back upon as the beginning of the end of Israel, the time when the crucial decisions were made that rendered it impossible for the Israelis to stay in the Middle East in the face of the increasing popular anger Netanyahu will have provoked in 1.5 billion Muslims. No, Israel cannot be defeated on the battleground. But the French colons in Algeria were never really defeated on the battleground, either, nor were the thousands of Britons who had ruled India.

More immediately, all Americans will have reason to rue Netanyahu’s return to power, since the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and other elements of the powerful Israel lobbies will pull Congress around to support Likudnik policies in the next few years.

And it won’t even be allowed to protest where Netanyahu will take America.

Thomas International

Mustafa Barghouti on Israel Elections

“Former Palestinian presidential candidate (and likely future candidate) Mustafa Barghouti stopped by my office today for a short discussion on his impressions of what is possible and what is not in the aftermath of yesterday’s national elections in Israel.

As usual, Barghouti paints a compelling picture of limited options and stark realities.”

– Steve Clemons

Thomas International