Rumor of U.S. Sneak Attack on Iran Planned for Next Week?

[I don't offer Webster G. Tarpley, a conspiracy theorist, as a final authority on this matter:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webster_Tarpley

However, the precedent of the Israeli destruction of the infrastructure of Lebanon, which was clearly supported and encouraged by the Bush administration, looms as a possible precedent for a brutal sneak attack on Iran -- if not next week, sometime during Bush's remaining time in office. Our fleet has assembled in the Persian Gulf where U.S. Middle East forces have been placed under the supervision of a U.S. naval officer. We have seen the madness of Iraq this past four years and the neocons have been loudly endorsing an attack on Iran:

http://www.commondreams.org/views02/1110-07.htm

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/816046.html

I think we had all best listen up now. Such an attack would be a disaster for all involved. Ed Kent]

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Operation Bite: April 6 sneak attack by US forces against Iran planned,
Russian military sources warn
By Webster G. Tarpley
Online Journal Contributing Writer


Mar 26, 2007, 01:02


WASHINGTON DC, -- The long awaited US military attack on Iran is now on
track for the first week of April, specifically for 4 am on April 6, the
Good Friday opening of Easter weekend, writes the well-known Russian
journalist Andrei Uglanov in the Moscow weekly ³Argumenty Nedeli.² Uglanov cites Russian military experts close to the Russian General Staff for his account.

The attack is slated to last for 12 hours, according to Uglanov, from 4 am until 4 pm local time. Friday is the sabbath in Iran. In the course of the attack, code named Operation Bite, about 20 targets are marked for bombing; the list includes uranium enrichment facilities, research centers, and laboratories.

The first reactor at the Bushehr nuclear plant, where Russian engineers are working, is supposed to be spared from destruction. The US attack plan reportedly calls for the Iranian air defense system to be degraded, for numerous Iranian warships to be sunk in the Persian Gulf, and for the most important headquarters of the Iranian armed forces to be wiped out.

The attacks will be mounted from a number of bases, including the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Diego Garcia is currently home to B-52 bombers equipped with standoff missiles. Also participating in the air strikes will be US naval aviation from aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf, as well as from those of the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean. Additional cruise missiles will be fired from submarines in the Indian Ocean and off the coast of the Arabian peninsula. The goal is allegedly to set back Iran¹s nuclear program by several years, writes Uglanov, whose article was reissued by RIA-Novosti in various languages, but apparently not English, several days ago. The story is the top item on numerous Italian and German blogs, but so far appears to have been ignored by US websites.

Observers comment that this dispatch represents a high-level orchestrated leak from the Kremlin, in effect a war warning, which draws on the formidable resources of the Russian intelligence services, and which deserves to be taken with the utmost seriousness by pro-peace forces around the world.

Asked by RIA-Novosti to comment on the Uglanov report, retired Colonel
General Leonid Ivashov confirmed its essential features in a March 21
interview: ³I have no doubt that there will be an operation, or more
precisely a violent action against Iran.² Ivashov, who has reportedly served at various times as an informal advisor to Russian President Vladimir Putin, is currently the vice president of the Moscow Academy for Geopolitical Sciences.

Ivashov attributed decisive importance to the decision of the Democratic
leadership of the US House of Representatives to remove language from the just-passed Iraq supplemental military appropriations bill that would have demanded that Bush come to Congress before launching an attack on Iran. Ivashov pointed out that the language was eliminated under pressure from AIPAC, the lobbing group representing the Israeli extreme right, and from Israeli Foreign Minister Tsipi Livni.

³We have drawn the unmistakable conclusion that this operation will take
place,² said Ivashov. In his opinion, the US planning does not include a
land operation: ³ Most probably there will be no ground attack, but rather massive air attacks with the goal of annihilating Iran¹s capacity for military resistance, the centers of administration, the key economic assets, and quite possibly the Iranian political leadership, or at least part of it,² he continued.

Ivashov noted that it was not to be excluded that the Pentagon would use
smaller tactical nuclear weapons against targets of the Iranian nuclear
industry. These attacks could paralyze everyday life, create panic in the population, and generally produce an atmosphere of chaos and uncertainty all over Iran, Ivashov told RIA-Novosti. ³This will unleash a struggle for power inside Iran, and then there will be a peace delegation sent in to install a pro-American government in Teheran,² Ivashov continued. One of the US goals was, in his estimation, to burnish the image of the current Republican administration, which would now be able to boast that they had wiped out the Iranian nuclear program.

Among the other outcomes, General Ivashov pointed to a partition of Iran
along the same lines as Iraq, and a subsequent carving up of the Near and Middle East into smaller regions. ³This concept worked well for them in the Balkans and will now be applied to the greater Middle East,² he commented.

³Moscow must exert Russia¹s influence by demanding an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council to deal with the current preparations for an illegal use of force against Iran and the destruction of the basis of the United Nations Charter,² said General Ivashov. ³In this context Russia could cooperate with China, France and the non-permanent members of the Security Council. We need this kind of preventive action to ward off the use of force,² he concluded.

Resources:

http://fr.rian.ru/world/20070319/62260006.html

http://fr.rian.ru/world/20070321/62387717.html

Webster G. Tarpley is a journalist. Among other works, he has published an investigation on the manipulation of the Red Brigades by the Vatican¹s P2 Suite and the assassination of Aldo Moro, a non-authorized biography of George H. Bush, and more recently an analysis of the methods used to perpetrate the September 11, 2001 attacks.

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Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah

I gather that there is a debate in process as to whether to re-release the 1946 Disney movie, Song of the South, which features the kindly African American, Uncle Remus, who relates Br'er Rabbit stories to white children. One of the unforgettable songs from that movie was a prize winner -- Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah. The following websites detail the specifics:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Remushttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Remus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Remus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah_%28song%29

Hearing an npr discussion last night of the pros and cons of bringing back this considered to be racist movie took me back to the time of my earliest memories when I was 2 through 4. At that mid Depression time my parents had moved from New York to Connecticut, first settling into a two family house on Pleasant Street in West Hartford -- the last built up street to the west prior to a reservoir and then Oakland Gardens, a poor folks village, that preceded the more prosperous Farmington (home of fashionable Miss Porters School for Girls and my grandmother Kent and her cousin Bess Luce -- mother of Henry, co-founder of Time Inc.) where we eventually moved.

Back to our first home on Pleasant Street, which must have been built up as a series of homes just prior to the Depression, an anomaly in our back yard between Pleasant Street and the previous one to the east was what must have been an original house -- more a shack in its simplicity where lived Bert, an elderly African American. He, as well as the house, was anomalous, as Hartford, itself, was a segregated city with its African American ghetto buried in its depths -- as I discovered a few years later as a boy scout delivering bundles of collected newspapers to a warehouse in it for the WW2 war effort.

Bert I met while exploring as a 3-year-old our back yard which connected with his garden and he became a kindly figure in my life as he worked on his plantings there. He told me stories and once bandaged my dog, a Boston bull terrier, which had cut it leg on a broken milk bottle. Bert gently urged me not to tease my dog -- I would tie him up in odd places under a chair or whatever. My life-long sense gained from Bert was of kindliness and wisdom about the way life should be lived -- a lesson that impacts on 3-year-olds who are just beginning to be socialized. One time Bert teased my mom as he was digging up worms in his garden by suggesting to me that I tell her that worm pies were absolutely delicious -- she demurred.

Jumping into other worlds, my mother-in-law was one of my dearest friends as well as a college dean and a civil rights activist. Near the end of her life I found her one evening on national news TV protesting the murder of a civil rights leader. She had been the last child of seven of a FFV (First Families of Virginia) which had held various political offices in Virginia and other states and her family had owned a few slaves. I remember her telling us that the older African American woman who had cared for her as a child had persuaded her by her example and kindness that racism was wrong.

And so it goes -- the uncle Remus and Br'er Rabbit stories are totally engaging, if racist from an adult perspective. For children, perhaps they carry an entirely different message? Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah!
--
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Where Is That Border?

[One certainly hopes this or some comparable action will not start escalation towards violence from which there would be no winner. Lest we forget, Iran has 3 times the population of either Iraq or Afghanistan and is well armed and positioned to disrupt the region totally. Our military forces are already over-extended and we have learned from Iraq that 'Shock and Awe' tactics merely create chaos -- not stable regime change. Needless to say, what Blair and Bush see as a justified war on Iraq, most of the rest of the world (and especially the Arabs and Iranians) see as a stupid latter day effort at imperialistic colonization! Ed Kent]

............................

Excerpt from a Monitor article on motives for the Iranian capture of the British sailors:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0329/p99s01-duts.html

For all the possible political motives however, the main cause of the showdown could be a centuries-old dispute over the water border between Iran and Iraq. It began with the 1639 Treaty of Zuhab between the Persian and Ottoman empires, which divided the land without a careful survey. Disagreements through the 1980s, and some of the fiercest fighting in the eight-year war between the two nations occurred along this border. The Associated Press quotes Lawrence G. Potter, an associate professor of international affairs at Columbia University, who says that even to this day the exact demarcation has not been established. "The problem is that nobody knows where the border is," Potter said. "The British might have thought they were on their side, the Iranians might have thought they were on their side."
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
--
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We Need a Renewed Deal!!!

[I happen to have done a dissertation on property theory, so as a philosopher I am all too well aware of what accountants and lawyers know -- that property is not things -- it is a complex of rights, duties, powers and liabilities that are readily manipulated within national and international legal schemes. What we see about us here in the U.S. (and by extension where our corporations run amuck globally) is the consequence of the games that have been devised by the dominating Republicans during the last 12 years in reallocating benefits (cutting those to people below the top 10% and raising those particularly of the top 1% and of corporations by various devices -- direct allocation of resources as well as sabotaging governmental regulatory agencies.

The current disaster of the Attorney General's office is but the tip of a huge iceberg best symbolized by Enron. We, the people, are being ripped off at every turn -- taxes, credit card company games with interest and penalties, medical insurance scams of all sorts, health and environmental risks, cancer and asthma inducing agents surrounding us -- with denial of medical early warning medical protections. This list is endless. Scarcely a day goes by without another disclosure of murderous abdications of responsibility by our current governments.

May we live so long that we see better once again in the U.S. We a need Renewed Deal!!!! Ed Kent]

....................................

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/29/business/29tax.html?th&emc=th

Income Gap Is Widening, Data Shows

By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON
Published: March 29, 2007

Income inequality grew significantly in 2005, with the top 1 percent of Americans — those with incomes that year of more than $348,000 — receiving their largest share of national income since 1928, analysis of newly released tax data shows.

The top 10 percent, roughly those earning more than $100,000, also reached a level of income share not seen since before the Depression.

While total reported income in the United States increased almost 9 percent in 2005, the most recent year for which such data is available, average incomes for those in the bottom 90 percent dipped slightly compared with the year before, dropping $172, or 0.6 percent.

The gains went largely to the top 1 percent, whose incomes rose to an average of more than $1.1 million each, an increase of more than $139,000, or about 14 percent.

The new data also shows that the top 300,000 Americans collectively enjoyed almost as much income as the bottom 150 million Americans. Per person, the top group received 440 times as much as the average person in the bottom half earned, nearly doubling the gap from 1980.

Prof. Emmanuel Saez, the University of California, Berkeley, economist who analyzed the Internal Revenue Service data with Prof. Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics, said such growing disparities were significant in terms of social and political stability.

“If the economy is growing but only a few are enjoying the benefits, it goes to our sense of fairness,” Professor Saez said. “It can have important political consequences.”

Last year, according to data from other sources, incomes for average Americans increased for the first time in several years. But because those at the top rely heavily on the stock market and business profits for their income, both of which were strong last year, it is likely that the disparities in 2005 are the same or larger now, Professor Saez said.

He noted that the analysis was based on preliminary data and that the highest-income Americans were more likely than others to file their returns late, so his data might understate the growth in inequality.

The disparities may be even greater for another reason. The Internal Revenue Service estimates that it is able to accurately tax 99 percent of wage income but that it captures only about 70 percent of business and investment income, most of which flows to upper-income individuals, because not everybody accurately reports such figures.

The Bush administration argued that its tax policies, despite cuts that benefited those at the top more than others, had not added to the widening gap but “made the tax code more progressive, not less.” Brookly McLaughlin, the chief Treasury Department spokeswoman, said that this year “the share of income taxes paid by lower-income taxpayers will be lower than it would have been without the tax relief, while the share of income taxes for higher-income taxpayers will be higher.”

Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., she noted, has acknowledged that income disparities have increased, but, along with a “solid consensus” of experts, attributed that shift largely to “the rapid pace of technological change has been a major driver in the decades-long widening of the income gap in the United States."

Others argued that public policies had played a role in the shift. Robert Greenstein, executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, an advocacy group for the poor, said that the data understates the widening disparity between the top 1 percent and the rest of the country.

He said that in addition to rising incomes and reduced taxes, the equation should take into account cuts in fringe benefits to workers and in government services that middle-class and poor Americans rely on more than the affluent. These include health care, child care and education spending.

“The nation faces some very tough choices in coming years,” he said. “That such a large share of the income gains are going to the very top, at a minimum, raises serious questions about continuing to provide tax cuts averaging over $150,000 a year to people making more than a million dollars a year, while saying we do not have enough money” to provide health insurance to 47 million Americans and cutting education benefits.

A major issue likely to be debated in Congress in the year ahead is whether reversing the Bush tax cuts would slow investment and, if so, how much that would cost the economy.

Mr. Greenstein’s organization will release a report today showing that for Americans in the middle, the share of income taken by federal taxes has been essentially unchanged across four decades. By comparison, it has fallen by half for those at the very top of the income ladder.

Because the incomes of those at the top have grown so much more than those below them, their share of total income tax revenue has risen despite the reduced rates.

The analysis by the two professors showed that the top 10 percent of Americans collected 48.5 percent of all reported income in 2005.

That is an increase of more than 2 percentage points over the previous year and up from roughly 33 percent in the late 1970s. The peak for this group was 49.3 percent in 1928.

The top 1 percent received 21.8 percent of all reported income in 2005, up significantly from 19.8 percent the year before and more than double their share of income in 1980. The peak was in 1928, when the top 1 percent reported 23.9 percent of all income.

The top tenth of a percent and top one-hundredth of a percent recorded even bigger gains in 2005 over the previous year. Their incomes soared by about a fifth in one year, largely because of the rising stock market and increased business profits.

The top tenth of a percent reported an average income of $5.6 million, up $908,000, while the top one-hundredth of a percent had an average income of $25.7 million, up nearly $4.4 million in one year.
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
--
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War Criminals - Shame on Us!

[Kofi Annan, former Secretary General of the UN, and now King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, the nation once Bush's closest ally apart from Israel in the Middle East, have declared the U.S. led invasion and occupation of Iraq to be illegal. This is no light matter. To quote the new Secretary General as reported in the article below:

"Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations gave a stark assessment in an address to the meeting, saying the region was “more complex, more fragile and more dangerous than it has been for a very long time.”

"There is a shocking daily loss of life in Iraq, he said, and Somalia is in the grip of “banditry, violence and clan rivalries.”

"Iran, which on Saturday had new sanctions imposed against it by the Security Council, is “forging ahead with its nuclear program heedless of regional and international concerns,” Mr. Ban added."

Apart from Tony (Me-too) Blair, the above comments more or less reflect the views of the rest of the world: Bush launched an unjust war, has created chaos in the Middle East, and clearly meets the criteria for being a war criminal as outlined by international law and the institutions devised to enforce it -- for which he apparently is being formally charged both in Germany and in Spain thus far:

http://www.bushcommission.org/

All of the above does not bode well for us Americans. Immediately after 9/11 we bore both the sympathy and respect of most of the global community as a terrible victim of an attack by terrorists. We were seen as its moral as well as military leader. Now we are symbolized by Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib as the super power that violates the most inviolate international standards of human rights -- those against unjust wars and against torture!!! Most embarrassing of all our chief legal officer, Gonzalez, hangs there swinging in the breeze as Bush's personal lawyer buddy who has encouraged these and other egregious violations both of international law and of our own Constitution!

Yes, democracy does seem to be arriving in the Middle East -- but it is a version of democracy that views the U.S. as a part of an evil axis of torturers, murderers, and advocates of the worst imaginable violations of standards of the rule of law and justice that have taken centuries to evolve in the Western world!

And so Bush goes down the tubes -- and one hopes that we are not going to go with him. Shame on us! Ed Kent]

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U.S. Iraq Role Is Called Illegal by Saudi King
By HASSAN M. FATTAH
King Abdullah's speech at a meeting of Arab leaders
underscored growing differences between Saudi Arabia and
the Bush administration.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/29/world/middleeast/29saudi.html?th&emc=th
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
--
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Shock and Awe Iran?

[I hope what we are hearing is huffing and puffing only from Blair and some of the others towards Iran, but I fear that we may just be seeing preparations for a Lebanon type attack designed to destroy Iran's infrastructure:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=NAZ20061001&articleId=3361

This website reported the possible motivation for our military build up in that region last fall. Since that time we have added a second fleet to the Persian Gulf which is undergoing maneuvers simultaneously with Iranian military ones. One false step on either side could launch a brutal war, cutting off access to the bulk of Mid East oil as well as risking massive military and civilian casualties. Ever since Hitler pulled the Blitz on London, some modern nations have (wrongly) assumed that enemies can be cowed into submission by brutal attacks on their civilian populations. Incidentally, I wonder what gives the British the right to stop and search a vessel there -- not exactly British coastal waters. One has to hope that their sailors will be returned shortly, but . . .

We shall see presumably what is up in future months and I sincerely hope that the decider is not deciding once again. An attack on Iran would be a disaster that would make Iraq look like a tea party! Ed Kent]

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Blair Pushes Iran for Release of Captives
By ALAN COWELL
Prime Minster Tony Blair of Britain said the campaign to
free 15 naval personnel could move into a "different phase."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/28/world/europe/28britain.html?th&emc=th
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
--
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[cpthebron] HEBRON UPDATE: 12 to 17 March 2007

[Hebron is a West Bank city of constant conflicts between a small Jewish settlement located in its midst which divides the Palestinian community into unequal halves:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebron

Tensions abide there daily. The Christian Peacemaker Teams do what they can to moderate these with periodic reports such as that following this excerpt from the Wiki report:

"In 1994, an Israeli Jewish settler, Baruch Goldstein, opened fire on Muslims at prayer in the Ibrahimi Mosque, killing 29. This event was condemned by the Israeli Government and polled Israelis. Israel banned the right-wing Kach movement as a result . . . . A year later, the Mayor of Hebron invited the Christian Peacemaker Teams to assist them [with] the local Palestinian community in opposition to what they describe as Israeli military occupation, collective punishment, settler harassment, home demolitions and land confiscation. They have maintained a presence in the community despite attacks against them, the most noted being in 2004 when two corps members, Kimberly Lamberty and Christopher Brown were attacked while walking Palestinian Children to school. Accounts of the CPT presence can be found in Art Gish's "Hebron Journal." Ed Kent]

........................

HEBRON UPDATE: 12 March to 17 March 2007

On team during this period: Art Arbour, Janet Benvie, Ilse Muehlsteph, Abigail Ozanne, Kathie Uhler, and Mary Wendeln.

Monday 12 March

Art Arbour and Janet Benvie went to an action held by The Palestinian Popular Committee at the Duboyya street checkpoint calling for the opening of Shuhada Street.

In the mid afternoon, Israeli settler children throwing stones from the cemetery, across Shuhada Street, over the concrete barrier and fence outside the CPT apartment prevented Arbour from entering onto the street. He also witnessed a bearded adult male come between the blocks to throw stones at Palestinian children. Benvie and Ilse Muehlsteph from the roof observed settler children leaving the area below the apartment and running up Shuhada Street, and then saw Israeli soldiers coming into the street from the Old City. The soldiers detained a young 14-year-old Palestinian boy and took him to the Beit Romano checkpoint, where Israeli police away in a jeep.

A relative of the detained boy asked CPT if they would go with him to the police station, so Arbour and Muehlsteph accompanied the older brother of the detained boy to the Kiryat Arba police station. Police would not communicate with them for some time while they waited at the gate. Finally a soldier appeared and a short time later the boy was released. Four hours had passed, but the detained boy reported that these soldiers had given him a meal and treated him well. "Some soldiers are bad but these were good ones," he said.

Tuesday 13 March

Morning school patrol at Yatta Road was uneventful. The soldier opening the door at the checkpoint searched the bags of many of the women teachers that went through. He did not search most of the children. The headmistress of the Al Fayha'a Girls' School asked Muehlsteph and Kathie Uhler to photograph (suspected) settler vandalism to the school rear gate. The vandals had tried to break the gate lock at the back wall leading into the schoolyard. They did not cause any other damage. The headmistress showed the CPTers how, in the past, vandals have cut the chain link fencing above the wall and how she has tried to have these holes fixed.

Abigail Ozanne and Uhler went on afternoon patrol. The CPTers circled around by Yatta Road checkpoint and then walked up Shuhada Street. As they approached Beit Hadassah settlement, they saw three settler children gather stones. The children advanced, throwing stones almost as big as a fist. None of the stones hit. Ozanne and Uhler retreated. The children only stopped chasing them and throwing stones when the group came even with the military base and in sight of a soldier.

Wednesday 14 March

As Muehlsteph and Mary Wendeln - newly arrived on team - walked to the CPT apartment, they noticed soldiers with guns stalking the streets and peering into open areas. The soldiers asked Muehlsteph and Wendeln if they lived in the apartment. They also questioned two Palestinian boys as they removed kerosene containers from the CPT apartment for refills.

Ozanne went out mid-afternoon to get supplies for supper. As she was leaving, she saw a patrol leaving the Old City. When she returned, the squad was at Beit Romano checkpoint. Two of the soldiers had mountable machine guns, as opposed to the m-16 assault rifles they usually carry.

Because there were many soldiers in the market, the team surmised that new soldiers were being trained. Benvie and Muehlsteph went to the Ibrahimi Mosque checkpoint on patrol. The CPTers met a settler who asked them what they were doing for Jewish human rights in Hebron. He told them that they did not care about Jewish blood being spilt, only about Arab blood.

Thursday 15 March

Due to the weather, two reporters for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation arrived in Hebron five-and-a-half hours after they left Jerusalem. They interviewed Arbour for a radio documentary as he guided them through the Old City.

Friday 16 March

Benvie and Ozanne went with a translator in the afternoon to visit families in Wadi al-Ghroos and discuss possible non-violent actions to address the problem. They asked the families what they saw as the worst problem and how CPT could help with this problem. They also presented some ideas the team had brainstormed. At the first home the CPTers visited, the father said he believes that the Israelis will not give up Hebron and that they will try to connect Kiryat Arba and Harsina.

The eldest daughter described how she went through the hills to school because the soldiers block the road. She said that the soldiers harass the women and girls. Sometimes they pull down their pants in front of the females or show them sexual pictures. Sometimes the soldiers will not allow the children to pass until they go to the store for the soldiers.

Benvie, Ozanne and the translator visited another family. They said they believe the main problem is the closure of the road to ambulances and other vehicles since 2001. It is hard for people to get to the hospital over rough ground. It is also difficult to bring in shopping because of the road closure. They talked about how there is no way to get the garbage out of the valley and they live near to the garbage dump, which has caused much disease.

At the home of a third family, the family talked about the lack of medical services. The patriarch repeated the problem of medical services because the road is closed. The family said the road is a serious problem. Once a child in the family was very sick so the father had to carry him out of the valley on foot. The father pointed out that the military has said they have never had problems with the people in the valley.

Saturday 17 March

In the afternoon, Ozanne and Wendeln went to a house previously owned by a Palestinian family and now rented by Isso Amro and discovered that a settler was praying in the yard. Ozanne called Amro, who asked her to take pictures and told her he would call the police to report the trespassing. Ozanne took several pictures while the settler tried to hide her face. Once the settler realized Ozanne was no longer taking pictures, the woman came out from behind a tree and threw a stone at Ozanne and yelled at her, "I will kill you!"


Christian Peacemaker Teams is an ecumenical initiative to support violence reduction efforts around the world. To learn more about CPT's peacemaking work, visit our website www.cpt.org --
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
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"Marines are at war, America is at the mall."

My own recollection of wars, begins with my father's reported experience as a new young lieutenant being spared fighting, as he was about to be shipped off, by the WW1 Armistice in November of 1918. That war was also made vivid to me by a trip as the teenage driver of the chaplain to the princes, "Tubby" Clayton:

http://www.infed.org/thinkers/clayton.htm

to the scene of the deadly battles of Ypes:

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/ypres.htm

in Belgium where countless young men were slaughtered in pointless charges into no man's land from their trenches. One of these had been maintained, as had many, many miles of graves with stark white crosses along the roads through the gently sloping fields of Flanders.

A young officer -- often a mere teenager -- was obliged to lead his troops over the top and, thus, was the first shot and killed by the waiting enemies across no man's land -- filled with blood, guts, and bacteria where new batches of wounded would meet their fates. Millions died pointlessly in that war -- the "lost generation."

WW2 was as horrible in its way with mass killings of civilians by both sides. First the German Blitz on London -- not a military target, but designed to defeat the Brits with terror. I worked with teens as a teen myself in the East End of London (where poorer people lived and where the Germans focused their bomb raids -- looking for the bend in the Thames and then unloading destruction east of this landmark.

Later we retaliated with fire and nuclear bombings of major German and Japanese cities -- Dresden, Berlin, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki --which created fire storms which swept civilians into the conflagrations or annihilated them with nuclear blasts and fallout:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II

Read Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughter House Five; he was a Nazi prisoner there:

http://www.rense.com/general19/flame.htm

We Americans were spared direct attacks on our homeland, but our beaches on the east coast were smeared with oil from our tankers sunk by German wolf packs. One of my uncles as a teen enlisted in the Merchant Marines and experienced the terrors of our sailors (he had a bad back and could not qualify for the regular military). Another uncle survived an incident in which all the others than himself were killed by the direct hit of a German shell on their tent in Italy. Both my uncles survived the war physically, but lived lives scarred by what we now know as PTSD -- neither went back to graduate from high school or on to college as had their five sisters.

As a nation we were all together in that war effort. Boy Scouts gathered newspapers and milkweed pods (for life jackets). Our front yard at the base of Avon mountain held an aircraft warning station manned 24/7 in two hour shifts -- one of many thousands scattered across the country. We watched fighter planes in training over the valley to the west -- one crashed and kids brought pieces of it to school to share the next day -- the pilot killed and his body destroyed in the crash. Businessmen worked night shifts in the local factories. The foundations of the civil rights movement were laid down as African Americans were gradually allowed equal roles in the military or joined in the war effort in our northern factories to which they migrated from southern share cropping labors.

The Korean War would have been mine -- I had completed two years of NROTC officers training in college when Eisenhower ended it off, allowing me to move on as a civilian rather than a warrior on the seas off the Korean peninsula. We still all felt an obligation to do our duty and joined in the war effort one way or another.

The momentum of these previous wars carried us into the madness of Viet Nam where a slogan -- the "domino" theory -- to the effect that not fighting the war would turn the whole of Asia communist overrode common sense. Nearly 60,000 American military men had died before we regained out sanity -- and many millions of Vietnamese, their land now poisoned by Agent Orange laid down to destroy enemy cover in its jungles.

At one point we had more than 1,000,000 troops engaged there. One may find fewer numbers recorded in the histories, but one of my students was a soldier involved in keeping track and he reported that the actual figures were far higher than publicly proclaimed -- more than a million at the Tet Offensive which was disastrous for us. We westerners cannot really cope with suicidal troops without overwhelming force on our side -- the kamikaze suicide bombers of the Japanese during WW2 had harried our naval forces:

http://www.paralumun.com/warkamikaze.htm

Another negative of our commitment to the Vietnam war was the exemption from the draft of college and graduate students -- until a universal draft lottery was finally introduced on January 1, 1970. I was that year visiting at Barnard, Columbia, and CCNY and the threat that loved ones now might now be drafted into the slaughter stunned my students and unleashed the riots on college campuses and elsewhere that rang the death knell for this pointless war. Unhappily the 'draft dodgers' from that war (Bush, Cheney) are now the ones who have so stupidly led us into the ones now being dragged out in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those who have not experienced war first hand have no idea how destructive it is to force men to kill or be killed -- and that it is innocents who are the primary victims of our modern wars with their weapons that can not discriminate at a distance between enemies and innocent women, children, and elderly.

But as the Monitor article intimates below, typical Americans today may be more engaged it trips to the mall with their over stretched credit cards than responsibility for our troops being killed and killing over there -- the countless thousands horribly trapped amidst the civil wars that we have stirred up in Afghanistan and Iraq? We have not even been paying to support the widows and orphans of our own dead and maimed, let alone facing up to the crippled futures of our 'enemies'.

Lest we forget, after Viet Nam we dumped 300,000 young American military out on our streets and often into our prisons when they were given "undesirable" discharges after we had drafted them out of high school to play our killing games in Vietnam. Most of these had not committed ordinary crimes -- they had violated military protocols either by becoming addicted to the drugs readily available to them between killing missions or had slugged a superior in an outburst of frustration. I repeat that number -- 300,000 -- which I remember vividly, as I spoke to the ACLU board back then on behalf of amnesty for these crippled ones -- voted by the board, but not by our Congress!

We now hear that the numbers of homeless Iraq veterans are mounting:

"According to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, nearly 200,000 American veterans are homeless on any given night, and over 400 of those homeless veterans served in Iraq."

http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,96237,00.html

And the killing goes on? Ed Kent]

.......................

Few Americans share Iraq war's sacrifices
Some say US citizens need a war tax or a call to national service. By Gordon Lubold
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0326/p01s01-ussc.html?s=hns
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Pakistan Is the Real Nuclear Threat!

[Thus far the Bush administration has managed to attack the wrong targets in its "war on terror." When it might have caught up with bin Laden in Afghanistan, it diverted it energies to Iraq, leaving both countries now in chaos with populations favoring American departure ASAP. Now its apparent target of another possible attack is Iran, whereas the nation already possessing both nuclear weapons and the capacity to deliver them is Pakistan. I know from asking my students that most Americans do not have a very clear sense of what lies where over there. A quick map search will disclose that as the crow flies from west to east from the Mediterranean, we find lined up Israel, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan.

It is pretty clear that the Cheney/Rumsfeld war plan has stuck the U.S. with two wings of a bird (Iraq and Afghanistan) whose central body is Iran -- Iran also controls the sea routes into Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Dubai, Qatar, Kuwait, i.e. a major portion of the world's OIL supply. It would not be hard for Iran to block the narrow Strait of Hormuz passageway past its coast -- the only oil and military exit route from all of the above. No wonder there is a more than slight panic as Iran demonstrates its possibilities with an arrest of 15 British sailors coinciding with the weak sanctions against it voted by the Security Council yesterday.

BUT -- a far greater hazard lies in this particular picture than an Iran with nuclear weapons capacity sometime down the line. It is Pakistan with its existing weaponry and a frail government being run by an ever less popular general. The Taliban is hanging out in Pakistan and striking more or less freely at our beleaguered troops in Afghanistan. Dr. Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist who has supplied the bomb knowhow to countries ranging from North Korea to Libya with Iran stage center, lives happily on with the likelihood of doing more 'Walmart' distribution of the same as needed if General/President Musharraf is removed:

http://www.acronym.org.uk/dd/dd76/76cc.htm

Frankly, I would not want to be the wounded U.S. President manning the eroding barricades at the White House. Will he get it wrong yet again? Probably. Ed Kent]

...........................

Musharraf Finds Himself Weakened After Firing of Judge
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
Protests over the firing of Pakistan's highest-ranking
judge signal the most serious challenge that Gen. Pervez
Musharraf has faced.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/25/world/asia/25pakistan.html?th&emc=th

OP-ED COLUMNIST
The General and the Housewife
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Gen. Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan is facing the most
serious crisis of his presidency.

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/03/25/opinion/25kristof.html?th&emc=th
(Available only to TimesSelect subscribers)

................................

Note. Anyone with a dot-edu e-mail address can sign up *free* for TimesSelect: http://www.nytimes.com/gst/ts_university_email_verify.html
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"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
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Drug Company Greed Is Killing Our Kids!

[It is pretty obvious to most Americans faced with ever increasing medical costs (combined with constant battles with their insurance companies to obtain promised recompense for same) that something is drastically wrong with American medicine.

On the macro scale we are the only developed nation without a universal medical system (single payer) that delivers excellent medical care to all (including visitors) at costs far below the per capita in the U.S. Americans are beginning to catch on to the fact that our system is broken,

However, on the micro level all of us are threatened by the spread of diseases and massive increases in medical expenses caused by the failure of our federal government to play its most basic role in regulating such things as reported below. And how many of us are stiffed by insurance companies. One of ours has fought year after year to find ways not to pay up -- Cigna which boasted massive profits this last year and which has been found to be an offender by our most recent NY Attorney General, now Governor, Eliot Spitzer.

In human terms people are dying needlessly because they only get to an emergency room when the pain is great -- and often then too late to save a life. The article following reports the worst disgrace -- killing babies in Amerika. Read and weep! Ed Kent]

...........................

Pediatricians Voice Anger Over Costs of Vaccines
By ANDREW POLLACK
Doctors say the soaring cost of new vaccines make it
difficult for them to buy the shots they give their
patients.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/24/business/24vaccine.html?th&emc=th
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Israel accused of 'apartheid'

[While we were at Oxford in the late 1950s we developed a close sense of things in South Africa through the eyes of a couple renting in the same building who became dear friends who were South Africans -- she Afrikaans and he of British roots. Alice had noted the distance between blacks and whites and her distress at not having had direct social relationships with them and so one evening we invited an Afro-American classmate, Vergil, from our college to join us for dinner. We all had a delightful evening. Later we casually asked Alice what the new experience had meant to her. She laughed and said, "Your friend is colored, not black. We have many good colored friends with whom our family dines." And so we learned the none-too-subtle distinctions that humans draw. Gandhi (an East Indian) was classified as colored. Japanese were white in apartheid SA and other weird designations quite literally based on one's personal appearance -- members of the same family with the same parents could be variously classified as black or colored.

The bottom line is that one's rights and lack of same were based on one's classification. That is the case, I gather, in Israel and in the occupied territories, too. So if the term, apartheid, is to be applied, while it comes from geographical distinctions, it is really a carry over of racism. Needless to say we have it still here in the U.S., lest any Israelis feel singled out by the designation. Ed Kent]

P.S. Michael and Alice left South Africa and raised their children elsewhere for obvious reasons.

...........................

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/181D9639-1F51-46E5-839E-292BBEFDE726.htm

NEWS MIDDLE EAST
Israel accused of 'apartheid'
Dugard said Gaza was an imprisoned society, with things little better in the West Bank [GALLO/GETTY]

A UN human rights envoy has likened Israel's treatment of Palestinians in occupied territory to "apartheid", and said that failure to tackle the situation will make it hard to solve abuses elsewhere.

John Dugard, a UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, made his remarks to the UN Human Rights Council on Thursday.

Dugard, a South African lawyer, said restrictions on movement and separate residential areas gave a sense of "deja vu" to anyone with experience of apartheid, noting that apartheid was "contrary to international law".

He said: "Of course there are similarities between the OPT [Occupied Palestinian Territory] and apartheid South Africa."

He also told the council that the situation "places in danger the whole international human rights enterprise".

He said that Western states would never rally support among developing nations for effective action against perceived abuses elsewhere, such as Sudan's Darfur, unless they tackled the plight of Palestinians.

Israel dismissed the statement and Dugard's regular reports to the council as "one-sided, highly selective and unreservedly biased".

Dugard, who was appointed to his position in 2001, said that Gaza was an imprisoned society and that the situation in the West Bank was little better.

'Reign of terror'

He said about 500,000 Israeli settlers were now living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, territories seized by Israel during the 1967 Middle East war.

"Settlers, largely unrestrained by the Israel Defence Forces [the Israeli military], subject many Palestinians to a reign of terror - particularly in Hebron," he said.

Itzhak Levanon, Israel's ambassador to the UN in Geneva, said such language was "inflammatory and inciteful" and would not contribute to a "process of constructive dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians".
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Bush is a stupid individual run by others!

[It is becoming increasingly clear from what one could have predicted from his pathetic academic career and subsequent misbegotten business ventures -- Bush is a stupid individual who depends on others to make decisions for him. He is the opposite of a "decider" as he wanders around in some sort of daze. Look to the Cheneys , Gonzalezes, neocons generally running for cover now to figure what will be coming next.

I venture it will not be good things, but rather more repressive legal abuses at home and all too likely a mad attack on Iran in the Middle East. The article below more or less tells it all. Ed Kent]

.........................

New to Pentagon, Gates Argued for Closing Guantanamo Prison
By THOM SHANKER and DAVID E. SANGER
The defense secretary's arguments were rejected after
Alberto R. Gonzales and other lawyers expressed strong
objections to moving detainees to the U.S.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/23/washington/23gitmo.html?th&emc=th

WASHINGTON, March 22 — In his first weeks as defense secretary, Robert M. Gates repeatedly argued that the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, had become so tainted abroad that legal proceedings at Guantánamo would be viewed as illegitimate, according to senior administration officials. He told President Bush and others that it should be shut down as quickly as possible . . . .

Mr. Gates’s arguments were rejected after Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and some other government lawyers expressed strong objections to moving detainees to the United States, a stance that was backed by the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, administration officials said.
[snip]
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Asylum from Arranged Marriages?

[I know from discussions with some of my students who have migrated to this country as refugees from repressive regimes -- who have become thoroughly Americanized -- that one of their deep fears is that they will be sent back to their countries of origin where they face this threat. The upshot of an arranged marriage can be that a young women becomes the unpaid servant of her husband's family -- grim for an intelligent college grad who barely speaks the language of a country of origin, let alone accepts it traditional cultural bounds. I will never forget an educated Egyptian professional woman at a human rights conference observing that such wives could be discarded simply by a husband pronouncing, "I divorce you" three times. One of the males from that country (Egypt) burst in smirkingly with "Two times will do it."
Ed Kent]

................................

Does the prospect of arranged marriage and abuse warrant asylum in the US? An immigration judge said no, but an appeals court panel found a valid fear of persecution. By Warren Richey
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0323/p01s02-usju.html?s=hns
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George Soros On Israel, America and AIPAC

[It is good to see George Soros telling it as it is. As I read him here and in my own view, Israel's greatest enemy in the U.S. is AIPAC which is playing a neocon game and deterring American politicians of both parties from helping Israel to negotiate peace with its neighbors. It is a bit ironic today to hear of the Iraqi leadership inviting its insurgents to join the political process, while Israel and the U.S. block acceptance of a Palestinian government which has reeled in Hamas.

If I may voice a word of my own on behalf of Soros -- he can scarcely be attacked as a self-hating Jew -- the ugly charge of anti-Semitism directed at any who have the temerity to criticize Israel. Such games-playing really is what endangers Israel -- attacking her best friends can only breed more enemies -- active or passive. I have been there and experienced this ugliness myself. I have had the good fortune of having fought anti-Semitism publicly since my undergraduate days when I wrote an editorial against Yale's versions. Yes, victims do, indeed, sometimes adopt the tactics of their tormentors when they in turn come to power. May this not be the fate of Israel!!!! Ed Kent]

P.S. Note that Soros is being heard around the world!

.....................................

http://www.palestinechronicle.com/story-03210745439.htm

Subject: George Soros On Israel, America and AIPAC

On Israel, America and AIPAC
By George Soros

New York Review of Books
Volume 54, Number 6
April 12, 2007
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20030?email

The Bush administration is once again in the process of
committing a major policy blunder in the Middle East,
one that is liable to have disastrous consequences and
is not receiving the attention it should. This time it
concerns the Israeli-Palestinian relationship. The Bush
administration is actively supporting the Israeli
government in its refusal to recognize a Palestinian
unity government that includes Hamas, which the US
State Department considers a terrorist organization.
This precludes any progress toward a peace settlement
at a time when progress on the Palestinian problem
could help avert a conflagration in the greater Middle
East.

The United States and Israel seek to deal only with the
president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas,
in the hope that new elections would deny Hamas the
majority it now has in the Palestinian Legislative
Council. This is a hopeless strategy because Hamas has
said it would boycott early elections, and even if
their outcome would result in Hamas's exclusion from
the government, no peace agreement would hold without
Hamas's support.

In the meantime Saudi Arabia is pursuing a different
path. In a February summit in Mecca between Mahmoud
Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, the Saudi
government worked out an agreement between Hamas and
Fatah, which have been clashing violently, to form a
national unity government. According to the Mecca
accord, Hamas has agreed "to respect international
resolutions and the agreements [with Israel] signed by
the Palestinian Liberation Organization," including the
Oslo Accords. According to press reports on March 15,
the new government, like the present one, will be
headed by Ismail Haniya, the Hamas prime minister, but
Hamas will get nine of the government's twenty-four
ministries, as well as an additional minister without
portfolio; President Abbas and his Fatah party will
control six ministries, and independent
representatives-some said to be under the control of
Hamas or Fatah-and other political factions will fill
the nine remaining ministries. NYR Subscriptions-Save
$41!

The Saudi government views this accord as the prelude
to the offer of a peace settlement with Israel, along
the lines of the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, a
settlement to be guaranteed by Saudi Arabia and other
Arab countries, based on the 1967 borders and full
recognition of Israel. The offer was meant to be
elaborated by Saudi King Abdullah at the Arab League
meeting to be hosted by Saudi Arabia at the end of
March. But no progress is possible as long as the Bush
administration and the Ehud Olmert government persist
in their current position of refusing to recognize a
unity government that includes Hamas. The recent
meeting between Condoleezza Rice, Abbas, and Olmert
turned into an empty formality.

Many of the causes of the current impasse go back to
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's decision to
withdraw from the Gaza Strip unilaterally, without
negotiating with the then-Fatah-controlled Palestinian
Authority. This strengthened the position of Hamas. In
the run-up to the January 2006 Palestinian legislative
elections, Sharon refused to lift a finger to help
Fatah's prospects. At the behest of the Quartet-the
European Union, the United States, Russia, and the
United Nations-James Wolfensohn worked out a six-point
plan to assist the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip; among
other things, it called for facilitating traffic
between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and opening a
port and an airport in the Gaza Strip. But not one of
the six points was implemented. The Bush
administration's official in charge, Elliot Abrams,
sabotaged the six-point plan from its inception. Partly
as a consequence, Hamas won the elections in an upset
victory.

Then came the blunder I am talking about. Israel, with
the strong backing of the United States, refused to
recognize the democratically elected Hamas government
and withheld payment of the millions in taxes collected
by the Israelis on its behalf. This caused great
economic hardship and undermined the ability of the
government to function. But it did not reduce popular
support for Hamas among Palestinians, and it reinforced
the position of Islamic and other extremists who oppose
negotiations with Israel. The situation deteriorated to
the point where Palestine no longer had an authority
with whom it would have been possible for Israel to
negotiate.

This was a blunder because Hamas is not monolithic. Its
inner structure is little known to outsiders but
according to some reports it has a military wing,
largely directed from Damascus, which is beholden to
its Syrian and Iranian sponsors and a political wing
which is more responsive to the needs of the
Palestinian population that elected it to power. If
Israel had accepted the results of the election, that
might have strengthened the more moderate political
wing. Unfortunately the ideology of the "war on terror"
does not permit such subtle distinctions. Nevertheless,
subsequent events provide some ground for believing
that Hamas has been divided between different
tendencies. It was not willing to go so far as to
recognize the existence of Israel but it was prepared
to enter into a government of national unity which
would have abided by the existing agreements with
Israel. No sooner was agreement reached than the
military wing engineered the kidnapping of an Israeli
soldier, Corporal Gilad Shalit, which had the effect of
preventing such a government from being formed by
provoking a heavy-handed military response from Israel.
Hezbollah then used the opportunity to stage an
incursion from Lebanon across the internationally
recognized border, kidnapping several more Israeli
soldiers. Despite a disproportionate response by
Israel, Hezbollah was able to stand its ground, thereby
gaining the admiration of the Arab masses, whether
Sunni or Shia.

It was this dangerous state of affairs -including the
breakdown of government in Palestine and fighting
between Fatah and Hamas-that prompted the Saudi
initiative, which holds out the prospect of a peace
settlement. Such a settlement would be very much in the
interests of Israel and the United States.

Defenders of the current policy would argue that Israel
cannot afford to negotiate from a position of weakness.
But Israel's position is unlikelyto improve as long as
it pursues its present course of military escalation.
Fortunately Saudi Arabia, whose position is also
precarious, has a genuine interest in promoting a
settlement based on two states. It would be tragic to
miss out on that prospect, which would mean both
withdrawal from large parts of the West Bank by the
Israelis, so that a workable Palestinian state can take
power, and acceptance of Israel's existence by Hamas.
The outlines of such a settlement are quite well
defined. The underlying concepts are not materially
different from what they were during President
Clinton's time.

The most potent threat comes from Iran. Movement toward
a settlement in Palestine would be helpful in
confronting that threat. But both Israel and the United
States seem to be frozen in their unwillingness to
negotiate with a Palestinian Authority that includes
Hamas. The sticking point is Hamas's unwillingness to
recognize the existence of Israel; but that could be
made a condition for an eventual settlement rather than
a precondition for negotiations.[1]

The current policy is not even questioned in the United
States. While other problem areas of the Middle East
are freely discussed, criticism of our policies toward
Israel is very muted indeed. The debate in Israel about
Israeli policy is much more open and vigorous than in
the United States. This is all the more remarkable
because Palestine is the issue that more than any other
currently divides the United States from Europe. Some
European governments, according to reports, would like
to end the economic boycott of Hamas once a unity
government is successfully established. But the US has
said it would not.

One explanation is to be found in the pervasive
influence of the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee (AIPAC), which strongly affects both the
Democratic and the Republican parties.[2] AIPAC's
mission is to ensure American support for Israel but in
recent years it has overreached itself. It became
closely allied with the neocons and was an enthusiastic
supporter of the invasion of Iraq. It actively lobbied
for the confirmation of John Bolton as US ambassador to
the United Nations. It continues to oppose any dialogue
with a Palestinian government that includes Hamas. More
recently, it was among the pressure groups that
prevailed upon the Democratic House leadership to drop
the requirement that the President obtain congressional
approval before taking military action against Iran.
AIPAC under its current leadership has clearly exceeded
its mission, and far from guaranteeing Israel's
existence, has endangered it.

The Palestine problem does not have a purely military
solution. Military superiority is necessary for
Israel's national security, but it is not sufficient.
The solution has to be political, as President Clinton
recognized. He exerted enormous energy to bring about a
peace settlement and his efforts were so successful
that it took the murder of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin
in 1995 by an Israeli extremist to prevent an Israeli
peace initiative with Arafat from being implemented.
Even after Ariel Sharon's walk on the Temple Mount in
September 2000 set off new violence, Clinton offered a
peace deal several months later that was rejected by
Arafat but probably suggests the shape of a future
settlement.

President Bush has never tried. He has adopted the
misleading metaphor of the war on terror and allowed
Ariel Sharon to have his way. Sharon did not want a
negotiated settlement. He came to realize that the
military occupation could not be maintained forever and
withdrew from Gaza, in part, it has been argued, to
strengthen the Israeli position on the West Bank. But
unilateral withdrawal led to the current chain of
events. The Bush administration did not just passively
acquiesce in the Sharon/ Olmert government's policies;
it actively encouraged them. AIPAC must bear its share
of responsibility for aiding and abetting policies such
as Israel's heavy-handed response to Hezbollah last
summer and its insistence on treating Hamas only as a
terrorist organization.

The current policy of not seeking a political solution
but pursuing military escalation-not just an eye for an
eye but roughly speaking ten Palestinian lives for
every Israeli one-has reached a particularly dangerous
point. After the Israel Defense Forces' retaliation
against Lebanon's road system, airport, and other
infrastructure one must wonder what could be the next
step for the Israeli forces. Iran poses a more potent
danger to Israel than either Hamas or Hezbollah, which
are Iran's clients. There is the growing danger of a
regional conflagration in which Israel and the US could
well be on the losing side. With the ability of
Hezbollah to withstand the Israeli onslaught and the
rise of Iran as a prospective nuclear power, Israel's
existence is more endangered than at any time since its
birth.

Supporters of Israel have good reason to question
AIPAC's advocacy and they have begun to do so. But
instead of engaging in critical self-examination, AIPAC
remains intransigent. Recently, the pro-Israel lobby
has gone on the offensive, accusing the so-called
progressive critics of Israel's policies of fomenting
anti-Semitism and endangering the very existence of the
Jewish state.

The case against those who disagree with Israel's
current policy is spelled out in detail by Alvin H.
Rosenfeld in a pamphlet published by the American
Jewish Committee.[3] After reviewing the rise of new
anti-Semitic currents, particularly in the Muslim world
and Europe, Rosenfeld equates anti-Semitism with anti-
Zionism and asserts that Jewish critics of Israeli
policies reinforce both. He acknowledges that criticism
by itself is not anti-Semitic; indeed, he writes, "the
biblical prophets stood on the side of justice and were
never hesitant to denounce their people's behavior when
they saw it deviating from the standards of justice."
But, he contends, "to condemn Israeli actions and, at
the same time, to forego any realistic historical and
political frameworks that might account for such
actions" is not acceptable. The use of "exaggerated and
defamatory terms," he writes, renders Israel
indistinguishable from the "despised country regularly
denounced by the most impassioned anti-Semites."

To call Israel a Nazi state...or to accuse it of
South African-style apartheid rule or engaging in
ethnic cleansing or wholesale genocide goes well
beyond legitimate criticism.

To talk about victims turning into aggressors falls in
his view in the same category.

To buttress his case, Rosenfeld examines the writings
of a number of critics. In particular, he focuses on a
collection of essays whose authors, in his own
judgment, make Noam Chomsky appear as an "almost
conservative thinker," but the list also includes Tony
Judt, a distinguished historian, whose crime consists
of suggesting a possible binational solution for
Israel, and Richard Cohen, a Washington Post columnist,
who wrote, among other things, that the "sanest choice
for Israel is to pull back to defensible-but hardly
injurious-borders" and to get out "of most of the West
Bank"-a policy often advocated in Israel itself.
Rosenfeld resorts, without any personal knowledge of
the people he attacks, to primitive accusations of
self-hatred, lumping all these critics together as
people who are "proud to be ashamed to be Jews." He
concludes that "the cumulative effect of these hostile
ideas, which have been moving steadily from the margins
to the mainstream of 'progressive' opinion, has been to
reenergize ugly ideas and aggressive passions long
considered dormant, if not dead," i.e., anti-Semitism.

Rosenfeld's argument suffers from at least three
elementary errors in reasoning. The first is guilt by
association. The fact that constructive critics of
Israel say things that, when taken out of context or
paraphrased in provocative ways, can be made to sound
similar to the comments of anti-Semites does not make
them anti-Semitic or supporters of anti-Semitism in any
way. Second, there is a lack of factual evidence. Are
the expressions used by the critics really "exaggerated
and defamatory"? That depends on the facts. What is the
more appropriate term, "Israel's still incomplete
security fence" or "an Apartheid Wall?" That can be
determined only by considering the actual impact the
wall is having on the lives of the Palestinians, a
subject ignored by Rosenfeld and AIPAC.

Third, the professed respect for criticism is a sham
when it is not permitted "to condemn Israeli actions
and, at the same time, to forego any realistic
historical and political frameworks that might account
for such actions." As presented by Rosenfeld, this
formula implies that Israel's actions have to be
justified, right or wrong. The appeal to a "realistic
framework" aims to rationalize the Israeli position.
Criticism ought to be considered on its merits and not
by any other yardstick. Suppressing criticism when it
is deemed to be unpatriotic has been immensely harmful
both in the case of Israel and the United States. It
has allowed the Bush administration and the Sharon/
Olmert government to pursue disastrous policies.

The pro-Israel lobby has been remarkably successful in
suppressing criticism.[4] Politicians challenge it at
their peril because of the lobby's ability to influence
political contributions. When Howard Dean called for an
evenhanded policy toward Israel in 2004, his chances of
getting the nomination were badly damaged (although it
was his attempt, after his defeat in Iowa, to shout
above the crowd that sealed his fate). Academics had
their advancement blocked and think-tank experts their
funding withdrawn when they stepped too far out of
line. Following his criticism of repressive Israeli
policy on the West Bank, former president Jimmy Carter
has suffered the loss of some of the financial backers
of his center.

Anybody who dares to dissent may be subjected to a
campaign of personal vilification. I speak from
personal experience. Ever since I participated in a
meeting discussing the need for voicing alternative
views, a torrent of slanders has been released
including the false accusation in The New Republic that
I was a "young cog in the Hitlerite wheel" at the age
of thirteen when my father arranged a false identity to
save my life and I accompanied an official of the
Ministry of Agriculture, posing as his godson, when he
was taking the inventory of a Jewish estate.[5]

AIPAC is protected not only by the fear of personal
retaliation but also by a genuine concern for the
security and survival of Israel. Both considerations
have a solid foundation in reality. The same two
factors were at play in the United States after
September 11 when President Bush declared war on
terror. For eighteen months thereafter it was
considered unpatriotic to criticize his policies. That
is what allowed him to commit one of the greatest
blunders in American history, the invasion of Iraq. But
at that time the threat to our national security was
greatly exaggerated by the Bush administration.
Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney went so
far as to warn that the threat would manifest itself in
the form of a mushroom cloud. In the case of Israel
today the threat to national security, even national
survival, is much more real. Israel needs the support
of the United States more than ever. Is this the right
time to expose AIPAC's heavy influence in American
politics? I believe this consideration holds back many
people who are critical of the way AIPAC conducts its
business. While the other architects of the Bush
administration's failed policies have been relentlessly
exposed, AIPAC continues to be surrounded by a wall of
silence.

I am not insensitive to this argument. It has held me
back from criticizing Israeli policies in the past. I
am not a Zionist, nor am I am a practicing Jew, but I
have a great deal of sympathy for my fellow Jews and a
deep concern for the survival of Israel. I did not want
to provide fodder to the enemies of Israel. I
rationalized my position by saying that if I wanted to
voice critical views, I ought to move to Israel. But
since there were many Israelis who held such views my
voice was not needed, and I had many other battles to
fight.

But now I have to ask the question: How did Israel
become so endangered? I cannot exempt AIPAC from its
share of the responsibility. I am a fervent advocate of
critical thinking. I have supported dissidents in many
countries. I took a stand against President Bush when
he said that those who don't support his policies are
supporting the terrorists. I cannot remain silent now
when the pro-Israel lobby is one of the last unexposed
redoubts of this dogmatic way of thinking. I speak out
with some trepidation because I am exposing myself to
further attacks that are likely to render me less
effective in pursuing many other causes in which I am
engaged; but dissidents I have supported have taken far
greater risks.

I am not sufficiently engaged in Jewish affairs to be
involved in the reform of AIPAC; but I must speak out
in favor of the critical process that is at the heart
of our open society. I believe that a much-needed self-
examination of American policy in the Middle East has
started in this country; but it can't make much headway
as long as AIPAC retains powerful influence in both the
Democratic and Republican parties. Some leaders of the
Democratic Party have promised to bring about a change
of direction but they cannot deliver on that promise
until they are able to resist the dictates of AIPAC.
Palestine is a place of critical importance where
positive change is still possible. Iraq is largely
beyond our control; but if we succeeded in settling the
Palestinian problem we would be in a much better
position to engage in negotiations with Iran and
extricate ourselves from Iraq. The need for a peace
settlement in Palestine is greater than ever. Both for
the sake of Israel and the United States, it is highly
desirable that the Saudi peace initiative should
succeed; but AIPAC stands in the way. It continues to
oppose dealing with a Palestinian government that
includes Hamas.

Whether the Democratic Party can liberate itself from
AIPAC's influence is highly doubtful. Any politician
who dares to expose AIPAC's influence would incur its
wrath; so very few can be expected to do so. It is up
to the American Jewish community itself to rein in the
organization that claims to represent it. But this is
not possible without first disposing of the most
insidious argument put forward by the defenders of the
current policies: that the critics of Israel's policies
of occupation, control, and repression on the West Bank
and in East Jerusalem and Gaza engender anti-Semitism.

The opposite is the case. One of the myths propagated
by the enemies of Israel is that there is an all-
powerful Zionist conspiracy. That is a false
accusation. Nevertheless, that AIPAC has been so
successful in suppressing criticism has lent some
credence to such false beliefs. Demolishing the wall of
silence that has protected AIPAC would help lay them to
rest. A debate within the Jewish community, instead of
fomenting anti-Semitism, would only help diminish it.

Anticipating attacks, I should like to emphasize that I
do not subscribe to the myths propagated by enemies of
Israel and I am not blaming Jews for anti-Semitism.
Anti-Semitism predates the birth of Israel. Neither
Israel's policies nor the critics of those policies
should be held responsible for anti-Semitism. At the
same time, I do believe that attitudes toward Israel
are influenced by Israel's policies, and attitudes
toward the Jewish community are influenced by the pro-
Israel lobby's success in suppressing divergent views.

-March 15, 2007

Notes

[1] As the highly respected Israeli writer David
Grossman, whose son was killed fighting in Lebanon,
commented on March 11, "In the present situation any
sort of dialogue between Israel and Palestinians is
positive and has the potential to change the state of
mind of both societies."

[2] It is not the only one. In a letter to the Jewish
citizens in America, Jimmy Carter wrote that "the
overwhelming bias for Israel comes from Christians like
me who have been taught to honor and protect God's
chosen people from among whom came our own savior,
Jesus Christ."

[3] Alvin H. Rosenfeld, "'Progressive' Jewish Thought
and the New Anti-Semitism" (American Jewish Committee,
2006).

[4] See Michael Massing, "The Storm Over the Israel
Lobby," The New York Review, June 8, 2006.

[5] See the article by Martin Peretz, "Tyran-a-Soros,"
The New Republic, February 12, 2007.


--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
--
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Horrors of "the pile" post 9/11

[Fewer than 3,000 people were killed by the 9/11 attack and most of their families were compensated out of a federal fund after the event. Little publicized or even recognized until most recently is the fact that somewhere between 20 and 40 thousand workers -- many volunteers from far states -- were subject to horrendous materials breathed into their lungs during the cleanup of the basement of the twin towers called "the pile" by those working there.

Workers were given almost casual warnings to protect their lungs at the start of this project by the Bush federal cabinet officer, Christie Whitman, but as Congressman Jerrold Nadler has pointed out:

"Christie Whitman repeatedly declared the air safe, and now thousands of people are sick, and some have died, from World Trade Center contamination," said Rep. Nadler. "To add insult to injury, she just went on 60 Minutes and tried to blame everybody else for her misdeeds."

http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/ny08_nadler/WhitmanProsecuted091306.html

Furthermore, responsibility after the men started the cleanup fell to NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani (who had foolishly located his command center in one of the the Trade Center buildings following the first attack there in 1993). Giuliani for his part was more concerned with avoiding liability for injury to the workers on the pile than caring for their health and welfare. One of my students who had come from his space center job in Florida as a volunteer and who has been physically impacted by this work and who is trying to get a new life together by college studies, shared with our class a page and a half letter from Giuliani to the workers with one sentence of thanks followed by paragraphs of threats directed at any who sought "fraudulently" to benefit from their labors. Actually there WAS great fraud connected with the cleanup -- major companies fully compensated for the effort had subcontracted the work out to others who had stiffed the workers with failures to pay them for part or all of their hours worked! This student is working on a book with a Pulitzer Prize winner to tell this grim tale -- he hopes to become a lawyer down the line. Watch for this unfolding.

It is good at long last to see a NYC mayor making some effort to repair of the damage done. In addition to asbestos, the World Trade Center had housed tanks of a number of toxic substances mixed in with the ashes and dust (in addition to the human remains). Thousands of the workers have been tested and found to have lungs poisoned and diminished by what they inhaled there. Some may have died already from the effects; others scattered back around the country may not have access to the NYC supports that we hope will emerge now more than five years after the fact. Ed Kent]

..................................

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/22/nyregion/22bloomberg.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Bloomberg Seeks U.S. Aid for Treatment of 9/11 Illnesses
Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

By SEWELL CHAN
Published: March 22, 2007

WASHINGTON, March 21 — Testifying at a Senate hearing on Wednesday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg pleaded for at least $150 million in annual federal aid to monitor and treat thousands of people who became ill after being exposed to dust and debris at ground zero.

The mayor also called for the creation of a special fund to compensate those who became sick, urging that the city and its contractors be protected from potentially ruinous liability as a result of lawsuits brought by rescue and recovery workers who have argued that they were not adequately protected from the environmental hazards left by the World Trade Center’s collapse.

Senators from both parties expressed sympathy for the mayor’s arguments, which were delivered at the start of a three-hour hearing of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

A panel appointed by Mr. Bloomberg last month put the total cost of evaluating and treating everyone potentially affected by the trade center attack at $392.6 million a year. The panel called for the federal government to provide, at a minimum, $153 million a year to sustain health programs run by the Mount Sinai Medical Center, the Fire Department and Bellevue Hospital Center.

Mr. Bloomberg told the committee’s chairman, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, that he supported a bill they introduced that would provide $1.9 billion for 9/11 health monitoring and treatment between 2008 and 2012.

Mr. Bloomberg noted that more than 8,000 workers had joined lawsuits accusing the city and some 150 contractors of neglecting to protect them during rescue and recovery operations at ground zero. “The city came together after 9/11, but this drawn-out and divisive litigation is undermining that unity,” he said.

Congress has capped the city’s potential liability from the 9/11 attacks at $350 million and set up a $1 billion fund to insure the city and its contractors from suits arising out of the ground zero cleanup.

But at a news conference after the hearing, Mr. Bloomberg said of the liability cap that “there are people who question whether that law would stand up” if challenged in court. He also called the $1 billion insufficient.

If Congress created a compensation fund and gave immunity to the city and its contractors from liability, the city would transfer the $1 billion from the insurance fund to the compensation fund, the mayor said.

After the hearing, Mrs. Clinton told reporters that the compensation fund was an important proposal, but she stopped short of endorsing it.

Mr. Bloomberg, a Republican, was surrounded at the hearing mostly by Democratic lawmakers from New York who have sought more aid for 9/11-related health problems. The two Republican senators present asked gentle questions.

Senator Michael B. Enzi of Wyoming, the committee’s ranking Republican, said the mayor’s request “adds up to quite a bit of money.” He told the mayor, “I will be giving you a request to more carefully delineate and more concisely delineate the dollars that you’re talking about.”

Deputy Mayor Edward Skyler, who was co-chairman of the mayor’s panel, told Mr. Enzi that the money was not for new programs, but only for existing ones. The mayor told Mr. Enzi that “every single penny” would be accounted for.

Senator Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican and a physician, said he did not doubt that there were “a lot of pulmonary problems associated with large particulate intake” at ground zero, but he asked the mayor, “Is there a point at which this stops in terms of a federal obligation?”

Mr. Coburn then quickly added, “Rather than have a yearly appropriation for this, why don’t we set up an endowed trust?” The mayor later told reporters that he was open to the idea, but said, “The real issue is: Can we get money every year?”

Doctors from all three 9/11 health programs, as well as Dr. James M. Melius, an occupational health expert, and Jeanne Mager Stellman, an authority on the exposure of military personnel to herbicides used in the Vietnam War, also testified.

After his appearance at the hearing, the mayor met privately with Michael O. Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services, and Representatives Carolyn B. Maloney and Vito J. Fossella of New York and Christopher Shays of Connecticut to discuss 9/11 health issues.

He also met with the House speaker, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, and Representatives Charles B. Rangel and Peter T. King of New York, to discuss the city’s legislative agenda.
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
--
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