Wednesday ~ August 30, 2006
Political
Commentary
IRAQ: Insurgents kill at least 77 as bloodshed
mounts by Sabah Jerges AFP – 8.30.06 Insurgents have killed at least 77 Iraqis and wounded scores in a
series of shootings and bombings, including one in a crowded Baghdad market and
another at a military recruitment centre. A blast in the Shurja market left 24 dead and 35 wounded Wednesday and
came just two hours after rebels targeted an Iraqi army recruitment centre in
the Shiite town of Hilla, south of Baghdad, killing 12 volunteers and
wounding 38. The Baghdad market blast came despite a massive security crackdown in
the violent Iraqi capital, rattling windows one kilometre (half a mile) away
as a plume of dust and smoke climbed above the skyline. Body parts were strewn across the area. Windows of nearby shops were
shattered, two cars were ripped apart and a popular restaurant blown open. "Firefighters are fighting to quell the fire as many shops are
burning," a police officer said at the scene, adding that the bomb had
been placed in a bag and partially concealed by a bicycle. "People are gathering the mobile phones and money of those killed
and storing them in … (More) The Lobby and the Israeli Invasion of
Lebanon: Their Facts and Ours All the national, state and
local Jewish organizations have launched a $300 million fundraising and
propaganda campaign in support of the 21 Jewish civilians and 116 soldiers
killed during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon (but not the 18 Israeli Arabs who were excluded
from Jews-only bomb shelters). As adjuncts of the Israeli foreign office
not a single one of the 52 organizations which make up The Presidents of the
Major Jewish Organizations in the US voiced a single public criticism of
Israel’s massive destruction of civilian homes, hospitals, offices,
supermarkets, refugee convoys and churches and mosques, and the deliberate
killing of civilians, UN peacekeepers and rescue workers with precision
bombing. On the contrary the entire Jewish lobby echoed in precise
detail the Israeli lies that the Lebanese deaths were caused by the Lebanese
resistance’s “use of human shields,” despite the total devastation of the
heavily populated southern suburbs of Beirut, completely out of range of any
Hezbollah rockets. The
magnitude of the Jewish Lobby’s cover-up of Israel’s massive military assault
can be measured in great detail. The Israeli
Armed Forces (IDF) launched 5,000 missiles, five-ton bunker-buster bombs and
cluster bombs as well as anti-personnel phosphorus bombs each day into
Lebanon for 27 days -- totaling over 135,000 missiles, bombs and artillery
shells. During the last seven days of the war Israel launched 6,000
bombs and shells per day -- over 42,000, for a grand total of 177,000 over a
heavily populated territory the size of the smallest state in the US. In
contrast, the Lebanese national resistance launched 4,000 rockets during the
entire 34-day period, an average of 118 per day. The ratio was 44 to 1
-- without mentioning the size differentials, the long-term killing effects
of the thousands of un-exploded cluster bombs (nearly 50 killed or maimed
since the end of hostilities) and Israel’s scorched earth military incursion.
The
Jewish lobbyists publish the number of Israel’s civilian dead as 41,
forgetting to mention that only 23 were Jews, the remaining 18 were members
of Israel’s Arab Muslim and Christian minority who constitute around 20% of
the population. The disproportionate number of Israeli Arabs killed was
a result of the Israeli government policy of providing shelters and siren
warning systems to Jews and ignoring the security needs of its Arab citizens. The
proportion of civilian deaths to soldiers was 41 to 116 or 26% of the total
Israeli dead (but if we only consider Jewish Israelis and IDF members the
proportion 23 to 116 or 16% of the Jewish dead were civilian.) Clearly
the Lebanese resistance was aiming most of its fire at the invading
IDF. In contrast, in Lebanon, of the 1,181 so far known to have been
killed, 1088 were civilians and only 93 were fighters. In other words 92% of the Lebanese dead were civilians --
over three times the rate of civilians killed by the Lebanese resistance and
almost six times the rate of Jewish civilians killed (the only ones who count
in the Lobby’s propaganda machine). To put it more bluntly: over 47 Lebanese civilians were slaughtered
for each Jewish Israeli civilian death. The Jewish
Lobby’s claims of Israeli moral and military superiority in the Middle East
-- which is paradoxically combined with warnings that Israel’s survival is at
stake -- has been shredded to tatters as a result of their failure to
annihilate Hezbollah. The Lobby’s echoing Israeli military claims of
the invincibility of the Israeli armed forces is largely based on their
‘fighting’ against rock throwing Palestinian school kids. Today it is
clear that they are quite vulnerable when faced with well-armed, veteran
Lebanese guerrilla fighters. According to a United Nation Report, from
June 26 to August 26, 2006, Israel killed 202 Palestinians, 44 of whom were
small children, while losing one soldier; while in Lebanon, Israel lost 116
soldiers to 93 Lebanese fighters in 34 days (almost half the time period). In
other words, 157 times more Israeli’s were killed as a result of the Lebanese
invasion in one month than died in Palestine in two months (United Nations
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, August 26, 2006). The Jewish Lobby’s
propaganda campaign in the US Congress, throughout the mass media and even in
our small communities in defense of Israel’s “Summer Rain” (raining bombs on
civilians) against the Palestinians has been thoroughly exposed as a
murderous scorched earth policy by the United Nations report and summarized
in the Israeli daily Haaretz (August 27, 2006): “The [campaign] . . .
is still taking a severe toll on 1.4 million Palestinians . . . thousands of
Palestinians have been forced to flee their homes following continuing IDF
incursions into the Strip (Gaza) and heavy shelling . . . the Israeli Air
Force has conducted 247 aerial assaults in Gaza…more than a million people
have been left with no regular supply of water and electricity.” The
Lobby, like skilled totalitarians, reverses the roles calling the Palestinian
victims (all 202 of them) terrorists and the executioners (the Israeli
Defense Force) victims (one dead soldier who was most likely killed by
‘friendly fire’). George
Orwell would have written a scathing essay on the Lobby’s version of Israel’s
Animal Farm where one Israeli death is worth more than 202
Palestinians. In
surveying the Daily Alert, the propaganda sheet prepared by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (a semi-official propaganda arm of the
Israeli regime) for the Conference of Presidents of Major America Jewish
Organizations (CPMAJO), there is not a single mention of the fact that the Jewish state was
killing almost 10 Lebanese civilians for each fighter, while the Hezbollah
resistance was killing four times as many Israeli soldiers as Israeli
civilians (Jews and Gentiles). Not a single opinion article, editorial
or commentary reproduced by the Daily Alert, from the Wall Street
Journal, Washington Post, The National Telegraph, the New
York Sun, USA Today, Boston Globe, New York Times, Haaretz,
The Jerusalem Post or The Times (UK) mentions the fact that
Israel’s much ballyhooed “precision” bombing succeeded in targeting
civilians, while the Lebanese defenders’ far less sophisticated weaponry
mainly hit IDF invaders. These omissions by the Jewish Lobby and its
members and supporters in the Anglo-American-Israeli respectable and yellow
press and electronic media were absolutely necessary to perpetuate the myth
the Israel was waging a “defensive”, “existential” (sic) war for “survival”
against Islamic “terrorists” embodied in Hezbollah and the Lebanese National
Resistance. Was
Israel’s destruction of 15,000 homes up to Beirut and beyond to Northern
Lebanon defensive actions as the CPMAJO claims? Do these very smart,
very wealthy, highly educated Princeton, Yale, Harvard, Hopkins and
Chicago-educated apologists for the Israeli invasion really believe that
bombing hospitals, supermarkets, water treatments plants, churches and
mosques in Southern Lebanon, oil refineries and milk, food and pharmaceutical
factories in Beirut, transport, highways and bridges in Northern Lebanon were
“existential” acts essential for the survival of the “Jewish
State”? Can’t they understand the simple math presented above? The
math of genocide? Do the investment bankers, professors, dentists and
armies of rabbis of all Talmudic readings believe that Israel is the innocent
victim of aggression -- justifying the slaughter of over 90% Lebanese
civilians among those it killed? Such well-educated professionals must
know that from January 1996 to August 2006, there were weekly incidents all
along the Israeli-Lebanese border, involving Israeli raids, killings and
kidnapping of Lebanese civilians, as well as rocket firing in both
directions. Didn’t
the Hollywood moguls who gave so generously to the Israeli war machine know
that Elliott Abrams, President Bush’s chief adviser on the Middle East (stern
defender of Jewish purity and intimate collaborator with the Israeli high
command) gave full support in early summer to an Israeli plan to destroy
Hezbollah, at least one month before the border incident (see Seymour Hersh,
“Watching Lebanon,” The New Yorker, August
21, 2006)? Of course
the educated elites know all about the Israeli lust for power and
dominance --unlike the good Germans in the 1940s, who claimed they didn’t see
the smoking chimneys or the grim trains -- as today images of devastated
apartments and slaughtered children were visible, easily accessible and
followed by well-publicized reports by all the human rights groups on
Israel’s crimes against humanity. They knew and supported Israel’s crimes before and
after the ceasefire -- and they proudly chose to endorse the war, the
policies and the state as true accomplices after the fact. Yet the
Jewish Lobby tells us that Hezbollah’s “kidnapping” of two soldiers across
the Israeli border was the detonator for a full-scale invasion. Numerous sources around the
world even dispute the Israeli account of a Hezbollah cross-border
attack. According to the big business US magazine Forbes (July
12, 2006), the French news service AFP (July 12, 2006), the respectable Asia
Times (July 15, 2006) and the Lebanese police, the Israeli soldiers were
captured within Lebanon in the area of Ai’tu Al-Chaarb, a Lebanese village a
few kilometers from the Israeli border. While the Jewish lobby raises funds
exclusively for Israeli-Jewish soldiers and civilians, Hezbollah is engaged
in a non-sectarian reconstruction program that embraces all Lebanese
communities and households, regardless of religious or ethnic
preferences. The reason is found in the fact that the Lebanese
resistance was a national movement. Contrary to the Lobby’s propaganda,
the Lebanese resistance was not exclusively Shia or even Muslim in
make-up. Israel’s invasion managed to united Lebanon’s factions in
defense of their homeland. Of the 93 Lebanese fighters killed, 20% were
from organizations other than Hezbollah, a point ignored by the Lobby’s ideologues,
who pursue Israel’s policy of pushing the US to attack Iran, Syria and other
Middle East states known to be hostile to Israel’s hegemonic ambitions. Consequences of Israeli War
In both
Israel and throughout the pro-Israel Jewish networks, the Israeli military’s
failure to achieve its goal of defeating and eliminating the Lebanese
resistance, particularly Hezbollah, has had a major impact. In Israel, the major criticism of the
Olmert-Perez regime and General Halutz from both soldiers and civilians is
that the government was too weak -- there was insufficient bombing, lack of
sufficient ground troops and too much concern for Lebanese
civilians. The cease-fire, they complained, was premature; the territory
occupied was too limited. Likud and other parties in the Knesset called
for the bombing of Syria and Iran. While many US and Israeli
progressives cited the “turmoil”, “dissent” and harsh polemics in the
aftermath of the war as typical of the “rough and tumble” of Israel’s
democracy, they ignored the savage militarist substance and ultra-rightwing
direction of Israeli public opinion. The “who lost the war” polemics in
Israel is basically anchored in preparations for a new, more violent attack
on Lebanon and other adversaries of Israel. This militaristic rage is manifested
in the brutal daily assaults on the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank
where Israeli warplanes bomb homes and ground forces assassinate and injure
dozens of civilians – “existential” murders against stone-throwing schoolboys. Israel’s
rage has affected Jewish religious notables. The Rabbinical Council of
America called for the Israeli military to re-evaluate its military rules of
war in light of Hezbollah’s “unconscionable use of civilians, hospitals, ambulances,
mosques and the like as human shields,” according to the Jerusalem Post
(August 21, 2006). The RCA and the modern Orthodox women’s
organization, Eminah, represent over one million US Jews. Their call to maximize
civilian deaths in order to lessen the “risk” to “our” (Israeli Jewish)
soldiers is in the finest spirit of Nazi chaplains egging on the Wehrmacht’s
scorched earth policy during World War II. Their Israeli counterparts,
Rabbis Eliyahu and Drori, echoed the RCA’s “delicate criticisms” in more colorful
and uninhibited terms: “Our corrupt military, which tells us that our
soldiers must endanger their lives to protect enemy civilians, is the reason
we lost the war,” according to the gentle Rabbi Eliyahu, who sees all
non-Jewish civilians opposing Israeli policy as enemies worthy of
incineration. Not to be outdone, the good Rabbi Drori accused the rest
of Western humanity of being “anti-Semites” for being horrified at Israel’s
savage destruction. “Anti-Semites demand that we use Christian morality
while our enemies act like barbarians.” (Jerusalem Post, August 21,
2006) Apparently the killing and maiming of over a thousand Lebanese
civilians, mostly women and children, does not satisfy this raging bull
Rabbi. Lest one think that these US and
Israeli Rabbis are simply loose cannons or isolated psychopaths, three weeks
earlier one Rabbi Dov Lior, in the name of the Yesh Council of Rabbis
(with hundreds of thousands of Israeli followers), announced that “when our enemies hold a
baby in one hand and shoot us with the other, or when missiles are purposely
aimed at civilian populations in the Land of Israel in blatant disregard for
moral criteria, we are obligated to act according to Jewish morality, which
dictates that ‘he who gets up to kill you, get up yourself and kill him
first.’” (Jerusalem Post, August 25, 2006) The holy men of the
Holy Land are providing a post-factum religious blessing for the more than
three hundred Lebanese children killed and urging the future killing of even
more children. All this, we are told, is according to “Jewish
morality.” Surely many US Jews, especially liberals and even
conservatives, object to rabbinical fiats for the slaughter of children, but
we are deafened by their polite silence. The Lobby conveniently ignores
the Jewish morality spiel, even as it defends the “moderate” secular line of
Israeli civilian deaths resulting from Hezbollah using Lebanese babies and
old grannies as shields to commit their crimes. So we have a raging
debate among US and Israeli rabbis, and secular and religious apologists over
whether killing Lebanese civilians and children is based on tactical military
or religious-ethical considerations. The Executive Director of the
American Jewish Committee, David A. Harris, puts to the lie the nasty bit of
propaganda by US “Left” Zionists who downplay the role of the Jewish Lobby in
securing whole-hearted US White House and Congressional support for Israel’s
destruction of Lebanon. In discussing US subservience to Israel, Harris
stated, “No
other nation has been prepared to define such an intimate relationship with
Israel in all bilateral spheres -- from arms sales, foreign aid and
intelligence-sharing to a free-trade zone, scientific co-operation and
diplomatic support. No other nation has the capacity, by dint of its
size and stature, to help ensure Israel’s quest for a secure and lasting
peace ]sic] . . . In the recent conflict with Hezbollah, once again the
United States demonstrated its willingness to stand by Israel, provide vital
support and withstand the pressure of many US allies who would have wished
for an earlier end to the fighting even if it meant keeping Hezbollah largely
intact and in place . . . Whatever the primary factor, there can be no doubt
that American Jewry is an essential element of the equation (yoking the US to
Israel). This is all the more reason why American Jewry need to work day
in and day out to ensure that the mutually beneficial link [sic] goes from
strength to strength.” (Jerusalem Post, August 25, 2006) In plain English, the Jewish networks
and lobbies were able to secure 98 percent support from Congress for a
resolution supporting Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, even as 54 percent of
Democrats and 39 percent of Republicans favor a policy of neutrality as
opposed to alignment with Israel. (Times-Bloomberg Poll, July 25-August
1, 2006, published in the Jewish Telegraph Agency -- August 15, 2006) The
Lobby convinced, pressured and threatened the White House to prolong the
Israeli terror bombing as Harris so proudly announced. The Jewish Lobby
does work “day in and day out” to make sure that Israel can ethnically
cleanse Palestine, drop five-ton bombs on Lebanese apartment buildings,
bulldoze villages and isolate the US from even its closest allies at the
expense of the US taxpayers, our democratic ideals and our
sovereignty. And the American Jewish Committee has the chutzpah
(arrogance) to say that it is “our mutually beneficial link.” Now that
is a bit of political dishonesty! James Petras, a former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton
University, New York, is co-author of Globalization Unmasked (Zed Books). His latest book is, The Power of
Israel in the United States (Clarity Press, 2006). He can be reached at: jpetras@binghamton.edu. Other
Articles by James Petras * The Liquid Bomb Hoax:
The Larger Implications UN official denounces Israel’s use of U.S. provided
cluster bombs MSNBC 8.30.06
Imagine, if you will, a modern
apartheid state with first, second and eleventh class citizens, all required
to carry identification specifying their ethnic origin. First class
citizens are obliged to serve in the armed forces, kept on ready reserve
status until in their forties, and accorded an impressive array of housing,
medical, social security, educational and related benefits denied all others.
Second class citizens are
exempted from military service and from a number of the benefits accorded
citizens of the first class. They are issued identity documents and license
plates that allow them to be profiled by police at a distance.
Second class citizens may not own land in much of the country and marriages
between them and first class citizens are not recognized by the state.
Second class citizens are sometimes arrested without trial and police
torture, while frowned upon and occasionally apologized for, commonly occurs. Citizens of the eleventh
class, really not citizens at all, have no rights citizens of the first class
or their government are bound to respect. Their residence is forbidden
in nearly nine-tenths of the country, all of which they used to own.
The areas left to them are cut up into smaller and smaller portions weekly,
by high walls, free fire zones and hundreds of checkpoints manned by the army
of the first class citizens, so that none can travel a dozen miles in any
direction to work, school, shopping, a job, a farm, a business or a hospital
without several long waits, humiliating searches and often arbitrary denials
of the right to pass or to return. Posh residential settlements for the
first class citizens with protecting gun towers and military bases are built
with government funds and foreign aid on what used to be the villages and
farms and pastures of the eleventh class citizens. The settlers are
allotted generous additional housing and other subsidies, allowed to carry
weapons and use deadly force with impunity against the former inhabitants,
and are connected with the rest of first class territory by a network of of first-class citizen only roads. Citizens of the eleventh class
are routinely arrested, tortured, and held indefinitely without trial.
Political activism among them is equated to “terrorism” and the state
discourages such activity by means including but not limited to the
kidnapping of suspects and relatives of suspects, demolition of their family
homes, and extralegal assassination, sometimes at the hands of a death squad,
or at others times by lobbing missiles or five hundred pound bombs into
sleeping apartment blocks or noonday traffic. Passports are not issued
to these citizens, and those who take advantage of scarce opportunities to
study or work abroad are denied re-entry…(More) Retroactive Laws Invoked to Protect Bush Administration War
Criminals from War Crimes Prosecution
Bush Turns His Terror War
on the Homeland
Counterpunch.org August
29, 2006
When I was a kid John Wayne war movies gave us the message that
America was the good guy, the white hat that fought the villain.
On August
23 the BBC reported that Amnesty International has brought war crimes charges
against Israel for deliberately targeting civilians and civilian
infrastructure as an "integral part" of Israel's strategy in its
recent invasion of Lebanon. Israel
claims that its aggression was "self-defense" to dislodge Hezbollah
from southern Lebanon. Yet, Israel bombed residential communities all over
Lebanon, even Christian communities in the north in which no Hezbollah could
possibly have been present. United
Nations spokesman Jean Fabre reported that Israel's attack on civilian
infrastructure annihilated Lebanon's development: "Fifteen years of work
have been wiped out in a month." Israel
maintains that this massive destruction was unintended "collateral
damage." President Bush maintains that Israel has "a right to protect
itself" by destroying Lebanon. Bush blocked the attempt to stop
Israel's aggression and is, thereby, equally responsible for the war crimes.
Indeed, a number of reports claim that Bush instigated the Israeli aggression
against Lebanon. Bush has other
war crime problems. Benjamin Ferenccz, a chief prosecutor of Nazi war crimes
at Nuremberg, recently said that President Bush should be tried as a war
criminal side by side with Saddam Hussein for starting aggressive wars,
Hussein for his 1990 invasion of Kuwait and Bush for his 2003 invasion of
Iraq. Under the
Nuremberg standard, Bush is definitely a war criminal. The US Supreme Court
also exposed Bush to war crime charges under both the US War Crimes Act of 1996
and the Geneva Conventions when the Court ruled in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld against
the Bush administration's military tribunals and inhumane treatment of
detainees. President Bush and his Attorney
General agree that under existing laws and treaties Bush is a war criminal
together with many members of his government. To make his war crimes legal
after the fact, Bush has instructed the Justice (sic) Department to draft
changes to the War Crimes Act and to US treaty obligations under the Geneva
Conventions. One of
Bush's changes would deny protection of the Geneva Conventions to anyone in
any American court. Bush's
other change would protect from prosecution any US government official or
military personnel guilty of violating Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.
Article 3 prohibits "at any time and in any place whatsoever outrages
upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading
treatment." As civil libertarian Nat Hentoff observes, this change would
also undo Senator John McCain's amendment against torture. Eugene
Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice says that
Bush's changes "immunize past crimes." Under the
US Constitution and US legal tradition, retroactive law is impermissible.
What do Americans think of their President's attempts to immunize himself,
his government, CIA operatives, military personnel and civilian contractors
from war crimes? Apparently,
the self-righteous morally superior American "Christian" public
could care less. The Republican controlled House and Senate, which long ago
traded integrity for power, are working to pass Bush's changes prior to the
mid-term elections in the event the Republicans fail to steal three elections
in a row and Democrats win control of the House or Senate. Meanwhile,
the illegal war in Iraq, based entirely on Bush administration lies, grinds
on, murdering and maiming ever more people. According to the latest
administration estimate, the pointless killing will go on for another 10-15
years. Trouble is,
there are no US troops to carry on the war. The lack of cannon fodder forces
the Bush administration to resort to ever more desperate measures. The latest
is the involuntary recall of thousands of Marines from the inactive reserves
to active duty. Many attentive people regard this desperate measure as a sign
that the military draft will be reinstated. According
to President Bush, the US will lose the "war on terror" unless the
US succeeds in defeating "the Iraqi terrorists" by establishing
"democracy in Iraq." Of course, insurgents resisting occupation are
not terrorists, and there were no insurgents or terrorists in Iraq until Bush
invaded. Bush's
unjustified invasion of Iraq and his support for Israeli aggression have done
more to create terrorism in the Muslim world than Osama bin Laden could hope
for. The longer Bush occupies Iraq and the more he tries to extend US/Israeli
hegemony in the Middle East, the more terrorism the world will suffer. Bush and the Zionist/neocon ideology that holds
him captive are the greatest 21st century threats to peace and stability. The
neoconized Bush regime invented the war on terror, lost it, and now is
bringing terror home to the American people. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the
Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall
Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He
is coauthor of The
Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com
And so it goes. Your
Pal, |