Australia, a real country, is not bashing Israel yet. We are eternally grateful to our friends in Australia, Canada and New Zealand, and to the brave Anzac forces who served with distinction in World War I and in the world struggle against fascism, and who fought to liberate Palestine, and who fought and died with the soldiers of the Jewish Legion in Gallipoli. But the author has a poor understanding of how things work here in the Middle East. He writes:
Nonetheless, in the unlikely event that a peace deal is reached between the Israelis and the Palestinians, the question of international forces to monitor the deal and perhaps to guard borders will become a real one.
Given Australia's remarkable history of involvement in the Middle East, the question of our participation should be given serious consideration by Canberra.
The fact that the Palestinian foreign minister suggested Australian soldiers reflects the high reputation of our troops. But it also demonstrates that Australia's deep friendship with Israel has not remotely diminished our credibility with the Arab world.
The fact that the Palestinian foreign monister suggested Australian soldiers shows that he is sucking up to Australia. Palestinians are anxious to get any foreign force into the West Bank, in the hope that they will be able to realize their God-given right to life, liberty and the pursuit of suicide bombing under a foreign force. The job of a foreign force, as we learned from Lebanon is to watch as Israeli soldiers are kidnapped, film it and do nothing, to report Israeli troop movements to the Arabs, and to snitch on Israeli spies. For some reason, Israelis are not anxious to have such forces in the West Bank. Australians should leave such jobs to Spanish and Fijian and Chinese soldiers who are already adept at it.
Greg Sheridan, Foreign editor | June 25, 2009 Article from: The Australian
RIAD Malki, the foreign minister of the Palestinian Authority, would like to see Australian troops posted to the Gaza Strip as peacekeepers. More than that, he would be happy, in the event of an eventual Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian territories, to have Australians posted in the West Bank.
Malki told me this in a meeting in Ramallah earlier this week. Specifically, he would like Arab, probably Egyptian, forces to come into Gaza, to stop rockets being fired at Israel and, in his words, to "stop any Israeli incursions into Gaza".
Then, he says, the Palestinian forces in Gaza should be professionalised. But to provide security, he says the Palestinians "are willing to accept international forces, NATO, American or Australian forces, in Gaza or the West Bank. We will go the extra mile. We will take away any excuse from the Israelis (not to withdraw from Palestinian territories)."
At the moment, Malki's proposal is unrealistic. The Palestinian Authority cannot guarantee its own security in Gaza. Egypt, let alone the US or Australia, would be unlikely to commit troops and the Israelis would not accept a restriction on their right to self-defence.
Nonetheless, in the unlikely event that a peace deal is reached between the Israelis and the Palestinians, the question of international forces to monitor the deal and perhaps to guard borders will become a real one.
Given Australia's remarkable history of involvement in the Middle East, the question of our participation should be given serious consideration by Canberra.
The fact that the Palestinian foreign minister suggested Australian soldiers reflects the high reputation of our troops. But it also demonstrates that Australia's deep friendship with Israel has not remotely diminished our credibility with the Arab world.
Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard and former treasurer Peter Costello are visiting Israel as part of the inaugural Australia Israel Leadership Forum, organised by Melbourne businessman Albert Dadon.
Gillard deserves particular praise for attending the forum, as she was subject to a nasty campaign from the Left to try to intimidate her out of going. The Left internationally is going through one of its periodic bouts of trying to isolate Israel. This is one of those demented moments where allegedly progressive opinion believes it's the height of creativity to engage the mullah dictatorship in Iran, as it steals elections and pursues nuclear weapons, but wrong to visit a democratic ally such as Israel.
The Rudd government has stood four square against this nonsensical position, as demonstrated in Kevin Rudd's long telephone conversation with Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, earlier this week.
Rudd, who follows the Middle East with forensic attention to detail, discussed Netanyahu's speech responding to US President Barack Obama's Cairo address to the Muslim world. Specifically Rudd and Netanyahu discussed the prospect of a Palestinian state and the situation in Iran.
Gillard also met Netanyahu and Israeli President Shimon Peres. Gillard's outlook on national security and international relations generally has matured and deepened enormously over the past few years. She certainly believes what she says. But there is also a good political dimension to what Gillard is doing. A Labor politician from the Left, she aspires one day to the prime ministership. The traditional doubt about the Left is that they tend to be anti-American or simply unreliable on national security. Gillard has given a series of speeches and performances that demonstrate she is 100 per cent with Rudd in the mainstream Curtin-Hawke Labor tradition on the US alliance, the deployment of Australian forces overseas and indeed Israel and the Middle East.
She delivered a remarkably gracious address to the gala dinner in Jerusalem's majestic King David Hotel, kicking the forum off. Without any ambiguity, Gillard celebrated Australia's friendship with Israel. She drew attention, with pride, to Australia's long military involvement in the Middle East. She expressed concern at the frustration of democracy in Iran and at Iran's nuclear ambitions.
Gillard got good press in Israel, where she is widely admired for her strong statements as acting prime minister in support of Israel's right to self-defence when it undertook the operation earlier this year in Gaza to stop the relentless launch of thousands of rockets from Gaza on to the civilian population of Israel's southern cities. Gillard's visit is significant in Australia-Israel relations, in the development of Gillard, and in the maturation of Labor's Left more generally (exceptions notwithstanding).
The other star of the evening was Costello. Politicians are always at their best when they have just announced their retirement. Costello's speech sparkled with wit, commitment to the Australia-Israel friendship and a wide geo-political understanding of the issues of terrorism and democratic development in the Middle East.
Costello gave a more sweeping account of our military involvement in the Middle East. Australians should be more aware of this. Our premier military historian, Jeffrey Grey, has argued that Australia has had a greater strategic military effect in the Middle East than anywhere else.
In the southern Israeli city of Beersheba there is now a magnificent park and statue commemorating the famous charge of the Australian light horse in 1917, which took Beersheba from the Ottoman Turks. This allowed the British to drive through to Jerusalem and led to the British mandate over Palestine and thus the establishment of Israel. On the same day as the Australian action in Beersheba the British government decided in principle to support the establishment of a Jewish state in Israel.
Then in World War II Australian divisions fought magnificently against Axis forces in the Middle East. Some Arab leaders had petitioned Adolf Hitler to include the Middle East's Jews in the Final Solution. The Australian effort was critical in making sure that didn't happen. More recently, in 2003 the Australian special forces were the first allied troops to go into Iraq. Their priority was to locate and destroy Scud missile launchers that Saddam Hussein might use against Israel.
At the political level the relationship between Australia and Israel is splendid. But perversely there is still a bias against Israel in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, despite the fine work of the embassy in Tel Aviv. Even more perversely, there is a little bit of a similar bias in the Australian Defence Force, which has an operational relationship with a number of the Gulf State Arab nations, and consequently hosts lots of Arab officers at Australian staff colleges and the like, but no similar relationship with the magnificent Israeli Defence Force, with which it should routinely be sharing strategic insights and tactical expertise.
Nonetheless, in Israel this week Australian political leadership has been on display at its bipartisan best, all to the background of a very good Australian cultural festival. You couldn't really ask for more.
Greg Sheridan visited Israel as a participant in the inaugural Australia Israel Leadership Forum.
It took so long for them to remember that they are Jews, even though the town has been decaying for a long time. The reason was no doubt the ideal conditions and affluence, which made people to leave this paradise for the wilds of impoverished Tel Aviv and Savyon. The article explains:
The rubber trade collapsed, and fortunes here and downriver in the Brazilian city of Manaus vanished. Some Jewish immigrants perished young, succumbing to diseases like cholera. A few stayed, marrying local women and raising families. Others returned home, leaving behind descendants who clung to a belief that they were Jews...
Iquitos lies four degrees south of the Equator, reachable only by boat or plane. Isolation, intermarriage and assimilation nearly wiped out the vestiges of Judaism here. Storefronts chiseled with Jewish surnames like Foinquinos and Cohen, and a cemetery ravaged by vandals, served as some of the few reminders of the community that once thrived here.
And of course, such a paradise attracts Jews from all over the world:
By the start of this decade, the Jews here were gathering to observe Shabbat each Friday and during the High Holy Days at the home of the patriarch, Mr. Edery. After he died, they met on Próspero Street at the home of Jorge Abramovitz, 60, whose father, a Polish Jew, moved here long after the collapse of the rubber boom.
Mr. Reátegui Levy, the oil field inspector, moved in 2005 with his wife and six children to Ramla, a dusty city southeast of Tel Aviv. But despite dreaming for decades of such a move, he said he had trouble adjusting to Israeli life.
He said he missed his house with cacao and passion fruit trees, and the status of being a manager at PetroPerú. He murmured something, just audible over the din of this city's thousands of motorcycle rickshaws, about losing the spark of love with his wife.
So, unlike nearly all the Iquiteños who moved to Israel, Mr. Reátegui Levy moved back, alone.
Be it ever so malaria, cholera and snake infested, there's no place like home.
Still, cynicism aside, it is good that some people are remembering they are Jewish. All over the world, there are many communities and families like the people in Iquitos. There are many more who have forgotten, whose ancestors were forcibly converted to Christianity or Islam. Judaism, it seems to me, should extend a welcoming hand to those who wish to return. Hopefully, not only those who are poverty stricken and desperate will remember their roots.
IQUITOS, Peru — If Ronald Reátegui Levy someday finds that he is the last Jew of Iquitos, it may well be of his own doing.
His dream, which he has vigorously pursued, is to persuade the descendants of Sephardic merchants who settled in this remote corner of the Amazon basin more than a century ago to reaffirm their ties to Judaism and emigrate to Israel.
"It is getting very lonely here," said Mr. Reátegui Levy, 52, an inspector at Peru's national oil company, referring to the more than 400 descendants of Jewish pioneers who have formally converted to Judaism this decade, including about 160 members of his immediate and extended family. Nearly all of them now live in Israel.
Until recently, such a rebirth of Judaism here seemed unlikely. The history of Jews in Iquitos, dating from the late-19th-century rubber boom that transformed this far-flung Amazonian outpost into a once thriving city of imported Italian marble and a theater designed by Gustave Eiffel, was almost forgotten.
But Mr. Reátegui Levy and a handful of others began organizing the descendants of dozens of Jews from places as varied as Morocco, Gibraltar, Malta, England and France who had settled here and deeper in the jungle, opening trading houses and following their star in search of riches and adventure.
The rubber trade collapsed, and fortunes here and downriver in the Brazilian city of Manaus vanished. Some Jewish immigrants perished young, succumbing to diseases like cholera. A few stayed, marrying local women and raising families. Others returned home, leaving behind descendants who clung to a belief that they were Jews.
"It was astounding to discover that in Iquitos there existed this group of people who were desperate to reconnect to their roots and re-establish ties to the broader Jewish world," said Lorry Salcedo Mitrani, the director of a new documentary, "The Fire Within," about the Jews of the Peruvian Amazon.
Scholars compare the Jews here with groups like the Hispanic crypto-Jews of the southwestern United States and northern Mexico, the Lemba of southern Africa or the Bene Israel of India, who in varying ways have sought to reclaim a Jewish identity that had seemingly been weakened through time.
"We were isolated for so many decades, living on the jungle's edge in a Catholic society without rabbis or a synagogue, in which all we had were some vague notions of what it meant to be Jewish," Mr. Reátegui Levy said.
"But when I was a child, my mother told me something that forever burned into my mind," he said. "She told me, 'You are a Jew, and you are never to forget that.' "
Iquitos lies four degrees south of the Equator, reachable only by boat or plane. Isolation, intermarriage and assimilation nearly wiped out the vestiges of Judaism here. Storefronts chiseled with Jewish surnames like Foinquinos and Cohen, and a cemetery ravaged by vandals, served as some of the few reminders of the community that once thrived here.
But by the end of the 1990s, some of these descendants, including Mr. Reátegui Levy, were brought together by Víctor Edery, a patriarchal figure who organized religious ceremonies in his own home, keeping a few customs alive even if it was done by blending Jewish and Christian beliefs.
Still, the existence of the Jews of Iquitos posed some philosophical challenges to some Jews elsewhere. Since nearly all the Jews who originally settled here were men, their descendants could not attest to having Jewish mothers, ruling them out as being Jewish according to strict interpretations of Jewish law.
Moreover, the Jewish community of about 3,000 people in Lima, the capital, largely preferred to ignore the Jews of Iquitos, some scholars say, in part because of the thorny issues that the Jews here posed about race and origins. This is, after all, a country where a small light-skinned elite still wields considerable economic and political power — and Lima's Jews are often seen as an elite within that elite.
"The notion of a Jew who looks like an Indian and lives in a poor house in a small city in the middle of the jungle is, at best, an exotic footnote to the official history of Peru's Jewry as Lima sees it," said Ariel Segal, a Venezuelan-born Israeli historian whose arrival here in the 1990s to study the community also helped serve as a catalyst for the Iquitos Jews to organize.
By the start of this decade, the Jews here were gathering to observe Shabbat each Friday and during the High Holy Days at the home of the patriarch, Mr. Edery. After he died, they met on Próspero Street at the home of Jorge Abramovitz, 60, whose father, a Polish Jew, moved here long after the collapse of the rubber boom.
While they lacked a rabbi, they conducted services in Hebrew they learned from cassette tapes. They cleaned their cemetery and began burying their dead there again. They persisted in their campaign to be recognized as Jews and to be allowed to emigrate to Israel.
Finally, they persuaded Guillermo Bronstein, the chief rabbi of Lima's largest Ashkenazi synagogue, to oversee two large conversions, easing the way for hundreds to move to Israel. The exodus included nearly the entire Levy clan, descended from Joseph Levy, an adventurer who put down stakes here in the 19th century.
Mr. Reátegui Levy, the oil field inspector, moved in 2005 with his wife and six children to Ramla, a dusty city southeast of Tel Aviv. But despite dreaming for decades of such a move, he said he had trouble adjusting to Israeli life.
He said he missed his house with cacao and passion fruit trees, and the status of being a manager at PetroPerú. He murmured something, just audible over the din of this city's thousands of motorcycle rickshaws, about losing the spark of love with his wife.
So, unlike nearly all the Iquiteños who moved to Israel, Mr. Reátegui Levy moved back, alone.
He still attends Shabbat at Mr. Abramovitz's home each week, along with 40 or so other regulars who dream of formally converting and moving to Israel. While their numbers have dwindled, he encourages them and regales them with tales of fertile land in the Golan Heights and the bravery of his eldest son, Uri, who is in the Israeli Army.
But something keeps Mr. Reátegui Levy here in Iquitos, the same decaying jungle city that attracted his great-grandfather from Tangier so many decades ago. "My family, my heart and soul, all that I hold dear are in Israel," he said. "Maybe I am back here for a reason."
A heartfelt cry from the Iranian dissident movement, asking for help. Sure no Israeli forgets the friendly people of Iran from the old days, though that is hard to reconcile with the crowds screaming death to Israel. If there was a way to help, surely Israel would do so. But if the jamming is being done by Nokia and Siemens, then the remedy is to address Nokia and Siemens and to start pressure for an international boycott of firms that interfere with communications in service of tyrannical regimes, whether it is Internet or Radio, whether it is Iran or China.
Good communications would not, of course, be enough to topple the government. Still, the courage of Iranian dissidents has amazed the world. Arabs ask why there are no such revolutions in their countries. The answer is simple: It takes a lot of guts for masses of people to stand up to armed thugs.
"Dear Israeli Brothers and Sisters," writes Iranian dissident Arash Irandoost, "Iran needs your help more than ever now. And we will be eternally grateful. Please help opposition television and radio stations which are blocked and being jammed by the Islamic Republic (Nokia and Siemens) resume broadcast to Iran. There is a total media blackout and Iranians inside Iran for the most part are not aware of their brave brothers and sisters fighting and losing their lives daily. And the unjust treatment and brutal massacre of the brave Iranians in the hands of the mullah's paid terrorist Hamas and Hizbullah gangs are not seen by the majority of the Iranians. Please help in any way you can to allow these stations resume broadcasting to Iran.
"And, please remember that we will remember, as you have remembered Cyrus the Great's treatment of you in your time of need," Irandoost concludes, signing his blogged call for help "Your Iranian Brothers and Sisters!"
In an interview with Israel National News, Iranian expatriate pro-democracy activist Amil Imani said that Irandoost's message represents the sentiments of much of the youth in the streets in Iran. They have a strong belief in the technological know-how of the Israelis to overcome the Iranian regime's attempts to block communications.
"This is going to be the most massive, impressive revolution of the 21st century," Imani said, "and we're seeing it live." However, he added, it is now too dependent on Internet communications, so the protesters are very much in need of outside assistance to fight the technological and information war.
More generally, Imani said, the Iranian people are lionizing any leader of any nation who comes out strongly against the Islamic Republic at this time.
According to Imani, at least 500 people have been killed by Iranian government forces, with another 5,000 injured. But the hospitals are no longer safe, he added, as the gunmen from the basiji militia enter the emergency wards looking for We will remember, as you have remembered Cyrus the Great's treatment of you in your time of need. wounded protesters. Therefore, Imani said, sympathetic doctors have taken to treating the wounded wherever they can, including in private homes.
Even outside Iran, tens of thousands of protesters are out in the streets every day, especially in the United States and Europe. Imani said he thinks the phenomenon represents unprecedented unity in the Iranian expatriate community.
As for the basijis themselves, Imani reported, many of them are Lebanese and Palestinian Authority Arabs hired by the regime to do its bidding. Iranians reportedly captured seven basijis who spoke no Persian, only Arabic. According to Imani, 10,000 more Arab hired guns arrived in Tehran to serve the mullah-led regime.
But they are not the only ones thinking about guns at this point. Some Iranian protesters, Imani reported, have taken to threatening their oppressors, "God have mercy on you if we decide to [take up] arms!"
I received the letter below from a visitor to Israel from New Zealand. Once again it shows that when people do make the effort to visit and see life as it really is through their eyes, suddenly the polemic outbursts of those with anti Israel opinions, usually not based on facts, I have to say, show Israel in a totally different light. Dorothy Finlay, who lives in Tauranga. writes:
I have spent nearly 35 years of my life in the Middle East. As a Christian with close friends among Arabs and Jews, I am literate in Arabic and can communicate in Hebrew. I have nursed in the Christian Arab sector of the Old city, in St. John Eye Hospital in Jerusalem, and Nasir Eye Hospital in Gaza in 1999. I have also worked in Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem and taught in the Arab Bethlehem University. I recently returned from Jerusalem, where I was part of an expat team helping Arab children with congenital heart disease who receive life-saving surgery from Israeli paediatric cardiac surgeons.
I know how issues related to Israel are always inflammatory to those who have prejudice — both religious and political. I have even seen charges of Israel's 'oppression' of Arabs and 'apartheid'. I can say, on the basis of my own experience and that of others, that such charges have no basis in fact.
Following is an account of a typical day (January 20, 2009) during my most recent stay. What I saw, on this day — and all other days — was quite the opposite of 'oppression' and 'apartheid'.
Today is another busy day for the team from Shevet Achim, an NGO that coordinates care for children from Iraq, Gaza, and the West Bank who need urgent heart surgery in Israeli hospitals.
As I walk through the corridors of Wolfson Children's Hospital near Tel Aviv, I see nearly as many Arab children with their mothers as Israelis. You could see they are all good friends, sharing concerns for their children. Hebrew, English and Arabic languages are interwoven in the hum everywhere as parents discuss their children with no thought of their origins.
Wahaj was first into the theatre for repair of a critical congenital heart condition. This bouncy two-year-old and his mother had travelled from northern Iraq to Jerusalem and had been waiting for a week for the 'big day'. Now it is history and soon he will be able to return home with a new heart and future.
Havan, a very small 11-month-old from Iraq, is scheduled today for heart catheterisation. This little boy, who nearly succumbed to pneumonia en route through Jordan, now has a perpetual smile.
Today six children from Gaza with serious heart problems are being transported from the Erez Israel/Gaza crossing to Israeli hospitals for assessments, examinations and surgery. Last week there were ten such children in one day. Palestinian doctors, who depend on Israeli hospitals to treat these children, referred them to Dr Tamir, head of the Israeli NGO 'Save a Child's Heart' (SACH). Israeli surgeons with SACH provide the high tech surgery at no charge to the children. Continued - A Kiwi's View of Israel
According to the story, Israels' abducted soldier Gilad Shalit will be transferred to Egypt within a few days as part of a prisoner-exchange deal with Hamas, European diplomatic sources said Thursday. The move is part of a new United States initiative that includes Egyptian and Syrian pressure on Hamas, internal Palestinian reconciliation and Israel's opening of the Gaza crossings. A "reliable" European source said this Egyptian-brokered agreement was reached two days ago. A Palestinian source confirmed the report last night but officials in Jerusalem denied any knowledge of it. Israel will have to release scads of Palestinian prionsers, but Shalit will just get to be in an Egyptian prison, and will be allowed visits by his parents. Maybe.
The Hamas can then bargain for the rest of the prisoners they want. The advantages of the deal are clear. The US wins support from Hamas for opening the gates in Gaza. The Egyptians win support for their role in releasing Palestinian prisoners. Shalit gets to see his mommy and daddy. The Hamas gain further legitimacy as a legitimate and respectable genocidal organization, that got a lot of bad guys freed by kidnapping a soldier. Expect more kidnappings in the future.
The Israelis are supposedly beholden to the US for this "favor" and will then need to negotiate with Hamas from a position where Israel no longer has any leverage at all. This is an example of "tough love" for Israel.
Yedioth Ahronoth's Nahum Barnea reports today on an unnamed American businessman who ferried secret Syrian hummus from President Bashar Assad to Jerusalem where then-Israeli PM Ehud Olmert ate the culinary peace offering without having it tested by security...
Hummus from Damascus Yedioth Ahronoth By Nahum Barnea
In February 2007, the secret negotiations between Israel and Syria began under the auspices of the Turkish government.
Shortly afterwards, a North American businessman visited Damascus. He was invited to a long meeting with Bashar Assad. Ehud Olmert's name arose in the conversation. The American tried to convince Assad that Olmert's intentions were serious. Along the way, he told Assad that one of Olmert's favorite foods was hummus.
The businessman was scheduled to leave his hotel the next day at 9:00 AM. At 8:55 AM, a Syrian officer knocked on his door. He was holding a jar filled with Syrian hummus.
"This is for the Israeli prime minister," he said. Hummus
The man took off from Damascus to Amman, and from there to Israel.
That afternoon, the jar was brought to the prime minister's office in Jerusalem. Olmert instructed [staff] not to subject the jar to security checks; it was a gesture of trust.
Olmert, his chief of staff Yoram Turbowicz and the political adviser Shalom Turjeman -- all three shared in the secret. They sat around the jar and ate heartily.
It could be said that a dark deal was devised here: hummus in exchange for the Golan. But there was no deal: Assad sent hummus, but secretly built a nuclear facility in northern Syria; Olmert ate the hummus, but secretly gave instructions to attack the facility. The strike was carried out in September.
Now there is a new government in Jerusalem, and it has not yet experienced the taste of Damascus hummus.
If Assad wants to renew the negotiations, he should get the chickpeas ready.
Considering that hundreds of thousands of Indians were converted to Shi'ite Islam and that Ciudad Del Este in Paraguay is a known Hezbollah base this article is a bit late in coming. Iran is not a potential threat, but an actual one. From Janes in 2001(!):
THERE has been a long-standing belief that the southern Lebanese Islamic militant group, Hezbollah, has established training camps located in or around the Isla de Margarita island off the northern coast of Venezuela, northwest Brazil, and in the Paraguayan-Brazilian-Argentine tri-border region in South America. While it has never been firmly established that these training camps exist, Hezbollah cell activity in Isla de Margarita and the town of Ciudad del Este in the tri-border region in Paraguay has been documented. More recently, the focus has been on Ciudad del Este, as Venezuela has been able to significantly reduce the activities of Hezbollah cells within its borders
Of course, since then, things have happened in Venezuela too. It is not really likely that President Chavez reduced the influence of Hezbollah there. That is not why he was elected.
It is late in coming, but better late than never - if only someone is listening.
MIAMI (AFP) — Iran's growing influence in Latin America is a "potential risk" to the region, the newly-appointed head of the US Southern Command, General Douglas Fraser has warned.
Fraser, who on Thursday takes charge of US military operations in 31 countries across Latin America and the Caribbean, expressed "real concern" about the Islamic Republic's links with "extremist organizations" in the region.
"The real concern is not a nation-to-nation interaction, it is the connection that Iran has with extremist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah and the potential risk that that could bring to this region," Fraser told journalists ahead of taking up the post.
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has forged close ties with several leftist Latin American leaders in recent years, most notably Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Cuban leader Raul Castro.
Commenting on Iran's ties to extremist groups in the region, Fraser said: "it is a concern, and it is an issue we will continue to monitor for any increasing activity."
He cited Lebanon-based Hezbollah, which has links to Iran and is accused of being behind a suicide bombing that killed 200 US marines in Beirut in 1983 and the 1996 bombing of the Khobar towers in Saudi Arabia, which killed more than 20 people.
The group has denied playing a role in those attacks and the bombing of Israeli and Jewish targets in Buenos Aires.
Fraser, who was Deputy Commander at US Pacific Command, said the illicit trade in arms drugs and people was worrying, and indicated it would be the focus of his work.
"The major concern is the illicit trafficking and the impact that that is having in the security and the stability especially through the northern part of South America through Central America and the Caribbean and through Mexico and the United States."
He added the US needed to ensure links between narco-terrorism and illicit trafficking do not become more pronounced.
Fraser played down talk of a conventional threat in the hemisphere, but said Venezuela's military stance was concerning.
"I'm concern with the military build-up in Venezuela because I don't understand the threat that they see," he said.
"I don't see a conventional military threat in the region. So I don't see why they see a need to build their military to the point that they are pursuing."
Fraser, who lived in Colombia for three years as a teenager, said Southern Command would continue to help that country combat leftist guerillas like the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia -- the FARC -- and nacro-terrorist groups.
"The FARC is not defeated and we need to continue that effort. That's been a focus for a very specific reason," he said.
"But Southern Command has been engaged with all the militaries within the region, with the exception of Cuba," he said.
"My intent is not to focus on one nation or the other because it is together that we build that capacity."
Fraser is the first US Air Force officer to take the helm of the Southern Command.
He replaces Admiral James Stavridis, who has been tapped to become the NATO Supreme Allied Commander in Europe.
Spain is not going to play at morality any more. And in return, Israel will agree not to prosecute Spanish officials for using the wealth confiscated during the Spanish Inquisition. HRW objects, of course, because they haven't finished rounding up all the Jew-Zionist "war criminals" yet.
MADRID - Spanish legislators voted yesterday to change a law that let judges indict Osama bin Laden and Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, narrowing its scope to cases with a clear link to this country and yielding to criticism that Spain should not act like a global cop.
The reform will not be retroactive, so the dozen or so cases now being investigated at the National Court will continue, the Justice Ministry said. These include investigations of alleged Chinese abuses in Tibet, an Israeli air force bombing in Gaza that killed 14 civilians, and alleged torture at the US prison for terrorism suspects in Guantanamo Bay.
Spain's two main parties joined forces to amend the law in a rare show of unity. The measure passed in the lower house of Parliament and is expected to pass in the Senate.
Spanish judges have used the so-called doctrine of universal justice to prosecute crimes such as torture, terrorism, and genocide with no connection to Spain, prompting protest from countries such as Israel and China.
New York-based Human Rights Watch criticized the vote, saying Spain had been a model in this field of law and now "many victims of serious human rights violations will lose one of the few places they could turn in search of redress.''
"It is deplorable for the Spanish government to capitulate to diplomatic pressure,'' said its spokesman, Reed Brody.
The International Criminal Court is the only global war-crimes tribunal, but it can only prosecute crimes committed after its founding treaty, known as the Rome Statute, came into force in 2002 - which means it could not prosecute bin Laden or Pinochet.
Also, the ICC's reach is limited. It can only launch investigations in countries that have ratified the Rome Statute or where it is ordered to by the UN Security Council.
Warning - The Surgeon General of Iran has determined that opposing the healthy election is dangerous to your health. From ABC:
A senior Iranian cleric called Friday for harsh punishment for leaders of the country's post-election protests, even as a G8 foreign ministers meeting in Italy urged Iran's rulers to seek a peaceful resolution to the tense two-week confrontation over the disputed presidential vote.
Iran's ruling clergy has widened its clampdown on the opposition, led by presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, who says he is the rightful election winner. Hundreds have been detained since the June 12 vote, in which President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was proclaimed the winner.
Of course, proper progressives will insist that martyr Nada Soltan was really a Zionist Mossad agent named Fiegeh Katenellenbogen.
By NAZILA FATHI and ALAN COWELL TEHRAN — As Iran's leaders push back threats to their authority after the disputed presidential election, crushing street protests and pressing challengers to withdraw or to limit their objections, the country's main electoral oversight group ruled Friday that the ballot had been the "healthiest" since the Islamic revolution in 1979.
The statement by the 12-member Guardian Council, which is charged with overseeing and vetting elections, fell short of formal certification of the ballot. But it offered further evidence that, despite mass demonstrations and violent confrontation with those who call the election a fraud, the authorities are intent on enforcing their writ and denying their adversaries a voice.
Two weeks after the election on June 12, Mir Hussein Moussavi, the top challenger, issued an angry statement Thursday that underscored his commitment to press ahead — but also his impotence in the face of an increasingly emboldened and repressive government that restricted his ability to do much more than express outrage.
In remarks quoted on the official IRNA news agency, Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei, a spokesman for the Guardian Council, said the panel had "almost finished reviewing defeated candidates election complaints" which the council said earlier numbered in excess of 600.
"The reviews showed that the election was the healthiest since the revolution," Mr. Kadkhodaei said. "There were no major violations in the election."
According to the official results, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won an 11 million-vote margin of victory, securing almost two thirds of a record turn-out of 40 million voters. Initially, three losing candidates registered complaints of electoral irregularities, but one of them, Mohsen Rezai, a former commander of the Revolutionary Guards, withdrew his objections. Mr. Moussavi said Thursday he, too, had come under pressure to drop his complaint.
Mr. Moussavi does not have a political organization to rally, and during the height of the unrest he attracted a large following more because of whom he opposed — President Ahmadinejad — than because of what he stood for, political analysts said.
"I am willing to show how election criminals have stood by those behind the recent riots and shed people's blood," Mr. Moussavi said in a statement posted on his Web site on Thursday. "I will not back down even for a second because of personal threats and interests from defending the rights of the people."
With most protests suppressed or canceled, a few dozen people arrived Friday at the Behest-e Zahra cemetery to mourn Neda Agha-Soltan, a 26-year-old woman shot dead last Saturday whose image went round the world as an instant emblem of the protest.
According to Tehran, members of the government's Basij militia, ordered to prevent any gatherings, have beaten even small groups of passers-by so the mourners arrived in groups of two or three, muttered brief prayers and left, The Associated Press said, quoting unidentified witnesses.
International condemnation of the authorities' response to the post-election protests could also be muted since a meeting of the Group of Eight countries in Trieste, Italy, on Friday seemed divided on how strongly Tehran should be criticized. While many European countries have forcefully condemned Tehran's crackdown and President Obama has voiced increasingly stern criticism, Russia, which hosted Mr. Ahmadinejad immediately after the disputed election, has said isolating Iran would be a mistake, according to Italy's ANSA news agency.
The United States delegation at the meeting is headed by William Burns, the undersecretary of state for political affairs. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has a fractured elbow and did not attend.
Perhaps the most important question now is whether the leadership can paper over the deep divisions that the election has widened within Iran's political elite, which present the most serious threat to the system in its 30-year history.
There were still signs of widespread public anger and resentment toward the leadership, but no organization to channel it, political analysts said.
The hard-line leadership appears to have intimidated some opposition figures into stepping back from the defiance and confrontation that have upended Iran over the past two weeks.
On Thursday, Mehdi Karroubi, another defeated presidential candidate, who had been more visible in recent days than Mr. Moussavi, said he did not consider Mr. Ahmadinejad's victory legitimate, but would pursue his complaints through the legal system.
But there were also signs of continued resistance. A few conservatives have expressed revulsion at the sight of unarmed protesters being beaten, even shot, by government forces. Only 105 out of the 290 members of Parliament took part in a victory celebration for Mr. Ahmadinejad on Tuesday, newspapers reported Thursday. The absence of so many lawmakers, including the speaker, Ali Larijani, a powerful conservative, was striking.
There was still no word from a former president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a Moussavi supporter who is considered one of the nation's most effective political operatives and coalition builders. That held out the prospect of behind-the-scenes maneuvering that might challenge the status quo, political analysts said.
To avoid violent suppression of street protests, people are turning to other ways of expressing dissent. Echoing a symbol of defiance to the shah, the ritual of 10 p.m. rooftop shouts of "God is great" and new chants of "Death to the dictator" has been growing stronger by the day.
Some people have begun to identify and embarrass plainclothes agents by circulating photographs of those who infiltrated protests and beat demonstrators. And protesters pledged to release thousands of green and black balloons on Friday in memory of those killed in the clashes.
An expatriate Iranian political analyst, who asked not to be identified because he often visited Iran and feared retribution, said Mr. Moussavi's "only option will be to court behind the scenes and try to muster support in powerful circles, and use them as his proxies to fight for him, and of course they will fight, but not for Moussavi, but because of their disagreement or because they despise Ahmadinejad" and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader.
Another analyst, also speaking on the condition of anonymity, said it was still possible for the fractious elite to try to unite to avoid being pushed out of power altogether.
In another indication of the depth of divisions that remain, a senior cleric, Grand Ayatollah Nasser Makarem-Shirazi, called for "national conciliation."
"Definitively, something must be done to ensure that there are no embers burning under the ashes, and that hostilities, antagonism and rivalries are transformed into amity and cooperation among all parties," he said in comments posted on the state-run Press TV Web site.
The government appeared to fall back on a familiar playbook: trying to rouse Iranians through populist appeals against outside interference and dark accusations of foreign conspiracy. Mr. Rezai's aides said the authorities did not even bother to conduct the limited recount they had agreed to. Mr. Ahmadinejad stepped out of the shadows to lash out at President Obama, who said Tuesday that he was "appalled and outraged" by the crackdown on protesters.
On Thursday, Mr. Ahmadinejad said: "We expected the British and European countries to make those kinds of comments. But we were not expecting Mr. Obama, who has talked about change, to fall in the same trap and follow the same path that Bush did."
He did not stop there. "I hope you avoid interfering in Iran's affairs and express your regret in a way that the Iranian people find out about it," he said.
Nazila Fathi reported from Tehran, and Alan Cowell from Paris. Michael Slackman and Mona el-Naggar contributed reporting from Cairo, and Sharon Otterman from New York.
Mashaal emphasized that the Palestinian people were committed to the return of refugees to their homes and warned against any possibly of recognizing Israel as a Jewish state.
"It's a definition that annuls the right of return to lands conquered in 1948," he said.
Of course a demilitarized Palestinian state is worthless if your aim is to murder all the Jews.
Jun. 25, 2009 jpost.com staff and AP , THE JERUSALEM POST
Hamas is prepared to cooperate with any international effort that brings an end to the occupation, but rejects the idea of a demilitarized Palestinian state, since this would be worthless, the group's Damascus-based leader Khaled Mashaal said Thursday during a speech in the Syrian capital Thursday.
"The Palestinian people reject the Israeli position presented recently [in Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's Bar Ilan speech] on a demilitarized state, refugees, Jerusalem and a Jewish state… a demilitarized state would not have serious political essence," he said in the televised speech. "The Palestinians will not accept Jerusalem as a united capital under Jewish sovereignty."
Mashaal emphasized that the Palestinian people were committed to the return of refugees to their homes and warned against any possibly of recognizing Israel as a Jewish state.
"It's a definition that annuls the right of return to lands conquered in 1948," he said.
Concerning captured IDF soldier Gilad Schalit, the Hamas leader said, "The only choice Binyamin Netanyahu has to secure the soldier's release is through a serious prisoner exchange."
He said that Israeli stubbornness had hampered indirect talks and recent efforts.
"We will continue to do everything we can to free our prisoners," he said. "Hamas is committed to securing the release of all 12,000 prisoners."
Mashaal said he welcomed US President Barack Obama's new approach to the Middle East, but was waiting to see action. While the Hamas leader admitted that "there has been a change in Obama's language," he said the US president remains too sympathetic to Israel.
He said Obama's call to stop settlement activity was "positive, but not enough."
"We are in a new era - Israel can no longer defeat us," he continued. "It failed in its Nazi war in Gaza just like it failed in Lebanon. This is the result of resistance."
If Aaron David Miller says the emphasis on settlements is a mistake, it is a mistake:
Interestingly enough, last week two former Washington insiders heavily involved over the years in Middle East issues - Aaron David Miller, the 1990s Middle East negotiator from the Left, and Elliott Abrams, the former deputy national security advisor from the Right - addressed a group in Washington and both said the Obama administration's focus on the settlements was a mistake.
Abrams, for his part, said he did not understand Obama's apparent decision "to take the position that Israel is the problem." And, indeed, making the settlements the issue takes all the onus off the Palestinians.
And as far as Miller was concerned, the JTA quoted him as saying that "as legitimate a problem as settlements are with respect to undermining the environment toward a negotiation," they are a "distraction" given all the other problems that need to be addressed.
"Given the stakes and reality, we are going to need a relationship with Israel of great intimacy in order to do this. We need to think very carefully about how we're going about it, where is the strategy, what is the objective," said Miller, no fan of the settlement enterprise.
With Defense Minister Ehud Barak scheduled to fly back to Washington on Monday for another round of talks about construction in the settlements, it is instructive to ask at this point what exactly US President Barack Obama is trying to achieve by pushing Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to the wall on this issue.
If, as some maintain, it's a way to build his credentials in the Arab world, then - okay - the policy can be understood. US and European diplomats say continuously that everywhere they travel in the Arab world, settlement construction is the one issue that they hear about time and time again: that construction in the settlements is poisoning the atmosphere and that Obama's seriousness in charting a new policy with the Arab world will be judged in no small degree by how he deals with Israel on this issue.
And, as has been said ad nauseam, Obama wants the Arab world. He wants the Arab world to help him out of Iraq and the worsening quagmire in Afghanistan, and also in dealing with Iran -- though the international community's policy toward Iran is likely to undergo a drastic reassessment following the schisms within Iranian society that are now out there for everyone to see.
One can argue that it is ludicrous to link settlements with Syria's sealing its borders with Iraq, or getting the Untied Arab Emirates to reduce its booming business with Teheran, but the link is continuously being drawn, and Obama wants to remove this particular coal from the fire.
But if Obama is being so forceful on the settlements out of a belief that this will push the negotiation process forward, then he is mistaken.
Whether this was Obama's intention or not, his hard line on the settlements has effectively made Israeli-Palestinian negotiations dependent on a complete settlement freeze, something the Netanyahu government - because of its political makeup and Netanyahu's desire for political longevity - is simply not going to do.
So here is the status report so far on the Obama administration's settlement policy: The US has strongly called for a complete settlement freeze, Netanyahu has made clear that he will not comply and the Palestinians say that they will not begin negotiating until one is in place.
The bottom line: there will be no negotiations.
Ironically, this state of no-negotiations is good and comfortable for PA President Mahmoud Abbas. He is not interested in negotiating with Netanyahu, figuring - probably rightly so - that he is not going to get more from the Likud prime minister than he got from former prime minister Ehud Olmert, who was willing to cede more than 93 percent of the West Bank, make up for the rest with a land swap, and relinquish Israel's claim over the holy basin in Jerusalem.
Abbas turned down Olmert's offer, telling The Washington Post that the gaps were too wide. He is he probably reasoning that those gaps aren't going to narrow under Netanyahu, so why negotiate?
And Obama has now given him an excuse not to.
This state of no-negotiations might serve Netanyahu's purpose as well, at least if one believes his critics, who argue that the prime minister really doesn't think it is possible to reach an agreement with the Palestinians, and that all he is doing now is posturing.
Netanyahu has made clear that he will not agree to a complete freeze. He has said that he won't build any new settlements, or expropriate any new land, but he won't freeze construction for natural growth.
First of all, it is not clear whether he legally has the power to do so. How do you stop building an apartment that is 75% complete? What about contractual obligations? What about money invested?
Secondly, even if Netanyahu could wave his wand and magically stop everything right now, politically he can't. With Israel Beiteinu's Avigdor Lieberman breathing down his neck, the prime minister is not going to do something that most Israelis, according to the recent polls, don't even think he should do - stop natural growth construction in the large settlement blocs.
If Obama thinks that by pressing this issue real hard, the Israeli public will revolt against Netanyahu, or that Netanyahu will go gently into the good political night, then he is misreading both the public and Netanyahu. Netanyahu, currently flirting with Kadima's Shaul Mofaz, will not be felled so easily.
Interestingly enough, last week two former Washington insiders heavily involved over the years in Middle East issues - Aaron David Miller, the 1990s Middle East negotiator from the Left, and Elliott Abrams, the former deputy national security advisor from the Right - addressed a group in Washington and both said the Obama administration's focus on the settlements was a mistake.
Abrams, for his part, said he did not understand Obama's apparent decision "to take the position that Israel is the problem." And, indeed, making the settlements the issue takes all the onus off the Palestinians.
And as far as Miller was concerned, the JTA quoted him as saying that "as legitimate a problem as settlements are with respect to undermining the environment toward a negotiation," they are a "distraction" given all the other problems that need to be addressed.
"Given the stakes and reality, we are going to need a relationship with Israel of great intimacy in order to do this. We need to think very carefully about how we're going about it, where is the strategy, what is the objective," said Miller, no fan of the settlement enterprise.
And, indeed, if the US objective is to get negotiations started, then the Obama administration's policy of making the settlements its main focus is proving counterproductive.
Despite fervent denials by Obama administration officials, there were indeed agreements between Israel and the United States regarding the growth of Israeli settlements on the West Bank. As the Obama administration has made the settlements issue a major bone of contention between Israel and the U.S., it is necessary that we review the recent history.
In the spring of 2003, U.S. officials (including me) held wide-ranging discussions with then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Jerusalem. The "Roadmap for Peace" between Israel and the Palestinians had been written. President George W. Bush had endorsed Palestinian statehood, but only if the Palestinians eliminated terror. He had broken with Yasser Arafat, but Arafat still ruled in the Palestinian territories. Israel had defeated the intifada, so what was next? [Commentary] Getty Images
Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, President George W. Bush, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Jordan's King Abdullah, June 4, 2003.
We asked Mr. Sharon about freezing the West Bank settlements. I recall him asking, by way of reply, what did that mean for the settlers? They live there, he said, they serve in elite army units, and they marry. Should he tell them to have no more children, or move?
We discussed some approaches: Could he agree there would be no additional settlements? New construction only inside settlements, without expanding them physically? Could he agree there would be no additional land taken for settlements?
As we talked several principles emerged. The father of the settlements now agreed that limits must be placed on the settlements; more fundamentally, the old foe of the Palestinians could -- under certain conditions -- now agree to Palestinian statehood.
In June 2003, Mr. Sharon stood alongside Mr. Bush, King Abdullah II of Jordan, and Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas at Aqaba, Jordan, and endorsed Palestinian statehood publicly: "It is in Israel's interest not to govern the Palestinians but for the Palestinians to govern themselves in their own state. A democratic Palestinian state fully at peace with Israel will promote the long-term security and well-being of Israel as a Jewish state." At the end of that year he announced his intention to pull out of the Gaza Strip.
The U.S. government supported all this, but asked Mr. Sharon for two more things. First, that he remove some West Bank settlements; we wanted Israel to show that removing them was not impossible. Second, we wanted him to pull out of Gaza totally -- including every single settlement and the "Philadelphi Strip" separating Gaza from Egypt, even though holding on to this strip would have prevented the smuggling of weapons to Hamas that was feared and has now come to pass. Mr. Sharon agreed on both counts.
These decisions were political dynamite, as Mr. Sharon had long predicted to us. In May 2004, his Likud Party rejected his plan in a referendum, handing him a resounding political defeat. In June, the Cabinet approved the withdrawal from Gaza, but only after Mr. Sharon fired two ministers and allowed two others to resign. His majority in the Knesset was now shaky.
After completing the Gaza withdrawal in August 2005, he called in November for a dissolution of the Knesset and for early elections. He also said he would leave Likud to form a new centrist party. The political and personal strain was very great. Four weeks later he suffered the first of two strokes that have left him in a coma.
Throughout, the Bush administration gave Mr. Sharon full support for his actions against terror and on final status issues. On April 14, 2004, Mr. Bush handed Mr. Sharon a letter saying that there would be no "right of return" for Palestinian refugees. Instead, the president said, "a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel."
On the major settlement blocs, Mr. Bush said, "In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949." Several previous administrations had declared all Israeli settlements beyond the "1967 borders" to be illegal. Here Mr. Bush dropped such language, referring to the 1967 borders -- correctly -- as merely the lines where the fighting stopped in 1949, and saying that in any realistic peace agreement Israel would be able to negotiate keeping those major settlements.
On settlements we also agreed on principles that would permit some continuing growth. Mr. Sharon stated these clearly in a major policy speech in December 2003: "Israel will meet all its obligations with regard to construction in the settlements. There will be no construction beyond the existing construction line, no expropriation of land for construction, no special economic incentives and no construction of new settlements."
Ariel Sharon did not invent those four principles. They emerged from discussions with American officials and were discussed by Messrs. Sharon and Bush at their Aqaba meeting in June 2003.
They were not secret, either. Four days after the president's letter, Mr. Sharon's Chief of Staff Dov Weissglas wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that "I wish to reconfirm the following understanding, which had been reached between us: 1. Restrictions on settlement growth: within the agreed principles of settlement activities, an effort will be made in the next few days to have a better definition of the construction line of settlements in Judea & Samaria."
Stories in the press also made it clear that there were indeed "agreed principles." On Aug. 21, 2004 the New York Times reported that "the Bush administration . . . now supports construction of new apartments in areas already built up in some settlements, as long as the expansion does not extend outward."
In recent weeks, American officials have denied that any agreement on settlements existed. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated on June 17 that "in looking at the history of the Bush administration, there were no informal or oral enforceable agreements. That has been verified by the official record of the administration and by the personnel in the positions of responsibility."
These statements are incorrect. Not only were there agreements, but the prime minister of Israel relied on them in undertaking a wrenching political reorientation -- the dissolution of his government, the removal of every single Israeli citizen, settlement and military position in Gaza, and the removal of four small settlements in the West Bank. This was the first time Israel had ever removed settlements outside the context of a peace treaty, and it was a major step.
It is true that there was no U.S.-Israel "memorandum of understanding," which is presumably what Mrs. Clinton means when she suggests that the "official record of the administration" contains none. But she would do well to consult documents like the Weissglas letter, or the notes of the Aqaba meeting, before suggesting that there was no meeting of the minds.
Mrs. Clinton also said there were no "enforceable" agreements. This is a strange phrase. How exactly would Israel enforce any agreement against an American decision to renege on it? Take it to the International Court in The Hague?
Regardless of what Mrs. Clinton has said, there was a bargained-for exchange. Mr. Sharon was determined to break the deadlock, withdraw from Gaza, remove settlements -- and confront his former allies on Israel's right by abandoning the "Greater Israel" position to endorse Palestinian statehood and limits on settlement growth. He asked for our support and got it, including the agreement that we would not demand a total settlement freeze.
For reasons that remain unclear, the Obama administration has decided to abandon the understandings about settlements reached by the previous administration with the Israeli government. We may be abandoning the deal now, but we cannot rewrite history and make believe it did not exist.
Mr. Abrams, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, handled Middle East affairs at the National Security Council from 2001 to 2009
On June 8-10, 2009, the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People held one of its frequent conferences in Jakarta, Indonesia. Although the conference objective was ostensibly to "provide greater support for [a] two state solution," the program's agenda included: the "question of Palestine," "promoting support for the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people through the United Nations system," "reaching decision-makers and politicians," "participating in international campaigns to end the occupation," and "a just solution of the issue of Jerusalem." Holding a highly one-sided event in a country that does not have diplomatic relations with Israel, has the world's largest Islamic population, and is a member of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) is counterproductive to promoting peace through understanding between Israel and the Islamic world.
As in past committee "conferences," many speakers were officials from highly politicized NGOs, including Joharah Baker of Miftah and Daniel Seidemann of Ir Amim. Miftah and Ir Amim, NGOs funded by the EU, advocate and campaign for Palestinian positions, including on Jerusalem. Miftah's website declares its goal is to "disseminate the Palestinian narrative and discourse globally."
In her presentation in Indonesia, Ms. Baker highlighted the exclusively Palestinian position, claiming that "the conflict was not about Hamas, Fatah or even a military conflict. It was about ending an illegal Israeli occupation..." She speciously argued that the media only references "Palestinian 'terror' and Israel's 'necessary retaliation,'" instead of considering "the possibility that suicide bombings [are] a symptom of a much bigger problem."
In his contribution to this anti-Israel exercise, Mr. Seidmann (from Ir Amim) asserted that what he defined as new "[m]assive settlements…would cut East Jerusalem off from the West Bank, sounding the death knell for a two-State solution" and home demolitions are a "concerted attempt to reduce the Palestinian presence at that volcanic core." Seidmann also declared that "[t]he Government supported the steamrolling of the competing narratives in Jerusalem into an exclusionary settler narrative." No Israeli rebuttal or neutral analysis was included, as is the case for other NGO meetings organized by this committee.
Another NGO representative, Sonja Karkar of Women for Palestine (Australia), demonized Israel, saying "the Palestinian struggle against Israel's occupation, ethnic cleansing and institutionalized apartheid over 61 years was the defining struggle of the twenty-first century." She accused Israel of "racist ideology," declared Israel "the most prolonged colonial enterprise of modern times," and blamed "Zionist organizations" in Australia for "play[ing] a significant role in legitimizing the illegal occupation at the highest governmental and business levels." In another form of demonization, she declared "[t]he savagery of Israel's recent attacks on Gaza," and called for "global campaigns of boycott, divestment and sanctions" to make Israel "hurt economically and politically."
Other speakers and Israeli experts (whose entry into Indonesia appeared to be conditional on opposition to Israeli government policy) similarly represented a very narrow section of the political spectrum, and never departed from the Palestinian narrative and agenda. As such, it was highly misleading.
This Committee, and its events, is yet another example of how UN-NGO collaboration contributes to the intensification of the conflict, weakens universal human rights, and erodes the legitimacy of the UN. As with the Durban process, the Human Rights Council, CERD, UPR, Committee Against Torture, and other forums, the UN provides a platform for the demonization of Israel by NGOs. Correspondingly, outside the UN, these organizations and their officials provide additional legitimacy, visibility, and soft-power influence for biased campaigns.
Quote from Bassam Eid, founder and director or the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group based in east Jerusalem:
When Israel removed the checkpoint at the southern entrance to Jericho, the Palestinian Security Agency started to work harder and began to despise the local people even more. It claims that Israel has given them too much work by removing the checkpoint. I, as a Palestinian, in consideration of the Palestinian Security Agency's need to take some tasks off its shoulders, request that Israelis put back the checkpoint. But of course that is left to the judgment of Ehud Barak and not me.
After saying good-bye to one friend I met in the streets of Jericho, another would arrive and warn me that the first was under "a question mark," meaning he was apparently a security agent. Events of this sort bring me back to the 1970s, several years after the beginning of the occupation, when people in the streets of Palestine feared each other.
I would like to suggest that Gen. Dayton not just train agents in the use of weapons, beating and torture (eight prisoners have been tortured to death in Palestinian prisons so far this year: five in Gaza, three in the West Bank), but also train them how to behave among their own people. However, I don't believe that ranks high on Dayton's list of priorities.
Whenever someone is beaten or tortured, the justification given is that the person either "opposed the peace process" or "belonged to Hamas." At the end of the day, people return to their routines and shut their eyes to the reality around them.
Americans seem to have a knack for that sort of thing.
A letter from Dexter Van Zile. He has asked us to blog about it - everyone, so we have. It is truly pitiful that Mennonites are carrying on a shameful relation with the worst Ayatollahs in Iran while they are murdering their own people.
Hello Everyone:
As you know, the Mennonite Central Committee has been one of the more vociferous and unfair critics of Israel.
This pacifist group has allowed its prophetic voice to be used as a weapon of war against Israel.
Its activists have also worked to legitimize Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the eyes of the American people.
When I've spoken with the people from the MCC about their dialogue with Ahmadinejad, they respond by saying that it is a good thing to keep the lines of communications open even with people we regard as "enemies." They also state that they have expressed their concern to Ahmadinejad about his comments regarding Israel.
Now that the Iranian regime has revealed itself to be quite willing to use violence to suppress its opposition, the MCC, whose activists have met with Ahmadinejad, have fallen silent.
They are not using the lines of communication that they said were so necessary to maintain.
On June 15, I wrote a post on CAMERA's website about this silence.
I have recently updated this post with some new information that frankly caused my jaw to drop. In short, the MCC has engaged in dialogue with with scholars from the Imam Khomeini Education and Research Institute (IKERI) located on Qom, Iran. This institute is directed by Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi, described by The Star (Toronto) as "spiritual adviser to Iran's hard-line president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad."
One dissident described Mesbah-Yazdi as "the most dangerous Mullah in Iran." The Toronto Star reported that Mesbah-Yazdi is "is a strong advocate of the death penalty, public flogging and the use of suicide bombers against "enemies of Islam."
It's obvious enough to state that if Israel were behaving the way the regime in Iran is behaving, the MCC would not hesitate to issue a ringing condemnation.
I don't know how any of you want to use this information, but please, read the post [article is below ]. If you've got a blog, please blog on it. Feel free to quote my message in its entirety. [That's what we did!]
Dexter Van Zile Christian Media Analyst CAMERA PO Box 35040 Boston, MA 02135-0001 617-789-3672 Voice 617-851-0912 http://www.camera.org email: dexter@camera.org
When it comes to rehabilitating his image in the United States, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can count on the Mennonite Central Committee for assistance.
The organization has sponsored two dinners and an interfaith pilgrimage to Tehran during which Christian leaders have met with the Iranian President and offered kind words about the man afterwards.
Now that events demonstrate that Ahmadinejad is the public face of a brutal regime willing to suppress the people it governs, the organization has fallen silent.
After more than two days of protests and violence in Iran, the MCC has not published any statement about the regime on its website, nor does it have any plans to.
On the morning of June 15, 2009, CAMERA sent an email to Ed Nyce, the MCC's Media and Education Coordinator asking whether or not the organization was going to issue any statement about Iran.
Nyce's response, which came on the afternoon of June 15, was succinct and direct:
"We have no plans to issue a statement."
When asked in subsequent communications (email and a voice message) why the MCC had nothing to say, Nyce reiterated in an email that the MCC has "no plans to issue a statement."
The MCC's silence about the events in Iran is remarkable given its highly visible campaign to legitimize Ahmadinejad in the U.S. This campaign began in February 2007 when the MCC organized a meeting of Christian leaders with the Iranian President in Teheran. The delegation held a press conference in Washington, D.C. upon its return to the U.S. Christian leaders reportedly challenged Ahmadinejad about his anti-Semitic statements, but their complaints had little apparent effect. Four days after the delegation's meeting Ahmadinejad appeared in Sudan, where according to Islamic Republic News Agency (Iran's official news service), he said "Zionists are the true manifestation of Satan."
In September 2007, the MCC organized an ecumenical dinner attended by Ahmadinejad and numerous Christian leaders in New York City.
The leaders met with the Iranian president after he addressed the United Nations on September 26, 2007. According to The New York Times, Albert Lobe, executive director of the Mennonite Central committee told Ahmadinejad "We meant to extend to you the hospitality which a head of state deserves."
Lobe's obsequiousness was apparently a response to the treatment Ahmadinejad received at Columbia University on Sept. 24, when the school's president Lee Bollinger called him "a petty and cruel dictator."
The MCC organized a similar dinner with Ahmadinejad in September 2008. After this meeting, MCC officials reassured the American people that the Iranian President had no desire to destroy Israel militarily, but merely supported a "one-state solution" to the conflict in which "Israelis and Palestinians elect a single government to represent both peoples."
When it comes to portraying Ahmadinejad in a sympathetic light, or condemning Israeli policies, such as the construction of the security barrier, the Mennonite Central Committee has been quite vocal. But when it comes time to assess the behavior of the Iranian regime in light of the Christian gospel (which it uses so often to judge Israel), the group falls silent.
UPDATE - June 24, 2009
In addition to sponsoring the two dinners and interfaith pilgrimage mentioned above, the Mennonite Central Committee has had multiple face-to-face contacts with scholars from the Imam Khomeini Education and Research Institute (IKERI) located on Qom, Iran. This institute is directed by Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi, described by The Star (Toronto) as "spiritual adviser to Iran's hard-line president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad."
According to a report in the The Star, a May 2007 meeting between scholars from the institute and Mennonite scholars at the University of Waterloo sponsored by the MCC provoked a protest from Iranians in Canada. The Star reported:
"We're not against dialogue but the Mennonites are naïve if they think they can open one with these people," said Haideh Moghissi, a YorkUniversity sociologists who with 17 others signed a protest letter sent to the university.
She says Mesbah-Yazdi and his followers are "at the forefront of oppression in Iran," responsible for silencing all intellectuals who disagree with the regime.
"It hurts to know that while people are losing their lives over there, some people are opening the door to 'dialogue' over here. Why doesn't the institute open it back there?"
The Star also reports that Mesbah-Yazdi "is a strong advocate of the death penalty, public flogging and the use of suicide bombers against "enemies of Islam."
"He is the most dangerous mullah in Iran," says Saeed Rahnema, director of York University School of Public Policy and Administration, who spearheaded the protest.
Despite complaints from Iranian dissidents about the meeting in 2007, the MCC sponsored another dialogue with scholars from IKERI in Qom on May 24-27, 2009.
According to an article about the most recent meeting published on the website of ConradGrebelUniversityCollege (which sent scholars to the dialogue), the participants witnessed "active campaigning on behalf of presidential candidates."
The article also states that at the conference's end, "the Mennonite delegation expressed its gratitude to IKERI for unsurpassed hospitality, delicious meals, comfortable accommodations, and excellent conference meeting space."
IKERI apparently treated its Mennonite guests with more respect and deference than the Iranian government has shown to its own citizens. According to CNN, witnesses report that government security forces are beating people like "animals."
Where, oh where, are the crowds of rights demonstrators, where is Oxfam? Amnesty? Human Rights Watch? They issued minor press releases, but nobody gave them much coverage. If Israel or the US were murdering people in this way, there would be an outcry all over the world. Streets would be flooded with protestors. Where is Tikkun? Doesn't Michael Lerner's sense of justice extend to Iranians? Don't they have rights?
Violent confrontations in Iran - Why is everyone silent?
Tell us, where is everyone? Where did all the people who demonstrated against Israel's brutality in Operation Cast Lead, in the Second Lebanon War, in Operation Defensive Shield, or even in The Hague, when we were dragged there unwillingly after daring to build a separation barrier between us and the suicide bombers, disappear to? We see demonstrations here and there, but these are mainly Iranian exiles. Europe, in principle, is peaceful and calm. So is the United States. Here and there a few dozens, here and there a few hundreds. Have they evaporated because it is Tehran and not here?
All the peace-loving and justice-loving Europeans, British professors in search of freedom and equality, the friends filling the newspapers, magazines and various academic journals with various demands for boycotting Israel, defaming Zionism and blaming us and it for all the ills and woes of the world?could it be that they have taken a long summer=2 0vacation? Now of all times, when the Basij hooligans have begun to slaughter innocent civilians in the city squares of Tehran? Aren't they connected to the Internet? Don't they have YouTube? Has a terrible virus struck down their computer? Have their justice glands been removed in a complicated surgical procedure (to be re-implanted successfully for the next confrontation in Gaza)? How can it be that when a Jew kills a Muslim, the entire world boils, and when extremist Islam slaughters its citizens, whose sole sin is the aspiration to freedom, the world is silent?
Imagine that this were not happening now in Tehran, but rather here. Let's say in Nablus. Spontaneous demonstrations of Palestinians turning into an ongoing bloodbath. Border Policemen armed with knives, on motorcycles, butchering demonstrators. A young woman downed by a sniper in midday, dying before the cameras. Actually, why imagine? We can just recall what happened with the child Mohammed a-Dura. How the affair (which was very harsh, admittedly) swept the world from one end to another. The fact that a later independent investigative report raised tough questions as to the identity of the weapon from which a-Dura was shot, did not make a difference to anyone. The Zionists were to blame, and that was that.
And where are the world's leaders? Where is the wondrous rhetorical ability of Barack Obama? Where has his sublime vocabulary gone? Where is the desire, that is supposed to be built into all American presidents, to defend and act on behalf of freedom seekers around the globe? What is this stammering?
A source who is connected to the Iranian and security situation, said yesterday that if Obama had shown on the Iranian matter a quarter of the determination with which he assaulted the settlements in the territories, everything would have looked different. "The demonstrators in Iran are desperate for help," said the man, who served in very senior positions for many years, "they need to know that they have backing, that there is an entire world that supports them, but instead they see indifference. And this is happening at such a critical stage of this battle for the soul of Iran and the freedom of the Iranian people. It's sad."
Or the European Union, for example. The organization that speaks of justice and peace all year round. Why should its leaders not declare clearly that the world wants to see a democratic and free Iran, and support it unreservedly? Could it be20that the tongue of too many Europeans is still connected to dark places? The pathetic excuse that such support would give Khamenei and Ahmadinejad an excuse to call the demonstrators "Western agents," does not hold water. They call them "Western agents" in any case, so what difference does it make?
To think that just six months ago, when Europe was flooded with demonstrations against Israel, leftists and Islamists raised pictures of Nasrallah, the prot?g? of the ayatollah regime. The fact that this was a benighted regime did not trouble them. This is madness, but it is sinking in and influencing the weary West. If there is a truly free world here, let it appear immediately! And impose sanctions, for example, on those who slaughter the members of their own people. Just as it imposed them on North Korea, or on the military regime in Burma. It is only a question of will, not of ability.
Apparently, something happens to the global adherence to justice and equality, when it comes to Iran. The oppression is overt and known. The Internet era broadcasts everything live, and it is all for the better. Hooligans acting on behalf of the regime shoot and stab masses of demonstrators, who cry out for freedom.
Is anything more needed? Apparently it is. Because it is to no avail. The West remains indifferent. Obama is polite. Why shouldn't he be, after all, he aspires to a dialogue with the ayatollahs. And that is very fine and good, the problem is that at this stage there is no dialogue, but there is death and murder on the streets. At this stage, one must forget the rules of etiquette for a moment. The voices being heard from Obama elicit concern that we are actually dealing with a new version of Chamberlain. Being conciliatory is a positive trait, particularly when it follows the clumsy bellicosity of George Bush, but when conciliation becomes blindness, we have a problem.
The courageous voice of Angela Merkel, who issued yesterday a firm statement of support for the Iranian people and its right to freedom, is in the meantime a lone voice in the Western wilderness. It is only a shame that she has not announced an economic boycott, in light of the fact that this is the European country that is most invested in building infrastructure in Iran. She was joined by British Foreign Secretary Miliband. It is little, it is late, it is not enough. Millions of freedom seekers have taken to the streets in Iran, and the West is straddling the fence, one leg here, the other leg there.
There is a different Islam. This is already clear today. Even in Iran. There are millions of Muslims who support freedom, human rights, equality for women. These millions loathe Khamenei, Chavez and Nasrallah too. But part of the global left wing prefers the ayatollah regime over them. The main thing is for them to raise flags against Israel and America. The question is why the democrats, the liberals, and Obama, Blair and Sarkozy, are continuing to sit on the fence. This is not a fence of separation, it is a fence of shame.
The Obama administration went out of its way to send 4th of July celebration invitations to Iranian diplomats, thereby legitimizing and supporting a repressive, genocidal regime that gathers crowds to scream "Death to America."
The really embarrassing part of this fiasco is that the invitations were ignored - America was snubbed:
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Iranian diplomats had in any case not replied to invitations already sent out. Initially, the administration had said that the invitation still stood, but by Wednesday afternoon announced otherwise.
"As far as I know not a single Iranian accepted the invitation to 4 of July celebration? said State Department Spokesman Ian Kelly said earlier Wednesday. "They are celebration of our basic values of independence and freedom, which are exactly what Iranians demand on the streets."
This is a real gem:
U.S. officials and analysts believe that the political turmoil in Iran surrounding its contested June 12 presidential election has dimmed immediate prospects for U.S. dialogue with Tehran, but say U.S. President Barack Obama's hopes for engagement have by no means been snuffed out.
Officials acknowledge that the Iranian authorities bloody crackdown on street protests sparked by the election have made it less likely that Tehran will wish to engage and harder for the Obama administration to do so.
"We'll get back to you about that dialog invitation when we're done murdering peace here. Peace and light."
In a contest for dumbest, most amoral diplomatic moves in history, those invitations may have an honored place next to receptions for Nazi diplomats and negotiations with the Japanese in 1941, though they don't hold a candle to Chamberlain at Munich.
Natural gas lines of Basij Head quarter was set on fire after Basijie's locked themselves inside . at 0:05 you can see the whole building exploded at least 5 from Basijies were killed you can see fire in different parts of city location : Eastern Tehran
Armed Iranian security forces clashed with some 200 pro-reform demonstrators outside the parliament building in Tehran on Wednesday, but no casualties were reported.
Riot police and militia volunteers gathered near the parliament armed with batons and tear gas to deter the protesters from their planned to protest.
According to an Iranian blogger who witnessed the event, police bearing guns and riot gear attacked unarmed demonstrators. The New York Times quoted his post as saying: "They were waiting for us - they all have guns and riot uniforms - it was like a mouse trap - ppl [sic] being shot like animals."
Amateur videos posted on YouTube by people saying it was taken at protests on Wednesday showed groups of young people chanting on a Tehran street. One showed men and women throwing rocks and pushing barricades, one blazing, in the street. Others shouted: "Death to the dictator!"
The time and place the videos were taken could not be immediately confirmed due to restrictions on foreign media in Iran.
A helicopter could be seen hovering over central Tehran. A witness who walked through Baharestan Square in front of the parliament building around 7 P.M. three hours after the scheduled start of the protest, told The Associated Press it was swarmed by hundreds of riot police who did not allow people to even briefly gather.
A cute message about peace. Jason Alexander and One Voice have been villified and ridiculed by David Horowitz's Front Page magazine and right wing Zionist bloggers. That's why I think David Horowitz is part of the problem, not part of the solution. I don't think saying "we're all just folks" is going to get to the bottom of the problems either, but at least Alexander is not villifying people and is looking for a solution rather than trying to make things worse. "Zionists" who make fun of peace groups or try to discredit them are not helping Zionism or peace.
Jason Alexander, who spent nine years playing ambiguously Jewish George Castanza on Seinfeld, told a crowd in Jerusalem on Wednesday that the search for an Israeli-Palestinian solution and the show about nothing that launched him to fame have one thing in common - neither seemed destined to succeed.
But just as the show managed to bounce back with comedy, said the balding actor, a solution might be found for Mideast troubles if people write and laugh with one another.
"We were canceled, we were gone, we were a distant memory and somehow we came back and eventually everybody caught on and started paying attention," he said. "Other than that, we shed no wisdom."
Alexander, 49, is a creator of Imagine: 2018, a project that asked Israeli and Palestinian high school students to write stories about what the world might look like 10 years down the road if an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement was signed in 2008.
The group collected 50 stories from each side into a book and has made two of the stories into short films.
The project is sponsored by One Voice, www.onevoicemovement.org a nonprofit organization that works to forge connections between Israeli and Palestinian moderates.
Alexander was calm and jovial in an appearance with some of the high school writers and One Voice officials Wednesday - a far cry from the alternately nebbish and erupting George Costanza he played for nine seasons on Seinfeld.
He praised the young writers for bridging the gap between their cultures with comedy, such as a scene from one of the films in which an Israeli soldier and a Palestinian boy point guns at each other with murderous expressions only to laugh and squirt water from the guns a moment later and then to use them as mock cell phones.
"God knows if you can make people laugh, it's the best way to heal wounds," he said.
But he also cautioned: humor is a language that doesn't always translate.
"Jewish humor is self-deprecating humor," said Alexander, who is Jewish. "Nothing makes a Jew laugh more than jokes about Jewishness. It's purely speculation, but my guess is that's probably not as true for the Arab world."
Alexander said he came to Israel for the first time in 1990 with arms folded and heels dug in, thinking "I would not have a positive experience." Instead, he said, he discovered a deep, personal connection with the country and has returned many times, often doing work for One Voice.
Alexander was disappointed, though, that his fellow Americans so often know Israelis and Palestinians only through stereotypes about the conflict.
"People here get painted throughout the world with a very wide brush," he said. "To most of the world, to most people I know, Israelis are two things: victims or occupiers. Palestinians are two things: victims or terrorists... But when you sit down and you talk to people on both sides, everyone's humanity and the similarity we all share comes out."
From Iran, there is news of more demonstrations over the fraudulent elections, and over the suppression of the elections, and - a compromise initiative from the influential senior clerics of Qom. But Ayatollah Khameinei insists that the election results will not be changed. As Sharq al Awsat wrote regarding the compromise initiative:
... informed sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that the senior sources of emulation in Qom were exerting pressures on the authorities in Tehran to search for a compromise to the current political crisis shaking Iran. They said a delegation from the Guardian Council's members visited the religious leaders and ayatollahs in Qom to get their public support for the legitimacy of the election and the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for a second term. But an Iranian source told Asharq Al-Awsat: "But praise be to God, the sources of emulation did not support the demands" of the Guardian Council and added that many of the sources of emulation in Qom formed a "neutral" voice during this crisis and because of their tendency to remain "above politics" can play an important role during the crisis shaking Iran.
An Iranian source talked about reports to the effect that around 50 of the sources of emulation, ayatollahs, and clerics in Qom sent messages to Ayatollah Khamenei urging him to look into the complaints of the reformists and examine the reported violations. An Iranian source from the reform movement explained to Asharq Al-Awsat that members of the Guardian Council, the body supervising the election, visited the Shiite seminary in Qom and met the sources of emulation there and that Great Ayatollah Safi Golpaygani, one of the most important sources of emulation in the seminary, was among those they met. The source, which it cannot be identified, said Ayatollah Golpaygani urged the Guardian Council "to be above politics and exercise its role as a neutral arbiter between the political parties and not lean toward one party at the expense of the other." It added that Ayatollah Golpaygani's stand should be pondered because of his great influence on the Guardian Council whose chairman he was during the first years after the revolution. The source then went on to say: "Compared to Ayatollah Jannati, the Guardian Council's present chairman, Golpaygani is an expert jurisprudent, has a history in the revolution, and is respected." It added that the Guardian Council came under heavy pressure from the reformists and the ayatollahs because it acted as a supporter of Ahmadinejad. It noted that the sources of emulation in Qom stressed to the Council's members that "it is a judicial body and not apolitical one and the political nature of its action is damaging for it."
Armed Iranian security forces thwarted a demonstration planned by opposition protesters outside the parliament building in Tehran on Wednesday, according to various media reports.
Riot police and militia volunteers gathered outside the parliament armed with batons to deter the hundreds of protesters from demonstrating, said witness reports in The New York Times and AFP.
According to an Iranian blogger who witnessed the event, police bearing guns and riot gear attacked unarmed demonstrators. The New York Times quoted his post as saying: "They were waiting for us - they all have guns and riot uniforms - it was like a mouse trap - ppl [sic] being shot like animals."
Iranian authorities have also arrested 25 journalists linked to defeated refortmist candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi's campaign, AFP reported.
Mousavi's official Web site had declared earlier in the day that a protest was planned for the venue on Wednesday afternoon, despite an official ban on the rallies.
The Web site distanced Mousavi from the demonstration, calling it independent and not organized by the reformist leader.
The mixed messages reflected the dilemma facing the unlikely opposition leader, a longtime supporter of Iran's government thrust to the head of a pro-democracy protest movement.
Mousavi, a former prime minister, saw his campaign transform into a protest movement after the government declared that hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the overwhelming winner of the June 12 election.
Mousavi and his supporters claim massive fraud tilted the election and want the vote to be canceled and held again. The final tally gave 62.6 percent of the vote to Ahmadinejad and 33.75 percent to Mousavi, a landslide victory in a race that had been perceived as much closer. Rezaie came in third.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has ordered the protests to end, leaving Mousavi with the choice of restraining followers or continuing to directly challenge the country's ultimate authority despite threats of escalating force.
Famine is only to be expected in a regime that spends its money on rockets for Hezbollah and advanced Russian weapons. No doubt someone will find a way to blame it on Israel.
Study conducted by Syrian government reveals poverty in country expanding. Some 3.5 million people have no income, peasants immigrating to cities in order to avoid food shortage
Doron Peskin Published: 06.23.09, 08:31 / Israel Money
Some 700,000 households in Syria – about 3.5 million people - have no income. In other words, an average of one family of five in Syria leans on monthly governmental aid in order to survive, according to a comprehensive study conducted by the Social Affairs and Labor Ministry in Syria, whose main findings were published by the local al-Watan newspaper.
Most supported families are living in conditions of poverty, as the governmental aid allows for minimal living conditions. According to Syrian law, a household is entitled to governmental aid if it is able to prove that both partners have no income during the year or a pension sufficient for basic living.
The study reveals that the main center of poverty is in northern Syria. In the Halab district, for example, there are 110,000 families in need of aid in order to survive. In Hasaka there are 87,000 such families, and in the Hamat province there are 68,000 such families.
The smallest number of needy families is in the Quneitra district, which borders with Israel, totaling 6,825 families.
Deterioration in poverty levels
The research findings stress the difficult economic challenge faced by the country's decision makers, and shows that the efforts made by the regime to deal with the poverty and unemployment problem have not borne fruit.
The past two years have seen a state of deterioration in the poverty levels in Syria due to the rise in the prices of oil and food products. According to estimates, the average income per person in Syria stands at some $250 a month.
The price hike has been joined in the past two years by a heavy drought. The Syrian government said last week that it would send out urgent shipments of food to drought-stricken areas, particularly in the Hasaka district.
These reports join a recent international report, which states that some 160 villages in northeastern Syria have been abandoned by their residents due to the food shortage. These villagers immigrate to the country's big cities, putting a great amount of pressure on the already shaky infrastructures in Syrian cities.
The Syrian development plan for the years 2006-2017 set a target of reducing poverty from 11.4% to 7% of the population, but its implementation is extremely weak at the moment.
Doron Peskin is head of research at Info-Prod Research (Middle East) Ltd.
David Shasha wrote another of his "progressive" screeds extolling the mythical paradise of Jewish - Muslim relations that was destroyed by us greedy and evil Zionists. Israel Bonan responds.
Allow me to briefly introduce myself. My name is Israel Bonan, I am a Mizrahi Jew. I was born in Cairo, Egypt in the mid 1940s. I was expelled from Egypt in 1967, and left with a torn shirt on my back, and a pair of mangled glasses, broken intentionally, on my face, and with very little else.
I am considered by any descriptive measure, a bona fide "refugee", a designation echoed by the United Nation High Commissioner of Refugees UNHCR, on behalf of the more than 800,000 displaced Mizrahi Jews fleeing the Arab countries (expressed twice, in 1957 and subsequently in 1967). I currently reside in the Boston area in the US.
I have been familiar with Mr. Shasha's views for quite sometimes now, and I find it disquieting that his positions, which run contrary to the factual history of the era and the conventional wisdom of the Mizrahi community, or as he prefers to call us "the Arab Jews", are taken as representative, when they are not.
It never ceases to amaze me, that Mr. Shasha who likes to refer to himself as an Arab Jew, though born in the US, has such a meager understanding, of the history of the era and about what constitutes a refugee or to dwell with any depth about their lot. Be that as it may.
I find that Mr. Shasha's logic and the common thread in his writings, have always consisted of three major assertions; making his discourse monotonously predictable and invariably repetitive.
Israel is considering enacting a temporary freeze on settlement construction, excluding projects already underway, if the United States agrees to continued construction for natural growth once the freeze ends, an Israeli government source has told Haaretz.
U.S. Mideast envoy George Mitchell has been conducting low-profile talks with Israel in a bid to reach an agreement on the settlement issue, the government official said.
Mitchell was due to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Paris on Friday, but Netanyahu postponed the meeting and sent Defense Minister Ehud Barak to Washington for talks, the source said.
Barak believes that any progress on both the Palestinian and the regional peace tracks will render the settlement issue considerably less important, the government official said.
"If there's progress on the peace talks, it will become clearer where the big settlement blocs are, and the gaps will become easier to bridge," said a source close to Barak.
Israel and the United States have already agreed that all unauthorized outposts are to be removed "within weeks or months," no new settlements are to be built and no Palestinian land is to be confiscated.
However, they disagree over the duration of the settlement freeze and the future of settlement construction projects already underway.
Israel is offering to halt some settlement construction for up to six months, while the United States is interested in a considerably longer period.
In addition, Israel wants to convince Washington that building projects currently underway should be allowed to continue - including the construction of up to several thousand housing units.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi raised the settlement issue in a meeting with Netanyahu in Rome yesterday, telling him that settlement construction may become an obstacle for peace, and must be stopped.
Netanyahu is reported to have replied that "an agreed-upon formula can be found with the U.S. if this is what they're looking for."
Speaking at a press conference after the meeting, Netanyahu said he had no intention of giving up his vision of a final-status agreement in which a demilitarized Palestinian state acknowledges Israel as a Jewish state.
"This isn't a trick or a maneuver," Netanyahu said. "It will become a stepping stone on the way to true peace."
[From NYT] They are known mockingly as the "Joojeh Basiji" — the "chicken Basiji." These are the militia scarcely old enough to manage more than a feeble beard. Teenagers, brainwashed from early childhood, they have been ferried into the capital in large numbers, given a club and a shield and a helmet and told to go to work. … Whatever happens now, all is changed utterly in Iran. Opacity, a force of the Islamic Republic, has yielded to a riveting transparency in which one side confronts another. The online youth of Iran will not be reconciled to a regime that touts global "ethics" and "justice" while trampling on them at home. … I bow my head to the youth of Iran, the youth that is open-eyed, bold and far stronger and more numerous than the near-beardless vigilantes.
This speaks for itself. "East" Jerusalem is now off limits for Israeli building it seems. The problem is not Maaleh Edumim or some outlying neighborhood, but neighborhoods that are in the heart of Jerusalem and an integral part of it, that have been Jewish since 1967. Some of them were Jewish prior to 1948, such as the Hebrew University compound and the Old City Jewish quarter.
As I noted earlier (See Will Jerusalem be a frozen settlement?) the settlement freeze had the potential to include Jerusalem and evidently it does. Is this blurring of distinctions deliberate or not? Israel has not done a good job of explaining that Jerusalem always had a different status in international law, because it had been internationalized. The United States acquiesced in "illegal" Jordanian building projects in Jerusalem, and investors from the United States erected a hotel over the Mt. Olives cemetery. But now they ask for complete cessation of Israeli building in Jerusalem. Ramat Eshkol, French Hill, Saint Simon are all neighborhoods constructed after the Six day war, but very much a part of Jerusalem. Ramat Eshkol is two minutes drive from the central bus station, but the United States evidently insists that people in Ramat Eshkol cannot add an extension to their porch or a kindergarten without a permit from Hillary Clinton.
Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem are included in the US demand that Israel halt "settlement" construction, including for natural growth, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told The Jerusalem Post during a press briefing on Monday.
"We're talking about all settlement activity, yes, in the area across the line," he said, referring to neighborhoods in Jerusalem over the Green Line, or pre-1967 armistice line, in response to a question on where America's calls to halt construction in the settlements would be applied.
Even so, Kelly had no immediate reaction to the Ministry of Housing and Construction's inclusion in the draft 2009-10 state budget of funds for the capital's Jewish Har Homa neighborhood or for one in the West Bank settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim.
The ministry has earmarked more than NIS 200 million for the preparatory work and marketing of 1,210 apartments in the east Jerusalem Jewish neighborhood of Har Homa.
The line item, which sets aside funds for the new apartment projects, can be found in the draft state budget now being debated in the Knesset.
The money for these projects has been allocated at a time when tensions remain high between Israel and the United States regarding construction over the Green Line.
Israel has always insisted that it has a right to build anywhere in Jerusalem because the state incorporated that land into the municipality and under Israeli law it is not considered part of the West Bank. But the international community considers Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem to be settlements and has condemned any new Jewish construction there.
Har Homa has been a particular sticking point because of its location on the city's southeast edge, next to the Palestinian city of Bethlehem.
The Obama administration had not officially clarified its position on Jewish neighborhoods over the Green Line but within Jerusalem's municipal boundaries, but the Netanyahu government had been working under the assumption that US officials' call to halt even natural growth in the settlements did not refer to neighborhoods in the city, according to high-placed government officials.
Kelly's comments Monday, however, made clear that Jerusalem was included, suggesting that efforts to finesse the disagreement could be further complicated.
US President Barack Obama has called the settlements illegitimate and said that their expansion must stop, including natural growth.
While Israel has expressed its willingness to take down unauthorized West Bank outposts, it has balked at halting natural growth in the settlements, arguing that communities need to continue to function normally.
The dispute between the two allies has been unusually public, including messy wrangling over tacit arrangements sketched out far from the spotlight under the Bush administration.
Though Israel in 2003 signed onto the US-sponsored road map peace plan, which calls for a settlement freeze including natural growth, government sources claim that Bush officials assented to construction continuing in settlements expected to remain with Israel under any peace accord with the Palestinians.
The Obama administration, however, has contended that if such understandings were ever discussed in private, they were not resolved or made binding.
Either way, as part of the Bush-era arrangements, Israel was supposed to stop providing financial incentives for Israelis to move to these communities.
Though the new budget proposal might not subsidize individuals, it would provide money for some of the work on the 240 pre-approved homes in 2009 as well as marketing and preparatory work for 970 additional units in Har Homa, which still await approval from the Jerusalem Municipality.
Unlike in the West Bank, construction in Har Homa or any other part of Jerusalem does not need the approval of the Prime Minister's Office or the Defense Ministry.
The Prime Minister's Office had no comment on the earmarking of funds for Har Homa. The Jerusalem Municipality and the Construction and Housing Ministry could not be reached for a reaction.
Peace Now's Hagit Ofran, who alerted reporters to the line item in the draft budget, said pushing ahead with Har Homa construction would be "unwise."
"It risks our foreign relations and our international standing for another project which is totally leading us to a situation where we cannot have a two-state solution," Ofran said.
The same 2009-2010 budget includes more than NIS 150m. for infrastructure work in the Ma'aleh Adumim settlement, east of the capital. The funds would create gardens, parks and roads for homes that have already been built in a neighborhood known as 07. Work has been ongoing in that neighborhood for the last decade, and some 3,100 apartment units have been built there. Some 400 apartment units have yet to be completed in that area.
Ma'aleh Adumim Mayor Benny Kashriel said that private contractors had financed all the recent work on the project.
The money from the ministry's budget for this project was a fiction, he said, in that it merely returned funds that were paid to the ministry by the contractors.
But a ministry spokesman said money had been set aside by his office to complete the 07 project.
Peace Now attacked the funding of the Ma'aleh Adumim project, saying it ran counter to the expectations of the United States and the international community that Israel would freeze settlement activity, which meant stopping any construction.
From 2003 to 2007, some 2,000 new apartment units were completed in the Jerusalem suburb, which Israel has made clear it expects to keep in any final-status deal with the Palestinians.
It is not clear if Israel really agreed to this, but according to Jerualem Post, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev claimed Tuesday to have secured the support of Israel and all other involved parties for a Middle East peace conference in Moscow.
A "Moscow conference on the Middle East should become an important stage in our actions" toward peace talks, JPost quoted Medvedev as saying in a speech to the 22-member Arab League in Cairo. "Today we have principal agreement from all parties."
The Russian president also warned against forcing democracy on Arab states and praised US President Barack Obama's address to the Arab world, saying it showed more tolerance.
"There are things to learn from the Arab world and therefore, mentoring, forcing democracy and especially direct interference are absolutely inadmissible," Medvedev said. "Understanding of this is growing in the world. One example is President Barack Obama's speech."
Indeed, Russians understand that too much democracy is not a good thing. Medvedev also said he supports a Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital as a result of a resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Earlier Tuesday, after meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Medvedev told reporters that Egypt was playing a constructive role in attempting to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict "to establish mutual confidence on this issue."
"Now the two sides are taking some steps and attempts to resume the peace process and together with the international community we support this trend," Medvedev said.
Russia has long aimed to be a key player in the Middle East peace process. It d has promoted the idea of an international conference in Moscow for the past year and a half. The plans have repeatedly stalled. Israel and the United States had resisted conference participation by Hamas, while Moscow continues engagement with the group. It is unclear why Israel, which has long resisted such conferences, especially under the patronage of the USSR, who are patrons of Syria. The reasons for Israeli acceptance are obscure.
A Rasmussen survey found that eighty-one percent of American voters agree that Palestinian leaders must recognize Israel's right to exist as part of a Middle East peace agreement, according to a new survey by U.S. polling company Rasmussen Reports published Tuesday. The poll did not evidently ask if Palestinians must recognize the right of the Jewish people to self determination, or in other words, to recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people. The distinction is crucial. Seven percent disagreed that recognition of Israel should be a requirement for peace, while 12 percent are not sure. But only 27 percent believe it is somewhat likely that Palestinian leaders will agree to recognize Israel's right to exist, the poll found. If that is the case it is not clear why 48% thought Obama's Middle East policy (they mean Israel polcy) is about right, since the policy is predicated on Israel-Palestinian peace. But that's how polls are sometimes. 35% believe he should be more supportive of Israel, which 10% think he should be less supportive. Only fifty-seven percent of voters say Israel should be required to recognize a Palestinian state do so as part of a regional peace agreement, and 20 percent oppose such a requirement. Forty-nine percent of respondents said the United States should help Israel if it decides to attack Iran over the latter's nuclear weapon facilities. An earlier survey result had found a drop of 20% in support of US voters for Israel.
Hamas, Israel deny Schalit release rumor Jun. 23, 2009 JPost.com Staff , THE JERUSALEM POST
Both Hamas and Israeli officials on Tuesday evening both denied a report by the Palestinian Ma'an news agency that captured IDF soldier Gilad Schalit would be transferred to Egypt in a few hours, in exchange for Israeli release of about 1,000 prisoners in stages. . The news agency later updated the report, taking out the time frame but still claiming that Schalit's release was imminent. (See here for a bad translation of the Maan report )
The report, quoting unnamed Egyptian sources, claimed there was an unscheduled visit to Tel Aviv by Egyptian general Muhammad Ibrahim, in which he supposedly saying discussed prisoner swap arrangements to be made after Schalit's transfer to Egypt.
Ma'an later changed its report, claiming that the transfer would take place, but not in a matter of hours.
Washington, DC—Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sent the following letter today to President Obama, supporting his decision to make the Middle East a priority in his administration while reiterating the importance of America's "unbreakable" bond with Israel.
Reid writes, "Like you, I am deeply committed to bringing peace to this critical, but troubled, region. I believe negotiations will be successful only with a renewed commitment from the Palestinians to be a true partner in peace. I look forward to working closely with you to achieve the goal of a long and lasting peace in the Middle East, one in which a Palestinian state is willing to live side-by-side in peace with a strong and secure Israel."
The full text of the letter is below: June 15, 2009
President Barack Obama The White House Washington, DC
Dear Mr. President:
I am writing in support of your decision to make the Middle East a priority for your administration. I also applaud you for reiterating during your recent speech in Cairo the importance of America's "unbreakable" bond with Israel.
Like you, I am deeply committed to bringing peace to this critical, but troubled, region. I believe negotiations will be successful only with a renewed commitment from the Palestinians to be a true partner in peace. Arab states in the region must also act to support the peace process. All parties must recognize Israel's right to exist, end terrorism, and respect previous agreements made with Israel.
The pursuit of peace is never easy. Many difficult decisions lie ahead. I hope your administration will work behind the scenes with all involved on the steps they must take to move forward.
As these discussions continue, it is also vital this process not take away from your commitment to deal with the ongoing threat from Iran. Iran has continued to call for Israel's destruction while repeatedly defying the international community with its nuclear program. I believe that resolving the problem of Iran's nuclear program will help facilitate the Arab-Israeli peace process you and I both seek to promote.
Last year, the Senate passed my bipartisan resolution to proudly celebrate the 60th Anniversary of the modern state of Israel and recognize the historic kingdom of Israel, which was established more than 3,000 years ago. Today, we must once again stand with our ally and ensure the continuation of the Jewish state.
I look forward to working closely with you to achieve the goal of a long and lasting peace in the Middle East, one in which a Palestinian state is willing to live side-by-side in peace with a strong and secure Israel.
Violence erupted (evidently on June 20) in other Iranian cities besides Tehran, but it is more difficult to get information. A report (from reliable source that must remain anonymous):
I received communication from Shiraz that there have been clashes in different parts of the city. What is notable about Shiraz is that the security forces have sometimes lashed out randomly at people who might only look like protesters. An eyewitness confirmed this report.
This video is posted with the text below (including incorrect date):
several people have been wounded and killed by POLICE during the Anti Iranian government protest against election fraud in Iran, Shiraz city, including a man which has been allegedly killed, on Saturday 21 June 2009
Jun. 21, 2009 JPost.com Staff , THE JERUSALEM POST President Shimon Peres on Sunday expressed hope that the Iranian leadership would "disappear" before the Islamic republic makes use of its enriched Uranium, saying it was more important to fight the Iranian regime than the country's nuclear program.
"The struggle against the leaders of the Iranian regime is more important than [the struggle against] the bombs," Peres said, speaking at the Jewish Agency assembly in Jerusalem.
The president also attacked Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has hinted that Israel and the US were behind the pro-Mousavi riots in Teheran.
"How dare he claim that we demanded that the Iranian people head to the streets and risk their lives?" Army Radio quoted Peres as saying.
Also Sunday, Iran's Parliament reiterated warnings sounded by Khamenei in which he said that leaders of the US, UK, France and Germany must not to interfere in the country's internal affairs, threatening that Iran would respond to such meddling "in other fields."
Iranian parliament speaker Ali Larijani directed a message at US President Barack Obama, saying that he "showed the deceitful meaning of change too soon."
According to Iran's ISNA news agency, Larijani called for the National Security and Foreign Policy Commission of the Iranian Parliament to revise relations with the US, UK, France and Germany.
In his speech Friday, Khamenei blamed the United States, Britain and "other enemies" for fomenting unrest. He said Iran would not see a second revolution like those which transformed the countries of the former Soviet Union.
"These divisions come from the Zionist radio and the bad British radio trying to change the meaning of the election," Khamenei said.
He said the election outcome was a vindication of the Islamic republic and an earthquake for its enemies. "If the people did not trust in the system they would not participate in it," he said. "Iran's enemies are targeting the beliefs and trust of the people."
According to CNN, up to 150 persons were killed Saturday (June 20) in protests against the Iranian government. Demonstrators chanted The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran said protesters who had been beaten and injured by security forces were arrested and detained when they sought medical treatment in hospitals. Fear of arrest had reportedly driven injured protesters, some in serious condition, to seek care at foreign embassies. Videos of the brutality have been posted around the Web.
In wealthy neighborhoods, there were raids by the Basiji militia.
Mir Hossein Moussavi declared he was ready for "martyrdom."
That was the message posted on Moussavi's page on Facebook, the social networking Web site that has proved to be a key source of information in the absence of international media coverage.
The message urged Moussavi's supporters to "protest" and "not go to work."
"Today you are the media," said one message. "It is your duty to report and keep the hope alive."
Iran's ruling system is "going to the slaughterhouse," a post on the site said.
Opposition Candidates Karoubi and Moussavi didn't attend an election council meeting where they were supposedly to be allowed to lay out their plans. Probably they would have been arrested and disappeared, a time honored custom in totalitarian regimes, and a custom in Iran as well.
Videos have been posted around the Web - Following are fairly fresh (June 20).
