Uprooted Palestinian

United solidarity with Gaza

February 9, 2010 · 1 Comment

The Electronic Intifada,

Philip Rizk, The Electronic Intifada, 8 February 2010

A woman holds her shoe to the Egyptian embassy in Beirut at a protest against the wall being constructed by the Egyptian government at the border with Gaza. (Matthew Cassel)

On the third night of my abduction by Egyptian authorities last year, after intermittent interrogation and being handcuffed and blindfolded in a two by two meter cell, a state security officer asked me why I had so many “international relationships.” The following night my kidnappers drove me home. I was never given a reason for why state security agents kidnapped me from a march protesting the ongoing siege on Gaza. Though, judging from the focus of the interrogation, the reason had something to do with the two years I lived and worked in Gaza and solidarity efforts I have been involved in since then.

Upon being reunited with my family I started realizing the explanation of what “Nour” — my main interrogator — must have meant by “international relations.” During my abduction by the Egyptian state security apparatus, protests were staged around the world, letters were sent to embassies, some friends initiated a widespread Internet campaign and the press covered the story extensively.

During Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip the Egyptian authorities kidnapped or arrested many Egyptian activists that protested or expressed criticism of the Egyptian government’s role in the Israeli attacks on the Palestinian enclave. Most of these activists were beaten, deprived of sleep and tortured. Likely due to my second (German) citizenship I was only threatened with torture during my abduction. From the start I was treated with a different standard than Egyptians without a second passport.

And yet, my quick release I attribute to the multitude that stepped into action around the world. These included friends, family members but also a mass of people I don’t know and who, one year later, can’t thank enough. My final days of interrogation were extremely sped up — though under intense mental pressure of heightened interrogation and accusations. Suddenly “Nour” and his compatriots simply wanted to get rid of me and get this “story” off their backs.

Fast-forward to December 2009. Members of various civil society and human rights groups from around the world organized the Gaza Freedom March (GFM) in response to the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip in December 2008/January 2009 and the ongoing siege. The marchers from over 42 countries had set out with a similar message to the 15 person strong march that I had been abducted from earlier that year — an end to the siege of the Gaza Strip. The reason it had been that small is that we knew how the Egyptian state apparatuses work. They follow online organizing and tap phone calls, so we had to organize clandestinely if we were to get anywhere.

The organizers and participants of the GFM who I know are committed activists, and collectively they had an incredible capacity for networking with activists around the globe. Prominent Palestinian activists in Gaza and elsewhere in Palestine provided vital backing to the march and a steering committee was formed to lead the events. Yet, some curious decisions were made early on that should be questioned in retrospect.

For many months, activists in Cairo remained in the dark as to who was organizing the Gaza Freedom March and what its intentions were. Although the idea of a march garnered much excitement, it left many in Egypt asking why they knew nothing more than the few details available on the GFM’s public website. This was all the more confusing considering that the march was going to be launched from Cairo where numerous Palestine solidarity groups are based.

Many Egyptian activists who I know were excited to be involved in an event that would increase global awareness about the siege on Gaza. I called some of the organizers of CODEPINK during a trip to the US in October. They informed me that they had decided to follow the instructions of the Egyptian regime, which included no contact with Egyptian activists and meant they were providing the Egyptian authorities with a list of names of all the participants. Once the marchers arrived in Cairo I repeatedly heard justification that GFM organizers did not want to put Egyptian protesters at risk. Yet, Egyptians regularly protest in Egypt despite the risks. For a group of outsiders to justify the exclusion of our involvement without asking our opinion — in spite of the good intentions of “protecting” us — felt paternalistic and demeaning.

I believe from the start a political miscalculation was made: the colonization of Palestine and the siege on Gaza do not take place in isolation. The network of neo-liberal hegemony in the region includes Egypt as a key player and thus the regime acts as a partner with Israel when shared interests are at stake. Despite my reservations about the organizational dimensions of the march, I believe some very critical sporadic protests were staged all over Cairo that made an impact and caught Egyptian security completely off guard.

One week after most of the GFM participants had left Egypt, the site of a planned protest to commemorate the end of the Israeli assault on Gaza was completely overrun with Egyptian state security. Passersby were barely permitted to pass the square and the march had to be relocated to a less public place. The Gaza Freedom March was an important effort that reminded me of what I had learned upon my release from prison: our best weapon is numbers.

Fast-forward again to Saturday, 23 January 2010. In Beirut various factions including a movement called “The Campaign to Stop the Wall of Shame” staged a significant protest at the Egyptian embassy protesting the regime’s construction of an underground steel barrier on the border with Gaza. This was powerful. When activists of a nearby country move to the street to protest the Egyptian government — and an Egyptian multinational corporation’s role in aiding the Israelis in besieging the Palestinians.

My question is, how do we take it a step further? Can we coordinate actions between Cairo, Beirut, Gaza and other cities against this wall of shame? On 13 February a joint protest against the wall is planned to happen in Beirut and Cairo. The Arab Contractors company that is constructing the wall along Egypt’s border with Gaza operates in 29 countries. Let us move 29 countries to the streets and call for an end to complicity in the siege.

One year on from my abduction I have the liberty to move, act freely and live. The population of the Gaza Strip does not have that luxury. What we have on our side are numbers determined to end the siege on Gaza and call for justice in Palestine. Let us move together.

Philip Rizk is an Egyptian-German filmmaker and freelance journalist based in Cairo, Egypt. Philip lived in Gaza City from 2005 to 2007 working as a writer for a nongovernmental organization. In 2009 his documentary This Palestinian Life premiered at the London International Documentary Festival. Philip can be reached at rizkphilip AT gmail DOT com.

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→ 1 CommentCategories: Activism · Egypt Zionists · Gaza · Palestine · Siege of Gaza · Solidarity · Wall of Death

"Israel is a mad nation led by insane people"

February 9, 2010 · Leave a Comment

I4P: IRAN WINS AWARD FOR BEST “ONE LINER”

In the world of political rhetoric, ya gotta love the Iranians. Firstly they take no “shite” off the US or Israel, good for them. And speaking of the Evil Rogue State of Israel, I am personally awarding Iran “First Prize” for the best description of Israel ever given by any country. And here’s the winning sentence: “Israel is a mad nation led by insane people”
source Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki on Monday referred to Israel as “a mad nation led by insane people”.

In an interview to the al-Jazeera network, Mottaki said that the Islamic Republic was not taking the Jewish state’s threats to launch a military attack on its nuclear facilities seriously, but stressed that Tehran must be prepared for an Israeli attack.

Mottaki says ‘Zionist regime is in its weakest position’ following Goldstone Report, Lebanon and Gaza wars, but warns entire region ‘must be prepared for crazy operations against us’ com

Yup, kudos to Iran for the best ever description of Israel…………..

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February 9, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Palestinian journalists scoff at “farcical election”


[ 08/02/2010 - 10:34 PM ]


Independent journalists protest there exclusion from the membership of the PJU

From Khalid Amayreh in Ramallah


Independent and professional journalists throughout Occupied Palestine are scoffing at the “journalists’ union elections” which took place on Saturday, 6 February, under the aegis of the Fatah organization, describing the event as a “farce” and “fraud.”

The Fatah group, in coordination with some erstwhile leftist organizations, selected some 60 journalists who are supposed to form the new journalists union to replace the old moribund union headed by Naim Tubasi.

Tubasi had been accused of corruption and monopolizing the union for his own personal expediency. He denies the charges, arguing that his foes within Fatah were only trying to use the union as a bridge for normalization with Israel.

The new elections are widely considered an internal PLO affair as hundreds of independent and professional journalists in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip didn’t participate.

“The election was a joke, the results were a foregone conclusion,” said Yusuf, a radio journalist from the Hebron region.

He adds “I wouldn’t want to offend language by calling this farce an election. True elections must be open to all journalists, irrespective of their ideological orientations. This so-called election reminds me of union elections under the old communist regimes in Eastern Europe where everything was concocted by the Communist party.”

Another journalist, Fathi Sabbah, described the process as “illegitimate and illegal.”

“There is no doubt that the aim of this election had nothing to do with efforts to reform the journalists’ union. The process was a fraud from A to Z and the main purpose of the elections was to create a union with a form but without a substance in order to be manipulated and used by Fatah for political and factional considerations.

“They just want a union at their beck and call, this is the reason they concocted this body out of quasi and little journalists and other people who lack the professional qualifications to be true journalists.”

Sabbah castigated the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and other leftist organizations for allowing themselves to be “duped” by Fatah, which he said led to the “arrogation of the union”

“Hundreds of present and former union members have been shocked to see the PFLP stoop to this level in order to obtain a piece of this sinful cake.”

A third journalist, Gibreil Saadeh described the new union as “lame horses replacing dead horses.”

A fourth, Hisham Sharabati of Hebron, likened the union elections with union elections in tyrannical Arab states where everything is arranged beforehand.

“As I was watching the plenary session of the union elections on the Palestine TV, I remembered how things are done in one of the very nationalistic Arab states, run by a vanguardist party in whose orbit other parties revolve. I sought refuge in Allah from the evil of Satan, and beseeched the Almighty to keep us away from the un-straight path that would take us to a similar situation.”

Criticisms

Critics, who hail from various ideological backgrounds, are citing numerous flaws in the Fatah-dominated journalists union, which they say would render the union decidedly illegal and un-representative of Palestinian journalists.

One of the most delegitimizing flaws is the issue of membership which critics claim is manipulated rather brazenly in order to ensure that the union remains permanently in the hands of the Fatah organization.

“They grant memberships to people who have little or nothing to do with the profession of journalism as long as they go with the flow. It is like allowing blacksmiths to join the doctors’ guild or allowing shepherds to join the engineers’ union,” says Nael from Ramallah.

“Besides, it is conspicuously clear that a large number of members are actually members of the various security agencies. They are journalists in name, but security officers in reality.”

Nael’s remarks don’t seem to be exaggerated. The membership of the journalists union has not been sifted for many years, and many of the people previously registered as journalists in the early or mid 1990s are no longer practicing the profession, assuming they had ever done that in the first place.

“There is irrefutable evidence that many of the estimated 300-400 people who voted as a bloc for the new union were security cadres. This is why this is a fraudulent election, it is an affront to the profession of journalism, it is an insult to Palestinian democracy, it is even an insult to our dignity as a people.”

Additional criticisms are directed at the hasty manner in which the elections were conducted. For example, a complete list of union members was never released to allow objections. Similarly, numerous aspirant members, many of them independents or unaffiliated with Fatah, were not accepted for unknown reasons.

Indeed, hundreds of practicing journalists who have joined the profession, have been unable to find their way to the union due to its protracted paralysis and dysfunction as a result of political manipulation by the Fatah organization.

Furthermore, the Fatah organization, in collusion with the erstwhile leftist organizations, refused to allow elections to take place in places other than Ramallah, apparently in order to ensure that the process remains under their tight control. This apparently prevented many journalists from outlaying regions such as Hebron and Nablus from taking part in the elections.

Another scandalous flaw blemishing the new Union is the so-called quota system which means that the union seats are divided among PLO factions in accordance with an anachronistic system dating back to the early 1980s.

Pursuant to this system, Fatah receives the lion’s share of the seats, followed by the PFLP and its former ideological sister, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), followed by a myriad of small factions, most of which have few followers and supporters on the ground.

Hamas and the Islamic Jihad are totally unrepresented in the new body and the same applies to dozens, if not hundreds, of independent journalists.

In other words, the new union, very much like the old one, will not reflect the present political reality in occupied Palestine where probably over half of the population don’t view the PLO as their “sole and legitimate representative.”

This fact, say some journalists, might prompt journalists who are unaffiliated with PLO to establish their own representative body instead of risking being marginalized by the Fatah-dominated body.

None the less, there are those who would rather give the new union the benefit of the doubt, at least for the time being.

“Let us look at the half-full of the proverbial glass. The old union had been virtually dead from time immemorial. This union is not going to be an idealistic union, but let us wait and see. Maybe something good might come out of it,” says Awadh Rajoub, a West Bank correspondent for al-Jazeera.net Arabic service.

“An ailing union is better than a dead one, isn’t it?”

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→ Leave a CommentCategories: Elections · Fath · Freedom of Press · Freedom of Speach · Journalism · PFLP · PLO

Israeli police raid Palestinian refugee camp

February 9, 2010 · Leave a Comment

JERUSALEM
Mon Feb 8, 2010 2:52pm EST

addImpression(“10036173_Related News”);
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – A Palestinian refugee camp on the edge of Jerusalem erupted in violence on Monday after Israeli police carried out a raid to arrest tax evaders and Palestinians responded by throwing stones.

Eleven people were arrested, some for involvement in the unrest and others for the non-payment of municipal taxes and other bills, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

The violence in Shuafat refugee camp, within the expanded Jerusalem borders that Israel declared after capturing its eastern sector in a 1967 war, was another example of tensions that are always near the surface in a city at the heart of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Palestinian schoolchildren threw rocks at police vehicles and Rosenfeld said four officers were slightly hurt. Palestinian officials said 10 Palestinians were injured, none seriously.

Citing biblical roots to the city, Israel regards all of Jerusalem as its “indivisible and eternal capital,” a claim that has not been recognized internationally.

Palestinians want East Jerusalem, annexed by Israel after the 1967 conflict, to be the capital of the state they hope to establish in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who under U.S. pressure ordered a limited settlement freeze in the occupied West Bank, has refused to heed Palestinian demands to halt the construction of homes for Jews in East Jerusalem.

The Israeli military also carried out arrests in the West Bank on Monday. Among those detained was the wife of the mayor of the town of al-Bireh. An army spokesman said she was suspected of involvement in the Islamist Hamas movement.

(Additional reporting by Erika Solomon, Mohammed Assadi and Tom Perry in Ramallah, Writing by Ori Lewis; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

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OPEN LETTER TO: AL-JAZEERA, BBC, CNN, PRESS TV AND DEMOCRACY NOW

February 9, 2010 · Leave a Comment

DesertPeace

By: Angie Tibbs, Canada

Hello,
I have just watched a most amazing video entitled “Gaza in Plain Language”, a collaboration between Anthony Lawson and Joseph Mowrey.

This is a critical must see presentation for anyone who is unaware of what really happened in Gaza during the Israeli 26 Day bombardment of the Gaza strip in Dec. 2009, and it is equally important for those of us who are only too well aware,  to make sure we will never forget. The death and destruction brought to bear on the people of Gaza by Israeli forces during this time frame was horrific.

Mr. Lawson and Mr. Mowrey have combined their energies to produce an excellent, hugely informative, and heartbreakingly honest piece of work that needs to be seen by everyone.

I hope (no, I beg) that you will air this video so that your viewers can see for themselves what the people of Gaza have endured.  We cannot hide this atrocity as if it never were.

I wish to thank Mr. Lawson and Mr. Mowrey for this most important presentation.

Their dedication to spreading the truth about the horrors of Gaza is appreciated and applauded.

Please take this outstanding production and present it to your viewers, Al Jazeera, BBC, CNN, Press TV and Democracy NOW.

Sincerely,
Angie Tibbs

***********************************************************************

I hope you will reserve nine minutes and 41 seconds of your time to look at this video.

Gaza in Plain Language


Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFK5TNcmEmg

The article “Gaza in Plain Language”, by Joe Mowrey, was first published by Dissident Voice (http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/01/gaza- in-plain-language/).

February 8, 2010 Posted by Elias | NEWS & POLITICS | , , , , , , , , , , , , | No Comments Yet

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Mishaal-Lavrov meeting focuses on Palestinian reconciliation

February 9, 2010 · Leave a Comment

PIC


[ 08/02/2010 - 07:33 PM ]

MOSCOW, (PIC)– Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov discussed Palestinian reconciliation efforts with a visiting delegation of the Hamas Movement led by its supreme leader Khaled Mishaal on Monday.

Hamas’s representative in Lebanon and a member of the delegation Osama Hamdan said that Hamas hopes that contacts with Moscow over inter-Palestinian reconciliation would continue.

He added in statements published by Russia Today website that his Movement hopes that new solutions for the major issues in the Middle East would be tabled.

Hamdan noted that Lavrov promised during the meeting that Moscow would support Palestinian reconciliation efforts, describing this position as “very important”.

The Hamas leader said that Mahmoud Abbas’s term in office had expired according to the Palestinian basic law, adding that presidential elections would be held after the reconciliation.

Mishaal’s visit to Moscow is the third since Hamas won Palestinian legislative elections in 2006 and is expected to meet with other Russian officials during his visit.

In Nablus in the West Bank, however, Dr. Abdul Sattar Qassem, a professor of political science at Najah University, said that the Palestinian reconciliation was not close.

He told the PIC on Monday that security coordination between the PA in Ramallah and Israel would foil any possible reconciliation, adding that it should be completely stopped in order for the reconciliation to succeed.

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CHRISTMAS BOMBING TIED TO MOSSAD/CIA PLOY FOR MORE TERROR FUNDING

February 9, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Intifada Voice

Underwear Bomber Redux – Was Mutallab An Israeli “Secret Weapon”?

By way of deception… thou shalt control key airports
(editorial note:  Veteran Today broke this story initially and thanks Joe Quinn and Naill Bradley for their fine journalism and great investigative work.  Gordon Duff for the staff of Veterans Today)
After repeatedly denying that the Christmas Underwear Bomber™ had any help in his misguided attempt to blow up Detroit-bound Flight 253 on Christmas day 2009, or that there was any sign of an accomplice on over 200 hours of Amsterdam airport security tapes, the US government recently, and very quietly, chose to admit that it had been watching Mutallab all along and that it’s now looking for his accomplice at Amsterdam airport.
In one of only a few mainstream news reports on the US government’s reversal, the Detroit News stated:
The State Department didn’t revoke the visa of foiled terrorism suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab because federal counter-terrorism officials had begged off revocation, a top State Department official revealed Wednesday.
Patrick F. Kennedy, an undersecretary for management at the State Department, said Abdulmutallab’s visa wasn’t taken away because intelligence officials asked his agency not to deny a visa to the suspected terrorist over concerns that a denial would’ve foiled a larger investigation into al-Qaida threats against the United States.
“Revocation action would’ve disclosed what they were doing,” Kennedy said in testimony before the House Committee on Homeland Security. Allowing Adbulmutallab to keep the visa increased chances federal investigators would be able to get closer to apprehending the terror network he is accused of working with, “rather than simply knocking out one soldier in that effort.”
ABC News also reported:
Federal agents also tell ABCNews.com they are attempting to identify a man who passengers said helped Abdulmutallab change planes for Detroit when he landed in Amsterdam from Lagos, Nigeria.
Of course, that’s not an admission that Mutallab had an accomplice, but it says a lot following six weeks of repeated denials on the existence of accomplices.
Detroit attorney Kurt Haskell and his wife Lori
If US federal counterterrorism officials, aka the FBI, specifically requested that Mutallab be allowed to fly to Detroit from Amsterdam, it lends a lot more credence to the report by lawyer and eyewitness Kurt Haskell who has repeatedly claimed that Mutallab was escorted to the gate in Amsterdam by a “sharply dressed Indian-looking man”. If we accept Haskell’s statement (and at present there is no reason not to) then a reasonable explanation is that the accomplice was tasked with ensuring that Mutallab got on the plane and was a member of either the US intelligence services or the intelligence services of another US-friendly nation.Haskell himself has presented just such an analysis on his web site.
Haskell himself has presented just such an analysis on his web site.
But what are we to make of the claim by the US State Department that the goal of this little maneuver was to “get closer to apprehending the terror network he [Mutallab] is accused of working with”?
Surely if US intelligence was aware that Mutallab was a terrorist threat they would have at least taken the precaution of making very sure that the flight onto which he was to be escorted was not a target of the “terror network”? Surely a thorough rub down, or a strip-search would not have been out of the question for such a threat to US national security?
Take your pick; either US intelligence is so incompetent that they did not first check if this known terrorist was carrying a bomb onto the plane, or they staged the entire operation themselves in order to keep the Islamic terrorism bandwagon rolling.
One of the most interesting things about the Christmas day underwear bombing fiasco is that it played out on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. If Mutallab had no passport and was escorted to the gate by a “sharply-dressed man”, then it is unlikely that he went through normal security checks at the airport. We have no doubt that an agent of the US government could quite easily bypass security at any airport, but we also believe it would be difficult to prevent this fact from leaking out to the press, particularly from officials and security personnel working at Amsterdam Schiphol airport.
To enable a person to bypass all airport security would require a very particular presence at the airport in question, something akin to a little self-contained “kingdom”.
Recently, Joe exchanged a few emails with a Dutch reporter who has extensive experience of the internal workings of Amsterdam airport. He told me:
Israel [...] needs US-weapons – and spare-parts. Most of this stuff is since many years brought to Israel by cargo planes (Hercules, B-747) that used Schiphol (Amsterdam) as the needed half-way-stop. Officially they were civil planes, but they were treated as state – (military) planes. There is legally a big difference in status.
Because this weaponry was in many cases of a very sophisticated and for that reason classified kind, it needed protection on the way from the US to Israel. The Dutch authorities therefore agreed upon the fact that Israel was given a special secluded area (hangar and apron) that would be guarded by Israeli personnel.
These guardians were not of El Al (Israeli national airline). They were members of Shin Bet, the Mossad-branch that looks after civil safety. For the young people that manned it, it was a way of performing their conscription duties.
Members of Shin Bet did not only guard military airplanes. They also provide for safety of passenger-planes. I do not know whether it is the same at other airfields, but at Schiphol everyone could see them at work at the gates of El Al planes.
In fact the young girl who flew as a passenger with the Israeli cargo-plane that crashed in Amsterdam (Anat Solomon) had done a tour as a Shin Bet safety-officer at Schiphol and flew home for her wedding.

El Al cargo plane crash Amsterdam
After the crash members of the Shin Bet-group at Schiphol were speedily brought to the crash-site, to see if they could gather some of the classified stuff that was on board the crashed plane. Officially this was in contradiction with Dutch laws about the treatment of crash-sites, but it was agreed to by a secret agreement between the Dutch and Israeli government – as a logical consequence of the fact that only Israelis would know what sort of classified weaponry was onboard.
Facts about the existence of an ‘Israeli part of Schiphol’ were officially given by the Parliamentary Enquiry Commission; they were given in interrogation reports (of El Al and Shin Bet personnel) by the police, they were given by Mr. Jeroen Pelttenberg, El Al’s station-manager at Schiphol, and by some other people that were in some way or another confronted with the situation.
These guardians were not of El Al (Israeli national airline). They were members of Shin Bet, the Mossad-branch that looks after civil safety. For the young people that manned it, it was a way of performing their conscription duties.
Members of Shin Bet did not only guard military airplanes. They also provide for safety of passenger-planes. I do not know whether it is the same at other airfields, but at Schiphol everyone could see them at work at the gates of El Al planes.
The El Al cargo crash into an apartment block in the Bijlmer suburb of Amsterdam in 1992 gives us an idea of the “sophisticated weaponry” and “spare parts” the Mossad was (still is) siphoning from the US arsenal through its transport hub at Amsterdam airport. Israelis arrived at the scene of the crash to retrieve incriminating evidence (the dead and injured residents of Bijlmer be damned). Over 1,000 local residents and emergency workers had developed respiratory, neurological and mobility ailments, as well as a rise in cancer and birth defects, by the time an investigation by Dutch journalists in 1998 brought the cargo’s true manifest to light:
Almost six years after the event, on 30 September 1998, editors Harm van den Berg and Karel Knip of the Dutch paper NRC Handelsblad published the results of an extensive investigation they had carried out into the crash. They had obtained the freight documentation for the flight, and made public for the first time its real cargo. The manifest confirmed the plane was carrying 400 kilograms of depleted uranium as ballast, but also showed that it carried among its cargo about 10 tons of assorted chemicals. The chemicals included ten 18.9-litre plastic drums of dimethyl methylphosphonate (DMMP), and smaller amounts of isopropanol and hydrogen fluoride: three of the four chemical precursors for the production of Sarin nerve gas.
A spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office immediately denied that Flight 1862 had been carrying Sarin precursors. When this was contradicted hours later by an El Al spokesman, the Prime Minister’s office acknowledged that the chemicals were onboard but stated that “the material was non-toxic and was to have been used to test filters that protect against chemical weapons”. An explanation that Earth Island Journal found “puzzling”, since “it only takes a few grams to conduct such tests. Once combined, the chemicals aboard Flight 1862 could have produced 270 kilos of sarin – sufficient to kill the entire population of a major world city.”
On January 29, 1999, Dutch attorney general Vrakking testified at official hearings that the El Al security detachment at Schiphol was a branch of the Mossad. It also emerged that El Al planes are never inspected by Dutch customs or the Dutch Flight Safety Board at Amsterdam Schiphol.
Journalists say Dutch security officials have told them that the Netherlands has allowed Israel to make secret military air shipments through Schiphol since the 1950s. Former Dutch Defense minister Henk Vredeling, in an interview with Dutch TV NOS – and apparently caught unawares of the legal implications of admitting complicity in a war crime – proudly recounted secret weapons transports to Israel during the Yom Kippur war in 1973. These shipments apparently lie outside the Atlantic Alliance military treaties because the aircraft going to Israel are not refueled at NATO air bases but at the commercial airport of Schiphol.
The Mossad “state within a state” at the airport has taken full advantage of this loophole. “Schiphol has become a hub for secret weapons transfers because El Al has special status there. Dutch authorities have no jurisdiction over Israeli activities at the airport,” said Henk van der Belt, a member of an investigation team set up by Bijlmer residents.
One of the investigators working on behalf of the Bijlmermeer survivors said that Schiphol had become, and continues to be, “a hub for Israeli secret weapons transfers”. The question we need to answer is; was Mutallab also an Israeli secret weapon in the promotion of the war on terror?
Given the Mossad’s free reign over its little “kingdom” within Amsterdam Schiphol, coupled with the fact that Israeli security firm ICTS is in charge of the regular security operation there, it’s worth reflecting upon a couple of other incidents in recent years. Before the Underwear Bomber came the Shoe Bomber:
Six months prior to Reid’s near shoe bombing of American Airlines flight 63 from Paris to Miami in December 2001, while memories of 9/11 were still fresh in everyone’s mind, Reid attempted to board an El Al flight from Schiphol to Tel Aviv.
Reid was taken aside by El Al security and identified as a terrorist suspect. Reid paid for a one-way ticket with cash and would not reveal what he planned to do in Israel.
However, rather than turning Reid into Dutch security for further action, he was allowed to board the El Al flight by Israel’s Shin Bet security so his movements during his five days in Israel could be monitored.
Six months later, Reid attempted to ignite his shoe on the flight from Paris to Miami. Israel had not informed British, American, or any other security agency of the concerns about Reid. Reid’s aunt, Claudette Lewis who raised Reid in south London, was quoted as saying she believed her nephew had been “brainwashed.”
Reid later said El Al failed to detect that he had explosives in his shoes on the flight to Tel Aviv, an amazing revelation considering the Israeli airline’s tight security.
The links between El Al security and Mossad are extremely close with abundant cross-pollination of senior personnel back and forth.
The security company that allowed Reid to board American Airlines 63 at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris was ICTS (International Consultants on Targeted Security) International. ICTS’s senior management are all ex-Israeli security officials, many of whom for El Al security.
It was ICTS that largely developed the passenger “profiling” procedures used at Schiphol and other airports around the world through its subsidiary, ICTS Holland Products BV.
Bear in mind that ICTS also shared security duties on 9/11 at Boston’s Logan Airport and handled security for London’s bus system. This Israeli security firm, effectively a front for the Mossad, has therefore had its personnel on the ground to oversee arguably the four most notorious “al-Qaeda terrorist attacks” against American and British targets.
According to former Mossad spy Victor Ostrovsky, the Mossad organization is relatively small. But the ethos it embodies – rule over others by way of deception – runs deep through its front companies that link ramified networks comprising some of the ‘best’ (most noxiously evil) psychopaths globally.
In 2006 a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Mumbai was escorted back to Schiphol by Dutch fighter planes after the crew became suspicious of some passengers’ behavior. Granted that in the hysterical post-9/11 climate you only need to wear a beard and whisper Allah to warrant suspicions, but 12 people were nevertheless arrested before the Dutch government announced it was a false alarm. A trial run for future scenarios involving Northwest Airlines perhaps?
Last February a Turkish Airlines Boeing crashed upon landing at Schiphol. Another incident that smacks of spy vs spy games, four of the nine passengers killed were US “Boeing employees” returning from Turkey after pitching a “sophisticated airborne radar station” – to be installed in a Turkish airforce Boeing 737 – to the Turkish military brass on behalf of the Pentagon.
Zombie Nation
Amsterdam Schiphol has had the DNA-tearing ‘naked’ scanners in operation since 2007. Although that’s irrelevant in Mutallab’s case because he was escorted around normal security procedure, the incident was used to promote these machines en-masse, a plan we are told was on the backburner until now because of ‘fears for people’s privacy.’
Completely overlooked is the brazen conflict of interest exemplified by former head of the Department of Homeland Security and dual US-Israeli citizen Michael Chertoff, who ran around giving dozens of media interviews touting the need for the US government to buy more full-body scanners. He stands to net a tidy profit through his security consultancy firm Chertoff Group, which along with other notable former Senators and TSA officials make up the “full-body scanner lobby” that represents the manufacturers cashing in on the sale of these insidious dehumanization devices.
Along with the psychopaths in the US government, racist hard-liners in Israel believe the survival of the state of Israel lies solely in its military strength and that this strength arises from the need to answer the constant threat of war.
Of course, fighting a real and well-equipped enemy is very risky. After all, you might lose. The next best thing is to create the enemy yourself and play both sides against the middle, as they say. Unfortunately it is the masses of ordinary people that find themselves in the middle of the deranged games that psychopaths play.

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Khudari hails Turkish support for Gaza steadfastness

February 9, 2010 · Leave a Comment

[ 08/02/2010 - 05:48 PM ]
GAZA, (PIC)– MP Jamal Al-Khudari, the head of the popular committee against the siege, on Monday described the Turkish government, institutions and people as an honorable model of unlimited support for the Palestinian people.
Khudari, during the inauguration ceremony of an office for the Turkish charitable society Yardim in Gaza city, said that the Turkish government extends unlimited political and moral support for Palestine.
He said that the Turkish people displayed honorable stands in backing of the Palestinian people especially in continuing rallies against the siege of Gaza.
The independent MP pointed out that the Turkish institutions also played a prominent role in bolstering the steadfastness of the Palestinian people.
The Yardim office in Gaza plans to sponsor 4,500 Palestinian families, Khudari said, noting that Turkish ships would soon sail from Turkey to Gaza in a bid to break the siege and draw the world’s attention to the suffering of one and a half million Palestinians besieged in the Strip.

He urged other charities in the world to follow suit and open offices in Gaza in a bid to break the isolation imposed on the Strip.

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The Israeli-US Unbreakable Relations

February 8, 2010 · Leave a Comment

The Biased US Broker in the Middle East
The Israeli-US Unbreakable Relations

By Khalid Amayreh
Journalist — Occupied Palestine

Sharon told Peres, “We control the United States, and the Americans know it.”

Ever since the ill-fated Rogers Plan, proposed and named after former US secretary of state William Rogers in 1969, every American administration made ostensibly exhaustive efforts to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict.

However, all these efforts failed miserably, apparently due to Israel’s adamant refusal to give up the spoils of the 1967 War.

Another key reason behind the failure of the US peace diplomacy in the Middle East is the US reluctance and consistent refusal to exert meaningful pressure on Israel to abide by international law, which further emboldened Israel and made the Jewish state bask undisturbed in its rejectionism and arrogance of power.

In 1969, Golda Meir, the former Israeli prime minister, who displayed characteristic Zionist arrogance, as well as profound pathological hatred of Arabs, flatly rejected the Rogers Plan, describing it as a “disaster” for Israel and saying that “it would be irresponsible for any Israeli government to support such a plan.”

In1969, Israel’s cabinet formally rejected the plan, and in 1970, 70 American senators and 280 representatives rejected the plan as “being too one-sided against Israel.”

That was 40 years ago; today, the Obama administration is regurgitating more or less the same ideas, centering on the concept of the land-for-peace formula. Other US administrations under presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush Sr, Bill Clinton, and George W Bush employed the same ideas in formulating their respective Middle East initiatives, but to no avail.

During these decades, Israel heavily employed diversionary tactics to distract attention from real issues. It used issues such as Arab non-recognition of Israel, Arab refusal to sit down with Israel at the negotiating table, and later the issue of “terror,” a reference to Arab resistance to Israel’s ruthless and cruel aggressions against Arab civilians in Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, as well as inside the occupied Palestine.

In addition, successive Israeli governments used the time to create facts on the ground, namely building hundreds of Jewish colonies and transferring hundreds of thousands of its Jewish citizens to live on an occupied land belonging to another people.

The United States was closely monitoring all these developments, but refused to take any pro-active step against Israel, despite the latter’s brazen violations of international law, including America’s own laws such as the prohibition of the use of American-supplied weapons against civilians.

Why?

The Israeli penetration of American politics has been meticulously documented by many American intellectuals.

Israel is a small country with a population of six million, while the United States is the world’s remaining super power, with a population exceeding 300 million people. Moreover, Israel relies on the United States for acquiring state-of-the-art American military technology, which enables Israel to maintain a manifestly arrogant stand vis-à-vis the Arab world, as well as clear defiance of international law, including the United Nations and its Security Council.

Therefore, at the face value, one would think that the United States, not Israel, should be in a natural position to pressure, even coerce Israel, to heed the American will.

The truth, however, is that Israel has been in a position to pressure, even coerce, every American administration since president Eisenhower effectively ordered Israel in November, 1956 to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula, following the Anglo-French invasion of Egypt.

Even today, it is amply clear that President Obama is more concerned about Israeli (Jewish) pressure on his administration than Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu is concerned about the possible US pressure on Israel.

This fact allows Netanyahu to successfully challenge and defy the Obama administration on the issue of settlement expansion, effectively forcing the American president to admit that he had underestimated the obstacles impeding a possible peace settlement between Israel and Palestinians.

The unique Israeli predominance over American politics and policies is not new. It goes back to the very birth of Israel when American Jewish circles used their financial leverage and political influence to get president Truman to recognize Israel against recommendations to the contrary by the state department.

Over the years, Israel and its powerful allies at the American arena successfully consolidated and virtually perpetuated Israeli predominance over US politics. The Israeli penetration of American politics has been meticulously documented by such American intellectuals, such as Alfred Lilienthal, who in 1978 wrote his masterpiece reference “The Zionist Connection: What Price peace; and Paul Fiendly who wrote “They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel’s Lobby.”

More recently, J J Mearsheimer and S W Walt jointly wrote The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy , which, using meticulous documentation, exposed Israel’s disproportionate influence on the US foreign policy.

Unbreakable Israeli-US Bond!

The United States is committed to maintain Israel’s qualitative edge in terms of its military and strategic capabilities over all Arab states combined.

In fact, thanks to this disproportionate influence, the Octopus-like Israeli-American lobby, which tightly controls the Congress, was able to obtain long-standing commitments from the United States that no other country in the world would ever receive.

These include the following:

First, the United States committed itself to Israel’s survival and security, irrespective of Israeli behavior. This iron-clad commitment is routinely and almost ritualistically repeated by every new administration and by almost every American official visiting Israel. Again, this commitment is an independent variable, a constant that is not subject to other variables. In short, United States is with Israel all along, whether aggressor or victim.

Second, the United States is committed to maintain Israel’s qualitative edge in terms of its military and strategic capabilities over all Arab states combined and other Israel’s potential enemies. This is also a constant American foreign policy not subjected to the modes of Israeli behavior. This explains the visibly aggressive American efforts against the Iranian nuclear program, although there is no unequivocal evidence that Iran is developing nuclear weapons.

In this context, the United States imposed harsh sanctions against Libya until the North African state was bullied to dismantle its nuclear program and ship its components to the United States. All of this happened while Israel continued to maintain a large nuclear arsenal made up of hundreds of nuclear bombs and warheads.

Third, there is a long-standing American-Israeli understanding, according to which the United States would nearly unconditionally support and back Israeli diplomatically whether at the United Nations or the world at large. The United States used its veto power rather liberally to shield Israel from international condemnation, even when Israel was manifestly the aggressor party.

Hence, Israel effectively has nothing to worry about in terms of the military, political,and diplomatic ramifications and repercussions of its behavior in the Middle East.

This is why Israel has been able to annex and Judaize East Al-Quds )Jerusalem), build hundreds of Jewish-only colonies, and demolish tens of thousands of Arab homes throughout occupied Palestine, with nearly total impunity, thanks to this more or less total American commitment to the Jewish state.

In 2006, the Israeli air force dropped perhaps two million cluster bomblets over Lebanon, enough to kill or maim two million children. In 2008-2009, Israel committed a virtual genocide against the thoroughly starved and thoroughly-beleaguered inhabitants of Gaza, killing and maiming thousands of civilians and utterly destroying thousands of homes, schools, mosques, and other civilian infrastructure.

Tel Aviv Controls Washington?

Palestinians and their supporters must stop chasing the American mirage.

Far from denouncing Israel’s violence and Nazi-like brutality, both the lame-duck Bush administration and the succeeding Obama administration watched the grisly massacres as if they were taking place on a different plant.

It was rumored a few years ago that the former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, a certified war criminal by any standard of honesty and fairness, told Shimon Peres, who reportedly objected to Israeli measures in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that he (Peres) should never worry about American pressure on Israel.

Sharon told him, “We control the United States, and the Americans know it.”

Israeli circles long denied the authenticity of the statement. However, it is amply clear that Sharon, who is now lying comatose for the fourth year, did not go too far in describing the unique American-Israeli relation.

By now and in the light of more than half a century of “special relations” between Israel and the United States, it should be clear that Israel has been able to impose its will on the US government, regardless of which administration is in power.

In light, it is explicitly futile to expect the Obama administration or any other American administration to force Israel to end its occupation of the West Bank and allow the Palestinians to have a viable state with East Al-Quds as its capital.

The United States has been given more than half a century to resolve the conflict in Palestine in accordance with international law, and the net result has been a gigantic fiasco.

Now, if Mr Obama, who is probably “the last and best shot,” from the Arab vantage point, is brazenly capitulating to Israel, as is clear from his administration’s inability or perhaps unwillingness to force Israel to stop the decades-old process of devouring whatever remains of the West Bank.

It is strikingly stupid to continue to count on his administration to give justice to Palestinians.

This is not to say though that the United States cannot be influenced. It can, but first, Arabs and Muslims must first show some respect for themselves and deal with the United States using the language of mutual interests, not the language of subservience and submission.

In the winter of 1973, King Faisal of Saudi Arabia told then US secretary of state Henry Kissinger that America could not be a true friend to Arabs and Muslims and at the same time continues to embrace Israeli territorial expansion at the expense of Palestinians.

Unfortunately, very few Arab leaders have eversince dared to make the same point to Americans.

To conclude, Palestinians and their supporters must stop chasing the American mirage, because it will not ever produce water. This is why an alternative strategy ought to be sought, preferably one that would make occupied Palestine a Muslim issue first, and a nationalist one second.



Khalid Amayreh is a journalist living in Palestine. He obtained his MA in journalism from the University of Southern Illinois in 1983. Since the 1990s, Mr. Amayreh has been working and writing for several news outlets among which is Aljazeera.net, Al-Ahram Weekly, Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), and Middle East International. He can be reached through politics.indepth@iolteam.com.

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PFLP warns of returning to negotiations with the Israelis

February 8, 2010 · Leave a Comment

PFLP warns of returning to negotiations with the Israelis

[ 08/02/2010 - 08:00 PM ]

GAZA, (PIC)– The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) has warned Monday that the US-Israeli diplomatic maneuvers were meant to liquidate the Palestinian cause through the resumption of the “indirect” talks between the PA in Ramallah and the Israeli occupation authority (IOA).

The PFLP opined that the negotiations aim at promoting the US policies to dominate the oil-rich region, and to provide political cover for the Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people.

In this concern, the PFLP made it clear that the PA leadership in Ramallah shouldn’t go back to the table of negotiations till the IOA completely halts settlement activities, warning that the recommendations taken by the PLO’s central council and the executive committee shouldn’t be ignored.

It added that any resumption of the negotiations opposing the PLO’s recommendations would harm the Palestinian unity and would derail all efforts to achieve the national reconciliation.

Meanwhile, Palestinian researcher Ibrahim Habib ruled out any Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip similar to the brutal attack last year, but he opined that the military escalation along the Gaza front would continue.

According to Habib, the nightmare of the IOF failure in the war on Gaza last year serves as strong deterrent for the Israelis not to take the risk again, especially that no Israeli elections are looming in the horizon that usually serve as a motive for any Israeli government to harm the Palestinians in order to gain the blessing of the Israeli public before the elections.

He added that another strong deterrent was Israel’s focus on the Iranian nuclear problem and the Syrian front, explaining that any full-scale aggression on Gaza would wipe out Israel’s dreams to destroy the Iranian nuclear reactors.

However, Habib opined that the IOA wouldn’t abandon its strategic goal of toppling Hamas in Gaza, but it would rather suspend such an option temporarily.

As far as the Syrian front is concerned, the researcher pointed out that the IOA tries not to ignite that front believing that the war once ignited would cost it a very high price with reports from the Israeli intelligence that Syria prepared 40,000-strong special army similar to that of the Palestinian and the Lebanese resistance to confront any possible future IOA war.

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