Needed: A new policy on Islam
Patrick J. Buchanan
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13741.htm


06/23/06 "WorldNet" -- -- In 1938, the year of Anschluss and Munich, a
perceptive British Catholic looked beyond the continent over which war
clouds hung and saw another cloud forming.

"It has always seemed to me ... probable," wrote Hilaire Belloc, "that
there would be a resurrection of Islam and that our sons or our
grandsons would see the renewal of that tremendous struggle between
the Christian culture and what has been for more than a thousand years
its greatest opponent."

Belloc was prophetic. Even as Christianity seems to be dying in
Europe, Islam is rising to shake the 21st century as it did so many
previous centuries.

Indeed, as one watches U.S. Armed Forces struggle against Sunni
insurgents, Shia militias and jihadists in Iraq, and a resurgent
Taliban, all invoking Allah, Victor Hugo's words return to mind: No
army is so powerful as an idea whose time has come.

The idea for which many of our adversaries fight is a compelling one.
They believe there is but one God, Allah, that Muhammad is his
prophet, that Islam, or submission to the Quran, is the only path to
paradise and that a godly society should be governed according to the
Shariah, the law of Islam. Having tried other ways and failed, they
are coming home to Islam.

What idea do we have to offer? Americans believe that freedom comports
with human dignity, that only a democratic and free-market system can
ensure the good life for all, as it has done in the West and is doing
in Asia.

From Ataturk on, millions of Islamic peoples have embraced this
Western alternative. But today, tens of millions of Muslims appear to
be rejecting it, returning to their roots in a more pure Islam.

Indeed, the endurance of the Islamic faith is astonishing.

Islam survived two centuries of defeats and humiliations of the
Ottoman Empire and Ataturk's abolition of the caliphate. It endured
generations of Western rule. It outlasted the pro-Western monarchs in
Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Ethiopia and Iran. Islam easily fended off
communism, survived the rout of Nasserism in 1967 and has proven more
enduring than the nationalism of Arafat or Saddam. Now, it is
resisting the world's last superpower.

What occasioned this column was a jolting report in the June 20
Washington Times, by James Brandon, alerting us to a new front.

"Arrests Spark Fear of Armed Islamist Takeover" headlined the story
about the arrest, since May, of 500 militants who had allegedly
plotted the overthrow of the king of Morocco and establishment of an
Islamic state that would sever all ties to the infidel West – to end
the poverty and corruption they blame on the West.

The arrests raised fears that Al Adl wa al Ihsane, or Justice and
Charity, was preparing to take up arms to fulfill the predictions of
the group's mystics that the monarchy would fall in 2006. Though
illegal, Al Adl wa al Ihsane is Morocco's largest Islamic movement,
which boycotts elections, but has hundreds of thousands of followers
and has taken over the universities and is radicalizing the young.

Its founder is Sheik Abdessalam Yassine, who has declared its purpose
is to reunite mosque and state: "Politics and spirituality have been
kept apart by the Arab elites. And we have been able to reconnect
these two aspects of Islam – and that is why people fear us."

And, one might add, why people embrace them.

If Morocco is now in play in the struggle between militant Islam and
the West, how looks the correlation of forces in June 2006?

Islamists are taking over in Somalia. They are in power in Sudan. The
Muslim Brotherhood won 60 percent of the races it contested in Egypt.
Hezbollah swept the board in southern Lebanon. Hamas seized power from
Fatah on the West Bank and Gaza. The Shia parties, which hearken to
Ayatollah Sistani, brushed aside our favorites, Chalabi and Iyad
Allawi, in the Iraqi elections. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the most
admired Iranian leader since Khomeini. In Afghanistan, the Taliban is
staging a comeback.

This has all happened in the last year. And where are we winning?

What is the appeal of militant Islam? It is, first, its message: As
all else has failed us, why not live the faith and law God gave us?

Second, it is the Muslim rage at the present condition where
pro-Western regimes are seen as corruptly enriching themselves, while
the poor suffer.

Third, it is a vast U.S. presence that Islamic peoples are taught is
designed to steal their God-given resources and assist the Israelis in
humiliating them and persecuting the Palestinians.

Lastly, Islamic militants are gaining credibility because they show a
willingness to share the poverty of the poor and fight the Americans.

What America needs to understand is something unusual for us: From
Morocco to Pakistan, we are no longer seen by the majority as the good
guys.

If Islamic rule is an idea taking hold among the Islamic masses, how
does even the best army on earth stop it? Do we not need a new policy?

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"[A] barrage of headlines and sound-bites suggest the Presbyterians
have abandoned divestment totally. Pro-Israeli activists claim this is
a victory for them and a defeat for the divestment movement –
mainstream media are readily accepting this as fact."


Understanding the Presbyterian Vote:
Divestment, Corporate Engagement and Israel
By WILL YOUMANS and NORA ERAKAT
June 23, 2006
http://www.counterpunch.org/youmans06232006.html


America's largest Presbyterian church voted to continue policies of
economic engagement in the Middle East. It affirmed its willingness to
use its investment policies to press for peace in Israel-Palestine.
The vote came two years after it's overwhelmingly support of a phased,
selective divestment from Israel.

During its 217th General Assembly, the Presbyterian Church (USA) voted
to substitute the language of "divestment" for the precise concept of
"corporate engagement." Both concepts refer to the same process of
moral responsible investment. They just refer to different stages.
Corporate engagement is when the Church researches the companies,
determines their compliance with its standards, and then pressures
them to change. Divestment refers to the ultimate termination of
investments from the targeted corporations if engagement fails to
produce positive change.

Nothing in the amended resolution prevents the PC(USA) General
Assembly from deciding to decide to divest. Rev. Gretchen Graf,
moderator of the General Assembly said "this new statement clarifies
the engagement process, which has not yet led to any recommendation
for divestment," she told the General Assembly. She specified that
divestment could still occur in 2008.

The substitution of divestment language for more procedural terms
comes after two years of steady pressure from pro-Israeli lobby groups
and a relative absence of support from pro-Palestinian groups outside
of the church. The new resolution addresses tensions with the
pro-Israeli Jewish community. Many argued divestment is anti-Semitic
and harms Jewish-Christian relations.

The previous assembly's language called for "phased, selective
divestment from corporations that profit from the illegal occupation
of Palestine." The new resolution does not actually contradict this.
The language is merely softer.

However, a barrage of headlines and sound-bites suggest the
Presbyterians have abandoned divestment totally. Pro-Israeli activists
claim this is a victory for them and a defeat for the divestment
movement – mainstream media are readily accepting this as fact.

Manya Brachear's story in the Chicago Tribune is titled,
"Presbyterians won't divest over firms' ties to Israel" (6/22/06).
Peter Smith wrote that "The Presbyterian Church (USA) yesterday
rescinded its controversial policy of considering divestment" in the
article, "Presbyterians shift investment focus off Israel." That was
in the Louisville Courier-Journal (6/22/06). Charles A. Radin's piece,
"Presbyterians reverse stance on Israeli divestment" ran in the Boston
Globe.

"Presbyterians end a previous policy that had singled out Israel," by
Richard Ostling, was featured in the Houston Chronicle.

Since 2004, the Mission Responsibility Through Investment Committee of
the Presbyterian Church (USA) has engaged five multinational
corporations as part of the process — Caterpillar Inc., Citigroup, ITT
Industries, Motorola and United Technologies. During a press
conference following the vote, Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick, said
the Assembly's action does not overturn the actions of the 216th
General Assembly (2004), indicating that the MRTI's mission will
continue.

Rev. Graf said the MRTI committee could still recommend "divestment
only as a last resort." Given that the target companies are unlikely
to start caring about the Palestinians, the last resort is probably
not too far away.

The 2.5 million-member Presbyterian Church U.S.A. has a long history
of presence in Palestine and the Levant. Many within its own ranks
witnessed first-hand the oppressive nature of Israel's policies
towards the Palestinians.

Palestinian Presbyterians and Christians played a role in defending
the Church's 2004 vote. Pro-Peace Jewish and interfaith groups,
including Jewish Voice for Peace, the American Friends Service
Committee, Tikkun, the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, and
the Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (USA),
became active on this in just the past few months. The New York
City-based Jews Against the Occupation wrote in a letter to the PCUSA
that divestment was "an important step forward for peace and justice
in Israel and Palestine."

This support paled in comparison to the backlash from pro-Israel
groups such as the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish
Committee. At one point, the Chicago City Council was going to deny
the Church a building permit based on its divestment call. Churches
were inundated with letters and phone calls against it. Pro-Israeli
activists set up meetings and events, and helped prop up a
Presbyterian anti-divestment group.

Now, they consider the removal of the term "divestment" a victory. "We
are thrilled," said David Elcott, director of inter-religious affairs
for the American Jewish Committee. He said the compromise was
"courageous. ... This is a win-win situation not only for Jews and
Christians. Even more, it is a victory for Israelis and Palestinians
and those committed to end the suffering."

Rabbi Jonathan Miller said "I am grateful to all people who stuck with
us to make right this mistake."

Their statements are pure spin on the outcome of the General
Assembly's amended resolution. The impact of the resolution, to
explore divestment as a form of non-violent resistance to Israel's
Occupation of Palestinian Territories remains fully intact. They
conflict with the statements made by top PCUSA officials at the press
conference.

Casey Currie, a member of the Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the
Presbyterian Church (USA) did not think the simple change of language
was the stunning victory Israel's apologists claim it is. The PCUSA
reaffirmed its commitment to morally responsible investing and
engaging corporations that profit from oppression. As Currie said, "if
it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, it's a duck."

There is no basis for claiming the Presbyterians surrendered their
right to divest from companies profiting off of Israel's military
occupation. This vote did not let Israel and the companies helping it
off the hook. Yet, the media have largely adapted the twisted version
of events. It seems they all wish divestment would just go away.


Noura Erakat is a legal and grassroots organizer with the US Campaign
to End the Israeli Occupation. She can be reached at
legal  @endtheoccupation.org.

Will Youmans is the Washington, DC-based writer for the Arab-American
News. He blogs at www.kabobfest.com.

===

Why the Boycott of Israel is Justified
by Gabriel Ash
June 6, 2006
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/June06/Ash06.htm


  The recent boycott resolutions of CUPE and NATFHE against Israel's
Apartheid predictably awakened Israel's willing apologists, initiating
a high pitched chorus of condemnation and self pity across the Western
media, not to mention the blogosphere.

Their arguments, however, are flimsy, not to say rotten. I'll review
them one at a time.

But first a clarification. The boycott/divestment/sanctions (BDS)
campaign is a very diverse campaign. Each organization has its own
specific criticism of what it condemns. Israel's offensive policies of
colonization in the West Bank and Gaza are the common denominator, but
some organizations go beyond that. Likewise, each organization has a
different take on what action its members should undertake. But all
agree on the need for and appropriateness of some kind of collective
action that puts pressure on Israel. I have my own take on both these
questions -- what to condemn and how to respond -- but my following
remarks address only the broad consensus.

1. Boycotting Israel is hypocritical. There are many other and worse
human rights violators. Why aren't these organizations boycotting the
UK for occupying Iraq or Russia for its massive slaughter of Chechens?

If a group were to participate in the BDS campaign against Israel
while supporting the invasion of Iraq and the massacres in Chechnya,
such a group would probably be hypocritical, or at least seriously
confused. Are there such groups? I am not aware of any. But if they do
exist, they should indeed rethink their stance.

However, there is no direct line from condemnation to choice of
action. When considering what action to endorse, a group must take
into account other considerations beyond the moral wrongness of what
is being condemned.

Responsibility. Are Russian academics involved in the Russian
occupation of Chechnya the way Israeli academics are involved in
legitimizing Apartheid? Obviously not. If some Israeli apologists
believe the opposite, they are welcome to make the case. The case for
the complicity of Israeli academia has been persuasively made.

Practicality. Is it practical to try to influence US policy in Iraq
through a boycott of US academics? Clearly not. Israel's small
academic world is vulnerable and therefore susceptible to pressure.
The British boycott resolution already succeeded in scuttling a
proposed cooperation between Hebrew University and the Israeli
Security apparatus. There is no point in trying to use the same
tactics against the U.S. That is unfortunate. But taking an all or
nothing attitude to human rights -- which is what some of Israel's
apologists demand -- is silly. Not to mention the real hypocrisy of
those who call attention to human right violations in Sudan or Russia
without having any demonstrable interest in human rights at all, but
rather out of the desire to defend human rights violations.

Saliency: Most of the organizations that call to boycott Israel have
their own different missions that are not focused on the Middle East.
Each has to consider the role solidarity with Palestinians and
pressure on Israel plays in its overall position and the way it
reflects its identity and specific goals. Those groups committed to
defending human right are completely within their rights, for example,
to consider that Israel damages the framework of humanitarian law more
than China does, even though China has jailed more people than Israel
has. Israel's democratic rhetoric and its claim to be a beacon of
civilization and morality mean that the occupation in Palestine
doesn't merely violates human rights, it relaxes and degrades the
principles of human rights in a way no other rogue state does.

Local leadership: Like most strategies of collective action, the
boycott/divestment/sanctions campaign depends on broad consensus. The
first requirement for such a consensus to form successfully is that
the campaign be actively supported and demanded by the victims, in
this case Palestinians. At least for now, there is neither an Iraqi
nor a Chechnyan boycott campaign or even demand. Palestinians, on the
other hands, are leading the boycott/divestment/sanctions campaign
against Israel. Also important is the vocal support from a minority of
Israeli groups that support Palestinian rights. This is similar to the
way the South African campaign was led by the ANC and was supported by
an activist minority of White South Africans. Without local
leadership, a campaign lacks legitimacy and is less likely to take
hold. Groups are therefore fully justified in taking that in
consideration when deciding their priorities.

Tailoring different responses to different transgressions based on
complex considerations is not necessarily hypocritical, although it
can be. The more appropriate adjective in this particular case is
"thoughtful."

2. The comparison between Israel and South Africa is misguided. Israel
is very different and not as bad as South Africa.

"Apartheid" means "separation" and so does "Hafrada," the Hebrew term
for the current policy of Israel vis-à-vis Palestinians. But nobody
claims that Israel is "the same" as South Africa. A glance to the
globe is enough to ascertain that the two are indeed different
countries, and therefore have different, unique and specific histories
and institutions. What we claim, however, is that the Apartheid regime
in South Africa and the current regime in Israel have a number of
significant common traits, and that these common traits are repugnant.

This is not the place to engage in that substantive debate. For those
who wish to deepen their knowledge of the issue, Chris McGreal
provides an excellent introduction in The Guardian. But one does
remark that Israel's defenders are not in a very good position to
argue now that the regime in Israel is not as repugnant as South
Africa was. In fact, Israel's apologists today are often the same
groups that used to defend the Apartheid regime in South Africa.
Zionist organizations feted the similarities between Afrikaners and
Jews, the Anti-Defamation League, for example, even spied on
anti-Apartheid activists in the U.S. Israel, for its part, supported
South Africa's nuclear program and later helped it evade sanctions. On
the other hand, South African Black and Jewish anti-Apartheid
activists who visited the West Bank said that the conditions of
Palestinians were similar or even worse than what Blacks endured under
Apartheid.

Who has more credibility on the subject of how repugnant the Israeli
brand of "Hafrada" is, Abe Foxman, head of an organization that
supported Apartheid in South Africa, or the victim of Apartheid,
Archbishop Desmond Tutu?

3. Putting pressure on Israel is one-sided and therefore unfair. It
would be better to encourage both sides to engage each other in dialogue.

Israel's apologists have a simple narrative about the history of the
relations between Jews and Palestinians. In that narrative, Jews came
to Palestine with open palms, and have tried ever since to achieve
peaceful co-existence with Palestinians, only to be repeatedly
rebuffed by hostile and belligerent Palestinians. Base on that
narrative, Israel's apologists demand more "dialogue," and excuse all
Israel's actions as self-defense.

Unfortunately for them, nobody else accepts that fairy tale today.
Actual history is very different.  Since the very beginning, the
Zionist leadership was clear about its intention to displace and
dispossess Palestinians to make way for a Jewish state. That goal had
been largely accomplished in 1948. Thereafter, Israel found the status
quo comfortable, and saw no urgency in resolving its conflict with the
Palestinians. At every occasion, Israeli leaders expressed disinterest
in peace. Ben Gurion said the solution for the Palestinian problem
would be that Palestinians would become "human dust." Moshe Dayan told
them after the 1967 occupation, "we have no solution, you will
continue to live like dogs." Golda Meir said there was no need for
dialogue because "there is no Palestinian people." Begin and Shamir
refused to negotiate on Palestinian rights in the face of serious U.S.
pressure. Begin even invaded Lebanon to avoid having to talk with
Arafat (who had already agreed to a "two state solution" in 1974.)
After Oslo, despite their lip service to advancing a "two state
solution," Rabin, Netanyahu and Barak have all refused to evacuate a
single settlement. All three built new settlements, Barak being the
most industrious. At no point has any Israeli leader agree to withdraw
from the West Bank and Gaza in full, not to mention to recognize the
rights of Palestinian refugees.

The evacuation of Gaza, contrary to the fairy tale, is not a
withdrawal at all. Israel is still the occupying force in Gaza. The
situation of Gaza today is in fact the closest Israel comes to the
full South African Apartheid model; Gaza is an effective separate
Bantustan under full Israeli military control. Finally, Olmert's
latest plans for "unilateral separation" in the West Bank point in the
same intensified Apartheid direction.

Those who might fear that this historical excursus is threading stale
water should consider how Sharon's advisor Dov Weissglass recently
described the purpose of evacuating the settlements from Gaza:

"…we succeeded in removing the issue of the political process from the
agenda. And we educated the world to understand that there is no one
to talk to.…As long as there is no one to talk to, the geographic
status quo remains intact….. [until] Palestine becomes Finland."

There you have it succinctly. Israel's consistent policy is to avoid
dialogue in order to maintain its domination. Based on this analysis,
peace can only be advanced by putting pressure on Israel. This is
exactly the purpose of the divestment, boycott and sanctions campaign.

4. The boycott advocates are anti-Semitic.

Puhleeeeze!

Writing in the Boston Globe, Reason magazine's Cathy Young insinuates
that Mona Baker is guilty of anti-Semitism.

Young's evidence: Baker says that in the U.S., "Zionist lobbies are
extremely powerful with both Congress and the media." Apparently,
according to Young, you're either an anti-Semite or an idiot. Because
only an idiot would argue with what Baker said.

Young's smear, to put it mildly, is despicable, but very much de
rigeur in almost every standard apology for Israel. Dear Ms. Young,
please read the first half of Norman Finkelstein's book, Beyond
Chutzpah, and copy the following sentence 500 times in your notebook:
"I will not use accusations of anti-Semitism to smear critics of
Israel and Zionism."

Now, there are certainly a few lost souls out there whose motive for
supporting Palestinian rights is anti-Semitism. It's a pity. They are
the mirror image of the Zionists who support human rights in Sudan for
the sole purpose of deflecting attention from Israel. We wish both
kinds of bigots full recovery. But we won't stop eating Broccoli if we
discovered that it was Hitler's own favorite food. Nor should we stop
supporting Palestinian rights because David Duke support them too.

Besides, outside the fervid imagination of Israel's willing
apologists, the problem of real anti-Semitism is negligible. To gauge
how negligible it is, consider that in 2003, the ADL, which is
supposed to lead the struggle against anti-Semitism, honored former
Italian PM Berlusconi, weeks after the latter made sympathetic remarks
about Mussolini -- Hitler's sidekick in World War II -- a dictator who
enacted race laws and sent Jews to the death camps. Furthermore,
taking into consideration the Christian Zionist right in the U.S. and
the anti-Muslim right in Europe, I think it is safe to say that there
are more anti-Semites among Israel's friends than among those who
express solidarity with Palestinians.


Gabriel Ash is an activist and writer who writes because the pen is
sometimes mightier than the sword and sometimes not. He welcomes
comments at: g.a.evildoer @ gmail.com.

===

Congress grossly misled about plight of Palestinian Christians
15 June 2006
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article4811.shtml


In a letter to the American Congress on 13 June, Open Bethlehem's
chief executive Leila Sansour, a Christian from Bethlehem, expressed
her community's shock at the gross misrepresentation of the threat
facing the Christians of the Holy Land. She urged Congress to pay heed
to the plight of the oldest Christian community in the world.

"We are disappointed by the resolution drafted by Congressman McCaul
and Congressman Crowley purporting to act on our behalf. The
resolution seriously misrepresents the situation facing Christians in
the Holy Land".

The ill-conceived resolution accuses the Palestinians of
discrimination towards their own Christian community – and does so
without consulting any local churches or Christian organizations. The
drafters of the resolution ignored the calls from churches in
Jerusalem, as well as the overwhelming body of reports from
international organizations warning of the devastating effect of the
Israel's system of closures, collective punishment and the
construction of the wall. In the Holy city of Bethlehem, the wall
forcefully expropriates most of Bethlehem's valuable land and historic
landmarks depriving many Christian families from their homes, links to
their community in Jerusalem and their income.

The Open Bethlehem campaign was created to address the state of
emergency in Bethlehem with full support from the Patriarchs of
Jerusalem and all Bethlehem Civil institutions. His Holiness Pope
Benedict XVI received the first Open Bethlehem passport, lending his
support to the campaign alongside international figures such as
Archbishop Desmond Tutu and President Jimmy Carter.

Open Bethlehem is deeply encouraged by churches and church leaders
across the US and by the work of those US politicians who have joined
Rep.Henry Hyde in bringing the plight of Christians in Palestine to
Congress and the people of the US.

In a letter to the White House last Friday, Rep. Hyde stated that the
Wall and expanding settlements are, "irreversibly damaging the
dwindling Christian community."

The report says that "the Bethlehem area is home to over 20 Israeli
settlements and there are plans to build more. The settlements and the
barrier completely encircle the Christian triangle of Bethlehem, Beit
Jala and Beit Sahour (Shepherd's Field)." In addition to causing
housing and land shortages, "this construction physically obstructs
the Bethlehem community from its spiritual, cultural and economic
lifeline in Jerusalem."

Since 2000, approx. 3,000 Christians from Bethlehem have emigrated.
The UN states that: "This economic emigration will have a long-term
impact on the multi-cultural character that has defined the city of
Bethlehem for centuries."

Leila Sansour says: " Palestinian Christians could very soon become
unsustainable as a community. Their erosion will mean an end to sacred
Christian traditions that go back to the time of Jesus and an end to
the presence of Christianity in the Holy Land. At this critical time
it is imperative that Christians around the world act and speak
responsibly and it is equally imperative that those who want to see an
open, democratic peaceful Middle East engage honestly with our plight.

Church leaders across all Christian denominations have criticised the
resolution. In the letter to US congress. Open Bethlehem has urged the
formation of a fact finding mission from congress that would help
representatives be closely informed about the situation.

Open Bethlehem Letter to Congress

13 June 2006

Dear Representative,

I write to you as the Chief Executive Officer of Open Bethlehem, to
say that we areencouraged by the latest interest of Congress in the
plight of the world's oldest Christian community. Open Bethlehem is an
independent city project created to preserve theheritage of our
ancient city. Our aim is to ensure that our community survives in the
birthplace of Christianity, as part of a diverse, multi-faith society
that will be an essential pillar of an open and democratic Middle East.

We are, however, disappointed by the latest resolution drafted by
congressman McCaul and congressman Crowley purporting to act on our
behalf. The resolution seriously misrepresents the situation facing
Christians in the Holy Land. We have contacted the highest officials
in the Catholic and Evangelical Churches in the US and in the Holy
Land and they strongly oppose this resolution. We understand that the
resolution was drafted without consulting Christians living in the
region or local Christian organizations. The resolution grossly
misleads the Congress as to the real threat that faces our community.

Between the years 2000 and 2004, 357 Christian families (10% of the
Christian population) emigrated from Bethlehem alone. Indeed, this
massive emigration threatens the existence of the indigenous Christian
community, which has been safeguarding sacred Christian traditions
since the time of Jesus. This flight is primarily a result of the fear
generated by repeated Israeli military incursions, and has been
exacerbated by the economic devastation of Bethlehem due to the
Israeli closure imposed on the city.

Perhaps the Israeli barrier is most emblematic of the shared fate of
both Muslim and Christian Palestinians. The Bethlehem barrier winding
in and around our city consists mainly of 25-foot high slabs of
concrete, sniper towers, and remote-controlled infantry positions. It
is built on privately-owned Palestinian land, resulting in the loss of
most of Bethlehem's fertile and economically prosperous agriculture
lands and many of our major landmarks. It has also severed our city
from Jerusalem, a city with which we have historically enjoyed
interdependent kinship, trade, and social relations. Equally, if not
more important, the barrier fragments this single, indivisible
Christian diocese, threatening the Christian communities of both cities.

We urge you not to sign the resolution and to engage directly with
Palestinian Christians. We ask that you consider forming a
fact-finding mission this August recess to Bethlehem, to learn first
hand about the challenges that we face. We will facilitate your visit,
as we believe that only close and transparent relations can help our
communities build peaceful and prosperous futures. We also encourage
you to meet with church leaders in the United States, in the belief
that all Christians share a stake in the survival of Christian
communities in the Holy Land.

We look forward to hearing from you and welcome any questions,
requests or suggestions. You can contact me directly by email:
leilasansour @ openbethlehem.org or telephone: +44 (0) 7814 937743.

Thank you.

Yours sincerely,
Leila Sansour
Chief Executive


Open Bethlehem is a Bethlehem city initiative to preserve the historic
character of our Holy city within an open, democratic and multi-faith
Middle East. Open Bethlehem was launched on 9 November 2005, declaring
Bethlehem an open city and announcing the issue of a Bethlehem
passport, given to His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI. Open Bethlehem
hosts tours, delegations, events promoters and investors on the basis
that Bethlehem is a city of openness and diversity, with a
centuries-old tradition of welcoming travellers, refugees and pilgrims
from across the world.

===

Who Elected These Pea Brained Idiots?
Thursday, June 15, 2006
http://umkahlil.blogspot.com/2006/06/who-elected-these-pea-brained-idiots.html


As Sam Bahour wrote today,"We have now seen it all."


"Congressmen Michael McCaul (R-TX) and Joseph Crowley (D-NY) are
soliciting cosponsors for a bill addressing "the systematic
destruction" of the Palestinian Christian community by the Palestinian
Authority (PA)."

Yeah, right. And thanks for your concern. Where was your concern when
the Israeli storm troopers shot and killed Johnny Thaljieh, a Greek
Orthodox altar boy, while he was hanging around in front of his
uncle's shop? And where was your concern when Christine Sa'ada, a
little Christian girl, was 'collateral' damage from an extrajudicial
assasination? Oh, and where was your concern when Kamal Nasser, a fine
poet, a friend of my dad's, was knocked off in Beirut years ago by
none other than Ehud Barak in drag? And where was your concern when
Israel's stormtroopers shot at the statue of the Virgin Mary in
Bethelehem? Or destroyed an ancient sixth century church? Or stole
land from my cousin's Christian village, Beit Jala, for the so-called
Jewish 'neighborhood' Gilo? AIPAC must have greased your palms
considerably, boys. Well, for your edification, although I'm not sure
if it's worth it, here is a real, live Palestinian Christian on the
matter. I'm of the school that Palestinians should speak about
themselves, not bought off congressmen, not students of the "Orient,"
and most definitely not transplanted European and American "Israelis":

"We are disappointed by the resolution drafted by Congressman McCaul
and Congressman Crowley purporting to act on our behalf. The
resolution seriously misrepresents the situation facing Christians in
the Holy Land...

"We have contacted the highest officials in the Catholic and
Evangelical Churches in the US and in the Holy Land and they strongly
oppose this resolution. We understand that the resolution was drafted
without consulting Christians living in the region or local Christian
organizations. The resolution grossly misleads the Congress as to the
real threat that faces our community." Open Bethlehem's chief
executive Leila Sansour, a Christian from Bethlehem

Patriarchs Atalla Hanna, Michael Sabbah and Reverend Mitri Raheb,Canon
Naim Ateek, and other religious leaders in Palestine don't have a
problem with the Palestine Authority's relations with Palestine's
Christians.

So who did these guys consult? None other than Justus Weiner. Remember
him. The schill for Israel who wrote a book that said that Edward Said
wasn't Palestinian? Thank God he is the champion of Palestinian
Christians. I am so touched. God has answered my prayers for another
appearance of the savior. Honestly, could we have a resolution against
stupidity in Congress? Or would that be too time consuming?

According to Churches for Middle East Peace: "What information is the
basis for the McCaul/Crowley resolution? The research that forms the
basis of the resolution was conducted by Professor Justus Weiner, an
American/Israeli academic who is a scholar at the Jerusalem Center for
Public Affairs in Israel. His research includes little or no input
from the local indigenous Palestinian Christians--- Orthodox,
Catholic, Anglican and Lutheran communicants, and has significant
inaccuracies, exaggerated conclusions and major omissions."

CMEP is very Christian in their assessment of Weiner.

But jokers like these congressmen, and their supporters, those great
advocates for the Palestinians (their concern for Christians is
touching; as for the rest, they may starve), including Ileana
Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Connie Mack (R-FL), Mike Pence (R-IN), Shelley
Berkley (D-NV), Henry Brown (R-SC), Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI),
Madeleine Bordallo (D-GU), Mark Souder (R-IN), John Carter (R-TX),
Thomas Tancredo (R-CO), and Steve Chabot (R-OH) make me want to
express myself in a very un-christian manner.

What you can do and more information here from Churches for Middle
East Peace.

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Shoppers' Thirst for Palm Oil Threatens to Wipe Out Orangutans
By Martin Hickman
The Independent UK
Tuesday 23 May 2006
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/052406EB.shtml


     The demand for a cheap ingredient found in thousands of products,
from shampoo to biscuits, is contributing to the extinction of the
orangutan, warn conservationists. One in 10 mass-produced foods on
Britain's shelves is estimated to contain palm oil, a bulking agent
and preservative, but supermarkets and food manufacturers have been
accused of doing too little to ensure their supplies are not
threatening forests that are vital to the survival of Asia's only
great ape.

     An estimated 5,000 orangutans are killed each year in Malaysia and
Indonesia by the burning of vast tracts of virgin forest to supply the
world's growing demand for palm oil. Building roads to the plantations
has made the situation worse, by opening up the jungle for poachers,
who kill orangutan mothers and sell their babies as pets to Asian
families.

     WWF, formerly the World Wildlife Fund, estimates that 80 per cent
of orangutan habitat has been lost in the past 20 years. Experts warn
that at current rates of deforestation, the orangutan will be extinct
in the wild in just 12 years. Its disappearance would set a dismal
precedent for the survival of other endangered animals such as the
polar bear and the tiger.

     "The orangutan is one of the monkeys closest to us. We still have
a lot to learn about them," said Mark Attwater of the Orangutan
Foundation.

     Dr Willie Smits, of the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation, said
the loss of the orangutan had hastened in the last three years, "and
palm oil plantations take the brunt of the blame."

     Conservationists say Britain, the second biggest importer of palm
oil in the EU, could do more. They want the Government to make
companies responsible for the environmental impact of their activities
in the Company Law Reform Bill. Five major food retailers - Sainsbury,
Marks & Spencer, Waitrose, the Co-op and Asda - have joined a
not-for-profit organisation aiming to clean up the palm oil industry.
But Britain's biggest retailer Tesco and the major store chains
Morrisons and Iceland, have refused to join the Roundtable on
Sustainable Palm Oil.

     Membership of the Roundtable, which has agreed what constitutes
sustainable palm oil and hopes to certify ethically produced supplies
of the ingredient within two years, costs £1,300 a year.

     According to Friends of the Earth there are now fewer than 60,000
orangutans left and the United Nations lists the Bornean orangutan as
"endangered" and the Sumatran orangutan as "critically endangered."

     The threat facing the orangutan is outlined in a report, The Oil
for Ape Scandal, by five wildlife groups - Friends of the Earth, the
Ape Alliance, the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation, the Orangutan
Foundation and the Sumatran Orangutan Society.

     The report says that year after year satellite pictures have shown
vast fires raging through their habitat, clearing land to meet the
global demand for hardwood and palm oil.

     Demand is growing quickly for palm oil because of its cheapness
and versatility. Friends of the Earth is not calling for a consumer
boycott because the prevalence of palm oil would make such a call
almost unworkable: it is often listed as "vegetable oil" on labels.
But it wants retailers such as Tesco to do more.

     Tesco said it was working with its three big suppliers of palm oil
to secure sustainable sources. A spokeswoman said the grocer was also
seeking to identify the sourcing of the "small amounts" of palm oil
which did not come from its three major suppliers.

     Ed Matthew, corporate responsibility campaigner for Friends of the
Earth, said: "How on earth can Britain's biggest retailer not take
this seriously?"

     "If we can't save the orangutan what hope do we have of saving the
natural environment?"

     The Hidden Ingredient

More than 100 million tons of vegetable oil are produced worldwide
every year, of which at least 30 million tons are palm oil.


The UK is the second biggest importer of palm oil in Europe, after the
Netherlands.

Palm oil increases a food's shelf life.

Palm oil is found in one in 10 supermarket products in the UK.

90 per cent of the world's palm oil exports come from the oil-palm
plantations of Malaysia and Indonesia.

Global palm oil production is projected to double by 2020 to meet
increasing demands.

Oil palm plantations are thought to be responsible for at least half
of the observed reduction in orangutan habitat between 1992 and 2003.

Orangutans used to be found throughout Southeast Asia, but now only
survive on Borneo and Sumatra.

Products containing palm oil include: Bread, biscuits, cereals,
chocolate (including Cadbury's chocolate), cooking oil, cosmetics,
crackers, crisps (including Walker's crisps), detergents, ice cream,
margarine, soap, soup (including Heinz soups), toothpaste.

Tesco own-brand products containing palm oil:

All bread, all crisps, iced buns, value fry chips, vegetable gravy
granules, lightly salted tortilla chips, sunflower oil spread,
American oven chips, big chips, mushroom quiche, crinkle-cut fry
chips, organic shorties, rough oat cakes, finest maple and pecan
cookies, fish fingers, mixed nuts and raisins, organic ginger crunch,
finest savoury biscuit selection, sage and onion stuffing, hot-cross
buns, shredded vegetable suet, value chocolate spread, soap, value
seafood sticks.

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Nine vehicles destroyed in Torkham blast
http://www.dawn.com/cgi-bin/dina.pl?file=top12.htm&date=20060621


LANDI KOTAL, June 20: A bomb blast in Torkham on Tuesday destroyed
nine heavy vehicles carrying supplies to Afghanistan.

Witnesses said the bomb exploded on a truck, destroying it with eight
other vehicles carrying ghee, food items and other goods to Afghanistan.

===

Taliban kill 32 in Afghanistan
http://www.dawn.com/cgi-bin/dina.pl?file=top10.htm&date=20060620


KANDAHAR, June 19: An Afghan legislator alleged on Monday that the
Taliban had killed his 32 friends and relatives in southern
Afghanistan and that 10 others were missing.

Dad Mohammad Khan said 27 of the men had been killed in Helmand
province when they had gone to the scene of an earlier attack in which
five others were shot dead.

"Yesterday morning in Taliban attacks, 32 of my relatives and friends
were killed," said Dad Khan, the influential former intelligence chief
of the province.

"Ten relatives of mine are still missing and five are wounded," he said.

One of the five men killed in the earlier ambush was a brother of Khan
named Juma Gull, a former governor of Helmand's Sangin district.

The group had been returning from a visit to Ghorak district in
neighbouring Kandahar province. "Taliban attacked their vehicle and
killed my brother, my son and three other people," Mr Khan said.

"On hearing the news my other brother Gull Mohammad and other
relatives rushed to the site of the incident. They were ambushed by
Taliban again. Some of them were killed at the site, and some were
killed in different locations.

"Today we have recovered 32 bodies of my family members, relatives and
friends."

The incident was confirmed by deputy provincial governor, Mullah Amir
Akhund.

"A total of 30 people were killed in the two attacks in Sangin
district yesterday, which includes two brothers of MP Dad Mohammad,
one of his sons and the rest are mostly his relatives," he said.

"His other son and three more are wounded."

A self-proclaimed Taliban spokesman said the movement was responsible
for the attacks.—AFP

===

Tribal elder killed
http://www.dawn.com/cgi-bin/dina.pl?file=top11.htm&date=20060620


DERA ISMAIL KHAN, June 19: Militants shot dead a tribal elder with
close ties to the US-backed Afghan government on Monday, an official
said. Nazimuddin Gangikhel was driving in a pick-up truck when gunmen
opened fire from a parked car in South Waziristan, a tribal region
bordering Afghanistan, the intelligence official said on condition of
anonymity due to the sensitive nature of his job.

Mr Gangikhel was heading to his village of Angoor Ada when he was
ambushed near Wana, South Waziristan's main town, the official said.

The slain tribesman regularly travelled to Kabul and met officials of
Afghan government, the official added.

Scores of tribesmen have been killed in South and the adjoining North
Waziristan tribal regions in recent years on suspicion of helping
authorities hunt them or spying for the United States.—AP

===

Karzai questions Nato campaign as Taliban takes to hi-tech propaganda
By Tom Coghlan in Kandahar
23 June 2006
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article1095848.ece


Afghanistan's President, Hamid Karzai, has attacked Britain, the US
and other nations with troops in Afghanistan, calling on them to
"reassess the manner in which the war on terror is conducted", as the
death toll in Afghanistan passed 600 in four weeks.

The Afghan President, who has seen support for his government collapse
in the violent and economically stagnant south of the country in
recent months, distanced himself from the ongoing military operations
there, which involve 11,000 troops including 3,300 British soldiers.

"It is not acceptable for us that in all this fighting, Afghans are
dying," he told reporters at his first press conference for at least
six months. "In the last three to four weeks, 500 to 600 Afghans were
killed. [Even] if they are Taliban, they are sons of this land."

The Afghan President's words are a blow for US and British forces in
the country. The British Armed Forces minister, Adam Ingram, defended
the continued British presence in Afghanistan.

He told the Commons: "Completing this process is not simply a moral
obligation to the Afghan people, success is also essential for future
British security interests. If the Karzai government were to fail and
Afghanistan were to be an unpoliced and impoverished black hole, there
could be no greater boost for worldwide Islamist extremism and no more
certain way of ensuring abundant and uninterrupted supplies of heroin
on our streets."

However, political commentators remain fearful that the Afghan
President has lost support across the south, with the Taliban
displaying an aptitude for the sort of sophisticated propaganda
campaign waged by Iraqi militants.

The Taliban now have three different press spokesmen covering three
separate regions of the country. In Kandahar this summer, Taliban
cassettes, DVDs and magazines are available in numbers never
previously seen. Their focus is the "puppet" government of Mr Karzai
and its complicity in what is portrayed as the Western military
persecution of ordinary Afghans.

"This propaganda does have an effect, particularly when it is repeated
again and again," Hamidullah Tarzi, a political analyst and former
finance minister, said. "As Goebbels used to say, it doesn't matter
whether propaganda is a lie or not, if you repeat it enough people
will believe it."

Most of the Afghan population are illiterate, but there are hundreds
of tapes on sale in the bazaars of the south that feature songs
against the government and foreigners, eulogising the martyrs of the
Taliban; typical are titles such as "The Martyrs of Showli-kot" and
"Bush the Infidel".

"The buyers have increased for these tapes with all the recent
fighting," a tape seller named Zalmai said. "The government banned
them, but we just take the covers off."

The Taliban have also begun broadcasting a pirate station called the
"Voice of Sharia" from mobile transmitters in at least two southern
provinces.

On the internet, unknown in Afghanistan while the Taliban were in
power, there is also a sophisticated website, www.alemarah.org. In
Arabic and Pashto it offers news, poetry, messages from the Taliban's
spiritual leader, Mullah Omar, and regularly updated videos of the
last messages of Taliban suicide bombers.

A DVD called Lions of Islam is one of a number that is widely
available. It was largely filmed in Pakistan's tribal areas and
includes the beheading of an Afghan alleged to be an American spy and
the execution of local criminals according to Taliban Sharia justice.

In response, Western forces in the country are extending a fledgling
military funded radio channel called Radio Peace into the south to
counter anti-government propaganda.

"It is perhaps something we haven't paid enough attention to in the
past," a Nato military spokesman, Major Luke Knittig, said.

The Afghan government issued a directive through its intelligence
service on Monday which banned Afghan journalists from filming or
interviewing alleged members of the Taliban. The directive also
included a ban on reports "that aim to represent that the fighting
spirit in Afghanistan's armed forces is weak".

The Afghan media were also told not to lead with stories about
"terrorist activities". The directive was later said to bea request by
the office of Hamid Karzai reflecting "the need to help the nascent
media sector in Afghanistan to approach the complex issue of terrorism
and terrorist activities in a principled manner".

The Taliban tapes

One tape purchased by The Independent features two singers engaging in
an imagined debate between President Hamid Karzai and the Taliban
leader, Mullah Omar; in a style not dissimilar to that of American
rappers.

"I have brought peace and stability, I defeated al-Qa'ida and the
terrorists," sings the voice that represents Karzai. "You have killed
your Muslim brothers to satisfy the Jews and the Infidels," sings back
the voice representing Omar.

"I was elected president by free and fair elections," sings Karzai.
Omar replies: "What kind of election is it that everywhere there are
American and British tanks and infidel soldiers? The infidels have
tanks, artillery and air support, but we have God's support."

It continues for half an hour with Karzai eventually admitting defeat.

Afghanistan's President, Hamid Karzai, has attacked Britain, the US
and other nations with troops in Afghanistan, calling on them to
"reassess the manner in which the war on terror is conducted", as the
death toll in Afghanistan passed 600 in four weeks.

The Afghan President, who has seen support for his government collapse
in the violent and economically stagnant south of the country in
recent months, distanced himself from the ongoing military operations
there, which involve 11,000 troops including 3,300 British soldiers.

"It is not acceptable for us that in all this fighting, Afghans are
dying," he told reporters at his first press conference for at least
six months. "In the last three to four weeks, 500 to 600 Afghans were
killed. [Even] if they are Taliban, they are sons of this land."

The Afghan President's words are a blow for US and British forces in
the country. The British Armed Forces minister, Adam Ingram, defended
the continued British presence in Afghanistan.

He told the Commons: "Completing this process is not simply a moral
obligation to the Afghan people, success is also essential for future
British security interests. If the Karzai government were to fail and
Afghanistan were to be an unpoliced and impoverished black hole, there
could be no greater boost for worldwide Islamist extremism and no more
certain way of ensuring abundant and uninterrupted supplies of heroin
on our streets."

However, political commentators remain fearful that the Afghan
President has lost support across the south, with the Taliban
displaying an aptitude for the sort of sophisticated propaganda
campaign waged by Iraqi militants.

The Taliban now have three different press spokesmen covering three
separate regions of the country. In Kandahar this summer, Taliban
cassettes, DVDs and magazines are available in numbers never
previously seen. Their focus is the "puppet" government of Mr Karzai
and its complicity in what is portrayed as the Western military
persecution of ordinary Afghans.

"This propaganda does have an effect, particularly when it is repeated
again and again," Hamidullah Tarzi, a political analyst and former
finance minister, said. "As Goebbels used to say, it doesn't matter
whether propaganda is a lie or not, if you repeat it enough people
will believe it."

Most of the Afghan population are illiterate, but there are hundreds
of tapes on sale in the bazaars of the south that feature songs
against the government and foreigners, eulogising the martyrs of the
Taliban; typical are titles such as "The Martyrs of Showli-kot" and
"Bush the Infidel".

"The buyers have increased for these tapes with all the recent
fighting," a tape seller named Zalmai said. "The government banned
them, but we just take the covers off."
The Taliban have also begun broadcasting a pirate station called the
"Voice of Sharia" from mobile transmitters in at least two southern
provinces.

On the internet, unknown in Afghanistan while the Taliban were in
power, there is also a sophisticated website, www.alemarah.org. In
Arabic and Pashto it offers news, poetry, messages from the Taliban's
spiritual leader, Mullah Omar, and regularly updated videos of the
last messages of Taliban suicide bombers.

A DVD called Lions of Islam is one of a number that is widely
available. It was largely filmed in Pakistan's tribal areas and
includes the beheading of an Afghan alleged to be an American spy and
the execution of local criminals according to Taliban Sharia justice.

In response, Western forces in the country are extending a fledgling
military funded radio channel called Radio Peace into the south to
counter anti-government propaganda.

"It is perhaps something we haven't paid enough attention to in the
past," a Nato military spokesman, Major Luke Knittig, said.

The Afghan government issued a directive through its intelligence
service on Monday which banned Afghan journalists from filming or
interviewing alleged members of the Taliban. The directive also
included a ban on reports "that aim to represent that the fighting
spirit in Afghanistan's armed forces is weak".

The Afghan media were also told not to lead with stories about
"terrorist activities". The directive was later said to bea request by
the office of Hamid Karzai reflecting "the need to help the nascent
media sector in Afghanistan to approach the complex issue of terrorism
and terrorist activities in a principled manner".

The Taliban tapes

One tape purchased by The Independent features two singers engaging in
an imagined debate between President Hamid Karzai and the Taliban
leader, Mullah Omar; in a style not dissimilar to that of American
rappers.

"I have brought peace and stability, I defeated al-Qa'ida and the
terrorists," sings the voice that represents Karzai. "You have killed
your Muslim brothers to satisfy the Jews and the Infidels," sings back
the voice representing Omar.

"I was elected president by free and fair elections," sings Karzai.
Omar replies: "What kind of election is it that everywhere there are
American and British tanks and infidel soldiers? The infidels have
tanks, artillery and air support, but we have God's support."

It continues for half an hour with Karzai eventually admitting defeat.

===

Afghan deaths 'not acceptable,' Karzai says
Associated Press
http://email.globeandmail.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/hxVz0E5vBE0BHt0EcFl0EE


KABUL — Afghan President Hamid Karzai urged the international
community to reassess its approach to the war on terror, saying
Thursday the deaths of hundreds of Afghans, including Taliban
militants, was "not acceptable."

A clearly frustrated Mr. Karzai said the approach being taken to hunt
down militants does not focus on the roots of terrorism itself.

"I strongly believe ... that we must engage strategically in disarming
terrorism by stopping their sources of supply of money, training,
equipment and motivation," Mr. Karzai said during a press conference.

In recent weeks, Afghan and coalition forces have launched a massive
anti-Taliban operation across four southern provinces, aimed at
killing or capturing fighters blamed for an upsurge in violence.

More than 600 people, mostly militants, have been killed since May as
insurgents have launched their deadliest campaign of violence in
years. At least 14 coalition soldiers have been killed in combat since
mid-May.

"It is not acceptable for us that in all this fighting, Afghans are
dying. In the last three to four weeks, 500 to 600 Afghans were
killed. [Even] if they are Taliban, they are sons of this land," he said.

Earlier Thursday, al-Qaeda's No. 2 leader urged Afghans in a new
videotape to rise up against U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan, prompting
Mr. Karzai to denounce the terror fugitive as "the enemy of the Afghan
people."

The posting of Ayman al-Zawahri's videotape on an Islamic website
followed a coalition military warning Wednesday that "significant
violence" lies ahead in southern Afghanistan, where thousands of
troops are fighting a deadly Taliban resurgence.

The taped message was Mr. al-Zawahri's sixth this year and was posted
on a website known as a clearing house for al-Qaeda and other
militants' statements.

"I am calling upon the Muslims in Kabul in particular and in all
Afghanistan in general and for the sake of God to stand up in an
honest stand in the face of the infidel forces that are invading
Muslim lands," said Mr. al-Zawahri, wearing a white turban and sitting
in front of a black backdrop with an automatic rifle next to him.

The Egyptian-born fugitive also called on "the young men of Islam, in
the universities and schools of Kabul, to carry out their duties in
defence of their religion, honour, land and country."

The 3½ -minute tape, entitled "American Crimes in Kabul," appears to
have been made the day after a May 29 accident in which a U.S.
military truck crashed into traffic in Kabul, killing up to five
people. The incident sparked anti-foreigner riots in Kabul that left
about 20 people dead — the deadliest unrest in the Afghan capital
since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.

"I direct my speech today to my Muslim brothers in Kabul who lived the
bitter events yesterday and saw by their own eyes a new proof of the
criminal acts of the American forces against the Afghani people," Mr.
al-Zawahri said on the videotape.

Unlike Mr. al-Zawahri's previous messages, which appeared aimed at
Americans, the latest video has no English subtitles. He spoke in
Arabic, and websites carried translations in Pashtun and Farsi, two
languages widely spoken in Afghanistan.

Asked about the new tape, Mr. Karzai blamed Mr. al-Zawahri for
Afghanistan's massive suffering before and after the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks.

"He is first the enemy of the Afghan people, and then the enemy of the
rest of the world," Mr. Karzai said during a press conference. "He
killed Afghans for years — thousands — and then he went to America and
destroyed the twin towers."

"We in Afghanistan want him arrested and put before justice."

In renewed violence, four U.S. soldiers were killed and another
wounded Wednesday while trying to block the movement of enemy forces
in the eastern Nuristan province, the military announced in a
statement Thursday.

Ground troops and attack planes were called in to continue the assault
through the night, but it was unclear if there were any enemy casualties.

Afghan and coalition forces have been operating in eastern Afghanistan
along the Pakistan border since mid-April targeting al-Qaeda and
Taliban militants.

Late Tuesday, militants bombed two coalition convoys in southern
Afghanistan, killing one civilian bystander and wounding 13, including
six Canadian soldiers, the military said.

The attacks came as the U.S.-led coalition warned that major battles
were likely to continue as Taliban fighters resist a large-scale
military push in southern Afghanistan ahead of an imminent security
handover to NATO-led forces.

"We are seeing the enemy operating in larger groups. They are fighting
hard. They are clearly trying to stop our efforts to move into certain
areas," coalition spokesman Colonel Tom Collins said.

Coalition and Afghan forces launched Operation Mountain Thrust in
earnest last week with more than 10,000 Afghan, British, Canadian and
American troops deploying in the largest anti-Taliban offensive since
the former regime's 2001 ouster.

More than 600 people, mostly militants, have been killed since May. At
least 10 coalition soldiers also have been killed in combat in that time.

Mr. al-Zawahri and al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden were hosted by the
Taliban before their ouster. They both are now believed to be hiding
in the rugged border frontier between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The new message by Mr. al-Zawahri is part of a dramatic increase in
videos and audiotapes recently by al-Qaeda, including three by Mr. bin
Laden.

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Saudi forces shoot dead six "al-Qaida" men
Brian Whitaker and agencies in Riyadh
Friday June 23, 2006
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329512506-110491,00.html


Saudi security forces stormed a suspected al-Qaida hideout in the
capital early today, killing six militants in a gun battle, according
to the interior ministry and local media. One policeman also died in
the clashes and a seventh suspect was injured and arrested, the
ministry said.

The ministry's statement, carried by the official Saudi news agency,
said security forces had chased seven members of a "deviant" group to
a house in al-Nakheel district of Riyadh.

The house was "a hideout for crime, corruption, and a base for the
plots of aggression and outrage," the statement said.

Saudi television showed police removing several vehicles from the
scene, some of them damaged in the clash, as officers carried away
what appeared to be bags of evidence.

Saudi-owned al-Arabiya television quoted security sources as saying
the militants were on the verge of launching unspecified attacks.

"In the early morning hours, security forces pursued the seven members
of the group ... to a house in the Nakhil district ... and immediately
came under heavy automatic weapons fire," the ministry statement said.
"One security man was martyred in the incident and there were some
injuries among the ranks of security forces."

After denying for several years that insurgents were operating in the
kingdom, Saudi Arabia launched an aggressive anti-terrorism campaign
in May 2003 after suicide bombers linked to al-Qaida attacked three
residential compounds in Riyadh.

Since then, attacks have continued, though less frequently than
before, and the authorities' efforts to track down the militants
appear relatively successful, with most of those named in two wanted
lists now killed or captured.

Cornered militants usually resist arrest, and the ensuing gun battles
have often resulted in deaths and injuries among the police.

In the most recent major incident, last February, security forces
foiled an attack on the world's largest oil-processing facility, at
Abqaiq, in the east of the kingdom.

Two vehicles carrying the name of the state oil company, Saudi Aramco,
but packed with explosives, drew up near the plant. Gunfire broke out
when they were challenged by guards and at least one of the vehicles
blew up.

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Mr. PRESIDENT WE DO NOT BELIEVE YOU
By Ibrahim Ebeid
Al-Moharer, June 14, 2006
http://www.al-moharer.net/mohhtm/i_ebeid243d.htm


President Bush never set foot in Baghdad. He does not dare because
Baghdad and all of Iraq are under the control of the Resistance. He
went to the Green Zone to instruct his stooges confined to a four
square miles around the Palace of the Republic of Iraq. This Palace,
which is the symbol of Iraq and its sovereignty was robbed by the
United States and became the residence of Khalilzad, the true ruler of
occupied Iraq.

Maliki and the other stooges are no more than puppets controlled when
instructed and to repeat Bush's words when needed. These puppets live
in the Green Zone and do not dare to mix with the Iraqi people.

Mr. Bush keeps using the same cliché: Iraq is liberated by him and his
cronies, Saddam Hussein destroyed Iraq and its infrastructure, schools
were destroyed and neglected, women were not free, freedom of worship
was of no existence and so on. His lies have no end and I am pretty
sure they will continue as long as he exists on this earth.

The reality is that George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George Bush, the
father, took parts in the destruction of Iraq; they are responsible
and that history will condemn them for destroying the cradle of
civilization.

The secular government was replaced by a sectarian, very fanatic and a
reactionary one cornered in four square miles protected by more than a
quarter million foreign troops.  The Iraqi members of the legitimate
government that built Iraq and made it flourish are suffering in the
occupation concentration camps; they might be executed to satisfy the
ego of the neo-cons in Washington D.C., and their allies in the
Zionist entity.

The occupation of Iraq was not for democracy, because democracy,
security and progress do not exist in the new Iraq. This war was for
oil and above all on behalf of "Israel", the Zionist racist settler
entity in Palestine.

US intelligence, military sources and Western media confirmed to us
recently that Zionist military advisers are helping US Special Forces
build assassination squads to murder Iraqis, a fact that we knew long
ago.

The Zionist supporters in the Bush Administration were behind pushing
the United States to invade Iraq. The "Israelis" helped train US
soldiers and Marines for urban warfare, conducting clandestine
surveillance missions in the western Iraqi desert and permitting the
United States to place combat supplies in occupied Palestine,
"Israel".( USA TODAY 11/03/2002.)

Events every day are changing and we cannot keep up with them. The
Zionist forces are murdering Palestinian children on the beaches and
in the streets of Gaza. The story of Hadil, a female child was
devastating to see her family killed by Zionist terrorist bombs while
relaxing by the sea with her family. A man with his children was blown
up in his Volkswagen while driving in a street in Gaza, his car was
hit by a Zionist missile, others were killed by the same savages and
many more will be killed and assassinated. Simultaneously, the
American occupying forces and their stooges, the sectarian brigades
are murdering the innocent civilians in Ishaqi, in Haditha, in
Tellafar, in Baghdad, in Karkuk, in Mosul, in Baqouba, in Basrah ……

What happened to the murderers? Absolutely nothing! They came to
Palestine and to Iraq to give us a lesson in Democracy, as Bush and
his cronies claim. And Mr. Bush claims that Iraq is liberated,
progress and security are marching forward. Yet, when he sneaks into
Iraq secretly he stays in the fortified Green Zone, cornered in four
square miles.

Mr. President, I would like you to read the following paragraph about
Education in Iraq before your father started his war of aggression
against the Cradle of Civilization.

- The number of kindergartens rose from 71 to 119 between 1979 and
1990 with an annual increase of 67.6 percent.

- The number of nurseries rose from 135 to 646 in the period 1968-1990
with an annual increase of 212.1 percent. The number of children
enrolled at the nurseries rose from 14530 to 86508 with an annual
increase of 468.3 percent.

- The number of teachers in these kinder garters and nurseries rose
from 551 to 4908 with an annual increase of 324.6 percent.

- The number of primary schools rose from 5137 to 8725 in the years
1968-1990 with a rate of increase of 69.8 percent. The number of
students rose from 1,017050 to 3,335 699 in the same period with a
rate of increase of 123.2 percent.

- The number of teachers in primary Schools rose from 47058 in 1968 to
130115 in 1990.

- In secondary schools, the number of schools rose from 840 to 2700
with a rate of in crease of students enrolled at these schools rose
from 285721 to 1,058331 with a rate of increase of 27.4 percent in the
period 1968-1990.

- The number of vocational schools rose from 44 to 289 in the same
period 1968-1990 with a rate of increase of 556.8 percent. The number
of students enrolled at these schools rose from 10600 to 142822 with a
rate of increase of 1247.3 percent. The number of teachers at these
schools rose from 1002 to 9127 with a rate of increase of 810.8 percent.

- Students enrolled at teacher-training institutes rose from 10861 to
30962 with a rate of increase of 185 percent. The number of teachers
rose from 442 to 1782 with a rate of increase of 303 percent in the
period 1968-1990.

- The number of universities rose from 5 to 12 in the same period
above with a rate of increase of 1.4 percent, where as the number of
their students from 31086 in 1968 to 179542 in 1991 with a rate of
increase of 477.6 percent. The number of university teaching staff
increased from 1879 in 1968 to 10548 in 1990 with a rate of increase
of 461.4 percent. In the Kurdistan Autonomous Region, the indicators
of progress in this sector were as follows:

- The number of kindergartens rose from 3 to 61 in the period
1971-1990, with a rate of increase of 19 percent. Their students
increased from 354 in 1971 to 4297 in 1991 with a rate of increase of
11 percent. The number of teachers in these Kindergartens rose from 24
to 347 with a rate of increase of 13 percent.

- The number of primary schools students rose from 93596 in 1971 to
411265 in 1990 with a rate of increase of 34 percent. The number of
their teachers rose from 4615 to 14544 with a rate of increase of 21
percent.

- The secondary schooling showed a great progress. The number of
secondary schools rose from 118 to 292 with an increase of 14 percent.
The number of their students rose from 17903 in 1971 to 101127 in 1990
with an increase of 46 percent. The number of secondary schools
teachers rose in the period 1971-1990 from 820 to 3751 with an
increase of 35 percent. Considerable progress was also achieved in
vocational education, in the Kurdistan Autonomous Region. The number
of vocational schools rose from 6 to 34 in the period 1970-1990 with
an increase of 46 percent. The number of this students rose from 974
to 13201 with an increase of 12 percent.

Please Mr. President, do not tell us any more lies because we do not
believe you.

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Threats against four prominent Jerusalemite Palestinian activists are
but prelude to what the state of Israel has in mind for the entirety
of the occupied city.


Expulsion is racist
Gabriela Becker*
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/800/op3.htm


The 20 days and counting that remain for Mohamed Abu Teer, Ahmed
Attun, Mohamed Tottah and Khaled Abu Arrafeh, Hamas Jerusalemite
activists and newly- named Palestinian Authority (PA) officials, to
renounce political affiliations or face expulsion from their homes and
city is reminder of the fate of all Jerusalemites under Israeli
occupation. Decades of suppression amid the incessant goal of
expelling the majority of Palestinians from Jerusalem, Judaising the
city and guaranteeing maximum Israeli land control, has today reached
an unprecedented level, with international legitimacy meant to provide
the final stamp of approval.

The near-completed apartheid wall around Jerusalem -- part of the
Israeli quest for "final borders," an extension of the Oslo Accords --
is the essence of the closing stage of occupation. The construction of
the massive barrier guarantees that at least 100,000 of approximately
250,000 Jerusalemites will find themselves on the "other" or eastern
side of the wall. They will thus be in areas that the occupation has
previously announced it intends to "put up" as pawns in any future
negotiations -- areas such as Kufr Aqab, Shufat Refugee Camp, Ezarya,
Abu Dis and parts of Sawahre -- to provide a pretence of
"disengagement," "land swapping," and "final settlement" in order to
formalise its occupation of the rest of Jerusalem including the
massive West Bank settlement blocs of Maale Adumim to the east, Givat
Zeev to the north, and Gush Etzion to the south.

In other words, the city and its surroundings will continue to be in
the hands of the Israeli occupation while all Palestinians -- not
solely Jerusalemites -- will be shut out. This policy has moved full
force since the 1993 closure that prevented West Bank and Gaza ID
holders from accessing Jerusalem.

Expulsion in Jerusalem is taking place in a number of forms, many
continuous since the occupation of the West Bank in 1967, including
land confiscation, house demolitions, unbearable taxation, and ID
confiscation. But in the past two years, the occupation's Jerusalem
Municipality, the Interior Ministry, and other Israeli governmental
and "non-governmental" bodies -- if such distinctions exist -- have
merged not only to accelerate the long list of measures but also to
increase the range of policies. The apartheid wall and the pending
declaration of final borders, providing for the occupation a sweeping
means of taking over most of the area, together with added targeting
of activists and institutions remind us of the increased determination
of the occupation to "transfer" Palestinians into areas that it will
brand part of a Palestinian "state" as it implements forced
separation, also known as expulsion, also known as apartheid. Recent
efforts to widen the pretences for ID confiscation has provided yet
another chance for the occupation to put into play a number of public
announcements linking activists, parties, the PA, institutions and all
Jerusalemites into one. Thus, the Israeli Interior Ministry
declaration should be seen as linked both to the immediate expulsion
of Jerusalemites from their city, a targeting of those who remain in
the city, and the strategic endgame of eliminating Palestinian
institutions that provide services and support otherwise unavailable
from an alien municipality that thrives on marginalising and
impoverishing Palestinians.

The Israeli "peace camp," including a number of Israeli human rights
groups and journalists, seem to be at the forefront of opposition to
the Interior Ministry attack on the Hamas activists, at least
according to some media outlets. But the detail of the disagreement
reflects that in actuality there is no deep-seated dispute. On the one
hand, there is the "peace camp" desire for a consistent Israeli
position in favour of the Oslo/PA framework (an integral part of
Bantustanisation). In addition, there is the wish to maintain a high
profile for Israeli calls for "Palestinian rights," albeit within the
context of the current institutions of occupied Jerusalem. Lastly,
there is apprehension that the rhetoric around and Western image of
the "Jewish state" -- the only "democracy" in the Middle East etc --
is being compromised; that is, exposed. Of course, the issue is not a
legal one, just as Israeli courts are not grounded on justice. The
Israeli government steers part of the pressure on it towards the
judiciary knowing full well that the courts will either approve its
measures or ask for symbolic amendments with the policy intact, or, in
the worst of cases, maintain a democratic exterior that can be better
utilised at a later date. Bringing the issue to Israeli courts may
also provide the Israeli government with opportunity to peddle its
plans for Jerusalem through additional wings of government, perhaps
gaining legitimacy for calls to "give-up" certain Palestinian areas in
exchange for setting the final borders of the city. Part of this could
include changing the status of the city's inhabitants under the
pretence of supporting Palestinian "state/nation" building.

These are but some of the dangers attendant to fighting the occupation
within its own court system. As an additional example, and in response
to the Israeli Interior Ministry's demands, France called for
respecting the rights of Palestinians in Jerusalem. In actuality, the
message was a reminder to Hamas and the four legislators that either
they consent to the conditions put forward by Israel, the West and
other countries (including Arab ones) in terms of supporting Oslo (or
the roadmap, or the Arab Initiative) or lose the diplomatic perks that
guarantee media attention and international pressure, which will
remain only if Hamas endlessly concedes to the unacceptable list of
conditions put forth by Israel. Perhaps, not acquiescing may be
proportional to a dwindling worldwide interest in favour of more
willing partners. In this way, we can predict that, far from taking an
unconditional position against occupation, ultimatums will come not
just from Israeli ministries but from the Israeli "peace camp" and
"friendly" states, Western and otherwise, forever moments away from
reneging their support and expressing "disappointment". This is
reminder of the kind of repulsive racist power relations at the core
of occupation and colonisation that deal with Palestinians as
"dispensable and replaceable".


* The writer is a US researcher based in occupied Jerusalem.

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US government can detain noncitizens indefinitely without explanation


The Worst Ruling of the Week
Matthew Rothschild
The Progressive
Friday 16 June 2006
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/061706G.shtml


     A lot of people are up in arms about the Supreme Court's "no
knock" decision.

     I also think it's outrageous.

     Making police knock before barging into the sanctity of people's
homes is fundamental to the 4th Amendment, and to the principle
underlying that dates back to thirteenth century.

     Talk about turning back the clocks!

     But there's a decision that bothers me even more, and it's
received a lot less attention.

     And that's a ruling, on July 14, by Federal Judge John Gleeson,
that the government can detain noncitizens indefinitely without
explanation so long as that end of that detention is "reasonably
foreseeable."

     The case before him was Turkmen v. Ashcroft, filed by the Center
for Constitutional Rights "on behalf of male Muslim noncitizens from
Arab and South Asian countries who were swept up by the INS and the
FBI in the dragnet that followed September 11," the center notes.

     Judge Gleeson also ruled that the government could single out
people on the basis of race, religion, or national origin. "If applied
to citizens," he acknowledged," this singling out "would be highly
suspicious."

     Calling the decision "profoundly disturbing," Rachel Meeropol, an
attorney for the center, said it gives the green light to detentions
of noncitizens "at the whim of the President."

     Gleeson's ruling would have justified the Japanese internment
camps for all except those who were citizens at the time. (David Cole,
one of the attorneys in this case, makes this same point in a great
article he wrote for the LA Times.)

     In the here and now, it's an especially distressing ruling because
it bestows a blessing on one of the Bush Administration's many
powergrabs after 9/11. With the Ashcroft Raids, Special Registration,
and other policies, the government rounded up 5,000 immigrants and
deprived them of their due process rights.

     And Judge Gleeson says that's OK?

     The Fifth Amendment says "no person" shall be deprived of due process.

     The Fourteenth Amendment echoes that, and says "no person" shall
be denied the equal protection of the laws.

     Now the Bush Administration and Judge Gleeson are willfully
ignoring those amendments. And they are treating immigrants as less
than persons.

     How sweet it isn't.

===

Kicked Out of Gitmo
By Carol J. Williams
The Los Angeles Times
Sunday 18 June 2006
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/061906Z.shtml


     A Times reporter's struggle to get the truth about America's
island prison just got tougher.

     In the best of times, covering Guantanamo means wrangling with a
Kafkaesque bureaucracy, with logistics so nonsensical that they turn
two hours of reporting into an 18-hour day, with hostile escorts who
seem to think you're in league with Al Qaeda, and with the dispiriting
reality that you're sure to encounter more iguanas than war-on-terror
suspects.

     In the worst of times - this past week, for example - those
quotidian discomforts can be compounded by an invasion of mating crabs
skittering into your dormitory, a Pentagon power play that muzzles
already reluctant sources and an unceremonious expulsion to Miami on a
military plane, safety-belted onto whatever seat is available. In this
case, that seat was the toilet.

     I ended up on that plane, on that seat, because of a baffling move
by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's office, in which the only three
newspaper reporters who managed to surmount Pentagon obstacles to
covering the first deaths at Guantanamo were ordered off the base
Wednesday. Rumsfeld's office said the decision was made "to be fair
and impartial" to the rest of the media, which the government had
refused to let in.

     Rumsfeld's gatekeepers have long made clear that they view outside
scrutiny of the detention operations as a danger to the Bush
administration's secretive and often criticized campaign to
indefinitely detain "enemy combatants." But this time, their actions
seemed counterproductive because booting out the Los Angeles Times,
Miami Herald and Charlotte (N.C.) Observer only provoked fresh demands
to learn what the government is hiding.

     Those of us cleared to cover the prison and war-crimes tribunal
learned long ago that there will be a hard-fought battle for every
factlet. When unexpected news breaks, like the suicides, the
Pentagon's knee-jerk reflex to thwart coverage reminds me of how
Communist officials used to organize Cold War-era propaganda trips for
Moscow correspondents but then pull the plug when embarrassing
realities intruded.

     "You ask a lot of questions!" said Emily Witt, a 25-year-old
first-timer from Miami's alternative weekly New Times, when she
observed my scattershot strategy for interrogating officials during a
rare "inside the wire" tour of the prison camps last month.

     What little we learn often comes to light by accident, through
casual slips-of-the-lips by military doctors, lawyers and jailers
innocently oblivious of their superiors' preference for spin. A
battery of questions to the prison hospital commander - who for
security reasons can't be identified - elicited that prisoners are
force-fed through a nasal-gastric tube if they refuse to eat for three
days and that 1,000 pills a day are dispensed to treat detainee
ailments, anxiety and depression.

     Those details became relevant when two prisoners attempted suicide
May 18 by consuming hoarded prescription medications. Likewise, we
understood why a hunger strike early this month began with 89
prisoners but swiftly fell off to a few defiant handfuls with the
onset of painful and undignified force-feeding. During an interview
last month with the new detention center commander, Rear Adm. Harry B.
Harris Jr., we queried him on plans for handling detainee deaths - a
theoretical exercise until two Saudis and a Yemeni hung themselves
June 10.

     I've been to Guantanamo six times. It was during my first visit in
January 2005 that I learned how expressions of polite interest in
minute details can elicit some of the most startling revelations. As
Naval Hospital commander Capt. John Edmundson showed off the 48-bed
prison annex, for instance, I asked, apropos of nothing, if the
facility had ever been at or near capacity.

     "Only during the mass-hanging incident," the Navy doctor replied,
provoking audible gasps and horrified expressions among the public
affairs minders and op-sec - operational security - watchdogs in the
entourage, none of whom were particularly pleased with the disclosure
that 23 prisoners had attempted simultaneously to hang themselves with
torn bed sheets in late 2003.

     But such revelations are infrequent, and the investment of time to
obtain them is grossly disproportionate. On a typical day at
Guantanamo, reporters rise at dawn, head for breakfast in a mess hall
at 6 a.m., then at 7 a.m. cross the often storm-tossed bay to the main
naval base in small boats, clutching our laptop bags and life
preservers as waves crash over the bow and drench us.

     We make the return crossing at around 9 p.m., after hours in the
bowls of military alphabet soup, writing our stories in JIBs - joint
information bureaus that are simple rooms with folding chairs, tables
and telephones - while we cover OMC or JTF (the Office of Military
Commissions that runs the tribunals and the Joint Task Force that
oversees the prison). Back at the CBQ - the combined bachelors'
quarters - we sleep in a dorm-like complex on the virtually abandoned
leeward side of Guantanamo Bay that this month suffered an invasion of
crabs the size of your head, coupled and clattering across the floors,
halls and sidewalks. Their leggy orange spawn slithered under doors
and divebombed us from the ceiling.

     Despite the shroud of secrecy and the at-times surrealistic
backdrop, it is the rare glimpse into the war-on-terror workings that
make assignments at Guantanamo a source of professional satisfaction.

     Under ground rules we must agree to if we want access to the base,
journalists may not have any contact with detainees, who are removed
from sight at all but one camp during media tours. Only at the
compound for the most compliant prisoners can we even make eye contact.

     That's why coverage of the tribunal sessions have been so
important in putting a human face on the prisoners, whose names and
nationalities were only disclosed in March under a court order
following an Associated Press legal challenge.

     Court appearances by the 10 men charged with war crimes have
offered us our first meaningful independent view of detainees in the
prison's 4 1/2 years. Some seem to be committed holy warriors whose
detention has only fueled their hatred of Americans. Others contend
that they are innocent of any attack on U.S. forces, just unfortunates
swept up in the post-9/11 fervor.

     Meanwhile, 450 others have been held for years without charges or
legal recourse. Their indefinite detention to keep them off the global
terrorism battlefields feels like a Muslim version of the World War II
Japanese American internment.

     It is the opportunity to shed light into the dark corners of the
antiterrorism campaign that inspires us to surmount the obstacles and
obfuscations. And it is the thwarting of that mission with moves like
our expulsion that make us all the more determined to question, probe
and illuminate the actions of our government being waged in the
country's name.

     ---------

     Carol J. Williams is the Caribbean bureau chief for the Times.


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A young Muslim shot by police during a dawn raid
Independent, UK
13 June, 2006


London: A young Muslim shot by police during a dawn terror raid on a
suspected bomb factory in east London broke down today as he described
the moment anti-terrorist officers stormed his house. Mohammed Abdul
Kahar, 23, choked back tears as he recalled the 4am raid. Mr Kahar
told a packed press onference how he was woken by the screams of his
younger brother. "From my room I could hear this screaming so I got
out of bed," he said. He said he was clad only in boxer shorts and a
t-shirt. "I assumed a robbery was happening," he said. He told how he
edged down the stairs before suddenly seeing a spark and hearing a big
bang. "I fell on the wall," he said. "I was on the floor, I looked at
my chest and I saw bleeding coming down my chest and I saw the hole in
my chest. "At that moment I knew I was shot."

Speaking publicly about the controversial raid for the first time, he
said as he lay on the stairs bleeding and fearing for his family he
was kicked in the face by a police officer and told to "shut the f***
up." Mr Kahar told how he put his hand over his chest and saw two
officers walking towards him. He then described feeling the shotgun
against his chest.  He said: "I was begging 'please, please, I cannot
move'." He claimed that as he pleaded with them, the officers told him
to 'shut the f*** up, stay here, stay here'. "At that moment I thought
they were going to shoot me again or shoot my brother," he said. "I
heard them shouting 'secure the room'.

"At that moment I still did not know they were the police, they never
said a word about the police." Mr Kahar claimed he was grabbed and
dragged down the stairs and then thrown on the pavement outside. He
added: "I just thought 'they're going to kill us'." He told reporters
he did not realise the raid was a police operation until he was lying
on the street. He also said he did not support terrorism. "Violence is
not in my nature. It's not in my religion," he said. Abul Koyair, 20,
who like his brother was shaven-headed with a beard, told the press
conference the police raid had been "like a dream".

He recalled being woken up by an alarm which appeared to be coming
from inside their house. He said his elder brother emerged from his
own bedroom and started going downstairs before suddenly being shot.
He said: "After that it was all quiet. No one said anything. I thought
it was like a dream. "After about one or two minutes I realised that
this was not a dream. I realised that my own brother had got shot for
no reason. They tried to murder my brother." He then saw the police
officers dragging his brother downstairs, hitting him as they went. He
said: "I kept thinking to myself, 'why didn't they shoot me
instead?'." He was taken outside, handcuffed and told to look at the
ground.

He said: "At that time I kept saying to the officer, 'please tell me,
is my brother ok? Is my brother ok?'. "They told me, 'just shut up,
don't say a word, look down on the floor'." Mr Kahar said he was in
great pain when he was taken to the hospital, adding: "It seemed like
fire. I was burning." He said he had pleaded with the doctor not to
allow him to be taken away to be interviewed, but he had seen police
officers asking the doctor to release him early. He said while he was
being interrogated officers repeatedly asked him if he was a member of
an extremist group, including at one point the Ku Klux Klan. His
brother told the press conference that before the raid in Forest Gate,
east London, he had applied to be a community police officer.

He said he no longer wanted to join the force after the events of June
2. The brothers' personal testimonies could pile more pressure on
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair, who has faced fresh
calls to resign since the brothers were released without charge on
Friday, a week after their arrest. Yesterday, senior figures,
including the Prime Minister and London Mayor Ken Livingstone, gave
Sir Ian - also under pressure over the shooting of Jean Charles de
Menezes - their personal backing. Asked about Sir Ian's future, the
brothers stopped short of calling for him to go today. Mr Koyair said:
"Whoever is responsible should be put to justice, whoever gave the
order for this happen."

Mr Kahar said: "I want everyone that was involved in it to apologise."
Mr Kahar said he supported the role of the police, adding: "Without
police the country would be lawless." He said that during his
detention in Paddington Green police station he feared officers would
frame him. He told reporters: "All the way through my detention I kept
thinking they are going to frame me, they are going to frame me." He
said: "I'm a law-abiding citizen. I was born and bred in east London.
I love my town." He went on: "I ain't done nothing to this country.
This is my country. I love everyone around." Experts have suggested
that the brothers can expect compensation running into six figures.

The two men were arrested when 250 officers - some armed and some
wearing chemical suits - raided their house in Lansdown Road. Both
were held under anti-terror legislation. Since the raid, Scotland Yard
has insisted officers had no choice but to act after receiving
intelligence about the existence of a chemical bomb. Mr Kahar said he
"had no idea" who could have given the police intelligence about them.
"From my point of view the person who did this they have terrorised me
and my family," he said. Mr Kahar said his only crime was being Asian
and Muslim. He said he felt no pain from the shot at first but claimed
he felt scared as officers allegedly attacked him after he was shot.

"I was begging them, I asked them to spare my life," he said.

Mr Kahar, with his right arm still in a sling, said he was given no
warning before being shot in the chest. "He (the officer) looked at me
straightaway and shot and I fell on the floor," he said. "I did not
know myself I was shot until I saw my wound." He also alleged that no
one from the police had had "the decency to phone up and apologise".

Not even the senior officer had said sorry, he said. Mr Kahar repeated
his call for an apology to him and his family but added: "Suing the
Met is not even in our heads at the moment." "This has ruined my
life," he continued. "I cannot sleep, I have flashbacks, I cannot
sleep with the light off. "I want everyone that was involved, whoever
gave the order for the raid to happen, for the shot to go off,
everyone involved to apologise."

When Mr Koyair was asked about reports suggesting he had shot his
brother, he responded: "I was really upset. I would never lay a finger
on my brother." Family spokesman Asad Rehman, who also speaks for the
Justice4Jean campaign set up after Mr de Menezes was shot by police in
London last July, said the bullet fired at Mr Kahar had only missed
his heart because of the angle it entered his chest as he came
downstairs. Mr Kahar said he would not be able to return to his house
after the ordeal he had suffered. He said the interrogation had been
"like hell", adding: "I knew they made a mistake from the time they
entered my house. We are an innocent family." Asked whether he would
be seeking financial compensation from the police, he replied: "I am
not interested in money at all. I want everyone to be brought before
the courts for the way I was shot." A young Muslim shot by police
during a dawn terror raid on a suspected bomb factory in east London
broke down today as he described the moment anti-terrorist officers
stormed his house.

Mohammed Abdul Kahar, 23, choked back tears as he recalled the 4am
raid. Mr Kahar told a packed press conference how he was woken by the
screams of his younger brother. "From my room I could hear this
screaming so I got out of bed," he said. He said he was clad only in
boxer shorts and a t-shirt. "I assumed a robbery was happening," he
said. He told how he edged down the stairs before suddenly seeing a
spark and hearing a big bang. "I fell on the wall," he said. "I was on
the floor, I looked at my chest and I saw bleeding coming down my
chest and I saw the hole in my chest. "At that moment I knew I was
shot." Speaking publicly about the controversial raid for the first
time, he said as he lay on the stairs bleeding and fearing for his
family he was kicked in the face by a police officer and told to "shut
the f*** up." Mr Kahar told how he put his hand over his chest and saw
two officers walking towards him. He then described feeling the
shotgun against his chest. He said: "I was begging 'please, please, I
cannot move'."

He claimed that as he pleaded with them, the officers told him to
'shut the f*** up, stay here, stay here'. "At that moment I thought
they were going to shoot me again or shoot my brother," he said. "I
heard them shouting 'secure the room'. "At that moment I still did not
know they were the police, they never said a word about the police."
Mr Kahar claimed he was grabbed and dragged down the stairs and then
thrown on the pavement outside. He added: "I just thought 'they're
going to kill us'." He told reporters he did not realise the raid was
a police operation until he was lying on the street. He also said he
did not support terrorism. "Violence is not in my nature. It's not in
my religion," he said. Abul Koyair, 20, who like his brother was
shaven-headed with a beard, told the press conference the police raid
had been "like a dream". He recalled being woken up by an alarm which
appeared to be coming from inside their house. He said his elder
brother emerged from his own bedroom and started going downstairs
before suddenly being shot. He said: "After that it was all quiet. No
one said anything. I thought it was like a dream.

"After about one or two minutes I realised that this was not a dream.
I realised that my own brother had got shot for no reason. They tried
to murder my brother." He then saw the police officers dragging his
brother downstairs, hitting him as they went. He said: "I kept
thinking to myself, 'why didn't they shoot me instead?'." He was taken
outside, handcuffed and told to look at the ground. He said: "At that
time I kept saying to the officer, 'please tell me, is my brother ok?
Is my brother ok?'. "They told me, 'just shut up, don't say a word,
look down on the floor'." Mr Kahar said he was in great pain when he
was taken to the hospital, adding: "It seemed like fire. I was
burning." He said he had pleaded with the doctor not to allow him to
be taken away to be interviewed, but he had seen police officers
asking the doctor to release him early.

He said while he was being interrogated officers repeatedly asked him
if he was a member of an extremist group, including at one point the
Ku Klux Klan. His brother told the press conference that before the
raid in Forest Gate, east London, he had applied to be a community
police officer. He said he no longer wanted to join the force after
the events of June 2. The brothers' personal testimonies could pile
more pressure on Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair, who
has faced fresh calls to resign since the brothers were released
without charge on Friday, a week after their arrest.

Yesterday, senior figures, including the Prime Minister and London
Mayor Ken Livingstone, gave Sir Ian - also under pressure over the
shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes - their personal backing. Asked
about Sir Ian's future, the brothers stopped short of calling for him
to go today. Mr Koyair said: "Whoever is responsible should be put to
justice, whoever gave the order for this happen." Mr Kahar said: "I
want everyone that was involved in it to apologise." Mr Kahar said he
supported the role of the police, adding: "Without police the country
would be lawless."

He said that during his detention in Paddington Green police station
he feared officers would frame him. He told reporters: "All the way
through my detention I kept thinking they are going to frame me, they
are going to frame me." He said: "I'm a law-abiding citizen. I was
born and bred in east London. I love my town."

He went on: "I ain't done nothing to this country. This is my country.
I love everyone around." Experts have suggested that the brothers can
expect compensation running into six figures. The two men were
arrested when 250 officers - some armed and some wearing chemical
suits - raided their house in Lansdown Road. Both were held under
anti-terror legislation. Since the raid, Scotland Yard has insisted
officers had no choice but to act after receiving intelligence about
the existence of a chemical bomb. Mr Kahar said he "had no idea" who
could have given the police intelligence about them. "From my point of
view the person who did this they have terrorised me and my family,"
he said. Mr Kahar said his only crime was being Asian and Muslim. He
said he felt no pain from the shot at first but claimed he felt scared
as officers allegedly attacked him after he was shot.

"I was begging them, I asked them to spare my life," he said. Mr
Kahar, with his right arm still in a sling, said he was given no
warning before being shot in the chest. "He (the officer) looked at me
straightaway and shot and I fell on the floor," he said. "I did not
know myself I was shot until I saw my wound." He also alleged that no
one from the police had had "the decency to phone up and apologise".
Not even the senior officer had said sorry, he said. Mr Kahar repeated
his call for an apology to him and his family but added: "Suing the
Met is not even in our heads at the moment." "This has ruined my
life," he continued. "I cannot sleep, I have flashbacks, I cannot
sleep with the light off.

"I want everyone that was involved, whoever gave the order for the
raid to happen, for the shot to go off, everyone involved to
apologise." When Mr Koyair was asked about reports suggesting he had
shot his brother, he responded: "I was really upset. I would never lay
a finger on my brother." Family spokesman Asad Rehman, who also speaks
for the Justice4Jean campaign set up after Mr de Menezes was shot by
police in London last July, said the bullet fired at Mr Kahar had only
missed his heart because of the angle it entered his chest as he came
downstairs. Mr Kahar said he would not be able to return to his house
after the ordeal he had suffered. He said the interrogation had been
"like hell", adding: "I knew they made a mistake from the time they
entered my house. We are an innocent family." Asked whether he would
be seeking financial compensation from the police, he replied: "I am
not interested in money at all. I want everyone to be brought before
the courts for the way I was shot."

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AMBUSH OF U.S. ISLAMIC LEADER IN IRAQ SHOCKS DEARBORN FAITHFUL
Gregg Krupa
Detroit News
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060620/METRO01/606200350


DEARBORN -- The phones at the Islamic Center of America have not
stopped ringing since evening prayers on Friday, following an
assassination attempt in Karbala, Iraq, on an influential clergyman in
American Islam.

Earlier in the day, gunmen on motorcycles ambushed Ayatollah Sayed
Mortadha al-Qazwini, founder of three mosques in California and father
of Imam Sayed Hassan al-Qazwini, the clergyman at the mosque on Ford
Road, which is believed to be the largest mosque in the United States.

"He is fine, now, thank God," the imam said.

"My brothers and I were not too happy about our father returning to
Iraq after Saddam fell. But he told us: 'I have lived my life. I need
to go serve my people.' "

The elder al-Qazwini, 75, fled Iraq in the 1970s after Saddam Hussein
sentenced the Shi'a leader to death.

In 32 years of ministry in the United States, he established two
mosques in Los Angeles and one in San Diego.

As the elder al-Qazwini walked home from his mosque in Karbala, gunmen
shot him in his left arm and right thigh. Doctors removed the bullets,
and he is recuperating at home, the younger al-Qazwini said.

The concern at the Islamic Center of America was palpable over the
weekend.

The elder al-Qazwini visited three years ago, a major occasion for
many local Muslims. More than 1,000 turned out to hear him speak.

"It's a shock," said Rana Abbas-Chami, whose grandfather, Imam Mohamad
Jawad Chirri, founded the Islamic Center of America in the 1940s in
Detroit. "It kind of opens your eyes to really how unfortunate the
whole situation is, there in Iraq."

Imam al-Qazwini said his father is expected to recover. Coalition
forces in Iraq announced the arrest of four men in the incident.

"So many people have called, or e-mailed, or stopped by," the younger
al-Qazwini said. "People came in on Sunday, in tears. Muslims and
non-Muslims have talked to me, and it makes me so grateful to God that
my father is loved by everybody and that during tragic times you can
be overwhelmed by expression of love."

You can reach Gregg Krupa at (313) 222-2359 or gkrupa @ detnews.com.

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Math related problems
Ray Hanania
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3263844,00.html


When you really sit down and examine Palestinian-Israeli conflict,
much of it has to do with math

When my wife and I were married, I remember how she wanted to make
sure that our marriage avoided any of the natural hurdles that a union
like ours might be guaranteed.

After all, she is Jewish and I am Palestinian.

Alison said she wanted to be "fair" and make sure that if anything
happened, we each would get "half" of the house.

I thought that was great and gladly signed the prenuptial agreement,
(also called a ketubah, by some).

It wasn't until I translated the Hebrew, and had someone tutor me in
calculus, that I realized she was getting 78 percent of the house and
I was getting 22 percent.

"Hey, that's your half," my wife said with an innocent shrug.

Those Israelis.

Arabs invented mathematics

When you really sit down and examine the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,
much of it has to do with math.

What is more surprising is that the word Algebra is actually an
English Word that comes from Arabic origins.

We invented mathematics! So why are we Arabs so bad at it?

Well, it might be our word but we sure don't know how to use it. Of
course, maybe that's because we really didn't invent it, I guess.

According to Arabs, the word "algebra" comes from the Arabic word
"al-jabr," which comes from the title of the book "al-Kitab
al-Muhtasar fi hisab al-gabr wa-l-mugabala," which seems like a lot of
wasted syllables to say "algebra." (It actually translates to "The
book of Summary Concerning Calculating by Transposition and
Reduction." It was, written by a Persian Muslim Muhammad ibn Musa
al-khwarizmi.)

But, I digress.

Palestinian-Israeli math troubles began long before 1947 but that's as
good a point to star as any. For example, the United Nation's
Partition gave the Jews 55 percent of the British Mandated territory
of Palestine while Arabs were "given" 45 percent. Not quite an even
split. But close.

Ironically, at the time, the Palestinian Arabs out-numbered Jews 2 to
1. But Israel countered that the Arabs had 22 countries and they only
had one. Using Israeli mathematics, that means "equal."

By the time Israel was declared, Israel not only controlled the land
set aside for a Jewish State in the Partition, but they also captured
10 major cities in the Arab portions of the plan, before their state
was even declared.

My cousin Henry Cattan wrote in his book "Palestine, The Arabs and
Israel" that before the end of the mandate and before any intervention
by the Arab states, the Jewish militias occupied most of the Arab
cities in Palestine before May 15, 1948.

"Tiberias was occupied on April 19, 1948, Haifa on April 22, Jaffa on
April 28, the Arab quarters in the New City of Jerusalem on April 30,
Beisan on May 8, Safed on May 10 and Acre on May 14, 1948. In
contrast, the Palestine Arabs did not seize any of the territories
reserved for the Jewish State under the partition resolution."

Not very good terrorists

When the armistice was called, Israel controlled 78 percent of
Palestine and the Palestinians were left with only 22 percent.

I see all kinds of math-related problems in this conflict.

For example, take the Palestinians (I can hear the Israelis screaming
"puhleeeease!"). Palestinians are not that good at what they do. For
example, they don't make very good terrorists. Look at the numbers.
The Israelis might be a little better. For every one Israeli the
Palestinians kill, Israelis kill five Palestinians.

At Camp David, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered to annex only
about 40 percent of the settlers. What a great offer. Of course, that
all depends on how you look at it, I guess.

Israel already annexed 60 percent of the settlers who live in places
like Gilo and around east Jerusalem. The "40 percent" that Barak
proposed basically covers most of those who remained outside of that
area and live in what was left of the West Bank. In the end, he
settled for 80 percent of the remaining settlers in the West Bank.

Gee. Thanks.

The Palestinians negotiated backwards, offering their best deal up
front, recognizing Israel in the "78 percent" of original Mandated
Palestine – keep in mind the other British mandate was not a part of
Palestine and was called Trans-Jordan.

Barak, changing the 40 percent to "80 percent" of the settlers in the
West Bank/Gaza excluding East Jerusalem, infuriated right-wing
Israelis when they added it up and concluded Barak was surrendering 20
percent of the settlers.

Barak stuck with his initial proposal to return "91 to 94" percent of
the 22 percent, (minus east Jerusalem and the land around it), which
basically, according to Palestinian math, means that in the end,
Palestinians would get exactly 18.297 percent, down 3.703 percent from
the 22 percent they wanted.

Better than nothing

Now, I am no math genius. But if the Palestinians wouldn't accept
that, what makes Israelis think they'll accept Olmert's plan which,
according to Palestinian mathematician Saeb Erakat is about 60 percent
of the West Bank.

Olmert says that's just "temporary."

Of course, he's much closer to Einstein, than Saeb Erakat, who
sometimes should try counting to 10 before he opens his mouth. As a
matter of fact, maybe both sides should count to 10 together.

I know it works with me.

Still, the half of the half of the half they offered is better than
nothing, if you are an optimist, although my brother and uncle, who
are engineers, might dispute even that.

According to them, the pessimist sees a glass filled halfway with
water as being half empty while the optimists sees it as being half
full. But, as engineers, they see it from the perspective of the
"third half." A situation like that just means there is a lot of
wasted glass.


Ray Hanania is an award winning Palestinian American journalist,
author and standup comedian.

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Harkat informant called 'insane'
Terrorism suspect freed on bail; expert attacks accuser's credibility

Ian MacLeod
The Ottawa Citizen
Thursday, June 22, 2006
http://www.canada.com/components/print.aspx?id=5531c205-5287-4f4f-8ece-45d504955\
a92&k=7361


Suspected Ottawa terrorist Mohamed Harkat was freed on bail yesterday
as evidence emerged that a former "high-ranking" al-Qaeda informant
who triggered his arrest was, in fact, a relatively minor and
"certifiably insane" operative.

What's more, Abu Zubaydah only revealed his information, including now
questionable details about supposed al-Qaeda plots against the United
States, while being tortured by Central Intelligence Agency interrogators.

The revelations by senior Federal Bureau of Investigation and CIA
officials are contained in The One Percent Doctrine, a new book by
Pulitzer Prize-winning U.S. journalist and author Ron Suskind.

Though it does not mention Mr. Zubaydah's tip about Mr. Harkat, the
Canadian Security Intelligence Service has confirmed he identified Mr.
Harkat as the former operator of a guest house in the Pakistani city
of Peshawar for extremists travelling to Chechnya. Mr. Harkat has
denied any connection to Mr. Zubaydah.

It is not known what other incriminating information Canadian
authorities have against him.

Yet even before Mr. Harkat's December 2002 arrest and detention on a
government-issued security certificate, there were serious doubts
within the FBI and CIA about Mr. Zubaydah's credibility, according to
the book.

Their apprehensions and that "the United States would torture a
mentally disturbed man and leap, screaming, at every word he uttered,"
were ignored by senior White House officials who wanted to publicly
trumpet Mr. Zubaydah's March 2002 capture in Pakistan as a major coup
for the "war on terror," writes Mr. Suskind.

But Mr. Zubaydah was little more than a "travel agent" for al-Qaeda
operatives moving around the globe and had no operational role, says
the book.

Quoting an unnamed top CIA official, it describes a high-level meeting
at CIA headquarters:

"Around the room, a lot of people just rolled eyes when we heard
comments from the White House. I mean, (President George W.) Bush and
(Vice-President Dick) Cheney knew what we knew about Zubaydah. The guy
had psychological issues. He was in a way, expendable. It was like
calling someone who runs a company's in-house travel department the
COO (chief operating officer). The thinking was, why the hell did the
president have to put us in this box?"

Mr. Harkat's lawyer, Matt Webber, yesterday said the book's assertions
about Mr. Zubaydah credibility are "quite staggering.

"It goes to show just how unreliable some of the (intelligence)
information is. How could this have ever been presented as a reliable
source of information in light of this?"

In March 2002, nine months before Mr. Harkat's arrest, Mr. Zubaydah
was captured by CIA, FBI and Pakistani intelligence officers at his
home in Faisalabad, Pakistan. Authorities, writes Mr. Suskind,
believed he was an important, but mysterious player in al-Qaeda.

Counter-terrorism intelligence over the previous two years had picked
up numerous references to the 30-year-old Saudi-born Palestinian. "His
name was intoned by operatives at all levels, by new recruits, by foot
soldiers, and wannabes throughout South Asia and the Mideast. It
wasn't always clear what Zubaydah was doing, or where he fit in the
wider organization. Just that he seemed to connect people."

A few days after the capture, former White House spokesman Ari
Fleischer described Mr. Zubaydah as a "key terrorist recruiter and
operational planner and member of Osama Bin Laden's inner circle."

But when Dan Coleman, at the time a senior FBI al-Qaeda expert, and
other al-Qaeda hunters at the CIA read Mr. Zubaydah's 10-year diary,
retrieved with other documents during his capture, they were stunned.
"In it, Zubaydah wrote of his exploits in the voice of three people:
Hani 1, Hani 2, and Hani 3. Hani 1 was a boy, really, 10 years younger
than the youthful Zubaydah's real age. Hani 2 was the same age as
Zubaydah; and Hani 3 was 10 years older," Mr. Coleman, now retired,
recalled.

"Zubaydah wrote impressions of countless days, years all told, of
meeting with potential recruits, and his reactions to events and news
reports -- from all three perspectives. Each Hani had a distinctive
voice and personality.

"What was being observed, by three pairs of eyes, meanwhile, was often
less than compelling -- what people ate, or wore, or trifling things
they said ... in page after page after page.

"Zubaydah was a logistics man, a fixer, mostly for a niggly array of
personal items, like the guy you call who handles the company health
plan, or benefits, or the people in human resources. There was almost
nothing 'operational' in his portfolio."

The CIA, writes Mr. Suskind, had long suspected that Mr. Zubaydah was
involved in the August 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa. But
under those dates in his diary "there was nothing," said Mr. Coleman,
"nothing but nonsense.

"This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality," the book quotes
Mr. Coleman as telling a top FBI officials a few days after reading
the diary.

"That's why they let him fly all over the world doing meets and
greets. That's why people used his name on all sorts of calls and
e-mails. He was like a travel agent, the guy who booked your flights.
You can see from what he writes how burdened he is with all these
logistics -- getting families of operatives, wives and kids, in and
out of countries. He knew very little about real operations, or
strategy."

In a speech two weeks after the capture, U.S. President George W. Bush
-- who, according to the book, had by then been briefed on Mr.
Zubaydah's apparent mental instability and non-operational role in
al-Qaeda -- revealed the arrest. "The other day we hauled in a guy
named Abu Zubaydah," he told Republican Party contributors. "He's one
of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction to
the United States. He's not plotting and planning anymore. He's
where he belongs."

Senior FBI and CIA officials cringed, according to Mr. Suskind. Mr.
Zubaydah, meanwhile, was increasingly referred to in news reports as
"chief of operations" for al-Qaeda, "a top al-Qaeda lieutenant",
"number three" to Osama bin Laden and even his potential heir.

Mr. Suskind alleges the Bush administration's demonization of Mr.
Zubaydah was "misleading the public for no apparent reason except
short-term political gain (that) seemed wilful and self-interested."

Yet his portrayal of Mr. Zubaydah is at odds with other
characterizations and information about the man.

The 9/11 Commission that investigated the circumstances surrounding
the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against the U.S., said Mr.
Zubaydah was a "major figure" in the 1999 Millennium Plot. In that
case, Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian refugee claimant living in Montreal,
took part in the foiled al-Qaeda plot to bomb the Los Angeles airport
that December. He was convicted in the U.S. in April 2001. (The report
notes that Mr. Zubaydah also asked Mr. Ressam to get genuine Canadian
passports for other terrorists to use.)

A Jordanian court later sentenced Mr. Zubaydah to death in absentia
for his role in a thwarted plot to bomb hotels there during millennium
celebrations.

In May 2002, according to the book, Mr. Zubaydah became the first
suspected terrorist to experience the U.S.'s new legal interpretation
that the Geneva Convention's treatment of prisoners of war provisions
does not apply to the U.S. in the treatment of suspected terrorists
captured overseas. He is believed to be in custody at the U.S.
terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"According to sources, (Mr. Zubaydah) was water-hooded, a technique in
which a captive's face is covered with a towel as water is poured
atop, creating the sensation of drowning," says the book. "He was
beaten. He was repeatedly threatened, and made certain of his
impending death. His medication was withheld. He was bombarded with
deafening, continuing noise and harsh lights."

Under his duress, Mr. Suskind writes, Mr. Zubaydah told his captors
that U.S. shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, public water systems,
nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge and Statue of
Liberty were being targeted by al-Qaeda. He also revealed the name of
Jose Padilla. Days later, Mr. Padilla, a U.S. citizen, was arrested in
Chicago on suspicion he planned to set off a radioactive "dirty bomb"
in the U.S.

Mr. Padilla was then detained for three years without charges in
military jails before being indicted in federal civilian court last
November on charges of conspiring to murder, kidnap and maim Americans
overseas and of providing material support to terrorists. He has never
charged in connection with the alleged dirty-bomb plot.

Meanwhile, Mr. Harkat's lawyers have successfully argued in federal
court that Mr. Zubaydah's allegations against their client should be
deemed not credible because of mounting evidence that his information
was obtained through torture.

Last year, in a decision upholding the security certificate against
Mr. Harkat, Justice Eleanor Dawson concluded Mr. Harkat had associated
with Mr. Zubaydah. But she based this on secret evidence --
disregarding the statements from Mr. Zubaydah himself -- because of
doubts over how he "came to provide information about Mr. Harkat."

Mr. Harkat refused to be interviewed yesterday, but his wife, Sophie,
relayed to him the details from the book.

"Mo's comment was that he doesn't know Abu Zubaydah," she said. "I've
always believed that what Abu Zubaydah has said was untrue. It just
proves that these allegations are ridiculous."


Senior writer Ian MacLeod is editor for national security and
terrorism. imacleod @ thecitizen.canwest.com

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MP to investigate Dr Kelly's death
By Hélène Mulholland
The Guardian, UK
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13120.htm


A backbench MP is to investigate the "unanswered questions" from the
official inquiry into the death of weapons scientist Dr David Kelly.

The former Liberal Democrat environmental spokesman Norman Baker today
revealed his decision to stand down from the shadow cabinet two months
ago was based on a quest to establish the "truth" behind Dr Kelly's death.

Mr Baker said he wanted to return to the issue because the 2003 Hutton
inquiry had "blatantly failed to get to the bottom of matters".

He vowed to question ministers and to unearth new facts in a bid to
establish the "truth" of the case.
Dr Kelly was found dead on July 18 2003 after being named as the
possible source of a BBC story on the government's Iraq dossier.

Later that month Lord Hutton was appointed head of an independent
inquiry into the events surrounding Dr Kelly's death. After a
two-month inquiry, Lord Hutton concluded the scientist had taken his
own life.

Oxford coroner Nicholas Gardiner subsequently looked into the
possibility of reopening the inquest into Dr Kelly's death, but after
reviewing the evidence with the lord chancellor, decided that there
was no case for doing so.

Mr Baker explained that he had decided to wait until he relinquished
his environmental role before embarking on an investigation to find
out the "truth" that the Hutton inquiry had failed to deliver.

"It did not answer questions," he told Guardian Unlimited today.

"It was not carried out using proper rules of evidence, people were
not giving evidence under oath and the whole thing became a criticism
of the BBC."

Mr Baker said he had given himself a year to carry out his inquiries.
This will include revising the medical evidence, interviews with
experts and looking at issues relating to the government's "behaviour"
in the affair, as well as the weapons of mass destruction claims made
in the months preceding Dr Kelly's death.

Mr Baker admitted he already holds a "number of theories" about the
scientist's death, but declined to speculate so early into his
investigation, which began two months ago just after he stood down
from his shadow post.

Mr Baker, who is known for his forensic use of parliamentary
questions, insisted his decision to stand down after six years as
environment spokesman was his choice alone.

"I have long been unhappy about the sequence of events and I was
unhappy at the time about the way the Hutton inquiry was conducted and
I wanted to free up some time to look into this," he said.

"I haven't informed the party leadership yet," he added. Asked if Dr
Kelly's widow, Janice, was aware of his plans, Mr Baker said: "I
recognise the sensitivity of the matter for the family and the need to
speak with them, but only if they prepared to do so."

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Threatened, abused, raped and tortured: such is the fate of untold
numbers of Iraqi women amid the barbarous practices of the occupation.


The height of humiliation:
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/800/focus.htm


Within months of the occupation of Iraq, complaints surfaced of human
rights violations in prisons administered by occupation authorities.
It took almost a year and published photographs of horrific incidents
of torture in Abu Ghraib before the world began to heed the voices of
detainees and those trying to defend them.

Today, four years into the Anglo- American occupation, tens of
thousands of Iraqis are still languishing in prison without charge, no
trial in sight, deprived of the right to contest the grounds of their
detention before judicial authorities. For various reasons, Iraqi
women, too, have been caught up in the sweep of detentions and account
for a goodly percentage of detainees, not only in Abu Ghraib, but in
many other prisons. In addition to suffering the same hardships as
male inmates, the women endure another plight: silence. The plight is
two-fold, emanating, first, from the occupation authorities' denial
that there are female detainees to begin with, and second from the
nature of the stigma surrounding the arrest and detention of women.

I will discuss here obfuscations surrounding the existence of "female
security detainees" and the pretexts cited by occupation authorities
for detaining them. I will then address how women are treated during
the arrest and interrogation process, for their ordeal does not begin
in prison but rather from the moment security forces descend upon them.

DENIAL: Occupation authorities (by which I mean foreign military
forces and Iraqi army, police and special forces operating under the
command of the occupation) apply the term "security detainee" to all
"security detainees arrested under the provisions of UN Security
Council Resolution 1546 on the grounds that they are considered an
imperative threat to the stability and security of Iraq". So much for
theory. In practice, a "security detainee" is anyone who has been
subject to random arrest -- i.e. without a court order -- regardless
of sex, age or circumstances.

Numerous rights organisations have reported the presence, "for
security reasons," of female detainees in many prisons throughout
Iraq. Evidence indicates widespread maltreatment, degradation and
physical and psychological torture, in addition to unhealthy and
unhygienic conditions of detention. There remains considerable
uncertainty about the number of female detainees.

Among organisations involved in documenting the detention of Iraqi
women are several independent women's and human rights groups
operating inside Iraq and abroad (such as Women's Will, Occupation
Watch, the Iraqi League and the Human Rights' Voice of Freedom),
official and political party publications (notably those produced by
the Association of Muslim Scholars, the Iraqi Islamic Party, the Iraqi
National Media and Culture Organisation), and international agencies
and human rights and anti-war organisations (Amnesty International,
the International Red Cross, the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq, and
the BRussells Tribunal).

In addition, there is the personal testimony of detainees following
their release. One such case is Hoda Al-Azawi, who was interviewed
following her release from Abu Ghraib. Another is Abdul- Jabbar
Al-Kubaysi, secretary-general of the Iraqi Patriotic Alliance, who
spent over a year in detention in Camp Cropper and who recalls
hearing, night after night, day after day, the cries and screams of
women being tortured under interrogation.

SECRECY AND SCANDAL: Estimates of the number of Iraqis arrested since
the invasion in March 2003 range from 30,000 to 100,000. A heavy cloak
of secrecy and misinformation surrounds the status and welfare of
security detainees, even ones as well known as the short story writer
and translator Mohsen Al-Khafafi who was arrested in April 2003 and
only released in April this year. In general, occupation authorities
refuse to be specific about the number of detainees -- perhaps to be
at liberty to increase or reduce their number as deemed necessary.

The same applies to the extent and whereabouts of female detainees.
However, in their case the source of secrecy is two-fold: over the
first two years at least, not only did the occupation want to cover up
its detention of women, so too did their families. There were two
major reasons why these families would have wanted to collude in the
silence. First, the detained women may have been members of the Baath
Party or one of its agencies and they feared revenge. Second, they
feared the stigma of having a female relative in prison, the thought
of which conjures up rape and unwanted pregnancy.

Occupation authorities, for their part, were eager to deny the
existence of female detainees, especially after the sexual abuse
scandal at Abu Ghraib. They refused to release information in the hope
of deceiving public opinion at both the international and domestic
levels. Internationally, the Bush administration was particularly wary
of international peace, human rights and women's rights organisations
and activists. After congressional members saw photographs of female
prisoners at Abu Ghraib forced at gunpoint to bare their breasts,
officials in the Bush administration blocked these photographs from
going public. Although they cited reprisal attacks against US forces
in Iraq, it is commonly believed that the cover up was to spare the US
additional international ignominy.

Inside Iraq, occupation authorities suppressed information about
female detainees so as not to provoke anger, on the one hand, and so
as to give the Iraqi people the sense that the occupation respected
local traditions, especially with regard to the sensitive status of
women, on the other. On occasion, Iraqi collaborators helped promote
this impression. On 18 April 2004, Ministry of Interior Chief Ahmed
Youssef issued a statement denying maltreatment of female detainees.
He said: "we are Muslims. We know very well how to treat our female
detainees."

Apart from cases of such well-known detainees as Hoda Saleh Ammash and
Rihab Taha, occupation authorities are generally mute about the
existence of female detainees. Available information gives lie to
their silence.

MALTREATMENT AND PROOF: On 20 April 2004, Abdul-Bassat Turki, the
first Iraqi minister of human rights, gave an interview to The
Guardian on the condition of female prisoners in Iraq. Turki had
recently resigned from his post in protest against the human rights
violations committed by American forces and Paul Bremer's
determination to ignore his reports and to refuse him permission to
visit Abu Ghraib.

Turki told the Guardian that he had warned Bremer repeatedly of the
abuses of prisoners in Abu Ghraib, but that Bremer had consistently
ignored all warnings. In December 2003, a month before the US military
mounted its own secret investigation into Abu Ghraib, Turki phoned
Bremer to complain of the treatment of female detainees. "They had
been denied medical treatment. They had no proper toilet. They had
only been given one blanket, even though it was winter," the former
minister said.

Amnesty International interviewed several female victims of
maltreatment and torture after their release from Abu Ghraib. Many
complained of having been beaten, threatened with rape, verbally
abused and held in solitary confinement for long periods of time. One
Amnesty report states that since the invasion in 2003 women in Iraqi
jails have been routinely threatened with rape.

One of the rare occasions in which Anne Clwyd, the British human
rights envoy to Iraq, was moved to speak out about human rights
violations after the invasion was when she learned of the arrest and
subsequent torture of a 70-year-old woman, whose torturers forced her
into a makeshift bridle and then mounted her like a donkey.

A report by the Iraqi Women's Will organisation listed the types of
physical and psychological torture inflicted upon women in Iraqi
jails. Amongst the most degrading is being brought in nude for
questioning and hence subject to derisive and humiliating remarks by
interrogators, wardens and translators. Prior to this, detainees are
routinely threatened to be deprived of water, food, have been confined
to small cages inhibiting all movement, exposed to extremes of heat
and cold, and subject to forced sleep deprivation.

Hoda Al-Ezawi relates that she was kept in solitary confinement for
156 days. Then her sister was arrested and thrown into the cell with
her, along with the corpse of their dead brother. Among the other
types of torture inflicted upon her was to be kept standing for more
than 12 hours straight while subject to continual threat and
intimidation. US forces and the Iraqi National Guard arrested Al-Ezawi
along with her two daughters, Nora, 15, and Sara, 20, on 17 February
2005 on the charge of supporting the resistance.

Ali Al-Qeisi, the man whose torturers thrust a bag over his head,
forced to stand on a crate as they coiled wires around him and then
photographed producing the picture that has become a worldwide symbol
of the occupation and the horror of Abu Ghraib, recalls his anguish at
hearing the screams and cries of female detainees. "Their food was
brought into their cells by naked men," he relates, adding, "we felt
helpless as we listened to their screams, unable to do anything but
pray to God Almighty."

The Ministry of Interior's Wolf Brigade arrested Khalda Zaki, a
46-year-old housewife, in her native Mosul. Soon afterwards she
appeared on Iraqi state television claiming she had supported an
insurgent group. Later she retracted this confession, revealing how
her captors had whipped her and threatened to rape her. The "Wolves",
a group founded in October 2004, received two months' intensive
training by American military personnel before being deployed in
security operations against "armed groups". The brigade has become
notorious for its use of torture and other forms of inhuman treatment.

Suheib Baz, a cameraman for Al-Jazeera, told The Independent that he
had personally seen a 12-year-old girl being tortured: "She was naked,
and crying out to me for help while being beaten." He also relates
that prison wardens would photograph these horrors.

Still, the denial continues or the figures are airbrushed. As a
result, we continue to encounter such reports as, "On 6 February 2006,
a military spokesman told the French Press Agency that 50 detainees
had been released, although he denied that any women were among them,"
and "four women have remained in detention after 400 detainees were
released last month, among whom were five women."

British authorities recently announced that since October 2005,
British authorities no longer held any women or children in custody.
Even taking this statement at face value, it indicates that British
authorities had detained women and children prior to that date, in
conflict with previous denials.

It also conflicts with statements made by General Muntazer Al-Samerani
in interview with the French Press Agency in December 2005. The former
supervisor of Iraqi Special Forces revealed the existence of nine
secret detention centres as well as the existence of women detention
centres in Baghdad in the districts of Kazemiya and Rishad. He added
that the women in these centres were routinely subject to torture and
rape.

On 20 October 2005, officials of the Kazemiya women's prison confirmed
an instance of rape. The UN was refused permission to investigate.

According to a report of the UN Assistance Mission to Iraq, Iraqi
police tortured a woman detained in Diwaniya police station since
March 2005. The victim recounted that electric shocks were applied to
her heels. She was told that her teenage daughter would be raped if
she did not supply the information her interrogators wanted.

This is the tip of the iceberg. A report published by the Iraqi
National Association for Human Rights on 29 October 2005 found that
women held in Interior Ministry detention centres are subject to
numerous human rights violations, including "systematic rape by the
investigators and to other forms of bodily harm in order to coerce
them into making confessions". The report added that prisons fail to
meet even the most basic standards of hygiene and that the women were
deprived of facilities as fundamental as toilets. The Ministry of
Justice has confirmed the accuracy of the report.

In such circumstances, it is insult to injury that female detainees
are often forced to sign a paper prior to their release in which they
testify to being properly treated. The purpose of this affidavit is to
silence them and deprive them of recourse to litigation in the future.

It should be noted, here, that the first question that is put to
female detainees is: "Are you Sunni or Shia?" The second is, "Are you
a virgin?"

METHODS OF ARREST: Random arrests continue in spite of the so-called
"national unity government". Occupation forces are deliberately as
brutal as possible when they raid people's homes. They threaten women,
"confiscate" money, jewellery and other property, force women to watch
as they deliberately humiliate their husbands, sons or fathers, and
sometimes order them to take pictures with the cameras of American
soldiers.

Most arrests and raids take place after midnight while people are
asleep. In some neighbourhoods, women now sleep fully dressed so as
not to be caught in their nightgowns if their homes are raided.

Heavy artillery -- including tanks and helicopters -- are sometimes
deployed in raids, despite the fact that such a display of force far
exceeds the demands of the operation. Slapping, kicking and insulting
male members of the household and locking women and children into
bathrooms are a matter of course.

In Mosul, on 18 June 2005, the Iraqi League met several former female
detainees and relatives of women still in prison. The league learned
the following: security forces routinely take wives, parents, brothers
or sisters, or even minors, as hostages in the event the suspect they
are pursuing is not home.

Interrogators almost invariably ask women who have been taken into
detention about the whereabouts of their male relatives rather than
restricting their questions to acts for which the women themselves may
have been accountable.

There are numerous women in prison who were still nursing infants at
the time of their arrest and suffer intense psychological trauma from
being separated from their children.

UNLAWFUL PRETEXTS: One of the most widespread causes of the detention
of women in Iraq is to be used as bargaining chips to force their male
relatives to surrender to authorities. Wives and daughters are brought
in and threatened with rape in front of their male relatives so as to
coerce the latter into confessions.

Not uncommon, too, is for women to be arrested on the grounds of
"supporting the resistance". The stories below only hint at the scale
of the constant threat that hangs over the heads of Iraqi women:

"Zakiya Sabaawi has been arrested because her husband, who is wanted
by the occupation army, has fled ... "

"Iman Ahmed, of Amiriya, was taken into custody in order to force her
brother, who is being pursued by occupation forces, to surrender himself."

"Sara Taha Al-Jumaili of Falluja was arrested twice. The first time
occurred on 19 October 2005, when US forces alleged that she was the
daughter of Zarqawi. It is common knowledge that Sara is the daughter
of Taha Al-Jumaili, the well- known politician, who was under
detention with the occupation forces when Sara was arrested. She was
released in response to a popular demonstration and the declaration of
a general strike. She was arrested again on 8 November on the charge
of being a terrorist. Again, she was not released until the people
declared a general strike and disseminated leaflets threatening the
occupation forces with retaliatory acts."

"An official at the Iraqi Ministry of Justice announced yesterday that
a board of review, consisting of six Iraqi officials and three
American officers, met on 17 January and agreed to release the six
Iraqi female detainees within a few days. Yesterday, the Ministry of
Justice confirmed that it still expects US forces to release the
women, in spite of US statements to the contrary... Since that time,
the statements of Iraqi officials have conflicted with the statements
of their American counterparts with regard to the release of six of
the eight Iraqi women being held in American prisons on suspicion of
involvement in terrorism."

"Occupation forces arrested Ilham Hussein, whose husband, Yasser
Ibrahim Hassan, had just been killed in front of her and her family on
6 May 2006 during a raid on their home in the university district in
central Baghdad. The couple had just celebrated the birth of their
first son five days ago."

UNKNOWN JAILS: There are no exact figures on the number of jails and
detention camps controlled by occupation authorities. According to a
recent Amnesty International report, most "security detainees" are
held in one of four American-run facilities: Camp Bukka outside Basra,
Abu Ghraib in Baghdad, Camp Cropper in Baghdad and Fort Sousa near
Suleimaniya. In addition to these, US forces use the detention
facilities of various regiments throughout the country for temporary
purposes. British forces hold a number of "security detainees" in a
detention facility in the Shoeiba Camp near Basra.

Iman Khammas maintains that there are five secret prisons in Iraq on
top of the 10 known, of which three are in Baghdad: the notorious Abu
Ghraib, Al-Kazimiya and Al-Risafa. On 4 May 2004, Deputy Operations
Commander Major General Jeffrey Miller told a press conference that in
addition to the three major detention centres operated by the US army
there were 13 or 14 smaller camps used for the assessment of
detainees. Hajj Ali, director of the Organisation for the Defence of
Detainees in Occupation Jails, remarked: "Under Saddam there were 13
prisons. Now there are 36 run by the government and 200 run by the
militias. All these have the approval of the American government."

According to the report of the US State Department's Democracy and
Human Rights Bureau of 6 March 2006, there are 450 detention centres
in Iraq. Some of these are administered the Ministry of Interior and
others by the Iraqi Ministry of Defence. In addition, there are secret
detention centres scattered throughout the country. Kurdish parties
also run at least five detention centres outside the official penal
system.

THIS IS INTOLERABLE: Torture and inhuman treatment are regarded as
gross violations of human rights under the Fourth Geneva Convention
(Article 147). Even following the supposed transfer of authority on 28
June 2004, the UN Security Council reaffirmed the continued and full
standing of, and obligation of all parties to respect, international
humanitarian law in Iraq, including the Geneva Conventions.

Torture and inhuman treatment are prohibited under international law,
as reflected in the Rome Statute establishing the International
Criminal Court (Article 8:2) where cruel and inhuman treatment and
torture in non-international armed disputes are considered war crimes.

Whereas Amnesty International ranked the security detention system --
and the acts of torture and brutality inflicted upon the detainees in
that system -- as crimes of war, it described the system that
supplanted it following the handover of sovereignty as tyrannical
because of the systematic and widespread violations of fundamental
human rights and international humanitarian law.

The human rights organisation holds American-led multinational forces
in Iraq directly responsible for these crimes, including those that
are increasingly perpetrated by Iraqi security forces. International
law and international humanitarian law make absolutely no exceptions
on the prohibition of torture, even under conditions of emergency or
warfare.

Compounding the intolerable, "multinational forces", and all who work
with them, enjoy immunity from prosecution under Iraqi civil and
criminal law, in accordance with Security Council Resolution 1546 and
the accompanying exchange of letters between Iraqi and American
authorities. In addition, the recommendations of the joint board of
review for the release of detainees, whose membership includes
representatives from the Iraqi ministries of justice, interior and
human rights, are not binding. It is the multinational forces' deputy
commanding general for detention operations who has the ultimate say
as to whether or not a detainee is to be released.

With respect to Iraqi governments under occupation, until now there
are no cases of perpetrators of maltreatment, torture and murder
having been brought to justice, with the sole exception of a few
policemen in Baghdad charged with the systematic rape and torture of
female detainees.

Female detainees, like men and children in Iraqi jails, are the
victims of a brutal, degrading and life-threatening system. In
addition, the gender-related injustices perpetrated in the course of
arrest, interrogation and detention constitute a deliberate affront to
the cherished values and morals of Iraqi society.

There will be no end to these violations as long as Iraq remains
occupied by forces that enjoy immunity from prosecution under Iraqi
law and as long as occupation authorities continue to treat Iraqi
citizens with racist contempt in order to feel better about plundering
the nation's wealth and depriving its people of their most fundamental
rights under international law and human rights conventions. It is all
the more unfortunate that this situation is condoned by Iraqi
authorities that claim to represent an independent and sovereign nation.


* The writer is a London-based Iraqi novelist.

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From stitching to playing with soccer balls
http://www.dawn.com/cgi-bin/dina.pl?file=nat26.htm&date=20060613


SIALKOT, June 12: Twelve-year-old Adnan Nazir spent three years
working, literally, until his fingers bled from hand-stitching
footballs that the world's soccer elite prefer. But on a recent
sweltering day, he got to play with one of these balls for the first
time in a team of other boys who, like Nazir, were taken from
sweatshops where they had worked and enrolled in schools as part of a
UN-led project against child labour.

"There was no school in my village so my parents sent me to a factory
to stitch balls," Nazir said before kickoff in his game in Sialkot,
near Lahore, where 75 per cent of the world's soccer balls are
manufactured.

"Life was hard and I hated my work, but now I can go to school and
learn," he said.

The United Nations, which held its World Day against Child Labour on
Monday, coaxed Sialkot's football manufacturers into agreeing to ban
children from making hand-stitched footballs, which are preferred by
the world's leading soccer teams.

Last week, the UN's International Labour Organisation went a step
further, launching a FIFA-funded project in Sialkot to form soccer
clubs for former child workers, train coaches and equip players.

"All children have the right to play and not be made to work in
hazardous workplaces," said Nick Grisewood, a consultant employed by
the ILO to create the `football initiative'.

Grisewood predicted that the project would be rolled out next year
across cricket-crazy Pakistan and other countries to help former child
labourers. Currently, some 170 million children between nine and 17
work in hazardous environments around the world, according to the UN.

In Sialkot, more than 10,000 children have been taken out of stitching
centres where they worked for hours each day hunched over a football
wedged between their knees while forcing three-inch needles through
thick leather, earning the equivalent of a few cents per ball.

Football manufacturers have phased out children working at stitching
centres under a 1997 agreement with the ILO and FIFA, the football's
governing body.

Manufacturers in Sialkot have set up registered stitching centres
where no child below 14 can work. Major buyers like Adidas and Nike
require manufacturers to verify their balls have not been made using
child labour.

Despite the success in the football-stitching industry, Pakistan has
more to do in curbing child labour in other fields, including
agriculture, mining, deep-sea fishing, surgical goods manufacturing
and brick-making.

About three million Pakistani boys and girls between the ages of five
and 14 work, about eight per cent of the country's child population.

More than half work in rural areas where few or no child labour
eradication projects are in place, particularly in Punjab and Sindh
where children handle pesticides and heavy machinery.

"One of the greatest challenges for us is to break into the rural
areas where adults traditionally rely on donkeys or children to work
the land," said ILO's Pakistan-based chief technical officer Ahmet
Ozirmak.

Improving funding for education, streamlining government bureaucracy
and better informing parents about the dangers to children in
workplaces were crucial to improving the situation, Ozirmak said. — AP

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Jews for and against Jesus
By Israel Adam Shamir
http://www.israelshamir.net/English/Jews_and_Jesus.htm


Jews are evil, and there is a special place in hell just for them. I'd
say to them: Believe whatever you want. Practice whatever you preach.
Just stay the hell away from us.

Do not rush to denounce me, do not send this piece post-haste to your
local branch of ADL or LICRA, do not send police to my home. I did not
quote Adolf Hitler, no worry. This was a direct quote from Haaretz
newspaper, from an article by the newspaper columnist Bradley Burston.
With one omission: "for Jesus". The evil ones, according to Haaretz,
are only the `Jews for Jesus', who should be sent to hell. `Jews
against Jesus' are perfectly loveable.

Burston's outburst of hate deserves to be analysed. Jews are good, he
says; what makes some Jews evil is their love to Christ. Ergo, Christ
is really hateful in the eyes of Burston; and apparently the most
liberal newspaper in Israel finds nothing objectionable in this line.
I bet the Christian supporters of Israel also will wipe the spit off
their face and claim it was just a spot of rain. The Pope and Kofi
Annan issued no reproach, and the Congress did not declare a day of
mourning, as they do whenever Jews are mentioned in less than
favourable context. The very Christian president Bush did not mention
this hate talk to Prime Minister Olmert, when they met in the White
House. The newspapers of the West were busy spreading lies about Iran,
and paid no attention to the assault on the faith of their silent
majorities.

Burston dissimulates somewhat to cover his tracks. Instead of saying
outright: "Yes, I hate Jesus and despise Christians", he looks for
another fault of the "Jews for Jesus": they carry out a missionary
activity. Proselytizing is persecution, he whines; do not preach to
Jews. If "proselytizing is persecution", why does the Jewish state
spend a lot of their taxpayers' money (and it includes taxes collected
from Christians, too) to proselytise and convert the Christians into
Jewish faith? There is an official state program to convert 200,000
Russian Christians in Israel into the faith of "Jews against Jesus".
The program is headed by a government official, and is quite active.

Moreover, if "proselytizing is persecution", why "Jews against Jesus"
carry out their anti-Christian propaganda from New York to Moscow? If
you do not like your beliefs being undermined, why do you undermine
the beliefs of others? Indeed, Jews often say they do not proselytise.
It is true up to a point: while Christians want to turn Jews into
their brothers-Christians, the Jews do not want to turn others into
full-fledged Jews, they are quite satisfied if others are profaned and
turned away from Christ. And they work for it: they sue churches,
spread horrible stories about paedophile priests, ban Christmas,
propagate the Gospel of Judas. They do it under the cover of
"secularism", which is but a gentile-facing Judaism, a form of
Mammon-worship. "Just stay the hell away from us", calls Burston to
the `Jews for Jesus'. Well, should not he give this advice to his
coreligionists, `Jews against Jesus', and march them back to ghetto?

Burston bewails: "It's hard enough to be Jewish as it is. It's tough
to be Jewish if you're secular, and it's no less difficult if you're
religious. It's tough to be Jewish in the Diaspora if you live among
non-Jews. It's tough to live there if you live among lots of Jews."
Well, it is tough because it is unnatural. It's tough to live
believing that everybody hates you and wants to kill you. It is tough
to deny Christ because His sun warms us all. It is tough and it is
unnecessary, like sleeping on sharp nails. People who describe
themselves as "Jews" are also human; they also need Christ, and His
denial is much more harmful for their souls than any denial of
holocaust can be.

"Respect this religion (of Jews against Jesus), let this religion
live", says Burston in his sequel. No way. Your "Jewish religion"
which includes "secular Jews" is not a religion. "Secular Jew" is as
impossible as "secular Christian" but its implication is much worse:
if an observant Jew still believes in God, a secular Jew is a man who
placed his ethnic origin in stead of God; a man whose superiority
complex of chosenness is not mitigated by meekness required by the
faith. Why is it not enough for a secular person to be what he is, an
Israeli in Israel, an American in America, a Russian in Russia? Isn't
it just a desire to be special, when one is not? Of them, the Gospel
says: "they claim they are Jews but they are not". There is nothing
inherently wrong in the descendents of Jews: after parting with their
superiority spirit, they can become as good as any, and it is up to
each one to decide whether to claim that one is a Jew or just an
ordinary Israeli, American, Russian.

In Israel, as elsewhere, more and more people stop to count themselves
among `the Jews' and join the nation they live amongst. An important
Israeli writer A.B. Yehoshua and the philosopher Menahem Brinker
noticed that the Palestinians are part of their nation much more so
than the Jews of Manhattan or Chicago - the connection with whom, in
their eyes, is a thing of the past. It is a beginning of an
independence movement: until now, the state of Israel is a colony of
World Jewry, but we feel that this umbilical cord should be severed as
it stops the development of the new nation, which includes all
inhabitants of the Holy Land and excludes the Jews elsewhere.

The Holy Land can work wonders. An American Jew cried to Lord saying:
"I have sent my son to Jerusalem and he turned to Christ", and the
Lord replied: "It happened to My Son, too". The old joke may become
true on a large scale, as the Jewish state in Palestine proves ethical
impossibility and undesirability of Jewish paradigm. All gloomy
prophecies of anti-Judaic thinkers were materialised here. The goyim
are locked up, starved and bombed in this window-case of Jewish
generosity, Gaza strip. When the Jews do not lobby for nuking Iran,
they shoot at Lebanon. The foreign workers have zero rights, are
frequently deported and even their meagre salaries are often not paid
to them. Israeli workers' lot is not enviable, either: while
landlords, usurers and stock exchange players operate tax-free, labour
is taxed to brim. The Jewish state is good for dentists, money dealers
and rabbis; it is not good for the rest, because it is a Jewish state.

As for Burston's request for respect, it is impossible for us to
respect your "religion" that teaches hate to Christ and Christians.
Long before Inquisition, in the first century, the Jews incorporated a
special birkat haminim, Anathema to Christians in their daily prayer;
it is said even now by pious Jews every morning. T'is better to die
than to be healed by a Christian, ruled the Mishna. Talmud improved on
it and allowed to kill Christians, especially ex-Jews, at any
occasion, and turned it into a commandment. Maimonides, the great
luminary of Judaism, turned simple hate into the whole system: a Jew
should not follow Christians, should not bow to His image, should not
make His image for oneself or for others, but a Jew should burn down a
Christian city, and never allow to rebuild it. Furthermore, a Jew has
to dislike an active Christian (a "misleader"), not to refrain from
hating a Christian, not to save a Christian missionary from death, not
to credit a missionary with any merits, not to refrain from doing bad
to misleaders etc. To our luck, the Jews of our days do not follow
these commandments anymore than they observe the ban on shaving their
beards.

Still, Burston chose "Jews for Jesus" as his favourite object of hate.
Indeed, Jewish hatred to Christ and Christians is deeply entrenched,
but their hatred to their former brethren who defected from the gang,
takes the proverbial cherry. The South-Eastern corner of Temple Mount
enclosure retains a gruesome memory of an encounter between Jews for
and against Jesus. In year AD 65, some thirty years after the
Resurrection, love to Christ made great inroads into the community of
hate, and burstons of that time decided to deal with Jews for Jesus
the only way they know. They invited Jacob, the Brother of the Lord,
(apparently he was a son of Joseph from an early marriage and grew up
together with Jesus) and asked him to explain to people that Jesus was
not the Messiah nor Son of God. Jacob agreed to appear before the
people. A huge crowd gathered on the Temple grounds, waiting for the
much publicised appearance of Jacob who was well-known for his saintly
ways. His knees were like those of a camel for he knelt a lot, said
the people. He fasted and prayed all the time for Jerusalem and its
unruly folk. Jacob was also the bishop of the Church of Jerusalem, and
a man who still tried to be a Jew and a Christian in the same time.
The priests asked for quiet, and called Jacob to witness. And the old
saintly bishop came up and witnessed: Jesus is Christ. Burstons of the
time roared: these Jews for Jesus are evil; and dropped the old man
down from the Temple corner. As he did not die immediately, they went
down and killed him. That was the end of `Jews for Jesus', for
centuries to come.

Since then, many, many Jews embraced Christ, but they did not try to
seat on two chairs or dance on two weddings at once. In a way, I agree
with Burston: let us leave the appellation of `Jews' to Christ-haters
like Burston and Steinsaltz, to war criminals like Mofaz and
Wolfowitz, to supporters of genocide in Palestine like Elie Wiesel and
Alan Dershowitz, to crooks like George Soros and Marc Rich. Leave this
appellation to the small community of Neturei Karta who observe all
the commandments and support Iran and the Palestinians, for they are
the just men in the Jewish Sodom. But we do not have to stay in Sodom.
Much as I sympathise with `Jews for Jesus', and ready to defend them
from burstons, I disagree with their clinging to the past. They try to
put new wine into old skins (Luke 5:37, Matthew 9:17). Good that they
discovered Jesus, but it is `Jews' part of them that should be
discarded. They remind of the Talmudic adage: "tovel vesheretz
beyado", they baptise while not letting go of the reptile tail. If
they live in the Holy Land, they can be Palestinian (or Israeli)
Christians; if they live in the US, they can be Americans of any
Christian denomination they choose. They are chosen as the members of
a new chosen folk, that of the Church which is New Israel, and they do
not need the old trappings. Let them follow bishops and saints of
Jewish origin, who gave up the pretensions of Jews and accepted the
crown of Christ. Nobody has to be a Jew, and as their crimes in
Palestine multiply, it is imperative not to be one.

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Terrorists in Miami, Oh My!
By Robert Parry
Consortium News
Saturday 24 June 2006
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/062406A.shtml


     The Bush administration finally took action against alleged
terrorists living in plain sight in Miami, but they weren't the
right-wing Cuban terrorists implicated in actual acts of terror, such
as blowing a civilian Cuban airliner out of the sky. They were seven
young black men whose crime was more "aspirational than operational,"
the FBI said.

     As media fanfare over the arrests made the seven young men, many
sporting dreadlocks, the new face of the terrorist enemy in America,
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales conceded that the men had no weapons
or explosives and represented "no immediate threat."

     But Gonzales warned that these kinds of homegrown terrorists "may
prove to be as dangerous as groups like al-Qaeda." [NYT, June 24, 2006]

     For longtime observers of political terrorism in South Florida,
the aggressive reaction to what may have been the Miami group's loose
talk about violence, possibly spurred by an FBI informant posing as an
al-Qaeda operative, stands in marked contrast to the US government's
see-no-evil approach to notorious Cuban terrorists who have lived
openly in Miami for decades.

     For instance, the Bush administration took no action in early
April 2006, when a Spanish-language Miami television station
interviewed Cuban terrorist Orlando Bosch, who offered a detailed
justification for the 1976 mid-air bombing of a Cubana Airlines flight
that killed 73 people, including the young members of the Cuban
national fencing team.

     Bosch refused to admit guilt, but his chilling defense of the
bombing - and the strong evidence that has swirled around his role -
left little doubt of his complicity, even as he lives in Miami as a
free man, protected both in the past and present by the Bush family.

     The Bush administration also has acted at a glacial pace in
dealing with another Cuban exile implicated in the bombing, Luis
Posada Carriles, whose illegal presence in Miami was an open secret
for weeks in early 2005 before US authorities took him into custody,
only after he had held a press conference.

     But even then, the administration has balked at sending Posada
back to Venezuela where the government of Hugo Chavez - unlike some of
its predecessors - was eager to prosecute Posada for the Cubana
Airlines murders.

     Summing up George W. Bush's dilemma in 2005, the New York Times
wrote, "A grant of asylum could invite charges that the Bush
administration is compromising its principle that no nation should
harbor suspected terrorists. But to turn Mr. Posada away could provoke
political wrath in the conservative Cuban-American communities of
South Florida, deep sources of support and campaign money for
President Bush and his brother, Jeb." [NYT, May 9, 2005]

     Bush Family Ties

     But there's really nothing new about these two terrorists - and
other violent right-wing extremists - getting protection from the Bush
family.

     For three decades, both Bosch and Posada have been under the Bush
family's protective wing, starting with former President George H.W.
Bush (who was CIA director when the airline bombing occurred in 1976)
and extending to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and President George W. Bush.

     The evidence points to one obvious conclusion: the Bushes regard
terrorism - defined as killing civilians to make a political point -
as justified in cases when their interests match those of the
terrorists. In other words, their moral outrage is selective,
depending on the identity of the victims.

     That hypocrisy was dramatized by the TV interview with Bosch on
Miami's Channel 41, which was cited in articles on the Internet by
Venezuela's lawyer José Pertierra, but was otherwise widely ignored by
the US news media. [For Pertierra's story, see Counterpunch, April 11,
2006.]

     "Did you down that plane in 1976?" asked reporter Juan Manuel Cao.

     "If I tell you that I was involved, I will be inculpating myself,"
Bosch answered, "and if I tell you that I did not participate in that
action, you would say that I am lying. I am therefore not going to
answer one thing or the other."

     But when Cao asked Bosch to comment on the civilians who died when
the plane crashed off the coast of Barbados in 1976, Bosch responded,
"In a war such as us Cubans who love liberty wage against the tyrant
[Fidel Castro], you have to down planes, you have to sink ships, you
have to be prepared to attack anything that is within your reach."

     "But don't you feel a little bit for those who were killed there,
for their families?" Cao asked.

     "Who was on board that plane?" Bosch responded. "Four members of
the Communist Party, five North Koreans, five Guyanese." [Officials
tallies actually put the Guyanese dead at 11.]

     Bosch added, "Four members of the Communist Party, chico! Who was
there? Our enemies ..."

     "And the fencers?" Cao asked about Cuba's amateur fencing team
that had just won gold, silver and bronze medals at a youth fencing
competition in Caracas. "The young people on board?"

     Bosch replied, "I was in Caracas. I saw the young girls on
television. There were six of them. After the end of the competition,
the leader of the six dedicated their triumph to the tyrant.... She
gave a speech filled with praise for the tyrant.

     "We had already agreed in Santo Domingo, that everyone who comes
from Cuba to glorify the tyrant had to run the same risks as those men
and women that fight alongside the tyranny." [The comment about Santo
Domingo was an apparent reference to a strategy meeting by a
right-wing terrorist organization, CORU, which took place in the
Dominican Republic in 1976.]

     "If you ran into the family members who were killed in that plane,
wouldn't you think it difficult?" Cao asked.

     "No, because in the end those who were there had to know that they
were cooperating with the tyranny in Cuba," Bosch answered.

     In an article about Bosch's remarks, lawyer Pertierra said the
answers "give us a glimpse into the mind of the kind of terrorist that
the United States government harbors and protects in Miami."

     The Posada Case

     Bosch was arrested for illegally entering the United States during
the first Bush administration, but he was paroled in 1990 by President
George H.W. Bush at the behest of the President's eldest son Jeb, then
an aspiring Florida politician.

     Not only did the first Bush administration free Bosch from jail a
decade and a half ago, the second Bush administration has now pushed
Venezuela's extradition request for his alleged co-conspirator,
Posada, onto the back burner.

     The downed Cubana Airlines flight originated in Caracas where
Venezuelan authorities allege the terrorist plot was hatched. However,
US officials have resisted returning Posada to Venezuela because Hugo
Chavez is seen as friendly to Castro's communist government in Cuba.

     At a US immigration hearing in 2005, Posada's defense attorney put
on a Posada friend as a witness who alleged that Venezuela's
government practices torture. Bush administration lawyers didn't
challenge the claim, leading the immigration judge to bar Posada's
deportation to Venezuela.

     In September 2005, Venezuela's Ambassador Bernardo Alvarez called
the 77-year-old Posada "the Osama Bin Laden of Latin America" and
accused the Bush administration of applying "a cynical double
standard" in its War on Terror.

     Alvarez also denied that Venezuela practices torture. "There isn't
a shred of evidence that Posada would be tortured in Venezuela,"
Alvarez said, adding that the claim is particularly ironic given
widespread press accounts that the Bush administration has abused
prisoners at the US military base in Guatanamo Bay, Cuba.

     Theoretically, the Bush administration could still extradite
Posada to Venezuela to face the 73 murder counts, but it is
essentially ignoring Venezuela's extradition request while holding
Posada on minor immigration charges of entering the United States
illegally.

     Meanwhile, Posada has begun maneuvering to gain his freedom.
Citing his service in the US military from 1963-65 in Vietnam, Posada
has applied for US citizenship, and his lawyer Eduardo Soto has
threatened to call US government witnesses, including former White
House aide Oliver North, to vouch for Posada's past service to
Washington.

     Posada became a figure in the Iran-Contra scandal because of his
work on a clandestine program to aid Nicaraguan contra rebels fighting
Nicaragua's leftist Sandinista government. The operation was run
secretly out of the White House by North with the help of the office
of then-Vice President George H.W. Bush.

     Posada reached Central America in 1985 after escaping from a
Venezuelan prison where he had been facing charges from the 1976
Cubana Airlines bombing. Posada, using the name Ramon Medina, teamed
up with another Cuban exile, former CIA officer Felix Rodriguez, who
reported regularly to Bush's office.

     Posada oversaw logistics and served as paymaster for pilots in the
contra-supply operation. When one of the contra-supply planes was shot
down inside Nicaragua in October 1986, Posada was responsible for
alerting US officials to the crisis and then shutting down the
operation's safe houses in El Salvador.

     Even after the exposure of Posada's role in the contra-supply
operation, the US government made no effort to bring the accused
terrorist to justice.

     Secret History

     As for the Cubana Airlines bombing, declassified US documents show
that after the plane was blown out of the sky on Oct. 6, 1976, the
CIA, then under the direction of George H.W. Bush, quickly identified
Posada and Bosch as the masterminds of the Cubana Airlines bombing.

     But in fall 1976, Bush's boss, President Gerald Ford, was in a
tight election battle with Democrat Jimmy Carter and the Ford
administration wanted to keep intelligence scandals out of the
newspapers. So Bush and other officials kept the lid on the
investigations. [For details, see Robert Parry's Secrecy & Privilege.]

     Still, inside the US government, the facts were known. According
to a secret CIA cable dated Oct. 14, 1976, intelligence sources in
Venezuela relayed information about the Cubana Airlines bombing that
tied in anti-communist Cuban extremists Bosch, who had been visiting
Venezuela, and Posada, who then served as a senior officer in
Venezuela's intelligence agency, DISIP.

     The Oct. 14 cable said Bosch arrived in Venezuela in late
September 1976 under the protection of Venezuelan President Carlos
Andres Perez, a close Washington ally who assigned his intelligence
adviser Orlando Garcia "to protect and assist Bosch during his stay in
Venezuela."

     On his arrival, Bosch was met by Garcia and Posada, according to
the report. Later, a fundraising dinner was held in Bosch's honor
during which Bosch requested cash from the Venezuelan government in
exchange for assurances that Cuban exiles wouldn't demonstrate during
Andres Perez's planned trip to the United Nations.

     "A few days following the fund-raising dinner, Posada was
overheard to say that, 'we are going to hit a Cuban airplane,' and
that 'Orlando has the details,'" the CIA report said.

     "Following the 6 October Cubana Airline crash off the coast of
Barbados, Bosch, Garcia and Posada agreed that it would be best for
Bosch to leave Venezuela. Therefore, on 9 October, Posada and Garcia
escorted Bosch to the Colombian border, where he crossed into
Colombian territory."

     The CIA report was sent to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia,
as well as to the FBI and other US intelligence agencies, according to
markings on the cable.

     A Round-Up

     In South America, investigators began rounding up suspects in the
bombing.

     Two Cuban exiles, Hernan Ricardo and Freddy Lugo, who had left the
Cubana plane in Barbados, confessed that they had planted the bomb.
They named Bosch and Posada as the architects of the attack.

     A search of Posada's apartment in Venezuela turned up Cubana
Airlines timetables and other incriminating documents.

     Posada and Bosch were arrested and charged in Venezuela for the
Cubana Airlines bombing, but the men denied the accusations. The case
soon became a political tug-of-war, since the suspects were in
possession of sensitive Venezuelan government secrets that could
embarrass President Andres Perez. The case lingered for almost a decade.

     After the Reagan-Bush administration took power in Washington in
1981, the momentum for fully unraveling the mysteries of
anti-communist terrorist plots dissipated. The Cold War trumped any
concern about right-wing terrorism.

     By the late 1980s, Orlando Bosch also was out of Venezuela's jails
and back in Miami. But Bosch, who had been implicated in about 30
violent attacks, was facing possible deportation by US officials who
warned that Washington couldn't credibly lecture other countries about
terrorism while protecting a terrorist like Bosch.

     But Bosch got lucky. Jeb Bush, then an aspiring Florida
politician, led a lobbying drive to prevent the US Immigration and
Naturalization Service from expelling Bosch. In 1990, the lobbying
paid dividends when Jeb's dad, President George H.W. Bush, blocked
proceedings against Bosch, letting the unapologetic terrorist stay in
the United States.

     In 1992, also during George H.W. Bush's presidency, the FBI
interviewed Posada about the Iran-Contra scandal for 6 ½ hours at the
US Embassy in Honduras.

     Posada filled in some blanks about the role of Bush's vice
presidential office in the secret contra operation. According to a
31-page summary of the FBI interview, Posada said Bush's national
security adviser, Donald Gregg, was in frequent contact with Felix
Rodriguez.

     "Posada ... recalls that Rodriguez was always calling Gregg," the
FBI summary said. "Posada knows this because he's the one who paid
Rodriguez' phone bill." After the interview, the FBI agents let Posada
walk out of the embassy to freedom. [For details, see Parry's Lost
History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & Project Truth.]

     More Attacks

     Posada soon returned to his anti-Castro plotting.

     In 1994, Posada set out to kill Castro during a trip to Cartagena,
Colombia. Posada and five cohorts reached Cartagena, but the plan
flopped when security cordons prevented the would-be assassins from
getting a clean shot at Castro, according to a Miami Herald account.
[Miami Herald, June 7, 1998]

     The Herald also described Posada's role in a lethal 1997 bombing
campaign against popular hotels and restaurants inside Cuba that
killed an Italian tourist. The story cited documentary evidence that
Posada arranged payments to conspirators from accounts in the United
States.

     Posada landed back in jail in 2000 after Cuban intelligence
uncovered a plot to assassinate Castro by planting a bomb at a meeting
the Cuban leader planned with university students in Panama.

     Panamanian authorities arrested Posada and other alleged
co-conspirators in November 2000. In April 2004, they were sentenced
to eight or nine years in prison for endangering public safety.

     Four months after the sentencing, however, lame-duck Panamanian
President Mireya Moscoso - who lives in Key Biscayne, Florida, and has
close ties to the Cuban-American community and to George W. Bush's
administration - pardoned the convicts.

     Despite press reports saying Moscoso had been in contact with US
officials about the pardons, the State Department denied that it
pressured Moscoso to release the Cuban exiles. After the pardons and
just two months before Election 2004, three of Posada's
co-conspirators - Guillermo Novo Sampol, Pedro Remon and Gaspar
Jimenez - arrived in Miami to a hero's welcome, flashing victory signs
at their supporters.

     While the terrorists celebrated, US authorities watched the men -
also implicated in bombings in New York, New Jersey and Florida -
alight on US soil. As Washington Post writer Marcela Sanchez noted in
a September 2004 article about the Panamanian pardons, "there is
something terribly wrong when the United States, after Sept. 11
(2001), fails to condemn the pardoning of terrorists and instead
allows them to walk free on US streets." [Washington Post, Sept. 3,
2004.]

     But a whole different set of standards is now being applied to the
seven black terrorism suspects in Miami. Even though they had no
clear-cut plans or even the tools to carry out terrorist attacks, they
have been rounded up amid great media hoopla.

     The American people have been reassured that the terrorists in
Miami have been located and are being brought to justice.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
     Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s
for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy &
Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be
ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com,
as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press &
'Project Truth.'

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Al-Jazeera, as American as Apple Pie

By Joanne Levine
The Washington Post
Sunday, June 25, 2006; B03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/23/AR2006062301367_\
pf.html


In a country's hinterlands, a distant region seldom visited by
outsiders, a television crew investigates why so many residents are
fleeing the area. When local officials catch wind of the crew's
presence, they begin interrogating people the journalists interviewed,
and pressure others not to talk.

Russia? Uzbekistan? China? No. This incident took place in North
Dakota, in the heart of the United States.

That's where a team of reporters I supervise went to shoot a story
about the Great Plains emptying out. When the sheriff of Crosby, a
town near the Canadian border, heard about it, he contacted the
U.S. Border Patrol. An agent soon showed up at the local newspaper,
asking for the journalists' names. Other agents asked whether they
"seemed like U.S. citizens."

The journalists are Peggy Holter, Josh Rushing and Mark Teboe. They
are all experienced reporters, and they are all U.S. citizens. So what
was it that raised officials' antennae?

The channel they work for: al-Jazeera.

Say that name in the United States and, likely as not, the listener
will practically shudder in revulsion. Many Americans automatically
think "terrorist TV," or "Osama bin Laden's network." They
see al-Jazeera, the Arabic-language channel based in Qatar, as the
al-Qaeda leader's mouthpiece, broadcasting his videotaped messages of
jihad.

Yet the truth is that al-Jazeera is a pioneer of news independence
that the U.S. government once lauded for bringing freedom of the press
to the Middle East. Now it's planning to broadcast worldwide,
including in the United States. But as its Arab owners work to make
that a reality, the prejudice here persists, and those of us who work
for the network find ourselves running, at every turn, into
resistance, rejection and racism.

Take Border Patrol Assistant Chief Lonnie Schweitzer, who questioned
the legitimacy of our reporters' presence in Crosby. "It's
al-Jazeera," he told the local newspaper. "What is the interest
of an Arab news organization in Crosby, North Dakota?"

Holter, Rushing, Teboe and I work for al-Jazeera International, a
24-hour English-language news and current affairs channel set to
launch later this year from four new broadcast centers -- in Doha,
Qatar; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; London; and Washington. The network
will still have a lot of news and documentary programming emanating
from the Middle East and showing Arab points of view. But in
expanding, it hopes to provide news from a broad range of perspectives
and to increase coverage of regions largely forgotten by U.S.
networks, such as Africa and Latin America.

Yet even as al-Jazeera International prepares to open a window onto
the world, the doors here are slamming shut. AJI and its employees are
being isolated. The network cannot get liability insurance,
which severely hampers our ability to hire freelancers and rent
equipment. One of the big five U.S. accounting firms won't touch our
business here, even though it is happy to work with us in Doha. The
same is true of a major international bank.

The channel has also struggled to get distribution in the United
States. Various organizations are angered by the prospect of it
hitting the airwaves. The conservative watchdog group Accuracy in
Media is trying to block us any way it can. The United American
Committee, which defines its mission as promoting awareness of
extremist Islamic threats in the United States, even organized a
protest outside the network's Washington offices in April, although
only a handful of demonstrators showed up.

Several employees I know believe they have suffered consequences for
joining the network -- one was dropped by an adoption agency she once
used and another had two rental applications rejected after
naming her employer. I haven't had any experiences as upsetting as
those, but many eyebrows were raised in February when I told friends
and acquaintances that I was leaving ABC's "Nightline," where
I was a producer, to take a job as head of long-form programming for
North and South America at al-Jazeera International.

Perhaps most significant, scores of people refuse to be interviewed by
our reporters. On numerous stories, I have approached people who know
me from my past jobs. They will talk to me on the phone, but they
refuse to appear on camera, saying they can't be seen on al-Jazeera. I
have heard this too often -- from officials in government and Congress
as well as from other people in the media.

My department, for instance, tried to do a story about Civil War
reenactors. The journalists were denied access to a reenactment
because the organizers were expecting "many patriotic people" who
they thought would be upset by al-Jazeera's presence. At the recent
Take Back America conference here in Washington, author Kevin Phillips
would not accept a business card from our investigative reporter. And
even The Washington Post would not allow one of its staff
photographers to participate in an AJI discussion about images from
the Iraq war.

I am not naive. I know we are living in a time when the Middle East
and the West harbor deep-rooted suspicions and mistrust of each other.
I've worked and lived in the Middle East for the past six years,
covering stories such as the second Palestinian intifada and
the invasion of Iraq. I'm a New York Jew married to a Jordanian Druze
whom I met when I lived in Amman in 2002 on a fellowship. I heard
plenty of anti-Semitic comments there from those who didn't suspect
that I might be Jewish. Today, some people ask me how a Jew can work
for al-Jazeera. It's that kind of thinking that builds up walls,
rather than tearing them down. The racism I experienced was
unacceptable in Jordan. And it is unacceptable in the United States.

Most people in this country have never watched al-Jazeera. But in so
many minds, it has become synonymous with al-Qaeda. I'd guess that the
only thing most people know about it is that it is always the first
network to receive bin Laden's videotapes. What they  don't know is
that al-Jazeera started nearly 10 years ago as the first independent
voice in the Middle East. With the courage to tell it like it is, it
offended authoritarian regimes from Saudi Arabia to Jordan. Its
reporters -- and at times the network itself -- have been routinely
kicked out of countries for reporting the real news instead of acting
like the sleeping pill known as state-run television news.

Al-Jazeera has even been labeled "Zionist" by the Arab street and its
regimes. It is the only Arabic broadcaster to put Israeli officials on
television and to report the Israeli side of stories. Israeli leaders
such as Ariel Sharon and Shimon Peres have been invited to appear on
the network, although they ultimately did not. But Israel routinely
sends Arabic-speaking officials to participate on various programs.

What many Americans also don't know is that, before Sept. 11, 2001,
al-Jazeera was lauded and applauded by the Bush administration for
this fearless attitude toward the dictatorships of the Middle East.
High-ranking administration officials, including Defense Secretary
Donald H. Rumsfeld and then-national security adviser Condoleezza
Rice, made frequent appearances on the network.

After 9/11 -- and especially after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003
-- tensions between the West and the Middle East escalated, and
al-Jazeera's reporting often angered Americans. The network showed
civilian casualties caused by U.S. troops in Afghanistan and
Iraq. It also showed images of U.S. troops taken hostage in Iraq. It
broadcast pictures of Iraqis celebrating over a downed U.S. aircraft.
When four U.S. contractors were killed in Fallujah in March 2004 and
their burned and mutilated bodies were hung from a bridge, al-Jazeera
put it on TV.

The White House now takes every opportunity to demonize the network's
editorial choices. Some of these choices may be hard for Americans to
stomach. But they undeniably offer another side of the story. And
al-Jazeera has a tradition of showing both sides. Many Americans would
probably be surprised to learn that last winter, a fiery Syrian
American psychiatrist, Wafa Sultan, came out on al-Jazeera to declare
that violence is destroying Islam. The impassioned interview made her
an international sensation -- and a target of death threats.

It wasn't an easy decision to take the job at al-Jazeera
International. I've found it a challenge to work under conditions in
which I often feel like an outcast. But I believe that bridges need to
be built, and I felt that taking a job with AJI offered a chance to
try to do that.

Each incident shrouded in bigotry has served to convince me ever more
that the United States needs an outlet like al-Jazeera International,
offering a wider panorama of views. These are dangerous times. And
they will just get more dangerous if each side continues to retreat.
Al-Jazeera doesn't shy away from any side of a story. And Americans
should not shy away from al-Jazeera.

levine.joanne @ gmail.com


Joanne Levine is executive producer of programming for the Americas at
al-Jazeera International.

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Two Algerian men, known as "V" and "I" detained in Algeria
Amnesty International

Incommunicado detention/fear of torture or other ill-treatment


The UK authorities deported two Algerian men, known as "V" and "I", to
Algeria on 16 and 17 June respectively, on the grounds that they
presented a "threat to the national security" of the UK. The men's
families have had no contact with them since they arrived at Algiers
airport, and Amnesty International fears that they are being held in a
military barracks in Algiers, part of which is used as a secret
detention centre, and that they are at risk of torture or other
ill-treatment.

In London the Algerian consulate had reportedly assured the men that
they were not wanted for any crimes in Algeria and that they would be
released after they had spent a few hours in police custody at the
airport to satisfy formalities. Despite this, the men have been held
at an undisclosed location since they arrived, and have been allowed
no contact with their families, in violation of Algerian law.

When the men's relatives made enquiries, the authorities confirmed
that they had arrived in Algeria and were in custody, but would not
say where or why, or give permission to visit them.

Amnesty International fears that the men are held by a military
intelligence agency, the Department for Information and Security
(Département du renseignement et de la sécurité, DRS). It specializes
in interrogating people thought to possess information about terrorist
activities. DRS detainees are routinely held in secret places of
detention, allowed no contact with the outside world, and there are
persistent reports of torture and other ill-treatment.

"V" and "I" were among a group of men the UK authorities labelled as
"suspected international terrorists" and held either in prison or
under house arrest on the basis of secret intelligence which has not
been disclosed to them or their lawyers and which they have therefore
been unable to challenge. Both men had been held in Long Lartin prison
since 2005, awaiting deportation. "V" and "I" faced a stark choice:
either continue to challenge their deportation to Algeria and face
continued detention in high-security prisons far away from their
families, friends and communities for years on end, or face an
uncertain future fraught with risk by returning to that country. To
pursue their appeal against deportation would have meant a legal
battle involving the use against them of secret intelligence never
disclosed to them or their lawyers and a standard of proof heavily
weighted in favour of the government. "V" and "I" lost all faith in
the possibility that they would receive any meaningful justice in the
UK. In March 2006, they withdrew their appeals against the deportation
orders. They preferred to return to Algeria, despite the risks they
would face.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Anyone suspected of involvement in terrorist activities, or who is
believed to possess information about terrorist activities in Algeria
or abroad, faces a real risk of secret detention and torture in
Algeria. Amnesty International has received dozens of reports of
detainees treated in this way, among them people who had returned to
Algeria from overseas, either voluntarily or at the hands of foreign
governments.

Under Article 51 of the Algerian Criminal Procedures Code, detainees
suspected of "terrorist or subversive acts" may be held without charge
for a maximum of 12 days. The arresting authorities must immediately
give them the opportunity to communicate with their families and to
receive visits from them. In addition, any detention beyond four days
has to be authorized in writing by the public prosecutor.

RECOMMENDED ACTION:

Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible, in Arabic,
French, English or your own language:

- expressing concern that the men known as "V" and "I", deported by
the UK government on 16 and 17 June respectively, are detained at an
undisclosed location and that their families are not able to
communicate with them, in violation of Article 51 of the Algerian
Penal Procedures Code;

- urging the authorities to ensure that they are treated humanely in
custody, and protected from torture and other ill-treatment;
- calling on the authorities to tell their families where they are
detained and why, and to ensure that "V" and "I" can communicate with
their families immediately and are given any medical attention they
may require;

- calling on the authorities to release them unless they are promptly
charged with a recognizably criminal offence and tried within a
reasonable time.


APPEALS TO:
President
His Excellency Abdelaziz Bouteflika
Président de la République, Présidence de la République, El Mouradia,
Alger, Algeria
Fax:        +213 21 609618
             +213 21 691595
E-mail:           president @ el-mouradia.dz
Salutation:       Your Excellency/Excellence

Justice Minister
His Excellency Tayeb Belaiz
Ministre de la Justice, Ministère de la Justice
8 Place Bir Hakem, 16030 El Bihar, Alger, Algeria
Fax:        +213 21 922956
             +213 21 921701
             +213 21 925557
Salutation:       Your Excellency/Excellence

Foreign Minister
His Excellency Mohamed Bedjaoui
Ministre des Affaires Etrangères, Ministère des Affaires Etrangères
Place Mohamed Seddik Benyahia, 16070 El Mouradia, Alger, Algeria
Fax:        +213 21 504141
             +213 21 504242
Salutation:       Your Excellency/Excellence

COPIES TO:
Official human rights body, reporting to president
Commission nationale consultative de promotion et de protection des
droits de l'Homme, M. Mustapha Farouk Ksentinin (Président)
Palais du Peuple, Avenue Franklin Roosevelt, Alger, Algeria
Fax:        + 213 21 239037
             +213 21 239005

and to diplomatic representatives of Algeria accredited to your country.

PLEASE SEND APPEALS IMMEDIATELY.

Working to protect human rights worldwide

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Israeli security prepares for a campaign to bar international
activists from entering West Bank

Saed Bannoura
IMEMC & Agencies
Thursday, 22 June 2006, 16:39
http://www.imemc.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=19455&Itemid=1


Israeli Newspaper Maariv reported on Thursday that the Israeli
security services are preparing for a campaign to bar international
peace activists from entering the occupied West Bank this summer to
participate in the "Summer Peace camp" organized by the International
Solidarity Movement (ISM).


The Israeli Police forces and army units are preparing to the
wide-scaled campaign that aims at barring the peace activists from
entering Israel and the occupied territories, in addition to expelling
those who are already in the country.

International peace activists are active in the peaceful protests
against Israel's Annexation Wall and the protests against the Israeli
policy of settlement construction and expansion, in addition to the
Israeli policy of house demolishing in the occupied territories.

Maariv reported that the army will also issue an order to close the
Palestinian territories for internationals in an attempt to bat the
entry of internationals there. Israel claims that the activists will
be expelled under the pretext of supporting "illegal organizations".

Also, Israel will try to arrest and expel Palestinians who carry
international nationalities "if they fail to explain why they are
visiting the country".

The campaign will also include expelling foreign workers, including
Palestinians, who entered Israel without obtaining work permits from
the Israeli authorities.

It is worth mentioning that Rachel Corrie, a 23 year old American
peace activist, was killed on March 16, 2003 when she was crushed by
an Israeli military bulldozer while trying to bar the army from
demolishing a Palestinian home in Rafah in the southern part of the
Gaza Strip.

On April 11 2003, Tom Hurndall, British photographer and a member of
the International Solidarity Movement, was shot in the head by an
Israeli sniper and suffered irreversible brain damage, dying from his
wound a year later.

Hurndall was trying to save Palestinian children subjected to Israeli
military fire. The children fled. But three, aged between four and
seven, were paralyzed by fear.

Tom Hurndall was in a coma for nine months and died January 13, 2004,
in a London hospital due to complications with pneumonia. He had spent
the past nine months in a vegetative state.

===

Israeli Planes Attack Bridge in Gaza
Tuesday 27 June 2006
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/062706T.shtml


Move may signal start of a military operation after soldier abducted.
     Gaza City, Gaza Strip - Israeli planes attacked a bridge in
central Gaza late Tuesday, Israel Radio reported, and Israeli tanks
were said to be on the move, possibly signaling the start of a
military operation.

     Palestinian security forces said Israeli tanks were moving near
the Israeli village of Nahal Oz, a main Israeli staging area just
outside Gaza, but that they had not yet entered Gaza.

     In the Shajaiyeh neighborhood of Gaza City, not far from the
border fence, armed militants took up positions across from the
blaring headlights of Israeli vehicles, and Israeli attack helicopters
hovered overhead. The militants told residents to leave the area.

     Israeli military officials said a limited operation has been
authorized for southern Gaza, aimed at "terrorist infrastructure." The
officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not
authorized to talk to reporters.

     Israel has been massing troops and armor around Gaza since Sunday,
when Palestinian militants tunneled under the border and attacked an
Israeli army post at a Gaza crossing, killing two soldiers and
abducting a third.

     Anticipating an invasion, Palestinian militants piled up sand on
roads near the border and in Gaza City. "We are ready to confront any
stupid act that the Zionists might commit," said Abu Obeida, spokesman
for the military wing of Hamas, the Islamic group that controls the
Palestinian parliament.

     The group also claimed that militants from various factions had
taken up positions throughout northern Gaza.

     Egyptian officials said the government asked Hamas to release the
soldier and has deployed 2,500 extra troops along the border with Gaza
to prevent an influx of Palestinians if Israel invades. Egypt also
imposed a nighttime curfew on residents along the border.

===

Israeli Troops and Armor Surge Into Gaza
     By Laura King and Ken Ellingwood
     The Los Angeles Times

     Wednesday 28 June 2006

     The Jewish state presses for release of a soldier captured by
militants. Officials say there is no plan to seize the Palestinian
territory.

     Gaza City - Israeli troops and tanks, backed by fierce aerial
bombardment, punched their way into the southern Gaza Strip early
today, hours after Israel declared that time was running out for
Palestinian militants to free an Israeli soldier seized in a
cross-border raid.

     The offensive was by far the largest since Israel unilaterally
pulled its troops out of the seaside territory more than nine months
ago. In the intervening months, Israel has responded to Palestinian
militants' rocket attacks with airstrikes and artillery barrages.

     But this is the first time since the withdrawal that large
concentrations of Israeli forces have entered the restive, densely
populated coastal territory.

     The attack began late Tuesday when Israeli warplanes blew up a
bridge in central Gaza, with loud booms reverberating across Gaza City
- a move Israeli military officials said was meant to prevent the
captors of Cpl. Gilad Shalit, 19, from moving him.

     Later, two other bridges and a power plant were struck, sending
billows of white smoke into a night sky lighted by flames and flares.

     The air offensive in effect sliced Gaza into three sectors and
knocked out power to large swaths, though electricity was restored at
least temporarily in Gaza City and other northern areas. There was no
immediate word on any Palestinian casualties or the number of Israeli
troops that crossed into Gaza.

     Military analysts said the incursion was the first phase of an
operation that would intensify, possibly to include targeting Hamas
leaders, unless Shalit is released.

     "We are trying to make it clear to the Palestinian Authority and
terrorist organizations that we're very serious about this and about
Cpl. Shalit's safety and quick return home," said Capt. Noa Meir, an
Israeli military spokeswoman.

     Officials said Israel did not want to seize the Gaza Strip, which
it occupied for 38 years.

     "We have no interest in returning to a place we have left. We seek
dialogue, not a bloodbath," Israel's infrastructure minister, Binyamin
Ben-Eliezer, said early today. "If they return the soldier, sit down
at the negotiating table - we're out. There's nothing for us there."

     In the hours before the strike, Palestinians girded for attack,
topping bulldozed mounds of sand along urban thoroughfares with barbed
wire and laying what appeared to be homemade explosives in the
expected path of Israeli tanks massed just across the border.

     Against the backdrop of battle preparations by both sides, the
Palestinians' ruling Hamas movement and the rival Fatah faction
announced Tuesday that they had tentatively agreed on a political
platform that could lead to negotiations with Israel.

     However, the move appeared to be more of an effort to present a
symbolic united front at a time of crisis than to genuinely alter the
hard-line stance that has led to the Hamas-dominated government's
diplomatic and economic isolation. The Islamist Hamas movement
emphasized that it was still not willing to acknowledge Israel's right
to exist.

     The offensive was sparked by an audacious cross-border raid Sunday
in which Palestinian militants captured Shalit and killed two other
soldiers. Two of the Palestinian attackers were killed.

     The consortium of Hamas-linked groups claiming to hold Shalit
warned Tuesday against any attempt to rescue him, saying it would
result in failure and bloodshed. That was a chilling and probably
deliberate reminder to Israelis that the last time Palestinian
militants managed to seize an Israeli soldier, in 1994, he was
subsequently killed in an Israeli rescue raid.

     "The soldier is in a secure location to which the Zionists' reach
does not extend," Mohammed Abdelal, a spokesman for the Popular
Resistance Committees, one of three groups thought to have taken part
in the raid, told reporters in Gaza City.

     The purported captors have demanded the release of Palestinian
prisoners who are female or younger than 18 in exchange for
information about Shalit, but have provided no proof he is alive.

     Israel said no prisoner exchange was being contemplated.

     Israeli military sources said they believed Shalit was being held
in southern Gaza, a stronghold for militant Palestinian groups that
have engaged in abductions of foreigners and Palestinian political rivals.

     The Israeli troop incursion was concentrated east of the southern
border town of Rafah. But the scale and intended duration of the
military push were not clear.

     In the initial offensive, Israeli soldiers did not enter Gaza City
or its immediate environs, where in some neighborhoods masked
militants flooded the streets and mosque loudspeakers called on people
to resist.

     "Take up your rifles and fight!" a senior leader of Hamas'
military wing, Nizar Rayan, said in a broadcast exhortation.

     Complex mediation efforts led by Egypt continued Tuesday. Because
Shalit holds dual French-Israeli citizenship, French diplomats were
also involved, but they were close-mouthed about their role.

     The United States also urged restraint on Israel's part.

     "There really needs to be an effort now to try and calm the
situation," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters en
route to Pakistan.

     Seeking to step up the pressure on the Hamas government, Israel
closed its border crossings with Gaza on Monday. Combined with a naval
blockade, the closure has effectively barred the importation of food,
fuel and other goods. Israeli media reported that government leaders
also were considering cutting off electricity and water.

     Vice Premier Shimon Peres said Israel was asking governments to
withhold donations to the Palestinian Authority until the soldier is
freed.

     Peres also said it appeared that Hamas' political leader, Khaled
Meshaal, a hard-liner who is based in Damascus, the Syrian capital,
was responsible for Sunday's attack - the most explicit public
accusation against Meshaal from a senior Israeli official.

     "It's clear that Khaled Meshaal gave the order for this operation,
and he wants to destroy prospects for peace," Peres told reporters
after visiting Shalit's parents in the Galilee region.

     In the streets of Gaza City on Tuesday, the mood was one of anger
and defiance, with many saying that Palestinians should not free the
Israeli soldier without getting something in return.

     Atop makeshift barricades of sand, concrete blocks and debris,
young Palestinian boys played with toy rifles. Aerial drones and other
aircraft could be heard circling overhead, and Israeli gunships were
visible through the heat haze offshore in the Mediterranean.

     Adding to the jittery atmosphere, a car exploded Tuesday close to
the Gaza City residence of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud
Abbas, who was not in the building at the time.

     One man, described as a Hamas militant, was killed and several
others were wounded. Palestinians called it an assassination by
Israel, but the Israeli military denied any involvement.

     The announcement of a political agreement by Hamas and Fatah came
after weeks of negotiations, and after Abbas said last month that he
would put the question of whether to recognize Israel to Palestinian
voters in a referendum.

     Under the tentative agreement, Abbas would be empowered to hold
negotiations with Israel but any agreements reached would require the
approval of the Hamas-dominated parliament.

     The document appeared to fall far short of international and
Israeli demands on Hamas. Israel dismissed the accord as a "diplomatic
non-starter."

     The negotiations over a Hamas-Fatah political pact and the capture
of Shalit have laid bare the divisions within Hamas.

     The group's military wing, thought to report primarily to exiled
leaders in Damascus, said it took part in the raid that brought about
the soldier's capture. The Hamas-led government, meanwhile, urged that
the soldier not be harmed.

     "We … don't want to reach a situation of bloodshed," government
spokesman Ghazi Hamad, who speaks fluent Hebrew, told Israel's Army Radio.

     Defense Minister Amir Peretz said during a visit Tuesday to the
agricultural community of Kerem Shalom, where the Palestinian attack
took place, that Israel had no choice but to respond decisively to a
raid on its soil.

     ---------

     King reported from Gaza City and Ellingwood from Jerusalem.

===

Don't remain silent as Israel prepares for a massacre!
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006


Dear Benjamin
As Israel surrounds Gaza with troops, tanks lined up and helicopter
gunships on standby, ready for an 'extensive operation', their
supporters call for a massacre of the Palestinian people - "Knock them
off one by one until they relent" as one puts it on the BBC News
comments pages.  The world can see how strong Israel is with their
hardcore military weaponry gleaming in the heat waiting to be put into
action.  The catalogue of weapons at their disposal is impressive, and
chilling: fighter aircraft, missiles: air-to-surface,
surface-to-surface..., tanks, armoured vehicles, artillery, attack
helicopters, submarines and missile craft (we've already seen what
they can do to a Palestinian family on a Gaza beach) - and we mustn't
forget the nuclear warheads, biological and chemical weapons & atom
bombs.

While the media focus on Olmert's words warning that "a large-scale
military operation is approaching", with no comment about what the
consequences of such action will be for the Palestinian people, and as
they relate the concern for the Israeli soldier being held prisoner by
Palestinian fighters - the media expresses no concern about the
thousands of Palestinian political prisoners held by Israel.

The actions of the racist Israeli state and that of their supporters,
which includes the BBC, illustrate their total disregard and contempt
for Palestinian lives.  Rabbi Moshe Levinger, the worst kind of
Zionist extremist, founder of the settlements in Hebron, could be the
spokesperson for Olmert, Bush, the BBC and our very own government and
great leader Tony Blair when, in response to a question about the
massacre of Palestinians carried out by one of his followers in Hebron
1994, he says he is "sorry not only about dead Arabs but also about
dead flies".  It is nothing new that Israel prefers the word
'operation' to massacre as a poll carried out by Israeli TV showed
following the massacre of Palestinians in 1994.  The poll "established
that at least 50% of Israeli Jews would approve of the massacre,
provided that it was not referred to as a massacre but rather a
'Patriach's Cave Operation'".  In Hebron today there is a monument to
the mass murderer 'Saint Baruch Goldstein'.  Whether carried out by a
far right extremist settler or by the Israeli government, massacre of
Palestinians seems to be acceptable through the eyes of the media and
by the 'British values' our government wishes us all to adopt.
Our media will not speak of Palestinians and certainly not about the
men, women and children being held as political prisoners by Israel,
they will not speak about the humiliation, continued dispossession and
ethnic cleansing carried out by Israel on a daily basis against
Palestinians, never mind the torture of Palestinian prisoners - no
matter that they include women and children.

Contact the Bureau Chief's of BBC and CNN in Palestine to tell them to
cover what is going on right now in Gaza as fully as possible, so that
the millions of people they reach see the ongoing violence of Israeli
missile strikes.  Demand also that they break their silence on the
story of thousands of Palestinians detained and tortured by Israel.

CNN Bureau Chief Thomas Fenton
tom.fenton @ turner.com
+972 (0)2 500 9500
BBC Bureau Chief Simon Wilson
simon.wilson @ bbc.co.uk
+972 (0)2 537 4199

===

Israeli Invasion Looms :

Israeli troops are amassed on the border of the Gaza Strip as
Palestinian militants continue to hold an Israeli soldier captured on
Sunday

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,423930,00.html

===

Palestinian militants release first information about soldier:

A Palestinian militant leader today said a captured Israeli soldier
was being held in a "secure place," and he claimed that his group also
seized a Jewish settler in the West Bank.

http://tinyurl.com/omcup

===

Palestinian groups demand release of jailed women

"The occupation will not get any information about the missing
soldier, except after committing to first immediately release all
women prisoners from Israeli prisoners," the three groups said in a
statement. "Secondly, (we demand) the immediate release of all
children under 18 years," they added.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=12846

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"The Palestinians Must Pay a Price for Their Choice"


Surrender vs. the Right to Exist
By KATHLEEN CHRISTISON - Former CIA analyst
http://counterpunch.com/christison05272006.html


Noting that he had been raised with the deep conviction that the
Jewish people would never have to relinquish any part of the "land of
our forefathers," Ehud Olmert told Congress in his address to a joint
session on May 24, "I believed, and to this day still believe, in our
people's eternal and historic right to this entire land." He did then
concede that dreams alone cannot bring peace and will not preserve
Israel as a "secure democratic Jewish state." But what stands out in
this little-noted statement of Jewish attachment to the land is its
affirmation of a supreme Jewish right to all of Palestine, never mind
who else may live there. In the context of any hope for a just and
equitable peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, this is
a deal-breaker par excellence.



In light of this official Israeli view that the Jewish people have "an
eternal and historic right to this entire land," one is startled by
the hypocrisy of the demand -- enunciated universally by Israel, the
U.S., the EU, and most of the rest of the international community --
that the Palestinians must recognize Israel's "right to exist" before
anyone will even speak to them, before they can be admitted to
civilized company in the world. Does this demand that Palestinians
recognize Israel's right to exist mean that they must recognize
Israel's "right to the entire land" as defined by Olmert? And if that
is the case, how could the Palestinians possibly be assured, even if
Israel were magnanimously to grant them a "state" or a "Bantustan" in
a part of that "entire land," that Israel would not at some future
date take it back, since Jews have "an eternal and historic right" to
it? Why should anyone believe that any Israeli concession of land
would be permanent?



Olmert's assertion of this all-encompassing Jewish "right" is
certainly not a new feature of Israeli and Zionist dogma. The notion
has underlain Zionism from the beginning, hidden sometimes behind a
leftist veneer of accommodation to the reality of the Palestinian
presence in this sacred Jewish land, but never very far beneath the
surface. The Zionist belief in Jewish supremacy has never truly been
hidden. I ran into this in crude form a few years ago. Shortly after
the Palestinian intifada began in 2000, an acquaintance -- no friend,
but an irritating bigot who always argues Israel's case openly on the
basis that Jewish interests are superior to Palestinian interests --
wrote me an email in which he concluded that, because there is "simply
not enough room in Palestine for both Jews and Palestinians," the
Palestinians should "go back to Jordan, where they came from" and
leave Palestine to the Jews, who own it and so badly need a homeland.
(The erroneous notion that Palestinians came from Jordan is a
conscience-clearing artifact of the Zionist imagination, designed to
"prove" that Palestinians did not originally come from Palestine, are
simply interlopers in a Jewish land, and therefore will not be hurt or
inconvenienced by "going back" where they came from.) I told him he
was factually wrong and completely immoral -- which I'm sure did
nothing to burden his conscience, but which did serve, blessedly, to
end our correspondence.



The particular argument put forth by this particular man expresses
more crude racism than most supporters of Israel would admit to
feeling, but in fact his position reflects the official views of the
Israeli government and of the U.S. government that supports it.
Ultimately, his position, which is of course identical to Olmert's,
captures the essence of Zionism and defines what has been the basis of
U.S. policy toward Israel and Zionism since well before the state of
Israel was established 58 years ago: that is, that Israel's interests
as a Jewish state and Israel's "rights" always take precedence, no
matter what the interests and rights of the Palestinians, and that
Palestinian needs can be accommodated only when these do not interfere
with Israel's or when Palestinians give in to Israel's demands. At
bottom, this is a policy based on the assumption that there is "simply
no room in Palestine for both Jews and Palestinians" and that the only
possible solution over the long term is for the Palestinians to
disappear in some fashion. As the PLO ambassador to the U.S., Afif
Safieh, is fond of saying, Israel wants the Palestinians' geography
but not their demography -- the land but not the people.



This Palestinian disappearance can be accomplished in one of several
ways, by Israeli calculation. First, they could be induced to leave
Palestine altogether; Israel has been working since its creation on
some version of this option -- outright expulsion, as occurred in
1948, or inducing a "voluntary" exit by making life insupportable, as
is occurring today -- as the best way to relieve itself of the
Palestinian "problem." Or, as a second option, the Palestinians could
be forced into submission; this has been the fate of the 20 percent of
Israel's population that is Palestinian, and it was the fate of West
Bank-Gaza Palestinians during the first 20 years of the occupation
when they were quiescent under Israeli control. This option is no
longer feasible from Israel's standpoint, however, since there are now
or soon will be more Palestinians than Jews in Palestine, which makes
the job of forcing submission too unseemly for a state claiming to be
democratic. Or, as a third option, the Palestinians could be lulled
into a political submissiveness that leads them, out of desperation,
to accede to every Israeli condition; this is what Yasir Arafat did by
signing on to the Oslo agreement and recognizing Israel's "right" to
exist, thus giving away all the Palestinians' negotiating cards
without securing in return any Israeli agreement to do more than
conduct negotiations.



Since this third option collapsed at Camp David in 2000, Israel has
reverted to working on the first option. The Oslo process failed
essentially because Arafat woke up at the last moment, after Israel
had tried to force feed a totally unsatisfactory final agreement, and
refused to be lulled into complete capitulation. Since Arafat's
awakening, the Israeli agenda, supported wholeheartedly by the U.S.
and to a lesser extent by the rest of the West, has been to pursue
option one, inducing the Palestinians in one way or another to leave
Palestine altogether -- in other words, attempting to force the
Palestinians' abject surrender on terms that assume total Jewish
supremacy.



The U.S. and the West are working hard to help Israel enforce this
surrender. While the Palestinians starve under the international
community's aid cutoff, media leaders like the Washington Post set the
tone by blaming the Palestinian victims. "Palestinian leaders," the
Post intoned in a recent editorial describing the aid crisis, "have a
long tradition of exploiting the suffering of their own people for
political ends; Hamas has been content to foster a humanitarian crisis
in the West Bank and Gaza Strip." If the logic of this charge that the
Palestinians caused their own catastrophe because they failed to vote
the way Israel and the Post wanted and because Hamas refuses to give
in to Israel's dictates is not immediately clear, it helps to
understand that the basic assumption of Israel and its supporters in
the U.S. is that Israel's demands and rights always take precedence
and the Palestinians are acceptable only if they always recognize this.



Shortly after the Hamas election in January, Robert Satloff, director
of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy -- the think tank
affiliated with the Israeli lobby organization AIPAC -- laid out the
essential demand on the Palestinians. Appearing on the Lehrer News
Hour, Satloff declared that the Palestinian people must pay a price
for their choice and that it should be a "strategic objective" of the
world community to bring down the Hamas government. Twenty years ago,
Satloff observed with astounding arrogance, the PLO acceded to what he
called the "minimum entry requirements" by recognizing Israel --
entry, that is, to Israel's and the lobby's world, where Jews have the
superior rights in Palestine and hold the whip hand and where
Palestinians count only when they bow to this Jewish supremacy.



This do-as-I-say-or-else approach now characterizes all Israeli and
Western attitudes toward the Palestinians and informs the demand that
Hamas recognize Israel's right to exist. In a press conference with
Olmert on May 23, Bush chided the Palestinians, declaring that no
country (meaning Israel) "could be expected to make peace with those
who deny its right to exist." Yet the Palestinians themselves are
expected to make peace with those who deny their right to exist as a
nation. Bush sees no contradiction here because he cannot see past the
assumed supremacy of Israel's rights in Palestine.



The Hamas election, and Israeli and Western reaction to it, have in
fact exposed the basic problem with all peace negotiations as framed
by Israel and the U.S. for the last several decades: Palestinians have
been allowed to participate -- have been given any role at all in
reconciliation efforts -- only when they have agreed to go along with
Israel's demands. But this principal demand on the Palestinians is a
fundamental obstacle to any real resolution of the conflict. The
insistence that the Palestinians "recognize Israel's right to exist"
does not mean, to Israel and the U.S., simply that the Palestinians
must pledge not to throw Jews into the sea. Refraining from this
drastic step is fairly easy even for the most militant of Islamists.
It means instead recognizing Israel's moral legitimacy. For a
Palestinian this means recognizing -- indeed, embracing as a moral
imperative -- Israel's right to have expelled the Palestinians and
taken their homes and their land.



This demand ignores the reality that Israel was established as a
specifically Jewish entity in a land populated overwhelmingly by
non-Jews and that maintenance of its Jewish majority required the
expulsion of much of that non-Jewish population. To paraphrase George
Bush, no people can be expected to make peace with, or to recognize
the moral legitimacy of, those who have attempted and are still
attempting to destroy them. The demand for Palestinian recognition of
Israel's moral legitimacy presupposes a priority of Israeli over
Palestinian interests in peace negotiations that totally undermines
any negotiating process intended to deliver justice to both sides.
This Palestinian recognition cannot be the central prerequisite of any
peace process -- to be compulsorily accepted before the process even
begins -- when Israel refuses to recognize a similar moral right for
the Palestinians.



The PLO did recognize Israel's right to exist in 1988 as a condition
of its participation in peace negotiations, but any continuing
Palestinian obligation to adhere to this recognition has been obviated
by Israel's refusal to offer a reciprocal recognition of the
Palestinians' existence. The grave injustice inflicted on the
Palestinians in 1948 and in the decades since has never been
redressed, and this must be the centerpiece of any negotiating
process. For the very reason that there is no established Palestinian
state, the core issue in any negotiation should be, not recognition of
Israel's legitimacy, but recognition of the Palestinians' right to
exist as an independent, viable, sovereign state. Israel exists and is
in no danger of ceasing to exist; continued concern about its
existence and continued demands that Palestinians recognize it as a
Jewish state, without a demand for reciprocation from Israel,
constitute an affirmation that Jewish rights are superior. This is a
fundamentally unjust and immoral presumption in international
relations, as in all human relations. Neither Israel nor the United
States will ever have peace until Israel is made to recognize the
people it displaced in Palestine as equals in the land.



Kathleen Christison is a former CIA political analyst and has worked
on Middle East issues for 30 years. She is the author of Perceptions
of Palestine and The Wound of Dispossession. She can be reached at
kathy.bill @ christison-santafe.com

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A Harvest of Conflict
Did Anti-Semitism Take Root at the South Central Farm?

by Marc Ballon, Senior Writer
Jewish Journal
2006-06-23
http://www.jewishjournal.com/home/preview.php?id=160392006-06-23


Photo: A bulldozer destroys plants on a plot of land in South Los
Angeles on June 13 after activists and farmers were evicted from the
South Central Farm.


Developer Ralph Horowitz made no secret of his intense displeasure
with the 350 mostly Latino farmers who squatted on his 14-acre parcel
at 41st and Alameda streets in South Los Angeles. As he saw it, the
farmers who cultivated avocados, squash, tomatoes and other produce on
individual family plots without paying him were squatters who, in
effect, stole from him.

Before Horowitz finally evicted the farmers and their supporters last
week, he also had to endure celebrities railing against him and
demonstrators showing up at his home . not to mention the expense of
thousands of dollars in legal fees spent on enforcing his property
rights.

But Horowitz hauled out the most explosive grievance at the 59th
minute of the 11th hour in the standoff. Speaking to a Los Angeles
Times reporter last week, Horowitz said he refused to reward a group
that included people who had made anti-Semitic remarks about him.

Even if they raised $100 million, this group could not buy this
property, Horowitz told NBC4 in a separate interview. .It.s not about
money. It's about I don't like their cause and I don't like their
conduct. So there.s no price I would sell it to them for.

Horowitz, who declined repeated requests to be interviewed for this
story, also has talked of being infuriated by an Internet site that
accused him of being part of a "Jewish Mafia" that controls Los Angeles.

The South Central Farmers group and supporters have emphatically
denied engaging in anti-Jewish posturing, noting that many in their
ranks are Jewish, including rabbis. They accuse Horowitz of playing
the anti-Semitism card to divert criticism from him and to splinter an
alliance of Westside Jews, environmentalists and South L.A. farmers
that coalesced around saving the farm.

I believe Horowitz thought he was getting a lot of bad press, and
sometimes people believe that if you attack you can take the issue
away from those people who are questioning what you're doing, said Dan
Stormer, a civil rights attorney who.s representing the farmers. The
best defense is a good offense..

Other observers say that Horowitz had plenty to be aggrieved about,
and studies suggest that anti-Semitism is a real problem among
Latinos. But evidence of actual anti-Semitism on the part of the
farmers or leaders is slim or even nonexistent.

The recent battle over what many call the largest urban farm in the
nation captured headlines around the world, pitting Horowitz against
poor Latino farmers and do-gooder celebrities. With last week.s
eviction looming, entertainers such as .60s folk icon Joan Baez and
actors Danny Glover, Martin Sheen and Laura Dern visited the farm site
to show support. As pressure mounted and the bulldozers began rolling,
many hoped Horowitz would buckle and sell the property, especially
after Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said he helped cobble
together a $16.3 million offer for the land . a bid that apparently
met the asking price. (Some insiders say the complicated proposal
would have demanded substantial good faith from Horowitz, such as a
provision that would have required him to borrow $6 million against
the property with the expectation of getting reimbursed within 18
months.)

In the end, though, Horowitz walked away from a deal that would have
made him a media hero, one that would have allowed the farmers to
continue growing their fruits and vegetables that, supporters say,
some relied on for sustenance.

Why didn't he sell? Horowitz told several media outlets that his anger
toward farmers for squatting on his land and vilifying him had so
alienated him that he wouldn.t sell to them for any price. He
disliked from the beginning,. he said, the activists, the movie stars,
the anarchists and the hard-nosed group.

He also pointed out a land trust that offered to purchase the land had
missed a deadline.

But what about the anti-Semitism bombshell which is bound to
reverberate through the Jewish community, while also raising questions
about Horowitz's timing and motives?

It's not difficult to find implied and explicit anti-Semitism linked
to the cause of the South Central farmers.

La Voz de Aztlan, a Web site that describes itself as .a totally
independent news service,. offered that .Not many people are aware
that Los Angeles has a powerful .Jewish Mafia. that is in cahoots with
the Los Angeles Police Department and many local elected politicians.
... Through "backroom deals" and collusion with certain Jewish L.A.
City Council members, Ralph Horowitz was given ownership of the land
and he has now placed an eviction notice on the entrance to the farm..

The AfroCubaWeb site linked to the La Voz story and in its summary
added the word .sinister. in front of .Jewish land developer Ralph
Horowitz..

Such radical sites are widely dismissed as marginal and irrelevant,
but a handful of arguably anti-Semitic posts also appeared on the
leftie site la.indymedia.org. A poster who called himself .Farmboy.
referred to .WHORE-witz.; .Susan. wrote: .There was a time in this
country when Jews were also kept down. Do you remember that? It
appears, Mr. Horowitz, that you've forgotten what prejudice is like.
If it.s not about the money, then what is it about, Mr. Horowitz?

Another poster submitted a picture of a Molotov cocktail and suggested
it was time to use them.

Horowitz's charges of anti-Semitism come at a time when Latino
anti-Semitism in the United States has reached worrying levels.
According to a 2005 Anti-Defamation League (ADL) survey, 19 percent of
American-born Latinos hold anti-Semitic beliefs, while 35 percent of
foreign-born Latinos have such views. For Americans at large, the
number for those with anti-Semitic views is 14 percent.

ADL National Director Abraham Foxman has said Latino anti-Semitism
stems from anti-Jewish teachings in the schools, churches and
communities of Latin countries.

But is anti-Semitism the issue at the South L.A. farm? The local ADL
branch has received no complaints alleging anti-Semitism on the part
of the farmers or their supporters, said Alison Mayersohn,
spokesperson for the ADL, Pacific Southwest Region.

The farmers and their allies explicitly disassociated themselves from
anti-Semitism when word reached them that that Horowitz believed they
had posted anti-Semitic comments on their Web site and/or linked to an
anti-Semitic site. Both charges were untrue, and group leaders faxed a
letter to Horowitz on June 9 - days before the eviction - to tell him
that they condemned anti-Semitism.

"We have never engaged in such descriptions and would support you in
speaking out against anti-Semitism," the missive said. .In addition,
many of the supporters of the South Central Farmers are Jewish..

L.A. City Councilwoman Jan Perry, whose Ninth District includes the
urban farm, acknowledged that there have been ad homonym attacks on
Horowitz, but she observed no anti-Semitism from anyone associated
with the farm. Perry, who is African American and Jewish, has faced
intense criticism herself for suggesting that the site could be used
to generate local jobs and needed tax revenue.

Horowitz, apparently, could not be mollified. His enmity for the
farmers and their supporters only grew after learning that
anti-Semitic printouts from La Voz de Aztlan had circulated by unknown
sources at L.A. City Hall. That Web site, which Rabbi Abraham Cooper,
associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, has called .venomous,.
has no official or unofficial connection with the farmers.

Even so, the injection of anti-Semitism into the dispute by third
parties apparently set Horowitz off. Rabbi Levi Cunin of Chabad of
Malibu, who spoke with Horowitz by phone in a failed bid at bridging
the gap between the two sides, said the developer expressed upset at
being characterized as a stereotypical Jewish landlord.

In Cunin's opinion, "it was a very complicated puzzle and
[anti-Semitism] was just a part of it," he said. Horowitz "was
vilified strongly, and I think he felt very, very hurt by the way this
was all dealt with." [Classic "whack em and weep" sydrome - WVNS]

Farmer Alberto Tlatoa, 20, said Horowitz's charges of anti-Semitism
represented nothing less than the cynical attempt of a victimizer
trying to portray himself as victim. Looking tired and dispirited two
days after the forced eviction, he pointed to torn branches and
twisted plants where his family.s three peach trees, squash and other
fruits and vegetables once flourished.

"I want to call on him to look into his heart," said Tlatoa, wearing a
shirt bearing the message, "South Central Farmers Feeding Families."
"These are families just trying to survive, to feed their kids, to
keep them away from gangs. That is not a crime."

Stormer, the farmers. attorney, said that he wouldn't have represented
them if he.d detected any anti-Semitism. Stormer says he will continue
to pursue litigation to undo the eviction. His next appearance in
court is scheduled for July 12, when he intends to challenge the
city's below-market sale of the property to Horowitz in 2003.


The tussle over the land dates back before 1986, when the city seized
Horowitz.s land using the eminent domain process. Officials hoped to
build a trash incinerator on the site, but community opposition
derailed that project. After the 1992 riots, the city leased the land
to the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, which began allowing people to
cultivate the land. After a series of bruising court battles, Horowitz
regained possession of his land in 2003 for about $5 million . a price
well-below market level but close to what the city had paid him 17
years earlier. (As part of the deal, Horowitz agreed to donate 2.6
acres for a community soccer field.)

Farmer supporters challenged the legality of the sale and continue to
do so, characterizing it as a backroom sweetheart deal.

Insiders said Horowitz was initially open to working out a deal but
lost interest after repeated attacks on his character. He also told
several media outlets that he paid more than $25,000 per month to
maintain the property but received not a penny from the squatting farmers.

Leaders of the farmers have recently come under scrutiny for alleged
wrongdoing and intimidation. The L.A. Weekly reported allegations that
the leaders evicted fellow farmers, even though they lacked legal
authority, while also allegedly collecting .donations. from farmers.
The leaders have denied the charges, saying those evicted had
illegally subleased plots for personal gain.

Meanwhile, those sympathetic to Horowitz.s position have included Mark
Williams, an African American board member of Concerned Citizens of
South Central Los Angeles. Williams accused "radical" farmer activists
of both bad faith and race baiting over the history of the conflict.
He said that it was his mother, activist Juanita Tate, who had
originally helped broker a deal with the city for the farmers to use
the land while it lay fallow, provided that the farmers would vacate
when needed on 30 days notice.

That day arrived when the city agreed to return the land to Horowitz.
Tate took the position that the farmers should abide by the agreement.
In response, she was cast, said Williams, as "a black woman hostile to
the new Latin majority in our community."

Williams said that the attacks devastated Tate, the long-time
executive director of Concerned Citizens, which community members
founded in 1986 to block the proposed incinerator project. Tate died
in 2004.

But resisting an eviction does not make the farmers racist or
anti-Semitic, supporters said. In the weeks following the judge's
order to leave in late May, activists and celebrities built an
encampment at the farm, including a kitchen, medic station and art
space. A .sacred space. also appeared, which featured a menorah and
other holy and spiritual relics, supporter Sarah Coffey said.

"The community that has been built here isn't about race, religion or
color," she said. "It.s about sustainability and connectedness to the
land."

As last week.s eviction approached, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa
amplified his effort to broker a solution that would have preserved
the green space, which stands out in an industrial area . and in a
city that is short on accessible urban parkland. Working with the
Annenberg Foundation and Trust for Public Land, the mayor helped put
together a deal that he thought would meet Horowitz.s asking price,
said Darryl Ryan, the mayor's press deputy.

Much to Villaraigosa.s chagrin, Horowitz torpedoed the deal, Ryan
said.

"I think when it came down to it, Mr. Horowitz didn't want to sell the
land to the farmers," he said. "Mr. Horowitz didn't like the way they
were treating him."

Neither the mayor nor his staff members witnessed any anti-Semitism
directed at Horowitz by the farmers or their supporters during their
involvement, Ryan added.

The city has allocated a 7.8-acre site at 111th Street and Avalon
Boulevard that would accommodate some 200 garden plots. Thirty
displaced farmers already have begun cultivating the land. Some of the
farmers remain dissatisfied with the substitute location for a variety
of reasons. The city is looking for other potential garden sites as well.

Farm supporters hope beyond hope that somehow they will prevail in
their struggle to regain the use of Horowitz.s property, although the
odds appear dim at best.

As things stand, many of the avocado and peach trees have been cut
down, along with the photogenic walnut tree in which actress Daryl
Hannah had perched.

But has more been lost than an urban garden?

Horowitz.s .unfounded. charges of anti-Semitism have generated an
anti-Jewish backlash among some Latinos, said Tezozomoc, an elected
co-leader of the South L.A. farmers. The farmers, he said, feel angry
about the developer's besmirching them.

But others see continued good relations between the two ethnic groups.

"The dust-up over the garden is not going to have any serious impact
on Latino-Jewish relations,. said David Lehrer, president of Community
Advocates, Inc., an L.A.-based consulting group that focus on
improving ties between the city.s diverse communities. .There are
other more profound and deep-seated issues that could cause friction,
but the garden isn't one of them."


For more info about the LA farm collective:
http://www.southcentralfarmers.com/

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US MUSLIM WOMEN AMERICANIZING MOSQUES, BOOK FINDS
Michael Conlon, Reuters, 5/10/06
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-05\
-10T121603Z_01_N29286160_RTRUKOC_0_US-RELIGION-MUSLIMS-USA.xml&archived=False


CHICAGO - The face Muslim women present to America is as diverse as
the faith itself -- and one that is changing as waves of often
impoverished immigrants come to the United States.

That is part of the picture that emerges from a new book shedding
light on the lives of Muslim women by way of well-crafted profiles of
more than four dozen of them, cutting across cultures and lifestyles.

"Part of what we found is that the United States is one of the best
places in the world for women to practice Islam because they do have
freedom, because of our ideas about women having careers and a voice
in houses of worship," said Donna Gehrke-White, author of "The Face
Behind the Veil" (Citadel Press).

"Muslim women here have much more to say in how the religion is
practiced," challenging some traditions such as separate entrances and
second-rate worship spaces in some mosques, she said in an interview.
"In some countries women don't even go to mosques."

"The other thing is that women are Americanizing the mosques, bringing
in Brownie (scout) troops, self-help programs" -- common adjuncts to
other houses of worship but not often seen in places where mosques
were there for prayer and nothing more, added Gehrke-White, a Pulitzer
Prize-winning journalist at the Miami Herald newspapers.

She estimates there are 3 million Muslim women in the United States.
While earlier immigration patterns brought in the educated and
affluent, whose children have moved easily into middle or upper class
society, more recent trends have brought in the poor and desperate,
many from Africa and Asia.

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US citizen to resist extradition from UK
http://www.dawn.com/cgi-bin/dina.pl?file=top12.htm&date=20060609


LONDON, June 8: A US citizen was remanded in custody when he appeared
in a British court on Wednesday accused of supplying Al Qaeda with
military equipment.

Syed Hashmi was arrested on Tuesday night at London's Heathrow airport
as he tried to board a plane to Pakistan and detained pending
extradition proceedings to the United States, where he is wanted on a
terrorism charge.

The 26-year-old told Bow Street Magistrates Court in London he would
fight attempts to send him back to the United States.

Lawyer Laura Rosefield, representing the US government, told the
court: "It is alleged that he (Hashmi) has been supplying military
equipment and currency to Al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

"His UK student visa has expired. He has no permanent address here,
despite studying here since 2003. On his arrest a large amount of cash
was found on his person."

The court was told that a provisional extradition warrant was issued
for Hashmi's arrest on June 1.

It alleged that between January 1 and March 1, 2004, he received
"military gear, intending that it should be used for the purposes of
terrorism".

He was indicted earlier this year by the United States District Court
for the southern district of New York.

Hashmi was remanded in custody until June 15. Another appearance,
possibly by video-link, was scheduled for July 6. — AFP

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Iraqi Troops Are Turning on Their American Counterparts


Friendly Fire Ambush
By MARJORIE COHN
June 22, 2006
http://www.counterpunch.org/cohn06222006.html


Sergeant Patrick R. McCaffrey, Sr. and First Lieutenant Andre D. Tyson
died on this day two years ago in Balad, Iraq. Back then, military
officials reported that enemy insurgents ambushed them. The Army
subsequently conducted an investigation and learned the men were
targeted and killed by Iraqi troops they were training.

Although the Army completed its investigation on September 30, 2005,
it failed to clarify the initial notification to the families for nine
months. It took a May 22 letter from Senator Barbara Boxer's office to
force the Army to finally come clean.

A month before he died, Patrick told his father that Iraqi forces they
were training had attacked his unit. When he filed a complaint with
his chain of command, Patrick "was told to keep his mouth shut," his
mother said.

After Patrick died, his parents conducted their own investigations.
The Army denied requests to see autopsy reports. The McCaffreys
persisted. They talked to soldiers in their son's unit and managed to
learn what really happened.

Bob McCaffrey was informed by members of his son's company that
insurgents were offering Iraqi soldiers about $100 for each American
they could kill. "Iraqi troops are turning on their American
counterparts," Bob said. "That puts a knock in the spin that the White
House is trying to put on this story — how the Iraqis are being well
trained and are getting ready to take over."

Nadia McCaffrey learned that after her son was shot, a US truck
arrived. It picked up Lt. Tyson, who was dead, but did not take her
son who was still alive. The truck returned later and took him to the
base, where he bled to death.

Yesterday, Brig. Gen. Oscar Hilman and three other officers visited
Patrick's mother to deliver the official report. "It was
overwhelming," Nadia told me. I had to live through the whole thing
again."

The officers "tried to patronize me as a good Mom," she added. "I said
I won't stand for that. I want the truth!"

When Nadia talked to Army officers yesterday she asked them, "How
could you possibly let this happen"? They sat silent.

An Army official cited the "complexity" of the case as an excuse for
the delay in telling the families how their sons really died,
according to the Los Angeles Times.

"They never tell the family the truth," said Ophelia Tyson,
grandmother of Andre Tyson. "You know how politics is."

"I really want this story to come out; I want people to know what
happened to my son," Nadia said. "There is no doubt to me that this is
still happening to soldiers today, but our chain of command is awfully
reckless; they don't seem to give a damn about what's happening to
soldiers."

The father of two children, Patrick joined the National Guard the day
after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. He was the first combat death in the
58 year history of California's 579 Engineer Battalion, based in
Petaluma, Ca. Patrick was listed as "Casualty number 848." That was
1652 deaths ago.

"He was killed by the Iraqis that he was training," Nadia said.
"People in this country need to know that."

"It's god-awful," said Bob, himself an Army veteran. "It underlies the
lie of this whole situation in Iraq. It's all to me a pack of lies."

Boxer noted, "You have to ask yourself, 'What are we doing there with
a blank check and a blind eye, when our soldiers are risking their
lives for the Iraqi people and the Iraqis are turning around and
killing our soldiers?' We need an exit strategy."


Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and
president-elect of the National Lawyers Guild.

===

Army Lies to Mother of Slain Guardsman for Two Years
By Amy Goodman
Democracy Now!
Friday 23 June 2006
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/062306S.shtml


     Two years after National Guardsmen Spc. Patrick McCaffrey and 1st
Lt. Andre Tyson were killed in Iraq, the truth about their deaths has
been exposed. Military officials initially told the families that the
two men had been killed in an ambush by insurgents but an Army
investigation concluded that they were in fact murdered by members of
the allied Iraqi Civil Defense Corps. The military only told the
families the truth this week. We speak with Nadia McCaffrey - the
mother of Spc. Patrick McCaffrey - who is accusing the Pentagon of a
deliberate cover-up.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

     The US military is being accused of another deliberate cover-up
involving killings in Iraq. But this time, the victims are not
Iraqis...they're American soldiers.

     Specialist Patrick McCaffrey and First Lieutenant Andre Tyson -
both members of the California National Guard - were killed in June
2004 while on patrol near the town of Balad, fifty miles north of
Baghdad.

     Military officials initially told the families that the two
soldiers had been attacked and killed in an ambush by insurgents. But
that story turned out to be a lie.

     An Army investigation concluded in September 2005 that the two
were in fact killed by members of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps -
supposed allies that the Guardsmen had been training and patrolling
with. McCaffrey and Tyson's fellow soldiers had suspected this was the
case all along. Instead of sharing these findings with the families,
the military sat on the story - for nine months.

     It was only after Nadia McCaffrey - the mother of Specialist
Patrick McCaffrey - asked California Senator Barbara Boxer in May to
pressure the Pentagon to release information about her son's death
that the truth came out.

     The military revealed what it knew only this week - nearly two
years to the day of the killings of McCaffrey and Tyson. An Army
general briefed the families at their homes on Wednesday. The Pentagon
is now being accused of a deliberate cover-up.

     Senator Boxer said the case raises troubling questions and plans
to raise the issue on the floor of the Senate.

     She told reporters, "I think it's pretty obvious that if the
American people knew that the Iraqis we train would turn on our
soldiers, support for the war would erode."

     This is not the first case of its kind. Also in 2004, NFL star Pat
Tillman was killed while serving in Afghanistan. The Army initially
said Tillman was killed by enemy fire while leading troops into
battle. The high-profile story was widely reported in the media. But
the Army was later forced to acknowledge that Tillman had in fact been
killed by gunfire from his fellow soldiers.

     Nadia McCaffrey, the mother of Specialist Patrick McCaffrey. She
joins us on the line from Tracy, California.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

     Rush Transcript

     Amy Goodman: We go now to Tracy, California, to speak with Nadia
McCaffrey, the mother of Specialist Patrick McCaffrey, welcome to
Democracy Now!, Nadia.

     Nadia McCaffrey: Good morning, Amy.

     Amy Goodman: It's good to have you with us. And again our
condolences on the loss of your son, Patrick.

     Nadia McCaffrey: Thank you.

     Amy Goodman: Can you tell us what you learned this week?

     Nadia McCaffrey: Well, it was a bumpy week. This week I learned -
and I had a visit from a general and three high-ranking officers at my
house. And this was to let me know that the report that I had received
originally in 2004, after my son's death, was not true, was not
exactly a report. Nobody bothered to give me a report. But what we
know was exactly that Patrick and Andre were attacked in an ambush,
and they were both killed.

     We since then asked many, many times, a report on Patrick's
autopsy and a report on the result of the ambush or the investigation
from the ambush. And then we were answered absolutely nothing.
Letters, email, you name it. Phone calls. I don't know how many times
I've personally called the Pentagon. Nothing. We would be given
another phone number to call to or another direction within the
country. The call to Iraq military here, some other person in
Washington, D.C. It didn't make sense.

     So I was just fed up with it, and I just walked up to Senator
Boxer, and I just asked her, "Please, can you help me with this?" And
then, boy, two or three days later, I started to get a phone call from
the Pentagon, telling me that somebody would - a doctor would call me
in the next few days to give me a report on Patrick's death from the
autopsy. It happened just like that. So the doctor that called
actually worked on Patrick and remembered Patrick very well, when he
came in from Dover. And he also sent me the next day by FedEx a CD
with pictures of the arrival first of Patrick out of the body bag and
all the procedure of the autopsy.

     Amy Goodman: The San Francisco Chronicle piece on your learning
this week, on the second anniversary of Patrick's death, what actually
happened to him, begins, "Fellow soldiers knew within minutes on June
22, 2004, that California National Guard Specialist Patrick McCaffrey
and First Lieutenant Andre D. Tyson had been killed by supposedly
allied Iraqi soldiers who were patrolling alongside them. Army
investigators reached the same conclusion in 2005." So, his fellow
soldiers knew immediately. Have you talked to any of his buddies who
survived and came home?

     Nadia McCaffrey: Oh, yes, I did. And I actually had my own
investigation, and I have accumulated a box - actually I've got two or
three boxes - of papers. People sent me emails from across the
country, people who were in Iraq, people who just were home, but also
check from one soldier to the other, to the other. I accumulated that.
And somebody in Los Angeles, a professor, Professor Wolf, he made a
lot of time for this investigation. He followed it from the beginning.
And he really helped me, you know. And obviously, something was wrong
from the start. We needed to pinpoint what it was, and how it was
presented to us was totally wrong. You know, it was just false. It
didn't work. I mean, it didn't make sense. Many things did not make
sense at all.

     Amy Goodman: But no member of his unit came to you and said, "It's
not as the Army has told you. I was there."

     Nadia McCaffrey: Yes. Yes, two or three people did.

     Amy Goodman: And did they tell you this?

     Nadia McCaffrey: They told me, yes, what they saw and what they
have heard. As a matter of fact, just after Patrick and Andre were
killed, one of the soldiers made his own report. And very complete, I
may say. And this report was actually sent to the Sacramento Bee in
Sacramento, newspaper. And this article was actually published by the
Sacramento Bee. Immediately after that, this article was all over the
world, because when Patrick's body returned to the airport in San
Francisco, I called the media, and that made a huge fire within the
news and so on, since the Pentagon had a ban on that.

     Amy Goodman: Let's explain the idea that you called the national
press to be at Sacramento airport, international airport, when
Patrick's body came home, because President Bush had issued this
executive order, saying that you shouldn't videotape, photograph, film
the flag-draped coffins of the soldiers coming home. But you defied that?

     Nadia McCaffrey: Yes, yes. I didn't want to. That was my son.
Frankly, I didn't really care, you know. I needed to do it this way
for us, and I wanted to honor my son. I was not going to pass him in
the dark, returning home, no. He didn't leave in the dark; why should
I do that when he comes back? No. But because of that, immediately
after this, this article took off and was everywhere. What happened
was, the soldier who wrote this article was threatened to be
court-martialed immediately. And the only reason that the
court-martial didn't happen is because it became too public too fast.
But he nonetheless was in serious trouble. I know that through his
mother, and she was extremely worried about it. So I talked to other
soldiers in his unit, and I called, you know, [inaudible] in San
Francisco that I know. I needed advice from just in case something
would turn ugly. He's okay. But it was not easy for him for quite a
long time.

     Amy Goodman: What was his name?

     Nadia McCaffrey: He's still in, so I'm not sure if I should say.
His first name is Chris.

     Amy Goodman: And his report was published, and he was named in the
papers.

     Nadia McCaffrey: Yes. Well, yeah. His name was Chris Murphy. He's
a very nice young man. He didn't think - he was 19 or 20 years old,
you know - if he acted. He lost Patrick. Patrick was his friend, like
a dad figure, you know, and he protected him. When he got in trouble,
Patrick would defend him, which he did with all the young soldiers,
you know.

     Amy Goodman: Wasn't that why Patrick decided to go to Iraq? I
mean, why did he join the military? And then, why did he decide to go
to Iraq? They were two different decisions.

     Nadia McCaffrey: Well, he did not want to go to Iraq at all. He
enlisted after 9/11 to become a National Guard, and he wanted to do
this because he reacted from, of course, the catastrophe of the Towers
in the 9/11. And he didn't [inaudible] he thought about it and he
wanted to do something for his country. He wanted to help.

     He would have been here for Katrina. He would have - you know,
there was a fire between Shasta and Redding that burned for ten days
[inaudible] last year. Nobody was there to stop the fire. It burned
over 15,000 acres of woods and land, houses, you name it. People just
left their home and let it burn. Now, Patrick would have been part of
the National Guard to be there to stop the fire.

     And once he was in Iraq, well, he was deployed, anyway, of course.
So once he was in Iraq, it took him a very short time to realize that,
you know, that this was not at all what we said we were doing. And he
said to me many times, not just one, but it didn't take long for him
to admit and to say, "Mom, we shouldn't be here. We have nothing to do
here. We are not fulfilling any of our promises to the people." And he
- he lost his illusion. And because of that, after that, he turned to
the children, the Iraqi children, and the soldiers.

     Amy Goodman: Now, the Army is saying that it was the Iraqi troops
he was training that turned their guns on him and Andre. You got a
video of the troops he was training?

     Nadia McCaffrey: Yes.

     Amy Goodman: How did you get this?

     Nadia McCaffrey: This, I didn't know I had it. And - because we
got Patrick's laptop just a little time after he was killed and
returned home. I left that laptop the way it was for a long time, just
looking at the pictures that came up. And then, this year, from his
birthday actually, on May 26, I decided to maybe to burn some DVDs,
because there was so much material on the laptop, and I was thinking,
you know, if something happened to it, we're going to lose it. So I
decided to burn some DVDs. And somehow the whole process got stopped,
so I tried to play with it a little bit and it started to work, and it
did download into a DVD.

     And there was something I had never seen before. There was
pre-training, pre-video training of Patrick training the Iraqis,
shooting and doing some exercise. We see Patrick very clearly on the
street. And I remember afterward that he told us, his wife and I, that
he was going to send some DVDs home. We never got the DVDs. Well, I
think this is the answer. They were - didn't have time to do it.

     Amy Goodman: Now, do you know who of these men killed your son,
Patrick?

     Nadia McCaffrey: No. I don't know exactly which one precisely, but
I have - I'm sure the men who killed him are in those three videos, yes.

     Amy Goodman: And I want to tell our listeners that you can go to
our website at democracynow.org; for our viewers, we have been running
the videotape that you got off of Patrick's computer. We've been
running it through this broadcast. Again, our website is
democracynow.org. Has anyone been taken into custody for the killing
of Patrick and Andre?

     Nadia McCaffrey: I'm not too sure. I was told by the general and
the officer yesterday that there was one person in custody. But there
is no name on it. I don't know yet. I really would like to know,
because last year, I remember when the 579 came home, there was a
gathering here at the house, and many of them were present. They say
at the time that the sniper that shot at Patrick and came just at the
last minutes of the shooting from behind the wall, well, you know,
that sniper has disappeared from the military investigation. And this
man was supposed to be arrested last year.

     Now, they also said that the man that they arrested was part of
the shooting, but they also said there was a second man. And they
think that second man is dead. I'm not sure. It doesn't make sense.
Again, it doesn't fit with what I have heard last year and with what
I'm hearing from them now.

     Also I confronted them with some details that really are not
possible. The way the officer described the scene of the shooting is
impossible. Why? Because the direction of Patrick's bullet wound, it's
not right. It's just - something is very wrong. So I'm not sure. I'm
going to look into it. And I want to go do the second - , because the
first investigation that was started has been closed. And now, they
are reopening a second investigation, which is a criminal
investigation. And it's not going to be the same people running it.

     Amy Goodman: Is Senator Boxer going to be calling for a hearing in
the Senate?

     Nadia McCaffrey: Yes. Oh, yes, she has been wonderful.

     Amy Goodman: Well, Nadia McCaffrey, I want it thank you very much
for being with us. Nadia McCaffrey's son Patrick McCaffrey killed in
Iraq, June 22, 2004. She learned on the second anniversary of his
death that the Army had lied to her originally about how her son died.
We will continue to follow this story.

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Why Americans Should Be Packing Their Bags NOW
By Ezekiel
http://outtheretv.com


It is now time to think about the unthinkable. Americans who have been
raised to love their country and trust in their leaders' commitment to
democracy need to be considering--even planning for--emigrating to
escape before full-blown tyranny arrives in the United States.
You and Your Family Can Be Trapped in a Matter of Hours

Don't be lulled into complacency because neither you nor your friends
have been hauled out of bed by the Gestapo in the middle of the night.
The heavy hand of an unrestrained government is already being felt
among some targeted groups, and the mechanisms necessary to institute
a totatlitarian state that will impact the daily lives of all
Americans are already in place. Within a matter of hours, the power of
the imperial federal executive can be invoked to freeze your assets
and prevent you from traveling within or out of the United States.

Do you still believe that your money is your own, and that you can do
with it what you want? Then you have a lot to learn about how federal
control of your money has grown in the last 15 years. Many ordinary
Americans, people who are far from being terrorists or even political
activists, have already encountered the Bank Secrecy Act and the
features of the Patriot Act that have made it even more restrictive.
Benedictine sisters at the Holy Name Monastery in Florida couldn't
understand why their checks were bouncing back in 2005. A call to the
bank revealed that their account had been frozen--by the bank--because
one 80 year-old signatory on the account had not provided her Social
Security number as required by the Bank Secrecy Act and the Patriot Act.

Federal law now requires banks to provide strict oversight of
customers' accounts, ostensibly to counter money laundering and
terrorist funding. Banks must first collect extensive information
about depositors so that they have clear evidence of customers'
identities, and then share this information with federal agencies.
They must file Suspicious Activity Reports with FinCEN whenever there
is "unusual" activity out of the customer's normal pattern of behavior
in addition to the more widely known Cash Transaction Reports filed
whenever there are cash deposits or withdrawals in excess of $10,000.
Finally, they must respond quickly with information and other
"appropriate action" whenever a customer's name is on the "Control
List" formed from information collected from federal and local law
enforcement agencies.

Banks are anxious to avoid the wrath of the federal officials who
regulate them closely, and are quick to share information and even
freeze accounts if there is any question about a customer. John Byrne,
an official of the American Bankers' Association, testifying before
the House Financial Services Committee in February, 2002, was proud of
bankers' efforts to satisfy federal requests:

We have also been diligently responding to the various lists that the
government has been distributing to either block or freeze accounts or
to notify law enforcement that a particular individual has an account
with a specific institution.

If a federal or local law enforcement agency decides to put you on the
"Control List," you will lose access to your bank assets within hours.
You probably already know something about the lists that can prevent
you from traveling by air. The F. B. I. created the original "no-fly"
list in 1990, but the Patriot Act created a new agency, the
Transportation Security Administration, to implement the list after
9/11. At the beginning of September, 2001, there were 16 people on the
list. Now, European airlines, who must check the list before boarding
passengers bound for the U. S., report it contains over 80,000 names.
There are actually two lists. One is a strict "no-fly" list of
individuals who are not allowed to board planes at all. The larger
list is the "selectee" list. People who turn up on the selectee list
have their boarding passes marked with an "S" which signals security
personnel to pull them out of line and subject them to stricter
searches and often extensive questioning. Those who have missed
flights because of begin detained or prevented from flying altogether
include political active individuals on the left and right and critics
of the Bush administration, intelligence services and the Iraq war.
The TSA and the agency that actually compiles the list, the
Transportation Security Intelligence Service, refuse to divulge the
sources for the names added to the list. They do admit that the number
of names increases "almost daily" as various federal and possibly
local agencies submit information.

Again, if an agency decided to submit your name, this computerized
system would be able to block you from being able to travel within
minutes. If you think you can evade the TSA by getting to Canada and
flying from there, think again. Transport Canada expects to have a
no-fly list in place by the end of the year despite the objections of
Canadian civil liberties groups and the Canadian Islamic Congress.

Nations that move toward totalitarianism follow a common series of
steps as they eliminate freedom. While rhetoric aimed at target groups
may begin with "love it or leave it," before long authoritarian states
enact restrictions on emigrees taking assets out of the country and
even on emigration itself. In the United States, those restrictions
are already in place, but are currently enforced selectively against a
fairly small number of people to avoid arousing too much controversy.
Modern computer technology enables authorities to use the laws and
systems now in place to expand the application of these restrictions
far more widely to groups and individuals identified through the
government's vast, illegal data gathering effort of the past few
years. Those who hear themselves targeted as "traitors," "fifth
columnists," "degenerates," etc.--in other words, Muslims, gays,
atheists, leftists, antiwar activists, dissenters and others--should
realize that they could find themselves blocked from leaving the
country even before other elements of a fascist state are put in place.

There Is No Quick Turn Around on the Horizon

Those who are counting on a major electoral defeat for those who
support implementing a totatlitarian government in the U. S. are
pinning their hopes on a "triple bank shot."

Republicans hold a 15 seat majority in the House of Representatives
and a six seat margin in the Senate (where the Vice President holds a
tie-breaking vote). Even the most optimistic Democrats don't expect to
prevail in the Senate because there are only four possible pickups:
Pennsylvania, Montana, Rhode Island and Ohio.

The House would seem to be a stronger possibility, especially
considering generic Congressional polls that show Democrats leading
Republicans by an average of 13 points. But those numbers don't
translate into the 15 seat pickup necessary because of redistricting
that has made incumbents almost invulnerable. Stuart Rothenberg
currently predicts a Democratic gain of 7 to 10 seats and rival
analyst Charlie Cook identifies maybe nine Democratic pickups. The
numbers just aren't there.

Even if Democrats have the votes on the ground to gain 15 seats, the
problems with the electoral system that have called the last two
Presidential elections into doubt have only become worse. Electronic
voting machines with no paper trails are even more prevalent, and
nothing has been done to prevent the voter suppression techniques that
have been so successful during this decade. Finally, there is little
evidence that even a long-shot Democratic majority in the House would
halt America's descent into fascism. The Patriot Act passed the House
with Democratic votes both times. A majority of Senate Democrats
supported the nomination of NSA wiretapper Hayden for the CIA. The
Iran Freedom Support Act, called by Dennis Kucinich a "stepping stone"
to yet another illegal war, passed the House 397-21 just a few weeks ago.

All this enabling behavior by Democrats makes even Democratic
activists like Glenn Greenwald skeptical that a Democratic majority in
the House would halt the slide toward fascism:

I've written before that, at least to me, the principal if not
exclusive benefit of the Democrats taking over one or both of the
Congressional houses in November is that it will impose some checks
and limitations on the behavior of the administration and,
specifically, will finally result in meaningful investigations into
what has happened in our country and to our government over the last
five years. But I have serious doubts about whether that would
really happen...John Cole is absolutely right that Democrats have
managed to change virtually nothing as a result of the collapse of the
Bush presidency.

That's because they think the same and behave the same as they did
when they were getting pushed around by Bush as a highly popular "war
president." As a result, there is no reason to believe they will be
any better than they are now (and have been for the past four years)
if and when they take over one or both Congressional Houses. One could
make a compelling case that they will be even worse.

Given the intensity and promimity of the current threat to personal
liberty, it is wishful thinking to hold out for an electoral victory
in November that will make everything right.

Economic Factors Make Emigrating More Difficult Every Day
Emigrating is much easier with a little money. Obtaining residency in
most countries requires an immigrant to demonstrate the means to
survive either from assets already in hand or income from a job or
business. If you can get your current employer to transfer you or have
the skills to get a new job overseas, you're set. Otherwise, getting
away from oppression in the U. S. may require you to assemble and use
some of your financial assets.

For most people, a substantial percentage of personal assets are tied
up in the family home. Equity in a house can provide the funds
necessary to relocate, buy a home abroad, and start a business in a
new country. The problem is that the American housing market is in
decline. Inventory is up 40%. Sales are down 15-20%. Some are
predicting price drops of more than 10% with a bear market that could
last four or five years.

The longer you wait, the less equity you're likely to have.
On top of that, the dollar is declining. Since early April, the value
of the dollar has fallen by more than 7% against the Euro, and the
combination of huge trade and budget deficits suggest to some analysts
that the dollar's fall will continue until 30% to 50% has been wrung
out of its value.

Again, the longer you wait, the less your dollars will buy you in
another country.

Economic trends are yet another factor suggesting that now is the time
to emigrate before housing deflation and a dropping dollar rob you of
the money you will need to start a life outside the U. S.

Delay Is Dangerous

Leaving your home and career behind is hard. I know. I've done it. But
in the year since I've left, things have only gotten worse in the
United States. Yes, Bush's popularity has suffered because of the
endless war in Iraq, the Katrina fiasco and rising gasoline prices,
but the trend toward authoritarian government has not been reversed;
it has accelerated. All it takes is for one of a number of possible
events--a terrorist attack, war against Iran, financial panic, an
epidemic, civil unrest--to tip things to a point of no return.

The laws and mechanisms are all in place to prevent people from
escaping tyranny. They have already been used to harass and trap tens
of thousands. The government now has the ability within a matter of
hours to prevent everyone from taking assets abroad or leaving by the
light of day.

If you are inclined to "stay and fight," then I can only wish you good
luck. In my fifties, I do not see myself as a freedom fighter taking
to the hills with my rifle, nor would I want to put myself in a
situation where I was forced to take the life of another to save my
own or that of a family member. For us, it is better to go to a place
where the insanity has not spread so widely.

If you believe that leaving the U. S. would be giving in to the forces
of fascism, I would point you to a recent movie about a fascist
dictatorship. The character Evie, played by Natalie Portman, recalls
the arrest of her parents in the movie "V." As scenes of their capture
and torture play on the screen, she narrates, "My mother wanted to
leave the country. My father said that would be letting them win. (He
thought) it was a game."

This is no game. How tragic it was that not more Jews left Nazi
Germany in time to escape the concentration camps. They loved their
country. They trusted in the basic decency of their neighbors. As
anyone would be, they were reluctant to leave behind their homes,
their careers, their friends, their family. In the end, they lost it all.

The people who now control the executive branch of the federal
government have committed serious crimes already, and will not refrain
from even greater abuses to hold onto power and avoid prison. No one
should expect to see George Bush deliver a rambling speech about his
mother before climbing aboard a helicopter in disgrace. These people
will not back down. The window is closing. Life goes on outside the
boundaries of the United States. Don't wait until it's too late.


Ezekiel is an American who emigrated to Europe a year ago. He
distributes a monthly newsletter for people who would like to learn
more about emigration, obtaining visas, starting businesses overseas
and living abroad. You can reach him at ezekielinexile @ gmail.com.

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Lesson from ISI's killing of a Journalist in Pakistan
By abid ullah jan
June 19, 2006
http://www.icssa.org/isi_murder.html


It seems the conscience of humanity doesn't stir until someone pays
the price for resisting oppression and our right to know and tell the
truth. On June 16, 2006, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence
Directorate (ISI) silenced another journalist, Hayatullah Khan,
forever. He was handcuffed and shot from behind after experiencing
unknown torment at the hands of his abductors for six months. That is
why you are reading this column, which I am writing with utter shame
for not having said a word in Mr. Khan's favor when he was alive. The
question, however, is: What type of words would have saved his life?
Appeals, protests, or exposing the real faces of his persecutors?

This column will not do any favors to the deceased journalist or his
young daughters and sons—Naila Hayat (8), Farishta Hayat (6); Kamran
Hayat (5); and Faisal Hayat (3). Nevertheless, it could serve as a
crucial lesson to other journalists that the initiative and courage
displayed by Mr. Khan should always be their responsibility, too. Mr.
Khan died because he contradicted the Pakistan military's version of
events in the U.S. war of terrorism. If everyone, or at least, most
journalists were not relying on government press releases; if they
were doing honest reporting after fieldwork, a few of them would not
have been singled out like this.

The military dictatorship and its repressive arm, the ISI, did not
turn against Mr. Khan overnight. The government authorities harassed
him and his family for over four years before the ISI finally abducted
him in December 2005 and killed him in June 2006.

The harassment of Hayatullah Khan started on August 5, 2001. On that
day, Reporter Sans Frontiers wrote that Mr. Khan had received new
threats and was obliged to stay in hiding. Local authorities had been
harassing the journalist since June. Threatened with arrest, Khan left
Mir Ali. He had to flee the town of Bannu to find refuge in Peshawar.[1]

Hayatullah Khan told Sans Frontiers: "I have been so harassed and
intimidated that I have left my native town and am taking shelter in
one place or another to escape the administration's strong-arm
tactics." Local authorities ransacked the journalist's house several
times, and arrested one of his relatives to force Khan to surrender.
It was the responsibility of other journalists to follow Mr. Khan's
leads, and verify the authenticity of his reports. When a journalist
is left alone like this, there is no doubt that not only his
victimization will continue but that the government authorities will
remain engaged in dirty tricks it does not want to see exposed.

Military officials in the tribal area of North Waziristan continued
harassing Hayatullah Khan. His persecution intensified in April 2004,
when Mr. Khan reported the "misuse" of military vehicles in the area.
His brothers and daughter were expelled from an army-administered
school. The press reported the incident, but it was soon forgotten.[2]
Again, not one journalist followed the lead, which would have reduced,
if not eliminated, the authorities' persecution of Mr. Khan altogether.

Finally, on December 5, 2005, five armed men abducted Khan. His
abduction came days after he contradicted Pakistani Army claims that
Hamza Rabia, a leading Arab activists, and four others, died on
December 1 as a result of an accidental munitions explosion. On the
basis of photographs he took at the scene, Khan said a US missile
killed Rabia. Villagers said a missile fired from a plane or a drone
caused the explosion.

Right from the beginning, the ISI was considered responsible for Mr.
Khan's kidnapping. The Daily Times reported that his eldest daughter,
Naila, was not optimistic that her father would come home safely. She
told a Daily Times reporter: "Personally, I do not hope my father will
come back safe and sound." When asked why she thought so, she replied:
"He [Hayatullah Khan] was taken away by the ISI (Inter-Service
Intelligence)."[3]

Since the line between local and U.S. agencies acting against the
truth-tellers in Pakistan is too thin when it comes to the so-called
"war on terrorism," people started accusing U.S. agencies of keeping
Mr. Khan after his abduction in 2005. In response, the U.S. Consul in
Peshawar, Mike Spangler, said on May 10, 2006 that the United States
had "read the reports on the disappearance of Hayatullah Khan (...),
but is not in possession of any information about him."[4] This left
no one else but the ISI suspect.

It is out of the question that the Taliban or "Islamic extremists"
abducted Khan because the government authorities had accused him "of
writing articles about the weakness of the North Waziristan
administration and the growing influence of the Taliban."[5] On March
28, 2006 The Guardian reported that a local journalist mysteriously
disappeared "in a case that highlights the murky underbelly of the US
`war on terror'." This shows who Mr. Khan's killers are.

Khan was found dead on Friday, June 16, 2006, three kilometers south
of Mir Ali near the Afghan border. He had been handcuffed and appeared
to have been shot from behind while trying to escape, his brother,
Ehsanullah, told the BBC. Reporters Without Borders have reported that
he had been shot several times in the head. During his abduction, Mr.
Khan had lost a lot of weight and had grown a long beard. His brother
told the BBC the handcuffs were of a type usually used by the security
forces. Khan's brothers said in a joint statement that he was
kidnapped and killed by official security apparatus - meaning the
ISI.[6] Mr. Khan's journalist colleagues had been blaming the ISI for
his abduction for a long time.[7]

The ISI will never learn a lesson. It has to serve military and
civilian governments alike. However, the lesson other journalists must
learn following the death of their Pakistani colleague by torture,
starvation, and, finally, murder by the ISI, is very clear: Protests,
appeals and campaigns with the help of local and international
organizations for the protection of journalists are futile. If
journalists really want to protect fellow journalists and look after
their own future, they must never allow any of their peers to seek out
the truth in isolation. They must commit themselves, in the interests
of their honor and their craft, to join the search for truth and, in
the process, leave no stone unturned.

Pakistani journalists, in particular, have to unlearn the old lesson
of journalism. The lesson is: Don't make an enemy of your kids -
follow what the rest are doing. This is exactly the same message the
ISI directly gives to the journalists it targets.[8] If all
journalists and columnists start worrying about their own kids, we may
never save the nation. The very few who do dare to tell it as it is,
will either have to face certain torture and death, like Hayatullah
Khan, or will have no option but to leave their ailing parents,
unmarried sisters, and their roots behind to seek protection in other
lands, where they live like unwelcome visitors from the grave.


Notes

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] Reporters Sans Frontiers, Pakistan annual report 2002, released
April 24, 2002. See URL: http://www.rsf.org/print.php3?id_article=1447

[2] Waqar Gillani, "Pakistan — a vibrant press under constraint since
2003: Three journalists and an author killed, says SAFMA's `Media
Monitor2003' report," Daily Times, May 10, 2005. URL:
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_10-5-2004_pg7_24

[3] "Small ages, big challenges: In search of kidnapped father," Daily
Times, December 21, 2005. URL:
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2005%5C12%5C21%5Cstory_21-12-2005_\
pg7_40


[4] Reporters Sans Frontiers, "Hayatullah Khan found dead six months
after he went missing," June 16, 2006. URL:
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=18050

[5] Reporters Sans Frontiers, Pakistan annual report 2002, released
April 24, 2002. See URL: http://www.rsf.org/print.php3?id_article=1447

[6] BBC Report, "Pakistani journalist found killed," June 16, 2006,
15:41 GMT URL:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5088052.stm

[7] Guardian report, "Smoke and mirrors," March 28, 2006. URL:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,,1741551,00.html

[8] See a 2003 article: "Unlearn old lessons of journalism," by the
author, March 5, 2003. URL:
http://www.pakistan-facts.com/article.php?story=2003031019583051 ;
http://www.zmag.org/interactive/content/display_item.cfm?itemID=4562
and http://icssa.org/Unlearn_old_lessons.htm

Also see:


Journalism in Pakistan:
http://www.icssa.org/Journalism%20in%20Pakistan.htm

Unlearn old lessons of journalism:
http://www.icssa.org/unlearn_old_lessons.htm

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As Barrier Comes Down, a Muslim Split Remains
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/25/us/25muslim.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&th&emc=th


SAN FRANCISCO, June 24 — During Friday prayers at San Francisco's
largest downtown mosque, Sevim Kalyoncu, a young Turkish-American
writer, used to resent that the imam never addressed the women, as if
his message was not intended for them. But the sermons underwent a
sudden change when the Islamic Society of San Francisco took the
controversial step of tearing down the barrier separating male and
female worshippers.

"He was always addressing the brothers during the Friday sermon," Ms.
Kalyoncu said. "Now we hear 'brothers and sisters' because he can see
us. Before, I felt very distant, but now it seems that women are part
of the group. It's a first step."

Even after the slapdash, 8-foot wall across the back of the Darussalam
mosque was demolished as part of a renovation last fall, however, the
400-member congregation remained divided.

After the demolition, a small knot of veiled women marched in
brandishing a hand-lettered cardboard sign that read "We Want the
Wall." Several men who pray at the mosque — on the third floor of an
old theater in a particularly sleazy stretch of the city's Tenderloin
district — are still grumbling, and some of them even decamped for a
rival mosque. But the wall stayed down.

The norm in the United States and Canada — not to mention in the
larger Muslim world — is to separate the women, if not bar them
entirely. A small if determined band of North American Muslims, mostly
younger women, have been challenging the practice, however, labeling
the separation of men and women imported cultural baggage rather than
a fulfillment of a religious commandment. They argue that while
Muslims brag that Islam grants more rights to women than other
religions do, the opposite is true.

"I am positive there will be an American Islamic identity that is
separate from what you see in the Middle East and the rest of the
Islamic world," said Souleiman Ghali, a founding member of the Islamic
Society of San Francisco and the main force behind the wall's removal.

"We can discuss things that would be taboo in different countries,"
added Mr. Ghali, 47, a Palestinian who immigrated to the United States
from Lebanon when he was 20 and now runs a copy business in downtown
San Francisco. "Here we can challenge ideas or change them, and there
is no religious authority to come in with the power of the government
to shut us down, accusing us of being infidels contradicting thousands
of years of the religious norm."

In Regina, Saskatchewan, Zarqa Nawaz was so incensed when her
200-member mosque shunted the women into a small, dark room behind a
one-way mirror that she made a documentary on the subject.

The film, "Me and the Mosque," was financed by the National Film Board
of Canada and broadcast on Canadian national television in April. It
will appear on two American satellite channels, Link TV and Free
Speech TV, starting July 16.

Mrs. Nawaz said the issue had broader implications.

"The barriers have become a metaphor for keeping the women secluded in
other ways, to having no role in running the community," she said.

In 2001, a survey by the Council on American-Islamic Relations of more
than 1,200 mosques found that 66 percent of them required women to
pray behind a partition or in a separate room, up from 52 percent in
1994. Another study, spearheaded by the Islamic Social Services
Association of Canada, found that mosques generally "relegate women to
small, dingy, secluded, airless and segregated quarters with their
children."

Islamic scholars and women activists say they believe the trend has
accelerated since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, attributing
it to a newly pervasive insecurity on the part of North American
Muslims who have counteracted it through a staunch adherence to tradition.

"There is a sense that there is a crusade out there against Islam,
that Islam is under siege and we have to hold steadfast to our
righteous ways more than ever," said Khaled Abou El Fadl, a law
professor at the University of California , Los Angeles, and a
prominent Islamic jurist known for his moderate interpretations.

Dr. Abou El Fadl said the practice began in 18th-century Saudi Arabia,
where the austere Wahhabi sect of Islam started walling off or banning
women from mosques. (He added that the modern spread of Wahhabism is
one facet of the pervasiveness of Saudi financial support for Muslim
institutions worldwide.)

Mrs. Nawaz's film takes an alternately light-hearted and serious look
at the arguments on both sides.
"In Islam, mixing is not encouraged; there is no mixing between sexes,
and there are all kinds of reasons for that," Ghassan Joundi, the
president of the Manitoba Islamic Association, says in the film. In
Dr. Joundi's mosque, the men first erected a barrier with shutters,
then nailed them shut.

At the Darussalam mosque, the dispute over the wall was just one
skirmish in a larger battle over the entire tenor of the mosque. Mr.
Ghali and other leaders at the mosque fired an imam they deemed overly
militant, not least because he wanted to make the barrier between the
sexes even more pronounced. The imam went to court, winning more than
$400,000 in a wrongful dismissal suit, and then opened a competing
mosque around the corner, where the women still worship behind a wall.

But Mr. Ghali and other mosque leaders say they believe North America
provides fertile ground for melding the best of all cultural
traditions because the Muslim population is so diverse.
"You can't take a tradition in Pakistan, Somalia or Egypt and bring it
to America and make it part of the law; it doesn't make sense," said
Mr. Ghali, who resigned as president of the mosque's board in
February. "It's one of those cultural things that many immigrants
brought from overseas without giving it much thought. It's time to get
rid of those bad habits."

That outlook incited an exodus by some worshippers, and some who
stayed have complained that a clique of "ayatollahs" who brook no
dissent now run Darussalam.

"I don't want to be distracted by ladies in the back when I am
praying," said Adel al-Dalali, 40, a Yemeni cab driver who prays at
Darussalam, noting that mosques in his homeland were built with a
mezzanine reserved for women. "Even if it is more culture than
religious tradition, we feel it's needed."

At the back of the mosque, some of the roughly 30 women worshippers
agreed. "As a Muslim woman, I was more at peace praying behind the
wall," said Zeinab al-Andea, a 50-year-old Yemeni who spoke only
Arabic. "As a veiled woman, I don't want to mix with men. It's a
beautiful mosque, but I wish there was a wall."

The mosque occupies the top floor of a building that was filled mostly
with sweatshops until 1991, when the Islamic Society moved in. The
recent renovations turned the mosque into one large room flooded with
light. Broad green stripes on the red carpet show the faithful where
to line up, and, in a nod to tradition, men and women still do not
pray shoulder to shoulder.

The wall across the back was replaced with small printed signs reading
"Sisters Prayer Area Only Behind This Sign." The aim of knocking down
the wall was not for the sexes to mingle, but to have comparable
access to the imam.

Outside, the neighborhood is rife with all manner of vice. Intoxicated
men and women occasionally stagger into one of the many liquor stores.
Across Market Street, a pornography store called Sin City exhorts
passers-by to "See the Beauty, Touch the Magic."

Yet a dedicated group of women who support the change at Darussalam
navigate their way to the mosque each Friday.

These women say they hated the wall. With it, they had trouble hearing
the sermon and often fell out of sync with the prayer movements.
Distracted, some say they gave up praying and instead just gossiped or
drank tea.

Proponents of barriers in mosques tend to argue that the Prophet
Muhammad's wives, who inhabited a series of rooms attached to the main
mosque at Medina, spoke to the faithful from behind a tentlike
curtain. They also say a distinct space for women assures they will
not have to jostle with men.

Muslim rituals are guided by the Koran and the Hadith, tomes that
detail Islam as it was practiced in the prophet's time. Advocates and
some religious scholars say the books support the women. Muhammad
emphasized that the rules for his wives were distinct from those for
other women, they note, and he never resorted to a barrier, despite
similar debate in the seventh century.

Some early adherents of Islam showed up late for prayers so they could
stay in the back and ogle the women's behinds, even penning bawdy odes
to the sight, said Dr. Abou El Fadl, the U.C.L.A. scholar, so Mohamed
recommended that all men pray at the front of their mosques. None of
Islam's three holiest mosques — Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, and those
in Mecca and Medina — originally had barriers between the sexes.

"Men try to justify it now by creating arguments that are ludicrous,
like saying that men back then were more moral," said Mrs. Nawaz, the
filmmaker, a 38-year-old mother of four. "This is completely bogus.
The men were exactly the same back then when it came to being
distracted. The prophet didn't deal with it by separation, he dealt
with it by education."


[NOTE: In the Prophet's mosque in Medina, the men's and women's
sections are side by side. -WVNS]

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

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Gaza Power Plant Hit by Israeli Airstrike is Insured by US Agency
by Farah Stockman
Thursday, June 29, 2006
Boston Globe
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0629-07.htm


WASHINGTON - The Palestinian power plant bombed by Israeli forces
Tuesday is insured by a US government agency, and US officials say
they expect American funds to be used to pay for the damage.

The destruction of the 140-megawatt reactor, the only one in the Gaza
Strip, threatens to create a humanitarian disaster because the plant
supplies electricity to two-thirds of Gaza's 1.3 million residents and
operates pumps that provide water supplies.


  Flames rise out of a power plant after it was hit by an Israeli air
strike in Gaza in this June 28, 2006 video grab. Israeli tanks backed
by helicopter gunships and artillery pushed into the Gaza Strip on
Wednesday, stepping up pressure on Palestinian militants to release a
kidnapped soldier. REUTERS/Reuters TV

But paying a claim on the plant, which was insured for $48 million,
could prove problematic for the United States, which cut off funding
for all infrastructure projects in the Palestinian territories after
the militant group Hamas won legislative elections in January.

Administration officials said the restrictions on working with a
Hamas-led government could further complicate the repair of the
electric facility, which could take weeks, if not months, to fix
because of the escalating violence in Gaza.

The bombing of the plant could become a lasting problem for the Bush
administration, which is appealing for an end to the showdown between
Israelis and Palestinians in Gaza.

Israeli warplanes hit the power plant two days after Palestinian
militants attacked an Israeli Army unit, killing two soldiers and
taking another one hostage. Israeli forces responded yesterday by
entering the Gaza Strip for the first time since Israel's historic
pullout from the territory nine months ago, bombing the plant and
three bridges.

The power plant cost about $150 million and took more than five years
to build.

Plans for it began in 1999, when two private investors -- the
now-defunct Enron Corp. and a Palestinian-born construction mogul,
Said Khoury -- laid down the blueprint for making the Palestinian
territories less reliant on buying electricity from Israel.

The project faltered when violence broke out in Gaza in 2000 and when
Enron collapsed into bankruptcy, but Khoury continued to push forward.
His construction company's US subsidiary, Connecticut-based Morganti
Group, bought out Enron's stake in the plant.

In 2002, the plant began operating, becoming the first such facility
regulated by the Palestinian Energy Authority. In 2004, it reached
full commercial capacity and its owners were able to purchase $48
million in ``political risk" insurance from the Overseas Private
Investment Corporation , an arm of the US government that provides
American businesses with financing abroad and promotes US interests in
emerging markets.

The US Investment Corporation -- set up in 1971 with US taxpayer funds
-- had been supportive of the project from the beginning, arranging
the first meeting between investors for the plant, according to the
Bloomberg news service.

Few commercial insurance companies insure such projects against
political violence, but the US Investment Corporation does so to
encourage development in emerging markets, according to Lawrence
Spinelli, a spokesman for the Investment Corporation.

The insurance that Morganti purchased covers ``political violence,"
which includes ``wars, acts of terrorism, things like that," Spinelli
said. To be paid for the damage, the company must file a claim, and
the Investment Corporation must determine whether the claim is covered
by the policy, Spinelli said.

The corporation raises its reserve funds through insurance premiums
and other charges to its clients, but its funds are kept in the US
Treasury and are controlled by Congress.

That could be a problem for those who want to see the power plant
swiftly rebuilt.

After the election of Hamas in January, a host of congressmen
introduced bills designed to freeze US assistance to the Palestinian
territories to prevent any financial benefit from reaching Hamas,
designated as a terrorist organization. In April, the State Department
announced it would cut off all planned funding for infrastructure in
Gaza and the West Bank.

But advocates for Palestinians say that the plant must be repaired,
even if the US government is forced to pay for it.

``If you take out two-thirds of the power in a place like Gaza, and if
this is the source of electricity that powers pumps for water, you may
have a major crisis on your hand in short order," said Ed Abington , a
former consultant to the Palestinian Authority.

===

Destruction of Gaza Power Station Violates Agreement with EU to Spare
Electricity from Military Actions


Olmert Invades Gaza, Dashing Hopes for Swap of Prisoners
"Operation Summer Rains" a Pre-planned Israeli Invasion
28/06/2006
http://www.aljazeerah.info/28%20n/Israeli%20Invasion%20Pre-planned,%20Destructio\
n%20of%20Gaza%20Power%20Station%20Violates%20Agreement%20with%20EU%20to%20Spare%\
20Electricity%20from%20Military%20Actions.htm


Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) early Wednesday
invaded southern and eastern Gaza Strip and
occupied Yasser Arafat airport, after destroying
three bridges linking south and north Gaza as
well as the only power station in the strip and
knocking out water pipelines in what the IOF
called ?Operation Summer Rains,? driving
thousands of Palestinian civilians to evacuate
their homes looking for safety and paralyzing
civilian life in the densely-populated and
poverty-ridden Mediterranean coastal strip.

Dismissing calls by Russia and the United Nations
Secretary General, Kofi Annan, for restraint and
by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to
"give diplomacy a chance," Israeli Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert on Wednesday insisted on military
action saying that Israel wouldn't balk at
"extreme action" to bring home a soldier captured
by Palestinian anti-occupation activists.

Ruling out negotiations, Olmert insisted that,
"the age of restraint has come to an end," and
gave an order to military leaders for
comprehensive and ongoing military action, he told parliament on
Tuesday.

Palestinian chief negotiator and lawmaker, Saeb
Erakat, said Israel wants to reoccupy the Gaza
Strip and the capture of the Israeli corporal,
Gilad Shalit, was only a pretext.

Former Palestinian deputy premier and Foreign
Minister lawmaker Nabil Shaath on Tuesday voiced a similar statement.

Israel was planning a military invasion of Gaza
to stop the launch of primitive home-made
Palestinian rockets before the Israeli soldier
was captured, Sha'ath told the Qatar-based Arabic
satellite television station, al-Jazeera.

Israeli media reported an imminent military
operation in Gaza a week before the capture of
the dual Israeli-French soldier Shalit, 19.

Saeb Erakat told al-Jazeera, on Wednesday that
Israel, by destroying the electricity grid in
Gaza was violating a Palestinian ? Israeli
agreement with the European Union (EU), whereby
it was agreed to keep power out of military action.

Erakat added that Israel's destruction of the
bridges and roads and other infrastructure in
Gaza indicates it was reoccupying the Gaza Strip.

He stressed that "We are unarmed civilians and
not an army," as the Israeli media is trying to portray the
Palestinians.

The international contacts that are being
conducted intensively by President Mahmoud Abbas
for the world community to intervene and stop the
Israeli aggression were fruitless, he added.

IOF sealed off and banned entry to and exit from
the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, besieging President
Abbas, Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and top
officials of the Palestinian National Authority
(PNA) as leading anti-occupation activists went underground.

Palestinian presidential security adviser Jibril
al-Rjoub arrived in Cairo on Tuesday via Jordan
and met with the Egyptian FM Ahmed Abu el-Gheit,
intelligence chief Omar Sulaiman and presidential adviser Osama
el-Baz.

Panic Grips Palestinian Civilians

The invasion came shortly after Palestinian
security forces deployed near the Gazan border
town of Rafah said they were ordered out by the IOF.

Thousands of Palestinian civilians evacuated
their homes in Rafah and other communities
looking for safety as the Israeli tanks and
troops rolled into the southern Gaza Strip under
the cover of the US-made F-16s early Wednesday.

Before daybreak Wednesday IOF warplanes flew low
over Gaza city, causing sonic booms and breaking windows.

Men, women and children, packed into rickety
carts and cars fled border areas of southern Gaza
in fear of their lives after Israeli troops rolled into the territory.

"We're going someplace safe. We saw the tanks
coming and we decided to leave before anything
else happens,? said Mohammed Abu Zakr, arriving
in the southern city of Rafah accompanied by two
female relatives and several young children, AFP reported.

Gazan Infrastructure Targeted

Much of the northern Gaza Strip was plunged into
darkness after Israeli war planes hit the power
station, three bridges, water pipelines and a
road in a series of night-time raids.

Flames poured into the night sky from the power plant in central Gaza.

Grabbed by what Anshel Pfeffer described in The
Jerusalem Post on Monday as the "Entebbe
Syndrome," Olmert ruled out negotiations and
rejected a Palestinian demand to free 400 women
and minors among more than 9,800 Palestinian
detainees in the IOF jails, dashing the hopes of
both the Palestinian families and the Israeli family of the ?missing?
soldier.

The IOF reported corporal Gilad Shalit ?missing?
following a daring Palestinian attack, in which
two Palestinians were killed when they attacked
an IOF unit protecting the Israeli-Egyptian
border crossing of Karm Abu Salem (known to
Israelis as Kerem Shalom), after killing two
Israeli soldiers and wounding four others.

Russia on Tuesday was seriously concerned over
the dangerous development of the situation around
the Gaza Strip, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin
said.

"The situation on the Palestinian territories and
in the Palestinian-Israeli relations,
regrettably, is already heated. It is apparent
that the force operation in Gaza can lead to
numerous human victims and will be fraught with
the gravest consequences for the future of
Palestinian-Israeli settlement," he said.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has called on the
Israeli government "to refrain from tough
scenarios and try to find a solution within political bounds."

Search for Missing Recruit in West Bank

Separately in Gaza, anti-Israeli occupation
activist Hamza Muhareb, 21, was killed and five
Palestinians were wounded in a massive explosion
that demolished a car near the residence of
President Abbas in Gaza on Tuesday.

Meanwhile the security situation in the West Bank was heating up.

IOF said overnight Wednesday that the Israeli
army recruit Eliyahu Oshri, a settler of the
illegal Israeli settlement of Itamar near the
northern West Bank city of Nablus, was missing,
confirming a report by the Popular Resistance
Committees (PRC) it had captured Oshri.

IOF sources they believe Oshri or his body could
be somewhere in or around Ramallah.

The IOF sealed off Ramallah, the home of the PNA
leadership, by military roadblocks and
checkpoints early Wednesday and massive searches
were being conducted by the IOF troops.

===

Israeli settler goes missing in West Bank: kidnapped or not?
PNN, (Bethlehem)
Palestine News Network
28 June 06
www.freedomarchives.org


There is a missing Israeli settler in the West
Bank. Although his presence is illegal, he does
live in a Nablus area settlement in the northern
West Bank in direct contravention to international law.

The last place 18 year old Elyaho Asheary was
seen was near the Betar Settlement, built on Bethlehem District lands.

At the same time, the Nasser Salah Addin
Brigades, the armed resistance wing of the
Popular Resistance Committees announced they
captured an Israeli soldier in the West Bank.
Although they made no official announcement, the
Israelis fear that this is the missing settler.

The settler was a student at an Israeli military college in the West
Bank.

===

Israel arrests Hamas leadership
Thursday 29 June 2006
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/087CE7F6-233F-4AB7-A48F-E42A2C3C7676.htm



Israeli forces have rounded up dozens of Palestinian Cabinet
ministers and lawmakers from Hamas, increasing pressure on militants
to release a captured Israeli soldier.

Witnesses said on Thursday that tanks moved into northern Gaza,
widening Israel's largest military operation in the year since it
pulled out of the seaside territory.

Adding to the tension, a Palestinian militant group claimed on
Thursday that it had killed an 18-year-old Jewish settler kidnapped
in the West Bank. Palestinian security officials said they believed
the body of Eliahu Asheri had been found in the West Bank city of Ram
Allah.

Hamas officials said more than 30 lawmakers have been arrested in the
West Bank.

Palestinian security officials said Israeli forces detained Nasser
Shaer, the Palestinian deputy prime minister, and three other Cabinet
ministers, as well as four lawmakers in Ram Allah. Several others
were arrested in the town of Jenin, they said.

Israeli media reported a roundup of Hamas lawmakers in Jerusalem and
other locations. Also, the Hamas mayor of the West Bank town of
Qalqiliya and his deputy were detained, security officials said.

The Israeli military refused to comment. Israel blames Hamas for the
Sunday attack in which two soldiers were killed and a third captured
when militants tunnelled under the border and attacked an army post,
setting off the invasion.

According to the witnesses, before daybreak on Thursday, Israeli
tanks and bulldozers moved into northern Gaza, stopping about 200m
inside Palestinian territory across from the Jabaliya refugee camp.
No clashes were reported. But the military denied its forces had
moved into northern Gaza.

No casualties

Despite the size of the Israeli operation, with large troop
movements, artillery barrages and many air strikes over two days, no
one was hurt.

Israel held the Palestinian government, headed by Hamas, responsible
for the fate of the soldier. It also blamed the Hamas leadership in
exile in Syria.

An Israeli Cabinet minister said Khalid Mishaal, the Syria-based
Hamas leader, was a target for assassination. In a bold warning to
the country that shelters him, Israeli warplanes buzzed the seaside
home of Bashar Assad, the Syrian president, in the port of Latakia.

Syria confirmed that Israeli warplanes entered its airspace, but said
its air defences forced the Israeli aircraft to flee.

Israel's concern goes beyond the rescue of the soldier and the
negative precedent abducting soldiers would set. Ehud Olmert's
government is alarmed by the firing of homemade rockets at Israeli
communities around Gaza and support for Hamas in the Arab world,
especially from Syria.

Earlier, witnesses reported heavy shelling around Gaza's long-closed
airport, and Israeli missiles hit two empty Hamas training camps, a
rocket-building factory and several roads.

Humanitarian crisis

Palestinians filled up on basic supplies after warplanes knocked out
electricity, raising the possibility of a humanitarian crisis. The
Hamas-led government's information ministry warned of "epidemics and
health disasters" because of damaged water pipes to central Gaza and
the lack of power to pump water.

In Rafah, Nivine Abu Shbeke, a 23-year-old mother of three, hoarded
bags of flour, boxes of vegetables and other supplies.

"We're worried about how long the food will last," she said. "The
children devour everything."

Dozens of Palestinian militants - armed with automatic weapons and
grenades - took up positions, bracing for attack.

Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, threatened harsher action to free
the soldier, though he said there was no plan to re-occupy Gaza.
Mahmoud Abbas, the  Palestinian president, deplored the incursion as
a "crime against humanity".

Abbas and Egyptian dignitaries tried to persuade Assad to use his
influence with Mishaal to free the soldier, Corporal Gilad Shalit.
Assad agreed, but without results, said a senior Abbas aide. Israel
refused to negotiate with the militants and rejected their demand -
freeing Palestinian prisoners - outright.

The US pressure

The Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) in Gaza said they had killed
Asheri, kidnapped in the West Bank. Palestinian security officials
said the body had been found, and Israeli security sources said the
youth had apparently been killed. The PRCs had said it would execute
the hostage if Israel did not halt its invasion of Gaza.

Also, militants said they kidnapped another Israeli, and police said
they had a missing person report about a 62-year-old Israeli from the
central Israeli city of Rishon Lezion.

Meanwhile, the European Union on Wednesday urged both Israel and the
Palestinians to "step back from the brink" and, echoing a statement
from Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, to give diplomacy a
chance.

The White House kept up its pressure on Hamas, saying the Palestinian
government must "stop all acts of violence and terror". But the US
also urged Israel to show restraint.

Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, urged restraint in a phone call
to Olmert, saying he had spoken to Assad and Abbas and asked them to
do everything possible to release the soldier. Amr Mussa, the Arab
League secretary-general, called on the US to assume its role as
"honest broker" and to make the Palestinian-Israeli conflict its top
priority in the Middle East.

===

Israel denies tactical role of arrests
Thursday 29 June 2006
Aljazeera + Agencies
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/236C0F88-5DB5-4B1C-BAC4-D9721837757A.htm



The Israeli army has denied it arrested Palestinian government
ministers in an attempt to pressure the Palestinian Resistance
Committees group into releasing an Israeli soldier kidnapped by them
on Sunday.

Mark Regev, the Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, said the arrests
were "due to the fact that Hamas over the last few weeks has
escalated terror attacks against Israel".

Jacob Dalal, an army spokesman, said: "They are not being used as
bargaining chips. These are people with terrorist records, with
allegations and charges pending against them."

An army spokeswoman said the ministers would be investigated, brought
before a judge, their detention extended and charge sheets prepared.

During raids in Ram Allah and Jerusalem early on Thursday, at least
eight Hamas cabinet ministers were detained.

Israeli troops detained five of the ministers at the same Ram Allah
hotel, Aljazeera reported.

Some were led away blindfolded and in handcuffs, Palestinian security
sources said.

Palestinian officials said Umar Abd al-Raziq, the Palestinian finance
minister, and at least seven other cabinet members, along with nearly
20 Hamas legislators in operations across the West Bank were detained.

Israel said 64 Hamas officials in all were taken into custody during
the West Bank operation.

In a sign of worsening relations between Israelis and Palestinians, a
planned summit between Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, and
Mahmud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has been cancelled.

Abbas condemned the arrests of the Hamas politicians and called on
Western powers to intervene to "restore democracy".

The Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) group, which claimed
responsibility for the kidnapping of Corporal Gilad Shalit during a
raid on an Israeli army post, said: "Olmert and [defence minister]
Amir Peretz will be entirely responsible for the life of the
kidnapped soldier if the aggression continues."

Palestinians lined up at public water fountains to fill up jugs after
a second night of power cuts, under Israeli military pressure that
has sparked fears of a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

"When the Israelis come, maybe we'll be stuck in our homes for God
knows how long," says Isra Abu Anza, a 16-year-old girl standing in a
queue at one of the fountains.

"We need to drink, to wash, to bathe."

An Israeli missile destroyed a crucial power station late on Tuesday.
In Rafah, which relied on the destroyed power plant for half of its
daily energy needs, residents are now left without power for much of
the day.

The Israeli military continued to prepare for a ground assault on
parts of Gaza.

In preparation for the offensive, Israel dropped leaflets on northern
Gaza urging residents to avoid areas troops may single out for attack.

Israeli aircraft fired missiles at the southern Gaza Strip on
Thursday, with the military saying it aimed at open areas, and
Palestinian medical officials saying a car was hit.

===

Major Israeli websites hacked
Yedioth Internet
28 June 2006
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3268449,00.html


More than 750 Israeli websites hacked in recent hours. Among them:
Soldier's Treasury Bank, Rambam Hospital, and Globus Group ticket
center. Hackers: You're killing Palestinians, we're killing servers
Gal Mor, Ehud Kinan

Unprecedented number of Israeli websites hacked: Hundreds of websites
were damaged by hackers in recent hours, following IDF activity in the
Gaza Strip. The hackers are members of the Moroccan "Team Evil" group,
responsible for most of the website damage in Israel in the past year.
This is the largest, most concentrated attack on Israeli websites in
recent years.

A Ynet investigation revealed that more than 750 Israeli websites, on
a number of different domains, were hacked into and damaged in recent
days. Prominent among them were the Soldier's Treasury Bank, Bank
Hapoalim (not the main page), Rambam Hospital, the Society for Culture
and Housing, BMW Israel, Subaru Israel, Jump Fashion, non-profit
organization "Yedid," Kadima's youth website, and the Globus Group
ticket center. Many of these sites have not yet returned to normal.

Hackers left the message: You're killing Palestinians, we're killing
servers.

Early on Wednesday, the IDF began operation "Summer Rains" in Gaza:
Forces entered the southern end of the strip, adjacent to the point of
Cpl. Gilad Shavit's kidnap. The air force attacked a power station and
blacked out areas of Gaza. Three bridges were bombed in central Gaza,
in order to prevent movement of the kidnapped soldier.

Many Israeli websites are hacked every day – most of these are small
sites, with inadequate information security. It is significantly
different when the sites are ones of large companies, who have
adequate defenses from this sort of attack.

Past success of Team Evil

In the past, Team Evil succeeded in hacking into several sites of
medium-sized but recognized Israeli companies. In April, they hit tens
of sites, including those of the "Shilav" children's store, "The Blue
Square" supermarket and McDonald's.

The group's spokesman previously told Ynet that "we are a group of
Moroccan hackers that hack into sites as part of the resistance in the
war with Israel. We attack Israeli sites every day. This is our
duty…hacking is not a crime."

Added another group member: "We want Israel to stop fighting. Stop
killing children and we'll stop hacking." According to the spokesman,
the group's members are all Moroccan youths, under the age of 20.

The increase in hacking of websites following military operations is a
well-known phenomenon, in Israel and in the rest of the world. A
similar increase was seen in attacks on both Israeli and Arab websites
in the first days of the second intifada, pursuant to military
operations that took place in Gaza, Judea and Samaria at that time.

===

Fmr. Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami:
"It Was Wrong" For Israel to Invade Gaza
Wednesday, June 28th, 2006
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/28/1421222

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Israeli forces have invaded the Gaza Strip for the first time since
withdrawing ten months ago. Israel says it launched the raid to
recover a soldier captured by Palestinian militants. The strikes came
just hours after Fatah and Hamas agreed on a document to implicitly
recognize Israel within its 1967 borders. We go to Gaza to speak with
Palestinian physician Dr. Mona El-Farra and we get comment from former
Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami and Palestinian activist Ali
Abunimah. [includes rush transcript]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Israeli forces have invaded the Gaza Strip for the first time since
withdrawing ten months ago. Israel says it's launched the raid to
recover captured soldier Gilad Shalit. Shalit was captured in a
Palestinian operation on Sunday. The raid began after Israel rejected
Shalit's captors demand for the release of all Palestinian females and
Palestinians below the age of eighteen in Israeli prisons. Israel
opened the attack with a series of air strikes on three bridges and
Gaza's main power station. The attack left the power station in flames
and knocked out electricity in most of Gaza City. Palestinian
militants have reportedly taken up defensive positions around Gaza -
setting the stage for a potential firefight with the invading soldiers.

The strikes came just hours after officials close to Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas said Hamas had agreed on a document to
implicitly recognize Israel within its June 1967 borders. Hamas
leaders later denied this is the case. Hamas lawmaker Salah
al-Bardaweel explained: "We said we accept a state [in territory
occupied] in 1967 - but we did not say we accept two states." The deal
follows weeks of negotiations between Fatah and Hamas leaders over the
terms of a unity government. Palestinians hope the agreement will
bring an end to the crippling international aid freeze imposed since
Hamas swept to power in elections earlier this year.


Ali Abunimah, a writer, speaker and founder of the website Electronic
Intifada. He is author of the book "One Country: A Bold proposal to
end the Israeli-Palestinian impasse" which will be published by
Metropolitan Books this Fall. He joins on the line from Amman, Jordan.
Shlomo Ben-Ami, has held a number of positions within the Israeli
government, including Foreign Minister, Minister of Public Security
and Member of Parliament. His latest book is "Scars of Wars, Wounds of
Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy." He speaks to us from Madrid, Spain,
where he is currently Vice-President of the Toledo Peace Center.
Dr. Mona El-Farra, a physician and community activist in northern
Gaza. She was at the hospital that received many of the victims of
Friday's bombing. She runs a blog titled "From Gaza, With Love"

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
RUSH TRANSCRIPT

AMY GOODMAN: We're joined on the telephone from Spain by Shlomo
Ben-Ami. He's the former Foreign Minister of Israel and a former
member of the Israeli Knesset. He wrote the book Scars of War, Wounds
of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy. We're also joined on the line by
Ali Abunimah, founder of Electronic Intifada, electronicintifada.net,
speaking to us from Jordan. Ali Abunimah, can you talk about the
latest news?

ALI ABUNIMAH: Yes. Good morning, Amy. I'm here in Amman, Jordan, and
watching the situation very closely. And it reminds me of the eulogy
that Rabbi Yakov Perin gave for Baruch Goldstein, the Israeli settler
who murdered 29 Palestinians in Hebron in 1994. He said, "One million
Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail." And this kind of racism is
clearly on display in the Israeli reaction to the capture of its
soldier in the Gaza Strip by the Palestinian resistance. In fact, last
week here in Amman, the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said
explicitly that the lives of Israeli Jews are more important than the
lives of Palestinians.

And we see that reflected also in the world reaction. Is it not
astonishing that the entire world knows the name and face of the
Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, while the hundreds of Palestinian
children held in Israel's dungeons, not to mention 10,000 adult
prisoners, thousands held without charge and trial, abducted from
their homes in the middle of the night by Israeli occupation forces,
remain nameless and faceless before a silent world?

And I want to say that it's very deeply painful to me as a Palestinian
that while Palestinians in Gaza are demonstrating, the families of
prisoners are demonstrating to urge the resistance not to release the
soldier until their prisoners and hostages held by Israel are
released, that the Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas rushed
to condemn the legitimate conventional military operation carried out
by the resistance and rushed to send his security forces to hunt for
the captured soldier on Israel's behalf, when never once in history
has he deployed his forces to protect and defend his own people
against Israel's daily massacres. It's becoming unavoidable to many
Palestinians, if not most, that Abbas is engaged in open collaboration
with the occupation.

And a final point, that as far as Israel is concerned, it is rapidly
becoming a failed state, unable to learn any lessons from its past.
It's now repeating in Gaza and the West Bank all the mistakes of its
invasion and occupation of Lebanon. And I believe that if it doesn't
drastically and dramatically change course, it will self-destruct
within a decade, perhaps taking everyone else in the region with it.
It has become an apartheid pariah state, and its leaders are deluded
in thinking that they can bludgeon the indigenous Palestinian
population, who are now the majority between the Mediterranean and the
Jordan River, into submission and servitude.

I call on brave Israelis to understand the lessons, which brave white
South Africans understood, and to engage in a voluntary process with
Palestinians of dismantling completely, starting today, the system of
racist laws, walls and settler colonies that are imprisoning both
people in perpetual and endless and escalating bloodshed. It needs to
stop now.

AMY GOODMAN: Ali Abunimah speaking to us from Amman. Let's turn to the
former Israeli Foreign Minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami. Your response?

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: Response to what?

AMY GOODMAN: To what Ali Abunimah just said?

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: No, no. I'm not going to respond to that. If you have
any particular question with regard to this operation, with regard to
the abduction, with regard of the political situation on the ground --
I'm not going to go into that wider analysis about South Africa and
what have you.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, why don't you start with what is happening right now?

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: Well, what seems to me that is happening right now is
that Israel is trying to change the equation that was established by
those who took the soldier as hostage. Their equation was one of
releasing the soldier for prisoners in Israeli jails, and Israel seems
that the present government is not ready for that, although previous
governments did negotiate and Rabin negotiated. Even Sharon negotiated
to exchange prisoners. This government doesn't seem to be politically
confident enough to negotiate, and therefore, they want to change the
equation to one that means that we will withdraw from Gaza or we'll
stop -- we'll interrupt this incursion if the soldier is released.

Is this going to work? I'm not sure it is going to work. I am afraid
that these kind of operations tend to have a dynamic that one knows
how they start, one doesn't really know how they end. I hope it
doesn't end in the collapse of the Palestinian Authority, in the
collapse of Abu Mazen, and the rest of it, because the situation is
difficult enough without this modicum of stability and legitimacy that
is given by the current president and the prime minister is destroyed.
So I really expect that things will be controlled in some way.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think that the Israeli government should release
prisoners?

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: Should release prisoners? Well, I think that these
kind of situations require a sort of political approach, rather than
military approach. You see, it's not that easy also to say that they
should release prisoners, because that means that every Israeli
citizen is a candidate to be taken hostage. The dilemma is not simple.
I am for a political solution. These might perhaps take the form of,
say -- that the quid pro quo from the point of view of Israel would
have to be not to persist in the suffocation, the economic
suffocation, of the Gaza Strip, the boycott to the Palestinian
Authority. These kind of quid pro quos maybe we can reach through some
sort of third party mediation. I'm not sure that exchanging prisoners
will work, simply because this means exposing every Israeli citizen to
being taken hostage.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think the Israeli government was wrong to reinvade
Gaza?

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: Well, yes. I think it was wrong to do that, because --
if only for the reasons that affect the stability of the government
itself. You see, the government is engaged now in this idea of
disengagement from the West Bank. If the they invade the Gaza Strip,
what they are going to show to the Israeli opinion and to public
opinion, as a whole, is that disengagement, unilateral disengagement,
doesn't work. If you do not coordinate things, either with the
Palestinians or through a third party -- the Quartet, for example --
disengagement creates a frontline in a state of war, in a permanent
state of war. And therefore, you'll have to reoccupy the territory, so
what's the point in disengaging in such a manner? I think the
government is exposing the fallacies of its own policy by occupying or
reoccupying the Gaza Strip.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to Gaza right now, where Dr. Mona El-Farra
is. She is a physician in northern Gaza, a health development
consultant for the Union of Health Work Committees in Gaza. What is
the situation on the ground right now, Dr. El-Farra?

DR. MONA EL-FARRA: Since the early hours of the morning, the Israeli
army did not stop their sonic bombing against the Gaza Strip. They
started the operation last night, 10:30. They targeted the
infrastructure of the Gaza Strip. Two-thirds -- the main target was
the electrical power plant. And now, two-thirds of Gaza Strip are with
no electricity.

The population mood is angry, anxious, worried, scared. But despite
all this, demonstrations are going in the streets against the release
of the soldier, especially by the families of the political prisoners.
This is the opinion, feeling.

And I have a comment here to say. There's no balance of power between
the Israeli army and the militia or the resistance movement here in
Gaza. Israeli knows that very well. So what's happening in Gaza now is
collective punishment. I don't understand, why to destroy the
infrastructure? Why to deprive the population from the electricity? It
is collective punishment. This will not bring the soldier back.

What will bring the soldier back: negotiation, understanding the
rights of Palestinian people to exist. The disengagement plan, for
example, and the wall in the West Bank, all these measures Israel did
to guarantee its security, it did not, anyway, because the security of
Israel is not harmed by the resistance or largely harmed by the
Palestinian resistance.

The mood is very bad in Gaza and angry. You can see twenty -- 2,000
people last night demonstrated in the middle camps of Gaza Strip
against the release of the soldier, or the release of the soldier in
swap of the political prisoners. People feel they are humiliated and
Israel and the world wants us to kneel down. This is the mood of the
people here now in Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: The issue of collective punishment, Shlomo Ben-Ami,
former Foreign Minister of Israel, your response to that?

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: I am not favorable to collective punishment. But, you
see, one needs to see the conditions on the ground. When Israel
withdraws from the Gaza Strip and then you have every day Kassam
missiles being launched against an Israeli township, what would you do
then? What is the answer to that? I mean, either to reoccupy the land
or to open political negotiations, but that's, for example, President
Abbas or even Ismael Haniyeh -- control all the factions in Gaza, do
they control Islamic jihad? Do they control the martyrs of Al-Aqsa? So
you have here a very serious problem.

We need sometimes to descend from the heights of the conceptual or
even of the moral ground to see what can be done on the ground. So the
problem is that the government has been trying all kind of ways to
stop the launching of Kassam missiles. I'm sure that Ismael Haniyeh is
not interested in these attacks. I'm sure that Mahmoud Abbas is not
interested. Do they have the capacity to stop it? They don't have it,
because the political system or the hierarchy of command, the chain of
command, is invertibrate. So what is Israel to do in such a situation?

AMY GOODMAN: Ali Abunimah, your response?

ALI ABUNIMAH: Well, it's amazing, the rhetoric of Shlomo Ben-Ami, who
knows much better. I've heard him expose the situation more
eloquently, even on your show, Amy. He knows very well that this isn't
about Gaza. This is about Israel's relentless assault on the
Palestinians throughout the Occupied Territories, its expansion of
colonies and settlements in the occupied West Bank, and its announced
annexation plan, which even he has criticized. But he's not against
the annexation of the West Bank. What he believes, he's deluded in
believing, is that Palestinians -- they can find Palestinians who will
sit and agree to the annexation of Ma'ale Adumim, Ariel and all the
settlements around the Occupied Territories.

What he has to realize and what all Israelis have to realize is that
the age of colonialism has ended. He said, Shlomo Ben-Ami said, that
the so-called convergence plan, the unilateral annexation plan, is
Israeli's attempt to preempt the world recognizing that Israel is now
a Jewish minority ruling over a Palestinian majority.

He wants to talk about the Quartet and the U.S. and doing things on
the ground, because he doesn't want to talk about the big picture,
that what is driving the conflict is the radical inequality between
the Jewish minority, that rules all of the territory between the
Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and the disenfranchised
Palestinian majority, who are paying the price for the luxury that
Israel lives in, for the high incomes of Israelis, for the
settlements, for the swimming pools, for the security in Tel Aviv and
in Hertzliyah and in Jaffa and in Haifa and in Akka, that Israelis
live a normal life all around the country, except in Sderot, where
they experience the few dozen customs. But what pays for that
normality for Israelis is the total disenfranchisement and
dispossession of the majority population. And Israel believes that it
can hide them behind walls, in ghettos, as was done to Jews in Europe
in the 1930s and `40s.

And he should be a brave Israeli. He should speak out against the
occupation. He should speak out against the apartheid laws inside
Israel, not just in the West Bank. He should condemn the law that says
that an Israeli citizen can marry anybody in the world, except a
Palestinian, that an Israeli who marry a Palestinian has to leave the
country. This is a new style of apartheid. It is even, as some have
said, a new kind of Nuremberg law. And I'm waiting for Shlomo Ben-Ami
to live up to his claimed liberal and progressive credentials and
condemn these things and join the struggle to liberate not just
Palestinians, but also Israelis, from this devastating system of
oppression and apartheid, which will kill all of us --

AMY GOODMAN: Let me put that question to Shlomo Ben-Ami.

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: As I told you, Amy, I really thought we were going to
talk about the current crisis, as it is.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I think --

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: I, of course, do not deny things that I say about the
convergence plan. I dedicated my political life to trying to reach a
settlement, that essentially meant disengaging from Palestinian lands,
having the fully fledged Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its
capital. These are my credentials. It's not books that I've written.
It is things that I've tried to do.

Now, we have a political crisis there, and we are trying to see how we
solve it. My suggestion is, as I said before, not to invade, try to
find a different quid pro quo, and that is, stopping the suffocation
of the Palestinian economy in Gaza, improving relations with the
Palestinian Authorities, and moving to a political phase. This is my
solution to the current crisis. I don't want to go now into the wider
picture. I have said things, I have written things about it. I don't
want to repeat it right now. And frankly, I am in the middle of a
business lunch. I had the idea that we are having a very short interview.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, let me just ask you --

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: And now I am interrupting the whole reunion.

AMY GOODMAN: I'm very sorry. I just want to ask you one last question:
the strikes coming just hours after officials close to Mahmoud Abbas
said Hamas had agreed on a document to implicitly recognize Israel
within its June `67 borders.

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: Yeah. I think it is a very important document. I think
that if indeed they sign it, this will at least stem the decline into
a potential civil war between Palestinians. I think it is in Israel's
interest to have a united Palestinian polity, that is, that subscribes
to a shared political plan. I would have preferred them to simply
subscribe to the Arab Peace Initiative. I think they have departed
from that legitimacy, or from that inter-Arab legitimacy, and created
their own. I don't see the logic of it. I think that the Arab Peace
Initiative has a worldwide legitimacy, and simply subscribing to it
would have meant a lot, in terms of Israeli public opinion. As it is,
I think it enhances the unity between Palestinians, but it creates a
condition that, I am afraid -- and again, I'm not speaking theory and
not generalities -- I'm afraid that the current Israeli government
will not see that as a starter.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you for being with us, Shlomo Ben-Ami,
former Israeli Foreign Minister, Member of Parliament, book Scars of
War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy. He is speaking to us
from Spain. Thanks for joining us. We will come back to this
discussion after break with Ali Abunimah, as well as Dr. El-Farra.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We are talking to Ali Abunimah, founder of Electronic
Intifada; and Dr. Mona El-Farra, physician in northern Gaza. Ali
Abunimah, your response to this document, that at least those close to
Mahmoud Abbas said that Hamas had agreed to recognizing Israel within
the `67 borders.

ALI ABUNIMAH: I think if tomorrow Ismael Haniyeh and Khaled Meshaal
and all the other leaders of Hamas get down on their knees and say,
"We want to give up everything to Israel and accept a state on the
West Bank and Gaza Strip and accept to cancel the rights of
Palestinian refugees and to abandon our rights to resist the
occupation in any form whatsoever," it would make no difference
whatsoever, Amy, because the stumbling block, the fiction, here is
that it's the Palestinians who have rejected this. The Hamas leaders,
like the leaders of Fatah, have said many times that they're willing
to talk to Israel, they're willing to recognize Israel. The Hamas
leaders have said, "Okay, we don't want to do that in advance, because
the PLO did that in advance during the Oslo Accords and got nothing in
return. So we do it on the basis of reciprocity."

The problem, Amy, is that Israel is still completely 100% committed to
colonialism. That is why Israel is continuing to seize land in the
West Bank, to build new settler colonies every day, to pave
Jewish-only roads in the West Bank, to build the apartheid wall, to
treat Gaza as a giant prison. The reason that Israel pulled its
settlers out of Gaza, as Shlomo Ben-Ami has said before, is to create
the fiction that Israel is not ruling over a Palestinian majority,
exactly as South Africa created the Bantustans to try and fool the
world into thinking that Blacks had their rights within these
so-called independent homelands and didn't need to have rights within
the South African state. The same trick will not work in Palestine, as
it did not work in South Africa.

And the world needs to recognize that. And I'm thrilled that there's a
growing civil society movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions
that does. This is what is going to put pressure on Israel to end the
colonial practices, no matter what document is signed between Hamas
and Fatah. That will make no difference if there is no active
worldwide opposition and resistance to Israel's colonialism. That is
what will make a difference.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Mona El-Farra, I wanted to give you the last word.
When we last spoke -- Shlomo Ben-Ami was talking about the shelling of
Kassam, and we last spoke, Dr. El-Farra, when you were at the hospital
after the children, the families were -- the explosions on the beach
in Gaza and a number of members of one family killed. What is the
latest on that situation?

DR. MONA EL-FARRA: Okay. First, just quickly, I totally agree with the
analysis of Mr. Abunimah, totally agree with his analysis. Israelis
did not try in the excuse of the soldier. The plan was ready to invade
Gaza -- not physically invade it. Anyway, Israel did not invade Gaza.
They are controlling us from outside.

Regarding the Kassam rockets, I would like to know how many people
really were injured by these Kassam rockets. As I told you before, the
balance of power is towards Israel. These Kassam rockets and the other
rockets is just very primitive devices. It is just a show of --
protesting against what's happening here. But seriously, it doesn't
hurt Israeli security. What was your question?

AMY GOODMAN: The latest on the family that we last spoke to you about,
that member -- a number of members of the family, of the Galia family,
who were killed at the Gaza beach, and the conflicting reports. Human
Rights Watch and you, yourself, as a doctor in the hospital, saying
that it was as a result of Israeli shelling, and the Israeli military
saying it was Palestinian bombs.

DR. MONA EL-FARRA: Yeah, yeah, okay. This is a big joke for me, and
I'm totally, like all of us here in Gaza, totally convinced by the
fact that it was Israeli shelling. I met the doctors who received the
injured. I saw the injured myself, and the site of injuries show that
it was not from mines. Minefield injuries are different from shelling
injuries. The site of the injuries were in the upper side of the
bodies. Beside, the shrapnel we found, it was the same like what we
received in the case of Jabalia two years ago. So no matter what
Israel is trying to say -- it is Palestinian mines -- this is not
acceptable for us. And you forget all this. We don't need to add a new
crime to the Israeli crimes. Even if this was from the Palestinian
side, we have a large record of Israeli assault against Palestinians.

And just I need somebody to explain to me, why this sonic bombing? And
now, since 3:00 in the morning until now, we are under heavy sonic
bombing from the sky. This, I consider, collective punishment, and it
will not secure Israeli security. It is just they are humiliating us
as Palestinians. They want us to kneel down. And I agree with Mr.
Abunimah, what Israel is doing now sort of revives the idea of
colonialism in the area.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you both for being with us, Dr. Mona
El-Farra, physician, community activist in northern Gaza, and Ali
Abunimah, who is founder of electronicintifada.net. We thank you both
for joining us.

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Japan announces decision to pullout troops from Iraq crusade

TOKYO, June 20 (Xinhua) - Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi
announced Tuesday at a press conference that Japan has decided to
withdraw the Ground Self-Defense Force troops from Iraq, Kyodo News
reported. Koizumi talked about the  plan on Tuesday morning with
leaders of the ruling coalition and opposition parties shortly before
the announcement. He  described the Iraq mission as "a chapter has
been finished," a government source was quoted as saying. Japanese
Defense Agency Director General Fukushiro Nukaga issued an order to
withdraw the troops right after the premier left the press conference.

Japanese government officials indicated that the pullout may begin
later this month and be completed by the end of July. The move is said
to be a response to an announcement by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri
al-Maliki, who said on Monday that Iraqi forces will take over the
security task in July in Muthana Province, where the Japanese troops
have been stationed. However, the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force will
continue to stay in Iraq to provide assistance to the United Nations'
reconstruction efforts, Kyodo said. Koizumi said at a press conference
on Monday that Japan will continue to help the Iraqi people even after
the ground troops are pulled out. Japan has stationed some 600 Ground
Self-Defense Forces troops in the southern Iraqi city of Samawah,
capital of Muthana Province, for a non-combat medical, reconstruction
and humanitarian mission as part of the U.S.-led multinational force
since early 2004.

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