Obama move alarms Israel supporters

By Paul Richter
April 27, 2009
Reporting from Washington -- The Obama administration, already on treacherous political ground because of its outreach to traditional adversaries such as Iran and Cuba, has opened the door a crack to engagement with the militant group Hamas.

The Palestinian group is designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization and under law may not receive federal aid.
But the administration has asked Congress for minor changes in U.S. law that would permit aid to continue flowing to Palestinians in the event Hamas-backed officials become part of a unified Palestinian government.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-obama-hamas27-2009apr27,0,4563512.story

Ahmadinejad: Obama support of 'Gaza massacre' was big mistake

(AP)

In a rare interview with American television, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad criticized U.S. President Barack Obama for his "support of the massacre of Gazans" during Israel's offensive on the Hamas-ruled coastal territory earlier this year.

"The gentleman's [Obama] support of the massacre of Gazans in support for the criminals who were responsible for that atrocity was a major mistake on the part of the gentleman," Ahmadinejad told ABC reporter George Stephanopoulous during an interview aired Sunday on 'This Week'.

"I think that if Mr. Obama wants to help with the Palestinian issue, he has to move in accordance with justice, fair play and also, again, I am calling for the right for the Palestinians to determine their own fate," said the Iranian leader.
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Ahmadinejad also used the interview to defend again his speech at the United Nations anti-racism conference last week, in which he called Israel a "racist" state, and to slam the American leader for boycotting the summit.

"When I was talking against the Zionist regime in the racism conference, the first proviso for successful talks would be to give the other party the freedom to speak," said the Iranian leader.

"Mr. Obama has the right to have his own opinion, obviously. He is ready to express his points of view. But the Geneva conference had been organized to combat racism, to oppose racism," said Ahmadinejad.

"My point of view is that the Zionist regime is the manifestation of racism."

When asked whether Iran would support a two-state solution should such a settlement be reached by Israel and the Palestinians, Ahmadinejad said: "Nobody should interfere, allow the Palestinian people to decide for themselves. Whatever they decide."

A vocal denier of the Holocaust, Ahmadinejad also told ABC that he still had two questions regarding the historical accuracy of the Nazis' delieberate murder of six million Jews during World War II. "if the Holocaust happened," Ahmadinejad said, then Palestinians should not be held to pay the price.

"My first question was, if the Holocaust happened, where did it take place? In Europe. Why should they make amends in Palestine?" he said, adding: "The Palestinian people had no role to play in the Holocaust. They had no role, for that matter, in the Second World War. Racism happened in Europe, the amends are made in Palestine?"

The Iranian leader also said that more questions and research must be done to prove that the event actually occurred.

"My second question about the Holocaust, if this is indeed a historical event, why do they want to turn it into a holy thing? And nobody should be allowed to ask any questions about that? Nobody study it, research it, permit it to research it. Why?"

U.S. to reveal alleged prison abuse photos

Gerry Broome / Associated Press
DEFENSE SECRETARY: Robert Gates, center, in a visit to Camp Lejeune said: “There is a certain inevitability, I believe, that much of this will eventually come out.”
Defense Department officials worry that the Bush-era images will prompt a backlash in the Middle East.
By Peter Wallsten, Julian E. Barnes and Greg Miller
April 24, 2009
Reporting from Washington -- The Obama administration agreed late Thursday to release dozens of photographs depicting alleged abuses at U.S. prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush White House.

The decision will make public for the first time photos obtained in military investigations at facilities other than the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Forty-four photos that the American Civil Liberties Union was seeking in a court case, plus a "substantial number" of other images, will be released by May 28.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-interrogate24-2009apr24,0,4199113.story

Israel defies US and destroys Palestinian home

Israel defies US and destroys Palestinian home
By Ben Lynfield in Jerusalem
Thursday, 23 April 2009

Brushing aside international criticism, Israel demolished a Palestinian house in East Jerusalem in the latest in a series of actions that critics say is racheting up tensions in the city, harming chances for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Ammar Hudidon, a resident of the Jebel Mukaber neighbourhood and a father of seven children, said a bulldozer flattened his home yesterday after the Jerusalem municipality said he lacked building permits. Palestinians complain that the permits are virtually impossible to obtain.

A municipality spokesman stressed that the demolition was "conducted completely under the auspices of the Interior Ministry and the government of Israel" and was not ordered by the Mayor, Nir Barkat.

It comes a day after President Barack Obama called on Israelis and Palestinians to take measures to promote peacemaking and two days after a Jerusalem planning committee approved a building project for the headquarters of an Israeli settlement group in Sheikh Jarrah, a Palestinian area which Jewish settlers are increasingly penetrating.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israel-defies-us-and-destroys-palestinian-home-1672716.html

Wiretap Recorded Rep. Harman Promising to Intervene for AIPAC

By Jeff Stein, CQ SpyTalk Columnist

Rep. Jane Harman , the California Democrat with a longtime involvement in intelligence issues, was overheard on an NSA wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department reduce espionage-related charges against two officials of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful pro-Israel organization in Washington.

Harman was recorded saying she would “waddle into” the AIPAC case “if you think it’ll make a difference,” according to two former senior national security officials familiar with the NSA transcript.

In exchange for Harman’s help, the sources said, the suspected Israeli agent pledged to help lobby Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., then-House minority leader, to appoint Harman chair of the Intelligence Committee after the 2006 elections, which the Democrats were heavily favored to win.

Seemingly wary of what she had just agreed to, according to an official who read the NSA transcript, Harman hung up after saying, “This conversation doesn’t exist.”

Harman declined to discuss the wiretap allegations, instead issuing an angry denial through a spokesman.

“These claims are an outrageous and recycled canard, and have no basis in fact,” Harman said in a prepared statement. “I never engaged in any such activity. Those who are peddling these false accusations should be ashamed of themselves.”

It’s true that allegations of pro-Israel lobbyists trying to help Harman get the chairmanship of the intelligence panel by lobbying and raising money for Pelosi aren’t new.

They were widely reported in 2006, along with allegations that the FBI launched an investigation of Harman that was eventually dropped for a “lack of evidence.”

What is new is that Harman is said to have been picked up on a court-approved NSA tap directed at alleged Israel covert action operations in Washington.

And that, contrary to reports that the Harman investigation was dropped for “lack of evidence,” it was Alberto R. Gonzales, President Bush’s top counsel and then attorney general, who intervened to stop the Harman probe.

Why? Because, according to three top former national security officials, Gonzales wanted Harman to be able to help defend the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, which was about break in The New York Times and engulf the White House.

As for there being “no evidence” to support the FBI probe, a source with first-hand knowledge of the wiretaps called that “bull****.”

“I read those transcripts,” said the source, who like other former national security officials familiar with the transcript discussed it only on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of domestic NSA eavesdropping.

http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docid=hsnews-000003098436

Holocaust and Israeli occupation/ Gideon Levy

The Israeli soldiers played backgammon in their tent as a Palestinian ambulance stood waiting, its red lights flashing.

The sight of the ambulance, holding an agonized woman, was not enough to cause any of the soldiers to take a break from their game.

This went on for half an hour, until my patience finally ran out. It was the height of the second Intifada, and we were lined up at checkpoint 250, which at that point besieged the West Bank town of Jenin. I exited the vehicle and approached the soldiers, raising my distraught voice at them.


http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1079368.html

Gaza, remember? By Gideon Levy

Alyan Abu-Aun is lying in his tent, his crutches beside him. He smokes cigarettes and stares into the tiny tent's empty space. His young son sits on his lap. Ten people are crammed into the tent, about the size of a small room. It has been their home for three months. Nothing remains of their previous home, which the Israel Defense Forces shelled during Operation Cast Lead. They are refugees for a second time; Abu-Aun's mother still remembers her home in Sumsum, a town that once stood near Ashkelon.

Abu-Aun, 53, was wounded while trying to flee when his home in the Gaza town of Beit Lahia was bombed. He has been on crutches ever since. His wife gave birth during the height of the war, and now the baby is with them in the cold tent. The tent was sent flying during the storm that devoured the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, so the family had to put it back up. They receive water only occasionally in a container, and a tiny tin shack serves as a bathroom for the 100 families in this new refugee camp, 'Camp Gaza,' in Beit Lahia's Al-Atatra neighborhood.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1079219.html

'Israel could have made peace with Hamas under Yassin'

Adding that this was a turbulent period of terror attacks, Sela explains that his goal in the encounters was "to collect information about the Palestinian cells and organizations, to thwart the attacks outside. In that capacity I met with Yassin. We held him in Hadarim Prison [near Netanya] on the third floor in harsh conditions. We gave him a very hard time. He was not allowed visits and we kept him tightly locked up for almost five years. He was held in a narrow room where the temperature was 45 degrees [Celsius] in the summer and freezing cold in the winter. His blankets were dirty and smelled. That's how he lived. I found him to be a very smart man, and also very decent. We engaged in a war of minds. We knew that after every battle between us someone would die, either on my side or on his side."

What did you talk about?

Sela: "Business - intelligence. When the biggest adversaries sit down to talk face to face, it's a different ball game. I always told him, 'Stop blowing up buses, stop murdering women and children.' He replied: 'Tzvika, listen, we had good teachers: You established a state thanks to your military power. The dead I take from you are for the sake of establishing a state, but you are killing women and children for the sake of the occupation. You already have a state. You are dirty and hypocritical. I have no interest in destroying you - all I want is a state."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1078849.html

Palestinian activists plan massive graffiti protest on West Bank fence

The separation barrier will receive its largest piece of graffiti yet when Dutch and Palestinian activists scrawl on it a 2,000-word letter by a South African scholar arguing that "Israeli apartheid" is "far more brutal" than Pretoria's was.

The letter by Farid Esack will be put on the eastern face of the wall this week by activists belonging to Sendamessage - a Dutch group that collects money over the Internet for painting messages to protest against the barrier Israel is building along the West Bank.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1078578.html

Israeli conductor Barenboim to perform in Egypt for first time

Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim will lead the Cairo Symphony Orchestra Thursday in his first performance in Egypt, bringing his campaign to bridge divides through music to the heart of the Arab world for the first time.

He will conduct the orchestra in a performance of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony and play several piano solos at the Cairo Opera House.

The visit by the famed conductor and pianist has been largely welcomed by mainstream Egyptian intellectuals and artists because of Barenboim's outspoken support of Palestinian statehood, criticism of the Israeli government and his contention that there is no military solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Those views even earned him honorary Palestinian citizenship, which he accepted in 2007.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1078512.html

Israel Investigated, But Will It Repent?

Saturday, 11 April 2009, 12:34 pm
Column: Ramzy Baroud

Israel Investigated, But Will It Repent?

Any variation of the words “Palestine” and “massacre” are sure to yield millions of results on major search engines on the World Wide Web. These results are largely in reference to hundreds of different dates and events in which numerous Palestinians were killed by the Israeli army or settlers. But references to massacres of similar nature precede the state of Israel itself, whose establishment was secured through the ever-expanding agenda of ethnically cleansing Palestinians. Throughout its history, this bloodletting project has been carried out for once specific purpose, that being the illegal acquirement of land and the suppression or extermination of those who dare to resist.

Israel has denied almost every massacre it has committed. Those too obvious to deny, were “investigated” by Israel itself, which predictably, mostly found its soldiers “not guilty” or culpable of minor misconduct. Israeli “investigations” served the dual purpose of helping Israelis retain their sense of moral superiority, and sending a highly touted message to international media of Israeli democracy at work and the independence of the country’s judiciary.

With the Gaza tragedy of December 2008-January 2009 being the latest in the ever growing list of Palestinian massacres, little seems to have changed the way Israel views its action, with the full approval of the US and the half hearted position of much of the international community.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0904/S00118.htm

Gideon Levy / The dark religious side of Israel

A few days after tens of thousands of Israelis raised their eyes to the heavens at dawn to honor "the return of the sun to the place it stood at creation," and millions of Israelis joyfully read out praise in the Passover Hagaddah for genocide - jihad by means of horrific plagues and drowning infants - it's time to admit it: We live in a religious country.

That's the case during this holiday, when in some places it's impossible to find leavened products, when the rabbinate seeks to install special computer programs at supermarkets to prevent the sale of leavened foods, when Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger asks Rabbi Yaakov Israel Ifergan to get his follower Nochi Dankner to install the program at his supermarkets, and when the cows of our country are on a leaven-free diet.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1077908.html

The dark side of Dubai

The dark side of Dubai

Dubai was meant to be a Middle-Eastern Shangri-La, a glittering monument to Arab enterprise and western capitalism. But as hard times arrive in the city state that rose from the desert sands, an uglier story is emerging. Johann Hari reports

Tuesday, 7 April 2009

Construction workers in their distinctive blue overalls building the upper floors of the new Burj al-Arab hotel

The wide, smiling face of Sheikh Mohammed – the absolute ruler of Dubai – beams down on his creation. His image is displayed on every other building, sandwiched between the more familiar corporate rictuses of Ronald McDonald and Colonel Sanders. This man has sold Dubai to the world as the city of One Thousand and One Arabian Lights, a Shangri-La in the Middle East insulated from the dust-storms blasting across the region. He dominates the Manhattan-manqué skyline, beaming out from row after row of glass pyramids and hotels smelted into the shape of piles of golden coins. And there he stands on the tallest building in the world – a skinny spike, jabbing farther into the sky than any other human construction in history.

But something has flickered in Sheikh Mohammed's smile. The ubiquitous cranes have paused on the skyline, as if stuck in time. There are countless buildings half-finished, seemingly abandoned. In the swankiest new constructions – like the vast Atlantis hotel, a giant pink castle built in 1,000 days for $1.5bn on its own artificial island – where rainwater is leaking from the ceilings and the tiles are falling off the roof. This Neverland was built on the Never-Never – and now the cracks are beginning to show. Suddenly it looks less like Manhattan in the sun than Iceland in the desert.

Once the manic burst of building has stopped and the whirlwind has slowed, the secrets of Dubai are slowly seeping out. This is a city built from nothing in just a few wild decades on credit and ecocide, suppression and slavery. Dubai is a living metal metaphor for the neo-liberal globalised world that may be crashing – at last – into history.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/the-dark-side-of-dubai-1664368.html

Spain investigates what America should

A Spanish court has initiated criminal proceedings against six former officials of the Bush administration. John Yoo, Jay Bybee, David Addington, Alberto Gonzales, William Haynes and Douglas Feith may face charges in Spain for authorizing torture at Guantánamo Bay.

If arrest warrants are issued, Spain and any of the other 24 countries that are parties to European extradition conventions could arrest these six men when they travel abroad.

Does Spain have the authority to prosecute Americans for crimes that didn't take place on Spanish soil?

The answer is yes. It's called "universal jurisdiction." Universal jurisdiction is a well-established theory that countries, including the United States, have used for many years to investigate and prosecute foreign nationals for crimes that shock the conscience of the global community. It provides a critical legal tool to hold accountable those who commit crimes against the law of nations, including war crimes and crimes against humanity. Without universal jurisdiction, many of the most notorious criminals would go free. Countries that have used this as a basis to prosecute the most serious of crimes should be commended for their courage. They help to create a just world in which we all seek to live.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/06/EDSG16SH3N.DTL

Palestinian doctor who lost three kids in Gaza op tapped for Nobel Prize

Palestinian Dr. Ezzeldeen Abu al-Aish, whose three daughters were killed during Israel's offensive on the Gaza Strip earlier this year, has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, Army Radio reported on Monday.

The nomination was announced by Belgium's state secretary, who described al-Aish to the Arabic-language daily A-Sharq Al-Awsat as a "soldier of peace." The doctor has been awarded honorary Belgian citizenship "in recognition of his efforts in service of humanity," said the state secretary.

According to A-Sharq Al-Awsat, Minority Affairs Minister Professor Avishay Braverman has called Dr. Abu al-Aish to congratulate him, calling the nomination a victory for humanity.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1076773.html