Hardly any respite - While some calm has returned to the compound of Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Muslim holy site is still under grave threat

By KHALED AMAYREH - October 16, 2009

An uneasy calm is descending over East Jerusalem after thousands of Israeli troops lifted a tight siege lasting two weeks on Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, one of Islam's holiest sanctuaries.

The site witnessed violent disturbances two weeks ago when Israeli paramilitary police stormed the Haram Al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary) in an effort to arrest Palestinians who had repulsed an attempt by a group of Jewish fanatics who were trying to arrogate "prayer rights" at the Islamic shrine.

Dozens of Palestinians were injured, some quite seriously.

Following the incident, hundreds of Muslims from Jerusalem and also from Arab towns and villages in Israel decided to maintain a constant presence at the mosque in order to repulse new attempts by Jewish extremists to seize a foothold at Al-Aqsa compound. On many occasions, Israeli police forces threatened to storm the Noble Sanctuary if the sit- in didn't end. Meanwhile, they maintained a constant presence outside the compound. But on Sunday, the Israeli government decided to lift the siege, effectively allowing participants in the sit-in to leave peacefully.

The deal apparently was part of a behind-the-scenes understanding between Israel and Jordan whereby Israel agreed to reinstitute the status quo ante at the site and to refrain from provoking Muslim sensibilities. According to the Jordanian- Israeli Peace Treaty, Jordan retained the role of custodian of Al-Aqsa Mosque. Jordan had harshly criticised Israel for the "standoff", and unconfirmed reports indicated that the Jordanian government threatened to expel the Israeli ambassador from Amman if the provocations continued.

Indeed, King Abdullah II warned in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz last week that the irresponsible Israeli behaviour with regard to Al-Aqsa Mosque could spark off a huge conflagration in the region and "destroy everything". Jordan and other Muslim countries witnessed large anti-Israel protests following Friday congregational prayers.

In addition to Jordan, several Muslim countries also filed protests with Israel, warning the Israeli government that any attempt at a gradual Jewish takeover of Islam's third holiest site would be viewed as crossing an ultimate red line by Muslims, and would also put an end to any semblance of peacemaking efforts in the region. The protests prompted Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to publicly deny that Israel was harbouring hostile intentions with regard to Al-Aqsa Mosque.

"Last week extremist figures tried to undermine Israel's stability. This is an extremist minority that spread lies about Israel digging under the Temple Mount [Haram Al-Sharif]. This is a lie," he said.

Another Israeli official, Trade and Labour Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer warned that Israeli Arabs were beginning to "link up" with Hamas against Israel. "A certain alliance is forming between Israeli Arabs, specifically the Islamic Movement, and Hamas," Ben-Eliezer told Israeli state-run radio, adding that Israel would eventually pay a heavy price if this was permitted to continue. Muslim leaders in Jerusalem and the rest of the occupied Palestinian territories scoffed at these statements, calling them "brash lies".

"Israel is trying to tell the Muslim world that this is a confrontation with Hamas. This is a lie, because Al-Aqsa Mosque belongs to the entire Muslim umma (nation) and Israel is trying to demolish the mosque or at least arrogate part of it in order to build a temple for Jews," said Sheikh Raed Salah, head of the Islamic Movement in Israel.

Salah was arrested briefly last week on charges of "incitement against the state" and of "making contacts with a terrorist organisation" -- an allusion to Hamas. Both Salah and his deputy, Sheikh Kamal Khatib, have also been barred from entering Jerusalem for 30 days. Israel has accused Salah and other Muslim leaders of carrying out "subversive activities" and "orchestrating" claims about an Israeli conspiracy against Al-Aqsa Mosque.

The restoration of calm at Al-Aqsa Mosque seems to vindicate the view of Muslim leaders that the main source of tension was Jewish provocations, particularly the repeated attempts by messianic Jewish fanatics to enter the mosque -- not as ordinary tourists, but as provocateurs and trouble- makers. Sheikh Ikrema Sabri, a chief imam and preacher at Al-Aqsa Mosque, said Muslims in Jerusalem and the rest of Palestine would never stop resisting and protesting efforts by Jewish intruders to establish a foothold or gain "prayer rights" at the Muslim shrine.

The current relative calm is unlikely to last for long, however, given the determination of messianic Jewish groups that are bent on demolishing Islamic holy places in Jerusalem in order to build a Jewish temple on their ruins. Some of these groups, such as the Temple of Faithful, believe that Jews won't attain redemption until Al-Aqsa Mosque is destroyed and a Jewish temple is erected in its place. According to extremist Jewish doctrine, the ensuing violence that would see the death of a huge number of people would expedite the appearance of a Jewish Messiah, or Redeemer, who would bring about salvation for Jews and rule the world from Jerusalem.

Messianic Jewish groups, which exert a lot of influence on the Israeli government and parliament, and even the army, seem to show little deference to any government decision to maintain status quo ante arrangements at Al-Aqsa Mosque esplanade where the Muslim Waqf (religious endowments authority) has been managing the holy site since 1967. A few days ago, a number of Jewish intruders disguised as foreign tourists entered the mosque despite tacit Israeli assurances to the contrary. Similar attempts, coordinated or uncoordinated with the government, are expected in the coming days and weeks.

Moreover, it seems that the current right-wing Israeli government fully identifies with the declared and undeclared goals of the extremists, despite any public stand to the contrary. Indeed, not a single member of the current government has criticised -- let alone denounced -- the fanatics for their repeated provocations.

This week, Sheikh Salah alluded to Israeli government collusion with messianic fanatics. He said nothing short of a full liberation of Al-Aqsa Mosque from the Israeli occupation would shield the Muslim sanctuary from harm. "The Israeli government is the prime mover of all plots against Al-Aqsa Mosque. The important thing is not what they say to the media, but what they do at, around and especially beneath Al-Aqsa Mosque."

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A Museum of Intolerance in Jerusalem

People's Geography

An excellent address by Saree Makdisi who was in Australia recently as the 2009 recipient of the Adelaide-based Edward Said Memorial Lecture (there is also a US-based Edward Said Memorial lecture series). The second half of this 60 minute address is particularly worthwhile. The introduction by journalist Antony Loewenstein is brief but if you’d like to skip ahead, move the cursor on the audio bar to about the six minute mark.

Makdisi’s presentation is on the construction of architect’s Frank Gehry’s Museum of ‘Tolerance’ in Jerusalem and he notably talks about the kind of politics of double erasure its construction entails. On another level, it is also symptomatic and representative of the whole programme of Israeli apartheid.

From Sydney Ideas:

In 2004, construction began in Jerusalem on the local branch of the Los Angeles-based Museum of Tolerance, designed by the leading American architect, Frank Gehry [above: artists impression].

The museum is now being built over the remains of what had been the largest and most important Muslim cemetery in Palestine, which had been in continual use from the time of the Crusades up until 1948. The clash between the two competing claims to the same site offers a paradigmatic case to explore and rethink the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, since all of the elements of the larger conflict are also in play in the struggle over this specific site.

The presentation is a precursor to a forthcoming paper that will be published in Critical Inquiry* later this year — well worth looking out for.

References

“The Architecture of Erasure,” forthcoming in Critical Inquiry.

See also “A Racialized Space: Social Engineering in Jerusalem,” in Journal of Contemporary Arab Affairs, vol. 2, no. 4 (October-December, 2009), pp. 566-75.

"They killed him because he was Palestinian"

Jody McIntyre writing from Yabad, occupied West Bank, Live from Palestine, 14 October 2009

Fuad's family in their home, his mother and father holding a picture of their dead son. (Hamde Abu Rahme)

On 30 September 2009 at 11am, 17-year-old Fuad Mahmoud Nayif Turkman was standing outside his school in the village of Yabad, when he was run over by an Israeli military jeep. Yabad is located in the occupied West Bank, near the city of Jenin. An Israeli military spokesperson later claimed that "hundreds" of Palestinians were "rioting" in the area, and that the jeep had experienced "mechanical difficulties." However, eyewitnesses from the scene say that the students were doing nothing of the sort. Jody McIntyre spoke with Fuad's father, Mahmoud Turkman, and his 12-year-old brother Fadi for The Electronic Intifada:

Jody McIntyre: What was Fuad like?

Mahmoud Turkman: He was like any boy, really. Worked hard in school, popular with his friends. He was in his last year at school and was planning to go on to university. Fuad always told me wanted to finish his studies as soon as possible in order to support the family [which includes 11 brothers and sisters]. During the school holidays, Fuad would come to help me with my work building houses. Once he asked me, "Father, you work so hard all the time to give us money and put food on the table -- why do we take it so for granted?"

At home he was always on his computer -- he bought it independently, refusing to allow me to contribute anything to the cost.

Fuad was always keen on looking the part, dressing nicely and playing with his hair. I don't know if there was a girl he liked. If there was he was too shy to tell us.

Fuad was a very quiet boy; he never made problems with anyone.

JM: When was the last time you saw Fuad?

MT: The last time I spoke to Fuad, he said that he was keen to finish school so that he could get married. I told him that after your brother is released from jail [Fuad's older brother has 12 months of a six-year sentence remaining] I want to make a big party for both of you.

I once told Fuad that I was worried that my house wasn't big enough for both him and his brother, and he told me, "Don't worry, we can swap, sleeping one night each here."

A woman who lives near us recently traveled to Mecca, and when she got back she gave Fuad a necklace. She told him to wear it because she was afraid that something bad was going to happen to him -- that was two days before he was killed.

JM: Where were you when you heard the news?

MT: On the day Fuad was killed, I was trying to get permission to visit his brother in prison. Fuad's uncle called and told me that something had happened at to my son at the school, and that they were at the hospital and I should try to come as quickly as possible, but he told me that Fuad was fine. He didn't want me to face the pain alone.

When I got to the hospital, I could see that my son was in bad shape -- many tubes were stuck into his body and nose, but he was still alive.

But when I went to stroke Fuad's arms, I could feel him dying inside. I quickly recited a passage from the Quran, to ask God to take my son to heaven. The rest of the family arrived to see Fuad, but the doctors took him away to another room to perform surgery. Unfortunately, it was too late.

JM: Was anyone at the scene when he was injured?

MT: Fuad was standing on the road [of his school] with a group of friends, when the Israeli military jeep suddenly swerved left off the main road toward them. All of his friends jumped out of the way in shock, but Fuad stayed where he was -- he stuck his hands in the air and waved his arms for the jeep to stop.

It ran straight into him, reversed over his body, and then drove forward again crushing Fuad underneath for a third time. All the teachers and boys shouted for the soldiers to stop so they could help their injured friend, but the soldiers instead closed the school gate so that nobody could get to Fuad. The teachers asked the soldiers if they realized what they had just done, but they replied, "We haven't done anything wrong. This is normal."

JM: Why do you think Fuad was killed?

MT: Why? Because he is Palestinian. As the soldiers said, this is normal. The Israeli army doesn't care about the life of any Palestinian, so this can happen any time -- they can kill anyone they like. When they ran Fuad over, they didn't even look under the jeep to see what had happened, but were more interested in closing the school gate so that nobody could help him.

They then called three more jeeps for back-up, and when they drove away, the jeep rode over Fuad's body, still trapped underneath, for a fourth time! This shows their blatant disregard for the lives of Palestinian boys.

One of Fuad's brothers, also a student at the school, saw this and jumped over the school gate to help Fuad, so the soldiers started kicking him and beating him with their guns until he was bleeding from his wounds. They didn't care -- they had murdered one boy, and then they wanted to kill his brother as well.

Fuad was left alone for 40 minutes. He wasn't dead yet, but nobody was allowed forward to help. Afterwards, the soldiers told the teachers that the whole thing was an accident, but still didn't even have the decency to call an ambulance, even though they had one on call just two minutes away. Only once the soldiers thought Fuad was dead did they re-open the school gate and let the people inside go to help him.

Maybe if the soldiers had shot my son I would be able to come to terms with his death, but for it to have happened in such an undignified manner is very difficult for me to comprehend. The road he was standing on is only for the school, and is around 40 meters away from the main road, so when they swerved left so sharply, they did it because they wanted to kill someone. By the time they had run over his body so many times, Fuad's liver was lying on the pavement. My brother wrapped it in plastic so that I wouldn't have to see it.

During the second intifada, there was an accident here in Yabad where an Israeli jeep lost control and flipped over. My brother, Fuad's uncle, saw this happen and went to help them, calling an ambulance and even helping to retrieve their weapons. The soldiers had been involved in an accident, not fighting, and you help anyone in an accident. But when Fuad was lying on the ground, close to his death, and the soldiers claimed it was an accident, they had no interest in calling an ambulance. Furthermore, every Israeli military vehicle has someone who is trained in first aid, in case one of the soldiers is injured, but they refused to help Fuad. All the teachers had cars to drive Fuad to the hospital, but the soldiers prevented them from doing so.

Now, none of the students want to go back to school, because they are afraid that they will be the next victim of this occupation. All the fathers want to send their children to different schools.

JM: How has his death affected family life?

MT: In many ways! Fuad was great with the family, and got along with all of his brothers and sisters. Now, when I walk through the house and see all of his things still lying where they were -- his bed, his computer, his clothes -- I feel like he is still here with us.

Fuad's youngest brother is three years old, and he used to go to Fuad when he was on his computer and ask him to play music so he could dance to it. Every time Fuad walked through the front gate to the house, he would run to hug him. Now he always asks me, "Where is Fuad? I miss Fuad -- I want Fuad here!" I told him that Fuad has gone to heaven.

All his brothers and sisters loved him immensely, and they are so, so sad that they will never see him again.

JM: What were Fuad's political views?

MT: Fuad always told me that he thought we could make peace here in Palestine. He hated to see the fighting between Palestinians and Israelis, and desperately yearned for freedom; to be able to go anywhere he wanted, without walls or checkpoints blocking his path. He wanted peace, because it would mean that he could go to school without being afraid.

JM: What would you say to world leaders?

MT: We want peace. We need to find a solution where we live in freedom. We have a very difficult life here, and every Palestinian person is suffering. People are dying as they are held and beaten at checkpoints, children have been killed, pregnant women with their babies still in their bellies have been murdered, so the world needs to help.

JM: Fadi, how do you remember your older brother?

Fadi Turkman: I keep seeing Fuad in my dreams, playing and joking with us. I was in class at school when my teacher said to me, "Go to your house, your brother has died." I ran all the way home and when I got there I started crying.

Fuad always helped me with my school work ... in fact, we helped each other. He let me play on his computer. We went to the mosque together.

The night before he died, Fuad was here at the house playing with me and my friends.

I always used to tell Fuad everything I wanted to do when I grew up, and he promised to take me everywhere in the world.

Jody McIntyre is a journalist from the United Kingdom, currently living in the occupied West Bank village of Bilin. Jody has cerebral palsy, and travels in a wheelchair. He writes a blog for Ctrl.Alt.Shift, entitled "Life on Wheels," which can be found at www.ctrlaltshift.co.uk. He can be reached at jody.mcintyre AT gmail DOT com.
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Tony Blair and the business of covering up war crimes

By Jim Holstun, The Electronic Intifada, 14 October 2009

On 7 October 2009, Tony Blair gave a lecture at a New York university. In responding to an unexpectedly direct student question, he publicly joined, for the first time, the US and Israeli Zionist consensus rejecting the Goldstone report.

On 27 June 2007, Blair left his job as UK prime minister under the cloud of the war on Iraq that he had concocted with former US President George W. Bush. Just hours later, he assumed his new position as the Special Envoy to the Mideast Quartet (EU, Russia, UN, US). He had long been a Zionist and a member of Labor Friends of Israel, and he received heartfelt farewells-and-hellos from Ehud Olmert ("A true friend of the State of Israel") and Tzipi Livni ("a very-well appreciated figure in Israel"). Palestinians living under Israeli occupation did not find this a very a promising development.

Though Blair spends only a week a month in the Middle East, he has managed to keep busy. He maintains a grueling, globe-trotting schedule of lectures, for which he receives up to $500,000. On top of this, he has been at work on his memoirs, for which he received a $7.3 million advance. Consulting work brought him $3.2 million (including a bonus) from J. P. Morgan Chase and $800,000 from Zurich Financial Services. By October 2008, he had amassed at least $19 million, far outdistancing even the enterprising Bill Clinton. He is thought to be the highest paid public speaker in the world.

Blair's schedule has caused some concern in the Middle East. His office insists that his "current role in the Middle East takes up the largest proportion of his time," but in late 2008, a Western diplomat in Jerusalem wondered if "his overstretchedness has produced a tactical blunder," while a UN official in Jerusalem said, "There is a general sense that he is not around" ("Lectures see Tony Blair earnings jump over #12," The Times, 29 October 2008). In September 2008, a coalition of Mideast aid groups accused the Quartet of "losing its grip," adding that its "failings could have serious ramifications for implementing international law around the globe" ("Aid groups: Tony Blair faces imminent failure in Middle East," The Times, 25 September 2008).

On 27 December 2008, Israel launched the Gaza massacre, which it dubbed "Operation Cast Lead." Eight days later, when asked about Blair's reaction, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown explained, "Tony's on holiday at the moment." While Blair found time to attend a private opening of the new Armani store in Knightsbridge, he found none to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, thus recalling his silence during the 2006 Israeli war on Lebanon ("As Gaza is torn apart by war, where is Middle East peace envoy Tony Blair? He's been on holiday," Daily Mail, 5 January 2009). In early January, Blair flew to Israel, but he did not condemn the Israeli assault. In February 2009, while Palestinians in Gaza were still digging themselves out and mourning their dead, he accepted a $1 million prize from Tel Aviv University as the "Laureate for the Present Time Dimension in the field of Leadership" (Press release, 2009 Dan David Prize, 17 February 2009).

On 1 March 2009, he finally made it to Gaza. He conceded "a huge amount of damage" and the deaths of "large numbers of civilians," but rejected as "not very sensible" any discussion of disproportionality in Israel's attacks ("Blair shocked at devastation on first Gaza visit as envoy," The Scotsman, 2 March 2009). Blair did not meet with Hamas leaders, and his visit to Gaza lasted only a few hours, for he had to make a pilgrimage to Sderot, the Gilad Shalit of western Negev settlements ("Middle East envoy Tony Blair in Gaza for first time," The Independent, 1 March 2009). In June, he visited Gaza a second time and, as proof of his deep humanitarian instincts, went so far as to say that the Palestinians were in a "tough situation" ("Former British PM Blair Visits Gaza Strip," Voice of America News, 15 June 2009).

On 15 September 2009, the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, chaired by Justice Richard Goldstone of South Africa, issued its 575-page report entitled "Human Rights in Palestine and Other Occupied Arab Territories." For three weeks after the Goldstone report's publication, Blair said nothing about it in public. Then, on 7 October 2009, he spoke at SUNY Buffalo (UB), where I teach, to a huge audience in the university's Distinguished Speakers Series. I didn't hear the lecture, for I was outside in a free speech corral (the first one to have appeared on my campus) with a group protesting Blair's invitation and his enormous lecture fee of $150,000, as confirmed to me by his exclusive agent, the Washington Speakers Bureau.

We also protested the censorship of questions. For several years now, by requiring that all questions to them be pre-submitted and approved, the UB administration has protected from direct questioning those of our Distinguished Speakers whose resumes include war crimes in the Balkans and West Asia. This time, they packaged the censorship as "The Blair Student Question Contest": students pre-submitted questions for review, and the administration invited the lucky winners up on the podium to deliver their approved questions in person. When questioned about the practice, Dennis R. Black, UB Vice President of Students and emcee for the evening, told The Buffalo News that "there was no attempt at censorship and that the questions were merely moderated" -- an interesting distinction.

An audio version of the whole speech is available on the website of UB's public radio station ("UB Distinguished Speaker Series - Tony Blair," WBFO, 13 October 2009). It consists primarily of earnest platitudes and whimsical anecdotes, concluding, incredibly enough, with a story about a comical horse-betting Irishman, rendered in Blair's very best music-hall brogue. But things took a change for the better in the question-and-answer period. Nicolas Kabat, a UB political science major, co-founder of UB Students for Justice in Palestine, and member of the Western New York Peace Center Palestine-Israel Committee, was one of the lucky contest winners because of the slow-pitch, painfully bland question he pre-submitted. But at the microphone, he asked a hard-edged question about Blair's response to the Goldstone report, why he thinks the basic principles of international law are irrelevant to the Middle East peace process, and why the continuing siege on Gaza isn't also harmful to that process.

A video of the five-minute Kabat-Blair exchange is available on YouTube. I'm told by the UB student who recorded it that UB Vice President for Students Dennis Black (visible at the end of the clip) heard Kabat's unapproved question with vein-popping disbelief. Later, Director of UB Special Events William Regan wrote Kabat to chastise him for departing from the approved question, saying that he had "violated a trust that needs to exist for a contest like this to function properly." In a delightful Freudian slip, he added that "We are very disappointed with your ethical conduct." There is something exquisite about the righteous indignation of a befuddled censor.

Blair seemed at first to be thrown off balance by an actual, uncensored question. Though he eventually found his feet and began to concoct his classic blend of choirboy sanctimony and Machiavellian misdirection, he also seemed to wander unwittingly into a public rejection of the Goldstone report. Like most of its opponents, he failed to find fault with a single one of its factual claims but moved immediately into nostrums and whinging. Despite Kabat's clear statement that the report condemned both Palestinian armed groups and Israel, Blair brightly observed that "you have given one view, and the trouble is that there is another view. ... And one of the things you learn about conflicts like this ... is that you never solve these conflicts by taking one view and forgetting about the other. ... And rocket attacks came out of Gaza on Israeli towns. Now those rocket attacks have got to stop as well."

Like Benjamin Netanyahu in his recent speech to the UN, Blair failed to note the report's forthright and detailed chronicle and condemnation of Palestinian rocket and mortar attacks, and its statement that they had all but ended during the lull of June-November 2008 (31-33, 71-82, 449-74). In fact, Hamas ceased all of its attacks and cracked down on firings by other groups, reducing them by 97 percent and Israeli casualties by 100 percent. This Hamas peace offensive was just too much for Israel to bear, so on 4 November 2008, a squad of Israeli commandos infiltrated Gaza and killed six Hamas soldiers, thus shattering the lull (78).

Blair also suggests that we must reject the Goldstone report as hopelessly partisan because it ignores provocations by Hamas: "The Israeli soldier that is kidnapped at the moment, Gilad Shalit, should be released." The problem here is that the report actually exhibits the usual disproportionate and tacitly racist concern for this lone Israeli detainee (on pages 25, 28, 57, 66, 288, 289, 291, 304, 371-73, 412, 415, 418, 486, 541, 551), though unlike Blair, it also discusses the 8,100 detained Palestinian men, women and children (27-29, 401-23).

The center of Blair's rejection of the Goldstone report, however, lay in his dismissal of international law as such. He genuflected briefly toward it, but added that we'll never get anywhere through "a debate over a report that is hotly supported on one side, hotly and deeply contested on the other." In other words, international law is fine until Israel disagrees with it, at which point we should abandon it. How, then, will the conflict be resolved? Israel needs "security" and the Palestinians need an "independent state," but first, there needs to be "an end to violence," which, of course, never includes the root violence of occupation. And most of all, we must "understand the pain on either side, get them to understand that they are not alone in their pain."

In short, Blair guides us gently away from the fussy, contentious, legalistic and impractical world of international law, which makes us throw our hands up in the air, Rashomon-style, and toward that warm and empathetic place where we feel each other's pain. This empathetic pain seems to be quite distinct from and finer than the everyday pain experienced by mere Palestinians in Gaza, as they bleed and die in particular places. In the classic mode of conservative ideologists, Blair insists that, if we ever hope to change social institutions, we must first change the human heart.

For all its faults, the Goldstone report never descends to this sort of vacuous moral idiocy. It combines an analysis of massive violations of international law with a chronicle of the human pain those violations have caused: the suffering of people in Gaza crushed in their homes beneath debris (239), wounded and denied medical care (232-33, 377), shot down while waving white flags (199-203), seared by white phosphorus (533), and left to sicken and die in a state of permanent siege (9-10, 22-25, 95-100, 335-71). And the ongoing reality of war crimes arising from an illegal military occupation pervades the report.

But of course, this is Tony Blair, so there's a cheery upside to things, too, thanks to the Palestinian Authority's neoliberal development projects and its West Bank security gang: "And just to tell you some good news out of Israel and Palestine this week. ... When I first became the Envoy ... I couldn't have gone to a city like Jenin or Nablus on the West Bank. Today, I go to Jenin or Nablus, where they opened a hotel in Nablus just the other day. I go to places like Qalqilyah, I go to Hebron, I go to Jericho, Ramallah obviously. In other words, I can go around the West Bank."

Who could ask for anything more?

Jim Holstun teaches world literature and Marxism at SUNY Buffalo. He has previously published< "Nonie Darwish and the el-Bureij massacre" and (with Joanna Tinker) "Israel's fabricated rocket crisis" for The Electronic Intifada. He can be reached at jamesholstun A T hotmail D O T com.

Deporting foreign children preserves Israel's Jewish identity

By Yair Ettinger
Haaretz
October 14, 2009

Interior Minister and Shas Party chairman Eli Yishai plans "to muster all of Shas' political power on the issue of the foreign workers," he told Haaretz on Tuesday.

During a conversation with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, Yishai warned that if the cabinet rejects his demand that children of foreign workers not be given residency or citizenship in Israel, he will abdicate responsibility for the Immigration Authority, which is currently in his ministry's purview, to the Prime Minister's Office, and foment a coalition crisis to boot.

He also reminded Netanyahu of a similar case in 1986, when then-Shas chairman and interior minister Yitzhak Peretz resigned from the cabinet after the High Court of Justice ordered the ministry to register people who underwent Reform conversions overseas as Jews.
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Yishai does not object to Monday's decision to postpone deporting the children and their parents until the end of the school year, saying this was for "humanitarian reasons." But he stressed that he will not agree to any further postponements and will vehemently oppose granting the children citizenship or residency.

Allowing these children to stay in Israel "is liable to damage the state's Jewish identity, constitute a demographic threat and increase the danger of assimilation," he said.

Israel: No peace talks unless UNHRC drops Gaza report

Press TV - October 14, 2009 17:19:32 GMT

Over 1,300 Palestinians were killed during Gaza 'war'

A day before the UN Human Rights Council convenes to debate on a UN report accusing Israel of war crimes in Gaza, Tel Aviv threatens to scrap peace talks with Palestinians unless the damning report is dropped.

The threat came Wednesday as the report was being discussed at the UN Security Council (UNSC)'s regular monthly meeting on the Middle East.

During the UNSC meeting, Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki urged the 15-member body to adopt the report, compiled by a fact-finding mission headed by South African judge and international prosecutor Richard Goldstone.

The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) will hold a special session to debate the issue on Thursday. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak called the foreign ministers of France, Britain, Spain and Norway on Wednesday and asked them not to back the Gaza report.

The Geneva-based body was initially set to vote on the report last week, but it was delayed until March 2010, after the Palestinian Authority withdrew its support for the report.

Having faced an unprecedented wave of condemnation and accusations of treason over his controversial decision, Acting Palestinian Authority Chief Mahmoud Abbas made a U-turn and called for a special session of the UN Human Rights Council to vote on the report in order to save his image.

Different Palestinian factions, including Hamas, had accused Abbas of betraying the victims of the three-week war by bowing to pressure from the US and Israel. Both Israeli and US officials dismissed the report as biased.

If adopted, the UN Human Rights Council could refer the report to the UN Security Council. The UNSC can call for the prosecution of senior Israeli officials in the International Criminal Court, if Tel Aviv fails to launch its own investigations into the Gaza war under international scrutiny.

War Criminals Are Becoming Arbiters of the Law

Israel and the Goldstone Report

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
October 14, 2009

The double standard under which the Israeli government operates is too much for everyone except the brainwashed Americans. Even the very Israeli Jerusalem Post can see the double standard displayed by “all of Israel now speaking in one voice against the Goldstone report”:

“This is the Israeli notion of a fair deal: We’re entitled to do whatever the hell we want to the Palestinians because, by definition, whatever we do to them is self-defense. They, however, are not entitled to lift a finger against us because, by definition, whatever they do to us is terrorism.

“That’s the way it’s always been, that’s the way it was in Operation Cast Lead.

“And there are no limits on our right to self-defense. There is no such thing as ‘disproportionate.’

“We can deliberately destroy thousands of Gazan homes, the Gazan parliament, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Interior, courthouses, the only Gazan flour plant, the main poultry farm, a sewage treatment plant, water wells and God knows what else.

“Deliberately.

“Why? Because we’re better than them. Because we’re a democracy and they’re a bunch of Islamo-fascists. Because ours is a culture of life and theirs is a culture of death. Because they’re out to destroy us and all we are saying is give peace a chance.

“The Goldstones of the world call this hypocrisy, a double standard. How dare they! Around here, we call it moral clarity.”

A person would never read such as this in the New York Times or Washington Post or hear it from any US news source. Unlike Israeli newspapers, the US media is a complete mouthpiece for the Israel Lobby. Never a critical word is heard.

This will be even more the case now that the Israel Lobby, after years of effort, has succeeded in repealing the First Amendment by having the Hate Crime Bill attached to the recently passed military appropriations bill. This is the way the syllogism works: It is anti-semitic to criticize Israel. Anti-semitism is a hate crime. Therefore, to criticize Israel is a hate crime.

As the Jerusalem Post notes, this syllogism has “moral clarity.”

Britain’s ambassador to the United Nations, John Sawers, stepped into the hate crime arena when he told Israel Army radio that the Goldstone report on Israel’s military assault on Gaza contains “some very serious details which need to be investigated.”

A year from now when the Anti-Defamation League has its phalanx of US Department of Justice (sic) prosecutors in place, Sawers would be seized and placed on trial. Diplomatic immunity means nothing to the US, which routinely invades other countries, executes their leaders or sends them to the Hague for trial as war criminals.

In the meantime, however, the Israeli government put Sawers and the UK government on notice that British support for the Goldstone Report would result in the destruction of the double standard that protects the West and Israel and create a precedent that would place the British in the dock for war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“London,” declared the Israeli government, “could find itself in handcuffs if it supports the document [the Goldstone report].”

Once the DOJ’s hate crime unit us up and running, “self-hating Jews,” such as leaders of the Israeli peace movement and Haaretz and Jerusalem Post journalists, can expect to be indicted for anti-semitic hate crimes in US courts.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
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NPR’s ‘Morning Edition’ Joins Vigilantes

by Susie Kneedler on October 13, 2009

We’ve all wondered when NPR would investigate the bigotry underlying the Occupation and ever-growing colonization of Palestine. Yesterday, Morning Edition finally announced a piece on how groups of Israeli men roam streets, intimidating Palestinian and Jewish people who date each other. I looked forward to an expose’ of the thugs’ intolerance. Sadly, NPR spit out the opposite: a paean to the racism of those Israelis. Renee Montagne opens with the "news" that, "There is a new enemy for some Israelis: romance between Jewish women and Arab men, and vigilantes have banded together to fight it. The vigilante groups are walking the streets and towns across Israel. The largest and most notorious is in the Jewish settlements that have sprung up in and around traditionally Arab East Jerusalem."

What does Montagne mean, "Jewish settlements" "have sprung up" amid "traditionally Arab" East Jerusalem? Montagne misleads listeners from the outset, declining to mention either the illegal Israeli Occupation of Palestinian lands or its continual theft and violence toward the people of Palestine. Just yesterday, the Israeli government demolished yet more Palestinian-owned buildings in East Jerusalem, without a peep from NPR.

Montagne reveals that "Sheera Frenkel joined one of the groups on patrol." Montagne makes Frenkel’s participation sound like camaraderie–the same phrase one would use if Frenkel actually became a vigilante herself. Montagne’s only critical word is her label "vigilante" for people who are in fact vigilantes.

Sheera Frenkel tells us that these vigilantes object to "Arab men dating Jewish girls." Frenkel’s terms treat her subject unequally in two ways: she opposes an ethnicity, "Arab," to a religion, "Jewish"– a racist formulation, for, unbelievably, Frenkel never once mentions the boys’ true identity: "Palestinian." Meanwhile, Frenkel’s whole approach is sexist, heightening the supposed "danger" posed by "Arab men" to "Jewish girls." If Frenkel were fair, she would describe the couples as "men and women," or, because they are "underaged," as "boys and girls."

Frenkel says that "’David’–who doesn’t want his name used" has a "mission" to "patrol," searching to "find Arab-Jewish couples and break up their dates." Frenkel shows no revulsion toward David’s interference. David avows: "My heart hurts every time I see a Jewish girl with an Arab. It’s extremely upsetting. I ask myself, ‘How did we get to this situation? How did we descend to this level?’ It is a serious step backwards in our eyes." Frenkel neglects to condemn or even question David about his hunger for segregation. She lets pass David’s bigoted claim that he and his ilk exist on a plane inherently "above" Palestinians and would be degraded by "falling" in love with them–literally plunging both down and behind.

Frenkel grants the vigilantes legitimacy: "In groups named ‘Fire for Judaism’ and ‘Love of Youth,’ 30 to 40 men…patrol the streets each night," without questioning their monikers or motives. "Officially, they’re on the lookout for any mixed couples," but a driver called "TS" "says the problem lies solely with Arab men dating Jewish girls." In other words, another layer of prejudice applies: the gangs aren’t just looking for any "mixed couples." Frenkel refrains from asking the vigilantes why Palestinian men in love with Jewish women is a bigger threat to their prejudices than Palestinian women with Jewish men.

TS says that the "Arab" men entice the girls with gifts: "These men approach the girl in a nice way. They buy her things. They build trust with the woman so that, given some time, the girls just blindly follow them. And–with time–one friend follows another, and soon enough, you have a commune made up of these types of girls." Horrors: a "commune," no less. How is such a conglomeration different from a kibbutz? Frenkel does not interrogate the self-appointed posse about its assumption that the Jewish women are saps–bribed into myopia. Instead, Frenkel tells us–without a glimmer of disapproval–that such Jewish persecution of Palestinian men dating Jewish women has actually become the official policy of one local government: "In…an industrial city in Israel’s center," the "municipality has formed a special division" for dealing with the "what it sees as the problem of underage Arab-Jewish couples."

Frenkel comments, "the couplings are an unforeseen bi-product of the growing number of Jewish settlements that have been built across largely Arab East Jerusalem." "Couplings"?–sounds as if Frenkel’s chatting about the matting habits of animals, rather than serious human beings capable of great devotion. "[U]nforeseen bi-product"?–naive inadvertence to the consequences of stealing others’ property and moving in next door, not a calculated exponential expansion. "[G]rowing number"?–an innocent increase devoid of larceny. "Jewish settlements"?–Jewish pioneers taming uninhabited land, instead of colonies pinched by invaders. "[T]hat have been built"?–simple construction on mysteriously bulldozed ruins, rather than obliterating others’ homes . "[A]cross largely Arab East Jerusalem"?–accidental spread throughout territory once inhabited by Arabs, never purloining the legal inheritance of Palestinians or dominating those who so tenuously remain. Frenkel conceals the Israeli breaches of International Law in its ethnic cleansing, revealing instead a sense of Palestinians as sub-human. Frenkel, like Montagne, condemns listeners to ignorance of the bloody Occupation and its ends by hiding every relevant fact.

Frenkel informs us that "Alona Levy, a 16-year-old Jewish teenager, says that she gets approached by Arab men every day," twisting the tale into the threat posed by lascivious aliens to virtuous damsels. Alona portrays her problem as predatory Arabs: "a group of Arab boys drove by and were yelling at us, ‘Hey, hot girls!,’ and we didn’t pay them any attention. We aren’t interested in them. This happens to us almost three times a day at least." Frenkel doesn’t question but rather validates Alona Levy’s bias about Palestinian boys, announcing, "But she [Alona] and her friends understand why some girls decide to defy local norms and date Arab men." Alona claims that "There are a lot of girls that go out with Arab men, because Arab boys are wild, they’re bad boys." Alona drives home her point, "I think they [the Palestinian boys] like us, because Arab girls are all conservative and wear the covering on their hair, and we dress normally." Frenkel doesn’t investigate Alona’s caricatures by actually interviewing either Palestinian boys or girls.

Frenkel reverts to David, for whom "mixed couples" are "a growing epidemic." Frenkel refrains from condemning David’s portrayal of romance among Palestinians and Jews. Frenkel doesn’t query David’s fear, let alone her own mischaracterization of such couples as "mixed." What has happened to our American press if an NPR "reporter" frankly implies that Palestinian-Israeli couples are mesalliances or miscegenation? What sort of paranoia sees intimacy among Palestinians and Israelis as a plague the way David does? What kind of "journalist" concurs with his categories of abuse? Frenkel instead announces that David and his fellow vigilantes target girls who are "known problem cases." Frenkel recounts David’s story of accosting one Jewish girl who refused to get out of a car with Palestinians, taking his word that the car sped off–after first hitting David’s leg–after which David chased the car for 30 minutes, quitting only after filing a police report.

David announces that: "Our goal is to talk to the girls and convince them that their place is with the Jewish nation, not with our enemies." Nowhere does Frenkel utter even a yip about so barbarous a belief: that Jews belong only "with the Jewish nation" and that Palestinians are inviolable "enemies." David brags that he and his group have "saved" four girls, declaiming that, "Even if we have rescued only one girl," "we have done a good deed, and we thank God for it." Frenkel remains mum about such fundamentalist zealotry. Frenkel instead affirms in her closing lines that "’David,"–the man who hides behind a pseudonym–wants publicly to humiliate his target: "He hopes that drawing attention to the incident will embarrass the girl and force her to leave her boyfriend. He says it’s one more girl he might save."

What a terrible end to a biased report. Frenkel shuts down her biased "story" of maniacal busy-bodies–mobs, even–with the fiction that David actually cares to "save" a girl. He merely wants to harass a person better than he is–or at least more open-minded. "David" craves nothing but hate, pursuing an eternal war based only on his own lethal animosity.

Sheera Frenkel never criticizes the racism of the vigilantes or compares it to traditional U.S. values of equality and kinship for all. We can’t excuse Frenkel’s omissions by the traditional alibi of "objectivity," for there’s nothing "fair" about her approach. Frenkel interviews no Palestinians who love Jewish people or Jews who love Palestinian people. Worse, Frenkel valorizes the vigilantes’ mania. Sheera Frenkel refuses to depict the affection among these young couples as the gift that it really is. The couples’ connection across a lethal Occupation is a hopeful, good sign that peace–amity–harmony are not only possible, but are truly happening right now.

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The Toxic Legacy of Christopher Columbus

By William A. Cook

When beliefs morph into truth, regardless of the realities of time and place, the non-initiated become fodder for those with the zeal and power to enforce their will. Thus the great discoverer of the Americas “fantasized that he had located— or had come close to—the site of the paradise into which Jehovah had placed Adam and Eve” ( Ned Hopkins, CTA Action, 1992). The “Christ-bearer,” baptized in his unquestioned faith, utilized his birth name to justify his actions, reasoning that God gave license to him as His servant. Perhaps, as we bear down on the anniversary of Columbus’ achievements, we might consider how it has been possible for a Medieval world of unbridled superstition, intolerance, and religious myopia to envelop the advanced civilizations of western culture at the beginning of the 21st century.

The irony of this review that watches Columbus sail from the ports of Spain as the Spanish Crown expelled or slaughtered the Jews and Muslims in 1492, empowered by their Christian faith, resides in the realty that the west and the Muslim world of the 21st century clings still to the superstitions that gave rise ultimately to the greatest holocaust the world has ever known, as David Stannard notes in his work, The American Holocaust. If Columbus precipitated an invasion of the western powers into the “new” hemisphere, what Hopkins claims “…resulted in the largest exchange of people, animals, and plants that the planet has ever seen…,” it also resulted in the near extermination of an entire race and multiple cultures. The justification for this invasion found expression in the authority of the Roman Catholic faith to bring salvation to the “savages” and civilization to the primitives who lagged behind the advances of European cultures.

What mindset allows such darkness to blind what the eyes can see? Before Columbus an estimated 10-18 million people lived and loved in what we now call the United States. The Hopi and Zuni cultures thrived in the south west for an estimated 4000 years before the Spanish arrived. In the east the Algonquian, Iroquoian, and Muskogee peoples existed as far back as 10,000 years. The Iroquois formed a confederacy with five other tribes in the late 15th century that lasted long enough that Benjamin Franklin could visit its assembly and learn from it. These “savages” had a constitution and a code to guide behavior that included a prohibition of blood revenge, a social compact communitarian in nature, communal land, and hunters that provided for the community not for themselves. “There were no mendicants or paupers among them” (French Jesuit 1657) and “… the Chiefs are generally the poorest among them … obliged to give to others” (Dutch missionary). It might be said that these “savages” were taught “to think for them selves but to act for others.” What a novel thought for the “civilized” beasts that invaded this continent from Europe.

Whether we observe the Spaniards in central and south America or the Puritans in New England, we find a Eurocentric racist mindset cobbled with an imperialistic belief in their own superiority given vitality by their religious tenets that they are the chosen of God, redeemed – and hence destined for everlasting life in the presence of God Almighty. Indeed the western mind has been bathed in such moral epistemology since medieval times and sustained by historians and politicians who defend colonialism by conquest as a God given duty. “The colonialist … reaches the point of no longer being able to imagine a time occurring without him. His irruption into the history of the colonized people is deified, transformed into absolute necessity,” as Frantz Fanon puts it.

All that is needed to sustain such a mindset is obliteration of the peoples being subjugated, to transform them from people to “savages” or barbarians, primitives without souls, without culture or intelligence, irrelevant “cockroaches” to be discarded, driven from the land, or killed. Thus do we witness the civilized European inflict their beliefs on the natives through acceptance of the “requerimiento” that ordered them to accept the truth of Christianity and allegiance to the Spanish Crown or suffer torture or death. Or in the case of the Puritans as they moved against the Pequot people, face extermination as Godless minions of Satan.

Then, strangely enough, as Edward Said remarked, the “Settler group adorns itself with the mantle of the victim: the European homeland of the colonists—or the metropolitan European power that politically controls the settlement area—is portrayed as the oppressor, while the European settlers depict themselves as valiant seekers of justice and freedom, struggling to gain their deserved independence on the land that they “discovered” or that is theirs by holy right.” (as quoted by Stannard).

Perhaps Columbus and the Puritans might be excused for their actions since they were raised in a world that knew the truth of God’s word from the dominant religious and political forces of their times. As a consequence they found license to slaughter at will in the name of their God. “[The Spaniards] took babies from their mother’s breasts, grabbing them by the feet and smashing their heads against rocks … They built a long gibbet, low enough for the toes to touch the ground and prevent strangling, and hanged thirteen [natives] at a time in honor of Christ Our Saviour and the twelve Apostles. … Then, straw was wrapped around their torn bodies and they were burned alive” (Bartolome de Las Casas). Such is the power of myth in the medieval mind. What one believes justifies all. So Columbus and the Conquistadors mercilessly plundered and ravaged a people and their land.

Such dependence on myth to establish belief that drives the actions of a state to destroy another is surely the product of by gone times, times where superstition, prejudice, racism festered like some infection embedded in the heart and mind, the toxic atmosphere that propelled Columbus and the Puritans. Today, in our advanced DNA omniscience, in a world driven by globalization, prodded by ideologies of democracy, equality, liberty and the realization that we humans can bring these virtues to the entire world, surely such myths no longer exist.

How explain then America’s proclivity to torture under our most Christian of Presidents? Did he not send his forces to Iraq at God’s behest to bring the infidels the “gift” of God’s freedom and liberty in the manner of King Ferdinand of Spain who enlisted his servant Columbus to bring “souls to God” on his behalf? Didn’t our president’s advisor, Dick Cheney, justify “extraordinary interrogation techniques” to bring the recalcitrant to the truth, or die? How like the “requerimiento” that offered the Native life or death in the name of God Almighty.

What differentiates the slaughter of the natives by bloody massacres that wiped out whole tribes, as the Conquistadores swept across the south west or the Puritan massacre of the Pequots, in the fiery hell they designed for those God helped them destroy, from the razing of Fallujah by the American forces as they leveled the city to the ground and in the process scorched and seared the residents in the unforgiving fire of white phosphorus? What has changed since Medieval times? What progress is discernible but the technology of death? The racist mindset clamped on the brain by arrogance of belief in white superiority remains firmly in place justifying what the soul knows in its silence to be merciless slaughter that needs no God to trumpet its evil.

How similar the incantations of the righteous “settlers” arriving from a foreign land to lay claim to the homes of an indigenous people, people bought and brought to Israel by American dollars, defying law and logic in the process, condemning those who have lived on the land for centuries as invaders or usurpers of their God given rights as proclaimed in an ancient book of dubious authenticity but useful for purposes of theft. How strange that civilized people throughout the world witness this ludicrous behavior as rational, finding confrontation of truth and international law uncomfortable and so allow the robbery to continue.

Not even the barbaric behavior of these demented souls that find favor with their G-d when they club to death an old shepherd or mob children in the streets on the way to school or burn Palestinian homes or throw the residents of an apartment into the streets and take their home for themselves or, as soldiers in the IDF, glorify their G-d by killing defenseless and innocent women and children in Gaza, can nudge the indifferent people of the world to scream to the heavens that some sick stupidity is loose in this ancient land that is senselessly claimed to be the holiest piece of real estate on the planet.

Benny Morris, the most prolific of Israeli historians, in an interview in Ha’aretz contends that the annihilation of the Native Americans was unavoidable. “The great American democracy could not have been achieved without the extermination of the Indians. There are cases in which the general and final good justifies difficult and cruel deeds that are carried out in the course of history.” Dr. Adi Ophir, in commenting on this interview notes: “Morris seems to know what the general and final good is: the good of the Americans, of course. He knows that this good justifies partial evil. In other words, under specific circumstances, Morris believes that it is possible to justify genocide. In the case of the Indians, it is the existence of the American nation. In the case of the Palestinians, it is the existence of the Jewish state.” (“Genocide Hides Behind Expulsion,” Adi Ophir, 1-16-2004). How convenient an argument to give credibility to the genocide in Palestine, especially since the declaration of the American state occurred 289 years after the arrival of Columbus. But logic does not play a role here; superstition does.

Consider the logic of the new Prime Minister of Israel, Bibi Netanyahu, as he castigated the world leaders at the UN two weeks ago for allowing a holocaust denier to address their assembly. “Shame on you,” he yelled, lifting his covenant with the God of Abraham high above the podium to prove that the land of Palestine belongs by historical right to the Jews, “Shame on you” for not accepting the fact that G-d gave this land to the Jews, as though their belief in what is now known to be fiction must be used to justify the decimation of the Palestinians. “If as archeology suggests, the sagas of the patriarchs and the Exodus were legends, compiled in later periods, and if there is no convincing evidence of a unified invasion of Canaan under Joshua, what are we to make of the Israelites’ claims for ancient nationhood?” (The Bible Unearthed, Finkelstein and Silberman, 98).How ironic that the “real” descendents of the people of ancient Judea are the people of Palestine who centuries ago converted to the Christian or Muslim faiths, not the Ashkenazi European Jews like Netanyahu who have no Semitic blood connection to the land but only an acceptance by conversion to the Jewish faith (Shlomo Sand, When and How the Jewish People Was Invented). What a convenient way to justify theft of another’s home and land.

How can we pretend that the United States and its “only friend” in the mid-east have the right to impose their beliefs on other states? Have these modern day colonists not, as Fanon said, deified their own being and justified their actions as the will of their imagined God as though no other God exists or no belief in a different divinity can be conceived? How can we pretend that flechette bombs, depleted uranium weapons, dimes, white phosphorus, bunker buster bombs, cluster bombs and all the machinery of modern war designed to decimate thousands of people, to inflict heretofore unseen wounds on mind and body, can in any rational way be justified as civilized or humane? Perhaps, like Columbus and his Conquistadores, we should forgo the luxury of technological prowess and return to the shield and sword so the full carnage we inflict might be visible to all of us as the screams of the baby and the mother sink deep into our hearts and the blood splatters over our face and we must face what we have wrought.

- William A. Cook is a professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California and author of Tracking Deception: Bush’s Mideast Policy.

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Sarkozy accused of nepotism after handing top post to 23-year-old son

From The Times
By Charles Bremner
October 9, 2009

President Sarkozy caused embarrassment among his political allies yesterday with news that his 23-year-old student son is to be handed the powerful post of boss of Europe’s biggest business district.

As the Opposition cried nepotism, stalwarts of Mr Sarkozy’s Union for a Popular Movement said that the President was going too far in lining up Jean, a third-year student, to head the public agency that runs La Défense, the island of corporate towers in the west of Paris.

Patrick Devedjian, a Cabinet minister and the current Défense boss, is being moved aside for the President’s second son. He reacted bitterly yesterday with a quotation from Corneille, the 17th-century dramatist: “For souls nobly born, valour does not await the passing of years.” Privately, other UMP officials said that Mr Sarkozy was exposing himself to accusations of dynasty building.

Patrick Jarry, the Communist Mayor of Nanterre, which borders La Défense, said that the President’s younger son had no legitimacy and no qualifications for such a post. “This is nothing less than an attempt to ensure the permanence of the clan and lock down the executive power in the area,” he said.

If the job is confirmed in December, the ascent of the fledgeling politician will be even more meteoric than that of his father, who won the mayor’s post in Neuilly, the rich suburb that adjoins La Défense, at the age of 28.

Unlike the President, who forged his own way in local politics, the elevation of “Prince Jean” has been greatly assisted by his father’s power in the area. Sarko Jr, who has blond golden-boy looks and is much taller than le père, won a Neuilly seat in the Hauts-de-Seine county council, Mr Sarkozy’s old fiefdom, last year and then was handed the job of heading the UMP group there.

Chairmanship of the Epad, the agency that manages the business district, is a political post in the gift of the council, so there is little doubt that Jean will receive the appointment. As head of the public agency, which was run by his father until 2007, he will oversee the multibillion-euro expansion of the district, where numerous big companies have their headquarters.

Le Dauphin, as Jean is also known, will be able to celebrate his new part-time post at the same time as the extension of the Sarkozy dynasty. Jessica Sebaoun, his heiress wife, is to give birth to the President’s first grandchild in December.

Jean’s promotion was seen by the opposition Socialist party as part of Mr Sarkozy’s scheme to create a new Greater Paris region, controlled by the UMP. The Cabinet endorsed the 30-year plan yesterday in the face of opposition from the Socialists, who control both Paris and the surrounding Île-de-France region.

'Religious' Jews antagonize Jerusalem locals under prayer pretext

October 10, 2009

Jerusalem – Ma’an - Hundreds of religious Jews marched toward the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, taking over the streets in the Old City in what was described as an in-your-face celebration of Shmini Atzeret, which falls a day after the Jewish holiday of Sukkot.

The celebration was viewed by Palestinians in the area as a provocative act.

While many observant Jews in the holy city walk to the Western Wall complex at the bottom of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound for part of the Shmini Atzeret celebration, hundreds of agitators made their way to the Palestinian neighborhood on Al-Wad Street near the entrance of the Al-Qatanin Market. Palestinians observing the group believed they were attempting to break into the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

On the pretext of celebration, religious Jews performing the Hakafot - dancing round in circles with the Torah - pushed Palestinian shopkeepers out of the streets and ordered them to close their doors.

“You are dirty Arabs,” was a slogan the antagonistic group launched at Palestinians in the area, with several shopkeepers being backed into their stores or small corners of the Old City by advancing celebrators. Racial slurs against Arabs mixed in with the traditional rain prayer marking the end of Sukkot and the start of the harvest.

The group of ultra-orthodox Jews was accompanied by several dozen Israeli soldiers and border guards, who watched as religious rituals were used to antagonize local residents.

Palestinians who refused to back down from the ralliers and remained in the area were told by police that they must shut their stores and leave the area for two hours by order of the police department, “so the worshipers could perform their prayers,” one officer said.

Jerusalem Waqf officials rejected the police order and urged residents to “remain steadfast in confronting the settlers’ provocative acts.”

Police were also seen barring the rowdy group from the entrance area of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, bolstering Palestinian concerns that under the pretext of prayer, the group indeed intended to break into the compound.

The location the group staged the prayer at is a street that runs from the Western Wall in the north toward the Al-Qatanin Gate, one of the main gates to the Old City, which is next to one of the entrances to the Muslim Haram Ash-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary, that is home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

The incident occurred just hours after Israeli forces lifted their siege on the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, where more than 100 Palestinians were barricaded, inside, refusing to leave for fear the compound would be taken over by Israel.

Following the Friday prayer at the mosque, nearly 100 more Muslim worshippers remained in the area, vowing to remain there until the close of the Jewish holidays, which end Saturday night. Many of those inside the area have said they will not leave for another two days to ensure the safety of the area.

Who Is a Jew?

October 6, 2009
By Gilad Atzmon
Uprooted Palestinians

The question of "who is a Jew?" has been debated in Israel since it attained statehood. In the Jewish state the authorities, Rabbis and the media would dig into one’s bloodline with no shame whatsoever. For the Israelis and orthodox Jews, Jewishness is obviously a blood related concept. However, Jewishness and blood concerns are becoming a subject of a growing debate in the UK. In the last few days The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian are trying to decide whether Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a ‘self hating Jew’ or just an ordinary antisemite. Like the Israeli Rabbis they both dig into his bloodline.

Ahmadinejad is revealed to have a ‘Jewish past’ said the Daily Telegraph on Saturday. According to the paper, a photograph of the Iranian president holding up his identity card during elections in March 2008 “clearly” suggests that his family had Jewish roots. The Telegraph even found the ‘experts’ who suggested that “Mr Ahmadinejad's track record for hate-filled attacks on Jews could be an overcompensation to hide his past.” Needless to say that Ahmadinejad has never come on record with a single anti-Jewish ‘hate- filled’ attack as the Telegraph suggests. He is indeed extremely critical of the Jewish state and its raison d'etre. He is also highly critical of the crude and manipulative mobilisation of the holocaust at the expense of the Palestinian people.

One may wonder why a Western media outlet happens to selectively engage with issues to do with the racial or ethnic origin of the Iranian president. At the end of the day, digging into peoples ethnic past and family bloodline is not a common practice you expect from the Western press. It is something you tend to leave for racists, Nazis and Rabbis. For one reason or another, no one in the so called free press tried to dwell on the close ties between multi billion swindler Bernie Maddof and his tribe. The Free Press saved itself also from dealing with Wolfowitz’s ethnicity, in spite of the fact that the Zionist war he brought on us has cost 1.5 million lives by now. If you wonder how it is that the Western free media is reverting to ‘pathology’ in order to deal with a Muslim president, the answer is simple not to say trivial:

The so called ‘liberal West’ is yet to find the answers to President Ahmadinejad within the realm of reason. It lacks the argumentative capacity to address Ahmadinejad. Instead, it insists to spin banal racially orientated ideas that cannot hold water, "By making anti-Israeli statements” says The Daily Telegraph, “he is trying to shed any suspicions about his Jewish connections.” The truth of the matter is clear. Ahmadinejad has already managed to re-direct a floodlight of reasoning and skepticism just to enlighten our darkest corner of hypocrisy. He somehow manages to remind us all what thinking is all about.

It is pretty much impossible to deny the fact that Ahmadinejad’s take on the holocaust and Israel is coherent, consistent and valid. He seems to have three main issues with the narrative:

1. Around sixty Million died in WWII, the vast majority of them were innocent civilians. How is it, asks Ahmadinejad, that we insist to concentrate on the particularity of the suffering of one ‘very’ specific group of people i.e. the Jews?

2. The Iranian president rightly maintains that this historical chapter must be historically examined. This would mean as well that every event in the past should be subject to scrutiny, elaboration and revision. “If we allow ourselves to question God and the Prophets, we may as well allow ourselves to question the holocaust.”

3. Regardless of the truthfulness of the holocaust, it is not a trivial fact that the suffering of the Jews in Europe had nothing to do with the Palestinian people. Hence, there is no reason for the Palestinians to pay for crimes committed by others. If some Western Leaders feel guilty for crimes committed against the Jews by their ancestors, which they seem to claim, they better allocate some land for the Jews within their territories rather than expect the Palestinians to keep upholding the Zionist murderous burden.

As much as it is obviously clear that the above points raised by Ahmadinejad are totally valid, it is also painfully transparent that the West lacks the means to address those issues. Instead we seem to revert to supremacy and pseudo scientific discourse dwelling on blood, pathology and lame psychoanalysis.

As embarrassing as it may seem, in just three moves Ahmadinejad manages to expose the current deceptive Western mode of discussion. He, in fact identifies the holocaust as the core of our hypocritical stand, a tendency that has managed to shatter our ethical judgment. The holocaust was there to divert the attention from the colossal crimes committed by the allies: Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Dresden are just brief examples of institutionalized genocide at the hands of the English Speaking Empire. The holocaust has successfully matured into a new religion. Yet, it lacks theology. It doesn’t allow any form of criticism or reformism. It is in fact an anti-Western religion inspired by hate and vengeance. It is dark, it is blind and it lacks mercy and compassion. It is a faith that declares an assault on any form of doubt. It is a crude brutal belief system that stands in opposition to the notions of liberty and goodness. As if this is not enough, those who subscribe to this religion are complicit in an ongoing assault against grace and peace.

As things stand at the moment, The British media is yet to decide whether Ahmadinejad is a ‘Jew rebel’ or just a ‘Meshugena Goy’. The Guardian was very quick to publish its own take on the subject refuting the Telegraph’s account. However, one thing is clear, neither the Guardian nor the Telegraph or any other so called ‘free media’ outlets are free enough to address the questions raised by Ahmadinejad.

1. Why only the Jews?

2. Why do you all say NO to scrutinizing the past?

3. Why do the Palestinians have to pay the price?

Instead of engaging in these crucial elementary questions. The British main papers succumb to racially orientated bloodline digging.

Rather than following the banal Zionist query ‘who is a Jew?’ I suggest that we take the discourse one step further and ask a very simple question: What Jewishness stands for?

Haram al-Sharif sovereignty under threat

Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 7 October 2009

Palestinian women in West Bank city of Bethlehem wait to pass a checkpoint on their way to Jerusalem's Haram al-Sharif, September 2009. (Luay Sababa/MaanImages)

Tension over control of the Haram al-Sharif compound of mosques in Jerusalem's Old City has reached a pitch unseen since clashes at the site sparked the second Palestinian intifada nine years ago.

Ten days of intermittently bloody clashes between Palestinians and Israeli security forces in Jerusalem culminated yesterday in warnings by Palestinian officials that Israel was "sparking a fire" in the city. Israel's Jerusalem Post newspaper similarly wondered whether a third intifada was imminent.

Israel, meanwhile, deployed 20,000 police to safeguard the annual Jerusalem march, which was reported to have attracted a crowd of 70,000 passing through sensitive Palestinian neighborhoods close to the Old City.

The ostensible cause of friction is Israel's religious holidays that have brought Jewish worshippers to the Western Wall, located next to the Haram al-Sharif and traditionally considered the holiest site in Judaism. The wall is the only remnant of the Jewish temple destroyed by Herod in AD70.

At a deeper level for Palestinians, however, the ease with which Jews can access sites in and around Jerusalem, while the city is off-limits to the vast majority of Palestinians, highlights the extent to which Palestinian control over Jerusalem and its holy places has been eroded by four decades of occupation.

That point was reinforced on Sunday when the gates to the mosque compound were shut by Israeli police, who cited safety concerns for 30,000 Jews praying at the Western Wall for Succot.

Jerusalem's police chief, Aharon Franco, also incensed Palestinians on Monday by castigating them for being "ungrateful" after Israel had allowed them to pray at al-Aqsa during Ramadan.

In fact, only a small proportion of Palestinians can reach the mosque. Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza cannot get past Israel's wall, and the 1.5 million Palestinians in Israel and Jerusalem are finding it harder to pray there. This week police have been allowing only women and Palestinian men with Israeli identification cards showing they are aged at least 50 to enter.

Both the Palestinian Authority and Jordan issued statements this week warning that Jewish groups, including extremists who want to blow up the mosques, should be prevented from entering the Haram.

It was in this context that the leader of the Islamic Movement inside Israel, Sheikh Raed Salah, called on Israel's Palestinian citizens to "shield the [al-Aqsa] mosque with their bodies."

Concerned that most Palestinians can no longer access the mosques, Salah has taken it on himself to campaign against Israeli moves under the banner "Al-Aqsa is in danger," urging Israel's Palestinian minority to protect the mosques by increasing their visits and ensuring a strong Islamic presence at the site.

In a further provocation by Israel yesterday, Salah was arrested on suspicion of incitement and sedition. A judge released him a few hours later but only on condition that he stay away from Jerusalem.

Palestinian concerns about Israeli intentions towards the Haram are not without foundation. Israel's religious and secular leaders have been staking an ever-stronger claim to sovereignty over the compound since the occupation began, despite an original agreement to leave control with Islamic authorities.

On the ground that has been reflected in Israel's efforts to reshape the geography of the city.

It began with the hasty razing of a Muslim neighborhood next to the Western Wall that was home to 1,000 Palestinians. In place of the homes a huge prayer plaza was created.

Next a ring of Jewish settlements were built separating East Jerusalem from the West Bank, and more recently Jewish extremists have been taking over Palestinian neighborhoods just outside the Old City, such as Sheikh Jarrah, Ras al-Amud and Silwan.

With official backing, Jewish settlers have also been confiscating and buying Palestinian homes in the Old City's Muslim Quarter, including next to the mosques, to establish armed encampments.

They have also been assisted by Israeli archeologists in digging extensively under the quarter. Tensions over the excavations escalated dramatically in 1996 when Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister then as now, approved the opening of the Western Wall tunnels under the mosques. In the ensuing violence, at least 70 Palestinians were killed.

In addition, Israeli officials and rabbis have been redefining the significance in Jewish religious thought of the compound, or Temple Mount as it is known to Jews.

The rabbinical consensus since the Middle Ages has been that Jews are forbidden from entering the compound for fear of desecrating the site of the temple's inner sanctum, whose location is unknown. Instead religious Jews are supposed to venerate the site but not to visit it or seek to possess it in any way.

That view has been shifting since a wave of religious nationalism was unleashed by the seemingly miraculous nature of Israel's victory in the 1967 war. As the Israeli army captured the Old City in 1967, for example, its chief rabbi, Shlomo Goren, rushed to the Haram to read from the Bible and blow a ram's horn, as the ancient temple priests had once done.

At the Camp David talks with the Palestinians in 2000, Ehud Barak, the Israeli prime minister at the time, demanded -- against all Jewish teachings -- that the whole compound be declared the "Holy of Holies," a status reserved for the temple's inner sanctum. His adviser Moshe Amirav said Barak had used this precondition to "blow up" the negotiations.

The Camp David failure led to an explosion of violence at the Haram al-Sharif a few months later that triggered the second intifada.

Islamic sovereignty was challenged again in 2003 when Israeli police unilaterally decided to open the compound to non-Muslims. In practice, this has given messianic cults, who want the mosques destroyed to make way for a third temple, access under police protection.

It was precisely rumors that Jewish extremists had entered the compound on the eve of Judaism's holiest day, Yom Kippur, that provided the spark for the latest round of clashes.

It is reported that a growing number of settler rabbis want the injunction against Jews praying at the compound lifted, adding to Palestinian fears that Israeli officials, rabbis, settlers and fundamentalists are conspiring to engineer a final takeover of the Haram al-Sharif.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.