New Iraq going 'soft on Israel'

By Ahmed Janabi - November 9, 2009 - Al-Jazeera

The Baghdad International Fair first opened its doors in 1964 [EPA]

The ten-day Baghdad International Fair opened its doors for the 36th time on November 1.

Featuring exhibits from major international companies, the trade fair was held annually from 1964 until the 2003 US-led invasion. It resumed in 2007.

However, a change to the fair's charter this year has angered many Iraqis.

The Iraqi government has dropped an article from the charter which obliges participating companies to prove they do not have trade links with Israel.

A memo from the Iraqi ministry of foreign affairs on October 7, alerted foreign embassies to the decision to drop article 45.

Sources within the Iraqi ministry of foreign affairs who spoke on the condition of anonymity told Al Jazeera that the EU had warned Iraqi officials that if article 45 was not removed, European companies would not participate in this year's event.

An EU source, who cannot be named because she is not authorised to speak to the media, said the first invitations to the fair, which were received by the embassies of EU countries in April, included the clause. However, EU missions in Baghdad later received an amendment suggesting that participating companies would not be required to boycott Israel.

Officials from the Iraqi ministry of foreign affairs were unavailable for comment.

'Destroying national spirit'

Members of the Iraqi parliament told Al Jazeera that they were unaware of the decision to remove the clause.

Nasar al-Rubei, a spokesperson for the al-Sadr parliamentary bloc, vowed to launch a campaign to restore article 45.

"It is not up to the government to take any action when it comes to Israel," he said.

"We live in a society that looks at Israel as an entity built on stolen land. We know that Iraq's foreign policy has not been defined yet, we know Iraq's foreign policy is the government's responsibility, but the relation with Israel is a special case. They must not touch it without people's approval.

"From our side, we will fight to restore article 45, we will launch a campaign to collect signatures for a petition asking the government to review its decision and to promise not to change anything related to Israel without the parliament's approval."

Laila al-Khafaji, a member of parliament from the Unified Iraqi Coalition, said: "We were completely unaware of that issue. I hold the ministry of foreign affairs and [the] foreign relations committee in the parliament [responsible] for making the parliament the last to know."

Dhafir al-Ani, a member of parliament from al-Tawafuq bloc, sees the move as part of a long-term plan to condition Iraqis to accept Israel.

"When you see Iraqi political parties racing to win blessing from US officials, what do you expect? We said it from the beginning, we in Iraq can clearly see an organised plan to destroy Iraqis' national spirit," he said.

"Every Iraqi grew up on the idea that Israel is a criminal and illegitimate entity. Examples that Iraqis truly believed that are plenty in history. For instance, Iraq does not share borders with Israel, yet it participated in all Arab-Israeli wars.

"We think one of the main targets of the war on Iraq was to remove Iraq from Israel's security threat list."

'More royal than the king'

In 2004, Mithal al-Alusi became the first Iraqi politician to visit Israel [EPA]

But not all Iraqi politicians share this perspective.

Mithal al-Alusi, a former member of the Iraqi National Congress, has publicly called for an Iraq-Israel peace treaty.

In 2004 he became the first Iraqi politician to visit Israel.

Upon his return he was immediately fired from the Iraqi parliament and his party, the Democratic Party of the Iraqi Nation, was expelled from the Iraqi National Congress.

He also survived an attempt on his life in which two of his sons were killed.

He visited Israel again in 2008, saying: "I want to negotiate with Israel for the sake of Iraq. There are several Arab countries talking to Israel.

"The Palestinians themselves sit with the Israelis, should we be royalists more than the king himself?"

But al-Ani opposes this perspective, saying: "It is true some Palestinian politicians sat with the Israelis and started a political process with them, but why should we not look at the other part of the Palestinians, who still up to now oppose what their politicians have done. They are the majority.

"In the rest of the Arab world, the majority of the population is against establishing contacts with Israel."

A history of boycotts

In 1951 the Arab League established the Bureau for Boycotting Israel. Based in Damascus, Syria, the bureau has lost much of its authority since Egypt, Jordan and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) signed peace treaties with Israel.

It still holds bi-annual meetings with representatives from Arab countries which have not signed peace treaties with Israel.

Before the US-led invasion, Iraq adhered closely to the instructions of the bureau. Israeli companies, those with Israeli shareholders and companies with dealings with Israel were banned in Iraq.

Iraqi ties with the US were cut after the US supported Israel in the 1967 war, and although they were restored in 1984, commercial deals with the US were kept to a minimum.

Before the 2003 invasion, Iraq endured 13 years of UN sanctions. During this time speculation was rife that one of the aims of the sanctions was to force Iraq into a peace process with Israel.

Al Jazeera has obtained a document written by Saddam Hussein's secretary, which conveys Hussein's rejection of an offer to partake in a peace process with Israel in exchange for the lifting of sanctions.

In April 2002, Iraq stopped its oil exporting operations for a month in protest at Israeli aggression in the Palestinian territories.

'Fruit of US strategy'

This document conveys Hussein's rejection of an offer to ease sanctions in exchange for peace talks with Israel

Arab countries are essentially divided into two groups; those, such as Egypt and Jordan, who have signed peace treaties with Israel, and those who still do not have diplomatic ties or any sort of contact with Israel.

For many Arab countries, the US-led invasion of Iraq signalled the loss of a strategic asset in their conflict with Israel.

Bahrain closed its offices of the Bureau for Boycotting Israel in 2006 after signing a free trade agreement with the US. Shortly thereafter, some Bahraini officials began urging the establishment of contacts with Israel.

However, Bahrain's parliament - ignoring government objections - has just passed a bill outlawing any contact with Israel and introducing prison sentences for anybody found to be breaking this law.

Badi Rafaia, a spokesman for the Federation of Anti-Normalisation with Israel Unions Committee in Jordan, said the US-led invasion of Iraq removed one of the last remaining obstacles to Israel's denial of Palestinian rights.

"[Before the war] Iraq was the main obstacle to Israel's plan to establish ties with Arab countries and subsequently swallow Palestinians' rights and demands," he said.

"We believe that Iraq's decision to allow companies with ties to Israel to work in the country is the fruit of American strategy in the region.

"Most Arab countries in the region, including my country Jordan, signed peace treaties with Israel. Jordan-Israeli peace stipulates that Jordan would no longer boycott Israeli goods; moreover it stipulates that Jordan should help to carry other Arab countries to end boycotting Israeli goods.

"I assure you, it is not something Arab public opinion is proud of."

Israel is well-known for its advanced technology and industry and some observers may find it hard to imagine an effective boycott by the Arabs, who are still far behind Israel and the West in these fields.

However, Rafaia argues that the boycott strategy has proved successful in many parts of the world and that there are plenty of examples of underdeveloped nations achieving their goals via these means.

"Economic boycott is a successful strategy if it was well planned. The Indian leader Gandhi used this strategy against Britain, when his country was occupied ... And it worked," he said.

"In [the case of] Arabs boycotting Israel, all I can tell you is if the boycott was not effective, Israel would not try to use every opportunity to break or at least ease the boycott by Arabs of its products and services."

UK MoD: Afghan war no matter of public view

Press TV - November 8, 2009 17:33:43 GMT

Britain's Queen Elizabeth II prepares to lay a wreath during the Remembrance Sunday service in Whitehall, London.

British Defense Minister Bob Ainsworth has downplayed mounting public skepticism of the Afghan war, saying the mission was not a matter of public opinion.

The comments came as the Queen paid her respect to Britain's war dead on Remembrance Sunday, when the Ministry of Defense confirmed the death of another trooper in Afghanistan.

Ainsworth was referring to a BBC poll which found 64 percent of Britons regarded the war as 'unwinnable' — a rise of six percent since July — seemingly corresponding to the country's death toll in Afghanistan that has passed the 230 milestone.

“This campaign is directly connected to our safety back here in the United Kingdom and people need to recognize that. Failure will be a disaster for us," he told Sky News.

While MoD only acknowledged a 'dent' in the support for the campaign, the head of the country's armed forces, Sir Jock Stirrup, told BBC One's Andrew Marr show that it was 'incredibly important' to improve ways for 'explaining the successes we are having'.
He said despite the progress being 'painful, slow and halting', the troops based in the war-torn country believed that they were gaining ground.

Stirrup went on to question the current 'optimistic' US estimate of a possible pull out from Afghanistan by 2013, saying the Afghan army could not be entrusted with the full task of maintaining security until a year later.

Meanwhile, a report by the Sunday Times daily said army chiefs were considering a retreat in the face of growing Taliban insurgency and planned to withdraw British troops from outlying bases in Afghanistan.

The strategy, dubbed 'retrenchment', would see several bases, including deadly Musa Qala, abandoned for larger towns in volatile Helmand province — a move expected to spark reaction from the families of soldiers who died there.

This would not be the first time British troops have quitted the Musa Qala, which quickly fell into the Taliban's hands in 2007, only to be reclaimed by NATO forces in a costly operation later that year, the paper noted.

The New Yorker Mucks Up Gaza

by Bruce Wolman on November 7, 2009

The New Yorker sent Lawrence Wright, its Pulitzer Prize winning staff writer, over to Israel and Gaza to report on "What really happened during the Israeli attacks?" I’m not sure what the reason was for the question mark, unless it was a hint not to take what’s written as what really happened. Wright’s letter from Gaza is disappointing, but then it could have been worse. Had Jeffrey Goldberg remained on The New Yorker’s staff, he would most certainly have been the one David Remnick sent over for this assignment. We can all imagine how Jeffrey’s piece would have read.

After giving a second read to Wright’s letter, I couldn’t quite understand my deep initial antipathy. But then I noticed that the first seventy paragraphs or so are only a preamble to the last twenty in which Wright finally addresses the actual Gaza invasion. By the time this reader reached the supposed subject of the piece, he was already zoned out from Wright’s jaded history and observations. Perhaps this is the only way a New York-based weekly magazine can get away with discussing possible Israeli war crimes – by first providing a great deal of background information in conformance with the basic Hasbara narratives of the conflict.

Wright attempts to present a timeline of what happened leading up to the Gaza invasion. He starts back in June 2006, six months after Hamas had won the Palestinian parliamentary elections. According to Wright, a "moment of promise" in the "opportunity for peace" culminated in bloodshed June 24, 2006, when Hamas commandos killed two Israeli soldiers and captured a third from a Merkava tank–teenaged Gilad Shalit. In retaliation, the Israelis over the next months arrested 64 senior Palestinian officials and killed over 400 Gazans, including 88 children, and turned Gaza upside down looking for their missing soldier.

Left unexplained is why Wright believes that on June 24th peace still had a moment of promise. He suggests that Hamas’ goal in capturing Shalit was to put a halt to the peace initiatives. Apparently Hamas’ stated goal – to negotiate for some of the 7,000 Palestinian prisoners – is not sufficient to explain the Hamas attack. Wright also refers to Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza settlements as if it was an Israeli peace overture. He writes,

"From the Israeli perspective, at least, the Gaza problem was supposed to have been solved in August, 2005, when Ariel Sharon, then the Prime Minister, closed down the Jewish settlements on the Strip and withdrew Israeli forces. The international community and the Israeli left wing applauded the move. But, almost immediately, mortar and rocket attacks from the Strip multiplied."

As Shlomo Ben-Ami and others have noted, Ariel Sharon conceived of the unilateral withdrawal of the settlers and Israeli forces from Gaza as a means to avoid further peace initiatives and demands for Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, not as a stimulus to the peace process. Wright is correct about the international community’s approval–if by "international community" he follows the US State Department meaning, i.e., any ad-hoc collection of countries expressing (either willingly or by pressure) public agreement with a United States position. The Israeli left wing did applaud, if by left-wing one includes Israelis such as Ari Shavit, Ha’aretz’s own version of Tom Friedman and one of Wright’s sources. But moderate leftists and peace negotiators such as Shlomo Ben-Ami and Yosi Beilin warned from the time of Sharon’s announcement that a unilateral, as opposed to a negotiated, withdrawal would lead to negative consequences for the peace process and quite likely an acceleration of violence. Ben-Ami in his 2006 book, Scars of War, Wounds of Peace predicted rather accurately what has happened in the aftermath.

For me, a key litmus test in truth telling on the situation in Gaza is how a report handles the takeover of the Strip by Hamas. If the narrative doesn’t refer to the Bush-Rice-Abrams backing (most likely even initiating) of Mohammed Dahlan’s Gaza coup attempt, which preceded the Hamas preemptive counter-coup, then it is seriously remiss. It is amazing to what extent the mainstream media continues to ignore David Rose’s well-sourced report on the US role in Dahlan’s power play, which appeared in Vanity Fair.

Wright does state that "Fatah refused to step aside and let Hamas govern." He mentions the "large demonstrations by both factions in the West Bank and Gaza, along with kidnappings, gun battles, and assassinations." And he even refers to the peace accord between Fatah and Hamas arranged by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. But he fails to inform that the United States opposed the Saudi accord, and subverted it by conspiring with Dahlan in his attempt to organize a putsch. Unfortunately, for the United States, Israel, Fatah and Dahlan, Hamas routed Dahlan’s forces.

Wright’s treatment of Gaza is mostly nasty (quite a contrast with this site’s reporting from Gaza last spring). Here is the tenor: The Israelis would like to ignore Gaza and forget it even exists (after 36 years of insisting they had to place settlers there). The West Bankers want to distance themselves from their poor relatives. Egypt’s only goal is to make sure Gaza remains Israel’s problem. A Saudi with a drink in his hand tells Israel to get the bombing right this time.

We are informed Gaza ran out of allies before the invasion. While this may be mostly true if one considers only the corrupt rulers and elites of the Arab countries, and the GWOT leaders of Europe and the United States [Global War on Terror], for the Arab and Muslim populations across the globe empathy with Gaza is one of the few political stances they all hold in common. Gaza can only be kept friendless by the application of authoritarian repression and Western interference.

According to Wright, "the territory has long had the highest concentration of poverty, extremism, and hopelessness in the region." There is nothing there for the children to do, yet the Gazans love nothing more than to fuck and have more kids. (One man tells Wright that Gazans love to procreate.)The movie theaters are shut down. Little music can be heard. Sports facilities have been destroyed. Sharia law is being introduced.

Wright goes through a litany of Hamas social policies of which he obviously disapproves. This is a subject worthy of discussion, and I share some of his concerns, but what do these policies have to do with what really happened in the Israeli attacks? Many of the same criticisms can be made of the social practices in the ultra-orthodox towns of Israel, but would that help to explain the Gaza invasion? Saudi Arabian society is far more repressive than Hamas’ Gaza. Still this hardly provokes New Yorker writers to suggest we invade Saudi Arabia.

Apparently Wright didn’t find any Gazans with something positive to say about Hamas. Gazans not in Hamas are worried. "The whole place is becoming a mosque," complains one female reporter. A native Gazan businessman says he feels like "a refugee in my own country" since the Hamas takeover. An economist tells Wright that "Secular people are punished. The future is frightening."

He devotes six paragraphs to a visit with a cell sympathetic to Al-Qaeda, a faction which Hamas has acted against. The complaints from these Jihadists are the opposite of the previous quoted Gazans. “We thought Hamas was going to apply Islamic law here, but they are not.” He [the leader of the Jihadi coalition] spoke of the “fancy restaurants on the beach” and said that Hamas tolerated uncovered women there. “They have a much more moderate way of life, and we cannot deal with that.” Well, which is it in Gaza?

Wright provides the obligational presentation of the more outrageous clauses in the Hamas Charter, and says that the charter "has come to embody the fear that many Israelis hold about the Palestinians." Yet, he fails to report that Israel was not very fearful of the Charter at the time of Hamas’ founding in 1987. In fact, the Israeli government initially aided Hamas and supported its growth, calculating that the Islamists would be a useful tool to reduce the strengths of the more secular Fatah and PLO.

Ari Shavit is given space to recall 2002 and his experience visiting a bombed cafe in Jerusalem. Since Gaza and Hamas are the current evil-doers, we only hear about Hamas attacks and Gazan celebrations of the Moment Cafe bombing. The fact that all the Palestinian factions were involved in suicide bombings at that time is no longer relevant, as Fatah and the West Bankers are currently the good Palestinians.

Wright asserts, "The Hamas [suicide bombing] attacks derailed the peace process initiated by the Oslo accords and hardened many Israelis against the Palestinian cause." Which is to say: The failed negotiations, Sharon’s provocative march on the Temple Mount, the Israeli massive overuse of force to quell the initial outbreaks of the Second Intifada (before any suicide bombings I might add), and the election of right-wing tough guy Sharon evidently had no causal relationship to the Palestinian attacks or the derailment of the peace process. In fact, and it is hard to believe Wright doesn’t know this, the peace process died with the elections of Ariel Sharon and George Bush. The violence that followed was in response to the violence. It developed its own momentum divorced from the failed peace process. It was an escalating tit-for-tat.

Gaza is sui generis from Wright’s perspective, as if God instead of resting on the seventh day, fooled around for a few hours and built himself an anti-Eden and called it Gaza. I began to see Gaza as, I suspect, many Gazans do: a floating island, a dystopian Atlantis, drifting farther away from contact with any other society. Wright offers a very concise take on the origins of Gaza and mucks it up for some unrevealed reason. He correctly asserts that Gaza was part of Britain’s mandate over Palestine, but then goes on to say that the Brits "considered Gaza res nullius — nobody’s property." I spent quite some time Googling round to find out the source of Wright’s claim here without result. No reference to Britain specifically considering Gaza res nullius came up.

Curiously, the legal concept of res nullius is often introduced by certain Israeli supporters and legal experts, especially the Commentary and David Horowitz crowd, in order to claim that Israel is not illegally occupying the territories. But they claim that all the territories – the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem – not just Gaza are res nullius. The majority of international legal experts dispute that res nullius applies to the occupied territories.

During the 1948 war, Palestinian refugees did flee to the Gaza Strip. When the armistice lines were drawn, Gaza was under the control of the Egyptians. After the 1967 war, control switched to the Israelis. But Wright goes further and claims "Israel and Egypt agreed to try to set up a Palestinian entity that would rule Gaza, but it was clear that neither party wanted responsibility for the Strip, so it remained in limbo, little more than a notional part of a Palestinian entity that might never come into existence." The Egyptian-Israeli Peace Agreement called for a resolution of the Palestinian issue. From the time the Arab League recognized the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people, Gaza was considered an integral part of the Palestinian territories even by Egypt. This was reaffirmed in the Oslo accords. So it’s unclear to me why Wright would seek to portray Gaza as a "notional part of a Palestinian entity". Of course, for the Israelis a hived-off Gaza lessens the current demographic threat and it would like nothing better then to declare Gaza an orphan, and an unloved one at that.

There are other inaccuracies which leads one to wonder how familiar Wright is with his subject matter. For example, he has Salam Fayyad, the current Prime Minister as a Fatah loyalist, when in fact Fayyad is an independent. In the last Palestinian election he ran for the Legislature on the list of a small party he organized with Hanan Ashrawi.

He notes splits within Fatah’s leadership, but ignores the ‘radical’ Meshal’s recent statements indicating Hamas’ willingness to accept a state based on the 1967 borders.

Wright repeats an excuse Israel gives for the timing of the Gaza attack, that Hamas was introducing GRAD rockets into Gaza. Yet, he must know that Israel has not shut down the tunnel smuggling and, if Israeli’s claims about the GRADs are true, GRADs are obviously still being stockpiled.

More seriously, Wright wrongly interprets Israeli tactics:

The Israeli military adopted painstaking efforts to spare civilian lives in Gaza. Two and a half million leaflets were dropped into areas that were about to come under attack, urging noncombatants to “move to city centers.” But Gaza is essentially a cage, and the city centers also came under attack. Intelligence officers called residents whose houses were going to be targeted, urging them to flee. The Air Force dropped “roof knockers”—small, noisemaking shells—on top of some houses to warn the residents to escape before the next, real bomb fell on them.

Israel may claim it drops leaflets and makes calls to spare civilian lives, but obviously if that is the case, it never investigates how these tactics work in practice. With no safe place to go, with attacks on anything that moves, with bombings shifting from one locale to another, Israeli warnings only increase civilian panic. Why flee your home if you don’t know whether you will be safe out in the open, and there is no place to flee to? Or whether the school or refugee center you reach will be the next target. Had Israel been serious about protecting civilians, then it would have opened its borders and let the non-combatant Palestinians flee from the war zone as international law demands. But Israel would not countenance Palestinian refugees on its territory, so it could only urge that they even more tightly concentrate themselves in the Gaza urban areas, which the Israelis eventually ended up attacking anyway.

Several times Wright repeats the Israeli mantra that no country would accept the rocket firing on its citizens that Israel has experienced. He even quotes Obama in Israel last year, “No country would accept missiles landing on the heads of its citizens. If missiles were falling where my two daughters sleep, I would do everything in order to stop that.” The twelve thousand rockets and mortars fired into Israel between 2000 and 2008 are noted, but the context is missing. This is partially correct, but not very illuminating.

By hewing to the Israeli narrative, Wright is unable to see the truth, that both sides are locked into a strategic race for deterrence against the other. "Collective punishment" applied to civilians, aka terror when the other side is employing it, is the means by which Israel seeks to maintain deterrence, and hence control, of the Palestinians. In response Hamas has attempted to establish its own deterrence vis-a-vis Israel with guerrilla actions, terror attacks, suicide bombings (a tactic which turned out to be a failure and counterproductive), and more recently, inaccurate rocket attacks.

In military and think-tank circles Israel is fairly open about its application of collective punishment. Indeed, civilian death tolls have never led to Israeli second thoughts. Gaza worked, they will say. Less obvious and accepted is the notion that the Palestinians are also in their own way also seeking a deterrent capability. (During the Second Intifada the Palestinians overplayed their hand and went beyond deterrence in the way they accelerated the suicide bombings, deluding themselves for a brief period of time into thinking these tactics were so successful they could achieve parity with Israel by their use. Instead the carnage provoked a ferocious Israeli reaction and the Israelis crushed the Palestinian uprising. Hamas has since returned to searching for a way to establish a level of deterrence. Fatah has abandoned the armed route, but has gained nothing with the Israelis. Whether Fatah will remain passive remains to be seen.)

Being the far superior power, Israel has determined the rules of the conflict. Hamas and the Palestinians respond. Seen in the context of a mutual game of deterrence, Hamas’ strategy and tactical maneuverings are rational, even if the acts themselves are immoral. We are not simply seeing the bloodthirsty cravings of extremists or the primitive urges for revenge as Wright implies.

Basically Israel is satisfied with the status quo. The Palestinians want to upend that status quo – aiming for one state or two states – i.e., some end to the occupation. To deter Palestinian violence against the current order, Israel enforces a limited but still severe collective punishment on the Palestinian civilian population as the price for its militants’ activities. Moreover, the Israelis expect the Palestinian population to blame the militants for the Israeli punishment, and eventually to demand that the militants stop their attacks on the Israelis. Hamas knows it cannot defeat Israel militarily, but it also cannot let Israel pay no price for the continuation of the status quo.

Firing rockets is a signal to the Israelis that the Palestinians will not just passively (or non-violently) accept the current situation. The wild inaccuracy of Palestinian rockets is intentional. The rockets cause psychological angst for Israeli civilians and a political problem for the Israeli government, but they don’t kill many Israelis. If the rockets were more effective at killing, the Israelis would retaliate with overwhelming force. The intensity of the rocket firings is gauged to keep Israeli cost-benefit calculations for an escalated response or a full invasion below the threshold. Hence, it is inaccurate to say that Hamas wants to kill as many Israelis as possible. If that was the aim, they would choose other tactics.

Once Israel refused to lift the blockade on Gaza during the cease fire, Hamas had no choice but to up the ante. Their people were approaching destitution, just as Israel intended. Hamas needed to try and force Israel to negotiate an amelioration of the blockade, even if the odds of success were against them. To renew the ceasefire with the blockade still in full force would have irreparably eroded support for Hamas.

Armed with this analysis we can reject one of Wright’s conclusion. He writes,

"They also underscore the biases that had taken root in each camp: the Israeli belief that Hamas terrorists and the Gazan people were one and the same; the Gazan tendency to support any act of resistance against the Israelis, no matter how self-defeating it might be."

While the majority of Israelis probably do see Hamas and the Gazan people as one and the same, Gazans have been much more circumspect about supporting "any act of resistance." If one examines Palestinian polling since the Oslo accords, you will see that Palestinians’ approval of suicide bombings and other acts of violence have varied greatly over the period. As their situation has only worsened, Gazans in their desperation have been willing for all kinds of strategies to be tried, both violent and non-violent. All have been self-defeating. Until Wright and the Israelis can demonstrate to the Gazans an alternative other than surrender, Wright should be more careful in his judgements.

Wright’s letter from Gaza is not completely one-sided, but neither does it answer the question posed.

Channel 4 defends Israel lobby probe

They wield great influence in support of Israel

By Simon Rocker - The Jewish Community - November 5, 2009

Presenting: Peter Oborne

Channel 4’s flagship investigations programme, Dispatches, is to probe what it calls “one of the most powerful and influential political lobbies in Britain” — the pro-Israel lobby.

The political columnist Peter Oborne is to front an hour-long broadcast, Inside Britain’s Israel Lobby, due to be broadcast on Monday week.

The hard-hitting documentary strand has been responsible for such programmes as Undercover Mosque two years ago, which included covert filming of Islamist extremists preaching in British mosques.

According to Channel 4’s official pre-publicity, “despite wielding great influence among the highest realms of British politics and media, little is known about the individuals and groups” who work “in support of the interests of the state of Israel”.

It says that Mr Oborne “sets out to establish who they are, how they are funded, how they work and what influence they have, from the key groups to the wealthy individuals who help bankroll the lobbying.

“He investigates how accountable, transparent and open to scrutiny the lobby is, particularly in regard to its funding and financial support of MPs.”

The pro-Israel lobby, it adds, “aims to shape the debate about Britain’s relationship with Israel and future foreign policies relating to it. Oborne examines how the lobby operates from within Parliament and the tactics it employs behind the scenes when engaging with print and broadcast media.”

According to a spokesman for the channel, Dispatches wanted “to look at one of the most powerful, but also least transparent lobbying groups in the UK”.

He explained it was “an entirely legitimate area for journalistic investigation, not least in the run-up to an election, where a lobby working in support of the interests of a foreign power could wield great influence in shaping future British policy”. He rejected any suggestion that it had been designed to balance such controversial programmes as Undercover Mosque.

The programme had been commissioned by the commissioning editor for Dispatches, Kevin Sutcliffe, in discussions with production company Hardcash.

Hardcash managing director David Henshaw said the programme was a “conventional political investigation” and “not a conspiracy-theory film”.

It was “not the synagogue equivalent of Undercover Mosque”, he said.

Mofaz blames Netanyahu, offers new illusive peace plan

Press TV - November 8, 2009 18:50:19 GMT

A prominent Israeli lawmaker describes Benjamin Netanyahu as a prime minister without an effective plan on the 'peace process.'

Shaul Mofaz, deputy opposition leader in the Israeli Knesset and a former 'military commander, presented another controversial 'peace plan' on Sunday after consulting with President Shimon Peres and Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

"The government and the prime minister have no plan,” Mofaz told a Tel Aviv press conference. “We have been waiting, but there is no path and there won't be. In six months, the prime minister has done nothing to change things. A prime minister without a diplomatic horizon harms the ability of Israel to achieve security and stability. As a former chief of general staff and defense minister, I can tell you that this is dangerous."

"Israel is seen as an insubordinate element, opposing a solution to the Palestinian conflict,” said the Kadima Member of the Knesset, quoted by the Jerusalem Post. “The time has come to make decisions. As a candidate to lead the country, I felt I had to present a plan. A leader cannot sit quietly while the prime minister is not presenting a vision for the future.”

His plan claims immediate "conditional negotiations" with the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, and the formation of a 'demilitarized Palestinian state' with temporary borders on 60 percent of the West Bank and Gaza that, according to the illusive plan, would recognize Israel within a year.

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum, however, ruled out any prospective negotiations with the Israelis. “Hamas will not negotiate with Israel,” he said. “We do not believe in engaging with the occupation, or in talks that would beautify its face in the eyes of the world.”

Under what Mofaz portrays as some sort of an innovative plan, there would be no need for a halt in Israel's settlement activity in the remaining 40 percent of the occupied West Bank and "no settlement will be evacuated". This part of his plan is in sharp contrast with Palestinians' demand for a complete freeze in the expansion of Jewish settlements on Palestinian lands before resuming peace talks.

According to his plan, key issues like the fate of Palestinian refugees, Jerusalem, and borders would be decided 'later.'

US reaction to Gaza report disappoints author

Press TV - November 8, 2009 16:22:33 GMT

Richard Goldstone, head of Fact Finding Mission on Gaza

The head of a UN investigation that has charged Israel with war crimes in Gaza says the 'lukewarm' US reaction to his findings is disappointing.

Although both sides in the December-January war were blamed in the report by Richard Goldstone, the UN findings put Israel on the spot for actions that claimed the lives of at least 1,387 Palestinians and 13 Israelis, according to UN figures.

"The reactions in the international community were very mixed, but the lukewarm from the United States disappointed me," Goldstone told das Parlament, a weekly political newspaper published by Germany's lower house of parliament, the Bundestag.

"The fact that the reactions from Israel were so violent really surprised me at times," he added, according to Reuters. "I had hoped that our call to take legal steps and pursue people at a national level would fall on more open ears."

On Friday, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution that calls on Israel and the Palestinians to investigate the alleged war crimes.

Norway drops war crimes case against Israel

November 8, 2009

WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Norwegian prosecutors have dropped a case alleging war crimes by 10 Israeli leaders during last winter’s Gaza military campaign.

Chief prosecutor Siri Frigaard said Friday she is dismissing the complaint, lodged on April 22 by a group of lawyers under Norway's universal jurisdiction law, because "there is no good reason" for Norwegian authorities to investigate further and Norway should be judicious in deciding when to investigate alleged war crimes by individuals with no connection to the country.

The 2008 jurisdiction law allows foreigners to face charges in Norway for war crimes committed anywhere in the world.

Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and opposition leader Tzipi Livni were among the Israelis named.

The decision comes a day after the United Nations General Assembly, with Norway abstaining from the vote, endorsed the Goldstone Report. The report alleges war crimes by Israel and Hamas during the Gaza war and recommends independent investigations into the charges.

Video - Israel: 60 years of Ethnic Cleansing and Mass Murder

November 8, 2009 - M. Ballan



Zionist massacres, 1948-2009. This is what Israel thinks of peace...

Video: Israeli separation barrier cuts family from village

November 8, 2009 - Al-Jazeera



Hani Amer, a Palestinian resident of the West Bank village of Mas'ha, must pass through padlocks, fences and two gates to get from his home on one side to any other part of town.

Israel's separation barrier has cut off Amer's home from those of his neighbours and the view of his village has been replaced by the wall.

Israel says it built the wall to protect its citizens from Palestinian attacks, but Amer, who lives on the same side as Israeli settlers in the West Bank, says it is his family that needs protection.

Nicole Johnston reports.

New ‘smart’ electrical meters raise fresh privacy issues for consumers

By DANIEL SILVA

November 7, 2009, 1:54pm

MADRID, Nov. 7 (AFP) – The new ''smart meters'' utilities are installing in homes around the world to reduce energy use raise fresh privacy issues because of the wealth of information about consumer habits they reveal, experts said Friday.

The devices send data on household energy consumption directly to utilities on a regular basis, allowing the firms to manage demand more efficiently and advise households when it is cheaper to turn on appliances.

But privacy experts gathered in Madrid for a three-day conference which wraps up Friday warned that the meters can also reveal intimate details about customers' habits such as when they eat, what time they go to sleep or how much television they watch.

With cars expected to be fuelled increasingly by electricity in the coming years, the new meters could soon be used to gather information on consumer behaviour beyond the home, they added.

''The collection and storage and retention of the data makes it vulnerable to security breaches as well as to government access,'' Christopher Wolf, the co-chairman and founder of the Washington-based Future of Privacy Forum, told AFP.

''It is really an issue of how much information about us can be collected by a third party, how much do they really need, how long do they need to keep it, what should the rules be on retention and when should destruction of it occur.''

More than eight million ''smart meters'' have already been installed in the United States and the number is projected by the government to rise to 52 million by 2012.

Last month US President Barack Obama announced 3.4 billion dollars (2.3 billion euros) in grants to modernise the country's electricity grid, part of which will pay for about 18 million ''smart meters.''

The European Parliament passed an energy package in April which proposed that 80 percent of electricity consumers have ''smart meters'' by 2020.

In Italy 85 percent of homes already have smart meters installed, the highest penetration rate in Europe, according to the Future of Privacy Forum. France is second with a 25 percent penetration rate.

''This is certainly the next stage, the new frontier, in the potential for privacy invasion,'' Elias Quinn, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Energy and Environmental Security at the University of Colorado, told AFP.

''The potential is great for privacy invasion depending on who can have access to this information. We are kind of walking into 'smart meter' development blindly. There is no general informed consent.''