‘The Times’ lets everyone off the hook on Goldstone

by James North and Philip Weiss on October 8, 2009

The New York Times is covering the Goldstone Report. Where is it covering it? Well: the furor over the report among Palestinians. We’re pretty sure this is a good story. Neil MacFarquhar is on it. But it’s really not The Story, it’s just an angle of a hugely-important international story, and the only angle the Times is covering.

Here’s what the Times refuses to cover:

–the furor over the Goldstone report on the part of the Israel lobby in the U.S., and the pressure it’s put on the Obama administration, number one. Even J Street has been quiet about the Goldstone report, while it puts out a statement applauding an Israeli Nobelist.

–and what about the political jockeying over the report, the decision by the Obama administration to bury it and make the Palestinian Authority do the dirty work? Important story. Nothing. Mike Hanna of the Century Foundation said two weeks ago that the report’s troubling findings were going to be very "tricky" diplomatically for the Obama administration. He was right. He knows what’s gone down. Why isn’t the Times calling him for comment?

–the incredible discomfort that Goldstone, a Jewish judge who denounced apartheid, has created among liberal American Jews who know that Gaza was a horror but are afraid to face these facts. Nine dead Israelis, 1400 dead Palestinians: of whom the majority were civiilans. The Israelis destroyed the only remaining flour mill, destroyed chicken farms with bulldozers, and dropped white phosphorus on children. American Jews were never silent about napalm in Vietnam. Here they are tonguetied and helpless, and the Times is helping them to avoid this important question by suppressing the news.

–Nothing in the Times about the many Jews here who have supported Goldstone, including Jews Say No!

–No editorial yet in the Times.

This is about discourse suppression. It is related to the fact that the New Yorker, the leading cranial IV for the Establishment, has said nothing at all about Gaza in 10 months. No: Gaza and the persecution of the Palestinians there is an untidy embarrassment to the liberal Establishment.

The New Republic has actually been more responsible than the Times and the New Yorker here. By publishing raving maniacs like Michael Oren and Yossi Klein Halevi, it has at least informed its readers where it hurts, that this is ideologically disputed territory. The Times has told its readers, Only Palestinians care about this. More mush from the wimp.

One other point. Mainstream liberals are quick to call for people to speak out on Third World countries and once upon a time in Eastern Europe when human rights are suppressed. It’s easy to condemn the Soviet Writers Union or ministries in Africa for not speaking out against genocide. What’s hard is to report and speak out on issues that cause your own readers to squirm. The true measure of intellectual courage is, you go ahead and do it anyway. The Washington Post, the Times, the New Yorker and others have failed this test.

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Following al-Aqsa clashes, Israel mulls banning Islamic movement

Sheikh Raed Salah has been banned from Jerusalem for 30 days

By Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 8 October 2009

The Israeli government announced yesterday it would consider banning Israel's Islamic Movement at the next cabinet meeting, in a significant escalation of tensions that have fueled a fortnight of bloody clashes in Jerusalem over access to the Haram al-Sharif compound of mosques.

The move followed the arrest of the movement's leader, Sheikh Raed Salah, on Tuesday on suspicion of incitement and sedition. Police accused Sheikh Salah of calling for a "religious war" in recent statements in which he warned that Israel was seeking a takeover of the Haram, which includes the al-Aqsa mosque.

Sheikh Salah was released a few hours later on condition that he stay away from Jerusalem for 30 days. The decision was widely interpreted as a move to damp down a possible backlash from Israel's 1.3 million Palestinian citizens, many of whom regard the sheikh as a spiritual leader. Police were deployed in large numbers throughout Jerusalem yesterday.

An Islamic Movement spokesman, Zadi Nujeidat, told the Haaretz newspaper: "We will continue our activities and call for a continued presence in and around the mosque. We are used to arrests."

The move against the Islamic Movement follows a series of pronouncements from Sheikh Salah, echoing statements from Palestinian officials in the occupied territories, that have infuriated the Israeli government.

This week he called on Muslims who could reach the compound -- access to which has been heavily restricted by the Israeli police -- to "shield the [al Aqsa] mosque with their bodies." Sheikh Salah himself has been barred by the courts from entering the Haram compound for several months.

At his annual "Al-Aqsa is in danger" rally in his hometown of Umm al-Fahm in northern Israel last week, he warned tens of thousands of supporters that Israel was trying to prize away control of the compound from the Islamic religious authorities. He added that, should Israel force a choice between martyrdom and renouncing al-Aqsa, "we will clearly choose to be martyrs."

Like many other Palestinian leaders, Sheikh Salah fears that, as well as "Judaizing" East Jerusalem, Israel is engineering a takeover of the Haram -- known to Jews as the Temple Mount because the remains of the destroyed first and second Jewish temples are believed to lie under the mosques.

He has raised repeated concerns that Israel is secretly digging under the mosques, as it did before opening the Western Wall tunnels in 1996. Then, clashes led to the deaths of 75 Palestinians and 15 Israeli soldiers.

A delegation of Palestinian leaders from inside Israel who visited the compound yesterday warned that there was strong evidence of such excavations.

In an interview with Haaretz on Monday, Sheikh Salah also warned against "infiltration of extremist Jewish elements" into the compound -- a reference to Messianic cults that want the mosques destroyed so a third temple can be built.

Muslim leaders throughout the region have expressed growing concern that the Israeli police are secretly escorting such groups into the compound following a decision by Israel in 2003 to allow non-Muslims to visit the Haram without oversight from the Islamic authorities.

Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza, meanwhile, are unable to reach Jerusalem, and Israel has increasingly limited access to the mosques for Palestinians with Israeli IDs.

During clashes at the compound on Sunday, the Islamic Movement's deputy, Kamal Khatib, and the Palestinian Authority's minister in charge of Jerusalem, Hatem Abdel Khader, were arrested. Both were released on bail and banned from Jerusalem for 15 days.

Calls from Israeli officials for Sheikh Salah's arrest and restrictions on the Islamic Movement have been growing all week.

The deputy prime minister, Silvan Shalom, of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party, told Israel Radio on Tuesday: "Sheikh Raed Salah should be behind bars."

The cabinet meeting on Sunday will discuss a law to ban the Islamic Movement being drafted by the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party of Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister. The bill is expected to be presented to ministers a week later.

The interior minister, Eli Yishai, of the Shas party, announced on Tuesday he would withdraw funding for imams who "incited" against Israel and was investigating whether he could fire them.

The Islamic Movement has rapidly grown in popularity by focusing on charitable and welfare work and has won control of several councils since the 1980s.

Despite eschewing terrorism, the movement is regarded with great suspicion by Israeli officials, who have shut down its charities and newspaper on several occasions. Sheikh Salah and four other leaders of the Islamic Movement were arrested in 2003 accused of supporting terrorism but released two years later in a plea bargain that significantly reduced the charges.

It is unclear how Israel would ban the Islamic Movement.

Analysts say the government could use the 1945 emergency regulations from British rule but the move would be unlikely to withstand judicial scrutiny. Traditionally, the security establishment has argued that it is better not to push the Islamic Movement underground.

The US state department was reported this week to have expressed concern to Israel that it and the Palestinian Authority not "inflame tensions" over 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.

Richard Falk on Palestine and the Goldstone report

October 7, 2009

The Palestinian leadership has backed a move to defer a UN vote on the Goldstone report that accuses Israel of committing war crimes during its offensive in Gaza.

Richard Falk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and a special UN rapporteur on the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories, talks to Al Jazeera about the possible motivation behind the decision.

After Goldstone, Hamas faces fateful choice

Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 8 October 2009

The political collapse underway has put Hamas, including Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, in a bind. (Wissam Nassar/MaanImages)

The uproar over the Palestinian Authority's (PA) collaboration with Israel to bury the Goldstone report, calling for trials of Israeli leaders for war crimes in Gaza, is a political earthquake. The whole political order in place since the 1993 Oslo accords were signed is crumbling. As the initial tremors begin to fade, the same old political structures may appear still to be in place, but they are hollowed out. This unprecedented crisis threatens to topple the US-backed PA leader Mahmoud Abbas, but it also leaves Hamas, the main Palestinian resistance faction, struggling with fateful choices.

Abbas, accustomed to being surrounded by corrupt cronies, sycophants and yes-men, badly misjudged the impact of his decision -- under Israeli and American instructions -- to withdraw PA support for the resolution at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, forwarding the Goldstone report for further action. After all, the PA had actively sabotaged measures supporting Palestinian rights at the UN on at least two occasions in recent years without much reaction.

This time, torrents of protest and outrage flowed from almost every direction. It was as if all the suppressed anger and grief about PA collaboration with Israel during the massacres in Gaza last winter suddenly burst through a dam. "The crime at Geneva cannot pass without all those responsible being held accountable," the widely-read London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi stated in its lead editorial on 8 October. The newspaper called for the removal of Abbas and his associates who betrayed the victims of Israel's massacres and "saved Israel from the most serious moral, political and legal crisis it has faced since its establishment."

Naming collaboration -- even treason -- for what it is has always been a painful taboo among Palestinians, as for all occupied peoples. It took the French decades after World War II to begin to speak openly about the extent of collaboration that took place with the Nazi-backed Vichy government. Abbas and his militias -- who for a long time have been armed and trained by Israel, the United States and so-called "moderate" Arab states to wage war against the Palestinian resistance -- have relied on this taboo to carry out their activities with increasing brazenness and brutality. But the taboo no longer affords protection, as calls for Abbas' removal and even trial issued from Palestinian organizations all over the world.

Hamas too seems to have been taken by surprise at the strength of reaction. Hamas leaders were critical of Abbas' withdrawal of the Goldstone resolution, but initially this was notably muted. Early on, Khaled Meshal, the movement's overall leader, insisted that despite the Goldstone fiasco, Hamas would proceed with Egyptian-mediated reconciliation talks with Fatah and smaller factions scheduled for later in the month, stating that reaching a power-sharing deal remained a "national interest."

As the tremors continued, however, Hamas leaders escalated their rhetoric -- seemingly following, not leading, public opinion. Mahmoud Zahar, a prominent Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip, labeled Abbas a "traitor" and urged that he be stripped of his Palestinian nationality. Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, speaking before a hastily convened session of the Palestinian Legislative Council, said Abbas was personally responsible for the "crime" committed in Geneva, and a senior officer from the Hamas-controlled Gaza police force held a press conference to announce that Abbas and his associates would be subject to arrest if they set foot in Gaza.

All of this puts Hamas in a bind. Before the Goldstone report crisis, Hamas had signaled that it accepted the most recent Egyptian proposals for reconciliation. The Egyptian position paper can be described as technocratic -- it deals with mechanisms for elections, release of prisoners, the formation of committees and other matters. It does not resolve core political and philosophical differences over the role of resistance and armed struggle, which Abbas rejects and Hamas defends. Nor does it deal with the problem of PA "security coordination" with Israel which has resulted in the killing and arrest by the PA of numerous Palestinian resistance fighters and the closure of hundreds of Palestinian organizations and charities.

Despite the remaining gulf, Hamas wanted to sign a unity deal. Being part of a Western-recognized PA would be Hamas' ticket to the "peace process" -- something Meshal has made no secret that Hamas seeks, although on its own terms. Abbas was less keen on a unity deal, as he and his cronies still resist dealing with Hamas as a political force that has popular legitimacy. But after Goldstone, Abbas needs Hamas.

Hamas now cannot have it both ways: it cannot talk about "unity" and "reconciliation" with people that it -- and many Palestinians -- view as "traitors." To seek unity with such people is in effect to say that Hamas wishes to join a government of traitors. For the moment, Hamas is buying time and has asked Egypt to postpone the scheduled Cairo meeting later this month.

Hamas' long-term strategy of trying to join the slowly crumbling edifice of the Palestinian Authority now makes no sense. It now seems more likely that the deal will not go ahead, although Hamas is maneuvering to avoid blame, and to maintain its lifeline to Egypt, which backs Fatah. Perhaps the more likely outcome, at least in the short term, is a continued stalemate, where Abbas, now entirely dependent on Israeli and American forces to remain in power, limps on even though he has no legitimacy or credibility, and is widely despised.

The more difficult question for Hamas will be, what comes next? Will it try to muddle through as it has, or will it rally the Palestinian public to oppose and resist Abbas until the collaborationist PA is dissolved? This would be an enormous strategic shift -- Hamas would likely have to drop the trappings of "government" it has taken up since it won the 2006 legislative elections and return to its roots as a social movement and a clandestine organization.

It will not have much time to decide where it is going. The hopes raised by the Obama Administration's initial foray into peacemaking have been dashed in the wake of Obama's surrender to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over settlements, even though US Middle East envoy George Mitchell continues with utterly sterile "diplomacy" aimed at bringing the rejectionist Israeli government face to face in "negotiations" with the political corpse of Abbas. As Israel accelerates its colonization of the West Bank and its ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem, there is increasing talk of a new intifada.

The political collapse underway offers all Palestinians -- including Hamas -- a new opportunity: to build a broad-based, internationally legitimate popular resistance movement that mobilizes all of Palestinian society as the first intifada did, and to reconnect with Palestinians inside Israel who face an existential threat from escalating Israeli racism. This movement must work with and enhance the global solidarity campaign to put maximum pressure on Israel -- and its collaborators -- to end their repression, racism and violence, and hasten the emancipation of all the people of Palestine.

Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.

Japan Threatening to Oust US Troops From Okinawa

New Japanese Govt Seeks to Force Negotiations

by Jason Ditz, October 07, 2009

Faced with their first major change in governance since World War 2, Japan’s new Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) ruled government is seeking to relieve long-standing grievances regarding the massive US military presence.

US bases (red) cover much of Okinawa

But the US ruled out holding any negotiations with the new government regarding its 60+ year long military presence, insisting they made all the agreements they need with the outgoing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).

The DPJ is reportedly playing hardball now, however, threatening to kick the US military off the island of Okinawa, which is where the bulk of their presence is situated. The islanders have long complained about the major burden of tens of thousands of US soldiers occupying a large chunk of their island.

The LDP’s solution was to pay the US billions of dollars to relocate one of their bases. The DPJ however insists that if the US wants a sustainable alliance with Japan it will return to the bargaining table, and soon.

Related Stories

• September 1, 2009 -- US Rules Out Negotiations With New Japan Govt on Base Deal
• August 30, 2009 -- Japanese Opposition Victory Could Force US Rethink in Pacific
• August 18, 2009 -- Polls Shows Japanese Opposition Party Critical of US Role Poised for Victory

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Informed sources: Abbas advised not to return to Ramallah

07/10/2009 - 05:02 PM

RAMALLAH, (PIC)-- Informed Palestinian sources revealed on condition of anonymity that Mahmoud Abbas was advised by some of his aides to delay this return to Ramallah in the West Bank until the popular anger and the scandal he caused by his position regarding Goldstone’s report subside.

According to Quds Press, the sources said that political and security advisors to Abbas asked him not to return to Ramallah and continue with his regional and European trip through setting a long program of visits until the popular fury is absorbed.

In another related context, the Palestinian ministry of interior in the Gaza Strip announced Wednesday that it started to file lawsuits on behalf of Gaza police and security men who were killed by Israel during its war on the Strip against all officials of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Ramallah who were responsible for withdrawing Goldstone’s report on Israeli war crimes.

Spokesman Ihab Al-Ghussein stated that the interior ministry would work on filing these lawsuits with all concerned legal and human rights institutions, noting that more than 250 members of the Palestinian police and other security apparatuses were massacred during the Israeli war on Gaza.

In the same context, a number of Palestinian professors and intellectuals called on Arab and Muslim countries not to deal with Abbas because he waived the interests of his people, collaborated with the Israeli occupation and became a threat to national and Arab security.

In a news conference held on Wednesday in Palestine square in Gaza city, their spokesman said that Abbas and his entourage do not represent the Palestinian people after they favored their personal interests over the Palestinian people’s.

The spokesman underlined that Abbas, through his new scandal, confirmed some of his previous treacherous positions against the Palestinian people, most notably, his involvement in the liquidation of former president Yasser Arafat and his security collaboration with the Israeli occupation.

On the same day at noon, the Italian capital Rome witnessed a massive march attended by hundreds of Palestinians and Arab residents who condemned Abbas’s visit to the country and his position towards Goldstone’s report.

For its part, Ala’a Tafesh, the secretary-general of martyr Jawdah group affiliated with Al-Aqsa Brigades, the armed wing of Fatah, said Wednesday that the resistance fighters within Fatah would form a revolutionary court to prosecute all those involved in the withdrawal of Goldstone’s report.

Tafesh added in a statement posted on Al-Jazeera net that the only punishment that fits this political crime is the “death penalty” before the Palestinian masses so as to be a lesson to those tempted to betray the Palestinian people and their cause.

Is Eli Lilly Milking Cancer by Promoting and Treating It?

Jeffrey Smith
huffingtonpost
Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:27 EDT

Years ago, an owner of a glass company was arrested for throwing bricks through store windows in his town. What a way to increase business! Has Eli Lilly figured out the drug equivalent of breaking, then fixing our windows?

In August 2008, the huge drug company agreed to buy Monsanto's bovine growth hormone (rbST or rbGH), which is injected into cows in the US to increase milk supply. It was an odd choice at the time. A reporter asked Lilly's representative why on earth his veterinary division Elanco just paid $300 million for a drug that other companies wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. The drug's days were obviously numbered. The former head of the American Medical Association has urged hospitals to stop using dairy products from rbGH-injected cows, the American Nurses Association came out against it, even Wal-Mart has joined the ranks of numerous retailers and dairies loudly proclaiming their cows are rbGH-free. In fact, Monsanto's stock rose by almost 5% when the sale was announced, and Eli Lilly's dropped by nearly 1%.

The main reason for the unpopularity of this hormone, which is banned in most other industrialized countries, is the danger of insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1). Dozens of studies confirm that IGF-1, which accelerates cell division, substantially increases the risk of breast, prostate, colon, lung, and other cancers. Normal milk contains IGF-1, milk drinkers have higher levels of IGF-1, and the milk from cows injected with Eli Lilly's drug has much greater amounts of IGF-1. You can connect the dots.

Would it be too crass to point out the obvious conflict-of-the-public's-interest that Eli Lilly also markets cancer drugs? In fact their drug Evista, which might help reduce the risk of breast cancer, may lower IGF-1 (according to one small study). So on the one hand, Eli Lilly pushes a milk drug that might increase cancer, and on the other, it comes to the rescue with drugs to treat or "prevent" cancer. Call it the perfect cancer profit cycle.

It gets better.

Cows treated with rbGH have much higher incidence of mastitis, a painful infection of the udder. This results in more pus in the milk (yuck). But don't worry. It's Eli Lilly to the rescue again. They are one of the companies happy to sell antibiotics to dairy farmers to treat the infection--which can't help but increase antibiotic resistance in humans (double yuck).

History of Lawsuits and Criminal Charges

But would Eli Lilly consciously risk our health just to increase their profit? What kind of company are they and can we trust them with our food? If recent events are any indication, you better look for rbGH-free labels.

A December 17, 2006 New York Times article revealed that according to hundreds of internal documents and emails,

Eli Lilly has engaged in a decade-long effort to play down the health risks of Zyprexa. ... Lilly executives kept important information from doctors about Zyprexa's links to obesity and its tendency to raise blood sugar -- both known risk factors for diabetes. ... Lilly was concerned that Zyprexa's sales would be hurt if the company was more forthright about the fact that the drug might cause unmanageable weight gain or diabetes.

Their own surveys revealed that 70% of psychiatrists had at least one patient "develop high blood sugar or diabetes while taking Zyprexa." And 30% of patients taking the drug for a year gained at least 22 pounds--some over 100 pounds. But Lilly told their sales team, "Don't introduce the issue!!!"

One doctor even warned: "Unless we come clean on this, it could get much more serious than we might anticipate." It did indeed get serious. They paid out hundreds of millions in settlements to people who claimed they developed diabetes or other disorders.

But Lilly's Zyprexa troubles were not over. In early 2009, they were forced to pay a record-setting $1.42 billion settlement with the Justice Department, and another record-setting state consumer protection claim of $62 million, for illegally marketing the drug to children and the elderly. It emerged in June of this year that Lilly "officials wrote medical journal studies about the antipsychotic Zyprexa and then asked doctors to put their names on the articles, a practice called 'ghostwriting.'"

Eli Lilly was also the maker of the infamous Diethylstilbestrol (DES), a synthetic estrogen. Starting in 1938, it was prescribed to pregnant women to prevent miscarriages and other problems. Although in 1953, research showed that it didn't actually prevent miscarriages, it continued to be used until 1971, when the FDA alerted the public that the daughters exposed to DES in the womb were at risk of a rare vaginal cancer. An estimated 5-10 million pregnant women received DES. The civil courts held Lilly liable because they should have foreseen (based on prior information) that DES might cause cancer and that Lilly should have done the proper testing before marketing it.

Rigging Research

In the late 1980s Eli Lilly was one of four companies (including American Cyanamid, Upjohn, and Monsanto) that tried to get their version of bovine growth hormone approved by the FDA. I sat down with Dr. Richard Burroughs, who was a lead reviewer for the agency on these applications. He didn't have kind words to say about the companies. "They didn't follow good science and they didn't follow regulations for adequate well controlled studies," he said. "They just went out and skewed the data."

He said, for example, that Eli Lilly had mysteriously lost organ samples that may have shown problems in injected cows. And their researchers came up with creative ways to hide reproductive changes in the animals. Specifically, injections appeared to suppress cows' regular menstrual cycle or reduce the visual symptoms. The company was required to report the number of cows "in heat," but was told by the FDA that they could not use bulls to identify them. If bulls were needed, then the label on their drug would have to inform farmers that they would need a bull to help identify which cows were in heat. And most farms didn't have bulls.

According to Burroughs, FDA investigators figured out that Lilly researchers secretly pumped up a heifer--a young female cow--with male hormones, so that the transgendered animal would act like a male and be attracted to the cows in heat. Lilly followed the letter of the law by not using a bull, but well, you can decide if you want to trust these guys.

Eventually, Lilly and two other companies withdrew their products, leaving Monsanto's brand of rbGH as the only one that got approved and marketed. But Lilly worked a deal where they represented Monsanto's drug outside the US. They sell it in 20 countries, including South Africa, Brazil, Colombia, Honduras, Kenya and Mexico. And now, they offer it in the US as well.

Human Reproductive Problems from Drugged Milk

In May 2006, an article in the Journal of Reproductive Medicine concluded that rbGH use, and the subsequent increase in IGF-1 in the US diet, is probably the reason why we have much higher levels of fraternal twins compared to the UK, where rbGH is banned.

Mothers with twin births are more likely to suffer from hypertension, gestational diabetes, hemorrhage, and miscarriage. Twin babies are more likely to be born prematurely and suffer from birth defects, mental retardation, cerebral palsy, vision and hearing disorders, and serious organ problems. How many drugs do you suppose Eli Lilly sells to treat these disorders?

Tell Eli Lilly to take rbGH off the market and out of your milk. To find non-rbGH dairy products, check out the non-GMO shopping section at www.responsibletechology.org.

International bestselling author and filmmaker Jeffrey M. Smith is the executive director of the Institute for Responsible Technology. His first book, Seeds of Deception: Exposing Industry and Government Lies About the Safety of the Genetically Engineered Foods You're Eating, is the world's bestselling and #1 rated book on GMOs. His second, Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods, documents 65 health risks of the GM foods Americans eat everyday. Both are distributed by Chelsea Green Publishing.

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The still-missing central fact in the Iran drama

By Glenn Greenwald - Octber 7, 2009

Ever since Iran reported the existence of its Qom enrichment facility to the IAEA, one central assertion has been repeated as fact over and over by the American media to make the story as incriminating as possible: namely, that Iran only disclosed this because they discovered they had been "caught," i.e., they found out that the West knew of this facility and they thus had no choice but to disclose it. That assertion has been fundamental to the entire Iran drama. After all, if Iran voluntarily notified the IAEA of the Qom facility before it was even operational and thus agreed to have the facility inspected, it's impossible to maintain the melodramatic storyline that Iran was planning something deeply nefarious here and got "caught red-handed." The assertion that Iran was forced into disclosure is vital to the entire plot, and it's been constantly repeated as fact.

But ever since this episode began, I've read countless accounts from numerous sources and never once saw a single piece of evidence to support this claim -- and I've been actively looking for it and asking if anyone has seen such evidence. Today in Time Magazine, Bobby Ghosh writes of an exclusive interview he conducted with CIA Director Leon Panetta about Qom, in which Panetta claims the CIA knew of the facility for three years. After describing Panetta's account of how the CIA discovered the site and how they learned it was designed for uranium enrichment, this paragraph appears:

U.S. officials believe that it was only when Iran found out that its cover had been blown that it chose to own up to the plant's existence -- although how it might have learned of Washington's discovery remains unclear. On the eve of the U.N. General Assembly last month, the Iranians sent the IAEA a terse note, acknowledging the presence of the Qum facility.

Does that sound like the CIA actually knows whether Iran ever even discovered "that its cover had been blown," let alone that this was the reason the Iranians disclosed the facility to the IAEA? Obviously not. Time can say only that U.S. officials (unnamed, of course) "believe" that this happened -- based on what? -- but cannot even say how Iran might have learned of the U.S. discovery (that's "unclear"). Plainly, at least according to this account and every other that I've seen, there are no known facts to support the claim that this is what motivated Iran's IAEA disclosure. It's just something that gets asserted without any challenge or questioning.

Just this weekend, a New York Times Editorial flatly asserted: "Of course, Iran didn’t even acknowledge that it was building a plant near Qum until last week after it was caught red-handed." In fact, the Times has no idea whether Iran's disclosure to the IAEA had anything to do with that or whether Iran even knew that the West had learned of the Qom facility. Worse, the very first news story the Times published about this matter -- the day after the Press Conference with the leaders of the U.S., Britain and France -- contained this sentence: "At some point in late spring, American officials became aware that Iranian operatives had learned that the site was being monitored, the officials said." There's no evidence at all for that critical claim, and the Time article today unintentionally casts doubt on it by making clear that this is nothing more than a "belief" of unnamed American "officials."

Obviously, it's possible that the U.S. really did learn three years ago that Qom was an enrichment facility, that Iran somehow found out that this was the case, and that it was this that prompted the Iranians to disclose to the IAEA. But that's a mere possibility, an unproven assertion from government officials which, at least as of now, they're not even claiming is certain. But it's also obviously quite possible that Iran voluntarily disclosed this facility to the IAEA because they're willing to allow inspections, believe their NPT obligations require disclosure 180 days prior to operability (which is what they've claimed since 2007), and intend to use it for civilian purposes and thus have nothing to hide. Since the claim about Iran's motives for disclosure is the linchpin of all the hysteria -- the vital fact that makes what Iran did appear sinister -- shouldn't newspapers refrain from repeating it as though it's proven and make clear to their readers that this is but one of several possibilities: one for which absolutely no evidence has been presented?

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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.