The ‘Rogue Entity’

The ‘Rogue Entity’

Stuart Littlewood – uruknet.info March 29, 2008

Twenty Questions Radio/TV interviewers avoid asking about Israel….

The abysmal performance of western TV and radio interviewers when dealing with issues surrounding Israel - that ‘Rogue Regime’ or ‘Zionist Entity’, as many now call it - is not only embarrassing but a blot on the escutcheon of journalism.

Even the most fearsome inquisitors purr like a pussycat. Their rottweiler instincts evaporate, their investigative skills desert them, objectivity takes a nosedive. Penetrating questions are seldom asked, lies go unchallenged. Any Israeli spokesperson or cheerleader is guaranteed an easy ride.

Have the nation’s truth-seekers fallen under some wicked Zionist spell? Are their researchers on strike? Did somebody nobble the programme editors?

While we wait with mounting frustration for our broadcasters to get their act together, here are 20 simple questions the BBC and others seem anxious not to ask……

On Rockets and Sieges

The numbers of home-made Qassam rockets launched at Israel are diligently counted and quoted, but how many sophisticated munitions have Israel’s F-16s, helicopter gun-ships, armed drones, tanks, occupation troops and navy patrol boats fired into the crowded humanity that packs the Gaza Strip? We are never told.

(2) Why should we believe the claim that the siege of Gaza is about rockets “raining down” on Sderot? Palestinians in the West Bank don’t fire rockets yet the Israelis are still in occupation after 40 years, still stealing their land and water, and now dumping their toxic waste there.

(3) Israelis say that if the rockets stop, things will be OK…. Does that mean Gaza will be able to trade freely with the outside world like any other country, and people will be able to come and go freely? Will you and I be able to visit Gaza without Israeli hindrance?

On the Collective Punishment of Gazans

(4) Why can’t Gaza’s 3,000 licensed fishermen put to sea and earn their living without being harassed and fired on? What is the status of Palestinian territorial waters under international law? Why are half the hospitals’ dialysis machines out of action and the chronically sick dying in agony for want of proper medication?
(5) Which parts of the Declaration of Human Rights and Geneva Conventions don’t Israelis understand?

On the War on Christianity

(6) Israelis use ‘administrative’ controls to disrupt the life and work of the Christian Church in the Holy Land. No Muslim or Palestinian Christian living outside Jerusalem is allowed to visit the Holy Places in the Old City without special permission. Christian priests, many of whom are Jordanian, cannot go home to see their families because Israel’s new visa policy would prevent them returning to their parishes. The Catholic priest in Gaza has been trapped there for 9 years knowing that if he visits his folks the Israelis won’t allow him back into the Strip. “We seek a life of freedom—a life different from the life of dogs we are currently forced to live,” he says. What should be our response to attempts by Israel to paralyse the Church?

(7) Is it not shameful that our elected politicians, who are mostly Christian themselves, show so little concern? Is it not doubly shameful how the leaders of western Christendom seem oblivious to the Israeli government’s war against Christian communities? Beware those pseudo-Christians in high places, who talk the talk but won’t walk the walk. How many top brass have visited Gaza to show solidarity with the flock? At the present rate there will soon be no Christians left in the place where Christianity began, and churchmen will wake up one morning to find the Holy Land, from which their whole power and purpose are derived, stolen from under their noses.

On illegal Settlements

( Israel has expropriated agricultural land and key water resources in the Palestinian West Bank for its own use. More than 38% of the territory now consists of Israeli settlements, outposts, military bases and closed military areas, Israeli-declared nature reserves or other infrastructure that’s off-limits to Palestinians. Jews-only highways linking settlements to Israel, and the 580 checkpoints and roadblocks, have fragmented Palestinian communities, blocked access to their lands and severely restricted movement. How can this be right?

(9) The freezing and dismantling of Israeli settlements are a cornerstone of major peace initiatives. The most recent, the Quartet’s 2003 ‘roadmap’ endorsed by the UN Security Council, is perfectly clear on the question of illegal settlements. Israel is under an obligation to….

a) immediately dismantle settlement outposts erected since March 2001,
b) freeze all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements) consistent with the Mitchell Report,
c) take “no actions undermining trust, including confiscation and/or demolition of Palestinian homes and property”.
Why have none of these obligations been met?

(10) A year ago the General Assembly reaffirmed that Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, “are illegal and an obstacle to peace” and demanded “the immediate and complete cessation of all Israeli settlement activities”. Why is Israel still stealing Palestinian land for more illegal construction? By vowing to press ahead with settlement building, Israel’s prime minister Olmert again signals contempt for international law and world opinion… further proof (if ever it were needed) that Israel isn’t interested in peace.

On the Evil of the Wall

(11) In 2004 the International Court of Justice, sitting at the request of the UN General Assembly, concluded that the route chosen for the Separation Wall “gives expression in loco to the illegal measures taken by Israel with regard to Jerusalem and the settlements”. The ICJ ruled the Wall illegal and declared that it should be dismantled where it encroaches onto Palestinian land. Why hasn’t this been done? Why is Israel still building it? If Israelis feel a wall is necessary for security reasons why don’t they build one on their own territory?

On House Demolitions and the Right of Return

(12) In 1948 the newly established state of Israel began demolishing the homes of Palestinian refugees to prevent their return. More than 125,000 houses were systematically destroyed. Since 1967 18,000 more have been demolished, making another 100,000 Palestinians homeless. Demolishing homes is a deliberate Israeli strategy to….

· inflict collective · punishment and break the Palestinians’ will to resist the occupation
· achieve a silent ethnic transfer
· ensure that Israel’s control of the Occupied Territories and their resources becomes permanent

Apart from the fact that these acts breach every rule in the book, every convention and every declaration governing civilised conduct, how would the Israelis like it if they were the victims?
(13) Why can any Jew from anywhere in the world, who has never before lived in Israel and whose ancestors have never lived in Israel, go and live in Israel – or ’squat’ in an illegal outpost in Palestine with Israel’s blessing - while Palestinians who can prove title to their former houses may not?

On Imprisonment

(14) Nearly 10,000 Palestinians, including women and children, have been abducted and languish in Israeli prisons, many without charge or trial. 30+ Palestinian parliamentarians, democratically elected, are also imprisoned. What civilised country would do this?

On Ethnic Cleansing

(15) The ethnic cleansing of Palestine, begun in the months before and after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, is still going on in and around Jerusalem and in Gaza. Israel’s Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger argues for an ethnic cleansing programme to transfer Gazans out and dump them in the Sinai desert. Haaretz reports that he wants Britain, the EU and the US to assist in the construction of a Palestinian state in the middle of nowhere. “They will have a nice country, and we, the Jews, shall have our country and we shall live in peace.” This leading advocate of ethnic cleansing says Muslims should recognize that “our land is the Holy Land and Jerusalem belongs to us”. Do we in Britain wish to associate with people who hold such views?

On Terror

(16) Since the land occupied by Israel was taken by terrorist means, employing gangs such as the one that blew up the British mandate government in the King David Hotel in 1946 killing 90, by what moral yardstick do British and other western leaders ‘do business’ with the Israeli Government but not with Palestine’s democratically elected Hamas leadership?

(17) Remembering that most Israeli prime ministers have been responsible for authorising war crimes against the Palestinian people, why are the words ‘terrorist’, ‘militant’ and ‘extremist’ applied only to Palestinians? They fit successive Israeli governments like a glove, and given Israel’s lawless and inhuman conduct in Palestine and Lebanon, which has outraged world opinion, why isn’t it branded a terrorist state?

On our (uncritical) Support

(1 For decades Occupied Palestine has received British and European aid. If Palestinians had been left in peace, free to trade and develop in the normal way, there would no need for aid. In effect British and EU taxpayers are subsidising Israel’s illegal occupation and the economic strangulation it imposes. Why should we think this acceptable and continue to pick up the tab?

(19) Why is there such strong support for Israel at the heart of British government? Why have so many MPs and MEPs allowed themselves to be drawn into the ‘Friends of Israel’ web? How can supposedly bright people with information at their fingertips still be ignorant of Israel’s apartheid practices, wholesale land thefts, careless slaughter of children and other atrocities? Can we take it that they approve of the slow genocide inflicted on defenceless civilians, the middle-of-the-night snatch squads, the house demolitions, the torture and assassinations, and the crushing of Christian and Muslim communities? Is it not foolish and insulting for them to claim we share Israel’s beliefs and values, and should even share foreign policy? A well-respected Jewish MP recently called the Israeli government “a gang of amoral thugs”. Isn’t that about right?

On the Two-State solution

(20) Israel and its Zionist stooges are pushing for a two-state solution… eventually, when it suits them and their land grab is complete. To warped minds this will give the racist regime and its supremacist ideals some kind of seal of approval. By that time the shrunken and shredded remnants of Palestine will have become a permanently impoverished and ghettoized mini-state, trashed and raped of its resources, traumatised, subservient, easy to control and never capable of prospering. Israel’s scheming allies, who include western governments (though not western peoples), go along with this grubby plan. Can someone please explain why we, the citizens of a Christian democracy once mandated with responsibility for Palestine’s future wellbeing, would wish to soil our hands with it? The ethical choice, surely, is a single state with Jews living alongside their Arab neighbours as equal citizens and sharing the land within a common legal and democratic framework. That, after all, was the original intention, and the developments of the last 60 years are a gross perversion and betrayal. Only the Palestinians themselves have had the courage to resist it.

When the Day of Reckoning comes to the Middle East - and engulfs the meddlesome West - much of the blame will rest squarely on the lack of journalistic rigour here and in the US, which has allowed a delinquent political élite to work their evil too long.

-ends-

Stuart Littlewood

28 March 2008

Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. For further information please visit www.radiofreepalestine.co.uk

Darfur: Those Trying to Make a Quick Buck Out of Human Misery

Darfur: Those Trying to Make a Quick Buck Out of Human Misery
Dr. Mohammed Abdu Yamani, Arab News

I pray to Allah to forgive those who caused the Darfur disaster. It is possible they did it with entirely good intentions and didn’t imagine the harmful consequences (the death of thousands of innocent and powerless people) of their actions.

More than four years of conflict in Darfur has left more than 200,000 people dead and 2.5 million displaced, many to eastern Chad. No one would have expected that things would deteriorate to the extent that Darfur children will be sold publicly in some European capitals.

Some NGOs and charitable organizations, like the French Children Rescue/Arche de Zoe (Zoe’s Ark), claim that their objective is to save orphans and homeless kids. The fact is they were making a quick buck out of human misery.

Zoe’s Ark says it wanted to rescue children from Darfur but nine French nationals, six of them members of the Zoe’s Ark and three journalists, face jail sentence on charges of kidnapping and extortion, while seven Spanish flight crew are charged with complicity.

For some time, there has been doubts about this nongovernmental organization founded by Eric Breteau, a volunteer fireman from Paris. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) called the attempt to separate the 103 kids (21 girls and 82 boys, the youngest being about one-year-old and the oldest about 10) from their parents and then take them to France for adoption as an “illegal and totally irresponsible move.” The UN said the kidnapped kids had families in Chad and Sudan, had been living with family members in villages and were not at all “war orphans” as the group claimed.

Annette Rehl, an officer of the UN refugee agency UNHCR, told Reuters in the eastern Chadian city of Abeche that, “Those kidnapped kids are not orphans and they were not sitting alone in the desert in Chad. They were living with their families in communities.”

UNICEF spokesperson Veronique Taveau told journalists in Geneva that what happened violated international rules, such as The Hague Convention on International Adoption and the Convention of the Rights of the Child. He said this was not an isolated incident given the large number of children involved. According to one French newspaper, the Europeans offered sweets and biscuits to encourage the children to leave their homes.

Ten-year-old Mariam, who was one of the victims along with her younger sister, said their mother was dead but their father was still alive. “A car came with two white men and one black man who spoke Arabic. The driver said ‘come with me, I’ll give you some money and biscuits and then I’ll take you home,’” she said.

“We were taken to the white people’s house and they gave us medicine, a small white tablet. I was not ill. All the children were given pills. They told us that we would not longer be able to go home,” Mariam said.

Radio Netherlands said that the French government is at a loss as to what to do about the arrest in Chad of French citizens and how to deal with lots of unanswered questions about what has become known as “the Zeo’s Ark affair.”

The French government has condemned the abduction, but its own role in the affair is far from clear. Many observers believe that it is involved in the scandal.

As a result of this grave crime against children, the authorities in the Republic of Congo have suspended the international adoption of children.

It was reported that hundreds of Chadian women hurled abuses at the 16 Europeans accusing them of “child-trafficking”. Protesters threw stones at foreign journalists in the Chadian town of Abeche, shouted slogans accusing the former colonial power of a role in the bid to abduct Sudanese and Chadian children to France to be sold. They chanted, “No to the slave trade! No trafficking in children. We want those responsible to be tried in Abeche”.

Idriss Deby, the Chadian president called the operation “pure and simple abduction” and went on to assert that the children could have ended up being sold to a pedophile ring or used to supply human organs. He was quoted as saying on Chad’s presidency website, “These people.. treat us like animals. So this is the image of the Savior Europe, which gives lessons to our countries. This is the image of Europe which helps Africans.”

French diplomats said they had warned Zoe’s Ark for months against the project, but Christophe Letien, a spokesman for the charity insisted its intentions were humanitarian. This proves that Sarkozy’s government was involved and was aware of the operation. Many European families has each paid the aid group several thousands euros to adopt, not merely host, a child from Darfur as French officials have said. This stands as clear evidence that the French authorizes had knowledge of the operation before it took place.

More important is the fact that the group of aid workers who are convicted in this shameful crime included the president of Zoe’s Ark, a doctor, three journalists and four firefighters who are all French nationals.

The scandal has caused outrage and condemnation across Africa. Many consider it a throwback to the dark history from the colonial era, when slave traders, missionaries and colonial officials blithely separated African families with no regard to their wishes or interests.

Let us pray to Allah that those kids get good care until they are reunited with their families and that the current situation in Chad and Darfur will not affect the trial process of those who are involved in this crime.

The most wanted list

The most wanted list
By Noam Chomsky

There are 3 categories of crimes: murder with intent, accidental killing, and murder with foreknowledge but without intent. Israeli & U.S. atrocities fall into the third category.

On February 13, Imad Moughniyeh, a senior commander of Hezbollah, was assassinated in Damascus. “The world is a better place without this man in it,” State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack said, “one way or the other he was brought to justice.” Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell added that Moughniyeh has been “responsible for more deaths of Americans and Israelis than any other terrorist with the exception of Osama bin Laden.”

Joy was unconstrained in Israel too, as “one of the U.S. and Israel’s most wanted men” was brought to justice, the London Financial Times reported. Under the heading, “A militant wanted the world over,” an accompanying story reported that he was “superseded on the most-wanted list by Osama bin Laden” after 9/11 and so ranked only second among “the most wanted militants in the world.”

The terminology is accurate enough, according to the rules of Anglo-American discourse, which defines “the world” as the political class in Washington and London (and whoever happens to agree with them on specific matters). It is common, for example, to read that “the world” fully supported George Bush when he ordered the bombing of Afghanistan. That may be true of “the world,” but hardly of the world, as revealed in an international Gallup Poll after the bombing was announced.

Global support was slight. In Latin America, which has some experience with U.S. behavior, support ranged from 2% in Mexico to 16% in Panama, and that support was conditional upon the culprits being identified (they still weren’t eight months later, the FBI reported), and civilian targets being spared (they were attacked at once). There was an overwhelming preference in the world for diplomatic/judicial measures, rejected out of hand by “the world.”

* Following the terror trail

In the present case, if “the world” were extended to the world, we might find some other candidates for the honor of most hated arch-criminal. It is instructive to ask why this might be true.

The Financial Times reports that most of the charges against Moughniyeh are unsubstantiated, but “one of the very few times when his involvement can be ascertained with certainty [is in] the hijacking of a TWA plane in 1985 in which a U.S. Navy diver was killed.” This was one of two terrorist atrocities the led a poll of newspaper editors to select terrorism in the Middle East as the top story of 1985; the other was the hijacking of the passenger liner Achille Lauro, in which a crippled American, Leon Klinghoffer, was brutally murdered. That reflects the judgment of “the world.” It may be that the world saw matters somewhat differently.

The Achille Lauro hijacking was a retaliation for the bombing of Tunis ordered a week earlier by Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres. His air force killed 75 Tunisians and Palestinians with smart bombs that tore them to shreds, among other atrocities, as vividly reported from the scene by the prominent Israeli journalist Amnon Kapeliouk. Washington cooperated by failing to warn its ally Tunisia that the bombers were on the way, though the Sixth Fleet and U.S. intelligence could not have been unaware of the impending attack. Secretary of State George Shultz informed Israeli Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir that Washington “had considerable sympathy for the Israeli action,” which he termed “a legitimate response” to “terrorist attacks,” to general approbation. A few days later, the UN Security Council unanimously denounced the bombing as an “act of armed aggression” (with the U.S. abstaining). “Aggression” is, of course, a far more serious crime than international terrorism. But giving the United States and Israel the benefit of the doubt, let us keep to the lesser charge against their leadership.

A few days after, Peres went to Washington to consult with the leading international terrorist of the day, Ronald Reagan, who denounced “the evil scourge of terrorism,” again with general acclaim by “the world.”

The “terrorist attacks” that Shultz and Peres offered as the pretext for the bombing of Tunis were the killings of three Israelis in Larnaca, Cyprus. The killers, as Israel conceded, had nothing to do with Tunis, though they might have had Syrian connections. Tunis was a preferable target, however. It was defenseless, unlike Damascus. And there was an extra pleasure: more exiled Palestinians could be killed there.

The Larnaca killings, in turn, were regarded as retaliation by the perpetrators: They were a response to regular Israeli hijackings in international waters in which many victims were killed — and many more kidnapped and sent to prisons in Israel, commonly to be held without charge for long periods. The most notorious of these has been the secret prison/torture chamber Facility 1391. A good deal can be learned about it from the Israeli and foreign press. Such regular Israeli crimes are, of course, known to editors of the national press in the U.S., and occasionally receive some casual mention.

Klinghoffer’s murder was properly viewed with horror, and is very famous. It was the topic of an acclaimed opera and a made-for-TV movie, as well as much shocked commentary deploring the savagery of Palestinians — “two-headed beasts” (Prime Minister Menachem Begin), “drugged roaches scurrying around in a bottle” (Chief of Staff Raful Eitan), “like grasshoppers compared to us,” whose heads should be “smashed against the boulders and walls” (Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir). Or more commonly just “Araboushim,” the slang counterpart of “kike” or “nigger.”

Thus, after a particularly depraved display of settler-military terror and purposeful humiliation in the West Bank town of Halhul in December 1982, which disgusted even Israeli hawks, the well-known military/political analyst Yoram Peri wrote in dismay that one “task of the army today [is] to demolish the rights of innocent people just because they are Araboushim living in territories that God promised to us,” a task that became far more urgent, and was carried out with far more brutality, when the Araboushim began to “raise their heads” a few years later.

We can easily assess the sincerity of the sentiments expressed about the Klinghoffer murder. It is only necessary to investigate the reaction to comparable U.S.-backed Israeli crimes. Take, for example, the murder in April 2002 of two crippled Palestinians, Kemal Zughayer and Jamal Rashid, by Israeli forces rampaging through the refugee camp of Jenin in the West Bank. Zughayer’s crushed body and the remains of his wheelchair were found by British reporters, along with the remains of the white flag he was holding when he was shot dead while seeking to flee the Israeli tanks which then drove over him, ripping his face in two and severing his arms and legs. Jamal Rashid was crushed in his wheelchair when one of Israel’s huge U.S.-supplied Caterpillar bulldozers demolished his home in Jenin with his family inside. The differential reaction, or rather non-reaction, has become so routine and so easy to explain that no further commentary is necessary.

* Car bomb

Plainly, the 1985 Tunis bombing was a vastly more severe terrorist crime than the Achille Lauro hijacking, or the crime for which Moughniyeh’s “involvement can be ascertained with certainty” in the same year. But even the Tunis bombing had competitors for the prize for worst terrorist atrocity in the Mideast in the peak year of 1985.

One challenger was a car-bombing in Beirut right outside a mosque, timed to go off as worshippers were leaving Friday prayers. It killed 80 people and wounded 256. Most of the dead were girls and women, who had been leaving the mosque, though the ferocity of the blast “burned babies in their beds,” “killed a bride buying her trousseau,” and “blew away three children as they walked home from the mosque.” It also “devastated the main street of the densely populated” West Beirut suburb, reported Nora Boustany three years later in the Washington Post.

The intended target had been the Shia cleric Sheikh Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, who escaped. The bombing was carried out by Reagan’s CIA and his Saudi allies, with Britain’s help, and was specifically authorized by CIA Director William Casey, according to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward’s account in his book Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981-1987. Little is known beyond the bare facts, thanks to rigorous adherence to the doctrine that we do not investigate our own crimes (unless they become too prominent to suppress, and the inquiry can be limited to some low-level “bad apples” who were naturally “out of control”).

* “Terrorist villagers”

A third competitor for the 1985 Mideast terrorism prize was Prime Minister Peres’ “Iron Fist” operations in southern Lebanese territories then occupied by Israel in violation of Security Council orders. The targets were what the Israeli high command called “terrorist villagers.” Peres’s crimes in this case sank to new depths of “calculated brutality and arbitrary murder” in the words of a Western diplomat familiar with the area, an assessment amply supported by direct coverage. They are, however, of no interest to “the world” and therefore remain uninvestigated, in accordance with the usual conventions. We might well ask whether these crimes fall under international terrorism or the far more severe crime of aggression, but let us again give the benefit of the doubt to Israel and its backers in Washington and keep to the lesser charge.

These are a few of the thoughts that might cross the minds of people elsewhere in the world, even if not those of “the world,” when considering “one of the very few times” Imad Moughniyeh was clearly implicated in a terrorist crime.

The U.S. also accuses him of responsibility for devastating double truck-bomb attacks on U.S. Marine and French paratrooper barracks in Lebanon in 1983, killing 241 Marines and 58 paratroopers, as well as a prior attack on the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, killing 63, a particularly serious blow because of a meeting there of CIA officials at the time.

The Financial Times has, however, attributed the attack on the Marine barracks to Islamic Jihad, not Hezbollah. Fawaz Gerges, one of the leading scholars on Lebanon, has written that responsibility was taken by an “unknown group called Islamic Jihad.” A voice speaking in classical Arabic called for all Americans to leave Lebanon or face death. It has been claimed that Moughniyeh was the head of Islamic Jihad at the time, but to my knowledge, evidence is sparse.

The opinion of the world has not been sampled on the subject, but it is possible that there might be some hesitancy about calling an attack on a military base in a foreign country a “terrorist attack,” particularly when U.S. and French forces were carrying out heavy naval bombardments and air strikes in Lebanon, and shortly after the U.S. provided decisive support for the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, which killed some 20,000 people and devastated the south, while leaving much of Beirut in ruins. It was finally called off by President Reagan when international protest became too intense to ignore after the Sabra-Shatila massacres.

In the United States, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon is regularly described as a reaction to Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) attacks on northern Israel from their Lebanese bases, making our crucial contribution to these major war crimes understandable. In the real world, the Lebanese border area had been quiet for a year, apart from repeated Israeli attacks, many of them murderous, in an effort to elicit some PLO response that could be used as a pretext for the already planned invasion. Its actual purpose was not concealed at the time by Israeli commentators and leaders: to safeguard the Israeli takeover of the occupied West Bank.

It is of some interest that the sole serious error in Jimmy Carter’s book Palestine: Peace not Apartheid is the repetition of this propaganda concoction about PLO attacks from Lebanon being the motive for the Israeli invasion. The book was bitterly attacked, and desperate efforts were made to find some phrase that could be misinterpreted, but this glaring error — the only one — was ignored. Reasonably, since it satisfies the criterion of adhering to useful doctrinal fabrications.

(Watch video: Carter speaking out against Israeli occupation)

* Killing without intent

Another allegation is that Moughniyeh “masterminded” the bombing of Israel’s embassy in Buenos Aires on March 17, 1992, killing 29 people, in response, as the Financial Times put it, to Israel’s “assassination of former Hezbollah leader Abbas Al-Mussawi in an air attack in southern Lebanon.” About the assassination, there is no need for evidence: Israel proudly took credit for it. The world might have some interest in the rest of the story. Al-Mussawi was murdered with a U.S.-supplied helicopter, well north of Israel’s illegal “security zone” in southern Lebanon. He was on his way to Sidon from the village of Jibshit, where he had spoken at the memorial for another Imam murdered by Israeli forces. The helicopter attack also killed his wife and five-year old child. Israel then employed U.S.-supplied helicopters to attack a car bringing survivors of the first attack to a hospital.

After the murder of the family, Hezbollah “changed the rules of the game,” Prime Minister Rabin informed the Israeli Knesset. Previously, no rockets had been launched at Israel. Until then, the rules of the game had been that Israel could launch murderous attacks anywhere in Lebanon at will, and Hezbollah would respond only within Israeli-occupied Lebanese territory.

After the murder of its leader (and his family), Hezbollah began to respond to Israeli crimes in Lebanon by rocketing northern Israel. The latter is, of course, intolerable terror, so Rabin launched an invasion that drove some 500,000 people out of their homes and killed well over 100. The merciless Israeli attacks reached as far as northern Lebanon.

In the south, 80% of the city of Tyre fled and Nabatiye was left a “ghost town,” Jibshit was about 70% destroyed according to an Israeli army spokesperson, who explained that the intent was “to destroy the village completely because of its importance to the Shia population of southern Lebanon.” The goal was “to wipe the villages from the face of the earth and sow destruction around them,” as a senior officer of the Israeli northern command described the operation.

Jibshit may have been a particular target because it was the home of Sheikh Abdul Karim Obeid, kidnapped and brought to Israel several years earlier. Obeid’s home “received a direct hit from a missile,” British journalist Robert Fisk reported, “although the Israelis were presumably gunning for his wife and three children.” Those who had not escaped hid in terror, wrote Mark Nicholson in the Financial Times, “because any visible movement inside or outside their houses is likely to attract the attention of Israeli artillery spotters, who… were pounding their shells repeatedly and devastatingly into selected targets.” Artillery shells were hitting some villages at a rate of more than 10 rounds a minute at times.

All of this received the firm support of President Bill Clinton, who understood the need to instruct the Araboushim sternly on the “rules of the game.” And Rabin emerged as another grand hero and man of peace, so different from the two-legged beasts, grasshoppers, and drugged roaches.

This is only a small sample of facts that the world might find of interest in connection with the alleged responsibility of Moughniyeh for the retaliatory terrorist act in Buenos Aires.

Other charges are that Moughniyeh helped prepare Hezbollah defenses against the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, evidently an intolerable terrorist crime by the standards of “the world,” which understands that the United States and its clients must face no impediments in their just terror and aggression.

The more vulgar apologists for U.S. and Israeli crimes solemnly explain that, while Arabs ‘purposely’ kill people, the U.S. and Israel, being democratic societies, do not intend to do so. Their killings are just accidental ones, hence not at the level of moral depravity of their adversaries. That was, for example, the stand of Israel’s High Court when it recently authorized severe collective punishment of the people of Gaza by depriving them of electricity (hence water, sewage disposal, and other such basics of civilized life).

The same line of defense is common with regard to some of Washington’s past peccadilloes, like the destruction in 1998 of the al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan. The attack apparently led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people, but without intent to kill them, hence not a crime on the order of intentional killing — so we are instructed by moralists who consistently suppress the response that had already been given to these vulgar efforts at self-justification.

To repeat once again, we can distinguish three categories of crimes: murder with intent, accidental killing, and murder with foreknowledge but without specific intent. Israeli and U.S. atrocities typically fall into the third category. Thus, when Israel destroys Gaza’s power supply or sets up barriers to travel in the West Bank, it does not specifically intend to murder the particular people who will die from polluted water or in ambulances that cannot reach hospitals. And when Bill Clinton ordered the bombing of the al-Shifa plant, it was obvious that it would lead to a humanitarian catastrophe. Human Rights Watch immediately informed him of this, providing details; nevertheless, he and his advisers did not intend to kill specific people among those who would inevitably die when half the pharmaceutical supplies were destroyed in a poor African country that could not replenish them.

Rather, they and their apologists regarded Africans much as we do the ants we crush while walking down a street. We are aware that it is likely to happen (if we bother to think about it), but we do not intend to kill them because they are not worthy of such consideration. Needless to say, comparable attacks by Araboushim in areas inhabited by human beings would be regarded rather differently.

If, for a moment, we can adopt the perspective of the world, we might ask which criminals are “wanted the world over.”

– Noam Chomsky is the author of numerous best-selling political works. His latest books are Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy and What We Say Goes, a conversation book with David Barsamian, both in the American Empire Project series at Metropolitan Books. The Essential Chomsky (edited by Anthony Arnove), a collection of his writings on politics and on language from the 1950s to the present, has just been published by the New Press.

Copyright 2008 Noam Chomsky

Cracking Somali Government

Cracking Somali Government
www.IslamOnline.net

CAIRO — The US-backed interim government in Somali is on life support losing the hearts and minds of the people as well as conceding major cities to the armed opposition.

“We haven’t been paid in eight months,” a government soldier named Hassan told the New York Times on Saturday, March 29.

“We rob people so we can eat.”

Last week government soldiers went to a market in the capital Mogadishu and, at gunpoint, stole sacks of grain.

The innocent civilians were only rescued by fighters of the ousted Supreme Islamic Courts of Somalia (SICS).

Interim Premier Nur Hassan Hussein knows that his troops rob civilians.

“This is the biggest problem we have,” he said in an interview this month.

The prime minister also admitted that every month, more than half of the government’s revenue are stolen by “our people.”

Backed by the US, the Ethiopian army invaded Somalia last year to the SICS, which ruled for six months after routing a US-backed alliance of warlords and restored unprecedented order and stability for the first time in 15 years.

SICS fighters captured on Wednesday, March 26, the two strategic towns of Jowhar and Mahadai from the interim government.

Recent months have seen a strong comeback for the Courts which had seized four smaller towns and a military checkpoint near Mogadishu earlier this month.

“I feel this slipping away,” admitted government representative at the US Mohamed Abdirizak.

Failed US Policy

The looming failure is raising questions about Washington’s strategy of installing the interim government by force.

“The policy has failed,” said Representative Donald M. Payne, Chairman of the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health.

“We’re Baghdad-izing Mogadishu and Somalia,” he said.

The Ethiopian military intervention in neighboring Somali was backed and supported by the Bush administration.

Washington reportedly supplied the Ethiopian with intelligence on SICS forces and oppositions, making it easy to defeat them in a couple of weeks.

US gunships had targeted Somali resistance leaders in a series of air strikes.

A recent US strike on the southern Somali city of Dobley targeted Aden Hashi Farah Ayro, the leader of Al-Shabaab group, the SICS military wing, but instead claimed the lives of many civilians.

The strike was the fourth by the US on Somali territories in the past 14 months.

On January 8, 2007, a US AC-130 gunship killed ten civilians in a failed attack on figures in southern Somalia.

A few days later, the US launched another raid on fleeing SICS fighters.

The US Navy carried out a third strike last June against what it described as “Islamist fighters” hiding in the mountains in the northern Puntland region.

To counter the resurgent resistance, the US State Department earlier this month designated Shabaab a terrorist organization.

The move was questioned not only by many Somalis but also European diplomats and critics in Congress.

They fear it will only raise the group’s profile among the increasingly disillusioned populace.

“We’re making people feel wrongly treated and pushing them toward more radical positions,” said Representative Payne.

The Rabbi of hate

The Rabbi of hate
By Khalid Amayreh

“So I believe that I act in the spirit of the Almighty God. By defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.” - Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1924

“A thousand non-Jewish lives are not worth a Jew’s fingernail” - Dov Lior, Rabbi of Kiryat Arba

“We will carry out a greater holocaust against the Palestinians,” - Matan Vilnai, Deputy Defense Minister, 1 March, 2006

Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual leader of the ultra-orthodox Shas party, which represents Jews from the Middle East, has urged Jews around the world to pray for Israeli soldiers, not only on the Jewish Sabbath, Saturday, but also on Mondays and Thursdays.

According to the Israeli newspaper, Ha’aretz, Yosef told his followers that Israeli soldiers need to be blessed by the Almighty for killing and maiming hundreds of Palestinians, mostly innocent civilians, in the past few days.

“Had it not been for them, would we have time to study the Torah? To turn the books,” Yosef was quoted as saying Saturday night during his weekly sermon in Jerusalem.

It is really lamentable that Yosef thinks that it is only through murder and genocide of Palestinians that Jews can sit down and study the Torah.

Jews, after all, have been studying the Torah for many centuries without “Jewish soldiers” engaging themselves in mass murder, mass terror and mass oppression. Does the rabbi think that linking Torah studies to mass murder in Gaza brings honor to the Torah and to Judaism?

Yosef, who on several occasions called Palestinians “rats,” is considered by many in Israel as one of the greatest living sages of the Torah. However, his enthusiastic support for ethnic cleansing and genocide against the Palestinians caricatures a sinister man who quotes ancient texts to justify every conceivable crime against humanity and every abomination against God and man.

Yosef is not unaware of the Nazi-like atrocities the soldiers he is blessing have committed and are committing in Gaza.

He knows too well that an army that murders innocent civilians, including babies in their mothers’ laps, is not an army of righteous soldiers, but rather an army of thugs and criminals, not unlike the Gestapo and SS and wehrmacht.

I understand that some Zionist rabbis tend to believe in the horrible idea that in war time, there is no such a thing as “innocent civilians of the enemy.” In other words, “All’s fair in love and war.”

But this is a stunningly immoral concept that degrades man to cannibalistic savagery. Because then every mass murderer from Adolph Hitler, to Joseph Stalin, to Ariel Sharon, to Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak could justify the mass murder of civilians on the ground that in wartime, no holds are barred. Indeed, this would be the most comfortable justification for all the holocausts, genocides, pogroms and inquisitions in the world since Adam and Eve.

Well, I really wonder how these rabbis of evil, people such Yosef, Dov Lior, David Batsri, and many many others, would react if a Nazi apologist argued that the mass killings of Jews during the holocaust was a perfectly justified and legitimate act “since we viewed European Jewry as our number-1 enemy, and we were at war, and in wartime there is no such a thing as innocent civilians of the enemy.”

Now, what is the difference between a rabbi praying for and blessing an army that has just murdered and maimed hundreds of innocent people in Gaza, and a German Nazi priest praying for and blessed Nazi killers who had just carried out one of those pacification raids in central or Eastern Europe?

Does the rabbi think that a holocaust by Jews is kosher? Does he think that non-Jewish children and women and men are un-human, or lesser humans? What kind of Torah is he studying? Does he think that the Torah prohibition against murder covers only “Jews”?

Rabbi Yosef is more than just an unenlightened old man; he is actually an evil man. He is evil because in the name of the Torah and in the name of Judaism, he tries to make evil look good, ugliness look fair and cardinal sins against God and man look as great acts of charity.

It is really hypocritical that while many Zionists don’t stop denouncing Catholic religious leaders for supporting the Third Reich and for keeping silent in the face of the Holocaust, rabbis, even prominent rabbis, such as Yosef, are more or less indulging in the same evil behavior they are denouncing.

Yosef may be a learned man in matter of Jewish theology. But he seems to be a dwarf in understanding the moral messages of the Torah. Because if he were truly faithful to the true spirit of Judaism, he should realize that murdering innocent people-non-Jews as well as Jews- is the greatest crime under the sun.

Doesn’t he read “Thou Shall not murder”? Doesn’t he read “thou shall not oppress?” Is this his way of making “Tikkun Ha’olam,” or fixing the world, by blessing and encouraging child killers and mass murderers?

It is sad how men of religion who think they are hallowing the name of God are actually doing Satan’s work.

And we wonder why the world is in such a mess!

– Khalid Amayreh resides in the West Bank

Merchants of Lethal Deceit

Merchants of Lethal Deceit
Tariq A. Al-Maeena, talmaeena@aol.com

Five years into the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, US President George Bush claims it’s been worth the haul. And although he claims he sheds tears for every one of the 4,000 soldiers he has sent to their death, little or no mention is made of an estimated one million or more innocent Iraqi civilians who have lost their lives as a result of his grand adventure.

Remember the proponents of the aggression then? One of the strongest, Tony Blair of UK, is now keeping himself as far away from Bush as possible, and privately conceding that this adventure was a “horrible mistake”. Was he led into this deceitful adventure by the smooth-talking neocons of the Bush administration and the gentle prodding by Bush himself?

Whatever happened to Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and Donald Rumsfeld, those active cheerleaders of a murderous and unlawful invasion of countries that harbored no ill will toward the United States or the American people?

Now facts have proven that this carnage was built on an orchestrated deception, first among Bush’s constituents through selective manipulation of the media, and later by presenting false evidence to the world community, the United Nations.

These past five years will remain embedded in the minds of those who had lost their loved ones in Iraq and Afghanistan with pain and anguish. For it was under the US commander in chief’s instructions that US soldiers used their most brutal practices among the prisoners by systematic acts of rape, sodomy and torture. They dehumanized their captives. Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo have become synonyms for gross human rights violations.

This continued and sustained assault on these two countries is a violation that has for the most part remained unchecked. Most nations are noticeably quiet on US transgressions in the region. It has not, however, failed to create deep chasms of animosity and suspicion of Bush’s intentions. His talk of “spreading democracy in the Middle East” is now met with derision.

For poll after poll has proven that the inhabitants of Afghanistan and Iraq see themselves as worse off today than before the acts of aggression began. And really, what was it that Bush was after?

There were no weapons of mass destruction. Nor was there any sign of ill will in either country toward the United States. Was it the oil? Well maybe, but there was always the specter of an Israeli lobby dictating terms and manipulating things.

Many of those smooth-talking neocons who convinced their constituents of a doomsday situation if Iraq was not invaded are not around today parading in front of the world’s media with their false assertions. Perhaps they are keeping a low profile for fear of being charged for these crimes against humanity in some tribunal sometimes in the future.

For, if you strip away all irrational rhetoric, what is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan is indeed a crime. A war crime to match the Israeli aggression and occupation of Palestine! How closely were the two operations orchestrated with Bush and Sharon in power?

And while one languishes in a vegetative state, the other is free to continue his acts of violence unchecked and unfettered.

And not satisfied with the amount of innocent blood already spilled, he is now pushing for another bloody adventure, this time against Iran.

Iran is an Islamic state, and Bush should think long and hard before contemplating any such moves. He lacks credibility when he talks about Iran’s threat to the region and his evidence is dismissed as a joke.

The people in this region have seen and heard enough. The real threat has never been Iran. The real threat has been the willingness of some to believe what Bush says.

While Bush and his remaining neocons work covertly with the Israelis in an effort to convince the world body of the threat Iran poses, such alarmist talk has indeed been falling on deaf ears in the region.

As for the tears Bush says he sheds for the fallen, everyone knows they are as fake as the evidence he presented to justify his wars of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Terrorism — Compare and Contrast

Terrorism — Compare and Contrast
Tanya Hsu, tanyahsu@mindspring.com

Last week in Arab News, columnist Fatin Bundagji wrote of a letter from an American, rather typical of the refrain we have heard for the past five years. Accusing Ms. Bundagji of “conveniently” forgetting that Arab terrorists attacked the US, the writer implied that America has every right to retaliate against anybody, an individual or nation, it considers an enemy. Thus the rightful invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, neither state having had anything to do with 9/11 whatsoever.

It is fallacious logic. One cannot compare apples to oranges.

No Arab nation has ever attacked the United States. The same cannot be said of the West, who has for the past century been invading the Middle East repeatedly in its quest for control of the region’s resources. Instead, the argument should be made with all elements being equal.

The 9/11 attacks were terrorist acts, to be certain, but not by an Arab state. One must compare a terrorist to a terrorist, and contrast the results. An example of an American terrorist who did attack Arabs on their own soil would be Baruch Goldstein.

Born and bred in Brooklyn, New York, Goldstein walked into the Cave of the Patriarchs in Jerusalem on Feb. 25, 1994, at 5.20 a.m., opening fire on 500 Palestinian Muslims at a Friday-morning prayer in Ramadan. Spraying the worshippers with his automatic rifle, he emptied 110 bullets in less than a minute and a half. Thirty Palestinians were killed immediately, and three were trampled to death in the ensuing panic. Those who fought back beat Goldstein to death. More than 20 further Palestinians were killed the same day in retaliation for Goldstein’s death, including fiver killed by the Israeli Defense Forces.

Deaths of Arab civilians at the hands of this American terrorist amounted to 1/500ths of a percent of the total Arab population in Israel. The 9/11 attacks resulted in the deaths of 1/1000ths of a percent of the total American population. In other words, comparing terrorist act to terrorist act, one man alone, Goldstein, massacred twice as many Arabs in a single incident as per capita deaths on 9/11. If one includes all Israelis, Muslim and Jewish citizens alike, Goldstein still murdered half as many per capita as those who were killed in the US on 9/11.

Yet not one Arab state launched a retaliatory attack on Israel. No one invaded Israel; not a single Arab nation decided that the Israeli people should pay the collective price for a massive act of civilian terrorism. In fact, Israel and America barely raised an eyebrow, and Goldstein was praised in New York by the Jewish extremist organization Kahane Kach. Instead, Baruch Goldstein was buried as a martyr and hero in Israel.

Today pilgrims visit Goldstein’s gravesite daily, his burial plaque reading: “Here lies the saint, Dr. Baruch Kappel Goldstein, blessed be the memory of the righteous and holy man, may the Lord avenge his blood, who devoted his soul to the Jews, Jewish religion and Jewish land. His hands are innocent and his heart is pure. He was killed as a martyr…”

Meanwhile, the US continues to cite 9/11 to justify a war resulting in the death of over one million Iraqis (according to the British Opinion Research Business report in 2007).

As for US troop casualties, the Pentagon releases only death reports for troops killed on the field, from bullets or bombs (4,000). They do not include deaths sustained “not in direct combat”, e.g. those who die during evacuation, Humvee accidents, hospital deaths, those killed off duty, or private contractors (as many in Iraq as US troops). Also not included are suicides: 120 traumatized veterans kill themselves per week, according to a CBS 2007 investigation.

Thousands will die of cancer or kidney toxicology from depleted uranium exposure; thousands more have been infected with “Sandfly Disease” that can be fatal. Little wonder that the Pentagon bans the publication of photos of caskets flown home under cover of darkness.

If sheer statistics account for a sound argument, more than a million have paid the price for 9/11. How many more before the US is satisfied? As Dick Cheney himself said after the 1991 Gulf War (146 US troops killed), as to why the US left Iraq: “How many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth?…not very many”. George W. Bush this week announced that it “makes no sense” for the US to retreat from Iraq, and suggestions to the contrary are unpatriotic. But his vice president said in 1991, “I do not think the United States wants to have US military forces accept casualties and accept the responsibility of trying to govern Iraq. I think it makes no sense at all.” If the US did that, Cheney prophesied in 1991, it would cause the US to be “involved in a civil war inside Iraq (that) would literally be a quagmire.”

Neither Iraq, Afghanistan, nor Saudi Arabia was responsible for 9/11, in the same way that America was not responsible for the Goldstein massacre. One must compare military state action to military state action, not terrorist to nation state.

The equation seems simple:

Arab kills Americans = mass retaliatory military force required in revenge that is morally justifiable.

American kills Arabs = hero.

— Tanya Cariina Hsu is a political analyst originally from London. She lives in Riyadh.

Bin Laden’s Latest Video–Harbinger for Wider Islamo-Christian War?

Bin Laden’s Latest Video–Harbinger for Wider Islamo-Christian War?
March 26, 2008

‘Perhaps you do not yet see that the worst is awaiting your kind in the face of the coming Islamo-Christian War, from which my kind will arise victorious. Perhaps G-d will find it suitable that a terrorist attack will end your misery. I shall personally pray for it to be so.”–Orri Joseph Avraham, an Israeli Citizen in an email to this writer

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Like distant thunder and lightning that warn of an approaching storm, recent events strongly suggest a false-flag attack on the Catholic Church–either in the form of an assassination on the Pope himself or a terrorist attack on the Vatican–may soon be in the works for those wishing to widen the present ‘clash of civilizations’ between the Christian and Muslim worlds for Israel’s benefit.

Like most of the moves Israel makes in her great game of chess, events are thought out–not just minutes in advance, but sometimes decades. In her drive to become the dominant power (first in the Middle East and then in the world) the necessity of knocking all competing powers out of the game–be they political, religious, or both–is obvious. This being the case, the fact that the followers of Islam and Christianity together encompass over ½ of the world’s 6 billion people means they represent a clear and present danger to the hegemonic designs of Zionism, which means they must be brought down, and given the fact that Israel cannot win a war against such overwhelming numbers, the best way to achieve this is having the 2 sides wipe each other out while the Jewish state sits back and watches from the sidelines.

The ‘clash of civilizations’ idea is nothing new. Militant, bigoted and irrational Israel-firsters such as Daniel Pipes, Normon Podhoretz, Martin Kramer and many others acting as unregistered agents for the Jewish state have been piling up the cordwood of an Islamo-Christian holocaust now for many years. At first generalized to non-Catholic denominations (meaning fundamentalist, apocalyptic-minded Protestants who found favor with Twilight Zone ideas such as the rapture and other poorly-interpreted passages from the Book of Revelations) now the agenda seems to be centered on bringing the Catholics into the battle for Israel’s benefit as well.

The reasons and benefits for doing so are obvious. The Catholic church–despite dealing with declining numbers in recent years–still has over a billion followers world-wide who swear obedience and loyalty to the Pope. In addition, the church and the countries that are principally Catholic in their orientation have not been as ‘enthusiastic’ as Tel Aviv and Washington DC would like when it comes to fighting the ‘war on terror.’ The previous Pope, John Paul II, as much as he is faulted by conservative elements within the Catholic laity, was nevertheless outspoken in his opposition to the war in Iraq.

How then does a creature such as Israel go about changing the minds of a billion Catholics worldwide and induce them into signing on to a new crusade against over a billion Muslims? Well, borrowing a catch-phrase used by Jewish interests in suckering the American people into going to war in Iraq for Israel’s benefit, it would be a ‘cakewalk’, meaning the simple matter of a well-placed bullet or a well-placed bomb. The Pope being shot by a Muslim fanatic with ties to Al Qaeda, Hezbollah or Hamas or a bomb going off in the headquarters of the Catholic church (St. Peter’s in Rome) and within minutes there would be 1,000 million Catholics world-wide calling for a new crusade against Islam, goaded along of course by a Zionist media and its now-infamous mouthpieces. The Israeli prime minister and his entire cabinet would be in front of every camera around the world, wiping crocodile tears from their eyes, denouncing the tragedy and promising to assist in whatever way possible with what the Church needed in ‘dealing’ with the situation. Rabbis everywhere (taking a break from their Talmudic studies that describe Jesus as a sorcerer and his mother a prostitute) who in recent years have been working feverishly trying to confuse Christians about the truly demonic, anti-Christian and anti-Gentile nature of Zionism and its ugly Frankenstein child Israel would take center stage in the western media, shaking their heads and saying ‘tsk, tsk, tsk…what a tragedy…Well, now you Catholics know what we Jews have been dealing with for years’. Protestant ministers, who centuries ago ‘decoded’ all the end-times prophecies and concluded that the Vatican and its leader are the predicted anti-Christ would put such inflammatory statements to the wayside in favor of bringing their fellow hell-bound Catholics into the anti-Islamic/pro-Zionist fold.

Those who would scoff at such a scenario, saying no evidence for such a plan exists should pay better attention to the news, both past and present. Keep in mind that this was already tried once before with the failed assassination of John Paul II by Mehmet Ali Agca, a ‘crazed Muslim fanatic’ (said by Israel’s intelligence service Mossad to be working for Iran) right in the heart of St. Peter’s Square. As the old saying goes, ‘if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again,’ and just as in the case of the USS Liberty and Israel’s unsuccessful attempt in bringing the US onboard as hired gun for the Jewish state, 9/11 went off without a hitch, and ‘the rest is history,’ as they say.

More important than this however is the recent past, and particularly the history of the last 2 years. The publishing of the now-infamous ‘Mohammed cartoons’ throughout ‘Christian’ Europe a few years ago was no accident, nor was it all about ‘freedom of speech’. In every country they appeared, laws exist making the ‘incitement’ of racial and religious hatred a crime. Hundreds are rotting in prisons throughout Europe at this very moment for telling the ugly truth as it pertains to Israel, Zionism, Judaism, Jewish influence or the sancta sanctorum, the Holocaust. The cartoon depictions of the prophet Mohammed were insulting enough, as Islam forbids such caricatures, but the image of him with a lit fuse coming out of his Turbin-clad head cannot be seen in any other light other than one of deliberate provocation.

Now, as if all the uproar weren’t enough the first time around and as if there weren’t anything more newsworthy to report, these same ‘Christian’ countries recently decided to re-print these cartoons in February 2008. Of the more important reactions emanating from all of this this was a taped message from none other than former CIA asset Osama Bin Laden himself where he calls for jihad on Europe and mentions Pope Benedict XVI by name, saying the reprinting of the cartoons came “in the framework of a new Crusade in which the pope of the Vatican has played a large, lengthy role’ . He further warned of ‘severe’ reprisals from the Muslim community, saying ‘The response will be what you see and not what you hear, and let our mothers bereave us if we do not make victorious our messenger of God.’

Important in this latest development is that the organization doing the translating for this latest message was none other than SITE–the ‘Search for International Terrorist Entities’ Institute based in Bethesda, Maryland. Long known to be an Israeli intelligence associated group, SITE was co-founded by Rita Katz, daughter of a convicted Israeli spy hanged by Saddam Hussein who herself moved to Israel. Upon coming to America she took up shop with the likes of Steven Emerson, arch-Neocon and slavish supporter of Israel who makes his living lecturing on the dangers of ‘militant Islam’. It should be remembered that–almost as if Emerson had a crystal ball hooked up to Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv–he predicted an attack on America shortly before 9/11 by–surprise, surprise–Osama Bin Laden.

Besides the publication and re-publication of the cartoons, there is the Regensberg incident taking place September 2006 where Benedict XVI read a speech on Islam resulting in what became an international uproar. Benedict was quoted saying ‘Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.’ Although quoting someone else’s words in the speech, nevertheless agents in the Zionist media–eager to create as much heat from this event as possible–made the most of it for weeks. In the ensuing uproar, death threats were issued against his person by individuals claiming to be Muslims. Priests and nuns were killed around the world. In the West Bank and Gaza, 6 Christian churches were set on fire. Palestinian Christians living near the churches said it was not the work of Muslims, but rather Jews who obviously wanted to blame the Muslims.

In Iraq, once home to one of the largest Christian communities in the Middle East, several churches were bombed. A previously unknown group calling itself Kataab Ashbal Al Islam Al Salafi threatened to kill all Christians in Iraq if the Pope did not apologize to Muhammad within three days. The Iraqi militia Jaish al-Mujahedin (Holy Warriors’ Army) announced its intention to “destroy their cross in the heart of Rome… and to hit the Vatican.“

Recently (and suspiciously) the Zionist media took an obvious extreme interest in the elevation of Iraqi Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho to the College of Cardinals (the body responsible for electing a new pope) by Pope Benedict XVI in November. In an age where the only thing one hears from the Jewish press concerning the Catholic Church are the lurid stories of priest sex abuse cases and subsequent cover-up by the Vatican, the amount of attention paid to this story was unusual, to say the least. Shortly thereafter and following a noticeable amount of press coverage concerning him, he was kidnapped and later found dead and, naturally, Osama Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda was blamed. It is interesting to note that those who knew Rahho said he was a vocal opponent of the war and occupation of his country.

Finally, there is the recent ‘baptism’ by Benedict XVI of Magdi Allam, Egyptian-born critic of Islam and pro-Israel spokesman. Allam, as deputy director of Corriere Della Sera newspaper has made a name for himself in recent years for his lambasting of Islam (which he calls inherently violent and backwards) and for his praise of the Jewish state in his book ‘Long Live Israel’. Pretending to abandon Islam (which he admitted to never practicing) and choosing as his baptismal name ‘Christian’, the service was performed during Easter mass at the Vatican and was televised around the world a mere 2 days after the message from Bin Laden was made public. Muslim groups in Italy were puzzled as to why so much attention was put on the event and why so much secrecy surrounded it beforehand. He has since received death threats for his ‘conversion’ and the fact that Benedict XVI performed the ritual only adds to the image the Zionists are trying to paint of the head of the Catholic church as an enemy of Islam.

Mention the word ‘Fatima’ and Catholics worldwide understand its significance. It is the event in the early 1900’s where 3 peasant children in Portugal claimed to have received warnings from the Virgin Mary about an apocalyptic future. The first 2 warnings were revealed, but the third appeared to have been altered to fit a particular political agenda before being released many decades later. When it was finally released a few years prior to 9/11, it warned that the Pope would be shot down and killed. Some prophecy-wonks immediately seized on the previous attempted assassination of John Paul II, despite the fact that he lived through it in contravention of the prediction. There is little doubt then that if indeed Benedict is killed, the Zionist media will make the most of this third warning, using it to add even more noise to the anti-Muslim war drums that will be pounding within the Catholic world. Further, they will be sure to point out the fact that ‘Fatima’ was the name of the daughter of Mohammed, the founder of the same religion with which the ‘Christian West’ finds itself at war today.

In sum what exists here are all the ingredients for a major false-flag attack taking place against Rome by some ‘Middle Eastern’ group tied to Osama Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda with the end result being an enraged and highly-polarized Catholic world marching headlong into George Bush’s ‘Crusade against terrorism’. If there is anything than can be said about the Zionists and how they do business, it is that there is a certain amount of predictability to it all. They lay the groundwork…The stage is set perfectly and they go to great lengths in preparing the public for any soon-to-take-place changes through a program of subtle yet powerful media conditioning.

With this in mind then, the one phrase all people should call to mind if and when these events come to fruition is not necessarily the ‘I told you so’ all are destined to hear coming from media mouthpieces in the aftermath, but rather the motto of Israel’s intelligence service Mossad that has made assassinations, bombings and false flag attacks its tricks of the trade which is ‘By way of deception, thou shalt do war.’

© 2008 by Mark Glenn, Contributing Editor, American Free Press Newspaper

Why George W. Bush is the World’s Leading Terrorist

Why George W. Bush is the World’s Leading Terrorist
Reggie – TV News Lies March 24, 2008

Terrorism is the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives. US Federal Bureau of Investigation

Read the sentence carefully. You didn’t hear it on any corporate media newscast since 9/11. It’s the official US FBI definition of terrorism. In its official definition, the FBI does not limit terrorism to stateless individuals or groups. In its official definition, the FBI does not suggest that terrorism cannot be perpetrated by the leader of a nation state. But even more amazing is that the official FBI definition of terrorism describes exactly what George Bush did in the aftermath of the attacks of 9/11!

APPLYING THE DEFINITION

• George W. Bush, in his unprovoked attack against the sovereign nation of Iraq, openly violated the UN Charter, to which the US is a signatory. The Charter’s core principles contained in Article 2(4) and Article 51 prohibit one nation from attacking another except in self-defense or with the authority of the U.N. In effect, George Bush launched an unlawful use of force against persons and property.

• The invasion launched by George W. Bush was heralded by the most frightening and powerful use of force and military violence in recent history. His Shock and Awe bombardment of Baghdad was designed to intimidate and coerce the government as well as the civilian population of that nation to change its existing leadership. That, in itself, was a political objective.

• The purpose of the invasion and ensuing occupation of Iraq was to replace the existing dictatorship with an American-backed form of democracy that would not permit the emergence of a government headed by the majority Shia religious leadership. These motives were unquestionably political and social.

So, what part of the FBI definition of “terrorism” do the voters of the United States not understand? And what acts of terrorism as defined by the FBI do the voters of the United States not recognize? Is there any doubt at all that the Bush administration committed acts of terrorism when it unlawfully used force and violence against the nation of Iraq to intimidate and coerce its government and the civilian population, in furtherance of the Bush/PNAC political and social objectives.

Therefore, by any definition, if George W. Bush is guilty of terrorism, he can accurately be identified as a TERRORIST. And if he is truly a terrorist, it is only fitting that George W. Bush be scrutinized in terms of his success in that capacity. What is his standing among the other murderous terrorist activity in the world today? Is it possible that George W. Bush actually has claim to being the very BEST at something during his reign in office?

It is our contention that George Bush is the most successful terrorist alive today, big time. Let’s look at the figures.

MIRROR, MIRROR ON THE WALL - WHO’S THE LEADING TERRORIST OF ALL?

THE CONTEST

EVERYONE ELSE: Despite the protestations of George W. Bush to the contrary, we are NOT safer now by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, according to the Terrorism Knowledge Base, the number of deaths from terrorist attacks throughout the entire world prior to the invasion of Iraq was 6,680. That included the nearly 3,00 deaths in the US on 9/11! Since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the number of terrorist-related casualties worldwide has reached 36,174!

More than 27,000 of those deaths were in Iraq, where the identity of ‘terrorists’ is vague and undefined. However, for the sake of argument, we will attribute all of these deaths to so-called terrorists.

Repeat: The total number of deaths in the entire world caused by terrorists since George W. Bush declared a War on Terror, amounts to approximately 40,000.

GEORGE W. BUSH: In pursuit of his arrogant and PNAC-driven political and social objectives in Iraq, George W. Bush has the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians on his hands. To cover his guilt, early in the war, the US government ordered the Iraqi Ministry of Health to stop counting civilian deaths, and forbade them from releasing any totals previously gathered. The image of a surgical war, dominated by smart bombs and resulting in very few civilian casualties was televised to the American public throughout the hostilities.

As a result, the number of civilian casualties in Iraq is probably vastly under-estimated. According to Human Rights Watch, many of the civilian deaths were the direct result of weapons that should never have been used in populated areas. Among these were nearly 2 million submunitions which fail to explode immediately and killed people long after the initial conflict had ended. In addition, the strategy of decapitation bombing killed many civilians while it failed to kill a single Iraqi military leader in 50 attempts.

In January of 2008, a joint UN World Health Organization and the Iraqi government study concluded that between 104,000 and 223,000 Iraqis had died violently since the invasion. In 2006, the respected British journal The Lancet reported that 654,965 (at least 392,979 and as many as 942,636) Iraqi civilians had been killed in the occupation, in addition to deaths expected from Iraq’s normal death rate. Whatever count you accept, George W. Bush is far ahead, big time..

If we go with the low ball figure of 104,000, the lowest estimate of Iraqi civilians killed as a direct result of the unlawful invasion and occupation of the country, George W. Bush still wins the title of the LEADING TERRORIST alive today, big time.

No matter how you look at it, George W. Bush wins, big time.

And that doesn’t include the estimated 3,485 civilian deaths in Afghanistan, - the country to which we sent only 11,000 troops to fight the Taliban. George W. Bush claimed victory in Iraq in his acceptance speech. What utter nonsense. The country is dangerous and explosive, and in the hands of the same warlords and Taliban chieftains who ruled before 9/11. Revisionist history by this administration is never challenged by the media. The list of Big Lies prevails.

And it doesn’t include the military deaths on all sides, or the kidnappings, or the contractor deaths or the wounded or the dying. It doesn’t count the deaths to come from the depleted uranium shells or the permanently maimed and psychologically affected.

George W. Bush, his handlers and his administration can be proud. The dubious title of LEADING TERRORIST now belongs to the most powerful man in the world who seeks another term of office to continue what he has begun.

The American corporate media refuse to address the totals. Doing so might result in an accusation of being unpatriotic or un-American. Doing so would challenge directives from the WH such as those that keep the nation from seeing the draped coffins of their 4,000 military dead or hearing about the deaths of other coalition forces. Terrorists also injure and mutilate their victims. The number of US seriously wounded troops is far into the tens of thousands. Still, we rarely, if ever, are told of the unbearable injuries that will scar the lives of so many young Americans for their lifetimes.

After all, doing so might influence the outcome of the upcoming election.

How utterly shameful that is for this ill-informed country and how tragic it is for the world.

http://tvnewslies.org/tvnl/index.php/editorial/reggies-commentary/20-regs-thoughts/750-why-george-w-bush-isthe-worlds-leading-terrorist

Where Are the Iraqis in the Iraq War?

Where Are the Iraqis in the Iraq War?
Ramzy Baroud, Aljazeera.net English.

Five years following the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, the mainstream media is once more making the topic one of intense scrutiny and analysis. The costs and implications of the war are endlessly covered from all possible angles, with one notable exception — the cost to the Iraqi people themselves.

Through all the special coverage and exclusive reports, very little is said about Iraqi casualties, who are either completely overlooked or hastily mentioned and whose numbers can only be guesstimated. Also conveniently ignored are the millions injured, internally and externally displaced, the victims of rape and kidnappings who will carry physical and psychological scars for the rest of their lives.

We find ourselves stuck in a hopeless paradigm, where it feels necessary to empathize with the sensibilities of the aggressor so as not to sound “unpatriotic,” while remaining blind to the untold anguish of the victims. Some actually feel the need to go so far as to blame the Iraqis for their own misfortune. Both Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have expressed their wish for Iraqis to take responsibility for the situation in their country, with the former saying, “We cannot win their civil war. There is no military solution.”

It would have been helpful if Clinton had reached her astute conclusion before she voted for the Senate’s 2002 resolution authorizing President Bush to attack Iraq. For the sake of argument, let’s overlook both Clinton’s and Obama’s repeated assertions that all options, including military, are on the table regarding how to “deal” with Iran’s alleged ambition to acquire nuclear weapons. But to go as far as blaming the ongoing war on the Iraqis’ lack of accountability is yet a new low for the “antiwar” candidates.

Is it still a secret, five years on, that the war on Iraq was fought for strategic reasons, to maintain a floundering superpower’s control over much of the world’s energy supplies and to sustain the regional supremacy of Israel, the US’ most costly ally anywhere?

Of course, there are those who prefer to imagine a world in which a well-intentioned superpower would fight with all of its might to enable another smaller, distant nation to enjoy the fruits of liberty, democracy and freedom. But it is nothing short of ridiculous to pretend that Iraqis are capable of controlling the parameters of the conflict, and the government whose election and operation is entirely under the command of the US military is capable of taking charge and assuming responsibilities. Equally absurd is the insinuation that the civil war in Iraq is an exclusively Iraqi doing, and that the US military has not deliberately planted the seeds of divisions, hoping to reinterpret its role in Iraq from that of the occupier to that of the arbitrator, making sure the “good” guys prevail over the “bad.”

The idea of the US making an immediate exit from Iraq or taking full financial and legal responsibility for the devastation and genocide — yes, genocide — that occurred in the last five years is simply unthinkable from the viewpoint of the corporate US media, which still relates to the war only in terms of American (and never Iraqi) losses.

There are very few commentators who are actually arguing that the reasons for war were entirely self-serving, without an iota of morality behind them. Would Bush employ the same logic he used to justify Saddam Hussein’s execution — suggesting this was warranted by the Iraqi president’s violence against his own people — when dealing with those responsible for the deaths of over a million Iraqis as a result of this war?

And indeed Iraqis are dying in numbers that never subside regardless of the media and official hype about the “surge.” Just Foreign Policy says the number of dead Iraqis has surpassed a million, while a survey by the British polling agency ORB estimates the number at over 1.2 million. But the plight of Iraqis hardly ends at a death count, since those left behind endure untold suffering: soaring poverty, unemployment between 40-70 percent (governmental estimates), total lack of security in major cities, and, according to Oxfam International, 4 million in need of emergency aid.

“Baghdad has become the most dangerous city in the world, largely as a result of a US policy of pitting various Iraqi ethnic and sectarian groups against one another. Today Baghdad is a city of walled-off Sunni and Shiite ghettoes, divided by concrete walls erected by the US military,” reports Dahr Jamail, one of the a few courageous voices that honestly relayed the horrendous outcomes of the war.

Indeed, there seem to be no promising statistics coming out of Iraq. Even under the previous regime and the debilitating sanctions imposed by the US and the UN, Iraqis were much better off prior to the war. Now, Iraqis are relevant only as pieces of the endless US government propaganda. From the viewpoint of Bush, McCain and Cheney, they are the victims of Al-Qaeda, which must be fought at all costs. From the viewpoint of Clinton and Obama, they need to fight their own wars and take responsibility for them, as if Iraqi “irresponsibility” is the main problem.

In yet another “surprise” visit to Iraq by a US official, Vice President Dick Cheney declared that Iraq was a “successful endeavor.” Considering the exorbitant contracts granted to selected corporations, the war has indeed succeeded in making a few already rich companies and individuals a lot richer.

Meanwhile, Shlomo Brom, a senior fellow at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies and former head of the Israeli Defense Force’s Strategic Planning Division, sees things from a slightly different angle. “Any Iraq will be better than Iraq under Saddam, because the Iraq of Saddam had the ability to threaten Israel,” he was quoted as saying in the Christian Science Monitor.

In considering such skewed logic, one can only hope that Cheney’s successful experiment will end soon, and that Israel’s desire for security is now sated. The people of Iraq cannot tolerate any more “success.”