Marvel Comics buries Captain America

NEW YORK – It’s a funeral fit for a superhero.  

In the drizzling rain at Arlington National Cemetary, thousands of grieving patriots solemnly watch as the pall bearers — Iron Man, the Black Panther, Ben Grimm and Ms. Marvel — carry a casket draped with an American flag.

Yes, folks, Captain America is dead and buried in the latest issue of Marvel Comics, due on newsstands the morning after Independence Day. After 66 years of battling villains from Adolf Hitler to the Red Skull, the red, white and blue leader of the Avengers was felled by an assassin’s bullet on the steps of a New York federal courthouse.

He was headed to court after refusing to sign the government’s Superhero Registration Act, a move that would have revealed his true identity. A sniper who fired from a rooftop was captured as police and Captain America’s military escort were left to cope with chaos in the streets.

But the sniper didn’t act alone, and didn’t even fire the shot that killed the captain.

Writer Jeph Loeb has been busy working through the stages of grief in the most recent issues of Marvel Comics. A book centered on Wolverine dealt with denial; one with the Avengers covered anger; and Spider-Man battled depression.

With the story line so relevant to present-day politics, and the timing of the latest issue so precise, it’s hard not to think the whole thing is one big slam on the government.

“Part of it grew out of the fact that we are a country that’s at war, we are being perceived differently in the world,” Loeb said. “He wears the flag and he is assassinated — it’s impossible not to have it at least be a metaphor for the complications of present day.”

But Loeb says he was working with more personal material: the death of his 17-year-old son from cancer.

“So many people have lost their sons and daughters over the years, for the greater good or to cancer or other horrible things,” said Loeb, an executive producer for NBC’s “Heroes.” “I wanted this to be something people would identify with.”

In the final frames of the book, the Falcon delivers a eulogy asking superheros old and young to stand up and honor Captain America. Loeb did a similar thing at his son’s funeral.

“It was this moment where I realized that we were all different, but this boy, my son, made us all connected,” he said. “It was powerful.”

Captain America, whose secret identity was Steve Rogers, was an early member of the pantheon of comic book heroes that began with Superman in the 1930s.

He landed on newsstands in March 1941, nine months before Pearl Harbor — delivering a punch to Hitler on the cover of his first issue, a sock-in-the-jaw reminder that there was a war on and the United States was not involved.

Since then, Marvel Entertainment Inc., has sold more than 200 million copies of Captain America magazine in 75 countries.

In the most recent story line, he became involved in a superhero “civil war,” taking up sides against Iron Man in the registration controversy, climaxed by his arrest and assassination.

Marvel says you never know what will happen. He may make it back from the dead after all, although Loeb says that question isn’t really important right now.

“The question is, how does the world continue without this hero?” he said. “If that story of his return gets told further down the line, great. But everyone’s still been dealing with his loss.

“They aren’t going to wake up and it’s a dream, like it’s some episode of ‘Dallas.’”

Source: AP via Yahoo! News
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070630/ap_en_ot/captain_america

General Predicts Israel Will Attack Iran, Syria, Hamas, Hezbollah, “al-Qaeda” this Summer

It is a provocative headline: “Israel braces for July war with up to five enemies.” If we are to believe Israeli military intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, this attack will be launched by Iran, Syria, Hizbullah, Hamas and, of course, “al-Qaeda,” the database. “Each of these adversaries is capable of sparking a war in the summer,” Yadlin told the World Tribune. In other words, Israel is capable of attacking one or all of these “adversaries,” as Israel has a notorious history of attacking its neighbors under contrived pretense.

Few remember the words of the Irgun terrorist Menachem Begin, later Israeli prime minister—as Israelis, much like Americans, prefer to be led by terrorists and war criminals—who admitted in 1982 “that Israel had fought three wars in which it had a ‘choice,’ meaning Israel started the wars,” according to Donald Neff, writing for the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

Here is Begin’s quote in full: “In June 1967, we had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that [Egyptian President] Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.”

As Livia Rokach writes in the introduction to Israel’s Sacred Terrorism, based on the memoirs of Moshe Sharett, the former Israeli prime minister, the “Israeli political/military establishment aimed at pushing the Arab states into military confrontations which the Israeli leaders were invariably certain of winning. The goal of these confrontations was to modify the balance of power in the region radically, transforming the Zionist state into the major power in the Middle East.” In order to realize this modification of power, Israel engaged in “military operations aimed at civilian populations across the armistice lines,” in particular against a defenseless Palestinian population, but also against Israel’s Arab neighbors, and these “operations [were] designed to dismember the Arab world, defeat the Arab national movement, and create puppet regimes which would gravitate to the regional Israeli power.”

“A clear, lucid, coherent logic runs through the history of the past three decades,” Rokach wrote in the 1980s. “In the early fifties the bases were laid for constructing a state imbued with the principles of sacred terrorism against the surrounding Arab societies on the threshold of the eighties the same state is for the first time denounced by its own intellectuals as being tightly in the deadly grip of fascism.”

“Lebanon was the model, prepared for its role by the Israelis for thirty years, as the Sharett diaries revealed,” explains Ralph Schoenman in his book, the Hidden History of Zionism. “It is the expansionist compulsion set forth by Herzl and Ben Gurion even as it is the logical extension of the Sharett diaries. The dissolution of Lebanon was proposed in 1919, planned in 1936, launched in 1954 and realized in 1982.” Schoenman cites Oded Yinon’s A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s, a document that “outlines a timetable for Israel to become the imperial regional power based upon the dissolution of the Arab states.”

In regard to Syria, Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery tells us the Zionist state created a convenient myth in order to escalate hostilities and thus steal land. “According to legend, the Syrians exploited their control of heights overlooking the Israeli villages in the valley below them. Again and again the evil Syrians (the Syrians were always ‘evil’) terrorized the helpless kibbutzim by shelling. This myth, which was believed by practically all Israelis at the time, served as a justification for the occupation of the Golan Heights and their annexation by Israel. Even now, foreign visitors are brought to an observation post on the Golan Heights and shown the defenseless kibbutzim down below.”

The truth, which has been exposed since then, was a bit different: Sharon used to instruct the kibbutzniks to go to their shelters, and then he would send an armored tractor into the demilitarized zone. Predictably, the Syrians shot at it. The Israeli artillery, just waiting for its cue, then opened up a massive bombardment of the Syrian positions. There were dozens of such “incidents.”

Earlier this month, Jan Muhren, a Dutch UN observer stationed interchangeably at the Golan Heights and the West Bank in 1966-67, told a Dutch current affairs program “neither Jordan nor Syria had any intention to start a war with Israel,” according to Monsters and Critics. Muhren said “Israel was not under siege by Arab countries preceding the Six-Day War … and that the Jewish state provoked most border incidents as part of its strategy to annex more land,” that is to say steal land at gunpoint, most notably from Syria, although the “war” resulted in the theft of Gaza and the West Bank from Egypt and Jordan respectively. As well, Israel grabbed the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt.

Once again, Israel is not “under siege by Arab countries,” or Hezbollah, Hamas, and the fantastical “al-Qaeda” for that matter, and yet we are told each “of these adversaries is capable of sparking a war in the summer.” Israeli officials, according to the World Tribune, “said Iran has direct influence over Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas. He said Al Qaida has increasingly come under Iranian influence and was being used by Iran and Syria in such countries as Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon.” In short, the Israeli “security myth” documented by Livia Rokach in the 1980s and in the current era buttressed by ludicrous fairy tales, is alive and well. Under such a “security” pretense, never examined by the corporate media, we can expect Israel, or more likely the United States, under an AIPAC and neocon zombie trance for some time now, to attack Iran and Syria, possibly next month, certainly before the Commander Guy leaves office.

Iraq was attacked and 750,000 Iraqis slaughtered in the name of “Israeli security,” that is to say Israeli hegemony. “Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I’ll tell you what I think the real threat (is) and actually has been since 1990—it’s the threat against Israel,” Philip Zelikow, Bush insider and former executive director of the nine eleven whitewash commission, told a crowd at the University of Virginia on September 10, 2002, according to Emad Mekay, writing for the IPS-Inter Press Service. Naturally, the corporate media completely ignored Zelikow’s comments.

As should be expected, the Likudniks and American neocons will demand, in the wake of Israel’s defeat to Hezbollah last summer, another go, this time making certain to accomplish their goals. Meyrav Wurmser, the Israeli married to the neocon David Wurmser, admitted as much last December. “Hizbullah defeated Israel in the war. This is the first war Israel lost,” she told Yedioth Internet. “I know this will annoy many of your readers… But the anger is over the fact that Israel did not fight against the Syrians. Instead of Israel fighting against Hizbullah, many parts of the American administration believe that Israel should have fought against the real enemy, which is Syria and not Hizbullah.” Wurmser, of course, is talking about the neocon part of the administration, the part that has control of American foreign policy. Iran, naturally, figures prominently on the target list as well. If the Israeli Likudniks and the American neocons have their way, Israel will have a second go this summer.

Addendum

In order to underscore the neocon connection to the Israeli Likudniks, I am including here a short video I produced last year:

Source: Another Day in the Empire
http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=910

The Triumph of US/Israeli Policy in Palestine

Brothers-in-Arms

The Triumph of US/Israeli Policy in Palestine

By JENNIFER LOEWENSTEIN

Contrary to the many claims that the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip represents the failure of US and Israeli policies in Palestine, the violent civil infighting that has dominated the Gaza Strip over much of the last year and a half and that led directly to the Hamas coup of June 2007, marks yet another major foreign policy victory for the occupiers. Hamas will never be allowed to remain in power in Gaza so we must fear for the future of that tiny, desperately overcrowded strip of land and its 1.4 million inhabitants; additionally, Abbas ­in order to maintain his role as “Good Guy”- will have to accede to the dictates of Israel and the United States or suffer the same fate as his predecessor, Yassir Arafat.

Western nations are standing by in silence as the deadly siege of Gaza and the dismemberment of the West Bank continue unabated. What we are witnessing in full view each day are unprecedented steps taken by the world’s only superpower and its favorite client state, Israel, to ensure the death of a nation. While friction between the two key political factions in the occupied Palestinian territories has long undermined the smooth functioning of internal affairs, it was the direct, cynical involvement of US and Israeli policy-makers in these affairs that guaranteed the breakdown of internal stability and paved the way for the Hamas “coup” in Gaza.

Media reports have been careful to leave out important facts leading up to the coup such as that Hamas was the legitimate, democratically elected ruling party in the Palestinian territories following the January 2006 Palestine Legislative Council elections; that it was the US-Israeli dismissal of those election results that fueled the civil infighting between Hamas and Fatah; that obvious US backing of Fatah against Hamas helped create popular mistrust of Fatah increasing Hamas’ popularity in Gaza and leading directly to Hamas’ takeover of the Fatah military apparatus in the Gaza Strip. In other words, there were real and understandable reasons for the coup. But in the end, Hamas’ seizure of the power it should have had in the first place ends up serving the interests not only of Mahmoud Abbas and the warlord Muhammad Dahlan. It also provides the perfect opportunity for US-Israeli policy in the region to move forward with even fewer objections, if that is possible to imagine, than have heretofore been made. Who will stand up for a “terrorist organization that seeks the destruction of Israel”? The line has been beaten into our heads with every mention of the word “Hamas” for years. We should not expect a change in the behavior of the American public or of other western audiences until, when Israel is mentioned, we immediately say to ourselves, “a terrorist state that seeks the destruction of Palestine.” Seeks and is succeeding in it.

II.

Watching the barbarous killing between brothers in Gaza, a power struggle between rival factions seething in frenzy like the great prison in which they thrive, Israeli and American political analysts can rest their cases with confidence. Across the spectrum of debate, these experts can expect vindication by the media juries who, in sanctimonious indignation at the brutality meted out by partisans of Fatah or Hamas, have assembled all the “evidence” they need to justify our righteous war against Muslim-Arab terrorists and their internecine blood feuds.

That the US has temporarily chosen a weak, compliant leader, Mahmoud Abbas, and the power thirsty warlord, Muhammad Dahlan, to back during the bitter strife between key Palestinian factions testifies not to a belief that one side is trustworthy and deserves our support, but rather to the ease with which the Americans and their clients pick and choose their pawns in their bitter regional cockfights. Today’s statesmen were yesterday terrorists, their titles dependent on the needs of the superpower and its clients: yesterday Fatah was on the US State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations and its leader, Yassir Arafat, was a declared “terrorist,” “irrelevant,” and exiled in his presidential compound in Ramallah until his mysterious death. Fatah’s military wing, the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades is still listed as a foreign terrorist organization. Neither of these factors apparently bothers the current leadership which understands that power and prestige are most easily acquired and unchallenged when bequeathed from above.

Truth be told, the Abbas/Dahlan alliance elicits far greater contempt in the eyes of the masters than the more independent and genuine resistance faction headed by Hamas. The numerous meetings and photo-ops between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Abbas, and US President George Bush and Abbas, are little more than tactical stunts to make it look as though genuine negotiations are taking place. In fact, Abbas has been repeatedly by-passed and shunned when Israeli and US negotiators make the real policy decisions; decisions that remain one-sided and dismissive of any demands-other than those that are entirely self-serving-that Abbas and his entourage have made. The arms and funding channeled through Abbas’ Fatah (for his clique represents only one of the many spin-off Fatahs that emerged during the second Intifada) signify little more than the conduit through which US-Israeli policies can be secured. For all the claims about US backing of Fatah, neither Abbas nor Dahlan have yet to benefit on the ground from this “support”. Indeed, the ease with which Hamas was able to wrest control of Gaza indicates just how little US support for Fatah was worth there. Nevertheless, the same pipeline of support for “Fatah” has done a great deal to bolster perceived US and Israeli national security interests in the same region.

III.

Once again the pictures on our television screens in our newspapers are intended to suffice for missing substance; the context of empire is invisible or deliberately obscured ­in Palestine as in Iraq, Lebanon and elsewhere. If the takeover of Gaza by Hamas was unanticipated, its success was a gift of immeasurable value to the overlords; a welcome but unforeseen consequence of fueling divisions among a weakened and oppressed people, undermining any steps toward positive change. Abbas and his underlings have foolishly offered up Palestine cut in two to the occupation regime that worked so hard to end the charade of a single Palestine to begin with. This was a coup for Israel in its on-going quest for regional hegemony, and a triumph for America’s “War on Terror.” For all the talk about a one-, two- or bi-national state solution to the Israel/Palestine conflict, the reality is that no state solution for Palestine is on the near or distant horizon. Palestine is a series of disconnected pieces whose division into still smaller parts continues month after month.

Those fretting about a “Hamastan” in the Gaza Strip ought to be worried not about its viability or longevity or about whether or not Islamic law and social mores will be imposed. Hamas’ presence in Gaza will be but a short-lived, transitory phenomenon entirely at the mercy of the US-backed Israeli military which has not left Gaza alone for a single day since Hamas’ coming to power despite a yearlong ceasefire called by its leaders and scrupulously observed. Those concerned about a Hamas-controlled Gaza ought instead to be wondering how they are going to justify Hamas’ destruction within the Strip and all the suffering, chaos and death that will ensue over the shameful silence of the international community.

IV.

Claims that Hamas’ “victory” in the Gaza Strip is a sign that the Bush Doctrine in Palestine has failed are misguided. While no one can foresee all of the events that might take place in a region as volatile as the Middle East, Hamas’ takeover in Gaza will ultimately benefit Israel and the United States. It will benefit Israel by giving it a free hand to destroy Hamas, permanently sever the West Bank from the Gaza Strip, and re-”negotiate” with its newly appointed “partners” the remaining islands of economically unviable territory that will soon be entirely encircled by a concrete and barbed-wire wall, cut off from their supplies of water and fertile land, and separated internally by “Arab-free” roads. It will benefit Israel and the United States by assuring another compliant puppet regime adjacent to Jordan, friendly to Egypt and Saudi Arabia and hostile to Hizbullah, Syria and Iran, even as the fault lines harden. It has already benefited both Israel and the United States by reassuring them that their tactics for undermining indigenous experiments in democracy have once again proven effective; that the people who have dared to defy those tactics learn quickly how painful it is to advocate or practice popular sovereignty and the rule of law.

Mahmoud Abbas has already learned how well complicity and collaboration are rewarded. Having dismissed Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, dissolved the national unity government, declared a new, ‘legitimate’ government under his rule and appointed his friends to work beside him, he recently stepped into the limelight with an address on Palestine TV, broadcast in the US on C-SPAN, by announcing how he would further “enhance democracy.” This would begin by no longer speaking to “murderers,” by which he meant Hamas.

Clearly, his membership application into the club of the Good Guys has been, for the time being, approved.

Jennifer Loewenstein is the Associate Director of the Middle East Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is a member of the board of the Israeli Coalition against House Demolitions-USA branch, founder of the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project and a freelance journalist. She can be reached at: amadea311@earthlink.net

Source: CounterPunch
http://counterpunch.com/loewenstein06252007.html

Lyndon Johnson Was First to Align U.S. Policy With Israel’s Policies

By Donald Neff

It was 33 years ago, on Nov. 22, 1963, that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. While a traumatized nation grieved for its youngest president, he was succeeded by Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, who was to become the most pro-Israel president up to that time. A sea change was about to take place in America’s relations with Israel.

Johnson was quick to declare his support for the Jewish state. Shortly after being sworn in as president, Johnson reportedly remarked to an Israeli diplomat:

“You have lost a very great friend, but you have found a better one.” Commented Isaiah L. Kenen, one of the most effective lobbyists for Israel in Washington: “ I would say that everything he did as president supported that statement.” ¹

Up to Johnson’s presidency, no administration had been as completely pro-Israel and anti-Arab as his. Harry S. Truman, while remembered as a warm friend of Israel, was more interested in his own election than Israel’s fate. After winning office on his own in 1948 with the support of the Jewish vote, he seemed to lose interest in the Jewish state.²

Dwight D. Eisenhower was distinctly cool toward Israel, seeing it as a major irritant in America’s relations with the Arab world and U.S. access to oil. There were no powerful partisans of Israel in his administration and his secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, was a frequent critic of Israel. Kennedy was considerably warmer toward the Jewish state and became the first president to begin providing major weapons to it, breaking an embargo in place since 1947.³ Yet he valued the U.S. position in the Arab world, particularly with Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, and as a result maintained a fairly even-handed policy despite having a number of pro-Israel officials in his administration.

All this changed dramatically under Johnson. Not only was he personally a strong supporter of the Jewish state but he had a number of high officials, advisers and friends who shared his view. These included officials within the administration such as McGeorge Bundy, Clark Clifford, Arthur Goldberg, Harry McPherson, John Roche, the Rostow brothers, Walt and Eugene, and Ben Wattenberg.

These officials occupied such high offices as the ambassador to the United Nations, the head of the National Security Council and the number two post at the State Department. They were assiduous in putting forward Israel’s interests in such memoranda as “What We Have Done for Israel” ⁴ and “New Things We Might Do in Israel” ⁵ and “How We Have Helped Israel.” ⁶

The president was repeatedly urged to distance America from the Arab world.

The president was repeatedly urged by Israel’s supporters to embrace Israeli policy, give the Jewish state increased aid, and distance America from the Arab world. So pervasive was the influence of Israel’s supporters during Johnson’s tenure that CIA Director Richard Helms believed there was no important U.S. secret affecting Israel that the Israeli government did not know about in this period.⁷

So closely allied were U.S. and Israeli interests in the mind of “Mac” Bundy, the special coordinator of Middle East policy during the 1967 war, that he once sought to buttress a recommendation to Johnson by remarking: “This is good LBJ doctrine and good Israeli doctrine, and therefore a good doctrine to get out in public.” ⁸ When initial war reports showed Israel making dramatic gains and several officials in the State Department Operations Room outwardly showed satisfaction, Undersecretary of State Gene Rostow turned to them with a broad smile on his face and said ironically: “Gentlemen, gentlemen, do not forget we are neutral in word, thought and deed.” ⁹ In the State Department’s summary of the start of the war, Rostow’s brother, Walt, the national security adviser, wrote on a covering letter to Johnson: “Herewith the account, with a map, of the first day’s turkey shoot.” ¹⁰

Beyond the administration’s supporters of Israel, one of Johnson’s closest informal advisers was Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas, another warm friend of Israel’s. Two of Johnson’s closest outside advisers were Abraham Feinberg and Arthur B. Krim, both strong supporters of Israel. Feinberg was president of the American Bank & Trust Company of New York and the man whose “activities started a process of systematic fund-raising for politics [in the late 1940s] that has made Jews the most conspicuous fund-raisers and contributors to the Democratic Party,” according to a study by Stephen D. Isaacs, Jews and American Politics. Johnson routinely consulted Feinberg on Middle East policy.

Vocal Supporters of Israel

Feinberg was a vocal supporter of increased aid to Israel. Although an American, Feinberg at various times owned the Coca-Cola franchise in Israel and was a part-owner of the Jerusalem Hilton Hotel. When his bank fell into trouble in the 1970s and two of its officers were convicted of misappropriating funds, the Israeli Bank Leumi Company, in a generous act of reverse aid, purchased Feinberg’s American Bank & Trust Company.¹¹

Arthur Krim was president of United Artists Corporation of Hollywood, a New York attorney and another major Democratic fund-raiser. He served as chairman of the Democratic National Party Finance Committee and chairman of the President’s Club of New York, the most potent source of Johnson’s campaign funds. Krim was married to a physician, Mathilde, who in her youth had briefly served as an agent for the Irgun, the Jewish terrorist group led by Menachem Begin.

The Krims were so close to Johnson that they built a vacation house near his Texas ranch to be close to him on long weekends and were regular guests at the White House. Mathilde Krim stayed at the White House during much of the 1967 war and was a regular caller at the Israeli Embassy, passing reports and gossip back and forth. The Krims, like other Johnson friends, did not hesitate to advise the president on Middle East policy.¹²

How influential the Krims were in forming Johnson’s Middle East policy was hinted at by notes in the president’s daily diary for June 17, 1967. The notes reported that at a dinner with the Krims and others at Camp David, Johnson openly discussed a speech he was working on that was to establish the nation’s Middle East policy for the years ahead.

According to the notes, Johnson read from various drafts of the speech around the dinner table, “inserting additions and making changes, also accepting comments and suggestions from all at the table.” Thus two passionate partisans of Israel, the Krims, helped Johnson refine what was later called the “five great principles of peace,” the pillars of U.S. policy in the Middle East for the next two decades.

After Johnson delivered the speech on June 19, he received a report of an enthusiastic phone call from Abe Feinberg saying that the Jewish community was delighted with the speech. “Mr. Feinberg said he had visited with Israelis and Jewish leaders all over the country and they are high in their appreciation.” ¹³

Under Johnson, aid to Israel increased and the old arms embargo was completely shattered, portending the massive transfer of treasure, technology and weapons that began in the next administration of Richard M. Nixon. That, of course, was only the beginning of the age of total support of Israel, which has reached new heights under Bill Clinton.

RECOMMENDED READING

Donovan, Robert J., Conflict and Crisis: The Presidency of Harry S Truman, 1945-1948, New York, W.W. Norton, 1977.

*Green, Stephen, Taking Sides: America’s Secret Relations with a Militant Israel, New York, William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1984.

*Hersh, Seymour M., The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy, New York, Random House, 1991.

Isaacs, Stephen D., Jews and American Politics, Garden City, NY, Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1974.

Khalidi, Walid (ed.), From Haven to Conquest: Readings in Zionism and the Palestine Problem until 1948, Washington, DC, Institute for Palestine Studies, second printing, 1987.

Miller, Merle, Lyndon: An Oral History , New York, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1980.

*Neff, Donald, Warriors for Jerusalem: The Six Days that Changed the Middle East, New York, Linden Press/Simon & Schuster, 1984.

*Neff, Donald, Fallen Pillars: U.S. Policy towards Palestine and Israel since 1945, Washington, DC, Institute for Palestine Studies, 1995.

Rubenberg, Cheryl A., Israel and the American National Interest: A Critical Examination , Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 1986.

Wilson, Evan M., Decision on Palestine: How the U.S. came to Recognize Israel, Stanford, CA, Hoover Institution Press, 1979.

FOOTNOTES

1 Miller, Lyndon, p. 477. This was generally the assessment in Israel as well; see Green, Taking Sides, pp. 184-86.

2 See for instance: Wilson, Decision on Palestine, pp. 148-49; Rubenberg, Israel and the American National Interest, pp. 9-10, 31; Khalidi, From Haven to Conquest, pp. liii-lxvii; Donald Neff, “Palestine, Truman and America’s Strategic Balance, 4″ American-Arab Affairs, No. 25, Summer 1988, pp. 30-41.

3 Neff, Fallen Pillars, pp. 170-71.

4 State Dept., NEA/IAI:2/8/67; confidential, declassified 4/16/81.

5 W.W. Rostow, Memorandum for the President, 5/21/66; secret, declassified 3/13/79.

6 Unsigned, White House papers, 5/19/66; secret, declassified 3/13/79.

7 Neff, Warriors for Jerusalem, p. 110.

8 Ibid., p. 273.

9 Ibid., p. 213.

10 Rostow to the President, 6/5/67, secret.

11 Isaacs, Jews and American Politics, p. 83. Detailed information on Feinberg, including his aid to Israel’s nuclear program, is in Hersh, The Samson Option, pp. 93-111.

12 Neff, Warriors for Jerusalem, pp. 83, 156-58.

13 “Marvin to the President,” memorandum, 6:30 PM, 19 June 1967, reprinted in Neff, Warriors for Jerusalem, pp. 307-08.

Source: Washington Report on Middle East Affairs
http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/1196/9611096.htm

Muslim leaders demand India presidential candidate step down over headscarf remarks

Islamic leaders demanded the ruling coalition withdraw its candidate from India’s presidential race on Tuesday after she said Muslim women should stop wearing their headscarves.

LUCKNOW, India – Islamic leaders demanded the ruling coalition withdraw its candidate from India’s presidential race on Tuesday after she said Muslim women should stop wearing their headscarves.

Several Muslim leaders called on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to find a new candidate for the largely ceremonial post, accusing Pratibha Patil, a Hindu, of insulting Islam by suggesting the headscarf is primitive.

Addressing a conference in the northwestern city of Udaipur over the weekend, Patil said women started wearing the headscarves in India to save themselves from 16th century Muslim invaders, and that it was time to drop what the practice, Indian newspapers reported.

“Now that women are progressing in every field, we should morally support and encourage them by leaving such practices behind,” she said.

Patil, 72, belongs to the moderate Congress party. Parliament and state legislatures choose the president, and the ruling coalition has enough votes to get her elected.

Maulana Khalid Rashid, a member of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, said it was God who had asked women to wear a headscarf and that this was enshrined in the Quran, the Muslim holy book. The board is India’s highest Muslim authority on personal matters.

“Any statement against the veil means an opinion against Allah and the Quran which no Muslim will tolerate,” Rashid told The Associated Press.

Historians disagree with Patil. They say the practice of women using scarves in the presence of outsiders was already widespread in the 13th century.

Muslims account for nearly 14 percent of India’s nearly 1.1. billion people. Conservative Muslim women wear headscarves and face-covering veils.

Relations between Hindus and Muslims have been hostile since the bloody partition of the subcontinent into predominantly Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan at independence from Britain in 1947.

Hindu religious leaders have not reacted to Patil’s call.

Orthodox Hindu women also cover their faces in the presence of elderly male members of the family, even though their religions doesn’t mandate the practice like for Muslims.

Maulana Hasanul Badr, a Muslim cleric, said it was the duty of Muslim women to cover their bodies.

“Why do politicians interfere in our religious matters? It has become a fashion to pass judgment on Islam,” he said.

“The statement is a clear reflection of Patil’s mind-set about Islam and Muslims. It is better that the United Progressive Alliance change its presidential candidate and opt for a more secular person for this post,” he said, referring to the governing alliance.

Source: Star Tribune
http://www.startribune.com/722/story/1254665.html

Rolls-Royce Wins $6.06 Billion in Orders from Qatar Airways

Rolls-Royce PLC, the world’s second-largest aircraft engine maker, said Monday that it won orders worth a total of $6.32 billion, including a record $5.6 billion contract to supply engines to Qatar Airways.

The British company will supply Qatar Airways with engines for its new fleet of Airbus A350 aircraft with deliveries due to begin in 2013, Rolls-Royce said in a statement. The pact also provides for a long-term services contract for an undisclosed duration.

“This is an extremely significant order from one of the world’s most forward-looking airlines,” said Chief Executive John Rose.

Separately, Rolls-Royce said it won contracts to supply five engines to International Lease Finance Corp. and two to Flyglobespan along with $180 million worth of business with China’s Hainan Airlines and $260 million with China Eastern Airlines.

Shares in Rolls-Royce, which competes for Airbus’ business alongside companies such as General Electric Co. and United Technologies Corp.’s Pratt & Whitney, gained 0.8 percent to 551 pence ($10.89) on the London Stock Exchange.

Source: SF Gate
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/06/18/financial/f081051D50.DTL&type=business

Finkelstein and The Progressive

Fallout from a Smear

Finkelstein and The Progressive

By JOHN HALLE

For those of us in the academy, among the most important stories of the week was a successful smear campaign waged by Alan Dershowitz and the Zionist lobby resulting in noted scholar and author Norman Finkelstein being denied tenure at DePaul University. The distinguished historian Raul Hilberg spoke for many in admitting to “a sinking feeling about the damage this will do to academic freedom.”

One might think that this story would be a natural for inclusion in “McCarthyism Watch”, a regular weekly feature on the Progressive Magazine website presided over by Progressive editor Matt Rothschild.

It won’t be.

That’s because of the minor but not insignificant role which Rothschild and Progressive columnist Ruth Conniff played in fueling the witch hunt.

A year ago, Finkelstein’s name came up on a Madison talk show where Conniff was appearing as a guest. Conniff shocked many listeners by describing Finkelstein as “a Holocaust denier” and a “celebrity in a certain, a pretty ugly anti-semitic group in the country.” Finkelstein protested demanding a retraction from Conniff’s editor, fearing that a respected publication’s denigration of his character could influence his upcoming tenure decision. Rothschild responded by reasserting the correctness of Conniff’s charges, citing in support canards circulated by Finkelstein’s chief antagonist, Dershowitz.

Since the DePaul administration’s deliberations were conducted in secret, it is not known whether Finkelstein’s fears materialized. It is not unreasonable to assume that Conniff’s slanders and Rothschild’s defense of them sent a clear signal that Finkelstein was fair game who could not count on the support even on the left fringes of the mainstream.

And indeed, there was one organ of progressive opinion which was silent on the Finkelstein case this week.
Rothschild is fond of citing Martin Niemoller’s adage of what happens when we don’t speak up when they come for others.

Like too many liberals, both now and in the Weimar Republic, one can always count on Rothschild and the Progressive for a howl of outrage.

Except when it matters.

John Halle is Director of Studies in Music Theory and Practice at Bard College. He can be reached at: halle@bard.edu

Source: CounterPunch
http://www.counterpunch.com/halle06162007.html