Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s spokesman denounces ‘propaganda and bias’

Link to ‘The Guardian’ video

Israel refused to accept the findings of a highly critical UN inquiry into the Gaza war and said today it would launch a diplomatic offensive to prevent any risk of prosecutions.

No independent inquiry into the military’s conduct during the war last January would be held, a clear rejection of one primary recommendation from the UN report.

The inquiry, headed by a former South African judge, Richard Goldstone, delivered a detailed and damning criticism of the war, accusing both Israel and armed Palestinian groups, notably Hamas, of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity. It was by far the most serious international inquiry into the three-week war, which left 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis dead and which triggered a wave of criticism across the world.

“This report was conceived in sin and is the product of a union between propaganda and bias,” said Mark Regev, spokesman for the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu. “Israel is a country with a fiercely independent judiciary … Everything done by the military in Israel is open to judicial review by the independent judiciary.”

Israel had refused to co-operate with the inquiry, not letting the team enter Israel or the occupied West Bank. It said the UN human rights council, which commissioned the inquiry, was biased against Israel.

“The mandate was biased from the beginning and it would have been a mistake to give credibility to a mission that has more in common with a kangaroo court than it does with a serious investigation,” Regev said.

For its part, Hamas also rejected the criticism. “The Palestinian people and the Palestinian resistance were in a position of self-defence and not of attack. One cannot compare the simple capabilities of the resistance with the great strength of the occupation,” said Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas leader and former Palestinian prime minister.

After the inquiry was published yesterday evening, a legal team from Israel’s foreign ministry met with other government officials to prepare an analysis of the UN report. Netanyahu reportedly held meetings into the night on the impact of the findings.

Israel is concerned that, when the UN human rights council discusses the report later this month, it could agree to pass it to the UN security council. The security council could then decide to pass the findings on to the international criminal court, where arrest warrants could be issued ahead of prosecutions.

Israel’s deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon, who is on a visit to Washington, said he would meet the US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, to minimise the impact of the report before it reaches the UN security council. Other senior figures from the Israeli government are expected to begin a round of telephone calls with ministers from other governments, particularly the five permanent members of the security council, to head off any decision that might lead to prosecutions. The Ha’aretz newspaper said priority calls would go out to EU nations, in the hope of influencing the debate at the UN human rights council in Geneva.

Continue reading: THE GUARDIAN

When I heard the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) was holding a celebratory “spotlight” on Tel Aviv, I felt ashamed of Toronto, the city where I live. I thought immediately of Mona Al Shawa, a Palestinian women’s rights activist I met on a recent trip to Gaza. “We had more hope during the attacks,” she told me. “At least then we believed things would change.”

Al Shawa explained that while Israeli bombs rained down last December and January, Gazans were glued to their TVs. What they saw, in addition to the carnage, was a world rising up in outrage: global protests, as many as 100,000 on the streets of London, a group of Jewish women in Toronto occupying the Israeli Consulate. “People called it war crimes,” Al Shawa recalled. “We felt we were not alone in the world.” If Gazans could just survive, it seemed that their suffering could be the catalyst for change.

But today, Al Shawa said, that hope is a bitter memory. The international outrage has evaporated. Gaza has vanished from the news. And it seems that all those deaths–as many as 1,400–were not enough to bring justice. Indeed, Israel is refusing to cooperate even with a UN fact-finding mission headed by respected South African judge Richard Goldstone.

Last spring, while Goldstone’s mission was in Gaza gathering devastating testimony, the Toronto International Film Festival was making the final selections for its Tel Aviv spotlight, timed for the Israeli city’s hundredth birthday. There are many who would have us believe that there is no connection between Israel’s desire to avoid scrutiny for its actions in the occupied territories and the glittering Toronto premieres. I am sure that Cameron Bailey, TIFF’s co-director, believes that himself. He is wrong.

Continue reading: THE NATION

One writer spent four years inside the world of modern-day slavery; an industry that produces huge profits and countless wasted lives.

The Israel Defense Forces discovered that there had been “irregularities” in the use of cluster munitions, even before the end of the recent Lebanon war, sources in the defense minister’s office said Monday. As a result of this information, Defense Minister Amir Peretz ordered an “extensive inquiry” into the use of these munitions before the war’s end.

Meanwhile, for the first time Monday, the IDF admitted targeting populated areas with cluster munitions. In a statement released by the IDF Spokesman’s Office, “the use of cluster munitions against built-up areas was done only against military targets where rocket launches against Israel were identified and after taking steps to warn the civilian population.”

The statements released by the minister’s office contradict Israel Defense Forces’ claims – made both during and after the war – regarding the use of cluster munitions.

One IDF version, which remained unchanged until earlier this week, held that the firing of cluster munitions was done in accordance with international law.

On Sunday it was announced that an investigating officer, Brigadier General Michel Ben-Baruch, who was appointed to examine the issue, found that in some cases cluster munitions were used contrary to the orders of Chief of Staff Dan Halutz.

(Continue reading: Haaretz)

A teacher was shot to death in northern Afghanistan after he gave a speech condemning suicide bombings, it was revealed today.

Abdul Hadi claimed the attacks were un-Islamic and un-Afghan during a speech yesterday in the Archi district of Kunduz province.

He spoke at a gathering of about 700 people, including the Kunduz governor, and was on his way home when he was killed, Khair Mohammad Subat said.

Kunduz police chief General Mohammad Ayub Salangi said police were investigating and that no arrests have been made so far.

(Continue reading: The Daily Mail)

Two investigative reports uncover the Bush administration’s efforts to suppress legal proceedings against high-ranking Chinese officials—former Trade Minister Bo Xilai and Beijing’s Olympic Organizing Committee President Liu Qi—accused of torturing religious group members.

A declaration Sunday by Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to pull his Mahdi Army fighters off the streets may help bring an end to the wave of violence that swept Baghdad and Shiite areas after the government launched a crackdown against militias in Basra.

That will ease the violence which has claimed more than 300 lives. But it won’t bring an end to the power struggle between Shiite parties that triggered the confrontation.

Nor will it ensure government control of Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city and headquarters of the vital oil industry.

And it could leave Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki politically weakened because he put his prestige on the line with promises to crush Basra’s “criminal gangs,” some of which he said were “worse than al-Qaida.”

The crackdown has already dragged the United States into a bloody inner-Shiite fight at a time when the U.S. administration would prefer to talk about success against Sunni extremists and to argue that Iraq is finally on the road to stability.

Instead, the bloody confrontation serves as a reality check about the situation in Iraq — even as the top U.S. officials in Baghdad prepare to brief a skeptical Congress for two days starting April 8 about prospects for bringing home the troops and leaving a relatively stable country behind.

President Bush called the Basra crisis “a defining moment” because the Maliki-led Iraqi government was finally taking on the Shiite militias.

But the crisis speaks volumes about the reality of Iraqi society and raises new questions about the effectiveness of the country’s leadership as America debates whether continuing the mission here is worth the sacrifice.

Iraqi and American officials portrayed the crackdown as a move to crush outlaw militias — some with close ties to Iran — that have effectively ruled the streets of the country’s second-largest city for nearly three years.

Many of those armed groups are without question deep into oil smuggling, extortion, murder and robbery.

But the picture is more complex. It involves deep-seated rivalries within the majority Shiite community.

Numerous other militias and armed groups operate in Basra and elsewhere in the south — some with close ties to political parties in the national and provincial governments.

All signs indicate that the crackdown was directed primarily at the Mahdi Army, the armed wing of al-Sadr’s political movement.

The Sadrists believe the goal was to weaken their movement before provincial elections this fall. Al-Sadr’s followers expect to make major gains in the regional voting at the expense of al-Maliki’s Shiite partners in the government.

That points to a significant difference between the Shiite crisis and the war against Sunni insurgents. Al-Qaida has been severely weakened because it lost much of its support within the Sunni community.

By contrast, al-Sadr’s movement commands a wide following especially among impoverished Shiites who feel estranged from Shiite parties that appeal more to the better-educated urban classes.

For months, al-Sadr and other Shiite parties have been locked in a bitter power struggle for control of the Shiite south — which contains the bulk of the country’s proven oil reserves as well as major religious shrines that attract millions of pilgrims.

Last August, al-Sadr proclaimed a unilateral cease-fire nationwide in an effort to reorganize the force and rein in factions that had branched out into crime.

U.S. commanders acknowledge that truce helped bring down violence in Baghdad.

Nonetheless, U.S. and Iraqi forces continued to chip away at the Sadrists with raids and arrests in Baghdad and elsewhere. American officials insist the target was not al-Sadr’s movement but Iranian-backed renegades who did not abide by al-Sadr’s cease-fire.

Al-Sadr’s followers didn’t see it that way.

Once the crackdown began in Basra, they rose up all over the Shiite heartland, launching rockets into the U.S.-protected Green Zone in Baghdad, firing on American patrols, burning offices of al-Maliki’s political party and attacking government installations.

The fact that al-Maliki apparently miscalculated the response casts doubt on his judgment and raises serious questions about his commitment to the U.S. goal of national reconciliation.

Despite the Mahdi Army’s unsavory image, a number of key U.S. commanders and officials here have long maintained that it is a mistake to demonize the entire Sadrist movement, which enjoys a substantial following among millions of Iraqi Shiites.

It would be a mistake to assume that U.S. goals and al-Maliki’s goals are fully aligned, said Middle East expert Jon Alterman.

“Our (the U.S.) preference is for many voices to be reflected in whatever Iraqi government emerges from five years of conflict,” Alterman said. But, “al-Maliki is playing a long-term game for all the marbles.”

The Basra confrontation also served as a test for the U.S.-trained Iraqi security forces, which are majority Shiite and include many al-Sadr supporters.

In the campaign’s first days, Iraqi forces made little headway against Mahdi fighters, who unleashed rocket-propelled grenades and machine gun fire every time government troops tried to enter their neighborhoods.

The headquarters of the Iraqi army’s Basra operation has come under fire regularly since the fighting began. Iraqi commanders have had to turn to the British and American warplanes to take out militia fighters blocking their advance.

At least a dozen police, including some elite commandos, defected to the Sadrists in Baghdad. AP Television News video showed Mahdi fighters in Basra unloading weapons from an Iraqi army vehicle.

The vehicle didn’t have a scratch on it, suggesting it was either abandoned by the Iraqi soldiers or delivered to the Mahdi Army.

//associated press//

The Marine Corps yesterday dismissed all charges against one of the Marines accused of killing women and children in the Iraqi town of Haditha in late 2005, the third time a Marine linked to the slayings has been exonerated after one of the most notorious episodes of the war.

Lance Cpl. Stephen B. Tatum, who has admitted shooting civilians inside their homes as part of a pursuit of insurgents, was cleared and granted immunity to testify in further hearings related to the investigation. The move leaves only Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich to face charges in connection with the shootings on Nov. 19, 2005. As many as two dozen civilians were killed that day after a roadside bomb hit the Marines’ convoy and killed a member of their unit.

Tatum’s trial was slated to begin yesterday at Camp Pendleton in California, but Marine Corps officials announced that his charges were dismissed “in order to continue to pursue the truth-seeking process into the Haditha incident.” Tatum’s lawyers said the decision was made as they were preparing for the case to go to trial.

Tatum had been charged with involuntary manslaughter, reckless endangerment and aggravated assault. He was one of four Marines charged in the killings after investigators found that they entered homes and killed unarmed women and small children, some of whom were in their pajamas and lying on a bed.

Although the Marines were at first accused of going on a rampage, the case has evolved into a far more complex examination of the Corps’ rules of engagement and the general conduct of wartime operations in hostile residential areas.

Officials close to the Haditha case said they think prosecutors dismissed the charges in order to pursue Wuterich aggressively at trial. The cases against three of the Marines accused of shooting civilians have fallen apart, and Wuterich remains the only one left for prosecutors to target for accountability. Wuterich led the Marine squad and allegedly told his troops, as they approached a group of civilian homes that day, to shoot first and ask questions later.

Jack Zimmermann, a civilian lawyer who represents Tatum, said yesterday that his client will testify if called as a witness but emphasized that no deal was struck in exchange for his testimony. Tatum’s statements to investigators place Wuterich in the homes and indicate that Wuterich was shooting at civilians, and that Tatum followed suit. Wuterich’s lawyers have disputed that account.

“Lance Corporal Tatum wants to make it clear that he’s not a witness against Wuterich, that he’s going to say what he saw,” Zimmermann said. “He responded to an attack the way he was trained to do. He was following his training. We wish this dismissal had occurred months earlier, but this is the right result.”

Lt. Col. Paul J. Ware, an investigating officer in the case, recommended last year that Tatum not face any charges after finding that he shot people in the houses because Wuterich was doing so. Ware said that although the deaths were regrettable, it is only in hindsight that Tatum’s actions can be judged inappropriate.

“LCpl Tatum shot and killed people in houses 1 and 2, but the reason he did so was because of his training and the circumstances he was placed in, not to exact revenge and commit murder,” Ware wrote in August. Lt. Gen. James T. Mattis went against the recommendation and sent the case to trial.

Marine officials declined to comment on the dismissal ordered by Lt. Gen. Samuel T. Helland, who took over command of I Marine Expeditionary Forces after Mattis was promoted.

So far, three Marines with Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines have been cleared, including Tatum, and Wuterich is the only one left to face charges directly relating to the shootings. Two Marine officers are facing charges related to the aftermath of the incident, allegedly either interfering with the investigation or failing to properly investigate the slayings.

Wuterich’s trial was slated to begin March 4 but has been delayed. No new date has been set.

Mark Zaid, a civilian lawyer who represents Wuterich, said that he looks forward to hearing Tatum’s testimony and that he hopes it will clarify some events.

“The dismissal of Tatum’s charges is yet another indication that there was a rush to judgment concerning the events of that day,” Zaid said. “I don’t know if we’re ever going to see or truly know exactly what happened, but I can say that there’s an argument to be made that the prosecution of these young Marines has caused more damage to our country’s reputation than the event itself.”

//washington post//

China accused the Dalai Lama on Sunday of stoking Tibetan unrest to sabotage the Beijing Olympics and also berated House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, saying she is ignoring the truth about Tibet.

This month’s violence in Tibet and neighboring provinces has turned into a public relations disaster for China ahead of the August Olympics, which it had been hoping to use to bolster its international image.

The Chinese government said through official media that formerly restive areas were under control and accused the Dalai Lama, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, of trying to harm China’s image ahead of the summer games.

“The Dalai clique is scheming to take the Beijing Olympics hostage to force the Chinese government to make concessions to Tibet independence,” said the People’s Daily, the main mouthpiece of the Communist Party.

The Tibetan spiritual leader called the accusations against him “baseless,” asserting that he supported China’s hosting of the summer games.

“I always support (that) the Olympics should … take place in Beijing … so that more than 1 billion human beings, that means Chinese, they feel proud of it,” he said Sunday in New Delhi, India.

Pelosi’s visit to the Dalai Lama in Dharmsala, India, on Friday was the first by a major foreign official since the protests broke out. The Democratic leader said if people don’t speak out against China’s oppression in Tibet, “we have lost all moral authority to speak on behalf of human rights anywhere in the world.”

China’s official Xinhua New Agency published commentary Sunday accusing Pelosi of ignoring the violence caused by the Tibetan rioters.

“‘Human rights police’ like Pelosi are habitually bad tempered and ungenerous when it comes to China, refusing to check their facts and find out the truth of the case,” it said.

“Her views are like so many other politicians and western media. Beneath the double standards lies their intention to serve the interest groups behind them, who want to contain or smear China,” it said.

Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill said Sunday that Pelosi condemns the Chinese government’s crackdown in Tibet and calls on it “to begin a substantive dialogue and to allow journalists and independent monitors into Tibet to find out the truth.”

China’s reported death toll from the protests in the Tibetan capital Lhasa earlier this month is 22. Tibet’s exiled government says 99 Tibetans have been killed.

Xinhua said Sunday that 94 people had been injured in four counties and one city in Gansu province in riots on March 15-16. The report also said 19 rioters had surrendered in Gannan, a prefecture in Gansu, but it did not give any details.

Despite the media restrictions imposed by the Chinese government, some information was leaking out. An American backpacker who traveled to Chengdu, the capital of western Sichuan province, said he had seen soldiers or paramilitary troops in Deqen in northwest Yunnan province, which borders Tibet.

“What was an empty parking lot by the library was full of military trucks and people practicing with shields. I saw hundreds of soldiers,” said the backpacker, who would give only his first name, Ralpha.

There have been no reported protests in Yunnan.

Monks at the Gedan Song Zan Monastery outside of Zhongdian in northwest Yunnan prayed Sunday for peace and an end to the recent unrest among ethnic Tibetan populations in China. The monks, who characterized themselves as both Tibetan and Chinese, said they felt that the upheaval and riots had helped no one.

The government has insisted that stability has returned to the troubled areas. State broadcaster China Central Television said Sunday that electricity and telecommunications had been restored in Lhasa.

The official lighting of the Olympic torch is set for Monday in Greece, and some 1,000 police will surround Ancient Olympia to keep away pro-Tibetan protesters from the ceremony. The torch is scheduled to travel through 20 countries before the Beijing Olympics open on Aug. 8.

One of Thailand’s six torchbearers withdrew Sunday in protest. Environmentalist Narisa Chakrabongse said in an open letter that she decided against taking part in the relay to “send a strong message to China that the world community could not accept its actions.”

Meanwhile, a group hosting the Dalai Lama’s visit to Germany May 14-20 said Sunday that the trip was still scheduled to take place. The trip is to include meetings between the Dalai Lama and various German state leaders.

//associated press//

The most important thing to keep in mind  is that tension between China and Tibet has been building for decades.  On one side you have the

Comment by Jamie Metzl, Executive Vice President, Asia Society

Chinese increasing their efforts to fully integrate Tibet into China, while on the other side Tibetans are pushing for meaningful cultural and religious autonomy under Chinese rule. The upcoming Beijing Olympics are creating a platform where the Tibetans may feel more emboldened in making their claims, while the Chinese feel that they need to limit dissent and promote peace and stability.

We don’t know how these protest are going to end. Certainly the Dalai Lama has made a strong commitment to non violence and I have every expectation that commitment will be maintained. The Dalai Lama  has also expressed his desire for Tibet to remain part of China, but with greater autonomy. To date the Chinese have been hesitant to yield to the demands of the Tibet exile movement for things such as the Dalai Lama’s return to Lhasa.

//google//

Garret Reppenhagen received integral training about the Geneva Conventions and the rules of engagement during his deployment in Kosovo. But in Iraq, “much of this was thrown out the window,” he says.

“The men I served with are professionals,” Reppenhagen told the audience at a panel of U.S. veterans speaking of their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan. “They went to Iraq to defend the U.S. But we found rapidly we were killing Iraqis in horrible ways. But we had to in order to remain safe ourselves. The war is the atrocity.”

The event, which has drawn international media attention, was organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War. It aims to show that their stories of wrongdoing in both countries were not isolated incidents limited to a few “bad apples,” as the Pentagon claims, but were everyday occurrences.

The panel on the “Rules of Engagement” (ROE) during the first full day of the gathering, named “Winter Soldier” to honor a similar gathering 30 years ago of veterans of the Vietnam War, was held in front of a visibly moved audience of several hundred, including veterans from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam. Winter soldiers, according to U.S. founding father Thomas Paine, are the people who stand up for the soul of their country, even in its darkest hours.

Reppenhagen served in Iraq from February 2004-2005 in the city of Baquba, 25 mi. northeast of Baghdad. He said his first experience in Iraq was being on a patrol that killed two Iraqi farmers as they worked in their field at night.

“I was told they were out in the fields farming because their pumps only operated with electricity, which meant they had to go out in the dark when there was electricity,” he explained. “I asked the sergeant, if he knew this, why did he fire on the men. He told me because the men were out after curfew. I was never given another ROE during my time in Iraq.”

Another veteran of the occupation of Iraq on the panel was Vincent Emmanuel. He served in the Marines near the northern Iraqi city of al-Qaim during 2004-2005. Emmanuel explained that “taking potshots at cars that drove by” happened all the time, and “these were not isolated incidents.”

Emmanuel continued: “We took fire while trying to blow up a bridge. Many of the attackers were part of the general population. This led to our squad shooting at everything and anything in order to push through the town. I remember myself emptying magazines into the town, never identifying a target.”

As other panelists nodded in agreement, Emmanuel spoke of abusing prisoners who he knew were innocent, adding, “We took it upon ourselves to harass them, and took them to the desert to throw them out of our Humvees, while kicking and punching them when we threw them out.”

Two other soldiers testified about planting weapons or shovels on civilians they had accidentally shot, to justify the killings by implying the dead were fighters or people attempting to plant roadside bombs.

Jason Washburn was a corporal in the Marines and served three tours in Iraq, his last in Haditha from 2005-2006.

“We were encouraged to bring ‘drop weapons’ or shovels, in case we accidentally shot a civilian, we could drop the weapon on the body and pretend they were an insurgent,” he said. “By the third tour, if they were carrying a shovel or bag, we could shoot them. So we carried these tools and weapons in our vehicles, so we could toss them on civilians when we shot them. This was commonly encouraged.”

Washburn explained that his ROE changed “a lot.”

“The higher the threat level, the more viciously we were told to respond. We had towns that were deemed ‘free-fire zones.’ One time there was a mayor of a town near Haditha that got shot up. We were shown this as an example because there was a nice tight shot group on the windshield, and told that was a good job, that was what Marines were supposed to do. And that was the mayor of the town.”

Jason Wayne Lemue is a Marine who served three tours in Iraq.

“My commander told me, ‘Kill those who need to be killed, and save those who need to be saved,’ that was our mission on our first tour,” he said of his first deployment during the invasion nearly five years ago.

Lemue continued, “After that, the ROE changed, and carrying a shovel, or standing on a rooftop talking on a cell phone, or being out after curfew [meant the people] were to be killed. I can’t tell you how many people died because of this. By my third tour, we were told to just shoot people, and the officers would take care of us.”

John Michael Turner served two tours in the Marines as a machine gunner in Iraq. Visibly upset, he told the audience, “I was taught as a Marine to eat the apple to the core.” Turner then pulled his military metals off his shirt and threw them on the ground.

“April 18, 2006, was the date of my first confirmed kill,” he said somberly. “He was innocent, I called him the fat man. He was walking back to his house, and I killed him in front of his father and friend. My first shot made him scream and look into my eyes, so I looked at my friend and said, ‘Well, I can’t let that happen,’ and shot him again. After my first kill I was congratulated.”

Turner explained one reason why establishment media reporting about the occupation in the U.S. has been largely sanitized. “Anytime we had embedded reporters, our actions changed drastically,” he explained. “We did everything by the books, and were very low-key.”

To conclude, an emotional Turner said, “I want to say I’m sorry for the hate and destruction that I and others have inflicted on innocent people. It is not okay, and this is happening, and until people hear what is going on this is going to continue. I am no longer the monster that I once was.”

//antiwar.com//

Attacks all over the planet by U.S. Predator planes suggest Bush thinks he has the “right” to kill civilians.

Imagine, for a moment, that you live in a small town somewhere near the Southern California coast. You’re going about your daily life, trying to scrape by in hard times, when the missile hits. It might have come from the Iranian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) — its pilot at a base on the outskirts of Tehran — that has had the village in its sights for the last six hours or from the Russian sub stationed just off the coast. In either case, it’s devastating.

In Moscow and Tehran, officials announce that, in a joint action, they have launched the missile as part of a carefully coordinated “surgical” operation to take out a “known terrorist,” a long-term danger to their national security. A Kremlin spokesman offers the following statement:

“As we have repeatedly said, we will continue to pursue terrorist activities and their operations wherever we may find them. We share common goals with respect to fighting terrorism. We will continue to seek out, identify, capture and, if necessary, kill terrorists where they plan their activities, carry out their operations or seek safe harbor.”

A family in a ramshackle house just down the street from you — he’s a carpenter; she works at the local Dairy Queen — are killed along with their pets. Their son is seriously wounded, their home blown to smithereens. Neighbors passing by as the missile hits are also wounded.

As it happens, there are no terrorists in the vicinity. Outraged, you organize your neighbors and march angrily in protest through the town, shouting anti-Russian, anti-Iranian slogans. But, of course, there is nothing you can really do. Iran and Russia are far away, their weaponry powerful, your arms nonexistent. The state of California is incapable of protecting you. This is, in fact, at least the fourth time in recent months that a “terrorist” has been declared “taken out” from the air or by a ship-based cruise missile, when only innocent Californians have died.

As news of the “collateral damage” from the botched operation dribbles out, the Russian and Iranian media pay next to no attention. There are no outraged editorials. Official spokesmen see no need to comment further. No one is held responsible and no promises are made in either Tehran or Moscow that similar assassination strikes won’t be launched in the near future, based on “actionable intelligence,” possibly even on the same town. In fact, the next day, seeing UAVs once again soaring overhead, you load your pick-up and prepare to flee.

Swatting Flies in Somalia

Philip K. Dick meet George W. Bush. When it comes to such a thing happening in the United States, we are, of course, at the wildest frontiers of science fiction. The U.S. is a sovereign nation. We guard our air space and coastal waters jealously. Any country violating them for purposes of aggressive action, no less by launching a missile against an American town, would be committing an act of war and would certainly be treated accordingly.

If, somehow, such an event did occur, it would be denounced in Washington and on editorial pages across the country as a shocking contravention of international legal conventions and a crime of war unless, of course, we did it in a country where sovereignty has been declared meaningless.

In fact, an almost exact replica of the above fictional incident — at least the fourth of its kind in recent months — did indeed take place at the beginning of March in the embattled failed state of Somalia. (For that country’s most recent abysmal collapse, the Bush administration, via an invasion by Ethiopian proxy forces, can take significant credit.) One or two houses in Dobley, a Somali town, were hit, possibly by two submarine-launched Tomahawk Cruise missiles in what a U.S. official termed “a deliberate strike against a suspected bed-down of known terrorists.”

The missiles were evidently meant for Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, an al-Qaedan suspect in the bloody bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. He was, however, not in Dobley, despite the “actionable intelligence” on hand. Accounts of the dead and wounded in the town vary. One report claimed only wounded Somalis (and two dead cows); most spoke of anywhere from four to ten dead civilians. Local district Commissioner Ali Nur Ali Dherre told CNN that three women and three children had been killed and another 20 people wounded. While a “U.S. military official said the United States is still collecting post-strike information and is not yet able to confirm any casualties. He described [the] strike as ‘very deliberate’ and said forces tried to use caution to avoid hitting civilians.”

For the dead Somalis, not suprisingly, we have no names. In stories like this, the dead are regularly nobodies and, though the townspeople of Dobley did indeed march angrily in protest yelling anti-American slogans, just about no one noticed.

In our world, only the normal smattering of small news reports dealt with this modest sidebar in the President’s Global War on Terror (GWOT). On the GWOT scorecard — if you remember, for a long time George Bush kept “his own personal scorecard” of top terror suspects in a desk drawer in the Oval Office, crossing off al-Qaedan figures as U.S. forces took them down — this operation hardly registered. One terrorist missed, and not for the first time, possibly a few dead peasants in some god-forsaken land. Please, move on

In a recent Pentagon briefing for reporters featuring Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Michael Mullen, who had just returned from a trip to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, 4,500 words of back-and-forth were interrupted by this question from a reporter:

“Secretary Gates, the strike on Somalia two days ago — did the missiles that were fired — did they strike their target? And was the target Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan? Do you have a report back from the field? And Admiral Mullen, what message did you give to President Musharraf, and why did you meet with him?”

Gates responded to the Somali part of the question in eight words: “You know we don’t talk about military operations.” He might have added: …unless they’re successful.

That was evidently all that the incident and its minor “collateral damage” deserved in such a global war. So Gates and Mullen moved on immediately. So many matters more important than a single “decapitation” strike that didn’t succeed to consider.

The Decapitation Strike as Global Policy

Minor as that Somali mis-strike might seem, this is not, in fact, a small matter. Think of that strike and the many like it around the world over these last years as reflections of George Bush’s post-9/11 update of globalization. After all, the most basic principle of his Global War on Terror has been the erasure of global boundaries and whatever international agreements about war-making might go with them.

Across the Islamic world, in particular, boundaries simply no longer matter. In fact, in such regions no aspect of sovereignty can now constrain a U.S. president from acting as he pleases in pursuit of whatever he may personally define as American interests.

“Assassinations by air” are, writes David Case in Mother Jones magazine, “a relatively new tactic in warfare.” By the beginning of 2006, however, U.S. Predator drones “bearing Hellfire missiles — the preferred weapon in decapitation [strikes] — had already hit ‘terrorist suspects overseas’ at least 19 times since 9/11.” Such strikes and other similar operations by air, land, and sea have been a crucial follow-on to the Bush administration’s proclamations, immediately after 9/11, that there would be no “safe havens” for terrorists on the planet, nor safety for those countries which housed them, inadvertently or otherwise. Within days of the destruction of the World Trade Center towers, Bush administration officials were already identifying up to 60 countries-cum-targets.

This aspect of the Bush Doctrine, of what the President likes to call staying “on the offensive,” when mixed with a couple of decades of “advances” in air warfare, including the development of sophisticated, missile-armed drones, “smart bombs,” “precision-guided munitions,” and the like, has resulted in a lethal globalizing brew of assassination and destruction. It recognizes neither boundaries, nor sovereignty across much of the planet. With all its “actionable” possibilities, it will surely be with us long after George W. Bush has left office.

Of course, those few nameless dead or wounded Somali civilians — swatted like so many flies and forgotten as quickly as flies would be — don’t faintly match up against the “dozens” of Iraqi civilian deaths that, according to Human Rights Watch, were caused by 50 decapitation strikes launched against the top officials of Saddam Hussein’s regime back in March 2003. (Not a single official was harmed.) Nor do they quite make it into the company of the “Afghan elders” being taken to President Hamid Karzai’s inauguration back in 2001, who were mistaken “for a Taliban group” and bombed, with 20 killed; nor the 30 or more guests at an Afghan wedding party back in 2002 blown away by 2,000-pound bombs after celebratory gunfire was evidently mistaken for an attack (no apologies offered); nor that wedding party in the Western desert of Iraq near the Syrian border wiped out in 2004 with 42 deaths, including 27 in one extended family, 14 children in all. They were, of course, taken for terrorists. (As U.S. Major General James Mathis put the matter in offering an explanation: “How many people go to the middle of the desert… to hold a wedding 80 miles from the nearest civilization?”) And these are just a few prominent cases, not including the civilians killed in periodic Predator and other strikes in Pakistani border areas, in Afghanistan, and elsewhere whom no fuss is ever made about — not here, anyway.

After all, there’s always going to be “collateral damage” when you keep your eye — and your 2,000-pound bomb or Hellfire missile — focused on the prize.

The “Right” to Kill Civilians

Remember back in the 1990s, when the glories of an economically borderless world were being limned? Just after September 11, 2001, the Bush administration proudly declared us to be in a far darker world without borders (except, of course, when it came to our own). In this new world, whether we knew it or not, whether we cared or not, we granted our highest officials — specifically our military and intelligence services — the full powers of prosecutor, defense counsel, judge, jury, and executioner, as well as the right to report on such events only to the extent, and as, they wished. This was the sort of power that monotheistic religions normally granted to an all-powerful god, that kingdoms generally left to absolute rulers, and that dictators have always tried to take for themselves (though just, of course, in the domains under their control).

Our domain, it seems, is now much of the globe, when it comes to the bloody work of assassinating individuals via bombs or missiles that, however precise, surgical, and smart, are weapons meant to kill en masse and largely without discrimination.

There are still limits of sorts on such actions. These put bluntly — though no one is likely to say this — are the limits imposed, in part, by racism, by gradations, however unspoken, in the global value given to a human life.

The Bush administration has, so far, only been willing to carry out “decapitation” strikes in countries where human life is, by implication, of less or little value. It has yet to carry one out in London or Hamburg or Tokyo or Moscow or the Chinese countryside, even though “terrorist suspects” abound everywhere, even (as with the Anthrax attacks of 2001) in our own country. On the other hand, given the impetus of this kind of globalization, who knows when such a strike might come. After all, the CIA has already carried out clearly illegal, sovereignty-violating “extraordinary rendition” operations (kidnappings of terror suspects) on the streets of European cities.

In this country, we still theoretically venerate the sovereign self (“the individual”) and that self’s right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Despite George Bush’s “Freedom Agenda,” however, the sovereignty, not to say the life, liberty, and happiness of other peoples, individually or collectively, have not really been much on our minds these last years. Our freedom of action, our safety, has been the only freedom, the only “security,” to which we have attached much global value. And don’t for a second think that, when the “actionable intelligence” comes in to John McCain’s, Hillary Clinton’s, or Barack Obama’s Oval Office, those Predators won’t be soaring or those cruise missiles leaving subs lurking off some coast — and that innocent civilians elsewhere won’t continue to die.

In places like Somalia, we deliver death, and every now and then an American bomb or missile actually obliterates a terrorist suspect. Then we celebrate. The rest of time, it’s hardly even news. When the deeper principle behind such global strikes is mentioned in our papers, in some passing paragraph, it’s done — as in a recent Washington Post article about a Predator strike, piloted from Nevada, that killed a suspected “senior al-Qaeda commander” in Pakistan — in this polite way: “Independent actions by U.S. military forces on another country’s sovereign territory are always controversial” (Imagine the language that the Washington Post would use, if that had been a Pakistani drone strike in Utah.)

This version of globalization is already so much the norm of our world that few here even blink an eye when it’s reported, or consider it even slightly strange. It’s already an American right. In the meantime, other people, who obviously don’t rise to the level of our humanity, regularly die.

And here’s the thing: In our world, there is a chasm that can never be breached between, say, a Sunni extremist clothed in a suicide vest who walks into a market in Baghdad with the barbaric intent of killing as many Shiite civilians as possible, and an air or missile attack, done in the name of American “security” and aimed at a “known terrorist,” that just happens to — repeatedly — kill innocent civilians. And yet, what if you know before you launch your attack, as American planners certainly must, that the odds are innocents (and probably no one else) will die?

Not so long ago in the United States, presidentially sanctioned assassinations abroad were illegal. But that was then, this is so now. Nonetheless, it’s a fact that the “right” to missile, bomb, shell, “decapitate,” or assassinate those we declare to be our enemies, without regard to borders or sovereignty, is based on nothing more than the power to do it. This is simply the “right” of force (and of technology). If the tables were turned, any American would recognize such acts for the barbarism they represent.

And yet, late last week, like clockwork, the Associated Press brought us the latest notice: “In Afghanistan, a spokesman for the American-led coalition said troops had used ‘precision-guided munitions’ to strike a compound about a mile inside Pakistan…” This operation was, as they all are, said to be based on “reliable intelligence”; in this case, “senior” Taliban commanders were said to be in residence.

As it happened, according to the Pakistani military and the AP reporter who made it to Tangrai, a village of about forty houses, the residence hit was that of “Noor Khan, a greengrocer who said the house was his family home.” The AP reporter added that “only one of its four walls was standing amid a tangle of mud bricks, bedding and cooking pots.” And Noor Khan, who was quoted saying, “We are innocent, we have nothing to do with such things,” claimed that six of his relatives, four women and two boys, had been killed. (The Pakistani military, on investigating, reported that two women and two children had died.)

This was but the latest minor decapitation strike, and — we can be sure of this — not the last. Philip K. Dick move over. We’re already in your future.

[Note: Let me strongly recommend David Case's article, "The U.S. Military's Assassination Problem," in the March/April issue of Mother Jones magazine, quoted in the above piece. A well researched, thoughtful, and rare discussion of what we know about the Bush administration's global assassination campaign from the air, it is an accomplishment. I have relied on it in writing this essay.]

Tom Engelhardt, editor of Tomdispatch.com, is co-founder of the American Empire Project and author of The End of Victory Culture.

//alternet//

The Five-Day War in GazaBy URI AVNERY

I was reminded this week of the old tale about a Jewish mother taking leave of her son, who has been called up to serve in the Czar’s army against the Turks.

Some years ago, President Bush called for a “Crusade” against terrorism. He had no idea that for hundreds of millions of Arabs, the word “Crusade” brings to mind one of the biggest crimes in human history, the appalling massacre committed by the original crusaders against the Muslims (and Jews) in the alleys of Jerusalem. In an intelligence contest between Bush and Vilnai, the outcome, if any, would be in doubt.

Vilnai does not understand what the word “Shoah” means to others, and Olmert does not understand why there is rejoicing in Gaza after the attack on the yeshiva in Jerusalem. Wise men like these direct the state, the government and the army. Wise men like these control public opinion through the media. What is common to all of them: blunted sensibilities to the feelings of anybody who is not Jewish/Israeli. From this springs their inability to understand the psychology of the other side, and hence the consequences of their own words and actions.

Why, for God’s sake? What have we done to them?

Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is a contributor to The Politics of Anti-Semitism.

//counterpunch//

In spite of escalating violence, a growing chorus of Israelis have begun calling for negotiations with Hamas.

Kevin Peraino

When paramedic Yerach Tucker arrived at the Mercaz Harav yeshiva in Jerusalem last Thursday night, gunshots were still cracking through the halls. As he inched closer to the front door, a stream of young men frantically poured out of the Jewish seminary, their shirts stained with blood. Tucker ducked behind a bus, waited for the shooting to stop, and then crept with his team through the front gates. Inside the school’s library, he found students lying slumped at their desks, heads collapsed over their books. “You couldn’t see the floor,” Tucker recalled. “It was covered in red.” Outside, news filtered through the growing crowd that militants in Gaza had celebrated the shooting with their own bursts of gunfire. “We bless the operation,” Hamas said in a statement. “It will not be the last.” Tucker looked on as an angry mob of ultra-Orthodox men broke into a roar and began to shout, “Death to the Arabs!”

With eight students dead and nine more wounded, the attack was Jerusalem’s worst in four years. Tucker, like most Israelis, says he hopes his military will hit back hard–even if it’s not clear whether the gunman, an Arab from East Jerusalem, was working on his own. Yet when it comes to longer-term policy toward the Islamists, the paramedic just sighs. “Hamas controls everything in Gaza–we can never finish them off,” he says. “They run the place. I don’t want to talk to terrorists, but what can you do? Eventually we’ll have to talk to them.” In the United States, the notion of face-to-face talks with Hamas, which the State Department classifies as a terrorist organization, has long been a political third rail. Yet in the Jewish state a growing chorus of security officials, academics and regular Israelis like Tucker have begun calling for negotiations with the Islamists. In a Haaretz-Dialog poll last month, 64 percent of Israelis said they supported direct talks; among those who belong to the country’s dovish Labor Party, 72 percent favor negotiations. Yet even among those surveyed from the hawkish Likud Party, almost half–48 percent–said they favor a face-to-face dialogue. Already in recent weeks, even as the two sides have traded some of the most ferocious bombardments in months, a number of nongovernmental channels have opened between Israelis and the Islamists.

The numbers are a reflection of the Israeli public’s growing frustration at what they see as a failing Gaza policy. Since the Islamists won power in parliamentary elections two years ago, Israel and the United States have enforced a punishing embargo on the coastal strip, hoping support for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his moderate West Bank allies could help turn public opinion against Hamas. Yet the Islamists have survived and learned to effectively play the spoiler, sabotaging Abbas’s peace talks with a few well-placed attacks. Israeli military raids into Gaza have similarly backfired. After Israeli troops killed more than 50 Palestinian civilians in Gaza operations last week, international public opinion turned sharply critical. “Hamas is not going to disappear,” says Shlomo Brom, a former Israeli military chief of strategic planning. “They’re not Al Qaeda; they’re a national political movement.” Brom, who favors indirect negotiations with Hamas, says he believes a dialogue could help moderate the Islamists. Damascus-based Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal told NEWSWEEK last year that his organization would also be open to direct talks, as long as there are no preconditions.

Yet the fragility of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s governing coalition makes any high-profile contacts unlikely. Yaron Ezrahi, a political scientist at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University who supports direct negotiations, says that there’s “a huge gap” between current Israeli policymakers and public opinion on the issue. Part of the problem is that Olmert, whose approval ratings are hovering in the single digits, depends on the support of right-wing parties like the Sephardic Orthodox Shas bloc to stay in power.

Rather than direct talks, the government has quietly blessed Egyptian efforts to arrange a ceasefire between the two sides. Abbas, too, is conflicted. He has refused to discuss a unity deal with Hamas, arguing that the Islamists took over Gaza illegally last June and must submit to his authority first. Any deal that excludes his Palestinian Authority may weaken Abbas’s standing among Palestinians, and his ability to continue longterm peace talks with the Israelis.

Even if Israel did choose to hold direct talks, there are a number of practical obstacles. The Hamas takeover of Gaza last June has sharply divided the Islamists, fracturing the organization into a number of independent power bases. “When you talk to Hamas you don’t have one address,” says a former Israeli intelligence operative who has held direct talks with the Islamists in the past, and requested anonymity before describing the sensitive talks. “You have to deal with several figures in order to achieve approval for anything.”

Israel has long held quiet, behind-the-scenes talks with key Hamas figures. The Jewish state still provides the vast majority of the West Bank’s electricity; after Hamas began winning local elections three years ago, Israeli officials sometimes had no choice but to talk with Islamic municipal officials over practical issues like utilities. Mohammad Ghayyada, the Hamas-affiliated mayor of the West Bank town of Nahalin, says that just last month he traveled to Israel to meet with electric-company officials after a blackout darkened his town. Israeli intelligence agencies have also long held talks with Hamas leaders in Israeli jails; since the Islamists seized power in Gaza last year, Israel has arrested more than 2,000 Hamas activists in the West Bank, according to the organization’s spokesman, Yazid Khader. Last summer, Ofer Dekel, a former officer in the Shin Bet intelligence agency responsible for the hunt for captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, traveled to Israel’s Haderim prison to meet with a group of jailed senior Hamas officials.

Still, Shalit’s case highlights the difficulties of any such talks. After indirect negotiations through Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman went nowhere, Shalit’s father, Noam, spoke several times by phone about the case with Gaza-based Hamas leader Ghazi Hamad. Those conversations have since stopped, but several months ago the senior Shalit retained a team of French lawyers to reach out to Hamas. One of them, Emmanuel Altit, told NEWSWEEK that he has made contact by phone with a number of Hamas factions in Gaza, including the hard-liners, and is trying to travel to Gaza to hold face-to-face talks. (The Israeli government, so far, has refused to issue Altit a permit.) “I really don’t care much about the politics,” says Noam Shalit. “My only interest is to resolve the issue of my son and bring him home. From my point of view, direct negotiations are the most effective. The two parties need to sit together. Hamas controls Gaza whether we like it or not.”

//newsweek//