Iraq

CBS News broadcasts an interview with a Norwegian physician on the scene in Gaza.

He says he has seen one military casualty come into the hospital. Of 2500 wounded, 50% are women and children. Doing surgery around the clock. There are injuries you do not want to see-- children coming in with open abdomens, with injured legs, we had to amputate both of them. This is a war on the civilian population of Gaza. It is a very young population. They cannot flee. They are fenced in. They are bombing one and a half million people in a cage.



Please write CBS News and thank them for their journalistic integrity in running this piece.

Casualty toll in Gaza as of Monday morning from the Mizan Center for Human Rights.

Apparently the Israeli military trained on this online video game.

Also please write your representative and senator, send this link, and demand that the US intervene diplomatically to stop this atrocity.
/End

The Israeli propaganda blitz around their attack on Gaza has been greeted with uncharacteristic skepticism by the American public and even by some of the mainstream US press. Even the Jewish American community is uneasy about this one, in a way perhaps unparalelled since the 1982 Israeli attack on Lebanon and siege of Beirut. Jews for Peace in Los Angeles are actively protesting the Gaza atrocities, and newspaper articles from around the US on local protests held this weekend often mention mixed Arab-American and Jewish-American rallies.

If it is true that Americans are greeting Israeli talking points with more criticism this time, is it because we have been intensively exposed for the past 8 years to precisely this sort of mental manipulation by Bush-Cheney and their stable of Neoconservatives?

Let's take some of the basic techniques of propaganda practiced by Bush and compare them to those deployed by the Israeli leadership in the past 8 days.

1. Deny it all.

Bushie Examples: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld denied that there was massive looting in Iraq during April of 2003, alleging that CNN had one tape of a guy stealing a vase and kept looping it over and over again. "How many vases can they have?" he asked. In mid-summer 2003, Rumsfeld denied that there was a guerrilla war in Iraq, even though Jamie McIntyre of CNN was able to quote the Pentagon definition of guerrilla war, and it fit Iraq. Rumsfeld just replied, "No."
Cont'd/

Then there was Bush's insistence that "Brownie" had done a "heckuva job" in New Orleans after Katrina.

Kadima Examples: When French President Sarkozy requested a two-day halt in Israeli air strikes so that humanitarian aid could reach ordinary Gazans, Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni replied, “there is no humanitarian crisis in the [Gaza] Strip and therefore there is no need for a humanitarian truce.” The UN and others involved in humanitarian work in Gaza do not agree:
' the UN agency insisted it was desperate to get supplies into the enclave."The military incursion compounds the humanitarian crisis following more than a week of shelling and an 18-month long blockade of the territory," the UN humanitarian coordinatory said in a daily report. There was an "almost total blackout" across most of Gaza and land and mobile phone networks were also down because they depend on backup generators which had no fuel, the report said. All Gaza City hospitals have been without mains electricity for 48 hours and now rely on backup generators which the UN said were "close to collapse." The report said that "for the second consecutive day Israeli authorities have refused to allow an ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) emergency medical team into Gaza" to help at the main Shifa hospital. The territory has been sealed off for more than two days. . . More than 510 Palestinians have already been killed in Israel's nine day old offensive on Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip, which on Saturday was intensified with the launch of a massive ground operation. The UN said the tank fire and air attacks were preventing medical staff reaching hospitals and ambulances could not get to injured "because of continuous fire." The World Food Programme has coordinated emergency food deliveries into Gaza in recent months but the Israeli army said there was plenty of food in Gaza warehouses and that the territory's Hamas rulers had halted distribution.'

In line with Livni's Big Lie, the Israeli army said with a straight face that the reason the World Food Program doesn't send food into Gaza is because its warehouses there are "full."

2. Pretend that your main concern is for your own victims

Bushie examples: They refused to say that they "invaded" or "conquered" Iraq, always using the word "liberation" when they spoke of their war of aggression. Bush was not invading and occupying Iraq, he was liberating the long-suffering Iraqis. Richard Perle even maintained that they would be "grateful" for being "liberated." I.e., we're doing this to you for your own good.

The Bushies renamed the Iraqi guerrilla resistance to the US "anti-Iraqi forces." They even managed to get some clueless CNN anchors to report that "anti-Iraqi forces attacked US troops in the Triangle of Death today." The implication was that the US military and its allies were the pro-Iraqi forces.

Kadima: Livni said, "But Hamas is not our problem alone; it is also a problem for all the Palestinians in the region." I.e., Israel is bombing and attacking Gaza on behalf of the Palestinians to secure their welfare.

3. Demonizing the opponent, ad hominem arguments

Bushies: "Axis of Evil" (courtesy Neocon David Frum). Bush called Saddam a "threat" even if he had no weapons!. Saddam was intrinsically dangerous, ontologically dangerous; his danger to the US could not be divorced from his very being in existence. (How silly this all is is easily demonstrated by the Reagan and first Bush administration's active alliance with . . . Saddam.)

Israeli pundit: Confronting the depths of Hamas's evil.

Hamas won the elections for the Palestine Authority in January 2006 and formed a government; yet Livni objects even to speaking of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, because Hamas, she says, is just a terrorist organization. (It has engaged in terrorist tactics, just as Livni has committed state terror on a large scale, as with dropping a million cluster bombs on civilian areas of south Lebanon; but Hamas isn't "just" a terrorist organization, or Livni's bombing of policemen and the ministry of interior in Gaza would make no sense; she thinks it was the government of Gaza, obviously. Hamas has engaged in diplomacy, has called truces, etc. It is made up of human beings, not demons.)

4. Repetition of simple slogans until they become accepted as true

Bushie examples: There are so many I don't know where to start. But the repeated innuendo that Saddam Hussein was operationally connection to the 9/11 al-Qaeda attacks on the US is the big example. The assertion that Iraq had "weapons of mass destruction" (itself a propaganda phrase intended to suggest nukes) was made over and over again, and Bush, Rice, andothers constantly used "mushroom cloud" and other nuclear imagery for Iraq.

Kadima: Israeli leaders have repeated over and over again that they "had no choice" but to attack Gaza. But of course they had a choice. They had negotiated before, they could have negotiated again. Assertions that the Palestinians walked away from the 2000 Camp David negotiations, that Israel is involved in a "peace process", that the colonies in the West Bank can't be moved back to Israel, all of these are constantly repeated.


5. Use of half-truths

Bushie examples: Bush would boast that 2/3s of the al-Qaeda leadership had been killed or captured, without mentioning that many in its upper echelons, like, oh, Osama Bin Laden had not. Or he slammed the Democrats who had voted against his illegal war of aggression as "not supporting liberation."

Kadima examples: Israelis point to thousands of rocket attacks by Hamas on Israel, without mentioning that no Israelis had been killed by them during the truce stretching from mid-June, 2008 until December 26. That is, the prelude to the most violent Israeli attack on Gaza since 1967 was . . . not a single Israeli death at the hands of Hamas in the preceding half-year. And in 8 years, Hamas had killed about 15 Israelis with those home made rockets, during which time the Israelis had killed nearly 5000 Palestinians, nearly 1000 of them minors. The rockets were small, handmade affairs for the most part and most landed uselessly. Some did damage to property and a few wounded or killed people. That would be a legitimate assertion. But the quotation of "thousands" of rockets is a half-truth and intentionally misleading.

Another half-truth is that Israel is involved in a "peace process" or supports Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, when in fact it has gone on stealing Palestinian land in the West Bank and making Palestinian lives miserable and colonizing them.

Then there are other techniques such as 6) appeal to fear and 7) appeal to prejudice. Apologists for the attack on Gaza depict Gazans as murderous, jihadi, homophobic, sharia-wielding fanatics, in a word, Muslims, and therefore of course their lives don't matter. Sound familiar?

Having been treated to these propaganda techniques repeatedly and continuously for 8 years, the US public can suddenly hear the similarity in the assertions of Israeli officialdom and its supporters.

Of course, the Neoconservatives had borrowed a lot of their techniques from the Jabotinsky/ Likud tradition of revisionist Zionism, so what goes around comes around.

By the way, since Tzipi Livni admitted Sunday that her government is resisting a diplomatic solution to Gaza and wants to keep the war going as long as possible, and that one impediment is "the pictures coming out of Gaza"-- i.e. of dead children and civilians and ordinary policemen, I'll just put in this link for those with a tough stomach. Not for the squeamish (and not an endorsement of the site). Here is another one; same caveats

Thanks to Lefty Coaster for the Kos Diary on yesterday's IC posting.

A little bit of irony from the British archives on Iraq.

"Muhammad al-Sadr, the President of the Senate, is believed to aspire one day to head a predominantly Shia Cabinet, but,though his name has been mentioned recently in political circles as a possible Prime Minister, the Sunni effendi element is unlikely ever to accept a Shiah 'alim as Prime Minister. It is also doubtful whether Muhammad al-Sadr could ever succeed in consolidating Shiah opinion behind him."

Basil Newton, British Ambassodor to Iraq/ Lord Halifax, Foreign Secretary, Baghdad, December 8, 1939
/End

Lawrence Davidson, author of Foreign Policy, Inc.: Privatizing America's National Interest, writes in a guest op-ed for IC:

Why is it that most Americans pay little attention to foreign policy? For instance, over the last eight years we have seen the awful consequences of foreign policies that support dictators, supply the weapons for war crimes against the Palestinian people, launch invasions of sovereign nations under false pretenses, and earn the United States the anger, bordering on hatred, of growing numbers of people around the globe? Yet there is no real outcry among Americans except for a small, if increasingly vocal, minority.

In a recently published book, Foreign Policy Inc: Privatizing American National Interest (University Press of Kentucky, 2009) I explain why most Americans disregard foreign policy (it is due to a phenomenon I call "natural localism") and examine the consequences of this long standing popular posture.
Cont'd


A major consequence of this disregard is that actual policy formulation has come under the influence of well organized and financed lobby groups which do have interests in foreign affairs. This is certainly the case as regards the Middle East. Here both Jewish Zionists and Christian fundamentalist Zionists have achieved ascendent influence over policy formulation toward Israel and the Palestinian territories and much of the rest of the region as well. Likewise, a neo-conservative interest group with strong ties to Israel, achieved command positions in the Defense and State Departments under the administration George W. Bush. Relative to these lobbies, the influence of oil interests is of only secondary importance. One can argue that as a result of this situation, there is no foreign policy reflecting genuine US national interests for this important part of the world. There has been, and continues to be, only the parochial goals of special interests which present their own aims to the public as "national interests."

The public’s inattention to foreign policy has inevitably led to a deep and persisting ignorance of the consequences of US foreign policy. The mainstream mass media, whose editors and reporters are themselves often biased in their perspectives and ignorant of the "facts on the ground," has helped perpetuate a myth that American foreign policy is mainly an altruistic effort to export our domestic ideals: democracy, modernity, development, etc. The long list of dictatorships that Washington has seen fit to subsidize and arm, the coups and right wing revolutions that the CIA has been involved in (sometimes aimed against democratically elected governments), the subordination of whole economies to the interests of US business concerns, the collusion of multiple US administrations in the destruction of Palestinian people, and other dubious policies have conveniently been overlooked by most of the media. Thus, when those abroad who resist US policies do damage to American lives and property, the vast majority of American citizens have no context to understand their behavior. They are easily convinced they are terrorists who simply "hate our values."

Yet the truth of the matter is that America’s policies in the Middle East have been lobby driven for at least the last 60 years. And, unbeknownst to the general public, they helped create the historical context for the September 11, 2001 attacks. Then, the response of the Bush administration to that attack went on to made things much worse for the US. There are more than a billion Muslims in the world and a growing number of them are now seriously angry at America. There are over 300 million Arabs and many of them are willing to materially support those who stand up against the US and its ally Israel. These vast numbers represent the sea in which our country’s adversaries now swim. The US has not the manpower, the intelligence capacity, nor the staying power to fight and defeat all the various organizations that have and will arise to confront us. Keep in mind that these will not be regular armies, but will be guerrilla operations and clandestine groups who, as we have seen, are already capable of doing us great damage both in their own part of the world and here in America.

Under the circumstances, it is in the interest of all Americans that there be a thorough policy review of past and present foreign policy efforts in the Middle East. This should be done with transparency and include a national public debate on just what are our national interests in that part of the world. If oil is one of them, is it also in the national interest to use force to control that resource at its source? Is Israel really a country important to the United States, or just important to certain powerful but parochial special interests? And, what has truly been the results of Israel’s US subsidized policies toward the Palestinians? Finally, is it an offense warranting impeachment when the president lies, misleads, distorts information and then sends American troops to their deaths based on that presentation? These issues are important to all Americans. They deserve to be publically aired. Progressives should demand these subjects be taken up at all levels of government from town and county councils on up. Media outlets should be picketed with demands for open debate on foreign policy. And, most importantly, Americans should insist that the incoming Democratic administration promote the necessary public debate on national interests and foreign policy formulation. If we ignore this, and allow things to go on as they are, then we can expect nothing but continuing disaster.

By Lawrence Davidson
Professor of History
West Chester University
West Chester, PA
ldavidson a/t wcupa d o t edu

Professor Davidson is author of the just-published Foreign Policy, Inc.: Privatizing America's National Interest

With regard to the Arab-Israeli conflict, we have entered the age of micro-wars.

The first wars that Israel fought with its Arab neighbors were conventional struggles in which infantry, artillery, armor and air forces played central roles.

Israel's enemies had few effective tools in the 1950s and 1960s. Abdel Nasser encouraged Palestinian resistance from Gaza in 1955, but it was more harassment than a serious military operation. The Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian conventional armies were what Israel's leaders worried about. Jordan was no match for the Israelis and it had a history of secret agreements with the Zionist leaders, so its military was only a threat when, as in 1967, other Arab leaders convinced the Jordanian leadership to join in a collective effort.

Israel's policies were not merely defensive, contrary to the propaganda one constantly hears from New York. Moshe Sharrett's diaries demonstrate conclusively the expansionist character of the regime. Israel's leaders badly wanted the Sinai Peninsula and therefore a commanding position over the trade of the Red Sea and the Suez Canal in the 1950s and 1960s. There was also some petroleum there. Israel used superiority in armor and air power in 1956 to take the Sinai, in conjunction with an orchestrated Anglo-French attack on Egypt's position in the Suez Canal (which Gamal Abdel Nasser had nationalized that summer). President Dwight D. Eisenhower, afraid that vestiges of Old World colonial thinking would push the Arabs into the arms of the Soviets, made Israel relinquish its prize. But hawks in Israel took the Sinai from Egypt again in the 1967 war, in which Israel again demonstrated that armor plus air superiority always defeats armor that lacks air cover (Israel managed to destroy the Egyptian air force early in the war).

Egypt could not accept loss of its sovereign territory. As the largest Arab state, with a third of the Arab population, and a developing economic, technological and military capability, Egypt could not be dismissed. Its leader from 1970, Anwar El Sadat, found a way of striking back. Egypt launched the 1973 war as a surprise attack, and used sophisticated underwater sand-moving equipment to get across the canal and penetrate into the Sinai. By this time Egypt had Soviet SA-6 surface-to-air missiles that served as anti-aircraft batteries and was careful to keep its tanks under their umbrella. Had Egypt had a better air force, Egyptian armor could have rolled right into Israel proper in October of 1973. The Israeli cabinet is said to have feared it was the fall of the Third Kingdom. But even in the absence of a proper air force, the Soviet SAMs were a game-changer. I would argue that they were the difference between the crushing defeat of Egypt in 1967 and the draw-to-slight victory Cairo won in 1973.

The writing was on the wall. Israel could not have the Sinai. Egypt was too big and too increasingly powerful an enemy to continue to provoke it. 1973 settled that. The Egyptian public was tired of war and its expense, and so both sides were willing to conclude the Camp David Peace Treaty of 1978. Egypt got the Sinai back permanently. Israel escaped the most serious military threat in the region.

Israel's political tradition seeks expansion if possible; if not possible, it seeks a balance of power with its enemies. If that is not possible, it seeks to be held harmless from its avowed foes. If that is not possible, it is willing to wage total war to punish the enemy population until it accepts at least a cold peace. (I mean by "total war" war on the civilian population in which the guerrilla group is embedded, as for instance dropping a million cluster bombs on the farms of south Lebanon in 2006 or half-starving Gazan children in 2007-2008, methods illegal in international law but routinely deployed by Israeli leaders and defended by most Zionists everywhere.) Where necessary, Israel is willing to give up territorial expansion to get the cold peace.

The 1982 Lebanon War was a hybrid. Israel deployed a conventional army against the Palestine Liberation Organization and Lebanon. The PLO fought an unconventional struggle in Beirut, and reached out diplomatically to the US, France and Italy to achieve a negotiated outcome rather than an outright defeat. The PLO had to leave Beirut. But Israel's victory was pyrrhic. 1. The Lebanon War was highly unpopular at home and abroad because it seemed unprovoked. 2. The PLO was not destroyed. 3. Israel's old expansionist tendencies kicked in and it was unwilling to relinquish South Lebanon, such that it began occupying yet another Arab country. 4. Israel's occupation helped create the Shiite resistance we now call Hizbullah, which evolved into a highly effective unconventional military force.

Jordan's government was neutralized in the early 1990s with a peace treaty, just as Egypt's had earlier been with Camp David. The PLO also engaged in the peace process off and on, and with the death of Arafat the old guerrilla PLO seemed to end, as Fatah became a political party.

That development left Israel with three main regional enemies: Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas. Hizbullah in turn gradually attracted Iranian patronage. In the case of the Levantine players, the main issue was Israeli occupation of their land-- south Lebanon and the Shebaa Farms for Hizbullah, the Golan Heights for Syria, and Gaza and the West Bank (the most vigorously colonized of the Occupied Territories) for Hamas.

The Arab-Israeli wars of the opening years of the 21st century have not been conventional wars. They have been micro-wars. Israel had demonstrated in the earlier Arab-Israeli wars that it could generally win a conventional struggle.

The new repertoires of struggle against Israel had four dimensions.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports of Israel's heavy artillery bombardment of densely populated Gaza on Saturday that "The American School north of Gaza was directly hit and almost completely destroyed, with one school guard killed. In addition, at least three to five schools were damaged by Israeli shelling of nearby targets." I presume that this is the school working to promote US good relations with Palestinians that now no longer exists.. Of course, the rest of the humanitarian situation is pretty bad, too--"Distribution of food assistance to the most vulnerable is erratic due to the security situation."

The OCHA [pdf] issued the following report on Saturday regarding the Gaza humanitarian situation, about 4 hours before Israel invaded. Personally, I find that the pdf format is often an impediment to the spread of information. The files are huge, they require proprietary software, and don't suit a lot of the world that is still dependent on dial-up connections. So I am posting the report in HTML here.
Cont'd


OFFICE FOR THE COORDINATION OF HUMANITARIAN AFFAIRS
P.O.Box 38712,
East Jerusalem,
Phone: (+972) 2-582 9962 /
582 5853,
Fax: (+972) 2-582 5841
• ochaopt@un.org •
www.ochaopt.org

United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

GAZA HUMANITARIAN SITUATION REPORT 3 January 2009 as of 16:00 Israeli military operations and heavy bombardment of the Gaza Strip continued into their eighth day. Violence As of 3 January, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, 432 people have been killed and 2,200 persons have been injured.

On 3 January, the IAF continued air and naval strikes in all parts of the Gaza Strip, particularly North Gaza, Gaza and the Middle area, with airstrikes focusing on moving vehicles, residences, open areas, and former Israeli settlements. In addition to the airstrikes, the IDF has commenced shelling areas in Gaza up to and exceeding one kilometer from the Israel-Gaza border.

At the moment of issuing this release, artillery shell fire has been reported from the eastern border to open areas in North Gaza, Gaza and the Middle Area. Increasing numbers of warning leaflets are being dropped, warning people to evacuate the targeted areas, exacerbating confusion and panic among the civilian population. The American School north of Gaza was directly hit and almost completely destroyed, with one school guard killed. In addition, at least three to five schools were damaged by Israeli shelling of nearby targets.

Palestinian militants fired 20 rockets and mortars into Israel injuring 3 Israelis.

Health According to WHO [The World Health Organization], many medical supply donations have entered the Strip in recent days, including through Rafah, and more are in the pipeline. The main challenge for now is how to catalogue and manage these supplies. WHO is identifying which individual items may still be needed, particularly in regards to medical equipment which is more difficult to assess.

Intensive care unit capacity in hospitals is still limited and the lack of specialist surgeons remains a problem. Blood units have entered Gaza, bringing supplies to adequate levels. In addition to the Ministry of Health’s current central warehouse, UNRWA has identified a storage facility for incoming MoH pharmaceuticals. A logistical team of pharmacists and other staff are shifting supplies currently held in small storage spaces throughout Gaza to the new central warehouse for organization and inventory; all new medicines arriving will also be stored in this new warehouse. Three more storage facilities in the north, central and south have been identified.

Since 27 December, 103 patients entered Egypt through Rafah for external medical treatment. Of growing concern are the 700-1000 chronic medical patients who had been receiving regular treatment in Israel and East Jerusalem each month. The existing referral system through Erez for these patients has been disrupted. Without electricity from the Gaza Power Plant (GPP), hospitals are operating on backup electric generators. These generators cannot be relied on to provide constant power to hospitals, and it is critical that fuel is delivered to the power station in order for mains electricity to be restored.

Food

Distribution of food assistance to the most vulnerable is erratic due to the security situation.

Since 27 December, WFP (through implementing partners) has distributed only a fraction of the 1350 metric tonnes available and the food that is currently being distributed should have been distributed in the October- December cycle. UNRWA resumed its prior food distribution in seven distribution centres on 1 January which it had suspended on 18 December; distributions are continuing today.

Water and Sanitation

On 2 January, airstrikes in the Al Mughraga area damaged a main drinking water pipe, cutting off water supplies to 30,000 people in Nuseirat Camp. Beit Lahiya Sewage Lagoon: There is a particular emerging concern, that current military operations could damage the sand walls of the Beit Lahiya sewage lagoon causing a massive sewage overflow. In addition to agricultural areas, up to 15,000 people are directly at risk. Two years ago, five people were killed and 2,000 displaced when the lagoon overflowed.

Shelter

Several hundred people have sought shelter at locations provided by UNRWA. The Agency has 91 preidentified locations throughout the Gaza Strip, primarily schools, with a capacity for 40,000 persons, including non-refugee displaced if necessary.

Crossings

KEREM SHALOM: Closed today. A total of 75 truckloads including 42 for humanitarian aid agencies were allowed entry to Gaza through Kerem Shalom crossing yesterday, 2 January. These included 46 truckloads of food supplies (including 21 trucks for UNRWA), five medical supplies (MoH and WHO), 17 truckloads of animal feed, five power generators for ICRC, and two trucks of other items.

RAFAH: Three truckloads of medical supplies (Qatari, Kuwait and Egyptian donation) were allowed entry to Gaza through Rafah crossing today. Five medical cases were allowed out.

EREZ: Closed today. 226 foreign nationals (Russians, Ukrainians, Americans and Norwegians) were allowed out through Erez yesterday. International staff of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) have been prevented from entering Gaza for the past two months, adversely affecting program management and assessments.

Priority imports neded:

Power plant and electrical transformers: Industrial fuel is needed to power the Gaza Power Plant, which has been shut down since 30 December. Replacement of ten transformers which were completely damaged is also urgently needed to restore electricity supply to 250,000 people in central and northern Gaza. All water, sanitation and other utilities, which provide basic services to the population, as well as hospitals and the general population are affected by the outages; some areas have now experienced power outages for up to 48 hours. Hospitals are increasingly reverting to generators to support intensive care and operating room functions.

Wheat grain: Essential to provide flour for local bakeries and humanitarian food distribution to the population of Gaza. There are long lines at bakeries and bread rationing has been implemented by the Gaza authorities.

Cash: Has still not entered the Gaza Strip and is urgently needed, including for the UNRWA cash distribution program to some 94,000 dependent beneficiaries, as well as its “cash for work” program.

After a four-hour artillery barrage, Israeli troops moved into the northern part of the Gaza strip on Saturday.

This land operation raises the same question Jonathan Freedland asked about the whole Gaza War, which is whether it is wise and how it will end with any lasting advantage to Israel. Me, I can't see it. The Israelis used to assassinate and attack Hamas when they controlled Gaza, with no success in destroying the movement. So how can they destroy it now when they don't control Gaza and are just making a temporary incursion into a heavily populated, complex territory?

Human Rights Watch has slammed Israel for indiscriminate attacks on civilians during the Gaza operation, which is a war crime.

At 2:06 pm on Saturday 1/3 EST, I was watching CNN, the US feed, which had temporarily switched to the London desk of CNN International. CNN International began an interview with PLO spokesman Saeb Erakat, the first time I have seen a Palestinian commenter on US television during the past week with the exception of the PA envoy to the UN.

CNN US suddenly interrupted the Erekat interview and switched to Ben Wiedeman in Jerusalem to explain the task Israel had before it. It has been 20 minutes and they have never returned to finish the Erekat interview. Have any of the major magazine shows had any Palestinians at all on this week as commenters?

2:31 PM CNN US did a telephone interview with Mustafa Barghouti, who complained that CNN's coverage was all from the Israeli side. He insisted that Hamas had been ready to negotiate a cease-fire and pointed out that Hamas had killed no one during the truce since June and before the Israeli attack. Barghouti has a pretty thick accent and I don't know how well he is understood by US audiences. Why is it that Israeli interviewees all have American accents but no similar Palestinian observers can be found?

Earlier on Saturday CNN invited Gen. David Grange on, one of the military commentators outed by the New York Times as part of a Pentagon influence-peddling scheme for the media. Grange kept talking about what "we" would do if "we" took rocket fire the way the Israelis had from Hamas. Grange did not say what "we" would do if militant European refugees landed at Norfolk, took over Virginia, expelled its population, and then kept the refugees from McLean huddling over in West Virginia in camps for decades with no reparations, recently denying them sufficient food and fuel to avoid a humanitarian crisis. But of course that would never happen to the Granges, so why bother to even mention any point of view but the hawks'?

Besides,the point of CNN US seems to be to prevent voices like Saeb Erekat's from being heard, though they are allowed on adult channels intended for the rest of the world.

/End.

Thousands of Afghans rallied on Friday against the Israeli attack on Gaza Three thousand protesters in Kabul burned Ehud Olmert and George W. Bush in effigy, chanted death to Israel and death to infidels, and demanded that the 30,000 US troops in Afghanistan depart.

That is what the US really needed at this juncture, was to lose new propaganda points away to the Taliban.

A suicide belt bomber killed his own clansmen at a tribal reconciliation meeting at Yusufiya just south of Baghdad, killing at least 30 and wounding 110. It was the first big suicide bombing of 2009.i

There was also a bombing each in Baghdad and Mosul that left 6 civilians wounded.

Sawt al-Iraq reports in Arabic that the Israeli attack on Gaza continues to roil Iraq. On Friday, worshipers at several mosques in the northern, largely Sunni Arab city of Mosul (pop. 1.7 mn.) prayed for the souls of the Palestinian victims. Mosque preachers condemned the attacks launched by the Israeli military on the Gaza Strip, and praised the steps being taken by the Turkish government to get a ceasefire.
Cont'd

The holding of extra mourning prayers was coordinated by the Sunni Pious Endowments Board in the city. The preachers urged worshippers to pray for their brethren in Gaza and to make mention of their sufferings in their daily personal prayers until they are succored. Mosul is some 80% Sunni Arab, and the Arabs there have had a special interest in the welfare of Palestinians for decades. There were demonstrations and riots in Mosul over the Zionist colonization of Palestine as far back as the 1930s.

There was a rally against the war on Gaza at the main mosque in Mosul on Wednesday.

The Shiite preachers of Kufa, Najaf, Karbala and Baghdad also condemned the Israeli attacks and called for urgent aid to be provided to the inhabitants of Gaza. Some 5,000 Shiite students protested Israel in Baghdad's Sadr City and cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called for international intervention to halt what he called a massacre of innocents in Gaza; he also called for humanitarian aid to be sent to the victims.

Sawt al-Iraq adds, "The Iraqi Air Force on Wednesday (12/31) made four flights to El Arish in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula to ferry humanitarian and medical aid to the residents of the Gaza Strip, which has been subjected to Israeli air strikes for several days, according to the press spokesman for the [Iraqi] Ministry of Defense."

Let me just repeat that. Iraq's air force is carrying aid to the Gazans via Egypt! And when Iraq gets its act together and gets rich from oil and gas, isn't it obvious that the aid will increase significantly?

Kurdish-Arab tension is rising in Mosul ahead of the Jan. 31 provincial elections, with one Arab party accusing Kurds of attempting to suppress it. On Wednesday, a candidate for the Sunni Arab party, "Iraq for Us," was assassinated in a cafe in Mosul.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that there are lively contests among the Sunni Arab parties as well. The Iraqi Islamic Party (descended from the Muslim Brotherhood) is competing against the Awakening Councils or tribal levies paid by the US originally to turn on the radical fundamentalist vigilantes. There are also secular parties running.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that fear of sectarian violence in Baghdad is still keeping Iraqis from traveling out of their own neighborhoods. (There are few mixed districts left, and for Shiites to go into Sunni ones or vice versa is still thought dangerous). Dora in south Baghdad was for some years a stronghold of fundamentalist Sunni guerrillas, until they were expelled in 2007-2008 by Awakening Councils. The district is the site of the famed Assyrian Market, which was closed in 2006 at the height of the sectarian violence and ethnic cleansing campaigns. Al-Hayat reports that Shiite entrepreneur from Bayya' to the north began a bus service between the two districts last week, offering passengers a way to move across the Sunni-Shiite divide for the first time in years.

The USG Open Source Center paraphrases articles in the Jordanian press on the Israeli attack on Gaza. Jordan is one of only two Arab states to have a formal peace treaty with Israel, and its intellectuals clearly want the government to abrogate it. Worse, they have been driven by the images of dead children dug out of mosques in Gaza to advocate Jordanian violence against Israel.

'Jordanian Press Says Israeli Operation in Gaza Will Not Achieve Security, Peace
Jordan -- OSC Summary
Wednesday, December 31, 2008

. . . Yasir Abu-Hilalah writes an article in Al-Ghadd[Tomorrow] on page 26, in which the writer discusses the elements of strength that HAMAS has. He says that HAMAS has around 25,000 fighters, who need training and weapons. He says that the Israelis admit that HAMAS has grown more professional after its control of the Gaza Strip and managed to smuggle a large amount of weapons and explosives through tunnels. He adds that HAMAS has hundreds of male and female suicide bombers. Then, HAMAS has rockets, which constitute a "real force of deterrence" despite the fact that these rockets are not sophisticated . . .
Cont'd


Fahd al-Khitan also writes an article in Al-Arab al-Yawm on page 3, in which he says that "in light of what is happening in Gaza, Arab moderates should stop marketing illusions about peace." He says that Jordan has done its utmost on the political and human level to declare solidarity with Gaza and condemn the Israeli actions. He adds:"We should conduct a profound review of the political discourse by rehabilitating a previous position, which the state had adopted; namely, supporting the right of the Palestinian people to resisting the occupation and not being satisfied by saying that negotiations are the only way for achieving peace because this path has failed to achieve anything since the peace processwas launched 17 years ago. This position should be translated into direct and public relations with the Palestinian resistance movements, alongside continuing official relations with the Palestinian Authority" . . .

. . . Amman Al-Arabal-Yawm in Arabic, an independent newspaper often critical of government policies, publishes an article by Chief Editor Tahir al-Adwan on page 20, in which thewriter criticizes the delay in holding a meeting for the Arab foreign ministers to discuss the "criminal Israeli aggression" on Gaza. The writer says: "Yesterday, while I was watching the news conference of the Palestinian president and the Egyptian foreign minister, I heard one statement from both men, which is (making efforts to stop the aggression), and I had thought that the president and the minister meant what they were saying because making efforts more than 36 hours after the start of the aggression was enoughat least to reduce the severity of the Israeli aggression. However, the reality of the situation is that while the news conference was in progress, the raids were escalating to the extent that Gaza appeared to be in a total holocaust. It is either that Israel is brushing aside the (efforts of its Arab friends) or that it hears about these efforts from news conferences only." . . .

... Amman Al-Ghadd in Arabic, an independent Jordanian daily, publishes an article on page 32 by Samih al-Ma'ayitah, in which he says that "what is required is not only expelling Israeli ambassadors and closing the embassies, but also driving Israel out of all aspects of Arab life. I am talking here about a comprehensive Arab-Islamic course that drives out the Zionist entity, and all forms of relations with it, from the Arab-Islamic political, economic, and security life."

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki announced Thursday that Iraq had "regained its national sovereignty". It could in fact be argued that for the first time since the end of the Gulf War, Iraq is again for most purposes an independent country in international law. It was put under Chapter 7 of the United Nations charter in the early 90s, having been found an aggressor against Kuwait. In some ways, its Chapter 7 status was taken advantage of by the Bush administration in its invasion of Iraq. There are still some things Iraq wants from the UN, and the Russian ambassador there has suggested that some Article 7 provisions will last for a while yet. But the main thing standing between Iraq and sovereignty now is anyway not international law but the large foreign troop presence on Iraqi soil. Still, that presence is underpinned by a bilateral treaty concluded by a sovereign Iraqi parliament with the United States. Cont'd . . .

US troops now need warrants for arrests, though they can detain suspects for 24 hours while they seek to justify it to a judge. Thousands of Iraqis imprisoned by the US will have to be released unless valid legal cases can be built against them.

In a move of the utmost symbolism, Iraqi troops are now taking control of the Green Zone, the few acres in downtown Baghdad, surrounded by blast walls, where US military and diplomatic personnel have worked, and where parliament and many Iraqi government offices are located. US military control of this area has often provoked tensions. Once Marines manhandled a member of parliament from the Sadr Movement who was coming in for a vote, provoking widespread criticism. The nerve center of the US in Iraq and of its Iraqi political allies had to be put behind blast walls because otherwise it would have been constantly bombed and sniped at. The area took a great deal of mortar fire as it was, endangering US State Department personnel who were sleeping in flimsy shelters. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has announced his determination to take down the blast walls. Minister of Defense Abdul Qadir al-`Ubaidi pledged to reopen the road between the Green Zone and the Republic Bridge within days, according to al-Hayat.

Bombings and other violence killed 8 in the northern cities of Mosul and Kirkuk or their environs on Thursday.

Basra authorities arrested a leader of the "Army of Heaven" millenarian cult that launched attacks last year this time. It is the beginning of the Islamic new year, and apparently the cult is seeking ways of taking power.

Al-Maliki also announced that there is "no place in Iraq for the terrorist" Mujahidin-e Khalq (MEK) organization. The Iraqi government has taken control of Camp Ashraf, northeast of Baghdad, the terrorist training camp leased by Saddam Hussein to 3500 members of the Iranian MEK cult. The MEK carried out terrorist attacks inside Iran on behalf of Iraq, as well as spying on, and making false allegations about, Iran's civilian nuclear energy program. MEK have probably been triple agents, sharing information with and pushing disinformation on Saddam, Israel and the US through various channels. They also served Saddam as an SS, repressing Iraqi dissidents. When the US took Iraq in 2003, the Neoconservatives at the Pentagon wanted to adopt the terrorist group for covert operations against Iran and against the Shiite fundamentalist parties in Iraq that had been hosted in exile by Tehran. The Pentagon/ Neoconservative interest in the MEK appears to have been connected to its secret ties to Israel, and prominent members of the American Israel lobby such as Daniel Pipes and Patrick Clawson went to bat for this motley crew of bombers and saboteurs (ironically, they have been prolific in accusing ordinary Americans of being 'terrorist supporters' if they declined to ask 'how high' whenever Bibi Netanyahu commanded us to jump). The State Department, in contrast, pushed for listing the MEK as a terrorist organization. In the end, as usual in the Bush administration, Washington gave us the worst compromise possible, declaring MEK a terrorist organization and going on using it for espionage and sabotage in Iran as well as against Iraqi Shiites. In 2005 the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and the Da`wa Party came to power in elections in Baghdad, the very parties against which MEK had been conspiring, and they have repeatedly tried to get rid of the Mojahedin, but were stopped by the Pentagon. The 'Islamic Marxist' guerrillas are likely now to be expelled. Al-Maliki said that they would not be forced to return to Iran, and could go to other destinations of their choice, but could not remain in Iraq.

The British military has handed over the control tower at Basra International Airport to Iraqi authorities. Britain had been using the airport as a military base, but now will withdraw outside it and allow it to function as a civilian, Iraqi facility. This step is a further phase in the British withdrawal from Iraq; the UK once had 40,000 troops in the country, and is now down to about 4,000. They will likely all be out by July 1.

As the foreign troops leave, Iraqis will have to settle their differences themselves. Kurdistan President Masoud Barzani slammed Iraqi Arab leaders for provoking ethnic tensions with Kurds.

The news keeps reporting that the Israeli air force bombed refugee camps in Gaza.

Did you ever wonder how those refugee camps got to be in Gaza? Cont'd . . .

I mean, where are they refugees from? There didn't used to be refugees in Gaza, before 1948, after all. The grandparents of today's refugees were living in their own homes, which their ancestors had lived in for centuries if not millennia.

After Germany created Jewish refugees in WW II, it was made to pay reparations to the victims, right?

Israel hasn't paid a dime to any of the Palestinian families it expelled in 1948, [pdf] which is itself a violation of international law.


Palestinian refugees created by Israeli military actions, 1948.

Update: Israel continued to bomb Gaza on day 7 of blitz. The airstrikes continued Friday morning.

Israel has killed 37 children and 17 women since it began its bombardment last Saturday. About a fourth of the over 400 persons killed are estimated to be obviously civilians because they were children or women; the proportion of the civilians killed is likely actually higher because a lot of the men are probably noncombatants, too. Likewise, large numbers of the over 2000 Gazans wounded have been innocent civilians.

Gazans are facing starvation and death, according to UN humanitarian chief John Holmes. The power plant has been knocked out, making it impossible for the hospitals properly to treat the over 2000 wounded in the airstrikes, or indeed, for patients needing oxygen & etc. to get it. Hospitals have resorted to generators, but they run on fuel, which is in short supply and many Gazans are without electricity. Some 20,000 a day are not getting the UN wheat rations and other foodstuffs on which they rely, given that Israel long ago destroyed their economy. That is, there is real and increasing hunger in Gaza, 50% of the population of which is children.

Tzipi Livni said the purpose of the operation was to weaken Hamas.

Wasn't that the purpose of all those assassinations carried out by Ariel Sharon in 2003-2004? Didn't they assassinate Sheikh Yasin and Rantisi & etc. then? Did Hamas disappear? If Livni and Ehub Barak think that aerial bombardment is the right way to deal with a group like Hamas in a place like Gaza, they are just as out of touch with reality as George W. Bush.

We all too often focus only on negative developments, and while it is understandable for people to keep their eyes on impending calamities, obsessing about the bad sometimes causes us to miss good news. We see a lot of that even with regard to the US. For instance, there has been a 23% decline in violent crime over the past twenty years in the US, but people who watch a lot of television (especially, I presume, police procedurals) tell pollsters they think crime has gotten worse.

I see significant positive stories in the Muslim world in 2008 that don't get a lot of press in the US, but which will be important for the incoming Obama administration.

1. The Pakistani public, led by its attorneys, judges and civilian politicians, conducted a peaceful, constitutional overthrow of the military dictatorship of Pervez Musharraf in 2008.
Last February, the Pakistani public gave the largest number of seats in parliament to the left of center, secular Pakistan People's Party. The fundamentalist religious parties took a bath at the polls. In August, the elected parliament initiated impeachment proceedings against Musharraf, who resigned. A civilian president, Asaf Ali Zardari, was elected. George W. Bush is reported to have been the last man in Washington to relinquish support for Musharraf, who had rampaged around sacking supreme court justices, censoring the press, and imprisoning political enemies on a whim. Pakistan faces an insurgency in the northwestern tribal areas, and problems of terrorism rooted in past military training of guerrillas to fight India in Kashmir. But the civilian parties have a much better chance of curbing such military excesses than does a leader dependent solely on the military for support. True, the new political leadership is widely viewed as corrupt, but South Korean politics was corrupt and that country nevertheless made progress. Besides, after Madoff/Blagojevich, who are we to talk? The triumph of parliamentary democracy over military dictatorship in Pakistan during the past year is good news that Washington-centered US media seldom could appreciate because of Bush's narrative about military dictatorship equalling stability and a reliable ally in the war on terror. In reality? Not so much.

2. The Iraqi government succeeded in imposing on the Bush administration a military withdrawal from Iraq by 2011. The hard negotiations showed a new confidence on the part of the Iraqi political class that they can stand on their own feet militarily. The relative success of PM Nuri al-Maliki's Basra campaign last spring was part of the mix here. But so too was the absolute insistence by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani that any Status of Forces Agreement not infringe on Iraqi sovereignty. The Sadr Movement resorted to street politics, aiming to thwart any agreement at all, thus providing cover to al-Maliki as he pushed back against Bush's imperial demands. The Iraqi success in getting a withdrawal agreement has paved the way for President-elect Obama to fulfill his pledge to withdraw from Iraq on a short timetable.

3. Syria has secretly been conducting peace negotiations with Israel, using the Turkish Prime Minister Rejep Tayyip Erdogan as the intermediary. There are few more fraught relationships between countries in the world than the Israel-Syrian divide, but obviously Bashar al-Asad and Ehud Olmert felt that there were things they could fruitfully talk about. Ironically, the clueless George W. Bush went to Israel last spring and condemned talking to the enemy as a form of appeasement. While he got polite applause, the Israeli mainstream is far more realistic than the silly Neocons who write Bush's speeches, and Olmert went on talking to al-Asad. Unfortunately, the Israeli attack on Gaza has caused Syria to call off the talks for now. It should be a high priority of the Obama administration to start them back up.

4. There has been a "near strategic defeat for al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia." "Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula" conducted numerous bombings and shootings in the period 2003-2006, during which the Saudi authorities got serious about taking it on. Saudi Arabia produces on the order of 11 percent of the world's petroleum, and instability there threatens the whole world. The dramatic subsiding of terrorism there in 2008 is good news for every one. Opinion polls show support for al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia plummeting, and determination to fight terrorism is overwhelming. In polling, a solid majority of Saudis say they want better relations with the United States. Yes. The Wahhabis are saying that. And their number one prerequisite for better relations? A US withdrawal from Iraq. (See above).

5. The crisis of state in Lebanon was patched up late last spring by the Doha agreement. Qatar's King Hamad Al-Thani showed himself a canny negotiator. Hizbullah came into the government and received support as a national guard for the south as long as it pledged not to drag the country into any more wars unilaterally. Lebanese politics is always fragile, but this is the best things have been for years. Lebanese economic conservatism allowed its banks and real estate to avoid the global crash, and hotel occupancy rates are up 25% over 2007, with a 2008 economic growth rate of 6%. The new president, Michel Suleiman, has also pursued responsible diplomacy with Syria, and the two countries are normalizing relations after years of bitterness. For all the potential dangers ahead, 2008 was a success story of major proportions in Lebanon.

6. [pdf] Indonesia's transition to democracy that began in 1998 has been 'consolidated' and it has regained its economic health, paying back $43 billion in loans to the International Monetary Fund. Indonesia is the world fourth most populous country and the world's largest Muslim country, comprising something like 16 percent or more of all Muslims. It faces many challenges, as do all young democracies, but when 245 million Muslims have kept democracy going for 10 years, the thesis that Islam is somehow incompatible with democracy is clearly fallacious.

7. Turkey avoided a major constitutional crisis in 2008 when the constitutional court declined to find the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) guilty of undermining the official ideology of secularism. AKP is mildly Muslim in orientation, in contrast to the militantly secular military. The verdict gave Turks an opportunity to work on bridging the secular-religious divide. Turkey, a country of 70 million the size of Texas, is a linchpin of stability in the Middle East, and it survived a crisis here.

8. Major Arab pop singers jointly performed an anti-war opera that called for co-existence among the region's Christians, Muslims and Jews and an end to the senseless slaughter. It ran on 15 Arab satellite channels,and one satellite channel ran it nonstop for days. It was the Woodstock of this generation in the Arab world and it got no international press at all.

9. King Abdullah II of Jordan pledged an end to press censorship in Jordan. Tim Sebastian reports,
'The man at the center of this event was King Abdullah of Jordan, who last month gathered together the chief editors of Jordan's main newspapers and told them that from now on there would be big changes in the country's media environment. Specifically, no more jailing of reporters for writing the wrong thing and a new mechanism would be created to protect the rights of journalists, including their access to information. "Detention of journalists is prohibited," he said. "I do not see a reason for detaining a journalist because he/she wrote something or for expressing a view."'
It is legitimate to take all this with a grain of salt, to be skeptical, to wait and see. But Sebastian is right that if the king means it, it is big news for Jordan and the Middle East, and the court in Amman should be pressured to stand by the new procedures.

10. The United Arab Emirates is creating the first carbon-free city, "Masdar," as a demonstration project. That the Oil Gulf, a major source of the fossil fuels that, when burned, are causing climate change and rising sea levels, has become concerned about these problems, it is a very good sign.

The pace of Israel's bombardment of Gaza slowed on Wednesday, with two big airstrikes. One aimed at destroying tunnels that allow Palestinians to smuggle in goods from Egypt. The other targeted the offices of deposed Palestine Authority prime minister Ismail Haniya, who is now in hiding.

Aljazeera English has compelling video of Tuesday's bombardment from the cell phone of one of their correspondents in Gaza.



An Iranian crowd attacked the British embassy in Tehran.

The Israeli government appears to have rejected international calls for a 48-hour truce to allow humanitarian aid to reach Gaza. Lack of electricity, fuel, medicine and even food is threatening to create an even deep crisis there than during the Israeli blockade that has been in force off and on for the past year.

This post continues: click below



In fact, an Israeli ship rammed a vessel attempting to deliver medical supplies to Gaza, severely damaging it and endangering the passengers, who included Karl Penhaul of CNN and former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. The boat, which was in international waters, could easily have sunk.

Aljazeera English has video on the ramming:



A Hamas spokesman came on Aljazeera Arabic to denounce the Palestine Liberation Organization of Mahmud Abbas of running an espionage cell in Gaza against Hamas, and of providing key information to Israel for use in its air strikes. The charges are a reminder that there is a sort of Palestinian war between Hamas in Gaza and the PLO on the West Bank, of which Israel is taking advantage.

Aljazeera English reports on the bombardment of Sderot by rockets from Gaza and its effect on every day life for Israelis there. These Qassam rocket attacks are one reason the leadership of the Kadima and Labor Parties decided to attack Gaza.



There have been many wounded, and there has been property damage in Sderot. Rockets and mortars from Gaza killed no Israelis June-Dec. 26, but since 2000 and before Dec. 27, have killed about 25.

Aljazeera English reports on civilian casualties in Gaza:



Nir Rosen considers the Gaza crisis in the context of the history of colonialism and resistance to it.

Aljazeera English reports on the weaponry given to Israel by the US, which supports Israel to the tune of $3 bn. a year in direct aid and much more in indirect aid. It is universally known in the Middle East that Israel attacks its Arab foes with US military equipment, which is one of the wellsprings of hatred for the US in the region.



For those of you who wanted more extended background reading on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, see the SHUR working paper on Israel, Palestine and democratic possibilities. Here are the report's policy recommendations:
' The historic land of Palestine belongs to all who live in it and to those who were expelled or exiled from it since 1948, regardless of religion, ethnicity, national origin or current citizenship status;

•Any system of government must be founded on the principle of equality in civil, political,
social and cultural rights for all citizens. Power must be exercised with rigorous impartiality on behalf of all people in the diversity of their identities;

•There must be just redress for the devastating effects of decades of Zionist colonization in the pre- and post-state period, including the abrogation of all laws, and ending all policies, practices and systems of military and civil control that oppress and discriminate on the basis of ethnicity, religion or national origin;

• The recognition of the diverse character of the society, encompassing distinct religious,
linguistic and cultural traditions, and national experiences;

• The creation of a non-sectarian state that does not privilege the rights of one ethnic or
religious group over another and that respects the separation of state from all organized
religion;

• The implementation of the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees in accordance with UN
Resolution 194 is a fundamental requirement for justice, and a benchmark of the respect for
equality;

• The creation of a transparent and nondiscriminatory immigration policy;

• The recognition of the historic connections between the diverse communities inside the new, democratic state and their respective fellow communities outside;

• In articulating the specific contours of such a solution, those who have been historically excluded from decision-making -- especially the Palestinian Diaspora and its refugees, and Palestinians inside Israel -- must play a central role;

• The establishment of legal and institutional frameworks for justice and reconciliation'

1. Iraqis are safer because of Bush's War. In fact, conditions of insecurity have helped created both an internal and external refugee problem:

Israel pursued "all out war" on Hamas in Gaza on Tuesday, as the death toll rose to 360, with wounded at over 1000. Already in the morning on Tuesday, 10 Palestinians had been killed.

AP reports that the Islamic Mission Party (Da'wa) of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki called on all Muslim countries to cut off relations with Israel in response to the air strikes on Gaza. Egypt and Jordan have formal peace treaties with Israel, but several other Arab countries have informal relations with it, such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

Hizbullah leader Hasan Nasrallah , according to al-Hayat reporting in Arabic, addressed an enormous crowd of thousands in the south Beirut Shiite slums on Monday afternoon in which he called for an urgent Arab summit on the issue, which he said some were attempting to stop. He also called for a third Intifadah or popular uprising. Nasrallah toned down his attacks on the government of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt for not removing the checkpoints that keep Gazans bottled up in Gaza. He had called for massive crowds to pour into Egyptian streets to protest Egypt's compliant attitude toward Israel. Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit defended the troops at the Gaza border as guardians of Egypt and said they were capable of taking care of Nasrallah if necessary. Aboul Gheit strongly implied that Nasrallah is an Iranian agent seeking to stir up trouble for non-Arab purposes. Egypt as a relatively secular military dictatorship deeply fears Hamas in Gaza and Khomeinism in Iran as fundamentalist religious ideologies that, if they took hold in Egypt, might lead to substantial instability there.


Beirut, courtesy AP

AP adds, "In the southern Lebanese port city of Sidon, around 3,000 people also staged a demonstration, many of them chanting slogans insulting the leaders of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia for perceived complicity with Israel." Sidon is Muslim Brotherhood territory.

AP says that in the largest rally in Egypt, 3,000 Egyptians protested, mainly Muslim Brotherhood. The military regime in Egypt greatly curbs popular rallies, and the crowds would likely have been much bigger without these security restraints.

The Taliban in Afghanistan called on all Muslims to unite and wage war against Israel.

Farnaz Fasihi reports from Beirut on the building rage in the Arab public toward their political leaders, who have been complaisant toward the Israeli blockade of and strikes on Gaza. The implication is that the Israeli air raids are helping delegitimate moderate Arab governments and so destabilizing the Middle East.

A rally against the Israeli strikes on Gaza held in the northern city of Mosul in Iraq was itself attacked by a suicide bomber on Sunday, who killed one civilian and wounded 16 others. The rally was mainly attended by the Iraqi Islamic Party, which is part of the pro-American Nuri al-Maliki government in Baghdad. From the point of view of Sunni fundamentalist vigilantes, the IIP is just being hypocritical, since it is indirectly working hand in hand with Israel by working closely with the US, and so is itself implicated in the bombings of Gaza. Intra-Sunni conflict may intensify as the provincial elections approach on Jan. 31.

The BBC rounds up Arabic press reaction to the Gaza crisis.

Gershon Shafir examines the bad fit between Israeli policy goals in Gaza and the methods the Olmert government is deploying in an attempt to attain them.

Aljazeera English reports on the further Israeli airstrikes on Gaza:

Here is my translation of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani's fatwa or legal ruling issued on Sunday concerning the Israeli attacks on Gaza. Arabic text courtesy of Sawt al-Iraq. Sistani is the spiritual leader not only of Iraqi Shiites but of many other Shiites in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Lebanon and India. He is explicit in asking his followers to take practical steps to stop the Israeli attacks. Note that the Neoconservatives argued for putting the Shiites in control of Iraq on the grounds that, as a religious minority themselves, they would be more sympathetic to Israel, and as Shiites would have less empathy with Sunni and Christian Palestinians.

In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate

The beloved Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip have, since noon yesterday, been subjected to a vicious attack and to continual strikes that have resulted so far in hundreds of victims being martyred or wounded.

This assault comes after a suffocating blockade to which this oppressed people has been subjected for several months. It had resulted in the creation of harsh humanitarian conditions as a result of lack of food, medicine, fuel and other necessities of daily life for the citizens.

Mere verbal expressions of condemnation and disapproval of what is being done to our Palestinian brethren in Gaza, and of solidarity with them, mean nothing before the immensity of this horrific tragedy to which they are being subjected.

The Arab and Muslim worlds are called upon, more than at any past time, to take practical steps in order to stop this continual aggression and to break this cruel blockade that has been imposed on that proud people.

We ask God, the Exalted, the All-Powerful to take the hands of all and lead them to that wherein lies goodness and righteousness. Verily, he is the All-Hearing, the Gracious.

The Office of Sayyid Sistani.
28/12/2008
29 Dhi al-Hijjah 1429

Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani of Iraq has called upon Arab and Muslim nations to support the Palestinians in Gaza with more than lip service. Iran's PressTv translated the statement this way:
' "Condemning what is going on in Gaza and supporting our brothers only with words is meaningless, considering the big tragedy they are facing . . . Arab and Islamic nations need to take a decisive stance, now more than ever, to end these ongoing aggressions and to break the unjust siege imposed on the brave people of Gaza . . ."

The relatively secular governments of Egypt and Jordan do not like fundamentalist Hamas, and they are implicitly or in Egypt's case actively cooperating with Israel to weaken Hamas. Iran, which supports Hamas, is seeking a propaganda coup in the Middle East over this issue. That is to be expected. Sistani's forceful call for practical action, on the other, shows an increased militancy and self-assuredness on the part of the Shiite authorities in Iraq. The prospect of a quick US withdrawal may be helping fuel this confidence.

Aswat al-Iraq reports in Arabic that Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, the leading Shiite party in parliament, also came out strongly on behalf of the Gazans.

The Israeli bombardment of Gaza entered its third day on Monday, as the prospect of a possible land invasion loomed, with Israel massing tanks on the border.

What I can't understand is the end game here. The Israelis have pledged to continue their siege of the civilians of Gaza, and have threatened to resume assassinating Hamas political leaders, along with the bombardment. The campaign of brutal assassinations launched by Ariel Sharon earlier in this decade were, Sharon, promised us, guaranteed to wipe out Hamas altogether. Do the Israelis expect the population at some point to turn against Hamas, blaming it for the blockade and the bombardment? But by destroying what was left of the Gaza middle class, surely they a throwing people into the arms of Hamas. The US experience of bombing North Vietnam and mining Haiphong Harbor, etc., was that it only stiffened Hanoi's resolve. The massive Israeli bombardment of Lebanon in 2006 did not achieve any significant objectives. In fact, Hezbollah was politically strengthened; it now sits in the Lebanese cabinet and has been recognized as a formal national guard for the south of the country. Its stock of rockets has been replenished. There is a UN buffer now, but in the past such buffers have been removed when hostilities threaten.

If the Gaza population doesn't turn on Hamas, and Israeli measures don't destroy the organization (which they helped create and fund back in the late 1980s when they wanted a foil to the secular PLO), then what? They'll just go on half-starving Gaza's children for decades? Malnourished children have diminished IQ and poor impulse control. That would make them ideal suicide bombers. Plus, sooner or later there will start to be effective boycotts of Israel in Europe and elsewhere over these war crimes. The Israeli economy would be vulnerable to such moves.

Of course, there are only 1.5 million Gazans, and they increasingly are being forced to live in Haiti-like conditions, so in the short term the Israelis can do whatever they want to them. But I can't see this ending well for the Israelis in the long term. Very few insurgencies end because one side achieves a complete military victory (I think it is about 20%). But by refusing to negotiate with Hamas, Israel and the United States leave only a military option on the table. The military option isn't going to resolve the problem by itself. Gaza is a labyrinth. Those Qassam rockets are easy to make. There is so much money sloshing around the Middle East and so many sympathetic Muslims that Gaza will be kept just barely afloat economically, making Hamas hard to dislodge. And the Israeli blockade of Gaza is so distasteful to the world that eventually there is likely to be a painful price to pay for it by the Israelis.

Among the 210 targets hit by Israeli airstrikes this weekend was the campus of the Islamic University. Israel also bombed the Interior Ministry.

The Washington Post reports a growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where the death toll from Israeli air strikes has reached 300 with 1300 wounded, 235 of them wounded. WaPo writes:
'Humanitarian aid groups sounded the alarm Sunday about what they described as a deteriorating medical situation in the strip and urged the opening of Gaza's borders to allow supplies to flow to hospitals. There are growing shortages of vital medicines and equipment, the aid workers said. "There are hundreds of wounded in the hospitals in the Gaza Strip, and what we have received so far has only been a fraction of our need. Our supplies have been depleted, and we are in desperate need for supplies," said Iyad Nasr, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Gaza. "We ask the parties to avoid striking the civilian population on both sides." '

Aljazeera English gives video on Gaza hospitals struggling to treat civilians wounded by Israeli airstrikes. The hospitals' ability to treat had already been degraded by the long Israeli blockade of Gaza.

Aljazeera English reports on the Israeli air strikes on Gaza, which have killed 230 persons, a third of them civilians and wounded 388. The Other 2/3s were largely Palestinian policeman, as targeted 32 police stations, maintaining that they are essentially Hamas foot soldiers. The 100 air sorties killed the Gaza chief of police and other officials, including individuals Israeli intelligence had fingered as masterminds of the rocket attacks on Israel.



The outbreak of hostilities affects Americans, since al-Qaeda hit New York and the Pentagon in some important part over the Israeli occupation of the Palestinians. The airstrikes and large death toll also present a challenge to the incoming Obama administration, which may find peace-making more difficult now.

The UN Security Council held a special evening session on Saturday and issued a call for an immediate ceasefire. The attacks drew a furious response from the Arab world. Egypt, which has collaborated with Israel in blockading the Gazans, branded its partner's air strikes "murder." The US, which for some odd reason holds an irrational hatred of the Palestinians, branded the dead Gaza policemen "thugs" and blamed the massive aerial strikes solely on Hamas, the fundamentalist Muslim party that controls Gaza.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, outgoing president of the European Union, issued among the more measured responses: "The President of the Republic expresses his lively concern at the escalation of violence in the south of Israel and in the Gaza Strip. He firmly condemns the irresponsible provocations that have led to this situation as well as the use of disproportionate force. The president of the republic deplores the significant loss of civilian life and expresses his condolences to the innocent victims and their families."

Sarkozy "requests an immediate cessation of rocket fire directed at Israel as well as of Israeli bombardment of Gaza, and he calls on the parties to exercise self-restraint. He reminds everyone that there is no military solution to Gaza, and demands the implementation of a durable truce.

This statement, which I seem to be the only news source to present in full in English, seems to me to be the best issued by any head of state on this particular incident, and shames the insensitive and one-sided statement issued on behalf of the US by Gordon Johndroe.

Israel blames Hamas for primitive homemade rocket attacks on the nearby Israeli city of Sederot. In 2001-2008, these rockets killed about 15 Israelis and injured 433, and they have damaged property. In the same period, Gazan mortar attacks on Israel have killed 8 Israelis.

Since the Second Intifada broke out in 2000, Israelis have killed nearly 5000 Palestinians, nearly a thousand of them minors. Since fall of 2007, Israel has kept the 1.5 million Gazans under a blockade, interdicting food, fuel and medical supplies to one degree or another. Wreaking collective punishment on civilian populations such as hospital patients denied needed electricity is a crime of war.

The Israelis on Saturday killed 5% of all the Palestinians they have killed since the beginning of 2001! 230 people were slaughtered in a day, over 70 of them innocent civilians. In contrast, from the ceasefire Hamas announced in June, 2008 until Saturday, no Israelis had been killed by Hamas. The infliction of this sort of death toll is known in the law of war as a disproportionate response, and it is a war crime.

A brazen car-bombing in the Kadhimiya district of Baghdad killed 28 and wounded 55 on Saturday. Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that an Iraqi security official expressed surprise and dismay that Kadhimiya could be bombed that way. He said that the district is very heavily guarded and checkpoint inspections at the entrance to it should have caught a car bomb. He told the pan-Arab London daily that the bombing either indicated that the security forces detailed to Kadhimiya were becoming careless, or the bombing was an inside job.

Kadhimiya is the site of the tomb of Musa al-Kazim, the seventh Shiite Imam or what they believe is a divinely appointed leader directly descended from the Prophet Muhammad. Believers have begun flocking to the shrine, since the first ten days of the Muslim New Year, which have just begun, are a time of ritual mourning for Shiites. The destruction of the tomb of the 10th and 11th Imams in Samarra