Supporters of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad gather during a rally at al-sabaa Bahrat Square in Damascus

by Shamus Cooke

After meeting again to decide Syria’s fate, the Arab League again decided to extend its “monitoring mission” in Syria. However, some Arab League nations under U.S. diplomatic control are clamoring for blood. These countries — virtual sock puppets of U.S. foreign policy — want to declare the Arab League monitoring mission “a failure,” so that military intervention — in the form of a no fly zone — can be used for regime change.

The United States appears to be using a strategy in Syria that it has perfected over the years, having succeeded most recently in Libya: arming small paramilitary groups loyal to U.S. interests that claim to speak for the local population; these militants then attack the targeted government the U.S. would like to see overthrown — including terrorist bombings — and when the attacked government defends itself, the U.S. cries “genocide” or “mass murder,” while calling for foreign military intervention.

This is the strategy that the U.S. is using to channel the Arab Spring into the bloody dead end of foreign military intervention.

For example, the U.S. media and government are fanatically giving the impression that, in Syria, the local population would like foreign militarily intervention to overthrow their authoritarian president, Bashar Assad. But facts are stubborn things.

After spinning these lies, The New York Times was forced to admit, in several articles, that there have been massive rallies in Syria in support of the Syrian government. These rallies are larger than any pro-government demonstration that the U.S. government could hope to organize for itself. The New York Times reports:

“The turnout [at least tens of thousands — see picture in link] in Sabaa Bahrat Square in Damascus, the [Syrian] capital, once again underlined the degree of backing that Mr. Assad and his leadership still enjoy among many Syrians, nearly seven months into the popular uprising. That support is especially pronounced in cities like Damascus and Aleppo, the country’s two largest.” (January 13, 2012).

The New York Times is forced to admit that the two largest cities — in a small country — support the government (or at least oppose foreign military intervention).

This was further confirmed by a poll funded by the anti-Syrian Qatar Foundation, preformed by the Doha Debates:

“According to the latest opinion poll commissioned by The Doha Debates, Syrians are more supportive of their president with 55% not wanting him to resign.” (January 2, 2012).

If people in Syria do not want foreign intervention — a likely reason that so many attended pro-Assad demonstrations — what about the so-called Free Syrian Army, which the United States has given immense credibility to and which claims to speak for the Syrian people?

The Free Syrian Army — like its Libyan counterpart — appears to be yet another Made-in-the-USA militant group, by route of its ally Turkey, a fact alluded to by the pro U.S.-establishment magazine, Foreign Affairs:

“Why does the Syrian [government] military not rocket their [Free Syrian Army] position or launch a large-scale assault? The FSA fighters are positioned about a mile from the Turkish border, near enough to escape across if the situation turned dire.”

The article also quotes a Free Syrian Army member who states: “Every [Free Syrian Army] group in Turkey has its own job,” Sayeed said. “[The Turks] gave us our freedom to move.” (December 8, 2011).

The article also mentions that the Free Syrian Army is calling for a “no fly zone” over certain regions of Syria, which would destroy the Syrian government military; the possible starting locations of this no fly zone are on the Syrian borders of either Turkey, Jordan, or Iraq — all three are either strong U.S. allies or client states.

A “no fly zone” is the new euphemism that means the U.S. and its European military junior partners in NATO will intervene to use their advanced fighter jets to destroy the Syrian military, as happened in Libya. In Libya the no fly zone evolved into a “no drive zone” and eventually a “no survival” zone for anything resembling the Syrian military — or anybody who armed himself in defense of the Libyan government.

As in Syria, Libya’s largest city, Tripoli, never had large anti-government demonstrations. The anti-Libyan government/pro-U.S. paramilitary group that attacked Libyan forces was so tiny that it took months to take power after 10,000 NATO bombing sorties (bombing missions) that destroyed large portions of Libya’s infrastructure, as documented by the independent Human Rights Investigations.

It’s totally unimaginable that any large section of Syrian society would invite a NATO-backed no fly zone, i.e. war, into Syria. The examples of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya are too glaring for any Middle Eastern nation not to notice. For the Free Syrian Army to demand a NATO invasion of Syria is enough to label the FSA a U.S. puppet group striving for political power, deserving to be condemned.

This strategy of using a proxy army to undermine an anti-U.S. government has a grisly past. This strategy is celebrated in the book Charlie Wilson’s War, which tells the true story of the U.S. government sending weapons and cash to Islamic extremists to wage a terrorist campaign against the Afghan government, which was an ally of the Soviet Union at the time. The attacks eventually led to the Afghan government asking for Soviet military re-enforcements, whose presence in Afghanistan created a degree of popular support for the extremists who eventually became known as the Taliban.

The same scenario also played itself out in Kosovo, where the tiny, U.S.-backed Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) began a terrorist campaign against the government of Yugoslavia, intending to separate Kosovo into an independent nation. When the Yugoslav government attempted to defend itself from the KLA — while imitating its violent tactics — the U.S. and other western governments labeled it genocide, and invaded Yugoslavia, calling it a “humanitarian invasion.” To this day the U.S. is one of few nations that recognizes Kosovo as an independent nation while Kosovo faithfully serves the interests of the United States.

The same proxy war strategy — by the U.S. and other European powers — played a crucial role in numerous wars throughout Africa, which culminated in the massive Congo War that killed over five million people, as French journalist Gerard Prunier describes in his book, Africa’s World War.

In Syria history is repeating itself, and some non-U.S. allies are very aware of it. The New York Times reports:

“[Russia's Foreign Minister] said that foreign governments [the U.S., Turkey, etc.] were arming ‘militants and extremists’ in Syria.”

The Foreign minister also gave an accurate description of U.S. foreign policy towards Iran:

“Mr. Lavrov offered a similarly grave message about the possibility of a military strike against Iran, which he said would be a “catastrophe.” He said sanctions now being proposed against Tehran were “intended to have a smothering effect on the Iranian economy and the Iranian population, probably in the hopes of provoking discontent.” (January 19, 2012).

Most ominously, the Russian Foreign Minister said that U.S. foreign policy in Syria and Iran could lead to a “very big war,” i.e., a war that becomes regional or even international in scope, as other powers intervene to uphold their interests in the region.

Russia has offered a way to avoid war in Syria and is pursuing it through the UN Security Council; it is the same path being pursued by the pro-U.S. government in Yemen: maintaining the current government in power until elections are called. Unfortunately, Yemen is an ally of the U.S. and Syria is not — the U.S. and its allies are blocking the same approach in Syria in order to pursue war.

The Syrian government opposition bloc inside of Syria, the National Coordination Committee, opposes foreign military intervention. A leader of the NCC is Hassan Abdul Azim, who wisely states;

“We refuse on principle any type of military foreign intervention because it threatens the freedom of our country,” (January 19, 2012).

This is very likely the prevailing opinion inside of Syria, since the threat of no fly zones will result in the same mass bombings experienced by the citizens of Tripoli in Libya. The fake Syrian opposition outside of the country, The Syrian National Council, is yet another U.S. puppet — now allied with the Free Syrian Army — begging for a military invasion of Syria in order to “liberate” it. Of course the western media tells only the perspective of the pro-U.S. Syrian National Council.

The U.S. has proven on multiple occasions that military solutions solve nothing, having torn asunder the social fabric of Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Libya. The working people of Syria and Iran do not desire “help” from the U.S. government and its allies to prevent bloodshed. The working people of these countries could liberate themselves from their authoritarian governments, as did the Tunisians and Egyptians, which is precisely the point: the U.S. is intervening militarily to re-gain control over a region that slipped out of its hands during the Arab Spring. This military approach serves to push the working people of the targeted country into the hands of their government while creating a humanitarian catastrophe for the invaded nation. The working people of the United States have no interest in aggressive war and have a responsibility to learn about U.S. government propaganda so that they can demand its end in the streets.

Shamus Cooke is a social worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action ( www.workerscompass.org  )

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/13/world/middleeast/syrians-rally-in-support-of-assad.html
http://www.thedohadebates.com/news/item/index.asp?n=14312
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/12/08/syria_free_army_rebels?page=0,3
http://humanrightsinvestigations.org/tag/nato-bombing/
http://www.smh.com.au/world/russia-warns-west-it-risks-war-over-syria-iran-20120119-1q8ei.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/19/world/europe/russia-warns-against-support-for-arab-uprisings.html?_r=3&ref=world
http://rt.com/news/syria-protests-russia-dialogue-149/

Source: Research Global

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Shamus Cooke is a frequent contributor to Global Research.  Global Research Articles by Shamus Cooke

Beware politicians cloaked in the American flag or diplomats sporting Union Jack kippahs…

 by Stuart Littlewood

A full house attended IBCA's Annual Balfour Dinner on 17 November 2010 at the Tel Aviv Hilton celebrating the 93rd anniversary of the Balfour Declaration giving members and guests an opportunity to meet the new British Ambassador to Israel, H.E. Matthew Gould MBE attired in his Union Jack coutured kippa.

When Marcellus, in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, famously says, “Something’s rotten in the state of Denmark”, he means that the body politic is rotting from the top down and the corruption stinks to high heaven.

410 years later the Bard’s words are especially applicable to the so-called political élite of the Western world. The stench of their corruption is assailing the nostrils of more and more people and causing mass nausea.

Thankfully some small but effective relief is available in the United States courtesy of the Council for the National Interest Foundation (CNIF), an independent non-profit concern that provides information and analysis on the Middle East and its relationship to the United States. The CNIF has been doing an excellent demolition job on US foreign policy and exposing how it is dangerously at odds with American values and national interests. http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/11/23/the-cost-of-israel-to-americans/

The CNIF hammers home the necessity for voters and their elected officials to be free from the undue influence and pressure of foreign countries and their lobbyists.

The US’s uniquely massive support for Israel, says CNIF, has cost trillions of dollars and multitudes of lives. It has diminished America’s moral standing in the world, lessened its domestic freedoms, and exposed the American people to unnecessary and growing peril.

And yet America’s taxpayers give Israel over $8 million per day. And since the US is in deficit, this means borrowing the money, handing it to Israel, then paying interest on it for evermore afterwards. 10 million American families are reportedly sliding into foreclosure; but the US administration continues to heap tax money onto Israel.

It is not as if Israel is a close ally. The Israeli regime spies on America incessantly. Its forces have killed and injured numerous Americans with impunity. And Israel has repeatedly stolen US technology and passed it on to other nations, some of them America’s enemies.

In 1967 Israel attacked the USS Liberty, killing or injuring over 200 American servicemen. A high ranking independent commission in 2003 found that Israel had committed an act of war against the United States. Yet the US President at the time (Johnson), and his secretary of defense (McNamara), are said to have recalled rescue aircraft and ordered a cover-up.

Israeli aggression and defiance of international law, human rights conventions and UN resolutions, have created enormous hostility throughout the world, much of which is directed at the US as Israel’s number one buddy, funder and protector. Furthermore Israel’s nuclear arsenal is a menace both to the region itself and far beyond. It has refused to sign the nuclear proliferation treaty and the British American Security Information Council has found that in Israel “nuclear weapons are being assigned roles that go well beyond deterrence.”

The fact that such weapons are in the hands of Israel’s psychopaths makes it perfectly understandable that other nations in the region wish to acquire them as a deterrent.

US intelligence agencies have so far found no concrete proof that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. Iran, of course, is not happy to be constantly threatened with sanctions and pre-emptive strikes. It demands that the American authorities publicly apologize to the Iranian government and its citizens “for the false accusations they publicized against Tehran in violation of international norms and regulations”. In a letter handed to the Swiss Embassy, which represents US interests since Iran and Washington severed diplomatic relations in 1980, Tehran also demanded compensation for material and moral damages caused by America’ anti-Iran publicity campaign.

You’d think that a supposedly responsible superpower like the US would seek to re-establish diplomatic links rather than stay in a sulk for 30 years and spitefully snipe and intimidate through third parties. America is seen to have the unmistakable hallmarks of a playground bully who could drag us all into another world war.

As for Israel’s war crimes in Jerusalem, the West Bank and especially Gaza, the racist regime uses American weapons in violation of US laws, killing and maiming huge numbers of civilians, women, and children.

This endless killing spree funded by American taxpayers and shielded by the US government has caused a burning hatred of the US throughout the Muslim world.

Britain, as America’s and Israel’s bitch, is also feeling the heat and putting herself in peril.

A red rag cover-up

Meanwhile, on the British side of the Atlantic former ambassador Craig Murray has numerous well-placed informants and is busy blowing the lid off one of the slimiest intrigues ever exposed at Westminster.

On his website Murray has penned a marvellous piece titled Gould-Werritty: A Real Conspiracy, Not a Theory. Gould is the British Ambassador to Israel Matthew Gould and Werritty is zionist stooge Adam Werrity, friend and “adviser” to disgraced defence secretary Liam Fox. http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2011/11/gould-werritty-a-real-conspiracy-not-a-theory/

“There is a huge government cover-up in progress over the Werritty connection to Mossad and the role of British Ambassador to Israel Matthew Gould, and their neo-con plan to start a war with Iran,” says Murray. He had made a Freedom of Information request for all communications between Gould and Werritty and was astonished to receive a midnight reply that his request was refused because it was “likely to exceed the cost limit”.

This was like a red rag to a bull. And it coincided with attempts to obstruct MP Paul Flynn while questioning Cabinet Secretary Gus O’Donnell on the Gould-Werritty connection at the House of Commons Public Administration Committee. Flynn was repeatedly interrupted by Robert Halfon MP who, says Murray, receives funding from the same Israeli sources as Werritty and was formerly Political Director of the Conservative Friends of Israel.

Murray’s concerns centre on the numerous meetings between Fox, Werrrity and Gould, and especially their “private dinner” in Tel Aviv with Mossad. Murray claims that Gould met Werritty many times more than the twice that O’Donnell listed in his “investigation” into the affair.

Murray observes: “It is now evident that not only did Fox, Gould and Werritty have at least five meetings while Fox was in power – with never another British official present – they had several meetings while Fox was shadow Foreign Secretary.” He acknowledges that O’Donnell was correct in saying that what Fox and Werritty were up to in opposition wasn’t his concern. But what Gould – a senior official – was doing with them most certainly was. “A senior British diplomat cannot just hold a series of meetings with the opposition shadow Defence Secretary and a paid zionist lobbyist. What on earth was happening?”

O’Donnell, replying to Flynn’s questions about the dinner date with Mossad, said: “The important point here was that, when the Secretary of State had that meeting, he had an official with him—namely, in this case, the ambassador. That is very important, and I should stress that I would expect our ambassador in Israel to have contact with Mossad. That will be part of his job. It is totally natural, and I do not think that you should infer anything from that about the individual’s biases. That is what ambassadors do.”

But Murray is adamant. “I know from a mole that the plot involves a plan to attack Iran.”

Many will feel it is intolerable for a Christian country like Britain to be represented by a Jew, especially in the Middle East and more especially in Israel where there is bound to be a conflict of interest. There used to be a rule in the Foreign Office, I understand, preventing such person being appointed. Why was that rule disregarded?

Gould has been photographed wearing a Union Jack kippah in a tacky attempt to convince us he’s batting for Britain. Can an ardent zionist Jew be anything but an Israel-firster? You may well ask… Fox and Werritty are both zionist sympathisers, as are foreign secretary Hague and prime minister Cameron.

All of them appear firmly wedded to the principle expressed in Fox’s idiotic declaration that “in the battle for the values that we stand for… Israel’s enemies are our enemies and this is a battle in which we all stand together…” Fox was the man the Jewish Chronicle hailed as “a champion of Israel within the government”, though of course there are many others – 80 percent of Conservative MPs for a start.

Mad, mad world of diplomacy

The American and British publics have been shamefully caught up in more than enough zionist warmongering plots. Iraq, which we subjected to 12 years of cruel sanctions and subsequently bombed back to the Stone Age, killing hundreds of thousands, was never our enemy. Libya was not our enemy. Iran is definitely not our enemy. Nor is Afghanistan; nor Syria; nor Lebanon; nor Palestine; nor Egypt.

As I write, reports are coming in that Iran’s parliament has voted to expel the British ambassador, presumably in retaliation for the British chancellor George Osborne’s announcement last week of fresh punitive measures targeting Iranian financial sectors, including the Central Bank of Iran. The bill now needs the approval of the Guardian Council.

The UK Foreign Office says it will to react “robustly” if Iran expels its ambassador. “This unwarranted move will do nothing to help the regime address their growing isolation or international concerns about their nuclear programme and human rights record. If the Iranian government acts on this, we will respond robustly in consultation with our international partners.”

However, for some seven months this year the Foreign Office didn’t bother to send an ambassador to Tehran when the last one finished his stint in March. Hague and Cameron, like Obama and Clinton, apparently think it unimportant to maintain senior level contact with the country they say is dangerous and must be crippled by sanctions or smashed by war.

Welcome to the mad, mad world of zio-British and zio-American diplomacy. Shouldn’t they be straining every sinew to strengthen links with Iran, too long neglected? Or are we supposed to applaud this supremely casual attitude in the matter of key relationships that could mean life or death for millions?

The stench of “something rotten in the state” is becoming unbearable. Would the Council for the National Interest Foundation care to set up a branch here in the UK, please, and help clean up and disinfect?

Stuart Littlewood

27 November 2011

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Stuart Littlewood’s book Radio Free Palestine can now be read on the internet by visiting www.radiofreepalestine.org.uk

by Nahida Izzat

Did you ever ponder about the question: Who is promoting America’s wars?

Who pushed for the war on Iraq?

Who is pushing for another war on Iran?

Who is promoting concepts of American Exceptionalism., military necessity, and “leadership with muscle”?

Who is indoctrinating American police and public with “educational” programmes of “Law Enforcement”?

Who is fomenting hatred against Islam and Muslims just to conceal their criminality by pretending to be the spearhead fighting the war against terror and extremism?

Who is offering courses in combating terrorism with their “superb anti-terror schools”?

Who is posing as the world leading authority in understanding and explaining “terror” related issues?

Who is supporting a pariah entity and promoting its interests despite all its violations of Human Rights and International Law?

Who are those who hold key positions in USA policy making and Homeland Security despite being advocates and supporters of a supremacist racist Jewish group?

Who is forcing us to go through radiating machines under the pretext of fighting terrorism while expanding and making a fortune in the process?

Who is fermenting by deception, all sorts of wars and conflicts yet deceivingly they pose as the protector of peace and security?

Who is honouring and celebrating murderers and baby killers?

To answer these questions, this might be a good place to start

Then have a look at this

And this

“For more than three decades, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs has been a strong supporter and defender of America’s military might – and of America’s
long-standing friendship with Israel. I thank you all for your contribution to the debate
over our nation’s foreign policy.”
~ Robert M. Gates, Secretary of Defense

“[JINSA, the Jewish Institute for National Security] created a crucial forum that exists nowhere else that keeps our nation and its leaders focused on the threats, challenges and opportunities that we face from a combination of sworn enemies, emerging rivals and evolving alliances.”
~ Senator Joseph Lieberman

JINSA which claims to have 20,000 members and has a budget of about $4.000.000 is actively involved in promoting and justifying wars of aggression

Henry M. Jackson Foundation- HJF is yet but another organization linked to JINSA. It declares on it’s own website: “for the Advancement of Military Medicine, Inc. (HJF) is a global organization dedicated to advancing military medical research. We serve military, medical, academic and government clients by administering, managing and supporting preeminent scientific programs that benefit members of the armed forces and civilians alike.”

In their 2010 Annual Report, they describe themselves as a “Global Organization Driven by Singular Mission”

“Since its founding in 1983, HJF has dedicated itself to a clear and noble mission: advancing military medicine. Although much has changed in the ensuing 27 years, the Foundation’s commitment to its mission remains unchanged.”

So, Who are the war mongers?

The Insanity of the Iran Confrontation

Press Release – JINSA Applauds Obama Admin. Turnaround on Iran

Iran, Iran, Iran and Iran

Policy Director Jim Colbert Quoted in Washington Jewish Week, 11/9/2011

Iran Expert Berman Briefs JINSA on What’s Happening Inside Iran

Confronting Iran Panel

Matthew Gould, the Zionist-British Ambassador to Israel and the Plot to Attack Iran

“Does this lust for war and destruction has any ideological foundations?”, one is entitled to ask.

Lo and behold, with only a tiny scratch to the surface in search for answers, you are hit with this:

THE LAWS OF KINGS AND THEIR WARS

6) The obligation to destroy the seven nations living in the Land of Canaan;
7) The prohibition against allowing any one of them to remain alive;
The obligation to destroy the descendents of Amalek;
9) The obligation to remember what Amalek did;

Mishneh Torah, Chapter 5, Halacha 1

“A king should not wage other wars before a milchemet mitzvah. What is considered as milchemet mitzvah? The war against the seven nations who occupied Eretz Yisrael, the war against Amalek, and a war fought to assist Israel from an enemy which attacks them.
Afterwards, he may wage a milchemet hareshut, (war of aggression) i.e. a war fought with other nations in order to expand the borders of Israel or magnify its greatness and reputation.”

“wars of conquest are permissible. As stated, these are wars against enemies that lie very far from Israel’s borders, and as such, are obviously not defensive wars but rather wars motivated by pure aggression.”

“….the justification for war is the Jewish people’s exercising their divine right to the land of Canaan, “And you shall take possession of the land and settle in it for I have assigned the land to you to possess.”

“Rabbi Yehudah identifies wars of conquest and aggression as commanded (mitzvah) and the war against the seven nations as obligatory (chovah).”

Sadly, such ideology is not confined to being dusty theological scrolls kept in attics, or ancient theoretical books used as mythology. Such ideology has managed to produce its own horrific manifestation. It is real in every practical sense; seen, heard, smelled and touched as facts on the ground, and in the most ugly and reprehensible manner, as it poses as an “authority” in ethics slaughtering, maiming and stealing while “blessing” humanity with “Great” lessons in “morality”!

Adherents of such racist and anti-human ideology, while affirming in principle and in practice that wars of aggression are commanded, do not hesitate to agitate the whole world against one quarter of its populations, namely the Muslims. They flood the media with fabricated stories about the “immanent” Islamic “terror threat”. They spread the irrational hysteria of Islamophobia and “shari’a-phobia”. They keep people hostages, in a perpetual state of anxiety, hate and fear; shackled by the Hasbara-made psychological dungeons of ignorance and misinformation.

They accuse and attack the very book that clearly forbids wars of aggression: ‘You may fight in the cause of God against those who fight you, but DO NOT INITIATE AGGRESSION. God does not love transgressors.’ (2.190).
The book which clearly calls for justice even against oneself: “Ye who believe! Stand out firmly for justice, as witnesses to God, even as against yourselves, or your parents, or your kin, and whether it be (against) rich or poor: for God can best protect both. Follow not the desires (of your hearts) (4:135).
The book which unequivocally calls for justice even when dealing with aggressors:
“O ye who believe! be steadfast firmly for God, as witnesses to fair dealing, Let NOT a group’s hostility to you cause you to deviate from JUSTICE. Be JUST, for it is closer to piety. Be God conscious; for God is Well Aware of what you do.” (5-8 ).

Knowing all this, Are We Justified to ask questions and search for answers?

Knowing all this, would any true friend of Palestine, would any sane or moral person, want to see the Palestinians forced or coerced to live with such heartless warmongers?

True friends of Palestine would NOT defend the rights of thieves, murderers and serial killers to remain on STOLEN Land.

True friends of Palestine would NOT defend racist ideology, by smearing those who expose it.

True friends of Palestine would NOT object to Palestinian aspiration of FULL Liberation.

True friends of Palestine would NOT divert the attention from the Real Criminals only to focus on a vague phantomic concept that can be dropped at any moment after achieving its goals.

True Humanists and True Friends of Palestine would most certainly not shy away from speaking the TRUTH even when it hurts, and even against their own people.

Source: Uprooted Palestinian

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Nahida- The Exiled Palestinian

Nahida Izzat is a Jerusalem-born Palestinian refugee who has lived in exile for over forty two years, after beingforced to leave her homeland at the tender age of seven in 1967, during the six-day war. She has a degree in mathematics, but art is one of her favorite pastimes. She loves hand-made things and so makes dolls, cards, and most of her own clothing. She also writes poetry, participates in written dialogues and believes in building

I. Victims

Glenn Greenwald recently posted a short piece about “The Human Toll of the U.S. Drone Campaign.” Greenwald noted that the population of the United States is kept in the dark about the civilian victims of the drone campaign by a government that “refuses to disclose anything about these attacks and media outlets [which] virtually never report on [its] victims.” What the U.S. public does get from both of these sources is a picture of the Middle East “as a cauldron of sub-human demons.”

Greenwald’s article references a BBC program about a Pakistani “jirga” or gathering of tribal leaders. The leaders were from the Warziristan region of the country but the gathering took place in the capital of Islamabad. Warziristan has been the site of many drone attacks and the leaders brought with them some of the maimed survivors so they could be seen and their stories told.

The picture that came through is that there are now rapidly growing numbers of innocent victims of these attacks: children, teenagers, adults and the elderly–essentially anyone in the neighborhood of an intended target. The number of those actually targeted who have been killed is impossible to know because the government will claim such kills even if the only verifiable victims are “half-blinded, double-amputee teenagers.”

II. Visibility

Greenwald correctly observes that “it is easy to cheer for a leader when the victims of his on-going violence remain invisible.” However, the question remains, how is this invisible status maintained in a country with a “free press”? Here are some relevant points that might shed light on this issue:

1. The “news business” in America is infinitely more interested in profit than it is in journalistic excellence. Much of that profit comes from advertisers who have no wish to underwrite what might appear to be unpatriotic investigations into unwarranted wars and foreign interventions. This makes the business oriented boards and stockholders of media outlets very conservative and also encourages a “make no waves” cooperative attitude toward the government and its preferred storylines.

2. Most citizens do not care about all this. In the U.S., and elsewhere, the majority are apolitical. They focus on the local and other people are “real” relative to their geographic and relational distance. As you move further away from the average person’s focal center, victims of accident or injustice become more abstract.

3. Being apolitical does not mean that the average citizen cannot be scared out of his or her wits. Deliver the same media message over and over again, consistently and with the right amount of emotion and you can create a nationwide consensus based on nothing but a sales pitch. Among other things you can sell the population an enemy (Viet Nam, Iraq, Iran or any state you chose) to the point where almost an entire nation will support invasion and slaughter. This is what I call a “thought collective.” And, as our own recent history reveals, you can create this sort of group-think repeatedly over a relatively short period of time.

III. Distorted Vision

Greenwald’s piece is an indicator that, when it comes to the Middle East, the United States has long been steeped in a thought collective that distorts the vision of both the common folk and the elites alike. The 9/11 attacks raised this national mind set to the point of near hysteria. In the immediate aftermath of that disaster anyone who suggested that U.S. foreign policy might have helped motivate the terrorists (an obvious fact for anyone who had read the speeches of Osama bin Laden) was likely to be labeled unpatriotic, maybe even a traitor, lose their job, maybe even their friends, and refused admittance into the arena of national mourning. When in early October 2001 Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal gave the city of New York a check for $10 million to help with recovery efforts, Mayor Giuliani rejected the offer out of hand. It seems the Prince had suggested that now was a good time for the U.S. to rethink its Middle East foreign policy.

Only in the last year or so have their been signs of small cracks in the thought collective. Growing numbers of ordinary citizens, to the extent that they think about these things at all, want the U.S. out of the Middle East. They are even starting to question the $3 billion a year that goes to Israel. And, it may be that Islamophobia has peaked as a popular topic of national concern. More and more, this bit of paranoia is being identified with fringe factions of the conservative right.

Unfortunately, these cracks are visible only outside the beltway. Inside the beltway, that is in Washington DC, nothing has really changed. The thought collective is, if anything, stronger than ever. This is because the formulation of policy is strongly influenced by special interests whose power over the politicians and the political parties is financially decisive. It will stay that way until millions of Americans decide change in our foreign policy is important enough to be a voting issue.
Because the thought collective within the government has not changed, foreign policies and actions have not changed. Violent intervention is still the mainstay of policy as can be seen in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Pakistan (with perhaps Iran in the wings). Greenwald notes at the end of his piece that while Americans “hear almost nothing” about the victims of U.S. aggression, “the people in that part of the world hear a lot about it and that explains much about the vast discrepancy between the two regions.”

IV. The Verdict

And what might that continuing discrepancy mean for the future of the United States? Well, it means the U.S. will almost certainly lose the war in Afghanistan, just as it lost the war in Iraq. You see, in Afghanistan as in Iraq, there are just too many people who really hold a fearsome dislike for the U.S., its government and its soldiers, to make likely successful conquest and pacification. A more general victory in the war of terror is equally unlikely. Here the applicable logic is rather simple. There were a set of conditions that led up to the 9/11 attacks and the attacks themselves created a precedent. America’s contribution to those conditions (our policies and our behavior) have held constant. Whatever damage we have caused al-Qaida can, and probably will, be repaired and other equally dangerous groups are likely to spring up in the foreseeable future.

So what then is the answer to the question that serves as the title of this short essay? The honest answer is that if there continues to be no change in U.S. policies and behavior in the Middle East, it is more likely than not that another attack of the magnitude of 9/11 will occur within the next ten years. The time line is guesswork, but the rest of the answer is not.

ldavidson@wcupa.edu
www.tothepointanalyses.com
www.twitter.com/pointanalyses

************

DR. LAWRENCE DAVIDSON is professor of Middle East history at West Chester University in West Chester, PA, and the author of America’s Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood (University of Florida Press, 2001), Islamic Fundamentalism (Greenwood Press, 2003), and Foreign Policy, Inc.: Privatizing American National Interest (University of Kentuck Press, 2009).

How Andrew Breivik Has Helped Assuage Abe Foxman’s Internet Nightmares

by Maidhc Ó Cathail

“

Abe Foxman [image: opinion-maker.org

Three days after the July 22 terror attacks in Norway, the self-described “world’s leading organization fighting anti-Semitism” issued a press release entitled “ADL: Norwegian Terrorist Motivated By Growing Extremist Ideology In Europe And The U.S.” Citing its national director, the ADL described the attacks in Norway as “a stark reminder of the broad range of violent terror threats” facing the world today. “These attacks underscore the serious and potent threat of violence posed by a variety of dangerous extremists from across the ideological spectrum,” said Foxman. “This includes the ‘lone-wolf’ extremists, who have access to extremist ideologies on the Internet from around the world.”

The ADL press release went on to point out, “The suspect in the July 22 attacks, Andrew [sic] Behring Breivik, published a 1,500-page manifesto quoting from the writings of European and American anti-Muslim writers, including Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller, who promote a conspiratorial anti-Muslim agenda under the pretext of fighting radical Islam.” In an interesting Freudian slip, Foxman’s supposedly reliable “fact-finding ” organisation confused the suspect’s given name, Anders, with that of his alleged online avatar, “Andrew Berwick” – said to be the Anglicised version of his name – the supposed author of the online manifesto.

“Breivik was clearly influenced by an ideological movement both in the United States and Europe that is rousing public fear by consistently vilifying the Islamic faith,” Foxman self-righteously proclaims, while neglecting to mention that movement’s source, which can easily be traced to the same foreign gvernment that the ADL works so hard to defend against even the most measured criticism. The self-congratulatory League may have, as its press release claims, “extensively reported on individuals who promote a conspiratorial anti-Muslim agenda in this country,” but it most certainly, and not surprisingly, has never probed too deeply into the apparent state-sponsored roots of that Islamophobic network.

As the ADL’s press release observes, the online manifesto attributed to Anders Behring Breivik owes much to Web sites such as Pamela Geller’s Atlas Shrugs and Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch. In its extensive reporting on the likes of Geller and Spencer, however, Foxman’s fact-finders have shown little or no interest in the source of their funding. Over the past three years, for example, up to $1 million has been funneled to the Los Angeles-based Jihad Watch through David Horowitz’s Freedom Center by Joyce Chernick, whose husband, Aubrey, is a former trustee of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy – a think tank created by AIPAC, which lobbies Congress on behalf of the Israeli government. No doubt compounding the ADL’s lack of curiosity is the fact that the self-styled civil rights organisation is one of an ostensibly diverse range of pro-Israel groups that has received funding from the Chernicks’ Fairbrook Foundation.

Could it be that Foxman’s condemnation of Islamophobia is nothing more than a fig leaf to conceal his efforts to counter a more plausible source of anxiety: the growing awareness in the United States and around the world of Zionist criminality? Isn’t the spread of such so-called “anti-Semitism” a more likely cause of the ADL’s concern about “access to extremist ideologies on the Internet”?

A survey of ADL press releases and reports on alleged “lone wolf” extremist incidents over the past few years reveals such pointed titles as “White Supremacist Shooting at U.S. Holocaust Museum Shows Where Spread of Hatred Can Lead ,” “John Patrick Bedell and the Lethal Lure of Conspiracy Theories,” and “Arizona Shooter’s Online Footprint Shows Distrust Of Government, Interest In Conspiracy Theories.” In this context, the Norway terror attacks of Anders – or is it Andrew? – Behring Breivik that were seemingly inspired by the conspiracy theory of an Islamic takeover of Europe (created, significantly, by extremist Zionist “historian” Bat Ye’or) serve as an even more frightening reminder of the dangers posed by conspiracy-fueled extremism.

“The obvious danger to Americans and Europeans,” Foxman warns in a July 30 Washington Post op-ed, “is that as this movement grows and solidifies, more people may become motivated to violence by this hateful ideology.” To avert this alleged danger, the ADL’s national director suggests that “the polarization, vitriol and fear engendered by anti-Islamic activists must be replaced by reasoned and civil debate. We must rally the voices of reason to overcome the voices of intolerance before it is too late.”

However, as far as Abe Foxman is concerned, it’s pretty safe to assume that the primary “voices of intolerance” to be overcome include those who refuse to swallow the ADL’s “anti-conspiratorial” line that Israel’s premeditated attack on the USS Liberty was a tragic “error,” that applying the apartheid analogy to the “Jewish state” is a “big lie,” or that Mearsheimer and Walt’s measured critique of the Israel lobby is little more than an “anti-Jewish screed.” If that’s any indication of what Foxman has in mind by “reasoned and civil debate,” those who still talk of “Dancing Israelis” on 9/11 must surely be in Andrew Breivik territory – and will find themselves treated as such.

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Maidhc Ó Cathail

Maidhc Ó Cathail writes extensively on U.S. foreign policy and the Middle East. Read other articles by Maidhc, or visit Maidhc’s website.

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Dr. Franklin Lamb is an American who has dedicated the best years of his life and more to the service of Palestinian Refugee Camps in Lebanon. This is a letter to his wife Janet on the anniversary of the Sabra & Shatila Massacre, on Sept. 14, 2007

At least 1,700 Palestinians were slaughtered on Israel’s say-so, 25 years ago this week

Janet Lee Stevens was born in 1951 and died on April 18, 1983, at the age of 32, at the instant of the explosion which destroyed the American Embassy in Beirut.

Dearest Janet,

It’s a very beautiful fall day here in Beirut today. Twenty-five years ago this week since the massacre at the Palestinian refugee camps at Sabra-Shatilla. Bright blue sky and a fall breeze. It actually rained last night. Enough to clean out some of the humidity and dust. Fortunately not enough to make the usual rain created swamp of sewage and filth on Rue Sabra, or flood the grassless burial ground of the mass grave (the camp residents named it Martyrs Square, one of several so named memorials now in Lebanon) where you once told me that on Sunday September 19, 1982, you watched, sickened, as families and Red Crescent workers created a subterranean mountain of butchered and bullet-riddled victims from those 48 hours of slaughter. Some of the bodies had limbs and heads chopped off, some boys castrated, Christian crosses carved into some of the bodies.

As you later wrote to me in your perfect cursive:

“I saw dead women in their houses with their skirts up to their waists and their legs spread apart; dozens of young men shot after being lined up against an ally wall; children with their throats slit, a pregnant woman with her stomach chopped open, her eyes still wide open, her blackened face silently screaming in horror; countless babies and toddlers who had been stabbed or ripped apart and who had been thrown into garbage piles.”

Today Martyr’s Square is not much of a Memorial to the upwards of 1,700 mainly women and children, who were murdered between Sept. 15-18. You would not be pleased. A couple of faded posters and a misspelled banner that reads: “1982: Saba Massacer”, hang near the center of the 20 by 40 yard area which for years following the mass burial was a garbage dump. Today, roaming around the grassless plot of ground is a large old yellow dog that ignores a couple of chicken hens and six pullets scratching and pecking around.

Since you went away, the main facts of the massacre remain the same as your research uncovered in the months that followed. At that time your findings were the most detailed and accurate as to what occurred and who was responsible.

The old 7-storey Kuwaiti Embassy from where Sharon, Eytan, Yaron, Elie Hobeika, Fradi Frem and others maintained radio contact and monitored the 48 hours of carnage with a clear view into the camps was torn down years ago. A new one has been built and they are still constructing a mosque on its grounds.

I am sorry to report that today in Lebanon, the families of the victims of the massacre daily sink deeper into the abyss. No where on earth do the Palestinians live in such filth and squalor. ‘Worse than Gaza!” a journalist recently in Palestine exclaims.

A 2005 Lebanese law that was to open up access to some of the 77 professions the Palestinians have been barred from in Lebanon had no effect. Their social, economic, political, and legal status continues to worsen.

“It’s a hopeless situation here now,” according to Jamile Ibrahim Shehade, the head of one of 12 social centers in the camp. “There are 15,000 people living in one square kilometer,” Jamile runs a center which provides basic facilities such as a dental clinic and a nursery for children. It receives assistance from Norwegian People’s Aid and the Lebanese NGO, PARD. “This whole area was nothing before the camps were here and there has been very little done in terms of building infrastructure,” Shehade explained.

Continued misery in the camps has taken a heavy psychological toll on the residents of Sabra and Shatilla, aid workers here say. Tempers run high as a result of frustration from the daily grind in the decrepit housing complex. In all 12 Palestinian camps in Lebanon tensions and tempers rise with increasing family, neighborhood, and sect conflicts. Salafist and other militant groups are forming in and around Lebanon’s Palestinian camps but not so much here in the Hezbollah controlled areas where security is better.

In Sabra-Shatilla schools will run double shifts when they open at the end of this month and electricity and water are still a big problem.According to a 1999 survey by the local NGO Najdeh (Help), 29 percent of 550 women surveyed in seven of the 12 official refugee camps scattered across Lebanon, have admitted being victims of physical violence. Cocaine and hashish use are becoming a concern to the community.

There is some new information about the Sabra-Shatilla massacre that has come to light over the years. Few Israelis but many of the Christian Lebanese Forces, following the national amnesty, wanted to make their peace and have confessed to their role. I have spoken with a few of them.

Remember that fellow you once screamed at and called a butcher outside of Phalange HQ in East Beirut, Joseph Haddad? At the time he denied everything as he looked you straight in the eye and made the sign of the cross. Well, he did finally confess 22 years later, around the time of his youngest daughter’s confirmation in his local parish. Your suspicions were indeed correct. His unit, the second to enter the camp, had been supplied with cocaine, hashish and alcohol to increase their courage. He and others gave their stories to Der Spiegel and various documentary film makers.

Many of the killers now freely admit that they conducted a three-day orgy of rape and slaughter that left hundreds, as many as 3,500 they claim, possibly more, of innocent civilians dead in what is considered the bloodiest single incident of the Arab-Israeli conflict and a crime for which Israel will be condemned for eternity.

Your friend, Um Ahmad, still lives in the same house where she lost her husband, four sons and a daughter when Joseph, a thick-set militiaman carrying an assault rifle bundled everyone into one room of their hovel and opened fire. She still explains like it was yesterday, how the condoned slaughter unfolded, recalling each of her four sons by name, Nizar, Shadi, Farid and Nidal. I asked Joseph if he wanted to sit with Um Ahmad and seek forgiveness and possible redemption since has now become a lay cleric in his Parish. He declined but sent his condolences with flowers.

Do you remember Janet, how we used to walk down Rue Sabra from Gaza Hospital to Akka Hospital during the 75-day Israeli siege in ’82, as you used to say “to see my people”? Gaza Hospital is gone now. Occupied and stripped by the Syrian-backed Amal militia during the Camp Wars of ’85-87. Its remaining rooms are now packed with refugees. One old lady who ended up there recited how it’s her 4th home since being forced from Palestine in 1948. She survived the Phalangist attack on and destruction of Tel a Zaatar camp in 1976 fled from the Fatah al Islam Salafists in Nahr al Bared Camp in May of this year and wore out her welcome at the teeming and overwhelmed Bedawi camp near Tripoli last month.

Most of your friends who worked with the Palestine Red Crescent Society are gone from Lebanon. Our cherished friend, Hadla Ayubi has semi-retired in Amman, Um Walid, Director of Akkar Hosptial, finally did return to Palestine following Oslo, still with the PRCS. And its President, Dr. Fathi Arafat, your good friend, passed away in December of 2004 in Cairo less than a month after his brother Abu Ammar died in Paris. They both loved you for all you had done for their people.

That trash dump near the Sabra Mosque is now a mountain. Yesterday I did a double take as I walked by because I saw three young girls-as sweet and pretty as ever I have seen — maybe 7 to 9 years old in rags picking thru the nasty garbage. Their arms were covered with white chemical paste. Apparently whoever sent to scavenge sought to protect them from disease. As I climbed thru the filth to give them my last 6,000 LL ($4) they managed a smile and giggle when I slipped on a broken thin plastic bag of juicy cactus fruit skins and plunged to my knees.

In some areas of the camps there are mainly Syrians. Selling cheap ‘tax free’ goods. Still some Arafat loyalists. Mainly among the older generation. Palpable stress among just about everyone it seems. One young Palestinian explained to me his worry that with the upcoming Parliamentary election to choose a new President scheduled for September 25, there may be fighting and his October 6 SAT exams may be cancelled and he won’t be able to continue his studies.

When you and I last spoke Janet, it was on April 16 of that year and I was en route to the Athens Airport to catch a flight to Beirut to be with you, you told me you were working on evidence to convict Sharon and others of war crimes.

Twenty years later, lawyers representing two dozen victims and other relatives attempted to have Ariel Sharon tried for the massacre under Belgian legislation, which grants its courts “universal jurisdiction” for war crimes.There had been great expectations about the case among the Palestinians and their friends, since as you remember, Sharon had already been found to bear “personal responsibility” in the massacres by an Israeli commission of inquiry which concluded he shouldn’t ever again hold public office. But hopes were dashed when the Belgium Court, under US and Israeli pressure, decided the case was inadmissible.I regret to report that all those who perpetrated the Massacre at Sabra-Shatilla escaped justice. None of the hundreds of Phalange and Haddad militia who carried out the slaughter were ever punished. In fact they got a blanket amnesty from the Lebanese government.

As for the main organizers and facilitators, their massacre at Sabra-Shatilla turned out to be excellent career moves for virtually all of them.

Arial Sharon, found by the Israeli Kahan Commission Inquiry ” to bear personal responsibility ” for allowing the Sabra-Shatilla massacre resigned as Minister of Defense but retained his Cabinet position in Begin’s Government and over the next 16 years held four more ministerial posts, including that of Foreign Minister, before becoming Prime Minister in February, 2001. Following the Jenin rampage US President Bush anointed him “a man of peace.”

Rafel Eytan, Israeli Chief of Staff, who shared Sharon’s decision to send in the Phalange killers and helped direct the operation was elected to the Knesset as leader of the small ultra rightwing party, Tzomet. In 1984 he was named Agriculture Minister and Deputy Prime Minister in 1996. He currently serves as head of Tzomet and is jockeying for another Cabinet position in the next government.

Major-General Yehoshua Saguy, Army Chief of Intelligence: found by the Kahan Commission to have made “extremely serious omissions” in handling the Sabra-Shatilla affair later became a right-wing Member of the Knesset and is now mayor of the ultra-rightist community of Bat-Yam, a little town near Tel Aviv.

Major-General Amir Drori, Chief of Israel’s Northern Command: found not to have done enough to stop the massacre, a “breach of duty”, recently was named as head of the Israeli Antiquities Commission.

Brigadier-General Amos Yaron, the divisional commander whose troops sealed the camps to prevent victims from escaping and helped direct the operation along with Sharon and Eitan was found to have” committed a breach of duty”. He was immediately promoted Major-General and made head of Manpower in the army, served as Director-General of the Israeli Defense Ministry and Military Attaches at the Israeli Embassy in Washington. He is currently working for various Israeli lobby groups as a scholar in ‘think thanks’.

Elie Hobeika, the Chief of Lebanese Forces Intelligence, who along with Sharon master-minded the actual massacre fell out with the Phalange in 1980s under suspicion that he was involved in killing their leader, Bachir Gemayal.

He defected to the Syrians, acquired three Ministerial posts in post-civil war Lebanon Governments, including Minister of the Displaced (many thought he know a lot about this subject) of Electricity and Water and in 1996, Social Affairs.

On January 24, 2002, twenty years after his involvement at Sabra-Shatilla he was blown up in a car bomb attack in East Beirut. Two of his associates who were also rumored to be planning to ‘come clean’ regarding Sharon’s role were assassinated in separate incidents. A few days before Hobeika’s death he stated that he might reveal more about the massacre and those responsible and according to Beirut’s Daily Star staff who interviewed him, Hobeika told them that his lawyers had copies of his files implicating Sharon in much more than had become public. These files are now is the possession of his son who, following Sharon’s death, may release the files.

They still remember you in Burj al Buragne camp. A few weeks ago one old man told me: “Janet Stevens? No, I didn’t know her. He paused and then said, .Oh!..you mean Miss Janet! She spoke Arabic…I think she was American. Of course I remember her! We called her the little drummer girl. She had so much energy. She cared about the Palestinians. That was so long ago. She stopped coming to visit us. I don’t know why. How is she?”

And so, Dearest Janet, I will be waiting for you at Sabra-Shatilla , at Martyrs Square, on Saturday, September 15, 2007.

You will find me patting and mumbling to that old yellow dog. He and I have become friends and we will pay our respects to the dead and I will reflect on these past 25 years and we will watch for and wait for you. You will find us behind the straggly rose bushes on the right as you enter.

Come to us, Janet. We need you. The camp residents need you, one of their brightest lights, on this 25th anniversary of one of their darkest hours. You were always their mediator and advocate…and until today you are their majorette for Justice and Return to their sacred Palestine.

Forever, Franklin

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Janet Lee Stevens was born in 1951 and died on April 18, 1983, at the age of 32, at the instant of the explosion which destroyed the American Embassy in Beirut. Twenty minutes before the blast, Janet had arrived at the Embassy to meet with US A.I.D. official Bill McIntyre because she wanted to advocate for more aid to the Shia of South Lebanon and for the Palestinians at Sabra, Shatilla, and Burg al Burajneh camps, stemming from Israel’s 1982 invasion and the September 15-18 massacre. As they sat at a table in the cafeteria, where she had planned to ask why the US government has never even lodged a protest following the Israeli invasion or the Massacre, a van stolen from the Embassy the previous June arrived and parked just in front of the Embassy. Almost directly in front of the cafeteria. It contained 2,000 pounds of explosives. It was detonated by remote control and tons of concrete pancaked on top of Janet and Bill, killing 63 and wounding 120. Remains of Janet’s body were found two days later, unidentified in the basement morgue of the American University of Beirut Hospital by the author. She was pregnant with our son, Clyde Chester Lamb III. Had he lived he would be 24 years old. Hopefully taking after his mother he would, no doubt, be a prince of a young man.

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English translation of the Al Kifah Al Arabi Condolense and three articles by Janet below:

Janet Lee Stevens

Place of birth: Philadelphia – The United States of America.

Qualifications: A degree in political sciences from the University of Pennsylvania.

A completed PhD Thesis: “The impact of popular literature on the Egyptian Theater“.

Janet Stevens arrived from the United States to learn about the Middle East. She first arrived in Egypt where she studied Arabic, and she learned to read and write the language.

In Cairo she met Tunisian Toukic Jabali who worked in Theatre and they married.

Subsequently she moved with him to Tunisia, and she registered at the University of Zaytouna to continue studying Arabic. She was a member of the student union at the University and she was very well known for her activism. She lived in Tunisia for nearly five years.

Janet worked with Amnesty International and was responsible for the release of a Tunisian political prisoner. She continued to work with Amnesty International until the time of her death..

Janet moved from Tunisia to Lebanon a year before her death and her passion was to become a successful journalist. She worked in Lebanon at “Monday Morning” magazine and she left the magazine following the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

She also worked during this war as a free lance reporter. In addition, she worked as an assistant to Japanese journalist “Arata”, a reporter for “Asahi” magazine in Beirut. During this same period she wrote reports for the news agency “Al Quds Press”.

Janet was hired by “Al Kifah Al Arabi” magazine to write in depth reports a few days before she died.

Janet Stevens was very faithful to the Arab cause and especially the Palestinian struggle as is evidenced so clearly in her reports published in the German and American media.

The Staff of Al Kifah Al Arabi

April 25, 1983.

The Seventh Day (04/25/1983)

Because her seat was vacant at the editor’s meeting on Tuesday morning, it seemed that something had happened, although none of us had known before that the new colleague who was late this morning will never come on any future morning.

It was her fourth day at “Al Kifah Al Arabi”, and the next day was her date to travel to meet with the very well known writer “John Le Carre” in Cyprus and from there to other global hot spots to write insightful reports, part of an effort to bring our magazine to a new level.

But Janet insisted to write something before leaving. “You must evaluate my writing style…I have information about the political goals of American assistance in the Arab region”.

We objected and told her “but you have no time…leave this for later. The date for you to travel is tomorrow”.

The day of the explosion at the American embassy it didn’t came to our minds that under its ruble would be our very determined colleague.

After twenty four hours we knew by guessing her secret for being absent from the editorial meeting….then we were sure. Did she know by leaving us the address of her family in the Unites States that we would only use this address in a message of condolence?

The Staff of Al Kifah Al Arabi

April 25, 1983.

Janet Lee Stevens was a doctoral student of Arabic literature in the Department of Oriental Studies (now the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations) who became devoted to the language and culture of the Arab world. She expressed her affection by setting for herself the highest critical standards of learning and by her deep commitment to promoting tolerance and understanding of the peoples whose literature and civilization she grew to love. Janet spent the last few years of her life immersing herself in the region, conducting important scholarly research, writing honestly about events she observed, arguing for compassion in human affairs and tolerance of ideas in the realm of the intellect. She took great personal risks in her constant efforts to mitigate the harsher qualities of life she encountered. On April 18, 1983, on the eve of returning to Penn to complete and defend her thesis, Janet, while interviewing US embassy staff about the use of American aid in Lebanon, was killed in the bombing of the American Embassy in Beirut. Her family, professors, fellow graduate students, and many friends created this award to honor her memory and spirit.

********************************

Dr. Franklin Lamb is Director of the Sabra Shatila Foundation. Contact him at: fplamb@sabrashatila.org. He is working with the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign in Lebanon on drafting legislation which, after 62 years, would, if adopted by Lebanon’s Cabinet and Parliament grant the right to work and to own a home to Lebanon’s Palestinian Refugees. One part of the PCRC legislative project is its online Petition which can be viewed and signed at: http://www.petitiononline.com/ssfpcrc/petition.html. Lamb is reachable at fplamb@palestinecivilrightscampaign.org. Franklin Lamb’s book on the Sabra-Shatila Massacre, International Legal Responsibility for the Sabra-Shatila Massacre, now out of print, was published in 1983, following Janet’s death and was dedicated to Janet Lee Stevens. He was a witness before the Israeli Kahan Commission Inquiry, held at Hebrew University in Jerusalem in January 1983.

GALLO/GETTY

“Following the First Gulf War a U.S. sponsored blockade of Iraq resulted in the death of over half a million Iraqi poor people and children.”

Dr. Lawrence Davidson

Part I

On Monday 12 September 2011 I had sixty five students in a “Twentieth Century World” history class ask me what I thought were the origins of the 9/11 attacks. I said I was quite willing to tell them what I thought, but first they had to give me their opinions. The vast majority believed that Muslim fanaticism led to the tragedy. The only other competitive theory, held by a small minority, was that the attacks were the result of a conspiracy located within the U.S. government itself.

I made it clear that I do not believe in the conspiracy explanation, if for no other reason than it would be impossible to keep that sort of thing secret in a political environment (Washington DC) which leaked information like a sieve. I was more interested in why they thought Muslim fanaticism caused the attack. They could not answer the question in any specific way. It was just the majority opinion that was somehow “in the air.” And, indeed, it is what our leaders and the media suggest and is, by now, part of a shared national consciousness.

Next I inquired why they asked me this question? They answered that as the fellow in the History Department who taught about the Middle East, they saw me as a credible source of information. With that established, I agreed that this was a good and indeed necessary use of class time. So I began.

I told them that Muslim fanaticism did not cause the attack. Clearly the belief that one was acting in a way approved by God made it easier to hijack the planes and crash them into their targets. But that belief was not the motivation for these acts. Rather the attacks on September 11, 2001 were performed as revenge for decades of U.S. foreign policy decisions that had caused enormous suffering in the Middle East.. Student reaction was something like: “foreign policy, what foreign policy?” I told those sixty five students that was exactly the right question. It was time (actually it was long past due) that they understood 9/11 in its historical context. I then led them through a brief description of the following events, all of which identified the United States as an enemy of justice and democracy in the Middle East:

1. In 1953 the U.S. overthrow the democratically established government of Iran and installed the Shah’s dictatorship.

2. In 1958 the U.S. landed troops in Lebanon in support of a Maronite Christian president who was seeking to subvert the Lebanese constitution. We repeated the mistake 25 years later, in 1983, when Ronald Reagan once more sent U.S. forces into Lebanon and quickly lost 241 servicemen to a suicide bomber.

3. We have subsequently backed numerous ME dictators, among them Mubarak in Egypt, Abdullah in Jordan, the Saudi monarchy in Arabia (where we kept troops on the holiest of Muslim soil), the king of Bahrain, etc. even while selectively opposing others such as those in Syria and Lybia. Our criterion for support is not whether a government is a dictatorship or democracy, but rather whether it cooperates or not with American policies in the region.

4. The notorious regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq was an excellent example of this criterion. For a number of years this dictator was the beneficiary of American support (we sold him his poison gas and biological agents). However, he eventually invaded Kuwait (which the British had lopped off from Iraq in 1913) and we then turned against him. Following the First Gulf War a U.S. sponsored blockade of Iraq resulted in the death of over half a million Iraqi poor people and children. I quoted Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s infamous 1996 confession on the TV program 60 Minutes that she thought all those deaths were “worth it.” I am sure that Osama bin Laden thought exactly the same way about the deaths of the civilians in the Twin Towers and the hijacked airplanes.

5. And, of course, there is the consistent U.S. support of Israel in its policy of relentless absorption of Palestinian land. Which, in the eyes of many in the Middle East, makes Washington an accomplice in an imperialist and colonialist foreign occupation. As a function of this support U.S. sought to overturn the 2006 fair and free democratic election of the Hamas government in Palestine.

Finally, I explained to the students that however U.S. officials might rationalize these policies, it is simply naive to expect that those who do not like our behavior will stand by and do nothing. And they haven’t. As it turns out, most of those who have turned violent against us are non-state actors such as those associated with Al Qaeda because, over the last 60 odd years, those Middle Eastern governments that opposed the U.S., and also Israel, have been proven impotent.

Part II

The vast majority of Americans have no clue about this history of U.S. behavior. And, the truth is that we simply cannot think critically about what we do not know. As a consequence Americans have no historical context through which to understand the “blowback” such behavior engenders. That being the case they are susceptible to whatever fantasies the media and their leaders feed them, as well as innumerable conspiracy theories. Most Americans accept the story that the terrorism of September 11 was motivated by religious fanaticism and carried out by those who “hate our freedoms.” (To this contention I reply that those who fight against the U.S. do not care what we Americans do in our country, they care what we do in their countries). The sceptics gravitate to the conspiracy stories. They too have it wrong though oddly the U.S. government, by acting in the way described above, did engineer the disaster.

In the case of my students I have filled in the knowledge gaps. It is hard to know how deeply they will ponder this new information and what they can do with it if they do think it through. In any case, as the saying goes, they are but a drop in the ocean. I know that is a depressing thought, but it is an accurate one.

I have come to the conclusion that the United States, for all its ability to project force, is in decline. It is in decline for the same reason that most past empires and power states have faltered. They falter because, over time, their elites become self-deluded and the general public kept in ignorance. The elites come to mistake their own perceptions, limited by narrow interest and/or distorted by ideologies, for objective reality. None of them have ever seen fit to integrate a “devil’s advocate” into their deliberations. Those who can see the world objectively are more likely than not to be ignored or outright fired. Without such people in the halls of power and the offices of the media we are blind. And, as the English poet Gerald Massey once observed, “in blindness we gather thorns for flowers.”

ldavidson@wcupa.edu
www.tothepointanalyses.com
www.twitter.com/pointanalyses

Lawrence Davidson
Department of History
West Chester University
West Chester, Pa 19383
USA

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DR. LAWRENCE DAVIDSON is professor of Middle East history at West Chester University in Weshttp://www.intifada-palestine.com/2010/10/ambassador-orens-invisible-israel-dr-lawrence-davidson/dr-lawrence-davidson/t Chester, PA, and the author of America’s Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood (University of Florida Press, 2001), Islamic Fundamentalism (Greenwood Press, 2003), and Foreign Policy, Inc.: Privatizing American National Interest (University of Kentuck Press, 2009).

Assemblyman David I. Weprin, center, is a Democrat running against Bob Turner for the House seat Anthony D. Weiner gave up.

by Dr. Lawrence Davidson

Part 1

The 27 July 2011 New York Times has a front page article about the upcoming September 13 special election for New York City’s Ninth Congressional District seat. The article opens a window on the political use of Israel as a campaign touchstone. The Ninth District, the most heavily Jewish District in the nation, is the one recently vacated by Democratic Representative Anthony Weiner who was, of course, a loyal supporter of Israel. Alas, he was also a man with a strong libido and no discretion. He was forced to step down after electronically sharing obscene pictures of himself with at least six women. The Democratic and Republican candidates who seek to fill this seat are not known for gross indiscretion in their private lives (though who knows what skeletons lurk in which closets), yet in their public pursuit of this Congressional seat they seem to be drawn, as by an irresistible political force, to follow Weiner’s lead and do obeisance at the alter of Zionism. Is this yet another form of folly?

Both candidates, Democratic Assemblyman David I. Weprin and his Republican opponent, Bob Turner (a retired cable television executive) are involved in a process of “one-upmanship on who is more pro-Israel.” One would think that Turner would have no chance in such a competition seeing as how Weprin is an “Orthodox Jew who keeps a kosher home, observes the Sabbath, and has been to Israel at least eight times.” Nonetheless, he is playing this game with some serious support.

Bob Turner makes his debut as a Republican candidate for the NY9 seat. (photo credit: azi paybarah / observer)

“On Monday [July 25], former Mayor Edward Koch, [a Jew and] a Democrat, endorsed the Republican candidate”on the basis that a Democrat, even one who is a strong supporter of Israel, can not be strong enough as long as President Obama holds the White House. Koch argues that only the election of a strong Republican supporter of Israel will “rebuke” the president for saying “that Israel’s pre-1967 border should be the basis for a peace agreement.” Former Mayor Koch, apparently not just physically but also mentally 87 years old, seems not to care that a Republican candidate may end up supporting domestic positions that can ruin the United States. He is obsessed with a single issue, Israel.

You would think that this obsession with Israel and its 1967 borders is pretty crazy in an election for someone to represent the interests of parts New York City that have names like Queens, Kew Gardens, Flatbush and Sheepshead Bay. And aren’t there numerous other issues, vital to the health of the nation, such as the federal budget and deficit, the fate of Medicare and Social Security, etc. that ought to hold voters’ attention? So who cares about some foreign country approximately 6,000 miles away? Well, according to Cynthia Zalisky, the executive director of the Queens Jewish Community Council, it is not only Ed Koch who is obsessed. She tells us that “how the candidates feel about Israel and the president’s concept of the pre-1967 borders is going to resonate in this district.” Donald Schwartz, an Orthodox Jewish activist from Kew Gardens agrees. He says that the Democratic candidate is not a sufficiently “fierce advocate” for Israel and his election would allow the President Obama to “take the Jewish vote for granted.”

Former Mayor Edward Koch -- NYC

All of this should raise eyebrows. Just how many Jewish voters are we talking about? And, how do we know that most care about what the Zionist activists care about? Why should it always be assumed that the Jewish vote turns on the question of Israel? The New York Times article answers the first of the these questions. The Jewish voters in the ninth district are numerous. Almost half of the population is Jewish, many of them observant, and a significant number of them, 30 to 35%, regularly turn out to vote. Thus, as political consultant Jerry Skurnik puts it, “you can’t get wiped out in the Jewish vote and expect to win a district like this.” Ok. But why assume most of those 30 to 35% of Jewish voters prioritize Israel when they vote, or are dissatisfied with President Obama on the issue of Israeli borders? You know, Mr. Weprin did endorse same sex marriage and that has upset some of the Orthodox community. Yet the New York Times really has its focus on the question of loyalty to Israel and takes it for granted that those Zionist activists who shout loudest know what the silent majority is thinking. On the other hand, maybe the Ninth is somehow special. Maybe Israeli settlements do top social security. It is depressing to think so, but it is possible.

Part II

Just for argument sake, let’s go with the notion that the Ninth District is indeed special. So lets say that the candidates do have to cater to specifically Jewish opinion to win this district, and that enough Jewish votes turn on the issue of Israel’s 1967 borders that candidates have to play the Zionist card to win. What should those who oppose kowtowing to Zionist influence (and there are organizations of anti-Zionist Jews out there) do about this? Here are three possible approaches:

1. Find a way to increase the non-Jewish voter turnout. The political party that can do this can probably destroy the formula set forth above by Jerry Skurnik.

2. Find a way to get as many of the Jewish voters as possible to shed the single issue picture painted of them by the Zionists. There is probably an undercurrent of resentment about this one dimensional representation. Someone should tap into it. To this end, we proceed to #3.

3. Find a way to form a Jewish, but non-Zionist, political cadre to compete for Jewish voter support within the Democratic Party in the Ninth District and others like it. Give the Democratic Jewish voters a democratic choice.

Number one is the least volatile of these efforts. The consequences of pushing numbers 2 and 3 really depend on just how deep the Zionist “Jewish activists” are entrenched. Depending on that question, one of two things could happen. If the Israeli obsession is in fact only skin deep, that is only an issue for a relatively small, albeit vocal, minority of Jewish voters, it should be overcome pretty easily by insisting on the greater importance of domestic concerns. Those issues, closer to home, will then come to the fore as candidate touchstones and Israel will recede to the lower end of the list of important factors. If, however, a notable percentage of the Ninth District’s Jewish voters are obsessed with Israel, then concerted efforts as described in 2 and 3 could result in blood in the streets.

Part III

Either way, something really should be done to challenge the prevailing assumption that Israel is the touchstone political issue for American Jewish voters. Whatever might be the case in the Ninth District, this level of concern for Israel is probably not true of Jews nationally. On a national level most U.S. Jews vote Democratic and probably do so regardless of the candidates position on Israel. In fact, my bet is that both political parties don’t really scramble for Jewish votes which, except for rare places like the Ninth District, are minuscule. What they scramble for is Jewish lobby money. And the Jewish lobby is not only obsessed with Israel, for all intents and purposes it functions as unregistered agent of that country. So to get the money you have to do your obeisance at the alter of Zionism.

This situation is potentially more dangerous then most American Jews realize. The Zionist hold over U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East has already cost the country dearly. It was at least part of the reason we were attacked on 9/11 and why we subsequently invaded Iraq. The Israel connection has alienated America from the entire Muslim world and helped encourage domestic racism in the form of Islamophobia. What happens if this orientation continues and results in more wars, more terrorist attacks and greater debilitation of the domestic budget? At some point the American public, looking for reasons for these disasters, may well focus on lobby influence and the prioritizing of the interests of a foreign land 6000 miles away. At that point it will not be just AIPAC that will pay the price. The Zionist insistence that all Jews support Israel, as untrue as it is, will have stereotyped American Jewry and anti-Semitism will quickly become a serious issue.

Therefore, it is in the best interests of the American Jewish community to shed the image of the single issue voter, to consciously begin to hold those Zionist activists at arms length, and to join with those groups, such as Jewish Voices for Peace, that reject any demand that they do obeisance at the alter of Zionism. Quite frankly, the leaders of Israel are fanatics, the true believers of the American Zionist lobbies are fanatics, and Ed Koch is a fanatic. Most American Jews are not fanatics and it is time they let the rest of the country know it.

ldavidson@wcupa.edu
www.tothepointanalyses.com
www.twitter.com/pointanalyses
Lawrence Davidson
Department of History
West Chester University
West Chester, Pa 19383
USA

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DR. LAWRENCE DAVIDSON is professor of Middle East history at West Chester University in West Chester, PA, and the author of America’s Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood (University of Florida Press, 2001), Islamic Fundamentalism (Greenwood Press, 2003), and Foreign Policy, Inc.: Privatizing American National Interest (University of Kentuck Press, 2009).

” There are also powerful lobbies in the area of foreign policy and their influence allows them to skew policy formulation away from any objective national interest toward the fulfillment of their particular parochial interestsIn terms of the Middle East, the Zionist lobby, surely commands the political field. And that means that ultimately, it commands Obama too”.

by Dr. Lawrence Davidson

Part I – Facing the World

It was the Scottish poet Robert Burns who, in a 1786 poem, wrote “O would some power the gift to give us to see ourselves as others see us, it would from many a blunder free us.” That gift is now ours in the form of modern polling technology but, alas, Burns underestimated our abilities to turn a blind eye to its revelations and continue our blundering ways. Here is a recent example.

The respected polling company Zogby International recently conducted one of its periodic “Arab Attitudes” polls measuring, among other things, the popularity of the United States in the Arab Middle East. This one was conducted between the middle of May and the middle of June, 2011 and involved 4,000 face-to-face interviews in six countries: Morocco, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The results are not pretty. As reported by Al Jazeera, “The United States’ popularity in the Arab world has plummeted to levels lower than the last year of the George W. Bush administration.” The best the U.S. and the Obama administration could do was a 23% approval rating in Lebanon. In Egypt the approval rating was but 5%, which constituted a 30 % fall from the last survey two years ago.

For those paying attention to U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, the reason for this awful performance is not difficult to understand. James Zogby got it right when he attributed the results to, “disappointment in the failure to meet the high expectations created by Obama’s election in 2008.” He continues, “those expectations appeared to rise further after Obama’s June 2009 speech in Cairo, where he pledged to seek a ‘new beginning’ between the U.S. and the Muslim world and expressed particular sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians.” The speech led most Arabs to expect rapid improvement in the two areas they consider the “greatest obstacles to peace and security in the Middle East”– the continuing [Israeli] occupation of Palestinian lands and U.S. interference in the Arab countries.” Both came up again and again in the poll as continuing problems with the Palestinian issue by far number one. As Shibley Telhami, an expert on Arab public opinion” points out, “US foreign policy is evaluated through the prism of the Arab-Israeli conflict.” Obviously Barack Obama has not come through on this issue.

, Obama's speech to the Muslim world

Why did he fail? Whatever his initial intentions, Obama has learned that being President of the United States does not always involve looking after the national interest. Instead, it often involves seeing to the interests of (in his case) the Democratic Party machine and its politician constituents. If he does not do that he gets no cooperation in Congress and therefore, in terms of legislation, cannot carry forward an agenda. This arrangement demands the president’s cooperation with the various lobbies to which politicians have tied themselves. Most of these are domestic and reference the economic stability of the states and districts that congress persons and senators represent. But there are also powerful lobbies in the area of foreign policy and their influence allows them to skew policy formulation away from any objective national interest toward the fulfillment of their particular parochial interests. Just think about our policy toward Cuba for the past 50 some years. In terms of the Middle East, the Zionist lobby, surely commands the political field. And that means that ultimately, it commands Obama too. Thus, in American politics, when it comes to knowing how others see you, there is a priority order. The lobbyists are often at the top of that list. So, domestic polls telling the president how the Zionists (Jewish and Christian) see his Middle East policy trumps polls telling him how the Arabs see it. As a result it is almost impossible for American leaders to face reality about the outside world in those cases where foreign policy is at the mercy of domestic lobbies.

Part II – Facing Ourselves

On the gateway leading up to the ancient Greek sanctuary on the island of Delphi was inscribed the saying, “Know Thyself.” The sanctuary was actually a temple to the god Apollo and in the temple lived the Delphic oracle. It was believed that the god would, through the medium of the oracle, answer questions about the future. But those answers were often qualified and quite enigmatic. To properly understand them one had to start by paying attention to the advice at the gate – by knowing thyself.

If America’s political system can make it difficult to face foreign realities, it can also sometimes make it equally difficult to face domestic realities. And that is because the people in Washington often go to great lengths to deny what they do and how that shapes who they are. They refuse to know themselves. Take for instance the question of Washington’s sanctioned use of torture.

Bush Administration Authorized CIA Torture

On 11 July 2011 Human Rights Watch released an 107 page report, “Getting Away With Torture,” documenting “overwhelming evidence of torture by the Bush administration” and the subsequent failure of the Obama administration to “meet US obligations under the Convention Against Torture to investigate acts of torture and other ill treatment of detainees.” The report notes that despite the “legal obligation to investigate these crimes,” President Obama has treated them as “unfortunate policy choices.” What investigations have been conducted by the administration have been purposefully designed not to address “the systematic nature of the abuses.” For instance, in August of 2009 the U.S. Justice Department undertook an investigation which restricted itself to “unauthorized acts” of torture during the so-called war on terror. In other words, it looked into only those alleged acts that the Bush White House had not authorized. The implication here is that the only torture incidents the Obama people are interested in are the unofficial acts of isolated lower echelon individuals.
President Obama’s motives in doing this are pedestrian at best. He doesn’t want to focus on the past but rather on the future. As Human Rights Watch notes, Obama’s decision to “end abusive interrogation practices” during his own tenure in office “will remain easily reversible unless the legal prohibition against torture is clearly established.” So much for the president’s concern for the future. He also seems to want to protect those who were ‘just following orders.’ Just as significant, Obama may want to maintain maximum flexibility of action for future administrations. In other words, he may think it prudent to make sure future officials can commit the same crimes as those of the recent past.

Senator Dick Durbin

These decisions, both of the Bush and Obama White Houses, are the “know thyself” clues to the nature of American leadership that almost no one in the U.S. government wants to face. Almost no one, but not quite. Back in June of 2005 U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) got up on the Senate floor and spoke about an FBI report describing the “detainees at the naval base in Cuba as being chained to the floor without food or water in extreme temperatures.” He then said the following to his colleagues, “if I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners under their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime…that had no concern for human beings.” There was an immediate demand that Durbin apologize for insulting the country and its servicemen who were fighting so hard to “overcome evil regimes and spread democracy around the world.” Much to his credit, Durbin refused to apologize, yet his honesty was and is the exception and not the rule.

Part III – Conclusion

Most Americans either do not care what their officials and agents do abroad, do not believe it when the horror stories leak out, or rationalize them away as the unavoidable consequences of the “war on terror.” Therefore, in the end, they neither see themselves as others see them nor look honestly into their own faces. And so they are led to collectively act in self-destructive ways. This is the case despite the fact that age-old guideposts to relatively right action have been staked out for us by poets and oracles. In the end, one can not help but share President Dwight Eisenhower’s anxiety as he worried about just “how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?

ldavidson@wcupa.edu
www.tothepointanalyses.com
www.twitter.com/pointanalyses

Lawrence Davidson
Department of History
West Chester University
West Chester, Pa 19383
USA

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DR. LAWRENCE DAVIDSON is professor of Middle East history at West Chester University in West Chester, PA, and the author of America’s Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood (University of Florida Press, 2001), Islamic Fundamentalism (Greenwood Press, 2003), and Foreign Policy, Inc.: Privatizing American National Interest (University of Kentuck Press, 2009).