AIPAC on Trial: The lobby argues that good Americans spy for Israel

May 7, 2007 Issue
Copyright © 2007 The American Conservative

by Justin Raimondo

Is there a First Amendment right to engage in espionage? Dorothy Rabinowitz seems to think so. Describing the actions of Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, two former top officials of AIPAC, the premier Israel lobbying group, who passed purloined intelligence to Israeli government officials, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist characterized them as “activities that go on every day in Washington, and that are clearly protected under the First Amendment.” If what Rabinowitz says is true—if passing classified information to foreign officials is routine in the nation’s capital—then we are all in big trouble.

On Aug. 4, 2005, Rosen, Weissman, and Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin were indicted by a federal grand jury and charged with violating provisions of the Espionage Act that forbid divulging national defense information to persons not authorized to receive it. The indictment traces the treasonous trio’s circuitous path as they met in the shadows—in empty restaurants, at Union Station in Washington, on street corners. Rosen and Weissman sought out and cultivated Franklin, milking him for information that they dutifully transmitted to their Israeli handlers. According to Rabinowitz, however, they were merely “doing what they had every reason to view as their jobs”—which is true, assuming they understood their jobs to be spying for Israel.

The trial is scheduled to begin June 7. As the day of reckoning approaches, the Israel lobby is ratcheting up the rhetoric. So, too, is the defense: in a duet of hysterical accusations and frenzied rationalizations, the accused spies’ defenders have described the proceedings as a frame-up, the result of an intra-bureaucratic struggle within the government, and a plot by anti-Semites in Bush’s Justice Department to carry out a Washington pogrom. None of these flights of imagination are any more convincing than the Dream Team’s defense of O.J. Simpson. Yet the noise level continues to rise, as if sheer volume, instead of logical arguments, could overwhelm the copious evidence of the defendants’ guilt.

The indictment lists numerous acts of espionage, dating back to 1999, in which Rosen and/or Weissman acted as conduits for classified information flowing from Washington to Tel Aviv. The feds had been watching for a long time: the indictment makes clear that Rosen and Weissman didn’t make a move without the FBI’s counterintelligence unit knowing about it. This surveillance is how they happened on Larry Franklin, the Pentagon’s top Iran analyst, who walked in on a luncheon meeting in Arlington, Virginia, attended by Rosen, Weissman, and Naor Gilon, chief of the political-affairs section at the Israeli Embassy. The feds were listening in as Franklin—referring to a document dated June 25 and marked “top secret”—announced he had secrets to tell.

Tell not sell: unlike the majority of post-Cold War spies, the AIPAC-Franklin espionage ring wasn’t centered around financial gain but ideology. Franklin is a dedicated neoconservative, a minor yet key player in the neocon network, who served in the military attache’s office in the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv in the late 1990s and was a Defense Intelligence Agency analyst with expertise in Iranian affairs working in Douglas Feith’s policy shop.

The counter-intelligence unit was hot on Franklin’s trail, and they watched his every move—his wholesale transfer of top-secret information on Iran, al-Qaeda, and other intelligence of interest to Israel to Rosen and Weissman, who funneled it to their contacts in the Israeli Embassy. The FBI gave Franklin enough rope to hang himself, and then moved in, showing up at his door and confronting him with his treachery. A search of his home and office turned up a veritable lending library of classified documents dating back years, all of which had doubtless been made available to the Israelis. Faced with the probability of a long prison stretch, Franklin agreed to wear a wire to his subsequent meetings with Rosen and Weissman. In the months that followed, the FBI built its case, recording conversations and following the AIPAC duo.

And they did a good job, apparently, because the government is making an unusual request: that some testimony and evidence be shielded from the public due to its highly sensitive nature. This wasn’t just a case of pilfering a few innocuous memoranda. It looks like team AIPAC made off with the family jewels and maybe even the deed to the house. Why else would the Justice Department risk having a conviction thrown out on appeal on account of such a rarely invoked legal mechanism?

The defense has protested proposed security procedures—magnetometers at the courtroom door, security sweeps of the courtroom itself, an officer of the court monitoring electronic surveillance while the trial is in session—on the grounds they would prejudice the jury against the defendants. They compare this to dragging Rosen and Weissman before the jury in prisoners’ uniforms and shackles. Yet these security measures point to the seriousness of the matter before the court, the depth to which the Rosen-Weissman-Franklin spy ring penetrated the government, and the ongoing breach they have opened in America’s national-security firewall.

While most of the more cautious elements in the Jewish community are staying well away from this case, the radicals, such as Rabbi Avi Weiss and his AMCHA-Coalition for Jewish Concerns, who have previously devoted their efforts to freeing Jonathan Pollard, have now turned their attention to Rosen and Weissman. Steven Lieberman and Anne Sterba, lawyers for the group, wrote in an amicus brief: “Trying these two men for disclosing critical ‘national defense information’ to foreign officials, without letting the public know what the alleged information was, will allow enemies of the Jewish people to exaggerate the significance of that evidence and will leave the press and the public to subsist only on rumors and speculation.”

The Weiss group likens the prosecution of Rosen and Weissman to the Dreyfus case—in effect positing the existence of a vast anti-Semitic conspiracy at the highest levels of the Justice Department. Not exactly a credible contention, offered, as it is, without evidence, but the defenders of Rosen and Weissman are getting more frantic as the trial date approaches. As a writer for the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz put it, “Does this trial really carry any resemblance to the Dreyfus trial? It’s a different era, a different country, a different system, a different accusation. Making this comparison demands some imagination, much ambition, and maybe a speck of chutzpah too.”

A recently unsealed defense memorandum details a Feb. 16, 2005 colloquy between Rosen’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, and Nathan Lewin, AIPAC’s legal counsel, in which the latter reveals that Paul McNulty—then the U.S. attorney for the eastern district of Virginia and chief prosecutor in the case—“would like to end it with minimal damage to AIPAC.” Lewin told Lowell, “He is fighting with the FBI to limit the investigation to Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman and to avoid expanding it.” This is hardly the behavior one would expect of contemporary anti-Dreyfusards in the Justice Department plotting to scapegoat AIPAC and the Jews.

Clearly the Rosen-Weissman defense team is involved in a bit of “greymail,” that is, forcing the government to disclose as much classified information as possible during the discovery phase of this case and hoping to derail the prosecution entirely as it weighs the effects of disclosure against the benefits of a possible conviction. As we go to press, Judge T.S. Ellis has ruled against the prosecution's proposal to shield sensitive testimony and evidence behind a veil of pseudonyms and euphemism, which could delay the begining of the trial.

Efforts to embarrass the administration go beyond accusing DOJ and extend to prominent figures such as Condoleezza Rice, who is accused by Abbe Lowell of leaking national defense information to AIPAC as Franklin did. Gen. Anthony Zinni is being targeted in a similar manner. Both have been subpoenaed, along with David Satterfield, deputy chief of the U.S. mission to Iraq, and William Burns, U.S. ambassador to Russia, to testify. If Rosen and Weissman are going down, the Israel lobby seems to be saying, then so are a lot of prominent people—some of whom, like Zinni, just happen to be their enemies.

This isn’t greymail, it’s blackmail. It was Zinni, after all, who said of the Israel lobby and the neoconservatives: “I think it’s the worst-kept secret in Washington. Everybody—everybody I talk to in Washington—has known and fully knows what their agenda was [during the run up to the Iraq War] and what they were trying to do.”

The intrigue thickened last October as word leaked that a proposed deal was dangled in front of Rep. Jane Harman: AIPAC would back her to become head of the House Intelligence Committee if she would urge the government to treat Rosen, Weissman—and AIPAC itself—with kid gloves. The Forward reported, “Several congressional sources confirmed that major donors to the Democratic Party have been lobbying Pelosi on behalf of Harman’s nomination to head the intelligence committee and that these attempts were not welcomed by the House Democratic leader.” Time named Haim Saban, the billionaire Hollywood producer and major AIPAC moneybags, as one of the supplicants. Pelosi didn’t fall for it, and Harman was rebuffed. Perhaps this was in the background when the speaker was booed as she addressed the subsequent AIPAC national conference, although Pelosi got back in the Israel lobby’s good graces after she stripped a provision from the military appropriations bill that would have required the president to go to Congress for permission to attack Iran.

The defense has fought to get the case against Rosen and Weissman thrown out on any number of grounds: the Espionage Act is unconstitutional, it doesn’t apply to their clients but only to government officials, and, last but not least, it’s a violation of the Israel lobby’s First Amendment “right” to betray classified information to its masters in Tel Aviv. Twisting and turning, threatening and spitting, delaying as best it can, the defense has tried to wriggle out of it every which way, to no avail. The trial is going forward, and the public spectacle of the biggest espionage scandal involving Israel since the prosecution of Pollard could deliver a body blow to the Israel lobby at a time when it has come in for public scrutiny and criticism as never before.

But that hasn’t prevented the lobby from brazenly defending the accused spies, in spite of the preponderance of evidence, and even hailing them as patriots. Writing in The Forward, Michael Berenbaum avers, “Instead of being grounds for prosecution, perhaps the influence Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman were trying to exert—making officials and the public aware of the danger from Iran—should be heralded.” And why should we hail espionage as laudable in this instance? Well, you see, because the AIPAC defendants were ahead of their time in citing the danger from Iran: “In Washington, as Rosen and Weissman are learning the hard way, the ‘crime’ is often not being wrong, but rather being right too early or at the wrong time, or being out of sync with the conventional wisdom, or pushing an inconvenient truth.”

In light of Judge Ellis’s recent ruling that in this trial the Espionage Act is going to be interpreted narrowly and that the burden is on the prosecution to show that the defendants knowingly harmed U.S. national security interests, the defense might be expected to make a pitch similar to Berenbaum’s—that, instead of prosecuting Rosen and Weissman, we ought to be pinning medals on their chests.

The AIPAC defendants weren’t spies, they were merely ahead of the curve, anticipating the day when a distinction is no longer being made between American and Israeli interests. That is the line we are hearing, as the curtain goes up on the trial of Rosen and Weissman. Whether the jury or the public falls for it remains to be seen.
___________________________________________

Justin Raimondo is editorial director of Antiwar.com.

May 7, 2007 Issue

May 14, 2007: Celebrate the release of Overcoming Zionism and We Begin Here

Salam Alrawi, Alwan for the Arts, Ramsey Clark, Sara Flaunders, Abdeen Jabara, DeeDee Halleck, Ahmed Issawi, Mona Khalidi, Clark Kissinger, Emily Kunstler, Dan Meyers, Ralph Poynter, Michael Ratner, Margaret Ratner Kunstler, Michael Steven Smith, and Lynne Stewart invite you to attend a book party to celebrate the release of:

Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine,
by Joel Kovel

&

We Begin Here: Poems for Palestine and Lebanon,
Edited by Kamal Boullata and Kathy Engel

Monday, May 14, 2007, 5:30PM
Mamlouk
211 East 4th Street

Joel Kovel, Kathy Engel and others will read from their works.

Both books will be available for purchase

Refreshments will be provided by MAMLOUK

In Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine, Kovel confronts the unfortunate confusion between Jews, Judaism, Zionism, and the State of Israel as the basis for systematic manipulation by the imperialist power system. He argues that the inner contradictions of Zionism have led Israel to a “state-sponsored racism” fully as incorrigible as that of apartheid South Africa and deserving the same resolution. Only a path toward a single-state secular democracy can provide the justice essential to healing the wounds of the Middle East.

Joel Kovel is a well-known writer on the Middle East conflict. He has written ten books which include The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World, White Racism a Psychohistory; Red Hunting in the Promised Land: Anti-communism and the Making of America. He is a professor of social science at Bard College and edits Capitalism, Nature and Socialism. He was a candidate for the Green nomination for US President in 2000.

We Begin Here: Poems for Palestine and Lebanon, contains poems written in response to the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon together with poems offered in support of the Palestinian and Lebanese people following the 2006 Israeli war on Lebanon, and others written about the U.S. war and occupation of Iraq. Following a great tradition of poetry throughout history, this book shows the vast conscience and lyrical spirit of resistance on the part of poets in support of the dignity, rights, and humanity of the Palestinian and Lebanese people.

Kathy Engel is a poet, creative and communications consultant for peace, social justice and human rights groups, and currently an adjunct professor at NYU. Her emphasis is connecting the imagination and art to work for social justice and peace. Her books include Banish The Tentative, 1989 and Ruth's Skirts, 2007. She is co editor of We Begin Here: Poems for Palestine and Lebanon, 2007. She has founded and co founded organizations including MADRE, Riptide Communications, East End Women in Black, Hayground School. She serves on the Advisory Board of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation.

The great divide

As Israel marks its 59th Independence Day, the Arab sector insists it longs for greater inclusion in the state. A view from the Arab side of a widening gulf.
---

---

SHABTAI GOLD, THE JERUSALEM POST

Apr. 23, 2007

---

The relationship between the state and its Arab citizens is at its lowest level ever," says Jafar Fareh, of the Haifa-based rights group Mossawa, ahead of Israeli Independence Day.

Fareh is worried about the concept of separation which he feels is becoming more dominant in Israeli society. He, like other Arab citizens of Israel, is concerned that as Israel enters its 59th year, the gulf between Jews and Arabs continues to widen.

Arab intellectuals speak of the "Jewish ghetto" mentality, which, in their view, means Israel is closing itself off from all non-Jewish regional elements, including the Arab citizens. Many are worried that this trend will have negative consequences not only on Israel and its Arab citizens, but on the region as a whole.

Fareh is quick to place a fair amount of the blame for the "ghettoization" on the Left.

"The readiness to talk and negotiate [with the Palestine Liberation Organization] is part of the separation concept, based on the idea of 'We are here, and they are there,'" he says.

The talks with the PLO, he believes, have worsened the situation of Arab citizens in Israel. "Now people in Israel say to us, 'If it's not good for you here, go live in the PA,' implying that in Israel we must behave according to their terms."

Fareh points out that both the Oslo agreements and the disengagement plan went ahead because of the support of Arab MKs. He also blames the PLO, which he says forgot the Arab-Israelis, and says there is a rift between the two.

"Nabli Shaath, from the PLO, said Arabs should be loyal citizens in the Jewish state," Fareh recalls. "A dog is loyal. I want to be a partner, not loyal to Jewish masters."

Aida Touma-Sliman, from Acre, is also in favor of partnership with Israeli Jews, based on a changing of the current rules.

She, like Fareh, was a signatory of the "Future Vision" document, which is an attempt to outline a strategy for autonomy for the Arab citizens of Israel and which has alarmed many Israeli Jews with its blueprint for separatism.

She says the document, which was mainly intended to be an internal document aimed at starting a dialogue among Arabs, was translated into Hebrew because "we want to talk with the Jews. This document is not at all a sign of separatism."

Touma-Sliman, a member of the Hadash political party, notes that a recent survey shows that some 80 percent of Arabs in Israel support the concepts the document puts forward.

"This document says we want this place to be a homeland for Jews and Arabs who are here. We want equality for all citizens."

Touma-Sliman also wants recognition of the Arabs in Israel as a national collective. "The state wants to divide us into groups. However, we are not Druse, Beduin, Christian or whatever. We are all part of the Palestinian-Arab people."

Author Salman Natour traces the separation problem to the British Mandate. "The problem of separation has been around since the beginning. This goes back to the British policy of divide and conquer. In the State of Israel, the Ashkenazi elite controls, and the others are controlled."

For Natour, from Daliat al-Carmel in the Galilee, the problem of separation hits close to home. "I am Druse. We are supposed to have equal rights, according to the Israeli criteria. Most Druse serve in the army. Yet we don't have full rights or equality."

Natour sees the ruling elite of European Jews as responsible for the generally lower social status of Mizrahim, or, in his words, "Arab Jews."

"The Ashkenazi elite looks down on all things Arab. The eyes of Israel are to the West, especially culturally, and it rejects the East, to an extent."

Natour, who wrote the cultural section of the Future Vision document, views himself as an "Arab-Palestinian from the Druse community. I am not Israeli, but a citizen of Israel. Israel, as a Jewish state, prevents me from having a full Israeli identity."

Like many other signatories of the Future Vision document, he wants to break the old mold of Arab-Jew relations through dialogue with the Jews. "This is not a final document, but a basis for dialogue."

He uses his own community as an example for the change he wishes to see. In the future, "Druse can choose to serve in the army if they want, but not because they have to. After we break the mold, the old treaty, we can think about how to build a new relationship."

Ghaleb Majadle, the new minister of science and culture and the only Arab minister in the current government, sees things differently. He thinks the document doesn't deal with the real issues affecting the Arabs in Israel, and that the group that wrote it is not representative of the Arab sector.

He says the Arab public is too concerned with making ends meet and other basic needs, and it is not free to deal with weighty issues like those raised by the document. Those basic needs, he says, include more classrooms, more economic opportunities, better planning for houses, and a generally better quality of life.

The Jews in Israel, Majadle says, are not yet ready for the document either, noting that it lacks widespread support. More public debate of the document is needed before it can be considered for presentation to the coalition, he says.

Majadle partly blames past governments for the Arab sector's socioeconomic problems, saying the distribution of wealth was not equal, and that government policies contributed to widening social and economic gaps.

He points out that not one new Arab village was founded by the state since its inception, while it strives to create more and more Jewish towns. "Fifty percent of Arabs are below the poverty line. When we close the gaps in the Israeli society between Jews and Arabs, I am convinced that the Arab population will be free to deal with these important questions."

MK Dov Khenin (Hadash) also believes that more attention needs to be paid to issues that are of greater concern to the Arabs in Israel, like improved social services and economic opportunities, and less on symbols, like the anthem and the flag.

Khenin says the Israeli establishment focuses on symbols in order to rally the Jewish public together. "Separation is a bad characteristic of the Israeli society, dangerous to the whole society."

Because the major afflictions of the country's Arab citizens are a troubled economic situation and social discrimination, Khenin explains, the government would rather not deal with those issues.

While Khenin agrees with Majadle that the Future Vision document needs more public debate - "among all Israelis, not just Jews or Arabs" - he says that nationalist political aspirations of many Arab Israelis can exist simultaneously with the desire to improve socioeconomic levels, and one is not dependent on the other.

But Majadle's views are seen by many emerging political voices as of the older generation, one that didn't strive to fully achieve the multifaceted objectives of the Arab minority in Israel.

Haneen Zoabi, a member of the political bureau of Balad, says the Israelization process that the Arabs in Israel underwent necessitated the emergence of a more Arab-nationalist line, such as that of her party.

She talks about the older generation, the "bent generation," that lived through the 1948 war and gave in to the Israeli establishment, and the younger generation, the "upright generation," that emerged in the late 1960s with a more rebellious nature.

WHILE MOST Jewish Israelis will celebrate their victory in the 1948 war, many Arabs see it quite differently.

The 10th annual March of Return will take place this Independence Day. It is an event organized by the Association for the Defense of the Rights of the Internally Displaced. The protesters, including Jews from organizations like Zochrot, will march to the abandoned northern village of al-Lajun; most of the village's former residents live in Israeli-Arab areas like Umm el-Fahm.

About one quarter of Israeli Arabs, according to some estimates, are internal refugees. Although citizens of the state, they are not allowed to return to the land which they lost as a result of the war.

Daoud Bader is one such displaced person. He was born and raised in al-Ghabisiyya, a village with about 800 residents at the time of the 1948 war. The villagers left during the war, but were allowed to return based on a High Court of Justice decision from 1951. However, the army declared the area a closed military zone, thereby preventing their return. The village was then razed by security forces. Only the mosque, which Bader says is 230 years old, remains standing. He now lives in the village of Sheikh Dannun, near Acre.

Khenin says that Israel should recognize its part in the plight of Arabs created by the 1948 war. "It won't hurt Independence Day if we were to recognize the pain caused [to the Arabs] in 1948," he says, adding that "the day will have a positive connotation for Arabs citizens when they feel the state cares about them, and stops viewing them as a threat."

While it might be true that the politicization of the Arabs in Israel has led to a greater divide between them and the Jewish citizens, Zoabi blames the Zionist parties, from the Left and the Right, for creating the separation.

She says at first, right after Oslo, Israel felt it needed peace with the Arabs to live in the region. Now, she says, Israel feels it can exist without peace with the Arabs, including the Arabs in Israel. This, she declares, will "strengthen the concept of the Jewish ghetto, the concept of separation."

Fareh, although not in full agreement with Zoabi, is also deeply concerned. His litmus test for judging the situation is a statistic that says that in the last six years, 35 Arab citizens were killed by Israeli police, while not a single Jew died at the authorities' hands. "Even during the disengagement and evacuations of settlements, when the settlers threw stones and blocks," the security forces did not respond with lethal force, he notes.

"If the Jews fail to live with the Arabs in Israel, we will pay the price in the short term. But in the long run, the whole Middle East will suffer as a result. The status of relations between the Jews and Arabs in Israel is a good measuring stick for regional peace. We are the face of the Middle East in Israel. We are the ones with the potential to make this place normal," Fareh says.

"There is a two-year window," he cautions, referring in part to the Arab Peace Initiative re-launched in Riyadh last month. "If nothing is solved by then, there will be a catastrophe.

"But I am an optimist," he adds.

The Legend of the Removed Checkpoints

Ran HaCohen, The Electronic Intifada, 24 April 2007

Israel's wall in the West Bank village of Al-Ram, north of Jerusalem, 20 February 2007. (Moti Milrod/MaanImages)

Last Monday's paper gave us a small reason to be happy. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met with Palestinian Chairman Mahmoud Abbas for the second time in just a few weeks. Reporting the meeting -- described by Palestinian sources as "fruitless" -- Ha'aretz noted:

"An IDF lieutenant-colonel also attended the meeting. The officer briefed the Palestinians on the plan to remove IDF roadblocks in the West Bank. According to the officer, the IDF has so far removed 44 roadblocks. He added that the IDF was planning to remove an additional 17 in the next stage of the plan. The sources said that the Palestinian delegation requested the removal of more roadblocks, and that Olmert expressed his willingness."

Good News, Isn't It?!

Hear, hear: the IDF removed 44 roadblocks! This may not be much, given the rather extensive list of restrictions imposed on Palestinians, i.e.:

Standing prohibitions

Palestinians from the Gaza Strip are forbidden to stay in the West Bank.

Palestinians are forbidden to enter East Jerusalem.

West Bank Palestinians are forbidden to enter the Gaza Strip through the Erez crossing.

Palestinians are forbidden to enter the Jordan Valley.

Palestinians are forbidden to enter villages, lands, towns, and neighborhoods along the 'seam line' between the separation fence and the Green Line (some 10 percent of the West Bank).

Palestinians who are not residents of the villages Beit Furik and Beit Dajan in the Nablus area, and Ramadin, south of Hebron, are forbidden entry.

Palestinians are forbidden to enter the settlements' area (even if their lands are inside the settlements' built area).

Palestinians are forbidden to enter Nablus in a vehicle.

Palestinian residents of Jerusalem are forbidden to enter area A (Palestinian towns in the West Bank).

Gaza Strip residents are forbidden to enter the West Bank via the Allenby crossing.

Palestinians are forbidden to travel abroad via Ben-Gurion Airport.

Children under age 16 are forbidden to leave Nablus without an original birth certificate and parental escort.

Palestinians with permits to enter Israel are forbidden to enter through the crossings used by Israelis and tourists.

Gaza residents are forbidden to establish residency in the West Bank.

West Bank residents are forbidden to establish residency in the Jordan Valley, seam-line communities, or the villages of Beit Furik and Beit Dajan.

Palestinians are forbidden to transfer merchandise and cargo through internal West Bank checkpoints.

Periodic prohibitions

Residents of certain parts of the West Bank are forbidden to travel to the rest of the West Bank.

People of a certain age group -- mainly men from the age of 16 to 30, 35, or 40 -- are forbidden to leave the areas where they reside (usually Nablus and other cities in the northern West Bank).

Private cars may not pass the Swahara-Abu Dis checkpoint (which separates the northern and southern West Bank). This was canceled for the first time two weeks ago under the easing of restrictions.

Travel permits required

A magnetic card (intended for entrance to Israel, but eases the passage through checkpoints within the West Bank).

A work permit for Israel (the employer must come to the civil administration offices and apply for one).

A permit for medical treatment in Israel and Palestinian hospitals in East Jerusalem (The applicant must produce an invitation from the hospital, his complete medical background, and proof that the treatment he is seeking cannot be provided in the occupied territories).

A travel permit to pass through Jordan Valley checkpoints.

A merchant's permit to transfer goods.

A permit to farm along the seam line requires a form from the land registry office, a title deed, and proof of first-degree relations to the registered property owner.

Entry permit for the seam line (for relatives, medical teams, construction workers, etc. Those with permits must enter and leave via the same crossing even if it is far away or closing early).

Permits to pass from Gaza, through Israel to the West Bank.

A birth certificate for children under 16.

A long-standing resident identity card for those who live in seam-line enclaves.

Checkpoints and barriers

There were 75 manned checkpoints in the West Bank as of January 9, 2007.

There are on average 150 mobile checkpoints a week (as of September 2006).

There are 446 obstacles placed between roads and villages, including concrete cubes, earth ramparts, 88 iron gates, and 74 kilometers of fences along main roads.

There are 83 iron gates along the separation fence, dividing lands from their owners. Only 25 of the gates open occasionally.

Main roads closed to Palestinians, officially or in practice

Road 90 (the Jordan Valley thoroughfare).

Road 60, in the North (from the Shavei Shomron military base, west of Nablus and northward).

Road 585 along the settlements Hermesh and Dotan.

Road 557 west from the Taibeh-Tul Karm junction (the Green Line) to Anabta (excluding the residents of Shufa), and east from south of Nablus (the Hawara checkpoint) to the settlement Elon Moreh.

Road 505, from Zatara (Nablus junction) to Ma'ale Efraim.

Road 5, from the Barkan junction to the Green Line.

Road 446, from Dir Balut junction to Road 5 (by the settlements Alei Zahav and Peduel).

Roads 445 and 463 around the settlement Talmon, Dolev, and Nahliel.

Road 443, from Maccabim-Reut to Givat Ze'ev.

Streets in the Old City of Hebron.

Road 60, from the settlement of Otniel southward.

Road 317, around the south Hebron Hills settlements."

So, given this list, as I was just saying, removing 44 roadblocks may not be much, but nevertheless, it is good news. Isn't it?

Back in December 2006 ...

Let's refresh our memory. It all started last December, when Olmert met Abbas. Olmert promised to remove checkpoints in the West Bank: "I intend to personally supervise it," he told Abbas, "so that the Palestinian society would feel the relief" (Ha'aretz, Dec. 24, 2006). The same day, Ha'aretz reported that Defense Minister Amir Peretz and his deputy Ephraim Sneh were actually working on a plan to facilitate Palestinian movement in the West Bank.

The two must have spent the whole night in their office, devising a plan for dismantling not less than "45 out of approximately 400 checkpoints." At dawn, just as they intended to retire for a short nap, they found Ha'aretz at the doorstep, the top of which headline read: "IDF Opposes Olmert Plan to Dismantle West Bank Checkpoints."

This sounded like a story worth following. In a democracy, the government sets the policy, the army carries it out. In other kinds of regimes, the army sets the policy, the government nods. Which regime is Israel's?

Olmert Withdraws

A few days later (Ha'aretz, Dec. 27, 2006) the prime minister indeed ordered the army to dismantle scores of checkpoints -- but "in a second phase, dependent on an additional decision of the political echelon." So at the first stage, no checkpoints will be removed (and then we'll see). This, as some Israeli sociologists claim, has always been Israel's regime: instead of risking a dispute with the army, the government complies with the army's demands.

Meanwhile, Aluf Benn of Ha'aretz revealed that the "new" plan to dismantle 45 checkpoints was nothing but an old document, prepared by the Israeli army originally in English -- an "export product" for American eyes -- back in 2005. And never implemented, of course. So much for the sleepless night of Olmert's aides: all they did was feed the media with an old army document.

The Army Rewards

Anyway, the prime minister gave the army a green light not to dismantle any checkpoint. The army, for its part, did not leave this ministerial gesture unrewarded. On Jan. 17 Ha'aretz reported that the Israeli army finally complied.

"The Israel Defense Forces announced yesterday that it recently removed 44 dirt barriers that were located near Palestinian villages in the West Bank. In recent years, the army established nearly 400 barriers and permanent roadblocks. The move is one of a series of steps aimed at easing restrictions on the Palestinians that were announced following the December 24 meeting between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas."

So you see: Olmert did keep his solemn promise, and the Israeli army did carry it out and did dismantle 44 checkpoints. At least, that's what the army announced, and the Israeli army always tells the truth. Well, almost always.

Oops ...

In this exceptional case, it took less than a week to expose the dirty deal between the government and the army. Scores and dozens of such deals -- among the government, the army, and the settlers -- are never exposed; the entire Israeli colonial project is based on such deals, made behind the back of all democratic mechanisms. But this was an exception. On Jan. 22, following an embarrassing UN report, the army had to admit:

The Israel Defense Forces admitted yesterday that the 44 dirt obstacles it said had been removed from around West Bank villages did not actually exist.

Last Tuesday, the IDF announced that it had removed 44 dirt obstacles that blocked access roads to West Bank villages, to fulfill promises made by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas during their meeting a month ago. Olmert had pledged measures to ease the lives of Palestinian civilians.

However, a military source admitted yesterday that these obstacles 'had either been removed before the political level decided on the alleviations or had been bypassed by Palestinians earlier, and a decision had been made not to rebuild them.'

So the 44 "removed" checkpoints, or dirt obstacles, didn't exist in the first place. The Israeli lie probably counted on Israel's information superiority: after all, who could count all those checkpoints better than the Israeli army? Alas, the UN turned out as an unexpected party-pooper.

Yesterday's Lie Is Today's Truth

But why bother to tell the truth when a lie is just as good? Three months later, Israel is again counting on our short memory. In an official meeting between the Israeli prime minister and the Palestinian president, no less, the army airs once again the legend about the 44 "removed checkpoints." The lie exposed in January is recycled as truth in April, and everybody is happy: Israel can claim it kept its promise, the Americans can claim progress in the "peace process," even President Mahmoud Abbas can claim an achievement.

Who would bother to remind us that all this is nothing but a lie? The abused Palestinians haven't felt any relief whatsoever, but have been cynically cheated once again. And all of us media consumers have been duped along with them.

Remember this next time the Palestinians show their inexplicable ingratitude.

Remember this next time you hear an official Israeli announcement.

Dr. Ran HaCohen was born in the Netherlands in 1964 and grew up in Israel. He has a B.A. in Computer Science, an M.A. in Comparative Literature, and his PhD is in Jewish Studies. He is a university teacher in Israel. He also works as a literary translator (from German, English and Dutch), and as a literary critic for the Israeli daily Yedioth Achronoth. Mr. HaCohen's work has been published widely in Israel. "Letter from Israel" appears occasionally at Antiwar.com. This article, which first appeared on Antiwar.com, is republished with the author's permission.

REAL CRIMES OF WOLFOWITZ IGNORED

Wolfie’s recent influence peddling scandal nothing compared to history of spying

Paul Wolfowitz, the head of the World Bank, is on the hotseat after reports revealed his sweetheart deal for his sweetheart. But this latest sordid scandal pales in comparison to charges that Wolfie spied for a foreign power in the 1980s while he was a U.S. official. Read correspondent Michael Collins Piper’s behindthe- scenes look at this neo-con’s crimes.

See TOP NEO-CON, Page 10

Page 10, AMERICAN FREE PRESS * April 23 & 30, 2007 Behind the Scenes with Michael Collins Piper

Top Neo-Con Spied for Israel And Got Away With the Crime

Wolfowitz `gal pal' scandal nothing compared to charges of treason

By Michael Collins Piper

Piper

.IT MADE THE NEWS when World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz was caught arranging a sweet deal for his mistress with World Bank funds, but the fact that Wolfowitz was once investigated for spying for a foreign government has kept under wraps by the mass media in America.

Those who make it their business to know about the doings of intriguers such as the big man at the World Bank recognize that Wolfowitz is a traitor who once engaged in espionage on behalf of Israel—and got away with it. However, the much bigger scandal, dating back to 1978, has never been plastered across the front pages of newspapers or slavered over by grinning media personalities.

While the employees of the World Bank are up in arms and have publicly hissed him and called for his ouster, Wolfowitz is still hanging on at the World Bank with the support of the Israel-controlled Bush administration.

That many are reveling in the scandal surrounding Wolfowitz is not surprising. Not only is Wolfowitz a “neo-con” (that is, one of the famous neo-conservatives) but he is also, as brash commentator Maureen Dowd has noted, a “con,” in the classic sense of the word: a con-man, a crook, evidenced by his influence-peddling on behalf of his mistress. However, in addition, one might suggest, Wolfowitz should also be considered a “con” in another sense of the word: short for “convict”—as in prison convict, which is where Wolfowitz might have ended up if he had been charged with spying for Israel as some federal agents believe he is guilty of having done.
For many years, Wolfowitz has engaged in dubious affairs on behalf of the interests of Israel. Like many others in his circle of friends and political associates, Wolfowitz—both in private life, as a well-paid academic between stints in government, and in government, most lately as number two man in the Defense Department under the unlamented Donald Rumsfeld— was a key player at the highest level in a relentless, well-funded and carefully orchestrated campaign of lies and disinformation—acting in concert with Israeli intelligence and the Israeli lobby in America—to embroil the United States in the war against Iraq. Many call Wolfowitz a “war criminal.” At the very least, he’s a liar.
_____________________

“Forget about Wolfowitz and his mistress. But don’t forget about Wolfowitz and his spying for Israel.”

_____________________

But Wolfowitz, as we’ve seen, can also be pondered as a possible traitor—if then-ranking people in our FBI and the Justice Department were to be believed.

Back in 1978, Wolfowitz was under investigation, as an official of the U.S. Arms Control & Disarmament Agency, for having passed a classified U.S. document to an Israeli government official.

The purloined material related to the proposed sale of U.S. weapons to an Arab government, something always of concern to fanatic Israeli loyalists like Wolfowitz, who, although American born, has always placed Israel’s needs first and foremost in his policymaking ventures.
Wolfowitz utilized the good offices of an operative of the pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, as the intermediary in handing over the stolen document to Wolfowitz’s friends in Israel (where, by the way, his sister lives).

It is this same AIPAC that, even now, is in the midst of a nasty criminal spy scandal relating, once again, to the illegal acquisition of classified U.S. defense information. Two former top AIPAC officials will soon stand trial in federal court for their pro-Israel misdeeds.

In any event, although Wolfowitz was never prosecuted for espionage, that doesn’t mean that there wasn’t evidence to indict him.

Several long-time close Wolfowitz associates (all now-infamous “neo-conservative” armchair intriguers for Israel)—ranging from Richard Perle to Stephen Bryen to Michael Ledeen to Douglas Feith, who served as Wolfowitz’s deputy in the Defense Department— have all been under FBI scrutiny at one time or another on suspicion of espionage on behalf of Israel.
It often surprises many Americans, who hear in the media that Israel is such a great ally of the United States, to learn that there are good patriotic Americans in the FBI who don’t like the idea of American public officials, like the aforementioned neo-conservatives, passing classified defense material to this dubious ally.

None of these neo-cons was ever indicted. However, in the case of Bryen, one dedicated federal prosecutor (who happened to be Jewish) pushed hard to indict Bryen, only to have the Israeli lobby put pressure on the Reagan administration to force the Justice Department (ruled by a series of notably corrupt and Israeli-influenced attorneys general during the Reagan years) to abandon the Bryen investigation.

Forget about Wolfowitz and his mistress. Don’t forget about Wolfowitz and his spying for Israel.

AIPAC Trial Likely to be Postponed

The unprecedented trial of two former officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, who are charged under the Espionage Act with unlawful receipt and disclosure of national defense information, is likely to be postponed from its scheduled start date on June 4.

The need to resolve disagreements between the parties over the handling of classified information involved in the case will "knock the trial date into a cocked hat," said Judge T.S. Ellis, III at an April 19 hearing.

The Judge gave prosecutors until May 2 to decide whether they will propose a new set of "substitutions" for classified evidence, which would then need to be reviewed by the defense and the court under the provisions of the Classified Information Procedures Act.

Alternatively, prosecutors may decide to stand fast with their previous proposal to bar public access to the classified evidence, a position that the judge has already rejected, thereby setting the stage for an appeal.

Judge Ellis issued a detailed memorandum opinion (pdf) on April 19 to explain why he concluded that the prosecution proposal to exclude public access to classified evidence is not authorized by statute or precedent.

The memorandum opinion advised the government that any proposal to exclude public access to classified evidence would have to be thoroughly supported by "a highly detailed explanation of the ensuing harms to national security... [since] much of the classified information at issue [here] is not self-evidently damaging to national security."

Posted by Steven Aftergood on April 24, 2007 12:03 PM | Permalink

The American, Israeli, and Palestinian Triangle

4/16/2007

Video link for Amb. Afif Safieh's Harvard Lecture

Zionism its Role in World Politics

Şenay Yeğin

Tuesday , 24 April 2007

Author: Hyman Lumer. New York: International Publishers, 1973. 152 pages. ISBN 0-7118-0383-X

In the 8th Century, after the exile of Jews from Jerusalem by the Romans, the word “Zion” has been uttered by the Jews to emphasize their longing for the Promised Land: Palestine. Today, the word Zion is being used as a modern term, Zionism which is the name given to the movement of the Jews who are in Diaspora to gather on the land of Palestine again. Zion has become an ideology as Zionism; but it did not serve to the civilization development in the Middle East. Instead Middle East came out to be a deadlock. Is it a deadlock because of pure Zionist intentions or imperialist missions? The American Marxist Hyman Lumer in his book “Zionism Its Role in World Politics” answered this question by defining Zionism as a nationalist movement serving to imperialism and US aims over the oil territories.

It is easy to understand the message that Lumer tries to give from the cover of the book on which there is a shape of world circled by “Zionism”. Lumer’s thesis in his book is that Zionism is not only gathering of Jews in the Promised Land but its support to imperialism which is a big actor in world politics. In the first part of his book, Lumer introduces Zionism by explaining its roots and nature, its contribution to the establishment of Israel, and its socialist side. In the second part, his emphasis is on the purpose of Zionism which is being in the service of imperialism. He supports his arguments by questioning how Zionism got support from imperialist powers, what kind of an expansionist policy it had and its imperialist policies over Africa. In the third part, Lumer elaborates on the Zionist organizations in the US and on the role of monopoly capital. In the next part, he emphasizes that Zionism was a nationalist movement and he explains that Zionism’s reaction was the formation of a fascist organization, the Jewish Defense League. In the fifth part, he points to the Soviet Jews in Israel and in the last part; he emphasizes the reaction of Jews in the US and in Israel to Zionism.

In the first part, Lumer defines political Zionism by the creation and perpetuation of a Jewish state and makes a distinction with its religious definition which is the belief in an eventual return to the Holy Land upon the coming of the Messiah. The two most important forerunners of Zionism were Leon Pinsker and Theodor Herzl who wrote books about it after the development of anti-semitism with the upsurge of imperialism and racism in the 19th Century. According to Lumer, as a political ideology Zionism was based on two points which were that the Jews throughout the world form a nation and that anti-semitism is eternal. He emphasized that Zionism is not only an ideology, but it is also an organized movement which is based on the principle of the establishment of a state which is purely Jewish to escape anti-semitism. However while escaping anti-semitism; Lumer emphasizes that Jews treated Israeli Arabs as second-class citizens.

In the first part, Lumer emphasizes that there were also socialist trends in a nationalist movement like Zionism in the beginning of 1900s. The supporters of socialist Zionists in the tsarist Russia had gathered under organizations like Workers of Zion which supported a socialist Jewish state in Palestine. Moreover Lumer emphasizes that today; there are socialist developments in Israel like kibbutz, which is the communal enterprise whose members in return provided only by the necessities of life. He emphasizes that 58.5 percent of Israel’s economy is private sector which belongs mostly to foreign capital.

In the second part of the book, Lumer is supporting his argument that, Zionism is serving to imperialism because of Israel’s will of all of Palestine, its expansionist policies and its relations with Africa. Israel willed not only to possess their homeland but all of Palestine. Herzl wanted Jews to be backed by imperialist countries such as the Ottoman Empire, Germany, Russia and France for possessing the land of Palestine. Other than these countries Britain and the USA supported Jews for their mission, too. By the Balfour Declaration in 1917, with the invasion of Palestine by Britain, Jews were assisted by Britain. Besides Britain a committee in the USA, American Emergency Committee for Zionist Affairs, was founded for the establishment of a Jewish commonwealth.

Between 1958 and 1966, Israel implemented expansionist policies; forming ties with 39 countries in Africa, 23 in Latin America, 11 in Asia and 8 in Mediterranean. Israel supported French imperialism against the independence movements of Algerians and it joined to Britain’s and France’s invasion of Egypt in 1956. In 1958, after the leadership of an anti-imperialist regime in Iraq, Israel supported Britain and US when their troops landed to protect Jordan and Lebanon from the regime. In 1967, Israel used its expansionist policies by invading Egypt. However its expansionist policies were not only for Arab countries but also for African countries. Israel was basically an associate of South Africa which had an apartheid regime. However, it gave military aid to national liberation fronts in Africa for presenting Israel as a socialist but not communist and more acceptable than imperialist powers.

In the third part, Lumer emphasizes that Zionism is in association with the US by explaining Zionist organizational movements there, US aid to Israel and its dependence on US capital. In the US, Zionism did not have many followers in the beginning of the 19th Century, because the ones who did not support it thought the return to the homeland could only occur by the upcoming of the Messiah. However after the Holocaust and the upsurge of Jewish nationalism, organizations were founded some of which were Women’s Zionist Organization of America, Zionist Organization of America and United Labor Organization of America. Moreover, the US Jews aided Israel’s political parties and the institutions that support their policies since the establishment of Israel, under the umbrella organization called The United Jewish Appeal. Furthermore, Lumer emphasizes that US imperialism shows itself in the Israeli economy, by saying that a vast part of investments are owned by Ford, Motorola and other US companies. Eighty percent of Israel’s foreign debt is also owned by US government which makes Israel dependent on the foreign capital of the US imperialism. Moreover, the main point of the book is given in this part which is that US is trying to use Israel as a weapon against Arab liberation movement and its threat to US oil investments by making it dependent on its capital. Especially after the 1967 war with Egypt Israel became highly dependent on US.

Besides, Lumer’s emphasize on Israel’s dependence on the US capital, in the fourth chapter, he raises the point that Zionism became a reactionary movement and that it supported racism by forming an ultra-racist organization which tried to combat Soviet Russia, blacks and Arabs. According to Lumer, if a country is capitalist it uses racial or nationalist oppression to prevail its exploitation. For the Jewish question, there are Marxist and Zionist views. According to the Marxist point of view Jewish question is based on the recognition of the class roots of anti-semitism and working class unity. On the other hand, the Zionists view anti-semitism as everlasting and a distinctive form of repression. Moreover, he gives the example of the Soviet Russia which resolved the Jewish question by eliminating the capitalist roots of racism. According to Lumer, the incline of Jewish nationalism after the 1967 war caused the establishment of Jewish Defense League (JDL) in 1968. The shift to right among Zionists is being criticized by Lumer. He says that racism fosters the exploitation of workers and anti-semitism only occurs in the societies of class exploitation. According to Lumer, it was a reactionary movement that was founded for protecting Jews from blacks in New York. JDL was found guilty because of the bomb attacks. Some of the targets of the attack were against Soviet News Agency, Soviet Embassy, and Palestinian Liberalization Organization. Moreover, Lumer emphasizes that JDL was used as a tool for CIA’s anti-Soviet operations.

In the fifth part, Lumer singles out the point that the difficulties that Jews came across in the Soviet Union are only lies. The Jews in the Soviet Russia came across with Zionist hostility especially after the 1967 war. The Soviets were accused by implementing discriminatory laws to the Jews like not allowing them leave the country or by forcing them to carry domestic passports to expose Jews to discrimination. In the Soviet Russia, Jews’ religious freedom was restricted, too. However, Lumer emphasizes that the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights invoked the Soviet Jews to immigrate to Israel. However after the immigration Jews wanted to return to Soviet Russia, because it was hard to live in a capitalist system. Moreover, he points out that there is a big lie which claims that the Jews in the Soviet Russia were treated intolerably by the Russians.

In the last part, Lumer is making emphasize on the point that there is a rising opposition to Zionism in the USA and Israeli policies in Israel. There is an incline of peace movements in Israel which are usually against Israeli imperialist policies. The opposition in the US is generally among the young Jews who have leftist political views. It is not only among Jews but also among non-jews, too.

As far as Lumer has Marxist point of views and that he was one of the editors in the Political Affairs Magazine which is a publication of the Communist Party in the USA, it must be considered that a Marxist point of view can not be neutral for criticizing a nationalist movement of the Jews. It must be noted that this book was published in 1973, while the Soviet Union was still alive. So as a Marxist author in a capitalist country, the longing for a communist regime and also criticizing Zionism as a servant of imperialism are both inevitable. However, when the policies of Israel are compared with its current policies, it is noteworthy that Israel is still making attempts to invade its neighbors and it is still a major ally of the US.

Catholic Nobel peace laureate shot in nonviolent West Bank rally

By Judith Sudilovsky

4/23/2007
Catholic News Service

JERUSALEM (CNS) – Northern Ireland's 1976 Noble Peace Prize laureate, Mairead Corrigan Maguire, was injured in the leg by a rubber bullet while taking part in a nonviolent demonstration against the Israeli separation wall.

Maguire, a Catholic, required medical treatment for her injury and also for tear-gas inhalation. She remained in the hospital for a few hours, then returned to the demonstration. She left the country the following day, April 21, as planned.

Maguire had been attending the Second Bil'in International Conference on Nonviolence in the West Bank village of Bil'in, where Palestinians and international and Israeli peace activists have held such protests against the wall since February 2005. The conference was sponsored by the International Solidarity Movement.

Movement activist Jonas Martinez, an American Catholic who said he did not want to give more details about where he was from, said conference participants joined the weekly demonstration against the wall and were met by Israeli soldiers armed with rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannons.

Demonstrators, including Maguire, covered their faces with bandannas and onion slices to dilute the tear gas, he said, and after each lob of tear gas they would regroup and continue forward toward the wall. He said demonstrators shouted in various languages: "Don't shoot, we are nonviolent."

In addition to Maguire, eight demonstrators were hit by rubber bullets, he said, and numerous demonstrators were beaten by soldiers. Three demonstrators were arrested but later released, he said. Some of the more than two dozen injuries came from tear gas, he said.

One demonstrator, Tito Kayak of Puerto Rico, managed to climb a nearby military tower and hang a Palestinian flag on the top; he was arrested. He was to remain under house arrest until the end of the Israeli Independence Day holiday, which begins the evening of April 24, said Martinez.

Israel says the separation wall is necessary to prevent suicide attacks against Israeli civilians and notes that the number of attacks has decreased significantly since the wall was built.

At a press conference before being injured, Maguire told about 500 participants in the nonviolence conference that the wall was an "insult to the human family" and must come down.

"Nonviolence will solve the problems here in Israel and Palestine," Maguire said in a statement issued by the International Solidarity Movement. "Often, the world sees only violence. But Palestinians are a good people, working toward nonviolence. This wall must fall."

Israelis with Ahmed Chalabi are building the walls in Iraq

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

من يبني الحائط؟

.

فريق عمل إسرائيلي يعمل بتنسيق كامل مع لجنة الحشد الشعبي والتي يرئسها احمد الجلبي لتطويق أكثر من خمسين مدينه في العراق بسياج عزل

دار بابل للدراسات والإعلام - الموصل

ـ24 نيسان 2007

.

Dar Babel for Studies & Information (Mosul) has issued a report (above, in Arabic, April 24, 2007) indicating that work on the "walls" that are now being put up in Iraq have been in preparation for over three months. This project is being headed by Ahmad Al-Chalabi in conjunction with the Israeli company of Zeef Belinsky who has a long track record in ghetto construction, and with Al-Mahdi Army's financing and labor. The document provides sufficient details on the six work locations producing these concrete blocks, for easier targeting.

.

posted by Imad Khadduri # 6:52 AM

Israelis, Palestinians discuss final peace accord – report

Palestinian newspaper al-Quds says Israeli, Palestinian officials discussed difficult issues that have been blocking progress in peace talks

Joseph Nasr

Published:

04.24.07, 14:31 / Israel News

Israeli and Palestinian officials discussed a number of thorny issues at an undisclosed European location in preparation for final-status peace talks, the al-Quds newspaper reported Tuesday.

The final borders of the future Palestinian state, the plight of Palestinian refugees, the status of Jerusalem and the future of Jewish settlements built in the West Bank were on the agenda, the Palestinian daily added.

The report quoted a senior Palestinian official as saying that the meeting reflected the willingness of Israeli and Palestinian leaders to fulfill US President George W. Bush will to establish an independent Palestinian state by the end of his presidency next year.

The report also said that Israel initially resisted the meeting but acquiesced to pressure from Washington and the European Union.

Under the Oslo Accord negotiations over final status talks should have ended in May 1999.

The Palestinians insist that all refugees who fled Palestine during the 1948 Israeli-Arab war should be allowed back into their homes according with United Nations Resolution 194.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel was ready to make "painful concessions" to achieve peace with the Palestinians, but warned that no Palestinian refugees will be allowed into Israel's sovereign territory.

We like our Arabs to be traitors

Editor's note: I am moving to posting at the primary blog(also see new articles below and some of yesterday's at the secondary blog).
---
Last update - 07:50 13/04/2007

Haaretz

By Bradley Burston


If Azmi Bishara had never existed, the right would have had to invent him.

There is the irresistible juxtaposition of the good suits and the revolutionary rhetoric, the erudite professor of philosophy seated alongside Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah at a memorial in Syria for Hafez Assad, the Christian from Nazareth praising Hezbollah as a heroic example of Islamic resistance which has "lifted the spirit of the Arab people."

The right can't afford to lose Bishara. He is subversive beyond its wildest dreams. As the first Arab to run for prime minister of the Jewish state, his brilliance, his flamboyance, his refusal to compromise, have allowed the right to milk the word treason for all its worth.

Bishara always made too good a target. For people like Avigdor Lieberman, Bishara is an electoral secret weapon, fuel for the fire of any campaign that trades on fear of Arabs, hatred of Arabs, suspicion of Arabs, revulsion at the fact that they live here among us, well over than a million of them. One of them for every four of us.

Bishara, however, is not our real problem. We are our problem.

There is something deep down in many of us, which causes us to takes a quiet satisfaction in the notion that if push came to shove, the Arab citizens of Israel would prove themselves disloyal.

Too many of us want our Arabs to be traitors. Too many of us see Israeli Arabs, as a group, as hypocrites, parasites, their dual-loyalty a thin disguise for support of terror in the service of Palestine.

There is a quiet sense among many of us, that Israeli Arabs are fleecing the state, even as they grouse about inequality and nurse plans to de-Judaize the national home of the Jewish People.

It is, in many ways, a form of classical anti-Semitism in which the Semites in question happen to be Israeli Arabs.

We complain that they live off the rest of us, that they flaunt our zoning laws and evade the taxes we pay, that they are happy to take our welfare while spurning the notion of defending the country.

It makes us feel somehow more secure in our own identity as Jews in a Jewish state. It makes our dislike of them, our educational, economic, and social discrimination against them, seem more of a reasoned response than what it actually is, which is institutional racism.

Consider an article currently making its viral rounds on the e-mail circuit among Israeli Jews.

"They're so 'downtrodden' that tax collection in the Arab sector is a joke, and statistics on this are known to all those who care to know them," the article states. "Not only national levies like income and value-added taxes, but they can't really be bothered to pay their own municipal taxes, all the while expecting the government to cover the deficits they themselves created."

A fascinating condemnation, proving, perhaps more than anything, that Israeli Arabs have learned remarkably well to become as Israeli as the next guy.

The article goes on to paint a picture of the Israeli Arab as posing as a victim of crushing racism and poverty while actually living a life of luxury far beyond the means of the average Israeli Jew.

"They're so 'discriminated against,' that this entire [Arab] sector lives in single-family houses, that is to say, villas, which are, in fact, huge castles."

According to the anonymous author, "Every one of them lives on a jabel [hillock] of his own, as though land were an unlimited resource in this land.

"Residents of [the Israeli Arab village of] Sahnin complain of 'confiscation of lands.' But they forget that in Sahnin, 20,000 residents live on 8,000 dunams, while in Ramat Gan, for example, upwards of 150,000 people live on a total area of 12,000 dunams, a quarter of which is taken up by parks."

The real relish, however, is reserved for the blend of treachery and hypocrisy which the author finds endemic among Israeli Arabs.

"They're so 'oppressed,' that that they can openly identify with the worst of our enemies, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria, the Islamic Jihad and they rest of the scum, and no one even seriously considers demanding the least loyalty to their own state."

At the same time, the author notes, Israeli Arabs have no interest in moving to a future Palestinian state. In a reference to a Lieberman proposal, he concludes, "They're not even prepared to remain in place and have the border fence be moved ? leaving them in 'Palestine' without their having to leave their homes."

Finally, we can all begin to sleep well at night, knowing that we can make our Arabs fit any misconceptions we choose. We can convince ourselves, in the space of an inbox, that Israeli Arabs enjoy unparalleled freedoms and prosperity. We can even accuse them of treason and, at the same time, console ourselves with their lack of true political conviction.

They live here among us. We can look right at them, and not see them at all.

Zionist horror, at Palestine human rights protests in Michigan

"Most Saturdays, a half-dozen to a dozen or more members of Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends hold signs against Israel ("Israel Commits Atrocities"), against U.S. policy ("Stop U.S. Aid to Israel") and against supporters of Israel ("Israel Lobby Inside"). Sometimes they videotape the worshipers as they arrive."
---

Thursday, April 12, 2007

NEWS: Counter-Protest
Non-Jews lead effort to stop Shabbat demonstrations in Ann Arbor.

Don Cohen
Special to the Jewish News

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Ann Arbor

How can a community like ours, that rightly prides itself on being a liberal and respectful one, be silent in the face of this kind of abuse of our Jewish neighbors?"

That is the question that Larry Crockett and others in the recently formed Worship Without Harassment group ask fellow Ann Arborites regarding the picketing of Beth Israel Congregation each Saturday morning for the past three years.

Most Saturdays, a half-dozen to a dozen or more members of Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends hold signs against Israel ("Israel Commits Atrocities"), against U.S. policy ("Stop U.S. Aid to Israel") and against supporters of Israel ("Israel Lobby Inside"). Sometimes they videotape the worshipers as they arrive.

The Ann Arbor City Council, area religious leaders and the Ann Arbor News have condemned the pickets to no avail.

In an opinion piece in the Ann Arbor News in January, Beth Israel's Rabbi Robert Dobrusin said the signs "contain false and hateful statements crafted to be provocative and offensive." As to the protesters' claim that they seek dialogue and their demand for a synagogue-hosted platform to present their views, Rabbi Dobrusin wrote that the Shabbat protests "are disrespectful, intrusive, insensitive and counter-productive to any true dialogue on this subject in this community."

Crockett, a member of First Unitarian Universalist Church of Ann Arbor, has observed the picketing a few times and found it "disgusting," saying there are proper forums and venues to demonstrate about political issues. He also suspects that Jews are being singled out in a way that other religious groups wouldn't be, and that beyond political differences anti-Semitism is likely at play.

"I think if it had happened at a mainline church, it would have been over in a month; someone would have found a way to stop it," he says.

An answer on the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page on the group's Web site also addresses the issue of anti-Semitism: "When Jews - and only Jews - are subjected to this kind of behavior, then what might the appropriate term to describe that be?" it says.

Crockett urges friends of the Jewish community to show support by signing an online petition, sending letters of support to the congregation and speaking out at their own religious institutions in support of Beth Israel and against protests at houses of worship. To contact the group, or sign the online petition, which had 328 signators at last count, visit the Web site

www.worshipwithoutharassment.org.

In July 2005, some Beth Israel congregants formed SPURN (Synagogue Protest Unacceptable! Respond Now) to encourage donations to the American Friends of Magen David Adom, supporters of Israel's emergency medical service, as a positive response to the protests. To date, it has raised just under $85,000. See

www.aaspurn.org for information.

URL

A Bitter Spat Over Ideas, Israel and Tenure: Finkelstein vs Dershowitz

April 12, 2007

By PATRICIA COHEN

If the longstanding fight between two professors, Alan Dershowitz and Norman Finkelstein, was under the jurisdiction of family court, a judge could issue restraining orders and forbid inflammatory statements. But, alas, this nasty and zealously pursued feud is taking place in scholarly precincts, so each protagonist is continuing his campaign, unhampered, to destroy the other’s professional reputation and career.

In the latest round, first reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Mr. Dershowitz, a law professor at Harvard and a prominent defender of Israel, is trying to derail Mr. Finkelstein’s bid for tenure at DePaul University in Chicago. He has sent a blast of e-mail messages to faculty and administrators there accusing Mr. Finkelstein of shoddy scholarship, lying and anti-Semitism.

Mr. Finkelstein, who is going before a university-wide review panel on Friday, the third and final step of the tenure process, said that so far two committees — one from the political science department and one from the college as a whole — voted in favor of tenure. But the college dean rejected his advisory committee’s vote and recommended against an appointment.

“I am personally confident that had the process been without outside interferences, I would have gotten tenure,” Mr. Finkelstein said. (Tenure decisions will be announced in June, said Denise Mattson, a spokeswoman for DePaul.)

Regardless of the outcome Mr. Dershowitz has managed to irritate many people besides Mr. Finkelstein. “Everyone has been offended by the degree of outside pressure,” said Michael Budde, the chairman of DePaul’s political science department, “which shows no respect for the integrity of our process and institution.” On Tuesday the Middle East Studies Association, which represents scholars, sent a letter to DePaul’s president expressing concern that this tenure decision had been “unduly politicized.”

--MORE--

Related

Zionism vs. Anti-Zionism: Dershowitz Tries To Get Finklestein Fired

Finding the Courage to Negotiate: Pelosi, AIPAC and Foreign Policy

The Berkeley Daily Planet

Editorial

By Becky O’Malley


So let us begin anew, remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.
—President John F. Kennedy


These words are from Kennedy’s first inaugural address. That speech marked a generation, my generation. Nancy Pelosi, a politically aware woman of my own age, like me a college student in 1961, cannot have escaped hearing that speech and being influenced by it all of her adult life, as we all were. The attitude it embodied ultimately resulted in the end of a repressive regime in the former Soviet Union, without the atomic war that many in 1961 thought was inevitable. Kennedy described the belief system he hoped to counter: “[B]oth sides overburdened by the cost of modern weapons, both rightly alarmed by the steady spread of the deadly atom, yet both racing to alter that uncertain balance of terror that stays the hand of mankind’s final war.” Kennedy and his successors made many mistakes along the way, but his assertion that negotiation was the only way to end the balance of terror and avoid the atomic Armageddon which threatened to destroy the planet paid off in the end.

Pelosi, now a grandmother like me, is continuing to follow Kennedy’s advice by visiting leaders of potentially warring nations in the Mideast and urging negotiations. Tom Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor in Congress, is going along. Her credentials as a supporter of Israel, like his, are rock-solid, but no matter, the twerps are nipping at their heels.

Dick Cheney, briefly emerging from his undisclosed hidey-hole, led the attack, which has now trickled down to lesser-con luminaries like columnist Debra Saunders. The most foolish version of all this was Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s suggestion that Pelosi shouldn’t have worn a headscarf when she visited a mosque. “I just don’t know what got into her head, to be completely honest with you,” he said. “Her going to a state which is, without question, a sponsor of terror, and having her picture taken with Assad and being seen in a head scarf and so forth is sending the wrong signal to the people of Syria and to the people of the Middle East.”

Perhaps Romney, who is a Mormon, doesn’t knew that when Nancy and I were growing up Catholic women were always required to cover their heads in church, and that even Protestant princesses (there were no women Speakers in those days) donned veils when calling on the Pope. As a mayor’s daughter she’s undoubtedly grown up seeing politicians of all faiths bobby-pin yarmulkes to their heads when courting Jewish voters. Wearing a scarf is no big deal.

Lantos has even suggested that a trip to Iran should be the next item on the agenda, a proposal which Pelosi’s political staff quickly rejected, but don’t bet against it nevertheless. The time for talking to all parties is now, as sensible Israelis and Americans, even some Republicans, are starting to admit. Pelosi carried what she thought was a peace message to Syria from Israel, only to have clueless Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert deny that he’d intended any such thing, probably under pressure from the Bush White House.

But the time has come to talk. George Soros, international financier, philanthropist and determined advocate of what he believes to be human rights imperatives, came out of the political closet with a piece in the April 12 New York Review of Books.

He said that “The Bush administration is once again in the process of committing a major policy blunder in the Middle East, one that is liable to have disastrous consequences and is not receiving the attention it should. This time it concerns the Israeli–Palestinian relationship. The Bush administration is actively supporting the Israeli government in its refusal to recognize a Palestinian unity government that includes Hamas, which the U.S. State Department considers a terrorist organization. This precludes any progress toward a peace settlement at a time when progress on the Palestinian problem could help avert a conflagration in the greater Middle East.” His statement was dated March 15, before Pelosi’s trip, but its endorsement of the necessity of negotiation certainly applies to talking to Syria as well.

With a great deal of trepidation, remarkable in someone with as much influence and even power as Soros has, he zeroed in on the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) as one of the principal obstacles to peace:

“I am not sufficiently engaged in Jewish affairs to be involved in the reform of AIPAC; but I must speak out in favor of the critical process that is at the heart of our open society. I believe that a much-needed self-examination of American policy in the Middle East has started in this country; but it can’t make much headway as long as AIPAC retains powerful influence in both the Democratic and Republican parties. Some leaders of the Democratic Party have promised to bring about a change of direction but they cannot deliver on that promise until they are able to resist the dictates of AIPAC.” Even though Soros is himself Jewish and a strong supporter of Israel, he knows that he is exposing himself to personal attacks for taking this position.

Pelosi, like many Democratic politicians in the Bay Area including Lantos, Assemblymember Hancock and Mayor Bates among others, has in the past been a vocal and visible supporter of AIPAC. That puts her in a good position to jump boldly into the negotiating process, just as Nixon’s history of anti-Communism put him in a good position to open negotiations with China. Even so, it has taken a considerable amount of courage for her to do so, and for Lantos and Congressman Henry Waxman to get her back as she does. It’s not too much to ask that other Democratic political leaders, especially those in safer-than-safe Northern California seats, should now demonstrate similar courage in resisting AIPAC’s undue influence on American and Israeli policy and speaking out in favor of open negotiations with all parties in the Middle East.

Twilight Zone / Village of the Martyrs

Last update - 15:04 12/04/2007

By Gideon Levy

In a square marked by cypress trees, the dead rest. Here are 48 decades-old graves - graves of Qassem Abbas, Awad Jawad, Arif Aqel and many unknown soldiers, who rest beneath the old tombstones. The cemetery of the fallen of the Iraqi Army's Second Battalion, 1948. Until the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, an Iraqi tank that had invaded the area was also kept here. In 1993, Israel hastened to remove the tank, lest the Palestinians make use of the steel junk heap.

Up on the hillside, above this military cemetery located south of Jenin, the "Village of the Martyrs," Al-Shuhada, was founded in 1948, a village of Bedouin refugees. About 2,000 of their descendants live here today; about a third of the men still go to work in Israel, in the fields of Emek Hefer and the surrounding area, exactly where their forefathers' villages once stood. At the end of last week, they dug another grave here.

Ahmed Asasa was buried in the soil of his village. He'd been shot in the neck from afar by an Israeli sniper. Two of his friends, who tried to come to his aid while he was bleeding to death, were also shot and wounded by snipers. Asasa was 15, a 10th-grader in the village high school. There was more than one Ahmed Asasa in this story: One of the friends who tried to help him, and one of the witnesses to the killing, also share the same name. Everyone is Ahmed Asasa, in the Village of the Martyrs.

Our escort to the village hesitates to drive his car into the Jenin refugee camp, where we are waiting for him. Captain Saud, of the Palestinian national security forces, is armed and wearing a fashionable shirt embroidered with the logo of the U.S. Army Special Forces; he knows that the camp's boundaries are a "red line" for PA personnel. Outside the boundaries, his people lie in wait for the owners of the stolen cars from the city and the camp, and they immediately confiscate and destroy the vehicles. "The PA brought an end to the occupation, solved the refugee problem, and now all it has left to do is to confiscate cars stolen from Israel," people in the camp say bitterly.

The government hospital in the city, on the edge of the camp, is shut down again, due to non-payment of wages. The two wounded boys whom we met later had received only first aid at this hospital and then were released. The hospital is deserted. Oh, the international boycott. In both the city and refugee camp of Jenin, people look like the walking dead.

We parked our car outside the house of Rabi'a Asasa, the "bingo" - slang for the wanted man of the village. In order to apprehend him, the soldiers raided this place two weeks ago Thursday at first light; in seeking to catch him, they killed young Ahmed. Rabi'a managed to get away.

We walk to the house of the dead boy. The blue iron gate is wrecked, because of the Jeep that stormed into the yard. The houses here are built on a rocky slope and we climb over the rough terrain to Ahmed's house. The fields of Qabatiyah, carpets of brown and green, are visible in the valley below. Further up the hill, between the houses, is a makeshift monument with a photo of Ahmed. This is where he fell. The sniper, say the residents, stood in the pink window of the house on the slope, under the television satellite dish, more than 100 meters away. The sniper aimed at the neck, fired and Ahmed collapsed.

It was very early in the morning. Only the laborers who go to work in Israel were awake at that hour. The sound of gunfire and stun grenades exploding was heard from the hills and the whole village awoke in a fright. Ahmed also awoke in his house at the top of the hill. The women and children rushed out, toward the slope, in fear of the soldiers who had invaded from above. They didn't know that the soldiers had raided the entire village, and were standing on the roofs of the houses and at the windows, also along the same slope. Only the head of the household, Ibrahim Asasa, remained in the house.

Ibrahim is 69, the father of 11 children; Ahmed was his youngest. Three days after the tragedy, the signs of shock and bereavement are still apparent on this withered man in a kaffiyeh. He was born in a village that is now the site of Moshav Beit Eliezer. Ibrahim still goes out to work in the fields of neighboring communities, between Kfar Monash, Beit Lid and Netanya. Last week, he was working for the Columbia citrus fruit company in Hadera. Now he's afraid that the state will prevent him from going to work in Israel because he has become a bereaved father. It seems like all the men of the village have come to console him in the living room of his home. They sit sipping bitter coffee and eating dried dates.

Ibrahim awoke at five that fateful morning and was getting ready to leave for work in Israel, when he heard gunfire from the hills overlooking the house. The other members of the family woke up and began running for their lives. Ahmed headed toward his cousin's house further down the slope. Ibrahim stayed behind, near the iron gate. A few minutes later he was informed that his son had been hit and was lying wounded on the slope. He was told that the boy was taken to the hospital and, afterward, that he had died. By the time he reached the hospital, he could only see his son's dead body.

The family's neighbor, also named Ahmed Asasa, was also awakened by the gunfire, and soon looked out the window and saw the other Ahmed Asasa lying wounded on the ground, bleeding from the neck, not far from his house. This Ahmed Asasa was afraid to leave the house because of all the shooting. Yet another Ahmed Asasa, an 18-year-old neighbor, decided to make a run for it and try to save his wounded cousin. A few women had tried before to pull the wounded boy out of the way, but then ran off because of the continued shooting. This Ahmed Asasa thought that because he was short, he could get to his bleeding cousin and help him. He started pulling him along the rocky ground, but then he, too, was wounded by bullet fragments, in the head and the waist. He shows us the scars. He says that when he got close to his cousin, Ahmed was still moving parts of his body and his eyes were open.

The Ahmed Asasa who'd tried to come to his aid fell and lost consciousness. He woke up later in the hospital. Neighbors say that the Ahmed who was shot in the neck lay on the ground for close to an hour. The Ahmed Asasa who survived still has trouble getting around.

Another neighbor, Shawki Asasa, a 24-year-old soldier in the PA under Captain Saud, also made his way to the wounded boy. Now he is at home recovering from his own injuries; a sniper's bullet pierced his shoulder and exited his upper back. He heard the women shouting that someone was wounded and rushed to help. After he himself was hit, he managed to drag his body a little before collapsing on the rocks like the two Ahmed Asasas. One of his commanders says that he tried to talk to one of the Israel Defense Forces officers, to persuade him to let them evacuate the wounded, but that the officer told him: "Don't interfere." Shawki's father says: "They don't want the world to help us and they don't want us to help each other, either. A boy lies there wounded and they don't let us help him."

By the time the first Ahmed Asasa arrived at the hospital, having finally been transported in a private car since no ambulance was permitted to get near him, he was already dead. The second Ahmed Asasa survived.

The IDF Spokesperson, this week: "On March 29 an IDF force operated in Shuhada, south of Jenin. During the action, the force was fired upon in a number of different incidents. At 4:47 the force identified a terrorist armed with a long weapon on the roof of a building, fired at him and identified a hit. At 5:24, the force identified two more armed terrorists on the roof of a nearby building and fired at them. Subsequently, a violent riot erupted in the village that included the throwing of explosives, gunfire and rock-throwing. In the course of the action Palestinians blocked the traffic routes with boulders, which prevented the medical forces from reaching the place. The IDF force did not prevent ambulances from entering the village. As noted, IDF fire was directed solely at armed terrorists."

His friends say that Ahmed loved soccer and was a good student. In the last picture taken of him, he's holding a certificate of excellence fr om his school. They laugh at the claim that he was armed, and his father points out that, given the distance between the sniper and his fleeing son, the boy wasn't endangering anyone, in any case. In recent years, six others from the village have been killed, including Hussam Asasa, who was physically and mentally disabled, and young Fadi Asasa, who was run over by a vehicle belonging to an undercover army unit.

All the students from the school came to their friend Ahmed's funeral, which was held in the village cemetery not far from the Iraqi cemetery, in the shadow of the cypresses.

Gideon Levy is an Israeli journalist for Ha'aretz, a member of its editorial board and former spokesman for Shimon Peres ^[1] A recurring theme of his articles is what he calls the "moral blindness" of the Israeli society to the effects of its acts of war and occupation, an attitude which he attributes to the systematic dehumanization of Israel's neighbours. During the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict, he joined a distinct minority of Israeli commentators by rejecting the view that this was a "just war" whose civilian casualties were inevitable and acceptable.

Levy was born in 1955 in Tel Aviv as a child of European immigrants. From 1978 to 1982 he served, along with Yossi Beilin as aide to Shimon Peres. Since 1982 he writes for the Israeli daily Haaretz, where in 1986 he first reported about the occupation and Palestinian life under the occupation.^[2] In 1996 he was awarded the Emil Grunzweig Human Rights Award by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.