Is the U.S. Waging Israel's Wars?
(Updated: See related stories in comments).
Related
Regan Official: 'War On Terror' A Hoax - Iraq For Israeli Territorial Expansion
Is new Israeli spy case tied to trial of former AIPAC officials?
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04/23/2008
Yinon's Prophecy: Is the US Waging Israel's Wars?
Considering the writings of Oded Yinon, the US mission is not yet accomplished.
By Linda S. Heard
Many throughout the Muslim world and beyond are asking this question: What are the real reasons behind the US invasion of Iraq and its wish to overthrow the governments of Syria and Iran?
For all their grandiose posturing, in truth, Iraq, Syria and Iran have never posed a direct threat to the US mainland. Put simply, they're too far away from the neighbourhood. So why would the US be willing to expend so many human lives and so much treasury on changing the regimes of countries it doesn't like?
Theories abound. At the top of the list is America's quest for oil, a shrinking, non-renewable resource. But, in reality, the US gets very little of its oil from the Middle East and the Gulf. Most comes from South America and Africa.
Another theory revolves around the petrodollar monopoly, which both Iraq and Iran have sought to disband by trading their oil in Euros. There may be something in this one but it doesn't explain why Syria is in the firing line.
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Yinon's strategy was based on this premise. In order to survive Israel must become an imperial regional power and must also ensure the break-up of all Arab countries so that the region may be carved up into small ineffectual states unequipped to stand up to Israeli military might.
Here is the link to Oded Yinon's 1982 "Zionist Plan for the Middle East"
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See you soon, I hope...
Rory McCarthy in Gaza City
guardian.co.uk,
Wednesday April 23 2008
The UN is to halt food handouts for up to 800,000 Palestinians from tomorrow because of a severe fuel shortage in Gaza brought on by an Israeli economic blockade.
John Ging, the director of operations in Gaza for the UN Relief and Works Agency, which supports Palestinian refugees, said there had been a "totally inadequate" supply of fuel from Israel to Gaza for 10 months until it was finally halted two weeks ago. "The devastating humanitarian impact is entirely predictable," he said.
A shortage of diesel and petrol means UN food assistance to 650,000 Palestinian refugees will stop tomorrow, and aid from the World Food Programme for another 127,000 Palestinians due in the coming days will also be halted.
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THURSDAY, APRIL 24, 2008
The Western UN ambassadors walked out of the meeting in dismay by the approach
The US, Britain, France and other members have walked out of a closed meeting of the UN Security Council after Libya compared the situation in Gaza to Nazi concentration camps in World War II.
Diplomats said France's UN ambassador walked out, followed by his Western colleagues, after the Libyan envoy made the remarks during a debate on Gaza.
Council members were meeting privately on Wednesday to discuss the possibility of issuing a compromise press statement that would have highlighted the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza while also contributing positively to efforts to reach an Israeli-Palestinian settlement.
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w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m
Last update - 16:09 24/04/2008
By Avi Issacharoff and Yuval Azoulay, Haaretz Correspondents and DPA
The Hamas organization issued notices on Wednesday calling upon the public in the Gaza Strip to arrive en masse at the crossings on the border with Israel after Friday prayers. According to the notices, the purpose of this mass demonstration is to break the blockade imposed by Israel on all the Gaza border crossings when Hamas seized control over the Strip last June.
The demonstrators are not expected to attempt to break down the barriers at the crossing, as was the case In January, when Hamas militants blew holes in the border barrier separating the Gaza Strip and Egypt. However, some violent clashes are expected.
It appears that Hamas is trying to erase from memory the failed anti-Israel demonstrations in February, in which Hamas was planning to create a human chain made up of 40,000 children that was to cross Gaza from north to south. Ultimately, the residents of the Strip did not heed Hamas' calls and the demonstrations, hailed in advance as massive, yielded a disappointing turnout.
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Will the Soldiers come tonight?
Al-Shar'iya Girls' Orphanage in Hebron: Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) and other internationals stayed overnight at an orphanage that the Israeli army threatened to close. The next morning, 2 April they heard the Israeli High Court had ruled to give Israeli military four days to provide full justification for the closure. Video shows children at orphanage.
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From: ism-media@googlegroups.com
ISM Media Alert
For Immediate Release, 24 April 2008
Carter Issues Statement of Support to Keep Hebron Orphanages Open
President Carter has issued a statement of support for the Hebron orphanages
and schools run by the Islamic Charitable Society. His statement will be
read by Tim Rothermel of the Carter Center, Jerusalem, during today's press
conference. The conference will be held at the at the Al-Shari'yah Girls'
Orphanage in Hebron. Tour and Lunch at the Al-Shari'yah Girls' Orphanage
(Beit el Binat), Salaam
(Peace) Street near Adel Street, Hebron at 12 noon.
1,700 students, including 240 orphans, will be forced out of their
orphanages and schools by the Israeli Army unless action is taken now to
halt the army's illegal activity.
A new deadline of Monday, April 28th has been issued by the Israeli
Military. They have demanded closure of the sewing workshop in the girl's
orphanage.a major step in their take over of the building and toward the
full closure of the orphanage and school.
On Tuesday, 26 February, the Israeli military entered buildings of the
Islamic Charitable Society (ICS) in Hebron handing over 6 military orders
for confiscations and closure of various facilities of the ICS, including
three schools and two orphanages. They demanded the orphanages, schools and
other facilities be closed by 1 April. On appeal, the Court ordered the
army to provide full justification for the closure orders. The Court has
yet to issue a final decision.
Without court approved justification, the army has already raided the
central warehouse and confiscated over $300,000 worth of school supplies,
clothing and food as well as two new school buses, and a van. They raided
the bakeries that had been supplying the orphanages, removing inventory and
destroying ovens. The military welded shut the gates of a $2,000,000 school
for 1200 students, scheduled to open in September.
The ICS provides shelter and care to 240 orphans in the orphanages, educates
more than 1700 students and aids an additional 4000 students and 5000 needy
families. It employs more than 700 teachers, counselors and other support
staff.
The Israeli military closure and confiscation orders claim that the ICS is
connected to Hamas. The Islamic Charitable Society says that some of its
employees are members of Fatah and some are members of Hamas, but that
neither of those parties control the Society. The ICS maintains their books
are audited by the PA, who has licensed them.
These books are open for inspection. The ICS was founded in 1962 under
Jordanian rule.
CPT Contacts: office 011-972-(0)2 222 8485
Paul Rehm: 011-972-(0) -54-432-8529;
Mary Anne Grady Flores: 011-972-(0)59-802-7301, (0)54-2581392
Email:cptheb@www.cpt.org , For more information visit
http://www.hebronorphans.blogspot.com
Christian Peacemaker Teams is an ecumenical initiative to support violence
reduction efforts around the world. To learn more about CPT's peacemaking
work, visit our website www.cpt.org Photos of our projects are at
www.cpt.org/gallery.
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) is a Palestinian-led
non-violent resistance movement committed to ending Israel's illegal
occupation of Palestinian land. We call for full compliance with all
relevant UN resolutions and international law.
For specific media inquires such as interview requests, photo usage, etc.
please email the ISM Media Office at media@palsolidarity.org
http://www.palsolidarity.org/
Carter Issues Statement of Support to Keep Hebron Orphanages Open
The High Price of Diplomacy with China
Posted on Apr 23, 2008
Editor’s Note: Below is the first of two related reports by the Center for Investigative Reporting. Click here for a parallel article linking the chief organizer of the Beijing Olympics to torture. For more information and the source documents these reports are based on, click here.
Bush Backs China
By James Sandler
The Bush administration is trying to scuttle a federal human rights lawsuit that threatens to embarrass one of China’s top political leaders. The administration says the case could jeopardize trade and “has already had a chilling effect on U.S.-China relations,” documents show.
The lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. district court, accuses Bo Xilai—a member of China’s elite Politburo and until recently the country’s trade minister—of controlling and directing forced labor camps where inmates were beaten, suffocated and killed.
The abuses occurred while Bo was governor of Liaoning province between 2001 and 2004, before he was named China’s minister of commerce, according to the complaint.
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Israelis Claim Secret Agreement With U.S.
Americans Insist No Deal Made on Settlement Growth
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 24, 2008; A14
A letter that President Bush personally delivered to then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon four years ago has emerged as a significant obstacle to the president's efforts to forge a peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians during his last year in office.
Ehud Olmert, the current Israeli prime minister, said this week that Bush's letter gave the Jewish state permission to expand the West Bank settlements that it hopes to retain in a final peace deal, even though Bush's peace plan officially calls for a freeze of Israeli settlements across Palestinian territories on the West Bank. In an interview this week, Sharon's chief of staff, Dov Weissglas, said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reaffirmed this understanding in a secret agreement reached between Israel and the United States in the spring of 2005, just before Israel withdrew from Gaza.
U.S. officials say no such agreement exists, and in recent months Rice has publicly criticized even settlement expansion on the outskirts of Jerusalem, which Israel does not officially count as settlements. But as peace negotiations have stepped up in recent months, so has the pace of settlement construction, infuriating Palestinian officials, and Washington has taken no punitive action against Israel for its settlement efforts.
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Thursday, April 24, 2008
The hunt for 'Mega'
Apart from Zionist conspiracy theories (some of which may be true, particularly the idea that a goal of American authorities was to block Bush's anticipated pardon of Pollard), the main interest of the latest Israeli spy scandal comes from reading between the lines. Ben-Ami Kadish, the latest alleged spy, was arrested after he foolishly discussed the problem on the phone with his Israeli handler, identified as Yosef Yagur, and Yagur, who must not be a very good spy, even more foolishly instructed him on what to tell the FBI. The Americans were already tapping phone lines by this point, and seemed to be approaching the conspiracy from both ends, having spooked Kadish enough to confide in Yagur. The lines were being tapped as part of a Manhattan grand jury investigation - a Manhattan grand jury? what did Eliot Spitzer know? - which had apparently been investigating espionage against the United States. Grand juries don't empanel themselves, so some American officials must have decided that Israeli spying needed to be investigated. You have to wonder whether there are special non-Jewish teams of lawyers and staff, as even one American Jew associated with any investigation could not possibly be trusted not to tip off Israel.
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Stewart Ain asks the big question (my emphasis in red):
theJewishAdvocate.com
By Hannah Mermelstein - Thursday April 24 2008
On March 20, 1941, Yosef Weitz of the Jewish National Fund wrote: “The complete evacuation of the country from its other inhabitants and handing it over to the Jewish people is the answer.”
On this day in 1948, almost two months before the first “Arab-Israeli war” technically began, the 1,125 inhabitants of the Palestinian village Umm Khalid fled a Haganah military operation. Like their brethren from more than 500 villages, they likely thought they would return to their homes within a few weeks, after the fighting blew over and new political borders were or were not drawn.
Instead, more than 6 million Palestinian people remain refugees to this day, some in refugee camps not far from their original towns, others in established communities in Europe and the US, all forbidden from returning to their homeland for one reason: they are not Jewish.
Yosef Weitz’s wish was granted. In my name, and in the name of Jewish people throughout the world, an indigenous population was almost completely expelled. Village names have been removed from the map, houses blown up, and new forests planted. In Arabic, this is called the Nakba, or catastrophe. In Israel, this is called “independence.”
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Related
Israel bars UN envoy after 'nazi' claim
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Wednesday, April 23, 2008, 09:20 AM
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, April 23, 2008
Contact:
David Gespass, NLG International Committee,
thepasss@aol.com
, 205-323-5966 or 205-566-2530
Jeanne Mirer , NLG International Committee,
mirerfam@earthlink.net
, 212-473-8700
Abdeen Jabara, NLG International Committee,
amjabara@aol.com
NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD URGES ISRAEL TO PERMIT RICHARD FALK TO ENTER ISRAEL AND THE OCCUPIED PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES
New U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Barred from Entry
New York. The National Lawyers Guild calls on Israel to permit Richard Falk, an eminent and widely-respected law professor and scholar, to enter Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories it seized forty years ago and has held illegally ever since. Professor Falk was recently appointed as the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Israel has barred entry to Professor Falk, claiming he cannot be fair because of his prior condemnation of persistent and pervasive human rights violations carried out by Israel in the Occupied Territories. In fact, Professor Falk made no claims any different from those made by John Dugard, the man he was to replace, in several reports on conditions in the Occupied Territories.
The National Lawyers Guild is familiar with the Israeli practice of avoiding criticisms of its practices. The Guild has sent several delegations to the Middle East to investigate conditions there. The Israeli government has refused to meet with the Guild’s delegates because of their claimed hostility to the State of Israel. In fact, Guild delegations, like Professor Falk, are hostile only to violations of human rights and international law.
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by Philip Giraldi
Israeli sources are reporting that the FBI investigation of the Ben-Ami Kadish spy case resulted from a leak coming from inside the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. The information on Kadish and on a number of other Americans who have spied for Israel was provided to the FBI anonymously, leading to the Bureau’s opening of a full investigation. One source reports that the National Security Agency was provided with Yosef Yagur’s current phone number and address and was able to obtain corroborating information on the case by tapping the phone. Yagur, who is now retired and living in Israel, was Kadish’s case officer, handling the cases of both him and Jonathan Pollard. Before the anonymous leak of information, the FBI had no idea that Kadish had been a spy for Israel. Now it is investigating a number of US citizens, including an individual who held very senior security positions in the Clinton and Bush White Houses.
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