Israel’s Covert Operations 10-31-2006

31, October 2006                    Israel’s Covert Operations

A new book, Der Krieg im Dunkeln (War in the Dark) by Udo Ulfkotte, formerly a correspondent for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, casts a disturbing light on Israel’s worldwide covert operations. These shadowy organizations engage in terrorist activities targeting violence on Muslims and conduct violent acts masquerading as Muslims to tarnish their image. Ulfkotte claims that Israel’s covert operator, Metsada, engages in sabotage and ‘false’ terrorist attacks and assassinations and the LOP (Lohamah Psichlogit) in psychological warfare. Ulfkotte further claims that agent’s provocateurs were recruited to stir up violence in the Muslim Banlieus of Paris and other cities in order to portray Muslims as hoodlums and terrorists. 

Even more disturbing is Ulfkotte’s contention that Israeli intelligence is engaged extensively in covert operations in the U.S.  Several days ago, Yechezkel Wells, a 21-year old dual U.S.-Israeli citizen, was found guilty of phoning in a false bomb threat on a Jet Blue flight on August 26 to Long Beach, California, Airport Emergency Services from a pay phone. Although Wells pleaded guilty, it is doubtful whether he will serve time for his criminal behavior. If history is any guide, Wells will simply be deported to Israel where he will be freed to continue serving his covert paymasters. I urge readers to write to their elected representatives and demand an immediate investigation to the sinister activities of these covert operations designed to compromise our security and stir up hatred against Muslim communities throughout the world. 

Our Dying Democracy 10-28-2006

28, October 2006                   Our Dying Democracy

Rolling Stone contributing editor, Matt Taibbi, confirms what most Americans decry, namely the 109^th Congress is “the worst ever.” He describes our lawmakers (or law breakers) as a “stable of thieves, .  . .  did their best to turn the mighty American empire into a debt-laden, despotic backwater.” Matt backups up his denunciation of Congress with compelling statistics.

Ø    The House ‘worked’ 218 days, including nine ‘short’ eleven minute days. The Senate had three days where they ‘worked’ less than 1 minute, qualifying it as the laziest Congress on record.

Ø    Drastically reduced the number of “open rules” effectively stifling debate and amendments.

Ø    Conference committees have been reduced to a total sham. Democrats are invited for a photo-op, then asked to leave after which the Republicans conduct the real meeting at an undisclosed location. Democrats are compelled to waste time knocking on doors to determine the meeting venues. There have been several instances where Republicans have hid behind doors to avoid detection resembling the antics of elementary school children.

Ø    Denied Democrats advanced notices of meetings to subvert any real debate. At one such meeting, the committee chairman, James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, adjourned the meeting abruptly, turned off the microphones and lights leaving the startled Democrats in total darkness.

Ø    Amendments (earmarks) are tacked on to bills as favors to select members to ensure their reelection prospects and as rewards to corporate donors. 

Israel Bleeding Palestinians 10-24-2006

24, October 2006                 Israel Bleeding Palestinians  

       

Israel continues to bleed the impoverished Palestinians withholding tax revenues exacerbating the unemployment situation and fueling more anger and suffering. The US administration has directed funds to the rival Fatah party in effort to further divide the Palestinians and weaken the opposition to Israeli’s state sponsored terrorism. In a renewed effort to halt foreign based Palestinian entrepreneurs, Israel is denying them Palestinian residency.

In complete violation of international law, Israel maintains control of all the borders and the Palestinian Registry. Simply stated nobody can enter or leave the West Bank or Gaza without Israeli permission, mimicking the draconian laws imposed by the white apartheid South African government. Take the example of Sam Bahour, a Palestinian-American businessman who moved to his old home town of El Bireh and established a thriving $100 million telecommunications company employing more than 2,000 Palestinians and a $10 million shopping center employing 220 Palestinians.  He has waited 12 long years to gain residency. 

Contrast this appalling injustice, with rights accorded to Jews from anywhere in the world who are granted immediate citizenship – a right denied the indigenous people who have lived there for centuries. According to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, the official Israeli policy since 1983, is to drastically reduce family reunification requests of the Palestinians.

Thousands of Palestinians are being denied residency and visitation rights. B’Tselem reports that in the last six years alone, more than 70,000 people have applied for permission to immigrate to the West Bank and Gaza to join their families. Most applicants have been denied. In addition to the appalling human rights violations imposed by Israel, there has been a concerted effort to split families and maintain the imprisoned population in a permanent state of abject poverty. 

The current policies of Israel are succinctly described in former President’s Carter, latest book, as a “a system of apartheid, with two peoples occupying the same land but completely separated from each other, with Israelis totally dominant and suppressing violence by depriving Palestinians of their basic human rights. Israel’s continued control and colonization of Palestinian land have been the primary obstacles to a comprehensive peace agreement in the Holy Land.”

Woodward 10-19-2006

 

19, October 2006                   Woodward

Woodward’s latest book, State of Denial, portrays the Bush administration as completely incompetent, obsessed with following their neo-con agenda of total world dominance. Rice ignored repeated warnings of the 9/11 attacks and for this alone she and her superiors, Bush and Cheney must be held accountable. Woodward exposes Rumsfeld as a bully ignoring the advice of his field commanders.

In spite of mounting opposition, Congress voted 100-0 to continue funding the war and granted US interrogators permission to continue torturing detainees with complete impunity. This speaks volumes of the complete lack of independent thinkers among our elected officials. The U.S. military budget has now peaked at $447 billion. The sane voices of retired generals are ignored. Even the ghost of Kissinger has reappeared urging the administration to ‘stay the course’, repeating the advice which led to the killings fields in Vietnam.

Money for critical domestic programs has all but evaporated. Iraq (and Afghanistan) is awash in blood as searing testimony to the failed policies of this administration. Drawing from the lessons of history, a united mass movement at the grass roots level is the only way to bring our troops home and bring an end to the sectarian violence in Iraq. The war profiteers must be held accountable for the obscene profits and wholesale theft as depicted in the documentary ‘Iraq for Sale.’  

Response to Nicholas Kristof 10-18-2006

18, October 2006                   Response to Nicholas Kristof,

18, October RE: Sami al-Hajj

Nicholas Kristof deserves much credit for exposing the appalling injustice meted out to fellow journalist, Sami al-Hajj – a cameraman for Al-Jazeera. This case is a glaring example of the abuse of the new interrogation law gifted by a feckless Congress to the President allowing interrogators to torture detainees with complete impunity. Al-Jazeera has been a constant thorn on the side of the Bush administration for exposing the searing, visual images of the mayhem that is the reality of Iraq and Afghanistan. Their headquarters was the target of a US missile attack in the early stages of the war in Iraq. They continue to be a constant embarrassment to the Bush administration which cannot tolerate ‘un-imbedded’ truthful reporting free from spin and propaganda.  It is outrageous that Sami al-Hajj should be savagely brutalized in an effort to force him to malign his employer.   

Israel 10-18-2006

18, October 2006                           Israel

Dear Sir,         Rachel Corrie RE: Israel

The release of a play, ‘My Name is Rachel Corrie’ was originally scheduled to open last March at New York Theatre Workshop, but was indefinitely postponed under intense pressure from influential Jewish organizations. The play is based on Rachel’s writings prior to her tragic death when she was crushed by an Israeli (U.S. made) bulldozer while attempting to prevent a Palestinian home from being demolished. The censorship was widely criticized by artists, and human rights activists through the world – including Pulitzer Prize-winning Nobel laureate, Harold Pinter who commented – “Rachel Corrie gave her life standing up against injustice. A theater with such a fine history should have had the courage to give New York theatergoers the chance to experience her story for themselves.” The play was a blockbuster success in London and provides a glimpse of the appalling plight of the Palestinians living in ghettoized prisons in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. 

Repeated efforts to prevent the screening of the play were finally overcome when the play opened at the Minetta Lane Theatre in New York last Sunday. It is a great tribute to the artists (including Vanessa Redgrave) and activists who were instrumental in allowing the general public to experience Rachel Corrie’s short, courageous life giving voice to the voiceless Palestinians.

North Korea 10-11-2006

11, October 2006                   North Korea

Add the Bush administration’s policy of containment of North Korea’s nuclear testing to the litany of foreign policy debacles. As a nation that has actually exploded nuclear bombs (Hiroshima and Nagasaki) and used chemical weapons (napalm in Vietnam, white phosphorus in Iraq) and (banned) cluster bombs, we are now wagging a finger of disapproval at North Korea’s intransigence. What hypocrisy! While we ramp up our arsenal of developing new nuclear weapons, we are threatening to impose crippling economic sanctions which will exacerbate the suffering of a nation already on the verge of starvation. It is high time we tone down the harsh ‘axis of evil rhetoric’ and engage North Korea in direct talks based on mutual respect. One can hardly blame North Korea’s desire to defend itself after the US preemptive attack on Iraq and its aggressive posture on Iran. It is time for the US to honor the 1968 Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty to eliminate all nuclear weapons. 

Response to local letter writer, RE: Israel 10-6-2006

6, October 2006               Response to local letter writer, RE: Israel
Daily 5th October
Dear Editor, ,

Sheree Roth (letters Daily, 5th October 2006) implies that Israel deserves unconditional support to compensate Jews who suffered from the Holocaust.  I would like to remind Roth it was the Germans who persecuted the Jews not the Palestinians. Perhaps Roth is unaware that the Israeli military occupation is in complete violation of international law and contrary to scores of United Nations resolutions. A staggering 80 percent of the land once owned by Palestinians has been illegally expropriated. 93 per cent of Israel’s land can only be leased or owned by Jews, a privilege denied non-Jews.
According to Phyllis Bennis, head of the Middle East Project at the Institute of Policy Studies, Israel is essentially an apartheid government where Jews are protected and enjoy privileges denied the indigenous inhabitants, closely paralleling the former white South African system of government. Anybody who resists the iron boots of repression and occupation is denounced as a ‘terrorist’.  Israel operates with complete immunity with targeted assassinations and arbitrary arrests. Currently, over 8,000 men, women and children are languishing in prisons, denied due process. Unless, the international community relaxes the crippling economic sanctions imposed on the Palestinians and Israel releases confiscated Palestinian funds, an appalling humanitarian catastrophe will result.