AUGUST 2006

ISRAELI NEWS:

First skirmishes in the Knesset
Thursday, August 17, 2006

The warring inside Israel over who is to blame for the war's management and outcome has come almost full into the open. Defense Minister Amir Peretz tried a preemptive move yesterday evening, appointing former chief of staff Amnon Lipkin-Shakak as chairman of a committee of ex-generals (and one civilian, Eli Hurvitz of Teva, a dean of Israeli high tech and a proven speaker of common sense). Their job: to investigate all the problems that came up in the defense establishment and army during the war -- including the preparations for that kind of fighting, logistical problems, budget problems and more.

But Peretz's maneuver, a feint to head off a state investigative commission, possibly to be headed by Supreme Court President Justice Aharon Barak, was too transparent, and immediately came under attack from the Right and Left, including inside his own party, though meanwhile only openly from ex-general MK Danny Yatom, the former Mossad chief and stalking horse for Ehud Barak.

The Shahak committee was derided, not because of its composition -- everyone agreed that all its members are outstanding -- but because its mandate lacks two critical elements: the authority to subpoena and the authority to go above the military echelon, to the political echelon. Plus the fact that Shahak has been given only three weeks to come up with preliminary findings, makes the entire panel seem, well, cheap and not credible.

The Shahak committee comes on the heels of the 'Halutz affair,' meaning his less-than-a-minute phone call with his bank to order the sale of a stock portfolio he held at the branch about three hours after the July 12 kidnapping of the two soldiers, which prompted the entire war. Maariv, which broke the story, is still hot on Halutz's tail, and he has been an easy target, clearly not understanding why it might appear unseemly for the chief of staff to be busy with his stock broker when it appears a war is breaking out. There are sources who say that the Halutz call to his broker was routine for him at that time of the month. His version is that he asked his secretary to contact his broker a couple of hours before the kidnapping and she succeeded in reaching him only at noon, and Halutz took the call, speaking only the few words necessary to sell his shares.

Whatever. The 'affair,' which Maariv insists was the result of a person being 'in the right place at the right time' and not a political vendetta by anyone (with the assumption by those who charge it was political being that Peretz and Olmert were behind it to divert blame to Halutz away from them), is not the main battlefield, but rather, like the Peretz committee and the attacks on it, a skirmish in an internal political war building up inside Israel.

The first real battle will be over a state commission of inquiry. Aharon Barak is retiring from the Supreme Court in September, making him available to head the commission, which could either open a Pandora's box for a host of politicians (and ex-generals) from both Likud and Labor or turn into what almost all such commissions become -- a forum for a few beheadings and recommendations that never get implemented.

Typical of Israel in the last six years in particular, nobody is proposing a commission to ask why a war was necessary -- why were there no efforts made by Israel to engage the Lebanese government, or the Syrian government, or both, in an effort to neutralize Hizbollah. It's typical because in the last six years, Israel's lone policy has been unilateralism. It began with Ehud Barak, who unilaterally withdrew from Lebanon -- and declared there was no partner on the Palestinian side, thereby foreclosing any option for diplomacy instead of force in relations with them, and continued with Ariel Sharon, who never put any faith in diplomacy (except to make sure the U.S. was on his side, an easy task with President George W. Bush in the White House) and refused to ever try dialogue with Yasser Arafat, never spent more than a couple of hours in Mahmoud Abbas' company, and then conducted a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza 'to punish the Palestinians.'

Instead, everyone proposing a state commission of inquiry -- with a justice at its head, it would be a judicial commission, with powers of subpoena, and the authority to issue contempt citations as well as force the resignation of politicians, generals and anyone else it thinks should not be in office -- is basically asking it to find out why the army did not 'win the war' against Hizbollah.

The definition of winning, depending on who is doing the talking, is either the beheading of Hassan Nasrallah or the total annihilation of any Hizbollah in Lebanon, plus the return of the two kidnapped soldiers, unconditionally. For that, Olmert and Peretz have only themselves to blame, since from the moment they talked themselves into going to war within hours of the kidnapping (Halutz, by the way, says that at noon, it was still not clear full-scale war was coming), they made those goals out to be the purpose of the war. Over the following month, of course, as reality imposed its limits, they tried to change those goals, but by then millions of Israelis saw on TV how hundreds of thousands huddled in poorly maintained shelters in the north, and all the sentimentalism of 'Israel united in war' had kicked in. It was, after all, the first 'just war' Israelis have experienced since the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and they expected a victory no less easy than the Six Day War.

But that was unlikely from day one, and not only because a 'shock and awe' air campaign against Hizbollah offices and Lebanese infrastructure could not stop the rockets -- ultimately, at least 3,500 were fired into the country, with an estimated 2,000 others falling into the sea or empty areas where they went unnoticed. The IDF has spent the last six years devoted almost entirely to using repression against the Palestinians, and everyone who served in Gaza or the West Bank, from the generals down to the lowliest privates, were used to either subservient Arabs who trembled in fear of what the soldier might decide about their fate, or lone suicide bombers and occasionally, squads of two or three gunmen. The third-year conscripts in the elite combat units -- Paratroopers, Givati, Golani, Egoz and others -- who were sent on foot or in tanks into south Lebanon, had no real-life experience fighting well-organized units of highly trained soldiers that had all the advantages of guerilla formations in territory unfamiliar to the Israelis and intimately known by the Hizbollah.

True, the generals and colonels and majors and captains had all served in the south Lebanon 'security zone' where Hizbollah harassed Israel at the cost of 20-30 soldiers' lives every year for 18 years. But the 20 and 21-year-old foot soldiers, were those who faced the enemy up close. It seemed that only late in the war did the infantry learn to 'do a Hizbollah' on the Hizbollah, moving only at night, lying in ambush in the day, able to snipe at any Hizbollah fighter who appeared in their sights. But by then, the UN had reached a ceasefire agreement, and the war was over -- though not before the army seemed to conduct a coup d'etat, forcing Peretz and Olmert to okay one last ground operation that cost another 33 lives in less than 36 hours, after it was obvious Israel would be accepting the ceasefire. Olmert argues -- in private -- that the operation was meant to make a last minute improvement in UNSCR 1701. But there are some who say close readings of what Lebanese Prime Minister Fu'ad Siniora offered on the third or fourth day of the war is essentially what was achieved in UNSCR 1701, which the government now acclaims as a great achievement.

In any case, the investigative commission(s), if they fit the mold so far, won't be asking why the war was so ill-conceived, but rather who is to blame for the failure to win; on the way, heads will roll for not providing enough food and proper equipment for the reservists and for cutting budgets for improving the Merkava tank. In short, much might be learned technically about what went wrong and what should be fixed before the next war -- since Israel did not 'win,' the conventional wisdom from the man in the street to the 'high ranking sources in the army' is that another round of fighting is coming. But as usual, if that is so, the IDF will prepare for the war that was, and not the one that will be.

Meanwhile, the ceasefire is holding (though a faulty alarm in the eastern Galilee shocked several towns for a few minutes when sirens went off, to the chagrin of the Home Front, which had to explain it was a mistake), and despite all the Israeli skepticism, Lebanese troops are moving into south Lebanon for the first time since 1976, when Yitzhak Rabin, premier his first time, drew a 'red line' in south Lebanon, trying to keep the civil war as far as possible from the Israeli border. And this afternoon in New York, envoys from the countries offering troops to the 'new UNIFIL' are to meet at UN headquarters for a briefing on what the troops can expect. Hizbollah, in any case, has agreed to keep its weapons to itself and not display them in public in south Lebanon. It's a start. Israel will be keeping an eye on the arms smuggling routes out of Syria to Lebanon and will expect UNIFIL to do the same. Nobody knows for sure what Israel will do if it spots a convoy of rockets heading out of Damascus to Lebanon. It's not even sure Israel knows what it will do. In the meanwhile, it's too busy with the argument over who is to blame for 'not winning.'

www.ariga.com

.............................

Aug.12th

In another sign the tide may have started to turn, mainstream movements known in Israel as "the peace camp" or the "Zionist left," which earlier supported the war, withdrew their support for the military offensive arguing that Israel must accept talks.

On Thursday, hundreds of demonstrators staged a protest organized by the anti-settlement Peace Now organization and the left-wing Meretz party in front of the defense ministry to condemn the decision to press on with the fighting.

"The war has spiraled out of control and the government is ignoring the political options available," Peace Now spokesman Yariv Oppenheimer said.

Anti-war demonstrations in Israel had so far been organized by movements considered in the Jewish state to be from the extreme left.

In 1982, Peace Now organized a huge demonstration to condemn the role played by Israel in the massacre of Palestinians in Beirut's Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. It led to the resignation of then defense minister Ariel Sharon.

Israël contre Israël, 9 juillet 2006

Israel against Israel, July 9, 2006

One may do everything with bayonets, but one cannot sit on it.

  Pour d'autres dessins de l'actualité internationale  :
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/tableauxpastels/caricatures-mariali/ 

American family brutally assaulted at Israeli checkpoint

PNN, (Bethlehem) Ayman Oghanna 17 July 06

A mother and son, both American citizens, were savagely beaten last week by Israeli security at the Israeli entry point from Jordan: Allenby Bridge. The victims were 47 year old Tina Hannouneh and her 17 year old son. Their crime was looking Palestinian.

Hannouneh, who was born in the West Bank, moved to Arizona in 1986, where she now works as banker. She and her son Michael had come to Palestine, on a holiday, to visit friends and family. The incident occurred because 17 year old Michael, who suffers form a chronic heart condition, was listening to his i-pod.

Tina underwent surgery last week in Beit Jala. Afterwards, she spoke to PNN about her ordeal:

“We were entering through security when a guy dressed as a civilian approached Michael He grabbed Michael’s neck with his right hand and reached for the i-pod with his left hand, shouting ‘give me that’ in Arabic.”

Michael, who has spent most of his life in the US, does not speak or understand Arabic. He was unaware that the man choking him was a security officer, and refused to give him the mp3 player. Hannouneh added, “The security officer was not wearing a uniform. My son couldn’t have recognized him as army or police. He payed $400 for that i-pod, he’s not just going to give it to anybody.”

Confused and bewildered about what was happening, Michael held on to his i-pod. It was then that the officer became violent. Hannouneh explained that “the guy punched him, dropped him to the ground, and started banging his head against on the floor.” She continued, “He shouted in Arabic ‘you can’t say no to a police officer.’”

After trying to protect her son, the officer turned on Hannouneh. She commented, “As hard as he could he hit my face. I fell to the floor and hit my head on the metal bar in the security fence. I have two stitches and my nose is really smashed. My shirt and my pants were covered in blood”.

Humiliation

The terrorized family’s ordeal only came to an end when other officials realized they were American. Like all Palestinians, Hannouneh and her son were victims of institutional racism at the heart of the Israeli security service. Hannouneh told PNN, “They did this to me because of the color of my skin, because I’m Palestinian”.

bbc and other media reporting israel perspectives.....

A 2002 Glasgow University Media Group report revealed "that television news on the Israel/Palestinian conflict [in Britain] confuses viewers and substantially features Israeli government views.... There is a preponderance of official 'Israeli perspectives', particularly on BBC 1, where Israelis were interviewed or reported over twice as much as Palestinians. On top of this, US politicians who support Israel were very strongly featured.... TV news says almost nothing about the history or origins of the conflict." In America, this bias even more pronounced.

Few television news viewers realize Israel invaded Lebanon in 1978 and 1982, or that Israel occupied southern Lebanon for more than twenty years and this brutal occupation (as documented by human rights organizations) resulted in the formation of Hezbollah.

Few understand Israel has stolen Arab land, including the Golan Heights and Shebaa Farms, and common Israeli border provocations result in Hezbollah attacking Israel.

Few understand the magnitude of Israel's abduction of Lebanese: accused of resisting Israel's illegal occupation, or the fact many of them were tortured in the Khiam torture dungeon. "Lebanese detainees held without trial or after expiry of their sentences in Israeli prisons and in Khiam are Israel's forgotten hostages," notes Amnesty International. "Amnesty International knows of 21 Lebanese nationals who have been captured in Lebanon and transferred to Israeli prisons either without ever having been sentenced or held beyond the expiry of their sentences. These are just some of the detainees whom Amnesty International believes Israel to be holding as hostages. Most of them were captured by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) or by one of the pro-Israeli Christian militias in Lebanon, the Lebanese Forces or the SLA. Many of them were held in detention centers in Lebanon under Lebanese Forces' or SLA control before being transferred, usually secretly, to Israel." No mention of this in the corporate media. Instead, we are told, without additional comment, all Muslims are terrorists.

No mention in the corporate media of Israel's continual and repeated violations of Lebanese airspace. "Secretary-General Kofi Annan's Personal Representative for Southern Lebanon today called on Israel to cease its air violations over Lebanese territory," the UN News Center reported on November 4, 2004. "Staffan de Mistura issued his statement in Beirut in response to eight flights involving 11 aircraft and three drones across the Blue Line, as the line of withdrawal is known." Israel has violated Lebanese sovereignty dozens of time, buzzing Beirut, Tripoli, Tyre, and other cities, often using sonic booms to intimidate the population. Earlier this year Terje Roed-Larsen, the UN envoy to Middle East, complained of "constant Israel violations against Lebanon," but such stories seem to be of interest only to the Arab media.

No mention of Israel's violence around the illegally occupied Shebaa Farms. In response to Hezbollah attacking occupation forces at Shebaa Farms, Israel attacks civilians as a matter of course. "News reports in Beirut said that the Israeli forces started artillery bombardment of Kafer Shouba village and the neighboring villages after Hizbullah fighters fired one missile at a site for the Israeli occupation army in Shebaa farms," the Arabic News reported in February. "The Israeli bombardment resulted in injuring one Lebanese woman and damages to several houses in al-Habareyah and al-Kheyam and in al-Habareyah elementary school. One house in Kafer Shouba was directly hit." In November, 2005, "police explained that one Israeli military tank and artilleries bombarded for 45 minutes several Lebanese villages.... [and Hezbollah] retaliated the Israeli bombardment and fired mortars shelling at three Israeli positions in Shabaa Farms." In October of the same year, the IOF attacked Burket al-Nakkar and Jabal Saddaneh with attack helicopters. Of course, all of this occurred on Lebanese soil, and yet Lebanon did not invade Israel or incinerate school kids on Israeli roads.

Look who's been kidnapped!

Hundreds of Palestinian 'suspects' have been kidnapped from their homes
and will never stand trial

Arik Diamant
www.ynetnews.com


It's the wee hours of the morning, still dark outside. A guerilla force comes out of nowhere to kidnap a soldier. After hours of careful movement, the force reaches its target, and the ambush is on! In seconds, the soldier finds himself looking down the barrel of a rifle. A smash in the face with the butt of the gun and the soldier falls to the ground, bleeding. The kidnappers pick him up, quickly tie his hands and blindfold him, and disappear into the night.

This might be the end of the kidnapping, but the nightmare has just begun. The soldier's mother collapses, his father prays. His commanding officers promise to do everything they can to get him back, his comrades swear revenge. An entire nation is up-in-arms, writing in pain and worry.

Nobody knows how the soldier is: Is he hurt? Do his captors give him even a minimum of human decency, or are they torturing him to death by trampling his honor? The worst sort of suffering is not knowing. Will he come home? And if so, when? And in what condition? Can anyone remain
apathetic in the light of such drama?

Israeli terror This description, you'll be surprised to know, has nothing to do with the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit. It is the story of an arrest I carried out as an IDF soldier, in the Nablus casbah, about
10 years ago. The "soldier" was a 17-year-old boy, and we kidnapped him because he knew "someone" who had done "something."

We brought him tied up, with a burlap sac over his head, to a Shin Bet interrogation center known as "Scream Hill" (at the time we thought it was funny). There, the prisoner was beaten, violently shaken and sleep deprived for weeks or months. Who knows. No one wrote about it in the paper. European diplomats were not called to help him. After all, there was nothing out of the ordinary about the kidnapping of this Palestinian kid. Over the 40 years of occupation we have kidnapped
thousands of people, exactly like Gilad Shalit was captured: Threatened by a gun, beaten mercilessly, with no judge or jury, or witnesses, and without providing the family with any information about the captive.

When the Palestinians do this, we call it "terror." When we do it, we work overtime to whitewash the atrocity. Suspects?

Some people will say: The IDF doesn't "just" kidnap. These people are "suspects." There is no more perverse lie than this. In all the years I served, I reached one simple conclusion: What makes a "suspect"? Who, exactly suspects him, and of what? Who has the right to sentence a 17-year-old to kidnapping, torture and possible death? A 26-year-old Shin Bet interrogator? A 46-year-old one? Do these people have any higher education, apart from the ability to interrogate? What are his
considerations? I all these "suspects" are so guilty, why not bring them to trial?

Anyone who believes that despite the lack of transparency, the IDF and Shin Bet to their best to minimize violations of human rights is naïve, if not brainwashed. One need only read the testimonies of soldiers who have carried out administrative detentions to be convinced of the depth of the immorality of our actions in the territories.

To this very day, there are hundreds of prisoners rotting in Shin Bet prisons and dungeons, people who have never been ?and never will be ? tried. And Israelis are silently resolved to this phenomenon.

Israeli responsibility

The day Gilad Shalit was kidnapped I rode in a taxi. The driver told me we must go into Gaza, start shooting people one-by-one, until someone breaks and returns the hostage. It isn't clear that such an operation would bring Gilad back alive.

Instead of getting dragged into terrorist responses, as Palestinian society has done, we should release some of the soldiers and civilians we have kidnapped. This is appropriate, right, and could bring about an air of reconciliation in the territories.

Hell, if this is what will bring Gilad home safe-and-sound, we have a responsibility to him to do it.

Arik Diamant is an IDF reservist and the head of the Courage to Refuse organization.

The Rothschild’s own the land on which the Israeli Supreme Court and the Knesset, their parliament, sits. Their architects designed the buildings and they financed and constructed them without Israeli government involvement. The Supreme Court has 33 levels, a pyramid with an “eye” window on top, and the image of an upside down cross embedded in a walkway where it is the only religious symbol in the building to be trod upon. Photos of all of this are readily available on the web.



Examine the real history of most wars in the world. You will find that it begins and ends in the hands of those who control the money supply, and who most often have financed both sides of any given conflict. It is no less true in the United States. They simply loan more money to the side they want to win, then raise interest rates or just withhold any further credit to the side they want to lose. It is all a game for dominance.

july 20th

"I don't think the prime minister of Israel needs to be a military figure," said Ofer Frielich, a 30-year-old lawyer from Haifa.

"On the contrary, I think it's nice that both the prime minister and defence minister are civilians, because when someone's been in the military for years, he can only see things from a narrow point of view, while a civilian has a wider outlook."