Flashback: “Why It Rains: Hamas holding Israeli gas reserves hostage”

Is this the real reason behind the Gaza attacks?

Found link to this story on Stef Zucconi’s blog.

Source: The Electonic Intifada.

An unexpected energy windfall on Israel’s doorstep promises to resolve Israel’s energy security concerns for years to come. Unfortunately for Israe[l], it is the Palestinian Authority that controls the licensing of these reserves. So, as Operation Summer Rains washes away the administrative and political structures in the occupied territories, has Israel decided to use Hamas as an excuse to dismantle the PA and seize its energy assets?

After the Iranian Revolution cut-off energy supplies in 1979, and the loss of Sinai’s oil in 1982, Israel became dependent on expensive, long-distance energy imports. Towards the end of the 1990s, in an attempt to alleviate concerns over its energy security and reduce its dependency on imported oil, Israel decided to place a greater emphasis on natural gas. The architect of Israel’s energy strategy at the time was Netanyahu’s Minister of National Infrastructure, Ariel Sharon.

After Netanyahu’s election defeat in 1999, Ehud Barak sought to take advantage of improved relations with Egypt to import some of Israel’s gas from the Nile Delta [1]. There was, however, political resistance to the deal from within both countries and, when relations with Egypt began to deteriorate with the start of the 2nd Intifada and Sharon’s subsequent rise to power, the $3 billion deal was put on the back-burner. However, the possibility of avoiding dependence on such a politically contentious source arose in 2000 when several energy companies, including British Gas (BG), announced the discovery of �significant deposits� of natural gas off the Israeli coast [2].

Estimated at 100 billion cubic meters of proven reserves, these discoveries potentially offer enough gas to meet Israel’s goal of supplying 25% of its energy needs for more than 20 years – even without further imports [3]. The discovery has also raised realistic expectations of locating oil deposits beneath the gas fields.

Unfortunately for Israel, 60% of these reserves are in waters controlled by the Palestinian Authority, which has signed a 25-year contract with British Gas for further exploration in the area. Since this discovery, Israel has proceeded with the development of its reserves with the US-Israeli company Yam Tethys, but has been faced with an obvious dilemma over the Palestinian deposits [4]. Keen to secure the gas for its domestic market but unwilling to submit its sensitive energy supplies (and their profits) into the hands of the Palestinians, Israel has for the past 6 years pursued a policy of non-commitment, stalling and obstruction.

Despite early endorsement of the British Gas plan to develop the PA reserves for the Israeli market, the intensification of tensions during the Intifada allowed Sharon to veto the Gaza deal on security grounds. With the exploitation of the Palestinian reserves halted and the Egyptian deal put on hold, Israel has used the Yam Tethys supply as a stopgap. However, as its hungry economy quickly bought up these reserves and prices began to rise Israel needed to act to guarantee its future supplies. After years of on-off negotiations between the two reluctant trade partners, in July 2005, Israel signed a 15-year contract for Egyptian gas [5].

However, following the signing of the deal it was revealed that – impatient with Israeli intransigence – Egypt, British Gas and the Palestinian Authority had also been secretly negotiating a deal to sidestep the problematic Israeli market. Within a month, the three parties announced their plan to extract Gazan gas, transport it to Egypt in an Egyptian controlled pipeline, and then ship it on in liquefied form to the international market [6].

The possibility that Israel could be permanently excluded from such a tempting energy windfall on their doorstep, and that the main beneficiaries would be Egypt and the Palestinians, has since prompted Olmert to reverse Sharon’s veto and reopen negotiations with BG over the supply of Gazan gas to Israel. Despite the ongoing international isolation of Hamas, the BG deal was high on the agenda during Olmert’s recent meeting with British Chancellor Gordon Brown [6].

Despite BG’s commitments to Egypt and the PA, the company has announced that it is willing to enter into a deal with Israel. Within Israel, political legitimacy for the reversal has come from increasing criticisms of high prices caused by Egypt’s effective monopoly of Israeli gas supply. Also, according to Haaretz, Israel is confident that it has enough influence to persuade Egypt to back out of the Gazan deal, with senior government sources�asserting that: The gas off Gaza will come to Israel in the end. [6].

Until last week, Israel’s confidence did not make any sense. The security situation that provoked Sharon’s original veto of Gazan gas had not improved and it seems inconceivable that Israel would allow the PA, let alone Hamas, to reap the benefits of the Gazan gas fields. BG has made it clear that its Gazan gas will be developed soon, whether Israel likes it or not, but if Hamas is not to be the partner, then who is?

The arrival of Summer Rains gives us a sour answer. If the ongoing attacks on Gaza succeed in destroying the Palestinian Authority as a viable political entity, all commercial contracts with the Authority, such as that with British Gas, will become worthless and will have to be renegotiated with the Israeli government. Perhaps the most valuable hostage that Hamas has in the current crisis then is not the 19-year old Israeli soldier, but the Palestinian gas reserves that Israel claims as its own, and may go to extreme lengths to rescue.

Jake Bower is the pseudonym of a postgraduate historian in the UK who specialises in the strategic and tactical framework behind American foreign interventions. The above article was edited from a wider analysis of the regional and global dynamics of the new great game for control of energy resources and transit infrastructure.

From AIPAC to the Cuban Exiles: Is Obama Turning (Further) Right?

I think the comparison to Sen. Kerry is apt. There’s only one political party in the U.S.: The War Party.

By Greg Kafoury, CounterPunch.

This week, Senator Barak Obama traveled to Florida and spoke to Jewish and Cuban-American audiences. In those speeches, he embraced the right-wing policy positions of the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) and the hard-line program of the most reactionary elements of the Cuban exile community.

Senator Obama was for many years considered pro-Palestinian, but a year ago when he spoke sympathetically about the suffering of Palestinian people, he quickly backed off his statements under pressure from the Israeli lobby. His surrender to AIPAC this week is particularly troubling because it comes at a time when more and more Americans – including Jewish Americans – are awakening to the fact that the Israeli lobby is a threat to both America and Israel, because its unwavering support for the expansion of colonial settlements and its resistance to serious peace negotiations serve to block the two-state solution which could otherwise be within reach.

Last year, George Soros wrote in the New York Review of Books that the power of the Israeli lobby should be challenged by the creation of a new Jewish lobby in America, one committed to peace and justice. Just such a group was recently formed in Washington, D.C., calling itself “J Street.” Former President Jimmy Carter has warned that the occupation of Palestine is creating an Israeli apartheid.

On May 7, Carter appeared on Jay Leno’s “Tonight Show” and explained the need to negotiate with Hamas, negotiations that are opposed by the Israeli lobby and by the U.S. administration. He noted that Hamas prevailed in an internationally-supervised Palestinian election that had been sponsored by America and Israel. Carter pointed out that a recent Ha’aretz poll found that 64% of Israelis favor negotiations with Hamas. Yet Senator Obama has now fallen in line with AIPAC, ruling out negotiations with Hamas, and adopting the language of the Bush administration in calling Hamas a “terrorist organization.”

Occupation invites resistance. To demand an end to resistance as the price of discussing the occupation is to invite endless casualties. As Ralph Nader has pointed out, the American media makes much of the primitive rockets fired at Israel by Palestinians, while minimizing the use of heavy weaponry and helicopter gun ships by the Israelis in Gaza, one of the most densely populated areas on earth. Over the last year, Palestinian civilian casualties outnumber Israeli civilian casualties nearly 400 to 1.

In his speech to the Cuban exiles, Senator Obama said he was willing to meet Raul Castro, but declared that members of the exile community would have to have “a seat at the table.” This is the sort of precondition which Obama had previously ruled out, and the likelihood of Castro sitting down with exiles is beyond remote. Obama said that the release of political prisoners would have to be on the agenda, yet the exiles’ notion of who is a political prisoner consists largely of those who not only resisted the regime, but who took money from the American government, and coordinated their efforts with those who supported the overthrow of the regime. (See ” Cuba: U.S. Diplomat is Accused of Delivering Cash to Opposition,” N.Y. Times, 5/24/08.)

While Obama spoke in favor of allowing Cuban-Americans to more frequently visit their families in Cuba and to send money to them, these reforms are widely popular in the exile community. Most tellingly, Obama failed to oppose the Bush Administration’s ban on ordinary Americans traveling to Cuba on educational tours, tours that until 2004 allowed thousands of Americans to visit Cuba, and to come to their own conclusions about the Cuban Revolution.

Worse yet, the same Senator Obama who only a year ago supported ending the embargo declared that the embargo would continue until Cuba knuckled under to American demands.

In 1959, Cubans overthrew a dictator who was in partnership with the Mafia and who allowed Cuban workers and natural resources to be exploited by giant American corporations. In response to their nationalizing American assets, the Cubans faced nearly fifty years of U.S. sponsored invasion, embargo, sabotage, terrorism, and attempts to assassinate their leaders.

Yet Obama spoke not a word of how the restrictions of political liberty in Cuba are linked to Cuba’s struggle to maintain independence in the face of relentless attempts by a succession of U.S. administrations to use their great power to bring Cuba to heel.

Senator Obama spoke not a word of the accomplishments of the Cuban Revolution, the world-class health system, the high quality education, rural development, cutting edge research on infectious diseases, and the provision of thousands of Cuban doctors to the most disease-ridden, God-forsaken corners of the earth.

Senator Obama essentially gave the same kind of speech on Cuba that we have heard from American Presidents for the last fifty years. Where is the “change” that we have been waiting for, that we have been promised so repeatedly?

We have been down this road before. In 2004, progressives lined up behind Senator Kerry, and progressive organizations made no demands upon him. The anti-war movement folded its tents. After this early and unconditional surrender on the part of the American left, Senator Kerry moved sharply to the right. The Democratic Convention was militaristic in form and corporate in policy. The candidate who had called himself “anti-war” wound up running against Bush’s war policy from the right, calling for tens of thousands more troops, and criticizing Bush for having pulled back from Falluja simply because of the massive civilian carnage. Yet for all of this appeasement of the right, Kerry lost the election. Shortly thereafter, Bush leveled Falluja, and four years later American forces have been bombing major cities in Iraq.

Hay Ride: Jimmy Carter Crosses the Line

Source: Chris Floyd.

Here’s a thought experiment. Try to imagine a major American political figure boldly calling on Europe to break with the United States, unilaterally lift the blockage on Gaza and negotiate directly with Hamas, the democratically-elected government of Palestine.

He then goes on to reveal — from his access to the most highly classified intelligence — that Israel, far from being at risk from “destruction” by Iran or anyone, possesses a minimum of 150 nuclear weapons: the first time that any such high-level U.S. official has ever publicly confirmed the existence of Israel’s arsenal, much less detailed its size.

What’s more, this Establishment renagade then calls for the complete withdrawal of American forces from Iraq, combined with pledges of massive aid to rebuild Iraq “from the destruction we’ve caused.”

This fantasy became a reality yesterday in the drenching rain of a Welsh border town. Former President Jimmy Carter had come to Hay-on-Wye for the annual literary festival, and held forth in a wide-ranging interview before a large crowd. Carter denounced the policies of the so-called “Quartet” — the U.S., EU, UN and Russia — which have led to the strangulation of Gaza and immense suffering to the people “imprisoned” there, in Carter’s words:

The blockade on Hamas-ruled Gaza, imposed by the US, EU, UN and Russia – the so-called Quartet – after the organisation’s election victory in 2006, was “one of the greatest human rights crimes on Earth,” since it meant the “imprisonment of 1.6 million people, 1 million of whom are refugees”. “Most families in Gaza are eating only one meal per day. To see Europeans going along with this is embarrassing,” Carter said….

Referring to the possibility of Europe breaking with the US in an interview with the Guardian, he said: “Why not? They’re not our vassals. They occupy an equal position with the US.”

Here, of course, Carter has crossed perhaps the brightest glaring red line in American politics: equating a bunch of foreigners with the divinely blessed denizens of the shining city on the hill. No country, anywhere, is allowed to be the equal of the United States, in anything, at any time. This is not just a deeply ingrained part of the national psyche; it is also the avowed policy of the “unipolar dominationists” who have long controlled the commanding heights of American power. As we’ve noted before:

this goes back to the first Bush Administration, when then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney asked two of his top aides, Paul Wolfowitz and Scooter Libby, to draw up a “Defense Guidance Plan” to shape American strategy in the post-Cold War world. They produced an aggressive, ambitious document calling for the unilateral use of American military might to “discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.” Military intervention would be “a constant fixture” of what Wolfowitz and Libby called a “new order” which the United States – not the United Nations – would “establish and protect.”

As we all know, this document was refined, revised and expanded by the dominationists in their various think-tanks and corporate sinecures for years, reaching its fullest expression in the infamous PNAC paper of September 2000 (also known as the “boy, we sure need a new Pearl Harbor” document). It was later incorporated virtually whole cloth into the official “National Security Strategy” of the United States.

Carter has already been in hot water with the Establishment because of his recent dealings with Hamas. Barack Obama joined in the denunciations of Carter, declaring that he — the self-proclaimed agent of hope and change — would never negotiate with Hamas.

This brings up a curious point. Obama has taken a great deal of undeserved heat for his common-sense declaration that he would be willing to sit down with the leaders of hostile nations, such as Iran; but he adamantly refuses any negotiation with Hamas. In other words, he is (rightly) willing to negotiate with enemies of the United States — but not with an enemy of Israel. This position is actually more hardline than that of the Israelis themselves, the majority of whom favor direct negotiations with Hamas.

Carter’s unprecedented explicitness regarding Israel’s nuclear weapons somehow escaped the notice of the Guardian — which sponsored the festival and conducted the interview — but The Times picked it up:

Israel has 150 nuclear weapons in its arsenal, former President Jimmy Carter said yesterday, while arguing that the US should talk directly to Iran to persuade it to drop its nuclear ambitions.

His remark…is startling because Israel has never admitted having nuclear weapons, let alone how many, although the world assumes their existence. Nor do US officials deviate in public from that Israeli line.

But Carter, who as president had full access to America’s secret knowledge about Israel’s arsenal, steamrolled right over the long-held public line. The existence of this arsenal is of course the true context of Middle East relations: the fact that Israel can “obliterate” any of its antagonists in a matter of minutes, while none of them poses, even remotely, a similar “existential threat” to Israel. Yet the entire U.S. “bipartisan foreign policy establishment” gears much of its Middle Eastern policies around the professed goal of guaranteeing the survival and security of Israel.

The plain fact is that Israel is more than capable of guaranteeing its own survival. As for its manifold security problems, these might be better addressed by a more realistic, pragmatic engagement with its neighbors, and with the Palestinians locked down under its control. But as long as Israeli leaders can count on the full backing of the United States — financially, diplomatically and militarily — no matter what they do, they will have no incentive to come to any viable terms, and can continue their own dominationist policies, which over the years have only bred more suffering, more radicalization and more intransigence in their opponents.

Carter’s position on Iraq is, of course, the only sensible alternative left after years of needless slaughter and ruin: complete withdrawal and massive reparations. It goes without saying that neither of these essential elements play a part in the “withdrawal” plans of any of the remaining presidential candidates. [Carter's remarks on Iraq are not in the on-line Guardian story, but appeared in the print-only version.]

Carter’s emergence as a dissident from the Establishment line is one of those bitter ironies in which history delights. As we have noted here before, Carter bears a large share of responsibility for the dismal state of the modern world. It was he who, on the advice of his foreign policy guru, Zbigniew Brzezinski, helped lay the foundations of the global jihad movement, giving guns, money and training to some of the most violent and retrograde extremists in the world — in a deliberate, and successful, attempt to goad the Soviet Union into intervening to save its client government in Afghanistan. From this seed — cultivated on a massive scale later by the Reagan-Bush administrations — violent sectarianism spread across the world, helped at every point by the United States or its allies in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and elsewhere. This shadow world — where covert ops, terrorism, organized crime and state policy mix inextricably together, sometimes colluding, sometimes falling out — has now enveloped the globe.

Still, to paraphrase the great philosopher Donald Rumsfeld, you oppose mass murder, torture, repression and imperial aggression with the deeply tainted, grossly hypocritical public figures you have, not the saintly, unspotted agents of transformation you wish you had. Carter’s remarks represent a welcome crossing of lines by a prominent Establishment figure. Too bad that no one in America will ever hear them.

AIPAC Announces Annual Treachery Fest Agenda

By Liberal White Boy, a self-loathing Christian.

“Over half of your Congressional Representatives will be there with feedbags on.”

LOL.

Can Criticism of Israel Be Stopped?

By Alan Hart of Information Clearing House:

How can criticism of Israel be stopped? By labeling it as anti-Semitism, or so supporters of Israel right or wrong believe. This has always been Zionism’s game but now the U.S. State Department, no doubt under immense pressure from the Zionist lobby and its Christian fundamentalist allies, is playing it, too. In my view the State Department’s 94-page study, Contemporary Global Anti-Semitism, is a disengenuous and dangerous document which might well make all Jews everywhere more not less vulnerable.

In his report of the study, Ron Kampeas of the JTA (“The Global News Service of the Jewish People”) says: “U.S. diplomats and other officials will be expected to take their cues from this forceful language in how they deal with political groups and individuals overseas.”

The “forceful” language of the State Department study includes the following two paragraphs (my emphasis added for comment below)

“Anti-Semitism has proven to be an adaptive phenomenon. New forms of anti-Semitism have evolved. They often incorporate elements of traditional anti-Semitism. However, the distinguishing feature of the new anti-Semitism is criticism of Zionism or Israeli policy – whether intentionally or unintentionally – has the effect of promoting prejudice against all Jews by demonizing Israel and Israelis and attributing Israel’s perceived faults to its Jewish character.

“Regardless of the intent, disproportionate criticism of Israel as barbaric and unprincipled, and correspondingly discriminatory measures adopted by the UN against Israel, have the effect of causing audiences to associate negative attributes with Jews in general, thus fuelling anti-Semitism.”

I am very much aware that telling the truth of history as it relates to the making and sustaining of conflict in and over Palestine could provoke classical anti-Semitism, this because the truth of history includes the fact that Israel was created, mainly, by Zionist terrorism and ethnic cleaning. Though the two crimes against humanity were different in scale, the denial by supporters of Israel right or wrong of Zionism’s ethnic cleansing in Palestine is as obscene as the denial of the Nazi holocaust.

The question is… How can the truth of history be told, and Israel be criticised, without provoking classical anti-Semitism? The short answer is that the context must explain the difference between Judaism and Zionism. As I never tire of writing and saying, knowledge of this difference is the key to understanding why it is perfectly possible to be passionately anti-Zionist (opposed to Zionism’s colonial enterprise) without being in any way shape or form anti-Semitic; and, also, why it is wrong to blame all Jews everywhere for the crimes of the hardest core Zionist few in Israel.

If citizens of all faiths and none in the nations of the mainly Gentile Judeo-Christian world were aware of the differencies between Judiasm and Zionism, and how Zionism has made a mockery of and has contempt for the moral values and ethical principles of Judaism, there would be no danger of the truth of history and criticism of Israel provoking anti-Semitism.

As it relates to those of us who, with our books and public speaking, are on the frontline of the war for the truth of history and are by definition anti-Zionist, the State Department’s assertion (emphasised above) that we attribute Israel’s “perceived faults” to it’s “Jewish character” is libellous nonsense. We say the very opposite – that Israel is a Zionist state, not a Jewish state.

In conversation with me for a forthcoming television production, Professor Ilan Pappe, Israel’s leading “revisionist” or honest historian, offered a most penetrating observation. He was talking about the principle of the One State solution and he said:

“The One State would replace the racist and apartheid state with a shared democracy, a state for all of its citizens. This would create a state that was far more Jewish than the Zionist state because the Zionist state is not a Jewish state and abuses the principles of Judaism.” (My emphasis added).

As emphasised above, the State Department’s study also asserts that regardless of intention, “disproportionate criticism of Israel” (what the hell is that?) has the effect of “causing audiences to associate negative attributes with Jews in general.” This could not happen if audiences were aware of the difference between Judaism and Zionism.

Memo to the State Department: If you really want to play a part in stopping the monster of classical anti-Semitism going on the rampage again, take the lead in explaining the difference between Judaism and Zionism. (And read my two-volume book, Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews).

Genocide Alert: Israel has cut off all fuel supplies to Gaza’s 1.4 million residents

By Aaron Heller of the Associated Press:

Israel cut off all fuel supplies to Gaza’s 1.4 million residents Thursday, a day after four Palestinian militants infiltrated the Israeli depot that is the territory’s sole source of fuel, and shot dead two civilian workers.

The brazen daylight raid in southern Israel threatened to set off a new round of fighting in Gaza after a monthlong lull and could jeopardize recently renewed peace efforts.

Three smaller militant factions claimed they carried out the attack, but the Israeli government held Gaza’s Hamas rulers responsible. It sent tanks, troops and aircraft into the Palestinian territory after the raid, killing at least eight Palestinians, including three civilians. And it warned that more reprisals could be coming.

“We will chose the time and the place to respond. The blame lies on Hamas as the responsible authority there,” Matan Vilnai, Israel’s deputy defense minister, told Israel’s Army Radio.

The Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad, which took part in the attack, called the raid, which was carried out under cover of mortar fire, a “unique and complicated operation.”

Abu Ahmed of Islamic Jihad said the attack was intended to target the fuel depot on which Gazans depend.

The fuel “is dipped in humiliation,” he said, because people wait for it for hours. “If their fuel means humiliation for us, we don’t want it.”

Maj. Tal Levram, an Israeli army spokesman, said the militants apparently were planning to carry out a broader attack on a neighboring Israeli village or to kidnap soldiers, but were thwarted by the arrival of Israeli troops.

Palestinian militants frequently attack the Israeli border, but they rarely succeed in getting through. In another daring daytime raid in June 2006, militants tunneled into Israel, killed two soldiers and captured a third. The soldier, Cpl. Gilad Schalit, remains in captivity in Gaza.

Wednesday’s attack upset more than a month of calm following a broad Israeli military offensive that killed more than 120 Gazans, including dozens of civilians. Since the offensive ended in early March, Egypt has been trying to mediate a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, and the sides appear to have been honoring an informal truce.

Israel sealed its borders with Gaza after the Islamic militant group seized control of the territory in June, and has reduced the flow of fuel, electricity and basic goods. The sanctions have hit hard and Hamas threatened on Tuesday to blow up Gaza’s borders with Israel and Egypt to relieve the strain.

Israel has taken the threat seriously because Hamas breached the Egyptian border in January, allowing tens of thousands of people to pour into Egypt for more than a week before the border was resealed.

On Thursday, an Israeli think tank reported that Hamas’ military buildup is at its peak, despite the international blockade on Gaza.

The Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center said the Islamic militant Hamas group has organized 20,000 armed forces and acquired longer-range rockets and advanced anti-tank weapons.

It also said Iran and Syria supply Hamas with weapons, technical know-how and training. The major points of the report were not new, but were significant because of the center’s close links to Israel’s defense establishment. Some of the material in the report was based on data from the Shin Bet security agency.

Israel stopped pumping gas on Thursday and at least two Israeli ministers said Israel should cut it off permanently following the attack. However, officials said the flow would be renewed shortly to avert a humanitarian crisis.

Gazans received fuel supplies on Wednesday before the attack.

The infiltration also serves as a reminder that Israel, which is conducting peace talks with the rival Palestinian government of President Mahmoud Abbas, will not be able to implement a deal as long as Hamas rules Gaza. Hamas is not a party to those talks.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Arye Mekel said the raid would not disrupt peace talks. The two sides hope to reach a final peace deal by the end of the year.

“We decided that we will continue to talk and will not let terrorists have a veto voice on the talks with the pragmatic forces,” Mekel said.

The ‘Rogue Entity’ – Twenty Questions Radio/TV interviewers avoid asking about Israel….

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m42547&hd=&size=1&l=e

Stuart Littlewood

 

March 29, 2008 The abysmal performance of western TV and radio interviewers when dealing with issues surrounding Israel – that ‘Rogue Regime’ or ‘Zionist Entity’, as many now call it – is not only embarrassing but a blot on the escutcheon of journalism. Even the most fearsome inquisitors purr like a pussycat. Their rottweiler instincts evaporate, their investigative skills desert them, objectivity takes a nosedive. Penetrating questions are seldom asked, lies go unchallenged. Any Israeli spokesperson or cheerleader is guaranteed an easy ride. Have the nation’s truth-seekers fallen under some wicked Zionist spell? Are their researchers on strike? Did somebody nobble the programme editors? While we wait with mounting frustration for our broadcasters to get their act together, here are 20 simple questions the BBC and others seem anxious not to ask…… On Rockets and Sieges (1) The numbers of home-made Qassam rockets launched at Israel are diligently counted and quoted, but how many sophisticated munitions have Israel’s F-16s, helicopter gun-ships, armed drones, tanks, occupation troops and navy patrol boats fired into the crowded humanity that packs the Gaza Strip? We are never told. (2) Why should we believe the claim that the siege of Gaza is about rockets “raining down” on Sderot? Palestinians in the West Bank don’t fire rockets yet the Israelis are still in occupation after 40 years, still stealing their land and water, and now dumping their toxic waste there. (3) Israelis say that if the rockets stop, things will be OK…. Does that mean Gaza will be able to trade freely with the outside world like any other country, and people will be able to come and go freely? Will you and I be able to visit Gaza without Israeli hindrance? On the Collective Punishment of Gazans (4) Why can’t Gaza’s 3,000 licensed fishermen put to sea and earn their living without being harassed and fired on? What is the status of Palestinian territorial waters under international law? Why are half the hospitals’ dialysis machines out of action and the chronically sick dying in agony for want of proper medication? (5) Which parts of the Declaration of Human Rights and Geneva Conventions don’t Israelis understand? On the War on Christianity (6) Israelis use ‘administrative’ controls to disrupt the life and work of the Christian Church in the Holy Land. No Muslim or Palestinian Christian living outside Jerusalem is allowed to visit the Holy Places in the Old City without special permission. Christian priests, many of whom are Jordanian, cannot go home to see their families because Israel’s new visa policy would prevent them returning to their parishes. The Catholic priest in Gaza has been trapped there for 9 years knowing that if he visits his folks the Israelis won’t allow him back into the Strip. “We seek a life of freedom—a life different from the life of dogs we are currently forced to live,” he says. What should be our response to attempts by Israel to paralyse the Church? (7) Is it not shameful that our elected politicians, who are mostly Christian themselves, show so little concern? Is it not doubly shameful how the leaders of western Christendom seem oblivious to the Israeli government’s war against Christian communities? Beware those pseudo-Christians in high places, who talk the talk but won’t walk the walk. How many top brass have visited Gaza to show solidarity with the flock? At the present rate there will soon be no Christians left in the place where Christianity began, and churchmen will wake up one morning to find the Holy Land, from which their whole power and purpose are derived, stolen from under their noses. On illegal Settlements (8) Israel has expropriated agricultural land and key water resources in the Palestinian West Bank for its own use. More than 38% of the territory now consists of Israeli settlements, outposts, military bases and closed military areas, Israeli-declared nature reserves or other infrastructure that’s off-limits to Palestinians. Jews-only highways linking settlements to Israel, and the 580 checkpoints and roadblocks, have fragmented Palestinian communities, blocked access to their lands and severely restricted movement. How can this be right? (9) The freezing and dismantling of Israeli settlements are a cornerstone of major peace initiatives. The most recent, the Quartet’s 2003 ‘roadmap’ endorsed by the UN Security Council, is perfectly clear on the question of illegal settlements. Israel is under an obligation to…. a) immediately dismantle settlement outposts erected since March 2001, b) freeze all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements) consistent with the Mitchell Report, c) take “no actions undermining trust, including confiscation and/or demolition of Palestinian homes and property”. Why have none of these obligations been met? (10) A year ago the General Assembly reaffirmed that Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, “are illegal and an obstacle to peace” and demanded “the immediate and complete cessation of all Israeli settlement activities”. Why is Israel still stealing Palestinian land for more illegal construction? By vowing to press ahead with settlement building, Israel’s prime minister Olmert again signals contempt for international law and world opinion… further proof (if ever it were needed) that Israel isn’t interested in peace. On the Evil of the Wall (11) In 2004 the International Court of Justice, sitting at the request of the UN General Assembly, concluded that the route chosen for the Separation Wall “gives expression in loco to the illegal measures taken by Israel with regard to Jerusalem and the settlements”. The ICJ ruled the Wall illegal and declared that it should be dismantled where it encroaches onto Palestinian land. Why hasn’t this been done? Why is Israel still building it? If Israelis feel a wall is necessary for security reasons why don’t they build one on their own territory? On House Demolitions and the Right of Return (12) In 1948 the newly established state of Israel began demolishing the homes of Palestinian refugees to prevent their return. More than 125,000 houses were systematically destroyed. Since 1967 18,000 more have been demolished, making another 100,000 Palestinians homeless. Demolishing homes is a deliberate Israeli strategy to…. inflict collective punishment and break the Palestinians’ will to resist the occupation achieve a silent ethnic transfer ensure that Israel’s control of the Occupied Territories and their resources becomes permanent Apart from the fact that these acts breach every rule in the book, every convention and every declaration governing civilised conduct, how would the Israelis like it if they were the victims? (13) Why can any Jew from anywhere in the world, who has never before lived in Israel and whose ancestors have never lived in Israel, go and live in Israel – or ‘squat’ in an illegal outpost in Palestine with Israel’s blessing – while Palestinians who can prove title to their former houses may not? On Imprisonment (14) Nearly 10,000 Palestinians, including women and children, have been abducted and languish in Israeli prisons, many without charge or trial. 30+ Palestinian parliamentarians, democratically elected, are also imprisoned. What civilised country would do this? On Ethnic Cleansing (15) The ethnic cleansing of Palestine, begun in the months before and after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, is still going on in and around Jerusalem and in Gaza. Israel’s Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger argues for an ethnic cleansing programme to transfer Gazans out and dump them in the Sinai desert. Haaretz reports that he wants Britain, the EU and the US to assist in the construction of a Palestinian state in the middle of nowhere. “They will have a nice country, and we, the Jews, shall have our country and we shall live in peace.” This leading advocate of ethnic cleansing says Muslims should recognize that “our land is the Holy Land and Jerusalem belongs to us”. Do we in Britain wish to associate with people who hold such views? On Terror (16) Since the land occupied by Israel was taken by terrorist means, employing gangs such as the one that blew up the British mandate government in the King David Hotel in 1946 killing 90, by what moral yardstick do British and other western leaders ‘do business’ with the Israeli Government but not with Palestine’s democratically elected Hamas leadership? (17) Remembering that most Israeli prime ministers have been responsible for authorising war crimes against the Palestinian people, why are the words ‘terrorist’, ‘militant’ and ‘extremist’ applied only to Palestinians? They fit successive Israeli governments like a glove, and given Israel’s lawless and inhuman conduct in Palestine and Lebanon, which has outraged world opinion, why isn’t it branded a terrorist state? On our (uncritical) Support (18) For decades Occupied Palestine has received British and European aid. If Palestinians had been left in peace, free to trade and develop in the normal way, there would no need for aid. In effect British and EU taxpayers are subsidising Israel’s illegal occupation and the economic strangulation it imposes. Why should we think this acceptable and continue to pick up the tab? (19) Why is there such strong support for Israel at the heart of British government? Why have so many MPs and MEPs allowed themselves to be drawn into the ‘Friends of Israel’ web? How can supposedly bright people with information at their fingertips still be ignorant of Israel’s apartheid practices, wholesale land thefts, careless slaughter of children and other atrocities? Can we take it that they approve of the slow genocide inflicted on defenceless civilians, the middle-of-the-night snatch squads, the house demolitions, the torture and assassinations, and the crushing of Christian and Muslim communities? Is it not foolish and insulting for them to claim we share Israel’s beliefs and values, and should even share foreign policy? A well-respected Jewish MP recently called the Israeli government “a gang of amoral thugs”. Isn’t that about right? On the Two-State solution (20) Israel and its Zionist stooges are pushing for a two-state solution… eventually, when it suits them and their land grab is complete. To warped minds this will give the racist regime and its supremacist ideals some kind of seal of approval. By that time the shrunken and shredded remnants of Palestine will have become a permanently impoverished and ghettoized mini-state, trashed and raped of its resources, traumatised, subservient, easy to control and never capable of prospering. Israel’s scheming allies, who include western governments (though not western peoples), go along with this grubby plan. Can someone please explain why we, the citizens of a Christian democracy once mandated with responsibility for Palestine’s future wellbeing, would wish to soil our hands with it? The ethical choice, surely, is a single state with Jews living alongside their Arab neighbours as equal citizens and sharing the land within a common legal and democratic framework. That, after all, was the original intention, and the developments of the last 60 years are a gross perversion and betrayal. Only the Palestinians themselves have had the courage to resist it. When the Day of Reckoning comes to the Middle East – and engulfs the meddlesome West – much of the blame will rest squarely on the lack of journalistic rigour here and in the US, which has allowed a delinquent political élite to work their evil too long. -ends- Stuart Littlewood 28 March 2008 Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. For further information please visit www.radiofreepalestine.co.uk

U.S. Media Coverage of Israel-Palestine Conflict

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0502/S00151.htm

By Sonia Nettnin

Few Americans realize that U.S. mainstream media coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict passes through America’s political elites, Israeli public relations organizations and private American organizations, before it reaches the public.

One of The Media Education Foundation’s latest films, “Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land: U.S. Media and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” directed by Sut Jhally, examines how these filters distort the realities on the ground. It demonstrates how through word choice, limited historical context and one-sided perspectives, U.S. journalists provide the American public with limited news coverage.

This MEF documentary, in memoriam of Edward W. Said (1935-2003), describes the public relations strategies of U.S. corporations and lobby organizations to manipulate news coverage for the financial and political interests they represent. Since American public opinion is malleable, the media’s misinformation can mold the foundation of public perceptions. Hence, people draw conclusions based on biased news reports.

Through interviews with journalists, media analysts and political activists, the film explores the co-opted media’s techniques for reporting the conflict and mobilizing public opinion. For example, on September 3, 2001, a news network did not want its journalists referring to the Israeli settlement, Gilo, as a “settlement.” Instructions given to journalists explained that “…we don’t refer to it as a settlement…” so in one of the network’s news clips that followed, the journalist reporting from Gilo used the officially substituted word “neighborhood.” The word change altered the perspective of the news report drastically because it removed any perception of colonization from the report’s context. Clearly, replacing or eliminating words from a report can assist with removing skepticism about the nature of its subject matter. Moreover, it helps modify public perceptions as to who is the aggressor.

PR-media strategies explain why the news continues to emphasize the violence directed against Israelis. However, the media reports do not include international law in their coverage, with regards to human rights, the rights of Palestinian refugees and the obligations of occupying forces. The Geneva Conventions and several UN Security Council Resolutions are solid sources for reference. If news reports included the historical fact that Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem exist on Palestinian land, the background information may cause Americans to raise questions about the legality of those settlements. Moreover, people may begin to reassess the root causes of the conflict. When news consumers have thorough, accurate information, the conflict between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians can reflect different meanings or interpretations, absent from the current patterns of news coverage.

The film shows news footage of the Israeli Army as they attack Palestinian civilians. In response, Palestinians throw rocks. Without historical background in the news report, it appears as a violent conflict over disputed land, where Israeli Defense Forces use tanks and gun ships against the Palestinian people. If the media reported the conflict’s history, then news consumers may see a military regime’s occupation of Palestinian land and its indigenous people. With tanks and gun ships, Israeli soldiers attack Palestinian civilians. The color of media’s stock images change with history’s clarifying hue.

Other unfair aspects of the media’s conflict coverage are the absence of news reporting about the Palestinian’s daily life with checkpoint violence and curfews; and the organizations that protest their living conditions. Overall, the U.S. media does not cover the Israeli peace movement. When 2,000 Israeli and Palestinian women from the organization, Women in Black, marched down the streets of Jerusalem, the U.S. media did not cover the demonstration. Whenever an organization, such Gush Shalom (which considers itself the core of the Israeli peace movement) has a demonstration, it is not in U.S. news coverage.

However, the media is not just the news, but artistic and intellectual endeavors also. People communicate through storylines, public discourse and art, which shows their everyday life. If the Arab countries expressed their humanity in American pastimes, then it would create a Transatlantic, cultural bridge for American public awareness. Movies, music, magazines, radio programs, and television shows (maybe even a soap opera) entertain people, but it engages their beliefs and their values also. Cultural catalysts would reverse the adverse affects of current news coverage. Over time, the stereotypes and racial hate embedded in the American psyche would have no room on the political stage.

The Arab media and the Arab socio-political elite could contribute for these cultural initiatives. The alternative, media sources would focus on the people of the Middle East, and the media’s cultural lenses would reach American families in their homes. Cultural pastimes cultivate global awareness in people. The potential result is American media consumer’s understanding of the Middle East. After American families see Arab families across the world, they would realize that the similarities outnumber the differences. When they learn about families with common problems and aspirations, the use of the word “terrorist,” in America’s lexicon, would prove a linguistic challenge.

Since journalism is about public enlightenment, some of these educational endeavors would help Americans comprehend the daily violence endured by the Palestinians. If anything, Americans will gain more understanding about the pain and the suffering of Palestinians caused by the occupation. The tragedies within the Palestinian narrative cannot be filtered away anymore.

************* Sonia Nettnin is a freelance writer. Her articles and reviews demonstrate civic journalism, with a focus on international social, economic, humanitarian, gender, and political issues. Media coverage of conflicts from these perspectives develops awareness in public opinion.

Nettnin received her bachelor’s degree in English literature and writing. She did master’s work in journalism. Moreover, Nettnin approaches her writing from a working woman’s perspective, since working began for her at an early age.

She is a poet, a violinist and she studied professional dance. As a writer, the arts are an integral part of her sensibility. Her work has been published in the Palestine Chronicle, Scoop Media and the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. She lives in Chicago.