Patience wanes for Israeli aggression

First person by Bouthaina Shaaban

The endorsement by the UN Human Rights Council of Justice Richard Goldstone’s report on the war in Gaza – despite American and British criticism, Israeli threats, delays and different interpretations – demonstrates that the world has changed.

It shows that those with free conscience have started to be fed up with criminals and their war crimes; particularly those committed by Israel’s rulers against unarmed Palestinians for over 60 years. It also shows that despite Israel’s efforts to prevent coverage by world media of what is happening in Gaza and Palestine, some facts have started to surface; and no human being with a free conscience can tolerate or accept them – even if they were Jewish, or friends of Israel.

It is remarkable that during the days preceding the vote on the report, Israeli authorities treated the whole world as if it were populated by unarmed Palestinians; warning of the threat to the peace process if the report was accepted. It is as if there were a peace process, and as if the world had not heard the statements made by Netanyahu and Lieberman refusing to stop illegal settlement, rejecting the right of return for Palestinian refugees; as if the world does not see the judaization of Jerusalem; Israeli bulldozers demolishing Palestinian houses and throwing families in the streets; bringing foreign settlers to replace the Palestinians expelled by Israeli oppressive authorities, who attack farmers and burn their olive trees.

What Israel is trying to do after it has been exposed on the international arena, is either to threaten to “torpedo the peace process,” which is already stalled, or level random accusations of “anti-Semitism.” These accusations are not convincing to anybody any longer. Israeli officials and officers have, from now on, to take account of international prosecution and accountability before they commit their crimes against civilians.

As usual, Israel, Jewish lobbies and their agents in the mass media, parliaments and political bodies start political, diplomatic and media mobilization whenever it is criticized and whenever reports expose the crimes it is committing against civilians. It imposes a comprehensive media blackout, prevents politicians from criticizing it in public, and prevents reporters from accessing the crime scene.

This is what happened when Swedish journalist Donald Bostrum published his investigative report about killing Palestinians and harvesting their organs, which aimed at initiating international investigations into this decades-old practice which affected the US itself: American Jewish rabbis were involved in building criminal networks for trafficking human organs. Israel raised a media-storm against the journalist. His country, Sweden, prevented him from entering Palestine in order to divert the world public opinion from this horrible crime. Not only that, it also called for prosecuting those who wrote about this crime and tried to uncover it and put an end to it.

Bostrum presented the names and photographs of some of the victims, hoping that the investigation would be completed in order to reveal the extent and ugliness of these crimes. This was necessary due to the lack of an Arab authority which could push this file through international forums and courts, and continue to expose such crimes and bring to justice their perpetrators: politicians, military officers or Israeli intelligence staff; responsible for assassination, torture, kidnapping, demolishing houses, shelling civilian areas, and killing demonstrators.

In this context, it is worth recalling the lies promoted by the administration of US President George W. Bush about Muslims’ hatred of the United States. His question: “Why do they hate us?” was a mere cover for his war on Iraq which killed a million unarmed Iraqi civilians and aimed to justify kidnapping, torture, and secret prisons. We can also recall the money spent and the efforts made by that administration in order to improve the image of the US in the world. Today, after a president who respects Islam and Muslims has been elected, it is shown that the problem was not in Muslims and the Islamic world, neither was it in the inevitable clash of civilizations some have promoted, but in the policies of the American administration which promoted wars, killing, torture and destruction.

As the American people discovered today that Bush’s acts were responsible for the distortion of America’s global image, conscientious people of the world have started to condemn crimes committed against civilian Palestinians by the rulers of Israel and try to stop them. Israel will no longer be able to hammer the world with its never-ending blackmail dating back to the Nazi era 70 years ago.

The same applies today to the noise made by Israel about a Turkish television series which shows clips of what Israel commits on a daily basis against Palestinians, like killing children, and the abuse and humiliation they exercise on their checkpoints, which have no parallel in today’s world.

Instead of feeling shame as a result of committing crimes, Israel resorts to its usual methods, summoning the Turkish ambassador to protest against broadcasting such scenes, not against the crimes themselves. It describes the series, not the crimes, as “barbaric,” British newspaper The Independent reported. The question here is: can a television series be barbaric, terrorist and violent; or is it the crimes of killing children, committed by Israeli soldiers every day, which are barbaric and shameful to those who commit them?

The game began to unravel when Israel started to concentrate on a lie which it invented, like the fake footage of an explosion in the village of Teir Fleisa in Lebanon, only to divert attention from the Goldstone report. The lie, regrettably taken on and promoted by some Arab media, was quickly and competently exposed. The lie was quickly buried.

Despite all the efforts made by Israel to cover up its crimes, its Foreign Minister Ehud Barak – implicated in assassination and war crimes against unarmed civilians – had to ask for special protection from the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in order to avoid arrest and imprisonment on a recent state visit. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, had to face a group of students at Chicago University calling for the cancellation of a talk he was to give, wondering how the university could receive a war criminal to give a lecture.

The conclusion is that the world has started to change, and that it will not wait for the Israelis to write proudly about their crimes as if they were achievements, as former Israeli security chief, Avi Dechter, did in his lecture about Israel’s role in destroying Iraq. The world has even started to bring Israel to account for its crimes. But this process should continue to the end, until it brings justice to the victims and help the Palestinians gain their freedom and salvation from the last form of slavery in the world.

Asec to run gold mine in Algeria

Egypt-based Asec Mining has said it will plan and manage operations of an Algerian gold mine held by GMA Resources, following a deal to buy 10% of the company, Reuters has reported. The acquisition aims to leverage Asec's relative liquidity and continue its expansion into North Africa, Asec said. Asec has broad operations in geology, mining and manufacturing across the Mena region and manages gold mining and exploration projects in Sudan, Ethiopia and Libya.

Settlers attack Palestinian family in Sheikh Jarrah, injure seven

International Solidarity Movement (ISM)

ISM, 20 October 2009

The settlers who have recently occupied the house of the Gawi family, forcefully evicted from their home in Sheikh Jarrah on 2 August 2009, launched an attack today on the Palestinians camping outside. According to local sources, seven Palestinians were injured and four arrested.

The attack started between 8 and 8.30pm, when a driver of a lorry delivering furniture to the occupied house, accompanied by four settlers, attacked a five year old boy from the Gawi family who was playing nearby. The settlers then attacked a small tent where the Gawi family have been living since the eviction. The tent was full of mainly women and children at that time. A Palestinian woman who was hit hard by the driver had to be taken to hospital. A fight broke out immediately, involving at least 15 settlers. Several members of the family sustained light injuries and a 15-year old girl from the neighborhood was hit by a falling TV as the settlers managed to tear down the tent.

When police arrived, they made no attempts to stop the settlers attacking the family and later arrested four Palestinians. Two were released and another two, Khalet Gawi and Saleh Diab have been taken to hospital and told to come back to the police station tomorrow for further questioning. Four settlers were taken for questioning and released immediately.

The Gawi and Hannoun families, consisting of 53 members including 20 children, have been left homeless after they were forcibly evicted from their houses on 2 August 2009. The Israeli forces surrounded the homes of the two families at 5.30am and, breaking in through the windows, forcefully dragged all residents into the street. The police also demolished the neighborhood protest tent, set up by Um Kamel, following the forced eviction of her family in November 2008.

At present, all three houses are occupied by settlers and the whole area is patrolled by armed private settler security 24 hours a day. Both Hannoun and Gawi families, who have been left without suitable alternative accommodation since August, continue to protest against the unlawful eviction from the sidewalk across the street from their homes, facing regular attacks from the settlers and harassment from the police.

The Karm Al-Ja’ouni neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah is home to 28 Palestinian families, all refugees from 1948, who received their houses from the UNRWA and Jordanian government in 1956. All face losing their homes in the manner of the Hannoun, Gawi and al-Kurd families.

The aim of the settlers is to turn the whole area into a new Jewish settlement and to create a Jewish continuum that will effectively cut off the Old City form the northern Palestinian neighborhoods. Implanting new Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank is illegal under many international laws, including Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Civilians Killed in Pakistan Offensive

The number no one's counting
Alan Fisher

October 20, 2009

The pictures are too gruesome to show. The charred bodies lie under a makeshift shroud. Someone near the camera holds up an identity card - giving one corpse a name, a history, a dignity that's now been stolen.

Nearby, the covered body of a child, no more than five or six. A victim of a battle the child didn't know even existed. In this place, at least four people have been killed. The figure could be higher. The army knows how many men it's lost. Every day it gives new figures for the number of Taliban it claims it's killed. But no-one seems to know how many innocent civilians are being killed in this conflict.

Exclusive pictures obtained by Al Jazeera show the damage the war in South Waziristan has brought to the town of Saroragha, which sits close to the Afghan border. These are the first images images of what's happening inside South Waziristan.

As the camera moves slowly from left to right, villagers are picking through the rubble of their homes, trying to recover anything of value. These are not Taliban fighters but ordinary people caught up in a battle they knew was coming but had no way of escaping. The army has been pounding positions here for months, using fighter planes and helicopter gunships. It insists the targets were Taliban. Homes have been wrecked.

It's hard to find out what's going on in the conflict zone. The army has sealed off the area to the media, but the pictures confirm it has gained ground in the area. Jundola is one of the gateways into the Taliban stronghold. It's clear the area is now under Government control. The fight to gain more ground closer to the centre of Taliban operations is going to be much fiercer and inevitably more bloody.

AQIM Seeks Specialists In Morocco

CAIRO [MENL] -- Morocco has determined that Al Qaida was seeking to bolster its network in the North African kingdom.

Officials said the Al Qaida Organization in the Islamic Maghreb has sought to recruit specialists in bomb assembly and intelligence for the nascent network in Morocco. They said AQIM requested that North Africans fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia leave for Morocco over the next few weeks.

Algeria Plans New Energy Development

CAIRO [MENL] -- Algeria has approved plans for a major energy development project.

Algeria's state-owned energy monopoly Sonatrach has joined France's Total and Spain's Cepsa for the development of the Timimoun natural gas project. Timimoun, located in southwestern Algeria, was expected to produce 1.6 billion cubic meters of gas per year.

Jordan receives 50 million dollars in new batch of US aid

Amman - The Jordanian government on Tuesday received 50 million dollars in a new batch of US economic aid to Jordan for 2009, the Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation said in a statement. The installment brings to 143 million dollars the economic aid received by Jordan from the United States so far this year.

The new batch will be used to balance the public budget deficit, which is expected to hit an all-time high of about 1.5 billion dollars this year, the ministry said.

The United States so far pledged to extend 513.5 million dollars as economic aid this year to Jordan.

The ministry said that the government was establishing close contacts with European countries to speed up the payment of financial aid pledged by EU countries to Jordan for the 2009 budget.

Jordan is scheduled to receive 786 million dollars this year from non-Arab donor countries, including 365 million dollars to support this year's budget, the ministry said.