by Stephen Lendman

Simply put, Netanyahu is a huge risk to world peace, not to mention the modern emblem for the worst in the history of Israel.

Israel under Netanyahu reflects Arundhadi Roy’s view. Her book titled “Field Notes on Democracy” explained.

“What kind of India do they want,” she asked? “A limbless, headless, soulless torso left bleeding under the butcher’s clever with a flag driven deep into her mutilated heart?” She compared Hindu right wing persecution of Muslims to Hitler’s war on Jews. Occupied Palestinians are treated the same way.

Hitler terrorized Jews for a dozen years. Israel waged war on Palestinians for decades. It rages out-of-control. It shows no signs of ending. During his first late 1990s prime ministerial term, Netanyahu was Israel’s most polarizing leader. He exceeded the worst of his predecessors.

Right-wing extremists adore him. He’s worse than ever now. Polls favor his January 22 reelection. Israelis will have themselves to blame. They’re as out of touch as Americans. They accept what demands rejection.

Netanyahu wages war on democracy. He threatens his own people. He defies them. He gives chutzpah new meaning. He spurns Palestinian rights. He accelerated lawless settlement construction. He’s stealing Palestinian land faster than ever. His E1 Ma’aleh Adumin plan drew flack.

At issue is separating the West Bank from Jerusalem, Judaizing the entire city, surrounding Palestinian urban areas with encroaching Israeli settlements, and driving the last spike into the corpse of a two-state solution.

It’s no longer possible with or without E1 development. Proceeding with it divides the West Bank into separate north/south areas. Doing so reflects Netanyahu’s divide, conquer, steal, and ethnically cleanse strategy.

He calls Occupied Palestine “disputed territory.” He believes Jews have sole “natural right and territorial claim.” He spurns international law. Fourth Geneva leaves no ambiguity. Article 49 states:

“Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.”

Palestinians acted in their own defense. They defied occupation harshness. They erected a Bab Al Shams village tent city. They did so on their own land. Bab Al Shams means “Gateway to the Sun.” It reflects Palestinian liberation. It’s the gate to their return. Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury discussed it. He related Palestinian history symbolically through a love story.

Younis left his wife, Nahila. He joined Lebanese-based Palestinian resisters. She remained in Galilee. For years, he went back and forth secretly. Their children were born in Bab Al Sharms cave.

A Popular Struggle Coordination Committee statement explained Bab Al Shams resistance, saying:

“We, the sons and daughters of Palestine from all throughout the land, announce the establishment of Bab Al Shams Village (Gate of the Sun).”

“We the people, without permits from the occupation, without permission from anyone, sit here today because this is our land and it is our right to inhabit it.”

“A few months ago the Israeli government announced its intention to build about 4000 settlement housing units in the area Israel refers to as  E1.”

“E1 block is an area of about 13 square km that falls on confiscated Palestinian land East of Jerusalem between Ma’ale Adumim settlement, which lies on occupied West Bank Palestinian land, and Jerusalem.”

“We will not remain silent as settlement expansion and confiscation of our land continues. Therefore we hereby establish the village of Bab Al Shams to proclaim our faith in direct action and popular resistance.”

“We declare that the village will stand steadfast until the owners of this land will get their right to build on their land.”

Netanyahu ordered them out. He issued a lawless eviction notice. Forced expulsion followed.

On January 13, Haaretz headlined “Israeli security forces evacuate activists from Palestinian tent outpost in E-1 area,” saying:

Netanyahu asked Israel’s High Court to rescind a temporary injunction against evacuation. He ordered access roads blocked. The IDF designated the area a closed military zone.

Netanyahu defied High Court authority. Osnat Mandel is Director of Israel’s Justice Ministry HCJ (Israel High Court division). Netanyahu ordered him to act.

He followed through, saying “the people and tents must be removed due to security considerations.” He lied. He claimed the High Court injunction prohibits removing tents, not people.

Israel’s Civil Administration Office falsely said Bab Al Shams “was installed on state land.” Palestinians living there have legal ownership deeds.

Hundreds of security forces attacked Palestinians on their own land. They did so pre-dawn. Journalists and supporters were targeted.

Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi is Palestinian National Initiative Secretary-General. He witnessed what happened. He said:

“The people who need to leave are the settlers who have taken over the land, because the Palestinians have the right to stay on their own land.”

He added that Israeli forces surrounded Bab Al Shams before invading violently.

They attacked and arrested peaceful Palestinians, supporters and journalists. Women, children, the elderly and infirm were dragged away violently.

Palestinian television aired what happened. Israeli forces disruptively tried to prevent it. They want Netanyahu-ordered violence out of sight and mind. Haaretz reported it.

One Palestinian spoke for others, saying:

“We tied our hands, chained ourselves with each other to prevent the soldiers from removing us. The Soldiers violently attacked us, beat us, and injured at least 10.”

He vowed the Bab Al Shams struggle for justice won’t end.

Hundreds of Israeli soldiers and police defied the High Court injunction.

Haaretz said it “determined that the tents were put up on private Palestinian land.” Netanyahu plans E1 development there.

Palestinian spokesman Nour Odeh condemned what happened, saying:

“The eviction and the exercise of force is another indication that Israel is defying the international consensus on the need to vacate occupied Palestinian land.”

One Palestinian spoke for others, saying “Our hope is to return to our land. For us, we are here because we want change. We did not forget our land and never gave it away.”

Palestine’s liberating struggle continues.

A Final Comment

Netanyahu represents the worst of rogue leadership. He defies rule of law principles and other democratic values. He’s contemptuous of Palestinian rights. He threatens world peace.

On January 12, Haaretz headlined “Netanyahu, Barak spent NIS (New Israel Shekel) 11 bil. (around $3 billion) on preparations for Iran strike that never happened,” saying:

Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert calls it a major election campaign issue. Netanyahu wasted Israeli resources on reckless “adventurous fantasies,” he said.

Revenues spent are gone. “Can and should (Israel) bear the enormous defense budget, which has grown to unprecedented levels” under Netanyahu, he asked?

He’s defiant. He won’t touch defense spending. He claims it’s “in light of the challenges facing Israel.”

The Jewish state has no enemies whatever. Netanyahu invents them. He menaces the region. He endangers his own people. Megalomania and delusions of grandeur define him.

His mindset is messianic. He’s a loose cannon. He’s out-of-control. Hardliners around him share his vision. His Iranian obsession threatens Israel. His “bomb or be bombed” rhetoric reflects bluster. It demands condemnation and rejection.

Netayanhu rejected Olmert’s accusation. He called him “irresponsible.” He said he won’t “divulge details of defense spending, but I can say that we developed capabilities in arenas both near and far, and that is an important investment.”

He lied. Current and former Israeli officials deplore him. Some went public and said so. Israelis aren’t paying attention. On January 22, he’s favored to remain prime minister.

Haaretz contributor Yoel Marcus calls it “One term too many.” Netanyahu reflects a “storm….strong enough to paralyze our lives, close down roads,” and threaten lives that deserve protection.

“Maybe all those who are still drunk with Netanyahu’s glory will awaken before he brings disaster upon us all,” he added. Odds favor the latter, not the former.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book is titled “Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour
http://www.dailycensored.com/netanyahu-the-face-of-israeli-fascism/

 

The Split

Differences over Israel tear apart a Jewish marriage

From the Book

RADICAL PEACE:
People Refusing War

By William T. Hathaway

Stan and Hannah Cooper are friends of mine from college days. Both are Jewish, but they have diametrically opposed views about Israel, and their differences have become so bitter that they’ve decided to divorce. As the three of us talked about this, it became clear that their dispute is a microcosm of the conflict that is tearing the Jewish community apart and also destroying lives in an increasingly large part of the world.

William: Your differences must have become quite serious if you’ve decided to end your marriage after all these years.

Stan: Well, these are very serious issues. If you take the Holocaust seriously, you have to support Israel. And Hannah doesn’t. If she has her way, if the people she supports come to power in Israel and the USA, they’ll stop resisting the terrorists and become holier than thou pacifists while the Arabs push the Jews into the sea and blow up half the USA. Then the pacifists will cry about what a tragedy it all is.

Well, I’m not going through another tragedy. I’m not going to see America and Israel destroyed because we didn’t have the courage to stand up to fanatics. I’m not going to have our generation go through something like our grandparent’s went through. Once is enough, once was way too many, and now we finally have to defend ourselves.

Hannah: No way am I in favor of pushing the Jews into the sea. Whenever we talk about this, you exaggerate my position. You get very thin skinned and go into your attack mode.

Stan: Yeah, I admit, I and lots of other Jews are thin skinned about this issue. But when you think about how many Jewish skins got stretched over lampshades not so long ago, it’s understandable that we might feel a tad oversensitive. My grandmother’s brother, my great uncle, got gassed in Auschwitz. And her cousin got shot in the neck in Sachsenhausen.

Hannah: You know I lost family too. They didn’t even make it to the concentration camps. They were murdered in the Kiev ghetto by the German SS. I’m not playing this down. I’ve got relatives in Israel just like you do, and I don’t want them killed. But the Zionists have tunnel vision about this issue. They focus just on one part of it — preventing another Holocaust, no matter what. But I’m convinced that what the Zionists are doing now is making another Shoah more likely. Their moral compass has got thrown off by the trauma they went through. It’s making them do things that violate the basic principles of Jewish ethics. The moral sensitivity, the qualities that make me most proud to be a Jew are getting destroyed by these Israeli militarists.

Stan: Self defense isn’t unethical. The Torah never said lie down and let people kill you. We have to survive. If we’re attacked, we have to fight back. Hannah pooh-poohs anti-Semitism, says it’s not so bad anymore, don’t be paranoid. But the fact is it’s getting much stronger, and that’s world-wide.

I’ll give you an example of something that happened to me just last year. I walked into my high school classroom one morning, and someone had written “Jews are dog shit” on the board. Some students were already in the room, and they all said it was there when they got there. I erased it, but next day it was there again, “Jews are dog shit.” Nobody saw who did it, or so they claimed. It kept happening, couple of times a week. The students still played dumb. I thought they really knew who was doing it, but I couldn’t prove it. I’d get there early, trying to catch them at it, but never could. I asked the janitors to check the room, but I don’t think they actually did. They didn’t really care.

One night about ten o’clock the doorbell rang at home. I opened the door, and a fire was burning on the front porch, a brown paper bag going up in flames. The porch is wood. I was afraid the whole house would catch fire. When I stomped out the blaze, I found out the bag was filled with dog shit, got it all over my shoes.

Next morning I go into the classroom, and on the board is “Jews house burn like dog shit.” Students just sitting there. And of course whoever did it didn’t even make it grammatical, and it was an English class.

I asked the police to watch the house, but they said they didn’t have the manpower for that. All I could do was get new smoke alarms, install motion detectors, leave lights burning all night in the yard, and increase the fire insurance on the house. Do you know what it’s like trying to fall asleep in a house that might burn down any night? I was afraid to take sleeping pills because I might not hear the smoke alarm. I was a wreck, and nobody gave a damn. Not even you, Hannah. You said it was just a prank.

Hannah: I said it was a vicious prank. But no, I didn’t think they’d actually burn down the house. They’d already achieved what they were after — they’d made your life miserable.

Stan: Well, Jews are tired of having their lives made miserable. Far worse anti-Semitic attacks than this are happening all over the world. The neo-Nazis are on the rise in Germany. Jews get beaten up in Russia. Synagogues in Paris and Rome have to be guarded by the police. All this proves that the Jews need a secure homeland, a place they can go where they’ll be safe.

And seeing how most of the world doesn’t give a damn if Israel lives or dies, that changed me. I stopped being a left-winger when I saw how they fawn over the Palestinians. They make excuses for al-Qaeda. They defend Iran. And they oppose the only progressive, democratic country in the Mideast. Left-wingers have lost whatever meaning they ever had, so I’m not one of them anymore. Their policies will destroy our freedoms.

Hannah: Our freedoms are being destroyed now under capitalism. They don’t apply to everyone anymore, only to those who don’t rock the boat. You remember what happened to that client of mine?

Stan: Right. The Arab again.

William: What happened?

Hannah: He was an agricultural science student from Morocco and spoke at an anti-war demonstration here on campus, everything legal and peaceful. The police photographed him and got the university to let them examine their file photos of foreign students. The cops identified him and searched his dormitory room, where they found a Koran, prayer rug, some ammonium fertilizer, and several Arabic language magazines, one of which had a picture of Osama bin Laden. They confiscated his computer and found he had the al-Jazeera website bookmarked and had written e-mails to people in Morocco with insulting comments about the American president. They searched his car and found a timer from a clothes dryer. And with that they arrested him for violating the Patriot Act. Front page story in the paper: “Terror Suspect Arrested, Bomb Materials Found.”

It turned out the fertilizer was for a research project he was doing, measuring plant growth rates with different types of ammonium. He had just a small amount, not enough to make a real bomb even if he’d wanted to. He took me to the greenhouse and showed me the project — twenty little pots of plants and charts for how much they’re growing.

He was working in a coin laundry near the campus, doing everything from cleaning up to simple repairs. The timer on one of the dryers was broken, so he’d taken it out. He couldn’t fix it, so he called the main office, and they told him to bring it in and they’d give him a new one. He put it in his car, where the cops found it.

They had no case at all, and it wasn’t hard to convince the district attorney of that. The university confirmed his research project, an explosives expert confirmed that the amount of fertilizer was too small, and the laundry company confirmed they’d told him to bring in the broken timer.

The DA told the cops he was going to drop the charges, but they said they had an additional lead and needed another search warrant. They got it, and when they searched his room this time, they “found” cocaine.

This student was a devout Muslim, not the cocaine type at all, very traditional and old fashioned, like yeshiva school boys used to be. I’m one hundred percent certain the cops planted the drugs. They were determined to get him on something. He was an Arab speaking out against the war and saying unflattering things about the president. That meant he was an enemy and had to be got rid of.

The DA didn’t want to believe the city’s finest would set someone up, but he did offer that if the student turned in his visa and left the country in two weeks, he’d drop the charges.

I hated to go along with this deal, but I knew the kid didn’t have a chance of getting a fair trial. He agreed and told me terrible stories about how other students had treated him. He left the USA bitter at having his education snatched away from him because of ignorant prejudice.

Stan: Like I said at the time, I’m glad you helped the guy. You saved him from jail. And all pro bono.

I think it’s terrible when innocent people get swept up in all this. But what about all the innocent Israelis who are dying and the three thousand innocent Americans in 9-11? You don’t seem to care about them.

Hannah: This idea that Israelis and Americans are innocent victims of terrorists is a myth. It’s created to justify our aggression. Just like the belief that Islamic fundamentalists are the main terrorists in the world. It’s Orwell’s Big Lie. The USA and Israel started this battle. We’ve been abusing the Arabs in all sorts of ways for decades. We’re the main terrorists. For every American killed in 9-11, we’ve already killed a hundred Muslims, and more every day. It’s the same in Israel.

The targets of 9-11 were soldiers in the Pentagon and financial managers in the World Trade Center. Both those groups are terrorists, just a subtler kind of terror. We don’t see it that way here, we just reap the benefits. We’re conditioned to think of that as normal. But what the global poor suffer under our corporations and the International Monetary Fund and World Bank is economic terror. And what they suffer under military dictatorships supported by the Pentagon is physical terror.

Even things that seem harmless to us like missionaries, pop music and movies become a form of cultural terrorism in a traditional society. The garbage that Hollywood is pouring into those countries is debasing their culture, just like it has ours. We’re used to it, but they don’t want to get used to it.

When Muslims fight back against us, we label them terrorists. But terrorism means intentionally killing innocent civilians, and the financial manipulators and Pentagon officers aren’t innocent.

But no one deserves to be killed, innocent or not. Bombing anybody is barbaric and abhorrent. The USA and Israel are dropping bombs all the time, though, and the civilians they kill are just collateral damage to them. If we do it, we have to expect that people will do it to us. Violence creates counter-violence.

From the Arab point of view, the Israelis are invaders, millions of Europeans who are pushing them off their land. It’s like what happened in America. Millions of Europeans poured in and pushed out the people who were living here. The natives defended themselves by attacking white wagon trains and settlements, killing everyone they could — men, women and children. The whites called them terrorists, savages.

Now the Arabs are fighting back. But like the Indians, their weapons aren’t nearly as powerful as the Europeans’. What was it Mike Davis said? “The car bomb is the poor man’s air force.” The rich have Stealth bombers, the poor have Toyota Corollas, both filled with explosives. The bombers are a lot bigger and kill many more people.

One of the reasons the Western powers supported the formation of Israel was that they thought the Arabs were passive, they wouldn’t defend themselves. But they’ve surprised us. They may win.

Stan: William, as a Gentile, you can’t imagine how offensive it is to me to hear drivel like this, especially from a fellow Jew … and one I’m married to.

William: You’re right, I probably can’t.

Hannah: I’m not singling out the Jews with this. They’re no worse than any other European group. Western civilization has produced more violence than any other. Our history is a chronicle of atrocities. From the Romans on, it’s been ghastly. We make Genghis Khan look like a pacifist. That’s why I think our day is passing — we’ve harmed too many other peoples, and now we deserve to go under.

But what breaks my heart is that before this the Jews hadn’t been cruel and militaristic. We were peaceful. But we’ve became just as vicious as the goyim. What a loss! Now it’s obvious that the diaspora was a blessing. We were freed of the disease of nationalism. Now we’re dying of it.

I admit that after what they’d been through, it was understandable that the Zionists would feel they needed their own country and it should be around Jerusalem. They grew up reading in the Torah that God personally gave them that land. They’re convinced it’s theirs forever. And every Passover they vow, ‘Next year in Jerusalem.’ They’re fixated on this area, even though it hasn’t been theirs for two thousand years.

But the fact that it’s understandable doesn’t make it right. It doesn’t justify what they’ve done to the Arabs to get the land. Their own suffering has blinded them to the suffering they’re causing others. That’s what makes it so tragic.

There are hundreds of ethnic groups in the world that don’t have their own country. But if we needed our own, the land should have been taken from the Germans. That would’ve been fair. The Arabs didn’t have anything to do with the Holocaust or with the expulsion by the Romans.

For the Zionists, Israel was a wonderful dream — a place where Jews could be safe and our culture could flourish. But it’s a terrible reality — war and the oppression of another people.

William: Do you see any way out?

Hannah: Well, I do. But this could be just wishful thinking, trying to see a glimmer of good in all this grief. It seems to me that this horrible insoluble dilemma is generating a crux of pressure, a desperate energy that may be able to spring humanity into its next stage.

Stan: And what might that be? Pray tell.

Hannah: I know this sounds grandiose and impossible, but so have a lot of major shifts in human development right before they happened. I’m hoping this is the start of our species finally outgrowing its need for group identities. Having all these groups — familial, tribal, ethnic, national — leads to battles. But now we may be getting ready to view humanity as one unified group. We could be going through the birth pains of a new era in which we realize the whole world is our family.

This terrible knot of problems in Israel/Palestine comes from group identities — religion, ethnicity, nationalism. It seems to be a knot that can’t be untangled, so we’ll have to cut through it. We’ll have to start cutting loose from these identities, leaving them behind, dismantling the structures, stop thinking of ourselves as Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians, get beyond the whole deadly game of separation. This might be a long, slow process, but now is the time to start. Every step we can make in that direction will help. There’s no other way out.

The problems around Jerusalem are really a microcosm of the problems of the world. Since they’re most intense there, that’s where the breakthrough can happen. Whatever we can do to reduce the separating identities — tear down national boundaries, dissolve ethnicity, eliminate the gap between rich and poor — will bring us closer to being a human family. I’m not saying do away with differences, just divisions.

The separations have developed out of fear, because primitive life was such a struggle and humans felt so weak and vulnerable. They needed groups to survive. But now we’re at another level, and the groups have become a threat to our survival. We need to leave them behind before we can have world peace. The horrors of the Mideast could be forcing us all to this new evolutionary step.

Stan: Hosanna, Hannah! Praise the Lord! Very convincing. You’re good at arguments. That’s why you’re a good attorney. Too bad you’re not a divorce lawyer — we could save a bundle.

But the end result of all this idealism is that Israel goes down the tubes.

Hannah: Maybe so, as the first of many obsolete nations to fall apart and evolve into something more humane — a world family.

#

“The Split” is a chapter from Radical Peace: People Refusing War, which presents the experiences of peace activists who have moved beyond petitions and demonstrations into direct action, defying the government’s laws and impeding its ability to kill. Chapters are posted on a page of the publisher’s website at http://media.trineday.com/radicalpeace.

William T. Hathaway is a Special Forces combat veteran turned peace activist and is currently an adjunct professor of American studies at the University of Oldenburg in Germany. His first book, A World of Hurt, won a Rinehart Foundation Award for its portrayal of the psychological roots of war: the emotional blockage and need for patriarchal approval that draw men to the military. He is also the author of Summer Snow, the story of an American warrior in Central Asia who falls in love with a Sufi Muslim and learns from her that higher consciousness is more effective than violence. Chapters are available at www.peacewriter.org.

By Stephen Lendman

In 2003, Forbes magazine estimated Yasser Arafat’s wealth at about $300 million. No verifying source was listed. Fatah was notoriously corrupt. It still is today.  Its finances are a black hole. Bribes, foreign aid, secret investments, hidden bank accounts, slush funds, and other ill-gotten gains define them. Israeli intelligence estimated Arafat’s net worth at $1.3 billion. US accountants conducted a PA authorized audit. They estimated about $1 billion.

Current appointed PA prime minister, Salam Fayyad, once served as Arafat’s finance minister. He confirmed massive corruption, abuse, and impropriety. Arafat’s widow, Suha, got a $200,000 monthly allowance. Top Fatah officials cash in. Abbas benefits hugely. Previous articles discussed his collaborationist history. He sold out at Oslo. He never looked back. Perhaps betraying his people began earlier. He’s a world class scoundrel.

Edward Said once called him “moderately corrupt.” Apparently, he didn’t know the half of it. Reports suggest he amassed a huge fortune. He’s super-rich. As’ad AbuKhalil publishes “The Angry Arab” site. On November 14, he headlined “The personal fortune of Abbas.” He cited YNet News.

It said he earns $1 million a month. Not bad, if true. Obama gets $400,000 a year. Inlight Press was cited. It said Abbas holds several Jordanian accounts. He’s got over $500 million. It’s mostly stolen Palestinian taxpayer money and other embezzled funds.

“The accounts are not under any national or international scrutiny.”

“Recently, Abbas urged Moscow to supply him with a new advanced presidential jet worth $55 million despite the fact that he has a new Global Express speed jet bought for $53 million at his disposal. In addition he also uses a 504 Challenger jet.”

Abbas took office on January 15, 2005. From then until now, his expenses exceeded a billion dollars. PA sources say he has extensive property holdings.

His sons, Tarek and Yasser, profit handsomely from all PA projects. “This explains why (he) tried to promote a Dead Sea tourism project funded by Gulf states. It is claimed that his sons won contracts for more than $250 million.”

On May 18, 2012, Gatestone Institute International Policy Council headlined “How Much is Mahmoud Abbas Worth? Try $100 Million.”

Mohammed Rashid was Arafat’s financial advisor and trusted aide. He handled hundreds of millions of dollars donated by Washington, EU nations, and regional states.

He cashed in like other Fatah officials. On May 17, Haaretz ran a AP story headlined “Arafat aide accused of embezzlement.”

He’s sought for allegedly stealing millions of dollars of public funds. He’s suspected of transferring them from the Palestinian Investment Fund (PIF) into fake companies.

PA Anti-Corruption Commission head Rafik Natsheh accused him of embezzlement. He’s investigating 85 other PA members. Corruption allegations forced two cabinet ministers to resign. One observer called the commission’s work secretive. It’s impossible to know what goes on. At the same time, it selectively decides who to investigate and where to keep hands off. Operating this way destroys all credibility.

Rashid denied all charges. He threatened to expose Abbas corruption. He calls him the “Sultan of Ramallah.” He’s thin-skinned, vengeful, and tolerates no opposition.

He said he “made a huge mistake and must suffer the consequences.”

After Arafat’s November 2004 death, Rashid left Palestine. His whereabouts aren’t known. He’s been “moving between countries.”

An arrest warrant was issued. PA officials asked several countries to extradite him. They requested his assets be frozen. Interpol was asked for help. International donors expressed concern about huge sums gone missing.

In early June, a Ramallah anti-graft court convicted Rashid in absentia. He and two others were sentenced to 15 years imprisonment. They were ordered to return 33.5 million euros in stolen funds.

Throughout much of Arafat’s rule, rampant corruption allegations surfaced often. He and many other Fatah officials were suspected for good reason.

Funds to help Palestine went into private coffers. Rashid apparently cashed in like others. He handled PA finances. He knows where the bodies are buried.

Abbas accused him of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars. He said Abbas embezzled $100 million. Perhaps he knows less than he thinks or isn’t telling all he knows.

He said Fatah has a secret Jordanian bank account containing about $40 million. Millions of US donations are included. An unnamed source said Abbas instructed his General Intelligence Service to find Rashid and kill him.

He wants what he knows buried with him. He also wants imprisoned Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti kept there.

He’s a prisoner of conscience. On May 20, 2004, Israel convicted him unjustly on bogus terrorist charges. He received five consecutive life sentences plus 40 years.

If free, he’d be Palestine’s president, not Abbas. He was hugely popular. He still is. He honorably supports the rights of people. Abbas sold them out long ago.

Israel imprisoned Barghouti to prevent his election. Abbas wants him kept there. He also wants Hamas destroyed.

He’s a longtime Israeli collaborator, a traitor, a world class scoundrel, and embezzler. Why Palestinians tolerate him, they’ll have to explain.

Hamas’ 2006 legislative victory followed promises of fighting corruption. Washington, EU countries, and regional states contribute hundreds of millions of dollars annually. Much of it ends up unaccounted for.

Abbas stands accused of enriching himself throughout his tenure. He has huge sums stashed abroad. He has hidden investments and secret land deals.

He helped his sons become millionaires. A July 2012 House Foreign Relations Committee investigated chronic PA corruption.

Testimony given said “corruption within the Palestinian political establishment has been endemic for decades.”

“Reports suggest that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, like his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, has used his position of power to line his own pockets as well as those of his cohort of cronies, including his sons, Yasser and Tarek.”

The Palestine Investment Fund (PIF) was established to serve all Palestinians. Abbas “asserted complete control.” He appoints cronies as board members. He rejects requested audits.

US taxpayer funds were stolen. Accountability is absent. Operations are opaque. Transparency doesn’t exist. Rampant corruption is endemic.

PA officials enrich themselves at the expense of their own people. Abbas and his sons perhaps profited most of all. Legitimate governance is impossible with him in charge.

“While Abbas prosecutes Rashid, he conveniently avoids controversy surrounding his sons” and his own ill-gotten gains.

Jonathan Schanzer is Foundation for Defense of Democracies research vice president. He testified before the House Foreign Relations Committee.

He said Abbas and his sons line their pockets lavishly. Others made similar comments. They’re involved in all kinds of shady deals. They profit hugely. Bush and Obama officials did nothing to stop misuse of US funding.

Abbas prevents internal investigations. He enforces censorship. He targets press freedom. He blocks PA criticism. He wants his own malfeasance and that of his sons suppressed. He also crushes political opposition.

He’s aged 77. He nears retirement. He has no vice president or heir apparent. Israeli officials wants control over who replaces him.

They also want occupation harshness unchallenged. Massive corruption is a small price to pay. Perhaps they steal plenty on their own.

Washington provides billions of dollars annually. How much goes to secret coffers, who knows. Apparently don’t ask, don’t tell is policy. Media scoundrels go along and say nothing.

A Final Comment

On December 10, Maan News said Palestine’s Anti-Corruption Commission will institute legal proceedings against PA officials suspected of embezzling millions of dollars.

Commission head Natsheh said secret investigations were ongoing for sometime. Officials in Palestine suspected of complicity with Rashid are targeted. His whereabouts remain unknown.

The case goes well beyond him alone. Without naming names, Natsheh said Palestinian corruption is much bigger than what’s known and/or alleged about Rashid.

It remains to be seen who’s charged. Don’t expect Abbas or others he wants protected to be among them.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book is titled “Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity.” http://www.claritypress.com/Lendman.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour

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By BAR executive editor Glen Ford

The U.S. believes it can manipulate jihadi fighters in a holy war against the West’s enemies in the Muslim world. However, “Israel’s murderous assault on Gaza threatens to unravel the Salafist-Qatari-Saudi-NATO axis, for one simple and irreducible reason: there is no place for the racist settler state in this post-Arab Spring equation.”

“The Euro-American strategy to divert and control the Arab Spring through an armed alliance with Muslim fundamentalist fighters and their royal Arab financiers, has always contained a fatal flaw: Israel.”

As African Americans circle the wagons around Susan Rice, one of the most bellicose, bomb-at-the-drop-of-a-hat, Africa-bashing professional servants of power in Washington, America’s carefully crafted house of cards in the Middle East faces collapse.

The Euro-American strategy to divert and control the Arab Spring through an armed alliance with Muslim fundamentalist fighters and their royal Arab financiers, has always contained a fatal flaw: Israel. The Jewish State’s reflexive savagery towards Palestinians threatens to disrupt, if not destroy, the inherently unstable pact between the Great Satans of Washington, London and Paris, the Great Kleptocrats of Riyahd and Doha, and the martyrdom-seeking armies of Salafist Islam.

The unholy alliance is a retooling of the U.S.-Saudi Arabia-Pakistan axis that created the global jihadi network – including Al Qaida – at a cost of billions, in the 1980s. The immediate purpose was to humiliate the Soviets in Afghanistan. Inevitably, a “blowback” followed. Washington emerged with a new rational for the old business of imperialism: the war on terror.

To further circumvent international law and other hindrances to imperial reach, Washington devised the doctrine of “humanitarian” military intervention – where Susan Rice makes her mark as madwoman, demanding blockades and air strikes against Sudan, invasion of Somalia, embargoes on little Eritrea, and regime change in Libya.

The convulsions of the Arab Spring, leading to regime change of the most unwelcome kind for the West in Tunisia and Egypt at the beginning of 2011, set the stage for an even closer collaboration between NATO and the monarchies in Saudi Arabia and Qatar – and for a new and potentially cataclysmic blowback. The Euro-Americans, confronting the prospect of sudden eviction from an Arab world in flux, quickly regrouped to “get out in front” of the Arab Spring through a massive show of “humanitarian” force in Libya. However, NATO’s air armada needed foot soldiers to seize the ground in Libya, and to physically shove the knife into Muammar Gaddafi’s backside. Just as in Afghanistan three decades earlier, the Americans turned to the Salafists for fighters and to the thieving Arab royals of Saudi Arabia and Qatar for financing and political cover. Susan Rice, now U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was credited with convincing President Obama to join the French-initiated war to topple Gaddafi.

“It was only a matter of time before significant elements of the U.S.-empowered jihadis in Libya turned against their masters.”

It is silly to believe that Rice, or anyone other than Obama, was the pivotal person in this grand imperial maneuver. Rather, the sudden and savage assault on Libya was a collective imperial response to Europe and America’s greatest nightmare: mass revolutions in the Arab world, which would mean eviction of the West. However, Rice’s bellicosity and ambition, having thrust her into a key player position, conspired also to place her at the center of the blowback.

It was only a matter of time before significant elements of the U.S.-empowered jihadis in Libya turned against their masters. And there is no doubt that U.S. political and intelligence leaders saw it coming. When the U.S. ambassador and his entourage were under attack in Benghazi, two unarmed drones were diverted from surveillance duties over Derna, about 100 miles to the east.

Derna is a center of jihadi activism, the town that accounted for the highest concentrations of Al Qaida fighters in the Iraq war. Apparently, the U.S. maintained constant surveillance of the city and its environs – and, presumably, other jihadi strongholds – all the while projecting the fiction that the U.S. had empowered the “good” (meaning, pro-American) Islamists in Libya.

Susan Rice was carrying out her official duty – to lie – when she read purported intelligence reports on CBS Face the Nation [7], September 16, suggesting the September 11 attacks “began spontaneously” as a protest against an anti-Muslim video produced in the U.S. The explanation was consistent with the official U.S. “line” covering the entirety of the West’s post-Arab Spring offensive in the Middle East, which has since engulfed Syria. Libya’s “good” jihadis have joined Salafists from throughout the Sunni Arab world, largely bankrolled by the terrified feudal regimes in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, in a holy war that Washington has no choice but to pretend it can, somehow, control to its geopolitical advantage.

The Republicans, who have no problem with Obama’s adventures in Libya and Syria – as Mitt Romney repeatedly affirmed in the third presidential debate – attempt to make partisan points from the obvious falsity of Rice’s remarks. Like Romney, Senator John McCain and other GOP warmongers are saying they could do a better job of projecting U.S. power in the region, through the application of more direct U.S. military force – an approach that would even more quickly unravel the unsustainable alliances in which the Obama administration is so deeply invested.

“The Americans and Europeans now scramble to constrain Israel, lest it enflame Arab nationalism and Islamist sensibilities beyond all manageability.”

As if the contradictions of U.S. Middle East policy were not already acute enough, the Israelis now force their putrid selves into the maelstrom. Israel’s murderous assault on Gaza threatens to unravel the Salafist-Qatari-Saudi-NATO axis, for one simple and irreducible reason: there is no place for the racist settler state in this post-Arab Spring equation. Which explains why Israel has chosen to make its presence so dramatically felt at this time – why it initiated the current crisis with its assassination of Hamas military leader Ahmed al-Jabari, last week, setting off the Palestinian rocket barrage.

The Israelis do not see themselves at the center of Washington’s evolving strategy for continued western hegemony in the Middle East, and are forcing the issue in the usual manner: by killing Palestinians. The Americans and Europeans now scramble to constrain Israel, lest it enflame Arab nationalism and Islamist sensibilities beyond all manageability, wrecking the fragile political configurations the West has constructed since the fall of Egypt’s Mubarak, the war on Libya and the torture of Syria.

Washington understands that it cannot successfully channel a holy war against Syria’s Alawite President Assad and Shiite Iran while its “unshakeable ally,” the Jewish State, wages war on Palestinian Sunnis. It is a fatal contradiction in a region that, only two years ago, seemed to be slipping from the West’s grasp. U.S. imperialism finds itself in deep crisis in the world’s most volatile, and energy-rich, region.

Meanwhile, South Carolina Black congressman James Clyburn is deeply worried about the racial implications [8] of Republican claims that Susan Rice is not “competent” or “qualified” to succeed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. For Clyburn, this represents a grave problem for Black America. It is actually a perfect measure of how irrelevant the Black Misleadership Class has become to the burning issues facing mankind.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
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Source URL: http://blackagendareport.com/content/obama%E2%80%99s-mideast-policy-burns

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by JOHN MEARSHEIMER

In response to a recent upsurge in tit for tat strikes between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza, Israel decided to ratchet up the violence even further by assassinating Hamas’s military chief, Ahmad Jabari. Hamas, which had been playing a minor role in these exchanges and even appears to have been interested in working out a long-term ceasefire, predictably responded by launching hundreds of rockets into Israel, a few even landing near Tel Aviv. Not surprisingly, the Israelis have threatened a wider conflict, to include a possible invasion of Gaza to topple Hamas and eliminate the rocket threat.

There is some chance that Operation ‘Pillar of Defence’, as the Israelis are calling their current campaign, might become a full-scale war. But even if it does, it will not put an end to Israel’s troubles in Gaza. After all, Israel launched a devastating war against Hamas in the winter of 2008-9 – Operation Cast Lead – and Hamas is still in power and still firing rockets at Israel. In the summer of 2006 Israel went to war against Hizbullah in order to eliminate its missiles and weaken its political position in Lebanon. That offensive failed as well: Hizbullah has far more missiles today than it had in 2006 and its influence in Lebanon is arguably greater than it was in 2006. Pillar of Defence is likely to share a similar fate.

Israel can use force against Hamas in three distinct ways. First, it can try to cripple the organisation by assassinating its leaders, as it did when it killed Jabari two days ago. Decapitation will not work, however, because there is no shortage of subordinates to replace the dead leaders, and sometimes the new ones are more capable and dangerous than their predecessors. The Israelis found this out in Lebanon in 1992 when they assassinated Hizbullah’s leader, Abbas Musawi, only to find that his replacement, Hassan Nasrallah, was an even more formidable adversary.

Second, the Israelis can invade Gaza and take it over. The IDF could do this fairly easily, topple Hamas and put an end to the rocket fire from Gaza. But they would then have to occupy Gaza for years to come, since if they left Hamas would come back to power, the rocket attacks would resume, and Israel would be back where it started.

An occupation of Gaza would trigger bitter and bloody resistance, as the Israelis learned in southern Lebanon between 1982 and 2000. After 18 years of occupation they conceded defeat and withdrew all their forces. This experience is the reason the IDF did not try to invade and conquer southern Lebanon in 2006 or Gaza in 2008-9. Nothing has changed since then to make a full-scale invasion of Gaza a viable alternative today. Occupying Gaza would also place another 1.5 million Palestinians under formal Israel control, thereby worsening the so-called ‘demographic threat’. Ariel Sharon withdrew Israeli settlers from Gaza in 2005 to reduce the number of Palestinians living under the Israeli flag; going back now would be a huge strategic reversal.

The final, preferred option is aerial bombardment with aircraft, artillery, missiles, mortars and rockets. The problem, however, is that the strategy does not work as advertised. Israel used it against Hizbullah in 2006 and Hamas in 2008-9, but both groups are still in power and armed to the teeth with rockets and missiles. It is hard to believe that any serious defence analyst in Israel thinks another campaign of sustained bombardment against Gaza will topple Hamas and end the rocket fire permanently.

So what is going on here? At the most basic level, Israel’s actions in Gaza are inextricably bound up with its efforts to create a Greater Israel that stretches from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Despite the endless palaver about a two-state solution, the Palestinians are not going to get their own state, not least because the Netanyahu government is firmly opposed to it. The prime minister and his political allies are deeply committed to making the Occupied Territories a permanent part of Israel. To pull this off, the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza will be forced to live in impoverished enclaves similar to the Bantustans in white-ruled South Africa. Israeli Jews understand this quite well: a recent survey found that 58 per cent of them believe Israel already practises apartheid against the Palestinians.

Creating a Greater Israel will produce even bigger problems, however. In addition to doing enormous damage to Israel’s reputation around the world, the quest for a Greater Israel will not break the will of the Palestinians. They remain adamantly opposed not only to the Occupation, but also to the idea of living in an apartheid state. They will continue to resist Israel’s efforts to deny them self-determination. What is happening in Gaza is one dimension of that resistance. Another is Mahmoud Abbas’s plan to ask the UN General Assembly on 29 November to recognise Palestine as a non-member state. This move worries Israel’s leaders, because it could eventually allow the Palestinians to file charges against Israel before the International Criminal Court. Thus, the dream of a Greater Israel forces Tel Aviv to find ways to keep the Palestinians at bay.

Israel’s leaders have a two-prong strategy for dealing with their Palestinian problem. First, they rely on the United States to provide diplomatic cover, especially in the United Nations. The key to keeping Washington on board is the Israel lobby, which pressures American leaders to side with Israel against the Palestinians and do hardly anything to stop the colonisation of the Occupied Territories.

The second prong is Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s concept of the ‘Iron Wall’: an approach that in essence calls for beating the Palestinians into submission. Jabotinsky understood that the Palestinians would resist the Zionists’ efforts to colonise their land and subjugate them in the process. Nonetheless, he maintained that the Zionists, and eventually Israel, could punish the Palestinians so severely that they would recognise that further resistance was futile.

Israel has employed this strategy since its founding in 1948, and both Cast Lead and Pillar of Defence are examples of it at work. In other words, Israel’s aim in bombing Gaza is not to topple Hamas or eliminate its rockets, both of which are unrealisable goals. Instead, the ongoing attacks in Gaza are part of a long-term strategy to coerce the Palestinians into giving up their pursuit of self-determination and submitting to Israeli rule in an apartheid state.

Israel’s commitment to the Iron Wall is reflected in the fact that its leaders have said many times since Cast Lead ended in January 2009 that the IDF would eventually have to return to Gaza and inflict another beating on the Palestinians. The Israelis were under no illusion that the 2008-9 conflict had defanged Hamas. The only question for them was when the next punishment campaign would start.

The timing of the present operation is easy to explain. For starters, President Obama has just won a second term despite Netanyahu’s transparent attempt to help Mitt Romney win the election. The prime minister’s mistake is likely to have hurt his personal relations with the president and might even threaten America’s ‘special relationship’ with Israel. A war in Gaza, however, is a good antidote for that problem, because Obama, who faces daunting economic and political challenges in the months ahead, has little choice but to back Israel to the hilt and blame the Palestinians.

The Israeli prime minter faces an election of his own in January and as Mitchell Plitnick writes, ‘Netanyahu’s gambit of forming a joint ticket with the fascist Yisrael Beiteinu party has not yielded anything close to the polling results he had hoped for.’ A war over Gaza not only allows Netanyahu to show how tough he is when Israel’s security is at stake, but it is also likely to have a ‘rally round the flag’ effect, improving his chances of being re-elected.

Nevertheless, Pillar of Defence will not achieve its ultimate goal of getting the Palestinians to abandon their pursuit of self-determination and accept living under the heel of the Israelis. That is simply not achievable; the Palestinians are never going to accept being consigned to a handful of enclaves in an apartheid state. Regrettably, that means Pillar of Defence is unlikely to be the last time Israel bombards Gaza.

Over the long term, however, the bombing campaigns may come to an end, because it is not clear that Israel will be able to maintain itself as an apartheid state. As well as resistance from the Palestinians, Israel has to face the problem that world opinion is unlikely to back an apartheid state. Ehud Olmert said in November 2007, when he was prime minister, that if ‘the two-state solution collapses’ Israel will ‘face a South-African-style struggle’, and ‘as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished.’ One would think Israel’s leaders would appreciate where they are headed and allow the Palestinians to have a viable state of their own. But there is no sign that is happening; instead, Israel foolishly continues to rely on military campaigns like Pillar of Defence to break the Palestinians.

John J. Mearsheimer is an American professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. He is the co-author of The Israel Lobby.

This essay originally appeared in the London Review of Books.

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