August
8, 2014, Issue 206
ACTIVIST
NEWSLETTER
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1. Upcoming NYC
& Hudson Valley Protests
THE
WAR IN GAZA
2. Israel-Hamas
Truce Collapses In New Violence
3. Why Israel Wanted
A Ceasefire Now
4. Phyllis Bennis On
Gaza
5. Netanyahu: Help
Israel Avoid War Crime Charges
6. Obama: Blockade
Can’t Continue Forever
7. Why Israel Lies
8. Proof Israel
Targeted UN Buildings
9. Israel Soldier
Brags Of Killing Children
10. The Nightmare In Gaza
11. UN : ‘The Impact
On Children Most 'Severe'
12. It Is Not Just An Israeli War On Gaza
13. Some Arab Leaders Turn On Hamas
14. ‘Palestine Pre-1948, Before Israel’
THE
WAR IN IRAQ
15 US Re-Engages In Iraq
16. U.S. Air Strikes Killing 'Hundreds'
17. Critique Of U.S. Intervention In Iraq
18. UN: Some Rescued From Mountain Siege
19. Isis Surges In
Northern Iraq
20. Isis Consolidates
its Victories
21. Kurdish Forces Struggle To Counter Isis
22. Turkish
Warplanes In Iraq
––––––––––––
EDITOR’S
NOTE
Things fall apart. This issue is devoted to the two wars — in Gaza and in Iraq. The first articles are about the Israel war against Gaza.
These are followed by the U.S. decision to intervene militarily in Iraq against
the extreme jihadist ISIS. The Iraq coverage includes a criticism of U.S.
involvement by Phyllis Bennis and an important article by Patrick Cockburn on “Isis
Consolidates
its Victories.” We lead off with reports in new demonstrations tomorrow in our area.
—————————
1. AUG. 9 NYC & HUDSON VALLEY PROTESTS
 |
| Huge Washington protest Aug. 2. |
Saturday, Aug. 9, NEW YORK CITY: “The World Stands with Gaza!”
is the theme of a mass march to the United Nations. It is sponsored by many
peace and justice organizations as well as progressive Arab and Jewish groups. The
ANSWER Coalition, which sponsored the Aug. 2 protest in Washington that
attracted many tens of thousands, is involved in the New York protest at well.
The rally starts at 1 p.m. in Columbus Circle (58th St. and 8th Ave.
in Manhattan). People from the Hudson Valley are forming car pools or are
taking commercial buses and Metro North. It’s going to be quite a day.
Saturday, Aug. 9 ALBANY: A demonstration against the attack
on Gaza begins at 1 p.m. at the New York State Capitol Building
(West Capitol Park side) at 198 State St. “This Day of Rage supports the Boycotts,
Divestment and Sanctions Movement. Demand Sanctions on Israel Now.”
Saturday, Aug.9, WOODSTOCK: A protest will be held at the
Village Green in Woodstock 12 noon-1 p.m. Information, http://www.mideastcrisis.org.
The rest of August and early September events will be
published in a couple of days.
.
—————————
THE WAR IN GAZA
—————————
NOTE - DAILY UPDATES ON IRAQ AND GAZA
Update 8-14-14
GAZA TRUCE HOLDS
CAIRO (AP) -- Palestinian officials voiced cautious optimism
Thursday, hinting at progress in Egyptian-mediated negotiations with Israel to
bring an end to the fighting in Gaza and secure new arrangements for the
war-battered territory. But with the sides' demands still seemingly
irreconcilable, that optimism may be premature and a deal not so close in the
making.
Israel and Hamas are observing a five-day cease-fire which
began at midnight Wednesday, in an attempt to allow talks between the sides in
Cairo to continue. The negotiations are meant to secure a substantive end to
the monthlong war and draw up a roadmap for the coastal territory, which has
been hard-hit in the fighting.
Beyond demands for a seaport and airport, Hamas is also
seeking an end to a crippling blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt since 2007.
The blockade has greatly limited the movement of Palestinians in and out of the
territory of 1.8 million people. It has also restricted the flow of goods into
Gaza and blocked virtually all exports.
Update, 8-13
CEASE-FIRE CLOCK TICKING
By Al-Jazeera and
Activist Newsletter
The threat of renewed fighting in Gaza loomed Wednesday
as the clock ticked toward the end of a three-day
cease-fire without a sign of a breakthrough in indirect talks
in Cairo between Israel and the Palestinians.
Israeli and Palestinian negotiators were tight-lipped
Wednesday about whether any agreement on a long-term end to hostilities was
near. A Palestinian embassy source said that the talks were
continuing and that Palestinian delegates would hold more meetings with
Egyptian mediators.
A senior Israeli official told Agence France-Presse there
was still a long way to go to agree to an end to the conflict, which erupted on
July 8 when Israel launched military operations to halt cross-border rocket
fire from Gaza. "The negotiations are difficult and grueling," a
Palestinian official said of Monday's opening talks, which lasted almost 10
hours.
Six people, including two journalists, were killed early
Wednesday by an unexploded Israeli ordnance in the northern Gaza Strip, Health
Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qedra said, according to Israeli news website Haaretz.
The Israeli navy fired warning shots at a Palestinian fishing boat off the
southern coast of Gaza, but no injuries were reported.
Meanwhile, at least 57 Palestinians were arrested in Israeli
night raids across occupied East Jerusalem, Palestinian news website Maan
News reported Wednesday.
Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the men and boys were arrested in
connection with recent "stone throwing incidents."
Area residents said Israeli police broke into homes without
warning in the middle of the night an ransacked them before making arrests,
Maan said.
Update 8-11
NEW CEASE FIRE STILL
HOLDS
By Al Jazeera
Shortly after a new 72-hour cease-fire took effect, Israeli
and Palestinian factions were scheduled to resume
indirect negotiations in Cairo for another round of talks to bring
an end to more than a month of violence.
An Israeli delegation arrived in Cairo on Monday just hours
after the truce went into effect, and the Palestinian delegation was already
locked in talks with Egyptian intelligence mediators, who will relay the
Palestinians’ demands to the Israelis, a Palestinian official said.
Israeli demands include the demilitarization of Gaza and
disarmament of Hamas. The Palestinians have laid out a number of conditions,
starting with the lifting of Israel’s seven-year blockade of Gaza. They also
want the release of about 125 key political prisoners held by the
Israelis.
Israeli and Palestinian negotiators in Cairo agreed to the
72-hour humanitarian pause in a “simultaneous consensus,” according to Egyptian
negotiators. Egypt called on both sides to use the lull to “reach a
comprehensive and permanent cease-fire.”
The level
of violence has decreased since the start of the conflict a
month ago, with armed groups in Gaza shooting fewer rockets with shorter
ranges into Israel since the earlier cease-fire
ended. Israeli airstrikes on Gaza have also decreased, but at least
four Palestinians, including a 14-year-old boy, were killed
in Israeli attacks overnight — raising the Palestinian toll to more nearly
2,000 dead and 10,000 wounded since fighting began in earnest on July 8, Haaretz
reported. 64 Israeli soldiers have died in the conflict, and three
Israeli civilians have been killed.
On Sunday in a refugee camp in the West Bank city of Hebron,
Israeli soldiers shot and killed a 12-year-old Palestinian, Khalil
al-Anati, Maan News reported.
Israeli troops were reportedly escorting Israeli engineers into
Palestinian neighborhoods near the illegal Israeli settlement of Haggay.
“We don’t know what they [the Israelis] were doing,” a
weeping Yussef al-Anati told Maan News, his shirt soaked in blood from carrying
his nephew to a hospital. As the Israeli soldiers entered the refugee camp,
residents began throwing stones, though a witness said Khalil
al-Anati did not participate.
“Khalil was playing in front of the house, then we heard
gunfire. The kid was screaming and fell down,” Yussef al-Anati said. “He
was shot in the back, and the bullet exited through his stomach.”
Israeli forces have killed at least 17 Palestinians over the
past month in the West Bank.
Update 8-9
2A. ISRAEL AND HAMAS
FIGHT ON
 |
| Gaza City soon after end of cease fire. Several mosques were also hit. |
Five Palestinians
were killed in two Israeli airstrikes on Gaza on Saturday, emergency
services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said, and Hamas vowed there would be no
concessions to Israel as international mediators struggled to broker a new
cease-fire.
“We are not going to agree to a cease-fire without having
all of our demands met .… We will not go back. We are going to continue the war
until we achieve our goal [i.e., the end of the seven-year blockade and siege of
Gaza- AN]. This is what our people want,” Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum
said.
Medical officials in Gaza said two Palestinians were killed
when their motorcycle was bombed, and the bodies of three others were found
beneath the rubble of one of three bombed mosques. The airstrikes lasted
through the night and hit three houses, and fighter planes struck open areas,
the officials said.
The Israeli military said that since midnight it had
attacked more than 30 sites in the coastal enclave where Hamas is dominant. It
did not specify the targets.
Fighters in Gaza fired six rockets at towns in southern
Israel Saturday, setting off alarm sirens but causing no damage or injuries, a
military spokeswoman said....
2. ISRAEL-HAMAS TRUCE COLLAPSES
By Josef Federman And Mohammed Daraghmeh,
Associated Press 8-8-14, 5 p.m.
JERUSALEM — A three-day-old truce collapsed Friday in a new
round of violence after Gaza militants resumed rocket attacks on Israel,
drawing a wave of retaliatory airstrikes that killed at least five
Palestinians, including three children.
The eruption of fighting shattered a brief calm in the
month-long war and dealt a blow to efforts to secure a long-term cease-fire
between the bitter enemies.
A delegation of Palestinian negotiators remained in Cairo in
hopes of salvaging the talks. But participants said the negotiations were not
going well, and Israel said it would not negotiate under fire. The Palestinian
delegation met again late Friday with Egyptian mediators.
Azzam al-Ahmad, head of the Palestinian delegation, said the
delegation would stay in Egypt, where were held, until it reaches an agreement
that "ensures" the rights of the Palestinian people. "We told
Egyptians we are staying," he told reporters.
The indirect talks are meant to bring an end to the
deadliest round of fighting between Israel and Hamas since the Islamic militant
group seized control of Gaza in 2007. In four weeks of violence, more than
1,900 Gazans have been killed, roughly three-quarters of them civilians,
according to Palestinian and U.N. officials. Sixty-seven people were killed on
the Israeli side, including three civilians.
The Palestinians are seeking an end to an Israel-Egyptian
blockade imposed on Gaza after the Hamas took power [seven years ago after
winning an honest election in the Palestinian territories – AN].
The blockade, which Israel says is needed to prevent arms
smuggling, has restricted movement in and out of the territory of 1.8 million
people and brought Gaza's economy to a standstill. Israel says any long-term
agreement must include guarantees that Hamas, an armed group sworn to Israel's
destruction, will give up its weapons.
In Cairo, Palestinian participants in the talks were
pessimistic about the chances of a deal. They said Israel was opposing every
Palestinian proposal for lifting the blockade.
For instance, the Palestinians are seeking greater movement
of goods through Israeli-controlled cargo crossings, while Israel wants
restrictions on "dual-use" items that could potentially be used for
military purposes, they said.
Israel also was resisting demands to allow movement between
Gaza and the West Bank - Palestinian territories that are located on opposite
sides of Israel, they said.
"Israel in these talks wants to repackage the same old
blockade. Our demands are ending the blockade and having free access for people
and goods. This is what ending the blockade means. But Israel is not accepting
that," said Bassam Salhi, a Palestinian negotiator.
Negotiators said they expected to remain in Cairo for
several days. But with violence resuming, it was unclear how much progress
could be made.
The Israeli delegation to the Cairo talks left Egypt on
Friday morning, and it was not clear if it would return. "There will not
be negotiations under fire," Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said.
The original, three-day truce expired at 8 a.m. Friday. But
Gaza militants began firing rockets even before then. By late Friday, nearly 60
rockets had been fired. Two Israelis were hurt, and one of the rockets damaged
a home. [It is not entirely clear whether one of the smaller groups in Gaza
fired the rockets first or Hamas.
Israel responded with a series of airstrikes. Palestinian
officials said at least five people were killed in three separate strikes, two
of them near mosques. Among the dead were three boys, a 10-year-old and two
cousins, aged 12. At least five boys were wounded.
The deaths brought the overall Palestinian toll since July 8
to 1,902, said Palestinian health official Ashraf al-Kidra.
Hamas entered the Cairo talks from a position of military
weakness, following a month of fighting in which Israel pounded Gaza with close
to 5,000 strikes. Israel has said Hamas lost hundreds of fighters, two-thirds
of its rocket arsenal and all of its tunnels under the border with Israel.
Egypt has destroyed a network of smuggling tunnels that was once Hamas'
economic and military lifeline.
—————————
3. WHY
ISRAEL WANTED A CEASEFIRE NOW
By Richard
Becker, PSL/ANSWER, 8-5-14
After nearly a month of inflicting death and destruction on
Gaza, the Israeli occupation forces withdrew
Gaza, whose population of 1.8 million is 80% refugees from
other parts of Palestine crowded into an area of just 139 square miles, has
suffered more than 1,900 killed and 10,000 wounded (as of 8-8-14) since the
Israeli military assault began on July 8. The vast majority of the casualties
on the Palestinian side were civilian victims of Israel’s indiscriminate
bombing and shelling.
On the Israel side, 67 were killed, all but three were soldiers.
At least 640 Israel soldiers were wounded. Although the Palestinian losses were
exponentially greater, the Israel losses were five times those in the last
ground invasion of Gaza in 2008-9.
The U.S.-funded and armed Israeli military deployed a wide
range of high-tech air, land and sea weaponry. The Palestinian side has no air
force, navy, armored units or air defense system. Thousands of homes were
destroyed, schools, hospitals, mosques and Gaza’s only power plant were
repeatedly hit. Entire neighborhoods, like Shejaiya in Gaza City were turned
into rubble. Most of Gaza has little or no electricity and there are acute
shortages of water and other necessities.
The cost to rebuild Gaza is estimated at this point at $4-6
billion, three to four times Gaza’s annual gross domestic product. Isreal won’t
pay a dime. It’s come from UN and other contributions, if it comes at all.
While proclaiming their supposed “concern” about civilian
casualties, there can be no doubt that Netanyahu and his generals waged a
deliberate campaign of terror directed against the population of Gaza as a
whole. The repeated bombing and shelling of UN-run facilities in which tens of
thousands had taken refuge was neither accident nor mistake. Those attacks were
meant to send the message that there was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide,
that resistance to Israeli domination was futile and surrender the only option.
It was a campaign of terror carried out by a terrorist
state.
It’s the same message that repeated Israeli massacres from
Deir Yassin in 1948, to Sabra and Shatila in 1982, to Jenin in 2002, to Gaza in
2014 were meant to convey. But despite the indescribable suffering they have
been subjected to over the past century at the hands of imperialism and
Zionism, the Palestinians continue to resist.
Why a ceasefire now?
While the Israeli military has once again inflicted
unspeakable death and destruction on Gaza, it did not achieve victory, as
evidenced by the disarray today inside the Israeli political establishment over
the announcement that Israel troops were being withdrawn. A military
spokesperson announced that it had “achieved its objective” by destroying 32
military tunnels.
Extreme right wing politicians howled about “not finishing
the job.” Typical was Uzi Landau, tourism minister from the Yisrael Beiteinu
party, who said “the operation ended with no achievement that ensures quiet.”
The real objective – destroying the Palestinian resistance
forces in Gaza – was clearly not achieved.
There were several factors that brought pressure on Israel
to claim “success,” announce it was withdrawing its troops, and seek a
ceasefire.
1) Failure to achieve military victory, significant
army casualties killed and wounded, and the prospects of a protracted and
debilitating campaign.
2) Intensifying clashes in the West Bank with at least
10 Palestinians killed and hundreds wounded in protests supporting Gaza. On Aug.
4, one Israeli was killed and soldier wounded in attacks in Jerusalem. The
Israeli government feared that continuation of the assault on Gaza could lead
to a new intifada or uprising in the West Bank, and possibly extending
to the Palestinian population inside the 1948 borders of Israel.
3) Israel’s rapidly deepening international isolation,
with many governments condemning the Gaza operation and withdrawing
ambassadors, and a worldwide protest movement that brought millions of people
into the streets of countries around the world.
4) Growing criticism by the U.S. government, Israel’s
principal funder, armor and protector, of Israel’s blatant attacks on
civilians. While the U.S. continued its political and military support –
including an emergency re-supply of ammunition – the Obama administration was
increasingly concerned about being so closely identified with the Israel’s
terror campaign, and the prospect of new mass upheavals in the region. In an
unusually strong criticism, on August 4 White House spokesperson Josh Earnest
described the latest Israeli shelling of a UN school housing 3,000 refugees as
“appalling” and “disgraceful,” labels usually reserved for enemy governments.
His thuggish “no one can tell us what to do” rhetoric aside,
Netanyahu is no more immune to objective forces than any other political leader
or regime. The combination of facts on the ground in Gaza, in Occupied
Palestine as a whole, and in the world compelled the Israeli government to take
a step back, at least for the time being.
There is no guarantee that a longer term ceasefire will be
reached. All those who stand for justice for the Palestinian people must remain
on alert, and continue the struggle to immediately end the blockade of Gaza and
force the U.S. and Israel to provide reparations. In the long run, real
self-determination demands the right of return for all Palestinian refugees,
and an end to the Israeli apartheid system
—————————
4. PHYLLIS BENNIS
ON GAZA
Speaking on Democracy
Now 8-8-14, analyst Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies declared: Many of us were very much
afraid that this halt in the fighting, this ceasefire, even if it lasted the
three days, which it barely did by a moment, was not going to work unless the
siege of Gaza could be lifted.
There is no way that there’s going to be a permanent
ceasefire while Gaza remains completely surrounded by a wall that is backed by
the armed force of the Israeli military; where the skies are controlled by the
Israeli Air Force; while the waters, the coastal waters, are controlled by the
Israeli Navy, who prohibit the fishermen from going any more than two
kilometers out; while nothing is allowed in for rebuilding; when Israel can
bomb the power plant, the sewage treatment plants and expect people to simply
stop fighting and wait for negotiations, as if that’s going to work. We saw
this the last time, after the eight-day Israeli assault on Gaza in November of
2012, when the ceasefire that was negotiated by Hillary Clinton at that time
said that within 24 hours of the ceasefire there should begin implementation of
lifting the siege.
It never happened. So, not surprisingly, Palestinians — and
this is not only Hamas, this is across the board, every political faction—and,
we should note, the United Nations are calling very clearly for an end to the
siege of Gaza. Without that, no temporary ceasefire is going to work.
—————————
5. ISRAEL: HELP US AVOID WAR CRIME CHARGES
By Geoff Earle, N.Y.
Post, 8-6-14
WASHINGTON — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked
US lawmakers Wednesday to help fend off Palestinian claims that his country
engaged in “war crimes” while defending itself against attacks from Gaza, one
top lawmaker told The Post.
The Israeli leader later told international reporters that
his country employed “extraordinary measures” to avoid civilian deaths in the
nearly month-long conflict.
As a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas held for a third
day, Netanyahu met with a group of US legislators, including Rep. Steve Israel
(D-LI,) to discuss the country’s tense security situation and some fissures in
US-Israel relations.
 |
| His big fear: A war crimes indictment. |
Netanyahu asked the delegation to help Israel stay out of
the International Criminal Court, where its attacks on Gaza could come under
scrutiny — even while responding to Hamas rockets fired at Israeli urban
centers.
Palestinian leaders are getting ready to join the ICC, and
met with officials in The Hague recently to discuss the implications of
joining.
“The prime minister asked us to work together to ensure that
this strategy of going to the ICC does not succeed,” Rep. Israel told The Post
by phone from Tel Aviv.
Netanyahu “wants the US to use all the tools that we have at
our disposal to, number one, make sure the world knows that war crimes were not
committed by Israel, they were committed by Hamas. And that Israel should not
be held to a double standard,” the congressman said.
“It’s Hamas that
embedded its rockets in hospitals and in homes,” he added. “And now there are
some in the international community who want to investigate the Israelis for
the war crime of simply defending themselves.”
Netanyahu blamed Hamas for the civilian deaths, saying the
group intentionally used innocent people as human shields — and showed a
video to international journalists to prove the point.
—————————
6. OBAMA:
BLOCKADE CAN’T CONTINUE FOREVER
By AntiWar.com, 8-7-8
Ongoing peace talks in Cairo are
stalling primarily on Israel’s reluctance to agree to anything resembling an
end to the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip, but President Obama insists
something will eventually have to be done.
At a press conference that centered on touting his support
for the Israeli war, President Obama said there needed to be some recognition
that “Gaza
cannot sustain itself permanently closed off from the world.”
Obama didn’t call for an immediate end to the blockade,
which is what the Palestinians are pushing for at the talks, but rather said
there needed to be “some prospects for the opening of Gaza so that they do not
feel walled off.”
That’s an awfully vague call, but is still the closest a U.S. official has come to rejecting the long-standing Israeli blockade yet, and
could add some momentum to ending the humanitarian disaster that blockade has
wrought.
————————
7. WHY ISRAEL LIES
 |
| Israeli tank. Gaza is without an army, air force, navy, but the people fight back. |
By Chris Hedges
All governments lie, as I.F. Stone pointed out,
including Israel and Hamas. But Israel engages in the kinds of jaw-dropping
lies that characterize despotic and totalitarian regimes. It does not deform
the truth; it inverts it. It routinely paints a picture for the outside world
that is diametrically opposed to reality. And all of us reporters who have
covered the occupied territories have run into Israel’s Alice-in-Wonderland
narratives, which we dutifully insert into our stories—required under the rules
of American journalism—although we know they are untrue.
I saw small boys baited and killed by Israeli soldiers in
the Gaza refugee camp of Khan Younis. The soldiers swore at the boys in Arabic
over the loudspeakers of their armored jeep. The boys, about 10 years old, then
threw stones at an Israeli vehicle and the soldiers opened fire, killing some,
wounding others. I was present more than once as Israeli troops drew out and
shot Palestinian children in this way. Such incidents, in the Israeli lexicon,
become children caught in crossfire. I was in Gaza when F-16 attack jets dropped
1,000-pound iron fragmentation bombs on overcrowded hovels in Gaza City. I saw
the corpses of the victims, including children. This became a surgical strike
on a bomb-making factory. I have watched Israel demolish homes and entire
apartment blocks to create wide buffer zones between the Palestinians and the
Israeli troops that ring Gaza.
I have interviewed the destitute and homeless families, some
camped out in crude shelters erected in the rubble. The destruction becomes the
demolition of the homes of terrorists. I have stood in the remains of
schools—Israel struck two United Nations schools in the last six days, causing at least 10
fatalities at one in Rafah on Sunday and at least 19
at one in the Jebaliya refugee camp Wednesday—as well as medical clinics and
mosques. I have heard Israel claim that errant rockets or mortar fire from the
Palestinians caused these and other deaths, or that the attacked spots were
being used as arms depots or launching sites. I, along with every other
reporter I know who has worked in Gaza, have never seen any evidence that Hamas
uses civilians as “human shields.”
There is a perverted logic to Israel’s repeated use of the
Big Lie—Große Lüge—the lie favored by tyrants from Adolf Hitler and Josef
Stalin to Saddam Hussein. The Big Lie feeds the two reactions Israel seeks to
elicit—racism among its supporters and terror among its victims.
By painting a picture of an army that never attacks
civilians, that indeed goes out of its way to protect them, the Big Lie says
Israelis are civilized and humane, and their Palestinian opponents are inhuman
monsters. The Big Lie serves the idea that the slaughter in Gaza is a clash of
civilizations, a war between democracy, decency and honor on one side and
Islamic barbarism on the other. And in the uncommon cases when news of
atrocities penetrates to the wider public, Israel blames the destruction and
casualties on Hamas.
George Orwell in his novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four” called
this form of propaganda doublethink. Doublethink uses “logic against logic” and
“repudiate[s] morality while laying claim to it.” The Big Lie does not allow
for the nuances and contradictions that can plague conscience. It is a
state-orchestrated response to the dilemma of cognitive dissonance. The Big Lie
permits no gray zones. The world is black and white, good and evil, righteous
and unrighteous. The Big Lie allows believers to take comfort—a comfort they
are desperately seeking—in their own moral superiority at the very moment they
have abrogated all morality.
The Big Lie, as the father of American public relations,
Edward Bernays, wrote, is limited only by the propagandist’s capacity to fathom
and harness the undercurrents of individual and mass psychology. And since most
supporters of Israel do not have a desire to know the truth, a truth that would
force them to examine their own racism and self-delusions about Zionist and
Western moral superiority, like packs of famished dogs they lap up the lies fed
to them by the Israeli government. The Big Lie always finds fertile soil in
what Bernays called the “logic-proof compartment of dogmatic adherence.” All
effective propaganda, Bernays wrote, targets and builds upon these irrational
“psychological habits.”
This is the world Franz Kafka envisioned, a world where the
irrational becomes rational. It is one where, as Gustave Le Bon noted in “The
Crowd: A Study of the Public Mind,” those who supply the masses with the
illusions they crave become their master, and “whoever attempts to destroy
their illusions is always their victim.” This irrationality explains why the
reaction of Israeli supporters to those who have the courage to speak the
truth—Uri Avnery, Max Blumenthal, Noam Chomsky, Jonathan Cook, Norman
Finkelstein, Amira Hass, Gideon Levy, Ilan Pappé, Henry Siegman and Philip
Weiss—is so rabid. That so many of these voices are Jewish, and therefore have
more credibility than non-Jews who are among Israel’s cheerleaders, only
ratchets up the level of hate.
But the Big Lie is also consciously designed to send a
chilling message to Gaza’s Palestinians, who have lost large numbers of their
dwellings, clinics, mosques, and power, water and sewage facilities, along with
schools and hospitals, who have suffered some 1,650 deaths since this assault
began—most of the victims women and children—and who have seen 400,000 people displaced
from their homes. The Big Lie makes it clear to the Palestinians that Israel
will continue to wage a campaign of state terror and will never admit its
atrocities or its intentions. The vast disparity between what Israel says and
what Israel does tells the Palestinians that there is no hope. Israel will do
and say whatever it wants. International law, like the truth, will always be
irrelevant. There will never, the Palestinians understand from the Big Lie, be
an acknowledgement of reality by the Israeli leadership.
The Israel
Defense Forces website is replete with this black propaganda. “Hamas
exploits the IDF’s sensitivity towards protecting civilian structures,
particularly holy sites, by hiding command centers, weapons caches and tunnel
entrances in mosques,” the IDF site reads. “In Hamas’ world, hospitals are
command centers, ambulances are transport vehicles, and medics are human
shields,” the site insists.
“.... [Israeli] officers are tasked with an enormous
responsibility: to protect Palestinian civilians on the ground, no matter how
difficult that may be,” the site assures its viewers. And the IDF site provides
this quote from a drone operator identified as Lt. Or. “I have personally seen
rockets fired at Israel from hospitals and schools, but we couldn’t strike back
because of civilians nearby. In one instance, we acquired a target but we saw
that there were children in the area. We waited around, and when they didn’t
leave we were forced to abort a strike on an important target.”
Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer, in a
Big Lie of his own, said last month at a conference of Christians United for
Israel that the Israeli army should be given the “Nobel Peace Prize .... for
fighting with unimaginable restraint.”
The Big Lie destroys any possibility of history and
therefore any hope for a dialogue between antagonistic parties that can be
grounded in truth and reality. While, as Hannah Arendt pointed out,
the ancient and modern sophists sought to win an argument at the expense of the
truth, those who wield the Big Lie “want a more lasting victory at the expense
of reality.” The old sophists, she said, “destroyed the dignity of human
thought.” Those who resort to the Big Lie “destroy the dignity of human
action.” The result, Arendt warned, is that “history itself is destroyed, and
its comprehensibility.” And when facts no longer matter, when there is no
shared history grounded in the truth, when people foolishly believe their own
lies, there can be no useful exchange of information. The Big Lie, used like a
bludgeon by Israel, as perhaps it is designed to be, ultimately reduces all
problems in the world to the brutish language of violence. And when oppressed
people are addressed only through violence they will answer only through
violence.
— From Truthdig, Aug. 3, 2014. Chris Hedges writes a regular
column for Truthdig.com. He is a
former award-winning foreign correspondent for the New York Times. He has authored 12 books, most recently “Days of
Destruction, Days of Revolt” (2012), which he co-authored with the cartoonist
Joe Sacco.
—————————
8. PROOF ISRAEL TARGETED UN BUILDINGS
 |
| Father caries victim of UNRWA school in Beit Hanoun, July 24. |
By Richard
Silverstein, 8-5-14 Mideast Peace
From: Tikun Olam-תיקון עולם
An Israeli reporter for Maariv, Aviram Zino, has been
embedded with an IDF unit during the current invasion. Noam R writes in his Israeli political blog
about Zino’s fawning enthusiastic response to being given the chance of a
lifetime to be a reporter in the middle of the “action.” His reporting
comes across as cheerleading rather than objective journalism. But in
spite of himself, Zino reveals a damning fact that impeaches the IDF’s credibility
regarding its denial of deliberately targeting UN buildings housing Palestinian
civilian refugees.
Zino reports that the unit commander, Nadav, ordered the
firing of a $100,000 Tamuz (aka Spike) heat-seeking anti-tank missile on a
UNWRA school
in Beit Hanoun on July 24th:
“Nadav tried to clarify what means were available to him.
A survey of the field shows clearly fire coming from an UNWRA school in
the center of Gaza. The order is given and a Tammuz missile is fired at
the school. The commanding general, who arrives later for a press
conference, says in response: ‘This is yet another example of Hamas’ cynical
use of civilian structures for the purposes of terror.’
“It’s a bit aggravating since the unit tried from the
beginning of the Operation to do minimal damage, as best as possible, to
the “uninvolved” [military jargon for "civilians"].
15 Palestinian civilians died from this missile and 150 were
injured. As Noam R points out in his blog post, this is the first
eyewitness, definitive evidence that the IDF deliberately ordered a lethal
guided-weapon (not indiscriminate artillery fire) to be fired at a civilian
building in Gaza knowing there were unarmed non-combatants inside who would be
killed.
Two things to point out about this report. Clearly,
Zino didn’t see firing from the school. He trusted the unit commander’s
word that such fire had been confirmed. But by whom and how is not
mentioned. Second, the commander speaking at the press conference only
notes the attack by the IDF on the school without explaining how it justified
killing civilians. Zino, in the closing sentence, admits explicitly that
the attack was both disproportional and knowingly attacked civilians. As
Sara Lee Whitson says in the paragraph below: that “is a war crime.”
In fact, Human Rights Watch’s Sarah Leah Whitson spoke
about Israel’s responsibility to Gaza’s civilian population:
“The…presence of…civilians despite a warning to flee cannot
be ignored when attacks are carried out, as Israeli forces have done previously.
Warning families to flee fighting doesn’t make them fair targets just because
they’re unable to do so, and deliberately attacking them is a war .”
.
In other words, you may not attack a civilian target
containing unarmed civilians using heavy lethal weapons, even if you believe
there are armed fighters engaged in combat operations against you. The
safety of civilians trumps any desire to eliminate the armed threat, if there
is one. This is reinforced by the fact that the IDF never presents any
proof of its claims that armed fighters are firing from such structures and
didn’t do so in this particular case.
There is yet another instance of serious IDF prevarication.
Army spokesperson Lt. Col. Lerner told AP 900
Palestinian fighters had been killed during the war. Yet the IDF itself
only two days before had put that number at 300. When asked why it jumped
so much, AP characterized his response: “Lerner said the figure of 900
militants killed was an approximation, based on reporting from individual
Israeli units, but provided no further detail.”
Palestinian and UN reports place the number of dead fighters
at 20% of the overall total, which is 1,900. That would mean that 380
militants were killed. My own Israeli source reports more candid IDF
claims that 500 fighters have been killed. Certainly, the final number
will be somewhere between 380-500, but nowhere near Lerner’s prevaricating
claim of 900....
—————————
9. ISRAEL SOLDIER BRAGS OF KILLING KIDS
 |
By Middle East Monitor, 08-01-14
"I killed 13 childrens [sic] today and ur [sic]
next fucking muslims [sic] go to hell bitches," Israeli sniper David
Ovadia posted on his Instagram account yesterday. Ovadia directed the comment
at a fellow Instagram user a Palestinian woman.
The comment was made in response to a picture Ovadia posted of himself laying on the ground aiming his sniper rifle (above), while dressed
in army fatigues. It was quickly spread across social media networks
and his account was subsequently closed down.
Ovadia denied sending the message for days, claiming he was hacked. He finally confessed to Israeli military police and was sentenced to a month in jail. The IDF said the soldier did not actually shoot 13 children, but was instead
using the claim to harass and terrorize Palestinians on social media.
A brief video is at http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/07/31/373518/israeli-sniper-admits-killing-13-kids/
—————————
10. THE NIGHTMARE IN
GAZA
Noam Chomsky, 8-7-14
For the West Bank, the norm is that Israel continues its
illegal construction of settlements and infrastructure so that it can integrate
into Israel whatever might be of value, meanwhile consigning Palestinians to
unviable cantons and subjecting them to repression and violence.
For Gaza, the norm is a miserable existence under a cruel
and destructive siege that Israel administers to permit bare survival but
nothing more.
The latest Israeli rampage was set off by the brutal murder
of three Israeli boys from a settler
community in the occupied West Bank. A
month before, two Palestinian boys were shot dead in the West Bank city of
Ramallah. That elicited little attention, which is understandable, since it is
routine.
“The institutionalized disregard for Palestinian life in the
West helps explain not only why Palestinians resort to violence,” Middle East
analyst Mouin Rabbani reports, “but also Israel’s latest assault on the Gaza
Strip.”
In an interview, human rights lawyer Raji Sourani, who
has remained in Gaza through years of Israeli brutality and terror, said, “The
most common sentence I heard when people began to talk about cease-fire:
Everybody says it’s better for all of us to die and not go back to the
situation we used to have before this war. We don’t want that again. We have no
dignity, no pride; we are just soft targets, and we are very cheap. Either this
situation really improves or it is better to just die. I am talking about
intellectuals, academics, ordinary people: Everybody is saying that.”
In January 2006, Palestinians committed a major crime: They
voted the wrong way in a carefully monitored free election, handing control of
Parliament to Hamas.
The media constantly intone that Hamas is dedicated to the
destruction of Israel. In reality, Hamas leaders have repeatedly made it clear
that Hamas would accept a two-state settlement in accord with the international
consensus that has been blocked by the U.S. and Israel for 40 years.
In contrast, Israel is dedicated to the destruction of
Palestine, apart from some occasional meaningless words, and is implementing
that commitment.
The crime of the Palestinians in January 2006 was punished
at once. The U.S. and Israel, with Europe shamefully trailing behind, imposed
harsh sanctions on the errant population and Israel stepped up its violence.
The U.S. and Israel quickly initiated plans for a military
coup to overthrow the elected government. When Hamas had the effrontery to foil
the plans, the Israeli assaults and the siege became far more severe.
There should be no need to review again the dismal record
since. The relentless siege and savage attacks are punctuated by episodes of
“mowing the lawn,” to borrow Israel’s cheery expression for its periodic
exercises in shooting fish in a pond as part of what it calls a “war of
defense.”
Once the lawn is mowed and the desperate population seeks to
rebuild somehow from the devastation and the murders, there is a cease-fire
agreement. The most recent cease-fire was established after Israel’s October
2012 assault, called Operation Pillar of Defense.
Though Israel maintained its siege, Hamas observed the
cease-fire, as Israel concedes. Matters changed in April of this year when
Fatah and Hamas forged a unity agreement that established a new government of
technocrats unaffiliated with either party.
Israel was naturally furious, all the more so when even the
Obama administration joined the West in signaling approval. The unity agreement
not only undercuts Israel’s claim that it cannot negotiate with a divided
Palestine but also threatens the long-term goal of dividing Gaza from the West
Bank and pursuing its destructive policies in both regions.
Something had to be done, and an occasion arose on June 12, when
the three Israeli boys were
murdered in the West Bank. Early on, the Netanyahu
government knew that they were dead, but pretended otherwise, which provided
the opportunity to launch a rampage in the West Bank, targeting Hamas.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed to have certain
knowledge that Hamas was responsible. That too was a lie.
One of Israel’s leading authorities on Hamas, Shlomi Eldar,
reported almost at once that the killers very likely came from a dissident clan
in Hebron that has long been a thorn in the side of Hamas. Eldar added that
“I’m sure they didn’t get any green light from the leadership of Hamas, they
just thought it was the right time to act.”
The 18-day rampage after the kidnapping, however, succeeded
in undermining the feared unity government, and sharply increasing Israeli
repression. Israel also conducted dozens of attacks in Gaza, killing five Hamas
members on July 7.
Hamas finally reacted with its first rockets in 19 months,
providing Israel with the pretext for Operation Protective Edge on July 8.
By July 31, around 1,400 Palestinians had been killed,
mostly civilians, including hundreds of women and children. And three Israeli
civilians. Large areas of Gaza had been turned into rubble. Four hospitals had
been attacked, each another war crime.
Israeli officials laud the humanity of what it calls “the
most moral army in the world,” which informs residents that their homes will be
bombed. The practice is “sadism, sanctimoniously disguising itself as mercy,”
in the words of Israeli journalist Amira Hass: “A recorded message demanding
hundreds of thousands of people leave their already targeted homes, for another
place, equally dangerous, 10 kilometers away.”
In fact, there is no place in the prison of Gaza safe from
Israeli sadism, which may even exceed the terrible crimes of Operation Cast
Lead in 2008-2009.
The hideous revelations elicited the usual reaction from the
most moral president in the world, Barack Obama: great sympathy for Israelis,
bitter condemnation of Hamas and calls for moderation on both sides.
When the current attacks are called off, Israel hopes to be
free to pursue its criminal policies in the occupied territories without
interference, and with the U.S. support it has enjoyed in the past.
Gazans will be free to return to the norm in their
Israeli-run prison, while in the West Bank, Palestinians can watch in peace as
Israel dismantles what remains of their possessions.
That is the likely outcome if the U.S. maintains its
decisive and virtually unilateral support for Israeli crimes and its rejection
of the long-standing international consensus on diplomatic settlement. But the
future will be quite different if the U.S. withdraws that support.
In that case it would be possible to move toward the “enduring
solution” in Gaza that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called for, eliciting
hysterical condemnation in Israel because the phrase could be interpreted as
calling for an end to Israel’s siege and regular attacks. And — horror of
horrors — the phrase might even be interpreted as calling for implementation of
international law in the rest of the occupied territories.
Forty years ago Israel made the fateful decision to choose
expansion over security, rejecting a full peace treaty offered by Egypt in return
for evacuation from the occupied Egyptian Sinai, where Israel was initiating
extensive settlement and development projects. Israel has adhered to that
policy ever since.
If the U.S. decided to join the world, the impact would be
great. Over and over, Israel has abandoned cherished plans when Washington has
so demanded. Such are the relations of power between them.
Furthermore, Israel by now has little recourse, after having
adopted policies that turned it from a country that was greatly admired to one
that is feared and despised, policies it is pursuing with blind determination
today in its march toward moral deterioration and possible ultimate
destruction.
Could U.S. policy change? It’s not impossible. Public
opinion has shifted considerably in recent years, particularly among the young,
and it cannot be completely ignored.
For some years there has been a good basis for public
demands that Washington observe its own laws and cut off military aid to
Israel. U.S. law requires that “no security assistance may be provided to any
country the government of which engages in a consistent pattern of gross
violations of internationally recognized human rights.”
Israel most certainly is guilty of this consistent pattern,
and has been for many years.
Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, author of this provision of
the law, has brought up its potential applicability to Israel in specific
cases, and with a well-conducted educational, organizational and activist
effort such initiatives could be pursued successively.
That could have a very significant impact in itself, while
also providing a springboard for further actions to compel Washington to become
part of “the international community” and to observe international law and
norms.
Nothing could be more significant for the tragic Palestinian
victims of many years of violence and repression.
— Noam Chomsky is emeritus professor of linguistics and
philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass.
—————————
11. UN: 'THE IMPACT ON CHILDREN MOST SEVERE'
 |
| "Most moral army" killed hundreds of Gaza children and wounded thousands. |
By Lauren McCauley,
Common Dreams, 8-6-14
Israel's attack on Gaza will be felt most severely among the
Palestinian children, a top United Nations official said on Aug. 5 Addressing a
UN conference by phone, Pernille Ironside, who runs the UNICEF field office in
Gaza, said the agency estimates that roughly 373,000 Palestinian children have
had some kind of direct traumatic experience as a result of the attack and will
require immediate psycho-social support. This is in addition to the 408
children reported as killed and the thousands left wounded after three weeks of
heavy shelling by Israeli forces.
Asking, "How can a society cope with this? This is a
deep, deep, deep wound," Ironside quoted Nishant Pandey, head of Oxfam in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and
Israel as saying: “Public health conditions in Gaza are getting worse by the
hour, and with water running out the threat of disease is spreading fast. The
ceasefire alone will not be enough to end Gaza's suffering —t he blockade of
Gaza must also end if there is to be real recovery and lasting peace for both
Israelis and Palestinians.”
In a piece published in +972 Magazine on Aug. 5,
Olivia Watson, advocacy officer with Defense
for Children International-Palestine — which is independently verifying all
child-deaths in the conflict — writes that for even those children "who
manage to escape physical injury, the psychological effects of this latest
operation will be hidden, but severe and resounding.... Many have lost one or
both parents, or other family members. Some have lost their entire extended
families. All have experienced violence, fear and instability at close
quarters."
Relief workers who have spent time with Palestinian children
after the wars in 2008-9 and 2012 say that children who lost family members
exhibit real physical manifestations of their trauma including: night terrors,
inability to sleep, loss of bladder control, as well as refusing to eat, and
aversion to eye contact or physical touch.
Danny Muller, a coordinator with the Middle East Children's Alliance, told
Common Dreams that
in addition to the direct trauma of losing a loved one, children also experience more indirect trauma like the loss of a playground, a mosque, or a home.
Muller explained that because of the ongoing blockade and
repeated attacks by Israel, children in Palestine sustain "ongoing"
traumatic stress. The blockade has made families in Palestine food insecure for
years, Muller said, as he cited a consistent lack of access to drinking water
and high rates of unemployment, "all of which directly impacts the level
of safety and security they feel in their homes and communities."
"The children have an incredible level of fear,"
Muller said.
According to Mufeed al-Hasayneh, the Palestinian Minister of
Public Works, Israel has caused over $5 billion dollars in damage to homes and
infrastructure in the Gaza strip. Al-Hasayneh estimates that some 10,000 homes
have been completely destroyed, and 30,000 homes partially destroyed.
On Aug. 5, Oxfam International warned that Gaza is on the
brink of an international health crisis after recent bombing destroyed wells,
pipelines and reservoirs, leaving water dangerously scarce while remaining
reserves are contaminated with raw sewage. According to the group, 15,000 tons
of solid waste now fills the streets, water pumping stations are on the verge
of running out of fuel, and many neighborhoods have been without power for
days.
———————
12. IT IS NOT JUST AN
ISRAELI WAR ON GAZA
Pictures of two U.S. Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza July 20
in clashes with Hamas guerrillas when their armored vehicle was struck by a
shoulder-launched anti-tank missile July 20.
Top Nissim Sean Carmeli, 21, of South Padre Island, Texas.
Top Nissim Sean Carmeli, 21, of South Padre Island, Texas.
Bottom, Max Steinberg, 24, from Los Angeles. Citizens from a number of countries are fighting in the Israeli Army.
By Ramzy Baroud, 7-32-14
To some, US secretary of state John Kerry may have appeared
to be a genuine peacemaker as he floated around ideas during a Cairo visit on
25 July about a ceasefire between Israel and resisting Palestinian fighters in
Gaza. But behind his measured diplomatic language, there is a truth not even
America’s top diplomat can easily hide. His country is very much involved in
fighting this dirty war on Gaza that has killed over 1,050, injured thousands
more, and destroyed much of an already poor, dilapidated space that is barely
inhabitable to begin with.
US economic and military aid to Israel is measured annually
in the billions, and the US government continues to be Israel’s strongest and
most ardent ally and political benefactor. In fact, the US-Israel “special
relationship” is getting more “special” by the day even though Israel is
sinking further into the abyss of a well-deserved isolation.
True, there are some, even in the justice for Palestinians
camp, who oddly speak of how exceptional and fair the Barack Obama
Administration has been in comparison to its predecessors. However, they
neglect the fact that aside from a few particularly strong-worded statements,
Obama has been a dedicated stalwart on behalf of Israel and its security
by going as far as defending Israel’s ‘Operation Protective Edge’ war – the
slaughter of thousands of innocent civilians in Gaza.
But America’s support for Israel is crossing new red lines.
There are reportedly over
1,000 US citizens fighting in the Israeli army according to reports that
are now resurfacing due to the recent killing of two US-Israeli soldiers – Max
Steinberg, 24, of California, and Nissim Sean Carmeli, 21, of Texas. Like the
rest of the IDF soldiers killed in recent fighting, they were killed while
invading parts of the besieged Gaza Strip. But the number must be an
understatement since some of Israel’s
most ardent Jewish settlers are also American, and happen to be armed and
dangerous. Although this is causing a bit of a media buzz, there is no
political crisis. Instead, only condolences are offered to the families of the
Americans fighting the genocidal war on Gaza.
The US is not alone in this. European governments display an
incredible amount of hypocrisy as they continue to utilize doublespeak in their
approach to Middle East conflicts in general, and the situation in Palestine in
particular. The pressure mounting from European civil society makes it a bit more
challenging for EU governments to endow Israel with the same unconditional love
and support as that bestowed upon it by the US. EU hypocrisy is too palpable
even for clever politicians to hide. The British government is shamelessly on
the Israeli side, even while entire families in Gaza are being pulverized by
western weapons and military technology. Meanwhile, the French government imposed
a ban to prevent French society from showing its solidarity with the besieged
and massacred Palestinians in Gaza.
But why ban mere demonstrations of solidarity while France,
the US and other Western governments are allowing their Jewish citizens to be
enlisted in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) which is actively killing
Palestinian civilians? Shouldn’t that be a much greater concern to the
duplicitous French government than some protesters chanting some slogans during
a solidarity rally that may or may not be deemed anti-Semitic?
Indeed, not only are western governments providing Israel
with arms, funds and political cover to sustain its occupation and war, but
they are also contributing thousands of military experts and boots on the
ground in order to fight a war in Gaza where war crimes and crimes against
humanity are being committed on an hourly basis.
Belgium also stands accused of allowing such criminality.
Although Belgian civil society is one of Palestine’s strongest supporters,
their government is cloaked with unmistakable dishonesty. Many Belgian citizens
are also taking part in Israel’s lethal wars in Gaza and military occupation of
the occupied territory, with little or no protest from their government.
Western involvement in the war on the Palestinian people is
indeed going beyond the usual and known support of funds, military technology
and economic aid, to actual participation in the slaughter of Palestinians in
Gaza. This is not a matter than can be addressed within the larger argument of
Western double standards in Israel and Palestine, but an urgent issue that
demands immediate attention.
It is one thing to fail to stop war crimes from being
committed, it is a whole other level of failure to defend, finance and take
active part in carrying out these war crimes. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu is not the only leader culpable of Gaza’s bloodbath; others in
western capitals should also be.
— Ramzy Baroud is a PhD scholar in People’s History
at the University of Exeter (UK). He is the Managing Editor of Middle East Eye. He
is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author and
the founder of PalestineChronicle.com.
His latest book is My
Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press,
London).
—————————
13. SOME ARAB LEADERS
TURN ON HAMAS
By David D.
Kirkpatrick, N.Y. TIMES 7-31
CAIRO — Battling Palestinian militants in Gaza two years
ago, Israel found itself pressed from all
sides by unfriendly Arab neighbors to end the fighting. Not this time.
sides by unfriendly Arab neighbors to end the fighting. Not this time.
After the military ouster of the Islamist government in
Cairo last year, Egypt has led a new coalition of Arab states — including
Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — that has effectively lined
up with Israel in its fight against Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls
the Gaza Strip. That, in turn, may have contributed to the failure of the
antagonists to reach a negotiated cease-fire even after more than three weeks
of bloodshed.
 |
|
Arab monarchs and dictators, such as Egypt’s
Abdel Fatah
al-Sisi, Side with Israel.
|
Although Egypt is traditionally the key go-between in any
talks with Hamas — deemed a terrorist group by the United States and Israel —
the government in Cairo this time surprised Hamas by publicly proposing a
cease-fire agreement that met most of Israel’s demands and none from the
Palestinian group. Hamas was tarred as intransigent when it immediately
rejected it, and Cairo has continued to insist that its proposal remains the starting
point for any further discussions.
But as commentators sympathetic to the Palestinians slammed
the proposal as a ruse to embarrass Hamas, Egypt’s Arab allies praised it. King
Abdullah of Saudi Arabia called President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt the
next day to commend it, Mr. Sisi’s office said, in a statement that cast no
blame on Israel but referred only to “the bloodshed of innocent civilians who
are paying the price for a military confrontation for which they are not
responsible.”
“There is clearly a convergence of interests of these
various regimes with Israel,” said Khaled Elgindy, a former adviser to
Palestinian negotiators who is now a fellow at the Brookings Institution in
Washington. In the battle with Hamas, Mr. Elgindy said, the Egyptian fight
against the forces of political Islam and the Israeli struggle against
Palestinian militants were nearly identical. “Whose proxy war is it?” he asked.
The dynamic has inverted all expectations of the Arab Spring
uprisings. As recently as 18 months ago, most analysts in Israel, Washington
and the Palestinian territories expected the popular uprisings to make the Arab
governments more responsive to their citizens, and therefore more sympathetic
to the Palestinians and more hostile to Israel.
But instead of becoming more isolated, Israel’s government
has emerged for the moment as an unexpected beneficiary of the ensuing tumult,
now tacitly supported by the leaders of the resurgent conservative order as an
ally in their common fight against political Islam.
Egyptian officials have directly or implicitly blamed Hamas
instead of Israel for Palestinian deaths in the fighting, even when, for
example, United Nations schools have been hit by Israeli shells, something that
occurred again on Wednesday.
And the pro-government Egyptian news media has continued to
rail against Hamas as a tool of a regional Islamist plot to destabilize Egypt
and the region, just as it has since the military ouster of President Mohamed
Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood one year ago. (Egyptian prosecutors have
charged Hamas with instigating violence in Egypt, killing its soldiers and
police officers, and even breaking Mr. Morsi and other Brotherhood leaders out
of jail during the 2011 uprising.)
The diatribes against Hamas by at least one popular
pro-government talk show host in Egypt were so extreme that the government of
Israel broadcast some of them into Gaza.
“They use it to say, ‘See, your supposed friends are
encouraging us to kill you!’ ” Maisam Abumorr, a Palestinian student in
Gaza City, said in a telephone interview.
Some pro-government Egyptian talk shows broadcast in Gaza
“are saying the Egyptian Army should help the Israeli Army get rid of Hamas,”
she said.
At the same time, Egypt has infuriated Gazans by continuing
its policy of shutting down tunnels used for cross-border smuggling into the
Gaza Strip and keeping border crossings closed, exacerbating a scarcity of
food, water and medical supplies after three weeks of fighting.
“Sisi is worse than Netanyahu, and the Egyptians are
conspiring against us more than the Jews,” said Salhan al-Hirish, a storekeeper
in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya. “They finished the Brotherhood in
Egypt, and now they are going after Hamas.”
Egypt and other Arab states, especially the Persian Gulf
monarchies of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, are finding themselves
allied with Israel in a common opposition to Iran, a rival regional power that
has a history of funding and arming Hamas.
For Washington, the shift poses new obstacles to its efforts
to end the fighting. Although Egyptian intelligence agencies continue to talk
with Hamas, as they did under former President Hosni Mubarak and Mr. Morsi,
Cairo’s new animosity toward the group has called into question the effectiveness
of that channel, especially after the response to Egypt’s first proposal.
As a result, Secretary of State John Kerry turned to the
more Islamist-friendly states of Qatar and Turkey as alternative mediators —
two states that grew in regional stature with the rising tide of political
Islam after the Arab Spring, and that have suffered a degree of isolation as
that tide has ebbed.
But that move has put Mr. Kerry in the incongruous position
of appearing to some analysts as less hostile to Hamas — and thus less
supportive of Israel — than Egypt or its Arab allies.
For Israeli hawks, the change in the Arab states has been
relatively liberating....
—————————
14. ‘PALESTINE
PRE-1948, BEFORE ISRAEL’
By the Activist Newsletter
This headline is the name of 10-minute video that should be
seen by everyone interested in the conflict between Israel and the
Palestinians. It doesn’t discuss the whole story but concentrates on one
historical element. Find it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jxTseoru6g.
In the several decades leading up to the UN partition of
Palestine in 1947, Jewish and Christian Zionists often repeated the myth
of “a land without a people for a people
without a land.” Palestine was the “land without a people,” and Jews were the
“people without a land.”
Palestine, however, was not a land without people, whether
under the Ottomans or manipulated by British imperialism. In 1925 there were
780,568 non-Jewish citizens of Palestine (largely Muslims). Due to increasing
immigration beginning at the start of the 1900s, the Jewish population at that
time was 137,484
or 15% of the population. In 1946, the non-Jewish population
consisted of 1,339,763
people. In addition there were 602,586
Jews, including a
flood of additional immigrants escaping from the horrors of World War II in
Europe, amounting to 31% of the population.
Zionists usually depicted Palestine as a backward country
with backward people who evidently couldn’t even “make the desert bloom,” but
that wasn't quite the story, as you will see from the rare images of people and
infrastructure in different Palestinian cities during the 1920s,’30s and ’40s,
before the creation of the State of Israel.
The UN split Palestine into two sectors — 55% to the
minority Jews (who previously owned just 6% of the land), and 45% for the Arab
population. After the war of 1948-49 Israel ended up with 77%. Following the
war of 1967 Israel illegally occupied much of remaining Arab Palestine and in
time began to develop many Jewish settlements on this territory, protected by
police and soldiers — but this happened years after the images in this film,
which shows the abundance of people and their lifestyles in this pre-partition
“land without people.”
—————————
THE WAR IN IRAQ
Note: The New York Times today published a useful map on How
ISIS Came to Control Large Portions of Syria and Iraq. It is at http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/07/03/world/middleeast/syria-iraq-isis-rogue-state-along-two-rivers.html
—————————
Update, 8-14-14
MALIKI STEPS DOWN
By Al-Jazeera and Activist Newsletter
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's resignation on
Thursday, reported by Iraqi state TV, was preceded by a rare consensus this
week among major stakeholders in Iraq: From Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United
States, to longstanding domestic political supporters and opponents, there was
near unanimous agreement that Maliki’s time was up – it was Maliki’s own
Shia political bloc, in fact, that dumped him as its prime minister-nominee.
The U.S. supported the ouster, as did Iran.
The unprecedented series of events was aided by the rapid
battlefield gains of the ISIS insurgency in recent months, which helped tip the
balance against Maliki’s fortunes given ongoing political paralysis in Baghdad.
But while the many parties with divergent interests could
agree on ousting a divisive and dysfunctional figure and on the need to combat
the Islamic State, there remains little consensus at home or abroad over how to
govern a post-Maliki Iraq going forward.
In terrible news today, Iraq confirmed ISIS fighters have
killed at least 500 members of Iraq's Yazidi minority – including many women
and children – burying some alive and taking hundreds of women as slaves.
Iraq’s human rights minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, accused ISIS – who have
ordered the Yazidi, whom they regard as "devil worshippers" to
convert to Islam or be killed – of celebrating "a vicious atrocity"
with cheers and weapons waved in the air.
His remarks came as U.S. forces carried out airstrikes for a
third day against Islamic State fighters. U.S. planes also continued to drop
food and water for thousands of Yazidis who are trapped on a mountain and
threatened with slaughter by the armed group. The U.S.. expressed confidence
that the remainder would reach safety.
Maliki is one of a long line of Iraqi leaders the U.S. assisted to prominence and then engineered to oust. Washington blames the prime minister for the split in Iraq between the minority Arab Sunnis (about 20%), the minority Kurdish Sunnis and other smaller religious sects, and the ruling Shi’ites (about 65%).
The split has resulted in substantial Arab Sunni support for the religio-fascist ISIS, now marauding throughout sectors of northern Syria and Iraq. The Kurds in both Iraq and Syria oppose ISIS militarily. Maliki’s sectarianism is a factor in the split. Another major element, however, is Washington’s long effort to divide and conquer Iraq starting with its unjust and illegal invasion in 2003.
At this stage, the specter of ISIS is haunting not only the U.S., Iraq, and Iran, but Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies, Jordan, Egypt and Turkey.
SYRIAN KURDS SAVING YAZIDIS
MALIKIYA, Syria (AP) -- In a dusty camp here, Iraqi refugees have new heroes: Syrian Kurdish fighters who battled militants to carve out an escape route for tens of thousands trapped on a mountaintop.
While the U.S. and Iraqi militaries struggle to aid the starving members of Iraq's Yazidi minority with supply drops from the air, the Syrian Kurds took it on themselves to rescue them. The move underlined how they - like Iraqi Kurds - are using the region's conflicts to establish their own rule.
For the past few days, fighters have been rescuing Yazidis from the mountain, transporting them into Syrian territory to give them first aid, food and water, and returning some to Iraq via a pontoon bridge.
Update 8-11
BIG COMPLICATIONS IN IRAQ
BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq's new president on Monday snubbed the powerful incumbent Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and nominated the deputy parliament speaker to form the new government, raising fears of more infighting in the government as country faces the threat of Sunni militants in the north.
Al-Maliki's Dawa Party rejected the nominee, Haider al-Ibadi, as al-Maliki deployed elite security forces loyal to him in the streets of Baghdad to close two main avenues and hundreds of his supporters held a rally, raising fears that he may use force to stay in power.
The mounting political showdown comes as the United States beefed up its role in fighting back Sunni Muslim radicals whose dramatic expansion is threatening the autonomous Kurdish region in the north. Senior U.S. officials said the Obama administration has begun directly providing weapons to the Kurdish peshmerga forces fighting the Islamic State group.
U.S. warplanes carried out new strikes Monday, hitting a militant convoy moving to attack Kurdish forces defending the autonomous zone's capital, Irbil. American strikes in recent days helped bring one of the Kurds first victories after weeks of retreat as peshmerga fighters over the weekend recaptured two towns near Irbil.
But the political wrangling in Baghdad adds new instability as the country tries to deal with the Islamic State group, which has overrun much of the north and west.
Update 8-9
15A. OBAMA: BATTLING ISIS A 'LONG-TERM PROJECT'
By Al Jazeera, Aug. 9, 2014
President Barack Obama said Saturday that he would not give a timetable for the United States' intervention in Iraq, and warned that the current operation there could "take some time" as the U.S. military airdropped more supplies to thousands of members of an Iraqi minority who were trapped on a mountaintop after they fled the advance of the Islamic State armed group.
U.S. airstrikes launched in Iraq this week have focused on ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) or Islamic State fighters as they are also known, who have captured hundreds of women from the Yazidi religious minority, according to an Iraqi official. Thousands of other civilians have fled in fear. The U.S. said the strikes are also meant to protect American personnel stationed in Irbil, the capital of the country's autonomous Kurdistan region, where the extremists have been closing in.
Speaking at a news conference from the White House's South Lawn on Saturday morning, Obama said that "so far these strikes have successfully destroyed arms and equipment that [Islamic State] terrorists could have used against Irbil." [Ibril (or Erbil) is the largest city and capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region of or northern Iraq with population of about 1.5 million. It is 55 miles east of Mosul — Iraq’s second largest city, which was recently captured by ISIS. – AN]
"I'm not going to give a particular timetable [on strikes] because as I’ve said from the start, wherever and whenever U.S. personnel and facilities are threatened, it’s my obligation, my responsibility as commander-in-chief to make sure that they are protected," Obama said.
.... For the U.S. military, which withdrew its forces from Iraq in late 2011 after more than eight years of war, the re-engagement began on Friday, when two jets dropped 500-pound bombs on a piece of artillery and the truck towing it. The Pentagon said the militants had been using the artillery to shell Kurdish forces defending Irbil, the site of a U.S. consulate and about three dozen American military trainers.
Later Friday, the U.S. launched a second round of airstrikes near Irbil, U.S. officials said. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the strikes publicly, said unmanned aircraft hit a mortar and four Navy F/A-18 fighter jets destroyed a seven-vehicle convoy.
.... Expanding from their stronghold of Mosul, ISIS fighters have captured a string of towns and Iraq's largest hydroelectric dam and reservoir in recent weeks. Ethnic and religious minorities, fearing persecution and slaughter, have fled as their towns fell.
According to the United Nations, more than 500,000 people have been displaced by the violence in Iraq since June, bringing the total this year to well over 1 million.
In contrast to Washington's decision to invade Iraq more than a decade ago, both the airdrop and the authorization of military action against the Islamic State group were widely welcomed by Iraqi and Kurdish officials fearful of the movement's advance.
15 US RE-ENGAGES IN
IRAQ
 |
| U.S. fired two laser guided missile bomb s on ISIS position Aug. 8. |
By Julie Pace And Robert Burns
WASHINGTON (AP, Friday 8-8-14) -- U.S. fighters dropped
bombs on Islamic militants in Iraq Friday, the Pentagon said, carrying out
President Barack Obama's promise of military force to counter the advancing
militants and confront the threat they pose to Iraqi civilians and Americans
still stationed there.
Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby said that two
F/A-18 jets dropped 500-pound bombs on a piece of artillery and the truck
towing it. Kirby said the fighters had taken off from the aircraft carrier USS
George HW Bush in the Persian Gulf to conduct the mission. He said it wasn't
clear how many militants might have been killed in the strike.
The Pentagon said the militants were using the artillery to
shell Kurdish forces defending Irbil.
For the United States, it was a re-engagement in the long
sectarian war from which American combat forces had been withdrawn - on
President Barack Obama's orders - in late 2011.
In a televised speech Thursday night, Obama threatened to
renew U.S. military involvement. At the same time, he announced that U.S.
military planes already had carried out airdrops of food and water, at the
request of the Iraqi government, to tens of thousands of Iraqi religious
minorities atop a mountain surrounded by militants and desperately in need of
supplies. "America is coming to help," Obama declared.
Speaking to reporters while traveling in India Friday,
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the U.S. military has sufficient
intelligence resources and assets in place to launch strikes by both manned and
unmanned aircraft in the region.
Asked if the Islamic State group could successfully hide
among civilians to evade strikes, Hagel said if the Islamic State moves against
Irbil, Baghdad or the refugees trapped on a mountain, "it's pretty clear
who they are, and they would be pretty identifiable where our airstrikes could
be effective."
The Yazidis, who follow an ancient religion with ties to
Zoroastrianism, fled their homes after the Islamic State group issued an
ultimatum to convert to Islam, pay a religious fine, flee their homes or face
death.
"Earlier this week, one Iraqi in the area cried to the
world, `There is no one coming to help.' Well, today, America is coming to
help," Obama said. "We're also consulting with other countries - and
the United Nations - who have called for action to address this humanitarian
crisis."
The announcement reflected the deepest American engagement
in Iraq since U.S. troops left.
Obama, who made his remarks in a steady and somber tone, has
staked much of his legacy as president on ending what he once called the
"dumb war" in Iraq.
 |
| Dropping aid to refugees on mountain. |
new round of U.S. military action would be a cause for concern among many Americans. He vowed anew not to put American combat troops back on the ground in Iraq and said there was no U.S. military solution to the crisis."As commander in chief, I will not allow the United States to be dragged into fighting another war in Iraq," Obama said.
Even so, he outlined a rationale for airstrikes in the event
the Islamic State militants advanced on American troops in Irbil and the U.S.
consulate there in the Kurdish region of Iraq. The troops were sent to Iraq
earlier this year as part of the White House response to the extremist group's
swift movement across the border with Syria and into Iraq.
"When the lives of American citizens are at risk, we
will take action," Obama said. "That's my responsibility as commander
in chief."
He said he had also authorized the use of targeted military
strikes if necessary to help the Iraqi security forces protect civilians.
The Pentagon said the airdrops were performed by one C-17
and two C-130 cargo aircraft that together delivered a total of 72 bundles of
food and water. They were escorted by two F/A-18 fighters from an undisclosed
air base in the region.
The planes delivered 5,300 gallons of fresh drinking water
and 8,000 pre-packaged meals and were over the drop area for less than 15
minutes at a low altitude....
—————————
16. U.S. AIR STRIKES KILLING
'HUNDREDS'
By Jack Moore AND Gianluca
Mezzofiore , 8-8-14
From International
Business Times
The US military has launched air strikes against militants
of the Islamic State in northern Iraq, according to the Pentagon. Press
Secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby tweeted: "US military aircraft conduct
strike on Isil [Islamic State] artillery. Artillery was used against Kurdish
forces defending Erbil, near US personnel.
"
Two F-18 fighters dropped laser-guided 500-pound bombs on
the mobile artillery target. Militants of the Islamic State were using
artillery that has been abandoned by the Iraqi army when it fled to shell
Kurdish forces defending the regional capital of Kurdistan.
US airstrikes were very small and very targeted and the
Peshmerga Kurdistan forces are waiting for more strikes by the US fighter jets,
according to reports.
Khalid Jamal Alber, an official for the semi-autonomous
Kurdish government in northern Iraq, said: "We thank Barack Obama".
Iraqi army chief of staff Lieutenant General Babaker Zebari said he predicted
"huge changes on the ground in the coming hours.”
—————————
17. CRITIQUE OF U.S.
INTERVENTION IN IRAQ
From Democracy Now,
8-8-14
 |
| Obama announcing Iraq engagement. |
Progressive foreign news analyst Phyllis Bennis was
interviewed on Democracy Now today, Aug. 8, about the U.S. decision to
intervene military in the Iraq conflict. She is a fellow at the Institute for
Policy Studies who has written a number of books, including “Ending the Iraq War.” One of her recent pieces is
headlined "Don’t Go Back to Iraq!: Five Steps the U.S. Can Take in Iraq
Without Going Back to War."
Amy Goodman opened by asking her response to President Obama
announcing that there will be possible airstrikes in Iraq, both because of
what’s happening on the Sinjar Mountain and because Americans are threatened in
Erbil.
PHYLLIS BENNIS: You know, there’s no question that
the people that are particularly those that are exposed out on Sinjar Mountain
are at great risk. It’s a terrible situation for civilians throughout that
region. Having said that, the question of U.S. airstrikes is almost certainly
going to make things worse and not better. This should have been the lesson we
learned from what President Obama called the "dumb war." He admitted
this time around there is no American military solution, and yet he’s
authorizing American military actions. It doesn’t make any sense. There’s no
logic to it.
The notion that there is going to be the need for airstrikes
to protect the few dozen U.S. diplomats and a couple of hundred military people
in Erbil, I think, is widely understood as a legal feint away from the reality.
This is what allows the president, in his mind, apparently, to use military
force without consulting Congress. We didn’t hear anything about his
understanding of the War Powers Act, his understanding of his obligations to
consult with Congress.
There were reports
earlier yesterday afternoon that there had been consultations between the White
House and Congress—not in any two-way sense, but that members of Congress were
informed—but there’s been no details about what that consultation was about.
This is simply the White House making the announcement that they may be about
to go back to war. President Obama indicated that he’s aware of the widespread
antiwar sentiment. I think the last polls indicated it was somewhere between 78
and 82 percent of people in the United States who are absolutely opposed to
going back to Iraq militarily.
He said that we are uniquely capable. We are not uniquely
capable. The United Nations, even before this move by President Obama, had
offered the Iraqi government technical help to carry out real humanitarian
airlifts to the people stuck on the mountain in Sinjar Mountain. The U.S.
history of linking airdrops of food and water with bombing raids is not a good
one. If we look back to the last time this happened, it was in November 2001 in
Afghanistan, when you had the United States simultaneously dropping food packs —
at that time, they were using MREs, Meals Ready to Eat, that were wrapped in
strong, bright yellow plastic to make them easy to spot. They were being
dropped to Afghan refugees who were fleeing the U.S. bombing of the cities, but
at the same time the U.S. was dropping cluster bombs that also happened to be
made with bright yellow plastic of exactly the same color. And no one knows how
many children, in particular, were killed running to what they thought were
food packages that turned out to be cluster bombs. This is not a safe way to
carry out a humanitarian operation.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ (co-host): It’s four presidents now, in
a quarter of a century, that the United States has been involved in some sort
of military conflict connected to Iraq, beginning with the first President Bush
beating back Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, then 10 years of no-fly zones
and military sanctions, then the invasion by the second George Bush, and now
this latest reversal of his own policy by President Obama. If there’s a
definition of a quagmire, this is it. Your sense of why this continues now for,
essentially, a generation?
 |
| U.S. jet attacking northern Iraq. |
This is a situation where there is a huge set of dangers in
the region as a result of this attack. There is no question that in Iraq any
U.S. military attack now is going to be widely viewed as being in support of the
incredibly corrupt, unpopular government of al-Maliki. Today, Friday, is
supposed to be the deadline for the Parliament to choose a new prime minister.
Maliki is under enormous pressure from the Parliament to step down. So far he
has refused to do that, and the U.S. has said, "Oh, we’re not going to
take a position on who should be the prime minister of Iraq, although we think
there should be an inclusive government." Maliki has made clear his
government is a sectarian government based on empowering the Shia community in
Iraq to the detriment of Sunni, Christians, Yazidis and all other minorities.
In that context, this is viewed widely as direct U.S. support for al-Maliki,
and it seems to me that there is almost no way that al-Maliki is going to step
down now.
People in and around Iraq are talking about the fact that
the Sunni tribes will be prepared to move against the Islamic State, once they
are clear that there is a government in Baghdad that is not a sectarian
government in its own right. People welcomed ISIS (or (IS), the Islamic State.
They welcomed them, not because they agree with them. They’ve been horrific in
social terms, in terms of these communities. But they were welcome,
particularly by Sunnis across Iraq, precisely because they represented an
alternative to what was seen as the worse situation, being under the domination
of this sectarian government in Baghdad.
So, the role of the U.S. now, with increasing military
involvement back in Iraq, returning to Iraq, is going to put the U.S. in a
situation where it’s widely going to be blamed for the continuing rise of
sectarianism.
And in the region more broadly, it’s going to be pointed out
what hypocrisy it is, where the United States is arming Israel to kill
Palestinians in Gaza. The language that President Obama used, that there are
innocent people facing violations on a massive scale, that describes the
situation of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. And yet, rather than providing
humanitarian aid, demanding that Israel open the gates of Gaza, that it open
the border crossings, the United States instead is sending more weapons and
more money to buy more weapons and more ammunition for those Israeli attacks.
So, the question of how the U.S. is going to be blamed for this is even wider
because of the simultaneous crisis underway in Gaza.
AMY GOODMAN: Phyllis, the president raised, the
humanitarian issue of airdrops. The
other issue was saving Americans in Erbil, the military advisers, the U.S.
workers who are there. The other possibility is to move them.
PHYLLIS BENNIS: Exactly. If there was so much concern
about these 40 or so diplomats and a couple of hundred military advisers — I’m
not quite sure that they’re as threatened as some reports have indicated, but
if there was that concern, that’s a completely doable thing to simply get them
onto helicopters and planes and move them out. That’s a false, you know,
rationale. It’s being used because both at the public level and, I think, for
the Obama administration, their understanding of how they can use the
limitations on acting unilaterally without consulting with Congress is shaped
by the notion that American lives are at stake. If American lives are at stake
on an emergency basis, it’s possible, under some circumstances, for the
president to move. In this situation, there hasn’t been a move yet. There isn’t
that level of urgency. You know, this is not a situation where there are not
cellphones, where members of Congress cannot be called back to Washington, if
necessary. They can be on a conference call. Technology makes many things
available. We should let the White House know that; they seem to have
forgotten. But if this was really so dangerous for those couple of hundred
people, put them on a plane and get them out. That’s not a problem.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Phyllis, what about this issue of
the threat to Erbil? We’re talking about the Kurdish region that was relatively
peaceful compared to the rest of Iraq and supposedly had a military force that
was quite capable, yet ISIS has managed to roll back the Kurdish forces, as
well.
PHYLLIS BENNIS: Well, that’s right, Juan, except for,
the thing that I think is important for us to understand is that ISIS is not
operating alone. ISIS, or IS, the Islamic State, is a small operation of
somewhere around 10,000 fighters. They are good fighters. They are well armed,
with U.S.-supplied equipment that they have picked up all over Iraq. And it’s
exactly what the danger is if the U.S. decides to send more weapons to Syria:
We will see the same thing with the Islamic State fighters getting those
weapons because they’re stronger fighters. But they have overcome the Kurdish
fighters, the Peshmerga, only in one area, in the area near the dam, which does
in fact threaten Erbil, in theory. But what’s important about IS is that part
of the reason they appear so strong is that they are backed by military support
from former generals, former strategists, former leaders of the Baathist army
in Iraq who lost their jobs, lost their positions, lost their ability to
protect their families, in many cases, at the time of the U.S. invasion in 2003
and have been sort of waiting for an opportunity to challenge the U.S.-backed
government in Baghdad. And they also have the support, in many areas, of the
Sunni tribal leaders and their militias.
Now, right now they’re not fighting in a massive scale. They
were early on this year. They’ve pulled back. But there are every indication
now that if there were a change in Baghdad, in the government, that the tribes
would rise again against IS. That would place those tribal militias, as well as
the other forces of the Peshmerga, against the former Baathists that are now
fighting with IS. It’s an ugly kind of sectarianism that was put in place by
the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. All of this sectarianism really can be
traced back to that.
But I think it is important that we not see this as somehow
a magic of this Islamist organization that somehow has such incredible power on
its own to overcome the Peshmerga fighters, to overcome government forces. They
are powerful because, one, they have really good weapons that are made here in
the U.S., and, two, they have leadership and military capacity strengthened by
these Baathist military forces that remain in Iraq.
———————
18. UN: SOME RESCUED
FROM MOUNTAIN SIEGE
 |
| Yazidi minority family that fled from ISIS. |
The militants' capture of the nearby town of Sinjar,
ancestral home of the Yazidi ethnic minority, had prompted tens of thousands of
people to flee to the surrounding mountains.
"We’re just receiving the information right now. We’ve
just heard that people over the last 24 hours have been extracted and the U.N.
is mobilizing resources to ensure that these people are assisted on
arrival," David Swanson said by phone from Iraq.
"This is a tragedy of immense proportions, impacting
the lives of hundreds of thousands of people," he said.
"Over the past couple of days, almost 200,000 people
have made their way northwards to Iraq’s Kurdistan region, Dohuk governorate,
or to disputed border areas inside Ninewah," he said. “We have also
received reports that thousands more may have fled across the border into
Syria, and are waiting to cross back into Iraq, but I have no concrete
confirmation of that.”
Sinjar district previously had a population of 308,000.
—————————
19. ISIS SURGES IN NORTHERN IRAQ
By AntiWar.com, 8- 7-14
ISIS continues
to take advantage of its momentum in northern Iraq today, advancing keeper
into Kurdish-held territory and seizing several new cities along the Kurdish
frontier.
Among the most important cities to
fall was Bakhdida (also known as Qaraqosh), a city in the Nineveh Province
and the largest city of Iraqi Christians remaining.
Bakhdida normally only has around 50,000 residents, but was
also housing a number of Iraqi Christian refugees from in and around Mosul
since the ISIS takeover of that city in June.
Nearby villages, also mostly Christian, were overrun as
well, and another influx of refugees is coming out of ISIS-held territory and
into neighboring Iraqi Kurdistan.
Note: Some of the reports this article is based on came out
of Iraqi Kurdistan. Though traditionally reliable sources of information,
Kurdistan is
openly lobbying for US military involvement at this point, and therefore
efforts to “manage” information coming out of the region cannot be ruled out.
—————————
20. ISIS
CONSOLIDATES
ITS VICTORIES
By Patrick Cockburn
 |
| ISIS troops praying for victories to consolidate their proposed Caliphate in Iraq and Syria. |
From London Review of
Books, Aug. 21 issue, but written just before U.S. involvement
As the attention of the world focused on Ukraine and Gaza,
the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) captured a third of Syria in
addition to the quarter of Iraq it had seized in June. The frontiers of the new
Caliphate declared by ISIS on June 29 are expanding by the day and now cover an
area larger than Great Britain and inhabited by at least six million people, a
population larger than that of Denmark, Finland or Ireland.
In a few weeks of fighting in Syria ISIS has established
itself as the dominant force in the Syrian opposition, routing the official
al-Qaida affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra, in the oil-rich province of Deir Ezzor and
executing its local commander as he tried to flee. In northern Syria some 5,000
ISIS fighters are using tanks and artillery captured from the Iraqi army in
Mosul to besiege half a million Kurds in their enclave at Kobani on the Turkish
border. In central Syria, near Palmyra, ISIS fought the Syrian army as it
overran the al-Shaer gasfield, one of the largest in the country, in a surprise
assault that left an estimated 300 soldiers and civilians dead. Repeated
government counter-attacks finally retook the gasfield but ISIS still controls
most of Syria”s oil and gas production. The Caliphate may be poor and isolated
but its oil wells and control of crucial roads provide a steady income in
addition to the plunder of war.
The birth of the new state is the most radical change to the
political geography of the Middle East since the Sykes-Picot Agreement was
implemented in the aftermath of the First World War. Yet this explosive
transformation has created surprisingly little alarm internationally or even
among those in Iraq and Syria not yet under the rule of ISIS. Politicians and
diplomats tend to treat ISIS as if it is a Bedouin raiding party that appears
dramatically from the desert, wins spectacular victories and then retreats to
its strongholds leaving the status quo little changed. Such a scenario is
conceivable but is getting less and less likely as ISIS consolidates its hold
on its new conquests in an area that may soon stretch from Iran to the
Mediterranean.
The very speed and unexpectedness of its rise make it easy
for Western and regional leaders to hope that the fall of ISIS and the
implosion of the Caliphate might be equally sudden and swift. But all the
evidence is that this is wishful thinking and the trend is in the other
direction, with the opponents of ISIS becoming weaker and less capable of
resistance: in Iraq the army shows no signs of recovering from its earlier
defeats and has failed to launch a single successful counter-attack; in Syria
the other opposition groups, including the battle-hardened fighters of al-Nusra
and Ahrar al-Sham, are demoralized and disintegrating as they are squeezed
between ISIS and the Assad government. Karen Koning Abuzayd, a member of the
UN's Commission of Inquiry in Syria, says that more and more Syrian rebels are
defecting to ISIS: “They see it”s better, these guys are strong, these guys are
winning battles, they were taking territory, they have money, they can train
us.” This is bad news for the government, which barely held off an assault in
2012 and 2013 by rebels less well trained, organized and armed than ISIS; it
will have real difficulties stopping the forces of the Caliphate advancing
west.
In Baghdad there was shock and terror on 10 June at the fall
of Mosul and as people realized that trucks packed with ISIS gunmen were only
an hour”s drive away. But instead of assaulting Baghdad, ISIS took most of
Anbar, the vast Sunni province that sprawls across western Iraq on either side
of the Euphrates. In Baghdad, with its mostly Shia population of seven million,
people know what to expect if the murderously anti-Shia ISIS forces capture the
city, but they take heart from the fact that the calamity has not happened yet.
“We were frightened by the military disaster at first but we Baghdadis have got
used to crises over the last 35 years,” one woman said. Even with ISIS at the
gates, Iraqi politicians have gone on playing political games as they move
ponderously towards replacing the discredited prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki.
“It is truly surreal,” a former Iraqi minister said. “When
you speak to any political leader in Baghdad they talk as if they had not just
lost half the country.” Volunteers had gone to the front after a fatwa from the
grand ayatollah, Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s most influential Shia cleric. But these
militiamen are now streaming back to their homes, complaining that they were
half-starved and forced to use their own weapons and buy their own ammunition.
The only large-scale counter-attack launched by the regular army and the newly
raised Shia militia was a disastrous foray into Tikrit July 15 that was
ambushed and defeated with heavy losses. There is no sign that the
dysfunctional nature of the [U.S.-trained] Iraqi army has changed. “They were
using just one helicopter in support of the troops in Tikrit,” the former
minister said, “so I wonder what on earth happened to the 140 helicopters the
Iraqi state has bought in recent years?”
Probably the money for the missing 139 helicopters was
simply stolen. There are other wholly corrupt states in the world but few of
them have oil revenues of $100 billion a year to steal from. The sole aim of
many officials has long been to get the largest kickback possible and they did
not much care if jihadi groups did the same.
 |
| ISIS troops murdereing Iraqi soldiers last month. |
In the face of these failures Iraq's Shia majority is taking
comfort from two beliefs that, if true, would mean the present situation is not
as dangerous as it looks. They argue that Iraq”s Sunnis have risen in revolt
and ISIS fighters are only the shock troops or vanguard of an uprising provoked
by the anti-Sunni policies and actions of Maliki. Once he is replaced, as is
almost certain, Baghdad will offer the Sunnis a new power-sharing agreement
with regional autonomy similar to that enjoyed by the Kurds. Then the Sunni
tribes, former military officers and Baathists who have allowed ISIS to take
the lead in the Sunni revolt will turn on their ferocious allies. Despite all
signs to the contrary, Shia at all levels are putting faith in this myth, that
ISIS is weak and can be easily discarded by Sunni moderates once they've
achieved their goals. One Shia said to me: “I wonder if ISIS really exists.”
Unfortunately, ISIS not only exists but is an efficient and
ruthless organisation that has no intention of waiting for its Sunni allies to
betray it. In Mosul it demanded that all opposition fighters swear allegiance
to the Caliphate or give up their weapons. In late June and early July they
detained between 15 to 20 former officers from Saddam Hussein”s time, including
two generals. Groups that had put up pictures of Saddam were told to take them
down or face the consequences. “It doesn”t seem likely,” Aymenn al-Tamimi, an
expert on jihadists, said, “that the rest of the Sunni military opposition will
be able to turn against ISIS successfully. If they do, they will have to act as
quickly as possible before ISIS gets too strong.” He points out that the
supposedly more moderate wing of the Sunni opposition had done nothing to stop
the remnants of the ancient Christian community in Mosul from being forced to
flee after ISIS told them they had to convert to Islam, pay a special tax or be
killed. Members of other sects and ethnic groups denounced as Shia or
polytheists are being persecuted, imprisoned and murdered. The moment is
passing when the non-ISIS opposition could successfully mount a challenge.
The Iraqi Shia offer another explanation for the way their
army disintegrated: it was stabbed in the back by the Kurds. Seeking to shift
the blame from himself, Maliki claims that Erbil, the Kurdish capital, “is a
headquarters for ISIS, Baathists, al-Qaida and terrorists.” Many Shia believe
this: it makes them feel that their security forces (nominally 350,000 soldiers
and 650,000 police) failed because they were betrayed and not because they
wouldn't fight. One Iraqi told me he was at an iftar meal during Ramadan “with
a hundred Shia professional people, mostly doctors and engineers and they all
took the stab-in-the-back theory for granted as an explanation for what went
wrong.” The confrontation with the Kurds is important because it makes it
impossible to create a united front against ISIS. The Kurdish leader, Massoud
Barzani, took advantage of the Iraqi army's flight to seize all the
territories, including the city of Kirkuk, which have been in dispute between
Kurds and Arabs since 2003. He now has a 600-mile common frontier with the
Caliphate and is an obvious ally for Baghdad, where Kurds make up part of the
government. By trying to scapegoat the Kurds, Maliki is ensuring that the Shia
will have no allies in their confrontation with ISIS if it resumes its attack
in the direction of Baghdad. ISIS and their Sunni allies have been surprised by
the military weakness of the Baghdad government. They are unlikely to be
satisfied with regional autonomy for Sunni provinces and a larger share of jobs
and oil revenues. Their uprising has turned into a full counter-revolution that
aims to take back power over all of Iraq.
At the moment Baghdad has a phoney war atmosphere like
London or Paris in late 1939 or early 1940, and for similar reasons. People had
feared an imminent battle for the capital after the fall of Mosul, but it
hasn”t happened yet and optimists hope it won”t happen at all. Life is more
uncomfortable than it used to be, with only four hours of electricity on some
days, but at least war hasn”t yet come to the heart of the city. Nevertheless,
some form of military attack, direct or indirect, will probably happen once
ISIS has consolidated its hold on the territory it has just conquered: it sees
its victories as divinely inspired. It believes in killing or expelling Shia
rather than negotiating with them, as it has shown in Mosul. Some Shia leaders
may calculate that the US or Iran will always intervene to save Baghdad, but
both powers are showing reluctance to plunge into the Iraqi quagmire in support
of a dysfunctional government.
 |
| Iraqi Shi'ites volunter to fight ISIS. |
Iraq's Shia leaders haven't grappled with the fact that
their domination over the Iraqi state, brought about by the US overthrow of
Saddam Hussein, is finished, and only a Shia rump is left. It ended because of
their own incompetence and corruption and because the Sunni uprising in Syria
in 2011 destabilised the sectarian balance of power in Iraq. Three years on,
the ISIS-led Sunni victory in Iraq threatens to break the military stalemate in
Syria. Assad has been slowly pushing back against a weakening opposition: in
Damascus and its outskirts, the Qalamoun mountains along the Lebanese border
and Homs, government forces have been advancing slowly and are close to
encircling the large rebel enclave in Aleppo. But Assad's combat troops are
noticeably thin on the ground, need to avoid heavy casualties and only have the
strength to fight on one front at a time. The government's tactic is to
devastate a rebel-held district with artillery fire and barrel bombs dropped
from helicopters, force most of the population to flee, seal off what may now
be a sea of ruins and ultimately force the rebels to surrender. But the arrival
of large numbers of well-armed ISIS fighters fresh from recent successes will
be a new and dangerous challenge for Assad. They overran two important Syrian
army garrisons in the east in late July. A conspiracy theory, much favoured by
the rest of the Syrian opposition and by Western diplomats, that ISIS and Assad
are in league, has been shown to be false.
ISIS may well advance on Aleppo in preference to Baghdad:
it's a softer target and one less likely to provoke international intervention.
This will leave the West and its regional allies – Saudi Arabia, Qatar and
Turkey – with a quandary: their official policy is to get rid of Assad, but
ISIS is now the second strongest military force in Syria; if he falls, it's in
a good position to fill the vacuum. Like the Shia leaders in Baghdad, the US
and its allies have responded to the rise of ISIS by descending into fantasy.
They pretend they are fostering a “third force” of moderate Syrian rebels to
fight both Assad and ISIS, though in private Western diplomats admit this group
doesn”t really exist outside a few beleaguered pockets. Aymenn al-Tamimi
confirms that this Western-backed opposition “is getting weaker and weaker”; he
believes supplying them with more weapons won't make much difference. Jordan,
under pressure from the US and Saudi Arabia, is supposed to be a launching pad
for this risky venture but it's getting cold feet. “Jordan is frightened of
ISIS,” one Jordanian official in Amman said. “Most Jordanians want Assad to win
the war.” He said Jordan is buckling under the strain of coping with vast
numbers of Syrian refugees, “the equivalent of the entire population of Mexico
moving into the US in one year”.
*
The foster parents of ISIS and the other Sunni jihadi
movements in Iraq and Syria are Saudi Arabia, the Gulf monarchies and Turkey.
This doesn”t mean the jihadis didn't have strong indigenous roots, but their
rise was crucially supported by outside Sunni powers. The Saudi and Qatari aid
was primarily financial, usually through private donations, which Richard
Dearlove, the former head of MI6, says were central to the ISIS takeover of
Sunni provinces in northern Iraq: “Such things do not happen spontaneously.” In
a speech in London in July, he said the Saudi policy towards jihadis has two
contradictory motives: fear of jihadis operating within Saudi Arabia, and a
desire to use them against Shia powers abroad. He said the Saudis are “deeply
attracted towards any militancy which can effectively challenge Shiadom.” It”s
unlikely the Sunni community as a whole in Iraq would have lined up behind ISIS
without the support Saudi Arabia gave directly or indirectly to many Sunni
movements. The same is true of Syria, where Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the
former Saudi ambassador to Washington and head of Saudi intelligence from 2012
to February 2014, was doing everything he could to back the jihadi opposition
until his dismissal. Fearful of what they've helped create, the Saudis are now
veering in the other direction, arresting jihadi volunteers rather than turning
a blind eye as they go to Syria and Iraq, but it may be too late. Saudi jihadis
have little love for the House of Saud. On 23 July, ISIS launched an attack on
one of the last Syrian army strongholds in the northern province of Raqqa. It
began with a suicide car-bomb attack; the vehicle was driven by a Saudi called
Khatab al-Najdi who had put pictures on the car windows of three women held in
Saudi prisons, one of whom was Hila al-Kasir, his niece.
Turkey”s role has been different but no less significant than
Saudi Arabia's in aiding ISIS and other jihadi groups. Its most important
action has been to keep open its 510-mile border with Syria. This gave ISIS,
al-Nusra and other opposition groups a safe rear base from which to bring in
men and weapons. The border crossing points have been the most contested places
during the rebels” “civil war within the civil war.” Most foreign jihadis have
crossed Turkey on their way to Syria and Iraq. Precise figures are difficult to
come by, but Morocco”s Interior Ministry said recently that 1,122 Moroccan
jihadists have entered Syria, including 900 who went in 2013, 200 of whom were killed. Iraqi security suspects that Turkish military
intelligence may have been heavily involved in aiding ISIS when it was reconstituting
itself in 2011. Reports from the Turkish border say ISIS is no longer welcome,
but with weapons taken from the Iraqi army and the seizure of Syrian oil and
gasfields, it no longer needs so much outside help.
For America, Britain and the Western powers, the rise of
ISIS and the Caliphate is the ultimate disaster. Whatever they intended by
their invasion of Iraq in 2003 and their efforts to get rid of Assad in Syria
since 2011, it was not to see the creation of a jihadi state spanning northern Iraq
and Syria run by a movement a hundred times bigger and much better organised
than the al-Qaida of Osama bin Laden. The war on terror for which civil
liberties have been curtailed and hundreds of billions of dollars spent has
failed miserably. The belief that ISIS is interested only in “Muslim against
Muslim” struggles is another instance of wishful thinking: ISIS has shown it
will fight anybody who doesn”t adhere to its bigoted, puritanical and violent
variant of Islam. Where ISIS differs from al-Qaida is that it”s a well-run
military organisation that is very careful in choosing its targets and the
optimum moment to attack them.
Many in Baghdad hope the excesses of ISIS – for example,
blowing up mosques it deems shrines, like that of Younis (Jonah) in Mosul –
will alienate the Sunnis. In the long term they may do just that, but opposing
ISIS is very dangerous and, for all its brutality, it has brought victory to a
defeated and persecuted Sunni community. Even those Sunnis in Mosul who don”t
like it are fearful of the return of a vengeful Shia-dominated Iraqi
government. So far Baghdad's response to its defeat has been to bomb Mosul and
Tikrit randomly, leaving local people in no doubt about its indifference to
their welfare or survival. The fear will not change even if Maliki is replaced
by a more conciliatory prime minister. A Sunni in Mosul, writing just after a
missile fired by government forces had exploded in the city, told me: “Maliki”s
forces have already demolished the University of Tikrit. It has become havoc
and rubble like all the city. If Maliki reaches us in Mosul he will kill its
people or turn them into refugees. Pray for us.” Such views are common, and
make it less likely that Sunnis will rise up in opposition to ISIS and its
Caliphate. A new and terrifying state has been born.
———————
21. KURDISH FORCES
STRUGGLE TO COUNTER ISIS
 |
| Kurd peshmerga troops on the front lines against ISIS expect support from U.S. |
Various reports indicated the Islamic State extended its
territorial gains Aug. 7, with peshmerga forces withdrawing from areas
near Mosul including Hamdania, Bashiqa and Qosh. Other reports indicated
that peshmerga forces might have withdrawn from Makhmur as well, though the
Kurdistan Regional Government's Ministry of Peshmerga denies this.
According to unconfirmed reports from Kurdish officials,
U.S. air assets struck Islamic State targets near Sinjar to support embattled
minorities suffering from an ever-growing humanitarian disaster. Senior
Pentagon official John Kirby has since denied these reports, however.
Hamdania, Bashiqa and Qosh had been under Kurdish Regional
Government control since 2003. Peshmerga forces seized the Makhmur oil field
and nearby Bai Hassan oil field July 11, but ongoing skirmishes with Islamic
State forces leave the fate of these fields in question. Western oil companies
have reportedly pulled personnel out of unspecified locations in Kurdish
Regional Government territory.
The fighting in the contested border area between Islamic
State forces and peshmerga forces remains highly fluid, with the peshmerga
taking some towns and the Islamic State taking others. Recent Islamic State
attacks near Kurdish Regional Government territory have been confined to areas
with well-known Sunni militancy and to territories that the peshmerga recently
expanded into but in which they had not yet solidified their presence. In terms
of territory alone, the Islamic State is still superior, though the fighting is
far from over.
The Islamic State's primary advantage is in its mobility.
Offensively, Islamic State militants tend to flow and mass where the Iraqi and
Kurdish security presence is weak. As the peshmerga maneuver to concentrate on
certain threats and counterattack, Islamic State elements flank defending
forces in surprise attacks. The peshmerga's current difficulties therefore are not
losing conventional battles with the Islamic State, but rather being forced to
decline battle and retreat in order to regroup forces to better defend
strategic positions at energy infrastructure and population centers. The
peshmerga can harden and secure important places, but the Islamic State retains
the ability to exploit and perform deep raids through gaps that open.
—————————
22. TURKISH WARPLANES IN IRAQ
By Jason Ditz, Antiwar.com 8-7-17
Turkish media are reporting that F-16s
from Turkey are now looming overhead in northern Iraq, and some reports
suggest they may have carried
out bombing sorties against ISIS, the first stage of a growing
international war in Iraq.
President Obama has announced
his intentions to commence a US air war in northern Iraq, authorizing
airstrikes against ISIS targets in the area, as well as rescue missions to save
Yazidis trapped on a mountaintop.
It won’t just be the US and Turkey, either, as France
has also pledged non-specific “technical support” to the international war
effort to expel ISIS from the region, though at this point French sources say
that sending troops is not being considered.
Iran is already involved in the ISIS war, with troops
participating in the defense of Iraqi territory. Syria has also carried out
some airstrikes against ISIS along what was once the Iraq-Syria border, but now
simply straddles the ISIS caliphate.
It’s an unusual collection of nations to be involved in a
war, and reflects growing regional concern about the growing ISIS nation, and
in particular its recent moves into Iraqi Kurdistan.
Note: Some of the reports this article is based on came out
of Iraqi Kurdistan. Though traditionally reliable sources of information,
Kurdistan is
openly lobbying for US military involvement at this point, and therefore
efforts to “manage” information coming out of the region cannot be ruled out.
—————————
