What the moderate Arab world is

In the second of two pieces examining Iran's rising regional role, Amal Saad-Ghorayeb argues that attempts by "moderate" Arab leaders to whip up popular fear of Iran are US-orchestrated and aimed to keep in-check regional resistance to US-Israeli plans

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Not only does the notion of an Iraq-inspired model of Shia empowerment fail to stand up to scrutiny, but the so-called "Shia crescent" that Iran allegedly seeks to fashion out of it is an equally unsound proposition denoting a sectarian enterprise defined by an exclusively Shia alliance, an all-Shia constituency, and a regional agenda that caters solely to Shia communal interests.

Judged by these criteria, the regional alliance of which Iran and Hizbullah are part, bears little, if any, resemblance to a Shia crescent and much more to a cross-sectarian strategic front, consisting of state and non-state actors, which commands the support of the vast majority of both Shias and Sunnis in the region based on its political and military confrontation to the US and Israel.

This quadripartite alliance is not confined to Shia actors such as Iran and Hizbullah, but also incorporates the Sunni movement Hamas and a predominantly Sunni Syria, led by a secular Baathist state. Although many proponents of the Shia crescent theory insist, nonetheless, on counting Syria as a Shia state on account of its Alawite regime, such an attempt is an overstretch given the highly disputable classification of Alawism as Shiism among Shia clerical circles. In fact, it was not until 1973 that Alawites were deemed to belong to the Shia sect by Imam Musa As-Sadr, who did so as a political favour to President Hafez Al-Assad. The inclusion of Hamas and Syria in this alliance, means that it cannot be considered Shia or even Islamic in character and composition, but more accurately regional.

Yet, this has not prevented Arab leaders from trying to stoke fears of an Iran-led Shia power grab in the region. Besides the now infamous "Shia crescent" spectre raised by Jordan's King Abdullah, Egypt's President Mubarak accused Shias of paying allegiance to Iran before their own nation-states while Saudi officials have also publicly expressed concern over Iran's cultural and political influence in the region. To a large extent, this scare-mongering rhetoric has failed to strike a chord among Arab Sunnis, despite reports to the contrary in Western and some Arab media. Though Sunni-Shia tensions cannot be discounted, they are far less the product of the ascent of a Shia power in the region like Iran, or the looming threat of a Shia crescent, than of concrete crises in Iraq, and to a much narrower extent, Lebanon.

The current Sunni-Shia rift is fundamentally a political one that has been fuelled by the ouster of Sunni leader Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the institution of an American-backed, Shia- dominated state. Sunni rage was further ignited by the Iraqi government's highly incendiary execution of Hussein in December last year. While Iran is not feared as a Shia power as such, its support for the Iraqi government and its alleged links with Shia death squads in Iraq has earned it the reproach of many Sunnis and soured Sunni-Shia relations overall. In a similar vein, the crisis in Lebanon between the Siniora government and the Hizbullah-led opposition, has been interpreted by some Sunnis in the region as a flagrant Shia-instigated power struggle which has derailed Hizbullah from its loftier campaign of resistance to Israel.

Having said all this, the scope and intensity of sectarian tensions should not be exaggerated. Even in Lebanon, where the Sunni-Shia divide is only second to Iraq in its rancour, two-thirds of Sunnis do not support Sunni attacks against Shias in Iraq, while almost three-quarters of them do not view the Shia crescent as a reality, according to the findings of a Beirut Centre for Research and Information (BCRI) poll. In the region as a whole, Sunnis do not appear to be anywhere near as concerned as their leaders about Iran's rise as a regional powerhouse and its attendant sectarian implications. A joint survey conducted by Shibley Telhami and Zogby International in November 2006, revealed that only six per cent of a general sample of respondents from the predominantly Sunni countries of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and UAE, in addition to Lebanon -- states dubbed as "moderate" by the Bush administration -- regarded Iran as the greatest threat to their security, despite the fact that significant majorities in each of these countries viewed Iran's role in Iraq as negative. What these findings imply is that while the vast majority of Sunni Arabs are highly critical of Iran's policy on Iraq, they do not draw generalisations about Iran's Middle East policy on this basis. In other words, they do not see Iraq as the lynchpin of an incipient Shia crescent led by Iran that imperils their security. In fact, any misgivings Sunni Arabs may have about Iran and Hizbullah appear to be outweighed by the perception of these two strategic players as bulwarks against US hegemonic designs and Israeli territorial ambitions in the region.

As reported by the Telhamy-Zogby poll, 80 per cent of respondents see Israel and the US as posing the greatest threats to their security. Such fears have been prompted by the Bush administration's "war on terror," that is defined in part by doctrines of pre-emptive war and regime change that aim to reshape the face of the Middle East region. The US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, with threats to do the same in Syria and Iran, have combined with its orchestration of the Israeli onslaught against Lebanon last summer and the international embargo it organised against the Palestinians, starving them of needed funds, to create an image of the US as not merely a civilisational threat to Arabs and Muslims, but increasingly an existential one.

In this connection, Iran's right to nuclear power is supported by 61 per cent of Arabs, according to the results of the Telhami-Zogby poll, although half of all respondents in the survey suspect that Iran's nuclear programme is intended for weapons manufacture. For the majority of "moderate" Sunni Arabs then, a nuclear- armed Iran is a desirable counterweight to US and Israeli military dominance in the region. This is further evinced by the fact that President Ahmadinejad was ranked the third most popular leader in the Sunni Arab world, as reported by the Telhami-Zogby survey, in light of his renowned defiance of the US and his highly inflammatory anti-Israel rhetoric, which, while not sitting well with all Iranians back home, wins him much kudos in the Arab world.

Support for Iran also owes itself in large part to its longstanding sponsorship of popular Islamist resistance movements in the region -- Hizbullah and Hamas. Although Arab regimes castigated Hizbullah for its abduction of Israeli soldiers in July 2006, with Saudi Arabia condemning Hizbullah's actions as "irresponsible adventurism", popular Arab support for the movement reached its zenith in last summer's war, given the scale of the Israeli offensive and the resistance's ability to defeat the militarily superior Israeli army. As a consequence, the stature of Hizbullah's secretary-general, Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah, was elevated to heroic proportions in much of the Sunni Arab world, earning him the title of the "new Gamal Abdel Nasser" for his showdown with Israel. In the Telhami-Zogby poll, Nasrallah was ranked the most popular leader by Arab respondents, while in a BCRI survey commissioned by Kuwait's Al-Qabas newspaper in December, Nasrallah emerged as Sunni Kuwait's preferred leader, with 40 per cent of Kuwaitis expressing their preference for him over other Sunni leaders.

In keeping with the growing tide of anti-Israel sentiment, Sunni Islamist movements, including Muslim Brotherhood wings in Egypt, Jordan and elsewhere, lent their full support to Hizbullah's war effort, while Al-Qaeda's second in command, Ayman Al Zawahiri, jumped on the anti- Israel bandwagon in support of the resistance. In turn, Arab regimes, which had previously underestimated Hizbullah's endurance and military strength, were compelled to considerably tone down their earlier rhetoric in a desperate bid to salvage what remaining legitimacy they had left with a staunchly pro-resistance Arab public.

What facilitates the appeal of Shia Islamic actors like Iran and Hizbullah to an Arab Sunni audience is their embrace of the core principles of a once predominately Sunni Arabist movement. Arabist slogans such as resistance to occupation, the liberation of Palestine and the struggle against imperialism for regional independence, resonate well with the Sunni Arab street. While Hizbullah's Arab nationality somewhat mitigates its Shia identity, the notion of a Shia-Persian power becoming the standard bearer of Sunni Arab causes, appears more paradoxical. But judging from the level of Sunni Arab support for Hizbullah and Iran, it appears as though the perceived restoration of Arab pride and dignity that these two strategic players have bought about overrides national and sectarian considerations.

In effect, the much promoted "Shia crescent" theory appears to be far less of a political reality, or widespread social concern, than a card played by "moderate" Arab regimes to whip up fears among their Sunni publics within the context of a wider, US-orchestrated campaign to enlist the support of Sunni Arab regimes in demonising and isolating Iran. Since these regimes are unwilling to forgo their alliances with the US, they feel compelled to invent an enemy to counter- balance and deflect attention away from the US- Israeli threat, on which they cannot deliver, with the purpose of winning back some popular legitimacy via an imagined threat called "Shiism".

While the spectre of a Shia-Iranian security threat is one concocted by Arab leaders, the Iran- Hizbullah model is a very real political threat to the popular legitimacy and regional influence of Arab regimes. What the "moderate" regimes of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia fear is not so much the strategic threat posed to them by a nuclear-emboldened Iran, or even a Shia conversion campaign in their Sunni heartland, but rather, the model of political empowerment represented by Iran and Hizbullah. Arab alarmism is therefore not directed at the export of religious or cultural Shiism but, more significantly, at political Shiism as defined by its anti-imperialist, anti-Zionist, pro-resistance identity. That the US supports Saudi efforts to play a more active role in resolving regional disputes, in a last ditch attempt to eclipse Iran's regional soft power, is indicative of the recognition by both parties of the extent of Iran's influence and appeal among Sunni Arabs. And it is precisely because Iran does not act like a Shia power, with distinctly Shia objectives, that makes it such a formidable challenge to the US and its Arab allies. For the US-allied moderate states, the gravest threat to the longevity and stability of their regimes is a strategic regional alliance that cuts across the Sunni-Shia, Persian-Arab and religious-secular divides.

In effect, the new fault lines dividing the region are not between Arab-led Sunnis and Persian-led Shias, nor between democrats and autocrats, a la yesteryear's Bush doctrine. Nor is the now fashionable "extremists" versus "moderates" schema an apt depiction of reality. Today's fault lines centre on ideological and strategic orientations. On one side of the divide lie Arab regimes, such as Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, as well as recently elected governments, all of which have earned their "moderate" epithets by dint of their alliances with the US and their moderation vis-à-vis Israel. Whether authoritarian or democratically elected, these governments are fully buttressed by the US, and are therefore widely accused of ceding their nation's sovereignty and lacking popular legitimacy.

On the other side of the divide sits the strategic front represented by Iran, Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas, formed in response to the US- Israeli axis and thus essentially a reactive alliance. As a defensive front, whose central objective is to actively resist US and Israeli political intervention, security/intelligence infiltration, and military occupation with a combination of cultural, political and military means, the most suitable designation for this coalition of forces is the "resistance and mumanaa front". While only Hamas and Hizbullah are currently engaged in military resistance, the term mumanaa -- derived from the Arabic word "to prevent" and which connotes all forms of non-military resistance, confrontation and rejection -- refers to the politically confrontational stands assumed by Iran and Syria. Though none of the actors that constitute this front actually label themselves as such, they often characterise themselves as being part of a "resistance camp", " mumanaa front", or "circle of steadfastness" that "rejects hegemony and defeat" and seeks "justice" and "dignity".

In the final analysis, a potential wide-scale attack by the US on Iran -- which would most likely involve Israel and engulf Lebanon, the occupied Palestinian territories, and possibly Syria as well -- would only serve to further unify Sunni-Shia ranks, as exemplified by the July 2006 war. In such a scenario, Iran would unleash the Shia Iraqi resistance in full force, thereby eliminating the main source of Sunni antagonism towards it. For Hizbullah, greater participation in strategic decision-making would become of negligible significance in the face of a US-Israeli offensive on the movement and its regional allies. Unfettered by concerns for national unity and internal stability -- which would cease to exist in the midst of a regional war -- Hizbullah would devote itself exclusively to its "resistance priority", thereby regaining any Sunni support it recently lost. Thus, the launching of yet another chapter of the "war on terror" would only serve to radicalise the people of the region beyond the level achieved by the so-called "Iraq effect", while promoting the popular standing of a resistance and mumanaa front in the Arab world and beyond.

* The writer is a leading Lebanese expert on Hizbullah and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment Middle East Centre. She is the author of Hizbullah: Politics and Religion, Pluto Press.

© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved

Al-Ahram Weekly Online

Questioning the Shia crescent

Borders Spell Trouble for Arab-American

April 29, 2007

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

Abe Dabdoub calls the day he was sworn in as an American citizen last year the proudest moment of his life, little suspecting that his new identity would set off a bureaucratic nightmare at the hands of the Department of Homeland Security.

Most of his family members live in Canada, and on each of Mr. Dabdoub’s 14 trips to visit them since last August, on his way back across the Ambassador Bridge into Michigan, the Customs and Border Patrol agents have sent him through a security gantlet, he says.

He has been fingerprinted 14 times, his body searched 9 times, been handcuffed 4 times and isolated in a separate detention room 13 times. On the fourth trip, the border patrol agents started subjecting his wife to similar scrutiny.

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Islamic civilization bulldozed for Israeli takeover of Jerusalem

(Jerusalem) Maisa Abu Ghazaleh

Wednesday, 25 April 2007

Israeli bulldozers demolished parts of the Supreme Islamic Council near Al Aqsa Mosque beginning on Sunday. Located dozens of meters from the western wall near Jaffa Gate in East Jerusalem's Old City, the building is slowly being destroyed.

The Al Aqsa Foundation has reported that the Israelis began bulldozing parts of the southern and western facade and several internal rooms.

Adjacent to the building the Israelis are constructing apartments in the “modern western style, with architectural features in discord with the Arab-Islamic architecture.”

As part of continuing efforts to overtake Jerusalem, the Israelis are building luxury apartments in and around the ancient Islamic building. The apartments are being sold for millions.

During its monitoring of the process, the Al Aqsa Institution found that in addition to external damage, most of the inside the Supreme Islamic Council building had been destroyed, with interior walls knocked down.

Of the Islamic heritage in the Old City, the Al Aqsa Foundation wrote, “They fall under the ferocious war perpetrated by the Israeli institutions in the frantic pursuit to Judaize Jerusalem and obliterate all Arab and Islamic features, ignoring history and the Arab and Islamic civilization.”

The Israelis seized the Palestinian building under its own “absentee property” law after seeking to overtake it for years. As part of the project to engulf the western area of Jerusalem's Old City overlooking Al Aqsa Mosque, the Israelis sold the building to an American Jew to convert it into luxury apartments.

The Myth Of Jewish Refugees From Arab Land

April 23, 2007

By Dr. Elias Akleh


Victimizing the Jews has been the successful old political trick Zionists have been using to gain international political sympathy for the Israeli cause, and to justify all aggression and terror the Israeli army perpetrates on Palestinians and on the neighboring Arab countries. Whenever the international views turn against Israel, due to its aggression, a new Jewish victimizing story pops up.

One such late story I happened to come across on page 106 of March 19th. 2007 issue of U.S. News Magazine, was titled “You deserve a factual look at… The Forgotten Refugees. Why does nobody care about the Jewish refugees from Arab lands?” The article was published as an advertisement by FLAME (Facts and Logic About the Middle East), who claims to “publish the truth about Israel and the Middle East conflict in advertisements and letters to editors nationwide.”

The advertisement claims that there exist what it called Jewish refugees from Arab countries, and makes some comparison between these Jewish refugees and Arab refugees in an attempt to point to alleged international injustice when the UN spends “... many billions of dollars” on the Arab refugees while forgetting the Jewish refugees. The advertisement tries to avoid calling the Arab refugees by their true name: Palestinian refugees, in an attempt to deny any moral and legal responsibility of Zionist Israel in violating Palestinians’ human rights and creating Palestinian refugee problem.

The advertisement attempts to refute “A myth that Jews had an easy life in Muslim/Arab countries”. It claims that Jews under Islam were treated worse than second class citizens “governed by a system of discrimination intended to reduce Jews … to conditions of humiliation, segregation and violence”.

The truth is that Jews were treated, under Islam in the Arab World, better than any other place they had lived in the whole world at the time. They were treated like any other ethnic groups, e.g. Christians, with full citizenship that included freedom and rights like the rest of the citizens. They were allowed to live and worship freely in Jerusalem, where they were barred entrance by ancient Romans and European Christian Crusaders. When European Jews faced persecution since the start of Crusaders campaigns, they did not find any safe haven for themselves except in Islamic and Arab countries in North Africa and in the Middle East. Many of those Jews fought along side Muslim and Christian Arabs against the Crusaders, who called for the slaughter of every Jew for crucifying Jesus. In his book “Bitter Harvest” Palestinian scholar Sami Hadawi described this Jewish haven as follows:

“During the Middle Ages, North Africa and the Arab Middle East became places of refuge and a haven for the persecuted Jews of Spain and elsewhere… In the Holy Land they lived together in harmony, a harmony only disrupted when the Zionists began to claim that Palestine was the ‘rightful’ possession of the ‘Jewish people’ to the exclusion of its Moslem and Christian inhabitants”

The Jewish writer Dan Peretz described this situation in his book “The Arab Israeli Dispute” as follows: “Most Jews in Palestine belonged to old Yishuv, or community, that had settled there more for religious than for political reasons. There was little of any conflict between them and the Arab population. Tension began after first Zionist settlers arrived in the 1880’s”

Although given freedom like any other citizens a group of the Jews, believing themselves to be the elite God’s chosen people, who should not mix and mingle with the others, “Goyims”, as been taught by their prophets, had isolated themselves into ghettos the same way they had lived throughout Europe. Those, who had the courage to venture out of the ghettos, had flourished and reached high employment positions in Arabic governments and societies. Many had become the financial and trade centers of the Arab World. This fact contradicts the advertisement claims that Jews “… were excluded from society, from government, and from most professions ... They were barely tolerated and often… were victimized by vicious violence” Some extremist fundamentalist Jews, who had their noses up in the sky believing themselves to be the chosen people and better than all other nations, had invited rejection and intolerance from all nations, not just from Arabs, to such snobby racist attitudes.

The advertisement goes on further to claim that Jews in the Arab World were subjected to systematic violence and persecution after the establishment of Israel in 1948 and after Six Days War in 1967. “When Israel declared its statehood in 1948, programs broke out across the entire Arab/Muslim world. Thousands died in this violence… The vast majority of those Jews fled from where they had lived for centuries. They had to leave everything behind. Most of those who were able to escape found their way to the just-created state of Israel”

The programs, the advertisement does not clarify, were terrorist acts perpetrated by Zionists against Jewish communities in the Arab World, as well as throughout European countries to coerce the Jews to immigrate to Palestine to establish the alleged safe haven; Israel, on usurped Palestinian land. Zionist zealots and some mercenaries had fire-bombed Jewish synagogues and shops, damaged Jewish cemeteries, and painted hate graffiti to create anti-Jewish climate. Zionist offer of free transportation, free housing, and free salaries had encouraged a lot of Jews to surrender their fate to the Zionist plan. Those, who immigrated, had plenty of time to sell their properties before leaving.

The Arabs, contrary to the claims, did not subject their long-time neighboring Jews to violence since they distinguished between a Jew and a Zionist. Yet those Jews, who were disillusioned by Zionism and became “enemy combatants” and spies within the Arab World, had to be dealt with as such.

The advertisement brags about “Israel received every one of those Jewish refugees from Arab countries with brotherly open arms; it housed, fed and quickly integrated them into Israeli society”. It is true that Zionist Israel had received immigrant Jews, paid all expenses including transportation, rent, and monthly salaries until they were integrated in Israeli society. Yet this reception was not out of brotherly love. Those immigrant Jews were, deliberately, drowned into financial debt so that they could not leave Israel, after discovering the trap set for them, without repaying all the expenses plus interests. Young Jewish immigrants, and every new generation of their offsprings, have been conscripted into the Israeli terrorist army to kill and to be killed for the interests of rich pro-Zionist corporations of the West.

The advertisement repeats the old myth, that had been told and refuted so many times, that Palestinians had fled from Palestine after the Israeli occupation “... following the strident invocations of their leaders …so as to make room for invading Arab armies”, who according the advertisement will kill all the Jews so that Palestinians “could return to reclaim their properties and that of the Jews, all of whom would have been killed ...” by Arab armies.

Palestinians, like any other people, would never leave their homes voluntarily, and Arab leaders had never invoked them to leave. Sami Hadawi refuted this claim in his book “Bitter Harvest” stating the fact that “British Broadcasting Corporation monitored all Middle Eastern broadcasts throughout 1948. The records, and companion ones by a US monitoring unit, can be seen at the British Museum. There was not a single order or appeal, or suggestion about evacuation from Palestine from any Arab radio station, inside or outside Palestine in 1948. There is a repeated monitored record of Arab appeals, even flat orders, to the civilians of Palestine to stay put”.

This myth aims to erase guilt and moral responsibilities off Jewish shoulders for perpetrating the cruelest and ugliest massacres against mostly unarmed Palestinian villagers, and parading their women and children in the streets of Jerusalem to terrorize the rest of the Palestinians into fleeing out of their villages for their lives and for their honor when Zionist terror organizations, such as Irgun and Hagana, spread the rumors of their plans to attack Palestinian villages. Jewish historian Ilan Pappe, in his book “The Link”, mentions this fact: “The Israeli forces expelled the Palestinians from every village and town they occupied. In some cases, this expulsion was accompanied by massacres of civilians as was the case in Lydda, Ramleh, Dawimiyya, Sa’sa, Ein Zietun and other places. Expulsion also accompanied by rape, looting and confiscation”.

During wars people panic and flee their homes searching for safety. Yet they have always been able to return to their homes when danger subsides. Military conquest does not abolish private rights to property, nor does it entitle the victor to confiscate properties of civilian population. Even if the claims were true that Palestinians left their homes on the commands of their leaders, they still have the right to return to their homes and properties that had been stolen by Zionist immigrants. This right is protected by international law as noted by the noted Jewish writer and thinker Professor Erich Fromm “In international law, the principle holds true that no citizen loses his property or his right of citizenship; and the citizenship right is de facto a right to which the Arabs in Israel have much more legitimacy than the Jews”.
Israel’s rejection of Palestinians’ right of return has been on the top of their political agenda, which led them to break all UN resolutions regarding this matter, break all international laws, violate Palestinians’ human rights, and reject all Arab peace initiatives.

The advertisement continues with its allegations “… the Arab countries resolutely refused to accept Arab refugees into their societies. They confined them into so-called refugee camps …to keep them as a festering sore and to make solution of the Arab/Israel conflict impossible. These refugees, whose number has by now miraculously increased from their original 650 thousands to 5 millions, are seething with hatred toward Israel, and provide the cadres for terrorists and suicide bombers”

The Arab countries, mainly Jordan, Egypt, and Lebanon, had received the majority of Palestinian refugees, who became a burden on the already impoverished economy of these countries, who, unlike Israel, were not receiving three billions of Dollars annually from the US. The majority of these refugees (now numbers about 7.5 million and not only 5 million) want to go back to their own homeland and their homes that were illegally occupied by terrorist Israelis. They fight to regain what is rightfully theirs, unlike the terrorist Israeli army, who fight to usurp lands of other people.

As for the solution of the Arab/Israeli conflict, the Arabs had offered Israel many peaceful solutions, yet Israelis categorically rejected them because without the conflict they could not keep usurping more lands to build “Greater Israel”. The latest Arab peace initiative of last month, March 2007, offered Israel to keep 78% of Palestine for permanent peace and normalization of diplomatic relationships with all Arab countries. Yet Israel, as usual, rejected this offer.

The advertisement acknowledges that “since 1947 there have been over 100 UN resolutions concerning Palestinian refugees, but there has not been one single resolution addressing the horrible injustice done to the nearly one million Jewish refugees from the Arab states”

This paragraph refutes the advertisement’s claim by showing that the international community has recognized and acknowledged the existence of a genuine Palestinian refugee problem, and the non existence of the false called-for Jewish refugees from Arab countries. That is why “a special branch of the United Nation (UNRWA) exists for the maintenance of those refugees” (created by Israelis) as the article notices. Israel, backed by successive American administrations, had ignored those UN resolutions that aimed to solve the Palestinian refugees’ problem, rather than spending billion of Dollars “contributed by the US” as the advertisement objects. It, also, totally ignores the attention the world had focused on the issue of the Holocaust, the compensation in hundreds of billions of Dollars to Israeli Jews, making even the study of the Holocaust an international crime, and sentencing, fining and imprisoning all the renowned historians, who questioned some of its details.

The advertisement criticizes the Arab’s justifiable right to ask for compensations, and the Palestinian refugees’ legitimate right to return to their homeland, “what has been Israel for almost 60 years”, where Palestinian tribes had lived for over than three thousand years. It concludes by stating “But if there is to be any compensation, those forgotten Jewish refugees are certainly entitled to such compensation as much as the Arab refugees. Anything else would be an outrage and a great injustice”

The advertisement neglected to mention the most important point in this refugee issue, namely that the Palestinian refugees were forcefully ejected from their homes according to the Zionist ideology that is based on the idea of “people substitution”; the expulsion ‘transfer’ of Palestinians out of Palestine, and the implanting of Jews in their place. The idiom of “Jewish state is unthinkable without compulsory transfer of the Arabs to the Arab states” had been adopted since the first Zionist Congress in Basle in 1897, and had been repeated by notorious Zionist leaders such as British Zionist Israel Zangwill, Haim Weisman, Theodor Herzl, Nahman Syrkin (founder of Social Zionism), Selig Soskin (director of Jewish National Fund), and many others.

On the other hand the so-called Jewish refugees (Zionist Jews) from Arab countries had plenty of time to plan their leave and to liquidate all their properties, and to be fed, resettled and compensated directly by American tax money, where the annual three billion Dollars financial aid pays almost $3,000.00 monthly for every Israeli, not mentioning all the economic aid and tons and tons of military equipment that are given freely to the terrorist Israeli army to inflict terror on Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, Iraqis and Iranians.

Finally the advertisement gives a comparison between bogus numbers of the Jews in some Arab countries before and after 1948; countries where Zionists had successfully transferred their Jewish population to occupied Palestine (Israel). It ignores to mention the large number of Jews, who are still living, flourishingly, in Northern African Muslim Arab countries, in Turkey, and even in Iran (the so-called extremist Islamic and terrorist supporting country), that houses the largest Jewish population, 25,000 of them, in the Middle East outside Israel, and are represented by a Jewish MP, Maurice Mohtamed.

The publishing organization (FLAME) of this so-called “factual look”, whose claimed purpose is the research, publication of facts, and exposing false propaganda about the Middle East, seems to do the exact opposite; it distorts the facts and spreads false propaganda instead.

The simple truth of the Arab/Israeli conflict had been reflected by Indian leader and peace teacher Mahatma Ghandi when he stated: “Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English and France belongs to the French”

Israel's Strategic Threat

Related
Knesset committee to consider revoking MK Bishara's benefits
Statement of Condemnation of the Israeli Campaign against The Palestinian Intellectual and National Figure Azmi Bishara
Hands off Azmi! The Dangerous Politics of "A State for All Its Citizens"
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by NEVE GORDON

[posted online on April 17, 2007]

In early April the rumors about Dr. Azmi Bishara, the most famous Arab Knesset member, began circulating on the Internet: Bishara is afraid to return to Israel; Bishara intends to resign from the Knesset; the Israeli Security Agency has decided to accuse Bishara of treason and espionage. The gag order preventing the publication of any information about Bishara's actions made the rumors all the more intriguing. What did Bishara, in fact, do?

Bishara, a Christian Palestinian citizen of Israel from Nazareth, established the National Democratic Assembly known as Balad in 1995 and became a Knesset member in 1996. Since then he has been interrogated several times by the Israeli Security Agency, and has been charged and found not guilty twice: once for organizing visits to Syria for Israeli Arabs who wished to visit family members and a second time for speeches he gave in Syria and Israel praising Hezbollah's resistance in southern Lebanon and Palestinian opposition in the occupied territories. His visit to Beirut following last year's Lebanon war, alongside his claim that Israel was committing war crimes in Lebanon and carrying out genocide against Shiite Muslims, was, for many Israelis, yet another indication that Bishara has been using his parliamentary immunity to harm Israel. Many Jewish members of the Knesset have argued for years that Bishara is a fifth column and that Israeli democracy has a right and indeed an obligation to defend itself against the Bishara threat.

But what, one might ask, are Bishara's new offenses? It is, after all, highly unlikely that he is a spy on the payroll of a foreign entity. And while one may not like his uncompromising opposition to Israeli and American regional policies and his admiration for Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's militancy and strategic intelligence, expressing such views does not in and of itself jeopardize Israel's existence. Bishara, it seems, is a threat not because of any particular action or statement but because he has become a symbol of a new kind of opposition within Israel.

During the past few months, political activists and members of the Palestinian intellectual elite within Israel, all of whom are Israeli citizens, have drafted four documents that articulate how they conceive the state's future. The underlying assumption of all of these documents is that as long as Israel is defined as a Jewish state, its laws will always fall short of basic democratic principles and, more particularly, the right of all its citizens to full equality.

The authors of the document called "The Democratic Constitution" maintain that the Arab citizens of Israel should be considered a "homeland minority" with national rights. The idea is to transform Israel into a bilingual and multicultural democracy for all its citizens, rather than a Jewish democracy, which they argue is an oxymoron. Such transformation would inevitably mean changing the laws of citizenship and immigration so that citizenship would no longer be granted automatically to any Jew wishing to immigrate but rather to anyone born within Israel's territory or whose parent or spouse is a citizen, or to people persecuted due to their political beliefs.

Not long after the documents' publication, Israel's second-largest newspaper, Ma'ariv, reported a meeting between the head of the security agency, Yuval Diskin, and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. During the meeting Diskin warned Olmert that the radicalization of Israel's Arab citizens constitutes a "strategic threat to the state's existence." Diskin added that "the proliferation of the visionary documents published by the different Arab elites in Israel is particularly worrisome, [since] the documents are united by their conception of Israel as a state for all its citizens and not a Jewish state." The head of the security services concluded that "the separatist and subversive patterns represented by the elites might engender a new direction and mobilize the masses."

Balad sent a letter protesting Diskin's assertions, arguing that legitimate political activity whose aim is to change the state's character should not be considered subversive or dangerous. According to Ha'aretz, the Israeli Security Agency replied that it "would foil the activity of anyone seeking to harm Israel's Jewish or democratic character, even if that activity was carried out by legal means."

Diskin's words are telling. He admits not only that anyone who strives to alter the Jewish character of the state is considered an enemy and will be treated as such but that the secret service has no respect for democratic practices and procedures. It is precisely within the context of the four historic documents that one should understand the recent accusations against Bishara. More than anything else, Bishara constitutes a symbolic threat, since he personifies the recent demand of the Palestinian elite to transform Israel from a Jewish democracy to a democracy for all its citizens.

Syria, Elliot Abrams, and the Contras All Over Again

POLITICS:
Elliott Abrams and Déjà Vu All Over Again
Analysis by Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Apr 9 (IPS) - It has an all too familiar ring to it.

A crisis area -- in this case, the Middle East -- finds itself in desperate need of a peace process capable of tamping down the forces of violence and destabilisation which the United States itself has played a central role in unleashing.

Regional efforts at diplomacy -- in this case, led by Saudi Arabia -- gain some momentum but are frustrated by die-hard hawks in a U.S. administration. While increasingly on the defensive both at home and abroad, they are determined to carry through their strategy of isolating and destabilising a hostile target -- in this case, Syria -- despite its oft-repeated eagerness to engage Washington and its regional allies.

Sensing an increasingly dangerous impasse, the Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives -- in this case, Nancy Pelosi, backed by a growing bipartisan consensus that the administration's intransigeance will further reduce already-waning U.S. influence in the region -- tries to encourage regional peace efforts by engaging the target directly.

But, worried that her quest might actually gain momentum, administration hawks -- in this case, led by Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams and Vice President Dick Cheney -- accuse the speaker of undermining the president and, working through obliging editorial writers at the Washington Post, among other sympathetic media, including, of course, the Wall Street Journal, attack her for "substitut(ing) her own foreign policy for that of a sitting Republican president."

If that scenario sounds familiar, your foreign policy memory dates back at least to 1987, when, despite intensified regional peace-making efforts for which Costa Rican President Oscar Arias won that year's Nobel Peace Prize, the Ronald Reagan administration was persisting in its efforts to isolate and overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

It was then-House Speaker Jim Wright who, with the quiet encouragement of Republican realists, notably Reagan's White House chief of staff, Howard Baker, Secretary of State George Shultz and his special Central America envoy, Philip Habib, sought to promote Arias' plan.

Like today's Republican realists on the Iraq Study Group (ISG), who have urged the Bush administration to engage rather than continue to isolate Syria, they understood that popular and Congressional support for a "regime change" policy in Nicaragua was not sustainable and Washington should seek a regional settlement on the most favourable terms available.

But Abrams, then assistant secretary of state for Inter-American Affairs, worked assiduously with fellow hard-liners in the White House and the Pentagon -- just as he works today with Cheney's office -- to torpedo both the Arias plan and Wright's efforts to advance it throughout the latter half of 1987.

As Abrams' assistant at the time, the future neo-conservative heavy thinker, Robert Kagan, put it later, "Arias, more than any other Latin leader single-handedly undid U.S. policy in Nicaragua." And when he won the Nobel Prize, "all us of who thought it was important to get aid for the contras reacted with disgust, unbridled disgust."

As part of their strategy, hard-liners led by Abrams rejected appeals by Nicaragua for high-level talks, thus forcing Habib to resign by late summer and insisting -- as they now do with Syria -- that direct negotiations would serve only to legitimate Sandinistas and demoralise the contras.

In November 1987, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega came to Washington with a proposal for a ceasefire with the contras. After the administration refused to receive him, Wright, seeing an opportunity to jump-start a stalled peace process, attended a meeting at the Vatican Embassy here at which Ortega asked his main domestic foe, Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo, to mediate between the Sandinista government and the contras.

Wright's participation in the talks was seized by Abrams as the launching pad for a public -- if barely concealed -- attack on the speaker. Interviewed by the Post under the guise of an unnamed "senior administration official," Abrams charged Wright with engaging in "guerrilla theater" and "an unbelievable melodrama" that had dealt a "serious setback" to the administration's policy.

"This was not forward movement; this was screwing up the process," the "senior official" complained to the Post which, as in its criticism Friday of Pelosi's meeting with Assad, obligingly followed up with its own editorial, entitled "What is Jim Wright Doing?", charging the speaker with having acted "as though the actual conduct of diplomacy in this delicate passage were his responsibility."

The Journal's neo-conservative editorial writers swiftly joined in, accusing Wright of a "compulsion for running off-the-shelf foreign-policy operations," just as last week they charged Pelosi and Democrats of seeking "to conduct their own independent diplomacy".

Within just a few months of his meeting with Ortega, however, the Democratic-led Congress rejected Reagan's request to fund the contras, a step which Abrams incorrectly predicted at the time would result in "the dissolution of Central America".

According to Roy Gutman's aptly named 1988 book about Reagan's Central America policy, "Banana Diplomacy", Washington soon found itself "at the margins of the region's diplomacy".

Unlike his high-public profile as assistant secretary 20 years ago, Abrams, who now presides over Middle East policy at the National Security Council, is today far more discreet, no doubt in part because his conviction in 1991 for lying to Congress about his role in the Iran-contra scandal has made him an easy target for Democrats.

"He's very careful about not leaving fingerprints," one State Department official told IPS earlier this year.

But there is little doubt among Middle East analysts here that Abrams is playing a lead role in White House efforts to discredit Pelosi for meeting with Assad, just as he did with Wright for meeting Ortega in 1987.

And just as he worked with Reagan hard-liners to undermine the Arias Plan 20 years ago, so he appears to be doing what he can to undermine recent efforts by Saudi King Abdullah to initiate an Arab-Israeli peace process and, for that matter, by Republican realists, and even Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, to push it forward.

Why is Arab criticism always labeled as conspiracy to destroy Israel?

Editor's note: I am moving to post at the secondary blog(also see new articles below).

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Fifth column forever?

Abir Kopty

Published: 04.07.07

The Arab-Israeli public recently marked "Land Day." This event originated in 1976, when thousands went on strike and protested the government's intention to expropriate land in northern Israel in order to establish Jewish communities. Six Arab citizens were killed during these protests, and since that time the Palestinian people and broad sections of the Arab people have been marking "Land Day" on March 30 every year as a symbol of the struggle against discrimination and aspiration for peace and equality. In the psyche of the majority of the Jewish public, "Land Day" has been etched as a baseless, motiveless emotional storm. Superficial news stories on television and in the press, several photos from the march, a paragraph or two, and perhaps another sound bite all serve to reinforce the impression that Arab citizens are disconnecting from the State. Mostly there is no mention of the circumstances that gave rise to the event or their importance in the Arab narrative. The second public platform used by the Jewish public to view the Arab public is the many declarations of politicians who present the Arabs as an existential threat. For example, Avigdor Lieberman's declaration that the Supreme Arab-Israeli Monitoring Committees "supports Israel's destruction." This year, "Land Day" was marked against the backdrop of several documents that present harsh criticism and concrete proposals on a pact regarding relations between the State and its Arab citizens. These documents have been perceived to reflect a threat. For example, the Shin Bet security service characterized Arabs in Israel as a "strategic threat." Rhetoric of 'extermination' Whenever Arabs speak up and voice criticism that does not flatter Israel's policies, this criticism is labeled as an attempt to destroy and exterminate. Every time the question of the relationship between the State and its Arabs citizens is on the political and media agenda in Israel, many opinion leaders choose to consistently make use of rhetoric of "extermination." This use is not casual: It is connected to the most painful experience in the Jewish collective memory and arouses difficult connotations. The rhetoric and myth regarding the "threat" are used to reject any criticism or proposal for change. This even shapes to a large extent the perception of the Arab public being an "enemy" and apparently legitimizes the continuation of hostile policies towards it instead of reaching a mutual understanding. However, the constitutional proposal we raised, just like other documents published recently, did not only feature criticism but also alternatives that take Jewish citizens into consideration. The documents attempted to propose arrangements that would provide equality for all, both Jews and Arabs. The elimination and "extermination" of Jews is not what the offers care most about, but rather, possible ways for creating a common future. Moreover, those who drafted the documents constantly emphasize that we are talking about a basis for dialogue, rather than "red lines." The exclusion of Arabs from the media and other public circles in Israel limits the possibility of the others to be exposed to new information about Arabs and prevents them from finding out, in depth, what Arabs really think. Thus, without direct contacts and with the absence of fair reporting, the Jewish public is left with stereotypes and a one-dimensional picture that are very difficult to disprove. And this process is like the "chicken or the egg" debate – the Arab public, which is increasingly marginalized, is undergoing natural processes of alienation from its country of residence. The obstacles are only growing among both sides. In order to break through them we need work that would replace the rhetoric of "extermination" by "change" and "threat" by "cooperation."

Arab leaders air public relations campaign against Shin Bet

Last update - 07:52 06/04/2007

By Yoav Stern, Haaretz Correspondent

Arab leaders are expected to announce on Friday an organized public relations campaign against the Shin Bet security service. Opposition within the Arab sector to Shin Bet policy arose after the security service declared that it intends to disrupt the activities of any groups that seek to change the Jewish or democratic character of Israel, even if they use democratic means.

The campaign will be announced at a conference of the Adalah Center for Arab Minority Rights in Shfaram Friday afternoon.

Arab source said that during the meeting, delegates would discuss the relationship of the Arab public to the Shin Bet and elucidate ways of dealing with the Shin Bet's treatment of the Arab sector.

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All figures involved in drafting the four documents relating to the future of the Arab sector in Israel have been invited to participate in the summit.

This includes those who drafted Musawa organization's Ten Points, Adalah's Democratic Constitution, the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee's Future Vision, and the yet-unpublished Haifa Treaty. Also invited were Knesset members from all Arab political parties.

Adalah has a criminal probe into the Shin Bet's activity, accusing the security service of exceeding its authority and causing incitement against the Arab public.

The Association of Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) filed a petition to Attorney General Menachem Mazuz last month to order the Shin Bet to stop trying to block what the group called legitimate political activity.

ACRI's petition follows a letter the Shin Bet sent the previous week to the predominantly Arab Balad party's journal, Fasal al-Makal, warning that it would foil the activity of anyone seeking to harm Israel's Jewish or democratic character, even if that activity was carried out by legal means.

The letter came in response to a complaint filed by Fasal al-Makal to the Prime Minister's Office about a report in Maariv a few days earlier, in which Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin was quoted calling what was happening among Israeli Arabs as a "strategic threat." The issue was raised following the recent drafting of four documents in the Arab community calling for a revision of Israel's character,

Israelis Uprooting 1,000 Palestinians from Jerusalem

Related

Freedom of movement disrupted further by closure of East Jerusalem street

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Thursday, April 5, 2007

Zionists Uprooting 1,000 Palestinians from Jerusalem(Al-Quds)

The Zionist enemy is trying to complete the Judaization of Al-Quds by forcing out its owners through stealing more Palestinian Arab property…

Israel repeats its old claims:
Uprooting 1,000 Palestinians from Jerusalem (Al-Quds)
By Amjad Samhan (Ramallah)
April 3rd 2007
Translated By: Adib S. Kawar

One hundred Palestinian Arab families from Assalam (Peace), on the outskirts of occupied Al-Quds, received evacuation orders, and were “given” 14 days to evacuate their homes. The occupation authority claimed that the houses are built on land owned by the heirs of a dead Jewish woman called Rachel Filibine.

Eyewitnesses said that tens of policemen, members of what is known as border guards, officers and intelligence men, stormed into the residents’ apartments and handed them evacuation orders signed by the lawyer of the heirs of Rachel, which said that they have evidence that 80% of the land on which buildings are built on is owned by the heirs… If the orders of evacuation are executed, about a thousand Palestinian Arabs shall be made homeless.

It is not known what will be the fate of the Arab buildings that the order demands to be evacuated, but the officer in charge of the Al-Quds file, Muhammad Abed Rabo, pointed out that the case could be solved by changing the owners to tenants, which is not likely to be allowed, because the aim of the attack is to uproot the Arabs of Al-Quds fully from their capital. The second possibility is to immediately uproot the Jerusalemite Arabs, and demolish their buildings, which will then be replaced by a Zionist colony, “especially since the occupation authorities and extremist religious Zionist groups support the second choice. The presence of the Arab homes stands in the way of completing the connection of the colonies surrounding Al-Quds, namely Bazjat, Zaif, Maali Adomin, the French Hill and Nave Yacoub to the city.”

Abed Rabo said, “This plan aims at completing the big project known as ‘Greater Jewish Jerusalem’, which means, to complete the Judaization of Al-Quds, and isolate its Arabs, and strengthen the control of it, if not the suffocation Arab Jerusalemites”. He added that “80% of the project has already been fulfilled.”

One of the Palestinian Arab inhabitants that received an evacuation order, Nidal Aiash said, “The moment I received the evacuation order, I almost wept… Where shall I go with my family, I am ready to pay any amount they ask for; just so that I don’t leave this place… my home and city.”

Abu Aiash, a father of two said, “I paid US $60,000 to buy this apartment, and I never thought that everything I saved in my life is going to be lost for nothing, just like this… We have a lawyer who will follow our just case.” He pointed out that the evacuation orders were not accompanied by a court order, but to have all of these forces that accompanied the Zionist lawyer proves that the matter is almost certainly ‘precooked’.”

Another tenant, Mahmoud Sarandah, told Assafir newspaper that he also received a copy of the order and said, “What proves my ownership of the land is that I bought it from well known people. We shall raise a court case to prove that we own the land, and if they have anything to prove the contrary let them present it before the court.”

The owner of the project, Abdullah Azziz Al-Qam, told Assafir that he has what proves his ownership of the land, which he also purchased from well known people. We shall raise a case to the court to prove what we say, and if they have anything to prove the contrary, they are welcome to do so. I believe that they shall not be able to evacuate us from our homes, all they aim at is to put pressure on us, to terrorize and disturb us. He added, “I am carrying out big building projects in Al-Quds for nationalistic purposes, I sell the apartments for symbolic prices for the purpose of keeping my people from leaving their Al-Quds.”

It ought to be pointed out that just before this new Zionist project was declared, the occupation authorities confiscated Palestinian Arab owned homes in occupied Al-Quds, claiming that the land on which they are built is owned by “Israelis”. In Sheikh Jarrah, in occupied Al-Quds, the owners were changed to renters, when a colonizing group “proved” that the land is government owned, as if any such occupation authority sits and waits for somebody to prove its ownership of a certain property!!!

http://www.assafir.com/

Translated from Arabic by Adib S Kawar and revised by Mary Rizzo for Tlaxcala

# posted by thecutter @ 09:43

Iowa voters take Obama to task

Published: 02/04/2007

By James Zogby, Special to Gulf News

After delivering two solidly pro-Israel speeches before American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) audiences (one in Illinois, and the other in Washington) Senator Barack Obama ran into a troublesome question a few weeks ago, while campaigning in Iowa.

In many ways, it was a classic Iowa moment - the kind that makes me glad that Iowa still stands alone as the first caucus state in the presidential election cycle.

The question to Senator Obama came from an Iowa peace activist. It was thoughtful and quite direct, "On my trip to Israel/Palestine I found a very different reality on the ground for Christians and Muslims living in the West Bank than the Israel experience you shared with AIPAC last Friday. As president, how would you address the human rights crisis that Palestinian Christians and Muslims must bear?"

Obama's answer was also direct and included the following observations. After restating his belief in the centrality of the US-Israel strategic relationship, the senator went on to agree, in part, with the questioner saying "no one is suffering more than the Palestinian people".

He continued by suggesting that "if we could get some movement among the Palestinian leadership, what I'd like to see is a loosening up of some of the restrictions on providing aid directly to the Palestinian people". He then made reference to "heavy stones Israel must carry if there is to be progress for its peace", noting specifically the settlement issue.

Other than his expression of some real concern of the suffering of the Palestinians, Obama's observations were, in fact, nothing out of the ordinary and consistent with US policy. But the remark about Palestinian suffering became a national news story, prompting some hard-line supporters of Israel to demand a clarification. This was, I believe, an effort to teach a lesson to the junior senator from Illinois - much as had been done in 2004 when Howard Dean called for a more balanced US role in peacekeeping and when John Kerry criticised Israel's West Bank wall. The intent was to shut off debate by making it clear that this issue was off limits.

The story, however, did not end here, because this is Iowa and Iowans take their politics seriously. While some complain that Iowa or New Hampshire, (the first primary state) are not representative of the rest of the nation, in fact, they are. Though most of Iowa's ethnic, racial and interest groups are small, they take their responsibilities seriously, knowing that they will get the chance to raise the issues and ask the questions that the rest of America needs to have answered.

And on most topics, Iowans have done their homework and can be quite sophisticated, including matters involving the Middle East.

Open letter

In fact, for two decades, Iowa's Democrats have overwhelmingly passed resolutions at their state conventions supporting a more balanced and compassionate US policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

And so, it is not surprising that this year, a group of Iowans responded to the effort to intimidate Senator Obama with an open letter signed by activists across the state.

The letter, urging the senator to stand his ground, read, in part: "We have noted with concern the harshness of criticism you have received.... Your campaign has been built around a new brand of politics that offers hope to Americans eager for courageous, moral leadership. We thank you for extending this approach to a conflict which has historically suffered from a lack of American vision, engagement, and leadership. As Iowans, we have long advocated a foreign policy that reflects America's values and commitment to justice and peace. Your compassion and support for the establishment of a Palestinian state and the security of Israel are consistent with the positions taken by Iowa citizens for many years."

It is important that this group of Iowans responded as they did because it would have been tragic if those debate had been silenced and there had been no thoughtful discussion of the US peace-making role in the Arab-Israeli conflict during this presidential contest.

Given the deep frustration with US policy that exists throughout the Middle East and given the clear need that both Israelis and Palestinians have in US leadership providing a steady and balanced hand in peacemaking efforts, it is vital that this issue be discussed and candidates and voters be able to air their views.

As I have noted before, since the end of the Vietnam War, every US president has had to expend significant political capital on Arab-Israeli peacemaking (even George W. Bush, after ignoring this issue for years, now realises how important this question is to the US role in the broader Middle East). It is, therefore, imperative that those who seek to lead the United States in the next four years be asked to engage in an open conversation with the American people about how they intend to conduct Middle East policy.

Finally, it is worth noting, as our polling has demonstrated, that despite the hardline and one-sided positions taken by some, most Americans, including most American Jews and Arab Americans, support a US policy that recognises the needs of both Israelis and Palestinians and works for a balanced resolution to their conflict.

My thanks, therefore, goes to Iowa's peace activists for challenging the candidates to talk about the Middle East and for sending a clear message that the openness to engage in a respectful conversation about the Middle East is what is so desperately needed in this presidential race.

Dr. James Zogby is President of the Arab American Institute and Senior Advisor at Zogby International.

Prince Hassan: Neocons and Israel Plan “New 100 Years of War” in the Middle East

Monday March 26th 2007, 6:46 pm

Do a Google News search on “Prince Hassan Bin Tallal” or “Talal” and the results will point to the Daily Star of Lebanon and Today’s Zaman out of Turkey, but not one result over at the New York Times, ABC News, CNN, Fox, et al. Of course, this is hardly surprising, because you’re not supposed to know what Prince Hassan Bin Talal knows, in fact what millions of Arabs know. Here in America, we have more urgent concerns—for instance the “news” that the drug addict Anna Nicole Smith died of an overdose.

And what does Bin Talal and millions of Arabs know?

“After a keynote speech at the European Policy Centre in Brussels on the ‘coexistence of civilizations’ Prince Hassan Bin Tallal, crown prince of Jordan in the final days of the late King Hussein, spoke to Today’s Zaman…. Prince Hassan made it clear that the idea of breaking Iraq into pieces, as is circulating in some US and Israeli circles, would be a fatal mistake. The Jordanian prince warned that a possible break-up would play into the hands of Israeli ‘extremists,’ making Israel the dominant minority in a region of minorities.”

Prince Hassan “is now one of the leading intellectuals and activists of the Islamic world,” and yet his comments go unreported in this country. “I want to cite the Clean Break paper of 1996 attributed to the conservatives in the US. It seems to me that the concept of pan-Arabism, pan-Islamism, supra-national identity was actually taken to pieces by this paper, arguing somehow that fragmentation was taking place in that part of the world, so let us take full advantage of this. Muslims and Arabs do not need enemies as they are doing an excellent job of destroying each other. Of course this plays into the hands of Israeli extremists that believe Israel should emerge as the dominating minority in a region of minorities or a mosaic of minorities.”

The idea of taking “to pieces” Arab nationalism is hardly revelatory. “This is not a new idea, nor does it surface for the first time in Zionist strategic thinking,” writes Khalil Nakhleh in the publisher’s note to Israel Shahak’s transation of Oded Yinon’s A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties. “Indeed, fragmenting all Arab states into smaller units has been a recurrent theme,” going back at least to the memoirs of Moshe Sharett, former prime minister of Israel, as documented by Livia Rokach (Israel’s Sacred Terrorism: A study based on Moshe Sharett’s Personal Diary). Of course, until the Israelis hit the jackpot with the neocons, who were able to infiltrate the Bush administration and drive U.S. foreign policy, they were unable to carry out their master plan on the scale envisioned.

“End of the Westphalian system, the end of the Middle Eastern community of states, the beginning of a Balkanization that could lead, in the words of the former Iraqi Defense Minister Ali Allawi, to a new 100 years of war,” Hassan continues.

In short, a plan perfect for the Israelis and their neocon helpers.

Of course, none of this matters—as we are essentially deaf, dumb, and blind here in America, a condition facilitated by the corporate media—and it appears quite plain we are headed for what Hassan characterizes as a “new 100 years of war,” not simply in the Middle East but across the board.

But never mind. Former topless model and potential heiress Anna Nicole Smith has died from an overdose of prescription drugs. A TSA baggage screener stole a $100,000 watch from Paris Hilton’s bag. And most important of all, Britney Spears is back in the hospital again, this time with a toothache.

Israel deliberately employed SS mass murderer

Related

Minister quizzed over Holocaust cash

ISRAEL’S finance minister is to be questioned this week by police investigating the funding of an annual march at Auschwitz in memory of Holocaust victims.
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In the service of the Jewish state

By Shraga Elam and Dennis Whitehead

In the late 1940s, Walther (Walter) Rauff, an SS officer who was responsible for the murder of at least 100,000 people and was wanted by the Allies as a war criminal, was employed by the Israeli secret service. Instead of bringing him to justice it paid him for his services and helped him escape to South America. Documents of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that have been released over the past several years show that the Americans were aware that Rauff's case was not exceptional.

A CIA memorandum dated March 24, 1950 describes the relations between the Israel agent Edmond (Ted) Cross, whose name is deleted on this document, and a Nazi named Janos Walberg: "Subject's engagement be [sic] the Israeli Intelligence Service would fit into the picture as revealed by talks with X with [Edmond (Ted) Cross a.k.a. Magen or Crowder] consisting in the utilization of former Nazi elements for observation and penetration in the Arab countries. The attempt to send the well-known former SS Colonel Walter Rauff to Egypt having failed, the Israeli Service with all probability (however this has not yet been confirmed) had engaged Subject [Walberg], whose sentiments and past would arouse no suspicions in Egypt that he is a Jewish agent."

An earlier document, from February 1950, states that Cross helped Rauff obtain the necessary papers for immigration to South America, even though the attempt to send him to Egypt had failed. Why, though, did Israel help Rauff? This document provides a hint: "It is not improbable that Subject's presence in Syria was in connection with a mission for the Israel[i] service." Rauff was indeed in Syria, serving as military adviser to President Hosni Zaim, who sought a peace agreement with Irsael. Rauff was forced to leave after Zaim was deposed in a military coup.

The mission Rauff was to have carried out in Egypt is not known, but his connection with Cross may supply more than a hint. According to research by Ruth Kimche, a former Mossad employee, Cross was sent in July 1948, as the War of Independence raged, to assassinate several key figures in Egypt with the help of a group of Jews. At the last minute the mission was called off. Cross returned to Egypt in September, but again the plan was not executed, probably because he became entangled in a love affair with the Egyptian Princess Amina Nur a-Din and had to leave the country. According to Kimche, "The whole story is very reminiscent of the Lavon Affair of the 1950s, except that fortunately for them the 1948 plan was not implemented, apparently thanks to the Egyptian princess."

But the plan was not jettisoned, either. In 1949, as the U.S. documents show, Cross wanted to sent Rauff to Egypt. According to another document in Rauff's CIA file, Rauff did not reach Egypt, but a 1953 memorandum quotes the U.S. ambassador to Egypt as saying that a man named Rauff was in the country. True, the memorandum describes this Rauff as a Pole, but it also notes that he organized the extermination of Jews in Poland, making it very likely that the reference is to the famous Nazi officer.

Rauff was born in 1906. He served in the German Navy from the age of 18. In 1937 he was dismissed for conduct unbecoming an officer due to adultery. A close friend and fellow former naval officer, Reinhard Heydrich, who was then deputy commander of the SS under Heinrich Himmler, helped get him into the Nazi organization. Initially Rauff served in SS headquarters in Berlin. After the conquest of Norway in 1940 he headed the security police there for three months. That year he was reinstated in the Navy, at his request, and commanded a fleet of minesweepers, but in 1941 Heydrich summoned him back to SS headquarters.

When Heydrich was appointed governor of occupied Czechoslovakia, Rauff accompanied him to Prague as his technical assistant. He returned to Berlin in June 1942, after Heydrich's assassination by the Czech resistance. Rauff was appointed head of the SS Technical Department and was responsible for the project of extermination using gas vans. After Jews and others were herded into the back of a gas van, the vehicle was sealed and the exhaust pipe introduced into the back. When the engine was turned on the fumes killed everyone in the back of the vehicle. Between 97,000 and 200,000 people, most of them Jews, were murdered in this way. This method of mass murder was too slow and cumbersome for the Nazis, however, who went on to develop the gas chambers using Zyklon B as the killing agent.

From July 1942 until May 1943, Rauff also commanded the Einsatzkommando (a unit of the Einsatzgruppen, the mobile killing squads that were in charge of annihilating Jews) in North Africa and was responsible for concentrating the Jews in Tunisia. In July 1943, after a brief stay in Berlin, he was made commander of the Einsatzkommando in Corsica, and from September 1943 until the end of the war was the SS Kommandant in Milan. As such, he took part in the secret negotiations that led to the surrender of the Nazis in northern Italy.

Rauff, unlike other Nazis who participated in the talks, was arrested by the Allies on April 30, 1945. In 1947 he escaped and was recruited for Syrian intelligence by Captain Akram Tabara, who gave his name as Dr. John Homsi.

Rauff advised President Hosni Zaim in Syria and was arrested on the day of the coup against him. Rauff managed to convince his captors that he was only an adviser and had no command powers; he was released but ordered to leave the country.

According to one of the versions in the CIA files, Rauff was suspected of ties to "subversive Communist activity," as the agent of a German named Von Lipkau. After Rauff's expulsion from Syria, he was supposed to accompany Lipkau to India to disseminate Communist propaganda. According to one CIA report, the mission was aborted because Lipkau remained in Tel Aviv due to other commitments.

From Damascus Rauff went to Beirut, and from there to Italy. With the assistance of Israeli, and apparently also British intelligence, he sailed for South America in December 1949. He settled in Quito, the capital of Ecuador. A 1953 report put him in Buenos Aires, where he probably headed an anti-Communist group. In 1958 Rauff moved to Chile, obtaining permanent residency status there a year later. He became a cattle and fish merchant and was described as a rancher and an industrialist. His son, also named Walter, was accepted to the Chilean naval academy and was the protege of Chief of Staff General Carlos Prats, a supporter of the socialist President Salvador Allende. The son denies that his father ever worked for Israel.

On December 19, 1962, Rauff was arrested in Chile after West Germany requested his extradition. Chile's Supreme Court refused the request and released Rauff. Allende's election as president did not change the situation: in a friendly letter to Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal Allende wrote that he could not reverse the court's 1962 decision.

In September 1973, Allende was killed in a military coup against his democratically elected government. A few months later, the French paper Le Monde reported that Rauff was appointed head of Chile's intelligence service; the report was denied by the Chilean government. Ten years later, in January 1984, Chile turned down an extradition request for Rauff from Israel's Justice Ministry. A month later, West Germany repeated its extradition request. Chile said the case would be reopened only if it were presented with evidence of new crimes. Extraditing Rauff would not serve any public interest in Chile, the court said, since he had lived in the country for many years and his behavior was always beyond reproach.

The U.S. government got into the act, emphasizing to Chile its conviction that Nazi criminals must face trial. The Santiago government came under heavy international pressure to extradite Rauff. Both President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher addressed the issue in 1984, but their comments did not impress Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. The Nazi hunter Beate Klarsfeld traveled to Chile to organize protests over the issue and was arrested twice for disturbing the peace.

Then director general of Israel's Foreign Ministry, David Kimche, visited Santiago in 1984. The press reported that he urged his hosts to deport Rauff, whom he described as one of the major war criminals living in a Western country. His wife, Ruth Kimche, said on behalf of her husband that he does not recall this; they were in Chile on a private visit, she says. The sincerity of the Israeli efforts toward Rauff's capture can be gauged from the fact that already in 1979 Israel sold patrol boats to Chile and then overhauled Chilean war planes, and in 1984 was still assisting with their maintenance.

Rauff died of lung cancer in May 1984. The statement issued by the Israeli embassy sounded like a sigh of relief: "The problem with Mr. Rauff is now solved. God has tried him."

The fact that Rauff supplied intelligence to Israel has been published before, but for some reason the reports did not generate a public debate over the moral implications of Israel's providing protection to a major Nazi criminal, who was the subject of an international campaign by Nazi hunters Simon Wiesenthal and Beate Klarsfeld to bring him to trial. Similarly, the renowned U.S. Holocaust researcher Richard Breitman, who as director of historical research for the Nazi War Criminal Records Interagency Working Group reviewed Rauff's CIA file, chose to ignore information indicating that Israeli intelligence systematically employed Nazis in Arab countries.

According to CIA records Rauff's handler was Ted Cross, whose Hebrew name was David Magen. Cross was recruited in 1948 for clandestine activity by Asher Ben-Natan, director of operations in the Foreign Ministry's Political Department, which served as the precursor to the Mossad. Cross was fluent in several languages and had served in British intelligence in World War II.

According to an article by Gil Meltzer in the daily Yedioth Ahronoth from a year ago, Cross - who was from a wealthy Jewish Budapest family named Gross - was an international adventurer, a hedonist and a womanizer. To pay for his flashy lifestyle, he dealt in drugs. When Israel discovered that he had also sold his services as an agent to Egypt - for the very handsome sum of $20,000 - he was arrested and sentenced to a lengthy prison term. After his release he went into the restaurant business and, among other things, helped found the Wimpy's hamburger chain.

Can the Israeli government be blamed for the ties between Cross and Rauff, or was this a private initiative by the double agent? The CIA, it turns out, did not know some important details about Rauff's connections with Israeli intelligence.

In Passover of 1993, Shlomo Nakdimon published an interview with Shalhevet Freier in Yedioth Ahronoth. In the late 1940s Freier was a branch director in the Foreign Ministry's Political Department, and in the 1970s he chaired the Israel Atomic Energy Commission. He has since died. In the interview he related how he had recruited Rauff in Italy, after friends in the Italian Foreign Ministry tipped him off about the new arrival. Rauff was using an alias at the time. According to Freier, then, it was the Political Department that employed Rauff; there is no mention of Cross in his interview.

Freier told Nakdimon that Ben-Natan and the director of the Political Department, came to Italy especially "in order to watch the adviser to the president of Syria enter the house of their man in Rome." Freier introduced himself to Rauff as a representative of Israeli intelligence. For an entire month the Nazi criminal sat and wrote a report on Syria's military deployment.

"When he didn't know the answer to a question, Rauff called friends in Syria for additional information," Freier said. The Israeli government not only paid Rauff, but also arranged for a legitimate Italian visa. Rauff, his wife and their children sailed from Genoa to South America. He handed Freier the last part of the report in the port.

The CIA received information that Rauff had acted on behalf of British intelligence in Syria and gave his handlers a copy of the Syrian intelligence service and political police reorganization plan. He seems to have been the servant of several masters at once. According to the CIA documents, in November 1949 Rauff arrived in Rome from Beirut and stayed at the Pensione Telentino under the name of Walter Ralf. Sources at the hotel said that he had little money and lived frugally. He had no visitors and received only a few telephone calls. A Catholic priest known for his Nazi leanings gave Rauff 40,000 lire. On December 17, 1949, Rauff set sail for Ecuador. Both the ticket and his passport were supplied by either Israeli or British intelligence.

In January 1950, Cross told CIA agents that Rauff had left Italy and had severed his ties with Israeli intelligence, but had left behind many interesting documents. Cross promised to bring them to the next meeting, but the agents did not really believe him.

Freier said in the interview that Rauff continued to write to him. He told Nakdimon that he maintained contact with the Nazi "because I thought that one day I might need him. The Arabs trusted him."

Ben-Natan, who later served as director general of the Defense Ministry and ambassador to France and to Germany, now confirms that Freier employed Rauff but says he received a report from him to this effect only post factum. In retrospect, Ben-Natan today believes it was a mistake to forge ties with the Nazi criminal, but emphasizes that he provided very important material.

In the memoirs he published five years ago, Ben-Natan has a different account. He writes that Freier "succeeded in sending to Syria a former Nazi officer, who upon his return brought information about the deployment of the Syrian army." Ben-Natan confirms that the officer was Rauff, but is not absolutely certain which version is correct. In writing the book, he says, he relied solely on his memory.

What did the Israelis who hired Rauff know about his past? Were they aware of the gravity of his crimes? Asked by Nakdimon whether he knew at the time that Rauff was responsible for the gas-vans and the death of up to 200,000 people, Freier said he was not: "I asked him about his past, and he claimed that he had been the Gestapo official in charge of forging British pounds in order to subvert the British economy. Only years later did I hear on the radio that the Americans, after decoding files of senior Nazis, stated that Rauff had been in charge of all the engineering activity of the Gestapo."

It is difficult to believe that Freier did not know who he was recruiting. On May 2, 1945, many newspapers reported that "the infamous Colonel Rauff, the long-sought head of the SS in Milan, was captured." On October 19, 1945, Rauff, in American captivity, signed a sworn declaration admitting his involvement in killing Jews in the gas-vans. This document was submitted at the Nuremberg trials, together with a letter from his subordinate, Dr. August Becker, which contained a report about technical problems in the mass murder of the Jews. Apart from this, Rauff's name appears 31 times in the transcripts of the Nuremberg trials. This information was readily available: all one had to do was contact Dr. Robert Kempner, an American Jew who was the deputy chief prosecutor at Nuremberg, or the Jewish observers who followed the trials. Ben-Natan, who collected material about Nazi war criminals during this period in Europe, confirms that this information was available.

Rauff's mention in connection with the SS project to forge British banknotes calls into question another operation in which Freier was involved. At the end of the war, a Jew named Jacques Van Harten, one of the central agents of the forgery project, contacted Jewish soldiers from Palestine in northern Italy and offered them large quantities of forged banknotes in return for protection. (An article about this episode appeared in this magazine in 2000.)

In addition to large sums of money, Van Harten was also in possession of a large quantity of jewelry. Shmuel Ossia, an associate of Freier, testified that Freier interrogated Van Harten at length about his past. Ossia remembers seeing the frightened Van Harten in the corridor during the interrogation, which went on for a few days. Van Harten undoubtedly related how he had helped Himmler's special envoy, Kurt Becher, who was in charge of plundering the property of Hungarian Jewry, and revealed what he knew about the source of the forged British money, which later, thanks to Van Harten, would become a crucial source of funding for the illegal immigration and arms purchasing operations of the Haganah, the forerunner of the Israel Defense Forces.

The extent of Freier's awareness of Van Harten's deeds is shown not only by the commanders of the illegal immigration project (Aliyah Bet), but also by the fact that in an interview to the historian Nana Sagi in 1966, he said with feigned innocence that he did not understand how no reference was made to Van Harten in the Kastner and Eichmann trials. Sagi did not ask Freier why he did not use his extensive connections to address the issue.

The Americans arrested Van Harten in Italy, on suspicion of abetting the escape of Nazi war criminals. The Mossad l'Aliya Bet - the clandestine organization of the Jewish community in pre-1948 Palestine, which was in charge of the illegal immigration of Jews to the country - tried to obtain Van Harten's release. Yitzhak Tamari, a soldier in the Haganah who knew why Van Harten had been arrested, protested to the commander of the Haganah unit in Italy, Eliahu Ben Hur (Cohen). Ben Hur, who later became a major general in the IDF, told Tamari that Van Harten had been promised protection and a gentleman always keeps his word.

Following Van Harten's release, in 1946, Ben Hur instructed his father, Abba Cohen, Tel Aviv's fire chief, to help Van Harten acclimatize. Van Harten opened a jewelry store on Nahalat Binyamin Street, near the Carmel produce market. Abba Cohen later got a job in one of Van Harten's businesses. Van Harten died in 1973, a respected businessman and a resident of the upscale community of Savyon who during the war had used his money and connections to save Jews and smuggle out valuables for them, particularly jewelry. His family stuck to this account even after the publication of the article in 2000. The jewelry store, by the way, closed down soon after the article appeared.

Freier also helped Van Harten in 1947, when the British wanted to deport him. He put him in touch with the Jerusalem lawyer Mordechai Eliash and was probably also responsible for a letter sent to the British by Golda Meyerson (Meir), as the acting foreign minister of the Jewish Agency, stating that Van Harten was under the protection of the pre-State Jewish community, the Yishuv, because he had ostensibly helped save Jews.

But Van Harten was small fry compared to Rauff, who was a criminal on the same scale as Eichmann. It is thus not surprising that Klarsfeld, who invested considerable efforts to bring Rauff to trial, almost slammed down the telephone receiver when she heard that he had been employed by Israeli intelligence and had received its assistance in escaping to Europe. "In 1984, when I campaigned in Chile for Rauff's extradition, I had no knowledge of so-called 'contacts' between him and the Mossad," Klarsfeld wrote in an e-mail. "I doubt that it could have been possible, because Rauff was well-known in the Jewish world for his role in the gassing program by trucks and also because he persecuted the Jews of Tunisia when he was head of the Nazi police in Tunisia, and he persecuted the Jews in Italy when he was head of the Nazi police in Milano." Similarly, the director of the Israeli office of the California-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, Dr. Ephraim Zuroff, finds it improbable that Freier did not know about Rauff's crimes.
W

Arab experts cautious over Rice's peace moves

Middle East News
ANALYSIS

By Abdul Jalil Mustafa Mar 25, 2007, 15:03 GMT

Amman - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice may be carrying proposals for pushing forward the Arab-Israeli peace process, but governments of the region should avoid 'excessive optimism' as to the outcome of the new US round of diplomacy, Arab politicians and analysts said Sunday.

'We have to avoid excessive optimism regarding what may come out of Rice's new tour,' Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee at Jordan's lower house of parliament, Mohammad Abu Hudaib, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

'However, we do believe that the Arabs can put pressure on the United States to do something at this juncture, because Washington is in a state of crisis in Iraq and, therefore, it needs their help to come out of this plight,' he said.

Abu Hudaib considered Israeli and US attitudes towards the newly- forged Palestinian coalition government as 'non-reassuring.'

He alluded to Israel's avowed refusal to deal with the new Palestinian cabinet and Washington's declaration that it would only deal with the non-Hamas ministers.

The US Secretary of State met on Saturday in the Egyptian city of Aswan with foreign ministers of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, which form the pillars of the so-called moderate Arab camp.

Addressing a press conference earlier Sunday, Rice sidestepped a question about the nature of moves the United States intended to carry out to push forward the Middle East peace process.

But she said it would try to develop a 'common ground' between the Palestinians and Israelis for implementing the quartet's roadmap.

An address delivered by Jordan's King Abdullah II before the US Congress on March 8 appeared to be the catalyst for Rice's new Middle East tour, Arab diplomats said.

The monarch urged the United States to play a 'historic role' toward the conclusion of a Palestinian-Israeli peaceful settlement, warning all parties will be 'at risk' should a solution leading to the setting up of an independent Palestinian state not materialize.

'His Majesty's address was designed to alert the US legislators to the fact that the Palestinian question, which represents the core of all conflicts in the region, should be given priority over the situation in Iraq,' Abu Hudaib said.

The Aswan meeting comes ahead of the Arab summit conference scheduled for Wednesday in Riyadh, where Arab leaders are expected to re-launch the Arab Peace Initiative that was adopted for the first time by the Arab summit in Beirut in 2002.

Israeli leaders have demanded an amendment of the Arab blueprint, and Arab editorialists and commentators expected Rice to exercise pressure on Arab leaders to introduce certain changes into the Arab peace plan at the Riyadh summit.

'I don't believe Arab leaders will accept any pressure to change the Arab initiative,' Abu Hudaib said, citing the 'difficult situation' faced by the US administration due to pressure by the Congress to pull out from Iraq.

The Arab peace plan envisages extending recognition to Israel by all Arab states only after it pulls out from all Arab territories it occupied in the 1967 Six Day War, including East Jerusalem.

Israel however wants to normalize ties with Arab countries before committing itself to any territorial concessions.

Taher Adwan, editor-in-chief of the daily newspaper al-Arab al- Yawm, also indicated his belief that Arab leaders would reject any US pressures to change the Arab initiative.

'Washington used to put pressure on Arab leaders ahead of any new summit, but there are precedents where Arab summits did not respond to such dictations,' he said.

Adwan discerned a 'different US attitude this time, as far as the Palestinian-Israeli peace process is concerned.'

'However, Rice's visit to the region ahead of the Riyadh summit gives the conference added significance and should prompt Arab leaders to adopt strong positions that affect the US agenda and force it to change course in the right direction,' he said.

One of the impressions widely perceived in the Arab world is that the US secretary of state will be seeking support for the West's standoff with Iran over the nuclear issue.

'I cannot exclude this as part of the US manoeuvre, but any prudent politician must come to the conclusion that any war against Iran will be catastrophic for the entire region,' Abu Hudaib said.

© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur