Stop the war against Sudan

April 28, 2007

By David Rolde

The United States has been waging war against Sudan for the past 15 years, and we need to stop it. Just like with Iraq, the U.S. war against Sudan is a war for oil and a war for Israel. The proposed invasion of Sudan is based on lies. The lie of accusing the government of Sudan of "genocide in Darfur" serves the same function as the lie a few years ago accusing the government of Iraq of "possessing weapons of mass destruction". The U.S. government, and its allies the Israeli and U.K. governments, are the real world champion purveyors of genocide and possessors of WMDs.

Sudan, the geographically largest country in Africa and the home of 35 million people, has been devastated by U.S. attacks for the past 15 years. In the early 90s the U.S. government declared Sudan to be a "state sponsor of terrorism" because the government of Sudan does not support Israel. The U.S. government imposed sanctions against Sudan. The U.S. sanctions and trade boycott escalated in severity several times during the 90s and 00s and damaged the Sudanese economy, causing immense human suffering. Throughout the 90s the U.S. government armed and funded the SPLA rebels in the south of Sudan in a war against the Sudanese government, and against rival southern groups, in which millions of persons were killed or displaced. Millions of southern refugees fled from the SPLA and now live in Khartoum, the northern capital. The culmination of U.S. support for war in Sudan was the so-called "Sudan Peace Act," signed by George W Bush in 2002, which allocated one hundred million dollars per year to the SPLA.

One notable episode of the U.S. war against Sudan happened in 1998 when the U.S. government of Bill Clinton, with a missile strike, destroyed Sudan's only pharmaceutical plant, the al-Shifa plant near Khartoum. This rendered Sudan unable to produce needed human medications to treat endemic diseases such as malaria and also veterinary medicines needed by Sudan's livestock industry which is a major part of the livelihood of the people of Sudan.

In 2004, during the U.S. presidential election campaign, the U.S. government started leveling false allegations of "genocide" against the Sudanese government in regards to the new civil war in Darfur in the west of Sudan. The U.S. media and pro-imperialist "human rights" organizations (such as Human Rights Watch which is controlled by billionaire George Soros and the Council on Foreign Relations) falsely portrayed the conflict in Darfur as a slaughter of black Africans by a "white Arab" Sudanese government. In reality it was a civil war among many armed groups, some of which were supported by the U.S. and Israel, fighting over limited resources in an impoverished region. Nearly everyone in Sudan is a black African. And nearly everyone in Darfur is a black African, Arabic-speaking Muslim. The numbers cited for the "genocide" in Darfur were inflated estimates of how many people might die from famine and disease.

This year the propaganda against Sudan in the United States has intensified again. On April 30, 2006, the U.S. government in conjunction with U.S. Zionist groups, staged a large pro-war rally in Washington DC. U.S. congresspersons, as well as members of the Bush administration, spoke at the rally calling for the war against Sudan to be escalated by sending in an invasion force of U.N., NATO or U.S. troops. Nearly every pro-Israel group in the USA has anti-Sudan propaganda on the front of their website. In Massachusetts an example of a Zionist group doing pro-war activism is the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) of Greater Boston.

The anti-Sudan rhetoric is no different than the rhetoric that the U.S. government uses against other countries that the United States is attacking. One aim of U.S. attacks against Sudan is to gain or maintain control over Sudan's natural resources: notably petroleum but also uranium, other minerals, gum arabic, and the Nile River which supplies water to Egypt. China currently has access to oil from Sudan, and the U.S. government wants to cut China off. Destabilizing and impoverishing Sudan serves American and Israeli hegemonic interests to make sure there are no prosperous independent nations in the Middle East and North African regions.

But within the United States the anti-Sudan rhetoric is useful for more than just getting Americans ready for more overt war against Sudan. Anti-Arab and anti-Muslim rhetoric regarding Sudan is part of the general anti-Arab and anti-Muslim propaganda that is used to gain U.S. domestic support for the war in Iraq, continued U.S. support for Israel, and the so-called "war on terror". Zionist groups in the United States have been purveying anti-Arab propaganda regarding Sudan for many years before the Darfur war, making false claims about "slavery" in Sudan. Slave redemption efforts in Sudan have been shown to be a hoax. Divesting from Sudan is a Zionist anti-Arab counter-proposal to the idea of divesting from Israel. Lies about Arabs divert attention from efforts to end Israeli apartheid in Palestine.

On September 1, 2006, the U.S. rammed a resolution through the U.N. Security Council calling for tens of thousands of U.N. troops, ostensibly "peace-keepers" but really an imperialist invasion force, to be sent to Darfur to replace the current smaller U.S.-puppet African Union force. On September 17, Zionists and other pro-war Americans held an anti-Sudan rally in Central Park in New York City. The keynote speaker at the rally was Madeleine Albright, Clinton's Secretary of State, who is infamous for having admitted that the Clinton administration and the U.N. had killed half a million Iraqi children through the sanctions in the 90s but nevertheless defending the actions against Iraq as worthwhile. Rally attendees were asked to wear blue hats to signify their desire to send "blue helmet" U.N. troops to invade Sudan. These U.N. troops would not be "peace-keepers." We can see the likely outcome by looking at Haiti where, in 2004, the U.S. deposed the legitimate government and then sent in a U.N. occupation force which has terrorized the country and brutalized the Haitian people. When foreign U.N. soldiers get to Darfur and can't determine which black Arabic-speaking Muslims are the "bad Arabs" and which are the "good Africans", the U.N. troops will kill people indiscriminately. The Sudanese people will rightly resist. The situation will escalate. U.S. warmongers will call for sending more troops, including U.S. troops, and bringing the war to Khartoum. It will be a disaster. The U.S. war against Sudan needs to be stopped and reversed now.

Anti-war activists are not working hard enough to stop the U.S. and Zionist war against Sudan. The current threats against Sudan are just as serious as the threats against Iran. Anti-war activists should be focusing more effort to stop the war against Sudan and to work against U.S. imperialism in Africa in general - the current war against Sudan is just one manifestation of centuries of European colonialism and neo-colonialism in Sudan and Africa. The situation for the people of Sudan will improve once foreign intervention in Sudan stops.

Sudan approves U.N. deployment in Darfur

Sudan approves U.N. support for Darfur

17 minutes ago

Sudan on Monday approved the deployment of attack helicopters and more than 3,000 U.N. troops, police, and other personnel in Darfur to beef up the 7,000-strong African Union force in the troubled region.

Sudan's U.N. Ambassador Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem informed the secretary-general in a letter that the government had approved the U.N. plan to send helicopter gunships, the last outstanding item in the U.N.'s "heavy support package" for the AU force.

"It is the sincere hope of the Sudan that implementation of the heavy support package would proceed expeditiously," Abdalhaleem said.

Sudan's Foreign Ministry confirmed the government's acceptance of the "heavy support" package.

The United States has held off on imposing sanctions against Sudan to allow time for the government to decide to accept the U.N. plan, under which a joint force of 22,000 U.N. and African Union peacekeepers would be deployed in Darfur.

It is widely recognized that the current force of 7,000 AU peacekeepers is inadequate to stop the fighting in a region the size of France or Texas. About 2.5 million people have been driven from their homes in Darfur and are living in poorly protected camps in the province and eastern Chad.

Until now, Sudan has said it will accept only a small number of U.N. security forces and equipment to support the AU mission. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has said the deployment of U.N. troops would violate Sudan's sovereignty. Many believe he fears the U.N. force would arrest Sudanese officials suspected of war crimes in Darfur.

Bush’s Sudan Ambassador: There Is No Genocide in Darfur

UPDATE - April 13, 2007 - Editor's note: I am posting at the overflow blog(also see yesterday's articles below and at the secondary blog).
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Editor's note: I am moving to post at the secondary blog(also new articles below and yesterday's postings at the overflow blog).
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Anything coming from the Bush gang is generally a lie. In this case however it is a convenient truth. The Israelis and neocons want Sudan partitoned, meaning severely weakened, as they are accomplishing in Iraq.
Related
The Politics of Naming: Genocide, Civil War, Insurgency
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February 8, 2007

Natsios describes on-going Sudanese crisis

by Mariam Khan

Editors’ note: This article has been corrected. The original article contained substantial inaccuracies.

The on-going Darfur crisis is no longer a genocide situation, according to U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan Andrew Natsios. Natsios, a Professor in the School of Foreign Service, spoke on Wednesday in Gaston Hall.

Natsios did note, however, that genocide had previously occured in Darfur, amidst the ongoing conflict between inhabitants of the Sadanese region and government-backed Janjaweed militias.

Darfur has been a hot button issue since 2003. 2.5 million people have been displaced and over 400,000 people have died as a result of the conflict, according to Natsios.

“The place is littered with mass graves,” he said. Over 2,000 villages were destroyed from the beginning of the war in 2003 to the present, according a United Nations count cited by Natsios.

Natsios pointed to property issues as a major aspect of the conflict, explaining that the Arab Janjaweed militia has been destroying homes and taking the land and animals.

“Without property in Darfur, you will die,” he said. “You cannot go back to your homes because you have nothing to live off of.”

Natsios called Darfur a catastrophe, but said that he is opposed to continuing to use the word genocide, which President Bush and the State Department use to describe the situation in Darfur.

“The term genocide is counter to the facts of what is really occurring in Darfur,” he said.

“The humanitarian crisis in Darfur, the everyday suffering of children, females and males, is beyond imagination,” Azanaw Mengistu (COL ’09), a STAND member who attended the lecture, said. “Every day millions of Darfurians are losing hope and the international community’s response has been unfortunately disappointing.”

Eric Wind (SFS ’09) agreed that the situation was dire, but his motives for attending the speech were slightly different.

“As a Christian, I condemn the human rights abuses going on in Darfur,” he said. “I hope that the efforts of Ambassador Natsios, world leaders and non-governmental organizations such as STAND will help end unnecessary bloodshed in Darfur.”

Natsios said that the proposed deployment of 10,000 more United Nations troops, along with extensive negotiations, is the next step in ending the conflict.

“If a negotiated approach does not work, then we have to go to Plan B.”

Natsios would not comment on the details of “Plan B” but said that it would involve drastic measures by the United States.
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Special Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan

Arab tribe in Darfur reports 62 killed, 21 wounded in attack

By Agence France Presse (AFP)

Monday, April 02, 2007

KHARTOUM: At least 62 people were killed and 21 wounded in an attack on an Arab tribe in the war-torn Darfur region of western Sudan, according to the victims' relatives on Sunday.

"Two new bodies were left at the hospital in Nyala," the south Darfur provincial seat, Abdel Rahman Hasaballah of the targeted Torjam tribe told AFP by telephone.

Tribal chief Mohammad Hammad Jalali initially told AFP that 60 people were killed by gunmen riding camels and donkeys who swooped down on villages to steal livestock.

"We buried 23 people on Saturday," he said at the time, with the rest still at the morgue.

Thirteen wounded villagers are being treated in the provincial capital of Nyala and another eight in the nearby town of Kas, he said.

Families initially refused to collect the bodies from the hospital in protest.

They finally agreed to do so after setting three conditions for the authorities - an impartial investigation to identify the perpetrators, better protection and compensation for the victims' families.

The Torjam are blaming the attack on the government-backed Janjaweed militia, often used by the Sudanese authorities to suppress a rebellion raging in the region for the past four years.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb

But local officials quoted by the press blamed the killings on a rival Arab tribe in the region, the Rzigat Aballa - which in the past had provided recruits for the Janjaweed.

"We think the Rzigat Aballa is responsible for the attack because it occurred in the area of recent clashes between the two tribes," said Mohammad al-Ajeb, adding that some 500 heads of cattle had been seized and driven northwest. The authorities negotiated a truce between the two tribes in February after earlier confrontations.

United Nations and African Union envoys on recent visits to Khartoum bidding to find a peaceful solution to the Darfur crisis warned against tribal rivalries complicating the search for peace.

Since the outbreak of hostilities in the vast Darfur region in 2003, some 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million displaced in the fighting, according to UN estimates. Some sources say the death toll is much higher.

A 2006 peace agreement with one rebel faction has failed to halt the fighting. - AFP

Darfur and Iraq: Spot the difference

28 Mar 2007 12:57:00 GMT

Blogged by: Nina Brenjo

You might not immediately draw too many parallels between Iraq and Darfur, but the two conflicts are in fact remarkably similar, says Mahmood Mamdani, professor of anthropology at Columbia University.

The civilian death tolls in both places over the past three years are roughly the same, victims are targeted as part of a group, rather than as individuals and much of the killing is carried out by paramilitaries with close links to the military, Mamdani writes in the London Review of Books.

So, why are they called different names? The events in Iraq are explained as a cycle of insurgency and counter-insurgency, whereas the conflict in Darfur has been branded genocide by some people.

Iraq is a "messy" place, according to the professor, it lacks an "identifiable victim group", as David Bosco, contributing writer at Foreign Policy magazine, pointed out back in January. Nothing messy about Darfur, says Mamdani - that's to say nothing messy about the way it's portrayed as "a place without history and without politics; simply a site where perpetrators clearly identifiable as 'Arabs' confront victims clearly identifiable as 'Africans'".

Activists - often the very same people calling for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq - are clamouring for military intervention in Darfur. They couldn't be more wrong, argues Mamdani, since what is happening in Darfur is a civil war, rather than genocide.

Writing in New African magazine, Alex de Waal, an adviser to the African Union during the peace negotiations in Abuja in 2005, agrees and says those calling for international troops for Darfur are suffering from "salvation delusion". According to de Waal, political settlement is the only way to solve the conflict in Darfur.

Mamdani points to the 2005 report by the U.N.'s Commission on Darfur which concluded that the Sudanese government hadn't carried out a policy of genocide, but that both the government with its janjaweed helpers and the rebels were guilty of crimes against humanity and war crimes, respectively. The report mentions mercenaries playing a part in Darfur, another parallel with the conflict in Iraq, where they are sometimes called "contractors".

The media plays a significant role in simplifying the conflict in Darfur and the professor singles out New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof who has managed to reduce "a complex political context to a morality tale unfolding in a world populated by villains and victims who never trade places and so can always and easily be told apart". Mamdani accuses Kristof of glossing over the fact that the rebels have also played a part in contributing to civilian suffering in the region.

International campaigners - namely the Save Darfur group - have also simplified the violence in western Sudan as "Arab" against "African" and created an image of a one-sided conflict, says Mamdani. How else would they bring together groups that would normally be at opposite ends of the spectrum on many issues? By presenting Darfur as a single-issue campaign, groups such as the American Jewish World Service, the American Society for Muslim Advancement, the National Association of Evangelicals and others stand side by side when calling for military intervention to save Darfur. If the issue was Iraq, such a coalition would almost certainly collapse like a pack of cards.

We must speak up for the dead and dispossessed in an epidemic of rage

Tom Stoppard

Published: 26 March 2007

If not now, when? If not we, who? News of murder, rape, arson and dispossession in Darfur has been coming in for something like four years, stopping and starting and stuttering, scaling up into horrifying film footage that blanks out the political story, and also down into declarations, resolutions and soundbites that veil the horror of what's really happening in a war so remote and so obscured that the numbers of dead arrive rounded to the nearest hundred thousand.

Is it 200,000 or 300,000?

Both figures keep popping up in the Darfur story in reproachable documentation and all you can think is that the sub-text "enough is enough" of Tony Blair's reported message to Angela Merkel the other day had an even darker meaning than the phrase was intended to carry.

But, yes, enough is indeed enough. And one of the things you'd think the UN would have had enough of is being treated with casual disdain by the Sudanese regime, whose latest gesture was to use troops to deny the UN's humanitarian delegation access to a refugee camp in the Darfur region.

A peacekeeping mission would be more to the point, and here again the UN is as helpless against its own vetoes as against President Omar al-Bashir's soldiers.

If the United Nations could die of shame it would have been dead years ago.

How can the EU do better? Can it be effective at all? Yesterday, the British Prime Minister and the German Chancellor were making the right noises. Stringent sanctions. No-fly zones.

But the unpalatable truth is that sanctions require a degree of collective determination, of which the UN appears constitutionally incapable. A no-fly zone over that vast remote area represents an enormous challenge. And would freezing Sudanese assets abroad, one of the suggestions in the "writers' letter", in itself turn the situation around?

Bob Geldof, who orchestrated the letter, said yesterday: "It's code to get the UN behind us."

Well, maybe. But the point about Geldof is that he is a populist. What is needed is to make rage and shame contagious, an epidemic. The situation will be turned by numbers, vast numbers of the living outraged, to speak up for the 200,000, or was it 300,000, dead.

FRANCE BOMBING NEAR DARFUR: No U.S. Coverage

Dec 18, 2006

My friend Netta remarked to me this morning that there isn't any U.S. Media coverage of France's military support of the CAR army near Darfur, a force that is feared responsible for rapes and executions in the region:

In the past two weeks, with minimal publicity, [French] Mirage F1 jets have attacked and scattered a rebellion in north-eastern Central African Republic (CAR). But reports from the ground say the operation has had a devastating impact on civilians.

(Emphasis Mine)

According to the UFDR, the raids over several days at the start of December included an attack on Birao with six Mirage F1 fighters and four helicopter gunships. It claims the attack forced thousands of civilians to flee towards Darfur and southern Chad.

A French armed forces spokesman yesterday refused to give details of whether bombs, missiles or machinegun-fire had been used by the jets.

[...]

Nganatouwa Goungaye Wanfiyo, president of the Central African Human Rights League, said France's intervention on the side of the CAR army had been out of all proportion and may have increased the risk of a Darfur-style ethnic conflict. "They have just delayed the problem and worsened it. The opposition wants dialogue with Bozizé, that's all."

(All emphasis mine) The situation in Darfur isn't emphasized adequately in general, but for this development to not be reported at all among major MSM sources like CNN & MSNBC is concerning. If someone can post downthread the best contact e-mails for various news outlets, perhaps we can get this broad attention within our national media.

--By Skyterrain

SOS Children's Villages - USA - Conflict breaks out near SOS Childr

Conflict breaks out near SOS Children's Village in south Sudan

12/12/2006 - Fighting has broken out in recent weeks in the area surrounding SOS Children's Village Malakal, located in the war-torn southern region of Sudan, where warring factions are mounting strikes against each other with tanks and guns.

Ali Mahdi, director of SOS Children's Villages Sudan, said that although SOS Children's Village Malakal is not likely to become a direct target, it is in close proximity the Malakal airport, one of the areas of heavy fighting. Most of the fighting involves ground troops, and there are currently no air strikes in the vicinity of the children's village. However, there is a threat that some of the fighters may hide or take refuge in the SOS Children's Village, which would make it a direct target for opposing fighters.

Although the security situation in Malakal is worsening, it is not likely that SOS Children's Villages Sudan will evacuate the village and move the children to Khartoum. It would be too difficult to transport the children without compromising their security. Currently, SOS Children's Village Malakal is not facing any severe shortages of essential goods. Mr. Mahdi is very concerned nonetheless.

"The deterioration of the security situation in Malakal is affecting all aspects of life: in markets, shops and schools. The government offices are closed and that means difficulty in getting goods to Malakal," said Mahdi. "We transferred some food to the children's village for storage, and we sent the village director some money to stock up, but we don't know what will happen in the future."

SOS Children's Villages Sudan will provide emergency relief for the local community, such as cholera medication and emergency hospital units for the children's hospital in Malakal. There is already an SOS Emergency Relief Programme in the area, which will be extended with the renewed conflict.

Conflict in Darfur

Conflict has also flared up again in the unstable Darfur region of Sudan. SOS Children's Villages Sudan is currently operating an emergency relief programme in the Abu Shok Refugee Camp in Al-Fashir. The SOS Emergency Relief Programme includes three psycho-social centres that provide counselling and therapy services for all family members, as well as training and awareness sessions for mothers. Ali Mahdi remains cautiously optimistic and reports that even though the situation in Darfur is bleak, it is important that SOS Children’s Villages Sudan continue the project.

With the current conflict, SOS psychologists and social workers have moved out of their residences in the guest house in Al-Fashir, and have found accommodations with co-workers from the area. Communication is very difficult between SOS Children’s Villages in Khartoum and the emergency relief programme in Darfur. The Abu Shok refugee camp is now under curfew in the evening and it is dangerous for anyone to leave the camp.

Related Links:

SOS Children's Villages in Sudan

U.N. chief: Darfur is in ‘free fall‘": Conflict has spread to two neighboring countries

2006/12

By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer 7 minutes ago

UNITED NATIONS - The conflict in Darfur has spread to two neighboring countries and is now in "free fall" with six million people facing the prospect of going without food or protection, the outgoing U.N. humanitarian chief said Tuesday.

"I think some of the Arab countries and Asian countries have not really understood we‘re in a free fall. It‘s not a steady deterioration. It‘s a free fall and it includes Darfur, eastern Chad, northern Central African Republic," he said.

More than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million displaced in the fighting, and the violence has only increased since the government and one rebel group signed a peace agreement in May.

Egeland, who was the first to call Darfur the world‘s worst humanitarian emergency in November 2003, said that one of his greatest regrets is that key global leaders did not come together and offer the sticks and carrots to settle the conflict in 2004 when it only involved one million people.

Where is the free fall going?

Egeland recalled that the women and children he met during his recent fourth visit to Darfur thanked him for the food but pleaded for security. With the humanitarian operation collapsing in many places, he said, they will have nothing.

In a farewell speech on Monday to the U.N. Security Council U.N. Security Council, Egeland accused world leaders of failing to live up to a pledge made at a U.N. summit in September 2005 to protect civilians caught in armed conflict from genocide, war crimes and ethnic cleansing. A Security Council resolution adopted in April reaffirmed their agreement.

"But what I do expect is that China, the United States, Russia, the European Union — the leaders come together and say we‘re going to push and pull and provide sticks and carrots until it changes," he said.

Nonetheless, he said, things are starting to change.

The Security Council adopted a resolution pushed by Britain and the United States to transfer peacekeeping in Darfur from an ill-equipped 7,000-member African Union force to a larger, better equipped U.N. force. But the Sudanese government rejected a U.N. force, claiming it would violate the country‘s sovereignty and was an attempt at recolonization.

He supported the resolution but said it did not get implemented, partly because it lacked support from African, Arab and Islamic countries for a U.N. force.

In late November, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Sudan had agreed in principle to a compromise "hybrid mission" from the African Union and the U.N. — but Khartoum wanted to discuss the size, the force commander and the head of the overall mission.

"At the moment I think it‘s more than sad to see that grown men with jackets and ties like me sit and quarrel of what is a

hybrid force‘ ... while women and children are dying," Egeland said.

"I‘m happy to note that in nine months we might have this force, but what about the next nine days where it could collapse completely?

© 2006 The Associated Press.

Gaza and Darfur: When Will Kristoff Go to the Occupied Territories?

December 4, 2006

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

As a zone of ongoing, large-scale bloodletting Darfur in the western Sudan has big appeal for US news editors. Americans are not doing the killing, or paying for others to do it. So there's no need to minimize the vast slaughter with the usual drizzle of "allegations." There's no political risk here in sounding off about genocide in Darfur. The crisis in Darfur is also very photogenic.

When the RENAMO gangs, backed by Ronald Reagan and the apartheid regime in South Africa were butchering Mozambican peasants, the news stories were sparse and the tone usually tentative in any blame-laying. Not so with Darfur, where moral outrage on the editorial pages acquires the robust edge endemic to sermons about inter-ethnic slaughter where white people, and specifically the US government, aren't obviously involved.

Since March 1 the New York Times has run seventy news stories on Darfur (including sixteen pieces from wire services), fifteen editorials and twenty-one signed columns, all but one by Nicholas Kristof. Darfur is primarily a "feel good" subject for people here who want to agonize publicly about injustices in the world but who don't really want to do anything about them. After all, it's Arabs who are the perpetrators and there is ultimately little that people in this country can do to effect real change in the policy of the government in Khartoum.

Now, Gaza is an entirely different story. The American public as well as the US government have a great deal of control over what is happening there. And it is Israel, America's prime ally in the Middle East that is, on a day-to-day basis, with America's full support, inflicting appalling brutalities on a civilian population. To report in any detail on what's going on in Gaza means accusing the United States of active complicity in terrible crimes wrought by Israel, as it methodically lays waste a society of 1.5 million Palestinians. Of course the death rate is a fraction of what's alleged about Darfur, but all the same, we are talking here about a determined bid by Israel, backed by the U.S. and E.U. to destroy an entire society.

I wan't at all surprised there was a sharp swerve in emphasis towards Darfur at about the time of the Kerem Shalom attack and the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit in Gaza in June of this year. By the time Israel's campaign of destroying Lebanon got under way this summer (a campaign intricately linked to the Palestine issue), Darfur was hotter still as a distracting topic.

Where is Kristof? Couldn't he trade at least one of his Darfur columns for one on Gaza's suffering? Maybe he is deferring to Thomas Friedman, who owns the Middle Eastern turf on the NYT op-ed page the way Kristof owns chunks of Africa.

Israel's soldiers are not going to march into Gaza and truck all the inhabitants away. The strategy is simply to make the place into a garbage dump picked over by destitute people. The current ceasefire will do nothing to relieve the siege imposed physically, financially, commercially by Israel, the U.S. and the E.U. Israel and its accomplices are sentencing Gaza's occupants to a living death in situ, with actual death meted out each day to "terrorists" and those unfortunate enough to be in the line of fire, like the family in Beit Hanoun or the school teacher by the minibus filled with children (a near miss).

As Gideon Levy wrote in one of his many searing reports in Ha'aretz, the Israeli army "has been rampaging through Gaza-there's no other word to describe it-killing and demolishing, bombing and shelling, indiscriminately". When my brother Patrick was there in September he reported in The Independent that "Israeli troops and tanks come and go at will. In the northern district of Shajhayeh they took over several houses last week and stayed five days. By the time they withdrew, 22 Palestinians had been killed, three houses were destroyed and groves of olive, citrus and almond trees had been bulldozed. Fuad al-Tuba, the 61-year-old farmer who owned a farm here, said: 'they even destroyed 22 of my bee-hives and killed four sheep.' His son Baher al-Tuba described how for five days Israeli soldiers confined him and his relatives to one room in his house where they survived by drinking water from a fish pond. 'Snipers took up positions in the windows and shot at anybody who came near," he said. "They killed one of my neighbors called Fathi Abu Gumbuz who was 56 years old and just went out to get water.'"

The sound that Palestinians most dread, Patrick wrote, "is an unknown voice on their cell phone saying they have half an hour to leave their home before it is hit by bombs or missiles. There is no appeal."
The Israelis have destroyed 70 percent of the orange groves; stopped the fishermen from going out in their boats, destroyed the central power station. More than 50 percent of the population is out of work, and per capita income is less than $2 a day.

Jennifer Loewenstein, of the Middle Eastern studies program at the Unversity of Wisconsin at Madison, has visited Gaza many times and written powerfully about it on the CounterPunch website. She wrote to me last week, "If people received genuine information about Gaza they would also be appalled-and that's of course why they don't get any real information about it from getting out. In addition, if the Israeli blockade of virtually all human traffic into Gaza were to end and more visitors could actually get in, more people-including freelance journalists-would be outraged, or stunned into disbelief at what Israel with US and EU backing has done to that miserable strip of land. Again, that's why the Israeli-imposed human blockade persists. And while diplomats, UN and international aid workers and a few others do get in, the fact that most of them utter not a peep about this ongoing crime against humanity suggests in the most sinister way that they will continue not to utter a peep when things get worse.

As Loewenstein concluded: "Servility to power doesn't get more insidious or malignant than this."

Hitchens Study Group Probes Policy Options for Bedraggled Warmonger

We hear indirectly that Christopher Hitchens, as seemingly impervious to reality as his hero George Bush, is at last beginning to ponder how to extract himself from the Iraq mess. The usual unreliable sources claim a plaintive phone call from Hitchens to his friend Martin Amis, brooding on his dilemma.

Others have already fled the burning deck of Bush's Mission Iraq. The Neocons are trying to regroup, amid plaintive squeals that George Bush had not the intellectual mettle nor moral fiber for the great task they charged him with. The thousands of liberal intellectuals who either openly or tacitly backed the venture have long since sidled towards the exits, albeit without a word of remorse or self criticism.

Hitchens has been a full-bore supporter of the war, summoned to the White House days before the invasion to preach the morality and assured success of the cause. Since those days he has stumbled from one fox hole to the next. The early howls of triumph and exultant paragraphs about troops being garlanded with flowers have given way to more sterterous rationales, before a final stand on Kurdish soil. His recent book on Tom Paine (which according to a devastating review in the London Review of Books (is extensively plagiar ... --er-- indebted to an earlier work by John Keane) is dedicated "by permission" to the Kurdish president Jalal Talabani). No more talk from Hitchens of democracy and freedom further south amidst the Shia and the Sunni.

But defiant wagging of the Kurdish flag won't suffice for long. A special Hitchens Study Group is being convened to evolve policy options for the beleagured scrivener. Among the options on the table:

Hitchens should redeploy immediately over the horizon to the United Kingdom, be recommended for a peerage by the expiring Blair and take his seat in the House of Lords.

Hitchens should publish a vast essay of plaintive self-justification in Vanity Fair and then retire for a period of seclusion in the Betty Ford Clinic.

Hitchens should approach Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel, ask for his column back and carry on.

Note: An earlier version of first item in this column ran in the print edition of The Nation that went to press last Wednesday.