US training Sunni extremists to attack Hizbullah; operations to be attributed to Al-Qaeda

Thursday, April 19, 2007

(with an added note)

Issam Naaman is a Lebanese lawyer and writer, former Minister of Telecommunications under one of the governments led by Salim al-Hoss, and a member of a small political group that considers itself a third alternative beween the Hariri-led establishment, and the Hizbullah-led opposition. He wrote on April 18 in Al-Quds al-Arabi about information gleaned from the recent Pelosi delegation, and other US delegations at about the same time, mostly by a friend of his who is a think-tank type and didn't want his name used.

His main points were that Bush seems to be stymied in his desire to attack Iran, both by the political opposition of the Democrats, and the popular revulsion in the US against further military adventures that would be seen as at the expense of things like health insurance and the US standard of living. (By contrast, Bush policy on Palestine will be unchanged, because in the case of Palestine there is no pressure for change from Congress, in fact the Democrats outdo the Republicans in their support for Israel). As a "substitute" for not being able to strike Iran, the Bush administration plans an escalation in Lebanon. And here he mentions two specific points: (1) Tom Lantos said they are convinced Hizbullah is weak and this is the time to step up efforts to disarm it. (2) An airport in northern Lebanon will be used as a base for pressuring Syria, and also as a place for training of groups opposed to Hizbullah and opposed to anti-Abbas elements in Palestine. Then there was this:

It was learned from influential members of the US delegations that the Washington special[-forces] apparatus has begun assembling, arming and training members of Islamic extremist groups to undertake assaults on Hizbullah, in the framework of the conflict that it [the Bush administration] plans between the Sunni and the Shiite population, in districts where the two groups are contiguous. And it will be arranged to camouflage the agents in this by attributing the attacks to AlQaeda.

The writer's conclusion is that these exchanges with the American visitors confirmed that the Bush administration will not allow there to be any compromise in the dispute between the Hizbullah-led opposition and the Hariri administration over power-sharing, new elections and so on. Rather, the US administration will be working hard to promote confrontation, as part of its region-wide policy of fostering Sunni-Shiite conflict. In this context, the writer doesn't seem to regard the covert sponsorship of fake-AlQaeda US agents to be anything but one more ingredient in the overall plan.

This planned use by the Bush administration of Sunni extremists to stir the pot in Lebanon was discussed at length by New Yorker article called "The Redirection" last month, eliciting only an eerie silence from the policy elite. Judging from this Naaman piece, it would appear the scheme is pretty much a bipartisan open secret, which raises the question why no criticism from the Democrats. Or maybe answers the question.

ADDED NOTE: See also this post, which fills out the picture a little more.

ISRAEL ATTEMPTS TO SILENCE HIZBOLLAH MEN THAT CAPTURED ISRAELI SOLDIERS INSIDE LEBANON

Thursday, April 12, 2007

There is more to the Israeli government’s desire to change the status of three Hizbollah prisoners, captured during last years war in southern Lebanon, from ‘prisoners of war’ to ‘illegal combatants’ than meets the eye. All three of them it seems were captured on August 4 in the villages of Aita al-Shaab and Shihine, just inside the Lebanese border with northern Israel.

The Israeli government wants to charge at least one of the men, 23 year old Hussein Suleiman, with aiding in the capture of two Israeli soldiers. Now, readers may recall that it was at Aita al-Shaab, a village that is inside the Lebanese border, where the two Israelis were captured. The problem for the Israelis is; if their Hizbollah prisoners maintain their ‘prisoner of war’ status then the Israelis will have no alternative but to release the men once the deal has been struck to exchange prisoners. Since the Israeli government has insisted that their soldiers were captured inside Israel and not Lebanon, and if Suleiman is released knowing the real story, and then subsequently spills the beans, the Israelis are going to end up with even more egg on their faces than they already have. Imagine the furore there would be if the man that actually had a hand in capturing the Israelis inside Lebanon were able to tell his story.

The only way that the Israelis can prevent this from happening is to change the status of their prisoner to the extremely controversial status of ‘illegal combatant’, a status similar to that of America’s so-called ‘unlawful combatant’ under which ‘law’ the US feels entitles them to keep their prisoners indefinitely and to be tried whenever the US can dream up a charge to try them with. As an ‘illegal combatant’ Suleiman can then be charged with whatever crime the Israelis fancy they can get away with and then keep him locked up indefinitely.

First, however, the Israeli government has to front up to the Israeli courts in order to get Suleiman and the other two prisoners’ status changed. There are three things working in the prisoners favour; first is the obvious and transparent ulterior motives the Israeli government have for wanting to change their status; secondly, the Israeli people are beginning to get more than a bit fed up with the way Olmert and the other right-wing Zionists are handling Israel’s affairs and, third; a change in the status of Hizbollah prisoners may also have an effect on the status of the two Israeli prisoners. Given this, the courts might not necessarily look favourably at the Israeli government’s quest.

Olmert increasingly is on the nose of Israelis as well as the rest of the Arab world.

First Amendment Defense Is Pursued in Hezbollah TV Case

BY JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN - Staff Reporter of the Sun
April 9, 2007

Two men charged with attempting to broadcast Hezbollah television say the First Amendment protects them from being prosecuted for supporting terrorism.

Whether the case against Javed Iqbal of Staten Island and Saleh Elahwal of New Jersey will grow into a major confrontation over the First Amendment is far from certain.

So far, the federal government is building its case around the alleged economic ties the men have with executives at Al Manar, the television station Hezbollah broadcasts out of Lebanon that the federal government has designated to be a foreign terrorist organization. The indictment focuses on tens of thousands of dollars Al Manar allegedly paid the two for working toward making the television station available to North American viewers via satellite.

The charges sidestep any discussion of whether the men actually succeeded in making the station available to viewers who subscribed to a satellite service they sold.

In a legal brief filed Friday, lawyers for the men filed motions seeking the dismissal of the charges. The most serious charge the men face is conspiring to provide material support to terrorists.

"The Indictment seeks to punish Mr. Iqbal and Dr. Elahwal for exercise of their First Amendment rights: facilitating the broadcast of Al Manar," according to a brief filed by lawyers for the two men, Joshua Dratel and Edward Sapone. "The content of Hizballah's message cannot serve as a justification for repressing it, and/or for prosecuting Mr. Iqbal and Dr. Elahwal for communicating it," the brief said.

Besides the First Amendment defense, the two men allege they are being targeted for selective prosecution because of either their Muslim heritage or their Middle Eastern or South Asian ethnicity. The defense lawyers argue that even though several American corporations have provided advertising revenue to Al Manar, their clients are the only two persons to be prosecuted for assisting the television station.

Law enforcement notes made public with the brief also provide a fuller picture of Mr. Iqbal's business activities. His company sold satellite subscriptions for three separate television genres: pornography, church programming, and Arabic-language television, Mr. Iqbal told investigators at the time of his arrest.

WHY IS HEZBOLLAH ON THE TERRORISM LIST?

franklin lamb- WHO ISN'T BUT SHOULD BE ON IT?

It was a sign of the times last week (March 27) when House Armed Services Committee Staff Director Erin Conaton declared in a memo to committee staffers that the powerful committee was scrapping the Bush Administration shop worn phrase, Global War of Terrorism. Conaton’s boss, Rep. Ike Skelton,( D-Mo) the new Chairman of the Committee commented that “the overused label had become an embarrassment and had lost its meaning”.

Recent research in Lebanon has turned up information previously unavailable which sheds light of the misapplication of the Terrorism label by the Bush administration.

The” T word” is often misapplied as former National Security Advisor Brzezinski reminds us as he tours the country promoting his new book, Second Chance and focusing on the “catastrophic leadership” crisis caused by the Bush administration’s foreign policy.

Another area that would benefit from discarding the “terrorist label” is the Bush administration’s ongoing campaign against Hezbollah. There is considerable doubt among international lawyers whether Hezbollah should ever have been classified as a terrorist organization.

At the urging of U.S. and Israel, Canada classifies Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, which limits the group’s ability to raise funds and travel internationally. . A Canadian peace coalition called Tadamon Montreal is working to remove Hezbollah from the Terrorism list in Canada.

Australia and the UK distinguish between Hezbollah’s security and political wings, and other countries like China, Russia, and member states of the European Union and the United Nations have refused US/Israel demands to label Hezbollah a terrorist organization at all.

The process for putting an organization on the “Terrorism list” is as follows: The Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism in the U.S. State Department (S/CT) monitors the activities of groups active around the world considered potentially terrorist to identify potential targets for designation. When reviewing potential targets, S/CT looks not only at the actual terrorist attacks that a group has carried out, but also at “whether the group may be inclined toward future acts of terrorism or retains the capability to carry out such acts”.

As of April 2007, a plurality (39%) of the organizations on the US Terrorism list represent Muslim groups recommended for inclusion by, among others, AIPAC and their friends in Congress. According to former AIPAC Director of Congressional Relations, Steve Rosen, soon to start his trial for passing classified information to Israel, “AIPAC owns the ‘T’ list!”

The US State Department definition of terror is a broad one: “the deliberate and systematic murder, maiming and menacing of the innocent to inspire fear for political ends

Suspected terrorist groups are thereby defined as such by the means they use to pursue their objectives. To describe an organization as terrorist is not a comment on its political goal or ends, which may be laudable ones such as national liberation or resistance to occupation.

The common saying that ‘one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’ is rejected by this student of the subject because it is simplistic and even nonsensical. To whit, a terrorist can also be a freedom fighter struggling for justice and a freedom fighter can fight for freedom by using terrorist means.

Placed on the “T” list in 1999, Hezbollah was taken off the list a couple of years later following Hezbollah’s strong condemnation of the 9/11 attack on America. Hezbollah was returned to the list when Dick Cheney opined that a “presumed Hezbollah operative” probably met with an Al Qaeda representative in South America in 2001. Similar to Cheney’s Saadam Hussein-Al Qaeda ‘contacts’ claim.

Lebanese officials including Lebanese President Emil Lahoud contemptuously dismissed reports of such a meeting as Israeli-sponsored propaganda. According to Lahoud: “The media campaign, which is conducted by Israeli circles, seeks to exploit the September 11 attacks to slander the Lebanese resistance by stigmatizing it with the image of terrorism”. Lebanon continues to reject US/Israeli demands that they freeze Hezbollah’s bank accounts and force it to stop providing social services.

A study undertaken at the American University of Beirut in January- February 2007, benefiting from research and surveys from a variety of international and Israeli human rights organizations, tabulated no fewer than 6,672 acts of Israeli state terrorism directed against Lebanon and Palestine between the years 1967-2007. Not only is Israel absent from the US State Department Terrorism list, Israel appears to determine who is on it.

The case against Hezbollah presented in a draft by AIPAC for the State Department is virtually identical to the one finally issued by the State Department. It claims that Hezbollah bombed Americans at the US Embassy, the Marine barracks in 1983, and held a number of Americans hostage during the 1980’s. Or, as Hezbollah’s rap sheet currently appears on US and Israeli government computers:

“Hezbollah (as of April 3, 2007): Suicide bombings, hijacked 1985 TWA Flight 847; rocket attacks against Israel in 2006.”

(The latter item re the “rocket attacks against Israel in 2006”, is examined in the just released volume, The Price We Pay: A Quarter Century of Israel’s Use of American Weapons against Lebanon.)

Hezbollah is accused by Israel and the Bush administration of a type of Islamist Terrorism similar to Al Qaeda but used in the context of National Liberation, just like Hamas. Both of which have fought Israel in the Lebanese and Palestinian contexts, respectively.

However, unlike al Qaeda, their enemy, Hezbollah and Hamas are complex social and political movements. They use different types of force, including guerrilla tactics which are legitimate under international law. They are also different from al Qaeda in that their alleged terrorist activity aims to liberate Palestine and Lebanon, as opposed to being part of a ‘global struggle’ against the United States with undefined objectives.

Was Hezbollah involved in the attacks against Americans a quarter century ago? Hezbollah has consistently denied these charges ever since it published its “open letter” announcing its foundation in 1985, years after the first attacks.

The results of an investigation conducted entirely in Lebanon including interviews with some who claim to have been personally involved with the “rap sheet” events do not credit Bush administration claims.

What the record to date shows, pending the Bush administration release of claimed evidence to the contrary, is the following:

1) When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 and quickly routed much of the PLO resistance, more than 30 local resistance groups formed. Some were no doubt inspired by the success of the Iranian Revolution three years earlier and took advantage of available political and physical training. Arms were available from the soon to depart PLO, and other sources, sometimes as gifts and sometimes for cash.

For example, in late August 1982, as Fateh was preparing to depart Beirut for Greece and goodbyes were being said, two American researchers in Beirut were given (‘for safe keeping’) 250 brand new Chinese made Ak-47’s wrapped in thick grease and heavy plastic. Not knowing exactly what to do with the gifts in the ‘wild west’ atmosphere of the time, the Americans, doing what came naturally, hastily buried them at night. The weapons were never found by the advancing Israelis but were discovered 15 years later when the Commodore Hotel in Hamra was enlarged and workers dug up that vacant lot to its south! Who has them now is anybody’s guess!

The goal of these new groups in the 1980’s was to drive Israel and its foreign sponsors from Lebanon. The local and regional political situation of the early 1980’s was very tolerant of militant modes of actions and many groups adapted and acted because no single force, power or obstacle stood in their way.

‘Operations’ were sometimes carried out by part of a group without the knowledge, participation or liability or the particular organizations command.

Teams of foreign assassins were active those days including one traced to Israel which tried to assassinate one of America’s most competent Ambassadors to Lebanon, John Guenther Dean on August 27, 1980. The weapons used in the failed attempt were traced to a shipment made from the US to Israel. Dean’s crime was getting too chummy with Yassir Arafat and his deputy Abu Jihad, who were helping Dean to get the American Embassy hostages released from Iran.

Another “operation” during this period was the CIA funded attempt of March 8, 1985 to assassinate Sheik Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah. The car bomb killed eighty, mostly women and children and wounded 256. As Bob Woodward points out in his book, Veil, the CIA’s William Casey mistakenly thought Fadlallah was the spiritual leader of Hezbollah. To this day Fadlallah is quite independent of Hezbollah although he is probably Lebanon’s most revered cleric due in no small measure to his scholarship, his three decades of social service work, and his passionate defense of human rights.

2) An exhaustive review, by American researchers, of the nearly 80 Western kidnapping cases, organized by a staggering variety of groups in Lebanon between 1975 and 1990 concluded that more than 100 Western detainees were taken, released, killed or exchanged. As for the Lebanese themselves, thousands were kidnapped; many by Israel and their allies and hundreds are still unaccounted for.

According to some who claim to have participated in one way or another, in some of these kidnappings, active groups sometimes declared responsibility and sometimes were silent. Among the groups admitting their actions at various times were: The Organization of Socialist Revolutionary Work, the Armed Revolutionary Factions in Lebanon, Islamic Jihad, the Organization of the Oppressed in the World, the Revolutionary Justice Organization, Holy Warriors for Freedom, the Khaibar Brigade, the Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine, the Blessed Resistance, the Islamic Liberation Organization, the Organization of the Mujhahideen for Freedom, the Revolutionary Cells, The Organization of the Islamic Dawn, The Organization of Militant Revolutionary Cells.

These were some of the ‘main stream’ groups, there were others, some for whom kidnapping was a cottage industry. Some functioned much like the current US and the UK hired mercenaries in Iraq and Afghanistan. In some cases contracts were drawn up with individuals willing to “hire out” for certain specific abduction projects. Given the available labor pool there was sometimes intense competition for a contract. For some groups, westerners were snatched for no other reason than the ransom money was good. Often those involved would use the ransom money to start a legitimate business, pay for family needs such as medical care or their children’s tuition fees. Sometimes Western companies paid for the release of their employees and in other cases governments would pay.

The largest payment for hostages during this period was the Arms for Hostages deal worked out by the Reagan administration when it provided missiles and spare parts to Iran to use against Saddam Hussein’s army after the same administration had supplied the Iraqi regime with chemical weapons to use against Iraqi Kurd, Shiites and Iranians.

Lebanese Islamist groups, and others, who in the 1980’s were resisting Israel’s attacks did not feel that their acts were nearly as reprehensible as the US responsibility for what Israel was doing to their people and country.

For example, once it became clear to them that the US Marines had abandoned their initially claimed neutrality as ‘peace keepers’ and instead began the shelling of Lebanon with 2,700 lb. shells from the USS New Jersey, most of these groups felt it their duty to repulse the US attacks.

Interviews with some of these now middle aged resistance fighters in Lebanon, who were active in this period, make plain that these groups felt that their military actions against the foreign forces constituted legitimate self defense, protecting Lebanon’s population from attacks by foreign forces.

While the military legitimacy of fighting the American and French forces was clear to the Lebanese during the early 1980’s, what about bombing the American Embassy? International law has protected Embassies since the 1815 Congress of Vienna, extending protection to foreign plenipotentiaries.

Safe passage for diplomats is not always honored, and as recently as February 2007, the United States government has been accused by Iraq and Iran of unlawfully kidnapping Iranian diplomats

The evidence from the 1980’s suggests that Hezbollah stayed out of the kidnapping game and concentrated on building its organization which they formally announced in an ‘open letter’ on Feb. 14, 1985.

Would the founders of Hezbollah have heard of something on the street, village or family level, of who may have been responsible for some of the high profile western kidnapping cases? One assumes so. Did neighborhood gossip attach an obligation to get involved on behalf of their viewed oppressors, including the US, and rescue their hostages? Should this have been disregarded In order to avoid some future ‘terrorism’ list?

The evidence suggests that Hezbollah is on a “political list” called the “terrorism list” because Israel wants it there, not because there is proof that it engaged in terrorism against Americans 25 years ago.

Using the scare tactic of ‘kidnapping Americans’ and ‘terrorism’ without proof, adds to the international ridicule of Bush’s policies.

In the nearly empty Lebanese Parliament building these days, the gossip is that the Bush administration wants to bargain with Hezbollah to remove it from the ‘T’ list if Hezbollah gives up its objective of liberating Palestine and cancels its opposition to the Bush/Olmert backed Siniora government

Given this kind of Bush administration offer, many view Hezbollah’s spot on the ‘T list’ as a badge of honor . Yet, respect for international law would suggest that the Bush Administration ought to show their ‘evidence’ or remove Hezbollah from the list.

When pressed in early April, 2007 by a former House Judiciary Committee staffer, one lawyer in the State Department Office of the General Counsel commented, “Its not that Hezbollah is terrorist per se, actually we know they are pretty clean, they are ok, but you must realize that they do associate with shady characters to their east, if you know what I mean.”

Hezbollah’s view of the April 17, 1983, Embassy bombing is different from some militias operating during this period. Hezbollah has consistently opposed attacks on foreign civilians. It was one of the first to condemn the 9/11 operation as well as the 1997 attack at the Temple of Hatshepsut at Luxor, Egypt which killed 58 civilians as “bloody and terrible, calling them crimes against Islam. Hezbollah also condemned the Cairo attacks on the Greek tourists, and the Algerian killing of 7 trappist monks in Algerian by claimed Islamists.

Despite Hezbollah’s view, which is based on the Koran’s prohibitions against harming innocent civilians, was the 1983 US Embassy attack terrorism against an internationally protected structure, or had the Embassy become a legitimate military target? In the assertion of one individual, a former member of Islamic Jihad, interviewed by American researchers during the spring of 2007, his group had nothing to do with Hezbollah during the Embassy operation or at any other time. He claims his associates knew in advance (Soviet intelligence passed to Lebanon via Syria) that the eight CIA operatives assigned to Lebanon were holding meetings in the Embassy and using its diplomatic protection for cover to plot assassinations and attacks on Lebanon. The entire CIA contingent was indeed meeting on the 6th floor of the Embassy at the time of the attack. The same source claims that the Embassy was also being used to feed targeting information to the USS New Jersey, visible offshore from the upper floors of the Chancery.

The view that the American Embassy was a legitimate target on April 17, 1983, cannot be summarily dismissed without careful review because principles of International law tend to support it. Once an Embassy is used for aggressive military purposes its protection collapses and it becomes what Donald Rumsfeld calls a “legitimate target of opportunity”.

Where is the proof that has been demanded for more than two decades? Is the only reason Hezbollah is on the ‘terrorism list’ is because Israel wants it there and a desire by some in the Bush administration to settle old scores without proof of who was responsible?

Organizations such as Islamic Jihad, Organization of the Oppressed on Earth and the Revolutionary Justice Organization are considered by the Bush administration and Israel to be synonymous with Hezbollah. That grouping appears to be a clumsy and inaccurate conclusion designed to support political objectives. No proof has ever been offered to establish that these groups were part of Hezbollah during this period rather than adversaries or competitors.

As one Hezbollah supporter commented:

“In America as you built a resistance to the British invaders and occupiers, were all the groups neatly organized? Were some ‘terrorists’? Did the ones who did operations such as the Boston Tea Party’ give their names and address to the occupiers? Or did some hide their identity and even dress like natives? Did George Washington and his staff know everything that was going on or did some groups just form and decide it was better to work on their own liberation project? That is what it was like here in Lebanon during this period. We should leave that period and concentrate on working together to solve today’s problems in Lebanon and the Middle East. All parties talking and meeting”

In denying Hezbollah involvement in operations targeting American civilians, their leader Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah has stated:

“The truth of the matter is that there was something other than Hezbollah, called the Islamic Jihad, who kidnapped the hostages. There exist videocassettes, communiqués that bear the signature of the Islamic Jihad. It is independent from the party. It is absolutely incorrect that the Islamic Jihad is a cover name for Hezbollah.

Hezbollah remains on the US and Israel ‘terrorism’ list for purely political reasons and to punish the organization for its resistance to Israeli aggressions against Lebanon and Bush administration plans for the region.”

It is time for the Bush administration to present its case and prove what terrorism Hezbollah has actually used against the American people in the 1980’s in light of US government admissions that since 1999 there is no evidence that Hezbollah has engaged in ‘Terrorism’.

It’s time for the poker players to reveal their cards, or as they say down in Crawford.. ’ y’all show ‘em er fold ‘em!

Franklin Lamb has been in Lebanon researching a book for the past nine months. Hezbollah: a Brief Guide For Beginners is expected in early summer, 2007. He can be reached at fplamb@gmail.com

Listing Hezbollah as “Terrorist” Serves North American Imperialism

ZNet | Israel/Palestine

by Ghada Chehade; April 05, 2007

In the so-called war on “terror” the most powerful weapon being deployed is the word itself. In the post-9/11 geo-political climate, throwing in the word “terrorist” automatically mutes coherent and critical debate. Any valid and necessary criticisms of North American governments and their foreign policy are silenced and demonized with the use of that one word, while opposition to foreign invasion and imperialist plundering can be at once quelled and criminalized by deeming it terrorist. Canada’s anti-terrorist list is being used in this very way-as a vehicle for stifling, demonizing and criminalizing resistance to the North American imperialist project and Canada’s role in it. At the same time the word acts as subterfuge from the mass terror perpetrated by the US and its imperialist baby brother-Canada. What Canadian citizens need to ask is just who does this labeling protect? Does it protect the Canadian population who has never suffered at the hands of Hezbollah, or does is protect the Canadian government and business elite who are part of a North American project to ransack the world’s resources while discrediting and eliminating any parties that stand in the way? To understand the distinction we need to understand imperialism, as well as the one-sided and suspect way in which “terrorism” is currently defined.

The Word “Terrorist”: A Bullet and a Shield

In the Israeli attacks on Lebanon in 2006 the Canadian government unwaveringly supported Israel’s “right to defend itself” while denouncing and condemning Hezbollah’s actions as terrorist acts. This is not surprising, since it serves the neo-colonial interests of the west to side with the colonizer-Israel-in the Middle East. Canada’s sympathetic position on the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon 2006 highlights and reaffirms the systematic North American double standard toward Israel. When Palestinians or Lebanese kill Israelis, even soldiers, it is labeled terrorist. But when Israeli soldiers or settlers kill Arabs, including civilians and children it is explained away as self-defense against “terrorists.” Chomsky explains this double standard very well:

The guiding principle is clear and straightforward" their terror is terror, and the flimsiest evidence sufficed to denounce it and to exact retribution upon civilian bystanders who happen to be in the way; our (Israeli) terror, even if far more extreme, is merely statecraft, and therefore does not enter into the discussion of the plague of the modern age.

In this respect, the word “terrorist” serves as a shield that justifies even the most heinous injustices. These include the illegal occupation and the slow genocide of the Palestinian people, the occupation and on-going massacre of Iraqis by the US and the military occupation of Afghanistan by the US and Canada- the mission’s new over lord. Any form of resistance to imperialism and foreign occupation is loftily conflated with terrorism, in a type of Orwellian double speak that turns the colonizer and oppressor into the victim. Thus the word “terrorist” or “terrorism” is at once both a bullet and a shield; it allows imperialist interests to invade and kill while also shielding them from any criticism by demonizing those who resist.

A Word is as Powerful as Those Who DEFINE it:

Professor Mordechai Gordon, who served in the Israeli Defense Force in the 1980s, stresses that we must always be cognizant that the word "terrorism"/"terrorist" is itself defined in such a way as to serve the interests of those who hold power. The common use of the word terrorist refers to "a member of a clandestine or expatriate organization aiming to coerce an established government by acts of violence against it or its subjects." Under this one-sided definition of terrorism, governments and states cannot be considered terrorist because terrorism is used to signify the violent actions of groups/individuals against those in power. This is the description accepted and reproduced by the US and Canada. However, it negates and disregards a much more significant form of terrorism-STATE TERRORISM-which can be defined as "terrorizing the whole population through systematic actions carried out by force of the state." Such terrorism is an essential part of a government designed to protect the needs of the privileged and is aimed at eliminating any significant opposition among the subjugated people. Gordon aptly maintains that, based on the distinction between the conventional use of the word terrorism and state terrorism “one can make a pretty strong case that since 1948, and certainly since 1967, Israel’s acts of state terror against the Palestinians have been far more severe than all the acts of terror committed by Arabs against Israelis.” In this respect it is the State of Israel, and Canada and the US by virtue of their economic and military support of it, that are carrying out a much greater terrorism. In the summer of 2006 Harper claimed that Canada must defend Israel because its values are similar to Canada’s. We agree with Mr. Harper on the second part: Canada, Israel and the US’ shared imperialist values and agenda are readily apparent! Canada’s current “mission” in Afghanistan, which was entered into five years ago with no public debate and under the pretext of “development,” was undertaken to affirm Canada as the American empire's key ally. As such, America’s imperialist interests are also Canada’s imperialist interests, and have been for decades. Thus I refer to it collectively as North American Imperialism though the two do not possess the same military might or power.

North American Imperialism in the Middle East: A well-OILED machine

The majority of the world’s oil reserves are in the Middle East and Central Asia. Muslim countries including Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Yemen, Libya, Nigeria, Algeria, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, possess between 66.2 and 75.9 percent of total oil reserves. In contrast, the United States of America has barely 2 percent of total oil reserves. Western countries including its major oil producers (Canada, the US, Norway, the UK, Denmark and Australia) control approximately 4 percent of total oil reserves. (In the alternative estimate of the Oil and Gas Journal, which includes Canada's oil sands, this percentage would be of the order of 16.5%). Ultimately, Muslim countries possess at least 16 times more oil than the Western countries, and Western countries, especially the US and its Canadian side kick, want to get their hands on as much of it as possible. However, because countries like Canada and the US purport to be democratic and accountable to their citizens, they cannot simply tell the public that they are waging wars and invading sovereign states for oil (although increasingly in the US the administration is not shy about admitting this). Instead they demonize the governments and peoples of this oil-rich region as evil enemies to be eliminated, or “liberated” through the barrel of a gun US-style. Professor and economist Michel Chossudovsky of the University of Ottawa explains the bottom line:

Demonization serves geopolitical and economic objectives. Likewise, the campaign against "Islamic terrorism" (which is supported covertly by US intelligence) supports the conquest of oil wealth. The US led war in the broader Middle East-Central Asian region consists in gaining control over the world's reserves of oil and natural gas. The Anglo-American oil giants also seek to gain control over oil and gas pipeline routes out of the region…Thus, demonization is applied to an enemy, which possesses three quarters of the world's oil reserves. "Axis of evil", "rogue States", "failed nations", "Islamic terrorists": demonization and vilification are the ideological pillars of America's "war on terror". They serve as a casus belli for waging the battle for oil.

While all of the most oil-rich countries are Muslim not all of them are considered “terrorist.” Not surprising, states that have opened their borders to North America imperialism by allowing US military bases and multinationals on their land, opening their oil fields and markets, and crushing any internal resistance to foreign control are considered to be ally states. An excellent example is Saudi Arabia, which is by far the most extreme in its interpretation and implementation of Islam, yet is the biggest US ally in the region next to Israel. On the other hand, states that have tried to reclaim their oil revenues such as Iran in the 1950s or those that refused the US access to oil pipelines such as Afghanistan and Iraq in the1990s have been labeled “terrorist” and invaded accordingly. The government and media tell Canadians that their soldiers are in Afghanistan “liberating” women and “developing” the country (ironically, that they helped destroy). Are Canadians to believe that the “oppressed Muslim women” of Afghanistan were in need of “liberation” (which has yet to materialize) while the women of Saudi Arabia were not? Could the Canadian led occupation of Afghanistan have anything to do with the Afghan oil pipeline? Could it have everything do with the pipeline? It should seem suspicious to Canadians that the region with the most oil in the world also has been deemed by the west to have the most “terrorists.”

So what does this have to do with Hezbollah and Lebanon, a country that does not have oil?

Imperialism entails taking what you want no matter where it is. There are enough corrupt governments in the world for the imperial and colonial powers to find local partners willing to sell or give their peoples land and resources to foreign interests. These puppet governments are adequately trained by the imperialists on how to wipe out resistance with violence and state sponsored terror. But there is always internal resistance and when the resistance grows stronger and especially when it wins seats in government, it is considered especially dangerous to the imperial powers and their lap dogs. Such is the case with Hezbollah. While Lebanon has no oil, it does have something that comes between North America and access to Middle East oil, it has a growing resistance movement that is embedded in the people and refuses to be co-opted for western interests. As such, Hezbollah is a thorn in the glutinous belly of North American (and Israeli) imperialism.

Ultimately, the imperialist plan for the Middle East is similar to that of other regions: regime change, pillage the resources and forcibly open markets and remove any barriers, human or other, to foreign direct investment. In the language of neo-liberal “globalization” this is known as structural adjustment. Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) are indirectly implemented by the US under the guise of Bretton Woods institutions such as the IMF and WTO, both of which are controlled by the US. Purportedly, SAPs are intended to “liberate” “third world” markets making them competitive in the global market. To get western loans, poor countries of the south and east are forced to remove barriers to trade and foreign direct investment such as labour and environmental protection, remove subsidies for food, health and education for the poor and privatize all public sectors from education to farming. In many countries where the majority of the population are poor or subsistence farmers, this literally entails starving the population and expelling them from their land to make way for foreign corporations or subsidiaries. What’s more, the profits produced in the South are exported to the wealthy countries of the North with no compulsion to reinvest in the local economy. (The recent Paris III conference on “reforming” and “rebuilding” Lebanon was little more than a blue print for neo-liberal restructuring, and a foreign investment scheme that includes 52 states). SAPs are ultimately nothing more than an elaborate and systematic mechanism for directly funneling wealth and resources from the already poor regions of the south to the glutinous regions of the north, especially the US and Canada. War is part of this moneymaker insofar as the “reconstruction” required in countries that have been bombed by the US and its allies is then perversely contracted out to North American firms. Adding insult to massive injury, the US and Canada invade and destroy a nation only to go back and make money “rebuilding it.” It is a type of plundering and injustice unparalleled even by European colonialism.

The Plan for Lebanon and the Middle East:

Because the Middle East-Central Asia has the most oil in the world, the scheme there is far more intricate and deep. As with the redrawing of borders in 1920 by the French mandate (of the League of Nations) that resulted in the creation of Lebanon, the North American (with its British and Israeli partners) imperialist project also entails a redrawing of borders in the Middle East, or a “remodeling of the Greater Middle East,” to use the expression of George W. Bush. For Washington, the summer attack on Lebanon and the concomitant internal destabilization and provocation between Sunnis, Shi’as and Christians had nothing to do with returning soldiers captured by Hezbollah. Instead it is about carrying out the theory of “controlled chaos.” According to the followers of Leo Straus (know today as the neo-conservatives) real power can only be exerted by controlling all resistance. It is by plunging the masses into chaos that the elites can aspire to ensure the stability of their position. This theorizing is well documented in the BBC documentary series The Power of Nightmares. Journalist Thierry Meysssan has also chronicled it. He explains that

according to the adepts of Leo Strauss, it is only in this violence that the imperial interests of the United States merge with those of the Jewish State. The Israeli will to dismantle Lebanon, to create in its place a mini-Christian state and annex part of its territory, is not new. It was enunciated in 1957 by David Ben Gourion in a famous letter... Particularly, it was inserted into a vast colonization project of the Middle East written in 1996 under the title: A clean break: a new strategy to secure the Kingdom (of Israel). That document, written up in a neo conservative think tank, the IASPS, was prepared by a group of experts assembled by Richard Perle and given to Benjamin Netanyahu. It is representative of the thinking of the revisionist Zionism of Vladimir Jabotinsky. It called for:

• The canceling of the Oslo peace agreements
• The elimination of Yasser Arafat
• The annexation of the Palestinian territories
• The overthrow of Sadam Hussein, to destabilize Syria and Lebanon in a chain of events
• The dismantling of Iraq and the creation of a Palestinian state in its territory
• The utilization of Israel as a complimentary base for the US Star Wars program

A speech given in 1996 by Benjamin Netanyahu to the US Congress (http://www.netanyahu.org/joinsesofusc.html) was inspired by this document. In that speech all of the ingredients of the current situation are there: threats against Iran, Syria and Hezbollah, with the added demand for annexation of East Jerusalem.
These prescriptions concur with the US’ own viewpoints. For the American empire and its closest imperial allies such as Canada, control of the regions rich in hydrocarbons (oil) demands a redefinition of borders, States and political regimes: a “remodeling of the Greater Middle East,” to use the expression of George W. Bush once again. Any resistance to this North American-Israeli agenda, military or political, must be eliminated. Indeed while it is claimed that Hezbollah is a terrorist threat, it’s main threat to this agenda is a political one. In order to implement neo-liberal policies and annex parts of Lebanon to Israel, the imperial powers need sympathetic governments or an internal political situation conducive to regime change. With Hezbollah a part of the coalition government in Lebanon, this agenda is made much more difficult. Eliminating and discrediting Hezbollah has thus taken on paramount importance in the last couple of years. One way to do this is to add the organization to the terrorist list of powerful western states.

CONCLUSION:

Hezbollah fights imperialism rather than assisting it. This is part of the reason it is demonized and officially labeled terrorist. It is interesting to note that the only three countries that have officially listed both it’s military and political wing as terrorist, Canada, Israel and the USA, also have the most to gain in the Western oil-grab and destabilization of the region. If Hezbollah assisted the imperialist project like so many paramilitary groups in Latin America and elsewhere, trained by the (former) School of the Americas in the US, then they would be the allies of North America not its enemy. Let us not forget than in the Middle East and elsewhere today’s villains and terrorists were once the allies and lackeys of the US and the west. These include Manuel Noriega of Panama, Chile’s Augusto Pinochet, Saddam Hussein, and the ultimate bogeyman--Osama Bin Laden. All were at one time strategic allies of the US and on the CIA payroll. When they served their purpose or turned on their master, they were all hunted, tried or killed as villains and terrorists. The Israeli government originally funded even Hamas in a backfire attempt to split the Palestinians. And the opposite is also true: yesterday’s “terrorists” are today’s beacons of justice and resistance. At one time Canada considered Nelson Mandela and the ANC terrorists for their armed resistance against Apartheid in South Africa. But in 2001 Mandela became the first person ever to be awarded honorary Canadian citizenship. Canadians must not succumb to historical amnesia and forget the contradictions of the past!

This is not to suggest that Hezbollah is not engaged in violence, it is. But if the terrorist list were actually about the cessation of violence, then Israel and its state terrorism of the last 60 years would clearly be at the top, so would the US for that matter. In truth, imperialist states like Canada are not opposed to violence. Indeed no state or government is, or else they would not enter or fund wars. What they are opposed to, is any form of violence that threatens their interests rather than supporting them. In the end “terrorism” as employed today is but a lofty word applied to discredit your enemy. Indeed to Hezbollah, the Arab/Muslim world, and many critics in the west, Israel and the US (and increasingly Canada)--the oppressors and occupiers-- are considered to be terrorists. But the former has little power so their perspective is meaningless in a world run on realpolitik. Until we are ready to apply the word to all those who perpetrate violence, and until we are willing to differentiate honestly and justly between those who oppress and those who resist, then the word “terrorist” or “terrorism” is a meaningless and self-serving trap and diversion.

Shaping and manipulating public opinion is an essential part of the western imperialist project, and by demonizing their enemies western governments eliminate any need for critical debate. Canada’s terrorist list is currently being used in this very way: to demonize those who resist imperialism abroad and stifle any debate on the matter internally. In the case of geo-politics, governments are careful to package their imperialist resource grabs as “humanitarian interventions.” We need only think back to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, of which Canada was a part from the outset. It is now well documented that the US lied about their reasons for the invasion. There are no weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in Iraq, but there is tons of oil. And in the on-going “Save Darfur!” movement many on all sides of the political spectrum have been quick to adopt the call, circulated endlessly by North American governments and mainstream media, to prevent the genocide of black Africans by brutal Arabs and Muslims. Few stop to ask whether the North American interest in Sudan, like Iraq, has more to with oil and uranium than genocide. Canadian scholars at globalresearch.ca have documented claims that the Darfur conflict revolves around oil and minerals, including uranium discovered in Hofrat and Nihas, which is coveted by Israel for its nuclear program. Tadamon! is not defending or denouncing such claims but rather raising awareness about the need for Canadians to ask critical questions about the world around them, especially the “war on terror.” Is Hezbollah a terrorist organization just because the Canadian government, under huge pressure from Zionist lobbies, says they are? Should the actions of the Canadian military in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere also be considered terrorist? De-listing Hezbollah would provide a space for public debate and discussion on such issues. This was a point raised by two Canadian MP’s, Liberal MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj and New Democrat Peggy Nash, this summer. Clearly these members of parliament are not condoning terrorism. What they are saying is that Hezbollah has a well-established political wing and Canada would be promoting peace to come to terms with that and dialogue with it. Officially listing them as a terrorist organization is counter-productive and prevents public debate as well as any negotiations with the Lebanese resistance. To date, listing Hezbollah a “terrorist organization” does a lot more to protect Canadian imperialism and Israeli crimes than the Canadian public. Canadians must demand that the government de-list the organization in order to create a space for critical and public discussion, and to shed a necessary light on Canada’s role in the North American imperialist project.

Israel pits US against Iran, then ducks when the SH*T hits the fan

As usual, israelis get US to do their dirty work while they avoid casualties by keeping a low profile.

When will Americans learn that it doesn't 'pay' to be a zionist hitman?

Israel’s chief of military intelligence warned on Sunday that Hezbollah, Syria and Iran were preparing for a possible attack on Teheran by Israel’s main ally the United States as early as this summer.

Amos Yadlin told the weekly cabinet meeting that Israel’s three principal foes were steeling their defences because they feared a US attack on Iran, a senior official who attended the meeting told AFP.

‘Their preparation is defensive ahead of war,’ the official quoted Yadlin as saying on condition of anonymity. ‘They fear a war initiated by the Americans because they understand that there might be an attack against Iran over the summer, but not by Israel.’

Although Yadlin insisted Israel had no intention of becoming embroiled in such a conflict, he warned that any moves by the Jewish state could be wrongly interpreted by its neighbours as a sign of hostile intent.

‘If the Americans launch an offensive in Iran, Hezbollah and Syria will think the move had been coordinated with Israel and would expect Israel to strike them too,’ another government official at the meeting told AFP.

Yadlin said he feared a repeat of 1967 when sabre-rattling, brinkmanship and miscalculations upset a fragile calm and plunged the region into war.

‘We might again find ourselves in a war no one wanted,’ Yadlin told ministers.

What Chutzpah!

Zionists have been DEMANDING war for over four years, yet when everyone around them is dead and buried they will deny they ever wanted it.

‘Israel must be prepared and make sure its steps will not lead to any miscalculation on the other side.’

‘Israel is closely following developments on this front out of a concern that the three players might misinterpret certain steps taken by Israel,’ Yadlin was quoted as saying.

Unbelievable.

israelis never cease to amaze me with their treachery and their cowardice as they meticulously plan to sit it out, while Americans and Iranians duke it out.

Yadlin said Hezbollah was abiding by a UN-brokered ceasefire in southern Lebanon, but alleged the Shia militants were busily rearming north of the Litani river -- out of the jurisdiction of UN peacekeepers. * * *

‘Hezbollah has no intention of getting into a second round of conflict,’ Yadlin was quoted as saying. ‘But it is busy rebuilding its forces and has accelerated those efforts for fear of a summer attack.’

On Saturday, Iran’s joint chief of staff warned Arab states neighbouring Israel against what he called a ‘Zionist suicide attack’ this year.

‘The Zionists plan to carry out a suicide plot in the summer,’ the semi-official Fars news agency quoted Major General Hassan Firouzabadi as saying.

He predicted that an Israeli attack would start from Lebanon and Syria and proceed to Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

It will begin in May when the third US aircraft carrier is scheduled to arrive in the Gulf.

We have very little time to stop them.

Posted in

• cowards
• divide and conquer
• instigate
• Iran
• Israel
• US
• war
• zionism

Submitted by qrswave on Mon, 2007-04-02 00:48. qrswave's blog

On Point on Hezbollah

Related
Augustus Norton on Hezbollah’s Social Services
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Posted on Wednesday, March 21, 2007.

Sources

Yesterday, NPR’s On Point aired an hour-long show about my article from this month's magazine, Parties of God: The Bush Doctrine and the rise of Islamic democracy (excerpted online). Other guests included Augustus Richard Norton, professor of international relations at Boston University, and author of the new book Hezbollah: A Short History; Anthony Shadid, correspondent for the Washington Post; and Gidi Grinstein, a former Israeli peace negotiator and president of the Re'ut Institute.

As I told host Tom Ashbrook in summing up the story, “In this part of the world we frequently ask if the Islamic world is ready for democracy, and there's this suggestion that they're not quite mature enough or ready for it--when in fact what we might be asking is whether the West is ready for Islamic democracy, because for more than the past decade, there's been a real flowering of Islamic political parties across the Middle East.”

“It's difficult to see how you're going to lead to real democratic reform,” said Shadid, “and real democratic change in these countries . . . without some kind of engagement with Islamic movements.” Shadid recently wrote two terrific pieces (piece 1, piece 2) on the Mubarak regime’s repression of Egyptian democratic movements. “They represent such large constituencies,” he said, “but at this point you don't see any real signal from the Americans that they're willing to engage or have a desire to engage them.”

Click here to hear the show.

* * *

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This is On Point on Hezbollah by Ken Silverstein, published Wednesday, March 21, 2007. It is part of Washington Babylon, which is part of Harpers.org.

Israel weighing force against Hezbollah

By LAURIE COPANS, Associated Press Writer 50 minutes ago

Israel's defense minister on Wednesday accused Syria of allowing the rearmament of Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon and said Israel has the right to act "forcefully" against the Shiite militia to counter the threat.

Defense Minister Amir Peretz's comments came days after Israel said it discovered four bombs in northern Israel recently planted by Hezbollah guerrillas. The Israeli claim, denied by Hezbollah, immediately raised tensions along the volatile border.

Israel and Hezbollah fought a 34-day war last summer before a U.N.-brokered cease-fire took hold. Under the truce, thousands of Lebanese government troops and international peacekeepers patrol the border to maintain calm. The cease-fire also bars armed Hezbollah fighters from the border area and calls for a halt in unauthorized weapons transfers to the guerrilla group.

Speaking to visiting U.S. Jewish leaders, Peretz said Syria, Hezbollah's main ally, is continuing to allow weapons shipments to the group to cross its border with Lebanon.

"We can't under any circumstances ignore the transfer of weapons and ammunition to Hezbollah," Peretz said. While Israel remains committed to the cease-fire, he said, "we reserve the right to protect the citizens of the state of Israel and we will do this forcefully without any compromises."

In Beirut, a Hezbollah official declined comment.

Syria is Hezbollah's closest ally, and Israel accuses the Damascus government of providing weapons to the group and allowing arms from the guerrillas' other main supplier, Iran, to pass through its territory to Lebanon.

The Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot on Wednesday said Syria recently transferred Russian-made Kornet anti-tank missiles to Hezbollah in violation of the cease-fire agreement. The report cited unidentified "senior political sources."

During a trip to Moscow in October, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expressed concern that Russian missiles were reaching Hezbollah through third parties. At the time, Russia's defense minister said his government had settled the matter with Israel.

Peretz gave no firm evidence of the weapons transfers and did not specify what would provoke Israeli military action in Lebanon. But he said this week's discovery of the bombs along the border showed how critical the situation has become.

Israeli military officials said the bombs were planted in recent days, under the cover of bad weather. If true, it would mark a violation of the cease-fire and indicate a failure by the international peacekeepers to prevent new attacks on Israel.

Hezbollah denied the allegation, saying the explosives were planted months ago before the war. U.N. officials are looking into the Israeli report.

Peretz has come under heavy criticism for his handling of the war, which has widely been perceived as a failure by the Israeli public. Israel attacked Hezbollah on July 12 after the group infiltrated Israel, killing three soldiers and capturing two others.

Despite an advantage in firepower, the army failed to accomplish the two main goals set by Israeli leaders — destruction of Hezbollah and rescuing the two captured soldiers. It also was unable to prevent Hezbollah from raining thousands of rockets onto northern Israel.

A total of 159 Israelis were killed, including 39 civilians killed by Hezbollah rockets. More than 1,000 people were killed on the Lebanese side, according to tallies by government agencies, humanitarian groups and The Associated Press.

The count includes 250 Hezbollah fighters that the group's leaders now say died during Israel's intense air, ground and sea bombardments in Lebanon. Israel has estimated its forces have killed 600 Hezbollah fighters.

Hizbollah warn that Lebanon will see more violence

Robert Fisk

Published: 25 January 2007

There is worse to come. That is what Lebanon's opposition, led by the Hizbollah, said only hours after they lifted their violent day-long "strike" on Tuesday night and - here is the rub - there are few in this country who do not believe it.

At least three deaths, 120 wounded and sectarian fighting across a hundred miles of Lebanon, we are now told, was only a "warning to the government". If Christian versus Christian and Sunni versus Shia Muslim is not enough, then, what will be? And how planned is the coming tragedy?

Planning is what came to mind yesterday among all those who live here. How, we are asking ourselves, did those thousands of violent young men all have near-identical, brand new wooden coshes? How come so many men emerged on to the Beirut streets in near-identical hoods? How come the "general strike" called to demand the resignation of the Prime Minister, Fouad Siniora, was switched off in a matter of minutes?

But there were other, far more disturbing elements to Tuesday's scandalous day of violence. Two of the old civil-war fault lines - on the road north of Beirut and in the suburbs of the city - were reopened. Siniora himself started warning of the dangers of civil war and the United States - as Hizbollah must have hoped - came out in support of the government, claiming, quite falsely, that the violence came from the Hizbollah-led opposition.

It certainly did come from their Amal militia ally but Sunni Muslim supporters of the government were in gun battles in Tripoli - they continued yesterday - and the "Lebanese Forces" youths of Samir Geagea, an ex-militia murderer who supports the government, were engaged in pitched stoning battles with other Christian Maronites.

Indeed, the inter-Christian war, in retrospect, was probably the most vicious of the day. Most of the wounded were hurt when Geagea's men tried to stop supporters of the Maronite ex-general Michel Aoun blocking roads outside the capital. Through some odd and tragic tradition of history, the Christian communities in Lebanon have often fought cruel battles with each other. Aoun and Geagea's forces killed each other at the end of the civil war. Even during the Crusades, the Christians of Tyre fought each other when Salahedin was at their gates.

Of the various foreign powers taking sides in this frightening battle for power in Lebanon - and they include Iran and Syria, of course, as well as the United States - one might well ask if the destruction of the Christian population of Lebanon was not part of their plan.

And what of the economy? Lebanon nurses a £20bn (repeat: billion) public debt - one of the reasons why the Shias as well as Aoun's Christian movement claim that the government represents a corrupt clique rather than democratically elected ministers. This, however, hides at least two salient facts. Most of this monstrous waste was perpetrated when Lebanon lay under Syria's hegemony when a Lebanese academic memorably told me that Lebanese government officials did not hold PhDs in corruption. "They have professorships in corruption," he told me.

And last year's war with Israel, which began after Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers and killed three others, added billions of losses to the economy - a figure that will now be increased by the collapse of further foreign investment generated by Tuesday's "strike".

Siniora is supposed to receive more promises of foreign aid in Paris today. The Americans and Europeans are sure to be generous. But it is also a fact that hundreds of thousands of Shias, who suffered most at Israel's hands, genuinely support the Hizbollah and do indeed demand the resignation of the government. How can Siniora change their minds?

CIA gets the go-ahead to take on Hizbollah

What has been unofficially going on for a long while is made official.
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By Toby Harnden, US Editor

Last Updated: 1:47am GMT 10/01/2007

Con Coughlin: Siniora government's battle for survival The Central Intelligence Agency has been authorised to take covert action against Hizbollah as part of a secret plan by President George W. Bush to help the Lebanese government prevent the spread of Iranian influence. Senators and congressmen have been briefed on the classified "non-lethal presidential finding" that allows the CIA to provide financial and logistical support to the prime minister, Fouad Siniora. The finding was signed by Mr Bush before Christmas after discussions between his aides and Saudi Arabian officials. Details of its existence, known only to a small circle of White House officials, intelligence officials and members of Congress, have been passed to The Daily Telegraph. It authorises the CIA and other US intelligence agencies to fund anti-Hizbollah groups in Lebanon and pay for activists who support the Siniora government. The secrecy of the finding means that US involvement in the activities is officially deniable. The Bush administration hopes Mr Siniora's government, severely weakened after its war with Israel last year, will become a bulwark against the growing power of the Shia sect of Islam, championed by Iran and Syria, since the fall of Saddam Hussein. Mr Bush's move is at the centre of a fresh drive by America, supported by the Sunni states of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt as well as Israel, to stop Iranian hegemony in the Middle East emerging from the collapse of Iraq. The finding, drawn up at the White House by National Security Council (NSC) officials, is a sign of Mr Bush's growing alarm at the threat posed by Iran, which has infiltrated the Iraqi government and is training Shia insurgents as well as supplying them with roadside bombs. A former US government official said: "Siniora's under siege there and we are always looking for ways to help allies. As Richard Armitage [a former deputy US secretary of state] said, Hizbollah is the A-team of terrorism and certainly Iran and Syria have not let up in their support of the group." Prince Bandar bin-Sultan, the former Saudi Arabian ambassador to Washington, is understood to have been closely involved in the decision to prop up Mr Siniora's administration and the Israeli government, which views Iran as its chief enemy, has also been supportive. "There's a feeling both in Jerusalem and in Riyadh that the anti-Sunni tilt in the region has gone too far," said an intelligence source. "By removing Saddam, we've shifted things in favour of the Shia and this is a counter-balancing exercise. Prince Bandar, now King Abdullah's national security adviser, made several trips to Washington and held meetings with Elliot Abrams, the senior Middle East official on the NSC. Prince Turki al-Faisal resigned abruptly as ambassador to Washington last month. Intelligence sources said that a principal reason for this was his belief he had been undermined by Prince Bandar, who had not told him of the Lebanon plan or even that he was visiting Washington. As a quid pro quo to the Sunni Arab states, Mr Bush and Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, have agreed to work harder to re-start negotiations about a peace deal with the Palestinians. According to the Swoop website (theswoop.net), which contains briefings on diplomatic and intelligence matters: "US officials point to the Israeli release of some tax monies owed to the Palestinian Authority as the first fruits of this approach. Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former clandestine CIA officer, said that such a finding would involve "various steps and types of non-military activity" agreed to by the Lebanese. "It takes two to tango. You're only those things that the Lebanese themselves would want you to do," he said. Bush administration officials have spoken of their desire to promote "mainstream" Arab states and have even spoken of the existence of a "Sunni crescent" in the Middle East. But there is tension between this policy and the support for Nouri al-Maliki's Shia-led government in Iraq, which has links to Shia death squads and Iran. "The administration is reaping its own whirlwind after Iraq," said the intelligence source. "For 50 years the US preferred stability over legitimacy in the Middle East and now it's got neither. It's a situation replete with ironies." toby.harnden@telegraph.co.uk

Pressuring Israel May Prevent a 'Generational' Mideast War

Related

Jimmy Carter Speaks A Simple Truth About Palestinian Apartheid

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By Joshua Holland, AlterNet

Israel may well find itself at war with Syria and Hezbollah in the coming months, and the American foreign policy establishment needs to let go of its long-standing biases to prevent these conflicts.


Posted on December 23, 2006

The Middle East stands at the edge of an abyss, and the most powerful country in the world has become institutionally incapable of pulling it back.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that there "will be a war next summer. Only the sector has not been chosen yet." According to Israeli defense officials, "the IDF's operative assumption is that during the coming summer months, a war will break out against Hezbollah and perhaps against Syria as well."

America's best hope of containing the escalating tensions in the region would be to address the festering wound that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has represented for decades. Common sense dictates that the time has come for the United States to apply pressure on Israel to restart negotiations with the Palestinians equal to that already put on the Palestinians to recognize Israel and contain their violent factions.

That would mark a dramatic shift in policy, and would potentially transform Bush's smoldering wreckage of a Middle East agenda. It could also represent a turnaround in the larger struggle against Islamic extremism, pulling the world back from the brink of the real "Clash of Civilizations" that ideologues from both East and West apparently covet.

It would go a long way towards mending fences with our European allies -- Tony Blair said recently that "resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is at the core of bringing peace to the Middle East" -- and it would give the United States a golden bargaining chip to entice Iraq's neighbors to help clean up the mess we've made there. The Iraq Study Group -- the bipartisan, blue-ribbon bunch of Wise Old Men and Women -- concluded that we have little hope of stabilizing Iraq "unless the United States deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict" and urged "renewed and sustained commitment by the United States on all fronts," including an aggressive push for "a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine."

Yet, it won't happen. Israeli PM Ehud Olmert, who explicitly linked Israel's conflict with Lebanon during the summer to George Bush's "War on Terror," quickly shot down the ISG's recommendations, rejecting "the attempt to create a linkage between the Iraqi issue and the Mideast issue."

And so it will be. Despite the fact that we've been very, very good to Israel for a very long time, it has become politically impossible to demand that our closest ally drop the almost impossible preconditions they've put on the Palestinians for rejoining the peace process. That's because key constituencies in both major parties -- traditional Jewish "Israel voters" for the Dems and evangelical "Christian Zionists" for the Republicans -- have pushed the debate in DC to such a degree that a balanced approach to the region is now impossible for the United States.

This spring, political scientists Stephen Walt of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago created a firestorm with their study of the impact of the "Israel lobby" on U.S. foreign policy. Critics lambasted the two respected scholars, accusing them, as has become the norm, of perpetrating conspiracy theories and being closeted anti-Semites. But their point was simple. The Israel lobby, which they defined as a loosely allied group of advocacy organizations, have effectively created a rigid political orthodoxy in Washington, the result of which is that our government is now effectively incapable of pursuing U.S. interests in the Middle East if they conflict in any way with the policies of Israel's center-right governing coalition.

It would be hard to find a clearer validation of their argument than the knee-jerk rejection of the Iraq Study Group's recommendation that the United States adopt a regional strategy towards stabilizing Iraq.

The Bush administration has gone further in giving Israel carte blanche in its handling of the situation in the Occupied Territories than his predecessors (including Reagan) ever did, authoring a dramatic shift in U.S. policy towards the region. The administration offered its "Roadmap" with much fanfare in 2002. But while the Bushies have condemned the Palestinians for straying from that plan, they've been silent as the Israelis have repeatedly and quite openly violated its tenets.

In April 2004, George W. Bush made a statement that sent shockwaves through the diplomatic community:

In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion.

This was the moment when the United States gave up the pretense of being an honest broker in the conflict -- that pretense long being a hallmark of U.S. policy.

In 1978, Israeli Prime Minister Menachim Begin signed the Camp David Accords, in which he promised that Israel would halt the construction of settlements -- illegal according to U.N. Security Council resolutions 446, 452, 465 and 471. At the time, the Israeli settler population in East Jerusalem and the West Bank was less than 100,000 (in 1972, it was about 10,000). But as of 2000, there were 400,000 Israeli settlers living in territories captured in 1967, according to Israeli government statistics. Since the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993, the Israeli settler population in the West Bank (excluding Jerusalem) has doubled.

Three years ago, Israel promised the United States, in writing, that it would halt the construction of new settlements. But in October of this year, Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz released a report that Haaretz called "political dynamite." The government study found that "a secret two-year investigation by the defense establishment shows that there has been rampant illegal construction in dozens of settlements and in many cases involving privately owned Palestinian properties." The New York Times (in its "travel section" of all places), reported that while "Israel has long asserted that it fully respects Palestinian private property in the West Bank and only takes land there legally" Israeli occupation watchers have found that "39 percent of the land held by Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank is privately owned by Palestinians."

While the administration has given an unprecedented green light to the Israelis, it has brought intense pressure on the Palestinians. After much-touted Palestinian elections resulted in Hamas coming to power, the administration advocated a complete cessation of aid to the Palestinian authority and approved of Israel withholding Palestinian taxes that it collects. That led to an underreported but very severe humanitarian crisis in the occupied territories.

The rationale was that elements within Hamas refused to recognize Israel and call a halt to the Intifada, which is certainly justifiable on its face. But at the same time, both Ariel Sharon and his successor Ehud Olmert flagrantly violated the provision of the Road Map that requires that any and all moves in the occupied territories be negotiated with the Palestinians. The Bush administration had no problem with Olmert campaigning on a promise to unilaterally move about 20 percent of the Israeli settlers in the West Bank from recent settlements to older ones, while annexing about 10 percent of the Palestinian territory (a plan since abandoned, at least for the moment)

Simply put, if we extend the question of recognizing the other side's "right to exist" to the "right to self-governance within the boundaries long established by international law," then it becomes clear that Palestinians must acknowledge Israel's right to exist while powerful factions within the Israeli government refuse to acknowledge the same rights for the Palestinians, and can do so with impunity, according to the Bush White house.

And Israeli unilateralism is directly contrary to U.S. interests. As the New York Times' Steven Erlanger wrote ($$), "Israeli unilateralism can be bad for America as well as for Palestinian leaders who favor talking rather than shooting."

When the United States is seen to be an active participant, pushing its ally Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians, Israeli leaders can deflect domestic criticism by blaming Washington, the United States can earn credit with the Arab world for pushing Israel, and the Palestinians will be seen as an active player at the table, boosting negotiators like Mr. Abbas over the rejectionists of Hamas.

Since the Israelis pulled out of the peace process five years ago, there has been absolutely no incentive for them to return (while the Palestinians have been literally starved for voting Hamas to power).

Washington's lock-step embrace of Israeli policies goes beyond its dispute with Palestine; while Israel's massive destruction of Lebanon was viewed as a textbook example of a disproportionate response almost universally -- outside of DC and Tel Aviv -- there's evidence that the United States encouraged the attack. The United States also vetoed two Security Council resolutions condemning Israel for excessive violence in Gaza, which led Arab countries allied to the United States to break the economic embargo on the Palestinians.

We've dug a deep hole in the Middle East, and we just can't stop digging.

This isn't about Iraq -- nothing can salvage the U.S. project there at this point. And it's not even about defeating extremism in the short-term -- nobody seriously believes that militants will give up their violence overnight. But the American strategic class is talking about a "generational war" like the Cold War, and if that's the case, then we have got to take the Arab world's legitimate grievances seriously. Pressuring Israel to pursue a final settlement with the Palestinians would boost our frayed credibility (not only in the Middle East), deepen the rift in radical Islam between those who believe the West is their ultimate enemy -- call them the bin Ladenists -- and those who target their own, often corrupt, governments and, over the long-term, it would separate the Arab extreme from the Arab Main street. That's how you win a "war" on terror.

Joshua Holland is an AlterNet staff writer.

© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

People's Revolt in Lebanon

by MOHAMAD BAZZI

[from the January 8, 2007 issue]

Beirut

Ever since Hezbollah and its allies began an open-ended protest against the US-backed government on December 1, Beirut's gilded downtown--built for wealthy Lebanese and foreign tourists--has become more authentically Lebanese. Where Persian Gulf sheiks once ate sushi, families now sit in abandoned parking lots, having impromptu picnics, the smell of kebabs cooked over coals wafting through the air. Young men lounge on plastic chairs, smoking apple-scented water pipes, and occasionally break out into debke, the Lebanese national dance.

Most protesters are too poor to afford $4 caffe lattes, but men hawking shots of strong Arabic coffee for 30 cents apiece are doing a brisk trade. Nearly all businesses are shuttered, but a few enterprising store owners have figured out how to cater to the crowd. One hair salon converted itself into a sandwich shop, selling cheese on bread with a cup of tea for $1. The smiling cashier works behind a counter filled with L'Oréal hair products.

"I never came to downtown before these protests. I can't afford to come here. If I ate a sandwich here, I'd be broke for a week," says Emad Matairek, a 35-year-old carpenter from the dahiyeh, the Shiite-dominated suburbs of Beirut. "It's well-known that this area was not built for us."

The protests are being portrayed in much of the Western media as a sectarian battle, or a coup attempt--engineered by Hezbollah's two main allies, Syria and Iran--against a US-backed Lebanese government. Those are indeed factors underlying the complex and dangerous political dance happening in Beirut. But the biggest motivator driving many of those camped out in downtown isn't Iran or Syria, or Sunni versus Shiite. It's the economic inequality that has haunted Lebanese Shiites for decades. It's a poor and working-class people's revolt.

In Riad Solh Square, amid dozens of white tents erected for Hezbollah supporters to sleep in, there is a stage with a huge TV screen and rows of loudspeakers mostly positioned toward the Grand Serail, the Ottoman-era palace where Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and his Cabinet are hunkered down. Between the tents and the palace, behind eight-foot-high coils of barbed wire, there are hundreds of Lebanese soldiers toting M-16s and sitting atop armored vehicles. Every night thousands of people gather in front of the stage, within earshot of the Serail, demanding that Siniora either resign or accept a national unity government that gives Hezbollah and its allies greater power.

A major theme highlighted by the protesters is that Siniora is backed by the Bush Administration--and that alliance did little to help Lebanon during last summer's thirty-four-day war between Israel and Hezbollah. A few days into the sit-in, Hezbollah hung a large banner from a building showing Siniora embracing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, over a collage of dead Lebanese children Photoshopped onto his back. It reads, "Condy--Thanks," a reference to Siniora's meeting with Rice during the war, when US officials refused to endorse a quick cease-fire. "Thank you for your patience Condy, for some of our children are still alive," it reads.

But in most conversations with people at the sit-in and protests, economic concerns quickly emerge: Siniora's government is corrupt, has failed to reduce Lebanon's crippling $41 billion public debt and has done little to improve people's lives. Shiites are especially forgotten in the country's economic planning. Many at the sit-in have been out of work for years, or lost their jobs after the recent war.

"Our country is getting poorer, and Siniora's government is not talking about it," says Hadi Mawla, a 22-year-old graphic design student who came from the dahiyeh on the protest's first day, which drew hundreds of thousands to downtown. "Our standard of living is falling, while other Arab countries are improving. We Lebanese used to make fun of other Arab countries. Now they have great big cities like Dubai. And we're going to end up like Egypt--with a very poor class, a very rich class and nothing in between."

The economic dimension to the protest can be seen everywhere. Around the square there are hand-drawn posters of Siniora sitting on a chair made of stacks of dollar bills. From the stage, a projector shines slogans highlighting economic demands onto a building that houses the ultra-chic Buddha Bar, with its two-story Buddha statue inside. The swirling projector makes its point: "No to the government of VAT" and "No to the government of seafront properties."

This class battle transcends sectarian boundaries. Hezbollah has formed an alliance with the Free Patriotic Movement, led by Maronite Christian politician and former army commander Michel Aoun. With this coalition Hezbollah is trying to prove that it's not a purely sectarian party, it's not seeking to impose an Islamic government and it's willing to ally not just with nationalist Sunnis but also with Christians. Because Aoun stresses honest government, accountability and economic equality, he and Hezbollah seemed like a natural fit. By playing up its alliance with Aoun--and downplaying its partnership with the notoriously corrupt Shiite Amal party--Hezbollah can reinforce the reputation for honesty shared by many Islamist movements in the Middle East.

Hezbollah's charismatic leader, Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah--ever skillful at tapping into the Shiite tradition of empowering the dispossessed--often highlights the class dimension of his group's campaign. "They will hear us in all the palaces of the ruling coalition," Nasrallah thundered on December 7, in a speech via video-link to the protesters downtown. He was calling for a huge turnout at a rally three days later, where crowd estimates ranged as high as 1 million. "From the homes of the poor, from the shantytowns, from the tents, from the demolished buildings, from the neighborhoods of those displaced by war, we will make sure that they hear our voices."

There's a long tradition of the Lebanese state leaving Shiites to fend for themselves and waiting for religious or charitable groups to fill the vacuum. This happened over decades, long before Hezbollah emerged in the early 1980s. Hezbollah's "state within a state" was possible only because successive governments willfully left a void in the Shiite-dominated areas of south Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley and the dahiyeh.

"The central government always liked outsourcing the problems of the south. First they gave it to the Palestinians, then they gave it to the Israelis, and they gave it to Hezbollah from 2000 to 2006," says Khalil Gebara, co-director of the Lebanese Transparency Association, an anti-corruption watchdog group. "Hezbollah does what every political party does: They went and created a dependency network."

In the 1960s and '70s, when Shiites were first making the migration from the rural south and Bekaa to Beirut and other cities, the central government left their fate to the clans and feudal landlords who held sway in the agricultural hinterlands. By 1970, when the Palestine Liberation Organization began creating bases in southern Lebanon, the Shiites were on the front line of a conflict between the PLO and Israel. A Shiite cleric named Musa al-Sadr created Amal, the first Shiite political party, which later turned into a militia. To an extent, Amal supplanted the feudal lords as protector of the Shiites.

After the Israeli invasion of 1982, Hezbollah emerged to fight the Israeli occupation. It was more disciplined and less corrupt than Amal, although Hezbollah was always dependent on Iranian funding and support. When Hezbollah's grinding guerrilla war forced Israel to end its occupation in May 2000, the militia was hailed throughout the Muslim world for achieving what no Arab army had done before: force Israel to relinquish land. With the Israeli withdrawal, Hezbollah moved into the vacuum in southern Lebanon, opening clinics and schools and providing small-business loans.

To many Shiites, Hezbollah's ascendance put them on the political map. There's a word Lebanese have used to put down a Shiite: mutawali, which roughly translates into "country bumpkin." It's a term freighted with meaning--of dispossession, prejudice, deprivation. But Shiites have appropriated it and now use it with pride. "During the civil war, we mutawalis were insulted and put down. Hezbollah gave us a new sense of dignity, and that's the most important right we can have," says Mawla, the graphic design student. "Hezbollah made it possible for us to stand, without fear, and shout from the rooftops that we are mutawalis."

In 1990, at the end of the fifteen-year civil war, Lebanon's political class chose to continue its sectarian system. The current crisis is rooted in that choice, which began with the 1989 Taif Accord, brokered by Saudi Arabia and Syria. The agreement called for all militias to disarm--with the exception of Hezbollah, whose militia was labeled a "national resistance" against the Israeli occupation. Leaving traditional warlords in place, Taif enshrined the political partition among the country's rival sects: Power must be shared between a Maronite Christian president, a Sunni prime minister and a Shiite speaker of Parliament. Each of the major players in the war seized a piece of the government and extended the sectarian system to the lowest rungs of the civil service. This arrangement was ripe for exploitation by outside powers, especially Syria, which dominated Lebanon from 1990 until last year.

One man had a chance to change the economic underpinnings of this system, and perhaps eventually cast aside its entire sectarian basis. He was Rafik Hariri, a billionaire construction tycoon who served as prime minister for most of the 1990s and until late 2004. But Hariri failed at building a healthy postwar economy. He rebuilt downtown Beirut at the expense of the hinterlands, and he focused on luxury sectors--banking and upscale tourism--instead of Lebanon's productive sectors, agriculture and small industry. Hariri was trying to return to the prewar economy, which was driven by Lebanon's role as a transit center for oil money from the Persian Gulf. But by the 1990s oil producers no longer needed the Lebanese banking system; they had Dubai.

"Everything that the government built around here means nothing to us," says Matairek, the carpenter at the downtown protests. "What they should have done was strengthen the Lebanese army. All the money they spent to fix this downtown--what's the use of it, if the Israeli warplanes were able to bomb us, and the Lebanese army wasn't able to stop it?"

The gleaming downtown became a symbol of Hariri's reign and his failed economic policies. By the time he left office Lebanon had a $36 billion public debt, or 170 percent of GDP--one of the highest debt-to-GDP ratios in the world (it's now 190 percent). For much of Hariri's term, he relied on Siniora, an old friend, as his finance minister.

Siniora's biggest triumph as finance minister was the 2002 Paris II Donors Conference, which netted Lebanon $4.4 billion in soft loan guarantees. In return Siniora promised a raft of neoliberal economic reforms: He would privatize state assets like cellphone contracts, reform the country's civil service sector and balance the budget by 2006. Nine months before the donors conference, Siniora imposed Lebanon's first value-added tax (VAT): a 10 percent surcharge on most goods except food and medicines. One of his main arguments for staying in office is to shepherd a Paris III conference scheduled for January, in which international donors are expected to contribute toward rebuilding the infrastructure devastated by last summer's Israeli offensive.

"Because of Siniora and his economic programs, we have a very flawed tax system, based on indirect taxes. Statistically, it has been shown that this system recycles money from the poor to the wealthy," says Fawwaz Traboulsi, a political science professor at the Lebanese American University. "We have a 10 percent flat income tax, but most state revenues come from indirect taxation: the VAT, fuel taxes, utility surcharges. Salaried people pay the bulk of these taxes."

Throughout his tenure, Hariri clashed with the Syrian-backed Lebanese president, Emile Lahoud. In February 2005 Hariri was assassinated in a massive bombing as his motorcade drove through Beirut's seaside corniche. Widely assumed to have been carried out by Syria or its agents, the killing shook Lebanon and cast a harsh light on Syrian hegemony over the political system. Under internal pressure and mass demonstrations, the Syrian-backed prime minister resigned and Damascus pulled its 14,000 troops out of Lebanon. After elections in June 2005, the new parliamentary majority--a coalition of Christian, Sunni and Druse parties--appointed Siniora as prime minister. For the first time, Hezbollah joined the Lebanese Cabinet, securing two seats in Siniora's administration.

Until last summer's Israel-Hezbollah war, Siniora continued with the economic policies he had begun under Hariri. Morality aside, there's one major problem with these soak-the-poor economics: They strengthen Hezbollah. In a country divided drastically between haves and have-nots, a large proportion of the have-nots happen to be Shiites, and they rely for social services not on the government but on Hezbollah. In their view, the government takes, while Hezbollah provides.

After the latest war, with Israeli bombs targeting Shiite-owned factories and businesses in the south and in the Beirut suburbs, the Shiite middle class was devastated. This has made Shiites even more dependent on Hezbollah, as evidenced by the group's handing out up to $12,000 in cash payments to everyone whose home was destroyed. The money--most likely provided by Iran--was intended to pay for a year's rent and new furniture while reconstruction begins.

Locked in a state of perpetual conflict, Lebanon today faces the same choice it had in 1990, when the civil war ended. It can replicate the political system that it had before--based on corrupt sectarian warlords dividing up the spoils of the war they perpetuated--or it can try to produce a stronger and more egalitarian system, one that isn't based on religious divisions and that won't consign its largest sect, the Shiites, to the care of an Iranian-funded religious party.

"How can we still accept this government that steals? This government that built this downtown and accumulated this huge debt?" asks Matairek, the Shiite carpenter. "Who's going to pay for it? I have to pay for it, and my son is going to pay for it after me."