'War is peace'

Orwellian theories are being acted out in Israel - as persecution against Palestinians begins to echo 1984.

May 8, 2007 5:00 PM

Nimer Sultany

It is one thing to read George Orwell and Franz Kafka, it is quite another to live their texts. For us - Palestinians - Orwell and Kafka are not works of fiction but concrete reality.

Israel's persecution of Azmi Bishara, the prominent Palestinian scholar, head of the National Democratic Assembly and - until recently - member of the Israeli Knesset, is only the recent articulation of this reality. After all, this is not the first Israeli attempt to criminalise Bishara or other Palestinian political leaders. The state hopes that by reframing his political agenda as treason, incitement to violence and support of terrorism, his ideas will lose legitimacy, his community will be intimidated and the establishment will not need to deal with the challenge that the Palestinian citizens of Israel present to the ideology of the state through their demands for equality.

Bishara rightly claims that he will not have a fair trial. Indeed, we know from the history of the General Security Service (GSS) of a culture of lies and fabricated files (even against their own men as in the Bus 300 affair, which was hijacked by Palestinian militants in 1984). We also know that even in cases unrelated to "security", the Arab citizen is twice as likely to be indicted, convicted and imprisoned compared to his fellow Jewish citizen. Professors Aryeh Rattner and Gideon Fishman of Haifa University write: "Being an Arab may lead to a presumption of guilt without facts and the rules of evidence."

We also know that security is the sacred cow to which Israeli judges bow. Security has always been an important tool for the maintenance of the Jewish and Zionist character of the Israeli state. It was a major pretext for the confiscation of Palestinian citizens' lands. Israel's persecution of Bishara is part and parcel of this security mindset of the Israeli state vis-á-vis its Palestinian citizens. Those citizens were denied their basic rights and were subjected to a military administration for 18 years (1948-1966). Since then, the GSS has been the main state organ in charge of viewing us as a "fifth column." Bishara has already had his trial(s) without knowing. The justices of the Israeli Supreme Court have authorised more than once the wiretapping of his private conversations. "parliamentary immunity", "freedom of expression" and "democracy" are all tricks through which Big Brother comes to haunt you in the end.

Not only does the GSS closely monitor and control the Arab education system inside Israel, but it has publicly declared that the Palestinian citizens of Israel are a "strategic and demographic threat" to the state. In fact, it can be said that Big Brother is not only patrolling "thoughtcrimes" but has "telescreens" in the bedrooms of the Palestinian citizens, penetrating our private realms and controlling some of the most intimate aspects of our family and love lives. The Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law forbids family unification and effectively prohibits Arab citizens from marrying citizens of more than half of the countries in the Middle East. In this dehumanising context, the law declares that marriage and children are not humanitarian affairs.

Had Israel been a democratic state, one would have expected the legal apparatus to criminalise and outlaw anti-democratic movements. Israel, however, persecutes Bishara for his democratic agenda. "State of all its citizens" and "universal equality" would be considered a trivial and possibly conservative agenda in any normal democratic state. Strangely, in Israel, such an agenda has been labelled as dangerous, subversive and extremist. The Knesset rejected several times an "equal protection" clause that Bishara had proposed. Equality remains outside Israeli legislation.

After all, these are unorthodox ideas in Israel. The Zionist "Newspeak" is supposed to turn them into unthinkable ideas. The fact that three groups of Palestinian elites inside Israel - National Committee of the Heads of the Arab Local Municipalities, Adalah and Mada al-Carmel - have recently issued "vision documents" articulating our demands for equality, expressing our grievances and presenting an alternative historical narrative meant that Bishara had risen in prominence and influence.

On the other hand, anti-democrats and racists who openly propagate violence against as well as the expulsion of Palestinians (including those who are citizens) serve in the Knesset and the government, and cabinet ministers who routinely issue racist statements against the Palestinian citizens are not held accountable. In fact, they become more popular in the Jewish community after such statements.

It is thus hard to escape understanding the Israeli irony without the Orwellian backdrop. Bishara, vocal in his opposition to Israel's brutal assault on Lebanon last summer, is accused by the Thought Police (the GSS) of helping the enemy in times of war through contact with a foreign agent. The "enemy" here stands for the Arab world to which the Palestinian citizens belong and the "foreign agent" is defined retroactively as such by the Thought Police. These alleged crimes are punishable according to Israeli law by life imprisonment or death penalty. "Thoughtcrime is death."

On the contrary, cabinet ministers who urged the Israeli military - still ironically called the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) - to wipe out dozens of Lebanese villages and not feel morally restricted during the war were heralded as patriots. Those who perpetrate war crimes are considered "men of peace". The Big Brother is persecuting Bishara because "war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength."

What might be bewildering in recent developments is Israel's disregard for the impact that these policies might have on its future. Israel has always discriminated against the Palestinian minority, isolated it from its larger Arab milieu and employed a multi-layered control system. Since October 2000, however, Israel has been moving rapidly towards a collision by continuously pushing this minority further into the corner. Most of the minority's leaders were incessantly interrogated and at times physically assaulted by the police; Ra'ed Salah, a prominent religious and political leader, was imprisoned; several laws further restricted political speech and participation; Bishara faced two political trials; and more Arab houses have been demolished. More persecution of Bishara and his party will take Israel one step closer toward collision with its Palestinian citizens.

Israel is in effect presenting Azmi Bishara with two similar "options": to end up as either a Kafkaesque or an Orwellian protagonist. The former was executed, the latter was brainwashed and forced to betray his world waiting for an impending execution.

Meanwhile Bishara, as a genuine civil rights leader, is resisting the attempt to drag him into Kafka's Trial by Big Brother and his Thought Police. He courageously holds his ground: "We will not be intimidated. We will not bow to permanent servitude in the land of our ancestors or to being severed from our natural connections to the Arab world."

Nimer Sultany is a Palestinian citizen of Israel and currently a doctoral candidate at Harvard Law School.

He has worked as a human rights lawyer in the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and as the head of the political monitoring project
at Mada al-Carmel (the Arab centre for applied social research).

Rationalising imperial conquest

BOOKS

PRAFUL BIDWAI

The book is a devastating critique of the U.S. Empire-building project and its principal rationalisations.

FIVE and a half years after the United States launched its Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) in response to the attacks of September 11, 2001, by invading Afghanistan, the world has become considerably more insecure, and terrorism has become more menacing than ever before. A study for Mother Jones magazine in the U.S. by the Centre on Law and Security at the New York University (NYU) Foundation finds that there has been a 607 per cent increase in the incidence of terrorism between September 2001 and March 2003, and March 2003 and September 2006.

One of the biggest failures of GWOT strategy is none other than Iraq, where over 150,000 U.S. troops are deployed. A country free of religious extremism and terrorism until its invasion four years ago, Iraq now reports the world's largest number of terrorist and violent incidents, week after week. Over 650,000 civilians have perished in Iraq, besides 3,000-plus U.S. troops. The occupation forces there have no grip on the fast-deteriorating situation despite the "surge" in U.S. troops.

Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq has seen any of the promised "stabilisation" or "democratisation". In Afghanistan, there is a strong resurgence of the Taliban amidst rampant warlordism, and a serious danger that President Hamid Karzai's regime may come unhinged altogether. Opium production is booming as never before and now accounts for well over one half of the country's gross domestic product (GDP).

Worse, GWOT has alienated and antagonised large numbers of people in the Islamic world. The U.S. has lost all credibility in their eyes, as well as among growing numbers of people in the West. Discontent in the Islamic world, in particular West Asia, is growing along with the expanding cesspools of unaddressed grievances — further feeding violence, counter-violence and terrorism.

The U.S. is now increasingly perceived as a power in search of an Empire, to be built primarily by military means. It presents a new, ugly, aggressive and belligerent face in the post-Cold War era. New apologists have also emerged for the new imperialism of the post-Cold War era. During the Cold War, U.S. hegemonism was based on "saving the world from communism", and presenting a benevolent face to the "free world". Today's Empire needs different, if equally irrational, justifications or rationalisations.

Six of these rationalisations or banners and apologies for Empire are important: (i) the global war on terror; (ii) weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the `wrong hands'; (iii) failed states; (iv) the necessity and justice of external and forcible humanitarian intervention; (v) regime change in the name of democracy; and (vi) the war on narcotics.

The present book, an initiative of the Transnational Institute, an Amsterdam-based radical fellowship, and authored mainly by its Fellows, is a devastating critique of the U.S. Empire-building project and its principal rationalisations. Its greatest merit is that it centrally confronts the reality of post-Cold War U.S. imperialism and tries to analyse it comprehensively. It persuasively argues that each of the slogans and premises through which U.S. Empire-building is sought to be legitimised is fundamentally flawed.

The book's authors make their case on a broad canvas, which includes a discussion on the purposes of Empire (themselves related to specific regimes of economic power and to furthering inequality-enhancing neoliberal capitalism); the manufacture of intellectual opinion in favour of neoliberal ideas; and the special role played by American exceptionalism in legitimising Empire-building through its assertion that the U.S. is unique as the world's "natural" leader, in that "it is the one country whose pursuit of its national interest is, at one and the same time, the pursuit of a cosmopolitan universal interest".

These essays are followed by six chapter presentations on the six ideological banners. As important as these sections are the Introduction and Conclusion, both by Achin Vanaik, who weaves together the different themes and illuminates numerous connections between them.

To begin with, Walden Bello analyses the economics of Empire by postulating a massive crisis of over-accumulation: overproduction and building up of excess capacities, whose output the economics of the industrial North cannot absorb. He argues that recent attempts by international capital to develop new communications technologies; to colonise public spheres such as health, education, power, water supply and transport; to "financialise" itself; and to tap China's rapid growth to finance a debt-led consumption boom in the U.S. will not adequately remedy the causes of this crisis. Walden Bello presents U.S. post-Cold War belligerence as a consequence of economic weakness, not strength.

Susan George presents a critique of the neoliberal doctrine, rooted in a combination of conservative interpretation of neoclassical economic theory, and libertarian and ultra-individualist legal-political ideas. Susan George convincingly shows that the dominance of neoliberalism owes little to its intrinsic merit; nor was it a "natural" outcome of intellectual debate.

Rather, it followed a systematic and lavishly funded effort to "sell" the ideology through think tanks, select university departments, policy institutes and key individuals in the media. She explores and exposes the institutional framework through which this $1 billion enterprise was conducted.

Mike Marquesee's chapter is a searing critical analysis of American exceptionalism and its historical roots in settler colonialism. This notion sees the U.S. not just as a territorial entity, but as a "great social experiment", which must be propagated — if necessary, through colonial wars and the Monroe Doctrine. American exceptionalism sees the U.S. as the ultimate telos and goal of modernity itself.

Marquesee explains how this exceptionalism survives despite the blows delivered by the U.S.' ignominious defeat in the Vietnam war and the visible inferiority of the U.S. model of capitalism in relation to its Western European variants in respect of, say, public services.

The six chapter presentations that follow delve into the rationalising banners, by analysing their provenance and purpose, and their structural weaknesses and deceitful nature. They also suggest some alternative approaches.

Vanaik argues that the one-sided view of terrorism contained in the dominant discourse in the U.S. (which excludes state terrorism altogether), and the militarised solutions offered to it through GWOT, is an excellent "framing device" for the imperial project and "possesses the greatest capacity to mobilise domestic support for the U.S. pursuit of Empire abroad".

Vanaik, however, dissects GWOT's failure. He holds that demonisation of Islam and Muslims is "an inevitable corollary" of GWOT. Vanaik offers the International Criminal Court as an alternative framework within which to prosecute and punish terrorist acts.

Zia Mian takes apart the WMD argument as an excuse for waging war on Iraq. Washington deliberately concocted falsehoods about Saddam Hussein's pursuit of WMD and manipulated the media. The "in the wrong hands" proposition is a means of selectively rewarding friends, allies or client-states, while attacking enemies and "Axis of Evil" states.

Mian documents the U.S.' spectacular hypocrisy in developing new uses for and designs of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile defence systems, while preaching disarmament to others. He also shows how the mystique built around the bomb comes back repeatedly to haunt the U.S. through its spread to other countries. This is the inevitable consequence of the "Empire of Fear".

The U.S. claims that its wars in Central and West Asia were rationally calculated to promote regime change in the interests of "democracy"; or they were humanitarian interventions, necessitated by the failure/paralysis of the multilateral system (the United Nations, in particular). This argument has some resonance outside the U.S., especially given the context of the former Yugoslavia, Somalia and Rwanda — although the U.S. and its North Atlantic Treaty Organisaion (NATO) allies failed to act in these very cases.

But as Mariano Aguirre shows, unilateral, offensive, armed intervention mocks at international law and weakens multilateral institutions that ought logically to intervene and honour their obligation to protect threatened civilians.

Aguirre persuasively argues that the Left "should not abandon the moral imperative to protect victims, nor the principles of democracy and international law... We need to recognise that there are massive violations of human rights, that there are dysfunctional states that do not protect their people... Also, that the U.N. system lacks the administrative capacity and flexibility to respond and that power politics limit its capacities, and that, therefore, the international community has a role to play."

Phyllis Bennis writes a blisteringly critical account of how the U.S. first contemptuously bypassed the U.N. Security Council, and then cynically manipulated it to obtain a carte blanche in Afghanistan and Iraq. She criticises the U.S.' mollycoddling of regimes with dubious human rights records (for instance, Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Russia), its setting up of puppet regimes in the occupied countries, and its policies of creating or widening sectarian divides and of promoting the outright loot of Iraq's wealth through corporatisation and privatisation.

Bennis presents a scathing analysis of the effects of U.S. policy in West Asia, including promoting authoritarian allies, legitimising Israel's brutal occupation of Palestine, and the negative examples all this has set for West Asia as a whole.

David Sogge exposes state weaknesses, fragility or "failure" as a dishonourable pretext for Empire-building.

Most characterisations of failing states totally ignore the causes of failure, typically rooted in the structure of the global economy, neoliberal policies imposed by international financial institutions or Western governments, and absence of democracy and accountability. Military interventions rarely offer a solution, nor does the "shell of elections".

Last but not least is a discussion by David Bewley-Taylor and Martin Jelsma of the "war on narcotics" as yet another excuse for Empire. The U.S.'s supply-side approach to the drugs problem emphasises physical interdiction, although this has proved a failure. In practice, as "Plan Colombia" shows, the "war on narcotics" provides a convenient excuse for attacking Left-wing insurgents and maintaining a heavy U.S. military presence in select Third World countries. The authors argue for an alternative "harm reduction" and "decriminalisation" approach to drugs.

Vanaik concludes with a final summing up, which takes a bird's-eye view of the six legitimising themes and their weaknesses, and argues for a comprehensive, critical, Left-wing approach to dissecting Empire.

The book is, then, a broad-horizon yet penetrating critique of the rationalisations for Empire in the post-Soviet era. One wishes it had explored some themes (for instance, the economics of Empire, the relations between the U.S. and its allies, the manufacture of domestic consent in different countries, and alternative international arrangements, and so on) in greater depth.

Above all, one wishes it had devoted some space to a discussion of the growing resistance to Empire through the anti-war and peace movements, themselves linked to the global justice agenda.

Despite these shortcomings, the book remains one of the sharpest critical analyses of contemporary imperialism published recently. It is highly recommended.

Praful Bidwai is a Fellow of the Transnational Institute. He co-authored with Achin Vanaik South Asia on a Short Fuse: Nuclear Politics and the Future of Global Disarmament, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1999.

Hypocrites-in-Chiefs

Throughout the history almost every religion, every philosopher, every thinker, every historian, and nearly every Wiseman has feverishly abhorred hypocrisy and detested it more often and with more passion than any other behavior.

Almost 3,000 years ago, Homer said, "I detest that man, who hides one thing in the depths of his heart, and speaks forth another." Jesus of Nazareth had such an abomination of hypocrisy that he said the hypocrites "have neglected the more important matters of the law-justice, mercy and faithfulness" (Matthew 23:23). Shakespeare also gave some insight into the underpinnings of hypocrisy, "With devotion's visage and pious action we do sugar o'er the devil himself."

Ironically, the true hypocrites never think of themselves to be hypocritical; therefore, they say one thing and do another with impunity and especially with pride. The same is also true with today’s global leadership, led by the likes of U.S President George Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and the Israeli government.

We carry such short memories, that it wasn’t even couple of months after the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, which resulted in the massacre of over 1,200 Lebanese citizens, all was forgotten and forgiven. It was during this instance of, often seen, Israeli barbarism new standards of hypocrisy were set by the self-proclaimed saviors of humanity.

• HYPOCRISY: With the complete blessings and support of the U.S and U.K, all hell was set loose on Lebanon and Palestine by the Israelis, because 3 Israeli soldiers were kidnapped. In reality, the so-called moral leaders have never uttered a word over the countless abductions and targeted assassinations of dozens of democratically elected Lebanese and Palestinian legislators and officials. On August 19, 2006, Israel seized Palestinian Deputy Prime Minister Naser al-Shaer, a top official of the Hamas militant group, at his home in the occupied West Bank. Not a word is wasted over the illegal and immoral incarceration of countless Lebanese and Palestinian civilians still rotting in Israeli dungeons. Not a single word is said over the collective punishment of Lebanese and Palestinian civilians.
• HYPOCRITE: President Bush showed his real colors when he said, “this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom.” And with this racially-charged hypocritical outburst he belittled and generalized over 1.4 billion humans or 1/5 of humanity. But his racist comments beg even more questions. Whose ‘freedoms’ was he referring to? Did he mean Israel’s ‘freedom’ to violate international laws by freely embarking on Lebanese/Arab genocides, or it’s ‘freedom’ to legislate racist laws? Or did President Bush mean the ‘freedom’ of neo-con doctrine of pre-emptive attacks on sovereign nations like the one on Iraq, in which, since the U.S occupation 60,000-500,000 Iraqis and close to 3,500 Americans have been killed? The reality is, in 2006, President Bush openly and unapologetically supported the bloodbath of Lebanese and Palestinians, and still turns blind eye to the daily massacres of Iraqi civilians. If there is anyone who deserves to be known as a ‘fascist’, it’s him, his neo-con hawks, his lackeys like Tony Blair, and the Zionist groupies who blame everyone else but themselves for their indiscriminate and unabashed murders of thousands upon thousands of Muslims in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan. Remarkably, it took them only less than 5 years to preside over all of these pogroms. The manner in which these saviors of the world are busy maligning Muslims can be directly collated to Adolph Hitler's deliberate vilification of Jews prior to World War II.
• HYPOCRISY: Israel and Bush Administration arduously justified the destruction of Lebanon and the massacres of its people, under the pretext of, the Lebanese supposedly violated the UN Security Council’s (UNSC) resolution 1559. In reality, the resolution 1559 called upon “all remaining foreign forces [including Israeli] to withdraw from Lebanon.” In a direct violation of the resolution, Israel never vacated the Lebanese territory of Shebaa-Farms. Therefore, it had no legal or moral right to cry foul, especially when it had flagrantly violated 60 other UNSC resolutions relating to Israeli-Lebanese situation alone (see Appendix - A for the complete list). Hypocrites need to be cognizant of the fact that Israel violated UNSC resolution 425 (1978) for twenty two years. The resolution called upon the “Israel immediately to cease its military action against Lebanese territorial integrity and withdraw forthwith its forces from all Lebanese territory”. In an appearance on CNN’s ‘Paula Zahn Now’, the Lebanese consul general to the U.S Mohamad El-Harake shared his frustrations with the American hypocritical support of Israel at the UN Security Council. He said, “Let me tell you one thing before we finish. Israel took 22 years to implement Resolution 524, adopted in '78, to inviting Israel to withdraw its forces from Lebanon. Israel couldn't wait for 1559 adopted on the 2nd of September, less than two years, giving us the possibility of implementing this among ourselves as Lebanese. This is the way Israel wants to see a strong Lebanon?” Hypocrites need to be cognizant of the fact that Israel violated UNSC resolution 425 (1978) for twenty two years. The resolution called upon the “Israel immediately to cease its military action against Lebanese territorial integrity and withdraw forthwith its forces from all Lebanese territory”. In an appearance on CNN’s ‘Paula Zahn Now’, the Lebanese consul general to the U.S Mohamad El-Harake shared his frustrations with the American hypocritical support of Israel at the UN Security Council. He said, “Let me tell you one thing before we finish. Israel took 22 years to implement Resolution 524, adopted in '78, to inviting Israel to withdraw its forces from Lebanon. Israel couldn't wait for 1559 adopted on the 2nd of September, less than two years, giving us the possibility of implementing this among ourselves as Lebanese. This is the way Israel wants to see a strong Lebanon?”
• HYPOCRITES: Some of Evangelical Christians shamelessly support Israel in its brutality because they believe, for the biblical prophecies (The Book of Ezekiel, Chapter 38) to come true and to prepare for the Second Coming of Jesus, Israel will have to annihilate its Arab neighbors. A 2003 Pew Research Centre poll found that 36 percent of Americans believe that the creation of the state of Israel was a step towards the Second Coming of Jesus and that Israel must be supported if this was to come true. In reality, what these religious zealots fail to mention is that the same prophetic literature prophesies a dim ending for the Jews, who will be either converted or killed off in Armageddon.
• HYPOCRITES: American Zionists proudly send their children to Israel to get military training and to kill Arabs. American-media gives a flattering treatment to the American Zionists who join the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to fight the Arabs. They are revered as brave heroes. In reality, most of these heroes live in America, but they enlist only with the Israeli military. Not so surprisingly, the same media stereotypes the American Muslims as anti-American, even if they dare to participate in the humanitarian relief efforts for Lebanese and Palestinian civilians.
• HYPOCRITES: During the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, on hourly bases, the vigilant American-media gave the latest count of Katyushas fired on Israel. In reality, Israel rained hundred times more weapons on Lebanon. The American-media never counted the Israeli cluster bombs, missiles, motors, rockets, and shells dropped by the Israelis on the hapless Lebanese civilians.
• HYPOCRITES: The American and Jewish (Amerco-Jewish) news media eulogized and deciphered each shrapnel, every ball bearing, and every patch of grass of Israeli manicured lawns burned by the Hezbollah rockets. In reality, whenever a non-American or non-Israel media outlet showed pictorial proof of the Israeli brutality or Lebanese carnage, the Amerco-Jewish media hypocritically cried bloody-Marie and blamed the non-Amerco-Jewish media for inciting hatred against Israelis and instantly labeled them as anti-Semite.
• HYPOCRITES: Amerco-Jewish news media claims to be fair and balanced. In reality, 90 percent of times, they ever so shamelessly, broadcasted a parade of ultra-Jewish diplomats who expectedly squarely blamed the Lebanese civilians for becoming victims of Israeli weapons. After the infamous 1982 massacres of Sabra and Shatila, the Jewish lobbies setup permanent institutional structures to sanitize its tarnished image and to win world opinion. Israel launched Hasbara project to win the U.S public opinion and trained its diplomats in public relations and communications. To cover-up its outed dirty secrets, Israel hired the largest U.S PR firms like NYPR to court favorable American public opinion. The Jewish propaganda machine put together groups and organizations with catchy names to marshal American support for the Israeli fascist policies. Americans for safe Israel, Christian coalition, Christian Broadcasting Network, American Jewish Congress, Christian Friends of Israel, Jews for Jesus, and AIPAC (American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful foreign lobby) are the most active organizations that remain busy with cloaking Israeli dirty deeds with an image of a pristine nation obsessed with humanitarian works. Then there are organizations like CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America). CAMERA, through its persistent harassment of journalists, ensures that media coverage remains pro-Israel.
• HYPOCRISY: Israel and American government place themselves at the highest pedestal of morality and for the respect of law. In realty, the Human Rights Watch said the responsibility for the massacre in Qana rested "squarely with the Israeli military." Whenever Israelis killed the UN personnel, Red-Cross workers, or Lebanese civilians; the Israelis, Bush Administration, and the American-media nonchalantly dismissed the deliberate killings as accidents; even better, they blamed the Lebanese for bringing Israeli wrath upon themselves.
• HYPOCRISY: Despite displacing 1 million and massacring over 1,200 Lebanese civilians during the first month of Israeli savage attack, it’s the Israelis that were portrayed as the victim by the Israelis, Bush Administration and the American-media. In reality, during the fighting 116 Israeli soldiers and only 43 Israeli civilians were killed. Israel massacred close to 28 Lebanese civilians for each Israeli civilian lost.
• HYPOCRITE: In his comments, on July 31, 2006, President Bush said he wanted more than a ceasefire. "We want there to be a long-lasting peace, one that is sustainable." The reality is President Bush has blood of over 1,200 Palestinians and Lebanese on his hands. The Bush administration has ridiculed and stalled every peace effort, including Security Council ceasefire resolutions that could have saved innocent lives of hundreds of Lebanese civilians. If that wasn’t bad enough, his administration donated $210 million worth of aviation fuel to ensure that Israeli F-16s do not skip a beat in dropping bombs on Lebanese population, and expedited the supply of precision-guided bunker buster bombs for Israel to hasten the Lebanese holocaust. One such Made-in-America precision-guided bomb dropped from an Israeli F-16 massacred 54 Lebanese civilians in Qana, of which half were blossoming children.
• HYPOCRISY: Israel claimed it warned the Lebanese civilians beforehand to leave. In reality, before sending out the warning, Israelis also ensured every route leading out of Southern Lebanon laid in ruins. They also made sure that every escaping vehicle, every civilian convoy flying white flags, every UN personnel carrier escorting the civilians, and every Red-Cross ambulance rescuing the civilians from the Israeli murderous campaign didn’t escape intact. Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch said, "Just because the Israeli military warned the civilians… to leave does not give it carte blanche to blindly attack." Israeli fire was also directly responsible for the cold-blooded murders of 257 UN personnel.
• HYPOCRITES: American politicians and Media diligently harp on Israel being the most reliable ally and partner. In reality, the partnership had been largely one way, in favor of Israel. To date, Israel has received well over $110 billion FREE dollars in military and economic assistance from Washington.
• HYPOCRITES: American politicians and Media proudly call Israel to be its closest ally. In reality, Israelis have never shied away from shedding American blood whenever it suited them. On June 8, 1967, while patrolling in international waters in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, without any warning or justification, for several hours, the USS Liberty (AGTR-5) was savagely attacked by Israeli air and naval forces. The Americans suffered 34 fatalities and 173 were wounded. To this day, not a single Israeli has been court marshaled or punished for deliberately slaughtering Americans.
• HYPOCRITES: Israel and the U.S complain to no end that Hezbollah is armed by Iran and Syria. In reality, Israel has received 17 billion dollars of arms from the United States in last 10 years alone. In 2002, U.S gave $6 billion free aid to Israel. $2 billion were for Israel to buy American made weapons. $1.5 billion for military ventures to subsidize Israeli domestic armament industry. This amount doesn’t include other forms of military aid, such as free weapons and fuel for IDF.
• HYPOCRITES: Pro-Israeli media repeatedly flashed Israeli propaganda videos showing infrared videos of firings of the so-called Hezbollah rockets as the Israeli spokespeople hammered their propaganda. In reality, the pro-Israeli media consistently failed to provide a neutral and reliable confirmation to support the Israeli propaganda. Experts familiar with Israeli tactics believed the alleged videos of Hezbollah rocket launches were the Oscar-Award winning self-engineered videos of the Israeli psych-ops (an Israeli military unit tasked to control and dominate the dissemination of information in favor of Israel, even through deceit and lies).
• HYPOCRISY: The UN bullied by the U.S conveniently found time during the Israeli invasion to pass a Security Council resolution to threaten Iran with sanctions. In reality, the UN couldn’t muster enough courage to even request Israel to temporarily halt Lebanese genocide, so the Lebanese could have buried the rotting bodies of their loved ones.
• HYPOCRITES: Israel and the U.S call Hezbollah a terrorist organization. In reality, survey after survey show that most of the world views Israel to be a terrorist state. With the exceptions of the U.S, Israel and their lackeys the Britain, no one else calls Hezbollah a terrorist organization, not even the UN or EU does.
• HYPOCRITES: Israel argues, since Hezbollah emerged from and flourishes with the help Southern Lebanese population, therefore, everyone from that area should be considered and dealt as a combatant. In reality, almost every able Israeli adult either serves or has served, or is a reservist in the Israeli military. Therefore, by Israelis’ logic, every Israeli adult associated with the IDF should also be treated as legitimate combatant.
• HYPOCRISY: Israeli government arms the Jewish settlers in occupied settlements with automatic guns and grenades for the supposed self-defense. In reality, the Jewish settlers mount vigilante attacks on the unarmed Palestinians. They destroy crops, uproot trees, and burn the homes of Palestinians who happened to be living there for last hundreds of years.
• HYPOCRITE: The U.S presents itself as a fair and honest broker. In reality, between 1973 and 2001, the U.S used veto 33 times at the UN Security Council to sabotage Israel-specific resolutions. In addition, since the 1967 Six-Day Arab-Israeli war, the U.S has exercised its veto at the Security Council more than 90 times in support of Israel, rendering the UN totally impotent.
• HYPOCRITES: Bush and his poodle Blair never get tired lecturing the whole world on the virtues of democracy. In reality, they demand the Lebanese and Palestinians to exercise their democratic rights by electing only the candidates desired by the Tel-Aviv and Washington. Since the democratically elected Lebanese and Palestinian governments are not run by the puppets of Tel-Aviv and Washington, monetary aid for public (including humanitarian) projects for the Palestinians was cut off, and Israel clamped a virtual blockade of Gaza and Lebanon. The consul general Mohamad El-Harake summarized the Israeli strategy very well to CNN’s Paula Zahn. He said, “It is with Israel always a catch-22 situation. Either you kill each other as Lebanese, or I [will] come to kill you all.”
• HYPOCRITES: For several decades the British and Americans boycotted South Africa for its apartheid practices. In reality, neither the U.K, nor U.S ever utter a peep over illegal Israeli-occupation of Palestinian and Lebanese land, ethnic cleansing, and cold-blooded murders of Lebanese and Palestinians. Ironically, they declare the starvation of the Lebanese and Palestinians at the hands of Israelis as fair and legitimate.
• HYPOCRISY: The U.S allows the private sector to take high-resolution satellite pictures of its own military and nuclear installations. In reality, American laws bar everyone from taking satellite pictures of Israeli military and nuclear installations.
• HYPOCRITES: Upon the whims of Israel, Al-Minar, a Hezbollah T.V channel was banned in the U.S, Europe and India for allegedly spreading its propaganda. In reality, nobody says a word over the specially trained Israeli diplomats in public relations and communications -- like Alon Pinkas (a coordinator of PR efforts and the Israeli Counsel-General in New York) -- regularly winning and dinning with the America reporters and editors to disseminate the Israeli propaganda.
• HYPOCRITES: If anyone, even justifiably, dares to question or oppose the Zionist mantra or their behavior he/she is instantly labeled as “anti-Semite”. In reality, Zionists call every non-Jew a “Gentile”. Those who maybe unaware of the meaning, Gentile means, Heathen, Pagan, or Uncivilized. Social stigmatism/assassination through labeling is the most commonly employed tactic by the Zionists to intimidate and harass their perceived foes.
• HYPOCRITES: West never allows the whole world, especially the Germans, to forget the holocaust. In reality, for the last 60 years when it comes to Israel the West remains blind to making the 5 million Palestinians pay reparations for the holocaust.

It would be equally hypocritical to generalize every American and British and their whole media as biased in favor of Israel. U.S Congressman John Martha and the British Member of Parliament George Galloway are shinning examples of fair-minded politicians. Refreshingly, some of British news media, like ‘The Independent,’ provides unbiased coverage; occasionally, American media also exhibit glimpses of unbiased opinion. For example, August 1, 2006, in a ‘Los Angeles Times’’ Op-Ed, Adam Shatz pointed to the Israeli hypocritical humanitarian concerns, he wrote, “When Israel targets densely populated areas in hopes of killing one or a handful of militants, knowing that it may end up killing dozens of civilians, it can hardly claim to be showing concern for humanitarian law or civilian life. And by asking that we judge it by its professed intentions, rather than by its actions, Israel is asking too much of us and far too little of itself.”

Host of political satire John Stewart and the anchor of ABC World News Charles Gibson are also notable exceptions and pleasant examples of honorable and unbiased American journalists.

Maybe Andr Gide had Ehud Olmert and President Bush -- certainly not Tony Blair who merely loves to sit in Bush’s lap and wag his tail -- in mind when he observed, "The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity." Ehud Olmert flattened Lebanon under the pretext of self-defense, and President Bush flattened Afghanistan, Iraq and then helped Ehud Olmert flatten Lebanon under the pretext of self-defense and fighting terrorism. Who will fight the terror of these hypocrites?

APPENDIX - A

Following UN Security Council Resolutions directly name, condemn and/or deplore Israel for its violations. (Source: http://www.un.org/Docs/sc/unsc_resolutions.html)

Directly or indirectly asks Israel to respect Lebanese territorial integrity, sovereignty and political independence:

331, 337, 347, 425, 444, 467, 474, 490, 498, 501, 520, 549, 555, 561, 575, 583, 586, 587, 594, 599, 609, 617, 630, 639, 648, 659, 684, 701, 768, 803, 852, 1052

Deplores Israeli actions or lack of cooperation:

444, 467, 488, 517, 518

Condemns and calls upon Israel to cease military actions in Lebanese territories:

262, 270, 313, 316, 331, 347, 425, 450, 498, 501, 508

Condemns and deplores Israel for violating ceasefire and for military reprisals:

270, 280, 508, 509, 516, 517, 518, 520

Demands Israel to completely withdraw from the Lebanese territories:

242, 279, 313, 427, 501, 509, 517, 520, 587, 1559

Condemns and deplores Israel for violating Security Council resolutions:

248, 252, 256, 280, 337, 347, 444, 446, 467, 517, 520

Condemns and deplores Israel for violating Geneva Convention and Human rights Laws:

237, 248, 256, 280, 316, 347, 446, 450, 512, 513, 515, 518, 520

Deplores Israel for the interference and attacks on the UN Forces on the Israeli-Lebanese border:

427, 434, 467, 587, 1052

Demands Israel to release abducted/kidnapped Lebanese personnel:

316, 317, 347

30 structures in unrecognized Bedouin village in Negev demolished

Just another day of ethnic cleansing...
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Last update - 20:00 08/05/2007

30 structures in unrecognized Bedouin village in Negev demolished

By Mijal Grinberg, Haaretz Correspondent

30 structures, among them shacks and tents, were demolished on Tuesday in the unrecognized Bedouin village of Al-Twayil in the Negev.

The Council of Unrecognized Villages said the demolitions left 100 people with no roof over their heads.

The village, north of Be'er Sheva, has been in a struggle with the authorities for many years.

After the establishment of the State of Israel, when Israel's Arabs were subject to martial law, the families of the village were moved to the nearby areas of Lahura and Lakiya, but they were unable to remain due to claims on the land by other families, leading many of them to return to their original land over the past 20 years.

Following the demolitions, the Israel Lands Authority said it evacuated 24 "invasions" in the area and that "these invasions have taken place for the seventh time this year, to the same place."

"The invaders have homes in Lakiya," the authority said, and added that they had "evacuated tents, livestock shelters, and sheds."

Israel's F-22 Raptor

May 6, 2007

Xymphora in full:

Outsourcing

William S. Cohen, who as far as I can tell is just an private citizen who runs a lobby company with some iffy members, has assured Israel that the United States would be inclined to allow the sale of F-22 Raptor stealth fighter jets to the Israeli Air Force if Israel’s security were in jeopardy. Since Israel’s security, by definition, is always in jeopardy, Cohen is in effect announcing that the American government will turn over yet another part of its most important military secret technology to Israel (and thus, to China, as Israel immediately peddles all secret American military technology to China). Cohen’s trip was like a full state visit, with meetings with all the highest Israeli mucky-mucks, and discussions on Iran. Besides working for Israel, you have to assume Cohen is working for the manufacturers of the extremely expensive planes, Lockheed Martin and Boeing, who are anticipating the need to find new markets for them. Needless to say, the ‘sale’ of such planes to Israel would be funded by American taxpayer money. It is comforting to know that the concept of outsourcing has now been taken to its logical conclusion, with lobbyists now setting American military policy.

heh.

I suspect that Xymphora was just trying to get me to write the rest of his post for him... here goes:

Sibel Edmonds from her Hijacking of a Nation, Part 2:

The American Turkish Council (ATC)

Operating tax-free and under the radar is one of the most powerful “non-profit” associations in the U.S., the American Turkish Council (ATC). Some who are familiar with its operations and players describe it as ‘Mini AIPAC;’ this description aces it. ATC followed the AIPAC model; with the direct help of AIPAC & JINSA, it created a base out of which to stretch its tentacles, reaching the highest echelons of our government. While the ATC is an association in name and in charter, the reality is that it and other affiliated associations are the U.S. government, lobbyists, foreign agents, and MIC. Investigative journalist, John Stanton, correctly describes the ATC as an extraordinary group of elite and interconnected Republicans, Democrats and corporate and military heavyweights who are spearheading one of the most ambitious strategic gambits in U.S. history.

Included in ATC’s management, board of directors, and advisors; in addition to Turkish individuals of ‘interest;’ is a dizzying array of U.S. individuals. The ATC is led by Ret. General Brent Scowcroft, who serves as Chairman of the Board; George Perlman of Lockheed Martin, the Executive Vice President; other board members include: Former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, Ret. General Elmer Pendleton, Ret. General Joseph Ralston (Cohen Group), Ret. Col. Preston Hughes, Alan Colegrove of Northrop Grumman, Frank Carlucci of Carlyle Group, Christine Vick of Cohen Group, Representative Robert Wexler, Former Rep. Ed Whitfield…Basically many formers; statesmen, ‘dime a dozen generals,’ and representatives.


On the members - paying clients – side; their list includes all the MIC’s who’s who, such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman; the Washington Lobby scene’s who’s who; The Cohen Group, The Livingston Group, Washington Group International…
[]

One Stop Shop: The Cohen Group

Like many other former statesmen, William Cohen, former Secretary of Defense, dived into the business of lobbying and consulting, and created his own Washington firm, The Cohen Group, which works for some of the largest companies in the defense industry, such as Lockheed Martin, and serves numerous foreign players. The Cohen Group is one of the primary and most active members of the American Turkish Council (ATC). Cohen’s client, Lockheed Martin, happens to be on the board of ATC, in addition to being listed as ATC’s top paying client.

The group claims on its Website that its principals have "a century and a half of combined experience in the Congress, the Defense Department, the State Department, the White House, and state and local governments" and that they “have developed extensive expertise and relationships with key international political, economic, and business leaders and acquired invaluable experiences with the individuals and institutions that affect our clients' success abroad.” Abroad indeed. With a few ‘dime a dozen generals’ and former statesmen, the firm owes its phenomenal speedy success to interests ‘abroad’ and of course, the MIC! Let’s look, with great amazement, I hope, at how this ingenious lobby venture serves as foreign agent for several influences without having to register as such; with complete immunity against any scrutiny.
[]
The Cohen Group is an excellent case, illustrating the futility of FARA, since the firm does not have to be registered. They can claim that Turkey is not their ‘direct’ client; they can argue that they are not getting paid ‘directly’ by the government of Turkey or any other foreign entity or government. They certainly can; no matter that Grossman receives hundreds of thousands of dollars from a dubious Turkish company. Does Cohen discount Grossman’s Vice Chairmanship salary accordingly? No matter that half a million dollars per year from their client Lockheed Martin is mainly for services provided to Turkey, and having the group’s second chairman serve on Lockheed’s board is another way to get around all restrictions. The incestuous relationship twists and turns: The Cohen Group on the board of ATC, The Cohen Group a paying member client of ATC, The Cohen Group as Lockheed’s lobbyist, Cohen’s men on the board of Lockheed, Lockheed on the board of ATC, Lockheed also a paying client of ATC…How is your head; spinning yet?

well done, xymph. you got me.

Honoring Israel's apologists

Sonja Karkar, The Electronic Intifada, 7 May 2007

Greg Sheridan

Every now and then, journalists who have shown excellence in their work are rewarded. A prize that recognises their investigative skills and critical thinking is a worthy achievement; a prize that rewards them for using their profession to "conspicuously" support a foreign state in conflict, is not. Rather, it raises questions about their impartiality, good judgment and integrity. Their professionalism can no longer be trusted.

It happened in Australia this past week. Greg Sheridan, billed as "the most influential foreign affairs analyst in Australian journalism" by his newspaper The Australian was awarded the annual Jerusalem Prize by the State Zionist Council of NSW. According to its president Frank Levy, "The prize is awarded to someone who fosters and supports the state of Israel and its ideologies, the concept of the Jewish homeland and the Jewish community, particularly in Australia."

Sheridan saw nothing wrong in accepting the prize, but many Australians did. In fact, Sheridan wrote a loose article "Rare support for democracy in a sea of misunderstanding" (The Australian, 3 May 2007) in response to the mail he received urging him not to accept the prize and was at great pains to explain that he had not compromised his independence as a commentator because he believed Israel -- quoting the former pro-Israel president of Indonesia, Abdurrahman Wahid -- "is a democracy in a sea of misunderstanding."

Anxious to justify his position, Sheridan referred to the illustrious recipients of the prize worldwide including our own Liberal Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and a former Labor lord mayor of Sydney and current NSW minister, Frank Sartor. Sheridan wanted to make sure that bipartisan support for Israel in Australia was really understood and he pointed to both Liberal Prime Minister Howard and Labor Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd as avid supporters of Israel's democracy.

After all the names Sheridan dropped to validate his own selection for the prize, Israel's democracy emerged as the prime reason for Sheridan's unquestioning support, not because it is perfect, but because being anti-Israel is "fundamentally irrational and evidence of psychological and ideological dysfunction rather than genuine analysis."

There is no room in Sheridan's argument for an irrational and dysfunctional Israel and the ideology in which it is rooted. If any of its actions are mistakes that should be understood because "any democratic nation makes plenty of mistakes and sometimes it makes moral mistakes." But, he does not allow for other forms of government and leaders to make mistakes. Sheridan raises Saddam's responsibility for the killing of 300,000 to 400,000 of his own citizens: he does not mention that Israel slipped through the legal and moral net without condemnation when it deliberately killed hundreds of Palestinians and terrorised some 750,000 others to flee their homes and homeland in 1948.

Sheridan's snapshot look at history gives an out-of-context account of Israel's birth, ignoring the well-documented massacres and complete razing of Palestinian villages and towns that Israel executed to gain a permanent foothold in all of Palestine. None of that is in the least justified by Sheridan's statement that "there have always been Jews in Palestine." Indeed, it would have been helpful for him to point out that most of those Jews who lived in Palestine over the centuries were in fact Palestinians. Just like there are Palestinians who are Christians, and of course, Muslims. The European Jews filtered in when they fled persecution in Christian Spain in the Middle Ages, but it was not until modern times that the European Jewish population in Palestine swelled in number after Zionists forced their mass exodus to Palestine in the aftermath of the European holocaust. This was the realisation of the great Zionist colonialist experiment that had no predilection for democracy.

There was nothing fair about the partition that created Israel, giving the minority European Jewish population a greater portion of the land belonging to the majority Palestinian population. And there has been no fairness for the Palestinians since, despite Sheridan raising the old canard of Barak's "generous" offer. The 95 per cent of the West Bank and Gaza that Sheridan says was offered to the Palestinians was once again not put in context.

For years, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) had called for a two-state solution agreeing to Israel keeping 78 per cent of the former British-mandated Palestine while the Palestinians would form their state on the remaining 22 per cent that Israel has occupied since the 1967 war. At Camp David 2000, Barak's offer actually amounted to only a bare 8.3 per cent of the original Palestinian homeland from which they had been driven in 1948. In exchange for withdrawing completely from Gaza as well as the offer of a small piece of land in the Negev Desert that Israel had used as a toxic waste dump, Israel would annex the most fertile and strategically important areas of the West Bank while maintaining control over the Palestinian state's borders, air space and the land's scarce water resources -- and with Israel's military free to intervene at any time. Effectively, what was offered were four non-contiguous parcels of land which would force Palestinians to cross Israeli territory every time they travelled or shipped their goods between each other and with no free access to their own international borders with Jordan and Egypt. Had Arafat agreed to this, he would have effectively waived any further Palestinian claims against Israel. That would have been political suicide for the Palestinians already being subjected to these Orwellian restrictions.

Moving on, Sheridan says that Israel made this "generous" offer in exchange for a peace that would accept Israel's legitimacy. Because Arafat refused, Sheridan then makes the quantum leap to deduce that Arafat "had never accepted that Israel had a right to exist at all." Nowhere does Sheridan explain that all the while these negotiations were taking place, Israel's illegal settlement expansionism was still going on. In fact, the Israeli bureau of statistics reported that settlement building had increased 81 percent in the first quarter of 2000. (Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories, 11-12/00) Nowhere does Sheridan describe the nightly military raids into Palestinian cities, towns and villages, the killings, home demolitions, arrests, humiliations and indignities suffered by the Palestinian population. Nowhere does he mention the frenzied attacks by the Israeli settlers, who have no moral qualms about allowing their children to hurl stones and abuse at Palestinian women and children as they try to make their way to school or home. Instead, he asks the reader to empathise with the Israelis who he says are forced to defend themselves from the constant threats and attacks driven by "hate-filled and anti-Semitic propaganda designed to make schoolchildren despise the Jews." Israel's democracy, therefore, has an excuse for war; Palestinians under occupation have none.

For an experienced foreign affairs journalist, Sheridan shows an amazing reluctance to examine the realities of Israel's "democracy" at work. His article relies on the same old and now-debunked myths and arguments that no self-respecting journalist ought to employ. Even if Sheridan is convinced that "Israel is a democracy in good standing" he ought to be asking for whom? Israel has made no secret of its intention to be a Jewish state only, so it is no wonder that Israel's 1.2 million Palestinian citizens -- the survivors and descendants of the 1948 Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine -- see themselves increasingly isolated and alienated from Israeli society. It won't be long before Israel will have to declare its hand: is it "a state of the Jewish people throughout the world" as it defines itself, or a state of all its citizens, both Jewish and non-Jewish? Perhaps Sheridan sees this as yet another issue that must be left for Israel's "vibrant, genuine problem-solving democracy" to solve. In the meantime, Sheridan should indeed congratulate himself on the "great honour" of being awarded the Jerusalem Prize for no other reason than having supported Israel so "conspicuously".

Sonja Karkar is the founder and president of Women for Palestine in Melbourne, Australia.

Hunger in Eden

May 2, 2007 5:44

Posted by Andrew Lee Butters

Rashid, a West Bank villager, explains that an Israeli settler took over his olive grove. "I said to him, 'This tree is fifty years old. Did your grandfather plant it, or did mine?'"

The most surprising part of the West Bank -- to me anyway -- is how beautiful it is. For some reason I though the whole place would be as dry and bleak as the Judean desert between Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley. But the suburbs north of the capital quickly give way to panoramic countryside that seems southern Italian, with terraced olive groves, red hills, and flowering fruit trees.

Of course, not all is idyllic in this rural idyll. The first clue that something was amiss in Yanoun -- a Palestinian farming village near Nablus that I visited yesterday with an official from the World Food Program -- was the skittish behavior of the local children. They ran and hid from us, or cried when we tired to say hello. The watchtower on the ridge overlooking the village was another giveaway that this place is a conflict zone. Yanoun is surrounded by three Israeli settlements, the inhabitants of which which have made clear that they want their Palestinian neighbors to clear out. The settlers make armed patrols through Yanoun -- by car or horseback -- destroy farming equipment, and last month they kidnapped, tortured and killed a local shepherd, according to residents. The scared children thought we were settlers.

But that's not all that's happening. Though it's hard to believe that food could be scarce in this land of milk and honey, the 24 families who live in Yanoun are being slowly starved. The settlements now control access to about 96 percent of the village's land making commercial agriculture nearly impossible. And though Yanoun could possibly support itself with some kind of highly cultivated garden in the bowl shaped valley beneath, they don't have enough water to do so because the settlements have taken over their rain catching ground cisterns. And even if they could grow produce, the villagers would have trouble getting it to market. The reliable roads to the region are for Israelis only. The rest are clogged with checkpoints. So the people of Yanoun -- like some 400,000 other people in the West Bank -- scrape by with the help from the WFP.

The WFP brought me here to see an example of what they called "food insecurity" -- a condition not of outright starvation but of scarcity that occurs when people don't have reliable access to enough food to have productive lives. At first I was suspicious of the term -- sounds like a way of justifying NGO operations in places where there isn't famine. And in fact, the inhabitants of Yanoun don't look hungry. But the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has so dislocated the rural West Bank's population that they have become dependent on foreign aid. And several years of living on the five basic food stuffs given by aid organizations -- wheat, salt, sugar, chickpeas and oil -- has taken a toll on public health, which you can see by the rotting teeth on the kids of Yanoun. Of course, international donors could end this culture of dependence in a second by cutting aid. In which case, Israeli settlers could have these pretty hills pretty much to themselves.

Kirstie Campbell of WFP comforts a scared village girl.

--Andrew Lee Butters/Jerusalem

A terrible, delusional, wasteful misjudgment

May 4, 2007

Blair’s support for Israel last year was wrong. And we said so

Mary Ann Sieghart

Never believe people who protest: “I don’t want to say ‘I told you so’.” Of course they do. There is nothing more satisfying than to be vindicated. So here you go.

Last July I wrote a couple of columns on these pages excoriating Israel for its overreaction to the kidnap by Hezbollah of two of its soldiers. I criticised Tony Blair for not condemning Israel’s disproportionate response and I predicted that his action – or rather inaction – would hasten his demise.

Inevitably, I was deluged with e-mails accusing me of anti-Semitism (as if!), anti-Israeli bias and ignorance. Patronising readers told me that I had no understanding of Israel’s position in the Middle East. My warnings that Israel’s killing of nearly 1,000 Lebanese civilians and displacement of half a million would only add to the ranks of Hezbollah sympathisers and further inflame Muslim opinion against the West were dismissed as prejudice.

So it is some consolation that the Winograd Commission – set up by the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, himself – savagely criticised him this week for the failed war against Lebanon. On the decisions made in launching the war, the report says: “We determine that there are very serious failings in these decisions and the way they were made. We impose the primary responsibility for these failures on the Prime Minister, the Minister of Defence and the Chief of Staff.

“The decision to respond with an immediate, intensive military strike was not based on a detailed, comprehensive and authorised military plan . . . The Government did not consider the whole range of options, including that of continuing the policy of ‘containment’, or combining political and diplomatic moves with military strikes below the ‘escalation level’, or military preparations without immediate military action.”

Mr Olmert “made up his mind hastily, despite the fact that no detailed military plan was submitted to him and without asking for one. Also his decision was made without close study of the complex features of the Lebanon front and of the military, political and diplomatic options available to Israel . . . All of these add up to a serious failure in exercising judgment, responsibility and prudence.”

Phew! If that is the interim report, what has the commission saved up for its final statement? I cannot remember ever reading such trenchant criticism of a government in an official report.

What this ought to (but doubtless won’t) do is puncture the delusion held by many in the Jewish community that any criticism of any action by any Israeli government is either anti-Semitic or anti-Israel or both. It simply isn’t.

Only last week I mentioned in passing that, had Jack Straw still been Foreign Secretary last July, he could have moderated Mr Blair’s support for Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon. One reader e-mailed to say that I was either “entirely stupid” or “an anti-Semite happy to plant some anti-Israel poison” or “almost unbelievably ignorant of the facts”. Oh, and apparently, I am a “journalist-idiot” too.

Perhaps this reader would like to put the same charges to Judge Eliyahu Winograd, the commission chairman? Or perhaps he and his ilk could grow up and accept that candid friends of Israel may occasionally be justified in disagreeing, in good faith, with its government? It doesn’t mean that we hate Jews or that we don’t defend Israel’s right to exist.

But the problem does not lie only with paranoid e-mailers. Our own Prime Minister labours under a similar delusion. It is not that he believes criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic; but he is determined that no disapproval of Israeli action will ever pass his lips in public. He has held to this stricture as rigidly as he has to its cousin: unstinting support of US policy.

Mr Blair’s justification is that, by defending these governments in public, he has more “traction” with them in private. Would that this were so. Our Prime Minister met Mr Olmert just before the war and whatever he said at No 10 had zero effect. He warned President Bush that a better plan was needed for post-war Iraq, and what transpired? Sometimes, I suspect, he does not even tell the hard truths in private, since he shrinks from personal confrontations and is happier telling people what they want to hear.

It is not as if Mr Blair was not warned at the time that his position was ill-judged. Colleagues told him that the Israeli bombing of villages in southern Lebanon would strengthen Hezbollah, undermine Lebanon’s democracy, fail to achieve the military objective and weaken Mr Olmert. What is more, his support for the bombing would play into the hands of those who wanted to radicalise Muslim youth.

This was possibly the worst foreign policy misjudgment of his premiership, and it left a scar that remains to this day. Ministers and MPs who were prepared reluctantly to support the case for war in Iraq watched the pulverising of southern Lebanon and felt morally sick at their leader’s refusal to condemn it. Sure, Israel had a right to defend itself, but not at this level of untargeted aggression.

Previously supportive colleagues started to peel away. Because of the summer recess, their misgivings went largely unreported. But it meant that, when the Brownite coup happened last September, many more MPs and ministers were receptive to the idea of Mr Blair going within the year.

Another sad consequence is that the man who might have had so much to offer the Middle East peace process is now discredited there. Mr Blair could have applied the lessons he learnt in Northern Ireland – in particular, that he could not make peace by involving only moderates from the UUP and SDLP. It was the arrival of Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams at the negotiating table that made an agreement possible.

The same boldness is needed now in the Middle East. Any negotiation will have to include Hamas as well as Fatah, the ultra-orthodox Shas party as well as Labour. Had Mr Blair remained even-handed last July, he could now be the perfect peacebroker. Instead, he will have to content himself with lecturing conventions of American mortgage brokers. What a waste.

maryann.sieghart@thetimes.co.uk

Israel will again correct failures by going to war

Fri., May 04, 2007

Waiting for the next war

By Shuki Mairovich

The countdown to the next war has begun. Not as a result of the strengthening of the Hezbollah, nor as a result of the fact that it has moved south of the Litani, but rather as a result of the Winograd Committee report. Paradoxically, but in accordance with the history and mood of Israeli society, it is precisely the severity of the report that will bring about the next war.

This is not the first time that Israeli society is repairing the blunders of a past war by means of a new war. People remember Menachem Begin's observation that the first Lebanon War came to heal the trauma of the Yom Kippur War. That will be the case this time, too. The third Lebanon War will be declared as a correction of the Second Lebanon War. The ink on the Winograd report has not yet dried and the psychological preparations for the next war have already begun. The first sign of this appeared in the wake of proliferating complaints that the lack of experience on the part of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz, as stated in the panel's conclusions, was a crucial factor in the decision to go to war. Israeli society is characterized by an historical tendency to solve political problems by military means - i.e., via war - and public discourse is preparing for the demand that will come, sooner or later, to bring former generals back to steer the ship of state.

Even before the start of the war in June, 1967, the General Staff threatened the government, which surrendered and went to war. And also at the government meeting on the eve of the start of the first Lebanon War, the military people convinced the government to go to war. This time, the chief of staff did not need to force himself on the government; the government itself was chomping at the bit. These examples testify that the civilian level is incapable of standing up to the military establishment.




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The civilian leadership is not capable of thinking in a civilian way, and it accepts the tendency to go to war absolutely and uncritically. The Winograd Committee's criticism that the government did not examine alternatives to military confrontation shows that this option, in fact, does not exist in our society's lexicon.

Correction of the flaws that the report enumerates will be carried out, to one extent or another, but the important question is what the social mood is which will impel this process. Even now we are seeing the first signs of it: the strengthening of the army and the weakening of alternative civilian thinking. The meaning of further strengthening the army is the start of another war, because military thinking in its very essence negates solutions that are not military. This is the worldview of military people, these are the glasses through which they see reality, and public discourse in Israel adopts this mode of thinking. Just as it was when the Second Lebanon War broke out - when the Israeli public, like its leaders, warmly adopted the military option.

Israel's problem has never been a lack of military preparedness, a lack of leadership or a lack of judgment. Even if there is a leadership, even if the army is prepared and even if the considerations will be military in nature - the army will again determine the agenda, the leadership will accept it and the Israeli public will scurry after it. The only obvious conclusion - to strengthen civilian culture and to lessen the dominance of military culture - will again not be drawn by Israeli society, for the next war is already at the gates.

The author is a lecturer at the Ruppin Academic Center.

What the moderate Arab world is

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Al-Ahram Weekly Online

Questioning the Shia crescent

AIPAC Slams Rice Meeting With Syrian FM

Pro-Israel Group Slams Rice Meeting With Syrian FM
By Julie Stahl
CNSNews.com Jerusalem Bureau Chief
May 03, 2007

Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) - In a move criticized by a pro-Israel U.S. organization, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with her Syrian counterpart on Thursday, possibly signaling a shift in Bush administration policy towards a country designated by the State Department as a sponsor of terror.

Rice met with Foreign Minister Walid Muallem on the sidelines of a two-day conference in Egypt intended to discuss the future of Iraq. It's the first meeting between such senior American and Syrian officials in several years.

The U.S. has maintained a policy of economic and political isolation toward Syria since it withdrew its ambassador from Damascus in February 2005 following reports alleging Syrian involvement in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who opposed Syrian domination of his country.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) recently challenged that policy when she met with Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus. Other U.S. lawmakers have traveled to Syria in recent times, but Pelosi was the most senior to do so.

President Bush last December rejected a recommendation by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group - co-chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker and former U.S. Congressman Lee Hamilton - to engage Syria and Iran as part of the plan to bring calm to Iraq.

Experts said at the time that Syria and Iran would extract a price from the U.S. for their cooperation in Iraq, with some predicting that Syria would demand that the international community back off in its pursuit of the Hariri assassins. An international investigation has implicated senior Syrian officials in the killing.

Analysts also said the U.S. would likely push Israel to return the strategic Golan Heights, captured from Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War - another Baker-Hamilton recommendation.

"We think this is a serious mistake," Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, said of the U.S.-Syria meeting.

"When the U.S. meets with an official of a state on the U.S. list of terrorist countries, we simply legitimize their terrorist actions and send the message that we are not holding them strongly accountable for their actions," Klein told Cybercast News Service by telephone.

Until the Syrians close down the 10 terrorist groups with offices in Damascus and stop facilitating the transfer of weapons from Iran to Hizballah, the U.S. should be "isolating them and not embracing them," said Klein.

Among the groups hosted by Syria are the Palestinian factions Hamas and Islamic Jihad, responsible for the deaths and injuries of hundreds of Israelis - and some Americans - in suicide bombings and terrorist attacks since 1994.

In 2003, Syrian President Bashar Assad flatly refused a U.S. request to shut down the headquarters of Palestinian terrorist organizations in Damascus. Assad said they were merely public relations offices.

Klein called the meeting between Rice and Muallem "especially troubling" in light of the fact that the Bush administration sharply condemned the Pelosi-Assad meeting last month. "It makes a mockery of the criticism," he said.

Klein said the meeting made no sense, but he speculated that Washington may be hoping to deflect anti-American criticism in the Muslim world by meeting with a senior Syrian official.

Klein said he worried that the meeting may signal the beginning of a new U.S. push on Israel to surrender the Golan Heights.

The Republican Jewish Coalition, which was highly critical of Pelosi's visit to Damascus and launched an ad campaign against it, said Thursday it would not comment on the Rice-Muallem meeting.

The pro-Israel lobby AIPAC also had no immediate comment on the meeting.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said ahead of the meeting that it would focus "exclusively on issues related to Iraq." The U.S. accuses Syria of allowing insurgents to cross its border into Iraq to fight allied troops.

An Israeli government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there was no "direct correlation" between the Rice-Muallem meeting and Israel.

"This has nothing to do with us," she said. "The Americans have a serious problem in Iraq. They have to find a policy that works in Iraq."

Rice also spoke with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, although McCormack played down the encounter: "They said hello, that's about it."

The meeting on Iraq opened Thursday in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, with a plea from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for countries to forgive his country's debt to facilitate its reconstruction program.

Iraqi foreign debts are estimated at some $50 billion, according to reports. The Paris Club of lender nations has already written off another $100 billion.

Earlier al-Maliki was quoted as telling Rice that "a rapprochement" needed to take place between the U.S. and regional players, especially Syria and Iran, in order to solve the issue of Iraq.

"All of us here today are bound to the future of Iraq. What happens in Iraq has profound consequences which will affect each and every one of us," Rice said in a speech at the conference.