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I would like to share some rather disturbing news regarding a friend of mine from Gaza. Mohammed Omer, an award winning journalist, was recently assaulted by the Israeli Occupation forces without justification as he attempted to return to Gaza via the Allenby Bridge crossing on the Jordanian-West Bank border. Mohammed, whom I came to know during my stay in Gaza, was returning from an award ceremony in London where he was presented with the prestigious 2008 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism.

Of course, Israel controls Gaza’s borders and it took an immense effort for Mohammed even to leave Gaza to attend the London ceremony. And when he returned, Israel had a treat in store for him. How dare this presumptuous twenty-something earn an international prize for his reporting from Gaza! Needless to say, Israeli soldiers treated him in the most abhorrent, imperialistic fashion… His crime: to be Palestinian, to exist. (more…)

Two evenings ago, speaking before the American-Israeli Pubic Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Barack Obama desperately attempted to win back his floundering support among the American Jewish community by demonstrating his hawkish, pro-Israel stance. This is neither unusual nor suspect—especially in the United States where the Jewish demographic tends to be more fundamentally Zionist than the Israelis themselves and aspiring candidates are almost required to recite Theodor Herzl’s Der Judenstaat by heart.

Naturally, Obama made the typical platitudes: “Israel has the right to defend itself”, “I will always keep the threat of military action on the table to defend … Israel”, ad nauseam. But then he said something that could have caused Ariel Sharon to crack a smile through his coma:

“Any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel’s identity as a Jewish state, with secure, recognised, defensible borders. And Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel and must remain undivided,” he said to rapturous clapping and cheering.

What? East Jerusalem will remain part of Israel? Have U.S. politicians finally ceased pretending they support a negotiated settlement? (more…)

By now the private security firm, Blackwater USA, has become a household name. The firm has been the subject of multiple investigations, lawsuits, and congressional inquiries—all leading to an obvious conclusion: Blackwater in Iraq has either acted in a manner of extreme disregard for civilian lives, or they are outright contemptuous murderers. Yet, as Democracy Now! reports, Blackwater continues to reap millions in profits from the government and was recently awarded a new contract from the State Department.

In the aftermath of the now-infamous Nisour Square Massacre of September 2007 in which 17 Iraqi civilians were mercilessly gunned down by Blackwater operatives, the puppet Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, demanded that Blackwater be held accountable under Iraqi law. Al-Maliki had apparently forgotten the directive in place since Paul Bremer’s tenure providing immunity to all private contractors in Iraq. The order to expel Blackwater from Iraq was rescinded by the Bush junta and Blackwater was already operating in the region again by last April. (more…)

When I reflect upon the upcoming U.S. Presidential election, I tend not to place so much faith in the rhetoric of change. Despite prevailing, popular attitudes here in Europe, I find it difficult to imagine anything but the most marginal change in domestic policy should Obama become President (and virtually zero change elsewhere).

We may count ourselves lucky, however, that whether it is McCain or Obama that takes the reins in November, our eight-year affair with Bush is almost at an end. No matter which “wing” from the corporatist cesspool of American government becomes President, at least we will be spared the inane remarks, the cheesy laughter, the genuine stupidity and brass arrogance of the Bush years. Perhaps I am alone, but I always felt the crimes prosecuted by the Bush junta were always compounded by the profound ignorance expressed by some of its more senior members. (more…)

May 15, 2008 marks the 60th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, when Palestinians were forced from their homes and ethnically cleansed en masse in a premeditated and organized campaign carried out by armed Zionist militia. Historical accounts indicate that the forced migration of Palestinians from their homeland had been planned well in advance. The establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 was built on the violations of the rights of the Palestinian people. After widespread massacres and killings, more than 700,000 Palestinian civilians were brutally uprooted from their homes, villages and towns, and forced to become refugees in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and surrounding Arab countries. In addition, thousands of other Palestinians were internally displaced within the land subsequently occupied by Israel.

Since the establishment of the State of Israel, and after its expansion in 1967 when it forcibly occupied the remainder of Palestinian West Bank land (including occupied East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip, Israel has relentlessly confiscated Palestinian land in order to build illegal Jewish settlements, erasing the history of Palestine in the process. Israel’s campaign of “Establishing facts on the ground” has consistently forced more Palestinians into exile, and the Israeli authorities continue to seek to rid the land of its original inhabitants. (more…)

“Archaeology has become a weapon of dispossession,” Yonathan Mizrachi, an Israeli archaeologist, said in a recent telephone interview with us. He was referring to the way archaeology is being used in Silwan, a Palestinian neighborhood in the oldest part of Jerusalem, where, we believe, archaeological digs are being carried out as part of a concerted campaign to expel Palestinians from their ancestral home.

That effort is orchestrated by an Israeli settler organization called Elad, a name formed from Hebrew letters that stand for “to the City of David.” For several years, Elad has used a variety of means to evict East Jerusalem Palestinians from their homes and replace them with Jewish settlers. Today Silwan is dotted with about a dozen such outposts. Moreover, practically all the green areas in the densely populated neighborhood have been transformed into new archaeological sites, which have then been fenced and posted with armed guards. On two of these new archaeological sites, Jewish homes have already been built. (more…)

IOF Launches Fifth Day of Open War on the Gaza Strip
Death Toll Rises to 101, with Hundreds of Injuries

[The Palestinian Center for Human Rights] condemns in the strongest possible terms the continuing IOF open war on the civilians of the Gaza Strip. Air and land bombardments have killed 101 Palestinians since 27 February, and injured hundreds of others. The Centre also denounces continuing international silence over the carnage which has effectively encouraged the IOF to commit additional war crimes against Palestinian civilians and their property. The Centre warns that deaths and injuries will undoubtedly rise if the IOF operation continues, and reiterates its demand that the international community act immediately and effectively to put an end to these crimes, and to protect the lives of Palestinian civilians.

During the last 24 hours, another 39 Palestinians were killed throughout the Gaza Strip. Twenty-two of them were unarmed civilians, including 9 children. Six of the victims were from one family, including 3 women and 3 men who were killed in an air strike in Gaza City. The death toll since 27 February currently stands at 101 victims, including 49 unarmed civilians. The civilians who have been killed include 25 children and 5 women. In addition, more than 250 other people have been injured, mostly unarmed civilians. IOF have also destroyed houses and property across the Gaza Strip. (more…)

Arguably, the strong aid pessimism that persisted during the 1980s and 1990s had faded a little at the turn of this century. In 2000, at the Millennium Summit at the UN Headquarters (the only UN gathering in which all heads of state were present) all governments agreed upon the Millennium Development Goals as a grand strategy to markedly reduce extreme, deadly poverty. Its first goal was the reduction of the percentage of people living in extreme poverty by half until the year 2015. The other goals set targets for school enrollment, universal primary education, maternal health and a “global partnership for development”. The foundational thinking for this approach is to be found in what has been termed the “unofficial” book behind the goals, articulating the views of their architect – The End of Poverty by Professor Jeffrey Sachs. Professor Sachs is a fervent advocate of the view that a drastic increase in development aid could achieve these goals, and the public largely bought these arguments.

It seemed like the days in which perceptions that aid would largely become embezzled, spent by gullible do-gooders or used by big powers to further their geo-political and economic interests dominated debates about development were numbered – a shift in perceptions that is has in recent years been incessantly challenged by New York University Professor William Easterly. His book The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good (New York: Penguin Books, 2006) left its imprint on the academic and public debate on development aid. (more…)

Over 500,000 people have now fled Mogadishu and its seems safe to assume that the Bush doctrine is alive and well in Somalia.

With the Islamofascists overthrown and the bloodshed intensifying, America has added yet another success to its long list of accomplishments in spreading freedom and democracy. Somalis may yet throw candy to the U.S.-backed Ethiopian troops, but there’s just one hitch: the Islamist forces overthrown last year by the U.S.-backed Ethiopian army are regaining their strength and are likely to reassert their power if Ethiopia’s own domestic rebellion intensifies. (more…)

I received this message from Professor Noam Chomsky this summer in response to my article Security or Demography: The West Bank Barrier as a Demographic Tool.

From: chomsky[at]MIT.EDU
Subject: Re: West Bank Barrier
Date: June 16, 2007 19:27:29  IDT
To: kris[at]harmonicminor.com

Interesting, and well done, but I’m quite skeptical about the value of such inquiries, for a number of reasons.  Here’s a few.
 
You say it is a “highly contentious point” whether a barrier on the Israeli side of the Green Line would have achieved whatever security effects the Separation Wall does.  I don’t agree with that at all.  It’s an obvious point.  In fact it could have achieved far better results, since it could be impregnable, patrolled heavily on both sides of the fence, etc. Furthermore, even accepting (for argument’s sake)  the idea that for security Israel somehow needs intrusion into the West Bank, then why not just build a wall a fixed distance from the Green line, say 5 km (or whatever number one wants), thereby excluding the Maaleh Adumim salient and the Ariel salient, and the many other illegal communities?  Plainly, that would be at least as effective for self-defense.  The whole discussion seems absurd.  I’ve followed the arguments, and they don’t stand up to a moment’s inspection.  About as clear an evasion of the obvious as can be imagined.  We should also be more than a little disturbed, I think, by the universal acceptance in the West that the question of “security” reduces to the security of Israelis, that is, to the rich and powerful state closely linked to the US and EU, while there is no security problem for those under the jackboot.  The racism is stunning, even given the ineradicable imperial mentality. (more…)