Articles

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine–(PFLP) Obama speech another attempt to deceive Palestinians into futile “peace process”
May 23, 2011
Palestine Affairs
NOVANEWS     PFLP, May 21, 2011   The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine said on May 19, ...Read more
Obama’s speech to AIPAC affirms commitment to Israel and US policies that doom it
May 23, 2011
Campaigns
NOVANEWS     Ali Abunimah Eletronic Intifada,   Following his speech on Thursday night, and his meeting with Israeli Prime ...Read more
U.S. Commitment to IsraHell Is ‘Ironclad,’ Obama Says
May 23, 2011
Campaigns
NOVANEWS   Bloomberg   President Barack Obama told the nation’s largest pro-Israel lobby that the U.S. commitment to Israel’s security ...Read more
Porn in the USA
May 23, 2011
USA
NOVANEWS   By Yvonne Ridley   I wonder what the US Administration makes of the idiom that includes the words ...Read more
U.S. bill requires French rail company to disclose ‘truth’ of its Holocaust role
May 23, 2011
USA
NOVANEWS by crescentandcross     Maryland is the first state to pass such a law, which would require the company to ...Read more
Former thug who found Judaism hopes to be first African-American in Zionist Knesset
May 23, 2011
ZIO-NAZI
NOVANEWS by crescentandcross     26-year-old Marcus Hardie, dubbed by his L.A. gang ‘American Thug’ today is an Orthodox lawyer who ...Read more
Hamas, Fatah officials meet in Moscow to bolster reconciliation
May 23, 2011
Palestine Affairs
NOVANEWS   The Russian initiative to bring Hamas and Fatah officials together is set to focus on solidifying ties between ...Read more
Turkish FM warns IsraHell over response to new Gaza flotilla
May 23, 2011
Gaza
NOVANEWS   Haaretz   Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu warned Israel not to act against a planned new aid flotilla ...Read more
Fatah, Hamas leaders to meet Russian officials
May 23, 2011
Gaza
NOVANEWS   MOSCOW (AFP) – Members of rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas will meet “very senior” Russian officials on ...Read more
'Nazi' Barak: Israel-U.S. differences on peace process ‘smaller than they seem’
May 23, 2011
ZIO-NAZI
NOVANEWS   Haaretz   Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on Saturday that the differences between Israel and the United States ...Read more
Top Jewish Americans ponder support for Obama
May 23, 2011
Campaigns
NOVANEWS     CHICAGO (Reuters) – Some prominent Jewish Americans are rethinking their support for President Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election ...Read more
Zionist border debate frames Obama’s AIPAC appearance
May 23, 2011
Campaigns
NOVANEWS   It’s being billed as a forum to “strengthen the bond between the United States and Israel.” But when ...Read more

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine–(PFLP) Obama speech another attempt to deceive Palestinians into futile “peace process”

NOVANEWS

 

 

PFLP, May 21, 2011
 

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine said on May 19, 2011, commenting on the speech of United States President Barack Obama, that the Obama speech lacked any form of meaningful change or objectivity in relation to US policy, and served as yet more attempted justification for the occupation and its crimes against the Palestinian people. Said the Front, it is clear that any claims that the United States upholds “values of freedom, democracy and justice” are belied by the fact that those values instantly evaporate in the case of Palestine and its people. Furthermore, said the Front, the Arab youth movement will not trade their dignity, freedom and democracy for U.S. dollars and wars.

In a press statement, the Front said that it is clear that the U.S. position remains – as always – in imperial alliance with its strategic partner, Zionism, completely ignoring the legitimate demands of the Palestinian people, international law and U.N. resolutions. It is clear, the Front said, that the U.S. adopts the positions of Netanyahu and his settler regime, in alliance to deprive the Palestinian people of its inalienable national rights to independence and self-determination, demanding that Palestinians participate in a U.S. negotiations regime that has no capacity for providing rights or freedom for Palestine and its people. The United States has failed in its attempts to impose its political demands upon Arab and Muslim peoples, and is completely inappropriate and incapable of sponsoring any political settlement that leads to justice or peace in the region.

The Front noted that the U.S. president once again demanded the reactivation of the so-called “peace process” based on bilateral negotiations under the auspices of the U.S., outside the reference of international law and UN resolutions, reflects the fact that the U.S. is simply once again attempting to deceive the Palestinian, Arab and international public opinion while the occupation continues its siege, aggression, settlement as “facts on the ground” against the Palestinian and Arab people. The occupation continues to flagrantly violate international humanitarian and human rights law and the Fourth Geneva Convention to prevent the Palestinian people from exercising our rights to self-determination and national sovereignty over our land, and achieving our rights to freedom, self-determination and return.

The PFLP concluded by calling upon all Palestinian political and social forces to act together in unity to reject any such proposals and instead reactivate the power of the Palestinian national movement, through a rebuilt and democratic Palestine Liberation Organization that can represent the highest reference for our people wherever they are, with a clear vision for national resistance and victory.

Obama’s speech to AIPAC affirms commitment to Israel and US policies that doom it

NOVANEWS
 

 
Ali Abunimah
Eletronic Intifada,
 

Following his speech on Thursday night, and his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday, US President Barack Obama spoke to the 2011 Policy Conference of AIPAC, the influential Israel lobby today.

Obama’s speech today contains a number of interesting elements of the United States’ and the president’s view: a hard-headed realism about the deep trouble Israel is in and an equally hard-headed determination to keep doing the same things that will make Israel’s prospects poorer over the long-run while prolonging the suffering for Palestinians. These contradictory impulses, will only heighten conflict and do little to advance the president’s stated goal: peace.

Obama also addressed the fake controversy following Netanyahu’s public rejection on Friday of the president’s reference to a peace “based on the 1967 lines.”

Here are some of the key points of Obama’s speech with analysis.

Demography
Obama:

Here are the facts we all must confront. First, the number of Palestinians living west of the Jordan River is growing rapidly and fundamentally reshaping the demographic realities of both Israel and the Palestinian territories. This will make it harder and harder – without a peace deal – to maintain Israel as both a Jewish state and a democratic state.

Obama is simply pointing out the reality that Palestinians if not already, will soon be, the majority population in historic Palestine (Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip combined).

Yet Obama does not call for a morally correct solution: equal rights for all who live within the territory and all who have been unjustly excluded from it on the basis of ethnicity, according to basic democratic principles.

Instead, the president exhorts Israel to rush to create a truncated Palestinian statelet in the false belief that a Palestinian mini-state on a fraction of historic Palestine can fulfill the rights of some 11 million Palestinians denied their human rights, and right to self-determination for decades.

Obama’s use of demographic scare-mongering indicates an acceptance of the fundamentally racist view that the mere existence of certain categories of humans (in this case non-Jewish Palestinians) in a country is unacceptable and dangerous – even if they or their parents or grandparents were born in that country. Palestinians “west of the Jordan River” are not interlopers or intruders. They are indigenous people of the country. Instead of searching for ways for Israel to escape them by gerrymandering a bantustan, Obama should be calling for full and equal rights, nothing less.

Obama’s failure to call on Israel to respect the full and equal rights of the 1.4 million Palestinian citizens of Israel, will also be taken as a signal by Israel that the president is fine with the growing raft of racist legislation directed against this indigenous community.

Obama’s use of the demographic scare-tactic would have had its equivalent during the existence of apartheid South Africa in a US president urging the defunct racist regime in Pretoria to rush to create more bantustans so that South Africa could remain a ‘white and democratic state.’

When Obama claims, as peace process insiders often do, that the vision he laid out for “peace” is “is a well known formula to all who have worked on this issue for a generation” it is important to remember that these are “formulas” made by power players without reference to millions of Palestinians – especially refugees – who have never been consulted and who certainly don’t consider their own mere existence a threat to anyone’s “democracy.”

Military force is not enough
Obama said:

…technology will make it harder for Israel to defend itself in the absence of a genuine peace

Obama is acknowledging that military superiority is insufficient to maintain Israel in the absence of political legitimacy. But again there is a contradictory impulse: the unconditional US commitment to give Israel any and all technology and military means allows Israel to delude itself that it can rely forever on force of arms in lieu of a peace agreement.

Waning US hegemony means Arab public opinion now matters
Obama:

…a new generation of Arabs is reshaping the region. A just and lasting peace can no longer be forged with one or two Arab leaders. Going forward, millions of Arab citizens have to see that peace is possible for that peace to be sustained.

For decades the whole concept of the “peace process” was based on Israel signing treaties with unelected Arab leaders in spite of their publics’ deep opposition to such agreements that did nothing to restore the rights of Palestinians and only freed Israel’s hands to attack and occupy more. The 1979 Israel-Egypt and 1994 Israel-Jordan peace treaties are prime examples, and for many years the US sought a similar deal between Israel and Syria.

Obama is acknowledging that if the United States is unsuccessful in imposing new obedient client leaders on Arab states (or maintaining the ones it still supports), Israel would actually have to be acceptable to Arab publics and electorates. This is true enough, but again, his solution: a truncated Palestinian bantustan is hardly a sufficient answer to the challenge.

Isolation of Israel will be unstoppable even with US support
Several times in his speech Obama vowed the United States would stand up against the “delegitimization” of Israel. That is the term Israel and its supporters have applied to the global Palestine solidarity movement, calling for equal rights, especially the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.

Obama also referred specifically to the Palestinian Authority effort to seek UN recognition for a Palestinian state this September. Despite these US commitments, Obama observed:

But the march to isolate Israel internationally – and the impulse of the Palestinians to abandon negotiations – will continue to gain momentum in the absence of a credible peace process and alternative. For us to have leverage with the Palestinians, with the Arab States, and with the international community, the basis for negotiations has to hold out the prospect of success.

This seems to be a clear warning to Israel and it should serve as an encouragement to Palestine solidarity activists everywhere. However, the president offered no sense that under his leadership the United States will take any action other than presidential speeches that have any “prospect of success.”

Obama backs Bush’s view on “1967 lines”
Perhaps the centerpiece of Obama’s speech today was when he addressed the fake controversy over his mention of the 1967 lines on Thursday. Today, Obama said:

Now, it was my reference to the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps that received the lion’s share of the attention. And since my position has been misrepresented several times, let me reaffirm what “1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps” means.

By definition, it means that the parties themselves – Israelis and Palestinians – will negotiate a border that is different than the one that existed on June 4, 1967. It is a well known formula to all who have worked on this issue for a generation. It allows the parties themselves to account for the changes that have taken place over the last forty-four years, including the new demographic realities on the ground and the needs of both sides.

Here Obama appears to be deliberately returning to a formulation that his predecessor President George W. Bush used in his famous April 2004 letter to then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. In the letter, which assured Israel of US support for annexation of West Bank settlements built in violation of international law, Bush wrote:

As part of a final peace settlement, Israel must have secure and recognized borders, which should emerge from negotiations between the parties in accordance with UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338. In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion.

It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities.

(Note: the 1949 armistice line is the June 1967 line – i.e. the line that existed between the 1949 Rhodes Armistice agreement and the Israeli surprise attack that launched the Six-Day War on 4 June 1967).

As the language I’ve highlighted shows, Obama is reaffirming the essential points made by Bush: the 1967 line is infinitely malleable (to suit Israel) and thus the reference to it does not in any way preclude massive Israeli annexations to the east of it.

Second, any border must be by “mutual agreement.” Given the hopefully lop-sided balance of power, and Obama’s affirmation that the US will steadfastly continue to put no pressure on Israel, this means in effect that the commitment to the 1967 line is devoid of content. Despite the fireworks there is no practical difference between Obama and Netanyahu.

Hamas-Fatah deal
Obama said:

…the recent agreement between Fatah and Hamas poses an enormous obstacle to peace. No country can be expected to negotiate with a terrorist organization sworn to its destruction. We will continue to demand that Hamas accept the basic responsibilities of peace: recognizing Israel’s right to exist, rejecting violence, and adhering to all existing agreements.

Obama handed Netanyahu an excuse to continue to avoid the negotiations Obama claims are urgent, until Hamas learns –politically speaking – to sing HaTikva and dance a hora. Obama has never called on Israel to recognize fundamental Palestinian rights as a precondition for negotiations, and as we know has abandoned any effort to get Israel to adhere to international law or signed agreements by stopping settlement construction.

Obama could have learned something from President Clinton’s much more deft approach to the Irish peace process, but instead he chose to pander to Israel’s obstructionist preconditions diminishing the prospects for negotiations even further.

Settlements
In his speech on Thursday, Obama mentioned in passing that “Israeli settlement activity continues” in the occupied West Bank. But he pointedly did not make any call on Israel to stop building settlements. In today’s speech he didn’t mention the settlements at all.

Thus while exhorting Israel to rush toward a “two-state solution” in order to save itself from the terrifying threat of Palestinian infants, Obama has given up completely on any effort to confront the main obstacle to his preferred outcome: Israel’s accelerated colonization of the little remaining land.

Perhaps this more than anything sums up the competing impulses evident in Obama’s speech: an urgency to address an an “unsustainable status quo,” and his administration’s total commitment to the disastrous American policies that have brought us to precisely this point.

 

U.S. Commitment to IsraHell Is ‘Ironclad,’ Obama Says

NOVANEWS
 

Bloomberg
 

President Barack Obama told the nation’s largest pro-Israel lobby that the U.S. commitment to Israel’s security is “ironclad” and he will block any moves that would undermine it.

Obama repeated that the template for an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians should use the 1967 borders as a starting point in peace talks. He said that does not mean that the borders will be the same as existed before Israel captured the West Bank and Jerusalem that year in the Six Day War with Arab nations.

“This basic framework for negotiations has long been the basis for discussions among the parties, including previous U.S. administrations,” Obama said in an address today to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington. “It allows the parties themselves to account for the changes that have taken place over the last 44 years, including the new demographic realities on the ground and the needs of both sides.”

Obama’s proposal, made in a speech delivered at the State Department on May 19, marked the first time a U.S. president has explicitly backed using the 1967 boundaries as the starting point for talks that would have Israel cede control of some land to Palestinians in return for peace and security. He also called for Palestinian territory to be demilitarized. Obama offered no steps to restart the stalled peace talks.

Netanyahu Reaction

That speech stirred criticism from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and some Republicans in the U.S. At a May 20 White House meeting with Obama at his side, Netanyahu said boundaries based on the 1967 lines would be “indefensible.”

The Israeli leader is scheduled to speak to AIPAC tomorrow.

Obama said a deal along 1967 lines, which has been the basis for off-and-on talks for 20 years, needs to include land exchanges to allow Israel to retain major settlement blocs in return for granting offsetting land to Palestinians.

The president told AIPAC that he wasn’t surprised that his remarks “generated some controversy over the past few days.”

“What I did on Thursday was to say publicly what has long been acknowledged privately,” Obama said. “I have done so because we cannot afford to wait another decade, or another two decades, or another three decades, to achieve peace.”

Republican Criticism

Several Republicans who are potential opponents for Obama in the 2012 presidential race seized on the president’s position to portray Obama as insufficiently dedicated to Israel’s security.

“Insistence on a return to the 1967 border is a mistaken and very dangerous demand,” said former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty.

“President Obama has thrown Israel under the bus,” former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney said in a statement.

The recent agreement between the Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas “poses an enormous obstacle to peace,” Obama said. The U.S. and Israel regard Hamas as a terrorist organization. “No country can be expected to negotiate with a terrorist organization sworn to its destruction,” he said.

Obama came to the 2008 AIPAC meeting a day after clinching the Democratic presidential nomination that year to declare his “unshakeable commitment” to Israel’s security.

Early during the campaign year, polls showed Obama performed poorly with Jewish voters following controversy about sermons his former pastor delivered that included what Obama denounced as “anti-Israel” statements. By election day, Obama recovered, receiving 78 percent of the Jewish vote, more than 74 percent received by 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, according to exit polls.

Porn in the USA

NOVANEWS
 

By Yvonne Ridley
 

I wonder what the US Administration makes of the idiom that includes the words pot, kettle and black.

The reason for this recent musing comes from revelations that a stash of pornography was found during the infamous Abbottabad raid in Pakistan by US Navy seals.

Not only did the Obama gang boast that they’d finally got the world’s most wanted man but they gleefully revealed a few days later that among the “millions” of intelligence documents was a pile of porn.

Of course we’ve not seen an ounce of evidence to support either of these claims, so not surprisingly there are those demanding that the Americans either ‘put up or shut up’.

Obama argues he will not release pictures depicting the al-Qaida leader’s death because they are too graphic and could offend and inflame Muslims across the world.

It’s an odd argument since he then sees no problem in allowing people to think the al Qaida leader wiled away his days with his head buried in dirty magazines.

But quite frankly, ever since the WMD lies peddled by the US Government to justify the invasion and war in Iraq were exposed most people hold a healthy scepticism towards any official statements coming out of Capitol Hill.

The gullible truly want to believe their government and so they do, but cynics – and they are growing in number even in America these days – recognise weak, transparent propaganda when they see it.

And the OBL porn revelations were indeed weak, highly predictable but also hypocritical. I say this because if you chip beneath the thin veneer of US respectability and family values the country is awash with X-rated smut.

Had Osama bin Ladin checked in to the Marriott, Westin or Hilton hotel chains in America he could have had his pick of X-rated in-room, movies.

I’m told that demand is so high that the blue movie business generates more money than hotel mini-bars.

In Obama’s Apple Pie America, cable and satellite companies pump pornography into millions of homes where the American Dream has, for some, become X-rated.

And the Americans are keen to share – I remember one of the first things that followed the arrival of US forces in Afghanistan was the sex industry.

Scores of channels promoting straight and gay porn suddenly became readily available on television sets without even the need to subscribe. Yes, I bet that really helped Tony Blair and George W Bush’s crusade to liberate Afghan women.

The internet is also awash with obscene material which exploits women, and it is downloaded daily from US military bases across the world – some sites are so patriotic they even offer their services free of charge to those serving Uncle Sam.

The scale of the problem is so vast that 12 years ago Congress banned sales of sexually explicit material on military bases to keep the Christian right happy but it was never rigorously enforced.

I can reveal that certainly in Guantanamo the porn industry was very much in evidence when I visited with a documentary crew. You’ll have to take my word for it because the Gitmo PR team that escorted me around the base in May 2008 stopped me from filming the shelf racks at the local shop which was awash with dodgy magazines and videos. I still remember one lurid title “Debbie Does Dallas” sitting next to Penthouse.

I thought it would make a sharp contrast to the filming we’d just done in the library used by the Guantanamo detainees where shelves were filled with English classics, Islamic works and copies of the National Geographic.

Of course the reading material accessed by the detainees was specially selected by the authorities but perhaps the Pentagon should be equally selective over the material its soldiers access because there is a link between sexual predators and their reading and viewing material.

Just a few weeks ago 17 veteran and active-duty soldiers filed a lawsuit against the Pentagon. They accuse the U.S. military of permitting a culture that tolerates rape and sexual assault.

Reports show that as many as 3,250 reported rapes or other sexual assaults took place in the U.S. military, in 2009 alone. Military sources admit the unreported incidents could be as high as 16,000 because 80 percent of the victims may not have reported the incidents for fear of reprisal.

Instead of peddling silly propaganda about the stash of porn found in Abbottabad, I suggest American authorities look closer to home.

Interesting that those briefing the media about OBL’s alleged porn stash did so on condition of anonymity … well I wonder what they have to hide?

Could it be a case of porn, kettle and black?

*British journalist Yvonne Ridley is patron of the London-based human rights organization Cageprisoners and European President of the International Muslim Women’s Union.

U.S. bill requires French rail company to disclose ‘truth’ of its Holocaust role

NOVANEWS

by crescentandcross

 

 

Maryland is the first state to pass such a law, which would require the company to provide complete records of its role in the Holocaust and post them online.

AP

U.S. Governor Martin O’Malley on Thursday signed into law a first-of-its-kind measure that will require the French rail company SNCF to disclose its role in transporting Holocaust victims to Nazi concentration camps if the company seeks a contract to provide train service in the state.

O’Malley described the measure, which will take effect June 1, as an example of thinking globally and acting locally.”We hope this legislation can become a national model sooner rather than later so that Holocaust survivors who are still prying apart the windows of a cattle car, praised the measure.”

“It’s a beginning,” said Bretholz, who championed the legislation. “The other states will probably take note and perhaps do the same thing.”

Maryland is the first state to pass such a law, which would require the company to provide complete records of its role in the Holocaust and post them online.

“We need contrition,” Bretholz said during a meeting with O’Malley at which he showed the governor a book that included the names of about 76,000 people transported by the railway during the Holocaust, including his own. “We need statements. We need the truth.”

Keolis Rail Services America, a majority of which is owned by SNCF, a French government subsidiary, has sought a contract to be a third-party provider to operate the MARC train’s Camden and New Brunswick lines. The state’s transportation department withdrew an initial request-for-proposal in the hopes of generating additional competition, said department spokesman Jack Cahalan. Keolis won a contract last year to run Virginia’s commuter rail line.

A phone call to the Rockville-based company was not immediately returned. E-mails to SNCF officials were not immediately answered.

The railway acknowledges that SNCF’s equipment and staff were used to transport 76,000 Jews to Germany. Fewer than 3,000 returned alive.

SNCF has argued that it had no effective control over operations when France was under Nazi occupation from 1940 to 1944. The company also has said the French government has made an apology and offered reparations, although survivors contend the company itself never made such amends.

In a statement last fall, SNCF Chairman Guillaume Pepy noted that France’s president in 1995 recognized that nation’s responsibility for the criminal madness of the period.

As an arm of the French State, SNCF fully embraces these words and the sorrow they reflect for the victims, survivors, and their families who suffered as a result of our role ring the war, Pepy said in the statement.

Pepy said the company continues to work to educate young people about what happened and reach out to Jewish community leaders in the U.S. to reflect the full story of what happened in World War II. He said the company was trying to assist the remaining U.S. residents who may be entitled to reparations from the French government program.Between 1941 and 1944, 3,000 wagons that had been designed to move cattle were used to transport Jews to Nazi death camps, according to a study by French historian Christian Bachelier that was ordered by SNCF in 1996.

The study points out that there were acts of resistance, but mostly by workers and not
SNCF officials.

The railway’s bid to win high-speed rail contracts in California and Florida angered some U.S. Jews last year; they opposed giving a contract to a company with a role in the deportations.

Last year, former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill that would have required companies seeking high-speed rail contracts with California to disclose any role they played during the Holocaust. While the company agreed to voluntarily comply with the measure, the California lawmaker who introduced the bill wrote in a February letter to a company official that SNCF did not appear to be moving in that direction.

Former thug who found Judaism hopes to be first African-American in Zionist Knesset

NOVANEWS

by crescentandcross

 

 

26-year-old Marcus Hardie, dubbed by his L.A. gang ‘American Thug’ today is an Orthodox lawyer who enlisted in the IDF as a combat soldier and has his eyes set on politics.

Marcus Hardie grew up in an African-American community in Los Angeles, where his nickname was “American Thug.”

“I was a tough gangster,” he says.

But after a religious awakening that brought him to Judaism and eventually led him to immigrate to Israel, his street name changed to “American Faith.” In his recently published autobiography, Hardie recounts his journey from the streets of an inner-city ghetto in California to Israeli yeshivas, Ehud Olmert’s office and the battlefields of the second intifada.

He already knows which Hollywood stars he wants to play his character if his memoirs are turned into a movie. Currently working as a lawyer in California, he is planning to return to Israel soon, with one specific goal: election to the Knesset.

“I was raised by my grandmother – she was a religious Christian and used to anoint my head with oil and give me blessings,” Hardie, 39, told Anglo File recently during a phone interview. A “troubled youth in America’s violent inner city,” as he described himself, Hardie joined a gang his cousin had started. But after his cousin died during a burglary, Hardie quit the gang life and looked for meaning elsewhere.

“I became interested in the Jewish tradition because my grandmother had me reading the Bible. I read about the Jews coming out of Egypt and I became interested in the people of Israel,” he recalled. “After I got into college I started talking to a rabbi and he questioned me about why I was interested in Jewish tradition. I told him that I was interested in being a part of the chosen people.”

Hardie underwent three conversions: first with Reform, then with Conservative and finally, in 1997, with Orthodox rabbis. After graduating law school, he worked for California Governor Pete Wilson.

In 1999, Hardie immigrated to Israel, a country he had visited only once before. For about six months, he studied at a Jerusalem yeshiva and interned for Ehud Olmert, who was then the capital’s mayor.

In 2000, the 26-year-old Hardie enrolled in the Israel Defense Forces’ elite Golani Brigade.

“I was getting fired upon at one point in Jenin,” he recalled. “It was pretty dangerous stuff.”

Because he was a lawyer, Hardie was transferred to the army’s legal department. “But after six months of being a jobnik,” he said, using army slang for non-combat soldiers, “I decided I wanted to do more combat.”

He was transferred to the army’s armored division, where he drove and loaded tanks near Israel’s northern borders and later manned checkpoints in the West Bank.

After the army, Hardie moved to the Ultra-Orthodox town of Bnei Brak to work as a security guard.

“I lived among the yeshivas, the Haredim and I was learning Torah too,” Hardie said.

While he had adopted an Orthodox lifestyle back in 1997, he became even more religious in Bnei Brak. “One of my favorite cities in Israel to this day is still Bnei Brak. I love Orthodox Jews and the Jewish community there. I love spending time with the rabbis, I love davening and praying.”

In 2004, Hardie returned to America for a woman, but the relationship didn’t work out, and he is still single.

“Although I’m back in the U.S., I still consider myself Israeli and I still study Torah every day,” Hardie said. “I’m both American and Israeli. But I’d say I feel more Israeli.”

That feeling figures in his plans to return to Israel in the next two years and get involved in politics.

“I want to become the first African-American member of Knesset,” he said. “I think I can do it because I served in the army, I did reserve duty, I speak Hebrew, I’m a member of Likud and I’m still active in politics,” he said.

Hardie is currently working on a Middle East peace plan, which calls for a de-militarized Palestinian state with Ramallah as its capital.

In the meantime, Hardie is looking for Hollywood producers interested in turning his 320-page autobiography “Black and Bulletproof: An African-American Warrior in the Israeli Army,” published last year by New Horizon Press, into a movie. As actors for the lead role he suggests Will Smith, Jamie Foxx or Denzel Washington. “I think it would be great if we could get Steven Spielberg to direct it,” he said.

Hamas, Fatah officials meet in Moscow to bolster reconciliation

NOVANEWS
 

The Russian initiative to bring Hamas and Fatah officials together is set to focus on solidifying ties between the recently reconciled factions, find common ground for negotiations with Israel, reports Russian news agency ITAR-TASS.

Top Palestinian officials from both Hamas and Fatah are conducting meetings with members of the Russian Foreign Ministry in the coming days at a guesthouse near Moscow, according to a report by Russian news agency ITAR-TASS.

The meetings are reportedly being conducted under the auspices of the Institute for Oriental Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences, with the help of a Russian foundation for science and Islamic culture.

The Palestinian representatives were invited to Moscow by the head of the university, Vitaly Numkin, who is also heading the meetings, according to ITAR-TASS. The meetings are reportedly intended to solidify ties between the two recently reconciled factions. An additional stated goal is finding a common ground for Hamas and Fatah to begin possible negotiations with Israel, the report said.

Former rivals Hamas and Fatah signed a unity deal in Cairo earlier this month, a step that many view as crucial to establishing a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. However, the factions still disagree on many core issues. West Bank-based Fatah has adopted diplomatic means toward statehood, while Gaza-based Hamas has engaged in terror warfare against Israel and refuses to recognize its right to exist.

Experts believe this is the first time in recent history that Russia has taken an active measure to assist the Middle East peace process, making the initiative to bring the factions together a significant step for the country.

Meetings are to take place Sunday and Monday, with the Palestinian representatives meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Monday.

Turkish FM warns IsraHell over response to new Gaza flotilla

NOVANEWS
 


Haaretz
 

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu warned Israel not to act against a planned new aid flotilla to the Gaza Strip, the French Press Agency AFP reported on Saturday.

“It should be known that Turkey will give the necessary response to any repeated act of provocation by Israel on the high seas,” Davutoglu was quoted as saying in an interview on NTV television.

“Those who believe Turkey should take certain steps to stop (the new flotilla) must first warn Israel not to repeat the human tragedy it caused last year,” he continued.

Last May, nine Turkish pro-Palestinian activists were killed in clashes that broke out when Israeli naval commandos intercepted a Gaza-bound aid flotilla.

The IHH, the group that organized that flotilla, has announced that a new flotilla will sail to Gaza towards the end of June.

Asked whether the Turkish government had made an effort to stop the planned flotilla, Davutoglu said: “We have never encouraged any convoy. We have shared our views about the safety of our citizens with all related parties. That was the case last year and it is not any different this time.”

He added that the Turkish government “cannot give instructions to civil society.”

Davutoglu also called on the international community, including the U.S., to support the reconciliation deal struck between Fatah and Hamas.

“If the division of the Palestinian authorities is healed, the conditions that serve as Israel’s justification for the blockade will be eradicated… and there will be no need for an aid convoy,” he was quoted as saying.

Fatah, Hamas leaders to meet Russian officials

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MOSCOW (AFP) – Members of rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas will meet “very senior” Russian officials on Monday during their informal three-day visit to Moscow, a Palestinian negotiator said on Saturday.

The Palestinian delegation arrived in Russia on Friday evening after concluding mechanisms for implementing a reconciliation agreement between the two sides earlier in the week.

A member of the so-called Middle East Quarter, Russia backs making east Jerusalem the capital of a unified Palestine and is also in contact with Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip and is viewed as a terrorist organisation by Israel.

One of the Palestinian negotiators, Mustafa Barghouti, said the group planned to hold “a very important meeting with Russian officials on Monday.”

“It will be a very senior” meeting, Barghouti added.

The visit has not been formally announced by Russia and the foreign ministry was not immediately available for comment.

Barghouti said the Palestinians were formally invited to Moscow by a Russian Middle East studies institute.

The Palestinian unity pact has been strongly opposed by Israel, whose relations with Russia were strained this week by the expulsion of its military attache on spying charges from Moscow.

'Nazi' Barak: Israel-U.S. differences on peace process ‘smaller than they seem’

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Haaretz
 

Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on Saturday that the differences between Israel and the United States on the peace process are smaller than they seem.

A day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with U.S. President Barack Obama at the White House in Washington, Barak said in an interview with Channel 2 that “the meeting was less dramatic than it appeared.”

“I think that the Americans know well the nuances of our positions,” Barak said.

“I don’t think that the president’s speech was such a bad thing,” he added. “I think it’s good that the prime minister brought attention to the fact that we expect the recognition of settlement blocs and that we want the refugees to be absorbed within the Palestinian state. I don’t think that the president said it was necessary to return to the 1967 lines, but rather that we need to start the discussion based on the 1967 borders.”

Netanyahu and Obama held a closed door meeting in the Oval Office before jointly addressing the press on Friday afternoon. The meeting lasted an hour-and-a-half, more than twice the time planned.

Both Israel and the U.S. were cautiously optimistic about the meeting, with White House Press Secretary Jay Carney saying that the length of the one-on-one talk between Obama and Netanyahu was a positive sign, and “an indication of just how productive and constructive this meeting was”.

However, both sides conceded in their comments to the press that there were points of contention, claiming that these were “differences between friends.”

Shortly after Netanyahu and Obama met with the press on Friday, a senior U.S. State Department official told Haaretz that Obama was disappointed with Netanyahu’s reaction to his Middle East policy speech, faulting Netanyahu for focusing on the issue of 1967 borders instead of looking at his policy as a whole and especially the alternative he proposed to the unilateral declaration of the Palestinian state at the United Nations.

“There were plenty of things in support of Israel,” the official told Haaretz, citing Obama’s wariness of the recent reconciliation of Hamas and Fatah, his condemnation of terror perpetrated by Hamas and his call for Palestinians to halt unilateral steps toward recognition. The official added that Obama recognized Israel as a Jewish state, saying that focusing on issue of 1967 borders was missing the point.

Top Jewish Americans ponder support for Obama

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CHICAGO (Reuters) – Some prominent Jewish Americans are rethinking their support for President Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election bid after he effectively called on Israel to give back territory it has occupied since 1967 to Palestinians.

The backlash after Obama’s keynote speech on the Middle East has Democratic Party operatives scrambling to mollify the Jewish community as the president prepares to seek a second term in the White House.

Obama on Thursday called for any new Palestinian state to respect the borders as they were in 1967, prompting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to tell him bluntly that his vision of how to achieve Middle East peace was unrealistic.

“He has in effect sought to reduce Israel’s negotiation power and I condemn him for that,” former New York Mayor Ed Koch told Reuters.

Koch said he might not campaign or vote for Obama if Republicans nominate a pro-Israel candidate who offers an alternative to recent austere budgetary measures backed by Republicans in Congress.

Koch donated $2,300 to Obama’s campaign in 2008, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission.

“I believed that then-Senator Obama would be as good as John McCain based on his statements at the time and based on his support of Israel. It turns out I was wrong,” he said.

Despite the stormy reaction to Obama’s remarks, some commentators noted talk of the 1967 borders was nothing new.

“This has been the basic idea for at least 12 years. This is what Bill Clinton, Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat were talking about at Camp David, and later, at Taba,” Jeffrey Goldberg wrote on The Atlantic website.

“This is what George W. Bush was talking about with Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert. So what’s the huge deal here?”

Exit polls from the 2008 election showed 78 percent of Jewish voters chose Obama over his Republican rival Senator McCain.

“I have spoken to a lot of people in the last couple of days — former supporters — who are very upset and feel alienated,” billionaire real estate developer and publisher Mortimer Zuckerman said.

“He’ll get less political support, fewer activists for his campaign, and I am sure that will extend to financial support as well.”

Zuckerman backed Obama during his 2008 presidential run and the newspaper he owns, the New York Daily News, endorsed the president.

Obama’s Chicago-based re-election campaign sought to play down reaction to the shift in the U.S. stance toward Israel.

“There’s no question that we’ve reached out to the Jewish donor community, as we have to many other communities that strongly supported the president in 2008,” a campaign spokeswoman said on Friday.

“The continued grassroots organizing and fundraising efforts of many prominent leaders in the Jewish community makes it clear this will remain a strong base of support in 2012.”

Texas-based real estate developer Kirk Rudy, who is a deputy finance chairman for the Democratic National Committee, said he exchanged phone calls and e-mails with a large network of supporters since the president’s speech “trying to take people’s pulse” and has not seen a strong backlash.

“I have seen very emphatic and robust support — and financial support — from the Jewish community,” Rudy said, adding Obama received “significant financial participation from the Jewish community” at two fund-raisers in Austin, before the Middle East speech, that brought in roughly $2 million.

Since the speech, Rudy has received e-mails from angry voters but the overwhelming majority of his network will continue to donate and not cross party lines, he said.

But Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, wrote an open letter to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, calling on it to cancel a scheduled address by Obama to the lobby group on Sunday.

Zionist border debate frames Obama’s AIPAC appearance

NOVANEWS
 


It’s being billed as a forum to “strengthen the bond between the United States and Israel.” But when President Obama steps to the podium Sunday morning to address thousands of pro-Israel activists at the annual gathering of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in Washington, the elephant in the room will be a topic of recent division: Israel’s borders.

Obama ignited a firestorm on Thursday when he called on Israel to use its 1967 boundaries as the launching point for peace negotiations with Palestinian leaders.

The proposal, though not unlike others from presidents past, provoked an immediate outcry from Republican presidential contenders and a host of influential lawmakers on Capitol Hill, including a number of Democrats.

It also lay bare a fundamental divide between the Obama administration’s approach to a hypothetical Israel-Palestine peace deal and that advocated by Israeli leaders, particularly Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Against that backdrop, lawmakers from both parties will make appearances at the AIPAC conference, which begins Saturday evening.

Obama – who addressed the conference in 2008, but has not done so as president – will speak Sunday morning, along with House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.).

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) will address the group Sunday afternoon, while Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Netanyahu are slated to speak at a dinner Monday night.

Netanyahu is also scheduled to address a joint session of Congress on Tuesday.

A handful of GOP presidential hopefuls will be on hand – though not in an official role – including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.), Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.), former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman and Herman Cain, the former head of Godfather’s Pizza who threw his hat into the presidential ring on Saturday.

Gingrich and Bachmann will be holding private receptions, according to AIPAC spokesman Ari Goldberg. Also hosting events, Goldberg said, will be the the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and the Democratic National Committee, headed by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.).

With AIPAC expecting attendance to top 10,000, the lawmakers will be hoping to win over a powerful voting bloc that’s also a significant source of campaign cash. But it may be Obama who has the toughest sell ahead of him.

In a prominent address Thursday, the president suggested that Israel – a close U.S. ally and the only true democracy in the Middle East – cede land it won in the Six Day War of 1967 as a basis to relaunch Palestinian peace talks that have been stalled for several years.

“The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states,” Obama said from the State Department. “The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their full potential, in a sovereign and contiguous state.”

Netanyahu on Friday soundly rejected Obama’s proposal. Appearing alongside Obama in the Oval Office after a lengthy meeting between the two, Netanyahu warned that “a peace based on illusions will crash eventually on the rocks of Middle Eastern reality.”

“For there to be peace, the Palestinians will have to accept some basic realities. The first is that while Israel is prepared to make generous compromises for peace, it cannot go back to the 1967 lines,” he said, as Obama gazed intently with a hand under his chin. “It’s not going to happen. Everybody knows it’s not going to happen. And I think it’s time to tell the Palestinians forthrightly it’s not going to happen.”

A number of lawmakers have echoed those concerns, including Reps. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) – who warned that the 1967 borders “were were simply not defensible” – and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), who said the move would threaten Israel’s security.

“It would undermine Israel’s strategic depth, increasing its vulnerability to both military invasions and the sorts of rocket and missile attacks that Hamas carries out in Gaza,” Ros-Lehtinen, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Friday in a statement. “Doubling down on failed policies will not lead to the changes we need. It’s time for the Obama administration to change course.”

Another critic, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), has promised to introduce a resolution rejecting Obama’s position on Israel’s border lines.

“This is not only ridiculous, but dangerous,” Hatch said this week.

Even before Obama’s speech, AIPAC sought to dissuade attendees from heckling any of the speakers, as occurred in 2007 when  then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was booed for suggesting that the Iraq war had been less than a success. In an email this week to incoming delegates, AIPAC President Lee Rosenberg sought to prevent a repeat of that episode.

“We have always had the perspective that these speakers and guests have been invited into our home and we will treat them with the warmth, deference, respect, and appreciation that anyone would be accorded as such,” Rosenberg wrote.

“Therefore, how we conduct ourselves during the conference, individually and collectively, is a matter of great importance.Because we know that you – Democrats, Republicans, and Independents – come to this conference with one overriding concern – a stronger U.S.-Israel alliance – we ask that you act and react to every speech, address, and briefing, that will be offered as part of the conference program in only the most positive manner.”

The AIPAC conference runs from Sunday through Tuesday.