Dorothy Online Newsletter

NOVANEWS

Posted by: Sammi Ibrahem

Chair of West Midland Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Dear Friends,

The 6 items below begin with a weekly report by the Palestine Centre for Human Rights.  You can receive the PCHR reports by signing on to its mailing list via the email address at the end of the report.  This report will help keep you up to date on some events here in this part of the world.  The remaining items are primarily commentaries.

In item 2 Gideon Levy begins with a seemingly trivial matter—the end of leaf-blowing in Israel (a law takes effect today to outlaw the use of these noisy machines).  But his seemingly humorous opening leads to one of the strongest criticisms of Israel that I remember Levy writing in a long time.  Well done, Gideon!

Items 3 and 4 are refreshing British reactions to today’s news that Hamas and Fatah have joined hands.  Refreshing because from the political comments and commentaries here in Israel, it was a black black day.  As one of the responses to the news states below, Israel’s divide and conquer policy has perhaps seen its last.  Let’s hope so.  Netanyahu’s stand of ‘either peace or Hamas—Fatah must choose’ will get us nowhere.  Who is kidding who?  Since when has Netanyahu wanted peace?  Oh he’d love peace—but in the Greater Israel with no Palestinians around to remind him that Israel was built on their land. Let’s hope that Fatah and Hamas stay together.  Their mutual enemy is the occupation and the colonization.  To overcome these, they cannot afford to battle one another.  They owe it to the Palestinian people to see their reconciliation through, at the least until they have given their people a better future than the one they can look forward to now under occupation and colonization.

Item 5 argues that Washington fumbles in its dealings with the Israel-Palestinian issue, particularly with respect to the Hamas-Fatah union: “Without even hearing the details of the agreement, the White House, as reported in the New York Times, ‘all but dismissed’ it”  How Israelis must love to hear that.

Item 6 is interesting information about AIPAC, and item 7 is a link to a video and to commentary about a project on “Walls.” It is not merely about the Israeli wall, but does include it.

Here in Israel, as Memorial Day and Israel’s Independence Day near, the airwaves get heavy with Holocaust rememberings.  The tone gets somber as the Holocaust industry plies its wares while 60,000 Holocaust survivors live in Israel under the poverty line, many of them hungry and alone.  The Holocaust deserves to be remembered for what it did–not only to Jews, but to gays, to Jehovah Witnesses, to Gypsies, to Aryans who were mentally deficient, to the Russians, and ultimately for the ruins in which it left England, Europe, portions of Africa, the USSR, and also Germany itself—Also worth remembering is that had Field Marshal Rommel not been stopped, had he gotten to Palestine, Jews here would have not been an iota safer than they had been in Europe.

As Independence day nears, so also commemorations of the Nakba.  How will Israel react this year to those memorials of the Nakba, the commemoration of the Palestinian catastrophe.  May the period pass in peace.

All the best,

Dorothy

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1. PCHR

Palestinian Centre for Human Rights LTD(non-profit)

www.pchrgaza.org

_______________________________________________________

Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) Continue Systematic Attacks against Palestinian Civilians and Property in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT)

• · A Palestinian worker from Hebron was wounded and arrested by IOF while trying to have access to Israel for work.

• · IOF continued to target Palestinian workers, farmers and fishermen in border areas in the Gaza Strip

–A Palestinian farmer was wounded in  the northern Gaza Strip.

–IOF fired at Palestinian fishermen at sea and no casualties were reported.

• · IOF continued to use force against peaceful protests in the West Bank.

– Six protesters, including a child and a Spanish human rights defender, were wounded.

– IOF arrested 5 protesters, including a child and three international human rights defenders.

• · IOF conducted 25 incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank and two incursions into the Gaza Strip.

– IOF arrested 8 Palestinian civilians, including 4 children.

– IOF raided Tareq Ben Zeyad Secondary School in Hebron.

– IOF bulldozed eight tin-made stores owned by PADICO.

• · Israel has continued to impose a total siege on the Gaza Strip and tightened the siege on the West Bank.

– IOF have totally closed off the West Bank and the Gaza Strip for Passover for the second week.

– IOF arrested at least four Palestinians, including two children, at military checkpoints in the West Bank.

– IOF maltreated a Palestinian worker and sniffer dogs bit him.

Summary

Israeli violations of international law and humanitarian law in the OPT continued during the reporting period (21 – 27 April 2011):

Shooting:

During the reporting period, IOF wounded eight civilians, including a child, in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.  Five of the wounded, including a child and a Spanish human rights defender, were wounded in peaceful protests in the West Bank and a Palestinian worker was wounded in the far southwest of Hebron while trying to have access to Israel for work.  In the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian farmer was wounded when IOF fired at Palestinian farmers in  the northern Gaza Strip.

In the West Bank, during the reporting period, IOF used excessive force to disperse peaceful demonstrations organized in protest to Israeli settlement activities and the construction of the annexation wall in the West Bank.  As a result, six civilians, including a child and a Spanish human rights defender, were wounded. Five of them were wounded in Bil’ein ‘sweekly protest in the west of Ramallah, while the child was wounded in Nabi Saleh’s protest in the northwest of Ramallah.  In addition, dozens of Palestinian civilians and international human rights defenders participating in peaceful protests in the West Bank suffered from tear gas inhalation and bruises as they were beaten by IOF.

On 24 April 2011, a Palestinian worker was wounded when IOF stationed in “al-Kharouba” border area in the southwest of al-Ramadin village, southwest of Hebron, opened fire at him.  IOF opened fire before and after intentionally letting sniffer dogs attack the Palestinian worker and eat his flesh.  They then arrested him and transferred him later to Soroka Hospital in Beersheba. The arrested Palestinian was transferred later to an Israeli detention center.  It should be noted that this crime is the fourth of its kind documented by PCHR within two weeks in Hebron.

In the Gaza Strip, on 21 April 2011, a Palestinian farmer was wounded when IOF positioned on the border opened fire at Palestinian farmers and shepherds who were in their farms or in the jungle in al-Qutbania area in the southeast of Beit Hanoun town in the northern Gaza Strip. The wounded Palestinian was on his land which is approximately 900 meters far from the border.

On 23 April 2011, IOF gunboats positioned off al-Waha resort in the west of Beit Lahia town in the northern Gaza Strip, fired shells and opened intensive fire at Palestinian fishing boats.  They also fired many flash bombs.  Palestinian fishermen escaped as a result in fear of being wounded or arrested.  No casualties or damages in property were reported.

The full report is available online at:

http://www.pchrgaza.org/portal/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=7411:weekly-report-on-israeli-human-rights-violations-in-the-occupied-palestinian-territory-21-27-april-2011&catid=84:weekly-2009&Itemid=183

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Public Document

For further information please visit our website (http://www.pchrgaza.org) or contact PCHR’s office in Gaza City, Gaza Strip by email (pchr@pchrgaza.org) or telephone (+972 (0)8 2824776 – 2825893).

*Office Hours are between 08:00 – 16:00 hours (05:00 GMT – 13:00 GMT) Sun – Thurs.

Pchr_e mailing list
Pchr_e@pchrgaza.ps
http://pchrgaza.ps/mailman/listinfo/pchr_e_pchrgaza.ps

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2.  Haaretz,

April 28, 2011

Arab world is deposing rulers, Israel is blowing leaves

The Environmental Protection Ministry declared this nothing less than a “revolution” – the leaf blower revolution. The Arab world is deposing rulers and we are deposing the leaf blower.

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/arab-world-is-deposing-rulers-israel-is-blowing-leaves-1.358530

By Gideon Levy

Sometimes I’d watch him, the leaf blower. Making a racket, raising clouds of dust but doing a wonderful job of cleaning our streets. Crouching along the sidewalks of the city, he would never get anything but barrages of curses from passersby. Yesterday his work ended. The new noise prevention regulations went into effect, and with them, the end of the leaf blower.

I loved them, but apparently most Israelis thought otherwise. The Environmental Protection Ministry declared this nothing less than a “revolution” – the leaf blower revolution. The Arab world is deposing rulers and we are deposing the leaf blower. Now they will inundate the streets with thousands of African sanitation workers, who will sweep our streets in a hush and clean up after us ever so quietly with their wretched brooms of twigs, these sub-contracted workers, who earn the very minimum of the minimum wage and do not receive any social benefits or health insurance. But what’s important is that our rest is not disturbed and our tranquility is preserved, no matter the cost.

This is how we are, we Israelis. We love to eat our cake and have it, too. We love the artfully achieved natural “look.” We want someone to clean up after us but without making noise; we want someone to sweep up after us in conditions of near enslavement and without making a sound. It’s not Israeli raucousness, the persistent honking of car horns, and the music blaring out of these cars – all the work of our own hands – that disturbs us. What disturbs us is the leaf blower. It’s not the sounds of the seething environment that disturbs us. Not the outcries of the oppressed among us, not the mutterings of the world that opposes us and not the moans of those under our occupation. These do not disturb our serenity. Only the leaf blower does.

This leaf blower is, indeed, a metaphor. There are many other leaf blowers and brooms out there that Israelis would want to “do their work” for them, to clear away the fallen leaves and the piled up garbage, but they better not disturb their tranquility.

The separation wall is a case in point. They are there and we are here (and also there ), but the main thing is that the Palestinians disappear from our sight – separation and sweeping without any noise. Every time the occupation has the gall to proclaim its existence and make a racket like a leaf blower, we hasten to issue regulations to muffle it and use violent means to silence it.

Like the cleanliness of our cities, we want the occupation to continue but without making noise. We want violent wars and brutal military operations but without a peep from the world in their wake. We want crude violations of human rights but without the clamor of criticism; to preach to the world to boycott Hamas but to be against international boycotts. We want democracy but without the background noises of the minority. We want to live in a near theocracy, one of the most religious countries in the world, and to imagine we are living in a secular and liberal democracy. We want to consider ourselves enlightened and to vote for Kadima – a rightist, nationalist party in every respect, only without the leaf-blowing racket of the undisguised right-wing nationalists.

We say that most of us are in favor of the two-state solution, but we vote for parties that will do nothing to advance it. We vehemently oppose a one-state solution but we live, in fact for decades, in an apartheid state. We favor free access and worship at Joseph’s Tomb but not at Al Aqsa. We remember 1948 but without the Nakba. We oppose returning Palestinian property from before 1948 but we evict Palestinian inhabitants in Hebron and Sheikh Jarrah on the grounds that their homes were under Jewish ownership before 1948. We shoot passengers in Palestinian cars who refuse to stop at roadblocks, but when the Palestinian police do the same, we call it a “murderous terror attack.” We call the Israeli army Defense Forces, while most of its work is occupation. We live without a civil society but believe that tying a yellow ribbon onto our car mirrors for Gilad Shalit is an act of protest. We support Shalit’s release but oppose the release of 450 terrorists in exchange for him. And we sweep and sweep, but without making any noise.

I loved the leaf blower, but not only for his effectiveness: Sometimes it is, in fact, the silence that is rubbish. I, too, love quiet but not imaginary quiet, not quiet that sweeps things under the rug and deceives. If it is necessary to clean, let us do it with the necessary clamor, without disguising anything. Hence this desperate cry that stands no chance: Bring back the leaf blower.

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3.  The Indpendent,

28 April 2011 at 1:41 pm

A welcome reconciliation

http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2011/04/28/a-welcome-reconciliation/

By Jody McIntyre

The Foreign Desk

Divide and conquer. One of the oldest methods of colonialist powers.  Sow seeds of division amongst the people you are there to “civilise”, in order to weaken their resistance against your occupation of their land.

Since 2006, when democratic elections in Palestine led to the victory of Hamas, and the subsequent US-backed Fatah attempted coup to overthrow them, the two main Palestinian factions have been in conflict, with Hamas taking control of the Gaza Strip, and the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, who’s “authority” is questionable at best, taking control of the West Bank.  East Jerusalem, the capital of any future Palestinian state according to international law, and pre-1948 Palestine remain under Israeli occupation.

This week, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu confirmed his position on the division between the two parties by saying, “The Palestinian Authority must choose either peace with Israel or peace with Hamas.”  The Israeli government know that far more dangerous than Hamas, who they never miss an opportunity to denounce as a terrorist organisation bent on their destruction, whilst ignoring the fact that the State of Israel is based on wiping Palestine off the map, would be a unified Palestinian government capable of representing all of the Palestinian people; Palestinians living in Gaza, in Jerusalem, in the West Bank, inside pre-1948 Palestine and the millions of refugees living across the world.

The US government, under the guise of peace-broker, continue to play the role of bank-roller to the Israeli state.  After claiming to support moves towards Palestinian reconciliation, a spokesman added, “Hamas, however, is a terrorist organisation which targets civilians.  Any Palestinian government must renounce violence and recognise Israel’s right to exist if it is to play a constructive role.”  Why is there no call for any Israeli government to renounce violence, and recognise Palestine’s right to exist?  The answer is simple; Israel is a colonialist state, backed with billions of US dollars every year.

The reconciliation between the two political factions will be welcomed by huge swathes of Palestinian society, however, it has come about after much pressure from below.  Recent demonstrations in Ramallah calling for unity were cracked down upon by Palestinian Authority security forces, who seem to act as secondary occupation-enforcer in the West Bank, whilst similar demonstrations in Gaza were also deemed unwelcome by Hamas security forces, who first attempted to co-opt the protests into support for themselves, and then opted for repression.

A Facebook group entitled “May 15 – Palestinian Third Intifada” was recently deleted by the website after attracting over 300,000 members, but you cannot delete an idea.  On May 15th, the date Palestinians commemorate as al-Nakba, or “the catastrophe”, to mark the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were expelled from their land in 1948, Palestinian youth organisations, inspired by the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, have called for further demonstrations in an attempt to overcome the occupation of their land.  The future is in their hands, not in the hands of political leaders on either side of the divide.

Tagged in: gaza, Netanyahu, Palestine

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4.  The Guardian,

28 April 2011 19.30 BST

How Hamas-Fatah unity could break Middle East deadlockIf Palestinian reconciliation holds, it may release all the players, the US and Israel included, from the ossified roles of the process

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/28/palestinian-territories-hamas

Daniel Levy

Palestinians celebrate the reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas, in Gaza City. Photograph: Adel Hana/AP

For the better part of 20 years, the policies of Fatah (the leading faction within the Palestine Liberation Organisation) have been predictable to the point of tedium. This week in Cairo, in agreeing to a unity and power-sharing deal with Hamas, Fatah surprised. Yes, Palestinian national reconciliation has been tried before, fleetingly and unenthusiastically, following a Saudi-brokered arrangement in spring 2007, and it may again unravel. But this time, Fatah’s move appears to be a more calculated and profound break with past practice – and the anticipated opprobrium of the US seems to weigh less heavily.

From the Algiers 1988 decision of the Palestine National Council adopting a two-state solution on the 1967 lines, to the 1993 Oslo Declaration of Principles recognising Israel’s right to exist, through to last September’s relaunching of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in Washington, DC, the PLO approach can be reduced to one simple equation: that a combination of an accommodationist Palestinian side, Israeli rational self-interest and US leverage would overcome inbuilt Israeli-Palestinian asymmetries of power and deliver Palestinian independence and de-occupation.

Gaining traction for that formula was a marketing challenge under the military-fatigued Yasser Arafat, but he was replaced over six years ago by the unequivocally peace-credentialled Mahmoud Abbas. And still, the Palestinians kept doubling down on that formula in the face of failure. Fatah pursued negotiations without terms of reference, security coordination with the Israel Defence Forces, institution-building under occupation, and an inexplicable faith in American mediation – even as settlements metastasised across the Occupied Territories, elections were lost to Hamas, and accusations of collaboration grew deafening.

The last roll of this Palestinian dice, Fayyadism (named after Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and predicated on the notion that Palestinian good governance would induce Israeli withdrawal or, at least, international pressure to force that withdrawal) is set to splutter to an ignoble end this September. The two-year programme of building state-readiness will have succeeded, but will then stand helpless against the reality of an immovable Israeli occupation.

The test results are in. The accommodationist PLO equation did not compute.

A centrepiece of that strategy was for the peace process to be an exclusive domain of American mediation. In recent months, the Palestinians have been slowly manoeuvering out of this American cul-de-sac. Abbas refused to continue those September negotiations with Israel when the US failed to deliver an extension of even the limited and partial Netanyahu settlement moratorium. The PLO forced a vote on settlements at the UN security council, despite US pressure, leaving the US alone to cast its veto in a 14-1 vote. Preparations for UN recognition of Palestinian statehood proceed apace (again, in opposition to US policy). Finally, and most dramatically, Fatah has now agreed to this deal with Hamas.

Palestinian division, playing so-called “moderates” against “extremists”, had been a cornerstone of US (and Israeli) policy. If the Palestinian unity deal holds – and caution is well-advised with the details yet to be agreed, and with a history of false dawns – that cornerstone will be no more. It would be inaccurate to attribute this development to any radical departure in policy on the part of the Obama administration. Rather, this development is best understood against a backdrop of attrition, combined with new, post Arab Spring regional realities. The attrition part is obvious: there has been relentless growth in Israeli settlements and control of the territories over the years. When Oslo was signed in 1993, there were 111,000 settlers in the West Bank alone; today, that number exceeds 300,000, and 60% of the West Bank and all of East Jerusalem remain under exclusive Israeli control. And then there has been the impunity unfailingly granted to Israel by the US.

What has changed is that, in a region in democratising flux, Egypt no longer plays the role of status quo guarantor and is rediscovering a capacity for enacting regional policy that is independent, constructive and responsive to domestic opinion. The shift in Egypt’s outlook was key to delivering the Palestinian reconciliation breakthrough.

The Fatah-Hamas deal will, inevitably, meet with a rocky reception in the US. Congress may move to defund the PA, security assistance may be withdrawn, and official Israeli talking points (“they chose peace with the terrorists over peace with Israel”) will be warmly received on Capitol Hill. But will this reconciliation deal, if it holds, really be a negative development for the Palestinians, the US or even Israel?

For the Palestinians themselves, internal unity seems a prerequisite for developing a new national platform and strategy, and for reviving a legitimate, empowered and representative PLO. Unity creates one Palestinian address, the likelihood of a more robust negotiating posture, and provides an on-ramp for Hamas to engage in the political process, should it so choose. Crucial to any strategy will be a Palestinian adherence to international law and, in that context, to non-violence.

The Palestinians would best avoid preemptively cutting any ties to the US, but reduced dependence on the US, including the possible suspension of US aid, could be far from disastrous and might facilitate more productive and challenging Palestinian approaches to attaining their own freedom. Unity, or even a UN vote for recognition, will not in itself constitute a fully-fledged strategy or end of occupation. Huge challenges remain: managing security coordination (internal and external), running a limited self-governing authority that depends on Israeli goodwill to function and, not least, alleviating the closure-induced misery of Gaza. Unity, though, may be a crucial first step in developing a more compelling local and global Palestinian strategy – especially with the new prospect of meaningful Egyptian support.

For the US, Israel-Palestine is a defining national security interest in a critical region of the world. Alongside that, the peculiarities of American domestic politics on anything related to Israel leads the US to box itself in and limit its own manoeuverability on this issue. Too often, the result is American diplomatic impotence.

There might be advantages for the US in having this issue taken somewhat out of its hands, whether via enhanced Palestinian strategic independence, invigorated Egyptian diplomacy, or greater European or UN involvement. Such developments might enhance the prospects of a solution, produce openings for more effective US engagement with Israel, or at least might mitigate the debilitating cumulative impact this issue has on America’s standing in the Middle East.

Finally, Israel. It is unlikely that Israel will welcome a more independent, strategic or empowered Palestinian counterpart. Yet, Israel is today more, not less, insecure and uncertain of its future. In many respects, the aggravated asymmetry of the current peace process and strategic floundering on the part of the Palestinians gives Israel a false sense of permanent impunity and has encouraged Israel’s most self-destructive tendencies (not least, towards settlement building and intolerant nationalism).

It makes sense to speculate that a course correction by Israel’s leaders towards greater realism, pragmatism and compromise might emerge in response to a more challenging, strategic and – one would hope – non-violent Palestinian adversary.

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5.  [Thanks to Rupa for forwarding this important information about AIPAC and its dealings in the US]

Washington Showdown with AIPAC

Prohibited activities again catching up with lobby

http://original.antiwar.com/smith-grant/2011/04/27/washington-showdown-with-aipac/

by Grant Smith, April 28, 2011

When former AIPAC director Steven J. Rosen interpreted the contents of stolen classified US national defense information to Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler in 2004, he peddled it as proof that Iran was engaged in “total war against the United States.”  Far from an investigative journalism scoop, Rosen’s propaganda was not only false, but another small component of AIPAC’s larger drive to militarily entangle the US with Iran. Mirroring the trajectory of Enron — another secretive corporation that suddenly collapsed — this lobby has racked up such an unbroken string of challenges to US rule of law that concerned Americans are again gathering to confront AIPAC on a massive scale on May 21-24 in Washington.

More than a creative protest during AIPAC’s yearly conference, participants are attending workshops and learning circles to discover how to effectively expose, confront, and roll back AIPAC’s most secretive, dangerous, and costly initiatives. Participants will also network and leverage their contacts with activists from other states working to create lasting peace in the Middle East while reinstituting government accountability at home.  But why now?

A few observant Americans looked on in despair as AIPAC’s 1980s election law violations and 2004 employee indictments over classified information trafficking were recently unwound through attrition and curious moves by the courts and Justice Department.   The year 2011 is remarkably similar to a tipping point catalyzed by misdeeds that took place a half a century ago, when a coalition of fed-up Americans finally laid down the gauntlet and insisted on rule of law in America — breaking the back of AIPAC’s parent organization.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s Jewish activists were appalled that AIPAC’s parent organization, the American Zionist Council, was illegally laundering funds raised for legitimate overseas charitable relief back into covert US public relations and lobbying activities in secret coordination with the Israeli government.  The American Council for Judaism and scores of similarly concerned Americans relentlessly lobbied Congress and the US Department of Justice for relief. Even then-Congressman Donald Rumsfeld took action for his constituents.

After uncovering and documenting some of the AZC’s most egregious activities, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy ordered AIPAC’s parent organization — the AZC — to begin openly registering as an Israeli foreign agent on November 21, 1962.  Resistant to transparency and accountability, the AZC asked the Justice Department to keep its filed activities as a foreign agent secret, a subversion of the 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act transparency provisions.  The DOJ complied and refused to publicly release files about the AZC’s foreign agent filing until 2008.  This secret pact allowed the AZC to quietly shut down and transfer all key activities into its formerly unincorporated lobbying division, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.  AIPAC incorporated just six weeks after the AZC FARA order, but has never registered as a foreign agent.

According to newly declassified documents, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee notified[pdf] the Internal Revenue Service of its findings about how tax-exempt funds were laundered from Israel into nonexempt activities of the AZC and its AIPAC lobbying division.  But after a cursory investigation, and in spite of the DOJ foreign agent order, the IRS refused to revoke the AZC’s tax-exempt status[pdf].  In 1967, after landslide fundraising in the wake of the Six-Day War, AIPAC submitted its own application for IRS tax exemption editing out mandatory information[pdf] about the critical early support it received from the AZC and Israel.  The IRS granted AIPAC a tax exemption in 1967 — retroactive to 1953 — boosting the impact of the Justice Department’s prior cover-up of the organization’s true history.

Though again investigated as a foreign agent in the 1970s, AIPAC was soon free to spawn a network of coordinated stealth Political Action Committees designed to swing elections across the United States.  AIPAC board member Michael Goland was indicted and served a prison term in 1990 for corrupting the 1986 Senate race in California.  But like the AZC, AIPAC has proven highly resistant to accountability and responsibility for the actions of its associates.  Although the Washington Post exposed vast illegal campaign activity coordinated from AIPAC headquarters in the late 1980s, the FEC refused to regulate AIPAC as a political action committee, and the matter languished in court for decades until it was quietly and unceremoniously dismissed in 2010.

In 1984 the FBI also investigated AIPAC’s receipt of government-classified US confidential business data privately submitted by entities as diverse as the AFL-CIO and Monsanto to negotiate a better bilateral trade agreement with Israel. Again, nothing came of AIPAC or the Israeli government’s joint covert violation of US advice and consent negotiations and the shocking FBI investigation file of AIPAC remained locked away from public scrutiny until 2009.

Fallout from criminal indictments of AIPAC staffers caught red-handed trafficking classified information in 2004-2005 that were quietly unwound under mysterious judicial rulings and even more DOJ acquiescence in 2009 has put AIPAC’s activities under a new spotlight.  AIPAC briefly considered a media campaign to smear US law-enforcement officials but instead cut its losses by dumping Rosen. This led to Rosen’s $20 million retaliatory defamation lawsuit which opened up shocking new insights about AIPAC.   In 2010, true to form, AIPAC let loose a salvo of pornography and prostitution charges — which succeed more in revealing AIPAC’s decrepit work environment than anything about its former top executive-branch lobbyist. But the secret that AIPAC is an organization that has been breaking US laws since its emergence from the AZC in 1963 is now officially “out of the bag.”  The list of US classified documents stolen and misused by AIPAC grew larger in 2010, even as the IRS is again asked to retroactively revoke AIPAC’s tax exemption.

Rosen’s 2010 defamation lawsuit court documents (PDF) reveal that AIPAC’s classified information trafficking has been much more widespread than previously known.  AIPAC obtained a “secret National Security Decision Directive #99 calling on the Armed Services and Secretary of Defense to explore the potential for stepped-up strategic cooperation.” AIPAC gleaned classified annual reports of secret U.S. arms transfers. AIPAC skimmed classified law enforcement files about North African financial transfers to African-American political activists, which it then used to sabotage Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaign. AIPAC suctioned up classified U.S. intelligence about Khartoum. An AIPAC board member funneled classified raw U.S. signals intelligence into a lobbying effort, while another AIPAC employee solicited and received classified information about secret U.S. understandings with Saudi Arabia.  Such pervasive classified information-trafficking activities by a charity operating in the interest of a foreign government are simply not permissible under IRS and nonprofit regulations — irrespective of the motive.

In 2011, AIPAC is the number one obstacle to those seeking peace in the Middle East.  Today the lobby launders with impunity purloined US national defense information — rather than overseas charitable funds — to undermine peace.  It has forced concerned Americans of many stripes, liberal to libertarian, foreign policy novices to pros — to rekindle the spirit of the 1960s AZC accountability moment by again gathering in Washington May 21-24 at Move Over AIPAC.

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6.  Al Jazeera Last Modified:

28 Apr 2011 17:35

Washington fumbles Palestinian unity

America’s stalwart support of Israel is once again derailing peace negotiations before they even start.

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/04/201142815404146355.html

MJ Rosenberg Email

After secret talks that gave way to a Fatah and Hamas reconciliation, American politicians are already threatening to  cut funding to the Palestinian Authority – despite not even reading the terms of their agreement [EPA]

Any doubt about how the United States makes its policies on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be dispelled by the Obama administration’s near-instant reaction to the Fatah-Hamas reconciliation announcement: it is determined to be fully in sync with prime minister Netanyahu.

Without even hearing the details of the agreement, the White House, as reported in the New York Times, “all but dismissed” it:

The White House, which has been debating how best to revive peace talks ahead of an address to Congress next month by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, all but dismissed the proposed reconciliation by reiterating the longstanding American designation of Hamas as a terrorist organisation that has never expressed a willingness to recognise Israel, let alone negotiate with it.

“As we have said before, the United States supports Palestinian reconciliation on terms which promote the cause of peace,” Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said in the administration’s only public response. “Hamas, however, is a terrorist organisation which targets civilians.”

He added that any Palestinian government had to accept certain principles announced by international negotiators known as the Quartet: the United Nations, the European Union, the United States and Russia. They include renouncing violence, abiding by past agreements with the Israelis and recognising Israel’s right to exist. Hamas has never agreed to those conditions.

Then Congress spoke. Gary Ackerman, the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, and a pro-Netanyahu stalwart, weighed in on the agreement:

“It calls into question everything we have done,” Representative Gary L. Ackerman, Democrat of New York, said in a telephone interview. He later issued a statement saying the United States would be compelled by “both law and decency” to cut off all aid.

“I don’t think there is any will on the part of the administration or the Congress to provide funds to a government that is dominated by a dedicated terrorist organisation,” he said.

On a roll, Ackerman then said that the deal “will be paid for with the lives of innocent Israelis”. Ackerman, like most of his colleagues, never seems to notice all the innocent Palestinians who die at Israeli hands (many, many more than the number of Israelis who are killed by Palestinians), as evidenced by his cheerleading for the Gaza war. Nor did he care that he did not know the terms of the Fatah/Hamas agreement.

Of course, Ackerman’s statement is typical of the congressional response. In fact, one of the reasons that AIPAC cutouts like Ackerman are first to issue press releases on any matter related to Israel is to set the tone for their colleagues by indicating what the right (i.e., politically safe) position is.

But the position itself is dead wrong.

The right position would be to simply wait and see what the Hamas-Fatah agreement says. Already today, Haaretz is reporting that, under the terms of the agreement, president Mahmoud Abbas will be handling negotiations for any new unity government. (As usual, the Israeli view of events in its own region is not as stridently “pro-Israel” as in Washington.)

Considering that even prime minister Netanyahu has repeatedly praised Abbas for his commitment to peace, it is just possible that Hamas will, following Abbas’s lead, change its position in coming days.

Unfortunately, the US reaction to the Hamas-Fatah agreement makes any such change less likely.

In fact, the administration’s demand that Hamas recognise Israel in advance of any negotiations with Israel could well ensure that there won’t be any. So could our demand that it accept all previous agreements negotiated by the Palestinian Authority.

All of these issues would naturally be addressed in the context of negotiations. Demanding that Hamas accept them in advance – a position devised by the Israeli government and then pushed on the United States and the European Union – is an act of diplomatic sabotage.

There is only one demand we should make of Hamas, that it cease all acts of violence. Hamas has, in fact, lived up to that commitment during various cease-fire periods with Israel. In partnership with Fatah, it would likely do so again.

In any case, a mutual cease-fire is a reasonable demand, one that would facilitate negotiations. But the people issuing demands in Jerusalem and in Congress seem to have no interest in negotiating. Their goal is delivering for Israel which, of course, is a way of delivering for their campaigns.

This is the third time in the last few months that the combination of Netanyahu and the lobby (including, of course, its congressional allies) have successfully pressured the administration to do its bidding.

The first came when the United States was forced to stand all alone at the United Nations and veto a resolution condemning Israeli settlements (a resolution that embodied the Obama administration’s own policy).

The second was when the administration said that it would oppose any Palestinian declaration of statehood at the United Nations this coming fall.

It appears that the administration has little interest in playing the role of “honest broker”, at least until after Election Day 2012. And after that, there is the 2014 congressional election. And then the 2016 presidential election. And so it goes.

Meanwhile, as General David Petraeus famously warned us last year, the perception that the United States is in Israel’s pocket “presents distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests… Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of US partnerships with governments and peoples” in the Middle East.

But, hey, that’s only the national interest he’s talking about. What does a General know about politics?

MJ Rosenberg is a Senior Foreign Policy Fellow at Media Matters Action Network. The above article first appeared in Foreign Policy Matters, a part of the Media Matters Action Network.

You can follow MJ on twitter @MJayRosenberg.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

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7.  Walls

forwarded by Ruth H

An interesting project on walls, including the Israeli so-called ‘security barrier,’ which has nothing to do with security, but much to do with stealing Palestinian land.. Please read and watch the video (about 6 minutes).

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/flozowsky/up-against-the-wall