Dorothy Online Newsletter

NOVANEWS

Posted by: Sammi Ibrahem

Chair of West Midland Palestine Solidarity Campaign
 

[Thanks to all who informed me that only the introductory remarks had come through in yesterday’s message.  Hopefully everything will be there now.  It is on the page, at least.  Have no idea of what happened yesterday.  I apologize. D]

Dear Friends,

A rather long message tonight.  9 items, and some of them (particularly the final 2) are not short.

I debated with myself about including the initial report from Richard Silverstein.  Yes the story is horrid.  An attractive young woman behaves as a hardened racist and brutal beast.  In the end, I leave it up to you whether to read or not. Wonder what kind of wife, mother, etc she will be.

Item 2 is brief but a welcome relief after the first item: conductor Barenboim and his orchestra made it to Gaza via Rafa. The Egyptians who barely opened the crossing during Cast Lead, now opened it wide to allow an orchestra and its conductor in.  May miracles never end!

In item 3 the PCHR sketches the trials and tribulations of the Palestinian laborer living under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza.

Item 4 is the ‘Today in Palestine’ compilation of events.  Do please at least glance through its summaries so as to have at least an inkling about what goes on in this small but bloody part of the world.

Item 5 relates that Egypt has urged the US to recognize the Palestinian state.

Item 6 relates that Netanyahu has suspended building construction in East Jerusalem.  Wonder if someone is putting pressure on him???  We’ll perhaps know more from his conduct after he returns from his trips abroad.

In item 7 Netanyahu calls on Abbas to break the agreement with Hamas.  The government’s slogan has become ‘either Hamas or peace’—as though peace with a government in which Hamas sat were impossible.  Imagine Abbas telling Netanyahu ‘either peace or your foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman!’  But then Netanyahu no more desires peace than does Lieberman.  They both want land—and by continued colonizing they clearly say ‘we don’t want peace.’

Item 8 is a longish piece by Fisk on his meeting with and interview of Bin Laden.  But you won’t notice the length.  Fisk is always easy to read.

Item 9 is a criticism of the assassination of Bin Laden by Arab citizens of the US.  It is a very strong piece.

All the best,

Dorothy

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1. [May 3, 2011 From Richard Silverstein re a woman who during her service in the Border Police apparently tortured a young Palestinian and also during that period and after at checkpoints working for a private company she evidences strong racist and intimidating tendencies.]

I swear to you each time I come across a story like this I swear there can’t possibly be one worse, but inevitably there is…and this is surely one of them:

http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2011/05/02/israeli-border-policewoman-as-stone-cold-killer/

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2. Haaretz Tuesday, May 03, 2011

Daniel Barenboim and orchestra perform Mozart in Gaza

Israel and Egypt imposed a blockade on Gaza in 2007 after Islamic Hamas militants seized control from the Western-backed Fatah.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/daniel-barenboim-and-orchestra-perform-mozart-in-gaza-1.359658

By The Associated Press

Tags: Israel news Gaza

Famed Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim and a European orchestra performed Tuesday in the al-Madha centre in northern Gaza to show solidarity with its Palestinian residents.

Barenboim briefly entered Gaza through the Egyptian border crossing and conducted two pieces by Mozart before a small audience. International performances are rare in Gaza.

Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza in 2007 after Islamic Hamas militants seized control from the Western-backed Fatah but eased the blockade last year.

His visit to the Gaza Strip was in violation of an Israeli law which bans its citizens from entering the coastal enclave.

Barenboim, born in Argentina, grew up in Israel. The conductor is a controversial figure in Israel, both for his promotion of 19th-century composer Richard Wagner – whose music and anti-Semitic writings influenced Adolf Hitler – and vocal opposition to Israeli policies in the Palestinian territories.

In 2008 Barenboim took Palestinian citizenship and said he believed his rare new status could serve a model for peace between the two peoples.

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3.

PCHR Palestinian Centre for Human Rights Press Release

http://www.pchrgaza.org/portal/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=7422%3Aon-international-workers-day-pchr-denounces-israels-systematic-violation-of-palestinians-human-right-to-work-&catid=131%3Anew&Itemid=191

Ref: 40/2011

Date: 2 May 2011

Time: 11:30 GMT

On International Workers’ Day PCHR denounces Israel’s systematic violation of Palestinians’ human right to work

Since 1891, 1 May has been celebrated as International Workers’ Day, a public holiday throughout the world commemorating and reaffirming workers’ struggle for labor rights and decent working conditions.

The primary responsibility to protect and implement workers’ rights lies with nation states, since they are responsible for the implementation of international labor standards within the territories under their jurisdiction. As the occupying power Israel has the responsibility to ensure the right to work in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), comprised of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), inter alia, have confirmed the binding legal responsibilities of Israel vis a vis the entire spectrum of human rights of the Palestinian population under occupation.

However, the human right to work, which includes each individual’s right to the opportunity to gain their living by work which they freely choose or accept,[1][1] as well as the right to safe and healthy working conditions[2][2], remains out of reach for many Palestinians as result of Israeli policies enforced during its long standing belligerent occupation of the oPt.

In the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the approximately 585 checkpoints and other restrictions[3][3]inhibit the free movement of people to get to and from work and make trade difficult and costly. Confiscation of land and settlement activity have also taken economic opportunity away from Palestinians who make their living from agriculture or animal husbandry. As consequence, the unemployment rate has reached 17.2% and this has had an impact on the food-security level of the population (22% of households are food-insecure and an additional 12% are vulnerable to food insecurity[4][4]).

In the Gaza Strip, the Israeli-imposed total closure, tightened in June 2007 as means of “economic warfare” and collective punishment of the civilian population – and thus illegal under the Fourth Geneva Conventions of 1949 – has affected negatively all sectors of the economy

which were already damaged by the Israeli military operations of December 2008-January 2009. This has resulted in a corresponding rise in unemployment (now at 37.4%[5][5] compared to pre-closure figures of 26.4%) and in a sharp increase in poverty (65%[6][6]) and food insecurity (52% of the population is food insecure and an additional 13% is vulnerable to food insecurity[7][7]). Should the illegal closure be kept in force, the plight of unemployed workers will inevitably further deteriorate with evident implications on the workers and their families’ human dignity.

Unavoidably, since working opportunities in the formal economy are limited, thousands of people have found no alternatives but to risk their own lives working in the tunnels along the border with Egypt. According to PCHR documentation, since 2006 165 workers, including 8 children, have been killed in these circumstances. Furthermore, farmers and rubble collectors are affected  by Israeli unilaterally declared “no-go areas” on land located up to 1,500 meters from the fence dividing Israel and the Gaza Strip. Anyone entering or present in these areas – which comprise approximately 17% of Gaza’s territory and 35% of Gaza’s agricultural land[8][8] – is under high risk of being shot by Israeli border patrols. Likewise, Gaza fishermen, today only 3,700 compared to 10,000 in 2000[9][9], are often attacked by Israeli war vessels when fishing 3 nautical miles from the shore, although they are entitled to fish up to 20 nautical miles according to the Oslo Agreements.

In 2010[10][10], at least 15 Palestinian workers, including four children, were killed by Israeli forces while working in the  “no-go areas” on the land and at sea. Another 169 workers, including 45 children, were injured.

PCHR reiterates its condemnation of these crimes which are part of a long-standing pattern of violations perpetrated by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory and denounces the infringement of the inalienable human rights of the Palestinian population.

Public Document

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For more information please call PCHR office in Gaza, Gaza Strip, on +972 8 2824776 – 2825893

PCHR, 29 Omer El Mukhtar St., El Remal, PO Box 1328 Gaza, Gaza Strip. E-mail: pchr@pchrgaza.org, Webpage http://www.pchrgaza.org

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4. http://www.theheadlines.org/11/02-05-11.shtml

compilation of events in the West Bank, Gaza, and at times also elsewhere

======================

5.  Independent.co.uk Tuesday, 3 May 2011

US urged to recognise Palestinian state as Fatah and Hamas end rift

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/us-urged-to-recognise-palestinian-state-as-fatah-and-hamas-end-rift-2278066.html

By Catrina Stewart in Jerusalem

Egypt has urged the United States to recognise a united Palestinian state as warring factions Fatah and Hamas prepare to sign a landmark reconciliation pact in Cairo.

The appeal comes as the Palestinians indicated that they will ask the United Nations in September to recognise an independent state based on 1967 borders, a move condemned by both Israel and the United States.

Nabil al-Arabi, Egypt’s Foreign Minister, told visiting US congressman Steve Chabot that recognising the state “would correspond with previous statements by the American administration supporting peace based on two states”.

The US has so far appeared lukewarm on the preliminary reconciliation deal between Fatah, the party that dominates the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, and Islamist Hamas, which controls Gaza. Along with Israel, the US shuns Hamas as a terrorist group. But

the deal that ends a four-year rift has been greeted with relief by ordinary Palestinians, who see it as essential to achieving a peace deal that brings together the West Bank and Gaza.

Egypt has played a critical role in forging the deal between the two sides, signalling a thaw in Cairo towards Hamas, which received shorter shrift during the Mubarak era for its links with the Muslim Brotherhood, and a less conciliatory stance towards Israel.

In a sign of that, Egypt said last week it would shortly open its Rafah border crossing with Gaza, a move received with alarm in Israel, which has tried to weaken Hamas through a land and naval blockade of Gaza.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian President and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas and the Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, are to attend a ceremony in Cairo tomorrow to mark the signing of the reconciliation pact, which envisages the formation of an interim government.

But even as the deal is signed, key questions remain over whether Fatah and Hamas can reconcile their very deep-rooted differences, not least over who has control of the security forces.

The Palestinian Prime Minister, Salaam Fayyad, was able to offer few assurances on that point yesterday, saying only that the two parties must overcome their differences if they are to achieve a unified Palestinian state.

His own political future will be in doubt when the new transitional government is formed and set the task of preparing for general elections within the year. Hamas said yesterday that the next prime minister should come from Gaza, although not necessarily from the Islamist party.

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6.  Ynet Tuesday, May 03, 2011

Har Homa neighborhood Photo: AP

Netanyahu suspends east J’lem construction plan

PM orders discussion on massive east J’lem construction projects to be taken off planning committee’s agenda – ahead of US trip

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4064026,00.html

Ronen Medzini

The Prime Minister’s Office on Tuesday decided to postpone plans to build housing units in Jewish neighborhoods beyond Jerusalem’s Green Line for the second time in less than a month, Ynet has learned.

Discussion on the two projects for the construction of more than 900 housing units in east Jerusalem was taken off the District Planning and Construction Committee’s agenda for Thursday.

One project is a plan to build 930 homes at the neighborhood of Har Homa, and the other is slated to see the construction of dozens of units in Pisgat Ze’ev.

Thursday’s hearing was meant to address objections that were raised against the projects – one of the final stages before construction permits are issued. The postponement of the hearing delays the projects indefinitely.

The Interior Ministry confirmed that the order to bump the discussion came from the Prime Minister’s Office, which only three weeks ago rejected four major construction plans for the neighborhoods of Gilo, Har Homa, Pisgat Ze’ev and Ramot.

Political measure?

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to visit the United States at the end of the month, prompting the assumption that the latest measure aims to avoid nembarrassment during the visit.

The neighborhood of Har Homa was officially renamed Homat Shmuel in 1997 during Netanyahu’s first term as prime minister, despite US objection. Since the Jewish neighborhood is located beyond the Green Line, every action that aims to expand it provokes an international outcry, as it upsets the status quo in the capital.

“The plan (to build 930 units in Har Homa) gives preference to construction on east Jerusalem territories which have been taken over by Israel in 1967, and which stand at the heart of the political process,” wrote the Ir Amim organization, which promotes Palestinian-Israeli coexistence in Jerusalem. “This kind of preferential treatment can cause severe harm to the political process.”

The organization responded to the dismissal of the issue from Thursday’s agenda, saying that “the consideration of the political sensitivities of construction beyond the Green Line should thwart such plans from the start, instead of playing cat-and-mouse games with the international arena.”

Yair Gabay, a member of the District Planning and Construction Committee, told Ynet that the board did not yet receive the announcement that the hearing was cancelled, but noted that he saw it coming.

“I don’t see all of the systems mobilizing to promote new massive construction in Jerusalem, in order to respond to the plight of so many young couples that want to buy a home at a reasonable price in the city,” he said.

“If the state and municipal elements don’t reconsider the cause, we will lose Jerusalem, and that’s a shame,” he added.

The Prime Minister’s Office did not immediately respond.

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7.   Haaretz Tuesday, May 03, 2011

Netanyahu calls on Abbas to cancel Hamas unity deal

After meeting with Mideast envoy Tony Blair, the prime minister says the Hamas-Fatah unity deal will sabotage peace efforts; Netanyahu points to Hamas’ recent praise of bin Laden as reason for concern.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/netanyahu-calls-on-abbas-to-cancel-hamas-unity-deal-1.359641

By Barak Ravid and Reuters

Tags: Israel news Hamas Mahmoud Abbas

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to step away from a unity deal with the Islamist group Hamas a day before it was due to be signed.

“I call on Abu Mazen (Abbas) to cancel the agreement with Hamas immediately and to choose the way of peace with Israel,” Netanyahu said in a statement after meeting Middle East envoy Tony Blair.

Israel has said the surprise deal announced last week, which is meant to reconcile the rival Palestinian factions, will sabotage peace efforts. Most recently, it has pointed to Hamas’s condemnation of the killing of al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden by U.S. forces as reason for concern.

“The agreement between Abu Mazen and Hamas deals a tough blow to the peace process. How can peace be reached with a government in which half of it calls to destroy Israel and even praises mass-murderer Osama bin Laden,” Netanyahu said.

Palestinian leaders have defended the unity agreement, which will be signed at a ceremony in Cairo on Wednesday, saying reconciliation with Hamas reflects a deep-seated public desire to end internal differences.

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8.  Independent.co.uk  Tuesday, 3 May 2011

Robert Fisk: A close encounter with the man who shook the world

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-a-close-encounter-with-the-man-who-shook-the-world-2278035.html

One hot evening in late June 1996, the telephone on my desk in Beirut rang with one of the more extraordinary messages I was to receive as a foreign correspondent. “Mr Robert, a friend you met in Sudan wants to see you,” said a voice in English but with an Arabic accent. At first I thought he meant another man, whose name I suggested. “No, no, Mr Robert, I mean the man you interviewed. Do you understand?” Yes, I understood. And where could I meet this man? “The place where he is now,” came the reply. I knew that Bin Laden was rumoured to have returned to Afghanistan but there was no confirmation of this. So how do I reach him? I asked. “Go to Jalalabad – you will be contacted.”

A month later. “CLACK-CLACK-CLACK.” It was as if someone was attacking my head with an ice-pick. “CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK.” I sat up. Someone was banging a set of car keys against the window of my room in the Spinghar Hotel. “Misssster Robert,” a voice whispered urgently. “Misssster Robert.” He hissed the word “Mister.” Yes, yes, I’m here. “Please come downstairs, there is someone to see you.” It registered only slowly that the man must have climbed the ancient fire escape to reach the window of my room. I dressed, grabbed a coat – I had a feeling we might travel in the night – and almost forgot my old Nikon. I walked as calmly as I could past the reception desk and out into the early afternoon heat.

The man wore a grubby, grey Afghan robe and a small round cotton hat but he was an Arab and he greeted me formally, holding my right hand in both of his. He smiled. He said his name was Mohamed, he was my guide. “To see the Sheikh?” I asked. He smiled but said nothing.

I followed Mohamed all the way through the dust of Jalalabad’s main street until we arrived next to a group of gunmen in a pick-up truck in the ruins of an old Soviet army base, a place of broken armoured vehicles with a rusting red star on a shattered gateway. There were three men in Afghan hats in the back of the pick-up. One held a Kalashnikov rifle, another clutched a grenade-launcher along with six rockets tied together with Scotch tape. The third nursed a machine gun on his lap, complete with tripod and a belt of ammunition. “Mr Robert, these are our guards,” the driver said quietly, as if it was the most normal thing in the world to set off across the wilds of Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province under a white-hot afternoon sun with three bearded guerrillas. A two-way radio hissed and crackled on the shoulder of the driver’s companion as another truckload of Afghan gunmen drove up behind us.

We were about to set off when Mohamed climbed back down from the pick-up along with the driver, walked to a shaded patch of grass and began to pray. For five minutes, the two men lay half-prostrate, facing the distant Kabul Gorge and, beyond that, a far more distant Mecca. We drove off along a broken highway and then turned on to a dirt track by an irrigation canal, the guns in the back of the truck bouncing on the floor, the guards’ eyes peering from behind their chequered scarves. We travelled like that for hours, past half-demolished mud villages and valleys and towering black rocks, a journey across the face of the moon.

By dusk, we had reached a series of cramped earthen villages, old men burning charcoal fires by the track, the shadow of women cowled in the Afghan burka standing in the alleyways. There were more guerrillas, all bearded, grinning at Mohamed and the driver. It was night before we stopped, in an orchard where wooden sofas had been covered in army blankets piled with belts and webbing and where armed men emerged out of the darkness, some holding rifles, others machine guns. They were the Arab mujahedin, the Arab “Afghans” denounced by the presidents and kings of half the Arab world and by the United States of America. Very soon, the world would know them as al-Qa’ida.

Mohamed beckoned me to follow him and we skirted a small river and jumped across a stream until, in the insect-filled darkness ahead, we could see a sputtering paraffin lamp. Beside it sat a tall, bearded man in Saudi robes. Osama bin Laden stood up, his two teenage sons, Omar and Saad, beside him. “Welcome to Afghanistan,” he said.

He was now 40 but looked much older than at our last meeting in the Sudanese desert late in 1993. Walking towards me, he towered over his companions, tall, slim, with new wrinkles around those narrow eyes. Leaner, his beard longer but slightly flecked with grey, he had a black waistcoat over his white robe and a red-chequered kuffiah on his head, and he seemed tired. When he asked after my health, I told him I had come a long way for this meeting. “So have I,” he muttered. There was also an isolation about him, a detachment I had not noticed before, as if he had been inspecting his anger, examining the nature of his resentment; when he smiled, his gaze would move towards his 16-year-old son Omar – round eyes with dark brows and his own kuffiah – and then off into the hot darkness where his armed men were patrolling the fields.

Just 10 days before, a truck bomb had torn down part of the US Air Force housing complex at al-Khobar in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, and we were speaking in the shadow of the deaths of the 19 US soldiers killed there. And Bin Laden knew what he wanted to say. “Not long ago, I gave advice to the Americans to withdraw their troops from Saudi Arabia. Now let us give some advice to the governments of Britain and France to take their troops out – because what happened in Riyadh and al-Khobar showed that the people who did this have a deep understanding in choosing their targets. They hit their main enemy, which is the Americans. They killed no secondary enemies, nor their brothers in the army or the police in Saudi Arabia… I give this advice to the government of Britain.” He said the Americans must leave Saudi Arabia, must leave the Gulf. The “evils” of the Middle East arose from America’s attempt to take over the region and from its support for Israel. Saudi Arabia had been turned into “an American colony”.

***

Bin Laden was speaking slowly and with precision, an Egyptian taking notes in a large exercise book by the lamplight like a Middle Ages scribe. “This doesn’t mean declaring war against the West and Western people – but against the American regime which is against every American.” I interrupted Bin Laden. Unlike Arab regimes, I said, the people of the United States elected their government. They would say that their government represents them. He disregarded my comment. I hope he did. For in the years to come, his war would embrace the deaths of thousands of American civilians. “The explosion in al-Khobar did not come as a direct reaction to the American occupation,” he said, “but as a result of American behaviour against Muslims, its support of Jews in Palestine and of the massacres of Muslims in Palestine and Lebanon – of Sabra and Chatila and Qana – and of the Sharm el-Sheikh conference.”

But what Bin Laden really wanted to talk about was Saudi Arabia. Since our last meeting in Sudan, he said, the situation in the kingdom had grown worse. The ulema, the religious leaders, had declared in the mosques that the presence of American troops was not acceptable and the government took action against these ulema “on the advice of the Americans”. For Bin Laden, the betrayal of the Saudi people began 24 years before his birth, when Abdul Aziz al-Saud proclaimed his kingdom in 1932. “The regime started under the flag of applying Islamic law and under this banner all the people of Saudi Arabia came to help the Saud family take power. But Abdul Aziz did not apply Islamic law; the country was set up for his family. Then after the discovery of petroleum, the Saudi regime found another support – the money to make people rich and to give them the services and life they wanted and to make them satisfied.” Bin Laden was picking away at his teeth with that familiar twig of mishwak wood, but history – or his version of it – was the basis of almost all his remarks. The Saudi royal family had promised sharia laws while at the same time allowing the United States “to Westernise Saudi Arabia and drain the economy”. He blamed the Saudi regime for spending $25bn in support of Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war and a further $60bn in support of the Western armies in the 1991 war against Iraq, “buying military equipment which is not needed or useful for the country, buying aircraft by credit” while at the same time creating unemployment, high taxes and a bankrupt economy. But for Bin Laden, the pivotal date was 1990, the year Saddam invaded Kuwait. “When the American troops entered Saudi Arabia, the land of the two Holy places, there was a strong protest from the ulema and from students of sharia law all over the country against the interference of American troops. This big mistake by the Saudi regime of inviting the American troops revealed their deception. They were giving their support to nations which were fighting against Muslims.”

Bin Laden paused to see if I had listened to his careful, if frighteningly exclusive history lesson. “The Saudi people have remembered now what the ulema told them and they realise America is the main reason for their problems… the ordinary man knows that his country is the largest oil producer in the world yet at the same time he is suffering from taxes and bad services. Now the people understand the speeches of the ulemas in the mosques – that our country has become an American colony. What happened in Riyadh and al-Khobar is clear evidence of the huge anger of Saudi people against America. The Saudis now know their real enemy is America.” The overthrow of the Saudi regime and the eviction of US forces from the kingdom were one and the same for Bin Laden. He was claiming that the real religious leadership of Saudi Arabia – among whom he clearly saw himself – was an inspiration to Saudis, that Saudis themselves would drive out the Americans, that Saudis – hitherto regarded as a rich and complacent people – might strike at the United States. Could this be true?

Bin Laden sometimes stopped speaking for all of 60 seconds in order to reflect on his words. Most Arabs, faced with a reporter’s question, would say the first thing that came into their heads for fear that they would appear ignorant if they did not. Bin Laden was different. He was alarming because he was possessed of that quality which leads men to war: total self-conviction.

Bin Laden had asked me – a routine of every Palestinian under occupation – if Europeans did not resist occupation during the Second World War. I told him no Europeans would accept this argument over Saudi Arabia – because the Nazis killed millions of Europeans yet the Americans had never murdered a single Saudi. Such a parallel was historically and morally wrong. Bin Laden did not agree. “We as Muslims have a strong feeling that binds us together… We feel for our brothers in Palestine and Lebanon… When 60 Jews are killed inside Palestine” – he was talking about Palestinian suicide bombings in Israel – “all the world gathers within seven days to criticise this action, while the deaths of 600,000 Iraqi children did not receive the same reaction.” It was Bin Laden’s first reference to Iraq and to the United Nations sanctions that were to result, according to UN officials themselves, in the death of more than half a million children. “Killing those Iraqi children is a crusade against Islam,” Bin Laden said. “We, as Muslims, do not like the Iraqi regime but we think that the Iraqi people and their children are our brothers and we care about their future.” It was the first time I heard him use the word “crusade”.

***

For some time, there had been a steadily growing thunderstorm to the east of Bin Laden’s camp and we could see the bright orange flash of lightning over the mountains on the Pakistan border. But Bin Laden thought this might be artillery fire, the continuation of the inter-mujahedin battles that had damaged his spirit after the anti-Soviet war. He was growing uneasy. He broke off his conversation to pray. Then, on the straw mat, several young and armed men served dinner – plates of yoghurt and cheese and Afghan naan bread and more tea. Bin Laden sat between his sons, silent, eyes on his food.

I said to Bin Laden that Afghanistan was the only country left to him after his exile in Sudan. He agreed. “The safest place in the world for me is Afghanistan.” It was the only place, I repeated, in which he could campaign against the Saudi government. Bin Laden and several of his Arab fighters burst into laughter. “There are other places,” he replied. Did he mean Tajikistan? I asked. Or Uzbekistan? Kazakhstan? “There are several places where we have friends and close brothers – we can find refuge and safety in them.” I told Bin Laden he was already a hunted man. “Danger is a part of our life,” he snapped back.

He began talking to his men about amniya, security, and repeatedly looked towards those flashes in the sky. Now the thunder did sound like gunfire. I tried to ask one more question. What kind of Islamic state would Bin Laden wish to see? Would thieves and murderers still have their hands or heads cut off in his Islamic sharia state, just as they do in Saudi Arabia today? There came an unsatisfactory reply. “Islam is a complete religion for every detail of life. If a man is a real Muslim and commits a crime, he can only be happy if he is justly punished. This is not cruelty. The origin of these punishments comes from God through the Prophet Mohamed, peace be upon him.” Dissident Osama bin Laden may be, but moderate never. I asked permission to take his photograph, and while he debated this with his companions I scribbled into my notebook the words I would use in the last paragraph of my report on our meeting: “Osama bin Laden believes he now represents the most formidable enemy of the Saudi regime and of the American presence in the Gulf. Both are probably right to regard him as such.” I was underestimating the man.

Yes, he said, I could take his picture. I opened my camera and allowed his armed guards to watch me as I threaded a film into the spool. Without warning, Bin Laden moved his head back and the faintest smile moved over his face, along with that self-conviction and that ghost of vanity which I found so disturbing. He called his sons Omar and Saad and they sat beside him as I took more pictures and Bin Laden turned into the proud father, the family man, the Arab at home.

Then his anxiety returned. The thunder was continuous now and it was mixed with the patter of rifle fire. I should go, he urged, and I realised that what he meant was that he must go, that it was time for him to return to the fastness of Afghanistan. When we shook hands, he was already looking for the guards who would take him away.

This is an edited extract from ‘The Great War For Civilisation’, by Robert Fisk, published by Harper Perennial (£13.99)

Like Robert Fisk on Facebook for updates

[You might also wish to see Rupert Cromwell ‘America must end its 9-11 mindset’

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/rupert-cornwell/rupert-cornwell-america-must-end-its-911-mindset-2278096.html ]

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9.  [forwarded by Elana W]

The Statement House Arabs and House Muslims Never Released about OBL

http://ikhras.com/2011/05/the-statement-house-arabs-and-house-muslims-never-released-about-obl/

May 2, 2011

We are US-based Arab and Muslim organizations. We feel a compelling obligation to explain to our fellow Americans the meaning of the US killing of Osama bin Laden.

We take this opportunity to revisit the inconvenient fact that Osama Bin Laden and the Mujahideen were funded and supported by the US to fight the USSR in Afghanistan in the eighties. We recall that Ronald Reagan had called the Mujahideen “freedom fighters” when their interests coincided with the US’s. We remind ourselves that “Between 1978 and 1992, the US government poured at least US$6 billion (some estimates range as high as $20 billion) worth of arms, training and funds to prop up the mujaheddin factions.”

We note that the Mujahideen aligned themselves with the US, convincing themselves of the “lesser of two evils” argument. We recall that Zbigniew Brzezinski said:

The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.

We learn an important lesson from this history and note that collaboration with the US is an immoral and counterproductive effort. Collaboration does not shield one from US persecution, neither is it a smart “strategy.” Aligning with powerful empires is foolish and self-defeating. The logic of House Muslims (or “House Negroes” as Malcolm X called the collaborators of his era) is short-sighted and idiotic.

We abhor the subtext of President Obamaand Secretary Clinton‘s remarks, implying that the lives of millions of Afghanis, Iraqis and Pakistanis were worth somehow sacrificing in order to locate one ex-”freedom fighter” (as per Reagan’s words). Indeed, the President and Secretary of State did not even pay lip service to the countless lives devastated, weddings bombarded, children orphaned, spouses widowed, natural resources stolen. We condemn the hypocrisy of Secretary Clinton, who feigned concern for “innocent people” who were killed by OBL but not the innocent people in Afghanistan and Iraq for whose death she caused as Senator then as Secretary of State, or the innocent people in Palestine and Lebanon whose death by Israeli warplanes she supported. We cannot expect Obama and Clinton to apologize for the war crimes the US committed in pursuit of OBL, as it is not in empires’ nature to condemn themselves.

We are still haunted by the images of our sisters and brothers tortured in Abu Ghraib. The stench of scores of corpses from years of war, occupations and sanctions still fills the air. The emotional trauma of drones still terrorizes children. The dreary, bleak future facing millions of displaced Afghani and Iraqi refugees still shakes our conscience. White phosphorus and depleted uranium’s effects on public health and the environment will last for generations to come. That the US eliminated one of its ex-agents and claimed it was not waging war on Islam while war criminals continue to hold power in Washington and Tel Aviv offers us no relief.

We regret having spent the last decade begging for approval from the US mainstream, inviting US politicians to our conventions, having Ramadan iftars in the White House and embarrassing ourselves in a myriad of other ways. Now that OBL is finally dead, we look forward to freeing up the time we’d spent assuring everyone of our patriotism and swearing on the Qur’an that OBL did not represent us. We will no longer construct our discourse to sooth islamophobes’ racist anxieties. We will spend no more time emphasizing that OBL didn’t represent us than Christians assert that Obama, Clinton, Bush and Blair do not represent Christianity.

Instead, we will work on more urgent matters than pursuing the material comforts of the American dream, such as ending the occupation of Afghanistan, ending the occupation of Iraq, boycotting and dismantling “Israel,” closing Guantanamo, restoring civil liberties, ending US hegemony and racism.

Signed,

American Arab Anti Discrimination Committee, Arab American Institute, American Task Force for Palestine, Council on American-Islamic Relations, Islamic Society of North America, Park51

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[1][1] Art. 6, UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR)

[2][2] Art. 7, Ibid.

[3][3] PCHR, Weekly Report On Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, 21 – 27 April 2011.

[4][4] FAO-WFP-oPt, 2010 Socio-Economic and Food Security Survey, West Bank and the Gaza Strip, oPt.

[5][5] UN OCHA-oPt, Easing the Blockade, Assessing the Humanitarian Impact on the Population of the Gaza Strip, Special Focus, March 2011.

[6][6] PCHR, State of the Border Crossings, 16-30 September 2010.

[7][7] UN OCHA-oPt, Easing the Blockade, Assessing the Humanitarian Impact on the Population of the Gaza Strip, Special Focus, March 2011.

[8][8] PCHR, The Buffer-zone in the Gaza Strip, August 2010, Facts Sheet section.

[9][9] PCHR, Israeli Attacks on Palestinian Fishermen at Gaza Sea, February 2011, Facts Sheet section.

[10][10] UN OCHA-oPt, Easing the Blockade, Assessing the Humanitarian Impact on the Population of the Gaza Strip, Special Focus, March 2011.