Dorothy Online Newsletter

Dear Friends,

Rather a lot tonight, but, then, there is also all that I did not include!  Please do your best, read what you have time and patience for, and most important, do not neglect at least to glance through Today in Palestine—absolutely necessary if you wish to keep informed.

 

Item 1 reports a now usual kind of thing (unfortunately)—the desecration of Christian and Muslim graves in Jaffa.  In addition to tombs being destroyed, graffiti stating ‘death to the Arabs’ was painted on graves.  Remind you of the behavior of  others—the Nazis, for instance?  So it is in a tribal society.   The ‘other’ must be eliminated.  Only members of the tribe are acceptable.

 

Item 2 reports that the IOF protects settlers who engage in violence.  Of course the IOF denies this.  However, it is worth noting that this year 5 Mosques have been attacked, 4 of them in the West Bank, 1 in Israel, yet not a single assailant had been found till now.  Had these been synagogues instead of mosques, you bet that there would be someone in jail—perhaps even a number of someones!

 

Items 3 and 4 are from OCHA—3 informing us of Bedouin relocation (a nice word for expulsion), 4 the Protection of Civilians report for the week.

 

Item 5, Looking back at “September”: Reclaiming the Palestinian Story, is about the UN initiative from one Palestinian’s standpoint.  Worth reading. if for no other reason than to see the event from a Palestinian’s eyes—not all Palestinians, only this particular one’s.  But that, too, is something.

 

Item 6, A State is Born in Palestine reveals data hitherto unknown.  Had it been known prior to 1947, perhaps Israel would not have come into being.  But it has, and that is something that we now have to deal with.

 

Item 7 is a very brief letter published in the Guardian requesting the Uefa to not hold its under-20 competitions in Israel in 2013.

 

Item 8 is Today in Palestine.

 

Item 9 considers the upsurge in drones in the world and the possible effects.  The article does mention Israel, but does not condemn its use of this miserable weapon.  Ask any child from Gaza what a drone is, and the child might even be able to relate some unfortunate personal experience with the weapon.

 

Finally, item 10 is a video—about 10 to 15 minutes—about the infamous Wall.  Worth watching and distributing. Thanks to Anwar for forwarding.

 

That’s it for today—except to add that in today’s Haaretz Amir Oren in an opinion piece argues that Israel must not strike Iran without US permission.  Friends, let’s tell Oren that ISRAEL MUST NOT STRIKE IRAN, period!

No More war, as Sadat put it.  Please.

 

All the best,

Dorothy

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1.  Guardian

 9 October 2011

 

Israel Muslim and Christian graves desecrated in Israeli city of Jaffa

Militant Jewish settlers smash tombs and spray stones with graffiti on Yom Kippur and fire bomb is thrown at synagogue

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/09/graves-desecrated-jaffa-yom-kippur

 

Reuters

 

Jaffa, south of central Tel Aviv, where graves were desecrated on Yom Kippur. Photograph: Gil Cohen Magen / Reuters/Reuters

Dozens of gravestones have been desecrated at Muslim and Christian cemeteries and a fire-bomb thrown at a synagogue in Jaffa, Israel, on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement.

 

At least five tombs were smashed and around 20 others sprayed with Hebrew graffiti, including ‘Death to Arabs’ and ‘Price Tag’ – a slogan used by militant Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank and their supporters.

 

The “price-taggers” have vowed to avenge any move by Israel to uproot West Bank settlement outposts built without Israeli government permission, and have set fire to mosques and vandalised both Israeli and Palestinian property.

 

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said a fire-bomb thrown onto the roof of a synagogue in the Jaffa area caused no damage or casualties. He said an investigation had been launched and that patrols had been stepped up.

 

A few dozen Israelis and Palestinians turned out in a show of protest against the attacks and a local councillor blamed settlers. Jaffa is the ancient part of Tel Aviv, with a mixed Jewish and Arab population, including Christians and Muslims.

 

“All these extreme settlers are doing different activities and they are not paying a price for anything,” said Sami Abu-Shehadi, a member of the Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipality council. “Settlers have been saying that they want to bring the conflict inside [Israel] and this is exactly what they are doing now,” he said.

 

Rosenfeld said there was no initial indication the suspects were settlers or settler supporters, and that there was also a possibility that they might be football hooligans.

 

Israeli president Shimon Peres condemned the vandalism. “The desecration of graves is a forbidden and criminal act that defames our honour and is contrary to the moral values of Israeli society,” he said.

 

On Monday, a mosque in a Bedouin village in northern Israel was set on fire and graffiti sprayed on its walls in an attack authorities have blamed on hardline Jewish settlers. The attacks have drawn broad condemnation from top Israeli leaders and Peres, and the country’s chief rabbis visited the scene in a bid to calm tensions.

 

In 2005 a Jewish couple was charged for throwing a pig’s head into a Tel Aviv mosque in an attempt to derail Israel’s pullout from Gaza, which went ahead in August of that year.

 

In 2008 riots erupted in the coastal city of Acre in northern Israel when Jews accosted an Arab man who drove his car into a predominantly Jewish neighbourhood during Yom Kippur when all traffic halts and the country shuts down for 24 hours.

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2.  Jerusalem Post

October 7, 2011

  

 Photo by: Reuters/Nayef Hashlamoun

 

 PA official: IDF protects settlers who attack Palestinians 

 

http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=240897

 

By KHALED ABU TOAMEH

07/10/2011  

Palestinian Authority officials claims that settler violence planned in coordination with IDF; Charges are “ridiculous,” says military source.  

  

The IDF dismissed accusations by the Palestinian Authority that it was protecting settlers who attack Palestinians and/or their property in the West Bank as ridiculous on Thursday.

 

“It is both baseless and ridiculous to say the IDF is supporting such activity,” an army source said.

 

“The IDF together with other law enforcement bodies constantly work to prevent and investigate unlawful activities in the West Bank, whether they are perpetuated by Palestinians or Israelis,” the sources said.

 

But the PA minister for fence and settlements, Maher Ghnaim, told reporters in Ramallah that a recent upsurge in anti-Palestinian settler violence in the West Bank “coincided with increased assaults by the occupation against our people.”

 

He said this indicated the attacks were being “coordinated and programed” between the settlers and the IDF.

 

Ghnaim claimed IDF soldiers were not only protecting the violent settler groups, but were also providing escape routes for them after attacks on Palestinians.

 

Instead of dealing with the assailants, the soldiers often target defenseless Palestinians, as was the case in the village of Kusra last month, where one Palestinian was killed during a confrontation, he added.

 

The PA minister said that in the last month alone, settlers attacked more than 20 Palestinian communities in the West Bank while the Israeli government was busy “Judaizing” Jerusalem and while “aggressions” were continuing against the Aksa Mosque.

 

He also pointed out that four mosques had been torched or vandalized in the West Bank in recent weeks.

 

According to the minister, more than 4,000 olive trees were set on fire or uprooted during the month of September in the West Bank. He expected settler violence to increase during the olive harvest season, which is scheduled to begin in the coming days.

 

Earlier this week, the PA decided to send policemen and civil servants to participate in picking olives in a bid to keep settlers away.

 

Ghnaim also claimed settler drivers have deliberately hit 33 Palestinians since the beginning of the year. In the last few days, he noted, three Palestinians were injured after being hit by cars driven by settlers.

 

The IDF was not able to provide The Jerusalem Post with statistics regarding violent incidents in the West Bank.

 

But an army source said there had been a rise in West Bank violence between Israelis and Palestinians since the demolition of three homes at the Migron outpost early last month.

 

“It is a concern for us, because it can potentially create a deterioration in the security situation,” said the source.

 

 

The PA claimed, meanwhile, thousands of prisoners have been on hunger strike in Israeli prisons since September 27.

 

The prisoners are protesting against the policy of solitary confinement of some inmates and other punitive measures taken by the Prisons Service.

 

The PA called on Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to hold rallies in solidarity with the striking prisoners in the next few days.

 

The PA minister for prisoners affairs, Issa Qaraqi, claimed that the lives of many prisoners was at stake because of the 10- day-old hunger strike. He accused the Israeli government of endorsing a policy of “repression” against the prisoners and warned this would lead to a mutiny in the prisons.

 

Tovah Lazaroff contributed to this report. 

 

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3. OCHA   Published:2011-10-04     Bedouin Relocation: Threat of Displacement in the Jerusalem Periphery Fact Sheet | October 2011 Around 2,300 Bedouin residing in 20 communities in the hills to the east of Jerusalem are at risk of forced displacement. These communities, over 80% of which are refugees, have been informed by the Israeli authorities that they have no option but to leave the area, as part of a larger plan to relocate Bedouin communities living in Area C, where Israel retains control over security as well as planning and zoning.

United Nations Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Mac House
P.O.Box 38712
Jerusalem
Tel:++ 972-2-5829962/5853
Fax:++972-2-5825841
email:ochaopt@un.org
www.ochaopt.org

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4., 

Published: 2011-10-07     Protection of Civilians Weekly Report | 28 September – 4 October 2011 This week, Israeli forces injured 22 Palestinians throughout the oPt. Settlers injured another three Palestinians and vandalized around 250 trees. Israeli authorities demolished 26 Palestinian-owned structures, mainly including residential tents and water cisterns. In Gaza, a Palestinian worker killed in a tunnel. Update on movement through Rafah Crossing.

5. For your interest, a very clarifying perspective on the question of Palestine, and the submission of a request for a Palestinian State at the UN… from a friend of mine who lives with his wife and family in Bethlehem, West Bank. 

Katharine von Schubert

——————————————————————————–

 

From: Toine van Teeffelen

Sent: 06 October 2011 15:27

 

Subject: Palestine and the UN

 

Sorry for any cross-posting

 

Looking back at “September”: Reclaiming the Palestinian Story

 

 September was marked by a momentary sense of joy and celebration and also a sense of relief in the West Bank. Would Mahmoud Abbas keep his promise to submit the UN bid for a Palestinian state, or would he withdraw at the last moment under pressure of the Western powers? In Bethlehem we saw flags on the street and listened to the honking of cars, as normally occurs during wedding celebrations or when a political party wins the university elections. There was a sense of anticipation, of possibility. That sense was not felt since long.

 

But the honking and celebrations didn’t last long either. Nobody really thought that now or in the foreseeable future a Palestinian state would emerge or that the occupation would withdraw. In fact, if a change on the ground would happen, people felt, it would likely be to the worse. The cutting of economic aid by US congress, now implemented, and the “punishments” the Israeli government and parliament threatened to meet out, could plunge Palestinians in the occupied territories into deeper uncertainty. It could also lead to – as Abbas hinted in his UN speech – the collapse of the Palestinian Authority because of lack of funding and other resources.

 

But this sense of uncertainty and concern was not dominating. It was overcome by a sense of newly found freedom and dignity. To be sure: no freedom from occupation, but from a set of rules that have kept the Palestinians into captivity like chains. The talk about punishment came exactly because the UN bid showed the present Palestinian leadership willing and able to refuse to play the ground rules of the game. They dared to challenge them.

 

We know what the old, malicious game has been all about: “managing” the conflict. It has been about preventing an Intifada against the occupation to happen – the “explosion” of which so many political commentators have been afraid. It is about providing funds to the Authority in exchange for it being receptive to Western incentives and deterrents. The context is equally malicious: an American dominated peace process that has led to nowhere and in practice functioned as a cover for the continuing and deepening colonization of the West Bank and the strangulation of Gaza.

 

The PNA could not afford to be eternally imprisoned by this well-known paradigm of pursuing a peace-process-for-its-own-sake. It took the decision to bring the Palestine question onto the world stage and in front of global civil society. The geo-political factors that encouraged Mahmoud Abbas and the PNA leadership to make a leap into a new political paradigm are clear. They include the Arab Spring, which created a new regional sense of possibility. Turkey has become willing to defy Israel’s policies. Mubarak used to have a strong grip on Fatah and Palestinian factional politics, but is now gone. There is the emerging Turkish-Egyptian axis in the Eastern Mediterranean. Last but not least. the US shows itself unable, at least for the moment, to mold the new power configuration to its interests.

 

Besides these various amenable circumstances, the peace process has exhausted itself. It is publicly exposed as a lie by the hypocrisy of Netayahu and his government in speaking peace in public and destroying peace on the ground. Among common Palestinians there is a sense that the whole “process” has continued for much too long and has primarily been aimed at eating up Palestinian lands and rights, slowly but surely. Since long Mahmoud Abbas has not been identified with a people’s story of liberation. The PNA could not have continued for long to openly play a game without being able to explain its national meaning.

 

The sense of change contains an element of liberation, psychologically and educationally. In the West Bank, people for a long time have been tired and humiliated by the constant pressures of the occupation. At the same time, the inner human determination was eroded by the interfactional politics of Fatah and Hamas, and the continuous vulnerability of the PNA leadership to external pressures. Some people under occupation signed up to an economic peace for individual profit’s sake. The majority felt that neither endless negotiations nor a counterproductive armed struggle with its own repetitive scripts would lead to liberation. However, they could not see a clear alternative. While there is still no feeling that a new page is turned, there is a restored sense of dignity and confidence, and an openness to new possibilities.

 

If indeed a new paradigm is entering Palestinian politics, what are its contours? Engaging with the global civil society is not walking a repetitive script imposed by others but rather once again putting the Palestinian story center stage. It is about reclaiming and re-enacting the many Palestinian individual and community stories which together constitute the larger national story. Local protests against the occupation as well as the Arab Spring forced the Authority to incorporate people’s stories into its own politics. The drama of the UN and the Security Council vote add a much-publicized new national story to the earlier human stories on the ground.

 

These stories on the ground of organized popular and peaceful resistance receive less or more publicity but they are there all the time. The weekly demonstrations in Palestinian villages against the Wall, like in Bil’in, often designed with narrative imagination and drama, show international and local solidarity in the face of soldiers armed to the teeth. The initiatives to sail to Gaza and bring emergency relief is the basic human story of risking the military and facing the waters, just for the simple human goal of supporting a people under siege. In spring this year there were the courageous walks by Palestinian refugees from Syria and Lebanon enacting their right of return, trying to cross the border and facing the powerful Israeli army unarmed. There are the human stories of the boycott of Israeli products and events that sustain the occupation. The South African anti-Apartheid story of liberation still inspires. There are the countless stories of women showing their sumud or steadfastness in not loosing their human spirit; stories which also find their way to the world by the use of new media and genres of communication.

 

What brings back the national story instead of the imposed script is this element of human defiance and liberation which also characterized Abbas’ UN speech this time, as if he was saying: “Whatever you tell me to do, I have my rights and will fight for them.” It is a willingness to be pro-active in the face of deep uncertainty and many obstacles on the road to liberation.

 

To face the obstacles, conditions need to be fulfilled to increase the potential of a national story which incorporates community and individual stories. These conditions include a deepening connection to the Arab spring or “awakening” – both metaphors pointing to potentialities – which means a strong connection to the Arab peoples, also for moral and material support. They include a national unity which is not a slogan and which strives for unity among all sections of the people and not only Fatah and Hamas. It is about a restructuring and democratic reform of the PLO; free elections among the Palestinians, and a Palestinian leadership that is genuinely sharing and not only symbolically interested in people’s courageous stories of sumud on the ground. It requires pressures on Arab regimes, both in the neighboring and Gulf states, for a firm stand confronting the double standards of the US, whose only politics towards the Palestinians seems to be the threatening of cutting aid wherever the notion of Palestinian independence comes up (as in UNESCO). And of course it requires moral and material support from across civil society. The Palestinian nonviolent struggle of liberation is connected in myriad ways to the local, regional and global environment.

 

From among Palestinians themselves it requires a willingness to sacrifice once more. Engaging a people’s story implies the facing of deep uncertainty and risks, a dramatic struggle to attain a horizon of human values, and a challenge of inhuman obstacles to be taken.

 

In the wake of the September UN bid the economic situation on the ground may deteriorate, but at the same time the Palestinian story of liberation has returned to come on the foreground. Will it stay there? We don’t know. But a renewed sense of facing an open future, a sense of sumud or hope, rather than imprisonment by the past has come back, not just because of the UN bid, but because it is interwoven with the many human and community stories in the pursuit of dignity and freedom, both on the ground and in various local and international contexts.

 

Toine van Teeffelen is development director of the Arab Educational Institute in Bethlehem and anthropologist.

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6.  Forwarded by Sam Bahour. 

 

A State is Born in Palestine

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/magazine/a-state-is-born-in-palestine.html?_r=1&ref=global-home&pagewanted=all

 

By RONEN BERGMAN

 

 

Sixty-four years ago, in August 1947, the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine presented to the General Assembly a startling and unexpected report, calling for an end to the British Mandate of Palestine and division of most of the territory into two independent states, with the Jewish state occupying the majority of the land. What came next, of course, is well known — a vote in the General Assembly on Nov. 29, 1947, in favor of partition, and the war that immediately followed. The decision is viewed in the Arab world as “the great crime,” and Palestinian leaders, including the current president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, regard it as the original sin that led to the catastrophe, the nakba, that befell their nation — a disaster they now want the General Assembly to remedy. What is not widely known is how a possibly pro-Arab committee, or at least one that was supposed to be neutral, came to issue a report that led directly to the establishment of the state of Israel. What happened on that committee’s trip to Palestine, and how were the minds of its members changed in a way that so radically altered history?

 

For decades, Unscop’s classified documents were scattered in archives all over the world, and only recently have they been made available. Many were discovered by the historian Elad Ben-Dror, whose book on the Unscop role in the Arab-Israeli conflict will soon be published. The committee consisted of 11 members who arrived in Palestine on June 15, 1947. Because the U.S. and Britain wished to maintain the appearance of neutrality, no international powers were represented in the delegation. The Palestinians believed a deal to establish a Jewish state had already been made behind closed doors and so ordered a complete boycott of committee proceedings. Palestinians were warned against making any contact whatsoever with Unscop, and Arab journalists were forbidden to cover their visit. Out of fear of appearing to support one side over the other, the British, too, avoided contact with the committee. In the vacuum created by the Arabs and the British, Zionist diplomats and spies were able to work unencumbered on the Unscop members. The Jewish Agency (the representative body of the Jewish community in the British Mandate) appointed a former British intelligence officer, Aubrey (Abba) Eban, to serve as a liaison with Unscop. Eban focused his energies on two Latin American members, from Guatemala and Uruguay, who became increasingly pro-Zionist as the committee’s investigation proceeded, providing Eban with inside information on specific members and their deliberations.

 

Alongside Eban, the entire intelligence service of the Jewish underground organization Haganah was put to work monitoring Unscop members. Microphones were placed in hotel and conference rooms. All phone conversations were tapped. The cleaning staff in the building in Jerusalem where the committee held daily hearings was replaced by female agents who reported back each day on its activities. The tactic did not go unnoticed. A member of the Swedish delegation complained that the women on the cleaning staff were “too pretty and educated. They are the eyes and ears of the Zionist leaders, who come to hearings with replies prepared in advance.” The committee’s chairman, Emil Sandstrom, also suspected the Guatemalan member of leaking information to Eban. “I don’t know that he took their money,” Sandstrom commented, “but he certainly took their girls.” At the end of each day, intelligence was collated and circulated to the heads of the Jewish community under the code name Delphi Report, which bore the inscription “Read and destroy!”

 

The Haganah also gathered personal information on each member, in an effort to discover his particular areas of interest and vulnerabilities. On many of the field trips that committee members took, efforts were made to ensure that they serendipitously encountered someone who spoke their language or shared a common interest. N. S. Blom, a former Dutch official in Indonesia, arrived in Palestine with a pro-Arab agenda, but during his stay he found himself in frequent impromptu meetings with immigrants from the Netherlands, who pressed a different perspective upon him. On one occasion, while traveling in his official vehicle, he came across two farmers herding dairy cows across the road. When Blom got out of the car he discovered that, amazingly, the two farmers were immigrants from the Netherlands. Even more important, their cows were also of Dutch stock! In his otherwise dry reports to the Dutch Foreign Ministry, a welling up of national pride over the contribution of Dutch dairy farming to agriculture in the Holy Land stands out.

 

Wherever they went in Arab centers of population, committee members encountered empty streets and Palestinian Arabs fleeing restaurants in fear for their lives. Their experience in Jewish areas was quite different. In Tel Aviv, the day Unscop visited was declared a public holiday. The streets were decorated with flags, and friendly crowds surrounded the members wherever they went. The mayor of Tel Aviv welcomed them warmly, and at the end of a meeting at City Hall, the members were invited to step out on the balcony, at which point the crowd below broke into the Jewish anthem, “Hatikvah.”

 

Even the Iranian delegate, Nasrollah Entezam, initially viewed by the Jewish Agency as a die-hard opponent of Zionism, turned into a supporter of sorts. During a visit to an agricultural settlement in the Negev, Entezam’s Jewish liaison officer (who was a Persian-speaking Haganah agent) overheard him telling a colleague: “What asses the Arabs are! The country is so beautiful, and it can be developed. If they gave it all to the Jews, they would transform it into Europe!”

 

By contrast, committee members were dismayed by what they saw of British rule in Palestine. The U.N. secretary general’s main representative on the committee, the American Ralph Bunche, wrote of “daily bombings, shootings, kidnappings, sirens, security checks.” Some members traveled to the port city Haifa, where they witnessed 4,500 Holocaust refugees being taken off the famous ship Exodus and transferred to another vessel that would take them back to Europe. The Swede Sandstrom was particularly affected by the experience. “Without this evidence, our investigation would not have been complete,” he wrote in one of the classified documents located by Ben-Dror.

 

There were also meetings, some held secretly, with Jewish representatives and leaders of underground organizations. The Jewish leadership impressed the committee with its moderation. David Ben-Gurion’s willingness to accept a watered-down partition plan, for example, went well beyond the Jewish political consensus of the day. The underground leaders painted a rosy (and false) picture of the Jewish community’s ability to defend itself in case of war. By contrast, the sole Arab official willing to speak to the delegation, the secretary of the Arab Higher Committee, informed the visitors that the Arabs would not under any circumstances give up on the establishment of an Arab state extending over the entire territory of Palestine.

 

Nearly three months later, Unscop duly presented its report. The General Assembly voted in favor of partition, and the next day the Arabs went to war with the express goal of annihilating the Jewish community in Palestine.

 

The day before the vote in the General Assembly, the C.I.A. sent President Truman a classified report, “The Consequences of the Partition of Palestine,” arguing that the Jewish community in Palestine would collapse under Arab attack and warning that partition and war in the Middle East would do serious harm to American interests in the region. The State Department took the same position. Last-minute U.S. diplomatic efforts to create an international trusteeship for Palestine failed, as did pressure on the Jewish leadership to delay the declaration of a Jewish state. President Truman acknowledged the inevitable, and the representative of the Zionist movement in Washington was invited to formally request recognition. The new Jewish state did not yet have a name. In his haste to submit the request, the representative left the name of the country blank — to be filled in later.

 

Ronen Bergman is a senior political and military analyst for the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. He is at work on a book about the history of the Mossad.

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

7. This letter was printed in the UK’s Guardian newspaper on 5 October 2011,

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/05/israel-palestinians

Letters

Israel’s stance in the community of nations

·

Those who lead European football must respond to an appeal from Palestinians dismayed at the prospect of Israel hosting Uefa’s under-21 tournament in 2013. A state that uses military might to hold sway over land it illegally occupies and exploits, flouts international law and ignores UN resolutions surely forfeits the right to be treated as a member of the community of nations. But western powers continue to embrace Israel as an ally.  

 

During the 2011 under-21 tournament in Denmark in June, 42 Gazan football clubs, backed by many sporting bodies, wrote to Uefa president Michel Platini calling on his organisation not “to reward Israel for its violent repression of Palestinian rights”. We ask Uefa to respond positively to this plea.

Stephane Hessel diplomat

Ken Loach filmmaker

Michael Mansfield barrister

Miriam Margolyes actor

Nurit Peled Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought joint winner 2001

John Pilger journalist and filmmaker,

Ahdaf Soueif novelist and political and cultural commentator

Jean Ziegler vice-president, advisory committee of the UN human rights council

© 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited o

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8.  Today in Palestine—an invaluable  compilation of daily events in Palestine for those who want to know.

http://www.theheadlines.org/11/09-10-11.shtml

 

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9.  NY Times

October 8, 2011

 

Coming Soon: The Drone Arms Race

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/sunday-review/coming-soon-the-drone-arms-race.html?ref=middleeast

 

By SCOTT SHANE

Scott Shane is a national security correspondent for The New York Times.

 

WASHINGTON

 

AT the Zhuhai air show in southeastern China last November, Chinese companies startled some Americans by unveiling 25 different models of remotely controlled aircraft and showing video animation of a missile-armed drone taking out an armored vehicle and attacking a United States aircraft carrier.

 

The presentation appeared to be more marketing hype than military threat; the event is China’s biggest aviation market, drawing both Chinese and foreign military buyers. But it was stark evidence that the United States’ near monopoly on armed drones was coming to an end, with far-reaching consequences for American security, international law and the future of warfare.

 

Eventually, the United States will face a military adversary or terrorist group armed with drones, military analysts say. But what the short-run hazard experts foresee is not an attack on the United States, which faces no enemies with significant combat drone capabilities, but the political and legal challenges posed when another country follows the American example. The Bush administration, and even more aggressively the Obama administration, embraced an extraordinary principle: that the United States can send this robotic weapon over borders to kill perceived enemies, even American citizens, who are viewed as a threat.

 

“Is this the world we want to live in?” asks Micah Zenko, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Because we’re creating it.”

 

What was a science-fiction scenario not much more than a decade ago has become today’s news. In Iraq and Afghanistan, military drones have become a routine part of the arsenal. In Pakistan, according to American officials, strikes from Predators and Reapers operated by the C.I.A. have killed more than 2,000 militants; the number of civilian casualties is hotly debated. In Yemen last month, an American citizen was, for the first time, the intended target of a drone strike, as Anwar al-Awlaki, the Qaeda propagandist and plotter, was killed along with a second American, Samir Khan.

 

If China, for instance, sends killer drones into Kazakhstan to hunt minority Uighur Muslims it accuses of plotting terrorism, what will the United States say? What if India uses remotely controlled craft to hit terrorism suspects in Kashmir, or Russia sends drones after militants in the Caucasus? American officials who protest will likely find their own example thrown back at them.

 

“The problem is that we’re creating an international norm” — asserting the right to strike preemptively against those we suspect of planning attacks, argues Dennis M. Gormley, a senior research fellow at the University of Pittsburgh and author of “Missile Contagion,” who has called for tougher export controls on American drone technology. “The copycatting is what I worry about most.”

 

The qualities that have made lethal drones so attractive to the Obama administration for counterterrorism appeal to many countries and, conceivably, to terrorist groups: a capacity for leisurely surveillance and precise strikes, modest cost, and most important, no danger to the operator, who may sit in safety thousands of miles from the target.

 

To date, only the United States, Israel (against Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza) and Britain (in Afghanistan) are known to have used drones for strikes. But American defense analysts count more than 50 countries that have built or bought unmanned aerial vehicles, or U.A.V.’s, and the number is rising every month. Most are designed for surveillance, but as the United States has found, adding missiles or bombs is hardly a technical challenge.

 

“The virtue of most U.A.V.’s is that they have long wings and you can strap anything to them,” Mr. Gormley says. That includes video cameras, eavesdropping equipment and munitions, he says. “It’s spreading like wildfire.”

 

So far, the United States has a huge lead in the number and sophistication of unmanned aerial vehicles (about 7,000, by one official’s estimate, mostly unarmed). The Air Force prefers to call them not U.A.V.’s but R.P.A.’s, or remotely piloted aircraft, in acknowledgment of the human role; Air Force officials should know, since their service is now training more pilots to operate drones than fighters and bombers.

 

Philip Finnegan, director of corporate analysis for the Teal Group, a company that tracks defense and aerospace markets, says global spending on research and procurement of drones over the next decade is expected to total more than $94 billion, including $9 billion on remotely piloted combat aircraft.

 

Israel and China are aggressively developing and marketing drones, and Russia, Iran, India, Pakistan and several other countries are not far behind. The Defense Security Service, which protects the Pentagon and its contractors from espionage, warned in a report last year that American drone technology had become a prime target for foreign spies.

 

Last December, a surveillance drone crashed in an El Paso neighborhood; it had been launched, it turned out, by the Mexican police across the border. Even Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, has deployed drones, an Iranian design capable of carrying munitions and diving into a target, says P. W. Singer of the Brookings Institution, whose 2009 book “Wired for War” is a primer on robotic combat.

 

Late last month, a 26-year-old man from a Boston suburb was arrested and charged with plotting to load a remotely controlled aircraft with plastic explosives and crash it into the Pentagon or United States Capitol. His supposed co-conspirators were actually undercover F.B.I. agents, and it was unclear that his scheme could have done much damage. But it was an unnerving harbinger, says John Villasenor, professor of electrical engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles. He notes that the Army had just announced a $5 million contract for a backpack-size drone called a Switchblade that can carry an explosive payload into a target; such a weapon will not long be beyond the capabilities of a terrorist network.

 

“If they are skimming over rooftops and trees, they will be almost impossible to shoot down,” he maintains.

 

It is easy to scare ourselves by imagining terrorist drones rigged not just to carry bombs but to spew anthrax or scatter radioactive waste. Speculation that Al Qaeda might use exotic weapons has so far turned out to be just that. But the technological curve for drones means the threat can no longer be discounted.

 

“I think of where the airplane was at the start of World War I: at first it was unarmed and limited to a handful of countries,” Mr. Singer says. “Then it was armed and everywhere. That is the path we’re on.”

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10.  A Video –about 10-15 minutes.  Recommended.

Forwarded by Anwar

Fri, 7 Oct 2011 

A professionally produced video on the extent, route and impact of the Apartheid (separation) wall built by Israel under the guise of security. This is the wall that has resulted in loss of property, jobs, farmland, markets, livelihood and freedom and access to schools, hospitals, Churches, Mosques, families, friends and regular sources of supply of foodstuff  to 600,000 Palestinians in the West bank, nearly 20% of the Palestinian population of the West Bank; plus another 200,000 Palestinians in East Jerusalem, virtually the whole Palestinian population of East Jerusalem. The devastation to tourist access is not only insidious, but devastating and aims to place Palestinian tourist trade in the hands of Israeli businesses. Worst of all, the wall renders the whole Palestinian population in East Jerusalem and the West Bank in a virtual jail, allowed to move in or  out only with Israeli permit laws, which by the definition o some South African Legislators, are worse pass laws than those of the Apartheid  regime of South Africa. 

And why the US, Canada, and most Western European Countries continue to support these policies when the International Criminal Court judged this wall to be illegal and demanded its removal, why they continue to support these policies defies logic, honesty and real self interest of the people of these countries.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1S2cOL6-30A&feature=youtube_gdata_player