Dorothy Online Newsletter

NOVANEWS

Dear Friends,

 

Tonight’s message is Iran-heavy—not because I like the subject, but because it is a main subject in many an on-line newspaper as concerns Israel.  The first 4 of the 7 items below are on this subject.

 

Item 5 relates that Israel raided 2 Palestinian TV stations, leaving their usual IOF mess, just to show the Palestinians who is boss.

 

Item 6 is 2 articles—a brief announcement on the publication of Tom Hurndall’s record—photos and commentary of his experiences, including Gaza, where while trying to save 2 small Palestinian children threatened by Israeli soldiers shooting, he himself was shot by an Israeli soldier.  He lay brain-dead for months till finally he expired.  His photos are a record of his experiences.

 

Item 7 is ‘Today in Palestine’ for March 1.  In it you learn that 90,000 Palestinians are threatened with displacement due to demolitions.  You also will find updates on Hana al-Shalabi, who is now completing her 15th day of hunger striking for much the same reasons as Khaled Adnan’s protest.  And there is information about other prisoners, and much more.

 

Before going to the items themselves, I would like to comment on the first 2 in particular.

 

Item 1 is infuriating.  It shows how much Israel’s leaders care about the lives of their citizens.  It is preferable, according to these idiots, for 1000s of Israelis to killed than a nuclear Iran.  Yes.  You heard right.  Read the piece and see for yourselves.  I wonder if those who so rationalize include themselves among the dead.  The problem is that what they are trying to sell the public is fiction or mendacious, or both.  I frankly prefer to have no country nuclear.  But Iran is less dangerous to Israel than is Israel to Iran.  Iran is not shouting about attacking Israel.  Israel is shouting about attacking Iran!  Moreover, item 1 contains a link to another piece which likewise infuriates.  It is by a pilot (or former pilot) who attacked the nuclear facilities in Iraq.  Was so easy, by his account that we should go for it again, this time against Iraq.  Idiot!

 

In item 3 the tone changes.   Katherine Butler advises that anyone who sees the Iranian movie that won the Oskar for foreign films, Separation, won’t want to bomb Iran.  The point that she makes is that we want to bomb Iran because we see Iranians as our enemies.  But they have been made so by the media and malevolent politicians.

 

Finally, item 4 brings a fresh poll which shows that most Israelis do not want Israel to attack Iran alone, that 1/3 of the population does not want Israel to attack Iran at all.  May their voices (of which mine is one, though I was not polled) carry.  No, I’m not hopeful or naïve.  But I hope that Obama holds Israel back.

 

All the best,

Dorothy

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1 Ynet

March 01, 2012

 

Crunching Numbers

 

 Home Front Command drill in Jerusalem Photo: Reuters

    ‘Missiles on Israel preferable to nuclear Iran’

Former top Israeli official predicts Iran’s reaction to Israeli strike will cause thousands of casualties, but ’40 rockets are better than nuclear Iran’

 

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4197263,00.html

[see also Amos Yadlin’s unconvincing reasons that Israel should attack Iran http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/01/opinion/israels-last-chance-to-strike-iran.html?ref=opinion ]

 

Benjamin Tovias

 

The mathematics of war: A missile salvo on the greater Tel Aviv area, thousand of rockets fired at northern Israel, terror attacks against Israeli targets overseas, scores of Israeli casualties and countless others in bomb shelters – that is how a former top Israeli official described Iran’s possible reaction to an Israeli strike on its nuclear facilities.

 

According to a Thursday report in Yedioth Ahronoth, the former official – speaking anonymously with the New York Times – detailed the formula by which Israel assessed the magnitude of Tehran’s response: “1991 + 2006 + Buenos Aires, times three-to-five.”

 

In other words: The combined result of Saddam Hussein’s missile attack on Israel in 1991, Hezbollah’s missiles attacks on Israel during the 2006 Second Lebanon War and the terror attacks in Argentina’s capital in the early 1990s – times three.

 

These attacks claimed the lives of hundreds of Israelis and Jews and the damage to the Israeli economy amounted to billions of dollars.

 

“Forty missiles fired at Israel are no small matter – but it’s better that a nuclear Iran,” he said.

The New York Times said that the assessment is based on the premise that while Iran would aspire to meet any strike with force, it would prefer not to ignite a regional war.

 

US defense experts, however, qualified the statement, saying the West’s ability to accurately predict Iran’s moves was limited.

 

Washington, the report said, believes that a strike on the Islamic Republic would result in a missile barrage on Israel; but it also believes that Iran would try to somehow disguise its connection to such a counter-attack, possibly by promoting terror attacks on nations who support Israel.

 

The Americans also believe it is likely Iran will use any such strike as a pretext to close off the Strait of Hormuz.

 

US defense sources said that Tehran is likely to try and avoid a direct attack on American interests, because the regime knows that an American military strike will inflict significant damage.

 

Washington does, however, think Iran will opt for an indirect assault against its interests worldwide, or against oil production facilities in the Persian Gulf.

 

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times reported that the Obama Administration is unlikely to change its stance on Iran.

 

The White House believes that the US must stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, but that does not mean it is ready to declare that the US will impede Iran’s desire for “nuclear capabilities.”

 

A proposal to that effect has already been brought before Congress, and is widely backed by AIPAC.

 

US President Barack Obama is set to speak at the next AIPAC conventions in Washington, where he is expected to detail the US’ “red lines” on Iran.

 

Yedioth Ahronoth’s Washington correspondent contributed to this report

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2   LA Times 6:06 PM PST,

February 28, 2012

 

Obama likely to resist pressure to further toughen Iran stance

The Israelis, along with GOP presidential hopefuls and senators and some hawkish Democrats, want Obama to keep Iran from potentially building a nuclear weapon.

 

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-us-iran-20120228,0,6892812.story

 

By Paul Richter and Christi Parsons, Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Washington

The White House indicated Tuesday that President Obama would resist pressure for a tougher Iran policy coming from Israel and some U.S. lawmakers who argue that Tehran should not be allowed to acquire even the capability to eventually develop a nuclear weapon.

 

The push to toughen the administration’s policy comes ahead of a visit to Washington by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. As part of the war of nerves that the U.S. and Israel are conducting with Iran — and to some extent with each other — Netanyahu’s government has broadly hinted at using airstrikes against Iran’s nuclear sites should it determine that Tehran had developed the scientific knowledge and industrial means to build a nuclear bomb.

 

That is a lower threshold than the Obama administration’s so-called red line of preventing Iran from building a nuclear device. Senior Pentagon and intelligence officials have told Congress that it would take Iran several years to build a deliverable bomb, and that they don’t believe Iran’s leaders have decided to do so.

 

Several countries have the capability to build a weapon but have never crossed the line of trying to assemble one.

 

The Israelis, along with Republican presidential hopefuls, GOP senators and some hawkish Democrats, want Obama to move toward that Israeli position. They all believe he is politically vulnerable to charges of being weak on Iran and have stepped up their pressure in recent days as Obama prepares for his meeting with Netanyahu and a speech he is scheduled to give Sunday to the country’s largest pro-Israel lobbying group.

 

On Tuesday, however, White House officials said Obama would not make any public policy shift. Senior officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss diplomatic moves, left open the question of whether the president might add new details on U.S. policy against Iran in his private conversations with Netanyahu.

 

Both U.S. and Israeli officials call an Iranian nuclear weapon unacceptable and have vowed to prevent Iran from building one. Israeli officials have broadly hinted that they might launch an airstrike this year against Iranian atomic sites. The Obama administration has used the threat of Israeli military action to prod European and Asian allies, who fear a war in the region, to go along with tough sanctions against Iran. At the same time, American officials publicly have said they believe an Israeli airstrike would be a bad idea. Those remarks have ratcheted up tension between the two countries.

 

Obama believes the current strategy of diplomacy and sanctions can still work and that a more explicit military threat is not helpful, the senior officials said. The sanctions, which have included strict new measures to limit Iran’s oil exports and isolate its central bank, have begun to severely harm Tehran’s economy, and Iran has made offers to renew negotiations over the nuclear issue.

 

“Our policy remains exactly what it was,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said. “We are committed, as Israel is, to preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.”

 

“We believe there is time and space at this point” for diplomacy to continue, Carney said. In his speech Sunday to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Obama will reiterate that he is taking no option off the table, but he will emphasize that Iran can still end its weapons program peacefully, Carney said.

 

When Iran signaled last week that it might resume negotiations on its nuclear program, 12 members of the Senate sent Obama a letter warning that Tehran should not be allowed to buy time with fruitless talks. They pressed the president to insist that Iran suspend enrichment of uranium before any talks start.

 

Iran refused to suspend enrichment during previous negotiations, so the precondition could doom a parlay before it begins and increase the risks of a military confrontation.

 

Another move this month came when Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and 37 other senators, almost half of them Democrats, cosponsored a resolution that would declare “containment” cannot be U.S. policy on Iran.

 

The lawmakers worry that the White House would rely on containment — military deterrence and enforced isolation — rather than a military attack if Iran gets a nuclear bomb. Containment was the policy that U.S. presidents from Harry S. Trumanthrough Ronald Reagan used against the Soviet Union during the Cold War to help avoid direct military confrontation and nuclear war. The hawks on Iran argue that the Iranian regime is irrational and not subject to the sort of deterrence that worked against the Soviets.

 

The Senate sponsors “want to say clearly and resolutely to Iran: You have only two choices — peacefully negotiate to end your nuclear program or expect a military strike to end that program,” Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), one of them, told a news conference. The Senate has not voted on the proposed resolution.

 

The lawmakers “suspect the administration is far more comfortable with containment than they are; that’s certainly the vibe they’ve been getting for years now,” said Danielle Pletka, a vice president of the American Enterprise Institute think tank. “There’s only so many times you can hear, ‘We’ve got more time,’ and not suspect [the administration’s view is,] ‘We’ve got all the time in the world.’ “

 

Critics of the Senate resolution fear it might later be cited as congressional authorization for a war with Iran. Some Democrats sought to amend the language to clarify that it was not intended to imply consent for war, but the sponsors rejected the suggestion.

 

As Obama campaigns for reelection, Republicans sense a potential issue in charges that he is weak on Iran and inattentive to a threat against Israel’s existence. The four contenders for the GOP nomination all denounced Obama’s Iran policy as dangerous during a debate Wednesday in Arizona.

 

“This is going to be the key foreign policy question of the election,” said a senior Senate aide who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to comment. “With Iraq wound up and Obama’s strong overall record on counter-terrorism, the only area where the Republicans have breathing room is Iran and Israel.”

 

The White House has repeatedly said military action against Iran remains an option.

 

Whether Americans would support a war with Iran, after a decade of conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan, is a matter of partisan debate.

 

Hawks point to a recent Pew Research Center poll indicating that 58% of Americans would support military action if necessary to halt an Iranian nuclear program. Pew has reported similar findings back to 2009.

 

But doves argue that the finding reflects a mistaken belief that a quick military campaign could eliminate the danger. They predict that public support will fade as people become aware that an attack on Iran could spark a broader Mideast war, cause oil prices to rise and lead to a global recession.

 

paul.richter@latimes.com

 

christi.parsons@latimes.com

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 3 The Independent

 01 March 2012

Katherine Butler: See this film and then say that bombing Iran is ok

You can only think it is morally legitimate when you have dehumanised Iranians as the enemy

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/katherine-butler-see-this-film-and-then-say-that-bombing-iran-is-ok-7447295.html#

 

Here’s a story. Urban-dwelling middle-class couple, one bright school-age daughter. Nice apartment, good part of town. Husband and wife juggle the demands of their respective careers and the twice-daily school run with the obligations of extended family (the husband’s Alzheimer’s-afflicted father is living with them). But the marriage is unravelling.

 

She wants to relocate – abroad – he doesn’t. She moves out, they hire a home-helper for the old man – a poor working-class woman from the sticks. Bad things happen and a tricky situation becomes despairingly awful for all concerned. And this compelling human tragedy of truth and lies and communication breakdown plays out where? North London? Paris? The Upper West Side of New York? Tel Aviv?

 

The fictional action I’m describing is the plot of A Separation, the remarkable film that won the Oscar on Sunday in the Best Foreign Language category. Its setting is Tehran.

 

The big question prompted by the award – the first ever Oscar for an Iranian film – is this: could the box-office succeed where sanctions have failed? Could Oscars diplomacy deliver us from the military confrontation over Iran’s nuclear programme that Israel seems to want and which the British Government has joined in threatening?

 

It would be naïve to imagine President Ahmadinejad, charmed by the Hollywood prize, suddenly announcing he will comply with the West’s demands. Some factions in Iran may even choose to see A Separation’s validation by the American movie industry as a provocation. Independent film-makers in Iran, seen as too beloved of the West, have been jailed. My guess is that the film’s success will delight ordinary Iranians but be officially ignored – with any luck director Asghar Farhadi will be left to pursue his craft in peace.

 

The film could yet, however – and in a much more subversive way – influence the course of history, assuming that thanks to this Oscar, more people in Europe, America and Israel end up going to see it. Indeed, in my view, only when you have watched this painful film should you be permitted to have an opinion on how useful, sane or morally acceptable it is to even discuss bombing Iran rather than seeking a diplomatic end to the over-hyped stand-off about its desire for a nuclear capability.

 

Farhadi’s drama has nothing overt to say about regime change, nuclear weapons or revolutionary Islam, although the catalyst for the couple’s divorce is the wife’s desire to leave the country so that her daughter can be educated abroad. But its focus on the everyday and on contemporary human problems is its power. It is a portrait of a disintegrating relationship against a backdrop of family obligation and social division, and everyone worries about paying the bills. It could easily be transposed to a US setting, in which you could imagine the lead characters being played by George Clooney and Julianne Moore.

 

The comments yesterday of Israelis who saw A Separation and told an AP reporter they were surprised that Iranians had fridges and washing machines were saddening, and revealing. But hardly surprising when you think about how Iran and Iranians are generally characterised in Western discourse. Our mental images of the country involve fearsome black-clad women or angry men chanting “Death to America”. Words like “mullahs” (you barely need the prefix “mad” any more), “hardliners” and “threat” are usually linked in the same sentence. A news report about Iran not containing the words “nuclear ambitions”, “nuclear scientists” and “terror” seems unimaginable.

 

Iran has become more of a concept, a frightening idea, than a set of people with a proud civilisation, a turbulent modern history, and a legitimate viewpoint or even humanity. And, of course, you can only convince yourself that it is morally legitimate to bomb other people – don’t kid ourselves that Iran’s nuclear sites could be destroyed without also bombing a great many Iranian women, men and children – when you have dehumanised them or reduced them to caricatures of evil. The enemy.

 

Iran’s isolation in the world since 1979 is what sustains the rule there of a repressive elite motivated as much by money, and its own survival, as theocratic ideals. But, after 30 years of mutual suspicion, it has become difficult for most Westerners to think of Iranians en masse as anything other than terrifying, irrational freaks on a martyrdom mission, when there is a daily and hypocritical drumbeat led by Fox News neocons about the supposed threat they pose.

 

The characters in A Separation wear RayBans, drive Peugeots and are caught up in the daily drama of their own lives, not in wanting to wipe anyone off the map. Unlike the dangerously lazy narrative that is now received wisdom about Iran, the film is complex, sophisticated and nuanced. If even some of the cinema-going public come away thinking of Iranians as ordinary people like themselves, perhaps the sleepwalk to a futile war might become a little less inevitable than it now looks.

 

k.butler@independent.co.uk

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4  Thursday, March 1 2012

Independent commentary and news from Israel & PalestineCategories

 

Poll: Huge majority opposes unilateral Israeli war on Iran

 

http://972mag.com/poll-only-19-of-public-supports-unilateral-israeli-war-on-iran/36891/

 

Larry Derfner

This is the best news on the antiwar front since Meir Dagan went public – a poll published today by Dahaf, Israel’s leading public opinion surveying firm, found that only 19 percent of Israelis are in favor of Israel bombing Iran on its own, which is what most everyone, myself included, is predicting Israel will do.

 

The poll results, though, are not all peace and love – a plurality of 42 percent favor a joint U.S.-Israeli attack, which means the pro-war camp has a 2-1 advantage over the peace camp. (32 percent are against an attack on Iran, period.)

 

But if you judge by the public statements of Israeli politicians, there’s 0 percent opposition to war. If you judge by the news coverage and the commentators, there’s maybe 5 percent opposition. There’s been such a brainwashing campaign going on in this country, such a colossal amount of self-censorship by all the politicians, security establishment types and other influential figures over the war issue, so I find it remarkable that only 19 percent of Israelis are behind Netanyahu and Barak, that one-third of the public doesn’t want a war of any kind, no matter who’s behind us.

 

I hope to God that Obama brings this up in his meeting on Monday with Netanyahu, and in his speech the day before to AIPAC. This is powerful ammunition. And I hope to God that Peace Now, Meretz, Hadash, David Grossman, Amos Oz and everyone else who’s ever fought for peace in this country takes this poll as a wake-up call. There’s a movement waiting to be born. There’s a chance to stop this thing.

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5  Washington Post

February 29, 2012

 

Israel raids Palestinian TV stations

 

ABBAS MOMANI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES – Staff members of a local private television station “Watan”, look at the damage caused after Israeli troops raided this and another Palestinian television station in the West Bank city of Ramallah overnight, seizing computers and broadcasting equipment.

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/israel-raids-palestinian-tv-stations/2012/02/29/gIQAQJSkiR_story.html

 

By Joel Greenberg, Published:

 

JERUSALEM — Israeli troops raided two private Palestinian television stations in the West Bank city of Ramallah early Wednesday, seizing transmitters and other equipment, the army and Palestinian officials said.

 

The military said the two outlets, al-Watan TV and al-Quds Educational Television, were pirate stations whose transmissions interfered with legal broadcasting stations and aircraft communications.

 

.The army said the raids followed “countless requests” to cease broadcasting, but the Palestinian Telecommunications Ministry said it was never notified of such interruptions.

 

Ramallah is the seat of government of the Palestinian Authority, and Palestinian officials condemned the raids as an invasion of their territory and an attempt to stifle free speech.

 

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad visited the two stations and pledged speedy efforts to get them back on the air. He said Israeli incursions into Palestinian-ruled areas “aim to destroy what is left of the influence of the Palestinian Authority.”

 

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas called the raids a “blatant assault on freedom of the press and expression.”

 

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  The Guardian home

Thursday, March 1, 2012

 

Brave witness: Tom Hurndall’s The Only House Left Standing – in pictures

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2012/mar/01/tom-hurndall-only-house-left-standing-pictures#/?picture=386677607&index=9

Peace activist and aspiring photojournalist Tom Hurndall died in 2004, aged 22, after being shot by an Israeli soldier. His words and images bear witness to events he saw while living in Iraq, Jordan and the Gaza Strip. The Only House Left Standing: The Middle East Journals of Tom Hurndall is published this week by Trolley Books. Here are a selection of Hurndall’s photographs, and his own words, from the book
• Read Sean O’Hagan’s review  [Published by the Guardian, it is also in ‘Today in Palestine’ for March 1, 2012. D]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/mar/01/tom-hurndall-middle-east-photographs

Tom Hurndall : The house of Dr. Samir, Rafah

10 April 2003. The house of Dr Samir, Rafah. Tom and Rachel Corrie both stayed here. Situated on the edge of the demolition zone it was as Tom described it: ‘The only house left standing’ Photograph: Tom Hurndall

 

Tom Hurndall: a remarkable man’s photographs of the Middle East

Peace activist Tom Hurndall died at 22 after being shot by an Israeli sniper. His images and articles, that grew in intensity as his journey

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7 Today in Palestine

March 1, 2012

 

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/f_shadi/message/3417

 

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