Dorothy Online Newsletter

NOVANEWS

Dear Friends,

 

By contrast to yesterday, the pickings on Israel were slim today in the foreign press that I checked (nothing new about Israel or Palestine in BBC, the Guardian, the Independent, France24, der Spiegel, and Al Jazeera).  Only the American papers carried news and/or commentary on Israel, and that only with reference to Obama’s speech at today’s AIPAC conference vs Israel’s demands.  My impression is that lately attitudes in the American press towards Israel are more critical than in the past.  However, an instance of true unabashed and justified criticism that flowed into my inbox today is from Thailand, not the US.

 

The 4 items below begin with ‘Today in Palestine,’ the compilation of reports and commentaries on events in (mainly) the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

 

The following 2 items are from the LATimes and NY Times, respectively, both about Iran.  Each relates what Obama will be willing to give vs what Israel demands.

 

Lastly, the item from the Thai news is harshly critical of Israel, as can be seen even from its title: ‘Annihilation hovers over Palestine, not Israel.’  The figures of the number of colonists quoted in the article is, however, a bit low I believe.  There are now over 700,000 in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and surroundings.

 

There also was not much of interest in the domestic Israeli press today.  Hence only 4 items today, which of course expands if you read a portion of ‘Today in Palestine.’  There you will hear more about Hana Shalabi, who is now in her 3rd week of hunger strike, and will also learn about other political prisoners, as well as much more.  If  you want to know what is happening in the occupied Palestinian territory, ‘Today in Palestine’ tells you.

 

That’s it for today.

All the best,

 

Dorothy

++++++++

1 Today

Palestine for March 4, 2012

 

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

 

++++

2 LATimes

Sunday, March 4, 2012

 

Op-Ed

McManus: Israel’s brinkmanship, America’s peril

Is Israel serious in saying it might soon attack Iran’s nuclear facilities? It says it is, and the Obama administration is taking it at its word.

 

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-mcmanus-column-the-iran-israel-dilemma-for-o-20120304,0,4807303.column

 

Doyle McManus

 

Last week, Gen. Norton A. Schwartz, chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force, confirmed a no-longer-surprising fact: the Pentagon has sent the White House a menu of options for going to war with Iran.

 

But that doesn’t mean the military thinks bombing Iran would be a good idea. “It’s not prudent at this point to decide to attack Iran,” Schwartz’s boss, Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on CNN last month, adding that his advice applied to Israel as well as the United States. “A strike at this time would be destabilizing and wouldn’t achieve their objectives,” Dempsey said.

 

It’s hard to find a high-rankingU.S. militaryofficer who thinks war with Iran is a good idea. They point out that it is unclear that bombing Iran would succeed in stopping the Islamic Republic from developing nuclear technology, and that an attack would almost surely provoke Iranian retaliation and touch off a longer, wider war.

 

But that hasn’t stopped President Obama from rattling the saber.

 

“When the United States says it is unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, we mean what we say,” he told Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic last week. “As president of the United States, I don’t bluff.”

 

Part of the reason Obama sounds more hawkish than his generals is that he hopes the threat of military action can help bring Iran around. But he’s also trying to navigate a delicate situation with a leader who’s ostensibly one of his closest allies, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

 

Netanyahu and his defense minister, Ehud Barak, have said that they don’t believe economic sanctions and negotiations are working fast enough to persuade Iran to curtail its nuclear program. Barak has warned that Iran’s nuclear facilities will soon be so deep underground that they will be in a “zone of immunity,” safe from military attack — or at least safe from the scale of attack that Israel could muster.

 

Once that happens, Israel would have to depend on the United States for protection, and that’s not a position the Israelis want to be in. So Netanyahu and Barak have publicly suggested that it may soon be time for Israel to strike, despite the dangers that an attack would bring.

 

Are the Israelis serious? They say they are, and the Obama administration is taking them at their word. Over the past two months, a parade of U.S. defense officials has visited Israel. This week, Netanyahu is visiting Washington — hoping, according to Israeli media reports, to win a promise from Obama that the United States will prevent Iran from even attaining the capability to build nuclear weapons. Until now, the United States has said it will prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, but Israel wants the red line moved to the less easily defined point of “capability.”

 

For all Netanyahu’s bluster, Israeli officials still say war with Iran is something they’d like to avoid. An Israeli attack on Iran would almost certainly lead not only to direct retaliation from Tehran, but also a ground war with Hezbollah, the pro-Iranian militia that rules southern Lebanon. A poll of Israelis released last week found that only 19% favor attacking Iran without U.S. support, and only 42% favor an attack even with U.S. support.

 

Even Netanyahu has said that the outcome he’d prefer is an Iranian retreat in the face of economic sanctions, with no military action by anyone.

 

But is that possible?

 

The United States and its European allies have been working on proposals for the next round of nuclear talks with Iran, which are planned to begin next month. The aim, Obama said in his interview with the Atlantic, is to induce Iran’s leaders “to make a strategic calculation” to delay “whatever potential breakout capacity they may have.”

 

That probably means some kind of deal under which Iran would agree to limit its enrichment of uranium to levels well below what’s needed for nuclear weapons and submit to international inspections that would reassure Israel and other countries that it is not pursuing secret military projects.

 

The idea, said Dennis Ross, a former Obama advisor, would be to “stop the clock” and freeze Iran’s nuclear technology at a level that doesn’t threaten anyone else. But that would likely require the United States and its allies to soften their previous demand that Iran suspend all uranium enrichment as a first step.

 

Obama noted that Iranian leaders have frequently insisted they aren’t seeking nuclear weapons. “So it doesn’t require them to knuckle under to us,” he said. But it would require them to allow more intrusive inspections than they have accepted in the past.

 

The Obama administration contends that a deal like that is more possible than ever before, because economic sanctions against Iran have finally begun to bite. But to obtain an agreement with Iran, the United States needs Israel to stay its hand.

 

The term “brinkmanship” was coined during the Cold War to describe threats of military action that, if implemented, would lead to disaster for both sides. It’s ironic that in this case, the brinkmanship is coming from America’s ally, Netanyahu, and it carries the potential of calamity not only for Iran and Israel, but for the United States as well.

 

doyle.mcmanus@latimes.com

 

+++++

 

3  NY Times

Saturday, March 3, 2012

 

U.S. Backers of Israel Pressure Obama Over Policy on Iran

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/04/world/middleeast/israels-backers-in-aipac-press-obama-to-harden-iran-policy.html?_r=1&ref=middleeast

 

By MARK LANDLER

WASHINGTON — On the eve of a crucial visit to the White House by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, that country’s most powerful American advocates are mounting an extraordinary public campaign to pressure President Obama into hardening American policy toward Iran over its nuclear program.

 

From the corridors of Congress to a gathering of nearly 14,000 American Jews and other supporters of Israel here this weekend, Mr. Obama is being buffeted by demands that the United States be more aggressive toward Iran and more forthright in supporting Israel in its own confrontation with Tehran.

 

While defenders of Israel rally every year at the meeting of the pro-Israel lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, this year’s gathering has been supercharged by a convergence of election-year politics, a deepening nuclear showdown and the often-fraught relationship between the president and the Israeli prime minister.

 

Mr. Obama and Mr. Netanyahu will both speak to the group, known as Aipac, as will the three leading Republican presidential candidates, who will appear via satellite from the campaign trail on the morning of Super Tuesday. Republicans have seized on Iran’s nuclear ambitions to accuse Mr. Obama of being weak in backing a staunch ally and in confronting a bitter foe.

 

The pressure from an often-hostile Congress is also mounting. A group of influential senators, fresh from a meeting with Mr. Netanyahu in Jerusalem, has called on Mr. Obama to lay down sharper criteria, known as “red lines,” about when to act against Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

 

“We’re saying to the administration, ‘You’ve got a problem; let’s fix it, let’s get back on message,’ ” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, who took part in the meeting with Mr. Netanyahu and said the Israeli leader vented frustration at what he viewed as mixed messages from Washington.

 

“It’s not just about the Jewish vote and 2012,” Mr. Graham added. “It’s about reassuring people who want to avoid war that the United States will do what’s necessary.”

 

To give teeth to the deterrent threat against Iran, Israel and its backers want Mr. Obama to stop urging restraint on Israel and to be more explicit about the circumstances under which the United States itself would carry out a strike.

 

Specifically, Israeli officials are demanding that Iran agree to halt all its enrichment of uranium in the country, and that the suspension be verified by United Nations inspectors, before the West resumes negotiations with Tehran on its nuclear program.

 

The White House has rejected that demand, Israeli and American officials said on Friday, arguing that Iran would never agree to a blanket ban upfront, and to insist on it would doom negotiations before they even began. The administration insists that Mr. Obama will stick to his policy, which is focused on using economic sanctions to force the Iranian government to give up its nuclear ambitions, with military action as a last resort.

 

Despite the position of the Israelis and Aipac, the American intelligence agencies continue to say that there is no evidence that Iran has made a final decision to pursue a nuclear weapon. Recent assessments by American spy agencies have reaffirmed intelligence findings in 2007 and 2010 that concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program.

 

In his tone, at least, Mr. Obama is working to reassure Israel. In an interview published on Friday, Mr. Obama reiterated his pledge to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon — with force, if necessary — and ruled out a policy of accepting but seeking to contain a nuclear-armed Iran. The Israeli government, he said, recognizes that “as president of the United States, I don’t bluff.”

 

The White House’s choice of interviewer — Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent for the magazine The Atlantic — was carefully calculated. Mr. Goldberg is closely read among Jews in America; in 2010, he wrote an article exploring the situations under which Israel would attack Iran.

 

American Jews are anything but monolithic. More dovish groups, like J Street, are trying to make a case against a pre-emptive Israeli strike. But for the next few days, Aipac will set the tone for an intense debate over the Iranian nuclear threat.

 

Mr. Obama will not lay down new red lines on Iran, even if he discusses them with Mr. Netanyahu, administration officials said. And he is not ready to accept a central part of Israel’s strategic calculation: that an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would be warranted to stop it from gaining the capability to build a nuclear weapon, rather than later, to stop it from actually manufacturing one.

 

In the interview, Mr. Obama warned Israel of the consequences of a strike and said that it would delay but not prevent Iran from acquiring a weapon. He also said he did not know how the American public would react.

 

Israel’s supporters said they believed that a majority of Americans would support an Israeli military strike against Iran. But polling data paints a murkier picture: while close to 50 percent of Americans say in several polls that they would support Israel, a slightly larger number say they would stay neutral. In some surveys, there is strong support for continuing diplomacy.

 

Supporters of Israel argue that in the American news media, Iran’s nuclear program has been wrongly framed as Israel’s problem, rather than as a threat to the security of the whole world.

 

“This is about the devastating impact on U.S. and Western security of a nuclear-armed Iran bent on bullying the region into submission,” said Josh Block, a former spokesman for Aipac.

 

Turnout for this year’s Aipac conference is expected to surpass all previous records. And the roster of speakers attests to the group’s drawing power. In addition to Mr. Obama, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta will speak, as will Congressional leaders including Senator Mitch McConnell, the chamber’s Republican leader, and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House.

 

On Tuesday, the screens in the Washington convention center will light up with the Republican presidential contenders Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, who are likely to fault Mr. Obama as not doing enough to prevent Iran from getting a weapon.

 

“Aipac is the spearhead of the pro-Israel community’s efforts to move the American government’s red lines closer to Israel’s red lines,” said Martin S. Indyk, a former American envoy to Israel.

 

Officials at Aipac declined to comment about the conference or their strategy. But Mr. Block and other former Aipac officials said that, as in previous years, the group would blanket Capitol Hill with its members — all of whom will carry a message about the Iranian nuclear threat.

 

They will be pushing on an open door. Democrats and Republicans, divided on so much, are remarkably united in supporting Israel and in ratcheting up pressure on Iran. The Senate voted 100 to 0 last year to pass legislation isolating Iran’s central bank, over the objections of the White House.

 

There are four bills in the House and Senate that call for tougher action against Iran or closer military cooperation between Israel and the United States. Mr. Graham is one of 32 Republican and Democratic sponsors of a resolution that calls on the president to reject a policy of containing Iran.

 

“The Senate can’t agree to cross the street,” Mr. Graham said. “Iran has done more to bring us together than anything in the world.”

 

To counter Aipac’s message, J Street has circulated a video on Capitol Hill, highlighting American and Israeli military experts who have voiced doubts about the efficacy of a strike on Iran.

 

“We are saying there needs to be time for enhanced sanctions and diplomacy to work,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of J Street. “We’re trying to calm down the drumbeat of war.”

 

David E. Sanger contributed reporting.

 

+++++++

4 Forwarded by Mark

 

“his lie has been repeated so often that it has become the truth.“

 

Yes, but no sane educated person believes it. Those who believe it can be either sane or educated but not both.

 

 

On Sun, Mar 4, 2012

Kristoffer  wrote:

This lie has been repeated so often that it has become the truth. The real truth, as always, is quite different: It is Israel which is wiping Palestine off the map, day by day, slowly but surely, one settlement at a time.

 

 

http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/282736/annihilation-hovers-over-palestine-not-israel

 

Annihilation hovers over Palestine, not Israel

As the threat of Iran’s nuclear potential is hyped in Tel Aviv and Washington, it is the people in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem who are in real danger

 

Writer: Imtiaz Muqbil

Position: Executive editor of Travel Impact Newswire

•         Published: 4/03/2012 at 02:56 AM

•         Newspaper section: News

One of the claims being made to justify Israel’s demand for a blank cheque to attack Iran is that the Islamic Republic poses an ”existential threat” to the Jewish state in view of its statements about wanting to wipe Israel off the map.

This lie has been repeated so often that it has become the truth. The real truth, as always, is quite different: It is Israel which is wiping Palestine off the map, day by day, slowly but surely, one settlement at a time.

Here are the real facts:

On Feb 22 this year, Israeli authorities legalised the unauthorised settler outpost of Shvut Rachel in the northern West Bank and approved a plan for 500 new homes there. The plan was approved by the higher planning council of the Israeli civil administration, the military body that manages civilian affairs for most of the West Bank.

According to one report, the committee agreed to retroactively legalise approximately 100 homes already built there, as well as 95 homes without permits in the nearby settlement of Shilo, which has 2,000 residents, some 30km south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank.

The news agency Agence France Presse quoted Mr Yariv Oppenheimer, head of the settlement watchdog group Peace Now, as describing the move as ”one of the biggest projects in the territories”. The decision proved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was ”doing everything he could to prevent the creation of two states for two peoples”, Mr Oppenheimer said.

The AFP report said that more than 310,000 Israelis live in settlements in the occupied West Bank and the number is growing. Another 200,000 live in a dozen settlement neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem, which was captured by Israel in 1967 and annexed in a move never recognised by the international community.

Robert Serry, the top United Nations envoy for the Middle East peace process, described the Israeli move as ”deplorable”, one that ”moves us further away from the goal of a two-state solution”.

Mr Serry was quoted from a UN statement as saying, ”During his recent visit to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory, the UN Secretary-General [Ban Ki-moon] reiterated the United Nations well known position that settlement activity is illegal, contrary to Israel’s obligations under the road map [to peace] and will not be recognised by the international community.”

During his visit to the occupied territories on Feb 6, Mr Ban had renewed his call for progress in the Middle East peace process, citing the toll taken on the economy and lives of Palestinians by the ongoing Israeli occupation. ”The issue of settlements, which are illegal and hurt prospects for a negotiated solution, clearly has an economic dimension. Settlements and their infrastructure severely restrict access to land and natural resources by the Palestinian people,” Mr Ban said.

Also on Feb 22, the office of the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and vice-president of the European Commission Catherine Ashton issued a statement saying it was ”deeply concerned” by Israel’s approval of new construction in the settlements.

The statement said, ”Settlements are illegal under international law. In addition the Quartet road map states that Israel should not only freeze all settlement activity, but also dismantle those settlements erected since March 2001. It is particularly important at this point that neither party in the Middle East peace process undertakes provocative actions which undermine the prospects for continuing the dialogue which was re-established in January. The high representative calls on Israel to respect its obligations under the road map and reverse this decision.”

A more detailed check indicated that the EU had issued a similar statement in September 2011 following an Israeli decision to advance settlement expansion in East Jerusalem with approximately 1,000 new housing units in Gilo. Ms Ashton ”deplored” that move, too.

Said the earlier statement, ”The EU has repeatedly called on Israel to end all settlement activity, including natural growth, and to dismantle outposts erected since March 2001. Settlement activity threatens the viability of an agreed two-state solution and raises questions about Israel’s stated commitment to resume negotiations.”

That’s not all.

On Feb 23, the Palestinians went public with news of an Israeli plan to transfer land allocated for a future Qalandia airport into an industrial zone. The land, clearly located in occupied territory, is part of the Palestinian Authority’s development plans after statehood. The Israeli newspaper Maariv reported that the municipality of West Jerusalem had registered the unused land as state land.

It said that the Israeli Airport Authority made a submission to the Israeli municipality, requesting to register the land under its authority at the Israel Land Department.

On Feb 24, the Palestinian government issued a statement saying that this continued step-by-step Israeli expansion ”will kill the two-state solution”. In other words, it will wipe Palestine off the map.

Said the statement, ”The Palestinian government warns that the policies and actions of the [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu government seriously prevent the creation of a viable Palestinian state due to an irreversible mechanism working daily to create, and altering, facts on the ground in the form of territory, jurisdiction, and development.

”While the Israeli government tirelessly talks about wanting peace and returning to the negotiations table, it is aggressively working on preventing any of the fundamental issues to be negotiated through irreversible facts that obliterate the viability of the two-state solution and the creation of the state of Palestine on 1967 territories.

”The laws of the Israeli occupier continuously legalises what is in contravention with international law and signed agreements through new settlement activity, strengthening control of occupied Jerusalem in a manner that reveals Israel’s determination not to relinquish 1967 occupied territory that are the basis for negotiating a two-state solution.

”The international community needs not to be baffled by the Israeli governments sweet talk and seriously review the occupation’s belligerent actions,” concluded the statement.

None of this grabbed headlines in the global media, of course. That’s because the world was conveniently distracted by the Syrian uprising, the attacks and would-be attacks on Israeli diplomats in New Delhi, Bangkok and Tbilsi, and the continued sabre-rattling over Israel’s plan to attack Iran.

Apart from the essentially useless statements deploring and condemning the Israeli expansion, the Jewish state faced no sanctions or any other form of retribution. As this is an election year in the United States, President Barack Obama, who grandiosely told the Islamic world two years ago that Israeli settlement expansion was ”unacceptable”, could do nothing.

Now, Israel wants to attack Iran because it claims Iran wants to wipe Israel off the map. Exactly who is trying to wipe whom off the map? You decide.

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *