Mondoweiss Online Newsletter

NOVANEWS

 

• Israeli inquiry: One-ton bomb dropped on Shehadeh house, killing 13 civilians, was ‘legitimate’

• At J Street, Eltahawy gets standing ovation when she calls on peaceful revolution to come to Israel and Palestine

• For Egypt’s workers the revolution is far from over

• The opposition is building an interim government while Saif says there is nothing going on…

• Desecrating the American flag

• ‘Israeli Apartheid Week’ organizers respond to LGBT center’s decision to cancel event under pressure

• Can you pass the Saudi Arabia quiz?

• New resource tracks and analyzes Israeli arms exports

Israeli inquiry: One-ton bomb dropped on Shehadeh house, killing 13 civilians, was ‘legitimate’

Feb 27, 2011

Kate

 

And more news from Today in Palestine:

Land, property, resources theft and destruction / Ethnic cleansing / Settlers
Israeli bulldozers raze Palestinian home in Negev village
NEGEV, (PIC) 27 Feb — Israeli municipality teams bulldozed on Sunday morning a Palestinian home in Z’rura village in the Negev, occupied since 1948, in line with a campaign of demolitions in that village, local sources said.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bc
Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem’s visa revoked
Jerusalem (AsiaNews) 25 Feb — Israel’s Interior Ministry has revoked the permit for the Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem, The Rt Revd Suheil Dawani, to live in Jerusalem, and has refused requests to reinstate it, in spite of protests by Anglican authorities in the West specifically the United States. The Bishop is a native of the Holy Land and has spent most of his life and ministry here, but cannot obtain either citizenship or legal residence in Israel, since he was born in Nablus … Since the Bishop has of course remained at his post, in Jerusalem, without the permit, he could be arrested at any moment, be put on trial for being in Israel illegally, be sentenced to a prison term – or simply be forcibly removed from Jerusalem.
http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Anglican-Bishop-of-Jerusalem%E2%80%99s-visa-revoked-20875.html
Khater: Coming tourism conference marks Israeli success in Judaizing Jerusalem
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC) 27 Feb — Secretary-General of the Islamic-Christian Commission Dr. Hassan Khater has said an Israeli tourism conference to be held in Jerusalem the coming month marks Israel’s success in promoting the holy city as a capital for all Jews. Israel will stage a conference running from February 29 until March 31 that promotes Jewish tourism in Jerusalem. It is also behind a virtual reality website that shows Jerusalem without its Arab features.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bc
N. Jordan Valley sit-in highlights education dilemma under occupation
JORDAN VALLEY, (PIC) 27 Feb — Palestinian activists sat in at the Ain al-Halwa school in the northern Jordan Valley on Saturday with hopes to raise awareness on the Israeli occupation which has rendered meeting the educational needs of Area C impossible. The ”save the Jordan Valley” campaign, one of the sit-in organizers, said Israeli policies have hampered the building of schools, and military checkpoints have restricted movement of teachers and students. Israeli authorities have pursued a policy of destruction of private and public facilities including schools, said Wahba Usfour, a sit-in coordinator, citing as an example what happened in Khirbet Tana, a village east of the city of Nablus with a population of about 300.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bc
Ein il Hilwe opening day
[Photos] 27 Feb — Saturday… Palestinian and international organizations and activists shared our opening day of Ein Il Hilwe tent school. Although the occupation army threatened the Ein Il Hilwe community of demolition the night before, the community was very happy to celebrate the opening of their tent school last Saturday … The Bedouin community of Ein Il Hilwe is located in the north of the Jordan Valley. The children from this community as well as from the neighboring communities used to attend school in Tayasir for which they had to travel through the difficult Tayasir checkpoint. On a daily basis the children were facing harassment from the soldiers when trying to get to and from school. Some days children were forced off the bus and were left to walk the 13 km back home on the dangerous main road. 
http://www.jordanvalleysolidarity.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=174:ein-il-hilwe-opening-day&catid=15:2010&Itemid=21
Hebron girl hit by settler car
HEBRON (Ma‘an) 27 Feb — Medical officials in Hebron said an 11-year-old girl from the city was transferred to Hadassa Hospital in Israel on Sunday, after she was struck down by a settler car at the Beit Ainun junction.  The girl, identified as Amani Al-Mutawer, was said to have been walking to school when she was hit. Her condition was described as moderate. 
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=363952
Violence / Extrajudicial assassinations
Court indicts J’lem teen for manslaughter
Ynet 27 Feb — Jewish stabber not charged with murder. Other teens involved in murder of Arab man to stand trial for aggravated assault, obstruction of justice. Father of victim: ‘My son brutally murdered for speaking Arabic’
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4034967,00.html
Report: Shehadeh killing legitimate; civilian deaths due to intel failure
Ynet 27 Feb — A report submitted to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday determined that the targeted killing of senior Hamas figure Salah Shehadeh on July 22, 2002 was imperative as he posed a ‘certain, immediate and significant’ threat to Israeli citizens … The commission further concluded that the difficult collateral consequences of the strike against Shehadeh, in which 13 uninvolved civilians, mostly women and children, were killed and many others injured, became clear in hindsight to most of the senior officials involved in the planning and implementation of the operation … During the operation, a one-ton bomb was dropped on the house in which Shehadeh was staying, killing him, Hamas figure Zahar Natzer, Shehadeh’s wife Layla and his 15-year-old daughter Iman, who were with him in the house.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4035172,00.html
Israel’s own people increasingly targeted by Jewish state / Tim King 
One of Israel’s activists for humanity takes a soldier’s rifle butt to the cheek [in Hebron rally]; is it time now for the People’s Revolution of Israel? … Today we’re talking about 20-year old Israeli activist Sahar Vardi; whose appearance was marred on this occasion by the actions of an Israeli soldier, who drove the butt of the rifle into her face … As Ha’aretz relates, Sahar Vardi was dubbed a traitor and the daughter of a traitor by far-right groups in Israel. Her father is Amiel Vardi, a researcher and lecturer in classics at the Hebrew University. He is one of the founders of Ta’ayush, an Arab and Jewish political activist group that demonstrates on the issue of mass detentions of Palestinians that also engages in humanitarian aid activity. His reward for trying to help Palestinian farmers reach their vineyards during the grape harvest was a bullet from an Israeli settler.
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/february262011/sahar-vardi-tk.php
Siege / Restriction of movement
3 injured in Gaza tunnel collapse
GAZA CITY (Ma‘an) 27 Feb — Three Palestinians were injured Sunday when a smuggling tunnel collapsed near Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, medics said. Gaza medical spokesman Adham Abu Salmiya said the injured were transferred to Yousef An-Najjar Hospital. [End]
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=363856
Palestinians turn to computer technology to avoid Israeli roadblocks
Media Line 27 Feb — Checkpoint-buster program uses text messages to warn drivers of long lines ahead – Adopting an attitude of  ‘If you can’t beat ’em, go around ’em, ‘ Palestinian computer programmers have developed a simple text-messaging system to help cope with surprise or crowded checkpoints set up by the Israeli army across the West Bank. Called “Ezma,” or Arabic for traffic, the program is sustained on a user-fed databank that ferries it to subscribers, much like a traffic monitoring system in other countries …”The days of long lines don’t exist anymore. The IDF has learned the lessons and has even set up special units to deal with roadblocks,” Lt.-Col. Avital Leibovitz, an IDF spokeswoman, told The Media Line … But Alon said the line or no lines, he perceived a real threat coming from technology-savvy Palestinians like Al-Badawi and Samar, who are like their peers leading revolutions in Egypt and Tunisians.
http://www.themedialine.org/news/news_detail.asp?NewsID=31498
Waterborne diseases likely to erupt in the Mediterranean
Salem-News 26 Feb — The quality of water in Gaza is deteriorating rapidly, and until another source of water is found, the population in Gaza remains at risk as there is little that can be done as long as the Israel policy of closure continues. Ninety percent of the water available in Gaza coming from the coastal aquifer is undrinkable … The treatment of Gaza’s waste water cannot progress as long as Israel restricts basic building materials and adequate levels of fuel and electricity, and, with a rising population over-burdening the capacity of the current facilities. Now it looks like the closure will imperil Israel as the bacteria infested untreated waste water dumped into the sea off Gaza will inevitably flow to Israeli beaches and further up north and beyond.
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/february262011/gaza-water.php
2 Gaza border crossings open for limited goods
GAZA CITY (Ma‘an) 27 Feb — Israeli authorities will open two crossing into Gaza on Sunday for the transfer of limited quantities of goods, fuel and construction material, a Palestinian official said … Fattouh added that Israeli authorities would also allow the export of two truckloads of flowers and one truckload of tomatoes from the besieged coastal enclave to European countries.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=363714
Detention
Video: 11-year-old Palestinians stonethrower arrested
Ynet 27 Feb — Footage shows officers chasing down boy who took part in West Bank riot, taking him to police station without chaperone. B’Tselem: Stop treating kids as if they are dangerous wanted criminals [this video has been around for a while, but apparently Ynet has just discovered it]
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4035104,00.html
IOA imprisons Hamas MP for six months
SALFIT, (PIC) 27 Feb — The Israeli occupation authority (IOA) sentenced Hamas MP and former finance minister Dr. Omar Abdulrazek to six months in administrative detention. The international campaign for the release of detained Palestinian MPs in a statement on Sunday lashed out at the international silence toward the continued IOA “piracy” against elected representatives of the people.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcO
PA militias transfer detainee Annatsheh to Jericho hospital
Al-KHALIL, (PIC) 27 Feb — The family of political detainee Mutasim Annatsheh said that the Palestinian authority intelligence apparatus in Jericho city transferred their son to hospital after his health deteriorated. According to his family, Annatsheh suffers from irregular heartbeat as a result of the maltreatment and physical abuse he is exposed to at the hands of PA interrogators. The PA intelligence refused to release the detainee, although there was a decision from the higher court of justice demanding his immediate release. Prisoner Annatsheh is the brother of Al-Qassam martyr Mamoun and has been kidnapped in September 2010 without any guilt or charge leveled against him.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bc
Reprisals
Gaza govt: Israel lying about projectile numbers
GAZA CITY (Ma‘an) 27 Feb — …”Over the past days, the Israeli occupation has been publishing lies on the firing of projectiles from Gaza toward Israel, in order to create excuses to prepare world public opinion for an escalation against Gaza,” the statement said. 
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=363913
Rocket fired from Gaza hits Israel, no injuries
JERUSALEM (AFP) 27 Feb — A rocket fired from the Gaza Strip hit Israeli territory on Sunday morning, raising Israel’s alert level but causing no damage or casualties, according to Israel’s military and police. The latest rocket, which the military’s spokeswoman said struck a field in the Eshkol region in southern Israel, comes after a string of Israeli air raids targeting militant training camps across the Gaza Strip on Saturday night.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=363747
Activism / Solidarity
Clashes continue throughout Silwan
Silwan, Jerusalem (SILWANIC) 27 Feb — Violent clashes resurged in Silwan yesterday evening, 26 February, with Israeli forces firing round after round of tear gas and rubber bullets at Palestinian demonstrators. 20 Palestinian residents were injured by rubber bullets. Eyewitness accounts report that Israeli forces ambushed a number of young demonstrators. 3 paramedics were also injured.
http://silwanic.net/?p=12716
Attack in Hebron and a ‘Jesus challenged empire’ / Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh
[with video] BETHLEHEM 26 Feb — I joined the large demonstration in the old city of Al-Khalil/Hebron that is commemorating the day 17 years ago when a Jewish settler massacred worshippers in the Haram Ibrahimi. In today’s report, we look at the large popular resistance movement and demonstrations today (e.g. in Hebron where we got attacked). The video of inspiring events in Bethlehem to Hebron is included.
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/february262011/rebel-jesus-mq.php
Hundreds rally in Jerusalem against racism
Ynet 26 Feb —  Some 1,500 left-wing activists gathered in Jerusalem’s Zion Square Saturday to protest “the wave of racism consuming the country and Israeli society” due to government policies and especially those backed by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. A large number of youth group members were present at the rally, as well as activists belonging to Labor, Peace Now, and Meretz. Posters said, “Ivette – Niet” and “Fight racism – protect Zionism” as well as “Fight the government of darkness”.   
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4034499,00.html
Fatah youth vows non-violent resistance
RAMALLAH (Ma‘an) 27 Feb — The Fatah Youth Movement said Saturday that despite the US veto of an anti-settlement resolution at the UN, the group remained committed to non-violent resistance
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=363665
Palestinians and Libya / Egypt
PCHR: Thousands of Palestinians stranded abroad since Egypt events
RAMALLAH, (PIC) 27 Feb — Thousands of Gazans have been stranded abroad for over a month during changes in Egypt that have hindered their entry into the Cairo International Airport, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) has said. Palestinians returning to the Gaza Strip must transit Egypt before crossing over to the strip through Rafah.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcO
Ambassador: Palestinians in Libya are safe
BETHLEHEM (Ma‘an) — The 70,000 Palestinians in Libya are safe, but actions must be taken to ensure their continued protection, Palestinian Ambassador in Tripoli Atif Mustafa Auda said Sunday.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=363746
Palestinian refugees
Jihad slams Lebanese gov’t for changing law concerning Palestinian refugees
BEIRUT, (PIC) 27 Feb — The Islamic Jihad Movement said that the amendment made to the law of labor and social security in Lebanon only serves the policy of resettlement that is rejected by the Palestinian people, calling on the Lebanese government and parliament to reconsider this law.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2b
Harb approves draft on Palestinian work permits
DS 23 Feb — BEIRUT: Caretaker Labor Minister Butros Harb approved Tuesday a decision to organize Palestinian refugees’ work based on which they would be granted work permits …  Over 400,000 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are registered at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. The bulk of these refugees live in and around 12 camps across the country. Palestinian refugees are barred from all but the minimum amount of professions in the country … In August, the Parliament passed a draft law based on which Palestinian refugees would be granted work permits, access to a few additional professions and the provision of medical care services that would be funded by UNRWA, with most major concerns remaining unaddressed.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_ID=1&article_ID=125208&categ_id=1#axzz1FBShmCdR
Palestinian refugees may become a political vanguard / Ruba Salih
DS 25 Feb …the long-standing issue of the Palestinian refugees’ right of return, enshrined in international law since 1949, remains unresolved. The recent release of the “Palestine papers” has, if anything, confirmed the lack of any serious plan that would bring justice to four generations of displacement and statelessness. For the last 60 years and more, Palestinian refugees have been held hostage by two inflexible standpoints. On the one hand, Israel has adamantly refused to be held accountable for the tragedy of the refugee crisis, the Nakba, and is only ready to accommodate, on historical Palestine, a symbolic number of first-generation refugees. On the other hand, many host countries (with the exception of Jordan, where Palestinians have access to citizenship rights but are subject to more subtle forms of discrimination and exclusion) have endorsed the claim that tawtin [naturalization] and even tatwir (or development) would constitute a de-facto assimilation of the refugee populations and, eventually, undermine their right of return.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_ID=10&article_ID=125298&categ_id=5#axzz1FBShmCdR
Displaced families from areas adjacent to Nahr al-Bared still in limbo
DS 22 Feb — TRIPOLI: More than 100 Palestinian families displaced from the area surrounding Nahr al-Bared refugee camp have been left in limbo by the government’s delay in honoring its commitment to reconstruct their homes, The Daily Star can reveal … U.N. Relief and Works Agency’s  northern project manager Charles Higgins said that those displaced from the camp’s adjacent area were stuck waiting for reconstruction money pledged in 2008.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_ID=1&article_ID=125158&categ_id=1#axzz1FBShmCdR
Political news
Unity tops agenda in West Bank, Gaza
RAMALLAH/GAZA (Ma‘an) 27 Feb — An all-factions committee was called in Gaza, as legal professionals announced a sit-down in the West Bank to discuss mechanisms by which to use the Palestinian Basic Law to end the state of political division. In Gaza City, independent figures invited Sunday all Palestinian factions to a meeting where organizers said delegates would discuss current options to end the Palestinian split … In Ramallah, lawmakers agreed on Saturday to prepare a document based on Palestinian Basic Law and the constitution which would attempt to repair the division between the executive and juridical authorities when Hamas established independent rule in Gaza, and the West Bank set up an alternative government.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=363878
Dweik: Call for elections illegal
AL-KHALIL, (PIC) 27 Feb — Speaker of the Palestinian legislative council Dr. Aziz Dweik has said that the call for legislative and presidential elections was illegal. He told the PIC on Sunday that de facto Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and his premier Salam Fayyad were trying to rid themselves of crises by calling for those elections. Dweik opined that such calls were insignificant as long as the duo (Abbas & Fayyad) were not committed to ending the internal split.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcO
Other news
New resource tracks Israeli arms exports / Adam Horowitz
Mondoweiss 27 Feb — UAVs are a key export of Israel’s arms industry. A number of Israeli firms export drones, most prominently Aeronautics Defense Systems, Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries. UAVs are commonly used for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and targeting missions. More recently some models have begun to carry armed payloads.
http://mondoweiss.net/2011/02/new-resource-tracks-and-analyzes-israeli-arms-exports.html
Gaza assailants plant bomb under Christian car
Ynet 27 Feb — Dr. Maher Ayyad say received text messages to halt evangelical work or face harsh punishment … Ayyad says he does not preach his faith. 
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4035146,00.html
Police: Campus guards attacked son of commander
BETHLEHEM (Ma‘an) 27 Feb — Palestinian Authority police on Sunday said arrest warrants were issued for university security guards because they “brutally attacked” a police chief’s son.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=363829
Israeli, Palestinian entrepreneurs come together in search of investors
Haaretz 27 Feb — The event, at Jaffa’s Peres Center for Peace, drew 125 programmers, user experience experts, graphic artists, businessmen and investors. They included 111 Israelis, but only 14 Palestinians, from places including Jenin, Nablus and Ramallah
http://english.themarker.com/israeli-palestinian-entrepreneurs-come-together-in-search-of-investors-1.345923
Analysis / Opinion
Toward Palestine’s ‘Mubarek moment’ / Ali Abunimah
The Palestinian Authority should dissolve itself, as it is acting in Israel’s interest, writer says … There are numerous reasons to oppose new PA elections, even if Hamas and Fatah were to sort out their differences. The experience since 2006 demonstrates that democracy, governance and normal politics are impossible under Israel’s brutal military occupation. The Palestinian body politic was divided not into two broad political streams offering competing visions, as in other electoral democracies, but one stream that is aligned with, supported by and dependent on the occupation and its foreign sponsors, and another that remains committed, at least nominally, to resistance. These are contradictions that cannot be resolved through elections.
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/02/2011224141158174266.html#
Before the almond trees disappear / Daphna Golan
We do not have to continue to obliterate the past of the Arabs who lived in this land. It would be better to acknowledge the pain of their loss and offer them peaceful coexistence … Lifta is a small link in Jerusalem’s shrinking green necklace, its extraordinarily beautiful terrace agriculture a reminder of an extinct cultural landscape. Its land is being divided up and marketed even though no caretaker has yet been assigned to see to the preservation of its springs and green spaces. Jerusalem’s treasures are being privatized and given to well-connected developers, who become rich at the expense of the public and future generations. The village could have symbolized the hope of reconciliation.
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/before-the-almond-trees-disappear-1.345926
Either democracy — or Hebron / Carlo Strenger
Israel’s right-wing, time and again, claims a monopoly for the Zionist idea: In a recent article, Moshe Arens claims that those who are against schools taking students to Hebron have lost their roots in the land of Israel because the foundation of Zionism, has always been the return of the Jewish people to the land of its forefathers. Therefore, he argues, establishing a Palestinian state that would include some of Judaism’s most sacred places undermines the entire Zionist idea. To put it in a nutshell: For Arens, Zionism without Hebron is dead. 
http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/strenger-than-fiction/either-democracy-or-hebron-1.345693
The racist entity that is taking over Israel must be toppled / Sefi Rachlevsky
The atrocities in Libya send an unequivocal message to the world: Patriotism lies with democracy, not with the regime — The wretchedness of the law in the face of Rabbi Dov Lior has many meanings, and Lior’s refusal to be interrogated over his support for “The King’s Torah – The Laws for Killing Gentiles” – only marginally gets at the heart of the matter. Thirty years ago, the terrorist organization known as the “Jewish Underground” was set up with the purpose of killing Arabs. The group’s head of operations, Menachem Livni – who was convicted on multiple counts of murder before being pardoned by the regime – testified at the time that the living spirit, the initiator, the religious instructor and the coordinator of the murders was Lior.
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/the-racist-entity-that-is-taking-over-israel-must-be-toppled-1.345929
Arab MKs must beg forgiveness for Libya visit / Salman Masalha
All the [Israeli] Arab public figures who went to Libya should now publicly express remorse and beg forgiveness, first from the Libyan people and next from the Arab citizens they purport to represent.
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/arab-mks-must-beg-forgiveness-for-libya-visit-1.345930
From Chicago to the world: about Mordechai Vanunu and a ‘brief’ history / Eileen Fleming
Salem-News 26 Feb (CHICAGO) – As of this this weekend, it has been five years since this reporter started covering the situation of Mordechai Vanunu who was imprisoned by Israel for blowing the whistle on Israel’s nuclear weapon’s program
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/february262011/vanunu-history-ef.php
One nation, under repression: the Arab world and the ‘Palestine effect’ / Yousef Munayyer
The focus here is not meant to be on which region is more repressive, or which period or year was most repressive. Rather, what stands out immediately is that these 22 states, with all their different domestic dynamics, acted in a remarkably similar fashion over time throughout the Arab world. In many of the 28 years on this scale, the three series go up together or down together to similar extents. This defies just about anything anyone could expect when conducting such an analysis … Certainly, I would not go so far as to say that the revolution in Tunisia or Egypt or the uprisings taking place across the Arab world were immediate reactions to anything going on in Palestine … Rather, Palestine is a central Arab issue often adopted by opposition groups across the Arab world, whether for self-interested or altruistic purposes, and has been for the better part of a century. 
http://muftah.org/?p=834
Mideast / Arab world
Saturday: 19 Iraqis killed, 33 wounded, hundreds possibly beaten
The casualty figures from yesterday’s protests continued to rise today as reports trickled out from a number of cities across Iraq; however, the most chilling news came from Baghdad were hundreds of protesters may be detained and suffering from beatings. At least 19 Iraqis were killed and 33 more wounded besides those rumored beaten during arrests. Also, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani asked the government to improve services and combat corruption, while Human Rights Watch called for an investigation into the illegal use of force by security personnel. A possible explanation for the low estimate of wounded yesterday comes from four journalists who saw many wounded detainees inside a Defense Ministry prison in Baghdad yesterday. The four journalists, who were beaten and arrested as well, used their connections to gain freedom
http://original.antiwar.com/updates/2011/02/26/saturday-19-iraqis-killed-33-wounded-hundreds-possibly-beaten/
Lebanese protesters urge political system change in Beirut rally
Feb 27 (Reuters) — In wake of unrest sweeping Mideast, some Lebanese protesters chanted the now-familiar refrain of ‘The people want to bring down the regime …”We are here to bring down the sectarian system in Lebanon because it is more of a dictatorial system than dictatorship systems themselves,” said protester Rahshan Saglam.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/international/lebanese-protesters-urge-political-system-change-in-beirut-rally-1.346006
Factbox: Unrest in Arabian peninsula
Feb 27 (Reuters) – Unrest sweeping the Arab world against entrenched leaders has spread to the Arabian Peninsula, with tens of thousands demanding change in Yemen and Bahrain and smaller numbers demonstrating in neighbouring Gulf countries. Here is a summary of recent protests in the oil-producing region, which have broken out despite pledges of billions of dollars in state handouts and modest political changes designed to appease popular opposition to autocratic rulers. 
http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/factbox-unrest-in-arabian-peninsula
Deaths in Oman protests
AJ 27 Feb — At least two people have been killed in an industrial town in Oman, after police fired rubber bullets on anti-government protesters … Witnesses said a police station and a government building were set on fire.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/02/2011227112850852905.html
Tunisia prime minister resigns after protests
TUNIS, Feb 27 (Reuters) – Tunisia Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi announced his resignation on Sunday following a wave of street protests. Critics have accused Ghannouchi of being to close to the North African state’s former government, toppled in an uprising last month, and of failing to enact reforms … Three people have been killed and several people wounded in clashes between security forces and demonstrators since Friday over Ghannouchi’s role in the interim government.
http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/tunisia-prime-minister-resigns-after-protests
Bahraini Shi‘ite leader hints could accept king
MANAMA, Feb 27 (Reuters) – A Bahraini hardline Shi‘ite dissident said on Sunday he would accept a Western-style constitutional monarchy in the Gulf Arab kingdom if protesters supported the measure. Hassan Mushaimaa was allowed to return to Bahrain as part of several concessions by the ruling al-Khalifa family to Bahrain’s majority Shi‘ites who have been at the forefront of nearly two weeks of protests demanding more say in government.
http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/bahraini-shiite-leader-hints-could-accept-king
Egypt proposes presidency reform
AJ 26 Feb — Egypt is planning constitutional amendments that would open up competition for the presidency and only allow the winner to stay in office for eight years. The proposed amendments, outlined on Saturday by a judicial committee appointed by Egypt’s ruling military council, will be put to a referendum ahead of elections that will hand power back to a civilian government.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/02/2011226163611509450.html
Afghanistan
Afghan night raid survivors, in their own words
KABUL (Reuters) 26 Feb — The growing use of “night raids” by NATO-led and Afghan forces to kill or capture insurgents is one of the most controversial strategies in the Afghan war. Here are some accounts by Afghan civilians of night raids they experienced, which left them injured or bereaved.
http://www.uruknet.info/?new=75388
U.S.
Will the Arab revolutions finally penetrate the US echo chamber? / James M. Wall
Salem-News 26 Feb — CHICAGO — Alastair Crooke, a veteran British diplomat and author, wisely reminds us that echo chambers are extremely difficult to penetrate — The revolutions that began in Tunisia, continued in Egypt and now threaten Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, are spreading throughout the Middle East. Perhaps, one day, the revolution may even engulf Palestine. There are signs emanating from the echo chamber that controls US thought on all matters pertaining to Israel, that sounds of the revolutions may soon penetrate into the chamber.
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/february262011/arab-revolut-jw.php

 
     

At J Street, Eltahawy gets standing ovation when she calls on peaceful revolution to come to Israel and Palestine

Feb 27, 2011

Philip Weiss

 

I’ve been at the J Street conference for two hours now and the political program seems to be, End the Netanyahu government now, because we’re in deep trouble. But that message was overshadowed by Mona Eltahawy, the Egyptian journalist, who actuallly actually got applause when she spoke about the “massacre” in Gaza and Arab “hatred for Israel,” then got a standing ovation when she called on the assembled to lead a peaceful revolution for Palestinian “dignity and freedom.”

First Eltahawy, then the attack on Netanyahu.

Eltahawy’s theme was that the Arab revolutions are coming to Palestine inevitably, there’s no border. All the Arab revolutionaries care about Palestine. She quoted a Tunisian friend who said, “My feet are in Tunisia, my mind is in the west, I love the culture, I love the literature But my heart is in the east, with Palestinians.. I will not be a full and open friend with the west until Palestinians get their freedom and dignity, this is key.”

She also quoted young Egyptians with no personal knowledge of war. “But they don’t need war [to understand]…. because they see what happens to Palestinians on a daily on a daily basis, and they don’t like it… [They say], The hatred for Israel… will not end until you lift the siege on Gaza and treat Palestinians with freedom and dignity.”

Applause mostly from the young people, there are about 500 students here. You can see they love the Arab revolutions and want to feel so good about something themselves.  

Eltahawy’s closing challenge was that just as the Arab dictators responded late and stupidly to the demands of the people, Israel and Obama and its friends are responding late to the political movement afoot. They were completely tone-deaf to Gaza, she said; as Arabs everywhere watched Palestinians being “torn apart.” It was a “massacre,” she said twice. Great to hear that from a Jewish pulpit.

“My question to J street and to Israel, do you want to be ten days too late, do you want to be like these dictators that [Netanyahu]… loves so dearly… the people have outpaced the Obama administration…Here’s my challenge to you–“

Just as Egyptians and Tunisians “have managed to get rid of the unriddable…” wihtout burning one foreign flag, “the best of Gandhi and Martin Luther King combined,” it is time “to march for the freedom and dignity of our Palestinian brothers and sisters, and we will.

“Make that call, I will be with you. It’s about time, and it’s something that everyone is thinking about.”

She added, “This is not something that is supposed to scare you.. Embrace.. nonviolence. Millions of Arabs peacefully dismantled dictatorships ….Embrace them and reach out to them, and we too will march for the freedom and dignity of Palestinians.. Cll for that nonviolent revolution for freedom and dignity for Palestians, and I will be there.”

Wild cheers.

The anti-Netanyahu theme is all through the conference. I gather that Jeremy Ben-Ami went after Netanyahu last night.

And just now Ron Pundak, an Israeli liberal, threw cold water on Eltahawy’s parade by saying that nothing is going to change Israel as it is currently constituted, the government will do nothing.  

 

“Unfortunately we are governed by a prime minister, whose main policy is based on a paranoiac feeling, on an obsession on thinking that everyone is against us…

“The obsession with dealing with the past– the future is not at all calculated, and issues like the Arab Peace Initiative are not on the table, and we are looking at everything as if all criticism is anti-Zionist or anti-Semitic or anti-something…

“We are in a situation on the verge of tragedy.”

So far I have heard two Israelis blasting their country for not grabbing the Arab Peace Initiative — like Sadat’s flight to Jerusalem in ’77, Knesset Member Ophir Paz-Pines said–but with the sense that that time may be past. The Arab people have woken up, and they don’t like us.

J Street’s answer would seem to be what my answer is, go after the lobby and the American Jewish community because that’s where the power is. Though the agenda here is clearly a two-state solution. I’ll keep you posted. 

 
     

For Egypt’s workers the revolution is far from over

Feb 27, 2011

Philip Rizk
     

The opposition is building an interim government while Saif says there is nothing going on…

Feb 27, 2011

Seham 

Protesters Continue to Make Gains

Libya protesters control Zawiyah
Tanks have surrounded Libyan city as residents brace for raid by pro-Gaddafi forces at any moment.

And more news from Libya:

‘Security forces driven out of Misurata’
Reports coming out of Libya’s third largest city suggest that Misurata is now in the hands of opposition supporters. Khalid, a resident of Misurata, spoke to Al Jazeera’s Sami Zeidan about who is in control after clashes and a standoff with an army unit. He said security forces have been driven out of the city.

Libyan military defections mount
There is mounting evidence that a growing number of Libyan military personnel are defecting and joining the opposition against Colonel Gaddafi.  At the nation’s biggest navy base in opposition- controlled Benghazi, officers have declared a ‘free Libya.’  In the western city of Zawiya, amateur film shows soldiers being carried by protesters.  “One Libya, one people” they chanted.  Opposition sources say the military units defecting to them are well-armed, well-disciplined and well- organised.
http://feb17.info/videos/libyan-military-defections-mount/ 
Army joins the revolution in Az Zawiya
http://www.libyafeb17.com/?p=2758 
Top Libyan oil firm staff join protests – Quryna
RABAT Feb 26 (Reuters) – Employees at Libya’s Arabian Gulf Oil Co (Agoco) have joined the revolt against leader Muammar Gaddafi and have kept operations going since the unrest started, the online edition of the Quryna newspaper reported on Saturday. Quoting a statement it received from what it said were the company’s employees, Quryna said “the company runs its operations at all fields and production sites … and has managed since the start of the uprising to sustain operations at its oilfields … and at Al-Huraiqa port”.  Agoco, affiliated to the state-owned National Oil Company, was pumping about 450,000 barrels per day in April 2010 from some of the country’s biggest oilfields including Sarir and Nafoora, according to its website. Three of its employees were killed during the unrest, it added.
http://af.reuters.com/article/commoditiesNews/idAFLDE71P0HG20110226
Gaddafi’s defectors denounce ‘government of Mussolini and Hitler’
Some of the former Libyan ministers and diplomats who have turned on the regime of Muammar Gaddafi
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/26/gaddafi-defectors
Libya’s revolution headquarters
Benghazi, the de facto capital of the opposition, is where much of anti-Gaddafi actions are co-ordinated and executed.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/02/201122753146444424.html 
Battle of Benghazi: How protesters seized city
BENGHAZI, Libya — The young men of Benghazi pounded the dreaded military barracks in the city center with everything they could find. They threw stones and crude bombs made of tin cans stuffed with gunpowder. They drove bulldozers into its walls. All under a blaze of gunfire from troops inside that literally tore people in half. 
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41794067/ns/world_news-mideast/n_africa/
Translated: Misratah demonstrators capture a Brigadier and relative to Gaddafi
http://www.libyafeb17.com/?p=2729 
Footage of Defeated Mercenary and Injured Protesters being treated, Tripoli (Feb. 25)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fh1nQ6wDdkU&feature=player_embedded 
Glad tidings from Kufra
At 4:18 -”We are in complete control. Kufrah Airport is in a strategic location.  It ties Libya to the rest of Africa.  We here, oh youth of Libya, no Mercenary airplanes will enter from here.”
http://feb17.info/videos/glad-tidings-from-kufra/
Mass Anti-Gaddafi Demonstration in Misrata (Feb. 25)
http://feb17.info/videos/mass-anti-gaddafi-demonstration-in-misrata-feb-25/
Misratah comes out in HUGE numbers to honour its martyrs
http://www.libyafeb17.com/?p=2695
Demonstrations in Tripoli
Demonstration gains steam as men from side streets join up with the bulk of protesters in Tripoli!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVOUk4EJubY&feature=player_embedded
Mass Demonstration after Friday prayer in Darna (Feb. 25)
http://feb17.info/videos/mass-demonstration-after-friday-prayer-in-darna-feb-25/
Liberated youth of Benghazi cleaning up the street
http://feb17.info/videos/liberated-youth-of-benghazi-cleaning-up-the-street/
Demonstrators in Souq Al Jumaa, Tripoli (Feb. 25)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nMta1YwuSg&feature=player_embedded 
Protesters in Tripoli destroy Gaddafi bilboard (Feb 25)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFlZGZ8d4Xo&feature=player_embedded 
Latest pictures of Al Birka Barracks and Benghazi
http://www.libyafeb17.com/?p=2826 
The Martyrs
Young Girl from Shahhat killed by .57 Cal Mercenary heavy machine gun, Bayda Hospital (Feb. 17) **GRAPHIC CONTENT**
http://feb17.info/videos/young-girl-from-shahhat-killed-by-57-cal-mercenary-heavy-machine-gun-bayda-hospital-feb-17/ 
Fallan Libyan Heroes of Zawiya
http://feb17.info/videos/fallan-libyan-heroes-of-zawiya/
One of the fallen heroes in Souq Al-Jumaa, Tripoli (Feb. 25)
http://feb17.info/videos/one-of-the-fallen-heroes-in-souq-al-jumaa-tripoli-feb-25/
Son saying a prayer by the grave of his murdered Father, Tripoli cemetery (Feb. 26)
http://feb17.info/videos/son-praying-for-his-martyred-father-tripoli-cemetery-feb-26/ 
Soldiers ‘Burned Alive’ by their own Forces for Refusing to Fight Protesters
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agVUTcPUCB4&feature=player_embedded 
One of the Protesters killed after Friday prayer in Souq Al Jumaa, Tripoli (Feb. 25)
http://feb17.info/videos/one-of-the-protesters-killed-after-friday-prayer-in-souq-al-jumaa-tripoli-feb-25/ 
One of the many brave protesters that helped liberate Benghazi (Graphic)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAbdMFE9JiA&feature=player_embedded
Bloody streets of Tripoli after the killing of Protester in Souk Al Jumaa (Feb. 25)
http://feb17.info/videos/bloody-streets-of-tripoli-after-the-killing-of-protester-in-souk-al-jumaa-feb-25/ 
Aftermath of the Battle at Misrata Airport
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mV1L2eSG1-M&feature=player_embedded
Eyewitness Accounts of the Battle at Misrata Airport
http://feb17.info/videos/eyewitness-accounts-of-the-battle-at-misrata-airport/
Mass Protest/Funeral on Friday for Martyrs of the Battle for Misrata Airport
http://feb17.info/videos/massive-funeral-in-misrata-after-battle-of-the-airport-on-friday/
Breaking Video: Mercenaries shooting Protesters at close range prior to the liberation of Benghazi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsYLfGJlsKI&feature=player_embedded
Man shot in his forehead – GRAPHIC
http://www.youtube.com/verify_age?next_url=http%3A//www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3Dyib_sB9Ci58%26feature%3Dplayer_embedded
Disturbing images emerging from Tripoli Medical Centre
http://s257.photobucket.com/albums/hh220/molibya/Libyan%20Martyrs/?albumview=slideshow
Injured Child in Misrata Hospital
http://feb17.info/videos/injured-child-in-misrata-hospital/
A message from a woman in Tripoli
http://www.libyafeb17.com/?p=2819
Protesters in Souq Al Jumaa, Tripoli (Feb. 25)
After showing empty cases of live ammunition fired at them, the man at 2:15 asks: “Where are the reporters that they said would be here on Friday? Today is Friday! The reporters must be with him in his base at Bab Al Aziziyya!”
http://feb17.info/videos/protesters-in-souk-al-jumaa-tripoli-feb-25/ 
Reminder…the Libyan people have suffered for over 40 years
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtIiKsIgmIY&feature=player_embedded 
Other Violence
Foreigners in Libya report being beaten, robbed
Guest workers from Egypt, Tunisia and other nations tell of being attacked by Libyan security forces, robbed and accused of being traitors and inciting the uprising against Moammar Kadafi. Paying $200 for a government-sponsored taxi ride to the Tunisian border sounded like a bad deal. But Tunisian laborer Amr Soltan had no idea just how bad until he and his friends were driven instead to a prison, locked up for five days, robbed of their cellphones by police and beaten by guards.
http://feeds.latimes.com/%7Er/latimes/middleeast/%7E3/0EggB6jgsrM/la-fg-libya-brutality-20110227,0,4259996.story 
Qadhafi Clings to Power
Libya’s Gaddafi clings to Tripoli
With much of the oil-producing regions in opposition hands, Gaddafi’s power base shrinks to the capital’s periphery.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/02/201122792426740496.html
Battle for Tripoli continues
Most of Libya is out of control of the government, and Muammar Gaddafi’s grip on power may soon be confined only to Tripoli, Libya’s former interior minister told Al Jazeera. General Abdul Fatteh Younis, called upon Gaddafi’s leader to end his resistance to the uprising, although he does not expect him to do so. The embattled Libyan regime of passed out guns to civilian supporters, set up checkpoints and sent armed patrols roving the terrorised capital on Saturday. Some of Libya’s security forces reportedly have given up the fight. Footage believed to be filmed on Friday appeared to show soldiers in uniform joining the protesters. Al Jazeera’s Hoda Abdel-Hamid is in eastern Libya from where she wraps up the latest from across the country.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Mu-zp_yCCo&feature=youtube_gdata 
Inside Story – Gaddafi’s inner circle 
As some of those close to the Libyan leader continue to defect, how important is his remaining inner circle? And who are they?

Inside Gaddafi’s bunker 
As pro-democracy supporters gain control of cities in eastern Libya, many of Gaddafi’s properties have been ransacked and destroyed.  
Al Jazeera’s Jacky Rowland gives us a glimpse into one of his so-called palaces, on the outskirts of Benghazi.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7L1hWPGVcB0&feature=player_embedded
Saif Al Islam: You will discover that what you heard was a big joke.
http://www.libyafeb17.com/?p=2655 
Gaddafi’s son denies turmoil sweeping Libya-report
WASHINGTON, Feb 27 (Reuters) – The son of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi denied in a U.S. television interview that turmoil was sweeping the country and said the military did not use force against the people, despite reports to the contrary.
http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/gaddafis-son-denies-turmoil-sweeping-libya-report
Exclusive: Amanpour Interviews Gadhafi’s Son
In an exclusive interview with “This Week” host Christiane Amanpour, Saif al-Islam Gadhafi, the son of Libyan leader Col. Moammar Gadhafi and one of his chief advisers, insisted Libya was calm, the military has not attacked any civilians and reports of Libyan diplomats abandoning their posts were simply a ‘miscommunication.’ 
http://abcnews.go.com/International/saif-gadhafi-interviewed-by-christiane-amanpour-worldwide-exclusive/story?id=13011545
Jazeera Reports: Witchcraft and Sorcery books found in Gaddafi’s Palace in Bayda
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr_GI91nees&feature=player_embedded
Humanitarian Crisis
Doctors Needed
To all physicians whom are willing to provide services, expertise, or resources. A committee of doctors are putting these resources together in a consolidated effort to provide medical services to Libya. Groups of doctors are currently in Libya and others are making their way to Libya to provide these services directly. All those willing and able to assist in these efforts please email for further information. Libyanhealth_professionals @ yahoo.com.  Updates to follow
http://feb17.info/media/doctors-needed/ 
Libya: Stop the Crackdown
In Libya, Colonel Qaddafi’s armed forces are using machine guns and fighter jets against pro-democracy protesters — hundreds have already been killed and, without immediate international action, the situation could spiral into a national bloodbath.  The United Nations Security Council and the European Union are in emergency sessions on Libya this week. If we can pressure them to agree to a no-fly zone over Libya, a freeze of Qaddafi’s, his family’s and his high command’s assets, targeted sanctions against the regime, and international prosecution of any military officials involved in the crackdown — this could stop airforce bombings and split Qaddafi’s command structure.  We have no time to lose — the people of Libya are being slaughtered by government forces. Click to send a message directly to all the UNSC delegations, EU Foreign Ministers and the High Representative for the EU to stop the violence and share this with everyone — let’s inundate them with messages and spur them to action!
http://www.avaaz.org/en/libya_stop_the_crackdown/96.php 
Report from Doctor in Misrata Hospital
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm2Y_tKIkL0&feature=player_embedded 
British military secretly flies into Libya to evacuate foreign nationals
In a hush-hush rescue mission, British planes land in the desert to take 150 oil workers and their families to Malta. A Royal Navy frigate is expected to arrive in Benghazi on Sunday to pick up some of the 300 Britons believed to still be in Libya. In a hush-hush rescue mission, British airplanes land in the eastern Libya desert and take 150 oil workers and their families to Malta. A Royal Navy frigate is expected to arrive in Benghazi on Sunday to pick up some of the 300 Britons believed to still be in Libya.
http://feeds.latimes.com/%7Er/latimes/middleeast/%7E3/Ti49ZzGdEEs/la-fg-libya-rescue-20110227,0,5071671.story 
Expats flee chaotic Libya en masse
Thousands camp outside Tripoli’s airport for days on little more than bread and water in the hope of leaving.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/02/201122703618479675.html 
100,000 have fled Libya, U.N. refugee agency says
GENEVA, Feb 27 (Reuters) – Nearly 100,000 people have fled violence in Libya in the past week, streaming into Tunisia and Egypt in a growing humanitarian crisis, the U.N. refugee agency said on Sunday.  They include Tunisians, Egyptians, Libyans and third country nationals including Chinese and other Asians, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement. About half of the 100,000 have gone to Tunisia and half to Egypt.  “We call upon the international community to respond quickly and generously to enable these governments to cope with this humanitarian emergency,” U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said. The Geneva-based UNHCR began an airlift of shelter and other relief supplies on Saturday night to Djerba, Tunisia, and the aid will be brought to the Libyan border, it said. 
http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/100000-have-fled-libya-un-refugee-agency-says
Developments
Full Text of UN Resolution imposing sanctions on Libya
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/116663/20110227/un-resolution-libya-sanctions-original-text-un-resolution-1970-2011.htm
Obama: Gaddafi must leave Libya now
The US administration sharpens stance against Libyan leader, urging him for the first time to step down.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2011/02/2011226232530835912.html
UN slaps sanctions on Libyan regime
Security Council unanimously orders travel and assets ban on Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and his inner circle.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2011/02/20112271959190839.html 
UN Security Council hits Qaddafi with sanctions, war crimes investigations
The unanimous Security Council decision increases international pressure on Col. Muammar Qaddafi’s regime in Libya as President Obama calls for Qaddafi to leave power immediately.
http://rss.csmonitor.com/%7Er/feeds/world/%7E3/nkVPmqC0lv0/UN-Security-Council-hits-Qaddafi-with-sanctions-war-crimes-investigations
Interim Libyan govt wins support
“Caretaker administration” led by former justice minister gains the endorsement of the Libyan envoys to the UN and US.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/02/201122702915408866.html
Revealed: Blair’s secret calls to Gaddafi
Ex-PM phones Libyan despot – and urges him to quit, while SAS mounts daring rescue of oil workers stranded in desert. Tony Blair, widely criticised in recent days for offering Muammar Gaddafi “the hand of friendship” seven years ago, made an extraordinary personal intervention when he twice phoned the embattled Libyan dictator on Friday and asked him to stop killing protesters rising up against the regime. 
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/revealed-blairs-secret-calls-to-gaddafi-2226887.html 
Berlusconi: Gadhafi no longer in control of Libya
U.S. imposes sanctions on Libya for Gadhafi’s violent crackdown on protesters, UN to soon discuss possible sanctions; Turkish PM speaks out against UN sanctions, says they will harm the Libyan people.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/international/berlusconi-gadhafi-no-longer-in-control-of-libya-1.345851?localLinksEnabled=false
Gaddafi’s rule is over in Libya -German minister
BERLIN, Feb 26 (Reuters) – German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said on Saturday he believed Muammar Gaddafi would not be able to stay in power after his brutal reponse to the popular uprising in Libya and his rule was over.  In an article to be published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung newspaper on Sunday, Westerwelle criticised the European Union for not acting sooner to impose sanctions against Gaddafi.
http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/gaddafis-rule-is-over-in-libya–german-minister 
Libya rescue: William Hague says Gaddafi ‘must go’
Foreign Secretary William Hague has said “it is time” for Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to step down.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12590204
France closes embassy in Libya, withdraws staff
PARIS, Feb 26 (Reuters) – France has closed its embassy in the Libyan capital Tripoli and flown out its ambassador and staff there, the foreign ministry said on Saturday.  A French military plane pulled out 122 foreigners from Libya on Saturday, of whom 28 were French, it said. France’s air force evacuated 498 French people earlier in the week, leaving only a few who wished to remain for now in the crisis-hit country.
http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/france-closes-embassy-in-libya-withdraws-staff 
Solidarity
In Tunisia, an army of volunteers rushes to aid Libyans
RAS JDIR, TUNISIA – On Friday, Khadiga Mhiri, a 32-year-old pharmacist, was watching scenes of desperate people fleeing over the border from Libya on the television screen of her home in the Tunisian capital, Tunis. 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/26/AR2011022603482.html?wprss=rss_world&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=main-twitter
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, “PFLP Condemns the Gaddafi Regime’s Massacres against the Libyan People”
The PFLP demanded the protection of the Libyan people and their rights, and emphasized its support for the demands of the people of Libya and the Arab masses for freedom, human and national dignity, democracy, social justice, and the fight against corruption and dictatorship.
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/pflp260211.html 
Libyan ambassador to Malta supports the people
The Libyan ambassador to Malta has announced on Al Jazeera that he supports the people. He said he will not resign, but he distances himself from Gaddafi.
http://www.libyafeb17.com/?p=2668
Amid fear for family, Libyans in US take to streets
Amid fear for those caught in the bloodshed in Libya, hundreds of protesters took to the streets of Chicago Saturday to voice their disgust with Moamer Kadhafi’s deadly crackdown. Dozens of protesters gathered in a downtown Chicago plaza on February 21 in support of a mass uprising to put an end to Moamer Kadhafi’s four-decade rule. . Amid fear for those caught in the bloodshed in Libya, hundreds of protesters took to the streets of Chicago Saturday to voice their disgust with Moamer Kadhafi’s deadly crackdown.  Chanting “Libya, Libya don’t you cry, we won’t let your freedom die” and “Enough is enough, Kadhafi’s time is up,” they waved monarchist Libyan flags and stomped on posters of the grim-faced dictator.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/02/26/amid-fear-for-family-libyans-in-us-take-to-streets/ 
Stand Up For Libya: Boston
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIrP_UFBTHg&feature=player_embedded 
Libya, Chicago is with you!
http://www.libyafeb17.com/?p=2733 
Powerful banner at Chicago’s demonstration today
http://www.libyafeb17.com/?p=2761 
Protest Against Gadhafi in Geneva, GE (February 26, 2011)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqErcLxLX_o&feature=player_embedded 
Libya, Rome is with you!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbRchm8HCqA&feature=player_embedded 
“Free Libya” protests in Tokyo
http://www.libyafeb17.com/?p=2670
Analysis/Op-ed
How Egypt Can Help Libya
I suggest that the UN Security Council invite Egypt to intervene, if Libyans approve. A small part of Egypt’s army would dwarf Gaddafi’s forces. Without even having to fight, it could join and support the Libyan rebel forces that have already liberated eastern and southern Libya. This would change the situation completely.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-stallman/how-egypt-can-help-libya_b_828626.html?ref=email_share
‘Gaddafi ruthless, Egyptian army can help get rid of him’ 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNsWkdRmtR4 
Q+A: How will the world’s war crimes court act on Libya?
(Reuters) – The United Nations Security Council has imposed sanctions on Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and referred Libya’s crackdown on anti-government demonstrators to the International Criminal Court.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/27/us-libya-icc-idUSTRE71Q1DB20110227
Across ‘liberated’ eastern Libya, volunteerism and a pulling together
In Benghazi, Libya’s second-largest city, one member of the transitional city council says that ‘we have surprised even ourselves’ as residents have stepped forward to maintain order.
http://rss.csmonitor.com/%7Er/feeds/world/%7E3/pha2VN9cdX0/Across-liberated-eastern-Libya-volunteerism-and-a-pulling-together
Libya celebrates as Gaddafi’s remote strongholds rise against him
On the road from Benghazi to Tripoli, evidence of the dictator’s demise includes sacked barracks and official buildings burned.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/26/libya-celebrates-gaddafi-remote-strongholds 
Benghazi uprising triggers cleaning revolution
BENGHAZI, Libya, Feb 26 (Reuters) – Libyan protesters who swept their oppressive regime from power in the east of the country are now sweeping the streets, with a newfound sense of people power translating into a feeling of civic pride.  In Libya’s second city of Benghazi, protesters who had braved gunfire to wrest control from government troops now clutch brooms, emulating Egyptians who cleaned central Cairo after mass protests toppled President Hosni Mubarak.
http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/benghazi-uprising-triggers-cleaning-revolution 
Libyans remain fearful of Kadafi’s wrath
Even in cities that are no longer under his control, residents live in dread of potential repercussions. For all the rowdy anti-government protests and people saying they’re ready for martyrdom, the fear that Moammar Kadafi has sown for 41 years doesn’t disappear in the few seconds it takes to fire off a round of celebratory gunfire.
http://feeds.latimes.com/%7Er/latimes/middleeast/%7E3/HL5Bog0imCg/la-fg-libya-fear-20110227,0,5967285.story

Libya’s information walls come tumbling down
In case there were any remaining question that Seif al-Islam Qaddafi, the scion of Libya’s fast-fading leader, is not exactly the brightest star in the galaxy, he dispelled those doubts today by appearing on the Al-Arabiya satellite channel to declare that “everything is normal” in Tripoli even as news outlets reported on growing signs that the Qaddafi family is losing its grip on Libya. Earlier this week, Seif had invited foreign journalists to the Libyan capital so they could see for themselves just how wonderfully the Qaddafis were handling what he downplayed as the work of foreign-backed, pill-popping Al Qaeda terrorists bent on Libya’s destruction.
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/02/26/libyas_information_walls_come_tumbling_down
Telling Libya’s story over the Internet
An ad hoc network of information smugglers uses social media, accessed from across the border in Egypt, to share videos and firsthand accounts of the violence. Suleiman Zjailil is a modern-day town crier. He spends his days driving his battered car back and forth across the border with Egypt, smuggling out grainy cellphone videos so the world can see the news from his quarantined land.
http://feeds.latimes.com/%7Er/latimes/middleeast/%7E3/ATw8fDymVBY/la-fg-libya-information-20110227,0,5176350.story 
Libya’s Roman sites unscathed by unrest so far
RABAT, Feb 27 (Reuters) – Libyans appear determined to safeguard their rich cultural heritage during the popular unrest against leader Muammar Gaddafi, protecting it from the looting seen in neighbouring Egypt’s revolution just weeks ago. Conquered by most of the civilizations that held sway over the Mediterranean, Libya’s rich cultural heritage includes Leptis Magna, a prominent coastal city of the Roman empire, whose ruins are some 130 km (80 miles) east of Tripoli.
http://af.reuters.com/article/libyaNews/idAFLDE71M29K20110227?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0
Cartoons/Satire
Map of Libya According to Qaddafi-Imagi-Nation
http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/742/map-of-libya-according-to-qaddafi-imagi-nation
Muammar Gaddafi’s planned resignation speech
‘Muammar Gaddafi’s planned resignation speech,’ as seen by Tariq Ali. “It’s raining outside which is why I cannot address you. Sorry. It seems to be raining inside my tent as well. Can this be rain? No. It’s dogs polluting the uniforms of my bodyguards. No respect for women. Benghazi. I hate that city. Once I […]
http://pulsemedia.org/2011/02/27/muammar-gaddafi%e2%80%99s-planned-resignation-speech/

 
     

Desecrating the American flag

Feb 27, 2011

Morgan

 

Since I got back from Palestine two months ago, every Friday brings me back to the village of Bil’in. I won’t even remember the importance of Friday, as anything other than the start to my weekend, until I stumble across a video in my Facebook mini-feed and watch Haitham’s footage of the weekly demonstration in Bil’in.

During my three-week trip, I made it to two “demos” and spent five days in Bil’in, hanging out in the office of the Popular Committee and getting to know the people who send out articles, photos, and videos to the press and the general public via blogs, YouTube, Facebook, etc. I’m always proud, albeit a little anxious to see their footage, and faces at the demos on Friday.

When I saw Friday’s video start off with the burning of an American flag, I went on a short emotional roller coaster ride. The first emotion was shock–“I know these people, why are they doing this?” The next was worry–“What will the people who don’t know them think?” Then I remembered the U.S. veto.

Last week, the United States was the only country to veto the UN resolution condemning Israeli settlement expansion, knowing full well that its tacit approval would enable Israel to continue to steal land in Bil’in and all over Palestine. I couldn’t help but think of the Consent lecture we were in given in college; they told us that most rape happens when a lack of “no” is interpreted as a “yes.” Why do we speak of freedom as American values, while giving our tacit approval of the rape of Palestine?  It was a short roller coaster ride, but suddenly the image of Palestinians wrapped in kaffiyehs burning an American flag (and stomping on it) was no longer a violent or threatening image. That young man from Bil’in couldn’t possibly desecrate my flag any more than my president did last week.

     

‘Israeli Apartheid Week’ organizers respond to LGBT center’s decision to cancel event under pressure

Feb 27, 2011

Adam Horowitz

 

Below is a statement from the organizers of New York City’s Israeli Apartheid Week responding to the decision by New York LGBT Center to cancel a “Party to End Apartheid” under pressure from donors. You can sign their petition here.

As organizers of New York City’s Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW), we are dismayed to learn that New York’s LGBT Center has canceled the scheduled March 5 “Party to End Apartheid” that was to take place there.  We are equally dismayed that the Center also has banned one of the organizers of this event, and a member of our coalition, the Siegebusters Working Group, from holding its regular meeting at the Center. Israeli Apartheid Week, now entering its seventh year internationally and its fifth year in New York City, is a series of events designed to educate people about Israel’s apartheid nature and to build Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns in concordance with the just demands of Palestinian civil society.

In 2008, The LGBT Center hosted an Israeli Apartheid Week event discussing the boycott campaign against Israeli billionaire, diamond manufacturer, and settlement builder Lev Leviev.  This year’s IAW in New York includes conversations about BDS as a tactic, discussions of recent protests and revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa, a book release party for NY spoken word artist Remi Kanazi, and a discussion with queer theorist Judith Butler and filmmaker John Greyson. These events will be taking place in many venues across the city, including university campuses and churches.

On Tuesday, February 22, 2011, gay adult film producer and right-wing columnist Michael Lucas issued a press release threatening to boycott the LGBT Center for allowing local IAW organizers to meet and plan an event there.  Lucas denounced IAW as a “hate group” and called us “anti-Semitic.”  This is an ill-informed mischaracterization. IAW is not actually a group, but it is a part of the global BDS movement, which strongly opposes all forms of racism, including racism against Jews.

As anti-racists, IAW organizers – who are Palestinian, Jewish, queer, straight, and much more – denounce Lucas’ false accusations and are shocked that the Center has caved in to his threats.  The Center’s brief statement, issued without any input from the event organizers mere hours after Lucas made his threats public, declared that the Center is a “safe haven for LGBT groups and individuals.”  Yet the cancellation of this event and the banning of the organizing group from the Center send a clear message to LGBT people that we are not welcome if we are Arab or Muslim, or if we advocate human rights for Palestinians.

Lucas’ press release claimed that, “Israel is the only country in the Middle East that supports gay rights, while its enemies round up, torture, and condemn gay people to death.”  But as Palestinian queer organizer Sami Shamali reminded NY listeners at last week’s Audre Lorde Project event organized by author Sarah Schulman, “There is no magic pink door in the Apartheid Wall.”  Israel does not treat queer Palestinians any better than it does their straight counterparts, yet anti-Muslim and anti-Arab groups and individuals, like Michael Lucas, continue to claim that Israel is a wonderful place for gay people.  These pinkwashing arguments, designed to mask the true nature of Israeli apartheid, have prompted groups like Palestinian Queers for BDS to assert that Palestinian queers can speak for themselves and to demand that people like Lucas stop abusing their name.

On February 23, IAW organizers received an e-mail from Michael Lucas, gloating, “I cancelled your event.”  Let us not allow one individual to drown out the voices of millions of Palestinian people.  Let us not allow one individual to change the nature of the LGBT Center from one of democracy and safe space to one of censorship and exclusion.  We demand that the LGBT Center reverse its decision and guarantee the right of organizers to continue to meet and hold events there.

IAW in NYC Coordinating Committee
     

Can you pass the Saudi Arabia quiz?

Feb 27, 2011

Jeffrey Rudolph

 

Saudi Arabia, an Islamic absolute monarchy, has enjoyed extremely close relations with the United States, a constitutional republic. This relationship highlights the gross hypocrisy of US foreign policy: fundamentalism and dictatorship in the Arab world is only condemned when it comes garbed in anti-Americanism. In fact, Saudi Arabia makes Iran—the target of sanctions and regime change by the US for over 30 years—look relatively progressive. 

The US and Saudi governments have had a clear long-term agreement. The Saudis agree to supply oil in accordance with US needs and to reinvest the resulting revenue in US assets and arms. In return, the US provides protection to the Royal family regardless of its internal repression and extremist ideology. While mutually beneficial, this compact is also the source of one of Saudi Arabia’s great contradictions: The Saudi kings depend for their security on a country widely reviled in the Arab world as Israel’s protector.

Contradictions run deep in Saudi Arabia. Attempts at domestic reform have been confronted with state-sponsored extremist preachers—in fact, Saudi kings have, on occasion used their power to protect “progressives” from harsh Saudi judges. While in the foreign policy realm, uneven state support of confrontational policies concerning Iran have been coupled with attempts to moderate US belligerence in Iraq and Palestine. 

The following quiz is an attempt to supplement the rather shallow coverage of Saudi Arabia provided in the mainstream media. 

1. Which Middle-East country has been the US’s oldest ally in the region? 

-Saudi Arabia. In 2008, Saudi Arabia celebrated “the seventy-fifth anniversary of U.S.-Saudi diplomatic relations, which had started with the signing of the oil contract in 1933.” President Bush attended the celebration—flying to the Kingdom after attending celebrations in Jerusalem to mark Israel’s sixty years of existence since 1948. “Abdullah took some delight in the comparative longevity of the two anniversaries, cupping his palms open in front of him, as if weighing the relative poundage of sixty or seventy-five years of friendship in the scales.” (Robert Lacey; Inside The Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia; Viking; Toronto: 2009; p. 301.)

-“In May 1933, Ibn Saud granted Standard Oil of California an enormous petroleum concession for less than $200,000 [a great bargain]… Later, in the early 1940s, the California-Arabian Standard Oil Company (a consortium that became known in 1944 as the Arabian American Oil Company, or Aramco) convinced President Roosevelt to help the king by including the kingdom in the lend-lease aid program.” (Juan Cole; Engaging The Muslim World; Palgrave Macmillan; New York: 2009; p. 86.)

-“[O]il is not the whole story [of US interest in Saudi Arabia]: Saudi Arabia is also important because of its strategic location. Lend-Lease was extended to the nation in 1943 in exchange for permission to build and utilize an air force base in Dhahran. The location of this base later made it a useful tool for the Americans during the cold war. … The official relationship was launched at the highest level in the most dramatic of circumstances: at President’s Franklin Roosevelt’s post-Yalta meeting with Ibn Saud. … [W]ildly different notions of how the world worked…[did not] get in the way of the main bilateral issue: Saudi oil supply and American security guarantees for the kingdom.” (Stephen P. Cohen; Beyond America’s Grasp: A Century of Failed Diplomacy in the Middle East; Farrar, Straus and Giroux; New York: 2009; pp. 94-95.)

-The following link has a picture of the February 14, 1945 “landmark meeting between King Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt onboard the U.S. Navy cruiser Quincy in the Great Bitter Lake segment of the Suez Canal. The…meeting was the first face-to-face contact between top American and Saudi leaders and served as the foundation for the longstanding relationship between Washington and Riyadh.”: http://www.susris.com/2011/02/ 14/today-in-history-king- abdulaziz-and-president- roosevelt-meeting/

2. Who stated the following in 1945?: “I’m sorry, gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism. I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents.”

-Harry Truman: President of the United States, 1945-1953.

-The above quote was stated by Truman at a “meeting in Washington with William Eddy, the U.S. chief of mission in Saudi Arabia, and with other U.S. diplomats to the major Arab countries. There had been widespread anger in the Arab world at the favor that America was showing toward the Zionist effort to create a Jewish state in Palestine, and the diplomats had been assembled to explain the reasons for Arab opposition. But nothing he heard appeared to change Truman’s mind. … Truman was not quite correct. The U.S. Census of 1940 showed 107,420 individuals classified ‘white’ who gave their ‘mother tongue’ as Arabic, and census analysts reckon the real count of Arab-Americans at three times that. But the president’s political point remained. By the 1940s the Jews were organized politically in America in a way that the Arabs never were… Today [2009] there are some 3.5 million Arab-Americans (a good number of them Christians), and their political clout does not begin to match that of the 6.4 million U.S. Jews. Following the hard-fought creation of Israel in 1948, every successive crisis in the Middle East would increase pro-Israeli feeling inside America—and then came the emergence of so-called Christian Zionism in the 1980s. Popular evangelists like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson preached that the return of the Jews to the Holy Land had happened in accordance with biblical prophecy—‘to stand against Israel is to stand against God,’ proclaimed Falwell in 1981.” “America was the ‘far Satan,’ in Osama’s eyes, because it was the patron and supporter of the Al-Saud, the ‘near Satan’ that was the ultimate target. … [F]ew Americans could see that it was through the selection of contradictory friends [i.e. Islamic extremists in Afghanistan and allying with the House of Saud while also supporting Israel at the expense of Arabs] that their successive governments had picked themselves this lethal foe.” (Robert Lacey; Inside The Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia; Viking; Toronto: 2009; pp. 216-7 and 228.)

-The culmination of one-sided U.S. support for Israel was the Bush Jr. administration. One of its earliest and most warmly welcomed guests was Ariel Sharon, the hardline enforcer of Greater Israel.

3. What was Saudi Arabia’s military expenditures for 2009 (in US dollars)? What was Israel’s?

-Saudi Arabia’s military expenditures: $39 billion. (http://milexdata.sipri.org/ result.php4)

-Israel’s military expenditures: $14 billion. (http://milexdata.sipri.org/ result.php4)

4. Why, despite spending billions on military equipment, is the Saudi state unable to defend itself?

-“Even after Saudi oil was fully nationalized in 1980, Washington’s politico-military elite maintained their pledge to defend the existing Saudi regime and its state whatever the cost. Why…could the Saudi state not defend itself? The answer was because the Saud clan, living in permanent fear, was haunted by the spectre of the radical nationalists who had seized power in Egypt in 1952 and in Iraq six years later. The Sauds kept the size of the national army and air force to the barest minimum to minimize the risk of a coup d’état. Many of the armaments they have purchased to please the West lie rusting peacefully in desert warehouses. For a decade and a half in the late 1970s and ‘80s, the Pakistan army, paid for by the Saudi treasury, sent in large contingents to protect the Saudi royal family in case of internal upheavals. Then, after the first Gulf War, the American military arrived.” (Tariq Ali; The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power; Scribner; New York: 2008; p. 265.)

-“Relatively small in number, in order to minimize the domestic risk of a republican coup d’état of the kind that brought down monarchies in Egypt, Iraq, and Libya, it [the Saudi military] is impressively armed with equipment bought at prohibitive prices in what has proved to be a bonanza for Western cannon merchants. Thus, for a population four times the size of that of neighboring Jordan, the Saudi kingdom has barely twice as many personnel in its armed forces, but it spends thirty-three times what the Hashemite kingdom spends on its own military budget. … Much of Riyadh’s most advanced weaponry is ‘pre-positioned’ so as to be available for eventual use by the U.S. troops… It is an open secret that the huge airport at Jeddah is not designed merely for the transit of pilgrims to Mecca.” (Gilbert Achcar; Eastern Cauldron: Islam, Afghanistan, Palestine, and Iraq in a Marxist Mirror; Monthly Review Press; New York: 2004; pp. 71-72.)

-“The original function of the [Saudi National] Guard was to enlist the loyalty of the tribes to protect the royal family against any threat… The Guard was founded at a time of suspected military coups, so its first bases were sited close to Riyadh and the major cities. The idea was that the Guard could block hostile forces coming from the more distant army and air force bases on the borders. Its anti-aircraft weapons were designed to shoot down Saudi fighter planes. Its antitank rockets had to be good enough to take on the Saudi Army.” (Robert Lacey; Inside The Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia; Viking; Toronto: 2009; p. 184.)

-Note that the respective populations of Israel and Saudi Arabia are 7.6 million (75% are Jewish) and  25.7 million (including 5.6 non-nationals). Therefore, Saudi Arabia has the population to more than match Israel’s military.

5. Which country is the largest provider of crude oil to the US?

-Canada. “The top five sources of US crude oil imports for November [2010] were Canada (1,975 thousand barrels per day), Mexico (1,229 thousand bpd), Saudi Arabia (1,119 thousand bpd), Venezuela (884 thousand bpd), and Nigeria (806 thousand bpd).” http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/ oil_gas/petroleum/data_ publications/company_level_ imports/current/import.html

-While the US does not rely on Saudi oil, according to Noam Chomsky “What has been central to [US] planning [concerning Middle East energy resources] is control, not access, an important distinction. The United States followed the same policies long before it relied on a drop of Middle East oil, and would continue to do so if it relied on solar energy. Such control gives the United States ‘veto power’ over its industrial rivals, as explained in the early postwar period by influential planners, and reiterated recently with regard to Iraq: a successful conquest of Iraq would give the United States ‘critical leverage’ over its industrial rivals, Europe and Asia, as pointed out by Zbigniew Brzezinski, an important figure in the planning community. Vice President Dick Cheney made the same point, describing control over petroleum supplies as ‘tools of intimidation and blackmail’—when used by others. He went on to urge the dictatorships of Central Asia, Washington’s models of democracy, to agree to pipeline construction that ensures that the tools remain in Washington’s hands.” (http://www.monthlyreview.org/ 0607nc.htm)

-The issue of “control of oil” is fundamental. It is why the US accepts Saudi Arabia being China’s principal supplier of crude oil and why it accepts Russia-Saudi joint ventures connected to oil.

-Saudi Arabia has the world’s largest oil reserves and is the world’s largest oil exporter. Oil accounts for more than 90% of exports and nearly 75% of government revenues, facilitating the creation of a welfare state. (http://saudinf.com/main/d1. htm)

6. Who wrote the following in 1956?: “Arabia is a country that contains the holy places of the Moslem world, and the Saudi Arabians are considered to be the most deeply religious of all the Arab groups. Consequently, the King could be built up, possibly, as a spiritual leader. Once this were accomplished, we might begin to urge his right to political leadership.”

-Dwight D. Eisenhower: U.S. President, 1953 – 1961. (Juan Cole; Engaging The Muslim World; Palgrave Macmillan; New York: 2009; p. 88.) 
-Professor Cole, the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan, explains that, “Faced in the Middle East with the rise of secular Arab nationalism and of leftist politics in countries such as Syria, Washington cast about for a counterweight. … Later that year [1956], after the potentially destabilizing Suez War, Eisenhower cabled his secretary of state, John Foster Dulles…, ‘I continue to believe…that one of the measures that we must take is to build up an Arab rival of Nasser, and the natural choice would seem to be [King Saud]…’ In 1957, the U.S. National Security Council set up a working group to compile a list of Muslim organizations and religious groups that could be propagandized by the United States Information Agency. … [However] King Saud…was no match for Abdel Nasser, who knew how to appeal through powerful oratory to the aspirations of the Arab masses. … [Nevertheless the] Saudi leadership idea did not go away…and was resurrected by later American presidents. Washington appeared to think that, just as mainstream Protestants, such as theologian Reinhold Niebuhr were bulwarks against communism in the United States, so Wahhabism could underpin a conservative moral order compatible with the sanctity of private property in the Middle East. After September 11, Washington suddenly rethought its promotion of Saudi Arabia and Wahhabism as buttresses of a conservative, capitalist order in the Middle East.” “Saudi Arabia has more often been timid than militant in world affairs. Although Saudi intelligence coordinated with the Arab volunteers who went to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s, it did so in deference to the Reagan administration’s policy of marshalling private militias against leftist governments.” (Juan Cole; Engaging The Muslim World; Palgrave Macmillan; New York: 2009; pp. 84 and 88-90.)

-“[T]he West is reaping what it helped sow. For more than three decades its fight against progressive nationalism (as typified by Nasser’s model backed by the USSR) went hand in glove with the Islamic propaganda emanating from the Saudi monarchy, a sworn enemy of the Egyptian regime. With a view to supporting the Muslim Brotherhood against Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser, Riyadh, with the aid of the CIA, financed and provided a haven for a sizable section of the hazy international groupings of Islamic fundamentalism. … After so many years of anti-communist and anti-nationalist struggle conducted under the banner of Islam rather than liberal democracy, bankrupt nationalism and an impotent Left have left the door wide open to Islamic fundamentalism. … [In the 1980s,] Saudi rulers and their U.S. advisers imagined that the contagion could be contained by playing up the specifically Shiite nature of Iran, and by playing off ‘Sunni moderates’ against ‘Shiite extremists.’ Riyadh continued to play godfather to Sunni fundamentalist movements…” (Gilbert Achcar; Eastern Cauldron: Islam, Afghanistan, Palestine, and Iraq in a Marxist Mirror; Monthly Review Press; New York: 2004; p. 73.)

-An important concern for the Eisenhower administration was Nasser’s drive for true independence. However, in 1967, this “major problem in the Middle East was resolved with Israel’s destruction of the Nasser regime, hated by the United States and Britain, which feared that secular nationalist forces might seek to direct the vast energy resources of the region to internal development. A few years earlier, U.S. intelligence had warned of popular feelings that oil is a “national patrimony” exploited by the West by unjust arrangements imposed by force. Israel’s service to the United States, its Saudi ally, and the energy corporations confirmed the judgment of U.S. intelligence in 1958 that a ‘logical corollary’ of opposition to Arab nationalism is reliance on Israel as ‘the only strong pro-Western power in the Middle East,’ apart from Turkey, which established a close military alliance with Israel in 1958, within the U.S. strategic framework. (http://www.monthlyreview.org/ 0607nc.htm)

-The unfortunate truth is that the US has benefitted from not promoting democratic values in the Arab world as true democratic change leads to governments that primarily answer to their domestic populations, not their foreign patron. Turkey demonstrates that when a Middle East country becomes more democratic, it finds it more difficult to cooperate with Israel and the US on policies that dispossess Palestinians or harm Muslims.

7. True or False: In the early 1960s, a group of Saudi princes flew to Cairo and called for constitutional democracy for Saudi Arabia.

-True. As the Al-Saud splintered in the late 1950s under the challenge of Arab nationalism and the charismatic Nasser, a group of radical young princes campaigned for constitutional democracy. “Prince Talal was one of a group of reformers and leader within the royal family known as the Free Princes. In 1958 he wrote a proposed constitution for Saudi Arabia which would have created a constitutional monarchy and expanded civil rights. He began to assemble an elected advisory committee, but his ideas were rejected by the king, and religious leaders in Saudi Arabia issued a fatwa declaring his constitution to be contrary to Islamic law. In 1961 the kingdom revoked his passport and attempted to silence him, but heexpatriated to Egypt and declared himself a socialist. There, influenced by Gamal Abdel Nasser, Talal continued to push for reform and criticize the leadership of the Kingdom. In1964 Talal agreed to temper his criticisms in exchange for permission to reenter Saudi Arabia. He is now a successful businessman… Prince Talal resumed his push for reform in Saudi Arabia in September 2007, when he announced his desire to form a political party (illegal in Saudi Arabia) to advance his goal of liberalizing the country.”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Talal_bin_Abdul-Aziz

8. What event led to Saudi Arabia and other Arab oil-producing countries imposing an oil embargo on the US and Europe in the early 1970s?

-In 1973, “[K]ing Faisal of Saudi Arabia announced a boycott on his kingdom’s oil sales to the United States. Enraged by President Richard Nixon’s military support for Israel in the October War against Egypt and Syria, the Saudi king had hoped to compel some dramatic change in U.S. policy. Yet as the Arab oil boycott caused the price of oil on the world market to multiply nearly five times, it was back home, inside the Kingdom, that the truly dramatic changes would occur. … After centuries of hibernation and a few recent decades of only gradual change, Saudi Arabia was suddenly turned on its head. Foreign money brought foreign ways—the good, the bad, and, in the eyes of many Saudis, the very definitely ugly. Women started appearing on TV… [The] pure world [of the pious] was under threat.” “[A]ll over the Arab world in the 1970s…Muslims worked out their different responses to the material and spiritual inroads of the West. Those who opted for back-to-basics called themselves Salafi…” (Robert Lacey; Inside The Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia; Viking; Toronto: 2009; pp. 3-4 and 9.)

-“Led by Saudi Arabia, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) imposed a general rise in oil prices and an oil embargo on major oil consumers who were either supporters of Israel or allies of its supporters. The embargo was theoretically aimed at forcing Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories and recognize the rights of the Palestinian people. In reality…[Saudi Arabia] negotiate[d] exceptions with practically every nation…affected…but not before…giving them a taste of the power the Arabs could wield if they chose.” (Nicholas Buchele; Culture Smart Saudi Arabia; Random House; Canada: 2008; pp. 38-39.)

9. What three events in 1979 greatly affected Saudi Arabia’s domestic and foreign policies?

(i) The invasion and occupation of the Grand Mosque in Mecca on November 20, 1979 by five hundred Wahhabi fanatic salafis. The siege ended on December 4. All the surviving men were beheaded. The government lost 127 soldiers dead and 461 injured; 117 Salafi rebels were also killed. “Since the early 1960s the House of Saud had been on the lookout for trouble—investigating and arresting Communists, socialists, and ‘godless’ radicals of all sorts. Serious opposition, everyone anticipated, would be coming from the left. But the attacks of 1979 had come from the very opposite direction—from those on the right… ‘Godless’ was the reproach that was now being thrown at the king and princes… [The rebels] had been nurtured in the traditional territory of Wahhabi mosques…” (Robert Lacey; Inside The Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia; Viking; Toronto: 2009; pp. 34-35 and 46.)

(ii) The Iranian Revolution. “The ayatollahs’ revolution in Iran had been a dazzling assertion of Shia power and identity” that challenged the Saud family’s legitimacy. The Saudi royals did not want to suffer the fate of the Shah. The lesson they took away was: the solution to religious upheaval was more religion. “An apparently impregnable, Westernizing autocrat [in Iran], smiled on by America, with a huge army, an efficient secret police, and burgeoning oil revenues, had been brought down without a serious shot being fired—all the Shah’s modernization had proved helpless against the supposedly outmoded power of religion. … The Shah had got on the wrong side of the mosque, reckoned [King] Fahd—and that was the side on which the former playboy already feared himself to be.” More strictures on women, secular education, etc., thus followed.

In December, Shia riots, inspired by the triumphant return to Iran of Ayatollah Khomeini, broke out in al-Qatif in the Eastern Province. Twenty thousand National Guard troops were immediately moved into the Eastern Province. In 1987, rioting by Shia pilgrims in Mecca led to four hundred deaths and was the straw that broke the kingdom’s diplomatic relations with Iran.

The Saudi rulers were naturally threatened by Khomeini’s doctrine of rule by the clerics (i.e. rule by Kings was unIslamic). Saudi rulers (along with most Muslims) disagree with Khomeini’s radical doctrine that the ulema (religious scholars) are qualified not simply to advise the ruler, but to exercise government in their own right. The executive power held by Iran’s clerics sets Iran apart from the Muslim world. Saudi leaders argue that from the first caliphs, the secular rulers have always been the executive rulers, while the job of the sheikhs and the mufti has been to give them advice.

“The Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88 was a…bloody business. … When Iran launched a successful counterassault in…[1983] against Saddam Hussein’s unprovoked invasion of September 1980, the Saudis financed the Iraqi leader as a Sunni Arab ‘brother.’ Saddam was the best available barrier to the scary prospect of the ayatollahs taking power in Baghdad, while the United States backed the Iraqi tyrant as part of Washington’s enduring attempt to gain some redress for the humiliation of the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979-81.” (Robert Lacey; Inside The Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia; Viking; Toronto: 2009; pp. 47 and 109-110.)

(iii) The Russian invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. “The plight of the invaded Afghans woke an immediate and powerful response in a [Saudi] society where outrage was habitually rationed. Here was an injustice where protest could be permitted—encouraged even—by the Saudi government… Better that anger should be directed into jihad abroad than into Iran-style revolution at home. … Hundreds of [Saudi printing] machines stood ready to churn out tens of millions of Korans in multiple languages with [Saudi-approved] commentaries… It was part of the Kingdom’s worldwide missionary effort to combat the Shia teachings of Khomeini’s Iran… Korans…would be distributed free to the madrasas…inside Afghanistan and along the Pakistan border.”

The resulting possible threat to the Persian Gulf, led to President Carter, in his State of the Union address, declaring: “Let our position be absolutely clear. An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force. Early in February 1980 Carter agreed to a covert program that would put his doctrine into practice—a secret agreement that Saudi Arabia and the United States would match each other, dollar for dollar, to fund an undercover guerrilla campaign in Afghanistan that would hand the Soviets ‘their own Vietnam.’” (Robert Lacey; Inside The Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia; Viking; Toronto: 2009; pp. 65 and 67.)

-The Al-Saud’s response to the above three events was to appease the Wahhabi hardliners by tightening religious restrictions on ordinary Saudis and handing more powers to the ulema.

Saudi Arabia’s political structure is based on: veneration of the ruler; shura (consultancy) as personified in the 150-member appointed Shura council; and, a religious authority in the form of the ulema led by the Grand Mufti. Because there is no separation of religion and state, the political role of the ulema is second in importance only to the ruling family.

The attacks on 9/11 “finally settled who ruled whom in Saudi Arabia. After Juhayman [the leader of the Grand Mosque assault in 1979], the 1980s had seen the clerics dictating the agenda in an almost Iranian fashion, with the Al-Saud anxious to appease them… [However,] September 11 had shown what happened when religion got out of hand.” (Robert Lacey; Inside The Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia; Viking; Toronto: 2009; pp. 235-6.)

10. Why did Osama Bin Laden, who had been in sync with Saudi state policy in the 1980s, turn against the Saudi government?

-“When the news had come through of Saddam’s invasion [of Kuwait] in August 1990, Osama Bin Laden knew exactly how he could help. He got in touch with the comrades who had fought with him in Afghanistan… He and his mujahideen companions had defeated the Soviets… Now they would chase…Iraqis…back to Baghdad. … When the House of Saud turned down Osama’s mujahideen in favor of the godless Americans…They offended his religious beliefs—and those of many other pious Saudis.”

It should not be forgotten that in the mid-1980s, Bin Laden was a hero in Saudi Arabia as he was using his wealth to help a noble cause—kicking the Russians out of Afghanistan—which was supported by the Saudi and American governments. To many Arabs “It was a new and very pleasant sensation…to feel they had played their part in a military victory. ‘Progressive’ Arab leaders like Nasser and Sadat had flung well-armed Arab armies against Israel, and had delivered humiliation. They had not included religion in their strategy. But now victory was going to those who grounded themselves in Islam. Small and simple groups of holy warriors were humbling one of the world’s two superpowers.” “In 1988 the Russians started withdrawing, and on February 15, 1989, the Soviet Union announced that the last of its soldiers had left the country. It was an extraordinary defeat… But the victors interpreted its roots and reasons in different ways. Within months the West was celebrating the scarcely believable collapse of the entire Soviet monolith. [While the West celebrated capitalism and deterrence]…Saudis remembered their prayers…”

In general, Saudi fundamentalists had complained for a long time that “The Al-Saud…had exploited religion as…a means to guarantee their worldly interests, putting an end to jihad, paying allegiance to the Christians (America), and bringing evil and corruption upon the Muslims…in a word, betrayal. … [It was] the essence of the message that Osama Bin Laden would deliver via his attacks on America on 9/11. The House of Saud were hypocrites…” (Robert Lacey; Inside The Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia; Viking; Toronto: 2009; pp. 18, 119,123, 148 and 150.)

-“[To remove Iraq from Kuwait in 1991], a large United Nations-sanctioned force assembled and pushed the Iraqi military back out of Kuwait. For the first time, the U.S. military, and the militaries of Western Europe, had hundreds of thousands of troops on Saudi soil. After the Gulf War, [King] Fahd gave the United States use of…[an] air base. Among those outraged by then was Bin Laden, who declared war on the Saudi dynasty years before he declared war on the United States.” (Juan Cole; Engaging The Muslim World; Palgrave Macmillan; New York: 2009; p.101.)

-“Since the mid-1990s the U.S. Air Force had built up the Prince Sultan Air Base at Al-Kharj, south of Riyadh, to become the linchpin of its Middle East air command. … [Saudi Arabia permitted] The United States…[to use] Al-Kharj and some other bases for the [2003 Iraq invasion]…on a basis of strict military secrecy—after which the Americans must…be gone. … [O]nce the invasion was completed, American transporters flew in to start dismantling and shuttling U.S. Air Force assets eastward…to…Qatar. By the end of September 2003 there was not a single U.S. soldier, tank, or plane left on the soil of Saudi Arabia, apart from a few long-term military trainers. Abdullah had finally distanced the Kingdom from Bush’s America as he had long wished—and, in the process, one of the principal demands that Osama Bin Laden had made in attacking the twin towers…had also been met.” (Robert Lacey; Inside The Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia; Viking; Toronto: 2009; p. 291.)

11. Jihadi manuals, used by the mujahideen in Afghanistan and elsewhere, were produced in the early 1980s by which country? 

-The United States of America. “In the twilight of the Cold War, the United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings, part of covert attempts to spur resistance to the Soviet occupation. The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system’s core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books… [The U.S. is] now…wrestling with the unintended consequences of its successful strategy of stirring Islamic fervor to fight communism. What seemed like a good idea in the context of the Cold War is being criticized by humanitarian workers as a crude tool that steeped a generation in violence. … Published in the dominant Afghan languages of Dari and Pashtu, the textbooks were developed in the early 1980s…[at] the University of Nebraska-Omaha…Today, the books remain widely available in schools and shops, to the chagrin of international aid workers. ‘The pictures [in] the texts are horrendous to school students…’ One page from the texts of that period shows a resistance fighter with a bandolier and a Kalashnikov slung from his shoulder. The soldier’s head is missing. Above the soldier is a verse from the Koran. Below is a Pashtu tribute to the mujaheddin, who are described as obedient to Allah. Such men will sacrifice their wealth and life itself to impose Islamic law on the government, the text says.” (http://www.washingtonpost. com/ac2/wp-dyn/A5339- 2002Mar22?language=printer)

-“To the extent that Saudi Arabia is indirectly implicated in the rise of al-Qaeda in the 1980s, its partner in crime was surely the Reagan administration, the U.S. Congress, and the American religious right—who by encouraging brigades of Muslim volunteers to go to Afghanistan, created the preconditions for al-Qaeda’s rise.” (Juan Cole; Engaging The Muslim World; Palgrave Macmillan; New York: 2009; pp. 101-102.)

-With respect to Saudi Arabia establishing madrasas in Afghanistan in the 1980s, “We have to remember…that the original purpose of these schools was strategic. The fighting with the Soviets had tragic consequences—it was creating a lot of orphans. … The plan was to…put them [the orphans] through school—then ship them to the front. The Saudis get the blame…but…many of…[the madrasas] were part of a joint U.S.-Saudi project to take these poor kids and make them warriors for the West.” (Robert Lacey; Inside The Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia; Viking; Toronto: 2009; p.194.)

12. Which three countries were the first to officially recognize the Taliban government in Afghanistan?

-“By the end of September 1996 the Taliban had conquered Kabul and had extended their rule to twenty-two of the country’s thirty-one provinces. They announced that their godly government would be known as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, and while most of the world prudently stepped back and waited, three countries granted this unusual entity official recognition: Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates—and Saudi Arabia.” The Taliban began issuing prohibitions: “no kite flying, no pool tables, no music, no nail polish, no toothpaste, no televisions, no beard shaving… [T]he Taliban also…closed all girls’ schools and colleges, and banned women from working… These draconian regulations were enforced by religious police squads…that were built directly on the Saudi model of fundamentalist vigilantes and drew support from Saudi religious charities.” “At the end of July [1998] the Taliban…[finally captured] Mazar-e Sharif. This historic center of Shia worship…had resisted Taliban attacks…and was now punished with a series of ghastly reprisals. Ahmed Rashid later estimated that six thousand to eight thousand Shia…were slaughtered in a rampage of murder and rape that included slitting people’s throats and bleeding them to death, halal-style, and packing hundreds of victims into shipping containers without water, to be baked alive in the desert sun.” “Not for the first or last time, Saudi favor to Islamic purists had helped give birth to a monster…” (Robert Lacey; Inside The Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia; Viking; Toronto: 2009; pp. 199-201 and 209-10.)

-“When [in 1996] the Taliban religious movement decided to stone to death a couple caught in adultery, it chose a blazing afternoon in late August. … The condemned woman, Nurbibi, 40, was lowered into a pit dug into the earth beside the wall until only her chest and head were above ground. … [After the judge threw the first stone,] Taliban fighters who had been summoned for the occasion stepped forward and launched a cascade of stones…” (http://middleeast.about.com/ od/afghanistan/fr/taliban- ahmed-rashid.htm)

13. When the Taliban took power, who said he saw “nothing objectionable” in their plans to impose strict Islamic law?

-Glyn Davies: State Department spokesperson.

-“The U.S. government was well aware of the Taliban’s reactionary program, yet it chose to back their rise to power in the mid-1990s. The creation of the Taliban was ‘actively encouraged by the ISI and the CIA,’ according to Selig Harrison, an expert on U.S. relations with Asia. ‘The United States encouraged Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to support the Taliban, certainly right up to their advance on Kabul,’ adds respected journalist Ahmed Rashid. When the Taliban took power, State Department spokesperson Glyn Davies said that he saw ‘nothing objectionable’ in the Taliban’s plans to impose strict Islamic law, and Senator Hank Brown, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on the Near East and South Asia, welcomed the new regime: ‘The good part of what has happened is that one of the factions at last seems capable of developing a new government in Afghanistan.’ ‘The Taliban will probably develop like the Saudis. There will be Aramco [the consortium of oil companies that controlled Saudi oil], pipelines, an emir, no parliament and lots of Sharia law. We can live with that,’ said another U.S. diplomat in 1997. The reference to oil and pipelines explains everything. … Afghanistan itself has no known oil or gas reserves, but it is an attractive route for pipelines leading to Pakistan, India, and the Arabian Sea. In the mid-1990s, a consortium led by the California-based Unocal Corporation proposed a $4.5 billion oil and gas pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan. But this would require a stable central government in Afghanistan itself. Thus began several years in which U.S. policy in the region centered on ‘romancing the Taliban.’” (http://www. thirdworldtraveler.com/ Afghanistan/Afghanistan_CIA_ Taliban.html)

14. From the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 to 2007, what percentage of known suicide-bombers in Iraq were of Saudi origin? Iranian origin?

-Saudi origin: 43%; Iranian origin: 0%.  (http://www.mcclatchydc.com/ 2007/08/08/18791/studies- suicide-bombers-in-iraq.html)

15. How many Wahhabi suicide bombers had there been before 1980?

-None. “There were no Wahhabi suicide bombers until after the Reagan administration launched its struggle, with the help of the mujahideen, against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and there is no warrant in Wahhabism for suicide, or it would not have taken 150 years for it to occur to a Wahhabi fighter to sacrifice himself in that way. It is wrong to tar all the members of a religious tradition with the brush of terrorism based on the actions of a small number of persons among them.” (Juan Cole; Engaging The Muslim World; Palgrave Macmillan; New York: 2009; p. 111.)

16. True or False: Saudi Arabia was instrumental in putting forward a comprehensive peace plan with Israel—that was formally adopted by the entire Arab League—that offered Israel full recognition and normal relations.

-True. “During a February 2002 interview the crown prince [Abdullah] startled…columnist Thomas Friedman by…[producing] a fully worked-out peace proposal that offered Arab recognition of Israel and normalization of relations in exchange for an Israeli return to its pre-1967 borders. A few weeks later Abdullah went to Beirut to push his peace plan through the twenty-two-member Arab League summit—the most developed and comprehensive Arab olive branch ever. … [P]rivate polling inside Israel [done by a company not told it was for Saudi Arabia]…found that 70 percent of Israelis thought that the Abdullah peace plan was a fair deal.” (Robert Lacey; Inside The Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia; Viking; Toronto: 2009; p. 285.)

-In March 2002, the Arab League summit in Beirut unanimously put forth a peace initiative that commits it not just to recognize Israel but also to establish normal relations once Israel implements the international consensus for a comprehensive peace—which includes Israel withdrawing  from the occupied territories and a just settlement of the Palestinian refugee crisis. (This peace initiative has been subsequently reaffirmed including at the March 2009 Arab League summit at Doha.) All 57 members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, including Iran, “adopted the Arab peace initiative to resolve the issue of Palestine and the Middle East…and decided to use all possible means in order to explain and clarify the full implications of this initiative and win international support for its implementation.” (Norman G. Finkelstein; This Time We Went Too Far: Truth and Consequences of the Gaza Invasion; OR Books; New York: 2010; p. 42.)

-“[T]he proposal…was never taken seriously by the expansionist government of Ariel Sharon, nor by the stridently pro-Israeli politicians in Washington.” (Juan Cole; Engaging The Muslim World; Palgrave Macmillan; New York: 2009; p. 103.)

-Saudi Arabia is concerned that its US ally is largely hated in the Arab world due to its invasion and occupation of Iraq, blatantly pro-Israel stance and other policies. Accordingly, King Abdullah has attempted to resurrect his Arab-Israeli peace plan, reconcile Hamas and the PLO, and pursue other policies to diminish Iran’s influence in the region. (The Saudi rulers had warned against the 2003 US invasion of Iraq as they were concerned that the venture could lead to increasing Iran’s power in the region.) “Instead of attempting to enlist Saudi Arabia in vendettas, as the Bush administration did, pitting Saudis and their Sunni allies in Lebanon against the Iran-backed Shiite Hizbullah (which ended badly in May 2008 when Hizbullah militiamen demonstrated that they could take over all of Beirut if they so chose), or attempting to set Saudi Arabia and other Gulf oil monarchies against Iran, the United States should see the Saudis as the ultimate potential peace brokers in the region.” (Juan Cole; Engaging The Muslim World; Palgrave Macmillan; New York: 2009; p. 112.)

17. What was the unemployment rate in Saudi Arabia in 2010?

-According to the CIA World Factbook, the estimated rate is 10.8%. The rate is for Saudi males only. Some unemployment estimates range as high as 25%. (https://www.cia.gov/library/ publications/the-world- factbook/fields/2129.html)

-Saudi Arabia has an unemployment problem for several reasons. “In reality, income generated from exporting…high priced primary commodities [such as oil] enhances the value of the local currency, which in turn makes other potential exports…more expensive…[thus] destroying jobs. … Other roots of unemployment include the kingdom’s extremely high population growth rate…and [the practice] whereby individual Saudis bring foreign workers into the country, taking jobs away from citizens. … There is plenty of poverty in Saudi Arabia. … King Abdullah has responded to this challenge by embarking on projects such as the building of an entirely new city of 2 million, aiming to provide a million jobs to Saudis, and by developing industries such as aluminum, steel, fertilizer, and petrochemicals so as to diversify the economy.” (Juan Cole; Engaging The Muslim World; Palgrave Macmillan; New York: 2009; pp. 93-95.)

-“The unrestricted entry of cheap foreign workers had flooded the Saudi labor market with millions of third-world workers who were willing to live in primitive camps and to work for…$190 per month. This was a third of the amount on which a Saudi could survive, and the logical solution—that young Saudis should be trained to work as managers—was handicapped by the rising generation’s embarrassing deficiencies in education, particularly when it came to practical knowledge and independent reasoning skills. The teaching of math, science, and English…had been drastically reduced in the early 1980s to make room for the extra religious classes that featured learning by rote… Small wonder that the vision of jihad in foreign lands offered purpose and excitement that attracted many a frustrated young [man]…” “Public beheadings today are disciplinary displays intended to make a point to the ever-swelling community of migrant workers—some ten million, legal and illegal, in a population of twenty-eight million—and the grim deterrent seems effective. By day or by night, you can walk the streets of any Saudi town without fear of muggers. People leave their cars unlocked. Gun crime against or between locals is virtually nonexistent…” (Robert Lacey; Inside The Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia; Viking; Toronto: 2009; pp. 192 and 317.)

-“Domestically, Saudi Arabia faces the challenges of unemployment, an exploding population, a growing gap between rich and poor, rapid urbanization and an information revolution that has bypassed the rulers. Although Saudi Arabia shares many of the conditions that have bred the [2011] democracy uprisings—including autocracy, corruption and a large population of educated young people without access to suitable jobs—its people are cushioned by oil wealth and culturally resistant to change.” In other words, unlike other Arab countries, the ruling families in the Persian Gulf region can use cradle-to-grave benefits to co-opt opponents and preempt change. (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/ 02/20/world/middleeast/ 20saudi.html?_r=1&hpw)

-For a sense of the degree of corruption that has prevailed in Saudi Arabia, consider that “an investigation by the [UK’s] SFO [Serious Fraud Office] into alleged payments of as much as £1bn made by [arms manufacturer] BAE to Prince Bandar bin Sultan…was dropped in 2006 after the intervention of the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair. The Government claimed that investigating the £43bn Yamamah deal would threaten the UK’s national security.” (http://www.independent.co.uk/ news/business/news/bae- protesters-win-sfo-injunction- 1914892.html)

-“[S]audi Arabia ranks about seventeenth in the list of the world’s twenty most powerful economies, just behind Turkey and comfortably ahead of any other Arab country.” King Abdullah’s “most wide-reaching reform…has been…the accession of the Kingdom to the World Trade Organization. In a trade context this has involved the removal of various preferential tariffs, notably the discounts to the U.S. oil majors who founded Aramco. More profoundly, it required the passing—and enforcement—of forty-two new laws to impose international standards of arbitration, fiscal transparency, legal process, and the protection of intellectual property… As a result of these reforms, Saudi business efficiency [has improved according to the World Bank]…” (Robert Lacey; Inside The Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia; Viking; Toronto: 2009; pp. 272 and 302.)

18. Which is the only Muslim-majority state to forbid the building of churches?

-“Among the nearly 60 Muslim-majority states in the world, only one, Saudi Arabia, forbids the building of churches.” (http://www.juancole.com/2009/ 11/swiss-islamophobia-betrays. html)

-Saudi Arabia is also the only country where women cannot drive (and where men can vote in municipal elections but women cannot). (http://www.juancole.com/)

-Observers are correct to discern hypocrisy whenever the US government attacks Iran for being undemocratic and abusive towards its own citizens since “The [Saudi] kingdom is run as an absolute monarchy. It does not allow freedom of religion or of speech. It discriminates against religious minorities. It imposes strict gender segregation… It represses political dissidents.” However, such repression is not due to Islam—since many Muslim countries have far better human rights records—but due to the Saudi regime and Saudi culture. (Juan Cole; Engaging The Muslim World; Palgrave Macmillan; New York: 2009; p. 95.)

-“[I]n Saudi Arabia the law actually enshrines the principle that the male knows better than the female. A woman nay not enroll in university, open a bank account, get a job, or travel outside the country without the written permission of a mahram (guardian) who must be a male blood relative—her father, grandfather, brother, husband, or, in the case of a widow or separated woman, her adult son.” “Since 9/11 women have the right to work in the private sector, but like any other activity outside the home, they can do it only with the written permission of their…male guardian.” (Robert Lacey; Inside The Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia; Viking; Toronto: 2009; pp. 277 and 325.)

19. Who wrote the following about a conversation he had with Saudi King Faisal at a state dinner?: “[The King informed me that] Jews and Communists were working…together, to undermine the civilized world as we knew it. Oblivious to my [Jewish] ancestry—or delicately putting me into a special category—Faisal insisted that an end be put once and for all to the dual conspiracy of Jews and Communists. The Middle East outpost of that plot was the State of Israel, put there by Bolshevism for the principal purpose of dividing America from the Arabs.”

-Henry Kissinger: United States Secretary of State, 1973-1977. (http://www.danielpipes.org/ 995/the-scandal-of-us-saudi- relations)

-Robert Jordan, Bush’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia, discovered the depth of conspiracy thinking among Saudis when he arrived in Riyadh a few weeks after 9/11 to take up his post. “Many senior princes believed it was a Jewish plot. Nayef (the interior minister) actually said it was a Zionist conspiracy in a public statement. Even Abdullah was suspicious. They had latched onto this report that three thousand Jewish employees had not gone into work that day. It was an urban myth that has since been discredited, but at the time it was the only way they could make sense of it. … To accept that [many Saudis were involved with the 9/11 attacks]…was like accepting that your son was a serial killer.” (Robert Lacey; Inside The Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia; Viking; Toronto: 2009; p. 228.)

-The terror attacks inside Saudi Arabia during the early 2000s, “were the work of Saudi jihadis who had been driven out of Afghanistan by the U.S.-UK invasion in the months following 9/11. The demolition of their Afghan training camps forced several hundred extremists back to the Kingdom, where they regrouped in safe houses as ‘Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,’ taking orders via coded phone messages from their leaders, who had gone into hiding in the tribal territories along the Afghani border. Osama Bin Laden…ordered them to take the battle to the Al-Saud on their home territory.” “Prince Nayef may have blamed 9/11 on the Zionists, but now his Ministry of the Interior went for the terrorists with ruthless efficiency.”   (Robert Lacey; Inside The Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia; Viking; Toronto: 2009; pp. 245 and 248.)

-In contrast to how the U.S. has treated its prisoners, Saudi Arabia has adopted a liberal and progressive rehab program. According to Prince Nayef, the architect of the program, “Some people say that our rehab program is too soft—that we should build a sort of Saudi Guantanamo to punish them. But that is just what Al-Qaeda would like. … If we used the old, harsh ways, then they would draw sympathy and the extremists would take advantage of that to try to get more people involved in terrorism. … We are building a national consensus that extremism is wrong. … [W]e have had…[many] young men surrender themselves because their families brought them in. Whoever wins society will win this war.” (Robert Lacey; Inside The Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia; Viking; Toronto: 2009; pp. 255 and 257-8).

20. True or False: A popular satirical TV comedy show, on the air in Saudi Arabia for many years, pokes fun at the flaws of Saudi society by dealing with sensitive topics such as terrorism, marital relations and religion.

-True. (http://www.youtube.com/ results?search_query=tash+ma+ tash+youtube&aq=f )

-“[A] fatwa – a religious edict — was issued by senior sheikhs in the Kingdom who said it was sinful for anyone to watch the show [Tash Ma Tash]. The sheikhs said it made a mockery of sheikhs and insulted religious figures, failing to accord them due prestige and importance. This particular fatwa followed an episode about judges in Saudi courts—who are all sheikhs. According to the episode, the sheikhs work only 2 or 3 hours a day, even though official working hours are from 8 to 2. Unpleasant as it may be, it was the truth; many sheikhs work far less than is required. Thousands of people requiring signatures or coming with witnesses to courts all over the Kingdom depend on the judges’ presence in order to finish their business. … The fatwa was issued and the message was clear: criticizing judges is a ‘no-no.’” (http://archive.arabnews.com/? page=7&section=0&article= 53889&d=3&m=11&y=2004)

-In its many years on the air, Tash Ma Tash has never once made fun of a greedy prince or a pompous government minister. In 2006 it moved from the official government channel to satellite TV in Dubai, and, in 2008, renamed itself…(“We Are All Village People”). (Robert Lacey; Inside The Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia; Viking; Toronto: 2009; p. 324.)

21. What is the Shia population of the oil-rich Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia?

-Approximately 915,000 (of a total population of the Eastern Province of 3,400,000).  Shias have suffered discrimination and are disproportionately poor in Saudi Arabia. Needless to say, Iran, especially following its Revolution, tried to incite “its fellow Shias” against the ruling Saudi regime. However, Shia have proved loyal to the Kingdom while radical Sunnis committed terror against the regime. “[L]ike a lot of minorities in [Saudi Arabia, Shias recognize]…they would get a better deal from the Saudi monarchy than they would from any nonroyal government. … How could the Shia expect anything but oppression from the Wahhabis?” (Robert Lacey; Inside The Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia; Viking; Toronto: 2009; pp. 101 and 170.)

-Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest oil exporter, with one-quarter of the world’s proven oil reserves, mostly in the Eastern Province, home to the giant government-owned oil corporation Saudi Aramco. Oil accounts for 75% of budget earnings, approximately 45% of GDP and 90% of exports. Today, China and Japan are its biggest customers. The kingdom also has huge reserves of natural gas. The government is making efforts at diversifying the economy into power generation, telecom, and petrochemical industries. (Nicholas Buchele; Culture Smart Saudi Arabia; Random House; Canada: 2008; p. 49.)

Jeffrey Rudolph, a college professor, was the Quebec representative of the East Timor Alert Network, and presented a paper on its behalf at the United Nations. He has prepared  widely-distributed quizzes on Israel-Palestine, Iran, Hamas, and Terrorism which can be found, respectively, at: http://www.countercurrents.org/rudolph180608.htm;http://www.countercurrents.org/rudolph240410.htm;  http://www.countercurrents.org/rudolph250610.htm; and, http://www.countercurrents.org/rudolph080810.htm.

(Comments or questions concerning the quizzes should be emailed to: Israel-Palestine-Quiz@live.com)

New resource tracks and analyzes Israeli arms exports

Feb 27, 2011

Adam Horowitz

 

Mondoweiss contributor Jimmy Johnson has just unveiled an interesting new resource to highlight “news, data and analysis focusing on Israel’s arms industry.” The site is called Neged Neshek (“Against Arms” in Hebrew) and it looks like it will be a very useful resource.

In addition to laying out the raw data on what Israel sells and where it goes, the site also features analysis, including this interesting piece on “Israel and the rise of drone warfare“:

UAVs are a key export of Israel’s arms industry. A number of Israeli firms export drones, most prominently Aeronautics Defense Systems, Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries. UAVs are commonly used for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and targeting missions. More recently some models have begun to carry armed payloads.

During the first years of the Israeli occupation of Sinai (War of Attrition)

Egypt began to deploy the SA-2 and SA-3 antiaircraft systems. The appearance of the batteries led to a number of IAF losses, and harmed the Air Force’s ability to gather intelligence from the frontlines. During the search for a method of intelligence gathering that would not put the lives of air crew at risk, the possibility of acquiring UAVs was explored.

Alternately put, the cost of Egyptian resistance to military occupation required mechanisms of pacification. In September 1971 the first squadron of U.S.-made Firebee UAVs was deployed to the Refidim Airbase in Occupied Sinai and the “squadron’s first operational flight was carried out almost immediately”. In the October (Yom Kippur) War

it was able to reduce its manned aircraft losses by using inexpensive Chukar decoys to deceive and saturate Egyptian [surface-to-air missile] battles along the Suez Canal. (1)

They were deployed similarly to support the occupation of Syria’s Golan Heights where they “fooled the Syrians into thinking that a massive combat plane strike had begun against their [anti-aircraft] positions.” The key Israeli innovation was not in their use for surveillance. Instead the “operational need for real time intelligence on the front lines led to the idea of a UAV carrying a stabilized camera that could broadcast pictures.”

Shortly after the war the Israeli government

charged the IAI and Tadiran companies with developing small, versatile, low-signature [UAVs], able to send back real-time intelligence by direct video link, and capable of being operation in the field by ordinary soldiers after only three to six months training. (2)

Both IAI and Tadiran responded successfully. Tadiran produced the Mastiff and IAI the Scout with the first units entering into service in 1977. The concept was first tested in battle “in 1981 when the South African Army used the IAI Scout during Operation Protea in Angola.” (3) Operation Protea was an attempt to destroy the South-West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO). The apartheid military’s use of drones in a colonial war of military occupation forecast Israel’s first combat deployment in Lebanon in 1982. The IDF invaded and attacked Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) bases, also engaging in combat with the Syrian military and Lebanese irregulars. This turned out to be a turning point in the deployment and popularization of UAVs.

One of the main tactical challenges to IAF operations in Lebanon was the threat posed by a heavy concentration of Syrian SAM batteries in the Bekáa Valley. These were precisely located by using reconnaissance UAVs … Decoy UAVs were launched toward the SAM sites, and once the Syrian radars were activated, they were struck both by ground-launched antiradar missiles and by air-launched missiles, all while being observed by reconnaissance UAVs. … The 1982 air operations rejuvenated interest in decoy drones and also popularized small UAVs with real-time video cameras. (4)

The U.S. was about to experience a military set-back that encouraged it to draw from Israel’s experience. After the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon in October 1983 “as well as other hostile actions by Syrian-supported factions,” the U.S. “adopted an offensive posture”

authorizing bombardment of militia strongholds and Syrian army positions in the Shouf Mountains behind Beirut. Both 16-in gunfire from the USS battleship New Jersey and air-strikes by carrier-launched [fighters] were employed but with marginal results. Neither the naval gunfire nor the air strikes were terminally controlled, and prestrike and poststrike reconnaissance aircraft were routinely engaged by hostile fire. (5)

This compared unfavorably with the Israeli experience in carrying out the same tasks. “Two U.S. Navy captains, sent in-country to investigate the shortcomings, came away impressed with the effective use by the Israeli Army UAVs in the [targeting] role and recommended the adoption of such a system by the U.S. Navy” prompting Secretary of the Navy John Lehman to acquire a UAV capability, the IAI Pioneer. (6)

Israel also innovated UAV use in extrajudicial executions in its occupations of Lebanon and the OPT. Targeted assassinations have long been a tactic Israel used against Palestinian and Lebanese militants. The highest-profile killing during this earlier period was the February, 1992 assassination of Hizballah Secretary-General Sheikh Abbas al-Musawi where an IAI Scout “was used to locate [al-Musawi’s] vehicle, for targeting and to report the results of the strike.” These efforts used helicopters, cruise missiles or aircraft to fire any weapon with the UAVs performing only ISR missions. This description still fits all but a few of the UAV models in the world today with the U.S. and Israel providing most of those few models able to carry armed payloads themselves.

Esteem of Israeli UAVs further grew after the first Gulf War when the Pioneer “emerged as a useful source of intelligence at the tactical level during Desert Storm. [The] Pioneer was used by Navy battleships to locate Iraqi targets for its 16-inch guns.” (7) This marked the first time the U.S. used drones for real-time surveillance in combat. It was a Pioneer that was involved in what may one day be seen as a watershed moment:

In one case, a group of Iraqi soldiers saw a Pioneer flying overhead and, rather than wait to be blown up by a 2,000-pound cannon shell, waved white bedsheets and undershirts at the drone. It was the first time in history that human soldiers surrendered to an unmanned system. (8)

Since then Israeli UAV innovation has continued to inform that of other militaries. The speed of Israeli technological advancement in the field reflects an important aspect of its pacification laboratory. Wartime research and development in industrial nations operates at an accelerated pace and four decades of consistent conflict in its occupation of the OPT, as well as nearly two decades in Lebanon, has created a permanent wartime level of militarized technological investment as well as a battlefield laboratory for deployment.

The perpetual war economy and combat history, combined with Israel’s early entry into the UAV field, have provided Israel with a competitive edge in exporting UAVs. The ‘combat proven’ aspect of Israeli technology is advertised by the IDF itself. It noted the use and success of its UAVs in the Operation Cast Lead assault on Gaza, reporting on its website:

The success of the IDF thus far in Operation Cast Lead is largely due to the cooperation between different parts of the army — such as various brigades and units. Thanks to the use of UAVs … the IDF has been attaining footage captured from the air, above the Gaza Strip, and collecting data for the ground forces in Gaza.

Popular Mechanics noted about Cast Lead that “On the Israeli side, there is counter-rocket technology such as radar that quickly tracks rocket launches back to point of origin and signal-gathering missile-guidance sensors that are mounted on UAVs.” More than fulfilling radar, targeting and air-strike roles, UAVs offer “continuous or ‘persistent’ surveillance of the battlespace, providing commanders with what is, in effect, a low hanging, near-stationary satellite.” The unmanned aircraft also helps to alleviate “pressure on the military by political authorities and the general public to minimize casualties and capture of aircrews by the enemy” and complete missions “which, if manned, would tax or exceed the limits of human endurance.” (9)

Earlier restrictions on UAV operational capacity have fallen away with the dramatic increases in computer processing power, image rendering, wireless and sensor technologies that allow for higher resolution photo and video transmissions and improved communications. The speed of technological advance in the field has led to constant reassessment of unmanned vehicles’ battlefield potential and the dedication of increasing resources to development and procurement by armed forces worldwide. The U.S.’s National Defense Authorization Fiscal Year 2001 legislation declared “It shall be a goal of the Armed Forces to achieve the fielding of unmanned, remotely controlled technology such that … by 2010, one-third of the aircraft in the operational deep strike force aircraft fleet are unmanned.” [PDF] Just five years later, the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review increased that to 45 percent.

The U.S. UAV program predates Israel’s, though it has been slower to adopt and integrate the technology. Now investing hundreds of millions of dollars annually in developing and advancing UAV technology the US military UAV program is projected to generate $62 billion in revenue from 2010 – 2015, increasing at a 10% compound annual growth rate. This investment by the U.S. and the political considerations of its domestic military industrial complex have led the U.S. to almost completely supplant Israeli drones in its arsenal. This does nothing to negate the generative influence that Israeli drones and their use in Lebanon and the OPT, and later their use by the U.S. in Iraq, had on the U.S. drone programs. A Congressional Research Office report notes to this effect that following the deployment of the Pioneer in “the Gulf War, military officials recognized the worth of UAVs, and the Air Force’s Predator became a UAV on a fast track, quickly adding new capabilities.” (10)

Other nations though have turned to Israel to fill a demand for drones. Over fifty nations (see insert) have procured Israeli models to fill a variety of surveillance, combat, and counterinsurgency roles. Just as in the U.S. case, the battlefield experience is a selling point. The Aeronautics Defense Systems (ADS) Orbiter brochure notes it to be a “Field proven, mature operational system”. [PDF] It is in service with at least twelve militaries. BlueBird Aero Systems’ Spy-Lite is too noted as “combat proven” and advertised as having “been operated successfully in combat conditions [by] the Israeli Defense Forces”. [PDF]

ADS’ Aerostar – serving in at least fifteen nations – promotional material states it is “[o]perationally proven on four continents” and is a “combat proven – mature operational system”. [PDF] Elbit Systems’ Hermes 450 – sold to at least a dozen nations – is advertised as “[o]perational in the Israel Defense Force”, a fact highlighted with a bright yellow “BATTLE PROVEN” [PDF] stamp on the front of its brochure.

The media too promotes the combat-tested worthiness of Israeli military systems. The Jerusalem Post in a December 2008 article about the procurement of IAI’s Heron UAV by Canada states, “It plays a vital role in IDF operations in the Gaza Strip and in southern Lebanon, and in February the Heron Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) will make its debut in Afghanistan as the main surveillance drone for the Canadian Armed Forces.” Here we can see that there is not only a mature Israeli industry based upon the oppression of Palestinians and Lebanese, the technology’s history is actively marketed.

Agencies of authority, from occupying armies to border patrols to police forces to private military/security firms all exercise control over certain spaces normally including the airspace. UAVs are useful and used in ISR missions beyond those of direct conflict and military occupation. Israel continues to fly UAVs over the OPT and Lebanon for surveillance and intelligence gathering while the same machines are being exported all over the world. French police deployed the IAI Hunter for “hostile protest monitoring” during the G8 summit in 2003. The Aerostar is also guarding Chevron’s oil fields in Angola and the Russian Federal Security Authority used ADS’s Skystar 300 for surveillance at St. Petersburg’s 2006 G8 conference. The entire UAV market is expected to rise to $13.6 billion dollars by 2014.

Current military use of UAVs is limited by the need for relatively unchallenged airspace. They usually have a low radar signature but if located have little evasive or defensive capability. Efforts to make air combat-capable UAVs are years away from matching the capability of piloted aircraft. Until that happens, they will be vulnerable when deployed without air superiority. Thus, UAVs remain a tool of the already dominant. Hezbollah in Lebanon has at least twice penetrated Israeli airspace with an Iranian-built Mirsad-1 UAV. This was of immense public relations value to Hezbollah but the flights had little military use because of their minimal freedom of movement in Israeli airspace and both were shot down. However, UAVs as part of an integrated warring, pacification, counterinsurgency or control strategy can guide the attacks of approaching ground forces and identify targets for air and artillery strikes. Their ability to map in real-time the physical landscape of the battleground makes them a key tool of the nascent information technology-based theories of net-centric warfare.

(1) Munson, Kenneth (1988). World Unmanned Aircraft. London: Jane’s Publishing Company, p. 8.
(2) Ibid.
(3) Zaloga, Steven J. (2008). Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: Robotic Warfare 1917-2007. Oxford: Osprey Publishing, p. 22.
(4) Ibid., p. 22-3.
(5) Newcome, Laurence R. (2004). Unmanned Aviation: A Brief History of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. Reston, VA: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, p. 95-6.
(6) Ibid., p. 96. Bone, Elizabeth and Christopher Bolkcom, 25 April 2003. Umanned Aerial Vehicles: Background and Issues for Congress. [PDF] Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, p. 2.
(7) Ibid., p. 2.
(8) Singer, P.W. (2009). Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century. New York: Penguin Press, p. 57.
(9) Defense Science Board, February 2004. “Defense Science Board Study on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Uninhabited Combat Aerial Vehicles”. [PDF] Washington, D.C.: Office of the Under Secretary of Defense For Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, p. 4.
(10). Bone and Bolkom, p. 2.