NOVANEWS
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Husband of ‘NYT’ Jerusalem correspondent calls for attack on Iran
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Israeli military court extends administrative detention for civil rights lawyer Dr. Yousef Abdul Haq
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AIPAC member identified as Abileah assailant during Netanyahu speech to Congress
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Adelson dumps Gingrich and Santorum’s star is rising
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US citizens arrested in Bahrain supporting peaceful protest near one-year anniversary of uprising
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‘Free Beacon’ reporter attacks Center for American Progress in misleading articles that push for Iran war
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The 8th annual ‘Israeli Apartheid week’ is focused on BDS
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Likud party members issue call to storm al-Aqsa mosque next Sunday
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Asher Grunis discriminates his way to the top of the Israeli Supreme Court
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Sh*t the David Project says about Israel
Husband of ‘NYT’ Jerusalem correspondent calls for attack on Iran
Feb 11, 2012
Philip Weiss
When does the Caesar’s wife standard kick in? When do warlike statements from Israeli Hirsh Goodman, who is married to Isabel Kershner, a New York Times Jerusalem correspondent, become too much for the Times to bear? When do those pronouncements affect the paper’s reputation for straightforward reporting?
Not behaving like Caesar’s wife– Goodman last month called for Israel to wage an international “war” for its public image. Now he’s calling for war against Iran.
Notice the sloppy thinking– that Iran is threatening America with nukes, threatening a world war.
Daniel Nolan reports for the Spectator, a Hamilton, Canada, newspaper on a speech by Goodman on Thursday night at a local synagogue, sponsored by the United Jewish Appeal:
A prominent Israeli writer is advocating his nation attack Iran’s nuclear development facilities now because the risk is too great after that country builds nuclear weapons.
Hirsh Goodman doesn’t believe sanctions being pushed by Western nations will stop Iran and said something has to be done this year before Iran moves its nuclear work underground.
He said a nuclear Iran, along with a nuclear Pakistan, would plunge the world into “a new cold war, if not a hot one.”
“The minute Iran is nuclear, it’s a whole different game,” Goodman said Thursday night at the Beth Jacob Synagogue in west Hamilton.
“Not because they are going to blow up Israel. They’ve got missiles that can reach the east cost of America, but what happens if the ayatollah (Iran’s supreme leader) wakes up one morning and destroys the Saudi fields and the Kuwaiti oilfields and the West is left with no energy.”
Israeli military court extends administrative detention for civil rights lawyer Dr. Yousef Abdul Haq
Feb 11, 2012
International Solidarity Movement and Tanweer Enlightenment Forum
Dr. Yousef Abdul Haq Photo: Tanweer Enlightenment Forum
The Israel military court has extended administrative detention for two months in addition to three months already detained for civil rights lawyer Dr. Yousef Abdul Haq, a lecturer at An-Najah National University and the Cultural Coordinator for the Tanweer Palestinian Cultural Enlightenment Forum, currently detained in Ofer Prison near Ramallah.
Yousef Abdul Haq was arrested November 7th, 2011 at his home at 2:00 AM, suffering from illness which requires constant dosage of medicine, forcing his transfer to a hospital immediately after his arrest in Ramla.
He was sentenced to two months in administrative detention immediately.
This arbitrary administrative detention is legally incompatible with the most basic international standards of human rights, because it is without any specific charge against the prisoner. These arbitrary detentions depend on the military file and “secret evidence” which cannot be seen by the detainee or defense lawyers. This file is prepared by Israel intelligence and is “collected” illegally.
This type of detention is internationally banned and is impacting lawmakers in the Palestinian Legislative Council, members of local councils, university students, political activists, academics, trade unionists and even women and children.
The imposition of administrative detention by Article 111 of the military state of emergency imposed by the British colonial authorities of Palestine September, 1945 is illegal on the grounds that Article 43 of the Hague international agreement of 1907 prohibits an occupying power to change the legislative reality of the country occupied.
Administrative detention is the endless suffering of the prisoners because they may de detained for a decade, physically and psychologically impacting the detainee and their family based on the expectation that the next decision will be an extension of detention.
The International Solidarity Foundation for Human Rights received from the Israeli military court in Ofer, that the number of additional administrative detentions issued by the Israeli military governor reached a total of 5,971 since the beginning of 2004 until the end of 2010.
We in the Tanweer Enlightenment Forum, call for the release of our colleague Dr. Yousef immediately from behind bars, and we hold the Government responsible for the conditions of Israel’s occupation, in respect to his health. We demand the end of the administrative detentions which are contrary to international law..
On this occasion, we declare our solidarity with the prisoner hero Khader Adnan, who is continuing his hunger strike battle in his 55th day to end the administrative detentions. We also call on international institutions and the Arab and local media to expose the policy of administrative detention. We uphold the work of a united front for the release of Palestinian prisoners including lawyers, members of the Legislative Council, academics, students, children and women.
We call for the end of administrative detentions forever.
Freedom for political prisoners.
Close the detention camps and prisons and abolish administrative detention.
AIPAC member identified as Abileah assailant during Netanyahu speech to Congress
Feb 11, 2012
Annie Robbins
Occupy AIPAC sent out the following press release:
A recent response to a subpoena from the United States Capitol Police has revealed the main assailant of a peaceful demonstrator who was physically attacked and injured on May 24, 2011, to be Stanley Anthony Shulster, allegedly a member of the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). According to the lawsuit, Mr. Shulster, a retired lawyer, admitted to assaulting Rae Abileah, a member of CODEPINK, in the House of Representatives while she protested the Israeli occupation of Palestine during the speech by Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel. The Capitol Police issued an arrest warrant for Mr. Shulster for this attack.
Mr. Shulster’s biography on the Jackson County, Oregon Republican Women website identifies him as “an Unpaid Lobbyist,” and a “Volunteer in the Israel Defense Forces Medical Unit and a member of AIPAC.” The bio states: “At the last AIPAC meeting in May of 2011 Stan was present to hear the stirring address that Prime Minister Netanyahu gave to Congress and he grabbed the woman who heckled the Prime Minister while he was speaking.”
Abileah protests Israeli occupation
during the speech by Netanyahu 5.24.2011Rabbi Shmuley Boteach also attested to the assault when he wrote in his blog, “The elderly gentleman to my right, whom I had been talking to just before the speech started, pulled the flag out of her hands, cupped his hands over her mouth, and assisted in subduing her.” Additional witnesses have been identified by the U.S. Capitol Police.
According to the complaint, Mr. Shulster grabbed the banner held by Ms. Abileah, used his hand to attempt to gag and suffocate Ms. Abileah, and yanked her head back, injuring her neck. As a result of the attack, Ms. Abileah sustained a neck strain, swollen neck and muscle strain, and has since suffered from frequent head and neck aches as well as emotional trauma.
Ms. Abileah is a 29 year old American Jew of Israeli descent, who works as the Co-Director of CODEPINK, a women-initiated grassroots peace and social justice organization that seeks to end U.S. wars and the U.S. funded occupation of Palestine.
“I was shocked that the biography of the person who attacked me would brag about his use of violence. This lawless behavior echoes the routine actions of the Israeli government and military in carrying out violent acts daily against the Palestinian people. I am hopeful that my filing suit will be a clear signal to those who attempt to silence peaceful protesters, that they will be held accountable for their illegal actions,” said Ms. Abileah.
Photos of the action and assault can be found here.
AIPAC’s 2012 annual policy conference will be held from March 4 to 6 in Washington, D.C. It is expected that peaceful protesters will challenge AIPAC’s policies of supporting Israel’s ongoing crimes against the Palestinian people and its threats of attacking Iran.
(Plans for OCCUPY AIPAC are under way and will take place March 2-6 in Washington DC.)
Adelson dumps Gingrich and Santorum’s star is rising
Feb 11, 2012
Annie Robbins
News spreads fast. Bloomberg is reporting Adelson isn’t planning on floating Gingrich anymore which leaves him high and dry and scrambling for cash.
Five losing contests later, Gingrich and Winning Our Future, an outside political action committee supporting him, are almost silent on television airwaves, offering free water and coffee at events, and revamping a fundraising strategy based largely on the support of a single wealthy backer, Sheldon Adelson, and the Las Vegas casino owner’s family.
In the past seven days, Winning Our Future has spent $61,290 on broadcast television advertisements, compared with $636,920 spent by Mitt Romney and a super-PAC backing him, Restore Our Future, according to data compiled by New York-based Kantar Media’s CMAG, a company that tracks advertising.
For now, the Adelsons don’t plan to deliver another big check to float Gingrich’s campaign, according to a person familiar with their deliberations.
So, have you checked out that video up there yet? (I rec, it’s funny) Gee, what can I say? Does America deserve a president named Santorum? Wrong question. Do I think he’ll win? No. Do I think he’ll win the GOP nomination? At this point, maybe. I’ve been saying all along you can’t win the GOP nomination if the fundies don’t love ya, and fundies don’t like Mormons, something about hell….it’s hard keeping all those extremists sorted out. I wish we could send them to an island far far away, together. Anyway, enough of my ramblings.
The Hill:
But Rick Santorum’s wins in Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado have instead coalesced support around his campaign, with Gingrich now looking for another miraculous come-from-behind.
Meanwhile, a super-PAC supporting Santorum’s campaign told Bloomberg the money has been “rolling in” since the former senator’s upset wins, including a $1 million donation earlier this week.
Googled Santorum lately? Yep, that site is still holding strong and remains in the #1 position, after the Santorum campaign’s paid spot. But it doesn’t end there, it’s not just a gag site, something I realized tonight when I clicked on “Click to continue“:
Rick Santorum is Good at Winning Caucuses
Caucuses by nature are built around people who are the most politically passionate. In Democratic caucuses, this benefits a candidate who is a bit further to the left, and his success in caucuses was a big key towards President Obama’s run to the Democratic nomination four years ago. But, as being too far to the left is considered completely unacceptable in our political climate, a socialist group is unable to highjack the proceedings. Things are different in the Republican, where you have two groups of complete whack jobs who are viewed as being a part of the conservative mainstream: the Ron Paul Libertarians and the extreme Religious Right. These people are more passionate than your average conservative, and are more willing to spend their time attending a caucus.
Think of it this way: following the Florida Primary, won by Mitt Romney, a fair amount of attention was paid to the low turnout rate. About 8.5% of Florida’s population showed up to vote in the Republican primary. Compare that to Colorado, where just over 1% of the state population participated in the caucus, and Minnesota, where less than 1% participated. And while Santorum had a strong showing in Missouri’s primary, that primary was merely symbolic and awarded no delegates. As a result, Missouri’s Republican Primary only drew from 4% of the state’s population.
What’s the conclusion to draw from this? Santorum does have a following. In Midwest states, he is the social conservative candidate of choice. But we won’t know if he’s become the social conservative candidate of the south until March. More importantly, we have no evidence to this point that Santorum can win anything that a significant portion of a state’s population actually shows up to. Until he does that, Santorum is merely the King of Contests Nobody Gives a Shit About. And while that may parlay a better contract for him with Fox News this fall, it will not get him the Republican nomination and certainly would not allow him to even put up a competitive race against President Obama in the General Election.
Comedians are going to have a field day with this, that’s one thing we can look forward to.
US citizens arrested in Bahrain supporting peaceful protest near one-year anniversary of uprising
Feb 11, 2012
Adam Horowitz
The following press release was just sent out by WitnessBahrain.org:
American Citizens Arrested in Bahrain during Peaceful Protest
Huwaida Arraf & Radhika Sainath in Police Custody
For immediate release
Febraury 11, 2011
(Manama) – US Citizens Huwaida Arraf and Radhika Sainath were arrested by Bahraini security forces in Manama on Saturday during a peaceful protest in near the Standard Chartered Bank downtown. Protesters had marched into the city center to reestablish a presence of nonviolent, peaceful protest leading up to the 1-year anniversary of the Arab Spring uprising in Bahrain.
Huwaida and Radhika were in Bahrain as part of an international solidarity effort aimed at providing an international civilian presence to report and monitor the situation on the ground. Leading up to February 14, Bahraini authorities had prevented journalists, human rights observers and other internationals from entering the country, leading many to fear a brutal crackdown. The two women are part of the Witness Bahrain initiative ( http://www.witnessbahrain.org ), which arrived in Bahrain in response to a call by Bahraini democracy activists for international observers.
Just yesterday, top US human rights envoy, Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner, called on the Bahraini authorities to respect the rights of Bahrainis to peaceful protest and to refrain from using excessive force. Huwaida was dragged away by numerous security forces after sitting on the ground, and it is widely reported that detainees have suffered physical abuse while on the way to and at police stations.
Both women were part of a peaceful protest marching near the Pearl Roundabout – site of last year’s peaceful round-the-clock protest in Bahrain, modeled after Egypt’s Tahrir Square – when they were attacked. Both are human rights lawyers, and both have experience as human rights activists in Palestine. Additionally, both were part of the National Lawyer’s Guild delegation to Gaza following Operation Cast Lead to investigate possible war crimes and illegal use of American weaponry on a civilian population.
‘Free Beacon’ reporter attacks Center for American Progress in misleading articles that push for Iran war
Feb 11, 2012
Alex Kane
A new, neoconservative online outlet called the Washington Free Beacon is continuing thecampaign against the Center for American Progress (CAP) in two articles that go after the organization for “downplaying” intelligence on Iran’s nuclear program. But the author, Adam Kredo, misleads readers by distorting the existing evidence on Iran. The articles represent a continuation of a campaign to discredit those who are cautious about a war on Iran, a core reason why neoconservatives are attacking CAP.
Kredo’s main contention is that CAP, along with the Huffington Post and Media Matters, has “downplayed new intelligence indicating Iran’s nuclear program is more dangerous than previously thought.” Kredo writes that liberal groups have taken to questioning the reporting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the organization tasked with monitoring nuclear energy and weapons. But it’s Kredo’s characterization of the most recent IAEA reportthat is wrong.
But first, Kredo is also wrong when he writes that liberal groups like CAP have questioned “the IAEA’s recent findings on Iran.” As evidence for that assertion, he links to a CAP report that approvingly cites the IAEA report “detailing Iran’s past and current nuclear weapons-related research.” So in fact, CAP does not question the veracity of the IAEA report–and neither do the other articles Kredo links to.
More important though is Kredo’s distortion of the IAEA report–which, it should be noted, has been credibly criticized by some analysts. The distortion serves up an agenda that portrays an Iranian nuclear weapons program as an “existential threat” to Israel that should be wiped out by the U.S. and/or Israel–actions that would lead to a disastrous war.
“This is the exact same pattern that we saw in Iraq, and the effort by folks to hype the threat and take things out of context and confuse the American public into thinking things that are not true,” said Jamal Abdi, the policy director for the National Iranian American Council (NIAC). “Right now, a lot of Americans have been fooled into thinking that Iran has a nuclear weapon, or even that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon.”
In Kredo’s first article (which has a hyperlink with the title, “war on truth,”) Kredo writes:
The IAEA’s most recent report reveals that Iran has been pursuing nuclear weapons since the mid-1980s with public activities peaking around 2002 before apparently moving underground.
And in his second article, which smears CAP as “prejudiced” and “anti-Semitic,” he similarly states:
Liberal writers routinely question the veracity of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) November report on Iran. The report builds the case that the regime is aggressively pursuing nuclear weapons.
The IAEA report does sound the alarm on certain aspects of Iran’s nuclear work that the report says may indicate nuclear weapons work. But no where in the report can you find a definitive statement that “Iran has been pursuing nuclear weapons since the mid-1980s” or that Iran is “aggressively pursuing nuclear weapons,” which is how Kredo characterizes it.
“What [U.S.] intelligence reports found and continue to find is the same thing the IAEA report found, which is that Iran had a concerted nuclear weapons program up until 2003, and shut that program down,” Abdi explained in a phone interview. “And while there still remains some activities that appear to be geared towards no other purpose than potential weapons work, it’s the finding of both the intelligence community and the IAEA that Iran has not made a decision to actually pursue a nuclear weapon. If anything, what they’re moving towards is the capability if they decide to get a nuclear weapon. And that’s much different than what this reporter is asserting.”
Kredo’s misleading characterizations, which frequently shows up in mainstream media, have been roundly criticized by the media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). In November 2011, a FAIR “action alert” noted:
The first part of the agency’s November 8 report declares–once again–that Iran is not transferring uranium for use in a military project.
The more explosive allegations that media are focusing on are contained in an annex that attempts to lay out evidence that has been circulating for years. The IAEA report stresses concern over allegations over past activities; very little of the report is dedicated to research that could be describing as ongoing. Indeed, the media is focusing primarily on the IAEA’s speculation about what might be ongoing research that could be related to a military program.
The Christian Science Monitor also had a good report outlining why the IAEA report wasn’t the “game changer” it was made out to be:
In a 14-page annex to its quarterly report on Iran released yesterday, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said new intelligence and other data gave it “serious concern” about the allegedly peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program. But the casus belli for military strikes that anti-Iran hawks in the US and Israel expected to gain from the IAEA report is far from clear-cut…
Prior to the report’s release, speculation mounted in Israel and Washington that new revelations might prompt military strikes to prevent Iran from acquiring a weapon.
Instead, experts say, much of the information is years old, inconclusive – and perhaps not entirely real.
Most of the weapons-related work it details was shut down nearly a decade ago – in 2003 – the IAEA says, and less formal efforts that “may” continue do not bolster arguments that Iran is a nation racing to have the bomb.
Iran “doesn’t seem to have the same North Korea-like obsession with developing nuclear weapons. That’s nowhere to be found in the [IAEA] evidence,” says Shannon Kile, head of the Nuclear Weapons Project at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
“Yes, Iran is making progress, they’ve covered the waterfront in terms of the main technical areas that you need to develop a nuclear weapon,” says Mr. Kile. “But there is no evidence they have a dedicated program under way. It’s not like they are driving toward nuclear weapons; it’s like they’re meandering toward capability.”
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