Boycot Israel 4

Amnesty International's secretary-general, Irene Khan, visits the gate of Ras Atja in Israel's separation fence in the West Bank near Qalqilia.

Electronic Intifada:

'Why an academic boycott of Israel is necessary.
Let me begin by stating that any successful academic boycott imposed upon Israeli institutions of higher education will assuredly have an impact on the academic freedom of Israeli scholars and teachers, at least in terms of its expression beyond their national borders. Is this acceptable? After all, other teachers and scholars who obviously have a stake in academic freedom, will have to cooperate with the boycott if it is to have an impact. As one of those academics, my answer to this question is that it is not only acceptable but absolutely necessary -- and for the following reasons:1. Academic freedom is an ideal, and ideals if they are to be responsibly adhered to, must be judged against their consequences in real life situations. One of the major real life situations we are dealing with here is the fact that Israeli academic institutions and personnel have been intimately involved for nearly 40 years in their country's systematic destruction of Palestinian educational endeavors (and thus Palestinian academic freedom) within the Occupied Territories. And even longer, if less dramatically, as regards the Arab-Israeli community within Israel proper. The vast majority of Israel academics have either been silent, or active participants in this process. The passive aspect of this complicity with the occupation has been commented upon by Tanya Reinhart, formerly a professor of Linguistics at Tel Aviv University. She tells us that "Never in its history did the senate of a any Israeli university pass a resolution protesting the frequent closure of Palestinian universities, let alone voice protest over the devastation sowed there [in the OT]....It is not that a motion in that direction failed to gather a majority, there was no such motion anywhere in Israeli academia." And then there is Professor Ilan Pappe of Haifa University, who estimates that the number of Israeli academics who have "raised their voices against occupation" is "roughly 100 out of 9000." And many of these, like Pappe himself, are subject to harassment by university administrators and social ostracization by their peers. In terms of active collaboration with the occupation the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel has noted that "Israeli research institutes, think tanks and academic departments have historically granted legitimacy to the work of academics who advocate ethnic cleansing, apartheid, denial of refugee rights, and other discriminatory policies....Collaboration and cooperation with the intelligence services, the army, and other agencies of the occupation regime is part of the routine work of the Israeli academy."Thus, with the passive or active assistance of the vast majority of Israeli professorate, Palestinian education at all levels in the Occupied Territory is often brought to a near standstill by closures and roadblocks while its teachers, students, and physical structures suffer repeated assaults by Israeli military and settler paramilitary forces. All of this is documented at, among other places, Birzeit University's Right2Education website.'

Lees verder: http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6348.shtml

Irak 150

The Jewish Daily Forward bericht:

'Israeli Experts Say Middle East Was Safer With Saddam in Iraq.

Jerusalem - Although few tears were shed in Israel over Saddam Hussein’s death last week, a small but growing chorus — including government officials, academics and Iraqi émigrés — is warning that Israel could find itself in more danger with him gone, and that it might even regret having welcomed his toppling.
“If I knew then what I know today, I would not have recommended going to war, because Saddam was far less dangerous than I thought,” said Haifa University political scientist Amatzia Baram, one of Israel’s leading Iraq experts.
Saddam was feared and reviled in Israel, both as a tyrant and as an enemy of the Jewish state. He demonstratively supported Palestinian terrorists, and few have forgiven his bombarding of Israel with Scud missiles during the 1991 Gulf War.
“Retrospectively, justice has been done,” Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh told Israel Radio this week. Still, he cautioned, Israel must now be concerned “about what is liable to happen in the future.”
Saddam’s death, Sneh warned, could lead to “a reinforcement of Iranian influence in Iraq.” He said that Iraq had turned into a “volcano of terror” following the war, with “destructive energies” that could spill over into Jordan and Israel.
Such misgivings, though rarely aired publicly for fear of offending Washington, reach high into Israel’s security establishment. Yuval Diskin, director of the Shin Bet security service, told a group of students in a military preparatory program last May that Israel might come to regret its support for the American-led invasion in March 2003.
“When you dismantle a system in which there is a despot who controls his people by force, you have chaos,” Diskin said, unaware that the meeting was secretly recorded. “I’m not sure we won’t miss Saddam.” The tape was later broadcast on Israeli television.
Although Iraq was long feared as a formidable enemy of the Jewish state, on the eve of the invasion it was poor and powerless. Palaces across the country were made of cheap plaster. Nuclear and biological weapons seen as threats by the Bush administration were nonexistent.
Baram, the Iraq expert, said that before the war started, he advised American officials of problems they might face afterward. What he did not anticipate, he said, was the scale of terrorism that would spread across the country, calling it “much, much more than I expected.”
Since the invasion, chaos has swept Iraq. Terrorist bombs in public places, sectarian attacks between Shi’ites and Sunnis, and ordinary criminal violence kill tens of people daily. One study estimates that some 650,000 Iraqis have died violently since the war, killed either by American and allied forces, terrorists or criminals.
Even some of those who suffered directly from Saddam’s brutality told the Forward that in retrospect, Israel was better off with him than without.
Baghdad-born Avraham Eini was a teenager when his father was arrested and tortured by Saddam’s security agents in the 1970s. “He later died of his wounds,” said 54-year-old Eini, who had escaped with his family and settled in Ramat Gan. Two decades later, in 1991, Iraqi Scud missiles fell 200 yards from his house.
Eini said he felt a sense of “revenge and relief” when Saddam was executed last week. Yet, he said, “Israel would be safer today if Saddam stayed in power.”
Saddam and his Ba’athist revolutionary colleagues came to power in 1968, a year after the crushing defeat of Arab armies by Israel in the Six-Day War. Vice president and strongman of the regime, Saddam had an attitude that was decidedly anti-Israel, following Ba’athist ideology and postwar Arab sentiment. One of his first notorious moves was to hang 17 alleged spies, nine of them Jewish.'

Lees verder: http://www.forward.com/articles/israeli-experts-say-middle-east-was-safer-with-sad/

De Nuance van de NRC 12

Mede dankzij het Nederlandse gewelddadig ingrijpen in Afghanistan zijn volgens de NRC ' te veel burgers' gedood. 'Te veel?' Is er dan zoiets als een acceptabel aantal burgerdoden en is dat aantal overschreden? Is er een bepaald quotum gedode dan wel vermoorde burgers dat wij in het 'beschaafde' Westen aanvaardbaar vinden? Wat is dit voor verborgen propaganda?

'''Te veel burgers dood door NAVO.''

Kabul, 4 jan. De NAVO heeft gisteren erkend dat er het afgelopen jaar te veel burgerslachtoffers zijn gevallen bij haar strijd in Afghanistan.
„De grootste fout die we hebben gemaakt [..] is het doden van onschuldige burgers”, zei een woordvoerder van de NAVO-stabilisatiemacht ISAF gisteren in de Afghaanse hoofdstad Kabul.
De NAVO zou al enkele weken werken aan een verandering van tactiek, waardoor burgers minder gevaar zouden lopen. Details over die nieuwe tactiek zijn (nog) niet bekendgemaakt.
Dinsdag, een dag vóór de NAVO-verklaring, had de Afghaanse president Hamid Karzai wederom zijn ongenoegen uitgesproken over de werkwijze van buitenlandse en assisterende Afghaanse strijdkrachten. In een verklaring drukte hij zijn „grote spijt” uit over de dood van twee burgers in de oostelijke provincie Nangarhar, bij een inval door Amerikaanse militairen. Zondag waren er (vreedzame) demonstraties in de provinciehoofdstad Jalalabad tegen het incident, dat werd bevestigd door getuigen en de gouverneur van Nangarhar. Een woordvoerder van de Amerikaanse militairen zei onbekend te zijn met de dood van de burgers.
NAVO-troepen hebben vorig jaar tientallen burgers gedood, vooral bij bombardementen in de zuidelijke provincies, maar ook tijdens vuurgevechten en in gevallen waarbij NAVO-militairen zich bedreigd voelden door burgers, bijvoorbeeld als die niet gehoorzaamden aan orders.
Bij een luchtaanval tijdens operatie Medusa in Kandahar zijn volgens Afghaanse bestuurders afgelopen oktober twintig leden van een familie gedood. De resultaten van het onderzoek waartoe Karzai opdracht had gegeven, en waaraan de NAVO heeft meegewerkt, zijn nooit gepubliceerd. De NAVO-commandanten hebben het rapport tot in detail bestudeerd, aldus de woordvoerder. „Het heeft behoorlijk indruk gemaakt op dit hoofdkwartier.” The New York Times wist onlangs te melden dat volgens het onderzoek 31 burgers zijn omgekomen. (AP)'

Zie: http://www.nrc.nl/buitenland/article590454.ece/Te_veel_burgers_dood_door_NAVO

Opvallend zijn deze bewoordingen:

1. 'De NAVO zou al enkele weken werken aan een verandering van tactiek, waardoor burgers minder gevaar zouden lopen.
2. Zondag waren er (vreedzame) demonstraties in de provinciehoofdstad Jalalabad tegen het incident...
3. in gevallen waarbij NAVO-militairen zich bedreigd voelden door burgers, bijvoorbeeld als die niet gehoorzaamden aan orders.'

1. Wat bedoelen onze Westerse strijdkrachten met: 'waardoor burgers minder gevaar lopen?' Kennelijk betekende de huidige tactiek dat men geen of op zijn minst onvoldoende rekening hield met Afghaanse burgers en dat ze in de toekomst 'minder gevaar' gaan lopen. Ik zou zeggen dat het geweld dat namens ons in Afghanistan wordt uitgeoefend helemaal geen enkele burgerdode ten gevolge zou moeten hebben. Hoe anders kan men de hearts and minds van de bevolking winnen?
2. Het woord 'incident' is misleidend. Als er iets duidelijk is geworden is dat het nu juist geen incidenten zijn, maar dat er 'te veel burgers' zijn gedood en dat het doodschieten van onschuldigen veelvuldig en zeker te vaak plaatsvindt. 'Incident' is propagandistisch taalgebruik. Waarom houdt de NRC zich niet aan onafhankelijke berichtgeving? Welk belang dient de krant nu?
3. NAVO-militairen, ik ga ervan uit dat daaronder ook Nederlandse militairen zijn, doden zodra ze 'zich bedreigd voelen, bijvoorbeeld als Afghanen niet gehoorzaamden aan orders.' Hoe nu? Spreken alle NAVO-militairen vloeiend Afghaans zodat hun gevoel een goede graadmeter is om burgers te doden? Aangezien de overgrote meerderheid geen Afghaans spreekt en de cultuur nauwelijks kent is de vraag waar hun dodelijk 'gevoel' op gebaseerd is.

Waarom publiceert de NRC een bericht dat meer vragen oproept dan antwoorden geeft? En hoe genunceerd is dit bericht voor de doorsnee NRC-lezer?

Irak 149

Democracy Now:

'AMY GOODMAN: Well, today on Democracy Now!, we're going to continue our coverage of the execution of Saddam Hussein by airing one of the last televised interviews Saddam Hussein did with an American journalist. The interview actually took place in 1992, soon after Desert Storm. It was in Baghdad and was conducted by our colleague here at Downtown Community Television, 15-time Emmy Award-winning journalist Jon Alpert. Until now, this broadcast was never aired in the United States. In a moment, we'll play excerpts. But first, Jon Alpert, welcome back to Democracy Now! Talk about this interview you did with Saddam Hussein.
JON ALPERT: Well, everybody was anxious to find out what he was thinking after the Gulf War. Did he feel that he had made a mistake in invading Kuwait? Was he interested at all in trying to find a path to peace? There didn't really seem to be much going on in the diplomatic front. And we were fortunate enough to get an interview with him, and he used it to talk about the possibilities for peace and how he felt about the war.
AMY GOODMAN: Where did you do the interview?
JON ALPERT: In one of his palaces. It’s really a rather exciting journalistic story. They came knocking on the hotel room door at 10:00 in the morning. And I could tell from the way they were dressed and their serious faces that this was -- these were the people who were going to take me to the interview. And I went to get my camera, because I do my interviews basically from behind the camera, not sitting here like this. And they said, “What are you doing?” I said, “I’m getting my camera.” They said, “You can’t take the camera.” I said, “Well, how can I interview him? You know, I’m not going to do this with colored pencils.” And they said, “Get in the car. If you're not in the car in two minutes, we're leaving you behind.”
And they took us to the palace. We walked in. And immediately, Saddam Hussein appears. And he came up, he shook my hand, took our photograph. I have the souvenir photographs here. And then he disappeared. And I said, “My goodness, I blew it. There's no interview.” And they said, “Just shut up,” and took us down to the basement, where I had my first and only jailhouse search. They inspected parts of me I didn't know I had, then took me to a room, and when they opened the door, there were 200 people sitting in the room. The entire crew from Iraqi Television and all Saddam's officials, hanger-on, translators, and things like that. And I knew eventually I’d be speaking to him. It didn't happen until later on that evening. But then we conducted a one-hour interview.
AMY GOODMAN: Let's go to a clip of this interview.
JON ALPERT: We’re wondering, when the Iraqi army went into Kuwait, did you imagine that the forces were going to strike back against your country as hard as they did?
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] Yes, we imagined this, and we imagined even more than that.
JON ALPERT: This is now your chance to talk directly to the American people. And I’m wondering if you could just make a simple declarative statement about your intentions with chemical weapons and nuclear weapons?
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] If it helps make things clear to the American people, then let me tell you that we are ready and willing to work positively and effectively with all those who are interested to work in this direction to make the region of the Middle East a region free of all weapons of mass destruction.
JON ALPERT: We have a new administration in Washington. Do you think that there is any hope, now that President Bush has gone, that there can be better relations between the United States and your country?
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] We are still willing to discuss new relations with the United States, if the United States is prepared so to do.
JON ALPERT: If President Clinton was sitting here opposite you, what would you like to tell him?
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] When he actually sits in front of me, then I will tell him what I think I will do.
JON ALPERT: And how about if ex-President Bush was here?
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] And it is part of the trait of an Arab and values of an Arab not to fight. It is part of an Arab’s trait to fight only those who are on their horses with their swords drawn. Now that President Bush is neither on his horse nor with a sword drawn, then I don't think that he is in a position to be fought.
JON ALPERT: Basically, the people in the United States have come to the point where they don't trust you.
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] At any rate, whether or not people trust us or not is -- I don't want to comment on that. But I want to say that the American people are going to discover that amongst the first people that are worthy of their trust are people here in Iraq.
JON ALPERT: Many people believe that if, for example, we turn around and we walk away, that you'll be back across the border in Kuwait tomorrow.
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] If only we had the means to reach out to the American people and explain to them how the American administration goaded the Kuwaitis themselves to become part of the conspiracy being woven against us, then the situation and the perception of the American people today would have been different from what it is.'

Lees verder: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/03/1459240

Irak 148

Patrick Cockburn schrijft in de Independent:

Saddam: From monster to martyr?
How Bush and Blair's choices have led to disaster in Iraq, culminating in a chaotic execution that is fuelling civil war

It takes real genius to create a martyr out of Saddam Hussein. Here is a man dyed deep with the blood of his own people who refused to fight for him during the United States-led invasion three-and-a-half years ago. His tomb in his home village of Awja is already becoming a place of pilgrimage for the five million Sunni Arabs of Iraq who are at the core of the uprising.
During his trial, Saddam himself was clearly trying to position himself to be a martyr in the cause of Iraqi independence and unity and Arab nationalism. His manifest failure to do anything effective for these causes during the quarter of a century he misruled Iraq should have made his task difficult. But an execution which vied in barbarity with a sectarian lynching in the backstreets of Belfast 30 years ago is elevating him to heroic status in the eyes of the Sunni - the community to which most Arabs belong - across the Middle East.
The old nostrum of Winston Churchill that "grass may grow on the battlefield but never under the gallows" is likely to prove as true in Iraq as it has done so frequently in the rest of the world. Nor is the US likely to be successful in claiming that the execution was purely an Iraqi affair.
Many Iraqis recall that the announcement of the verdict on Saddam sentencing him to death was conveniently switched last year to 5 November, the last daily news cycle before the US mid-term elections. The US largely orchestrated the trial from behind the scenes. Yesterday the Iraqi government arrested an official who supervised the execution for making the mobile-phone video that has stirred so much controversy.
The Iraqi Shia and Kurds are overwhelmingly delighted that Saddam is in his grave. But the timing of his death at the start of the Eid al-Adha feast makes his killing appear like a deliberate affront to the Sunni community. The execution of his half-brother Barzan in the next few days will confirm it in its sense that it is the target of an assault by the majority Shia.
Why was the Iraqi government of Nouri al-Maliki so keen to kill Saddam Hussein? First, there is the entirely understandable desire for revenge. Members of the old opposition to Saddam Hussein are often blamed for their past ineffectiveness but most lost family members to his torture chambers and execution squads. Every family in Iraq lost a member to his disastrous wars or his savage repressions.
There is also a fear among Shia leaders that the US might suddenly change sides. This is not as outlandish as it might at first appear. The US has been cultivating the Sunni in Iraq for the past 18 months. It has sought talks with the insurgents. It has tried to reverse the de-Baathification campaign. US commentators and politicians blithely talk about eliminating the anti-American Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and fighting his militia, the Mehdi Army. No wonder Shias feel that it is better to get Saddam under the ground just as quickly as possible. Americans may have forgotten that they were once allied to him but Iraqis have not.'

Lees verder: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2124262.ece

Robert Fisk 22

Arminius wees me op het volgende artikel van Robert Fisk:

'Robert Fisk: He takes his secrets to the grave. Our complicity dies with him.
How the West armed Saddam, fed him intelligence on his 'enemies', equipped him for atrocities - and then made sure he wouldn't squeal.

Published: 31 December 2006.

We've shut him up. The moment Saddam's hooded executioner pulled the lever of the trapdoor in Baghdad yesterday morning, Washington's secrets were safe. The shameless, outrageous, covert military support which the United States - and Britain - gave to Saddam for more than a decade remains the one terrible story which our presidents and prime ministers do not want the world to remember. And now Saddam, who knew the full extent of that Western support - given to him while he was perpetrating some of the worst atrocities since the Second World War - is dead.
Gone is the man who personally received the CIA's help in destroying the Iraqi communist party. After Saddam seized power, US intelligence gave his minions the home addresses of communists in Baghdad and other cities in an effort to destroy the Soviet Union's influence in Iraq. Saddam's mukhabarat visited every home, arrested the occupants and their families, and butchered the lot. Public hanging was for plotters; the communists, their wives and children, were given special treatment - extreme torture before execution at Abu Ghraib.
There is growing evidence across the Arab world that Saddam held a series of meetings with senior American officials prior to his invasion of Iran in 1980 - both he and the US administration believed that the Islamic Republic would collapse if Saddam sent his legions across the border - and the Pentagon was instructed to assist Iraq's military machine by providing intelligence on the Iranian order of battle. One frosty day in 1987, not far from Cologne, I met the German arms dealer who initiated those first direct contacts between Washington and Baghdad - at America's request.
"Mr Fisk... at the very beginning of the war, in September of 1980, I was invited to go to the Pentagon," he said. "There I was handed the very latest US satellite photographs of the Iranian front lines. You could see everything on the pictures. There were the Iranian gun emplacements in Abadan and behind Khorramshahr, the lines of trenches on the eastern side of the Karun river, the tank revetments - thousands of them - all the way up the Iranian side of the border towards Kurdistan. No army could want more than this. And I travelled with these maps from Washington by air to Frankfurt and from Frankfurt on Iraqi Airways straight to Baghdad. The Iraqis were very, very grateful!"
I was with Saddam's forward commandos at the time, under Iranian shellfire, noting how the Iraqi forces aligned their artillery positions far back from the battle front with detailed maps of the Iranian lines. Their shelling against Iran outside Basra allowed the first Iraqi tanks to cross the Karun within a week. The commander of that tank unit cheerfully refused to tell me how he had managed to choose the one river crossing undefended by Iranian armour. Two years ago, we met again, in Amman and his junior officers called him "General" - the rank awarded him by Saddam after that tank attack east of Basra, courtesy of Washington's intelligence information.
Iran's official history of the eight-year war with Iraq states that Saddam first used chemical weapons against it on 13 January 1981. AP's correspondent in Baghdad, Mohamed Salaam, was taken to see the scene of an Iraqi military victory east of Basra. "We started counting - we walked miles and miles in this fucking desert, just counting," he said. "We got to 700 and got muddled and had to start counting again ... The Iraqis had used, for the first time, a combination - the nerve gas would paralyse their bodies ... the mustard gas would drown them in their own lungs. That's why they spat blood."
At the time, the Iranians claimed that this terrible cocktail had been given to Saddam by the US. Washington denied this. But the Iranians were right. The lengthy negotiations which led to America's complicity in this atrocity remain secret - Donald Rumsfeld was one of President Ronald Reagan's point-men at this period - although Saddam undoubtedly knew every detail. But a largely unreported document, "United States Chemical and Biological Warfare-related Dual-use exports to Iraq and their possible impact on the Health Consequences of the Persian Gulf War", stated that prior to 1985 and afterwards, US companies had sent government-approved shipments of biological agents to Iraq. These included Bacillus anthracis, which produces anthrax, andEscherichia coli (E. coli). That Senate report concluded that: "The United States provided the Government of Iraq with 'dual use' licensed materials which assisted in the development of Iraqi chemical, biological and missile-systems programs, including ... chemical warfare agent production facility plant and technical drawings, chemical warfare filling equipment."'

Lees verder: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2114403.ece#2006-12-31T00