Irak 151

Zou premier Balkenende het ophangen van Saddam Hoessein nog steeds toejuichen? Misschien moet de Nederlandse parlementaire pers dit eens aan hem vragen. Politici die weten waarover ze het hebben zijn intussen 'ontzet' over de beelden.

De Guardian bericht:

'Cairo Dismayed at "Primitive" Saddam Death.

Saddam Hussein was made into "a martyr" by the manner of his execution, the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, warned today, saying he had urged Washington not to hang him during the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha.
In an interview with an Israeli newspaper, Mr Mubarak said that when it became clear the former Iraqi dictator was about to be hanged he sent a message to president George Bush asking to get it postponed. "Don't do it at this time," Mr Mubarak told the US leader, he recounted in an interview with the Yediot Ahronot newspaper.
"Why is it necessary to hang (him) just at the time when people are saying the holiday prayers?"
Mr Mubarak, who was interviewed at the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheik ahead of a meeting there with the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, who also condemned the manner in which Saddam was put to death.
Footage shot on a mobile phone camera, which appeared on television and websites just hours after Saddam was hanged on Saturday, showed him facing sectarian taunts from hooded guards before he was placed in the noose.
Mr Mubarak labelled the video footage of Saddam's death as "shocking pictures, primitive pictures," adding, "It was disgraceful and very painful".
"I'm not going to say whether Saddam deserved the death penalty or not," Mr Mubarak said. "I'm also not going to go into the question of whether that court is legal under the occupation.? "When all's said and done, nobody will ever forget the circumstances and the manner in which Saddam was executed. They have made him into a martyr, while the problems within Iraq remain."
Egypt is a key US ally in the Middle East, and has signed a peace deal with Israel. However, it also had friendly relations with Saddam's regime before his invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
The manner of Saddam's execution has been condemned around the world, with Mr Bush admitting he "wished proceedings had gone in a more dignified way".
Tony Blair, who was on holiday when Saddam was hanged, has yet to comment. His deputy, John Prescott, labelled the way it was carried out as "deplorable".'
Lees verder: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1983658,00.html Of:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010507F.shtml

Israelisch Expansionisme 37

Galilee October 1948, Ethnically Cleansed Palestinians on their way to Lebanon.

Electronic Intifada:

'PALESTINE: ROLE OF THE MEDIA:
With the New Year, will Ha'aretz's op-ed page be any
different? By Zachary Wales.

On New Year's Day, notions of resolve, reform, or reflection come as no surprise on newspaper editorial pages. Similarly unsurprising are the op-eders that carry on with business as usual. Things were no different on Ha'aretz's opinion page, which kept an even keel of New Yearisms. Rather untypical, however, was the limited role that honesty played in the mix. The most curious example was the lead editorial, -- often viewed as any paper's mouthpiece -- entitled, "Our obligation to refugees, as refugees." One might guess that it covered the subject of Palestinian refugees, a conundrum that has crippled every "peace process" since Israel's creation in 1948. Subsequent to the expulsion of some 800,000 Palestinians during that period, Israeli perceptions of the refugee problem back then led almost directly to the state's claim as an inclusive democracy now. To prevent the imminent return of refugees, Israel gave the remaining Palestinian population (then about 150,000 and now about 1.4 million) Israeli ID cards, thus creating the minority known as the "Israeli Arabs." A cynical interpretation is that ID cards back then served the purpose that fences and walls serve now: demographic control. More cynical still is the extent to which Israel is an inclusive democracy -- take the state-sanctioned Arab-Jew segregation in public schools, service distribution, housing rights, and just about everything else. Even the country's political establishment left considers "a state for all citizens" treasonous words. But let us not stray too far. "Our obligation to refugees, as refugees" was concerned with the 300 Sudanese refugees who were recently denied amnesty in Israel. For a citizenry that swallows a daily existence as segregated, racialized, discriminatory, administratively unfair, and internationally outlawed, Sudan is a digestible, understandable distraction. It is also a liberal cause, perhaps as much so as Liberia was to all those well-meaning Confederates in 1847. Almost any country, particularly your correspondent's, can ignore its domestic qualms and purport to "do something" about Sudan. The hitch, however, is self-awareness, and this is where Ha'aretz gives its intentions away. The piece tactfully ignores the Palestinian refugee problem while examining how "dulling the senses has overtaken Israeli society," vis-à-vis the Sudanese refugees and the Jewish refugees (later to become colonizers) who fled European anti-Semitism. Influential Israeli scholars have also adopted this tone. "As members of the Jewish people, for whom the memory of the Holocaust burns, we cannot stand by as refugees from the genocide in Darfur hammer on our doors," Avner Shalev, chairman of Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust museum, told The Christian Science Monitor on Tuesday. Meanwhile, Israeli human rights groups plan demonstrations for next Monday outside of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's residence. It would seem that Ha'aretz, which has repeatedly demonstrated a critical lens on Israel's political ironies, would grant at least a token acknowledgement to this one, especially as it calls on Israel to "open its gates, and also its heart, to the refugees." References to Palestinian refugees, even in the most minimal sense, are nowhere to be found. It is as if for a moment, one of the most salient topics of Israeli politics leaves the editorial conscience. Then readers are asked to remember the Jewish refugee narrative in isolation from that of the Palestinians, although the two are inseparable. One can only ask, is this editorial about Sudanese refugees in the first place? Or is it about overwriting the historical conscience? Such exercises are the things of Israeli "birthright tours," not newspaper editorials.'

Lees verder: http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6345.shtml
Zie ook: http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Palestine-Remembered/Story562.html

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