Some Americans Are Getting Their Heads Around The Mess They've Made

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/06/29/red_team
While it is anathema to broach the subject of engaging militant groups like Hizballah what a team of senior intelligence officers at U.S. Central Command -- CENTCOM -- has been doing. In a "Red Team" report issued on May 7 and entitled "Managing Hizballah and Hamas," senior CENTCOM intelligence officers question the current U.S. policy of isolating and marginalizing the two movements. Instead, the Red Team recommends a mix of strategies that would integrate the two organizations into their respective political mainstreams. While a Red Team exercise is deliberately designed to provide senior commanders with briefings and assumptions that challenge accepted strategies, the report is at once provocative, controversial -- and at odds with current U.S. policy.

Israeli Goons Come for 7 yr old Boy

Shin Bet spokesperson's office tells Haaretz the security service does not summon children to be interrogated and this case was obviously a mistake.
By Amira Hass




Israel Defense Forces soldiers summoned a 7-year-old Palestinian boy to a Shin Bet investigation, without checking whether the order was mistaken, Haaretz has learned.

On June 10, the Za'akik family from the West Bank village of Beit Omar awoke to loud knocks at the door. The father of the family opened, and three Israeli soldiers entered the house; one of them, whom the father thought to be the commander, asked for the boy, M. His father told the officer that M. was seven years old, and showed him his identification, stating the boy's date of birth as September 17, 2002.

The mother noticed that the officer laughed upon seeing the document, but he delivered the summons nonetheless. The mother understood from him that the 7-year-old must attend a meeting with "Captain Tamir" of the Shin Bet security services at the offices of the Coordinator of Government Activity in the Territories (COGAT ), in the settlement bloc of Gush Etzion the next morning. The family decided not to send the child to the Shin Bet office, but because they feared the soldiers might return and arrest the boy, they consulted the organization Defense for Children International.

Yet Another Israeli Partisan in Obama's Court - Elena Kagan

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan is an Israel partisan

JTA - "Kagan explains Barak remarks" -- U.S. Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan said her admiration for a former Israeli chief justice was rooted in her Jewishness and admiration for Israel.
She offered a similar explanation, if less passionate, for her penchant for Chinese food on Christmas.
Kagan, the U.S. solicitor general tapped by President Obama for the high court, has come under fire from conservatives for a speech she gave welcoming Aharon Barak when she was dean of the Harvard Law School. Barak was her "hero," she said...
Conservatives say they reject the model of judicial activism set by Barak, who has upheld a judicial role in shaping Israeli laws [which discriminate against non-Jews].
A number of Republican senators said they would bring up her admiration for Aharon Barak during her confirmation hearings, and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) was the first to follow through on Tuesday.
"I am troubled by the fact that you hold up Barak as a judicial role model," Grassley said. "He's been described as creating a degree of judicial power undreamed of by most U.S. justices."

Flotilla - Turkish Report

The Turks have come out with a full summary report, within a month of the Israeli attack on the Gaza Aid Flotilla.
Israel's geriatric committee (of three old men, plus two 'observers') will start serious work on July 11.

Mavi Marmara Report -

What's With Petraeus' Cinerama Medal Scene?

General Petraeus, newly in command of the (very much) losing Afghanistan War, comes to the US Senate with amazing qualifications.
Amongst those are his Technicolor panel of medals, hardly fitting on his left chest.
Obviously, he's been presented with these medals after incidents in which he conducted himself with great valour.
By my count of his photo, I reckon he's parading some 60 medals.
But his record doesn't confirm his valour; he has been a behind-the-front staff officer forever:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Petraeus

He has suffered two major injuries:
- In 1991, he was accidentally shot in the chest with an M-16 assault rifle during a live-fire exercise when a soldier tripped and his rifle discharged.
- During a civilian skydiving jump, his parachute collapsed at low altitude due to a hook turn, resulting in a hard landing that broke his pelvis.

In 2003, Petraeus, then a Major General, saw combat for the first time when he commanded the 101st Airborne Division during V Corps's drive to Baghdad.
In Mosul, a city of nearly two million people, Petraeus and the 101st employed classic counterinsurgency methods to build security and stability, including conducting targeted kinetic [ie killing people] operations and using force judiciously, jump-starting the economy, building local security forces, staging elections for the city council within weeks of their arrival, overseeing a program of public works, reinvigorating the political process
In February 2004, the 101st was replaced in Mosul by a unit roughly one quarter its size—a Stryker brigade. The following summer, the Governor of Nineveh Province was assassinated and most of the Sunni Arab Provincial Council members walked out in the ensuing selection of the new governor, leaving Kurdish members in charge of a predominantly Sunni Arab province. Later that year, the local police commander defected to the Kurdish Minister of Interior in Irbil after repeated assassination attempts against him, attacks on his house, and the kidnapping of his sister. The largely Sunni Arab police collapsed under insurgent attacks launched at the same time Coalition Forces attacked Fallujah in November 2004.
In less polite words, Petraeus fucked-up.

So much for the much-bemedalled commander, who has has progressed through the higher ranks, was in charge of America's two wars in the Middle East, and has now been put, personally, in charge of the totally unwinnable war in Afghanistan.

Update: 02/07/10: Petraeus: Withdrawal timeline does not mean "switching off the lights"
When General David Petraeus testifies today on Capitol Hill, his main job will be to carefully define the timeline for the beginning of America's exit from Afghanistan, a timeline that has stakeholders in Washington and throughout the region confused and concerned.

Barred from Jerusalem for crime of being Palestinian

Engineer's battle to overturn loss of residency highlights plight of thousands
By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem Tuesday, 29 June 2010
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/barred-from-jerusalem-for-crime-of-being-palestinian-2013066.html

Samir Abu-Khalaf holds a photograph of his son Murad, whose East Jerusalem residency was revoked by Israeli authorities

To say that Palestinian Murad Abu-Khalaf's roots are in Jerusalem is a serious understatement. His family lived in the Baka district of West Jerusalem until they were forced to leave in the war of 1948. They have since lived – and live – in the inner East Jerusalem district of Ras al-Amud. His family doctor father's clinic in East Jerusalem's main street of Salahadin is opposite three shops owned by each of his uncles. One of his brothers, also a doctor, works at one of Jerusalem's two main (Israeli) hospitals, the Shaare Zedek Medical Centre. The city is, in short, his home.

But when the next hearing of a case of fundamental importance to the future of this super-qualified young man takes place in the Jerusalem District Court today, he won't be there. At the age of 33, he has suddenly become, to use his own word, "stateless". His only "crime" has been to spend several years in the US doing an electrical engineering PhD, completing post-doctoral research funded by a division of the US Army, acquiring high-tech work experience with the sole purpose of bettering his future career prospects in the Holy Land, and being a little homesick.

Yet in 2008 the young Dr Abu-Khalaf became a statistic, one of a record 4,577 Palestinian residents to have their Israeli-conferred status as a resident of East Jerusalem revoked in that year and with it the right to live permanently or work in either Israel or the occupied Palestinian territories. It is this revocation which is being challenged in court on his behalf by the Israeli human rights lawyer Leah Tsemel today, and about which he says: "Losing my residency in my country is a source of pain to me... I feel I am being asked to choose between building my career and my homeland."

For Dr Abu-Khalaf has been told his only chance of having the revocation "reconsidered" – and it's far from certain this would succeed – is if he gives up his high-flying job as a software developer, leaves the US and stays here for at least two years – maybe "working in a café", as he puts it. So far Dr Abu- Khalaf has been told he will no longer qualify for an Israeli travel document. He would still be able to visit the country as a tourist, though not work or live in it, and then only if he obtains a US travel document.

Turkey: Forget Flying Over Us

Turkey has banned an Israeli military flight from its airspace in apparent retaliation for Israel's interception of the Free Gaza flotilla last month, in which nine pro-Palestinian Turkish activists were killed.

"Israeli media reported that Turkey had not allowed a plane transporting military personnel to a tour of Holocaust memorial sites in Poland to cross its airspace. The aircraft, with more than 100 people on board, was forced to make a detour. Israel has not commented on the issue."

One more tour group to Holocaust Disneyland stopped. Good.

Turkey has woken up and realised the true value of its former alliance with 'the shitty little Levantine country'.

See No Evil, Hear No Evil......Israel's Committee of Investigation

Israel's phony 'Committee of  Investigation' into the Flotilla Massacre consists of three old men:

Amos Horev (86 yrs) - Castrated Palestinian in Blood Vengeance
Yaakov Tirkel (75 yrs) - Israeli Chair of Gaza Flotilla Attack Investigation Doesn’t Believe It Should Exist
Shabtai Rosenne (93 yrs) - Shabtai Rosenne and the Qibya Coverup
All of these links go, with thanks, to Richard Silverstein, who has thoroughly investigated the bunch of criminal old farts.

Here's a photo of Shabtai Rosenne getting ready for his part in this farce.


Latest: Even Judge Tirkel can't put up with his original brief. He is asking for more judicial powers:
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/despite-wider-remit-soldiers-won-t-be-questioned-in-gaza-flotilla-probe-1.299057

Mind you, this may be just a move by the Israeli government to demonstrate that it is 'really serious'.

Chief Israeli Spook/Assassin Disgraced

One of Israel's most repulsive extra-territorial murderers (Meir Dagan, the head of Mossad) is to be replaced by another. Yuval Diskin, head of Shabak (Shin Bet - internal murderers) may take on the job.

The Independent: "Meir Dagan, the head of Mossad, Israel's intelligence service, could step down in three months after the country's Prime Minister refused to extend his term, a television channel has claimed.
The unconfirmed reports will prompt speculation that Mr Dagan, 65, is being ousted over a botched operation in January to kill a Hamas operative in Dubai that led to a diplomatic backlash from some of Israel's closest allies".
Richard Silverstein - Tikun Olam

Murdered for Being Palestinian While Driving

On Friday, June 11, in broad daylight in the middle of a residential neighborhood, a policeman killed a driver who ran into - but did not kill - pedestrians: police officers on foot.

The killing was buried immediately in the giant cemetery called "of no interest to the Israeli public." Why? Because all this happened in a Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem (Wadi Joz ), and because the driver's name was Ziad Jilani.

Jilani was treated to a lightning trial: He was convicted on the spot of intending to carry out a terror attack because the people hurt by his car were Israeli policemen. They chased him as one chases someone defined as a terrorist, while shooting (first in the air, but then in a way that endangered passersby. In fact, a 5-year-old girl sitting in a parked car was injured ).

And then, when he was lying on the ground shot, according to witnesses, he also took two bullets to the head. That is, between the second the man was indicted for intending to run people over in a terror attack, and until the moment a gun was allegedly pressed right up to his head and the trigger pulled, the Border Police on the scene were victims, witnesses, prosecutors, judges and executioners.

They [Israeli Border Police] chose, allegedly, to return him to his family with his face imploded after being hit by two bullets, apparently fired into his right cheek. The bullets did not even have a place to come out because, lying there, his left cheek was on the asphalt. Neutralize means eliminate.
Ha'aretz

see, for more horrors in this story:  http://newsfrommiddleeast.com/?xstart=b&new=67212

If there is a heaven - Ilana Hammerman - Deconstruct

Ilana Hammerman, an Israeli do-gooder, took three Palestinian girls through the West Bank checkpoint and then right on to Tel Aviv. Her story is here:
http://www.haaretz.com/magazine/friday-supplement/if-there-is-a-heaven-1.290214

Now, an hour's drive to the sea is not very far (except for the checkpoints), and Tel Aviv is like Benidorm but a lot less sophisticated.

Ilana (poor self-deluded do-gooder) took these poor girls to "the museum, the mall and the market, dipped in the sea, ate ice cream on a bench in the boulevard and when the evening came they crossed the checkpoint again to return to their homes".

Except she didn't. She took them to:
- the campus - Tel Aviv University, which these girls can never hope to even attend
- the museum - the Eretz Israel Museum
- the shopping mall - Dizengoff Center, where they couldn't afford to buy anything.
- the picturesque Neve Tzedek quarter - "the first official Jewish neighborhood built outside the Jaffa walls in 1887."
- Jaffa port "I was the only one who took a walk on the pier, because the girls sat down right at the beginning of it, took off their sandals, rolled up their pants and waded in the dark waters, refusing to budge".
- the flea market in Jaffa (much like a weekly market anywhere in the world)

Then - "They didn't want to stop for even a minute at the restaurant there to have a bite to eat or something to drink, or even to just relax a bit. Instead they immediately removed their sandals again, rolled up their pants and ran into the water. And ran and ran, back and forth, in zig-zags, along the huge beach, ponytails flying in the wind. From time to time, they knelt down in the sand or crowded together in the shallow water to have their picture taken. The final photo shows two of them standing in the water, arms around each others' waists, their backs to the camera.

This strikes me as the salient, innocent point in the whole episode. These girls, living just an hour's drive away (excluding checkpoints) from Tel Aviv, Jaffa, and the sea, are entranced by their first experience of something they've never encountered before, and may never have another chance to see and feel again.

----------------------------------------------
And here's the reaction:

Police investigating Ha`aretz reporter

By LAHAV HARKOV
Jerusalem Post, 18/06/2010
http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=178843
See also: If there is a heaven by Ilana Hammerman
http://www.haaretz.com/magazine/friday-supplement/if-there-is-a-heaven-1.290214
Hammerman described illegaly helping Palestinian teens into Israel.

Israel Police is investigating Ha`aretz reporter Ilana Hammerman for helping three Palestinian girls illegally enter Israel and disturbing a police officer, The Jerusalem Post learned on Friday.
Hammerman wrote an article entitled `If there is a heaven` in which she described how she brought 18-year-old Palestinian girl Aya and her two cousins into Israel without permits, for `a day of fun` in Tel Aviv, during which she lied to an undercover police officer.
The Legal Forum for the Land of Israel, which describes itself as `preserving the national integrity of the State of Israel and the Jewish people,` sent a letter of complaint to Attorney-General Yehuda Weinstein. Shimrit Alkalai, the Forum`s lawyer, said that Hammerman`s actions were against the Entrance to Israel Law. The Attorney General`s office responded that the case has been sent to the police for further investigation.
In the May 13 article `If there is a heaven,`

Starting Out All Over Again

During 2009, I completely lost all hope of ever seeing a just solution to the Israel/Palestine 'problem', so I gave up blogging.

I haven't regained much of that hope, but Israel's standing in the world has taken so much of a turn for the worse (Operation Cast Lead, Flotilla Killings, etc), that there just may be something positive on the horizon.

My blog posts will (I hope) concentrate on personal stories, in classic Reader's Digest style, mostly lost in the mass of new political stories that are dealt with so much better by other, more influential bloggers.

My first two new posts deal with reports I found very moving; the first experience of the sea by three Palestinian girls, and an incidental murder in Jerusalem.