Bush Blocked Israeli Air War on Iran?

The Guardian is reporting that George w. Bush derailed Israeli plans for air strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities earlier this year. Bush is said to have told Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, that Washington didn’t believe that Israel could take out Iran’s nuclear plants without a prolonged air campaign that would ignite a major Middle East war. He also said it would likely spark Iranian attacks against American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and on oil shipping in the Persian Gulf.

The newspaper’s account is third hand. They’re relying on statements from two aides of a European head of state who informed them of what Olmert had told him during a visit to Israel. So, Olmert reportedly revealed this to the European head of state who subsequently related the account to his aides who, in turn, let it slip to the English paper.

Does this rule out an American air campaign against Iran? That remains an open question. There is some speculation that, should Obama win the November election, Cheney might pressure Bush to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities before leaving office.

 

Israel Threatens Iran, Tehran Says Thanks!

Here’s the premise. One of Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert’s deputies announces that an Israeli strike on Iran might be “unavoidable” if Tehran continues to pursue its nuclear weapons programme, i.e. nuclear enrichment.

Haven’t we seen this movie before?

Washington kick-started Iran’s ascendancy in the Muslim world by going to war against Iraq. That allowed Iraq to fall under Shiite control, enormously boosting Iran’s influence and prestige. Then Iran bankrolled Hezbollah and Hamas, extending its sphere of influence from the Persian Gulf all the way to the Mediterranean Sea.

Lately Iran has picked up a couple of new patrons – Russia and China. China wants a secure source of oil, an energy “leg up” over India and the U.S. Russia wants to manage the control of Iranian oil and natural gas to help it tighten its control over Europe’s energy supplies. Both want to put a dent in American hegemony over the area. To this end, Russia has supplied Iran with some of its latest surface-to-air missile batteries while China has delivered what may be the most sophisticated and capable anti-ship cruise missiles on the planet.

Who would benefit from airstrikes against Iranian nuclear installations? Here’s a clue – it’s not Israel, it’s not the United States, it’s not the Sunni Arab states. The winner would be – Iran!

The Mullahs and Ayatollahs in Tehran face greater threats from within than from without. Iran’s younger generation clamours for secular and democratic reforms. Yet these very same reformers warn anyone who’ll listen that an attack on their homeland would drive them right behind the Tehran government in support of their country. Attacking Iran, in effect, could unify Iran, bolster solidarity for Tehran throughout the Muslim world and cause the Shia regions to coalesce ever more strongly behind it. That could play proper hell with American forces in a seemingly more tranquil Iraq and could also impact on the war in Afghanistan.

If Israel attacks it’s a fair bet that Iran will retaliate against the West. It could withhold its own oil exports and block most other oil shipments through the Persian Gulf with its anti-ship missiles. That could be enough to collapse many Western economies. It could likewise drive a wedge between the Israeli/American coalition and Europe while simultaneously improving Russia’s and China’s hands in the region and elsewhere.

So, what’s the answer? I don’t know but it certainly isn’t resort to airstrikes. That route is a temporary solution, at best, but fraught with so many downsides as to make it ludicrous. Do we really need Israel doing for Iran the same favour it did for Hezbollah in Lebanon?

The solution might just lie in taking Washington and Israel out of the equation altogether and entrusting the problem to more effective intermediaries, Russia perhaps, while contenting ourselves with sanctions and containment.

I only wish that the United States and Israel weren’t, at this critical moment, saddled with two of their most inept leaders in history.

 

Engaging Hamas

George Bush doesn’t get it, neither does Olmert. Hamas is the duly elected governing party of the Palestinian people. It’s not Fatah and Abbas. They lost the election, Hamas won.

Hamas isn’t a very likable outfit. It is, however, the chosen voice of a radicalized population. If we could ever get past idiots like Bush and Olmert, we might also find that Hamas could, possibly, be the key to easing the radical nature of the Palestinian people.

Bush ought to just back out of this thing anyway. He’s been revealed as a blatant manipulator who co-opted Abbas against the will of the Palestinian people, sparking a bloody civil war in the result.

Somebody else needs to step in – and I mean step in with troops. It has to be a coalition of countries that can still be seen, on both sides, as unbiased. That isn’t going to be easy, both sides embracing the delusional “you’re either with me or against me” philosophy that’s worked so well for George w. Bush. Since we probably won’t satisfy either of them, the UN will have to ensure that it sets the bar high and satisfies itself.

Next step. Option A. Back to the pre-1967 borders and I mean back. One big 5-year plan to remove all Israeli settlement beyond its pre-1967 borders, everything. Out, gone. Jerusalem either a free city or partitioned. Full compensation for Arabs forced out post 1949 which can be offset by the value of Israeli-owned assets left behind in Palestinian territory. Agreement to guarantee sharing of freshwater resources situated in the West Bank. Full recognition of Israel and full trade rights with the Arab nations. Aid to Israel to help in accommodating relocated settlers. Then, a 10-mile wide demilitarized zone along the Israeli-Palestinian borders.

Or

Option B. A one-state solution. Full citizenship for every Palestinian living within the combined Israel-Palestinian state. Full voting rights, human rights and all other political freedoms.

Israel gets to choose.

Option A would be the only practical solution for Israel. The single state option wouldn’t work demographically. The Palestinians would soon gain an ethnic majority that would translate into electoral control. To retain Jewish political control, Palestinians would have to be disenfranchised in a form of apartheid. Unacceptable, flat out.

Give the Palestinian people something to work for, something to build, instead of always leaving them with just something to fight for. We’ve had that experiment for half a century and have seen how well it’s worked. You want to eliminate radicalism? That’s where you begin. Give them their own country, give them a Marshall Plan that floods them with aid to build that place into something worth having as quickly as possible, and you’ll have not just a roadmap but the road itself.

You can’t get this started until you acknowledge the democratically elected leaders of the Palestinians, no matter how distasteful you may find that. If you want to see the face of the Palestinian leadership, don’t look at them, look a decade or two beyond them and then start creating the opportunity for that future, progressive leadership to emerge and take hold.

Or not. You can always go back and ship over more boatloads of clusterbombs and attack jets because, surely, you just need a few more of them to solve the problem, just a few more.

 

First Kosovo, Then Israel and Can Texas Be Far Behind?

Kosovo, or at least its ethnic Albanian majority, has declared its independence from Serbia. The seminal words there are “ethnic Albanian.” Kosovo has historically been Serbian through and through. It’s cherished by the Serbian people. But, mainly as a result of centuries of wars between the Slavs and the Ottomans, they allowed ethnic Albanians into the area and those folks settled in and bred themselves into a tidy majority. A dust up ensued and “bingo” they’ve taken the place as their own.

Israel is facing a similar demographic problem. Can’t live with the Palestinians but not prepared, at least not yet, to live without them. The window may be closing on the two-state option and that’s terrifying to a lot of Israelis. If the situation defaults to a one-state solution, the Palestinians would quickly be the majority, capable of voting their interests – if they were ever given a vote. Israel would have to maintain a South African-style apartheid or lose Israeli control of their homeland. Yikes!

Best of all there’s the American southwest. A lot of Americans are becoming alarmed at the demographic explosion of the Latinos. It’s believed that Latinos could become an ethnic majority in various southwestern states before too long. What then? What if they use their voting power to “have it their way”? It’s not too hard to imagine that “their way” wouldn’t be entirely comfortable for America’s caucasian majority.

Hasta la vista, Yanquis! You’re not the only ones who “Remember the Alamo.”

 

Israeli Clusterbombing Violated International Law

Barely a month after the Israeli military cleared itself of all wrongdoing in the use of clusterbombs against Lebanon during its 2006 war with Hezbollah, the Winograd commission into the war has found just the opposite – that the weapons and the way they were used clearly violated international law.

From the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs:

“The Winograd Committee said it did not find any evidence to prove that soldiers fired cluster bombs at civilian targets or that civilians were injured by the bomblets during the war, but it did say that firing the bombs at built-up areas – even if they were being used by Hezbollah as military posts at the time – “does not comply with the rationale on which the restrictions [in Israeli and international law] on the use of cluster [bombs] is based.”

The committee, set up by the Israeli government to investigate the war, found that firing the bombs into residential areas, even if the residents had left, was not an “acceptable widening” of the rules, as civilians would be hurt.

The Winograd Comittee had five members, who were appointed by the cabinet about a month after the war ended, and was headed by retired judge Eliyahu Winograd. The committee’s mandate was to investigate and reach conclusion on the conduct of political leaders as well as the military and defence systems.

In the final report, it said that the cluster bombs were inaccurate and spread out over a wide area; not all the bomblets exploded and continue to cause harm long after they were fired.

About 90 percent of the cluster bombs were fired in the last days of the war, when it was clear a ceasefire would soon be announced. Over four million bomblets were fired during the war, according to the UN.”

The UN says unexploded cluster bomblets such as those shown above continue to exact a toll on Lebanese civilians having killed 30 and wounded 200 since the war ended.

The Israeli military still refuses to assist UN workers trying to clear the remaining weapons, finding ten new sites every month.

“All these weapons systems are computerised and grid references are entered before the bombs drop. Not receiving the cluster bomb strike data from the Israelis remains our biggest obstacle to clearance,” Dalya Farran, a spokeswoman for the UN Mine Action Coordination Centre for South Lebanon (MACSL), told IRIN. The UN estimates that Israel rained down around four million bomblets – most US-supplied – onto south Lebanon in the last three days of its 2006 July war with Hezbollah fighters, when a ceasefire had already been agreed.

And this, supposedly, is our ally and friend.

 

Torture, No – Terror, Absolutely

The men shown here are hunting for unexploded cluster bomblets from Israeli weapons fired into southern Lebanon. The UN reports they’re still finding an average of ten new sites every month. Israel, which left the Lebanese countryside littered with these weapons, won’t tell the UN where they are. From the UN Human Affairs Office news service, IRIN:

“Deminers clearing Israeli-dropped cluster bombs in south Lebanon are turning up an average of 10 new sites per month, while Israel continues to ignore requests for data that would assist clearing the estimated one million unexploded bomblets, which continue to kill and maim civilians and decimate rural livelihoods. A single cluster bomb can disperse hundreds of bomblets.

All these weapons systems are computerised and grid references are entered before the bombs drop. Not receiving the cluster bomb strike data from the Israelis remains our biggest obstacle to clearance,” Dalya Farran, a spokeswoman for the UN Mine Action Coordination Centre for South Lebanon (MACSL), told IRIN. The UN estimates that Israel rained down around four million bomblets – most US-supplied – onto south Lebanon in the last three days of its 2006 July war with Hezbollah fighters, when a ceasefire had already been agreed.

Cluster bombs, or sub-munitions, are legal, and manufacturers say their failure rates should be between 10-15 percent. The UN estimates in general the weapons fail between 20-30 percent of the time. In south Lebanon MACSL estimates between 30-40 percent of the bombs dropped failed to explode, rising up to 80 percent in some places.

The high failure rate may partly be explained by Israel’s use of Vietnam-war era munitions, such as the M42, M77 and Blue 63, all US or Israeli-made and the MZD2, made in China, many of which MACSL said had gone beyond their expiry date by the time they were dropped on Lebanon.

The Israelis also dropped the new M85 cluster bomb that is designed to self destruct if it fails to explode on impact and which manufacturers say has a 1 percent failure rate. MACSL’s Dalya Farran said they estimate the bomb, used for the first time on battlefields in Lebanon, had a 10 percent failure rate.”

Refusing to assist in clearing these weapons or at least disclosing where they can be found is state terrorism, plain and simple. These weapons are serving no military purpose unless the Israeli government and its military see some benefit in killing and maiming Lebanese civilians.

 

When Your Pals Torture, It’s Not Torture

Canada’s federal bootlickers, the SHarper government, are falling all over themselves to avoid their pals being called what they are, torturers. From CanWest:

ForeignAffairs Minister Maxime Bernier lashed out Saturday at a controversial document identifying the U.S. and Israel as countries it suspects of practising torture, calling it “wrong” and demanding it be rewritten.

“I regret the embarrassment caused by the public disclosure of the manual used in the department’s torture awareness training,” said Bernier in a statement.

“It contains a list that wrongly includes some of our closest allies. I have directed that the manual be reviewed and rewritten,” said Bernier.

After making this pronouncement, Maxie swung deftly back to his perch and whiled away the rest of the afternoon tossing his own waste at passing children.

America doesn’t torture? Israel doesn’t torture?

Let’s begin with Israel and this BBC report from February, 2000:

“An official Israeli report has acknowledged for the first time that the Israeli security service tortured detainees during the Palestinian uprising, the Intifada, between 1988 and 1992.

The report, written five years ago but kept secret until now, said the leadership of the security service Shin Bet knew about the torture but did nothing to stop it.

The report did not detail the torture methods used, but human rights organisations say some detainees died or were left paralysed.”

“Most of the violations were not caused by lack of knowledge of the line between what was permitted and what was forbidden, but were committed knowingly,” the report said.

“At the Gaza facility, veteran and even senior investigators committed very grave and systematic violations.”

So, Maxi-pad, that ought to whet your intellectual appetite on the subject of Israel and torture, if you had the slightest interest in anything beyond whitewashing your government’s buddies.

As for the United States? Well we know at least the tip of the iceberg on the waterboarding business. That, Maxi, is also torture – plain and simple just the way you like it. Even former Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge has just condemned waterboarding as torture because, well because it is dimmo.

Then there’s that special rendition business – kidnapping folks and flying them off to sunny destinations where, for a few bags of cash, you can hire people to do your torturing for you. Hey Maxi, remember that guy, Maher Arar? He got done up pretty good, didn’t he? We paid him ten million bucks. Why was that again? Oh yeah, I remember now – we paid him because he spent a year in captivity as America’s guest being tortured.

There’s something really creepy about people like the Harpies who choose to erase the historical record to whitewash the evils of their friends. At the end of the day, they all wind up with the same stench.

 

Israel Clears Israel Over Cluster Bomb Attacks, Quelle Surprise!

The Israeli military has notified the Israeli military that it has completely exonerated the Israeli military in its use of cluster bombs in Lebanon during its failed skirmish with Hezbollah in 2006.

Israel’s military advocate-general, Brig-Gen Avihai Mendelblit found the, ” majority of the cluster munitions were fired at open and uninhabited areas”, but in some cases the military hit residential areas, responding to rocket attacks by Hezbollah. In Maroon a-Ras, the bombs were used to “allow the evacuation” of Israeli soldiers.

Amnon Vidan of Amnesty International in Israel said he was not surprised by the decision, noting that in such cases, rather than have the army investigate itself, it was better that an international investigation take place.

“The amount of cluster bombs used in civilian areas, as well as testimonies by soldiers about the use of the bombs, and Israel’s refusal to hand over to the UN maps of the locations where it fired the bombs to help demining efforts,” all point to different conclusions than those reached by the military, he said.

In August 2006, Jan Egeland, then the UN undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, had harshly condemned Israel’s use of cluster bombs, calling it “shocking and completely immoral.”

“Ninety percent of the cluster bomb strikes occurred in the last 72 hours of the conflict, when we knew there would be a resolution,” he said, adding that populated areas, such as homes and agricultural land were now covered with unexploded bomblets.

 

5 Good Reasons, 5 Bad Reasons to Criticize Israel

I found this article at Haaretz.com, a liberal Israeli newspaper. It’s really something to think about:

Five of the following are reasonable. Five are not.

This is a reflection, if nothing else, of the duality of leftist criticism of Israel. There are leftists whose critiques are clear-eyed, factually valid, morally on point. And then there are those for whom Israel represents a blood-boiling factory of evil, an entity whose very existence is an affront, an abomination. Those who are convinced, and seek to convince the world, that the Jewish state should cease to exist.

“Why does the left hate Israel? Here are five good reasons:

1. Because Israel’s policies are frequently marked by gratuitous humiliation of and disdain for the Palestinians.

2. Because Israelis can live with this. If the policies hinted at in 1. above are associated with a status quo which Israelis find tolerably calm and Palestinians find unbearable, even lethal, Israel’s leaders often view this as a viable and even optimal outcome.

3. Because Israel, in practice, values settlements more than it values social justice.The right will tell you that there is no contradiction between settlements and social justice. Which would be true if there were no Palestinians, and if the Palestinians did not view the land occupied by settlements as theirs, historically, legally, and morally. And which would be true if the same consideration offered settlers in fixing the route of the West Bank fence were applied to Palestinians, that is, were farmers not cut off from their fields, pupils from their schools, and close relatives from one another.

The right will tell you that the settlements are no obstacle to peace. But that same right will also argue that the settlements are the only real bulwark between the Palestinians and an independent Palestine.

4. Because Israel, even in withdrawing from Gaza, has left it to die. It is not lost on leftists that many Israelis reap a distinct satisfaction from the Palestinians’ inability to help themselves, govern themselves, save themselves. Leftists may note that Israel has done everything in its power to convince the world to deny much-needed aid to a democratically elected government, and that Israel has not acted as a neighbor whose primary concern is an eventual peace.

5. Because of the propensity of Israel’s leaders to demonstrate arrogance, claim a monopoly on the moral high ground, set non-negotiable demands to which Palestinian politicians cannot agree, then condemn Palestinians for intransigence.

Here, then, are five bad reasons:

1. The Palestinian cause is inherently progressive.As currently constituted, Palestinian governance is marked by institutional graft, widespread human rights violations, curbs on press freedoms, tribalism, blood feuds, murders of women on the basis of contentions of preservation of family honor, and celebration of the targeting and killing of non-combatants as a legitimate form of resistance to occupation.

2. Israel remains the sole root cause of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the reason it remains unresolved.As root causes go, both sides have demonstrated profound intransigence, both sides have violated agreements with abandon, both sides suffer from extremists whose power to destroy a peace process far outweighs their proportion of the population.In addition, the contention that Israel is solely responsible suggests that the solution of the Mideast conflict is the dissolution of Israel.

This brings us to:3.

Israel is a Jewish state.For a vocal minority of leftists, this fact alone – coupled with the following two arguments – is enough to call into serious question Israel’s right to exist. This argument, which holds that the formally Jewish nature of the state enshrines an unconscionable level of racism, dovetails with:

4. Israel is an apartheid state.See Occupation: It’s horrid, but it’s not apartheid

5. Israel’s actions are comparable to those of Nazi Germany.This contention may be the genuine litmus test for anti-Semitism on the left. In the end, the compulsion to accuse Israel of genocide, while turning a blind eye to wholesale slaughter in Darfur and elsewhere, tends to say a great deal more about the accuser than the accused. “

Haaretz is a welcome voice of moderation. It recognizes that others can criticize Israeli policies and actions without being anti-semitic just as some critics truly are anti-semites.