Tag Archives: Israeli

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Gaddafi, the inevitable bloody end.

Sami Jamil Jadallah

Sami Jamil Jadallah

With the exception of Tony Blair, the modern day Lord Balfour who had “special” business and political relations with Gaddafi, every one in Libya and the Arab world is quite happy with the news of the end of Mouamar Gaddafi and his regime. It is only fitting for a bloody dictator and a regime to meet a bloody end. No one should shed tears. Contrary to his claim to die fighting, Gaddafi was pulled from a sewer pipe like a rat.

Like so many bloody kelpto-criminal dictatorships, Gaddafi was and for a time the darling of the West specially after abandoning his weapons of mass destruction program. The US George Bush dispatching Condi Rice to engage him and Hilary Clinton as recent as this January treated his son Moutasim as royalties warmly shaking hands with the towering Moutasim.

While the US did not sponsor Mouamar Gaddafi in certain periods of his regime, it did engage him and according to certain reports facilitated his coming to power and with the exception of Fiedel Castro the US engaged if not sponsored every dictator and dictatorships in Latin and Central America, in the Middle East, in East Europe, certainly in the Far East.

The US more than any other country in the world should take the blame for the millions who died and suffered under military dictatorship that not only killed and tortured its citizens but looted the country as well.

We all need to remember the likes of the late Shah of Iran who was brought back to power by coupe organized by the CIA with a planned budget of $1,000,000 with $100,000 distributed in cash to the streets and the remaining $900,000 was handed over by Kermit Roosevelt to Ardashire Zahedi as part of Operation Ajax.

The Shah who ruled his country with an iron fist relying on the CIA, Mossad and his torturous SAVAK also looted the country and allowed his close circle of generals and advisors to loot tens billions of dollars allowing them to live the good life in Switzerland, in West Europe, certainly in the US and around Washington DC.

While the people lived in dire poverty in the country side, the Shah was able to spend $100 millions on his coronation ceremony in 1967 in the city of Persepolis as King of Kings with heads of states, diplomats, movie starts counted among the guests with caviar, chefs and Baccarat crystals flown from France dinning on Limoges porcelain china.

We all should remember the end of the man, politicians and socialists adorned him as “emperor of emperors”, dejected pegging for a country to give him asylum and a place to die.

Nicolae Ceausescu was anther dictator much beloved and admired by American presidents who received him in White House, simply because who took an independent line from Moscow when it came to the Middle East and his relationship with Israel not withstanding his bloody and ruthless dictatorship and his looting of the country making every Romanian poor with the exception of his immediate family and his close circle of friends. I will never forget that night in a Geneva hotel when I saw his execution on December 25th, 1989.

General Suharto of Indonesia and General Ferdinand Marcos were among the many dictators the US not only supported but sponsored delivering weapons and riot fighting equipments allowing these two to loot their country blind and run authoritarian bloody regimes with wide spread corruptions, all in the name of supporting anti-Communist regimes.

In Latin and Central the US and over the last century have supported and given aid and comfort to a dozen of civilian and military dictatorship key among them the likes of Anatasio Somoza Garcia and his family, Fulencio Batista of Cuba, General Noriega of Panama, and of course General Augusto Pinochet who ruled Chile with an iron fist for 17 years, murdering in cold blood mover 3,000 and torturing hundreds of thousands.

In Central America, the US the could not find one military dictator it did not like. The US sponsored, trained and funded the many military rulers and dictators that ruled Central America where some 500,000 people died or killed as a direct result of these military dictatorship and the wars they waged against their people and the resulting civil wars.

In Africa the story was no different, American presidents disgraced the White House with receptions offered to killers and murderers the likes of Samuel Doe of Liberia, who upon taking control in a bloody coupe tied more than 17 members of Liberian cabinet to palm trees and shot them.

Mobuto Sese Seko of Zaire was another favored dictator favored in Washington, Paris, London and Brussels. Mubuto Sese Seko took over Zaire in a CIA sponsored coupe on 14 September 1960 and ran Zaire to the ground while looting its wealth. Western governments were only too happy to support such criminal dictators as long as they claim to fight Communism.

In the Middle East the story was no different. It is well known fact that the CIA not only provided safe house for Saddam when he was injured and fled the attempted assassination attempt on General Abdul-Kareem Qassem and later in 1968 sponsored his return to Iraq to become the VP of Iraq.

During the 8 years war with Iran, the US under the Reagan administration gave Saddam Hussein over $40 Billions in aid in his fight against Iran and forced the neighboring Arab Gulf countries to contribute hundreds of billions of dollars to Saddam, money and resources that could have done wonder in the development of the Arab world from Morocco to Yemen to Syria to Bahrain.

Until the evening of his invasion of Kuwait, Saddam was America and Europe favorite Arab dictators knowing well he ran a bloody criminal authoritarian regime were more than one million persons were killed or murdered and were for the first time chemical weapons were used against civilians targets, Iraqi Kurds killing 5,000 instantly and injuring 10,000. Donald Rumselfed was to deliver Ronald Reagan congratulations to the Iraqi dictator.

The United States played a key and critical role in perpetuating Saddam Hussein dictatorship providing it with money, economic and military aids and of course providing legal and international cover and immunity for its crimes. Thanks to a freedom loving American administration millions of people died during and after Saddam in Iraq, and in Iran and over $1.5 Trillions of Arab wealth simply disappeared and evaporated if not looted by the merchants of death.

Hosni Mubarak and Bin Ali were the darling of the United States the model of modern Arab rulers and police states where dictators rule with iron fists making sure the country and the West id free of “Islamists” and rewarding these two regimes for their openness and special relationship with Israel.

No doubt the US which contracted countries like Egypt, Syria, Jordan and other North Africa countries as “torture contractor” was only too happy to seek these rulers and dictators and their families not only loot the country clean but imprisoned, killed and tortures tens of thousands of citizens.

Kelpto-dictarotship touted by the World Bank and the IMF as model emerging economies were millions lived below poverty lines and with millions unemployed. International donors, financial instructions never looked beyond the “cooked” financial and economic books presented by the leadership of these countries and never bothered to leave their 5 stars hotels and see the utter misery the majority of people lived in.

With Mouamar Gaddafi meeting the bloody end he deserve the Arab Spring must continue and succeed in countries and against dictatorship
In Syria, in Yemen perhaps with these dictators meeting the same bloody end. Those who rule by the sword will die by the sword. Grieved, oppressed, tortures and dramatized people should not have mercy on those who rules them.

In closing I want to address this question to President Obama and the leaders of the West, why is it OK for the Libyans, the Syrians and the Yemenis, the Egyptians and the Tunisians to rise up against oppression and dictatorship and in the case of Libya to use force with support from NATO while denying the Palestinians the right to have a seat at the UN to seek freedom and independence from the Jewish Occupation, not by use of arms but by getting a UNSC resolution to demand the immediate end of the Jewish Occupation that lasted more than Gaddafi 42 years of bloody rule? An explanation is needed.

Sami Jamil Jadallah

Sami Jamil Jadallah

Sami Jamil Jadallah is an international legal and business consultant and is the founder and director of Palestine Agency and Palestine Documentation Center www.palestineagency.com and founder and owner of several business in technology and services. Sami also runs an online website (Jefferson Corner). His articles are also featured on PalestineNote and Veterans Today.

Articles on RamallahOnline by Sami Jamil Jadallah

Born in the Palestinian city of El-Bireh ( presently under Israeli Military Occupation, Armed Jewish thugs and settlers). Immigrated to the US in 62. After graduating from high school in Gary, Indiana was drafted into the US Army ( 66-68) received the Leadership Award from the US 6th Army NCO Academy in Ft. Lewis, Washington. Five of us brothers where in US military service about the same time. Graduated from Indiana University with BA-72, Master of Public Affairs-74 and Juris Doctor-77, and in senior year at IU,was elected Chairman of the Indiana Student Association.

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New Israeli Discriminatory Laws

Stephen Lendman

Stephen Lendman, 5 May 2011

In April, the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel discussed six new laws passed during the Knesset’s 2011 winter term “that directly or indirectly target the rights of Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel.”

Overall, they’re treated like a fifth column, denied equal rights as Jews in a country just as much theirs. More so, in fact, as their forebears lived there for centuries or longer.

Each new law is discussed briefly below.

(1) “Duty of disclosure for recipients of support from a foreign political entity – 2011″

Imposing restrictions on foreign funding of human rights organizations, it established two parliamentary committees of inquiry to investigate them, “a tactic commonly used by authoritarian regimes to control the activities of” groups they target.

In fact, attacking human rights organizations that represent or defend the rights of vulnerable groups shows “the mask of democratic norms in Israel today is off.”

(2) The “Nakba Law”

When first proposed, it banned and criminalized commemorating it as a way to “erase a seminal event in Palestinian history from Israeli consciousness.”

Enacted as the Budget Foundations Law, it lets the finance minister reduce or eliminate funding for any institution or entity engaging in any activity at variance with Israel’s definition as a “Jewish and democratic” state, or commemorates Israel’s Independence Day as one of mourning.

In other words, it violates Arab history, culture, and right to express, teach, or disseminate it freely. Adalah and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) will petition Israel’s Supreme Court to annul the law, despite rarely ever getting favorable rulings, and when issued sitting governments have violated them with impunity.

(3) “Law to Amend the Cooperative Societies Ordinance”

Known also as the Admissions Committees Law, it permits committees in hundreds of communities and towns on state-controlled land to exclude “socially unsuitable” applicants. This “arbitrary criterion” is thus used to exclude Arabs and others for reasons real democracies call abhorrent and prohibit.

Since 2007, Adalah has challenged this policy before Israel’s High Court. In March 2011, it filed a new petition to annul it.

(4) “Israeli Lands Law” (Amendment No. 3)

It prevents anyone from selling or renting property for over five years or bequeathing it to “foreigners.” They’re defined as non-residents or non-citizens of Israel, as well as Jews who automatically may immigrate under Israel’s 1950 Law of Return. “This law amounts to illegal, direct interference in the private property of Palestinians, whose refugee relatives may never regain” land rightfully theirs.

(5) “Citizenship Law (Amendment No. 10)

It permits revoking citizenship rights of anyone convicted of espionage (as Israel defines it), assisting enemies in times of war (again loosely defined to fit state policy), and other acts defined under the 2005 Prohibition on Terrorist Financing Law.

While suspects of the above offenses fall under Israel’s criminal law, new Knesset legislation “renders citizenship conditional” as a way to target Israeli Arabs. In addition, a new amendment to the Criminal Procedures Law targets non-Jews suspected of security offenses. Overwhelmingly this affects Israeli Arabs and Gazans, facing “harsh restrictions (of) their due process rights.”

The law specifically overturns a High Court 2010 decision – “Anonymous v. The State of Israel.”

(6) Another new law strips salary and pension benefits from Knesset members, designated by the Attorney General to be suspected of crimes punishable by 10 or more years in prison, and/or who don’t appear at criminal proceedings or investigations to answer for them.

This “arbitrary law” targeted former Arab MK Dr. Azmi Bishara. In March 2007, he left Israel because of unjust allegations against him, about which indictments never followed showing they were spurious.

Anyone in Israel not Jewish faces extreme racist discrimination, especially Arabs for their faith, ethnicity, and cultural differences.

Adalah is challenging some of these laws. For others it will only do so if someone is unjustly harmed by their provisions. In fact, everyone for equitable justice should denounce all discriminatory laws. Nothing whatever justifies them

A Final Comment

On April 28, Israel’s Supreme Court dismissed a Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) petition filed on behalf of over 1,000 Cast Lead victims. It asked the High Court to order Israel’s State Attorney “to refrain from raising a claim under the (two-year) statute of limitations in future civil suits” for just compensation.

PCHR agued that statutory limitations should only apply to when Israel’s illegal siege ends. The combination of time limitations, blockade, and monetary barriers deny victims judicial redress. In effect, they establish a Gazan “accountability free-zone,” letting Israel violate international law with impunity.

At issue, is the universally recognized right to compensation for violations of international law, what neither Israeli governments nor its High Court respect. Its April 28 dismissal of legitimate redress is a blight on its reputation as an equitable tribunal. It’s also a serious setback for Israel’s victims.

“Significantly, the Court’s decision to dismiss the petition was procedurally flawed.” It denied PCHR its lawful right to reply by May 3. It shows Court complicity with rogue officials and soldiers, shielding them from justice, as well as denying legitimate compensation to their victims.

Moreover, the UN Fact-Finding Mission on Cast Lead concluded that such actions amounts to “persecution, a crime against humanity.”

International law, in fact, recognizes the right of all victims to redress, including compensation, when violations have been committed against them. Yet Gazans are now prevented from “accessing justice, in violation of their fundamental rights.” They now face three major obstacles:

(1) Statute of limitations: Under Israeli law, civil damage claimants have two years to act from the date of the incident, or lose out entirely. However, Gaza’s closure and other restrictions prevented them from submitting filings within the required time. In fact, before August 2002, the period allowed was seven years.

(2) Monetary barrier: Israeli courts require claimants to pay court insurance fees before filing. While courts may, in fact, wave them, they’re always applied to Palestinians, putting them under an unfair burden. Moreover, exact amounts aren’t fixed. They’re determined on a case-by-case basis. For lost or damaged property, they’re usually a percent of its value. In cases of injury or death, no formal guideline exists.

PCHR said that in recent wrongful death cases it filed, claimants had to pay insurance costs of $5,600, an insurmountable amount for most Palestinians. “Simply put,” said PCHR, “claimants from Gaza – crippled by the economic devastation wrought by the occupation and the illegal closure – cannot afford this fee and their cases are being dismissed and closed,” denying them justice.

(3) Physical barriers: Under Israeli law, valid testimonies require victims or witnesses be in court to undergo cross-examination. Under siege, however, since June 2007, Gazans were denied permission to appear in court. As a result, their claims were dismissed.

Moreover, PCHR lawyers are prohibited from entering Israel to represent clients and must hire Israeli ones at extra cost. However, plaintiffs also are denied entry to meet with attorneys, and they, in turn, get no permission to enter Gaza. In fact, the entire process is rigged to insure injustice, another indictment of cruel and discriminatory intolerance.

PCHR said the policies and practices it challenged “perpetuate a climate of pervasive impunity.” As a result, they effectively made Gaza an “accountability free zone,” what, in fact, applies throughout Occupied Palestine, reinforced by rogue justices misinterpreting international law by violating it.

Stephen Lendman

Stephen Lendman

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/

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Where Are the Israeli Poets?

Calligram by Guillaume Apollinaire

 

William James Martin

Where are the Israeli poets?
Those who would search their dreams
For memories lost or
Denied

Those who would look inward
To see the archetypes of shadows
Fleeing
In the night

Or who would search the rocky landscape of the mind
To see those whom they have chased away

Where are those who would survey the scrubgrass
And the pale horse
And the winter moon
And the olive trees
Planted a thousand new suns ago
By those who are no longer

But whose sweat lingers in the soil

Are there no Israeli poets?
Are they afraid?
Of looking inward

On a barren moonlit landscape
While wandering the winding paths
Stepping on rubble on ancient villages
Which are no longer

But villages whose souls still weep
For the familiar voices
They may sometimes hear

In the distance
When the wind is right

 

  • William James Martin teaches in the Department of Mathematics at the University of New Orleans. Contact him at: wjm20@caa.columbia.edu. This article was also published at Palestine Chronicle and Axis of Logic. Read more articles on RamallahOnline.com

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The Israeli Commission into Flotilla Attack Is Incapable of Conducting Independent, Credible Investigation

PCHR

Palestinian Centre for Human Rights Ref: 49/2010, 16 June 2010

On Monday, 14 June 2010, the Israeli Cabinet approved the establishment of a committee charged with investigating Israel’s 31 May attack on the ‘Gaza Freedom Flotilla’; the attack resulted in the killing of 9 international activists and the wounding of dozens more. On 1 June 2010, the UN Security Council issued a presidential statement condemning the attack and calling for “a prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation conforming to international standards.”

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) assert that the commission established by Israel fails to conform with these standards and that in preventing effective investigation Israel is internationally accountable.

The Israeli “Independent Public Commission” is not an official commission of inquiry. It is a government appointed, non-statutory body, which in practice will enjoy only nominal power. Significantly, the committee may only ‘request’ co-operation, while the Israeli government has already stated that no Israeli soldier will be called upon to testify.

The mandate of the commission is also overly vague and generic; the language of the resolution adopted by the Israeli cabinet – which speaks of “examination” of the aspects related to the actions taken by the State of Israel to prevent vessels from reaching the coast of the Gaza Strip – indicates that the purpose of the commission is not to conduct a thorough, independent inquiry into the military operation, but rather to divert attention and frustrate the pursuit of justice.

That the commission does not offer any guarantee of independence and effectiveness is further illustrated by reference to the appointed members of the commission, who (notwithstanding their venerable ages) have little experience in criminal investigation and inquiry commissions.

Jakob Turkel, a former Israeli Supreme Court judge expert in civil matters who also served as a military court judge, will chair the commission, composed also of a retired major-general in the Israeli army and a former diplomat.

Most importantly, the two foreign experts who were appointed as observers will not have the right to vote in relation to the proceedings and conclusions of the commission, and they will have only a limited right to participate in the hearings and deliberations. The commission in fact can hinder the observers’ access to certain documents and information on the ground that revealing such information could harm national security or Israel’s foreign relations.

International law establishes a binding obligation on all States to carry out exhaustive and impartial investigations – and if appropriate prosecutions – into all suspected violations of international law. Such investigations must be genuine and not designed to shield those responsible from justice. The European

Court of Human Rights has consistently stated that in order to be effective, or genuine, investigations must be “capable of leading to the identification and punishment of those responsible”.

The newly-appointed Israeli committee fails to meet even this basic requirement. It is tasked with evaluating the situation from an overly broad contextual perspective and has neither the power nor the mandate to evaluate or attribute individual criminal responsibility. On the contrary, the resolution appointing the commission expressly provides that: “law enforcement agencies will not make use of testimonies given before the Commission or before those individuals tasked with collecting information for the Commission, as evidence in legal proceedings”.

PCHR’s and other human rights organisations’ experience[1] has revealed that Israel has consistently disregarded its obligation to conduct effective investigations, taking only fake measures which effectively shield suspected war criminals from justice. Now 18 months since the end of the 23 day-long military attack on the Gaza Strip, during which hundreds of alleged war crimes were committed, Israel has still failed to conduct any independent and genuine investigations, as it is internationally required.

PCHR believe that this committee’s real purpose is to divert international attention, waist time, and ultimately frustrate the pursuit of justice. It is essential that the international community take immediate action to uphold victims’ legitimate rights to the equal protection of the law and an effective judicial remedy.

Therefore, in accordance with the requirements of the UN Security Council, an international investigative committee must be promptly appointed. The committee must be empowered with the necessary tools in order to be capable of identifying and prosecuting those responsible for the operation that caused the deaths, injures and damages to the members of the humanitarian flotilla.

Concurrently, States should exercise the jurisdiction of their national criminal systems to investigate the facts of the events of 31 May 2010, and refer the situation to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in accordance with Article 13(a) of the Rome Statute.

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B’tselem: Gaza, 95% of factories are closed, 93% of water is polluted

Gaza Siege food handouts

Most of Gaza’s factories have closed and its water is polluted as a result of Israel’s siege policy, according to a new report being released today by the Israeli Human Rights group – B’tselem.

The siege policy has “led to economic collapse in Gaza,” B’tselem noted in a 44-page report (PDF) that looked at Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem during the period from January 2009 to the end of April 2010.

Following is a summery of this report:

  • The prohibition on bringing in raw materials and exports into Gaza, which has been in place since Hamas’s takeover of the Strip in June 2007, forced 95 percent of the factories and workshops in the area to close.
  • Before 2007, 4,000 types of goods were let into Gaza, compared with less than 150 that come in now. Among the restricted items are building materials such as iron and cement, which are needed to rebuild the 3,500 homes destroyed during last Israeli assault on Gaza – Operation Cast Lead.
  • The quantity of goods that comes through the crossings is less than one-quarter of what entered prior to the siege.
  • Before 2007, 70 trucks laden with export goods such as furniture, clothing and produce left Gaza daily for Israel. Now, only the export of strawberries and flowers to Europe is allowed in “certain instances”. Goods are coming into Gaza through a system of tunnels set up under the border with Egypt, although the system is not enough to revive Gaza’s economy.
  • Electricity is a problem in Gaza. 98% of the residents suffer from blackouts ranging from eight to ten hours a day, while the remaining 2% do not receive any electricity at all.
  • The power outages due to lack of fuel and spare parts have prevented the proper operation of wells and desalination plants.
  • At the end of 2009, studies showed that 93% percent of the Gaza Strip’s water was polluted, with high quantities of chloride and nitrates.
  • “The water supply is defective and thousands of residents are not even connected to the water grid. Waste treatment has also been affected. Every day, some 100,000 cubic meters of untreated or partially untreated waste-water flow into the sea.”
  • A lack of pesticides and spare parts for irrigation systems makes it hard for farmers. Those with land near the border with Israel can no longer farm because access is forbidden or restricted, and those who violate these orders risk being shot.
  • Fisherman cannot go out farther than three nautical miles, which limits the Strip’s fish supply.
  • The number of Palestinian fatalities at the hands of the IOF dropped from 456 in 2008 to 83 from January 21, 2009, through the end of April 2010. These numbers do not include Palestinian deaths that occurred during Operation Cast Lead.
  • The report noted that Israel demolitions had continued in Area C of the West Bank, where from January 2009 to the end of April 2010, the occupation forces had destroyed 44 residential structures. The demolitions left 317 Palestinians homeless.
  • In 2009, the Jerusalem Municipality demolished 48 buildings in east Jerusalem. The demolitions left 247 Palestinians homeless.
  • The report notes that the IOF had not stop building settlements and no outposts been removed.
  • According to the report, very few IOF or police investigations into allegations of wrongdoing against Palestinians had actually lead to convictions. From the start of the second intifada in September 2000 to the end of April 2010, B’tselem reported 255 cases of violence to the military advocate-general’s office. Only 11 indictments were filed, and one of those was canceled.
  • During that same period, B’tselem turned to the Justice Ministry’s Police Investigation Department concerning 180 cases of violence, but only 12 indictments were filed.
  • Since September 2000, B’tselem has submitted 220 complaints to the Israel Police, demanding investigations of cases where Israelis harmed Palestinians or damaged their property. Only nine of these complaints resulted in indictments.

B’tselem executive director Jessica Montell said that the report was being released to mark “the 43rd anniversary” of the end of the Six Day War, which marked “the beginning” of Israel’s occupation.

“The ongoing occupation both violates” Palestinian rights and “poses clear dangers for Israel’s democracy,” Montell said. “For this reason we as Israelis must demand accountability for actions taken in our name in the occupied territories and work to change in policies that infringe human rights.”