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| Barack Obama has become even more pro-Israel than George W Bush, analyst argues |
Obama is the "the first Jewish President". That's the title of New York magazine's lead article, written by John Heilemann and quoting a major Obama fundraiser.
Listening to Obama speak at the United Nations on Wednesday many would nod in agreement, not less in Palestine and the Arab world.
The US president has embraced the rejectionist Israeli position on the question of international recognition of an independent Palestinian state.
But that's not a Jewish position. It's a radical Zionist position. Many Jews, including US and Israeli Jews, do not embrace such extremist views.
But the fact that Obama surpassed his predecessor George W Bush, the most radical supporter of Israel among all US Presidents, has left everyone in Israel dumbstruck. The latest Zionist US president sounded like Israel's own founding fathers.
Never have they heard a US president read straight from the papers of the Israeli government.
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Avigdor Lieberman is thrilled by a speech that called Israel the "historic homeland" of "the Jewish people." AIPAC is over the moon: "President Obama demonstrated his understanding of Israel’s legitimate requirements." J Street is happy, too.
Netanyahu called the speech a "badge of honor." Of course. Because Obama's description of "the Jewish people's burden of centuries of exile, persecution"-- and the Palestinians' burden to amend for that-- is straight from Netanyahu himself.
Hanan Ashrawi, who is part of the Palestinian delegation at the UN, reacted angrily to President Obama’s UN address. Here are some quotes from a Ha'aretz interview in Hebrew that took place immediately after the speech (Barak Ravid, “Palestinian Anger Over Obama Speech at the UN” (original title), Ha’aretz (Hebrew))
I did not believe what I heard, it sounded as if the Palestinians were occupying Israel. There was no empathy for the Palestinians, he only spoke of the Israeli problems.
He told us that it isn’t easy to achieve peace, thanks, we know this. He spoke about universal rights – Good, those same rights apply to Palestinians.
[The Americans] are applying enormous pressure on everybody at the UN, they are using threats and coercion. I wish they would invest the same energy in an attempt to promote peace, not threats.
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| Netanyahu has no qualms with rejecting President Obama's terms outright |
Sooner or later, it's going to happen. Most likely, the moment will come just before his first head-of-state meeting in New York. Or perhaps it will happen just before his first side-bar meeting with Binyamin Netanyahu. Or then again, it may come as the cumulative reaction to a series of embarrassing encounters with fellow world leaders. But the moment will come.
At some point this coming week, during his visit to the this year's opening of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, US President Barack Obama is going to have a nearly irresistible urge. He is going to want to stand up to his hovering political handlers and the smothering bureaucracy which tries to dictate his every move, summon his personal dignity, and say "Enough".
"We do not need mediation ... for Israel in any way," Davutoglu said during a televised press conference in the central province of Konya when asked to comment on the possibility of the US helping to resolve their differences.
"There is no such situation in which mediation is needed. The demands of Turkey are clear" if its former ally Israel wants to improve relations, Davutoglu said.
There seems to be a late effort to lobby Obama not to veto the Palestinian bid for statehood at the Security Council. Jimmy Carter was on NPR's All Things Considered today urging the president to stand out of the way (and host Guy Raz seemed incredulous). Now this letter to Obama from a former ambassador, Charles O. Cecil, ambassador to Niger under Clinton, is getting wide circulation in email lists I'm on.
1. ExecutionsBy Arshad Mohammed and Patrick Worsnip
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A last-ditch international push began in New York on Sunday to try to relaunch Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and avert a crisis over Palestinian statehood at the United Nations.
Officials met two days after President Mahmoud Abbas said he would demand full membership of the world body for a Palestinian state at the U.N. General Assembly this week, setting up a diplomatic clash with Israel and the United States.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton held talks with EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton. Asked before the meeting if either could report any progress, Clinton replied, "We are meeting to talk about the way forward." Asked if that meant no progress, she said, "I didn't say that."
Senior diplomats from the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations -- the so-called Quartet of Middle East mediators -- also met on Sunday, an EU official said, as part of an intense effort in recent weeks to persuade the Palestinians to drop their U.N. plans.
Troops fired tear gas during a curfew in a West Bank village to stop peaceful demonstrations
By Donald Macintyre- The Independent
Israeli troops fired tear gas indiscriminately and sometimes dangerously to enforce a daytime curfew inside a West Bank village to stop Palestinians holding a peaceful demonstration on their own land, a military whistleblower has told The Independent.
The soldier's insight into the methods of troops comes as the Israeli military prepares for demonstrations predicted when the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas submits an application for the recognition of statehood to the UN next week.
The testimony also reinforces a report by the human rights agency B'Tselem which argues that the way Israel deals with protests in the small village of Nabi Saleh is denying the "basic right" to demonstrate in the West Bank. The right to demonstrate is enshrined in international conventions ratified by Israel.
"The following morning, at 11:30 a.m. on Friday 17 September, General Drori ordered the militiamen to stop their operation, but after a further meeting with Phalangist officers the Israelis agreed to let them remain in the camps until the following day. Hobeika was also given permission to use two battalions of fresh troops and in the afternoon another force of militiamen entered the camps where they began a new round of killing. The Israeli commander in Beirut, General Yaron, has since admitted that, in spite of the fact that Israeli officers had known for several hours that the massacres were taking place, the Phalangists were allowed to call up reinforcements and remain in the camps for a further thirty-six hours. The militiamen rampaged around Sabra and Shatila until Saturday morning killing indiscriminately: nurses were raped by the killer gangs and then shot, children were scalped, patients from two hospitals were dragged from their beds and knifed to death. The Phalangists left most of their victims where they killed them, in their homes or in the streets, but some of them borrowed Israeli bulldozers and tried to cover up their deeds by shovelling corpses into mass graves. Because some of the victims were taken away and never seen again, and because it was decided not to open up some of the graves, it will never be known how many people were butchered. But perhaps as many as 2,000 people were killed and not even Sharon can pretend that these were the 'terrorists' he was allegedly looking for."
Prime Minister Essam Sharaf said Egypt's peace deal with Israeli was not sacred and was always open to discussion or change if that would benefit the region or enhance peace, speaking in an interview with a Turkish television channel.
Al Masry Al Youm
Israel's remaining diplomatic staff left Cairo on Thursday, following the Israeli ambassador and some other embassy officials in leaving for Tel Aviv after the Israeli Embassy was stormed last Friday.
Sources at the Cairo airport said the embassy staff, composed of Israeli Plenipotentiary Minister Yisrael Tuckachinsky, the embassy’s security chief, and the security chief's deputy, left on board an Air Sinai flight for Tel Aviv.
The same sources did not disclose if any of the embassy’s staff remained in the building.
Britain has amended a law that allowed for issuing arrest warrants against Israeli politicians who visit the country, British Ambassador Matthew Gould announced Thursday. Gould called opposition leader Tzipi Livni, against whom an arrest warrant was issued in 2009, and told her the Queen has signed the amendment "to ensure that the UK’s justice system can no longer be abused for political reasons."
PARIS - The French branch of the Jewish Defense League - an organization banned in Israel and America as a terrorist group - is recruiting people for a mission here next week to help "defend the settlements" of the West Bank.
According to a spokesman for La Ligue de Defense Juive in France - where the organization is legal - the mission will take place between September 19 and September 25 and will be made up of five groups of 11 people each, who will take up their "stands" in five different West Bank villages.
What will we tell the world next week, at the UN? What could we say? Whether in the General Assembly or the Security Council, we will be exposed in all our nakedness: Israel does not want a Palestinian state. Period. And it doesn't have a single persuasive argument against the establishment and the international recognition of such a state.
So what will we say, that we're opposed? Four prime ministers, Benjamin Netanyahu among them, have said that they're in favor, that it must be accomplished through negotiations, so why haven't we done it yet? Is our argument that we object to it's being a unilateral measure? What's more unilateral than the settlements that we insist on continuing to build? Or perhaps we will say that the route to a Palestinian state runs through Ramallah and Jerusalem, not New York, a la the U.S. secretary of state. The State of Israel itself was created, in part, in the United Nations.
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(Reuters) - Israel's naval blockade of the Gaza Strip violates international law, a panel of human rights experts reporting to a U.N. body said on Tuesday, disputing a conclusion reached by a separate U.N. probe into Israel's raid on a Gaza-bound aid ship.
The so-called Palmer Report on the Israeli raid of May 2010 that killed nine Turkish activists said earlier this month that Israel had used unreasonable force in last year's raid, but its naval blockade of the Hamas-ruled strip was legal.
A panel of five independent U.N. rights experts reporting to the U.N. Human Rights Council rejected that conclusion, saying the blockade had subjected Gazans to collective punishment in "flagrant contravention of international human rights and humanitarian law".
The four-year blockade deprived 1.6 million Palestinians living in the enclave of fundamental rights, they said.
In total, the settlers severed two dunums (two thousand square meters) of Mahmoud’s grape vines in fields near the illegal Karmei Tsur settlement.
Israeli authorities and the Israeli civilian police – upon seeing a number of Palestinians, press, and international activists – soon arrived on the scene accompanied by roughly twenty-five soldiers.
"Most of the victims of America's wars that are supposedly "against terror" have been civilians, and torture has also been deployed as a weapon. Civilians in Pakistan are killed on average every week in drone strikes, according to a recent report from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, and also regularly in Afghanistan in "night raids."
And sometimes they are just shot point blank, as in March 2006 when US soldiers reportedly executed at least 10 civilians, including a 70-year old woman and a 5-month old baby, and then called in an airstrike to bomb the house and cover it up. A recently discovered US diplomatic cable from Wikileaks provides evidence of this crime. Iraq veteran Ethan McCord says that killings of civilians by US forces was "standard operating procedure" while he was deployed there." |
| The Arab League met in Cairo on Monday to discuss the PA's bid for statehood at the UN later this month |
Arab states will push for a fully-fledged Palestinian state at the United Nations next week, the Qatari prime minister has said despite a US threat to block such a move.
Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, Qatar's prime minister and foreign minister, told a late Monday night consultation session that he hoped the gathering would support the Arab plan to take the Palestinian bid for statehood to the UN General Assembly.
"The Arabs had agreed to apply to the United Nations for a full-fledged Palestinian state with its capital East Jerusalem," al-Thani, chairman of the follow-up committee on the Palestinian UN bid, said at the start of the meeting.
He did not mention the option of taking a resolution to the Security Council and forcing the US to fulfill its pledge to cast a veto.
"We will review in this meeting the steps taken to go to the UN, because this is an Arab demand," he said.US President Barack Obama said on Monday that if the Palestinians try to achieve statehood in the UN Security Council, the US will oppose the proposal.
Extreme right-wing Jewish activists in the West Bank have moved from spontaneous acts against Arabs - following the demolition of Jewish homes by Israeli authorities, or terror attacks against Jews - to organized planning that includes use of a database of potential targets, according to new analysis by the Shin Bet security service.
The small groups of Jewish extremists are difficult to infiltrate and carry out surveillance on Arab villages and collect information about access points and escape routes in the villages. They are also collecting information about left-wing Israeli activists.
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet on Sunday approved a plan to relocate tens of thousands of Bedouin from their unrecognized villages into settlements with official state status.
The plan emerges from the Prawer Report, drafted to find a solution to the problem of unrecognized villages in the Negev.
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As part of the plan, some 20,000 to 30,000 Bedouon will be relocated to recognized settlements including Rahat, Khura and Ksayfe. The plan also includes financial compensation for those relocated, as well as alternate plots of land. The program is estimated to cost the state NIS 6.8 billion.
Robert Gates, the now-retired secretary of defense, argued directly to President Obama that Israel is an ungrateful ally, a new report says.
In a meeting of the National Security Council Principals Committee held not long before Gates’ retirement, the former secretary of defense argued that America had taken many steps to guarantee Israel’s security, but had received nothing in return, reports Bloomberg’s Jeffrey Goldberg.
No idea in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has had as much potential and been so neglected and rejected as that of return of the Palestinian refugees. Israel’s denial of the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes, beginning at the end of the 1948 war and continuing today, focused public discussion about the refugees’ return on an argument about that right and left no place for new visions and political practices to develop as part of public debate.
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| Dozens of Egyptian protesters entered a building containing the Israeli embassy after breaking down a wall |
Israel's ambassador to Egypt and senior staff have been evacuated home after protesters broke into a building containing the country's embassy in Cairo on Friday night, adding further strain to already tense relations between the neighbours.
A plane carrying Yitzhak Levanon, the ambassador, and others landed in Israel on Saturday, Israel Radio reported, as an Israeli diplomat condemned the attack as a "serious violation" of diplomatic behaviour.
Protesters tear down a concrete wall built in front of the Israeli embassy in Cairo September 9, 2011.
Tony Karon
As a raucous mob of protestors on Friday stormed past passive Egyptian policemen, breaching the wall around Israel's Cairo embassy and sacking the unsecured parts of the building, Israel turned for help to the Obama Administration. Looking to the U.S. to shield it from international opprobrium has become a familiar pattern for Israel in recent years, but the result was telling: President Obama got on the phone with the Egyptians and ensured a restoration of order that allowed the safe and orderly evacuation of the Israeli embassy. But nobody expects the ambassador, who flew home late Friday on an emergency flight, to return to Cairo any time soon. The best Washington was able to was to ameliorate the damage -- just as it had tried (but failed) to do amid mounting tensions between Israel and Turkey that led Ankara to expel Israel's ambassador last week. And, of course, the U.S. has also failed to bully or bribe the Palestinians into stopping their bid for recognition of statehood at the U.N. later this month in what would be an international vote of no-confidence in the U.S.-led peace process.
Read more-Time
Last December, Tunisians rose up against their dictator, triggering a political earthquake that has sent shockwaves through most of the Middle East and north Africa. Now, Tunisia is leading the way once again – this time on the vexed issue of gender equality.
It has become the first country in the region to withdraw all its specific reservations regarding Cedaw – the international convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women.
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| Netanyahu has isolated his nation with aggressive regional policies |
Protests at Israel's embassy in Cairo on Friday escalated into an attack on the facility that brought down the Israeli flag and forced the ambassador and his staff to flee in the middle of the night.
These dramatic events should come as a wake-up call: the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, can no longer take Egypt for granted.
Egypt's empowered and vocal public opinion since the revolution that threw out the government of Hosni Mubarak, the former president, has changed the way Cairo does business with its presumed "peace partner".
The window of opportunity to halt the deterioration of relations is closing fast. Do not expect relations to recover any time soon.
Israel's killing of four Egyptian security officers on the border three weeks ago has angered Egyptians and humiliated the country's ruling military council.
Disgusting and horrifying news. What are these people afraid of? An exhibit of children's art from Gaza, brought back to the States by Susan Johnson, was scheduled to go public on Sept. 24 at the Oakland Museum of Children's Art. The Middle East Children's Alliance, a partner in staging the exhibit, informs us that the museum's board folded and the exhibit has been cancelled.
 Protesters throw thousands of documents into the streets after breaching a security wall and replacing Israel's flag. |
| Egyptians protest outside the Israeli embassy in Cairo after tearing down a concrete protection wall nearby [EPA] |
Israel's embassy in Cairo has been stormed by protesters who tore down one of the outer embassy walls and threw thousands of documents from the embassy's windows.
The angry Egyptians also replaced the neighbouring country's flag with their own after breaking in on Friday night.
The group had left a mass rally at nearby Tahrir Square, where organised protesters called for reforms by the military, which now governs Egypt.
"Thousands of documents were being thrown out of the windows, but it's unclear which floor they were coming from," our correspondent Sherine Tadros said.
"Indications are that it's pretty much a chaotic situation. Protesters set on fire two police vehicles."
Sources at the Egyptian interior ministry told Al Jazeera that up to 300 people had been injured as the result of clashes around the embassy, and one died of a heart attack.
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| In the occupied Palestinian Territories, a "matrix of control has been put into place that curbs Palestinians' most basic human rights" |
South Africa, 1948.
After winning the elections, the National Party turned the racial segregation policies put in place under Dutch and British colonial rule, into something a lot more sophisticated and Machiavellian. The government classified all peoples in three separate races. White, coloured and blacks. Each race had its rights and limitations. The white minority controlled the much larger black majority .
This system of domination and separation became known as "apartheid".
Through a combination of non-violent and armed struggle, international pressure and boycott, the system was brought to an end in 1990 (when ban on the African National Congress and other political parties was lifted) and Nelson Mandela was elected president of the country in 1994, after an overwhelming victory of its party, the ANC in the universal elections.
In the early 70s, many countries opposed to the regime, decided that something of a legal nature was needed to put even more pressure on the South African government. The International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (ICSPCA) was ratified by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in 1973.
Recognition of a Palestinian state could, in theory, lead to Israeli officials being dragged repeatedly before the International Criminal Court in the Hague for claims regarding its settlement policies in the West Bank, legal experts say.
According to the statute of the court, the direct or indirect transfer of an occupier’s population into occupied territory constitutes a war crime.
Electronic Intifada
The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), the broad Palestinian civil society coalition that acts as the Palestinian reference point of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, welcomes the recent decision by the Turkish government to impose limited sanctions on Israel and hopes that it is implemented from today as announced.
On September 2, the Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoğlu announced that the Turkish government would downgrade its diplomatic relations with Israel and suspend all military relations with Israel. Davutoğlu gave today, September 7, as the deadline for Israel to withdraw all diplomatic personnel above the second-secretary level.
Turkish warships will escort any Turkish aid vessels to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said in remarks broadcast on Al Jazeera television on Thursday.
The comments from Erdogan came as Turkey has downgraded diplomatic ties with Israel and heated up rhetoric against the Jewish State in the aftermath of the publication of the UN Palmer Commission report on the Mavi Maramara raid and Israel's refusal to answer Turkish demands to apologize for the incident.
WASHINGTON — The United States said Thursday it will veto a bid for UN recognition of a Palestinian state if it comes to a vote before the UN Security Council.
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said US opposition to such a move by the Palestinians "should not come as a shock."
"So yes, if something comes to a vote in the UN security council, the US will veto," she said.
In Ramallah, the Palestinian leadership confirmed on Thursday that it intends to make a formal request that the United Nations accept the state of Palestine as a member.
Read moreVoice: Get away from him. [shot heard]
Other voices in agreement. [another shot]
Other voice: No discussions. Drop him where he stands!
Group voices: Sentenced!
Other voice: He was sentenced to death.
Other voice: Get away from him. Get away. [repeated gun fire]
Voice: Wahsh [beast]
Voice: Real beast Abu Saleh(?)
I guess Abu Saleh(?) is the name of last shooter.
"But take population out of the equation -- an admittedly big variable -- and Turkey promptly becomes a likely candidate for future superpower. It possesses the 17th top economy in the world and, according to Goldman Sachs, has a good shot at breaking into the top 10 by 2050. Its economic muscle is also well defended: after decades of NATO assistance, the Turkish military is now a regional powerhouse.
Perhaps most importantly, Turkey occupies a vital crossroads between Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia. A predominantly Muslim democracy atop the ruins of Byzantium, it bridges the Islamic and Judeo-Christian traditions, even as it sits perched at the nexus of energy politics. All roads once led to Rome; today all pipelines seem to lead to Turkey. If superpower status followed the rules of real estate -- location, location, location -- then Turkey would already be near the top of the heap."
Turkey's Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is threatening wider sanctions after Israel refused to apologise for the killing of nine Turks on a Gaza-found flotilla
The Independent
Turkey's Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has threatened to widen sanctions against Israel – which he accused of behaving like a "spoiled boy" – and confirmed he was considering a politically highly sensitive visit to Gaza, possibly as early as next week.
The crisis in Israel-Turkish relations deepened as Mr Erdogan said his government was "totally suspending" defence industry links after Israel refused to apologise for the killing of nine Turks on a Gaza-bound flotilla 15 months ago.
Mr Erdogan said there would also be an enhanced Turkish naval presence to ensure "freedom of navigation" in the eastern Mediterranean and declared: "Trade ties, military ties, regarding defence industry ties, we are completely suspending them." He added without elaboration: "This process will be followed by different measures."
Amira Hass
An officer in the Civil Administration who lives in the settlement of Reihan was given a 25-year lease on 50 dunams in the northern West Bank by the World Zionist Organization's Settlement Division, at a price of one shekel per year. This information surfaced during a petition to the High Court of Justice filed by a Palestinian who claims ownership of around 16 dunams of the land.
The 50 dunams in question are among the 3,500 dunams that the Civil Administration's custodian of abandoned and government property transferred in 1994 to the WZO, which in turn granted Reihan permission to use it. But these are the land reserves of Palestinian villages in the area.
"Why so, I ask myself, after 10 years of war, hundreds of thousands of innocent deaths, lies and hypocrisy and betrayal and sadistic torture by the Americans – our MI5 chaps just heard, understood, maybe looked, of course no touchy-touchy nonsense – and the Taliban? Have we managed to silence ourselves as well as the world with our own fears? Are we still not able to say those three sentences: The 19 murderers of 9/11 claimed they were Muslims. They came from a place called the Middle East. Is there a problem out there?
American publishers first went to war in 2001 with massive photo-memorial volumes. Their titles spoke for themselves: Above Hallowed Ground, So Others Might Live, Strong of Heart, What We Saw, The Final Frontier, A Fury for God, The Shadow of Swords... Seeing this stuff piled on newsstands across America, who could doubt that the US was going to go to war? And long before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, another pile of tomes arrived to justify the war after the war. Most prominent among them was ex-CIA spook Kenneth Pollack's The Threatening Storm – and didn't we all remember Churchill's The Gathering Storm? – which, needless to say, compared the forthcoming battle against Saddam with the crisis faced by Britain and France in 1938.
There were two themes to this work by Pollack – "one of the world's leading experts on Iraq," the blurb told readers, among whom was Fareed Zakaria ("one of the most important books on American foreign policy in years," he drivelled) – the first of which was a detailed account of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction; none of which, as we know, actually existed. The second theme was the opportunity to sever the "linkage" between "the Iraq issue and the Arab-Israeli conflict".Read more
A defiant Muammar Gaddafi has issued his latest apocalyptic statement, urging his surrounded followers to "keep fighting" and promising to turn Libya "into a hell".
In an audio statement aired this afternoon by Syria's Arrai TV station, Gaddafi denounced the rebels as "traitors", and said tribes loyal to him would never surrender to "collaborators". "We won't surrender again; we are not women; we will keep fighting," he declared.
Confirming reports that it's lost control of its cache of US diplomatic cables, WikiLeaks on Thursday announced a security breach resulting in the disclosure of hundreds of thousands of unredacted documents.
According to The Wall Street Journal, WikiLeaks quickly accused its former publishing partner, The Guardian, for portions of the leak.
Turkey expelled Israel's ambassador and said Friday it is cutting military ties with the country over its refusal to apologize for last year's raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla that killed nine people.
Turkey's move came before the anticipated publication Friday of a U.N. report on violence aboard a Gaza-bound protest flotilla. The fatalities included eight Turkish nationals and one Turkish-American activist.
The report, obtained by The New York Times and posted on its website, said Israel's naval blockade of Gaza is a "legitimate security measure." But it also said Israel's use of force against the flotilla was "excessive and unreasonable," according to the newspaper.
