Sunday, March 27, 2005

 

On the road to nowhere: Sgrena's car on road prepared for Negroponte

Thanks to Umkahlil for this tip to the Democracy Now radio interview with Naomi Klein. Klein had just met with Giuliana Sgrena, the Italian journalist who was shot at by US troops in Baghdad immediately after having been liberated from those who had kidnapped her.

AMY GOODMAN: We continue with independent reporter, Naomi Klein. She just met with Giuliana Sgrena, who has just been released from a Rome hospital to her home though she is still very ill, dealing with having been shot on the way to the airport after her release by -- in Iraqi captivity. Naomi Klein, the news that the checkpoint -- that the road that they -- that Calipari was killed on, that she was driving on, Sgrena, when she was being driven to the airport, had been set up for – that there had been a checkpoint set up for the trip of U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte to a dinner that night with General George Casey, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq to provide security. U.S. soldiers established mobile checkpoint, clusters of humvees armed with 50 caliber machine guns on top. It was one of the details that opened fire on the Italians' vehicle. Have you heard anything about this?

NAOMI KLEIN: Well, this would support what Giuliana told me, which is that the road she was on was not the public road that other journalists have traveled on, and that contractors and so on travel on, the very dangerous road. It was a secured road reserved for top Embassy officials, like obviously like Negroponte. But one thing that's very clear is that if she is on this road, and the way she explains it, she had to go through a U.S. checkpoint in order to get into the Green Zone. You can only access this road through the Green Zone. It's very, very difficult to get into the Green Zone. When I tried to get into the Green Zone, I had to go through six checkpoints -- six different passport checks. So, the idea that the American military didn't know that they were on the road, that they -- that didn't know about their presence is impossible, if she was, in fact, on a road that emerged out of the Green Zone. And I think that the idea that there was a mobile checkpoint set up for Negroponte obviously supports this claim very strongly. What Giuliana was talking about was what she was -- the only thing she could figure out is that the people who they checked in with in the Green Zone, the U.S. soldiers they checked in with in the Green Zone in order to get in, didn't radio ahead to these mobile checkpoints and warn them that they were coming. And from her perspective, that could have either been a mistake, or it could have been some sort of act of vengeance and anger, you know, and we know that there's a lot of anger at the idea that Italians may be paying very large ransoms for the release of prisoners. She's not alleging some grand conspiracy. There could have just been a broken down communication. But the idea that they didn't know, I think, is impossible, if she was on this secured road, because it emerged out of the Green Zone and you cannot get into the grown zone without passing through a checkpoint.

 

the trouble with Zionism - Joel Kovel

Kibush is without a doubt the best Israeli site I have seen. It presents a wonderful compendium of articles, commentary and interviews. This is an excerpt from an interview by Lorna Tychostup with an American Psychiatrist Joel Kovel.

JK: The contradictions posed by the notion of a Jewish democratic state are so severe that you can’t codify it in a constitutional form. To do so would mean breaking apart the fiction that there can be a genuine democracy for one ethnic group over others. So a great many questions are just sort of shelved. In fact, the national boundaries cannot be well defined. It is not at all clear just where Israel should begin or end, given the myth of its origins, still held by many Zionists, that `God promised all of this region to us…` There are people who say Israel should keep expanding all the way to Turkey and should take over everything in the region. More crucially, this notion underlies the relentless impulse to occupy all Palestinian land and the appalling story of the settlements in the Occupied Territories.


If past experience is any guide, we can be pretty sure that what I’ve just said will arouse very strong negative feelings among the American Jewish community. The question is, however, whether one can accept responsibility for what has been done, which means being able to think honestly about the past, to incorporate your history into the present, and to have a sense of your limits. In a word, it means being conscientious, or in this case, arguing openly about the history and actuality of Israel. This doesn’t of course mean accepting what I’ve said on faith, but it does imply an open and conscientious engagement with the issues and a willingness to look at oneself and if necessary, to change—we might say, in `good conscience.`

Then there is the matter of the bad conscience, where, instead of being able to accept responsibility and to look at what you are doing, one is unable to think self-reflectively and self-critically. Being unable to take criticism, the bad conscience explodes into violent denunciation and suppression of critics. It replaces conscientiousness with blame. I contend that such a bad conscience is an important aspect of the present situation. And evidence for this is precisely that we have so much difficulty getting a decent debate about Israel and Zionism going in this country.

I think this situation is improving to some degree, witness undertaking an interview like this. The terrible events of the last few years have cost Israel a lot of legitimacy, and this has made for certain openings. But the openings have to be seen as possibilities to engage the still-massive ideological complex supporting Zionism, including its bad conscience.

LT: What happened in Nazi Germany—the Holocaust—was a horrible thing. It remains the principle justification for a Jewish national home.

JK: Yes, no doubt, it still looms like a monstrous shadow. It’s understandable that people would have felt that way, or even still feel that way. But a feeling of that kind can’t justify what has been done in the name of Zionism, if only for the instrumental reason that it has failed to bring real security to the Jewish people.

LT: What accounts for the inability of one side to empathize with the other that leads to anger, name-calling, and violence?

JK: I agree we have to get beyond the name-calling and the denial, both of which are driven by the bad conscience. One important dimension is the denial that Palestinians may have a legitimate grievance. Because a bad conscience can’t take responsibility, the person afflicted with it can’t think of themselves as being wrong; this just stirs up intolerable feelings of guilt. Now if you admit that the Palestinians have a legitimate grievance, then of course, you have to think that maybe you are wrong, and might have to take responsibility or even change. The bad conscience keeps that kind of thought out of awareness, by attacking the critic, and at the same time, by reducing the moral value of Palestinians and their cause. Then the only things one can think about are is that the Palestinians are simply motivated by blind hatred, or are congenital terrorists, or being Arabs, are shaped by Islam to hate the West. This takes the whole situation out of history and makes it impossible to look at what has really happened, namely there has been violent expropriation, ethnic cleansing, and illegal occupation of Palestinian land. Everything is simply put on the level that all these Palestinians hate us. At times the denial has extended to the claim that the Palestinians don’t exist as a people.


 

thirteen years of sanctions - the aftermath

It takes a lot for me to cry when I read articles. This small excerpt from a very important article by Felicity Arbuthnot from Islam On Line gives just an indication of what a tremendous tragedy the sanctions against Iraq were.

Then there was Jassim. In the same ward as Ezra, he lay with his huge eyes and glossy hair, listlessly viewing the barren ward. He had been selling cigarettes on the streets of Basra to support his family until he became ill. “This is Felicity and she writes for a living,” said Dr. Haddad. Jassim was transformed; he glowed and showed me the poems he spent his days writing, when he still had the energy. He collected phrases, too, to incorporate where he thought appropriate. I told him all writers collect words and phrases, they are our tools. He glowed again, delighting that he was being understood and that his instincts were guiding him correctly along his passionate path. “I asked death, ‘What is greater than you?’ Death replied, ‘Separation of lovers is greater than me,’” was one of his collected phrases. He was 13.


One of his poems was called “The Identity Card.” In translation, it reads:
The name is love,
The class is mindless,
The school is suffering,
The governorate is sadness,
The city is sighing,
The street is misery,
The home number is one thousand sighs.

He watched my face for reaction. Lost for words, eventually I said, “Jassim, if you can write like this at thirteen, think what you will do at twenty.” I asked him if I could incorporate his poem in articles from that visit and said I would send them back to him, so he would see it in print. Some weeks later, I did just that and sent cuttings back to him with a friend and imagined him glowing again. He had fought and fought, but lost his battle just before my friend arrived. He never saw his poem in print and became just another statistic in the “collateral damage” of sanctions by the most inhuman regime ever overseen by the United Nations, which arguably condemned the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child - the most widely signed convention in history - to the dust, to the mass of graves of Iraq's children, resulting from the embargo years.


Friday, March 25, 2005

 

Peter Brooke - The One State as a Liberation Struggle for the Palestinians

Reality or Illusion

Peter Brooke's main political experience was in Northern Ireland in the 1970s and 1980s, when he was a frequent contributor to the journal Workers Weekly, arguing for the 'two nations' view of Irish history and for 'electoral integration' (the right of the people of Northern Ireland, so long as they were part of the United Kingdom, to be able to join and participate fully in the life of the political parties capable of forming the government of the United Kingdom). He is the author of Ulster Presbyterianism - the historical perspective, Dublin, Gill and Macmillan, 1987: Belfast, Athol Books, 1994). His present interests are reflected in his website - www.politicsandtheology.co.uk

A single democratic secular state covering the whole area of Israel/Palestine, from the river Jordan to the Mediterranean, was the original demand of the Palestine Liberation Organisation; and a single state, though perhaps not so democratic or secular, is still the demand of Hamas. It seems that already, should such a state come into existence tomorrow, the Palestinians, or non-Jews, would be in a majority and they would of course easily be in a majority if the refugees' right of return was respected.

So it should not be difficult to argue that a democratic one state solution would be a 'liberation' for the Palestinians. As things stand at present it would indeed appear as a mighty victory for the Palestinians and a defeat for the Israelis. But since, as things stand at present, all power is in the hands of the Israelis and very little power is in the hands of the Palestinians, this really amounts to an argument against it, or against the possibility that it will ever be implemented (I say 'very little' power is in the hands of the Palestinians because they do have some capacity, at enormous cost to themselves, to make life uncomfortable for the Israelis).

I have therefore felt the more important task was to develop arguments that would show how a One State solution is in the interests of the Israelis - even suggesting that it is the only solution, short of a renewed bout of outright ethnic cleansing, that would fulfil the most basic of Jewish nationalist aspirations. Which is to live in security in the Biblical homeland. If the concept of Biblical homeland is to be taken seriously, it must include the territory now known as the West Bank, where the Palestinian population is concentrated. So long as this Palestinian population constitutes a separate political entity it will cut Jews off from full and free access to the heartland of 'Judaeo-Samaria' and it will pose a perpetual threat to Israel's security. This is true whether the Palestinian political entity is a separate, fully sovereign state, which is the professed aim of the 'international community', including the USA (and Israel is a dependency of the USA); or even if it takes the form of a powerless archipelago of irredeemably aggrieved Bantustans, which seems to be the preferred option of the Israeli government.

The security of Jews living in Israel/Palestine requires Jewish control over Palestinian military capacity. This can be achieved either as at present through naked terrorism; or through agreement on a common polity with a common army in which each side will have control over the military capacity of the other.

A one state solution argued in those terms may of course look less attractive from a Palestinian point of view. It is not a Palestinian victory; it would initially be implemented with the Israelis still in a position of strength and it would therefore be weighted, probably very unfairly, in the Israeli interest; and it requires the Palestinians to renounce the one project in which all their hopes have been invested since the destruction of the Ottoman Empire - the establishment of an independent, sovereign Palestinian state. I have said elsewhere that a combined Israel/Palestine could still be called a 'Jewish state', but it could not be an exclusively Jewish state; by the same token it could be called a 'Palestinian state', but it would not be an exclusively Palestinian state.

However, hellish as the Palestinian condition has been since the formation of the state of Israel, it has surely only been made worse by the false hope offered first by the struggle for an independent Palestinian state covering the whole area, then by the 'International Community' in the form of the 'two states solution'. Indeed the one victory the Palestinians appear to have gained in this context - the refusal of the 'International Community' to recognise the Israeli occupation of the West Bank - has worked to the advantage of the Israelis, since it has released them from any pressure to recognise the democratic rights of the people living there or even to take responsibility for their welfare. The political energies of the Palestinians have been diverted into a hopeless task since there is no possibility whatsoever that the Israelis will renounce effective control over the West Bank. Or of the Gaza Strip. The Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip is based on much the same principle as the withdrawal of Poles from the Warsaw Ghetto. The 'two state solution' has condemned Palestinians to a dreadful roller coaster ride of alternating hope and disappointment with, I believe, no real prospect of any eventual escape. False hope is in itself a form of oppression and to renounce it would in itself be a small liberation - a liberation and clarity of vision that is already enjoyed by the followers of Hamas.

Coming to terms with reality means coming to terms with the fact that the One State already exists. The whole area from the river to the sea is already a single polity with a single government - the Israeli government. Instead of engaging in a futile effort to escape the sovereignty of the Israeli government, the immediate task should be to impose on the already existing government of the area its obligation to provide for the welfare of all the people living under its control.


Some time ago, I argued in the context of a One State discussion list that this process could begin with a demand, raised loudly and clearly, that Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, should have the right to hold Israeli passports. This suggestion went down like the proverbial lead balloon, but I still hold to it. It does not of itself imply renunciation of separate Palestinian nationhood or statehood. It is a first statement of the principle that so long as Palestinians are being ruled by the government of Israel they should, without prejudice to their long term aspirations, have the rights of citizens of Israel. It is a position analogous to that of Republicans in Northern Ireland in the late sixties who demanded the full rights of British citizens without renouncing their ambition to abstract themselves from the United Kingdom. The principle is unanswerable. Recognition of it would, I believe, be a first step towards the liberation of both sides in this seemingly endless and futile quarrel.

 

Deir Yassin Day - Event!

8pm Saturday 9th April 2005
FREE ADMISSION
St John’s Wood Church, Lords Roundabout, NW8 Nearest station: St John’s Wood
Please arrive early as seating is limited. Drinks and Arabic sweets will be served.

I am Im-Fares – mother of Fares – in Palestine it’s not respectful to call a married woman by her name, like a girl. I’m a mother now so I’m called after my eldest child. Im-Fares. I will always be known as ‘Mother of Fares’ even though my son is no longer with us. He will live in my name - for as long as I live. He should have lived long after me, but now his name will die with me.
(From "Five Soldiers and a Boy" - to be performed at DYD2005)

Once upon a time, the children of Abraham: Muslims, Christians and Jews, were blessed
“… and the Angel of the Lord called unto Abraham … and said, … ‘that in blessing I will bless thee, ...and I will multiply they seed as the stars of the heaven … and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed’...”
How have we come from this place of blessing to the atrocity of Deir Yassin? Deir Yassin Day, 2005 traces the "children of Abraham" from the stories in the Bible and the Qur’an, through the golden ages of Islamic history until war and massacre came to the Holy Land of Palestine.

Featuring
· Music composed and performed for Deir Yassin by world famous musician and writer, Gilad Atzmon. www.gilad.co.uk
· A short story from Ghassan Kanafani, the award winning Palestinian novelist assassinated by Mossad in 1972 http://www.al-awda.org/ghassankanafani/
· Songs from Palestine and the choir of St Johns Wood Church
· Dramatised true stories from Palestinian refugee camps and Israeli soldiers
· A short film and photographs, A Palestinian Dream, from Italian artist David Brunetti
PARTICIPANTS
Maxine Peake –Shameless/Channel 4, Andy de la Tour – Notting Hill and Oliver Twist, Roger Lloyd-Pack – Only Fools & Horses and The Vicar of Dibley, Susan Wooldridge – The Jewel in the Crown and The Last Place on Earth,Vincent Manna – AMP’s Swan Lake , Gregory Donaldson – The Bill/ Granada, Mark Wainwright – Wagner’s Ring Cycle/ ENO, Andrew McBean – RSC and Shooting with Parsley/DYD 2004 and many others….

http://www.deiryassin.org/pdf/2005INVITATION.pdf
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
“….as the stars of the heaven…” The Children of Abraham St John’s Wood Church – situated between the London Central Mosque and the Liberal Jewish Synagogue –invites the Palestinian and solidarity communities to join them for the Deir Yassin Day 2005 commemoration. The title is taken from the Book of Genesis: “… and the Angel of the Lord called unto Abraham … and said, … ‘that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply they seed as the stars of the heaven … and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed’...”

So how did we get from this place of blessing to the atrocity of Deir Yassin?

It is tempting to think that Christians persecuted Jews in Europe, and subsequently Jews persecute Muslims and Christians in Palestine: is this how we came to Deir Yassin?

What of Jewish disdain for Christians; and what about the crimes of Christians against Muslims in the past, and now in Iraq – Abraham’s own birthplace? And what of those Muslims today, who, in their anguish and despair, care so little for innocent life? Is this how we came to Deir Yassin?

But, there have been many times over the centuries when Muslims, Christians and Jews lived together in peace, tolerance and mutual respect, producing some of the greatest philosophy, science and art known to humanity. Knowing this, and having come to a Deir Yassin of massacre and atrocity, can we move to a Deir Yassin of hope and reconciliation?

The road to Deir Yassin is a hard one. Today, in this church, between a great synagogue and a great mosque, perhaps we may begin our journey.

Through commemoration, truth is placed firmly in the public view. Whatever the intentions of the powerful may be and whatever the political outcomes, it becomes ever more important that the truth of Palestinian life and history be established forever. Through commemoration of the pivotal and symbolic massacre at Deir Yassin, this truth is placed firmly in the public view.

Deir Yassin, is remembered yearly with commemorations throughout the world and at two flagship events in Jerusalem and London. We write, speak, and publish constantly and three permanent memorials have been dedicated to Deir Yassin: in the Dar al Tifl Children’s School in Jerusalem; in Kelvingrove Park in Glasgow and by Lake Seneca in upstate New York. With your help, we shall one day soon build such a memorial here in London.

Everybody knows there must eventually be peace and reconciliation in Israel/Palestine, but what kind of peace, what kind of reconciliation and at what cost? We believe that such reconciliation can only be based on truth, justice and the law.

We have heard calls for a "revolutionary forgiveness" - a forgiveness with truth and justice at its centre, and thus removed from injustice and piety - to take place in "the broken middle of Jerusalem". Those of us committed to the memory and meaning of Deir Yassin agree, but ask that the reconciliation take place slightly off centre at the village of Deir Yassin.

A truthful and visible memorial at Deir Yassin, clearly viewed from the Holocaust memorial at Yad Vashem, may not only be one way out of the present horror, it may be the only way out. With this is in mind, we will one day consecrate a truth and reconciliation memorial and centre at Deir Yassin, the site of the great atrocity against Palestinians and close to the site commemorating the great atrocity against Jews.

May God bless the Palestinian people.

Contact Deir Yassin Remembered at PO Box 25852, London N5 1ZUTel 0207 7607 6035 email: dyr@eisen.demon.co.uk

Thursday, March 24, 2005

 

Gilad Atzmon - To Sit in the Dark

A talk at the SOAS Palestinian Society 23.4

I am sure that some of you are familiar with the old Jewish joke: What does it take for a Jewish mother to change a light bulb? Then impersonating an elder Jewish mother, applying a high pitch east European accent you spit it out: ”no vorries I vill sit in the dark”. As it seems, the Jewish mother embodies the essence of modern Jewish existence. To be a Jew is to sit in the dark, to be a Jew is to be a victim and to enjoy your symptoms. If we analyse this bizarre tendency in the light of Freud’s pleasure principle, we might mistakenly deduce that the Jewish mother finds pleasure in inflicting pain on herself. Some may even diagnose the Jewish mother as a mythical masochistic figure. In fact, it is the other way around, The Jewish mother doesn’t enjoy her own suffering at all. The Joke is supposed to reveal a very different message. The Jewish mother, instead of improving her general state of being, rather than enjoying reading the ‘Jewish Chronicle’ in the light, she voluntarily offers to sit in the dark, she gains satisfaction initiating some remorse feeling amongst the Other, whoever the Other is. Usually it is her beloved kind (son) but it can as well be her partner, the neighbour, the social worker, the Swiss banker or even the United Nations. The Jewish mother vill sit in the dark as long as someone there is happy to feel guilty for her sitting in the dark.

To be a proper Jewish mother means to daily exploit the entire victim vocabulary. But it isn’t really the Jewish mother, as it seems, victim mentality is occupying the hard nucleus of modern Jewish identity. As we all know many of those who call themselves Jews are far from being religious. Some are even atheists. Many of our Jewish friends are far from being Zionist (at least that’s what they say), some are even anti Zionist, but then once a Jew drops his victim status he becomes an ordinary boring being. To be a Jew is to believe in the holocaust, to be a Jew is to believe in a historical narrative constructed around endless merciless sagas of persecution and harassment. To be a Jew is to believe that all that suffering is far from being over, in fact a new holocaust may be re-launched tomorrow morning, why tomorrow, today, this very minute! To be a Jew is set oneself in a state of self imposed paranoia. Thus, to be a Jew is to believe in 'us and them' rather than in just ‘being amongst others’. To be a Jew is to believe that anti Semitism is an irrational tendency intrinsically symptomatic to Gentile existence. But who are the Gentiles? Ladies and gentleman, the Gentiles are the human family, thus I would deduce that to be a Jew is to believe that the human family behaves irrationally at least when it comes to Jews.

But then, what is so appealing in being a ‘victim’, I assume that most people would be embarrassed when being blamed for victimising themselves or even suspected to be paranoid. Somehow, this wouldn’t happen with most Jews. A Jew would be offended when being suggested that he is victimising himself. Moreover, an accusation as such would be perceived by him as a clear anti Semitic assault not to say a form of a ‘holocaust denial’. When it comes to Jewish common self-perception, victim is not an act, it is rather a state of being. Within the contemporary Jewish world view, the Jews are the only real ultimate genuine sufferers. If this is not enough, the fact that they are ‘the true real and only genuine sufferers’ is now legally imposed. To suspect this very fact may result in a court case. For instance, in case you happen to be a new historian and you may doubt some facts to do with the latest Nazi Judeocide, you probably find yourself behind bars or just removed from your academic post.

When it comes to the unique case of the Jewish family, the Jewish mother strategies are found to be very effective. Sitting in the dark ‘pays off’. The Jewish mother maintains her absolute hegemony within the family cell. Consequently, the guilt ridden Jewish child (no doubt the real victim) will attend medical or law school just to keep his mother happy. He will bring home the highest possible marks just to ease her sitting in dark. By the time he finally realises that he himself had been the real victim, he his ready to join his father's business and in any case, he is too old to rebel. By now he himself becomes a victim and the rest of the world should feel guilty for him. But then, he is far from being happy, rather than being out there amongst others, he is now pushed back to the ghetto, tied for the rest of his life with a clannish knot. Funny enough, this is enough to make him a neurotic character as well an astonishingly good accountant or psycho-analyst.

Looking at the Jewish family cell we see a successful operating machine, the parents volunteer to take on some insignificant suffering, in return the guilt ridden young generation bring home excellent academic results. But then, this very mechanism goes far beyond the Jewish family cell or even the segregated Jewish community. In fact, post WW2 Jewish western affairs are based on the very same philosophy. This may as well be the hidden layer behind the current misleading contemporary presentation of the complementary Judeo Christian bond: The Judeo subject insists to be the ultimate victim and the Christian world is enthusiastically endorsing the opportunity to celebrate guilt. As bizarre as it may sound, in 1948, while the Israelis ethnically cleansed the Palestinian population, the ‘guilty’ West was sitting and praising ‘Jewish heroism’. Very much the same happened following the miraculous Israeli victory in 1967. For many years, ‘guilt’ became the core of the European parliamentary left’s blind support of Israel. As revolting as it may sound, the modern Jewish identity is copying the role of the Jewish elder mother and the European parliamentary left is taking the role of the Jewish guilt ridden toddler. Take a look at British contemporary politics: On the right end we find the Christian prime minister, Mr Tony Blair, the guilty Gentile, being the leader of once a socialist institute, he is now publicly supporting a bourgeoisie racist, nationalist, colonialist state, Michael Howard, on the very same end, being a secular Jew, wouldn’t bother to share with us some deep spiritual Jewish insights, instead, he is telling us about his Jewish grandmother, the Holocaust victim.

Today I am talking about Jewish Identity. In practice, I am talking about Jewish identification, I leave out Judaism, or any reference to Jewish cultural heritage. I don’t even talk about the Jewish people. Instead, I ask what does it mean to be a secular Jew. I try to find out what Jewish secular people identify with when they call themselves Jews. I would argue that as far as contemporary Jewish identity is concerned, two major ideological schools are offering a clear answer. One is Zionism and the other is Jewish leftism.

Let’s start with the Zionist school.

Following the 19th century European national awakening some Jews decided that Jewishness is actually a manifestation of nationalistic aspiration. Although European nationalism was intrinsically associated the patriotic subject with the land he dwelled on, Jewish nationalism was based on a mere fantasy. It associated the Jew with the land he was supposed to dwell on. The early Zionists' popular slogan at the time was: ‘land with no people for people with no land’. While many historians justly ridicule the above statement proving beyond doubt that the land of Palestine was in fact overwhelmingly occupied with indigenous Palestinians, the main problem with the slogan has to do with the fact that People with no land can never establish a genuine nationalistic movement. Zionism was and still is, as groundless as, let’s say, an Italian claim for ownership of the land of England just because England was once a part of the Roman empire. Jewish nationalism was always an ideologically baseless utopian belief. It is an invalid nationalistic movement simply because the Jews are not a nation. More over even in their alleged ‘home land’, they are just about to become a minority. And yet, Zionism was a sign of a change, the Jews decided willingly to change their doomed fate, to become ‘normal’ people, people who love their land, people who engage with nature and live in nature. The Zionist Jew desired to redeem himself from the state of victimhood. The Zionist Jew desired to take his own fate in his hands. This reformed perception held till 1967, until then the Zionist Jew regarded himself as a proud self sufficient colonialist. Till 1967 the holocaust had merely an instrumental role, it was something to capitalise on rather than a major tragic event. If anything, for my parents' generation, the holocaust was something to be ashamed of. The image of ‘cattle led to the slaughter’ filled them and even my generation with contempt towards anything that smelled like Diaspora. Tom Segev was very articulate in conveying the story of Israelis' disdain towards the ‘Seventh Million’ (those who managed to survive the war). Needless to say that the current state of Israel clearly reveals how unsuccessful Zionism proved to be. The transformation of the Jewish people into a modern western civilised society failed completely. The Israelis are far from being attached to the land which they apparently shred with apartheid walls. Not only that Israelis didn’t manage to erect a civilised society, it is hard to think of any current modern state as morally corrupted and racially motivated as the Jewish state. And yet, Zionism was an attempt to transform the Jew into a dignified being, A strong, blond athletic productive subject rather than one who prefers voluntarily to sit in the dark.

The alternative Jewish ideological answer to Zionism is provided by the Jewish left thinkers. On the surface it sounds poetic and peaceful but in practice it is at least as devastating as Zionism. The left Jew would roll his eyes up and state with sheer defeat that “it was Hitler rather than Moses who made him into a Jew”. Basically, it is the Other, the Gentile, who makes the Jew into a Jew. As funny as it may sound, most of those righteous Jews would argue in the same breath that the Palestinians should enjoy the right of ‘self determination’. I do ask myself how is it that when it comes to themselves, those left Jews are far from being generous. Somehow, so it appears, the left Jew is reluctant to self determine himself. Apparently, for the left Jew, WW2 has never ended, day by day, they are all defeated by Hitler or more generally speaking, by the Gentile world. But isn’t this an absurd proposition? In fact, there is no Gentile world. Gentile world is in itself a Jewish invention. Gentile people do not identify themselves as ‘non Jews’, there are far more interesting predicates to embrace. Hence, we can clearly see that Jewish leftism is in itself a form of ‘sitting in the dark’ it is an exercise in victim practice. In short, like the Jewish mother they are sitting in the dark (probably not too far from their mothers). They are self appointed victims. Thus, we must admit then that it is not Hitler who turned them into Jews. They are Jews because enthusiastically, they endorse the Jewish identity. They prefer to be victims. It is their own preference not to change the light bulb.

But then why is it necessary? Surely the Jewish leftist knows that these days he can express his calling without presenting any ethnic traces, we are supposed to live in a multi cultural society. Your voice is supposed to be heard regardless of your ethnic origin, your religious background, your sexual preferences or any other social grouping. I would argue that the voluntarily tendency to sit in the dark is the new Jewish religion. It is a sophisticated ideological mechanism that makes the Other, the Western Gentile, feel unwelcome or inferior in any political discourse to do with Palestine. In practice it locates the humanist Jews in the centre of Palestinian affairs. But then, in practice it serves Israel with an ideological and moral body armour. As soon as those humanist Jews become recognised as a genuine voice for Palestine we learn from them that one state solution is utterly impractical. Somehow, for them, the Jewish cause is slightly more important than the Palestinian one. In the end of the day the Jews really suffered.

The victim strategy is the latest and most sophisticated form of Jewish supremacist segregation. Not only that I surround myself with walls, I even make the other feel guilty for me building those walls around myself (by the way, I don’t know whether you are aware of the bizarre fact that within the Israeli discourse it is the Palestinians that are blamed for the Jews building the apartheid wall). You can take from the Jew his religion, you can take away the chicken soup you can even put ‘sea fruit’ on his plate but once you take away the victim tendency, the Jew isn’t a Jew anymore. Once you lift the colossal threat of Hitler then the Jew becomes an ordinary boring being. Let me tell you, this is not going to happen.

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U.S. bars Italians from examining victim’s car

Associated Press (-First printed in Army Times http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-740304.php)
ROME, March 23, 2005 — The U.S. military command in Iraq has blocked two Italian policemen from examining the car in which an Italian intelligence agent was shot to death in Baghdad, a newspaper said Wednesday.

Corriere della Sera said that the policemen were about to leave when the Italian Embassy in Baghdad received an order from the U.S. command on Monday to abort the mission for security concerns.

The embassy in Baghdad reportedly alerted Rome authorities, who called off the trip.

The car, a Toyota Corolla, is reportedly still in American hands, at Baghdad airport where it was originally rented.The Foreign Ministry in Rome declined comment on the report, while officials at the Italian Embassy in Baghdad could not immediately be reached. The U.S. military in Baghdad had no immediate comment.

Italian authorities say that examining the vehicle is key to assessing what happened on March 4, when U.S. troops opened fire on the car carrying secret service agent Nicola Calipari, another intelligence officer and journalist Giuliana Sgrena, who had just been released after a month of captivity in Iraq. Calipari died on the spot, while the other two were wounded.

Prosecutors investigating the shooting have received photographs of the car, but they want to analyze bullet holes and other elements, according to Corriere.

Calipari’s killing outraged Italians and prompted Premier Silvio Berlusconi to demand that Washington provide an explanation. Italy agrees that the shooting was an accident but disputes some key elements of the U.S. account.

The U.S. military said that the vehicle was speeding and refused to stop, and that a U.S. patrol tried to warn the driver with hand and arm signals, by flashing white lights and firing shots in front of the car and into the car’s engine block.

Berlusconi said the car was traveling slowly at night and stopped immediately when a light was flashed at it, shortly before U.S. troops fired on the car. Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini said the fire appeared to have hit the right side of the car.

Vowing to shed light on the incident, Washington has ordered an investigation into the shooting, to be led by a U.S. brigadier general with the participation of Italian officials. The joint commission is expected to release its findings by mid-April.


Wednesday, March 23, 2005

 

Bethlehem - Jerusalem peace procession

The wonderful Umkhalil blog has posted some good links to the Palm Sunday Peace procession. Here is a small excerpt of some extremely interesting posts and links, most notably peacefile:

from an interview with Sis Levin
“Life in Palestine is very different from what the public knows,” continues Levin. When she lectures in the USA, she finds that 85 percent of the average audience don’t have a clue about the situation, don’t know about the walls, and don’t know that Palestine has been reduced to nine percent of its former size. “There’s only nine percent left,” she repeats.

Ten years ago, recalls Levin, a home was imploded by Israeli forces two blocks from her Bethlehem house. And it’s true the home had been inhabited by a suicide bomber. But sometimes there’s more to the story. Levin recalls the woman whose home was raided. During the raid, Israeli troops killed her mother, her father, and her fiancé, then locked her in the room with the bodies. “Of course when she got out of that room she was quite out of her mind,” says Levin. “She went straight to Hamas and said strap it on me. When these things happen they don’t tell those stories either.”

Levin sees the same problems with media coverage of violence in the USA. When kids shoot kids at Columbine, Paducah, or Conyers, we don’t look behind those events either. We don’t ask how these things happen. “The media, instead of being a big part of the solution is very much a part of the problem.” Once Levin showed “Bowling for Columbine” to the youth of Bethlehem and they asked her. “Did your country take bulldozers and flatten the houses of the kids who did that?”


Tuesday, March 22, 2005

 

William Blum - American Imperialism

Through Uruknet I found this interesting article on American Imperialism, by William Blum, of which I post only a few short paragraphs:

There were also elections in Palestine in January, which occurred following the death of Yasser Arafat. Do the celebrators think that the United States was behind Arafat’s death as well? But here too, elections were held before; it’s how Arafat became president. Seumas Milne of The Guardian in London recently observed that elections would have taken place earlier than January if the US and Israel hadn’t known that Arafat was certain to win them. Milne adds: “The claim that democracy is on the march in the Middle East is a fraud. It is not democracy, but the US military, that is on the march.”{2}

And now, class: In 25 words or less explain why the UN, the US, France, Germany, Russia, Spain, and other nations are insisting that Syria leave Lebanon without delay while saying not a word about the US withdrawing from Iraq. There are most likely many more people in Lebanon who want the Syrians to stay than people in Iraq who want the US to stay, one reason being that Lebanon borders only on Syria and Israel.

What has distinguished the Bush administration’s foreign policy from that of its predecessors has been its unabashed and conspicuously overt expressions of its imperial ambitions. They flaunt it, publicly and proudly declaring their intention — nay, their God-inspired right and obligation — to remake the world in their own image. The utterly callous attitude toward human suffering that marks the current administration’s philosophy differs from Kennan’s cold-blooded amorality in that the Bushgang has rejected his advice and do indeed talk about human rights and democracy … ad infinitum. But so has every administration post World War II. Kennan was surprisingly out of tune with international public relations, or maybe he was just too honest to be a diplomat.

So why is the Bushgang so intent on encouraging democracy all over the world? Should that not be supported? Well, it depends on what you mean by democracy, or what the Bushgang means by it. I think that what Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice, et al look for in a “democratic” third world country, or look to establish in that country, is that the government is corporate-friendly, that the society has the legal and financial institutions needed to remake the country so that it’s appealing to foreign investors, that it will play ball with the World Trade Organization, the IMF, and the rest of the international financial mafia, and most important, that it is a capitalist system, enterprise nice and free, none of this socialist crap. That’s what they mean by democracy. Least of all have they in mind any kind of economic democracy, the closing of the gap between the desperate poor and those for whom too much is not enough.

 

Fallujah tragedy, the destruction in numbers

March 21, 2005 (from Uruknet)
Dr. Hafidh al-Dulaimi, the head of “the Commission for the Compensation of Fallujah citizens” has reported the following destruction that has been inflicted on Fallujah as a result of the American attack on it:
- 7000 totally destroyed, or nearly totally destroyed, homes in all districts of Fallujah.
- 8400 stores, workshops, clinics, warehouses, etc.. destroyed.
- 65 mosques and religious sanctuaries have been either totally demolished and leveled with the ground or whose minarets and inner halls have been demolished.
- 59 kindergartens, primary schools, secondary schools and technical colleges have been destroyed.
- 13 government buildings have been leveled.
- Destruction of the two electricity substations, the three water purification plants, the two railroad stations and heavy damages to the sewage and rain drainage subsystems throughout the city.
- The total destruction of a bridge to the West of the city.
- The death of 100,000 domestic and wild animals due to chemical and/or gaseous munitions.- -- The burning and destruction of four libraries that housed hundreds perhaps thousands of ancient Islamic manuscripts and books.
- The targeted destruction (which appears to be intentional) of the historical nearby site at Saqlawia and the castle of Abu al-Abbas al-Safah.

Dr. al-Dulaimi has asked all relevant international organization to visit and document the destruction to Fallujah.........The Head of the Compensation Committee reveals in numbers the Fallujah Tragedy March 21, 2005
(Islam Memo news item in Arabic: http://www.islammemo.cc/news/one_news.asp?IDNews=59994 - translation by Imad Khadduri)


 

BADIL - What is the Conflict all About?


BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights
Press release, 22 March 2005
Settlement or Colonization ? " What is the Conflict all About?"

Jewish settlements constitute a form of colonization in a world that has outlawed colonialism says the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the 1967 occupied Palestinian territories. He also suggests that the time has come for the international community to change its use of language and to start using the terms colonies and colonists to describe Jewish settlements and settlers.

The recently announced planned expansion of Ma'ale Adumim in the Jerusalem-area further illustrates Israel's unique form of colonization: exclusive control of the land and exclusion of indigenous Palestinians. Ma'ale Adumim sits on land owned by the Palestinian villages of Abu Dis and al-Azariyya. Israel's separation ('apartheid') Wall around Jerusalem is supposed to encompass this colony. This process of colonization did not start after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Before the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, Jewish colonization was viewed as a means to create the population base and territorial contiguity necessary for the establishment of a Jewish state in former Palestine.

After the 1948 Arab-Israeli war (Nakba) Jewish settlement on the land of Palestinian refugees aimed to prevent their return, retain Jewish control of their lands and to break up the territorial contiguity of Palestinian towns and villages that remained inside the state of Israel. This is the same process that has been taking place in the 1967 occupied Palestinian territories for the last 37 years. The military orders and administrative procedures used to carry out this process of colonization in the occupied territories are only slight adaptations of laws used inside Israel proper. The response to Israel's ongoing expansion of Jewish colonies is a test of the international community's commitment to the rule of law.

At last months' London meeting on supporting the Palestinian Authority the participants agreed that the disengagement plan "should take place without prejudice to final status negotiations, and in accordance with international law". Phase One of the Road Map says that the Government of Israel should freeze all settlement activity, including natural growth of the settlements. The issue of Jewish settlements is supposed to be dealt with during Phase Three and in the context of an International Conference convened by the Quartet, in consultation with the parties. Now is not the time for appeasement says the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the occupied Palestinian territories. Settlements constitute an illegality in the removal of which the international community has a legal and moral interest says the UN Special Rapporteur, John Dugard. Ongoing Jewish colonization raises serious questions about whether a policy of constructive engagement alone will be sufficient to gain Israel's compliance with its obligations under international law, the advisory opinion of the ICJ, and the Road Map.

It also raises questions about the nature of the conflict. Since 1967 peacemaking efforts have been based on the assumption that the root cause of the conflict is Israel's illegal military occupation. Is it possible to end the occupation without addressing Israel's very nature as a colonial state?

-- BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights
PO Box 728, Bethlehem, Palestine Telefax: 00972-2-2747346
info@badil.org - www.badil.org

Saturday, March 19, 2005

 

Secret US plans for Iraq's oil - BBC Newsnight

By Greg Palast
Reporting for Newsnight
17-03-05

The Bush administration made plans for war and for Iraq's oil before the 9/11 attacks, sparking a policy battle between neo-cons and Big Oil, BBC's Newsnight has revealed.

Two years ago today - when President George Bush announced US, British and Allied forces would begin to bomb Baghdad - protesters claimed the US had a secret plan for Iraq's oil once Saddam had been conquered.

In fact there were two conflicting plans, setting off a hidden policy war between neo-conservatives at the Pentagon, on one side, versus a combination of "Big Oil" executives and US State Department "pragmatists".

"Big Oil" appears to have won. The latest plan, obtained by Newsnight from the US State Department was, we learned, drafted with the help of American oil industry consultants.

Insiders told Newsnight that planning began "within weeks" of Bush's first taking office in 2001, long before the September 11th attack on the US.

"We saw an increase in the bombing of oil facilities and pipelines [in Iraq] built on the premise that privatisation is coming".
Mr Falah Aljibury

An Iraqi-born oil industry consultant, Falah Aljibury, says he took part in the secret meetings in California, Washington and the Middle East. He described a State Department plan for a forced coup d'etat.

Mr Aljibury himself told Newsnight that he interviewed potential successors to Saddam Hussein on behalf of the Bush administration.

Secret sell-off plan

The industry-favoured plan was pushed aside by a secret plan, drafted just before the invasion in 2003, which called for the sell-off of all of Iraq's oil fields. The new plan was crafted by neo-conservatives intent on using Iraq's oil to destroy the Opec cartel through massive increases in production above Opec quotas.

The sell-off was given the green light in a secret meeting in London headed by Ahmed Chalabi shortly after the US entered Baghdad, according to Robert Ebel. Mr Ebel, a former Energy and CIA oil analyst, now a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told Newsnight he flew to the London meeting at the request of the State Department.

Mr Aljibury, once Ronald Reagan's "back-channel" to Saddam, claims that plans to sell off Iraq's oil, pushed by the US-installed Governing Council in 2003, helped instigate the insurgency and attacks on US and British occupying forces.

"Insurgents used this, saying, 'Look, you're losing your country, you're losing your resources to a bunch of wealthy billionaires who want to take you over and make your life miserable,'"
said Mr Aljibury from his home near San Francisco.

"We saw an increase in the bombing of oil facilities, pipelines, built on the premise that privatisation is coming."

Privatisation blocked by industry

Philip Carroll, the former CEO of Shell Oil USA who took control of Iraq's oil production for the US Government a month after the invasion, stalled the sell-off scheme.

Mr Carroll told us he made it clear to Paul Bremer, the US occupation chief who arrived in Iraq in May 2003, that: "There was to be no privatisation of Iraqi oil resources or facilities while I was involved."

Ariel Cohen, of the neo-conservative Heritage Foundation, told Newsnight that an opportunity had been missed to privatise Iraq's oil fields. He advocated the plan as a means to help the US defeat Opec, and said America should have gone ahead with what he called a "no-brainer" decision.

Mr Carroll hit back, telling Newsnight, "I would agree with that statement. To privatize would be a no-brainer. It would only be thought about by someone with no brain."

New plans, obtained from the State Department by Newsnight and Harper's Magazine under the US Freedom of Information Act, called for creation of a state-owned oil company favoured by the US oil industry. It was completed in January 2004 under the guidance of Amy Jaffe of the James Baker Institute in Texas.

Formerly US Secretary of State, Baker is now an attorney representing Exxon-Mobil and the Saudi Arabian government.

View segments of Iraq oil plans at www.GregPalast.com

Questioned by Newsnight, Ms Jaffe said the oil industry prefers state control of Iraq's oil over a sell-off because it fears a repeat of Russia's energy privatisation. In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, US oil companies were barred from bidding for the reserves.

Ms Jaffe says US oil companies are not warm to any plan that would undermine Opec and the current high oil price: "I'm not sure that if I'm the chair of an American company, and you put me on a lie detector test, I would say high oil prices are bad for me or my company."

The former Shell oil boss agrees. In Houston, he told Newsnight: "Many neo conservatives are people who have certain ideological beliefs about markets, about democracy, about this, that and the other. International oil companies, without exception, are very pragmatic commercial organizations. They don't have a theology."
A State Department spokesman told Newsnight they intended "to provide all possibilities to the Oil Ministry of Iraq and advocate none".

Greg Palast's film - the result of a joint investigation by Newsnight and Harper's Magazine - will be broadcast on Thursday, 17 March, 2005.

Newsnight is broadcast every weekday at 10.30pm on BBC Two in the UK.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/4354269.stm

Friday, March 18, 2005

 

Photo of Sgrena's car?

We've all seen some photos. Have we seen the real one yet, or has that photo even ever been shot? Is this car still in existence?

While perusing the site dedicated to the Italian journalist who was killed in Somalia while disclosing the ugly side of International Cooperation, which sent barrels of toxic waste to be buried in that godforsaken land, Ilaria Alpi,, I found this photo, which seems to coincide with the information that Sgrena and "Corsaro", the Italian intelligence agent who survived the shooting, have given.

I wish I knew how to post pictures here! Maybe once I get ADSL service installed, I can figure it out. In the meantime, see this photo before it too gets taken down (The photo on the site of La Repubblica has been taken down.....)

Thursday, March 17, 2005

 

mysteries surrounding the killing of the Italian agent at the US checkpoint

This is an analysis of the mysteries surrounding the killing of the Italian Intelligence agent Nicola Calipari and the injuring of the Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena by the US soldiers at the Baghdad checkpoint. It comes from Misteri d’Italia, dated 11 March 2005. I have found some information here, and especially some acute and lucid questions that I haven’t seen elsewhere. It is a long piece, yet very readable and engaging. The translation is mine, and I hope it is as free from errors as possible!

by Sandro Provvisionato, Carlo Bifani, Stefania Limiti

I lost a friend by Sandro Provvisionato

Very, very much has been written about Nicola Calipari. The by now inevitable rhetoric, in this nation of ours without any more certainties to cling to, wasn’t able to avoid a term that is unfortunately sadly overused: HERO.

Whoever dies in dramatic circumstances, almost magically becomes a hero: a policeman during a robbery, a victim of the mafia or terrorism, a hostage who has fallen into the most bloodthirsty of hands.
I don’t know if Nicola (permit me to call him by his first name, because I have known him for a long time) was a hero. I only know that one of the most beautiful persons that I have ever known in my long career as a journalist is dead. A simple, reserved man who did not like the limelight, but most especially a competent man who adored his work.

I met Nicola in the beginning of 2000 when he was at the summit of the SCO (The Operative Central Service of the Police). After the
Kossovo War, the “humanitarian war” that the NATO unleashed – with the full support of the Italian centre-left, lead by Massimo D’Alema – to “liberate” the Serbian province, currently in the hands of a war criminal and drug trafficker . I decided to write a book that did not recount my own experiences as a war correspondent, but the reality of a country designed with the vocation to become a “narco State”, a Colombia nestled like a wedge in the Balcans.

The history of these years seems to have proven that book right (It was published in 2000 under the title: UCK, the Shadow Armada. A War Between Mafia, Politics and Terrorism). And Nicola had an important role in that book: he did not want to be cited, but all or almost all of the news on the Albanian drug traffickers of Kossovo came from him, from Nicola, who was an absolute expert on the argument.
In him I found sensitivity and competence, but especially a great willingness to reason.

To my question: Why did the NATO create a war for this gang of criminals and drug traffickers that the UCK was? He responded, “I’ve been asking myself that same question since the beginning of the war”.

Our relationship had continued over the course of the years. In moments of doubt about facts that were unfolding, it often happened that I would call him. And he always had an original and intelligent way to interpret the events. It was never banal, never superficial. He knew how to analyse the events with a lucidness that linked one fact to another, until he had woven a textile worthy of the best of those who today are called with consternation and scorn, “conspiracy theorists”.

We would often joke about that term. I would say, “They call me one, but when it comes down to it, the real conspiracy theorist is you…” He laughed and always repeated, “If you don’t look behind that which is happening, you only have a frontal vision and it gives you only a partial image of reality”.

I had heard from him a few weeks before his death. I expressed my doubts regarding the operation conducted last year by the SISMI (Military Intelligence), and therefore by him, in Lebanon regarding a thwarted terrorist attack against the Italian embassy of Beirut with the support of the Syrian Secret Services (see
Misteri d'Italia Newsletter 93 ). He was a bit unnerved by my insinuation, but then, as always, he laughed and told me: “You know, the doubt that the Syrians have played a trick on us had dawned on me as well…”

We promised to see one another soon to better discuss it. There was no time for this to happen.
Ciao, Nicola.

Still a mystery
I hate to admit it, but even the assassination of Nicola Calipari will remain a mystery.

You can bet on that, the Italian-American Investigative Commission has already got the conclusion in the palm of their hands: incident.

At the very most there will be some throw-away admission: maybe, but don’t expect too much, an inexperienced American soldier, inattentive due to tiredness or from the too many joints he smoked, maybe frightened by the sound of a motor in the night, who had opened fire with too much haste.

But unfortunately, in the reconstruction of the fact, the Americans will absolutely want to insert an element of our responsibility: incident yes, faulty judgement on the part of us Yankee shooters, but you too, damned Italians, you did things with far too much bad judgement. Does one travel around at night, in an anonymous car, without even an emblem to distinguish you?

And you will see that someone, automatically, deviously will try to instil in us the doubt that if that operation was conducted not by any old civilian (Calipari was a policeman), but by a soldier… who knows, maybe things wouldn’t have gone the way they did.

No trial, no real judicial investigation, no debate in the courtroom. The Italian Judge Franco Ionta knows well that his hands are tied. It should be more than enough to remember the
tragedy of Cermis to understand that the Americans will never, ever permit us to put one of them on trial, especially if he is in the military.

The curtain will fall also on this heart wrenching death.

But the interrogative that we will be asking will always remain the same. To ever stop listing them, to searching a response to them, this, yes this would be truly criminal.

No, It was not the fault of inexperience. by Carlo Bifani*

Whoever has ever in his life been involved in an activity at risk, in which there is a danger that the irreparable could happen is an integral part of the work one undertakes, knows that it is never over till it is over.

The great quantity of evaluations, of considerations that do not always correspond to the truth that have been accumulating in the media about what happened in the phases that were immediately successive to the liberation of the journalist of Il Manifesto, has motivated the realisation of this page, in which I will try to recount for that small amount of professional experience that I possess, what my opinion is regarding the events.

Let us start with that which we know:

*In the operation of the release of the hostage and the removal of the same and of the operative personnel involved, the best elements that our intelligence has available were used.
*The group travelled in a Toyota Corolla, with standard features.
*The group was using a street which is one of the most dangerous of the area.
* The car was object of action of shooting by American military personnel.In my view, it seems a out of place to form a hypothesis from these elements, along with interpretations and suggestions about the tactical choices that could have been used as an alternative to that which was put in practice by the Coordinator of the mission, who, as it has been many times stressed, was a competent and expert person who had the capacity to be able to choose the best of all possible options.

For that regarding the choice of the car, one can only add to that which has already been said, that if this had happened to a vehicle furnished with a coefficient of an adequate armouring (B5 or superior categories), to acquire one would have meant using one from the car park of our Embassy, involving in a concrete way the security apparatus of the Embassy itself, which evidently had to be kept out of the phase of which we are talking.

It should also be said that, in the case that the firing of bullets of which the car had undergone had been effected by the weapon that the division of the American armoured tank involved in this event was furnished with (12.7 calibre), the armouring of the car would have served little to nothing.

The street that links the capital to the airport is the most dangerous in the area for the characteristics of the surrounding zone, because it is very difficult if not impossible to maintain the terrain sterile in proximity of the road, for the simple fact that it is not possible to impede that along the way cars that have been prepared to explode at one of the checkpoints has not inserted themselves into the road itself. This, together with the doubtful degree of preparation on the part of the United States military personnel located there, explains my way of seeing why the incident could have taken place.

There are those who have asked why Dott. Calipari did not arrange the effectuation of the last part of the transfer of the convoy, safeguarding in that way against surprises such as that which unfortunately had been waiting for him, in a way to make it obvious and evident that the vehicle in movement was part of a group of the Coalition. To respond to this question, let us try to understand what the work that those who are operators in intelligence in the operative zone is comprised of.

That work is made up of waiting, of appointments that are cancelled, of false leads, of movements in which one undergoes surveillance and of phases in which one can only be at the mercy of those who are creating the rules of the game.

What should the personnel employed in that task have done? Ask the convoy to follow him at a safe distance as a sort of caravan, until they obtained the release of the hostage? And if this had then happened in the proximity of the street that is linked to the airport, wouldn’t they have had to await alongside the road, at night, in an unprotected area, for the arrival of the armoured car of the Embassy?

It appears evident, in my view, that only the person on the field and with the knowledge of every aspect of the mission is authorised to express evaluations that are worthy of note.

I believe that the worst thing is that to have lost a man and a professional like Dott. Calipari, who I imagine was happy, but aware of the fact that despite the fact that all of them were returning home, nothing is really over until it is over. * Administrator of Start Security
http://www.startsicurezza.com/

Incident or Ambush? By Stefania Limiti

The elements that bring us to conjecture whether the incident in which the car in which the three (or four?) passengers of the Toyota were driving were involved in was an incident or if it was a scientifically studied ambush are decidedly few and fragmented.

Theory of the incident

It is the most easy theory, and also the most simplistic.

Going in favour of this theory are the numerous cases of civilians killed at the American checkpoints.

Syndrome of the Sherrif? That is possible. In substance, that is the culture in which the entire American army is impregnated in. It is a culture that is well diffused even in American society, which is used to buying and carrying weapons with great ease.

It remains to ask ourselves how it is possible to build a planet to suit American standards and not even be able to run a checkpoint. But we are dealing with elements that support this thesis and they are all theoretical.

The only concrete element supporting the incident, that of “friendly fire”, could be the “not elevated” volume of bullets that had hit the car, a dozen shots in all, perhaps even less (eight). But, as we will see, even this concrete element of support is very weak.

Theory of the Ambush

The data that can support this second thesis are rather more substantial, on the other hand.

In the first place, the motivations that can be called “political”, that are macroscopic and much more evident that those which support the incident. We will point them out further in the chapter entitled, “The Italian method…. And the American one”.

There are then the concrete elements:

From the cursory analysis of the Toyota from the photos that arrived in Italy (gift of the Israelis to the TG1 News) one can deduce that the shots were not aimed at the wheels of the car or at the motor, objectives that are requested by any rules of engagement of patrol military or who are stationed at a check point. The bullets were aimed towards the posterior part of the car (where Sgrena and Calipari were seated), some had perforated the glass of the passenger window to the person seated in the front (the fourth man), none were aimed at the driver, third objective, after the wheels and motor, if the purpose is to stop a moving car.
The car will not be consigned to the Italian judiciary authorities, but will be “held” by the Americans in their base which is adjacent to the airport.

Even the satellite telephone will not be consigned, at least not for now, by the Americans to the Italian magistrates. It will be analysed, perhaps with the purpose of acquiring indications on the communication which had gone on between the agents of the SISMI and the kidnappers of Sgrena.

With every probability, another satellite telephone is still missing.

The checkpoints: in one of her first declarations, later faded into the background, Sgrena had spoken of at least three American checkpoints that had been crossed without encountering any problems. It is known that the soldiers of the various checkpoints along the same road communicate with one another. Why was there no communication that a Toyota was travelling towards the airport and not the arrival of an armoured killer?


The fourth man

Parliamentary sources confirm that there was a fourth man along the road to the airport from Baghdad where Giuliana Sgrena would have once again reached Italy: he was an Iraqi to whom it is “necessary to preserve his safety”.

Up until here, nothing extraordinary: that which remains really incomprehensible is the rapid attempt to cancel his existence, which went into play already just several hours from the shooting which had killed Nicola Calipari.

In the very first reconstructions of the facts, the Italian Prime Minister had publicly spoken of “Several shots which had struck the car and the police officer, accompanied by two other functionaries” (other than the freed journalist.) We also know that among the functionaries of SISMI there was Major “Corsaro” (a nickname meaning pirate), former component of the ROS (Special Division of the State Police, known as Caribinieri), and former collaborator with Captain “Ultimo”, a very well known Police Agent involved in Mafia investigation.

The “Corsaro” had descended silently from the airplane which had landed at Ciampino and was medicated at Celio Military Hospital for shrapnel that had hit him in the foot and then he had once again silently disappeared from view.

The latest version which Berlusconi gives, made known to the public during his intervention in Senate on 9 March, maintains that the fourth man was an official of connection who had remained at the Baghdad airport…

The ANSA news service had referred the facts on the basis of the accounts of “qualified sources”, who had immediately confirmed that the “shooting in which Calipari was killed took place along the road for the airport” consisting of a convoy of autos – among which that carrying the just liberated Sgrena” – therefore there was not one single car (version which coincides also with the news diffused by the same agency from Beirut).

“In the shooting, which had cost the life of Calipari, in addition to Sgrena – immediately admitted to the nearby American hospital – there were another two agents who were injured who were in the car carrying the reporter from Il Manifesto”.

Again ANSA refers that one of the two agents of the SISMI who was injured in the Baghdad shooting is in “serious condition. The man was injured by a bullet from a firearm which had hit his lung and he had undergone surgery in the American military hospital”.

If that is not enough: the judge Franco Ionta and Piero Saviotti, of the Anti-Terrorism pool of the Capital, had immediately said that they wanted to hear, regarding the investigation opened for the homicide of Calipari, not only Giuliana Sgrena, but also “the two functionaries of the SISMI injured in the shooting at the checkpoint, as soon as it is possible after their return in Italy”. (The investigation of the Court of Rome had immediately presented itself as being extremely complex, given that the theatre where the shooting took place is a war zone and everything therefore must be subordinated to a possible international rogation against the USA).

For the record, the first report of the Digos (section of investigative police) consigned to the Court of Rome, in the reconstruction of the shooting speaks of a fourth person and 9 March had the notation of the existence of a presumed fourth man in the car aimed at by the USA soldiers at Baghdad with Nicola Calipari, Giuliana Sgrena and a functionary of the SISMI on board that will be further studied by the magistrates that are investigating on the shooting which took place on 4 March.

Further: during the debate in the House of Deputies, the Foreign Affairs Minister Gianfranco Fini had explicitly denied (so much so that many had immediately translated his affirmation as an admission) the existence of the fourth man: “There is no mystery regarding the presence of a ‘fourth man’ in the vehicle that carried the just freed journalist and the two agents of the SISMI, including Calipari, towards the airport”.

Fini said this addressing directly a Parliament member of the Green party, Paolo Cento, who had asked for clear responses on the fate of the person seriously injured and immediately transported to the military hospital of the US Commando.

“It is true”, Fini had explained, “that in the agitated and tragic hours immediately successive to the shooting that had brought about the death of Calipari, there was confusion; it is also true that from the hour 24:05, therefore between midnight Friday and Saturday, Palazzo Chigi (Prime Minister’s headquarters) had made the precision (in the note from Palazzo Chigi, diffused after the encounter between the Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and the American Ambassador Mel Sembler): “Other than the death of Nicola Calipari and the injuring of Giuliana Sgrena, the fire of the American soldiers at the checkpoint on the road to the airport of Baghdad had provoked the injury of only one single person”. That immediate, too rapid version of the facts which we were speaking of at the beginning.

Minister Fini in his intervention to the Parliament members had clearly stated that all of the Iraqi citizens who had collaborated with the Italian authorities would be safeguarded: at this point another problem arises. It is known that the Italian informative network is based on the role of many Iraqis (so much so that last September in occasion of the hearing before the Parliamentary Commission of Control on the Secret Services (COPACO), the director of the SISMI, Nicolò Pollari said that from the spring of that year no Italian secret agent is present in Iraq explaining that our 007s have left the country for reasons of security. See Misteri d'Italia newsletter 91: yet, if truly an Iraqi informer, or an operative agent is now in the hands of the US Commando, Italy should insist upon being able to guarantee directly his security, rather than to leave him to his destiny

Seeing that the denials resemble confirmations, one or the other must be true: the mystery of the “fourth man” is linked to his first and last name, perhaps that of a person of stature that Italy intends upon protecting (perhaps as a consequence of the dealings for the liberation of Giuliana Sgrena) or the autonomy of Italy in Iraq, that which was claimed by a man like Nicola Calipari, is definitively dead and buried.

The Italian method…. and the American one

There is a hypocrisy that is totally Italian at the basis of this sad event.

The hypocrisy is that of having a mistaken law, unfathomably severe and inflexible on the crime of kidnapping, a law that by now for years has been regularly violated by all and everyone has acted as if they weren’t aware. Hypocritically, in other words.

Italian law, as a matter of fact, considers kidnapping not as a crime against the person, but as a crime against the patrimony. From here the prohibition of paying the ransom to kidnappers, leading to the freezing of the assets of the family members of the kidnapped person.

Therefore, paying the ransom for a kidnapping in Italy is a crime, punishable even if it is committed abroad.

Yet, it is known that the SISMI (in the same way that the SISDE, which mounted in a scandal of secret funds that this service had which was discovered in 1992) possesses secret balance sheets that are not able to be documented, and they also have the availability to use hidden deposits.

With the phenomenon of the kidnapping of Italian citizens in Iraq, the Italian government had given life to a machine which is identical to that in which, ten years ago, the kidnappings in Sardinia and Calabria were resolved, that is, illegally, with the money of the secret services.

Why so much rigor in the law, if violating it, first and foremost, is the Italian government? Wouldn’t it be better to throw off the mask of hypocrisy and pay the ransom in the clear light of day?

Why continue to declare (at right, centre and left) “one does not make deals with criminals (or terrorists)!!!” and then make deals which are then paid? Why continue to not have the courage of supporting ones own actions?

The American method on the other hand is the exact opposite. Firmness is firmness. Period. For the few American hostages kidnapped in Iraq, Nicolas Berg is the prime example the American government has not lifted a finger. The only possibility of intervention, for the Americans, is the blitz, the armed assault.

We, convinced that human life is priceless, prefer the Italian method. But without being ashamed of it. Without hypocrisy.

It is from this philosophy that the shooting in which Nicola Calipari had fallen was born.

For the Americans it is intollerabile that an allied country, paying the ransom (it was that way for Agliana, Stefio and Cupertino, as well as for Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, as well as for Sgrena and it would certainly have been so even for Baldoni) finances the Iraqi resistence.

So, it is in that light that the Italians act in a hidden way. Even to the eyes of the Americans. Those who had set up the fake blitz for the liberation of the three Italian bodyguards and the Polish industrial, just to save face. Those who had faked that the liberation of the two Simonas was fruit of the humanitarian intervention of the Italian Red Cross (who, differently from the other Red Crosses of the European countries, however, is nominated by the government).

The way in which the Sgrena affair had concluded itself , however one wants to intend it, as an ambush or an incident, shows the inversion of tendency of American tolerance that from now on will be equal to zero.

The message has arrived loud and clear to the Italian government from the part of the American government.

From now on there will be no secret dealings, no covert Italian actions for the liberation of other possible hostages in Iraq.

This is the only certainty that we can gather from this horrible story.

The precipitous re-entry

Part of that which we have written up until now explains the reason for the precipitous re-entry into Italy of the mission that had liberated Sgrena. A mission which was certainly at four, and not at three: the hostage, the head of the mission Calipari, the Carabiniere “Corsaro”, alias Andrea and an Iraqi mediator, now perhaps dead, perhaps in the hands of the Americans.

It is evident that the journalist of the Manifesto was not to have been shown to the Americans, or worse, interrogated. The Americans were not to know of the ransom.

But it is also evident that the government wanted to take full advantage of the brilliant conclusion of the affair to gather the optimum results for their image. Even if, as for the liberation of Agliana, Stefio and Cupertino, which took place at the vigil of the European elections, the liberation of Sgrena happened before the imminent Regional elections in Italy.

The announcement of the liberation of Giuliana Sgrena was to appear on all of the news programs at dinner time and in all of the newspapers the next morning.

A stop overnight in the Embassy would have caused the effect of a dilation of time that would certainly have dampened the mass media impact and would have weakened its effect.

Faced with these two “clauses”, we are certain that Nicola Calipari was not in the condition to decide upon a program that was different from that which terminated in his death.

translated from Italian by Mary Rizzo
peacepalestine

 

Abu Mazen - right of return should be viewed "realistically"

In a Haaretz article, we see Abu Mazen talking about « realistic demands » of the Palestinians. Apparently, he seems to believe the Right of Return is not one of them…. And what demands shall he make of Israel? That it accepts to adhere to international law? Or maybe that it builds the Wall a little lower. This was written:

"Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas will tell Palestinian factions at a meeting in Cairo today that the refugees' right of return should be viewed "realistically," and that not all Palestinian exiles will return to former homes in Israel and the territories, the London-based Asharq al-Awsat newspaper reported yesterday.

Palestinian sources told the paper that Abbas will tell the parley's participants - Hamas and Islamic Jihad in particular - that the right of return cannot be fully implemented, but that "individuals who ask to return to their homes and receive compensation [instead] will be able to do so."

But, then I ask myself, what does he mean, really, by -"individuals who ask to return and (not "or") receive compensation will be able to do so"? These are the moments I wished I read Arabic! The article continues:

"According to the paper, Abbas plans to explain his shift as stemming from a desire to strengthen the Palestinians' position with regard to other final-status issues such as Jerusalem, the prisoners and the settlements."

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

 

False Arrest and Brutal Interrogation of a Peace Activist in Tul Karm

Vera Reider passed this on in English, and I had already received a copy in Italian from Al-Awda. I don't know if they are promoting the establishing of committees, petition campaigns or protests, and I haven't written to the email address posted here. For the moment, I believe that it is at any rate important to diffuse the information that the international community is aware of this arrest and of the torture of a peace activist.

Join the "Israeli and International Committee to Free Muhammad Tanji"

Muhammad Tanji, a 36 year old educational counselor from Tul Karm, known to all as 'Aziz', has for many years been known in Israel, in the occupied Palestinian Territories and in the international community as a peace activist who devotes most of his time to education for dialogue and against violence. On the March 3rd, 2005, Aziz was arrested by soldiers while on his way from Abu Dis University, where he is studying for his Post Graduate in Social Sciences. "The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel" succeeded in arranging for a lawyer to meet Aziz in Kishon Prison (also known as Jalameh) only on Wednesday. In Aziz’s statement to the lawyer he declared that in the course of his interrogation he was subjected to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. He was beaten, was held in physical restraints for hours on end, and more. In light of this information, the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel has appealed to the High Court of Justice for an end to the use of torture in the interrogation of Muhammad Tanji.

According to the statement, Aziz is being questioned regarding alleged anti-Israeli activities with the Islamic Jihad. For anyone who knows Aziz, these accusations are unfathomable. The interrogators are applying severe physical and mental pressure on Aziz to confess that he is responsible for a cell of the Islamic Jihad, and that he has carried out military activities. The statement reads: “My legs are dripping with blood from the tight cuffs…up to 1:30 in the morning, on a chair with my hands in cuffs, with my feet chained to the chair…” The physical pressures being exerted on Aziz are being backed by open threats of administrative arrest and falsified criminal charges: The investigators threatened that the interrogations will continue until he confesses to activities with the Islamic Jihad, and that if he does not confess they will charge him falsely with participation in the murder of a soldier.

Aziz devotes the great majority of his time and energy to his work with children and youths advancing the values of dialogue, coexistence and peace. He has planted hope in the hearts of many that there is a willing partner on the Israeli side. Aziz has never swerved from this path, even when his peace activities aroused the anger of those who do not accept the road of dialogue, and he has even received threats from various Palestinian groups, including the Islamic Jihad.

Since the year 2000, Aziz has been active in “Windows,” an Israeli-Palestinian NGO working to advance understanding between the youths of both nations. In the course of his activities with “Windows,” he has accompanied and facilitated many meetings between groups of youths from both sides; he has established a large community of “Windows” activists in the Tulkarm area, and served on the organization’s Board of Directors for three years. Today, he is active in the organization Kufiya, an Italian-Palestinian group that provides economic assistance and education in the occupied Palestinian Territories. Aziz has initiated joint activities between Kufiya and the Israeli youth organization 'Sadaka-Reut – For Coexistence in Israel' – whose goal is to advance dialogue and understanding between the two peoples.

Aziz’s many friends in Israel and the world have been following the developments of his arrest with shock and anger, and they are actively working for his immediate release. Among those who have joined this cause are Louisa Morgantini, a Member of the European Parliament and many European peace organizations.

The committee:

Lana Tatur and Efrat Wolfson (Windows) 972 - 54-2161656
Gamila yafit Biso (The Olive Tree Movement) 972 - 52-4341840
Dafna Banai (Machsom Watch, Sadaka-Reut) 972 - 52-2575938
Fadi Shbeita (Sadaka-Reut) 972 - 54-4859046
Anat Matar – 972 - 52-856001
Paola Ghiglione (kufia onlus, Italia) 39 – 0106515148 M. 39 - 3471035397
freeaziz@gmail.com

 

Right of Return Statement

A few weeks ago, the Forward newspaper published an article on Dr. Asali, founder and head of the American Task Force on Palestine, ATFP http://www.forward.com/articles/.

The article quoted Asali as publicly calling on the Palestinians to abandon the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their original towns and villages in historic Palestine because it is unrealizable." He then proceeded to insult young Palestinian activists and their supporters in the US.

"I understand the young [pro-Palestinian] students who scream on university campuses. I know what they are talking about. And I also know that they don't know what they are talking about.

"Dr. Asali's statements prompted a large number of Palestinian grassroots, community-based organizations and associations created and run by refugees, in Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Europe and the US to issue a statement of their own, denouncing Asali's proclamations.

Statement to the Public Regarding Ziyad al-Assali's Statements on the Right of Return for Palestinian Refugees

The Global Palestine Right of Return Coalition (and its constituent organizations in historic Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Europe and North America, including Al-Awda), and in conjunction with the Right of Return Congress and the listed signatory popular organizations and committees representing various Palestinian refugee communities, join the Arab-American community in declaring that various statements and false representations by the president of the Washington-based "American Task Force on Palestine" (ATFP) Dr. Ziad Asali nullifying the Palestinian right to return and demeaning the Palestinian and Arab people are reprehensible and entirely outside the consensus of our people.

The Right of Return is an inalienable right affirmed by the international community annually since 1948. No single person, group or government have the authority or mandate to forfeit this individual and national right.

In reality, voices such as Asali's are part of a larger concerted effort to introduce a false veneer of moderation as a replacement for the legitimate inalienable rights of the Palestinian and Arab people, represented by their right to return, sovereignty and self-determination. Through organizations like ATFP, Asali has gone even beyond the Geneva Accords, the Nusseibeh-Ayalon Agreement and other such attempts that violate fundamental, inalienable and natural rights that are enshrined in international law.

From under the garb of hollow US democratization, Asali has in effect been diligently advancing the neo-conservative plan for the "New Middle East", where nations and people are reconstituted against their will.

Of particular concern is the concerted attempt by Asali and a few others to normalize efforts leading to self-defeat and the nullification of the right to return. Asali made a statement to Forward recently that "we (Palestinians) must now separate the right from the return, " and that "there is really nothing to return to. It is Israel now". Instantly Asali became a celebrity in Zionist circles. Dr. Asali is free to forfeit his right to return to his home in Jerusalem, but he has no right to dismiss, hurt or forfeit the rights of 6 million Palestinian refugees.

Asali's position is consistent with the Bush administration's political construct and is based on the erroneous notion that Palestinian refugees will merely accept dictates from others after decades of struggle. In reality, the Palestinian people, particularly the refugee and exiled communities worldwide, are the sole makers of their destiny through their own grassroots participatory institutions and cumulative political consensus produced by decades in struggle. These institutions have collectively made it clear that the individual and collective right to return is a fundamental prerequisite for any peace, as guaranteed by international law, and will not be compromised nor offered away.

As a reflection of the Bush administration's policies against a targeted community, Asali, not unlike Fouad Ajami, by design or default, seems to have taken on the task of trying to fracture consensus and, through mockery, instill in the community a subservient value of self. Yet, as history continues to demonstrate, such a voice will always remain an intruder threatening the well-being and cohesiveness of their people and communities throughout the world. Asali does not represent the aspirations of our people or the wide base of the Arab American community despite his attempts to claim the contrary. He remains outside the overwhelming consensus and the stipulations of international law.

All such detractors of the natural and legitimate Right of Return have failed miserably in their attempts to dismantle human rights. The Palestinian people have repeatedly demonstrated for nearly 57 years that they are determined to exercise their Right of Return. In this they are supported by all people of good and free conscience. No doubt justice will prevail.

Signatories, [The following signatories represent the overwhelming majority of the Palestinian right of return movement worldwide and a great sector of the Palestinian people.]
*Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition, North America
*The Global Palestine Right of Return Coalition, including: Right of Return Committee-Denmark Right of Return Committee-Sweden Right of Return Committee-Netherlands Arab Culture Society--Poland Palestinian Community - France Right of Return Committee - Germany Al-Awda, United Kingdom
*The Palestinian Right of Return Congress (Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Malaysia, Morocco, Europe, North America)
*BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights--Palestine
*European Confederation for the Right of Return (Germany, France, Denmark, Holland, Poland, Sweden, Norway, United Kingdom and Italy)
*Aidoun Group-Syria
*Aidoun Group-Lebanon
*The Higher Committee for the Defense of the Right of Return--Jordan
*Fateh Youth Movement-Province of Bethlehem--Palestine
*Families of Deportees of the Church of the Nativity-Palestine
*The Vocational Training Association-Dheisheh Refugee Camp, Palestine
*Dheisheh Philanthropic Association-Dheisheh Refugee Camp, Palestine
*Popular Committee-Al-Izza Refugee Camp, Beit Jibreen, Palestine
*Union of Women Activity Centers-West Bank refugee camps, Palestine
*Union of Youth Social Centers-Palestine
*Committee for the Defense of the Right of Return-Balata Refugee Camp, Palestine
*Yafa Cultural Center-Balata Refugee Camp, Palestine
*Association for the Defense of the Rights of the Internally Displaced-Shafa Amer, Palestine
*Popular Committee-Dheisheh Refugee Camp, Palestine
*Popular Service Committees (PLO) -West Bank refugee camps, Palestine
*Popular Coalition for the Defense of the Right of Return-Palestine
*Beit Awla Cultural Center-Hebron, Palestine
*Beit Awla Municipality-Hebron, Palestine, Palestine
*Fateh Movement-Beit Awla, Hebron, Palestine
*Beit Awla's Women Club-Hebron, Palestine
*Beit Jibreen Association-Adhna, Hebron, Palestine
*Association of Residents of Villages and towns Destroyed and Occupied in1948-Ramallah Province, Palestine
*Coordinating Committee for West Bank Vocational Training Associations in the West Bank-Palestine
*Gaza Popular Committees, Executive Office-Gaza Strip, Palestine
*Committee for the Defense of the Right of Return-Ramallah Province, Palestine
*Popular Committee for the Defense of the Right of Return-Nablus, Palestine
*Yazour Philanthropic Association-Nablus, Palestine
*Kafar Saba Philanthropic Association-Nablus, Palestine
*Palestinian Return Center-Nablus, Palestine
*Hawaa' Cultural Center-Nablus, Palestine
*Popular Services Committee of Dheisheh Refugee Camp -Bethlehem, Palestine
*Popular Services Committee of 'Aida Refugee Camp-Bethlehem, Palestine
*Laji' Center/Return is the Key-'Aida Refugee Camp, Bethlehem, Palestine
*The Coordination Forum of NGOs Working Among the Palestinian Community-Lebanon
*Arab Resource Center for Popular Arts/Al-Jana--Lebanon
*Association Najdeh--Lebanon
*Health Care Society--Lebanon
*KG Resource & Training Center --Lebanon
*Palestine Martyrs Works Society/Samed--Lebanon
*Association for the Development of Palestinian Camps (Ina'ash)--Lebanon
*Ghassan Kanafani Cultural Foundation--Lebanon
*Handicapped Social Association--Lebanon
*National Association for Social Medical Care & Vocational Training--Lebanon
*National Association for Vocational Training and Social Services--Lebanon
*National Foundation for Health, Social and Educational Services--Lebanon
*National Institution for Social Care & Vocational Training--Lebanon
*Palestinian Arab Women League--Lebanon
*Popular Aid for Relief and Development--Lebanon

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