By Helena Cobban
Tue Nov 24, 4:00 am ET
Washington – President Obama urgently needs to distance Washington from the provocative – and illegal – actions the Israeli government has been undertaking in Jerusalem.
He needs to do this to save the two-state solution that he supports between Israelis and Palestinians. He needs to do it, too, because it will help protect US troops around the world. Jerusalem is a core concern for many of the world's 1.5 billion Muslims, and with US forces now facing tense situations in several majority-Muslim countries, Washington has a stronger need than ever to keep the goodwill of the peoples of those lands.
This is one of the main findings from a study-tour of the region I co-led earlier this month. In Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and the West Bank, strongly pro-US leaders underlined to us the importance of Jerusalem to their own political fortunes and those of other American allies throughout the Muslim world.
Israel took control of the eastern portion of Jerusalem, including the historic, walled "Old City," in the 1967 war. Since then, Israeli governments have invested heavily in implanting Jewish settlers into East Jerusalem, while squeezing out the area's indigenous Palestinians, both Muslims and Christians.
In recent months this campaign of ethnic transformation has intensified. On Nov. 16, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced plans for the construction of 900 new housing units in the southeast settlement of Gilo. He reportedly did this right after Mr. Obama's special envoy to the region, George Mitchell, had pleaded with him not to. But aside from expressing "dismay," have we seen any visible consequences from Washington? Not yet.
Today, Jerusalem is a tinderbox. If it ignites, American interests will be at risk, because Washington is seen as acquiescing in Israel's harmful actions there.
In decades past, when policy differences arose between Israel and the United States, many of Israel's supporters argued that it was on the front line against terrorism, so Americans should not second-guess its judgments or policies.
That was never a wholly convincing argument. But now, the situation has turned quite around. Today, it is American men and women who are on the front lines and it is their – and our – interests that are most at risk.
By not holding Israel to account, Washington is needlessly – and recklessly – offending hundreds of millions of Muslims on whose goodwill our troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere depend.
While in Jerusalem, we saw Israel's destructive policies firsthand. The Jewish state is:
•Expanding the large Israeli-only settlements that ring the city to the east, north, and south.
•Supporting smaller settler "outposts" in the heart of Jerusalem's remaining Palestinian enclaves.
•Completing the 24-foot-high Separation Wall that encloses many Palestinian portions of the city and slices through the center of others.
•Delegating responsibility for archaeological excavations in sensitive areas to settler organizations that have worked feverishly – and quite unscientifically – to push tunnels right under the historic "Muslim Quarter" of the walled Old City.
•Making it almost impossible for the city's Palestinians to expand their housing stock, and conducting regular demolitions of Palestinian housing it deems "illegal."
All these Israeli actions are themselves illegal under international law, since Israel controls East Jerusalem and the surrounding West Bank only as a military occupying power, not a rightful sovereign government.
Imagine if, when the US military occupied Baghdad after 2003, Washington had taken steps like these! Fortunately, it didn't. Instead, it steadily delegated authority back to Iraqis themselves.
The US is far and away Israel's biggest external supporter. The aid America gives to her allies should not be unconditional but used to uphold US interests. In the Middle East, that means US dollars and diplomacy should support a fair and sustainable peace between Israelis and Palestinians and the rule of law in an otherwise chaotic world.
It's true that over the years many Americans have become persuaded that Greater Jerusalem has been "unified," that it all belongs to Israel, and indeed is "Israel's eternal capital."
The rest of the world – and international law – doesn't agree. What people in other countries see is Israel thumbing its nose at international law as it works to transform the city's ethnic composition.
This is disastrous for Washington's peace diplomacy, which has always been based on the principle that the city's final disposition should be negotiated, rather than unilaterally determined through the creation of new facts on the ground.
In his landmark Cairo speech to Muslims in June, Obama said he would "personally pursue" a two-state solution "with all the patience and dedication that the task requires." Today, Obama may feel that the political price of standing up to Israel – which few US presidents have done – is too high. It is high – but the risk that continued acquiescence to Israel's policies in Jerusalem poses to American lives (and those of Palestinians and Israelis) is now even higher. This is Obama's chance to set a new, just course for the Middle East on a firmly pro-American basis.
He can do this by linking US aid to Israel to its compliance with international law in the city, by supporting action by the UN Security Council to uphold international standards there, and in other ways.
The 250,000 remaining Palestinians of Jerusalem desperately need this action. So does Obama's peace diplomacy.
And so, too, do the 200,000-plus US service members deployed today in tense, majority-Muslim lands.
Helena Cobban, a longtime correspondent and columnist for the Monitor, was recently appointed executive director of the Washington-based Council for the National Interest.
Read more...
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Middle East peace: Is two-state solution kaput?
By John V. Whitbeck
Tue Nov 17, 4:00 am ET
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia – The seemingly perpetual Middle East "peace process" is now at a moment of truth. Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said so himself at a press conference on Nov. 4.
Palestinian hopes that the Obama administration would remain resolute in insisting that Israel halt further expansion of its settlements on Palestinian land have been dashed. An especially low moment came when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton recently used the word "unprecedented" to praise Israel's minimalist promise of restraint in its settlement expansion program. In rapid reaction, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced that he did not wish to seek reelection because it was now clear that the US would not stand up to Israel.
Washington's capitulation raises the possibility that "the two-state solution is no longer an option and maybe the Palestinian people should refocus their attention on the one-state solution, where Muslims, Christians, and Jews live as equals," Mr. Erakat told the press.
His verbal bombshell just might signal a turning point in the long, frustrating search for peace with some measure of justice in Israel/Palestine.
Throughout the long years of the so-called peace process, deadlines have been consistently and predictably missed. Such failures have been facilitated by the practical reality that, for Israel, "failure" has had no consequences other than a continuation of the status quo, which for all Israeli governments has been not only tolerable but preferable to any realistically realizable alternative. For Israel, "failure" has always constituted "success," permitting it to continue confiscating Palestinian land, expanding its West Bank colonies, building bypass roads for Jews only, and generally making the occupation even more permanent and irreversible.
In everyone's interests, this must change. For there to be any chance of success in any new round of negotiations, failure must have clear and compelling consequences that Israelis would find unappealing – indeed, at least initially, nightmarish, since democratic demographics would inevitably spell the end of Jewish supremacy in the "Jewish State."
The Palestinian leadership, with or without Mr. Abbas, should now announce its willingness to resume negotiations with Israel but only on this express and irrevocable understanding: If a definitive peace agreement on a "two-state basis" has not been reached and signed by the end of 2010, the Palestinian people will have no choice but to seek justice and freedom through democracy – through full rights of citizenship in a single state in all of the land which, prior to 1948, was called Palestine, free of any discrimination based on race or religion and with equal rights for all who live there, as in any true democracy.
The Arab League should then publicly state that the very generous Arab Peace Initiative, which, since March 2002 has offered Israel permanent peace and normal diplomatic and economic relations in return for Israel's compliance with international law, will expire and be "off the table" if a definitive Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement has not been signed by the end of 2010.
At this point – but not before – serious and meaningful negotiations can begin. Given how far Israeli settlements have encroached on Palestinian land, it may already be too late to achieve a decent two-state solution, but a decent two-state solution would never have a better chance of being achieved. If it is indeed too late, then Israelis, Palestinians, and the world will know and can thereafter focus their minds and efforts constructively on the only other decent alternative.
It is even possible that, if forced to focus during the coming year on the prospect of living in a fully democratic state with equal rights for all its citizens – which, after all, is what the United States and the European Union hold up in all other instances as the ideal form of political life – many Israelis might come to view this "threat" as less nightmarish than they traditionally have.
In this context, Israelis might wish to talk with some white South Africans. The transformation of South Africa's racial-supremicist ideology and political system into a fully democratic one has transformed them, personally, from pariahs into people welcomed throughout their region and the world. It has also ensured the permanence of a strong and vital white presence in southern Africa in a way that prolonging the flagrant injustice of a racial-supremicist ideology and political system and imposing fragmented and dependent "independent states" on the natives could never have achieved.
This is not a precedent to dismiss. It could and should inspire.
John V. Whitbeck, an international lawyer who has advised the Palestinian negotiating team in negotiations with Israel, is author of "The World According to Whitbeck."
Read more...
Tue Nov 17, 4:00 am ET
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia – The seemingly perpetual Middle East "peace process" is now at a moment of truth. Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said so himself at a press conference on Nov. 4.
Palestinian hopes that the Obama administration would remain resolute in insisting that Israel halt further expansion of its settlements on Palestinian land have been dashed. An especially low moment came when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton recently used the word "unprecedented" to praise Israel's minimalist promise of restraint in its settlement expansion program. In rapid reaction, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced that he did not wish to seek reelection because it was now clear that the US would not stand up to Israel.
Washington's capitulation raises the possibility that "the two-state solution is no longer an option and maybe the Palestinian people should refocus their attention on the one-state solution, where Muslims, Christians, and Jews live as equals," Mr. Erakat told the press.
His verbal bombshell just might signal a turning point in the long, frustrating search for peace with some measure of justice in Israel/Palestine.
Throughout the long years of the so-called peace process, deadlines have been consistently and predictably missed. Such failures have been facilitated by the practical reality that, for Israel, "failure" has had no consequences other than a continuation of the status quo, which for all Israeli governments has been not only tolerable but preferable to any realistically realizable alternative. For Israel, "failure" has always constituted "success," permitting it to continue confiscating Palestinian land, expanding its West Bank colonies, building bypass roads for Jews only, and generally making the occupation even more permanent and irreversible.
In everyone's interests, this must change. For there to be any chance of success in any new round of negotiations, failure must have clear and compelling consequences that Israelis would find unappealing – indeed, at least initially, nightmarish, since democratic demographics would inevitably spell the end of Jewish supremacy in the "Jewish State."
The Palestinian leadership, with or without Mr. Abbas, should now announce its willingness to resume negotiations with Israel but only on this express and irrevocable understanding: If a definitive peace agreement on a "two-state basis" has not been reached and signed by the end of 2010, the Palestinian people will have no choice but to seek justice and freedom through democracy – through full rights of citizenship in a single state in all of the land which, prior to 1948, was called Palestine, free of any discrimination based on race or religion and with equal rights for all who live there, as in any true democracy.
The Arab League should then publicly state that the very generous Arab Peace Initiative, which, since March 2002 has offered Israel permanent peace and normal diplomatic and economic relations in return for Israel's compliance with international law, will expire and be "off the table" if a definitive Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement has not been signed by the end of 2010.
At this point – but not before – serious and meaningful negotiations can begin. Given how far Israeli settlements have encroached on Palestinian land, it may already be too late to achieve a decent two-state solution, but a decent two-state solution would never have a better chance of being achieved. If it is indeed too late, then Israelis, Palestinians, and the world will know and can thereafter focus their minds and efforts constructively on the only other decent alternative.
It is even possible that, if forced to focus during the coming year on the prospect of living in a fully democratic state with equal rights for all its citizens – which, after all, is what the United States and the European Union hold up in all other instances as the ideal form of political life – many Israelis might come to view this "threat" as less nightmarish than they traditionally have.
In this context, Israelis might wish to talk with some white South Africans. The transformation of South Africa's racial-supremicist ideology and political system into a fully democratic one has transformed them, personally, from pariahs into people welcomed throughout their region and the world. It has also ensured the permanence of a strong and vital white presence in southern Africa in a way that prolonging the flagrant injustice of a racial-supremicist ideology and political system and imposing fragmented and dependent "independent states" on the natives could never have achieved.
This is not a precedent to dismiss. It could and should inspire.
John V. Whitbeck, an international lawyer who has advised the Palestinian negotiating team in negotiations with Israel, is author of "The World According to Whitbeck."
Read more...
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Dear John, Thanks for the Layoff
Wed May 27, 8:08 am ET
By Jessica Ward Jessica Ward
Dear John,
While this could easily be a private letter between you and me, current economics are hinting to me that perhaps my condition is wider-spread than just my house. As a result, I've elected to make this a public letter. I hope you don't mind.
I'm writing today to thank you for my layoff. When you hired me to work in your firm two years ago, we both knew we were taking a chance on each other. Thank you for treating me well. Thanks for the raises, the benefits and the annual company picnic. I thank you and my family thanks you. I will cherish the knowledge and friendships that built during my time with the company, but most of all, I'm thankful for my layoff.
In these days of extreme economic hardship, you should know that I haven't gone crazy since we last spoke. In fact, I think I may have gone sane. All joking aside, this layoff may be one of the best things that has ever happened to me. Let me explain.
I did what every good pink-slip recipient should do. I spruced up my resume and filed for unemployment. I even bought a paper to search jobs in the classifieds. However, it seems that unless you're looking for a used dishwasher or a '93 Civic, there isn't much in the ads these days. Still, required by the local unemployment office, I had to try to get three jobs a week. I found myself scouring for jobs that I knew I would hate. I gave up. After one week, I stopped claiming unemployment. (And if the state of Washington wants its $453 back, they can have it).
You see, the pre-Christmas layoff timing was perfect. It saved me a fortune on child care and the kids will forever remember it as the year we spent three days building the best gingerbread house ever. (It looked just like Snoopy's doghouse.)
We thought this layoff would be a crushing financial blow and opted to hand-make all of our Christmas gifts. They were a huge hit with our family and friends and we spent several wonderful days together as a family creating them. We didn't at all miss the experience of circling the mall for hours looking for a parking spot. The kids didn't sit on Santa's lap at Macy's but we did run into him at a neighborhood ice hockey game and snapped a photo. I'll mail you one.
John, while severance would have been really nice, the gift that you gave me was an abundance of quiet, contemplative time to decide what to do with my life. Not a career, not my time, but my life. I hired a career coach (a tax-deductible job search expense, I thought to myself). I started a workout routine, and I wrote my day-to-day experiences down for myself as a way to order my thoughts. I had ambition. A special breed of ambition that comes from wondering how I'll pay that career coach, or for that matter, even pay my next student loan bill.
We wrote out our household budget for the first time ever, and we stuck to it. I wrote a business plan to start my business, and my husband encouraged me to restart the freelance writing career that I'd put on hold six years ago when I got married. Now I work only part-time for myself and I write part time. I never commute. My wonderful kids are thriving. And as for that student loan payment I wasn't sure I could make in December? I paid the balance of the loan off in full in February, three years ahead of schedule.
With the time afforded to me by my layoff, I was able to focus on my family and household. We kept waiting for the loss of income to hit us with that anticipated financial blow, but it didn't come. I started a blog to inspire others to living "laid off" and making do without a "real job" through smarter spending and finding efficiencies.
Throughout my career, I'd never taken the time to live. I'd never shopped for banks or health insurance. I'd never second-guessed my 401k and never taken the time to design a budget for the family. I'd never volunteered in the kids' classrooms or created a plan more than six months in duration because things might have changed at work.
With no last-minute time crunches at the office, my kids don't think that food comes from a box in the freezer. We cook food that looks like the way it naturally grew. I have more peace of mind than I can ever remember. I'm reading books for fun; I'm indulging in hobbies and spending time with friends and family. I've reconnected with old friends and I volunteer with causes that are important to me.
This is the most rewarding period of my life, ever.
Just wanted to let you know, in case you're wondering, I'm OK. And thank you again for all you taught me. Most of all, for my layoff. I'm living my dream, and it's all thanks to you, I might never have found with it means to live otherwise.
Sincerely,
Jessica Ward
Read more...
By Jessica Ward Jessica Ward
Dear John,
While this could easily be a private letter between you and me, current economics are hinting to me that perhaps my condition is wider-spread than just my house. As a result, I've elected to make this a public letter. I hope you don't mind.
I'm writing today to thank you for my layoff. When you hired me to work in your firm two years ago, we both knew we were taking a chance on each other. Thank you for treating me well. Thanks for the raises, the benefits and the annual company picnic. I thank you and my family thanks you. I will cherish the knowledge and friendships that built during my time with the company, but most of all, I'm thankful for my layoff.
In these days of extreme economic hardship, you should know that I haven't gone crazy since we last spoke. In fact, I think I may have gone sane. All joking aside, this layoff may be one of the best things that has ever happened to me. Let me explain.
I did what every good pink-slip recipient should do. I spruced up my resume and filed for unemployment. I even bought a paper to search jobs in the classifieds. However, it seems that unless you're looking for a used dishwasher or a '93 Civic, there isn't much in the ads these days. Still, required by the local unemployment office, I had to try to get three jobs a week. I found myself scouring for jobs that I knew I would hate. I gave up. After one week, I stopped claiming unemployment. (And if the state of Washington wants its $453 back, they can have it).
You see, the pre-Christmas layoff timing was perfect. It saved me a fortune on child care and the kids will forever remember it as the year we spent three days building the best gingerbread house ever. (It looked just like Snoopy's doghouse.)
We thought this layoff would be a crushing financial blow and opted to hand-make all of our Christmas gifts. They were a huge hit with our family and friends and we spent several wonderful days together as a family creating them. We didn't at all miss the experience of circling the mall for hours looking for a parking spot. The kids didn't sit on Santa's lap at Macy's but we did run into him at a neighborhood ice hockey game and snapped a photo. I'll mail you one.
John, while severance would have been really nice, the gift that you gave me was an abundance of quiet, contemplative time to decide what to do with my life. Not a career, not my time, but my life. I hired a career coach (a tax-deductible job search expense, I thought to myself). I started a workout routine, and I wrote my day-to-day experiences down for myself as a way to order my thoughts. I had ambition. A special breed of ambition that comes from wondering how I'll pay that career coach, or for that matter, even pay my next student loan bill.
We wrote out our household budget for the first time ever, and we stuck to it. I wrote a business plan to start my business, and my husband encouraged me to restart the freelance writing career that I'd put on hold six years ago when I got married. Now I work only part-time for myself and I write part time. I never commute. My wonderful kids are thriving. And as for that student loan payment I wasn't sure I could make in December? I paid the balance of the loan off in full in February, three years ahead of schedule.
With the time afforded to me by my layoff, I was able to focus on my family and household. We kept waiting for the loss of income to hit us with that anticipated financial blow, but it didn't come. I started a blog to inspire others to living "laid off" and making do without a "real job" through smarter spending and finding efficiencies.
Throughout my career, I'd never taken the time to live. I'd never shopped for banks or health insurance. I'd never second-guessed my 401k and never taken the time to design a budget for the family. I'd never volunteered in the kids' classrooms or created a plan more than six months in duration because things might have changed at work.
With no last-minute time crunches at the office, my kids don't think that food comes from a box in the freezer. We cook food that looks like the way it naturally grew. I have more peace of mind than I can ever remember. I'm reading books for fun; I'm indulging in hobbies and spending time with friends and family. I've reconnected with old friends and I volunteer with causes that are important to me.
This is the most rewarding period of my life, ever.
Just wanted to let you know, in case you're wondering, I'm OK. And thank you again for all you taught me. Most of all, for my layoff. I'm living my dream, and it's all thanks to you, I might never have found with it means to live otherwise.
Sincerely,
Jessica Ward
Read more...
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Yet Another Bogus 'Terror' Plot
Robert Dreyfuss Robert Dreyfuss
Fri May 22, 7:56 am ET
The Nation -- By the now, it's maddeningly familiar. A scary terrorist plot is announced. Then it's revealed that the suspects are a hapless bunch of ne'er-do-wells or run-of-the-mill thugs without the slightest connection to any terrorists at all, never mind to Al Qaeda. Finally, the last piece of the puzzle: the entire plot is revealed to have been cooked up by a scummy government agent-provocateur.
I've seen this movie before.
In this case, the alleged perps -- Onta Williams, James Cromitie, David Williams, and Laguerre Payen -- were losers, ex-cons, drug addicts. Al Qaeda they're not. Without the assistance of the agent who entrapped them, they would never have dreamed of committing political violence, nor would they have had the slightest idea about where to acquire plastic explosives or a Stinger missile. That didn't stop prosecutors from acting as if they'd captured Osama bin Laden himself. Noted the Los Angeles Times:
Prosecutors called it the latest in a string of homegrown terrorism plots hatched after Sept. 11.
"It's hard to envision a more chilling plot," Assistant U.S. Atty. Eric Snyder said in court Thursday. He described all four suspects as "eager to bring death to Jews."
Actually, it's hard to imagine a stupider, less competent, and less important plot. The four losers were ensnared by a creepy FBI agent who hung around the mosque in upstate New York until he found what he was looking for. Here's the New York Times account:
Salahuddin Mustafa Muhammad, the imam at the mosque where the authorities say the confidential informant first encountered the men, said none of the men were active in the mosque. ...
Mr. Cromitie was there last June, and he met a stranger.
He had no way of knowing that the stranger's path to the mosque began in 2002, when he was arrested on federal charges of identity theft. He was sentenced to five years' probation, and became a confidential informant for the F.B.I. He began showing up at the mosque in Newburgh around 2007, Mr. Muhammad said.
The stranger's behavior aroused the imam's suspicions. He invited other worshipers to meals, and spoke of violence and jihad, so the imam said he steered clear of him.
"There was just something fishy about him," Mr. Muhammad said. Members "believed he was a government agent."
Mr. Muhammad said members of his congregation told him the man he believed was the informant offered at least one of them a substantial amount of money to join his "team."
So a creepy thug buttonholes people at a mosque, foaming at the mouth about violence and jihad? This is law enforcement? Just imagine if someone did this at a local church, or some synagogue. And the imam says the people "believed he was a government agent."
Preying on these losers, none of whom were apparently actual Muslims, the "confidential informant" orchestrated the acquisition of a disabled Stinger missile to shoot down military planes and cooked up a wild scheme about attacking a Jewish center in the Bronx.
It gets even more pathetic:
The only one of the four suspects who appears to have aroused any suspicion was Payen, a Haitian native who attended the Newburgh mosque. Assistant imam Hamid Rashada said his dishevelment and odd behavior disturbed some members, said the assistant imam, Hamid Rashada.
When Payen appeared in court, defense attorney Marilyn Reader described him as "intellectually challenged" and on medication for schizophrenia. The Associated Press said that when he was asked if he understood the proceedings, Payen replied: "Sort of."
Despite the pompous statements from Mayor Bloomberg of New York and other politicians, including Representative Peter King, the whole story is bogus. The four losers may have been inclined to violence, and they may have harbored a virulent strain of anti-Semitism. But it seems that the informant whipped up their violent tendencies and their hatred of Jews, cooked up the plot, incited them, arranged their purchase of weapons, and then had them busted. To ensure that it made headlines, the creepy informant claimed to be representing a Pakistani extremist group, Jaish-e Muhammad, a bona fide terrorist organization. He wasn't, of course.
It is disgusting and outrageous that the FBI is sending provocateurs into mosques.
The headlines reinforce the very fear that Dick Cheney is trying to stir up. The story strengthens the narrative that the "homeland" is under attack. It's not. As I've written repeatedly, since 9/11 not a single American has even been punched in the nose by an angry Muslim, as far as I can tell. Plot after plot -- the destruction of the Brooklyn Bridge! bombing the New York Subways! taking down the Sears Tower! bombing the Prudential building in Newark! -- proved to be utter nonsense.
Read more...
Fri May 22, 7:56 am ET
The Nation -- By the now, it's maddeningly familiar. A scary terrorist plot is announced. Then it's revealed that the suspects are a hapless bunch of ne'er-do-wells or run-of-the-mill thugs without the slightest connection to any terrorists at all, never mind to Al Qaeda. Finally, the last piece of the puzzle: the entire plot is revealed to have been cooked up by a scummy government agent-provocateur.
I've seen this movie before.
In this case, the alleged perps -- Onta Williams, James Cromitie, David Williams, and Laguerre Payen -- were losers, ex-cons, drug addicts. Al Qaeda they're not. Without the assistance of the agent who entrapped them, they would never have dreamed of committing political violence, nor would they have had the slightest idea about where to acquire plastic explosives or a Stinger missile. That didn't stop prosecutors from acting as if they'd captured Osama bin Laden himself. Noted the Los Angeles Times:
Prosecutors called it the latest in a string of homegrown terrorism plots hatched after Sept. 11.
"It's hard to envision a more chilling plot," Assistant U.S. Atty. Eric Snyder said in court Thursday. He described all four suspects as "eager to bring death to Jews."
Actually, it's hard to imagine a stupider, less competent, and less important plot. The four losers were ensnared by a creepy FBI agent who hung around the mosque in upstate New York until he found what he was looking for. Here's the New York Times account:
Salahuddin Mustafa Muhammad, the imam at the mosque where the authorities say the confidential informant first encountered the men, said none of the men were active in the mosque. ...
Mr. Cromitie was there last June, and he met a stranger.
He had no way of knowing that the stranger's path to the mosque began in 2002, when he was arrested on federal charges of identity theft. He was sentenced to five years' probation, and became a confidential informant for the F.B.I. He began showing up at the mosque in Newburgh around 2007, Mr. Muhammad said.
The stranger's behavior aroused the imam's suspicions. He invited other worshipers to meals, and spoke of violence and jihad, so the imam said he steered clear of him.
"There was just something fishy about him," Mr. Muhammad said. Members "believed he was a government agent."
Mr. Muhammad said members of his congregation told him the man he believed was the informant offered at least one of them a substantial amount of money to join his "team."
So a creepy thug buttonholes people at a mosque, foaming at the mouth about violence and jihad? This is law enforcement? Just imagine if someone did this at a local church, or some synagogue. And the imam says the people "believed he was a government agent."
Preying on these losers, none of whom were apparently actual Muslims, the "confidential informant" orchestrated the acquisition of a disabled Stinger missile to shoot down military planes and cooked up a wild scheme about attacking a Jewish center in the Bronx.
It gets even more pathetic:
The only one of the four suspects who appears to have aroused any suspicion was Payen, a Haitian native who attended the Newburgh mosque. Assistant imam Hamid Rashada said his dishevelment and odd behavior disturbed some members, said the assistant imam, Hamid Rashada.
When Payen appeared in court, defense attorney Marilyn Reader described him as "intellectually challenged" and on medication for schizophrenia. The Associated Press said that when he was asked if he understood the proceedings, Payen replied: "Sort of."
Despite the pompous statements from Mayor Bloomberg of New York and other politicians, including Representative Peter King, the whole story is bogus. The four losers may have been inclined to violence, and they may have harbored a virulent strain of anti-Semitism. But it seems that the informant whipped up their violent tendencies and their hatred of Jews, cooked up the plot, incited them, arranged their purchase of weapons, and then had them busted. To ensure that it made headlines, the creepy informant claimed to be representing a Pakistani extremist group, Jaish-e Muhammad, a bona fide terrorist organization. He wasn't, of course.
It is disgusting and outrageous that the FBI is sending provocateurs into mosques.
The headlines reinforce the very fear that Dick Cheney is trying to stir up. The story strengthens the narrative that the "homeland" is under attack. It's not. As I've written repeatedly, since 9/11 not a single American has even been punched in the nose by an angry Muslim, as far as I can tell. Plot after plot -- the destruction of the Brooklyn Bridge! bombing the New York Subways! taking down the Sears Tower! bombing the Prudential building in Newark! -- proved to be utter nonsense.
Read more...
Friday, May 22, 2009
Israel's Growing Internal Divide
The Nation The Nation Wed May 20, 12:36 pm ET
The Nation -- "How long can a relatively large minority be assumed by the majority to be an enemy without in the end actually turning into one? How long can the state exist as a stable political framework if this is how it treats a sixth of its citizens?" So asked the Israeli novelist David Grossman in his brilliant and sadly prescient book Sleeping on a Wire, a portrait of Israel's Arab minority that was written in 1991. "Slowly and steadily, as if slumbering, Israel is missing its chance to rescue itself from a horrible mistake," Grossman warned. "It is creating for itself the enemy it will run up against after its other enemies have made their peace with it."
Eighteen years later, a new poll finds that only 53.7 percent of Israeli-Arabs believe Israel has a right to exist as an independent state, down from 81.1 percent in 2003. An astounding 40 percent deny that the Holocaust ever happened. This is proof that "they hate us," some Jewish Israelis will likely contend, "they" being all Arabs, from Cairo to Nazareth. Yet until recently, surveys had consistently shown that the majority of Arab-Israelis wanted to be accepted as citizens despite being subjected to discrimination in everything from land ownership to education. Polls conducted in the past by Sammy Smooha, a professor at Haifa University (who also conducted the latest survey), found that 75 percent of Arab-Israelis between the age of 16 and 22 supported voluntary national service; 68 percent were willing to live in a Jewish neighborhood; 75 percent supported a return of Palestinian refugees only to a Palestinian state.
That was before the Second Lebanon War and the war in Gaza, which may not have vanquished Hamas but which clearly did further radicalize Israel's Arab citizens. Before proto-fascist Avigdor Lieberman was appointed Israel's Foreign Minister. Before another government took power that has shown no interest in stopping the growth of illegal settlements in the West Bank, much less addressing the inequities between Jews and Arabs in Israel. "Time is running out" on Iran, Benjamin Netanyahu tried to persuade President Obama in their meeting this week. As Bernard Avishai points out here, it is running out on something else: the notion that Israel can be the democratic state its founders dreamed of creating.
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Cheney's speech contained omissions, misstatements
By Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel, McClatchy Newspapers Jonathan S. Landay And Warren P. Strobel, Mcclatchy Newspapers Thu May 21, 7:10 pm ET
WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Dick Cheney's defense Thursday of the Bush administration's policies for interrogating suspected terrorists contained omissions, exaggerations and misstatements.
In his address to the American Enterprise Institute , a conservative policy organization in Washington , Cheney said that the techniques the Bush administration approved, including waterboarding — simulated drowning that's considered a form of torture — forced nakedness and sleep deprivation, were "legal" and produced information that "prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people."
He quoted the Director of National Intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair , as saying that the information gave U.S. officials a "deeper understanding of the al Qaida organization that was attacking this country."
In a statement April 21 , however, Blair said the information "was valuable in some instances" but that "there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means. The bottom line is that these techniques hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security."
A top-secret 2004 CIA inspector general's investigation found no conclusive proof that information gained from aggressive interrogations helped thwart any "specific imminent attacks," according to one of four top-secret Bush-era memos that the Justice Department released last month.
FBI Director Mueller Robert Muller told Vanity Fair magazine in December that he didn't think that the techniques disrupted any attacks.
— Cheney said that President Barack Obama's decision to release the four top-secret Bush administration memos on the interrogation techniques was "flatly contrary" to U.S. national security, and would help al Qaida train terrorists in how to resist U.S. interrogations.
However, Blair, who oversees all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, said in his statement that he recommended the release of the memos, "strongly supported" Obama's decision to prohibit using the controversial methods and that "we do not need these techniques to keep America safe."
— Cheney said that the Bush administration "moved decisively against the terrorists in their hideouts and their sanctuaries, and committed to using every asset to take down their networks."
The former vice president didn't point out that Osama bin Laden and his chief lieutenant, Ayman al Zawahri , remain at large nearly eight years after 9-11 and that the Bush administration began diverting U.S. forces, intelligence assets, time and money to planning an invasion of Iraq before it finished the war in Afghanistan against al Qaida and the Taliban .
There are now 49,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan fighting to contain the bloodiest surge in Taliban violence since the 2001 U.S.-led intervention, and Islamic extremists also have launched their most concerted attack yet on neighboring, nuclear-armed Pakistan .
— Cheney denied that there was any connection between the Bush administration's interrogation policies and the abuse of detainee at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, which he blamed on "a few sadistic guards . . . in violation of American law, military regulations and simple decency."
However, a bipartisan Senate Armed Services Committee report in December traced the abuses at Abu Ghraib to the approval of the techniques by senior Bush administration officials, including former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld .
"The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of 'a few bad apples' acting on their own," said the report issued by Sens. Carl Levin , D- Mich. , and John McCain , R- Ariz. "The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality and authorized their use against detainees."
— Cheney said that "only detainees of the highest intelligence value" were subjected to the harsh interrogation techniques, and he cited Khalid Sheikh Mohammad , the alleged mastermind of the 9-11 attacks.
He didn't mention Abu Zubaydah, the first senior al Qaida operative to be captured after 9-11. Former FBI special agent Ali Soufan told a Senate subcommittee last week that his interrogation of Zubaydah using traditional methods elicited crucial information, including Mohammed's alleged role in 9-11.
The decision to use the harsh interrogation methods "was one of the worst and most harmful decisions made in our efforts against al Qaida ," Soufan said. Former State Department official Philip Zelikow , who in 2005 was then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's point man in an internal fight to overhaul the Bush administration's detention policies, joined Soufan in his criticism.
— Cheney said that "the key to any strategy is accurate intelligence," but the Bush administration ignored warnings from experts in the CIA , the Defense Intelligence Agency , the State Department , the Department of Energy and other agencies, and used false or exaggerated intelligence supplied by Iraqi exile groups and others to help make its case for the 2003 invasion.
Cheney made no mention of al Qaida operative Ali Mohamed al Fakheri , who's known as Ibn Sheikh al Libi , whom the Bush administration secretly turned over to Egypt for interrogation in January 2002 . While allegedly being tortured by Egyptian authorities, Libi provided false information about Iraq's links with al Qaida , which the Bush administration used despite doubts expressed by the DIA.
A state-run Libyan newspaper said Libi committed suicide recently in a Libyan jail.
— Cheney accused Obama of "the selective release" of documents on Bush administration detainee policies, charging that Obama withheld records that Cheney claimed prove that information gained from the harsh interrogation methods prevented terrorist attacks.
"I've formally asked that (the information) be declassified so the American people can see the intelligence we obtained," Cheney said. "Last week, that request was formally rejected."
However, the decision to withhold the documents was announced by the CIA , which said that it was obliged to do so by a 2003 executive order issued by former President George W. Bush prohibiting the release of materials that are the subject of lawsuits.
— Cheney said that only "ruthless enemies of this country" were detained by U.S. operatives overseas and taken to secret U.S. prisons.
A 2008 McClatchy investigation, however, found that the vast majority of Guantanamo detainees captured in 2001 and 2002 in Afghanistan and Pakistan were innocent citizens or low-level fighters of little intelligence value who were turned over to American officials for money or because of personal or political rivalries.
In addition, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Oct. 5, 2005 , that the Bush administration had admitted to her that it had mistakenly abducted a German citizen, Khaled Masri , from Macedonia in January 2004 .
Masri reportedly was flown to a secret prison in Afghanistan , where he allegedly was abused while being interrogated. He was released in May 2004 and dumped on a remote road in Albania .
In January 2007 , the German government issued arrest warrants for 13 alleged CIA operatives on charges of kidnapping Masri.
— Cheney slammed Obama's decision to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and criticized his effort to persuade other countries to accept some of the detainees.
The effort to shut down the facility, however, began during Bush's second term, promoted by Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates .
"One of the things that would help a lot is, in the discussions that we have with the states of which they (detainees) are nationals, if we could get some of those countries to take them back," Rice said in a Dec. 12, 2007 , interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. "So we need help in closing Guantanamo ."
— Cheney said that, in assessing the security environment after 9-11, the Bush team had to take into account "dictators like Saddam Hussein with known ties to Mideast terrorists."
Cheney didn't explicitly repeat the contention he made repeatedly in office: that Saddam cooperated with al Qaida , a linkage that U.S. intelligence officials and numerous official inquiries have rebutted repeatedly.
The late Iraqi dictator's association with terrorists vacillated and was mostly aimed at quashing opponents and critics at home and abroad.
The last State Department report on international terrorism to be released before 9-11 said that Saddam's regime "has not attempted an anti-Western terrorist attack since its failed plot to assassinate former President ( George H.W.) Bush in 1993 in Kuwait ."
A Pentagon study released last year, based on a review of 600,000 Iraqi documents captured after the U.S.-led invasion, concluded that while Saddam supported militant Palestinian groups — the late terrorist Abu Nidal found refuge in Baghdad , at least until Saddam had him killed — the Iraqi security services had no "direct operational link" with al Qaida .
Read more...
WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Dick Cheney's defense Thursday of the Bush administration's policies for interrogating suspected terrorists contained omissions, exaggerations and misstatements.
In his address to the American Enterprise Institute , a conservative policy organization in Washington , Cheney said that the techniques the Bush administration approved, including waterboarding — simulated drowning that's considered a form of torture — forced nakedness and sleep deprivation, were "legal" and produced information that "prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people."
He quoted the Director of National Intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair , as saying that the information gave U.S. officials a "deeper understanding of the al Qaida organization that was attacking this country."
In a statement April 21 , however, Blair said the information "was valuable in some instances" but that "there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means. The bottom line is that these techniques hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security."
A top-secret 2004 CIA inspector general's investigation found no conclusive proof that information gained from aggressive interrogations helped thwart any "specific imminent attacks," according to one of four top-secret Bush-era memos that the Justice Department released last month.
FBI Director Mueller Robert Muller told Vanity Fair magazine in December that he didn't think that the techniques disrupted any attacks.
— Cheney said that President Barack Obama's decision to release the four top-secret Bush administration memos on the interrogation techniques was "flatly contrary" to U.S. national security, and would help al Qaida train terrorists in how to resist U.S. interrogations.
However, Blair, who oversees all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, said in his statement that he recommended the release of the memos, "strongly supported" Obama's decision to prohibit using the controversial methods and that "we do not need these techniques to keep America safe."
— Cheney said that the Bush administration "moved decisively against the terrorists in their hideouts and their sanctuaries, and committed to using every asset to take down their networks."
The former vice president didn't point out that Osama bin Laden and his chief lieutenant, Ayman al Zawahri , remain at large nearly eight years after 9-11 and that the Bush administration began diverting U.S. forces, intelligence assets, time and money to planning an invasion of Iraq before it finished the war in Afghanistan against al Qaida and the Taliban .
There are now 49,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan fighting to contain the bloodiest surge in Taliban violence since the 2001 U.S.-led intervention, and Islamic extremists also have launched their most concerted attack yet on neighboring, nuclear-armed Pakistan .
— Cheney denied that there was any connection between the Bush administration's interrogation policies and the abuse of detainee at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, which he blamed on "a few sadistic guards . . . in violation of American law, military regulations and simple decency."
However, a bipartisan Senate Armed Services Committee report in December traced the abuses at Abu Ghraib to the approval of the techniques by senior Bush administration officials, including former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld .
"The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of 'a few bad apples' acting on their own," said the report issued by Sens. Carl Levin , D- Mich. , and John McCain , R- Ariz. "The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality and authorized their use against detainees."
— Cheney said that "only detainees of the highest intelligence value" were subjected to the harsh interrogation techniques, and he cited Khalid Sheikh Mohammad , the alleged mastermind of the 9-11 attacks.
He didn't mention Abu Zubaydah, the first senior al Qaida operative to be captured after 9-11. Former FBI special agent Ali Soufan told a Senate subcommittee last week that his interrogation of Zubaydah using traditional methods elicited crucial information, including Mohammed's alleged role in 9-11.
The decision to use the harsh interrogation methods "was one of the worst and most harmful decisions made in our efforts against al Qaida ," Soufan said. Former State Department official Philip Zelikow , who in 2005 was then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's point man in an internal fight to overhaul the Bush administration's detention policies, joined Soufan in his criticism.
— Cheney said that "the key to any strategy is accurate intelligence," but the Bush administration ignored warnings from experts in the CIA , the Defense Intelligence Agency , the State Department , the Department of Energy and other agencies, and used false or exaggerated intelligence supplied by Iraqi exile groups and others to help make its case for the 2003 invasion.
Cheney made no mention of al Qaida operative Ali Mohamed al Fakheri , who's known as Ibn Sheikh al Libi , whom the Bush administration secretly turned over to Egypt for interrogation in January 2002 . While allegedly being tortured by Egyptian authorities, Libi provided false information about Iraq's links with al Qaida , which the Bush administration used despite doubts expressed by the DIA.
A state-run Libyan newspaper said Libi committed suicide recently in a Libyan jail.
— Cheney accused Obama of "the selective release" of documents on Bush administration detainee policies, charging that Obama withheld records that Cheney claimed prove that information gained from the harsh interrogation methods prevented terrorist attacks.
"I've formally asked that (the information) be declassified so the American people can see the intelligence we obtained," Cheney said. "Last week, that request was formally rejected."
However, the decision to withhold the documents was announced by the CIA , which said that it was obliged to do so by a 2003 executive order issued by former President George W. Bush prohibiting the release of materials that are the subject of lawsuits.
— Cheney said that only "ruthless enemies of this country" were detained by U.S. operatives overseas and taken to secret U.S. prisons.
A 2008 McClatchy investigation, however, found that the vast majority of Guantanamo detainees captured in 2001 and 2002 in Afghanistan and Pakistan were innocent citizens or low-level fighters of little intelligence value who were turned over to American officials for money or because of personal or political rivalries.
In addition, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Oct. 5, 2005 , that the Bush administration had admitted to her that it had mistakenly abducted a German citizen, Khaled Masri , from Macedonia in January 2004 .
Masri reportedly was flown to a secret prison in Afghanistan , where he allegedly was abused while being interrogated. He was released in May 2004 and dumped on a remote road in Albania .
In January 2007 , the German government issued arrest warrants for 13 alleged CIA operatives on charges of kidnapping Masri.
— Cheney slammed Obama's decision to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and criticized his effort to persuade other countries to accept some of the detainees.
The effort to shut down the facility, however, began during Bush's second term, promoted by Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates .
"One of the things that would help a lot is, in the discussions that we have with the states of which they (detainees) are nationals, if we could get some of those countries to take them back," Rice said in a Dec. 12, 2007 , interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. "So we need help in closing Guantanamo ."
— Cheney said that, in assessing the security environment after 9-11, the Bush team had to take into account "dictators like Saddam Hussein with known ties to Mideast terrorists."
Cheney didn't explicitly repeat the contention he made repeatedly in office: that Saddam cooperated with al Qaida , a linkage that U.S. intelligence officials and numerous official inquiries have rebutted repeatedly.
The late Iraqi dictator's association with terrorists vacillated and was mostly aimed at quashing opponents and critics at home and abroad.
The last State Department report on international terrorism to be released before 9-11 said that Saddam's regime "has not attempted an anti-Western terrorist attack since its failed plot to assassinate former President ( George H.W.) Bush in 1993 in Kuwait ."
A Pentagon study released last year, based on a review of 600,000 Iraqi documents captured after the U.S.-led invasion, concluded that while Saddam supported militant Palestinian groups — the late terrorist Abu Nidal found refuge in Baghdad , at least until Saddam had him killed — the Iraqi security services had no "direct operational link" with al Qaida .
Read more...
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