my occupied territory February 15, 2007
Dr. Sami Al-Arian, the political prisoner who is being unlawfully detained by the US government, has collapsed in prison in Virginia and was subsequently transferred to a medical facility in North Carolina. Just this week, I wrote about the hunger strike that Al-Arian began about 23 days ago in protest of his continued detention despite a plea agreement with prosecutors. Read my last post to find out more about the broadcast interview with Al-Arian and the details of his case.
More importantly, national Muslim organizations such as MAS and CAIR have called on all people of conscience to fax letters to the judge in charge of Sami's case. Please see the links to the action alerts below and consider taking a few minutes to type up a letter and fax it to the judge. The least we can do is speak out against this injustice.
From MAS Freedom Foundation:
WASHINGTON, DC - Feb. 15, 2007 (MASNET) Due to the severe health concerns of Dr. Sami Al-Arian, who collapsed on the twenty-third day of his Hunger Strike for Justice, the Muslim American Society (MAS) Freedom Foundation has organized an emergency fax campaign to Judge Gerald Lee of the Virginia Eastern District Court.
Dr. Sami Al-Arian embarked upon a hunger strike to protest his legal treatment, incarceration, and current eighteen month jail sentence for his refusal to testify testifying before a grand jury. This verdict was rendered against him despite a plea agreement he had with the government, which included a no-cooperation clause.
Given the fact that sending letters to Judge Gerald Lee will take a long period of time, MAS Freedom Foundation is urging individuals to send faxes directly to Judge Lee's chambers today. Additionally, everyone is encouraged to contact at least 10 other individuals and request that they send faxes and contact others as well. Please be polite and respectful when writing to Judge Gerald Lee. Send your fax to the Honorable Judge Gerald Lee at: (703) 299-3339. Below is a sample fax highlighting key points to address.
SAMPLE FAX:
To the Honorable Judge Gerald Lee
Your Honor, Dr. Sami Al-Arian is currently on a hunger strike in federal detention to protest his treatment by U.S. authorities. Family members have reported that Dr. Al-Arian collapsed on the twenty-third day of his fast and has been moved from Virginia to a medial facility in North Carolina. He began his hunger strike more than 3 weeks ago after refusing to testify before a grand jury in Virginia. His attorneys have indicated that an earlier plea agreement freed him from further cooperation and that the government's actions amount to a form of harassment. On humanitarian grounds I respectfully request that Dr. Al-Arian's sentence for civil contempt be removed.NOTE: It is critically important to indicate that you are requesting the removal of the 18 month sentence for civil contempt. Judge Lee only has jurisdiction over the civil contempt portion of Dr. Al-Arian's sentence, thus he cannot release Dr. Al-Arian. However, Judge Lee can remove the 18 month civil contempt sentence making Dr. Al-Arian eligible for release in April. Please don't forget to join MAS Freedom Foundation and thousands across the United States on Wednesday, February 21st as we unite in solidarity with Dr. Al-Arian's Hunger Strike for Justice and for a national press conference in front of the Department of Justice at 11:00am.Please write to the following individuals to ask for an immediate end to Dr. Al-Arian's suffering:
1- Honorable Judge Gerald LeeU.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia401 Courthouse Square, Alexandria, VA 223142- Attorney General Alberto Gonzales Department of Justice U.S. Department of Justice 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20530-0001Fax Number: 202- 307-6777 BY E-MAIL: E-mails to the Department of Justice, including the Attorney General, may be sent to askdoj@usdoj.gov
3- The Honorable John Conyers, Jr 2426 Rayburn BuildingWashington, DC 20515 202-225-2072 Fax John.conyers@mail.house.gov
4- Senator Patrick Leahy 433 Russell Senate Office BuildingUnited States SenateWashington, DC 20510 (202) 224- 4242 Faxsenator_leahy@leahy.senate.gov
Fact sheet on Sami Al-Arian's caseAction Alert from CAIR http://masnet.org/takeaction.asp?id=4010
www.uruknet.info?p=30682
Saturday, February 17, 2007
Palestinian ministers face blanket US ban
Blow to unity cabinet in run up to three-way talks· Fatah and independents to be treated 'same as Hamas'
Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem
The Guardian Friday February 16, 2007
American officials have told the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, that they will boycott all ministers in a new coalition cabinet unless the government meets international conditions, including recognition of Israel, Palestinian officials said yesterday.
The warning indicates the extent of Washington's unease at the agreement reached in Mecca last week between the rival Palestinian groups, Hamas and Fatah. It comes just before a meeting in Jerusalem on Monday between the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, and Mr Abbas.
The boycott means that any Fatah leaders who join the new government will be shunned by US officials, and suggests that Monday's meeting is unlikely to produce a breakthrough.
However, the US will continue to talk to Mr Abbas and his office, Palestinian officials said. An official told Reuters: "The Americans have informed us that they will be boycotting the new government headed by Hamas. Fatah and independent ministers will be treated the same way Hamas ministers are treated."
Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian negotiator who met US officials last week to prepare for Monday's meeting, said: "The Americans reiterated the position that their relations with the government will depend on the government's compliance with the Quartet's principles."
The so-called Quartet of Middle East negotiators - the EU, US, UN and Russia - has said its boycott of the Palestinian government will only be lifted if the new authority recognises Israel, renounces violence and accepts past peace agreements.
After months of bitter factional fighting on the streets of Gaza, Hamas and Fatah signed an agreement in Mecca last week to form the new coalition cabinet, a step that has been months in the making. Western governments had hoped that Mr Abbas, the Fatah leader, might convince Hamas to accept their conditions. The Mecca agreement fell short of meeting those conditions, though the Palestinians did agree to "respect" previous peace agreements.
Israeli officials were reportedly also angry that Mr Abbas signed up to such a deal. However the Mecca pact represents a return of Saudi Arabia in diplomacy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The pact, which many Palestinian observers saw as a Saudi endorsement of Hamas's part in the government, reportedly came with a promise of $1bn for the Palestinians from the Saudi government.
Yesterday, Mr Abbas was due to meet Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister, in Gaza to draw up the details of the new cabinet, but hurdles have already emerged. On Wednesday, Hamas demanded that its armed force, known as the executive force, should be recognised, that Mr Abbas should lift his objections to the employment of several Hamas figures as senior civil servants, and that he should agree to a candidate for interior minister.
Last night Mr Haniyeh resigned in a procedural move aimed at launching the unity cabinet, officials in his office said.
Although Monday's three-way talks represent a new US effort on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, Israel has made it clear that key issues in the peace process, such as the setting of borders, the future of Jerusalem and the Palestinian refugee question, will not be on the table this time.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,2014380,00.html
Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem
The Guardian Friday February 16, 2007
American officials have told the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, that they will boycott all ministers in a new coalition cabinet unless the government meets international conditions, including recognition of Israel, Palestinian officials said yesterday.
The warning indicates the extent of Washington's unease at the agreement reached in Mecca last week between the rival Palestinian groups, Hamas and Fatah. It comes just before a meeting in Jerusalem on Monday between the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, and Mr Abbas.
The boycott means that any Fatah leaders who join the new government will be shunned by US officials, and suggests that Monday's meeting is unlikely to produce a breakthrough.
However, the US will continue to talk to Mr Abbas and his office, Palestinian officials said. An official told Reuters: "The Americans have informed us that they will be boycotting the new government headed by Hamas. Fatah and independent ministers will be treated the same way Hamas ministers are treated."
Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian negotiator who met US officials last week to prepare for Monday's meeting, said: "The Americans reiterated the position that their relations with the government will depend on the government's compliance with the Quartet's principles."
The so-called Quartet of Middle East negotiators - the EU, US, UN and Russia - has said its boycott of the Palestinian government will only be lifted if the new authority recognises Israel, renounces violence and accepts past peace agreements.
After months of bitter factional fighting on the streets of Gaza, Hamas and Fatah signed an agreement in Mecca last week to form the new coalition cabinet, a step that has been months in the making. Western governments had hoped that Mr Abbas, the Fatah leader, might convince Hamas to accept their conditions. The Mecca agreement fell short of meeting those conditions, though the Palestinians did agree to "respect" previous peace agreements.
Israeli officials were reportedly also angry that Mr Abbas signed up to such a deal. However the Mecca pact represents a return of Saudi Arabia in diplomacy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The pact, which many Palestinian observers saw as a Saudi endorsement of Hamas's part in the government, reportedly came with a promise of $1bn for the Palestinians from the Saudi government.
Yesterday, Mr Abbas was due to meet Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister, in Gaza to draw up the details of the new cabinet, but hurdles have already emerged. On Wednesday, Hamas demanded that its armed force, known as the executive force, should be recognised, that Mr Abbas should lift his objections to the employment of several Hamas figures as senior civil servants, and that he should agree to a candidate for interior minister.
Last night Mr Haniyeh resigned in a procedural move aimed at launching the unity cabinet, officials in his office said.
Although Monday's three-way talks represent a new US effort on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, Israel has made it clear that key issues in the peace process, such as the setting of borders, the future of Jerusalem and the Palestinian refugee question, will not be on the table this time.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,2014380,00.html
Information Warfare, Psy-ops and the Power of Myth
By Mike Whitney
"ICH 02/15/07 " --- -
The bombing of the Golden Dome Mosque in Samarra is the cornerstone of Bush’s psychological operations (psy-ops) in Iraq. That’s why it is critical to have an independent investigation and discover who is really responsible. The bombing has been used as a “Pearl Harbor-type” event which has deflected responsibility for the 650,000 Iraqi casualties and more than 3 million refugees. These are the victims of American occupation not civil war.
The bombing was concocted by men who believe that they can control the public through perception management. In practical terms, this means that they create events which can be used to support their far-right doctrine. In this case, the destruction of the mosque has been used to confuse the public about the real origins of the rising sectarian tensions and hostilities. The fighting between Sunni and Shiite is the predictable upshot of random bombings and violence which bears the signature of covert operations carried out by intelligence organizations. Most of the pandemonium in Iraq is the result of counterinsurgency operations (black-ops) on a massive scale not civil war.
The Pentagon’s bold new approach to psychological operations (psy-ops) appears to have derived from the theories of former State Dept official, Philip Zelikow (who also served on the 9-11 Commission) Zelikow is an expert on “the creation and maintenance of ‘public myths’ or ‘public presumptions’. His theory analyzes how consciousness is shaped by “searing events” which take on “transcendent importance” and, therefore, move the public in the direction chosen by the policymakers.
“In the Nov-Dec 1998 issue of Foreign Affairs he (Zelikow) co-authored an article called ‘Catastrophic Terrorism’ in which he speculated that if the 1993 bombing of the World Trade center had succeeded ‘the resulting horror and chaos would have exceeded our ability to describe it. Such an act of catastrophic terrorism would be a watershed event in American history. ‘It could involve loss of life and property unprecedented in peacetime and undermine America’s fundamental sense of security, as did the Soviet bomb test in 1949. The US might respond with draconian measures scaling back civil liberties, allowing wider surveillance of citizens, detention of suspects and use of deadly force. More violence could follow, either future terrorist attacks or US counterattacks. Belatedly, Americans would judge their leaders negligent for not addressing terrorism more urgently”. (Wikipedia)
Zelikow’s article presumes that if one creates their own “searing event” (such as 9-11 or the bombing of the Golden Dome Mosque) they can steer the public in whatever direction they choose. His theory depends entirely on a “state-media nexus” which can be depended on to disseminate propaganda uniformly. There is no more reliable propaganda-system in the world today than the western media.
New Clues in the Bombing
New clues have surfaced in the case of the bombing of the Golden Mosque which suggests that the claims of the Bush administration are false. An article by Marc Santora, (“One Year Later, Golden Mosque still in Ruins”, New York Times) provides eyewitness testimony of what really took place one year ago:
“A caretaker at the shrine described what happened on the day of the attack, insisting on anonymity because he was afraid that talking to an American could get him killed. The general outline of his account was confirmed by American and Iraqi officials.
The night before the explosion, he said, just before the 8 p.m. curfew on Feb. 21, 2006, on the Western calendar, men dressed in commando uniforms like those issued by the Interior Ministry entered the shrine.
The caretaker said he had been beaten, tied up and locked in a room.
Throughout the night, he said, he could hear the sound of drilling as the attackers positioned the explosives, apparently in such a way as to inflict maximum damage on the dome”.(NY Times)
Clearly, if the men were men dressed in “commando uniforms like those issued by the Interior Ministry”, then the logical place to begin an investigation would be the Interior Ministry. But there's never been an investigation and the caretaker has never been asked to testify about what he saw on the night of the bombing. However, if he is telling the truth, we cannot exclude the possibility that paramilitary contractors (mercenaries) or special-ops (intelligence) agents working out of the Interior Ministry may have destroyed the mosque to create the appearance of a nascent civil war.
Isn’t that what Bush wants to divert attention from the occupation and to show that the real conflict is between Shiites and Sunnis?
It's unlikely that the mosque was destroyed by “Sunni insurgents or Al Qaida” as Bush claims. Samarra is predominantly a Sunni city and the Sunnis have nearly as much respect for the mosque as a cultural icon and sacred shrine as the Shiites.
The Times also adds, “What is clear is that the attack was carefully planned and calculated”.
True again. We can see from the extent of the damage that the job was carried out by demolition experts and not merely “insurgents or terrorists” with explosives. Simple forensic tests and soil samples could easily determine the composition of the explosives and point out the real perpetrators.
The Times even provides a motive for the attack: “Bad people used this incident to divide Iraq on a detestable sectarian basis.”
Bingo! The administration has repeatedly used the incident to highlight divisions, incite acrimony, and prolong the occupation.
Finally, the Times notes the similarities between 9-11 and the bombing of the Golden Mosque: “I can describe what was done as exactly like what happened to the World Trade Center.”(NY Times)
In fact, the bombing of the Golden Mosque is a reenactment of September 11. In both cases an independent investigation was intentionally quashed and carefully-prepared narrative was immediately provided. The government’s version of events has been critical in supporting the extremist policies of the Bush administration.
Just as 9-11 has been used to justify the enhanced powers of the “unitary” president, the evisceration of civil liberties, and a permanent state of war; so too, the bombing of the Golden Mosque, has been used to create a fictional narrative of deeply ingrained sectarian animosity that has no historical precedent. Both events need to be exposed by thorough and independent investigations.
The Bush administration has consistently abandoned the limitations of “reality-based” politics. They govern through demagoguery, force and deception. This is no different.
9-11 and the Golden Mosque are the foundation blocks in the Pentagon’s “Strategic Information” program. It is a war that is directed at the American people and it relies heavily on the power of myth.
Forewarned is forearmed.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17078.htm
"ICH 02/15/07 " --- -
The bombing of the Golden Dome Mosque in Samarra is the cornerstone of Bush’s psychological operations (psy-ops) in Iraq. That’s why it is critical to have an independent investigation and discover who is really responsible. The bombing has been used as a “Pearl Harbor-type” event which has deflected responsibility for the 650,000 Iraqi casualties and more than 3 million refugees. These are the victims of American occupation not civil war.
The bombing was concocted by men who believe that they can control the public through perception management. In practical terms, this means that they create events which can be used to support their far-right doctrine. In this case, the destruction of the mosque has been used to confuse the public about the real origins of the rising sectarian tensions and hostilities. The fighting between Sunni and Shiite is the predictable upshot of random bombings and violence which bears the signature of covert operations carried out by intelligence organizations. Most of the pandemonium in Iraq is the result of counterinsurgency operations (black-ops) on a massive scale not civil war.
The Pentagon’s bold new approach to psychological operations (psy-ops) appears to have derived from the theories of former State Dept official, Philip Zelikow (who also served on the 9-11 Commission) Zelikow is an expert on “the creation and maintenance of ‘public myths’ or ‘public presumptions’. His theory analyzes how consciousness is shaped by “searing events” which take on “transcendent importance” and, therefore, move the public in the direction chosen by the policymakers.
“In the Nov-Dec 1998 issue of Foreign Affairs he (Zelikow) co-authored an article called ‘Catastrophic Terrorism’ in which he speculated that if the 1993 bombing of the World Trade center had succeeded ‘the resulting horror and chaos would have exceeded our ability to describe it. Such an act of catastrophic terrorism would be a watershed event in American history. ‘It could involve loss of life and property unprecedented in peacetime and undermine America’s fundamental sense of security, as did the Soviet bomb test in 1949. The US might respond with draconian measures scaling back civil liberties, allowing wider surveillance of citizens, detention of suspects and use of deadly force. More violence could follow, either future terrorist attacks or US counterattacks. Belatedly, Americans would judge their leaders negligent for not addressing terrorism more urgently”. (Wikipedia)
Zelikow’s article presumes that if one creates their own “searing event” (such as 9-11 or the bombing of the Golden Dome Mosque) they can steer the public in whatever direction they choose. His theory depends entirely on a “state-media nexus” which can be depended on to disseminate propaganda uniformly. There is no more reliable propaganda-system in the world today than the western media.
New Clues in the Bombing
New clues have surfaced in the case of the bombing of the Golden Mosque which suggests that the claims of the Bush administration are false. An article by Marc Santora, (“One Year Later, Golden Mosque still in Ruins”, New York Times) provides eyewitness testimony of what really took place one year ago:
“A caretaker at the shrine described what happened on the day of the attack, insisting on anonymity because he was afraid that talking to an American could get him killed. The general outline of his account was confirmed by American and Iraqi officials.
The night before the explosion, he said, just before the 8 p.m. curfew on Feb. 21, 2006, on the Western calendar, men dressed in commando uniforms like those issued by the Interior Ministry entered the shrine.
The caretaker said he had been beaten, tied up and locked in a room.
Throughout the night, he said, he could hear the sound of drilling as the attackers positioned the explosives, apparently in such a way as to inflict maximum damage on the dome”.(NY Times)
Clearly, if the men were men dressed in “commando uniforms like those issued by the Interior Ministry”, then the logical place to begin an investigation would be the Interior Ministry. But there's never been an investigation and the caretaker has never been asked to testify about what he saw on the night of the bombing. However, if he is telling the truth, we cannot exclude the possibility that paramilitary contractors (mercenaries) or special-ops (intelligence) agents working out of the Interior Ministry may have destroyed the mosque to create the appearance of a nascent civil war.
Isn’t that what Bush wants to divert attention from the occupation and to show that the real conflict is between Shiites and Sunnis?
It's unlikely that the mosque was destroyed by “Sunni insurgents or Al Qaida” as Bush claims. Samarra is predominantly a Sunni city and the Sunnis have nearly as much respect for the mosque as a cultural icon and sacred shrine as the Shiites.
The Times also adds, “What is clear is that the attack was carefully planned and calculated”.
True again. We can see from the extent of the damage that the job was carried out by demolition experts and not merely “insurgents or terrorists” with explosives. Simple forensic tests and soil samples could easily determine the composition of the explosives and point out the real perpetrators.
The Times even provides a motive for the attack: “Bad people used this incident to divide Iraq on a detestable sectarian basis.”
Bingo! The administration has repeatedly used the incident to highlight divisions, incite acrimony, and prolong the occupation.
Finally, the Times notes the similarities between 9-11 and the bombing of the Golden Mosque: “I can describe what was done as exactly like what happened to the World Trade Center.”(NY Times)
In fact, the bombing of the Golden Mosque is a reenactment of September 11. In both cases an independent investigation was intentionally quashed and carefully-prepared narrative was immediately provided. The government’s version of events has been critical in supporting the extremist policies of the Bush administration.
Just as 9-11 has been used to justify the enhanced powers of the “unitary” president, the evisceration of civil liberties, and a permanent state of war; so too, the bombing of the Golden Mosque, has been used to create a fictional narrative of deeply ingrained sectarian animosity that has no historical precedent. Both events need to be exposed by thorough and independent investigations.
The Bush administration has consistently abandoned the limitations of “reality-based” politics. They govern through demagoguery, force and deception. This is no different.
9-11 and the Golden Mosque are the foundation blocks in the Pentagon’s “Strategic Information” program. It is a war that is directed at the American people and it relies heavily on the power of myth.
Forewarned is forearmed.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17078.htm
This scapegoating is rolling back the gains of anti-racism
Martin Jacques
Anti-terror stunts and a barrage of propaganda are demonising Muslims and making Islamophobia the acceptable face of racism
The Guardian Thursday February 15, 2007
Predictably enough, the action of the police in last year's Forest Gate raid has been excused with the mildest of rebukes. Out of more than 150 complaints, only a tiny number were upheld. The whole operation, you will recall, was a figment of the security services' imagination. A fortnight ago, there was another spectacular anti-terrorist operation, this time in Birmingham, concerning an alleged plot to kidnap a Muslim member of the armed forces. The pattern of these operations is now well established. The police swoop on an area, make dozens of arrests, accompanied by lurid media reports about the would-be plotters' intentions. There have now been charges, although an innocent party who was arrested and then released has given a disturbing account of his experience in custody. The most alarming example was last summer, when it was alleged there was a plot hatched in Pakistan to blow up as many as 10 aircraft, which resulted in a huge security clampdown at Heathrow and new hand-luggage rules. But, despite a number of charges, a degree of scepticism would be wise, given the experience of cases such as the ricin plot that never was.
Just what are these operations about? You may remember MI5 chief Eliza Manningham-Buller suggested last November that the intelligence services had discovered 30 "plots to kill people and to damage our economy", often with "links back to al-Qaida in Pakistan and through those links al-Qaida gives guidance and training to its largely British foot soldiers here on an extensive and growing scale". The authority for such a statement, I assume, comes from MI5 agents. The quality of such reports, though, must be treated with profound scepticism, dependent as they are on the doubtful calibre and knowledge of these agents and the tendency of such people to live in a semi-fantasy world of endless conspiracy. The fact remains that, notwithstanding the huge security operations and the large numbers arrested, relatively few people have actually been charged. The test of justice is, fortunately, more demanding than the criteria used to justify headlines and political hyperbole.
Of course, we must take terrorist threats seriously - but also the price we pay for these alarums. They magnify our sense of trepidation and persuade people the worst is about to happen: it is under the cloak of such fear that governments on both sides of the Atlantic have been able to impose swingeing restrictions on civil liberties. The fact remains, however, that deaths in the UK from Islamist terrorism have been far fewer than those perpetrated by the IRA. Meanwhile, the price for these constant security operations is paid, above all, by our Muslim communities. Every such operation tars them with the brush of terrorism, an intimation to rest of society that extremism lurks within their ranks.
The scapegoating of the Muslim community has become the stock in trade of politicians, the Conservatives recently accusing the Muslim Council of Britain of separatist tendencies, and New Labour all too frequently indulging in the same kind of refrain - notably during the most disgraceful period of its domestic rule last autumn, when cabinet ministers were falling over themselves to make disparaging remarks about the Muslim community.
The argument typically starts from the global terrorist threat and ends up by suggesting the Muslim community nurtures and sustains such a terrorist mentality by its failure to integrate. Jack Straw squirmed about the veil, Ruth Kelly inveighed against imams, Alan Johnson proposed that faith schools admit up to 25% not of the same faith (patently directed against the Muslim community), and John Reid warned a Muslim audience of "fanatics looking to groom and brainwash [your] children ... for suicide bombing". Amid this panic-inducing rhetoric, there was little acknowledgment that Muslims suffer more discrimination than any other section of society, no recognition that every attack on their community can only intensify that prejudice. Imagine what it feels like to be a Muslim, stalked by a constant sense of distrust and suspicion? As a society we may condemn racism, but when it comes to Muslims, it seems to be somehow acceptable, from the cabinet downwards.
And what is to blame for this failure to integrate? Prejudice, perhaps? Discrimination? Racism? No, according to David Cameron, Ruth Kelly and many others, the cause would appear to be multiculturalism. Pause for a moment and spot the slippage in the argument. It is no longer only about Muslims but all our ethnic minorities. For enshrined in the principle of multiculturalism is the idea that the white community does not insist on the assimilation of ethnic minorities but recognises the importance of pluralism. It is not about separatism but a respect for difference - from colour and dress to customs and religion. The attack on multiculturalism is the thin end of the racism wedge. It seeks to narrow the acceptable boundaries of difference at a time when Britain is becoming ever more diverse and heterogeneous.
None of this is to deny the importance of finding ways of integrating the Muslim community. It is hardly surprising, though, that many young Muslims feel alienated. They face worse discrimination in education and employment than any other ethnic minority, Anglo-American policy in the Middle East has had the effect of demonising the Muslim world, and the Muslim community here finds itself the victim of a barrage of hostile propaganda. A major assault on discrimination involving the government, the media and the Muslim community is long overdue. But while British foreign policy so profoundly discriminates against the Muslim world, and New Labour remains in denial about the connection between domestic Muslim attitudes and its foreign policy, there seems little prospect of making a new start.
Antipathy towards Muslims, meanwhile, threatens to roll back hard-fought anti-racist gains, which, over the decades, have won a degree of respect for ethnic minorities and an acceptance of the principle of difference. These gains have always been fragile. Important ground is now being ceded as Islamophobia becomes the acceptable face of racism and the attack on multiculturalism finds important new recruits.
· Martin Jacques is a visiting research fellow at the Asia Research Centre, London School of Economics.
martinjacques1@aol.com
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2013207,00.html
Anti-terror stunts and a barrage of propaganda are demonising Muslims and making Islamophobia the acceptable face of racism
The Guardian Thursday February 15, 2007
Predictably enough, the action of the police in last year's Forest Gate raid has been excused with the mildest of rebukes. Out of more than 150 complaints, only a tiny number were upheld. The whole operation, you will recall, was a figment of the security services' imagination. A fortnight ago, there was another spectacular anti-terrorist operation, this time in Birmingham, concerning an alleged plot to kidnap a Muslim member of the armed forces. The pattern of these operations is now well established. The police swoop on an area, make dozens of arrests, accompanied by lurid media reports about the would-be plotters' intentions. There have now been charges, although an innocent party who was arrested and then released has given a disturbing account of his experience in custody. The most alarming example was last summer, when it was alleged there was a plot hatched in Pakistan to blow up as many as 10 aircraft, which resulted in a huge security clampdown at Heathrow and new hand-luggage rules. But, despite a number of charges, a degree of scepticism would be wise, given the experience of cases such as the ricin plot that never was.
Just what are these operations about? You may remember MI5 chief Eliza Manningham-Buller suggested last November that the intelligence services had discovered 30 "plots to kill people and to damage our economy", often with "links back to al-Qaida in Pakistan and through those links al-Qaida gives guidance and training to its largely British foot soldiers here on an extensive and growing scale". The authority for such a statement, I assume, comes from MI5 agents. The quality of such reports, though, must be treated with profound scepticism, dependent as they are on the doubtful calibre and knowledge of these agents and the tendency of such people to live in a semi-fantasy world of endless conspiracy. The fact remains that, notwithstanding the huge security operations and the large numbers arrested, relatively few people have actually been charged. The test of justice is, fortunately, more demanding than the criteria used to justify headlines and political hyperbole.
Of course, we must take terrorist threats seriously - but also the price we pay for these alarums. They magnify our sense of trepidation and persuade people the worst is about to happen: it is under the cloak of such fear that governments on both sides of the Atlantic have been able to impose swingeing restrictions on civil liberties. The fact remains, however, that deaths in the UK from Islamist terrorism have been far fewer than those perpetrated by the IRA. Meanwhile, the price for these constant security operations is paid, above all, by our Muslim communities. Every such operation tars them with the brush of terrorism, an intimation to rest of society that extremism lurks within their ranks.
The scapegoating of the Muslim community has become the stock in trade of politicians, the Conservatives recently accusing the Muslim Council of Britain of separatist tendencies, and New Labour all too frequently indulging in the same kind of refrain - notably during the most disgraceful period of its domestic rule last autumn, when cabinet ministers were falling over themselves to make disparaging remarks about the Muslim community.
The argument typically starts from the global terrorist threat and ends up by suggesting the Muslim community nurtures and sustains such a terrorist mentality by its failure to integrate. Jack Straw squirmed about the veil, Ruth Kelly inveighed against imams, Alan Johnson proposed that faith schools admit up to 25% not of the same faith (patently directed against the Muslim community), and John Reid warned a Muslim audience of "fanatics looking to groom and brainwash [your] children ... for suicide bombing". Amid this panic-inducing rhetoric, there was little acknowledgment that Muslims suffer more discrimination than any other section of society, no recognition that every attack on their community can only intensify that prejudice. Imagine what it feels like to be a Muslim, stalked by a constant sense of distrust and suspicion? As a society we may condemn racism, but when it comes to Muslims, it seems to be somehow acceptable, from the cabinet downwards.
And what is to blame for this failure to integrate? Prejudice, perhaps? Discrimination? Racism? No, according to David Cameron, Ruth Kelly and many others, the cause would appear to be multiculturalism. Pause for a moment and spot the slippage in the argument. It is no longer only about Muslims but all our ethnic minorities. For enshrined in the principle of multiculturalism is the idea that the white community does not insist on the assimilation of ethnic minorities but recognises the importance of pluralism. It is not about separatism but a respect for difference - from colour and dress to customs and religion. The attack on multiculturalism is the thin end of the racism wedge. It seeks to narrow the acceptable boundaries of difference at a time when Britain is becoming ever more diverse and heterogeneous.
None of this is to deny the importance of finding ways of integrating the Muslim community. It is hardly surprising, though, that many young Muslims feel alienated. They face worse discrimination in education and employment than any other ethnic minority, Anglo-American policy in the Middle East has had the effect of demonising the Muslim world, and the Muslim community here finds itself the victim of a barrage of hostile propaganda. A major assault on discrimination involving the government, the media and the Muslim community is long overdue. But while British foreign policy so profoundly discriminates against the Muslim world, and New Labour remains in denial about the connection between domestic Muslim attitudes and its foreign policy, there seems little prospect of making a new start.
Antipathy towards Muslims, meanwhile, threatens to roll back hard-fought anti-racist gains, which, over the decades, have won a degree of respect for ethnic minorities and an acceptance of the principle of difference. These gains have always been fragile. Important ground is now being ceded as Islamophobia becomes the acceptable face of racism and the attack on multiculturalism finds important new recruits.
· Martin Jacques is a visiting research fellow at the Asia Research Centre, London School of Economics.
martinjacques1@aol.com
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2013207,00.html
Italy orders CIA kidnapping trial
BBC Friday, 16 February 2007, 12:39 GMT
An Italian judge has ordered 26 US citizens - most of them CIA agents - to stand trial over the kidnap of an Egyptian cleric in Milan in 2003.
Osama Mustafa Hassan was allegedly seized by the CIA and flown to Egypt, where he says he was tortured.
Five Italians were also indicted by the judge, including Italy's ex-military intelligence chief, Nicolo Pollari.
The case would be the first criminal trial over the secret US practice known as "extraordinary rendition".
During rendition, people suspected of involvement in terror activities are taken from one country and flown to another, where many claim they are tortured.
Extradition decision
Most of the indicted US citizens are believed to have returned home from Italy.
The Italian government has yet to decide whether or not it wishes to request their extradition. Those indicted include the former station chief of CIA operations in Milan, Robert Seldon Lady, who says his opposition to the proposal to kidnap the imam was over-ruled.
He is reported to be among those who have returned to the US, leaving behind a villa in Italy which he bought with his life savings.
Mr Pollari, the former head of the Italian secret service, SISMI, had already been removed from his job following a parliamentary inquiry into the claims.
Lawyers say they have compiled thousands of pages of documents and testimony from Italian agents past and present, some of whom have acknowledged working with the US in planning the abduction.
The trial is due to begin on 8 June.
Torture claims
Mr Hassan was released from prison in Egypt only on Sunday.
He says that he was tortured during his four years of detention in Cairo.
He described one form of torture in which he was forced to lie on a wet mattress through which an electric current was passed.
His lawyer has said that he wishes to return to Milan to testify during the trial.
On Wednesday, EU lawmakers endorsed a damning report accusing some member states of turning a blind eye to rendition, naming Italy as one of the countries involved.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6368269.stm
An Italian judge has ordered 26 US citizens - most of them CIA agents - to stand trial over the kidnap of an Egyptian cleric in Milan in 2003.
Osama Mustafa Hassan was allegedly seized by the CIA and flown to Egypt, where he says he was tortured.
Five Italians were also indicted by the judge, including Italy's ex-military intelligence chief, Nicolo Pollari.
The case would be the first criminal trial over the secret US practice known as "extraordinary rendition".
During rendition, people suspected of involvement in terror activities are taken from one country and flown to another, where many claim they are tortured.
Extradition decision
Most of the indicted US citizens are believed to have returned home from Italy.
The Italian government has yet to decide whether or not it wishes to request their extradition. Those indicted include the former station chief of CIA operations in Milan, Robert Seldon Lady, who says his opposition to the proposal to kidnap the imam was over-ruled.
He is reported to be among those who have returned to the US, leaving behind a villa in Italy which he bought with his life savings.
Mr Pollari, the former head of the Italian secret service, SISMI, had already been removed from his job following a parliamentary inquiry into the claims.
Lawyers say they have compiled thousands of pages of documents and testimony from Italian agents past and present, some of whom have acknowledged working with the US in planning the abduction.
The trial is due to begin on 8 June.
Torture claims
Mr Hassan was released from prison in Egypt only on Sunday.
He says that he was tortured during his four years of detention in Cairo.
He described one form of torture in which he was forced to lie on a wet mattress through which an electric current was passed.
His lawyer has said that he wishes to return to Milan to testify during the trial.
On Wednesday, EU lawmakers endorsed a damning report accusing some member states of turning a blind eye to rendition, naming Italy as one of the countries involved.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6368269.stm
Holocaust denial writer jailed for five years
· Extradited German given maximum sentence· Publisher a dangerous agitator, judge says
Kate Connolly in Berlin
The Guardian Friday February 16, 2007
A German neo-Nazi publisher was yesterday sentenced to five years in prison for inciting racial hatred and denying that the Nazis murdered six million Jews.
Ernst Zündel, who was extradited from Canada to face trial in Germany in 2005, received the maximum sentence available for the crime of Holocaust denial after being found guilty on 14 counts.
The prosecutor, Andreas Grossmann, said Zündel's claim that the Holocaust never happened earned him the title of "political conman" and that his views were dangerous to Germans.
"You might as well argue that the sun rises in the west, but you cannot change that the Holocaust has been proven," he said, referring to Zündel's work Did Six Million Really Die? The prosecution accused him of using "pseudo-scientific methods" in an attempt to overturn the accepted facts on the Holocaust.
But campaigners for Zündel, 67, said he was a peaceful advocate of the right to free speech who was being denied that right. His supporters filled the courtroom.
At the close of the trial Zündel - who also wrote The Hitler We Loved and Why, and has described Hitler as "a decent and very peaceful man" - asked the court in Mannheim to set up an international commission of historians to explore the Holocaust. He said he wanted "hard facts" and not just witness statements, and that if the commission could prove Jews were gassed he would "hold a press conference at which I would publicly apologise to Jews, Israelis and the world".
Calling Zündel a "dangerous agitator, a rabble-rouser and haranguer" and an "admirer of Adolf Hitler" with a "deep hate towards everything Jewish", the judge, Ulrich Meinerzhagen, said he was handing down the harshest possible sentence because the state had "the right and the duty to protect the basic principles of the law".
Zündel, who emigrated to Canada in 1958 but was deemed a security threat by the time of his deportation in 2005, had repeated his claims in various publications and on his website. He spent two years in custody in Canada before his extradition to Germany.
The trial was stopped in November 2005 and resumed three months later after the judge complained that Zündel's defence lawyers were deliberately and unnecessarily trying to prolong it. One lawyer was subsequently excluded from the trial for signing her correspondence to Zündel with "Heil Hitler", while another was warned he faced prosecution for quoting from Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf in his address to the court.
Zündel's yearlong trial has turned him into something of a hero among Holocaust deniers in the Arab world. Posters of him appeared at a conference in Tehran last year organised by the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who as well as denying the Holocaust has called for Israel to be wiped off the map.
Germany, which holds the six-month presidency of the EU, is trying to outlaw Holocaust denial and to ban swastikas across member countries. But the proposal is expected to cause heated debate over freedom of speech. Ten European countries and Israel already have laws against Holocaust denial.
Kate Connolly in Berlin
The Guardian Friday February 16, 2007
A German neo-Nazi publisher was yesterday sentenced to five years in prison for inciting racial hatred and denying that the Nazis murdered six million Jews.
Ernst Zündel, who was extradited from Canada to face trial in Germany in 2005, received the maximum sentence available for the crime of Holocaust denial after being found guilty on 14 counts.
The prosecutor, Andreas Grossmann, said Zündel's claim that the Holocaust never happened earned him the title of "political conman" and that his views were dangerous to Germans.
"You might as well argue that the sun rises in the west, but you cannot change that the Holocaust has been proven," he said, referring to Zündel's work Did Six Million Really Die? The prosecution accused him of using "pseudo-scientific methods" in an attempt to overturn the accepted facts on the Holocaust.
But campaigners for Zündel, 67, said he was a peaceful advocate of the right to free speech who was being denied that right. His supporters filled the courtroom.
At the close of the trial Zündel - who also wrote The Hitler We Loved and Why, and has described Hitler as "a decent and very peaceful man" - asked the court in Mannheim to set up an international commission of historians to explore the Holocaust. He said he wanted "hard facts" and not just witness statements, and that if the commission could prove Jews were gassed he would "hold a press conference at which I would publicly apologise to Jews, Israelis and the world".
Calling Zündel a "dangerous agitator, a rabble-rouser and haranguer" and an "admirer of Adolf Hitler" with a "deep hate towards everything Jewish", the judge, Ulrich Meinerzhagen, said he was handing down the harshest possible sentence because the state had "the right and the duty to protect the basic principles of the law".
Zündel, who emigrated to Canada in 1958 but was deemed a security threat by the time of his deportation in 2005, had repeated his claims in various publications and on his website. He spent two years in custody in Canada before his extradition to Germany.
The trial was stopped in November 2005 and resumed three months later after the judge complained that Zündel's defence lawyers were deliberately and unnecessarily trying to prolong it. One lawyer was subsequently excluded from the trial for signing her correspondence to Zündel with "Heil Hitler", while another was warned he faced prosecution for quoting from Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf in his address to the court.
Zündel's yearlong trial has turned him into something of a hero among Holocaust deniers in the Arab world. Posters of him appeared at a conference in Tehran last year organised by the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who as well as denying the Holocaust has called for Israel to be wiped off the map.
Germany, which holds the six-month presidency of the EU, is trying to outlaw Holocaust denial and to ban swastikas across member countries. But the proposal is expected to cause heated debate over freedom of speech. Ten European countries and Israel already have laws against Holocaust denial.
Brandeis Donors Exact Revenge For Carter Visit
Major givers reportedly withholding funds from school, sparking fierce free-speech debate on Massachusetts campus.
Larry Cohler-Esses - Editor At Large
The Jewish Week Friday, February 16, 107
Major donors to Brandeis University have informed the school they will no longer give it money in retaliation for its decision last month to host former President Jimmy Carter, a strong critic of Israel.
The donors have notified the school in writing of their decisions — and specified Carter as the reason, said Stuart Eizenstat, a former aide to Carter during his presidency and a current trustee of Brandeis, one of the nation’s premier Jewish institutions of higher learning.
They are “more than a handful,” he said. “So, this is a concern. There are evidently a fair number of donors who have indicated they will withhold contributions.”
Brandeis history professor Jonathan Sarna, who maintains close ties with the administration, told The Jewish Week, “These were not people who send $5 to the university. These were major donors, and major potential donors.
“I hope they’ll calm down and change their views,” Sarna said.
Sarna indicated he knew the identity of at least one of the benefactors but declined to disclose it. He said only that those now determined to stop contributing include “some enormously wealthy individuals.”
Eizenstat said his information came from discussions Tuesday with university administrators, who did not disclose to him who the donors in question were, or how much was involved.
Kevin Montgomery, a student member of the faculty-student committee that brought Carter to Brandeis, related that the school’s senior vice president for communications, Lorna Miles, told him in a meeting the week before Carter’s appearance that the school had, at that point, already lost $5 million in donations.
Asked to comment, Miles replied, “I have no idea what he’s talking about.”
Miles said that university President Jehuda Reinharz was out of the country and unavailable for comment. The school’s fundraising director, Nancy Winship, was also unavailable, she said.
“I have not heard anything from donors,” said Miles. “I don’t know where Stuart’s information is coming from. I don’t think there is any there there, in your story.”
The apparent donor crisis comes on the heels of a series of Israel-related free speech controversies on the Waltham, Mass., campus, of which Carter’s January appearance is only the latest and most high-profile. Critics of Israel last year protested Reinharz’s removal of an art exhibit from the school library containing anti-Israeli paintings — denounced by some as crude propaganda — by youths from Palestinian refugee camps.
The university got flack from the other side when it awarded an honorary doctorate in June to renowned playwright and frequent Israel critic Tony Kushner, who once referred to Israel’s founding as “a mistake.”
The run-up to Carter’s appearance was also punctuated by acrimony when the former president declined an initial invitation to appear in a debate format with Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz. Instead, Dershowitz appeared only after Carter left the hall.
Yet, the school has also won notice for a course it offers on the Middle East conflict co-taught by Shai Feldman, a prominent Israeli strategic analyst, and Palestinian Khalil Shikaki, a leading West Bank demographer. It also conducts an exchange program with Al Quds University, a Palestinian school in East Jerusalem. The Brandeis student body of about 5,000 is about 50 percent Jewish but also contains a significant population of Muslims.
Nevertheless, the free-speech controversies seemed to pit Brandeis’ commitment to maintaining its status as a top-tier, non-sectarian university —with all the expectations of untrammeled discourse this brings — against its determination to remain, in Reinharz’s words, a school under “continuous sponsorship by the Jewish community.”
The alleged action by some top donors has now sharpened the tensions between those two goals, intensified by the school’s commitment to the ideals of its namesake. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, a founder of American Zionism and one of the judiciary’s fiercest free speech defenders.
“The American Jewish community understands the visit by Carter to Brandeis to be reflecting a heksher” — a stamp of approval — “from the university,” said Sarna, whose field is American Jewish history. “They see it as a statement that Brandeis certifies him as kosher.
“The faculty views it very differently,” he said, “that Brandeis is a forum; that views are uttered in that forum, some of which we agree with and some of which we don’t. But the faculty does not view his appearance as a heksher.
“It’s that gap in perception that seems to require greater dialogue between the two entities so at least one understands the other,” said Sarna.
But the Carter event may have instead opened the door to greater tensions. Emboldened by it, a group of left-wing students are now seeking to bring to campus Norman Finkelstein, a controversial Holocaust scholar who charges that Jewish leaders exploit the tragedy to fend off and silence criticism of Israel for its treatment of the Palestinians. He charges, too, that Jewish organizations have inflated the number of Holocaust survivors to inflate reparations payments.
A group of right-wing students has invited to campus Professor Daniel Pipes, an Arabist and policy analyst who writes often of the security threat he sees to the United States and Europe from Muslim immigrants. Pipes has also founded Campus Watch, a program that seeks to monitor what professors teach in class and publicize those it regards as extremists. This has provoked charges he is a McCarthyist, which he denies.
In a contentious meeting with faculty after the Carter event, Reinharz denounced Finkelstein and Pipes as “weapons of mass destruction,” according to a report in The Justice, the Brandeis campus newspaper. His executive assistant, John Hose, explained, “These are people who tend to inflame passions, whose mission is not so much discussion and education as it is theatre, a show ... If you want serious discussion, there’s lots of resources available for that already at Brandeis.”
At the Feb. 5 meeting, Winship, the school’s chief fundraiser, also alluded to the brewing problem with donors. The e-mails from them “kept coming and coming,” The Justice quoted her as saying. “We’re just trying to repair the damage. The Middle East is just this trigger of emotions for our alumni and for our friends. For the most part, the donors who come to us come through the Jewish door.”
Reinharz sharply criticized the committee that brought Carter to campus for leaving the university with $95,000 in logistical and security costs, according to The Justice.
“Faculty members should not be allowed to invite whoever they want and leave Brandeis with a huge bill,” Reinharz complained, according to the paper.
The school’s budget for 2005, the latest year for which tax records are available, was $265.75 million against revenues of $310 million.
Members of the sponsoring committee protested that Reinharz had earlier assured them money would be no barrier to bringing the first U.S. president to Brandeis since Harry S Truman’s 1957 commencement speech there.
“I think Jehuda [protested the cost] because he wanted to distance himself from Carter,” said Montgomery, the student member of the Carter committee. “I feel this is Jehuda’s attempt to appease the harsh donor critics.”
The Brandeis president did not attend the Carter event, with his office making it known that Reinharz was out of town.
At the faculty meeting, Susan Lanser a professor of English, complained, “I know many, many faculty who do not feel they can speak freely about the Middle East” in public forums. And in an interview with The Jewish Week, Mary Baine Campbell, another English professor, spoke of “the chilling effect of knowing one speaks about things unwelcome by the administration in charge of working conditions and pay. They could be angels. I don’t know. It’s a slightly chilled atmosphere.”
Lanser said the administration’s warnings about donors had reinforced that sense. “I’m not saying that was the intent of the meeting,” she said. “I think Brandeis is committed to open intellectual inquiry. But this issue gets complicated because of the strong feelings of some donors.”
This vexed aftermath contrasted sharply with the widely praised tenor of the event itself. The university audience of almost 2,000 received Carter with notable civility and even gave him several standing ovations. At the same time, student questioners challenged him with tough and critical queries.
The focus of hostility toward Carter — his new book on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — has led to no less than Anti-Defamation League leader Abraham Foxman charging him with “engaging in anti-Semitism.” Many others have echoed this.
The protests start with the book’s title, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” implicitly comparing Israel’s policies towards Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza to apartheid-era South Africa. The book itself contains gross factual errors, charge critics, and a lopsided bias that lays blame almost exclusively on Israel for the failure to resolve the conflict.
Critics object especially to Carter’s claim that pro-Israel forces in the United States have a disproportionate and stifling impact on public debate of the issue — denounced by Foxman as “the old canard and conspiracy theory of Jewish control of the media, Congress and the U.S. government.”
At the event, Carter defended himself against such charges. Interviews with audience members suggested their ovations stemmed more from respect for Carter’s former office and their acceptance of his basic integrity and good faith than agreement, necessarily, with his views.
“I think everyone was surprised at how well he was received,” said Michael Berenbaum, a Holocaust scholar and historian unaffiliated with Brandeis. “That may be the most important part of the story. Instead of coming as partisans, they listened to Carter attentively, asked tough questions and gave him an audience. The Jewish community may have a more significant generation gap than they understand between what young people are prepared to hear and what older activists are prepared to hear.”
http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=13674
Larry Cohler-Esses - Editor At Large
The Jewish Week Friday, February 16, 107
Major donors to Brandeis University have informed the school they will no longer give it money in retaliation for its decision last month to host former President Jimmy Carter, a strong critic of Israel.
The donors have notified the school in writing of their decisions — and specified Carter as the reason, said Stuart Eizenstat, a former aide to Carter during his presidency and a current trustee of Brandeis, one of the nation’s premier Jewish institutions of higher learning.
They are “more than a handful,” he said. “So, this is a concern. There are evidently a fair number of donors who have indicated they will withhold contributions.”
Brandeis history professor Jonathan Sarna, who maintains close ties with the administration, told The Jewish Week, “These were not people who send $5 to the university. These were major donors, and major potential donors.
“I hope they’ll calm down and change their views,” Sarna said.
Sarna indicated he knew the identity of at least one of the benefactors but declined to disclose it. He said only that those now determined to stop contributing include “some enormously wealthy individuals.”
Eizenstat said his information came from discussions Tuesday with university administrators, who did not disclose to him who the donors in question were, or how much was involved.
Kevin Montgomery, a student member of the faculty-student committee that brought Carter to Brandeis, related that the school’s senior vice president for communications, Lorna Miles, told him in a meeting the week before Carter’s appearance that the school had, at that point, already lost $5 million in donations.
Asked to comment, Miles replied, “I have no idea what he’s talking about.”
Miles said that university President Jehuda Reinharz was out of the country and unavailable for comment. The school’s fundraising director, Nancy Winship, was also unavailable, she said.
“I have not heard anything from donors,” said Miles. “I don’t know where Stuart’s information is coming from. I don’t think there is any there there, in your story.”
The apparent donor crisis comes on the heels of a series of Israel-related free speech controversies on the Waltham, Mass., campus, of which Carter’s January appearance is only the latest and most high-profile. Critics of Israel last year protested Reinharz’s removal of an art exhibit from the school library containing anti-Israeli paintings — denounced by some as crude propaganda — by youths from Palestinian refugee camps.
The university got flack from the other side when it awarded an honorary doctorate in June to renowned playwright and frequent Israel critic Tony Kushner, who once referred to Israel’s founding as “a mistake.”
The run-up to Carter’s appearance was also punctuated by acrimony when the former president declined an initial invitation to appear in a debate format with Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz. Instead, Dershowitz appeared only after Carter left the hall.
Yet, the school has also won notice for a course it offers on the Middle East conflict co-taught by Shai Feldman, a prominent Israeli strategic analyst, and Palestinian Khalil Shikaki, a leading West Bank demographer. It also conducts an exchange program with Al Quds University, a Palestinian school in East Jerusalem. The Brandeis student body of about 5,000 is about 50 percent Jewish but also contains a significant population of Muslims.
Nevertheless, the free-speech controversies seemed to pit Brandeis’ commitment to maintaining its status as a top-tier, non-sectarian university —with all the expectations of untrammeled discourse this brings — against its determination to remain, in Reinharz’s words, a school under “continuous sponsorship by the Jewish community.”
The alleged action by some top donors has now sharpened the tensions between those two goals, intensified by the school’s commitment to the ideals of its namesake. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, a founder of American Zionism and one of the judiciary’s fiercest free speech defenders.
“The American Jewish community understands the visit by Carter to Brandeis to be reflecting a heksher” — a stamp of approval — “from the university,” said Sarna, whose field is American Jewish history. “They see it as a statement that Brandeis certifies him as kosher.
“The faculty views it very differently,” he said, “that Brandeis is a forum; that views are uttered in that forum, some of which we agree with and some of which we don’t. But the faculty does not view his appearance as a heksher.
“It’s that gap in perception that seems to require greater dialogue between the two entities so at least one understands the other,” said Sarna.
But the Carter event may have instead opened the door to greater tensions. Emboldened by it, a group of left-wing students are now seeking to bring to campus Norman Finkelstein, a controversial Holocaust scholar who charges that Jewish leaders exploit the tragedy to fend off and silence criticism of Israel for its treatment of the Palestinians. He charges, too, that Jewish organizations have inflated the number of Holocaust survivors to inflate reparations payments.
A group of right-wing students has invited to campus Professor Daniel Pipes, an Arabist and policy analyst who writes often of the security threat he sees to the United States and Europe from Muslim immigrants. Pipes has also founded Campus Watch, a program that seeks to monitor what professors teach in class and publicize those it regards as extremists. This has provoked charges he is a McCarthyist, which he denies.
In a contentious meeting with faculty after the Carter event, Reinharz denounced Finkelstein and Pipes as “weapons of mass destruction,” according to a report in The Justice, the Brandeis campus newspaper. His executive assistant, John Hose, explained, “These are people who tend to inflame passions, whose mission is not so much discussion and education as it is theatre, a show ... If you want serious discussion, there’s lots of resources available for that already at Brandeis.”
At the Feb. 5 meeting, Winship, the school’s chief fundraiser, also alluded to the brewing problem with donors. The e-mails from them “kept coming and coming,” The Justice quoted her as saying. “We’re just trying to repair the damage. The Middle East is just this trigger of emotions for our alumni and for our friends. For the most part, the donors who come to us come through the Jewish door.”
Reinharz sharply criticized the committee that brought Carter to campus for leaving the university with $95,000 in logistical and security costs, according to The Justice.
“Faculty members should not be allowed to invite whoever they want and leave Brandeis with a huge bill,” Reinharz complained, according to the paper.
The school’s budget for 2005, the latest year for which tax records are available, was $265.75 million against revenues of $310 million.
Members of the sponsoring committee protested that Reinharz had earlier assured them money would be no barrier to bringing the first U.S. president to Brandeis since Harry S Truman’s 1957 commencement speech there.
“I think Jehuda [protested the cost] because he wanted to distance himself from Carter,” said Montgomery, the student member of the Carter committee. “I feel this is Jehuda’s attempt to appease the harsh donor critics.”
The Brandeis president did not attend the Carter event, with his office making it known that Reinharz was out of town.
At the faculty meeting, Susan Lanser a professor of English, complained, “I know many, many faculty who do not feel they can speak freely about the Middle East” in public forums. And in an interview with The Jewish Week, Mary Baine Campbell, another English professor, spoke of “the chilling effect of knowing one speaks about things unwelcome by the administration in charge of working conditions and pay. They could be angels. I don’t know. It’s a slightly chilled atmosphere.”
Lanser said the administration’s warnings about donors had reinforced that sense. “I’m not saying that was the intent of the meeting,” she said. “I think Brandeis is committed to open intellectual inquiry. But this issue gets complicated because of the strong feelings of some donors.”
This vexed aftermath contrasted sharply with the widely praised tenor of the event itself. The university audience of almost 2,000 received Carter with notable civility and even gave him several standing ovations. At the same time, student questioners challenged him with tough and critical queries.
The focus of hostility toward Carter — his new book on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — has led to no less than Anti-Defamation League leader Abraham Foxman charging him with “engaging in anti-Semitism.” Many others have echoed this.
The protests start with the book’s title, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” implicitly comparing Israel’s policies towards Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza to apartheid-era South Africa. The book itself contains gross factual errors, charge critics, and a lopsided bias that lays blame almost exclusively on Israel for the failure to resolve the conflict.
Critics object especially to Carter’s claim that pro-Israel forces in the United States have a disproportionate and stifling impact on public debate of the issue — denounced by Foxman as “the old canard and conspiracy theory of Jewish control of the media, Congress and the U.S. government.”
At the event, Carter defended himself against such charges. Interviews with audience members suggested their ovations stemmed more from respect for Carter’s former office and their acceptance of his basic integrity and good faith than agreement, necessarily, with his views.
“I think everyone was surprised at how well he was received,” said Michael Berenbaum, a Holocaust scholar and historian unaffiliated with Brandeis. “That may be the most important part of the story. Instead of coming as partisans, they listened to Carter attentively, asked tough questions and gave him an audience. The Jewish community may have a more significant generation gap than they understand between what young people are prepared to hear and what older activists are prepared to hear.”
http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=13674
Sen. Obama: U.S. must support Israel's right to self defense
By Shmuel Rosner,
Haaretz Fri., February 16, 2007
WASHINGTON - United States Senator Barack Obama, a Democrat from Illinois who is competing for his party's presidential nomination, told Haaretz on Thursday that the United States should help protect Israel from its "dangerous" enemies.
"My view is that the United States' special relationship with Israel obligates us to be helpful to them in the search for credible partners with whom they can make peace, while also supporting Israel in defending itself against enemies sworn to its destruction," he said.
"Israelis want more than anything to live in peace with their neighbors, but Israel also has real - and very dangerous - enemies," Obama said.
Obama, the first black candidate with a real chance at the Democratic nomination, intends to present his policy regarding Israel soon, and his staff has been drafting a speech on the subject.
In his speech, Obama intends to remove any doubts that the Democratic Party's donors and constituents, many of whom are Jewish, may have about his support for Israel.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/826665.html
Haaretz Fri., February 16, 2007
WASHINGTON - United States Senator Barack Obama, a Democrat from Illinois who is competing for his party's presidential nomination, told Haaretz on Thursday that the United States should help protect Israel from its "dangerous" enemies.
"My view is that the United States' special relationship with Israel obligates us to be helpful to them in the search for credible partners with whom they can make peace, while also supporting Israel in defending itself against enemies sworn to its destruction," he said.
"Israelis want more than anything to live in peace with their neighbors, but Israel also has real - and very dangerous - enemies," Obama said.
Obama, the first black candidate with a real chance at the Democratic nomination, intends to present his policy regarding Israel soon, and his staff has been drafting a speech on the subject.
In his speech, Obama intends to remove any doubts that the Democratic Party's donors and constituents, many of whom are Jewish, may have about his support for Israel.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/826665.html
Turkey to send team to check Jerusalem excavations
By Jonathan Saul
SignOnSanDiego.com REUTERS 6:33 a.m. February 15, 2007
ANKARA – Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday Turkey would send a team of experts to Jerusalem to survey archaeological work near the al-Aqsa mosque which has triggered protests across the Muslim world.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, speaking at the same news conference during a visit to Ankara, said he welcomed the decision, saying: 'We have nothing to hide.'
'The work which is being conducted is being done outside the Temple Mount area. We are very happy to host the prime minister's team and therefore the right and correct and exact story will come out,' Olmert said.
Israel insists the dig poses no threat to sites revered by Muslims. Olmert said he had shown Erdogan photographs of the area, but the Turkish leader said he did not know the area and so was not completely convinced by Olmert's assurances.
Muslim but secular Turkey is one of the few countries in the region to enjoy good ties with both Israel and the Palestinians as well as with Israel's foes Iran and Syria. Ankara is keen to play a more active diplomatic role in the region.
'As a modern Muslim country Turkey can play a role building ties between Israel and Muslim countries that do not have relations with Israel,' Olmert said.
Olmert also reaffirmed his offer of peace to Syria as long as Damascus stopped supporting terror groups.
'We want to make peace with Syria, we are happy to make peace with Syria, but Syria has not stopped supporting the path of terror and instead needs to accept the principles that the international community has set,' Olmert said.
'I have no doubt that under such conditions it will be very easy to speak with Syria.'
Ankara has offered to mediate in fresh talks between Syria and Israel and the issue was again discussed on Thursday.
Talks between Israel and Syria over the Golan Heights, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war, collapsed in 2000 after Damascus insisted on regaining control of all the strategic piece of land.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has repeatedly signalled an interest in talks since Israel's inconclusive war last year in Lebanon with Syrian-backed Hezbollah guerrillas.
The situation has been complicated by U.S. charges that Syria supports Iraqi insurgents, which Damascus denies, as well as Syria's open sponsorship of Palestinian militants.
Professor Francis A. Boyle ---- Bertrand Russell Lectures : Palestinians & Impeachment
January 9th "Palestinians and International Law "
Mp3 Part 1 http://www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/~peace/Francis_Boyle_Tuesday_1of2_resampled.mp3
Mp3 Part 2 http://www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/~peace/Francis_Boyle_Tuesday_2of2_resampled.mp3
January 10th "The U.S. National Campaign to Impeach President George W. Bush Jr. "
Mp3 Part 1 http://www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/~peace/Francis_Boyle_Wednesday_1of2_resampled.mp3
Mp3 Part 2 http://www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/~peace/Francis_Boyle_Wednesday_2of2_resampled.mp3
The Most Powerful Man in Iraq : Who is Muqtada al-Sadr?
By PATRICK COCKBURN
Patrick Cockburn is the author of 'The Occupation: War, resistance and daily life in Iraq', a finalist for the National Book Critics' Circle Award for best non-fiction book of 2006.
CounterPunch February 15, 2007
Whatever else the US intended when it invaded Iraq in 2003 it was not to hand power to an Islamic militant in a black turban who denounces Washington and Israel in the same breath. The claim by two American officials yesterday that Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shia nationalist cleric, has left for Iran is a measure of how far the US would like to see him out of the Iraqi political scene.
Allegations by US officials in Baghdad have little credibility after almost four years in which they have been repeatedly exposed as untrue. Supporters of Muqtada immediately denied that he was in Iran and either refused to say where he was or asserted that he was in the Shia holy city of Najaf. He has every reason to keep his location a secret, since in the past the US military has said it will either kill or capture him if it can. Two of his most important aides have been killed in mysterious circumstances in the past week.
We may be close to a final confrontation between the US and Muqtada, perhaps the most important political figure in Iraq. The US and Iraqi governments are starting their much-heralded campaign to regain control of Baghdad from the Sunni insurgents and Shia militias, of which the most important is Muqtada's 70,000-strong Mehdi Army. Iraq's borders with Iran have been closed for 72 hours.
Muqtada himself has no doubt that he is under threat. In an interview in January he said: "I have moved my family to a safe place. I have even made a will and I continually move around so they have trouble knowing exactly where I am." He has been trying to avoid becoming a US target. He plays down his own strength. Asked about claims that the army and police are infiltrated by his men, Muqtada said the reverse was true and "it is our militias [that] are swarming with spies. It doesn't take much to infiltrate the army of the people." He denies that the death squads killing Sunni are really members of the Mehdi Army.
Probably, Muqtada and the men around him believe that if he can avoid a direct clash with the US army then he will win in the end. His popularity among the Shia is great. In the past few weeks his men have stopped carrying their weapons so openly in the streets and have closed a number of their offices in Baghdad. But the militiamen are seldom far away. In Sadr City they have only retreated deeper into the vast shanty town of two million people that is the greatest bastion of Sadrist support.
***
The rise of Muqtada has been one of the surprises of the four years since the US invaded. Saddam Hussein must have been astonished as he went to his execution to hear the name: "Muqtada! Muqtada! Muqatada!" shouted by jeering onlookers. Had Saddam realised the potential of this strange, enigmatic young man before the invasion then he would doubtless have killed him, as he did Muqtada's father and two of his brothers eight years ago.
It is difficult to avoid Muqtada's presence in Baghdad. Dressed in his dark clerical robes, he peers menacingly from posters on thousands of walls. His Mehdi Army militiamen control not only Sadr City but much of the capital and southern Iraq. He is an essential prop to the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, in which six ministers belong to his movement.
Yet the source of his power has remained a mystery to the US and many Iraqi politicians. Few men have been so consistently underestimated. He is not a great orator, nor does he have huge charisma. His movement has limited resources. Until recently, his militiamen were unpaid and provided their own weapons. He does not have a powerful foreign backer. In spite of US efforts to link him to Iran and claim that he has fled there, he and his movement have traditionally been suspicious of the Iranians, and they of him.
The real source of his vast influence among the Shia of Iraq - the Sunni see him as orchestrating the death squads that have killed so many of them - is that he promulgates a blend of religion and nationalism that they find deeply attractive. He comes from the deeply revered Sadr clerical family that provided so many martyrs under Saddam Hussein. Some American commanders may wonder if it is wise for the US to pick a fight with a religious leader regarded with cult-like devotion by millions of Shias. They may also reflect that he is not just popular with the poor masses of Shia Iraq - his picture also hangs on the wall in many Iraqi police stations and army barracks. Some of these will be the very people on whom US and Iraqi commanders will rely in order to regain control of Baghdad.
It is impossible to explain Iraq today without understanding the reasons behind the astonishing rise of Muqtada al-Sadr and his movement in less than four years. Muqtada appears to have come from nowhere. In reality, he is heir to a social and political movement with a history that stretches back almost half a century. In addition, he could not have become so powerful so fast had he not come from a family that provided some of the most revered leaders of the Shiah clergy in their long and bitter struggle with Saddam Hussein.
***
The most common poster of the Sadrist movement shows three men in black clerical garb with an Iraqi flag behind them. The first figure is Muqtada himself. The second is of his father, Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, assassinated along with two of his sons on the orders of Saddam outside Najaf in January 1999. The third is of Mohammed Baqir al-Sadr, a distant cousin and father-in-law of Muqtada, a revolutionary Shia who was executed together with his sister in 1980. The poster perfectly illustrates the blend of religion and nationalism that has made Sadrism so potent.
The Sadrist movement, of which Muqtada is the current leader, was founded by Mohammed Baqir al-Sadr. It was he who sought to interpret Shia Islam and organise its adherents in the 1950s and 1960s in order to oppose the powerful Iraqi Communist Party and the nationalist Baath Party. He helped to establish the Shia religious party al-Dawa to counter secularism.
At first, Baqir seemed to be leading a doomed attempt to revive Shia Islam to struggle with the problems of the modern age. He moved away from the traditional political quietism of the Hawza, the Shia religious hierarchy in Iraq, towards finding answers to the central questions of political and economic life. Like so many other Shia religious leaders, he did not lack courage. Even when the Baathists were at the height of their power and notorious for their cruelty, Baqir refused to bow to them. In a famous saying he vowed that: "If my little finger were Baathist I would cut it off." Saddam Hussein, particularly frightened of insurgent Islam after the triumph of Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran, struck back. In 1980 he killed Baqir, his sister and hundreds of his followers.
At first, Baqir seemed to be leading a doomed attempt to revive Shia Islam to struggle with the problems of the modern age. He moved away from the traditional political quietism of the Hawza, the Shia religious hierarchy in Iraq, towards finding answers to the central questions of political and economic life. Like so many other Shia religious leaders, he did not lack courage. Even when the Baathists were at the height of their power and notorious for their cruelty, Baqir refused to bow to them. In a famous saying he vowed that: "If my little finger were Baathist I would cut it off." Saddam Hussein, particularly frightened of insurgent Islam after the triumph of Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran, struck back. In 1980 he killed Baqir, his sister and hundreds of his followers.
But the Sadrist movement did not die. Iraq's Shia community, 60 per cent of Iraq's population, became increasingly conscious of their identity as Saddam Hussein blundered into the war with Iran and then invaded Kuwait. In 1991 he crushed the great Shia uprising and began to look for a Shia religious leader whom he could co-opt. In a move he would come to regret, he chose Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, a pupil and cousin of Baqir and father of Muqtada, for this role.
Paradoxically, given the US allegations yesterday, Saddam's regime was attracted by Sadiq because he was anti-American and distant from Iran. But it swiftly became alarmed when he launched a mass movement aimed at addressing the immediate concerns of the impoverished Shia masses that criticised the old religious hierarchy as remote and cut off from day-to-day life.
A famous story is told of Sadiq illustrating his concern for ordinary Iraqis. A man looking for a religious leader to follow asked each of them the price of tomatoes. Some, more accustomed to being queried about esoteric religious matters, were offended by such a mundane question. The exception was Sadiq, who gave a full response, detailing the prices of different types of tomato. The man departed satisfied, saying he had at last found a religious leader who knew about life as it was really lived by Iraqis. He said: "I choose the one who knows my suffering, who is close to the poor and the disinherited." The latter class of Iraqis was more numerous in Iraq in the 1990s as the economy suffered under the weight of sanctions.
Secularism, discredited by Saddam's failures, was on the retreat and Islam was resurgent. Sadiq spoke for the newly impoverished Shia masses. But his discourse was also patriotic, opposed to foreign interference in Iraq, whether it came from the US or Iran. He called for Sunni and Shia unity. He would often begin his sermons with the refrain: "No, no to America; no, no, to Israel; no, no to the Devil."
His strength was - and this is also true of his son Muqtada - that he expressed the feelings of the Shia poor. A study of Muqtada by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group says: "The relatively well-to-do, urbanised, educated or commercial classes eyed him wearily, viewing his plebeian, militant Shiism as a source of instability and a threat to their interests." Sadiq even called on Saddam himself to repent. He wore the shroud of those who expect to die, and with reason. It became clear to the Iraqi leader that he was a nurturing an increasingly dangerous enemy. He reacted violently, as he invariably did against opponents, and ordered his security men to ambush Sadiq and his sons in their car as they drove through the holy city of Najaf. As news of their death spread, it sparked the most serious riots seen in Iraq between the uprising of 1991 and the invasion of 2003.
***
Muqtada was not necessarily the natural political and religious heir to Sadiq. He was his father's fourth son, and 25 years old when Sadiq was killed (assuming that Muqtada's official birth date of 1974 is correct). He was under surveillance by Saddam's security men - perhaps the most suspicious men on earth - but they concluded he was harmless.
Muqtada had hidden strengths. Most importantly, there was a large constituency of Iraqis waiting to embrace him. In April 2003, as Baghdad fell, he instantly stepped forward to fill a vacuum. Nobody else was offering to lead the young, poorly educated, violent but devout Shia masses. Their ferocious looting of Baghdad was a sign of their rage towards the powers that be. They, like him, were suspicious of the conciliatory Shia religious hierarchy in Najaf and the Iraqi exiles returning from London and New York courtesy of the US army. Muqtada represented those who hated Saddam, and were grateful that he was deposed, but did not want to replace him with a foreign occupation.
Muqtada's influence quickly became apparent. On 11 April, in his first Friday prayer sermon, he called on the faithful to walk as pilgrims to Karbala to commemorate Arba'in, the ritual commemorating 40 days' mourning for the death of Imam Hussein. Absorbed by the fall of Saddam, few observers noted the significance of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis walking for days to Karbala waving their black and green flags.
Muqtada's followers had already demonstrated a more menacing side to their movement: a willingness to use violence against their enemies, real or imagined. Sayed Majid al-Khoei, a liberal-minded and very able Shia leader, the son of the Grand Ayatollah al-Khoei, had returned early to Najaf. He had offered forgiveness to those officials who had been compelled to cooperate with Saddam Hussein. On 10 April he took Haider al-Killidar, the administrator of the great golden domed shrine of Imam Ali, back to his offices. They were soon trapped by an angry crowd, many of whom were allegedly followers of Muqtada. Shots were fired. Sayed Majid was dragged from the shrine and knifed to death in the street.
The policy of the Shia hierarchy, notably Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and of the previously exiled religious parties, al-Dawa and SCIRI, was not to oppose the US occupation but to use it to enable the Shia to take power. They pressed the US envoy Paul Bremer to hold elections that the Shia were bound to win.
Muqtada's line was different. He opposed the occupation from the beginning. His father, Sadiq, had blamed the US for sanctions that had brought the Iraqi poor to the edge of starvation. His son was no less hostile. He denounced the members of the Iraqi Governing Council, which the Shia religious parties joined, as pawns of America.
Not all was plain sailing. The Mehdi Army, his militia, was only a shadowy force. The first Sadrist demonstration I attended in October 2003 in the heart of Sadr City was well organised, but only 3,000 people took part. It was easy to underestimate the potential of his movement, which Paul Bremer, the head of the ruling Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), blindly proceeded to do. He toyed with the idea of arresting Muqtada. Meanwhile, the occupation was becoming ever more unpopular. It failed to provide security, economic reconstruction or democratic elections. The 70 per cent of Iraqis who were unemployed before the invasion still had no jobs.
The confrontation with the CPA happened almost by accident. Muqtada delivered a sermon describing the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center in New York as "a miracle and a blessing from God". This was reprinted in the Sadrist newspaper al Hawza. Bremer told one of his staff: "Close down the rag." Within days, Sadr City and the whole of southern Iraq was in flames as the Mehdi Army - armed, enthusiastic but untrained young men - took over the streets.
One of the cities seized by the militiamen was Kufa, on the Euphrates and a short distance from Najaf. Soon Muqtada and his militiamen were being besieged by 2,500 US soldiers. Here I had a nasty brush with the Mehdi Army. The incident helped explain why so many Iraqis are terrified by these black-clad militiamen.
I was sitting in the back of a car wearing a red and white headress, or keffiyeh, primarily so that I wouldn't be recognised as a foreigner in the tough Sunni insurgent towns on the road to Najaf. We stopped at checkpoint manned by the Mehdi Army. The Keffiyeh turned out to be a bad idea. The militiamen recognised me as an obvious Westerner. They started shouting that I was an American. They were clutching their Kalashnikovs and I did not think it would take much for them to kill us all.
Finally they jumped into our car, clutching their weapons, and told us to follow another car full of militiamen to their headquarters in the main mosque in Kufa. Once there they became less aggressive. They offered me a cigarette, and, although I had given up smoking some years before, it seemed unwise to refuse. They leafed through a copy of The New Yorker and muttered "haram (forbidden)" when they saw a cartoon of a woman in a low-cut blouse. All the militiamen came from Sadr City and said that they were quite willing to die for Muqtada.
In a military sense, Muqtada and his militiamen lost their confrontations with the US army in April and again in August 2004. Many Iraqis blamed them for the destruction in Najaf. But at the same time the Sadrists had survived and shown their strength. Muqtada demonstrated he was one of the central figures in Iraqi politics and he had also learned to avoid, if at all possible, direct military conflict with the US.
The following year Muqtada showed his political muscle. While still denouncing the occupation, he took part in the political process. He joined the Shia political front, the United Iraqi Alliance, which triumphed in the general elections in January and December 2005. In the second election he won 32 out of 275 seats in parliament, thus giving him veto power over the choice of prime minister. There are six Sadrist ministers running departments including health and transport. All were soon stocked with supporters of Muqtada.
In 2006, the Mehdi Army extended its grip into most Shia areas in Baghdad. After the attack on the Shia al-Askari shrine on 22 February there were nationwide pogroms of the Sunni. Mixed neighbourhoods began to disappear. Shia who did not like the Mehdi Army welcomed them because they were desperate for armed men from their own community to protect them from death squads and suicide bombers. They were also central to the operation of the death squads killing Sunni where ever they found them.
By now, all Shia gunmen were being called Mehdi Army by the Sunni. Muqtada said, defensively, that many of them were not under his control. This was probably correct but he did not try to rein them in. It was also true, though, that by early 2007 all the Shia militias, whatever they said in public, were intent on taking over Baghdad and driving the Sunni into the south-west quadrant of the city.
Probably it would be wiser for the US to include Muqtada in the political process. He has far more legitimacy among the Shia masses than many of the former exiles whom the US would like to see in power. Accomodating and controlling Muqtada and the great numbers of Iraqis he represents is essential to stabilising Iraq, but instead the US seems intent on trying to marginalise or eliminate him.
Even if they succeed it will do them little good. The Sadrist movement has surived many years of adversity before under Saddam. The Shia masses are not going to allow themselves to be robbed of power which they believe rightly belongs to them. By driving Muqtada into a corner, the US is forcing him to rely more and more on Iran, though it is unlikely that he has fled there.
President Bush shows no sign of learning from his failures in Iraq since 2003. For almost four years he has been fighting the Sunni community. Now, by confronting Muqtada, he is moving towards armed conflict with the Shia as well.
The Road Map to Despotism
By Chris Hedges
Truthdig on Feb 11, 2007
Editor's note: Despite spending an estimated $80 million, the government was unable to prove that Dr. Sami Al-Arian was a terrorist, yet he remains in prison and his sentence will likely be extended. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges warns that the abusive imprisonment of this nonviolent Palestinian dissenter does not bode well for the rest of us.
Professor Sami Al-Arian, whose persecution and show trial are parts of a long string of egregious acts of injustice perpetrated by the Bush administration, has been on a hunger strike since Jan. 22 to protest the prolongation of his imprisonment.
Al-Arian's travels through the halls of American justice, and now the subterranean corridors of the nation's Stygian prison system, reads like a bad rip-off of Kafka. Al-Arian was acquitted on eight of the 17 counts against him by a Florida jury, which deadlocked on the rest. He agreed to plead guilty to one of the remaining charges four months later in exchange for being released and deported. The judge gave Al-Arian as much prison time as possible under a plea deal—57 months at his sentencing. He was set to be released this April, something that now appears unlikely.
The trial was a stinging rebuke to the Bush administration's drive to turn the American judicial system into kangaroo courts. Over the six-month trial a parade of 80 witnesses, including 21 from Israel, attempted to brand the Florida professor as a terrorist. The government submitted thousands of documents, phone interceptions and physical surveillance culled from 12 years of investigations. The trial cost taxpayers an estimated $80 million. The 94 charges against Al-Arian and his co-defendants resulted in no convictions. But because Al-Arian has twice refused to testify before a grand jury in Virginia in a case involving a Muslim think tank, he has now been charged with contempt of court. The date of his release could be extended by as much as 18 months.
Al-Arian, who is a diabetic, began a hunger strike in response.
"I believe that freedom and human dignity are more precious than life itself," he said in a telephone interview from Northern Neck Regional Jail in Warsaw, Va. "In, essence I am taking a principled stand that I am willing to endure whatever it takes to win my freedom.
"I am still OK," he said. "I have lost 26 pounds by today. It's definitely not easy, but I am determined to continue. It's not a decision you make haphazardly or something that you take lightly. In the end, you have to make difficult decisions because of the larger cause. I drink four large cups of water a day, about 12 ounces each."
Dr. Al-Arian said he will remain on a hunger strike until the government ends its campaign against him and allows him to return to his wife and children.
The case and continued harassment sets a dangerous precedent for American Muslims, who since 9/11 have been monitored, detained and deported in large numbers. But it bodes ill for the rest of us as well. The new legislation suspending habeas corpus and creating the possibility of legally stripping U.S. citizens of their right to a fair and timely trial is a taste of what awaits us all should we enter a period of instability or national crisis. In many ways the assault against Al-Arian is an assault against the judicial system that lies like a barrier between us and despotism.
"Much of the government's evidence against me were speeches I gave, lectures I presented, articles I wrote, magazines I edited, books I owned, conferences I convened, rallies I attended, interviews I conducted, news I heard and websites no one accessed...In one instance, the evidence consisted of a conversation that one of my co-defendants had with me in his dream," he said. "It was reminiscent of the thought crime of Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-Four.' The scary part was not that these were offered into evidence, but that a federal judge admitted them. That's why I am so proud of the jury, who acted as the free people that they were and saw through Big Brother's tactics.
"I've been to nine prisons in nine months," he explained. "I spent the first 23 months in Coleman Federal Penitentiary, where the conditions were Guantanamo-plus, that is they were like those of the detainees in Guantanamo Bay 'plus' one phone call a month and visits with my family behind glass. I was in a nine-foot-by-eight-foot cell, where I was held under 23-hour lockdown. During the first few months, they wouldn't even allow me to exercise unless I was strip-searched, which I refused to submit to, so I was inside 24 hours. During the first month, I was allowed only one 15-minute phone call, and for six months after that I was not allowed to make any calls.
"I was shackled and handcuffed every single time I left my cell for any reason," he said. "When I needed to take my legal papers for meetings with my attorney, the guards would not carry them for me, even though they did for other prisoners. Though I was shackled, they forced me to carry them on my back, as I was bent over. I had to walk like that for half a mile. I should also mention the use of fire alarms in trying to disrupt life. In the Special Housing Unit [SHU], a punitive section of the prison where I was the only pretrial detainee, alarms and emergency sirens would go off 15 to 20 times every single day, at 12 a.m., 2 p.m., any time of the day. It was a deafening noise that would continue for five to 10 minutes. It was clearly deliberate. In the SHU, commissary was almost nonexistent. All they offered was potato chips, whereas in the general compound everything was available. The SHU was designed for disciplinary purposes, not for housing a pretrial detainee.
"Not only did they place me in the SHU, but they imposed additional restrictions on me," he went on. "For instance, everybody else was granted contact visits, while I had to see my family behind glass. They also insisted on strip-searching me before and after these behind-the-glass visits. In May 2003, my wife drove two hours to see me, but they denied her the visit when I would not submit to a strip search."
Al-Arian is a Palestinian. The injustice meted out to him in America is writ large in the Middle East. He has no passport, no home, no country. He must live on the charity of others, stateless, as most Palestinians are, and without the rights of the citizens around him. He once thought America would be his home. He was, before this charade, in the process of gaining citizenship. All this is over. In George Bush's America there is no place for activists or dissidents. And when they finish with those on the margins of our society they will turn, if we let them, on the rest of us.
HRW slams Saudi travel ban on critics
Middle East Online 2007-02-15
Human Rights Watch urges Saudi King to permit 22 activists to travel to share their vision of Kingdom's future.
DUBAI - Human Rights Watch has urged Saudi Arabia to lift travel bans on prominent critics, saying such restrictions violate international law.
"By imposing travel bans, the Saudi government is restricting the movement of leading intellectuals diminishing their ability to work for a better future for the Saudi people," the rights group wrote in a letter to King Abdullah, according to a statement issued Wednesday.
In the letter sent on February 9, the New York-based watchdog detailed travel bans on 22 activists, including three prominent constitutional reform advocates who were only released from lengthy prison terms in August 2005 following a pardon by King Abdullah.
Ali al-Demaini, Abdullah al-Hamed and Matruk al-Faleh had been serving nine, seven and six years in jail respectively after being arrested in March 2004 along with nine others, on charges of demanding a constitutional monarchy.
One of those held in 2004, Mubarak bin Zuair, was later detained and then banned from travelling after protesting to the media that his father and brother had been jailed for speaking to the media.
HRW said Faleh, a professor of political science, has been unable to take up a sabbatical position in the United States because of the ban and that other academics have lost their jobs because of their outspoken views.
"These travel bans violate international human rights law which guarantees everyone the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country," HRW said.
HRW said that some individuals were told that their ban would last five years, none were told of the reasons and that Saudi courts have refused to hear challenges.
It accused the kingdom of wanting to "punish its critics and to prevent their views from reaching a foreign audience."
"If Saudi Arabia wants to improve its image abroad, it should allow its leading intellectuals to travel abroad and share their visions of the country's future," said Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW Middle East director.
"The Saudi royal family should ask itself how long it wants to continue banning, firing and arresting its critics, and at what cost."
Washington considers key ally Saudi Arabia a "moderate" regime in the region.
Human Rights Watch urges Saudi King to permit 22 activists to travel to share their vision of Kingdom's future.
DUBAI - Human Rights Watch has urged Saudi Arabia to lift travel bans on prominent critics, saying such restrictions violate international law.
"By imposing travel bans, the Saudi government is restricting the movement of leading intellectuals diminishing their ability to work for a better future for the Saudi people," the rights group wrote in a letter to King Abdullah, according to a statement issued Wednesday.
In the letter sent on February 9, the New York-based watchdog detailed travel bans on 22 activists, including three prominent constitutional reform advocates who were only released from lengthy prison terms in August 2005 following a pardon by King Abdullah.
Ali al-Demaini, Abdullah al-Hamed and Matruk al-Faleh had been serving nine, seven and six years in jail respectively after being arrested in March 2004 along with nine others, on charges of demanding a constitutional monarchy.
One of those held in 2004, Mubarak bin Zuair, was later detained and then banned from travelling after protesting to the media that his father and brother had been jailed for speaking to the media.
HRW said Faleh, a professor of political science, has been unable to take up a sabbatical position in the United States because of the ban and that other academics have lost their jobs because of their outspoken views.
"These travel bans violate international human rights law which guarantees everyone the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country," HRW said.
HRW said that some individuals were told that their ban would last five years, none were told of the reasons and that Saudi courts have refused to hear challenges.
It accused the kingdom of wanting to "punish its critics and to prevent their views from reaching a foreign audience."
"If Saudi Arabia wants to improve its image abroad, it should allow its leading intellectuals to travel abroad and share their visions of the country's future," said Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW Middle East director.
"The Saudi royal family should ask itself how long it wants to continue banning, firing and arresting its critics, and at what cost."
Washington considers key ally Saudi Arabia a "moderate" regime in the region.
Egypt arrests 73 Brotherhood members
By Heba Saleh in Cairo
The Financial Times Limited 2007 February 15 2007 20:08
The Egyptian authorities on Thursday detained 73 members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the banned group considered the largest opposition force in the country.
The arrests, in Cairo and provinces in the Nile Delta, are the latest in a campaign against the group which appears aimed at preempting its opposition to constitutional amendments that would change the electoral law and ban the establishment of parties based on religion.
Brotherhood officials also say the government wants to prevent them from taking part in elections scheduled for next May for the Shura Council, the upper chamber of parliament.
A security official was quoted as saying those detained on Thursday are accused of belonging to an illegal organisation.
Despite being banned the group operates openly in Egypt and fields candidates who run as independents under the slogan "Islam is the solution."
It surprised the Egyptian authorities in 2005 by capturing twenty percent of the seats in parliament.
But in recent weeks, Egypt president Hosni Mubarak described the organisation as a threat to national security, and the authorities appear determined to prevent it from building on its gains in the parliamentary poll.
Those arrested on Thursday include three former Brotherhood parliamentary candidates and at least four office managers who work for independent deputies representing the group in the assembly.
Almost three hundred members of the Brotherhood have been held since the latest wave of arrests started in December.
Earlier this month, the authorities referred the cases of forty Brotherhood members to a military court – a move seen as an escalation of the continuing campaign against the organisation.
They include senior leaders and businessman who face accusations of money laundering. The assets of some 29 people linked to the Brotherhood have been frozen.
Press attacks against the group have also intensified in recent weeks. Newspapers close to the government have accused the organisation of preparing for violence since December when students allied to the group staged a military-style parade on the campus of Al Azhar university. They were protesting against the rigging of student union elections.
Catalogue of provocations
Israel's encroachments upon the Al-Aqsa Mosque have not been sporadic, but, rather, a systematic endeavour
Khaled Amayreh,
Khaled Amayreh,
Al-Ahram Weekly February 15, 2007
When Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967, the Israeli army's chief rabbi, General Shlomo Goren, tried to convince a commander of the conquering forces, Uzi Narkis, to blow up Al-Aqsa Mosque "once and for all". This story was retold by Narkis shortly before his death in 1997 and quoted by Avi Shlaim in his important book, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World.
"There was an atmosphere of spiritual elation. Paratroopers were milling around in a daze. Narkis was standing for a moment on his own, deep in thought, when Goren went up to him and said 'Uzi, this is the time to put a hundred kilogrammes of explosives in the Mosque of Omar, and that's it. We'll get rid of it once and for all.' Narkis said 'Rabbi, stop it.' Goren then said to him, 'Uzi, you'll enter the history books by virtue of this deed.' Narkis replied, 'I have already recorded my name in the pages of the history of Jerusalem.' Goren walked away without saying another word."
Goren re-entered the Haram Al-Sharif esplanade on 15 August 1967, in military uniform along with two-dozen soldiers from the Israeli army, in order to take measurements of its length and width. Afterwards, Goren announced where the Jewish "Second Temple" would be positioned. Two weeks after this incident, the Israeli occupation army seized the key to the Moroccan Gate leading to Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Four days after the seizure of East Jerusalem, Israeli army bulldozers wantonly demolished the Maghariba and Al-Sharaf neighbourhoods, levelling them to the ground. The Palestinian inhabitants of the two neighbourhoods were expelled unceremoniously at gunpoint. At least 135 houses, two mosques, and two religious schools were completely destroyed.
In April 1968, Israel confiscated the Haret Al-Maghariba for "public use" and built on the site a large plaza in front of the so-called "Wailing" or "Western Wall". The Haret Al-Maghariba and the adjacent smaller Haret Al-Sharaf, which was also obliterated, were both Islamic waqf (religious endowment) property dating back to the Kurdish Muslim warrior Salaheddin Al-Ayoubi who defeated the Crusaders and restored Jerusalem to Islam.
On 21 August 1969, an Australian Christian Zionist, bearing the name Michael Dennis Rohan, set fire to the interior of Al-Aqsa Mosque. The fire quickly destroyed the exquisite and ancient minbar, or pulpit, of Salaheddin (a new minbar, a replica of the old one, was put into place 1 February 2007). Rohan claimed he was "the Lord's emissary" and acting upon divine instructions. He said his purpose was to enable the Jews to build a temple in order to hasten the second advent of Jesus. Israeli authorities, who later claimed that Rohan was deranged, hindered efforts to extinguish the fire.
In 1970, Israeli occupation authorities began intensive excavation works directly beneath Al-Aqsa Mosque on the southern and western sides, and in 1977, digging continued and a large tunnel was opened beneath the women's prayer area. In 1979, a new tunnel was dug under the mosque, going east to west.
On 2 March 1982, an armed Jewish terrorist and Talmudic student attacked Al-Aqsa Mosque from Bab Al-Silsila after assaulting Muslim guards. Eventually, he was overpowered.
On 11 April 1982, a Jewish American terrorist, who was also an Israeli soldier, entered the Dome of the Rock and started firing randomly at Muslim worshipers. Dozens of people were killed and injured. The Israeli government subsequently pardoned Allen Goodman, a member of the Jewish Defence League, after he spent but a few years in jail.
On 27 April 1982, Jewish terrorist leader Meir Kahana, along with 100 of his followers, stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque carrying a large diagram of the Second Temple he was planning to build "on the ruins" of Al-Aqsa Mosque.
On 27 January 1984, two waqf guards saw two Jewish terrorists fleeing near the Golden Gate. The two left behind ladders, 13 kilogrammes of explosives, and 21 Israeli- manufactured grenades similar to ones found there previously.
On 29 March 1984, the Archaeological Department of the Israeli Ministry of Religious Affairs dug a tunnel, one metre in length, two metres in width and 10 metres deep near the western part of Al-Aqsa Mosque, endangering the Islamic "Majlis" or council building.
On 1 August 1984, Al-Aqsa security guards discovered another group of Jewish terrorists preparing to blow up the mosque. Sheikh Saadeddin Al-Alami, mufti of Jerusalem, said: "had it not been for the protection of God, the whole mosque would have been completely obliterated.
Also on 1 August 1984, the Jewish terrorist Youssef Zeruya was convicted of plotting to blow up the Dome of the Rock Mosque and sentenced to three years in jail.
On 8 October 1990, Israeli "border police" soldiers murdered as many as 22 Palestinians and injured more than 100 others during a protest triggered by an attempt by Jewish extremists to lay the cornerstone for a Jewish temple in the Haram Al-Sharif plaza. On 19 August 1991, an Israeli judge, Ezra Kama, ruled that the Israeli police, not Palestinians, provoked the violence. The UN also condemned Israel for the carnage.
In September 1996, Israeli occupation authorities opened a large ancient tunnel beneath Haram Al-Sharif, sparking bloody clashes with Palestinian Authority police throughout the West Bank in which 57 Palestinians and 16 Israelis were killed.
In December 1997, Jewish terrorists tried to toss a pig's head into the Haram Al-Sharif compound.
On 28 September 2000, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon -- then opposition leader -- in deliberate provocation led hundreds of Israeli crack police into the Haram Al-Sharif compound in order to "underscore Jewish rights". The next day, Al-Aqsa Intifada broke out.
On 7 February 2007, Israeli bulldozers began digging outside Bab Al-Maghariba (the Moroccan Gate). Israel claimed that it was but repairing an old ramp leading to Al-Aqsa Mosque. Muslim officials contend the digging is part of Israeli designs against the mosque.
Two days later, Israeli occupation authorities prevented Muslims from accessing Al-Aqsa Mosque for the weekly congregational prayer. With effort a few thousand Palestinians entered the mosque where they protested against the provocative excavations. The Israeli police fired tear gas and stunned grenades at the protesters, injuring several of them.
Jerusalem prayers pass peacefully
BBC Friday, 16 February 2007, 12:11 GMT
Islamic prayers at Jerusalem's holiest site ended peacefully on Friday, a week after clashes between Palestinians and Israeli police.
About 3,000 police were deployed around the Old City of East Jerusalem, and men under 50 were barred from entering the Temple Mount, or Haram al-Sharif.
Palestinians oppose Israeli excavations at the site, the holiest in Judaism and Islam's third holiest shrine.
Muslims say the work threatens holy remains, a charge Israel denies.
Israel says the work is needed to repair a walkway up to the compound. But Palestinian leaders see the work as a huge provocation.
Click for plan of the holy sites : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6368073.stm#complex
The start of the work last week sparked angry protests and Muslim leaders around the world have demanded it be halted. Plans for construction work for the walkway have been put off, but preparatory excavations continue.
Jerusalem's Palestinian mufti and officials from Israel's Islamic movement had called for a mass protest ahead of this Friday's prayers.
But the leader of the Islamic movement, Sheikh Raed Salah, remains banned from the site after being arrested during earlier protests.
Israel imposed strict limits on who could enter the compound, with many left praying on the streets outside the Old City, says the BBC's Bethany Bell, in Jerusalem.
Police remained deployed after prayers came to an end as thousands of worshippers began streaming out of the compound, seen as a possible flashpoint.
Contested
On Thursday, Turkey agreed to send an observation team to assess Israel's approach to the excavation work, and Israel has installed web cameras to broadcast the dig online.
The Haram al-Sharif is believed to be where the Prophet Muhammad made an ascent to heaven into the presence of God.
Jews believe the Temple Mount is where Abraham offered his son Isaac as a sacrifice to God and where Solomon built the First Jewish Temple. It is the holiest site in Judaism.
Israel captured East Jerusalem in the 1967 war. Since then, the compound has remained under Muslim jurisdiction in conjunction with neighbouring Jordan.
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