Hamas presents its "price tag"

The US has said the shelling of a UN shelter in Gaza is "totally unacceptable and totally indefensible". In its strongest criticism yet of Israel's offensive in the Palestinian territory, the US - Israel's closest ally - also said the civilian casualties were "too high". It urged Israel to do more to protect civilian life. BBC News

The European Union on Thursday condemned the shelling of a United Nations school and crowded Gaza market the previous day, urging an immediate probe into the "unacceptable" deaths of civilians. "It is unacceptable that innocent displaced civilians, who were taking shelter in designated UN areas after being called on by the Israeli military to evacuate their homes, have been killed," the EU's diplomatic service said in a statement. Agence France-Presse

I’m no fan of Hamas, quite the contrary. But Israel’s attempt to put all the blame on Hamas is outrageous. The international community will soon judge this war’s atrocities. Hamas may be reprimanded, deservedly, but Israel will be condemned and ostracized far more. And then Israelis will say, ‘It’s Hamas’ fault. And the world will laugh. Haaretz

AIPAC rules. It's the Jewish community's National Rifle Association, which also uses its clout against children. To be fair, it is not the Jewish community that AIPAC represents but the organized Jewish community, a small minority of Jews. I still believe that most American Jews, always progressive and humanitarian, have not abandoned 3000 years of Jewish history and tradition to support this barbarism. M. J. Rosenberg

The story here is not the condemnations themselves, but how long they took in coming and how little space they initially receive in the American media and how that was organized... That is the real story of the Gaza "war" (massacre).

I am about to turn 70, and when I was a boy Jewish people were, for me, Albert Einstein, Arthur Rubinstein, Sandy Koufax and Sid Caesar... Today, I'm sorry to say, they are: Binyamin Netanyahu, AIPAC and Sheldon Adelson... way to go Israel, Mazel tov. DS

My Gaza rant (part two)

photo mmansour

To whom it may concern:

"Oppressed beneath the weight of their own corruption and of military violence, they for a long while preserved the sentiments, or at least the ideas of their free-born ancestors" Edward Gibbon - "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire"

Relevant quotes:

"There is no more Palestine. Finished . . ." Moshe Dayan As quoted in TIME Magazine (30 July 1973)

"We don't have a solution, and you will continue living like dogs, and whoever wants will go, and will see how this procedure will work out." Moshe Dayan speaking of the Palestinians, in Mehiro shel Ihud (Revivim, 1985) by Yossi Beilin, p. 42

"Um-Shmum" David Ben Gurion

DS

My Gaza rant

Dov Lior, the rabbi of the settlement of Kiryat Arba, has issued a religious ruling permitting the total destruction of Gaza if Israel’s military leaders deem it necessary. Lior is considered one of the more extreme rabbis on the religious right. In his ruling, he wrote (...) “The defense minister may even order the destruction of Gaza so that the south should no longer suffer, and to prevent harm to members of our people who have long been suffering from the enemies surrounding us,” he wrote. Haaretz

A statement like the above in the mouth of say, Harry Truman, would have been rather normal during World War II; the days of Hiroshima and the fire bombing of Dresden and might even make sense in today's Israel... that is if Israel were in any danger of being overrun and destroyed by her many enemies... but that is far, far, from the case. 

Leaving moral reservation's aside, Israel's reaction is purely hysterical and enormously counterproductive to their interests, both long and short term.

This hysteria is what frightens me most.

One of the things that worries me most is that, having the Iron Dome anti-rocket system that destroys over 90% of incoming missiles the Israelis don't have the sense to hunker down and sweat it out till the blockaded Hamas runs out of rockets, just using drones etc to keep the Hamas fighters off balance... 

Because with their monumental lack of sangfroid they have allowed Hamas to sucker them into a street by street, house by house, toe to toe, man to man, infantry battle, where all their technological advantages are neutralized. The Palestinian's secret weapon, their greatest war resource in the long run is their birthrate and their willingness to die for their cause. They are using these strategic advantages now.

Although the ratio of casualties is around ten to one the IDF is taking what by hysterical, Israeli standards are very heavy casualties and what is much more important in the long run, they are getting the sort of worldwide "baby killer" reputation that did so much damage to America's prestige and influence during the war in Vietnam... Israel is far from being as unsinkable as the USA... and perhaps more important... the mechanisms by which the tail wags the dog in Israel's relationship with America are getting creakingly obvious to even the dullest American wits. DS

Obama's triumphal entry into Jerusalem... yada yada yada

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The US is hoping that Obama's positive first trip will reinvigorate peace efforts, though most settlers are not worried. They see the composition of the new Israeli cabinet as a reassurance that Israeli policy will move away from peace negotiations. Christian Science Monitor

Obama's visit to Israel was strictly for domestic American consumption, because unless the president and Netanyahu took a decision on when to attack or not attack Iran or intervene in Syria's civil war, which they could have done by telephone, his trip was strictly a public relations exercise, certainly it wont affect the "Peace Process" or lead to Palestinian statehood.

The much talked about "Two State Solution" is not stalled or even dead, it never existed: it and the "Peace Process" said to be leading to the founding of a "viable, contiguous, Palestinian state",  or even a Bantustan, was never more than a way of stalling, killing time, running out the clock. Israel has been waiting for a moment that now appears to be fast approaching: the disintegration of the Middle East as the west has known it since the end of World War One. In a short time all of the borders that were designed during the First World War by Britain and France  to suit western interests, will now probably become undefined, fluid if not gaseous... just as Israel's own borders are.

You may not have noticed, but Israel's frontiers have been undefined since 1967. The objective of the Israelis in avoiding the "Two State Solution" is  to not define them "prematurely", before all the pieces on board start to move.  In times like these, the last thing the Israelis want is to be the only ones with firmly drawn frontiers when all other borders in the Middle East are going to be negotiable. The settlers are not an "obstacle to peace", they are merely an excuse for Israel not to define those frontiers.

This Middle Eastern disintegration has been a long time coming and perfectly foreseeable by anyone as cool headed and long headed as the Israelis. The neocon led invasion of Iraq with its "real men go to Tehran" leitmotif, was itself a desperate, Hail Mary pass, attempt to control the events that are now taking place with that certain spontaneity of what looks like a historically driven process.

"What we're seeing here is, in a sense, the growing—the birth pangs of a new Middle East, and whatever we do, we have to be certain that we're pushing forward to the new Middle East, not going back to the old Middle East". Condoleezza Rice - 2006

Just in case you don't know what the "old Middle East" looked like, check this map... As you can see, it's mostly about Turkey and Iran... Not many borders visible except theirs and Britain's protectorates and today the British, who used to control Egypt, are no longer players... and as you may have noticed lately, America's once smothering grip on the area is fading fast.

At this moment Syria is literally disintegrating, spewing nearly half a million refugees into tiny, neighboring  Jordan, where the Palestinian majority is permanently restless and the influence of the Muslim brotherhood is growing. The Muslim Brotherhood controls Egypt and Hamas in Gaza is an offshoot of the Brotherhood; and then there is always Al Qaeda which is growing exponentially in the Syrian conflict. So much for the Sunnis

As to the Shiites: Iran besides working diligently on developing atomic capabilities is fighting a proxy war alongside Assad in Syria, is the major power influence in Iraq and is heavily arming  Shiite Hezbollah on Israel's Lebanese border...

What could the Israelis expect to achieve as all this comes unraveled and the shooting starts?

Simple: they could ethnically cleanse Judea, Samaria, Gaza (and maybe Israel itself too while they are at it) all in the midst of the confusion of a military free for all.  Chaos with thousands of refugees simultaneously in movement everywhere... and when the dust settles, let the Palestinians establish their "viable and contiguous state" on the ruins of the Jordanian monarchy as a Sunni buffer between Israel and Shiite Iraq... if they so desire.

Who thought all this up? Ariel Sharon, I should imagine, who else? DS

Israel's massive flotilla cock-up

(...) I call on the Government of Israel to open the crossings to allow unfettered access for aid to Gaza, and address the serious concerns about the deterioration in the humanitarian and economic situation and about the effect on a generation of young Palestinians‪." William Hague - UK Foreign Secretary statement on Gaza Flotilla

Mossad Chief Meir Dagan said on Tuesday that Israel is progressively becoming a burden on the United States. "Israel is gradually turning from an asset to the United States to a burden," said Dagan, speaking before the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. Dagan said that the U.S. government has recently examined the possibility of coercing a settlement on Israel and the Palestinians, but retreated from the idea after realizing it would not lead to a peace agreement. Haaretz

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If we look at the thing sensu strictu, the ship of a NATO country has been boarded on the high seas by the armed forces of a non-member of NATO and when the occupants of the ship exercised their right of self-defense and tried to repel the boarding party, they were massacred.... This is piracy plain and simple.

In theory the members of NATO should invoke Article Five "an attack on one member is an attack on all the members" and declare war on Israel. Of course that isn't going to happen, but the reasons it isn't going to happen show NATO to be something of a joke. You may remember that the USA fought a war with Great Britain in 1812 over the principal of freedom of the seas. The "Law of the Sea" is the basis of international law.

Aside from all questions of international law, what stands out is how badly done it was. The Israel of Entebbe days seems to have vanished with the hardy kibbutz culture that created it. Bad concept, bad planning, bad execution... like the Cast Lead attack on Gaza, like the last invasion of Lebanon. The enemies of Israel and even its friends are beginning to think Israel can't cut the mustard anymore. That perception is more dangerous for Israel than any Iranian atomic bomb.

If there is anything but simple incompetence and pathological stupidity involved, if there is a "deep game" here, than all I can think of is that this barbaric boutade  is a ploy to humiliate Barack Obama and degrade his attempts to effect some sort of reconciliation between the USA and the Muslim world.

However, you know that finally Obama's response will be mealymouthed, and although there is much criticism of Israel all over the alternative media in the USA, you wont hear any strong criticism of Israel from him, or the US Congress or the mainstream American media either... then the world will know who is boss. That could be the bottom line: Israel still controls the American political-media space.

As of now the Israeli PR response is the classic, "The whole world are hypocrites, Israel is terribly misunderstood, your eye punched my fist", when the problem for Israel is that, daily, Israel is better understood than ever before and the mechanisms that give Israel impunity are clearer every day too. As the head of Mossad says, Israel is getting to be a burden and not an asset for the USA. The question is how long can you keep a lead balloon airborne?

What Israel and friends of Israel should be concerned about is that the number of people in the "west" who are thoroughly sick of Israel is growing exponentially. The problem is that the people now in power in Israel believe that everyone who isn't Jewish, if you only scratch the surface, is a default antisemite anyway and it is naive to try to conform to their hypocritical rules of conduct.

Of course, in the end, this is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Finally, people will have had enough and no matter how much military might or political leverage is employed, universally adverse opinion reaches a tipping point. At that moment things begin to move very quickly and no amount of hasbara will hide the simple reality of an apartheid rogue state, armed with atomic weapons, that has managed to unman the American political class.

In the Gaza flotilla incident we are looking at a "dress rehearsal" of that tipping point... it is now only a matter of time. DS

Caught in the whirring gears of tragedy

Benjamin Netanyahu is pulling away from his rivals in the race to become Israel's next prime minister, in a sign that the three-week war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip has accelerated Israel's shift to the political right. Financial Times

Backing Bibi will be the Israeli lobby, the Evangelicals, the neocons and a Congress that could find only five members to oppose a resolution endorsing all the Israelis had done and were doing to the people of Gaza. Pat Buchanan

Prince Turki, a man who expresses himself with care and moderation, was recently the Saudi ambassador to the UK and the US and, before that, the long-serving chief of Saudi intelligence. He and his brother, foreign minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, have represented the pro-US kingdom to the world for well over three decades. They are also part of the reforming wing of Saudi Arabia’s absolute monarchy and allies of King Abdullah. Prince Turki, citing equally forthright remarks by King Abdullah and Prince Saud, is now telling the new administration of Barack Obama it can either change course radically on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or forfeit the US “special relationship” with Saudi Arabia. The US, he warns, risks losing its leadership role in the Middle East. The Bush administration has not only left “a sickening legacy in the region”, he says, but “contributed to the slaughter of innocents”. Mr Obama should embrace the 2002 peace plan of King Abdullah, offering full Arab recognition of Israel for full Israeli withdrawal from occupied Arab land and the creation of a Palestinian state, with Arab east Jerusalem as its capital. Prince Turki reveals that Iran last week called on Saudi Arabia to lead a jihad against Israel. “So far, the kingdom has resisted these calls,” he said, but “eventually, the kingdom will not be able to prevent its citizens from joining the worldwide revolt against Israel”. Strong stuff. Editorial - Financial Times

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The three quotes above lay out the parameters for an epoch making disaster.

First: Netanyahu is going to be elected the next prime minister of Israel and the chances of progress toward a two state solution based on the Saudi peace plan or Taba are nil and the Gazans will continue to be starved and killed.

Second: because of the peculiarities of the American system of political financing the US Congress will refuse to ever seriously twist Israel's arm.

Third: the Saudi royal family, faced with the humiliation of being ejected by their irate subjects, egged on by Iran, from their uniquely prestigious role as protectors of the holy places of Islam and faced with the prospect as Bedouins of spending eternity living on the shores of some frozen Swiss lake with only the company of their money, despised by all Muslims, are finally going to act.

They are not going to cut off the oil like in 1973, they simply will refuse to buy any more US treasury bills until the US government pressures Israel into accepting the two state solution outlined in the Saudi plan.

In this refusal to finance the American economy that arms and enables Israel, they will be probably be accompanied by all the other kinglets and princelings of the Persian Gulf, who are also anxious to prove their Muslim credentials in the face of militant Iran's growing influence over their infuriated subjects.

In short a creditors strike, which in America present condition would be terminally devastating.

This will mean the bursting of the T-Bill bubble and with it any hope of success for a stimulus plan to save the US economy by printing more money. It might also cause America's creditors, such as China, to unload their dollar reserves. This would mean the collapse of the dollar and a galloping, Argentine style, inflation which would wipe out what little purchasing power America's middle class might still possess and leave all those on fixed incomes destitute.

"Impossible! They wouldn't dare!", you say.

If you don't believe that great disasters that everyone can see coming and would want to avoid can happen, think about the tragic summer of 1914, the lead up to World War One, that Barbara Tuchman so perfectly described in her best-selling masterpiece "The Guns of August".

Like then, a complex mechanism that we do not, perhaps cannot, fully understand, has been set in motion and as in classic Greek tragedies the character of the participants leads irremediably to their downfall. In this play Israel's attack on Gaza takes the role of Gavilo Princip. DS

Israel, America's tragic looking glass: some notes

John Ging is an ex-Army officer who worked in Rwanda during the genocide and was in the Balkans when ethnic cleansing took place. As one of the UN’s main men on the ground in Gaza, he says the current Palestinian situation is the worst he has ever encountered... Irish Times (hat to P. Weiss)

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As the waters of this unspeakably criminal tsunami momentarily recede and we can briefly assess the damage, push aside some smoking rubble, count the victims and simmer in our impotent rage, I'd like to share with you some of the material I have collected during these few days during which we have had our noses rubbed in so much, and such indigestible, horror.

When I began to work with the Internet in the mid 90s, I soon discovered the beauties of the collage of illustrative quotes from authoritative voices, complete with links.

Standing on the shoulders of giants, as it were, I even made a modest little business out of sending these collages to corporate clients with my comments attached and the buzz the comments produced led to my writing a weekly column in a major Spanish newspaper. I guess I'm another one of those little Internet stories.

So instead of pontificating about the horror of Middle East, today I'll take a step back, revert to default mode and do a collage with minimalist comments of mine own attached.

Except for China Matters and the clipping from the Irish Times, which I found on Philip Weiss's invaluable blog, all the commentators quoted are Jewish. For one of the most heartening developments in all this retched horror is the reaction of so many Jewish people in Israel, America and around the world, whose principals are principals no matter whose tribe is involved.

It was always clear that Israel was going to take advantage of the post-Bush/pre-anybody interregnum to attack one of its enemies. Remember when the possibility of an attack on Iran or Lebanon 2.0 were being chewed over? It turned out badly for the people of Gaza, but Iran & Syria are probably noting that all Israel could do in the end was beat up the little guy on its doorstep. China Matters

This brief review of Israel's record over the past four decades makes it difficult to resist the conclusion that it has become a rogue state with "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". A rogue state habitually violates international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction and practises terrorism - the use of violence against civilians for political purposes. Israel fulfils all of these three criteria; the cap fits and it must wear it. Avi Shlaim - Guardian

It is important that Jewish people are at the cutting edge of world outrage because Israel's still being admitted into civilized company after what has been perpetrated in Gaza is enough to fuel a hundred and one conspiracy theories no matter how far fetched and outre they might be.

Apartheid South Africa was never cut so much slack... Serbia was bombed into submission and Milosevic brought to trial, but it is hard to imagine that any Israeli will ever have to stand trial in The Hague, for what the entire world has witnessed.

But as Abba Eban was fond of saying about the Palestinians, the Israelis never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. As Immanuel Wallerstein points out:

Had Israel been serious about a two-state solution based on the so-called Green Line - the line of division at the end of the 1948-1949 war - it probably would have achieved a settlement.

Israel however was always one step behind. When it could have negotiated with Nasser, it wouldn't. When it could have negotiated with Arafat, it wouldn't. When Arafat died and was succeeded by the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas, the more militant Hamas won the Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006. Israel refused to talk to Hamas.

Time has finally run out on the "two state solution" and what might have been, will never now be. Israel has painted itself and the USA into a corner, from which it seems almost impossible for America to escape.

In my opinion only the reaction of America's Jewish community can save us from this nauseating Albatross without a tragic fracturing of our political culture.

Sadly, you see, Israelis see their Jewish state as a bone in the throat of Palestinians, not just historically, but still. They feel themselves, increasingly, in a desperate “existential” fight where no holds are barred now, because no holds will be barred later. Show weakness about what is yours, and you are a baby-step away from Bosnia. Which is, of course, what Serbians thought, and how "Bosnia" began. Bernard Avishai (hat to P. Weiss)

Throughout the Arab world, from end to end, there echoed the words of Hassan Nasrallah: The leaders of Egypt are accomplices to the crime, they are collaborating with the “Zionist enemy” in trying to break the Palestinian people. It can be assumed that he did not mean only Mubarak, but also all the other leaders, from the king of Saudi Arabia to the Palestinian President. Seeing the demonstrations throughout the Arab world and listening to the slogans, one gets the impression that their leaders seem to many Arabs pathetic at best, and miserable collaborators at worst.

This will have historic consequences. A whole generation of Arab leaders, a generation imbued with the ideology of secular Arab nationalism, the successors of Gamal Abd-al-Nasser, Hafez al-Assad and Yasser Arafat, may be swept from the stage. In the Arab space, the only viable alternative is the ideology of Islamic fundamentalism.

This war is a writing on the wall: Israel is missing the historic chance of making peace with secular Arab nationalism. Tomorrow, It may be faced with a uniformly fundamentalist Arab world, Hamas multiplied by a thousand. Uri Avnery

If Israel's goose isn't yet cooked, it is certainly ready to be tested with a fork. Here is how Professor Immanuel Wallerstein analyzes the resulting juices in an article entitled, "Chronicle of a Suicide Foretold: The Case of Israel".

Now, Israel has invaded Gaza, seeking to destroy Hamas. If it succeeds, what organization will come next? If, as is more probable, it fails to destroy Hamas, is a two-state solution now possible? Both Palestinian and world public opinion is moving towards the one-state solution. And this is of course the end of the Zionist project.

The three-element strategy of Israel is decomposing. The iron fist no longer succeeds, much as it didn't for George Bush in Iraq. Will the United States link remain firm? I doubt it. And will world public opinion continue to look sympathetically on Israel? It seems not. Can Israel now switch to an alternative strategy, of negotiating with the militant representatives of the Arab Palestinians, as an integral constituent of the Middle East, and not as an outpost of Europe? It seems quite late for that, quite possibly too late. Hence, the chronicle of a suicide foretold. Immanuel Wallerstein

The United States is well caught between a horrid rock and a tragic hard place. If America's most valued allies in the Middle East, the tushy licking Arab "moderate" regimes collapse and are replaced by Islamic republics, which is where Israel's hysterical barbarity is inevitably taking them, this will have a massively detrimental effect on America's standing in the world and might even collapse the dollar; however, if any US government attempts to pressure Israel meaningfully, then AIPAC and all it represents will surely pull out all the stops and use any tool that comes to their hands to destabilize that government... in the middle of the greatest economic crisis since the great depression.

That is the dilemma that President Obama will be facing by tomorrow evening. DS

Israel, the Ponzi state

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A Ponzi scheme consists in the perpetrator offering unrealistic returns on the capital invested and then using the assets of the later investors to pay high profits to the earlier ones. It's success depends on the new investors bringing more and more even newer ones into the game. It all falls apart when people start asking awkward questions and demanding their money back. This causes a panic and the entire pyramid collapses.

Bernard L. Madoff has become a household word with his Ponzi-Pyramid scheme that has bilked billions of dollars from the world's wealthy. Many if not most of Madoff's victims are Jewish. They trusted him and he betrayed them.

My thesis is that the state of Israel is a huge Ponzi scheme: a geo-strategic Ponzi, a military-Ponzi and finally, or perhaps first of all, a moral-Ponzi.

How is Israel a "Ponzi scheme"?

Israel's first "selling point", the much quoted and much disputed old saw, "a land without a people for a people without a land", which, whoever actually said it first, has led to much ethnic cleansing, is the nucleus of the entire "scam". Although in the light of the "New Historians" the phrase is not being used so much anymore, when I lived in Israel in the 1970s, soon after the Six Day War, this phrase was repeated to me endlessly.

Zionism's second and most powerful selling point and the final, by default, defense of everything that Israel does, is that the pain that Europeans inflicted on the Jewish people entitles the Jewish people to inflict pain on a third party, the Palestinians, who played no part whatsoever in the Shoa. This has to be the most curious reading of the law of Talion in all its endless history.

"A land without a people for a people without a land" presupposes that some people are entitled to be more visible than others, have more rights than others, are more "equal" than others. No democracy can be built on sands like these. Take the finest people in the world, and Israel has taken some of the finest, and then flatter, force, entice, fool or trick them into playing out that phrase and despite the quality of the players, nothing but evil can result.

What is happening today in Gaza flows naturally from that phrase.

Why is all this a fraud?

The victims of the Israeli Ponzi are many...

In physical pain, and humiliation, the Palestinians are the greatest victims of course, but immense will be the pain of the Jewish people all over the world as they awake to find that what was sold to them as a safe refuge, a place of regeneration and a "light unto the gentiles", has in fact, become a death trap and a moral sewer of corrupt politicians committing sordid common crimes of every sort while simultaneously bombing entrapped civilians.

When they find that their refuge and light has become a place where the Jewish people's name is being dirtied for the ages, then that awakening will finally have a much more lasting effect on our western world then rivers of innocent blood. In many ways the Jewish people have always been and continue to be the "mirror soul" of western culture, and the tarnishing of that mirror deforms us all.

I also said that Israel is a geo-political and military Ponzi too.

After the Six Day War and especially after the Yom Kippur war Israel and its military have been sold in the USA as an essential American strategic asset in the Middle East, when in fact America's support of Israel's military machine is probably the greatest, perhaps the only obstacle that America faces in having normal relations with the Muslim world.

The Gaza operation is so sordid and criminal and the images of civilian suffering so horrifying, that to be associated with them drains any life out of the soft power that America may still possess.

Gaza has been a wake up call for even the most sober of strategists.

One of America's most highly respected strategic thinkers, Anthony H. Cordesman, writing for the Center for Strategic and International Studies:

Has Israel somehow blundered into a steadily escalating war without a clear strategic goal or at least one it can credibly achieve? Will Israel end in empowering an enemy in political terms that it defeated in tactical terms? Will Israel’s actions seriously damage the US position in the region, any hope of peace, as well as moderate Arab regimes and voices in the process?

To be blunt, the answer so far seems to be yes. (...) As we have seen all too clearly from US mistakes, any leader can take a tough stand and claim that tactical gains are a meaningful victory. If this is all that Olmert, Livni, and Barak have for an answer, then they have disgraced themselves and damaged their country and their friends. If there is more, it is time to make such goals public and demonstrate how they can be achieved. The question is not whether the IDF learned the tactical lessons of the fighting in 2006. It is whether Israel’s top political leadership has even minimal competence to lead them

In short Israel is in the process of destroying any future the United States might still have of influencing events in its favor in the Middle East.

Perhaps there is a window opening briefly where Barack Obama may have the opportunity, by simply washing his hands, to rid the USA of this horrible problem... perhaps by just giving the Israelis enough rope, they may end up hanging themselves.

Read this by Gideon Levy in today's Haaretz:

This past weekend, the UN and the Human Rights Commission in Geneva have demanded an investigation into war crimes allegedly perpetrated by Israel. In a world in which Bosnian leaders and their counterparts from Rwanda have already been put on trial, a similar demand is likely to arise for the fomenters of this war. Israeli basketball players will not be the only ones who have to shamefully take cover in sports arenas, and senior officers who conducted this war will not be the only ones forced to hide in El Al planes lest they be arrested. This time, our most senior statesmen, the members of the war kitchen cabinet, are liable to pay a personal and national price.

I don't write these words with joy, but with sorrow and deep shame. Despite all the slack the world has cut us since as long as we can remember, despite the leniency shown toward Israel, the world might say otherwise this time. If we continue like this, maybe one day a new, special court will be established in The Hague.

A very slender hope, indeed.

I think Barack Obama or any other president of the USA that I can think of, or even imagine, would do anything in their power, up to and including invading Holland in order to prevent Levy's scenario from ever taking place.

However, if Obama does allow a Hague trial of the Israeli "kitchen cabinet" to occur (and why not include Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld while they are at it?) I will be forced to conclude that Obama's admirers are not blowing smoke out of their hinder parts, but that he is, in fact, the great man they insist he is. DS

Against the genocide of Gaza, in Madrid

Madrid 01/11/09

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There was a big demonstration in Madrid today against Israel's massacre of Gaza, with an estimated crowd of 250,000 people.

The demonstration marched behind a banner that read, "Paremos el genocidio palestino", "Let's end the Palestinian genocide".

It was a cold morning bathed in Madrid's amazingly beautiful January light. My wife and I went and I took a couple of pictures. I hope that it did some good. DS

Naomi Klein advocates boycotting Israel - Guardian

After viewing the video clip from the BBC read this snippet from Naomi Klein's article in the Guardian.

It's time. Long past time. The best strategy to end the increasingly bloody occupation is for Israel to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa. In July 2005 a huge coalition of Palestinian groups laid out plans to do just that. They called on "people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era". The campaign Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions was born.

Every day that Israel pounds Gaza brings more converts to the BDS cause - even among Israeli Jews. In the midst of the assault roughly 500 Israelis, dozens of them well-known artists and scholars, sent a letter to foreign ambassadors in Israel. It calls for "the adoption of immediate restrictive measures and sanctions" and draws a clear parallel with the anti-apartheid struggle. "The boycott on South Africa was effective, but Israel is handled with kid gloves ... This international backing must stop."

Yet even in the face of these clear calls, many of us still can't go there. The reasons are complex, emotional and understandable. But they simply aren't good enough. Economic sanctions are the most effective tool in the non-violent arsenal: surrendering them verges on active complicity.(...) The world has tried what used to be called "constructive engagement". It has failed utterly. Since 2006 Israel has been steadily escalating its criminality: expanding settlements, launching an outrageous war against Lebanon, and imposing collective punishment on Gaza through the brutal blockade. Despite this escalation, Israel has not faced punitive measures - quite the opposite. The weapons and $3bn in annual aid the US sends Israel are only the beginning. Throughout this key period, Israel has enjoyed a dramatic improvement in its diplomatic, cultural and trade relations with a variety of other allies. For instance, in 2007 Israel became the first country outside Latin America to sign a free-trade deal with the Mercosur bloc. In the first nine months of 2008, Israeli exports to Canada went up 45%. A new deal with the EU is set to double Israel's exports of processed food. And in December European ministers "upgraded" the EU-Israel association agreement, a reward long sought by Jerusalem.

It is in this context that Israeli leaders started their latest war: confident they would face no meaningful costs. It is remarkable that over seven days of wartime trading, the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange's flagship index actually went up 10.7%. When carrots don't work, sticks are needed.

This is an idea whose time has certainly come. DS

Annus horribilis: I can get it for you wholesale

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Here are the two leading stories in today's "Jewish Daily Forward", which is probably America's oldest and certainly its most prestigious Jewish community newspaper.

Peace Groups Lose First Major Gaza Challenge On Capitol Hill
As Israel’s military campaign in Gaza entered its second week, Capitol Hill became the latest battleground where Jewish hawks and doves are trying to shape the American response to the ongoing violence. Dovish groups bombarded lawmakers with calls and e-mails in an attempt to influence the wording of pro-Israel resolutions being shaped in the House and Senate. The groups’ line in the sand on those resolutions was straightforward: Unless the House and Senate included a call for an immediate cease-fire, the dovish groups would call on their supporters to actively oppose them. For the Jewish peace camp, the first Middle East crisis of the new Congress and administration was an opportunity to flex its muscles and show presence on the national scene. But in the end, they lost.

And

AJCongress Crippled by Madoff Scandal
One of the Jewish community’s most storied national organizations revealed that it has been gutted by the financial collapse of investor Bernard Madoff, losing the vast majority of its endowment. Officials at the 90-year-old American Jewish Congress disclosed that apparent fraud at Madoff’s investment firm had cost the organization roughly $21 million of the $24 million in endowments that supported the AJCongress and its programs.(...) It’s ironic that the Madoff scandal, with its tales of exclusive country club life and high-priced international hedge funds, has been so destructive to an organization that was founded to be the voice of the Jewish masses. The AJCongress was founded in 1918 and became a populist counterbalance to the American Jewish Committee, which was dominated by the wealthy and conservative German-Jewish establishment. Under the leadership of its legendary founder, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, the AJCongress was one of the first national organizations to support Zionism and to protest the Nazi regime, and it established a reputation for being politically liberal. After World War II, it made its mark as an active litigant on church-state issues and civil rights.

When these two stories are juxtaposed in The Forward, it seems to me that a certain American-Jewish "golden age" is coming to an end, one whose beginning we might put arbitrarily in World War One, when financier Bernard Baruch became an adviser to president Wilson and the chairman of the War Industries Board, or perhaps in 1932 when Herbert Hoover named Benjamin Cardozo to the US Supreme Court... or maybe even a bit earlier in 1924 when composer George Gershwin premiered his "Rhapsody in Blue".

We are talking about a golden age of the Jewish diaspora that compares favorably with those of Babylon, Al-Andalus or Wilhelmine Germany.

More than a golden age, a love affair.

It is impossible to exaggerate the significance and harmful consequences of this disenchantment and the effects it will have on the fabric of American life, cultural, social and political in years to come. DS

He could at least stop playing golf

President-elect Barack Obama plays a little golf during his vacation last week in Hawaii. Al Jazeera contrasted footage of Obama on vacation with scenes of the carnage in Gaza, noting what it called "the deafening silence of the Obama team." (Tim Sloan / Getty-AFP / December 29, 2008)

Israeli ground troops have started to enter the Gaza Strip, Israeli military officials have confirmed, a week after the offensive against Hamas began.(...) Earlier, Israel intensified air and artillery attacks on the territory. (...) The UN has warned of a worsening humanitarian crisis, and believes 25% of more than 400 Palestinians killed by Israel so far were civilians.(...) there are said to be some 10,000 Israeli troops and hundreds of tanks massed on the border with Gaza. The office of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has also announced that the government has ordered the urgent call-up of "tens of thousands" of extra military reservists. BBC News

"We want him to say something at least to stop the bloodshed," said Suhail Natour, a Palestinian activist who lives in the Mar Elias Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut. "Waiting until the 20th, with the bloodshed continuing, I don't think is an acceptable way of confirming a new policy in the Middle East. Silence on this means complicity." Chicago Tribune

David Seaton's News Links
Readers of mine will know that I am no fan of Barack Obama's, but I confess that I never expected him to prove me right by defining himself so quickly... even before being sworn in as President.

What is happening in Gaza is huge, grotesquely tragic... It is like watching a cat play with a small animal before killing it... endlessly mauling it... warming to its work.

People all over the world have placed great hopes in Barack Obama and his "yes we can - change we can believe in" and they are waiting for a word... only a word... and while people are dying horribly, he is playing golf.

Being photographed playing golf at a moment like this is as tone deaf as Bush looking out of plane at the ruins of New Orleans was... much more tone deaf in my opinion.

I'm sorry, but the "one president at a time" thing is not good enough. He had a lot to say about the Mumbai attacks:

"President-Elect Obama strongly condemns today's terrorist attacks in Mumbai, and his thoughts and prayers are with the victims, their families, and the people of India. These coordinated attacks on innocent civilians demonstrate the grave and urgent threat of terrorism." Brooke Anderson, Obama's Chief National Security Spokesperson

And he was positively loquacious when it come to the economy:

President-elect Barack Obama on Saturday said the struggling U.S. economy could face more challenges and urged lawmakers to act quickly on recovery proposals even as some Republicans expressed concerns about plans for a huge stimulus package. "As we mark the beginning of a new year, we also know that America faces great and growing challenges -- challenges that threaten our nation's economy and our dreams for the future," Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address. Reuters

But, when in their moment of agony, the Palestinians waited for a word from Obama and the word finally was:

FORE!

They say that first impressions are the most important... I doubt whether anyone in the Middle East will forget this one anytime soon. DS

Gaza: rummaging around for shoes

"Dime con quién andas y te diré quién eres" (tell me who hang out with and I'll tell you who you are) Old Spanish proverb

'Twas an evening in October, I'll confess I wasn't sober,
I was carting home a load with manly pride,
When my feet began to stutter and I fell into the gutter,
And a pig came up and lay down by my side.
Then I lay there in the gutter, thinking thoughts I cannot utter,
Till a lady, passing by, did chance to say:
"You can tell a man that boozes by the company he chooses,"
Then the pig got up and slowly walked away.
"The Pig Got Up and Slowly walked Away" (1933, Clarke Van Ness, music by F. Henri Klickmann)

David Seaton's News Links
Anyone eager for change they can believe in would do well to listen closely to the statements and perhaps more importantly to the silences of Barack Obama in the next few days.

As the Spanish proverb and the song quoted above suggest, the United States is defined by the company it keeps. America's conjoined twin alliance with Israel defines America for the world. No amount of chanting "yes we can", will change this. Only a genuine change in policy will change it.

Will there ever be any change?

If you believe that Barack Obama will face down the Israel lobby while trying to pull the USA out of a recession that is quickly turning into a depression, then your hope passes all audacity and enters into that part of the human psyche where suicide bombers expect 72 virgins on completing their assignment.

Richard Nixon once warned, in very different circumstance, that America was in danger of becoming "a pitiful and helpless giant". Nothing conveys this helplessness more graphically than America's supine support for Israel's treatment of the Palestinian people... but very few people pity the "helpless giant" today... if they ever did. DS

America fiddles while the world burns

Israel's deputy defence minister yesterday warned his country was close to launching a huge military operation in Gaza and said Palestinians would bring on themselves a "bigger shoah," using the Hebrew word usually reserved for the Holocaust. News Item - Guardian

David Seaton's News Links
"Relativizing" the Holocaust, comparing it to any other event, diminishing its uniqueness, is considered by Jews and many others as a grave insult to Hitler's Jewish victims and a proof of antisemitism. In what light are we supposed to read the Israeli defense minister statement threatening the Palestinians of Gaza with a Holocaust? Does he mean that since he already has the Palestinians in a concentration camp, that he is now preparing to exterminate them? Is he relativizing the Holocaust?

However that may be, his language is perfectly outrageous.

If I say that, am I "relativizing the holocaust"?

Meanwhile the candidates to the US presidency are lining up to swear eternal loyalty to Israel.

I think that there will be no meaningful debate on Israel, or much of anything else, till after the presidential elections. The elections drain all the vitality from the news cycle. Strangely enough, they put all serious political discussion into the deep freeze. The candidates and their handlers craft positions and try to avoid being shot down. The world burns, but the US elections come first. DS

Every so often something beautiful happens

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Every so often something beautiful happens that makes your heart swell with human feelings of empathy and solidarity.

A wall falling and people behind it flowing out just to buy ice cream, to see their friends they haven't seem for years, or to get married and start a family like the couple in the story below.

The down side? This could blow Egypt apart. American aid has neutralized Egypt, but Egypt is the most important country in the Middle East.

If the Mubarak regime is seen collaborating with the Israelis to put the Palestinians back in their cage it might bring the Egyptian people out into the streets. If the Israeli army enters Gaza and Hamas puts up a real fight then the Egyptian army (captains, majors and colonels) might stage a coup d'etat and a general war might break out in the Middle East. Something much bigger and harder to control than the Yom Kippur war of 1973. Because when people's hearts swell with human feelings of empathy and solidarity it generates an amazing force that politicians oppose at their peril. DS

Wedding bells to ring after fall of Rafah wall - Reuters
While other Palestinians lugged food and fuel from Egypt into the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, Omran Lubbab took advantage of the fall of Gaza's Rafah wall to bring his future bride home.

"No more delays," said Lubbab, a 34-year-old Gaza cameraman, vowing to marry fiance Heba al-Qadi in two weeks' time.

Lubbab was reunited with Qadi, a Palestinian who lives on the Egyptian side of the divided town of Rafah, after stepping through one of the gaps Hamas fighters blew in the border wall dividing the town.

"We have been engaged for two years but our wedding has been delayed because of the closure of the border crossing," said Qadi, who carried two suitcases filled with new dresses into the Gaza Strip to begin her new life.

Israel and Egypt have largely kept the Rafah passage sealed since Hamas Islamists violently took over the Gaza Strip from forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in June.

In a declared bid to stop Palestinian rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip, Israel shut the territory's other crossing points on Friday but eased restrictions on Tuesday after an international outcry over shortages of fuel and other goods.

Qadi will be staying with relatives in Gaza until the wedding.

Her mother, Buthaina al-Qadi, was all smiles as she watched the couple chatting about their wedding reception.

"I am very happy. My daughter is finally going to start a new life and a family," she said.

Palestinian police estimated that more than 100,000 people had crossed into the Egyptian side of Rafah.

"People need to breathe. People need to bring food to their children. It is the revolution of hunger," said one policemen who declined to give his name.

Hamas' stand - Los Angeles Times

The right to exist: I kill, therefore I am

David Seaton's News Links
This article makes an interesting read. By taking control of Gaza, Hamas has gained an international audience for its message. Alexander Haig of unhappy memory had this to say in The Wall Street Journal, "Let us not delude ourselves. The recent Hamas conquest of Gaza is a signal defeat for the United States that goes well beyond the particulars of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We have sought to deny the Islamic terrorists a territorial base in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and elsewhere. Now they have won one on the Mediterranean."

And Haig neglected the worst part about Hamas... They are strictly Palestinian nationalists and have nothing to do with Al Qaeda and its agenda, an "inconvenient truth" that degrades the neocon, "Islamofascism" narrative. Hamas are converting Gaza into a laboratory for their future role in a Palestinian state and a loudspeaker for their agenda, which, as this article from the Los Angeles Times proves, strikes many sympathetic notes to western ears. DS

Hamas' stand - Los Angeles Times
Abstract: The writings of Israel's "founders" — from Herzl to Jabotinsky to Ben Gurion — make repeated calls for the destruction of Palestine's non-Jewish inhabitants: "We must expel the Arabs and take their places." A number of political parties today control blocs in the Israeli Knesset, while advocating for the expulsion of Arab citizens from Israel and the rest of Palestine, envisioning a single Jewish state from the Jordan to the sea. Yet I hear no clamor in the international community for Israel to repudiate these words as a necessary precondition for any discourse whatsoever. The double standard, as always, is in effect for Palestinians. I, for one, do not trouble myself over "recognizing" Israel's right to exist — this is not, after all, an epistemological problem; Israel does exist, as any Rafah boy in a hospital bed, with IDF shrapnel in his torso, can tell you. This dance of mutual rejection is a mere distraction when so many are dying or have lived as prisoners for two generations in refugee camps. As I write these words, Israeli forays into Gaza have killed another 15 people, including a child. Who but a Jacobin dares to discuss the "rights" of nations in the face of such relentless state violence against an occupied population? I look forward to the day when Israel can say to me, and millions of other Palestinians: "Here, here is your family's house by the sea, here are your lemon trees, the olive grove your father tended: Come home and be whole again." Then we can speak of a future together. READ IT ALL

Fatah's corruption is the origin of Hamas's power

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In contemplating the Hamas takeover of Gaza, observers seem to be missing something obvious: Hamas has just produced a de facto "two state solution"… history's first example of a "free Palestine". Gaza is now governed by the winner of what international observers considered at the time a "model" democratic election and they are untainted in Arab eyes by subservience to Washington. At the same time, on the West Bank, the "other" Palestine, is still effectively controlled by the Israelis and their “separation wall”, private roads, checkpoints and growing settlements, all of which makes president, Mohammed Abbas look like little more than an American puppet charged with protecting Israeli lives and property. In Gaza, as Tony Karon, a senior editor of Time Magazine and expert on Middle Eastern affairs wrote, “Having trounced Fatah on the polls, Hamas now moved to trounce them on the streets,” using what Jimmy Carter called Hamas’s, "superior skills and discipline."

It wasn’t Palestinian religious fervor that opened the doors for Hamas, it was Hamas's honesty and Fatah's corruption. The strategy the "west" has decided to follow now is to strangle Hamas and fatten Fatah. This is difficult because Hamas needs very little to get by and Fatah's proven capacity to engulf donor's money uselessly is limitless. A basic principal is at work here that explains the fall of Fatah and the rise of Hamas: when public servants are honest and hardworking it is surprising how much can be done with little money, but crooked politicians are a literally a bottomless pit. If the United States, Israel and the hapless European Union, were intelligent they would shower money on Hamas, hoping to corrupt them in the same way they did Fatah during the "Peace Process".>Hamas’s strategy is simple, as Ahmed Yousef the political adviser to the democratically elected Palestinian prime minister Ismail Haniya, explained in the New York Times, "We have begun disarming the drug dealers and the armed gangs and we hope to restore a sense of security and safety to the citizens of Gaza. We want to get children back to school, get basic services functioning again. (...) Our sole focus is Palestinian rights and good governance."

The "international community", by encouraging the Palestinian split, are giving Hamas and Fatah each their separate, universally publicized, chemically pure showcase: one for Hamas to demonstrate disciplined sacrifice and another for Fatah to demonstrate feckless larceny. This may have the unintended result of publicizing the Muslim Brotherhood style of government all over the endemically corrupt Middle East: something that could destabilize the west's "moderate" allies in the region. DS

The scene of Fatahland flowering as Hamastan wilts is sheer fantasy - Freedland - Guardian
Abstract: It sounds logical enough. Nurture a flowering Fatahland while pariah Hamastan withers away. But it is surely a delusion. The first and most obvious danger is that the more generous the west is to Abbas, the more his credibility will be destroyed. Every dollar or euro he takes will confirm him as the lackey of foreign powers, casting him alongside Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, Nuri al-Maliki of Iraq and Fuad Siniora of Lebanon as a mere western proxy. Each bouquet from Israel will tarnish him further, establishing him as the servant of the enemy. Already the Arab press is comparing Abbas with Antoine Lahad, the strongman whose hated South Lebanon Army served as Israel's policeman. As has happened so often before, in seeking to boost "moderates," the west only hugs them to death. Besides, the whole idea rests on a series of faulty assumptions. First, it assumes that Israel will indeed come through with the goodies it promises. On this, the record is not encouraging. Ehud Olmert has repeatedly met Abbas and promised the release of tax funds or greater freedom of movement, only to do nothing. Second, even if Israel does hand over the cash, there is no guarantee that Abbas's Fatah-dominated administration could translate that into improvements on the ground. Again, past experience is not encouraging. Put crudely, Fatah has shown itself to be either corrupt or incompetent or both. But let's be optimistic and imagine the new approach did indeed bear fruit on the West Bank. Do we imagine that Hamas would calmly sit by, watching itself being pushed out of the Palestinian future? Veteran Palestinian analyst and negotiator Ahmad Khalidi asks, "What incentive is there for Hamas to play along and not spoil it?" We all know how easy it would be to wreck any rapprochement between Fatahland and Israel: a simple terror attack on Israeli civilians and it would all be over. Hamas could be clever about it and ensure the attack came not from Gaza but from the West Bank, say in the Hamas stronghold of Nablus. That would undermine Abbas instantly. The dangers are multiple. If the West Bank is lavished with money but much of it stays in Fatah's gilded circle, thereby creating a class of haves and have-nots, there would be a surge of precisely the resentment that led to Hamas's election victory in January 2006. Who knows, Hamas could even end up taking over the West Bank too - after all, they had the edge over Fatah in elections there. Precedent makes clear that shunning the movement only makes it stronger. Ostracised for the last 18 months, they are more powerful than ever. READ IT ALL

Gaza: making an example or creating a model?

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Most of the analysis that I am reading about the Gaza situation seems to ignore what for me the major fact: Gaza is not under Israeli control nor under the control of anyone who bows their head to Washington. That is a revolution.

Washington and Jerusalem would like to starve Gaza into submission, but in today's news environment that is not an option, so there will be bread and lentils. Gaza is not Beverly Hills, the Gazans are tough as boots.

The next idea is to shower beneficence on the West Bank to create support for Fatah, but experience tells us that the Fatah's leaders will steal most of it... That's why the party of Yassir Arafat lost the elections to Hamas in the first place. Fatah is divided and corrupt, that is why despite better weapons they were so easily routed by Hamas in the Gaza fighting.

Prediction: In Gaza, the first thing that Hamas will do is install Sharia, which means orderly life in chaotic societies. They will clean up the streets, literally and figuratively. They will shoot the drug dealers and end price gouging in the markets. They will run the schools and the hospitals without stealing and before long the people of the West Bank will be longing to live like in Gaza, with honest leaders and no Israeli checkpoints or settlers. DS

World moves to support West Bank - BBC News Abstract: Hamas was and is boycotted because it does not accept the Quartet's conditions for engagement - recognition of Israel, renunciation of violence and acceptance of previous peace agreements. The aim is to revive the fortunes of President Abbas and Fatah (the main element in the PLO and once the arch-enemy of Israel but now seen as its negotiating partner) in the hope that he will be able to show that moderation is a better way forward for the Palestinians than extremism. The problem with this scenario is that it has been tried so often before and has failed because it has not delivered the state the Palestinians desire. The Israelis used to predict that moderate pro-Jordanian factions on the West Bank, the old families that prospered under King Hussein's rule there, would see off the radicals of Fatah. Now Fatah, rejected by Palestinian voters in January 2006 as corrupt and inefficient, is seen as the moderate grouping and the effort is on to push Hamas into a corner. The possibility now is that the West Bank will be favoured and Gaza be left to wither. At some stage, though, there will have to be new elections. These should show if the Western approach bears fruit.(...) Mouin Rabbani, senior analyst for the International Crisis Group, told Reuters: "My suspicion is that Gaza is going to come under an even stronger siege than before. "What the international community will try and do now is turn Gaza into hell while helping the West Bank, to show what you get when you elect people we like."(...) Israel itself has nearly $600m it owes the Palestinians from tax revenues and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who is in Washington for talks with President George W Bush on Tuesday, says this will be released. Israel, he said, would "empower the moderates". The moderates will want more than direct cash aid. Mr Abbas wants greater freedom of movement on the West Bank, the release of Palestinian prisoners, especially the leading Fatah figure Marwan Baghouti, and beyond that, a new effort to get peace talks going. How far Israel goes in that direction remains to be seen.(...) Internationally there might be a policy divergence between the EU and the US. Washington might see in this the chance of trying to crush Hamas, and through that, to diminish one of its supporters, Iran.(...) But an EU official said: "The question is whether it is positive to distinguish between the good guys on one side, and the bad guys on the other. We want to avoid partition." Russia takes the same view. READ IT ALL

Hamas puts a cat among the pigeons

David Seaton's News Links
Most observers seem oblivious to the most obvious fact that is staring them right in the face: Hamas controlled Gaza is the first example in all history of a "free Palestine"... and it has a democratically elected government.

In fact by expelling American and Israeli dominated Fatah from Gaza we now have a de facto "two state solution". Israelis have always called this sort of thing, "creating facts on the ground"... They are now being paid in their own coin.

The West Bank is still effectively occupied by the Israelis, which makes Abu Mazen little more than a puppet president. The only power in Gaza is Palestinian, Hamas was freely elected to govern the Palestinian Authority in elections that international observers considered "model" and is uncompromised and untainted in Arab eyes by subservience to Washington.

Surrounded by Israel on three sides, "Hamasitan" has one open frontier to Egypt. For them to be starved into submission, Israel and the USA would need the active, open and admitted collaboration of Egypt, the shame of which the Egyptian population, duly informed by satellite TV and the Internet, might not be prepared to tolerate.

It will now be possible for Hamas governed Palestine to declare its "independence" and be recognized by Iran, Syria, Cuba, Venezuela etc, and hundreds of assorted NGOs. Any Israeli attempt to crush "independent" Gaza militarily, if it lasted more than a few days, would have an electrifying effect on the entire Middle East and on the European left as well. If the defense of Gaza lasted too long and caused too many casualties, it might even destabilize the Jordanian monarchy. We are looking at a brilliant, revolutionary stroke. DS

Hamas capture priceless Palestinian Authority intelligence archives - Debka
Abstract: The Fatah-led general intelligence and security services caved in too fast to shred, wipe or burn documents, computer disks and archives. The entire collection fell into Hamas’ hands when they seized Palestinian Preventive Intelligence HQ at Tel Awa (henceforth Tel al-Islam) and the Palestinian General Intelligence center near Gaza port. DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources say: Never before has a bonanza of Western intelligence secrets on this scale ever reached an implacably hostile Islamist terrorist gang. The US, British and Israeli intelligence services may have suffered their greatest debacle in the war on Islamist terror. It will take them many years to recover. Hamas has taken possession of hundreds of thousands of documents cataloguing the clandestine operations of Western intelligence services in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia and the oil emirates. It is now the owner of complete archives of Palestinian undercover links with foreign intelligence services going back decades, with names of spies, political collaborators and double agents. The documentation covers the secret ties Palestinian intelligence maintained from the 1970s, when Yasser Arafat was based in Lebanon, with the Americans, the British, the French, the Israelis and many others. Most intelligence experts say Israel should have bombed the two buildings and destroyed their contents rather than letting them fall into the hands of an organization and country dedicated to its eclipse.(...) For Hamas, this booty is priceless – and not only as the repository of bombs for planting under Mahmoud Abbas and his cohorts. The Palestinian group’s Syrian and Iranian sponsors will pay a king’s ransom for this unique collection of explosive secrets hidden by many a Western intelligence agency and government. Damascus and Tehran will be hugely empowered with the means to stay a jump ahead of American moves in the region and tools to sabotage US policies at any time. They will have a store of national secrets and compromising information to hold over the heads of Western leaders and officials, lists of undercover agents, and records of covert operations carried out by the Israeli Mossad, Shin Bet and Military Intelligence, CIA, British MI6 and other Western agencies. Iran, Syria and Hamas will know the names of politicians, including Israelis, who worked secretly with Palestinians and their shady deals. One intelligence expert said that the Gaza hoard left in enemy hands by Abbas and Mohammed Dahlan are the crown jewels compared with the Saddam Hussein’s intelligence archives. READ IT ALL

Witless in Gaza

David Seaton's News Links
Nowhere, not even in Iraq, are the miseries and failings of American foreign policy as evident as in the Gaza strip. Nowhere has the distance between the rhetoric and the reality so painfully, so obscenely evident.

And nowhere has Israel acted more stupidly... The two state solution is dead and short of ethnic cleansing on a huge scale or an atomic war against all comers... or both, Israel's future consists of facing eternally a people who fight them by day and make babies by night. DS

Few Good Options for U.S. on Palestinian Violence - New York Times
Abstract: For two years, the United States has tried to choke off Hamas, the militant Islamic group that has been ascendant in Gaza and the West Bank, while throwing limited aid and support to Fatah, its more moderate Palestinian rival. Now, with Fatah, the party of the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, on the verge of collapse in Gaza, Washington is facing a shrinking menu of alternatives. “We have limited options, and most of them are bad,” said Martin S. Indyk, the former United States ambassador to Israel. America’s options are limited in part because its role has been limited, with the Bush administration pursuing what for the most part has been a hands-off policy toward the Palestinians. In public comments on Wednesday, Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, said that the hope of averting a wider civil war remained largely in the Palestinians’ hands.(,,,) “There are a lot of people now who are angry and are saying, ‘Let Hamas govern Gaza, let Gaza go to hell,’ ” said Ghaith al-Omari, a former foreign policy adviser to Mr. Abbas who is now a fellow at the New America Foundation, a public-policy institute in Washington. But that is a prospect that Israel and the United States fear could lead to a situation in which Gaza becomes a breeding ground for terrorists. “There appears to be a near-total takeover of Gaza by Hamas, which could create a major danger because it would result in an Iranian-backed terrorist state on our doorsteps, between us and Egypt,” Sallai Meridor, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, said in an interview. “We are watching the developments very seriously.” Mr. Indyk, who is head of the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy, argued that such a development could have consequences far beyond the carnage of a civil war between rival Palestinian factions. “What would happen is that Hamas would take over and Gaza will be a full terrorist state, right on the fault line of the Western world,” Mr. Indyk said. “We should all understand what the stakes are here. It will be a haven for all the bad guys — Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad.”(...) Israeli and some Fatah officials have appealed for an international force — possibly under the auspices of the United Nations — to try to restore order in Gaza. But Middle East experts say that few countries are willing to send troops into the increasingly lawless territory, and Bush administration officials expressed little interest on Wednesday in supporting such a force. READ IT ALL