Wednesday, January 23, 2008

 

Omar Barghouti - Never Aganist!! European Collusion in Israel's Slow Genocide

The European Union, Israel's largest trade partner in the world, is watching by as Israel tightens its barbaric siege on Gaza, collectively punishing 1.5 million Palestinian civilians, condemning them to devastation, and visiting imminent death upon hundreds of kidney dialysis and heart patients, prematurely born babies, and all others dependent on electric power for their very survival.

By freezing fuel and electric power supplies to Gaza, Israel, the occupying power, is essentially guaranteeing that "clean" water -- only by name, as Gaza's water is perhaps the most polluted in the whole region, after decades of Israeli theft and abuse -- will not be pumped out and properly distributed to homes and institutions; hospitals will not be able to function adequately, leading to the eventual death of many, particularly the most vulnerable; whatever factories that are still working despite the siege will now be forced to close, pushing the already extremely high unemployment rate even higher; sewage treatment will come to a halt, further polluting Gaza's precious little water supply; academic institutions and schools will not be able to provide their usual services; and the lives of all civilians will be severely disrupted, if not irreversibly damaged. And Europe is apathetically watching.

Princeton academic Richard Falk considered Israel's siege a "prelude to genocide," even before this latest crime of altogether cutting off energy supplies. Now, Israel's crimes in Gaza can accurately be categorized as acts of genocide, albeit slow. According to Article II of the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the term is defined as:
"[A]ny of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; ..."

Clearly, Israel's hermetic siege of Gaza, designed to kill, cause serious bodily and mental harm, and deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about partial and gradual physical destruction, qualifies as an act of genocide, if not all-out genocide yet. And the EU is suspiciously silent.

But why accuse Europe, in particular, of collusion in this crime when almost the entire international community is not lifting a finger, and the UN's obsequious Secretary-General, who surpassed all his predecessors in obedience to the US government, is pathetically paying only lip service? In addition, what of the US government itself, Israel's most generous sponsor that is directly implicated in the current siege, especially after President George W. Bush, on his recent visit, gave a hardly subtle green light to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to ravage Gaza?

Why not blame the Palestinians' quiet Arab brethren, particularly Egypt -- the only country that can immediately break the siege by reopening the Rafah crossing and supplying through it the necessary fuel, electric power and emergency supplies? And finally, why not blame the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority, whose subservient and visionless leader openly boasted in a press conference its "complete agreement" with Bush on all matters of substance?

After Israel, the US is, without a doubt, the guiltiest party in the current crime. Under the influence of a fundamentalist, militaristic, neo-conservative ideology that has taken over its helms of power and an omnipotent Zionist lobby that is unparalleled in its sway, the US is in a category by itself. It goes without saying that the PA, the UN, as well as Arab and international governments maintaining business as usual with Israel should all be held accountable for acquiescing, whether directly or indirectly, to Israel's crimes against humanity in Gaza. It is also true that each one of the above bears the legal and moral responsibility to intervene and apply whatever necessary pressure to stop the crime before thousands perish. But the EU commands a unique position in all this. It is not only silent and apathetic; in most European countries Israel and Israeli institutions are currently welcomed and sought after with unprecedented warmth, generosity and deference in all fields -- economic, cultural, academic, athletic, etc. For instance, Israel was invited as the guest of honor to a major book fair in Turin, Italy. Israeli government-funded films are featuring in film festivals all over the continent. Israeli products, from avocados and oranges to hi-tech security systems, are flooding European markets like never before. Israeli academic institutions are enjoying a special, very lucrative, association agreement with the relevant organs in the EU. Israeli dance groups, singing bands and orchestras are invited to European tours and festivals as if Israel were not only a normal, but in effect a most favored, member of the so-called "civilized" world. Official Europe's once lackluster embrace of Israel has turned into an intense, open and enigmatic love affair.

If Europe thinks it can thus repent for its Holocaust against its own Jewish population, it is in fact shamefully and consciously facilitating the committal of fresh acts of genocide against the people of Palestine. But Palestinians, it appears, do not count for much, as we are viewed not only by Israel, but also by its good old "white" sponsors and allies as lesser, or relative, humans. The continent that invented modern genocide and was responsible for massacring in the last two centuries more human beings, mostly "relative humans," than all other continents put together is covering up crimes that are reminiscent in quality, though certainly not in quantity, of its own heinous crimes against humanity.

In no other international affair, perhaps, can the European establishment be accused of being as detached from and indifferent to its own public opinion. While calls for boycotting Israel as an apartheid state are slowly but consistently spreading among European civil society organizations and trade unions, drawing disturbing parallels to the boycott of South African apartheid, European governments are finding it difficult to distinguish themselves from the overtly complicit US position vis-a-vis Israel. Even European clichés of condemnation and "expressing deep concern" have become rarer than ever nowadays. Moreover, Israel's relentless and defiant violation of Europe's own human rights laws and conditions are ignored whenever anyone questions whether Israel should continue to benefit from its magnanimous association agreement with the EU despite its military occupation, colonization and horrific record of human rights abuse against its Palestinian victims. If this is not complicity, what is?

Morality aside, sinking Gaza into a sea of darkness, poverty, death and despair cannot bode well for Europe. By actively propping up an environment conducive to the rise of fanaticism and desperate violence near its borders, Europe is foolishly inviting havoc to its doorstep. Instead of heeding -- or at least seriously considering -- calls for boycott, divestment and sanctions against apartheid Israel, adopted by virtually the entire spectrum of Palestinian civil society, it may soon have to reckon with uncontainable forces of irrational and indiscriminate violence and its resulting chaos.

It seems European elites are currently determined never to oppose Israel, no matter what crimes it commits. It is as if the bellowing -- and increasingly hypocritical -- slogan upheld by Jewish survivors of European genocide, "Never Again!", is now espoused by European elites with one difference: the two letter, 's' and 't', are added at the end.

Omar Barghouti is an independent Palestinian political analyst and founding member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (www.PACBI.org)
Source: http://www.miftah.org/Display.cfm?DocId=15978&CategoryId=5

In Spanish On Rebelion: http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=62211

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# posted by thecutter @ 14:47 |

Friday, October 5, 2007

 

Fabio Mini (an Italian General) - "Operation Swarm"- War without End against Iran

Writing for Italy's l'Espresso, Italian General Fabio Mini has understood and explained the dangerous mechanisms of gaining consensus to wage war against "Enemies", which are variable and flexible according to the interests of hegemonic power. This enlightening article explains the manner in which War against Iran has been promoted in the West as well as the operative elements that will bring it about. A MUST READ! Translated from Italian by Diego Traversa and revised by Mary Rizzo for Tlaxcala and peacepalestine. (Also on peacepalestine by Fabio Mini: Even Escape is an Art, about the impossible disengagement from Iraq.

Anyone who thought that the green light for the Israeli-American attack against Iran would come from the American Congress, was wrong. Equally wrong were those who thought that a president like Bush, so frustrated by the Iraqi chaos, the Afghan deadlock and the industrial lobbies’ pressures, would wind up making the decision on his own. The attack against Iran will take place thanks to the newly-appointed French Foreign Minister Kouchner. In these years of threats and counter-threats, of pretexts to make war, the only “revealing” words have been those from the laconic phrase “we must prepare ourselves for the worst.” Many have taken these words as a slip of the lip, others have regarded them as a bad luck-dispelling provocation, others as an instigation and still others as a submission to an ineluctable event. It could be that the sentence contains all of this, but the profound essence of Kouchner’s words is different.

Strange connections and affinities have come into being in these last 15 years of worldwide military interventions of different kinds. Armies have been integrated with private soldiers, visionaries with mercenaries, business with ideology, and truth has gotten so imbued with lies that the propaganda’s logic can’t account for either. And one of the most unusual connections is the one that has been established between military staff, humanitarian workers and foreign policy, to such an extent that each of the three components can pass itself off as the other two. The main cement of this union is the emergency concept. Foreign politics has lost its nature of continuity in the relations between states and in the sphere of international organizations. It has been devoting itself for a while to running emergency relations, meaning extemporaneous relations connected to temporary and changeable interests or positions that are transitory and changeable to variable geometries.

At the end of the day, emergency politics is the only kind that allows a limited and selective commitment. Moreover, it can be done or undone at one’s will, since the dimension of the emergency can be manipulated or interpreted. Following the same manner of reasoning, the armies of these last 15 years have exclusively devoted themselves to emergency situations, preferably abroad and for so-called humanitarian reasons, in order to guarantee themselves consensus and support. There are no longer any armies able to defend their own territories or to provide defence in case of war. It’s increasingly difficult to find a state threatened with war by another state and today all the world’s armies rely on a minimum 12-month notice allowing them to mobilise the resources for national defence. Therefore, they have become specialized in emergency in the respect of both the kind and the timing of the interventions.

When Kouchner candidly states that we “must prepare ourselves for the worst” he simply interprets a philosophy which doesn’t have as its objective the searching for the best, less traumatic solution, but which instead calls on the political class to manage the emergency, the military means and the humanitarian organizations which have by now become inseparable. It’s also about the recognition of the political class’s incapacity itself to think of and find enduring solutions. It is about the military instruments and their incapacity in managing conflict situations until their complete stabilization, and the incapacity of the humanitarian organizations in settling the problems of the people in more long-term perspective than the one offered by emergency. Finally, Kouchner also admits that the summation of these incapacities leads inevitably to war.

Then, war it will be.

It’s obvious that, under these conditions, some exaggerations are required in order to assure the accomplishment of the emergency and the intervention of the various components: something has to happen: ­what the observers call the “trigger”­ so that it may provoke the political emergency, there has to be an immediate danger for the security of everyone and a humanitarian catastrophe has to be in sight (the bigger, the better). There has to be, in other words, a manageable apparatus capable of “inventing” the emergency, as well inventing its conclusion that will allow disengagement and the end of the commitment whether or not there has been any solution of these problems. The attack against Iran falls perfectly within this scenario and, looking at it carefully, it’s by now a nearly completed picture.

There are multiple pretexts available for the attack. The idea that Iran intends upon developing a nuclear bomb and to destroy Israel is by now widely recognized by everyone. What’s missing are confirmations and evidence beyond poor empty boasting, but in the past we have witnessed terroristic boasting that has at any rate, come about and nobody is willing to run the risk of underestimating it, not even for truth’s sake. An Iranian or Iranian-supported attack against the American forces in Iraq, this too without a scrap of proof, has started to persuade even the most sceptical people. Sooner or later, after much speaking about it and evoking it, it will be taken as an invitation or a challenge and it will really be carried out. The support Iran gives to Hamas and Hezbollah makes Teheran extremely vulnerable. An excess or mistake by one of these formations is sufficient to set off an immediate military intervention.

The foreign policy of the most major nations, Europe included, is by now used to the idea that a military intervention is able to bring Iran back to the positions it was in 20 years ago. Moreover, what’s starting to be accepted is the idea that the purpose isn’t only that of preventing a nuclear power from rising but also that of terminating the country as a regional player which embodies oil and strategic interests in every part of south central Asia. Regarding the military planning aspect, everything has already been prepared for a while. The plans for the attack date back to 1979, at the time of the US embassy crisis, and they have been updated with new technologies and strategies ever since.

The thesis that it’s about an attack basically aimed at the atomic installations with no collateral damage for the civil population is only a miserable fantasy from those who have by now become used to telling lies. Even the idea that it may be restricted to Iranian soil is suspicious to say the least, since the end of the stubbornness and the boastfulness of the Ayatollahs, on one side, and by the Israeli-Americans, on the other, has to do with interests and ambitions which go far beyond the Persian Gulf.

Whatever the kind of attack it may be, it will produce heavy military and civil casualties regardless of whether or not a nuclear emergency fall-out or a radiation leak is triggered. Any kind of attack must have as its premise the destruction of defence structures: air and missile bases, deposits, mobile ramps, military ports, naval units, radars and anti-aircraft artilleries, land and armoured units, communication and command headquarters will have to be eliminated before or during the attack against the nuclear installations.

Many of these structures are located near the most densely populated areas. Even taking into account the most sophisticated cruise missiles, the “intelligent” bombs directed against the targets by the Israeli and American commandos, who have already been operative for some time in Iran, a quite high margin of collateral effects remains. Were mini nuclear fission bombs or neutron bombs to be used instead of the conventional “bunker busting” bombs, the damage percentage might rise, even thought not as greatly as many expect.

Also the thesis that precise attacks may be carried out with only one component, the aerial and missile one, is a deception. A complex operation, as they say they want to realize, that aims at bringing the Iranian bellicose potential back to the stone age, requires multiple attack actions, with many forces, from many directions and in short lapses of time in order to prevent, as colonel Boyd used to say, any capability of decision, reaction and counter-strategy by the enemy. The multiple action has to also prevent the direct retaliation by the Iranian air and naval forces against the oil installations and cargos in the Persian and Oman Gulfs. It has to neutralise the missile threats against the American military bases in Central Asia and the Middle East. It has to prevent indirect Iranian strategic operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, the Caucasus area and anywhere else a Shia may represent trouble. Moreover, Teheran controls the northern coast of the Hormuz Straits and closing this seaway to oil cargos might cause oil prices to skyrocket to levels between 200 and 400 dollars per barrel.

The same would happen if Iran turned sabotage actions and bombings against the oil installations of other countries in the area. The military strategy of the attack against Iran can’t therefore be entrusted to a surgical attack or to one single component. It can be nothing but that of “Swarm Warfare” (or Horde Warfare), unearthed by Arquilla and Ronfeld after the unmatchable realization by Gengis Khan. In modern terms, this strategy makes all the components of war­land operative, naval, air, missile, space, virtual and information ones­ on multiple settings and levels. To achieve all this, it’s necessary that the “swarm” of the various components and actions, which develop by focusing on one place and then by spreading to other directions and places, be are at least sufficient enough in order to prevent any sort of reaction. The hordes entrusted with destroying the targets materially have to get integrated and to focus on targets along with the virtual hordes of diplomatic actions, of psychological warfare and with those of the manipulation of information.

The military actions have to be aimed at creating a humanitarian emergency that allows the international organizations to intervene in Iranian territory. Obviously, the responsibility for the catastrophe must be pinned on the Iranians themselves. Even in this respect, everything is ready or practically ready, not least after Kouchner’s exhortation. International agencies and NGOs are already looking forward to going to Iran to set women free from their chadors. If they are given the chance to intervene so as to gather refugees, to treat the wounded, to do the counts of the dead and to call elections every month, there will be a rush to bring democracy to Iran.

This scenario’s complexity shouldn’t lead one to think that it’s necessary to deploy a huge amount of forces. The Israeli and American flight formations’ bombing capacities are so high that they can cover multiple targets with a limited amount of jets. The naval missiles are by now technological weapons that don’t require mass interventions to carry out precise or wide-scale destruction. If anything, the variety of the plans and the kinds of intervention will bring about coordination, command and control problems, yet nothing out of the ordinary. The US and Israel have been cooperating for half a century and the matters of pseudo-authorizations from third countries about flying over or troops’ transit are by now overcome both by political accords with concerned countries and by the two powers’ inclination to ignore any objections.

What remains is the serious and important unknown of the post-emergency. The doubt about the future of a state which retains imperial origins and outlooks and which finds itself being turned from “rogue state” into “loser state” and being regarded as a political and strategic black hole after having been considered as aspiring to the role of regional power. Deep uncertainty remains not so much for the reaction to the defeat or the reduction of its aspirations but for the reaction to the humiliation. What can’t be ruled out is just what they want to avoid, that is, Iran’s nuclearization, still to be proved and implemented, which might instead be favoured with the help of foreign powers as a reaction to the humiliation.

Fabio Mini is an Italian General, former commander of the NATO forces in Kossovo.
Italian original: http://espresso.repubblica.it/dettaglio/Operazione-sciame-di-fuoco/1796788 Translated by Diego Traversa and revised by Mary Rizzo, members of Tlaxcala.

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# posted by thecutter @ 14:01 |

Saturday, March 31, 2007

 

Gino Strada Interview - Daniele Mastrogiacomo: Appeal for Liberation of Hostages in Afghanistan

Gino Strada: without guarantees for Rahmatullah, we will reconsider our presence in Kabul
In the photo: Gino Strada with Rahmatullah Hanefi

The head surgeon of the Non-government Organisation raises a sound of alarm for the mediator: “He’s been transferred into a jail in the Capital”

Attilio Bolzoni for La Repubblica

ROME – He has returned to Italy, but his thoughts still turn to Kabul. He is worried about his friend Rahmatullah and he wants him to be liberated immediately. “And, instead we have come to find out just now that he’s been transferred into one of the three prisons of the Afghan Capital,” Gino Strada says, the surgeon who ten days ago brought Daniele Mastrogiacomo safely home. He is expected at the march that should be large this Saturday in Rome at Piazza Navona. He is especially awaiting a signal from the government of Kabul for the release of the head of staff of the Emergency hospital at Laskar Gah.

When was Rahmatullah Hanefi brought to the jails of the Afghani Capital?

“From what we know, Wednesday afternoon he was brought by a convoy of vehicles of the NSD, the Afghani secret services. We have asked to be able to see him, one of our representatives at Kabul tried this morning, without any success: they would not let him meet him. I know that tomorrow Ettore Sequi, the Italian ambassador, will ask officially for a visit with him.

Will Emergency try again to see him or to speak with him?

“Of course, starting tomorrow. Among other things, the Minister of Justice of Afghanistan signed a precise agreement with us: there is a protocol that foresees that all of those in the Afghani hospitals are visited by our doctors at the moment of their entrance into penitentiary. All of the prisoners, no one excluded. But in this case, they are violating the protocol. And then, paradoxically, really, right in this prison of Kabul, Emergency has one of its clinics. In this way, the position of Emergency is up for scrutiny. If this is how things are going to continue, we will be forced to revise our plans in Afghanistan. Certainly, we won’t close the hospitals. But there is going to be reconsideration of Emergency there if we don’t have the guarantees of operating in serenity.”

But the government truly wants you there…

“I repeat: we are not going to leave, perhaps we will have to make some changes.”

How much time do you expect it to take until the position of Rahmatullah is clear, to know why he as taken away by the secret services at dawn on 20 March?

“Nothing will be made clear, because there is nothing to clear, all that remains is to ask for his immediate liberation. Rahmatullah Hanefi is being imprisoned only because he did what the Italian government asked him to do. Through Emergency, he offered his help as mediator to save the life of Daniele Mastrogiacomo. Our friend Rahmatullah had practically done volunteer work for the Italian government. And after that, the Italian government itself made agreements with the Afghan government. At the end of the situation, one of the parties decided that the volunteer had to be imprisoned.”

Who wanted that, in your view?

“The other day, I spoke for a long time with the Afghani Minister of Health, Amin Fatimie. It was an official meeting, the ambassador Sequi was there as well. Would you like to know what the Minister told me? He said that he couldn’t understand perfectly what was happening, that there was something that was not very clear, that there were – and I quote him – invisible hands that were moving things. There may also be invisible hands, but the uniforms that those persons were wearing were quite visible and quite recognisable: they are those of the Afghani secret services, the NSD. Another paradox of this case: Rahmatullah was already arrested in 2001 by the Taleban religious police. Four months of prison was what he had to go through, and to release him, strong intervention and pressure was required. Then the Talebans kept him in all that time, now he’s been jailed again, but for the opposite reasons.

Has Emergency got any information on what has become of Adjmal Nashkbandi, the interpreter of Daniele, captured together with him at Helmand?

“Unfortunately, we are unaware of any news there. The only person who could give us some was Rahmatullah, and now he’s in prison…”

What do you make of the announcement made by Mullah Dadullah at Sky News 24? Was it recorded before the liberation of Daniele, or afterwards?

“I don’t have the elements to establish exactly when Dadullah spoke. But, there is something very anomalous in that message, or at the very least, something new. He has never recognised the Karzai government, and now he says that they have to deal with him in order to release Adjmal. He says that the Afghani government has to speak with him and they have to free the two Talibans that have been requested.”

Mullah Dudallah, in his interview, repeats the idea of his of journalist-spies, on those others who do not recount everything that they’ve seen down in Afghanistan…

“In our hospitals in the past few weeks, there has been a terrifying number of civilian victims. The huge offensive of the NATO in the southern provinces of the country seems to be ignored by everyone. There are so many dead, there are so many wounded.”

Appeal by Daniele Mastrogiacomo

“Adjmal and Rahmat: their freedom is my own”

I am worried, in anguish and afflicted for the fate of Adjmal Nashkbandi and Rahmatullah Hanefi. They are two friends, two men to whom I am linked in an unbreakable bond. Adjmal was my interpreter and had lived through the same prisons with me for two weeks, an imprisonment that has worn us down psychologically and physically, and that we are continuing to suffer. He has seen, just as I have, the assassination of our driver Sayed Agha. I saw them free him from his chains, then I saw them take him away in another convoy. Now I discover, with bitterness, that he is still in the hands of the Talibans. The agreement that was reached, or so our kidnappers told us, foresaw the freedom of both of us. In the same way and at the same time. It was not that way.

Rahmatullah was the person who saved my life, who came to get me, in person, in the deep south of Afghanistan. He is a man of peace, he works for Emergency, a humanitarian organisation. He served a role that was unbiased, he was a mediator. We know that he is being held in some structure of the Afghani police, that he is being interrogated, that no independent organisation, no official authority, has been allowed to meet him. We have no news of his conditions. We don’t know where he is being imprisoned. It is a tragic, unjust reality that is causing me anxiety. Rahmatullah and Adjmal have to be freed immediately. I make an appeal to the government and parliament of Afghanistan, to the president Hamid Karzai, to the United Nations, to the UNAMA, to all the western embassies present at Kabul, to the non-governmental organisations that have been active in Afghanistan for years, so that they mobilise and use any influence they might have, acting in every possible seat, in order to bring Adjmal and Rahmatullah back home. Their freedom is my own.
Translated from Italian by Mary Rizzo for peacepalestine and Tlaxcala.

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# posted by thecutter @ 21:59 |

Friday, March 30, 2007

 

Afghanistan/Association of Non-Violent Objectors: “Not in our Names!”

“Yesterday’s vote in the Italian Senate, which has paved the way for the refinancing of the military missions from Italy, especially the mission in Afghanistan, was done ‘not in our names’.” Such was the comment by Massimo Paolicelli, President of the Association of Non-Violent Objectors.

“The increase in military spending of 11%,” Paolicelli continues, “the confirmation of the project of attack fighter planes with the capacity to transport JSF nuclear warheads, the new USA army base in Vicenza and now the permanence of the failed war in Afghanistan of the Italian troops and the utilisation of mercenaries in Iraq, are the tragic result brought home by the Centre-Left government in less than a year, literally going against the program that it had called to Italians to vote on.

We are asking more than anything for the respect of Article 11 of the Constitution, violated in Afghanistan where a war is underway, where Italian troops participate together with those of the NATO. We are asking for the immediate withdrawal of our troops in order to permit a different kind of presence in Afghanistan, alongside the civil society and the democratic forces, who have been abandoned by the NATO mission. It is worrying that our Foreign Affairs Minister has a-critically cited, as the road towards reconciliation, the foreseen amnesty of the Karzai government, which has been accepted favourably by the warlords who are sitting in Parliament, but very strongly protested by the democratic forces of Afghanistan.

It is upsetting to see many of our Italian Parliament members who had demonstrated in marches in the past few years against the wars, without “ifs, ands, or buts”, but then leave their consciences hanging with their overcoats outside the halls of Parliament, and enter into the Hall in order to refinance Italian participation in a war, hiding themselves behind a finger – given that they support a some kind of proposal for a peace conference (that should take place after the Spring bloodletting) and some additional crumb dropped on the plates of cooperation. All of this is ‘not in our names’.”

Rome 28 March, 2007
Translated by Mary Rizzo for Tlaxcala

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# posted by thecutter @ 15:00 |

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