Tag: israel/palestine

al-Shorouk’s story on secret Sudan raids

The relatively new Egyptian newspaper al-Shorouk has been making some news yesterday, reporting that the US air force had been engaged in a series of attacks against convoys of trucks carrying arms in Eastern Sudan. The destination of the trucks, apparently, was Gaza via Sinai. Needless to say this is a huge story, not only because it would appear to confirm allegations that Hamas is obtaining Iranian-purchased arms via Sudan (and probably originally Djibouti) and that they are being smuggled through Sinai and the Rafah tunnels. It followed up on the story today alleging that US Air Force raids had claimed 300 lives.

The reason we’ve never heard about any of this, apparently, is that the US is not advertising the operations, the al-Bashir regime in Khartoum has declared a media blackout, and Egypt is respecting the blackout but keeping a close eye since this involves major arms traffic (it’s an old route, once used by the French poet Rimbaud) going through its territory. Today al-Shorouk said that an Egyptian intelligence agent visited the area to verify the issue.

I’ve been talking about this with a few people who closely follow the news yesterday and we’re all rather skeptical at this point. Some of the Egyptian press (not necessarily al-Shorouk though, as far as I know) has a bad reputation for pulling things out of thin air or basing them on unreliable disinformation websites like Debka. This would be a huge, world scoop if it turns out to be true, involving so many of the region’s hottest issues: arms trade, illegal US operations, Hamas’ supply line, Iran, Sudan and its recently indicted president. The story also assumes that a convoy of trucks carrying weapons (presumably the Grad rockets Hamas is launching against Israel) are able to make their way through Egypt, which seems impossible without the cooperation of the government or serious wasta up high. (That being said, drugs use the same route, and small arms did come from Sudan during the Islamist insurrection of the 1980s and 1990s.)

So basically, either al-Shorouk got it wrong, or it has revealed the first secret military actions of the Obama administration to control the arms smuggling to Gaza issue – as the Bush administration had promised Israel in the MOU it signed in mid-January. I’m a skeptic, but I’ll be watching how this develops.

Fundamentalism in Israel’s army

It’s been a while since I agreed with Christopher Hitchens on anything else than the theory of evolution:

“Peering over the horrible pile of Palestinian civilian casualties that has immediately resulted, it’s fairly easy to see where this is going in the medium-to-longer term. The zealot settlers and their clerical accomplices are establishing an army within the army so that one day, if it is ever decided to disband or evacuate the colonial settlements, there will be enough officers and soldiers, stiffened by enough rabbis and enough extremist sermons, to refuse to obey the order. Torah verses will also be found that make it permissible to murder secular Jews as well as Arabs. The dress rehearsals for this have already taken place, with the religious excuses given for Baruch Goldstein’s rampage and the Talmudic evasions concerning the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. Once considered highly extreme, such biblical exegeses are moving ever closer to the mainstream. It’s high time the United States cut off any financial support for Israel that can be used even indirectly for settler activity, not just because such colonization constitutes a theft of another people’s land but also because our Constitution absolutely forbids us to spend public money on the establishment of any religion.”

Hat tip: Mango Girl.

A message from the Israeli tourist board

I can’t resist interjecting some facts for prospective tourists for Israel who are lured by this video that’s lately been aired in the US:

Actually, if you visit Israel, there is a good chance that YOU WILL DIE.

It’s not just the suicide bombings, stray rockets, crazed bulldozer operators and various types of assassins. It’s also the head-fucked IDF soldiers, rabidly anti-gentile Jewish fundamentalists, settlers and crazy Russian mob types. Even if they don’t kill you, they are generally rather unpleasant: just look at the customer service at those electronics stores in New York City. You know this is the place where Armageddon Hill is located, and where the Messiah is set to fight the undead armies of the Anti-Christ. Why take the chance when the Bahamas are sunnier, France has better food and Morocco more oriental exotica than you could possibly ever need?

And on top of it there’s a chance you’ll be given a full-body cavity search at the airport. No really, that does happen. Frequently. That doesn’t happen in Mayorca, does it? Or Buenos Aires.

“No one belongs here more than you” they say at the end of the ad. Well, why not let millions of ethnically cleansed Palestinians have a go first, and come back when they’ve sorted that out.

P.S. I remember the old ad, “Have a ball… in Israel” was a much better jingle, especially to the tune of “Hava Nagila”. Great song, that.

Not just a slogan on a T-shirt

Lawrence of Cyberia goes through those hilarious Israeli army T-shirts and matches them with the war crime behind them:

That crazy Israeli sense of humor

This is Israel

Dead Palestinian babies and bombed mosques – IDF fashion 2009 – Haaretz – Israel News:

“Dead babies, mothers weeping on their children’s graves, a gun aimed at a child and bombed-out mosques – these are a few examples of the images Israel Defense Forces soldiers design these days to print on shirts they order to mark the end of training, or of field duty. The slogans accompanying the drawings are not exactly anemic either: A T-shirt for infantry snipers bears the inscription ‘Better use Durex,’ next to a picture of a dead Palestinian baby, with his weeping mother and a teddy bear beside him. A sharpshooter’s T-shirt from the Givati Brigade’s Shaked battalion shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a bull’s-eye superimposed on her belly, with the slogan, in English, ‘1 shot, 2 kills.’ A ‘graduation’ shirt for those who have completed another snipers course depicts a Palestinian baby, who grows into a combative boy and then an armed adult, with the inscription, ‘No matter how it begins, we’ll put an end to it.’

There are also plenty of shirts with blatant sexual messages. For example, the Lavi battalion produced a shirt featuring a drawing of a soldier next to a young woman with bruises, and the slogan, ‘Bet you got raped!’ A few of the images underscore actions whose existence the army officially denies – such as ‘confirming the kill’ (shooting a bullet into an enemy victim’s head from close range, to ensure he is dead), or harming religious sites, or female or child non-combatants. “

Oh but they do try so hard to avoid civilian casualties…

Choking on my chapattis

No posts this week as I have been attending a wedding in Goa, India for the last few days. Having been almost completely unplugged from my usual internet addiction, I had missed the news that Chas Freeman has been forced into withdrawing his nomination to head the US National Intelligence Council. And that the man leading the campaign is the AIPAC staffer who is on trial for espionage (and unfortunately will probably not be convicted.) More here. I did not like the fact that Freeman had ties to the Saudi lobby but find it a bit rich that he was attacked by the most powerful and malicious foreign policy lobby in the US for this, especially considering the Israel lobby’s responsibility for 20 years of failed US Middle East policy. I hope the new nominee will be someone just as (or more!) outspoken on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Normal ranting and links will resume next week.

For Obama, Helping Gaza Is Harder Than It Looks

For Obama, Helping Gaza Is Harder Than It Looks:

“Ignoring those contradictions might be acceptable in furtherance either of the simple moral goal of helping thousands of people in need or, more cynically, in pursuit of the public relations win that might come from being seen to do so. But much of the money pledged in Sharm el-Sheikh may never actually go to helping Palestinians in Gaza at all. At a Paris conference in late 2007, the international community started a pledge drive that eventually totaled $7.7 billion in proposed aid to the Palestinians. By September 2008, only $1.4 billion had gone through to the Palestinian Authority according to French diplomat Pierre Duquesne, thanks to the difficulty of distributing the aid and a failure of donors to actually deliver the promised money.

USAID says it committed $600 million after the Paris donor’s conference, including $300 million in budget support to the Palestinian Authority and $184.7 million in refugee assistance. Other countries, especially the Arab donors, did not follow through on their own pledges. With $6 billion in undelivered pledges, the Sharm el-Sheikh summit may simply repurpose the same money pledged a year ago in Paris. And it seems perfectly possible, barring dramatic changes in the Middle East political equation, that a year from now another summit will propose more humanitarian goals, boldly repurposing unused Paris-Sharm el Sheikh money.”

These are important points – a lot of money has already been pledged to Palestinians, but not disbursed. The conference has been held under the same basic premise – isolation of Hamas in favor of Fatah – that the whole “West Bank first” policy is based on. Yet, the Egyptian initiative and Palestinian reconciliation talks aimed at creating some kind of National Unity Government would suggest a move away from that scenario. The visits of John Kerry, Javier Solana and Tony Blair to Gaza also suggest a change of attitude towards Hamas – unless they are mere PR.

So what will it be? Full backing for Palestinian reconciliation, with the understanding that this means dealing with at least parts of a Hamas-staffed NUG? Or pretending to want Palestinian reconciliation but acting as if it has no prospects and continuing a failed policy? Does the EU, do the Arabs have to wait for Obama to make up his mind about this? They should make his job easier and change policies unilaterally, Obama is saddled with an AIPAC-controlled Congress and probably can’t change the policy even if he wanted to. But others can make it clear that they will no longer slavishly follow the American lead here – America is an obstacle, not a leader, in Israeli-Arab peace.

This does not mean engaging Hamas directly. But at the very least it means clearly, unequivocally, supporting Palestinian reconciliation as the most urgent priority in the next few months and providing some guarantees that the international community would not abandon a NUG because Ismail Haniyeh or some other Hamas leader is a member. You can figure out the money later, for now, will the Quartet continue to back isolating Hamas over Palestinian reconciliation?

Also see: March Lynch is disappointed at Hillary Clinton for behaving like West Bank First is still the plan.

Update: Lynch posts a guest comment by Tamara Wittes, saying there is a big difference about what the US can do with its funding – which ultimately is controlled by Congress – and what it can do diplomatically. I agree, and this is what is referred to above, but I don’t get a real sense of clarity from what Hillary Clinton said at Sharm al-Sheikh. Maybe if Clinton wanted to support reconciliation, she should have said so more forthrightly. Nathan Brown also chimed in on the same point.