Middle East

The Ghoulish Face Of Empire

June 24, 2014 Chris Hedges, www.truthdig.com Educate! Foreign Policy, Iraq, Middle East, Wars and Militarism

The black-clad fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, sweeping a collapsing army and terrified Iraqis before them as they advance toward Baghdad, reflect back to us the ghoulish face of American empire. They are the specters of the hundreds of thousands of people we murdered in our deluded quest to remake the Middle East. They are ghosts from the innumerable roadsides and villages where U.S. soldiers and Marines, jolted by explosions of improvised explosive devices, responded with indiscriminate fire. They are the risen remains of the dismembered Iraqis left behind by blasts of Hellfire and cruise missiles, howitzers, grenade launchers and drone strikes. They are the avengers of the gruesome torture and the sexual debasement that often came with being detained by American troops. They are the final answer to the collective humiliation of an occupied country, the logical outcome of Shock and Awe, the Frankenstein monster stitched together from the body parts we left scattered on the ground. They are what we get for the $4 trillion we wasted on the Iraq War. The language of violence engenders violence. The language of hate engenders hate. “I and the public know what all schoolchildren learn,” W.H. Auden wrote. “Those to whom evil is done do evil in return.” It is as old as the Bible.

South African Church Leaders Endorse Israeli Apartheid Week

March 10, 2014 Ali Abunimah, www.electronicintifada.net Resist! Apartheid, BDS, Middle East, Palestine, Racism

"On Sunday, Anglican Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town Desmond Tutu reiterated his support for IAW and for the Palestinian-led campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) on Israel. “People who are denied their dignity and rights deserve the solidarity of their fellow human beings,” Tutu said in a statement. “I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing in the Holy Land that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under Apartheid,” Tutu added. “Their humiliation is familiar to all black South Africans who were corralled and harassed and insulted and assaulted by the security forces of the Apartheid government.” Recalling the role of BDS in ending apartheid in South Africa, Tutu said the “same issues of inequality and injustice today motivate the divestment movement trying to end Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestinian territory and the unfair and prejudicial treatment of the Palestinian people by the Israeli government ruling over them.”

9 Brands To Boycott To Hold Israel Accountable

February 20, 2014 Beth Perry, www.policymic.com Resist! BDS, Israel, Middle East, Palestine

"Boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) are big news in 2014. If Scarlett Johansson's Sodastream fiasco didn't grab your attention, perhaps the American Studies Association's boycott of Israeli universities did, or Netanyahu's increasing talk of million-dollar PR campaigns, legal offensives and diplomacy efforts to counter the BDS threat. Opinion pages are filled with debate, John Kerry has warned Israel that it could be facing a delegitimization campaign "on steroids" and voices from all sides are speculating that a boycott movement against Israel could be about to break into the mainstream."

Cracks In The Imperial Partnership?

February 14, 2014 Jason Farbman, www.socialistworker.org Educate! Iran, Israel, Middle East, Syria, Wars and Militarism

"This sentiment was echoed from the floor of the Senate, where Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein denounced the bill. Feinstein took apart AIPAC, argument by argument. She warned the bill would jeopardize the stability the U.S. is trying to generate, arguing, "It says to the U.K., China, Russia, France and Germany that our country cannot be trusted to stand behind our diplomatic commitments." Feinstein decried the bill as a "march to war." While she took pains to reassert her commitment to Israel's self-defense, she also confidently stated, "We cannot let Israel determine when and where the U.S. goes to war." The pushback against AIPAC from the White House, Feinstein and others has opened the door to criticism from other quarters. Feinstein's Senate speech came "amidst a surprising spate of newspaper editorials against the bill, particularly given the dearth of actual news coverage about it," as foreign policy critic Jim Lobe noted."

Tunisia Passes Progressive Constitution

February 13, 2014 Hayes Brown, www.thinkprogress.org Educate! Arab Spring, Middle East, Tunisia

After what had at times been a slow and frustrating process, the Tunisian National Assembly on Sunday evening voted to approve what is one of the most progressive constitutions in the region, with only 12 members of the 216-member legislative body voting against. Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki and outgoing Assembly chief Mustapha Ben Jaafar signed the document on Monday morning, bringing it into effect. With its new constitution, Tunisia, the starting place of the massive protests that swept Western Asia and North Africa in 2011, manages in some ways to surpass even the United States in terms of enshrining progressive ideals.

The Last Apartheid State

February 13, 2014 Bill Mullen, www.socialistworker.org Resist! BDS, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, Wars and Militarism

"The American Studies Association (ASA) passed a resolution in mid-December announcing its intention to honor the academic and cultural boycott of Israeli institutions called for by the Palestinian boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement. The ASA vote helped to catapult discussion of BDS and Israel's denial of rights to Palestinians into the mainstream. On February 3, Students for Justice in Palestine at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., held a forum on "Why the Boycott? Panel on the ASA Decision and Academic Freedom." Bill Mullen is a professor of English and American Studies at Purdue University and member of the ASA's Caucus on Academic and Community Activism, which made the initial motion for the ASA to consider an academic boycott. Here, we print an edited version of his speech."

The NSA’s Secret Role In The U.S. Assassination Program

February 10, 2014 Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald, www.firstlook.org Educate! Drones, Middle East, NSA, Wars and Militarism, Whistleblowers

"The National Security Agency is using complex analysis of electronic surveillance, rather than human intelligence, as the primary method to locate targets for lethal drone strikes – an unreliable tactic that results in the deaths of innocent or unidentified people[…]any strike is taken, there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured – the highest standard we can set.” He added that, “by narrowly targeting our action against those who want to kill us and not the people they hide among, we are choosing the course of action least likely to result in the loss of innocent life.” But the increased reliance on phone tracking and other fallible surveillance tactics suggests that the opposite is true. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which uses a conservative methodology to track drone strikes, estimates that at least 273 civilians in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia have been killed by unmanned aerial assaults under the Obama administration."

IMPORTANT UPDATE Extremist Senators Threat Of Iran War Stopped

January 14, 2014 Sarah Lazare, www.commondreams.org Organize! Iran, Middle East, Wars and Militarism

"A majority of Senate Democrats are refusing to reveal where they stand on a bipartisan Iran sanctions bill that experts warn risks a catastrophic war with Iran[…]The bill would advance further sanctions on Iran and impose near-impossible conditions on a final agreement. It stands in direct violation of an interim agreement reached in late November in Geneva that the U.S. will "refrain from imposing new nuclear-related sanctions" during the six-month period the agreement is in effect, and critics charge it amounts to a call for war."

Safety Elusive for Destitute Families in Kabul

January 13, 2014 Kathy Kelly, www.coolrevolution.net Educate! Afghanistan, Middle East

I came to the camp with young activists of the Afghan Peace Volunteers there to distribute heavy coverlets, (duvets), manufactured with foreign donations by local seamstresses, precisely for distribution free of charge to Kabul’s neediest people in the winter months. The UK sister organization to my own group, Voices for Creative Nonviolence, will distribute food packages in the camp during the coming week. We’ll never know who the fire might have killed, because when the old or the young die from the pressures of poverty, of homelessness, of war, we can’t know which disaster tipped the balance. We won’t know which catastrophe, specifically, will have taken any lives lost here to this dreadful winter. Many will be consumed by the slow conflagration of widespread poverty, corruption, inequality and neglect.

Noam Chomsky: Sabra & Shatila Massacre That Forced Sharon’s Ouster Recalls Worst of Jewish Pogroms

January 13, 2014 Staff, www.democracynow.org Educate! Chomsky, Human Rights, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, Wars and Militarism

" It was almost a replica of the Kishinev massacre in pre-First World War Russia, one of the worst atrocities in Israeli memory, led to a famous nationalist poem by the main Israeli poet, Chaim Nahman Bialik, "City of Killing." The tsar’s army had surrounded this town and allowed the people within it to rampage, killing Jews for three days. They killed 45 people. That was—that’s pretty much what happened in Sabra-Shatila: Israeli army surrounded it, sent in the Phalangist forces, who were obviously bent on murder[…]Lebanese Christian terrorist force, allied with Israel. The soldiers watched as they illuminated it. They helped them enter. They watched for several days while they murdered, not 45 people, but somewhere—Israel claims 800, other analyses go up to several thousand. That’s the Sabra-Shatila massacre. The idea that Sharon had indirect—the tsar, incidentally, was bitterly condemned internationally for direct responsibility."

Noam Chomsky on the Legacy of Ariel Sharon: Not Speaking Ill of the Dead “Imposes a Vow of Silence”

January 13, 2014 Staff, www.democracynow.org Educate! Chomsky, Human Rights, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, Wars and Militarism

"Well, you know, there is a convention that you’re not supposed to speak ill of the recently dead, which unfortunately imposes a kind of vow of silence because there’s nothing else to say—there’s nothing good to say. What both Rashid and Avi Shlaim have said is exactly accurate. He was a brutal killer. He had one fixed idea in mind, which drove him all his life: a greater Israel, as powerful as possible, as few Palestinians as possible—they should somehow disappear—and an Israel which could be powerful enough to dominate the region. The Lebanon War then, which was his worst crime, also had a goal of imposing a client state in Lebanon, a Maronite client state. And these were the driving forces of his life."

Canadians Held 50 Days In Egyptian Prison After Documenting Massacre Speak Out Following Release

November 1, 2013 Staff, www.democracynow.org Educate! Egypt, Middle East

"As Egypt sets a date for ousted President Mohamed Morsi to stand trial for inciting the murder of protesters and the Muslim Brotherhood calls for mass demonstrations, we speak with two people who witnessed one of the bloodiest massacres of Morsi supporters by Egyptian state forces. Acclaimed Toronto filmmaker John Greyson and emergency room medical doctor Tarek Loubani were in Cairo on August 16, en route to a humanitarian mission in Gaza, when they went to film a protest and then rushed to the scene of a massacre — Greyson reportedly began filming the shooting’s aftermath while Loubani treated some of the injured. Then, along with 600 Egyptians that day, the pair of Canadians were swept up and detained without charge. They were held in cockroach-infested jail cells with as many as 36 other inmates. Greyson and Loubani launched a hunger strike, while supporters in Canada mounted a massive campaign to lobby for their release. Then, in early October, the pair were freed. They have since returned home to Canada, where they continue to call for the release of their Egyptian cellmates who remain imprisoned. We go to Toronto, where we are joined by Greyson, who is also a member of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid. And in Ontario, we’re joined by Tarek Loubani, an assistant professor at Western University. He is a Palestinian refugee and one of the architects of the Canada-Gaza academic collaboration, a project that brings doctors from the West to Gaza to train physicians."

Victims of U.S. Chemical Warfare In Iraq

October 15, 2013 Elizabeth Schulte, www.socialistworker.org Educate! Environment, Iraq, Middle East, Wars and Militarism

"For its invasion of Iraq in 2003, the U.S. military didn't hesitate to use depleted uranium once again.According to Jamail, who went to Iraq to report as an independent, "unembedded" journalist: The U.S. and British militaries used more than 1,700 tons of depleted uranium in Iraq in the 2003 invasion (Jane's Defence News, 4/2/04)--on top of 320 tons used in the 1991 Gulf War (Inter Press Service, 3/25/03). Literally every local person I've ever spoken with in Iraq during my nine months of reporting there knows someone who either suffers from or has died of cancer.During its two pounding assaults on the city of Falluja in 2004, the U.S. used large quantities of DU ammunition, as well as white phosphorous--which burns when exposed to air and can cause horrific injuries to anyone caught in its path. It's important to remember that this was a war the U.S. government said it was fighting in order to put a halt to Saddam Hussein's access to "weapons of mass destruction"

Palestine–This Month In Pictures: September 2013

October 5, 2013 Staff, www.electronicintifada.net Educate! Middle East, Palestine, Wars and Militarism

"During the month of September, a 19-year-old Palestinian died after Israeli forces shot him during a search-and-arrest operation inJenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. Two Israeli soldiers, one off-duty, were killed during the month. One was shot by a sniper in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron; the identity of the shooter remains unknown. The other was allegedly killed by a Palestinian acquaintance who reportedly planned to use the soldier’s body as ransom to secure the release of his brother from Israeli prison. Israeli forces demolished all residential and livelihood structures, some of which were funded by international donors, in the Bedouin community of Khirbet al-Makhul in the West Bank’s Jordan Valley. Ten families were displaced as a result; Israel prevented the provision of shelter-related humanitarian assistance to the community following the operation and threw sound grenades at a group of diplomats, aid workers and locals during an attempted delivery of humanitarian aid, Reuters reported."

Iraqi Birth Defects Covered Up?

October 5, 2013 Jeena Shah, www.huffingtonpost.com Educate! Environment, Iraq, Middle East, Wars and Militarism

"The U.S. military first used DU in Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War. Official statistics from the Iraqi government indicate that by 1995, 800 out of 100,000 Iraqis were suffering from cancer as compared to before the war when the rate was 40 out of 100,000. A 2001 study by the U.S. government of 21,000 veterans who had served in the Gulf War found an increased rate of miscarriages, and of those who gave birth, two to three times greater likelihood of birth defects. Despite strong evidence of the lasting damage DU can cause, the U.S. once again used it as a weapon following its 2003 invasion and, according to a Pentagon spokesperson, took no responsibility to clean up DU-impacted areas in Iraq."

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