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  • A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition Marching on the Pentagon

    A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition Marching on the Pentagon


    Want information on the March 21st March on the Pentagon?
    Go to

    Why We’re Marching on the Pentagon
    Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine … Occupation is A Crime

    Please post this event on your Facebook and MySpace pages, and forward it widely to your friends and family.


    Download the 2-sided color ANSWER flyer, which has this statement on the back

    Why are we still marching even after the war criminal George W. Bush has left office? Because the people must speak out for what is right. More than 1 million Iraqis have died and tens of thousands of U.S. troops have been wounded or killed.

    The Iraq and Afghanistan war will drag on for years unless we act now. The cost in lives and resources is criminal regardless of whether the Democrats or Republicans are in charge of the government.

    We must also act to end U.S. support for Israel’s ongoing war against the Palestinian people. The Bush Administration gave the green light and provided the weapons and the money for Israel’s recent war against the Palestinian people in Gaza. More than 5,000 Palestinians were killed or wounded; the majority of casualties were civilians, including hundreds of children, in this high-tech massacre. “We the People” pay the bill as the U.S. provides $2.5 billion a year for Israel’s massive military machine.

    Why We Say “Bring All the Troops Home Now Not Later!”

    If Bush’s war and occupation of Iraq was an illegal action of aggression—and it was—how can the new government say that it can only gradually end the war over a number of years? The Iraqis don’t want foreign military forces running their country. No one would!

    The Pentagon has employed 200,000 foreign contractors (mercenaries) and 150,000 U.S. troops to maintain the occupation of Iraq. They have no right to be there. A few thousand are being brought out of Iraq only to be redeployed to occupy Afghanistan, and the fools in the media proclaim “the war is winding down.” That is not true.

    President Obama decided to keep the Pentagon just as it was under Bush. He even selected Bush appointee Robert Gates to keep his position as chief of the Pentagon. Gates announced that the new administration would double the number of troops sent to Afghanistan. That is certainly not the “change” most people thought was coming following the end of Bush’s tenure.

    These are wars for domination in the Middle East and Central Asia.

    The people of the United States want change. We are sick and tired of wars of aggression waged abroad under false slogans of “national security.” These are wars that reap massive profits for corporate weapons-makers with the promise of winning control over the vast oil and natural gas reserves in the Middle East and Central Asia.

    Working people may have another definition for “national security.” What really makes the people “insecure?” Ask the 2.3 million families who are losing their homes because they are being foreclosed when they can’t pay their steep debts to the banks. Ironically, when these same parasitic bankers couldn’t pay their debts, the federal government rushed in with a $2.5 trillion bailout using our tax dollars.

    Or ask working-class students who are being laid off from their jobs just as tuition costs soar out of reach. What defines “security” for millions of young people whose future is at stake? Do they want tax dollars spent to kill poor people abroad or to finance education?

    We will march on Saturday, March 21, the sixth anniversary of the start of the Iraq invasion, to demand that taxpayer dollars be used to meet people’s needs—here and everywhere. This year’s real Pentagon war budget will top $1 trillion.

    This amount could create 10 million jobs, provide healthcare and education for all, rebuild New Orleans, and repair much of the damage done in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. We need money for jobs, housing, health care and education, not for wars of aggression.

    The occupation of Iraq alone costs $12 billion each month. This amounts to $400 million each day, $16.7 million per hour and $278,000 per minute.

    The Pentagon war machine does not act in our interests. Its wars benefit the biggest corporations and banks that seek to control the markets and riches of the Middle East. The people of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine are not our enemies. They want to live free from colonial-type domination. Only a people’s movement demanding an end to U.S. wars and militarism can win justice for people here and abroad.

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  • Venezuela’s Jews, already uneasy, are jolted by attack

    Venezuela’s Jews, already uneasy, are jolted by attack

    A break-in at a Caracas synagogue on Jan. 31 heightened the concerns of the country’s Jews. (Carlos Hernandez/The Associated Press)

    By Simon Romero
    Published: February 13, 2009

    Listen to Article

    CARACAS, Venezuela: This country’s small Jewish community was already on edge when vandals painted anti-Semitic epithets on the walls of Jewish institutions and businesses last month after President Hugo Chávez cut ties with Israel and called on Jews here to support his description of Israel’s leaders as a “government of assassins.”

    But another episode, the break-in and desecration of a Sephardic synagogue on Jan. 31, intensified the uncertainty among Jews here. Officials are also putting pressure on Jewish leaders to retract criticism of Chávez regarding the attack and to accept the government’s explanation of it as a simple robbery by corrupt members of the intelligence and municipal police forces.

    “The atmosphere of intimidation is terrifying,” said Rabbi Pynchas Brener, 77, a prominent Ashkenazi leader and an outspoken critic of Chávez’s government. “We do not know when this pressure will start to ease up.”

    The government’s handling of the episode has also sown confusion. Chávez has denounced the attack and other forms of anti-Semitism and proclaimed his friendship with Venezuela’s Jews. But he has also asserted that unidentified opponents of his attacked the synagogue to cause disarray before a referendum this Sunday to decide whether Chávez can run for re-election indefinitely.

    “Some sectors of the oligarchy want to overshadow the advances of the revolution with acts of violence,” Chávez said shortly after the attack.

    When the Interior Ministry seemed to contradict his assertion that the attack was an effort to weaken his rule, arresting 11 people and saying robbery was their motive, Chávez shifted his position. He attacked critics who claimed he had created a political atmosphere in which anti-Semitism could flourish, accusing them of harboring the “criminal intent to unleash a religious war in Venezuela.”

    Commentators on state media and pro-Chávez Web sites have taken up with relish Chávez’s initial position that the attack was a plot by his opponents. “The synagogue case seems to us like a media show assembled by the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad,” said Hindu Anderi, a pro-Chávez journalist, in comments published by the government’s Bolivarian News Agency.

    Meanwhile, Mario Silva, the host of a program on state television, issued a menacing call for the rabbi of the desecrated synagogue to express gratitude publicly for a swift investigation.

    “I still have not seen the first declaration from the rabbi of the synagogue saying, ‘Sirs, I am thankful to the government,’ ” Silva said Monday night.

    Silva appeared to get his wish on Thursday in the form of an impromptu ceremony broadcast on state television in which the foreign minister, Nicolás Maduro, appeared at the synagogue to meet with Jewish leaders.

    Elías Farache, a leader of Venezuela’s Sephardic community, read a statement at the ceremony thanking Chávez and Maduro for prioritizing the investigation. “We hope the legal process will shed new light on the motivations behind this case,” Farache said.

    Despite the government’s efforts to put the controversy to rest, a sense of dread still lingers among Venezuela’s 12,000 to 14,000 Jews. That number is down from as many as 20,000 in the 1990s because of emigration.

    Chávez and his government have long been dogged by accusations of anti-Semitism, at least since his association with Norberto Ceresole, an Argentine with anti-Semitic views who advised Chávez in the 1990s.

    Chávez later distanced himself from Ceresole but recent statements have led to renewed criticism from Jewish leaders — including one by Venezuela’s ambassador to Russia, who said last year that the brief coup against Chávez in 2002 included “many Mossad snipers, who were Venezuelan citizens but Jews.”

    The warm welcome that Chávez has extended to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran has also troubled Jews.

    The tensions intensified last month when Chávez expelled the Israeli ambassador to protest the war in Gaza, and senior officials attended a rally at the Sheik Ibrahim Mosque here in Caracas. “Our revolution is also the revolution for a Free Palestine,” Tareck El Aissami, the interior minister, said at the rally.

    On the sidelines of the televised rapprochement on Thursday at the synagogue, one observer, León Benaim, summed up his view of the attack and the government’s reaction to it.

    “The motive was simple,” said Benaim, 73, a Moroccan Jew who moved to Venezuela three decades ago. “It is to threaten and frighten the Jewish community so that we leave.”

    María Eugenia Díaz contributed reporting.María Eugenia Díaz contributed reporting.

  • Gaza’s Future

    Gaza’s Future

    Henry Siegman

    Henry Siegman, director of the US Middle East Project in New York, is a visiting research professor at SOAS, University of London. He is a former national director of the American Jewish Congress and of the Synagogue Council of America.


    ATTENTION: ARTICLE IS WRITTEN ONE YEAR AGO

    Gaza’s Future

    Henry Siegman 7 February 2008

    The breaching of the barrier between Gaza and Egypt by Gaza’s imprisoned population dramatised two fundamental realities about which Israeli and US policymakers have been in complete denial. First, that sooner or later Gazans would seek to break out of their open-air jail. That they have done so should be applauded not condemned. It would have been a sad comment on the human spirit had Gaza’s citizens surrendered to their fate.

    Israel’s claim that the strangulation of Gaza was intended to provoke its population into overthrowing Hamas is absurd – and offensive. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that the draconian restrictions imposed by Israel on Gaza’s civilian residents redirected against their Israeli tormentors what anger existed among them towards Hamas for its ideological rigidity and its refusal to halt rocket assaults on Israel. As recent opinion polls have found, the suffering caused by the Gaza closures produced greater solidarity not greater divisiveness. It even moved Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad to public displays of anger (however disingenuous) against Ehud Olmert’s government.

    Olmert’s statement, made shortly before the breakout, that Gaza’s residents could not expect to lead normal lives while missiles from Gaza were hitting Israel would have been perfectly reasonable if Gazan residents had indeed been allowed to live ‘normal’ lives before the most recent tightening of the noose and if it were the case that Gaza’s civilian residents had any control at all over the firing of the missiles.

    As Olmert knows, neither is the case. The siege of Gaza was imposed by Israel because Israel’s government and the US administration intended to undo the results of Hamas’s victory in the elections of 2006. Initially, they thought they could achieve this by arming Fatah’s security forces and encouraging them to promote anarchy in Gaza in a way that would discredit Hamas. When Hamas ousted Fatah security forces, Israel blockaded Gaza in the hope that its population would overthrow Hamas. The Qassam rockets were the consequence, not the cause of these misguided Israeli and US manoeuvres.

    It is not even true that the siege of Gaza and the boycott of Hamas were necessary to get a peace process with Abbas and his Fatah party underway, as Bush and Olmert claimed when they met in Washington in June 2007. Hamas had announced its willingness to submit to a popular referendum any agreement that resulted from permanent status talks between Fatah and Israel. Israel boycotted Hamas because it did not want Hamas to play any role in a peace process, fearing that this would exact a far greater price than negotiations with Fatah from which Hamas was excluded.

    Ironically, Abbas probably has far less flexibility in negotiations with Israel when he is in an adversarial relationship with Hamas. As long as Fatah and Hamas are at war, Hamas will condemn any compromise as Abbas’s collaboration with the enemy. In the best of circumstances it would be hard to conceive of the terms of a peace accord acceptable to both sides: they are entirely out of reach so long as Fatah and Hamas remain unreconciled.

    Certainly the peace process the US and Israel have promoted following the break between Fatah and Hamas has not produced anything other than empty rhetoric and emptier promises. On the ground, absolutely nothing has changed: not in anticipation of the Annapolis conference; not at the conference itself; not following the conference’s conclusion; and not following Bush’s visit to Jerusalem and Ramallah. For all the pomp and ceremony of that occasion and the uplifting talk of adherence to Road Map obligations, not a single so-called illegal outpost has been removed, and the checkpoints that Israel solemnly promised to reduce have in fact been increased. (Whether the intention to deny all new construction in East Jerusalem and in the settlements announced by Olmert’s office as I write these lines will suffer a similar fate remains to be seen.)

    Yet Abbas and Fayyad have pretended that they are engaged in a significant peace process with Israel that could produce, in Bush’s words, ‘a viable, contiguous, sovereign and independent’ Palestinian state by the end of this year. Presumably they know better. If not, the big difference between Fatah and Hamas is not so much that one is committed to a political process and the other to violence, or that one is secular and the other Islamic, but rather that the former lives in a world of fantasy and the other does not.

    Does the situation in Gaza justify the relentless missile and mortar assaults that continue to target Israeli civilians in Sderot? To argue, as Hamas’s leaders do, that these primitive Qassam rockets have resulted in no more than two or three Israeli deaths over the years, while Israeli retaliations cause the daily killing not only of militants but of innocent men, women and children, is not a justification for Hamas’s targeting of Israeli civilians. That Qassam rockets have not fallen on a kindergarten full of children in Sderot is not the result of skilful humanitarian targeting on the part of Islamic Jihad and Hamas militants. It is simply extraordinary luck.

    On the other hand, the immorality of Hamas’s assaults on Israeli civilians is not a licence to bring Gaza’s civilian population to a state of near starvation. The insensitivity that prevents Israelis from seeing that their behaviour towards Palestinian civilians – whether in Gaza or in the West Bank – is not very different from the Palestinians’ targeting of Israeli civilians could not have found more unfortunate expression than in Olmert’s assurance that while Israel ‘will provide the population [in Gaza] with everything needed to prevent a crisis, we will not supply luxuries that would make their life more comfortable.’ What UNRWA’s commissioner-general Karen Abu Zayd sees as a people ‘intentionally reduced to a state of abject destitution’ is seen by Olmert as a people deprived of ‘luxuries’.

    In the face of such criticism, Israelis angrily respond that instead of condemning Israel’s policy towards Gaza, their critics would be better advised to demand that Gaza’s citizens remove their Hamas-led government. The absurdity of such a suggestion aside, one has to wonder how Israelis would respond if they were told by Palestinians that instead of condemning Hamas’s terrorist assaults on Israeli citizens, they should remove their own government for failing to end the occupation.

    That said, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the breach in the barrier between Gaza and Egypt has created a new strategic situation. Of course, the barrier separating Gaza from Egypt will be closed again, but it is highly unlikely that the status quo ante can be restored and the absolute closure on Gaza’s population reimposed. As Ha’aretz suggested in an editorial of 24 January, the crisis in Rafah is an opportunity to pursue policies that are ‘more creative than assassinations and starvation’.

    Which brings me to the second of the fundamental realities. The current goal of isolating Hamas and negotiating a peace agreement with Fatah is based on the fantasy that such an agreement can be implemented despite Hamas’s opposition. Hamas is a movement with deep roots and a significant role in Palestinian politics that opposition from Israel and the US can only strengthen. New border arrangements to prevent a serious breakdown between Israel and Egypt cannot be implemented without somehow involving Hamas. And for domestic reasons, it is inconceivable that either Abbas or the Egyptian government would consent to the creation of a new cross-border regime that aims at the continued strangulation of Gaza’s population.

    The inevitability of four-party discussions between Israel, Egypt, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas presents the US with an opportunity to change course and to encourage Israel to engage Hamas in talks aiming at a ceasefire, the only way to end the Qassam assaults. The talks could then address the question of the acceptance by Hamas of the Arab peace initiative. Of course, there can be no certainty that Hamas would agree: what is certain is that it will never agree while Israel and the US seek its overthrow, and without negotiations that deal with both sides’ grievances.

    Equally important, the issue of Hamas’s recognition of Israel should not be expanded by Israel beyond normal international practice. Israel’s requirement that this recognition include a pronouncement on the Jewish state’s legitimacy, or on its ethnic and religious character, is gratuitous and inappropriate. A simple statement of recognition of Israel’s statehood should suffice. No US government has ever asked anyone to affirm the legitimacy of the dispossession of America’s Indians as a condition for the establishing of normal relations.

    If the Bush administration were to take advantage of the new situation in Gaza to promote internal Palestinian reconciliation it might yet lay the groundwork for an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. If it maintains its current posture, it will remain essentially irrelevant, with far-reaching implications for all the parties to the conflict – not to mention the rest of the world.

    25 January

    Henry Siegman, director of the US Middle East Project in New York, is a visiting research professor at SOAS, University of London. He is a former national director of the American Jewish Congress and of the Synagogue Council of America.

  • Israel’s Lies

    Israel’s Lies

    Henry Siegman

    Henry Siegman, director of the US Middle East Project in New York, is a visiting research professor at SOAS, University of London. He is a former national director of the American Jewish Congress and of the Synagogue Council of America.

    Israel’s Lies

    Henry Siegman

    Western governments and most of the Western media have accepted a number of Israeli claims justifying the military assault on Gaza: that Hamas consistently violated the six-month truce that Israel observed and then refused to extend it; that Israel therefore had no choice but to destroy Hamas’s capacity to launch missiles into Israeli towns; that Hamas is a terrorist organisation, part of a global jihadi network; and that Israel has acted not only in its own defence but on behalf of an international struggle by Western democracies against this network.

    I am not aware of a single major American newspaper, radio station or TV channel whose coverage of the assault on Gaza questions this version of events. Criticism of Israel’s actions, if any (and there has been none from the Bush administration), has focused instead on whether the IDF’s carnage is proportional to the threat it sought to counter, and whether it is taking adequate measures to prevent civilian casualties.

    Middle East peacemaking has been smothered in deceptive euphemisms, so let me state bluntly that each of these claims is a lie. Israel, not Hamas, violated the truce: Hamas undertook to stop firing rockets into Israel; in return, Israel was to ease its throttlehold on Gaza. In fact, during the truce, it tightened it further. This was confirmed not only by every neutral international observer and NGO on the scene but by Brigadier General (Res.) Shmuel Zakai, a former commander of the IDF’s Gaza Division. In an interview in Ha’aretz on 22 December, he accused Israel’s government of having made a ‘central error’ during the tahdiyeh, the six-month period of relative truce, by failing ‘to take advantage of the calm to improve, rather than markedly worsen, the economic plight of the Palestinians of the Strip . . . When you create a tahdiyeh, and the economic pressure on the Strip continues,’ General Zakai said, ‘it is obvious that Hamas will try to reach an improved tahdiyeh, and that their way to achieve this is resumed Qassam fire . . . You cannot just land blows, leave the Palestinians in Gaza in the economic distress they’re in, and expect that Hamas will just sit around and do nothing.’

    The truce, which began in June last year and was due for renewal in December, required both parties to refrain from violent action against the other. Hamas had to cease its rocket assaults and prevent the firing of rockets by other groups such as Islamic Jihad (even Israel’s intelligence agencies acknowledged this had been implemented with surprising effectiveness), and Israel had to put a stop to its targeted assassinations and military incursions. This understanding was seriously violated on 4 November, when the IDF entered Gaza and killed six members of Hamas. Hamas responded by launching Qassam rockets and Grad missiles. Even so, it offered to extend the truce, but only on condition that Israel ended its blockade. Israel refused. It could have met its obligation to protect its citizens by agreeing to ease the blockade, but it didn’t even try. It cannot be said that Israel launched its assault to protect its citizens from rockets. It did so to protect its right to continue the strangulation of Gaza’s population.

    Everyone seems to have forgotten that Hamas declared an end to suicide bombings and rocket fire when it decided to join the Palestinian political process, and largely stuck to it for more than a year. Bush publicly welcomed that decision, citing it as an example of the success of his campaign for democracy in the Middle East. (He had no other success to point to.) When Hamas unexpectedly won the election, Israel and the US immediately sought to delegitimise the result and embraced Mahmoud Abbas, the head of Fatah, who until then had been dismissed by Israel’s leaders as a ‘plucked chicken’. They armed and trained his security forces to overthrow Hamas; and when Hamas – brutally, to be sure – pre-empted this violent attempt to reverse the result of the first honest democratic election in the modern Middle East, Israel and the Bush administration imposed the blockade.

    Israel seeks to counter these indisputable facts by maintaining that in withdrawing Israeli settlements from Gaza in 2005, Ariel Sharon gave Hamas the chance to set out on the path to statehood, a chance it refused to take; instead, it transformed Gaza into a launching-pad for firing missiles at Israel’s civilian population. The charge is a lie twice over. First, for all its failings, Hamas brought to Gaza a level of law and order unknown in recent years, and did so without the large sums of money that donors showered on the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority. It eliminated the violent gangs and warlords who terrorised Gaza under Fatah’s rule. Non-observant Muslims, Christians and other minorities have more religious freedom under Hamas rule than they would have in Saudi Arabia, for example, or under many other Arab regimes.

    The greater lie is that Sharon’s withdrawal from Gaza was intended as a prelude to further withdrawals and a peace agreement. This is how Sharon’s senior adviser Dov Weisglass, who was also his chief negotiator with the Americans, described the withdrawal from Gaza, in an interview with Ha’aretz in August 2004:

    What I effectively agreed to with the Americans was that part of the settlements [i.e. the major settlement blocks on the West Bank] would not be dealt with at all, and the rest will not be dealt with until the Palestinians turn into Finns . . . The significance [of the agreement with the US] is the freezing of the political process. And when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and you prevent a discussion about the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package that is called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed from our agenda indefinitely. And all this with [President Bush’s] authority and permission . . . and the ratification of both houses of Congress.

    Do the Israelis and Americans think that Palestinians don’t read the Israeli papers, or that when they saw what was happening on the West Bank they couldn’t figure out for themselves what Sharon was up to?

    Israel’s government would like the world to believe that Hamas launched its Qassam rockets because that is what terrorists do and Hamas is a generic terrorist group. In fact, Hamas is no more a ‘terror organisation’ (Israel’s preferred term) than the Zionist movement was during its struggle for a Jewish homeland. In the late 1930s and 1940s, parties within the Zionist movement resorted to terrorist activities for strategic reasons. According to Benny Morris, it was the Irgun that first targeted civilians. He writes in Righteous Victims that an upsurge of Arab terrorism in 1937 ‘triggered a wave of Irgun bombings against Arab crowds and buses, introducing a new dimension to the conflict’. He also documents atrocities committed during the 1948-49 war by the IDF, admitting in a 2004 interview, published in Ha’aretz, that material released by Israel’s Ministry of Defence showed that ‘there were far more Israeli acts of massacre than I had previously thought . . . In the months of April-May 1948, units of the Haganah were given operational orders that stated explicitly that they were to uproot the villagers, expel them, and destroy the villages themselves.’ In a number of Palestinian villages and towns the IDF carried out organised executions of civilians. Asked by Ha’aretz whether he condemned the ethnic cleansing, Morris replied that he did not:

    A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them. There was no choice but to expel that population. It was necessary to cleanse the hinterland and cleanse the border areas and cleanse the main roads. It was necessary to cleanse the villages from which our convoys and our settlements were fired on.

    In other words, when Jews target and kill innocent civilians to advance their national struggle, they are patriots. When their adversaries do so, they are terrorists.

    It is too easy to describe Hamas simply as a ‘terror organisation’. It is a religious nationalist movement that resorts to terrorism, as the Zionist movement did during its struggle for statehood, in the mistaken belief that it is the only way to end an oppressive occupation and bring about a Palestinian state. While Hamas’s ideology formally calls for that state to be established on the ruins of the state of Israel, this doesn’t determine Hamas’s actual policies today any more than the same declaration in the PLO charter determined Fatah’s actions.

    These are not the conclusions of an apologist for Hamas but the opinions of the former head of Mossad and Sharon’s national security adviser, Ephraim Halevy. The Hamas leadership has undergone a change ‘right under our very noses’, Halevy wrote recently in Yedioth Ahronoth, by recognising that ‘its ideological goal is not attainable and will not be in the foreseeable future.’ It is now ready and willing to see the establishment of a Palestinian state within the temporary borders of 1967. Halevy noted that while Hamas has not said how ‘temporary’ those borders would be, ‘they know that the moment a Palestinian state is established with their co-operation, they will be obligated to change the rules of the game: they will have to adopt a path that could lead them far from their original ideological goals.’ In an earlier article, Halevy also pointed out the absurdity of linking Hamas to al-Qaida.

    In the eyes of al-Qaida, the members of Hamas are perceived as heretics due to their stated desire to participate, even indirectly, in processes of any understandings or agreements with Israel. [The Hamas political bureau chief, Khaled] Mashal’s declaration diametrically contradicts al-Qaida’s approach, and provides Israel with an opportunity, perhaps a historic one, to leverage it for the better.

    Why then are Israel’s leaders so determined to destroy Hamas? Because they believe that its leadership, unlike that of Fatah, cannot be intimidated into accepting a peace accord that establishes a Palestinian ‘state’ made up of territorially disconnected entities over which Israel would be able to retain permanent control. Control of the West Bank has been the unwavering objective of Israel’s military, intelligence and political elites since the end of the Six-Day War.[*] They believe that Hamas would not permit such a cantonisation of Palestinian territory, no matter how long the occupation continues. They may be wrong about Abbas and his superannuated cohorts, but they are entirely right about Hamas.

    Middle East observers wonder whether Israel’s assault on Hamas will succeed in destroying the organisation or expelling it from Gaza. This is an irrelevant question. If Israel plans to keep control over any future Palestinian entity, it will never find a Palestinian partner, and even if it succeeds in dismantling Hamas, the movement will in time be replaced by a far more radical Palestinian opposition.

    If Barack Obama picks a seasoned Middle East envoy who clings to the idea that outsiders should not present their own proposals for a just and sustainable peace agreement, much less press the parties to accept it, but instead leave them to work out their differences, he will assure a future Palestinian resistance far more extreme than Hamas – one likely to be allied with al-Qaida. For the US, Europe and most of the rest of the world, this would be the worst possible outcome. Perhaps some Israelis, including the settler leadership, believe it would serve their purposes, since it would provide the government with a compelling pretext to hold on to all of Palestine. But this is a delusion that would bring about the end of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.

    Anthony Cordesman, one of the most reliable military analysts of the Middle East, and a friend of Israel, argued in a 9 January report for the Center for Strategic and International Studies that the tactical advantages of continuing the operation in Gaza were outweighed by the strategic cost – and were probably no greater than any gains Israel may have made early in the war in selective strikes on key Hamas facilities. ‘Has Israel somehow blundered into a steadily escalating war without a clear strategic goal, or at least one it can credibly achieve?’ he asks. ‘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.’ Cordesman concludes that ‘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.’

    15 January

    Note

    [*] See my piece in the LRB, 16 August 2007.

    Henry Siegman, director of the US Middle East Project in New York, is a visiting research professor at SOAS, University of London. He is a former national director of the American Jewish Congress and of the Synagogue Council of America.

  • Official: Aliya from Turkey to double

    Official: Aliya from Turkey to double

    By ETGAR LEFKOVITS
    The number of Jews expected to immigrate to
    Israel from Turkey this year is likely to double compared to last year,
    but the level remains extremely low despite surging anti-Israel and
    anti-Semitic incidents in the predominantly Muslim country, a Jewish
    Agency for Israel official said Sunday.

    A
    Turkish demonstrator displays a shoe on a banner during a protest
    against Israel at the Kocatepe mosque in Ankara, Turkey, Saturday.
    Photo: AP

    Separately,
    the Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Venezuela said Sunday that he doubted
    whether the South American country held any future for the Jewish
    community, following the Friday night vandalism of the oldest synagogue
    in the country.

    About 250 Turkish Jews are expected to immigrate to Israel this
    year, more than double the 112 who did so last year, said Eli Cohen,
    director-general of the Jewish Agency’s Immigration and Absorption
    Department in Jerusalem.

    The number of expected immigrants from Turkey this year makes
    up only 1 percent of the 25,000-strong Jewish community that traces its
    roots in the nation back more than five centuries, dating to the
    Spanish Inquisition.

    RELATED
    • Turkey: The longer view (Editorial)
    • A climate of fear

    “We
    would prefer that the main reason for aliya today [be] the ideology of
    those immigrants who come from Western countries, but we see that the
    anti-Semitic incidents, as well as the global economic crisis, are what
    is furthering aliya today,” Cohen said.

    He noted that many of the Turkish Jews seeking to make aliya
    were students or young couples wanting to study at Israeli universities
    or to live in Israel.

    Relations
    between Israel and Turkey hit a nadir last week after Turkish Prime
    Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been a leading and vitriolic
    critic of Israel’s recent military operation against Hamas in Gaza,
    stormed out of a panel discussion with President Shimon Peres at the
    World Economic Forum in Davos.

    At the same time, the Jewish Agency official said Sunday that
    there was “a large interest” in immigration to Israel among Jews living
    in Venezuela. About 14,500 Jews live there, and only 60 immigrated to
    Israel last year.

    All Israeli representatives were kicked out of the country last
    month during Operation Cast Lead, but the agency is in daily contact
    with Jewish groups there, Cohen said.

    Meanwhile, Rabbi Pynchas Brener of Venezuela said Sunday that
    he was doubtful that there was any future for the Jewish community
    there.

    “There is a psychological mechanism which makes people within
    the country think things are not as bad as they seem,” Brener told The Jerusalem Post
    in a telephone interview from Caracas. “For psychological reasons,
    people who live in the country tend to justify actions taken against
    them.”

    His comments came after the main Sephardi synagogue in Caracas was vandalized by a group of attackers.

    Two security guards were overpowered by about 15 people who
    ransacked the synagogue’s sanctuary and offices late Friday, shattering
    religious objects and leaving graffiti such as, “We don’t want
    murderers,” and “Jews, get out.”

    The incident forced the synagogue to cancel Saturday services.

    “Reason makes us believe that this was done with the consent –
    if not the instigation – of some central power in Venezuela,” he said.

    He noted that Israel and Jews were viewed as synonymous in the
    South American country, adding that an upcoming vote on whether the
    president could be reelected indefinitely could prove to be a harbinger
    of things to come.

    “I do not know if in this environment there will be a future for the Jewish community here,” he said.

    The New York-based Anti-Defamation League called the synagogue incident “a modern day Kristallnacht.”

    “This violent attack, occurring on the Jewish Sabbath, is
    reminiscent of the darkest days leading to the Shoah, when Jews were
    attacked and synagogues and Torahs vandalized and destroyed under the
    guard of the Nazi regime,” said ADL National Director Abraham H.
    Foxman.

    Foxman said the heinous anti-Jewish hate crime was not random,
    but was “directly related to the atmosphere of anti-Jewish intimidation
    promoted by President Hugo Chavez and his government apparatus.”

    The organization called for Chavez to “abandon the official
    government rhetoric of demonization of Israel and the Jews and to
    publicly denounce this wanton act of anti-Semitic violence.”

    Separately, the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center said
    Sunday that Chavez’s attacks on Israel and the Jewish community had
    “set the stage” for the incident.

    “This was no mere hate crime from the margins of society, but a
    reflection of President Chavez’s campaign to demonize Israel and her
    supporters,” the organization said. “For this dangerous escalation of
    hate against a minority to stop, President Chav


    From: Haluk Demirbag,

    Subject: Official: Aliya from Turkey to double

    Israil senelerdir sayıları az bile olsa değerleri çok olan Turkiyeli Musevi

    kardeşlerimizi İsraile göçe itmek için çok yol denedi. Tayyip ve Simon

    amcaların danışıklı döğüş yapabileceğini neden kimse düşünemiyor?

    Bir taşla iki kuş vuruluyor:

    1. Tayyip secimler için müthiş bir hamle yapıyor
    2. Simon amca da, senelerdir danışmanlarının Israil’e çekebilmek için akla
    karayı seçtiği Türk milletinden ayrılmak istemeyen Türkiye Musevilerine,
    bilet kesiyor…

    Yakın zamanda Gürcistan’ı hatırlayalım…

    Siyonizmin güçlenmesi için sahte ve kontrollü anti-semitizm ispatlı ve iyi
    yazılmış çizilmiş bir yoldur.

    Eski tüfek Simon amca da Tayyip de ne yaptığını biliyor kendi hedefleri açısından…

    Türkiye’de olabilecek herhangi bir anti-semitizim çıkışına karşı
    herkesin duyarlı ve uyanık olması lazım. Biz asırlardır bağrımızda
    sakladığımız, koruyup kolladığımız sevgili Musevi dostlarımızı ve
    peygamberlerin torunlarını kimseye vermek istemiyoruz, Israil dahil,  onlar
    bize Osmanlı atalarımızın emaneti!!!

    Official: Aliya from Turkey
    to double

    ez’s hate campaign must be denounced by all leaders in the Americas and beyond.”

    —————–

  • THE DEPKA REVIEW

    THE DEPKA REVIEW

    Summary of DEBKAfile’s Exclusives in the Week Ending February 5, 2009
    Hamas fires first shore-to-ship C-802 missile 31 Jan.: DEBKAfile’s military sources reveal a formidable addition to Hamas’ arsenal: The missile fired from Gaza out to the Mediterranean last week was not a Qassam as reported but a C-802, the Iranian shore-to-ship Nur C-802 missile, which is based on the Chinese “Silkworm.”

    It was launched by Iranian officers who are training Hamas operatives in its use before delivering a large consignment. With its 120-km range and 165-kilo warhead, the C-802’s mission is to break Israel’s 40 km blockade of Gaza’s waters. This is now the key objective of Tehran and the Palestinian Islamists.
    The Israeli Navy’s first brush with the C-802 was in the 2006 Lebanon war. On July 14, it was used by Hizballah to cripple the Hanit missile ship opposite Beirut.

    Our sources affirm that arms smuggling to Gaza continues by land and sea at the pre-war tempo notwithstanding the brave talk in Jerusalem, Washington and Cairo of a concerted effort to stem the flow.

    Since 2006, military experts note, Iran has upgraded the C-802 in an important respect. A new version, of which 1,000 have been delivered to Hizballah, operates without radar. It has the attributes of a cruise missile with small radar reflectivity, a strong anti-jamming capability and the ability to skim as low as 5-7 meters from the water’s surface under the targeted ship’s radar. Tehran claims 98 percent targeting effectiveness for its updated Nur anti-ship missile.

    Ahmadinejad: Iran’s Islamic Revolution not limited to its borders 31 Jan.: Iran’s government spokesman is quoted as saying Saturday, Jan. 31 that capitalist thought and the system of domination have failed. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a ceremony marking the 30th anniversary of Khomeini’s overthrow of the shah that Iran’s Islamic revolution was not limited to its borders. His response to the US president Barack Obama’s overtures was a demand that America apologize for 60 years of “crimes against Iran” and its new president carry out a “deep and fundamental change.”

    Gaza rocket alarms Ashkelon Saturday in another Hamas ceasefire breach

    31 Jan.: Hamas again breached its own ceasefire declared Jan. 19 Saturday, Jan. 31, with a Grad rocket against the town of Ashkelon to the north. It exploded harmlessly on open ground after a siren alerted the population. An Israeli air strike hit the rocket team. Last Tuesday, a roadside bomb on the Israeli side of the Gaza border killed an Israeli soldier and injured three, drawing minor Israeli responses followed by two rounds of Qassam fire. The flare-up accompanied the first trip to the region of Barack Obama’s Middle East envoy George Mitchell. Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, cancelled his talks in Washington with US defense secretary Robert Gates last Wednesday amid expectations of a major Israeli response to Hamas violations.

    Egyptian-Hamas talks on a long-term ceasefire in Gaza limp along after Hamas-Damascus rejected Cairo’s first proposals out of hand.

    Meshaal urges Iranian students to join Islamist liberation of all Palestine 2 Feb.: On the third day of his talks with Iranian leaders in Tehran, Hamas’ supreme leader Khaled Meshaal urged Iranian students to join his Islamist movement in helping liberate all of Palestine, secure the return of all Palestinians and retake Jerusalem so that “we can pray together.”

    DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources disclose the three topics uppermost in Meshaal’s talks with Iranian leaders:
    1. Tehran is playing tough in Middle East, including Gaza, to intimidate the Obama administration ahead of direct talks.

    2. Iran will torpedo Hamas’ long-term truce talks in Cairo so as not to grant president Hosni Mubarak any advantages on the Palestinian playing field.

    3. Hamas needs urgent injections of military and economic assistance to shore up its rule in the Gaza Strip.

    If Tehran holds back, the Palestinian Islamists may turn to Cairo and Riyadh for the proffered Saudi-Egyptian aid package for reconstruction. If Iran delivers, Meshaal will instruct the Hamas delegation to ditch the Egyptians and their proposals.

    Israel air raids blow up six Hamas tunnels after Palestinian missile-mortar salvoes 2 Feb.: After 14 missiles and mortar rounds were fired into Israel Sunday, Feb. 1, Israel launched air strikes against a Hamas building in central Gaza and six out of roughly 300 smuggling tunnels running under the southern Gazan border corridor with Egypt.

    The building was empty after Israel forewarned dwellers by telephone of the coming attack. DEBKAfile’s military sources report that although missile, rocket and mortar attacks on southern Israel have been building up for the past week , defense minister Ehud Barak stands fast against demands for a major reprisal.

    He maintains that the main threat to Israeli security now emanates from Hizballah.

    Hizballah terror teams fan out in six countries prompting maximum Israeli alert
    DEBKAfile Exclusive Report     2 Feb.: The Lebanese Hizballah has deployed terrorist teams in six countries for attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets in revenge for the death of its military chief Imad Mughniyeh who it accuses Israel of killing a year ago.

    This intelligence prompted the counter-terror bureau in Jerusalem to publish Sunday, Feb. 1, an exceptionally high alert for traveling Israelis to beware of assaults and abductions. Security is also high in Israel and at embassies and Jewish institutions worldwide.

    Hizballah also believes it can disrupt Israel’s general election on Feb. 10 by assassinating a senior official.
    According to our sources, terrorist teams have also been drawn from the covert spy and terror cells Hizballah maintains in other parts of the Middle East as well as Africa and Europe.

    Israeli travelers were specifically warned to avoid Arab and Muslim countries – especially Sinai – watch out for unusual occurrences, refuse tempting offers and invitations from strangers, rendezvous with contacts only in public places along with trusted companions and avoid patronizing the same locations, such as hotels and restaurants, with predictable regularity.
    Israeli holidaymakers in Sinai were warned to leave at once.

    Long-range Grad rocket explodes in central Ashkelon 3 Feb.: The Grad rocket from Gaza which exploded in central Ashkelon Tuesday, Feb. 3, damaged vehicles in central Ashkelon and left three people in shock. A busload of passengers escaped to safety with seconds to spare.

    Iran’s first spy satellite launch Tuesday signifies nuclear-capable rocket in hand 3 Feb.: The launch of Omid (Hope), Iran’s first home-made satellite into orbit early Tuesday, Feb. 3, is a breakthrough demonstrating the Islamic Republic has managed to develop long-range, three-stage ballistic rockets propelled by solid fuel and capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

    Cont. Next Column

    		 Israel and Western officials have been playing down this fast-developing capability while proving helpless to hold back Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

    DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources report the new satellite is designed for tracking, research and tele-communications and carries digital measuring instruments. Iran’s top-secret “Military Group” – the team of scientists and technicians working on its clandestine nuclear bomb program – is clearly moving ahead undisturbed by UN sanctions or technical difficulties.

    Obama administration gravely concerned by first Iranian satellite 3 Feb.: The White House and Pentagon issued strong statements Tuesday, Feb. 3 about the dangers posed by the launch of Iran’s first homemade satellite into space. DEBKAfile notes that none of the leading contenders in Israel’s Feb. 10 general election, including the defense and foreign ministers – or even prime minister Ehud Olmert – saw fit to react to the event.

    White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said any effort to develop missile delivery capability, continue an illicit nuclear program, threaten Israel and sponsor terror is an “acute concern to this administration.”

    Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell told reporters that Iran poses “a real threat and a growing threat.” DEBKAfile’s Washington sources report that the Obama administration is getting fed up with Tehran continually laying down hard facts ahead of any dialogue begins between the two governments.

    Our Iranian sources see no sign of Tehran softening its attitudes on nuclear or missile issues ahead of those talks.

    Barak loses Gaza truce gamble, Cairo decides to slam Rafah door shut4 Feb.: Israel’s defense minister Ehud Barak held off responding to ten days of missile-mortar salvoes from Gaza in the hope of Cairo successfully negotiating a long-term truce deal with Hamas.

    DEBKAfile’s military sources report that Egypt’s announcement Wednesday, Feb. 4, that as of Thursday, its only border crossing with Gaza at Rafah would be closed down for all traffic signaled the breakdown of those negotiations. It followed Cairo’s discovery that Hamas was under orders from Tehran to keep the truce talks dragging on aimlessly together with daily missile and mortar fire against Israel. Barak’s policy of relying on Egypt for results has been discredited. Hamas is expected to respond to its cutoff from Egypt by stepping up cross-border attacks against Israel.

    Wednesday, Christopher Guinness, spokesman of the UN Relief and Works Agency, UNWRA, complained that Hamas police raided its warehouse in Gaza City and stole 3,500 blankets and nearly 500 food packages that were to have been distributed to poor Gaza families. UNWRA demanded their immediate return.

    Five days to Israel’s poll: Frontrunner Netanyahu is slipping
    DEBKAfile Special Analysis     5 Feb.: The man certain to form the next Israeli government after the general election of Feb. 10, Likud’s Binyamin Netanyahu, who started out with a handy lead of well over 30 Knesset seats (out of 120), is losing ground to Avigdor Lieberman’s right-wing Israel Beitenu.

    His campaign blunders include his apparent choice of the unpopular Labor leader, Ehud Barak, to carry on as defense minister in the next government. Another is his refusal to name a finance minister for a country worried sick by the slide into serious recession and growing unemployment.

    Both those decision deny the voter hope for a much needed change – especially a new defense minister to replace Ehud Barak, whose policies are widely condemned.

    The average, middle-of-the road voter is worried about national security and therefore leans to the right – away from his Labor party. Polling-day falls amid high security alerts on two potential warfronts, Gaza in the South and Lebanon in the north. The gap between this fraught situation and Barak’s claims of restored deterrence equals his credibility gap.

    His policy of tying Israel’s security to Cairo’s uncertain good offices instead of letting the military do its job crashed with the ill-fated Egyptian-Hamas negotiations in Cairo for a long-term truce. Day by day, Hamas violates its ceasefire pledge by blasting Israel with missiles and mortars. IDF reprisals are confined to aerial bombardments of empty buildings and sandy expanses in the Gaza Strip.

    On top of this unpopular alliance, Netanyahu is unclear on his future policies. It took him until this week to come out with an explicit statement on a key security issue, when he said: “Iran will not acquire nuclear arms. Period.” While promoting an “economic peace” plan for the West Bank, the Likud leader has never come right out and stated his views on George W. Bush’s two-state solution of the conflict.

    Israeli Beteinu is therefore cutting into Likud’s support and threatening to overtake foreign minister Tzipi Livni’s Kadima.

    But although the right-of-center bloc can count on a Knesset majority, the Likud leader will deny the country stable government if he insists on handing out the key defense and finance portfolios to figures outside that bloc for the sake of “a national unity government.” By linking his Likud to Labor, Netanyahu will reach his second term as prime minister from a position of weakness rather than the strength he started out with.

    Israeli naval commandoes board a Lebanese aid ship

    5 Feb.: After the captain refused to heed the Israeli navy’s orders to leave embargoed waters, Israeli seamen boarded the ship and had it towed to Ashdod port. No arms were found on the vessel only a small amount of aid destined for Gaza and a number of Syrian and Lebanese pro-Hamas activists who were taken off for interrogation. They will be sent back to the ship which on no account will be allowed to dock at Gaza.

    Barak: More Iranian ships bound for Gaza
    DEBKAfile Special Report

    5 Feb.: Although defense minister Ehud Barak did not confirm that the Iranian ships on their way to the Gaza Strip carry arms for Hamas, DEBKAfile’s military sources report that they are in fact arms vessels. Tehran will try and break the blockade on Gaza, encouraged by the failure of the US, Egyptian and Israeli navies to confiscate the arms aboard the Cypriot-flagged arms ships now docked at Limassol. Some are already on the way, expected to enter the Gulf of Suez and waters opposite Gaza over the weekend and try to drop their cargoes of weapons containers off shore. Israeli warships and spy planes are tracking them.

    At a special conference Thursday, Feb. 5, prime minister Olmert, foreign minister Tzipi Livni and the defense minister agreed the Iranian arms ships must be prevented from unloading their cargoes, even at the cost of a marine clash with Iran. At stake is the entire international effort to stop the Palestinian Islamists rearming.

    The Cypriot authorities are unloading the Iranian arms ship of cargo that contravenes the UN Security Council sanctions resolution 1747 which bans Iranian arms exports. DEBKA file’s military sources disclosed it was carrying 10 containers of Iranian rockets and other weapons for rearming Hamas in the Gaza Strip in violation of Israel’s terms for accepting a Gaza ceasefire last month.