Israel shaken by troops' tales of brutality against Palestinians

A psychologist blames assaults on civilians in the 1990s on soldiers' bad training, boredom and poor supervision

Taken from The Observer (Guardian online), UK
By Conal Urquhart in Jerusalem

A study by an Israeli psychologist into the violent behaviour of the country's soldiers is provoking bitter controversy and has awakened urgent questions about the way the army conducts itself in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

Nufar Yishai-Karin, a clinical psychologist at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, interviewed 21 Israeli soldiers and heard confessions of frequent brutal assaults against Palestinians, aggravated by poor training and discipline. In her recently published report, co-authored by Professor Yoel Elizur, Yishai-Karin details a series of violent incidents, including the beating of a four-year-old boy by an officer.

The report, although dealing with the experience of soldiers in the 1990s, has triggered an impassioned debate in Israel, where it was published in an abbreviated form in the newspaper Haaretz last month. According to Yishai Karin: 'At one point or another of their service, the majority of the interviewees enjoyed violence. They enjoyed the violence because it broke the routine and they liked the destruction and the chaos. They also enjoyed the feeling of power in the violence and the sense of danger.'

In the words of one soldier: 'The truth? When there is chaos, I like it. That's when I enjoy it. It's like a drug. If I don't go into Rafah, and if there isn't some kind of riot once in some weeks, I go nuts.'

Another explained: 'The most important thing is that it removes the burden of the law from you. You feel that you are the law. You are the law. You are the one who decides... As though from the moment you leave the place that is called Eretz Yisrael [the Land of Israel] and go through the Erez checkpoint into the Gaza Strip, you are the law. You are God.'

The soldiers described dozens of incidents of extreme violence. One recalled an incident when a Palestinian was shot for no reason and left on the street. 'We were in a weapons carrier when this guy, around 25, passed by in the street and, just like that, for no reason - he didn't throw a stone, did nothing - bang, a bullet in the stomach, he shot him in the stomach and the guy is dying on the pavement and we keep going, apathetic. No one gave him a second look,' he said.

The soldiers developed a mentality in which they would use physical violence to deter Palestinians from abusing them. One described beating women. 'With women I have no problem. With women, one threw a clog at me and I kicked her here [pointing to the crotch], I broke everything there. She can't have children. Next time she won't throw clogs at me. When one of them [a woman] spat at me, I gave her the rifle butt in the face. She doesn't have what to spit with any more.'

Yishai-Karin found that the soldiers were exposed to violence against Palestinians from as early as their first weeks of basic training. On one occasion, the soldiers were escorting some arrested Palestinians. The arrested men were made to sit on the floor of the bus. They had been taken from their beds and were barely clothed, even though the temperature was below zero. The new recruits trampled on the Palestinians and then proceeded to beat them for the whole of the journey. They opened the bus windows and poured water on the arrested men.

The disclosure of the report in the Israeli media has occasioned a remarkable response. In letters responding to the recollections, writers have focused on both the present and past experience of Israeli soldiers to ask troubling questions that have probed the legitimacy of the actions of the Israeli Defence Forces.

The study and the reactions to it have marked a sharp change in the way Israelis regard their period of military service - particularly in the occupied territories - which has been reflected in the increasing levels of conscientious objection and draft-dodging.

The debate has contrasted sharply with an Israeli army where new recruits are taught that they are joining 'the most ethical army in the world' - a refrain that is echoed throughout Israeli society. In its doctrine, published on its website, the Israeli army emphasises human dignity.

'The Israeli army and its soldiers are obligated to protect human dignity. Every human being is of value regardless of his or her origin, religion, nationality, gender, status or position.'

However, the Israeli army, like other armies, has found it difficult to maintain these values beyond the classroom. The first intifada, which began in 1987, before the wave of suicide bombings, was markedly different to the violence of the second intifada, and its main events were popular demonstrations with stone-throwing.

Yishai-Karin, in an interview with Haaretz, described how her research came out of her own experience as a soldier at an army base in Rafah in the Gaza Strip. She interviewed 18 ordinary soldiers and three officers whom she had served with in Gaza. The soldiers described how the violence was encouraged by some commanders. One soldier recalled: 'After two months in Rafah, a [new] commanding officer arrived... So we do a first patrol with him. It's 6am, Rafah is under curfew, there isn't so much as a dog in the streets. Only a little boy of four playing in the sand. He is building a castle in his yard. He [the officer] suddenly starts running and we all run with him. He was from the combat engineers.

'He grabbed the boy. I am a degenerate if I am not telling you the truth. He broke his hand here at the wrist, broke his leg here. And started to stomp on his stomach, three times, and left. We are all there, jaws dropping, looking at him in shock...

'The next day I go out with him on another patrol, and the soldiers are already starting to do the same thing."

Yishai-Karin concluded that the main reason for the soldiers' violence was a lack of training. She found that the soldiers did not know what was expected of them and therefore were free to develop their own way of behaviour. The longer a unit was left in the field, the more violent it became. The Israeli soldiers, she concluded, had a level of violence which is universal across all nations and cultures. If they are allowed to operate in difficult circumstances, such as in Gaza and the West Bank, without training and proper supervision, the violence is bound to come out.

A spokeswoman for the Israeli army said that, if a soldier deviates from the army's norms, they could be investigated by the military police or face criminal investigation.

She said: 'It should be noted that since the events described in Nufar Yishai-Karin's research the number of ethical violations by IDF soldiers involving the Palestinian population has consistently dropped. This trend has continued in the last few years.'

Private equity funds risk destabilising poor countries: UNCTAD

Taken from Yahoo News, Tuesday, October 16
By William French, AFP

Private equity funds are an increasing force among global investors but their short-term approach risks destabilising some developing countries, the United Nations trade and development agency said on Tuesday.

Private equity funds were involved in 889 merger and acquisition deals in 2006, some 18 percent of the global total and worth a record 158 billion dollars (111 billion euros), the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) said in its "World Investment Report 2007."

Overall, global foreign direct investment (FDI) reached 1,306 billion dollars in 2006, up 38 percent and close to the record 1,411 billion dollars set in 2000.

Investment growth occurred across all regions of the global economy, from developed countries to the developing world and the "transition" economies of Southeast Europe and the former Soviet Union, the report said.

Mergers and acquisitions remained the driving force behind FDI and private equity's growing role in this field merits serious study given its different investment strategy, UNCTAD said.

"We need to understand the role and the behaviour of the private equity funds more," UNCTAD director general Supachai Panitchpakdi told journalists.

"To me, they do not look like long-term investors," he said.

Private equity groups specialise in raising cash from private investors and banks, which they then use to buy underperforming publically listed companies, which are taken private, restructured and re-sold, often at great profit.

Britain and North America are the most important regions for fundraising and investments by private equity firms but continental Europe and Asia are gaining ground, the UNCTAD report said.

The largest private equity takeover to date is the 45 billion dollar purchase of Texas utility TXU by a consortium including Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Texas Pacific Group and major Wall Street banks including Goldman Sachs.

"Private equity funds have typically shorter time horizons than public companies engaged in buyouts as they are inclined to look for options that offer quick returns," the UNCTAD report said.

Supachai warned that the short-term investment strategy inherent in private equity deals "can sometimes destabilise countries if they are overly dependent on these equity funds.

"They dismantle companies and sell plants ... unlike the kind of greenfield investment we like to see," he added.

"Greenfield" investments are projects such as new power plants or factories constructed from scratch.

UNCTAD said that growing competition in the private equity market and the soaring cost of investments casts some doubts as to the sustainability of the high level of their FDI activity.

Private equity funds have long been criticised by trade unions and left-wing politicians for so-called "asset stripping" and a cavalier attitude towards the workers in companies they acquire.

Two years ago, Germany's Social Democrat party chief Franz Muentefering, currently the government's labour minister, famously likened the investment funds to "locusts" for allegedly stripping companies of their most valuable assets and then moving on.

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It is true that Private equity firms are nothing but asset strippers. Their main aim is to make money in the short run. Unfortunately that is the life we live today, everybody looking after themselves and not others as a famous economist once said... in the long run we are all dead!

US silent on Israel grab of Arab land

Taken from Yahoo News, 10, October 2007
By AFP

The United States refused to immediately comment Wednesday on Israel's decision to confiscate Arab land near Jerusalem, one day before Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was to head to the region. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters that Washington had not yet determined what its official reaction would be.

"(I'm) still looking into it," he said. "I want to understand better the facts on the ground from our people in the field."

"As soon as I have those, I'll be happy to provide you with a reaction."

Israel on Tuesday ordered the confiscation of Arab land outside east Jerusalem, officials said, reviving fears that the occupied West Bank could be split in two and challenging peace overtures.

The appropriation orders came as Israelis and Palestinians prepare for a major US-sponsored international peace summit widely expected in Maryland next month, and were immediately criticized by Arab authorities.

Washington's silence contrasts with the reaction by France, Egypt and Jordan, all of which have denounced the land grab.

Rice was due to depart Washington Thursday for Moscow and the Middle East, hoping to lay the groundwork for the peace meeting.

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I doubt if Condoleezza Rice will make any statements, after all this is nothing new. The US has vetoed every UN resolution condemning Israel for criminal acts - so don't expect anything to happen with this issue.

Argentina 'dirty war' priest jailed

Taken from Al-Jezeera News Agency,
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 09, 2007

The first Roman Catholic priest charged for crimes committed under Argentina's past military government has been sentenced to life in prison.

Christian von Wernich was convicted on Tuesday of involvement in torture, kidnapping and murder during a trial that focused attention on the church's role in the 1976-1983 "dirty war".



The former police chaplain was found to have been a "co-participant" with police in seven homicides, 31 torture cases and 42 kidnappings during the military rule that critics say the church did little to oppose.

One judge described the offences as crimes against humanity.

Prosecutors said he extracted information from prisoners during the Catholic practice of confession and took money from families of prisoners ostensibly to help send the detainees into exile when they had already been killed.

Verdict welcomed
Fireworks exploded outside the federal courthouse after Judge Carlos Rozanski announced the conviction and prison sentence handed down by a three-judge federal panel. Inside the court, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a human rights group still seeking "missing" sons and daughters from the period, cheered loudly.



"Justice has been done. This is a historic day we Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo never thought we'd live to see," Tati Almeyda, a member of the group said. Adriana Calvo, of the association of former detainees and the missing, said: "That a court has acknowledged that genocide exists in our country is an encouragement for us to carry on and justifies so many years of struggle."
Al Jazeera's Lucia Newman said von Wernich showed little emotion when the verdict was read out.

She added that in theory, von Wernich, 69, had the right to be moved to house arrest once he turned 70.

Earlier, using biblical language, the priest professed his innocence during mere minutes of final testimony after his defence spent hours in closing arguments.

"False testimony is of the devil because he is responsible for malice and is the father of evil and lies," he said, prompting murmurs in the courtroom packed with torture survivors and human rights activists.

Detention centres
Prosecutors said von Wernich had been linked by survivors to at least five clandestine detention camps in Buenos Aires province.

During the three-month trial, more than 70 witnesses testified and judges toured former torture centres at police stations with survivors.

The "dirty war" officially left some 13,000 dead or missing, although human rights groups have put the toll at nearly 30,000.

Juan Martin Cerolini, von Wernich's defence lawyer, argued that as part of his duties as a priest, the defendant was obliged to visit police detention centres but that did not mean he played any part in the state crackdown. He rejected survivor testimony suggesting von Wernich - who wore a bullet-proof vest over his clerical collar during the trial - conspired with police to help extract information from prisoners under the guise of giving them spiritual assistance.

Von Wernich said in his last words to the judges that he never violated the priestly prohibition against revealing information obtained in the Roman Catholic practice of confession.

"No priest of the Catholic church ... has ever violated this sacrament," he said.

Stricken with pain
The Catholic church, in a statement issued immediately after the verdict was announced, said it was stricken with pain at seeing "a priest participating in very serious crimes." "If any member of the church ... by recommendation or complicity, endorsed the violent repression, he did so under his own responsibility, straying from and sinning gravely against God, humanity and his own conscience," Jorge Bergoglio, Buenos Aires archbishop, said.

Rights organisations allege that the church turned its back to the atrocities committed during military rule and even covered up rights violations, which included the deaths and disappearances of priests and nuns.

The von Wernich case is the biggest human rights trial in Argentina since former police chief Miguel Etchecolatz was convicted in September 2006 in the same La Plata courthouse.

The trials came after the Supreme Court in 2005 annulled amnesty laws blocking prosecution of scores of former state security agents or their civilian allies.

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Torture Appeal

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Torture Appeal

Taken from New York Times, October 9, 2007
By DAVID STOUT

A German citizen who said he was kidnapped by the Central Intelligence Agency and tortured in a prison in Afghanistan lost his last chance to seek redress in court today when the Supreme Court declined to consider his case.

The justices’ refusal to take the case of Khaled el-Masri let stand a March 2 ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va. That court upheld a 2006 decision by a federal district judge, who dismissed Mr. Masri’s lawsuit on the grounds that trying the case could expose state secrets.

The Supreme Court’s refusal, without comment, to take the case was not surprising, given that a three-judge panel for the Fourth Circuit was unanimous. Nevertheless, today’s announcement prompted immediate expressions of dismay, and it could exacerbate tensions between the United States and Germany.

The Fourth Circuit acknowledged the seriousness of the issues when it dismissed Mr. Masri’s suit. “We recognize the gravity of our conclusions that el-Masri must be denied a judicial forum for his complaint,” Judge Robert B. King wrote in March. “The inquiry is a difficult one, for it pits the judiciary’s search for truth against the executive’s duty to maintain the nation’s security.”

The ordeal of Mr. Masri, who is of Lebanese descent and was apparently the victim of mistaken identity, was the most extensively documented case of the C.I.A.’s controversial practice of “extraordinary rendition,” in which terrorism suspects are abducted and sent for interrogation to other countries, including some in which torture is practiced.

The episode has already caused hard feelings between the United States and Germany, whose diplomatic ties were already frayed because of differences over the war in Iraq. Mr. Masri’s lawyer in Germany, Manfred Gnjidic, said the high court’s refusal to consider the case sends a message that the United States expects other nations to act responsibly but refuses to take responsibility for its own actions.

“We are very disappointed,” Mr. Gnjidic said in an interview today with The Associated Press.

“It will shatter all trust in the American justice system.”

Mr. Masri contended in his suit that he was seized by local law enforcement officials while vacationing in Macedonia on New Year’s Eve 2003. At the time, he was 41 years old and an unemployed car salesman.

“They asked a lot of questions — if I have relations with Al Qaeda, Al Haramain, the Islamic Brotherhood,” Mr. Masri said in a 2005 interview with The New York Times. “I kept saying no, but they did not believe me.”

After 23 days, he said, he was turned over to C.I.A. operatives, who flew him to a secret C.I.A. prison in Kabul. There, Mr. Masri said, he was kept in a small, filthy cell and was shackled, drugged and beaten while being interrogated about his supposed ties to terrorist organizations.

At the end of May 2004, Mr. Masri said, he was released in a remote part of Albania without ever having been charged with a crime.

The C.I.A. has never acknowledged any role in Mr. Masri’s detention. But investigations in Europe, as well as news reports in the United States, have bolstered his version of events. German prosecutors issued arrest warrants in January for 13 suspected C.I.A. agents believed to have taken part in the operation that swept up Mr. Masri.

As a practical matter, it is extremely unlikely that President Bush would ever agree to turn the 13 agents over to German authorities. But the warrants against them could hinder their ability to travel in Europe.

When the Fourth Circuit dismissed Mr. Masri’s suit, Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, called the action “truly unbelievable” and “reminiscent of third-world countries.”

The Constitution Project, a nonpartisan organization that seeks to focus attention on constitutional issues, called the Supreme Court’s refusal to take up the case “profoundly disappointing.”

“The government’s treatment of Mr. El-Masri has been appalling, and the executive branch should not be permitted to hide its mistakes behind the so-called state secrets privilege,” said the organization’s senior counsel, Sharon Bradford Franklin. “Now that the court has declined to consider this issue, Congress should immediately take up legislation to reform the state secrets privilege and clarify that it does not authorize unchecked power to disregard individual rights.”

Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, who has introduced legislation to ban extraordinary rendition, said today that “the Bush administration reflexively responds with the ‘state secrets’ defense whenever it is caught bending or simply ignoring the law.”

The chief White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, said later that, on the contrary, the administration is “judicious” in citing state secrets to avoid lawsuits. “And the fact that the Supreme Court agreed with us is, in our opinion, a good thing,” Ms. Perino said.

For his part, Mr. Masri was arrested by the German police in May on suspicion of setting a fire that caused $675,000 in damage to a market in a Bavarian town. His lawyer said Mr. Masri had had a dispute with the store, and that his action was the result of not receiving psychological counseling that he had sought. A German judge ordered him held in a psychiatric ward.

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Angela Merkel is no Gerhard Schroder, so I doubt Germany will be doing anything that benefits the interest of its people - this will all probably be forgotten in the interest of national security (US National Security that is). Maybe Merkel should be the one ordered by the German judge to be held in a psychiatric ward! ...by the way does anyone know what happened to the Italian case against the CIA agents?

Another security firm involved in Iraq shooting

Taken from The Sydney Morning Herald, Australia, 10 October 2007
Reuters/AFP/AAP

A foreign security company staffed mainly by Australian guards said one of its security teams was involved in Tuesday's fatal shooting in central Baghdad.

The Iraqi government said two women were shot dead by foreign security guards.

The scene of the incident was near a base of Unity Resources Group (URG), which is staffed mainly by Australian guards.

The Australian head of the security company, Michael Priddin, confirmed the company had been involved in the shooting incident.

"We deeply regret this incident and we will continue to pass on further information when the facts have been verified and the necessary people and authorities have been notified," Mr Priddin told ABC Radio this morning.

Mr Priddin said the exact circumstances of the incident were still to be determined and the company was working with Iraqi authorities to do so.

"In essence, what we know is that one of our security teams was involved in a shooting incident on Tuesday at approximately 1.40 in the afternoon in the Karrada area of Baghdad," he said.

"One of our security teams which was mobile was approached at speed by a vehicle which had failed to stop despite an escalation of warnings which included hand signals and signal flares.

Finally shots were fired at the vehicle and the vehicle itself stopped."

Security organisations in Iraq are under intense scrutiny after guards from the US security firm Blackwater allegedly opened fire without provocation in Baghdad last month and killed 17 people while escorting a convoy of US diplomats.

Several witnesses said the convoy had headed in the direction of the URG base - a hotel complex sealed off behind high concrete walls and sand bags.

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Well you couldn't make it up... The fact is that over the years while British and American soldiers have faced courts martial over alleged crimes carried out in Iraq, not one security contractor has been prosecuted at home or in Iraq despite a significant number of allegations of abuse. The media have only recently been tuning into these stories.

Iraq seeks $9m for each Blackwater victim

Taken from The Sydney Morning Herald, October 10, 2007
By Anne Davies and agencies

IRAQI authorities have demanded $US8 million (8.9 million Australian dollars) in compensation for the families of each of the 17 people killed when Blackwater USA guards opened fire on a crowded square last month.

A report issued by the Iraqi Government, which calls on the US Government to end its relationship with the controversial security firm within six months, is set to further raise tensions between the Government of the Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, and the White House.
The report said the compensation - totalling $US136 million - was so high "because Blackwater uses employees who disrespect the rights of Iraqi citizens even though they are guests in this country".

The US military pays compensation to the families of civilians killed in battles or to cover property damage, but at far lower amounts. The Iraqi Government has called on US authorities to hand over the Blackwater security agents involved in the shootings to face possible trial in Iraqi courts and has disputed US claims that a law agreed to in 2004 grants the Blackwater guards immunity.

"The investigation committee appointed by [Mr Maliki] has finished its inquiry and has found that there was no evidence that the convoy of Blackwater came under fire directly or indirectly," a Government statement said, quoting the inquiry's findings. "Employees of the company violated the rules governing use of force by security companies. They have committed a deliberate crime and should be punished under the law."

The Iraqi Government would now take "judicial measures to punish the company", the statement said.

The US embassy was tight-lipped on whether those involved in the killings would be handed over for prosecution in a case that has thrown the spotlight on the murky world of private security operators in Iraq.

"This and other matters will be discussed by the joint commission as they proceed with their work [so it is] best not to prejudge the outcome of their discussions," an embassy spokeswoman, Mirembe Nantongo, told AFP, referring to a joint Iraq-US inquiry into the shootings.

Blackwater USA has more than 1000 contractors in Iraq protecting US diplomats, reconstruction and aid officials. On September 16 an operation went horribly wrong when a convoy entered the crowded Nisoor Square and the square was sprayed by machine-gun fire.

Since then, it has been revealed that the company has been involved in 195 shooting incidents since 2004.

Blackwater officials have claimed that the convoy on September 16 was under attack from gunfire, but no Iraqi witnesses have corroborated the report.

The report found that Blackwater guards also had killed 21 Iraqi civilians and wounded 27 in previous shootings since it took over security for US diplomats in Baghdad after the US invasion.The Iraqi Government did not say whether it would try to prosecute in those cases.

The US has not made conclusive findings about the shooting, though there are multiple investigations under way and Congress has opened inquiries into the role of private security contractors.

US university urged to lift ban on Tutu

well - what happened to "freedom of speech" in America? This is an interesting article...

Taken from The Jerusalem Post, Oct 6, 2007
By Associated Press

Faculty members, students and others have urged the University of St. Thomas to reconsider its decision opposing a campus visit by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

University spokesman Doug Hennes said the situation will be discussed next week with the school's president, the Rev. Dennis Dease.

Dease defended his decision to oppose the visit in a statement Friday, saying that a speech Tutu delivered in 2002 was offensive to the Jewish community because it compared Israel's treatment of Palestinians to Adolf Hitler's policies.

"I spoke with Jews for whom I have a greatrespect," Dease said. "What stung these individuals was not that Archbishop Tutu criticized Israel, but how he did so, and the moral equivalencies that they felt he drew between Israel's policies and those of Nazi Germany, and between Zionism and racism."

Dease has received more than 1,800 e-mails, encouraged by Oakland, California-based Jewish Voice for Peace, asking him to reverse his stand and invite Tutu to the campus. The e-mails also asked Dease to reinstate Cris Toffolo as director of the school's peace and justice program, the group said.

Toffolo has said her support for Tutu's visit was cited as a reason for her removal from the post, but Dease denied that. Toffolo is still a faculty member at the school.

On the campus of the private Catholic university in St. Paul, students have put up fliers supporting Tutu.

St. Thomas theology professor David Landry called Dease's stance "very regrettable." Landry added that "a lot of Jews have written they don't find Tutu's remarks terribly offensive, and I've read his speech and I don't think he equates the state of Israel with Hitler, and I don't think he referred to Zionism as racism."

Mordecai Specktor, publisher and editor of American Jewish World, a weekly Jewish newspaper in Minnesota, said: "The Jewish community can survive a speech by Archbishop Tutu. We've endured worse."

Iran's parliament approves labeling CIA, U.S. Army terrorist groups

Taken from Haaretz, Israel, 30/09/2007
By The Associated Press

Iran's parliament on Saturday approved a nonbinding resolution to label the CIA and the U.S. Army terrorist organizations.

The move is seen as a diplomatic tit-for-tat after the U.S. Senate voted in favor of a resolution urging the State Department to designate Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization.

"The aggressor U.S. Army and the Central Intelligence Agency are terrorists and also nurture terror," said a statement by the 215 lawmakers who signed the resolution at an open session of the Iranian parliament. The session was broadcast live on state-run radio. The hard-line dominated parliament said the two were terrorists, because they were involved in dropping nuclear bombs in Japan in World War II, used depleted uranium munitions in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq, supported the killings of Palestinians by Israel, bombed and killed Iraqi civilians and tortured terror suspects in prisons.

The resolution, which is seen as a diplomatic offensive against the U.S., urges Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government to treat the two as terrorist organizations. It also paves the way for the resolution to become legislation that - if ratified by the country's hard-line constitutional watchdog - would become law. The government is expected to remain silent over the parliament resolution and wait for U.S. reaction before making its decision.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Senate voted 76-22 in favor of a resolution urging the State Department to designate Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization. While the proposal attracted overwhelming bipartisan support, a small group of Democrats said they feared labeling the state-sponsored organization a terrorist group could be interpreted as a congressional authorization of military force in Iran.

The Bush administration had already been considering whether to blacklist an elite unit within the Revolutionary Guard, subjecting part of the vast military operation to financial sanctions.
The U.S. legislative push came a day after Ahmadinejad told world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly that his country would defy attempts to impose new sanctions by arrogant powers seeking to curb its nuclear program, accusing them of lying and imposing illegal penalties on his country.

He said the nuclear issue was now closed as a political issue and Iran would pursue the monitoring of its nuclear program through its appropriate legal path, the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is the UN's nuclear watchdog.

Tensions between the U.S. and Iran have escalated over Washington accusations that Iran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons and has been supplying Shiite militias in Iraq with deadly weapons used to kill U.S. troops. Iran denies both of the allegations.

Earlier this month, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on all state matters, named a new head for the elite Revolutionary Guard. He appointed Mohammed Ali Jafari, described as a senior figure in the hard-line force, to replace Yahya Rahim Safavi, who led the Guard for the last decade.

In a new decree, Khamenei also appointed Jafari to run the Basij, groups of volunteers dedicated to support the ruling Islamic establishment, the official IRNA news agency reported.

The appointment effectively merged the two forces. Further intertwining the Guard with the popular Basij force is widely believed to be aimed at undermining U.S. efforts to designate the Guard a terrorist organization.

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Can anyone blame Iran (or even it's people) for declaring the CIA a terrorist organisation? The CIA has a history of destabilising Iran and other Middle Eastern countries. In Iran this process began in 1953 when the CIA overthrew the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mossadegh in a military coup, after he threatened to nationalize foreign oil companies. The CIA replaces him with a dictator, the Shah of Iran, whose secret police, SAVAK (trained by the CIA & Mossad), was as brutal as the Gestapo. The Shah was an evil dictor (supported by the US) and kept his people oppressed. For his support, he awarded foreign oil companies to resume extracting oil from Iran but was forbidden to see its accounts (i.e how much oil was extracted and how much money was made) - Sound familiar? His dictatorship made Iranian people more angry towards him and the Western world and bred fundamentalism. It was only until 1979 that the people of Iran were set free by the Islamic revolution that overthrew him. The US backed puppet fled to Egypt, never to return. All foreignors and westernised Iranians had also fled Iran. Iranian students stormed into the US embassy, held 52 embassy employees hostage for a 444 days. The US government severed diplomatic relations and imposed economic sanctions on April 7, 1980 and later that month attempted a failed rescue. Shortly afterwards, Iraq invaded Iran and it was the start of Iraq-Iran war where millions of people died. To get revenge, the US backed Saddam Hussein's Iraq in their war against Iran, helping them with weapons (to fight the Soviet backed Iran) but at the same time secretly allowed Israel to sell American weapons to Iran using the profits to arm the Contras fighting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Well you couldn't make it up! The people of Iran are forgiving people, they want a fresh start with the USA, but the USA hasn't forgotten it's embarassing defeat in Iran and want's to make ammends. On July 3, 1988 the USS Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655 en route to UAE killing all 290 passengers and crew on aboard, including 38 non-Iranians and 66 children. The Vincennes was inside Iranian territorial waters at the time. According to the US government, the Iranian airbus was mistakenly identified as an attacking F14 fighter. The Iranian government maintains that the Vincennes knowingly shot down a civilian aircraft. Today, Iran has changed alot. Whether you like him or not Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has tried on numerous occasions to make friendship with the Bush administration. Bush does not want to know. Ahmadinejad recenty went to the States and answered questions by students and public from Columbia University. He has since extended an invitation to U.S. President George W. Bush to speak at an Iranian university - I doubt Bush will ever take that offer. Jaw Jaw is better than War War!

Here's more info of the roles the CIA played in recent time . All information has been extracted from a brilliant site informationclearinghouse.info

The U.S. Congress created the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947 with the passing of the National Security Act. The official duty of the Central Intelligence Agency is to serve as an intelligence gathering agency.

In reality, the CIA does not only gather information but consistently targets and engages in covert operations, psychological operations, and acts of terrorism both domestically and internationally.

CIA past operations and activities
Operation Phoenix was an assassination program conducted by the CIA during the Vietnam conflict. Its objective was to eliminate Vietnamese who might oppose the U.S but also to terrorize the entire population of South Vietnam and to suppress opposition to the occupying U.S. forces. Over 20,000 Vietnamese were murdered, often at random.

During the 1980s the CIA used profits from its cocaine smuggling activities to finance the Contras in Nicaragua who were responsible for the murders of tens of thousands of civilians, and it attempted to disrupt the country's economy, in order to destabilize the legitimate Sandinista government. For this, the U.S. was condemned in the World Court for "unlawful use of force," and it rejected a U.N. security council resolution calling upon it to observe international law. We must note that George Bush Sr. was vice president at the time .

On Sept. 11, 1973, the CIA planned and organized the military coup d'etat in Chile which overthrew the legitimately elected government of Salvador Allende and brought to power the regime of General Augusto Pinochet. This regime abducted, tortured and killed thousands of Chilean citizens in an attempt to suppress opposition.

It appears that Henry Kissinger, National Security Advisor and Secretary of State in the Nixon and Ford administrations, was closely involved diplomatically with the Southern Cone governments at the time and well-aware of Operation Condor. The first cooperation agreements were signed between the CIA and anti-Castro groups, and fascist movements such as the Triple A set up in Argentina by Jose Lopez Rega ("personal secretary" of Juan and Isabel Peron), and Rodolfo Almiron. The post-junta truth commission found that the Argentine military had "disappeared" at least 10,000 Argentines in the so-called "dirty war" against "subversion" and "terrorists" between 1976 and 1983; human rights groups in Argentina put the number at closer to 30,000. We must note that George Bush Sr, was head of the CIA at the time it began and vice president at the time it ended.

Operation CHAOS was the most vicious aggressive domestic surveillence operation conducted on American antiwar groups and activists like Abbie Hoffman, whose objectives were to:

1. Gather information on their immorality.
2. Show them as scurrilous and depraved.
3. Call attention to their habits and living conditions.
4. Explore every possible embarrassment.
5. Investigate personal conflicts or animosities between them.
6. Send articles to newspapers showing their depravity.
7. Use narcotics and free sex for entrapment.
8. Have members arrested on marijuana charges.
9. Exploit the hostilities between various persons.
10. Use cartoons and photographs to ridicule them.
11. Use disinformation to confuse and disrupt.
12. Get records of their bank accounts.
13. Obtain specimens of handwriting.
14. Provoke target groups into rivalries that resulted in deaths.

The CIA was allegedly involved in the April 2002, Venezuela failed coup that tried to overthrow President Hugo Chavez, who was democratically elected.

In 2002 the CIA distorted Iraq data to the media in order to justify George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Most recently, former CIA employee, Luis Posada Carriles, who is believed to be the mastermind behind the 1976 Cubana de Aviacion bombing which killed 73 people, walked free from a U.S. court Tuesday following a court ruling for his liberation.

These are only a handful of operations; there have literally been hundreds and many are still classified as secret by the U.S. government.

For a time-line checkout here.

Black gold turns grey as Western giants prepare to draw from the wells of Iraq

Taken from The Independent, UK, 30 September 2007
By Ewa Jasiewicz

The big oil multinationals thought the prize was theirs under new production-sharing agreements in the war-torn country. But the 'Iraqi wealth for the Iraqi people' movement is growing amid internecine conflicts and trade union resistance.

Iraq is open for business," promised oil ministry officials. "Investment can reduce Iraq's poverty and help bring peace," came back the chorus from oil company chiefs.

As the executives toasted one another with cocktails sponsored by Lukoil at the Iraq Petroleum 2007 conference in Dubai earlier this month, ordinary Iraqis were living in a state of emergency.

Oxfam reports that 28 per cent of the country's children are malnourished, that four million people regularly can't buy enough to eat, and that 70 per cent are without adequate water supplies. With 60,000 Iraqis fleeing their homes each month and reports of an average of 62 violent deaths per day, the soft carpets, piped music and quiet deal-making at the Hyatt Regency hotel were a world away from occupied Iraq.

At the same time, a parallel conference was taking place in Basra under the banner, "Oil wealth belongs to the Iraqi people". Organised by the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions (Ifou) and attended by civil society leaders, activists and academics from all over the country, this was Ifou's third conference aimed at stopping the likes of Shell and BP from gaining a controlling stake in Iraq's oil wealth.

With a growing movement to keep the oil in the public sector, disputes between the Kurdish regional government (KRG) and Baghdad, and no legal framework for investment, the black goldrush that international oil companies are banking on is not a done deal.

Iraq, with proven reserves of 115 billion barrels represents the biggest untapped oil and gas market on the planet. Iraqi oil production stands at just 2.5 per cent of the world's total even though the country possesses 10 per cent (or potentially double that, according to some estimates) of global reserves.

With just 4 per cent of the world's oil in the hands of multinationals and a growing trend for nationalisation in countries from Venezuela to Kazakhstan, Iraq is seen by many international groups as their best chance to turn the tables.

Central to their hopes is a new oil law friendly to foreign investment. Drafted in closed-door consultations between international oil companies, the International Monetary Fund and the American and British governments, this law is the blueprint for foreign companies to explore, develop, produce and sell Iraqi oil under exclusive contracts lasting up to 30 years.

Regardless of whether Iraq's parliament passes the law, oil minister Hussain al-Shahristani (pictured right) has declared the country open for business and plans to invite companies to invest under existing Baath regime legislation to speed up the process. "There is no legal vacuum in Iraq," he declared at the Iraq Petroleum conference in Dubai. "We are now under the oil law of Iraq that has been in force for a few years. We are going to go ahead and prepare our model contracts."

Controversy has raged over the provisions of the new law, with political parties, religious authorities, oil experts and trade unions calling for a referendum and a moratorium on any long-term contracts with foreign groups. Planning minister Ali Baban has pledged to resign if the law is passed; the Association of Muslim Scholars has issued a fatwa against it; more than 100 senior technocrats and experts have written to the government boycotting it; and Iraqi oil unions have not ruled out strike action.

Asked about the possibility of a consultation involving Iraqi civil society and unions over the law – a senior source at the Iraqi ministry of planning, who did not wish to be named, said: "Well Iraqi workers, they come from a low class – they are not well informed about these things. They are always demanding something: whether it's higher wages or conditions, they are always wanting something." He denied they should be included in consultations.

Oil and gas lawyer Jay Park has run training workshops for the oil ministry and international companies on the draft law. He was the author of oil legislation in both Somalia and Kurdistan and has represented foreign companies and the KRG in contract negotiations. In a workshop at the Dubai conference, Parks paraphrased Bismarck, quipping: "Laws are like sausages: you don't want to know how they were made, you don't want to know how the sausage machine works."

But it is not on sausage machines that Iraqi civil society begs to differ. A recent research poll commissioned by US and UK human rights groups found that just 4 per cent of Iraqis felt they had received enough information about the oil law. Some 63 per cent said they believed their oil industry should be developed by state companies, with 32 per cent of those indicating a strong preference.

Adding fuel to the fire, conflict between the Kurdish regional government and Baghdad reached a new high this month when the KRG signed a production sharing agreement with Dallas-based oil firm Hunt.

Mr Shahristani has declared the Hunt deal illegal. Speaking on the sidelines of Iraq Petroleum, he said: "Any contract that has been signed by anybody other than the ministry of oil now, before the new law is legislated, has no standing as far as the government of Iraq is concerned." With the Kurdish energy minister claiming to have at least 10 companies in line to sign further deals, the conflict looks set to escalate.

The type of contracts on offer has also been a source of controversy. Production-sharing agreements (PSAs) were the first to be touted by the law – exclusive long-term deals that Iraq's unions liken to earlier, colonial-era concession agreements. These gave companies virtually unlimited profits, and control over the production, depletion and sale of Iraq's oil.

PSAs are usually used by countries with reserves to which it is hard to gain access and, as a result, high extraction costs. None of the top six Opec countries use the agreements, opting instead for service contracts. These allow the state to retain full authority over all production decisions and consign the investing company to the role of contractor.

But the international groups want PSAs. In 2004, BP, Shell, Chevron, Exxon, Total and ENI employed the services of Washington-based corporate lobbyists the International Tax and Investment Centre. The ITIC produced a document which concluded that PSAs were the only investment option for Iraq. Officials from the British Foreign Office and Treasury advised the ITIC in late 2004 on their strategy for influencing the Iraqi government. The British ambassador to Iraq then sent the document formally to the Iraqi finance minister.

Although Foreign minister Kim Howells claimed the Foreign Office was only acting as a postal service, Rob Sherwin, Middle East economic adviser for the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, admitted on the sidelines of Iraq Petroleum that the FCO and British oil companies have held talks on the future of Iraqi oil. "We have had discussions in the past as to where Iraq's oil industry ought to go," he said.

Mr Sherwin, who used to work as Middle East economic business development adviser to Shell, believes charges of the Government advocating UK oil group interests are overstated. "Of course Britain has an interest in Iraq, but some people are trying to overplay those interests and relationships with oil companies. They are trying to make a nuisance."

Back at Iraq Petroleum, John Heavyside, business manager for BP in Iraq, was showing his enthusiasm for PSAs: "We want to take risks and get incentivised to perform better; service contracts don't really allow us to do that. It's what we all want, all the international companies here. Production-sharing agreements offer a win-win situation. They are equitable and offer lucrative returns and benefits to both the state and investing companies."

Some in the oil ministry disagree. Natiq al Bayati, director of reservoir and oil fields development, has called PSAs "a red line". Speaking at Iraq Petroleum, he stated: "International oil companies would prefer the PSC [production-sharing contract] but the political and economic culture and atmosphere in Iraq is not conducive to this contract. We will operate on a 'horses for courses' basis – there will be no one model contract."

While oil groups have not yet sent their personnel to Iraq, they have been working hard to get a foot in the door. The country currently has 45 competitive memoranda of understanding with oil companies – confirmed pre-contractual commitments to work together on particular projects. The oil ministry has also confirmed work on model deals and regulations. More than 100 blocks are up for exploration – 40 in the Kurdish region and 65 in the rest of Iraq.

Abdul Ilah Qassim al-Amir, oil adviser to the Iraqi prime minister, reiterated that contracts signed under the previous regime would be reviewed. In this category are the Al Ahdab field for the China Petroleum Company; Exploration Block 8 for India's ONGC Videsh; the Amara field for Petro Vietnam; Block 3 for Indonesia's Petro-mina; and the Al Noor field for the Syrian government.

However, Lukoil's claim to the West Qurna field – a super giant possessing up to 10 per cent of all Iraq's known reserves – is invalid, according to Mr Amir, who claimed that the previous regime annulled the contract.

Washington has referred to the oil legislation as a revenue- sharing law and reconciliation measure. Yet just one of the 46 provisions refers to revenue sharing and mentions it as the subject of a second law. The "reconciliation" aspect is the incentivising of regional authorities to counter insurgency and achieve their own political and religious ambitions by controlling oil policy. This has led some commentators to call the law an "oil for peace" measure, and others a plan for the dismemberment of the country.

Step up the Federal Oil and Gas Council. The FOGC will have at least 15 members representing regional political leaders, the Iraqi National Oil Company, and the ministries of oil, planning and finance. It will have the power to decide what type of contracts, and with which companies, will be signed, and how resources accounting for 95 per cent of all government revenue will be developed and managed for a generation.

Timothy Mills, president of the US Chamber of Commerce and campaign lawyer to George Bush during the disputed election results of 2000, provided an insight into the pacification policy behind regional economic decision-making. Writing for the official programme of the Iraq Petroleum conference in Dubai, he said: "[If] the untapped oil wealth of Iraq is fairly distributed amongst the various political and social factions, then each political and social faction would share a strong interest in quelling the unrest that has persisted for the better part of the past four years."

Yet Tariq Shafiq, author of the oil law and former director of the Iraqi National Oil Company, believes that tasking regional political authorities with economic, political and security mandates could escalate sectarianism. "The FOGC will conform to the ethnic and sectarian divisions inside the country. People should be picked for their ability and integrity, not along ethnic lines. The decision making requires two-thirds to approve. If you have a strong party there or a strong region, one party could easily block one third."

Iraqi economist and oil expert Kamil Mahdi goes further: "This arrangement will see regions competing with each other to award contracts to multinationals, with the benefits flowing to corrupt local elites and the multinationals themselves."

Many of Iraq's top professionals have joined the exodus from the country, and the brain drain is taking its toll on the oil sector.

An Iraqi consultant working with organisations in Baghdad, who did not wish to be named, said: "Iraq can, on its own capability and manpower, double production, but the organisations operating here are incredibly weak. Execution of work has been delayed, and contracts with suppliers and manufacturers are taking three to four times as long as they used to because experts in the field of contracting have left. About 90 per cent of Iraq's top experts have left. Nobody wants to die."

A world away from the bright lights of Dubai in the power-cut streets of Basra, the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions was pressing ahead with its campaign for a unified industry in public hands.

Hassan Jumaa Awad, Ifou president, believes Iraqi manpower and international technology and expertise make a good match for developing the oil sector, but only on terms advantageous to Iraq. Speaking from Basra, he said: "It is possible to co-operate with oil companies through a service contract, for the development of the oil industry in the service of the Iraqi economy." He said that the Southern Oil Company could increase output by one million barrels per day by the end of 2008 if given a $500m (£250m) investment.

Despite their reconstruction efforts and a membership of 26,000, Mr Shahristani has ruled the union illegal and wants to see it shut down. The oil minister has refused to recognise or meet with it, instead reapplying Baathist laws that ban unions in the public sector.

Speaking on the sidelines of Iraq Petroleum, he stated: "Trade unions anywhere else are supposed to be concerned with the welfare of workers and adequate wages, not set policies for the government." He said that industrial action effecting exports would be treated as "violent" and dealt with by force.

The strength of the union, however, has forced the prime minister to meet with leaders over demands covering pay, health and safety and permanent contracts, as well as a re-instatement of fuel subsidies and consultation on the oil law.

Ifou, from its origins as the Southern Oil Company union in 2003, has held regular elections and grown to a nationwide federation including unions from 10 state oil and gas companies.

Responding to the oil minister's comments, Mr Awad said: "Our legitimacy has come through the ballot box and the Iraqi constitution, which enshrines the right to form unions. The minister's actions are similar to those undertaken by Saddam's regime against those who demanded better conditions for the people."

He went on to say: "We will continue our efforts to serve our members and defend our oil wealth, no matter what the cost."

And the cost may be high. In June arrest warrants were issued against union leaders and Iraqi troops occupied the oil fields over strike threats. The TUC and the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions have both condemned the Iraqi government's strong-armed tactics and called for negotiations and recognition of Ifou as a bona fide organisation.

For Iraqis, an economic occupation, imposed by military force, threatens a future of genuine sovereignty and freedom. Yet with a growing opposition challenging sectarian, corporate and foreign agendas, the future of Iraq's black gold is far from certain.

Ewa Jasiewicz is a freelance journalist and part-time researcher for Platform, an independent oil industry analyst

The war for the house

Taken from Haaretz, 30/09/2007
By Gideon Levy

Theirs is an apartment building no one has ever heard of. No architectural International Style, no style at all, just an apartment building. Five floors, 11 families, new tiles in one of the bathrooms. Situated on a hillside, the house hovers above the city below. Hovers? Hovered.

Many other buildings surround this one. Densely constructed, the houses almost touch one another. A narrow alley, the width of a person, separates the buildings. All of the residents of the apartment building are family members - parents, siblings and cousins. They built one floor on top of another, residing in cramped proximity. Residing? Resided.

Last Thursday, the bulldozer arrived. How did the bulldozer get to a home at the end of the narrow alleyway? Along the way, as they say, the bulldozer paved a route of destruction for itself, damaging all the homes in its path. Here it demolished a stone fence, there it cracked a wall. What difference does it make already? Some of the homes have now become hazardous for human residence, their cracked walls threatening to collapse. The bulldozer finally reached its destination and began razing the building.

The five stories collapsed like a house of cards, stirring up a huge cloud of dust, burying everything in the apartment building: kitchen utensils, furniture, toys, electronic appliances and memories. Nothing remained; everything was buried. Last week, I saw two children trying to save something: the new bicycles purchased for the school year. Demolished walls with iron rods protruding from them covered the red bikes the children struggled to extract. Finally, they uncovered them: bent, smashed. Pain surfaced on the faces of the children, a girl and a boy, nine or 10 years old. Nothing remained of their home. Just a row of children's clothing fluttered in the wind, hung on a wire descending from the remains of the roof. The staircase remains suspended in the air on iron rods, leading nowhere, threatening to crash down at any moment on our heads and upon the heads of the rummaging children.

Here lives the Mabruk family, not happily. The father, Ali, his sons and daughters. About three weeks ago, the Israel Defense Forces killed his son, Nasser; another son, Majid, is still wanted by Israel. A fighting family, active in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. A giant red flag of the Popular Front is now planted among the ruins of the house, protesting the world that has shown no interest in them. Not far from there, at the end of a row of houses, the soldier Ben Zion Henman was killed in a gun battle that erupted here about 10 days ago. Within the camp, Mohammed Khaled, 17, and Adib Salim, 38, were killed. Adib was a disabled tirmis [lupin bean] salesman, paralyzed on the right side of his body. He fell, bleeding, under a sign memorializing his brother, Jamal, a Hamas activist who was liquidated here by a missile in 2001. The IDF claims that the paralyzed Adib was armed. In its response, the IDF emphasizes as supporting evidence the fact that his brother was a terrorist.

It was a successful operation: The IDF prevented a horrible suicide attack. Some of the planners of this attack were here, among the alleyways of the Ein Beit Ilma camp, located on the western edge of Nablus. No one can dispute the need to carry out an operation like this, which prevented killing. The fact that only two Palestinians were killed during the three days of the nameless operation - this time the IDF did not follow its habit of assigning the operation one of the childish names it favors - attests to the caution the soldiers employed.

In this light, there is even more reason to ask: Why the apartment building? Why was it necessary to destroy the lives of 11 families? How will it contribute to the security of Israel, even if the IDF calls the building a "combat post?" When will we finally wean ourselves of this unnecessary and criminal means of destroying the homes of innocent people? Does the fact that the commander of the Popular Front in the camp lives in the house justify demolishing the entire five-story building? When will the IDF learn that the next terrorists will sprout from among these very ruins? Was not the urge for revenge aroused in the heart of the child who searched for the bicycle among the ruins of his home, who saw his world destroyed? Anyone wishing to become acquainted with the real "infrastructure of terror" is invited to travel to Nablus, to see the ruins of the home at the edge of the Ein Beit Ilma camp.

Complex's swastika symbol mistake

Taken from Sydnet Morning Herald, Australia, 28.08.07
By Dan Glaister


Painting a swastika on a public building is a hate crime. But what happens when the building is the swastika?

From the ground, a construction in San Diego, United States, appears innocuous. But viewed from the air, on the internet via Google Earth, the shape is unmistakeable - it resembles the Nazi symbol.


Whoops … the building's shape seen from the air

Construction began for the six-building complex at the US naval base at Coronado in southern California in 1967.

The plans called for two central buildings and a single L-shaped barracks, but the Naval Amphibious Base Complex 320-325 evolved in design. By the time it was finished in 1970 it had four L-shaped buildings set at right angles. That was when the problem was spotted.

The scheme's architect, John Mock, said this week that while he was aware of the shape as viewed from above, he did not think it a true swastika. "We knew what it was going to look like, but it isn't that. It's four L-shaped buildings … looking at it from the ground or the air, it still is."

Forgotten about after the initial controversy, the buildings' form become an issue again thanks to the internet and Google Earth. It has led an unlikely alliance - of bloggers, anti-discrimination activists, politicians and one talkshow radio host - to take action.

And the navy has added $US600,000 ($687,000) to its 2008 budget for camouflage.

Landscaping, rock structures and solar panels should help disguise the building's shape.

"We take this very seriously," said Scott Sutherland, the deputy public affairs officer for the Navy Region Southwest. "We don't want to be associated with something as symbolic and hateful as a swastika."

The remedy might not stop conspiracy theorists. The buildings, surmise some bloggers, were put up by German POWs as a Hitler tribute. Others say nearby buildings look like planes pointing at the swastika.

One theory has it that, sideways, the buildings resemble Calvary crosses. And the crosses point to Jerusalem.

----------------------------------------------------------

What a stupid thing to do in the first place. The architect and the people behind the project should be seriously questioned and punished!

The 9/11 survivor no one can remember

· Tale of flight from burning tower does not add up
· Woman goes to ground after story is questioned

Taken from the Guardian, UK, Friday September 28, 2007
David Dunlap and Serge Kovaleski

Tania Head's story, as shared over the years with reporters, students, friends and hundreds of visitors to ground zero, was a remarkable account of both life and death.

She had, she said, survived the terror attack on the World Trade Centre despite having been badly burned when the plane crashed into the upper floors of the south tower.

Crawling through the chaos and carnage on the 78th floor that morning, she said, she encountered a dying man who handed her his inscribed wedding ring, which she later returned to his widow.

Her own life was saved, she said, by a selfless volunteer who extinguished the flames on her burning clothes before she was helped down the stairs. It was a journey she said she had the strength to make because she kept thinking of a beautiful white dress she was to wear at her coming wedding to a man named Dave.

But later she would discover, she said, that Dave, her fiance, and in some versions her husband, had perished in the north tower.

Ms Head's account made her one of only 19 survivors who had been at or above the point of impact when the planes hit. But no part of her story, it turns out, has been verified.

The family and friends of the man to whom she claimed to be engaged say they have never heard of Tania Head and view the relationship she describes with the man, who did die in the north tower, as an impossibility.

A spokeswoman for Merrill Lynch, where she told people she worked at the time of the terror attack, said the company had no record of employing a Tania Head.

And few people, it seems, who embraced the immediacy and pain of her account ever asked the name of the man whose ring she had returned, or that of the hospital where she was treated, or the identities of the people she met in the south tower on the morning of 9/11.

"She never shared those details, and it was nothing we wanted to probe," said Alison Crowther, the mother of Welles Remy Crowther, a man who died on 9/11 and who is credited with rescuing a number of people from the south tower, including Ms Head by her own account.

In recent weeks the New York Times sought to interview Ms Head about her experiences on 9/11 but she cancelled three scheduled interviews, citing her privacy and emotional turmoil, and declined to provide details to corroborate her story. "I have done nothing illegal," she said.

She has retained a lawyer, Stephanie Furgang Adwar, to represent her.

No one has suggested that Ms Head did anything to profit financially from her position as an officer with the Survivors' Network, the non-profit group for which she helped to raise money.

But the organisations to which she has been affiliated have also questioned her account.

For several weeks colleagues who said they respected the good work she had done among survivors have pressed her to come forward and clarify details. But they said they had been unable to persuade her or, in other cases, that she contradicted previous versions she had given.
The board of the Survivors' Network voted this week to remove her as president and as a director of the group, which supports those who escaped the terror that day.

Jefferson Crowther, Welles Crowther's father, said in an interview that he and his wife met Ms Head early last year.

"She explained that her clothes were on fire and that our son took a jacket and put out the flames.

"She told us that she said, 'Don't leave me,' and he replied, 'I won't. Don't worry. I'll get you down.'

"She seemed so heartfelt and genuine about what she said to us."

The missionary danger

Current-day missionaries use friendly tactics, but are just as dangerous as before

Taken from Ynet News, Israel, 27.09.07
Ya'acov Margi

History is repeating itself. Then, as now, missionaries were operating under the guise of mercy and a "religion of love," in an effort to boost the number of converts in Israel based on Christian doctrine. In this way, some elements are attempting to realize their final objective: Exterminating the Jewish people through money and manipulations.

Then, history was filled with pogroms, crusades, the Inquisition, blood libels, mass killing, and genocide, which were all undertaken in the name of this same "love." If it wasn't done gently and mercifully, then it was done through the use of force, torture, destruction, fire, murder, and cruelty.

Toady, missionaries have been forced to change their modus operandi. For example: Acquiring souls through money, covering debts, making tempting proposals, immigration, and guaranteed employment. All of the above are the means of persuasion employed by profession missionaries.
Making others convert to Christianity is considered among missionary circles to be a profession where all means justify the end. They claim that their objective is "saving the soul" of the intended victim.

Most promises are not realized, yet the hurt, weak, and embarrassed victim is despaired and doesn't realize this. There are cases where he believes professional seducers and their smooth messages, and then it is too late. The humiliation, destruction, and poison introduced by the missionary into the victim's soul have already seeped into the depths of his lost soul.

Tempted by offers of help
Judaism has no interest in converting members of other religions. Freedom of religion is one thing, and there is no reason to prevent a member of any other religion from acting based on his faith. However, converting someone – even if this is done by a Jew enticing a Christian – while using money and other despicable means, is a wholly different matter.

At times of crisis, people could easily be tempted by offers of help that are proposed on behalf of missionary elements. Missionaries are very active in the grey area of helping the needy. Many cases of handing out food to the needy or extensive campaigns like handing out school bags to children are undertaken by missionaries as part of a strategic effort to gain the trust of the needy.

Based on accumulated data, we can clearly point to heightened missionary activity among communities of new immigrants, as well as submission to this activity. Many of the new immigrants arrive with a Jewish background that is not deep, do not understand Hebrew, miss home, and seek humane treatment. This, in addition to the difficult economic state faced by many of them, prepares the ground for missionary activity.

The Israeli government must boost enforcement and promote the bill I initiated, which would ban conversion efforts and set a jail term of one year for those who violate the law.

The writer, a Knesset member, is the Shas faction chairman
----------------------------------------------------

Evangelical Christians are the single biggest reason why the state of Israel remains an Apartheid state and an aggressive state in the Middle East. It is why Israel is supported by the US financially and Militarily at the expense of it's taxpayers. Why would Evangelicals encourage and finance aliyah so that Jews who do not have any links to the state of Israel take over occupied land and homes that belong to Palestinians for the sake of Zionism. What kind of religion is this? What kind of agenda is this?

As Desmond Tuto said famously "When missionaries came to South Africa, we had the land, they had the Bible. Then they told us, 'Let's close our eyes and pray.' When we opened our eyes we saw that we have the Bible, they have the land."

Ex-Serb colonel gets 20 years for Vukovar war crimes

Taken from the Guardian, September 27, 2007
By David Batty and agencies

The UN war crimes tribunal today jailed a former Yugoslav army colonel for 20 years for his involvement in the massacre of hundreds of people in the Croatian town of Vukovar in 1991.



Mile Mrksic, a former colonel in the Serb army, was found guilty of aiding and abetting the torture and murder of 194 people sheltering in a hospital in Vukovar, a town which became synonymous with one of the most notorious cases of mass murder in the 1991-95 wars across the former Yugoslavia.

A second officer, Veselin Sljivancanin was jailed for five years for torture but cleared of the most serious charges against him. A third officer, Miroslav Radic, was cleared of all charges.

The verdicts generated indignation in Croatia, which had hoped for far more severe sentences. State-run radio called the outcome "shocking", while the prime minister, Ivo Sanader, said the verdicts were "shameful".

"The whole world witnessed the suffering of civilians in Vukovar. The victims did not deserve such verdicts," Mr Sanader said.

Prosecutors at the Hague tribunal had sought to prove the trio were responsible for the killing of at least 264 people who had fled to Vukovar's hospital expecting to be evacuated by international observers when the town fell to Yugoslav forces after a siege.

Several hundred were taken from the hospital by Serb-dominated army units and militias and taken to a farm where they were beaten and shot dead.

Prosecutors had sought to prove that those killed were largely civilians, but the court ruled they had been initially selected as suspected Croatian fighters. Accordingly, all charges of crimes against humanity against the three men - known as the "Vukovar Three" - were dismissed, including the charge of extermination.

But Mrksic, 60, then the commander of Serb forces in the region, was convicted for turning over the captives, who were considered POWs, to a group of Serb paramilitaries that he knew harboured intense animosity towards them.

Sljivancanin, 54, the area's chief security officer, was jailed for failing to protect the Croatians from beatings and torture by the local Serb paramilitary forces and militias.

Mr Radic, 45 was cleared of having anything to do with the cruelty meted out to the hospital evacuees and ultimately their murder.

UN prosecutors also expressed dismay at the outcome. "The prosecutor finds it incomprehensible that someone who is convicted for the torture of 200 people can receive only a sentence of five years," said a spokeswoman for chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte.

One nurse who was in the hospital at the time told Reuters that she was shocked at the court's leniency. Footage of Sljivancanin promising to hand over patients to the Red Cross has been repeatedly aired on Croatian television over the years.

"He is responsible for the fact that the wounded were taken from the hospital," the nurse, Binazija Kolesar, said. "We all saw him in the hospital and we know that he was the one who was making decisions."

Sljivancanin, who was first detained in June 2003, will be credited for his time in detention and freed within a year.

Israeli in Lebanon under investigation in muder case and on espionage charges

Taken from Haaretz, Israel, 22/09/2007
By Yoav Stern,

An dual citizen of Israel and Germany has been arrested in Lebanon on charges of espionage, a Lebanese judicial source said on Saturday. Security officials said the man, Daniel Sharon, has been handed over to military intelligence for questioning. According to Lebanese publication Al-Akhbar Wa-Sapir, Sharon was arrested on Thursday during an investigation into the murder of a Lebanese citizen.

During questioning, it emerged that Sharon had visited Lebanon 11 times on his German passport over the last two years. He denied allegations he was on an espionage mission and said he was in Lebanon for leisure purposes, according to the source.

Media reports said that police in the Merje area, a hotbed of the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah movement in Beirut's southern suburbs, were investigating the killing of Moussa al-Shalaani when the probe led them to Sharon.

Al-Shalaani had been shot with a gun belonging to a security officer who had been his roommate. The roommate was summoned for questioning, and maintained that he had lost his gun.

The roommate also said that during the time of the murder, he had been with his German friend who was residing at the Four Points Sheraton hotel in Beirut's luxurious Verdun neighbourhood.

A hotel employee told the police that Sharon had paid him to not write his full name on any documents.

"His conflicting testimonies led the authorities to arrest him, and further investigations are underway in a murder case and espionage," the judicial source said.

"He is denying charges of espionage and insists that he is gay and he likes to have sexual relations with Lebanese men and that is why his visits to Lebanon were frequent," the source said.

"But further investigations into the case showed that Sharon had a friend in the Lebanese security offices who used to facilitate his entries to Lebanon and with the help of a hotel clerk he managed to hide his real name," the source added.

A Lebanese security agent was also held for questioning about his relations with the Israeli man after the two maintained contacts through the Internet, said officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. Lebanon forbids any contacts or dealings with Israel.

Lebanon's General Prosecutor Saeed Mirza said investigations were underway into how the story was leaked to the press.

During questioning, it emerged that Sharon is well-versed regarding Lebanon, speaks Arabic well and knows how to use he language's many idioms. According to reports, Sharon learned Arabic in the United Arab Emirates from a teacher of Bahraini citizenship. The Lebanese media reported that Sharon kept his cool during questioning and denied accusations that he was a spy.

The media also reported that Sharon had visited Lebanon 11 times since 2005, once immediately prior to the Second Lebanon War with Israel last summer. His last visit was four days prior to his arrest, and he was scheduled to leave on the day of his arrest.

It later emerged that Sharon had sent his security officer friend on trips abroad on several occasions, and in exchange the man helped Sharon within Lebanon.

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It does beg to question who is stiring up trouble in Lebanon and who was behind the recent assassinations (or the finiancing of it).

Recalled: The Sabra Shatila Massacre

Well, I waited a few days for the world media to recall the massacre that took place at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps 25 years ago, and you guessed it - little or no coverage at all. So I had to rely on the Arab media...

Sabra Shatila recalled

Taken from Al-Jazeera news Agency, SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2007
By Iman Azzi in Beirut, Lebanon

Twenty-five years after surviving the massacre at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut, Jamila Khalife still mourns family members who were killed at the hands of Phalangist Lebanese forces.




Lebanon is marking the 25th anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacre [AFP]

Her life since then, she says, has been a daily reminder of the horrors she witnessed as a 16-year-old Palestinian refugee from Jaffa living in the camps at the height of the 1975-90 Lebanese civil war.

"This was my father," said Khalife, pointing to a black and white photo of a man lying face down in a narrow street.

"They shot him in the head."

Three of her relatives were also killed.

"After it was over, on the way to find my mother at the nearby hospital, I saw a woman on the street, her intestines were spilling out. She died holding her baby," Khalife recounted as her own daughter, Ghram (Arabic for Love), sat on her lap.


Dusk massacre
In September 1982, Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) fighters, evacuated from their Beirut barracks and the Israeli army, surrounded the refugee camps.


About 2,000 civilians were killed over the course of three days [AFP]

On the afternoon of September 16, Israeli forces allowed members of the Lebanese Forces (LF) - an offshoot of the Phalange party - into the camps allegedly to search for suspects in the slaying of Bashir Gemayel, then Lebanese president.



Gemayel, who also headed the LF, had been killed by a car bomb outside his office a day earlier, angering many of his supporters and plunging war-torn Lebanon into further chaos. Palestinian forces quickly distanced themselves from Gemayel's death, but it did not save the camps from reprisals.

Khalife says she remembers seeing both Israelis and Phalange party members inside the camps that day.

"The Israelis were wearing military uniforms. The Phalange wore jeans, normal clothes and military arm bands. They swore at us in Lebanese Arabic," she said.

Most aid organisations working in the camps in 1982 say around 2,000 civilians were killed over the course of three days.

Feigning death
Nabil Mohammad, a Palestinian refugee who lost all but one of his six siblings, said: "The Israeli military were bombing the camps and the worst case scenario was that the Israelis would come in and collect the young men so my uncle sent me away, thinking it would be safer."

Mohammad, his cousin and his cousin's wife dodged snipers as they made their way to a retirement home where his aunt worked. When the fighting had subsided and they returned to their home, they discovered that five of his siblings and his mother had been killed.

His younger brother Munir survived by feigning his death a few feet away from his mother's body.

Mohammad was only 19 when the killings took place, but every year since then he tries to keep the memories of his loved ones alive by returning to the camps, now home to 45,000 Lebanese, Palestinians and Syrians.

He remains bitter that fellow Arabs would commit what he called atrocities.

Avenging Gemayel?
But a former LF fighter, who spoke to Al Jazeera on the condition of anonymity, insisted that the Israeli military, and not the Lebanese, should shoulder full responsibility for the killings.

He said: "After Bashir Gemayel was killed, Lebanon was at a boiling state. We were angry, we were lost. We knew that something was going to happen but didn't know what."

He admitted that the LF was angered by the assassination of Gemayel but had no idea what was planned at Sabra and Shatila. The soldier, who began fighting with the LF when he was 13 in 1979, said his unit had been confined to barracks at the Beirut airport and not allowed to leave after Gemayel's murder until they were deployed around Sabra and Shatila.

"It was not the LF [who were responsible for the killings]. It was the Israeli soldiers who went inside those camps," he said.

Where is Sabra and Shatila?

But 25 years later, some Lebanese are unfamiliar with the events of Sabra and Shatila.

Elias, 20, said he had never heard of Sabra and Shatila.

"Where are Sabra and Shatila?" he asked turning to his friend. "Iraq? They never mentioned it in school."

George Hanna, 43, a resident of East Beirut, said: "It was between Christians and Palestinians during the war. I've never been there. What would I do there if I went?

"I never gave Sabra and Shatila any thought."




A quarter of a century later, some Lebanese are still unfamiliar with the massacre [AFP]

Nevertheless, Palestinians in Lebanon are determined to keep the history of the camps alive, at least for their community.

Kassem Aina, a co-ordinator for the 'Never forget Sabra and Shatila' campaign, told Al Jazeera: "We tell the children not only about the massacre of Sabra and Shatila. We tell them about all massacres from Deir Yassin to Tel Zaatar to Sabra and Shatila. I feel sad we have so many massacres in our history."

Never forget Sabra and Shatila was founded by Stefano Chiarini, an Italian journalist and activist, who passed away last February.

To mark the 25th anniversary this year, delegations from Italy, France, Spain and other nations will join Palestinian and Lebanese memorials planned for the week.

Seeking justice
The memorials mark the events at the camps, but also push for bringing perpetrators to justice.
To this day, there has been no direct accountability for the killings.

Ariel Sharon, the former Israeli prime minister, was forced to resign as defence minister after he was found both "indirectly" and "personally" responsible by the 1982 Kahane Commission of inquiry which investigated Israeli culpability in Sabra and Shatila.

LF commander Elie Hobeika, who led the incursion into the camps, received amnesty like all militia leaders following the Lebanese civil war, and went on to become a member of parliament.
He claimed he had evidence that would prove his innocence and directly implicate the Israelis, but was killed one month before he was to testify against Sharon in a case brought by camp survivors in Belgium in 2001.

This weekend, the streets of Sabra and Shatila remain densely packed with people struggling to live normally at the scene of one of Lebanon's worst modern tragedies.

Legal resolution may arrive later but on this year's anniversary the families of the victims are working to balance memories of their loved ones with the ability to move beyond the tragedy.
"You can forgive but you can never forget," said Aina.

Greenspan admits Iraq was about oil, as deaths put at 1.2m

Taken from The Observer, Sunday September 16, 2007
By Peter Beaumont and Joanna Walters in New York

The man once regarded as the world's most powerful banker has bluntly declared that the Iraq war was 'largely' about oil.

Appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1987 and retired last year after serving four presidents, Alan Greenspan has been the leading Republican economist for a generation and his utterings instantly moved world markets.

In his long-awaited memoir - out tomorrow in the US - Greenspan, 81, who served as chairman of the US Federal Reserve for almost two decades, writes: 'I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.'

In The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World, he is also crystal clear on his opinion of his last two bosses, harshly criticising George W Bush for 'abandoning fiscal constraint' and praising Bill Clinton's anti-deficit policies during the Nineties as 'an act of political courage'. He also speaks of Clinton's sharp and 'curious' mind, and 'old-fashioned' caution about the dangers of debt.

Greenspan's damning comments about the war come as a survey of Iraqis, which was released last week, claims that up to 1.2 million people may have died because of the conflict in Iraq - lending weight to a 2006 survey in the Lancet that reported similarly high levels.

More than one million deaths were already being suggested by anti-war campaigners, but such high counts have consistently been rejected by US and UK officials. The estimates, extrapolated from a sample of 1,461 adults around the country, were collected by a British polling agency, ORB, which asked a random selection of Iraqis how many people living in their household had died as a result of the violence rather than from natural causes.

Previous estimates gave a range between 390,000 and 940,000, the most prominent of which - collected by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and reported in the Lancet in October 2006 - suggested 654,965 deaths.

Although the household survey was carried out by a polling organisation, rather than researchers, it has again raised the spectre that the 2003 invasion has caused a far more substantial death toll than officially acknowledged.

The ORB survey follows an earlier report by the organisation which suggested that one in four Iraqi adults had lost a family member to violence. The latest survey suggests that in Baghdad that number is as high as one in two. If true, these latest figures would suggest the death toll in Iraq now exceeds that of the Rwandan genocide in which about 800,000 died.

The Lancet survey was criticised by some experts and by George Bush and British officials. In private, however, the Ministry of Defence's chief scientific adviser Sir Roy Anderson described it as 'close to best practice'.

Articles of faith

When two eminent US scholars wrote about the 'Israel lobby' they were vilified by colleagues and the Washington Post. This week Barack Obama joined the attack. Ed Pilkington hears their story

Taken from The Guardian
Saturday September 15, 2007

Given the reception John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt received for their London Review of Books essay last year on what they called the Israel Lobby, it would have been understandable had they crawled away to a dark corner of their respective academic institutions to lick their wounds. Their argument that US foreign policy has been distorted by the stultifying power of pro-Israeli groups and individuals was met with a firestorm of protest that has smouldered ever since.

The authors were assailed with headlines such as the Washington Post's: "Yes, it's anti-semitic." The neocon pundit William Kristol accused them in the Wall Street Journal of "anti-Judaism" while the New York Sun linked them with the white supremacist David Duke.

The row became a focal point of a much wider debate about the limits of permitted criticism of the state of Israel and its American-based supporters that has ensnared several academics and writers, including a former president. Jimmy Carter was castigated earlier this year when he published a plea for a renewed engagement in the Middle-East peace process under the admittedly provocative title, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. He was labelled an anti-semitic "Jew hater" and even a Nazi sympathiser. Meanwhile, a British-born historian at New York University, Tony Judt, has been warned off or disinvited from four academic events in the past year. On one occasion, he was asked to promise not to mention Israel in a speech on the Holocaust. He refused.

For Walt, the explosion of criticism after the LRB publication in March 2006 struck particularly close to home as two members of his own Harvard faculty turned on him. Ruth Wisse, professor of Yiddish literature, compared Walt and his University of Chicago co-author's work to that of a notorious 19th-century German anti-semite. Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard criminal law professor who represented OJ Simpson, charged them with culling some of their references from neo-Nazi websites.

Given the battering he has taken, Walt is remarkably upbeat. "We were surprised by how nasty it got," says the Harvard professor. "The David Duke reference, the neo-Nazi websites - these were intended to smear us and swing attention on to us rather than to what we were saying. It wasn't pleasant, but it never made me doubt what we had written or doubt myself." Standing tall in the face of attack is one thing; to raise your head above the parapet for a second round is quite another. But that is what the Mearsheimer/Walt double act are doing: they have gone on the offensive with the publication of a book-length version of their original treatise.

As night follows day, the dispute has started anew. The New York Sun has dedicated a section of its website to the controversy; Dershowitz has revved up again, calling the book "a bigoted attack on the American Jewish community"; and Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League, has gone to the trouble of writing his own book in riposte - and it's in the bookshops a week before The Israel Lobby appears.

There is one obvious question to put to Walt: why do it to yourself? Wasn't one stoning enough? "We did ask ourselves, did we want to go through this again?" he admits, but only to add: "It didn't take us all that long to figure out we had more to say and it was our job to say it."

By writing a 496-page book, as opposed to the original article's mere 13,000 words, the authors hope to present a more nuanced version of their case. They have taken in new examples to support their thesis, notably the second Lebanon war, which broke out in the interim, and have sought to address some of the points raised by critics.

The book follows the structure of the original article fairly faithfully, and its argument can be summarised thus: in recent years the US government has given Israel unconditional support, showering it with $3bn a year irrespective of the human rights violations it inflicts on the Palestinians. It was not always this way - think of the Suez crisis of 1956 when America stepped in to frustrate Israel's (and Britain's) ambitions. But from the 1960s onwards the relationship deepened to the extent that today American and Israeli interests are deemed by many Americans to be essentially identical.

The authors ask why this is the case, and argue that strategically there is no reason for it. The end of the cold war removed a central justification for the special relationship, as Israel no longer provided the US with a barrier to communism in the region. Post 9/11, the US and Israel are presented as partners against terrorism, but America's vulnerability to attack partly stems from its support for Israel, which has provoked hostility in the Muslim world. Nor is there a moral argument for indiscriminately backing Israel - as a towering military presence in the Middle East, Israel is no longer under existential threat.

So what explains this ongoing largesse? The authors conclude that the answer lies with the Israel lobby, a loose coalition of individuals and organisations that wants US leaders to treat Israel as though it were the 51st state. The lobby stifles debate, inhibits criticism of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and maintains the special relationship despite the fact that it has become a liability both for the US and for Israel itself.

In its transition from literary journal essay to stand-alone book, the authors have made a few telling alterations of presentation and emphasis. The most vivid is that in the body of the text they have demoted lobby to lower case: the Israel Lobby has become the Israel lobby. Walt sees that as the most minor of changes, remarking that: "John and I don't even remember how the capital L got used in the first place."

More substantially, perhaps, they have used the extra space to make several robust disclaimers, insisting that they have never questioned the right of Israel to exist or the legitimacy of the Israel lobby itself. They have also filed down some of the more jagged edges of their argument, such as their position on the role the lobby played in the build-up to the Iraq war. They still maintain that the war would "almost certainly not have occurred" were it not for the Israel lobby, but they soften the claim by adding that America's belligerent mood in the aftermath of the attacks on New York and Washington also had much to do with it.

Such nuances make for a more sophisticated read, but they fall far short of the revisions - the authors would say capitulations - that would be needed to satisfy their detractors.

Foxman is one of the most vocal critics. His new book, timed specifically to counteract the arrival on bookshelves of The Israel Lobby, pulls no punches. Its title is representative of the tone of the book: The Deadliest Lies. "This is a big lie that the Jewish people have lived with throughout history," he tells me from his New York office. "Up to now these anti-semitic canards have been heard on the fringes, but to have two respected academics repeat them legitimises the debate and penetrates the mainstream."

More measured - though still forceful - criticism of the Mearsheimer and Walt book has come from those titans of US journalism, the New York Times and the New Yorker. The Times' book critic William Grimes takes a swipe at the authors' claim that it is time for the US to treat Israel as a normal country: "But it's not. And America won't. That's realism." David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker, suggests none too flatteringly that the book is symptomatic of a polarised era in which Americans are searching for an explanation to the evils of the times.

In the swirl of debate, the squabbling parties keep coming back to the core concept of an Israel lobby, case notwithstanding. The authors have been meticulously careful in the book to stress that they see the lobby as a loose coalition. It is not a single, unified movement and it is certainly not a cabal or conspiracy. Yet no matter how profuse their disclaimers, they have not assuaged those antagonists for whom any lumping together of Jews or Jewish interest groups sets alarm bells ringing. "Visit any anti-semitic website and you'll hear the same old themes: the Jews have too much power; they exercise political influence not as individual citizens but as a cabal," writes Foxman. "Walt and Mearsheimer sound all the same notes, with a subtlety and pseudo-scholarly style that makes their poison all the more dangerous."

In our conversation, Walt accepts the phrase "the lobby" is "an awkward term as many of the groups and people in it don't operate on Capitol Hill. It's shorthand - you could call it the pro-Israel movement". One wonders why he and his co-author have stuck with it, then, when it has allowed their detractors to smear other more credible parts of their argument.

Take the slanging match over the causes of the Iraq war. Walt and Mearsheimer rightly lay a large part of the blame for this disastrous escapade on the neoconservatives within the Bush administration, but they then go on to define those neocons as an integral part of the Israel lobby. Books have been written about the various motivations of the neocons. Sympathy for Israel is one, but there are many others - the desire to spread democracy, a belief in the positive uses of military intervention, denigration of international institutions. To suggest that the neocons and the Israel lobby are one and the same is a conflation too far.

But the authors have brought into the open aspects of American intellectual life that needed airing. They cast light on the overweening activities of specific pro-Israeli groups, most importantly the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Aipac is a self-avowed lobby (it calls itself America's pro-Israel lobby) and has been ranked the second most powerful such body in the US. With a staff of more than 150 and a budget of $60m, it wields extensive influence among Congressmen, working to ensure criticism of Israel is rarely aired on Capitol Hill. The Guardian invited it to comment, but it declined.

Though Foxman insists the furore is proof that debate is alive and kicking, Walt and Mearsheimer have also put their finger on the limits of acceptable discourse in the US. It is notable that none of the candidates standing for president in 2008 have a word of criticism for Israeli state behaviour; this week Barack Obama pulled an advert for his campaign from the Amazon page selling The Israel Lobby, denouncing the book as "just wrong".

So what happened to America's commitment to free speech, the First Amendment? "We knew from De Tocqueville this country is driven by conformity," Judt says. "The law can't make people speak out - it can only prevent people from stopping free speech. What's happened is not censorship, but self-censorship." Judt believes that a few well-organised groups including Aipac have succeeded in proscribing debate. He recalls a prominent Democratic senator confiding to him that he would never criticise Israel in public. "He told me that if he did so, for the rest of his career he would never be able to get a majority for what he cared about. He would be cut off at the knees."

In the final chapter of the book, Walt and Mearsheimer make a shopping list of reforms. They call for: a two-state solution to the Middle East crisis; greater separation of US foreign policy from Israel for both nations' sake; and campaign finance reform to reduce the power of pro-Israeli groups.

Nothing outlandish, or even controversial, there. Coming at the end of such a bumpy ride of claim and counter-claim, the conclusion feels almost disappointingly gentle. That in itself bears eloquent witness to the state of affairs in America today, where thoughts considered unremarkable elsewhere are deemed beyond the pale.

· The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt is published by Allen Lane at £25. To order a copy for £23 with free UK p&p go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0870 836 0875