PHOTO BEWAIL

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 16:40:00 +0000

The Afghanistan Americans seldom notice

Want a billion dollars in development aid? If you happen to live in Afghanistan, the two quickest ways to attract attention and so aid from the U.S. authorities are: Taliban attacks or a flourishing opium trade. For those with neither, the future could be bleak.

In November 2008, during the U.S. presidential elections, I traveled around Afghanistan asking people what they wanted from the United States. From Mazar in the north to Bamiyan in central Afghanistan to the capital city of Kabul, I came away with three very different pictures of the country.

Dragon Valley is a hauntingly beautiful place nestled high up in the heart of the Hindu Kush mountains. To get there from Kabul involves a bumpy, nine-hour drive on unpaved roads through Taliban country. In the last couple of years, a small community of ethnic Hazara people has resettled in this arid valley, as well as on other sparse adjoining lands, all near the legendary remains of a fire-breathing dragon reputedly slain by Hazrat Ali, the son-in-law of Prophet Mohammed.

A few miles away, hewn from the soaring sandstone cliffs of Bamiyan in central Afghanistan are the still spectacular ruins of what used to be the largest examples of standing Buddha carvings in the world. Two hollow but vast arched, man-made alcoves, which rise higher than most cathedrals, still dominate the view for miles around.

For much of the world, the iconic image of Taliban rule in Afghanistan remains the shaky video footage from March 2001 of the dynamiting of those giant Buddhas that had rested in these alcoves for almost 1,500 years. Months after they were blown up, the Taliban bombed neighboring Hazara towns and villages from the air, burning many to the ground. Tens of thousands of their inhabitants were forced to flee the country, most seeking shelter in Iran.

In the seven years since the Taliban were ousted by the United States, the Hazara villagers of Bamiyan have started to trickle back into places like Dragon Valley in hopes of resuming their former lives. Today, ironically enough, they find themselves in one of the safest, as well as most spectacularly beautiful regions, in the country. Its stark mountains and valleys, turquoise lakes and tranquil vistas might remind Americans of the Grand Canyon region.

Yet the million-dollar views and centuries of history are cold comfort to villagers who have no electricity, running water, or public sanitation systems -- and little in the way of jobs in this hardscrabble area. While some of them live in simple mud homes in places like Dragon Valley, others have, for lack of other housing, moved into the ancient caves below the ruined Buddhas.

No help whatsover

Just outside one of the many single-room mud houses that line the floor of Dragon Valley, I met Abdul Karim, an unskilled laborer who has been looking daily for work in the fields or on construction sites since he returned from Iran a year ago. Most days, he comes home empty-handed. "We have nothing, no work, no electricity, no help from the government or aid organizations. Right now our situation is terrible, so of course I have no hope for the future. I'm not happy with my life here, I'm ready to die because we have nothing."

His only source of income is a modest carpet-weaving business he's set up inside his tiny house at which his two children, a boy aged about 10 and a girl of about 15, work. It generates about a dollar a day.

As I went door to door in the small Hazara settlement, I heard the same story over and over. In the mud house next to Karim's, I met "Najiba" (not her real name), a woman of perhaps 70 years, who said that her family had received virtually nothing in aid. "The government hasn't done anything for us. They just say they will. They just came by once, gave us some water, some clothes, but that's it."

Traveling in Bamiyan province, I repeatedly heard the same story with slight variations. In the wheat fields outside the village of Samarra, I met Shawali, a peasant who told us that he and his son had fled south to Ghazni, a neighboring province, to escape the Taliban. "My son and I labored hard pulling big carts full of timber and heavy loads until we could raise enough money to return to Bamiyan." Here he remains a day laborer, eking out a living, and no better off than when he was in internal exile in Ghazni.

The situation has so disintegrated that many say they wish they could simply return to the refugee camps in Iran. In Dragon Valley, for example, I met "Khadija." As the middle-aged woman fanned a small fire fed by wood gathered from nearby, she said, "We were happy in Iran. It was good. The weather was warm. We had a good life there, but it was still someone else's country. When the [Iranian] government told us we had to go back home, we wanted to return to start a new life. But [the Afghan government] hasn't helped us at all. They told us they were going to give us wood, supplies, and doors but they've given us nothing... no help whatsoever."

A recent report from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) offers some context for the kind of desperate poverty I encountered in Bamiyan. The agency's analysts estimate that about 42% of the country's estimated 27 million people now live on less than $1 a day.

According to the Red Cross, Iraq is now a country of widows and orphans

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 16:32:00 +0000

The sixth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq is a sad occasion for the balance sheet: during six years of occupation 1.2 million citizens were killed, 2,000 doctors killed, and 5,500 academics and intellectuals assassinated or imprisoned. There are 4.7 million refugees: 2.7 million inside the country and two million have fled to neighbouring countries, among which are 20,000 medical doctors.

According to the Red Cross, Iraq is now a country of widows and orphans: two million widows as a consequence of war, embargo, war again and occupation, and five million orphans, many of whom are homeless (estimated at 500,000).

Almost a third of Iraq’s children suffer from malnutrition. Some 70 per cent of Iraqi girls no longer go to school. Medical services, not so long ago the best in the region, have totally collapsed: 75 per cent of medical staff have left their jobs, half of them have fled the country, and after six years of “reconstruction” health services in Iraq still do not meet minimum standards.

Because of the use of depleted uranium in ammunition by the occupation, the number of cancer cases and miscarriages has drastically increased.

According to a recent Oxfam report, the situation of women is most worrisome. The study states that in spite of optimistic bulletins in the press, the situation of women keeps deteriorating.

The most elementary supplies are still not available. Access to drinkable water is for large parts of the population a problem and electricity is functioning only three to six hours a day, and this in a state that was once a nation of engineers.

More than four in 10 Iraqis live under the poverty threshold and unemployment is immense (28.1 per cent of the active population). Besides 26 official prisons, there a some 600 secret prisons. According to the Iraqi Union of Political Prisoners, over 400,000 Iraqis have suffered detention since 2003, among which 6,500 minors and 10,000 women. Torture is practiced on a large scale, and some 87 per cent of detainees remain uncharged.

Corruption is immense: according to Transparency International, Iraq, after Somalia and Myanmar, is the most corrupt country in the world. The American Foreign Affairs journal calls Iraq “a failed state”. This is symbolised by the fact that Iraq, a state that has the third largest oil reserves in the world, must import refined oil on a massive scale. Authorities are on the verge of giving oil concessions for 25 years to international (also European) oil companies, though they have no mandate or legal authority to do so.

Instead of being paid reparations for the enormous destruction wrought on the infrastructure of the country, entailing billions in oil revenues lost, Iraq is again in line to be robbed. There is large scale ethnic cleansing going on against the Turkmen, the Christians, the Assyrians and the Shebak. Kirkuk is being “Kurdicised” by massive immigration and illegal settlements (of Israeli inspiration) and its history falsified.

This data, referenced in numerous reports, was presented during an information session in the European Parliament organised by the Brussells Tribunal on 18 March by a panel of Iraqi specialists. On 19 March, there was a session in the Belgian Parliament where a national representative after the statement of Dr Omar Al-Kubaissi, a renowned Iraqi cardiologist and expert on health, frankly admitted that he had no idea of the scale of the humanitarian disaster. Who can blame him?

In the European press we hear little or nothing concerning this humanitarian disaster. In the newspapers there is talk of elections, of an occasional bomb attack, of the political process, of the positive results of the “surge”, etc, but concerning the suffering the Iraqi people … next to nothing.

We have fallen asleep and we console ourselves: Obama plans the retreat American troops; therefore the issue of Iraq is off the agenda. The truth is that we want to forget this humanitarian disaster, because the West is responsible. Of course, in the first and last instance the administrations of Bush and Blair, but also the Netherlands, Denmark, Hungary, Poland and Italy were part of the coalition and hence accessory while Antwerp was a vital transit port for the invasion. Therefore also Europe bears a heavy responsibility.

How is it possible that we can dissimulate the impact of the war, which initially stirred world public opinion, in spite of the flow of shocking reports? “Darfur” sounds a bell meanwhile (and correctly so) as a sort of African holocaust, but the crimes against the humanity of a near “genocidal” scale in Iraq are swept under the carpet.

If the press does not do its job, how can public opinion be touched? Even activists and well meaning politicians are not on the level. This type of disinformation, and the indifference that comes with it, one could call a form of negationism, or at least a type of immoral ignorance. Wir haben es nicht gewusst, we will say. But the people of the Arab region will not forgive us. Let this be clear.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 07:21:00 +0000

A Spanish judge has instituted a judicial inquiry against seven Israeli political and military personalities on suspicion of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The case: the 2002 dropping of a one-ton bomb on the home of Hamas leader Salah Shehade. Apart from the intended victim, 14 people, most of them children, were killed.

For those who have forgotten, the then commander of the Israeli air force, Dan Halutz, was asked at the time what he feels when he drops a bomb on a residential building. His unforgettable answer: “A slight bump to the wing.” When we in Gush Shalom accused him of a war crime, he demanded that we be put on trial for high treason. He was joined by the prime minister, Ariel Sharon, who accused us of wanting to “turn over Israeli army officers to the enemy”. The attorney-general notified us officially that he did not intend to open an investigation against those responsible for the bombing.

I should be happy, therefore, that at long last somebody is ready to put that action to a judicial test (even if he seems to have been thwarted by political pressure.) But I am sorry that this has happened in Spain, not in Israel.

Israeli TV viewers have lately been exposed to a bizarre sight: army officers appearing with their faces hidden, as usual for criminals when the court prohibits their identification. Paedophiles, for example, or attackers of old women.

On the orders of the military censors, this applies to all officers, from battalion commanders down, who have been involved in the Gaza war. Since the faces of brigade commanders and above are generally known, the order does not apply to them.

Immediately after the cease-fire, the minister of defence, Ehud Barak, promulgated a special law that would give unlimited backing by the state to all officers and soldiers who took part in the Gaza war and who might be accused abroad of war crimes. This seems to confirm the Hebrew adage: “On the head of the thief, the hat is burning.”

I do not object to trials abroad. The main thing is that war criminals, like pirates, should be brought to justice. It is not so important where they are caught. (This rule was applied by the State of Israel when it abducted Adolf Eichmann in Argentina and hanged him in Israel for heinous crimes committed outside the territory of Israel and, indeed, before the state even existed.)...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 06:59:00 +0000

Of all the beautiful phrases in Barack Obama's inauguration speech, these are the words that stuck in my mind: "You are on the wrong side of history."

He was talking about the tyrannical regimes of the world. But we, too, should ponder these words.

In the last few days I have heard a lot of declarations from Ehud Barak, Tzipi Livni, Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Olmert. And every time, these eight words came back to haunt me: “You are on the wrong side of history!”

Obama was speaking as a man of the 21st century. Our leaders speak the language of the 19th century. They resemble the dinosaurs which once terrorized their neighborhood and were quite unaware of the fact that their time had already passed.

During the rousing celebrations, again and again the multicolored patchwork of the new president’s family was mentioned.

All the preceding 43 presidents were white Protestants, except John Kennedy, who was a white Catholic. 38 of them were the descendants of immigrants from the British isles. Of the other five, three were of Dutch ancestry (Theodor and Franklin D. Roosevelt , as well as Martin van Buren) and two of German descent (Herbert Hoover and Dwight Eisenhower.)

The face of Obama’s family is quite different. The extended family includes whites and the descendents of black slaves, Africans from Kenya, Indonesians, Chinese from Canada, Christians, Muslims and even one Jew (a converted African-American). The two first names of the president himself, Barack Hussein, are Arabic.

This is the face of the new American nation – a mixture of races, religions, countries of origin and skin-colors, an open and diverse society, all of whose members are supposed to be equal and to identify themselves with the ”founding fathers”. The American Barack Hussein Obama, whose father was born in a Kenyan village, can speak with pride of “George Washington, the father of our nation”, of the “American Revolution” (the war of independence against the British), and hold up the example of “our ancestors”, who include both the white pioneers and the black slaves who “endured the lash of the whip”. That is the perception of a modern nation, multi-cultural and multi-racial: a person joins it by acquiring citizenship, and from this moment on is the heir to all its history.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 06:55:00 +0000

The shocking level of the last wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence, which ended with this weekend’s cease-fire, reminds us why a final resolution to the so-called Middle East crisis is so important. It is vital not just to break this cycle of destruction and injustice, but also to deny the religious extremists in the region who feed on the conflict an excuse to advance their own causes.

But everywhere one looks, among the speeches and the desperate diplomacy, there is no real way forward. A just and lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians is possible, but it lies in the history of the people of this conflicted land, and not in the tired rhetoric of partition and two-state solutions.

Although it’s hard to realise after the horrors we’ve just witnessed, the state of war between the Jews and Palestinians has not always existed. In fact, many of the divisions between Jews and Palestinians are recent ones. The very name “Palestine” was commonly used to describe the whole area, even by the Jews who lived there, until 1948, when the name “Israel” came into use.

Jews and Muslims are cousins descended from Abraham. Throughout the centuries both faced cruel persecution and often found refuge with one another. Arabs sheltered Jews and protected them after maltreatment at the hands of the Romans and their expulsion from Spain in the Middle Ages.

The history of Israel/Palestine is not remarkable by regional standards — a country inhabited by different peoples, with rule passing among many tribes, nations and ethnic groups, a country that has withstood many wars and waves of peoples from all directions. This is why it gets so complicated when members of either party claim the right to assert that it is their land.

The basis for the modern State of Israel is the persecution of the Jewish people, which is undeniable. The Jews have been held captive, massacred, disadvantaged in every possible fashion by the Egyptians, the Romans, the English, the Russians, the Babylonians, the Canaanites and, most recently, the Germans under Hitler. The Jewish people want and deserve their homeland.

But the Palestinians too have a history of persecution, and they view the coastal towns of Haifa, Acre, Jaffa and others as the land of their forefathers, passed from generation to generation, until only a short time ago.

Thus the Palestinians believe that what is now called Israel forms part of their nation, even were they to secure the West Bank and Gaza.

And the Jews believe that the West Bank is Samaria and Judea, part of their homeland, even if a Palestinian state were established there.

Now, as Gaza still smoulders, calls for a two-state solution or partition persist. But neither will work.

A two-state solution will create an unacceptable security threat to Israel. An armed Arab state, presumably in the West Bank, would give Israel less than 10 miles of strategic depth at its narrowest point.

Further, a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip would do little to resolve the problem of refugees. Any situation that keeps the majority of Palestinians in refugee camps and does not offer a solution within the historical borders of Israel/Palestine is not a solution at all.

For the same reasons, the older idea of partition of the West Bank into Jewish and Arab areas, with buffer zones between them, won’t work. The Palestinian-held areas could not accommodate all of the refugees, and buffer zones symbolise exclusion and breed tension.

Israelis and Palestinians have also become increasingly intertwined, economically and politically.

In absolute terms, the two movements must remain in perpetual war or a compromise must be reached. The compromise is one state for all, an “Isratine” that would allow the people in each party to feel that they live in all of the disputed land and they are not deprived of any one part of it.

A key prerequisite for peace is the right of return for Palestinian refugees to the homes their families left behind in 1948. It is an injustice that Jews who were not originally inhabitants of Palestine, nor were their ancestors, can move in from abroad while Palestinians who were displaced only a relatively short time ago should not be so permitted.

It is a fact that Palestinians inhabited the land and owned farms and homes there until recently, fleeing in fear of violence at the hands of Jews after 1948 – violence that did not occur, but rumours of which led to a mass exodus. It is important to note that the Jews did not forcibly expel Palestinians. They were never “un-welcomed”. Yet only the full territories of Isratine can accommodate all the refugees and bring about the justice that is key to peace.

Assimilation is already a fact of life in Israel. There are more than one million Muslim Arabs in Israel; they possess Israeli nationality and take part in political life with the Jews, forming political parties. On the other side, there are Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Israeli factories depend on Palestinian labour, and goods and services are exchanged. This successful assimilation can be a model for Isratine.

If the present interdependence and the historical fact of Jewish-Palestinian coexistence guide their leaders, and if they can see beyond the horizon of the recent violence and thirst for revenge toward a long-term solution, then these two peoples will come to realise, I hope sooner rather than later, that living under one roof is the only option for a lasting peace.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 06:52:00 +0000

Sameh is a twenty-three year old journalist based in the Gaza Strip. He has been active for years to bring out the word of his people's suffering. Janet is a twenty-one year old journalist and an American citizen, determined to help after she had seen the horrendous crimes that perpetrated in Gaza by Israel. She crossed thousands of miles to evaluate the situation with her own eyes, her own mind, and her own heart. She stumbled across Sameh's work online, and it was not long before they became friends and united in the struggle to open the eyes of the world to the agonies in which they are so often closed. One story that caught their attention was located in the eastern Gaza Strip. It is an account of the personal catastrophe of Khaled Abd Rabo.

We began our journey and were barely able to reach the town of Abd Rabo. As we drove along, our car dipped to the right and to the left. The ground was rutted from the holes that the Israelis tore into the streets with their bombs, their bulldozing, and their fires. The land was also wounded. A once lush and tranquil neighborhood had been transformed into hell on earth. Our eyes were filled with nothing but devastation, and masses of people covered the place like flies.

Our car came to a halt and we walked down the street to Khaled's shattered home. And there was Khaled himself, sitting in the rubble of what was once a happier time.

"This house used to have four floors, and a nice garden. It brought us peace and tranquility," he began to tell us. "The Israeli army came to this house many times before, but the last was in March of 2008."

He explains how they invaded his home and investigated him and his family. "They found nothing. I am a police officer in the Ramallah government; I have nothing to do with Hamas.

"That day when they left us, they did not take anything or harm anyone," he continued. "I remember it was 12:50pm on the fourth day of the military ground invasion when the army took control of the region. A real battlefield was born and thousands of people were trapped. Nobody could leave due to the excessive fire from the Israelis, and the soldiers kept on coming, and coming, and coming.

"And then the tanks came. One of them was based only meters away from my house. There were twenty-five of us, and we were all told to leave," he said as his voice trembled and he began to cry. "The soldiers were eating chips and chocolate, and they were smiling when they killed my daughters.

"My mother, my wife, and my three daughters all held white flags when they tried to leave the house. We saw two of the soldiers get out of their tank, and we told them how we wanted to leave. We waited and waited for their response but were given no answer. Then, to our own surprise, a third soldier emerged and he opened fire on the children with insanity.

"Souad was only seven years old, Summer was three, and Amal was of only two years. My mother was shot as well, and I watched all that I loved fall to the ground. I screamed for them to stop! I ran into the house to call civil defense, ambulances, anyone who could help.

"For one hour the injured were bleeding, and two of my daughters were killed despite the so called ceasefire. No help was able to come to us in time. One of the ambulances tried, but the Israeli soldiers stopped the paramedic and forced him to remove his clothing. They then bombed the ambulance and it was buried in rubble. The paramedic fled naked while their fire surrounded him.

"I left the house with some of my family members," Khaled continued. "We carried my mother in a crib. I held Summer in my arms, and she was still breathing despite her gaping spinal wound. I thought to myself, 'no way can I leave little Summer, even if I end up dead like my other two daughters.' I passed her to my brother and then took the body of Souad in my hands, and my wife held Amal as we left the house.

"The soldiers were firing uncontrollably above their heads and everywhere around them. Many of the houses were demolished by their tanks. As we crossed one of the roads, there was a man and he tried to save us but the snipers saw this and killed both him and his horse. When we finally reached the town of Jabaliya, we saw that everyone had brought all of the injured citizens here. So shocked were we by what we saw that we threw our bodies to the ground, and for one hour we remained there unable to fathom what has become of our people."

We asked him why he thought they would kill his children. He replied, "I am certain they were drunk, or were given orders to kill everyone including the children. This was on Harets a couple of days ago, that many Israeli rabbis were giving orders to leave no one alive," he explained. "I don't know why my daughters were killed. They never committed any crimes, they were children! They did not fire rockets at Israel, although Israel claims to only aim at those who have first fired at them.

"We are a very peaceful people, we have nothing to do with fighting or rockets. I know if I go to the court about what has happened the Israeli army would create thousands of pretexts to make their soldiers appear innocent. They have done this with many other cases before," he went on.

"It was not a war between two immense armies. Obviously, it was a war between civilians and the fourth largest army in the world: Israel. But they do not call it a war. They call it an operation."

An operation where tens of thousands of Gazans were either killed or psychologically and physically wounded. The devastation did not only effect the people, but all you can imagine. Yet buildings can be repaired and the land will grow again, but Khaled's mayhem will never be alleviated. He will never hear the laughter of Saoud and Amal again, but he will hear the aching cries of Summer. She is now paraplegic due to her injuries. The only thing that functions is her mind. A mind that will forever be telling the nightmare of what happened to her life. Even during her first interview in the hospital, in every single detail.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 06:50:00 +0000

Of all the beautiful phrases in Barack Obama's inauguration speech, these are the words that stuck in my mind: "You are on the wrong side of history."

He was talking about the tyrannical regimes of the world. But we, too, should ponder these words.

During the rousing celebrations, again and again the multicolored patchwork of the new president’s family was mentioned.

Israel is the product of the narrow nationalism of the 19th century, a nationalism that was closed and exclusive, based on race and ethnic origin, blood and earth. Israel is a “Jewish State”, and a Jew is a person born Jewish or converted according to Jewish religious law (Halakha). Like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, it is a state whose mental world is to a large extent conditioned by religion, race and ethnic origin.

When Ehud Barak speaks about the future, he speaks the language of past centuries, in terms of brute force and brutal threats, with armies providing the solution to all problems. That was also the language of George W. Bush who last week slinked out of Washington, a language that already sounds to the Western ear like an echo from the distant past.

The words of the new president are ringing in the air: “Our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please.” The key words were “humility and restraint”.

Our leaders are now boasting about their part in the Gaza War, in which unbridled military force was unleashed intentionally against a civilian population, men, women and children, with the declared aim of “creating deterrence”. In the era that began last Tuesday, such expressions can only arouse shudders.

Between Israel and the United States a gap has opened this week, a narrow gap, almost invisible – but it may widen into an abyss.

The first signs are small. In his inaugural speech, Obama proclaimed that “We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus – and nonbelievers.” Since when? Since when do the Muslims precede the Jews? What has happened to the “Judeo-Christian Heritage”? (A completely false term to start with, since Judaism is much closer to Islam than to Christianity. For example: neither Judaism nor Islam supports the separation of religion and state.)

The very next morning, Obama phoned a number of Middle East leaders. He decided to make a quite unique gesture: placing the first call to Mahmoud Abbas, and only the next to Olmert. The Israeli media could not stomach that. Haaretz, for example, consciously falsified the record by writing - not once but twice in the same issue - that Obama had called “Olmert, Abbas, Mubarak and King Abdallah” (in that order).

Instead of the group of American Jews who had been in charge of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during both the Clinton and Bush administrations, Obama, on his very first day in office, appointed an Arab-American, George Mitchell, whose mother had come to America from Lebanon at age 18, and who himself, orphaned from his Irish father, was brought up in a Maronite Christian Lebanese family.

These are not good tidings for the Israeli leaders. For the last 42 years, they have pursued a policy of expansion, occupation and settlements in close cooperation with Washington. They have relied on unlimited American support, from the massive supply of money and arms to the use of the veto in the Security Council. This support was essential to their policy. This support may now be reaching its limits.

It will happen, of course, gradually. The pro-Israel lobby in Washington will continue to put the fear of God into Congress. A huge ship like the United States can change course only very slowly, in a gentle curve. But the turn-around started already on the first day of the Obama administration.

This could not have happened, if America itself had not changed. That is not a political change alone. It is a change in the world-view, in mental outlook, in values. A certain American myth, which is very similar to the Zionist myth, has been replaced by another American myth. Not by accident did Obama devote to this so large a part of his speech (in which, by the way, there was not a single word about the extermination of the Native Americans).

The Gaza War, during which tens of millions of Americans saw the horrible carnage in the Strip (even if rigorous self-censorship cut out all but a tiny part), has hastened the process of drifting apart. Israel, the brave little sister, the loyal ally in Bush’s “War on Terror”, has turned into the violent Israel, the mad monster, which has no compassion for women and children, the wounded and the sick. And when winds like these are blowing, the Lobby loses height.

The leaders of official Israel do not notice it. They do not feel, as Obama put it in another context, that “the ground has shifted beneath them”. They think that this is no more than a temporary political problem that can be set right with the help of the Lobby and the servile members of Congress.

Our leaders are still intoxicated with war and drunk with violence. They have re-phrased the famous saying of the Prussian general, Carl von Clausewitz into: “War is but a continuation of an election campaign by other means.” They compete with each other with vainglorious swagger for their share of the “credit”. Tzipi Livni, who cannot compete with the men for the crown of warlord, tries to outdo them in toughness, in bellicosity, in hard-heartedness.

The most brutal is Ehud Barak. Once I called him a “peace criminal”, because he brought about the failure of the 2000 Camp David conference and shattered the Israeli peace camp. Now I must call him a “war criminal”, as the person who planned the Gaza War knowing that it would murder masses of civilians.

In his own eyes, and in the eyes of a large section of the public, this is a military operation which deserves all praise. His advisors also thought that it would bring him success in the elections. The Labor party, which had been the largest party in the Knesset for decades, had shrunk in the polls to 12, even 9 seats out of 120. With the help of the Gaza atrocity it has now gone up to 16 or so. That’s not a landslide, and there’s no guarantee that it will not sink again.

What was Barak’s mistake? Very simply: every war helps the Right. War, by its very nature, arouses in the population the most primitive emotions – hate and fear, fear and hate. These are the emotions on which the Right has been riding for centuries. Even when it’s the ”Left” that starts a war, it’s still the Right that profits from it. In a state of war, the population prefers an honest-to-goodness Rightist to a phony Leftist.

This is happening to Barak for the second time. When, in 2000, he spread the mantra “I have turned every stone on the way to peace, / I have made the Palestinians unprecedented offers, / They have rejected everything, / There is no one to talk with” - he succeeded not only in blowing the Left to smithereens, but also in paving the way for the ascent of Ariel Sharon in the 2001 elections. Now he is paving the way for Binyamin Netanyahu (hoping, quite openly, to become his minister of defense).

And not only for him. The real victor of the war is a man who had no part in it at all: Avigdor Liberman. His party, which in any normal country would be called fascist, is steadily rising in the polls. Why? Liberman looks and sounds like an Israeli Mussolini, he is an unbridled Arab-hater, a man of the most brutal force. Compared to him, even Netanyahu looks like a softie. A large part of the young generation, nurtured on years of occupation, killing and destruction, after two atrocious wars, considers him a worthy leader.

While the U.S. has made a giant jump to the left, Israel is about to jump even further to the right.

Anyone who saw the millions milling around Washington on inauguration day knows that Obama was not speaking only for himself. He was expressing the aspirations of his people, the Zeitgeist.

Between the mental world of Obama and the mental world of Liberman and Netanyahu there is no bridge. Between Obama and Barak and Livni, too, there yawns an abyss. Post-election Israel may find itself on a collision course with post-election America.

Where are the American Jews? The overwhelming majority of them voted for Obama. They will be between the hammer and the anvil – between their government and their natural adherence to Israel. It is reasonable to assume that this will exert pressure from below on the “leaders” of American Jewry, who have incidentally never been elected by anyone, and on organizations like AIPAC. The sturdy stick, on which Israeli leaders are used to lean in times of trouble, may prove to be a broken reed.

Europe, too, is not untouched by the new winds. True, at the end of the war we saw the leaders of Europe – Sarkozy, Merkel, Browne and Zapatero – sitting like schoolchildren behind a desk in class, respectfully listening to the most loathsome arrogant posturing from Ehud Olmert, reciting his text after him. They seemed to approve the atrocities of the war, speaking of the Qassams and forgetting about the occupation, the blockade and the settlements. Probably they will not hang this picture on their office walls.

But during this war masses of Europeans poured into the streets to demonstrate against the horrible events. The same masses saluted Obama on the day of his inauguration.

This is the new world. Perhaps our leaders are now dreaming of the slogan: "Stop the world, I want to get off!" But there is no other world.

Yes, we are now on the wrong side of history.

Fortunately, there is also another Israel. It is not in the limelight, and its voice is heard only by those who listen out for it. This is a sane, rational Israel, with its face to the future, to progress and peace. In these coming elections, its voice will barely be heard, because all the old parties are standing with their two feet squarely in the world of yesterday.

But what has happened in the United States will have a profound influence on what happens in Israel. The huge majority of Israelis know that we cannot exist without close ties with the US. Obama is now the leader of the world, and we live in this world. When he promises to work “aggressively” for peace between us and the Palestinians, that is a marching order for us.

We want to be on the right side of history. That will take months or years, but I am sure that we shall get there. The time to start is now.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 06:47:00 +0000

When Adolf Hitler, leader of the Nazis and the Third Reich, designed and set about to build his universal city in Europe, he planned for a Museum of Jewish Culture. Situated in Prague, the museum would showcase the Jewish religion and traditions, their art and music, and their philosophy and history. In truth, though, it would be a museum of extinct ethnic peoples.

It seems that in these modern times, genocide and mass murder have become as frequent as it had in the past, if not more so. Not only did the Twentieth Century produce the killing fields of Eurasia, Uganda, Vietnam, Cambodia, Haiti, Guatemala, East Timor, Rwanda, and Yugoslavia, but so far this century has witnessed mass slaughter in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And now, there is Gaza and the Palestinians.

Refugee camps are much like museums. They consist of individuals, or groups of peoples and nationalities, that have been deported and that somehow time and progress have forgotten. “Progress” considers them “lesser” human beings. In the eyes of imperial nations, they are second class citizens. Their lives do not count for very much. Such has been how the world, including the United Nations (UN), have viewed the existence of the dispossessed Palestinians living in Gaza.

In many ways, the futuristic Gaza museum has been made possible by accomplices like the U.S. that supplies billions of dollars in arms and missiles to Israel. These weapons have been raining down and consuming Gaza day and night. The UN has as well shown itself to be a bystander in Gaza’s resistance in becoming a museum. Some Arab nations too have become ineffective. What is tragic is that it is more than about Israel, Hamas and Fatah. It is about the 1.5 million Gazans, many of them women and children, who have no choice but to live in Gaza.

The recent damage inflicted on Gaza and the Palestinians is colossal. Thousands of hospitals, schools, mosques, clinics, apartment buildings, food warehouses, and homes, have been destroyed. But I doubt if this will be included in the Gaza Museum, along with these fatality rates: 437 children, 138 women, 132 elderly men, and the more than 5,500 (2,000 are children) who were wounded. With over 50,000 left homeless and almost 500,000 without many of the basic necessities, such as water, electricity, and medicines, the victors are always very careful about what to exclude or what to leave out.

At the same time, museums, especially those established by the dominant order, almost always display a selective history and selective memory. The Qassam rockets and Hamas tunnels will be displayed, but not the pictures of the refugees of Ashkelon and Beersheba, which were driven out by the Israeli Army in 1948. Neither will the food and fuel sieges, Hamas’ democratic rise to power, or when Israel broke Hamas’ own truce, be displayed. A biased collective memory allows a nation to escape collective guilt. In rewriting history, museums of extinct peoples become easily justified.

A few countries and nations which have also suffered from imperialism and colonization understand. Bolivia and Venezuela have called on the International Criminal Court to investigate Israel for war crimes and the use of illegal weaponry. But those who remain in power are always the winners and are seldom brought to trial and tried for war crimes. Only the conquered are punished, as Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein found out. The morality of war and war crimes are more about military strength than that of justice.

Don’t be fooled by the ceasefire. There will be future occupations, blockades, and military interventions in Gaza, and Gaza will slowly die. In 1982, and in reference to the Israeli war in Lebanon, Meron Benvenisti, who was ordered to take extensive archives on Palestinian culture and history from the PLO’s Palestine Research Center in West Beirut, said, “This was not only to destroy them as a political or military power, but to take from them their history, to erase that because it is troublesome. This was a profound need or urge not to allow the Palestinians to be a respectable or historic movement. (1)

Israel’s assault on Gaza destroyed billions of dollars worth of buildings and infrastructure in an already impoverished territory. Economists claim that it will take five years to rebuild Gaza. The thousands killed and those still being pulled out of the rubble, including children with bullets lodged in their heads, will never again rebuild their lives. The Israeli military invasion of Gaza has sadly brought the Gazans, along with their faiths, histories, traditions, arts, and ideas, one step closer to becoming a museum. This travesty reveals that even in the 21st Century, the powerful Few still decides who lives and who dies.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has assured the world that his nation has won the Israeli-Gaza War. When peoples and nations fight each other and some become extinct, no one wins. Instead, the whole world, along with its diversity and possibilities, is at an enormous loss. And it is a great loss! Finally, militant extremists everywhere-whether they live in Israel, Gaza, the United States, or are a part of the UN, or are collaborators and suppliers in arms-must stop the insanity of violence and war. If not, not only will Gaza become a museum of extinct peoples, but the entire Earth.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 06:45:00 +0000

Stubbornly insisting on getting the carriage before the horse as the approach to a “durable and sustainable” ceasefire in Gaza Strip, U.S. and European diplomacy in particular is building on an Israeli misleading premise that the 22 – day military operation, dubbed “Cast Lead,” against the Palestinian Gaza Strip was a reaction and not a premeditated long planned scheme that found in the change of guards in Washington D.C. an excellent timing. It was “not simply a reaction,” but “a calculation," Daniel Klaidman wrote in Newsweek on January 10.

U.S. and European diplomats are reiterating the Israeli propaganda justification: “What would any normal country do if they were threatened by rocket fire? They would act.” U.S. President Barak Obama was the last western leader to uphold this Israeli claim. “But Israel is not a normal country, it is an occupying country,” former Palestinian - Israeli member of Knesset Azmi Bishara said. Moreover what country would tolerate an eight –year siege and not consider it an act of war without any national reaction? Why should western diplomacy judge Palestinians in Gaza as universally abnormal.

Western diplomacy is building on the Palestinian reaction in self – defense as the igniting cause of violence and on the Israeli aggressive action as the resulting effect. It is a non starter. It could win EU high representative Javier Solana, the international middle East quartet of peace mediators’ envoy Tony Blair, who are regular visitors to the region, and U.S. newly appointed Middle East envoy George Mitchell some audience among their Arab and Palestinian peace partners who might still hope that the United States and the European Union may yet be able to deliver on their two – state promise, but this audience was not and is still not the key player in Gaza. Israeli and Hamas’ non – abiding reaction to the UN Security Council resolution 1860 proved British Foreign Secretary David Miliband right when he said immediately thereafter that “peace is made on the ground while resolutions are written in the United Nations.”

Hamas has survived the Israeli “Operation Cast Lead,” which failed to remove it as a key player, to remain the only player on the ground in Gaza and not only as a key player there as well as a major much stronger player among Palestinians in the West Bank and the Diaspora. To build their diplomacy for a “durable and sustainable” ceasefire on the recognition only of the Israeli player while bypassing or sidelining the other protagonist is a dead end approach that could only encourage more Israeli aggressive actions and would for sure invoke more Palestinian violent reaction.

Unfortunately this has been the focus of UN resolution 1860, the so – called Egyptian initiative, the recent European summit meetings with Arab and Israeli leaders, the Israeli – US memorandum of understanding of January 19, George Mitchell’s Middle East eight – day tour, a focus that President Obama had subscribed to two days after his inauguration. It might not be too long before western diplomacy regrets this approach. Hamas should be “engaged … as there could be no solution to the issue” by keeping it out in the cold, Nathan J Brown, an expert from Carnegie Endowment, was quoted as saying by Indian “The Hindu” on January 25, a view shared also by former US president Jimmy Carter.

In historical perspective, nothing proves the Israeli action and the Palestinian reaction more than the very existence of Hamas. While founding the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was the reaction of the Palestinian refugees in exile to the Israeli action of forcing them out of their homeland in 1948, the founding of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in Gaza was the Palestinian reaction to the Israeli military expansion in 1967, which led to the occupation of the rest of historic Palestine.

More recently, the Palestinian reaction managed to develop some locally – made primitive rockets in self – defense, and to smuggle in some “Grad” systems, which Israel used in addition to the tunnels under the Gaza – Egypt borders as justification for military action, while imposing a media blackout to hide the horrible humanitarian disaster unfolding in Gaza as the result of its eight – year old blockade of the territory, which left the besieged Palestinians with one of two choices: Either to starve slowly to death or die instantly en masse in “Operation Cast Lead.” Israel imposed siege, in itself an act of war, as a collective punishment against Gaza civilians. U.S. and European strong advocates of Humanitarian Intervention, led by French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner, who call now for such interventions in Darfur, Myanmar and Zimbabwe and who did intervene militarily for humanitarian reasons in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo, have kept mum on Gaza.

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt hit directly at the root cause of the Gaza conflict. “They will dig tunnels out of desperation and there will be no way of stopping all these tunnels if you don’t open up the border,” he said. Bildt was joined by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown who urged ending “Gaza's economic isolation by reopening the crossings that link it to the outside world." European leaders seem to have finally awakened to the real equation of cause and effect in the conflict. However they are calling for opening Gaza border crossings as a sideshow, as the effect and not as the root cause of Palestinian reaction, as a prerequisite for a “durable and sustainable” ceasefire and not as an obligation that Israel must abide by in its capacity as the occupying power under international law, as merely a humanitarian outlet for the besieged civilian population and not as a national right of the Palestinians in Gaza Strip in the context of the Israeli unilateral military redeployment from the coastal strip in 2005.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 06:43:00 +0000

In his first week in office, U.S. President Barack Obama signed an executive order that would shut down the notorious U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay within a year. But as the United States moves to end this shameful episode, it is worth reflecting on the untold story of the very beginnings of Guantanamo.

The following account, which draws on dozens of interviews I conducted over the past few years, tells the startling tale of a period shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, when military officers on the ground tried to do the right thing with the recently captured detainees but were ultimately defeated by civilian officials back in Washington.

Those early days — back before Gitmo became Gitmo — strongly suggest that the damage the prison inflicted on America’s honor and security could have been avoided if policy-makers had been willing to follow the uniformed military’s basic instincts. It may be too late for these revelations to help redeem Guantanamo in its waning days. But those crafting U.S. detention policy in the years ahead could still benefit from learning about these small initial efforts at decency.

The story begins in the first week of January 2002, when Joint Task Force 160, led by Marine Brig. Gen. Michael Lehnert, dutifully landed at Guantanamo Bay. Lehnert’s approximately 2,000 troops were fired up about their mission: Building the first detention facility for prisoners taken from the Afghan battlefield. The unit had a 96-hour deadline, according to Lehnert, and they were told that about 300 detainees were already en route to Cuba. As Col. William Meier, Lehnert’s chief of staff, explained it, the task force had to help build hundreds of cells and the massive tent city needed to house the U.S. troops coming in to guard them.

But it wasn’t the logistics that most worried Lehnert. It was the policy vacuum into which he and his troops had been thrown. “We are writing the book as we go,” one officer said at the time. Lehnert said he had been told by the Joint Chiefs of Staff that the Geneva Conventions would not technically apply to his mission: He was to act in a manner “consistent with” the conventions (as the mantra went) but not to feel bound by them.

The Joint Task Force, advised by U.S. Southern Command, was essentially left on its own to improvise a regime of care and custody for the allegedly hardened Al-Qaeda terrorists — whom the Bush administration famously called “the worst of the worst” — who would be coming their way. The idea, as Lehnert told me he understood it, was to detain them and wait for a legal process to begin.

In the absence of new policy guidance about how to treat the detainees, Lehnert told me that he felt he had no choice but to rely on the regulations already in place, ones in which the military was well schooled: the Uniform Code of Military Justice, other U.S. laws and, above all, the Geneva Conventions. The detainees, no matter what their official status, were essentially to be considered enemy prisoners of war, a status that mandated basic standards of humane treatment. One lawyer, Lt. Col. Tim Miller, told me that he used the enemy-POW guidelines as his “working manual.”

The task force set to work around the clock, processing the detainees upon arrival, administering medical treatment and providing general care in the cells of the newly built Camp X-Ray. Lehnert’s lawyers studied the 143 articles of the Geneva Conventions, paying particular attention to Common Article 3, which prohibits “humiliating and degrading treatment.” The head of the operation’s detention unit, Col. Terry Carrico, summed up the situation to a team of Marine Corps interviewers several weeks into the mission: “The Geneva Conventions don’t officially apply, but they do apply.”

But there were early signs of trouble. Lehnert told me that his request to bring representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to Guantanamo — something international law requires for all prisoners being held in war-related situations — was, as he heard it, shunted aside somewhere up the chain of command. “The initial request,” he recalled, “was turned down.” He persisted. Even if he obviously could not implement some of the Geneva Conventions requirements — the right to musical instruments, for instance, or the right to work for payment — he wanted advice from ICRC professionals to help him ensure the prisoners’ safety and dignity.

Exasperated by repeated attempts to find out which guidelines to apply to the detainees, Col. Manuel Supervielle, the head JAG (the military acronym for Judge Advocate General) at Southern Command, picked up the phone and called the ICRC’s headquarters in Geneva. As one member of the Southern Command staff remembers the episode, the Joint Chiefs of Staff had warned the Gitmo task force that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s office opposed getting involved with the ICRC. But now, according to Supervielle, a US officer was asking the ICRC to help out at Guantanamo. The ICRC answered with an immediate “yes.”

It was a pivotal moment in the history of Guantanamo. Once Supervielle’s call had been made, the civilian policy-makers around Rumsfeld could not undo what the uniformed military had done — although, according to Supervielle, an irritated team of lawyers, including Pentagon general counsel William “Jim” Haynes, asked the Southern Command lawyer days later whether there was “a way to back out of it now.”

The ICRC arrived at Guantanamo on Jan. 17, 2002 — six days after the detainees did. Thus began what amounted to a period of subtle defiance of Washington’s lack of direction. The ICRC worked with Joint Task Force 160 to create a rational, legal detention operation.

To intensify his efforts, Lehnert told me, he requested a Muslim chaplain, Navy Lt. Abuhena Saiful Islam. Saif, as the Bangladeshi-American imam was known throughout the camp, became a fixture inside the blocs of cages at Camp X-Ray. Task force members recall him strolling daily through the camp, sometimes accompanied by Lehnert, and conversing with the detainees — some of whom were in no mood to chat, some of whom had stories to tell.

Lehnert had built his own Guantanamo, one with ICRC oversight, a Muslim chaplain and an overriding ethos that stressed codified law and the unwritten rules of human decency. Lehnert’s team let the detainees talk among themselves; it provided halal food, an additional washing bucket inside cells that lacked toilet facilities, a Qur’an for each detainee, skullcaps and prayer beads for those who wanted them, and undergarments for the prisoners to wear at shower time, in accordance with Islamic laws that proscribe public nakedness.

Perhaps Lehnert’s Guantanamo could have been sustained. But Rumsfeld wanted something else: He expected to get valuable, actionable intelligence from the detainees. By late January 2002, according to Brig. Gen. Galen Jackman, Lehnert’s chief contact at Southern Command, the defense secretary told officers on a video conference call with Southern Command that he was frustrated by the absence of such information.

A displeased Rumsfeld seems to have decided to create a second command, one that would exist side by side with Lehnert’s. It would be devoted solely to gathering intelligence and would be headed by a reservist major general, a former U.S. Army interrogator during the Vietnam War named Michael Dunlavey. Jackman told me that he considered the idea of two parallel commands a “recipe for disaster.” At the same time, Navy Capt. Robert Buehn, the commander of the naval base at Guantanamo, recalled, the Gitmo task force’s initial expectations of orders to build a courtroom began to fade.

As Dunlavey’s command took shape in late February and early March, the fabric of prisoner’s rights that Lehnert had woven was beginning to unravel. By the end of February, nearly 200 detainees had mounted a hunger strike to protest their treatment. Interrogations, not trials, had become the future of Guantanamo.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 06:40:00 +0000

When former President George W. Bush departed for his final trip home, that very moment represented an end of a long and unbearable nightmare, one that Bush epitomized until his last day in office.

Americans may decry what we can finally dub as the ‘Bush legacy’, for it brought economic ruin, but also pushed the country into avoidable, if not completely preventable wars, disgracing the collective history of a nation that for long imposed its sense of moral authority on the world.

But the new president is set to change all of that. True, Barack Obama is duly warning of hyped expectations, but, frankly, he can only blame himself for the eagerness and hope, realistic or otherwise, that has engulfed the nation, even the world over. During his presidential campaign he made many promises, the gist of which is that an Obama administration would be everything that the Bush administration was not. That was enough for ‘Obamaniacs’ to sing and dance the world over.

One cannot expect that Obama has a magic solution for everyone’s problems, everywhere. In fact one must be realistic and simply ask Obama to remedy the problems and conflicts that were introduced or provoked, financed and sustained by his own country.

Regarding the Middle East, Obama seems to have hit the ground running, or so we are told. Shortly after his inauguration, he appointed former Senator George Mitchell as special envoy to the region. Mitchell “will bring a wealth of experience and credibility to the job,” said CNN.

Once again, Obama is clearly attempting to delineate an early policy that differs from Bush’s. The latter was affiliated with the infamous Guantanamo Bay, the ‘gulag of our times’ – according to Amnesty International - thus Obama ordered it closed, a year from now that is. Bush was blamed for his late arrival to the Middle East peace process scene, thus Obama makes it clear that the peace process is a priority for his administration.

But the question is how different will Obama truly be when his administration is done carrying out a few symbolic gestures to appease the ever-eager public?

Naturally a new administration, promising a new era, requires a new language. Although inundated with lofty terminology, the outlines of Obama’s new administration seem, in some instances, a mirror image of Bush.

These are remarks made by Obama (not Bush), on January 22, and seen as the first major statement by his administration regarding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict: “Let me be clear: America is committed to Israel's security. And we will always support Israel's right to defend itself against legitimate threats. ..Hamas must meet clear conditions: recognize Israel's right to exist; renounce violence; and abide by past agreements. Going forward, the outline for a durable cease-fire is clear: Hamas must end its rocket fire; Israel will complete the withdrawal of its forces from Gaza; the United States and our partners will support a credible anti-smuggling and interdiction regime, so that Hamas cannot rearm.”

Funny how Obama started his statement with “let me be clear.” He cannot possibly be any clearer as he spent endless hours for many months assuring Israel and its supporters, while condemning Palestinians without any reservation or remorse.

Those who counted on Obama to bring a just peace to the Middle East must’ve had their hearts broken watching the man charging against Hamas’ terror, as thousands of Gazans were killed and wounded, including 430 children in the matter of three weeks as a result of Israel’s barbarous attacks, using mostly American weapons (and full, unqualified U.S. backing.)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 06:34:00 +0000

When Israeli election front runner Benjamin Netanyahu told the World Economic Forum that preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons ranks far above the global economic recession and other challenges facing leaders of the 21st century, he was dead wrong. It’s not about Iran’s nuclear enrichment program, but nuclear weapons in general-including Israel’s and America’s.

With all due respect, Mr. Netanyahu also failed to see a double standard in stating, and in reference to Iran, that what is not reversible is the acquisition of nuclear weapons by a fanatic radical regime. With extreme views like this, it is easy to forget or dismiss how and why nuclear weapons developed in the first place.

It is well known that the U.S. was the first nation to develop and then use the atomic bomb. What is not well known is how it adversely affected President Harry Truman and America’s post war relationship with the Soviet Union. Until President Truman was notified of the successful test of the nuclear bomb, he was willing to discuss Russia’s security, war reparations, and an Open Door approach to Eastern Europe.

Secretary of State Stimson reported that once President Truman was notified of the effectiveness of the atomic bomb, he was immensely pleased and tremendously pepped up by it. (1) Prime Minster Winston Churchill claimed that he noticed Truman was much fortified by something that had happened and that he stood up to the Russians in a most emphatic and decisive manner, telling them as to certain demands that they absolutely could not have, and generally bossed the whole meeting. (2)

Even though Japan had formerly surrendered at the end of World War II, this new irresistible power-as Churchill called it-was dropped on Hiroshima obliterating four square miles and killing 160,000 Japanese. Three days later another atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki killing 120,000 human beings. While exposure to radiation would last for many generations and kill even more people, the perpetrator of this act was slowly malformed into the destructive nature of nuclear weaponry itself.

Secretary of State Stimson later admitted that the policy of developing and using nuclear weapons prevented America from becoming a benevolent empire. He too concluded that the U.S. was on the wrong path of history as it started to bully the Soviet Union (and other nations). Instead of reparations for the Russians who had been invaded by Germany and a large part of their nation destroyed, and instead of the Open Door Approach and helping Russia regain its security, President Truman initiated the Truman Doctrine.

In 1947, the Truman Doctrine militarily meddled in the political affairs of Turkey and Greece so as to establish American superiority and a nuclear base near Russia. In 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization formed a mutual defense pact to counter Russia. When the National Security Council (68) stated that it was the goal of the U.S. to develop an Inter-American system and to foster the seeds of the destruction of the Soviet system, a greater rift and a deeper mistrust developed between the Cold War Super Powers.

While the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb in 1949, the U.S. already had manufactured over 300. Far worse was how the U.S. behaved when major scientists and United Nations leaders called for the creation of an international atomic control regime. The Soviet Union also called for the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. President Truman sent Bernard Baruch to the U.N. in order to prevent such bilateral talks from taking place and to make sure disarmament advocates were defeated. (3)

America’s initial monopoly on the atomic bomb was shortsighted and has unfortunately turned into Pandora‘s Box. It has caused an Arms Race with enormous psychological, social, economic, and environmental consequences. The U.S. has argued for Brinkmanship-the willingness to go to the brink of war to force the other side to back down; Massive Retaliation-if one nation attacks the other nation can still respond with considerable amount of destruction; and Mutual Assured Destruction-the rationale of building nuclear arsenals to the point that no one would dare use them because of the potential of complete annihilation.

Surely these ideas, policies and ways of thinking are the ultimate in fanaticism. One could also mention the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Ronald Reagan’s Nuclear Proliferation policies, and the numerous times the U.S. has come close in firing its Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles at Russia or using nuclear weapons to defeat an opponent, such as North Korea and North Vietnam. The most fanatical and insane aspect of nuclear weapons, though, is there indiscriminate nature towards civilian populations, as was proven in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Mr. Netanyahu claimed that he wants to “neutralize” the mother regime (Iran). He may instead, be better off and more secure by neutralizing ALL nuclear weapons, including those based in Israel and the U.S. Through open and reciprocal nuclear facility visits, and by prioritizing nuclear disarmament treaties, and by forming a fair and authentic U.N. committee dedicated to the complete abolishment of nuclear missiles, the “original sin” can once and for all be removed from the face of the Earth.

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