Jonathan Cook in Nazareth
Redress

Jonathan Cook argues that by rejecting Obama’s reckless and extravagant incentives to Israel in return for a temporary freeze on settlement-building, Netanyahu hopes to persuade the White House “to reaffirm a promise made in a 2004 letter from … George W. Bush that Israel will not be required to withdraw to the pre-1967 borders in a peace deal”.

A ghost haunted the meeting of the Arab League in Libya at the weekend, as its foreign ministers decided to give a little more time to the peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

Ghost of Camp David

That ghost was the Camp David talks of summer 2000, when US President Bill Clinton publicly held Yasser Arafat, the then-Palestinian leader, responsible for the breakdown of the negotiations, despite an earlier promise to blame neither side if they failed.

Mr Clinton's finger-pointing breathed life into the accusation from Ehud Barak, Israel's prime minister, that there was "no Palestinian partner for peace"; brought about the collapse of the Israeli peace movement, and ultimately sanctioned the decision of Mr Barak's successor, Ariel Sharon, to invade the Palestinian-controlled areas of the West Bank.

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Chris Marsden
WSWS

British Prime Minister David Cameron yesterday admitted that British aid worker, Linda Norgrove was killed by United States forces involved in a rescue operation and not by her Afghan captors, as had previously been claimed.

Speaking at a press conference, Cameron said, “Earlier this morning, General Petraeus, in command of all ISAF forces in Afghanistan, contacted my office to inform us that in the review of the rescue operation, new information had come to light about the circumstances surrounding Linda’s death.

“General Petraeus has since told me that the review has revealed evidence to indicate that Linda may not have died at the hands of her captors as originally believed. That evidence and subsequent interviews with the personnel involved suggest that Linda could have died as a result of a grenade detonated by the task force during the assault.”

Cameron’s statement points to a deliberate cover-up by the Pentagon, with the aid of the US puppet regime in Afghanistan. The only question unanswered is whether the British government was also in the know from the start, or was, in the words of the Telegraph, treated “like an ill-informed and gullible patsy by our chief allies in the world”. The first scenario is the more likely.

Norgrove, 36, was killed Friday, in a predawn raid—three weeks after being seized on September 26, in the province of Kunar, near the Pakistan border, on her way to view an irrigation project she had overseen. She was the only foreigner in a team of 200 Afghans. She was being held in a mud-walled compound, in the village of Dineshgal, high in the mountains in northeastern Afghanistan.

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Stephen Lendman

The new amendment has created divisions between the
left and right within Israel [Reuters]

Since inception, Israel's democracy was illusory, but of late it's further eroded. The Cabinet's October 10 adopted Law of Citizenship amendment requires all non-Jews wanting it to pledge loyalty to "the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state," its latest anti-democratic measure.

Voting 22 - 8, it evoked protests from Israeli artists, writers and intellectuals in front of Tel Aviv's Independence Hall against "the continuous erosion of Israeli democracy." Actress Hana Maron quoted Israel's Declaration of Independence saying:

"I will read this again: '(the state of Israel) will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex.' This makes me want to cry. What has become of us?"

Author Sefi Rachlevsky said:

"a country that invades the sacred space of the citizen's conscience, and punishes him for opinions and beliefs that are not in line with the authorities ceases to be a democracy and becomes a fascist state."

Defying the Cabinet's edict, Rachlevsky read excepts from a document titled "the declaration of independence from fascism," stating:

"We, citizens of Israel....have gathered here to announce that we shall not be citizens of the country purporting to be the state of Israel."

Professor Gavriel Solomon compared today's Israel to 1935 Germany, saying:

"the idea of Judenrein (Jew free zone) or Arabrein is not new....Some might say 'how can you compare us to Nazis?' I am not talking about the death camps, but about the year 1935. There were no camps yet but there were racist laws. And we are heading forward toward these kinds of laws. The government is clearly declaring our incapacity for democracy."

Solomon referred to the Nuremberg Laws, explained in a previous article, accessed through THIS link.

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The BRussells Tribunal

We, the undersigned, defending the right of Iraq to independence, sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity, rejecting the attempts of Iraqi puppets promoted by the US occupation to trade the national rights of Iraqis and to institutionalise via census the criminal demo-graphic engineering they have pursued by force, declare that:

From the first day of the US-UK occupation of Iraq, the occupation began to undertake a series of measures, directly or through its local allies, to destroy Iraq as a state and a nation and to partition it along ethnic and sectarian lines.

Today, the puppet government of the occupation and its Kurdish partners are trying to hold a population census in Kirkuk province whose aim is to give a permanent legal character to the criminal social engineering, ethnic cleansing and demographic changes that have been implemented under occupation.[1] This could unleash a full blown civil war across Iraq, and potentially lead to its partition and a consequent regional war.

In addition to the death of more than one million Iraqis, the ethnic cleansing and other means pursued by the United States, United Kingdom and their allies in order to implement the process of partitioning Iraq, in its cities and regions, have caused the forced migration of 2.5 million Iraqis out of Iraq and the forced displacement of 2.5 million others from their homes inside Iraq.

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