What do you think about the situation in Iran? Tue, June 23, 2009
Iran's top electoral body, the Guardian Council, found "no major fraud" in the disputed June 12 election and ruled out annulling the the results, Iran's state TV Tuesday quoted a spokesman for the council as saying.
Perhaps the mods should apply the same rules to billq's alter ego...
uplink, 2009-09-08 13:10:45
Israeli Prof - Israel 'Can Take
The World Down With Us'
By Nadim Ladki
9-5-9
The following quote is from remarks made in January, 2003 and published in the promient Dutch publication 'Elsevier' Magazine. Much has progressed for the Israeli military since 2003 and the subject of its Bioweapons capability is not even addressed directly.
(Prof Creveld) "Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother." I consider it all hopeless at this point. We shall have to try to prevent things from coming to that, if at all possible. Our armed forces, however, are not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen, before Israel goes under."
Here is one of the stories about the Professor's remarks in January, 2003...
Israeli Prof Suggests Israel Can Destroy
All European Capitals
By Nadim Ladki
(IAP News) - An Israeli professor and military historian hinted that Israel could avenge the holocaust by annihilating millions of Germans and other Europeans.
Speaking during an interview which was published in Jerusalem Friday, Professor Martin Van Creveld said Israel had the capability of hitting most European capitals with nuclear weapons.
"We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets of our air force."
Creveld, a professor of military history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, pointed out that "collective deportation" was Israel's only meaningful strategy towards the Palestinian people.
"The Palestinians should all be deported. The people who strive for this (the Israeli government) are waiting only for the right man and the right time. Two years ago, only 7 or 8 per cent of Israelis were of the opinion that this would be the best solution, two months ago it was 33 per cent, and now, according to a Gallup poll, the figure is 44 percent."
Creveld said he was sure that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon wanted to deport the Palestinians.
"I think it's quite possible that he wants to do that. He wants to escalate the conflict. He knows that nothing else we do will succeed."
Asked if he was worried about Israel becoming a rogue state if it carried out a genocidal deportation against Palestinians, Creveld quoted former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan who said "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Creveld argued that Israel wouldn't care much about becoming a rogue state.
"Our armed forces are not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that this will happen before Israel goes under."
__________________
Here is another, more complete version of the interview from http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1154.htm
"The prominent Dutch magazine Elsevier has published a conversation with Dutch-Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld. The following has been translated from the Dutch [and then from the German]":
"We Are Destroying Ourselves."
"In Israel a scenario of doom is taking shape."
Interview with the much reviled Dutch-Israeli Military Historian Martin van Creveld
Professor Martin van Creveld, an internationally known and controversial professor of military history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, foresees only extreme developments for the appreciable future. The methods by which Israel is currently combating the Intifada are doomed to failure. The chances for peace and the founding of a Palestinian state are visibly diminishing. A conversation with a pessimist, who, as he himself says, is reviled in his own country.
Interviewer: Your specialty is war. Is what's going on here war at all?
Creveld: Certainly, although the Palestinians have no government, no army, and no [nationality]. Everything is in chaos. That's why we won't win the war, either. If we could identify and eliminate every terrorist, we'd win this struggle within forty-eight hours. The Palestinian administration has the same difficulties. Even in Arafat decided to comply with our conditions and surrender tomorrow, it's virtually certain that the Intifada would continue.
Interviewer: Are there any similarities on the Israeli side?
Creveld: If the dispute lasts much longer, the Israeli government will lose control of its people. For people will say: "If government can't protect us, what on earth can they do for us? If the government can't guarantee that we'll be alive tomorrow, what good are they? We'll defend ourselves."
Interviewer: So Israel is beaten in advance?
Creveld: On that I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing." That certainly applies here. I regard a total Israeli defeat as unavoidable. That will mean the collapse of the Israeli state and society. We'll destroy ourselves.
Interviewer: Is there any point to the recent Israeli military offensive?
Creveld: This offensive is totally useless; it's only further enraging the Palestinians. Perhaps there will be a short-lived calm, but in the end there will even more suicide attackers.
Interviewer: Is there any hope?
Creveld: If I were Arafat, I wouldn't stop either. I'd only cease in exchange for a very far-reaching political accord. And it seems as if we have a government [under Sharon-tr.] that won't make Arafat such an offer. If elections were held today, the Left would be thoroughly beaten.
Interviewer: Some maintain that it is Israel's foreign enemies that keep the country unified.
Creveld: That's right. I only wish that there were foreign enemies, but that isn't the case. We've fought our external enemies for so many years. Each time there was a war, we took a mighty hammer to our foes, and after being defeated a few times, they left us alone. The problem with the Palestinian revolt is that it doesn't come from without, but rather from within. Therefore we can't avail ourselves of the hammer.
Interviewer: Is the solution, then, to keep the Palestinians outside the borders?
Creveld: Exactly, and right now there's nearly unanimous agreement on that. We ought to build a wall "so high, that not even a bird can fly over it." The only problem is: where to put the border? Since we can't decide whether the territories conquered in 1967 should be included, for the time being we improvise a little. We're building a series of little walls, which are much more difficult to defend. From a military standpoint this is very stupid. Every supermarket has gradually acquired its own living wall of security guards. Half the Israeli population is guarding the other half-unbelievable. Aside from the fantastic waste, it's almost totally useless.
Interviewer: Does that mean that the Palestinians stay within the borders?
Creveld: No, it means that they all get deported. The people who strive for this are waiting only for the right man and the right time. Two years ago only 7 or 8 percent of Israelis were of the opinion that this would be the best solution, two months ago it was 33 percent and now, according to a Gallup poll, the figure is 44 percent.
Interviewer: Will that ever be possible?
Creveld: Sure, since desperate times give rise to desperate measures. Today there's a fifty-fifty split on where the border should run. Two years ago 90 percent wanted the wall built along the old border. That has completely changed now, and if things continue, if the terror doesn't stop, in another two years perhaps 90 percent will want to build the wall along the Jordan. The Palestinians talk of "summutt," meaning hang tough, cling to the ground and the soil. I have enormous respect for the Palestinians. They fight heroically. But if we in fact want to strike across the Jordan, we would need only a few brigades. If the Syrians or the Egyptians were to try to stop us, we'd wipe them out. Ariel Sharon is leader. He never improvises: he always has a plan.
Interviewer: A plan to deport the Palestinians?
Creveld: I think it's quite possible that he wants to do that. He wants to escalate the conflict. He knows that nothing else we do will succeed.
Interviewer: Do you think that the world will allow that kind of ethnic cleansing?
Creveld: That depends on who does it and how quickly it happens. We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets for our air force.
Interviewer: Wouldn't Israel then become a rogue state?
Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother." I consider it all hopeless at this point. We shall have to try to prevent things from coming to that, if at all possible. Our armed forces, however, are not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen, before Israel goes under.
Interviewer: This isn't your own position, is it?
Creveld: Of course not. You asked me what might happen and I've laid it out. The only question is whether it is already too late for the other solution, which I support, and whether Israeli public opinion can still be convinced. I think it's too late. With each passing day the expulsion of the Palestinians grows more probable. The alternative would be the total annihilation and disintegration of Israel. What do you expect from us?
This interview was conducted by Ferry Biedermann in Jerusalem.
brucecification, 2009-09-05 22:12:53
Its obvious to all who have eyes and ears and tin foik hats that it is Israel who is pushing for war with Iran.
Fixed.
uplink, 2009-09-04 18:07:29
Uplink: Its obvious to all who have eyes and ears that it is Israel who is pushing for war with Iran. Thats what his post has to do with the topic. Lets see if you or the moderator can wrap your heads around that one.
Here's your chance to play gestapo moderator. Erase posts you personally feel are not relevant.
williamq, 2009-09-04 11:04:06
This has what to do with Iran?
uplink, 2009-09-03 13:14:47
The inhabitants of the Bedouin village of Amra have good reason to fear that the harsh tactics used by the Israeli army against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have been imported to their small corner of Israel’s Negev desert.
Over the summer, the Tarabin tribe, all of them Israeli citizens, have had the sole access road to their homes sealed off, while the dirt track they must use instead is regularly blocked by temporary checkpoints at which their papers and vehicles are inspected at length.
Coils of razor wire encircle much of the village, and children as young as eight have been arrested in a series of night-time raids.
“Four-fifths of our youngsters now have files with the police and our drivers are being repeatedly fined for supposed traffic violations,” said Tulab Tarabin, one of Amra’s 400 Bedouin inhabitants. “Every time we are stopped, the police ask us: ‘Why don’t you leave?’”
Lawyers and human rights activists say a campaign of pressure is being organised against the Tarabin at the behest of a nearby Jewish community, Omer, which is determined to build a neighbourhood for Israeli army officers on the tribe’s land.
“The policy in Israel is that when Jews need land, the Bedouin must move – no matter how long they have been living in their homes or whether their communities predate Israel’s creation,” said Morad al Sana, a lawyer with the Adalah legal centre for Israel’s Arab minority. “The Tarabin’s crime is that they refuse to budge.”
The 180,000 Bedouin in the Negev have never been welcome, says Oren Yiftachel, a geographer at Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheva. They are descendants of a few thousand who managed to avoid expulsion from the southern semi-desert region during the 1948 war that founded Israel.
Many of the surviving Bedouin, including the Tarabin, were forcibly relocated from their extensive ancestral lands in the 1950s to an area close to the Negev’s main city, Beersheva, Prof Yiftachel said. Israel declared the Bedouin lands as “state land” and established a series of overcrowded “townships” to house the tribes instead.
“The stated goal is one of ‘Judaisation’,” Prof Yiftachel added, referring to a long-standing policy of concentrating the rural Bedouin into urban reservations to free up land for Jewish settlement. About half of the Negev’s Bedouin, some 90,000, have refused to move.
According to a recent report from the Association of Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), the townships have “continuously ranked as the poorest, least developed and most crime-ridden towns in Israel”.
The refuseniks, such as the Tarabin, have faced unrelenting pressure to leave their 45 rural communities, none of which is recognised by the state. The villagers endure “third world conditions”, according to ACRI.
“The unrecognised villages are denied basic services to their homes, including water and electricity, and the villages themselves have no master plans,” Mr al Sana said.
As a result, he added, the villagers are forced to live in tin shacks and tents because concrete homes are invariably destroyed by the authorities. In the past two years, several shacks as well as the local kindergarten in Amra have been demolished.
The stark contrast between the dusty encampment of Amra and the green lawns and smart villas of Omer, only a stone’s throw away and the country’s third wealthiest community, is unsettling even for some of Omer’s 7,000 residents.
One, Yitzhak Nevo, a philosophy professor at Ben Gurion University and a leading activist with Dukium, a Negev coexistence group, said that, although the lands on which the Tarabin live fall under Omer’s jurisdiction, the Bedouin have been entirely excluded. “Even though they live within Omer’s municipal limits, their children get no education from us; our health clinic does not treat them; they are not hooked up to our water or electricity supplies and their refuse is not collected.”
He said Amra had been treated as nothing more than an eyesore until the mid-1990s when the powerful mayor, Pinhas Badash, decided that the Tarabin were both harming property values and obstructing the town’s expansion plans.
As Omer’s new neighbourhoods reached the limits of Amra, Mr Badash stepped up the pressure on the villagers to leave. A few years ago he pushed through the building of a new community for the Tarabin away from Omer. Two-thirds of the tribe relocated, while the remainder fought the attempted eviction through the courts.
“It was a very dirty business in which those in the tribe who left first were offered cheap land on which to build while the rest were threatened that they would be offered nothing,” Mr al Sana said.
Amra’s remaining Bedouin have found themselves surrounded by a tall wire fence to separate them from Omer. Two gates, ordered by the courts to ensure the Bedouin continued to have road access through the town, were sealed this year.
Since the beginning of the summer police patrol Amra’s side of the fence around the clock and the Tarabin report that a private security firm chases off any of them found inside Omer.
Nissim Nir, a spokesman for Mr Badash, denied that the Tarabin were being hounded. Omer made a generous offer to relocate them from their “illegal” site, he said.
Recently Mr Badash announced that thousands of acres around Omer would be forested with the intention of stopping the Bedouin from returning to the area once they had been evicted.
Mr Tarabin, 33, accused the police of being little more than hired hands carrying out Mr Badash’s plan.
“We are being suffocated. There are night-time searches of our homes using bogus pretexts, and arrests of young children. We are photographed and questioned as we go about our business. At the roadblocks they endlessly check cars entering and leaving, and fines are issued. No one visits us unless they have to, and we stay home unless we have to leave.”
He added: “Why is it so impossible for Omer to imagine allowing us to be a neighbourhood of the town?”
A report by Human Rights Watch last year severely criticised Israel’s treatment of the Bedouin.
A version of this article originally appeared in The National (www.thenational.ae), published in Abu Dhabi.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel.
brucecification, 2009-08-31 18:58:34
No one died in Abu Ghraib.Prisoners were humiliated by U.S. soldiers.Then, you fool, they were caught and turned in by other soldiers and the guilty party's went to jail.What's extraordinary about the United States of America is while not perfect,they have a transparent Democracy.You wouldn't even know about it when it's perpetrated by Russia or China ,Syria or Saudi Arabia.You seem to think that other countries are as transparent and that's where your Naivete or stupidity kicks in .The left wing idealist always take the easy and lazy route by criticizing America or Israel but they switch off when it comes to despotic dictatorships and become passive little kittens playing with a string.
Michael, 2009-08-29 11:55:58
"No one has yet died under alleged U.S. torture"-Nazi
If there is a hell, you're going to it Nazi. Alleged? No one has died? The US has been forced to admit both of these happened idiot. Abu Gharib? Guantanamo? Were you that outraged at US sanctions on Iraq that murdered a million children? How about Israel bombing a concentration camp, killing 700 children in Gaza? You make me sick.
Zionists in Canada are the real enemy of human decency and Canadian values of multiculturalism, human rights and democracy. Zionists in Canada support a rogue state (Israel)that according to the UN and Amnesty International has more human rights violations than China, is an anti democratic theocracy, and is actually committing ethnic cleansing on Christians and Muslims in Gaza and Jerusalem.
We as Canadian have always been proud of our contribution to the international community of peacekeeping. And now our government is a staunch supporter of a Nazi regime and we as Canadians should be outraged and disgusted.
If Israel is determined to destroy Iran, let them do it with their own troops, money and without Canada.
williamq, 2009-08-28 14:10:33
Funny how Bruce condemns alleged torture by the U.S. but fully supports torture by Iran and perversely believes them.No one has yet died under alleged U.S. torture.Canadian
Zahra Kazemi died after being tortured for taking pictures during a student protest .The official cause of death was a stroke.The physician that examined her said that she had been brutally raped.Skull fractured.Fingers broken.Broken Nose.Crushed Toe.Abdominal Bruising.Deep scratches on her neck.Evidence of flogging on her legs.
Or as Bruce would say "A top Sunni American Spy has stroke in Iranian custody but admits to trying to promote a rebellion amongst students "
Shameful Stupidity.
Michael, 2009-08-27 17:19:12
The real terrorists will eventually be exposed;
ZAHEDAN: A top Sunni rebel who is awaiting execution in Iran said on Tuesday that his militant group received orders from the United States to launch terror attacks in the Islamic republic.
Abdolhamid Rigi, brother of shadowy Jundallah (Soldiers of God) group leader Abdolmalek Rigi, told reporters his brother was an Al-Qaeda point man in Iran six years ago but that later the group broke off ties with him.
'The United States created and supported Jundallah and we received orders from them,' Rigi said in Iran's restive southeastern city of Zahedan, the capital of Sistan-Baluchestan province bordering Afghanistan and Pakistan.
'They (US officials) told us whom to shoot and whom not to. All orders came from them. They told us that they would provide us with everything we need like money and equipment.'
Wearing normal clothing, and not a prison uniform, Rigi addressed reporters in a government building in Zahedan, amid relatively light security.
Iran has accused Jundallah of launching several attacks inside the country, mainly in Sistan-Baluchestan.
The group also claimed a May 28 bomb attack on the Shia Amir al-Momenin mosque in Zahedan in which more than 20 people were killed and 50 wounded.
That attack came just weeks before Iran's June 12 presidential election which returned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power.
Iran has in the past blamed US and British agents based in neighbouring Iraq and Afghanistan for launching attacks on border provinces with significant ethnic minority populations.
The day after the mosque bombing, officials accused the United States of 'hiring' those behind the attack, linking it to the presidential election. Washington rejected the accusation.
'We condemn this attack in the strongest possible terms,' State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said. We do not sponsor any form of terrorism in Iran.'
Before Tuesday's news conference began, reporters saw a group of people who reportedly had relatives killed in attacks launched by Jundallah.
An AFP correspondent said that as Rigi sat down to address reporters, some of the victims' relatives called out, denouncing him as a murderer.
Video footage of the aftermath of attacks allegedly launched by Jundallah was also shown at the news conference.
The images included gory executions of several handcuffed and blindfolded people, scenes which provincial officials told reporters had been filmed by Rigi himself.
The officials said some of those shown being killed, who were not identified, had been captured by Jundullah in 2006 and later executed.
Sistan-Baluchestan has a large ethnic Sunni Baluch minority, and also lies on a major narcotics-smuggling route from Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Iranian officials have said Abdolhamid will be executed for his role in several attacks in the country. -AFP
What do you think about the situation in Iran?
Perhaps the mods should apply the same rules to billq's alter ego...
uplink, 2009-09-08 13:10:45
The World Down With Us'
By Nadim Ladki
9-5-9
The following quote is from remarks made in January, 2003 and published in the promient Dutch publication 'Elsevier' Magazine. Much has progressed for the Israeli military since 2003 and the subject of its Bioweapons capability is not even addressed directly.
(Prof Creveld) "Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother." I consider it all hopeless at this point. We shall have to try to prevent things from coming to that, if at all possible. Our armed forces, however, are not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen, before Israel goes under."
Here is one of the stories about the Professor's remarks in January, 2003...
Israeli Prof Suggests Israel Can Destroy
All European Capitals
By Nadim Ladki
(IAP News) - An Israeli professor and military historian hinted that Israel could avenge the holocaust by annihilating millions of Germans and other Europeans.
Speaking during an interview which was published in Jerusalem Friday, Professor Martin Van Creveld said Israel had the capability of hitting most European capitals with nuclear weapons.
"We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets of our air force."
Creveld, a professor of military history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, pointed out that "collective deportation" was Israel's only meaningful strategy towards the Palestinian people.
"The Palestinians should all be deported. The people who strive for this (the Israeli government) are waiting only for the right man and the right time. Two years ago, only 7 or 8 per cent of Israelis were of the opinion that this would be the best solution, two months ago it was 33 per cent, and now, according to a Gallup poll, the figure is 44 percent."
Creveld said he was sure that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon wanted to deport the Palestinians.
"I think it's quite possible that he wants to do that. He wants to escalate the conflict. He knows that nothing else we do will succeed."
Asked if he was worried about Israel becoming a rogue state if it carried out a genocidal deportation against Palestinians, Creveld quoted former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan who said "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Creveld argued that Israel wouldn't care much about becoming a rogue state.
"Our armed forces are not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that this will happen before Israel goes under."
__________________
Here is another, more complete version of the interview from http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1154.htm
"The prominent Dutch magazine Elsevier has published a conversation with Dutch-Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld. The following has been translated from the Dutch [and then from the German]":
"We Are Destroying Ourselves."
"In Israel a scenario of doom is taking shape."
Interview with the much reviled Dutch-Israeli Military Historian Martin van Creveld
Professor Martin van Creveld, an internationally known and controversial professor of military history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, foresees only extreme developments for the appreciable future. The methods by which Israel is currently combating the Intifada are doomed to failure. The chances for peace and the founding of a Palestinian state are visibly diminishing. A conversation with a pessimist, who, as he himself says, is reviled in his own country.
Interviewer: Your specialty is war. Is what's going on here war at all?
Creveld: Certainly, although the Palestinians have no government, no army, and no [nationality]. Everything is in chaos. That's why we won't win the war, either. If we could identify and eliminate every terrorist, we'd win this struggle within forty-eight hours. The Palestinian administration has the same difficulties. Even in Arafat decided to comply with our conditions and surrender tomorrow, it's virtually certain that the Intifada would continue.
Interviewer: Are there any similarities on the Israeli side?
Creveld: If the dispute lasts much longer, the Israeli government will lose control of its people. For people will say: "If government can't protect us, what on earth can they do for us? If the government can't guarantee that we'll be alive tomorrow, what good are they? We'll defend ourselves."
Interviewer: So Israel is beaten in advance?
Creveld: On that I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing." That certainly applies here. I regard a total Israeli defeat as unavoidable. That will mean the collapse of the Israeli state and society. We'll destroy ourselves.
Interviewer: Is there any point to the recent Israeli military offensive?
Creveld: This offensive is totally useless; it's only further enraging the Palestinians. Perhaps there will be a short-lived calm, but in the end there will even more suicide attackers.
Interviewer: Is there any hope?
Creveld: If I were Arafat, I wouldn't stop either. I'd only cease in exchange for a very far-reaching political accord. And it seems as if we have a government [under Sharon-tr.] that won't make Arafat such an offer. If elections were held today, the Left would be thoroughly beaten.
Interviewer: Some maintain that it is Israel's foreign enemies that keep the country unified.
Creveld: That's right. I only wish that there were foreign enemies, but that isn't the case. We've fought our external enemies for so many years. Each time there was a war, we took a mighty hammer to our foes, and after being defeated a few times, they left us alone. The problem with the Palestinian revolt is that it doesn't come from without, but rather from within. Therefore we can't avail ourselves of the hammer.
Interviewer: Is the solution, then, to keep the Palestinians outside the borders?
Creveld: Exactly, and right now there's nearly unanimous agreement on that. We ought to build a wall "so high, that not even a bird can fly over it." The only problem is: where to put the border? Since we can't decide whether the territories conquered in 1967 should be included, for the time being we improvise a little. We're building a series of little walls, which are much more difficult to defend. From a military standpoint this is very stupid. Every supermarket has gradually acquired its own living wall of security guards. Half the Israeli population is guarding the other half-unbelievable. Aside from the fantastic waste, it's almost totally useless.
Interviewer: Does that mean that the Palestinians stay within the borders?
Creveld: No, it means that they all get deported. The people who strive for this are waiting only for the right man and the right time. Two years ago only 7 or 8 percent of Israelis were of the opinion that this would be the best solution, two months ago it was 33 percent and now, according to a Gallup poll, the figure is 44 percent.
Interviewer: Will that ever be possible?
Creveld: Sure, since desperate times give rise to desperate measures. Today there's a fifty-fifty split on where the border should run. Two years ago 90 percent wanted the wall built along the old border. That has completely changed now, and if things continue, if the terror doesn't stop, in another two years perhaps 90 percent will want to build the wall along the Jordan. The Palestinians talk of "summutt," meaning hang tough, cling to the ground and the soil. I have enormous respect for the Palestinians. They fight heroically. But if we in fact want to strike across the Jordan, we would need only a few brigades. If the Syrians or the Egyptians were to try to stop us, we'd wipe them out. Ariel Sharon is leader. He never improvises: he always has a plan.
Interviewer: A plan to deport the Palestinians?
Creveld: I think it's quite possible that he wants to do that. He wants to escalate the conflict. He knows that nothing else we do will succeed.
Interviewer: Do you think that the world will allow that kind of ethnic cleansing?
Creveld: That depends on who does it and how quickly it happens. We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets for our air force.
Interviewer: Wouldn't Israel then become a rogue state?
Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother." I consider it all hopeless at this point. We shall have to try to prevent things from coming to that, if at all possible. Our armed forces, however, are not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen, before Israel goes under.
Interviewer: This isn't your own position, is it?
Creveld: Of course not. You asked me what might happen and I've laid it out. The only question is whether it is already too late for the other solution, which I support, and whether Israeli public opinion can still be convinced. I think it's too late. With each passing day the expulsion of the Palestinians grows more probable. The alternative would be the total annihilation and disintegration of Israel. What do you expect from us?
This interview was conducted by Ferry Biedermann in Jerusalem.
brucecification, 2009-09-05 22:12:53
Fixed.
uplink, 2009-09-04 18:07:29
Here's your chance to play gestapo moderator. Erase posts you personally feel are not relevant.
williamq, 2009-09-04 11:04:06
uplink, 2009-09-03 13:14:47
Over the summer, the Tarabin tribe, all of them Israeli citizens, have had the sole access road to their homes sealed off, while the dirt track they must use instead is regularly blocked by temporary checkpoints at which their papers and vehicles are inspected at length.
Coils of razor wire encircle much of the village, and children as young as eight have been arrested in a series of night-time raids.
“Four-fifths of our youngsters now have files with the police and our drivers are being repeatedly fined for supposed traffic violations,” said Tulab Tarabin, one of Amra’s 400 Bedouin inhabitants. “Every time we are stopped, the police ask us: ‘Why don’t you leave?’”
Lawyers and human rights activists say a campaign of pressure is being organised against the Tarabin at the behest of a nearby Jewish community, Omer, which is determined to build a neighbourhood for Israeli army officers on the tribe’s land.
“The policy in Israel is that when Jews need land, the Bedouin must move – no matter how long they have been living in their homes or whether their communities predate Israel’s creation,” said Morad al Sana, a lawyer with the Adalah legal centre for Israel’s Arab minority. “The Tarabin’s crime is that they refuse to budge.”
The 180,000 Bedouin in the Negev have never been welcome, says Oren Yiftachel, a geographer at Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheva. They are descendants of a few thousand who managed to avoid expulsion from the southern semi-desert region during the 1948 war that founded Israel.
Many of the surviving Bedouin, including the Tarabin, were forcibly relocated from their extensive ancestral lands in the 1950s to an area close to the Negev’s main city, Beersheva, Prof Yiftachel said. Israel declared the Bedouin lands as “state land” and established a series of overcrowded “townships” to house the tribes instead.
“The stated goal is one of ‘Judaisation’,” Prof Yiftachel added, referring to a long-standing policy of concentrating the rural Bedouin into urban reservations to free up land for Jewish settlement. About half of the Negev’s Bedouin, some 90,000, have refused to move.
According to a recent report from the Association of Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), the townships have “continuously ranked as the poorest, least developed and most crime-ridden towns in Israel”.
The refuseniks, such as the Tarabin, have faced unrelenting pressure to leave their 45 rural communities, none of which is recognised by the state. The villagers endure “third world conditions”, according to ACRI.
“The unrecognised villages are denied basic services to their homes, including water and electricity, and the villages themselves have no master plans,” Mr al Sana said.
As a result, he added, the villagers are forced to live in tin shacks and tents because concrete homes are invariably destroyed by the authorities. In the past two years, several shacks as well as the local kindergarten in Amra have been demolished.
The stark contrast between the dusty encampment of Amra and the green lawns and smart villas of Omer, only a stone’s throw away and the country’s third wealthiest community, is unsettling even for some of Omer’s 7,000 residents.
One, Yitzhak Nevo, a philosophy professor at Ben Gurion University and a leading activist with Dukium, a Negev coexistence group, said that, although the lands on which the Tarabin live fall under Omer’s jurisdiction, the Bedouin have been entirely excluded. “Even though they live within Omer’s municipal limits, their children get no education from us; our health clinic does not treat them; they are not hooked up to our water or electricity supplies and their refuse is not collected.”
He said Amra had been treated as nothing more than an eyesore until the mid-1990s when the powerful mayor, Pinhas Badash, decided that the Tarabin were both harming property values and obstructing the town’s expansion plans.
As Omer’s new neighbourhoods reached the limits of Amra, Mr Badash stepped up the pressure on the villagers to leave. A few years ago he pushed through the building of a new community for the Tarabin away from Omer. Two-thirds of the tribe relocated, while the remainder fought the attempted eviction through the courts.
“It was a very dirty business in which those in the tribe who left first were offered cheap land on which to build while the rest were threatened that they would be offered nothing,” Mr al Sana said.
Amra’s remaining Bedouin have found themselves surrounded by a tall wire fence to separate them from Omer. Two gates, ordered by the courts to ensure the Bedouin continued to have road access through the town, were sealed this year.
Since the beginning of the summer police patrol Amra’s side of the fence around the clock and the Tarabin report that a private security firm chases off any of them found inside Omer.
Nissim Nir, a spokesman for Mr Badash, denied that the Tarabin were being hounded. Omer made a generous offer to relocate them from their “illegal” site, he said.
Recently Mr Badash announced that thousands of acres around Omer would be forested with the intention of stopping the Bedouin from returning to the area once they had been evicted.
Mr Tarabin, 33, accused the police of being little more than hired hands carrying out Mr Badash’s plan.
“We are being suffocated. There are night-time searches of our homes using bogus pretexts, and arrests of young children. We are photographed and questioned as we go about our business. At the roadblocks they endlessly check cars entering and leaving, and fines are issued. No one visits us unless they have to, and we stay home unless we have to leave.”
He added: “Why is it so impossible for Omer to imagine allowing us to be a neighbourhood of the town?”
A report by Human Rights Watch last year severely criticised Israel’s treatment of the Bedouin.
A version of this article originally appeared in The National (www.thenational.ae), published in Abu Dhabi.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel.
brucecification, 2009-08-31 18:58:34
Michael, 2009-08-29 11:55:58
If there is a hell, you're going to it Nazi. Alleged? No one has died? The US has been forced to admit both of these happened idiot. Abu Gharib? Guantanamo? Were you that outraged at US sanctions on Iraq that murdered a million children? How about Israel bombing a concentration camp, killing 700 children in Gaza? You make me sick.
Zionists in Canada are the real enemy of human decency and Canadian values of multiculturalism, human rights and democracy. Zionists in Canada support a rogue state (Israel)that according to the UN and Amnesty International has more human rights violations than China, is an anti democratic theocracy, and is actually committing ethnic cleansing on Christians and Muslims in Gaza and Jerusalem.
We as Canadian have always been proud of our contribution to the international community of peacekeeping. And now our government is a staunch supporter of a Nazi regime and we as Canadians should be outraged and disgusted.
If Israel is determined to destroy Iran, let them do it with their own troops, money and without Canada.
williamq, 2009-08-28 14:10:33
Zahra Kazemi died after being tortured for taking pictures during a student protest .The official cause of death was a stroke.The physician that examined her said that she had been brutally raped.Skull fractured.Fingers broken.Broken Nose.Crushed Toe.Abdominal Bruising.Deep scratches on her neck.Evidence of flogging on her legs.
Or as Bruce would say "A top Sunni American Spy has stroke in Iranian custody but admits to trying to promote a rebellion amongst students "
Shameful Stupidity.
Michael, 2009-08-27 17:19:12
ZAHEDAN: A top Sunni rebel who is awaiting execution in Iran said on Tuesday that his militant group received orders from the United States to launch terror attacks in the Islamic republic.
Abdolhamid Rigi, brother of shadowy Jundallah (Soldiers of God) group leader Abdolmalek Rigi, told reporters his brother was an Al-Qaeda point man in Iran six years ago but that later the group broke off ties with him.
'The United States created and supported Jundallah and we received orders from them,' Rigi said in Iran's restive southeastern city of Zahedan, the capital of Sistan-Baluchestan province bordering Afghanistan and Pakistan.
'They (US officials) told us whom to shoot and whom not to. All orders came from them. They told us that they would provide us with everything we need like money and equipment.'
Wearing normal clothing, and not a prison uniform, Rigi addressed reporters in a government building in Zahedan, amid relatively light security.
Iran has accused Jundallah of launching several attacks inside the country, mainly in Sistan-Baluchestan.
The group also claimed a May 28 bomb attack on the Shia Amir al-Momenin mosque in Zahedan in which more than 20 people were killed and 50 wounded.
That attack came just weeks before Iran's June 12 presidential election which returned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power.
Iran has in the past blamed US and British agents based in neighbouring Iraq and Afghanistan for launching attacks on border provinces with significant ethnic minority populations.
The day after the mosque bombing, officials accused the United States of 'hiring' those behind the attack, linking it to the presidential election. Washington rejected the accusation.
'We condemn this attack in the strongest possible terms,' State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said. We do not sponsor any form of terrorism in Iran.'
Before Tuesday's news conference began, reporters saw a group of people who reportedly had relatives killed in attacks launched by Jundallah.
An AFP correspondent said that as Rigi sat down to address reporters, some of the victims' relatives called out, denouncing him as a murderer.
Video footage of the aftermath of attacks allegedly launched by Jundallah was also shown at the news conference.
The images included gory executions of several handcuffed and blindfolded people, scenes which provincial officials told reporters had been filmed by Rigi himself.
The officials said some of those shown being killed, who were not identified, had been captured by Jundullah in 2006 and later executed.
Sistan-Baluchestan has a large ethnic Sunni Baluch minority, and also lies on a major narcotics-smuggling route from Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Iranian officials have said Abdolhamid will be executed for his role in several attacks in the country. -AFP
brucecification, 2009-08-27 07:47:30