Can you really not see ?

Amira Hass on the state of lethargy of the Israeli public moral consciousness over the crimes commited in their names by their state.

UN: Israeli cluster bombs immoral

Away from home reading the depressing news.

From Al-Jazeera:


Jan Egeland said on Wednesday that thousands of Lebanese civilians remain at risk from unexploded cluster bombs dropped there.

"What's shocking and I would say completely immoral is that 90 per cent of the cluster bomb strikes occurred in the last 72 hours of the conflict when we knew there would be a resolution, when we knew there would be an end."
"Those places who made those bombs should have a serious talk with Israel on the use of such bombs that are making our lives so miserable trying to help the Lebanese people," he said.

"Ninety per cent of the cluster bomb strikes occurred in the last 72 hours of the conflict when we knew there would be a resolution" Jan Egeland, UN"I hope the US will talk to the Israelis on that, because it is an outrage that we have 100,000 bombs among where children, women, shopkeepers and farmers are now going to tread"

Egeland added that he had not been able to get an explanation from the Israelis so far.

An 'explanation' ? What explanation ? An explanantion assumes some minimal level of rationality and morality. Where there is an explanation there is a justification. Can this act of barabarism be justified ?

Was there any explanation for Auschwitz ?

Ken Loach joins the cultural Boycott of Israel

''Statement by Ken Loach
I support the call by Palestinian film-makers, artists and others to boycott state sponsored Israeli cultural institutions and urge others to join their campaign.Palestinians are driven to call for this boycott after forty years of the occupation of their land, destruction of their homes and the kidnapping and murder of their civilians.They have no immediate hope that this oppression will end.As British citizens we have to acknowledge our own responsibility. We must condemn the British and US governments for supporting and arming Israel. We must also oppose the terrorist activities of the British and US governments in pursuing their illegal wars and occupations.However, it is impossible to ignore the appeals of Palestinian comrades. Consequently, I would decline any invitation to the Haifa Film Festival or other such occasions. ''
Best Wishes,Ken Loach

Read here an interview Loach gave to le Monde at the time of the screening of his Award winning movie 'The Wind That Shakes The Barley' at Cannes.

My argument for a cultural and economic boycott of Israel.

P.S. I will be traveling with an intermittent internet access and will not contribute much to this blog for the next two or three weeks. During this time comment moderation will be enabled.

Another Time, Another Place, Another Taste

Last year, we spent our holidays in Lebanon. It was the first time for my husband and children and it was after more than 20 years absence for me. Lucky we are, lucky we were !

The picture above was taken by my husband during a tour in our olive orchards. He told me that what he was seeing for the first time did not differ from what he constructed in his imagination when I used to describe the village for him. In some of the orchards, olive trees alternate with fig trees.

During this time of the year, my mother used to prepare jam with the figs gathered from our orchards. First she will dry the figs and then prepare the jam adding to it sesame and almonds. I remember the taste. I remember us in our early teenage, me and my brothers with our Peruvian born cousin, who came back to Lebanon with his parents like many Lebanese migrants around the beginning of the seventies seeking the good life, spending the summer days walking from our house to his house, listening to music, discussing our latest readings and eating my mother's fig jam. My mother was desperate, the jam was for the winter, when fruits will become scarce in the two village stores. She would laugh at our teen's appetite and do more jam until our return to school would put an end to our lazy and gourmet summer days...

Yesterday I made some jam for my family, freshly picked raspberries, blackberries and strawberries. We invited my brothers and their families, two of them live in the same city as us, and my father for a saturday morning breakfast with home made crêpes and red jam. They sat on the terrace, me and my sister in law in the kitchen supplying the crêpes. They discussed Lebanon, Politics and the recent Israeli agression. My older brother is Aounist, my other brother is Haririst (Sanyourist he corrected me) and I am none of these...The debate was intense. At some point, my husband had to moderate the discussion . I was allowed only one intervention or two when I finished preparing the crêpes. I told them to read my blog.

Then I sat with my dog beside me and left them debating again and again and I ate my crêpe with red fruits jam and remembered our summer days in Lebanon and my mother's fig jam.

True Hawks and Fake Hawks or why the Bush administration is not talking directly to Syria and Iran

Is it a sign of the times or a change of heart ? Neo-Con Richard Armitage, signer of the PNAC advocating regime change in Iraq and one of the leaders of the new 'War on Terrorism', former deputy secretary of state under GWB I talks to Al-Jazeera about Syria, Hezbollah, Iran, Israel and Lebanon. He advocates direct talks with Syria and iran as a way to find a solution to the current crisis in the ME. he thinks that the refusal of the Bush adminstration to engage in talks with Syria and Iran comes from a fear that'' talking is a sign of weakness".

Well I don't agree with him on that (see my previous post). This explanation has some implications which are in contradiction with how this adminstration want to appear to the world and to be perceived:
Indeed, how can a hawkish administration fear being perceived as weak ? It seems to me when you are a real hawk, you don't fear people's perceptions because people's perceptions are based on what you do and not what you say. Some real rugged hawks even excel in polishing the perceptions people have about them. Remember Don Corleone ?

Unless, of course, the Bush administration are fake hawks, chicks and cowards and that every show of force is effectively meant to hide their real weakness !
I think, as I don't doubt their hawkishness, that this adminstration does not want to talk because they want to diabolise their ennemies (see again my previous post). Otherwise, if the weakness explanation, which I have been hearing for so long now, is true, I challenge them, if they are true hawks, to talk to Iran and Syria !

Read the Armitage interview with Al-Jazeera

A Canadian MP is forced to resign after he suggested opening a dialogue with Hezbollah

We don't talk to terrorists, we kill them !

The problem is what do we do when the alleged terrorists are those who resist Israel and represent the majority of citizen in Arab countries ? This is more than half the population in lebanon for Hezbollah and more than half the population in Palestine for Hamas. Israel and the US are waging war on both organisations in the name of the 'War on Terror'.

There are two logical possibilities here when so many people correspond to the definition of terrorists or terrorists supporters:
We are wrong and our definition of terrorism is not correct;
We are not wrong and our definition of terrorism is correct;

From this it follows that in both cases, waging war on terrorism is going either to kill the wrong people along the terrorists (first case) or only the terrorists (second case) but many of them. In both cases many people will die, much more than what terrorism has been able to kill until now. This is what is happening now in the 'War on Terror'.

What do we do then ? We try to refine and correct our definition of terrorism and terrorists (first case) or because there are so many of them (second case), we try to help these people out from terrorist activities by talking to them while at the same time making it clear that terrorism is not acceptable. Actually not all countries engaged in the fight against terror agree on the definition of terrorism. Jordan, for example, a solid US and Israel ally, does not agree with Russia on its inclusion of the 'Muslim Brotherhood' in the list of terrorist organisations. This is because Russia's 'terrorists' are sunnis while Jordan's and USarel's 'terrorists', even though some are sunnis (Hamas) and some shiites (Hezbollah), have ties to countries unfriendly to USrael. On the other hand, Al-Zarqawi, who was slaughtering Iraqi shiites before he died, was a Jordanian bred Muslim sunni fanatic, probably influenced by sunni fundamentalists in Jordan.

Of course everybody forgot by now about Al-Qaida whose main role is to boost Bush's and Blair's popularity around election time by appearing on Al-Jazeera.

Hence the definition of terrorism has become a purely political game.

None of the issues mentioned however, refining the definition of terrorism or engaging in talks with 'terrorist' organisations and the people and countries who support them, was considered as sound by USrael who are waging wars on civilian populations in Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon in the name of the 'War on Terror'. The 'War on Terror' is becoming a mass murder and the 'free' world is accepting this mass murder which is taking place under its eyes because entire countries, populations and organisations were criminalised and diabolised. We are more inclined to forgive the killing of a murderer and of a criminal and the US made sure to extend its own criminal justice paradigm to terrorism: no fair trial, no fair judgement and no pardon in life, only in death ! However, are we sure that the people who are dying every day in Palestine, Iraq and Lebanon are murderers and criminals ?
Here again, the US has generalis, not only its own criminal judicial system but its lot of errors.

Suppose that terrorists are criminals, they are entilted to a trial and a judgement. If they don't have the status of criminals because they are treated by the 'War on terror' as 'heads of states' or 'political ennemies', then what are they ? They are not like every other head of state and they are not considered as real head of states. The US has found a convenient definition: EVIL ! The definition is convenient in the sense that it escapes classical categories, places terrorists both outside the realm of the criminal judicial system and the political system and dehumanise them.

The world is watching silent while Arab civilian populations are being slaughtered because these are not humans, they are 'terrorists' hence they are EVIL ! Since the beginning of the war in Iraq, there was never an official body count by the US occupation army. There is no point in counting dead 'evils' !

Today a Canadian liberal MP was forced to resign as the foreign affairs critic for his party after having made comments about the necessity for his country to initiate a dialogue with Hezbollah. The comments were made after the MP returned from a fact finding mission in Lebanon. Hezbollah is on the list of terrorist organisations in Canada.

The concept of Evil and the dehumanisation of Arabs since the beginning of the 'war on terror'

In 2003, the US didn't want to talk to Saddam, even though Saddam was their client warlord in the region for more than ten years. They didn't even give enough time to UN inspectors to finish their job in Iraq in the run-up to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. They fought in Iraq. They didn't fight against Saddam because the dictator was gone even more quickly than they thought. They, like Don Qixotte, fought ideas they have made up in their minds about Saddam, Iraq, Al-Qaida, WMD and the many links they fabricated and believed in for these virtual entities. There was however a reality on the ground they needed to really fight in Iraq, sectarianism, destabilisation, discontent, hostility of the occupied. However, this reality was not worth looking at because it contradicted their own 'reality', the one they were able to plant in their minds by reading Neo-Con litterature. Because what they fought for was a pure construct, a political construct meant to promote the 'War on Terror', they were not able to bring the promised democracy and peace to Iraq. Iraq is now a living hell, not a construct, a hell even worse than the one that stemmed from Saddam's dictatorial rule.

During this time, the US and Israel, and with them the self proclaimed 'democratic' and 'free' world, including Canada, declared themselves to be on the right side of history, the moral side, the side of Good, and they checked their ennemies on the wrong side, the side of Evil.

USrael made sure that all its ennemies in the ME were registered by the league of the 'free' nations on the wrong side. This was a golden occasion to get rid of all military and political dissent in the ME while Israelis were setting up their own peace plan in Palestine; a large prison-state for Palestinians for which Israel doesn't have to provide, because it is a state, but where it can block civilians, suffocate them and bomb them willingly in the name of the 'War against Terror'. Outside this large prison, Israel planned a prosperous and a peaceful country for Jews from all over the world.
But there were other problems for the realisation of this dream, Lebanon, Syria and Iran and a Palestinian leader who already talked to Isarel, recognised Israel and was again willing to talk, Arafat.

They checked Syria, Iran, Arafat, Hamas and Hezbollah on the side of terror and Evil and they started their work. They brought up the nuclear issue with Iran, they stopped initial peace talks with Syria and with Arafat and they declared Hamas and Hezbollah as the servants of Evil. They voted in the USrael congress sanctions against Syria and a pretty nasty UN resolution to drive Syria out from Lebanon and to create the conditions for the elimination of Hezbollah's military capacity, helped in this by a lebanese elite eager to trade one master for another. They voted and asked their friends states to vote Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation.

Arafat died not knowing why Sharon didn't want to talk to him. He was probably poisoned by Sharon and replaced by Abbas with whom Sharon and USrael didn't want to talk either. This was not a declared goal since Abbas was considered 'respectable' by USrael but after all they were not obliged to talk to him so they didn't. Sharon withdrew from the prison-Gaza only to reinforce the separation wall, initiate blockades, kill Palestinian leaders and officials by the dozen (targeted assassinations seen as totally acceptable by the 'free' world) and transfer some of them to Israeli prisons per se and make life in Gaza more hell than ever. But Sharon invented the unilateral 'peace' process mainly in order not to talk to the other side. During this time, Hamas stopped suicide bombings, engaged in the political process and capitalised on the Palestinian discontent with USrael and their client Mahmoud Abbas to become a party elected to power by the population. However, Hamas was on the terrorists list of USrael and USrael decided they were not going to talk to Hamas and they convinced the 'free' world into this. In the absence of talks, there were instead blockades of the Palestinian territories, killing of civilians (remember the family killed on a Gazan beach not long ago ?) and the starving of the Palestinians by stopping aid and preventing anybody from sending any aid, including medical supplies. Gaza was suffocating when Hamas agreed with Fatah, at the end of June, on a draft recognising Isarel in its 1967 borders and restricting resistance to these borders. This had the immediate effect of unleashing military operation after military operation by Israel in Gaza, daily shelling and killing of civilians. With it the imprisonment by Israel of many Hamas MPs and two killing attempts made on Ismail Haniyyeh and Khaled Mashaal, top Hamas officials.

Palestinians were suffocating but the free world was watching with good conscience because they were already categorised as EVIL 'terrorists'.

Syria was driven out from Lebanon and a pro USrael government installed there with the help of their long term allies, the Saudis (remember, those who have given us the 9/11 terrorists). USrael asked the Lebanese government to disarm Hezbollah who claimed Israel's occupation of Lebanon's Sheb'a farms as the number one reason for its military arsenal. A national dialogue was initiated in Lebanon between main political parties participating in the government in which Hezbollah is a member. During this time, Iran, emboldened by the Iraqi chaos, the US having eliminated their long time ennemy Saddam and installed a shiite, pro-Iranian government there, decided to defy the US, helped by the decline of the US overseas deterrent capacity, strained by the situation in Iraq.

This is when the US asked Israel to take care of Iran in a show of force against Hezbollah (claimed to be Iran's client) in Lebanon, and very quickly. Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker argues that the US's hurry for a large scale military operation against Hezbollah was motivated by the US internal elections agenda. Sorry, no time for this 'fragile democracy' in Lebanon.

It is in this context of accumulated errors in the ME that USrael started a war of brutal intimidation and punishment on Lebanon and the Lebanese in order to force them to get rid of Hezbollah. Lebanon, its government and its population, having the painful memories of the 15 years civil war they are just recovering from, show no willingness to turn against 40 % of their population, Hezbollah. Moreover, a political convent ties Hezbollah to a major Christian party, the party of general Michel Aoun and a sizeable part of Sunnis support Hezbollah's agenda in the country. Hezbollah, like Hamas, is more than a militant organisation, they have a social network, they are involved in the political process and they enjoy the support of more than half the Lebanese population, by the most conservative estimates. But the scope and force of the Israeli agression on Lebanon, its civilians and its infratsructure were meant to send a strong message: 'Get Rid of Hezbollah'. However the Lebanese this time were contemplating a different reality; Hezbollah is one of them and thay cannot just go out and kill 40 % of the population, they are not ready for another civil war.

USrael did not anticipate these differences in the perception and appreciation of the Lebanese reality, as with other adventures in the ME. The war went on for more than a month and did not produce the expected results but only destruction of Lebanon and its people on a huge scale and for years to come.

Meanwhile, Al-Qaida, the netwrok responsible for 9/11 and who is the reason behind the 'War on Terror' is quitetly hiding in the caves of a US friendly country, elusive and menacing as on September eleventh, immune to the 'War on Terror'.


The problem with this vision of the middle east promoted by USrael is that they don't want to talk to people who are essential part of the conflict. Why ? Because these people happen to be the incarnation of Al-Qaida (even though there is no relation between these groups and Al-Qaida), which is becoming the myth of Evil. USrael designated an Evil and its representatives on earth, even though not only there are no real relations between the EVIL and its alleged representatives but also profound differences. However the West and its main information channels are not keen on subtle categorial distinctions. Just before the war on iraq began, Bush didn't know that there were Shias in Iraq and he didn't know what is the difference between shias and sunnis. They are all Arabs, they are all Muslims and they are all Evils.

Nobody talks to EVIL, neither to its representatives. The only way out from a confrontation with EVIL is complete victory ! However, it happens that this EVIL is actually people made from flesh, human beings. If you don't talk to the people with whom you fight, it is because you want their complete elimination and the total submission of the rest of them. Complete elimination of Hamas and its supporters, complete elimination of Hezbollah and its supporters, complete elimination of their main moral and financial support in the region, the non compliant Iranian regime and its supporters, who is growing stronger and richer, thanks to increasing oil prices driven by the war in Iraq (in fact it is the US who is financing Hezbollah through the spectacular increase in oil prices since the Iraq war !).

That makes a lot of people, representatives of EVIL on earth, to eliminate ! May be an A bomb or a nuclear bomb can do the job like in Hiroshima and Nagazaki. The US did it before and they can do it again ! Why not and why do you think the US is more focused on Iran's nuclear capacity than on North Korea's ? Because the US's mai n ally in the region wants to keep its deterrent capacity exclusive as to impose its own solution to the ME crisis. After all, the bomb is in israel's hands, in the hands of the Good and is meant to desactivate EVIL istelf !

Nobody, in my opinion, has ever genuinly and officially apologized for Hiroshima and Nagazaki in the 'free' world and, judging by the reactions of the press in the 'free' world to scenes of death and suffering in Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine, few people have showed empathy and few have condemned ! You don't talk to EVIL. EVIL doesn't suffer and EVIL doesn't deserve sympathy nor empathy ! Hence the savage Isareli agression on Lebanon with the 'free' world active consent ! And tomorrow if Israel want to drop an atomic bomb on civilian populations in the ME nobody will have anything to say against that. 'Israel has the right to defend itself' we will surely hear from our politicians in the west and if they dare say something else they will have to resign !

There is a wild dream in this logic, a troubled wild child's dream, that what one believes is actually what exists. USrael is believing that they can model the ME to suit Israel's absurde colonialist adventure by propagating the myth of EVIL to silence dissent against isarel,s expansionnism and savage colonialism! They are doing so by the book with guidance from their theorists neo-Cons friends, with total disregard to the reality on the ground.

And when a Canadian MP visits Lebanon on a fact finding mission and sees actually a reality he was never prepared to see and utter the words he should never utter by Neo-Con standards, he is forced to resign !

May be we should send all MPs from Canada, the US and the UK and all allied countries on fact finding missions to Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine. They will see the reality on the ground and return to their countries and utter words they should never utter by neo-con standards and they will be forced to resign. Then we can elect new governments, governments who don't believe in EVIL, governments who believe in people and humanity and reason to better represent the interests of ordinary citizens caught in the moral darkness of the 'War on Terror' which is void of reason, morality and humanity !

Israel deliberately targeted Civilians and Infrastructure in Lebanon

''Israeli government spokespeople have insisted that they were targeting Hizbullah positions and support facilities, and that damage to civilian infrastructure was incidental or resulted from Hizbullah using the civilian population as a "human shield". However, the pattern and scope of the attacks, as well as the number of civilian casualties and the amount of damage sustained, makes the justification ring hollow. The evidence strongly suggests that the extensive destruction of public works, power systems, civilian homes and industry was deliberate and an integral part of the military strategy, rather than "collateral damage" – incidental damage to civilians or civilian property resulting from targeting military objectives.''

The Amnesty International Report is calling for a UN investigation on war crimes in Lebanon.

''Amnesty International calls for the immediate establishment of a comprehensive, independent and impartial inquiry into violations of international humanitarian law by both Hizbullah and Israel in the conflict. The inquiry should examine in particular the impact of this conflict on the civilian population. It should propose effective measures to hold accountable those responsible for crimes under international law, and to ensure that the victims receive full reparation.''

A Low Intensity War

After a month of heavy bombing on civilian populations Israel is waging a low intensity war on Lebanon. This is the most obvious sign of the fragility of the ceasefire and of the unwillingness of Israel to comply to yet another UN resolution ! It is a tactic Israel has pursued in the past. Israel is a country in perpetual war alternating periods of open wars with what can be considered as low intensity wars. In fact, Israel has been in a low intensity war with lebanon over the last fourty years since the beginning of its quasi-daily violations of Lebanon's air space, land and sea.
I remember, as a child, my parents painting the light bulbs in the house in blue in order not to be noticed during the night by Israeli warplanes flying over Lebanon to drop their bombs. The Israeli bombs used to be sent over Palestinian camps in Lebanon, then in the eighties they started to target Lebanese populations, villages and infrastructure in the south and lately they have been sending them all over the country more as a punishment for being the country of Hezbollah then as a carefully planned military operation ! The reality is that Israel can never pass a day without visiting Lebanon in a show of force !

The world believes that there is now a ceasefire in Lebanon but in reality, if you read local newspapers, it is not actually the case, at least not for Israel.
In today's Lebanese newspaper Al-Safir (Arabic only):

Nine days after the official announcement of the UN sponsored ceasefire:
Israel is continuing its Air, Sea and Land blockade of Lebanon;
Israel is still keeping few hundred soldiers at the frontiers, inside lebanese territory;
Israeli warplanes and warships are patrolling Lebanon's airspace and coast;
Israel has so far conducted two military operations inside Lebanon leading to casualties on both Israel's and Hezbollah's sides.

Moreover, the bombs and mines planted by Israel represent a danger for civilians retrurning to their villages and neighbourhoods;
Environmental and more dangerous hazards in areas bombed by Israel are both reproted by experts and experienced by ordinary citizens. My colleague blogger UrShalim has a recent post on the subject.

Meanwhile, at least two months and a half will be needed to recruit the UN international force for Lebanon (UNIFIL). Annan will be in Bruxelles this week discussing the contributions of European countries. The total number of UNIFIL peacekeepers should be around 9000 and right now we are far from that. Present talks are yielding timid or little contributions, except from Italy. Israel is imposing its own restrictions; vetoing contributing countries who do not have diplomatic relations with Israel (practically all Muslim countries) and asking that part of the force be stationed at the syrian Lebanese border (allegedly to stop arms smuggling to Hezbollah but chiefly to render the matter even more difficult because the Syrians, who are concerned by this, were not consulted !).

Moreover, Israel's intransigeance seems to be dictated by internal politics and Olmert's government is preoccupied by its survival.

The situation in the south is very fragile, complicated by the 'civil void' created by Israel's destruction of houses and infrastructure. The UN envoy estimated that two to three months are needed to remedy this void; cleaning fields from bombs, reparing bridges and roads, fixing canalisations and water for the population...

Right now, no schools are expected to open in South lebanon and South Beyrouth where most of the damage is. Yesterday, I was at a meeting at my son's school in Canada where they had to face a huge number of applications for Lebanese children and youths who were sent to their relatives here during the crisis or who are trying to register for the coming academic year from Lebanon hoping to arrange for a visa in the meantime. Although I was in Lebanon during the first six years of the civil war, yesterday I got to glimpse and remember how a war on civil populations can alter lives at the personal level.

The fragility of the situation is such that experts believe that it can return at any moment to a high intensity war like the one we witnessed between July 12th and August 16th. The UNIFIL force's mandate will be to protect civilians. They can open fire in selfdefense but they don't have the mandate to disarm Hizbullah and monitor his arms and weapons. This mandate was given to The Lebanese army whom some accuse of being underequipped, undertrained and Hizbullah friendly...

Despite the fragile situation, Lebanese are trying to get on with their lives. The government is conducting internal talks and meeting officials from the damaged areas to set a compensation program for civilians and to repair civilian infrastructure. Among Arab countries, Qatar has announced contributions that will cover the reconstruction of two villages in the south, Bint Jbeil and Khiyyam.
Also, according to Al-Safir, the Lebanese Prime Minister phoned Mubarak, Annan and Rice asking them to intervene in order to lift the Israeli blockade of Lebanon and the president of parliament, Nabih Berri, accused Israel of using the blockade as a coercitive measure against Lebanon meant to silence internal political dissent in Israel against Olmert and to give its government a countenance in face of those who want its resignation.

The media and Israel

From now on, I would like to post, as much as I can do, on some passages I find in my readings of the Western press, as well as the Saudi dominated Arab press as 'gem of the day' or 'perle du jour'. These consist of citations containing pro-Israel biases and connivences and anti-Arab préjugés dictated by political correctness, racism, lack of judgement, ignorance, plain hypocrisy, and absolutely not based on facts.

Today the 'Gem of the Day' goes to yesterday's Leader's editorial in the Guardian. Evoking the ceasefire and the last Israeli attempt in the Bekaa to kidnapp a Hezbollah official (or to disrupt arms shipment to Hezbollah according to Israel, as if the disruption of arms shipments cannot be made by air bombing, a war tactic to which the cowardly Israeli army resorted too much during the recent agression on Lebanon, instead of landing thirty soldiers with their humvees in a Lebanese village), the editorialist leader wrote:

''There is no doubt that Hizbullah sees itself as the victor in the conflict and this in itself is a provocation to an Israeli government which is under pressure at home to show it can still protect its territory. As such, the Bekaa raid may have been a symbolic exception to a policy of compliance with the UN resolution, rather than a disturbing indication of flagrant breaches to come. ''

Poor Israeli government ! Hezbollah was so villain as to not let Israel win and look what is happening now ! Because Israel MUST WIN, because Israel has the 'right to defend itself', because Israel is on the 'right side' of this war, because Israel is entitled to victory whenever it goes to war against its Arab neighbours, it is being subjected to an unbearable pressure at home to score a victory against Hezbollah. This has driven poor Israel to 'symbolically' not comply with UN security council resolution 1701 ! I am afflicted !

What kind of excuse The Guardian is going to find next time the Israeli government is going to breach UN resolution 1701 ? Is it going to serve us the same excuse ? What kind of excuse the Guardian is giving us as to the Israeli blockade of Lebanon's air space and coast ? Is it pressure at home ? And is a third breach of 1701, because there was already a second one, going to be considered as an exception ? What the person who wrote the opinion think of UN resolutions totally not respected by Israel ? Israel has a list of UN resolutions against it to which it never complied !

This is a clear example of excessive 'compassionate' journalism toward Israel. Is it the result of:
Self-censorship ? Political correctness ? Fear from being fired from the job ? Fear from being labeled anti-semite ? Plain sympathy ? All the previous at the same time ?

The world is silent while Israel is driving the ME and with it the entire world into the abyss

Alain Gresh is a Le Monde Diplomatique journalist and specialist of the Middle East. He has written authoritative articles and books on the subject. He is a must read. He recently started a blog at this adress in French.

''After considerable tension, all the Palestinian organisations except Islamic Jihad signed a text on June 27 calling for a political solution based on the creation of a Palestinian state beside the state of Israel. It also restricted armed resistance to the occupied territories. This agreement opened the way for the formation of a government of national unity that could open peace negotiations. The next day the Israeli army invaded Gaza, on the pretext that a soldier had been taken hostage, but in fact to destroy Hamas.

This Israeli incursion, with its bombing of power stations and ministry buildings, arrests of political leaders, destruction of homes, and use of civilians as human shields also qualifies as a war crime. The Swiss government, the custodian of the Geneva conventions, said on July 4 that there is "no doubt Israel has not taken the precautions required of it in international law to protect the civilian population and infrastructure".
The wars against the Palestinians and Lebanese are parts of the same strategy, which seeks to impose a solution that only satisfies Israeli interests. Yet never in the past 40 years has Israeli policy received such unanimous western support. We have heard only a few voices of dissent, notably from the Vatican.

Again the Arab world has demonstrated its inability to intervene - so far. Arab states allied with the US feel unable to exert pressure on Washington. What they have done is to condemn Hizbullah and Hamas, implicitly justifying Israeli incursions. The Saudi foreign minister, Saud al-Faisal, asked non-Arab parties to keep out of the conflict, obviously not referring to the US, but to Iran.

Abd al-Wahab Badrakhan, an al-Hayat columnist, wrote: "All the Arabs, from the Atlantic to the Gulf, know that the peace process is well and truly dead. However, the Arabs have never acknowledged that the peace process was dead, out of obstinacy and because they do not know how to get out of the swamp they have sunk into. Therefore, whether we like it or not, the final word has been left to those we call extremists or adventurers."
Hamas began in Gaza in 1987, after 20 years of Israeli occupation, surfing on the tidal wave of the first intifada. Hizbullah emerged from the fight against occupation forces after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. What new extremist organisation will rise from the fresh ruins of Lebanon?''

Read more...

Lebanon: Israel's bombing playground

Sean Smith's slideshow on the impact of the Israeli agression on Lebanon.

Israel's self proclaimed right on the Lebanese coast is endorsed by the UN

Everybody knows by now that UN resolutions 1559 and 1701 call for Lebanese sovereignty. Designed by the neo-cons, they were configured to drive Syria out from Lebanon and disarm Hezbollah. The first goal was achieved but not the second and it is the second goal that provoked the recent Isareli agression on Lebanon.

Hence it bothers me when the UN itself and those who welcomed these resolutions don't seem to believe in Lebanon's sovereignty when it comes to allowing USrael to agress Lebanon, to spill oil on its coast (in order to divert tourism from this area to Israel) and to fly the Lebanese coast to check the damage that was made by Israel !

I thought that I was misreading when I went throught this passage this morning:
''UN: Israel Approves Aerial Flights to Survey Lebanese Oil Spill.
Israel has given approval for aerial UN surveillance missions over the Lebanese coast to determine the scope of a massive oil spill caused by Israeli bombing, the United Nations said Monday.''

So it seems that the UN, Israel and the US and with it the self declared civilised world don't give a damn about Lebanese sovereignty when it comes to Isarel's self proclaimed rights !

The Middle East needs Peace

The middle east does not need extremisms, does not need Bush, does not need religions, does not need Blair, does not need unilateralism, does not need US neo-con imported and ready-made democracies and policies, does not need missionaries, does not need terrorism, does not need non sense, does not need suicide bombings, does not need zionism, does not need USrael and their neocolonialism, does not need killings, bombings, torture, dehumanising and military might.

The middle east needs hope, peace and economic development. Can any western democracy hear this plight ? Can anybody hear the plight of the meditterranean suffocated by tons of oil released by Isareli might ? Can anybody hear the plight of the Palestinians who elected a parliament imprisoned now by Israel ? Can anybody hear the plight of the Lebanese routinely put twenty years back by the state of Israel ? Can anybody hear the plight of the children who died in Qana, Gaza and south Beyrouth under the bombs of the Israeli army ? I am calling the world, the 'civilised', 'democratic' and 'moral' world. Is anybody hearing ?

''The chances of achieving a region-wide peace in the Middle East are slim to non existent right now, because the key non-Arab players are focusing on the wrong issues. They are trying to manage or eliminate the symptoms of our region's tensions instead of addressing the root causes. Hizbullah and Iran are among the best examples of this.

Israel and the US are obsessed with disarming Hizbullah and confronting Iran. But a quarter of a century ago neither of these issues existed. How Hizbullah and Iran became so problematic is worth recalling. Until 1979 Iran under the Shah was a close ally and friend of the US and Israel, and Hizbullah was not even born. What happened in the three decades from the mid-70s to today? Many things. The most consistent one was that we all allowed the Arab-Israeli conflict to fester unresolved. Its bitterness kept seeping out from its Palestine-Israel core to corrode many other dimensions of the region.

The constant clashes between Israel and Lebanon since the late 1960s derived heavily from the unresolved Palestinian-Israeli conflict that started with the 1948 war. Since Iran's 1979 revolution Islamist revolutionary zeal has found effective expression in its close association with Hizbullah, which Iranian revolutionary guards were instrumental in establishing and training. Tehran's assistance to Hamas today follows a similar pattern. A non-Arab power such as Iran exploits the resentment against Israel and the US throughout the Arab world to make political inroads into Arab regions. If the Arab-Israeli conflict had been resolved decades ago, Iran would not have this opportunity.''

A majority of Israelis are unhappy with the ceasefire

I wonder which world Israelis are living in ?

They are living in a mythological world made of 'righteous' biblical rights, 'absolute' force and 'moral' entitlement. The little 'morality' that was left to the Isareli society as a whole and to the state of Israel evaporated quickly with the second intifada. Nothing can distinguish Israel now form any brutal colonial state, from the Apartheid state of south Africa for example; targeted killings, criminal manipulations, indiscriminate bombings, economic, social and psychological warfare on civil populations.

This is the state of mind Israelis are living in...Absolute power and absolute entitlement so they don't understand how a little guerrilla can defeat them, they don't understand that the guerilla they want to eliminate is about 70% of the Lebanese population and the whole Lebanese territory (conservative estimates based on the percentage of shias, Christians and sunnis who support Hezbollah) . They sign bombs, they don't agree on the ceasefire, they want a final solution, they want a definitve victory...They even asked for an inquiry on why their army was not able to accomplish all this, to accomplish what their leaders have promised them.

It is time to stare at reality, to think about the amount of human suffering in the ME, to observe the fragility of humanity both in defeat and victory and to look for peace, for ways of living together, for a good and ordinary life. Can Israelis undertsand that ? Not now, I am afraid...They want their victory and they will keep trying to chase it for a while before they understand...

Funerals in Qana

From Al-Akhbar

The 'War on Terror': Scepticism should be the code word

In addition to the fact that scepticism at the ballot box is good, not only for your security, but also for your mental health.

Next time you are going to vote, don't vote for any Politician who tried to spin the war on terror or profit from it. Read Craig Murray:''We should be sceptical about this alleged plot, and wary of politicians who seek to benefit'' More...

Lebanon: Images from the Israeli Agression

From Blogger Ur-Shalim.

Pakistan and the spin of terror

Now I am reassured, as long as the information about the last terror plot is coming from Pakistani officials, I can sleep safe, sur mes deux oreilles ! What a nice ally Pakistan is in the fight against terror !

UPDATE
Read what Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekhistan, wrote in the Guardian about this:
''Then an interrogation in Pakistan revealed this amazing plot to blow up multiple planes. Of course, the interrogators of the Pakistani dictator have ways of making people sing like canaries. As I witnessed in Uzbekistan, you can get the most extraordinary information from people desperate to stop or avert torture. What you don't get is the truth.''

Racial Profiling at airports: A Stupid and Hollow measure aimed only at increasing racial tensions

Read here my personal account as a middle eastern woman traveling in Europe this summer, as well as the excellent Glenda Jackson article as of this morning on the subject.
Read here what I think of the growing politisation of terrorism and how to effectively protect citizens and civilians from it, along with the excellent Madeleine Bunting article on Islam, terrorism and the catastrophic politics of both issues in the UK.
These are the opinions of a bunch of women, Me, Madeleine and Glenda. I can tell you, you better follow these opinions instead of those of Bush, Blair and their bunch of men including Rice because, as my favourite line in Lord of the Ring from another courageous woman says, 'I am no man' and so We Are No Men ! *

* I thank Richard for emboldening me to make such a statement through one of his comments, even though I admit that these distinctions are false and only circumstancial because for every worthy woman there is a worthy man...

Thank you Ms Wighton !

If every citizen in the UK and the US had the level of moral conscience and knowledge about the tragedies inflicted on Palestinians and Lebanese by Israel, there wouldn't be such an unjustified support for Israel and its military might in the west and we, the people of the middle east, would be living in peace !

Blair's Middle East policy has driven me to return my MBE I accepted my honour on behalf of Palestinian and Lebanese colleagues. I have now sent it back, also in their name.

Suzy Wighton, Wednesday, August 16, 2006

''I remember watching in horror the BBC reports of the massacres in Lebanon in the autumn of 1982. My family and I watched open-mouthed, transfixed by images of dead Palestinian families and the awful suffering on the streets of the Sabra refugee camp. Over the past five weeks I have again sat at home in Scotland, watching the TV rigid with shock at appalling crimes being committed in Lebanon and Gaza by the Israeli air, land and sea assault.

In 1985, after completing a tropical nursing course, and galvanised by my earlier travelling experiences in the occupied West Bank, I found the London office of Medical Aid for Palestinians and Dr Swee Chai Ang, a surgeon who had survived the massacre of Sabra and Shatila. Her commitment to the Palestinian cause, along with that of Major Derek Cooper and his late wife Pamela, was inspirational. Her bravery in travelling to Israel to testify against Ariel Sharon for complicity in the Sabra and Shatila massacres was breathtaking.
The Palestinian medical staff in Beirut were again being slaughtered in 1985 and 1986. They were dragged - along with their patients - from the hospital, which was on the edges of the Sabra and Shatila camps, and shot by militiamen.

Health volunteers were required, and I ended up in Bourj al-Barajneh camp in Beirut. The Palestinian refugee population there had arrived from all over Palestine in 1948, mainly from the Galilee. They had left everything behind, locked their front doors, and moved over the border to wait for the fighting to end so they could return to their homes. They still haven't been able to. Tents were replaced by corrugated tin shelters in which babies died sometimes of the heat and sometimes of the cold. Six weeks after I arrived, the war of the camps restarted, and I stayed for six months in the besieged camp.
In recent weeks many of my friends from those Beirut days have been in Ain el-Helweh camp in Sidon, or have moved from Tyre to Beirut, from east Beirut to west Beirut, or from Bourj al-Barajneh to Sidon and back again, under aerial bombardment from Israel, hosting Lebanese refugees in the Palestinian refugee camps. The Lebanese people I met in the south of the country have been on our television screens, displaced or dead. The same destruction and despair has been revisited upon my friends, both Palestinian and Lebanese. All have been targets of massive military attacks in civilian areas. Bombarded for existing, bombarded for daring to show defiance to bigger global plans for them.
For me this is a moment for action, and for making whatever gestures we can here in Britain to show our solidarity with the Lebanese and Palestinian people, who have been under siege both in Lebanon and Gaza.

On returning from Beirut after the siege of the refugee camps - having been saved from assassination on leaving the camps by the efforts of Canadian, Irish and Greek envoys - we international medical volunteers were given numerous awards. Our Palestinian and Lebanese counterparts received nothing. Their bravery and steadfastness went unnoticed. I was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire for services to the Palestinian people - a people who live still under occupation and in refugee camps in exile, as UN resolutions that would solve their plight are ignored.

I accepted my MBE on behalf of all my unsung Palestinian and Lebanese colleagues and comrades. I have now returned it, also in their name. It is an utter disgrace that the British prime minister refused to press for a ceasefire, remained on holiday while these war crimes were being carried out and that parliament has not been recalled. It is a disgrace that the US ambassador to the UN described a call for a three-day truce to assist in humanitarian relief and evacuation of the wounded as "unhelpful". It is a disgrace that this government ignored the concerns of the electorate and all other forms of lawful protest. I have therefore come to the conclusion that to continue to hold on to my MBE, for which I was nominated by the parliamentary Labour party, is also a disgrace.

I have returned my MBE to St James Palace, with regret, in protest at the government's complicity in the prosecution of illegal wars and occupations. And I am returning it, above all, in the hope that this small gesture will add to the swell of support for action for the people of Lebanon and Palestine, and to those who wish to see peace in Israel and other nations.
I would urge others who also hold honours, and who feel the same powerlessness in the face of Tony Blair's foreign policy, to do as I am doing. In the history of quiet British protest, the return of honours has always had its place. And so it should now, in the name of the Lebanese and Palestinian people. ''
· Suzy Wighton is a public-health coordinator in Aberdeen

Politics and Terrorism

Under this rubrique title The Guardian reports on the bitter exchange between British Mulsim MPs, who wrote a letter to the government complaining about the UK's policies in the ME and Afghanistan as a cause for alienating young British Muslims, and Tony Blair's government ministers.
The answer to the Muslim MPs complaint was a flat: 'We don't want terrorism to dictate our policies' . But these ministers seem to need a course in logic because they don't fear contradictions. What the hell the British army is doing in Afghanistan and Iraq other than 'fighting terrorism' alongside Bush ? One way or another, terrorism is dictating UK's foreign policy under Tony Blair. However, he and his ministers choose to ignore one of the two ways, that their foreign and domestic policies are focused on terrorism, while being uncomfortable with the other, that their policies should be dictated by terrorism concerns !

I mean what kind of logic is this ? The US and the UK are sending their armies to fight individual terrorists and terror cells all over the globe, wherever they exist. How can they expect terrorism not to fight them back at home ? The advantage terrorism has over a regular army and a regular state consists of two features
- Terrorism is carried by individuals hence it is more mobile than an organised army;
- Terrorism is an idea in an individual mind
The only thing our countries will never be able to do is stop individuals and ideas from moving across borders more swiftly and more efficiently than armies and their heavy equipment and as long as western policies are focused on fighting terrorism with regular armies in other countries they will be at a great disadvantage. Terrorism can be fought only with intelligence, because intelligence is mobile, like terrorism. We also need the presence of armies where the threat exists and where protection from terrorism is needed, which means in the US and the UK and not in foreign soil ! How come our leaders think that we are at war with Terrorism and they don't even bother deploying the army to defend their own soils and the citizens who live on it ? But our leaders are doing exactly the contrary of what should be done: beefing up intelligence in their own countries while sending their armies in 'rogue' states harboring terrorists.
I will leave the logical conclusion that comes out from this non sense to any rational mind to draw upon the fallouts of the UK and the US leaders policies against terrorism but also upon their premices and motivations !

Blair, The Guardian and their Arcs of Extremisms

Well before, but especially after the recent uncovering of the London 'liquid bombing plot', The Guardian started to go out of its way. Every day, I am reading shocking commentaries about Islam and Muslims mixing together extremist Salafism, which is the West's creation, and local Islamist resistance movements like Hamas and Hezbollah, which are Israel's creation.

Worse, an opinion Leader in the Observer last sunday says innocently that what Islam is doing to the west is all bad while the west has done nothing wrong but every good to Islam mentioning the Balkans, Bosnia and Kosovo as good services from the West to Islam with no word for Palestine, Israel, Guantanamo, AbuGhraib and the continuous support of the west to corrupt Arab regimes !

My interpretation of this turn is either one of these:

-The Guardian is trying to cover up for the shocking Israeli defeat !
-The Guardian is trying to give credit to Tony Blair after much of England and the World expressed doubts about the timing of his 'terror plot' !
-The Guardian is really sincere (but erroneous nonetheless) in its portraying of Islam, and those who are trying to foment world trouble by stigmatising Islam and Muslims in order to give Israel free hands in the ME have won !

May be the three premices above are all true and in this case, a new arc of extremism is born within 'moderate' European leftists. I believe this is the case and I believe that moderation is loosing ground every day our leaders and our press are inflating their rethoric along with their military muscle against Arabs and Muslims in Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Iran ! Brave new World !

Shattered lives in Lebanon

Who was Salwa Wehbé ?

Most of the time, when we see pictures of people killed on TV or in newspapers, our perception of the life that is behind is always abstract. A life is a story and not everybody has the ability to construct a story out of a picture, especially when often such pictures are clouded by political, strategic, military or simply spin commentary and journalism of this sort, made most of the time to cover the troubling issues of the day like the Israeli defeat at the hands of Hezbollah for example !

But those friends of Israel who are bitter today and cannot even aknowledge Israel's defeat are pathetic and blind. They can be assured that Israel made sure that its own military defeat would be a human defeat for Lebanese and for Hezbollah. Minutes before ceasefire Israelis were still bombing appartment buildings, civilians and economic infratsructure in Beyrouth and the south. How can The Guardian let such a huge amount of hate spill over their paper when Lebanese, Arabs and Muslims are mourning their dead today !

I learned, from the Palestinian and lebanese crises, that the West's contempt for Arabs and Muslims is a blind process, remnant of its colonial past and it is called Racism !

Seymour Hersh: the current Israeli agression on Lebanon was planned with the US as a 'demo for Iran' !

Were dead Lebanese children also part of the demo ?
Were the more than a thousand dead civilian Lebanese also part of the demo ?
Were the million displaced lebanese civilians, a quarter of the population, also part of the demo ? Was Lebanon's willingly destroyed economy also part of the demo ?
Was Lebanon's looting also part of the demo ?
Was Lebanon's willingly destroyed infrastructure part of the demo ?

Sanyura's Lebanon, Bush's darling in the ME, has served as a demo to a potential war against Iran ! I hope that Lebanese and their chiefs and their Hariris and their Lebanese Forces and their Jumblatt have learned the lesson this time around that this little country must count on itself and not on the US because when it comes to its interests and to the interests of its real ally, Israel, the US considers Lebanon and Lebanese as nothing else than a DEMO, Arabs, 'subhumans' !

The west's contempt for Arabs was never as strong as when no voice rose in support of Lebanon, a western friendly country, while its infrastructure, its children and its civilians were being massacred By Israel. In fact, not only the West didn't condemn Israel, not only it was busy excusing Israel's actions but it was busy purveying fragmentation bombs to Israel to better perform its criminal actions...

We have here a US administration which have contempt, not only for Arabs, but also for any form of human life that is not within the narrow interests of the few in the Bush adminstration and their friends in the industrial military complex, contempt for Human rights and thirst for oil, power and war ! How can we continue to give credibility to this administration ? How can we continue to give credibility to governments who support this administration ? How can we continue to give credibility to officials who do political and economic transactions with this administration ? How can we continue to give credibility to diplomats and politicians who think they can speak with this administration and convince them to change course ?

The Bush administration have showed convincingly the world, or every reasonable and rational person in the world, that They, Themselves, are the Terrorrists they claim they are eagerly chasing ! The rest of the world must stop dealing with this bunch of war criminals, terrorists and psychopaths for the sake of humanity ! Either you are with them and you are a war criminal and a morally banckrupt person or you are against them and this is where every person who cherishes human life must stand !

And please I don't want to hear anymore this grotestque lie about Israel 'wanting to defend itself' !

''According to a Middle East expert with knowledge of the current thinking of both the Israeli and the U.S. governments, Israel had devised a plan for attacking Hezbollah—and shared it with Bush Administration officials—well before the July 12th kidnappings. “It’s not that the Israelis had a trap that Hezbollah walked into,” he said, “but there was a strong feeling in the White House that sooner or later the Israelis were going to do it.

...”The United States and Israel have shared intelligence and enjoyed close military coöperation for decades, but early this spring, according to a former senior intelligence official, high-level planners from the U.S. Air Force—under pressure from the White House to develop a war plan for a decisive strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities—began consulting with their counterparts in the Israeli Air Force.''

...''Everybody knows that Iranian engineers have been advising Hezbollah on tunnels and underground gun emplacements. And so the Air Force went to the Israelis with some new tactics and said to them, ‘Let’s concentrate on the bombing and share what we have on Iran and what you have on Lebanon.’ ” The discussions reached the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, he said.
“The Israelis told us it would be a cheap war with many benefits,” a U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said. “Why oppose it? We’ll be able to hunt down and bomb missiles, tunnels, and bunkers from the air. It would be a demo for Iran.”

''The Israeli plan, according to the former senior intelligence official, was “the mirror image of what the United States has been planning for Iran.” (The initial U.S. Air Force proposals for an air attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear capacity, which included the option of intense bombing of civilian infrastructure targets inside Iran, have been resisted by the top leadership of the Army, the Navy, and the Marine Corps, according to current and former officials. They argue that the Air Force plan will not work and will inevitably lead, as in the Israeli war with Hezbollah, to the insertion of troops on the ground.)''

“We told Israel, ‘Look, if you guys have to go, we’re behind you all the way. But we think it should be sooner rather than later—the longer you wait, the less time we have to evaluate and plan for Iran before Bush gets out of office.’”
Cheney’s point, the former senior intelligence official said, was “What if the Israelis execute their part of this first, and it’s really successful? It’d be great. We can learn what to do in Iran by watching what the Israelis do in Lebanon.”

The long-term Administration goal was to help set up a Sunni Arab coalition—including countries like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt—that would join the United States and Europe to pressure the ruling Shiite mullahs in Iran. “But the thought behind that plan was that Israel would defeat Hezbollah, not lose to it,” the consultant with close ties to Israel said. “There is no way that Rumsfeld and Cheney will draw the right conclusion about this,” he said. “When the smoke clears, they’ll say it was a success, and they’ll draw reinforcement for their plan to attack Iran.”

Read more here ...

Harper and the Israeli agression on lebanon: between Ignorance and Political Manipulation !

Our conservative prime minister, Stephen Harper, who is even more vocal and more one sided than his idol GWB when supporting the Israeli agression on Lebanon, against the majority of Canadians and against Canada's long time standing for neutrality in world affairs, found a way out from a barrage of criticisms coming from opposition liberal MPs by appointing a Muslim Liberal MP from Pakistani origin to a fact finding mission in the ME and Pakistan !

Now Harper and some liberal MPs think that this is a smart move ! This is because of ingrained ignorance of what the middle east conflict is about, thanks to our mainstream media controlled by Mr Black !

I think Harper's move is vicious, manipulative and dangerous, smart only to silence his opponents but definitely not smart when it comes to achieving what it declares wanting to achieve. Appointing a Muslim MP from a Pakistani origin to a fact finding mission tied to the conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbours implies two things;
-This conflict is about Islam. Any Muslim is then an able envoy for such a mission !
-A Muslim from Pakistan as an envoy: Pakistan being the country, with Afghanistan, one of the main purveyors of trained terrorists, implies that this conflict is about Muslim terrorism.

This conflict is not about Islam. We are repeating this again and again but nobody seems to listen. In Palestine, Chritians voted for Hamas, tired of the corruption of Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah appartaus. In Lebanon, Hezbollah is shiite, nothing to do with sunni Islam from Pakistan. Moreover, Sunni Islamist terrorism, al-Qaeda like, has nothing to do with movements of resistance against Israel like Hamas and Hezbollah because these latter two never attacked western interests outside palestine and Lebanon and they built their reputation by providing citizen with helpe and social welfare where their western puppets corrupted governments ignored them to enrich themselves. They are elected by their people, participate in the political process and, unlike al-Qaeda, do not threaten to attack western interests anywhere in the world ! Moreover, Shiites are 40% of the Lebanese population whose Christians are massively behind Hezbollah in this war of agression ! 87% of Lebanese of all origins are with Hezbollah against Israel.

Sending a Muslim MP from a Pakistani origin on a fact finding mission to the ME is like sending a Christian Lebanese, to a fact finding mission to Northern Ireland, because he is Christian, even though he has no competence and no knowledge of the history of the Northern Ireland conflict !

Either Harper is ignorant, manipulative (because this way he is implying that this war is all about Pakistani bred fanatical Islam and because he is using an MP from a rival political party), or both at the same time. However, none of these 'qualities' is going to help the Canadian government formulate a just position in this conflict ! Liberals and other parties must react immediately to this non sense, but more urgently Liberals should ask their MP to refuse this mission (even if certain elected persons are hungry only for limelight and fame, which is the case of this MP I think) and those in the liberal party who think that Harper is doing a favor to Canadians and to bipartisan politics are naive !

Who needs the UN anyway ?

John Bolton, the man who said that we don't need the UN was actually right.

Because John Bolton is the UN now, if we don't need the UN, then we don't need Bolton, it follows that we don't need the two specially when they are One entity altogether.

If you doubt, look at the new UN resolution on the Irsaeli agression on Lebanon.

The new Israeli agression on Lebanon is a month old now. It killed more than 1000 civilians, many of them children, displaced more than quarter of the population while reducing their homes and orchards to complete ruins, provoked an environmental hazard threatening the coasts of Lebanon, Cyprus and Syria, did not accomplish its objectives in eliminating the Hezbollah 'threat' in a month of cowardly strikes and technically unequal fighting, but hopes to do so in the coming hours before Olmert's cabinet could meet to discuss the Israel friendly UN resolution...

There are lives at stake, a country's sovereignty, the hopes of the people who are in shelters and displaced but all UN diplomats can do is to formulate a resolution vague where they need to be clear, ambiguous where they need to be sharp thus comforting Israel in its own ambiguity in conducting the offensive, one sided and obsequious toward Israel, because they don't aknowledge the Israeli agression, where they need to be neutral and respect the victims and the country who is bleeding from this agression.

Al-Jazeera reports: ''Yet the resolution does not call for an immediate Israeli withdrawal - and the White House said Olmert in his call to the White House "thanked President Bush for the work he had done on the UN resolution on the Lebanon crisis."

Who needs the UN ? The poor and the weak when attacked by the powerful but when the UN sides with the powerful ignoring their actions, the weak don't need the UN and they will have to manage their problems alone. So, what will happen next in Lebanon ?

My guess is that the UN resolution is not going to work. I read Sanyura's opinion piece in the Guardian yesterday and Lebanon's requirements for peace as formulated in his opinion are not respected by the resolution. One of these two things will happen: either Sanyura and the resistance will stick to their demands and the war will go on with the danger of its extension to a regional war...or there will be a divide in the Lebanese position and Sanyura's government will not last and Hezbollah, with the support of the majority of the population, will take hold of the country. The war will continue, extends to a regional war more quickly with the other burden of an internal civil war provoked by factions unhappy to see Nasrallah in command...

In both cases, that is exactly what Israel and the US were looking for, a regional war and the completion of the neo con project for a new middle east...Isn't Israel's initiative to ignore the resolution and continue the offensive a clear sign that nobody is willing to waste time with this resolution ? The UN resolution would have served this goal, ignoring the obvious, Israel's agression while paving the way for the less obvious in the public opinion, a regional war, exactly as the previous resolution 1559 served as a premise for this current Israeli agression !

Read my colleague Ur-Shalim on the continuation of UN diplomacy by Israeli means and on the new UN resolution !

When the UN was not to Mr. Bolton's like, Mr.Bolton was unhappy and he didn't need the UN, now that he is the UN, nobody needs the UN anymore !

UPDATE: Shimon Peres spoke to Radio-Israel on Saturday August 12th and affirmed that the UN resolution justifies Israel's offensive on Lebanon. He said also that this resolution was the result of Israel's military pressures ! Killing more than 1000 civilians and destroying Lebanon's infrastructure is 'military pressure' on the UN according to this Nobel Price for PEACE Winner. Israel said it will accept UN resolution but needs until monday to stop hostilities. They hope meanwhile to occupy the south until Litani

Hassan Nasrallah spoke to Al-Manar TV today. He said that Hezbollah won't oppose the UN resolution, even if he considers it unjust and that Hezbollah is ready for a complete cessation of hostilities but will fight every Isareli occupation soldier left in Lebanon.

WHO IS THE TERRORIST ?

Security in the Age of Terror: Part 2. A Personal Account

Security in the Age of Terror: Part 1. The Political Paradigm

First Encounters: US customs in Canada

The first time I traveled to the US after September eleventh was in May 2003. My husband was attending a conference in San Francisco and thought that a short holiday at this time of year under the californian sun was mandatory after a long Canadian winter !

He left two days before me. He is always late wherever he goes and he arrived just half an hour before the flight was due to leave. I am an anxious person and with all the after 9/11 security measures I thought he was not going to make it. But he wasn't home few hours later and I assumed that he made it to the plane at time.

For this trip à deux with my husband, I had arranged for the children staying alone, my daughter was 18 at the time. When I arrive at the US customs at Pierre Trudeau Airport in Montréal two days later, I am an hour early with an onboard light luggage. The US customs are at all Canadian airports so every person traveling from Canada to the US is checked at departure. I present my Canadian passport and I am asked if I had travelled before to the US with another citizenship. I explain that until we acquired the Canadian citizenship, we used to travel to the US with our French passports. They ask why the visas attached to the French passports were not returned to the US customs last time I traveled to the US, it was in 1998. First I don't realise what they were talking about then I remember that after each one of our land travels to the US, and there were at least two per year between 1991 and 1998, when on our way back, we used to stop only at Canadian customs and I remember that nobody had asked us to return these visas because most of the time they were given for three months and our stay in the US was always between one and two weeks. It came to my mind that we threw these cards in the garbage when they were no longer valid !

I say that we didn't know we had to return them and that in my many travels to the US it is the first time this is actually a problem !

The officer says that according to their computers it looks like I have never left the US. He decides to refer me to his superior. I am transfered to a secondary area at the airport. When I arrive at the secondary area I am preoccupied by one thought: Why didn't my husband face the same problem when he left two days ago ? But there I see only people like me, Moroccans, Algerians... Arabs ! I understand the bias (my husband is European) and when the 'superior' arrives, my blood is boiling in my veins ! He and I repeat the same questions and answers over and over again.

I finally offer to give proof that during this time I was living in Canada and not as an alien citizen in the US. I feel the need to say more: ''Look sir, I am indignated, my husband who is in the same situation crossed your customs two days ago without being interrogated.'' He is very curteous but becomes red faced when I mention the fact, he says: ''Look, we are not going to make a problem out of this but my advice to you is this: next time you travel to the US you take with you your Canadian tax documents proving that during all this time, between 1998 and 2003, you lived in Canada.'' I am however upset and I say: ''I undertsand that there is some bias here (I don't say 'racial' but I turn my head towards the people who were waiting like me in the secondary area). I was always welcome in your country but right now it does not seem that this is the case. I have two children and a dog waiting for me at home. Your assurances are not enough for me right now. I ask you if you forsee any problems for my stay in your country I'd better return home and not board this plane !''

He assures me that there will no problem for me whatsoever and wishes me a good trip. When I arrive at San Francisco after a plane change at Chicago O'Hare I am shaken despite the fact that the customs and immigration officer was polite and curteous and that I could have faced a nastier person.

Only one thing obsesses me: I was singled out because of my name, my skin or my origins or probably all at the same time.

It was Orange Alert in the US, the week during which Bush famously boarded a US Navy ship on the Californian coast to declare to Americans 'Mission Accomplished' in Iraq.

The beauty of the country, which I was discovering for the first time, made me forget the incident but when I boarded the plane back to Montreal, the Alert, which was lowered for few days, was Orange again ! It was the time of the shoebomber obsession at Airports and there were huge delays at San Francisco Airport with people taking off most of their clothes and their shoes at boarding gates.

My next two trips to the US by Air will look exactly the same with less focusing on the shoes but more focusing on the 'close search', the search they perform with the hands inside your underwear. Needless to say that having the features of a middle eastern, I am always 'randomly' searched. From indignation, I developped some tolerance to this kind of search, which is humiliating, due to an active denial that someone is actually searching my underwear with an exception when last spring at la Guardia I see an elderly woman screaming at the women officers who were 'closesearching' her so I tell my husband who always asks me to be calm in such situations: ''Next time I am going to scream like her''. The point is: she is white and I am not and if I scream, I will not be allowed in the plane...My husband wins. There were also exemptions, this summer at Heathrow they didn't closesearch me, they must have decided that, after all, I wasn't the most dark skinned or the most middle eastern looking...

Perceptions are a matter of context and I was surprised to realise that today's London is a cosmopolitan and multicultural city to an extent even greater than every other European or American city...This will be confirmed during our many wanderings in Europe this summer.

Security in European Airports and Train Stations, summer 2006

Montreal-Bruxelles via Paris

When we leave Canada at the end of June, I, with my son, are the focus of a close search at the airport. Since our last travel toghether, he grew older with a light beard, a teen's beard but a beard after all, he has dark hair and he is as tall as his father. They find a compass in his geometry set and take it from him claiming it is a sharp metal tool.

When we arrive at Charles De Gaulle, our walk from one terminal to another to board a train to Bruxelles is slowed by an Alert to a possible presence of a bomb...

Bruxelles-St Petersbourg:

One week later, my son staying with his grand'mother in Belgium, my husband and I board a plane to Saint petersbourg for a one week visit of St Petersbourg and Moscou. At Zaventem, there were many Belgians from Moroccan origin leaving for their family vacations, I was not searched...

I am surprised to find little security measures in Russia except one occurrence when we are asked to show our passports when entering the train heading to Moscou at St petersbourg but this was only an adminstrative measure because a visa to Russia is only given to specific cities and places we visit and not to the whole country. During our stay there, Chamil Bassayev is declared dead. Poutine must be in seventh heaven showing his strenght to Bush and Blair who will be visiting for the G8 summit and who still have to chase their own Bin Laden...However, security was strenghtened in Russia for the G8 summit to block protests and it seems that anti-protest measures were efficient !

Our travel inside Russia is quite relaxed and it is fair to say that as visitors, and particularly in Moscou, we feel like we are traveling any city in Western Europe. However we are troubled by the perspective of having to ask for a train transit visa for Belarus and spend a whole day at the Belarus consulate or try to change our previous travel arrangements.

We had planned to travel by train between Moscou and Berlin and as this arrangement was made last minute before we left Canada, we figured out that we could arrange a transit visa on the train but we are told in Russia that we need a consulate visa for Belarus. So we spend our last day in Moscou on this in order to secure a last minute visa, the alternative is to buy plane tickets to leave Moscou and if not possible ask for an extension of our visa in Moscou, because they are given for a limited time...Our internet search about transit visa incidents the night before yielded some very worrying stories on Belarus. On the day of our departure we board the train with some apprehension...

Berlin-Moscou via Belarus and Poland.

Never take the Moscou-Berlin train even if they pay you !

The most difficult part of our travel, in many aspects, was the train between Moscou and Berlin. While the first class express train between st Petersbourg and Moscou was excellent, nice seats, and meals, movies and a real sense of comfort, this wasn't the case for the Moscou-Berlin train. The train is slow and at the frontier between Belarus and Poland, in Brest, they had to change the distance between the wheels because the rails are old in Russia on this line. Moreover, the train restaurant is so disgusting that we decide not to eat despite the fact that we don't have any food with us, only water. A Russian family living in Germany is kind enough to supply us with some tomatoes and dry soup. There is also a bad smell in the train and the furniture is not clean enough...Our compartment is considered first class in Russia but in fact it is not. The train doesn't have a first class compartment, however ours is considered as such because it is private, not shared...

The other burden is the driver who does not respect the time chart for stops at different stations and the personnel seems to be reluctant to let us leave the train to buy some food.

We arrive to Belarus around midnight but our visas will be checked only at the frontier with Poland, three hours later. We are asked to fill a declaration about the money we have and we have quite a lot (Euros and Canadian dollars) in camparison with the average traveler in the west because we thought that there was no automatic banking in Russia, just to discover that this was the country where you can find an automatic bank at every corner... My husband find it awkward to declare personal money and he declares nothing. I do the same...But when I get a terrible glance from the train worker at my paper (they collect the papers to give them to the Belarus customs) I understand that we are wrong so I ask the Russian family who are next and three dutch students who did the travel in the other direction and they all advise us to declare everything.

When we finally arrive to Brest, Belarus, the Belarus police is instantly on board. They take our passports to return them only three hours later after the train workers finish preparing the wheels. To our greatest surprise, the Belarus police is curteous and professional, no harrasment or excess of zeal, but we had our visas...And I think their anger at the people who didn't, as recounted on the internet, is justified by their will to affirm themselves as a nation separate and different from Russia.

The surprise will come to us in Poland at three o'clock in the morning, where right wing Christian zealots policemen and women could make old soviets blush in jealousy or in embarrassment or both together. They knock on the door as if they are looking for criminals, they enter our compartment four times, search under the carpet twice, scan our passports twice and order us to keep the compartment door open while we are in bed. One officer will litterally lie on my husband, his body stretched in search of something under the matress...They are rude, unpolite with no manners at all. It is, for me, the most traumatising encounter at customs...Just think that these Bush's new zealots will be part of EU...Hmmm

However the land trip between Moscou and Berlin and the dynamism we saw in Moscou as a city turned to Europe where you can pay your restaurant meal and your airport taxi in Euros, convince us that Europe is inevitably moving to the east, it is my husband's conclusion. He wondered if we will be alive when this shift will become real...

But believe me, for this shift to happen, the problem will not be Russia, neither Belarus, but definitely Christian Right wing-antisemite-Bush's and Israel's zealots in Poland...

Berlin-Paris

The weather is beautiful in Berlin, the children join us the day after. We visit Berlin's eclectic museums and savour German beers with the guidance of our germanophone daughter who is studying there until the end of the summer. At one of the museums, I am asked to give my handbag, which is a nice and a small Samsonite bag designed by Philipp Starck but looks like a bagpack. I explain that this is my hand bag and it contains my belongings, passports, money, etc...The security person in charge refuses, so I tell her I need my belongings with me and she gives me a plastic bag and I angrily empty my bag into the plastic bag, cell phone, wallet, perfume, watch, ring, etc...and walk into the nicest collection of Egyptian antiquities I have ever seen. However, inside the museum I see people with bagpacks larger than my hand bag, at least two persons. These persons were 'white'. I can't wait to finish the visit and walk toward the security, my husband waiting outside praying that this will not end bitterly and spoil my day. I tell the security that I felt discriminated because I was a middle eastern woman. She tells me no and I tell her yes and give the reason for that, the other two persons with their large bagpaks inside the museum. She starts on the defensive saying that it was her boss who is responsible for this decision and I ask to see her boss and she says that he left for lunch. Oh yeh...well I am not going to spoil the day with my family so I walk away with the promise that I will write to the museum direction and to this day I didn't write...I had the same incident at the Hermitage in St Petersbourg. They were two at the security, the guy wanted to take my bag and the girl looked at him saying I guess something like this: ''What, idiot, this is a handbag !''

Anyway I guess Philipp Starck didn't think about the category ambiguity of his creation when it is a matter of security !

We leave Berlin to Paris by air. At the airport, fairly relaxed security...My husband's swiss knife forgotten in his pocket. Ouch...He starts to say goodbye to his knife when the policeman in charge takes the knife and measures it. 'You can board the plane with it' he says, 'new rules allow knives within a certain lenght'...My husband couldn't believe this. He already lost two knives exactly the same lenght at American airports...

Paris-London

We leave Paris by train. We are told to arrive at Gare du Nord at least half an hour earlier for security reasons. There is a jam at the security and luggages are processed quickly. British customs are also at Gare du Nord, no close search for me this time. In the train we are given cards to fill with our names, adress and other informations about our stay but nobody o n the train neither in Waterloo station will actually bother collecting these cards from us...In every city we visited there was search and security measures in museums but not in London. Every museum we visit in London, we just walk in, handbag bagpack, whatever...Moreover, London's museums are free so the visitor doesn't have to check at a cashier !

Of all European cities we visited, London seems to be the most cosmopolitan one and it is the city where the obsession of security is not obvious, unlike other cities we visited.

London-Montreal via Paris

When we leave from Heathrow, I have a brassière without metal because, according to the security personnel in Montreal, the little metal that was in my regular brassière activated the security alarm, even though I was cautious to eliminate any metal from my clothes ! Now is the test: the test is negative, the alarm is silent at Heathrow and I am not submitted to a close search. I can anyway still be submitted to a 'random' search which is performed independantly from security alarms. Although, most of the time they will ask you for a 'close' search after an alarm goes on. Ouf, I say to my husband, 'now I know what to do' to minimize the probability of those humiliating searches ! But I am mistaken. At Charles De Gaulles, we have to pass a security check despite the fact that we are in transit ! Their security alarm goes on when I cross the door ! I am called for a close search. I am fulminating and I scream : 'look I have no metal whatsoever in my clothes, I don't even have a regular brassière, I don't know how your alarm went on, I just passed Heathrow and it was O.K.' The female officer just ignores me. I suspect that sometimes they help themselves to justify their 'close search'.

Conclusion:

The first feature of security measures are their heterogeneity in Europe and between Europe and North America. To be efficient, one needs a common algorithm. Also, more than security per se, there is no strict control of the people who enter a country, we twice filled information on board of a plane or a train and we were not asked to give this information because nobody was there to collect them ! Moreover, security measures appear to be ad hoc following recent threats or recent fears. Who can be in the mind of a terrorist ? Security measures, at least for travelers, seem to be inadequate and elusive. And racial perceptions are really a matter of relativity and can be erroneous. Perceptions are not objective. I am perceived more of a ME kind, and so a suspicious kind, where the ratio of white (Caucasians) people is important but this perception evaporates as soon as I pass a security barrier among people whose skin is darker than me or who look more ME kind or Arab than me. I am often considered as Spanish or Latin American origin, sometimes Armenian... And so are prejudices, totally non efficient when it comes to security...

I think it is more important to adress the growing insecurity at its roots, adequately try terrorrits as criminals before courts and before the law, reinforce existent criminal and security measures without inventing new hardly applicable ones, discard political discourse from the 'terrorist' arena because it is giving legitimate motives to would-be 'terror-plotters' to move to action, allow politics and politicians to do their jobs in designing immigration and foreign policies minimizing terror threats to protect their people while at the same time leaving this threat to where it belongs to the criminal and judicial spheres !