Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe ( Full Text)

Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe ( Full Text)

Authors: Niels H. Harrit, Jeffrey Farrer, Steven E. Jones, Kevin R. Ryan, Frank M. Legge, Daniel Farnsworth, Gregg Roberts, James R. Gourley, Bradley R. Larsen , The Open Chemical Physics Journal

A back-scattered electron (BSE) image featured in the newly published paper. The Open Chemical Physics Journal Volume 2 ISSN: 1874-4125 Affiliation: Department of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, DK-2100, Denmark. April 4, 2009 Abstract: We have discovered distinctive red/gray chips in all the samples we have studied of the dust produced by the destruction of the World Trade Center. Examination of four of these samples, collected from separate sites, is reported in this paper. These red/gray chips show marked similarities in all four samples. One sample was collected by a Manhattan resident about ten minutes after the collapse of the second WTC Tower, two the next day, and a fourth about a week later. The properties of these chips were analyzed using optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy (XEDS), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The red material contains grains approximately 100 nm across which are largely iron oxide, while aluminum is contained in tiny plate-like structures. Separation of components using methyl ethyl ketone demonstrated that elemental aluminum is present. The iron oxide and aluminum are intimately mixed in the red material. When ignited in a DSC device the chips exhibit large but narrow exotherms occurring at approximately 430 °C, far below the normal ignition temperature for conventional thermite. Numerous iron-rich spheres are clearly observed in the residue following the ignition of these peculiar red/gray chips. The red portion of these chips is found to be an unreacted thermitic material and highly energetic. View Document Info »

Adam Gadahn, a.k.a. “Azzam al-Amriki” Rises from the Dead in Somalia, After Allegedly Being Killed by Predator Strike in Wana

THIS FAT LITTLE MOSSAD AGENT ALWAYS MANAGES TO TURN-UP WHENEVER “AL QAIDA” IS BEING TARGETED FOR THE LATEST REASON.

THERE IS NO “AL QAIDA,” IT IS A DECEPTION!

American Al Qaeda holds rare news conference in Somalia

Washington, Apr.6 (ANI): Two young Americans who left their homes to join an Al Qaeda-linked terrorist group in Somalia held a rare “press conference” in Southern Somalia on Monday, saying they want to be killed “for the sake of God.”

According to a U.S. law enforcement official and a video posted on a Somali news Web site, at least 20 Somali-American men from the Minneapolis area and elsewhere in the United States have joined the terrorist group al-Shabaab, which has been warring with the moderate Somali government since 2006.

“We came from the U.S. with a good life and a good education, but we came to fight alongside our brothers of al-Shabaab … to be killed for the sake of God,” one man said in the video, as translated by Omar Jamal, the executive director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center in St. Paul, Minn.

In the video, two men, identifying themselves as Abu-Muslim and Abu Yaxye, say they are “Somali youth” from the United States who are now stationed near the city of Kismayo, more than 300 miles southwest of Mogadishu, according to Jamal.

The men say they are talking to media for the first time so others can learn why they joined al-Shabaab, he said.

A spokesman from the FBI Field Office in Minneapolis, E.K. Wilson, said he is “aware of the video,” which was posted on the Web site dowladnimo.com. He said the video was first brought to his office’s attention early Sunday.

Wilson would not say whether the FBI has identified the men in the video.

It was a “clear appeal to foreign youth, especially in English-speaking countries, to join the jihad in Somalia,” according to the Washington-based Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), which first provided the video to Fox News.

In the 30-minute video, featuring an anti-American hip-hop score and images of Usama bin Laden, a man dubbed “The American” purportedly leads a group of al-Shabaab militants in an ambush of Ethiopian forces, which oppose an Islamic state and have backed the new Somali government.

A law enforcement official confirmed to FOX News that the man, identified in the video as Abu Mansur al-Amriki, is originally from the United States, but said he has been in Somalia “for some time.”

The official said the man is in his late 20s or early 30s, and left the United States “many” years ago. (ANI)

Police arrest mastermind behind Feb 5 attack

The accused is alleged linked with a banned sectarian outfit besides being connected to Baitullah Mehsud. — Reuters

DERA GHAZI KHAN: Police in Dera Ghazi Khan claim to have arrested the alleged mastermind of the February 5 suicide attack on an Imam Bargah in Dera Ghazi Khan in which 27 people were killed and over 50 were injured, DawnNews reported.

The mastermind has been identified as one Qari Ismail.

At a press conference in D G Khan, DIG Police Mubarak Athar said the accused has links with a banned sectarian outfit besides having connections with Baitullah Mehsud. The police have also recovered sensitive documents and videos from his possession.

The DIG said his accomplice Ghulam Mustafa Qaiserani has also been taken into custody, who allegedly provided explosives and suicide jacket to the attacker.

Qari Ismail is also the mastermind behind the suicide blasts in Islamabad and Chakwal, DawnNews quoted Athar as saying earlier.

More Human Wreckage from Afghan Disaster/War

Bodies found in container will be sent to Kabul

By Saleem Shahid

The Afghan government has also started investigating the incident and vows strict action against those found to be involved in human trafficking rings. – Online photo.

QUETTA: The bodies of victims of a human smuggling racket found in a container truck near Quetta on Saturday will be taken to Kabul on Monday by an Afghan cargo plane.

‘A special plane will arrive here from Kabul tomorrow morning for taking the bodies to Afghanistan,’ Afghan Consul General Mohammad Daud Mohsani said on Sunday. The bodies would be transported by road if the plane could not be arranged, he added.

After completing legal formalities, the local administration handed over the bodies of the Afghan nationals to the Edhi Foundation. ‘We will hand over the coffins to the Afghan authorities at Quetta airport,’ Edhi sources said.

Security personnel were deployed at the hospital where survivors were undergoing treatment. ‘Cases have been registered against the survivors under the Foreigners Act and around a dozen of them have been taken into custody,’ sources told Dawn, adding that they would be interrogated in order to trace the elements involved in the human smuggling case in both countries.

A team of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) arrived here from Islamabad to investigate the case.

An investigation team of FIA and other agencies also visited Chaman and met several people. Five suspects are reported to have been detained.

All the illegal immigrants had been stuffed in the container in Chaman, the sources said.

They said four agents — Gul Agha, Wazir Mohammad, Mullah Gul Mohammad and Wali Mohammad — were involved in arranging the container to take the people to Iran.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has also ordered an investigation.

The Afghan consul general in Quetta said the Afghans found involved in the inhuman act would be brought to justice and he would also appeal to the Pakistan government to punish those responsible for the tragedy.

He said both countries should work jointly to deal with the elements running the human smuggling racket.

‘As (Afghans) are badly treated at checkpoints, arrested and taken away by the FIA and sent to prison to be sent back after one month, they are compelled to adopt ways which can put their lives at risk. If both the countries agree to provide travel facilities to refugees, such incidents can be reduced,’ the Afghan diplomat said at the Civil Hospital where he had gone to meet the survivors. He thanked the government for providing medical and other facilities to the survivors.

Most survivors were in a state of shock. There area around a dozen teenagers among them. Most of them belong to Kapisa province near Kabul and speak Persian. According to the sources; the smugglers had brought 64 Afghan nationals from Kabul and another 37 from Spin Buldak.

‘They put all of us in the container on Friday afternoon and locked it,’ 20-year-old Shamsur Rehman said in the hospital. When the air-conditioner stopped working, he said, they started screaming but the driver did not listen and he and the other people fell unconscious.

Gul Zameen, who was discharged from the hospital, said he and other people in the container had paid Rs5,000 to Rs10,000 to the Afghan agents who had arranged the truck in Spin Buldak. ‘We are all poor and wanted to find jobs in Quetta and Iran.’

‘We gathered at a hotel in Vesh before starting our journey,’ said Nazar Mohammad.

The FIA and other investigating agencies were conducting raids in Chaman and Quetta for the human smugglers and the truck’s driver and cleaner who had escaped after parking the container at Hazar Gangi stand.

Bury Al-Qaeda ghost

Published: April 5, 2009

IFTEKHAR A. KHAN
Those prophesying that Barack Obama in many ways would be similar to his predecessor were right on the spot if his recent speech on Afghanistan is to guide us. He has incessantly talked about 9/11 and Al-Qaeda as indeed did his predecessor, George Bush and his neocon cabal. Obama’s proposed surge in troops to bolster demoralised NATO forces in Afghanistan shows his determination to eliminate Al-Qaeda and Taliban resistance. Bush invented Al-Qaeda in the aftermath of 9/11 and Obama has decided to stick to it with the only difference that he has discarded the use of the term War On Terror. Al-Qaeda is in fact nebulous; it is a philosophy to resist. Had it been an organised body, the US killing machine would have snuffed it out long ago.
Who adhere to this philosophy? Those resisting the presence of foreign forces on their soil are its followers. Call them Al-Qaeda, nationalists, or sons of the soil; it is of little consequence. Millions that follow the philosophy are sure that no such thing as Al-Qaeda exists or it ever existed. They are sure that the Al-Qaeda ghost had no role in 9/11 and destruction of Twin Towers because it was an inside job. The Twin Towers were brought down by design, by demolition, by systematically placing detonating devices weeks before the hijacked planes struck. Collision of planes with the towers and their pancake collapse within the perimeters were two different issues. No outside collision however massive in magnitude could cause the collapse of the concrete towers to heap on to the ground as if they were toys made of pulp and sand.

Were a serious inquiry held immediately after the event and not 441 days later, it would have easily established the causes of the collapse. Barrie Zwicker in his book, Towers of Deception, claims that more than half of the New Yorkers believe 9/11 was an inside job; the White House had prior knowledge of it or was in some way complicit. If Al-Qaeda managed to hijack the planes to crash them against the towers, how did it manage to arrange detonation of the buildings? Bush administration failed to provide a plausible answer to one of the most important allegations. In fact, evidence to the contrary is aplenty. Specifically, how millions of tons of steel bars, to obliterate telltale marks, violating federal laws, were quickly shipped abroad. Chemical analysis of the bars and debris could have provided crucial evidence whether the damage had occurred by detonation or by burning airliners’ fuel as the official theory propounded.
Mainstream US media published stories skewed in favour of the official version, without highlighting views of the detractors, which was a manifestation of its unethical involvement in the cover up of the truth. Had the media probed as deep into 9/11 as it did to dig out Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky affair it would have surely found the clues to Twin Towers’ destruction.
To claim through corporate media that Al-Qaeda was responsible for the attack on the superpower is an unqualified fraud in history. Is not the similarity between gutting of the Reichstag in Germany before invading Europe and destruction of Twin Towers in the US before invading Afghanistan striking? Many in Europe have called Bush 21st century’s Hitler. Obama would do well to distance himself from that image by reassessing his Afpak strategy.

Wrapping defeat in euphemism, Bush in his last year in office had said: “We are not winning war in Afghanistan.” Obama has inherited Bush’s losing war. Instead of reappraising the past strategy to determine the causes of failure, he has decided to inject more troops. Quite erroneously, he thinks troop surge will help NATO forces to gain control, without realising that it will in fact cause an upsurge in resistance. More exposure of troops will result in more killing on both sides. Troops can never control popular uprising of the people.
Therefore, army action in Fata and Swat has not been able to put down the resistance because it was against, as said earlier, an amorphous body – philosophy of resistance, which the Americans prefer to call Al-Qaeda. No army however well laced succeeds against its own people.
We now face the predicament of US blaming the army and the ISI for colluding with Taliban. Imagine! Same network under Musharraf had handed over terror suspects to US in return for bounty, which he confessed in his book In line of fire. Leaving the country in a horrible mess, he has quietly slipped abroad on a lecturing tour. Who would listen to his pearls of wisdom, one wonders. However, there is only one word to describe the present situation: pathetic.
US war against Taliban and Al-Qaeda has triggered a class war and anti-Americanism. Lower layers of the impoverished people, maltreated by the system, are on one side and a handful in well-greased positions of authority on the other. That’s why the terror attacks are directed against the state authority, which sides with US designs, and not against the common people. Hoi Polloi are by misfortune caught in the crossfire.
The writer is a freelance columnist
E-mail: pinecity@gmail.com

Israel to build five artillery munitions plants in Bihar, India

Israel to build five artillery munitions plants in Bihar

Submitted 4 hrs 59 mins ago

Israel has signed a whopping $240 million agreement with India to build five artillery munitions factories in Bihar over a period of three years. The munitions factories will be built by the Israeli Military Industry (IMI) on the line of its ordnance factory in the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Hasharon, business daily ‘Globes’ reported. The Israeli defence industry said that the contract was the result of its collaboration with Indian Government’s Ordnance Factories Board (OFB). IMI will be the chief contractor in the deal and will use Israeli and Indian firms as subcontractors. The state-owned Israeli firm reported $660 million in sales last year, 16 per cent more than in 2007. The firm’s CEO Avi Felder said the global economic crisis would change the procurement pattern by the world’s leading militaries, which would switch to upgrading existing weapons platforms on short timetables instead of massive investment in new facilities that would take a long time to develop and deliver.

The real battle

Monday, April 06, 2009 Zafar Hilaly The prime minister never tires of reminding us that in Afghanistan and Swat the struggle that we face is all about “winning the hearts and minds of the people.” But the struggle is really about reclaiming minds and hearts from those claiming to be Muslims but who, for many Muslims, are the very antithesis of what they claim to be. One animal centre in the UK protested that associating animals with these “detestable species of mammals” was unfair. As to how we should deal with those who subject those who do not share their version of the Sharia to lashes and beheadings, the answer is, take them on and defeat them. Obviously, given the character of the enemy, the fight will be one in which no quarter is asked and none given. Soviet soldiers were skinned alive by Pushtun tribal women when captured. So they carried cyanide pills to commit suicide rather than undergo such a death. In retaliation, the Soviets took no prisoners, killing more than a million Afghans. Noticeably, the Taliban terrorists who attacked the Manawan Police Centre last week blew themselves up rather than face capture. The Taliban are the 21st century’s Mongols. Their mission too, like that of the 12th century Mongol hordes, is to destroy the culture, faith and way of life of their opponents, and to capture and kill them if they resist. But unlike the Mongols hordes they do not simply traverse the land like a swarm of locusts, instead they stay. The Taliban are counting on the fact that the peoples of the areas which presently constitute Pakistan will, when it comes to confronting invaders, surrender. The Taliban take heart from the fact, that though battle has not yet been joined in earnest, Pakistan has already surrendered in Swat and FATA. Extremism is a disease that has invaded the body politic of Pakistan; all echelons of government and the establishment carry visible scars of the infection and in some segments of society, such as the urban lower middle classes and the poor, it has become a contagion. Among the leadership, too, and especially in the military, adherence to the Salafist version of Islam was and is worn as a badge of pride. In past regimes, like that of Zia-ul-Haq, it was an asset in winning promotion. Similarly, recruitment policies under the last two military dictators generally favoured religious types, notwithstanding Musharraf’s sham liberalism. The nursery of the extremism that has Pakistan in its grip today is some of the 18,000 or so madrasas scattered all over the country. Often funded by foreign Wahhabi charities, these madrasas are the recruiting centres of the Taliban and the several murderous Jaishes that have proliferated. Their political patrons like the JUI have seized every opportunity that incumbency provided to enhance their student intake while jealously shielding their curricula and teaching methods from government supervision and inspection. Such has been the success they have enjoyed, and so close are the links maintained with former madrasa students, that according to one unnamed intelligence source, quoted on a KTN News programme entitled “50 minutes” hosted by Mr Manzoor Shaikh a few days ago, they have as many as 70,000 armed followers in Pakistan’s main population centres, awaiting the call to action. There is virtually no other countervailing force but the military in Pakistan which can confront them. However, the military, including the intelligence agencies which fathered some of the Jaishes are loath to take them on or cleanse the madrasas of extremists. Even though, it seems, that the realisation is belatedly dawning on the military, at all levels, that their own lives are at stake, and so too Pakistan’s existence. The question that arises, however, is whether the penny has dropped too late in view of the traction extremism has gained in Pakistan and the disruption such a campaign will now cause and the lack of any certainty of success. The fact that US unpopularity has never been greater, or the religious political parties more opposed to action against the Taliban, or the secular political leadership more discredited, suggests that it is. Besides, the bloodletting, chaos and turmoil that a civil war of this sort will unleash are almost certainly beyond the control of an unpopular and weak government. Indeed, some argue plausibly that it will lead the country to the very pass that we wish to avoid. Perhaps our leaders, like the Shah of Iran, have missed the boat. His much vaunted military, pampered and marvellously equipped as it was, deserted him when it came to the crunch. In East Pakistan too, by the time resolute action was ordered, it was too late; the game, so too speak, was over. The Taliban and their supporters know this and are banking on it. The truces and agreements they offer to postpone the inevitable confrontation work in their favour. They are biding their time till the situation ripens. The scenario in Pakistan today is like a Greek tragedy: we all know the end but are powerless to prevent it. The writer is a former ambassador. Email: charles123it@hotmail.com

The enemy within

Monday, April 06, 2009 Sameer Khosa There was a news item, not so long ago, about women not being able to work in lingerie shops in Saudi Arabia. According to the logic employed, women were not supposed to work and hence that extended to working in lingerie shops. The ironic consequence of that move was that in a society where men and women are not allowed to even be in physical proximity in public, women ended up having to buy their most intimate undergarments from men only. On Friday a video aired about the Taliban “administering justice” to a 17-year-old girl accused of having illicit relations with a man. One man held her face down and held her arms, while the other flogged her buttocks with a stick. So, it’s not okay for women to be touched by male doctors, or male companions, but male executioners can hold hands and slap bottoms in front of milling crowds? The Taliban, it seems, have a thing for kink. Apparently, one of the Taliban spokesmen said the girl had received a “lenient” sentence. Last time I checked, it took two, at least, to have illicit relations. If the girl’s sentence was lenient, one has to wonder what must have happened to the poor boy! Oh, wait – there is no boy in the video. Apparently, only girls must be punished for their libido. Boys, after all, become men when they can “tap that.” Take that for a specimen of modern thinking that gangs from Brooklyn can be proud of. Needless to say, unless one is a glutton for punishment – one should not ask for “leniency” from the Taliban. There is something sinister at work here. There is an unacceptable cruelty disguised as spirituality that is eating away at the fabric of our country and society. There has been a slow, steady, sustained hijacking of concepts of nobility in our religion to use them as tools of repression, oppression and fear. It is the logic and hypocrisy of the Taliban when they punish only girls and not boys for the same act of “immorality,” under the guise of Islam. It is the logic which says that televisions and videos should be banned, except when their spokesman has to give an interview, or the immoral women have to be given a dose of their version of Islam. It is the logic which prohibits vulgarity and obscenity to protect our morality, but circulates videos of beheadings and shootings to young children to show them the world in its complete and total horror. The Taliban have fed off the United States’ unpopularity in Pakistan and the globe. They have fed off the hypocrisy in foreign policy that permits and endorses the massacre of Palestinian lives to protect Israeli ones. They have fed off the lies that were told blatantly to the United Nations Security Council as a pretext to invade a country inhabited by Muslims. They have fed off the swagger and arrogance of a president who tortured and drove prisoners to insanity. They have fed off the frustration of a foreign policy that seems weighted in every measure against Muslims, and painted themselves as the vanguard of a Muslim struggle against oppression and as heroes of resistance to an empire. We need to wake up. The United States of America is not doing this to our girls. The United States of America is not issuing edicts to shut down schools (only for girls!). The United States of America is not expelling organisations that administer polio vaccines to our children. Yet, somehow there is a deep abiding antipathy to the US. For all the United States’ failings — it was our strategic decision under the great, modern, liberal, progressive leadership of our late martyred leader Benazir Bhutto that decided to treat, further and entrench this ideology as a strategic foreign-policy asset, instead of undoing the legacy of her father’s murderer. We may have serious, even legitimate grievances against US foreign policy – but it can never destroy us in a way that this internal dogmatic interpretation of Islam can. If we do not change things now, soon there will be nothing left to change. It is time to stop using anti-US sentiment as an excuse to do nothing about the Taliban. The Army restrains itself against these militants in no small measure, because it wants the people of Pakistan to own it and like it. We, the lawyers and civil-society activists, the wealthy and the comfortable, the educated and the elite, may not be able to fight on the frontlines. But this fight will not just be won in the valleys of Swat. It has to be won all over Pakistan, in the deserts and the mountains, from the coast of Karachi to the tip of Karakoram, in the hearts and minds of every Pakistani who must disown, despise and hate the unbending Taliban for us to fight successfully against them. There are no more half measures. It is not a fight for America. It is a fight for the soul of this country. It is a fight for the reclamation of our religion. The Great Satan is not attacking us from outside. The Great Enemy of Islam is within us, among us, ready to explode the next bomb in the name of our God. This is a fight for our God back. Speak up, speak now, speak louder and wider. Silence now is treachery. The writer is a Lahore-based lawyer. Email: sameer.khosa@gmail.com

Zionists behind blast: TNFJ

Monday, April 06, 2009 Rawalpindi The Quaid-i-Millat Jafariya Agha Syed Hamid Ali Shah Moosavi has strongly condemned the suicide blast in a Majlis-e-Aza at Markazi Imambargah Chakwal and termed it the heinous collusion of international colonial powers, Hindus and Zionists. According to a press release, he stated this while delivering a special address at the headquarters of Maktab-e-Tashayyo at the beginning of Ayyam-e-Askari (AS) on Sunday. He said those who laid down their life on ‘Farsh-e-Aza’ were the sons of this soil and belonged to all schools of thought without any discrimination and the whole nation shares the grief of the bereaved families. He said the incident of Manawan Police Training Centre in Lahore, suicide attack on FC Camp in Islamabad and today’s blast at Imambargah in Chakwal indicate that our combined enemy was playing heinous game of terrorism to pave the way for a big incident. The TNFJ chief said it is crystal clear that in Afghanistan, Indian agencies are completely patronising the miscreants for their activities in Balochistan, NWFP, federal capital and Punjab. He said announcement of the international colonial powers not to carry out any activity in Pakistan and continuing drone attacks suggests their duplicity. Pakistanis should make them understand through their deeds that there is no ‘Maktabi’ conflict here and our combined and perpetual enemy desires to benefit from entangling us in attacks on security forces, police centres, hospitals, teaching institutions, and Imambargahs.

Saudi patience is running out

By Turki al-Faisal

Published: January 22 2009 20:15 | Last updated: January 22 2009 20:15

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In my decades as a public servant, I have strongly promoted the Arab-Israeli peace process. During recent months, I argued that the peace plan proposed by Saudi Arabia could be implemented under an Obama administration if the Israelis and Palestinians both accepted difficult compromises. I told my audiences this was worth the energies of the incoming administration for, as the late Indian diplomat Vijaya Lakshmi Nehru Pandit said: “The more we sweat in peace, the less we bleed in war.”

But after Israel launched its bloody attack on Gaza, these pleas for optimism and co-operation now seem a distant memory. In the past weeks, not only have the Israeli Defence Forces murdered more than 1,000 Palestinians, but they have come close to killing the prospect of peace itself. Unless the new US administration takes forceful steps to prevent any further suffering and slaughter of Palestinians, the peace process, the US-Saudi relationship and the stability of the region are at risk.

Prince Saud Al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, told the UN Security Council that if there was no just settlement, “we will turn our backs on you”. King Abdullah spoke for the entire Arab and Muslim world when he said at the Arab summit in Kuwait that although the Arab peace initiative was on the table, it would not remain there for long. Much of the world shares these sentiments and any Arab government that negotiated with the Israelis today would be rightly condemned by its citizens. Two of the four Arab countries that have formal ties to Israel – Qatar and Mauritania – have suspended all relations and Jordan has recalled its ambassador.

America is not innocent in this calamity. Not only has the Bush administration left a sickening legacy in the region – from the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis to the humiliation and torture at Abu Ghraib – but it has also, through an arrogant attitude about the butchery in Gaza, contributed to the slaughter of innocents. If the US wants to continue playing a leadership role in the Middle East and keep its strategic alliances intact – especially its “special relationship” with Saudi Arabia – it will have to drastically revise its policies vis a vis Israel and Palestine.

The incoming US administration will be inheriting a “basket full of snakes” in the region, but there are things that can be done to help calm them down. First, President Barack Obama must address the disaster in Gaza and its causes. Inevitably, he will condemn Hamas’s firing of rockets at Israel.

When he does that, he should also condemn Israel’s atrocities against the Palestinians and support a UN resolution to that effect; forcefully condemn the Israeli actions that led to this conflict, from settlement building in the West Bank to the blockade of Gaza and the targeted killings and arbitrary arrests of Palestinians; declare America’s intention to work for a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction, with a security umbrella for countries that sign up and sanctions for those that do not; call for an immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces from Shab’ah Farms in Lebanon; encourage Israeli-Syrian negotiations for peace; and support a UN resolution guaranteeing Iraq’s territorial integrity.

Mr Obama should strongly promote the Abdullah peace initiative, which calls on Israel to pursue the course laid out in various international resolutions and laws: to withdraw completely from the lands occupied in 1967, including East Jerusalem, returning to the lines of June 4 1967; to accept a mutually agreed just solution to the refugee problem according to the General Assembly resolution 194; and to recognise the independent state of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital. In return, there would be an end to hostilities between Israel and all the Arab countries, and Israel would get full diplomatic and normal relations.

Last week, President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad of Iran wrote a letter to King Abdullah, explicitly recognising Saudi Arabia as the leader of the Arab and Muslim worlds and calling on him to take a more confrontational role over “this obvious atrocity and killing of your own children” in Gaza. The communiqué is significant because the de facto recognition of the kingdom’s primacy from one of its most ardent foes reveals the extent that the war has united an entire region, both Shia and Sunni. Further, Mr Ahmadi-Nejad’s call for Saudi Arabia to lead a jihad against Israel would, if pursued, create unprecedented chaos and bloodshed in the region.

So far, the kingdom has resisted these calls, but every day this restraint becomes more difficult to maintain. When Israel deliberately kills Palestinians, appropriates their lands, destroys their homes, uproots their farms and imposes an inhuman blockade on them; and as the world laments once again the suffering of the Palestinians, people of conscience from every corner of the world are clamouring for action. Eventually, the kingdom will not be able to prevent its citizens from joining the worldwide revolt against Israel. Today, every Saudi is a Gazan, and we remember well the words of our late King Faisal: “I hope you will forgive my outpouring of emotions, but when I think that our Holy Mosque in Jerusalem is being invaded and desecrated, I ask God that if I am unable to undertake Holy Jihad, then I should not live a moment more.”

Let us all pray that Mr Obama possesses the foresight, fairness, and resolve to rein in the murderous Israeli regime and open a new chapter in this most intractable of conflicts.

Prince Turki is chairman, King Faisal Centre for Research and Islamic Studies, Riyadh. He has been director of Saudi intelligence, ambassador to the UK and Ireland and ambassador to the US

Arabs helped Iran’s regional rise: Turki al-Faisal

Monday, April 06, 2009 RIYADH: Saudi Arabia’s former ambassador to Washington has described Iran as a paper tiger with claws of steel and cited differences among Arabs as the main reason for its increased regional role. Prince Turki al-Faisal’s remarks came at a closed-door meeting on Saturday at the University of Jordan’s Strategic Studies Centre. They were reported on Sunday by an Arab diplomat in Jordan and a former Jordanian official, both of whom attended the meeting, as well as Saudi Arabia’s Al-Watan newspaper. The two men spoke on condition of anonymity because of issue’s sensitivity. Turki, a brother of Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, does not hold a government position. But he has lately been speaking out on a number of issues. In an op-ed piece published in London’s Financial Times last January, Turki said former President George W Bush left a “sickening legacy’’ in the Middle East and warned US-Saudi relations would be at risk if the administration of President Barack Obama doesn’t change America’s policy in the region. In Saturday’s remarks, Turki, who is also the former intelligence chief, said Iran’s political regime is frail but has strong tools that enable it to achieve its “expansionist aspirations at theexpense of Arab interests.’’ “Arab differences represent a main reason for the increased Iranian role in the region that comes at the expense of crucial Arab interests and issues,’’ said Turki, according to Al-Watan. “Iran is a paper tiger with claws of steel,’’ the paper quoted him as saying. Saudi Arabia and mainly Shia Iran are seen as top rivals for influence in the Middle East, standing on opposite sides of political divides in Lebanon, Iraq and the Palestinian territories. The overwhelmingly Sunni kingdom as well as other Arab countries, such as Egypt, are deeply worried that Iran is seeking to fuel Islamic radicalism and establish itself as a regional superpower. They blame Syria, a close ally of Tehran, for helping it gain influence in crises they believe are none of Persian Iran’s business, such as the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, inter-Palestinian fighting and Lebanon’s simmering tensions. Saudi Arabia also believes that the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq has allowed Iran to become the most influential power in that country and deepened Sunni-Shia rifts across the region. In September 2005, Prince Saud told the Council on Foreign Relations that “Washington is essentially handing Iraq to Iran on a gold platter.’’ Turki reiterated his brother’s remarks at Saturday’s gathering, adding that former US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice objected to them. He also said his country can play a “vital role to restore security in Iraq.’’ He did not elaborate on that.

Army Reactor Program

WHY DOES THE US ARMY HAVE A NUCLEAR REACTOR PROGRAM?

Army Reactor

Program

S u m m a r y . T h i s r e g u l a t i o n e s t a b l i s h e s
policies, assigns responsibilities, and prescribes
procedures for implementing the
A r m y R e a c t o r P r o g r a m  t o  e n s u r e  t h a t
Army reactors are operated in a safe, secure,
and reliable manner from activation
through decommissioning.

Israeli Police: Lieberman Likely to Be Convicted

Readers Number : 75

05/04/2009 The corruption investigation into Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman is likely to produce charges of money laundering, fraud and breach of trust, police sources said Saturday, adding that questioning of the Yisrael Beiteinu leader was nearing an end. Unless additional testimony is needed, the police will submit their recommendations on filing an indictment in the coming weeks, the sources said according to Israeli daily Haaretz. They said the investigators were collecting more testimony from Lieberman with the intent to charge him with bribery as well. Lieberman’s testimony, the final stage of the police probe, began last week; the foreign minister will soon undergo one more session before the case is transferred to the State Prosecutor’s Office. Sources close to the investigation said that as long as Lieberman has not finished giving testimony, a final charge sheet cannot be drawn up. The foreign minister was questioned for five hours Friday by a team from the National Fraud Investigation Unit at an undisclosed location. Investigators presented him with documents outlining computerized financial transactions of firms suspected to be shell companies providing cover to move money to his bank accounts. Lieberman was asked to describe the origins of the money and how much was transferred, as well as the motives for creating the companies and their activities.  Lieberman was first questioned on the matter in April 2007, but last week was the first time he was asked about thousands of documents obtained by investigators since then. Sources at Yisrael Beiteinu said this weekend the party would not leave the government even if Lieberman is forced to withdraw from the governing coalition during the investigation. This comes despite Lieberman’s recent assertions that the party would quit the government should he be forced to relinquish the foreign ministry portfolio.

Pentagon Learning from Israeli Army’s Defeat against Hezbollah

Hanan Awarekeh Readers Number : 67

06/04/2009 It seems that the repercussions of the Second Lebanon War in which Israeli occupation army faced a severe blow by the Lebanese resistance fighters and by the steadfastness of the Lebanese people who supported the resistance against the Israeli aggression in July 2006. The Washington Post reported Monday that the Second Lebanon War has become the subject of an increasingly heated debate inside the Pentagon which could alter how the US military fights in the future. According to the report, the US army has dispatched as many as a dozen teams over the past three years to interview Israeli officers who fought against Hezbollah, with the goal of learning from the war’s failures, which was perceived by the Pentagon as “a disaster” for the Israeli military. Soon after the fighting ended, the report said, some US military officers “began to warn that the short, bloody and relatively conventional battle foreshadowed how future enemies of the United States might fight.” According to the Washington Times, the Army and Marine Corps have sponsored a series of multimillion-dollar war games to test how US forces might fare against a similar foe. “I’ve organized five major games in the last two years, and all of them have focused on Hezbollah,” said Frank Hoffman, a research fellow at the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory in Quantico. The reason that the 34-day war is drawing such fevered attention is that it highlights a rift among military leaders: Some want to change the US military so that it is better prepared for wars like the ones it is fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, while others worry that such a shift would leave the United States vulnerable to a more conventional foe, like Hezbollah. “HIZBULLAH UNDERSTOOD ISRAELI ARMOR’S VULNERABILITIES” According to the report, US military experts were stunned by the destruction that Hizbullah forces, using sophisticated antitank guided missiles, were able to wreak on Israeli armor columns. Unlike the guerrilla forces in occupied Iraq and Afghanistan, who employed mostly hit-and-run tactics, the Hizbullah fighters held their ground against Israeli occupation forces in battles that stretched as long as 12 hours. They were able to eavesdrop on Israeli communications and even struck an Israeli ship with a cruise missile. “From 2000 to 2006 Hizbullah embraced a new doctrine, transforming itself from a predominantly guerrilla force into a quasi-conventional fighting force,” a study by the Army’s Combat Studies Institute concluded last year. Another Pentagon report warned that the Hizbullah forces were “extremely well trained, especially in the uses of anti-tank weapons and rockets” and added: “They well understood the vulnerabilities of Israeli armor.” Many top Army officials, the report said, refer to the short battle almost as a morality play that illustrates the price of focusing too much on counterinsurgency wars at the expense of conventional combat. These officers note that, before the Lebanon war, Israeli forces had been heavily involved in occupation duty in the Palestinian territories. “The real takeaway is that you have to find the time to train for major combat operations, even if you are fighting counterinsurgency wars,” said one senior military analyst who studied the Second Lebanon War for the Center for Army Lessons Learned at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. Currently, the deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan have prevented Army units from conducting such training. The Pentagon polemic is not only related to strategy and policy making, but also to money. According to the report, army generals have also latched on to the Lebanon war to build support for multibillion-dollar weapons programs that are largely irrelevant to low-intensity wars such as those fought in occupied Iraq and Afghanistan. A 30-page internal Army briefing, prepared for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and senior Pentagon civilians, recently sought to highlight how the $159 billion Future Combat Systems, a network of ground vehicles and sensors, could have been used to dispatch Hezbollah’s forces quickly and with few American casualties. The report argues that the system could have prevented many casualties among the Israeli army soldiers had it been used in 2006. “Hezbollah relies on low visibility and prepared defenses,” one slide in the briefing reads. “FCS counters with sensors and robotics to maneuver out of contact.” According to the report, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is expected to stake out a firm position in this debate when he announces the 2010 defense budget. That document is expected to cut or sharply curtail weapons systems designed for conventional wars, and to bolster intelligence and surveillance programs designed to help track down shadowy insurgents. The changes reflect the growing prominence of the military’s counterinsurgency camp – the most prominent member of which is Gen. David H. Petraeus, head of the US Central Command – in the Pentagon. President Barack Obama has largely backed this group. Senior officials like Petraeus say that the threat posed by Hezbollah is being inflated by officers who are determined to return the army to a more familiar past, built around preparing for conventional warfare. The battle between the two camps will eventually be resolved in the budget discussions.

“I think a New World order is emerging.”

“I think a New World order is emerging.” Gordon Brown

G-20 Makes Six Pledges Toward New World Order

Arrests in Egypt ahead of nationwide strike

Riot police in downtown Cairo

22 hours ago

CAIRO (AFP) — Egyptian authorities have arrested 30 people and deployed extra police around the country as part of a plan to prevent a nationwide strike planned for Monday.

“Police have been given orders to arrest anyone taking part in demonstrations and extra security forces will be deployed around sensitive locations in Cairo and around the country,” a security official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Three students were arrested on Sunday in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria for distributing posters calling for a day of action, the official added.

The arrests come a day after 25 students were beaten and arrested in the Nile Delta city of Kafr el-Sheikh, after staging a sit-in outside the courthouse there to protest the arrest on Thursday of two other students.

“A central security truck arrived outside the courthouse, and the police began to run after students and beat them,” Rawda Ahmed of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) told AFP.

“Some students managed to get away, but police detained 25 of them,” she said. When the lawyers came out to see what was happening, “police proceeded to beat them up too.”

On Thursday, police detained female students Omneya Ahmed Taha Ghazi and Sara Mohammed Rizk from Kafr el-Sheikh University for distributing posters calling for people to join the April 6 strike.

Monday’s strike, dubbed “The Day of Anger in Egypt” has been called for by the “April 6 Movement”, a group of young activists formed last year after a similar call for action on the same date in 2008.

The group is urging people to wear black and is calling for protests including sit-ins at people’s places of work or study.

The group has two main demands: to set the national minimum monthly salary at 1200 Egyptian pounds (213 dollars) and to elect a body that would draft a new constitution, the organisers said.

The current minimum wage in Egypt is 167 Egyptian pounds (29 dollars).

On Thursday, Egypt’s powerful Muslim Brotherhood threw its weight behind the planned action calling on all to “express their anger and objection to the policies of the regime which has squandered the country’s riches, neglected its national security and removed Egypt from its role as leader and pioneer.”

The Islamists have urged people to strike “using all peaceful channels and abiding by constitutional and legal restrictions while safeguarding public and private property from damage during these peaceful activities.”

The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s largest opposition group, is formally banned but fielded independent candidates in 2005 elections, winning a fifth of the seats in parliament.

The group’s parliamentary bloc announced Sunday it would boycott Monday’s parliament session as part of the nationwide strike.

Last year’s strike, which saw riots erupt in the Nile Delta industrial city of Mahalla, was in protest at price hikes and low salaries. It gained support mainly through the online social networking site Facebook and SMS text messages.

Three people died and hundreds were detained in connection with the 2008 strike.

Egypt: Security forces on high alert ahead of ”The Day of Anger”

Posted: 05-04-2009 , 13:29 GMT Egyptian authorities have detained 30 people and deployed extra police around the country as part of a security drive to prevent a nationwide strike planned for April 6. “Police have been given orders to arrest anyone taking part in demonstrations and extra security forces will be deployed around sensitive locations in Cairo and around the country,” a security official told AFP. Three students were detained on Sunday in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria for distributing posters calling for a day of action, the official added. These arrests come a day after 25 students were beaten and arrested in the Nile Delta city of Kafr el-Sheikh, following a sit-in outside the courthouse there to protest the arrest on Thursday of two other students.

On Thursday, police detained female students Omneya Ahmed Taha Ghazi and Sara Mohammed Rizk from Kafr el-Sheikh University for distributing posters calling for people to join the April 6 strike. Monday’s strike, dubbed “The Day of Anger in Egypt” has been called for by the “April 6 Movement”, a group of young activists formed during 2008 after a similar call for action on the same date in 2008.

The group is calling on people to wear black and is calling for protests including sit-ins at people’s places of work or study.

The group has two main demands: to set the national minimum monthly salary at 1200 Egyptian pounds (213 dollars) and to elect a body that would draft a new constitution, the organisers said. The current minimum wage in Egypt is 167 Egyptian pounds (29 dollars).

On Thursday, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood called on all to “express their anger and objection to the policies of the regime which has squandered the country’s riches, neglected its national security and removed Egypt from its role as leader and pioneer.”

© 2009 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)

6 killed, over 32 injured in Guwahati car bomb blast

SEE: 100 Groups In A War Against India

The United Liberation Front of Asom is a militant group from Assam, among many other such groups in North-East India.

6 killed, over 32 injured in Guwahati car bomb blast

Press Trust of India

Six persons were killed and more than 32 injured on Monday in a powerful car bomb explosion triggered by suspected ULFA militants at Maligaon in Guwahati.

Four persons died on the spot when the bomb planted in a car at a parking area near Maligaon Chariali went off at about 2 pm, official sources said.

Nine of the injured were admitted to nearby Sanjivani Hospital, two in the adjacent Northast Frontier Railway Headquarters hospital and the rest were sent to Gauhati Medical College and Hospital, sources said. (With NDTV inputs)

Is Henry Kissinger Setting Obama’s Foreign Policy?

Is Henry Kissinger Setting Obama’s Foreign Policy?

Americans who voted for the change promised by Barack Obama would probably have been disturbed to see Henry Kissinger, an 85-year-old “warhorse” from the Nixon administration and the Vietnam War era meeting with the leaders of Russia during an “informal” summit on March 19-20.  Kissinger’s recent meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was actually his third meeting, at least, since Medvedev was elected and his second since Obama was elected.  So who’s running U.S. foreign policy?

One might ask, “This is change?”  Isn’t Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in charge of U.S. foreign policy?  What position does Henry Kissinger have in the Obama administration and why is he meeting with the Russian leadership before Clinton and Obama?  Who does Henry Kissinger serve and why is he crafting U.S. foreign policy?

The best answer to these questions came directly from Obama’s National Security Adviser, Jim Jones, when he spoke in Munich’s Hotel Bayerischer Hof on February 8, 2009:

Thank you for that wonderful tribute to Henry Kissinger yesterday. Congratulations. As the most recent National Security Advisor of the United States, I take my daily orders from Dr. Kissinger, filtered down through General Brent Scowcroft and Sandy Berger, who is also here. We have a chain of command in the National Security Council that exists today.

Jim Jones, Obama’s National Security Adviser, admitted that he takes his daily orders from Dr. Henry Kissinger.  He was not joking.  His speech can be read on the White House website.

This is how the Chicago Tribune and its sister paper the Los Angeles Times explained Kissinger’s recent visit to Moscow:

To “reset” relations with Russia, an old diplomatic warhorse is back on the path. Henry Kissinger, the architect of Cold War detente with the Soviet Union, met informally with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to try to smooth over a new generation of animosities between the countries.

And:

The octogenarian Republican is an improbable emissary to push the diplomatic line of a young Democratic president. But here he was in Moscow on Friday [March 20]: Henry Kissinger, the architect of Cold War detente with the Soviet Union, meeting informally with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to try to smooth over a new generation of animosities between the two countries.

Interfax, the Russian news service, reported that the purpose of Kissinger’s visit was to help organize a meeting between Obama and Medvedev and arrange Obama’s visit to Moscow.  The White House denied that Kissinger had been sent by President Barack Obama. “They’re private citizens and not there at the behest of the White House,” said an administration official, discussing the contacts on condition of anonymity. “But they did inform the White House beforehand.”

Wait a minute.  If the White House did not send Kissinger, but Kissinger is organizing a meeting between Presidents Obama and Medvedev, who is really running the White House and why is Kissinger discussing U.S. foreign policy with the leaders of Russia?  This visit by Kissinger to Moscow is the clearest signal to that the Obama White House is controlled by Kissinger and his fellow Elders of Zion.  Why else has the news of this visit been suppressed in the mainstream media.

Obama, it should be remembered, refused to comment on Israel’s criminal assault on Gaza in January because he did not think it was proper, as president-elect, to voice his opinion while George W. Bush was still president.  Obama said that he would “have plenty to say” about Gaza after January 20, yet he has not said anything meaningful about the situation and kept his envoy from even visiting the devastated Gaza Strip.  Well, Mr. Obama, how proper is it for Henry Kissinger to speak for the United States government to the Russian leaders?

Kissinger, it should be noted, is very close to Maurice “Hank” Greenberg the former head of A.I.G., the corrupt insurance company which has funneled a large part of the incredible amount of $180 billion received from the U.S. government to private banks such as Goldman Sachs.  Kissinger became chairman of A.I.G.’s International Advisory Board in 1987.  Greenberg’s name, like Kissinger’s, is kept out of the media discussion of A.I.G., which is like talking about the development of Ford Motor Company without mentioning Henry Ford.  Why is Kissinger’s role in crafting U.S. policy and in the criminally corrupt A.I.G. not discussed in the U.S. media as he discusses U.S. foreign policy with Russia’s leaders?

Source: Christopher Bollyn

U.S. spies on China from Kyrgyz base: Russian TV

By Dmitry Solovyov

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian state television accused the United States on Sunday of spying on China and Russia after secretly turning its only remaining air base in Central Asia into a state-of-the-art surveillance center.

A U.S. defense official dismissed the allegations as ridiculous on Friday, when Rossiya television, widely seen as an official mouthpiece in Russia, released a clip of the documentary it aired on Sunday about the Manas base.

Kyrgyz and U.S. officials could not be reached for comment late on Sunday.

Kyrgyzstan told Washington in February to close the base near the capital Bishkek, used to send supplies to U.S. troops in Afghanistan, after it secured a $2 billion economic aid package from Russia. The Americans are due to leave in August.

Airing the documentary, called “Base,” Rossiya showed a compound of two-storey windowless buildings, and said: “In one of the buildings … there is a multi-channel, multi-functional system of radio-electronic surveillance.

“This station can eavesdrop the whole world — every fax, every e-mailed letter. Every call from a mobile or landline phone is being recorded and processed. Billions of messages are being intercepted.”

It said: “At Manas, the U.S. built a station which controls entire Central Asia, parts of China and Siberia. For Americans, the existence of the intelligence complex at the base is more important than the runway. It was done in a treacherous way, without being endorsed by the Kyrgyz authorities.”

Airing the film just days after President Dmitry Medvedev’s first meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama is likely to raise speculation of tensions within Russia’s elite.

The U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity of Friday, noted the TV report surfaced just as U.S. and Kyrgyz officials had resumed dialogue over the base’s future.

The film was made by Russian journalist Arkady Mamontov, who in 2006 provoked a spat between London and Moscow with a documentary showed that pictures of what Mamontov said were British spies using a fake rock to gather secrets electronically.

(Reporting by Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Alison Williams)

UK charity head held over Bangladesh “bomb factory”

SEE: Another London Link to Southeast Asia Terror, Wahabbi Madrassas

UK charity head held over Bangladesh “bomb factory”

Posted: 06 April 2009 1459 hrs

DHAKA: Bangladesh security forces said they had arrested the head of a British charity linked to a huge cache of weapons and bomb-making equipment uncovered at a religious school last month.

Faisal Mustafa, 45, a British citizen who owns the London-based Green Crescent charity, was picked up from Gazipur, 40 kilometres north of Dhaka, deputy chief of Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) Colonel Rezaur Rahman Khan said.

“Faisal and the local coordinator of the charity were arrested early Monday morning. They are suspected of using the Green Crescent-owned madrassa for militant training and making bombs,” he said.

RAB officers raided the Islamic seminary, or madrassa, on the remote southern island of Bhola late last month, uncovering firearms, ammunition and explosive devices.

Bangladesh police say the madrassa was used as mini bomb factory.

Bangladeshi authorities have long viewed madrassas with suspicion, fearing they could be potential recruiting grounds for Islamic militant groups.

The Charity Commission, which regulates charities in Britain, announced it would investigate the extent of the alleged links between Green Crescent and the arms haul.

Jihadi literature was also found during the raid, including books that encouraged Muslims to take up arms.

The Bangladesh authorities are currently investigating dozens of Muslim charities in the impoverished country over allegations they are funding extremists.

The probe was launched after a mutiny at a military base in Dhaka in late February in which Islamic extremists are suspected to have played a role.

More than 70 people were killed, including at least 56 senior army officers, in the revolt at the Bangladesh Rifles headquarters.

– AFP/yb

White Man versus Dark Boy in Israel

By Rami G. Khouri

For years, pro-Israeli zealots and other fanatics in the United States have expressed the view that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East – and thus should be supported against Arab dictators. There is some truth to this argument, but not compelling integrity; Israel is indeed a domestic democracy for its Jewish citizens, and most Arab countries are not convincingly democratic.

But this is a diversion, not a serious discussion. It is also less pertinent in view of the new Israeli government, whose establishment suggests that hypocrisy, rather than democracy, may be the defining characteristic of Israeli policies. Equally troubling, hypocrisy also defines those in the

United States who unquestioningly support Israel and its excesses, and who parrot the argument that Israel is the only democracy in the region.

Hypocrisy is now the Israeli-American hallmark because of the increasingly stark and vulgar double standards applied to the behavior of the Israeli and Palestinian governments. This has been highlighted by the pronouncements of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, including their refusal to commit to a two-state solution as the goal of a negotiating process, a rejection of continued commitment to the “Annapolis Process,” and only vague commitments to negotiating with a view to reaching a peace agreement.

The silence from the United States on these positions has been profound, and troubling, but this is perhaps understandable in view of the fact that Washington is still formulating its policies in the Middle East and is completing its cast of characters who will manage the region’s policy, even as it deals with more pressing priorities. Opposing Israel too strongly in Washington is a surefire recipe for one-term political life expectancy, and Obama and his administration have to decide if they wish to take on the pro-Israel machine in Washington so soon.

The real problem with Israel’s position, though, is with the double standards that differentiate it from what is demanded of the Palestinians. For decades now, Israel and the US have routinely demanded that the Palestinians make precise, explicit and public acceptances of Israel’s right to exist, ending the use of violence, and recognizing past agreements. This was the case with the Palestinian Liberation Organization, which finally formally “renounced terrorism” and accepted “Israel’s right to exist” in the late 1980s. It is the case today with Hamas, which Israel, the US, the European states, Russia and the UN, via the Quartet, refuse to deal until it recognizes Israel, renounces the use of violence, and accepts previously reached agreements.

It is not clear to most of the world, beyond the hypocrisy-democracy heartland in Tel Aviv and corners of the West, why the Palestinians are asked to show strict compliance with past agreements and a priori formally recognize the enemy before any talks can start, while no such comparable standards are applied to Israel. This is precisely what colonialism is all about – one law for white men and a different, harsher set of rules for the native darker people. It is also why the entire world

experienced an anti-colonial revolt in the past century. As Israel is the last active colonial enterprise in the world – and Lieberman lives in a colony of settlers from abroad – it is not so surprising to see the values of colonial discrimination and subjugation applied to the practice of politics and diplomacy when Israel is concerned.

It is shocking, though, to see the US and other major democratic Western powers that support, and claim to value, Israel in part because of its democratic values, stand largely silent and immobilized in the face of its brazen hypocrisy and double standards. Israel’s behavior seems like the mirror image of its own fickle morality and expedient double-standards.

The continuing sharp contrast between the two different political and moral standards applied to Israelis and Palestinians is one of the reasons that the well-meaning officials associated with Yasser Arafat, and now with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, have proven to be a hapless band of political amateurs who have been unable to make war or peace with Israel, or to develop a meaningful, credible diplomatic relationship with major Western powers. Not surprisingly, they have slowly lost credibility with their own Palestinian population, and have ceded space and power to Hamas and others who demand politics based on more than pleading, and diplomacy anchored in more than dependency.

Two states, one for Israel and one for Palestine, are hard enough to achieve through peaceful negotiations these days. They are impossible to envisage at all if we also play this game according to two sets of rules, one for White Man Zionists and another for Dark Boy Arabs.

Rami G. Khouri is published regularly by THE DAILY STAR.