Listen to Leonard Cohen’s “Everybody Knows”, to clips from “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” while you read this: Jerusalem, Settlements, and the “Everybody Knows” Fallacy | The Middle East Channel
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Franco-British former hostage Gauthier Lefevre describes ‘daily struggle’ of staying positive as hostage.
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U.S. President Barack Obama’s Democratic allies in House of Representatives drop controversial vote plan.
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“Fred Hiatt, editor of the Washington Post’s editorial page, is particularly shameless about promoting both an imperial foreign policy and the Israeli connection. In today’s edition on page A6, billed as analysis, appears a Glenn Kessler piece called “Experts question whether US has a real Israel strategy.” The article is illustrated by a color photo of Palestinian youths throwing stones. Glenn’s Kessler’s assembled experts turn out to beDaniel Kurtzer, Aaron David Miller, Elliot Abrams, and Martin Indyk. That the Post believes that only Jews can rightfully comment on the US relationship with Israel should be disturbing to the 98% of the population that is not Jewish but which is nevertheless called on to financially support Tel Aviv, but what really caught my attention was a small bit towards the beginning of the piece. Kessler reports that “…Yitzhak Molcho, a low key private lawyer in Israel who negotiated the settlement freeze with Mitchell, worked closely behind the scenes on the Israeli response with Dennis Ross, a senior official on the National Security Council.”
First of all, the “settlement freeze” should rightly be called the “unsuccessful settlement freeze” as the Israelis never complied with the US demands. And second, there is the disturbing reemergence of Ross. At Camp David in 2000 when Bill Clinton brought together Yassir Arafat and Ehud Barak, Ross was a chief negotiator. He reportedly briefed the Israelis in advance on all US negotiating positions to obtain their approval, giving Israel a de facto veto over anything it objected to. For that yeoman’s work Ross was dubbed “Israel’s lawyer” by his colleagues. Now it would appear that Ross is doing the same thing for Obama. If Kessler is correct, the description of Ross’s role suggests that he is concerned with an acceptable Israeli response, not in convincing Israel that it mustchange its behavior to support US interests in the region. Which raises the question “Who is he working for and to what end?”
A few days ago I predicted that the crisis with Netanyahu would quickly be patched over with Obama conceding on every point and we would be back to business as usual withIsrael controlling the lopsided bilateral relationship. While it is possible that the tone of the narrative has somewhat shifted, the return to the status quo ante has largely come to pass and just in time for the annual AIPAC Conference where Hillary Clinton will no doubt speak soothingly, followed by a long conga line of congressmen who will deliver their own obeisances. I would like to think that international frustration with Israeli intransigence will finally reach a boiling point, possibly dragging Washington along kicking and screaming to actually pressure Israel in some real way to change course. We shall see, but I wouldn’t be optimistic. And before that happens American soldiers might well be drawn willy-nilly into a war with Iran, a war not of our choosing and one that can only have bad consequences.” PG
AFP – The international community “strongly supports” Palestinian efforts to build a state, UN chief Ban Ki-moon said, branding all Israeli settlement activity illegal.
Reuters – A Palestinian youth was killed by Israel troops and another was seriously wounded on Saturday during a clash in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian hospital officials said.
Comrade Rami sent me this (I cite with his permission): “had an encounter with Fania oz his daughter in Oxford in 1986 or 87. She came to my lab looking to establish “dialogue” with me as I was very involved in the Palestine society. She told me I am amoz oz’s daughter and I believe in peace. I refused to talk to her and she kept insisting that we should organize round tables to discuss peace. I told her we will do this when all Palestine is free and Zionism elliminated. She came back a few day later and this time accused me of lying by claiming that I was Palestinian when I was Lebanese. I told her we are all Palestinian. She didn’t invite me to any meeting after that: I guess they had enough Lebanese.”
Ahmed (a radical comrade from AUB) sent me this (I cite with his permission): “In reference to the small protest staged at AUB against Carlos Slim, in which I took part, LA Times got it wrong, we were not dispersed within minutes. We stayed for almost an hour. Once we put on our masks and unfolded our banners, they closed the curtains so that the people inside the hall could not see us, then the security came and tried to unmask us, but we ‘held to our masks’. The organizers of the event came and tried to give us lessons on how we are uncivilized, how this is not the right time or place for protest, how people are there to listen to Slim and not see masked people, and how masked people are scary, but we held to our position. Then AUB bourgeoisie, mostly business students, came to make fun of us, one person but a paper mask and held a paper saying in Arabic “I am hungry” (because you know, the only reason for us to “hate rich people” is that we are poor), another person threw coins at us, a third person put a free drink coupon on the floor in front of us (and I yelled at him “thanks, we need it”). Many people approached us, some were aggressive, some were sarcastic, and some discussed the matter with us, a few were convinced (one person even asked for a mask and joined us), and many told us that they will google up the Zapatistas once they get home. All in all I guess it was a success, beside it was fun pissing those people off, and I think the best thing the security did was trying to disperse us; this way they made a scene and brought us more attention. I believe one of the comrades is planning on writing a correction to LA Times. Please feel free to use this information as you wish.”
Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says in new year message that Iran has defeated ‘enemies’.
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Learn To Read And Write Arabic
Find out all about the revolutionary secret technique for learning to read and write Arabic. Read the article here.
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