Father Roy writes: The article pasted below was published in The Weekly Standard and carries the headline: "The Coming Attack on Iran". The implication of the headline is that the matter of another war has already been decided. We shall see about that.
The Editor of the Weekly Standard is William Kristol whom we know from FOX News. Kristol is also Chairman of the Project for the New American Century. Read PNAC’s Statement of Principles. Notice how subtle and seductive language can be. Scroll down on that page and find signatures of people you know.
It’s necessary that we make connections in our thinking. Please watch this video again: General Wesley Clark (08:15). Clark’s remarks are confirmed in the article pasted below.
The Coming Attack on Iran
When an irresistible force meets an immovable object, something’s gotta give.
Feb 2, 2012, Vol. 17, No. 22 • By TOD LINDBERG
The United States and Iran have been on a collision course since the Iranian revolution in 1979, when elements of the newly proclaimed Islamic Republic took U.S. diplomats and Tehran embassy personnel hostage. U.S. relations with Iran have been bad ever since. The focus in recent years has been the Iranian program to develop a nuclear weapon, but the backdrop is Iran as a growing regional threat, not only to Israel and to U.S. and allied interests in the Persian Gulf region, but also to the many Sunni governments of the Gulf, which fear an increasingly powerful Shiite government in Tehran.
A Zelzal missile launched outside Qom, Iran, June 2011
Meanwhile, Iran props up the Assad dictatorship in Syria, meddles in Lebanon through the Hezbollah militia, supports the radical Hamas regime in Gaza, and seeks to expand its divisive clout in neighboring Iraq, a task made easier by the decision of the Obama administration to end the deployment of U.S. combat forces there. The picture that emerges is of an Iran that is not so much a problem but the problem of the broader Middle East, eclipsing even the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Filed under israel and palestine articles by on Feb 13th, 2012. Comment. 
Sonja Karkar, editor of australiansforpalestine.com…, writes:
Dr Vacy Vlazna, creator and coordinator of Justice for Palestine Matters in Sydney, Australia has done a lot of excellent research to present the facts – not the myths – behind Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians from Silwan. How many more lies will Israel fabricate in its pursuit of an exclusively Jewish state? Is this what the world’s unquestioning support of Israel has been reduced to? Say nothing, do nothing, just let Israel have what it wants and the Palestinians be damned?
Silwan: Steadfastness are synonymous in the Palestinian soul. (Press TV)
The Palestine Chronicle
10 February 2012
“De-Arabizing the history of Palestine is another crucial element of the ethnic cleansing. 1500 years of Arab and Muslim rule and culture in Palestine are trivialized, evidence of its existence is being destroyed and all this is done to make the absurd connection between the ancient Hebrew civilization and today’s Israel. The most glaring example of this today is in Silwan, (Wadi Hilwe) a town adjacent to the Old City of Jerusalem with some 50,000 residents. Israel is expelling families from Silwan and destroying their homes because it claims that king David builta city there some 3000 years ago. Thousands of families will be made homeless so that Israel can build a park to commemorate a king that may or may not have lived 3000 years ago. Not a shred of historical evidence exists that can prove King David ever lived yet Palestinian men, women, children and the elderly along with their schools and mosques, churches and ancient cemeteries and any evidence of their existence must be destroyed and then denied so that Zionist claims to exclusive rights to the land may be substantiated.” – Miko Peled, Israeli dissident.
Indeed, archaeology has become a state apparatus for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the Zionist fairyland aka the City of David Archaeological Park located in the Palestinian village of Silwan in East Jerusalem.
East Jerusalem is the proclaimed capital of the proposed Palestine state. It was illegally annexed by Israel in the 1967 war. Prohibiting annexation of territories gained by military conquest is one of the major principlesof international law. The international community does not recognise Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem nevertheless over 50,000 illegalpremises have been built for 250,000 illegal Israeli colonists.
The goal of the archaeological judaisation of Jerusalem is to transform Jerusalem into the City of David, the capital of Greater Israel by eradicating the mixed ethnic composition of the Palestinian and Jewish population of East Jerusalem to a solely Jewish identity and unifying East and West Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty.
This judaising in Silwan is executed by the Israeli government, the Municipality of Jerusalem, and the rightwing colonist (settler) organisation, Elad, through the revocation of residency rights, absentee property laws, discriminatory taxation policies, home demolitions, transfer of Palestinian residents, replacing Arabic place names with Hebrew names and the expansion of settlements which Richard Falk, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, describes ‘as a form of ethnic cleansing ‘ which is defined as a crime against humanity under the statutes of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Furthermore Article 53 of the Geneva Convention states: “Any destruction by the Occupying Power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons.is prohibited.”
Financial support for judaising programmes comes from hundreds of moneyed Zionist organisations and foundations worldwide. In 2005, archaeologistEilat Mazar announced she had discovered the palace of King David circa 10 Century BCE. The excavations in Silwan were funded by the Shalem Center whose Zionist neocons have invested heavily in the judaisation efforts togive historicity to the David myth. Shalem’s founder, Ron Lauder of the Estee Lauder empire, is an uncompromising Zionist extremist, a Likudnik and a major shareholder in Israeli TV Channel 10 as well as the current Chairman of the Jewish National Fund (JNF) and President of the World Jewish Congress (JWC) which normalises the Israeli occupation. Curiously, in January, Abbas and Erekat had a closed meeting with Lauder in London even though the Palestinian team refused to meet with Netanyahu.
The Shalem Center has association with Sheldon Adelson, the casino billionaire who is a Likud supporter and a key financial backer of the Newt Gingrich campaign and Newt’s ‘Palestinians are an invented people’ idiocy. From 2007-9 the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies in the Shalem Center was directed by Natan Sharansky who is now Chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, a quasi-governmental organisation advancing Jewish immigration to Israel including the illegal colonies. Its 2008 the core budget was $314,760,000. The Jewish Agency was established by the World Zionist Organization (WZO) in 1929 founded on the commitment to warrant “The unity of the Jewish people, its bond to its historic homeland Eretz Yisrael, and the centrality of the State of Israel and Jerusalem, its capital.” It acts as agent of the government in assigning land to Jewish colonists in the Israeli-occupied territories. Its new chairman is religious Zionist Avraham Duvdevani who served as head of the WZO’s Settlement Division, co-chairman of the board of the Jewish National Fund and a member of the Jewish Agency’s Executive. Over a quarter of WZO delegates are from Orthodox Zionists attesting to their sinister rising influence.
The Shalem Centre works closely with Elad the right-wing hardline colonist organization and militia that advocates illegal Jewish colonial settlement in East Jerusalem acquiring, in cahoots with the Jewish National Fund and its subsidiary Hemanuta, Palestinian properties often through threats, false depositions, forged documents, posthumous witness signatures and militant house takeovers.
In December 2011, Australian listeners were treated to a fantasy tour of the so-called Palace of David by ABC presenter Rachael Kohn and archaeologist Avner Goren both of whom gushed forth fairytales about the mythical king absurdly comparing him to George Washington and sidestepping his dubious authenticity by urging trust in the Bible.
In archaeological circles there is an ongoing controversy about whether Biblical texts can be equated to history. In the 70s William Dever suggested that rather than Biblical Archaeology, the term Syro-Palestinian Archaeology (note not Syro-Israeli) was more appropriate and is used in academic circles.
Archaeologists who follow the Minimalist or Copenhagen school “conclude that the books of the Hebrew Bible were written during the Persian (or Hellenistic) period. The historical books actually contain made-up stories (that may have exploited some vague, ancient legends) through which the local organized refugee population provided itself with a mythic cover-(hi)story that linked it to the land and to a religion. This conclusion has two important corollaries: (1) Bible narratives about the political, social, and intellectual world of ancient Israel from Abraham to the temple’s destruction lack probative value. (2) Any narrative about what actually happened to the real people living in the central mountain areas of ancient Israel during what archaeologists call the Iron Age must, accordingly, be based on archaeological data alone. No other authentic sources for their history are available.”
It is widely accepted that the Bible originated in the 7th Century BCE, 300 years after David and other historical aberrations encompass the palaces officially ascribed to Solomon in Megiddo which are dated long after Solomon’s time. Cities conquered by Joshua in the 14th century BCE were destroyed well before that era. Daniel Gavron comments that “The story of Abraham’s journey from Ur of the Chaldees, the Patriarchs, the Exodus, Sinai, and the conquest of Canaan, all these were apparently based on legends…” In 2004, Yuval Goren admitted he examined ” a seemingly endless line of fake biblical texts of various kinds. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of such forgeries referring especially to the time of the First Temple. It will not be an exaggeration to say that the disciplines of biblical history and archaeology have been contaminated to such an extent that no unprovenanced written source seems to be reliable anymore.”
Proof of David’s existence rests on a piece of stone found at Tel Dan in northern Galilee (not Jerusalem) inscribed with the words ‘Beit David’ which could mean House of ‘David’ or ‘Beloved’ but not King David conclusively as with the sherd found at Tel Safi with the name ‘Goliath’ which “almost certainly did not belong to David’s Goliath, if it does say “Goliath” then it shows that there was such a personal name used in the region at approximately the correct chronological period.” The first ancient reference to an Israelite king is found in an 8th Century BCE Assyrian document recording “King Ahab of Israel sent 2,000 chariots and 10,000 soldiers.”
Sumud (steadfastness) life and land are synonymous in the Palestinian soul. King David may be a myth but it is the modern indigenous Palestinians, outcasts in their own land, who stand alone with the stone of sumud in their hands daily facing off the militant aliyah hordes backed by the Zionist Goliaths of multi-billion dollar empires, by Christian Zionist offerings, by the servile US Congress, by a depraved UK and EU and by a contemptibly inadequate United Nations.
Dr. Vacy Vlazna is Coordinator of Justice for Palestine Matters. She was Human Rights Advisor to the GAM team in the second round of the Acheh peace talks, Helsinki, February 2005 and was coordinator of the East Timor Justice Lobby as well as serving in East Timor with UNAMET and UNTAET from 1999-2001. She contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com….
Original Link: palestinechronicle.com…
Filed under israel and palestine religious conflict by on Feb 13th, 2012. Comment.
Father Roy writes:
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is the central problem facing the world today. Thanks to a renowned Jewish historian by the name of Ilan Pappé for telling the truth about the causes of the conflict.
This interview will illustrate the gist of what Pappe teaches at the University of Exeter It’s not a short video, but it’s comprehensive:
Pappe’s work has been both supported and criticized by other historians. Before he left Israel in 2008, he had been condemned in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. A minister of education had called for him to be sacked. His photograph had appeared in a newspaper at the center of a target, and he had received several death threats. A number of Pappe’s essays can be read on the Internet: Ilan Pappe | The Electronic Intifada.
Filed under israel and palestine articles by on Feb 15th, 2012. Comment.
Sonja Karkar, editor of Australians for Palestine, writes:
The following article is very important because it looks at the immense practical problems besetting the Palestinians as a consequence of Israel’s unrelenting occupation and apartheid policies and that unless the root causes of these problems are urgently dealt with, the Palestinians will remain an enslaved population.
It discusses, in particular, how aid has been a pernicious problem, linked as it is with politics and capital, and suggests that “Palestinians must aim to move away from the current context toward a paradigm that understands development as means to realising rights, freedoms, and self-determination. It is also essential to move beyond the technocratic and apolitical understanding of the development process toward recognising the asymmetry of power and colonial dominance.”
The ‘economic peace’ that promised so much, it says, merely “promoted economic normalisation through joint industrial zones, Israeli-Palestinian business forums, Palestinian investments in Israel and even in settlements, neglect of the agricultural and industrial base, joint management of water resources for the benefit of Israeli settlements and industry, neglect of Palestinian economic activities in Jerusalem, privatisation, and encouragement of public and individual debt.” The article points out that the Palestinian leadership is partly responsible for this state of affairs because it agreed to the Paris Protocol with the Israelis in 1994 when all the while and since, Israel has continued to colonise Palestine. However, that does not mean Palestinian civil society has to accept the entrenched oppression under which they now live.
This article provides some suggestions for creating a resistance economy.
All references in the article are available in the links provided below.
Defeating dependency, creating
a resistance economy
by Alaa Tartir, Sam Bahour & Samer Abdelnour
Al Shabaka
14 February 2012
In an important recent piece – Economic Hallucination – Ramallah-based
Al-Shabaka policy advisor Sam Bahour exposed the charade played by both
Western donors and the Palestinian Authority (PA) to cover up the occupied
territory’s inexorable economic meltdown after decades of Israeli military
occupation. Arguing that the combined donor-PA approach poses major
obstacles to freedom and rights, Bahour concluded: “It’s time for a new
economic model, one built on economic justice, social welfare, solidarity,
and sustainability.” What would such an economic model look like and how can
Palestinians living under occupation move from today’s grim reality to an
economy that sustains the quest for self-determination? Al-Shabaka policy
advisors Alaa Tartir and Samer Abdelnour join Bahour to debate these
questions and explore alternatives.Needed: Tools to Communicate the Socioeconomic Reality
The Gaza Strip has often been described as a large prison and, indeed,
Israel’s siege makes it impossible to portray it as anything else. The West
Bank, including East Jerusalem, is also a prison: its entire Palestinian
population, from the PA president (whose VIP status was recently downgraded
by Israel to a two-month travel permission) to day laborers, are forced to
rely on Israel for freedom of movement and access. Israel directly or
indirectly controls all Palestinian economic resources. Furthermore, 60% of
the West Bank, classified as Area C under the Oslo Accords, is completely
off limits to Palestinian development. Yet these West Bank realities are
masked by talk of economic “growth” of as much as 9% a year, impressive
institution building, and a booming stock market. This harmful narrative is
both a result of “people-blind” macro-economic measures and political
propaganda that effectively normalizes the occupation-PA-donor status quo.As Jeremy Wildeman put it in an article on the delusions of a Palestinian
economic miracle, “The crippling truth is one of poverty, personal
insecurity and protracted economic decline… [only serving] to distract the
world from implementing difficult solutions to the real problems.” How
difficult are those problems? Rashid Khalidi went to the heart of the issue
when he asked how “the settlement-industrial complex” would be uprooted – a
complex that stretches beyond the 600,000 settlers living in the occupied
West Bank and East Jerusalem to encompass the “hundreds of thousands in
government and in the private sector whose livelihoods and bureaucratic
interests are linked to the maintenance of control over the Palestinians”.It should be noted that even those reports that speak glowingly of Prime
Minister Salam Fayyad’s institution-building efforts cannot completely
escape the truth. Multiple reports by the World Bank, International Monetary
Fund, and the European Union, admit that the private sector cannot operate
due to the restrictions of the occupation and the shrinking of the
Palestinian productive base. One 2010 World Bank report went so far as to
say that Israel’s “apparatus of control” had “become more sophisticated and
effective in its ability to interfere in and affect every aspect of
Palestinian life, including job opportunities, work, and earnings… [turning]
the West Bank into a fragmented set of social and economic islands or
enclaves cut off from one another.”Although neo-liberal economic policies accelerated under Fayyad brought
wealth and spending power to small segments of the West Bank, this was
doomed to be a temporary phenomenon. That has now been replaced with
spiraling costs and deficits that the Government is seeking to address
through the same kind of austerity measures – public sector downsizing,
higher taxes, and reduced incentives for investments – the same kinds of
policies imposed upon many developing countries.Economist Raja Khalidi questioned the applicability of structural adjustment
policies to the Palestinian context in a recent article, noting that
longstanding financial problems in the OPT have nothing to do with
structural problems that can be “adjusted.” Rather, they are the direct
result of the occupation. In addition to the volatility of the tax base and
the vulnerability of the level of economic activity to the Israeli closure
policy and recurrent military confrontations, Israel has full control over
the tax and customs clearance revenue that it collects on behalf of the PA.
As a report by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD
revealed, imports produced in a third country and re-exported to the
territories as if they were produced in Israel (indirect imports) cause losses
of $480 million USD per year – almost 25% of public revenues, 10% in lost
gross domestic product (GDP) and 30,000 jobs per year. The PA’s moves are
leading to widespread protests against what has been termed “Fayyadism”
and the neo-liberal policies it represents.Among the challenges for Palestinian economists and analysts are: Which
tools and measures might be used or developed to more effectively
communicate the reality of the Israeli occupation, from the mundane to the
catastrophic in both human and economic terms. For example, is it viable to
deduct from rather than add to GDP the costs of construction or consumption
related to checkpoints and other forms of mobility restrictions (i.e. jobs
to construct roads, extra fuel and transportation services) as well as other
costs of the occupation? Similarly, when a student from Gaza cannot study in
Birzeit or a person is imprisoned for months or years without charge, what
is the negative cost to the Palestinian economy? Such realities do impact
Palestinian socioeconomic well-being yet are much more difficult to measure
than the cost of expropriated land and resources – which also require
measurement in terms of lost socioeconomic, human, and political value.
ARIJ, the Applied Research Institute-Jerusalem, estimated that the total
measurable cost of the Israeli occupation on the Palestinian economy in 2010
was $6.897 billion, a staggering 84.9% of the total Palestinian GDP in 2010.There is a need for new measures to factor in not only the cost of the
occupation but also the costs of corruption. National and international
institutions like the Bisan Centre for Research and Development, ARIJ, the
Center for Development Studies at Birzeit University, UNCTAD and the Rosa
Luxemburg Foundation do important work and can help to further develop
accurate tools for quantifying, and analyzing such costs. It is also
important to openly disseminate and discuss these costs widely and build
consensus around their findings and potential actionsTop Priority: Dealing with Aid Dependency
The debates about Palestinian dependence on international aid go back to at
least the Nakba (the Palestinian catastrophe of dispossession in 1948).
Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins’ analysis of past aid initiatives suggests that
these bore the “tangible signs of expulsion” and spoke of a common exile.
The present is more pernicious because the sources of aid are easily erased
together with their implications: “The visible is no longer a reliable
source of what is there. Direct imports are not direct. Palestinian police
uniforms mean Israeli coordination. And a new ‘Palestinian’ road probably
means more settlers.”Much has been written about the problems of the aid industry in the occupied
territories. There is a need to move beyond arguments that aid sustains the
occupation and to devise political costs that create a real change.
Palestinians must encourage the aid industry to stop wasting resources under
the false pretences of assistance and to help create a genuine economic
steadfastness to end the occupation. Donors are aware of the issues but have
little incentive to align general development policies with the reality of
the Palestinian experience. This is partly due to the unwillingness of donor
agencies to defy donor country political agendas, and partly to the global
reality that aid policy is highly decoupled from genuine socioeconomic
improvement. Added to this is the PA’s acquiescence to the status quo.
However, it cannot be ignored that donor countries benefit greatly from the
current configuration of the aid industry. This is particularly true of
USAID and the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA), whose
contractors and consultants consume so much of their own aid. In addition,
the recent book by Sahar Taghdisi-Rad reports that a great deal of aid to
Palestinians contributes to the Israeli economy. In the end, little aid
reaches Palestinians; that which does signifies an immense political cost
when it ignores inalienable rights to freedom, self-determination, and
return.Donors have never taken Palestinian claims seriously, partly because donor
investment in the so-called “peace process” has never been seriously
challenged. A civil society campaign is urgently needed to expose these
operations and make it difficult for donors to do business as usual. Getting
a few “bad” donors out of Palestine as a result of social pressure would go
beyond simply “reforming” aid and might restore Palestinian steadfastness
and resistance in the struggle for human rights.Another good starting point along this road would be lobbying to revoke the
exemptions the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat gave to USAID.
According to a 2010 report by AMAN, a Palestinian coalition for
transparency and accountability, 146 foreign organizations are registered,
just 40% of the total number operating in the OPT. This is partly because
Arafat exempted from registration all USAID institutions, branches, bodies
and companies, according to the report. Furthermore, the Ministry of
National Economy grants many USAID branches registration permits as
non-profit companies without requiring the submission of any official
documents. They do not have to report or submit budgets, and are not subject
to the oversight of the Palestinian Companies Controller. USAID is not the
only one to operate without registration or oversight. Others include Konrad
Adenauer Stiftung, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Ford Foundation, Handicap
International, and Diakonia. Indeed, the author of another study on
international aid agencies told Al-Shabaka that one NGO refused to disclose
information on the basis that “we are registered by the Israeli government
and so you don’t have the right to ask us to reveal any of our information,
particularly when it comes to finances”.The PA should not only demand accountability from foreign NGOs but also tax
their operations. A tax on the consultancies of foreign experts will make
them more expensive for donors in relation to local expertise. This is fully
in harmony with the Paris Declaration for aid effectiveness, as it would
promote the utilization of national capacity. Such incentives might help
redirect aid to Palestinian employment.This problem extends to Palestinian NGOs, which now number some 1,500 active
organizations . Many refuse to publicly disclose their general assemblies,
boards, staff, funders, audited financial reports, bylaws, and even their landlords.
Some of the biggest and most important Palestinian NGOs refuse to give any
information, claiming that the data is too sensitive. The Palestinian case is not
dissimilar, though perhaps not as extreme, to Haiti’s “Republic of NGOs”. Before
they were forced to pay for their own freedom from colonization, Haitians were
once a people able to feed and clothe themselves.The Palestinian leadership is partly responsible for the present conditions
of economic dependency and continues to suffer from the thinking and
consequences of an “economic peace” engendered by the Paris Protocol signed
with the Israelis in 1994. Such “peace” has promoted economic normalization
through joint industrial zones, Israeli-Palestinian business forums,
Palestinian investments in Israel and even in settlements, neglect of the
agricultural and industrial base, joint management of water resources for
the benefit of Israeli settlements and industry, neglect of Palestinian
economic activities in Jerusalem, privatization, and encouragement of public
and individual debt. All of the above has occurred alongside increasing
entrenchment of Israeli’s colonization of Palestine.It is vital to address the link between politics, capital and aid.
Palestinians must aim to move away from the current context toward a
paradigm that understands development as means to realizing rights,
freedoms, and self-determination (see, for example, this recent article by
economist Ali Kadri). It is also essential to move beyond the technocratic
and apolitical understanding of the development process toward recognizing
the asymmetry of power and colonial dominance. Many Palestinian writers are
touching on different aspects of this dilemma. This body of work needs to be
taken a stage further so that it can compete with the existing paradigm and
discourse and provide a credible alternative. The status quo only serves to
normalize and maintain the Israeli occupation by ignoring the political
roots of Palestinian poverty.
Learning from Practical Experience at Home and Abroad
A new Palestinian agenda for a resistance economy can be informed by
indigenous, regional, and international experiences. The economic vision
must be to reinforce self-sustainability and socioeconomic (as well as
cultural) resistance over and above artificial economic growth. Economic
growth – as measured, discussed, and applied has become a leash and muzzle.
This is not to suggest that private sector development be hindered;
entrepreneurship is important at all levels and scales. But there must be a
vision for an economy that sits at the heart of the Palestinian struggle.The first priority must be self-reliance in terms of basic foods.
Small-scale agriculture can – and has – been carried out by Palestinians to
feed themselves, e.g. permaculture, rooftop drip gardens, and local
biodiversity in terms of crops. Taken to scale, this would gradually reduce
and eventually end dependence on food aid. It could also serve to reconnect
millions of encamped Palestinians to land-based livelihoods. Much can be
learned from Lebanese author Rami Zurayk’s work on how Arab agriculture has
been undermined by aid and ways to restore indigenous practices (see his
recent book Food, Farming, and Freedom and his blog .) Cuba’s experience
of achieving food security under politically adverse conditions is also
worth studying. Another experience worthy of study is that of the Sahrawis,
who managed to organize and administer in exile a highly educated population
aligned with their national interests under the most adverse circumstances
(see Randa Farah’s recent study).It is also vital to prevent the PA from undermining Palestinian agricultural
potential. Marj Ibn Amer valley in Jenin district has historically been a
major food basket for Palestinians, but the PA has commenced actions to
establish an industrial zone, whose ability to operate will be fully
dependent on Israel, on that land. These attempts are being documented, legally
challenged and exposed by BISAN among others. PA officials have been known
to laugh when someone talks about the agriculture sector. In fact, the real joke
are the official declarations about empowering the people in their land when
the land is neither preserved nor used for Palestinian interests.Traditional cultural industries are another area worthy of support.
Exporting Palestinians’ rich cultural heritage (unlike vulnerable cash-crops
such as carnations and strawberries) can help educate people globally about
the Palestinian cause and provide opportunities to preserve cultural
industries.A Palestinian development agenda should engage Diaspora Palestinians in the
struggle for sustainable self-reliance. Palestinians have the experience of
the 5% that used to be deducted from the salaries of those working in the
Gulf for the Palestine Liberation Organization. The challenge now would be
to build the trust of the Palestinians in the Diaspora, to ensure that
Palestinian funds for a Palestinian development agenda would not be misused
or fill the pockets of corrupted leaders, but would instead be actually
managed as bonds by a national development bank or through a national
development agency along the lines of the Agha Khan Foundation.There is also a need to think about how Palestinians can institutionalize
and eventually create a bureaucracy around a democratic people-driven
development agenda. In the development literature there is a trend that
prioritizes the indigenous mechanisms, approaches, and governance for
development. In fact, the leading institutions of the first Intifada
demonstrated effective Palestinian-centered governance provisions.
Unfortunately, these were displaced in the wake of the Oslo Accords.Importantly, a new Palestinian economic vision must embrace dignity in aid.
There must be a time limit by which aid from donor nations supporting any
aspect of Israeli military activity is respectfully declined. All
international NGOs should agree to work on Palestinian development
priorities and timeframes (not three-year donor agendas) and tackle the root
causes of Palestinian poverty: the Israeli occupation and resulting
restrictions and continuing colonization of Palestine. Transparency in
purpose and operations, as well as demonstrated results must be ensured. If
we Palestinians do not ensure dignity in our development, no one will.Alaa Tartir is a Palestinian PhD candidate and researcher in international
development studies at the Department of International Development, at the
London School of Economics and Political Science as well as a project
coordinator. He is also a research fellow of the Palestine Economic Policy
Research Institute, and recently published The role of international aid in
development: the case of Palestine 1994-2008 (Lambert 2011).
Sam Bahour does business consulting as Applied Information Management (AIM),
specializing in business development with a niche focus on the information
technology sector and start-ups. He helped establish PALTEL and the PLAZA
Shopping Center. Until recently, he served on the board of trustees of
Birzeit University and was the University’s treasurer. He is also a Director
at the Arab Islamic Bank and the community foundation Dalia Association.
Bahour is co-editor of HOMELAND: Oral History of Palestine and Palestinians
(Olive Branch Press). He writes frequently on Palestinian affairs and his
work is posted at www.epalestine.com….
Samer Abdelnour is completing a PhD in Management at the London School of
Economics. His doctoral research examines NGOs and humanitarian response,
and the role of community and collective enterprise in postwar
peace-building and development in Sudan. Since 2005 Samer has managed
applied research projects across Sudan (Darfur, Southern Sudan, Blue Nile).
Al-Shabaka, The Palestinian Policy Network, is an independent, non-partisan,
and non-profit organization whose mission is to educate and foster public
debate on Palestinian human rights and self-determination within the
framework of international law.
Original Link: tiny.cc…
Filed under Israel and Palestine, israel and palestine conflict, map of israel and palestine by on Feb 16th, 2012. Comment.
Father Roy writes: Netanyahu is saying that Iran is undermining the world’s stability. Freud had a lot to say about “Psychological Projection“. Jesus taught: “Consider the speck and the mote” which is a lesson we all need to learn. Peace, Roy
Netanyahu: Iran’s terror acts undermine the world’s stability
Five arrested on suspicion of involvement in New Delhi attack against Israeli embassy; Thai police investigating Tuesday’s botched bombing, one suspect reportedly fled to Malaysia.
By Barak RavidTags: Benjamin NetanyahuIsrael terrorism
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that Iran is destabilizing the world and urged the international community to condemn its terror acts against Israeli targets.
The prime minister’s comments come a day after a botched terror attack in Thailand, which Israeli officials believe was meant to target Israel’s ambassador in Bangkok. The bombing followed an attack on Israel’s embassy in New Delhi and an attempted attack on Israeli diplomats in Tbilisi.
 |
Car bomb attack on the Israeli embassy in New Delhi. |
| Photo by: AP |
“Iran’s terror operations are now exposed for all to see,” Netanyahu said during a Knesset plenum on Wednesday. “Iran is undermining the world’s stability and harms innocent diplomats. World countries must condemn Iran’s terror acts and draw a red line.”
Four Thai civilians were wounded in Bangkok in a series of blasts that began Tuesday when a cache of explosives ignited at a house, apparently by mistake. One explosion blew off the leg of an Iranian who had fled, carrying what looked like grenades.
On Monday, a bombing of an Israeli diplomatic car in New Delhi wounded four people, including a diplomat’s wife. A similar bomb found under a car in Georgia on Monday was defused.
The Indian police detained five suspects for questioning on suspicion of involvement in the New Delhi attack, India Today reported.
According to the report, the police was able to identify the assailant, who placed the bomb on the car of the wife of the Defense Ministry’s representative in India, Tali Yehoshua-Koren, using footage from CCTV cameras positioned on the embassy’s street. The police also identified a red motorcycle believed to have been used by the terror cell.
The New Delhi police suspect that the terrorist had followed the Israeli diplomat. A few hours before the blast, the Israeli diplomat met with his wife for lunch in the Khan Market. Security cameras from the market area caught several of the suspects loitering around Tali Yehoshua-Koren’s car that was parked nearby.
Moreover, the police have been going over international phone calls made from New Delhi to Iran, Lebanon, and Pakistan during the hours following the bombing. During the half-an-hour from 3:30 to 4:00 P.M on the day of the attack, 115 calls were made to those three countries. Four of them were made from a phone booth near the market where the Israeli couple met. Thirteen of the conversations lasted between eight to ten minutes, and the police are trying to identify the persons who made these calls.
According to the report in India Today, the Israeli intelligence agency, the Mossad, gave its Indian counterpart a list of eight suspects, believed to have been involved in the attack.
The investigation of the Iranian terror cell in Thailand is also in progress. The Thai police set up a special command center dedicated to the search and seizure of cell members still at large. The police issued an arrest warrant for an additional member. Another suspect had apparently already fled the country on a flight to Malaysia. Thailand asked the Malaysia police to arrest the suspect.
Mohammad Haji, a member of the terror cell, who was arrested in Bangkok’s international airport trying to flee the country, denied all involvement in the bombing. Despite his denial, the Thai police believe they have enough evidence to prosecute him in the case. The police said the members of the terror cell arrived via Seoul, South Korea.
Link to original story in Haaretz: Netanyahu: Iran’s terror acts undermine the world’s stability
Filed under israel and palestine articles by on Feb 16th, 2012. Comment.
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