When sectarianism and tribalism become institutionalized, it often follows that politicians become preoccupied with holding on to personal rewards of power instead of tackling national problems

by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi
Ha’aretz
May 18, 2012

http://www.meforum.org/3234/south-sudan-chaos

When the state of South Sudan came into existence last July, with great fanfare, Israel was one of the first nations to recognize it, having provided support for South Sudanese leaders since the 1960s during the first civil war. Indeed, in late December, Salva Kiir Mayardit – the president of South Sudan – came to Jerusalem, where he discussed the unique prospect of locating the country’s embassy there. It was therefore no surprise that President Shimon Peres spoke so enthusiastically of the visit as a "moving and historic moment" for him and Israel.

Now, less than a year later, in light of Israel’s plans to deport South Sudanese refugees, it is worth taking a look at how the world’s youngest nation is faring.

Arguably, the worst problem the country faces is tribalism, despite the unity that was cultivated among South Sudanese rebels during decades of resistance to Khartoum’s aggressive campaigns of Islamization against the animists and Christians in the south, prior to independence.

Early signs of this malaise became apparent when low-level clashes between the Lou Nuer and Murle tribes in Jonglei state in the east of the country – going as far back as 2009 – suddenly intensified in August 2011. By the start of 2012, over 3,000 were dead and more than 100,000 displaced. The origins of these tensions lie in the mutual theft of cattle.

In an attempt to calm tensions, an agreement was signed early this month to end the violence, by tribal leaders representing six ethnic groups in Jonglei: the Dinka (who are regarded as politically dominant in South Sudan’s government), Kachipo, Jie, Nuer, Anyuak and Murle.

Stability in Jonglei is crucial to South Sudan’s economic future, because it offers a potential pipeline route that can go through Ethiopia to Djibouti, making it possible for the country to export its vast oil reserves without having to rely on its northern neighbor. However, Sudan has not only imposed heavy transit fees on South Sudan; it has also permitted itself the liberty of seizing part of the oil production when those fees haven’t been paid.

Yet the unilateral decision to respond to Sudan’s policies by suspending oil production before it had laid an alternative pipeline can only be described as folly on the part of the leadership in Juba, the capital.

As a confidential World Bank report recently leaked to the Sudan Tribune revealed, the shutdown of the oil industry – together with the austerity measures subsequently adopted by the government – could increase the poverty rate from 51 percent this year to 83 percent by 2013, while infant mortality is expected to double in the same period.

The reason such startling statistics could become reality is that, like post-Saddam Iraq, South Sudan is extremely dependent on petroleum, with oil exports accounting for 98 percent of government revenue. Unfortunately, Mayardit and his cabinet appear to be oblivious to the implications of their decision-making.

Meanwhile, it is not only in the rural areas of South Sudan that tribalism is evident. The phenomenon extends even to the university campus in the capital. As the Dubai newspaper The National reported, a minor incident at a soccer match on March 27 among Juba University alumni led to a square-off between 100 students the following morning. Since then, the university has been closed.

The newspaper also interviewed the president of the student union at the university, Ajang Ajang, who pointed out that "people still think about their tribes first, their nation second." Many members of the union sought to expel him after he decided to ban tribal associations on campus in February.

If such tribalism is evident on the country’s main university campus among students who will likely constitute South Sudan’s future elite, then it should come as no surprise that the president appears to be displaying authoritarian tendencies.

For when sectarianism and tribalism become institutionalized, it often follows that politicians become preoccupied with holding on to personal rewards of power instead of tackling national problems, and so a leading figure will probably emerge to assert himself as a strongman. Mayardit has been behaving in precisely this manner.

For example, The National recently highlighted the case of James Okuk, an employee of South Sudan’s foreign ministry. When he returned home from a trip to Brazil in October he was arrested by police, held at an abandoned house for four days and charged with "offending the president" simply because he wrote some articles critical of Mayardit’s tenure.

Okuk is now on trial. The case may partly have to do with the fact that Okuk’s uncle is Lam Akol, who broke away from the country’s ruling political faction – the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM ) – to form the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement: Democratic Change (SPLM-DC ) in 2009.

Akol has reportedly been resented by the Dinkas who dominate the SPLM for quite some time, but he has the support of the Shilluk people of the country’s northeast. Of course, Akol’s residing in Khartoum while his children finish their schooling there hardly helps his image.

When South Sudan declared independence, there were high hopes for a model democratic country in sub-Saharan Africa, but developments so far point to a country plagued by tribalism, government authoritarianism and disastrous economic policies that could greatly exacerbate poverty levels in the country, such that one may have to agree with the World Bank’s fears of a "state collapse." A bleak outlook indeed.

Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi is a student at Brasenose College, Oxford University, and an adjunct fellow at the Middle East Forum.

14 May 2012

Nato urged to investigate civilian deaths in Libya

A leading human rights organisation has urged Nato to investigate fully the deaths of civilians in air strikes in Libya last year.

Human Rights Watch believes Nato air strikes killed at least 72 civilians and says the organisation needs to bear responsibility where appropriate.

“We’re calling for prompt, credible and thorough investigations,” HRW’s Fred Abrahams told BBC News.

Nato insists it took unprecedented care to minimise civilian casualties.

It argues that it cannot take responsibility because it has had no presence on the ground to confirm the deaths.

Aircraft from the US, the UK and France conducted most of the 9,658 strike sorties last year, targeting forces loyal to Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi.

In March, another human rights organisation, Amnesty International, said it had documented 55 cases of named civilians, including 16 children and 14 women, killed in air strikes.

It described Nato’s failure to investigate these cases thoroughly as “deeply disappointing”.

The point of the Nato air campaign in Libya last year was to protect civilians, so how many innocent people died is still a sensitive issue, BBC diplomatic correspondent Bridget Kendall reports.

‘Deeply troubling’

In its report published on Monday, HRW said it had examined in detail evidence of claims of civilian deaths from eight separate Nato strikes.

In one instance, it said a first Nato bomb killed 14 people and a second bomb, moments later, killed 18 more who had rushed to help victims.

What concerns Mr Abrahams, the main author of the report, is that the deaths remain unacknowledged and the families have been offered no compensation.

“Until now, Nato has taken a position of denial,” he said.

“They refuse to give information about how they died and they refuse to investigate, and it is this lack of transparency that is deeply troubling.

“I think it will lead to unnecessary civilian deaths in the future if Nato refuses to look at what went wrong and make corrections.”

Nato says it is ready to co-operate with the new Libyan authorities in assessing what further action is appropriate.

But so far the task force being set up in Tripoli seems to have made little headway, our diplomatic correspondent adds.

Amb. Prosor explodes myths. ‘How can Israel-PA conflict be the key to stopping Assad and Ahmadinejad? Jerusalem not Jewish?

Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu, Arutz Sheva, April 24, 2012

Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Ron Prosor tore apart several myths Monday in an “Open Debate on the Situation in the Middle East” in the United Nations Security Council.

After quoting Winston Churchill’s statement, “In the time that it takes a lie to get halfway around the world, the truth is still getting its pants on,” Prosor methodically brought up and tore apart myths that he said have fertile ground in the Middle East. 

“Facts often remain buried in the sand. The myths forged in our region travel abroad – and can surprisingly find their way into these halls,” He said.

- Myth number one: “The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict is the central conflict in the Middle East. If you solve that conflict, you solve all the other conflicts in the region.” Prosor told the Council members. “The truth is that conflicts in Syria, Yemen, Egypt, Bahrain, and many other parts of the Middle East have absolutely nothing to do with Israel.

“It is obvious that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict won’t stop the persecution of minorities across the region, end the subjugation of women, or heal the sectarian divides. Obsessing over Israel has not stopped Assad’s tanks from flattening entire communities. On the contrary, it has only distracted attention from his crimes.

“Thousands are being killed in Syria, hundreds in Yemen, dozens in Iraq — and yet, this debate again repeatedly is focusing on the legitimate actions of the government of the only democracy in the Middle East. And dedicating the majority of this debate to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, month after month after month after month, has not stopped the Iranian regime’s centrifuges from spinning. 

- Myth number two: “There is a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.”

The Ambassador pointed out that even the Deputy Head of the Red Cross Office and “numerous international organizations have said clearly that there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”

He added,  Gaza’s real GDP grew by more than 25 percent during the first three quarters of 2011. There is not a single civilian good that cannot enter Gaza today. Yet, as aid flows into the area, missiles fly out. This is the crisis in Gaza.”  

- Myth number three: “Settlements are the primary obstacle to peace.”

Prosor said he can save time for the UN Human Rights Council, which has proposed another ‘fact-finding’ mission to Israel – this time to explore Israeli settlements. He said that “the facts have already been found,” explaining that when Egypt and Jordan controlled Judea, Samaria and Gaza between 1948 and 1967, “The Arab World did nothing – it did not lift a finger – to create a Palestinian state. And it sought Israel’s annihilation when not a single settlement stood anywhere in the West Bank or Gaza.

Prosor charged that the Arab world’s “primary obstacle to peace is not settlements [but]…is the so-called ‘claim of return’ – and the Palestinian’s refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist as the nation-state of the Jewish people.

He said that claims that Israel is “Judaizing Jerusalem” are “accusations [that] come about 3,000 years too late. It’s like accusing the NBA of Americanizing basketball.” Prosor also said that the percentage of Arab residents in  Jerusalem has grown from 26 percent in 1967 to 35 percent during the period that Israel supposed has been exercising “ethnic cleansing.”

- Another myth the Security Council has overlooked for the past 64 years, when Israel was reestablished as a state. is the “one great untold story, or – to be more specific – …more than 850,000 untold stories [of] Jews…uprooted from their homes in Arab countries,” he said.

Prosor pointed out, “These were vibrant communities dating back 2,500 years [but]…were wiped out. Age-old family businesses and properties were confiscated. Jewish quarters were destroyed. Pogroms left synagogues looted, graveyards desecrated and thousands dead.”

“The pages that the UN has written about the Palestinian refugees could fill up soccer stadiums, but not a drop of ink has been spilled about the Jewish refugees.

– He told the Council he “saved the most obvious myth for last: the myth that peace can somehow be achieved between Israelis and Palestinians by bypassing direct negotiations. History has shown that peace and negotiations are inseparable.”

“Palestinian leaders continue to pile up new pre-conditions for sitting with Israel. They are everywhere except the negotiating table.“ 

www.israelnationalnews.com

Reprinted from Daily Alert, Friday, April 20, 2012

Teachers from Rural U.S. on Educational Journey to Poland and Israel – Corinne Lestch
17 teachers from schools across the U.S. are still processing an emotionally powerful trip to Poland and Israel to deepen their understanding of the Holocaust, and bring back their experiences to the classroom. "We’re using the Holocaust as a lens to teach social justice, and we wanted to concentrate on teachers who have very little access to resources or survivors," said Sondra Perl, an English professor who helped create the Holocaust Educators Network at Lehman College.
    "They’re addressing local issues in their own home states around injustice, tolerance, bullying, racism. Most of them are not Jewish." "Poland broke my heart, and Israel blew my mind," Perl recalled a teacher from Idaho saying. (New York Daily News)

Free Israeli Cataract Clinics Treat 1,000 Ethiopians – Rivka Borochov (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
    When the seven-person crew from the Israeli volunteer organization Eye from Zion arrived in a remote region in Ethiopia in February to provide free cataract surgery, they were expecting several dozen patients. 1,400 showed up.
    The organization has performed the 20-minute procedure on thousands of people in Asian and African countries.
    After an initial 170 operations in the regions of Debark and Gondar, Eye from Zion founder Nati Marcus planned to return with another team of four eye doctors, a couple of nurses and a technician over the course of the year to finish the job for those on the waiting list.
    No one at Eye from Zion receives any money for their services.

Israeli Defense Firm to Add 100 Jobs in Maryland (Baltimore Sun)
    ELTA North America, a subsidiary of Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd., has opened a location in Maple Lawn in Howard County, Md., where it plans to create 100 new jobs, the state Department of Business and Economic Development said Wednesday.
    Most of ELTA’s employees are scientists, engineers, programmers and technicians who develop products for the armed services.

New Israeli Technology to Recycle Cellulose in Sludge – Karin Kloosterman (Green Prophet)
    Refael Aharon, the CEO and founder of Applied Clean Tech, says his company has refined the process of turning the cellulose in sludge – toilet paper, fecal matter and washing machine lint – into new paper.
    The finished product has no odor and poses no biological hazard. "It’s a real recycled paper," Aharon says.
    The company is already using its cellulose-based raw material in envelopes.

U.S.-Israel 3-D Printer-Makers Merge, Form $1.4B Company – Nataleeya Boss (Twin Cities Business)
    Eden Prairie, Minn.-based 3-D printer manufacturer Stratasys, Inc., will soon merge with Objet, Ltd., a Rehovot, Israel-based company that also makes 3-D printers, the companies said Monday. The equity value of the combined company will total approximately $1.4 billion.

Abu Marzook Says He’s Open to a New Israel Relationship

ahmed esmaill

In an exclusive interview, Abu Marzook discussed his own political future, relations with Israel, the Hamas Charter and the impact of the Arab Spring on his organization.

By Larry Cohler-Esses

Jewish Daily Forward, Published April 19, 2012, issue of April 27, 2012.

Cairo — Any agreement reached between Israel and the Palestinian Authority will be subject to far-reaching changes if Hamas comes to power in a democratic Palestinian state, a top Hamas leader told the Forward in an exclusive and wide-ranging interview.

Mousa Abu Marzook, considered Hamas’s second-highest-ranking official, said that his group would view an agreement between Israel and the P.A. — even one ratified by a referendum of all Palestinians — as a hudna, or cease-fire, rather than as a peace treaty. In power, he said, Hamas would feel free to shift away from those provisions of the agreement that define it as a peace treaty and move instead toward a relationship of armed truce.

“We will not recognize Israel as a state,” he said emphatically. “It will be like the relationship between Lebanon and Israel or Syria and Israel.”

The exchange was but one part of an unprecedented five-and-a-half-hour discussion conducted over two days between Abu Marzook and the Forward, the first-ever in-depth exchange between a senior Hamas leader and a Jewish publication.

TELL US WHAT YOU THINK OF THIS STORY. CLICK HERE TO COMMENT.

Abu Marzook, deputy director of Hamas’s political bureau, for the most part used the opportunity to expand on long-standing Hamas positions. Contrary to some media reports, he indicated no new flexibility that would move Hamas closer to accepting conditions laid down by the so-called Quartet of the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations for his group’s participation in the now moribund Middle East peace process. Abu Marzook did not, however, foreclose the possibility of a more accommodating relationship with Israel in the future.

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• In Fatah-Hamas Deal, What Role for Salam Fayyad?

Quite apart from the content of Abu Marzook’s remarks, several veteran observers of the hard-line Islamist group viewed the fact that the interview took place as a larger signal of change now roiling the organization.

“I think the mere fact of his speaking to you, independent of what he said, is almost more important than the specifics,” said Shlomi Eldar, who has reported on Hamas from Gaza for Israel TV’s Channel 10 and other media outlets since 1991. “Even granting such an interview is far away

from what he thought two or three years ago…. What [Abu Marzook] really wants is for Jewish Americans to convince the Israelis that Hamas is not like an animal.”

HOW WAS THIS HISTORIC INTERVIEW ARRANGED? FIND OUT HERE.

Gershon Baskin, an Israeli peace activist who has acted as a liaison between Hamas and senior Israeli government officials, including in the process that finally freed Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, termed the interview an “historic landmark.”

“The amount of time he gave you is amazing,” Baskin said.

But David Makovsky, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, focused more on the actual content. “Unfortunately,” he said, “it’s a validation of those who believe Hamas has a far way to go before it becomes a legitimate Palestinian interlocutor.”

In a number of cases, Abu Marzook — who is one of three prime candidates in upcoming internal elections for Hamas’s top leadership spot — offered words that differ on a practical level with the organization’s actual stance or behavior. The discrepancy could cut either way: In his call for a hudna with Israel, Abu Marzook sounded almost beseechingly dovish, even though his underlying conditions and details suggested a considerably more hard-line stance. On the other hand, his defense of Hamas’s right to launch operations targeting civilians compared with the absence of such attacks in recent years within Israel’s pre-1967 boundaries.

Over the course of the two-day discussion, amid a lunch of salmon and Nile River fish the first day and takeout pizza the second, Abu Marzook expounded on a variety of topics, ranging from the Holocaust, American Jewish solidarity with Israel, and the impact of the Arab Spring on his organization, to anti-Semitic passages in the Hamas Charter.

But Abu Marzook appeared to speak most passionately when touting his proposal for a hudna — an idea he first proposed in 1994.

“Let’s establish a relationship between the two states in the historic Palestinian land as a hudna between both sides,” he said. “It’s better than war and better than the continuous resistance against the occupation. And better than Israel occupying the West Bank and Gaza, making all these difficulties and problems on both sides.”

Pressed regarding concerns that Hamas’s goal during a hudna would remain the destruction of Israel as a state, and that a truce would give Hamas time to build up its arms toward that end, Abu Marzook said: “It’s very difficult to say after 10 years what will be on both sides. Maybe my answer right now [about recognizing Israel] is completely different to my answer after 10 years.”

But asked if, offered guarantees for his physical security, he would be prepared to go to Jerusalem to negotiate with Israel for exactly the kind of hudna he seeks, Abu Marzook replied bluntly, “No.”

Hamas has rejected negotiating with Israel directly. Abu Marzook said that under a previous understanding with Fatah, the faction controlling the P.A. in the West Bank, Hamas allows the P.A. to negotiate with Israel, despite its objections to the process. But Abu Marzook repeated his organization’s demand that any result must be approved in a referendum that includes all Palestinian refugees, not just those in the West Bank and Gaza. “All of the Palestinians should vote about this,” he said.

TELL US WHAT YOU THINK OF THIS STORY. CLICK HERE TO COMMENT.

He also made clear that such an agreement must include the unqualified right of Palestinians to return to land in what is now Israel.

From there, it only got more complicated. Abu Marzook described an agreement that would be treated almost as a “Rashomon” document — seen by the P.A. as a peace treaty, but by Hamas as a mere truce agreement.

“When we reach the agreement, our point of view is, it’s a hudna,” Abu Marzook emphasized.

This is not just a matter of semantics. Like the classic Akira Kurosawa film, in which each party observes the same event but sees it in radically different and ultimately irreconcilable ways, Fatah and Hamas envision radically different relationships with Israel, based on the same document.

For Fatah, a peace treaty with Israel encompasses mutual recognition, diplomatic exchange, trade, commerce, movement of peoples across borders and regional cooperation. It also includes a non-militarized Palestinian state and a limited Palestinian right of return.

And Hamas’s hudna vision?

“What’s the relationship between Israel and Syria and Lebanon right now?” Abu Marzook asked.

That answer — closed borders, barbed wire, no trade, no commerce, no diplomats, and arms build-ups on each side, to the best of each side’s respective abilities, in preparation for a possible war — might not matter much, so long as Fatah remained the party ruling a new Palestine state. But both Fatah and Hamas agree that their new state will be a democracy. So the question was unavoidable: What will become of any peace treaty Israel negotiates with the P.A. under Fatah if and when Hamas comes to power?

“Rabin signed the Oslo Accords,” Abu Marzook recalled, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s solemn ceremony with Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, on the White House lawn in 1993. “And when [Israeli opposition leader Benjamin] Netanyahu came [to power], he disagreed about the Oslo agreement,” leading to numerous changes in the accords.

Asked if a final peace treaty between Israel and a Palestinian state would not bind Hamas if it came to power later, Abu Marzook replied: “No. I don’t think any kind of treaty can ‘stuck’ anybody in the future. Just read history.”

Abu Marzook offered his views at a moment of unprecedented and far-reaching change in the Arab world, and within his own organization. The Arab Spring is one year old, and Hamas, classified as a terrorist group by the U.S. government, is today, numerous experts say, the latest stage on which the Arab world’s revolutionary drama is playing out.

The tidal wave that pitched out dictators in Tunis and Cairo has pushed the staunchly militant Palestinian group from its longtime home in Damascus, where the Spring’s surge has run blood red.

Hamas leaders have disavowed the Syrian regime’s slaughter of its own citizens and scattered across the region, some resettling in the Persian Gulf, others in Jordan and some in Gaza, where democratically elected Hamas officials rule a rump territory still under Israeli siege.

But Abu Marzook has come to Cairo — the Arab Spring’s still bubbling crucible. He has settled into a large three-story mansion some 90 minutes outside the city, in a newly developed, upper-class planned community known as New Cairo. The neighborhood’s wide, still unpaved streets look almost deserted but for construction crews, and are lined with numerous half-built homes, their scaffoldings still mounted in place and mounds of rubble piled in front of them. It’s quiet; a far cry from Cairo’s tumult. Security, a major consideration for a man in Abu Marzook’s position, is no doubt an easier proposition in this tranquil corner of a country still in midrevolution.

Inside his sparsely furnished home, with its large, airy rooms and marble floors, Abu Marzook works amid a retinue of bodyguards and aides. No women are in sight. At the end of the second day of the interview, he cheerfully offered his business card and invited follow-up questions via phone or email. But first, he wrote a new phone number at the top of the card. Disregard the four Damascus phone numbers still printed under his name, he said.

It is almost certainly not the first time he has had to improvise business cards. Abu Marzook’s has been a peripatetic life. A calm, soft-spoken man of 61, Abu Marzook struggles haltingly in rusty English — a language he once spoke daily while pursuing a master’s degree in construction management at Colorado State University; a doctorate in industrial engineering at Louisiana Tech, in Ruston, La., and living several years in Falls Church, Va., where his primary work through the early 1990s was raising millions of dollars for Hamas.

“They called him ‘the genius,’” said the journalist Eldar, whose new book, “Getting To Know Hamas,” is to be published in Israel in May. “In 1989 and 1992, he saved Hamas during periods of crisis. His fundraising built up Hamas’s infrastructure in Gaza because he had the financial connections with the Islamic funds around the world, especially in America and Europe.”

Indeed, during this earlier period, Abu Marzook was the top director of Hamas’s political bureau, not its deputy director. Within the movement, he was known as the favored protégé of Hamas’s revered founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Born in Rafah, a southern Gaza city near the Egyptian border, to parents who hailed from a village near Hebron in the West Bank, Abu Marzook was picked by Yassin at an early age as a prize pupil meant for greater things. With Yassin’s support, he attended college at Ain Shams University in Cairo and went on to graduate school in the United States — in part, to gain worldly knowledge of the West that would help a movement with few in its ranks who had this background.

Ostensibly, Abu Marzook’s fundraising, based in the United States and run from his home outside Washington, went to support Hamas’s huge network of social services in Gaza and, to a lesser extent, in the West Bank. Israel alleges (and he denies) that some of his fundraising went to support terrorist actions, as well. Hamas’ sprawling enterprise of medical clinics, orphanages, schools and social service agencies made up the overwhelming bulk of the group’s work in the occupied territories, as it does today. At the time, such fundraising was not explicitly illegal. The U.S. government did not designate Hamas as a terrorist group until 1995.

The popular gratitude and deep social roots that Hamas and its precursor group accrued through years of providing such service to Palestinians made it a formidable force when it launched its first attacks against Israel, during the first intifada, in 1988. Until then, Israel had quietly encouraged the religious movement as a rival to Fatah and other militant PLO groups, then seen as the Jewish state’s primary enemies.

Citing arguments that Islamic law prohibits ceding Muslim lands to nonbelievers, Hamas resolutely opposes the Oslo Accords and the halting efforts made by its bitter rival, the PLO, and by Israel toward a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. From the start of the Oslo process, the group backed up its opposition with terrorism, launching a campaign of bombings and eventually suicide bomb attacks, targeting civilians in cities across Israel. Since its inception, Hamas claims to have killed 1,365 “Zionist soldiers”— a statistic likely to include combatants and non-combatants, as the group has stated in the past that it views all Israeli Jews as combatants.

In 1993, Abu Marzook left the United States for Jordan, where he joined other leaders of Hamas’s “outside” wing to set up the group’s political headquarters in Amman. Jordan’s ruler, King Hussein, had long cultivated close, if careful, ties with Jordan’s affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood, and Hamas, which was established as the Islamist movement’s Palestinian branch, was offered offices in the Jordanian capital to set up its political operation right next door to Israel.

But after Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994, Israeli officials pressed Hussein hard to expel the group. The United States also pressured Jordan, and so, for that matter, did the PLO, which had come to view Hamas as the biggest internal threat to its hold on power.

In response, Hussein, who preferred to keep potential enemies close, offered a concession: He threw out Abu Marzook, who returned to the United States in 1995.

But on his arrival, Abu Marzook was instead detained when a terrorism watch list at immigration turned up his name. A search of Abu Marzook’s carry-on bags found what looked like evidence of substantial offshore and American bank accounts. And a strip search of his wife yielded an address book with hundreds of names, including several people whom American authorities regarded as Middle East extremists. Soon after his detention, Israel asked Washington to extradite Abu Marzook to stand trial in Israel on terrorism charges.

Abu Marzook eventually spent a year-and-a-half in Manhattan’s Metropolitan Correctional Center as his attorney, Stanley L. Cohen, fought a no-holds-barred, high-profile battle against his extradition. In the end, after initial decisions against him, it was Abu Marzook, weary of sitting in jail, who instructed Cohen to desist in his appeals; he’d go to Jerusalem, he decided, and face the Israelis in what promised to be a trial of the century.

Then, the government of Israel shifted. U.S. Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk cabled Washington that the recently elected Netanyahu government was uncertain it wished to take on the case. A late-night meeting between Washington’s envoy to Amman and King Hussein produced a way out: Hussein agreed to take back Abu Marzook.

Abu Marzook returned to Jordan in 1997, expecting to be hailed as the hero of Hamas who had faced down Israel and won. Khaled Meshal, a Hamas activist with roots in Kuwait, was expected to quickly return the keys to Abu Marzook’s office as chief of Hamas’s political bureau, which Meshal had managed on an acting basis.

But then, in September 1997, Netanyahu singlehandedly, if unintentionally, upended Abu Marzook’s triumph: He approved a Mossad hit on Meshal that went terribly wrong when the Israeli hit team was captured while trying to escape. To extricate the team, Netanyahu was forced to give up some 70 Palestinian detainees, including the most prized prisoner of all: Yassin. He also had to save Meshal’s life with the antidote to the toxin the agents had administered.

Abu Marzook’s star was not just eclipsed, it was sunk. “The day they tried to kill [Meshal] was the day Meshal the leader was born,” the well-connected Amman journalist Ranya Kadri told author Paul McGeough in his book, “Kill Khalid,” a history of the botched hit. “The man who died that day was Abu Marzook. Nobody wanted to talk to Abu Marzook after that — it was Meshal, Meshal, Meshal.”

Since then, Abu Marzook, though still a top player in Hamas, has served as deputy director to Meshal. The two are colleagues and rivals. On at least three occasions, Abu Marzook has stood as a leadership candidate to retake the top position in secret elections held by the Shura Council, Hamas’s clandestine policymaking body. Meshal has emerged each time, victorious.

But in January, to widespread surprise, Meshal announced his resignation. No one knows whether the Shura Council will accept the resignation when it meets sometime soon, on a date that remains secret. There are now considered to be three top candidates for the coveted post of political director: Meshal, Abu Marzook and Ismail Haniyeh, who was elected prime minister of the P.A. in 2006 and has been the effective chief of Gaza since then. The contest comes amid signs of sharply increased tensions between Meshal, the “outside” leader, and Haniyeh, now leading his own government in Gaza.

Asked if he is, indeed, a candidate, Abu Marzook explained that the process in Hamas was not like a like a bid for the U.S. presidency, in which a candidate throws his hat into the ring.

“Nobody announces himself as a candidate,” he said. “Someone else should announce a person for a post.”

But asked if, like the Civil War general, William Tecumseh Sherman, he would refuse to run if nominated and refuse to serve if elected, Abu Marzook laughed heartily and said, “No, I’m not that man.”

For Israel’s current leaders, the question of who ends up running Hamas is deemed moot. “None of this is relevant for Israel, because the government says they don’t want to hear from Hamas,” Eldar said.

Meanwhile, Israeli officials routinely denounce efforts by the Fatah leaders who control the P.A. to consummate a reconciliation agreement with Hamas, arguing that as a terrorist organization it is an unsuitable partner. But just as routinely, Israeli hard-liners dismiss negotiating with the P.A. at all, since it controls only the West Bank while Hamas rules in Gaza, outside its orbit.

A series of meetings between Fatah and Hamas leaders has ended in repeated announcements of an imminent agreement to bring the two groups and their rump governments back together. But the agreement has yet to be implemented, and Abu Marzook indicated with a resigned air that this would not happen very soon. “There’s some difficulties in the West Bank and some difficulties in Gaza, and we are working together to solve these,” he said.

If Abu Marzook’s appeal for a hudna sounded more dovish than his plan’s actual details, his rhetoric regarding Hamas attacks on Israel tacked in the opposite direction: considerably more hawkish than the reality.

The last suicide bombing attributed to Hamas took place in August 2004, almost eight years ago — an attack on two buses in Beersheba that killed 16 people. Since then, however, Israel claims to have thwarted terrorist attacks sponsored by Hamas in Israel proper. The group has also continued to launch attacks — some fatal — against Israeli Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank.

Since Israel’s 2008–2009 military offensive in Gaza, which it dubbed Operation Cast Lead, Hamas has also ceased launching rockets from Gaza into southern Israel.

Until March, the Hamas government in Gaza had for the most part sought to stop other groups from firing such missiles, as well. Then, on March 9, Israel launched a targeted killing in Gaza of a militant from another group whom Israel charged was planning a terrorist attack against it. That provoked a fusillade of some 200 rockets fired into Israel by others, which Hamas officials did nothing to stop. This, in turn, brought on escalating Israeli retaliations, until Egypt brokered a cease-fire agreement.

The exchange resulted in the deaths of 25 Palestinians, most of them militants but several civilians; no Israelis died.

Abu Marzook was at pains to knock down suggestions in numerous media outlets that Hamas is preparing to abandon armed resistance against Israel in favor of mass popular resistance against Israeli rule.

HOW WAS THIS HISTORIC INTERVIEW ARRANGED? FIND OUT HERE.

A February 6 article by Time magazine correspondent Karl Vick about the “mainstreaming” of Hamas was one object of his disdain. In it, Vick played up comments by Meshal, who, at a November reconciliation meeting with Fatah leaders, praised the popular protests of the Arab Spring last year in Egypt and Tunisia as packing “the power of a tsunami.”

“The new government emerging in Cairo may be dominated by Islamists,” Vick wrote hopefully, “but it has pushed both sides to make up and adopt the nonviolent strategy against Israel, complete with negotiations.”

For Abu Marzook, the November meeting in Cairo meant something “completely different.” At the meeting, he said, the groups involved asked, “What kind of [activities] between us we can share together?” And mass civil resistance, it was decided, was one in which all could participate.

“We accept that,” he said. “[It] can now make reconciliation easier.” But giving up both the right and the opportunity to conduct military operations? “It doesn’t mean that,” Abu Marzook stated flatly.

Indeed, a careful look at the original Agence France Presse report from which Vick drew Meshal’s comments reveals some important remarks the Time correspondent left out. “Now we have a common ground that we can work on,” Meshal said then. But he added, “As long as there is an occupation on our land, we have the right to defend our land by all means, including military resistance.”

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“Hamas is not going to voluntarily surrender what they see as a strategic and tactical option,” Baskin, the Israeli peace activist, said. “That would be in their eyes like surrender. So they say the option remains on the table. But what they tell people in the West who are engaging them is, ‘Watch what we do, not what we say.’”

Speaking in a different context, about the effects of the Arab Spring, Abu Marzook himself offered an additional consideration.

“Hamas before the [2006] election is not the same as after they are elected,” he said, “because as an opposition party, you can say anything, but no one expects you to do anything. But after election, you have to implement on the ground. And there are many, many difficulties when you implement anything on the ground.”

Still, in a long exchange about terrorism, the Hamas leader resolutely defended his organization’s past acts of violence targeting civilians. He asserted that Israel, under the rubric of collateral damage, had killed thousands more Palestinian civilians than vice versa. He dismissed the notion that it made some moral difference that Israel generally issues statements of public regret for the deaths of civilians it hits in pursuing what it characterized as military targets, while Hamas leaders often publicly celebrated the group’s successful actions targeting civilians.

“You cannot compare between the civilians killed by Israel and the civilians killed by the resistance,” Abu Marzook said. The Israeli numbers, he stressed, “were huge, really huge…. The action’s the action. You killed 17 children here. And there are 16 civilians killed in Israel. If you evaluate what the Israelis said or what the resistance said — okay, you can compare between just the talk. But in reality, the Israelis killed more than 1,000, and they said, ‘We are sorry.’… The killing is killing.”

At some points, Abu Marzook seemed to claim that the Hamas leaders who publicly celebrated such killings — who have included Meshal himself — were not speaking for the organization, or that Hamas had not itself directed and planned the actions or, at least, had not planned them as civilian hits.

“There’s no one speaker [within] the resistance,” he said. “Everybody talks about their actions, and you can make what you want of those speakers. They make it as [if this is] the policy of the resistance. And this is not right. Our policy is… against targeting any civilian.”

On those occasions when civilians die in such actions, “there is no planning” for this, he claimed, “because it’s very difficult to make something like this to be perfect…. When you killed his brother or his [fellow Palestinian] civilians, he wants to retaliate. It’s very difficult to say anything bad to him.”

Mouin Rabbani, a Jordan-based Middle East contributing editor to Middle East Report who follows Hamas closely, expressed surprise at such distancing remarks.

“I’m surprised he didn’t repeat their traditional justifications,” he said.

In the past, Rabbani said, Hamas had expressed interest in reaching an understanding with Israel whereby each side would undertake to avoid hitting civilians or civilian infrastructure targets. “In the past, among other arguments, they’ve justified their actions by claiming every Israeli is a soldier. It’s very uncommon for them to basically disavow these actions.”

‘Why am I here?”

This was not an existential plea to the cosmos. It was, rather, the first question I put to Abu Marzook at the start of the interview: Why had he agreed to a request by a Jewish news organization to talk with him in-depth in a lengthy and probing exchange?

“We don’t have originally something against the Jew as a religion or against the Jew as a human being,” he said. “The problem is that the Israelis kicked out my family. They have occupied my land and injured thousands of Palestinians…. I have to differentiate between the Jew who did this problem to my people and [American] Jews like you, who never did anything bad to my people.”

Abu Marzook waved away the contention that, in fact, most American Jews strongly support Israel as a Jewish state — in many cases, quite actively — and sympathize with their fellow Jews there. Speaking of Americans in general, he said, “Those people who have sympathy for the Jews [in Israel], it’s because of their history with the Jews. If you look carefully at what happened to the Jews in Moscow or Madrid, in Spain or in Germany or Poland, that’s very bad…. Anyone who historically his father or grandfather did something like that [to the Jews], he should be ashamed.”

This made Abu Marzook’s comments the next day in defense of the Hamas Charter all the more surprising. The charter, a lengthy, multi-part founding document composed in 1988, contains several sections that have been widely condemned as anti-Semitic.

The first such section cites a hadith, or saying of the Prophet Muhammad:

“The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.”

The second section cites passages from “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” an early 20th-century forgery now widely attributed to the czar of Russia’s secret police, that depict world Jewry as a nefarious international force through Western history. The passages cited hold “world Zionism” as responsible for, among other things, the French and communist revolutions, the control of media and finance worldwide, and the machinations of “secret societies,” including the “Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, the Lions in different parts of the world” that have been formed “for the purpose of sabotaging societies and achieving Zionist interests.”

Abu Marzook said that the charter does not govern his organization.

“We have many, many policies that are not going with the charter,” he said. “But when you talk about ‘change the charter,’ there are many Hamas people talking about changing the charter. That’s a debate inside Hamas, because there are many, many policies against what’s written in the charter.”

Asked specifically about changing the passages on Jews, Abu Marzook acknowledged no such amendments existed. But he defended the hadith as being taken out of context. The passage, he said, did not apply to all Jews — just those in Palestine.

As for the Protocols, “The Zionists wrote it, and they said, ‘No, we didn’t.‘ [It’s] linked to Zionists,” he said.

Informed that the document was, in fact, a forgery, Abu Marzook appeared nonplussed. “Really? This is the first time I know [about this],” he said.

For a Hamas leader who had lived and studied in the West to respond in such a manner seemed a stunning reflection of a movement that remains deeply insular and parochial, even as it now seeks wider legitimacy.

Abu Marzook spoke hopefully of the influence of the Arab Spring as a boon to his movement. The rise of fellow Islamist groups in Egypt and elsewhere could help bring the issue of the Palestinians to the fore, he said, even if, in the short term, Muslim Brotherhood groups, now responsible for governing, emphasized domestic concerns.

He alluded to the debate that the Arab Spring has sparked within Hamas itself, including discussion of converting the group fully into a political party that eschewed its own separate militia or guerilla arm, as has occurred with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. “There are some people in Hamas thinking [that] way,” he said. “But personally, I’m against any kind of political party, because Hamas is a political party and a resistance. You can’t divide this.”

But asked how the Arab Spring’s themes of civil resistance and demands for openness, transparency and democracy might influence Hamas, Abu Marzook looked puzzled. His group operates in areas, such as the occupied West Bank, in which it remains an illegal organization, he noted. And its status in several Arab countries also makes open operations impractical. He declined even to offer a dollar figure for its operating budget.

Might Hamas, for example, consider opening a window on debate within the secretive Shura Council, a body that will soon select a new leader even though no one, including its purported constituents, knows who its members are and how they will vote?

“This is not the interest of people in any way,” Abu Marzook replied.

Contact Larry Cohler-Esses at cohleresses@forward.com

Read more: http://www.forward.com/articles/155054/hamas-wouldn-t-honor-a-treaty-top-leader-says/?p=all#ixzz1sa6DlSSE

Posted By Margaret Griffis, On April 19, 2012

Iraq suffered significant bomb attacks in multiple cities today, leaving at least 69 dead and 176 more wounded. The multiple large-scale attacks were apparently coordinated, took place mostly during a 75-minute span, and focused on security personnel. In stark contrast, recent violence has largely resulted in only one or two deaths at a time.

Hamid Mutlaq, a Sunni member of parliament, blamed Baghdad for the slaughter, noting that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s office has been stoking political tensions in recent weeks and causing several groups to call for an end to Maliki’s budding "dictatorship." Among the most aggrieved parties is Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi who fled to Iraqi Kurdistan. He fears that Maliki’s machinations are tearing the country apart.

The carnage cut short a relatively quiet period for Iraq. According to the Interior Ministry, March saw the lowest death toll since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Their figures came up to 112 killed. The deadliest day last month left 63 dead and 257 wounded.

The gravest single attack today took place near Kirkuk in Malhaa/Dibis, where a multiple bomb attack killed nine people and wounded 24 more.

In Baghdad, a bomb targeted Health Minister Majeed Hamad Amin but instead killed two bodyguards and wounded six others on Palestine Street. Three people were killed and 20 more were injured in a blast in Kadhimiya. A bomb in Amil killed two construction workers and wounded 18 more. Two people were killed as they allegedly tried to plant a bomb in Ghazaliya. Five civilians were wounded in a Zaafaraniya blast. A judge was assassinated in Saidiya. Two civilians were killed in a blast in Harthiya.

A car bomber exploded his cargo at a Sahwa checkpoint in Samarra, killing five militia members and wounding eight more. Nearby, another bomb killed two people and wounded a Sahwa member. Three policemen were killed in a third but separate blast.

Eight civilians were killed in two separate bombing in Ramadi. As many as 10 others were also wounded.

A suicide bomber in Taji killed five people and wounded nine more. Two more bombs killed a civilian and wounded five others.

Two bombs in Kirkuk itself left four dead and 19 wounded. The police chief from Muqdadiya was among the wounded.

In Mosul, a suicide bomber was killed by security personnel before he could pull off his attack. A blast near a college left two dead and three wounded. A separate blast left three dead and two wounded at a restaurant.

One person was killed and 13 more were wounded in a blast, the first attack in the series, in Baquba.

In Tarmiya, a bomb targeting police killed one civilian and wounded six others, including three policemen.

Four policemen were killed when a roadside bomb exploded near Falluja.

Last night, a bomb in Amiriyat al-Fallujah killed a policeman and wounded another.

Gunmen attacked a checkpoint in Khales, killing one person and wounding three more.

Gunmen stormed a home in Mansouriyat al-Jabal where they killed a Sahwa member.

A car bomb exploded in Dujail, but only killed the driver of the car.

A roadside bomb killed a soldier in Ishaqi.

Gunmen killed a man in Mussayab.

The body of a four-year-old who had been shot was found in Imam Weis.

Six oil policemen were wounded in a blast near Jalawla.

At least five more people were wounded across Diyala province.

A blast in Hawija wounded three soldiers. Gunmen wounded a policeman.

In Kanaan, an I.E.D. blast wounded five people at a stadium.

In Jurf al-Sakhar, three people were wounded when the bomb they were allegedly planting exploded prematurely.

Mortars were launched into Balad and Tikrit, but no casualties were reported.

A car bomb was defused in Mafraq.

Read more by Margaret Griffis

• Kurdistan’s Barzani To Meet With Iraq’s Hashemi While in Turkey – April 18th, 2012
• Scattered Violence Leaves 13 Killed in Iraq – April 17th, 2012
• Iraqiya Seeks Confidence Withdrawal for Maliki – April 16th, 2012
• Iraq Election Officials Out on Bail; 13 Killed in Attacks – April 15th, 2012
• Iraq: Sadrists And Kurds Denounce Election Commission Arrests – April 14th, 2012

Article printed from Antiwar.com Original: http://original.antiwar.com

URL to article: http://original.antiwar.com/updates/2012/04/19/iraq-carnage-69-killed-176-wounded/

PM Netanyahu’s Speech at Holocaust Remembrance Day

Translation

18/04/2012

Photo by GPO

Yesterday morning, I visited an old-age home for Holocaust survivors.  There, I met Idit Yapo, an amazing woman of 104, clear and lucid.  Idit fled Germany shortly after Hitler gained power, in 1934. 
I met 89-year-old Esther Nadiv, one of Mendele’s twins.  She was reading a book, Golda Meir’s biography, and she told me, with a glint in her eye, she said:  “I am so proud, so very proud to be a part of the State of Israel which is in constant development.”
I met Hanoch Mandelbaum, an 89-year-old survivor of Bergen-Belsen.  Shortly after he came to Israel, as a young carpenter, he helped construct the desk upon which Ben Gurion signed the Declaration of Independence.  That is MiSho’a liTkuma – from holocaust to resurrection.
And I met Elisheva Lehman, an 88 year-old Holocaust survivor from Holland, who was a music teacher.  
I asked Elisheva if she would play something for us and she did.  She enthusiastically played “Am Yisrael Chai” and we all sung together.  It was quite emotional.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Am Yisrael Chai [The nation of Israel lives]

Our enemies tried to bury the Jewish future, but it was reborn in the land of our forefathers.  Here, we built a foundation for a new beginning of freedom, hope, and creation.  Year after year, decade after decade, we built the foundations of our country, and we will continue to yearly strengthen the pillars of our national life.
On this day, when our entire nation gathers together to remember the horrors of the Holocaust and the six million Jews who were murdered, we must fulfill our most sacred obligation.
This obligation is not merely an obligation to remember the past.  It is an obligation to learn its lessons, and, most importantly, to apply them to the present in order to secure the future of our people.  We must remember the past and secure the future by applying the lessons of the past.
This is especially true for this generation – a generation that once again is faced with calls to annihilate the Jewish State.
One day, I hope that the State of Israel will enjoy peace with all the countries and all the peoples in our region.  One day, I hope that we will read about these calls to destroy the Jews only in history books and not in daily newspapers.
But that day has not yet come.
Today, the regime in Iran openly calls and determinedly works for our destruction.  And it is feverishly working to develop atomic weapons to achieve that goal.
I know that there are those who do not like when I speak such uncomfortable truths.  They prefer that we not speak of a nuclear Iran as an existential threat.  They say that such language, even if true, only sows fear and panic.
I ask, have these people lost all faith in the people of Israel?
Do they think that this nation, which has overcome every danger, lacks the strength to confront this new threat?
Did the State of Israel not triumph over existential threats when it was far less powerful than it is today?  Did its leaders have any qualms about saying the truth?
David Ben Gurion told the people of Israel the truth about the existential dangers they faced in 1948 when five Arab armies tried to snuff Israel out in its cradle.
Levi Eshkol told the people of Israel the truth in 1967 when a noose was being placed around Israel’s neck and we stood alone to face our fate.
And when they heard these truths, did the people of Israel panic or did they unite to thwart the dangers?  Were we paralyzed with fear or did we do what was necessary to protect ourselves.
I believe in the people of Israel – and this belief is based on our experiences.  I believe that the people of Israel can handle the truth.  And I believe that they we have the capability to defeat those who seek to harm us.
Those who dismiss Iran’s threats as exaggerated or as mere idle posturing have learned nothing from the Holocaust.  But we should not be surprised.
There have always been those among us who prefer to mock those who tell uncomfortable truths than squarely face the truth themselves.
That is how Zev Jabotinsky was received when he warned the Jews of Poland of the looming Holocaust.
This is what he said in 1938, in Warsaw:
“It is already THREE years that I am calling upon you, Polish Jewry, who are the crown of World Jewry.  I continue to warn you incessantly that a catastrophe is coming closer.  I became grey and old in these years, my heart bleeds, that you, dear brother and sisters, do not see the volcano which will soon begin to spit its all-consuming lava…  I see that you are not seeing this because you are immersed and sunk in your daily worries…  Listen to me in this twelfth hour:  In the name of G-d!  Let anyone of you save himself, as long as there is still time, and time there is very little.”
But the leading Jewish intellectuals of the day ridiculed Jabotinsky, and rather than heed his warning, they attacked him.
This is what Sholem Asch, one of our nation’s greatest writers, said about him:
“What Jabotinsky is now doing in Poland is going too far.  His statement is detrimental to Zionism and to the vital interests of our people… It is disgraceful that these are leaders of a nation.”
I know there are also those who believe that the unique evil of the Holocaust should never be invoked in discussing other threats facing the Jewish people.
To do so, they argue, is to belittle the Holocaust and to offend its victims.
I totally disagree.  On the contrary.  To cower from speaking the uncomfortable truth – that today like then, there are those who want to destroy millions of Jewish people – that is to belittle the Holocaust, that is to offend its victims and that is to ignore the lessons.
Not only does the Prime Minister of Israel have the right, when speaking of these existential dangers, to invoke the memory of a third of our nation which was annihilated.  It is his duty.
There is a memorable scene in Claude Lanzmann’s documentary Shoah that explains this obligation more than anything.
In the harsh existence in the Warsaw Ghetto, Leon Feiner of the Bund and Menachem Kirschenbaum of the General Zionists met with Jan Karski from the Polish World War II Resistance Movement.
Jan Karski was a decent, sensitive man, and they begged him to appeal to the conscience of the world against the Nazi crimes.  They described what was happening, they showed him, but to no avail.
They said: “Help us.  We have no country of our own, we have no government, and we even have no voice among the nations”
They were right.
Seventy years ago the Jewish people did not have the national capacity to summon the nations, nor the military might to defend itself.
But today things are different.
Today we have an army.
We have the ability, the duty and the determination to defend ourselves.
As Prime Minister of Israel, I will never shy from speaking the truth before the world, no matter how uncomfortable it may seem to some.
I speak the truth at the United Nations; I speak the truth in Washington DC, the capital of our great friend, the United States, and in other important capitals; And I speak the truth here in Jerusalem, on the grounds of Yad VaShem which are saturated with remembrance. 
I will continue to speak the truth to the world, but first and foremost I must speak it to my own people. I know that my people is strong enough to hear the truth. 
The truth is that a nuclear-armed Iran is an existential threat of the State of Israel.
The truth is that a nuclear-armed Iran is an political threat to other countries throughout the region and a grave threat to the world peace.
The truth is that Iran must be stopped from obtaining nuclear weapons.
It is the duty of the whole world, but above and beyond, it is OUR duty.
The memory of the Holocaust goes beyond holding memorial services; it is not merely a historical recollection.
The memory of the Holocaust obligates us to apply the lessons of the past to ensure the basis of our future.
We will never bury our heads in the sand.
Am Yisrael Chai, veNetzach Yisrael Lo Yeshaker
[The Nation of Israel Lives, and the Eternal one of Israel does not Lie]

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PM Netanyahu’s Speech at Holocaust Remembrance Day

Speaking at Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony at Yad Vashem PM says people who dismiss Iranian threat as an exaggeration have learnt nothing from Holocaust

Aviad Glickman, YNet News, April 18, 2012

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that people who dismiss the Iranian threat as a whim or an exaggeration "have learnt nothing from the Holocaust."

Speaking at the state ceremony for Holocaust Remembrance Day at the Warsaw Ghetto Square in Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Museum, Netanyahu said: "I believe in our ability to defend."

"A nuclear Iran is an existential threat on the State of Israel and also on the rest of the world," Netanyahu said. "We have an obligation to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. It’s the world’s obligation, but above all it is our obligation.

Netanyahu in Yad Vashem (Photo: Ben Kelmer)

"Remembering the Holocaust is not merely a matter of ceremony or historic memory. Remembering the Holocaust is imperative for learning the lessons of the past in order to ensure the foundations of the future. We shall never bury our heads in the sand. "

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Addressing criticism following his proclamations of Iran as an existential threat, the prime minister said: "I hope the day comes when we learn of calls for Israel’s annihilation in history classes only, and not in daily media reports. But that day is not here yet. The Iranian regime is openly calling for our destruction and working frantically for the development of nuclear weapons as a means to that end.

"I know that some people don’t appreciate me speaking such uncomfortable truths. They would rather we not talk about Iran as a nuclear threat, they claim that, though it may be true, this statement serves to sow panic and fear."

Peres warns of Holocaust denial (Photo: Ben Kelmer) 

President Shimon Peres also spoke at the ceremony. "The Nazi dictator’s crematoriums created a global disaster and a Holocaust for my people," he said. "Holocaust deniers are denying the actions of their predecessors to cover up for their own actions. The lie of denial will not extinguish the fire of the inferno."

Peres addressed the tragic accident in Mount Herzl in which Sec.-Lt. Hila Bezaleli, 20, was killed when a lighting fixture collapsed. He offered his condolences to the officer’s family and to that of a Combat Engineering Corps soldier who died at an IDF base apparently due to a heart defect earlier on Wednesday.

"On my way here, the bright lights of Jerusalem changed into the flames that consumed my people. This is us, this is our nation. A nation bearing a great light; a nation bearing fathomless orphanhood."

Linking the memory of the Holocaust and the Iranian threat, Peres said, "Today we are a strong nation. Humankind has no choice but to learn the lessons of the Holocaust and face existing threats, before it is too late.

"Iran stands at the center of the threat to Israel. It is the terror hub. It presents a threat to world peace. One should not underestimate Israel’s unconcealed and hidden capabilities to deal with this threat."

Gantz: IDF is a wall of protection

Speaking at the Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony at Kibbutz Tel Yitzhak, IDF Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Benny Gantz said, "Tonight, 70 years later, standing in the land of Israel I look before me and see the embodiment of the strength of the Jewish nation. The leitmotif that no enemy has ever been able to cut off."

Gantz said that the IDF draws it strength from the determination of Holocaust survivors and that never again shall the Jewish people stand defenseless.

"We are the arm of steel that will respond to any attempt to hurt us with a harsh blow. We are the people’s wall of protection," he said.

Minister Dan Meridor said: "There is a false claim that the State of Israel was established because of the Holocaust. This is not true. The Holocaust happened because there was no state of Israel and six million Jews instead of 10 million live here now because of the Holocaust. "

Boaz Fyler contributed to this report

by Khaled Abu Toameh
April 17, 2012 at 4:45 am

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3019/jordan-palestinian-refugees

Jordan’s treatment of Palestinian refugees is not uncommon for an Arab country. In the past, Palestinians have also been denied entry into Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Libya. Palestinians are being held in tents, with poor sanitary conditions.

More than 1,000 Palestinians who fled from the violence in Syria and were hoping to find temporary shelter in Jordan, have been stranded along the border between Syria and Jordan for the past few weeks. The Jordanian authorities have been refusing to allow them into the kingdom.

The Jordanian authorities have set up a makeshift refugee camp along the border with Syria, where the Palestinians are being held in tents, with poor sanitary conditions.

Jordan’s treatment of Palestinian refugees is not uncommon for an Arab country. Lebanon and Egypt have also refused to grant asylum to the fleeing Palestinians. This is also not the first time that an Arab country keeps Palestinians waiting on the border. In the past, Palestinians have also been denied entry into Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Libya.

Arab support for the Palestinians has been largely rhetorical over the past two decades, forcing the Palestinians to become almost entirely dependent on American and EU taxpayers’ money.

Meanwhile, an additional 100,000 Syrians, who have fled their country in the past year, have been permitted to enter Jordan.

The Jordanians are worried that if they allow a few hundred Palestinians to settle in the kingdom, that would create a precedent and pave the way for 500,000 Palestinians living in Syria to run away to Jordan.

As Jordan’s King Abdullah already has a problem with the 80% Palestinian majority in his kingdom, he does not want the Palestinians in the kingdom. They pose a demographic threat to the Jordanians.

The decision to ban the Palestinian refugees from entering Jordan coincided with reports that the Jordanian authorities have begun revoking the Jordanian citizenship of Palestinians which they had previously been given.

Because the Palestinians pose a demographic threat to the Jordanians, hundreds of thousands of them living in Jordan will lose their status as Jordanian citizens.

The Jordanian government, according to sources in Amman, has even decided to revoke the Jordanian citizenship of Palestinian Authority leaders, including Mahmoud Abbas.

King Abdullah this week dispatched a high level delegation to Ramallah to discuss the new measures against the Palestinians with the Palestinian leadership. Headed by Jordan’s interior minister, the delegation informed the Palestinians that the kingdom would not be able to help the Palestinians who fled from Syria.

King Abdullah is so worried about the talk, mainly in Israel, about the need to establish a Palestinian state in Jordan that he has just instructed his government to come up with a new electoral law that would keep Palestinians away from parliament and most government institutions altogether.

Instruction page distributed to soldiers serving in West Bank warns of ‘foreign press looking for strong images.’ IDF officer: It’s hard to believe Lt. Col. Eisner fell into their trap

Yoav Zitun, April 17, 2012

"Remember it takes only 10 seconds out of hours of video footage to cause irreparable damage to the image of the soldiers, the army and the State," an instruction page distributed by the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit to soldiers serving in Judea and Samaria read.

The instruction page, which was obtained by Ynet, urges officers to remember that "the media, and especially the foreign press, is looking for strong images, even provocative, and therefore we must refrain from creating such images unnecessarily.

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"Remember that reporters on the field can create a provocation by their very presence or even intentionally in order to incite you to react the way they want you to," the document stated.

In recent years, the IDF has been sending combat soldiers with a camcorder to accompany units during operational activities, including suspect arrests, patrols inside Palestinian villages and riots. The footage recorded during these activities is then used for legal and advocacy purposes.

Every spatial brigade has an IDF Spokesperson’s Unit representative at hand, in addition to the division spokespersons. Also, almost every company or regiment commander has a camcorder, and it is quite common to see soldiers carrying video cameras during regimental exercised.

All these precautions, however, have not helped avoid the incident on Saturday in which Lt. Col. Shalom Eisner was captured on camera striking a Danish activist with his M-16 rifle.

‘Lethal, yet legitimate weapon’

"The media has taken a central place on the modern battlefield and constitutes a lethal, yet legitimate weapon with which to achieve the goal," the document read.

"The media does not reflect reality as a mirror, but rather shapes and influences it. The Palestinians make good use of this tool. It’s important to be the one leading and not the one being led," the document stated, while stressing the need for swift reactions and reliability.

"Unlike in the past, nowadays all soldiers and officers in the territories are aware that pro-Palestinian activists are trying to ambush them," an officer serving in the Judea and Samaria regiment told Ynet. "The goal is to capture the soldiers beating or verbally attacking or humiliating the Palestinian population."

The officer explained that soldiers serving in the territories get an extensive briefing on the subject. "The forces get lectures and even undergo simulations that were very similar to what happened (to Lt. Col. Eisner) in reality. That’s why it’s difficult to understand why an officer such as himself fell into their trap."

IDF sources said Tuesday that IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz will likely dismiss Lt. Col. Shalom Eisner. The sources also estimated that he may be offered another position in the army.

Central Command Chief Nitzan Alon is expected to hand over his recommendation on the matter to Gantz.

Earlier on Tuesday Eisner commented on the affair and told reporters, "These are tough times but I’ll get through it."