NAKBA, 70 years! And counting
Among the things that the Iran deal critics demand is a broader, better deal that curbs ballistic missile construction and prevents Iran from supporting “terrorists.” The media never questions the proposition that Iran in fact supports such people. Who are these terrorists? Hizbollah in Lebanon tops the list. (Hamas is usually next, and then the Houthis of Yemen, the Shiite militias in Iraq, the Syrian Arab Army, etc. Even the Revolutionary Guards a division of the Iranian military, is listed by the State Department as a “terrorist organization.”)
Hizbollah is little known to people in this country. Maybe some have seen that Anthony Bourdain “Parts Unknown” episode from Lebanon in 2015. Bourdain spent some time with a Maronite Christian family in Beirut who had a Hizbollah poster on the wall; the host praised their role in resisting Israeli attacks. (Bourdain in his typical way was nonjudgmental. It’s unfortunate that some of the best, most objective commentaries on some countries are provided by this professional cook on CNN.) Maybe some question the routine designation, by the State Department echoed by the media, of the organization as “terrorist.” I myself do. But we doubters are surely few. Few organizations have been more systematically vilified.
Why has Hizbollah been designated a “terrorist” organization by Israel and the U.S.,, followed (somewhat reluctantly) by the EU in 2013 under U.S. pressure? Germany continues to refuse to designate Hizbollah “in its entirety” as terrorist; like the EU in general it distinguishes between the “military wing” and the political party. Neither Russia nor China see it as terrorist. They realize that Hizbollah is a large political movement based in the Shiite community but enjoying an alliance with Christian and other minorities. It maintains a robust militia, more powerful than the Lebanese Army. It also maintains radio and TV stations, charities, hospitals. It has a genuine social base in Lebanon; that, rather than Iranian aid, is the key to its success. But instead of examining it in its specificities, successive U.S. administrations have simply condemned it while emphasizing its Iranian ties.
Just like the current administration smears Houthis in Yemen as Iranian proxies. Or the Alawi-led government of Syria as a pawn of an Iran striving for regional dominance. Anyone paying attention knows that while the Houthis practice a form of Shiism it is very different from that of Iran; that a Shiite imamate ruled Yemen for 1000 years; and that there is little evidence for Iranian arms support for the Yemeni rebels. They know too that the Damascus government is led by the secular Baathist Party, which is ideologically at odds with Iran’s Islamic republicanism; the alliance is based on mutual security in the face of ongoing imperialist encroachment. But the Saudi-promoted specter of a “Shiite crescent” extending from Iran through Iraq (the only majority-Shiite Arab nation) into Syria and Lebanon, threatening to absorb Yemen and perhaps Bahrain, ruled by the Iranian ayatollahs, guides the minds of the benighted U.S. policy makers.
Trump apparently demands a new deal with Iran that curbs its ballistic missile program and ends its support for (whatever the boss calls) “terrorism.” The principle recipients of this aid, always mentioned, are Hizbollah and Hamas. Hamas of course is the Palestinian party that governs the vast concentration camp of Gaza. It swept the Palestinian legislative election, the first and only free Palestinian election, in 2006. It has responded to Israeli occupation with violence on occasion; this itself, for the Israelis and U.S., constitutes terrorism. Iran-backed terrorism.
Why would Iran withdraw support from Hizbollah, even as it rises in electoral popularity and strength? Even as it successfully assists the Syrian Arab Army in fighting al-Qaeda and ISIL forces challenging the Assad government in Syria? It is an unreasonable imperialist demand. The demand of the Syrians and Iranians that the 2000 U.S. Special Forces illegally in Syria withdraw is eminently reasonable, but U.S. efforts to remold the Middle East through military intervention are outrageous. The U.S. demand to determine who the world views as terrorist is similarly outrageous.
By demanding that Iran renegotiate the nuclear deal to include the irrelevant question of Tehran’s ties to different political groups in the region, Trump does what the U.S. has done time and time again with those targeted for regime change: he sets the bar too high, and paves the way for war.
In 2002 the French and Germans made clear that they did not accept the U.S. justification for the impending war on Iraq. But the Brits were on board, reliably, and some other NATO allies. U.S. prestige took a blow in the court of world public opinion as the savage attack and occupation produced civil war, half a million died, and the U.S. engaged in the types of torture revealed in the Abu Ghraib torture photos. In 2011 Germany opposed NATO airstrikes on Libya, but France and Britain strongly advocated it, and drew in Hillary Clinton who convinced a hesitant Obama.
This time, however, all the U.S.’s top three European allies (with the 4th, 5th and 7th largest GDPs in the world), join China (2nd) and Russia (12th) in firmly opposing the U.S. action against Iran. (Japan–3rd—is opposed but will not speak up. All major powers think Trump is crazy to try to sabotage a deal that’s good for them, Iran and the world. The only ones applauding are the Israelis (who fantasize that Iran is an “existential threat”) and the Saudis (who see Tehran as the headquarters of Shiite heresy, and in their republicanism threatening to Sunni monarchies throughout the Gulf).
Many must marvel at how the absolutely clueless Trump has been influenced by the snake oil salesman Netanyahu, who tried so hard to dissuade Obama from signing the deal—from a U.S. Senate podium at that, and railed against it at the UN, and lectured Trump in English with a power point presentation a couple days before the announcement. And by the Saudi King Salman and Crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, who flattered him during his sword-dance visit last year. These are not the most reputable or trusted people in Europe or the world in general. Trump is choosing his friends on the basis who flatters him best.
Meanwhile Hizbollah, a big Iran ally, expands its control and hence Iran’s influence over Lebanon—through peaceful electoral means. And Bashar al-Assad, another big ally, militarily defeats his opponents with Russian, Iranian, Hizbollah and Iraqi Shiite militia assistance. The (Shiite, allegedly ) Houthis of Yemen hold out against the savage (Sunni) Saudi assault. These forces are not mere Iranian proxies but agents acting in their own right, with varying degrees of Iranian support.
Hizbollah was founded in 1982 as a response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. The group was inspired by the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, and the ideology of Ayatollah Khomeini. But to see it as a mere proxy is to deny agency to the Lebanese people who support it, for reasons that have nothing to do with Iran but everything to do with resistance to Israeli aggression.
To demand that Iran, in addition to the major concessions it has already made on its nuclear program, withdraw support from the various groups it supports (to some extent; sometimes the extent is exaggerated) in the region, is to demand it concede the field to the U.S., Israelis and Gulf Arabs and their own favored terrorist proxies. It’s a demand that the whole world accept the U.S. State Department’s evolving list of “terrorist organizations” as universally definitive. Enough already.
The Iranian organization Mujahadin-e Khalq (MEK), founded in the 1960s to violently oppose the Shah’s regime, was considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. until 2012. Why did the designation change? Hint: It had nothing to do with any change of behavior, but had something to do with ongoing ties to U.S. and Israeli intelligence in relation to producing regime change in Iran.
MEK famously sided with Saddam’s Iraq during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War. It has allegedly killed U.S. citizens. But now it’s cool, while Hizbollah is not. While the U.S. embraces MEK Iran is supposed to abandon Hizbollah, because the U.S. demands it, threatening to destroy a UNSC-approved treaty if Tehran persists in supporting this group which—did I mention?—just with its bloc swept the Lebanese elections. The arbitrary reasoning is obvious, and unjustifiable.
The U.S. under Trump has truly lost reason. Europe should now say, “It was a fun seven decades together. But now, it’s just not working. You’ve become offensive, unreasonable. You may overestimate your power. We will for our part resist your efforts to curb our trade with Iran or any other country where we have the right to operate.” Perhaps I think too optimistically. But the instability of our times and the president’s stubborn stupidity might just finally provoke the necessary Atlantic split.
Norman Finkelstein: We are all Hizbullah
In the West, it’s easy to concentrate on each daily drama about the Middle East and forget the world in which the real people of the region live. The latest ravings of the American president on the Iran nuclear agreement – mercifully, at last, firmly opposed by the EU – obscure the lands of mass graves and tunnels in which the Muslim Middle East now exists. Even inside the area, there has now arisen an almost macabre disinterest in the suffering that has been inflicted here over the past six years. It’s Israel’s air strikes in Syria that now takes away the attention span.
Yet take the discovery of dozens of corpses in a mass grave in Raqqa, Isis’s Syrian “capital”. It garnered scarcely three paragraphs in Arab papers last month, yet the 50 bodies recovered were real enough and there may be another 150 to be recovered. The corpses lay under a football pitch near a hospital which Isis fighters used before they fled the city – under an agreement with Kurdish forces – and could only be identified by markings which gave only their first names (if they were civilians) or their nom de guerre if they were jihadis. Who killed them?
Even less space was given to another gruesome discovery last month in tunnels beneath the Syrian town of Douma, east of Damascus. This vast stone warren of underground streets wide enough for cars and trucks was found to contain 112 bodies, 30 of them Syrian soldiers, the rest probably civilians, many killed long ago, presumably by the Jaish al-Islam group which fought for the town for many years. Were they hostages for whom the Islamists wished to exchange prisoners? And then murdered when no deal was struck?
An elder and highly experienced colleague Patrick Cockburn investigated an even more terrible mass killing outside Mosul which occurred in 2014, most of the victims Shia Iraqi soldiers. We know this because Isis filmed their appalling end, shot in the head and then tossed carelessly into the blood-stained waters of the Tigris, some of them floating far south towards Baghdad. History has not been kind to these lands. In 1915, when the Turks were massacring Armenians, many of the Armenian corpses drifted down the Tigris and reached Mosul – the very execution site which can be seen in the Isis video, taken, of course, 99 years later.
Like the vast mass graves of Europe after the Second World War – especially in the Soviet Union – the memory of this savagery will not be forgotten. Which is why the Iraqi authorities (largely Shia in the case of “judicial” trials which meet no international standards) have been hanging Isis suspects like thrushes on prison gallows, 30 at a time, in the south of the country. The Kurds appear to be behaving much more humanely outside Raqqa where court hearings have a modicum of justice, albeit unrecognised in the West. And so it goes on.
And to whom does one turn for justice? Or peace? The Russians in Syria, interestingly enough, have just started publishing a monthly newspaper for joint Syrian and Russian forces in the country. It has a touch of the old Soviet Union about it. The title is “Together, We Make Peace” – which might not convince the Syrian government’s opponents – and there are photographs of Russian troops feeding refugees (flat, Arab bread), of red-bereted soldiers patrolling front lines and a very large front-page photograph of both Vladimir Vladimirovitch Putin and Bashar al-Assad.
Intriguingly, just below, is a colour photograph of perhaps Russia’s top soldier in Syria: General Aleksander Juravlov, much bemedalled and in his dark blue dress uniform, staring unsmilingly at the camera. We may hear more of him as the weeks go by. Because Russia’s presence in Syria is far from over.
Copies of the newspaper in Arabic also attempt to teach Syrian soldiers basic Russian – the Russian version teaches Arabic. And there’s even (in the Arabic print run) a guide to Moscow, maps of Russia and stories about Second World War weapons. In the top left of each front page is another Soviet-style symbol: two hands clasped together. One hand is coloured in the red, white and black banner of Syria, the other in the red, blue and white of Russia. Yes, the Russians are going to be around for quite a while.
So are the Israelis. Their earlier attack on Iranian forces in Syria – of which there appear to be far fewer than the West imagines, although there are many pro-Iranian Hezbollah fighters still in the country – came suspiciously close to the Trump announcement reneging on the US nuclear agreement with Iran. And an Israeli statement that the Iranians had missiles in Syria was surely made in concert with the Trump administration – it came within hours, and coincidences don’t run that close in the Middle East.
The latest overnight Israeli air strikes, supposedly at Iranian forces in Syria after a supposed Iranian rocket attack on Israeli forces in Golan – and it’s important to use the “supposed” and not take all this at face value – must have been known to the Americans in advance. The Russians, too. And it’s clear that any Israeli plans to create a “security zone” (i.e., occupation zone) inside Syria and along the border of Golan – along the lines of the “security zone”, equally occupied and patrolled by local militias, in southern Lebanon until the year 2000 – would meet with American approval.
So it’s a moment when all sides are now staring at each other with increasing concern. Oddly, in all the coverage of Lebanon’s largely peaceful election last weekend, hardly anyone commented upon one of the successful Shia candidates in the Baalbek-Hermel district. He’s a familiar name – Jamil Sayyed – and he used to be Lebanon’s head of general security. He was also a loyal friend of Syria. The West had him locked up for three years after the inquiry into ex-prime minister Rafiq Hariri’s murder but he was released without any evidence found against him. After which, General Sayyed has been a frequent visitor to Damascus.
“Robert,” he said to me over coffee there some months ago, “why do you hate me?” That was a bit of a breath-taker, and your correspondent hastened to deny any such emotion. Then came an invitation to the restaurant he owns in Beirut.
The point, of course, is that General Sayyed’s election means that one of Syria’s most trusted friends now has a seat in the Lebanese parliament. His speeches will be listened to with deep interest by his parliamentary colleagues. Odd, though, how we go on missing these developments. Out in the West – or Trump’s Wild West – mass graves, Russian alliances and Lebanese elections just don’t get the coverage they deserve.
PALESTINA
The UN human rights chief has slammed Israel's deadly reaction to protests along the Gaza border as "wholly disproportionate" and backed calls for an international investigation.
Addressing a special session of the UN Human Rights Council on Friday, Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein said there was "little evidence" Israel made an effort to minimise casualties during mass border protests by Palestinians last Monday.
He said Israeli forces had killed 106 Palestinians, including 15 children, since March 30. More than 12,000 were injured, at least 3,500 by live ammunition.
Israel was an occupying power under international law, obliged to protect the people of Gaza and ensure their welfare, he said.
"But they are, in essence, caged in a toxic slum from birth to death; deprived of dignity; dehumanised by the Israeli authorities to such a point it appears officials do not even consider that these men and women have a right, as well as every reason, to protest."
"Nobody has been made safer by the horrific events of the past week," he added. "End the occupation, and the violence and insecurity will largely disappear."
He pointed out though that while at least 60 Palestinians were killed and thousands injured in a single day of protests on Monday, "on the Israeli side, one soldier was reportedly wounded, slightly, by a stone".
Many of the Palestinians injured and killed "were completely unarmed, (and) were shot in the back, in the chest, in the head and limbs with live ammunition," he said.
Some demonstrators threw Molotov cocktails, used sling-shots, flew burning kites into Israel, and attempted to use wire-cutters on border fences, but "these actions alone do not appear to constitute the imminent threat to life or deadly injury which could justify the use of lethal force," Zeid added.
"The stark contrast in casualties on both sides is ... suggestive of a wholly disproportionate response," he told the Council.
The killings resulting from "the unlawful use of force by an occupying power may also constitute a grave breach" of the Geneva Conventions, he added.
Such violations are called "war crimes", although Zeid did not explicitly use that word.
The special session comes after six weeks of mass protests along the Gaza border with Palestinian refugees demanding the right to return to their homes inside what is now Israel.
The protests on Monday, organised by various Palestinian factions, were part of Nakba or "Catastrophe", the day Palestinians commemorate the expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians from their homes by Israeli forces.
Israel has defended the killing of protesters with the old hasbara of "acting in self-defence to protect its borders and communities". Both Israel and the United States said Hamas, which rules Gaza, instigated the violence, an allegation the group denies.
In Friday's session in Geneva, the Human Rights Council will consider a resolution put forward by Pakistan and other Muslim countries that includes a call for the council to dispatch an "independent, international commission of inquiry" - UN's highest-level of investigation.
The draft resolution said the investigators should look into "all violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law ... in the context of the military assaults on large-scale civilian protests that began on 30 March, 2018".
It said the aim should be to "establish the facts and circumstances" around "alleged violations and abuses including those that may amount to war crimes and to identify those responsible".
Zeid said he supported the call for "an investigation that is international, independent and impartial, in the hope the truth regarding these matters will lead to justice".
He said Israeli forces had killed 106 Palestinians, including 15 children, since March 30. More than 12,000 were injured, at least 3,500 by live ammunition.
Israel was an occupying power under international law, obliged to protect the people of Gaza and ensure their welfare, he said.
"But they are, in essence, caged in a toxic slum from birth to death; deprived of dignity; dehumanised by the Israeli authorities to such a point it appears officials do not even consider that these men and women have a right, as well as every reason, to protest."
"Nobody has been made safer by the horrific events of the past week," he added. "End the occupation, and the violence and insecurity will largely disappear."
He pointed out though that while at least 60 Palestinians were killed and thousands injured in a single day of protests on Monday, "on the Israeli side, one soldier was reportedly wounded, slightly, by a stone".
Many of the Palestinians injured and killed "were completely unarmed, (and) were shot in the back, in the chest, in the head and limbs with live ammunition," he said.
Some demonstrators threw Molotov cocktails, used sling-shots, flew burning kites into Israel, and attempted to use wire-cutters on border fences, but "these actions alone do not appear to constitute the imminent threat to life or deadly injury which could justify the use of lethal force," Zeid added.
"The stark contrast in casualties on both sides is ... suggestive of a wholly disproportionate response," he told the Council.
The killings resulting from "the unlawful use of force by an occupying power may also constitute a grave breach" of the Geneva Conventions, he added.
Such violations are called "war crimes", although Zeid did not explicitly use that word.
The special session comes after six weeks of mass protests along the Gaza border with Palestinian refugees demanding the right to return to their homes inside what is now Israel.
The protests on Monday, organised by various Palestinian factions, were part of Nakba or "Catastrophe", the day Palestinians commemorate the expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians from their homes by Israeli forces.
Israel has defended the killing of protesters with the old hasbara of "acting in self-defence to protect its borders and communities". Both Israel and the United States said Hamas, which rules Gaza, instigated the violence, an allegation the group denies.
In Friday's session in Geneva, the Human Rights Council will consider a resolution put forward by Pakistan and other Muslim countries that includes a call for the council to dispatch an "independent, international commission of inquiry" - UN's highest-level of investigation.
The draft resolution said the investigators should look into "all violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law ... in the context of the military assaults on large-scale civilian protests that began on 30 March, 2018".
It said the aim should be to "establish the facts and circumstances" around "alleged violations and abuses including those that may amount to war crimes and to identify those responsible".
Zeid said he supported the call for "an investigation that is international, independent and impartial, in the hope the truth regarding these matters will lead to justice".
His comments came as the Egyptian president, Abdel-Fatah al-Sisi, announced he had ordered the opening of the Rafah border crossing with Gaza for the entire Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the longest length of time since 2013.
Sisi wrote on his official Twitter account late on Thursday that the opening would “alleviate the burdens of the brothers in the Gaza Strip”.
The Rafah crossing is Gaza’s main gate to the outside world. Egypt has kept Rafah largely sealed off since 2013, after Egypt’s elected Islamist president Mohamed Morsi was ousted.
On Friday, travellers were slowly moving toward the crossing. A bus arrived about every hour with people whose names appeared on lists provided by Hamas officials, who oversee who goes through the border.
Not far from there, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called on Muslim leaders to unite and confront Israel, days after scores of Palestinians were killed by Israeli snipers as they marked 70 years of Israeli occupation.
Speaking at an extraordinary summit of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on Friday, Erdogan said Israel should be held accountable over the killings which drew widespread international condemnation and triggered a wave of protests from Asia, through the Middle East, to North Africa.
"To take action for Palestinians massacred by Israeli bandits is to show the whole world that humanity is not dead," Erdogan told the group of Muslim leaders gathered in Turkey's largest city, Istanbul.
The Turkish president described Israel's killing of Palestinians as "thuggery, atrocity and state terror," and said the US' recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital would inevitably haunt it.
Not far from there, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called on Muslim leaders to unite and confront Israel, days after scores of Palestinians were killed by Israeli snipers as they marked 70 years of Israeli occupation.
Speaking at an extraordinary summit of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on Friday, Erdogan said Israel should be held accountable over the killings which drew widespread international condemnation and triggered a wave of protests from Asia, through the Middle East, to North Africa.
"To take action for Palestinians massacred by Israeli bandits is to show the whole world that humanity is not dead," Erdogan told the group of Muslim leaders gathered in Turkey's largest city, Istanbul.
The Turkish president described Israel's killing of Palestinians as "thuggery, atrocity and state terror," and said the US' recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital would inevitably haunt it.
US Embassy in Jerusalem is a symbol, mass oppression is the root of the protests
Palestinian protesters are seeking freedom from world largest concentration camp
Palestinians have the right to break free of the unliavable cage that is Gaza
Meet Marek Talik, Canadian doctor shot by IDF soldiers while treating Gaza's wounded
Outrage over Israeli massacre shows power of nonviolent Palestinian resistance
INSIDE STORY
Who can the Palestinians turn to for help?
The Burning frustration of the Palestinians
Who can the Palestinians turn to for help?
ARGENTINA, MESSI, no hay nada de amistoso en jugar con uno pa ís criminoso!
Cancelen el juego con el Estado del apartheid!
