Monthly Archive for April, 2004

Likud vote ‘will not halt Sharon’

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will implement his Gaza pull-out plan whatever the outcome of Sunday’s Likud party referendum, advisers say.

Sharon aide Lior Horev told Army Radio that he would accept the result, but would also “act in the ways that are open to him to move the plan forward”.

The prime minister was bound by Likud’s decisions, but was also leader of the whole country, Mr Horev added.

Every poll published in Friday’s press indicated Likud would reject the plan.

Sharon’s indifference to Likud’s opinion makes it appear as if he’s operating according to someone else’s timetable and since the move would invariably result in more resentment, insecurity, and violence I think it’s obvious who’s pulling his strings.

Recently there was an interesting letter exchange in The Nation concerning this article.

Gidon D. Remba, President of Chicago Peace Now, likened “lofty” aspirations of equal rights and one-state solutions to “the socialism of fools”.

When has Israel been anything if not socialist, thanks to its crippling dependency upon the economic and military aid it receives from the United States?

The people who want the aid are the same people who want the observers. They are the same policymakers and journalists who want internationalization. They are in fact the same people who until the creation of Israel in May 1948, did not want a state. They fought against independence from Britain; they fought against the need for a Jewish army; they fought against religious or historical ties to Jerusalem. Thus Davar, the Histadrut’s newspaper, was arguing against the need for statehood up until statehood was declared. Ha’aretz fought against Jewish militarism and against independence. The Labor movement fought, literally, those Jews who fought to oust the British from the land of Israel. They fought, literally, Jews who fought against Arabs, They advocated in the pre-state days a policy that will sound familiar to us fifty and sixty years later – Restraint.

These people have not changed. External circumstances have changed, but the policies have not changed. All the policies advocated by the socialist Zionists before statehood, which had no precedent in the history of the world (all the more so since as socialists and communists they supported revolutions and “fought” imperialism around the world, yet at home, they were counterrevolutionaries and denounced independence-minded freedom fighters, and supported British imperialism). They said then and they are saying now – without using the same words, but by pursuing the identical policies – that: “We are not a nation. We are not a real state. We are still dependent on others. And we want to be dependent on others.”

Marines Pull Back From Fallujah as Agreement Reached to Create Local Iraqi Security Force

FALLUJAH, Iraq (AP) – Iraqi security forces took over positions from withdrawing U.S. Marines on Friday, and a U.S. official said an agreement had been reached to allow an Iraqi security force to patrol the city and end the monthlong siege.

Members of the 1,100-member force moved into the former Marine positions in southeastern Fallujah and raised the Iraqi flag.

Negotiations were also taking place in the southern city of Najaf, where tribal leaders and police discussed a proposal to end a standoff between soldiers and militiamen loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. In a sermon, al-Sadr remained defiant, saying he rejected “any appeasement with the occupation.”

The commander of the new force is Maj. Gen. Jassim Mohammed Saleh, a veteran of Saddam’s Republican Guard. He shook hands with Marine commanders at a post on the southeastern entry to the city.

Recycling former oppressors from Saddam’s regime as kindred, enlightened defenders of democracy is a go? Who wrote this script [via Ipecac]? Here’s where these racists chronically err in judgement. The Iraqi people aren’t ignorant and tragically, too sadly for them their memories are vivid and long.

Sinclair stations won’t run “Nightline” tribute

NewsBlues.com is reporting [no free link] that Sinclair Broadcast Group has ordered its ABC-affiliated stations not to carry tomorrow’s “Nightline,” which will air the names and photos of soldiers who have been killed in combat in Iraq.

Sinclair General Counsel Barry Faber tells the site: “We find it to be contrary to the public interest.”

The boycott will affect eight ABC-affiliated Sinclair stations.

I’ve never considered Koppel more than a gov’t salesman. My guess is they did some polling and decided showing these pictures would generate some rabid support for the occupation. If they truly wanted to show the ‘human face’ they would also be broadcasting material such as this:

“This Is The Massacre, The Holocaust That We Are Seeing In Fallujah“

The Dick and Pony show is not suitable for the general public, either?

Aren’t you so fortunate to have these decisions taken completely out of your hands!

Roll over and play dead for the laydees and germs. Nice doggies.

war feels like war

The theory behind this film was over two years in the planning, yet nothing could have prepared us for the reality of war. This is the story of journalists caught up in a new era in war-reporting. In the second Gulf War the coalition forces divided the world’s media into two camps – ‘embeds’ and ‘unilaterals’.

In the making of War Feels Like War, Esteban Uyarra lived and worked among the unilaterals. Beginning in Kuwait City, then crossing the border into southern Iraq, we follow some of these independent reporters up to Baghdad and beyond, sharing the experiences and problems faced by those reporting on modern-day war.

Sunday, April 18, 2004
Biddu Day One

We sat for maybe 45 minutes watching the brave young kids fight tear gas, and by now rubber bullets, with stone after stone. Ambulances came and went as some were overcome by the gas and others were shot in the head by rubber bullets. And then it happened.

We were sat high up in the hills almost half a mile away from the soldiers and shebab sitting and chatting about how we can peacefully protest in these conditions when we heard a whooshing noise. None of us could place it at first but we thought it might be a bullet. We dismissed the idea as we couldn’t hear gunfire and what on earth were we doing to deserver being shot at? After we heard the whooshing noise a couple more times we get nervous and walked up another field to a big house where several villagers were sat. Five minutes later and the noise came again, closer this time. Now the Palestinians looked nervous. That is definitely bullets but where are they coming from? We can’t hear any shooting. We moved closer to walls and trees and looked around but we were very exposed up here and we had nowhere to go.

I guess it wasn’t until the Palestinian in the field below dropped to the floor that we knew for sure. Clutching his chest 24 year old Diyya Abed Al Kareem fell to the floor. He has been shot in the chest. They were shooting at us. Somewhere amongst those soldiers was a sniper and he was using a silencer. Against villagers and internationals sat in a field long after being violently dispersed somehow they felt they had to shoot someone?

Mark’s follow-up with picture and video can be found here. In a civilised country the evidence would be overwhelming that Diyya Abed Al Kareem was extra judicially assassinated for the high crime of being Palestinian.

The Israeli army’s sole justification for the continued use of live ammunition seems to be rooted in the premise that rocks can kill. And while the practice draws criticism, as it did from state comptroller Eliezer Goldberg in a 108 page report released in October 2003, to my knowledge no line of demarcation has ever been formally drawn. It doesn’t seem to matter if one person throws a rock at an army or scores of shebab were to advance on a lone soldier at an outpost, the Israeli army reserves the right to put a bullet in your head for throwing that stone.

Even if I were able to transcend that absurdity and accept the farcical notion that a well-equipped army confronted by shebab is entitled to use live ammunition in self-defence clearly something entirely sinister occurred in this case.

An Iraqi woman soothes her 15-year-old wounded niece Saja Ayid in a Baghdad hospital, after she was injured in an overnight incident involving U.S. troops and forces of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in the Baghdad suburb of Al Sadr City April 24, 2004. Three sisters were burned when their house, which was in the area of a firefight, caught fire.

An Iraqi woman soothes her 12-year-old wounded daughter Hajer Ayid in a Baghdad hospital April 24, 2004. Ayid was injured overnight in an incident involving U.S. troops and forces of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in the Baghdad suburb of Al Sadr City. Three sisters were burned when their house, which was in the area of a firefight, caught fire.

Four children shot dead in Iraq: witnesses

Four schoolchildren have been killed by gunfire in Baghdad, shortly after a roadside bomb ripped through a US military vehicle, witnesses said.

Some witnesses said the children, all aged around 12, were shot dead by US troops who had opened fire randomly after the blast on Canal Street in eastern Baghdad. At least five other people were wounded.

The children had left their nearby school to look at the burning Humvee, the witnesses said.

Children and some passersby were “celebrating” the attack near the vehicle when the deadly shots were fired.

The US military had no immediate word on the incident.

“I saw a child lying on the street with a bullet hole in his neck and another in his side,” said a driver who witnessed the incident.

“He had his schoolbag on his back. Some 15 minutes later his relatives came and took his body away.”

A nearby hospital confirmed receiving the bodies of four children with gunshot wounds.