"WHAT A BLACK DAY, THEY KILLED MY FAMILY."

It never ceases to amaze (or disgust) me how Western journalists can continue to refer to a ‘peace process’ in the Middle East, while the Israelis simultaneously continue to butcher Palestinians in their hundreds. According to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, the Palestinian death toll this year is worse, so far, than the previous three bloody years of the conflict. It said 312 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in 2008, including 197 unarmed civilians of whom 44 were children and another 14 were women.

Tragically, the latest killing includes both a woman and several children – shortly after 8am yesterday, a Palestinian mother and her four children were killed by an Israeli military attack as they sat around their breakfast table in the Gaza town of Beit Hanoun. Two other children and 10 others who were nearby were also injured.

Here is the peerless Donald Macintyre reporting on this brutal incident in the Independent:

“The Israeli military said it had been targeting nearby gunmen and suggested the deaths had been caused when explosives it said were being carried by two militants blew up. The children were about to eat breakfast when they were killed.

“The deaths of the children, and the wounding of two older siblings, overshadowed efforts by Egypt to broker a ceasefire between Israel and the armed factions in Gaza. At least one militant and another unidentified man were killed by Israeli forces during the incursion.

“Palestinian medics identified the dead children as sisters Rudina and Hana Abu Meatak, aged six and three; and their brothers, Saleh, four, and Mousad, 15 months. Their mother, Miyasar, who was in her late 30s, died later of wounds she sustained. Seven rockets were later fired into Israel, three claimed by Hamas in response to the deaths of the family.

“The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights said that, according to its preliminary investigation, around 20 armoured vehicles moved over a kilometre into northern Gaza at around 6am, and that at around 8.15am Israeli aircraft had fired a missile at a group of militants. The missile landed 10 metres away from the Meatak home, seriously injuring a militant, it said.

“Less than a minute later, the PCHR said, two further missiles were launched at the same area, landing at the door of the same house and killing another militant. The centre said that shrapnel from the missiles destroyed the door and sprayed around the house, killing the children outright.

“…The children's father, Ahmad Abu Meatak, told Associated Press that he was on his way to a nearby market when his home was hit. "What a black day. They killed my family," he said, sobbing outside the local hospital where the bodies were taken.”

Donald Macintyre, incidentally, is a (British) Middle East correspondent who deserves praise and support for his rigorously honest and compassionate (not to mention brave and courageous) reporting from the Occupied Territories. In recent weeks, he has interviewed Israeli soldiers who have confessed to him the torture, beatings and abductions that they have inflicted on the residents of the occupied Palestinian town of Hebron in recent years (a story which remarkably appeared on the front page of the Independent, entitled 'Our reign of terror, by the Israeli army').

In fact, Macintyre – a former political commentator and domestic journalist who has transformed into an insightful Middle East reporter and foreign correspondent par excellence – has form in this area: it was nearly three years ago that he first reported on the former Israeli soldiers who have admitted to joining the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) simply out of a desire “to kill Arabs”. When I read such accounts, such confessions of brutality and abuse, my mind often harks back to a former (Jewish) colleague of mine who, despite being liberal and left-wing and ‘pro-peace’, used to be in continual denial about the IDF’s long history of killing, maiming and torturing Palestinian civilians. He once proclaimed to me: “I refuse to believe that a single Israeli soldier has ever deliberately killed or harmed a Palestinian civilian.” It’s both ironic and depressing that, thanks to the journalism of Donald Macintyre and others, we now know that Israeli soldiers themselves disagree with such a naïve and partisan statement.

By the way, on a related issue, the Guardian reports that warmonger-turned-peace-envoy Tony Blair yesterday presented to the Israeli government a list of checkpoints that he wanted lifted in the West Bank. There are currently 500 Israeli barriers in the West Bank, stifling trade, chocking the Palestinian economy, preventing mothers in labour from reaching hospital, blocking kids from getting to school, etc. Guess how many the Israelis decided to move after their meeting with the all-powerful Blair?

One.

US ELECTIONS UPDATE

I haven’t had a chance to blog this week. It’s time for the weekend now but let me cast a critical eye back over the previous four days of US presidential politics. As you’ll all have noticed by now, Senator Hillary Clinton remains in the Democratic race after winning the Pennsylvania primary on Tuesday. She and her acolytes have been spinning her victory against Senator Barack Obama as ‘against all odds’ and as a victory for the ‘underdog’ and the mainstream media seems to be buying her crap. This blog, however, has no qualms about reminding the army of Beltway pundits and pontificators that opinion polls actually had Hillary in a 20-point lead over Obama only ten days before the primary – a lead she had built up since January. So it was Obama who was actually the underdog in this particular race and it was Obama who deserves credit, and plaudits, for halving Hillary’s initial lead on Tuesday to just 10 per cent (and that too after his rather unfortunate and offensive gaffe about "bitter" working-class people "clinging to guns or religion" in Pennsylvania.)

Now, as regular readers of this blog may have guessed by now, I am an Obama supporter. He is the best of a bad bunch. The other two remaining members of the ‘bad bunch’ – Senators McCain and Clinton – are pro-war hawks who say ludicrous things. Consider the evidence of this week alone:

Hillary Clinton

On ABC’s “Good Morning America” breakfast-news show, Clinton warned Tehran on Tuesday that if she were president, the United States could "totally obliterate" Iran in retaliation for a nuclear strike against Israel:

"I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran.

"In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.”

Not only is this a nonsensical statement – does she really want to be known as the ‘Genocide Candidate’? – but it is also deeply hypocritical. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran, has long been castigated and condemned for his alleged desire to ‘wipe Israel off the map’. Why should the US president now harbour an equally bizarre and immoral desire to wipe Iran off the map?

But, most troubling of all, is the fact that such a hawkish question was even asked in the first place. Can you imagine a politician in any other country in the world being asked such a question by a journalist on a breakfast show or answering in such a nakedly populist and hawkish manner? And on what grounds does a journalist even ask a presidential candidate about a hypothetical Iranian ‘nuclear’ threat to Israel when American’s own intelligence agencies have publicly and categorically confirmed that Iran has no nuclear weapons nor even a nuclear weapons programme (as I have blogged about here)? The mainstream media is pathetic, ignorant and biased – which is one of the many reasons behind me setting up this blog.

John McCain

On ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” on Sunday, April 20, McCain called one-time (and distant) Obama friend William Ayers “an unrepentant terrorist” (trying to smear Obama in a ‘guilt by association’ accusation). What was McCain’s evidence? McCain said that Ayers “was engaged in bombings which could have or did kill innocent people…” So McCain is saying that someone who engages in bombings which could have killed or did kill innocent people is a terrorist.

Now consider what McCain did. McCain flew a bomber, an A-4E Skyhawk, over North Vietnam. I don’t know whether he actually dropped his bombs before being shot down and taken prisoner by the Vietcong. But certainly he was engaged in actions that, if he had succeeded, could have killed innocent people – and was part of a war effort which did kill millions of innocent people in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Which makes McCain, in his own words, a terrorist.

By the way, while the US press continues to devote acres of print to the presidential primaries, it ignores the rather shocking case of the FBI arresting retired US military engineer Ben-Ami Kadish on charges of spying for Israel (!) Imagine that! America’s best buddy in the world, it’s closest ally, the biggest recipient of US aid, continues to spy on it even now, more than twenty years on from the infamous Jonathan Pollard case. There’ll be more on the spying case here on the Radical Opinions blog next week. Stay tuned!

9-11, NETANYAHU AND AHMADINEJAD

With apologists for the United States having spent several years now accusing Muslims, Arabs, doves, liberals and lefties of either (a) having been indifferent to the suffering perpetrated by terrorists on September 11th 2001 or (b) cynically using it to advance their anti-war or anti-American political agendas, may I point readers of this blog in the direction of the pro-war, pro-American Israeli politician (and former prime minister) Benjamin Netanyahu's rather tactless yet revealing remarks at Bar Ilan University this week?

"We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq," Ma'ariv quoted the former prime minister as saying. He reportedly added that these events "swung American public opinion in our favor."

Israel is benefiting from 9-11? Imagine if you or I had said such a thing. There would be instant accusations of anti-Semitism. Imagine if another world leader had spoken about the ‘benefits’ of 9-11. There would be nothing but uproar in Washington DC and on Fox News and talk radio. But, as I have repeatedly pointed out in previous posts, there is one rule for the Israelis and one rule for everybody else.

Nevertheless, cynical and callous Benjamin’s remarks may have been, but the fact is that the chairman of the Likud party happens to be 100 per cent correct in his analysis: the 9-11 attacks – and the subsequent so-called ‘War on Terror’ – have indeed benefited Israel strategically and tactically, while strengthening pro-Israeli, anti-Arab sentiments amongst the American public at large.

However, on the other hand, the comments regarding 9-11 made this week by Netanyahu’s Persian bete noire, President Ahmadinejad of Iran, have been anything but accurate or correct.

Now, I have no time for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Yes, alright, he was indeed mistranslated regarding his views on the existence and/or destruction of the State of Israel. But his views on the Holocaust are well-documented not to mention odious and ahistorical, and his decision to host a conference of Holocaust deniers in Tehran was both offensive and embarrassing. I consider him to be a bumbling ‘village idiot’, out of his depth, who has taken the art of ‘misspeaking’ to a new level. I mean, which sane and sensible leader stands in the front of the world’s media and denies there are homosexuals in their country, when images of the execution of homosexuals in that same country are publicly, widely and openly available? (I also can’t stand the fact that Mahmoud, like his self-centred and sanctimonious White House counterpart, wrongly and arrogantly assumes God is personally intervening to protect and guide him.)

Now, in his latest mis-pronouncement, the Iranian president has declared his support for the 'truthers' – the wide array of misguided, close-minded, obsessive 9-11 conspiracy theorists (who tragically tend to draw so much support and sympathy from the world’s conspiracy-obsessed Muslims). Speaking in the holy city of Qom, Ahmadinejad declared:

"Four or five years ago, a suspicious event occurred in New York. A building collapsed and they said that 3,000 people had been killed but never published their names.

"Under this pretext, they [the U.S.] attacked Afghanistan and Iraq and since then, a million people have been killed only in Iraq."

Yes, the United States did use 9-11 as a ‘pretext’ to attack Afghanistan and Iraq. And, yes, as I have blogged here before, studies suggest up to a million people may indeed have been killed as a result of the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq. But for Mahmoud to claim that a building (i.e. the World Trade Centre) simply ‘collapsed’ is an utterly false and misleading statement. The Twin Towers did not ‘collapse’, as a result of a natural disaster, or a bomb, or a controlled explosion or demolition. All of these ridiculous conspiracy theories have been repeatedly debunked and disproved by credible, independent experts from scientific and engineering backgrounds.

As for the names of the 9-11 victims not having been published, I am sorry to say that the Iranian prez is both a liar and a fool. A liar because here, here and here is the full list of all the dead and a fool because – a la his ‘homosexuals don’t exist in Iran’ comments – he must have known that his ludicrous claim could be instantly and demonstrably disproved as soon he made it. So why did he make it? I despair!

It is time, I believe, for supporters of Iran to disassociate from the 9-11 conspiracy theories promulgated by the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and it is time for supporters of Israel to disassociate themselves from the 9-11 cynicism and opportunism articulated by the likes of Benjamin Netanyahu. It’s that simple.

THE ARROGANCE OF ISRAEL

So, let me get this right: the United States of America funds Israel to the tune of $7 million a day, or around $500 per Israeli per year. Israel receives about $3 billion in direct foreign assistance each year, which is roughly one-fifth of America's entire foreign aid budget. It has been the largest annual recipient of direct U.S. economic and military assistance since 1976 and the largest total recipient since World War ll. Total direct U.S. aid to Israel amounts to well over $140 billion. (See this Congressional report for all of the astonishing details of unparalleled US financial largesse towards the Jewish state.)

Yet, this week, when a former President of the United States – who happens to be the man who negotiated Israel’s peace deal with its largest Arab neighbour, and who also happens to be a Nobel Peace Laureate to boot – visits the State of Israel at the start of a Middle East tour, he is denied a meeting with the Israeli prime minister, as well as the country’s foreign and defence ministers, and the Israeli security services even have the temerity to decline the requests for help and assistance from the US Secret Service agents guarding him. (Has anyone actually reminded the Shin Bet that everything they possess – from their guns and grenades, to their suits and sunglasses – is paid for, in full, by the United States?)

Is this the height of arrogance?

Yes.

But why the snub? Why the rudeness and arrogance expressed towards a former occupant of the traditionally pro-Israeli Oval Office – behaviour described by one American source as ‘unprecedented’? Because this former president happens to be none other than Jimmy Carter, author of the 2006 best-selling book, ‘Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid’, in which he describes,

“…the abominable oppression and persecution in the occupied Palestinian territories, with a rigid system of required passes and strict segregation between Palestine's citizens and Jewish settlers in the West Bank. An enormous imprisonment wall is now under construction, snaking through what is left of Palestine, to encompass more and more land for Israeli settlers. In many ways, this is more oppressive than what black people lived under in South Africa during apartheid.”

Judging by the official Israeli reaction to his visit now, two years on, I guess what they say is true. The truth hurts...

DO PALESTINIANS DESERVE LESS THAN TIBETANS?

Following on from yesterday, Haaretz also has a piece by its senior writer, and noted anti-occupation columnist, Gideon Levy, in which he makes a rather obvious yet under-reported point: why is it that the Tibetans are feted as freedom fighters by the West, lionised and eulogised, and China is condemned for its barbaric, repressive and colonial activities in Tibet, when the Palestinians are offered no such support or solidarity and Israel’s own China-like crimes of repression and occupation are ignored and overlooked?

The usual (depressing) two words: double standards.

From the Haaretz article:

“Israelis have no moral right to fight the Chinese occupation of Tibet….No small number of…good Israelis have recently joined the wave of global protest that broke out over the Olympics, set to take place in Beijing this summer. It is easy; it engenders no controversy - who would not be in favor of liberating Tibet? But that is not the fight that Israeli human rights supporters should be waging.

“To fight for Tibet, Israel needs no courage, because there is no price to pay. On the contrary, this is part of a fashionable global trend, almost as much as the fight against global warming or the poaching of sea lions.

“These fights are just, and must be undertaken. But in Israel they are deluxe fights, which are unthinkable. When one comes to the fight with hands that are collectively, and sometimes individually, so unclean, it is impossible to protest a Chinese occupation.

“Citizens of a country that maintains a military subjugation in its backyard that is no less cruel than that of the Chinese, and by some parameters even more so, and against which there is practically no more protest here, have no justification in denouncing another occupation. Citizens of a country that is entirely tainted by the occupation - a national, ongoing project that involves all sectors of the population to some extent, directly or indirectly - cannot wash their hands and fight another occupation, when a half-hour from their homes, horrors no less terrible are taking place for which they have much greater responsibility.

“The world has fallen in love with Tibet. How easy it is to do so….

“The Palestinians are not as nice as the Tibetans in the eyes of the world. But the Palestinian people deserve exactly the same rights as the occupied Tibetan people, even if their leaders are less enchanting, they have no scarlet robes and their fight is more violent. There is absolutely no connection between rights and the means of protest, and from that perspective, there is no difference between a Tibetan and a Palestinian - they both deserve the exact same freedom."

Hear, hear!

USE A PALESTINIAN CAR MECHANIC, GO TO PRISON

As reported a few days ago by the liberal Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, the Israeli Knesset has passed a law imposing a penalty of three years imprisonment on Israeli car-owners who take their vehicles to mechanics in the West Bank.

Does anyone detect the unmistakeable whiff of state-sponsored racism?

After all, the Israeli defence establishment – and its hardline apologists here in the West – justify each of the Jewish state’s ongoing crimes against freedom, democracy and the rule of law on the grounds of ‘national security’ – but what on earth is the security argument for banning the use of Palestinian mechanics by Israeli car-owners? Do Israeli cars have a track record of spontaneously combusting upon being touched by an Arab?

WHAT ON EARTH ARE BRITISH TROOPS ACTUALLY DOING IN IRAQ?

The headline in the Times this morning caught my attention: “Iraq snubs Britain and calls US into Basra battle.”

The article outlines how the Iraqi government of Nuri al Maliki, in its recent disastrous and bloody offensive against the Shia militias of Moqtada al Sadr, bypassed the British troops (still) stationed around the city of Basra and instead chose to rely for support on US military forces called in from Baghdad.

From the Times:

“About 550 US troops, including some from the 82nd Airborne Division, were sent from Baghdad to Basra to join up with 150 American soldiers already serving with Iraqi forces in the southern city.

“The Ministry of Defence made much of the fact that British troops, based at Basra airport outside the city, were not requested in the early stages of the operation. British officials claimed that the Basra offensive was proof that Iraqi troops could cope on their own.

“The Times has learnt, however, that when Britain’s most senior officer in Basra, Brigadier Julian Free, commander of 4 Mechanised Brigade, flew into the city to find out what was going on, Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, who was orchestrating the attacks on militia strongholds, declined to see him.”

So the question is, in the wake of such a humiliating gesture from our own puppet government in that occupied nation, why on earth are 5,000-plus British troops still in Iraq, cowering behind the walls of Basra airport and sitting on their backsides? Why have they not been withdrawn and brought home - as per the wishes of the majority of the British public? And do we need any further proof of the fact that British troops have been fighting and dying in vain in the south of Iraq, serving no particular strategic purpose other than to perpetuate the myth that the United States is part of a ‘Coalition’ that is occupying Iraq?

TOP US GENERAL IN IRAQ CONTRADICTS THE WAR HAWKS

This week, 'America's General' David H. Petraeus - he who ludicrously claimed, back in 2004 (!), that there were signs of "tangible progress" and "optimism" in Iraq – returned to Capitol Hill to once again brief Senators and Congressmen on the security situation in Iraq in the wake of the recent US military 'surge'.

Surprisingly, under pointed questioning from Senator Evan Bayh (Democrat, Indiana), General Petraeus painted a much more sombre and restrained picture of Iraq than many of his Republican cheerleaders:

"It's why I've repeatedly noted that we haven't turned any corners, we haven't seen any lights at the end of the tunnel. The champagne bottle has been pushed to the back of the refrigerator. And the progress, while real, is fragile and is reversible."

Contrast that with, say, the words of a certain senator from Arizona currently running for President, speaking on the same morning:

"But today it is possible to talk with real hope and optimism about the future of Iraq and the outcome of our efforts there. For while the job of bringing security to Iraq is not finished, as the recent fighting in Basra and elsewhere vividly demonstrated, we're no longer staring into the abyss of defeat and we can now look ahead to the genuine prospect of success."

Notice the difference?

IS ISRAEL THE WORLD’S MOST HYPOCRITICAL NATION? YOU DECIDE….

Which country is the most hypocritical on earth?

I am often torn when considering the answer to this question. Is it the United States, which blusters on and on about ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ and ‘liberty’ abroad while continuing to defend and even justify Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, waterboarding, rendition, the Patriot Act and warrantless phone tapping? Or which condemns elections in Palestine and Iran while simultaneously cosying up to dictators in Egypt and Saudi Arabia?

Or is it Saudi Arabia, which spends millions and millions of petro-dollars funding the spread of radical Islam across the world – building mosques and madressas and distributing books and pamphlets, from Bangladesh to Birmingham – yet forbids its residents from publicly practising any other religion apart from Islam and which remains the only country in the Arabian peninsula without a single church, synagogue or temple?

Is China the world’s most hypocritical country, with a totalitarian and dictatorial political system controlled by self-proclaimed communists on the one hand, but with those same communist rulers depending on a free-market, capitalist economic system to generate wealth and prosperity on the other?

Or it is my own home country, Britain, where the Archbishop of Canterbury was roundly condemned by all sections and segments of society, only a few weeks ago, for daring to even suggest that Britain’s Muslims be allowed to use religious courts to settle (some of) their legal disputes, despite the fact that Britain’s Jews have been allowed to do exactly the same for several decades now?

I happen to believe that the world’s most hypocritical nation is Israel. Why? Because for several years, the Israelis have been accusing Iran of being an ‘existential’ threat to the Jewish state, of developing a secret nuclear weapons programme and of disrupting the so-called ‘peace process’ by funding terrorist groups. The hawks in Tel Aviv have long harboured ambitions of launching a bombing campaign against Tehran and Israel’s neoconservative supporters in Washington D.C. are at the forefront of the anti-Iranian propaganda campaign inside the United States. Yet, only a week ago, the Swiss newspaper Sonntag revealed that Israel, supposedly observing a complete and utter boycott of all things Persian, has been buying Iranian oil for decades.

According to the Swiss report,

"Israel imports Iranian oil on a large scale even though contacts with Iran and purchasing of its products are officially boycotted by Israel. Israel gets around the boycott by having the oil delivered via Europe. A reliable Israeli energy newsletter, EnergiaNews…

"EnergiaNews got the information about the Iran trade from sources with ties to the management of Israeli Oil Refineries Ltd ... According to EnergiaNews the Iranian oil is liked in Israel because its quality is better than other crude oils.”

Can any country act any more hypocritically than this? You claim to hate a particular nation in your neighbourhood, you accuse it of being a state sponsor of terrorism and an existential threat to your own nation and people, you compare its president to Adolf Hitler and urge your allies in the West to sanction and even perhaps bomb it and – yet – all the while you continue to (secretly) buy oil from that country (!!) Is there any better definition of hypocrisy? I think not.

So, dear readers, that’s my view. What’s yours? Which do you think is the world’s most hypocritical nation, and why?

THIS BLOG IS BACK!

After another self-imposed and unavoidable blogging hiatus (apologies!!!), ‘Radical Opinions’ returns this week and it will be as explosive, controversial and contrary as ever. Rigorously radical yet rigorously factual.

I hope regular visitors to this blog will keep on coming and persuading their friends and colleagues to come here and post comments, start discussions and spread the word.