A sinister plan for the region
As’ad Abdul Rahman, Special to Gulf News
Zionist thinking is based on the establishment of “Greater Israel”, a state with a clear Jewish identity that should always be the regional superpower. And this goal requires “reshaping” of the Arab world. The Zionist attitude towards “Arab unity” emanates from Israel’s belief that such unity threatens its very existence and continuity. Hence the unwavering Zionist support for all sorts of plans aimed at the region’s disintegration into new ethnic and sectarian structures. This vision was the brainchild of Theodor Herzl, founder of political Zionism who, in 1904, openly declared: “We have discussed the issue, and agreed that we want a state from the Nile to the Euphrates. What we need is not a united, but a weak, fragmented and divided Arab Peninsula void of any potential to unite against us.” (…) This is being done by separating Arab countries in the east from those in the west; including Israel in the new Levant; excluding Iraq from the Arab system and merging it into a regional security system of the Gulf that could include Iran and the former Soviet Muslim states; integrating Arab states of the western flank (in North Africa) into the Mediterranean domain; and marginalising and isolating peripheral Arab countries such as Sudan, Somalia and Yemen with a view to including them in African and Horn of Africa blocs. Hence, the “absolute security” of the Zionist state requires the destruction of the region’s civilisational identity, and subsequently a change in its socio-! politica l structure into a sectarian, regional and local mosaic where the Zionist state emerges as the strongest sectarian entity….

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A more plausible reading of US policy: Maliki “under control”, leading Iraq to US-protectorate status
Arablinks
…it has been popular in the media and elsewhere to file all of the Maliki-Bush events under the heading of Bush’s stupidity in unwittingly giving the control of Iraq to an Iranian partisan; and to call for American withdrawal on the basis that political events there are out of control. The hypothesis outlined here—namely that Maliki is and has always been “under control”—would require a different reading, putting more emphasis on the idea that in fact the dismemberment of the country, which Maliki has done so much to promote, is part of the American strategy, not an index of its failure…

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Collective Punishment
What to Pack for One Year in Gaza
“Two-and-a-half year old Muhammad a-Shanti and his brother Mustafa, who is sixteen months old, have cystic fibrosis. They live in the Gaza Strip, where the health system is unable to treat their serious illness (…) Since Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007, Israel has almost completely prohibited Gazans to enter Israel or go abroad for medical treatment. The last time the children were treated at Hadassah was in September. Since then, Israel has not permitted them to enter its territory, and the toddlers’ condition has deteriorated.” Give me just one rationalisation for that. And because I know that you cannot I will speak words hanging in the air: Collective Punishment. There is no question as to what this could otherwise be termed. It is most certainly the elephant in the corner. You want to do something? You want to make sure that this doesn’t happen to other children – and there have been many – or to someone else’s mother, brother, sister, I can give you lists and lists of people who are affected. The names would mean nothing to you. I can tell you that we have no chemotherapy drugs in Gaza and the Israeli’s will not allow importation of any more. That means that anyone unfortunate enough to be trapped here and be suffering from cancer is receiving no treatment. Find me any kind of justification for that….

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Confrontation on the air:
Israeli radio talk-show host calls on army to arrest Palestinian journalist
Al-Quds Press Office, East Jerusalem
An Israeli radio talk-show host on Friday, 30 November, called on the Israeli occupation army to arrest an outspoken Palestinian journalist for criticizing the Israeli policies and practices “too harshly” and for “inciting the world against Israel and the Jewish people as well as for promoting anti-Semitism.” Samuel-Flatto-Sharon, an extreme right-winger, who also hosts a popular talk-show called “Flatto Bli Kheshbone (Flatto without accountability) called Palestinian journalist Khalid Amayreh, whom he was interviewing, the “most sinister anti-Semite ever.”…

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Besieged Bethlehem—the Wall
skipschiel
…Bethlehem is under siege, partly by the annexation wall which plunders land, homes, water and disrupts free travel. Also by the settlements ringing the city. And the permit system making nearly impossible Bethlehemite Christians visiting the Church of the Holy Sepulcher (Jesus’ crucifixion site) in the Old City of Jerusalem during the holy days and Muslims praying at the Al Aqsa mosque atop Mount Moriah also in Jerusalem’s Old City. Bethlehem, one of the holiest cities for Jews, Christians and Muslims is in occupied territory. Thus the occupying power, Israel, by international law, is responsible for the well being of the occupied people. Contrary to this, Israel perpetrates policies thru its siege that I believe are intended to ethnically cleanse Palestine, perhaps a form of genocide, or at least an early slippery slope into genocide—the annihilation of an entire society.I ask, with what authority does Israel perpetrate this matrix of control? I’ll let the international court system decided this question, congruent with the growing and hopeful trend. We visited to feel, comprehend and eventually struggle against this matrix, its cunning, its brutality, its terror…

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Six Millions Dollars in Bribes Offered by an American Company to al-Shamri and Muhsin
Special to Haq News Agency
According to the Haq correspondent in Baghdad, judicial sources have made a statement showing that the Central Criminal Court in al-Karkh issued arrest warrants on Thursday (November 29) for both Ali al-Shamri, the former Minister of Health and member of what is called the “Sadrist Movement”, and Adil Muhsin, the Inspector General for the Ministry of Health. These warrants are on the basis of accusations of corruption and bribery. The judicial sources stressed that the court issued the arrest warrants after receiving various pieces of evidence that point to the involvement of the suspects in the taking of bribes from a certain American pharmaceutical company. The value of the bribes amounted to $6 million in the form of commissions collected by the minister and inspector in amounts specified in contracts concluded with the American company…

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Iraq: It’s worse than you think
Turkana, Daily Kos
…Despite our media’s hype, things remain bad, and seem likely to get worse: millions of refugees, many returning to homes now occupied by others, no plan to resettle them, and basic services still failing to rise to the level of basic functionality. As one Baghdad resident told the Post “It was definitely so much better for us before the war,” he said. “We were never suffering the way we are now.” In a world of media decency, that would be the only story that mattered….

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Death Of 2 Palestinian Refugee Children In Iraq
Press Release: United Nations
Two sick Palestinian refugee children waiting for resettlement from Iraq died in the last two weeks, underscoring the precarious conditions faced by the group, a spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said today. One of the children died in Baghdad while another died in Al Waleed refugee camp at the Iraq-Syria border, where earlier this month a 50-year-old man awaiting resettlement also died earlier this month. “So far seven people have died there, including three young children, since Palestinian refugees started to arrive at the border in March 2006 fleeing violent attacks against them,” said William Spindler. The 3-year-old Palestinian boy who died at the camp had been suffering from rickets, a bone disease caused by lack of vitamins and minerals, as well as pneumonia. The other Palestinian child, whose resettlement approval was pending, was a 14-year-old suffering from Hodgkin’s disease….

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The New York Times publishs what it calls it the new sectarian map of Baghdad areas
HAQ agency
The New York Times publishes what it calls it the new sectarian map of Baghdad areas on its website. The maps show the sectarian makeup of neighborhoods in Baghdad, and the website claims that “it has changed from June 2006 until November 2007.” And the New York Times adds that these maps leads to concerns about clashes if displaced Iraqis try to move back…

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Dozens Arrested in Raid on Compound Of Sunni Politician
Amit R. Paley, Washington Post Foreign Service
The leader of Iraq’s largest Sunni political bloc said the Shiite-led government placed him under house arrest Friday after detaining his son and dozens of guards, aggravating the sectarian tension within the country’s leadership. U.S. and Iraqi military officials said they detained more than 40 employees of Adnan al-Dulaimi, who heads the Iraqi Accordance Front, after one was found with keys to a car rigged with explosives and two others were accused of killing a member of a neighborhood watch group. In a telephone interview from his home in the capital’s Adil neighborhood, Dulaimi demanded that the government release all the detained men — including his son, Maki, 38, and a spokesman for his political party, Mohammed al-Issawi — who he said were innocent victims of a politically motivated raid…

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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Friday, 30 November 2007.
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice. www.freearabvoice.org
In a dispatch posted at 2:58pm Baghdad time Friday afternoon, the Yaqen News Agency reported that the Iraqi puppet regime, under the direction of the American occupation forces, has begun building a wall around the city of al-Fallujah, 60km west of Baghdad, in order to cut the city off from the rest of the country. Yaqen reported a source in the puppet police who asked not to be identified as saying that the purpose of the wall is to prevent Resistance fighters from getting into the city, which is known for its wide expanses. The Americans and their Iraqi puppet regime is hoping to gain total control of the city by limiting all access to checkpoints that will be monitored round the clock and can be closed at any time to confine residents inside the city….

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Palestinian fuel companies warn of a human catastrophe in Gaza for lack of fuel
Palestinian Information Center
Mahmoud Al-Khazandar, the deputy head of the association of petrol and gas companies’ owners in Gaza Strip, has warned Thursday of possible human catastrophe in the tiny Strip after Israel decided to reduce quantity of fuel into Gaza. In a press conference he held over the matter, Khazandar explained that the petrol and gas companies in Gaza Strip refused to receive the reduced fuel quantities from Israel in order not to help it tightening the grip of economic sanctions against Gaza inhabitants. “We decided not to participate in besieging our Palestinian people in Gaza Strip, and our decision to stop receiving the reduced fuel amounts came after we did repeatedly warn of an imminent human disaster in Gaza due to Israeli cuts of fuel supplies to Gaza”, underlined Khazandar…

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2.3 Million Flee to Elsewhere in Iraq
LAUREN FRAYER, AP
The Shiite militia’s threat came in a typed letter tossed at Mohammed Abdul-Wahab’s door: “Leave this house within 48 hours or you will face death.” The Sunni government worker did just that — fleeing his ancestral home in a mostly Shiite area of Baghdad with his wife and 2-year-old son. Now, struggling to pay rent higher than his salary, Abdul-Wahab is among the nearly 2.3 million people the Iraqi Red Crescent says have been driven from their neighborhoods as Iraq is increasingly carved up along sectarian lines…

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APR – The Crimes of Militias in Khalis
Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq (AMSI)
The sectarian militias belong to the so-called Mahdi Army attacked to Nahr Al Sayyid and Mujaddad regions in Al Salam belong to Khalis. They forced the families to expel from their houses as burning while attacking to Al Kasab Castle in Al Salam region by these sectarian militias by the support of government forces on 23 November 2007, Friday. These attacks led 11 persons dead from the area who fought against the attack of sectarian militias in defense of their region. The sectarian militias took 5 corpses of the citizens during the withdrawal and they did not hand them over to their relatives until the time of this press release….

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In Iraq, Psyops Team Plays on Iran Fears, Soccer Love
Wired News
Psychological operations specialist spent a year-and-a-half Sgt. Joe Colabuno helping convince the Sunni residents of Fallujah to turn against local extremists by appealing to citizens’ sense of civic pride, pumping up their love of the national soccer team, citing the Koran, and provoking jihadists to overreact. Colabuno also appealed to the Sunnis hatred and fear of Shi’ites, and of Shi’ite Iran. “For 7 or 8 months,” Colabuno tells me, “all we hear about is ‘Iran is doing all [of the attacks], Iran is behind everything.’ There was frustration from them [Fallujah’s locals] because we wouldn’t ‘admit it.’ Like maybe the U.S. was conspiring with Iran.” “We’d stress in our SITREPS [situation reports] that in order to get these people on our side, we’ve got to play into their fears abut Iran,” he adds. Then, in January, “the White House suddenly got involved,” talking tough about how Tehran was stoking instability in Iraq. “That overnight changed the attitudes of the people towards us. They took it as almost an apology,” he adds….

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A Change Ain’t Gonna Come: Democrats Openly Embrace Aggression and Torture
Chris Floyd , Empire Burlesque
It was a remarkable display even by the hideous standards that the Democrats have already set for themselves. Over the past week, the party’s leaders have put forward not one but two architects of Bush Regime war crimes as standard-bearers for Democratic policies and principles. In so doing, they have aligned themselves as completely and publicly as possible with the Hitlerian war crime of military aggression in Iraq and the Stalinist filth of deliberate, calculated and brutal torture, as exemplified by (but in no way limited to) the sickening atrocities at Abu Ghraib….

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Dhari on Aljazeera: the occupation is in its worst days
Roads to Iraq
Sheikh Harith Al-Dhari Secretary General of AMSI was interviewed by Al-Jazeera today and said that the American occupation is in its worst days, and is about to withdraw its troops from the country. These are some brief points from what he said: The American occupation wants to transform Iraq into cantons governed by armed tribes and warlords, 80% of of the tribes refuse the occupation and all those who collaborate with the Americans. The politicians sold Iraq to the occupiers on a golden plate, and the media does not give a true picture about what is happening….

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Friday: 2 U.S. Soldiers, 21 Iraqis Killed; 9 Iraqis Wounded; 30 Iraqis Kidnapped
Margaret Griffis, Antiwar.com
An otherwise quiet prayer day was marked by the detention of dozens of people associated with a Sunni leader. Five U.S. soldiers were injured during a controlled detonation of a car bomb found at the politician’s Baghdad office. Two U.S soldiers were killed in separate incidents elsewhere. Overall, at least 21 Iraqis were killed and another nine were wounded throughout the country. Also, a mass abduction took place in Khalis. An MNC-Iraq soldier was killed during combat near Baquba today. Also, the DOD reported that a U.S. soldier was killed in a non-hostile vehicular accident on Wednesday in Baghdad….

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Rabin and My Father
Miko Peled, Special to PalestineChronicle.com
The recent so-called peace summit in Annapolis Maryland, reminds me of a time in early 1995. Then, as the cancer was taking over his otherwise perfectly healthy body, my father Matti Peled gave an interview that became the weekend cover story for Yediot Aharonot. The headline for the story was: “Rabin Does Not Want Peace”. This was in the midst of the Oslo euphoria when Rabin was The Man of Peace. This headline sealed the relationship between Rabin and my father, two men of steel who for thirty years had fought side by side, and worked together to build the Israeli army and then in 1967 lead it to the final conquest of the “Promised Land.” Rabin never called to say farewell to my dying father as other comrades in arms did, nor did he come during the Shiva, the traditional seven days of mourning, to express his condolences. Eight months and three bullets later Rabin himself was dead. At the time, people were shocked when my father said that Rabin’s government had no intention of allowing the Palestinians to establish an independent state….

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Abu Risha: Power to the Iraqi Awakening
Marc Lynch, Abu Aardvark
Ahmed Abu Risha, who took over leadership of the Anbar Salvation Council from his murdered father, gave a long interview to al-Arabiya this week. It’s interesting to get a sense of how his political thinking is developing. He began by talking about his recent visit to Washington. He started off by placing Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Joe Biden in the same category – really. He said that first Zarqawi and Abu Hamza al-Muhajir declared an Islamic State in Anbar, and then Joe Biden declared a plan for partitioning Iraq, and that he had gone to Washington to argue that neither was the reality of Iraq. He said that he told Bush that he carried a message from all the tribes of Iraq, Sunni or Shia, that they opposed partition of the country – and that Bush told him three times that such a partition would not happen. Somebody tell Abd al-Aziz and Ammar Hakim….

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Olmert shatters Abbas’s hopes; says Jerusalem uncompromised
Palestinian Information Center
Israeli premier Ehud Olmert has affirmed Thursday that the Israeli sovereignty on the occupied city of Jerusalem will not be compromised, shattering all the hopes that PA chief Mahmoud Abbas had attached on the Annapolis conference. Olmert’s remarks came as he briefed journalists after meeting with US and Palestinian high-ranking officials in Washington D.C. where he also stated that he will exert all possible efforts to reach a deal with the Palestinians by the end of 2008 on condition the PA must carry out its obligations in fighting and uprooting the Palestinian resistance factions as stipulated in the roadmap plan. The Hebrew radio also quoted Olmert as saying that the Israeli negotiations with the Palestinians will be based on “the fact that Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people”, adding that the Israeli sovereignty on the occupied city of Jerusalem wasn’t for negotiations…

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Dear Foreign Secretary – An Open Letter.
Prisoners Abroad – Double Standards.
Felicity Arbuthnot
Whilst sorry for the plight of the UK teacher, Gillian Gibbons, imprisoned, after a trial, for a mere fifteen days in Sudan, for allowing her class to name a teddy bear ‘Mohammed’, thus deemed to have insulted Islam, in the laws of that country, some vast double standards are being shown by our government.
You have ‘summoned’ the Sudanese Ambassador to express : ‘…in the strongest terms .. concern at the dentention.’ You have reportedly also spoken to the acting Minister of Foreign Affairs in Khartoum. British citizens and residents have spent years in Guantanamo Bay, without trial, with only too credible allegations of torture. Has the American Ambassador ever been ‘summoned’ for the Foreign Office to express ‘concern in the strongest terms’? How many telephone calls have there been to the US Department of External Affairs demanding their release?…

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Iraq: the country of two rivers without water
Domenico Guglielmi
Since the American invasion, the hydration system in Iraq, the richest country in water in the Middle East, has been completely devastated. The lack of concrete reconstruction projects by the government and the difficulty of humanitarian organisations to intervene in an effective way have caused hydration and humanitarian emergencies which are scarcely manageable. To this situation are added the issues surrounding the risk of the eventual collapse of the country’s largest dam…

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Sweden’s 300 Million Dollar Iraqi Refugee Trafficking Business
Nuri Kino and Marie-Jeanette Löfgren
Four million people are on the flight from Iraq. When the surrounding world closes its borders, illegal escape routes are the only things offered. Kaliber follows the desperate traffic — towards the attaining goal: Sweden. Here you can take part of Nuri Kino and Marie-Jeanette Löfgren’s report of a billion dollar industry, where networks of smugglers take people here on dangerous ways from Iraq — in exchange for big money. All refugees we have met live under pressure and threats. Their names are therefore changed, and the details of where we have met are sometimes altered in order to avoid identification….

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Zionists Dismember Palestine 60 Years Ago Today
umkahlil
No longer is it so easy for Zionists to vilify Palestinians and fool those in the west that the obstacle to peace sixty years ago was the Palestinians’ refusal to accept partition. Who wouldn’t? Who in his or her right mind would hand over a land to recent immigrants who owned at the most seven percent of it? Walid Khalidi writes about partition below. Thankfully, today, his solid writing on the topic may be disseminated electronically and the Zionist spin handily countered. Going on sixty years in exile, Palestinians and their supporters with dignity, clarity, passion, and courage struggle for their people in refugee camps and under occupation. Susan Abulhawa said on Fox News today, “We are not children of a lesser God.” And, although I experienced a bit of a rush to see headlined on the Guardian’s main page “State of Israel Could Disappear,” I quickly sobered contemplating the ugly reality that Israelis sacrifice Palestinians daily to the altar of their Demographic god….

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Misinformation by a pro-Kurdish journalist
EUROPEAN TURKMEN FRIENDSHIPS
In an article published on 28th November in ‘The Independent’,Patrick Cockburn writes: “In addition to the 2.2 million Iraqi refugees who have fled to other countries, a further 2.4 million are displaced inside Iraq. Of these, one million, mostly Kurds, were compelled to leave their homes under Saddam Hussein before 2003, but 1.2 million fled after the bombing of the Shia shrine in Samarra in February 2005. People are still leaving their homes inside Iraq and 28,000 more people were displaced in October.” This is a piece of misinformation written by a biased, pro-Kurdish journalist. How can a so-called “professional journalist” unashamedly write such nonsense! No one who follows the news in Iraq will swallow such a blatant lie. Firstly: it is since 2003, since the occupation of Iraq by the US-UK-AU that over 2.4 million Iraqis are internally displaced (while more than 2.2 million are displaced outside Iraq according to the UN). Secondly: these are not “mostly Kurds”…

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Grim warnings
David Tresilian
On 14 November this year, a meeting of the International Coordination Committee for the Safeguarding of the Cultural Heritage of Iraq ended in Paris with a grim warning about the challenges still facing Iraq’s heritage. At the meeting, organised by UNESCO, the United Nations agency responsible for education, science and culture, it was reported that more than 4,000 Iraqi antiquities had been seized between 2004 and 2007, most of them on the Iraqi-Jordanian border, with other objects seized elsewhere in the region. In Italy, 86 clay tablets bearing cuneiform writing had been seized, with a further 21 tablets and other items seized in Spain….

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Palestinian refugee children die in Iraq
UNHCR
Two sick Palestinian refugee children waiting for resettlement from Iraq died in the last two weeks, one of them in Al Waleed refugee camp at the Iraq-Syria border and the other one in Baghdad. Another refugee, a 50-year-old man, also waiting to be resettled, died earlier this month in Al Waleed refugee camp. So far seven people have died there, including three young children, since Palestinian refugees started to arrive at the border in March 2006 fleeing violent attacks against them. A 3-year-old Palestinian boy died a few days ago in Ramadi hospital and was buried in Al Waleed, where the family had been living since fleeing Baghdad in September last year. He had been suffering from rickets, a bone disease caused by lack of vitamins and minerals. He also suffered from pneumonia. Another Palestinian child whose resettlement approval was pending, a 14-year-old suffering from Hodgkin’s disease, died in Baghdad last week. The UN refugee agency has spoken on various occasions about the serious difficulties faced by Palestinian refugees in Iraq, many of whom are stranded at the border, unable to cross into the Syrian Arab Republic….

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Madrid redux
Bush’s peace meeting is nothing but an empty orgy of rhetoric
Azmi Bishara
Bush’s brilliant brainstorm to hold a meaningless, lustreless peace conference is like dry lightning, which brings not the prayed for rain. The US administration needed something to prove that its policy towards the Arab region was not a drastic failure. It came up with nothing better than to restage the Madrid peace conference that was engineered by James Baker, secretary of state under Bush’s father. For some reason, Republicans regard the Bush Sr-Baker policy following the war in Kuwait a success story worthy of commemoration and emulation. So we have a conference, today, that has brought the Arabs to Washington, flushed with gratitude to the imperial grace for bestowing its attention again upon the Palestinian cause….

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Pricking the Western conscience
Nicola Nasser
The West was instrumental in helping the Zionist movement create a state in Palestine. Israel was established at the expense of the Palestinians who have, as a result, lived for decades in unspeakable horror. To this day there is not a glimmer of hope for a just solution in Palestine. The assistance the West furnishes Israel grows constantly. Sixty years after the creation of the state Washington provides Tel Aviv with $3 billion every year, in addition to substantial loans and donations. Israel receives the highest per capital financial assistance in the world, although the Israelis boast of their vibrant economy. Since Israel was but a twinkle in the eyes of Zionist leaders, the West has embraced its cause, helped it along and offered it steady material and moral support…

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Weekly Report: On Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory No. 47/2007 ( 22 – 28 Nov. 2007 )
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights
Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) Continue Systematic Attacks on Palestinian Civilians and Property in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT)
* 11 Palestinians, including 2 brothers, were killed by IOF in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
* One the victims was extra-judicially executed by IOF in the West Bank.
* The two brothers were killed by the internationally-banned flechette shells.
* 28 Palestinians, including 4 children, and an Israeli human rights defender were wounded by IOF in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
* IOF conducted 12 incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank and 2 ones into the Gaza Strip.
* IOF arrested 30 Palestinian civilians in the West Bank and 12 others in the Gaza Strip.
* IOF destroyed a house and razed 7 donums[1] of agricultural land in Beit Hanoun town in the northern Gaza Strip….

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Iraq Lacks Plan on the Return of Refugees, Military Says
MICHAEL R. GORDON and STEPHEN FARRELL
As Iraqis refugees begin to stream back to Baghdad, American military officials say the Iraqi government has yet to develop a plan to absorb the influx and prevent it from setting off a new round of sectarian violence. The Iraqi government lacks a mechanism to settle property disputes if former residents return to Baghdad only to find that their homes are occupied, the officials said. Nor is it clear whether Iraqi authorities will be able to provide aid, shelter and other essential services to the thousands of Iraqis who might return. American commanders caution that if the return is not carefully managed, there is a risk of undermining the recent security gains (…) Ahmad Chalabi, the Shiite politician and former Iraqi exile, who made common cause with the Americans against Saddam Hussein, has been charged with developing a plan to provide services….

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APR – The Assassination of Civilians
Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq (AMSI)
American occupation forces killed Abdullah Ahmad Khidr who was 75 years old in Amiriya, west of Baghdad. The murder occurred when these forces raided the home of the citizen at three o’clock after midnight Tuesday 27 November 2007, fired shot him and killed him dead. The occupation forces also arrested 3 people from a nearby house to the victim’s home….

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Exclusive: ‘Fatah, Hamas will join ranks if IDF raids Gaza’
KHALED ABU TOAMEH, Jerusalem Post
Fatah will fight alongside Hamas if and when the IDF launches a military operation in the Gaza Strip, a senior Fatah official in Gaza City said Thursday. “Fatah won’t remain idle in the face of an Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip,” the official said. “We will definitely fight together with Hamas against the Israeli army. It’s our duty to defend our people against the occupiers.” The Fatah official said his faction would place political differences aside and form a joint front against Israel if the IDF enters the Gaza Strip. “The homeland is more important than all our differences,” he said…

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Israeli military announces readiness to invade Gaza
Saed Bannoura – IMEMC
The preparations for a mass invasion of Gaza are complete, said an Israeli source on Thursday. Israeli officials said the thousands of troops and dozens of tanks currently stationed on the Gaza border are not going to launch an invasion unless Palestinian resistance factions fire homemade shells across the border first. The Israeli daily newspaper Maariv reported that the chances of a major Israeli incursion into the Gaza Strip have increased now the Annapolis conference is over….

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Oil Traders Seize Control of World Oil Prices
Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy
A shadowy cabal of international “oil traders” have seized control of the world’s markets and the price of oil. That’s not the opinion of a crazed “conspiracy theorist”. It is the informed opinion of an expert market analyst interviewed by the prestigious Foreign Policy magazine. As oil reached $100 recently, Foreign Policy magazine asked the question: who stole the oil? Fadel Gheit, one of Wall Street’s top energy analysts, believes that the world price of oil is no longer tied to the market. In other words, powerful international traders have seized control of the world’s primary source of energy….

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APR – The Burning of Ibrahim Khalil Mosque
Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq (AMSI)
Sectarian militias burned and detonated Ibrahim al Khalil Mosque in Sayyidiyah in Baghdad on 27 November 2007, Tuesday. The aforementioned mosque has been under attack in the past few months, most recently the bombings of its minarets led to its closure. No less than one day before the inauguration, this attack came. The perpetrators of this heinous crime insist on continuing their war on God, Islam and everything which are against their desires. Those people attack on the mosques that are clean, holy and sacred to Muslims. The Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq (AMSI) condemns this heinous crime, carries the occupation forces, the current government and sectarian militia leaders fully responsible for this crime and the relevant security mosques….

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Journalists follow other Iraqis into exile
Khaldoun Zein Eddin
Their names are Najah, Nassim, Bakr, Dina and Awas. All five are Iraqi journalists who have spent the last four years covering the war in their home country. Today they are in Lebanon. Ironically, they came to attend a conference about war coverage and the safety of journalists at the American University of Beirut (AUB). But the conference effectively ended their careers as war journalists because none of them has gone back to Iraq. “We must cover what is happening but who covers us? We are in danger. We have carried the coffins of our colleagues on our shoulders. If we are killed, who will give compensation to our families? Our society has no mercy. Why should we throw ourselves into such a volcano? Why?” They recall the actual conference back in September. How some of the speakers had seemed to belong to another world from the one they had just come from…

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Same Old, Same Old – Israel Wins Again
Jim Miles
As I sit and read the announcements from today’s first discussions from Annapolis, all I can see is another dismal failure for peace and another year long “negotiation” process that like Oslo, Camp David, the ‘road map’ all lead to the same place. That place, as so clearly denoted by the late Tanya Rinehart, is nowhere. Today the leaders – Omert and Abbas – “have agreed to re-start negotiations to reach a comprehensive peace deal by the end of 2008.” Bush it was noted in the article “did not stay for the rest of the conference, leaving Annapolis as soon as the speeches were over.” He too is obviously quite happy with the status quo in Israel’s favour….

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RACISM ON ISRAELI AIRWAVES…..
Desert Peace
A radio interview between an extreme right wing Israeli and a Palestinian journalist, resulted in the ‘true colours’ of racism coming out loud and clear… The journalist, Khalid Amayreh, is a regular contributor to this blog… Below is a report of the broadcast, courtesy of the Al-Quds Press Office in East Jerusalem…. Israeli radio talk-show host calls on army to arrest Palestinian journalist for “incitement against Jews…and anti-Semitism”…

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Ron Paul and the Seven Dwarfs.
Smoking Mirrors
I could feel the little wheels spinning in my head as I watched the Republican debate Thursday morning. It came on at 2:00 AM here. They said they got 5,000 Youtube entries; two thousand more than for the Democratic debate and there was the implication that this meant something. I know what it meant; a huge number of people sent in questions that had to do with Ron Paul. That’s what happened. It must have been something for the people scripting the event. Surely Anderson Cooper; separated at birth from Paula White, knew this. It was interesting to see the first Ron Paul question be something from a headphone wearing Gen X rottweiler wanting to know about whether Ron Paul was a conspiracy nut….

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Israeli court backs Gaza fuel cuts
Aljazeera.net
Israel’s highest court has upheld a government decision to reduce fuel supplies to the Gaza Strip, but postponed electricity cuts to the Hamas-ruled territory. Israel cut down the amount of fuel oil, diesel and petrol arriving in Gaza last month, as part of economic sanctions ordered in response to the firing of Palestinian rockets. The government said it would begin cutting power on December 2, officials said on Friday….

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