Adopt a Doctor, Adopt a Patient, Adopt a Window, Adopt a Meal
Felicity Arbuthnot, UN Observer
…Attacks on medical staff, all medical facilities, the sick and the wounded are prohibited under the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and 1977. The rogue states occupying Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine have, it seems, abandoned the rule of law and indeed, are deliberately targeting everything painstakingly enshrined as protected, since the earliest laws on conflict were devised… If it can be said that the shelling of one medical institution is more deviant, appalling and inhuman than another, the damage to the El Wafa Hospital, attacked on Wednesday, 16th April, deserves a special category in Israel’s 60th Birthday Hall of Shame. The Hospital’s Medical Director, Dr Khamas Elessi explains that this is the only facility where cases of spinal chord and severe head injuries are treated. Patients are paralyzed and comatose, relying entirely on various life supporting equipment, constant care, frequent suctioning, all reliant on highly specialised medical skills and sophisticated technical facilities…Your help is needed and any amount, however small, can make a difference. Due to the Israeli siege on Gaza, hospital staff work for love and dedication and have not been paid for up to five months. Food for staff – and patients, for whom correct nutritional is especially vital – suffers more than a shortage. The hospital windows need replacing due to the attack. Medications and equipment need replacing and repairing…

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The New Walls of Baghdad
Steve Niva, Foreign Policy In Focus
…the real story on the ground in Iraq is that from Baghdad to Mosul, the U.S. military has been busy constructing scores of concrete walls and barriers between and around Iraqi neighborhoods, which it terms “Gated Communities.” In Baghdad alone, 12-foot-high walls now separate and surround at least eleven Sunni and Shiite enclaves. Broken by narrow checkpoints where soldiers monitor traffic via newly issued ID cards, these walls have turned Baghdad into dozens of replica Green Zones, dividing neighbor from neighbor and choking off normal commerce and communications. Similar walls are being erected in other Iraqi cities, while the entire city of Falluja remains surrounded by a razor-wire barrier, with only one point of entry into the city. Moreover, the U.S. military has doubled its use of unmanned aerial drones and increasingly relies upon aerial strikes to quell insurgent activities, often through bombings and targeted assassinations….

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EI exclusive: a pro-Israel group’s plan to rewrite history on Wikipedia
Report, The Electronic Intifada
A pro-Israel pressure group is orchestrating a secret, long-term campaign to infiltrate the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia to rewrite Palestinian history, pass off crude propaganda as fact, and take over Wikipedia administrative structures to ensure these changes go either undetected or unchallenged. A series of emails by members and associates of the pro-Israel group CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America), provided to The Electronic Intifada (EI), indicate the group is engaged in what one activist termed a “war” on Wikipedia…

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Belated Congratulations to a 5 year old.
Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues
You know something, it just dawned on me that I totally forgot to congratulate the “Iraqi” government, the Shiite Hawza and its Mullahs, the Militias, and our “brothers” the Kurds. Totally forgot to congratulate Iran and its stupendous president Ahmadinejad, and of course the great American brave boys, the wonderful American people, and their superb leader G.Bush. I totally forgot that the New Iraq has turned 5, so please accept my sincere apologies. And since I can’t send all of you a belated Birthday card, I offer you this little film specially designed for the occasion, extending to you my very best wishes….

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.There is more to be mourned than Iraq’s ancient treasures
Nada Shabout’s talk at Home Works laments the tragic loss of the occupied country’s modern art patrimony as well
Laura Wilkinson, Special to The Daily Star
“My scholarly identity,” declared art historian Nada Shabout, “is concerned with the destruction of Iraq and its modern art.” A professor of Art History at the University of North Texas and a visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Shabout is in town for Home Works IV, Beirut’s yearly forum of cultural practices…The neglect of Iraq’s modern artisitic production – wrapped up in the campaign to destroy any remnants of the Baathi regime, and therefore Iraq’s collective memory – was the central theme of Shabout’s resounding lecture. Shabout supports her argument with clear evidence and scholarly consideration. Those drawn to her lecture by its title and program synopsis perhaps assumed that her main interest was the looting of Iraq’s Modern Art Museum and the subsequent trafficking of its works. At the beginning of her talk, Shabout admits she’s tired of talking about this subject, and instead speaks with passionate urgency about the need to expose the “systematic campaign to erase Iraq’s collective memory.” Aided by a series of slides, Shabout demonstrates how the process of building a new, “democratic” Iraq entails the razing of public monuments, therefore the “erasure of collective memory”..

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US military tightens siege of Sadr City as cleric warns of war
Peter Symonds, WSWS
Scores of people have died over the past week as US and Iraqi forces tightened their noose around the huge working class suburb of Sadr City in Baghdad and pressed into the remaining strongholds of the Madhi Army loyal to cleric Moqtada al Sadr in the southern city of Basra. The actual death toll is likely to be far higher as US air strikes continue to pound the densely populated slums. In a statement late Saturday night, Sadr threatened an “open war until liberation” if the Iraqi government did not “take the path of peace and abandon violence against its people”. Sadr’s “final warning”, however, was more a pathetic plea to the Iraqi government, than a declaration of war. “This government has forgotten that we are their brothers and were part of them,” he said, alluding to the fact that the Sadrist movement helped Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki into office…

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Is Dubai helping ethnic cleansing in Palestine?
From Khalid Amayreh in occupied Jerusalem
The government of Dubai recently allowed a major bankroller of Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank to open at least two Jewelry stores in the Gulf emirate. According to reliable sources in the United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is a key member-state, Israeli billionaire and diamond magnate Lev Leviev is preparing to open two large jewelry stores in Dubai, a world’s hub of Jewelry trading. The first store will be opened soon at the Burj Dubai Mall (Dubai Mall Tower) while a second store is slated to be opened later this year in the new Atlantis Hotel on the Jumeirah Palm Island….

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Torture victim’s records lost at Guantánamo, admits camp general
Elana Schor, The Guardian
The former head of interrogations at Guantánamo Bay found that records of an al-Qaida suspect tortured at the prison camp were mysteriously lost by the US military, according to a new book by one of Britain’s top human rights lawyers. Retired general Michael Dunlavey, who supervised Guantánamo for eight months in 2002, tried to locate records on Mohammed al-Qahtani, accused by the US of plotting the 9/11 attacks, but found they had disappeared….

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Pentagon propaganda
Eli Stephens, Left I on the News
The New York Times has a major exposé today on the extent to which the Pentagon used network “military analysts” to get its point of view across to the American people, less euphemistically described as propagandizing the American people. You can read the article, it’s full of interesting details. But there are a few things that have to be noted about the article. First, it’s great, but like the Democrats’ “opposition” to the war in Iraq, it comes about six years too late…

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Palestinian special-needs children appeal to the world to end siege on Gaza
Palestinian Information Center
A large number of Palestinian children with special needs participated Sunday in a massive march to appeal to the world’s children and human rights organizations to help them to lift the unjust Israeli siege on them, carrying banners reading, “let me live like the rest of the world’s children” and “world without mercy or conscience.” The march, which was organized by the education ministry in Gaza, headed to the headquarters of the world health organization, where Palestinian children handed an appeal letter to Dr. Mahmoud Dahir, the director of WHO’s office…

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Extra-judicial killing by Israeli army in Balata refugee camp, Nablus
International Solidarity Movement
On Friday 18th April, 21 year old Hani Kabi, wanted by the Israeli army, was assassinated in a family home by Israeli army Special Forces in the refugee camp of Balata in Nablus. At 2am, over twenty Israeli jeeps entered the West Bank’s largest refugee camp, surrounded the neighbourhood of the old mosque in the centre of the camp, and invaded a number of homes nearby to where Hani was known to be located….

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Jailed lawmakers preparing Hamas-Fatah reconciliation initiative
Ma’an News
A Palestinian lawmaker from Hamas’ Change and Reform bloc said on Sunday that jailed lawmakers along with other prisoners were preparing a reconciliation initiative between political rivals Hamas and Fatah. Hamid Al-Baitawi highlighted that the initiative was being crystallized. However he emphasized that the success of such an initiative would be dependent on Palestinian politicians outside prisons…

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British dealers supply arms to Iran
Mark Townsend, The Observer
Investigators have identified a number of British arms dealers trading with Tehran, triggering alarm among government officials who fear Iran’s nuclear programme may be receiving significant support from UK sources. The probe by customs officers suggests that at least seven Britons have been defying sanctions by supplying the Iranian air force, its elite Revolutionary Guard Corps, and even the country’s controversial nuclear ambitions. Officials say they are perturbed by the number of British dealers who appear to be trading with Tehran, despite a third round of restrictions being recently imposed by the United Nations on exporting arms and components to Iran….

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To Her…
Layla Anwar, Uncensored Arabwomanblues
My lovely one, what have they done to you,
How disfigured you’ve become.
They’ve slashed your beautiful face,
with a thousand knives
hammered nails in your wrists
amputated your breasts
set your body on fire
smeared your blood on the walls
left you choking with phosphorus, depleted uranium, sewage, garbage…

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U.S. and Iran Find Common Ground in Iraq’s Shiite Conflict
JAMES GLANZ and ALISSA J. RUBIN, NYTimes
In the Iraqi government’s fight to subdue the Shiite militia of Moktada al-Sadr in the southern city of Basra, perhaps nothing reveals the complexities of the Iraq conflict more starkly than this: Iran and the United States find themselves on the same side. The causes of this convergence boil down to the logic of self-interest, although it is logic in a place where even the most basic reasoning refuses to go in a straight line. In essence, though, the calculation by the United States is that it must back the government it helped to create and take the steps needed to protect American troops and civilian officials….

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Carter: Hamas is willing to accept Israel as its neighbor
AP
Former President Carter said Monday that Hamas — the Islamic militant group that has called for the destruction of Israel — is prepared to accept the right of the Jewish state to “live as a neighbor next door in peace.” But Carter warned that there would not be peace if Israel and the U.S. continue to shut out Hamas and its main backer, Syria. The Democratic former president relayed the message in a speech in Jerusalem after meeting last week with top Hamas leaders in Syria. It capped a nine-day visit to the Mideast aimed at breaking the deadlock between Israel and Hamas militants who rule the Gaza Strip. “They (Hamas) said that they would accept a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, if approved by Palestinians and that they would accept the right of Israel to live as a neighbor next door in peace,” Carter said…

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Leila Fadel: News From Sadr City
Bill Moyers Journal
… One of those journalists is Leila Fadel – the Baghdad bureau chief for the McClatchy Newspaper Group. She was born in Saudi Arabia of a Lebanese father and a mother from Michigan. The fact that she speaks Arabic may have saved her life when she was covering the war between Hezbollah and Israel. She’s reported on everything from Iran’s relationship with Iraq… to the impact of war on families in ethnically torn neighborhoods …to the constant stress on US troops. And she does it all so well that this week she received a George Polk award for foreign reporting – an honor bestowed for courage under fire…

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Torture question hovers over Chertoff
Jason Leopold, Online Journal Contributing Writer
John Yoo and some other Bush administration lawyers who built the legal framework for torture are now out of the U.S. government, but one still holds a Cabinet-level rank: Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. In the summer of 2002, Chertoff, then head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, offered assurances to the CIA that its interrogators would not face prosecution under anti-torture laws if they followed guidelines on aggressive techniques approved by the department’s Office of Legal Counsel, where Yoo worked….

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Rice taunts Muqtada
ROBERT DREYFUSS
…No one really knows the relative strength of Sadr’s militia in relation to the Hakims’ Badr Corps, the Iraqi army, the police, etc., and even the issue of which faction controls how much of the army and police is confusing. But there’s no doubt any longer that both the United States and its Shia allies (Prime Minister Maliki and Hakim-ISCI-Badr) are willing to confront Sadr head on. Iran’s ambassador in Baghdad, a former officer in the Revolutionary Guards, confounded a lot of pundits by backing the crackdown in Basra, seemingly siding with Maliki over Sadr. Nicely, he pulled the rug out from under the United States by making it clear that in the Shia-vs.-Shia battles in Iraq, figuring out which side Iran is on is not so easy. (Those familiar with my writing know that I’ve written extensively about Iran’s ties to the Hakims.) Clearly, Iran is unhappy with the Mad max-like state of oil-rich Basra. But at the same time, the Iranian ambassador expressed unhappiness with the assault on Sadr City, lending some Iranian backing to Sadr’s main base of operations…

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April 20, 2008: 108 Iraqis Killed, 60 Wounded
Margaret Griffis, Antiwar.com
Early reports from Sadr City and Baghdad suggest that fighting between the Mahdi army and security forces has increased. Meanwhile, two mass graves were found in Diyala province. At least 108 Iraqis were killed and another 60 were wounded in violence across Iraq. No Coalition deaths were reported. A pair of mass graves were found in Diyala province, one near Muqdadiyah and the other near Khalis. At least 47 bodies were found between them…

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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Sunday, 20 April 2008.
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial
In a dispatch posted at 2:15pm Baghdad time Sunday afternoon, the Yaqen News Agency reported that a group of fighters for the Jaysh al-Mahdi militia set fire to checkpoints and observation towers in the al-Amin district of Baghdad in the militia’s first response to the threat issued by Muqtada as-Sadr that he will declare open warfare if the US-backed regime continues its offensive against the organization….

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