60 Years of Solitude…
Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues
I remember when I was first initiated to the Palestinian cause. I must have been 10 or 11. I vividly remember the setting. It was our living room. I recall seeing sun rays penetrating across onto the Persian carpet. I remember the colors coming alive. I guess it must have been spring or summer…I was taken away from my idyllic reverie of a few minutes when father said “Layla, what do you know about Palestine?” Of course I had heard of Palestine at age 10, but am not sure I knew all the details. All I knew is that something bad happened and it had to do with war and occupation. Sensing that I was hesitant to come forward with the little knowledge I had for a 10 year old, he completed my thoughts…” Palestine has been taken away from us by force…Layla, what happened to Palestine will happen to every Arab country unless…” My mother intervened as she usually does and added “Always remember that Palestine is Arab and that you are an Arab whatever happens…” My first formal initiation to the Palestinian cause was also an initiation to the Arab cause…In my mind they remained and are till this very day, intertwined and inseparable…Sixty years of wars, sixty years of expansion, sixty years of silence – the silence of mass graves, the solitude of mass graves…the solitude of exile. They still carry the key, the yellowed papers and the ID card…they will keep on carrying them. So will I. I am also holding onto the key, the papers that are turning yellow and the I! D card t hat I am keeping as a memory…I am too, today. So will you, tomorrow… And my father’s voice returns in full force “ What happened to Palestine will happen to every Arab country unless…”

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SIXTY YEARS PLUS A DAY
Desert Peace
The horror has lasted 60 years plus a day so far…. let us bow our heads for 60 seconds to honour the People of Palestine…. May we all see them as a free people soon…

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Anthony Charles Lynton
Blair due on trial in the Hague
David Halpin*
On the same day the BBC reported that former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz was to go on trial after five years in prison over the deaths of a group of Baghdad merchants in 1992, it was rumoured the former prime minister of Britain will be indicted for crimes against humanity. The list of charges is long and not confined to the many alleged crimes in Iraq. Mr Blair’s whereabouts are uncertain; he has been sighted occasionally in occupied East Jerusalem where he is acting as “peace” envoy for the “Quartet”. Most recently, he has been facilitating industrial zones for the employment of Palestinians and for the removal of a few of the over 500 Israeli Occupation Force roadblocks…

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Iran slams Iraqi government delegation
ROBERT DREYFUSS
…Iran is worried that (1) the Maliki government might make a deal to authorize a long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq through the Bush-Maliki accord that is supposed to be signed this summer, and (2) that the war against Muqtada’s JAM has gone a little too far. To understand this tangle, I’d look at the emerging possibility that the Iraqi government itself is split: that Maliki is increasingly opting for a pro-American stance, while the hard-core pro-Iranian ISCI faction around the Hakims is more willing to align itself with Tehran. Problem is, Tehran isn’t willing to make a choice between Sadr and Hakim…

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60 Years of the Palestinian Nakba, 60 Years of Ethnic Cleansing
The Palestinian Center For Human Rights Report
May 15, 2008 marks the 60th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, when Palestinians were forced from their homes and ethnically cleansed en masse in a premeditated and organized campaign carried out by armed Zionist militia. Historical accounts indicate that the forced migration of Palestinians from their homeland had been planned well in advance. The establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 was built on the violations of the rights of the Palestinian people. After widespread massacres and killings, more than 700,000 Palestinian civilians were brutally uprooted from their homes, villages and towns, and forced to become refugees in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and surrounding Arab countries. In addition, thousands of other Palestinians were internally displaced within the land subsequently occupied by Israel.
Since the establishment of the State of Israel, and after its expansion in 1967 when it forcibly occupied the remainder of Palestinian West Bank land (including occupied East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip, Israel has relentlessly confiscated Palestinian land in order to build illegal Jewish settlements, erasing the history of Palestine in the process…

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IRAQ: Government negligent in tackling human displacement – MP
IRIN News
The problem of internally displaced persons (IDPs) and Iraqi refugees in neighbouring countries is likely to grow into a regional and international problem because the government appears to have no clear policy to tackle it, a member of parliament (MP) said on 12 May. “The government’s obvious inability to solve the problem of IDPs and refugees could lead to serious regional and international problems, as there is no clear and comprehensive policy to get them back into their homes,” MP Abdul-Khaliq Zankana, head of parliament’s Displacement and Migration Committee, said…

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Saudis Rebuff Bush, Politely, on Pumping More Oil
SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and JAD MOUAWAD, NYTimes
President Bush used a private visit to King Abdullah’s ranch here on Friday to make another appeal for an increase in oil production that might give American consumers some relief at the gasoline pump. The Saudis responded by announcing they had decided a week ago on a modest increase of 300,000 barrels a day. The White House said the increase would not be enough to lower gasoline prices, which are nearing $4 a gallon, and industry analysts called it mostly symbolic. But Mr. Bush’s request, his second in five months, coupled with rising anti-Saudi sentiment in the Democratic-led Congress, underscored the growing tensions between the countries over oil…

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May 16, 2008: 1 US Soldier, 16 Iraqis Killed; 41 Iraqis Wounded
Margaret Griffis, Antiwar.com
Few clashes were reported in Sadr City, where a truce between Shi’ite gunmen and Iraqi forces was imposed earlier this week. At least 16 Iraqis were killed and another 41 were wounded in attacks during a fairly quiet prayer day. Also, the DOD reported the death of an American soldier who had been injured May 1st in Baghdad…

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The Nakba is our Holocaust
Khalid Amayreh, Palestine Think Tank
Basking in their usual insolence and self-absorbedness, Israeli leaders have been visibly irate over the highlighted commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, the destruction and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian community in 1948. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has been quoted as saying that there can be no Palestinian state unless and until the victims learn to forget the word Nakba. “The Palestinians will celebrate their statehood when they erase the word Nakba from their lexicon,” said Livni, whose father, Eitan, who died in 1991, played an active part in effecting the genocidal campaign of murder and terror that culminated in the establishment of Israel. Last year, Livni had the temerity to say that the creation of a Palestinian state on parts of the West Bank would have to address Israel’s Arab citizens. For those unacquainted with Zionist phraseology, the venomous remarks were an obvious allusion to diabolic Zionist designs to ultimately expel more than 1.5 million Israeli Arab citizens whose presence in Palestine predated the establishment of Israel by hundreds if not thousands of years…

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Knesset members: “Bush more Zionist than Olmert”
Saed Bannoura – IMEMC
After the US President, George W. Bush, gave a speech at the Israeli Knesset on Thursday, several right wing members of Knesset said that “Bush seems to be more Zionist the Olmert”, and that “it is better to have Bush as a PM instead of Olmert”. Some of the Knesset members even said that “Bush appears to be the one person who will achieve the Zionist aspirations”, the Arabs48 news website reported. During the Knesset session Olmert said that upon achieving a peace deal with the Palestinians, the agreement will be presented to the Knesset for approval , and that such an agreement will achieve the approval of the Knesset and will be supported by the Israeli public….

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Tehran ponders the spoils of victory
Sami Moubayed, Asia Times
…Now that order has been restored, Beirut airport has been reopened and Hezbollah troops have departed the streets of Beirut, what comes next? The March 14 Coalition gulped its pride and withdrew the two orders that had sparked the entire crisis, regarding Hezbollah’s surveillance and communication system and the discharge of their man, Wadih Shuqayr, from his post as director of airport security. The Iranians were pleased. The Americans and the Saudis were not. All parties have agreed to return to the negotiating table, and were scheduled to meet in Qatar on Friday to find a solution to the vacant presidential seat at Baabda Palace…How can the scars of what happened last week in Beirut be healed so easily, when day and night the media outlets of both Hariri and Nasrallah spread venom against each other? And if either side is a traitor, as their media sources are saying, then how can they sit together in Doha to talk about a common future and nation-building? And finally, what about Iran? Now that it has made its point loud and clear in Beirut, how does it plan on ending the crisis?..

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60 Years of the Palestinian Nakba, 60 Years of Ethnic Cleansing
The Palestinian Center For Human Rights Report
May 15, 2008 marks the 60th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, when Palestinians were forced from their homes and ethnically cleansed en masse in a premeditated and organized campaign carried out by armed Zionist militia. Historical accounts indicate that the forced migration of Palestinians from their homeland had been planned well in advance. The establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 was built on the violations of the rights of the Palestinian people. After widespread massacres and killings, more than 700,000 Palestinian civilians were brutally uprooted from their homes, villages and towns, and forced to become refugees in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and surrounding Arab countries. In addition, thousands of other Palestinians were internally displaced within the land subsequently occupied by Israel.
Since the establishment of the State of Israel, and after its expansion in 1967 when it forcibly occupied the remainder of Palestinian West Bank land (including occupied East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip, Israel has relentlessly confiscated Palestinian land in order to build illegal Jewish settlements, erasing the history of Palestine in the process…

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SIXTY YEARS PLUS A DAY
Desert Peace
The horror has lasted 60 years plus a day so far…. let us bow our heads for 60 seconds to honour the People of Palestine…. May we all see them as a free people soon…

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US/IRAQ: Soldier Refuses Tour, Citing “Stomach-Churning Horrors”
Aaron Glantz
A U.S. Army soldier who served as a military journalist in Afghanistan, Japan, Europe and the Philippines announced Thursday his intent to refuse orders to deploy to Iraq. “As an Army journalist whose job it was to collect and filter service members’ stories, I heard many stomach-churning testimonies of the horrors of the crimes taking place in Iraq,” said Sergeant Matthis Chiroux, 24, in an announcement under the rotunda of the House of Representative’s Cannon Office Building. “For fear of retaliation from the military, I failed to report these crimes, but never again will I allow fear to silence me. Never again will I fail to stand,” he said….

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Memory for forgetfulness
Mahmoud Darwish
Mahmoud Darwish was born in 1941 in the village of Birwe, in Upper Galilee. Birwe was destroyed in 1948 after its inhabitants were made to flee the village. The extract which follows is taken from a memoir Darwish wrote during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. In it, he remembers his first encounter with Beirut in 1948, before his family stole back into what has since become Israel, where Darwish remained until 1972…

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US troops use copy of Qur’an for target practice in Baghdad.
After Revealing the Crime…The Occupation Admits the Manipulation
Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq (AMSI)
The heinous crime against the Holy Book Qur’an carried out by the US-Nazi occupation forces was revealed and published by Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq (AMSI). Thereafter the occupation forces admitted the manipulation, shooting at the Holy Qur’an as a military target at one of their training. To cover up for this heinous crime the occupation forces announced that they opened an investigation with the soldiers on this issue, alleging that it respects Islam and Islamic Creed….

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Defense Secretary Robert Gates proposed talking with Iran the very same day Bush attacked Obama for suggesting the exact same thing
Justin Gardner
How exactly does Bush explain his speech when his own defense secretary’s opinions seems to place him in the “appeasement” camp with Obama? Here’s what Gates said… The United States should construct a combination of incentives and pressure to engage Iran, and may have missed earlier opportunities to begin a useful dialogue with Tehran, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said yesterday. “We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage . . . and then sit down and talk with them,” Gates said. “If there is going to be a discussion, then they need something, too. We can’t go to a discussion and be completely the demander, with them not feeling that they need anything from us.” Note the emphasis…”sit down and talk with them.”…

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“What a Way to Mark Independence Day”
Paramilitary Police Attack Al-Nakba March
JONATHAN COOK
…Away from the cameras, a fifth of the Israeli population — more than one million Palestinian citizens — remembered al-Nakba, the Catastrophe of 1948 that befell the Palestinian people as the Jewish state was built on the ruins of their society. As it has been doing for the past decade, Israel’s Palestinian minority staged an alternative act of commemoration: a procession of families, many of them refugees from the 1948 war, to one of more than 400 Palestinian villages erased by Israel in a monumental act of state vandalism after the fighting. The villages were destroyed to ensure that the 750,000 Palestinians expelled from the state under the cover of war never return. But in a sign of how far Israel still is from coming to terms with the circumstances of its birth, this year’s march was forcibly broken up by the Israeli police. They clubbed unarmed demonstrators with batons and fired tear gas and stun grenades into crowds of families that included young children…

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What about the children of Palestine?
Reham Alhelsi, Palestine Think Tank
While the children of Palestine face the atrocities of the Israeli military occupation, the children of Israel celebrate the on-going ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people….Do the Israelis know that while their children are allowed to travel all over the world, Palestinian children have sometimes to wait for hours at a checkpoint before they are allowed to reach their schools? Do they know that sick Palestinian children need permits from the Israeli military so they can reach hospitals and get the urgently needed and in many cases life-saving treatment? Did they ever hear of the many children who died because the Israeli occupation forces refused to give them the needed permits and thus weren’t allowed to leave Gaza to get treatment? In the course of decades of Israeli military occupation, Palestinian children have been subjected to all forms of physical and mental violence caused by the occupation…

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Chalabi’s Short-Lived Comeback
Brian Bennett, TimesOnline
This week, according to two U.S. officials, America’s diplomats and military liaisons were told to cut off ties with Chalabi…NBC News first reported the rebuke on its website, citing American concern over Chalabi’s contacts with Iran. A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad would not elaborate on the order, saying “we maintain contact with a wide variety of Iraqi interlocutors.” Chalabi, through a spokesman, said he had not been informed of any change in his relationship with the U.S. or Iraqi governments. Chalabi also denied that his dealings with Iran were any different from those of Iraq’s current President, Jalal Talibani, or Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Allegations about Chalabi’s ties to Iran are not new…Over the past six months, Chalabi has focused a lot of attention on delivering services to Sadr City, the northeast Baghdad Shi’ite slum that is a major stronghold of the firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. To do this required close coordination with al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia…

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Iraq Veterans Describe Atrocities to Lawmakers
Aaron Glantz, OneWorld
Antiwar veterans of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan took their case to Capitol Hill Thursday, baring their souls with stories of killings of innocent civilians, torture, and wrongful detentions. “On several occasions our convoys came upon bodies that had been lying on the road, sometimes for weeks,” said Marine Corps veteran Vincent Emanuele, who served in al-Qaim near the Syrian border in 2004 and 2005. “When encountering these bodies standard procedure was to run over the corpses, sometimes even stopping and taking pictures, which was also standard practice when encountering the dead in Iraq,” he told the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which organized the hearing….

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Israelis Praise “Zionist” Bush
IslamOnline.net & News Agencies
US President George W. Bush’s speech to Israeli Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel’s creation on the rubble of Palestine has earned him ecstatic praise from right-wing Israeli leaders, describing the Republican president a “great friend of Israel”. “It was a Zionist speech in the full sense of the word,” said former foreign minister Silvan Shalom, of the Likud party, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported on Friday, May 16. “His speech was the speech of a member of the National Religious Party,” NRP chairman Zvulun Orlev added. In his speech on Thursday, Bush hailed the close US ally Israel as a mighty democracy where liberty and justice thrive…

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IOF plan escalation of atrocities against Gaza
Palestinian Information Center
The Israeli occupation forces are gearing up to escalate their aggression against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip after getting a green light from George Bush, according to an Israeli newspaper. The Jerusalem Post said that “Defense officials” said that while the IOF “was preparing for possible military action in Gaza, Israel was still interested in obtaining a cease-fire with Hamas, via Egyptian mediation.” The paper reported that the IOF escalation against Hamas is expected to start after George Bush leaves on Friday. It is obvious that Bush has given the green light for further Israeli occupation atrocities in the already devastated Gaza Strip under the rubric of “fighting terror.”…

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Iraq to increase grain imports due to drop in local produce
Ali Shatab, Azzaman
This year’s severe drought is forecast to lower wheat and barely yields in Iraq by up to 35 percent, the Ministry of Planning said. The ministry, in a statement, added that Iraq has been subjected to one of its worst droughts in recent history this year. Wheat and barley yields may not exceed one million tons, the ministry added. Iraq needs up to four million tons of wheat to meet domestic produce and at least two million tons of barley used mainly as animal feed. Last year Iraq harvested more than 1.5 million tons of both crops and the rest it imported from abroad…

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All the President’s Nazis (real and imagined): An Open Letter to Bush
Larisa Alexandrovna, thepeoplesvoice.org
Your speech on the Knesset floor today was not only a disgrace; it was nothing short of treachery…Your reminiscence today about the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany should have been seen as your own condemnation of your own abhorrent actions against Iraq. The morbid irony of what you said will likely never register with your or your speechwriter. To truly grasp the grotesqueness of what you said requires that you have both a conscience and some understanding of history. We know you possess neither. I will therefore make your history lesson brief, but to the point. The unprovoked attack on Poland by Germany was a war crime just as your attack against Iraq – based on lies – is a war crime. This is not my opinion. This is not a political attack. This is a fact. Consider the words of the esteemed former chief prosecutor in the Nuremburg trials, Benjamin Ferencz, regarding your war of aggression against Iraq: “…Prima facie case can be made that the United States is guilty of the supreme crime against humanity, that being an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation.”…

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PM says to pardon Ninewa gunmen if hand over arms in 10 days
Voices of Iraq
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said he would pardon gunmen in the province of Ninewa if they handed over their medium and heavy arms to security authorities or tribal chiefs in their areas in 10 days’ time. “We have decided to grant clemency to members of armed groups in return for handing over their medium and heavy weapons to the security agencies or tribal chiefs in their areas within a period of 10 days,” according to a statement by Maliki’s office as received by Aswat al-Iraq – Voices of Iraq – (VOI). “Later instructions would be issued on the mechanisms to hand over weapons,” the statement read….

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McCain Unit Rolled out; Funeral Bombing Toll Rises to 25; Baghdad Governor’s Convoy Blown Up
Juan Cole, Informed Comment
…Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the Mosul power elite is increasingly disturbed by the central government’s military campaign in that city. They say that they would be willing to keep on the sidelines if the al-Maliki government just went after “al-Qaeda” (the Salafi Jihadis) in the city. But they say that the al-Maliki forces have arrested dozens of ex-members of the Baath Party, as well as former military officers. They say that if this campaign against the Mosul elite continues, they will be forced to act. The al-Maliki government had given them undertakings that it would only target “al-Qaeda”, but in fact it has arrested over 900 persons, many of them ex-Baathists. The US is cutting off relations with Iraqi politician and notorious embezzler and liar Ahmad Chalabi for the fourth time. This time the issue is said to be his deteriorating relations with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and his closeness to Brig. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, head of the Jerusalem (Quds) Brigades of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Actually my suspicion is that Chalabi is supporting the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr and that is the real reason for the tension with him…

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Mass Graves Found in Zubair Town of Basra City
Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq (AMSI)
On Wednesday, 14 May 2008 a new mass grave with 26 bodies of victims were found in the district of al Zubair Town 17 km southeast of Basra City in the cemetery of Sayyid Ahmad. The bodies of victims are the result of sectarian incidents which past year and previous years have been witnessed. The identies of the victims were identified by their relatives six of whom were abducted by the sectarian death squads on 17 May 2007 that is one year ago at the similar times. The victims were abducted from the blood bank in Basra General Hospital and had been taken to unknown destination. It is noteworthy that six victims were determined to donate blood at the aforesaid hospital; four of them were from Beit Rashed, another from Beni Tamim and a sixth one was accompanied by his brother to make blood donation…

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ISRAEL OFFICIALLY PROTESTS THE NAKBA
Desertpeace
Or at least the use of the word…. The Israeli mission to the United Nations is seeking clarifications after an official communique released by Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon’s bureau made specific reference to the word “nakba,” according to a report broadcast on Israel Radio early Friday morning. The report said the UN chief telephoned Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to express his solidarity with the Palestinians on the day they mark the “nakba,” the Arabic word meaning “catastrophe” that is used in reference to the founding of the state of Israel….

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