The Iraq Withdrawal: Obama vs. the Pentagon

By Raed Jarrar – Common Dreams

Obama should not forget that he is the Commander-in-Chief, and should stand up to the Pentagon

This Monday, Army Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, asked officials in DC to approve contingency plans to delay the withdrawal of US combat forces. The next day, the New York times published an op-ed asking president Obama to delay the US withdrawal and keep some tens of thousands of troops in Iraq indefinitely. Both the Pentagon and NY times article argue that prolonging the occupation is for Iraq’s own good. According to these latest attempts to prolong the occupation, if the US were to leave Iraqis alone the sky would fall, a genocidal civil war will erupt, and Iran will takeover their nation and rip it apart.

Excuses to prolong the military intervention in Iraq have been changing since 1990. Whether is was liberating Kuwait, protecting the region from Iraq, protecting the world from Iraq’s WMDs, punishing Iraq for its role in the 9/11 attacks, finding Saddam Hussien and his sons, fighting the Baathists and Al-Qaeda, or the other dozens of stories the U.S. government never ran out of reasons to justify a continuous intervention in Iraq. Under President Bush, the withdrawal plan was linked to conditions on the ground, and had no fixed deadlines. Bush only promise what that “as Iraqis stand up, we will stand down”. But Iraqis never managed to stand up, and the US never had to stand down.

Obama came with a completely different doctrine that thankfully makes prolonging the occupation harder than just making up a new lame excuse. He has promised on the campaign trail to withdraw all combat troops by August 31st of this year bringing the total number of US troops down to less than 50,000. Obama has also announced repeatedly that he will abide by the binding bi-lateral agreement between the two governments that requires all the US troops and contractors to leave Iraq by the end of 2011 without leaving any military bases behind. Both these promises are time-based, and not linked to the conditions on the ground. In addition, President Obama announced last week his intention to call an end to Operation Iraqi Freedom by August 31st, and to start the new non-combat mission as of September 1st this. The new mission, renamed “Operation New Dawn”, should end by December 31st 2011 with the last US soldier and contractor out of Iraq.

Conditions on the ground in Iraq are horrible. After seven years under the US occupation, Iraqis are still without water, electricity, education, or health care. Iran’s intervention and control of the Iraqi government stays at unprecedented levels. Iraq’s armed forces are still infiltrated by the militias and controlled by political parties. But so far, the Obama administration has not attempted to use any of these facts as a reason to change the combat forces withdrawal plan, or to ask the Iraqi government to renegotiate the bi-lateral security agreement. This week’s calls to prolong the occupation are surprising because they expose a conflict between the Pentagon on the one hand and the White House and Congress on the other hand. In fact, the executive and legislative branches in both the US and Iraq seem to be in agreement about implementing the time-based withdrawal, but the Pentagon is disagreeing with them all.

Obama should not forget that he is the Commander-in-Chief, and should stand up to the Pentagon. Iraq is broken, but the US military occupation is not a part of the solution. We cannot fix what the military occupation has damaged by prolonging it, neither can we help Iraqis build a democratic system by occupying them. We cannot protect Iraqis from other interventions by continuing our own. The first step in helping Iraqis work for a better future is sticking to the time-based withdrawal plan that Obama has promised and the two governments have agreed upon. President Obama should send a clear message to the Iraqi people to confirm that he is going to fulfill his promises and abide by the binding security agreement with Iraq, and this message must also be clear to the American people in this pivotal elections year.

Why Do They Hate Us?

By Bouthaina Shaaban – Daily Star Lebanon

News of what is happening to Arabs and Muslims in terms of injustice, imprisonment, starvation and torture have been prevented from reaching international conscience

The report of the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon caused a shock to all those concerned about justice and human rights. In his report to the UN General Assembly on February 5, 2010, on the Israeli war on Gaza, he says: “No determination can be made on the implementation of resolution 64/10 by the parties concerned,” pointing out that he has “called upon all of the parties to carry out credible domestic investigations into the conduct of the Gaza conflict.” Ban does not live on the moon, of course; and, unlike American officials, he visited Gaza and saw for himself the hundreds of homes and schools, some of which are UN schools, shelled by the missiles and phosphorus bombs fired by Israeli warplanes.

TV screens all over the world had shown the dead bodies of children, women and unarmed civilians killed by Israeli bombs. He saw for himself the smoke of white phosphorus in the sky over Gaza. In order to ascertain himself of the credibility of the Palestinian narrative, he only has to look at the disabled people who lost their limbs, eyes and members of their families. Putting the Israelis and the Palestinians in the same category implies a great deal of injustice; and ignoring the tragic conditions imposed on the Palestinians for 60 years as a result of occupation and blockade is an injustice and a shame that will haunt those who committed it and those who condone it.

Although human life is sacred and must not be subject to the litany of figures, it might be useful to remind Western politicians who ask idiotically “Why do they hate us?” that Gaza was destroyed a year ago, not by earthquake as in Haiti, but by a war launched by Israel that killed over 1,400 Palestinian civilians and wounded over 8,000 other civilians, most of them seriously. The war destroyed the infrastructure; agricultural land was flooded by sewage water; and Israel continues to use collective punishment and blockade on over 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza where over 300 civilians have died as a result of the blockade. Still, Western officials ignore this horrible tragedy. The same is done by the UN secretary general, who is supposed to represent international conscience. He equates Israeli generals with their unarmed civilian victims. He and Western officials ignore the testimony of Israeli soldiers who revealed that they were ordered not take any account of the life of Palestinian civilians. The Israeli organization “Breaking the Silence” has revealed new facts about Israeli practices in the West Bank and Gaza. So, why this cover up of the crimes of those generals and why equating criminals with their victims by politicians and journalists who repeat the question: “Why do they hate us?”

Ban’s report, which reveals the international community’s failure to condemn war criminals if they were not Muslim or African, came days after US President Barack Obama made the State of the Union address, in which he ignored the Middle East completely.

The fact is that hundreds of millions of Muslims all over the world have for decades been watching the reactions of Western leaders toward tragedies caused by their policies, particularly their support for the Israeli occupation, settlements and blockade. They see that international institutions dominated by the West do not care about the killing and displacement of their brothers and sisters and the deprivation of their freedoms and human rights. If anyone makes a move to insure that justice takes its course, the American veto is there to thwart this effort. After all this, Western politicians still ask: “Why do they hate us?”

Even news of what is happening to Arabs and Muslims in terms of injustice, imprisonment, starvation and torture have been prevented from reaching international conscience. Here is the US, which boasts about the freedom of the press, banning satellite TV stations en masse if they try to uncover the depth of the human suffering of a people under occupation, while the occupiers enjoy unprecedented international immunity. They commit war crimes, and no one has the right to demand that they should be deterred and punished, as if the lives of Arabs and Muslims are not equal to the lives of other humans in Western standards.

Indifference to human suffering caused by occupation, injustice and oppression increases indignation against this gap between this painful reality and the double standards of the powers which control international media and politics.

The enquiry involving former British Premier Tony Blair shows the fragility of the logic which turns the lives of millions into a daily tragedy. But if Blair, like the prime minister who did not notice the racial segregation wall which is destroying the life of the Palestinians because he does not care about them, cannot see the millions of orphans, widows and handicapped produced by the war on Iraq, how is he supposed to regret supporting that disastrous war on the whole Iraqi people? Such trials have no significance and are no longer able to polish the image of Western democracy which has revealed its reality through its stances regarding the events in the Middle East.

Violence is the result of using unjust force instead of trying to achieve justice in Palestine. And whether Western politicians understand that or not, Palestine, the cradle of Jesus Christ, is the bleeding wound which will never be healed until the US, Europe and international bodies take a just position which restores to the Palestinians their freedom, rights and dignity. These countries and bodies, by funding and arming Israel, are responsible for depriving the Palestinians of their freedom and human rights; and when they grant immunity to its war criminals, they become accomplices in Israeli wars and blockades. When the American administration, and with it Europe and the highest international body, ignore atrocious documented war crimes committed by the occupation forces, only because the war criminals are Israeli, and turn a blind eye to the cruelest forms of suffering imposed on a whole people, only because they are Muslim, there will always be Jews, Christians and Muslims in America, Europe and even in Israel who will support the oppressed against their oppressors.

Taliban Regime Pressed bin Laden on anti-U.S. Terror

By Gareth Porter – Inter Press Service

bin Laden was forbidden to talk to the media without the consent of the Taliban regime or to make plans to attack U.S. targets

Evidence now available from various sources, including recently declassified U.S. State Department documents, shows that the Taliban regime led by Mullah Mohammad Omar imposed strict isolation on Osama bin Laden after 1998 to prevent him from carrying out any plots against the United States.

The evidence contradicts the claims by top officials of the Barack Obama administration that Mullah Omar was complicit in Osama bin Laden’s involvement in the al Qaeda plot to carry out the terrorist attacks in the United States on Sep. 11, 2001. It also bolsters the credibility of Taliban statements in recent months asserting that it has no interest in al Qaeda’s global jihadist aims.

A primary source on the relationship between bin Laden and Mullah Omar before 9/11 is a detailed personal account provided by Egyptian jihadist Abu’l Walid al-Masri published on Arabic-language jihadist websites in 1997.

Al-Masri had a unique knowledge of the subject, because he worked closely with both bin Laden and the Taliban during the period. He was a member of bin Laden’s Arab entourage in Afghanistan, but became much more sympathetic to the Afghan cause than bin Laden and other al Qaeda officials from 1998 through 2001.

The first published English-language report on al-Masri’s account, however, was an article in the January issue of the CTC Sentinal, the journal of the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) at West Point, by Vahid Brown, a fellow at the CTC.

Mullah Omar’s willingness to allow bin Laden to remain in Afghanistan was conditioned from the beginning, according to al-Masri’s account, on two prohibitions on his activities: bin Laden was forbidden to talk to the media without the consent of the Taliban regime or to make plans to attack U.S. targets.

Former Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil told IPS in an interview that the regime “put bin Laden in Kandahar to control him better.” Kandahar remained the Taliban political headquarters after the organisation’s seizure of power in 1996.

The August 1998 U.S. cruise missile strikes against training camps in Afghanistan run by bin Laden in retaliation for the bombings of two U.S. Embassies in East Africa on Aug. 7, 1998 appears to have had a dramatic impact on Mullah Omar and the Taliban regime’s policy toward bin Laden.

Two days after the strike, Omar unexpectedly entered a phone conversation between a State Department official and one of his aides, and told the U.S. official he was unaware of any evidence that bin Laden “had engaged in or planned terrorist acts while on Afghan soil”. The Taliban leader said he was “open to dialogue” with the United States and asked for evidence of bin Laden’s involvement, according to the State Department cable reporting the conversation.

Only three weeks after Omar asked for evidence against bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader sought to allay Taliban suspicions by appearing to accept the prohibition by Omar against planning any actions against the United States.

“There is an opinion among the Taliban that we should not move from within Afghanistan against any other state,” bin Laden said in an interview with al Jazeera. “This was the decision of the Commander of the Faithful, as is known.”

Mullah Omar had taken the title “Commander of the Faithful”, the term used by some Muslim Caliphs in the past to claim to be “leader of the Muslims”, in April 1996, five months before Kabul fell to the Taliban forces.

During September and October 1998, the Taliban regime apparently sought to position itself to turn bin Laden over to the Saudi government as part of a deal by getting a ruling by the Afghan Supreme Court that he was guilty of the Embassy bombings.

In a conversation with the U.S. chargé in Islamabad on Nov. 28, 1998, Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, Omar’s spokesman and chief adviser on foreign affairs, referred to a previous Taliban request to the United States for evidence of bin Laden’s guilt to be examined by the Afghan Supreme Court, according to the U.S. diplomat’s report to the State Department.

Muttawakil said the United States had provided “some papers and a videocassette,” but complained that the videocassette had contained nothing new and had therefore not been submitted to the Supreme Court. He told the chargé that the court had ruled that no evidence that had been presented warranted the conviction of bin Laden.

Muttawakil said the court trial approach had “not worked” but suggested that the Taliban regime was now carrying out a strategy to “restrict [bin Laden's] activities in such a way that he would decide to leave of his own volition.”

On Feb. 10, 1999, the Taliban sent a group of 10 officers to replace bin Laden’s own bodyguards, touching off an exchange of gunfire, according to a New York Times story of Mar. 4, 1999. Three days later, bodyguards working for Taliban intelligence and the Foreign Affairs Ministry personnel took control of bin Laden’s compound near Kandahar and took away his satellite telephone, according to the U.S. and Taliban sources cited by the Times.

Taliban official Abdul Hakeem Mujahid, who was then in the Taliban Embassy in Pakistan, confirmed that the 10 Taliban bodyguards had been provided to bin Laden to “supervise him and observe that he will not contact any foreigner or use any communication system in Afghanistan,” according to the Times story.

The pressure on bin Laden in 1999 also extended to threats to eliminate al Qaeda’s training camps in Afghanistan. An e-mail from two leading Arab jihadists in Afghanistan to bin Laden in July 1999, later found on a laptop previously belonging to al Qaeda in and purchased by the Wall Street Journal , referred to “problems between you and the Leader of the Faithful” as a “crisis”.

The e-mail, published in article by Alan Cullison in the September 2004 issue of The Atlantic, said, “Talk about closing down the camps has spread.”

The message even suggested that the jihadists feared the Taliban regime could go so far as to “kick them out” of Afghanistan.

In the face of a new Taliban hostility, bin Laden sought to convince Mullah Omar that he had given his personal allegiance to Omar as a Muslim. In April 2001 bin Laden referred publicly to having sworn allegiance to Mullah Omar as the “Commander of the Faithful”.

But al-Masri recalls that bin Laden had refused to personally swear such an oath of allegiance to Omar in 1998-99, and had instead asked al-Masri himself to give the oath to Omar in his stead. Al-Masri suggests that bin Laden deliberately avoided giving the oath of allegiance to Omar personally, so that he would be able to argue within the Arab jihadi community that he was not bound by Omar’s strictures on his activities.

Even in summer 2001, as the Taliban regime became increasingly dependent on foreign jihadi troop contingents, including Arabs trained in bin Laden’s camps, for its defence against the military advances of the Northern Alliance, Mullah Omar found yet another way to express his unhappiness with bin Laden’s presence.

After a series of clashes between al Qaeda forces and those of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), the Taliban leader intervened to give overall control of foreign volunteer forces to the Tahir Yuldash of the IMU, according to a blog post last October by Leah Farrall, an Australian specialist on jihadi politics in Afghanistan.

In Late January, Geoff Morrell, the spokesman for Defence Secretary Robert Gates, suggested that the United States could not negotiate with Mullah Omar, because he has “the blood of thousands of Americans on his hands,” implying that he had knowingly allowed bin Laden’s planning of the 9/11 attacks.

Israel: Military Investigations Fail Gaza War Victims

Human Rights Watch

"An independent investigation is crucial to understand why so many civilians died and to bring justice for the victims of unlawful attacks"

Israel has failed to demonstrate that it will conduct thorough and impartial investigations into alleged laws-of-war violations by its forces during last year’s Gaza conflict, Human Rights Watch said today. An independent investigation is needed if perpetrators of abuse, including senior military and political officials who set policies that violated the laws of war, are to be held accountable, Human Rights Watch said.

On February 4, 2010, Human Rights Watch met with military lawyers from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to discuss the investigations. While the military is conducting ongoing investigations, officials did not provide information showing that these will be thorough and impartial or that they will address the broader policy and command decisions that led to unlawful civilian deaths, Human Rights Watch said.

“Israel claims it is conducting credible and impartial investigations, but it has so far failed to make that case,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director for Human Rights Watch. “An independent investigation is crucial to understand why so many civilians died and to bring justice for the victims of unlawful attacks.”

In one case, a military investigation apparently missed an important piece of evidence: remains of an aerial bomb found in the al-Badr flour mill outside Jabalya. Israel denied targeting the mill from the air, as alleged by the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict. However, video footage obtained by Human Rights Watch and released today shows the apparent remains of an Israeli MK-82 500-pound aerial bomb in the damaged mill, and UN de-miners say they defused the bomb.

More than 750 Palestinian civilians in Gaza were killed during the conflict, according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. The UN has said that nearly 3,500 homes and 280 factories were completely destroyed.

Human Rights Watch documented 53 civilian deaths in 19 incidents in which Israeli forces appeared to have violated the laws of war. Six of these incidents involved the unlawful use of white phosphorus munitions; six were attacks by drone-launched missiles that killed civilians; and seven involved soldiers shooting civilians who were in groups holding white flags.

To date, Israeli military courts have convicted only one soldier of wartime abuse during the Gaza conflict, for theft of a credit card.

The Israeli military lawyers said the military was investigating all cases reported by Human Rights Watch. Seven of the cases are criminal investigations into the alleged shooting of civilians waving white flags, they said. The military had originally dismissed Human Rights Watch’s report on these cases as based on “unreliable witness reports.”

The Israeli military has thus far examined specific incidents but not broader policies that may have caused civilian casualties in violation of the laws of war, Human Rights Watch said.

An independent investigation should examine the pre-operation decisions that led to civilian casualties, Human Rights Watch said. These include the decision to target Hamas’s political infrastructure; the use of heavy artillery and white phosphorus munitions in populated areas; attacks on Gaza police; and the apparently permissive rules of engagement for drone operators and ground forces.

“The Israeli investigations so far have looked mostly at soldiers who disobeyed orders or the rules of engagement, but failed to ask the crucial question about whether those orders and rules of engagement themselves violated the laws of war,” Stork said. “For those decisions and policies, senior military and political decision-makers should be held responsible.”

To date, Israeli military courts have convicted only one soldier of wartime abuse during the Gaza conflict, for theft of a credit card

Hamas is not known to have prosecuted anyone for firing hundreds of rockets indiscriminately into Israel. On January 27 it issued a news statement and report summary, saying that rockets from Palestinian armed groups had only targeted Israeli military objects and that civilian casualties were accidental – a conclusion that Human Rights Watch rejected as “legally and factually wrong.” Hamas released a full report about its conduct during the war on February 3 that Human Rights Watch is still reviewing.

In September 2009, the UN Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, headed by Justice Richard Goldstone, determined that Israel and Hamas had committed war crimes and possible crimes against humanity and called on both parties to conduct impartial investigations within six months.

On November 5, the UN General Assembly endorsed the Goldstone report and asked UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for a progress report about domestic investigations. Ban gave his report on February 4, passing on documents provided to him by Israel and the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, and reiterating his call for credible and impartial investigations by all sides.

“Secretary-General Ban merely passed on the parties’ claims, but he also reasserted the importance of credible investigations in conformity with international standards,” Stork said. “The pressure is still on Israel and Hamas to show that they will do it right.”

According to Israel, the military has conducted roughly 150 “investigations” of incidents in Gaza, but it has not provided a list of the cases. Nearly 90 of the 150 investigations are what the military calls an “operational debriefing” – tahkir mivza’i in Hebrew. These are after-action reports, not criminal investigations, in which an officer in the chain of command interviews the soldiers involved, with no testimony from victims or witnesses. Forty-five of these 90 cases have been closed.

The Israeli military says that military police have opened 36 criminal investigations, in which a military police investigator takes statements from soldiers and seeks testimony from outside sources. One resulted in the conviction for the credit card theft, incurring a seven and a half month prison sentence, and seven were closed due to lack of evidence or because the complainants were unwilling to testify. The remaining 28 are ongoing.

The military said it has disciplined four soldiers and officers for violating orders during the Gaza conflict. In one case, two commanders received notes of reprimand for firing high-explosive artillery shells that hit a UN compound where 700 civilians were taking shelter, despite dozens of phone calls from UN officials asking for the shelling to stop. During the same attack, artillery-fired white phosphorus set fire to a UN warehouse and injured three people in the compound. The military told Human Rights Watch that the white phosphorus aspect of the case is still under investigation and was not part of the reason for the reprimand. The only information the military has released about the other two disciplinary cases is that one resulted from an attack on UN property or personnel, and the other from an incident of property destruction.

The video Human Rights Watch released today of the al-Badr flour mill was filmed by the mill’s owners after it was damaged, on January 10, 2009. The UN fact-finding report said the Israeli military bombed the mill in a deliberate attempt to damage the civilian infrastructure of Gaza. Israel said its investigation found that the mill was a legitimate military target because of Hamas activity in the area and that it only fired a tank shell and did not bomb the mill from the air.

The UN told Human Rights Watch that de-miners visited the mill on February 11, 2009, and found the front half of a 500-pound Mk-82 aircraft bomb on an upper floor of the mill, corroborating the contents of the video.

The military lawyers told Human Rights Watch that, when provided with new evidence, they could reopen an investigation.

Israel has a poor record of military investigations into alleged violations against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, Human Rights Watch said. The Israeli human rights group Yesh Din has documented the low levels of criminal investigations, prosecutions, and convictions of soldiers despite the large number of allegedly unlawful deaths.

US Foreign Policy & Redrawing the Map of the Middle East

Talk by Dr. Azmi Bishara at UC Berkeley after collapse of Baghdad.
Date: 04/11/2003

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

Hassan Nasrallah: We Will Defeat Enemy, Change Region’s Face

By Hussein Assi – Al Manar

Lebanon’s strength is in the solidarity of its army, people, and resistance.

Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah said on Friday that in case of any confrontation with Israel, the Resistance will foil the aggressions’ objectives, defeat the enemy, and change the face of the region.

Sayyed Nasrallah was delivering a speech via video link before the Arab and International Forum for Supporting the Resistance at the UNESCO Palace in Beirut.

Sayyed Nasrallah started his speech by saying that Lebanon has abandoned the myth saying “Lebanon’s strength is in its weakness” to adopt the truth saying “Lebanon’s strength is in the solidarity of its army, people, and resistance.”

The Resistance leader said that Lebanon has achieved victory by kicking out the occupier from its land giving its nation and people the pride of enjoying a new and advanced position in the way towards decisive victory.

His eminence chose to highlight the bright and shining side of the current conflict in his speech and recalled that the forces of hegemony were seeking to create a settling entity that would constitute an eternal guarantee for their interests in the region. “The Zionists thought that they were achieving their scheme when the October 1973 war was launched. This war was a turning point in the conflict with Israel during which the Egyptian and Syrian armies put a limit on the Israeli dream of expansion. But a few years later, the Egyptian regime expelled Egypt from the conflict with Israel, thus marking the biggest transformation in the history of the conflict alongside the entry of Iran in it.”

“In 1982, Israel succeeded in invading Lebanon and its hopes of re-vivifying the Greater Israel project became high. But the Resistance was able to achieve Liberation in 2000, the year in which the Israeli troops withdrew from the Lebanese territories in a flagrant announcement of the failure of the theory of the Greater Israel project. Then came the Al-Aqsa Intifada that made Israel feel weak and talk about a battle for its existence but Resistant Gaza made it again and kicked out the occupation. Israel then continued its aggressive war against Lebanon and planned in 2006 to beat the Resistance but the Resistance remained. It was even strengthened.”

Sayyed Nasrallah concluded that Israel is living today a real dilemma: the dilemma of leadership and command, the dilemma of the invincible army which was defeated on the hands of the resistance fighters, and the dilemma of trusting the future. “Israel is trying to cover up its dilemmas through daily threats which scare only advocates of defeat and cowards,” his eminence added. “However, those who experienced Jihad, they are missing the confrontations to produce a new victory and a new glory for their nation.”

Hezbollah Secretary General then said that Israel is leaning today on intimidation attempts and on settlements’ building with the help of some countries, including the international community, the Security Council as well as some Arab regimes. “However, for the first time, Israel fears the military option and talks about the victory guarantees in any upcoming war.”

His eminence then noted that the Resistance overcame the most dangerous periods in the region when the United States was trying to transform the region into the so-called “New Middle East.”

While emphasizing that the resistance made its achievements amid the worst Arab situation and despite being stabbed in the back by some forces, Sayyed Nasrallah that the aim of the hegemony forces was to eliminate the Resistance movements in Lebanon and in Palestine and surrender to US and Israeli conditions. “The New Middle East was the title of the battle but the Resistance and its people were able to achieve victories. Our people held on to the culture of dignity and Jihad and rejected giving up,” his eminence said.

Hezbollah Secretary General said that it was possible to talk about a US failure and impotence. His eminence addressed the nation’s people and said: “The choice of Resistance is a true, logical and victorious one.”

His eminence, meanwhile, pointed out that the project of the Resistance and its people needs all political, legal, media and moral support to confront the psychological war waged against it. “The resistance is still facing many threats topped by defaming attempts through accusations of committing crimes, drugs trafficking, and blind submission to Iran and Syria,” Sayyed Nasrallah highlighted. “The threats also include besieging the Resistance and its voice through preventing it of attending conferences and through the bill the US working is preparing against Arab satellite networks, targeting Al-Manar and Al-Aqsa first of all.”

“If I had to address your forum with one call, I call you to support the resistance against this psychological warfare, but I assure you that this war will not shake us and that we will face it through patience and self confidence,” Sayyed Nasrallah stressed.

Hezbollah Secretary General concluded his speech by stressing that the Resistance would continue to recommend its soul to God and therefore achieve victory in any war. “I promise you, as I have always promised you. In any coming confrontation, we will foil the aggressions’ objectives, defeat the enemy, achieve a great historical victory, and change the face of the region,” his eminence said.

Mubarak Creates PR Disaster for Egypt and Himself

By Stuart Littlewood – Palestine Chronicle

Mubarak’s misdeeds have shamed the Egyptian people and all Arabs

Mubarak’s misdeeds have shamed the Egyptian people and all ArabsHosni Mubarak, President of Egypt, has plumbed new depths and caused deep offence with his shameful bullying of the Viva Palestina convoy bound for Gaza, which had driven for weeks and thousands of miles from many countries to bring medical aid and other relief to women and children cruelly shut off from the world and under endless lethal bombardment by Israel.

The dirty tricks resorted to by Mubarak and his lieutenants, which repeatedly delayed the convoy when only a few hours away from its destination, forced it to retrace its steps and take a dangerous and unnecessary sea voyage menaced by Israeli gunboats, heaped massive extra costs on the mercy mission then confronted it with 2,000 riot police, put him and his rotten regime beyond the pale. In other words, far outside acceptable standards of decency.

Mubarak’s misdeeds have shamed the Egyptian people and indeed all Arabs, and will be written indelibly into the history of the Middle East. Who would have thought that a man of his experience would visibly stoop so low as to invite wholesale ridicule and disgust?

Faced with all those obstacles the splendid men and women with Viva Palestina rose to the challenge in fine style and gave real meaning to the anthem “We Shall Overcome”.

They overcame all right. They overcame all the mean-minded chicanery the loathsome vultures of the Middle East could throw at them.

And with their generous hearts, human decency and sense of honour, the Viva Palestina team delivered a master-class in true grit and cross-cultural togetherness in the teeth of unjustified hostility.

Impressive too was the leader George Galloway. The British MP, considered a renegade in Westminster, once again showed himself to be head and shoulders above the pygmies of the British government when it comes to ‘doing the right thing’.

They all received sterling help en route from many authorities that co-operated in exemplary fashion. Egypt please take notes.

Where does Mubarak go from here? He could begin by asking forgiveness not only from the humanitarian convoy and the suffering children they were striving to reach, but from the world community whose eyes have been opened by this epic, blockade-busting expedition and who now view him and his kind with contempt.

And by asking forgiveness from God.

The crowning glory of Mubarak’s evil intent is the construction of the iron wall along the Gaza border, which threatens the Palestinians’ very survival and has been dubbed the ‘Death Wall’. It would go a long way to restoring Egypt’s credibility and his own standing if he were to do a spectacular U-turn and take it down… such a move being a sign of strength not weakness.