The Assassination of Yasser Arafat had been Ordered by the Israeli Cabinet
by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, July 6, 2012
The 2004 assassination of Yasser Arafat was part of a broader military and intelligence agenda to destroy the Palestinian Authority.
What recent news reports fail to mention is that the extra-judicial assassination had been ordered by the Israeli cabinet in 2003. It was subsequently approved by the US which vetoed a United Nations Security Resolution condemning the 2003 Israeli Cabinet decision to "get rid of Arafat". "We will choose the right way and the right time to kill Arafat."
(See Michel Chossudovsky, The Invasion of Gaza: "Operation Cast Lead", Part of a Broader Israeli Military-Intelligence Agenda, Global Research, November 2009)
The assassination of Yasser Arafat had been on the drawing board since 1996 under "Operation Fields of Thorns". According to an October 2000 document "prepared by the security services, at the request of then Prime Minister Ehud Barak, stated that 'Arafat, the person, is a severe threat to the security of the state [of Israel] and the damage which will result from his disappearance is less than the damage caused by his existence'". (Tanya Reinhart, Evil Unleashed, Israel's move to destroy the Palestinian Authority is a calculated plan, long in the making, Global Research, December 2001. Details of the document were published in Ma'ariv, July 6, 2001.).
Arafat's assassination was ordered in 2003 by the Israeli cabinet. It was approved by the US which vetoed a United Nations Security Resolution condemning the 2003 Israeli Cabinet decision. Reacting to increased Palestinian attacks, in August 2003, Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz declared "all out war" on the militants whom he vowed "marked for death."
"In mid September, Israel's government passed a law to get rid of Arafat. Israel's cabinet for political security affairs declared it "a decision to remove Arafat as an obstacle to peace." Mofaz threatened; "we will choose the right way and the right time to kill Arafat." Palestinian Minister Saeb Erekat told CNN he thought Arafat was the next target. CNN asked Sharon spokesman Ra'anan Gissan if the vote meant expulsion of Arafat. Gissan clarified; "It doesn't mean that. The Cabinet has today resolved to remove this obstacle. The time, the method, the ways by which this will take place will be decided separately, and the security services will monitor the situation and make the recommendation about proper action." (See Trish Shuh, Road Map for a Decease Plan, www.mehrnews.com November 9 2005)
The assassination of Arafat was part of the 2001 Dagan Plan. In all likelihood, it was carried out by Israeli Intelligence. It was intended to destroy the Palestinian Authority, foment divisions within Fatah as well as between Fatah and Hamas. Mahmoud Abbas is a Palestinian quisling. He was installed as leader of Fatah, with the approval of Israel and the US, which finance the Palestinian Authority's paramilitary and security forces.
To Read complete Article:
The Invasion of Gaza: "Operation Cast Lead", Part of a Broader Israeli Military-Intelligence Agenda
- by Michel Chossudovsky - 2009-01-04
Labels: ASSASSINATION, ISRAEL, PALESTINE
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Obama at UN: The arrogant voice of imperialism
Saturday, 24 September 2011 02:00
Bill Van Auken
US president Barack Obama delivered an empty and arrogant sermon to the United Nations on Wednesday, laced with platitudes about "peace" that were designed to mask Washington's predatory policies.
The American president received a tepid response from the assembled heads of state, foreign ministers and UN delegates. Not a single line in his speech evoked applause.
The novelty of two years ago, when Obama made his first appearance before the body posing as the champion of multilateralism in contrast to Bush, has long since worn off.
As the world quickly learned, changing the occupant of the White House did little to shift the direction of American foreign policy or curb the spread of American militarism.
The immediate purpose of Obama's 47-minute address was to supplement a behind-the-scenes campaign of bullying and intimidation aimed at forcing the Palestinian Authority to drop its plan to seek a UN
Security Council vote on recognition of Palestine as a sovereign member state.
Washington has vowed to veto any bid for Palestinian statehood if it comes to the Security Council, a move that would only underscore the real character of US imperialist policy in the Middle East and the hypocrisy of its claims to identify with the revolutionary upheavals of the Arab masses.
The speech and Obama's defence of the veto threat served to accomplish the same purpose, further diminishing the US president's popularity in the Arab world.
According to a recent poll, his favorable rating in the region has fallen from roughly 50 percent when he took office to barely 10 percent, even lower than George W Bush in his second term.
Obama rushed from the podium at the General Assembly hall to a meeting and joint appearance with Benyamin Netanyahu. The Israeli prime minister praised Obama's remarks and made it clear that the two are working on a joint strategy to muscle Palestine Authority head Mahmoud Abbas into dropping the statehood bid.
It was reported on Thursday that there were efforts to get the Palestinian delegation to make an entirely symbolic plea for recognition, while agreeing to postpone any vote until after the resumption of US-brokered negotiations with Israel.
There have been two decades of such talks, which have achieved nothing, while Israel has relentlessly expanded Zionist settlements in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem.
Since the onset of negotiations in 1991, the number of settlers has more than doubled, while the West Bank has been internally divided by settlements, security roads and checkpoints as well as the apartheid security wall separating it from Israel.
Obama's remarks in the UN speech represented an even further accommodation to Israel compared to his proposal in May for a resumption of talks, which he then said should be based upon pre-1967 borders with "mutually agreed swaps."
That statement, which implicitly supported Israel's demand to retain existing settlements, merely reiterated the official policy of the US government since the Clinton administration. Nonetheless, the mere reference to borders provoked a storm of criticism from Netanyahu, the Israeli right, and the Republican Party.
In his speech to the UN, Obama mentioned neither the 1967 borders nor any proposal to halt the expansion of settlements on the West Bank. Instead, he presented the basis for proposed negotiations as: "Israelis must know that any agreement provides assurances for their security. Palestinians deserve to know the territorial basis of their state." As the rest of the US president's remarks made clear, both those conditions are to be dictated by Israel.
While behind the scenes US officials are reportedly threatening the Palestinian Authority with cutting off all US aid if it goes ahead with the request for recognition, in his speech Obama described a turn to the UN as a "short cut" that would accomplish nothing.
Dismissing the role of the institution that he had rhetorically praised at the outset of his remarks, Obama said, "Peace will not come through statements and resolutions at the UN - if it were that easy, it would have been accomplished by now."
Indeed, scores of UN resolutions on the plight of the Palestinians have been repudiated and ignored by both Israel and Washington. The US has used its veto in the Security Council to kill scores more.
Evidently responding to the right-wing criticism of Republican presidential hopefuls, who have denounced him for "throwing Israel under the bus" with his 1967 borders remark last May, Obama went out of his way to dismiss the historical grievances of the Palestinian people, while identifying unconditionally with Israel.
Of the Palestinians, he said only that they deserved a "sovereign state of their own" and they "have seen that vision delayed for too long".
This was followed by a declaration that "America's commitment to Israel's security is unshakable, and our friendship with Israel is deep and enduring". He continued by describing Israel as a country "surrounded by neighbours that have waged repeated wars against it," whose "citizens have been killed by rockets fired at their houses and suicide bombs on their buses".
He referred to Israel as a "small country" in a world "where leaders of much larger nations threaten to wipe it off of the map". And he wound up by invoking the Holocaust.
"These facts cannot be denied," he said. One would never guess from this selection of "facts" that some 4 million Palestinians live under the oppression and constant violence of Israeli occupation, and that another 5 million are refugees, driven from their homeland.
Nor for that matter, would one have any inkling of the constant wars that "little Israel," with its elastic borders, has waged against its neighbours. Among the more recent are the 2006 war against Lebanon, which left 1 200 civilians dead and much of the country's infrastructure in ruins, and the 2008 "Operation Cast Lead," against Gaza, which claimed the lives of nearly 1 500 Palestinians, compared to 13 Israelis.
With a tone of exasperation, Obama acknowledged that "for many in this hall," the Palestinian question was the issue that "stands as a test" for Washington's claims to champion human rights and democracy.
In reality, however, the rest of the speech proved just as revealing in terms of the hypocrisy and imperialist interests that pervade Washington's policies all over the world.
The pretense laid out at the beginning of Obama's speech was that the US government is engaged in "the pursuit of peace in an imperfect world". The address included a trite refrain, repeated three times: "peace is hard".
Fleshing out this theme, Obama pointed to the partial troop withdrawals from the eight-and-a-half-year-old war and occupation in Iraq and the decade-old war in Afghanistan. He bragged that by the end of the year, only 90 000 US troops will be deployed in these wars.
Washington's aim, he said, was to forge an "equal partnership" with Iraq "strengthened by our support for Iraq - for its government and its security forces," and an "enduring partnership" with "the people of Afghanistan". He claimed that these changes proved that "the tide of war is receding".
The rhetoric about "partnership", however, refers to the plans being pursued by the White House and the Pentagon to keep US troops, CIA operatives and American bases in both countries, long past the dates set for US withdrawal. US imperialism is determined to continue pursuing the goals that underlay the wars from the outset: hegemonic control over the strategic energy reserves of the Caspian Basin and the Persian Gulf.
Obama then preceded to extol the "Arab Spring," declaring: "One year ago, the hopes of the people of Tunisia were suppressed . . . One year ago, Egypt had known one president for nearly 30 years."
Needless to say, the American president made no reference as to whose support had kept the dictators Ben Ali and Mubarak in power for so long, nor to the current attempts by Washington to salvage the regimes they headed and suppress the mass popular movements that forced their ouster.
From there, he proceeded to praise the NATO war in Libya, declaring that, by authorising this imperialist intervention, "the United Nations lived up to its charter."
In reality, the war represented a fundamental violation of the tenets of this charter, which proclaimed the "sovereign equality" of all member states, demanded that all disputes be settled peacefully and insisted that member states "refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state".
In the case of Libya, the US and its NATO allies, proclaiming the threat of an imminent massacre in Benghazi, procured a resolution authorising "all necessary measures" to protect civilians. It used this resolution as a cover for a war of regime change. The NATO powers carried out thousands of air strikes and sent in special forces troops to organise, train and arm a "rebel" force for a war that has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Libyans.
The aim of this war, like those in Afghanistan and Iraq before it, is domination of strategic energy reserves - as well as inserting Western military power in the midst of a region facing revolutionary turmoil.
"This is how the international community is supposed to work," Obama declared in relation to the Libyan operation, calling to mind Lenin's description of the League of Nations, the UN's predecessor, as a "thieves' kitchen".
Turning to uncompleted business and potential imperialist interventions yet to come, Obama condemned Iran for failing "to recognise the rights of its own people" and calling for the UN to impose new sanctions against Syria. "Will we stand with the Syrian people, or with their oppressors?" he demanded.
Given the bloody events in Yemen, where over 100 civilians have been massacred over the past three days, Obama could not completely ignore the upheavals against US-backed regimes in the region. In Yemen, however, there was no invocation to stand against oppressors, merely a call to "seek a path that allows for a peaceful transition".
Even more tepid was his reference to Bahrain, the headquarters of the US 5th Fleet. "America is a close friend of Bahrain," he declared. Here, where thousands have been killed, tortured, imprisoned, beaten and fired from their jobs for demanding democratic rights, he proposed merely a "meaningful dialogue," while justifying the repression by suggesting that Bahrainis were confronting "sectarian forces that would tear them apart".
The rest of the speech consisted of a hollow and unconvincing recitation of the usual platitudes. These included the elimination of nuclear weapons - with Washington, sitting on the greatest nuclear arsenal in the world and the only state ever to use such weapons lecturing North Korea and Iran. He inveighed against poverty and disease and insisted on the need "not to put off action that a changing climate demands". Thrown in were calls for the rights of women as well as gays and lesbians.
On the decisive issue facing millions of working people in the US and across the globe, Obama acknowledged that economic "recovery is fragile", that "too many people are out of work" and that "too many are struggling to get by". Referring to the multi-trillion-dollar bailout of the banks, he boasted, "We acted together to avert a depression in 2009" and insisted that "we must take urgent and coordinated action once more".
But as with all the other issues raised in the speech, the American president had no "co-ordinated action," no programme, and no policy to propose.
In the final analysis, Obama's empty rhetoric is a direct expression of the profound crisis gripping American capitalism and its ruling financial elite as it confronts economic collapse and the threat of revolutionary upheaval. - www.wsws.org
Labels: BARACK OBAMA, NEOCOLONIALISM, PALESTINE, UN
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The Hard-Line on Grocery Items
Queen Rania of Jordan
Queen of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan
Posted: June 7, 2010 02:20 PM
What do chocolate, cookies, A4 paper, potato chips, cumin, toys, jelly, nuts, dried fruit, nutmeg, and goats have in common?
It's a tricky one. If you're a moderate, they have absolutely nothing in common. But if you are a hard-line Israeli politician, they are all potentially dangerous goods that could threaten Israel's security. Well, it seems that that side of the political spectrum has won the argument, as all the above are items that the Israeli government has prohibited from entering Gaza.
It's understandable. I mean, you can inflict a lot of damage on your oppressors with a chocolate biscuit. And those paper cuts, boy, they can really hurt.
But I don't want to over-dramatize the situation, because it's not all doom and gloom down in Gaza. Many items are allowed in: mops, sponges for washing, egg cartons, glass cleaner, hair combs, plastic chicken cages, and lentils, amongst a list you can see for yourself at www.gisha.org.
So, what exactly are the 1.5 million Gazan people complaining about? What could possibly have been on the Freedom Flotilla that Israeli commandos attacked early Sunday morning in international waters, in yet another assault that has appalled our global community?
By most accounts, on the flotilla were 10,000 tons of, not guns, but vital humanitarian aid. The people of Gaza desperately need it to survive the 1,000 days of illegal blockade which has crippled Gaza and reduced it to a barely functioning, open-air prison. I'm talking about aid like cement to rebuild homes, which have lain in rubble and ruin since the monstrous attacks on Gaza last year; school supplies so that children can dare to hope and live up to their potential; medical equipment, like water purification tablets and wheelchairs, so that the sick and elderly don't suffer and perish needlessly.
The attack stunned the world because of its blatant and absurd disregard for anything resembling international law, human rights, and diplomatic norms. Although, I was stunned at the glaring outrageousness of the attack, I am not surprised by it. Sunday's event cannot be viewed in isolation; it is just another upshot of a dogma long fermenting on Israel's political landscape.
It is a doctrine that lives for itself and off others. It survives by tapping into the subliminal and cognizant levels. It implants into public consciousness a set of tenets that see Israeli's very existence as eternally under threat, to be defended through any means (preferably through use of force to show the enemy who's boss). It is best served through the adoption of an 'us against the world' mentality.
By its very nature, hard-line ideology is self-serving and self-perpetuating, its primary goal is to survive -- and that precludes everything. If to exist it must redefine what is acceptable, redraw the lines of international law, and re-imagine what weapons are appropriate -- so be it. Assigning themselves authority and immunity, Israel's leaders feel licensed to do whatever they like and not expect an international outcry.
But this hardened path is fraught with dangers for all of us. These radical policies debar Palestinian value and, by extension, human value. Harsh measures then become more palatable. Inflicting violence upon an innocent majority to punish the guilty few now seems necessary. Every day the blockade continues is another day our humanity remains under siege.
The effect is a people trapped between a rock and a hard line policy. The product is desperation, and the reaction is more hard line policies that attempt to defend previous hard-line policies! After all, did this outrageous attack take place to preserve Israel's security or to sustain the blockade itself? Such is the self-serving nature of uncompromising ideologies, and the spiral becomes hard to break.
And what I find most frustrating is how Israel defends its actions. By attacking criticism as part of an anti-Israel, anti-Semitic propaganda war. Israel, yet again, fails to understand that the problem is policy, not PR.
Now and always, hard-line policy and those who embrace it are vessels for darker forces that are at once self-cannibalizing and combustible. No good can come of them. They are unsustainable because their sense of righteousness denies human worth. Apart from other hard-liners on all sides who now have been gifted the fuel to invigorate their fanaticism and circulate it far and wide, everyone else loses out:
The people of Gaza lose out: 80% of them live below the poverty line. The children of Gaza lose out: one third of their schools destroyed during the attack on Gaza last year, still haven't been rebuilt. The newborns of Gaza lose out: 95% of Gaza's nitrate-full water, fails the World Health Organization's standards leaving thousands of babies at risk of poisoning.
The people of Israel lose out: rejected by a third of the countries in the United Nations, shunned by much of the global community whose foundation is human value, ordinary Israelis find themselves persona non grata outside their 'borders'. Living defensively isn't a way of life; people only thrive on secure foundations. Is the Israeli government really prepared to condemn its own people to the shaky foundations of rule-by-fear, and its consequences? So Israel's leadership needs to ask itself some tough questions. "Is our long term strategy to rule by fear? Is our long term outlook for the Israeli people one of constant defense? Are these horizons of hopelessness what we want for our people?"
And moderates around the world lose out: people like me, who dared to believe that the road to peace doesn't have to be a lonely and desolate one. That a two-state solution is not the figment of a naïve idealist's imagination. And those whose ethical responsibility it is now to deal with the science of reality, to form a coalition of humans that question and confront the assumptions of those on their far right, and to reaffirm the ethos of moderation.
After all, isn't moderation where most of the living is done?
Well, speaking as a moderate, I fear if the tides don't turn in our region, moderation will be amongst the most painful casualties of continued aggression and hard line policies. As someone who lived through the late King Hussein's fight for peace, until his very last breath, and watches his son, my husband, King Abdullah, continue that fight, it actually breaks my heart to see us moving further and further away from peace.
Peace. People. Moderation. I would have thought that those were too heavy a price to pay for sustaining a hardened stance.
So, when flotillas came to break the blockade, they came to help the people of Gaza. But, just as important, they came to break the blockade on the Israeli mind.
Labels: ISRAEL, PALESTINE, QUEEN RANIA
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