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The Al-Zaytouna Centre for Studies and Consultations is a Beirut, Lebanon-based organization engaged in “strategic and futuristic studies on the Arab and Muslim worlds, (emphasizing) the Palestinian issue.” In July 2010, it published the latest in its “Am I Not a Human?” series titled, “The Suffering of the Palestinian Child under the Israeli Occupation,” saying: Palestinian children grow up “under the Israeli occupation, surrounded by cruelty, oppression, killing, starvation and destruction.” Yet, like all children, they dream of playing and living normally and safely. Instead, their father may be dead or in prison, their brother killed, their home destroyed, and their mother forced to give birth at an Israeli checkpoint, risking her and the newborn. |
Friday, July 23, 2010
Palestinian Children Under Occupation
By Stephen Lendman, uruknet.info, July 21, 2010
Israeli aggression blocks peace talks
Morning Star Online, July 22, 2010
A peaceful two-state solution is impossible unless the security council holds Israel to account for its “ongoing aggression, colonisation and provocation,” Palestine’s UN envoy warned the security council on Wednesday.
Riyad Mansour said abuses preventing the resumption of direct talks include the continuing construction of zionist settlements and the demolition of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem.
He also cited the 900-plus military incursions in the West Bank and the arrest of more than 380 Palestinians in the last two months as further obstacles to the stalled peace process.
Afghan conference endorses indefinite occupation
By Bill Van Auken, wsws.org, July 22, 2010
The international foreign ministers conference held in Kabul Tuesday formally endorsed President Hamid Karzai’s proposed 2014 target for Afghan forces to assume the lead responsibility for the country’s security, while acknowledging that the foreign occupation will continue indefinitely.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton proclaimed the conference, which lasted just five hours, a “turning point.” But there was little new presented at the gathering, and nothing to dispel the growing sense that after nearly nine years of occupation and war, the US-led project of installing a stable puppet regime and extending US hegemony in Central Asia is mired in crisis.
An Open Letter to the People of Israel about Mordechai Vanunu
by Mairead Maguire, CommonDreams.org, July 21, 2010
Dear friends,
I write to ask for your help in gaining the freedom of a good man, a man of peace and a man of conscience.
In the Jewish scriptures there is great emphasis on justice and freedom and it is for such, for one man, that I write to seek your help.
He will not be aware that I am writing this Appeal, but I do so in the hope that, with your help, it will produce his freedom, and not cause more punishment and cruelty to be inflicted upon him.
I feel when I tell you the story, it will touch your hearts and there will be some among you who will be able to help him gain his freedom.
In May,2010, this man was returned to prison to serve three months for allegedly breaking his prison release restrictions and for speaking to Foreign Media. On Sunday July 11th , 2010, he had his first visit in seven weeks. His brother, Meir, was granted a 30 minute visit. There was a glass window between them and they spoke via the phone. He wore a prison uniform. He is held in the maximum security section. It holds the most notorious criminals in the country, for well known murder cases. About a dozen men are in severe isolation conditions.
Now Afghanistan too shows the limits of American power
British troops are paying the blood price in Helmand, as they did in Iraq, of a now officially subservient relationship
Seumas Milne, The Guardian/UK, July 21, 2010
The catastrophic illusions and acts of official betrayal at the heart of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are being progressively exposed, one after another. In London, the former head of MI5 Eliza Manningham-Buller confirmed to the Iraq inquiry this week that the security service had indeed warned Tony Blair’s government that aggression against Iraq, “on top of our involvement in Afghanistan”, would violently radicalise a generation of young Muslims and “substantially” increase the threat of terror attacks in Britain.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Top Officials Reiterate Pledges to Continue Afghan War
New 2014 Drawdown Date Is ‘Non-Binding’
by Jason Ditz, Antiwar.com, July 20, 2010
On the eve of the latest policy conference, top US and NATO officials have arrived in Kabul to pledge their support to the continuation of the Afghan War, with promises of an unending commitment to propping up the Karzai government going forward.
The date, which is “conditions-based” and “non-binding,” appears to be designed to accomplish little but replacing the July 2011 drawdown date, which has now been entirely abandoned by administration officials. The only apparent advantage to the 2014 date is that it is some four years hence and therefore far enough way as to not need to be immediately disavowed by any but the most hawkish officials.
So officials are now expressing their confidence in the 2014 victory, and the eventual security handover that will come at some point after it. In the meantime, the death toll in war continues to rise, and the promises of progress continue to seem more distant and more detached from reality.
No One Wants to Admit Afghan Failure
By Michael Winship, Consortiumnews.com, July 2010
Editor’s Note: The war in Afghanistan grinds on with a political imperative now more in control of U.S. policy than any military expectation of a meaningful “victory.” Put simply: No one wants to be accused of “losing” on the original front in the “war on terror.”
For Official Washington – both the politicians and the pundits – it remains easier to throw more money and troops at the problem than acknowledge that the war in Afghanistan was a huge mistake, as Michael Winship notes in this guest essay:
A recent headline on the New York Daily News Web site was blunt: “In case you’ve forgotten,” it read, “we’re at war.”
The story was about the deaths of six Americans in Afghanistan in five separate attacks and one accidental explosion, all on the same day. The day before, coalition forces had mistakenly killed six Afghan civilians when an artillery strike missed its target; the day after, the Taliban would kill eleven Afghan policemen and a district governor.
It is the deadliest year of the war in Afghanistan, now the longest in American history.
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