Eideard

UNESCO delegates stand and cheer after approving Palestinian membership
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Palestine has become a full member of the UN cultural and educational agency in a move that the United States and other opponents say could harm renewed Middle East peace efforts.

The US had threatened to withhold roughly $80 million in annual funding to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) if it approved Palestinian membership. The United States provides about 22% of Unesco’s funding.

Which is about how the average mafia functions. Extortion doesn’t make for lasting politics.

Huge cheers went up in Unesco after delegates approved the membership by 107 votes to 14 with 52 abstentions. Eighty-one votes were needed for approval in a hall with 173 Unesco member delegations present.

“Long live Palestine!” shouted one delegate, in French, at the unusually tense and dramatic meeting of Unesco’s general conference.

While the vote has large symbolic meaning, the issues of borders of an eventual Palestinian state, security troubles and other disputes that have thwarted Middle East peace for decades remain unresolved.

Palestinian officials are seeking full membership in the United Nations, but that effort is still under examination and the US has said it will veto it unless there is a peace deal with Israel. Given that, the Palestinians separately sought membership at Paris-based Unesco and other UN bodies…

The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, last week called Unesco’s deliberation “inexplicable”, saying discussion of Palestinian membership of international organisations could not replace negotiations with Israel as a fast track towards Palestinian independence.

There is no “fast track” towards Palestinian independence if you think that honorable and ethical negotiations will be forthcoming from Israel’s ruling politicians. They hold power from a commitment to manifest destiny and lebensraum.

History and historic decisions aren’t resolved in press releases from the State Department. Especially those offered in support of imperial occupying armies.

Eventually, the United States will face a military adversary or terrorist group armed with drones, military analysts say. But what the short-run hazard experts foresee is not an attack on the United States, which faces no enemies with significant combat drone capabilities, but the political and legal challenges posed when another country follows the American example. The Bush administration, and even more aggressively the Obama administration, embraced an extraordinary principle: that the United States can send this robotic weapon over borders to kill perceived enemies, even American citizens, who are viewed as a threat…

What was a science-fiction scenario not much more than a decade ago has become today’s news. In Iraq and Afghanistan, military drones have become a routine part of the arsenal. In Pakistan, according to American officials, strikes from Predators and Reapers operated by the C.I.A. have killed more than 2,000 militants; the number of civilian casualties is hotly debated. In Yemen last month, an American citizen was, for the first time, the intended target of a drone strike, as Anwar al-Awlaki, the Qaeda propagandist and plotter, was killed along with a second American, Samir Khan.

If China, for instance, sends killer drones into Kazakhstan to hunt minority Uighur Muslims it accuses of plotting terrorism, what will the United States say? What if India uses remotely controlled craft to hit terrorism suspects in Kashmir, or Russia sends drones after militants in the Caucasus? American officials who protest will likely find their own example thrown back at them.

“The problem is that we’re creating an international norm” — asserting the right to strike preemptively against those we suspect of planning attacks, argues Dennis M. Gormley…“The copycatting is what I worry about most…”

Last December, a surveillance drone crashed in an El Paso neighborhood; it had been launched, it turned out, by the Mexican police across the border. Even Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, has deployed drones, an Iranian design capable of carrying munitions and diving into a target, says P. W. Singer of the Brookings Institution, whose 2009 book “Wired for War” is a primer on robotic combat…

“I think of where the airplane was at the start of World War I: at first it was unarmed and limited to a handful of countries,” Mr. Singer says. “Then it was armed and everywhere. That is the path we’re on.”

Radio-controlled model airplanes – nowadays – aren’t a whole boatload away from capabilities of our military drones. They may be limited to smaller, lighter payloads. That doesn’t limit the inventiveness of terrorists who design underwear bombs. And no more reliance on suicide volunteers who may get nervous when the time comes to go BOOM!

But, Uncle Sugar presumes that only American genius can design these death-goodies. Just as our government thinks we’re above international law on torture, financing breakaway provinces, freedom fighters headquartered in foreign yacht clubs – our arrogance usually comes back to bite us on the butt.

Notable photos in the past 24 hours from Reuters

A Palestinian boy carries a table inside a kindergarten that was damaged during an Israeli air strike in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip…

Why am I going on the Freedom Flotilla II to Gaza? I ask myself this, even though the answer is: What else would I do? I am in my sixty-seventh year, having lived already a long and fruitful life, one with which I am content.

It seems to me that during this period of eldering it is good to reap the harvest of one’s understanding of what is important, and to share this, especially with the young. How are they to learn, otherwise?

Our boat, The Audacity of Hope, will be carrying letters to the people of Gaza. Letters expressing solidarity and love. That is all its cargo will consist of. If the Israeli military attacks us, it will be as if they attacked the mailman. This should go down hilariously in the annals of history. But if they insist on attacking us, wounding us, even murdering us, as they did some of the activists in the last flotilla, Freedom Flotilla I, what is to be done?

There is a scene in the movie “Gandhi” that is very moving to me: it is when the unarmed Indian protesters line up to confront the armed forces of the British Empire. The soldiers beat them unmercifully, but the Indians, their broken and dead lifted tenderly out of the fray, keep coming.

Alongside this image of brave followers of Gandhi there is for me an awareness of paying off a debt to the Jewish civil rights activists who faced death to come to the side of black people in the South in our time of need. I am especially indebted to Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman who heard our calls for help – our government then as now glacially slow in providing protection to non-violent protestors-and came to stand with us.

They got as far as the truncheons and bullets of a few “good ol’ boys’” of Neshoba County, Mississippi and were beaten and shot to death along with James Cheney, a young black man of formidable courage who died with them. So, even though our boat will be called The Audacity of Hope, it will fly the Goodman, Cheney, Schwerner flag in my own heart.

Bravo, Sister Walker. Glad to see you have the courage of your convictions.

You face a greater danger, I guess. At that time, in the beginning of my involvement in American civil rights struggles, racist mobs and their cohorts in uniform were only killing a few of those who challenged their evil. I fear the Israeli government truly doesn’t care about how many they maim and kill to defend the arrogance of ethnic superiority and their quest for lebensraum.

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has sternly rebuked the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, in an unusually fractious telephone call, according to media reports…

The Israeli prime minister telephoned Merkel on Monday to say he was disappointed that Germany had voted for a UN security council resolution condemning settlements that was vetoed by the US.

According to a German official quoted by Haaretz, Merkel was furious. “How dare you?” she said. “You are the one who has disappointed us. You haven’t made a single step to advance peace…”

The quoted comments reflect growing impatience in Europe with the impasse in the Israeli-Palestinian talks and a belief that Israel is stalling or impeding progress. With the exception of the US last Friday’s resolution was backed by all the security council members including Britain, Germany and France.

Despite the resolution being carefully worded to reflect American policy on settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the US wielded its veto for the first time under Barack Obama’s presidency…

Netanyahu told Merkel that he was planning a new initiative to be disclosed in the next few weeks. “I intend to make a new speech about the peace process in the next two to three weeks,” he was quoted as saying.

The only thing Netanyahu is interested in advancing is more rightwing politics in Israel. If he must stretch himself to vent more hot air and lies into the diplomatic ether – so be it. He has plenty of practice.

And he knows he can count on the United States Congress and the White House to back whatever crap lies he utters.

Thousands of people gathered along the shores of Istanbul on Sunday afternoon to welcome home the Mavi Marmara, the ship that was raided by Israel as it led a flotilla aimed at breaking the blockade of Gaza.

Nine people were killed in the raid last May, which drew international condemnation and helped lead to the easing of restrictions on Gaza. The raid also created a diplomatic standoff between Turkey and Israel.

Groups waving Palestinian and Turkish flags and chanting anti-Israel slogans stood by the ship, which had been confiscated by Israel. On its return on Sunday, it was decorated with posters of the dead passengers.

“Welcome to your soil,” said Ahmet Dogan, father of Furkan Dogan, a 19-year-old Turkish-American citizen who was killed in the raid. “Dear Mavi Marmara, hold your head high, you’ve done your duty, acted as the shield for the innocent…”

Turkey, which had long been a close ally of Israel, has demanded an apology and compensation for the deaths of the activists killed in the raid and recalled its ambassador. Israel has refused to apologize…as usual.

The Obama government, like every preceding government for the past 60 years, babbled a few criticisms of the Israelis – and returned to doing nothing for the dispossessed victims of Israeli expansionism.

Israelis continue demolition of Palestinian homes in the West Bank
Daylife/Demotix Images used by permission

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Thursday U.S. support for Palestinian statehood had yet to move beyond “slogans.”

Abbas said views in the United States and Europe had started to shift in favor of the Palestinians but expressed frustration at recent U.S. opposition to the idea of taking the quest for statehood to the U.N. Security Council.

“The world has started to change. Europe has started to change and America has started to change,” said Abbas, whose administration depends on political and financial backing from the United States and the European Union.

“True, it is still at the stage of slogans, such as ‘We support the two-state solution’ and ‘the establishment of a Palestinian state is in the vital national security interest of the United States’,” he added in a speech to commemorate the sixth anniversary of the death of Yasser Arafat…

Abbas, while reiterating his commitment to negotiations, has said the Palestinians are studying alternatives to the two-decade “peace process” if it fails.

One idea is to go to the U.N. Security Council to secure international recognition for a Palestinian state. The United States, Abbas said, had described such a move as a unilateral action — a view echoed in Israel…

Obama, in an address to the U.N. General Assembly in September, said success could lead to an agreement that would allow a sovereign state of Palestine to join the United Nations next year. The remark was widely covered by Arab media.

Abbas, talking about Obama’s remark, said: “I hope this is not just a slogan and when the time comes he says ‘We are sorry we could not (do it). Leave it for next year.’

“All the while you said this in the United Nations, this is a promise and a debt around your neck and it must be realized so that Palestine becomes a full member state of the United Nations,” he said.

I fear that this debt of Obama’s has about as much chance of being paid as his debts to American workers, the gay community, parents, children and educators. Half-measures and tactics more appropriate to Harvard tea party conflicts.

His essential framework remains locked with within the cowardly strictures of a Democratic Party that hasn’t changed foreign policy anywhere in the world since the days of Harry Truman and Golda Meir.

Israel’s coastal defense against foreign invaders

Israel is easing its Gaza embargo to allow snack food and drinks into the Palestinian enclave…following an international outcry over Israel’s raid on an aid flotilla.

Hamas, the Islamist group that rules the Gaza Strip, said the territory needs cement — banned by Israel and essential for reconstruction after a December 2008-January 2009 war — not soft drinks.

An Israeli official said the new product list, announced hours before U.S. President Barack Obama was to host Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Washington, was unrelated to Israel’s May 31 takeover of the convoy that challenged its Gaza blockade.

The talks between Obama and Abbas are expected to focus on ways to ease the embargo, which has drawn mounting international criticism since Israeli commandos…killed nine pro-Palestinian activists.

The Palestinian officials, based in the West Bank, said that as of next week, Israel will allow a wider variety of food, such as potato crisps, biscuits, canned fruit and packaged hummus, as well as soft drinks and juice, into the Gaza Strip.

“They will send the first course. We are waiting for the main course,” Palestinian Economy Minister Hassan Abu Libdeh said in Ramallah. “We are waiting for this unjust siege to end.”

It is wholly unsurprising that a government consumed with egregious and bigoted ideology treats other nations – captive nations – as imperial nations have always treated their servants.

The right-wing Israeli government needs to be thrown out of office. If the nation of Israel, that minority of residents within the current boundaries of Israel who are allowed to vote, continues to maintain crap politicians in office – they deserve the disdain they receive from the rest of the world.

An overnight attack on the West Bank village of Huwwara is believed to be the work of Israeli settlers, the Israeli army said Wednesday.

More than 300 olive trees were uprooted, two cars were set afire and a mosque in the town was spray painted with racist slogans, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports.

Tensions between Palestinian residents of Huwwara and Jewish residents in the nearby Israeli settlements of Yitzhar flared up in recent weeks after two settlers were wounded in a stone-throwing incident.

Brig. Gen. Nitzan Alon, commander of the Judea and Samaria Division, called the vandalism to Huwwara “unacceptable” and ordered an immediate investigation, The Jerusalem Post reports.

Uh-Huh.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures

It was an understated gesture, but one that reverberated around the footballing world.

When Frederic Kanoute scored for Seville against Deportivo La Coruna last week in the Copa del Rey he slowly lifted his jersey and revealed a black shirt embossed with the word ‘Palestine’ in various languages.

Within a few seconds it was gone but by then Kanoute, a French-born Muslim who plays for Mali, had made his political point.

It earned him a booking for lifting his shirt and, later, a €3,000 fine for breaking article 120 of the Spanish FA’s rule book which states that “revealing messages of a religious or political nature on the pitch is strictly prohibited during the time of play.”

High profile players like Thierry Henry and Samuel Eto’o also lined up to praise Kanoute’s actions.

Good for you. There’s never a shortage of nay-sayers who wish that opposition to the politics of death and destruction was somehow more discrete. I’d hope the next time Freddy Kanoute steps on the pitch, the Seville crowd will applaud a little bit louder.