Gaza War

By Dr Firoz Osman – Media Review Network

There is widespread scepticism in the Arab and Muslims world that the charade of negotiations in Washington between Mahmoud Abbas, leader of Fatah and the PLO, and right-wing hardliner Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister, will lead to any substantive agreements.

 US president Barack Obama has his eyes on the mid-term November elections, hoping to curry favour with the powerful Israeli Lobby, AIPAC.

Netanyahu, with his eyes on his wobbly coalition, rejects any permanent freeze on settlement activity, insisting on a “Jewish” state, rejects any sovereignty to any independent Palestinian state, rejects the Right of Return, and is uncompromising on sharing Jerusalem.

 Israel’s strategy was formulated by former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir before the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference, which was to engage in negotiations with the Arabs for the next 20 years or more without offering them any concession over an inch of the territory of Greater Israel. Significantly, Shamir’s right-hand man at the Madrid Conference was Netanyahu.
Read More »Negotiating peace not surrender

By Uri Avnery

(source: AntiWar.com)

“Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth, lest the Lord see [it], and it displease him, and he turn away his wrath from him.”

This is one of the most beautiful passages in the Bible (Proverbs 24:17-18) and, indeed, in the Hebrew language. It is beautiful in other languages, too, though no translation comes close to the beauty of the original.

Of course, it is natural to be glad when one’s enemy is defeated, and the thirst for revenge is a human trait. But gloating—schadenfreude—is something different altogether. An ugly thing.

Ancient Hebrew legend has it that God got very angry when the Children of Israel rejoiced as their Egyptian pursuers drowned in the Red Sea. “My creatures are drowning in the sea,” God admonished them, “and you are singing?”

These thoughts crossed my mind when I saw the TV shots of jubilant crowds of young Americans shouting and dancing in the street. Natural, but unseemly. The contorted faces and the aggressive body language were no different from those of crowds in Sudan or Somalia. The ugly sides of human nature seem to be the same everywhere.

The rejoicing may be premature. Most probably, al-Qaeda did not die with Osama bin Laden. The effect may be entirely different.

Read More »Bin laden is dead but what about his ideas?

A car bomb at a fruit market and another explosion minutes later at a nearby teashop wounded 62 people in Muslim southern Thailand on Tuesday, Thai police said.

The first explosion appeared to target an outdoor meeting of village chiefs at a district office in Narathiwat, one of the three southernmost provinces, police said.

A second device exploded two minutes later at a tea-shop 100 metres (yards) away, police said.

Reuters

Read More »Twin bombs wound 62 in muslim southern thailand

 
War on Gaza: 

Call for creation of United Nations War Crimes Commission

 Vienna, 8 January 2009

 I.P.O. Information Service

 In a statement issued today, the President of the International Progress Organization, Dr. Hans Koechler, called upon the United Nations Organization to establish a War Crimes Commission with the mandate to investigate war crimes and crimes against humanity committed on the territory of occupied Gaza (Palestine), to record them and help prepare indictments in conformity with the mandatory provisions of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War of August 12, 1949 (Fourth Geneva Convention).

Read More »Call for creation of united nations war crimes commission