Palestine – Features

Hindu holy man reveals truth of terror attacks blamed on Muslims

By Andrew Buncombe in Delhi

(source: The Independent)

India is being forced to confront disturbing evidence that increasingly suggests a secret Hindu terror network may have been responsible for a wave of deadly attacks previously blamed on radical Muslims.

Information contained in a confession given in court by a Hindu holy man, suggests that he and several others linked to a right-wing Hindu organisation, planned and carried out attacks on a train travelling to Pakistan, a Sufi shrine and a mosque as well as two assaults on Malegaon, a town in southern India with a large Muslim population.

He claimed the attacks were launched in response to the actions of Muslim militants. “I told everybody that we should answer bombs with bombs,” 59-year-old Swami Aseemanand, whose real name is Naba Kumar Sarkar, told a magistrate during a closed hearing in Delhi. “I suggested that 80 per cent of the people of Malegaon were Muslims and we should explode the first bomb in Malegaon itself. I also said that during partition, the Nizam of Hyderabad had wanted to go with Pakistan so Hyderabad was also a fair target. Then I said that since Hindus also throng [a Sufi shrine in] Ajmer we should also explode a bomb in Ajmer which would deter the Hindus from going there. I also suggested the Aligarh Muslim University as a target.”

Police in India have suspected for some time that Hindus may have been responsible for the attacks carried out between 2006 and 2008, and in November of that year several arrests were made, including that of a serving military officer. But the confession of Swami Aseemanand, obtained by an Indian news magazine, is perhaps the most damning evidence yet that Hindu extremists were responsible. It also suggests those involved were senior members of a religious group that is the parent organisation of India’s main opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

“The evidence is not conclusive but people have to take notice of this,” said Bahukutumbi Raman, a former national security adviser and now a leading regional security analyst. “This could aggravate tensions between India’s [Hindu and Muslim] communities. It will create problems.”

Read More »Saffron terrorism

By Mazin Qumsiyeh

(source: www.salem-news.com)

In a follow-up to the very successful 15 May36(the beginning of the global uprising), activists around the world called for a day of protests Friday (tomorrow). In Bethlehem, we gather after Friday Prayers in front of Omar’s Mosque (the Nativity Square) and march towards the apartheid wall.

President Obama tried in his (Cairo II) speech to again convince a sceptical world that the US promotes democracy and human rights. We have heard all of this orientalist talk before and yet have seen no action/change. The change is coming from the people waving Palestinian and Egyptian flags everywhere. Even Obama’s rhetoric seems hypocritical: why speak of peaceful demonstrations being suppressed in Syria and Libya but not speak about the constant repression of demonstrators by the Israeli apartheid regime? Obama even went further than other US presidents and talked as a typical Zionist: he lectured us, the native people, that we should stop “de-legitimising” Israel and accept it as “a Jewish state”, “for the Jewish people”. Even Reagan who, supporting apartheid South Africa in his first term, did not ask that we stop de-legitimising South Africa and recognise it as a “White state”, “for the white people”. What about International law (not mentioned by Obama) and what about a state of all its citizens (including the refugees who must be allowed to return to their homes and lands)? No, these basic rights are to be removed and the colonisers have a right to security but the colonised must be content to live in a demilitarised ghetto and accept their

dispossession.

Ronald Reagan refused to speak to AIPAC. But Obama agreed. Reagan at least pulled troops out of Lebanon while Obama still keeps his troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan (and uses the verbal trick of “ending combat mission”). Obama will also host war criminals at the White House and Netanyahu (the gang leader) will address the (Israeli-occupied) congress. No mention will be made of Israel’s illegal use of US weaponry in war crimes and crimes against humanity. Yet, the successes of the popular uprisings in the Arab world, including the new uprising that started on 15 May in Palestine and two scandals that hit the apartheid state this week, add to the cracks in the “Iron Wall” (fortified by the US). In one scandal, Russia charged the Israeli military attaché working at the Israeli Embassy with espionage and expelled him. Russia and Turkey and many other countries previously friendly to the apartheid regime have been changing. Israeli papers also reported that Ron Arad, national security adviser to Netanyahu, did not actually resign voluntarily but was fired because he leaked “sensitive information”. The “sensitive” information was that the United States had given Israel unequivocal guarantees that its “strategic capabilities” in the nuclear field would be preserved and strengthened (according to Haaretz). This put another nail in the coffin of the “change we can believe in” façade and embarrassed Obama.

Read More »Unchanging Obama challenged by the changing landsCape

Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of the state they hope to establish in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Palestinians in Jerusalem say they will again boycott the Israeli poll next week for mayor of the holy city.

"I voted in the past but it brought me nothing. I don’t believe in their (Israeli) democracy," said Fawziyeh al-Kurd, a Muslim Arab born in Jerusalem 56 years ago.

Some 260,000 Arabs, most of them Muslim, live in Arab East Jerusalem, which Israel occupied in the 1967, in a move that international community has not recognized.

Palestinians in East Jerusalem can vote in the mayoral contest — in which only Jewish candidates are running — but few have in the past and most will probably heed renewed calls by the Palestinian Authority to boycott this year’s Nov. 11 election.

Hatem Abdel Khader, an adviser on Jerusalem affairs to Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, said that by refusing to vote, Palestinians would demonstrate their opposition to Israeli occupation of the city.

"We cannot pay a long-term political price in return for short-term municipal services," said Khader, responding to some local Palestinian leaders who say participation in the election is the only way to secure equal rights in Jerusalem, which Israel’s 1948 occupation left divided.

Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of the state they hope to establish in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Hostile Jewish settlers

For Kurd, the political battle hits close to home.

She and her husband are fighting in an Israeli court against a ruling that says they do not own the patch of land where they built their house 50 years ago. They face possible eviction.

Nestled on a hill in East Jerusalem, Kurd’s one-storey dwelling is surrounded by hostile Jewish settlers who moved into homes whose owners are Palestinians.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, a leading civil liberties group that also deals with Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, said Israeli authorities have expropriated some 6,000 acres (2,430 hectares) from Palestinians in East Jerusalem.

Since 1967, the group said, Israel has built some 50,000 buildings for Jews in the Palestinian areas while denying many Palestinians building permits in East Jerusalem.

"The municipality has no housing plan for East Jerusalem, which means it is practically impossible to build there," said Orly Noy of the Israeli Ir Amim, or City of Nations, rights group, founded in 2004 to advocate equality in Jerusalem.

The problems facing Palestinians in the city have been compounded by a wall Israel is building in and around the West Bank.

Sections of the barrier have cut off several Palestinian neighbourhoods from Jerusalem, making it impossible for some Palestinians to work or visit relatives in Israeli-occupied sections of the city.

Palestinians say the wall, as well as Israel’s policies in Jerusalem, are designed to drive them out and cement its hold on the city.

While Jews from around the world can do whatever they want, Palestinians can find themselves stripped of their right even to return to visit families in Jerusalem if, for example, they go abroad to work or study for a time.

Palestinian candidate

Zohair Hamdan, a local leader from the village of Sur Baher, had planned to become the first Palestinian to run for Jerusalem mayor under Israeli occupation. He withdrew his candidacy last month, citing what he called technical reasons.

"I regret the decision by the Palestinian leadership to boycott the municipal election. There are 260,000 Arab residents in Jerusalem and they have rights which they can get through active participation in the election," said Hamdan.

"The Palestinian Authority, with all due respect, should let Jerusalem’s Arabs run their own affairs," he said of President Mahmoud Abbas’s administration a few miles away in Ramallah.

Reuters

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