Yes, a theocracy.

In my last post, I stated the obvious: That despite the US media’s constant statements to the contrary, Israel is a theocracy, not a democracy. There’s a whole lot of reasons why this is clearly the case, but today, we read of women being forced to sit in the back of buses because, well that’s what the Orthodox say is suppose to be. When religious interpretations trump civil rights in a state – that is a theocracy.

Reuters Israel “back of the bus” rule sparks religious row

Tue Jan 15, 2008 4:12am EST By Rebecca Harrison JERUSALEM (Reuters)

Every time Israeli student Iris Yoffe takes the bus to Jerusalem, she has to be ready for abuse from ultra-Orthodox Jews who say she should be kept off because she’s wearing trousers. Assuming she makes it onto the bus at all — on several occasions groups of Orthodox men have tried to block the door — Yoffe, 24, heads for the “women’s section” at the back of the bus, keeps her head down and tries to ignore the insults. “I end up feeling helpless and humiliated, like an outsider,” said Yoffe, whose public bus from her home in northern Israel to Jerusalem has separate male and female seating because it runs through an ultra-Orthodox community.

U.S.-born novelist Naomi Ragen, one of the women behind the High Court petition, said she was insulted and physically threatened when she accidentally boarded a mehadrin bus and refused to move to the back. Another woman was reported to have been spat at and beaten for refusing to move. Ragen, herself an Orthodox Jew, described the incidents on her website as “bullying women in the name of God”.

What? “an Israeli national bike-team uniform, a water canteen emblazoned with “George W. 43” and a global positioning system for the handlebars, loaded with the trails on his Texas ranch and riding paths in Israel.”

Gentle reader, I ask you to imagine the outcry from a story featuring Bush sporting an Egyptian (or Mexican for that matter) national bike team outfit. The following NYT article speaks for itself and unwittingly – or perhaps wittingly – makes many of my points that I’ve discussed earlier. Israel, a theocracy, is even referred to as a “democracy”.   

 Pool photo by Jack Guez

January 10, 2008

Bush Begins Peace Effort Bonded With Olmert

By STEVEN ERLANGER and STEVEN LEE MYERS New York Times

JERUSALEM — They share an enthusiasm for sports, fitness and the occasional cigar. They are both unpopular leaders, scarred by terrorism and zealous in their warnings about the threat of Islamic extremism. And yet they profess grand ambitions to accomplish what other leaders have failed to do for decades: make peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.President Bush and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel have in two years forged the sort of empathetic relationship that Mr. Bush had with the former prime minister, Ariel Sharon, and one that many in Israel and the United States thought unlikely to be repeated when Mr. Olmert came to power.On Wednesday, as Mr. Bush arrived in Israel for his first visit as president, the bond between the men was clearer than ever. And it is the strength of their trust in each other, especially Mr. Olmert’s faith in Mr. Bush’s commitment to Israel’s security, that many here say may offer the best foundation for an agreement with the Palestinians before the end of Mr. Bush’s term.“We certainly don’t want to delay the negotiation process,” Mr. Olmert said, “when we have such political assistance, assistance with respect to our security, too, when it comes to the most important power in the world being led by a person who is so deeply committed to the security of the state of Israel and to realizing the vision of two states, a person who is fair, who does not hide his viewpoints, who speaks openly about his will to establish a Palestinian state alongside Israel.”

Mr. Bush was here on Wednesday, and will go to the Palestinian territories on Thursday, to push Mr. Olmert and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, to get serious about their negotiations and their obligations to each other, as written in the first stage of the “road map” outlining steps to be taken.

Appearing with Mr. Olmert after a day of pomp including an English and Hebrew version of “Over the Rainbow” sung by Israeli youngsters, Mr. Bush declared this a “historic moment, a historic opportunity” to overcome the deep skepticism here and elsewhere that the peace efforts begun in Annapolis, Md., in November would succeed.

“I’m under no illusions,” Mr. Bush said after two and a half hours of meetings, including an hour privately with Mr. Olmert. “It’s going to be hard work. I fully understand that there’s going to be some painful political compromises. I fully understand that there’s going to be some tough negotiations, and the role of the United States is to help in those negotiations.

“It’s essential that people understand, America cannot dictate the terms of what a state will look like,” he added. “The only way to have lasting peace, the only way for an agreement to mean anything is for the two parties to come together and make the difficult choices, but we’ll help and we want to help.”

In interviews before and during Mr. Bush’s visit, officials described the evolution of the deep bond between the leaders, reinforced by their shared views of Israel’s security, and their own political problems in selling their approach to their respective constituencies. [Notice the constant reference to “Israel’s security”. Israel has a heavily armed (the best US taxpayers can buy) military, which enjoys national and universal conscription. Compare this to the occupied Palestinians who have no military, and no real equipment. Indeed, Israel’s security is the thing to worry about.]

Mr. Bush’s relationship with the two Israeli leaders he has known best, Mr. Sharon and Mr. Olmert, have differed in detail, if not in spirit. Mr. Bush admired Mr. Sharon as “an old warrior” who took him, when he was governor of Texas in 1998, on a helicopter ride over the settlements and battlefields that crystallized Mr. Bush’s sympathies for Israel’s security concerns, a senior official who worked for both Israeli leaders said.

“With Olmert, it’s completely different,” the Israeli official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was discussing private interactions between the leaders. “They’re the same age. They’re both runners. They both feel that most of the world is against them, which, I think, is not far from the truth.” [It really is dangerous when the world’s leading victimizers see themeselves as victimized by the world.]

Mr. Bush often relies on the personal in his foreign policy, responding to world leaders based on his own gut sense of their trustworthiness, as he expressly and, some say, wrongly did with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

In this case, the men’s friendship was cemented during Mr. Olmert’s first visit as prime minister to Washington in May 2006. They sat on the Truman balcony at the White House, without aides, and smoked cigars. They talked for more than an hour about family and sports and not, the Israeli official said, about politics.

Their relationship is politically useful to both of them, as both seek, in their own ways, to shore up their legacies as leaders. A large photograph of Mr. Bush and Mr. Olmert, walking shoulder to shoulder, hangs prominently in the West Wing of the White House. In Mr. Olmert’s private study, there are two photos of him with Mr. Bush, one like the one in the White House and the other with Mr. Olmert’s hand on the president’s shoulder.

For Michael Oren, an Israeli historian of American-Israeli relations, “the message is very clear” that Mr. Bush is a strong supporter of Israel and of its current prime minister.

However warm, the relationship is not one of equals. “They have a strong personal rapport,” said Miri Eisin, who just left the job as Mr. Olmert’s spokeswoman. “But in the end, Bush is the leader of the free world, someone whose decisions affect the entire world. And you see the dynamics of that in the room.”

Mr. Olmert’s effusive praise of Mr. Bush can embarrass Israelis, but they also understand that the relationship with Washington is central. Mr. Bush, as usual, is more circumspect in his public comments. Part of that may be personality, but part also reflects the power of Washington and the need to try to seem even-handed between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Mr. Olmert, who is said to have begun his acquaintance with Mr. Bush with a little skepticism, fed by his dovish wife, Aliza, has come to admire and trust Mr. Bush, his aides say. They say he believes that Mr. Bush, with his post-9/11 stance against terrorism and his belief in Israel’s democratic values, is a dependable ally who understands Israel’s security problems, both with the Palestinians and regionally, with Iran, and who is committed to defending Israel’s existence.

For Mr. Olmert, the close connection to Mr. Bush is both a lifeline and an insurance policy, that Israel will not be pressed to sacrifice its security to satisfy the American desire for a peace treaty.

Greeting Mr. Bush on Wednesday, Mr. Olmert told him, “Since I took office two years ago, you have become my personal friend and confidant.”

In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharanot, Mr. Bush praised Mr. Olmert as a man with a vision. “I trust him, I like him, and I think he’s a man of strength,” the president said.

Mr. Bush was said to have admired Mr. Sharon, incapacitated by a stroke, as a war hero and resilient politician, and to have treated him with respect. “With Olmert, there’s not the awe Bush had of Sharon as a great warrior, a little like Bush’s father,” Mr. Oren said.

Mr. Sharon also infuriated Mr. Bush at times, once by indirectly comparing him, in 2001, to Neville Chamberlain when he warned Mr. Bush not to appease Arab nations the way that “enlightened democracies in Europe” appeased Hitler in 1938 by sacrificing Czechoslovakia.

Daniel Levy, an Israeli analyst with the New American Foundation in Washington, said Mr. Bush and Mr. Olmert had grown so close that the president was now invested in his political future, willing to visit Israel so soon after Annapolis at least in part to bolster his standing before the Winograd report on the Lebanon war is made public later this month.

“He’ll make sure he knows the extracurricular interest of his interlocutor,” Mr. Levy said. He called it “an act of fidelity to Olmert.”

Their exchanges of gifts were also telling. Mr. Bush gave Mr. Olmert, a soccer fanatic, a soccer ball, a sports bag and cufflinks. Mr. Olmert gave Mr. Bush, who has traded running for biking, an Israeli national bike-team uniform, a water canteen emblazoned with “George W. 43” and a global positioning system for the handlebars, loaded with the trails on his Texas ranch and riding paths in Israel.

When the G.P.S. is turned on, the American and Israeli flags appear, and the sentence: “To my friend George Bush, from one athlete to another, happy trails.”

NYT

Speaking of Livni

See here for previous comments regarding Israel’s Foreing Minister, Tzipi Livni.

Bethlehem – Ma’an – Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni seems to be preparing to back up the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert following the publication of the Winograd report on the failures of the Israeli army in the 33-day war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006, according to the Israeli daily newspaper Ma’ariv.

Analysts expect the Winograd report to result in the collapse of Olmert’s Kadima party if Labour Party chair Ehud Barak and Avigdor Liberman from the Israeli Beteno decide to take advantage of the report.

Livni provoked a crisis between Egypt and Israel last week when she claimed that the Egyptian authorities had not exerted enough efforts to combat the smuggling of weapons into the Gaza Strip through underground border tunnels. This irritated the Egyptians and Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak was swiftly despatched to Egypt to calm them down.

During a meeting with dozens of American students in Jerusalem on Thursday, Livini extended her criticism to the whole world when she dismissed the international community’s calls on Israel to stop settlement constructions in Jerusalem. [It’s everyone’s fault but Israel’s!]

“The world asks us about settlements and sometimes criticizes us. Does the world know about the killing of two Israelis in Hebron last week by Palestinian security officers? We realize that the Palestinian dreams of an independent state should materialize, but on condition that Israeli security becomes a Palestinian interest as it is an Israeli interest,” Livni explained.

She added that the international community’s resolutions often rely on imagination rather than on reality and historic justice.  [Chutzpah!]

 Ma’an News

Picture from Ma’an images

Another Sad Farce: Israel deems use of cluster bombs ‘legal’

Cluster bombs (pictured below) are, by design, lethal to unprotected people. That is to say, to civilians; militants are usually in ‘hardened environments’. Furthermore, the unexploded remnants continue to kill civilians, especially children. A sad day indeed when the Israeli government proudly claims their use perfectly justified.

 

Many bomblets fail to explode and continue to endanger civilians

BBC 

Israeli military prosecutors say the army’s much-criticised deployment of cluster bombs in last year’s Lebanon war was legal under international law.

The Israeli army announced there would be no indictments against officers who used them, after a year-long enquiry.

“The use of the weaponry was a concrete military necessity,” a statement said.

The UN called Israel’s cluster bombing “shocking and immoral”, as most were used in the last 72 hours of fighting when a resolution was clearly imminent.

According to the inquiry by the head of the army’s Defence College, the majority of cluster bombs were dropped in open areas and their use in urban areas was an “immediate response” to target areas that were being used as launch pads by Hezbollah guerrillas. The findings were accepted by the army’s Judge Advocate General Avihai Mandelblit. The UN says about four million cluster bomblets were dropped on Lebanon during the 34-day conflict. Many of them failed to explode on impact, posing a danger to civilians in their homes, gardens and fields.

More than 30 people have been reported killed by cluster bomb and land mine explosions since the 2006 war.

Although cluster bombs are not illegal under the laws of war, campaigners say their use in populated areas constitutes an indiscriminate attack on civilians.

A step in the right direction

But, what must be remembered is that any such theoretical aid will be moot if Israel continues to violate international law by expanding the settlements. Israel’s clear desire is to succeed in the fait accompli of rendering a Palestinian state impossible. They have accomplished this – which is why such talk of a ‘Palestinian state’ is absurd. Also, one should take note of Israeli Foreign Minister, and former Mossad agent, Tzipi Livni’s remarks. And for one of the most sycophantic ‘interviews’ in the history of journalism, see this servile nonsense by the New York Times’ Roger Cohen, and learn all about the “tall, well-groomed, crocodile-skin boot wearing” minister. 

Officials from 68 countries in Paris have pledged a multi-billion dollar aid package for Palestinians, in the biggest such meeting for a decade.

To help set up a viable Palestinian state, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas wants $5.6bn (£2.8bn) by 2010.

He warned the one-day donors’ summit that Palestinians were facing a “total catastrophe” and challenged Israel to freeze all settlement activity.

‘Moment of truth’

Appealing for aid, Mr Abbas told donors in Paris a “moment of truth” had arrived.

“Without the payment of aid … we will be facing a total catastrophe in the West Bank and Gaza,” he said

A key element of the renewed peace talks is the US-backed road map, which requires Israel to freeze settlement-building activity and the Palestinians to disarm militants.

“I expect [Israel] to stop all settlement activities, without exceptions,” Mr Abbas also said.

After the Annapolis talks, Israel unveiled plans to expand a settlement on occupied land between Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

Mr Abbas told the conference that both the Palestinians and Israelis should each meet their road map commitments “without excuses”.

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told the summit that Israel was committed to its obligations, “including in relation to settlement activities”, but did not elaborate.

She added: “We do not want the image of Israel in the Palestinian mind to be a soldier at a checkpoint”.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told the summit that people in Gaza were living in the “most abhorrent conditions” that had “devastating effects on the economy and on family livelihoods”.

The World Bank and several aid organisations have said that until Israel lifts its system of restrictions on the movement of Palestinian people and goods, giving more money will not rebuild the Palestinians’ economy.

The new envoy of the Quartet of Middle East peace negotiators, ex-UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, told donors their pledges would be “indispensable” to the creation of a Palestinian state.

BBC

A historical glance of media bias against the Palestinians

As an historical perspective is always helpful in analyzing policies and behaviors, I offer this a 1993 analysis done by FAIR, which sows the ingrained racism (e.g., “It was not in them, or in the ways of their culture, to make such a daring leap”) we’ve come to expect from major press sources in the US. Also on full display is the constant concern over the strong’s (i.e., Israel’s) well-being – which is belied by the Israeli PM even saying “the Palestinians will never be able to present a military threat to Israel.” FAIR has also done an admirable job showing the history of Palestinian willingness to make peace.

Media Not Doing Justice To Mideast PeaceBy Sam Husseini

As virtually all media outlets celebrated the “magnificent spectacle of peacemaking” in Washington (Newsweek 9/27/93), leading media voices were often more jubilant than accurate in their reporting. Even as the Israelis and Palestinians were lauded for “emerging from the clutches of history” (Time, 9/13/93), too many journalists clung to past habits of bias in their coverage.

Most of the press showed more interest in the choreography of the signing ceremony than in what the agreement actually said. Thomas Friedman, the New York Times‘ Mideast expert, claimed the parties are “finally acknowledging that they each have an equally valid claim” to the land (9/10/93). Similarly, Time magazine (9/13/93) happily reported that the Palestinians and Israelis “are now free to live with each other, separate but equal.”

In the new agreement, the PLO recognizes the Israeli state, while accepting on behalf of Palestinians only limited autonomy under continued Israeli rule in the impoverished Gaza Strip and the small West Bank town of Jericho. The question of whether Palestinians will ever have a state is left open for future negotiations. This would hardly seem to be an “equal” arrangement As Edward Said noted in The Nation (9/20/93), the agreement “leaves Palestinians very much the subordinates.”

“The First Acknowledgment”

Some periodicals tried to be even-handed, but got their facts wrong in the process: Time (9/13/93) magazine attempted to show an equivalence of history, claiming that this is “the first acknowledgment by Israelis and Palestinians that they can share the land both call home.” In fact, since 1976, the PLO has backed a string of U.N. resolutions calling for an Israeli and a Palestinian state side by side. In 1984, the Los Angeles Times (5/6/84) quoted PLO head Yasir Arafat as saying, “I would be in favor of a mutual recognition of the two states.” Arafat repeated such a willingness at a 1988 U.N. meeting in Geneva.

But U.S. News & World Report (9/ 13/93) ignored this history, reporting on “the quarrelsome PLO’s newfound willingness to abandon its goal of destroying Israel.” What Arafat has done, in reality, is retreat from his demand that recognition be mutual; Israel only had to recognize the PLO as a representative of the Palestinian people, not the national rights of Palestinians.

The standard media line was to equate the pain of the occupied and the occupier. But some commentators still needed to paint the Arabs as villains. Despite the record of Palestinian willingness to compromise, Fouad Ajami (U.S. News & World Report, 9/27/93) commented of Palestinian leaders, “It was not in them, or in the ways of their culture, to make such a daring leap.”

The question of trust was rarely asked in a balanced fashion. PBS‘s Jim Lehrer repeatedly asked what would happen if, after the Palestinians achieve autonomy, a Palestinian attacks an Israeli (MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, 9/9/93, 9/13/93). But few reporters seemed worried that harm might befall some of the 1 million Palestinians who will still be under occupation outside of Gaza or Jericho.

Time (9/13/93) asked, “Can Palestinians be trusted with a truly independent state?” What other people would that be asked of? Such reporting also overlooks Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin‘s own statement (MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, 9/13/93) that “the Palestinians will never be able to present a military threat to Israel.”

US/Israeli Role in fomenting civil war in Palestine

The below is from an excellent journalistic source FAIR. In the below, they have analyzed (1) the role of US and Israel in causing the violence in Gaza; rather than discussing this externally imposed impetus for violence, the dominant discourse in the US is “Arabs killing each other over Jewish land” and (2) the silence of the US press in informing the public of (1).   

‘I Like This Violence’
Censoring the U.S. role in Gaza’s civil war
By Seth Ackerman

The big story from the Middle East last June was the factional fighting in Gaza that ended in a victory for the Hamas party and the routing of forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement. The violence made the front pages of the major papers—the New York Times (6/14/07), Washington Post (6/14/07), the Los Angeles Times (6/15/07)—and the cover of Newsweek (6/25/07). The overall message was simple: As the Washington Post’s Scott Wilson described it (6/15/07), the episode represented “a sharp escalation in intensity, brutality and ambition on the part of Hamas forces.”
As for the events that led up to Hamas’ takeover and the Bush administration’s role in them, these were hardly a secret—at least for the specialists who follow politics in the region closely. But Americans who rely on the mainstream media for their news were left in the dark as reporters did their best to keep any hint of the crucial background out of their coverage.

The facts are no mystery. The previous February, Hamas and Fatah had joined together in a national unity government in an effort to put an end to street fighting and factionalism within the Palestinian administration (Extra!, 9–10/06). The announcement of the power-sharing agreement, forged under Saudi auspices at a summit in Mecca, was greeted with nearly universal relief: “In the streets of Gaza, Palestinians broke out in celebration as the agreement was being announced, with members of Hamas and Fatah firing into the air,” the New York Times reported (2/9/07).
Over the months that followed, reports rolled in of weapons being shipped to Fatah forces with an Israeli green light (Ha’aretz, 12/28/06); the arrival in Gaza of hundreds of fighters trained under U.S. auspices in neighboring countries (Washington Post, 5/18/07); and a White House request for $83 million from Congress to finance “non-lethal aid” to Fatah forces (AP, 1/19/07).

In Israel, it was obvious what was going on. Ha’aretz’s chief diplomatic correspondent, Akiva Eldar, noted (4/24/07) that “arming the [pro-Abbas] Palestinian Presidential Guard is part of Elliott Abrams’ plan to bury the Mecca agreement.” (See The Return of Elliott Abrams)
If any proof were needed that the U.S. was trying to foment a civil war, it arrived just as the violence in Gaza was reaching a crescendo—in the form of an internal report by Alvaro De Soto, the U.N. envoy to the Quartet, that was leaked to the London Guardian (6/13/07). In De Soto’s report, the full text of which can be found at the Guardian’s website, the Peruvian diplomat wrote:

The U.S. clearly pushed for a confrontation between Fatah and Hamas —so much so that, a week before Mecca, the U.S. envoy [presumably Assistant Secretary of State David Welch] declared twice in an envoys’ meeting in Washington how much “I like this violence,” referring to the near–civil war that was erupting in Gaza in which civilians were being regularly killed and injured, because “it means that other Palestinians are resisting Hamas.”

To summarize: At a moment when violence in Gaza was a top story in the world media, it was disclosed by a U.N. diplomat who worked closely with the U.S. that a leading American policymaker in a private meeting had openly rejoiced at the violence and saw it as proof that American policy was working.

The complete article here.

Israeli policy of denying medical care to Palestinian children

This article discusses one of the saddest manifestations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Because occupied Palestine is forced to be economically dependent on Israel, it cannot afford modern equipment in its hospitals, even medicine faces long delays at Israeli checkpoints. Now that Gaza has been declared “a hostile entity”, children are dying of things like chicken pocks because they are not being allowed to seek medical treatment. But, as Palestinians, they are “unworthy victims” and simply ignored in the US press. Indeed, today’s New York Times upbraids the Palestinian leadership for presenting a map showing an “erased Israel”. I have no idea what that even means, although it is clearly meant to sound scary. But, how does one show something that is erased? The major news outlets in the US must not cease to portray Palestinians as ruthlessly out to eradicate Israel, which, though an absolutely ludricous proposition is the discourse used to excuse or ignore any action by Israel – even the denial of medical care to children who happen to live in the wrong area.  

 

“A matter of revenge”: Israel denying medical treatment to Gaza By Rami Almeghari

We have been waiting for an urgent referral to an outside hospital for the past six days, until he died today,” said Dr. Ismail Yassin Monday, in response to the death of one more patient at the Gaza Children’s Hospital.

Tamer al-Yazji, a 12-year-old chicken pox patient, died on Monday in his hospital bed after his referral to an Israeli hospital was delayed.

Dr. Yassin explained that Tamer’s condition had worsened over the past few weeks. He was showing symptoms of blood problems in his brain, so the ill-equipped hospital requested his urgent referral for an MRI scan and follow-up, which meant accessing medical care facilities in Israel or Egypt.

Working in less than ideal conditions with fuel supplies cut and medicine not entering the Gaza Strip, Gaza Children’s Hospital is currently treating a number of patients, including many infants and 10 cases of cardiac disease patients.

The director of the hospital’s infant intensive care unit, Dr. Shirin Abed, said that her unit provides care to a number of infants who are in dire need of medication.

Ahmad Abu Nada is 21 days old. Dr. Abed said, has not been able to feed properly since he was born and his condition is getting much worse.

“This baby’s condition has been deteriorating and unless he is referred for [outside] medical care, his brain could be damaged in the course of few days or few weeks, so we are asking for help. We filed a request to the concerned authorities for his referral, yet we have not received any response,” she stated.

According to the health care workers at the hospital, usually the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza determines to where a patient will be referred: either to the Israeli Haddasah hospital or to the Palestinian-run Al-Maqased hospital in East Jerusalem.

Now that the Hamas government has been in complete control of the Gaza Strip since June, the processing of such medical care transfer requests is taking longer than ever.

Earlier this month, a breast cancer patient died as her entry to Israel for treatment was delayed.

According to hospital officials, Gaza hospitals in general lack basic equipment such as MRI scanners or dialysis machines; therefore, many cases are being referred to outside Gaza every month.

In addition to the delay of access of Gaza patients to outside hospitals, mainly Israeli ones, the internal Israeli intelligence agency, the Shabak (Shin Bet) is reportedly pressuring applicants to give information in exchange for permission.

“Upon arrival at the Erez crossing in northern Gaza, the Shabak officers start interrogating patients, demanding them to give the Shabak information about friends and neighbors. When a patient refuses to give such information, the Shabak sends him back to Gaza,” explained Miri Weingarten of Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR), based in Tel Aviv.

Weingarten said that PHR has filed a petition to the Israeli High Court requesting three demands: allowing treatment for 11 patients listed in the petition, allowing all those in need for referral outside Gaza to travel and stopping the Israeli Shabak’s interrogation of Gaza patients who cross the Erez checkpoint.

“Among the eleven patients for whom we requested entry, was Na’el al-Kordi, 21, who died early this week after having been denied access, while four others got permission, with only two of them managing to enter the Erez checkpoint,” Weingarten added.

Neither the Israeli government, nor the Israeli High Court, has yet responded to PHR’s petition or to any other appeals by various local and international bodies to allow smooth access of Gaza patients to treatment outside Gaza.

According to PHR, Israel delays the access of 40 patients every month, thus causing death or deterioration of health condition in many cases.

In September, Israel declared Gaza a “hostile entity,” stepping up attacks on the coastal strip and cutting large quantities of fuel supplies to the 1.4-million-strong population which is dependant on Israel for many basic needs, from water to medication.

Israel cites security reasons for all its actions against the Gaza Strip, namely preventing Palestinian resistance factions from firing homemade rockets at nearby Israeli towns.

However, in the words of Weingarten, “It is not a matter of security, it’s rather a matter of revenge.”

The least surprising story of the day: Israeli officials reject U.S. findings on Iran

If the US ever makes the mistake of inititating war against Iran, there will be one reason, and one reason only for it. This was discussed extensively by Mearsheimer and Walt in their book that was explored here.

By Dion Nissenbaum, McClatchy Newspapers Tue Dec 4, 1:29 PM ET

JERUSALEM — Israeli officials, who’ve been warning that Iran would soon pose a nuclear threat to the world, reacted angrily Tuesday to a new U.S. intelligence finding that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons development program in 2003 and to date hasn’t resumed trying to produce nuclear weapons.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak directly challenged the new assessment in an interview with Israel’s Army Radio, and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the new finding wouldn’t deter Israel or the United States from pressing its campaign to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapons capability.

“It seems Iran in 2003 halted for a certain period of time its military nuclear program, but as far as we know, it has probably since revived it,” Barak said.

“Even after this report, the American stance will still focus on preventing Iran from attaining nuclear capability,” Olmert said. “We will expend every effort along with our friends in the U.S. to prevent the Iranians from developing nuclear weapons.”

Probably no country felt more blindsided than Israel by the announcement Monday that 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, in a stunning reassessment, had concluded with “high confidence” that Iran had halted its nuclear program in 2003 and with “moderate confidence” that it hadn’t restarted that program as of mid-2007.

For years, Israel has been at the forefront of international efforts to isolate Iran , with Israeli intelligence estimates warning that Iran was on the brink of a nuclear “point of no return,” an ominous assessment that often fueled calls for a military strike.

Israeli officials also have sought to isolate Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad , citing his calls for Israel’s destruction and his skepticism that the Holocaust took place.

The U.S. intelligence finding said that evidence “suggests” that Iran isn’t as determined as U.S. officials thought to develop a nuclear weapon and that a diplomatic approach that included economic pressure and some nod to Iranian goals for regional influence might persuade Iran to continue to suspend weapons development.

On Tuesday morning, Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper called the U.S.

findings “a blow below the belt.” An analysis in the competing Haaretz newspaper suggested that Israel might come to be viewed as a “panic-stricken rabbit” and said that the U.S. intelligence estimate established “a new, dramatic reality: The military option, American or Israeli, is off the table, indefinitely.”

“This is definitely a blow to attempts to stop Iran from becoming nuclear because now everybody will be relaxed and those that were reluctant to go ahead with harsher sanctions will now have a good excuse,” said Efraim Inbar , the director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University .

The estimate created an awkward situation for Israeli leaders, who mostly tried to sidestep direct criticism of the Bush administration.

Olmert sought to focus on the report’s finding that Iran had been deterred in 2003 from pursuing its nuclear weapons program by international pressure. That, said Olmert, made continued sanctions essential.

Barak was tougher and promised that the report wouldn’t influence Israeli policy.

“We cannot allow ourselves to rest just because of an intelligence report from the other side of the earth, even if it is from our greatest friend,” he said.

Israeli officials also highlighted where the U.S. and Israeli assessments agree.

They noted that while the latest U.S. assessment said that the earliest Iran was likely to develop enough weapons-grade material for a nuclear bomb was 2010, Israeli assessments weren’t dramatically different, finding that Iran could develop the workings for a nuclear bomb by 2009.

Gerald Steinberg , the chairman of the political science department at Bar-Ilan University , suggested that the findings might increase the chances that Israel will attack Iran because they reduce the chances that the United States will act.

“I think it may introduce a lot of stress in the Israeli-American relationship,” he said.

But Emily Landau , the director of the Arms Control and Regional Security Program at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies , said it would be very difficult for Israel to launch an attack without explicit support from the United States .

“If Israel were to carry out a military action, it would have to be in coordination with the United States , so if the United States is moving away from that option, it would have implications for Israel as well,” she said.

( McClatchy special correspondent Cliff Churgin contributed to this report from Jerusalem .)

When Nixon and Kissinger are “vexed” about your integrity- there’s a problem

For the New York Times, this in an excellent article about recently declassified documents pertaining to the relationship between the US and Israel. Cold war calculations and political maneuvering allowed Israel to steal nuclear information and maintain an undisclosed nuclear program without ever signing the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty – this continues to the present.

Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal Vexed Nixon

By DAVID STOUT

WASHINGTON, Nov. 28

President Richard M. Nixon and his close advisers were quietly fretting about a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. Their main worry was not a potential enemy of the United States, but one of America’s closest friends.

“The Israelis, who are one of the few peoples whose survival is genuinely threatened, are probably more likely than almost any other country to actually use their nuclear weapons,” Henry A. Kissinger, the national security adviser, warned Mr. Nixon in a memorandum dated July 19, 1969 — part of a newly released trove of documents.

Israel’s nuclear arms program, which Israel has never officially conceded exists, was believed to have begun at least several years before, but it was causing special problems for the young Nixon administration. For one thing, the president was preparing for a visit by its prime minister, Golda Meir, who was also in her first year in office and whose toughness was already legendary.

The Nixon White House’s concerns over Israel’s weapons were detailed in documents from the Nixon Presidential Library that were released on Wednesday by the National Archives under an executive order that requires that classified documents be reviewed and possibly declassified after 25 years.

The documents provide insights into America’s close, but by no means problem-free, relationship with Israel. They also serve as a reminder that concerns over nuclear arms proliferation in the Middle East, now focused on Iran, are decades old.

But perhaps the most interesting material, and the most pertinent given the just-completed peace conference in Annapolis, Md., concerns Israel and its relations with its neighbors, as well as with the United States.

“There is circumstantial evidence that some fissionable material available for Israel’s weapons development was illegally obtained from the United States about 1965,” Mr. Kissinger noted in his long memorandum.

He also said that one problem with trying to persuade Israel to freeze its nuclear program was that inspections would be useless, conceding that “we could never cover all conceivable Israeli hiding places.”

“This is one program on which the Israelis have persistently deceived us,” Mr. Kissinger said, “and may even have stolen from us.”

Although Israel has never publicly acknowledged possessing nuclear weapons, scientists and arms experts have no doubt that it has them, and the United States’ reluctance to pressure Israel to disarm has made America vulnerable to accusations that it has a double standard when it comes to stopping the spread of weapons in the Middle East.

But Mr. Kissinger reflected at length on the quandary faced by the United States. “Israel will not take us seriously on the nuclear issue unless they believe we are prepared to withhold something they very much need,” he wrote, referring to a pending sale of Phantom fighter jets to Israel.

“On the other hand, if we withhold the Phantoms and they make this fact public in the United States, enormous political pressure will be mounted on us,” Mr. Kissinger went on. “We will be in an indefensible position if we cannot state why we are withholding the planes. Yet if we explain our position publicly, we will be the ones to make Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons public with all the international consequences this entails.”

One of those consequences might be to “spark a Soviet nuclear guarantee for the Arabs, tighten the Soviet hold on the Arabs and increase the danger of our involvement,” Mr. Kissinger wrote at another point.

But Avner Cohen, the author of “Israel and the Bomb,” (Columbia University Press, 1998) who is a senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace, said on Wednesday that there was enough historical evidence to indicate that the president and the prime minister had reached a secret understanding on at least one issue: Israel would keep its nuclear devices out of sight and not test them, and the United States would tolerate the situation and not press Israel to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty that has been embraced by scores of countries around the world.

“That understanding remains to this day,” Mr. Cohen said.

NYT