Ann Wright - US Joins Israel in Blockading Education to Students in Gaza

As another international activist ship is on the high seas to break the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza, the United States government has joined with Israel to blockade higher education opportunities for students in Gaza and the West Bank.In this Oct. 11, 2012 photo, Palestinian student Amal Ashour, 18, poses for a portrait with schoolbooks at her family house in Gaza City. Ashour had planned to study English literature this fall at a university in the West Bank through a U.S.-sponsored program, but was recently informed the scholarship was no longer available for Gaza students. Under Israeli pressure, U.S. officials have quietly canceled a two-year-old scholarship program for students in the Gaza Strip, undercutting a program that American diplomats say has been key in providing needed educational opportunities for students in the Palestinian territories. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)

Rather than leveraging the large military and economic aid the United States gives the Israeli government each year for the right of Palestinians to accept scholarships and to travel to universities in the West Bank and to universities in other countries, the United States has, with minimal publicity, cancelled 30 scholarships to high school seniors in Gaza and the West Bank.

Two years after the scholarship program was begun in 2010 by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem stated that it would not grant the scholarships after Israel said it would not permit students to travel. "Because of the timing and risk of losing funding, available scholarships were awarded to other applicants," it said. "We hope to include Gazan students in future programs."

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http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/10/16-6

Graham Peebles - Incarcerated Inside Israel Palestinians Tortured And Isolated

Detention without trial, the presumption of guilt, denial of family visits, solitary confinement, torture, violent interrogation, and denial of access to appropriate health care, such is the Israeli judicial system and prison confinement experienced by Palestinian men, women and indeed children.

Currently there are, according to B'T selem “4,484 Palestinians – security detainees, confined in Israeli prisons.” Family contact is virtually impossible for prisoners, most of who are held inside Israel . This contravenes international law in the form of the universally trumpeted Fourth Geneva Convention (Article's 49 & 76), consistently violated and disregarded by Israel .

International laws – legally binding upon Israel , who are not above the rule of law, must be respected and enforced. Richard Falk UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, in the UN news 2/5/12 called “on the international community to ensure that Israel complies with international human rights laws and norms in its treatment of Palestinian prisoners.” The UN makes its feelings clear in the ‘Question of Palestine Administrative Detention' report (UNQAP) when it says, Israel “has historically ratified international agreements regarding human rights protection, whilst at the same time refusing to apply the agreements within the Occupied Palestinian Territory , attempting to create legal justifications for its illegal actions.” A comprehensive list of international legally binding agreements dutifully signed, ratified and consequently disregarded by various Israeli governments are cited by the UN, which sits hands tied, impotent it seems in the face of Israel's illegal and violent occupation (a fact that cannot be stated often or loudly enough), submissive to the imperialist Godfather. America .

Since the six-day war in 1967 an estimated 750,000 Palestinians have been incarcerated in Israeli prisons, including 23,000 women and 25,000 children. This constitutes, Richard Falk states “approximately 20 per cent of the total Palestinian population in the occupied territory or 40 per cent of the Palestinian male population there.” Staggering figures of those personally imprisoned, whist a whole nation is held captive intimidated by an illegal occupying power upon their homeland.

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http://www.countercurrents.org/peebles120812.htm

Col. Ann Wright - Turkish Court Indicts Senior Israeli Military Officials in Murders on Gaza Flotilla

On the Second Anniversary of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, Turkish Court Indicts Senior Israeli Military Officials in Murders of Nine Passengers

Two years ago I was a passenger on the first Gaza Freedom Flotilla which was sailing to break the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza. I watched from a small boat called the Challenger 1, as a much larger boat, the Mavi Marmara, with almost 600 passengers, was brutally attacked by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) commandos. 30 minutes later, our boat was attacked.

Using snipers from helicopters Israeli commandos shot many of the passengers on the exposed top deck of the ship. Other commandos in boats fired live ammunition, as well as percussion grenades, into all levels of the ship. As commandos repelled down from helicopters and boarded the ship, they executed at point blank range 5 passengers, including a 19 year old American citizen Furkan Dogan, whose body had five bullets including one to the back of his head. 9 persons, 8 Turkish citizens and one American citizen, were murdered and 50 others were wounded. One severely wounded Turkish man later died after being in a coma for many months.

Each of the six ships in the flotilla was attacked by IDF commandos. Passengers on the ships were shot with tasers and beaten by commandos. Potentially lethal paintballs were shot into the faces of passengers narrowly missing eyes and soft parts of the skull.

IDF commandos took the computers, cameras, identification and credit cards and several hundred thousands of dollars in cash from the passengers. IDF commandos sold many of the stolen computers. Very few of the items taken by the IDF have been returned to passengers.

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http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31228

Pierre Klochendler - With New Malware Virus, Israel Fans a Virtual Flame Against Iran

A new super-weapon has entered the Mideast cyber arena. First detected on Monday by a Moscow-based security company, ‘Worm.Win32.Flame’ – just call it ‘Flame’ – might be "the most sophisticated cyber weapon yet unleashed" on Iran’s secret nuclear networks.

Code from the Flame virus. "Flame can easily be described as one of the most complex threats ever discovered. Big and incredibly sophisticated, it redefines the notion of cyber-war and cyber-espionage," Alexander Gostev posted on the ‘Securelist’ blog of Kaspersky Labs, the company that uncovered the worm. Gostev is head of the firm’s Global Research and Analysis Team.

The newly-discovered multi-task device sniffs network traffic, takes screenshots when certain applications of interest are run, records audio conversations, intercepts keyboards – the web seems to be the limit.

From an initial analysis performed by Kaspersky Labs, the ‘Flame’ creators gather highly sensitive intelligence on highly sensitive operations of states, principally in the Middle East – e-mails, documents, messages, or discussions inside sensitive locations – and can "target SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) devices, ICS (industrial control systems), critical infrastructure and so on."

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http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31169

Gareth Porter - U.S. Hard Line in Failed Iran Talks Driven by Israel

Negotiations between Iran and the United States and other members of the P5+1 group in Baghdad ended in fundamental disagreement Thursday over the position of the P5+1 offering no relief from sanctions against Iran.

The two sides agreed to meet again in Moscow Jun. 18 and 19, but only after Iran had threatened not to schedule another meeting, because the P5+1 had originally failed to respond properly to its five-point plan.

The prospects for agreement are not likely to improve before that meeting, however, mainly because of an inflexible U.S. diplomatic posture that reflects President Barack Obama's need to bow to the demands of Israel and the U.S. Congress on Iran policy.

The U.S. hard line in the Baghdad talks and the failure to set the stage for an early agreement with Iran means that Iran will not only increase but accelerate its accumulation of 20-percent enriched uranium, which has been the ostensible reason for wanting to get Iran to the negotiating table quickly.

Iran's enrichment to 20 percent, which Tehran has justified over the past two years as needed by its Tehran Research Reactor to produce medical isotopes, can be turned into high enriched uranium more quickly than the 3.5 percent enriched uranium for Iran's nuclear power programme.

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http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/gareth-porter/43412/u-s-hard-line-in-failed-iran-talks-driven-by-israel

US Concerned Israel May Attack Iran "at Any Moment"

The Obama administration is worried that Israel's new coalition government in could signal an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities at "any given moment," one of Israel's leading TV stations reported Thursday night.

Shaul Mofaz and his Kadima party’s joining a unity government with rightwing Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu could be the final step in a united front for attack by Israel, according to the Hebrew-language Channel 10 News.

The televison station quoted unnamed Obama administration officials as saying they believed a Likud-Kadima coalition government could make a decision about an Israeli attack on Iran before the U.S. presidential elections in November.

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Israel's Arutz Sheva Channel 7 reports:

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http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/05/11-6

Rep Ron Paul - "It will Lead to War", Statement on H.R.4133, The US-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act of 2012

Mr. Speaker: I rise in opposition to HR 4133, the United States-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act, which unfortunately is another piece of one-sided and counter-productive foreign policy legislation. This bill's real intent seems to be more saber-rattling against Iran and Syria, and it undermines US diplomatic efforts by making clear that the US is not an honest broker seeking peace for the Middle East.

The bill calls for the United States to significantly increase our provision of sophisticated weaponry to Israel, and states that it is to be US policy to "help Israel preserve its qualitative military edge" in the region.

While I absolutely believe that Israel – and any other nation -- should be free to determine for itself what is necessary for its national security, I do not believe that those decisions should be underwritten by US taxpayers and backed up by the US military.

This bill states that it is the policy of the United States to "reaffirm the enduring commitment of the United States to the security of the State of Israel as a Jewish state." However, according to our Constitution the policy of the United States government should be to protect the security of the United States, not to guarantee the religious, ethnic, or cultural composition of a foreign country. In fact, our own Constitution prohibits the establishment of any particular religion in the US.

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http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=30838

Chemi Shalev - Has Israel’s leadership come down with mad-Jew disease?

This is what’s been going down in the last few days alone:

1. The Prime Minister says that sanctions against Iran aren’t working and the Defense Minister claims that Iran is irrational and then the Prime Minister stipulates that the Iranians want to make a bomb and then the IDF Chief of Staff flatly contradicts them and says that Iran is rational, sanctions are working and the Iranians won’t really make a bomb after all. And the Prime Minister and the Defense Minister go on saying what they were saying before, as if nothing’s happened.

2. The next day, a former chief of the Shin Bet, who spent his life in what Israeli leftists like to call “the apparatus of darkness,” opens his mouth for the first time since retirement and sounds like a turbo-charged Peter Beinart: the Israeli leadership suffers from a messiah complex, they are morally unfit to govern, they can’t wage war and they sure as hell don’t want to make peace.

3. Less than 48 hours later, an up and rising Likud minister and a fabled former head of the Mossad nearly come to blows in front of hundreds of people in New York. The Mossadnik calls the minister a liar and compares a proposed Knesset law to Nazi legislation, while the minister accuses the man who until recently was hailed as a cross between Indiana Jones, George Smiley and Bar Kochba as “harming the state security,” a crime punishable by law. “How did he ever get such a high position?” asks the minister of the man who was an IDF general before serving for eight years as head of the Mossad, where he was widely considered to be one of the best ever.

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http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/west-of-eden/has-israel-s-leadership-come-down-with-mad-jew-disease-1.427302

Renee Parsons - The Strategic Partnership Agreement and Pakistan

As President Obama has committed to withdraw U.S. combat troops from Afghanistan in 2014, the recently signed Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA) with Afghan President Hamid Karzai will implement an 'enduring' strategic partnership that extends a US presence in that country until 2024. A premise for the SPA is that as Islamic extremists find sanctuary within Pakistan borders, a commitment to train Afghan national security forces (ANSF) requires a long term U.S. presence until a strong Afghanistan army and police can defend their own country.

How NATO allies will respond at the upcoming Summit in Chicago to the Agreement's call for extension of the 2014 withdrawal date which the Alliance adopted at its 2010 Lisbon summit remains uncertain. While many NATO nations have indicated an eagerness to depart Afghanistan in 2014 and some have even announced a pre-2014 departure, the Agreement's appeal for a continued Afghan-NATO presence can be expected to agitate the Alliance.

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/renee-parsons/the-strategic-partnership_b_1499926.html

Jonathan Cook - Netanyahu Crowns Himself King of Israel

Israelis barely had time to absorb the news that they were heading into a summer election when Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu yesterday pulled the rug from underneath the charade. Rancourous early electioneering had provided cover for a secret agreement between Netanyahu and the main opposition party, Kadima, to form a new, expanded coalition government. 

Rather than facing the electorate in September, Netanyahu and his hardline rightwing government are expected to comfortably see out the remaining 18 months of his term of office. Not only that, but he will now have the backing of more than three-quarters of the 120-seat Israeli parliament, leading one commentator to crown him the “King of Israel”.

The announcement may have taken Israelis by surprise but it fully accorded with the logic of an increasingly dysfunctional Israeli political culture.

Shaul Mofaz, who a few weeks ago ousted Tzipi Livni as head of the centre-right Kadima party, had been vitriolic in denouncing Netanyahu. He called the prime minister a “liar” and went to the trouble of posting on his Facebook page a pledge that he would never make a deal with this “weak, incompetent and deaf government”.

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http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/05/09