Emma Hurd - Israel Considers Pre-Emptive Attack on Iran

Published on Wednesday, November 2, 2011 by Sky News

http://news.sky.com/home/world-news/article/16101552

by Emma Hurd

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to rally support in his cabinet for an attack on Iran, according to government sources.

The country's defence minister Ehud Barak and the foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman are said to be among those backing a pre-emptive strike to neutralise Iran's nuclear ambitions.

But a narrow majority of ministers currently oppose the move, which could trigger a wave of regional retaliation.

The debate over possible Israeli military action has reached fever pitch in recent days with newspaper leader columns discussing the benefits and dangers of hitting Iran.

Mr Lieberman responded to the reports of a push to gain cabinet approval by saying that "Iran poses the most dangerous threat to world order."

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Charles Onians - Palestinians Admitted as Full Member to UNESCO; US Cuts Funding in Response

By Charles Onians, Agence France Presse

Posted on October 31, 2011, Printed on November 1, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152922/palestinians_admitted_as_full_member_to_unesco%3B_us_cuts_funding_in_response

 Palestinians won entry to UNESCO on Monday, scoring a symbolic victory in their battle for full UN membership, prompting the US to cut its funding to the body and warn with ally Israel that the move harmed hopes for peace.

"The general conference decides to admit Palestine as a member of UNESCO," said the resolution that was adopted to loud applause by 107 countries, with 14 voting against and 52 abstaining.

"Accepting Palestine into UNESCO is a victory for (our) rights, for justice and for freedom," Mahmud Abbas' spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina quoted the Palestinian president as saying.

Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Malki, who was at the UN cultural body's Paris headquarters for the vote, hailed "a historic moment that gives Palestine back some of its rights," while Israel said it distanced peace.

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"McClatchy Newspapers" - Obama fails to persuade Palestinians to abandon quest for U.N. membership

McClatchy Newspapers,

last updated: September 21, 2011 08:48:17 PM

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/09/21/124773/obama-at-un-no-shortcut-to-israeli.html

UNITED NATIONS — President Barack Obama failed Wednesday to talk Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas out of seeking full U.N. membership, setting the stage for a U.S. veto that could help shore up Obama's sagging domestic political standing but risk injecting the first serious anti-U.S. unrest into the turmoil wracking the Middle East.

Plunging into frenzied, high-level diplomatic efforts to defuse the crisis, Obama spent about an hour Wednesday evening closeted with Abbas in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in what U.S. officials said was an attempt to persuade Abbas to return to peace talks with Israel that broke down last year.

But Abbas left the session still determined to submit a request on Friday for a U.N. Security Council resolution granting full U.N. membership to an independent Palestinian state. Obama has repeatedly vowed to block the move using the veto the United States controls as one of five permanent council members.

Abbas "has been very clear about what his intent is, which is to go to the Security Council," Ben Rhodes, a White House National Security Council spokesman, told reporters after the Obama-Abbas meeting, which he called "very candid and direct."

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"Progressive Radio Network Host Danny Schechter, Fridays @ 1pm(EDT)" - ISRAEL AND TURKEY, FRIENDS NO MORE

The first of several News Dissector Reports From Istanbul.
By Danny Schechter
Author of the Crime of Our Time

ISTANBUL TURKEY, September 19:  Let me begin with shvitz, a Yiddish term I believe that refers to special baths.

When the hotel I was staying at in Istanbul advertised that guests were welcome to enjoy the Turkish Bath in their basement, I took them up on it.  There were two other blondish guys in their birthday suits in the small room sweltering in the small room when I got there. They were drinking beer and conversing in a strange language I later identified as Swedish.

I was in town to speak at a session on Internet freedom at the 17th International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA 2011) at Sabanci Center. They were there, as I slowly learned as engineers loaned out to the America’s Westinghouse Corporation to build some nuclear plants in Turkey. Apparently, they were to have been built by the Tokyo Electric company that now has a nuclear disaster of their own on their hands. They were either fired or quit the job in Turkey.

It was something about fears about safety and ongoing risks. Japan is out; the American nuclear industry is in.

So now these shvitzing Swedes have a new job in a country they don’t know much about and also have, as they revealed to me, many prejudices and non-nuclear fears about.

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"Eric Margolis" - No Freedom for Palestine, Thunders Washington

http://www.ericmargolis.com/political_commentaries/no-freedom-for-palestine-thunders-washington.aspx
Published on Sunday, September 18, 2011 by EricMargolis.com

by Eric Margolis

Could we see a great leap forward next week on the Palestinian’s long quest for statehood?
Not quite. The Palestinian Authority (PA) says it will ask the United Nations General Assembly to upgrade from being a non-voting “observer entity” to an “observer state.” This bureaucratic-sounding change hardly seems earthshaking. The Vatican is an “observer state.”

But the earth is shaking. A majority of the world’s nations are fed up by the endless suffering of the stateless Palestinians and support creation of a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza.

Turkey’s increasingly influential premier, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, went to Cairo last week and spoke for the world: “Let’s raise the Palestinian flag and let that flag be the symbol of peace and justice in the Middle East.”

The United States is desperately scrambling to head off a favorable vote in the UN. Washington threatens to veto any pro-Palestine vote in the Security Council - that alone can grant statehood status to a new state. The US is exerting huge pressure on allies and dependant states to vote against any resolution in the General Assembly.

Threats and blackmail aside, the US, Israel and newly pro-Israel Canada are largely isolated on this issue. Israel is in a panic and is using all its mighty influence to sidetrack a vote. Its hard rightwing government is threatening the Palestinian territory with unspecified “grave consequences.’

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"Josh Ruebner" - Robbing Peter to Pay Israel

Published on Friday, August 12, 2011 by Foreign Policy in Focus

http://www.fpif.org/articles/robbing_peter_to_pay_israel

 
by Josh Ruebner

Nearly 20 percent of the constituents of Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL) live under the poverty line, and nearly 15 percent are unemployed. Jackson’s congressional district, covering parts of the south side of Chicago and its southern suburbs, has been hit harder than many others by the crises plaguing the economy. Many of his constituents are looking at even more cutbacks in social services, higher prices for food and fuel, and ever scarcer jobs. 

During this August congressional recess, Rep. Jackson, Jr. should be at home, meeting with constituents and proposing to them how he will help them cope with their difficult circumstances. Instead, the politician is proudly gallivanting around Israel, in one of three separate congressional delegations heading there this month on all-expense-paid junkets organized by the American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF), a so-called charitable affiliate of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the most influential of the myriad pro-Israel lobbying outfits. 

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Massive 'Social Justice' Protests Sweep Israel

Published on Sunday, July 31, 2011 by Agence France-Presse

http://www.afp.com/afpcom/en/

 

TEL AVIV -- Tens of thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets in 10 cities to protest against the high cost of living and to demand ''social justice, not charity''.

Police and media estimated that between 80,000 and 120,000 people demonstrated on Saturday. More than 50,000 people marched in Tel Aviv; about 10,000 protested in the northern city of Haifa, and in Jerusalem 15,000 demonstrators congregated outside the residence of the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, waving placards that read: ''A whole generation wants a future.''

''I came because I cannot make ends meet, and taxes end up in the pockets of the rich,'' one protester, who runs a nursery school, said.

Demonstrations against high rents and house prices have spread in recent weeks, with protesters setting up tent villages and road blocks.

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Michael Lerner: Middle East Peace Negotiations?

Until the populations of Israel and Palestine really want peace, the peace negotiations will be nothing but a slightly sad sideshow, unless the Obama administration, momentarily freed from its own electoral concerns, is prepared to put forward a substantive peace plan of its own.

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Ira Chernus: Is Palestine America's Next Vietnam?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hasnt been alone in playing for time when it comes to American policy, thats for sure. (Think, for instance, of our Afghan War commander General David Petraeus.) But Netanyahu played out the pre-election months with some skill and much shuffling of feet, as he officially pondered Obama administration proposals to reinstitute a settlements freeze in return for copious concessions. All the while, of course, West Bank building has been ramping up, as the 2010 elections crept ever closer. Now, its happened and lets be blunt: its a good moment for him and his policies -- in Washington. The new crew of Republicans who were swept into Congress seem to consider fealty to him and his right-wing government the sine qua non of political life.

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Nobel Laureate Mairead McGuire arrested by Government of Israel

It has been brought to the notice of the international community that Nobel Laureate Mairead McGuire second to none in her support to eliminate conflicts and the reasons for conflicts between nations and peoples, has been illegally arrested and detained by the Government of Israel when she arrived for the 'PEACE CONFERENCE OF NOBEL LAUREATES' to prevent her from attending a Peace Conference of Nobel Laureates from all over the world being held in Israel .

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