Saturday, June 21, 2014

(فيديو) زعبي: التنسيق الأمني خيانة للشعب الفلسطيني ووصل حد التنسيق السياسي

عرب 48

رفضت النائبة عن التجمع الوطني الديمقراطي، حنين زعبي، التراجع عن رفضها وصف اختفاء ثلاثة مستوطنين بالإرهابية، فيما وصفت استمرار التنسيق الأمني مع إسرائيل خيانة بالشعب الفلسطيني.
وتساءلت زعبي إن كان المستوطنون الثلاثة حقًا مختطفين، وإن صح ذلك فإن على إسرائيل أن تفتح قناة حوار مع الخاطفين وأن تطلق سراح الأسرى الفلسطينيين "المختطفين في سجون الاحتلال"، حسب تعبيرها.
وفي مقابلة ساخنة مع القناة الإسرائيلية الثانية أقرب إلى المواجهة، أكدت زعبي أن الإعلام الإسرائيلي يتجاهل أن قوات الاحتلال قتلت فتيين فلسطينيين.
وقالت زعبي: "نقدنا السياسي على السلطة الفلسطينية ليس جديداً، فإن هدف أبو مازن هو تقوية حكمه"، وأضافت: "التنسيق الأمني من قبل أبو مازن مع إسرائيل هو خيانة للشعب الفلسطيني"، وأكدت أن سياسة أبو مازن تجاوزت التنسيق الأمني إلى التنسيق السياسي مع إسرائيل.
ورفضت زعبي الاعتذار عن تصريحاته في الأيام الأخيرة وتصميمها على وصف الممارسات الإسرائيلية في الضفة الغربية بالإرهابية. وأكدت زعبي أن من حق الشعوب بل وواجب عليها مقاومة الاحتلال وفق ما يتيحه القانون الدولي وفي إطار القيم الأخلاقية الإنسانية، وأن يجب فهم نضال الشعب الفلسطيني في سياق الاحتلال الإسرائيلي، الذي هو الإرهاب المركزي.
واعتبرت زعبي أن الهدف الإستراتيجي للاحتلال ليس الوصول إلى المستوطنين الثلاثة وإنما ضرب البنية التحتية لحركة حماس وإفشال حكومة الوفاق الوطني.


Presbyterian Church votes to divest holdings to sanction Israel

Most prominent US religious group voted to sell church stock in companies whose products Israel uses in Palestinian territories





The Presbyterian Church on Friday became the most prominent religious group in the US to endorse divestment as a protest against Israeli policies toward Palestinians, voting to sell church stock in three companies whose products Israel uses in the occupied territories.
The church's General Assembly, meeting in Detroit, voted by 310-303 to sell stock in Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard and Motorola Solutions. Two years ago, the assembly rejected a similar divestment proposal by two votes.
The American Jewish Committee, a policy and advocacy group based in New York, said the vote was "driven by hatred of Israel". But Heath Rada, moderator for the church meeting, said immediately after the vote that "in no way is this a reflection of our lack of love for our Jewish brothers and sisters”.
The decision is expected to reverberate beyond the 1.8 million-member church. It comes amid discouragement over failed peace talks that have left activists desperate for a way to effect change and as the broader movement known as BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) has gained some momentum in the US, Israel's closest and most important ally.
Presbyterians who advocated for divestment insisted their action was not part of the broader boycott movement. Israeli officials, along with many American Jewish groups, denounced the campaign as an attempt to delegitimise the Jewish state.
Separately, the assembly also voted to re-examine its support for a two-state solution.
In a statement on its Facebook page, the Israeli Embassy in Washington denounced the Presbyterian Church resolution as "shameful”.
"Voting for symbolic measures marginalises and removes its ability to be a constructive partner to promote peace in the Middle East," the statement said.
Omar Barghouti, a co-founder of the BDS movement, praised the vote as a "sweet victory for human rights”. He said Presbyterian supporters of Palestinian rights have introduced divestment into the US mainstream and have given Palestinians "real hope in the face of the relentless and intensifying cruelty of Israel's regime of occupation, settler colonialism and apartheid”.
Representatives of the Presbyterian socially responsible investment arm told the national meeting in Detroit that their efforts to lobby the three companies for change had failed.
Carol Hylkema of the Israel/Palestine Mission Network, a Presbyterian group that advocates for Palestinians and spearheaded the drive for divestment, said their action was modelled on the divestment movement to end apartheid in South Africa. The 2012 assembly had endorsed a boycott of Israeli products made in the Palestinian territories.
"Because we are a historical peacemaking church, what we have done is, we have stood up for nonviolent means of resistance to oppression and we have sent a clear message to a struggling society that we support their efforts to resist in a nonviolent way the oppression being thrust upon them," said the Reverend Jeffrey DeYoe, of the Israel/Palestine Mission Network.
Two smaller US religious groups have divested in protest of Israeli policies: the Friends Fiduciary Corp, which manages assets for US Quakers, and the Mennonite Central Committee. Last week, the pension board of the United Methodist Church, the largest mainline Protestant group in the US, revealed plans to sell holdings worth about $110,000 in G4S, which provides security equipment and has contracts with Israel's prison system. However, the United Methodist Church had rejected church-wide divestment.
Motorola Solutions said in a statement that the company follows the law and its own policies that address human rights. Hewlett-Packard said its checkpoints for Palestinians were developed to expedite passage "in a secure environment, enabling people to get to their place of work or to carry out their business in a faster and safer way”. Caterpillar has said it does not sell equipment to Israel, just to the US government.
A church spokeswoman estimated the value of Presbyterian holdings in the companies at $21m.

القيسي: ثوار العشائر على أسوار بغداد

قال المتحدث باسم المجلس العسكري العام لثوار العراق اللواء الركن مزهر القيسي إن ثوار العشائر يقفون الآن على أسوار العاصمة بغداد، بعد أن تمكنوا من السيطرة على الموصل وصلاح الدين وطردوا قوات الجيش من ديالا وكركوك، نافيا أن يكون تنظيم الدولة الإسلامية في العراق والشام هو من يقود هذه الثورة ضد سياسات رئيس الوزراء نوري المالكي.
وأضاف خلال حلقة الجمعة (20/6/2014) من برنامج "لقاء اليوم" أن ثوار العشائر أوقدوا شعلة لثورة لن تنطفئ، بدأت منذ أن طالبوا بحقوقهم الشرعية عبر تنفيذ اعتصامات دستورية، لكنها  قوبلت بالحديد والنار مما دفعهم لحمل البندقية كملاذ أخير للحل.
وأكد القيسي أن سياسات المالكي المتمثلة في إرسال الفرق العسكرية وإقامة حواجز التفتيش في المنطقة بغرض إذلال الشعب وإهانة كرامته، كانت السبب الرئيسي في تفاقم الأزمة ووصول الحال إلى ما هو عليه الآن.
ولم يفصح اللواء عن ساعة الصفر لمهاجمة بغداد وإسقاط النظام بحسب وصفه، لكنه أكد قدرتهم العسكرية المتنامية على ذلك، وتنبأ بسقوط العاصمة تلقائيا بمجرد اقتراب الثوار منها.
تنظيم الدولة
ورغم إقرار المتحدث بوجود تنظيم "الدولة الإسلامية" في التطورات الحالية بالعراق "مع وجود امتدادات له في سوريا وأماكن أخرى من العالم"، فإنه أكد أن الثورة ليست للتنظيم وإنما ثورة عشائر عانت من الظلم وانتفضت ضده، نافيا بشدة وجود روابط أو تنسيق عسكري مع التنظيم، واعتبر أن الرسالة التي يريد الثوار إيصالها إلى العالم هي أن الثورة المسلحة التي قامت في العراق هي "ربيع" جديد لا علاقة له "بالإرهاب".
وأكد أن المجالس العسكرية لثوار العراق هي وحدها التي اكتسبت الشرعية من الشعب العراقي لتقاتل باسمه، لافتا في الوقت نفسه إلى وجود تنظيمات أخرى تقاتل على الأرض "ولكن بدون أدنى أنواع التنسيق مع المجالس العسكرية رغم أن الهدف يبدو واحدا".
ورفض القيسي كافة الانتهاكات ضد حقوق الإنسان، معبرا عن استنكاره وإدانته لها، وتمنى ألا ينشب قتال بين ثوار العشائر وتنظيم "الدولة الإسلامية".
وبشأن دعوة المرجعيات الشيعية في العراق الشباب إلى التطوع في الحرب، أكد أنهم يريدون أن يحولوا الأمر إلى قتال طائفي بين جانبين عاشا في سلام قرابة قرن من الزمان، مؤكدا جاهزية الثوار لكل الاحتمالات بما فيها الحل السياسي لأنهم "ليسوا طلاب حرب".
التدخل الأميركي
وردا على سؤال بشأن قدرة الولايات المتحدة على استهداف مقار قادة المجالس العسكرية، أكد القيسي أن هذه المقار توجد في كل بيت وحارة وشارع "حيث هب الجميع وشاركوا في الثورة الشعبية"، وشدد على الاستعداد للقتال لو جاءت الولايات المتحدة للاحتلال مرة أخرى.
وأبدى ترحيب المجلس العسكري بالموقف الخليجي الذي تبلور في خطاب المملكة العربية السعودية، رغم أنه يرى أن هذا الموقف "تأخر كثيرا"، مؤكدا أن المجلس لا يمثل طائفة ولكنه يمثل الشعب العراقي "الذي يئن تحت وطأة المشروع الإيراني" الذي يريد أن يغير "ديمغرافية" المنطقة، مطالبا دول الخليج بأن تنظر إلى شرعية الثورة ومطالبها بإنسانية، لأن نوري المالكي ارتكب كل أنواع الفظائع والجرائم بحق الشعب العراقي، بحسب قوله.
وأبان القيسي أنهم يتطلعون مستقبلا إلى بناء عراق جديد ينعم أهله بالديمقراطية ويختارون حكومتهم دون وصاية من أحد، وأن يعيش أهله في وحدة دون تجزئة اجتماعية ولا جغرافية، وأن تعود البلاد موحدة وهو ما يتطلب تضافر جهود جميع أبناء الشعب.

“This victory is for the Palestinians” - US Presbyterians vote to divest

Palestinians and solidarity activists are celebrating a historic vote by the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) to divest from three companies that profit from and assist Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian people.
After hours of debate and a decade of intense, hard-fought efforts, PCUSA’s 221st general assembly in Detroit voted on Friday night by 310-303 to divest the church’s holdings in CaterpillarHewlett-Packard and Motorola Solutions.
Despite a “decade of engagement,” the three firms “have failed to modify their behavior and continue to profit from Israeli human rights abuses and non-peaceful pursuits,” Reverend Walt Davis, a member of the PCUSA Israel/Palestine Mission Network, said in an emailed statement welcoming the decision.
The Presbyterian Church divestment decision “is inspiring and morally courageous. It is a victory for all peace with justice loving people around the world,” said Bisan Mitri of the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee.
“It shows that commitment to justice comes with a moral obligation to act: the time has come for other church denominations to follow suit,” she said.
At its last general assembly two years ago, a similar divestment measure failed to pass byjust two votes.
Rifat Odeh Kassis, coordinator of Kairos Palestine, who spoke at the general assembly,told The New York Times that the vote would send a loud message to Palestinians that says, “You are not alone.”
Palestinian churches have played a key role in boosting support for divestment among North American congregations. In 2009, Palestinian Christians issued the Kairos Palestinedocument, calling on churches around the world to take action for justice, including specifically support for the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.

“For the Palestinians”

“This victory, close as it was, is for the Palestinians and may it bring hope where there is so much darkness and abuse right now,” Reverend Donald Wagner, national director ofFriends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA), told The Electronic Intifada.
“We know our work will not be done until Palestine is liberated from the forces of colonization and oppression. We also hope Israel will see the light and realize that their choice of brutality and deception will in the end bring them down,” he added.
Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), which had campaigned intensely for the divestment measure, applauded the vote as “a turning point.”
“This decision will have real consequences, sending a message to Palestinians that the ongoing violations of their human rights is worthy of action on the global stage, and to companies and the Israeli government that the occupation is both morally and economically untenable,” JVP added.
The Presbyterian decision comes just over a week after the pension fund of the United Methodist Church divested from prison and occupation profiteer G4S, due in part to concerns over the company’s dealings with the Israel Prison Service.
“These successful campaigns illustrate the mainstreaming of divestment from the Israeli occupation as a nonviolent tactic to end US complicity in the violation of Palestinian rights,” Anna Baltzer, national organizer of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, a coalition of more than 400 organizations, said in a statement.

Interfaith effort

FOSNA’s Wagner hailed the interfaith work that had been a key part of the campaign: “Presbyterians saw 25-30 mostly young Jews working side by side with justice-oriented Presbyterians, together playing a major role in this victory.”
Other groups, including American Muslims for Palestine, helped to campaign for divestment.
Wagner also noted the intense efforts by divestment opponents. “On the other side we found the well financed pro-Israel lobby, including many Presbyterians who had gone on one-sided pro-Israel junkets,” he said.

Wide coverage

While the BDS movement has been gaining greater coverage and attention, the Presbyterian vote received high-profile media coverage, including articles in The New York Times, the Los Angeles TimesReutersAssociated Press and in Israeli and Arabic-language media.

Zionist dismay

Anti-Palestinian groups expressed anger and dismay at the vote, lobbing thinly-disguised accusations of anti-Semitism at Presbyterians.
Presbyterian “leaders have fomented an atmosphere of open hostility to Israel within the church, promoted a one-sided presentation of the complex realities of the Middle East, and permitted the presentation of a grossly distorted image of the views of the Jewish community,” Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation Leaguesaid in a statement.
The American Jewish Committee said that the divestment vote was “a setback for efforts to attain a negotiated, sustainable Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, and a breach with a Jewish community committed to Jewish-Christian relations.”

Accusations of anti-Semitism “losing power”

In reaction to the Presbyterian vote, former Israeli prison guard and Bloomberg columnistJeffrey Goldberg tweeted that “The idea of Christians lecturing Jews about morality is pretty funny to Jews who spent the past 2,000 years running away from their Christian torturers and tormentors.”
In its statement, Jewish Voice for Peace said that such “attempts to cynically use accusations of anti-semitism to forestall principled actions are losing power.”
It called on “Jewish institutions who claim to oppose the occupation to drop their spurious criticisms of divestment and instead join us in taking concrete action to change policy.”
Given that Zionist groups’ efforts at what FOSNA’s Donald Wagner has previously called “interfaith bullying” have failed to stop the divestment effort so far, the vote in Detroit may leave opponents of Palestinian rights searching for new strategies to try to stop the march.
“But we cannot and will not rest until Palestine is free,” Wagner said. “Now it is on to the Methodists, more universities and hopefully more victories as the movement is destined to grow – if we do the hard work of organizing for justice.”

Palestinian police attack CNN crew, beat prisoners’ mothers in Hebron

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Palestinian demonstrators argue with PA riot police during a rally in solidarity with hunger strikers in Israeli jails, in Hebron on 20 June.
 (Mamoun Wazwaz / APA images)
Palestinian Authority police forces violently attacked the mothers and wives of hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron today.
They also attacked a CNN crew, breaking their camera. Lama Khater, a writer, told Wattan TV in a video report that people had gathered at a mosque after Friday prayers to rally in support of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails as well as against the violent Israeli assault on Hebron over the past week.
“We were surprised by large numbers of uniformed Palestinian Authority forces from different apparatuses,” Khater said.
“As soon as the march started, and although not with large numbers, after just a few meters, the attack started and men and women were beaten. A number of young men were arrested and cameras were smashed and mobile phones confiscated,” she added.
Some 125 Palestinian political prisoners remain on hunger strike in Israeli jails, protesting their detention without charge or trial.
Safa Abu Hussein, the wife of prisoner Said Abu Hussein, said: “Women police officers attacked us with clubs in a savage manner, injuring my one-year-old daughter and causing me bruises. A large number of Palestinian security forces beat us and the youths taking part and prevented us from carrying banners and flags.”
Khater confirmed to Wattan TV that Safa Abu Hussein was beaten, as well as the mother of prisoner Tarik Deis among dozens of others.

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The mother of prisoner Mazen al-Natshe expressed shock at the brutality of Palestinian Authority police.
The elderly mother of prisoner Mazen al-Natshe, interviewed by Wattan TV, expressed shock at what happened. “We came down to say we want our men, we want our prisoners who have been 58 days without food,” she said.
We thought they would be with us, but instead they came and beat us,” rally participant Israa Karama told Wattan TV of the Palestinian Authority forces. “We don’t want them with us, but at least don’t let them be against us.”
This cell phone video posted on YouTube shows rally participants trying to advance through the street and being pushed back by Palestinian Authority forces in riot gear:
Palestinian Authority security forces are financed by and trained under the auspices of the European Union and the United States.

CNN camera smashed

Veteran CNN reporter Ben Wedeman tweeted: “Palestinian Authority police attack CNN crew in Hebron, break camera.”
He posted a photo of his cameraman with the broken camera:
Ma’an News Agency quoted an unnamed journalist saying that for a time, “Journalists were prevented from taking pictures of the march.”

Israeli-PA crackdown

This latest PA attack on Palestinians and journalists comes after similar brutality in Ramallah on 11 June.
It also comes after more than a week of an ongoing Israeli military assault in the West Bank. Acting in coordination with the Palestinian Authority, Israeli forces have killed three Palestinians, arrested more than 300 people and ransacked hundreds of homes, educational and social organizations.
Israel claims the assault is aimed at locating three settlers who went missing on 12 June, but Israeli officials have instead engaged in a wide-scale crackdown and collective punishment.

BACK TO BAGHDAD!

By Eric Margolis

June, 21, 2014
NEW YORK – One would think the neoconservatives who engineered the Iraq War – the worst disaster for the United States since Vietnam – would never emerge from hiding.
Not so. With dazzling chutzpah, former Vice President Dick Cheney, the real power in the Bush administration, just claimed President Barack Obama was responsible for the growing mess in Iraq.
Obama is a wimp allowing America’s foes to run rampant across the Mideast and Eastern Europe, growled Cheney. He wants US troops to reoccupy Iraq, and maybe Syria. Cheney’s blustering was applauded by another over-the-hill dotard, Republican party leader Sen. John McCain.
Out from the Washington woodwork crept a swarm of neoconservatives. They joined Cheney in blasting Obama over Iraq and calling for more wars against the Muslim world.
It’s a pity Americans don’t call these war-drum beaters by their proper name. In Britain, they would be known as Imperialists and Empire Loyalists. The Republican Party has in effect become the American Imperialist Party allied to the ardently pro-Israel neoconservatives.
Both parties want to see the American Global Empire enforced and expanded. So wrote Dick Cheney in a op-ed piece trumpeted by the house organ of the hard right, the Wall Street Journal, a violent diatribe against Obama that would have made Mussolini blush.
Now, President Obama faces a grave decision. As Baghdad’s army wavers before Sunni assaults, he is deploying limited US airpower and 300 US troops to blunt the jihadist/Ba’athist advance. Besides killing many civilians, air attacks will outrage Saudi Arabia and much of the Sunni Muslim world. Obama knows that America must not be seen as the champion of Iraq’s Shia against the Sunni minority.
The Saudis are openly warning Obama not to intervene in Iraq. Meanwhile, Iran is beginning to send ground forces into Iraq, to the fury of Saudi Arabia and Israel. Cooperation between Washington and Tehran over Iraq is likely to have a positive effect on US-Iranian nuclear negotiations.
So Obama is hedging his bets by sending the token 300 US Special Forces to Baghdad as ‘advisors,’ as if Iraq, which had been at war since 1980, needed more training or advice. Air and/or drone strikes are due any minutes.
What Obama is really doing is sending ‘white’ officers to stiffen the spines of wavering native troops.
Interestingly, Obama finds himself in the same type of imperial dilemma faced by Britain’s PM Gladstone in 1885. In that year, Britain’s imperial general Charles ‘Chinese’ Gordon went to Khartoum, Sudan, to lead the fight against Islamic jihadists known as Dervishes. Their leader, Mohammed Ahmed, aka the Mahdi, became a paramount Victorian villain akin to our era’s Osama bin Laden.
Gordon was trying to shame Gladstone into sending a British Army up the Nile to relieve Khartoum. Like Obama, Gladstone wanted to avoid imperial adventures but was eventually forced by jingoistic public outcry to send an army to Sudan, though not before Gordon was killed and became a Victorian Christian martyr. The fall of Khartoum to the Dervishes was the 9/11 of the Victorian Age.
What’s really at stake here is oil. Some 8,000 jihadists and resurgent Ba’ath Party militants are no threat to the US, as Obama claims. They are, however, a dire threat to Big Oil.
Saddam Hussein nationalized Iraq’s oil and kicked out its foreign owners. As soon as he was deposed, the US and other foreign oil firms moved back in to pump Iraq’s black gold. As Dick Cheney said, Iraq was invaded for the sake of “Israel and oil.”
Meanwhile, the White House is fast yanking the carpet out from under the wretched Nouri al-Maliki’s feet, all but warning him to quit or else. Shia generals are already planning how to redecorate Maliki’s office. Fresh from picking a new government in Kiev, the US is now deep into Iraqi king-making.
Remember Henry Kissinger’s pithy quip, “it’s more dangerous being America’s ally than its enemy.”
Maliki will be the next useless puppet to be swept aside by Uncle Sam. Whichever CIA “asset” that takes power in Kabul will face a similar threat. Both Iraq’s and Afghanistan’s armies are paid to wear uniforms, not to actually fight.
Meanwhile, few Americans are yet aware that the Iraq War cost over $1 trillion – financed by loans from China and Japan. – that our grandchildren will be paying.
Those neocons baying for war have not so far offered to make personal contributions to a greater war effort. Few will recall that Vietnam began with small numbers of US “advisors.”