Zionism alarmed

M Shahid Alam

The US love fest with Israel appears to have run into a spot of trouble. In a reversal of its previous policy, the US is insisting that Israel suspend new settlement construction in East Jerusalem to pave the way for ‘peace’ talks with the Palestinian Authority. For a change, the US is countering Israel’s ‘No’ with tough talk not heard in a while.

On March 9, when the US vice president was greeted in Tel Aviv with news of new settlements in East Jerusalem, he was furious. Privately, he told Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel’s settlement activity “undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us, and it endangers regional peace.”

This is not a message right-wing talk artists could shout down. Joe Biden was echoing the message delivered by General Petraeus, commander of US troops in the Middle East, to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the US Armed Services Committee. Hillary Clinton too reiterated this message in her speech to AIPAC.

What has occasioned this open rift between two spouses in a heavenly marriage? There have been tiffs before between them, but never before has a US administration told Israel that its policy endangers American troops or American interests in the Middle East? This talk is serious. It belies decades of rhetoric that has boosted Israel as America’s unsinkable aircraft carrier in the Middle East.

It appears that its past is beginning to catch up with Israel. Adversaries it had long suppressed, forces it had harnessed for its expansionist policy, blowbacks from decisions made in hubris have now converged to limit Israel’s options. Is the Zionist logic that had brought endless successes in the past now working in the opposite direction? Is Israel running out of its fabled resourcefulness?

Israel’s stunning victory in June 1967 had produced two destabilizing results. Having solved its native problem in 1948, Israel had created it anew in 1967 by its decision to retain the West Bank and Gaza. The June War also swelled the ranks of extremist Jews who began to colonize East Jerusalem, West Bank, and Gaza. Unable to drive out the Palestinians, this new round of colonization would turn Israel into an apartheid state.

In the 2000s, international civil society started taking notice. Movements were launched to divest from, boycott and sanction Israel. Activists began to use Western legal systems to prosecute Israelis for war crimes. Israeli leaders visiting Western campuses are now heckled routinely. Slowly, Western publics are turning away from Israel.

In 1982, in a bid to extend Israel’s northern border, Israel invaded and occupied southern Lebanon. The Lebanese Shias responded by creating Hizbullah, a multi-layered grass-roots resistance, the most formidable adversary Israel had ever faced. In 2000, they forced Israel to withdraw unilaterally, and in July 2006 repulsed a fresh Israeli invasion, giving Israel a bloody nose.

No more was Tehran a distant threat for Tel Aviv: it was now positioned right next to Israel’s northern border. Although Hizbullah spoke to the grit and discipline of Lebanese Shias, it could not have grown without Iranian support.

At about the same time, as part of its strategy to defeat the Second Intifada, Israel built the apartheid Wall cutting through the West Bank, and it pulled the Jewish settlements out of Gaza while sealing it from outside contacts. By stopping the suicide-bombers, the Wall gave Israel time to complete the creation of Gaza-like enclaves in the West Bank. In consequence, ‘peace’ talks with Palestinians lost their urgency and were shelved. This made the pro-US Arab regimes a bit nervous: they needed the charade of ‘peace’ talks to shore up what little legitimacy they had with their home audience.

The Egyptian-Israeli siege of Gaza brought Iranian influence to Israel’s southern border. The siege has stopped Hamas from becoming another Hizbullah, but their home made rockets reminded Israel that its native problem had not gone away – that it would continue to haunt them.

In the 1990s, the Zionist logic had spawned Al Qaeda, a group that would use terror to lure the US to wage war against the Middle East. After the Cold War, the Zionists too – led by the Neocons – pursued the same goal. Using the absurd thesis of the ‘clash of civilizations,’ they began to promote a Western war against the Islamicate. They urged the US to take out Iran, Syria and Iraq.

This was a departure from Israel’s long-standing war strategy. Israel took US money and weapons, but fought its own wars. This had several advantages. It built Israel’s military strength and prestige; it kept the US military out of Israel’s path to hegemony over the Middle East. Also, American support for Israel might wear thin if they saw their troops dying in Israel’s wars. If Israel was ready to abandon this strategy in the 1990s, that is because it could not take on Iran, Iraq and Syria on its own.

And so the die was cast. When Al Qaeda struck on 9-11, Israel saw opportunity. The Zionists began to press full steam for the US to invade Iraq – and succeeded. Few Israelis worried that the chickens would come home to roost. In April 2008, Netanyahu said, “We are benefiting from…the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq.”

Now, some ten years later, the chickens are coming home to roost. The Iraq war has achieved little for Israel. It removed a defanged Saddam Hussein, but extended Iran’s influence into Iraq and it has brought Iranian proxies to its northern and southern borders. Iran now uses Palestine to undermine pro-US Arab regimes.

More ominously, the US military has now spoken. It has warned that Israeli policy raises tensions in the Middle East and endangers US troops on the ground. It will not be easy for Israel and its backers to shout down US generals with charges of anti-Semitism. That is why so many Zionist commentators look alarmed. One Israeli commentator warns that “Obama and Netanyahu are at point of no return.” Others are saying worse.

It appears unlikely that this ‘flap’ between the US and Israel will blow over soon. If it does not, attacks by Jewish groups – inside and outside Israel – against Obama will become more frequent and nastier. The loyalty of some Americans, both inside and outside the Congress, will be tested. It is hard to predict where this will go.

However, this much should be clear. Even if US-Israeli differences over the Middle East are finessed for now, that will not be the end of it. The pressures that have persuaded the US to insist on a ‘solution’ to the Palestinian problem will persist. The realities that have produced the present ‘flap’ are not going away.

The writer is professor of economics at Northeastern University, Boston. He is author of Israeli Exceptionalism (Palgrave, 2009) and Challenging the New Orientalism (IPI, 2006). Email: alqalam02760@ yahoo.com.

Can the CIA sabotage Iran’s nuclear project?

WASHINGTON: The reported defection of an Iranian scientist to the United States has renewed speculation about a CIA plot to sabotage Iran’s nuclear programme through covert action.

But it remains unclear whether Shahram Amiri, the young physics researcher who reportedly joined forces with the US spy agency, represents an intelligence coup for Washington or a minor setback for Tehran, former CIA officers said. ABC television reported that Amiri, who went missing without explanation in Saudi Arabia last year, had defected and resettled in the United States in cooperation with the Central Intelligence Agency.

Amiri, in his thirties, worked at Tehran’s Malek-Ashtar University of Technology, part of a network of research centers with close ties to Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guards and the country’s weapons industry. The scientist did not appear to play a senior role in the country’s nuclear project, and his knowledge may have been confined to a single aspect of the programme.

“It’s really impossible to say how much of a window this kind of a defector could provide without knowing how much he was reading into aspects of the entire programme, as opposed to chipping away at one part of the programme,” CIA veteran Paul Pillar told AFP.

“One ought to be very cautious about how much a difference any one individual might make,” said Pillar, now at Georgetown University. Some media reports suggested the scientist may have helped inform the Americans about a secret enrichment site near Qom, which caused international outrage when it was revealed in September.

Amiri’s disappearance appeared to confirm reports in recent years that US intelligence agencies have tried to lure away key civilian and military figures to undercut Iran’s nuclear drive in an operation dubbed “Brain Drain.”

The fate of a former Iranian deputy defence minister who disappeared in Istanbul in 2007, General Ali Reza Asgari, remains unresolved, amid speculation he defected as well and offered his knowledge of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. The suspected defections offer a glimpse into a secret struggle between Western intelligence agencies and Iran, with the United States and its allies working to delay Tehran’s nuclear project by clandestine means even as they seek international support for tougher sanctions.

“The one thing that we have done, and this has come out in the open press… is to feed faulty components into the supply chain for Iran’s nuclear weapons programme,” said Clare Lopez, who worked for the CIA during and after the Cold War. Working through a family of Swiss engineers, the CIA reportedly managed to provide Libya and Iran with flawed parts for several years, according to The New York Times and other media.

In 2006, a sabotaged power supply failed at the uranium enrichment plant in Natanz, reportedly causing 50 centrifuges to explode and setting back Tehran’s nuclear fuel work.

Former intelligence officers said defections are a delicate, risky business, and it remained uncertain whether Amiri had cooperated with the Americans over a long period of time.

“By and large defections like this are what you call walk-ins, that is they come to you,” said Bruce Riedel, a retired CIA officer and fellow at The Brookings Institution think-tank. “Typically, a response for a walk-in is, ‘Hey wait, we rather you stay in place and provide an ongoing stream of intelligence.’” Iran remains a difficult target for US spies, as Washington has not had an embassy in Tehran for 30 years, cutting off opportunities to develop intelligence sources and contacts.

Moreover, Iran has honed an effective counterintelligence service with “a good track record” of exposing foreign espionage, Riedel said. Amiri could be a gold mine, offering a trove of information about the nuclear program, which US and European governments insist is a cover for a clandestine nuclear weapons project.

“The other alternative is we’re so desperate to gain information on the Iranian nuclear programme that we’ll take anything we can get,” Riedel said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case.”

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=232660

Bhutto’s 31st death anniversary observed

ISLAMABAD/NAUDERO: The 31st death anniversary of Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was observed throughout the country on Sunday.

The main event was held in Garhi Khuda Bakhsh. The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the PPP (Shaheed Bhutto) arranged separate gatherings and programmes to observe the death anniversary of Z A Bhutto in Garhi Khuda Bakhsh.

Caravans of party workers and leaders of the PPP arrived in Larkana, Naudero and Garhi Khuda Bakhsh in order to attend the death anniversary, while welcome camps were installed at various places.

Separate camps were also set up to accommodate the leaders and workers from all the four provinces, Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Kashmir. Strict security measures were taken on the occasion and a monitoring room had been set up at the CPO Office for monitoring the security arrangements.

Garhi Khuda Bakhsh and the President House, Naudero, have been divided into two zones and nearly 10,000 police officials have been deployed there. The DPOs of five districts, headed by the Larkana DIG, have been appointed for monitoring the event.

Five hundred commandoes and 500 policewomen performed duties around the President House and the Mazar while five gates, representing the Federation and the four provinces, had been installed at the place of the public gathering and 40 walk-through gates had also been placed on these doors. Close circuit cameras, jammers and bomb detectors had been installed around the Mazar, while the Bomb Disposal Squad was also present in the area.

Karzai steps up attack against US war policy

Afghan President Hamid karzai says there will be no military operation in the southern province of Kandahar unless the Afghan people support it.

In a meeting with local officials in Kandahar, Karzai promised to consult tribal leaders before any US-led military offensive in the region.

He said any such move would depend on the Afghan people’s full agreement and permission.

This is while US-led alliance prepares to launch its next offensive, dubbed Omid, in Kandahar starting June.

The coalition forces are currently engaged in another major assault in the neighboring Helmand province.

The Marjah offensive, which began on February 13, has been criticized by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and tribal elders due to the high numbers of civilian casualties.

Locals say civilians often fall victim to such military operations.

Thousands of people have been forced to leave their homes before and during the operation. Others have been trapped in their homes with little access to food and medicine.

The tribal elders of Helmand want an end to the offensive in the war-weary country, citing Western troops’ disregard for civilian lives as the main reason.

The tensions between the West and Karzai exposed publicly last Thursday, when he accused “foreigners” of perpetrating fraud in the August presidential elections.

Presstv

Pentagon for pressure on India to ease tension with Pakistan: WSJ

Times Of India

WASHINGTON: The Pentagon is actively lobbying for more pressure on New Delhi to ease tensions between India and Pakistan, the Wall Street Journal has reported. It has also revealed that US President Barack Obama had issued a secret directive to intensify diplomacy towards that aim and to win Islamabad’s cooperation in Afghanistan.

Asserting that without détente between the two rivals, US efforts to win Pakistani cooperation in Afghanistan would suffer, the directive in December concluded that India must make resolving its tensions with Pakistan a priority for progress to be made on US goals in the region, the daily said citing “people familiar with its contents”.

A debate continues within the administration over how hard to push India, which has long resisted outside intervention in the conflict with its neighbour. The Pentagon, in particular, has sought more pressure on New Delhi, the influential daily said citing US and Indian officials.

The journal cited current and former US officials as saying the discussion in Washington over how to approach India has intensified as Pakistan ratchets up requests that the US intercede in a series of continuing disputes.

The Obama administration has, so far, made few concrete demands of New Delhi, it said citing US and Indian officials.

According to US officials cited by the Journal, the only specific request has been to discourage India from getting more involved in training the Afghan military, to ease Pakistani concerns about getting squeezed by India on two borders.

The directive to top foreign-policy and national-security officials was summarised in a memo written by National Security Adviser James Jones at the end of the White House’s three-month review of Afghan war policy in December, the daily said.

According to US and Indian officials cited by the Journal, the Pentagon has emerged in internal Obama administration debates as an active lobbyist for more pressure on India, with some officials already informally pressing Indian officials to take Pakistan’s concerns more seriously.

Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has been among the more vocal advocates of a greater Indian role, according to a US military official, encouraging New Delhi to be more “transparent” about its activities along the countries’ shared border and to cooperate more with Pakistan.

US military officials were circumspect about what specific moves they would like to see from New Delhi, the Journal said.

But according to people who have discussed India policy with Pentagon officials, the ideas discussed in internal debates include reducing the number of Indian troops in Kashmir or pulling back forces along the border, it said.

The State Department has resisted such moves to pressure India, according to current and former US officials, insisting they could backfire, the Journal said.

Israeli jets attack Gaza, after renewed war rhetoric

Presstv

Israeli fighter jets have attacked central and eastern Gaza Strip following Tel Aviv’s threats of a fresh round of strikes on the blockaded sliver.

The Sunday raids targeted al-Maghazi near the Gaza City and al-Qarara in the town of Khan Younis.

The locals reported an increase in Israeli military presence in the coastal sliver over the past two weeks, the Palestinian Ma’an news agency reported.

Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom said Friday that a military operation was brewing in response to alleged rocket attacks from Gaza.

The enclave is yet to recover from the aftermath of Israel’s December 2008-January 2009 artillery, aerial and naval bombardments which left more than 1,400 Gazans dead and inflicted a damage of more than USD 1.6 billion on its economy.

India snubs US, to attend nuclear meet in Iran

Presstv

The Indian government will stand by its decision to take part in a nuclear meeting slated for mid-April in the Iranian capital, Tehran, in a move that is set to irk the US administration.

According to a report published by The Hindustan Times on Sunday, the conference dubbed “Nuclear Energy for All, Nuclear Weapon for None” will be held on April 17 and 18 in Tehran. The Indian Ambassador to Iran, Sanjay Singh, will represent India at the event, which will be attended by ministers, officials and nuclear experts from over 55 countries.

The decision to participate in the international nuclear disarmament meet comes while Washington continues its efforts to impose new sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program.

The Tehran event will be held only days after a nuclear security summit between US President Barak Obama and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Washington on April 12 and 13.

Earlier, India rejected a call from the US to walk away from pipeline project carrying natural gas from Iran through Pakistan, saying “energy security” is a priority for its rapidly growing economy.

Iran and Pakistan inked a deal in March to construct a multi-billion dollar natural gas pipeline connecting the two neighboring countries, and India is interested in the further extension of the line to its borders if the pipeline’s security can be guaranteed in Pakistan. The project is strongly opposed by the US. The deal is part of the long-delayed $7.5 billion Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline project.

The passion for Bhutto

By: Nadeem F. Paracha

The majority of Muslims in Pakistan are ensconced in the popular Barelvi creed of Islam that is the mainstay of Muslims in the subcontinent. It reassures the enshrinement of the traditional Sufism that prevailed due to a long period of interaction between Islam and the esoteric strains of Hinduism and other faiths of India.

‘Folk’ Islam became the dominating creed of the rural peasant, the urban proletariat and the semi-urban petty-bourgeoisie. It incorporated the anti-clergy elements of Sufism, and a more relaxed fiqh, fusing these with accommodating forms of worship and the concept of overt religious reverence of people it considered divine. The result was a sub-continental Muslim ethos that was socially tolerant and repulsed by the puritan dogma.

Though agrarian in its worldview, ‘folk’ Islam did not negatively react to modern Islamic reform initiated by rationalists like Syed Ahmed Khan, and consequently (by the 1960s), it became the chosen expression of populist (secular) politics in Pakistan. The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) became the first Pakistani political party to set the tone of its rhetoric according to the populist imagery of ‘folk’ Islam, in the process managing to attract the urban working classes and the rural peasantry towards its social-democratic programme.

Not only did the PPP chairman, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, become one of the first major Pakistani political figures to start being seen indulging in rituals associated with ‘folk’ Islam (such as visiting Sufi shrines), PPP rallies too started radiating an aura of the colourful activity found at many Sufi shrines. The 1970s in Pakistan thus became an era of populist extroversion.

With ‘folk’ Islam adopted as a populist political expression by the ruling PPP, this form of expression eventually became the tool that culturally connected the country’s secular political parties with the spiritual and political moorings of the working classes and the peasants.

The cultural synthesis emerging from such a connection was one of the reasons behind Bhutto’s image, graduating from being that of a ‘brave patriot’ (1967-68), to becoming a people’s messiah (1970s) and the embodiment of a Sufi saint posthumously.

The ZAB regime was a vibrant mix of rural and urban populism (such as through the promotion of folk and proletariat art and music), and of modern bourgeois liberalism that helped urban society maintain a liberal aura. Night-clubs, horse racing and cinemas continued to thrive; religiosity largely remained a private matter, or manifest itself in a display of passion at shrines through dhamal, qawali, etc.

However, lurking within this mix was also an awkward anomaly. As the popular variation of Islam in Pakistan peaked in the 1970s, the modern variation (tied to the Aligarh thought) started to erode when things started to change within some state institutions after the 1971 East Pakistan debacle. A move was seen afoot in the army towards puritanical strain of Islam, especially those advocated by renowned Islamic scholar and the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) chief, Abul Ala Maududi.

The JI was an early advocate of what came to be known as Political Islam. It first emerged as an opponent of secular/socialist Muslim nationalism in the 1950s and 1960s and was also opposed to the more populist strains of the faith. The JI was eventually successful in converting a sizable section of the urban middleclass to its cause after the former stopped resonating with the modern, reformist tradition of Syed Ahmed Khan. The populist ‘folk’ Islam they began to associate with ‘Bhuttoism’ or a ‘vulgar’ populism, supposedly aimed at undoing the hold on society of bourgeois politics and economics.

Thus, the urban bourgeoisie and the petty-bourgeoisie became the main players against the Bhutto regime during the 1977 PNA movement, led by the JI and its allies. But it wasn’t until the arrival of the Ziaul Haq dictatorship and the anti-Soviet Afghan Jihad that political Islam managed to find state approval.

As the US and Saudi Arabia pumped in millions of dollars of aid for the ‘jihad’, the more aggressive and puritanical strains of Islam that were largely alien to the region’s Muslims began finding official sanction as well. But in spite of the rapid proliferation of the jihadi mindset and penetration of puritanical Islam in the workings of society that Zia initiated, Bhutto is still remembered as an icon in the devotional sense of loyalty to the culture of ‘folk’ Islam.

Thus, it is not surprising that his death is not seen by his supporters as martyrdom gained through the puritanical concept of ‘jihad’ against an infidel. Instead, his execution by the Zia dictatorship is embroiled in the kind of folk imagery that would leave the Islamists cringing. It is remembered more as a murder of a modern Sufi saint who danced to the gallows in defiance of a usurper and his malicious, scheming team of puritan clerics.

‘Zulfikar Ali Bhutto rejected Kissinger’s warning over nukes’

Embassy deputy chief says American president sent three mercy pleas to save ZAB

ISLAMABAD: Deputy chief of the US mission in Islamabad, Gerald Feuerstein, who was a witness to the meeting between former premier Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger in Lahore in August 1976, admitted that Bhutto rejected the “warning” to disband Pakistan’s nuclear programme.

In an interview with a private TV channel, Gerald said the US had been concerned over Bhutto’s nuclear plan to match India’s capabilities and sent Kissinger to warn the Pakistani leader. “Yes, it’s true that Bhutto rejected the warning and Pakistan continued with its nuclear programme,” he said. “I was the protocol officer when Kissinger came to Pakistan in August 1976 and met Bhutto in Lahore.” Gerald said Kissinger came with “a carrot and stick”. “The carrot were the A-7 bombers, while the stick was not the direct threat, but since US elections were near and the Democrats were set to win them and wanted a tougher non-proliferation approach and might make Pakistan an example. Pakistan did face sanctions,” Gerald said.

Saving Bhutto: However, Gerald denied that the US made Bhutto a “horrible example” over his refusal to drop the nuclear programme. “The US president had sent three mercy pleas to General Zia to save Bhutto,” he said.

Gerald called Bhutto Pakistan’s most gifted politician despite his weaknesses. He said the US maintained its pressure on Pakistan’s nuclear programme and succeeded in pursuing the French to cancel their nuclear deal with Islamabad. However, Pakistan did not stop its plan despite sanctions, even under General Zia, and in 1998 both India and Pakistan conducted their nuclear tests. To a question, he denied that the US had adopted double standards in case of nuclear programmes of India or Israel, compared to its stance on Iran or Pakistan, but admitted the US did not impose sanctions on India after its first nuclear test. Gerald also disclosed that former US president Bill Clinton intervened when ex-premier Nawaz Sharif was sentenced under Gen (r) Pervez Musharraf. “Yes, president Clinton intervened,” he said, when asked what the US did when Sharif was sentenced. He also defended the US’ decision to attack Afghanistan. app