Exporting Jenin to Iraq ..............

[Thinkerman]

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Exporting Jenin to

Nigel Parry, Electronic Iraq

 

31 March 2003

 

 

Nigel Parry. (Suzanne Klotz)

On 29 March 2003, Justin Huggler, writing in the British Independent newspaper, reported that the US was "studying fighting in the West Bank city of Jenin last April" for clues on how to manage urban combat in the cities of Iraq.

 

According to the article, Israeli professor Martin van Creveld, who teaches military history and strategy at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, told reporters that he lectured US Marines in Camp Lejeune in North Carolina in 2002.

 

Questioned about Israeli tactics in Jenin by the Marines, van Creveld "told them the giant D9 bulldozers, manufactured for civilian use in the US but fitted with armour-plating in Israel, were among the most useful weapons."

 

The article additionally noted that "the American military bought nine of the converted bulldozers used in the Jenin demolitions from Israel." ("Israelis trained US troops in Jenin-style urban warfare", by Justin Huggler in Amman, The Independent, 29 March 2003.)

 

Israeli general Shaul Mofaz, now Israel's defence minister, admitted to the media that, when preparing for Jenin, Israel had "analyze[d] and internalize[d] the lessons of earlier battles -- even, however shocking it may sound, even how the German army fought in the Warsaw ghetto." (Ha'aretz, 25 January 2002).

 

In the Warsaw ghetto uprising, the Nazi army set fire to residents' homes to convince resistance fighters to surrender. In Jenin refugee camp, this lesson of Warsaw was adapted by targeting residents' homes with days of sustained missile fire from Israeli combat helicopters and by systematic bulldozing.

 

Israeli troops used the Caterpillar D9 bulldozers in Jenin to clear wide passages through homes to enable tanks and armored personnel carriers to get into the camp. The bulldozers were also used to raze a large area in the center of the camp and were directly responsible for civilian deaths in cases where homes were bulldozed on top of their occupants.

 

A May 2002 report from Human Rights Watch described the extent of the bulldozer damage in the center of the camp and detailed a case in which a bulldozer was used to kill a resident:

"At least 140 buildings -- most of them multi-family dwellings -- were completely destroyed in the camp, and severe damage caused to more than 200 others has rendered them uninhabitable or unsafe. An estimated 4,000 people, more than a quarter of the population of the camp, were rendered homeless because of this destruction. Serious damage was also done to the water, sewage and electrical infrastructure of the camp. [...] The harm from this destruction was aggravated by the inadequate warning given to civilian residents. Although warnings were issued on multiple occasions by the IDF, many civilians only learned of the risk as bulldozers began to crush their houses. Jamal Fayid, a thirty-seven-year-old paralyzed man, was killed when the IDF bulldozed his home on top of him, refusing to allow his relatives the time to remove him from the home. [...] This case requires investigation as a possible war crime." ("Jenin: IDF Military Operations", Human Rights Watch, May 2002).

 

Israel subsequently devoted massive resources towards politically derailing a United Nations investigation into the events in Jenin, and launched a massive public relations campaign to turn the debate about "what happened in Jenin?" into a semantic tussle about whether or not there was a "massacre". The utter devastation in the camp, the 50 percent civilian casualty rate, and a disturbing account by one of the Israeli bulldozer drivers in Jenin rendered this point redundant for people of conscience.

 

The effect of Israel's massive campaign of distraction and, in particular, how passively the media accepted Israel's spin was totally out of sync with how the same media handles the killings of Israeli civilians. In the immediate aftermath of one 2002 bus bombing, CNN's graphics production department was quick to frame the live reporting as a "Rush Hour Massacre". The "M word" is used often in relation to the killings of Israelis on CNN, but never when the victims are Palestinians. CNN's subsequent investigative report into what happened in Jenin, by Sheila MacVicar, was pedantically framed by anchors to the point of sabotage:

"MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: A compelling story now in two parts from our Sheila MacVicar. We're about to show you the beginning of what -- of that report on what happened in Jenin in the month during which so much of that place was reduced to rubble. But we want to make one point first. To put it bluntly, we have no way of ascertaining, any more than Sheila MacVicar herself had any way of ascertaining, whether or not the people she -- who she talked to were telling the truth absent independent verification, and that has been impossible to come by. The statements you're going to hear ought to be taken as charges, allegations awaiting proof, if there ever can be proof. We can't keep interrupting to remind you of that, but just keep it in mind. That said, here is Sheila MacVicar on what happened in Jenin."

 

If it were not enough to have the facts of Jenin briefly raked through with tortured understatement and only a couple of moments of clarity in MacVicar's report, on every subsequent broadcast CNN's viewers were treated to similar "reminders" by anchors that, in fact, there are no such things as "facts". Needless to say, CNN exhibits no such care when Israeli claims about Palestinians are presented, regularly defaulting to Israeli ways of perceiving the conflict -- illegal settlements are termed "Jewish neighbourhoods" and Israel's brutal military occupation is whitewashed as "what Palestinians see as military occupation."

 

As a result of all this distraction, misrepresentation, and political maneuvering by Israel, the world never really was allowed to discover and reflect on the gravity of what actually happened in Jenin, and Palestinians were left to add one more event to their historical time line to be remembered primarily as an event which they exaggerated, rather than one Israel worked hard to encourage us to bury like the bodies bulldozed into the rubble of the camp.

 

It is not Israel's barring of journalists, international aid workers, or medical personnel from Jenin between 3-17 April 2002 that we remember with a grimace, but a single word which Saeb Erekat allegedly said in one of several CNN interviews he gave during the terrifying information blackout. A single Palestinian's articulation of the collective fears of a people whose history has been peppered with uninvestigated massacres is more of a stumbling block for our consciences than our lack of forthright investigation into the facts of the matter.

 

That the US has apparently not only "learned" from what human rights groups characterised at the time as "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity" but has actually purchased from the very same perpetrators the very same tools used to commit these acts for reuse in Iraq, communicates an undeniable message to the Arab world of American support for Israel so blind and insensitive to both Palestinians and Iraqis that it is terrifying.

 

Living in America these days, it is shocking to see how little the current US administration cares about how it is perceived around the world. President George W. Bush and his far right advisors who steer American foreign policy are apparently leaving no stone unturned to squander what is left of America's good name on unpopular causes justified by increasingly incredible exaggerations of "threat".

 

After the 11 September 2001 attack against the citizens of the world in New York City, the international community -- bar a handful of fringe groups -- were united around the United States' stated declaration to take decisive action against international terrorism.

 

At this point, I am reminded of the tens and tens of thousands of Palestinians who came out on to the streets of Palestinian towns to celebrate the Oslo redeployments.

 

Several months later, when it became clear that the Israelis had only taken a step back out of the towns to maintain a caging perimeter, and that Israel's land confiscation and home demolition had continued unabated, attitudes changed dramatically. Even the so called 'rejectionist' Palestinian groups had ceased their violence until it became clear that Israel was using the peace process as a cover for expanding its military occupation and doubling the number of Jewish settlers in the occupied territories.

 

Israel's transparent lack of dedication to the peace process terminally undermined the initially very visible and undeniable Palestinian commitment to it. The inevitable consequence to Israel's blatant misuse of the peace process as a fig leaf for the most extensive land grab for years was the Intifada, fueled from day one by Israel's typical heavy handed use of live ammunition in response to stone-throwing demonstrations.

 

America faces a similar problem of terminal credibility loss in the gulf between its words and deeds. One and a half years into America's "war against terror", Afghanistan has buried a comparable number of civilians killed by US bombing to those America buried after the World Trade Center attacks. To say that the new Afghan regime is "beset by serious problems" is somewhat reminiscent of CNN's treatment of Jenin. Last weekend saw another two American soldiers killed -- not in Iraq, but in Afghanistan. With all the current focus on Iraq, it's hard to remember that our last regime change isn't going that well.

 

Meanwhile, the primary reasons the US offers for extending its war to Iraq -- the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's regime to regional stability and the liberation of the Iraqi people -- are utterly at odds with the way that the US has approached this war, by defying the very democratic mechanism of international order that was established with fear and trembling in the wake of the last world war.

 

In the name of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the US has compromised its own theoretical commitment to media freedom by co-opting journalists into combat units where they have no choice but to identify with the soldiers on whom their safety depends, by pressuring foreign media organisations to suppress all reports of failure, and by bombing Iraqi state television and the telecommunications infrastructure, the latter of which is aimed to quash the tiny percentage of non-commercial media reporting originating from Baghdad via the Internet.

 

Blatantly unrepresentative images of a couple Iraqis helping a US Marine to tear down a portrait of Saddam Hussein fool no one. While many Iraqis indeed want to see the back of Saddam Hussein tyrannical regime, they are simultaneously aware that their self appointed "liberators" are the very same people responsible for a decade of genocide by sanctions that has killed somewhere in the region of one-and-a-half million Iraqis, a greater pile of bodies than that which lies at the feet of Saddam Hussein.

 

And now we find that the US intends to use the very tactics and tools that shocked the world in Jenin on the Iraqis it claims it wants to "liberate". These are bitter days indeed. Please let no one be surprised if the expected street parties for our troops don't materialise quite as expected. Especially not when we're talking about exporting Jenin to Iraq.

 

 

Nigel Parry is one of the founders of Electronic Iraq and the Electronic Intifada.

 

 

Page last updated: 31 March 2003, 14:03 CST

 

 

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[N.O.R.F]

US backs troops over checkpoint killings

 

 

US troops fear fresh suicide attacks at checkpoints

American military commanders have defended the right of their soldiers to open fire in self-defence.

They were responding to the deaths of seven Iraqi women and children, who were shot in their vehicle by soldiers at a checkpoint.

 

Two other Iraqis were wounded when the vehicle they were all travelling in was fired on after it reportedly failed to stop at the road block near the city of Najaf, south of Baghdad.

 

 

US commanders said they would investigate the incident, but the first reaction was to back the troops.

 

 

Click for map of coalition advance on Baghdad

 

The soldiers involved "absolutely did the right thing", General Peter Pace, vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said.

 

"Our soldiers on the ground have an absolute right to defend themselves."

 

And at US Central Command in Qatar, Brigadier General Vincent Brooks said there would be no change in the rules of engagement at checkpoints.

 

"We're trying to get some separation between a potential threat and the force that is being protected," General Brooks told reporters.

 

"There will be occasions where civilians will be put in harm's way," he said.

 

 

This is sick,they have been kiling innocent civilians left,right and centre and now they are saying that it was the right thing to do! This conflict has gotten me depressed sooo much walaahi, i have actually been losing sleep,

allahu akbar!

[Thinkerman]

Me to north, i cannot watch TV anymore lest i catch the propaganda and the boastfull killers

[Thinkerman]

Is Israel More Secured Now that Iraqis are Dying?

4/3/2003 - Political - Article Ref: IV0304-1913

By: Ramzy Baroud

Iviews* -

 

 

 

Israel appears more at ease, now that American and British bombs are falling on Iraq, harvesting the lives of many innocents.

 

Yet despite Israel's unambiguous role in all of this, few have connected the dots regarding the role played by Israel and its mouthpieces in the United States. Israel's task was to destroy one of the few remaining countries in the region that opposed the US proxy in the Middle East. Following Iraq, Israel was promised, that next would come Syria, Iran, Hezbollah and the Palestinian resistance.

 

Many conveniently blame the war on the 'neo-conservatives' in the American administration, some 'embedded' in the many think tanks that have tremendous influence on the decision-making process in Washington. But the relationship between the so-called neo-conservatives and the state of Israel is yet to be exposed.

 

Those who recall events that preceded the war, know too well how the "doves" within the administration, at least for a short while, opposed the military option on Iraq vs. those who championed the 'total war' strategy starting in 1992 (not following September. 11, 2001 as many are lead to believe), as outlined in the 'Wolfowitz Doctrine.' Paul Wolfowitz, one of the most vibrant advocates of Israel's policy in the US government was then the undersecretary for policy in the Pentagon.

 

In March 1992, Wolfowitz, who was delegated to draft the "Defense Planning Guidance", outlined his ambitions instead, where he proposed that nations should be 'discouraged' from "challenging our leadership". Wolfowitz was one of the first to propose the pre-emptive war, (used by Israel in its war against the Arabs in 1967) to allegedly "prevent the development of weapons of mass destruction". Wolfowitz, who seemed to get along very well with the right wing elements within Israeli governments, 'accidentally' neglected the fact that Israel's nuclear program was active as early as 1952, with the creation of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC). He worried little about Israel, but aimed at 'disarming' the sanctions devastated nation of Iraq.

 

The Wolfowitz proposal, which eventually gained momentum and won over the support of the administrations' big names, shamefully manipulating the September 11 tragedy to score cheap victories for Israel to subdue its rivals in the Middle East.

 

The neo-conservatives gained yet more ground when President George Bush appointed Elliot Abrams, described by a recent newsletter of the Washington-based Council for the National Interest on March 14, 2003 as "a convicted felon in the disgraceful Iran-Contra operation, outspoken mouthpiece for Israel and critic of the peace process." Oddly, the anti-peace advocate was made the President's new chief advisor in the Middle East.

 

The pro-Israeli circle in the Administration, ferocious advocates of the pre-emptive war strategy and whose duel allegiances seem to disregard the interests of the American people, was almost complete. Abrams joined the ranks of pro-Israeli war hawks, including Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, and most notably Donald Rumsfeld, whose infamous referral to the Palestinian occupied territories as "so-called occupied territories (being) a result of a war which (Israel) won", left many pondering whether the US was at all committed to peace and stability in the Middle East.

 

Many people across the US must have doubted the alleged relationship between al-Qaeda and the September 11 terrorist attacks on one hand, and Iraq on the other. (Considering that even George Tenet of the CIA had bluntly told a Congress Committee that, evidence of such links proved unsubstantiated.)

 

Why has the United States suddenly decided to jump into the swamp of redrawing the geo-political map of the Middle East, considering that neither its oil imports nor its growing multinational corporations' influence in the region is at risk (excluding the backlash inspired by the anti-American sentiment, itself inspired by the cruelty of the Israeli army in the occupied territories. It's no secret that Israel uses American weapons to kill Palestinians, money to build and expand its illegal settlements and political backing to thumb its nose at international law and the international community.)

 

Zelman Shuval, a former Israeli ambassador to Washington shed some light on the answer in an article, published in the Hebrew newspaper Yediot Ahronot on January 16, 2003. Shuval, said that Israel should make 'behind the scenes' efforts to get the American administration to attack Iraq "sooner rather than later". Postponing, delaying or canceling the war, he asserted, would create "very negative consequences" for Israel.

 

Of course, the United States' government has its own reasons to attack Iraq: global supremacy, strategic control, oil of course, the failure of the Afghanistan war to boost the sense of security among Americans, diverting the attention from the major financial scandals involving top government officials, diverting attention from the crumbling economy and soaring unemployment. But even with these reasons, Israel, its strong Washington lobby and major players within the administration, were always on top of things, pushing for a war that was vehemently rejected by a few countries shy of the whole world.

 

Not only that Israel's role in this war has been overlooked, but also pro-Israeli pundits have done their best to lead the American people to look the other way from Israel's real political motives in the war. Jerry Falwell and his fanatic cronies on one hand, preached to millions about how Israel is "a key player in end times events," for, "according to scripture things are falling into place for Jesus' return É the great Tribulation, Armageddon and the millennial reign of Christ."

 

 

In the meantime, pro-Israeli media collaborators thought of every wrong reason to justify the war, from liberating Iraq, to making the world a better place, to explaining how the war fits neatly into the "clash of civilizations" theory, a theory mainly aimed at engaging the world in a dishonest debate over cultural feuds, while the issue resides in business, power, control and politics. On the other hand, few dared to propose that Israel will not be able to carry out its illegal policies in the Middle East: land confiscation, unfair 'peace' proposition, ethnic cleansing, and coercing its Arab neighbors into accepting Israel's regional supremacy. (Who would dare say no to Israel once Iraq is occupied, and while the US military machine is present to crush any dissent? In fact, who would dare question the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian and Arab lands, in violation of international law, if the United States is itself occupying an Arab country, also in violation of international law?)

 

It was no coincidence when Secretary of State, Collin Powell rushed to address lobbyists from the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, AIPAC, on March 30, less than two weeks after the launching of the Iraq War. Powell renewed the United States' commitment to Israel, condemned Palestinian bombings as a "cowardly acts", (no word on the murder of scores of Palestinians preceding the bombings), and assured Israel and its agents in the US of the sacred bond between his country and Israel. But most importantly, he promised a much safer Middle East for Israel after the toppling of the Iraqi government and President Saddam Hussein. Both Powell and the AIPAC members of course knew too well that Israel had, for many years, over two hundred nuclear warheads, including some thero-nuclear devices (aka, hydrogen bombs), a secret revealed by Mordechai Vanuni, a former Israeli nuclear technician, and also revealed by U-2 Spy Plane photographs. (Suddenly a fully developed arsenal of Weapons of Mass Destruction is no longer a concern)

 

Placing most of the American army in desert battles to fight an illusionary enemy, while allowing Israel to run wild, threatening an entire region and defying international law in its oppression of the Palestinian people, will by no means bring 'peace and prosperity' to the Middle East. Moreover, hypocrisy, double-standards, and most certainly, unjust wars have never achieved, neither peace nor security. What they have done is evoked yet more anger, hatred, rebellion, and, dare I say, terrorism. Perhaps before fighting terrorism in the mountains of Tora Bora, we should examine where terrorism truly originates: our own unjust policies.

 

 

 

Baroud is the editor of the PalestineChronicle.com and "Searching Jenin: Eyewitness Accounts of the Israeli Invasion."