Saed Bannoura
IMEMC & Agencies August 16, 2006 Protesting naked body searches practiced by the prison authorities at the Israeli Negev detention camp against the relatives of the detainees, at least 2400 detainees announced hunger Strike on Tuesday morning.
Palestinian Detainees Media Center reported that the detainees in twenty sections at the Negev desert detention camp returned all meals since Tuesday at noon in protest to the hostilities practiced against them and against their parents. The Center added that soldiers are attempting to force wives, mothers or sisters of the detainees to undress completely in order to search them before they visit their detained family members. |
By JOHN WALSH
Counterpunch 16/08/2006 "My fellow American," Howard Friedman, President of AIPAC, begins his letter of July 30 to friends and supporters of AIPAC, "Look what you've done"! After warning that "Israel is fighting a pivotal war for its life," by which he means Israel's wanton slaughter and all-out destruction in Lebanon, Freiedman condemns "the expected chorus of international condemnation of Israel's actions" and Europe's call for "a cease-fire immediately." Then he exults: "only ONE nation in the world came out and flatly declared: Let Israel finish the job. . That nation is the United States of America--and the reason it had such a clear, unambiguous view of the situation is YOU and the rest of America Jewry." (All emphases in the original here and below.) Here I must take issue with President Friedman since I bet that most Jewish Americans, in contrast to the AIPAC crowd, were horrified by the slaughter in Lebanon. In fact if anyone other than President Friedman wrote this, he would be accused of fabricating a Jewish plot and labeled a nutty conspiracy theorist and scurrilous anti-semite.)
"How do we do it"? President Friedman asks a little further on. The answer is "decades of long hard work which never ends." Not only is it hard work--but it's eternal. However, President Friedman is not content with generalities and gives us some of AIPAC's trade secrets. Here are two notables: |
by Martine Nouaille
AFP August 18, 2006 ROME - The Italian cabinet unanimously agreed at an emergency meeting to send troops to Lebanon as part of an expanded UN force but Germany ruled out sending ground forces and general dismay lingered over the level of France's proposed contribution.
Italy could send 3,000 troops as its contribution to the planned 15,000-strong UN force, aimed at strengthening the existing 1,990-member UN interim force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), according to senior politicians quoted by the ANSA news agency Friday. They could be operational from the start of September. But the exact manner and details of the Italian participation still have to be defined "in consultation with the other countries taking part in the mission, and obviously France," Prime Minister Romani Prodi said. The two houses of parliament were due to vote on the proposal later Friday and were expected to back it. The planned Italian contribution would dwarf that offered by France which has talked about a detachment of 200 troops in spite of hopes that it might deploy between 2,000 and 4,000 and provide the backbone of the UN presence. |
By Andy McSmith
17 August 2006 Lord Levy, Tony Blair's special envoy, was said to be in Israel meeting government officials yesterday to report back to the Prime Minister on the state of the ceasefire in Lebanon.
Labour's chief fundraiser has kept a low profile since his arrest over allegations that Labour sympathisers were offered peerages in exchange for loans or donations. The allegations have no bearing on Lord Levy's role in the Middle East, which he has visited on Tony Blair's behalf, but when the affair blew up calls were made for his sacking. However, Lord Levy's diary for the first six months of 2006, posted on the Foreign Office website, show that he has remained active in his unpaid role. In April he paid three visits to Jerusalem to meet senior Israelis, including the Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert. In a year, he seems to have met Mr Olmert more often than the past and present foreign secretaries, Jack Straw and Margaret Beckett, combined. The shadow Foreign Secretary, William Hague, said that the extent of Lord Levy's role was "not a satisfactory state of affairs" Comment: Lord Levy, "a leading international Zionist", who is singlehandedly responsible for ensuring new Labour's coffers remain full and who raised the money needed in 1997 for Blair's party to "sweep to victory". Despite being a self-mad millionaire, in 2000, Levy posted tax returns of just £5,000, suggesting that he earned the average national wage of £21,000. Levy is known to have used offshore trusts in the past and his companies had links with one or more tax havens until 1997. But at around the time of the general election he moved the Michael Levy Acquisitions Trust, an offshore trust based in Guernsey, back to the UK.
It was also reported that a second offshore trust - The Rothschild Trust in Guernsey, which held the shares of his principal company, Wireart - was altered at about the same time, with Levy and his wife, Gilda, taking over as trustees.
At the forefront of several alleged "Jewish" groups in the UK, one of which organised a recent rally in support of Israeli actions in Lebanon.
Levy was arrested and questioned in connection with the "Cash for Peerages" inquiry by the Metropolitan Police on 12 July 2006 where the Blair government had been giving titles in exchange for donations to the Labout Party. After six hours of questioning Levy was released on police bail.
Since 2002 Levy has been Blair's special envoy to the Middle East and counts among his friends former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak among others.
Levy and Blair, former tennis partners, first met in 1994 at a dinner party, where they were introduced by a senior Israeli diplomat.
A leading international Zionist organising the funding of the Labour party and with the 'ear' of Tony Blair introduced to Blair by a "senior Israeli diplomat" (Arch Zionist Gideon Meir) and who is now at the center of British policy on the Middle East??
I think I feel a conspiracy theory coming on.
|
By BARRY SCHWEID
AP Diplomatic Writer Thu Aug 17, 2006 WASHINGTON - The United States intends to act next month to have the United Nations impose penalties on Iran for refusing to suspend its enrichment of uranium, a State Department official said Thursday.
"They will be well-deserved," Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns told reporters. "It's not a mystery to the Iranians what is going to happen." U.S. officials did not specify the proposed punishment. Beyond the nuclear program, Iran supports Hezbollah as well as other terrorist organizations and has played a destabilizing role in the Middle East, said a department spokesman, Tom Casey. The Security Council has said Iran faces penalties if it does not suspend uranium enrichment, an important step in making nuclear weapons. |
AFP
August 18, 2006 JERUSALEM - Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon is to resign from the cabinet, a spokesman said, one day after the attorney general decided to indict the minister over accusations of sexual harassment.
Ramon, a close aide of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and a leading member of his centrist Kadima party, will announce his resignation on Sunday. |
Telegraph
By Patrick Bishop 18/08/06 Pressure is mounting on Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, to follow Hizbollah's example and consider force to eject Israel from Syrian land that it has occupied for nearly 40 years.
The public appetite for action is just one of the uncomfortable consequences regional rulers are facing, as Arabs compare their leaders' performances over Israel with the Lebanese "resistance". |
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