In this issue:

The 'Godfather' Goes to Ramallah

Another Partial Truth about Saudi 9/11 Role To Air on Fox-TV Special

Turkey Ousts Israeli Ambassador after UN Finding on Flotilla Killings

A 'Leef' Has Shaken Netanyahu

From Volume 38, Issue 35 of EIR Online, Published September 9, 2011
Southwest Asia News Digest

The 'Godfather' Goes to Ramallah

Sept. 5 (EIRNS)—The British Foreign Office and the Empire's tool Barack Obama have a plan to stop the Palestinian Authority and the united Palestinian movement from bringing a statehood resolution to the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 20: Send "The Godfather," Tony Blair, envoy for the Quartet, to Ramallah. By all estimates, including statements by top officials of the Foreign Ministry of Israel, the statehood resolution will pass by a wide majority, so, over the last several weeks, desperate efforts were put into motion to try to "split the yes votes" to deprive the Palestinians of statehood recognition by the majority of the world's sovereign states.

When efforts to get the European Union to split the yes votes with an alternative resolution failed, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) turned to Blair, reports a senior Egyptian strategic analyst. Sometime this week, Blair—the newly exposed godfather to the 9-year-old daughter of right-wing warmonger Rupert Murdoch—will offer the Palestinians a deal with "a new Roadmap" that has a timeline and a promise of full statehood at the end of the timeline.

"The Godfather will swear to God," declared the EIR source, "that the members of the Quartet—the U.S., United Kingdom, United Nations, and Russia," will force Israel to uphold Roadmap II, and if not, the U.S. and U.K. will agree to any terms the Palestinians put forward after the Israeli refusal.

Laughable. But, the source warned, "Do not underestimate how dangerous the controllers behind The Godfather are in getting what they want. They know that if the statehood resolution gets to the UNGA, the U.S. is finished in the eyes of the world, if it vetoes statehood after the vote passes. If the vote fails, Obama will be blamed because he already sent a letter out to 70 nations demanding that they vote against statehood. The letter went out this past week, and has the stench of Obama's UN Ambassador Susan Rice all over it.

Roadmap II, which was written in desperation by the British FCO, has already been okayed by the Israelis when Blair presented it to them last week.

"The Godfather and his backers are killers," said the source, referencing Blair's operations to get the Iraq War launched.

One of those Iraq operations was the killing, in the guise of a phony suicide of scientist Dr. David Kelly, who exposed Blair's and the British Empire's false intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

Another Partial Truth about Saudi 9/11 Role To Air on Fox-TV Special

Sept. 4 (EIRNS)—On the 10th anniversary of 9/11, Fox News plans to air a special documentary entitled "Secrets of 9/11," which partially documents the Saudi support network for the terrorist operation. But while the documentary is full of details about Saudi intelligence operations, Fox fails to nail Obama for continuing the cover-up on the 28 pages about Saudi involvement that were redacted from the 9/11 Congressional investigative report. As EIR readers know, Obama promised the families of the 9/11 victims that he would release the pages. Instead, he continued the cover-up.

One of the important voices in the Fox documentary is former Sen. Bob Graham, (D-Fla.), who led the first Congressional investigation into the 9/11 attacks in 2002. Asked by the Fox if he believes the hijackers' support network is still in place today, Graham said, "I have no reason to believe it's not."

The 18-month investigation by Fox's Specials Unit, show that some members of the suspected al-Qaeda support network entered the U.S. nearly a decade before the attacks, and that others are still living here.

Fox reports that the U.S. monitored a terrorist summit in Kuala Lampur, Malaysia, on Jan. 5, 2000, one week before the first two terrorists, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, arrived in Los Angeles. Photos were taken at the summit showing al-Mihdhar and Hazmi attending. The U.S. also knew that some of the terrorists attending the summit had U.S. visas.

According to Graham, the two terrorists, who arrived at Los Angeles Airport on Jan. 15, 2000, received support from the Saudi government or its representatives.

Hazmi and al-Mihdhar were soon met by Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi agent who had been in the U.S. since 1993 on a student visa.

Bayoumi claimed to have met al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar by chance at a Los Angeles Middle Eastern restaurant in January 2000. However, he met them immediately after a meeting with the Consul for Political and Cultural Affairs at the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles. Graham believes the "chance" meeting between the hijackers and the Saudi was planned.

Eleanor Hill, the chief of staff for the Joint Congressional Inquiry, said the FBI was concerned about Bayoumi: "Bayoumi—he was one of the individuals who had been the subject of a counterterrorism investigation or inquiry by the FBI and, lo and behold, ends up being really very helpful to two of the hijackers in California. He basically invites them to San Diego; he takes them around in San Diego; he helps them get an apartment; he puts down the deposit for their first apartment," Hill said.

Graham told Fox News there was no evidence that the hijackers ever paid Bayoumi back for the rent deposit.

"Our conclusion was that this was one of the services that Bayoumi had been directed to provide," Graham said. "The lifestyle of al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar became very expensive. Among other things, they like to go to bars. And they spent a lot of money, in fact, al-Hazmi at one point wanted to marry strippers that they had met at the bar," Graham added.

The Fox exposé does not mention that Bayoumi received funds from the wife of Saudi Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. at the time. EIR has exposed Bandar's key role in the Anglo-Saudi BAE warplane deal, for which Bandar received $2 billion in bribe money, which he used as a slush fund for covert operations. The question of whether Bandar's BAE slush fund was used to finance any of the 9/11 terrorists still remains a key area that has been covered up by every U.S. institution so far.

Turkey Ousts Israeli Ambassador after UN Finding on Flotilla Killings

Sept. 2 (EIRNS)—Turkey has suspended military agreements with Israel, and has expelled the Israeli ambassador to Turkey, after months of backroom negotiations over relations between the two countries, after Israeli Defense Forces attacks in May 2010 on a humanitarian aid flotilla headed for Gaza. Nine humanitarian aid worker activists, including an American-born Turkish-American, were killed when IDF commandos boarded the flotilla ships on the high seas. The unarmed civilians were part of the humanitarian effort.

According to the "Palmer Report," so-named after the head of the UN investigative panel, the Israeli commandos who boarded the lead ship, the Mavi Marmara, used "excessive and unreasonable force" and also found that most of the deceased "were shot multiple times, including in the back, or at close range, [which] has not been adequately accounted for in the material presented by Israel." Despite upholding the argument that Israel has the right to enforce a naval blockade on Gaza, the report calls the loss of life "unacceptable."

In February 2011, the Obama White House backed a six-month delay in the report's release, as demanded by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Turkey has demanded an apology from Israel, and that reparations be paid to the families of the dead civilians. Israel has refused both. As a consequence, Turkey expelled the Israeli ambassador, has now downgraded its diplomatic relations with Israel to the level of second secretary, and has suspended the substantial bilateral military agreements.

A 'Leef' Has Shaken Netanyahu

Sept. 4 (EIRNS)—Only six weeks after Israel's social protests began against the high cost of living, the J14 movement today brought out 450,000 people throughout Israel to rally against the Netanyahu government's anti-people economic policies. Ma'ariv's website reported the demonstration by 300,000 people in Tel Aviv, and another 150,000 in 17 other cities. Daphni Leef, a 25-year-old leader of the movement, called the outpouring of support a "miracle."

Leef led the charge by setting up a tent on the posh Rothschild Avenue in Tel Aviv. She started her protest after the rent on her apartment was raised beyond what she could afford.

Reports say most of the people who marched in the many locations on Sept. 3 were those hardest hit by the economic inequalities perpetuated by the Netanyahu government. These were the young people without assets of their own; students; doctors beholden to the steadily weakened public health system; young families; and the elderly—pensioners and Holocaust survivors whose fixed earnings could not meet the steep rise in the cost of living.

Leef addressed the protesters saying, "We are choosing to live. We are not invisible. If they only understand numbers, let us remind them that there are more than 7 million people here, and every one of these people has a heart. There was a sign on Rothschild that said: 'Every heart is a revolutionary cell.' It's true. Every one of us is the protest headquarters of one person."

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