Mideast News Digest
Reichstag Fire in Gaza?
The Oct. 15 deaths of three Americans, while on a fact-finding mission in the Gaza Strip in Occupied Palestine, have to be laid at the doorstep of the Synarchist "Beast-men," behind the "Clash of Civilizations" war: Israel's Finance Minister and second generation Jabotinskyite, Benjamin Netanyahu; U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, the ringleader of the perpetual war fanatics in the United States; and Richard Perle, who have been demanding that President Bush "lay off" Israel in its campaign to destroy Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian National Authority. Investigators must pursue the question: was the Gaza attack a Reichstag fire incidentstaged to get the U.S. to declare war on the Palestinian Authority as a continuation of Cheney's "perpetual" war on terrorism?
The attack on the convoy was either carried out directly by Israeli commandos, or by their controlled countergangs among the Palestinians. Sharon built up Hamas, beginning in the late 1980s, exactly as such a handy tool, against the Palestine Liberation Organization leadership. In the last year, the Mossad was caught red-handed building a phony "al-Qaeda" among the Palestinians in Gaza. In the last days, a Jewish "master bomb-maker" was arrested in Jerusalem, charged with having provided highly sophisticated bombs "for buses" to Palestinian Arabs.
The timing could not be more convenient for the Jabotinskyites, Perle and Netanyahu, who just completed a five-day conference at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. The Perle-Netanyahu hate-fest gathered the fascist members of the Sharon Cabinet, the Armaggedonists of the so-called Christian Right from the U.S., who say a Palestinian State as laid out in Bush's "Road Map" policy is a violation of the Bible, and top figures in Israeli intelligence and the military, who have been behind the 18-month-long attacks on Palestinian civilians in retaking the Palestinian territories freed under the Oslo Agreements. The last event of the Netanyahu-Perle fest was an Oct. 14 "secret" briefing to the U.S. Congress via satellite.
What did Bibi and Perle tell Congress? No doubt they said that Americans would be attacked by Palestinian terrorists, unless the U.S. backed Israel's attacks against Syria and Iran, and destroyed the PNA.
Bibi delivered this same message on a visit to Washington, D.C., in April 2002, to the U.S. Senate, and the American Enterprise Institute (home base of Perle). He said that unless the U.S. stopped pressuring Israel to withdraw from the Palestinian territories, which he childishly refers to as "Arafatistan," then it will be "your buses," and "your shopping malls" that will be attacked. After attending three of Netanyahu's speeches, this news service wrote, "If there is a major terrorist attack in the U.S., then the intelligence networks of Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel and the U.S. that must be investigated."
The Jabotinskyites have a long history of using assassinations to stop a Palestinian state: From the killing of UN envoy Count Folke Bernadotte in 1948, who drafted a peace plan, to the 1995 killing of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
The Americans killed on Oct. 15, were accompanying a U.S./PNA delegation, that was surveying the damage done by the IDF in a week-long attack on Gaza, that so far has killed seven Palestinians, including an eight-year-old boy, and a 15-year-old boy, and created a refugee crisis with more than 1,500 made homeless, after 120 Palestinian homes were destroyed.
It was this invasion of Gaza that Lyndon LaRouche mobilized to stop with his campaign statement in late September. Now with the Israeli nuclear threat against Iran, there is no time to wait in following LaRouche's leadership against the Sharon crowd.
Israeli Crazies Push Temple Mount Conflict... Again
Jerusalem police refused to allow the Temple Mount Faithful to celebrate the week-long Sukkot festival on the Al Haram al Sharif/Temple Mount this year, Ha'aretz reported on Sept. 13. The "Feast of Booths," which is associated with harvest season, began on Oct. 11 this year. The Temple Mount Faithful fanatics want to destroy the Muslim holy sites on Al Haram Al Sharif/Temple Mount in order to build the "Third Temple of Solomon."
Celebrating Sukkot would have obviously ignite major Palestinian rioting. The group will nonetheless have a ceremony at the Shiloah Spring in Arab-majority East Jerusalem, where they are showing a model of the "Third Temple" and displaying the "cornerstones of the Temple."
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the longtime political patron of the Temple Mount terrorists, keynoted the "Sukkot celebration" of the International Christian Embassy of Jerusalem, a nasty Christian-Zionist operation, where he addressed more than 5,000 delegates at the International Convention Center in Jerusalem.
Likud Could Lose Oct. 28 Local Elections
Ha'aretz reported Oct. 17 that the Likud is projected to lose the Oct. 28 local elections in Israel. Signs are seen on many Israeli streets, reading "Anything But Likud." The Likud stands to lose big in Israel's mayoral and councilmanic elections, because Israelis are infuriated over the economic collapse and the government's killer budget cuts. If Likud does lose these municipal elections, it could seriously erode the Likud's 40 mandates in the Knesset, whose next elections could be a lot sooner than 2007. Likud's base is in the low-income Oriental Jewish community, which is also is the hardest hit by the brutal austerity policies of Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Likud is reverting to its dirty tricks, sending out its ministers to campaign with the message that communities that vote Likud, will be rewarded by the Minister's largesse. This is so crude that MK Yossi Sarid of the Meretz party, is demanding that the Attorney General investigate these cases as "breach of trust" and open bribery. The Labor Party, also in poor shape, is forming local alliances with both an opposition party, One Nation, which is linked to the Histadrut labor federation, and also with a government coalition party, Shinui.
Lebanese President Attacks Syria Accountability Act
ArabicNews.com reported on Oct. 18 that Lebanese President Emile LaHoud said, in a statement the previous day, that "if there is a necessity for an accountability act in the region, it is more useful to be named 'Israel Accountability Act,' due to the Israeli brutal massacres and crimes against the Palestinians, and rejection of the international resolutions which stipulate the Israeli withdrawal from all the occupied Arab territories." He called on the United States to "liberate itself from the hegemony of the Zionist Lobby which constitutes a dangerous threat to the interests of the American people."
Separately, Lebanese Information Minister Michael Smaha said, during an interview broadcast on BBC on Oct. 17, that the presence of Syrian troops in Lebanon is a matter for Lebanon alone, and not the U.S. The Syria Accountability Act demands a Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon. Smaha said there are signed agreements between Syria and Lebanon, and no one has the right to interfere in that relationship.
Syria Could Aid Iraq Reconstruction
Syria could play a crucial role in Iraqi reconstruction, according to a political source in Lebanon. This source reported that one reason for Israel's attack against Syria, was to sabotage ongoing discreet talks, between the Americans and Syrians, over Iraq. The talks had been positive, on several levels. Bush, it is said, had become convinced that without some Syrian cooperation, there could be no stabilization of Iraq. The neo-cons and Cheney in person, pushed Sharon to attack, in reaction to this. The rush to pass the Syria Accountability Act is also seen as a move, by Cheney, in this direction. It is the hawks and the rightwing Christians who are behind this.
The source pointed out that Syrian-Iraqi ties go deep, and are longstanding. The Ba'ath Party, which has been officially disbanded in Iraq, still exists, with an estimated 4 million members, and has good relations with the Syrian party of the same name. Tribal groups in the two countries often overlap or are identical. Many of the members of the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) were in Syria before the war. Thus, the influence of Syria is considered significant.
Further substantiating this report is the news that Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, the new leader of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), was in Syria for three days in early October. After talks with Vice President Abdel Halim Khaddam, Hakim said that Damascus could "follow the example of other countries in the region and play an important role in the reconstruction of Iraq." He told the press he had asked officials to work "to strengthen relations between the Iraqi and the Syrian people," and to "support the Iraqi people's effort to recover independence, sovereignty, and stability." In reference to Turkey's decision to send troops, he stated, "Sending foreign troops cannot solve the problem of insecurity in Iraq. Hakim said the US must leave the country "quickly," because "no people can accept occupation."
Iran President Ready to Cooperate with IAEA; El Baradei Tells BBC He Is "Cautiously Optimistic"
Iranian President Khatami has signalled his readiness to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), according to Russian and BBC sources on Oct. 14. The IAEA delegation arrived in Tehran Oct. 16. It is expected that Iran will sign the additional protocol, as demanded, according to an Oct. 14 BBC wire. The final decision will come in the last days of October.
In an Oct. 16 interview with BBC, IAEA head Dr. Mohammad ElBaradei said he, too, was "cautiously optimistic" about moving things forward with the Iran nuclear program, during his visit to Iran. In an interview in Tehran with BBC correspondent Jim Muir, Dr. ElBaradei said: "I was assured that they have made a decision to come with full and complete story of all the nuclear activities in the past, and that they are absolutely ready now to cooperate fully with us and to demonstrate full transparency, for us to be able to get all the clarification required." Iran has an IAEA deadline of Oct. 31 to convince the international community that its nuclear program is strictly a civilian one.
ElBaradei said that he had spent the day dispelling misconceptions that the Iranians had about inspection protocols attached to their signing the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), assuring them that the IAEA would use its authority judiciously and impartially. "I think the protocol has become a national issue here, an emotional issue, the feeling that the protocol will be used and abused to undermine Iran's sovereignty, Iran's security, dignity, religious belief."
When pressed by the BBC correspondent on the uranium enrichment issue, ElBaradei noted that under the NPT, "every country has the right to have enrichment of uranium or reprocessing of plutonium." He said that there were discussions going on with some European countries to defuse the security concern, by seeing if Iran could get the nuclear technology for power generation without having to complete the fuel cycle itself.
Natural uranium has to be enriched before it can be used as fuel for nuclear reactors, so if the Iranians don't enrich the fuel themselves, they need to have an assured fuel supply.
Terrorist Group MEK Surfaces With New Scare Allegations About Iranian Secret Nuclear Weapons Program
As if on cue, the Mujahideen al-Khalq, a known terrorist group on the U.S. State Department list of international terrorist organizations, but which is backed by U.S. neo-con circles, including inside the Pentagon, has come out, in a Vienna press conference, with "new evidence" of Iran's nuclear program. The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), charged that Iran has another hidden nuclear facility, and could have the bomb by 2005. Firouz Mahvi, of the foreign relations committee of the group, said in Vienna Oct. 14, that "The site has been built to test centrifuges that enrich uranium. It is located 15 km east of Isfahan," he said, "under the name of Isfahan's Fuel Research and Production centre." He said the information came from undercover agents who have been working there. Iran's ambassador to the IAEA Ali Akbar Salehi, dismissed the report as "absolutely baseless."
Radical Shi'ite Cleric Supporters Seize Najaf Buildings
Moqtadar al Sadr reportedly seized two buildings in Najaf, to be used as "ministries" in his self-proclaimed government, according to Arab news reports on Oct. 14. The actions signal a new radicalization of Iraqi Shi'ites. Although the mainstream Shi'ites are continuing to try to avoid total war in Iraq, large numbers of grass roots Shi'ites are calling for joining the resistance. Moqtadar al Sadr (who accuses the Hakim group, SCIRI, of killing his father), is the rallying point for this ferment. He has backers in Iran, too, among the conservative clergy. He reportedly was received by Khamenei, some time ago.
What happens in Iraq among the Shi'ites will depend largely on what happens in Iran: if the country is attacked by Israel, or pressures increase from Washington, Iran will respond. Government spokesman Abdollah Ramanzadeh stated that, if attacked, Iran would use all means to defend itself, "and we are not joking," he said. This is interpreted to mean that countermeasures could be taken by Hezbollah, or by Shi'ites in Iraq, or by irregular forces in Europe and elsewhere. The spokesman stressed that Syria and Iran are coordinating their policies closely. Iran has declared that, if Syria is put under U.S. sanctions, then Iran will supply it with what it needs.
Asked about Iran's approach to the shadow cabinet of Moqtadar al-Sadr in Iraq, the Iranian spokesman refrained from making any comment arguing that it was a matter of Iraq's internal affairs. "We believe that a government representing the majority of the Iraqi people should take office in Iraq," he added.
Shi'ite Rivals Clash in Karbala
The clash between followers of Muktadar al-Sadr and supporters of the Grand Ayatollah Ali Hussein al-Sistani, started when Sadr allies tried to take over the shrine of Imam al-Hussein on Oct. 14, according to international wire reports from the city. Al-Sadr's supporters withdrew to another mosque. The incident began around 10 PM and continued until dawn, including the firing of rocket-propelled grenades.
Saudi Arabia Announces First-Ever Local Elections
Associated Press reported on Oct. 14 that the Saudi Foreign Minister announced the holding of local elections. In an interview on the sidelines of the OIC meetings, Oct. 13, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al Faisal told the OIC that the monarchy will hold its first-ever elections for local councils in 14 municipalities. Only half of the posts will be elected.
In the interview, Prince Saud Al Faisal commented on the threat posed by Israel's suspected nuclear arsenal, saying: "A country as small as Israel of four million people having that security ring, and being provided with the wherewithal to be able to have the arms to back [it], a country that has shown that it has no inhibitions in using its capabilities in attacks without provocation and against international law, you can sense the threat that everybody in the region ... feels from developments in Israel. The truth is that [Saudi Arabia] is perhaps the most active country now in fighting terrorism on the international scene.
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