In the WSJ op ed section today Abdurrahaman Wahid and Israel Lau write about the conference they are hosting in Bali pertaining to: "The Evils of Holocaust Denial."
I have said for years, and will be making a talk in October repeating what I believe, ie. When the world is falling into the anti-Semitism trap it is a pathological signal "..Something is rotten in Denmark." Blatant widespread hatred is, all too often, followed by wars and/or other type upheavals that simply bring more tragedy and suffering to a world already imploding from same.
We try to protect Europe from Iran and this drives Putin to go ballistic and provide Iran with the means of carrying out its various threats. (See 1 below.)
Meanwhile fighting in Gaza is rapidly escalating into a civil war between Palestinians. Be mindful of the fact that Israel no longer occupies any of Gaza and Lebanon and fighting between Arabs is taking place in both areas. (See 2 below.)
Excerpt of David Harris' advice to Europe vis a vis Iran. (See 3 below.)
Michael Oren writes newly released documents corrects widely held myth. Truth eventually triumphs but its delay permiots liars to have their day. (see 4 below.)
Has Hamas pushed too hard? (See 5 below.)
Dick
1) Russian president Vladimir Putin put teeth in his threats and his cynically helpful alternative suggestions regarding the deployment of US missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic.
It is ow evident the week before the G8 opened in Germany, Moscow released the long-withheld nuclear fuel for Iran’s atomic reactor in Bushehr. It was delivered 24 hours before Israel launched its new military imaging satellite Ofeq-7, bringing forward the Iranian threat to Israel. One immediate result has been the stiffening of Tehran’s negative posture, sparking what nuclear watchdog director Mohammed ElBaradei called Monday, June 11, a confrontation that needs to be urgently defused.
Alleged;ly special nuclear containers were loaded on a train in the yard of the manufacturers JSC Novosibirsk Chemical Concentrates Plant on June 2-3. They contained two types of nuclear fuel, WER-440 and WER-1000.
The special train headed out of Novosibirsk to Astrakhan on the Caspian Sea, 2,000 km away. There, the containers awaited loading aboard a Russian ship destined for Bandar Anzili, the Iranian military port on the Caspian shore. According to Iranian sources, a fleet of Iranian trucks was waiting at the other end outside Bandar Anzili port to transport the nuclear fuel and drive it slowly and carefully to Bushehr, a distance of 850km, arriving June 10 or 11.
The journey was interrupted by holdups ordered by the Kremlin in an episode which also laid bare the interdependence of Iran’s nuclear industry and Tehran’s program for arming Syria for war with Israel with the latest Russian munitions.
Arguments over payments due from Tehran have dogged relations with Moscow before and Putin is far from trusting.
A few days before the nuclear fuel left the Siberian factory, Tehran delivered the sum of $327m for a fresh delivery of Russian missiles to Syria. Iran pledged another $438m for further arms consignments before the fuel cargo was allowed to go forward. Putin then ordered the cargo to be loaded at Astrakhan, but await delivery in port until payment was made.
Iran duly deposited the money and the ship was permitted to set sail and cross the Caspian Sea to Iran. Putin never promised Bush Russia would deny Iran the nuclear fuel for its Bushehr reactor in perpetuity, as some administration circles in Washington have claimed in the last two years. Putin assured Washington, mainly in conversations with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, he would postpone delivery as long as he could, despite Moscow’s contractual commitments to Tehran.
The Bush administration’s plan to deploy missiles in East Europe made the Russian president mad enough to set this assurance aside.
His move hits the US where it hurts most: The UN Security Council meets at the end of June to approve harsher sanctions against Iran for continuing to enrich uranium in defiance of previous resolutions. Russian fuel delivery will substantially dilute the effect of such penalties, especially when the Islamic Republic is about to clinch a deal for the acquisition of long-range ballistic missiles from North Korea.
Putin developed a complex and well thought out retaliation strategy for America’s missile deployment in East Europe.
1. A second consignment of nuclear fuel went out to India from the same Russian factory which supplied Bushehr. This was a swipe by Putin at US-Indian nuclear cooperation which it is also under attack in the US Congress. It was also meant to place Moscow at dead center of the Russian-American-Israeli contest over domination of the Indian arms market. This contest also pertains to the developing military ties between New Delhi and Tehran, which Moscow is working hard to turn to its benefit. The Kremliln has not said the last word on this contest.
2. Monday, June 4, the Russian president sent the director of the Russian Nuclear Energy Commission, Sergei Kirienko, to the Russian Interfax news agency with an announcement: “I have just visited the Novosibirsk Chemical Concentrates Plant; fuel for Iran and India is ready,” he said. “It will be delivered six months before the physical launch.”
This statement has granted the Russian president six months’ leeway for jumping whichever way he finds expedient.
It is time enough for Moscow and Washington to reach terms on the Iran issue as well as the East Europe missile deployments. If the Bush administration digs its heels in on the missile defense shield, Russian engineers employed at Bushehr will be told to go ahead and activate the reactor even before December 2007. But if Washington relents, Russian personnel can always be told to go back to dragging their feet, as Moscow did on the nuclear fuel.
2) Abbas forces ordered to thwart Hamas 'coup' in Gaza
By Avi Issacharoff
Forces loyal to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah were ordered Tuesday evening to defend their positions in the Gaza Strip, and counter a "coup" by rival Hamas Islamists.
Hamas, stepping up a rapidly expanding power struggle, on Tuesday afternoon launched attacks against installations of security forces allied to Fatah, seizing a number of smaller positions and laying seige to others.
"Advance, our forces! Confront the seekers of the coup.
Defend your dignity and your military honour. Defend the
security of your people," the command of Abbas' National
Security Forces said in a statement issued in Gaza.
The statement giving the order described Hamas as a "bloody party which is launching a coup against the president and against the authority and national unity government."
Witnesses said they saw vehicles carrying members of the National Security Forces to battles in western and northern Gaza City.
Meanwhile, Hamas' Al-Aqsa TV and radio stations came under fire from Fatah forces Tuesday, employees said.
The Al-Aqsa TV station was surrounded by security forces allied with Fatah, said a station employee, Mohammed Abu Bilal.
Security officials said they received orders to stop the broadcasts of the station. Shortly after the attack, the station started playing pro-Fatah songs, a sign that the security forces had taken control of the broadcast.
But later, the television station broadcast pictures of what it said was a thwarted attack, along with pictures Hamas gunmen standing around captured security vehicles.
"Al-Aqsa is still shining," the radio station said. Witnesses said gunfire was continuing in the area.
Also Tuesday evening, two gunmen, one from Hamas and the other from Fatah, were killed in a clash in the central Gaza town of Dir el-Balah. The violence in the Strip, which erupted again Monday morning, has claimed 19 lives so far.
Fatah sources said Tuesday afternoon that they believed Hamas was trying to achieve a decisive victory in the Gaza Strip within hours.
Hamas earlier demanded that Fatah forces abandon their positions, threatening to attack those who remained in their posts.
Palestinian security officials said Tuesday afternoon that Hamas had seized three small Fatah positions in the southern town of Khan Yunis, but that Fatah remained in control of the local security headquarters. The town's streets were empty as people huddled indoors for shelter.
In the northern Gaza Strip, about 200 Hamas gunmen surrounded a compound, where some 500 Fatah fighters were holed up. Hamas fired mortars and rocket-propelled grenades at the building.
"They are attacking from all sides," said one of the officers, Khaled Awad.
The fighting also targeted senior officials from both sides, including the abduction of a deputy cabinet minister from Hamas. His kidnap in Ramallah hinted that the fighting could spill over into the West Bank.
Fatah's military wing, the Al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigades, threatened for its part to expand the fighting to the West Bank by announcing it would kill Hamas officials there unless the organization ceased its attacks.
In Gaza, former Palestinian foreign minister Nabil Shaath of Fatah said Hamas gunmen ransacked his Gaza home Tuesday afternoon, and shot one of his bodyguards in the leg.
Shaath, speaking to the media by telephone, appeared shaken but said no one in his family had been hurt. He said the attackers stole many items from his home in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahia.
Hamas seizes control of hospitals
On Tuesday morning, Hamas gunmen seized the European Hospital in Khan Yunis, making it the third medical center to come under Hamas control in two days. Gunmen traded fire at the institution.
Hamas then warned over a mosque loudspeaker that it would attack the headquarters of the Preventive Security Service in Gaza City, which is loyal to Fatah.
"The warning which we have given you to surrender has ended, and we will attack this position of Zionist collaborators," the warning said.
In Khan Yunis, Hamas controlled the roof of hospital and Fatah security forces took up positions nearby. The two sides traded fire. About 15 children attending a kindergarten in the compound were rushed into the main building, hospital officials said.
Haniyeh's house targeted
On Tuesday morning, gunmen attacked the home of Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas in a refugee camp near Gaza City, for the second time in as many days.
Hamas branded the assault with a rocket-propelled grenade an assassination attempt. Haniyeh and his family were in the house, but unhurt, in the second attack on his home in as many days.
Describing the attack, Haniyeh's son, Abdel Salam, said an RPG hit the side of the house in the Shati refugee camp, damaging it, while the family was inside. No one was hurt, he said.
Also Tuesday, Hamas said Fatah gunmen kidnapped a member of the Hamas military wing and executed him in the street. The dead man was identified as a cousin of Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a Hamas leader assassinated by Israel in 2004.
Earlier in the day, three women and a child were killed when Hamas militants attacked the home of a senior Fatah security official with mortars and grenades, security officials said.
The gunmen seized Hassan Abu Rabi and killed his 14-year-old son and three women in the house, hospital officials said. Fatah gunmen also stormed the house of a Hamas lawmaker and burned it to the ground.
The fighting disrupted final exams for university and high school students. The three universities called off final exams set for Tuesday.
High schools were trying to move test centers to areas out of the range of fire, said Mohammed Abu Shkeir, the deputy minister of education.
and
Abbas calls for immediate truce, Fatah threatens to quit gov't
By Yoav Ribak
Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas called Tuesday for an immediate end to the fighting between his Fatah movement and the rival Hamas, saying it went against Palestinian "interests."
The fighting, which erupted Monday morning after days of simmering tensions, has claimed 17 lives so far. On Tuesday afternoon, Hamas gunmen launched an attack on the headquarters of Fatah-allied security forces across the Gaza Strip.
"In order to protect the higher national interests of our people, and to try stop the bloodshed, I, in my position as the head of the Palestinian Authority and the head of all security forces call for an immediate halt to fire," Abbas said in a statement.
The statement accused "a small group of leaders," including those unhappy with a national unity deal between Abbas' Fatah movement and the ruling Hamas organization, of "taking the country into an ugly civil war."
The unity government was formed in March during a summit in Mecca, in an effort to stem a previous round of internecine violence in Gaza.
Fatah said its Central Committee would meet at 8 P.M. to decide whether to remain in the government it formed with Hamas in March in a bid to stop internal violence and ease Western sanctions.
Abbas also called for a joint meeting with Egyptian mediators to end the fighting, which has killed 80 people over the past month.
Sufyan Abu Zaida, a former Palestinian cabinet minister and a senior Fatah official, called on Abbas to involve the Arab League in a bid to stop factional violence.
"What is happening now in the Gaza Strip is different from previous cycles of violence -in terms of the number of dead, the amount of armed forces fighting each other, and in terms of rhetoric," he said. "We have stopped counting the dead and the fighting forces in the Strip - from the north to the south."
Abu Zaida made the comments at a conference for Israeli and Palestinian peace organizations in Tuscany, Italy.
But the frustrated head of the Egyptian security delegation, Major General Burhan Hamad, who has been trying to negotiate a truce, told Palestinian TV on Tuesday morning that he would call the people out onto the streets to protest if the two groups do not agree to stand down.
A cease-fire agreement brokered Monday by Egyptian officials collapsed after several hours.
Hamad said Tuesday that neither side responded to his call to hold truce talks Tuesday.
"It seems they don't want to come. We must make them ashamed of themselves. They have killed all hope. They have killed the future," said Hamad, who brokered several previous short-lived cease-fires.
Hamad said both sides were about equal in firepower. "Neither can have a decisive victory," he said. "To be decisive, they need weapons that neither side has."
He said he would call civilians out into the streets to protest if the two rivals did not agree to stand down.
Islam Shahwan, a spokesman for the Hamas militia, brushed aside the latest truce efforts.
"It's all talk. It's not serious," he said.
Nabil Abu Rudeineh, an Abbas aide, said Tuesday that there no end was in sight to the fighting.
"You can see for yourself there's no taste for a cease-fire right now," he told The Associated Press by telephone, blaming Hamas.
Jordan, EU call on Palestinian factions to lay down arms
Jordanian Foreign Minister Abdelelah Al-Khatib and the European Union's Middle East envoy Marc Otte on Tuesday urged Hamas and Fatah to stop fighting and use dialogue to resolve their differences.
The call came during talks that focused on the deteriorating situation in the Palestinian territories and means of spurring efforts for ensuring a resumption of peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, an official statement said.
"The two sides expressed concern over the internal Palestinian feuds and emphasized that dialogue and exercising self-restraint represented the only way for ending the violence there," the statement said.
Al-Khatib and Otte "urged all parties to seize the opportunity now available for boosting peace and called for a real effort both on the Arab and international level to help stop the deteriorating situation and revive the peace process," the statement said.
3) In the Trenches: Europe: Tough decisions on Iran can't be delayed
By DAVID A. HARRIS
Iran is determined to achieve nuclear weapons capability. Unlike the debate surrounding Iraq in the months leading up to the 2003 war, there's no disagreement this time among the major powers on Iran's ambitions, only on the timetable for achieving them.
Impressively, the major powers agree that Iran shouldn't be allowed to realize its goals. They're in accord that an Iran with nuclear weapons would pose a grave threat to regional and global security.
While Iranian leaders have repeatedly voiced a desire to live in a world without Israel-a threat that needs to be taken at face value-the danger doesn't stop there. Friends of Israel need to underscore this fundamental point.
4) Newly de-classified documents debunk claim that Israel sought '67 War
By Michael Oren
Great wars in history eventually become great wars about history. Only a few years after the last soldier leaves the battlefield, accepted truths about the nature of a military conflict and the motivations for it invariably come under assault by revisionists and counter-revisionists whose vehemence can rival that of the original combatants.
This again becomes the case with the 40th anniversary of the Six-Day War. Confronted with a harsh economic blockade, military pacts between heavily armed neighbors for the express purpose of aggression against Israel and hundreds of thousands of enemy troops actually massed on its borders, it would have been the height of irresponsibility for Israel's government not to plan for pre-emptive action. The picture that emerges is one of a country and leadership deeply fearful of military confrontation, and desperate to avoid one at almost any price.
Few of the historiographical struggles are as bitter as the one now being waged over the Arab-Israeli wars, in which a force of self-proclaimed "new historians" has laid siege to previously unassailable descriptions of the creation and survival of the Jewish state.
HISTORIANS NEW AGENDA
The unusual ferocity of the debate over Arab-Israeli history is directly related to the singularly high stakes involved. The adversaries are not merely vying for space on university bookshelves, but grappling with issues that have a profound impact on the lives of millions of people: Israel's security, the rights of Palestinian refugees, the future of Jerusalem. The new historians make no attempt to disguise their agenda.
Published by leading academic presses and widely acclaimed by reviewers, the radical interpretations by the new historians have largely supplanted traditional Zionist histories. This success would not have been possible without the diplomatic documents made available at various government archives under the 30-year declassification rule allowing access to previously classified material that is observed by most Western democracies.
Papers released by Britain's Public Record Office and the United States National Archives, for example, provide fresh insights into the diplomacy of the 1940s and 1950s, particularly in relation to the Arab countries, whose archives remain closed indefinitely. But when it comes to Arab-Israeli history, no collection can rival the Israel State Archives, which in addition to the wealth of firsthand accounts it contains, is particularly liberal in its declassification policy.
These documents — tendentiously read and selectively cited — have been marshaled to substantiate the most radical of revisionist theories about the 1948 War of Independence and the 1956 Sinai Campaign. With the 40th anniversary of the Six-Day War now upon us, the same methodology is again about to be applied to smashing the "myths" of 1967.
The historical controversy over 1967 is especially brutal. The belief that the Six-Day War was imposed on Israel by an alliance of Arab states bent on its destruction — and that Israel's conquest of territories was the result of its legitimate exercise of the right to defend itself in a war which it did everything in its power to avoid — has been sacrosanct for Zionists across the political spectrum. That the final disposition of those territories continues to be the focus of Israel's internal political debate and of ongoing international negotiations makes the 1967 war a hugely inviting target for radical reinterpretation.
With the revisionists' approach lauded regularly in the Israeli press, the first shots in this battle already are being fired. In the academic world, the initiative has come from the social sciences rather than history departments. According to this school, the Six-Day War erupted not as a result of Arab belligerency but in reaction to socioeconomic factors within Israel, as a tactic by the nation's leaders to distract attention from their failed domestic policies.
These authors seem to share the belief — one that is strongly implied, if not yet openly asserted — that Arab actions had little to do with the outbreak of hostilities in 1967, and that Israel not only failed to prevent war but actively courted it. The massing of Egyptian troops in the Sinai, the expulsion of the U.N. Emergency Force and the closing of the Straits of Tiran, the Arab defense pacts and public commitments to eradicate the Jewish state — all were either provoked or blown out of proportion by Israel in the interest of internal cohesion, territorial expansion or other ulterior motives.
Israeli "fear had no basis in reality," Ha'aretz journalist Tom Segev writes in his newly translated book 1967. "There was indeed no justification for the panic that preceded the war, nor for the euphoria that took hold after it."
But can these conclusions stand up to straightforward historical scrutiny? Can the assertion that Israel wanted the war, did little or nothing to avert it, or even instigated it be substantiated by Israeli declassified documents from the period, the favored weapons of the new historians?
Files from the Israel State Archives reveal a great deal about Israeli policymaking and diplomacy of the time, and about what Israel's leaders thought, feared and strove for during three weeks of intense diplomatic efforts leading up to June 5, 1967. Far from even hinting that Israel deliberately brought about the conflict, the record shows that Israel was desperate to avoid war and, up to the eve of battle, pursued every avenue in an effort to avert it — even at great strategic and economic cost to the nation.
The newly released Israeli diplomatic documents from the period leading up to June 5, 1967, offer overwhelming evidence against any suggestion that Israel sought war with the Arabs. Nor do the tens of thousands of declassified papers contain a single reference to any desire to divert public opinion from the economic situation, to overthrow Arab rulers, or to conquer and occupy the West Bank, the Sinai or the Golan Heights.
FEARFUL OF CONFRONTATION
On the contrary, the picture that emerges is one of a country and leadership deeply fearful of military confrontation, and desperate to avoid one at almost any price. The sole hope of doing so, the Israelis believed, rested with the United States. But the Johnson administration, though favorably disposed to Israel, was limited severely by domestic political constraints and its all-consuming involvement in Vietnam. These limitations prevented the Americans from taking the measures that might have restored the status-quo ante in the Sinai and the Straits of Tiran, and stemmed the momentum toward war that Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser had generated.
Moreover, it cannot be claimed that Israel was wrong in considering the use of force, confronted as it was by the blockade, military pacts and enemy troops. Nor can Israel be faulted for employing the threat of force to spur the United States to intervene diplomatically. The few measures Johnson did adopt — reiterating America's 1957 pledges on Tiran, the Red Sea Regatta proposal, the representations to Arab leaders — were directly attributable to those intimations by Israel.
In the final analysis, the Israelis held back from acting militarily until the very last opportunity for a diplomatic settlement had passed, even though they knew that every day they waited was costing them dearly in resources, readiness and morale, and was likely to constrict their own maneuverability if war became unavoidable.
Given the archival records, it seems the new historians face a formidable task in trying to prove that Israel had hostile intentions in 1967. But the historiographical battle over the Six-Day War has scarcely begun.
In addition to the Israeli archives, numerous other primary and secondary sources must be culled, and further controversies tackled. Researchers confront a battery of potentially explosive issues, among them the conquest of the Golan, the flight of West Bank refugees, the annexation of Jerusalem and the origins of the peace process. The conclusions reached here can only be considered preliminary — if not quite the first round in this battle, then certainly an opening shot.
5) Hamas losing support'
by Yaakov Lappin
Palestinian pollster tells Gaza clashes costing Hamas popular support. Human rights activist adds: Gazans unsure they will return if they leave their homes
The gun battles and exchanges of mortars and explosives ravaging the streets of Gaza are costing Hamas popular support among Palestinians, a leading Palestinian pollster told Ynetnews on Tuesday.
Elias Kukali, of the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion (PCPO), based in the West Bank, said Fatah would naturally benefit from Hamas's decline.
PA Infighting
Al-Aqsa calls on members to 'fight coup' / Ali Waked and agencies
Chaos in Palestinian Authority reaches new peak: Hamas takes over Fatah bases, headquarters in all of northern Gaza Strip, conquers other wide parts of area. Palestinian president to meet with Fatah leaders to discuss possibility of quitting unity government. Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades calls on members to take to streets
Full story
"In general, Palestinians are against the fighting between the factions," Kukali said, adding that 78 percent of Palestinians were unaffiliated with either side.
With the exception of those who are partisan in favor of Hamas, "the majority of Palestinians are disappointed by Hamas, and feel that Hamas is incapable of running the government," the analyst added, citing a poll conducted by PCPO, due to be released in two days.
"For the time being, there are only two alternatives for Palestinians, and if they don't vote for Hamas, they will vote for Fatah," Kukali said.
Asked whether Hamas was trying push Fatah out of Gaza, Kukali said that such a goal was unfeasible, adding: "Every side has its support and power, and each wants more power than the other."
"There are people on both sides who benefit from the continuation of fighting," he added.
'Fighting resembles gang war'
Speaking from his mobile phone in Gaza, Jabar Washa, of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), told Ynetnews that the Hamas-Fatah war was "was more like a gang war than a battle between militants. We explicitly say that."
"I think this a factional clash motivated by self-interest," Washa said. "It's far away from the national interest. The national interest is to put an end to these clashes and to the suffering caused when militant groups attack," he added.
Washa said that the situation in Gaza has gotten so bad that the PCHR has had to close its office there.
"What concerns people here is the complete ambiguity and uncertainty, because uncertainty is more dangerous than danger," Washa said. "For the first time in the Palestinian Authority's existence we closed our office due to the curfews," he added. "People here expect the worst and they say that what we have now is bad enough," Washa said.
Asked how many people he estimated have been killed in the fighting, Washa replied that "there is no exact figure up to now because the situation is deteriorating. It's not a matter of how many, it's a matter of why. Even a single person who is killed or who is injured or victimized is a story. So I'm not in favor of counting casualties because every single human being has his her dignity should be respected."
"The most serious concern people here have is that they are uncertain that they will come back safely if they go out. So I think we are paying highly for this factionally-motivated conflict," he added.
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