A Syrian peace partner.... Americans come to aid Palestine? & Prison rape as policy in U.S.

A Syrian peace partner

Back in December 1990, then U.S. secretary of state James Baker famously said, "It is in a situation such as we have in the Gulf that we cooperate with a major Arab country who happens to share the same goals as we do." Back then, Baker was referring to Syria.

These words were the first signs of a concrete rapprochement between Damascus and Washington, after a gridlock in relations that had lasted, on and off, since 1979.

George Bush Sr came to the White House with a new mentality, much like Barack Obama in 2009.

When the Gulf War broke out in January 1991, Bush made sure that Israel kept out of the conflict in order to prevent alienating Syria from Operation Desert Storm, and forced Israel to practice self-restraint when Saddam Hussain showered the Israeli capital with Scud missiles.

Annoyed by a remark made by Israeli finance minister Yitzhak Modai, who claimed that Washington would have to pay Israel $2 billion (Dh7.3 billion) in compensation for the Scud attacks, Bush refused to channel a $400 million housing development loan to Israel, promised earlier to Israeli housing minister Ariel Sharon.

This is the kind of pressure Syria is seeking from the U.S. Administration today, to get Benjamin Netanyahu to commit to peace on the Golan, and to a freeze on colonies.

Currently, nearly 300,000 Israelis live in colonies in the West Bank, and approximately 200,000 are found in East Jerusalem.

So far, all we have heard from Netanyahu is that colonies are part of the "natural growth" of the state of Israel, and that Jerusalem - occupied by Israel in 1967 - will remain "Israel's capital".

This week, Obama's envoy George Mitchell wrapped up meetings in Damascus, where he described his talks with President Bashar Al Assad as "very candid and positive", adding that he told his Syrian host that Obama is "determined to facilitate a truly comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace".

Meanwhile, in Israel he tried to downplay very visible differences with Israeli officials by describing disagreements as "discussions among friends".

He then quickly added, "There isn't agreement on all points, and on several issues we are trying to reach an understanding."

It is rather ironic that, coinciding with an American administration that wants to change the status quo in the Middle East, comes a hard-line government in Israel that is interested in nothing but escalation.

Some hardliners in the U.S. are still not convinced that Syria is ready for peace, arguing that it wants a peace process, rather than a peace treaty, with Israel.

They believe that because of the election results in Lebanon, and what happened in Iran since June 12, Syria is in a weaker position today, and therefore, more pressure should be applied to it, to extract concessions on the Hezbollah and Hamas resistance movements.

That is apparently not what Obama thinks, since shortly after the Lebanese elections, not only did he send Mitchell on his first visit to Syria, but also announced that he would be sending an ambassador to Damascus to fill a post that has been vacant since 2005, and quickly withdrew the charge d'affaires, who was a reminder to the Syrians of the Bush era.

Taking the lead from the U.S. is Saudi Arabia, which has engaged positively with the Syrians since January, ending tension that has lasted since 2005.

When will Americans come to aid Palestine?

Unless President Barack Obama resolves to expunge "special" from the U.S.-Israeli "special relationship," this entangled alliance will continue to ensure that the U.S. is portrayed as guilty by its association with Tel Aviv's thuggish behavior in Palestine and elsewhere. And by the U.S. insistence that Israel not be held accountable under international law.

On July 3rd, Israeli ambassador Michael Oren claimed “Iran nuke could wipe Israel off the map in seconds.” An accurate translation reveals that what the president of Iran proposes is that Zionism be “erased from the pages of history.” But why quibble over words and their intent when Israel’s intent is to create a consensus that ensures war with Iran?

Two days after Oren’s saber-rattling speech, Vice-President Joe Biden was asked in a televised interview whether the Obama Administration would restrain Israeli military action against Iran. President Obama was then out of the country. A self-proclaimed Zionist, Biden responded, “Israel can determine for itself—it’s a sovereign nation—what’s in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else.”

Unfamiliar with the refrain, “loose lips sink ships,” Biden’s cavalier comment evoked memories of Vice President Dick Cheney who routinely waited until his boss was out of town to make bellicose remarks that moved the U.S. steadily closer to war in Iraq.

Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, scrambled to offset the impression left by Biden’s comment. Astute strategists know it is the small impressions that, step-by-step, form the consensus beliefs that shape policy-making. It was the gradual drip, drip, drip of such impressions that created the (false) consensus belief that Iraq had WMD, ties to Al Qaeda and mobile biological weapons laboratories.

Pro-Israeli pundits quickly claimed that, with Biden’s comment, Washington had given Tel Aviv the green light to attack Iran. Mullen grabbed media attention to reconfirm the obvious: an attack on Iran could have “grave and unpredictable consequences.”

Prison rape as policy in U.S.

On June 23rd, the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission (NPREC) issued its long awaited report on the state of rape in America’s prisons. This august group’s findings were duly noted in the flood of daily media and, like so many other well-intentioned blue-ribbon commission reports, will be quickly forgotten. However, while unstated, its primary finding is evident to all: the American prison system is the domestic corollary to the global war on terror.

Rape is sexual violence, a personal and social ritual of patriarchy. Men most often rape women and girls, reminding them that physical terror and sexual violation enforce the structure of power. Male rape of men, like their rape of females, serves to harm the victim, both to physically terrorize and to psychologically shame. Male rape of other males asserters the darkest dimension of masculinity under patriarchy.

Rape victims, both women and men, share an existential sense of violation; the victim is both physically invaded or overpowered and shamed or stigmatized. For the perpetrator, rape enables him to enforce the structure of social hierarchy and control.

Nowhere is the need to delineate the structure of power greater than the prison and the military. As Foucault made clear in “Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison,” prison is a living hell. It is a domestic war zone where, in a highly regulated social organization, a quasi-military force maintains order through terror both formal and informal. Prison rape (especially male rape) is a cousin to the rape and other forms of sexual terror practiced as a tactic by the U.S. military and intelligence operatives in the war on terror in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo. [see “Sexual Torture: What is Acknowledged and What Remains Unknown,” CounterPunch, May 15-17, 2009, and "Sexual Terrorism: The Sadistic Side of Bush's War on Terror," CounterPunch, May 13, 2008]

Angela Davis astutely observed years ago that we live under the domestic tyranny of a prison-industrial complex. It is cousin to the military-industrial complex first identified by Eisenhower a half-century ago and that still drives American global imperialism. Like Rome of old, America is a garrison state.

According to the NPREC study, more than 7.3 million people are captives of the American “correctional facilities or supervised” by the criminal justice system. Among these are some 2.2 million adults imprisoned throughout the country and an addition 5.1 million adults “under correctional supervision” in federal, state and local facilities throughout the country.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) finds that, in 2006, 112,498 federal and state prisoners were women; white, blacks and Hispanic made up 40, 42 and 16 percent, respectively, of the prison population. Finally, nearly 100,000 juveniles were under confinement, more than half being 16 years or younger.

Yes, You Can!-- Victim of neglect and ignorance Jerusalem.

First, an honest disclosure: I loved the Shepherd hotel very much.

In the first years after the Six-Day War, I was a frequent guest there. My work in the Knesset demanded that I stay in Jerusalem at least two nights every week, and after the war I switched from the hotels of West Jerusalem to those in the Eastern part of the city. My favorite was the Shepherd. I felt at home there.

The charm of the place lay in its special atmosphere. It is located in the middle of that ancient Arab town which itself aroused my intense curiosity. Its rooms have high ceilings and old furniture, and it was run by remarkable people - two elderly Arab ladies who were educated in Beirut and steeped in Palestinian-Lebanese culture.

The area surrounding the hotel is the neighborhood of the al-Husseini clan. The holdings of this vast extended family, with more than 5000 members, comprise the greater part of the Sheikh Jarrah quarter, which also includes the legendary Orient House.

Victim of neglect and ignorance

Syrian actor Abbas Al Nouri, famed for his role in the historical epic Bab Al Hara, recently launched a public campaign to declare Occupied Jerusalem "the eternal capital of Arab culture".

Nouri has petitioned Arab League Secretary General Amr Mousa, and "all Arab ministers of culture" saying: "If there is indeed peace coming to [Occupied] Jerusalem, then let it come via culture, which was and remains, the most important weapon of [Occupied] Jerusalem."

Al Nouri added, "Culture is non-negotiable; a weapon that cannot be disarmed!" This month, the petition had gathered less than 100 signatures on the internet, showing that if anything, the project was not progressing as planned.

I personally signed the petition, and my number was 57. I applaud Al Nouri's initiative, however, saying: noise is better than silence, and activism, no matter how minimal, is better than political coma.

The early results of Al Nouri's campaign should raise more than just eyebrows in the Arab world. Passiveness does not stop there; internet-savvy Arabs have not even tried to challenge Wikipedia, which says: "[Occupied] Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and its largest city."

Additionally, Al Nouri's campaign went by unnoticed in many important Arab media outlets, which were too busy covering other events - like the passing away of Michael Jackson, or the political unrest in Honduras - to allocate prime time for a cause that seemingly, no longer interests Arab audiences.

Occupied Jerusalem, a city that has been besieged 23 times, captured and re-captured 44 times, still remains the topic of Arabic poetry, patriotic songs, paintings, drama, and photography.

What Arabs forget is that no matter how pro-active they are towards the city, reality within the city itself is difficult to challenge. The only people able to really preserve Occupied Jerusalem are the Palestinians of the 1948 areas.

According to a December 2007 census, conducted by Israel, the city has a population of 747,600, of which 64 per cent are Jews, 32 per cent are Muslim, and two per cent are Christian.

The same study shows that Occupied Jerusalem's Jewish population was decreasing, because of the high Muslim birth rate, although nine per cent of the 32,488 people living in the Old City, continue to be Jewish.

That is correct, aided by the fact that many Jews leave Occupied Jerusalem for other parts of Israel because of few job opportunities, and expensive real estate, especially around religious quarters.

For example, in 2005, a total of 16,000 Jews left Occupied Jerusalem, while only 10,000 moved into it. Forty-two per cent of the city's Arabs, however, are young, below the age of 15 and they have been strongly encouraged by the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) to stay in the city to maintain the Arab identity of Occupied Jerusalem; a legacy long fought for by the late president Yasser Arafat.

Iran and U.S. not fated to be enemies forever

• Interview with Stephen Kinzer by Kourosh Ziabari

The post-election episodes that have taken place in Iran, which continue to occupy front-page headlines of world newspapers, have perplexed and mystified many.

Although the dissidents who continue to defy the government’s call for an end to the protests over the June 12 presidential election have failed to provide hard proof that the election was rigged in favor of the incumbent, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, their suspicions are reasonable and their right to speak out against a perceived wrong unquestionable.

On the other hand, there are those who allege interference by foreign powers attempting to fuel unrest and destabilize the government with the eventual goal of regime change in mind, suspicions which are also not unreasonable given the historical record, which contains no shortage of precedents for similar actions.

The 1953 CIA-orchestrated coup d’etat that overthrew Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh was one such example, well remembered in Iran but often purged from U.S. accounts and unknown among much of the American public.

Stephen Kinzer has done much to remedy this with his book All the Shah’s Men, which documents events leading up to and following the coup in extraordinary detail. An award-winning journalist for the New York Times, Kinzer was at one time also the paper’s bureau chief in Istanbul, and has received an honorary doctorate for his lifelong contribution to journalism.

Stephen Kinzer generously set aside time from his busy schedule, which includes work writing a new book on realpolitik in the Middle East set to come out early next year, to join me in an interview for Foreign Policy Journal to try to clear up some of the ambiguities surrounding Iran’s disputed election and to share his view of the events that have followed and the controversy that has captured the world’s attention.

Israeli firms accused of profiting off Holocaust

• Families battle for assets in court

Israel’s second largest bank will be forced to defend itself in court in the coming weeks over claims it is withholding tens of millions of dollars in “lost” accounts belonging to Jews who died in the Nazi death camps.

Bank Leumi has denied it holds any such funds despite a parliamentary committee revealing in 2004 that the bank owes at least $75 million to the families of several thousand Holocaust victims.

Analysts said the bank’s role is only the tip of an iceberg in which Israeli companies and state bodies could be found to have withheld billions of dollars invested by Holocaust victims in the country -- dwarfing the high-profile reparations payouts from such European countries as Switzerland.

“All I want is justice,” said David Hillinger, 73, whose grandfather, Aaron, died in Auschwitz, a Nazi camp in Poland. Lawyers are demanding reparations of $100,000 for Bank Leumi accounts held by his father and grandfather.

The allegations against Bank Leumi surfaced more than a decade ago following research by Yossi Katz, an Israeli historian.

He uncovered bank correspondence in the immediate wake of the Second World War in which it cited “commercial secrecy” as grounds for refusing to divulge the names of account holders who had been killed in the Holocaust.

“I was shocked,” said Dr Katz, from Bar Ilan University near Tel Aviv. “My first reaction was: ‘My God, this isn’t Switzerland!’ ”

In 1998, following widespread censure, Swiss banks agreed to pay $1.25 billion in reparations after they there were accused of having profited from the dormant accounts of Holocaust victims.

Dr Katz’s revelations led to the establishment of a parliamentary committee in 2000 to investigate the behaviour of Israel’s banks. Its report came to light belatedly in 2004 after Bank Leumi put pressure on the government to prevent publication.

Investigators found thousands of dormant accounts belonging to Holocaust victims in several banks, though the lion’s share were located at Bank Leumi. Obstructions from Leumi meant many other account holders had probably not been identified, the investigators warned.

The parliamentary committee originally estimated the accounts it had located to be worth more than $160m, using the valuation formula applied to the Swiss banks. But under pressure from Leumi and the government, it later reduced the figure by more than half.

A restitution company was created in 2006 to search for account holders and return the assets to their families.

Meital Noy, a spokeswoman for the company, said it had been forced to begin legal proceedings after Bank Leumi had continued to claim that its findings were “baseless”.

The bank paid $5m two years ago in what it says was a “goodwill gesture”. Ms Noy called the payment “a joke”. She said 3,500 families, most of them in Israel, were seeking reparations from Bank Leumi.

The bank was further embarrassed by revelations in 2007 that one per cent of its shares -- worth about $80 million -- belonged to tens of thousands of Jews killed during the Holocaust.

Mr Hillinger, who was born in Belgium in 1936 and spent the Second Wold War hiding in southern France, today lives in Petah Tikva in central Israel.

He said before the outbreak of war his father and grandfather had invested money in the Anglo-Palestine Bank, the forerunner of Leumi, in the hope it would gain them a visa to what was then British-ruled Palestine.

Although his parents escaped the death camps, his grandparents were sent to Auschwitz and died in the gas chambers shortly after arrival.