186 No oil for blood! Bike-riders repaint lanes in NY after removed at Hasidic request

No oil for blood! Bike-riders repaint lanes in NY after removed at Hasidic request

(1) No oil for blood! - Philip Weiss
(2) Oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens says US oil companies missing out on Iraq's oil
(3) Contracts Awarded to Russian, Norwegian Firms on Last Day of Iraq Oil Auction
(4) Walt: On Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Lobby
(5) Meeting on Iran's nuclear programme cancelled
(6) Meeting to impose sanctions on on Iran cancelled at China`s request
(7) Race against time for UN to prevent Iran’s nuclear ambitions
(8) For Palestinians, Every Day Is Kristallnacht - Paul Craig Roberts
(9) Vanunu: Israel is not a democracy unless you are a Jew
(10) Settlers attack West Bank mosque and burn holy Muslim books
(11) Egypt demolishing Muslim Brotherhood hospital
(12) Bicycle-riders repaint bike lanes in NY after they were removed at Hasidic request
(13) Washington Fuss Over White House Hanukkah Party

(1) No oil for blood! - Philip Weiss

http://mondoweiss.net/2009/12/no-oil-for-blood.html

No oil for blood!

by Philip Weiss on December 14, 2009 · 15 comments

The Israel lobby theory of Iraq war is looking better and better. Reuters, Saturday:

    Critics said the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq said was driven by oil, but United States oil majors were largely absent from an Iraqi auction of oil deals snapped up instead by Russian, Chinese and other firms. <http://www.reuters.com/assets/print?aid=USTRE5BB18Q20091212>

Here by the way is Steve Walt dispensing with Peter Beinart’s claim that Afghanistan demonstrates that the Israel lobby had no role in the Iraq disaster. <http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/12/08/on_afghanistan_iraq_and_the_lobby_a_response_to_peter_beinart>

(2) Oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens says US oil companies missing out on Iraq's oil

http://in.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idINN2149238420091021

Pickens says U.S. firms 'entitled' to Iraqi oil

Thu Oct 22, 2009 2:18am IST

By Tom Doggett

WASHINGTON, Oct 21 (Reuters) - Oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens told Congress on Wednesday that U.S. energy companies are "entitled" to some of Iraq's crude because of the large number of American troops that lost their lives fighting in the country and the U.S. taxpayer money spent in Iraq.

Boone, speaking to the newly formed Congressional Natural Gas Caucus, complained that the Iraqi government has awarded contracts to foreign companies, particularly Chinese firms, to develop Iraq's vast reserves while American companies have mostly been shut out.

"They're opening them (oil fields) up to other companies all over the world ... We're entitled to it," Pickens said of Iraq's oil. "Heck, we even lost 5,000 of our people, 65,000 injured and a trillion, five hundred billion dollars."

President Barack Obama has pledged to withdraw U.S. troops in Iraq.

"We leave there with the Chinese getting the oil," Pickens said.

Iraq's Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani told a Washington conference on Wednesday that his government was happy with the energy auction it held earlier this year. The auction was the first chance for foreign oil firms to compete for Iraqi oil since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

"We're pleased with scale and participation of the IOC (International Oil Companies) and the transparent and public competition," Shahristani said at a U.S.-Iraq business and investment conference.

BP and the Chinese oil company CNPC were the only firms to win a contract in Iraq's bid round this summer, the first chance for foreign oil firms to compete for Iraqi oil since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Seven other oil and gas fields failed to attract bidders on the terms Iraq offered. ...

(3) Contracts Awarded to Russian, Norwegian Firms on Last Day of Iraq Oil Auction
Russia's Lukoil and Norway's Statoil won a joint contract to develop a major untapped oil field in southern Iraq, Saturday, on the second and final day of a two-day auction aimed at boosting Iraq's oil output. Representatives from dozens of foreign oil companies attended the auction, despite security risks.

Edward Yeranian | Cairo

12 December 2009

http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/middle-east/12dec09-iraq-oil-79122227.html

The Iraqi government expressed satisfaction with the outcome of major two-day oil auction, Saturday after awarding the prized West Qurna Phase Two oil field to both Russia's Lukoil and Norway's Statoil.

The winning bid by the two companies proposed to give Iraq a fee of $1.15 per barrel of crude extracted from the field. The companies also pledged to reach an output of 1.8 million barrels per day.

Friday, Iraq awarded contracts to exploit the Majnoon oil field to Royal Dutch Shell and Malaysia's Petronas, while granting another major contract to China's CNPC.

Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani declared that the results of the auction were "a victory," adding that Iraq would not waste the money from the oil deals "on wars," as former president Saddam Hussein "used to [do]." The money, he emphasized, will "go to the Iraqi people."

(4) Walt: On Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Lobby

http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/12/08/on_afghanistan_iraq_and_the_lobby_a_response_to_peter_beinart

On Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Lobby: A response to Peter Beinart

Stephen M. Walt

Wed, 12/09/2009

 At the risk of sounding self-congratulatory, one measure of the impact that our book on the Israel lobby has had is the lengths that some critics go in their attempts to discredit it. The latest entrant into this field is recovering Iraq hawk Peter Beinart, who earlier this week offered a new and truly goofy "refutation" of our argument about the lobby’s role in causing the Iraq war.

Beinart's critique is straightforward. He says that Obama's decision to escalate in Afghanistan "blows a hole" in our (alleged) claim that "America wages war in the Muslim world, in large measure, because of the Israel lobby." We make no such argument, of course, but it seems that careful reading is not one of Beinart's strengths. We did argue that the lobby played a critical role in the decision to invade Iraq in 2003, although we emphasized that it "did not cause the war by itself." His "evidence" against his made-up charge is the fact that key organizations in the lobby such as AIPAC have been largely silent on Afghanistan, focusing instead on the familiar issues of Israel-Palestine and Iran. Yet Obama upped the ante in Afghanistan anyway.

Furthermore, a number of prominent neoconservatives have endorsed Obama's Afghan surge, even though this step makes military action against Iran less likely, which, according to Beinart, would be "bad for Israel." Thus, he reasons, the neoconservatives' position on Afghanistan proves that they "aren't warlike on Israel's behalf, they are just warlike," which Beinart thinks is more evidence that the lobby (and more generally, a concern for Israel) had little to do with the Iraq war.

There are many holes in this argument. Here are four.

First, whether the lobby and Israel played a critical role in causing the US to invade Iraq in March 2003 is an empirical question that revolves around the facts of the decision-making process that led to that war.  In our book, we presented abundant evidence of the neoconservatives' key role in conceiving, advocating, and helping make the decision to invade Iraq, and we also showed that other key groups in the lobby -- including AIPAC, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and the Jewish Council on Public Affairs -- supported it as well. Prominent individuals in the lobby such as Mortimer Zuckerman, David Harris, and Rabbi Eric Yoffie, as well as "pro-Israel" pundits like Martin Indyk, Ken Pollock and Beinart himself, were cheerleaders for the war, even though the overall population of American Jews was less supportive of the war than the U.S. population as a whole. Whatever factors led Obama to put 30,000 more troops in Afghanistan are largely irrelevant for understanding what happened in the years and months before we invaded Iraq, let alone the lobby's role in shaping other aspects of U.S. Middle East policy. On the latter point, I might note, Beinart admits it has "great power."

Second, the logic behind Beinart's discussion of how Afghanistan relates to Iraq makes no sense. He thinks that finding a case (Afghanistan) where the United States went to war or escalated an ongoing war that the lobby cared little about proves that we are wrong about Iraq, because it shows that you don't need the lobby to make a war happen. But we never said the lobby's influence was behind every war the United States has fought since Israel's founding, or even every military action the United States has undertaken in the Middle East; such a claim would be absurd. Indeed, Beinart's depiction sounds to me like an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, which attributes to Jewish organizations a sinister and all-powerful control over nearly every aspect of U.S. policy. Needless to say, we explicitly rejected this sort of argument in our book.

In fact, most groups in the lobby never had much interest in Afghanistan, so it's hard to see what their lack of enthusiasm for Obama's surge tells us about their influence on the decision to invade Iraq in 2003. Saddam's Iraq, on the other hand, had fired SCUD missiles at Israel in 1991, was giving money to the families of suicide bombers, and was suspected of seeking WMD. Thus, it is easy to understand why many groups in the lobby wanted the United States to invade Iraq, or why the Israeli government overcame its initial reservations and pushed for war once it understood that the Bush administration intended to deal with Iraq first and then train its gunsights on Iran.

Third, Beinart is of course correct to note that the neoconservatives tend to be enthusiastic about using military force and that they are therefore likely to favor some wars that have little to do with Israel's security. He is also correct in observing that they have a Manichean view of international politics. But contrary to what Beinart implies, virtually all neoconservatives are also deeply committed Zionists who believe that the United States should use its military power to promote Israel's interests, which they tend to see as indistinguishable from the interests of the United States. It is no accident that in 1998 the neoconservatives started pushing hard for war against Iraq, not against Afghanistan or North Korea. And after toppling Saddam, they hoped to use America's formidable military might to go after Iran and Syria, Israel's other main enemies in the Middle East. In short, one can be "warlike and hold "a Manichean worldview," and still "be warlike on Israel's behalf." And the neoconservatives are clearly both.

Fourth, Beinart's argument depends in good part on the fact that getting more deeply involved in Afghanistan makes it more difficult to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. This issue is much more important than Afghanistan to Israel and if the neocons care so deeply about Israel, then it ought to be more important to them. Yet the neoconservatives strongly support Obama's surge (though they are also quite hawkish when it comes to Iran). To Beinart's way of thinking, this must mean that an attachment to Israel isn't very important to them after all; they are just overly fond of using military force.

That's not what is going on here. Virtually all prominent neoconservatives are deeply and openly committed to Israel's security -- sometimes dramatically so -- and there are two obvious reasons why they favor getting more deeply involved in Afghanistan, even it does make it more difficult to confront Iran. First, history shows that they are incompetent strategists who often advocate policies that they think will be good for Israel but in fact turn out to harm the Jewish state. The invasion of Iraq is an obvious case in point, as its main beneficiary turned out to be Iran. Second, the neoconservatives are happy to see the United States embroil itself with countries and groups in the Arab and Muslim world, because maintaining a constant state of tension between the United States and Islam is a good way to safeguard the "special relationship."

In sum, neither the neoconservatives' strong support for Obama's recent decision on Afghanistan, nor the relative indifference of groups like AIPAC, tells us much about the lobby's role in defending the "special relationship" between the United States and Israel or its influence on the decision to invade Iraq in 2003.

(5) Meeting on Iran's nuclear programme cancelled

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8413066.stm

Page last updated at 22:08 GMT, Monday, 14 December 2009

A planned meeting of diplomats from world powers on curbing Iran's nuclear programme has been cancelled.

Envoys from the US, UK, France, Russia, China and Germany had been due to meet, reportedly either in Brussels or at the Copenhagen climate conference.

Unnamed US sources told reporters China had had scheduling problems. There will now be a live conference by phone.

A US spokesman said the diplomats looked forward to continuing their consultations on how to deal with Iran.

Correspondents say the news marks a setback for efforts to present a unified front on Iran in the face of continued defiance from Tehran.

The Iranians are under UN Security Council sanctions for refusing to stop enriching uranium.

The US and France said it was time to impose new sanctions last week, after a UN report suggested that Iran was trying to defy some of the existing curbs.

(6) Meeting to impose sanctions on on Iran cancelled at China`s request
From: Kristoffer Larsson <kristoffer.larsson@sobernet.nu> Date: 15.12.2009 06:40 PM

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1134995.html

Last update - 00:00 14/12/2009

World power meeting on Iran nuclear canceled at China`s request

By The Associated Press

Senior officials say that a meeting by five world powers on Iran's nuclear program has been canceled on China's request.

The U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany had planned to meet Friday. Officials from three of the five powers demanded anonymity Monday because their information was confidential.

One of the officials said China cited scheduling problems in asking for the cancellations. He and another official said the five now planned to talk via conference call.

The meeting was to be in Brussels or on the sidelines of the Copenhagen summit.

Iran has shrugged off three sets of U.N. Security Council sanctions imposed to curb its uranium enrichment program. Tehran says it needs to enrich to make fuel for a future reactor network. But the program can also be used to make fissile warhead material.

Israel's defense minister urged the world Monday to agree to tough new sanctions on Iran, suggesting that military strikes remained a final option should Tehran refuse to heed Security Council demands.

7) Race a(gainst time for UN to prevent Iran’s nuclear ambitions

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/bronwen_maddox/article6956662.ece

December 15, 2009

Bronwen Maddox

There is a tiny chance that more sanctions might work in persuading Iran to halt its nuclear work, or even in overthrowing the regime. But there won’t be any sanctions if diplomats don’t get a move on.

The unbelievably slow pace at which they are scheduling their meetings does not match the speed with which Iran’s work is moving forward. A key UN meeting on Friday was postponed yesterday at China’s request, and that may be a covert way of stalling, although Chinese officials deny it.

However, the result is that we are now, in essence, into a Christmas break. Yet there may be only months left before Iran’s nuclear work puts it within easy reach of a bomb.

There are two reasons why new sanctions might have an effect where existing ones have failed. If they came with clear support from Russia and China they would tell Iran that it had finally alienated its most important friends.

Second, the regime is much more vulnerable than when the last sanctions were applied, and the economy is more fragile. Iranian leaders are afraid of being overthrown — even if, for the moment, they have crushed the opposition. Either a change of behaviour or a change of regime would count as success.

There are three separate tracks of talks. Most hopes rest on a core group within the United Nations Security Council — the “E3 plus 3” in diplomatic jargon, or Britain, France, Germany, the US, Russia and China. The reluctance of Russia and China may dilute the economic impact of any new sanctions, but the political impact of a united front means that this track could be the most valuable.

The European Union is also pursuing its own course. But as Germany is Iran’s main trading partner in Europe, with Italy also significant, those two governments will largely determine the outcome.

The third track — the US, acting alone — could have the greatest economic impact on Iran, as early versions, targeted at its banks, have shown. The US does not trade directly with Iran, but could cripple trade by penalising companies in countries that do. Iranian leaders would try to rally people against the US, blaming the Great Satan for their suffering.

Iran’s ability to shrug off sanctions so far is a reminder of the limited power of the US and the EU. But a united front of the US, the EU, Russia and China would hurt Tehran — if diplomats hold

(8) For Palestinians, Every Day Is Kristallnacht - Paul Craig Roberts

From: Sadanand, Nanjundiah (Physics Earth Sciences) <sadanand@mail.ccsu.edu> Date: 15.12.2009 02:04 PM

For Palestinians, Every Day Is Kristallnacht

By Paul Craig Roberts

December 14, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- “Settlers attack West Bank mosque and burn holy Muslim books” was a London Times headline on December 11, 2009.

These attacks, together with the demolition of Palestinian homes, the uprooting of Palestinians’ olive groves, the innumerable checkpoints that prevent Palestinians from accessing schools, work, and medical care, the Israeli Wall that denies Palestinians access to the land stolen from them, and the isolation and blockade of the Gaza Ghetto, are part of the Israeli government’s policy of genocide for the Palestinians.

Note that nearly 10 years of aggressive land grabbing by Israel has taken place since this map was last updated. The question is: Who is really wiping who off the map?

The Israel Lobby has such power over America that even former President Jimmy Carter, a good friend of Israel, is demonized for using the polite term--apartheid--for the genocide that has occurred over the decades during which American “Christian” preachers, together with bought-and-paid-for politicians, justified Israel’s policy of slow genocide for Palestine.

Israelis who still have a moral conscience--a small part of the population--endeavor to use moral protests against the inhumanity of the Israeli government. Israelis Jeff Halper and Angela Godfrey-Goldstein lead the Israeli Committee Against House Demolition (ICAHD), a non-violent, direct-action group established to oppose and resist Israeli demolition of Palestinian homes in the Occupied Territories.

Under international law an occupier by military force is forbidden to steal the occupied land. The US, however, has protected Israel’s violation of international law for decades by vetoing UN resolutions. Israel has been able to steal Palestine from the Palestinians, because the US government used its power to prevent Israel from being held accountable under international law.

In March 2003 American citizen Rachel Corrie stood in front of an Israeli bulldozer, made by Caterpillar and sent to destroy a Palestinian home. Her courageous act of defiance was regarded as an annoyance, and she was run over and murdered by the Israeli bulldozer operator. Israel suffered no consequences for its murder of an American citizen who had a moral conscience.

In the Israeli-controlled American media, we hear endlessly that Palestinians are terrorists who strap on explosives in order to kill innocent Israelis and who terrorize Israeli towns by firing rockets into them. One look at the maps above is enough to make clear who the real terrorist is. The success of Israeli propaganda in the face of totally obvious facts damns the ignorance and unconcern of the American people.

The Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, which also has a moral conscience and is intelligent to boot, wrote on December 4, 2009: “Every appointee to the American government must endure a thorough background check by the American Jewish community.” http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1132797.html Haaretz notes that any American that the President of the United States proposes for an appointment to his government is subject to the approval of the Israel Lobby, which can blackball appointees at will.

Haaretz gives the example of Charles Freeman, whom President Obama intended to appoint as head of the National Intelligence Council. The Israel Lobby proved, again, that it was more powerful than a mere American President and prevented the appointment, citing Freeman’s “anti-israel leaning.” In other words, because Freeman was not an overboard apologist for Israel’s crimes he was unacceptable to the Israel Lobby.

Haaretz reports: “The next attempt to appoint an intelligence aide, in this case, former Republican senator Chuck Hagel, also resulted in vast criticism over his not having a pro-Israel record.” The Israel Lobby has blocked Hagel’s appointment by President Obama. Hagel doesn’t want to start a war with Iran for Israel’s benefit and was blackballed by Morton A. Klein, the president of the Zionist Organization of America. Hagel, it seems, “refused to sign a letter calling on then-president George Bush to speak about Iran’s nuclear program at the G8 summit that year.”

Now it is a Jewish daughter of a Holocaust survivor, Hannah Rosenthal, whose appointment to head the US Office to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, an office that is another indication of America’s puppet state status, is under attack. Rosenthal was the head of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs during 2000-2005. Her black mark came from serving on the advisory board of the J Street Lobby, a recently-formed American Jewish organization formed in opposition to AIPAC’s murderous militarism.

The Israel Lobby’s opposition to Hannah Rosenthal shows that no moral person can survive the Israel Lobby’s blackball.

The US, “the world’s only superpower,” has no independent voice in Middle Eastern affairs. The real power rests in the hands of the settler thug, Avigdor Lieberman, Deputy Prime Minister of Israel and Minister of Foreign Affairs. This is the man who controls the Obama government’s Middle East policy. Lieberman forced the “all-powerful President of the US, Barack Omama,” to rescind his order to Israel to halt the illegal settler settlements on occupied Palestinian land. Obama was given the bird and submitted to his master.

Macho Americans who prance around as if they owned the world are nothing but the puppets of Israel. The US is not a country. It is a colony.

(9) Vanunu: Israel is not a democracy unless you are a Jew

From: Sadanand, Nanjundiah (Physics Earth Sciences) <sadanand@mail.ccsu.edu> Date:  15.12.2009 01:53 PM

What Americans Need to know about Mordechai Vanunu

By Eileen Fleming

Monday, 14 December 2009

http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/news/1/12507-what-americans-need-to-know-about-mordechai-vanunu.html

I'm not a traitor. I'm a man with a conscience who did what he did out of a deep belief after much thought and many doubts. But I knew that I had to do it, that I had no choice...somebody had to do it...I contributed my share by making public what the public ought to know and they shut my mouth behind the prison walls. -Mordechai Vanunu

December 14, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- Mordechai Vanunu was released from Ashkelon prison to open air captivity in east Jerusalem on April 21, 2004 after 18 years-most all in solitary-on April 21, 2004.

In 1986, Mordechai Vanunu was clubbed, drugged, bound and kidnapped from Rome by the Mossad because he told the truth and provided the photographic proof of their clandestine 7 story underground WMD facility in the Negev.

In the case of Mordechai Vanunu, Americans need to know that the restrictions that have held him captive in Jerusalem come from the Emergency Defense Regulations which were implemented by Britain against Palestinians and Jews after World War II.

After WW II, Attorney Yaccov Shapiro, who later became Israel's Minister Of Justice, described the Emergency Defense Regulations as "unparalleled in any civilized country: there were no such laws in Nazi Germany."

During one of my seven trips to Jerusalem since 2005, I asked Vanunu, "If the British Mandate has expired why not the British Mandate's Emergency Defense Regulations?"

Vaunu replied, "The reason given is security but it is because Israel is not a democracy unless you are a Jew. This administration tells me I am not allowed to speak to foreigners, the Media, and the world. But I do because that is how I prove my true humanity to the world. My freedom of speech trial began January 25, 2006 for speaking to the media, the same day as the Palestinian elections...When I decided to expose Israel's nuclear weapons I acted out of conscience and to warn the world to prevent a nuclear holocaust."

In 1963, Peres was Israel's Deputy Minister of Defense when he met with President Kennedy at the White House. Kennedy told Peres, "You know that we follow very closely the discovery of any nuclear development in the region. This could create a very dangerous situation. For this reason we monitor your nuclear effort. What could you tell me about this?"

Peres replied, "I can tell you most clearly that we will not introduce nuclear weapons to the region, and certainly we will not be the first."

In 2005, Vanunu told me, "President Kennedy tried to stop Israel from building atomic weapons. In 1963, he forced Prime Minister Ben Guirion to admit the Dimona was not a textile plant, as the sign outside proclaimed, but a nuclear plant. The Prime Minister said, 'The nuclear reactor is only for peace.'

"Kennedy insisted on an open internal inspection. He wrote letters demanding that Ben Guirion open up the Dimona for inspection. The French were responsible for the actual building of the Dimona. The Germans gave the money; they were feeling guilty for the Holocaust, and tried to pay their way out. Everything inside was written in French, when I was there, almost twenty years ago.

"Back then, the Dimona descended seven floors underground. In 1955, Perez and Guirion met with the French to agree they would get a nuclear reactor if they fought against Egypt to control the Sinai and Suez Canal. That was the war of 1956. Eisenhower demanded that Israel leave the Sinai, but the reactor plant deal continued on.

"When Johnson became president, he made an agreement with Israel that two senators would come every year to inspect. Before the senators would visit, the Israelis would build a wall to block the underground elevators and stairways. From 1963 to '69, the senators came, but they never knew about the wall that hid the rest of the Dimona from them.

"Nixon stopped the inspections and agreed to ignore the situation. As a result, Israel increased production. In 1986, there were over two hundred bombs. Today, they may have enough plutonium for ten bombs a year."

On January 25, 2006, after nearly two years of speaking to hundreds of foreigners since his release from prison, Vanunu was convicted by the Jerusalem Magistrates Court of 15 violations of a military order that had prohibited him from talking to non-Israelis and because he attempted to "leave the state" by taking a cab from Jerusalem to Bethlehem to attend Christmas Eve mass at the Church of the Nativity in 2004. The original indictment included 22 different violations; Vanunu was charged with 19 and acquitted of four. He was acquitted of speaking to foreign nationals on the internet and via video and voice chats.

Just prior to the taping of "30 Minutes with Vanunu" on March 26, 2006, Vanunu told me, "Many journalists come here to the American Colony, from CNN and NY Times. They all want to cover my story, but their EDITORS say no...CNN wants to interview me; but they say they can't do it because they don't want problems with the Israeli censor. BBC is doing the same thing. Sixty Minutes from the United States from the beginning they wanted to do a program, but because of the censor situation they decide not to do it."

On July 2, 2007, Israel sentenced Vanunu to six more months in jail for speaking to foreign media in 2004. On September 23, 2008, the Jerusalem District Court reduced Vanunu's sentence to three months, "In light of (Vanunu's) ailing health and the absence of claims that his actions put the country's security in jeopardy."

On June 14, 2009, Vanunu told me, "The Central Commander of the General Army testified in court that it is OK if I speak in public as long as I do not talk about nuclear weapons."

Vanunu's restrictions will be reviewed again by the Israeli High Court after Dec. 21, 2009. On July 6, 2009, the Supreme Court stated, "pending a review of his conduct, Vanunu will be able to ask for the restrictions to be lifted and be allowed to travel abroad...The state's representative noted that six months may be too short a time period to determine a change in Vanunu's behavior and that the state will reconsider the restrictions based not only on Vanunu's behavior but a host of other considerations, including the time that had lapsed since he divulged state secrets to the British paper." [1]

It will soon be twenty-four years since Vanunu "divulged state secrets" and as Vanunu told me, "All the secrets I had were published in 1989 in an important book, by [Nuclear Physicist] Frank Barnaby, The Invisible Bomb: Nuclear Arms Race in the Middle East." [2]

Regarding Israeli behavior towards Vanunu, Americans need to know that in 1986, Israel kidnapped him from Rome but Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states: "No one shall he subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention", including abduction of a person by agents of one state to another state.

Vanunu was charged with and convicted of treason and espionage. According to Section 99 of the Israeli Penal Code, treason is defined as "an act calculated to assist (an enemy) in time of war...delivering information with the intention that it fall into the hands of the enemy."

 Section 113 defines aggravated espionage as "deliver(ing) any secret information without being authorized to do so and with intent to impair the security of the state" and a sub-clause provides for a penalty of seven years for the unauthorized collection, preparation, recording or holding of secret information; if this is done with intent to impair the security of the state and then, the penalty is increased to 15 years.

Vanunu got 18 years and was also rendered defenseless when the court ruled that his motivations were not ideological and they refused to allow Vanunu's own statements regarding his intentions to be considered in his defense.

A few days before Vanunu was lured from London to Rome, where he was clubbed, drugged and kidnapped by the Mossad, he spent three days being interviewed by Nuclear Physicist, Frank Barnaby.

Barnaby had been employed by the London Sunday Times to review the 57 photos Vanunu had obtained at various restricted locations in the Dimona and he also went to Jerusalem to provide expert testimony at Vanunu's closed door trial.

Barnaby testified, "I found the fact that Vanunu was able to smuggle a camera and films into and out of Dimona and photograph highly sensitive areas in the establishment astonishing. I very vigorously cross-examined Vanunu, relentlessly asking the same questions in a number of different ways and at different times...I found Vanunu very straightforward about his motives for violating Israel's secrecy laws he explained to me that he believed that both the Israeli and the world public had the right to know about the information he passed on. He seemed to me to be acting ideologically.

"Israel's political leaders have, he said, consistently lied about Israel's nuclear-weapons programme and he found this unacceptable in a democracy. The knowledge that Vanunu had about Isreal's nuclear weapons, about the operations at Dimona, and about security at Dimona could not be of any use to anyone today. He left Dimona in October 1985 and the design of today's Israeli nuclear weapons will have been considerably changed since then...Modern nuclear weapons bear little relationship to those of the mid-1980."[3]

A total of 1,200 pages of transcript of that closed door trial have been released and Vanunu told the court: "I wanted to confirm what everyone knew, I didn't want Israel to go on denying that it had nuclear weapons, and Shimon Peres to go on lying to (then US president) Ronald Reagan, saying that we didn't have a nuclear arsenal. I also wanted controls to be placed on these weapons." [4]

Defense witness and the Sunday Times journalist who broke Vanunu's story, Peter Hounam, stated, "It is clear that, as far as Vanunu's accusers are concerned, the trial is not only about whether this decision to reveal the secrets of Israel's atom bomb amounted to treason and espionage, it is also about whether his decision to become a Christian was at the root of his alleged treachery".

Hounam also testified that "We did not pay him money, but only covered his expenses... Money did not motivate him." [5]

Sunday Times journalist Wendy Robbins wrote, "Mordechai never asked for nor received a single penny for his information... he blurted out the whole tale without first setting out any financial preconditions. Mordechai got nothing out of the whole episode. He never `sold' Israel's secrets -- he told them."

In the 80's, Vanunu was transported to and from his closed door trial in a crash helmet, handcuffs and leg-irons, inside a van with blacked out windows that blasted noise to assure Vanunu would not communicate with journalists or supporters. During the court hearings, two Israeli security agents flanked him at all times in order to be able to cover his mouth if he began to reveal anything they deemed secret. The public, the press and all observers-even Amnesty International- were excluded from the hearings and the court's judgment was censored before publication.

On January 25, 2006, the first day of a freedom of speech trial in Israel only two reporters from minor media showed up for Vanunu's historic court case. Not one was in the court room on February 22, 2006, when it was revealed that Israel had gotten Microsoft to hand over all the details of Vanunu's Hotmail account before a court order had been obtained by eluding that he was being charged for espionage. Vanunu wrote, "Microsoft obeyed the orders and gave them all the details...three months before I was arrested and my computers were confiscated...it is strange to ask Microsoft to give this information before obtaining the court order to listen to my private conversations. It means they wanted to go through my emails in secret, or maybe, with the help of the secret services, the Shaback, Mossad...Sfard [Vanunu's attorney] proved that the police had misled the judges who gave the orders to arrest me: to search my room, to go through my email, to confiscate my computers and that they misled Microsoft to believe they are helping in a case of espionage. The State came to the court with two special secret Government orders; Hisaion [documents or information that are deemed confidential by the government and kept from the court, the defendant, and lawyers.] This allows the prosecution to keep documents related to my court hearing secret. One was from the Minister for Interior Security and one from the Minister of Defense."

Americans need to know that Vanunu's secretly taped police interrogations, his 2004 Christmas Eve arrest for "attempting to leave the country" when he attempted to celebrate his first Christmas out of prison at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and the confiscation of his private property by thirty Israeli Forces that stormed into his room at St. George's Cathedral in 2004, according to Vanunu had all "been done...under the false and misleading statements to the courts of 'suspicion of espionage', and yet they are not charging me with spy crimes... and the fact is that I have not committed any crimes."

When Vanunu next faces the Israeli Supreme Court, the world will know more about Israeli democracy and Justice. Until then, learn more @ http://vanunu.com/ and see and hear Vanunu in 2005, 2006, 2008 video interviews freely streaming @ VANUNU ARCHIVES: http://wearewideawake.org/

1. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1246443734213&pagename=JPost% 2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

2. http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id= 1370&Itemid=223

3.  http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/israel/barnaby.pdf

4.  http://www.converge.org.nz/pma/onvan.htm

5.  http://www.toysatellite.org/babel/vanunu/vaninfo.html#top

Eileen Fleming, Founder of WeAreWideAwake.org A Feature Correspondent for Arabisto.com Author of "Keep Hope Alive" and "Memoirs of a Nice Irish American 'Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory" Producer "30 Minutes with Vanunu" and "13 Minutes with Vanunu"

(10) Settlers attack West Bank mosque and burn holy Muslim books

From: Kristoffer Larsson <kristoffer.larsson@sobernet.nu> Date: 13.12.2009 08:03 PM

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6953281.ece

December 11, 2009

Suspected extremist Jewish settlers today attacked a mosque in the northern West Bank, burning holy books and spraying threatening graffiti in Hebrew on the building, Palestinian officials and Israeli police said.

Extremists broke into the mosque in the village of Yasuf, near the city of Nablus, and burned Korans and copies of the Hadith, or sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, and prayer carpets, while spraying slogans on the floor reading “Price tag – greetings from Effi.”

A pile of ash on a scorched carpet was all that remained of around 100 holy books, The Times found.

The so-called 'price tag' is the hardline Jewish settlers’ policy of attacking Palestinians and their property in retribution for any Israeli government curb on settlement expansion. Effi is a Jewish name.

Hardliners are furious that the right-wing government of Binyamin Netanyahu has given in to US pressure to try and enforce a temporary freeze on the construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, where some 300,000 settlers live. It is feared that the attack may be the beginning of an intensified campaign against the government by the settlers.

While the attackers escaped, the Israeli government was quick to condemn the attack. "This is an extremist act geared toward harming the government's efforts to advance the political process for the sake of Israel's future," said Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, whose department is overseeing the freeze.

When they discovered the desecration of their mosque, Palestinian villagers started throwing stones at Israeli soldiers, whom they often accuse of complicity with settlers when they carry out such attacks on them and their olive orchards. Two Palestinians and an Israeli soldier were hurt in the clashes.

There have been rising tensions since Mr Netanyahu announced the proposed freeze last month, in an effort to meet US and Palestinian demands for a total halt on settlement construction, deemed illegal by the international community but often backed by the Israeli state.

Thousands of angry settlers gathered for a demonstration close to the Prime Minister’s residence in Jerusalem this week, vowing to continue building and condemning Mr Natanyahu’s decision to bow to pressure from Barack Obama, the US president. They carried banners that said “Obama wants us frozen, God wants us chosen,” and “God’s Bible gave us this land.”

The settlers believe that the West Bank – which they call by its Biblical name, Judea and Samaria – should be part of a greater Israel, and are adamantly opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state.

They have torn up freeze orders delivered by the Israeli authorities to settlements in the West Bank, and blocked inspectors trying to enforce the building ban. Last week at the settlement of Qedumim, close to Nablus, residents prevented inspectors from entering while cheering as trucks of building materials were brought in.

A right-wing cabinet minister said that the freeze was largely a sham and that the settler population could grow by as many as 3,000 people in the next 10 months, the period of the proposed moratorium.

"This is neither a freeze nor a suspension," Benny Begin, the son of former prime minister Menachem Begin, told a conference in Tel Aviv, according to an Israeli newspaper. "Construction in Judea and Samaria will continue in the next 10 months."

"We are ... saying that we don't intend to restrict or suspend new building permits," he added.

And Mr Netanyahu has tried to temper anger by allocating special development grants to tens of thousands of the settlers, sparking anger from Mr Barak’s centrist Labour party, which has threatened to vote against the measure.

(11) Egypt demolishing Muslim Brotherhood hospital

From: WVNS <ummyakoub@yahoo.com>  Date: 14.12.2009 09:36 AM

Fri, 11 Dec 2009

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=113470§ionid=351020502

Egypt has begun the demolition of a new hospital built by the opposition Muslim Brotherhood for the poor in the capital over what it called the building's 'unsafe' edifice.

The decisions to tear down the 250-bed Islamic Medical Association's Central Charity Hospital built with a burgeoning budget in Cairo comes over the seven-story building's height, officials told Reuters.
"These demolitions are being carried out on buildings higher than the expected range, raising safety concerns," local government spokesperson Khalid Mustafa said on Thursday.

However, Egypt's main opposition party, the Muslim Brotherhood, has accused authorities of playing politics and trying to undermine the party's status in public.

"[The demolitions] are politically motivated. [Other] people build on government-owned land and no one evacuates them," Reuters quoted Brotherhood leader Mohammed Mahdi Akef as saying.

"There is oppression of everything that is Brotherhood-related," he added.

The Muslim Brother hood has run various networks of social projects in order to help the poor.

Egypt, however, has banned political activities of the group despite its popularity and accession of a fifth of the national assembly in the country's 2005 elections.

(12) Bicycle-riders repaint bike lanes in NY after they were removed at Hasidic request

From: Steven Salemi <ssalemi@earthlink.net>  Date: 13.12.2009 06:18 PM

The New York Post

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/brooklyn/bike_war_paint_g7EizkFEZktV3IlNUJosQM

Photo: http://Hipsters%2Brepaint%2Bbike%2Blanes%2Bin%2Bbrush%2Boff%2Bto%2BHasids%2B-%2BNYPOST.com.jpg

Hipsters repaint bike lanes in brush off to Hasids

By JEREMY OLSHAN and JAMIE SCHRAM

December 8, 2009

Groups of bicycle-riding vigilantes have been repainting 14 blocks of Williamsburg roadways ever since the city sandblasted their bike lanes away last week at the request of the Hasidic community.

The Hasids, who have long had a huge enclave in the now-artist-haven neighborhood, had complained that the Bedford Avenue bike paths posed both a safety and religious hazard.

Scantily clad hipster cyclists attracted to the Brooklyn neighborhood made it difficult, the Hasids said, to obey religious laws forbidding them from staring at members of the opposite sex in various states of undress. These riders also were disobeying the traffic laws, they complained.

Two cycling advocates were apprehended by the Shomrim Patrol, a Hasidic neighborhood watch group, as they repainted a section of bike lane at 3:30 a.m. yesterday, but when cops arrived, no one was arrested and no summonses were issued, police said.

"These people should apply for a job at the DOT," neighborhood activist Isaac Abraham said of the repainting. "You put it on, they take it off -- and they will probably do this again."

A Department of Transportation spokesman said: "We will continue to work with any community on ways we can make changes to our streets without compromising safety."

A source close to Mayor Bloomberg said removing the lanes was an effort to appease the Hasidic community just before last month's election.

Abraham contends the bike lanes put children at risk of getting hit by cars or bicycles as they exited school buses.

But Baruch Herzfeld, who has tried to bridge the gap between hipsters and Hasids with a bike-rental program, said safety is not the issue so much as xenophobia.

"They don't want the hipsters in their neighborhood," he said. "It's like in Howard Beach back in the day when they didn't want black people in the neighborhood."

The cycling advocacy group Transportation Alternatives has not taken sides in the dispute.

But bike lane or not, "cyclists have a right to be on Bedford Avenue," said Wiley Norvell, a group spokesman.

Additional reporting by Maggie Haberman and John Doyle

jeremy.olshan@nypost.com

(13) Washington Fuss Over White House Hanukkah Party

From: ReporterNotebook <RePorterNoteBook@Gmail.com> Date: 12.12.2009 07:07 PM

Luke Sharrett/The New York Times

“This is all one big overblown latke,” Rabbi Levi Shemtov said of the fuss over the the White House's Hanukkah party.

By RACHEL L. SWARNS
Published: December 10, 2009

WASHINGTON — At the first Hanukkah party in the Obama White House, a Jewish student choir will sing in sweet harmony, the two young children of a soldier deployed in Iraq will light a 19th-century silver menorah from Prague and President Obama and his wife, Michelle, will greet more than 500 guests in a celebration that is expected to spill from the State Room to the East Room.

But to the dismay of some administration officials, the plans for next week’s party — one of the hottest holiday events for the nation’s Jewish elite — have been overtaken by feverish debate over the size of the guest list, the language on the invitations and what this says (or does not say) about Mr. Obama’s relationship with Jews.

President George W. Bush, who began the tradition of White House Hanukkah parties, invited 600 people to his last party, administration officials say. But rumors spread wildly, first in the Israeli press and then locally, that President Bush had invited 800 people and that the Obamas were planning to invite only 400. (Administration officials say they have invited 550 people.)

The invitations have also caused some consternation because they make no mention of Hanukkah, inviting guests to “a holiday reception” on Dec. 16.

In an opinion article published by JTA, the Jewish news agency, Tevi Troy, a former Bush administration liaison to Jewish groups, warned that the Obama White House had given Jewish Americans “a number of reasons to fear that it takes its votes for granted.” Mr. Troy cited as examples the administration’s call for a freeze on Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the decision to honor Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland, who has been accused by some Democratic lawmakers of anti-Israel bias.

Mr. Troy said the reduced guest list created “a nagging sense that there may be a studied callousness at work here.”

His commentary, published on Nov. 23, and an article a week earlier in The Jerusalem Post, touched off a flurry of news articles, blog postings and kitchen table discussions. This week, the Israeli newspaper Yediot Achronot published photographs of President Bush lighting a menorah and Mr. Obama standing with Santa Claus alongside an article headlined, “Obama Downsizes Hanukkah in the White House.”

Rabbi Levi Shemtov, who is overseeing the process of making the White House kitchen kosher for the party, said he was besieged with questions about the issue on a recent trip to Israel.

“I usually get asked when I came and how long I’m staying; this time, all anyone wanted to know was whether I was getting invited to the White House Hanukkah party,” said Rabbi Shemtov, who heads the Washington office of the American Friends of Lubavitch, which lobbies for the Lubavitch movement.

Rabbi Shemtov, who has attended Hanukkah parties at the White House, said he raised an eyebrow when he received his invitation, but noted that the Bush administration once sent invitations out with Christmas trees on them.

“This is all one big overblown latke,” the rabbi said.

“I feel that we need to save our communal kvetching in reserve for when it’s more called for and really matters,” he continued.

Jewish Democrats accused Republicans of using the party for political ammunition. Advisers to Mr. Obama described the focus on the guest list as disappointing.

“Hanukkah is a wonderful holiday to celebrate, but that’s not the whole ballgame, by any means, in terms of outreach to the Jewish community,” said Susan Sher, one of the president’s two liaisons to Jewish groups.

Ms. Sher noted that Mr. Obama held the first White House seder, invited the leaders of more than a dozen Jewish organizations for a wide-ranging discussion at the White House in July, held a conference call with 900 rabbis in August and videotaped a message to Jews for the High Holy Days in the fall.

Administration officials also noted that White House records showed that Mr. Bush never had more than 584 guests at his Hanukkah parties. Most years there were fewer than 500, they said.

Josh Block, a spokesman for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel lobby, which has disagreed with aspects of Mr. Obama’s policy toward Israel, praised his outreach and said what mattered was that he would continue to hold the party.

Mr. Troy, who said he was astonished by the reaction to his article, agreed. He said the Obamas were “doing what they need to do in terms of outreach.”

As for the party, he is not expecting an invitation.

“The people who are invited will have a great time,” he said. “And a lot of people who didn’t get in will grumble. But you won’t hear any grumbling from me.”