New Owner Purges Re****ters At Israel's Haaretz
By Ed Corrigan,
via Rense.Com
5-31-8
A new German owner has purchased Haaretz and a "Putsch is being
carried out among re****ting staff," in the most im****tant and liberal
Zionist paper in Israel. According to inside sources, the new owner
has carried out a rough, sittingroom survey that revealed that "the
occupation doesn't sell newspapers" and they are therefore
concentrating on the business world (ie. The Marker).
Twilight Zone, Gideon Levy's regular Friday column, has been scrapped,
Amira Hass has been degraded to freelance on half salary, Meron
Rapa****t has been fired and Akiva Eldar has lost at least one half
page a week.
The paper frequently allowed journalists critical of the Israeli
occupation to publish articles that exposed the reality of the
occupation to the Israeli population and was circulated around the
world. The new editorial direction is disturbing news. Haaretz was one
of the few decent Israeli media outlets and showed that in Israel
there was some respect for freedom of the press and critical
discussion. This is a repeat of the situation when Conrad Black*
bought the Jerusalem Post and hired an Israeli censor to be publisher.
The decent journalists all quit in protest, including Benny Morris
back when he still had a moral conscience.
DENIED ENTRY
It reflects a more disturbing trend. Norman Finkelstein was recently
denied entry into Israel and the West Bank. Bishop Desmond Tutu was
denied entry into Israel too. Prominent Palestinian journalists are
routinely denied exit visas by the Israelis to leave the Occupied
Territories to go on speaking tours and a group of Palestinians
students from Gaza were also recently denied exit visas to attend
American universities after being granted Fulbright Scholar****ps from
the American Government.
It appears that the Israelis are closing down many if not all of the
sources of critical information coming out of Israel. The hypocracy of
it all is that Israel complains that when the British Academic Union
proposes a boycott of Israeli academic institutions as a way to
pressure Israel and to protest Israel's policies toward the
Palestinians the Israelis start to scream that the proposed boycott is
a violation of freedom of speech and a violation of academic freedom.
Israeli authorities have been cru****ng academic freedom and free
speech for Palestinians, and even Israeli critics, for decades.
Israel does not want its own population and the rest of the world to
know what it is doing to the Palestinians.
Source: http://www.rense.com/general82/purge.htm
________________________
As Things Look, Israel May Well Attack Iran Soon
By Joschka Fischer
Commentary,
Daily Star, Lebanon,
Friday, May 30, 2008
As a result of misguided American policy, the threat of another
military confrontation hangs like a dark cloud over the Middle East.
The United States' enemies have been strengthened, and Iran - despite
being branded as a member of the so-called "axis of evil" - has been
catapulted into regional hegemony. Iran could never have achieved this
on its own, certainly not in such a short time.
A hitherto latent rivalry between Iran and Israel thus has been
transformed into an open struggle for dominance in the Middle East.
The result has been the emergence of some surprising, if not bizarre,
alliances: Iran, Syria, Hizbullah, Hamas and the American-backed,
****ite-dominated Iraq are facing Israel, Saudi Arabia, and most of the
other Sunni Arab states, all of which feel existentially threatened by
Iran's ascendance.
The danger of a major confrontation has been heightened further by a
series of factors: persistently high oil prices, which have created
new financial and political op****tunities for Iran; the possible
defeat of the West and its regional allies in proxy wars in Gaza and
Lebanon; and the United Nations Security Council's failure to induce
Iran to accept even a tem****ary freeze of its nuclear program.
Iran's nuclear program is the decisive factor in this equation, for it
threatens irreversibly the region's strategic balance. That Iran - a
country whose president never tires of calling for Israel's
annihilation and that threatens Israel's northern and southern borders
through its massive sup****t of proxy wars waged by Hizbullah and Hamas
- might one day have missiles with nuclear warheads is Israel's worst
security nightmare. Politics is not just about facts, but also about
perceptions. Whether or not a perception is accurate is beside the
point, because it nonetheless leads to decisions.
This applies in particular when the perception concerns what the
parties consider to be threats to their very existence. Iranian
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's threats of annihilation are taken
seriously in Israel because of the trauma of the Holocaust. And most
Arab governments share the fear of a nuclear Iran. Earlier this month,
Israel celebrated its 60th birthday, and US President George W. Bush
went to Jerusalem to play a leading part in the commemoration. But
those who had expected that his visit would mainly be about the
stalled negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians were bitterly
disappointed. Bush's central topic, including his speech to Israel's
Knesset, was Iran. Bush had promised to bring the Middle East conflict
closer to a resolution before the end of his term this year. But his
final visit to Israel seemed to indicate that his objective was
different: he seemed to be planning, together with Israel, to end the
Iranian nuclear program - and to do so by military, rather than by
diplomatic, means.
Anyone following the press in Israel during the anniversary
celebrations and listening closely to what was said in Jerusalem did
not have to be a prophet to understand that matters are coming to a
head. Consider the following:
First, "stop the appeasement!" is a demand raised across the political
spectrum in Israel - and what is meant is the nuclear threat emanating
from Iran.
Second, while Israel celebrated, Defense Minister Ehud Barak was
quoted as saying that a life-and-death military confrontation was a
distinct possibility.
Third, the outgoing commander of the Israeli Air Force declared that
the air force was capable of any mission, no matter how difficult, to
protect the country's security. The destruction of a Syrian nuclear
facility last year, and the lack of any international reaction to it,
were viewed as an example for the coming action against Iran.
Fourth, the Israeli wish list for US arms deliveries, discussed with
the American president, focused mainly on the improvement of the
attack capabilities and precision of the Israeli Air Force.
Fifth, diplomatic initiatives and UN sanctions when it comes to Iran
are seen as hopelessly ineffective.
And sixth, with the approaching end of the Bush presidency and
uncertainty about his successor's policy, the window of op****tunity
for Israeli action is seen as potentially closing.
The last two factors carry special weight. While Israeli military
intelligence is on record as saying that Iran is expected to cross the
red line on the path to nuclear power between 2010 and 2015 at the
earliest, the feeling in Israel is that the political window of
op****tunity to attack is now, during the last months of Bush's
presidency.
Although it is acknowledged in Israel that an attack on Iran's nuclear
facilities would involve grave and hard-to-*****s risks, the choice
between acceptance of an Iranian bomb and an attempt at its military
destruction, with all the attendant consequences, is clear. Israel
won't stand by and wait for matters to take their course.
The Middle East is drifting toward a new great confrontation in 2008.
Iran must understand that without a diplomatic solution in the coming
months, a dangerous military conflict is very likely to erupt. It is
high time for serious negotiations to begin.
The most recent offer by the six powers - the UN Security Council's
five permanent members plus Germany - is on the table, and it goes
very far in accommodating Iran's interests. The decisive question,
however, will be whether it will be possible to freeze the Iranian
nuclear program for the duration of the negotiations to avoid a
military confrontation before these negotiations are completed. Should
this newest attempt fail, things will soon get serious. Deadly
serious.
(Joschka Fischer, Germany's foreign minister and vice chancellor from
1998 to 2005, led
Germany's Green Party for nearly 20 years. THE DAILY STAR publishes
this commentary in collaboration with Project Syndicate-Institute for
Human Sciences (c) www.project-syndicate.org).
SOURCE:
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id=92572
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