Top Three Gaza Myths Debunked

Despite the so-called “liberal” media’s endless barrage of pro-Israeli propaganda, a significant portion of the U.S. public is opposed to the current attack on Gaza. As the casualties mount and peace is pushed further out of reach, The Indypendent’s Jaisal Noor exposes three big myths of the conflict.

MYTH # 1

The root of the conflict is that Hamas is a terrorist organization bent on the destruction of Israel.

It is true that Hamas commits unjustifiable terrorist acts and is on the United States’ terror list. The “terrorist” label is often used against enemies of U.S.-supported countries. When it was deemed in their interest, Israel and the United States bolstered both Hamas and its predecessor the Muslim Brotherhood. Terrorist tactics were also used by the groups Irgun and the Stern Gang to aid in the creation of a Jewish state. Meanwhile, Israel stands accused of indiscriminately targeting civilians by the United Nations and human rights groups.

The “terror” list currently includes the Lebanese Hezbullah which was born from the resistance to the 1982 Israeli invasion, and until last year included Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress.

Another former member of the U.S. terror list is the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The original PLO charter concurs with the Hamas charter, proclaiming that “armed struggle” be used to reclaim Palestine. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon once accused former PLO leader Yasser Arafat of being a “terrorist,” and refused to negotiate with him. Today the PLO’s biggest party, Fatah, is the preferred peace partner.

Recently, Hamas has firmly maintained that it is now willing to participate in negotiations based on internationally recognized borders and rights. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that as early as 2006, Hamas leader Ismaeil Haniyeh offered “a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders and … a truce for many years.” Haniyeh called on President Bush to launch a dialogue with the Hamas government. “We are not warmongers, we are peacemakers and we call on the American government to have direct negotiations with the elected government.” Hamas re-emphasized this position recently, adding, “our conflict is not with the Jews, our problem is with the occupation.” The United States and Israel ignored the offer.

Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank — which were occupied by Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War — are recognized by United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 as the land for a future Palestinian state. This has become the international consensus for peace, with only Israel, the United States and a handful of other nations voting against the annual General Assembly resolution calling for a settlement based on “242.”

MYTH # 2

Hamas is to blame for ending the cease-fire and Israel’s actions are in self-defense.

The three conditions for the June 2008 ceasefire were that (1) Israel would drastically reduce its military blockade of Gaza, (2) Israel would halt all military incursions into Gaza and, (3) Hamas would halt all rocket attacks into Israel.

From the outset of the cease-fire, Israel did little to ease its military blockade. As a result, Gazans continued to suffer from a lack of food, fuel, financial aid, electricity, clean water, medical supplies and more. The United Nations warned that Gaza would face “catastrophe” if the blockade were not lifted. The Israeli government maintained that the blockade was necessary to stop rocket attacks. However, as the Canadian Globe and Mail newspaper reports, Hamas had ceased launching rockets into Israel during the cease-fire and even arrested members of militant groups who did fire a handful of rockets.

Despite the intense blockade against Gazan civilians, the cease-fire held until Nov. 4. On that date, Haaretz reports, it was the Israeli military that made an incursion into Gaza and killed six Palestinians. The Israeli government sought to justify these actions, saying that these Palestinians were suspected of plotting to kidnap Israeli soldiers. Predictably, militants responded to the attack by launching rockets into Israel. Thus began the unraveling of the cease-fire.

Following the end of the cease-fire, Israel moved closer to an invasion, claiming this was the only remaining option to eliminate rocket attacks from Gaza. According to Haaretz, Hamas offered to extend the ceasefire if Israel lifted its blockade. There is evidence that Israel was planning to strike Gaza before and during the cease-fire.

The White House said that Israel will cease its attack when Hamas has agreed to a truce. Hamas has said it would abide by a cease-fire if border crossings were reopened and the economic siege of Gaza ended. Israel has refused this offer.

Meanwhile, Israel unleashed its U.S.-supplied arsenal — which includes unconventional weapons — while attacking its own designated safe-areas. This forced the Red Cross and United Nations to briefly suspend relief work in Gaza, spurring the Vatican to compare the conditions there to a “concentration camp.” The United States abstained from a Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire.

MYTH #3

Israel and the United States are doing everything in their power to achieve peace.

For decades the United States has provided Israel with billions of dollars annually in military aid and backed Israel’s seizure of occupied lands. The number of settlers in the West Bank and Jerusalem has increased from 200,000 in 1990 to more than 460,000 today. Claiming it received secret U.S. approval , Israel announced it would build thousands of new homes in 2008. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon noted that this directly “contravenes both international law and Israel’s obligations” in the peace process.

Israel has also erected a “security barrier” through the West Bank, annexing large swaths of land. In 2004, the International Court of Justice declared construction of the wall “contrary to international law.”

Meanwhile, even outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has recently stated that to achieve peace and recognition by the Arab world, Israel “should withdraw from almost all of the territories, including in East Jerusalem and in the Golan Heights.”

Amid reports that President-elect Obama may reverse U.S. policy and negotiate with Hamas, scholar Norman Finkelstein observes, “Hamas in recent months has supported a two-state settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict, joining the international consensus. It’s abiding by the terms of the truce, showing it can be trusted to abide by its agreements, which means it was becoming a credible negotiating partner.” He adds, “Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni stated in early December 2008 that although Israel wanted to create a temporary period of calm with Hamas, an extended truce ‘harms the Israeli strategic goal, empowers Hamas, and gives the impression that Israel recognizes the movement.’ Translation: a protracted cease-fire that enhanced Hamas’ credibility would have undermined Israel’s strategic goal of retaining control of the West Bank.” Finkelstein concludes: “Israel was facing a new Palestinian peace offensive and therefore it has to knock out Hamas.”

Click here to view a 2008 map of Israeli Settlements and separation barrier in the West Bank produced by the The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, B’TSELEM.

Adam Sheets contributed to this article.
THE WORLD STANDS WITH PALESTINE: Pro-Palestinian women in New York City stand next to the Palestinian flag at one of the many demonstrations that have taken place since the Israeli assault on Gaza began in late December. From New York to London to Cairo, hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets. “We are demanding that the Palestinians be protected, but as Americans, we are also demanding that our tax money not be spent on killing innocent civilians,” a protestor told The Indypendent at a Jan. 3 rally in New York City. PHOTO: MARK A. BAILEY

www.indypendent.org

Saturday’s incident a reminder of life PC’s Jeff Xavier is trying to escape

by Bill Reynolds

PROVIDENCE – I always root for Jeff Xavier.

That’s because I first met him long before he became a Providence College basketball player, and certainly long before he became an unfortunate centerpiece in last Saturday’s night’s bizarre drama when one of his older brothers inexplicably walked onto the court at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center after he had been poked in the eye and was in pain on the PC bench. An incident that happened on national television, no less, and has since taken on a life of its own on the Internet.

It was in the spring of 2004, Xavier was an All-State player at St. Raphael in Pawtucket then, and he said something I’ve never forgotten.

“I don’t like the ghetto,” he said that day. “I don’t like anything about it.”

He didn’t like ghetto life because he had grown up in Pawtucket’s Prospect Heights housing project, had grown up one of five kids with a father who was never around and there was never any money. Had grown up in a world where violence and drugs were always there, a childhood world of gunshots and too many kids hanging on too many corners, their futures stopping at next week.

Xavier had survived all that, complete with the scars to prove it. To this day he still has a scar on his right hand and another on the side of his head, the legacy of being jumped once on a Pawtucket playground because some kids thought he was someone else.

Survived despite spending two years in middle school living with a family in Lincoln, because his own family had unraveled.

“When I look back on my life, I don’t know how I came to be the person I am today,” he said that day.

I was thinking of all this Saturday night, of how unfair life can be. How Xavier once had been one of those Rhode Island high school stars who had gone to sleep at night, his head full of dreams about one day playing for the Friars, and how the Friars didn’t want him. And how he had gone to Manhattan for two years, had proven he was a better player than anyone ever thought he could be, and how he had transferred back here, like waking up in the middle of a childhood fantasy.

And then this . . .

He gets poked in the eye in the nationally televised game against Marquette, his brother walks out on the court to confront one of the referees, and everything gets complicated, flashed across the country as one of the big stories of the day.

So there he was in the hallway of the Dunk late Monday night, at the end of what had been an emotional 48 hours. He had spent Saturday night at the hospital, where he had undergone minor surgery on his injured eye. Now he had just finished playing in the win over Cincinnati, even if the original thinking had been that he would have to sit it out. But his eye had been better than expected when he woke up, and he wore goggles during the game, toughing it out.

“Playing here means the world to me,” he said quietly. “They’re going to have to cut the uniform off me.”

That’s the other thing to remember.

Playing for the Friars was the dream, and not just his dream, either. Every game he’s got about 20 relatives that come to watch him, and it’s their dream, too, as if he plays for them as well as for PC.

“You have to understand how we grew up,” he said. “How difficult it was.”

For it wasn’t just the unrelenting poverty and the dysfunction. It also was the little things. Like going to the playground to play a little ball and some guy’s trying to sell you drugs. Like trying to go to school and some older kid is hassling you. The everyday violence, both the reality of it and the promise of it. It was the constant drama of ghetto life.

One of his brothers was shot. He’s seen other family members just trying to get by, just trying to survive in a diminished world where they grew up with few advantages.

“I was always getting jumped as a little kid and my older brothers were always trying to protect me,” he says. “They became overprotective.”

Wasn’t that what happened Saturday night in the Dunk?

He got poked in the eye on a drive to the basket, all but writhing in pain on the bench, and his older brother Jonathan came out on the court to make things right, to protect his little brother.

Wasn’t that his motivation, to protect his little brother, however wrongheaded it turned out to be?

“It was unfortunate,” Xavier said. “I wish it didn’t happen.”

He says this softly, for this there is nothing loud or dramatic about Jeff Xavier. There wasn’t that April afternoon four years ago when I first met him. There isn’t now. Instead, there’s the sense that he’s grounded. He’s been engaged for nearly two years to Marisa Seander. He has come so far from his childhood, living a life that once would have seemed unable to imagine.

Which is why I always root for him.

So it’s understandable Xavier wants to put Saturday night’s drama behind him, not only for his brother but for himself, too. To get back to this senior season of his, in this experience that means the world to him.

To get back to the life he never thought he was going to have, back there when he was growing up in ghetto world he was trying to get away from, the scars of which he carries to this day.

breynold@projo.com

State to seek bids for some surgeries to cut health costs

By Katherine Gregg and Steve Peoples

Journal State House Bureau PROVIDENCE — The first Rhode Islanders to see firsthand how the Carcieri administration intends to use its unprecedented new power to cut Medicaid spending may be those seeking tonsillectomies.

To save $200,000 in the 5½ months remaining in this budget year, the Department of Human Services intends to seek bids to determine where a patient can go for the cheapest non-emergency surgery, a tonsillectomy being just one example cited by DHS Director Gary Alexander yesterday. A hospital? A surgical center? A doctor’s office?

The “selective contracting” of surgical services was just one of several money-saving plans that came to light yesterday after a second day of hearings on legislation to require General Assembly approval before the administration can use its new powers to limit, redesign or raise the patient share of the cost for any medical service covered by Medicaid.

Governor Carcieri is banking on at least $2 million in Medicaid savings this year to help avert a massive state deficit, and Alexander acknowledged this is also hinged on “selective contracting” with companies willing to provide the least expensive prescription drugs and medical equipment; a previously disclosed $10,000 liquid-assets maximum for adults to qualify for the state-subsidized RIte Care health-insurance program, and the “diversion” of 196 nursing home patients to alternative settings.

Carcieri has repeatedly pledged that the agreement — known as a “global Medicaid waiver” –– that was approved in the waning days of the Bush administration is designed to give poor, elderly and disabled Rhode Islanders better health-care choices.

The waiver caps all Medicaid spending at $12 billion over the next five years and gives Carcieri broad authority to reshape programs. A document released at one point by the governor’s office anticipated $20 million in Medicaid-related savings in the first year alone.

On Tuesday, however, a day after the agreement with the federal government officially took effect, state officials appeared unable to explain millions of dollars in expected cuts to health-insurance programs.

“We’re not prepared to answer those questions,” Ann Martino, a senior administrator with the Department of Human Services, told the House Finance Committee, when asked to explain a proposed “limited benefit package” for RIte Care, which serves at least 112,672 children and parents.

Martino testified that the administration has backed off a plan to cut dental coverage for some recipients. But she said there would be cuts.

“Alternate savings were being looked for,” she said. “And I’m, to be honest with you, not sure what was exactly elected as a substitute.”

Those comments sparked a new round of concerns when the Senate Finance Committee held its own hearing yesterday on the legislative-oversight bill. The Senate version states, “No changes in the state Medicaid program shall be made without the express approval by a legislative body …”

It allows the governor to unilaterally impose only the most basic administrative changes that don’t affect “beneficiary eligibility, benefits, overall health-care delivery systems, payment methodologies or cost sharing.”

Without the oversight, advocates representing vulnerable Rhode Islanders fear the governor could eliminate or change popular services. The lobbyist for the nursing home industry urged senators to specifically prohibit state Medicaid administrators from retroactively refusing to pay for patients released by hospitals to nursing homes. The executive director of Kids Count recommended latitude to reinstate coverage for the non-citizen children of immigrants in this country legally. Others urged the inclusion of patients on an implementation task force.

Without legislative or congressional oversight, “the governor would have free rein to erode the provisions of RIte Care,” fretted Amanda Dumas, a pediatric resident at Hasbro Children’s Hospital. But Alexander said there was no plan to cut early screening programs for poor children. He said there was no immediate plan to change how RIte Care is managed, and “whatever changes we propose have to come before the legislature.”

The General Assembly expects to approve the oversight legislation in the next two weeks. The administration has promised not to begin implementing the new system in that time, according to a letter Alexander sent to lawmakers.

speoples@projo.com

Chinese milk scam duo face death sentence

Relatives of the victims gathered at the court as the sentences came

Two men have been given the death penalty for their involvement in China’s contaminated milk scandal.

The former boss of the Sanlu dairy at the centre of the scandal was given life imprisonment.

They were among several sentences handed down by the court in northern China, where Sanlu is based.

The scandal, in which melamine was added to raw milk to make it appear higher in protein, led to the deaths of six babies and made some 300,000 ill.

It led to product recalls across the globe, and further damaged China’s reputation for producing safe and reliable products, the BBC’s Quentin Sommerville in Beijing says.

At home, the scandal left parents terrified and caused outrage across the country, coming only four years after an earlier milk powder scandal which left 13 babies dead, he adds.

Victims’ relatives protested outside the courthouse in Shijiazhuang on Thursday. Some said they had been prevented from attending the trial by authorities anxious to contain anger over the affair.

Illegal workshop

The most senior figure to be sentenced was Tian Wenhua, who was chairwoman of the Sanlu Group, the largest producer of baby milk powder.

MELAMINE SCANDAL 10 Sept: 14 babies reported ill in Gansu province 15 Sept: Beijing confirms first deaths from the contamination 22 Sept: Toll of ill babies rises to tens of thousands – and eventually will rise to almost 300,000 23 Sept: Other countries start to test Chinese dairy products or remove them from shops 31 Oct: Chinese media suggest melamine is routinely added to animal feed 24 Dec: The main dairy firm involved, Sanlu, is declared bankrupt 31 Dec: Four senior Sanlu executives go on trial 2 Jan:Firms involved ask for forgiveness in a mass New Year text message 22 Jan: A court in China begins handing down sentences In pictures: China’s milk scandal Timeline: China milk scandal

When the scandal broke in September, it emerged that Sanlu had known it was selling toxic milk – and allowed around 900 tonnes of it to leave its dairies.

It was only when its New Zealand partner intervened that production stopped.

Tian Wenhua pleaded guilty to charges of producing and selling fake or substandard produce in December.

The Intermediate People’s Court in Shijiazhuang gave her a life sentence and ordered her to pay a fine of 20m yuan ($2.9m).

Sanlu itself was fined 50m yuan ($7.3m), Xinhua news agency reports, even though the firm has been declared bankrupt.

Earlier the court sentenced cattle farmer Zhang Yujun and milk trader Geng Jinping to death.

Zhang Yujun was accused of running an illegal workshop in Shandong province in eastern China, producing 600 tonnes of the fake protein powder – the largest source of melamine in the country.

Geng Jinping was convicted of producing and selling toxic products to dairy companies from his milk production base.

One other person received a suspended death sentence, two were jailed for life and six – including three former Sanlu executives – were jailed for between five and 15 years for their part in the scandal, Xinhua news agency reports.

Huge anger

All together, 22 companies sold contaminated milk, which had been supplied by a chain of melamine producers and middlemen.

Sanlu’s Tian Wenhua pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing

The dealers added the industrial chemical to boost the apparent protein content of milk, which had often been watered down to make more money.

Major dairy companies bought the milk from such dealers, failing to test the milk for purity and nutritional value.

The result was widespread poisoning of babies, the group most vulnerable to tainted milk as it was their only food source.

Kidney damage was reported in hundreds of thousands of people. At least six babies were killed because of it.

The government has scrambled to fight off allegations that it reacted slowly to the crisis, by pledging to improve food safety standards and promising to bring the culprits of the scandal to court.

But families of the victims say China’s lack of openness, public accountability and official corruption mean they have little faith that similar poisonings will not happen again, our correspondent reports.

Source: www.bbc.co.uk