By Sam Bahour

Israeli Exceptionalism: The Destabilizing Logic of Zionism. by M. Shahid Alam. Palgrave Macmillan, 272 pp., £55.00

Israeli Exceptionalism: The Destabilizing Logic of Zionism arrived in the mail shortly after I completed sending a thank you note to two other authors and friends, Kathleen and Bill Christison. The Christison’s had just released their newest title, Palestine in Pieces: Graphic Perspectives on the Israeli Occupation (Pluto Press) and I felt that they deserved a huge thank you for encapsulating their eyewitness report of Israeli military dispossession and occupation in the warped ideological framework of Zionism. I felt such a framing depicted a high sense of rarely found political maturity on behalf of American analysts. Israeli Exceptionalism was a natural next read for it peeled the onion of Zionism to reveal how deeply flawed this ideology was and is and how it has become a destabilizing factor which puts people of the region—and arguably beyond—in serious jeopardy.

Israeli Exceptionalism is not only a must read, it is a must think about book. To add intellectual spice, every chapter starts with a few quotes of prominent individuals related to the topic at hand. Reading these quotes alone speak volumes of the human tragedy, in thought and lives, that Zionism evoked.

Author M. Shahid Alam, a non-Arab, professor of economics at Northeastern University in Boston does a fascinating job of creating a repository of references on Zionism by way of narrative and footnotes. Although I think of myself as well-read on the topic, I attest that I learned much from Israeli Exceptionalism, not only in terms of identifying new references, but also in terms of analysis and context.

It was not the first time I have read the word “exceptionalism” in relation to Israel. New York Times columnist Roger Cohen recently wrote that Israel “lives in a perpetual state of exceptionalism.” (New York Times, Oct. 16, 2009). However, Professor Alam explored this Israeli phenomenon on a deeper level of its underlying ideology to shed light on why this abnormal state seems to be unable to come to terms with modern day realities. The book addresses three principal forms of Israeli exceptionalism: 1) the “divine right” of Jews, 2) “Israeli achievements,” which at first glance seem impressive, and 3) the Jews’ “uniquely tragic history.” Alam explains that, “In order to secure itself against these “unique” threats to its existence, Israel claims exemption from the demands of international laws.” Sadly, so long as Israel resists permitting international law to be its reference point, despite the fact that Israel’s own birth is owed to the same body of law, the only alternative Israel allows for is the age-old Law of the Jungle—the law of might is right.

Throughout the book the author uses a new term, “Islamicate,” which this writer, a secular Palestinian, found a sober source of food for thought, especially given the state of global and regional affairs today. As a foil for his historical review of the development of Zionism, its trials and tribulations, and the existence of Israel, the author gives us the Islmicate—the Muslim world, or the “Islamic heartland”—which forces the reader to see the larger context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Given the events of 9/11 and all that proceeded it, including the shift from a Cold War paradigm to a War on Terror one, this backdrop is a key framing for the analysis. However, the author speaks at some length of the Arab nationalist movement which unsuccessfully attempted to face off with Israel, but skips the depth of the secular Palestinian national movement that broke away from official Arab nationalism leadership and kept the Palestinian struggle for freedom and impendence alive all these years, albeit under threat today from an Islamist trend in the region. That noted, Alam is correct when he ended the book by saying, “The Islamicate world today is not what it was during World War I. It is noticeably less inclined to let foreigners draw their maps for them.”

The thesis of the book is that “The Zionist movement in Palestine has generated endemic violence between Jewish settlers and Palestinians. Since 1948, this violence has repeatedly pitted Israel against the Palestinians and its neighbors. It has dragged Western societies, especially the United States, into ever widening and deepening conflicts with the Islamicate.” Professor Alam argues that “the history of these ever-expanding circles of conflict and instability was contained in the Zionist idea itself.”

This approach to understanding Zionism and Israel —the notion that an all-encompassing plan has and is guiding Israel—is a constant source of debate between myself and many Israeli friends. I argue that a macro plan, one that has a guiding thrust to force the realization of the original Zionist myth that Palestine was a “land with no people for a people with no land” is in place and motivating many on the Israeli side. Many Israelis argue that this notion gives too much credit to their society and leadership and contend that minimal planning, chance, luck, and near total haphazardness have brought them to their precarious state of affairs. After a careful reading of Israeli Exceptionalism I tend to believe that the truth is somewhere in the middle. Like the founders of Zionism, Israel’s current leadership is too politically savvy to try and micromanage the future. Instead it provides an overall framework and lets its constantly adapting organizations—the World Zionist Organization, then Israel—deal with the required, real-time maneuvering based on the ever-changing realities and interests of the moment.

Professor Alam carefully follows the intertwining interrelationships among many seemingly disparate movements that have, collectively, driven the State of Israel—the exclusionist ideology of Zionism, interests of shifting global powers, anti-Semitism, Christian Zionism, Jewish Diaspora, the Israeli lobby, and the clout ascertained by serving the short term political interests of individual western leaders. Although the text is heavily footnoted, the author’s many insights prompt the reader to want to learn more and corroborate some of the information provided: particularly in the chapter devoted to “Jewish Factors in Zionist Success,” for example, where the author’s historical portrayal of Jewish influence in the service of Zionism/Israel around the world suggests much more of a monolithic dynamic among these communities than I tend to find plausible.  For example, and Alam also makes mention of this aspect of Jewish Diaspora: “Jews of 19th century Germany founded the Reform movement, rejecting the idea of a Jewish nation …The Reform movement of those days was a compromise between total apostasy (assimilation) and orthodoxy.” (Ami Isseroff, Opposition of Reform Judaism to Zionism - A History, August 12, 2005). Given such strong trends within world Jewry that opposed Zionism for considerable periods in the movement’s history, Alam’s monolithic view seems tendentious. I would claim that superior organization and dynamic leadership among committed Zionists is what led to the “success” of Zionism, more so than any natural Jewish leaning toward a desire for an exclusionist state, with all that that means for others. A significant minority of Jews alive today in fact continue to oppose Zionism on the grounds that it is very “un-Jewish.”

Meantime, the book chronicles the emergence of an influential trend of Jewish-only exceptionalism long before the horrific misery of Jews after WWII, and as a matter of fact, even before the recognized founder of Zionism, Theodore Herzl, wrote The Jewish State (a book I re-read annually.) However, Alam correctly notes that “Israel’s creation and survival are anomalies” and that, after nearly 100 years of Zionist/Israeli exclusionism evinced in a policy of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, “It would appear that Israel’s demographic constraints are binding: and these constraints may well determine the ultimate destiny of this exclusionary colonialism.” “The tragedy of Zionism,” proclaims Alam, “is written into its design; its end is contained in its beginning.” That may be true for many –isms of this world, some which have already collapsed of their own weight.

A Zionist friend and writer, Bernard Avishai, recently wrote in his latest book, “Israel is a society where institutional discrimination against individuals for an accident of birth or a profession of faith has been so routine it is hardly noticed—not, at least, by Jews.” (The Hebrew Republic, Harcourt, pg. 25). Another Zionist, albeit of a completely different school of thought, Israel’s current Minister of Defense, Ehud Barak, was quoted earlier this month as saying "If, and as long as between the Jordan and the sea, there is only one political entity, named Israel, it will end up being either non-Jewish or non-democratic … If the Palestinians vote in elections, it is a binational state, and if they don’t, it is an apartheid state."  These words coming from across the Zionist spectrum should not be taken lightly. Remember: apartheid is a crime against humanity!

Professor Alam states that “at first, Zionists did not seek to conceal the colonial character of their movement…concealment was not necessary in the age of high imperialism and triumphant racism.” The United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379, adopted on November 10, 1975 by a vote of 72 to 35 (with 32 abstentions), "determine[d] that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination". The resolution was revoked by Resolution 46/86 on December 16, 1991. In the history of the UN, this is the only resolution that has ever been revoked. As a Palestinian experiencing the real-time impact of the racialist policies of a Zionist-motivated Israeli state, I believe that revoking this resolution was a mistake because it only postponed the inevitable day of reckoning when Israel would have to look at itself in the mirror and accept what it found there as real.  Reading Israeli Exceptionalism can help us to understand how such historical oddities evolve.

Another Israeli friend, Deb Reich, a non-Zionist but someone who has lived—sometimes painfully—the Zionist reality, expressed it rather succinctly when I asked her about Zionism. She said, “I have come to believe that lecturing people about their badness is the last thing on earth that can solve our problems and will rarely change their behavior one iota; in fact, it can make them more stubborn. I know that we have no choice but to try to hold people accountable for their actions in terms of both the intended and unintended consequences for others, because without accountability there is chaos; but at the same time, if we want positive change, then we MUST open a window for people on how they can redeem themselves, and redeem the situation. That endeavor is what leadership is supposed to be about.”

Understanding history is one thing, but being able to come to terms with it and survive it is something materially different, just ask Palestinians living today. Is turning back the clock of history doable or even desirable today? Left to the tools of our day—international law, compensation, and hopefully reconciliation—will history correct itself in the future with the emergence of smarter generations of Israelis and Palestinians? Can we Palestinians survive as a people to see that day? These are questions we ponder daily while under the influence of Israeli occupation and dispossession.

Professor Alam believes that the tide of Zionism will begin to turn when the banana republics of the Middle East begin to fall and are “replaced by Islamist governments” at which time “it may become difficult for the United States to maintain its presence in the region.” I beg for the international community to uphold their obligations under international law and resolve this conflict before that day.

- Sam Bahour is a Palestinian-American living in the Palestinian City of Al-Bireh in the West Bank. He is co-author of HOMELAND: Oral Histories of Palestine and Palestinians (1994). He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Contact him at: sbahour@palnet.com. (An edited version of this review was published in Arab News -http://arabnews.com - on March 17, 2010)

Today, “60 leaders of religious orders representing 59,000 Catholic nuns” sent a letter to federal lawmakers urging them to pass the Senate health care legislation. They decried the “false” information floating around about abortion provisions and said that the bill’s “historic new investments” for pregnant women are the “REAL pro-life stance.” The nuns’ letter was a significant and unusual break with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which continues to denounce the legislation. This afternoon, Stupak dismissed the nuns, saying that he listens to only male religious figures and far-right religious organizations:

Congressman Bart Stupak, D-Mich, responded sharply to White House officials touting a letter representing 59,000nuns that was sent to lawmakers urging them to pass the health care bill.

The conservative Democrat dismissed the action by the White House saying, “When I’m drafting right to life language, I don’t call up the nuns.” He says he instead confers with other groups including “leading bishops, Focus on the Family, and The National Right to Life Committee.”

It’s Stupak and the bishops, however, who are increasingly isolated. The nuns join other prominent pro-life figures and organizations — including the Catholic Health Association — in urging passage of the bill.

By Ewa Jasiewicz and Frank Barat

The first session of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine (RTP) was heard in Barcelona, Spain earlier this month. The RTP is a peoples’ legal initiative designed to systematically try key actors responsible for the perpetuation of human rights violations in Palestine.
 
In the frame this time was the European Union (EU). Two days and 21 expert witness testimonies later, the RTP found individual states and the EU as a whole guilty of persistent violations and misconduct with regards to international and internal EU law. These included: assistance in perpetrating the crime of apartheid — deepened in definition as applicable to the violation of the inalienable right of return for refugees and the collective punishment and ghettoization of Gaza; aiding the procurement of war crimes and crimes against humanity particularly with regards to Gaza; and violating the Palestinian right to self-determination, aiding illegal colonization, the annexation of East Jerusalem and theft of natural resources.
 
We may all know this, but knowing exactly how and through which laws and mechanisms allows for a water-tight case for justice for Palestine and the denormalization of Israel’s occupation.
 
The RTP’s endorsement of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) as a means to hold Israel and its collaborator states accountable under international law was also a boost to European civil society groups and prominent figures sitting on the fence about the tactic.

The RTP aims to reenergize and popularize the necessary delegitimization of Israeli apartheid, occupation and human rights violations. Its not just about "preventing the crime of silence" but also about providing a forum for speaking out, active witnessing and active listening, and to tool up civil society on how to publicize and pressure their governments to abide by the law.
 
The reason the EU and violation-abetting or non-compliant states have continued to treat the observance of international law and Palestinian rights as a policy issue rather than a legal obligation is because civil society has given them this choice through a lack of pressure in these areas. These states should not have a choice, these legal frameworks are not voluntary or optional once signed, they are obligatory.
 
The language of international human rights law is dense, inert and dispassionate despite the fact that it has been generated through global anti-colonial, anti-occupation struggle and sacrifice. Nevertheless, it’s a language movements should strategically learn and connect to the real-time, felt-on-the-body, resistance and endurance of the Palestinian people and the policy-makers in our parliaments.
 
Contextualizing the violence of policies of violation in the small print of complicated contracts and treaties, or in casual conversations in presidential dining rooms in Tel Aviv, was enabled by the RTP.
 
At the RTP, Veronique De Keyser, a European Member of Parliament from Belgium, testified that during a trip to Israel as part of a delegation of European MPs, she was told by then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni that the Israeli government was intent on instrumentalizing Fatah to undermine Hamas. According to her testimony, Olmert and Livni added that Israel had no interest in recognizing a unity government.
 
Meir Margalit, a former member of the Jerusalem city council spoke of soldiers demolishing a Palestinian home in the presence of an EU Commissar. When this fact was brought to the attention of the mayor of Jerusalem, Ehud Olmert at the time, it resulted in a delay in the destruction of the home until no MPs were present to witness.
 
Charles Shamas, a Palestinian legal consultant and founder of the MATTIN group, a voluntary human rights based partnership in Palestine which focuses on international human rights and international humanitarian law enforcement and third state responsibility , mapped the mechanisms by which international law obligations can be triggered in the EU. He explained this could be achieved by targeting obscure internal regulations within EU legal frameworks, deciphering obscure clauses and regulations within EU treaties and targeting them at the appropriate bodies.

Shamas demystified the means by which laws are effectively changed when the EU collaborates in contracts and treaties with Israel.By accepting Israeli definitions of international law rather than its’ own, the EU is in fact violating its own internal and international laws.  For example, a new agreement on civil aviation between the EU and Israel could legitimize the occupation of the Palestinian territories through recognition of airspace and the airports in occupied territory as part of Israel. Shamas cited a challenge to a draft agreement between Europol and the Israeli police authorities which was regarded as unlawful as the police were headquartered in occupied East Jerusalem.
 
Phil Shiner of Public Interest Lawyers in the UK presented his own experiences to the RTP of attempting to use the British domestic courts to challenge the UK’s failure to fulfill its obligations under international humanitarian law with respect to Israeli activities during its invasion of Gaza last winter. A British court found his claim, which was coordinated with the Palestinian legal organization Al-Haq, to be a matter for "high foreign policy" and denied it. Shiner suggested seeking more compliant alternative EU member state courts to file similar cases.
 
The applicability of existing international law on conventional weapons was dissected in the context of Israeli’s invasion of Gaza by Colonel Desmond Travers, a member of the UN-sponsored Goldstone commission. In his testimony, Travers provided forensic analysis of the flight-path of a flechette dart within the human body. He also discussed Israel’s suspected use of Dense Inert Metal Explosive (DIME) weapons and depleted uranium. Travers also scrutinized Israel’s use of white phosphorous as a weapon rather than an obscurant. Aside for the need for political action to stop Israeli impunity, Travers explained that a ban on certain weaponry altogether including white phosphorous, urgent environmental clean-up and the need for new laws were necessary and should be advocated.

Expert researcher and Middle East specialist Agnes Bertrand detailed the EU’s passive complicity with Israeli violations. Israel has caused an estimated 56.35 million euros worth of infrastructural damage to works funded by the European Community since 2000, with damage suffered during last year’s Gaza invasion amounting to around 12,35 million euros. The EU Commission has no intention of filing for damages or compensation, instead passing the buck to the Palestinian Authority, stating that as the construction aid was given to the PA, it would have to make the claim for it. Yet no legal advice has been forthcoming on how the PA is supposed to do this. The EU’s Association Agreement with Israel, in particular Article 2and the framing of the dialogue between the EU and Israel were found to be breaching articles of the International Law Commission and the 1966 covenant on Civil and Political Rights in their exclusion of the observance and inclusion of international law and any references to occupation.
 
Translating the language and expertise of law into everyday activism as a tool against the attack on the legitimacy of our movement and Palestinian rights is the challenge ahead that the RTP can play a part in. The Barcelona session is only the beginning. The next RTP session will take place in London at the end 2010 and will focus on international corporations profiting from the occupation as well as labor rights in Israel-Palestine. It will be followed by sessions in South Africa focusing on apartheid, and in the United States focusing on the American and UN role in the conflict.

(Full findings/conclusions of Barcelona session of Russell Tribunal on Palestine are available here: http://www.russelltribunalonpalestine.net/)
 
- Ewa Jasiewicz is a freelance journalist, union organizer and coordinator for the Free Gaza Movement. She was one of the witness for the Russell Tribunal on Palestine. — Frank Barat is coordinator of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine. He can be reached at russelltribunaluk A T googlemail D O T com. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. (This article was first published in Electronic Intifada - http://electronicintifada.net)

As the Pentagon prepares to survey soldiers about President Obama’s decision to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, a new poll of military personnel who served in the Afghanistan or Iraq wars has finds that sexual orientation is “not a burning issue that overwhelms veterans’ lives.”

The new poll, commissioned by The Vet Voice Foundation and conducted jointly by Republican and Democratic pollsters, finds that most veterans are “comfortable around gay and lesbian people, believe that being gay or lesbian has no bearing on a service member’s ability to perform their duties, and would find it acceptable if gay and lesbian people were allowed to serve openly in the military.” Fifty-eight percent of veterans said they served alongside gays or lesbians, and only 22 percent thought they had not:

– 60% of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans believe that being gay or lesbian “has no bearing on a service member’s ability to perform their duties.” Only 29% disagree.

– 73% of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans say it is “personally acceptable to them if gay and lesbian people were allowed to serve openly in the military.” Only a quarter (25%) would find it unacceptable.

– 73% Iraq and Afghanistan veterans say “they are personally comfortable in the presence of gays and lesbians.” Only a quarter (23%) is uncomfortable, and hardly anyone is very uncomfortable (only 7%).

The survey, which sampled 45% self-identified Republicans and just 20% Democrats, suggests that military personnel are more comfortable serving alongside openly gay and lesbian troops than previously thought. The poll also contradicts the findings of a widely circulated Military Times survey, which reported that 58% of respondents are opposed to efforts to repealing DADT, and undermines the claims of some conservative lawmakers who argue that lifting the ban would undermine the primary goal of the military.

“Simply put, our military is the most professional organization the world has ever known. Not only will service members abide by a repeal, but they’ll largely accept it and move on to the task at hand. For all of the hyperbolic rhetoric from those opposed to a repeal, today’s military really doesn’t see an issue here,” said Jon Soltz, Chairman of the Vet Voice Foundation. Indeed, the survey concluded that veterans under age 35 lean toward favoring allowing gay and lesbian people to serve openly (41% favor to 35% oppose) while veterans over age 35 lean toward opposing by five points (31% favor, 36% oppose).

Cross-posted on The Wonk Room.

By Stephen Lendman

Currently, around 500,000 Jews reside illegally in over 120 West Bank and East Jerusalem settlements as well as dozens of outposts. Their numbers grow daily despite occasional pledges to curtail or slow them, the latest last November when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared a 10 month freeze, calling it a move to "help launch meaningful negotiations to reach a historic peace agreement that would finally end the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians."

Never mind Israel’s history of past peace process futility because all previous efforts were more pretense than real, or as some Palestinians say - How can they negotiate in good faith without a willing partner? They’ve never had one and don’t in Netanyahu, an extremist hard-right zealot.

The same holds for a settlement freeze, just rhetoric with no substance, especially given Israel’s plan to make all Jerusalem a Jewish city, according to Netanyahu. During a May 22, 2009 Jerusalem Day ceremony (commemorating the city’s 1967 reunification), he declared:

"United Jerusalem is Israel’s capital. Jerusalem was always ours and will always be ours. It will never again be partitioned and divided."

For East Jerusalem Palestinians, it means removing them one settlement expansion and home demolition at a time.

So much for the peace process and freeze, evidenced by a February 26 Haaretz report saying Israel "plans to build another 600 homes in East Jerusalem" on Occupied Palestinian land.

Then on March 10, Israel’s Interior Ministry approved 1,600 in Ramat Shlomo, "an ultra-Orthodox East Jerusalem neighborhood" during vice president Joe Biden’s visit to restart no-peace peace talks, the same as past stillborn efforts.

A Haaretz March 11 report goes further, saying planning officials confirm that:

"Some 50,000 new housing units in Jerusalem neighborhoods beyond the Green Line are in various stages of planning and approval." Plans for 20,000 apartments "are in advanced stages of approval and implementation, while plans for the remainder have yet to be submitted to the planning committees."

According to Ir Amin, activists for a stable and equitable Jerusalem, construction this vast "will move Israel beyond the point of no return" and render conflict resolution impossible.

This highlights Netanyahu’s earlier disingenuous announcement that:

"a policy of restraint regarding settlements (will) include a suspension of new permits and new construction in Judea and Samaria for a period of ten months (as well as) a promise to enable normal life to continue for three hundred thousand Israeli citizens, our brothers and sisters, who live in Judea and Samaria (what Jews call the West Bank)."

Yet unlimited East Jerusalem expansions continue where 200,000 Jews already live on expropriated Palestinian land. In addition, thousands of West Bank housing units and other construction continue or are planned as Netanyahu explained last November saying:

"When the suspension ends (or sooner), my government will revert to the policies of previous governments in relation to construction," meaning expropriating Palestinian land is policy, and no plans will change it.

He then added:

– housing already underway will continue;

– "we will continue to build synagogues, schools, kindergartens and public buildings essential for normal (settlement) life; (and)

– We do not put any restrictions on building in our sovereign capital," referring to East and West Jerusalem, even though East is Occupied Territory.

On February 17, Haaretz’ chief political columnist Akiva Eldar reacted, saying "you’d have to be blind, an idiot, or a member of the Yesha Council of settlements to use the term ‘freeze’ to describe the real estate situation in Judea and Samaria." Among other projects, a new Ariel industrial zone continues, Eldar adding with tongue in cheek:

"It seems that the freeze (in) new industrial zones in national priority zones….in the heart of the West Bank is not at the top of the (government’s) list of priorities."

National Priority Areas (NPAs)

On December 13, 2009, the Netanyahu government approved Decision No. 1060, titled, "Defining Towns and Areas with National Priority," classifying Israeli and West Bank areas as NPAs. In Israel, 40% of their residents are Arab Israelis, sure to lose out because officials may decide where and in what amounts funding will be directed. As a result, Adalah, The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, contested the move before Israel’s High Court of Justice (HCJ). More on that below.

Israel’s Earlier NPA Definition

On February 15, 1998, the earlier Netanyahu government approved Decision No. 3292, classifying 553 "A" and "B" towns and villages as NPAs, only four being Arab ones, a decision Adalah also challenged for the High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel and the Follow-Up Committee for Arab Education for discriminating against non-Jews.

On February 27, 2006, the HCJ agreed, saying this law can’t give the government or its officials sweeping authority to distribute benefits and budget allocations as it wishes. It allowed one year for implementation.

It’s still waiting, and in June 2009, the Knesset passed the NPA Law as a provision of the Economic Arrangements Law, contradicting the HCJ’s High Follow-Up ruling.

Its language is vague. It doesn’t define an NPA or list qualifying towns and villages, what funding they’ll get, or over what period of time. It also lets officials distribute benefits as they wish, based on whatever criteria they decide. It thus defies the HCJ by granting the government broad discretionary powers, and it extends past government decisions until January 13, 2012, six years after the Court’s ruling.

Despite strong Knesset opposition, the law passed. According to attorney Ben Yitzhak, counsel to the Knesset’s Finance Committee:

"The legislative proposal, as presently submitted here, does not include any mechanism of oversight or control by the Knesset….The fundamental rule, which the Supreme Court has also reiterated, is that legislation must anchor the general policy and the guiding criteria in the foundation of the action and legislative objective. (In) this sense, (it) constitutes a deviation from these models."

Other MKs called it in contempt of the HCJ ruling. It’s supposed to have the final say, but not in Israel. Its governments have a history of ignoring or contravening Court rulings, doing as they please, with no recriminations from its highest judicial body that walks loudly but carries a small stick, and at times none at all.

Based on the new NPA law, the government classified NPAs by four criteria:

– periphery areas and socio-economic classifications;

– the security threat level;

– their distance from an international border; and

– whether a community was established in the past five years.

Ones being funding weren’t specified, only regions, and officials got sweeping allocation authority for the following purposes:

– elementary, secondary and higher education;

– housing and urban development;

– employment;

– engineering infrastructure; and

– culture and sport.

In addition, NPA designation may exclude towns and villages in them and permits broad distribution discretion. So much that even government officials expressed concern, saying: "such considerations and awarding of benefits could result in a differentiation between towns or villages in the same district, or a differentiation within a town or village."

The decision further says that, because of budget constraints, funds will be allocated to at most 25% of the state’s population within NPAs. It also lets officials distribute some benefits to one town but not another, based on their say alone, adding to the discriminatory bias that will totally exclude Arab areas and favor higher socio-economic Jewish ones over others.

As in America, the rich take care of their own, letting others take the hindmost, even though doing so contradicts the NPA’s purpose - to help poorer areas, including Arab ones, not self-sufficient well-off communities.

The NPA law also includes West Bank settlements  under the "level of security threat" criterion - no matter that it’s illegal under international law, Fourth Geneva’s Article 49 stating:

"The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies."

Since 1967, Israel did it half a million times and counting.

In addition, NPA settlements will be funded for whatever purposes official decide. Yet they’re defined at the district and regional level. In other words, for funding purposes, a distinction is made between a designated area and individual towns and villages in it.

Adalah will contest the law, believing the government failed to implement the HCJ’s ruling in the High Follow-Up Committee Case. The 2009 NPA Law contravenes it by its vague language and sweeping classification discretion. Officials may decide what areas qualify, amounts they’ll get, for what purposes, and for how long.

The law also permits the previous government’s January 2012 extension that the HCJ ruled discriminatory against Arab areas and promotes aggressive settlement development and expansion. It’s arbitrary and illegal, harms Israeli Arabs and West Bank Palestinians, and four years after the Court’s ruling, it’s still impossible to compile a list of qualifying NPAs because of the law’s vagueness.

Israeli National Heritage Sites

All countries have them, including Israel. For example, in 2001, the ancient Masada fortress was designated, and in 2003 Tel Aviv’s White City, a collection of over 4,000 Bauhaus or international style buildings built since the 1930s by German Jewish architects, emigrating to escape the Nazis.

Establishing them in Israel is one thing, in Occupied Palestine another, and that’s the problem.

Yet on February 23, Netanyahu added Hebron’s Cave of the Patriachs and Bethlehem’s Rachel’s Tomb, saying the right-wing religious Shas party persuaded him, no matter they’re in Occupied Palestine, not Israel, and thus illegal under international law.

MKs reacted to the decision. The left of center Meretz party chairman Haim Oron said: "This is an attempt to blur the lines between the State of Israel and the Occupied Territories. Just a little pressure from the right and Netanyahu" caves. "This decision casts the prime minister’s….declaration (for) two states for two peoples in a ridiculous light."

For MK Talab al-Sana of United Arab List-Ta’al: "The government’s decision attests to its cynical criteria that would include places holy to Muslims and Christians," besides being a thinly veiled way to expropriate more Palestinian land in defiance of international law.

Israeli extremist elements praised the decision as did Knesset hard-liners.

A Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) press release condemned it, saying it "was taken on the eve of the 16th anniversary of the mass killing of 29 Palestinian worshippers in the Ibrahimi Mosque by an Israeli settler, Baroch Goldstein, on 25 February 1994."

It also violated international law, including:

– the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict defining it as "movable or immovable property of great importance to the cultural heritage of every people;"

– its Article 2 calling for "the protection of cultural property (to include) the safeguarding of and respect for such property;" and

– Article 9 of its Second Protocol prohibiting "any illicit export, other removal or transfer of ownership of cultural property."

– Fourth Geneva calls "extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly," a grave Convention breach.

The 1999 review of the 1954 Hague Convention and Second Protocol updates "military necessity" to include the "proportionality" prohibition against disproportionate, indiscriminate force likely to cause damage to or loss of lives and objects.

And the 2004 Cairo Declaration on the Protection of Cultural Property affirmed the 1954 Hague Convention principle that "damage to cultural property belonging to any people whatsoever means damage to the cultural heritage of all humankind, since each people makes its contribution to the culture of the world."

Israel is criminally liable for repeatedly violating fundamental international laws it’s sworn to uphold but has yet to be held accountable. For certain, however, what can’t go on forever, won’t, but it’s up to grassroots pressure to assure it.

- Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Contact him at: lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Antiwar activists are gearing up to commemorate the
seventh anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq with a weeklong
series of events to protest the ongoing occupation of the country.

The US invaded Iraq on March 20, 2003.
Then-President George W. Bush and top administration officials told the
American people Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat to the US, had
concealed weapons of mass destruction and helped plan the 9/11 attacks.

But that was a lie. Former Bush administration
officials have said publicly that the Iraq war was planned weeks after
the Bush was sworn into office and that intelligence reports that claimed Iraq
was a threat were cooked up by analysts under pressure by Vice
President Dick Cheney and his senior staffers. And government reports
have been released since the invasion documenting the nearly 1,000 lies
the Bush administration used to sell the war to the American public.

Those lies claimed the lives of 4,369 US soldiers,
have wounded hundreds of thousands more, both mentally and physically,
and cost taxpayers $700 billion. By some estimates, more than half a
million Iraqi civilians have also been killed.

And, yet, seven years after “shock and awe” the US
still has 96,000 troops on the ground, according to Shawn Turner, a
Department of Defense spokesman.

Antiwar protests will be held in major cities across
the country March 20, including a march in Washington, DC, where
thousands are expected to show up to speak out against the war.

Next week, Andy Thayer plans to attend a protest in
Chicago along with thousands of others opposed to the war. Thayer is a
representative of the Chicago Coalition Against War and Racism and the
Gay Liberation Network. He spoke to Truthout earlier this week about
the message that he hopes to convey during the protest:

“The main message is that only the people can stop
the war,” he said. “That’s the only way that wars in the past have been
stopped, short of the annihilation of one or both sides of them.”

Representatives of the Iraq Veterans Against the War
(IVAW), a group based in New York, and about 80 other veterans’
advocacy groups are helping to organize the protests, which they will
use to also demand all returning war veterans receive adequate health
care and treatment.

Progress? 

Last Sunday, Iraqis held the first election since
2003 that they’ve organized themselves, and 62 percent of registered
voters cast ballots. Only 53 percent of voters cast ballots in Baghdad,
which experienced a five-hour bombardment by militants that day.

“The mere fact that Iraq is holding (the election),
with no major sects or ethnic groups boycotting, is little short of a
miracle to many current and former officials who lived through the
darkest days of sectarian violence from 2005 to 2007,” Warren P.
Strobel of McClatchy Newspapers wrote in a recent story.

While parliamentary election results are tallied in
Iraq, a US commander there said it’s unlikely any outcome would require
American troops to stay beyond their scheduled withdrawal, according to
the American Forces Press Service. Polling this week has been
characterized by military officials as a “historic” moment for Iraq
that paves the way for the drawdown of US forces from 98,000 to 50,000
before September.

But Paul Sullivan, executive director for veterans
advocacy group Veterans for Common Sense (VCS), said the invasion has
come at a huge cost in terms of suffering, about which his group
personally warned Bush.

In March 2003, VCS urged Bush’s administration not
to take on another war if it couldn’t take care of the veterans
fighting in the war.

“First, we know the Iraqis aren’t going to greet us
with flowers,” Sullivan said, referring to the many predictions made by
Bush officials after the overthrow of Hussein. “Then we said that the
Iraqis didn’t have weapons of mass destruction because they’d been
destroyed. Then we said that Iraq was not harboring al Qaida because,
in fact, it was al Qaida that had Osama Bin Laden that had offered to
remove Saddam Hussein and the Iraqis from Kuwait, and the Kuwaitis and
Saudis turned down their offer.

“Then we said that the VA was unable to handle its
current load of veterans from World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam
war, the Gulf War, and we didn’t think that the VA would be able to
handle an influx of new patients. And we were right on all of those
things. And what made it worse is that here we are seven years since
the Iraq War started, and there’s still no plan for how to handle
casualties from the two wars.”

Sullivan said of Bush’s entering the war with Iraq,
“There was no plan to take care of our casualties from the two wars -
now at 508,000 and rising at the rate of one new Department of Veterans
Affairs (VA) patient from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars flooding into
VA every five minutes.”

Sullivan said he would like to ask Obama what he is
doing to make sure that veterans and their families don’t fall through
the cracks.

Back when VCS wrote a letter to Bush before the Iraq
war began, VCS and US war veterans questioned the wisdom of invading
Iraq and sought a meeting with the White House to discuss their
concerns. The letter included nearly 1,000 signatories, including
high-ranking officers.

Citing UN predictions of massive Iraqi casualties,
including 1.26 million children under age five at particular risk, the
letter stated, “excessive civilian casualties like those predicted by
the UN pose a grave risk to our national security, making the US more
of a target of retaliatory attacks by terrorists.”

The letter also stated, “We would like to meet with
you to discuss steps the United States and its allies can take to
protect US soldiers, allied forces, and Iraqi civilians from known and
suspected hazards that would result from military operations.”

It also read, “We fear our own nation and Iraq would
both suffer casualties not witnessed since Vietnam. We fear the
resulting carnage and humanitarian consequences would further devastate
Iraqi society and inflame an already volatile Middle East, and increase
terrorism against US citizens.”

Bush never responded to the letter.

As the war in Iraq has continued, agencies have
tried to keep up with caring for veterans’ physical and mental health
care needs.

Amy Fairweather is an expert in veterans’ issues and
is director of the Coalition for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans, a
clearinghouse of more than 45 agencies serving a myriad of needs
associated with deployment in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. She also
is director of the Iraq Veteran Project for Swords to Plowshares, a
community-based, not-for-profit organization that provides counseling
and case management, employment and training, housing and legal
assistance to homeless and low-income veterans in the San Francisco Bay
area and beyond.

“At the beginning of these wars [in Iraq and
Afghanistan], there was a feeling that they were going to be short and
not produce a lot of casualties and certainly not this length of time
and repeated deployments,” Fairweather said. “So, throughout these
years, we in community-based systems of care as well as government
entities have been playing catch-up to try and quickly put into place
care in real time as we are seeing the staggering rates of traumatic
brain injury (TBI) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and
economic stresses and injuries that we didn’t necessarily anticipate
seeing.”

She said, “At this stage I think all sectors have
made great strides in responding to these needs.” For example, she said
that the VA has added a lot of mental health programs.

Also, she said that groups such as the Coalition for
Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans and other agencies are doing everything
from providing free transportation to wounded service members and their
families, who are dealing with mental health issues, to helping those
who have lost loved ones due to injuries combat death or suicide to
cope.

“We’ve been scrambling and there are some really
beautiful programs out there that have developed over these years and
that will just do wonders for these veterans and their families. And
hopefully because we are on the ground right now, trying to put in
place a safety net, these veterans won’t have the same problems that
their predecessors had. But we have to remember that the need is not
going to end when the war ends. These families and these veterans are
going to live with this for the rest of their lives, and we’re talking
about relatively young service members.” She has been seeing service
members who are 22 and 23 years old.

“Depending on their injuries and even if they’re not injured, going to war is something that stays with you forever,” she said.

Care for veterans is progressing, Fairweather said.
“I applaud the progress that we’ve made, but we have a lot more to go,”
she said. “There are still significant problems with access to health
care, access to mental health care. But we’re headed in the right
direction, but we have to remember that this job is something that we
have to do for the next 50 years. And we hope that everyone comes home
safely as soon as possible.”

In addition, Fairweather said, “I fear that once
there is no Iraq war, that interest in these individuals will dwindle,
and that cannot happen. We can’t say, ‘Oh, it’s over.’ It’s never over.”

Rep. Bob Filner (D-California) said the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan have led to a skyrocketing number of suicides among
veterans of the conflicts, to which the VA has been slow to respond.
“These are our children, they come home with these unseen wounds, these
silent wounds,” Filner said. “They may kill themselves from the demons
that they got from this war, a third of those who have been diagnosed
with PTSD committed felonies in this nation. These kids did not come
home to kill their spouses or their children, they were so wounded but
they were not taken care of by our people who sent them there … It is
time to take care of them, it is time to bring them home, let’s support
the resolution on the floor.

“War is hard, but I’ve got news for you,” Filner said. “Peace is harder.”

Today, at a luncheon at the National Press Club on the future of the Republican Party in Washington, FreedomWorks chairman and tea party strategist Dick Armey slammed former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) and other anti-immigration activists for “alienating a ‘natural’ constituency [Latinos] that could help the party win elections.” Armey admitted that as House leader, he made sure Tancredo didn’t have a stage to speak on. The Daily Caller reports:

Former Republican House leader Dick Armey said staunch anti-immigration opponents such as Rep. Tom Tancredo are destructive to Republicans — and are alienating a “natural” constituency that could help the party win elections. “Who in the Republican Party was the genius that said that now that we have identified the fastest-growing voting demographic in America, let’s go out and alienate them?” Armey said, referencing Hispanics, during a luncheon in Washington at the National Press Club.

“When I was the majority leader, I saw to it that Tom Tancredo did not get on the stage because I saw how destructive he was,” Armey said of the Colorado congressman and 2008 Republican presidential candidate known for his opposition to illegal immigration. [...]

Armey also said “the Republican Party is the most naturally talented party at losing its natural constituents in the history of the world.” “This party was born with the emancipation proclamation and can’t get a black vote to save its life. How do they do that?”

In an interview with Charlie Rose that aired earlier this month, Armey listed Tancredo (R-CO) as representing part of the “tea party tent” that he feels “uncomfortable” with. In 2006, Armey referred to Tancredo as the “cheerleader of jerkiness in the immigration debate.”

Armey’s remarks have clearly made “nativist-extremist” groups that are trying to exploit the momentum of the tea party movement nervous. Americans for Legal Immigration (ALIPAC) quickly came to Tancredo’s defense and started urging its members to attack Armey’s immigration position. According to ALIPAC, Armey has been fighting to “keep the illegal immigration issue out of the Tea Party movement.” On an organizing conference call hosted by NumbersUSA, callers dismissed Armey as not being a “true tea party patriot,” but also sought tips on how to translate their anti-immigrant views to fit the tea party narrative. “We’ll be a whole lot better off if when [sic] we talk about illegal immigrants we leave off the Hispanic-Latino stuff,” advised NumbersUSA executive director Roy Beck.

More on The Wonk Room.

By Uri Avnery - Israel

Some weeks the news is dominated by a single word. This week’s word was ‘timing’.

It’s all a matter of timing. The Government of Israel has insulted the Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden, one of the greatest “friends” of Israel (meaning: somebody totally subservient to AIPAC) and spat in the face of President Barack Obama. So what? It’s all a matter of timing.

If the government had announced the building of 1600 new housing units in East Jerusalem a day earlier, it would have been OK. If it had announced it three days later, it would have been wonderful. But doing it exactly when Joe Biden was about to have dinner with Bibi and Sarah’le – that was really bad timing.

The matter itself is not important. Another thousand housing units in East Jerusalem, or 10 thousand, or 100 thousand – what different does it make? The only thing that matters is the timing.

As the Frenchman said: It’s worse than criminal, it’s stupid.

The word “stupid” also figured prominently this week, second only to “timing”.

Stupidity is an accepted phenomenon in politics. I would almost say: to succeed in politics, one needs a measure of stupidity. Voters don’t like politicians who are too intelligent. They make them feel inferior. A foolish politician, on the other hand, appears to be “one of the folks”. 

History is full of acts of folly by politicians. Many books have been written about this. To my mind, the epitome of foolishness was achieved by the events that led to World War I, with its millions of victims, which broke out because of the accumulated stupidity of (in ascending order) Austrian, Russian, German, French and British politicians.

But even stupidity in politics has its limits. I have pondered this question for decades, and who knows, one day, when I grow up, I might write a doctoral thesis about it.

My thesis goes like this: In politics (as in other fields) foolish things happen regularly. But some of them are stopped in time, before they can lead to disaster, while others are not. It this accidental, or is there a rule?

My answer is: there certainly is a rule. It works like this: when somebody sets in motion an act of folly that runs counter to the spirit of the regime, it is stopped in its tracks. While it moves from one bureaucrat to another, somebody starts to wonder. Just a moment, this cannot be right! It is referred to higher authority, and soon enough somebody decides that it is a mistake.

On the other hand, when the act of folly is in line with the spirit of the regime, there are no brakes. When it moves from one bureaucrat to the next, it looks quite natural to both. No red light. No alarm bell. And so the folly rolls on to the bitter end.

I remember how this rule came to my mind the first time. In 1965, Habib Bourguiba, the president of Tunisia, took a bold step: he made a speech in the biggest refugee camp in Jericho, then under Jordanian rule, and called upon the Arabs to recognize Israel. This caused a huge scandal all over the Arab world.

Some time later, the correspondent of an Israeli paper reported that in a press conference at the UN headquarters, Bourguiba had called for the destruction of Israel. This sounded strange to me. I made inquiries, checked the protocol and found out that the opposite was true: the reporter had mistakenly turned a no into a yes.

How did this happen? If the journalist had erred in the opposite direction and reported, for example, that Gamal Abd-el-Nasser had called for the acceptance of Israel into the Arab League, the news would have been stopped at once. Every red light would have lit up. Someone would have called out: Hey, something strange here! Check again! But in the Bourguiba case nobody noticed the mistake, for what is more natural than an Arab leader calling for the destruction of Israel? No verification needed.

That’s what happened this week in Jerusalem. Every government official knows that the nationalist Prime Minister is pushing for the Judaization of East Jerusalem, that the extreme nationalist Minister of the Interior is even more eager, and that the super-nationalist Mayor of Jerusalem practically salivates when he imagines a Jewish quarter on the Temple Mount. So why should a bureaucrat postpone the confirmation of a new Jewish neighborhood in East Jerusalem? Just because of the visit of some American windbag?

Therefore, the timing is not important. It’s the matter itself that’s important.

During his last days in office, President Bill Clinton published a peace plan, in which he tried to make up for eight years of failure in this region and kowtowing to successive Israeli governments. The plan was comparatively reasonable, but included a ticking bomb.

About East Jerusalem, Clinton proposed that what is Jewish should be joined to the State of Israel and what is Arab should be joined to the state of Palestine. He assumed (rightly, I believe) that Yasser Arafat was ready for such a compromise, which would have joined some new Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem to Israel. But Clinton was not wise enough to foresee the consequences of his proposal.

In practice, it was an open invitation to the Israeli government to speed up the establishment of new settlements in East Jerusalem, expecting them to become part of Israel. And indeed, since then successive Israeli governments have invested all available resources in this endeavor. Since money has no smell, every Jewish casino-owner in America and every Jewish brothel-keeper in Europe was invited to join the effort. The Biblical injunction – “Thou shalt not bring the hire of a whore, or the price of a dog, into the house of the Lord thy God, for any vow; for even both these are abomination unto the Lord thy God” (Deuteronomy 23:18) – was suspended for this holy cause.

Now the pace is speeded up even more. Because there is no more effective means of obstructing peace than building new settlements in East Jerusalem.

That is clear to anyone who has dealings with this region. No peace without an independent Palestinian state, no Palestinian state without East Jerusalem. About this there is total unanimity among all Palestinians, from Fatah to Hamas, and between all Arabs, from Morocco to Iraq, and between all Muslims, from Nigeria to Iran.

There will be no peace without the Palestinian flag waving above the Haram al-Sharif, the holy shrines of Islam which we call the Temple Mount. That is an iron-clad rule. Arabs can compromise about the refugee problem, painful as it may be, and about the borders, also with much pain, and about security matters. But they cannot compromise about East Jerusalem becoming the capital of Palestine. All national and religious passions converge here.

Anyone who wants to wreck any chance for peace – it is here that he has to act. The settlers and their supporters, who know that any peace agreement would include the elimination of (at least) most settlements, have planned in the past (and probably are planning now) to blow up the mosques on the Temple Mount, hoping that this would cause a worldwide conflagration which would reduce to ashes the chances of peace once and for all.

Less extreme people dream about the creeping ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem by administrative chicanery, demolition of houses, denying means of livelihood and just making life in general miserable for Arabs. Moderate rightists just want to cover every empty square inch in East Jerusalem with Jewish neighborhoods. The aim is always the same.

The reality is, of course, well known to Obama and his advisors. In the beginning they believed, in their innocence, that they could sweet talk Netanyahu and Co. into stopping the building activity to facilitate the start of negotiations for the two-state solution. Very soon they learned that this was impossible without exerting massive pressure – and they were not prepared to do that.

After putting up a short and pitiful struggle, Obama gave in. He agreed to the deception of a “settlement freeze” in the West Bank. Now building is going on there with great enthusiasm, and the settlers are satisfied. They have completely stopped their demonstrations.

In Jerusalem there was not even a farcical attempt – Netanyahu just told Obama that he would go on building there (“as in Tel Aviv”), and Obama bowed his head. When Israeli officials announced a grandiose plan for building in “Ramat Shlomo” this week, they did not violate any undertaking. Only the matter of “timing” remained.

For Joe Biden, it was a matter of honor. For Mahmoud Abbas, it is a matter of survival.

Under intense pressure from the Americans and their agents, the rulers of the Arab countries, Abbas was obliged to agree to negotiations with the Netanyahu government – though only “proximity talks”, a euphemism for “distance talks”.

Clearly, nothing will come out of these talks except more humiliation for the Palestinians. Quite simply: anyone building in East Jerusalem and the West Bank is announcing in advance that there is no chance for an agreement. After all, no sane Israeli would invest billions in a territory he intends to turn over to the Palestinian state. A person who is eating a pizza is not negotiating about it in good faith.

Even at this late stage, Abbas and his people still hope that something good will come out of all this: the US will acknowledge that they are right and exert, at long last, real pressure on Israel to implement the two-state solution.

But Biden and Obama did not give much cause for hope. They wiped the spit off their faces and smiled politely.

As the saying goes: when you spit in the face of a weakling, he pretends that it is raining. Does this apply to the president of the most powerful country in the world?

- Uri Averny is an Israeli writer and founder of the Gush Shalom peace movement. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

“Green Zone” looks at an American war in a way almost no Hollywood movie ever has: We’re not the heroes, but the dupes. Its message is that Iraq’s fabled “weapons of mass destruction” did not exist, and that neocons within the administration fabricated them, lied about them and were ready to kill to cover up their deception.

Is this true? I’m not here to say. It’s certainly one more element in the new narrative that has gradually emerged about Iraq, the dawning realization that we went to war under false premises. “Green Zone,” directed by Paul Greengrass, is a thriller that makes no claim to be based on fact, but provides characters and situations that have uncanny real-life parallels. Its director made two of the “Bourne” films, and imports his approach to Baghdad, starring Matt Damon as an unstoppable action hero.

But this isn’t merely a thriller. It has a point to argue: Critical blunders at the outset made a quick and easy victory impossible, and turned Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” photo-op into a historic miscalculation. “Green Zone” argues, as many observers have, that the fatal error of the United States was to fire the officers and men of the Iraqi army and leave them at large with their weapons. The Iraqi army had no great love of Saddam and might have been a helpful, stabilizing force. Instead, it was left unemployed, armed and alienated.

Damon, playing Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller, is seen at the outset leading a raid on a suspected storage site for WMDs. Nothing there. Another raid, intended to find weapons of chemical warfare, turns up years-old pigeon droppings. Because some of the raids produce casualties, he begins to question the intelligence reports the raids are based on. He speaks out at a briefing, and rather improbably finds himself face to face with a U.S. intelligence agent named Poundstone (Greg Kinnear). He’s fed the usual line and told to perform his duty, but is overheard by Martin Brown, a hulking, grizzled CIA man who’s an old Middle East hand. Soon he’s meeting with Brown to pass on his doubts.

“Green Zone” indicates that the CIA, which lacked (as in real life) any evidence to back up the WMD claims, was cut out of the loop, and that Poundstone is not only the architect of the neocon fictions, but their enforcer; he even has a military group answering directly to him.

Miller also meets a New York newspaperwoman named Lawrie Dayne (Amy Ryan), whose reports about a secret Iraqi informer have given credence to the WMD claims. From her, he discovers that Gen. Al Rawi (Igal Naor) of the Iraqi army met with Poundstone in Jordan but, unlike the source Poundstone cited, flatly told him Saddam had no WMDs. So the bad intel was cooked up to justify the war the neocons desired.

Have I made the plot sound complex? Greengrass works with screenwriter Brian Helgeland to tell it with considerable clarity. By limiting the characters and using typecasting, he makes a web of deceit easy to understand. Also a great help to Miller is a local named Freddy (Khalid Abdalla), who risks his life to help him, acts as a translator and is given the film’s key line of dialogue.

The action in “Green Zone” is followed by Greengrass in the QueasyCam style I’ve found distracting in the past: lots of quick cuts between hand-held shots. It didn’t bother me here. That may be because I became so involved in the story. Perhaps also because unlike the “Bourne” films, this one contains no action sequences that are logically impossible. When we see a car chase that couldn’t take place in the real world, we naturally think about the visual effects. When they could take place and it’s a good movie, we’re thinking about the story.

“Green Zone” will no doubt be under fire from those who are still defending the fabricated intelligence we used as an excuse to invade Iraq. Yes, the film is fiction, employs farfetched coincidences and improbably places one man at the center of all the action. It is a thriller, not a documentary. It’s my belief that the nature of the neocon evildoing has by now become pretty clear. Others will disagree. The bottom line is: This is one hell of a thriller.

Giving this week’s GOP address, Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) bashed Democratic efforts to reform health care as a “bitter, destructive, and endless drive to completely transform America’s healthcare system.” Saying Democrats should scrap their plan and start over, Brown said, “This, above all, was the message that the people of my state sent to the president and the Congress in the election over a month ago.”

Senior White House adviser David Axelrod responded to Brown’s comments on ABC’s This Week, noting that that Brown’s state has a health care plan that is very similar “to the one we’re trying to enact here,” and Brown “voted for it”:

AXELROD: Let me note that Senator Brown comes from a state that has a health care format in his state that is similar to the one we’re trying to enact here. People in his state are overwhelmingly in support of it. He voted for it and said he wouldn’t repeal it. So we’re just trying to give the people in america the same opportunities that the people in Massachusetts have. To get health insurance at a price they can afford. This bill is important for the American people.

Appearing after him, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) called Axelrod’s comments “complete spin” and said, “no way in the world is what they did in Massachusetts like what we’re about to do in Washington:”

GRAHAM: And the interview I just heard is spin, campaigning. I thought the campaign was over. Are you trying to tell me and the American people that Scott Brown got elected campaigning against a Washington bill that really is just like the Massachusetts bill? The American people are getting tired of this crap. No way in the world is what they did in Massachusetts like what we’re about to do in Washington. We didn’t cut Medicare — they didn’t cut Medicare when they passed the bill in Massachusetts. They didn’t raise $500 billion on the American people when they passed the bill in Massachusetts. To suggest that Scott Brown is basically campaigning against the bill in Washington that is like the one in Massachusetts is complete spin.

Watch a compilation:

In fact, the plan implemented by former Republican Gov. Mitt Romney in Massachusetts is very similar to the Democratic proposal. Both plans require people to purchase coverage and both provide affordability credits to those who can’t afford insurance. Both create insurance exchanges, both establish minimum creditable coverage standards for insurers, and both require employers to contribute towards reform. The Wonk Room’s Igor Volsky created a chart outlining the similarities between Romney’s plan and the Senate bill that passed in December and will become the foundation of national health care reform.

Graham cites only two issues to support his claim: Medicare cuts and tax raises “on the American people.” But of course, no state has the authority to either change Medicare or raises taxes on all Americans.

Even conservatives see the similarities between the two plans. “[T]he public option has now vanished from the Obama plan. Which means that the federal plan bears a closer family resemblance than ever to Romney’s idea,” former Bush speech writer David Frum observed. American Spectator’s Philip Klein said there “ain’t” any substantial differences between the plans. The key parts of the Democratic proposal are the same as “those elements [that] formed the core of Romneycare,” Klein adds.