By Jillian C. York | EFF | January 28, 2012

This January 28 marks International Privacy Day. Different countries around the world are celebrating this day with their own events.

Throughout history, there have been a number of reasons why individuals have taken to writing or producing art under a pseudonym. In the 18th century, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay took on the pseudonym Publius to publish The Federalist Papers. In 19th century England, pseudonyms allowed women–like the Brontë sisters, who initially published under Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell–to be taken seriously as writers.

Today, pseudonyms continue to serve a range of individuals, and for a variety of reasons. At EFF, we view anonymity as both a matter of free speech and privacy, but in light of International Privacy Day, January 28, this piece will focus mainly on the latter, looking at the ways in which the right to anonymity–or pseudonymity–is truly a matter of privacy.

Privacy from employers

Human beings are complex creatures with multiple interests. As such, many professionals use pseudonyms online to keep their employment separate from their personal life. One example of this is the Guardian columnist GrrlScientist who, upon discovering her Google+ account had been deleted for violating their “common name” policy, penned a piece explaining her need for privacy. Another example is prominent Moroccan blogger Hisham Khribchi, who has explained his use of a pseudonym, stating:

When I first started blogging I wanted my identity to remain secret because I didn’t want my online activity to interfere with my professional life. I wanted to keep both as separate as possible. I also wanted to use a fake name because I wrote about politics and I was critical of my own government. A pseudonym would shield me and my family from personal attacks. I wanted to have a comfortable space to express myself freely without having to worry about the police when I visit my family back in Morocco.

Though Khribchi’s reasoning is two-fold, his primary concern–even stronger than his need for protection from his government–was keeping his online life separate from his employment.

Privacy from the political scene

In 2008, an Alaskan blogger known as “Alaska Muckraker” (or AKM) rose to fame for her vocal criticism of fellow Alaskan and then-McCain-running-mate Sarah Palin. Later, after inveighing against a rude email sent to constituents by Alaska State Representative Mike Doogan, AKM was outed–by Doogan–who wrote that his “own theory about the public process is you can say what you want, as long as you are willing to stand behind it using your real name.”

AKM, a blogger decidedly committing an act of journalism, could have had any number of reasons to remain anonymous. As she later wrote:

I might be a state employee. I might not want my children to get grief at school. I might be fleeing from an ex-partner who was abusive and would rather he not know where I am. My family might not want to talk to me anymore. I might alienate my best friend. Maybe I don’t feel like having a brick thrown through my window. My spouse might work for the Palin administration. Maybe I’d just rather people not know where I live or where I work. Or none of those things may be true. None of my readers, nor Mike Doogan had any idea what my personal circumstances might be.

Though Doogan claimed that AKM gave up her right to anonymity when her blog began influencing public policy, he’s wrong. In the United States, the right to anonymity is protected by the First Amendment and must remain so, to ensure both the free expression and privacy rights of citizens.

Similarly, in 2009, Ed Whelans, a former official with the Department of Justice, outed anonymous blogger John Blevins–a professor at the South Texas College of Law–in the National Review, calling him “irresponsible”, and a “coward.” Blevins took the fall gracefully, later explaining why he had chosen to blog under a pseudonym. Like Khribchi, Blevins’ reasons were numerous: He feared losing tenure and legal clients, but he also feared putting the jobs of family members in the political space at risk.

Privacy from the public eye

A friend of mine–let’s call him Joe–is the sibling of a famous celebrity. But while he’s very proud of his sibling, Joe learned early on that not everyone has his best interests at heart. Therefore, Joe devised a pseudonym to use online in order to protect the privacy of himself and his family.

In Joe’s case, the threat is very real: celebrities are regularly stalked, their houses broken into. His pseudonym keeps him feeling “normal” in his online interactions, while simultaneously protecting his sibling and the rest of his family from invasions of privacy.

Achieving anonymity online

Anonymity and pseudonymity may seem increasingly difficult to achieve online. Not only do companies like Facebook restrict your right to use a pseudonym, but even when you do think you’re anonymous, you might not be–as blogger Rosemary Port found out in 2009 after Google turned over her name in response to a court order.

While we should continue to fight for our privacy under the law, the best thing we can do as users to who value our right to anonymity is to use tools like Tor. Anonymous bloggers can use Global Voices Advocacy’s online guide to blogging anonymously with WordPress and Tor. And all Internet users should educate themselves about what is–and isn’t–private on their online accounts and profiles.

Related articles

• International Privacy Day: Fighting Data Retention Mandates Around the World (alethonews.wordpress.com)
• Google And Privacy: Nothing To See Here, Move On (informationweek.com)
• Google shifts stance on Google+ anonymity, will support pseudonyms (arstechnica.com)
• Google Says Bye Bye to User Privacy (forbes.com)
• Google+ relaxes real-name policy, allows pseudonyms (plus.google.com)

Rehmat’s World | January 28, 2012

Under pressure from pro-Israel Jewish groups – California State University, Northridge (CSUN) has reinstated its three Israel Study Abroad programs at Haifa University, Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University in Israel. The programs were halted in 2002, with three students enrolled in the program, when the US State Department issued a travel warning. Now, the CSUN management is convinced that Israel is a safe place even though Benji Netanyahu government claims that Hamas, Hizbullah and Iran are planing to “wipe Israel off the map.”

The University Chancellor Charles Reed ignored the opposition by 127 US academics to reinstating the program was led by California  State Northridge professor David Klein, many from CSUN. One of the signatories, Long Beach Professor Emerita Sherna Gluck says: “I cannot support cooperation with Israeli universities and certainly cannot endorse our CSU students attending these institutions any more than I supported exchanges with South African apartheid universities.”

In late 2009, 389 signatories endorsed a letter to UC Davis Provost William Lacy protesting the system-wise reinstatement on the grounds that the program would be inherently discriminatory Muslims and Arab students.

The Campus Watch, a Philadelphia-based, Israel Hasbara (propaganda in Hebrew) website, has long been campaigning against Dr. David Klein for his criticism of Israel’s Zionazi policies. The website is run by the Middle East Forum, to monitor US college campuses for academic pro-Palestinian bias and happenings. It publishes dossiers on professors, as well as some examples of their writings.

The Campus Watch encourages students to snitch on their professors. It has a whole section dedicated to student reports. The Campus Watch is essentially forming a paramilitary thought police, a private TIPS program for pro-Israeli advocates.

Dr. Klein is also accused of ‘anti-Semitism’ by organizations such as ‘Never Again Canada’ and ‘AMCHA’ who seek to impose their pro-Israel, pro-Zionist politics upon the California State University. There is no content on his website that could even arguably be labeled ‘anti-Semitic’ without the offensive conflation of Jews and Jewishness with the State of Israel, its government, and its motivating ideology, Zionism. This is not the first occasion of organized pro-Israel lobbies and groups targeting faculty and students for their advocacy for Palestine. From battles over tenure faced by extraordinarily qualified Palestinian professors to unjust firings or demotions of faculty who have spoken in support of Palestine, efforts to intimidate professors are increasing.

Dr. David Klein, a renowned Jewish professor of Mathematics, is listed at the “Self-Hating Israel-Threatening (S.H.I.T)” Jewish list where he is credited for saying:

“Israel is the most racist state in the world at this time. Support for Israel must stop. In pursuit of a Zionist agenda, Israel has followed a 60-year program of ethnic cleansing, including expulsion of the Palestinian population, military occupation, and mass murder. The attack of Gaza is only the latest in a long history of crimes against humanity. Israel avoids peace because peace interferes with territorial expansion and ethnic cleaning”.

Related articles

• California professor under attack for opposing “study in Israel” scheme (alethonews.wordpress.com)
• Swedes call for academic boycott of Israel (alethonews.wordpress.com)

Press TV – January 28, 2012

The US military plans to deploy a large floating base, unofficially dubbed the “mothership,” for commando teams to the Middle East amid recent developments in the region.

The Navy is converting an aging warship it had planned to decommission into a makeshift staging base for the commandos in response to requests from the US Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, The Washington Post reported on Saturday.

The floating base could accommodate smaller high-speed boats and helicopters commonly used by the United States Navy’s Sea, Air, and Land Teams, commonly known as Navy SEALs.

Lieutenant Commander Mike Kafka, a spokesman for the Navy’s Fleet Forces Command, declined to elaborate on the floating base’s purpose or to say where exactly it will be deployed in the Middle East.

There are indications that the Pentagon will send the vessel to the region by early summer, and Navy documents show that it could be headed to the Persian Gulf.

The deployment of the floating base to the Middle East marks a return to maritime missions for SEAL teams, who have been engaged in ground operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for the past decade.

The US Navy had earlier planned to retire the amphibious assault ship USS Ponce and decommission it in March 2012 after 41 years of service. The warship was sent to the Mediterranean Sea last year to provide military support to NATO air strikes on Libya.

The USS Ponce will be instead transformed into what the US military calls an Afloat Forward Staging Base.

Related articles

• This New Commando ‘Mothership’ Is Being Rushed To The Middle East (businessinsider.com)

By Ismail Salami | Intifada-Palestine.com | January 27, 2012

Washington’s double-edged sword of policies towards the Islamic Republic is not only exhausting the patience of the Iranian nation but it is provoking the ire of international conscience as well.

Goaded by Washington, EU foreign ministers decided on January 23 to impose a ban on oil imports from Iran under the fickle excuse that the country is pursuing a clandestine nuclear weapons program.

In a recent stance, Iran has threatened that it would never let a situation prevail where regional states could sell their oil while Iran couldn’t. Ali Akbar Velayati, senior adviser to the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, has said, “When there is an absence of Iranian supply, oil prices will soar up dramatically and the western countries are well aware of this fact; However, Iran will never allow itself to land in a situation in which it cannot sell oil but other regional states can.”

It hardly needs saying that such a firm stance on the part of Iran has been given considerable thought and that the European Union should be prepared to face the consequences of their irrationality and blind servitude to Washington.

Earlier Iran had warned that it would close the Strait of Hormuz, a move which, as the IMF has said, “could trigger a much larger price spike including by limiting offsetting supplies from other producers in the region.”

The sanctions on Iran oil, which will be effective in July, will surely have drastic repercussions for the European Union as Iran is mulling banning the sale of oil to Europe, a proactive move which will salvage the country’s economy on the one hand and will also lead to a drastic hike in oil prices on the other.

Undoubtedly, the EU decision to impose sanctions on Iran’s oil exports is, as Velayati has said, “a political maneuver,” and that “Iran doesn’t need any favor from any country to sell its oil, because global demand is always there.”

In the long run, Western oil firms and consumers may “emerge the biggest losers.” The IMF has predicted that crude oil prices could rise up to 30 percent namely to over USD 140 per barrel if Iran ever decided to retaliate by halting its oil exports altogether. Saudi Arabia has vowed to fill the gap.

But what if Saudi Arabia is bluffing? What if she cannot make up for the supply deficiency?

At all events, oil is fungible and Iran will easily find its own customers in Asian markets.

Europe has seen better days and now is not surely the best time for the imposition of sanctions on Iran’s oil as they will suffer most. For some European countries such as Italy, Spain and Greece, it will not be really easy to participate in the ban on Iran oil as they largely rely on Iran imports. As for Greece which is receiving oil from Iran on credit, it will be an utterly wrong decision to join other European countries which have secret plans to disintegrate the country.

Much to the chagrin of Washington and the Zionist regime, a number of countries such as China, India, Russia, Turkey, Japan, and South Korea have already refused to abide by the new measures. Russia has slammed the new package of sanctions and in a tough-worded statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry described the EU move as “deeply erroneous.”

“Under such kind of pressure Iran will make no concessions and no correction of its policy,” it said. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters that there was nothing to prove that Iran was trying to build an atomic weapon.

Russia has also warned the West against a US-led invasion of Iran, saying that this would incur a chain reaction and that the catastrophic consequences will affect the entire region.

It is manifest that Iran will do without the EU and will find its customers elsewhere in Asian markets. In other words, Iran will not lose in the passive war of sanctions engineered by Washington.

Indeed, sanctions are to be seen as part of Washington’s policy of coercion to break the back of the Iranian government and bring the nation to its knees. However, it should be noted that Iran has been mercilessly under severe sanctions for over 30 years and that it has turned the sanctions into opportunities to attain self-sufficiency and stand on its feet again. The entire gamut of the sanctions designed and spurred by the US and now followed by the EU is also tailored to suit the interests of Israel, the archenemy of Iran and thus the bosom buddy of Washington.

Ever since its inception, the Islamic Republic has been the target of Washington’s inveterate animosity.

In his book Spider’s Web: The Secret History of How the White House Illegally Armed Iraq (1993), Alan Friedman reveals how the US government aided the regime of the executed dictator Saddam Hussein in his invasion of Iran. Ironically, the once good pal of the United States suddenly turned into a parasite to be eliminated from the face of the earth. According to Friedman, Washington generously doled out its assistance in various forms to Iraq including billions of dollars worth of economic aid, the sale of dual-use technology, non-US arms, military intelligence, Special Operations training, and active participation in war against Iran. An Atlanta branch of Italy’s largest bank, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro funneled over USD 5 billion to Iraq from 1985 to 1989. This piece of information had been concealed by the CIA.

An appalling report revealed that the US government provided Saddam’s regime with chemical weapons. Released on May 25, 1994 by the US Senate Banking Committee, the report detailed the export of pathogenic (‘disease producing’), toxigenic (‘poisonous’), and other biological materials to Iraq after licensing by the US Department of Commerce. The report revealed 70 shipments (including Bacillus anthracis) from the US to Iraq over a span of three years.

The Iraqi regime used the chemical weapons provided by the US against the Iranian combatants and civilians, thus leaving them in a life-in-death situation. Around 100,000 Iranians were affected by nerve and mustard gases, and around one in 10 died before receiving any medical treatment. About five to six thousand are still under medical treatment, of whom around a thousand are critically ill.

The Iranian chemical victims are still dying on a daily basis.

So, Washington’s enmity towards the Islamic Republic goes far beyond its peaceful nuclear program which has constantly been used as a political leverage to stunt the economic and political growth of an anti-imperialism state and prevent the emergence of a Muslim superpower.

The depiction of Iran as a nuclear nightmare and as a global threat is only a saga manufactured by Washington in order to smother a voice so overpoweringly critical of the myriad morbid policies of a government whose American dream is dead and gone.

~

 Dr. Ismail Salami is an Iranian writer, Middle East expert, Iranologist and lexicographer. He writes extensively on the US and Middle East issues and his articles have been translated into a number of languages.

Related articles

• US lobbies Pakistan to drop Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline project (alethonews.wordpress.com)
• We Aren’t The World: Obama, Iran, and The Arrogance of Empire (alethonews.wordpress.com)
• EU oil sanctions: Iran to get its retaliation in first? (rt.com)

By Maira Sutton and Parker Higgins | EFF | January 27, 2012

If there’s one thing that encapsulates what’s wrong with the way government functions today, ACTA is it. You wouldn’t know it from the name, but the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is a plurilateral agreement designed to broaden and extend existing intellectual property (IP) enforcement laws to the Internet. While it was only negotiated between a few countries,1 it has global consequences. First because it will create new rules for the Internet, and second, because its standards will be applied to other countries through the U.S.’s annual Special 301 process. Negotiated in secret, ACTA bypassed checks and balances of existing international IP norm-setting bodies, without any meaningful input from national parliaments, policymakers, or their citizens. Worse still, the agreement creates a new global institution, an “ACTA Committee” to oversee its implementation and interpretation that will be made up of unelected members with no legal obligation to be transparent in their proceedings. Both in substance and in process, ACTA embodies an outdated top-down, arbitrary approach to government that is out of step with modern notions of participatory democracy.

The EU and 22 of its 27 member states signed ACTA yesterday in Tokyo. This news is neither momentous nor surprising. This is but the latest step in more than three years of non-transparent negotiations. In December, the Council of the European Union—one of the European Union’s two legislative bodies, composed of executives from the 27 EU member states—adopted ACTA during a completely unrelated meeting on agriculture and fisheries. Of course, this is not the end of the story in the EU. For ACTA to be adopted as EU law, the European Parliament has to vote on whether to accept or reject it.

In the U.S., there are growing concerns about the constitutionality of negotiating ACTA as a “sole executive agreement”.  This is not just a semantic argument. If ACTA were categorized as a treaty, it would have to be ratified by the Senate. But the USTR and the Administration have consistently maintained that ACTA is a sole executive agreement negotiated under the President’s power. On that theory, it does not need Congressional approval and thus ACTA already became binding on the US government when Ambassador Ron Kirk signed it last October.

But leading US Constitutional Scholars disagree. Professors Jack Goldsmith and Larry Lessig, questioned the Constitutionality of the executive agreement classification in 2010:

The president has no independent constitutional authority over intellectual property or communications policy, and there is no long historical practice of making sole executive agreements in this area. To the contrary, the Constitution gives primary authority over these matters to Congress, which is charged with making laws that regulate foreign commerce and intellectual property.2

(And by the way, we agree [pdf].)

Senator Ron Wyden has been asking these questions for years, first demanding an explanation from USTR ambassador Ron Kirk, President Obama, and now the administration’s top international law expert Harold Koh. The distinction between executive agreement and treaty should not be lost on this administration: as a Senator, Vice President Joe Biden used the same argument to require the Bush administration to seek Senate approval for an arms reduction agreement.

Public interest groups and informed politicians have long lamented these problems with ACTA. But the impact of dubious backroom law-drafting is getting fresh attention in light of the powerful global opposition movement that has emerged out of last week’s Internet blackout protests. Activists and netizens all around the world have woken up to the dangers of overbroad enforcement law proposals drafted by monopoly industry lobbyists, and rushed into law through strategic lobbying by the same corporate interests that backed SOPA and PIPA. Tens of thousands are protesting in the streets in Poland as their ambassador signed the agreement in Tokyo. The EU Parliament’s website and others have come under attack for their involvement in these laws. The Member of the European Parliament who was appointed to be the rapporteur for ACTA in the European Parliament, Kader Arif, quit yesterday in protest. In a statement he said:

I want to denounce in the strongest possible manner the entire process that led to the signature of this agreement: no inclusion of civil society organisations, a lack of transparency from the start of the negotiations, repeated postponing of the signature of the text without an explanation being ever given, exclusion of the EU Parliament’s demands that were expressed on several occasions in our assembly…

…This agreement might have major consequences on citizens’ lives, and still, everything is being done to prevent the European Parliament from having its say in this matter. That is why today, as I release this report for which I was in charge, I want to send a strong signal and alert the public opinion about this unacceptable situation. I will not take part in this masquerade.

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves. ACTA may have been signed by public officials, but it’s crystal clear that they are not representing the public interest.

It is now up to the collective will of the public to decide what to do next, and for individuals to ask themselves what they want their government to look like. Do you believe in democracy? Do you believe that laws should be made to reflect our collective best interests, formulated through an open transparent process? One that allows everyone, from experts to civil society members, to analyze, question and probe an agreement that will lead to laws that will impact potentially billions of lives? If we don’t do anything now, this agreement is going to crawl itself into power. With the future at stake like this, it’s never too late to fight.

~

If you live in Europe, follow these links to learn how you can take immediate action and stay informed on the latest updates:

La Quadrature du Net (@laquadrature): How to Act Against ACTA

European Digital Rights (@EDRi_org): Stop ACTA!

Open Rights Group (@OpenRightsGroup): ACTA: signed, not yet sealed – now it’s up to us

Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (@FFII): ACTA Blog

For those in the U.S., you can demonstrate your opposition to the dubious decision to negotiate ACTA as a sole executive agreement to bypass proper congressional review by signing this petition on the whitehouse.gov website, demanding the Administration submit ACTA to the Senate for approval.

EFF will continue to monitor ACTA’s global implementation and watch for efforts to use ACTA to broaden US enforcement powers.

• 1. United States, Australia, Canada, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, and South Korea
• 2. (See also here [pdf] and here).

Related articles

• ACTA anger: Protesters hopeful as official resigns (rt.com)
• Follow Up of the Day: EU ACTA Chief Resigns (geeks.thedailywh.at)

Ma’an – 28/01/2012

BETHLEHEM – The founder of humanitarian organization Roots of Peace said Friday that the group has demanded that Israel work to remove landmines from the Palestinian territories.

Heidi Kühn told Voice of Palestine radio that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his government would help to remove mines in the West Bank if the organization assisted with mine removal within Israel. [...]

Around 1.5 million landmines and unexploded ordinances prevent access to more than 50,000 acres of productive land in Israel, the West Bank and the Jordan River valley, Roots of Peace says.

The Israeli-Jordanian border areas and the Jordan Valley are still heavily land-mined, together with areas of the Golan Heights and the northern West Bank.

The mines no longer serve any military purpose.

Related articles

• Roots of Peace society plans to clear landmines near West Bank village, Israel has blocked removal (alethonews.wordpress.com)
• Israel digs trench to isolate farms in the Jordan Valley (alethonews.wordpress.com)

By Saed Bannoura | IMEMC & Agencies | January 26, 2012

Palestinian Minister of Detainees in the West Bank, Issa Qaraqe’, called for the boycotting of all Israeli military courts for their repeated rulings that confine thousands of detainees under administrative orders without filing any official indictments against them.

His statements came during a visit to the family of detainee, Ahmad Nabhan Saqer, aged 47, at the Askar refugee camp, near the northern West Bank city of Nablus.

Saqer has been imprisoned under administrative detention for over three years, since he was abducted in November 2008, and Israeli military courts have repeatedly issued administrative detention orders against him, without filing any formal charges.

Saqer was arrested three times before, and has spent a total of twelve years and counting, behind bars.

The Palestinian Minister said that administrative detention is an illegal and unconstitutional form of imprisonment, as military courts do not have to file charges or reveal the cause of arrest.

Detainees held under administrative detention do not know for sure when, or if, they will be released, as Israel often continues to renew these orders without any prior notice. In some isolated cases, the detainees have been told that they will be released, taken to the main prison gate, and are then informed that a new order was issued against them, usually for three or six months each time.

Qaraqe’ voiced an appeal to human rights groups to apply pressure on Israel and oblige it to end its administrative detention laws as they are arbitrary, unconstitutional, and violate International Law.

He said that all military courts must be boycotted as they base their rulings on “secret files” that even defense attorneys do not have access to.

The wife of Saqer stated that the extended imprisonment of her husband, and the uncertainty of when or if he will be released, directly impacts the family, particularly his children who can’t know for sure when their father will be able to return home.

On January 20, 2012, Saqer declared that he will be boycotting military courts, and stated that appearing in front of military courts and judges provides them with the legitimacy they do not have.

There are 280 Palestinians who are currently imprisoned under administrative detention orders; Israel has issued more than 20,000 administrative detention orders since the year 2000. These orders have also been issued against children and elected legislators.

Related articles

• Speaker Of Palestine Parliament Receives Six Months Administrative Detention (alethonews.wordpress.com)
• Khader Adnan, a Palestinian political detainee in isolation, ACT NOW (seachranaidhe1.wordpress.com)
• Arbitrary Detention and Detention of Children as Adults (altahrir.wordpress.com)
• Israel extends journalist’s detention without trial (alethonews.wordpress.com)

Bekah Wolf | The Electronic Intifada | 27 January 2012

Yousef Ikhlayl, top left, attending a demonstration in Beit Ommar less than six months before he was killed by Israeli settlers. (Palestine Solidarity Project)

On 28 January 2011 at 6:30am, Yousef Ikhlayl, 17, went with his father Fakhri to their farmland on the outskirts of the West Bank village Beit Ommar, where they prepared the land around their grapevines. At approximately 7am, two groups of Israelis from the illegal settlements Bat Ayn and Kiryat Arba were taking a “hike” in the privately-owned Palestinian agricultural land belonging to the residents of Beit Ommar (“Palestinian killed in clashes with settlers near Hebron,” The Jerusalem Post, 29 January 2011).

There was no indication that the settlers were planning on shooting. Yousef’s father reported that the first shot fired by the settlers hit his son in the head. The settlers then began shooting in the air and the surrounding areas to prevent others from approaching, as his father screamed desperately for help.

Yousef was carried to a car that drove him out of the agricultural valley and to the main road, where an ambulance “rushed” him to the hospital in Hebron, passing two Israeli military checkpoints on the way. At the hospital, Yousef was put on a respirator, though he had no brain activity. He passed away soon after.

At his funeral the following day, as is common practice with the Israeli military involving martyr funerals, soldiers numbering in the hundreds invaded Beit Ommar and attacked the funeral with tear gas, rubber-coated steel bullets and even live ammunition, as the Palestine Solidarity Project reported (“Funeral of Yousef Ikhlayl attacked by Israeli military, dozens injured,” 29 January 2011).

The murder of Yousef Ikhlayl, the impunity with which the settlers acted and the military’s behavior at the funeral are common occurrences in the occupied West Bank. The death of a Palestinian, even a child, is rarely noted and quickly forgotten in much of the world. The killing of Yousef was, however, a profound event for myself, the Palestine Solidarity Project (PSP, the organization I co-founded) and popular resistance in the Hebron district as a whole.

Never safe

PSP began farmer-accompaniment programs in the areas surrounding Beit Ommar — particularly the areas near Bat Ayn settlement — in 2006. We did so because of the extreme violence and the regularity with which settlers from this colony would attack farmers, particularly in the Saffa valley near where Yousef was killed.

Yousef was a regular participant in all of our activities, including demonstrations, farming actions, summer camps, English classes and even a photography workshop we held in 2010. He was a fixture at PSP events, volunteering to set up for conferences and often babysitting my young daughter as we held meetings and tours for international activists. I have vivid memories of Yousef carrying my baby, Rafeef, around the yard of my house, pointing out tree leaves and flowers while my husband, PSP co-founder Mousa Abu Maria, and I met with international delegations and the local popular committee.

Yousef was quite familiar with the Israeli settlers from the area and their potential for violence. Perhaps it was because of this familiarity with them that he did not run when they arrived in the area. He had been with PSP dozens of times as we accompanied other farmers to their land, as settlers watched from the hillside or hurled rocks at us from hundreds of meters away. Perhaps he assumed this time would be no different; but maybe it would have been different if we had been there with his family. I wonder about what he thought when the settlers approached. I have often thought in the last year if things would have been different if international activists had been there; if I had been there.

Our farmer-accompaniment program in the area throughout the years, though it had led to literally dozens of arrests of Israeli and international solidarity activists, was completely successful in deterring settler violence during the accompaniment.

In the end, the settlers roamed the area freely, shooting at residents and youth who began throwing stones for two hours. Two hours before Israeli soldiers, who are responsible for the security of Area C — 60 percent of the West Bank under Israeli military control — could persuade the residents to return to their homes.

The aforementioned Jerusalem Post article adds that twenty settlers were detained at the scene by the military — a highly unusual occurrence, possibly due to the presence of international and Israeli activists who had arrived in the area after the shooting — but were all released the same day.

Israeli impunity

During the two hours that the settlers stayed in the area, PSP activists arrived and began taking pictures of them to provide to the Israeli police responsible for investigating attacks by settlers on Palestinians in the West Bank. Shortly after the murder, Yousef’s father and the activists who took the pictures went to the Israeli police station (located in the settlement Kfar Etzion, next door to Bat Ayn) and filed a formal complaint.

Yousef’s father provided the photographs to the police and even identified a few individuals he saw closest to him and his son when he was shot. In a democracy, one would think this level of evidence, combined with the heinousness of the crime, would lead to a thorough investigation and speedy indictment. But, as we all well know, that is not what happens when settlers attack Palestinians.

In December 2011, Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights organization that monitors the criminal accountability of Israeli civilians and Israeli military forces in the West Bank, released an updated report on the rate of which Israeli civilians are prosecuted for crimes committed against Palestinians in the West Bank.

Yesh Din discovered, after researching the progress of 700 individual complaints filed with the Israeli police in the West Bank by Palestinians, that 91 percent of all complaints end with the investigation being closed without an indictment, including 85 percent of cases involving violence. The most common reason for closing a case (which can be done either by the police or by the police prosecutor) is “perpetrator unknown,” though a full 2 percent of all cases were closed because of a “lack of public interest,” which begs the question, “which public?” (“Updated data monitoring hundreds of investigations: 91% of cases closed without indictments,” 15 December 2011).

The report reveals that only 7.4 percent of cases involving settler crimes committed against Palestinians from 2005 to 2011 actually ended in an indictment. The statistic regarding crimes committed by Israeli military personnel against Palestinians, which are investigated by a separate entity, is a negligible 3.5 percent ending in indictments.

Yesh Din’s full report shows a series of failures, from the process of filing an initial complaint, to the police investigation, to the process inside the prosecutors’ office for initiating an indictment. In Yousef Ikhlayl’s case, Yesh Din discovered that while an investigation was conducted by the police (which may have only constituted the interview with Yousef’s father) and the file was turned over to the prosecution, the case has inexplicably been stalled for months because the prosecution’s office has refused to assign the case to an individual attorney, a step necessary before a final decision can be made on whether an indictment will be handed down.

It is obvious that individual justice for Palestinian victims of settler crimes — even when the victim is an unarmed child — remains elusive. Perhaps, as was suggested in an op-ed that appeared in Israeli daily Haaretz about the murder of Mustafa Tamimi, knowing the individual perpetrator, and pursuing a case against the individual, only serves to alleviate the responsibility of the system as a whole (“A courageous Palestinian has died, shrouded in stones,” 13 December 2011).

However, violent, ideological settlers, and their counterparts in the Israeli military, will only continue to act with total disregard for the basic human rights of Palestinians if they are assured that they will not face consequences. The death of a civilian, particularly a child, should result both in a black mark on the society that condones it, as well as the prosecution of the individuals responsible.

A call to action

Yousef Ikhlayl’s murder was overshadowed by world events taking place in January 2011. Activists and sympathetic journalists alike were focused on the massive uprising in Egypt that had just erupted, as well as other developments during the Arab uprisings. Beit Ommar, Yousef’s hometown, had fallen into the background as settler violence had decreased in previous months and the demonstrations in Nabi Saleh were gaining attention.

The community of Beit Ommar and the Palestine Solidarity Project have called for an international day of action on Saturday, 28 January, to commemorate the one-year anniversary of Yousef’s death and ensure that he will not be forgotten.

People all over the world will hold demonstrations in front of Israeli consulates, and will plaster their cities with posters of with his face (which can be found on the website).

We are calling for an end to Israeli impunity, and the world to remember that behind statistics and policy reports, the victims of Israel’s murderous policies are real, live people. It is imperative that the international community not only hold Israel accountable for its criminal acts, through movements including boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS), and solidarity work in Palestine, but also to humanize the victims of these crimes. Yousef Ikhlayl was a goofy, quiet and dedicated boy. He had a sheepish smile and made my daughter laugh. We will not forget him.

~

Bekah Wolf is a co-founder of the Palestine Solidarity Project, and has worked in the West Bank since 2003.  Further details on the day of action to demand justice for Yousef Ikhlayl can be found on the PSP website, www.palestinesolidarityproject.org. PSP can be followed on Twitter at @PalestinePSP.

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Al Akhbar | January 27, 2012

Saudi Arabia will recognize the Syrian National Council (SNC) as the “official representative” of the Syrian people amid a joint Western-Gulf Arab push to have President Bashar Assad removed, a senior member of the opposition group said on Friday.

“Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal told an SNC delegation he met in Cairo last week the kingdom will recognize the Council as the official representative of the Syrian people,” SNC executive council member Ahmad Ramadan told Kuwait’s Al-Rai newspaper.

Ramadan did not specify when Saudi will make the call, or whether it will be backed by its Gulf Arab allies in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

It was also reported in the UK’s The Times newspaper on Friday that Saudi Arabia and Qatar will begin funding the SNC as well as armed groups fighting the regime.

Gulf Arab states have taken a leading role in trying to oust the Syrian president, having this week announced the withdrawal of their members from the Arab League monitoring team in Syria.

Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani is to officially present a Western-backed plan to UN Security Council ambassadors in New York that will request Assad hand over power to his deputy, while a unity government is formed to oversee a full transition.

The improving ties between the GCC and SNC has aroused concerns among some corners of the Syrian opposition that fear Gulf states will turn Syria into a battleground against arch rival Iran.

The GCC oppose the democratic aspirations of the Arab Spring protests engulfing the region, and sent troops into neighboring Bahrain last year to crush a similar uprising there.

It is also unclear how representative the Istanbul-based SNC is of the protesters within Syria, and the level of contact between the internal revolution and external opposition groups.

Meanwhile, Russia has preempted the West and the GCC by already declaring its proposed UN resolution as “unacceptable.” … Full article

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By Peter Hart - FAIR – 01/27/2012

By the tone of  some of the media coverage, you might have thought Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced a plan to slash military spending yesterday.  On the front page of USA Today (1/27/12), under the headline “Panetta Backs Far Leaner Military,” readers learn in the first paragraph:

The Pentagon’s new plan to cut Defense spending means a reduction of 100,000 troops, the retiring of ships and planes and closing of bases–moves that the Defense secretary said would not compromise security.

The piece quotes critics of the cuts like Sen. Joe Lieberman and an analyst at the right-wing American Enterprise Institute. And the article talks about the most commonly cited figure of $487 billion in cuts over 10 years. As economist Dean Baker writes about such coverage–”Military Budget Cuts: Denominator Please”–there is no way people can assess the significance of what sounds like a lot of money if they don’t know how much the Pentagon is planning to spend over the same 1o-year period–roughly $8 trillion.

The PBS NewsHour did little to clarify the issue. The broadcast began with Jeffrey Brown announcing, “The Pentagon today outlined almost half a trillion dollars in budget cuts that would shrink the size of the U.S. military by trimming ground forces, retiring ships and planes, and delaying some new weapons.” PBS aired clips from Republicans Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich denouncing the budget cuts, and then interviewed a Pentagon official.

Even coverage of the Pentagon’s new “austerity” that managed to include some helpful context didn’t make things very clear. “The Pentagon took the first major step toward shrinking its budget after a decade of war” was how a New York Times story by Elisabeth Bumiller (1/27/12) begins. In the fourth paragraph, readers found this:

Even though the Defense Department has been called on to find $259 billion in cuts in the next five years–and $487 billion over the decade–its base budget (not counting the costs of Afghanistan or other wars) will rise to $567 billion by 2017. But when adjusted for inflation, the increases are small enough that they will amount to a slight cut of 1.6 percent of the Pentagon’s base budget over the next five years.

So the “first major step” in cutting the military budget… isn’t really a cut?

A Washington Post piece by Craig Whitlock (1/27/12) had a more accurate lead–”The Pentagon budget will shrink slightly next year”– but later tries to make a 1 percent cut sound more significant: “While the difference may sound small, it represents a new era of austerity for the Defense Department.”

To make matters even more confusing, the Post points out later that

Although the defense budget will decline next year, to $525 billion from this year’s $531 billion, under Obama’s current projections it will inch upward in constant dollars between 1 percent and 2 percent annually thereafter.

Kudos to Nancy Yousef of McClatchy for writing a piece (1/26/12) that took a different tack. Under the headline “Defense Budget Plan Doesn’t Cut as Deeply as Pentagon Says,” Yousef led with this:

Pentagon officials on Thursday announced the outlines of what they called a pared-down defense budget, but their request would increase baseline spending beyond the projected end of the war in Afghanistan, even as they plan to reduce ground forces.

To Yousef, the Pentagon was ” employing a definition of the term ‘reduction’ that may be popular in Washington but is unconventional anywhere else.”

And activist/writer David Swanson pointed out that the first question at Panetta’s briefing got right at this question of whether the cuts are really cut. From the transcript:

Mr. Secretary, you talked a little bit on this, but over the next 10 years, do you see any other year than this year where the actual spending will go down from year to year? And just to the American public more broadly, how do you sort of explain what appears to be contradictory, as you talk about, repeatedly, this $500 billion in cuts in a Defense Department budget that is actually going to be increasing over time?

Panetta’s answer:

Yeah, I think the simplest way to say this is that under the budget that was submitted in the past, we had a projected growth level for the Defense budget. And that growth would’ve provided for almost $500 billion in growth. And we had obviously dedicated that to a number of plans and projects that we would have. That’s gotta be cut, and that’s a real cut in terms of what our projected growth would be.

See the new release from the Institute for Public Accuracy for more of the context largely missing from the Pentagon budget coverage.

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