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By Saul Landau
$34.95
By Robert W. McChesney and John Nichols
$17.79
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Flickr / World Economic Forum
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Tony Blair had hoped to visit Gaza in his capacity as Mideast envoy for the Quartet—that’s the U.S., the U.N., the EU and Russia—but had to cancel because of a “specific security threat.” It’s hard to be an envoy if you can’t get to where you need to go, but the former British prime minister promised to make it to Gaza eventually and “press for help for the people there.”
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AP photo / Hasan Sarbakhshian
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By Scott Ritter — Iran’s recent missile tests should remove all doubt that an attack by either the United States or Israel would be a terrible mistake.
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instablogsimages.com
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The price of oil is bad now, but it could get much worse, according to OPEC Secretary-General Abdalla Salem el-Badri, if Iran became embroiled in a military conflict with the U.S. or Israel. If a war occurs, Badri says, there’s no telling how high oil prices might climb.
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AP photo / Ariel Schalit
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Israel and Iran appear to be locked in a dangerous round of ¿Quién es más macho? On Thursday, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak responded to Iran’s new displays of military prowess—this week’s missile tests—by declaring that Israel is ready for action should Iran push the direct-threat level any higher.
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AP photo / Petros Giannakouris
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By William Pfaff — The endless debate about the U.S. withdrawing its army from Iraq and what will happen to the country once it does tends to ignore much of what we know about how the world works.
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Flickr / throwthedamnthing
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Taking a move from the McCain playbook and latching on to the bogeyman that is Iran, Barack Obama responded to Tehran’s long-range weapons tests Wednesday with calls for tougher economic sanctions against the country, whose missiles are now deemed capable of hitting American bases in the region.
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slashfilm.com
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Sacha Baron Cohen is already notorious for his alter ego Borat, and now, fortunately for his career (and unfortunately for those who get caught in his comedic cross hairs), he has another invented personality—Austrian fashionista Bruno—who just pulled one over on former Mossad agent Yossi Alpher.
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commons.wikimedia.org
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Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s Cabinet has agreed to a German-brokered prisoner exchange with Hezbollah. It is believed that under the terms of the deal, Israel would receive the bodies of two captured soldiers in return for the release of five Lebanese prisoners and the bodies of 10 more.
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An Israeli policeman killed himself Tuesday afternoon at the Tel Aviv airport—just as French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife, Carla Bruni, were saying their goodbyes to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert before boarding their plane, which suddenly became a quick and urgent exercise.
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Mosaic’s Jamal Dajani points out that while President Bush recently likened diplomacy to “appeasement,” the government of Israel has been cutting deals with two of its sworn enemies: Hezbollah and Hamas.
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AP photo / Oded Balilty
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Egypt has brokered a deal between Israel and Hamas to end fighting in Gaza. The agreement calls for a six-month cease-fire, and the possibility of reopening Gaza’s borders and returning a captured Israeli soldier.
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AP Photo/Vahid Salemi
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By Robert Fisk — What is it about threats? What possesses half the Middle East to shout abuse all the time? First we have Ahmadinejad, one of the most crackpot presidents in the world, raving away about annihilating Israel. Then we have Shaul Mofaz, the deputy Israeli prime minister, telling the world that there would have to be attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
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AP photo / Alex Brandon
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By Chris Hedges — The failure by Barack Obama to chart another course in the Middle East, to defy the Israel lobby and to denounce the Bush administration’s inexorable march toward a conflict with Iran is a failure to challenge the collective insanity that has gripped the political leadership in the United States and Israel.
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Barack Obama’s statements about the city of Jerusalem before AIPAC’s annual policy conference have Mosaic wondering if the candidate just slipped up or truly doesn’t understand the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “Perhaps for a change,” suggests hosts Jamal Dajani, “he should stop pandering to interest groups and take a hard look at the facts on the ground.”
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By Robert Fisk — So they are at it again, the great and the good of American democracy, groveling and fawning to the Israeli lobbyists of American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), repeatedly allying themselves to the cause of another country and one that is continuing to steal Arab land. Will this ever end?
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flickr.com/photos
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Imagine if you could learn about the Great Flood, or experience a high-tech interpretation of heaven and hell (Disney’s goofy infernal montage, complete with pop-up demons, from “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride” notwithstanding), by plummeting down a hair-raising roller coaster ride. Not your idea of a good time?
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AP photo / Evan Vucci
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An Israeli official was quoted Friday as saying that “attacking Iran in order to stop its nuclear plans will be unavoidable,” a remark that may further escalate tensions between the two countries as leaders continue to lob rhetorical digs at each other.
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AP photo / Lawrence Jackson
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Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert issued a warning across the ocean to Iran during a visit to Washington Tuesday, urging the international community to convince Tehran that pursuing a nuclear weapons program would be a really, really bad idea.
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By William Pfaff — Israel’s colonization and annexation of the Palestinian territories over the last 40 years, and opposition to the creation of an independent Palestinian state, have turned Israel into an Arab-Jewish state under Jewish control.
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AP photo / Dan Balilty
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Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak called for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to resign or temporarily step down from his post in the midst of investigations into allegedly illegal donations to Olmert’s campaign. Barak threatened to pull the Labor Party out of the coalition government that supports Olmert unless he removes himself from the “day-to-day management of the government.”
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National Archives / White House Staff Photographers
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Israel’s nuclear arsenal is something of a mystery. In fact, it doesn’t officially have one, but it doesn’t officially not have one either (wink wink). Former President Jimmy Carter lifted the shroud of secrecy over the weekend when he revealed that “Israel has 150 or more” nukes. Carter was attempting to put Iran’s alleged nuclear shenanigans in perspective.
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This wasn’t the best week for Sen. John McCain’s (former) religious advisers, the Revs. John Hagee and Rod Parsley—primarily because the Republican front-runner has effectively given them both the political heave-ho following the public re-airing of their takes on Israel and Islam, respectively.
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The Mosaic Intelligence Report looks at two welcome developments in the Middle East: On Wednesday, Israel and Syria said they had begun indirect talks in Turkey, the first confirmation in eight years of negotiations between the long-time enemies. On that same day, the Gulf state of Qatar scored a diplomatic coup by pulling off a deal intended to end Lebanon’s protracted crisis.
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The just-published journals of Rachel Corrie, killed by an Israeli bulldozer, reveal her to have been a natural-born writer and a spirit full of intensity and yearning whose lust for life and sense of justice made her untimely death all the more tragic.
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commons.wikimedia.org
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The politically weakened government of Ehud Olmert is engaged in peace talks with neighboring Syria, the two countries have acknowledged. Turkey is moderating the indirect negotiations, the first since 2000. The last round of talks failed over the demand for Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights.
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AP photo / Kevin Frayer
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By Allen McDuffee — George W. Bush’s attempt to juggle Israel’s 60th anniversary, Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts and his hostility toward Iran means that Palestinians lose again.
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commons.wikimedia.org
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While addressing the Israeli Knesset, President Bush referred to the willingness of “some” to speak with unsavory leaders such as Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and he went on to compare them to those who sought to appease the Nazis before World War II. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton set aside their differences on diplomacy long enough to take objection to that statement.
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Celebrations are under way this week to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the founding of Israel. While world leaders added their congratulations and support to heighten the festivities, over 20,000 Palestians (most of whom, as this Mosaic Intelligence Report points out, are Israeli citizens) marked the occasion with a protest march at the abandoned Palestinian village of Safouria.
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By Joe Conason — In this protracted and often dispiriting prelude to the general election, few remarks have been as poorly chosen as Sen. Hillary Clinton’s threat to “totally obliterate” Iran.
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AP photo / Lefteris Pitarakis
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Israelis have begun celebrating their nation’s diamond anniversary with fireworks and public cheer. The Jewish state was founded shortly after World War II and has known almost constant conflict as well as remarkable growth in the decades since. Many Palestinians, who refer to the country’s founding as “the Catastrophe,” are preparing to mark the occasion with something less than delight.
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AP photo / Gerald Herbert, file
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By Bill Boyarsky — We are letting religious fanaticism dominate the presidential campaign. The candidates have brought it on themselves with tedious references to their churchgoing piety. Now we’re all paying for it. Who cares what their preachers say?
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blogs.trb.com
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Why is it that the U.S. economy is on a serious downswing? Could it be that we’re in the midst of a super-expensive war with little sign of scaling down in the near future that has jacked up oil prices to new heights and strained the federal budget? According to Bush, he’d have worked out our economic woes if it weren’t for those meddling congressional Democrats.
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There’s a new Jewish lobby in town, one that hopes to reclaim American Jews’ proud progressive tradition and counter the right-wingers who have managed to intimidate Washington in the name of the Jewish community. Unlike like-minded advocacy groups, J Street hopes to raise gobs of money in order to support lawmakers who take a more enlightened view, including a call for a more peaceful approach to American and Israeli foreign policy.
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This past week, Syria made headlines not once but twice. One story implicates the country in enriching uranium and says that the CIA confirmed to Congress that the target of a mysterious Israeli air raid in northern Syria on Sept. 6, 2007, was a reactor built with North Korean help.
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Israel denied Hamas a proposed six-month truce in the Gaza Strip on Friday, claiming such a lull would be used by Palestinians to prepare for future attacks against Israel. The cease-fire bid was seen by Israel as a “game” by Hamas, as Israeli airstrikes and commando raids continued in Gaza.
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By Joe Conason — Nobody with a functioning memory should be too quick to condemn Jimmy Carter for daring to speak with the leadership of Hamas, as nearly everyone along the American political spectrum suddenly has felt obliged to do.
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flickr.com / John Barnabas
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“Informed sources” say the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, a historically contested area between Israel and Syria, may soon find itself under new management. The two countries, which have been at war with each other since 1973, are both looking to resume the stalled 2000 peace talk process, which Syria has declared will not happen until the Golan Heights are returned.
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By Joshua Holland, AlterNet —
What separates Jimmy Carter from the neocons, other than a Nobel Prize, is his genuine desire to negotiate a Middle East peace settlement, and that means talking to everyone.
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Is former President Jimmy Carter on a peace mission or a mission impossible? As this Mosaic Intelligence Report explains, Carter will try to mediate the release of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit as a goodwill gesture on the part of Hamas, which is reported to be seriously considering Carter’s proposal.
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AP photo / Walter Petruska
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The State Department says it has twice asked Jimmy Carter not to meet with Hamas leaders, but the former president says he feels “quite at ease” in going ahead with a scheduled meeting because “Hamas will have to be included” if there is to be peace in the region.
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nytimes.com
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An interim decision by the Israeli Supreme Court on Wednesday marked the beginning of what could become a two-tiered road system in the West Bank. With two separate legal systems for Palestinians and Israelis already in operation, critics fear segregated roads would lead toward further institutionalization of apartheid in the occupied territories.
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel is scheduled to speak before the Israeli Knesset to underscore her country’s strong ties with Israel, but at least one aspect of her visit is already causing controversy. Merkel will address the Israeli parliament in German.
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AP photo / Oded Balilty
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By Chris Hedges — War creates a world without empathy. Those who have empathy cannot, as did Palestinian gunman Alaa Hisham Abu Dheim, coldly murder students in a Jerusalem library. Those who have empathy cannot drop tons of iron fragmentation bombs on crowded Palestinian refugee camps in Gaza, killing more than 120 Palestinians in a week, of whom one in five were children and more than half were civilians.
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This week’s Mosaic Intelligence Report from Link TV takes a look at Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to Iraq, where he was greeted with smiles and red carpets, and explains how Ahmadinejad has “outmaneuvered” President Bush everywhere in the Middle East (except Israel).
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guardian.co.uk
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A coalition of human rights and development groups has condemned Israel’s blockade of Gaza as the worst humanitarian crisis the territory has suffered since 1967. The Israeli government has defended the blockade as a necessary strategy against rocket attacks, a claim the aid groups reject.
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As Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama battled it out in several states Tuesday, Republican front-runner John McCain sent out a word of warning about the “dangerous” state of the world in trying to win supporters in San Antonio, Texas.
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AP photo / Gerald Herbert
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In keeping with the tradition of U.S. presidents attempting to forge peace agreements during their last years in office, President Bush remains optimistic about securing an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal in the final 10 months of his administration despite the recent outbreak of violence in the Middle East.
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AP photo / Adel Hana
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Attacks by Israeli forces killed more than 70 Palestinians on Saturday as fighting intensified in northern Gaza, prompting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to call the incursion “more than a holocaust.” Two Israeli soldiers were killed and seven were wounded, the Israeli military reported. Updated.
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Too Soon to Tell: The Case for Hope, Continued
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