Al Jazeera English has revealed that a second anti-Muslim class was taught to senior US military officers. The class was titled “Understanding the Threat to America,” and claimed that Islamists from Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood have infiltrated the US government at the highest levels.

The Al Jazeera program “Inside Story” has the details. Watch the program here:

The report came a day after Wired.com’s Spencer Ackerman and Noah Shachtman exposed a similar course being taught at the Defense Department’s Joint Forces Staff College. That class’ presentations included messages like “there is no such thing as ‘moderate Islam’” and advocated for waging “total war” on Islam using “Hiroshima” style tactics.

Al Jazeera reported that the class it revealed was taught at a military base in Virginia, although it’s unclear if it was at the same college where the course Wired exposed was taught.

Both of the anti-Muslim classes contained material prepared by the Strategic Engagement Group, Inc, a private group that contracts with the US military, according to Al Jazeera. MSNBC's Miguel Llanos has background on them:

The firm's website states its president, E.J. Kimball, was formerly a foreign policy counsel to Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., and created the bipartisan Congressional Anti-Terrorism Caucus.

Myrick earlier wrote to Pentagon chief Leon Panetta voicing her concern that "the political nature of these (class) reviews might inadvertently weaken" military training, Al-Jazeera noted.

Stephen Coughlin, VP of strategic communication initiatives, is described as "the leading expert in the United States on Islamic Doctrine" and a U.S. Army Reserve major with military intelligence expertise.

The group says it formed in 2010 "for the purpose of exposing and defeating efforts to subvert the United States Constitution and subjugate the American People."

The documents shown in the video demonstrate that this class revolved around the far-right conspiracy that groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) have close ties to Hamas and have infiltrated the US government and media to impose their agenda. To prove this theory, one slide in the presentation shown by Al Jazeera pictured Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR’s communications director, with Bill O’Reilly. The implication is that O’Reilly, the brash Fox News personality, is in cahoots with Hooper and CAIR, and by extension, Hamas, because he had Hooper on his show.

“It just about drove them crazy that Bill O’Reilly said I was a stand-up guy,” said Hooper in a phone interview. “It would be laughable if it wasn’t so harmful and divisive in our society. To say that Muslims are infiltrating every level of government and controlling all departments of the government from the Justice Department to the military--it is beyond bizarre, but that’s the nature of conspiracy theories.”

The involvement of a private contractor in these courses should come as no surprise. Anti-Muslim private groups who contract with law enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security are ubiquitous, and we now know the military has the same problem. A report from the Political Research Associates documented the use of these private contractors. “In place of sound skills training and intelligence briefings,” the report reads, “a vocal and influential sub-group of the private counterterrorism training industry markets conspiracy theories about secret jihadi campaigns to replace the U.S. Constitution with Sharia law, and effectively impugns all of Islam—a world religion with 1.3 billion adherents—as inherently violent and even terroristic.”

Meanwhile, more details on the first anti-Muslim class exposed by Wired have emerged. Think Progress reporters Eli Clifton and Ali Gharib have obtained hundreds of documents outlining the contents of that course. They report that well-known anti-Muslim figures like Robert Spencer, Steven Emerson, David Yerushalmi and more were cited in the Army class materials.

“These types of things are just the tip of the iceberg,” said Hooper, “and it’s all being done by a cottage industry of Muslim bashers who have unfettered access to spin their conspiracy theories for these leaders in our law enforcement community.”

How many more similar classes will be exposed?

Uri Dromi, the manger of Mishkenot Sha'ananim that hosts the festival said that "there is an increasing feeling of cultural siege and despite our success in attracting major writers, some of them, particularly from Britain, have come under huge pressure not to participate." He said that he had tried to invite South African writer and Nobel Prize laureate J. M. Coetzee "but he told me that he would come when the peace process goes forward."

I'm trying to find more on Coetzee's decision. In the meantime, for more on the International Writers Festival in Jerusalem see here and here.

Fetter me, cripple me, imprison me

I don't care,

Confine me, separate me, debase me,

I can bear,‏

Crush me, deflesh me, entomb me,

I am everywhere,

Haunting you, like a nightmare

I was, still am and will always be,

The spirit that people share,

Despite your cruelty and decree

It's only honor I can wear

inside, outside, I never despair

If my body is hungry and unfree

Freedom is my soul's fare

‘There,’ points Grandma.

She had a tent that was a home.

She had a goat and a camel.

She had a rake and a fork and a trowel.

She had a machete and a watering can.

She had a grove and two hundred plants.

She had a child and another one and another one.

***

‘There,’ she insists.

I could not see

Because of the wall.

I could not hear

Because of the noise.

I could not smell

Because of the powder.

***

But I can always tell,

I am sure of Grandma

Who always was

And is still

And will always be.

She smells like soil.

And smiles like soil.

And blinks like soil

When touched by rain.

***

She has a house that is a tent

She has a key

And a memory.

She has a hope

And two hundred offspring.

***

Grandma is here

But lives there.

Stark Aerospace of Mississippi is perhaps the only foreign-owned company with FAA permission to fly a drone in U.S. airspace. Based in the town of Columbus, the home of Mississippi State University, Stark is a subsidiary of the state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries — not that you could tell from looking at the company’s website, executive leadership or affiliations. You have to go to the Mississippi secretary of state website to learn that two of Stark’s three directors are Israelis.

So too with the America’s drone industry. The Israeli influence is not visible but it is real, documented and extremely relevant to the future of drones in America. If you want to know how drones may change American airspace in coming years, just look to Israel, where the unmanned aerial vehicle market is thriving and drones are considered a reliable instrument of “homeland security.”

“There are three explanations for Israel’s success in becoming a world leader in development and production of UAVs,” a top Israeli official explained to the Jerusalem Post last year. “We have unbelievable people and innovation, combat experience that helps us understand what we need and immediate operational use since we are always in a conflict which allows us to perfect our systems.”

Israel’s drone expertise goes back to at least 1970, according to the UAV page of the Israeli Air Force. Mark Daly, an expert on unmanned aircraft at Jane’s Defense in London, notes the Israelis were the first to make widespread use of drones in Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, when the aircraft were used to monitor troop movements.

Now, as the Arab media and Western reporters such as Scott Wilson of the Washington Post have reported, the Israeli Defense Force uses fleets of constantly hovering drones to intimidate and control the Arab population in the Gaza Strip.  (The residents call these drones “zenana,” which both sounds like the aircraft’s distinctive buzz and is Arabic slang for a nagging wife.) The IDF regularly uses drones for targeted assassinations of suspected militants, saying the drones enable them to use “precision strikes” to avoid hurting civilians. Yet as Human Rights Watch has documented, the drone strikes during the Gaza War killed scores of children who were nowhere near armed combatants.

Israel markets its expertise in defense to the rest of the world. Israeli academic Neve Gordon cites a glossy government brochure on drones titled “Israel Homeland Security: Opportunities for Industrial Cooperation,” which boasts, “no other advanced technology country has such a large proportion of citizens with real time experience in the army, security and police forces.” The chapter called “Learning from Israel’s Experience” notes that “many of these professionals continue to work as international consultants and experts after leaving the Israel Defense Forces, police or other defense and security organizations.”

The work has paid off when it comes to drones: The Jewish state is the single largest exporter of drones in the world, responsible for 41 percent of all UAVs exported between 2001 and 2011, according to a database compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Israeli companies export drone technology to at least 24 countries, including the United States.

Read the whole article here.

 

(Photo: Stop the Wall)

New demolition warrants in Silwan
Sunday the 13th of  May,  Israeli forces invaded Silwan alongside Municipality workers to deliver 7 demolish orders in the Bustan and Ein al Lousa in Silwan. The way the municipality workers normally attach the orders in the house entrance without writing a name on it which makes it hard for the people to resist legally in the Israeli courts, they need a lawyer to check if the warrant is real or it is an individual act by the municipality workers. 
link to silwanic.net

Settlers damage fields in Bethlehem village
BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- Israeli settlers damaged agricultural fields near Bethlehem-area village Wadi Fukin overnight Monday, the local council leader said. The group came from neighboring Israeli settlement Betar Illit, and were chased off lands by local residents, village council head Ahmad Sukkar said. They damaged harvests on land belonging to Hajj Ibrajim Muhammad Awad and Hajj Atiyeh Manasra, he said, adding that settlers threatened to return to destroy more land.
link to www.maannews.net

Israeli refuses to allow seriously ill hunger striking prisoner to go to hospital
According to Wafa’ Abu Ghalma, the wife of detainee Ahed Abu Ghalma, her husband has been denied medical treatment or hospitalization by the Israeli prison authorities despite a serious deterioration in his condition after 27 days of launching his indefinite hunger strike.
link to www.imemc.org 

What Thaer Halahleh's family told me about his release brings joy, but raises troubling questions, Linah Alsaafin
What Linah Alsaafin was told by hunger striker Thaer Halahleh’s family about the deal ending his fast was a cause for both joy, and serious concern about a pattern of pressure to isolate prisoners and coerce them into accepting deals.
link to electronicintifada.net

After 77 days, Thaer Halahleh to end hunger strike as Israel agrees to release, father tells EI blogger,Ali Abunimah
Palestinian prisoner Thaer Halahleh has agreed to end his hunger strike after 77 full days, on 15 May, EI blogger Linah Alsaafin tweeted after speaking with his father a short time ago.

Hassan Salameh loses 12 kilograms of his weight
The liberated prisoner Akram Salameh, 38, confirmed that his brother Hassan Salameh, 9 years in isolation, has lost 12 kilograms of his weight since the start of his hunger strike.

Son OF Arab MK Held For Refusing Military Service
The Israeli Police kidnapped Amro Naffa’, 18, the son of Arab Member of Israeli Knesset, Sa’id Naffa’, after he refusing to adhere to the compulsory military service, rejecting to be part of a military that occupies and oppresses the Palestinian people.
link to www.imemc.org

IOF soldiers arrest coordinator of Nabi Saleh popular committee
Israeli occupation forces (IOF) arrested on Tuesday the coordinator of the popular resistance committee in Nabi Saleh village near Ramallah.

[Today as opposed to 40 years ago, mainstream US] readers would learn about Israel's overwhelming military might, brutal conduct in warfare and eroding democratic values—plus the Palestinians' plight and Israeli intransigence. The photographs would show not cool students and cutting-edge artists but soldiers at checkpoints and religious radicals.... Why has Israel's image deteriorated? After all, Israel today is more democratic and—despite all the threats it faces—even more committed to peace.

Some claim that Israel today is a Middle Eastern power that threatens its neighbors, and that conservative immigrants and extremists have pushed Israel rightward.

Given all this, why have anti-Israel libels once consigned to hate groups become media mainstays? How can we explain the assertion that an insidious "Israel Lobby" purchases votes in Congress, or that Israel oppresses Christians? Why is Israel's record on gay rights dismissed as camouflage for discrimination against others?

The answer lies in the systematic delegitimization of the Jewish state. Having failed to destroy Israel by conventional arms and terrorism, Israel's enemies alit on a subtler and more sinister tactic that hampers Israel's ability to defend itself, even to justify its existence.

It began with PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat's 1974 speech to the U.N., when he received a standing ovation for equating Zionism with racism—a view the U.N. General Assembly endorsed the following year. It gained credibility on college campuses through anti-Israel courses and "Israel Apartheid Weeks." It burgeoned through the boycott of Israeli scholars, artists and athletes, and the embargo of Israeli products. It was perpetuated by journalists who published doctored photos and false Palestinian accounts of Israeli massacres.

Israel must confront the acute dangers of delegitimization as it did armies and bombers in the past.

Sixty-four years have passed since Palestinian society was decimated by the forcible transfer of some 700,000 people by Israeli forces. Each year, on 15 May, ‘Nakba Day’ commemorates the anguish of those who were expelled from their homes and those who fled in panic under direct military assault. Today also serves as a day of remembrance for the mass murders of 1948 and the destruction of entire villages, of Deir Yassin and Tantura and Al-Dawayima, when hundreds of Palestinians were killed during a period that is now known simply as ‘the catastrophe’.

While the term Nakba is seen as a reference to the murder, exile and devastation of the 1948 war, in reality, it could just as easily be used to describe the current belligerent occupation. It is an appropriate term for nearly six decades of demolitions, internment, the appropriation of land and the refusal by Israel to recognise and respect the basic human rights of the Palestinian people. It could very easily be used to describe the denial of the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people. The Nakba did not end in 1948. The mass forcible transfer that occurred during and in the aftermath of the war was only the first stage in Isreal’s illegal policy of displacement that is being implemented with equal determination and precision to this day.

For the last six decades, the rights of those dispossessed have never been addressed. Today, seven million Palestinian refugees are scattered across the globe. The right of the Palestinians displaced by the wars in 1948 and 1967 has been framed by Israeli rhetoric as a political claim and continuously rejected. In truth, the right to return of those displaced by a conflict is a well-established principle of international law. In particular, the right of Palestinian refugees has been unequivocally reiterated by the Security Council in its unanimously adopted Resolution 237 of 1967.

Indeed, the most recent bout of negotiations came about in response to a request from the Quartet for proposals on borders and security arrangements in a future two-State solution. However, this seems to ignore the fact that the conflict is not simply one of borders, but revolves around a multitude of interrelated issues, including the rights of refugees, Jerusalem, water, and prisoners, which need to be addressed in an equitable manner to bring about a just and durable solution to the conflict. By resolving the issues that Israel wants negotiated first, Palestinian representatives will be stripped of any leverage they have to negotiate other important questions, resulting in an illusory peace process and continued occupation.

Furthermore, Israel has repeatedly demanded that Palestinian representatives come to the negotiating table without preconditions. It should be clear to all involved that international law cannot be dismissed as a simple precondition. Rather, it is the foundation upon which constructive and well-balanced negotiations must be based and as such it must be upheld and respected by all parties involved.

Instead of fulfilling their obligations under international law to discourage the continuation of the ongoing breaches of international law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the international community has long reduced itself to advocating for the formalisation of such violations in the name of political expediency. At the same time, the tacit approval of the international community has only served to reward Israel’s illegal policy of dispossession, including land appropriation for the purposes of settlement construction and expansion.

As such, denial of the right to self-determination, which encompasses the right to return, has become a legacy, passed down by Palestinian parents to their children. Palestinians in 2012 still experience ‘the catastrophe’, albeit in a slightly different format. The term is today a reference to the silent annexation of the Jordan Valley and the forcible transfer of families across Area C of the West Bank. It describes the effects of the Annexation Wall, the illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip and the violent suppression of freedom of expression. It is also a fitting portrayal of a situation where some 2,500 Palestinian prisoners must go on hunger strike, several to the point of near-death, to demand the most basic human rights.

For Palestinians, the Nakba has been perpetuated for decades. It will continue for decades more, for as long as justice is sidelined and Israel is granted impunity by the international community for an uninterrupted stream of violations of international law that began more than sixty years ago.

This statement appeared on the Al-Haq website.

An injury at a Nakba protest held outside Ofer prison today (Photo: Activestills)

Lerner: Would it be acceptable in your mind to have a democratic Israel if through demographic changes a majority of Israelis were Palestinians? Or would you say that to preserve its Jewish character it would be permissible to infringe on its democratic character?

Beinart: It would be wrong for Israel to take any coercive measure to reduce its Arab population... We are a long way away from the time when an Israeli state would have an Arab majority, but if Israelis thought that was about to happen, I would oppose any measures (such as expulsion of Arabs) designed to coercively impose a Jewish majority.

But Israel has done this continuously for the past 64 years, both in Israel "proper" and in the occupied territories. Israel's Jewish majority is solely due to premeditated ethnic cleansing. If Beinart acknowledges it "would" be wrong for Israel to do this (in an imagined future), was it wrong to do it in the past? Is it wrong to do it now? He thinks it's wrong in the West Bank, but what about Israel's current routine ethnic cleansing of Bedouin villages within the green line? Beinart calls inside-the-green-line Israel "democratic Israel"; what about ethnic cleansing is democratic? (Because the majority -- who is only a majority due to prior ethnic cleansing -- voted for it?)

On the right of return of Palestinian refugees that Israel expelled in order to impose a Jewish majority, Beinart says approvingly:

The formula will most likely [be] a relatively small return by original refugees who are now getting relatively elderly now to pre-1967 Israel—perhaps 20,000 or 50,000 or 100,000, but a number that would not seriously threaten Israel’s demographics....

Is Beinart's opposition to "expulsion of Arabs" lip service?

Or more hopefully, is there a part of Peter Beinart's moral unconscious that is fighting with his tribal ideology, resulting in the cognitive dissonance we see in this interview?

And when will the morality defeat the tribalism, finally, and lead Peter to support genuine Israeli-Palestinian equality from the river to the sea?

P.S. - Changing the hot seat, which is Rabbi Lerner more concerned with: an act of atonement, or the appearance of one?

Lerner: We at Tikkun have suggested that Israel take in twenty to thirty thousand refugees each year for the next thirty years, because at the expectable growth rate of populations that number would not undermine the demographic balance and yet would appear to be a rather significant act of atonement.

Surely this would be a huge concession on Israel's part relative to its current stance. But if more than thirty thousand refugees per year want to return to lands that were stolen from them and live in peace with their neighbors, does Israel have the moral or legal right to say no, while continuing to provide an unlimited right of "return" to Jews who live comfortably in the U.S.? What does that have to do with the so-called "complete equality" promised in the Israeli founding documents these two men revere?

Question to Lerner and Beinart: Can you watch this video and not be for the right of return of refugees who wish to live peaceably with their neighbors? Can you walk up to these children and tell them "No you cannot return, but any Jew anywhere in the world can move tomorrow to live on top of the rubble of your grandparents' destroyed homes?"

Sam Bahour, a Palestinian-American based in Al-Bireh/Ramallah, speaking at TEDxRamallah in April 2011. Bahour blogs on Palestinian affairs and is co-editor of HOMELAND: Oral History of Palestine and Palestinians.