Izrael, Palestina i arapske zemlje

[bigvlada]

One in three Saudi air raids on Yemen hit civilian sites, data shows

 

Exclusive: Pressure on UK and US roles in war set to increase as survey shows school buildings and hospitals among targets

 

Ewen MacAskill and Paul Torpey

 

Friday 16 September 2016 15.12 BST Last modified on Saturday 17 September 2016 01.05 BST

 

 

More than one-third of all Saudi-led air raids on Yemen have hit civilian sites, such as school buildings, hospitals, markets, mosques and economic infrastructure, according to the most comprehensive survey of the conflict.

 

The findings, revealed by the Guardian on Friday, contrast with claims by the Saudi government, backed by its US and British allies, that Riyadh is seeking to minimise civilian casualties.

 

The survey, conducted by the Yemen Data Project, a group of academics, human rights organisers and activists, will add to mounting pressure in the UK and the US on the Saudi-led coalition, which is facing accusations of breaching international humanitarian law.

 

It will refocus attention on UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia, worth more than £3.3bn since the air campaign began, and the role of British military personnel attached to the Saudi command and control centre, from which air operations are being mounted. Two British parliamentary committees have called for the suspension of such sales until a credible and independent inquiry has been conducted.

 

 

Saudi Arabia disputed the Yemen Data Project figures, describing them as “vastly exaggerated”, and challenged the accuracy of the methodology, saying somewhere such as a school building might have been a school a year ago, but was now being used by rebel fighters.

 

The independent and non-partisan survey, based on open-source data, including research on the ground, records more than 8,600 air attacks between March 2015, when the Saudi-led campaign began, and the end of August this year. Of these, 3,577 were listed as having hit military sites and 3,158 struck non-military sites.

 

Where it could not be established whether a location attacked was civilian or military, the strikes were classified as unknown, of which there are 1,882 incidents.

 

Saudi Arabia intervened in March 2015 to support the Yemeni government against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in control of the capital, Sana’a. The UN has put the death toll of the 18-month war at more than 10,000, with 3,799 of them being civilians.

 

Human rights organisations in Yemen have documented repeated violations by the Houthis, including the use of landmines and indiscriminate shelling. Human Rights Watch noted this year that Yemeni civilians had “suffered serious laws of war violations by all sides”.

 

The Yemen Data Project has chosen to focus exclusively on the impact of the air campaign, rather than fighting on the ground, citing the difficulty of gaining access to frontline fighting and impartial information.

 

One of the most problematic findings of the survey for Saudi Arabia is the number of reported repeat attacks. While some attacks on civilian sites can be explained away as mistakes or being the location of military camps in densely populated areas such as Sana’a, repeated strikes on school buildings and hospitals will add to demands for an independent investigation.

 

One school building in Dhubab, Taiz governorate, has been hit nine times, according to the data. A market in Sirwah, Marib governorate, has been struck 24 times.

 

 

The UK’s shadow defence secretary, Clive Lewis, said of the survey: “It’s sickening to think of British-built weapons being used against civilians and the government has an absolute responsibility to do everything in its power to stop that from happening. But as ministers turn a blind eye to the conflict in Yemen, evidence that humanitarian law has been violated is becoming harder to ignore by the day.”

 

The Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesperson, Tom Brake, said the data added more weight to calls for the suspension of arms sales. “Despite consistent evidence showing targeting of civilians, first Cameron and now May’s governments have continued their hypocritical defence of Saudi Arabia’s brutal campaign in Yemen,” he said.

 

 

Sixty-four members of the US Congress, from the Democratic and Republican parties, sent a letter to Barack Obama last month urging the president to postpone sales of new arms to Saudi Arabia. The US also provides the Saudis with intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and logistical support.

 

The Democratic congressman Ted Lieu, who organised the letter and is a colonel in the US air force reserve, said: “The actions of the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen are as reprehensible as they are illegal. The multiple, repeated airstrikes on civilians look like war crimes.”

 

Campaigners are calling for an independent inquiry to establish whether attacks on civilian targets are because of poor intelligence, lack of precision on the part of the Saudi-led coalition planes, or a high degree of disregard for civilian lives.

 

Staff at the Yemen Data Project said they adopted rigorous standards, using news reports aligned with both sides in the conflict and crosschecked against other sources, such as social media, non-governmental organisations and evidence on the ground.

 

According to the project, the Saudi-led coalition hit more non-military sites than military in five of the past 18 months. In October 2015, the figures were 291, compared with 208; in November, 126 against 34; December, 137 compared with 62; February 2016, 292 to 139, and March, 122 compared with 80.

 

Despite a ceasefire announced in April, air raids have continued.

 

Over the course of the war, the survey lists 942 attacks on residential areas, 114 on markets, 34 on mosques, 147 on school buildings, 26 on universities and 378 on transport.

 

Asked by the Guardian about the figures during a visit to London, the Saudi foreign minister, Adel bin Ahmed al-Jubeir, portrayed the Saudi air force as professional and armed with precision weapons.

 

He said the Houthis had “turned schools and hospitals and mosques into command and control centres. They have turned them into weapons depots in a way that they are no longer civilian targets. They are military targets. They might have been a school a year ago. But they were not a school when they were bombed”.

 

The attachment of British military staff at the Saudi command centre has become increasingly controversial.

 

A UK Ministry of Defence spokesperson said: “The United Kingdom is not a member of the Saudi-led coalition and UK personnel are not involved in directing or conducting operations in Yemen, or in the target selection process.

 

“The MoD does provide training and shares best practice to the Royal Saudi air force, including training on targeting. We also provided guidance and advice to support continued compliance with international humanitarian law.”

 

The Yemen Data Project was set up this year in response to a lack of reliable official military figures. It says the project brings together figures from backgrounds in security, academia, human rights and humanitarian issues, and describes it as “independently funded to avoid any partisan affiliation”.

 

“Where independent reporting is not available, the data has been cross-referenced with sources from opposing sides to the conflict to ensure the reporting is as accurate and impartial as possible,” the project said.

 

Given the general lack of transparency from parties to the conflict and a paucity of independent reporting on the ground, the data had been verified and cross-referenced to the greatest extent possible, it added.

 

The number of civilian casualties is not included, because much of this area is highly politicised and it has not been possible to independently verify claims.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/16/third-of-saudi-airstrikes-on-yemen-have-hit-civilian-sites-data-shows

 

 

[bigvlada]

Yemen famine feared as starving children fight for lives in hospital

 

Civil war has created ‘very severe needs’, the UN warns, while a blockade aimed at hurting Houthi rebels has made the situation worse

 

 

Emma Graham-Harrison and agencies

Tuesday 4 October 2016 19.51 BST Last modified on Thursday 6 October 2016 11.00 BST

 

 

Dozens of emaciated children are fighting for their lives in Yemen’s hospital wards, as fears grow that civil war and a sea blockade that has lasted for months are creating famine conditions in the Arabian peninsula’s poorest country.

 

The UN’s humanitarian aid chief, Stephen O’Brien, described a visit to meet “very small children affected by malnutrition” in the Red Sea city of Hodeida. “It is of course absolutely devastating when you see such terrible malnutrition,” he said on Tuesday, warning of “very severe needs”.

 

More than half of Yemen’s 28 million people are already short of food, the UN has said, and children are particularly badly hit, with hundreds of thousands at risk of starvation.

 

There are 370,000 children enduring severe malnutrition that weakens their immune system, according to Unicef, and 1.5 million are going hungry. Food shortages are a long-term problem, but they have got worse in recent months. Half of children under five are stunted because of chronic malnutrition.

 

A sea blockade on rebel-held areas enforced by the Saudi-coalition supporting the president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, stops shipments reaching most ports.

 

Its effects can be seen in centres such as the Thawra hospital, where parents cram waiting rooms seeking help for hungry and dying children. In April, between 10 and 20 children were brought for treatment, but the centre is now struggling with 120 a month, Reuters reported.

 

Among them are Salem Issa, a six-year-old so emaciated he looks years younger and is now too ill to eat. “I used to feed him biscuits, but he’s sick. He won’t eat,” said his mother.

 

The crisis may get worse after Hadi ordered changes at the central bank. Aimed at squeezing the funds of Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, the move could leave ordinary Yemenis short of cash and make food shortages worse by depriving traders of the financial cover the bank has offered.

 

Ibrahim Mahmoud, of Yemen’s Social Development Fund, told Reuters only an improvement in the country’s financial system and an emergency aid effort could prevent the spread of hunger.

 

“If there is no direct and immediate intervention on behalf of the international community and state organisations, we could be threatened by famine and a humanitarian catastrophe,” he said.

 

Oxfam’s humanitarian policy adviser, Richard Stanforth, said: “Everything is stacked against the people on the brink of starvation in Yemen. The politicisation of the central bank and attempts by the parties in the conflict to use it as a tool to hurt one another ... threaten to push the poorest over the edge.”

 

Hadi moved the central bank headquarters from Sana’a, the capital currently controlled by Houthi rebels, to the southern port of Aden which his government holds. He also appointed a new governor, who said the bank had no money.

 

“It risks leaving the salaries of more than a million Yemenis unpaid. There may be a long-term effect on the Houthis, but the immediate effect will be on normal people trying to put food on the table,” the Yemeni economic analyst Amal Nasser said.

 

The sea blockade and daily airstrikes, which have hit civilian targets including hospitals, are part of a campaign to push rebels out of the capital.

 

There have been widespread calls for an independent inquiry into the conflict, including from senior British MPs. More than a third of Saudi-led bombing raids are thought to have hit civilian sites, and human rights groups say violations are also being perpetrated by Houthi rebels.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/04/yemen-famine-feared-as-starving-children-fight-for-lives-in-hospital

 

[Roger Sanchez]

Occupation forever.

[Budja]

 

Yemen conflict: Saudis blame funeral hall bombing on mistake

 

Case closed.

[Lord Protector]

How Kissinger Won the Middle East for America

 

The Kissinger Story

14/10/16

by Uri Avnery

 

I AM writing this (may God forgive me) on Yom Kippur.

Exactly 43 years ago, at this exact moment, the sirens sounded.

 

We were sitting in the living room, looking out on one of Tel Aviv's main streets. The city was completely silent. No cars. No traffic of any kind. A few children were riding about on their bicycles, which is allowed on Yom Kippur, Judaism's holiest day. Just like now.

Rachel, my wife, I, and our guest, Professor Hans Kreitler, were in deep conversation. The professor, a renowned psychologist, was living nearby, so he could come on foot.

And then the silence was pierced by a siren. For a moment we thought that it was a mistake, but then it was joined by another and another. We went to the window and saw a commotion. The street, that had been totally empty a few minutes before, began to fill up with vehicles, military and civilian.

And then the radio, which had been silent for Yom Kippur, came on. War had broken out.

A FEW days ago I was asked if I was prepared to talk on TV about the role of Henry Kissinger in this war. I agreed, but at the last moment the program was canceled, because the station had to devote the time to showing Jews asking God for forgiveness at the Western Wall (alias the Wailing Wall). In these Netanyahu times, God, of course, comes first.

So, instead of talking on TV, I shall write down my thoughts on the subject here.

Henry Kissinger has always intrigued me. Once my friend Yael, the daughter of Moshe Dayan, took me - in the great man’s absence, of course, since he was my enemy – to his large collection of unread books and asked me to choose a book as a present. I chose a book of Kissinger’s, and was much impressed by it.

Like Shimon Peres and I, Kissinger was born in 1923. He was a few months older than the other two of us. His family left Nazi Germany five years later than I and went to the US, via England. We both had to start working very early, but he went on with his studies and became a professor, while poor me never finished elementary school.

I was impressed by the wisdom of his books. He approached history without sentiment and dwelled especially on the Congress of Vienna, after Napoleon's downfall, in which a group of wise statesmen laid the groundwork for a stable, absolutist Europe. Kissinger stressed the importance of their decision to invite the representative of vanquished France (Talleyrand). They realized that France must be part of the new system. To ensure peace, they believed, no one should be left out of the new system.

Unfortunately, Kissinger in power disregarded this wisdom of Kissinger the Professor. He left the Palestinians out.

THE SUBJECT I was to speak about on TV was a question that has intrigued and troubled Israeli historians since that fateful Yom Kippur: Did Kissinger know about the impending Egyptian-Syrian attack? Did he deliberately abstain from warning Israel, because of his own nefarious designs?

After the war, Israel was rent asunder by one question: why had our government, led by Prime Minister Golda Meir and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, disregarded all the signs of the coming attack? Why had they not called up the army reserves in time? Why had they not sent the tanks to our strongholds along the Suez Canal?

When the Egyptians attacked, the line was thinly held by second-class troops. Most soldiers were sent home for the high religious holiday. The line was easily overrun.

Israeli intelligence knew of course of the massive movement of Egyptian units towards the canal. They disregarded it as an empty maneuver to frighten Israel.

To understand this, one has to remember that after the incredible victory of the Israeli army only six years earlier, when it smashed all the neighboring armies in six days, our army had abysmal contempt for the Egyptian armed forces. The idea that they could dare to carry out such a momentous operation seemed ridiculous.

Add to this the general contempt for Anwar al-Sadat, the man who had inherited power from the legendary Gamal Abd-al-Nasser a few years earlier. Among the group of "Free Officers" who, led by Nasser, had carried out the bloodless 1952 revolution in Egypt, Sadat was considered the least intelligent, and therefore appointed by consent as Nasser's deputy.

In Egypt, a country of innumerable jokes, there was joke about that, too. Sadat had a conspicuous brown spot on his forehead. According to the joke, whenever a subject came up in a Free Officers' Council meeting, and everyone expressed his view, Sadat would stand up last and start to speak. Nasser would put his finger on his forehead, press it gently and say: "Sit down, Anwar, sit down."

In the course of the six years between the wars, Sadat several times conveyed to Golda that he was ready for peace negotiations, based on Israel's withdrawal from the occupied Sinai Peninsula. Golda contemptuously refused. (In fact, Nasser himself had decided on such a move just before he died. I played a small role in conveying this information to our government.)

Back to 1973: almost at the last moment Israel was warned by a well-placed spy, no less than Nasser's son-in-law. The message gave the exact date of the impending attack, but the wrong hour: instead of noon, it predicted the early evening. A difference of several fateful hours. In Israel it was later debated whether the man was a double agent and had give the false hour on purpose. It was too late to ask him – he had died in mysterious circumstances.

When Golda informed Kissinger about the impending Egyptian move, he warned her not to carry out a preemptive strike, which would put Israel in the wrong. Golda, trusting Kissinger, obeyed, contrary to the views of the Israel Chief of Staff, David Elazar, nicknamed Dado.

Kissinger also delayed informing his own boss, President Nixon, by two hours.

SO WHAT was Kissinger's game?

For him, the main American aim was to drive the Soviets out of the Arab world, leaving the US as the sole power in the region.

In his world of "realpolitik", this was the only objective that mattered. Everybody else, including us poor Israelis, were just pawns on the giant chessboard.

A major but controlled war was for him the practical way to make everybody in the region dependent on the US.

When the Egyptian and Syrian attacks initially succeeded, Israel was in panic. Dayan, who in this crisis showed himself to be the nincompoop he really was, bewailed the "destruction of the Third Temple" (adding our state to the two Jewish temples of antiquity which were destroyed by the Assyrians and the Romans respectively.) The army command, under Dado, kept its cool and planned its counter-moves with admirable precision.

But munitions were running out quickly and Golda turned in despair to Kissinger. He set in motion an "air bridge" of supplies, giving Israel just enough to defend itself. Not more.

The Soviet Union was helpless to interfere. Kissinger was king of the situation.

WITH REMARKABLE resilience (and the weapons delivered by Kissinger) the Israeli army turned the tables, pushing the Syrians back well beyond their starting point and nearing Damascus. On the Southern front, Israeli units crossed the Suez Canal and could have started an offensive towards Cairo.

It was a rather confused picture: an Egyptian army was still east of the Canal, practically encircled but still able to defend itself, while the Israeli army was behind its back, west of the canal, also in a dangerous position, liable to be cut off from its homeland. Altogether, a classic "fight with reversed fronts".

If the war had run its course, the Israeli army would have reached the gates of Damascus and Cairo, and the Egyptian and Syrian armies would have begged for a cease-fire on Israeli terms.

That's where Kissinger came in.

THE ISRAELI advance was stopped on Kissinger's orders 101 km from Cairo. There a tent was set up and permanent cease-fire negotiations started.

Egypt was represented by a senior officer, Abd-al-Rani Gamassi, who soon captured the sympathy of the Israeli journalists. The Israeli representative was Aharon Yariv, former chief of army intelligence, a member of the government and a general of the reserves.

Yariv was soon recalled to his seat in the cabinet. He was replaced by a very popular regular army general, Israel Tal, nicknamed Talik, who happened to be a friend of mine.

Talik was devoted to peace, and I often urged him to leave the army and become the leader of the Israeli peace camp. He refused, because his overriding passion was to create the Merkava, an original Israeli tank that would give its crew maximum security.

Immediately after the fighting I met Talik regularly for lunch in a well-known restaurant. Passersby may have wondered about these two – the famous tank general and the journalist universally hated by the entire establishment – conversing together.

Talik told me – in confidence, of course – about what had happened: one day Gamassy had taken him aside and told him that he had received new instructions – instead of talking about a cease-fire, he could negotiate an Israel-Egyptian peace.

Immensely excited, Talik flew to Tel-Aviv and disclosed the news to Golda Meir. But Golda was cool. She told Talik to abstain from any talk about peace. When she saw his utter consternation, she explained that she had promised Kissinger that any talks about peace must be held under American auspices.

And so it happened: a cease-fire agreement was signed and a peace conference was called in Geneva, officially under joint US and Soviet auspices.

I went to Geneva to see what would happen. Kissinger was there to dictate terms, but Andrei Gromyko, his Soviet counterpart, was a tough customer. After a few speeches, the conference adjourned without results. (For me it was an important event, because there I met a British journalist, Edward Mortimer, who arranged for me to meet the PLO representative in London, Said Hamami. Thus the first Israeli-PLO meeting came about. But that is another story.)

The Yom Kippur war cost many thousands of lives, Israeli, Egyptian and Syrian. Kissinger achieved his goal. The Soviets lost the Arab world to the United States.

Until Vladimir Putin came along.

Edited October 17, 2016 by slow

[Hella]

tužan dan za ovdašnje simpatizere đihada

 

Now Some ISIS Men Try To Attack Israel, Get Bombed Into Oblivion Instantly

 

4 Islamic State gunmen were killed after they opened mortar fire on Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers in the Southern Golan Heights, in the first ISIS-Israel clash.

[Roger Sanchez]

What a parting gift...

 

 

[Eraserhead]

Sad ce to Tramp da ispravi ocas posla. Veliki i mudri antisistemski lider.

[Eraserhead]

@realdonaldtrump: As to the U.N., things will be different after Jan. 20th.

[mjone]

Lep potez Obame ... samo mogao je ovako nesto malo ranije da uradi

[Budja]

Sad ce to Tramp da ispravi ocas posla. Veliki i mudri antisistemski lider.

 

Mislim, sto rece Rodja parting gift.

Beznacajno, no bolje ista nego nista.

[Eraserhead]

Obama i Bibi su na ratnoj nozi vec 7 godina. Ovo je samo kruna pritisaka administracije da se zaustavi zidanje naselja koji traju skoro od pocetkamandata. Beznacajno jeste jer ce se ta politika promeniti za 25 dana.

[Roger Sanchez]

Koje kvalitetno Bibijevo luđenje u Jeruzalemu....

[Dagmar]

Obama i Bibi su na ratnoj nozi vec 7 godina. Ovo je samo kruna pritisaka administracije da se zaustavi zidanje naselja koji traju skoro od pocetkamandata. Beznacajno jeste jer ce se ta politika promeniti za 25 dana.

 

Bili su ljuti na njih dok su ih puštali da grade naselja, a sad neće biti ljuti na njih dok ih puštaju da grade naselja?

[MNE]

još jedan akbar kamiondžija...