Hiroshima annual remembrance of their holocaust in which 125,000 were killed or injured as the nuclear age entered the annals of diabolical history.

This date, August 6, 1945, was one of the most important and significant moments in world history. The arrival of the nuclear age with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima by the Americans at the end of World War II, thrust the world into an almost indescribable frenzy of self-destruction.  This winter I will be publishing research in a major peer-review journal titled, “Hiroshima and Spinning the Atom: America, Britain, and Canada Proclaim the Nuclear Age, August 6, 1945.” Using materials from the National Archives it will introduce some novel revelations of this horrific and Earth shattering event. While I am prohibited, due to “copyright authorisation,” from revealing too much prior to publication including  an abstract, I will, with appropriate circumspection, state the following.

Before the uranium-core bomb exploded in the skies over Hiroshima, the United States was planning a propaganda campaign to sell the nuclear age to the American people and the global community. The article will prove that the beginnings of this campaign preceded the Truman years and that it was multinational in scope. The article will introduce for the first time A-bomb statements on the day of the bombing in a comparative historical context. As usual, American historians primarily focus upon the United States role in the Manhattan Project on which I have  previously published but virtually ignore the role played by other “allies” during this period. Several nations are known to have prepared the world for the meaning of the atomic age in the most glowing terms and offer exterminationist rhetoric that debases the human condition and mocks the notion of  the “Greatest Generation” with its contemptuous disregard of  just war and its supposed moral superiority over the Germans or Japanese.

Many felt that the United States would have a monopoly on the nuclear weapons’ inventory for decades and arrogantly sought to prevent any efforts at international arms control. While the US used the atomic bomb against a nearly defeated and devastated Japan–twice I might add noting the criminal Nagasaki holocaust on August 9–the Soviet Union acquired its atomic bomb just four years later in August, 1949. The race was on and has not stopped as nuclear pride and nuclear elitism, so pronounced by the early nuclear powers, has prodded more vulnerable states to equal the score and avert regime change.

Unfortunately when the Earth was created, it came packed in its crust with uranium which is rather plentiful. Without uranium, a heavy unstable transuranic element with the atomic number 92, there is no atomic bomb: period. One cannot make any type of nuclear weapon–even a hydrogen bomb–without access to uranium. While plutonium was used as the primary fissionable material in the latter Nagasaki “Fat Man” bomb, without uranium one does not acquire plutonium. It is created as a by-product in a nuclear reactor when U-238 is bombarded with another neutron and does not exist in functional amounts in nature. Through reprocessing, which took place at Hanford in Washington State during the Manhattan Project (1942-1945), plutonium is separated and used as a fissionable fuel in nuclear weapons.

Someone forgot to tell the United States of America.

Mr George W. Bush was unfortunately not the first to mislead the American people about the existence of weapons of mass destruction (W.M.D.)  Physicists Leo Szilard, Victor Weisskopf, Enrico Fermi, Albert Einstein (though he was more of a pawn in this game), Eugene Wigner and non-scientist Alexander Sachs as early as 1939, two years before the US entered the war, were trying to scare President Franklin Delano Roosevelt into  launching an A-bomb programme in order to beat Nazi Germany that they claimed was feverishly and successfully working on an atomic bomb.

The first nuclear arms race was on. The “battle of the laboratories” was the name used in official documents but the problem was there was only one participant in this monstrous and unseemly competition. Germany had no Manhattan Project to speak of, did not create nuclear fission or reach criticality in any pile and never entered into a crash programme as did the US. While it had great physicists such as Werner Heisenberg, Paul Harteck, Otto Hahn (probably the first to discover nuclear fission of uranium), Kurt Diebner and Carl-Friedrich von Weizsäcker who were aware of  neutron-splitting fission, it never constructed enrichment plants, gaseous diffusion plants or reprocessing plants and never created an archetype for a nuclear bomb or warhead on their rocketry. There was a “missile gap” but who cares since only conventional warheads were then developed.

Germany was innovative in theoretical physics but not in experimental physics. Its scientists let it down during the war as it underestimated the value of graphite as a moderator to slow down neutrons and basically believed heavy water and natural uranium would cause fission. Of course that would obviate enrichment of U-235 and move to the plutonium option but that was not achieved. Also allied sabotage and bombing of their heavy water assets at the Vemork Hyrdogen-Electrolyis Plant  in Norway and research centers such as the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute in Berlin further stymied their episodic and elementary nuclear-research programme. Germany never even agreed it should develop A-bombs; that decision was never formally emphasised or adopted but of course there was anemic government sponsored research into nuclear fission which fissiled.

It is certain that the atomic bomb was built over a fabrication of lies or, to be more charitable, unseemly and epic exaggeration. No:  President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was hardly going to go public and talk about a German nuclear programme in 1939 or 1942, when the Manhattan Engineer District began, since he tried to keep such research in total secrecy but the genesis, the inception, the decision to develop atomic bombs was based on the false and unsubstantiated claim that Germany was in the midst of a crash programme to develop fission weapons. Was it merely faulty intelligence or exaggerated emotions to scare the administration into this Armageddon  of death and mayhem and butchery?

A nuclear rival did not exist and Saddam did not possess nuclear weapons either. The entire edifice and raison d’être for the atomic-bomb programme proved to be illusory and non-existent. While Mr Bush merely lied the US into war crimes against Saddam, the scientists who preyed on F. D. R. were not well informed enough to demand morally such a dangerous and possibly Earth-eliminating undertaking with the world moving inexorably toward a nuclear catastrophe. Adolph Hitler had not even invaded Poland when this coterie tried to get President Roosevelt to launch the nuclear A-bomb project which did begin in earnest in 1942.

Yet even when Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945, the nuclear-bomb warfare option did not end. It merely transferred its objectives upon Japan that clearly was not developing nuclear weapons.  The hate-filled United States did not allow a noncombat demonstration, a warning or even a continuation of the  blockade to coerce a surrender.  Not even the full-scale invasion, which they lied about 1,000,000 projected casualties, was likely to ever occur for that was not to deploy large numbers of American invaders across the Tokyo Plain for at least eight months in March 1946.

No modifying, despite the urgings of Secretary of War Henry Stimson and Undersecretary of State Joseph Grew,  the barbaric unconditional surrender doctrine to allow the retention of the Emperor occurred–even though it was allowed AFTER the war. Nor was there waiting to see the demoralising effect of the now-resented Soviet invasion of Manchuria. The Truman A-bomb was a revengeful, criminal act without justification or military necessity. Yes scientists such as Tokutaro Hagiwara speculated about fission and even the development of thermonuclear weapons with a U-235 spark to ignite the fusion of hydrogen atoms. Yet not even the US worried about Japan being anything other than a conventional power and no one speculated otherwise.

They used to say “duck and cover” like Bert the Turtle would do the trick. Or a little A-Bomb shelter in the backyard if you are home will be just fine. Or build more warheads and launchers than any other power will “deter.” What kind of a nation do we live in with this type of weapon, to paraphrase Secretary Stimson, “that we wear so ostentatiously on our hip?”

Dr Leo Szilard and the Franck Report avoided unconditional rejection of this carnage in Nagasaki.

Much has been written how Manhattan Project scientists became antiwar activists DURING World War II and tried to prevent the use of the atomic bomb. Such is not the case since every organised effort put conditions on Japan that if not met, would lead to the nuclear incineration of their country. No unconditional effort to stop the first nuclear war ever took place during the war years from 1939-1945.

The United States and the Axis powers had abandoned any pretext of preserving non-combatant immunity in warfare. The strategic bombings of urban areas was vigorously unleashed by the major powers during World War II as witnessed by the savage destruction of Dresden, Tokyo, Hamburg, Rotterdam, Nanking, and Coventry. As the violence mounted in a war without mercy, the combatants developed the concept of total war in which “soft” non-combatant, civilian populations were added to the traditional target selection of military bases, armies in the field, and key naval staging areas. Even Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson’s dramatic intercession to spare Kyoto, Japan’s ancient capital that abounded with historical and cultural treasures, from nuclear attack, was motivated to protect Japan’s historical and material artifacts and not the city’s civilian population.1

With strategic-nuclear bombing rapidly becoming operational in the final weeks of the war, 171 scientists and support personnel from the Manhattan Engineer District (Manhattan Project) responded by disseminating a flurry of petitions, reports, memoranda, and letters.2 Their purpose was to influence United States policy on how, not whether, the atomic bomb should be introduced into the Asian-Pacific War.

It will be shown that civilian and military officials, journalists, and scholars of the period have inaccurately assessed many of these documents as indicative of either unconditional opposition to the use of the atomic bomb or sharply at odds with Truman Administration policy. In particular, the petitions of physicist Leo Szilard at the Metallurgical Laboratory (Metlab) of the University of Chicago, have been variously interpreted as unalterably opposed to the use of the atomic bomb.3 A reexamination of the petitions will clearly demonstrate conditional and not unconditional opposition to attacking Japan with the atomic bomb. Furthermore, the Metallurgical Laboratory Report of the Committee on Political and Social Problems (the Franck Report) has repeatedly been assessed as unalloyed opposition to any combat role for the A-bomb. While their authors’ certainly shared misgivings in abandoning conventional warfare, it will be shown they eschewed an unconditional, absolutist rejection of the use of the atomic bomb.

One of the most detailed and important Manhattan Project documents concerning the A-bomb’s potential use was the Franck Report.4 James Franck, a German-refugee physicist and 1925 Nobel laureate, was the associate director of the chemistry division at Metlab and the committee chair.5 The Franck Report portrayed ominously the security implications of an unannounced use of nuclear weapons, was visionary in its prediction of an abbreviated American atomic monopoly, and correctly wished to harness weapons of mass destruction to an international-control regime. It advocated a noncombat demonstration on a “desert or a barren island” that would avoid international “horror and revulsion” against an unannounced American-nuclear attack in the Pacific.6 Although conceding the introduction of the A-bomb would trigger a nuclear arms race, its arguments in favor of a non-lethal test demonstration were tactical, not ethical.7 America’s fission bombs were too weak and “of comparatively low efficiency and small size” to “break the will” of Japan.8 Since many Japanese cities had already been “reduced to ashes” by conventional bombing, a surprise nuclear attack would only marginally influence Japan’s decision to surrender.9

However, the Franck Report avoided unconditional opposition to the use of nuclear weapons, and even recommended certain preconditions that might justify their introduction. These might include the approval of the incipient United Nations, the support of the American people, and a Japanese rejection of a surrender ultimatum: “The weapon might perhaps be used against Japan if the sanction of the United Nations (and of public opinion at home) were obtained, perhaps after a preliminary ultimatum to Japan to surrender or at least to evacuate certain regions…”10 The report also avoided recommending a modification of unconditional surrender, established at the Casablanca conference in January 1943, in order to facilitate a diplomatic solution to the war.

The Franck Report was alarmed about the potentially adverse diplomatic consequences that might ensue from a sudden nuclear attack, and counseled the administration on how best to avoid widespread opprobrium should the A-bomb be used against Japan; the government should defer combat use until the international community witnessed a technical demonstration, for this would lessen criticism particularly if “other nations may assume a share of responsibility for such a fateful decision.”11 While the Metlab scientists appropriately looked beyond the military application of the bomb and considered the impact of nuclear proliferation on United States national-security policy, the Franck Report not only avoided total opposition to a nuclear offensive, but also offered recommendations on how best to use the A-bomb without America becoming a nuclear-pariah state.

Arthur Holly Compton was the 1927 Nobel laureate in physics and director of the University of Chicago’s Metlab. It was the great scientist who originated the myth that Szilard’s petition drive and the Franck Report were unconditionally opposed to any atomic attack against Japan. Compton offered highly opinionated summaries before forwarding Metlab and Clinton Engineer Works (Oak Ridge, Tennessee) documents to Washington. He sent a copy of the Franck Report to George Harrison, a special consultant to Stimson and the chair, in the secretary’s absence, of the eight-person Interim Policy Committee on Atomic Energy (Interim Committee) in 1945.12 Included was Compton’s highly subjective analysis that the report wanted “outlawed by firm international agreement,” any “permitting [of] the bombs to be used in war.” Compton distanced himself from the report by arguing that any postponement in implementing the atomic option would “make the war longer and more expensive of human lives…”13 Nowhere does Compton mention that the Franck Report delineated a host of specific conditions that, if implemented, could justify a B-29 A-bomb campaign against Japan.

Dr Arthur Holly Compton

Harrison later informed Stimson in a “Top Secret” memorandum on June 26 about the existence of the Franck Report, and also inaccurately described it as rejecting the “use of the bomb, so nearly completed, against any enemy country at this time.”14 Several documentary and general histories of the atomic bomb by Barton Bernstein, Jeffrey Porro, et al., and William Sweet, excluded in their abridged reprints of the Franck Report those sections that only conditionally dissented from an A-bomb attack or that assessed the negative diplomatic fallout that might erupt from a military demonstration.15

At Metlab in July 1945, with the decision to use the atomic bomb only weeks away, Szilard began the petition movement. A Hungarian émigré, he helped create the Manhattan Project with his early conceptualization of the nuclear-chain reaction and his drafting of the August 1939 Albert Einstein letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt—delivered by Russian-born Lehman Corporation economist Alexander Sachs.16 Szilard has been repeatedly portrayed as the Manhattan Project’s chief architect in organizing protest against the use of the atomic bomb at the end of World War II. Yet Manhattan Project documents reveal Szilard neither unconditionally opposed the atomic bombings of Japan nor significantly deviated from Truman Administration policy.

In early 1945, with Germany’s defeat a near certainty, Szilard initially attempted through an Einstein letter of introduction to meet with Roosevelt, and persuade the president that the original rationale in developing the atomic bomb had vanished. Yet the president’s death on April 12, 1945 precluded such an encounter, and Szilard subsequently initiated the petition effort with the circulation of his July 3 petition and cover letter of July 4, 1945 among scientists from both Metlab and Clinton.17 There was an unsuccessful effort to distribute the petition at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, which built and assembled the weapons that were used against Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and August 9, 1945. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Los Alamos director, thwarted any petition distribution because he believed, somewhat hypocritically, a scientist should not attempt to influence the policy-making process of the national-security elites.18

While the cover letter unambiguously denounced the immorality of using nuclear weapons in opposing “on moral grounds…the use of these bombs in the present phase of the war,” the actual petition was less emphatic in its opposition to abandoning conventional warfare.19 If Japan did not accept American-“imposed” surrender terms that consisted of vague guarantees of “peaceful pursuits in their homeland,” the United States “might require a reexamination of her position” which could lead to the use of the atomic bomb.20 This first petition on a nuclear-related event did not propose an atomic warning or any concrete steps that might avoid the use of the A-bomb. Szilard, who later opposed a nuclear test-ban treaty in the 1960s that would reduce radioactive fallout and achieve some strategic stability in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis, did not advance any non-lethal test scenario that might have induced a Japanese surrender.21

Leo Szilard pronounced “Silard”

In paragraph six, Szilard’s petition repeated the cover letter’s condemnation of nuclear weapons with a vituperative critique of both conventional and nonconventional-strategic bombing of Japan:

The last few years show a marked tendency toward increasing ruthlessness. At present our Air Forces, striking at the Japanese cities, are using the same methods of warfare which were condemned by American public opinion only a few years ago when applied by the Germans to the cities of England. Our use of atomic bombs in this war would carry the world a long way further on this path of ruthlessness.22

This plea for atomic restraint only applied to using nuclear weapons “in the present phase of the war.”23 This was consistent with the petition’s call for an American “reexamination” of its nuclear-use policy should Japan not accede to dictated terms of surrender.

At the Clinton Laboratory, Szilard’s petition triggered a vigorous response. Eighteen Clinton scientists signed a petition that supported Szilard’s effort except for the latter’s final paragraph. Similar to the Franck Report, which the signers did not see, it recommended sharing American “responsibility for use of atomic bombs…with our allies.”

The amended petition, while repeating Szilard’s vague surrender terms that allowed Japan a “peaceful development in their homeland,” explicitly advocated an atomic warning prior to any A-bomb offensive:24 “We…feel that our attitude is more clearly expressed if its last paragraph is replaced by the following…’Convincing warnings have been given that a refusal to surrender will be followed by the use of a new weapon.’”25 This appeal for an atomic warning went beyond any Szilard petition. While Compton conveniently ignored the Clinton demand for an atomic warning in pursuing his own agenda of prompt, immediate use, his general characterization of its framers as “reading the minds of Mr. Truman and Mr. Stimson” accurately reflected the document’s avoidance of unconditional opposition to the use of the atomic bomb.26

A Clinton “counterpetition” effort also appeared that strongly supported the unconditional use of the weapon. George W. Parker, a chemist and leader of this small but vocal group, mailed Compton a letter which has eluded historical scrutiny on July 16, 1945—the same day as the first nuclear explosion at Trinity, in the appropriately named New Mexico desert, Jornada del Muerto (Journey of Death). While not representing government policy, Parker’s explicit written support for atomic diplomacy was one of the first to appear in any World War II document. Parker was impressed with the diplomatic advantages that would accrue from unveiling such an “impressive weapon.” As a winning weapon, the A-bomb would confer an “impressive victory…[and] should inspire American diplomacy and world opinion to effectively tame the present hard-booted Russian ego which is now an embarrassing threat to plans for world security.”27 Specifically rejecting an atomic warning and brushing aside fears of diplomatic isolation following the weapon’s use, Parker rejected any “political or moral issue” that might dissuade the government from authorizing an immediate use of the atomic bomb. It advocated “winning the war.”28

During this frenetic July when dozens of atomic scientists endeavored to influence the endgame of their unprecedented creation, Parker also released a petition, co-endorsed by D. S. Ballantine, that smeared Szilard’s petition movement as unAmerican. Titled “A Petetion [sic] to the Administration of Clinton Laboratories,” it was unusually strident and provocative as it unleashed a vitriolic condemnation of Szilard.29 Declaring itself a “counterpetition” and evoking the language and ideological nationalism that would typify McCarthyism, the Parker-Ballantine petition denounced Szilard as a threat to national security.30 “[T]he original Szilard petition has exposed the security of the DSM project. Certainly, if one such petition, with the information and dangerous implications it has, can pass through… plant and project administration, we feel that every individual may assume open season and compete to be sure that his own aquiesence [sic] or dissension is equally well broadcast.”31

“The Greatest Generation’s” Destruction of Innocents in Nagasaki

The Parker-Ballantine petition claiming to represent true patriotism, affirmed its “sentiments” were shared by “particularly those who have sons and daughters in the foxholes and warships of the Pacific.”32 While noting the Metlab petition’s ethical misgivings concerning weapons of mass destruction, the two scientists described accurately its less than unqualified opposition: “If practical necessities demand its [the bomb’s] use, then the moral issue should be bypassed. It should be used if the nation’s life were endangered, the petition went on to say.”33

In their petition, Parker and Ballantine rejected concerns that an unannounced A-bomb attack would precipitate international outrage, or threaten global security in introducing a new destructiveness of unprecedented magnitude. Deployment of the latest military technology always generates fear the petition alleged, but subsequent to widespread proliferation into nation-state arsenals, it becomes an “everyday implement of war.” So too would nuclear weapons as “future generations will come to regard this latest device with less and less regard.”34

The Clinton petitions, counterpetition, and letters were delivered to Martin D. Whitaker, physicist and director of the Tennessee laboratory, and the Oak Ridge scientists’ chief conduit to Washington. Whitaker subsequently gave them to Colonel Kenneth D. Nichols, Corps of Engineers, and a principal deputy of Major General Leslie R. Groves—the director of the Manhattan Project since its inception on August 13, 1942. Nichols, who earned a doctorate and later became a major general, was a key link in the communication’s channel between the Manhattan Project scientists and Washington.35 Nichols subsequently shared them with Compton, hoping to receive a summary analysis, but Compton confined his written analysis during the war only to those petitions and reports written by Metlab personnel.36

Two weeks after circulating his July 3 petition, Szilard submitted a second revision that had the support of seventy Metlab personnel. The signers’ names did not appear on a single-master petition but were scattered among nine different copies that were circulated among the various laboratory’s division sections.37 As a result, there have been widely disparate accounts of the precise number of names that appeared on the last Manhattan Project petition of World War II. At least four times in 1945 Szilard reported gathering sixty-seven signatures on the July 17th petition.39 Major General F. L. Parks referred to “some sixty scientists” in a letter to A. J. Muste of The Fellowship of Reconciliation.39 In 1960 Szilard actually reduced the number to “about sixty members” in an interview with U.S. News and World Report.40 While incorrectly identifying a quotation from the Franck Report and attributing it to Szilard’s petition, Lloyd Gardner stated only “several atomic scientists” signed the July petition.41 Alperovitz claimed some sixty-nine signatures were affixed to the petition.42 Kai Bird and Lawrence Lifschultz stupidly claimed there were 155 names appearing on Szilard’s July 17th petition which was only two fewer than the total number of signed supporters of all Manhattan Project petitions!43

A composite list of the July 17th petition at the National Archives contained the seventy names that appeared on nine-separate petition copies along with their job descriptions at the Metallurgical Laboratory.44 A revised, more detailed list, that was probably completed at the end of 1946, revealed a more intrusive ongoing-security monitoring operation. Those who signed the petition were now categorized as “important” or “not important,” and included the circumstances under which an individual might have resigned from the Manhattan Project.45 While there is no evidence of a post-petition purge, an ongoing intelligence-gathering operation of atomic scientists who attempted to influence the decision to use the atomic bomb, anticipated inappropriate national-security excesses during the Cold War.46

Szilard’s revised petition of July 17th never circulated outside Chicago and, unlike the draft of July 3rd, received no feedback from Clinton Engineer Works’s colleagues. While efforts were made by senior officials to draw major distinctions between the July 3 and July 17 versions, they were strikingly similar. Each contained eight paragraphs and neither advocated total opposition to the use of the atomic bomb. The final petition did not differ substantively from the original, but merely adopted a more measured, conciliatory tone in its critique of the possible use of atomic weapons. The first petition’s declaration that “the destruction of Japanese cities” might be effective but inappropriate, was replaced by the less provocative—“attacks by atomic bombs”—which removed specific criticisms of urban targeting. The July 3 petition warning that Japan’s refusal to abide by American surrender terms might justify a nuclear response, was rewritten with a similar warning that the United States “might…find itself forced to resort to the use of atomic bombs.”47

Dr Szilard’s July 17 petition that conditionally supported the use of the atomic bomb.

The July 3 petition’s denunciation of nuclear weapons as “primarily a means for the ruthless annihilation of cities,” was substituted with the less critical observation that they “provide…nations with new means of destruction.” The July 3 petition’s sixth paragraph, as cited earlier, which twice denounced the “ruthlessness” inherent in strategic bombing, was replaced with a more analytic reflection that nuclear proliferation among competing powers could significantly attenuate international stability.

Significantly, the revised petition retained the earlier provisions for a nuclear attack should “the terms which will be imposed upon Japan have been made public in detail and Japan knowing these terms has refused to surrender.”48 The revised petition concluded with a deferential request that the president, before authorizing the use of the atomic bomb, take cognizance of the petition’s “considerations” and “other moral responsibilities.”49 While the petitions deviated rhetorically in their assessment of the potential use of the atomic bomb, they both unambiguously outlined conditions that could allow its criminal, barbaric introduction into the Asian-Pacific War.

Szilard’s petitions omitted specific antibomb conditions that might have thwarted the genocidal use of this horrific weapon. Possible options of maintaining the blockade around the Japanese islands, continuing the mass murder city-busting air raids, or modifying unconditional surrender to allow the retention of the emperor were not included in any Metlab petition. Both the Franck Report and the July 13 Clinton petition at least recommended a non-combat demonstration or an atomic warning prior to the decision to deploying the uranium-core gravity bomb against Japan. Yet Szilard is referred to as the first “moral philosopher of the nuclear age.”50

Nevertheless, several officials claimed Szilard had to compromise his putative antibomb position in order to obtain a significant number of signatures on his petition. While certainly true the Hungarian émigré revised the original in order to obtain greater support, the original only included conditional opposition to the use of the atomic bomb. Compton and others who claimed a Metlab probomb consensus thwarted Szilard’s alleged anti-nuclear pacifism, were merely attempting to quell any laboratory opposition to an immediate, combat role for the atomic bomb.

According to Captain R. Gordon Arneson, the Interim Committee’s recording secretary, Szilard’s second petition was categorical in “urging that the bomb not be used in the present war.”51 Besides failing to acknowledge the petition’s explicit avoidance of unconditional opposition to the use of the A-bomb on a defenceless adversary, Arneson dismissed the petition endeavor as frivolous due to the scientific community’s supposed representation on the Scientific Panel.52

Compton also misinterpreted and attempted to discredit the petition drive in a July 24 memorandum to Nichols. Like Arneson’s misreading of the July 17 petition, Compton erred dramatically in his interpretation of the earlier petition as an absolutist unsuccessful effort to derail the use of the atomic bomb. Compton claimed Szilard failed in “seeking signatures requesting no use of the new weapons in this war.”53 In his postwar memoir, Compton repeated his claim that the July 3 petition “called for outright rejection of the use of atomic bombs.”54 The Metlab director averred it was rejected by other scientists, thereby, forcing Szilard “to rephrase it so as to approve use of the weapons after giving suitable warning and opportunity for surrender under known conditions.”55

Nichols, who essentially lifted Compton’s analysis of Szilard’s petition campaign, sardonically observed that “the more informed individuals” at Metlab refused to sign the original draft because they “support the present plans for use of the weapon.” Like Compton, he mistakenly claimed the second petition was significantly altered “as a result of opposition… in order to get signers…”56 Ironically, Compton’s and Nichols’s assessment of the restrained anti-use posture of the July 17 petition were more accurate than that of its author. Szilard’s July 19 cover letter to Compton twice claimed the final version emphasized “the moral issue only” despite its mere conditional dissent from using the A-bomb.

Yet Szilard contradicted his own assessment by describing considerable disagreement among the seventy signers of the document. Some supported “early” use of the bomb, because delay might create the impression that the United States was attempting to conceal its nuclear monopoly and “cause distrust on the part of other nations… ”57 Others feared a nuclear-arms race with Russia would result unless a “demonstration” was delayed until after the United States identified what “course it intended to follow” in arms control and development during the postwar period.58

Compton almost certainly submitted to Washington, without Szilard’s knowledge or consent, the July 3 petition since it was not intended for actual transmittal; only the final July 17 document was sent to Compton with the purpose of reaching the White House. Szilard delivered to Compton six unsigned copies, and one signed copy that was placed inside a separate envelope. Szilard’s intent was to conceal the names of his supporters by protecting their “privilege under the Constitution,” and requested the signed copy be seen only by those “authorized to open the mail of the president.”59 Nichols then delivered by military police courier the ten Metlab and Clinton petitions and letters to Groves.60

Despite Compton’s and Farrington Daniels’s fallacious assertion that the documents “were transmitted to the White House,” Arneson stated definitively that Truman never saw the Manhattan Project materials that were sent to Washington.61 Groves kept them for about a week until August 1, when he finally routed them to the secretary of war after Stimson had returned from the Potsdam Conference outside Berlin. “It was decided that no useful purpose would be served by transmitting…[them] to the White House, particularly since the President was not then in the country.”62

Raymond Gram Swing: moral, ethical but propagated anti-bomb myth.

The popular culture in the postwar period witnessed additional erroneous portrayals of the Szilard petitions as unconditionally opposed to the decision to use the atomic bomb. Raymond Swing, an immensely popular ABC radio newsperson, denounced America’s-atomic monopoly, advocated world government to restrain unlimited-state sovereignty, and referred to a “communication…to President Truman after the first experiment at Los Alamos [sic] proved to be a success…[as] a plea that the bomb…not be dropped over Japan before a test demonstration.”63 Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey misrepresented the July 3 petition as “ask[ing] Truman not to use the bomb at all,” without revealing its highly qualified opposition to an atomic offensive.64 They also claimed incorrectly in their Look article that Szilard, in seeking greater support, changed the July 3 petition’s demand of “no use of the A-bomb at all” to requiring that a “warning” must precede any authorized use of the atomic bomb.65

Jacob Bronowski wrote that Szilard, “[a]lways… wanted the bomb to be tested openly before the Japanese and an international audience, so that the Japanese should know its power and should surrender before people died.”66 However, no reference to “no use,” a test demonstration, or any non-lethal detonation ever appeared in a Szilard petition. More recently Martin Harwit, former director of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, reprinted the July 17 petition and correctly described its modest opposition to using the atomic bomb in the Pacific. However, he claimed inaccurately that only “as a last resort” should the atomic bomb be used against Japan.67

The atomic scientists who attempted to influence one of the twentieth century’s most fateful decisions, operated within a narrow ideological consensus that only modestly questioned the decision to use the atomic bomb. Manhattan Project officials, historians, and journalists have too often emphasized the supposed chasm between the national-security managers who formulated policy and the Manhattan Project scientists who built the bomb. While the airburst-atomic devastation of a non-nuclearJapan unleashed the nuclear arms race and threatened the human race, there was no movment among the supposed dissenters to reject any conditions for the transformation of World War II into an orgiastic nuclear war.

1. Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of the American Myth (New York, 1995), 531-32; Barton J. Bernstein, “The Atomic Bombings Reconsidered,” Foreign Affairs, Jan-Feb 1995, 147.

2. Of that total, Leo Szilard, James J. Nickson, and George W. Parker signed more than one document, resulting in 168 different signatures.

3. The name “Metallurgical Laboratory,” was a ruse that served as a “convenient blind.” Arthur H. Compton to Irwin Stewart, April 30, 1943, roll 10, file 156, Bush-Conant File Relating to the Development of the Atomic Bomb, 1940-1945, Records of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, Record Group 227; National Archives—Great Lakes Region (Chicago).

4. Michael B. Stoff, Jonathan F. Fanton, and R. Hal Williams, eds.,The Manhattan Project: A Documentary Introduction to the Atomic Age (New York, 1991), 140-47. In addition to Franck, the other committee members were Donald J. Hughes, James J. Nickson, Eugene Rabinowitch, Glenn T. Seaborg, Joyce C. Stearns, and Leo Szilard.

5. Barton J. Bernstein, ed., The Atomic Bomb: The Critical Issues (Boston, 1986), 25.

6. Ibid., 26-27. “Horror and revulsion” did not represent the Franck Report’s own reaction to a possible atomic attack on Japan, but those of the American public and the international community.

7. The use of the term “demonstration” has often confounded students of the war because of the myriad applications of the term. Frequently, it referred to the use of the atomic bomb in a non-combat mode such as an uninhabited area in Japan or even the United States. A “technical” or a “test” demonstration’s purpose was to induce Japan’s surrender or to gain international support should a combat use against urban areas subsequently ensue. The term “military demonstration” could suggest a “limited” counterforce attack against a military target that would produce minimal “collateral damage” to civilians. “Military demonstration,” however, was frequently used as a euphemism for strategic nuclear bombing of a full range of military and non-military assets.

8. Stoff, et al., eds., Manhattan Project, 143. The term “fission,” based on cell division in biology, refers to a neutron splitting of a uranium (or plutonium) nucleus into two smaller and similar-sized nuclei. Physicists Lise Meitner and her nephew Otto Robert Frisch coined the term in 1938.

9. Ibid.

10. Stoff, et al., eds., Manhattan Project, 144. For support of the development of the atomic bomb and the Franck Report’s, misspelled as “Frank,” surrender ultimatum as a means of “transferring the burden of responsibility to the Japanese themselves,” see Norman Cousins and Thomas K. Finletter, “A Beginning for Sanity,” The Saturday Review of Literature, June 15, 1946, 6-7.

11. Ibid., 147.

12. National Archives Microfilm Publications Pamphlet Describing M1108, “Harrison-Bundy Files Relating to the Development of the Atomic Bomb, 1942-1946,” (Washington, D. C., 1982), 1. In addition to Stimson and Harrison, other members of the Interim Committee were Ralph Bard, Vannevar Bush, Jimmy Byrnes, William L. Clayton, Karl T. Compton, and James B. Conant. Bard, undersecretary of the navy, authored a memorandum that has also been erroneously portrayed as a great departure from the Interim Committee’s consensus on using the atomic bomb “as soon as possible, on a war plant surrounded by workers’ homes…” While recommending an atomic warning, bilateral talks “somewhere on the China coast,” and an offer to retain the emperor, Bard proposed a mere two-to-three day bombing delay to induce Japan’s surrender on these terms. Notes of the Interim Committee Meeting, June 1, 1945; roll 4, file 3; Correspondence (“Top Secret”) of the Manhattan Engineer District, 1942-1946, Records of the Office of the Chief of Engineers, Record Group 77; National Archives—Great Lakes Region (Chicago). [Emphasis in original]; Ralph A. Bard, “Memorandum on the Use of S-1 Bomb,” June 27, 1945; roll 6, file 76, Harrison-Bundy Files Relating to the Development of the Atomic Bomb, 1942-1946, Records of the Office of the Chief of Engineers, Record Group 77; NA—Great Lakes Region (Chicago). [Hereafter referred to as H-B Files]. S-1 was one of several code names used for the Manhattan Project during the war.

13. Compton to Secretary of War–Attention: Mr. George Harrison, June 12, 1945, 1-2, roll 6, file 76, H-B Files.

14. Martin J. Sherwin, A World Destroyed: The Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance (New York, 1975), 305.

15. Bernstein, Atomic Bomb, 26-9; Jeffrey Porro, Paul Doty, Carl Kaysen, and Jack Ruina, eds., The Nuclear Age Reader (New York, 1989); 11-13, William L. Sweet, The Nuclear Age: Atomic Energy, Proliferation, and the Arms Race, 2nd ed. (Washington, 1988), 9.

16. National Archives Microfilm Publications Pamphlet Describing M1392, “Bush-Conant File Relating to the Development of the Atomic Bomb, 1940-1945,” (Washington, D. C., 1990), 2.

17. Albrecht Fölsing, Albert Einstein: A Biography (New York, 1997), 719-20.

18. Ronald E. Powaski, March to Armageddon: The United States and the Nuclear Arms Race, 1939 to the Present (New York, 1987), 18. Joseph Rotblat, 1995 Nobel Peace laureate, left Los Alamos in 1944 upon learning that Germany was not developing an atomic bomb. His moral opposition to continued atomic-weapons development was, however, a solitary act of protest and not part of any organized effort. He was threatened with arrest if he discussed his anti-bomb beliefs and, therefore, dissembled that family reunification in Europe was his reason for leaving the Manhattan Project. See Joseph Rotblat, “Leaving the Bomb Project,” in Ending War: The Force of Reason, Essays in Honour of Joseph Rotblat, Maxwell Bruce and Tom Milne, eds. (London, 1999), 12-13; Susan Landau, “From Fission Research to a Prize for Peace,” Scientific American, January 1996, 39.

19. “Szilard Petition Cover Letter,” July 4, 1945, roll 9, file 108, H-B Files.

20. “A Petition to the President of the United States,” July 3, 1945, roll 9, file 108, H-B Files.

21. Lawrence S. Wittner, Resisting the Bomb: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1954-1970 (Stanford, 1997), 256.

22. “Petition to the President,” July 3, 1945.

23. Ibid. [Emphasis Added).

24. Oak Ridge Petition, July 13, 1945.

25. Ibid. [Emphasis added]. This would have contrasted significantly with the Potsdam Declaration of July 26 which did not specify an atomic weapon in its warning of “prompt and utter destruction.”

26. Arthur Holly Compton, Atomic Quest: A Personal Narrative (New York, 1956), 243. Compton belonged to the Scientific Advisory Panel that found no “acceptable alternative to direct military use.”

27. George W. Parker to Arthur Holly Compton, July 16, 1945; roll 6, file 76, H-B Files. M. D. Whitaker’s name appears just below Compton’s as an addressee in whose care the letter would be sent to Compton. On atomic diplomacy see Alperovitz, Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam, the Use of the Atomic Bomb and the American Confrontation with Soviet Power (New York, 1985); Alperovitz, Decision to Use; Powaski, The Cold War: The United States and the Soviet Union, 1917-1991 (New York, 1998), 67.

28. Parker to Compton, July 16, 1945.

29. “A Petetion [sic] to the Administration of Clinton Laboratories,” ND, roll 6, file 76, H-B Files.

30. William Lanouette, “A Note on the July 17th Petition,” Kai Bird and Lawrence Lifschultz, eds., Hiroshima’s Shadow (Stony Creek, Conn. 1998), 558-59.

31. “Petetion [sic] to the Administration.” DSM stood for Development of Substitute Materials which was yet another code name for the secret atomic-bomb project. Shortly after the war, Ballantine became more circumspect in his overt support for nuclear weapons when he signed a Clinton petition that criticized General Leslie R. Groves for publicly dismissing the possibility of nuclear proliferation and claiming an American nuclear monopoly would guarantee victory in a future war. “To the Interim Committee on Nucleonics,” September 24, 1945, roll 6, file 77, H-B Files. I was informed about the September petition by Gene Dannen e-mail to the author, July 12, 1999. Dannen’s website, http://www.dannen.com/szilard.html contains a very useful annotated chronology of many documents from Manhattan Project scientists that involve the decision to use the atomic bomb.

32. Ibid.

33. Ibid. While it accurately assessed in principle the conditional-moral argumentation of Szilard’s petition, the latter claimed, after Germany’s surrender, that the initial rationale of DSM to prevent a German atomic monopoly was “averted.”

34. Ibid.

35. Interview with Dr. Albert Wattenberg, April 24, 1992, 24, Argonne National Laboratory History Project, Albert Wattenberg Papers, National Archives—Great Lakes Region (Chicago). This is a transcript of an oral history with Wattenberg, a Metlab physicist, who signed the Szilard petition.

36. Arthur H. Compton to Colonel K. D. Nichols, July 24, 1945, roll 6, file 76, H-B Files.

37. “A Petition to the President of the United States,” July 17, 1945, roll 6, file 76, H-B Files. The copies varied in numbers of signatures from two to fourteen.

38. Leo Szilard to Arthur Holly Compton, July 19, 1945 and August 6, 1945, roll 6, file 76, H-B Files; See also Leo Szilard to Matthew J. Connelly, August 17, 1945; Leo Szilard to Robert M. Hutchins, August 29, 1945, in Spencer R. Weart and Gertrude Weiss Szilard, eds., Leo Szilard: His Version of the Facts, Selected Recollections and Correspondence (Cambridge, Mass., 1978) 215-16, 220.

39. F. L. Parks to A. J. Muste, May 31, 1946, roll 6, file 76, H-B Files.

40. “President Truman Did Not Understand,” U.S. News and World Report, August 15, 1960, 69.

41. Lloyd C. Gardner, Architects of Illusion: Men and Ideas in American Foreign Policy, 1941-1949 (New York, 1970), 182. The Franck Report initially was published in “Before Hiroshima,” The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May 1, 1946.

42. Alperovitz, Decision to Use, 190.

43. Bird and Lifschultz, “Editors’ Note,” 552. In addition to the seventy signatures on the Szilard petition, eighty-seven names appear on Clinton Laboratories petitions. These figures exclude the July 3rd petition that was superseded by the July 17th version. However, Szilard later claimed he obtained “about fifty-three signatures” on the July 3rd draft. See Weart and Szilard, Leo Szilard, 187.

44. The list is untitled and contains only the date of the Szilard petition: July 17, 1945, roll 9, file 108, H-B Files. Ten women signatories appeared, in the following order, on the petition’s composite list: Ethaline Hartge Cortelyou, junior chemist, Katharine Way, research assistant, Mary Burke, research assistant, Mildred C. Ginsberg, computer, Hoylande Young, senior chemist, Information Section, Miriam P. Finkel, associate biologist, Mary M. Dailey, research assistant, Margaret H. Rand, research assistant, Health Section, Marguerite N. Swift, associate physiologist, Health Group, and Marietta Catherine Moore, technician. Of the eighty-seven Clinton personnel who signed petitions, all appear to be male.

45. The revised composite is untitled and contains only the date of the Szilard petition: July 17, 1945, roll 6, file 76, H-B Files. A handwritten note with unrecognizable initials accompanied it: “This is a list of people who signed the Szilard Petition of 17 July 45 to the President. There is included in brief the information on each person available in the Chicago area files.” July 2, 1947, roll 6, file 76, H-B Files.

46. For a comprehensive treatment of Cold War repression of liberal scientists see Jessica Wang, American Science in an Age of Anxiety: Scientists, Anticommunism, and the Cold War (Chapel Hill, 1999).

47 “Petition to the President,” July 3, 1945; “Petition to the President,” July 17, 1945. [Emphasis added].

48. Ibid. [Emphasis added].

49. Ibid.

50. Donna Gregory, ed., The Nuclear Predicament: A Sourcebook (New York, 1986), 5.

51. R. Gordon Arneson, “Memorandum for the Files,” May 24, 1946, 4, roll 6, file 76, H-B Files. While recording secretary, Arneson was then a second lieutenant. See also Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York, 1988), 634, 644.

52. “Notes for Possible Use of Secretary Patterson In Talking to Mr. Charles Ross,” ND, roll 6, file 76, H-B Files. Robert Patterson followed Stimson as Truman’s secretary of war and Ross was the White House press secretary. These notes were certainly written by Arneson, because entire passages of these “talking points” appeared verbatim in his “Memorandum for the Files.”

53. Compton to Nichols, July 24, 1945. [Emphasis added].

54. Compton, Atomic Quest, 241.

55. Ibid. These “known conditions” were not defined in the petition but presumably left for the Truman Administration to determine.

56. K. D. Nichols to Leslie R. Groves, July 25, 1945, roll 6, file 76, H-B Files.

57. Szilard to Compton, July 19, 1945.

58. Ibid.

59. Ibid.

60. William Lanouette, with Bela Silard, Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard, The Man Behind the Bomb [Chicago, 1992), 274. Silard, Szilard’s brother, shortened his surname.

61. Arthur H. Compton and Farrington Daniels, “A Poll of Scientists at Chicago, July 1945,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, February 1948, 44, 63.

62. “Notes for Possible use of Secretary Patterson.” The president was out of the country, due to the Potsdam Conference, from July 6 to August 7. See Arneson "Memorandum," 3. It is possible that Truman may have seen an antibomb letter from an O. C. Brewster, from New York, an engineer with the Manhattan Project. See Robert J. Donovan, Conflict and Crisis: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1945-1948 (New York, 1977), 69-70; Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey, “The Fight Over the A-Bomb,” Look, August 13, 1963, 20-21.

63. Raymond Swing, In the Name of Sanity (New York, 1945, 1946), 74. Since the Franck Report was completed five weeks before Trinity, one may conclude he was referring to a Szilard petition. On his internationalist perspective see especially chapters 1-2, 18-21. On Swing’s critique of nuclear weapons see John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947 (New York, 1972), 269.

64 Knebel and Bailey, “Fight Over the A-Bomb,” 22.

65 Ibid. [Emphasis added].

66 Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man (Boston, 1973), 370; Arthur Steiner, “Scientists and Politicians: The Use of the Atomic Bomb Reexamined,” Minerva, (Summer, 1977), 258-59.

67 Martin Harwit, An Exhibit Denied: Lobbying the History of Enola Gay (New York, 1996), 234-35.

An earlier version appeared in American Diplomacy under the title: “False Dissenters: Manhattan Project Scientists and the Use of the Atomic Bomb.” All photos derived from Google Images. Comments to kirstein@sxu.edu

SERE stands for Survival Evasion Resistance Escape. All departments of the imperialist forces train with this interrogation nonsense including the navy at Naval Air Station Brunswick, Maine where my interlocutor is stationed. These folks “practice” torture, barbaric tactics of cruelty and softening, sleep deprivation, physical abuse, walling, temperature alteration and other cruel and inhumane tactics forbidden under international and even US law. Devised in the 1950s due to torture against Americans in Korea, SERE’s reverse-engineered torture so Americans could learn it as practitioners or as the party line says survive it. I am certain that at one time they also practiced waterboarding but have no evidence that is occurring now even as part of their training. The US is the world’s leading rogue state and its most violent threat to international peace and security. I find it ironic that it trains its personnel to overcome these cruel and degrading practices given the fact the US is the main perpetrator of these foul deeds. A Freudian might say this is a case of national projection of its evil ways onto others: Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Extraordinary Renditon, Guantánamo death camp, criminal Iraq and Afghan wars in general.

From: Luedke, Barry T IT1 Faso, SERE [mailto:barry.luedke@navy.mil]
Sent: Tue 6/30/2009 6:28 AM
To: Kirstein, Peter N.

Hey Pete,

By the way, nice propaganda blog about me on your website:  http://english.sxu.edu/sites/kirstein/
That’s the problem with liars like you. You distort the truth. I never said anything about “loving guns”, yet you put that right under my name. It is both funny and pathetic at the same time. You claim to be a history professor? If you knew anything about history, you would know that socialism, and the way you think have not only been complete failures, but were responsible for the slaughter of millions of people. There were others in history who thought the way you do. Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and Lenin. Have you ever heard of them? They were responsible for the deaths of nearly 80,000,000 people. I think you can learn a lot from history. If only you would enlighten yourself to truth instead of propaganda and lies.

IT1(SW) Luedke
SERE EAST NASB
Brunswick, ME

—————————————————————————————

From: Kirstein, Peter N.
Sent: Tue 6/30/2009 10:35 AM
To: Luedke, Barry T IT1 Faso, SERE

Dear Barry Luedke:

I think calling me a “liar” does not contribute to the dialogue between those of us who are antiwar and those who are more bellicose. However, I think you fail to differentiate between democratic socialism, fascism and communism. Socialism or even Marxian communism does not envision a strong central government with dictatorial powers and the absence of a civil society. Indeed socialism emphasises equality, freedom with a vital state supervisory role.

In the US we unfortunately are not as far advanced in achieving socialism as other countries but we are not totally lacking. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Pell Grants and the stimulus package are examples of using the state to create a more just society.

So try to avoid sensationalising, as if you were FOX news, what socialism is and what it is not. I think your quotation of your entire first e-mail indeed reflected love of guns and the use or threat of force and destruction to achieve peace. I believe I adequately described your message.

BTW: Norman Thomas was a dear man, a wonderful person. He was not a warmonger, a lover of dictatorship or even a communist. Many of his views by the way did become practice as we moved, however slowly, toward a more socialist view of society with less competition and more cooperation.

Yours against American militarism.

Peter

From: Luedke, Barry T IT1 Faso, SERE [mailto:barry.luedke@navy.mil]
Sent: Mon 6/29/2009 2:50 PM
To: Kirstein, Peter N.
Subject: Something to ponder….

Know guns, know peace.
No guns, no peace…

IT1(SW) Luedke
SERE EAST NASB
Brunswick, ME   “The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of ‘liberalism’ they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”     – Norman Mattoon Thomas 1928.

From: Kirstein, Peter N.
Sent: Mon 6/29/2009 6:25 PM
To: Luedke, Barry T IT1 Faso, SERE

Dear Information Technician Luedke:

I agree with former presidential candidate Norman Thomas and do hope we achieve democratic socialism so our 48,000,000 citizens without health care would be covered LIKE you are at public expense and those without jobs are taken care of etc. If you are in the navy, you appear to have been brainwashed into believing that only violence can defend our freedom and that capitalism is superior, which unregulated can lead to horrendous suffering and social dislocation. Also those officers, I presume navy, who authorised those snipers to murder like cowards those, black, young, desperate, poor Somali pirates have blood on their hands. There was no reason to treat unresisting civilians in that manner. It lowers the navy to the level of those pirates in my opinion.

Also if you contact me again, kindly address me by name and sign your e-mail. I expect you as I did when I was in the military to comport yourself in a professional manner toward those you claim to serve.

I am sincerely yours,

Peter N. Kirstein

“American Imperialism and the Paranoid Style of American Politics.”

Richard Hofstadter, a major American historian of the postwar era, wrote an essay for Harper’s magazine, The Paranoid Style in American Politics in 1964. Whether it was Roman Catholicism, populism or masonry, communism or McCarthyism, this tendency to construe America as a nation under siege is a strong undercurrent of its oppressive culture and ethos. Yet I think paranoia is to a large extent cynically manufactured by the ruling classes in order to advance their personal quest of power projection and global domination.

An example was the shameless political advertisement of Democratic presidential candidate, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York. It depicted a phone ringing in the White House at 3:00 a.m. to suggest that then Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, could not be trusted as Commander in Chief and lacks the capacity to deal with an unannounced threat to the national interest. The ad was also inherently racist, as it depicted non-African-American children sleeping at that hour, but vulnerable if an African-American were elected president. It simply pandered to age-old hysterical themes of racial and national-security insecurities. Hysteria is frequently a manufactured by-product of power maximizing. An imperial, racist nation that practices global state terrorism is unwilling to encounter its own malevolence and so it projects onto others irrational qualities of evil and power. Recall the criminal invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003 was fueled by a hysterical overreaction to both the potential power and putative presence of non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

Jihadists, Muslims in general, terrorists, Al Qaeda, Hizbollah, Hamas, al Quds unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (P.K.K.) are designated or depicted as terrorist organisations. The Department of State would be well served to designate the United States as a terrorist organisation if that term is going to be utilised to designate crimes against civilians committed for political objectives. The deemphasis on using the word “terror” is noticeable since Barack Hussein Obama became the 44th president on January 20, 2009.

Yet the continued listing of so-called terrorist nations or non-state actors is an effort to dehumanise and marginalise those who have legitimate grievances against the United States, Israel and other oppressive governments. No other nation is as frightened as the United States about the external world and yet ironically no other nation can project power across the full spectrum of military assets. Yet this power has led to a perpetual unease, a sense of hysteria, a compulsion and addiction to war, a rogue state status of human rights violations and a slow but palpable decline in both the standard of living and civil liberties.

America’s greatest enemy is not external but internal. The power elites ranging from the neo-conservatives, the Israel Lobby, the centrist supporters of imperial overstretch such the Council on Foreign Relations, the Democratic and Republican parties, the immoral and unethical rulers of Wall Street and the Pentagon are the true enemies of the people. Great nations cannot sustain popular support of its endless wars and military adventurism unless it convinces the populace that their freedoms are enhanced by this madness.

Most Americans are proud of their country’s superpower status and are convinced that their freedom and putative democracy are sustained and nourished by constant muscular vigilance, frequent wars and an unrestrained worshipping of its military culture. Indeed, patriotism and love of country are to a large extent predicated on the belief that the American military is the sine qua non for our prosperity, protection and stability as a nation. Military academies, think tanks, specialised military universities, war-memorial monuments as prolific as McDonalds’s restaurants, veterans groups, Air Force Ones, marine presidential helicopters, colour guards, bellicose “bombs bursting in air” national anthems, p.o.w. flags, national holidays such as Memorial Day, Veterans Day, Independence Day and lesser ones as Armed Forces Day and the universality of the American flag are constant reminders of martial attributes that embrace war and violence to resolve interstate conflict. Washington, D.C. is virtually a military theme park that reflects the core values of the nation with scant attention to international peace and security.

At some point, the military empire that undermines our nation’s security needs to be dismantled and downsized in a manner that would not lead to unilateral disarmament beyond legitimate self-defence, but would clearly reduce the capacity of the arrogant hyperpower to wage war. Speaking truth to power, the United States of America is such a dangerous, irresponsible and destructive force, that for the sake of international peace and security, America must become a less powerful and more rational-state actor. The Fate of the Earth hangs in the balance.

Presidential Election, 2008:

I would prefer that one of the major candidates would have stated categorically that American imperialist forces would be withdrawn from Iraq without the usual qualifications of “orderly,” “systematically” etc. and critique the war in a manner that does not merely emphasise its impact on United States vital strategic interests in Afghanistan but as an immoral and ruthless projection of American power. The only candidate that did not vote for the authorisation to use force was former Senator Barack Obama. Even though he was not serving in the United States Senate but the Illinois State Senate, he publicly opposed the war on October 2, 2002, nine days before the Senate, with a Democratic party majority I might add, approved the evil joint-war resolution to send American military forces to Iraq.

In comparison to then Senator Clinton, there could be construed a greater credibility in the Illinois senator’s plan to withdraw one to two combat brigades a month and complete the withdrawal in sixteen months. As president, he appears to be implementing this phased withdrawal from Iraq and then deploying them to Afghanistan.

Senator Obama stated before his election as president he would engage in direct diplomacy with heads of state with which the United States has adversarial relations. These would include Iran, Cuba, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Venezuela and Syria that would be diplomatically engaged without preconditions but with a suggested agenda of relevant items. Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Mrs. Clinton, now ironically secretary of state, rejected such a rapprochement as naïve and as giving aid and comfort to our enemies.

The old politics of Cold War era confrontation does not quickly subside from this ruthless nation. A new politics is certainly needed where hegemonic aspirations are tempered with a more collegial and internationalist view of world politics. I think it naïve that America’s role in the world can be more constructive and less lethal in the absence of a more creative inter-state diplomatic agenda.

The costs of the Iraq war may reach three trillion dollars according to Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. The war budget alone is annually about one trillion when, in addition to the Pentagon, one includes the intelligence services, the Department of Energy and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Also the soaring health care costs for tens of thousands of wounded and psychologically damaged Iraq War veterans are part of the unsustainable economic burdens of the war to the United States economy. Rich nations do not have unlimited resources to police the world. Forty eight million Americans are without health insurance and the gap in life expectancy between the rich and poor is growing. Poor African-American males die at age 66.9 but the life expectancy of affluent white women is 81.1 years. This is not entirely the result of the Iraq War but it is arguable that the priorities of war, hegemonic domination and white Judeo-Christian supremacy demonstrate that a militarised society does not emphasise social equality at home, much less abroad.

America tortures and it won’t punish the perpetrators. Israel commits war crimes and the U.S. is silent. Moving toward peace and justice requires more than handshakes and calming speech although those are not immaterial. Peace and justice requires courage in moving against entrenched interests that use “terrorism” and “Islamofascist” terms to obscure their brutal, racist, savage destruction of a darker skinned people that had its country dispossessed and hijacked for NO logical reason in 1948.

May 5, 2009

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – A U.N. inquiry accused Israel on Tuesday of gross negligence and recklessness in attacks on U.N. property in the Gaza strip during fighting between the Jewish state and Palestinian militants in January.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who appointed the four-person inquiry board in February, said he would seek compensation for damage put at more than $11 million but would not follow the panel’s call for further investigations.

Israeli officials rejected the report as one-sided, saying it ignored the fact that Israel was fighting a war against a “terrorist” organization — the militant group Hamas.

Israel’s armed forces conducted their own investigation into the conduct of the December-January Gaza campaign and said last month it had found no serious misconduct by troops, who had acted within international law.

Israel launched the campaign to try to halt Palestinian rocket fire from the Hamas-controlled strip. More than 1,000 Palestinians were killed but the sides differ over how many were combatants. Israel lost 10 soldiers and three civilians.

The U.N. inquiry led by Briton Ian Martin, a former head of rights group Amnesty International who later joined the United Nations, investigated nine incidents of damage to U.N. property and faulted Israel in seven of them. It blamed Hamas in one case and could not establish responsibility in another.

In several cases, the report found Israel had “breached the inviolability of United Nations premises,” had not respected U.N. immunity and was responsible for deaths and injuries.

In a January 15 incident, the shelling of the Gaza compound of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) with high explosive and white phosphorus, an incendiary substance, “was grossly negligent, amounting to recklessness,” it said. Three people were injured.

PURSUE REPARATIONS

The panel also found that Israeli forces had failed to meet their responsibilities to protect U.N. personnel and civilians when they fired mortar shells on January 6 that landed near an UNRWA school in Jabalia where Palestinians were sheltering.

Seven people were wounded inside the school, but an estimated 30-40 people were killed nearby.

In these and other incidents, Israel said its forces were responding to Palestinian fire.

But the U.N. report said allegations that militants had fired from within U.N. premises “were untrue, continued to be made after it ought to have been known that they were untrue, and were not adequately withdrawn and publicly regretted.”

In 11 recommendations, the panel said the U.N. should seek that acknowledgment and should pursue reparations for damage caused. It also called for an impartial inquiry of alleged violations of international law by Israel in Gaza and by Palestinian militants who rocketed southern Israel.

The panel’s report emerged from a 27-page summary sent by Ban to members of the U.N. Security Council and to Israel. Ban said the full 184-page report was being kept secret because information in it could prejudice U.N. security.

In a letter accompanying the summary, Ban said he was “carefully reviewing these recommendations with a view to determining what course of action, if any, I should take.” But he said he did not plan any further inquiry.

Ban told a news conference, however: “I intend to seek reparation of loss or damage incurred by the U.N.” Apart from losses of some $29,000 caused by Palestinian rocket fire at a U.N. warehouse, the report ascribed all the damage to Israel.

Israel’s deputy U.N. ambassador, Daniel Carmon, called the report one-sided and unfair. “We were really shocked to see a report where the board is limiting itself to the facts of the damages only, ignoring the context, ignoring that there is war against terrorism,” he told Reuters.

Carmon called the panel’s recommendations “unacceptable,” but welcomed Ban’s letter which he said showed the U.N. chief was “somehow distancing himself from the board’s report.”

(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

 
Sister Christian Molidor, R.S.M., discussed the experience of living in the West Bank and Jerusalem. SXU Professor Peter N. Kirstein, Ph.D., advocated reassessment of the American-Israel bilateral relationship. Shaun Harkin, an organizer with the Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and the Chicago Antiwar Coalition, writer, International Socialist Review, addressed connections between the experience of the Palestinians and local marginalized communities.

For more information about Saint Xavier’s Middle Eastern Studies program:
http://www.sxu.edu/Academic/Liberal/Middle_Eastern_Studies/ default.asp

“The satellite is going round the earth along its elliptic orbit at the angle of inclination of 40.6 degrees at 490 km perigee and 1,426 km apogee. Its cycle is 104 minutes and 12 seconds.”

Whether the D.P.R.K. successfully achieved an actual space launch is a sideshow. I am unaware of any international law that prohibits a country from launching satellites, successfully or not, into Earth orbit. Certainly the Outer Space Treaty, the L.T.B.T. and N.P.T. do not preclude such activity. I find it ironic the nuclear-armed America denounces a satellite test but has not taken any action to cease its own “space” launches and other planetary ASAT activities. In fact N.A.S.A. is just another off budget Pentagon cash cow–an ersatz “Space Command” in which primarily military officers fly and engage in futile space colonisation.

It is the usual American empire asserting its rights of global pursuit of national security but demanding its adversaries not seek their own defence through military modernisation. If the United States were truly serious about acheiving a settlement of the Korean War, it would remove its roughly 35-40,000 troops along the D.M.Z. Will President Barack Hussein Obama, bring the troops home or will he persist in “containment” of the D.P.R.K. while giving lip-service to the six-party talks?

Most sources that are not anti-Asian are convinced the D.P.R.K. does not possess deployed nuclear weapons. They may have enriched enough isotopic Uranium 235 to manufacture fissile material for a bomb but it is questionable they have either weaponised much less deployed a nuclear weapon. They obviously do not have armed missiles; whether they have gravity bombs that can be sortied on an aging MIG is also very problematic.

——————————————————————————-

Kim Jong Il Observes Launch of Satellite Kwangmyongsong-2

Pyongyang, April 5 (KCNA) — General Secretary Kim Jong Il visited the General Satellite Control and Command Centre to watch the process of launching the experimental communications satellite Kwangmyongsong-2 on Sunday. He acquainted himself with the preparations made for the satellite launch.

After being briefed on the satellite launch, he observed the whole process of the satellite launch at the centre.

At 11:20 a.m. the satellite Kwangmyongsong-2, a shining product of self-reliance, soared into space by carrier rocket Unha-2. It was smoothly and accurately put into its orbit 9 minutes and 2 seconds after being completely separated from the carrier rocket.

Expressing great satisfaction over the fact that scientists and technicians of the DPRK successfully launched the satellite with their own wisdom and technology, he highly appreciated their feats and extended thanks to them.

It is a striking demonstration of the might of our Juche-oriented science and technology that our scientists and technicians developed both the multistage carrier rocket and the satellite with their own wisdom and technology 100 percent and accurately put the satellite into orbit at one go, he noted, repeatedly praising the patriotic devotion of the scientists and technicians who are playing a vanguard role in the drive to open the gate to a great prosperous and powerful nation.

Stressing the need to bring about a new turn in conquering outer space and making a peaceful use of it on the basis of the successful launch of the satellite Kwangmyongsong-2, he set forth the important tasks to be fulfilled to do so.

He met with the scientists and technicians who have contributed to the satellite launch by devoting all their wisdom and enthusiasm with ardent patriotism and warmly encouraged them before having a photograph taken with them.

He was accompanied by Secretary Jon Pyong Ho and First Vice-Department Director Ju Kyu Chang of the WPK Central Committee.

I appreciate this rather attractive blog running an excerpt:

http://wardchurchilltrial.wordpress.com/page/7/

Dr. Peter Kirstein has posted his remarks for the Chicago Gaza Panel, including a “naming names of the courageous victims of the New McCarthyism who refused to be silent”. (And one of the best jabs I’ve ever seen at the always/already useless Stanley Fish.)

Spanish philosopher Miguel Unamuno, during the Spanish Civil War, declared in 1936, “Sometimes to be Silent is to Lie.” He directed this remark on his campus of the University of Salamanca, where he had served twice as rector, to the pro-Franco fascist General Milan-Astray, who forced him off campus at gunpoint and placed Unamuno under house arrest. This was a shocking violation of academic freedom which I am sure Stanley Fish, now op-ed columnist of the New York Times, would with characteristic nuance defend.

Unamuno died within two months after suffering a heart attack. In this country professors have been denied tenure, denied promotion, subjected to public vilification, experienced censorship of their books, been prohibited from speaking at previously scheduled events, been suspended, denied the right to teach classes in their specialty, pressured to turn down appointments at universities, and have been fired from both tenure and non-tenure track positions for speaking truth to power about the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Naming names was used during the McCarthy Era to blacklist and smear supposed communists and internationalists including many academicians. Well I am naming names of the courageous victims of the New McCarthyism who refused to be silent: Norman Finkelstein, Joel Kovel, Terri Ginsberg, Mehrene Larudee, Douglas Giles, John Mearsheimer, Stephen Walt, Nadia Abu El-Haj, Joseph Massad, Ward Churchill and Juan Cole…

The Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice and the Middle Eastern Studies Program consider involvement in world issues and responsiveness to humanitarian crises as basic tenets of service, mercy, diversity, and justice that constitute a part of the core values of Saint Xavier University.

Due to the crisis in Gaza, the department and the Middle Eastern Studies Program have engaged in programming on campus to heighten awareness of the history and current humanitarian crisis in the region.

We invite you

to the third phase of our

awareness building efforts:

Panel Discussion

February 26^th

12:00 P.M.- 1:30 P.M.

4^th Floor Board Room

Panelists:

Christian Moledare, RSM

will discuss the lived experience in the West Bank and Jerusalem;

Peter N. Kirstein, Ph.D.

will advocate reassessment of the American-Israel bilateral relationship;

and

Shaun Harkin, Organizer, Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and ChicagoAntiwar Coalition, Writer, International Socialist Review

will address connections between the experience of the Palestinians and local marginalized communities.   

The Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice and the Middle Eastern Studies Program are grateful to the Diversity Action & Reflection Team (DART) for their support of this educational effort.

America’s political elites, in the grip of fear to challenge the Israel lobby or its client state, Israel, will not concede what is absolute fact. Israel is a major nuclear power with both fission and thermonuclear weapons. While I admit the latter is not 100% verifiable, the existence of Israel as a nuclear state is. There is not one arms control specialist or nuclear weapons’ expert who does NOT know that Israel, with the help of the French and Americans, has developed a nuclear arsenal. Dimona is their primary nuclear research center. They even jointly tested  in 1979 a nuclear device in the South Atlantic with then-apartheid South Africa.

While this blog would not be adding much to the public knowledge in reiterating  the tens of thousands of reports on Israel’s status as a nuclear power, it is essential that President Obama muster the courage to speak truth to the American people. His response to Ms Thomas was, “I will not speculate,” and glossed over the question. Part of the reason for this lack of candor is Iran. If the United States concedes that Israel is a nuclear-weapons state, it would diminish its argument that Iran, a Muslim state, should not be allowed to develop a fission device. It would render the hypocrisy in attempting to thwart a Muslim bomb in the region while ignoring the fact that a “Jewish” bomb exists. It would reveal the inconsistencies of counterproliferation.

While the Obama administration should be lauded for its tone and willingness to engage in dialogue with Iran, it should seek a nuclear weapons free zone. No nuclear weapons in the Middle East should be U.S. policy. Of course that would antagonise the Israel lobby for daring to concede that Israel must make concessions in bringing peace and stability to the region, but the primary purpose of an American president is to protect the national security of the American people. America’s interests in a denuclearised region are served by reducing horizontal proliferation. With a hectic arms race whereby Muslim states are attempting to match Israel, little is served except continued tension.  I am sure Iran is acutely aware that a non-nuclear Iraq was invaded and that a proto-nuclear state of North Korea was not.

February 7, 2009

Strong Indications of Violations of the Laws of War, U.S. Law, and War
Crimes Found in the Gaza Strip

[Gaza City] We are a delegation of 8 American lawyers, members of the National Lawyers Guild in the United States, who have come here to the Gaza Strip to assess the effects of the recent attacks on the people, and to determine what, if any, violations of international law occurred and whether U.S. domestic law has been violated as a consequence. We have spent the last five days interviewing communities particularly impacted by the recent Israeli offensive, including medical personnel, humanitarian aid workers and United Nations representatives. In particular, the delegation examined three issues: 1) targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure; 2) illegal use of weapons and 3) blocking of medical and
humanitarian assistance to civilians.

Targeting of Civilians and Civilian Infrastructure

Much of the debate surrounding Israel’s aerial and ground offensive
against Gaza has centered on whether or not Israel observed principles of proportionality and distinction. The debate suggests that Israel targeted Hamas i.e., its military installations, its leaders, and its militants, and in the process of its discrete military exercise it inadvertently killed Palestinian civilians. While we have found evidence that Palestinian civilians were victims of excessive force and collateral damage, we have also found troubling instances of Palestinian civilians being targets themselves.

The delegation recorded numerous accounts of Israeli soldiers shooting civilians, including women, children, and the elderly, in the head, chest, and stomach. Another common narrative described Israeli forces rounding civilians into a single location i.e., homes, schools which Israeli tanks or warplanes then shelled. Israeli forces continued to shoot at civilians fleeing the targeted structures.

We spoke to Khaled Abed Rabbo, who witnessed an Israeli soldier execute his 2-year-old and 7-year-old daughters, and critically injure a third daughter, Samar, 4-years old, on a sunny afternoon outside his home. Two other Israeli soldiers were standing nearby eating chips and chocolates at the time on January 7, 2009. Abed Rabbo recounts standing in front of the Israeli soldiers with his mother, wife and daughters for 5 — 7 minutes before one of the soldiers opened fire on his family.

We spoke to Ibtisam al-Sammouni, 31, and a resident of Zaytoun
neighborhood in Gaza City. On January 4th, the Israeli army forced
approximately 110 of Zaytoun’s residents into Ibtisam’s home. At
approximately 7 am on January 5th, the Israeli military launched two tank shells at the house without warning killing two of Ibtisam’s children: Rizka, 14 and Faris, 12. When the survivors attempted to flee Israeli forces shot at them. Her son Abdullah, 7, was injured in the shelling and remained in the home among his deceased siblings for four days before Israeli forces permitted medical personnel into Zaytoun to rescue them. After medical personnel removed the injured persons, an Israeli war plane destroyed the house and it crumbled over the lifeless bodies. The dead remained beneath the rubble for 17 days before the Israeli Army permitted medical personnel to remove their bodies for burial.

We spoke to the family of Rouhiya al-Najjar, 47, who lived in Khozaâ€^TMa, Khan Younis. Israeli forces ordered her neighborhoods residents to march to the city center. Rouhiya led 20 women out of her home and into the alley. They all carried white scarves. Upon entering the alley, an Israeli sniper shot Rouhiya in her left temple killing her instantly. Israeli forces prevented medical personnel from reaching her body for twelve hours. These are only some of the accounts that we’ve collected.

Israeli forces also destroyed numerous buildings throughout the Gaza Strip during the recent incursion. Guild delegates viewed the remains of hundreds of demolished homes and businesses — in addition to the remains of the American School in Gaza, damaged medical centers, and the charred innards of UNRWA warehouses. While in situations of armed conflict, collateral damage and mistakes can occur, the circumstances surrounding the cases that the delegation investigated indicate deliberate targeting rather than collateral damage or mistake. Specifically:

The American School at Gaza, which was hit with two F-16 missiles on

January 3, 2009, killing the watch guard on duty. According to Ribhi
Salem, the school’s director, the Israelis gave no warnings. Mr. Salem
stated that the school had come to an agreement with resistance groups not to use school grounds and there had never been resistance activity on the property.

United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)

John Ging, the Director of Gaza Operations for UNRWA reported that Israeli forces fired missiles at UNRWA schools in Gaza City, Jabalyia and Bet Lahiya. The United Nation compound in Gaza city was also hit with white phosphorous shells and missiles. Ging noted that al United Nations buildings and vehicles all fly UN flags, are marked in blue paint from the top, and that during hostilities the UN personnel remained in constant contact with Israeli authorities.

Misuse of Weapons

Our delegation has heard allegations of the use of DIME (Dense Inert Metal Explosive) weaponry, white phosphorus and other possible weapons whose use in civilian areas is prohibited. We have also heard of the use of prohibited weapons, such as flachettes. We have found our own evidence of the use of flachette shells, which we will combine with evidence collected by Amnesty International to push for further investigation. We have not found any conclusive evidence of the use of DIME, though we believe that this warrants further investigation and disclosure by the Israeli military.

Our findings overwhelmingly point to the use of conventional weapons in a prohibited manner, specifically, the use of battlefield weaponry in
densely populated civilian areas. Customary international law forbids the use of weapons calculated to cause unnecessary suffering. We found evidence that Israel used white phosphorus in extensively throughout its three-week offensive in a manner that led to numerous deaths and injuries. For example, Sabah Abu Halima, 45, lived in Beit Lahiya with her husband, seven boys, and one girl. It was midday and she and her entire family was home. Within minutes she felt her home shaking and missiles fell through the rooftop. She fell to the ground upon impact. When she looked up she saw her children burning.

Preventing Access to Medical and Humanitarian Aid

Under customary international humanitarian law, the wounded are protected persons and must receive the medical care and attention required by their conditions, to the fullest extent practicable and with the least possible delay. Parties to a conflict are required to ensure the unhindered movement of medical personnel and ambulances to carry out their duties and of wounded persons to access medical care. Speaking to medical workers and the family of victims, NLG delegates documented serious violations of this provision. Among the stories documented include:

Zaytoun neighborhood, which came under attack and invasion by ground foces on January 3, 2009. The Palestinian Red Crescent received 145 calls from Zaytoun for help, but were denied entry by Israel. Bashar Ahmed Murad, Director of Emergency Medical Services for the Palestinian Red Crescent Society told us that “a lot of people could have been saved, but they weren’t given medical care by the Israelis, nor did the Israeli army allow Palestinian medical services in.†When paramedics were finally allowed to enter on January 7, Israeli forces only gave them a 3-hour “lull€ to work and prohibited ambulances into the area. Insteadthey forced paramedics park the ambulances 2 kilometers away and enter the area on foot. Murad told delegation members how they had to pile the wounded on donkey carts and have the medical workers pull the carts in order to help
the most people possible in the short time they were given. After the 3 hours were over, the Israeli army started shooting toward the ambulances. The Red Crescent was not able to reach that area again to evacuate the dead until January 17, 2009 when the Israeli army pulled out.

Al-Shurrab Family

On January 16th, Israeli forces shot at the jeep of Mohammed Shurrab, 64 years of age, and two of his sons, Kassab and Ibrahim, aged 28 and 18 as they were returning from their fields. Mohammad was shot in the left arm and Ibrahim was shot in the leg. The elder son, Kassab, sustained a fatal bullet wound to the chest, being shot multiple times after being ordered out of the car. Mohammad, bleeding from his wound, contacted the media, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and a number of NGOs via
mobile phone in order to acquire medical assistance. Israeli forces denied medical relief agencies clearance to reach them until almost 24 hours after Mohammad, Ibrahim and Kassab had been shot. Earlier that morning, Ibrahim had succumbed to his wound and died. Mohammad Shurrab and his sons were shot during a so-called “lull†in Israeli ground operations, which Israeli forces had agreed to in order to allow humanitarian relief to enter and be distributed in the Gaza Strip. As such NLG delegates fail to see how this denial of medical access to the wounded Shurrab family could have been absolutely necessary and not simply arbitrary.

International humanitarian law also prohibits attacks on medical
personnel, medical units and medical transports exclusively assigned to carry out medical functions. Delegate members saw ambulances seriously damaged and destroyed, some apparenly deliberately crushed by Israeli tanks. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society and the Palestinian Ministry of Health informed delegates that 15 Palestinian medics were killed and 21 injured in the course of Israel’s assualt.

Conclusions

This delegation is seriously concerned by our initial findings. We have
found strong indications of violations of the laws of war and possible war crimes committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip. We are particularly
concerned that most of the weapons that were found used in the December 27 assualt on Gaza are US-made and supplied. We believe that Israel’s use of these weapons may constitute a violation of US law, and particularly the Foreign Assistance Act and the US Arms Export Control Act.

A report of our initial findings will be compiled and submitted to, among others, members of the United States Congress. We intend to push for an investigation by the United States government into possible violations by Israel of US law. We also hope to contribute our finding and efforts to other efforts by local and international lawyers to push for accountability against those found responsible for the egregious crimes that we have documented.

This is an analysis of the twenty-three day Israel assualt on the Gazan enclave in which 400 children were killed and a total of 1300 Palestinian civilians died. It is ironic that the world focuses on stopping Hamas’s access to rockets and little emphasis on reducing Israel’s capacity to wreak disproportional havoc on a civilian population under decades of occupation and years of near starvation. Dr Finkelstein was recommended for tenure in 2007 at DePaul University by his department and college personnel committee but was denied tenure for expressing views similar to those articulated here. Such is the state of academic freedom in this country where unpopular views and not the credentials of a candidate for tenure are given primary importance.

Foiling Another Palestinian “Peace Offensive”: Behind the bloodbath in Gaza

Early speculation on the motive behind Israel’s slaughter in Gaza that began on 27 December 2008 and continued till 18 January 2009 centered on the upcoming elections in Israel.  The jockeying for votes was no doubt a factor in this Sparta-like society consumed by “revenge and the thirst for blood,”[1] where killing Arabs is a sure crowd-pleaser.  (Polls during the war showed that 80-90 percent of Israeli Jews supported it.)[2]  But as Israeli journalist Gideon Levy pointed out on Democracy Now!, “Israel went through a very similar war…two-and-a-half years ago [in Lebanon], when there were no elections.”[3]  When crucial state interests are at stake, Israeli ruling elites seldom launch major operations for narrowly electoral gains.  It is true that Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s decision to bomb the Iraqi OSIRAK reactor in 1981 was an electoral ploy, but the strategic stakes in the strike on Iraq were puny; contrary to widespread belief, Saddam Hussein had not embarked on a nuclear weapons program prior to the bombing.[4]  The fundamental motives behind the latest Israeli attack on Gaza lie elsewhere: (1) in the need to restore Israel’s “deterrence capacity,” and (2) in the threat posed by a new Palestinian “peace offensive.” 

Israel’s “larger concern” in the current offensive, New York Times Middle East correspondent Ethan Bronner reported, quoting Israeli sources, was to “re-establish Israeli deterrence,” because “its enemies are less afraid of it than they once were, or should be.”[5]  Preserving its deterrence capacity has always loomed large in Israeli strategic doctrine.  Indeed, it was the main impetus behind Israel’s first-strike against Egypt in June 1967 that resulted in Israel’s occupation of Gaza (and the West Bank).  To justify the onslaught on Gaza, Israeli historian Benny Morris wrote that “[m]any Israelis feel that the walls…are closing in…much as they felt in early June 1967.”[6]  Ordinary Israelis no doubt felt threatened in June 1967, but-as Morris surely knows-the Israeli leadership experienced no such trepidation.  After Israel threatened and laid plans to attack Syria, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser declared the Straits of Tiran closed to Israeli shipping, but Israel made almost no use of the Straits (apart from the passage of oil, of which Israel then had ample stocks) and, anyhow, Nasser did not in practice enforce the blockade, vessels passing freely through the Straits within days of his announcement.  In addition, multiple U.S. intelligence agencies had concluded that the Egyptians did not intend to attack Israel and that, in the improbable case that they did, alone or in concert with other Arab countries, Israel would-in President Lyndon Johnson’s words-”whip the hell out of them.”  The head of the Mossad told senior American officials on 1 June 1967 that “there were no differences between the U.S. and the Israelis on the military intelligence picture or its interpretation.”[7]  The predicament for Israel was rather the growing perception in the Arab world, spurred by Nasser’s radical nationalism and climaxing in his defiant gestures in May 1967, that it would no longer have to follow Israeli orders.  Thus, Divisional Commander Ariel Sharon admonished those in the Israeli cabinet hesitant to launch a first-strike that Israel was losing its “deterrence capability…our main weapon-the fear of us.”[8]  Israel unleashed the June 1967 war “to restore the credibility of Israeli deterrence” (Israeli strategic analyst Zeev Maoz).[9]

The expulsion of the Israeli occupying army by Hezbollah in May 2000 posed a major new challenge to Israel’s deterrence capacity.  The fact that Israel suffered a humiliating defeat, one celebrated throughout the Arab world, made another war well-nigh inevitable.  Israel almost immediately began planning for the next round, and in summer 2006 found a pretext when Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers (several others were killed in the firefight) and demanded in exchange the release of Lebanese prisoners held by Israel.  Although Israel unleashed the fury of its air force and geared up for a ground invasion, it suffered yet another ignominious defeat.  A respected American military analyst despite being partial to Israel nonetheless concluded, “the IAF, the arm of the Israel military that had once destroyed whole air forces in a few days, not only proved unable to stop Hezbollah rocket strikes but even to do enough damage to prevent Hezbollah’s rapid recovery”; that “once ground forces did cross into Lebanon…, they failed to overtake Hezbollah strongholds, even those close to the border”; that “in terms of Israel’s objectives, the kidnapped Israeli soldiers were neither rescued nor released; Hezbollah’s rocket fire was never suppressed, not even its long-range fire…; and Israeli ground forces were badly shaken and bogged down by a well-equipped and capable foe”; and that “more troops and a massive ground invasion would indeed have produced a different outcome, but the notion that somehow that effort would have resulted in a more decisive victory over Hezbollah…has no basis in historical example or logic.”  The juxtaposition of several figures further highlights the magnitude of the setback: Israel deployed 30,000 troops as against 2,000 regular Hezbollah fighters and 4,000 irregular Hezbollah and non-Hezbollah fighters; Israel delivered and fired 162,000 weapons whereas Hezbollah fired 5,000 weapons (4,000 rockets and projectiles at Israel and 1,000 antitank missiles inside Lebanon).[10]  Moreover, “the vast majority of the fighters who defended villages such as Ayta ash Shab, Bint Jbeil, and Maroun al-Ras were not, in fact, regular Hezbollah fighters and in some cases were not even members of Hezbollah,” and “many of Hezbollah’s best and most skilled fighters never saw action, lying in wait along the Litani River with the expectation that the IDF assault would be much deeper and arrive much faster than it did.”[11]  Yet another indication of Israel’s reversal of fortune was that, unlike any of its previous armed conflicts, in the final stages of the 2006 war it fought not in defiance of a U.N. ceasefire resolution but in the hope of a U.N. resolution to rescue it.

After the 2006 Lebanon war Israel was itching to take on Hezbollah again, but did not yet have a military option against it.  In mid-2008 Israel desperately sought to conscript the U.S. for an attack on Iran, which would also decapitate Hezbollah, and thereby humble the main challengers to its regional hegemony.  Israel and its quasi-official emissaries such as Benny Morris threatened that if the U.S. did not go along “then non-conventional weaponry will have to be used,” and “many innocent Iranians will die.”[12]  To Israel’s chagrin and humiliation, the attack never materialized and Iran has gone its merry way, while the credibility of Israel’s capacity to terrorize slipped another notch.  It was high time to find a defenseless target to annihilate.  Enter Gaza, Israel’s favorite shooting gallery.  Even there the feebly armed Islamic movement Hamas had defiantly resisted Israeli diktat, in June 2008 even compelling Israel to agree to a ceasefire.

During the 2006 Lebanon war Israel flattened the southern suburb of Beirut known as the Dahiya, where Hezbollah commanded much popular support.  In the war’s aftermath Israeli military officers began referring to the “Dahiya strategy”: “We shall pulverize the 160 Shiite villages [in Lebanon] that have turned into Shiite army bases,” the IDF Northern Command Chief explained, “and we shall not show mercy when it comes to hitting the national infrastructure of a state that, in practice, is controlled by Hezbollah.”  In the event of hostilities, a reserve Colonel at the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies chimed in, Israel needs “to act immediately, decisively, and with force that is disproportionate….Such a response aims at inflicting damage and meting out punishment to an extent that will demand long and expensive reconstruction processes.”  The new strategy was to be used against all of Israel’s regional adversaries who had waxed defiant-”the Palestinians in Gaza are all Khaled Mashaal, the Lebanese are all Nasrallah, and the Iranians are all Ahmadinejad”-but Gaza was the prime target for this blitzkrieg-cum-bloodbath strategy.  “Too bad it did not take hold immediately after the ‘disengagement’ from Gaza and the first rocket barrages,” a respected Israeli columnist lamented.  “Had we immediately adopted the Dahiya strategy, we would have likely spared ourselves much trouble.”  After a Palestinian rocket attack, Israel’s Interior Minister urged in late September 2008, “the IDF should…decide on a neighborhood in Gaza and level it.”[13]  And, insofar as the Dahiya strategy could not be inflicted just yet on Lebanon and Iran, it was predictably pre-tested in Gaza. 

The operative plan for the Gaza bloodbath can be gleaned from authoritative statements after the war got underway: “What we have to do is act systematically with the aim of punishing all the organizations that are firing the rockets and mortars, as well as the civilians who are enabling them to fire and hide” (reserve Major-General); “After this operation there will not be one Hamas building left standing in Gaza” (Deputy IDF Chief of Staff); “Anything affiliated with Hamas is a legitimate target” (IDF Spokesperson’s Office).[14]  Whereas Israel killed a mere 55 Lebanese during the first two days of the 2006 war, the Israeli media exulted at Israel’s “shock and awe” (Maariv)[15] as it killed more than 300 Palestinians in the first two days of the attack on Gaza.  Several days into the slaughter an informed Israeli strategic analyst observed, “The IDF, which planned to attack buildings and sites populated by hundreds of people, did not warn them in advance to leave, but intended to kill a great many of them, and succeeded.”[16]  Morris could barely contain his pride at “Israel’s highly efficient air assault on Hamas.”[17]  The Israeli columnist B. Michael was less impressed by the dispatch of helicopter gunships and jet planes “over a giant prison and firing at its people”[18]-for example, “70…traffic cops at their graduation ceremony, young men in desperate search of a livelihood who thought they’d found it in the police and instead found death from the skies.”[19] 

As Israel targeted schools, mosques, hospitals, ambulances, and U.N. sanctuaries, as it slaughtered and incinerated Gaza’s defenseless civilian population (one-third of the 1,200 reported casualties were children), Israeli commentators gloated that “Gaza is to Lebanon as the second sitting for an exam is to the first-a second chance to get it right,” and that this time around Israel had “hurled [Gaza] back,” not 20 years as it promised to do in Lebanon, but “into the 1940s.  Electricity is available only for a few hours a day”; that “Israel regained its deterrence capabilities” because “the war in Gaza has compensated for the shortcomings of the [2006] Second Lebanon War”; and that “There is no doubt that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is upset these days….There will no longer be anyone in the Arab world who can claim that Israel is weak.”[20]

New York Times foreign affairs expert Thomas Friedman joined in the chorus of hallelujahs.[21]  Israel in fact won the 2006 Lebanon war, according to Friedman, because it had inflicted “substantial property damage and collateral casualties on Lebanon at large,” thereby administering an “education” to Hezbollah: fearing the Lebanese people’s wrath, Hezbollah would “think three times next time” before defying Israel.  He expressed hope that Israel was likewise “trying to ‘educate’ Hamas by inflicting a heavy death toll on Hamas militants and heavy pain on the Gaza population.”  To justify the targeting of Lebanese civilians and civilian infrastructure Friedman asserted that Israel had no other option because “Hezbollah created a very ‘flat’ military network…deeply embedded in the local towns and villages,” and that because “Hezbollah nested among civilians, the only long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians…to restrain Hezbollah in the future.” 

Leaving aside Friedman’s hollow coinages-what does “flat” mean?-and leaving aside that he alleged that the killing of civilians was unavoidable but also recommends targeting civilians as a “deterrence” strategy: is it even true that Hezbollah was “embedded in,” “nested among,” and “intertwined” with the Lebanese civilian population?  Here’s what Human Rights Watch concluded after an exhaustive investigation: “we found strong evidence that Hezbollah stored most of its rockets in bunkers and weapon storage facilities located in uninhabited fields and valleys, that in the vast majority of cases Hezbollah fighters left populated civilian areas as soon as the fighting started, and that Hezbollah fired the vast majority of its rockets from pre-prepared positions outside villages.”  And again, “in all but a few of the cases of civilian deaths we investigated, Hezbollah fighters had not mixed with the civilian population or taken other actions to contribute to the targeting of a particular home or vehicle by Israeli forces.”  Indeed, “Israel’s own firing patterns in Lebanon support the conclusion that Hezbollah fired large numbers of its rockets from tobacco fields, banana, olive and citrus groves, and more remote, unpopulated valleys.”[22] 

A U.S. Army War College study based largely on interviews with Israeli participants in the Lebanon war similarly found that “the key battlefields in the land campaign south of the Litani River were mostly devoid of civilians, and IDF participants consistently report little or no meaningful intermingling of Hezbollah fighters and noncombatants.  Nor is there any systematic reporting of Hezbollah using civilians in the combat zone as shields.”  On a related note, the authors report that “the great majority of Hezbollah’s fighters wore uniforms.  In fact, their equipment and clothing were remarkably similar to many state militaries’-desert or green fatigues, helmets, web vests, body armor, dog tags, and rank insignia.”[23]

Friedman further asserted that, “rather than confronting Israel’s Army head-on,” Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel’s civilian population to provoke Israeli retaliatory strikes, inevitably killing Lebanese civilians and “inflaming the Arab-Muslim street.”  Yet, numerous studies have shown,[24] and Israeli officials themselves conceded[25] that, during its guerrilla war against the Israeli occupying army, Hezbollah only targeted Israeli civilians after Israel targeted Lebanese civilians.  In conformity with past practice Hezbollah started firing rockets toward Israeli civilian concentrations during the 2006 war only after Israel inflicted heavy casualties on Lebanese civilians, while Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah avowed that it would target Israeli civilians “as long as the enemy undertakes its aggression without limits or red lines.”[26]

If Israel targeted the Lebanese civilian population and infrastructure during the 2006 war, it was not because it had no choice, and not because Hezbollah had provoked it, but because terrorizing the civilian population was a relatively cost-free method of “education,” much to be preferred over fighting a real foe and suffering heavy casualties, although Hezbollah’s unexpectedly fierce resistance prevented Israel from achieving a victory on the battlefield.  In the case of Gaza it was able both to “educate” the population and achieve a military victory because-in the words of Gideon Levy-the “fighting in Gaza” was “war deluxe.” Compared with previous wars, it is child’s play-pilots bombing unimpeded as if on practice runs, tank and artillery soldiers shelling houses and civilians from their armored vehicles, combat engineering troops destroying entire streets in their ominous protected vehicles without facing serious opposition. A large, broad army is fighting against a helpless population and a weak, ragged organization that has fled the conflict zones and is barely putting up a fight.[27]

The justification put forth by Friedman in the pages of the Times for targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure amounted to apologetics for state terrorism.[28]  It might be recalled that although Hitler had stripped Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher of all his political power by 1940, and his newspaper Der Stuermer had a circulation of only some 15,000 during the war, the International Tribunal at Nuremberg nonetheless sentenced him to death for his murderous incitement. 

Beyond restoring its deterrence capacity, Israel’s main goal in the Gaza slaughter was to fend off the latest threat posed by Palestinian moderation.  For the past three decades the international community has consistently supported a settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict that calls for two states based on a full Israeli withdrawal to its June 1967 border, and a “just resolution” of the refugee question based on the right of return and compensation.  The vote on the annual U.N. General Assembly resolution, “Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine,” supporting these terms for resolving the conflict in 2008 was 164 in favor, 7 against (Israel, United States, Australia, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau), and 3 abstentions.  At the regional level the Arab League in March 2002 unanimously put forth a peace initiative on this basis, which it has subsequently reaffirmed.  In recent times Hamas has repeatedly signaled its own acceptance of such a settlement.  For example, in March 2008 Khalid Mishal, head of Hamas’s Political Bureau, stated in an interview:

There is an opportunity to deal with this conflict in a manner different than Israel and, behind it, the U.S. is dealing with it today.  There is an opportunity to achieve a Palestinian national consensus on a political program based on the 1967 borders, and this is an exceptional circumstance, in which most Palestinian forces, including Hamas, accept a state on the 1967 borders….There is also an Arab consensus on this demand, and this is a historic situation.  But no one is taking advantage of this opportunity.  No one is moving to cooperate with this opportunity.  Even this minimum that has been accepted by the Palestinians and the Arabs has been rejected by Israel and by the U.S.[29] 

Israel is fully cognizant that the Hamas Charter is not an insurmountable obstacle to a two-state settlement on the June 1967 border.  “[T]he Hamas leadership has recognized that its ideological goal is not attainable and will not be in the foreseeable future,” a former Mossad head recently observed. “[T]hey are ready and willing to see the establishment of a Palestinian state in the temporary borders of 1967….They know that the moment a Palestinian state is established with their cooperation, they will be obligated to change the rules of the game: They will have to adopt a path that could lead them far from their original ideological goals.”[30] 

In addition, Hamas was “careful to maintain the ceasefire” it entered into with Israel in June 2008, according to an official Israeli publication, despite Israel’s reneging on the crucial component of the truce that it ease the economic siege of Gaza.  “The lull was sporadically violated by rocket and mortar shell fire, carried out by rogue terrorist organizations,” the source continues. “At the same time, the [Hamas] movement tried to enforce the terms of the arrangement on the other terrorist organizations and to prevent them from violating it.”[31]  Moreover, Hamas was “interested in renewing the relative calm with Israel” (Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin).[32]  The Islamic movement could thus be trusted to stand by its word, making it a credible negotiating partner, while its apparent ability to extract concessions from Israel, unlike the hapless Palestinian Authority doing Israel’s bidding but getting no returns, enhanced Hamas’s stature among Palestinians.  For Israel these developments constituted a veritable disaster.  It could no longer justify shunning Hamas, and it would be only a matter of time before international pressure in particular from the Europeans would be exerted on it to negotiate.  The prospect of an incoming U.S. administration negotiating with Iran and Hamas, and moving closer to the international consensus for settling the Israel-Palestine conflict, which some U.S. policymakers now advocate,[33] would have further highlighted Israel’s intransigence.  In an alternative scenario, speculated on by Nasrallah, the incoming American administration plans to convene an international peace conference of “Americans, Israelis, Europeans and so-called Arab moderates” to impose a settlement.  The one obstacle is “Palestinian resistance and the Hamas government in Gaza,” and “getting rid of this stumbling block is…the true goal of the war.”[34]  In either case, Israel needed to provoke Hamas into breaking the truce, and then radicalize or destroy it, thereby eliminating it as a legitimate negotiating partner.  It is not the first time Israel confronted such a diabolical threat-an Arab League peace initiative, Palestinian support for a two-state settlement and a Palestinian ceasefire-and not the first time it embarked on provocation and war to overcome it.

In the mid-1970s the PLO mainstream began supporting a two-state settlement on the June 1967 border.  In addition, the PLO, headquartered in Lebanon, was strictly adhering to a truce with Israel that had been negotiated in July 1981.[35]  In August 1981 Saudi Arabia unveiled, and the Arab League subsequently approved, a peace plan based on the two-state settlement.[36]  Israel reacted in September 1981 by stepping up preparations to destroy the PLO.[37]  In his analysis of the buildup to the 1982 Lebanon war, Israeli strategic analyst Avner Yaniv reported that Yasser Arafat was contemplating a historic compromise with the “Zionist state,” whereas “all Israeli cabinets since 1967″ as well as “leading mainstream doves” opposed a Palestinian state.  Fearing diplomatic pressures, Israel maneuvered to sabotage the two-state settlement.  It conducted punitive military raids “deliberately out of proportion” against “Palestinian and Lebanese civilians” in order to weaken “PLO moderates,” strengthen the hand of Arafat’s “radical rivals,” and guarantee the PLO’s “inflexibility.”  However, Israel eventually had to choose between a pair of stark options: “a political move leading to a historic compromise with the PLO, or preemptive military action against it.”  To fend off Arafat’s “peace offensive”-Yaniv’s telling phrase-Israel embarked on military action in June 1982.  The Israeli invasion “had been preceded by more than a year of effective ceasefire with the PLO,” but after murderous Israeli provocations, the last of which left as many as 200 civilians dead (including 60 occupants of a Palestinian children’s hospital), the PLO finally retaliated, causing a single Israeli casualty.[38]  Although Israel used the PLO’s resumption of attacks as the pretext for its invasion, Yaniv concluded that the “raison d’être of the entire operation” was “destroying the PLO as a political force capable of claiming a Palestinian state on the West Bank.”[39]  It deserves passing notice that in his new history of the “peace process,” Martin Indyk, former U.S. ambassador to Israel, provides this capsule summary of the sequence of events just narrated: “In 1982, Arafat’s terrorist activities eventually provoked the Israeli government of Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon into a full-scale invasion of Lebanon.”[40]

Fast forward to 2008.  Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni stated in early December 2008 that although Israel wanted to create a temporary period of calm with Hamas, an extended truce “harms the Israeli strategic goal, empowers Hamas, and gives the impression that Israel recognizes the movement.”[41]  Translation: a protracted ceasefire that enhanced Hamas’s credibility would have undermined Israel’s strategic goal of retaining control of the West Bank.  As far back as March 2007 Israel had decided on attacking Hamas, and only negotiated the June truce because “the Israeli army needed time to prepare.”[42]  Once all the pieces were in place, Israel only lacked a pretext.  On 4 November, while the American media were riveted on election day, Israel broke the ceasefire by killing seven Palestinian militants, on the flimsy excuse that Hamas was digging a tunnel to abduct Israeli soldiers, and knowing full well that its operation would provoke Hamas into hitting back.  “Last week’s ‘ticking tunnel,’ dug ostensibly to facilitate the abduction of Israeli soldiers,” Haaretz reported in mid-November it was not a clear and present danger: Its existence was always known and its use could have been prevented on the Israeli side, or at least the soldiers stationed beside it removed from harm’s way.  It is impossible to claim that those who decided to blow up the tunnel were simply being thoughtless.  The military establishment was aware of the immediate implications of the measure, as well as of the fact that the policy of “controlled entry” into a narrow area of the Strip leads to the same place: an end to the lull.  That is policy-not a tactical decision by a commander on the ground.[43]

After Hamas predictably resumed its rocket attacks “[i]n retaliation” (Israeli Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center),[44] Israel could embark on yet another murderous invasion in order to foil yet another Palestinian peace offensive. 

Norman G. Finkelstein

New York City

19 January 2009

[1] Gideon Levy, “The Time of the Righteous,” Haaretz (9 January 2009).

[2] Ethan Bronner, “In Israel, A Consensus That Gaza War Is a Just One,” New York Times (13 January 2009).

[3] 29 December 2008; www.democracynow.org/2008/12/29/israeli_attacks_kill_over_310_in.

[4] Richard Wilson, “Incomplete or Inaccurate Information Can Lead to Tragically Incorrect Decisions to Preempt: The example of OSIRAK,” paper presented at Erice, Sicily (18 May 2007; updated 9 February 2008; www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=1589).

[5] Ethan Bronner, “Israel Reminds Foes That It Has Teeth,” New York Times (29 December 2008).

[6] Benny Morris, “Why Israel Feels Threatened,” New York Times (30 December 2008).

[7] “Memorandum for the Record” (1 June 1967), Foreign Relations of the United States, vol. XIX, Arab-Israeli Crisis and War, 1967 (Washington, DC: 2004).

[8] Tom Segev, 1967: Israel, the war, and the year that transformed the Middle East (New York: 2007), p. 293, my emphasis.

[9] Zeev Maoz, Defending the Holy Land: A critical analysis of Israel’s security and foreign policy (Ann Arbor: 2006), p. 89.

[10] William Arkin, Divining Victory: Airpower in the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: 2007), pp. xxi, xxv-xxvi, 25, 54, 64, 135, 147-48. 

[11] Andrew Exum, Hizballah at War: A military assessment (Washington Institute for Near East Policy: December 2006), pp. 9, 11-12.

[12] Benny Morris, “A Second Holocaust? The Threat to Israel” (2 May 2008; www.mideastfreedomforum.org/de/node/66).

[13] Yaron London, “The Dahiya Strategy” (6 October 2008; www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3605863,00.html); Gabriel Siboni, “Disproportionate Force: Israel’s concept of response in light of the Second Lebanon War,” Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), 2 October 2008.  Attila Somfalvi, “Sheetrit: We should level Gaza neighborhoods” (2 October 2008; www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3504922,00.html).

[14] “Israeli General Says Hamas Must Not Be the Only Target in Gaza,” IDF Radio, Tel Aviv, in Hebrew 0600 gmt (26 December 2008), BBC Monitoring Middle East; Tova Dadon, “Deputy Chief of Staff: Worst still ahead” (29 December 2008; http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-36466558,00.html); www.btselem.org/English/Gaza_Strip/20081231_Gaza_Letter_to_Mazuz.asp.

[15] Seumas Milne, “Israel’s Onslaught on Gaza is a Crime That Cannot Succeed,” Guardian (30 December 2008).

[16] Reuven Pedatzur, “The Mistakes of Cast Lead,” Haaretz (8 January 2009).

[17] Morris, “Why Israel Feels Threatened.”

[18] B. Michael, “Déjà Vu in Gaza” (29 December 2008; www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3646558,00.html).

[19] Gideon Levy, “Twilight Zone/Trumpeting for War,” Haaretz (2 January 2009).

[20] Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff, “Israel and Hamas Are Both Paying a Steep Price in Gaza,” Haaretz (10 January 2009); Ari Shavit, “Analysis: Israel’s victories in Gaza make up for its failures in Lebanon,” Haaretz (12 January 2009); Guy Bechor, “A Dangerous Victory” (12 January 2009; www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3654505,00.html).

[21] Thomas L. Friedman, “Israel’s Goals in Gaza?,” New York Times (14 January 2009).

[22] Human Rights Watch, Why They Died: Civilian casualties in Lebanon during the 2006 war (New York: 2007), pp. 5, 14, 40-41, 45-46, 48, 51, 53.

[23] Stephen Biddle and Jeffrey A. Friedman, The 2006 Lebanon Campaign and the Future of Warfare: Implications for army and defense policy (Carlisle, PA: 2008), pp. 43-44, 45.

[24] Human Rights Watch, Civilian Pawns: Laws of war violations and the use of weapons on the Israel-Lebanon border (New York: 1996); Maoz, Defending the Holy Land, pp. 213-14, 224-25, 252; Augustus Richard Norton, Hezbollah: A short history (Princeton: 2007), pp. 77, 86.

[25] Judith Palmer Harik, Hezbollah: The changing face of terrorism (London: 2004), pp. 167-68.

[26] Human Rights Watch, Civilians Under Assault: Hezbollah’s rocket attacks on Israel in the 2006 war (New York: 2007), p. 100.  HRW asserts that Hezbollah rocket attacks on Israeli civilians were not retaliatory but provides no supporting evidence.

[27] Gideon Levy, “The IDF Has No Mercy for the Children in Gaza Nursery Schools,” Haaretz (15 January 2009).

[28] Glenn Greenwald, “Tom Friedman Offers a Perfect Definition of ‘Terrorism’” (14 January 2009; www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/01/14/friedman/).

[29] Mouin Rabbani, “A Hamas Perspective on the Movement’s Evolving Role: An interview with Khalid Mishal, Part II,” Journal of Palestine Studies (Summer 2008).

[30] “What Hamas Wants,” Mideast Mirror (22 December 2008).

[31] Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Israel Intelligence Heritage and Commemoration Center, The Six Months of the Lull Arrangement (December 2008), pp. 2, 6, 7.

[32] “Hamas Wants Better Terms for Truce,” Jerusalem Post (21 December 2008).  Diskin told the Israeli cabinet that Hamas would renew the truce if Israel lifted the siege of Gaza, stopped military attacks and extended the truce to the West Bank.

[33]  Richard N. Haass and Martin Indyk, “Beyond Iraq: A new U.S. strategy for the Middle East,” and Walter Russell Mead, “Change They Can Believe In: To make Israel safe, give Palestinians their due,” in Foreign Affairs, January-February 2009.

[34]  Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s Speech Delivered at the Central Ashura Council, 31 December 2008.

[35] Noam Chomsky, The Fateful Triangle: the United States, Israel and the Palestinians (Boston: 1983), chaps. 3, 5.

[36] Yehuda Lukacs (ed), The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: a documentary record, 1967-1990 (Cambridge: 1992), pp. 477-79. 

[37] Yehoshaphat Harkabi, Israel’s Fateful Hour (New York: 1988), p. 101. 

[38] Robert Fisk, Pity the Nation: The abduction of Lebanon (New York: 1990), pp. 197, 232.

[39] Avner Yaniv, Dilemmas of Security: Politics, strategy and the Israeli experience in Lebanon (Oxford: 1987), pp. 20-23, 50-54, 67-70, 87-89, 100-1, 105-6, 113, 143. 

[40] Martin Indyk, Innocent Abroad: An intimate account of American peace diplomacy in the Middle East (New York: 2009), p. 75.

[41] Saed Bannoura, “Livni Calls for a Large Scale Military Offensive in Gaza,” IMEMC & Agencies (10 December 2008; www.imemc.org/article/57960).

[42] Uri Blau, “IDF Sources: Conditions not yet optimal for Gaza exit,” Haaretz (8 January 2009); Barak Ravid, “Disinformation, Secrecy, and Lies: How the Gaza offensive came about,” Haaretz (28 December 2008).

[43] Zvi Bar’el, “Crushing the Tahadiyeh,” Haaretz (16 November 2008).  Cf. Uri Avnery, “The Calculations behind Israel’s Slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza” (2 January 2009; www.redress.cc/palestine/uavnery20080102).

[44] The Six Months of the Lull Arrangement, p. 3.

Source: Norman G. Finkelstein Website

Campus Watch is “Watching.”

Campus Watch, one of the New McCarthyism’s most egregious excesses, continues to list academics and other critics of its barnstorming, ideological-cleansing crusade against academic freedom. In its latest efforts in “Setting the Record Straight,” Daniel Pipes’s website has published a list of individuals who have allegedly erroneously written about the academic watchdog and its highly nationalistic, confrontational mission to stifle debate on the Middle East. I am included in their latest gambit to “set the record straight”:

“writing at his blog, allows his fixation with Campus Watch to get the better of him, again. This time, he ascribes an article to Middle East Forum director Daniel Pipes that was, in fact, written by Campus Watch West Coast representative Cinnamon Stillwell.”

I had written a response to Cinnamon’s critical commentary of an academic freedom conference that I participated in at New York University last February. I forthrightly acknowledged my unintentional error nineteen days later, on March 14, 2008, concerning the provenance of the piece. Somewhat gratuitously Cinnamon continues to express exasperation that she was not cited as the author. Again, I acknowledge the error. {Update: Campus Watch, subsequent to my post, has noted my corrections of the misattribution.} The broader issue is not provenance but the approach to dealing with disparate views on issues of colonisation, racism, peace and justice in the Middle East.

Indeed, I don’t think the Pipesian West Coast henchwoman has truly ”set the record straight.” I wrote in my response to their criticism of the N.Y.U. “Freedoms at Risk Conference:”

…”they believe no American academic should criticise Israel; no American academic should explore Palestinian suffering behind the walls of death and despair; no American academic should teach, utter, write or speak about any aspect of the Middle East, Israel, Iraq, Iran unless it entirely comports with the muscular, preemptive world-wide war against Islam–with YOUR son or daughter–not theirs.”

I believe the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the savage destruction of Gaza have certainly raised significant questions about the judiciousness of our foreign policy and whether the 4300+ American deaths have justified such actions. Wars must remain within the public sphere of vigorous dissent and debate as lives are lost and dreams shattered.

I don’t believe Ms Stillwell has fairly addressed my main point. For those who may be unaware, it was Campus Watch that was established in 2002 with the mission to “monitor” Middle East Studies departments on university campuses throughout the United States. They published a list of professors whom they construed as disloyal, sympathetic to terrorism and anti-American with the intent of marginalising or cleansing them from the academy. Hundreds of aroused non-specialists, including myself, demanded they be included in the blacklist as an act of anti-McCarthyism solidarity. 

Mr Pipes then dutifully published another list with the provocative title: “Solidarity With the Apologists.” “Apologists” was an explicit reference to a term bandied about during the witch hunts of the 1950s, in which academics, Hollywood filmmakers and other intellectuals were accused of being “apologists” for the Kremlin and the “communist menace” in general. Then Mr Pipes removed the original blacklist and the solidarity list from his website. He knew he had gone too far and had to retreat from this excess.

However, to set the record straight, Daniel Pipes as Colin Wright wrote in Situation Analysis, Spring 2004, believes that those professors who disagree with him should essentially be arrested or expelled from America. Writing for the New York Post, Pipes’s columns were entitled, “The Terrorist Next Door,” (August 12, 2003), “Profs Who Hate America,” (November 12, 2002) and “Terrorist Profs,” (February 24, 2003). Such uncontrolled rodomontade exceeds anything from any of those listed on Cinnamon’s latest list.

For the record, I never take this stuff personally. Cinnamon and I have exchanged several pleasant e-mail including my regard for her Haight-Ashburyesque name. Yet in the public sphere we continue to express our divergent views with gusto. Well I guess that is what Barack wants us to do: go for it but with civility.

Cardinal Renato Martino

John Pilger in an article refers specifically to this curious silence as Israel destroys what Cardinal Martino, head of the Vatican Council on Justice and Peace, has referred to Gaza as , “a big concentration camp.” I find it most disturbing that in the United States criticism of Israel has become extremely difficult and in particular in academia. One needs to address issues of persecution and destruction of vital educational properties beyond military necessity in a forthright manner. The ethnic composition of an aggressor nation or its victims is inadequate cause to withhold criticism of military excesses: adherence to the principles of proportionality, justice, respect for non-combatants and international humanitarian law should be demanded of all nations.

Pilger:

“Then there are the academics, the deans and teachers and researchers. Why are they silent as they watch a university bombed and hear the Association of University Teachers in Gaza plea for help? Are British universities now, as Terry Eagleton believes, no more than “intellectual Tescos, churning out a commodity known as graduates rather than greengroceries”?

Not too long ago I debated a professor, Edwin Moïse, at Clemson on the categorisation of deaths in the Iraq War. He was irritated that I overstated combat deaths as opposed to all deaths in theatre. I admit to some reluctance to categorise deaths in war since the evil of war has become routinised with statistics and disinformation campaigns. Nevertheless, I do post relevant and thoughtful comments to the blog that I receive as e-mail.:

Prof Kirstein:

In a story on you blog yesterday you stated that about 60+ non-combatants were killed in Gaza.

Lenin’s Tomb (blog) checked the UN report on deaths and found that the 60+ figure you used were women only, like all men killed were combatnats.

Also a large number of men killed were policemen.  I know that today most policemen act and look like military but they are not military and should not be considered combatants.

I find your blog excellent but with limited time you might have missed the BS that the UN is trying to sell.

Thank you and happy new year.

hal lewis

Islamic University Gaza apparently under attack

As an academic, I can think of few “targets” more delicate and worthy of sparing from aerial attack than educational institutions. In the latest strategic bombing of densely populated Gaza, Israel has deliiberately attacked Islamic University on late Sunday, December 28, 2008. This outrage cannot be justified by military necessity regardless of disinformation and unproven claims that it was primarily a haven for weapons deployment.

Attacking universities is similar to the strategic bombing campaign of the Second World War in which German cities were targeted without mercy. While it appears that the majority of casualties in these aerial raids of rage and hate are not civilian, some sixty non-combatants have been killed. The purposeful destruction of a university, not to mention the general violation of proportionality from the air, should be construed as a war crime. While a nation has the right of self-defence to suppress rocket attacks into its territory, it does not have the right to destroy civilian infrastructure and other vital components that support civil society.

A university represents knowledge, the search for truth and in this case the potential elevation of an occupied people. The Bush administration frequently justified its invasion of Afghanistan and its growing deployment of forces there as a countermeasure to prevent the Taliban from restricting the education of women. Yet there is apparently no concern about the destruction of a university which is one of the few avenues of potential progress in a region that is blockaded and utterly impoverished by Israel.

I would hope that university presidents, the American Association of University Professors and unions such as the National Education Association would condemn the bombing of educational institutions in this manner. Where will these students be relocated should be asked? Where will professors teach should be asked? Can a military nuclear power be allowed to use such violent measures to suppress the educational aspirations of an impoverished, helpless population without any criticism?

As we saw in the Lebanon-Israel war in 2006, few or zero casualties in Israel is met by force far beyond proportionality. An appropriate response should be measured by casualties, by targets selected and by length of campaign. Israel has used far more force and caused infinitely more human and material destruction than it received. I am not optimistic that the Obama administration will reassess American policy in the region as the war against Islam continues to create needless suffering and potentially a nuclear exchange at some point.

While there is no difference between war and murder, the poster is provocative and meaningful in its moral intensity.

Try Tough Love, Hillary

By ROGER COHEN

Imagine Ehud Olmert, the outgoing Israeli prime minister, saying this to Barack Obama:

Much has been made about the “insults” and “slurs” directed against Barack Obama by Al Qaeda’s deputy Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, the brilliant Egyptian physician, in a videotape released on November 19. The New York Times described the reference to “house negro” as an “insult” and the Chicago Tribune as “slurs.” The American press also disparaged Malcolm X, who was praised by Dr al-Zawahiri, as a “militant.” I did not see any press accounts that even mentioned that President-elect Obama has threatened to kill Dr Zawahiri and Osama Bin Laden. I would assert that Dr al-Zawahiri exhibited restraint and a more conciliatory approach than Obama. There was no threat directed against the American future president. There was no boasting of capturing or killing the Illinois president-elect. I would aver that an insult directed against an individual in response to a death threat does suggest a less belligerent and hostile attitude. If Obama indeed is willing to speak to our adversaries, then why has he consistently excluded Al Qaeda from that conversation and refreshing diplomatic approach?

In fact, Barack Obama wants to merely transfer the war from Iraq to Afghanistan. While the term “house negro” is unfortunate, I think Dr al-Zawahiri was correct in claiming Mr Obama appears to be adopting the Bush-Clinton approach to the Muslim world. Vice-President Elect Joe Biden and Senator Hillary Clinton voted for the 2002 Authorisation to Use Force resolution in Iraq. Senator Clinton threatened to devastate Iran if it attacked Israel with nuclear weapons. Such murderous and hate-filled speech was not only vicious but also utterly ignorant of key foreign affairs issues. Senator Clinton never mentioned that Israel possesses an enormous nuclear deterrent and that no nation would attack it preemptively with nuclear weapons for fear of a second-strike devastating retaliation.

Yet the racist Hillary Clinton who gloated in the primaries that she gets “the hard-working Americans, the white American” vote and lied about being almost killed in Kosovo at a flower-festooned reception at the airport, is apparently going to become Secretary of State. Twenty-three Senators and 133 members of the House of Representatives voted against the war in Iraq. Why did not President-elect Obama ask one of them to serve as Vice President or Secretary of State or Secretary of “War” or U.N. Ambassador? Where is the peace dividend, that so many of us who supported him initially in the primaries with our financial support and time, hoped would come?

While I have little regard for Al Qaeda due to their use of force and disregard for sparing noncombatants, I do believe President-elect Obama has become captive to the Clinton crowd and the establishment support of Israel that is beyond our geopolitical and national security interests. The crimes against humanity in Gaza and the destruction of the Palestinian people by Israel and the United States is a legitimate concern of Al Qaeda and those who seek justice through PEACEFUL means.

Malcolm X was a great figure. He ultimately did seek reconciliation between Muslims and non-Muslims after he saw white Muslims on his haj to Mecca. He was an advocate of internationalism and bringing people of colour together from all regions of the world. He was not a captive of the vital center in this country that is frozen in hatred of the Arab nation and is intimidated in even acknowledging that Israel has nuclear weapons but is determined to ultimately go to war with Iran that dares to explore and develop nuclear properties and reactors.

I told you so. When Barack Obama was asked on November 7 in Chicago at his first news conference as president-elect if he would respond to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s letter of congratulations, the senator refused to be gracious or even charitable. In typical prowar, Zionist fashion, he repeated the mantra that Iran could not get a nuclear weapon and that it supports terrorist groups that dare defy Israeli colonisation and mass-murder. This is what we get with this senator. The same old anti-Muslim bias in which Hamas and Hezbollah inferentially are construed as terrorists and not a word from the president-elect about Israel’s nuclear deterrent which is a threat to arms control and regional stability.

I knew when he named the plagiarist and prowar hawk, racist Senator Joe Biden as his vice presidential running mate, that I made a mistake in giving him $2300 for the primaries, attending a fund raiser, serving on his Foreign Policy network and supporting him in the primaries. It appears that we are going to get another militaristic Democrat in the White House. I told you so and I know I am right. A vote for Nader was the only responsible action I could take.

Yes I am glad a bi-racial man was elected president because it makes many so happy. Fine. Good. But will it improve our foreign relations and willingness to sit down and talk to our adversaries? I doubt it due to Barack already being captive to the Israel lobby and Clintonites. He will be forced to abandon his lofty idealism from the Ayers, Khalidi days and will I assure you be slaughtering and decimating nations that resist the hyperpower. Shame on him and a nation that destroys our best hope for peace and justice.

By: Calvin Davis

Media Credit: Rick Baultewicz {L to R} Moderator Yahya Kamalipour awaits answers on Iran from panelists Christopher Preble of the Cato Institute, PUC professor Richard Rupp and St. Xavier Peter Neil Kirstein.

Three experts, gathering to discuss U.S. and Iran relations, agreed Thursday Iran should be viewed as a rational nation and the next U.S. President should arrange to talk with its leaders.

The panel, held at The Calumet Conference Center, consisted primarily of professors including Richard Rupp, associate professor of political science and head of the Department of History and Political Science at PUC. Christopher Preble, director of foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, and professor Peter Kirstein of St. Xavier University rounded out the group of experts.

All panelists represented a similar anti-war mindset, although New York Sun reporter Eli Lake intended to attend the event to offer an alternate perspective.

A central issue to the panel was Iran’s image and their status as a rational and major power in the Middle East. America’s foreign policy under the Bush Administration was criticized a number of times in regard to its hypocritical and, at times, inaccurate portrayal of Iran.

Kirstein was often the most vocal in his criticisms.

“Part of the inherent racism of the U.S. in its pursuit of global hegemony is to describe the most demonic characteristics of those who dare speak up against it,” Kirstein said. “We [the U.S.] are probably the most irrational major power in the world since World War II.”

While Rupp wasn’t completely critical of the United States, he fundamentally agreed with Kirstein’s assessment.

“I consider it perfectly rational that Iran is seeking weapons of mass destruction…to deal with a threat from outside,” Rupp said.

Another issue tackled by the panel was whether or not the United States should negotiate directly with Iran, a topic currently hovering over the presidential campaign. All three panelists agreed Bush Administration’s isolation policy failed.

“We have isolated Iran for over 28 years,” Rupp said. “It matters a great deal that we haven’t been getting along with Iranians since theirs is an extraordinarily important and powerful state. We need to develop dialogue and we need to do it soon.”

Asked about his advice for the next U.S President, Preble made it clear that negotiations with Iran would simply be a starting point.

“Negotiations are not an end point; they’re a means to an end which I think should be Iran committing to not pursuing nuclear weaponization.”

Overall, panelists expressed a rather sympathetic view towards Iran, stating that while Washington and Tehran may differ, the citizens of each country have common interests. “The people of these countries have common interests – peace, security, open borders, free trade,” Kirstein said. “The governments do not.”

The panel discussion, held the night before the first presidential debate, was moderated by Yahya Kamalipour, director of the Center for Global Studies and head of the department of communication and creative arts at PUC.

Kamalipour plans to remain active in bringing similar panels to PUC.

“My goal is to organize at least one public presentation each year that would bring together experts from throughout the nation to debate a crucial issue of our time.”

He sees the free flow of information as a key component in understanding issues of the world.

“Without having constructive dialogue and sufficient information…we cannot make the right decisions or effectively participate in the democratic process,” Kamalipour said.

http://media.www.pucchronicle.com/media/

storage/paper1082/news/2008/09/29/

Negotiations, not war,

needed with Iran

BY LU ANN FRANKLIN
Times Correspondent | Friday, September 26, 2008

Iran will actively pursue nuclear weapons of mass destruction to deter the United States and Israel from military strikes against its sovereignty. And for humanitarian and economic reasons, negotiations, not war, with Iran are vital to Middle East stability.That was the consensus of a panel of Middle Eastern experts who participated at Purdue University Calumet’s lecture series on global understanding Thursday evening at the Hammond campus.

“We intended on having a panel with different perspectives,” said moderator Yahya Kamalipour, director of the Center for Global Studies and professor and head of Purdue Calumet’s Department of Communication and Creative Arts. “Eli Lake is on the other extreme side of this discussion.”

Rupp said that “the Iranians are hell-bent on acquiring weapons of mass destruction.” However, he said that “if diplomacy does not succeed, I would not support a military strike against Iran.”

“The effect will be dead babies, just like the U.S. left in Vietnam and Korea,” said Kirstein, who described himself as a pacifist. “Dead civilians, dead innocents, needless suffering.”

“Forty percent of the world’s oil goes through the Strait of Hormuz,” he said. “It would cause massive economic problems if it was closed.” In addition, an attack on Iran would unleash Hezbollah, the Middle East’s leading radical Islamic movement which would definitely retaliate with terror attacks on the U.S. and its allies, Preble said.

http://nwi.com/articles/2008/09/26/news/lake_county/docd92ccc

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]]> http://english.sxu.edu/sites/kirstein/archives/1201/feed 0 http://english.sxu.edu/sites/kirstein/archives/1173 http://english.sxu.edu/sites/kirstein/archives/1173#comments Thu, 25 Sep 2008 15:55:03 +0000 Peter Kirstein http://english.sxu.edu/sites/kirstein/?p=1173

Natanz is where nuclear enrichment via the gaesous centrifuge process occurs. Uranium is converted into a gas and U-235 isotopes which are only .7% of natural uranium is increased as U-238 isotopes which is 99.3% are whirled to the wall. At 3-4%, electricity can be produced through fission; at 90% a terrorist A-bomb like the ones dropped  by the United States over Hiroshima and Nagasaki can be deployed.

Iran was not part of Mr George W. Bush’s, an international terrorist in my opinion, State of the Union January 2002 Axis of Evil address when Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlevi (1919-80), the Shah of Iran with his Peacock Throne, ruled. This horrid dictator, who fellow war criminal and mass murderer Secretary of State Doctor Henry Kissinger was determined to support after exiled by the 1979 Iranian Revolution, was given nuclear technology and fuel by the United States. During the Cold War in the 1960s the U.S. provided, as reported in the Chicago Tribune, August 24, 2006, a nuclear reactor called the Tehran Research Reactor and, listen to this, 10 lbs of H.E.U. to the dictator. Highly-enriched uranium is weapons’ grade at approximately 90% U-235. This fissile material’s nucleus is capable of being divided by a smashing neutron (fission) and is still at the plant.

We hear much about the New Middle East as if the Bush administration is really interested in spreading liberal democracy to the sheikdoms and oil-rich states along the Gulf. During the Cold War, we were told it was a battle between good and evil, democracy and autocracy, God and atheism. Yet we gave a vicious, quasi-fascist Iranian dictator nuclear materials and a reactor. We exported nuclear materials because the shah was our kind of dictator; he was anti-Soviet although his Savak used the secret policy tactics of the K.G.B. He supported the west in its Manichaean struggle with the Soviets even though he represented the antithesis of democracy and human rights.

Much of Iranian hostility toward the U.S. can be traced to our support of this dictator who was swept from power in 1979 by the then exiled cleric Ayatollah Khomeini.

FACTS:

The U.S. was the progenitor of Iran’s nuclear programme.

The U.S. supported a ruthless dictator and deliberately engaged in nuclear proliferation in explicit violation of the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty’s ban on H.E.U. transfers to non-nuclear states.

Article I

Each nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to transfer to any recipient whatsoever nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or control over such weapons or explosive devices directly, or indirectly; and not in any way to assist, encourage, or induce any non-nuclear-weapon State to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, or control over such weapons or explosive devices

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Islamic Republic of Iran

Professor to participate in  US-Iran Conflicts discussion

Peter N. Kirstein, professor of history at SXU, will appear on a panel to discuss “U.S.-Iran Conflicts: Confrontation or Negotiation?” This event is sponsored by the Center for Global Studies. Other panelists include journalist Eli Lake, senior reporter for the New York Sun, Richard Rupp, associate professor of political science at Purdue University and Christopher Preble, director of foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. The event is Sept. 25 from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Calumet Conference Center at Purdue University Calumet.

 http://www.sxu.edu/today/story.asp?id=7615

Upcoming Fall 2008 Event

 Who’s Afraid of Finkelstein?

May 27, 2008

On Friday morning, the State of Israel refused to allow Prof. Norman Finkelstein, an American Jewish political scientist, to enter the country. Finkelstein was arrested at the airport and questioned by the Shin Bet security service for several hours. A day later, it became known that he had been banned from entering Israel for 10 years, for security reasons. Finkelstein managed to meet with a lawyer, who told him his chances of changing the decision were slim. When the Shin Bet decides that someone constitutes a security risk, the courts do not intervene.

According to the law, both in Israel and in other countries, no one has an intrinsic right to enter a country of which he is not a citizen. Immigration authorities have the power to keep a tourist from entering the country for reasons known only to themselves, and do not even need to provide an explanation. In Finkelstein’s case, the disturbing issue is neither the legality of keeping him out nor the authority to do so, but the reasonableness of the decision. Considering his unusual and extremely critical views, one cannot avoid the suspicion that refusing to allow him to enter Israel was a punishment rather than a precaution.

It is difficult to sympathize with Finkelstein’s opinions and preferences, especially since he decided to support Hezbollah, meet with its fighters and visit the graves of some of its slain operatives. But that does not mean he should be banned from entering Israel, since meetings with Hezbollah operatives do not in themselves constitute a security risk. True, the right to enter Israel is not guaranteed to noncitizens, but the right of Israeli citizens to hear unusual views is one that should be fought for. It is not for the government to decide which views should be heard here and which ones should not.

The decision to ban Finkelstein hurts us more than it hurts him. Every once in a while, the state suffers an attack of excessive sensitivity regarding its visitors. In 2002, it was Romanian flautist Gheorghe Zamfir who was kept out of the country by the Interior Ministry. The interior minister at the time, Eli Yishai, explained that Zamfir had expressed anti-Semitic views and that his entry into Israel would “hurt Holocaust survivors.” Avraham Poraz, who succeeded Yishai, overturned the decision.

When the person refused entry is Jewish, the absurdity is even greater. After all, Finkelstein could realize his right to immigrate to Israel as a Jew, in accordance with the Law of Return. Since he is Jewish and has no criminal past, it is doubtful whether he could be prevented from receiving Israeli citizenship.

The Shin Bet argues that Finkelstein constitutes a security risk. But it is more reasonable to assume that Finkelstein is persona non grata and that the Shin Bet, whose influence has increased to frightening proportions, latched onto his meetings with Hezbollah operatives in order to punish him.

And the decision is all the more surprising when one recalls the ease with which right-wing activists from the Meir Kahane camp – the kind whose activities pose a security threat that no longer requires further proof – are able to enter the country.

Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East have initiated a petition that seeks to reverse the draconian Israeli travel ban concerning Norman G. Finkelstein. Upon his deportation on May 23, he was told that he could not enter Israel for ten years or during the 70th Year of this putative democracy. Of course the petition is open for signature for all who believe in the right of American or other scholars to travel freely to countries even if their ruling elites are subject to critical thinking and analysis by the entrant.

To:  Israeli Government

Canadians for Justice & Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) and the undersigned call on Israel to reinstate Dr. Norman Finkelstein’s right to travel to the occupied Palestinian territories. Israel arbitrarily revoked this right on Saturday, May 24. For more information please see CJPME’s press statement at http://www.cjpme.ca/press/PR-Finkelstein-Israel-2008-05-25-PR2%20v.2.pdf

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

Hillary Strangelove

Hillary’s World.

Senator Hillary Clinton has threatened “massive retaliation” against the Islamic Republic of Iran were it to use nuclear weapons against the State of Israel. She has engaged in on-the-run extended deterrence by threatening the destruction of Iran were it to use weapons of mass destruction on third countries in the region as well. For  the record, Iran is a non-nuclear weapons state and has issued a Fatwa against pursuing a nuclear weapons capacity. Even If insincere, it is many years away from weaponising and deploying atomic systems in its arsenal. There is no urgency or hint of such a capacity on the part of Iran.

What she is advocating is the extermination of tens of millions of Iranians and a possible second-strike retaliation against the United States were it to engage in a preemptive nuclear war against Iran. The senator appears unaware that Israel is a major nuclear power and possesses between 150 and 200 nuclear warheads that can be deployed on both United States built fighter aircraft or launched by missiles.  I have never, even during the days of the Cold War, witnessed such reckless if not evil rhetoric in which innocent civilians would be slaughtered by the millions in such an indiscriminate manner. Israel hardly requires an extended deterrence from the United States: the nuclear nation which worked with South Africa during its apartheid regime to acquire and refine its nuclear capacity, does not require American nuclear protection. Iran would hardly benefit from a nuclear attack on a nuclear power in the region. The only group that needs our protection are the Palestinians who are the victims of one of the greatest violations of human rights since the end of World War II.

For Senator Clinton to be even contemplating a nuclear attack on a country as part of a political campaign strategy is unseemly and I believe an evil and despicable lack of ethics and morality. Her initial description of her nuclear plans of deterrence as “massive retaliation” was uttered during the disturbing high-tech lynching of the Philadelphia debate.  Massive Retaliation was introduced by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in a speech before the Council on Foreign Relations in New York in 1954. At the time, the United States believed it lacked the conventional might to restrain a possible Soviet attack on Western Europe and so Secretary Dulles suggested that the U.S. might use nuclear weapons to deter both a CONVENTIONAL as well as a Soviet nuclear first-strike assault. The policy of massive retaliation ratcheted up the scenarios in which these monstrous atomic and thermonuclear weapons would be used. The policy even for the United States was quickly discredited as a doomsday strategy in which nuclear warfare would be triggered by even a limited Soviet conventional surge across the Fulda Gap–the symbolic division between the boundaries between the former West and East Germany that was closest to the Rhine River. Of course its successor, Flexible Response, was equally flawed even if never fully articulated by either Secretary of Defence Robert S. McNamara and his successors at DoD.

The New York senator has cynically and ignorantly taken a Cold War doctrine and to put it mildly given it a horrific new level of application. If a nuclear state is attacked by another nuclear state, the U.S. will attack the attacker with nuclear weapons. I have never heard of a nuclear umbrella being extended to a major nuclear power such as the State of Israel. I also construe Mrs. Clinton’s remarks to be racist, antithetical to the need for diplomacy and reconciliation and a political ploy to appear to be out Thatchering, Margaret Thatcher, the former blustering British Prime Minister.

I say shame on Senator Clinton and under no circumstances, do I see any qualities in this individual that would be worthy of an American president. She should suspend her candidacy and be condemned by the Democratic Party as unprofessional, violent-prone and a threat to global justice and the international community.