Illustration by Bendib

US Department of Justice Asked to Regulate AIPAC as a Foreign Agent of the Israeli Government

The US Department of Justice has been formally asked to begin regulating the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) as the foreign agent of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A 392 page legal filing presented by a four person IRmep delegation in a two hour meeting with top officials of the Internal Security Section substantiated the following case for AIPAC's immediate registration:

1. AIPAC is a spinoff of an organization already ordered by the DOJ to register as an Israeli foreign agent. In November of 1962 the American Zionist Council was ordered by the Attorney General to begin filing disclosures as an Israeli foreign agent under the 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act. http://www.IRmep.org/1962Order.pdf. Six weeks later, former AZC employees incorporated the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington, DC, taking over the AZC's lobbying activities. http://www.IRmep.org/AIPAC.pdf. AIPAC did not register as a foreign agent.
2. AIPAC's founder Isaiah L. Kenen was the chief information officer for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs in New York and for a time duly registered in that role. http://www.IRmep.org/Kenen.pdf The Justice Department ordered Kenen to personally re-register after he formally left the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs to head up private lobbying and publicity for the Israeli government at the nonprofit American Zionist Council. Kenen never complied with the order. http://www.IRmep.org/order.pdf.
3. Espionage related FBI investigations in 1984 and 2005 reveal AIPAC's ongoing stealth foreign agency activities. Declassified FBI files released on the Internet last week reveal that in 1984 AIPAC and the Israeli Ministry of Economics were investigated for jointly obtaining and circulating classified US economic data to obtain favorable trade benefits for Israel. http://www.irmep.org/ila/economy. In 2005 Pentagon Colonel Lawrence Franklin pled guilty and two AIPAC employees were indicted for obtaining and circulating classified US national defense information to Israeli government officials allegedly in the interest of fomenting US action against Iran.
4. AIPAC's executive committee consists of the original member organizations of the AZC in addition to newer members. The Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, the umbrella group of AIPAC's executive committee, is housed in the same New York office as the World Zionist Organization - American Section, a registered foreign agent that is heavily involved in illegal settlement expansion according to Israeli prosecutor Thalia Sasson.

According to Grant F. Smith, director of IRmep, the case for reregulating AIPAC as a foreign agent immediately is compelling. "AIPAC was designed to supplant the American Zionist Council as the arm of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the United States after the DOJ ordered the AZC to register as a foreign agent. As such, Americans should have full public access to biannual FARA registrations detailing AIPAC's publicity campaigns, lobbying expenditures, funding flows, activities of its offices in Israel and internal consultations with its foreign principals - particularly over such controversial issues as illegal settlements and US foreign aid."

Concerned organizations and individuals who wish to supplement the Department of Justice filing or participate in future negotiations with law enforcement officials should contact the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, Inc. at info@IRmep.org or 202-342-7325. IRmep is a private nonprofit that studies how warranted law enforcement and civil action can improve U.S. Middle East policy.

SOURCE: Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy

Interview with Richard Falk

Richard Falk, Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and author of "Crimes of War, Iraq" and "The Costs of War: International Law, the UN, and World Order after Iraq" recorded October 17, 2009 in Seattle.

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRuGyH1fa5Y

By Daniel Machover* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

According to news reports, David Miliband plans to call the leader of the Israeli opposition, Tzipi Livni, to explain the British government's stance on the grant of an arrest warrant against her when she had been due to speak at a Jewish National Fund meeting in Hendon.

One reasonable version of this call to Livni is as follows:

"I am calling to explain why it would be wrong for me to apologise publicly or privately for the apparent decision by one of this country's independent judiciary to issue an arrest warrant against you.

"I should first explain that the British legal system has a strong tradition of fairness. All people under criminal investigation or criminal charge are entitled to the presumption of innocence: that is, they are presumed innocent unless and until convicted through a fair trial on the criminal standard of proof (that is, beyond reasonable doubt). Therefore, nobody here is saying you have been found guilty of any offence and any comments of this kind would be unacceptable.

"It does seem, however, that a judicial decision was taken that there exists a reasonable suspicion that you committed a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which is a criminal offence under our Geneva Conventions Act 1957. Of course, I have not seen any of the evidence that a court would have seen when making that decision. This is entirely right and proper: British ministers cannot interfere in such individual judicial decisions, as we must respect our ancient democratic tradition of non-interference with our independent judiciary. I hold the utmost respect for our independent judges.

"I am sorry, but I hope you understand that it is not my job as foreign secretary or any part of this government's job to second-guess a judge's decision or to interfere with it. I can tell you, however, that no charges could be brought against you without a decision by the attorney general. We very carefully guard the legal role of the attorney general, as the senior law officer, in making such decisions. The attorney general would first need advice from the head of our independent prosecution body, the director of public prosecutions, that the evidential test of the code for crown prosecutors was thought to be met (ie that there was more than a 50% chance that a jury would convict a defendant, having found on the evidence that it was beyond reasonable doubt that she had committed the alleged offence). If this evidential test was met, the independence of the UK legal system from the executive and the rights of victims of alleged crimes to see a just outcome to their complaints would be seriously undermined if the attorney general made a decision that it was against the public interest to bring charges of war crimes against a foreign national, who did not otherwise enjoy immunity from prosecution.

"Moreover, the attorney general would have to take into account this country's solemn treaty obligations under Article 146 of the Fourth Geneva Convention which states that we are 'under the obligation to search for persons alleged to have committed, or to have ordered to be committed ... grave breaches, and shall bring such persons, regardless of their nationality, before [our] courts'. The mandatory wording (ie 'shall') creates a presumption that it is in the public interest for criminal charges to be brought under our Geneva Conventions Act 1957 if the evidential test is met. I cannot say what the attorney general's decision would be in your case, as it must be a matter for her, on advice from the DPP.

"I understand that this may be a difficult position for you to accept. However, it is only appropriate that I also draw to your attention to some very disturbing aspects of the report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza conflict, headed up by the respected independent international judge Justice Richard Goldstone. As you know, the Goldstone report was adopted by the UN Human Rights Council in October and further endorsed at the general assembly in November. While the British government did not participate in the vote when the council adopted the report, we cannot ignore its conclusions that, from the facts that it gathered, grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention do appear to have been committed by Israeli armed forces in Gaza, including wilful killing. Also, at paragraph 1975, the Goldstone report recommended that 'state parties to the Geneva Convention ... should start criminal investigations in national courts, using universal jurisdiction, where there is sufficient evidence of the commission of grave breaches ... where so warranted following investigation, alleged perpetrators should be arrested and prosecuted in accordance with internationally recognised standards of justice'.

"In the light of all this, Her Majesty's government must therefore carefully weigh everything in the balance when considering whether it would be appropriate to prevent alleged victims applying for judicial arrest warrants. As I have great faith in the standards of justice in this country and in the quality of our judiciary, the political embarrassment that is sometimes caused by standing by our legal traditions will have to be endured. Changing these provisions would undermine our strong democratic values and the rights of victims of alleged serious crimes to access to justice. I hope that the assurance that I have given you that criminal charges will only be brought for grave breaches if the most senior prosecutor in this country thought there was sufficient evidence to justify charges, will satisfy you that only where there appears to be a case to answer will someone be charged with such offences in this country.

"I implore you to join calls within Israel for compliance with the rule of law and for the establishment of an immediate and urgent independent and effective judicial investigation, which can conclude whether or not any of the Israeli leadership that made operational decisions during Operation Cast Lead, including you, should face criminal charges under your own laws. The same applies to the Gaza authorities. Alternatively, if you are concerned that Israel cannot meet this challenge, then Israel could refer itself to the only fully independent international body that has the resources and the ability to resolve such matters, namely the international criminal court.

"Only once the matters set out in the Goldstone report are brought to a just and satisfactory resolution, which may include the need for some individuals on both sides of the conflict to be held accountable for their alleged individual criminal responsibility, the whole region can perhaps benefit from a durable and lasting peace. Without justice there cannot be peace."

Unfortunately, it seems that Miliband is unlikely to make the above phonecall to Tzipi Livni, but instead will repeat his statements of recent days, which implicitly criticise the role of our independent judiciary, and which fly directly in the face of this country's international legal obligations to "search out and prosecute" all those alleged to have committed war crimes. This sends a message that Britain is in fact a safe haven for suspected torturers and war criminals, especially if they come from a country which is identified as an ally of the United Kingdom. This is particularly alarming given that just one week ago, with his fellow EU foreign ministers, David Miliband endorsed a document promoting compliance with international human rights law which concluded with the promise that "The European Union will continue to do its utmost to promote an international order where no state or individual is above the law and no person is outside the protection of the law."

* Daniel Machover is chair of Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights and a partner at London lawfirm Hickman Rose

By Stuart Littlewood* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

The British public must be wondering what has happened to the nation's backbone - and its moral compass - when they see news items like these.

"British Foreign Secretary David Miliband yesterday apologized to MK Tzipi Livni and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman for the arrest warrant issued against Livni in London earlier this week. He also promised Lieberman to begin working immediately to change the UK laws that enable the issue of arrest warrants against Israeli officials accused of war crimes."

Who does this foreign secretary think he is, apologising in our name for the operation of British law, especially when the warrant was issued to answer well-founded charges of war crimes?

Livni claims it was not personal. "It's about the entire State of Israel and our ability to go on working together against common threats."

What common threats? We have nothing in common. The threats Israel faces are caused by its racist expansion, land theft, general lawlessness and hateful attitude towards its neighbours, and by the lethal threat Israel itself presents to others in the region. Our government puts us in harm's way by associating so closely with the regime and continually taking its side.

As for ex-night club bouncer Lieberman, a deranged loudmouth who lives in an illegal Jewish settlement in the Palestinian West Bank and thrives on extremist language, since when did he merit a British apology?

"Miliband called the warrant intolerable and said he had spoken to Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Justice Minister Jack Straw to find an urgent solution. Prosor [the Israeli ambassador in London] chastised the British secretary saying it was time the British government took action."

Prosor "chastised" a Minister of the Crown... demanded a change to our laws? Your own laws need changing more than ours, Prosor.

"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office also released a statement: 'We will not agree to a situation in which [former prime minister] Ehud Olmert, [Defense Minister] Ehud Barak and [opposition leader and former foreign minister] Tzipi Livni will be summoned to the bench. We utterly reject the absurdity that is happening in Britain.'"

Get your tanks off Palestine's lawn, Netanyahu, and your squatters off Palestinian land before you criticize anyone else.

The Israelis' arrogance is breath-taking. Livni would gladly repeat the atrocities in Gaza last December-January. Her office issued a statement saying she was proud of Operation Cast Lead. And speaking at a conference at Tel Aviv's Institute for Security Studies, she said: "I would today take the same decisions."

Leave the law on arrest warrants alone

Miliband's grovelling, especially to the Lieberman and Livni, is enough to make any red-blooded UK citizen cringe with shame. Few of us, surely, would touch these people with a barge-pole.

This abandonment of principle and descent into the abyss is explained in the Foreign Office statement: "The UK is determined to be a strategic partner of Israel."

Why? I have always wanted to know how this serves our best interests.

The law on arrest warrants, of course, should be left undisturbed. It's all quite simple. If Israel behaved in a civilised manner there would be no need for them.

This diplomatic ruckus helps us to see clearly the lunacy of stacking the British Foreign Office with Israel-lovers. There's Miliband, of course, with his ethnic links. He voted enthusiastically for the Iraq war and against an investigation.

Then there's our minister in charge of Middle East affairs, Ivan Lewis. He's a former vice-chairman of Labour Friends of Israel. He too voted for the Iraq war and against any investigation. In January, with the sickening stench of Israel's blitzkrieg on Gaza in the world's nostrils, Lewis told a rally in Manchester: "This community stands shoulder to shoulder with the people of Israel in the good and the bad times. We do not apply double standards to Israel..."

The trouble is, his kind don't apply any standards at all.

In July, with the blood of 1,400 dead Gazans (including 320 children and 109 women) on the hands of the Zionist devils, and with thousands more horribly maimed, the insensitive Lewis told the House of Commons: "Israel is a close ally of the UK and we have regular warm and productive exchanges at all levels."

Lewis is also chief executive of the Manchester Jewish Federation and a trustee of the Holocaust Educational Trust. Along with Miliband, he is the face of British diplomacy in the explosive Middle East.

Add to the team Miliband's Principal Private Secretary, Matthew Gould, just promoted as Britain's first Jewish ambassador to Israel with effect from next year. Gould told Haaretz that he and his wife will keep a Jewish household and bring up their kids in the Jewish tradition. "The fact that I'm Jewish means I will come with a particular insight and sympathy and understanding, because the story of my family is in certain respects the story of the people of the State of Israel. But fundamentally I'm going as the British ambassador, to pursue British policies and advance British interests."

That's difficult to believe, and some will point to a hopeless conflict of interests not only for Gould but also Miliband, Evans and others who feel an affinity with the appalling "story" of Israel.

Presiding over all this is our disaster-prone prime minister Gordon Brown, a Zionist sympathizer and patron of the Jewish National Fund, which is an organization set up to facilitate the confiscation and development of illegally occupied Palestinian lands.

As if to illustrate just how far Britain will go to appease Israel's ‘Criminal Tendency', the Jewish Chronicle reported a few days ago how the Foreign Office stamped on an initiative by the Department for Communities and Local Government to reassure the Muslim community that the British government did not support Israel's actions in Gaza. Foreign Office officials considered it pandering to the Muslim community's prejudices about Israel, especially when it was discovered that some Muslim leaders around the country wanted the government to recognise Hamas's right to armed resistance. Tut-tut. Oh dear, no. Everybody knows that only Israel is entitled to self-defence. And Britain panders only to Israel.

British-Jewish MP Sir Gerald Kaufman recently threw a bucket of cold water over this obscene Anglo-Israeli love-in by branding the Israeli government a gang of amoral thugs. These are the undesirables Miliband wants to accommodate with a change in the law. Well, I doubt if the British public would welcome the idea of such vile people, who think nothing of burning women and children to the bone with white phosphorus, coming and going as they please in our capital city.

These same thugs won't even allow thousands of Palestinian students like Berlanty Azzam the freedom to travel within their own homeland to attend university and finish their degree.

Mr Miliband, your cruel friends are not welcome here.

* Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. Read other articles by Stuart, or visit Stuart's website.

Poll Report on the War on Terrorism

What do American citizens get from their media? How far true is what they see and hear? Who are the good/bad media outlets in U.S. and what is their agenda? What role does the U.S. media play in unveiling/hiding the truth? and what are American citizens missing in their media?

The following poll results are very disturbing and interesting at the same time. They speak for themselves and answer all above questions:

Last week, more than five years into the "War on Terrorism", Retro Poll asked a national sample of Americans this question: "Do you agree or not with the government's assertion that people seized and detained at Guantanamo are presumed to be dangerous terrorists or they would not have been seized in the first place?" A slightly different wording last October had garnered 37% agreement. In the current poll 48% agreed. We conclude that a substantial proportion of people do not grasp a key principle of democracy--when everyone is not presumed innocent under the law until he/she/we have been proven guilty of a crime in a fair trial, dictatorial powers of government achieve supremacy. Civil rights exist not mainly to protect criminals, but to protect the public from arbitrary government abuse of authority. How come many don't know this, or are looking the other way?

Retro Poll data, based on small random samples--in this case 164 people-are not projected to precisely represent the general public on individual questions. Retro Poll instead focuses on statistically significant comparisons and unexpected findings within its random samples. In the current sample only 9 (9 out of 164) people could identify Maher Arar as the "Canadian citizen awarded $11 million for being tortured under the US extraordinary rendition." Two times that number (18) misidentified him as one of the 9/11 hijackers and 136 didn't know. Likewise 70% did not know that Italy has brought charges for kidnapping against 26 CIA agents in a case of "extraordinary rendition." Why are such important stories of extraordinary rendition, an anti-democratic if not outlawed process, not common knowledge? Where do people buy their ignorance and where is the source of this ignorance?

Lack of information is the tip of an iceberg. To get answers, Retropollsters asked the extent to which people believe various major corporate media organizations present the truth. The options were "usually", "mostly when it suits their interests", and "half the time or less." Whether asking about CNN, NYTimes, Fox, CBS, MSNBC, NBC or others, in every case less than 40% of the respondents thought the media "usually" tells the truth. Moreover, between 22 and 28 percent said that each outlet tells the truth "half the time or less." Retro Poll is a media critical group, but this can't be true. Even if the media manipulates, distorts, censors, its methods must be more subtle than to lie half the time. This latter response represents mass disaffection and mistrust of media.

Exploring the data further by cross-tabulating opinions on the media with responses to factual questions, the manipulation of the public becomes clearer. Not surprisingly, those who tended to "usually" trust Fox were consistently different in their political views from those other minorities who "usually" trust other corporate media outlets, or those who believe Fox tells the truth "half the time or less". In fact, those who think Fox usually tells the truth were consistently less aware or blind to important facts-for example, 2 out 3 claimed that the "U.S. opposes and does not teach, sanction or engage in torture" and more than 3 out of 4 denied that the Administration "fabricated intelligence on Iraq" before the war. By now these are facts so hard to deny that one must belong to an ideological support group or sect that thinks everything they read or hear is a conspiracy-perhaps against Mr. Bush or against themselves or against "America" or the "white race."

Regarding the presumption of innocence or guilt of Guantanamo prisoners, seventy-seven percent of Fox supporters (within the "usually truthful" group) held the presumption that captives are all terrorists. Surprisingly, adherents of other corporate media were not so highly different as on other questions with 40-52% also sustaining the government's position. In contrast, however, people who distrusted the various other media--truth "less than half the time"-supported the presumption of innocence. Presumption of guilt was only 10% for distrusters of NBC, 13% for CBS and 23% for CNN. These statistically significant results suggest that people who trust the Fox network tend to be the most ignorant and susceptible to anti-democratic demagogy but that many who trust other corporate media outlets--when compared with people who do not trust the corporate media market in general--also appear deceived and unprepared to defend their democratic rights. Monitoring disaffection with corporate media may be a useful tool to estimate support for public rights and democracy. The full questionnaire, poll responses and links defending factual questions can be found at www.retropoll.org.

Contacts:

Marc Sapir, MD, MPH
Executive Director, Retro Poll
marcsapir@comcast.net
www.retropoll.org
510-848-3826

Warren Gold, MD
Director, Retro Poll
warren.gold@ucsf.edu
415-476-2092

Mickey Huff, MA
Director, Retro Poll
mickeyhuff@mac.com
510-798-6251

A big salute for all American bloggers, journalists and small media org. who are fighting this disaster called ignorance and FREE corporate media organizations in USA.

Excellent reporting by Keith tonight on Habeas corpus, the Military Commissions and Tribunals Act of 2006 and how it will affect you in the future.

US the free? [Hat tip: Kimmy]