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Palestinian Journalist Murdered by U.S. Troops in Iraq
(Adrian Blomfield, Telegraph, September 13, 2004)
At one point, a Bradley fighting vehicle was hit by a car bomb, injuring two American soldiers. Three others were wounded when insurgents lobbed hand grenades at other soldiers trying to evacuate them. . . . During a lull in the fighting, Tumeizi ventured out to join a crowd gathering round the burning Bradley. The Americans had pulled out but Tumeizi knew it was only a matter of time before they would come back. . . . "Let's get this over with," he said to Seif Fouad, a Reuters cameraman who had become a firm friend in the 14 months Tumeizi had worked as a reporter in Iraq and often filmed his dispatches for al-Arabiya, one of the two television stations he worked for. . . . As Fouad started rolling the camera, the crowd behind Tumeizi, many of them children, grew more restless. . . . Some jumped on top of the burning Bradley while others clapped and cheered. "He was nervous," recalled Rajih Khalil, Tumeizi's housemate who had grown up with him in the Palestinian town of Hebron. . . . "He finished his piece to camera very quickly." Sighing with relief, the three began to move away from the scene. But he had made a small mistake that cost him his life. . . . "Suddenly Mazen stopped," said Khalil. "He hit his head and said 'I'm so stupid. I've forgotten to do the sign-off'." Cursing good-naturedly, the three returned to the Bradley and Fouad got out his camera and began filming. . . . None of the three heard the helicopters until it was too late. As Tumeizi spoke into the camera, the first gunship opened fire. Within seconds, all three men had been hit. . . . The footage released by al-Arabiya shows him pointing to the smoke billowing out of the Bradley moments before the helicopters began firing. . . . "It gave no warning," Khalil said. "Everything happened so quickly. We fell to the ground. I heard Mazen shout 'I'm going to die! I'm going to die!' . . . "I crawled across to him. I could see it was bad. He was on his front and his back was open. He couldn't breathe properly. 'It's all right,' I said. 'Don't be afraid. Help is coming.' I don't know if he heard me. He couldn't speak. He was moaning quietly." . . . With a broken leg, shrapnel injuries to his stomach and head wounds, Khalil could do little to help his friend. Fouad too was badly hurt while, further away, Guardian and Getty Images reporter Ghaith Abdul Ahad was nursing a head wound. "Around us were others dead or injured. People ran away but then some came back to help." . . . As they did, the helicopters made another pass again opening fire, Khalil said. "People trying to help us were wounded or ran away. After a minute, the helicopters came back and fired again. They came three or four times." . . . Within 10 minutes of their arrival at hospital, Tumeizi was dead. An 11-year-old girl brought in at the same time also died, one of 13 killed in the incident, according to health ministry officials.

posted by LoZo 11:37 AM

 

FBI probes Jewish sway on Bush government
(Nathan Guttman, Haaretz, September 05, 2004)
The FBI investigation into the Pentagon mole affair has expanded beyond data analyst Larry Franklin's immediate circle to encompass the entire issue of Jewish influence on the neoconservative part of the administration. . . . The officials include Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz; Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith; Pentagon adviser Richard Perle; adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, David Wormser; and Iran specialist Harold Rhode, all of them Jews. . . . The Washington Post reported that FBI people recently spoke to administration officials and Middle East experts to sound them out on the suspicion that senior officials funneled secret material to Israel. . . . The investigation now appears to center on the claim made by the opponents of the neoconservatives in the administration - that the latter are responsible for the U.S. Middle East policy and that they are suspected of bias in favor of Israel's interests. . . . The issues being queried have also increased. It transpires that the FBI is investigating, in addition to funneling classified information to Israel, the possibility that secret information had been given to Ahmed Chalabi, of the Iraqi opposition. Chalabi was close to many of the people mentioned in the affair and was a central source of information to the Americans on the goings-on in Iraq before the war. . . . The report said that Israel has long attempted to recruit U.S. officials as spies and to procure classified documents, according to the Times.

posted by LoZo 4:28 PM

 

An American in Gaza
An American in Gaza
[NOTE: The link above will take you to the full story, which has several dozen excellent photos as well.]

I came to Palestine to see with my own eyes what life is like here, to see what kind of life we as Americans are supporting and to see what kind of life we are destroying. . . . Most people in the world have no idea what life in Gaza is like. I have been here for a month now. I came here with a group of Europeans and Americans. One of the first things that I noticed is that there are no foreigners. Besides my group, I have seen only a handful of them. Most people here believe that the world does not care about them. It's easy to see why. The world is not here. . . . It's striking how different Gaza is from the stories I have heard about it. In America we hear stories of a barren and backward land -- a desert wilderness. We hear that Israel gave it life – that the settlers are pioneers, creating a new nation out of nothing. But here I am. Who are all the people who surround me? The one English word that every Palestinian knows is "welcome". The people here have welcomed me into their homes, overwhelmed me with generosity and kindness. Am I to believe they don't exist? When I see the distant red tile rooftops of the settlements, when I see the soldiers and tanks, when I hear the helicopters and fighter jets and machine guns sent to protect the settlers I wonder. Do the settlers really believe they are living in an unpopulated wilderness? Why do they think the army surrounds and outnumbers them? What do they think of the people that live here -- the people they can see with their own eyes? Do they even believe they are people at all? . . . There are many people here. The most densely populated place on earth, more crowded than Singapore or Hong Kong or even Manhattan, Gaza is a massive city of people that don't exist. . . . The people here have utilized nearly every inch of their precious land to produce life. But it's not possible to travel far without seeing barren plots of dust and rubble. Whenever I encounter one of these, I ask my companions what it is. The answer is always the same. "The Israelis demolished some houses here." "The Israelis bulldozed this grove of orange trees." "The Israelis bombed this police station." "The Israelis destroyed this factory." . . . The other reason that these farmers stopped maintaining this field is that the soldiers told them that they must leave it within a week. If they attempt to tend their field after a week, they will be shot. It seems that the settlers wanted a little more wasteland around their settlement. What is it about the sight of Palestinian farmers tending their crops that the settlers find so offensive? Perhaps if the settlers create a large enough expanse of desert around their homes, they can more easily believe the myth that they are living in an empty land. . . . House demolitions are an occurrence we sometimes hear about in the news. Usually the Israelis claim that the demolished homes are somehow connected to the insecurity of settlers, and therefore must be destroyed. In America, we think of a house as a single family dwelling, inhabited by a handful of people. The typical American house is financed and insured against damage. People in Palestine, on the other hand, live in large extended families. A typical Palestinian house is more like an apartment building, several flats occupied by different members of the same family. They are often four or five stories high. The roof is unfinished so the home can be expanded upwards as the family grows. Because of Islamic prohibitions on borrowing money and charging interest, nearly all of these homes are paid for in cash that a family has spent a lifetime saving. . . . I met several people whose homes near a settlement had been destroyed recently. They are all living in tents on a vacant lot a few hundred meters from where their homes once stood. When I visited them, the heat was almost unbearable. They had no running water, no electricity. There were a few mats on the ground that did very little to keep the dust off of everything. The tents were full of holes, and did nothing to keep out the flies. All around were goats and chickens. Most people said they could not sleep at night because they had no way to keep out the mosquitoes. There was one toilet for all of the families living here. It wasn't so much a toilet as a small hole in the ground surrounded by a tent. The people here were all very depressed. They have no money to rebuild their homes. Most of them have no way of even earning money. And none of them believed anyone in the world was willing or able to do anything for them. I asked several of them if there was anything they wanted to tell people in America. They asked me what good it would do. The press had already been there and nothing had happened. In spite of their desperation, these people sensed that I was suffering from the heat and offered me a cold glass of cola and fresh oranges. . . . The soldiers came one day and told everyone that they would demolish 17 homes. This was collective punishment for a bomb that had been placed in a nearby road. The soldiers did not present any evidence that the bomb had any connection with the houses. The people living in the houses say that the soldiers know there is no connection. As in many places in Gaza, these people are not allowed outside of their homes after dark. The soldiers shoot at anyone moving. . . . I'm not sure what conclusions to draw from these experiences. Life is very bad here. It seems that the daily hardship and humiliation these people suffer at the hands of the Israelis can only lead to hopelessness. And people with nothing to lose are much more likely to take drastic measures than people who feel secure. I have met many people here who condemn the operations against Israel. Everyone I've met here says they want peace, that all they want is the right to live freely in their own land, that 60 years ago Jews, Christians, and Muslims all lived here together peacefully. Everyone I've met has told me that they believe this land is for all the people of the world to share. People here ask me what else they can do when everything they have tried has failed. I don't know what to tell them. The situation seems hopeless.

posted by LoZo 5:19 PM