Antony Loewenstein

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Great letter from the UK Guardian on 20 November:

My story in Crikey this week that alleged Australian soldiers are involved in the targeted killings of “terrorists” in Afghanistan and beyond has already drawn predictable hysteria from men who can’t think of anything better than a long and glorious “war on terror” against “them”.

A more mature response has appeared by Ben Saul, Sydney University’s Law Professor, though there is a virtual absence of any discussion over state terrorism, a far more serious threat than the rest:

A recent report that Australians may be involved in covert missions for a multinational counter-terrorism centre in Paris, Alliance Base, raises questions of law and accountability.

Little is known about the operations, such as whether they include killing suspected terrorists or whether Australians or their government are involved.

One hopes that allegations of Australian involvement in “assassinations” are not true. As one who specialises in the law of war, I am not aware of any such official role by Australian forces and it would be contrary to their rules of engagement. Of course, it is hard to know what private citizens, including former soldiers, may get up to when working overseas, including working as mercenaries or for foreign armies.

Whatever the truth of the report, it raises a broader public interest question of when it may be lawful to kill suspected terrorists. Their lawfulness of such killings depends on who is involved, who they work for, what they do, and where they act. If Alliance Base is simply coordinating western counter-terrorism intelligence sharing and training by national agencies (such as the CIA and Australia’s ASIS or military intelligence), then legal concerns would be fairly limited.

Intelligence cooperation must ensure, for instance, that privacy laws are not violated by the sharing of information obtained by surveillance in one jurisdiction with foreign agencies. Cooperation must not encourage or condone the obtaining of evidence by torture, or share evidence where it would expose a person to death or torture elsewhere.

If, however, Alliance Base is also involved in operations in the field, such as “assassinations” or the killing of terrorists, the legal questions become more acute. Would such operations be lawful killings – or illegal, extrajudicial assassinations? The answer depends on four key factors under the law of armed conflict.

First, the location and context of a killing matters. There is only a “license to kill” where an “armed conflict” exists – as in Afghanistan, where there are ongoing hostilities against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Outside the theatre of hostilities, there is no lawful authority to kill (other than in the strict circumstances of self-defence under criminal law). That means, for instance, that killing suspected terrorists outside a war zone – whether in Dubai, or on an Australian street – could rightly be called an illegal, extrajudicial “assassination”.

Second, if the killings take place in an armed conflict, the target matters. A person who takes a “direct part” in hostilities can be attacked for so long as they participate in the fighting. Ordinarily “direct” participation means acts of physical violence against an adversary or civilians. That means “terrorists” can be targeted when mounting such attacks, or when immediately preparing attacks by, for example, placing explosives or rockets. Strong evidence of such participation is also needed before they are targeted.

But not any terrorist can be killed. Merely being a “member” of terrorist organisation, financing or recruiting terrorists, or providing political or spiritual leadership does not equate to “direct” fighting. Such acts may indeed be necessary to sustain the fighting capacity of the organisation, but they are not so dangerous in a direct military sense as to justify killing.

For the same reason, it is not lawful for an enemy to kill Australian taxpayers just because they finance our military, or to kill the Australian Prime Minister because she ultimately orders soldiers into battle. To so widen the zone of who may be killed is to go down the path of total war, where any civilian becomes fair game because they contribute to the war effort.

The law accordingly seeks to minimise civilian harm by distinguishing between those who pose an immediate risk of violence and those who provide indirect support for it. The latter can be dealt with through other, less violent means, such as through arrest and prosecution for terrorist crimes, or even by using emergency powers of administrative detention.

Third, only certain people enjoy a legal “privilege” or authority to lawfully kill on behalf of governments in war. Regular, uniformed members of national armed forces, acting for a government, may fight. So too may certain irregular forces belonging to a government, where the fighters wear a uniform or emblem, carry weapons openly, and respect the laws of war.

But a central requirement is always this: the legal authority of governments to fight wars is an essential characteristic of state power and sovereign responsibility. It cannot therefore be delegated or contracted out to private actors, including military personnel acting in a personal capacity, for profit or otherwise, for a foreign entity.

It is thus unlawful to use mercenaries to fight wars on our behalf, or to authorise “private security contractors” to perform combat functions. It is also unlawful to knowingly authorise another government to use one’s own forces to carry out unlawful acts.

Finally, anyone targeting terrorists must fight fairly and within the rules of combat. That means that those attempting to kill terrorists cannot, for instance, conceal themselves in civilian clothes while carrying out the attack, or use prohibited weapons (such as poison). Detainees must not be tortured and must be treated humanely and given access to the courts.

In sum, the legality of Alliance Base’s operations would depend on who is killing whom, on whose behalf, and where. As with president Obama’s drone wars in Pakistan or Israel’s targeted killings in Palestine, few of the legal or accountability questions can be adequately answered unless the public is provided with much more information.

Who is on the target lists and why? Where are they killed? Are Australians involved and in what capacity? Is it authorised by government? Are governments unlawfully assassinating people in our name – or are they only doing what is necessary, within the law, to ensure our safety? Australia’s answer is likely simple: we never assassinate, and we fight within the law.

Associate Professor Ben Saul is director of the Sydney Centre for International Law at the University of Sydney and a barrister.

A very interesting report in Israeli online magazine +972 on the terrible state of the Israeli media and its slavish following of the government line. Remind you of anywhere else? (here’s a clue; most Western countries):

“Netanyahu’s office has an original technique for marketing its messages,” senior Yedioth Ahronoth columnist Nahum Barnea wrote in his Friday column. “Briefings are emailed every few hours to reporters and commentators.  The condition is that the information not be attributed to Netanyahu, his advisers, his “circles” or his “associates.”  This way, the Prime Minister’s Office achieves broad circulation for its messages without having to answer questions and without taking responsibility for the facts.  It is a wonderfully convenient technique.”

One of these email messages, a perfectly standard one sent to reporters last week, has reached The 7th Eye. It’s an example of the said technique in action; and a review of reporting related to the email message also demonstrates just how convenient the technique is.

The message, sent from the Prime Minister’s Office, describes itself as an “off-record factual background briefing,” and includes detailed instructions, a “user’s manual”: The content of the briefing “must be published as information by the reporter, without naming the source under any circumstances. A reference may be made to a diplomatic source in Jerusalem, where the briefing says as much.”

The actual content of the briefing concerns the delays in the formulation of the agreement (“the American letter”) between the Israeli prime minister and the American Administration concerning the renewal of the moratorium of construction in the Territories (“the freeze.”) According to the Prime Minister’s Office, which is to say, according to that off-the-record statement issued by the PMO in the middle of last week, the letter is being delayed “because of the Palestinians,” who are arguing to the Americans that the agreements between the State Department and Netanyahu makes them look bad. In other words: The agreement is delayed not because Netanyahu spilled the beans on it too early (as it would transpire later in the week), but because Netanyahu got such a fantastic deal, and the Palestinians are now trying to undermine it.

The email was sent in the middle of the day and its content spread quickly across the media: First on the internet, then on broadcast media, and finally, the next morning, in print.

Within half an hour of the email, Atilla Somfalvi reported information relayed by a “diplomatic source,” on YNET; after another half hour, the content of the briefing appeared on NRG (Ma’ariv), Walla! and Haaretz, and then on Nana10 and on other websites. The web edition reporters (on Haaretz and on NRG they were print-edition reporters Barak Ravid and Eli Berdenstein, respectively) follow the instructions of Nir Heffetz, head of the Prime Minister’s spokesman’s office, to the letter. The information is sourced to the reporter himself, to a “diplomatic source” and to a “diplomatic source in Jerusalem.” The message is quickly absorbed, and the headlines on the websites are all variations on the claim that “the Palestinians are delaying the freeze.”

In the evening, on the Channel 2 main news program, Udi Segal implied the same claim in his report, while on the main news program on Channel 10 Chico Menashe reported on the talks without mentioning the PMO’s anonymous spin.

The next morning, Guy Varon reports the content of the briefing on Army Radio, and like the web reporters, quotes parts of it and sources them to a diplomatic source in Jerusalem. Israel Radio’s Ran Binyamini does the same. Later that day, it appears the political reporters in Ma’ariv and Yediot ignored the information disseminated by PMO and obtain clearer and different information. In Haaretz and Yisrael Hayom, Barak Ravid and Shlom Tzezana quote most of the statement verbatim, sourcing it to a “senior Israeli official with knowledge of the talks (Haaretz) and a “senior diplomatic source in Jerusalem (Yisrael Hayom).

The political correspondent of Yisrael Hayom not only stayed true to the exact phrasing by his “source,” but much of the report under his byline consisted of phrases written in the prime minister’s office, with suitable headlines: (“The Palestinians are stirring the pot?”, one subhead asked.”)

The idea of a small Jewish community in Indonesia pleases me and yet the blind adulation of an Israeli flag is sad. Is there knowledge how the Palestinians are being abused?

A new, 62-foot-tall menorah, possibly the world’s largest, rises from a mountain overlooking this Indonesian city, courtesy of the local government. Flags of Israel can be spotted on motorcycle taxi stands, one near a six-year-old synagogue that has received a face-lift, including a ceiling with a large Star of David, paid for by local officials.

Long known as a Christian stronghold and more recently as home to evangelical and charismatic Christian groups, this area on the fringes of northern Indonesia has become the unlikely setting for increasingly public displays of pro-Jewish sentiments as some people have embraced the faith of their Dutch Jewish ancestors. With the local governments’ blessing, they are carving out a small space for themselves in the sometimes strangely shifting religious landscape of Indonesia, the country with the world’s largest Muslim population.

The trend comes as extremist Islamic groups have grown bolder in assailing Christian and other religious minorities elsewhere in Indonesia, with the central government, fearful of offending Muslim groups, doing little to prevent the attacks. Last November, extremists protesting the 2008-9 war in Gaza shut down what had been the most prominent remnant of Indonesia’s historic but little-known Jewish community, a century-old synagogue in Surabaya, the country’s second-largest city.

That left the synagogue in a town just outside Manado — founded by Indonesians still struggling to learn about Judaism and now attended by about 10 people — as Indonesia’s sole surviving Jewish house of worship. Before reaching out for help to sometimes suspicious Jewish communities outside Indonesia, they researched Judaism at an Internet cafe here. They turned, they said jokingly, to Rabbi Google for answers. They compiled a Torah by printing pages off the Internet. They sought the finer points of davening on YouTube.

“We’re just trying to be good Jews,” said Toar Palilingan, 27, who, wearing a black coat and a broad-brimmed hat in the ultra-Orthodox style, led a Sabbath dinner at his family home recently with two regulars.

“But if you compare us to Jews in Jerusalem or Brooklyn,” added Mr. Palilingan, now also known as Yaakov Baruch, “we’re not there yet.”

This email was forwarded by Harvard Middle East expert Sara Roy. No real comment required:

I pass this along without making any claims to verify its accuracy.  From a NYC-based Israeli source, who just returned from Tel Aviv, where he met with senior IDF and Likud figures, including Netanyahu.  He is one of the Likud “princes” whose father was one of Menachim Begin’s closest personal friends.  He is very close with Benny Begin.

During a one week recent stay in Israel, he conferred with a military grouping that he is a part of.  They are generally opposed to the Iran war adventure and have a very active position within the current IDF hierarchy.  The incoming IDF chief of staff, Gen. Galant, is a very independent-minded soldier, with his own strong views on the folly of an Iran attack.  He is no pacifist.  He was in charge of the commando units that carried out the Gaza Flotilla operation.  He also ran a 16-man commando operation into southern Lebanon, tageting Hezbollah sites, which went afoul.  Hezbollah had the capacity to intercept transmissions from Israeli surveillance drones that were coordinating with the commando team, and Hezbollah was able to stage an ambush, that killed 16 members of the IDF team.  While the incident was totally hushed up, there is a serious IDF internal probe underway into the failed mission.   Despite these setbacks, Galant was made the new COS of the IDF.

There is a serious conflict between MOD Barak and the outgoing COS Ashkenazi, over the way that Barak handled his replacement, appointing Galant months before the February 2011 turnover.  Now, the Knesset has shortened the wait time before a retired IDF general can enter politics, from three years to 18 months.  Ashkenazi is already planning a challenge to Barak for the chairmanship of the Labor Party in the next election, and he will have a great deal of support in that effort.

Source had a meeting with Netanyahu, and came away concluding that he is completely irrational, and stubbornly refusing to listen to advice, even from Benny Begin.  Netanyahu is aware of the weakened political position of Obama, after the Nov. 2 midterm elections, and he plans to take advantage of this weakness to launch a hit against Iran.  He has solicited and won the backing of Sarcozy in this.  Bibi had several private meetings with Sarcozy.  Sarcozy has agreed to support Israel in an attack on Iran, and the recent Anglo-French military alliance, forged during Sarcozy’s recent visit to London, could be part of this French support for the Israeli attack on Iran.  Shades of Suez 1956?  An Israeli-French-British entente?   Sarcozy came to this arrangement with Netanyahu, in opposition to the European Union’s war-avoidance plans, which involve an approach to Iran, offering lucrative economic deals, if they freeze their nuclear program and remove the pretext for military action.  Germany has emerged as the leading channel for this approach to Iran, and Sarcozy, in part, is reacting against Merkel’s role in this EU effort.

The Israelis, during the Bush period, developed and partially tested a new bunker-buster weapon, which my source described as a ”semi-nuke.”  This was tested in the past in Nevada and in South Africa, but it still is in the final testing phases, even though approximately 100 of these bombs have already been produced.  The concern is that the fallout is strictly contained, and this requires some further refining.  At least one of the Iranian sites targeted by Israeli planners is close enough to the Iraq border, that they are deeply concerned that no fallout crosses into areas where there are American forces.  F-22 fighter jets “loaned” to Israel by President Bush have now been taken back by Obama, and so the French will provide top of the line Mirage jets to Israel.   The French are also providing mid-air refueling for the dozen planes (backed by 250 aircraft altogether)  that will carry out the bombing raid.

U.S. intelligence is aware of this situation, and Gates is deeply concerned that the situation has slipped out of any U.S. controls, due to indecision by Obama.  This is a factor in Gates’ determination to leave the Administration before August 2011.

For Israeli war planners, the biggest fear in not whether the operation itself will succeed or fail.  The biggest concern is what will happen the day after.  It is already factored into the equation that there will be very strong reactions to such an Israeli attack.  The stock markets around the globe will crash, and other chaos could result.  Israel will be clearly blamed and even further ostracized for the attack.

Israel is well aware of the Iranian retaliatory capabilities through Hezbollah and Hamas.  They know that Iranian support for both groups has tripled in recent months.  The strike plan developed by Ashkenazi involves attacks on southern Lebanon and Gaza, as the planes take off for their targets inside Iran.

Israeli war planners are aware of, and are factoring in several other possibilities.  First, there is a belief that Syria could make a military move to take back the Golan Heights as Israeli forces are focused on these other targets.  There is also a possibility of a military coup in Egypt, to prevent the succession of President Mubarak’s son Gamal.  Egypt could move into certain areas of the Sinai still held by Israel.

Israel is also aware of the danger of Pakistani strikes against Israel, in retaliation for the bombing of Iran.  A French delegation is in Pakistan, in an effort to derail any Pakistani retaliation against Israel, which, of course, could involve the use of nuclear weapons, which would wipe Israel off the map.

Netanyahu does not have the support of even the Begin faction of Likud for this action.  And if the attack takes place after February, when Gen. Galant takes over as COS of the IDF, he will refuse.  Source suggests that Netanyahu has significant respect for Bill and Hillary Clinton, and they could possibly dissuade him from taking this reckless action.  There was last week an eight-and-a-half hour meeting between Bibi and Hillary, and when she came out she said, “We still don’t see eye-to-eye.”  The prospect of some kind of political deal or shakeup in Israel, in which Kadima could come into a grand secular coalition and kill this crazy war scheme, is not very real.  Source believes that Avigdor Lieberman has sufficient power to block any move to oust him.  He is too powerful to dump.  Benny Begin met with him at length to get him to tone down the rhetoric.  He was not particularly successful.  He has built up a tremendous power base among the one million-plus Russian emigre.

When might such an operation be launched?  My source believes that, if it does not happen before December 10, it will next be on the table for March or April 2011.  Netanyahu is considering, but has not finalized in his mind, to order strikes in late November 2010.  All IDF vacations have been suspended as of this week;  and IDF officers studying abroad have been summoned home temporarily.  The line circulating around is:  “No repeat of the Yom Kippur War when Israel was caught by surprise.”

The most powerful military in history with the brightest minds in the business.

Or not:

For months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan leaders to end the war appeared to be showing promise, if only because of the appearance of a certain insurgent leader at one end of the table: Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban movement.

But now, it turns out, Mr. Mansour was apparently not Mr. Mansour at all. In an episode that could have been lifted from a spy novel, United States and Afghan officials now say the Afghan man was an impostor, and high-level discussions conducted with the assistance of NATO appear to have achieved little.

“It’s not him,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul intimately involved in the discussions. “And we gave him a lot of money.”

American officials confirmed Monday that they had given up hope that the Afghan was Mr. Mansour, or even a member of the Taliban leadership.

NATO and Afghan officials said they held three meetings with the man, who traveled from in Pakistan, where Taliban leaders have taken refuge.

The fake Taliban leader even met with President Hamid Karzai, having been flown to Kabul on a NATO aircraft and ushered into the presidential palace, officials said.

Stand by:

The WikiLeaks website has announced it plans to publish nearly three million more secret US documents in its next mass release of confidential material, The Daily Telegraph learned.

It would be seven times larger than its release last month, when it posted some 400,000 secret documents about the war in Iraq on its site.

“Next release is 7x the size of the Iraq War Logs. Intense pressure over it for months. Keep us strong,” WikiLeaks said on its Twitter feed, adding a link to a donations website.

“The coming months will see a new world, where global history is redefined.” it added in a later message.
It would be WikiLeaks’ third mass release of classified documents after it published 77,000 secret US files on the Afghan conflict in July.

The US authorities fear that a substantial amount of the next leak could include cables prepared by ambassadors and diplomats in the Middle East that could prove more damaging than the earlier releases.

The State Department has previously expressed concerns that the material could reveal the “source and methods” used by the US to gather intelligence overseas.

Foreign leaders could be able to read what American diplomats have written about them in secret cables sent to Washington, such as appraisals of their leaders’ personalities, competence and honesty.

This site has previously reported on the upcoming visit to Israel by a number of senior Australian politician and journalists. The message? Warm, cuddly embrace of Israel in all its authoritarian ways.

The following letter was sent yesterday by Australians for Palestine to all members of parliament:

Dear Senator/Member of Parliament,

The reported visit of 17 ministers, members and senators of the Australian Parliament to Israel as part of a 40 member delegation in December is a cause for serious concern. That the visit is being arranged and is partly funded by the privately owned Australia Israel Leadership Forum (AILF) and that many of those going are known Israel supporters, already brings into question the value of a trip so one-sided. As far as we have been able to ascertain, there are no representatives from the Greens or Independents or from the Australian Parliamentary Friends of Palestine; there is no visit scheduled in the Occupied Palestinian Territories; and there are no meetings with Palestinian representatives whether from the Palestinian Authority, the PLO, Palestinian members of the Knesset, Hamas leaders, heads of churches or NGOs.

Such a visit cannot possibly open the delegation up to the realities on the ground. In the interests of giving at least a balanced report, we have offered to facilitate meetings with Dr Hanan Ashrawi, Palestinian negotiator and a PLO executive member and Palestinian Knesset members Haneen Zoabi and Dr Jamal Zahalka who have all made themselves available.

We are asking that you use your good offices to urge your colleagues to take up this offer, and if they refuse, to challenge them in the parliament for not taking the opportunity to give the Australian public a fair and accurate account of a critical political situation that impacts constantly on world affairs.

Attached is a copy of the letter that accompanied a briefing document (also attached) in hard copy sent to 22 members of the delegation. We think that you will find enough issues in that document to warrant any delegation’s investigation. The failure to do so would amount to a serious neglect of Australia’s responsibility as a signatory to the Fourth Geneva Convention and our moral responsibility under all humanitarian conventions and human considerations.

Kind regards,

Sonja Karkar
Co-founder and co-convener
Australians for Palestine
PO Box 2099
Hawthorn VIC 3122
Melbourne – Australia