In the last week of April 1948, combined Irgun-Haganah forces launched an offensive to drive the Palestinian people out of the beautiful port city of Jaffa, forcing the remaining inhabitants to flee by sea; many drowned in the process. My aunt Rose, a teenager at that time, survived the trip to begin her life in exile on the Lebanese coast. Each Palestinian refugee family grows up hearing again and again the stories of those final moments in Palestine, the decisions, the panic, as we live in the midst of their terrible consequences. Throughout 1948, Jewish forces expelled many thousands of Palestinians from their villages, towns and cities into Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of others fled in fear. The purpose was to create a pure Jewish state, ethnically cleansed of the original inhabitants who had lived there for centuries. The creation of the state of Israel was the heart of this cataclysmic historical event for the Palestinians – the mass forced expulsion of a people; the more than 50 massacres carried out over the summer of 1948 by various armed Jewish forces; the demolition of villages to ensure the refugees could not return – all this is summed up in a single word for Palestinians: nakba, the catastophe.
guardian.co.uk

GAZA, Palestine, May 11, 2006 (IPC)- – A recent report monitoring the Israeli violations against the Palestinian people asserted that Israeli occupation forces have killed nine Palestinians and injured 31 others during the last week, in 768 violations.

The report, which was prepared by the Palestinian National Information Center (PNIC) pointed out that between May2-8, Israeli forces used its military arsenal against the Palestinian civilian population, in addition to exercising arbitrary measures and collective punishment policies against them, including the constant closures and economic blockade, shelling of civilian population centers and incursions.

The report added that Israeli forces opened fire 69 times against citizens and their properties, killing nine and injuring 31 others. Israeli forces also launched 39 arrest campaigns, in which 106 citizens were arrested.
ipc.gov.ps

BEIRUT, Lebanon – Israeli warplanes flew across villages in southern Lebanon on Thursday, prompting a complaint from the U.N. envoy to Lebanon who said such illegal flights were increasing.

Geir Pederson, the U.N. secretary general’s representative in Lebanon, issued a statement saying Israel had violated Lebanese airspace six times on Thursday in flights that involved a total of nine aircraft.

He expressed the United Nations’ “concern at the recent increase in violations by Israeli aircraft of Lebanese airspace” and called on Israel to stop all such flights.

In Jerusalem, an Israeli military spokeswoman refused to comment on Pederson’s statement, saying only: “We do not discuss air force activity.”
thestate.com

The Pentagon has secretly shipped tens of thousands of small arms from Bosnia to Iraq in the past two years, using a web of private companies, at least one of which is a noted arms smuggler blacklisted by Washington and the UN.

According to a report by Amnesty International, which investigated the sales, the US government arranged for the delivery of at least 200,000 Kalashnikov machine guns from Bosnia to Iraq in 2004-05. But though the weaponry was said to be for arming the fledgling Iraqi military, there is no evidence of the guns reaching their recipient.
guardian.co.uk

The spiralling violence in Iraq has led to sustained “sectarian cleansing” with many families forced to take refuge in squalid camps.

The Red Crescent says more than 100,000 people – equally Sunni and Shia Muslim – living in mixed areas have fled their homes since the February bombing of the Golden mosque in Samarra, a revered Shia shrine, which led to a frenzy of tit-for-tat killings.

Those with nowhere to stay find themselves reduced to tent cities like Shu’lah in Baghdad, where 800 families now live.

Other animals do not engage in protracted onslaughts against their own.

In a bid to stop sectarian violence, Iraq’s top Shiite cleric ordered all Shiite mosques to close for three days in a town in southern Iraq where a local Sunni Arab leader was assassinated.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani issued the edict for mosques in Zubayr, where gunmen killed Sunni imam Sheik Khaled Ali Obeid al-Saadoun and two of his associates Wednesday as they left a mosque after evening prayers. Al-Saadoun also had served as the local leader of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni Arab political group.

Sheik Mohammed Falak, al-Sistani’s representative in Zubayr, said in a statement Wednesday night that al-Sistani ordered Shiite mosques in the town to close from Thursday through Saturday to protest those killings and other attacks that have taken place against religious sites in the mostly Shiite province of Basra.
kare11.com

TEHRAN Ñ Iran’s top diplomat in Baghdad presented his credentials to Iraqi President Jalal Talabani as his nation’s first ambassador to Iraq in more than 25 years, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

The promotion of Hassan Kazemi-Qomi, who had already been Tehran’s leading diplomat in Iraq, indicates an improvement in official relations between the nations, which have been at the lower diplomatic level of charges d’affaires since ambassadors were withdrawn shortly before the Iran-Iraq war of 1980 to 1988.

“Upgrading the level of relations between the two countries will open a new page in the history of ties between the two countries,” IRNA quoted Talabani as telling Kazemi-Qomi upon receiving his credentials Tuesday night.

Talabani also said Iraq wanted Iran to help in reconstruction efforts, according to IRNA.
latimes.com

MOSCOW (AFP) – Any military action against Iran could cause the regional situation to “explode”, according to the head of Russia’s Security Council Igor Ivanov.

Ivanov called for a diplomatic solution to the international standoff over Iran’s nuclear programme.

“Any military action in Iran will lead to consequences that could seriously explode the situation in the region and beyond,” he was quoted as saying Thursday by ITAR-TASS and Ria Novosti.
news.yahoo.com

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said here Thursday that Iran will defend the legal rights of the Iranian nation and all other free nations.

Responding to the questions raised by the audience after delivering a speech at a gathering of the educated, students and instructors at University of Jakarta, he made the above comment in reply to a student who asked about the reason for Iran’s insistence on using peaceful nuclear technology.

Stressing that the opposition of Iran’s opponents to the country’s nuclear activities has nothing to do with their anxieties over possible deviation from peaceful path, he said, “Expression of anxieties by the enemies is just a big lie.

“There are many bullying countries, whose arsenals are full of nuclear and chemical weapons. They launch war anywhere in the world and use a variety of weapons. Besides, they have equipped many states, in particular the Zionist regime, with various types of nuclear arms.”

The president said this proves that they are not worried about nuclear weapons, given that they test a new weapon every day and threaten world nations with these weapons. “In view of this, how can they oppose nuclear weapons?”

He noted that in fact, what they oppose is the scientific progress of nations such as Iran and Indonesia, given their will for monopoly on science and technology to be used as a medium for hegemony over the world nations.
irna.ir

WASHINGTON (AP) — The government has abruptly ended an inquiry into the warrantless eavesdropping program because the National Security Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers the necessary security clearance to probe the matter.

The Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, or OPR, sent a fax to Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., on Wednesday saying they were closing their inquiry because without clearance their lawyers cannot examine Justice lawyers’ role in the program.

”We have been unable to make any meaningful progress in our investigation because OPR has been denied security clearances for access to information about the NSA program,” OPR counsel H. Marshall Jarrett wrote to Hinchey. Hinchey’s office shared the letter with The Associated Press.
nytimes.com

Palast:The Times and USA Today have Missed the Bigger Story — Again
I know you’re shocked — SHOCKED! — that George Bush is listening in on all your phone calls. Without a warrant. That’s nothing. And it’s not news.

This is: the snooping into your phone bill is just the snout of the pig of a strange, lucrative link-up between the Administration’s Homeland Security spy network and private companies operating beyond the reach of the laws meant to protect us from our government. You can call it the privatization of the FBI — though it is better described as the creation of a private KGB.

The leader in the field of what is called “data mining,” is a company, formed in 1997, called, “ChoicePoint, Inc,” which has sucked up over a billion dollars in national security contracts.

Worried about Dick Cheney listening in Sunday on your call to Mom? That ain’t nothing. You should be more concerned that they are linking this info to your medical records, your bill purchases and your entire personal profile including, not incidentally, your voting registration. Five years ago, I discovered that ChoicePoint had already gathered 16 billion data files on Americans — and I know they’ve expanded their ops at an explosive rate.

CIA Nominee Hayden Defends NSA Programs
CIA director nominee Gen. Michael Hayden on Friday defended the secret surveillance programs he oversaw while head of another spy agency as lawful and designed to “preserve the security and the liberty of the American people.”
gee I’m glad somebody is watching over my security and liberty: I was worried.

Gonzales: NSA may tap ‘ordinary’ Americans’ e-mail
WASHINGTON–Agents operating a controversial National Security Agency surveillance program may have inadvertently spied on the e-mails and phone calls of Americans with no ties to terrorists, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Monday.

Gonzales stressed that the program is “narrowly focused” and that adequate steps are taken to protect privacy, though he said he was unable to describe such procedures because of the program’s classified nature.