Bharat Rakshak

Carl wrote:Egypt to withdraw Israel envoy over Sinai shootings

shyamd wrote:Turkey realise that if Syria splits and kurds get autonomy, its oging to cause big problems for them.
....
Turkey was about to invade Syria when Syria was protecting Abdullah Ocalaan of the PKK.

It is no coincidence that news reports suggesting Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) leader Murat Karayılan had been captured by Iranian intelligence have attracted a great deal of attention.

On Saturday, Iraqi state television announced that security forces had captured the number two of the PKK in an operation against a group of Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK) militants carrying out sabotage attacks in early August.

[...]

By the end of Saturday, the view that Karayılan was not captured had gained in strength. However, by Sunday noon, Iranian state television once more announced the capture of Karayılan. Fars, one of the official Iranian news agencies, argued that the Iranian chairman of the Committee for Foreign Policy and National Security of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, had confirmed the reports suggesting that the number two of the PKK had been captured. In response to an inquiry referring to the news that the number two of the PKK was captured, Boroujerdi said: “This information is correct. Iranian intelligence units have captured the number two of this terror organization. Our intelligence forces have done something great by capturing the number two of the PKK.”

[...]

Subsequently, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and Turkey's envoy to Tehran have taken the stage. Davutoğlu met with Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi, who told him that they did not have any information confirming the capture of Karayılan. Likewise, Turkey's envoy to Tehran talked to Boroujerdi, who told them, “I did not say Karayılan had been captured; I said it would be better had he been captured.”

Interesting, isn't it?

Be sure that this is not theater play or a diplomatic scandal. A strong state like Iran would not display such an immature attitude towards such a delicate issue. Let us assume that the first day was some sort of misunderstanding and that the PKK's number two figure, Karayılan, was confused with the PJAK's number two, Murat Karasac. But there is no explanation for the announcement of similar reports on the second day as well.

Iran is sending an evil message to Turkey; a message saying it is willing to take action against the PKK in return for concessions by Turkey regarding the Syrian issue. The message that this false report seeks to send can be read as follows:

To Turkey, you have a dominant role in the uprisings in Syria, which is an indispensible ally to us in the region. If you try to put pressure on Syria or start an operation against the Syrian regime, we will be strongly involved in the game with the PKK.

In regards to the PKK issue, we are capable of capturing its leader and eliminating its activities; but we are also capable of making it grow. We have all the control in the Kandil Mountains. If you give up on Syria, we will deal with the PKK together; otherwise, we will become allies with the PKK.

To the PKK, we have in mind to capture Murat Karayılan. We will make Cemil Bayik, known for his hawkish stance, your leader, make you go to war with Turkey, and we will extend support to our neighbor. For this reason, we will be involved in your game with Turkey. If you stay close to us, you will win out of it. You should note that rapprochement between Turkey and Syria did not go well and that Turkey is now against Syria. In this way, you can make an alliance with Bashal al-Assad again. Stand with us against Turkey's policy vis-à-vis Syria.

This is backstage of the game staged last weekend. Iran is a big country. It has played its PKK card in an effort to protect its vital ally, Assad, in the Middle East. This is for sure.

The government is facing a tough situation now. It has to deal with both the massacre being committed by a dictator against his own people and the PKK problem. Hopefully, Turkey will take care of these difficult issues through good diplomacy.

He was too right-wing for Fox TV, or at least for the 400 advertisers who told the network earlier this year they no longer wanted their commercials on his now-cancelled talk show. He provoked international outrage by saying the Norwegian youth camp where 68 people were massacred in July bore "disturbing similarities" to the Hitler Youth. He has horrified the staunchly pro-Israel and anti-racist Anti-Defamation League with his "bigoted ignorance" in comparing reform Judaism to "radicalised Islam".

Yet tonight Glenn Beck, the American super-shock-jock with views which Tea Party Republicans love, but which many Israeli – as well as US – liberals regard as beyond toxic, will be the undisputed star of a "Restoring Courage" rally in Jerusalem. The event is designed to underline his fierce identification with the Israeli cause, or at least, the Israeli cause as he defines it – a cause for which he says he is will to die.

The organisers speak in slightly less radical terms. They say the rally will call for "unity among all faiths" as well as issuing a call to "all citizens of the world to stand with and declare their support for Israel". Beck is pushing that view to its sentimental limit. In a frequently tearful speech at a warm-up rally in Caesarea on Sunday night, Beck proclaimed: "Let the Jewish people know, no matter what our governments may say... we stand with you."

Beck insisted in a Jerusalem Post interview this week that he is "not here for politics". Many are unconvinced. Joanna Brooks, a US expert on Mormonism, the faith Beck was converted to in 1999, argued in the online magazine Religion Dispatches that Beck sees tonight's rally – at which he will appear with the famously right-wing Hollywood actor Jon Voight – as part of "a latter-day crusade to save the Holy Land from the Palestinians". A flavour of the views he expressed at his packed "Restoring Honour" rally in Washington a year ago shows how far Beck identifies with the pro-settler far-right in Israeli politics.

"There are forces in this land, and forces all over the globe, that are trying to destroy us," he told his ecstatic audience then. "They are going to attack the centre of our faith, our common faith, and that is Jerusalem. And it won't be with bullets and bombs. It will be with a two-state solution that cuts off Jerusalem, the Old City, from the rest of the world."

Jerusalem's secular mayor, Nir Barkat, will attend tonight. His spokesman said yesterday he would "give introductory remarks as he does at almost all events that bring over 1,000 visitors from abroad". A clutch of Knesset members and right-wing religious leaders are also expected.

But many, if not most, of the 1,600-strong audience will be from abroad – mainly American supporters who have flown in for an event which the organisers say has pledges of support from Democrat Senator Joe Lieberman, Mort Zuckerman, the Canadian-born billionaire publisher of the New York Daily News, and Republican presidential hopeful Rick Perry. They will include representatives of Christian Zionism, whose passionate support for Israel is complicated by a belief among many of its adherents that Jews will have to convert to Christianity before the second coming of the Messiah.

Beck's visit coincides with – though is not linked to – a visit by 26 Republican members of Congress. This is part of a much larger push by pro-Israel lobbyists in the US to bring 81 American legislators of both parties, including half the freshmen Republican Congress members, to Israel and the West Bank. Although such trips happen every year, this one, organised by an educational charity affiliated to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, has an added edge because of Palestinian plans to seek UN recognition of a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders. The move is strongly opposed by Israel and will be vetoed by the US if it goes ahead. Congressional leaders have already threatened to withhold funding of the Palestinian Authority if it pushes ahead with the plan.

The groups have been scheduled to meet the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, as well Israeli leaders. But their visit is likely to be overshadowed by Beck, who opposes not just the approach to the UN, but the idea of a Palestinian state. Prominent Haaretz blogger Bradley Burston said the irony was that the two-state solution Beck demonises "is probably farther from reality now than it has been at any time in the last 18 years", adding: "But what is irony to a man... for whom most Israelis are not hardline enough and therefore not Israeli enough... a man who knows better than the Jews what Auschwitz means, who Nazis are, what Israel needs, and how Jews figure in the greater plan of God and His Apostle Glenn?"

Philip wrote:And now (US "Christian" fundoos) they want to convert the Jews!

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 42763.html

The strange crusade: Glenn Beck's Holy Land mission
The TV shock-jock's outspoken Zionist views have left many Israelis horrified

IndraD wrote:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14646334

This news report says an Indian MP is also besieged inside Rixos hotel in Tripoli , what was he doing there?

TEHRAN, Aug. 24 (MNA) – The Iranian Embassy in Kuwait has protested the attendance of a Kuwaiti MP in a meeting organized recently by the terrorist Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) in Paris.

In a note that was handed over to the Kuwaiti Foreign Ministry, the embassy protested the move, IRNA reported on Wednesday.

Reportedly the Kuwaiti MP had spoken out against Iran at the meeting and leveled some accusations against the country.

abhishek_sharma wrote:The Kingdom of Magical Thinking: Widely assumed to be a fabulously wealthy welfare state, Saudi Arabia is in fact an economic basket case waiting to happen.

....

Iraq and Kuwait, two countries that share a small border and big history of mutual suspicion and war, are at it again. This time they are arguing about Kuwaiti plans to build a mammoth port that Iraq claims interferes with its shipping lanes in the Gulf.

Although it seems unlikely the tiff could escalate into another conflict, the remarks are disturbingly reminiscent of the recriminations that preceded Saddam Hussein's invasion of Iraq in 1990 and point to the uneasy relationship that has persisted long after Saddam's ouster.

[...]

Kuwait and other Gulf Arab states are deeply worried about widening Iranian influence in the Arab world, particularly Tehran's close ties with Iraq's Shiite-led government. Iran made its views on the port known through Kataib Hezbollah, a Shiite militia group funded and controlled by Iran that operates in Iraq. The group in July warned companies working on the port to stop and said the project would "besiege the Iraqi economy."

But it's not just Shiites who oppose the plan. Politicians across Iraq's political spectrum have rallied against it — reflecting fears that Iraq's access to the lucrative Gulf shipping trade will be cut off just as the country is regaining its economic footing.

Iraq's only sea access is through a narrow strip of water going from the Gulf to the port of Umm Qasr. Iraqis question why Kuwait with its hundreds of miles of coastline positioned its port where it directly juts into Iraq's only access to the sea.

Tensions between Iraq and Kuwait appear to have escalated to violence after several rockets struck the border area between the two countries, where a controversial new mega-port project is under construction.

[...]

Three Katyusha rockets hit the border area in the early hours of Friday morning last week, Al-Arabiya television reported. The rockets reportedly landed in Iraqi territory without reaching Kuwait.

While Iraqi officials have denied that the port was targeted, the Iraqi Shia militia Kata'ib Hezbollah had earlier threatened the South Korean consortium working on the project unless it stopped.

Strange are the ways of Persian diplomacy. Two things struck me this morning. First, the case of the Russians breaking the contract for sale of S-300 missiles to Iran. Moscow came under sustained American pressure in the heydays of the US-Russia ‘reset’ to jettison its military ties with Tehran. Although UN sanctions didn’t prohibit the S-300 deal worth several hundred millions of dollars, Moscow caved in. Tehran understood it became a ‘victim’ of US-Russia reset. It had the option to sue Moscow for damage, but it didn’t. For, that would have accelerated the ‘cooling’ of Iran’s ties with Russia.

So, Tehran waited - until ties with Moscow improved. As Moscow made overtures to Tehran to improve relations, Iranians feel encouraged to sue the Russians at the International Court of Justice. This might seem theatre of the absurd. But it has a greater logic. If Iran wins the case, it opens the way to ‘liberate’ Russia from the bondage of the ‘reset’ with the US. Moscow will be left with the choice to pay heavy damages to Tehran or take the easy course of reviving the S-300 deal. In short, as Iran’s ambassador to Russia put it, Tehran hopes that ICJ ruling “would help Russia carry out the supplies.”

What a subtle use of Persian language to hint Iran’s ICJ suit is a joint Russian-Iranian venture. It comes after FM Ali Akbar Salehi’s visit to Moscow ten days ago. The crisis over Syria has brought about Russian-Iranian proximity. The two countries have common viewpoints on Syria. Again, who do you think President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad had at home last evening in Tehran to break the Ramadan fast?

The Qatari emir, Sheikh Hamad Khalifa Al Thani! Yes, the same gentleman who is bankrolling the Libyan operations by the european countries and who is burning midnight oil to bring democracy to Syria by overthrowing the regime of Bashar Al-Assad, Iran’s closest ally in the region. Could Hamad be the harbinger of tidings from the opposite camp?

Hamad is perfectly capable of selling the same camel to two buyers simultaneously and then keeping it to himself at the end of the day. The big question is whether he brought some conciliatory message from Saudi Arabia. After all, with Turkey finding itself in a quagmire in the Kurdish mountains, it would have no appetite for an intervention in Syria. That would give Assad a breather and the Saudis an itch to do some rethink.

By Mahan Abedin

As the street-level opposition to the Syrian regime shows no signs of abating, there is growing pressure on strategic planners in Tehran to prepare for all scenarios, including one that doesn't involve current Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as the lynchpin of Syrian politics.

The perceived gravity of the problem, reinforced by region-wide changes, should force the entire Iranian foreign policymaking establishment to re-think and re-imagine the deepest dimensions of the country's regional diplomacy, including the very idea of the so-called "resistance axis".

There are deep fears in Tehran that the downfall or emasculation of Assad and the Alawite-led Ba'athist regime in Damascus will at the very least complicate the intricate set of relations that Iran maintains with Lebanese and Palestinian non-state actors, notably Hezbollah and Hamas, and effectively set the Islamic Republic on the back foot in the great strategic rivalry with the United States over influence and hegemony in the Middle East.

While this anxiety is understandable and partly reflects the genuine balance of forces and interests on the ground, it is ultimately myopic and the product of unimaginative strategic thinking. The partial and (in the case of Libya) total collapse of several Arab regimes in the Middle East and North Africa, is a harbinger for a profound re-alignment of the strategic map of the region, and specifically one where diplomacy is set to become more complex and entail greater involvement by indigenous powers.

In this scenario, the so-called "resistance axis" will have to be re-configured to respond to more complex diplomatic and strategic challenges, for while it may not be rendered totally redundant, its rhetorical power may not be so easily invoked to reduce all regional dynamics to a competition between Iran and the United States.

Defining the resistance axis
In the journalistic and increasingly academic discourse, the resistance axis in the Middle East is generally defined as an anti-Israeli and to some extent anti-American political, military and diplomatic alliance between key states and highly capable non-state political-military organizations.

The non-state actors, chiefly in the form of Hezbollah, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, assume the frontline burden of the nexus by directly confronting Israel and heightening the Jewish state's threat perception; thus undermining its ability to respond to more subtle and long-term challenges.

Syria is often described as the state with the most proximate relationship with these groups and the country which forms their primary line of defense. Syria in turn is described as being sustained and supported by the Islamic Republic of Iran, whose material, political and spiritual support is all-important to the preservation of the resistance axis.

From this point of view, both the software and hardware resides in Tehran, and it is the Islamic Republic's political, economic and ideological might that enables and empowers this nexus of resistance.

Most analysts describe the ultimate functionality of this resistance axis as a proxy war between Iran and Israel and a suitable vehicle for both states to avoid direct confrontation. More astute observers see it as a great game between Iran and the United States, to determine the political and ideological direction of the region.

What is remarkable is that Iranian, Arab and Western analysts are united in their description of the form, nature and functionality of the resistance axis.

The most immediate consequence of this unity of perception and analysis is that it skews understanding of the wider and deeper diplomatic nuances and dynamics of the region by ignoring several existing and emerging factors that shape regional diplomacy, including demographics, shifting public opinion and democratization.

The notion of a resistance axis - and by extension a counter-axis - reduces the region's diverse political and ideological forces to neatly defined pro-Iranian and anti-American camps.

While there is more than just a kernel of truth to this description - and there is no denying the fierce rivalry between Iran and the United States - the region's political future is determined by a wider range of factors and state actors like Saudi Arabia, Jordan and even the tiny Persian Gulf states cannot be viewed solely as enablers of American foreign policy.

The Arab Spring, and the expected resulting shift in political and diplomatic orientation, will bring the notion of a resistance axis, and the analytical frameworks that sustain it, under greater scrutiny. In particular, the gradual emergence of Egypt as a political, diplomatic and possibly even ideological power in its own right will significantly complicate regional diplomacy and might conceivably lead to the re-definition of the relationship between Iran and America.

Strategic planning requires a clear definition of goals and means. In this case, the most important question is why does the Islamic Republic of Iran support non-state actors in the region? Officially, Iran supports Lebanese Hezbollah and to a lesser extent Palestinian Hamas for primarily ideological motives and as part of a broader ethical foreign policy which prioritizes values over interests.

Unofficially, Tehran-based foreign policy experts produce a more sophisticated and comprehensive defense of this policy, and one that takes sufficient stock of the balance of power in the region, and the extent to which popular non-state actors can tilt that balance in Iran's favor.

But the gradual emergence of more independent-minded regional powers, and by extension the relative decline of American influence, call into question the wisdom of extending considerable support to non-state actors indefinitely.

Rethinking regional diplomacy
As the noose gradually tightens around Assad's neck, there is increasing indication that influential voices in Tehran are beginning to think about contingency planning. But the essential problem remains Iran's inability to imagine a Syria without the existing power structures and supporting ideology.

A recent interview with the well-informed and well-travelled Iranian lawmaker Sirous Borna Baldaji, which appeared in the influential Iranian Diplomacy website, is indicative of the depth of confusion that prevails in Tehran. Entitled "If Assad goes the Salafis will seize power", the interview is based on Baldaji's extensive recent field research in Syria.

The latter's insinuation that the cutting edge - if not the controlling brain - of the Syrian demonstrators are hardline Salafi extremists, is not only indicative of poor research but lack of imagination in terms of viewing a post-Assad Syria.

Baldaji's argument appears to be that once these so-called Salafis seize control of the reins of power in Damascus they will proceed to limit ties with Iran and cut off the vital support line to Hezbollah. It is an argument that is not only devoid of a deep understanding of Syria's strategic profile, but one that takes insufficient stock of broader regional dynamics.

In view of these regional dynamics, namely the empowerment of potentially pro-Iranian Islamists in Cairo and the emergence of a volatile and inexperienced regime in Tripoli, Iran should look to cultivating deeper ties with these states and by extension de-emphasizing the relationship with non-state actors.

The resistance axis needs to be rethought and reconfigured to adapt to emerging political and strategic developments and ultimately tied to a more lucid definition of Iranian national interests.

If Iran's primary national interest in the region is the expulsion of foreign military forces from the Persian Gulf area, then the emergence of more democratic regimes, whose chief sensitivity is their own public opinion, is supportive of this long-term strategic goal.

From this point of view, the downfall of Assad, however unlikely it may appear at this stage, is not necessarily the disaster imagined by many in Tehran's policymaking circles.

Mahan Abedin is an analyst of Middle East politics.

More than five years after the American military denied claims that its troops had executed at least 10 Iraqi civilians in cold blood, new evidence has emerged in a WikiLeaks diplomatic cable casting serious doubt on the US version of events.


A UN complaint contained in the latest batch of cables published by the whistle-blowing organisation suggests that in 2006 US troops killed at least 10 civilians, including five children and an elderly woman, in the central town of Ishaqi before ordering an air strike which destroyed the house where the alleged killings took place.

The incident is raised in a letter from Philip Alston, the UN rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. Mr Alston's letter to US officials, which went unanswered, challenges the American military version of events. It says that autopsies carried out in the nearby city of Tikrit showed the victims had been handcuffed and shot in the head. They included a woman in her 70s and a five-month-old. The US military had said that the troops seized an al-Qa'ida suspect from a first floor room after fierce fighting left the house in ruins. US officials originally said five people had been killed, although they later accepted a higher toll of 11.

McClatchy said the Pentagon did not respond to requests for comment.

RajeshA wrote:This would create a complete encircling of Israel by the Sunnis.

RajeshA wrote:For India it is good when neither the Sunni bloc becomes too strong nor the Shi'a bloc. We also don't want Israel to fall in West Asia, because if it does, we will become the next target of Ummah!

abhischekcc wrote:We should support for one main reason, that it is the human thing to do. They have suffered enough because one religion or the other wants to steal the legacy of Jews.

ramana wrote:I think Turkey is bolstering its Islamist credentials by downgrading relations with Israel as a prelude to attacking Syria.

By their books, ye shall know them.

I'm talking about the volumes, the libraries – nay, the very halls of literature – which the international crimes against humanity of 11 September 2001 have spawned. Many are spavined with pseudo-patriotism and self-regard, others rotten with the hopeless mythology of CIA/Mossad culprits, a few (from the Muslim world, alas) even referring to the killers as "boys", almost all avoiding the one thing which any cop looks for after a street crime: the motive.

Why so, I ask myself, after 10 years of war, hundreds of thousands of innocent deaths, lies and hypocrisy and betrayal and sadistic torture by the Americans – our MI5 chaps just heard, understood, maybe looked, of course no touchy-touchy nonsense – and the Taliban? Have we managed to silence ourselves as well as the world with our own fears? Are we still not able to say those three sentences: The 19 murderers of 9/11 claimed they were Muslims. They came from a place called the Middle East. Is there a problem out there?

American publishers first went to war in 2001 with massive photo-memorial volumes. Their titles spoke for themselves: Above Hallowed Ground, So Others Might Live, Strong of Heart, What We Saw, The Final Frontier, A Fury for God, The Shadow of Swords... Seeing this stuff piled on newsstands across America, who could doubt that the US was going to go to war? And long before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, another pile of tomes arrived to justify the war after the war. Most prominent among them was ex-CIA spook Kenneth Pollack's The Threatening Storm – and didn't we all remember Churchill's The Gathering Storm? – which, needless to say, compared the forthcoming battle against Saddam with the crisis faced by Britain and France in 1938.

There were two themes to this work by Pollack – "one of the world's leading experts on Iraq," the blurb told readers, among whom was Fareed Zakaria ("one of the most important books on American foreign policy in years," he drivelled) – the first of which was a detailed account of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction; none of which, as we know, actually existed. The second theme was the opportunity to sever the "linkage" between "the Iraq issue and the Arab-Israeli conflict".

The Palestinians, deprived of the support of powerful Iraq, went the narrative, would be further weakened in their struggle against Israeli occupation. Pollack referred to the Palestinians' "vicious terrorist campaign" – but without any criticism of Israel. He wrote of "weekly terrorist attacks followed by Israeli responses (sic)", the standard Israeli version of events. America's bias towards Israel was no more than an Arab "belief". Well, at least the egregious Pollack had worked out, in however slovenly a fashion, that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had something to do with 9/11, even if Saddam had not.

In the years since, of course, we've been deluged with a rich literature of post-9/11 trauma, from the eloquent The Looming Tower of Lawrence Wright to the Scholars for 9/11 Truth, whose supporters have told us that the plane wreckage outside the Pentagon was dropped by a C-130, that the jets that hit the World Trade Centre were remotely guided, that United 93 was shot down by a US missile, etc. Given the secretive, obtuse and sometimes dishonest account presented by the White House – not to mention the initial hoodwinking of the official 9/11 commission staff – I am not surprised that millions of Americans believe some of this, let alone the biggest government lie: that Saddam was behind 9/11. Leon Panetta, the CIA's newly appointed autocrat, repeated this same lie in Baghdad only this year.

There have been movies, too. Flight 93 re-imagined what may (or may not) have happened aboard the plane which fell into a Pennsylvania wood. Another told a highly romanticised story, in which the New York authorities oddly managed to prevent almost all filming on the actual streets of the city. And now we're being deluged with TV specials, all of which have accepted the lie that 9/11 did actually change the world – it was the Bush/Blair repetition of this dangerous notion that allowed their thugs to indulge in murderous invasions and torture – without for a moment asking why the press and television went along with the idea. So far, not one of these programmes has mentioned the word "Israel" – and Brian Lapping's Thursday night ITV offering mentioned "Iraq" once, without explaining the degree to which 11 September 2001 provided the excuse for this 2003 war crime. How many died on 9/11? Almost 3,000. How many died in the Iraq war? Who cares?

Publication of the official 9/11 report – in 2004, but read the new edition of 2011 – is indeed worth study, if only for the realities it does present, although its opening sentences read more like those of a novel than of a government inquiry. "Tuesday ... dawned temperate and nearly cloudless in the eastern United States... For those heading to an airport, weather conditions could not have been better for a safe and pleasant journey. Among the travellers were Mohamed Atta..." Were these guys, I ask myself, interns at Time magazine?

But I'm drawn to Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan whose The Eleventh Day confronts what the West refused to face in the years that followed 9/11. "All the evidence ... indicates that Palestine was the factor that united the conspirators – at every level," they write. One of the organisers of the attack believed it would make Americans concentrate on "the atrocities that America is committing by supporting Israel". Palestine, the authors state, "was certainly the principal political grievance ... driving the young Arabs (who had lived) in Hamburg".

The motivation for the attacks was "ducked" even by the official 9/11 report, say the authors. The commissioners had disagreed on this "issue" – cliché code word for "problem" – and its two most senior officials, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, were later to explain: "This was sensitive ground ...Commissioners who argued that al-Qa'ida was motivated by a religious ideology – and not by opposition to American policies – rejected mentioning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict... In their view, listing US support for Israel as a root cause of al-Qa'ida's opposition to the United States indicated that the United States should reassess that policy." And there you have it.

So what happened? The commissioners, Summers and Swan state, "settled on vague language that circumvented the issue of motive". There's a hint in the official report – but only in a footnote which, of course, few read. In other words, we still haven't told the truth about the crime which – we are supposed to believe – "changed the world for ever". Mind you, after watching Obama on his knees before Netanyahu last May, I'm really not surprised.

When the Israeli Prime Minister gets even the US Congress to grovel to him, the American people are not going to be told the answer to the most important and "sensitive" question of 9/11: why?

Philip wrote:One wnders whether Bibi's refusal to apologise,just one word,"sorry" is going to cost Isael very dearly in the long run.