Press Statement
NRIs DEMAND JUDICIAL PROBE INTO THE KILLING OF HEMANT KARKARE and PROPOSED INTER-FAITH DELEGATION OF AMERICAN INDIANS TO PAKISTAN
A meeting of NRIs and secular Indians was held at the Indian Islamic Cultural Center on the 28th December 2008 at 3pm. It was over presided by Dr. AK Nakadar, the Chief Trustee of the American Federation of Muslims of Indian Origin (AFMI), the leading organization of Indian Muslims in the US, and Mr. Amaresh Misra, the President of All India Patriotic Forum (AIPF). The meeting was attended by various representatives of AFMI from USA and Canada--Mr. Ali Qureshi, President, Dr. Shakir Mukhi, Dr Shahid Ali, and Aslam Ayubi.
The meeting was also attended by Badruddin Ajmal, the Chief of Assam United Democratic Front (AUDF). Mr. Ajmal seconded the demand of a probe into the death of Hemant Karkare, Vijay Salaskar and Ashok Kaamte and exhorted Muslims to form a secular party of the oppressed which can bring about a revolution in India.
Other speakers included Shri John Dayal, Shri Arshad Khan, President National Loktantrik Party, Waqar Rizvi, MJ Khan, President National Economic Forum of Muslims (NEFM), Illyas Azmi, MP, Aamir Rashidi, and Yogi Sikand, Pragati Sharma and Julia Manke.
The meeting passed the followed resolutions:
1) The AFMI and AIPF demand a judicial probe into the death of Hemant Karkare, Vijay Salaskar and Ashok Kaamte, during the Mumbai terror attack. A special PIL or RTI shall be used to this effect.
2) The AFMI and AIPF resolve to denounce terrorism in all its phases and dimensions and urge people of all faiths to join hands and work for a peaceful India. The participants of the conference organized by the 2 groups believe that terrorism is sponsored by those who use hatred as a weapon to disturb social peace for socio-political and economic gain.
3) The AFMI and AIPF denounce all those who use terrorism as an excuse to spread hatred against Islam and Muslims, Christians and Christianity, Hindus and Hinduism and other religions to persecute ordinary innocent people. The campaign of Islamophobia is detrimental to the social coexistence of different communities in India and outside.
4) The AFMI and AIPF recognize the severity of the tension that now exists between India and Pakistan consequent to 26/11 acts of terrorism in Mumbai and propose that a delegation of NRIs, Muslims, Christians and Hindus visit Pakistan to convey the message of peace to the political leaders of the two countries.
5) The AFMI and AIPF also condemn all forms of state terrorism and its links to individual terrorism. Both feed on each other.
6) The AFMI and AIPF resolve that a special civil rights act for Indian minorities, which protects them from atrocities, ought to be enacted to protect and extend constitutional rights enshrined in the constitution of India.
Dr. AK Nakadar Amaresh Misra
AFMI AIPF
The Israel Air Force used a new bunker-buster missile that it received recently from the United States in strikes against Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, The Jerusalem Post learned on Sunday.
The missile, called GBU-39, was developed in recent years by the US as a small-diameter bomb for low-cost, high-precision and low collateral damage strikes.
Israel received approval from Congress to purchase 1,000 units in September and defense officials said on Sunday that the first shipment had arrived earlier this month and was used successfully in penetrating underground Kassam launchers in the Gaza Strip during the heavy aerial bombardment of Hamas infrastructure on Saturday. It was also used in Sunday's bombing of tunnels in Rafah.
The GPS-guided GBU-39 is said to be one of the most accurate bombs in the world. The 113-kg. bomb has the same penetration capabilities as a normal 900-kg. bomb, although it has only 22.7 kg. of explosives. At just 1.75 meters long, its small size increases the number of bombs an aircraft can carry and the number of targets it can attack in a sortie.
Tests conducted in the US have proven that the bomb is capable of penetrating at least 90 cm. of steel-reinforced concrete. The GBU-39 can be used in adverse weather conditions and has a standoff range of more than 110 km. due to pop-out wings.
Also Sunday, Military Intelligence's Psychological Warfare Department broke into radio broadcasts in Gaza and warned Palestinian civilians not to cooperate with Hamas terrorist activity.
Palestinians reported that they received phone calls to their cellular phones and landlines from the IDF. The phone call, the Palestinians said, conveyed a recorded message ordering the immediate evacuation of homes that were next to Hamas infrastructure or being used by the terrorist organization.
On Sunday, head of the Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration Col. Moshe Levy was interviewed by several Arab news outlets during which he stressed that Israel was not against the Palestinian public in Gaza but was operating against Hamas.
Defense officials said Sunday that Israel would, however, not hesitate to target the homes of civilians who protected Hamas terrorists throughout the operation.
"We will go after every Hamas operative, no matter where he is," one official said. "We urge the Palestinians not to cooperate with terrorists."
ISRAELI jets bombed Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip for a third day today amid growing international calls for an end to the violence that has left more than 300 dead.
As Israeli tanks massed ahead of an expected ground operation, warplanes staged dozens of bombing raids in the densely populated Palestinian enclave, killing seven people, including six children, medics said.
Editor of 'Editor & Publisher'
Posted December 28, 2008In the usual process, the U.S. government, media here -- and most of the leading liberal bloggers -- are silent or playing down questions about whether Israel overreacted in its massive air strikes on Gaza, while the foreign press, and even Haaretz in Israel, carries more balanced accounts.
Anyone who cares should consult the respected Haaretz site often, if for no other reason than to learn that criticism of Israeli military actions are usually more heated inside that country than in the USA. The New York Times, for example, as of today (Monday), has not yet editorialized on the air assault. You may recall the lockstep support in the U.S. for Israeli's invasion of southern Lebanon, which included the use of U.S.-made cluster bombs. That invasion turned out to be a genuine fiasco.
One Sunday analysis at Haaretz: "A million and a half human beings, most of them downcast and desperate refugees, live in the conditions of a giant jail, fertile ground for another round of bloodletting. The fact that Hamas may have gone too far with its rockets is not the justification of the Israeli policy for the past few decades, for which it justly merits an Iraqi shoe to the face."
Another opinion piece in Haaretz -- titled, "Neighborhood Bully Strikes Again" -- by Gideon Levy: "Israel embarked yesterday on yet another unnecessary, ill-fated war. On July 16, 2006, four days after the start of the Second Lebanon War, I wrote: 'Every neighborhood has one, a loud-mouthed bully who shouldn't be provoked into anger... Not that the bully's not right - someone did harm him. But the reaction, what a reaction!' Two and a half years later, these words repeat themselves, to our horror, with chilling precision. Within the span of a few hours on a Saturday afternoon, the IDF sowed death and destruction on a scale that the Qassam rockets never approached in all their years, and Operation 'Cast Lead' is only in its infancy."
Also from Haaretz, Zvi Barel writes: "Six months ago Israel asked and received a cease-fire from Hamas. It unilaterally violated it when it blew up a tunnel, while still asking Egypt to get the Islamic group to hold its fire." Yet the U.S. media refers that only Hamas violated the ceasefire.
Another columnist there, Yossi Sarid, writes: "I can only hope that this time, for a change, we will know when to stop. This war must be described from the get-go as a war 'to be on the safe side,' rather than of necessity, and it is still unclear whether the last missile fired will be fired by us or by them."
Amira Hass, the paper's correspondent in Gaza, reports: "There are many corpses and wounded, every moment another casualty is added to the list of the dead, and there is no more room in the morgue. Relatives search among the bodies and the wounded in order to bring the dead quickly to burial. A mother whose three school-age children were killed, and are piled one on top of the other in the morgue, screams and then cries, screams again and then is silent."
From the lead Haaretz editorial: "[T]he inherent desire for retribution does not necessarily have to blind us to the view from the day after....Israel's violation of the lull in November expedited the deterioration that gave birth to the war of yesterday. But even if this continues for many days and even weeks, it will end in an agreement, or at least an understanding similar to that reached last June."
UPDATE: A McClatchy dispatch quotes Daniel Levy, a political analyst in Israel who once served as an adviser to Ehud Barak, who is leading the military campaign against Hamas: "I don't see how this ends well, even if, in two weeks time, it looks like it ends well."
Haaretz has just posted this from another columnist, Tom Segev: "[T]he assault on Gaza does not first and foremost demand moral condemnation - it demands a few historical reminders. Both the justification given for it and the chosen targets are a replay of the same basic assumptions that have proven wrong time after time. Yet Israel still pulls them out of its hat again and again, in one war after another."
And this from another columnist, Akiva Eldar: "The tremendous population density in the Gaza Strip does not allow a "surgical operation" over an extended period that would minimize damage to civilian populations. The difficult images from the Strip will soon replace those of the damage inflicted by Qassam rockets in the western Negev. The scale of losses, which works in 'favor' of the Palestinians, will return Israel to the role of Goliath."
The New York Times late Sunday reported, "At Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, women wailed as they searched for relatives among bodies that lay strewn on the hospital floor. One doctor said that given the dearth of facilities, not much could be done for the seriously wounded, and that it was 'better to be brought in dead.'"
The Washington Post's update: "By late Sunday night, the toll had reached 290 dead and as many as 1,300 wounded, Moawia Hassanain, a senior Palestinian Health Ministry official, said in an interview. The fatalities included 22 children younger than 16; more than 235 children were wounded, he said."
Greg Mitchell is editor of Editor & Publisher. His latest book, on Iraq and the media, is "So Wrong for So Long."
America Can't Wait for Bush to Leave
Bush Congratulating Himself, Trying to Shake Own Hand.
by Amanda Terkel, Think Progress
| Pak presents proposals to defuse Indo-Pak tension Updated at: 1710 PST, Tuesday, December 30, 2008  ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Tuesday said there was a "positive" development in its relations with India during last 48 hours, and reiterated its stance to cooperate on joint investigation into Mumbai incident. "Pakistan considers the development [with India] in last 48 hours as 'positive and welcoming'," Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said in his policy statement he read out at Foreign Office here. He recommended India to de-activate its forward air bases and put ground forces to peacetime locations, to resume friendly atmosphere between the two neighbouring countries. He said if India considers these suggestions, it would prove helpful in diffusing the ongoing tense situation between the two countries. Qureshi said the statement of Indian External Affairs Minister, Pranab Mukherjee regarding joint investigation into Mumbai incident also supported Pakistan's stance, as he admitted of not providing evidence to Pakistan so far. Of another positive development, Qureshi said that Mukherjee also categorically stated that India did not give ultimatum to Pakistan. He said Pakistan believes that ultimatums do not help improve relations between the countries. The Foreign Minister said Pakistan's approach was positive from the day one and it stands by its commitment to cooperate into the investigation whenever evidence was provided. "I reiterate that Pakistan wants to cooperate and has a positive approach," he said. Qureshi also termed positive recent developments including the direct contact between the DGMOs of Pakistan and India, and the telephonic conversation between President Asif Ali Zardari and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The Foreign Minister said Pakistan was also thankful to China for its efforts to de-escalate tension between Pakistan and India. Qureshi stressed the need for using direct contacts and diplomatic channels for improving the ties and said the importance of dialogue should not be overruled. The Foreign Minister said coercions and pressures would only benefit the powers involved in Mumbai incident that tried to dismantle peace between the two countries and also in the region. | |
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