Israel savored a victory on Sunday after U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton hailed his “unprecedented” position on settlements and back tracked from a previous call for a complete freeze to settlement construction before possible peace talks with the Palestinians.

“There is no question that the United States are our staunchest friends and that Israel’s firm stance on its positions pays off,” Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon told public radio on Sunday in a satisfied tone echoed by other officials.

The Israelis had reason to be satisfied.

In a joint press conference held, unusually, before talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pressed for negotiations to be restarted as soon as possible, despite the Palestinian insistence — which Washington backed only a few months ago — that Israel must first put a stop to all settlement activity in the occupied West Bank.

Sigh. Rewarding the Israelis for being obstinate and disagreeable will yield more of the same in the future. Sucks to be you Mrs. Clinton.

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Libya not only sits on the Security Council, it also is president of the General Assembly. So that means that Qaddafi has the U.S. over a boulder twice over. If the U.S. vetoes Security Council consideration of the Report, Libya can introduce it before the General Assembly, where we don’t have veto. If Abbas hadn’t singed himself so badly in mishandling this affair, he might’ve been able to weasel out of this by telling Libya to take a hike. But Hamas already has his ass in a sling over his betrayal of the Gazans. He can’t very well dump Goldstone twice.

So Obama may have the Goldstone nightmare return to haunt him in the Security Council. It might even be passed by the General Assembly. So much for our president’s supposed political adeptness.

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The United Nations Security Council will hold closed-door consultations on Wednesday to consider whether to accept a Libyan request for a meeting mainly to discuss a U.N. report that accused Israel and Palestinian fighters of war crimes during Israel’s assault of Gaza, diplomats said.

Libya’s deputy ambassador Ibrahim Dabbashi told AFP that his country circulated a letter on behalf of the U.N. Arab group requesting “an emergency meeting” of the 15-member body to consider the U.N. report.
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A spokesman for Libya’s U.N. mission, Ahmed Gebreel, said his country, which currently has a Security Council seat, had requested a meeting “because of the seriousness of the report and because we think it’s too long to wait until March.”

“We are welcoming Libya’s step that they have asked the Security Council to meet to discuss the Goldstone report,” Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said in a telephone conversation from Rome.

“Libya’s step is supporting the Palestinian people’s rights.”

Critics of the Palestinian Authority have accused Abbas of letting his people down by agreeing to the postponement. A statement by the Palestinian observer mission at the United Nations said it fully supported the Libyan request for a Security Council meeting.

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A new Palestinian police report notes a worrying rise in the number of Palestinians attempting or committing suicide

The number of suicide attempts among Palestinians in the West Bank has gone up by 65% since 2008, a new Palestinian police report says.

The Palestinian police’s Department of Planning and Research said that although the number of successful suicide attempts has gone down, the numbers collected so far show that more people have tried to kill themselves since the beginning of 2009 than during the whole of 2008.

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Some 50 intellectuals and filmmakers, including Briton Ken Loach, have accused the Toronto film festival of “complicity with the Israeli propaganda machine” over its spotlight this year of Tel Aviv.

The Toronto International Film Festival chose this year to present 10 films on the Jewish metropolis by local filmmakers for its “City to City” program, which each year focuses its lens on a different city.
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“Looking at modern, sophisticated Tel Aviv without also considering the city’s past and the realities of Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza strip, would be like rhapsodizing about the beauty and elegant lifestyles in white-only Cape Town or Johannesburg during apartheid without acknowledging the corresponding black townships of Khayelitsha and Soweto.”

The 50 signatories to the letter include Canadian sociologist Naomi Klein, British filmmaker Ken Loach, American actress Jane Fonda and several Israeli filmmakers.

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The outpouring of American public sympathy for Iranian demonstrators might never have occurred had cable news outlets not made the courageous decision to broadcast Neda’s killing vividly and repeatedly.

Yet when Palestinians employ direct action tactics to protest Israeli oppression, and when Israeli forces respond with wanton brutality, they are ignored by the US media, even when footage is already available through online sources.

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I thought I was making a cogent pt. until I read this disturbing column in the NY Times which claims that Lashkar IS an out & out anti-Semitic outfit which DOES want to foment holy war against the Jews.  I wonder what’s your take on this & whether you anyone currently living in Pakistan has anything to say on the subject.

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