August, 29 2008, 01:39pm EDT

FISA Court Denies Public Access To Spy Law Proceedings
ACLU Criticizes Decision That Will Allow Constitutionality Of Government Surveillance To Be Decided In Secret
WASHINGTON
In
a decision issued late Thursday, a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Court (FISC) judge denied a motion from the American Civil Liberties
Union seeking to bring a measure of transparency to the court's legal
review of the Bush administration's new spying law.
On July 10, less than two hours
after the president signed the FISA Amendments Act (FAA) into law, the
ACLU filed legal papers asking the FISC to ensure that any proceedings
it might conduct relating to the scope, meaning or constitutionality of
the FAA be open to the public to the extent possible. The ACLU also
asked the secret court to allow it to file a brief and participate in
oral arguments, to order the government to file a public version of its
briefs addressing the law's constitutionality and to publish any
judicial decision that is ultimately issued. The FISC oversees
intelligence surveillance, typically operates in secret and hears
arguments only from the government.
The following can be attributed to Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project:
"It's disappointing that the
intelligence court intends to adjudicate these important legal issues
in complete secrecy. The new surveillance law affects all of us because
it allows the executive branch virtually unfettered access to the
international telephone and email communications of U.S. citizens and
residents. The Bush administration says that the new law is necessary
to protect the country against terrorism, but there's nothing in the
law that prevents the government from monitoring the communications of
innocent Americans. Especially given the serious questions about the
new law's constitutionality, the court's consideration of these issues
should be adversarial and as transparent and informed as possible. The
intelligence court should not be deciding important constitutional
issues in secret judicial opinions issued after secret hearings at
which only the government is permitted to appear."
Thursday's FISC decision, which is signed by Judge Mary A. McLaughlin, is available here: www.aclu.org/safefree/nsaspying/36590lgl20080828.html
When the ACLU filed its motion with
the FISC, it also filed a separate legal challenge to the new law in
the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
More information about that legal challenge is available online at: www.aclu.org/faa
The American Civil Liberties Union was founded in 1920 and is our nation's guardian of liberty. The ACLU works in the courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to all people in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States.
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Sanders Blasts AIPAC After Group Thanks Him for Not Demanding Cease-Fire in Gaza
The senator—under progressive pressure to change his position on Israel's war—noted that AIPAC "has supported dozens of GOP extremists who are undermining our democracy" and is "now working hard to defeat progressive members of Congress."
Nov 05, 2023
After the American Israel Public Affairs Committee on Sunday publicly thanked U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders for declining to join global calls for a cease-fire in Israel's war on the Gaza Strip, the Vermont Independent rebuffed the lobbying group.
"AIPAC has supported dozens of GOP extremists who are undermining our democracy," Sanders said on social media. "They're now working hard to defeat progressive members of Congress. We won't let that happen. Let us stand together in the fight for a world of peace, economic and social justice, and climate sanity."
Sanders' comments were similar to those of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) earlier this week. Responding to the group attacking her on social media, the congresswoman, who supports a cease-fire, said: "AIPAC endorsed scores of January 6th insurrectionists. They are no friend to American democracy. They are one of the more racist and bigoted PACs in Congress as well, who disproportionately target members of color. They are an extremist organization that destabilizes U.S. democracy."
On Sunday, the pro-Israel organization—which has given tons of money to federal lawmakers in both major parties—shared on social media a clip from Sanders' nearly 10-minute appearance on CNN's "State of the Union" with Dana Bash.
During the interview, Sanders pointed out that Israel gets $3.8 billion in annual military aid from the United States and stressed the need for the nation to stop its indiscriminate bombing campaign in Gaza, echoing is Senate floor speech from Wednesday.
Like his address earlier this week, Sanders also decried the current conditions in the besieged enclave, blasted the right-wing government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for undermining regional peace, and stuck with his call for a "humanitarian pause," or a temporary halt to hostilities, rather than a cease-fire, or a long-term suspension of fighting.
Asked by Bash about his position, Sanders responded, "I don't know how you can have a cease-fire, a permanent cease-fire, with an organization like Hamas, which is dedicated to turmoil and chaos and destroying the state of Israel."
"The immediate task right now is to end the bombing, to end the horrific humanitarian disaster, to build, go forward with the entire world, for a two-tier, two-state solution to the crisis, to give the Palestinian people hope," he continued.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the number two Senate Democrat, on Thursday became the first senator to call for a cease-fire and fewer than two dozen House Democrats support the "Cease-Fire Now Resolution" introduced last month by Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.). Later Thursday, Durbin also joined a dozen other Senate Democrats in advocating for a "cessation of hostilities" in Gaza.
Sanders, who did not sign that letter, has faced mounting pressure from progressives across the country—including hundreds of people who worked on his 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns, when he ran as a Democrat—to change his position.
In response to AIPAC's tweet about Sanders, Yonah Lieberman—co-founder of the American Jewish group IfNowNow, which opposes Israeli apartheid—said that "it has been a very long time since I've been this disappointed in a politician."
As David Klion wrote Friday at The Nation:
To understand where Sanders is coming from, it helps to know a little about his personal history. Though he is well to the left of his Senate colleagues and has consistently voiced support for the basic human rights of Palestinians and criticized the Israel lobby, Sanders is in many ways a product of the liberal Zionist tradition. During his 2020 campaign, Sanders advisers urged the instinctively private candidate to talk more about his Jewish background, including the fact that his father, an immigrant from Poland, lost most of his family in the Holocaust. The slaughter of Europe's Jews is deeply personal for Sanders, and it likely factors into his response to the October 7 attacks, which were the single deadliest day for Jews anywhere in the world since 1945. The members of the Squad, who come from a wide diversity of backgrounds and are on average many decades younger than Sanders, lack this direct connection to the personal trauma that many American Jews of Sanders' generation feel.
They also lack his direct connection to Israel itself, including his time living on a socialist kibbutz near Haifa in 1963. As Sanders wrote in Jewish Currents in 2019: "It was there that I saw and experienced for myself many of the progressive values upon which Israel was founded. I think it is very important for everyone, but particularly for progressives, to acknowledge the enormous achievement of establishing a democratic homeland for the Jewish people after centuries of displacement and persecution." Sanders went on to acknowledge that Palestinians experienced the founding of Israel very differently, "as the cause of their painful displacement," and to call for a two-state solution.
"To put my own cards on the table, I wish Sanders would call for a cease-fire, and as a longtime supporter and admirer, I'm disappointed that he hasn't," Klion noted. "I understand the reasons why, but I don't think they excuse the call he's made."
While Bash on Sunday acknowledged Sanders' history, the 82-year-old senator insisted that "this is not—it's nothing to do with me, Dana," and went on to detail why he believes that "as a nation, we are living now, in my view, through a more difficult moment than we have lived in my lifetime."
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Despite the abundance of evidence to the contrary, Israel's ambassador to the United Nations claimed in a televised interview Sunday that "there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza," and was swiftly rebuked by people around the world.
Challenged by CNN's Dana Bash, Ambassador Gilad Erdan doubled down on his position: "I'm not saying that the life in Gaza is great. And, obviously, Hamas is the only one that should be held accountable for any situation in Gaza. But there's a standard, due to international humanitarian law."
"What does it mean, a humanitarian crisis? And I'm saying, again, there is no humanitarian crisis, based on the international humanitarian law, right now in Gaza," added Erdan, who also cast doubt on the death toll being shared by local officials.
U.S. Congressman Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) called Erdan's comments "unbelievable," given the current conditions in Gaza a month into the war Israel launched after a Hamas-led attack on October 7, and urged the ambassador to resign from his position.
Also responding to Erdan's appearance on "State of the Union," Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the anti-war group CodePink, said: "Does he think the world is not seeing the horrific reality in Gaza? Does he think we will believe his lies? No, we won't."
As of Sunday, Israel's air and ground assault of the besieged enclave—enabled by billions in U.S. military support—has killed at least 9,770 people, including over 4,000 children, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza. The ministry last month publicly identified thousands of the dead as Israeli officials and others, including U.S. President Joe Biden, questioned the figures.
Those who have so far survived the Israeli assault are facing limited power, water, and communication services as well as dwindling supplies of food and medicine. The United Nations World Food Program stressed Sunday that the aid entering Gaza "is nowhere near enough to meet the exponentially growing needs."
"Right now, parents in Gaza do not know whether they can feed their children today and whether they will even survive to see tomorrow," said Cindy McCain, the U.N. program's executive director, as she returned from the Rafah border crossing in Egypt. "The suffering just meters away is unfathomable standing on this side of the border."
Erdan's interview Sunday was not the first time during the war that the Israeli government has contested conditions in Gaza. During a Sky News appearance in Mid-October, Israeli diplomat Tzipi Hotovely also said that "there is no humanitarian crisis."
As The New York Timesreported Wednesday:
Israel's agency overseeing policy for the Palestinian territories, known as COGAT, maintained in a statement on Tuesday that there is "currently no humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip" despite the mounting evidence to the contrary from aid agencies, journalists, and people living there.
The statement said the Israeli government was monitoring the supply of water, food, fuel, and energy in Gaza and asserted that "the situation is far from crisis."
The newspaper added that "asked on Tuesday why Israel had cut off water supplies, in particular, to Gaza, the agency said that 'according to international law, Israel has no obligation to provide goods and services to the terrorist organization Hamas—especially in cases where the enemy uses them for war purposes (for example, with respect to electricity and fuel).'"
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Israel has been accused of waging a genocidal war as multiple plans to ethnically cleanse Gaza have surfaced.
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A month into Israel's war on Hamas, Sunday
reporting from The New York Times is bolstering fears of Israelis using the devastating war to ethnically cleanse the besieged Gaza Strip of Palestinians.
According to the Times:
Israel has quietly tried to build international support in recent weeks for the transfer of several hundred thousand civilians from Gaza to Egypt for the duration of its war in the territory, according to six senior foreign diplomats.
Israeli leaders and diplomats have privately proposed the idea to several foreign governments, framing it as a humanitarian initiative that would allow civilians to temporarily escape the perils of Gaza for refugee camps in the Sinai Desert, just across the border in neighboring Egypt.
The proposal has been rejected by not only Palestinians but also "most of Israel's interlocutors—who include the United States and Britain—because of the risk that such a mass displacement could become permanent," the newspaper noted.
Spokespeople for both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi declined to comment, though the latter delivered a mid-October speech in which he forcefully opposed any relocation.
At least two separate Israeli plans to permanent expel Palestinians from Gaza to Egypt have circulated during the war. One, reported by the Israeli business daily Calcalist, came from Israel's intelligence minister, Gila Gamliel. Another, reported by Middle East Eye, was authored by Amir Weitmann, who chairs the Libertarian faction of Netanyahu's Likud party, and published by the Israeli think tank Misgav Institute for National Security & Zionist Strategy.
Recent comments from Israeli leaders have also stoked fears of "a second Nakba," or catastrophe—a reference to when more than 750,000 Arabs were ethnically cleansed from Palestine in 1947-48 during the creation of the modern state of Israel. For example, Ariel Kallner, a Likud lawmakers, last month
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Ameed Abed, a 35-year-old resident of Jabaliya—part of northern Gaza, from which the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have told civilians to evacuate to the south—suggested in a phone interview with the Times that forced relocation to Egypt would be another Nakba: "As a Palestinian, I won't renew the Nakba again... We will not leave our homes."
Allegations of genocide and war crimes have mounted since Israel declared war on Hamas in retaliation for the Palestinian militant group leading an attack on October 7. Netanyahu has been
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The prime minister on Sunday indefinitely suspended Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu for publicly suggesting that dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza was on the table. Israel is one of the world's nine nuclear-armed nations.
As Politicodetailed:
A member of the ultra-nationalist Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party, Eliyahu earlier on Sunday claimed in a radio interview that since there were "no noncombatants in Gaza," using an atomic weapon on the Palestinian enclave was "one of the possibilities."
Eliyahu later sought to rectify his statement, saying it was "clear to all sensible people" that his reference to nuclear weapons had been "metaphorical."
Netanyahu
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According to officials in Israel, over 1,500 Israelis have been killed in the past month and Palestinian militants still have around 240 hostages. The Gaza Health Ministry said Saturday that the Israeli assault has killed more than 9,400 Palestinians, including 3,900 children. Another 144 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank, where Israeli settler violence has surged.
Some Israeli settlers in recent weeks have
tried to scare Palestinians into fleeing the West Bank with displays of dolls covered in blood or a substance meant to mimic it and leaflets with messages like, "Run to Jordan before we kill our enemies and expel you from our Holy Land, promised to us by God."
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