Members of a banned terrorist organisation can claim asylum in Britain, the Supreme Court has ruled.

The court ruled that being a member of the Tamil Tigers, which has been designated as a terrorist organisation by the government, should not prevent an individual claiming asylum.

Their ruling was made in the case of “R” who joined the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 1992, at the age of 10.

The Tamil Tigers, or Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, have been involved in a bloody struggle in Sri Lanka, that stretches back 30 years.

“R” occupied various positions until, at the age of 18, he was appointed to lead a mobile unit transporting members of the intelligence division through the jungles to Colombo.

He also acted as chief security guard to the leader of the intelligence division and second in command of the combat unit of the intelligence division.

In October 2006 he was sent under cover to Colombo to await further instructions but two months later he discovered that the Sri Lankan government was aware of his presence in the capital.

He fled to Britain and claimed asylum on the basis that if he returned to Sri Lanka he would face mistreatment due to his race and LTTE membership.

The application was refused, saying that there were grounds for considering that he had committed war crimes.

It said the Tamil Tigers had been “responsible for widespread and systemic war crimes and crimes against humanity” and that his membership of an extremist group could be presumed to amount to “personal and knowing participation, or at least acquiescence amounting to complicity, in the crimes in question.”

The decision was quashed by the Court of Appeal which said the government was wrong to assume that the individual, as a member of the LTTE, was guilty of knowing participation in such crimes and that the government should have considered whether there was evidence that he had made a significant contribution to the commission of such crimes.

The Home Secretary appealed against the decision but on Wednesday that was turned down.

Almost half of all U.S. voters believe that Israel should be made to cease all settlement construction as part of a future peace deal with the Palestinians, a Rasmussen Reports poll said on Wednesday.

The American institute claimed that a recent poll showed 49% of voters approved of forcing Israel to stop settlement construction, with only 22% of voters disagreeing, saying Israel should not be required to stop building those settlements. Another 29% were not sure.

But Isi Leibler, Zionist and backer of the entire colonial project, thinks America’s current stance is deeply unfair. I can just imagine him fuming and wondering why the poor, little Jews can’t just be allowed to do what they want (which is essentially what’s been happening for decades, even if the latest reports allege that Netanyahu has been “humiliated” by his government’s back-down over settlement expansion):

There are certain red lines which no government of Israel may cross. Netanyahu, on this occasion, must stand firm. The current crisis transcends political or ideological differences between Likud, Labor and Kadima. All mainstream parties should unite and convey to President Obama that Israel is a sovereign state and will not automatically bow to diktats of the US administration. They need to make the US administration and public understand that no government of Israel will agree to freeze construction in Jerusalem, the heart and soul of the Jewish people.

On 28 January 2010 the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) issued a statement to the Qatari government calling for a boycott of Daniel Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra (WEDO) and condemning the Qatari Ministry of Culture for hosting the orchestra in Doha. The statement goes so far as to accuse Daniel Barenboim of being an ardent Zionist. I would like to point out that the PACBI policy is “to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel.” It does not call for a boycott against all Israelis, but those affiliated with institutions that support the Israeli state and its policies and who do not express support for the Palestinian struggle against occupation. Daniel Barenboim and WEDO do not meet any of those criteria.

WEDO is but one of the many educational programs of the Barenboim-Said Foundation (BSF) which was founded by Daniel Barenboim together with my late husband, Edward Said. It is registered in Spain and the regional government of Andalusia is the main partner in this project.

WEDO is not a project for normalization. The yearly workshops in Spain are advanced musical summer courses. When students from Arab countries and Israel attend the same courses at any university around the world where the professor’s competence is the reason for which they enroll, it is considered furthering their education, not normalization.

The Israel Defense Forces decision to declare the Palestinian villages Bil’in and Na’alin closed military zones on Fridays for the next six months is a serious anti-democratic move. The order issued by the GOC Central Command implementing this restriction is an act against the freedom to demonstrate.

The fact that the army issued such a sweeping order, and that it is supposed to be in effect for such a long period, requires an immediate petition to the High Court of Justice asking it to block this dangerous and damaging move, which lacks any justification. The freedom to demonstrate is a basic right and an extension of freedom of expression.

In recent years, the two villages have come to symbolize the struggle against the separation fence that separates the villagers from their lands. The struggle is legitimate. It contributed substantially to the High Court order to alter the route of the fence near Bil’in, a decision that the IDF has yet to implement – which is also a blatant anti-democratic failing.

The residents of the villages and their supporters – Jews, Arabs and foreign activists – must be given the right to protest and fight for their rights.

During the years of demonstrations in the two villages, 23 demonstrators have been killed, half of them minors; no Israeli soldiers have been killed.

The demonstrations themselves have mostly been non-violent, and it was the IDF and Border Police that often exercised excessive and unnecessary force. In spite of the inconvenience, the IDF must permit this protest. The alternative could be terrorism.

The IDF decision is grave from another perspective as well: There has never been such a radical move against rightist demonstrations or settlers in the territories. While settlers run amok, burning fields and uprooting trees, damaging property and spreading terror as part of their criminal “price tag” policy, the IDF and the police stand idly by. When the left wants to protest and demonstrate, the IDF declares the area to be a closed military zone.

In this the IDF harms not only one of the basic values of democratic rule, the freedom to demonstrate, but also discriminates in its policy, granting excessive liberty to lawless settlers while being heavy-handed with leftist protesters.

The IDF order is therefore a revolting and ridiculous act, and the defense minister, who commands the IDF, must take immediate action to void it.

The tie-up between Arab entertainment giant Rotana and pro-Israel media mogul Rupert Murdoch is viewed in Egypt not only with suspicion but as signalling the decline of Arab film and art heritage.

In a country where film and television attract some of the largest audiences across the Arab world, the tycoon’s foray into the Middle East is widely seen in cultural circles as a ruse to benefit Israel.

Murdoch’s News Corp last month acquired a 9.09-percent holding in the Rotana Group of Saudi royal and business tycoon Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, with an 18-month option to double the stake.

Rotana is one of the largest film producers in Egypt and also owns the rights to hundreds of Egyptian motion pictures.

In Egypt, which signed a 1979 peace treaty with Israel but has resisted a warming of cultural ties, there has been wide suspicion that the tie-up with Rotana is part of a Murdoch scheme to thaw frosty Arab views of Israel.

“Murdoch will enter every Arab home to impose normalisation” of ties with Israel, said Egyptian film critic Ola al-Shafei.

The partnership amounts to “a defeat for the Arab film and art heritage,” she added.

Scriptwriter Osama Anwar Okasha wrote that Murdoch’s stake in Rotana was a “Trojan horse” designed to stealthily penetrate Arab culture.

…Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s foreign minister, said he had boycotted meetings with [Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva] because the Brazilian president did not pay a visit to the grave of Theodor Herzl, one of the founders of Zionism.

What are we to make of this?

It seems increasingly clear that a thoroughgoing reappraisal of the U. S.-Israeli strategic partnership is in the offing. Much of the credit (or, if you prefer, blame) for that prospect belongs to John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, authors of the famous (or infamous) tract “The Israel Lobby.”

Whatever that book’s shortcomings, its appearance in 2007 injected into discussions of U.S.-Israeli relations a candor that that had been previously absent. Convictions that had been out of bounds now became legitimate subjects for discussion. Prejudices were transformed into mere opinions.

Out of this candor has come a rolling reassessment, with the ultimate outcome by no means clear. That David Petraeus, hitherto not known to be an anti-Semite, has implicitly endorsed one of Mearsheimer and Walt’s core findings — questioning whether the United States should view Israel as a strategic asset — constitutes further evidence that something important is afoot.

To the list of the enemies threatening the security of the United States, the Pentagon has added WikiLeaks.org, a tiny online source of information and documents that governments and corporations around the world would prefer to keep secret.

The Pentagon assessed the danger WikiLeaks.org posed to the Army in a report marked “unauthorized disclosure subject to criminal sanctions.” It concluded that “WikiLeaks.org represents a potential force protection, counterintelligence, OPSEC and INFOSEC threat to the U.S. Army” — or, in plain English, a threat to Army operations and information.

WikiLeaks, true to its mission to publish materials that expose secrets of all kinds, published the 2008 Pentagon report about itself on Monday.

Lt. Col. Lee Packnett, an Army spokesman, confirmed that the report was real. Julian Assange, the editor of WikiLeaks, said the concerns the report raised were hypothetical.

“It did not point to anything that has actually happened as a result of the release,” Mr. Assange said. “It contains the analyst’s best guesses as to how the information could be used to harm the Army but no concrete examples of any real harm being done.”

WikiLeaks, a nonprofit organization, has rankled governments and companies around the world with its publication of materials intended to be kept secret. For instance, the Army’s report says that in 2008, access to the Web site in the United States was cut off by court order after Bank Julius Baer, a Swiss financial institution, sued it for publishing documents implicating Baer in money laundering, grand larceny and tax evasion. Access was restored after two weeks, when the bank dropped its case.

Governments, including those of North Korea and Thailand, also have tried to prevent access to the site and complained about its release of materials critical of their governments and policies.

The Army’s interest in WikiLeaks appears to have been spurred by, among other things, its publication and analysis of classified and unclassified Army documents containing information about military equipment, units, operations and “nearly the entire order of battle” for American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan in April 2007.

WikiLeaks also published an outdated, unclassified copy of the “standard operating procedures” at the military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. WikiLeaks said the document revealed methods by which the military prevented prisoners from meeting with the International Red Cross and the use of “extreme psychological stress” as a means of torture.

The Army’s report on WikiLeaks does not say whether WikiLeaks’ analysis of that document was accurate. It does charge that some of WikiLeaks’s other interpretation of information is flawed but does not say specifically in what way.

The report also airs the Pentagon’s concern over some 2,000 pages of documents WikiLeaks released on equipment used by coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Pentagon concluded that such information could be used by foreign intelligence services, terrorist groups and others to identify vulnerabilities, plan attacks and build new devices.

WikiLeaks, which won Amnesty International’s new media award in 2009, almost closed this year because it was broke and still operates at less than its full capacity. It relies on donations from humans rights groups, journalists, technology buffs and individuals, and Mr. Assange said it had raised just two-thirds of the $600,000 needed for its budget this year and thus was not publishing everything it had.

Perhaps the most amusing aspect of the Army’s report, to Mr. Assange, was its speculation that WikiLeaks is supported by the Central Intelligence Agency. “I only wish they would step forward with a check if that’s the case,” he said.