An Unhelpful discourse on Israel: AntonyLowestein.com
The following article is written by Israeli/American peace activist Jeff Halper for the Australian Jewish News but the paper refuses to run the piece, despite spending weeks attacking Halper and his supporters in its pages:
The uproar in the organized Jewish community over the prospect of my speaking in Australia is truly startling to an Israeli like me. Granted, I am very critical of Israel’s policies of Occupation and doubt whether a two-state solution is still possible given the extent of Israel’s settlements, but this hardly warrants the kind of demonization I received in the pages of The AJN. Opinions similar to mine are readily available in the mainstream Israeli media. Indeed, I myself write frequently for the Israeli press and appear regularly on Israeli TV and radio.
Why, then, the hysteria? Why was I banned from Temple Emmanuel in Sydney, a self-proclaimed progressive synagogue? Why did I, an Israeli, have to address the Jewish community from a church? Why was I invited to speak in every university in eastern Australia yet, at Monash University, I was forced to hold a secret meeting with Jewish faculty in a darkened room far from the halls of intellectual discourse? Why, when the “leaders” of the Jewish community were excoriating me and my positions, did the Israelis who attended my talks express such appreciation that “real” Israeli views were finally getting aired in Australia, even if they did not all agree with me? Given the support my right to speak evidenced by most of the letters published in The AJN, this all raises disturbing questions over the right of Australian Jews to hear divergent views on Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians held by Israelis themselves.
It raises an even deeper issue, however. What should be the relationship of Diaspora Jewry to Israel? Whatever threat I represented to the organized Jewish community of Australia had less to do with Israel, I suspect, than with some damage I might to do to the idealized “Leon Uris” image of Israel which you hold onto so dearly. This might seem like a strange thing to say, but I do not believe that you in the Diaspora have internalized the fact that Israel is a foreign country as far from your idealized version as Australia is far from its image as kangaroo-land. Countries change, they evolve. What would Australia’s European founders think – even those who until very recently pursued a “White Australia” policy – if they were to see the multi-cultural country you have become? Well, almost 30% of Israeli citizens are not Jews, we may very well have permanently incorporated another four million Palestinians – the residents of the Occupied Territories – into our country and, to top it off, it’s clear by now that the vast majority of the world’s Jews are not going to emigrate to Israel. Those facts, plus the urgent need of Israel to make peace with its neighbors, mean something. They mean that Israel must change in ways Ben Gurion, Leon Uris and Mark Leibler never envisioned, even if that’s hard for you to accept.
Report: Independent fact-finding mission of medical experts commissioned by Physicians for Human Rights-Israel and the Palestinian Medical Relief Society (PMRS) published today its special report on the Israeli invasion and bombardment of Gaza
In their report, the experts detail 44 testimonies by civilians who came under attack and by medical staff who were prevented from evacuating the wounded. The report provides first-hand evidence regarding the broader effects of the attacks on a civilian population that was already vulnerable on the eve of the offensive.
The experts collected samples of human tissue earth, water, grass and mud suspected to be contaminated by unidentified chemicals. These were sent by the team to laboratories in the UK and South Africa for analysis.
During the military operation in January, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel called for an external independent investigation into the events, for the rehabilitation of the Gaza Strip and for the opening of the Crossings.
Five independent experts in the fields of forensic medicine, burns, medical response to crises and public health, from Germany, Denmark, South Africa and Spain, immediately answered the call and traveled to Gaza between 29 January and 5 February 2009 for their first fact-finding investigation, and then to hospitals in Egypt, where some of the most seriously wounded were being treated.
The medical experts are: Professor Jorgen Thomsen from Denmark, expert in Forensic pathology; Dr. Ralf Syring from Germany, an expert in Public Health in crisis regions; Professor Shabbir Ahmed Wadee from South Africa, an expert in Forensic pathology; Professor Sebastian Van As from South Africa, an expert in Trauma surgery and Ms. Alicia Vacas Moro from Spain, an expert in International health.
From the conclusion of the report:
“…Besides the large-scale, largely impersonal destruction that the team witnessed and heard of, it was especially distressing to hear of individual cases in which soldiers had been within seeing, hearing and speaking distance of their victims for significant stretches of time, but despite the opportunity for ‘humanisation’, had denied wounded people access to lifesaving medical care, or even shot at civilians at short range…”
One of the testimonies in the report describes the aftermath of an attack. Muhammad Saad Abu Halima had lost two brothers and a young sister; his wife and daughter were wounded. He told the delegation his experience of evacuation:
“…We were going down the street Kamal Adwan, and we had almost reached the school when the soldiers halted us. A tank appeared on the street and stopped close to the school. The soldiers were occupying the second floor of a building which was only 20 meters away from the street. They could see that we were all wounded and dirty from the explosions, because the tractor was open at the back. They shot at us, killing my cousins Matar Saad Abu Halima and Muhammad Hikma Abu Halima, who were driving us to the hospital. The soldiers ordered us to get out of the tractor, and they asked me to take off my clothes. I did it and they checked all my body. I think they were looking for explosives, but we were all injured and in pitiful conditions. How could we think of carrying explosives when my younger siblings and my own children were dying? Then, when I was almost expecting death, they shouted at me: “you can get dressed and go”. They did not allow us to use the tractor.
I held my sister Shahed in my arms … but the soldiers said that the baby was already dead, so they forced me to leave her in the car. I tried to help my wife Ghada, who was completely burned, and they forced us to walk to the hospital. For about 300 meters the soldiers were shooting at our feet as we walked, raising so much dust that the wounds of my wife became full of dirt. After a while we saw a lorry on the road. It was overcrowded with people going to the hospital after the heavy attacks, but they made us room and we arrived at Shifa’ Hospital….“
Court extends remand of family of Bedouin gunwoman: Ha’aretz
A Be’er Sheva court Sunday extended the remand of the parents and uncle of a teenage Bedouin girl who was shot and killed after she tried to carry out an attack against a police base in the south. The girl’s father, Ibrahim al-Nabari, and her uncle, Awad al-Nabari, will remain in custody for four more days, while her mother was ordered held for an additional 24 hours. She is scheduled to be released today to house arrest in her brother’s house. The girl, Basma Awad al-Nabari, was shot and killed by Israel Defense Forces troops on Saturday, after trying to shoot at officers at a Border Police barrack at Shoket Junction. “It’s raining enemy missiles, the screams of Gaza ring in my ears. I have a strong desire to die for Palestine … to die for Gaza,” the girl wrote in her notebook, among other things. Law-enforcement officials found the notebook, in which Basma expressed sympathy for the plight of Gazans and a willingness to sacrifice herself for their cause. The police said in court that they found anti-Israeli incitement in Basma’s room and elsewhere in her parents’ house as well as three revolver shells in her uncle’s house. They said they suspected the parents and uncle were “tied to the event.”
“The terrorist’s parents should have been responsible for her acts,” the police representative said.
Neighbors insist: Bedouin teen not a terrorist: YNet
Hura residents say guard at entrance to Border Guard base mistook Basma Awad al-Nabari for a terrorist. Teacher: She never addressed any security-related issues, even during Gaza offensive
While police have declared Saturday’s foiled attack on Border Guard officers stationed at the Shoket Junction in south Israel an act of terror, neighbors of Basma Awad al-Nabari claim that the Bedouin teen was mistakenly shot to death after arriving at the base to file a complaint. According to several residents of the village of Hura, the guard at the entrance to the Border Guard base mistook the teen for a terrorist and misled the officers who arrived at the scene and shot her dead. “The rest of the details that were published by the police are mere embellishments,” a relative of the teenager told Ynet on Sunday. One of Al-Nabari’s teachers at the Amal Yitzhak Rabin High School said she was an “outstanding student who had never addressed any security-related topics, not even during Operation Cast Lead (in Gaza).”
IDF chief: Troops’ Gaza testimonies are completely unfounded: Ha’aretz
Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi on Sunday dismissed as “completely unfounded” accounts by Israeli soldiers of wrongdoings in the recent offensive against Hamas in Gaza. “It greatly disturbed me, and everyone, the ‘testimonies’ of soldiers that have been published about inappropriate acts and the apparently intentional harming of the civilian population,” Lt. Gen. Ashkenazi wrote in a letter to IDF soldiers to mark the upcoming Jewish holiday of Pesach. “These testimonies have been fully examined and investigated by the Military Police and Military Advocate’s Office, and have been found, to my joy, to be completely unfounded and lacking in any evidential basis.”
Haaretz published last month accounts by soldiers who fought in Operation Cast Lead saying that Israeli forces killed Palestinian civilians under permissive rules of engagement and intentionally destroyed their property. The soldiers’ testimonies were picked up by other Israeli news outlets and media across the world, sparking a controversy as the troops seemed to confirm Palestinian accounts of IDF behavior during the campaign.
In the letter, Ashkenazi said it was Hamas that hurt Gaza’s civilians.
Now there is a surprise for you…
IDF chief of staff glad troops’ Gaza ‘testimonies’ were thrown out: YNet
Ashkenazi tells soldiers in letter that accounts of military misconduct in Gaza lack factual basis
IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi wrote to soldiers Sunday regarding testimonies of immoral military conduct during Israel’s offensive in Gaza. n his annual Passover letter to IDF troops Ashkenazi wrote, “I am happy the ‘testimonies’ turned out to be false and lacking of any factual foundation.” Last month news agencies published controversial testimonies given by soldiers present during the fighting in Gaza, which contained a number of instances in which soldiers deliberately hurt innocent Gazan civilians. Two weeks later Military Advocate General Maj. Gen. Avi Mandelblit ordered the case closed due to lack of evidence. In his Pesach epistle Ashkenazi wrote, “The ‘testimonies’ that came from the mouths of soldiers regarding inappropriate actions and the deliberate harming of the civilian population had me very concerned. If at the end of an investigation we discover that there had been some aberrations from the norms they will be handled accordingly.”
Ashkenazi: ‘Claims of IDF war crimes unfounded’: Jerusalem Post
hief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi on Sunday reiterated his utter rejection of statements made by IDF soldiers in February to the effect that the army carried out war crimes during Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip. “We were all, myself included, disturbed by the ‘testimonies’ attributed to soldiers regarding inappropriate actions and the ostensible intentional harm visited upon the civilian population,” Ashkenazi wrote in a special Pessah greeting to reservists. “These testimonies were exhaustively examined and investigated by Military Police and the Military Advocacy and, to my satisfaction, have been proven to be unfounded and lacking in any factual base.”
The IDF chief was alluding to claims made by graduates of the Rabin Pre-military Academy during a conference held in February, which were later written up and printed in an academy pamphlet. Many Israeli media outlets then seized on the claims, and the allegations went on to make headlines around the world.
Ashkenazi added that if, however, “when the investigations are concluded, isolated deviations from this norm will be discovered, and they will be investigated and thoroughly dealt with. The IDF is determined to safeguard its values and ethical and normative image. That is the source of our strength. We will never adopt the norms and values of our enemies and will always remain loyal to the values and heritage of our nation.”
Beduins mystified by terrorist case: Jerusalem Post
In the dusty Beduin town of Hura, east of Beersheba, residents Sunday were mostly tight-lipped – though a few were brazenly defiant – when asked about 15-year-old Basma Awad al-Nabari, who died after opening fire on a Border Police base in the Negev on Saturday. Relatives in the town of some 10,000 inhabitants said they found it difficult to believe that Nabari, who was known as a calm and successful 10th-grader, could have committed any kind of terrorist act. If she had, they conceded, it’s likely that someone outside the family was behind the attack, which caused no other casualties. “We are not a family that teaches their children in this way,” her great-uncle Ouda al-Nabari said outside a tent for guests near her home. “We don’t go down to this level at all.”
The very eye of the storm: Ha’aretz
Akiva Eldar
Jawad Siam pulled out a brochure issued by the Jerusalem municipality heralding development plans for his place of residence, the village of Silwan in East Jerusalem. He pointed to the map in the brochure, where the neighborhood’s streets were marked. “You see this, Hashiloah Road?” he asked. “All these years, it was called Ein Silwan Street. ‘Ma’alot Ir David’ Street? That was Wadi Helwa Street. The street next to it, ‘Malkitzedek,’ used to be Al-Mistar Street.”
From two small rooms, not far from the Old City walls, Siam and his colleagues in Silwan’s Ein Helwa neighborhood committee, as well as a small group of Jewish friends, are waging a tenacious struggle on one of the world’s most volatile battlefields. As he sees it, the “conversion” of the street names, the settling of Jews there with the encouragement of rightist organizations, and the municipality’s intention to demolish dozens of buildings in the neighborhood, are merely a prelude to an eventual transfer plan. The real goal, he believes, is the expulsion of Ein Helwa’s 5,000 residents, part of a goal of reducing the Palestinian presence in the area.
Silwan, which the Israeli authorities call the City of David or Kfar Hashiloah, lies in the heart of the “holy basin” surrounding the Old City. Here is where Jewish-Palestinian struggles over houses, religion and culture are steadily multiplying: Right-wing organizations keep taking over yet another building and another site, sometimes with the municipality’s assistance; straw men tempt Palestinians into selling their homes; petitions to the Supreme Court come on the heels of allegations of libel; archaeologists clash over these organizations’ control of antiquities’ sites in the area; and the police try to undermine every official Palestinian activity, including cultural ones.
The campaign to isolate apartheid Israel — lessons from South Africa: International Journal of Socialist Renewal
Salim Vally
[Salim Vally, a leading member of the Palestine Solidarity Committee in South Africa and a veteran anti-apartheid activist, will be a featured guest at the World at a Crossroads conference, to be held in Sydney, Australia, on April 10-12, 2009, organised by the Democratic Socialist Perspective, Resistance and Green Left Weekly. Visit http://www.worldATACrossroads.org for full agenda and to book your tickets.]
There are moments in modern history when particular struggles galvanise millions around the world to act in solidarity. This occurred during the Spanish Civil War, the struggle of the Vietnamese people against US imperialism and the liberation struggles of Southern Africa. The time has now come for progressive humanity to cut through the obfuscations, canards and calumnies and meaningfully support the resistance of the Palestinian people.
For more than 60 years Palestinians have alerted us to one outrage after another, injustices piled upon injustices without the commensurate scale of global solidarity required to make a significant difference to their lives. It is now in our hands to change this unconscionable situation. Not by appealing to the ruling classes of the world and their institutions — which remain, in the face of abundant evidence, unmoved, callous and hypocritical. Which in fact sustain and provide succour to Israel’s apartheid and terror. It is rather by applying the most potent weapon we have learnt to rely on, forged and steeled through the tried and tested struggles of workers and oppressed people spanning time and space: solidarity. International solidarity in this sense in the words of the late Mozambican revolutionary, Samora Machel is “not an act of charity but an act of unity between allies fighting on different terrains toward the same objectives”.
Acts of defiance and determination against overwhelming odds continue to drive the will of Palestinians. Global solidarity activists need to be inspired and strengthened by this unleashing of creative energies; the fact that obstacles can be surmounted and the debilitating wastefulness of internecine and sectarian conflicts exposed.
Israel: a fundamentalist and militarised warrior state
The Palestinian struggle does not only exert a visceral tug on many around the world. A reading of imperialism shows that apartheid Israel is needed as a fundamentalist and militarised warrior state not only to quell the undefeated and unbowed Palestinians but also as a rapid response fount of reaction in concert with despotic Arab regimes to do the Empire’s bidding in the Middle East and beyond.
Avigdor Lieberman rules out ‘concessions’ to Palestinians: The Guardian
Israel never ratified 2007 Annapolis Middle East peace talks, new foreign minister says in debut speech
Israel’s new foreign minister dismayed the international community today with a rancorous analysis of the peace process and an announcement that the new government favours aggression rather than concessions to the Palestinians. In his first speech since taking office, the rightwinger Avigdor Lieberman dismissed the last round of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, arguing that Israeli concessions made in a bid to secure peace had all been fruitless. “Those who want peace should prepare for war and be strong,” he said. “There is no country that made concessions like Israel. Since 1967 we gave up territory that is three times the size of Israel. We showed willingness. The Oslo process started back in 1993, and to this day I have not seen that we reached peace.”
Speaking to what the Associated Press describes as a roomful of “cringing diplomats”, the new foreign minister said Israel was not bound by the Annapolis peace talks. These were initiated in November 2007 to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and involved around 40 countries.
“The Israeli government never ratified Annapolis; nor did [the] Knesset,” said Lieberman, promising to honour only the US-initiated “road map” of 2002, which has long been in stalemate amid accusations from both sides.
Livni condemns new Israel leaders: BBC
Israel’s former chief peace negotiator says the way the new government is talking shows it will not be a partner for peace with the Palestinians.
Tzipi Livni’s criticism follows the rejection by her successor as foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, of recent US-backed efforts towards a peace deal. “What happened is that the government announced that Israel is not relevant, is not a partner,” she said. New PM Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged to seek peace but has not detailed how. Ms Livni’s centrist Kadima party came narrowly ahead of Mr Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud in the February election, but he was asked to form a coalition as right-leaning parties predominated. In his speech on Wednesday, at a foreign ministry handover attended by Ms Livni, the ultra-nationalist Mr Lieberman said Israel was not bound by the Annapolis accords agreed with the Palestinians and the Bush administration in November 2007. He said the only legitimate document was another US-sponsored deal, the Road Map peace plan of 2003, because he said it was ratified by the Israeli government and the UN Security Council.
So even Livni agrees that Israel is nota partner to any possible just peace… she should know…