I have yesterday published on this blog a report, which appeared in Redress.com, and is of somewhat doubtful nature. While I checked out the quotations from Alderman and they are accurate, there is an assumption here that ‘whistle blowers’ from the various Jewish organisations have assisted in the collecting and phrasing of this ‘report’. This is unlikely, to say the least, but I cannot prove my doubts, so decided to leave this and see whether some proof emerges. To not publish can be seen as some form of censorship, I feel.
Video of the Demonstration in London, 27th December 2009, Part 1
Video of the Demonstration in London, 27th December 2009, Part 2
Gaza aid convoy led by George Galloway declares hunger strike: Ha’aretz
More than 400 members of an international aid convoy to Gaza declared a hunger strike on Sunday to protest Egypt’s refusal to allow them entry into the Hamas-ruled territory via the Red Sea.
Alice Howard, a spokeswoman for British-based Viva Palestina, said the group was consuming only liquids, as it remained stranded in the Red Sea port of Aqaba.
Led by British MP George Galloway, 150 vehicles were carrying hundreds of tons of humanitarian aid. They had hoped to enter Gaza on Sunday, the first anniversary of Israel’s offensive against Hamas in the coastal strip, Operation Cast lead.
Egypt refused to let the group enter through the Red Sea. It says they should use a Mediterranean route closer to the Gaza border.
Howard said Turkey is trying to mediate.
Galloway, a controversial lawmaker who was expelled from the ruling Labor party, visited Gaza earlier this year at the head of a similar aid caravanaid caravan. Upon his arrival, a senior Hamas official thanked Galloway for the “noble goodwill gesture” and called him a “hero.”
Just arrived from Cairo:
Sent: (from Cairo) on Monday, December 28, 2009 6:21 PM
GMS Bulletin #
Hi everyone,
It is proving harder than I thought to fit in writing these bulletins in a timely fashion.
Yesterday was a great day. We went down to a major bridge across the Nile and tied cards of rememberance and flowers to the bridge railings. These were removed almost immediately by the police who follow us everywhere. It
is evident that there are spies at our meetings. The police challenged us to move on, but in a very restrained manner. It is obvious that at this stage they are treating internationals with kid gloves, unlike their own nationals.
It is theoretically forbidden to gather in groups of more than 6. However we have found that in greater numbers we can prevail. We had planned yesterday to hire small boats on the nile and float 1400 candles in memory of the people killed in Gaza last year. A good photo op for the media. An easy gentle media event that should not push the police prohibitions. But the police would not allow it. So there we were, all gathered 1400 of us, and we began a strong loud street demo. It was wonderful – songs in a variety of languages. Banners (forbidden) were unfurled. Silly buggers, if they had let us use the boats , there would have been just a few boats and candles floating down the Nile. But they still treated us with kid gloves.
The authorities have prevented us hiring buses to go to AL Arish as planned for today. Various groups have gone on ahead but have been arrested at Al Arish.
As well as the Gaza freedom march, there are a number of other groups operating independently but coordinating together.: The French have been successful in getting the co-operation of their Embassy to help get them buses., there are the Spanish and a whole lot of other groups. It is all wonderfully fluid and anarchic. I cannot praise the women of Code Pink highly enough. They are all very experienced operators, operating in the best feminist model, facilitative, clear, not top down like the traditional left, male models. Very competent and nurturing, no bloody ego – yay!
Well it looks as if I will be able to get this sent to you as I write.
Cheers
Vivienne
To read frequent reports from Cairo on the Gaza Freedom March, please connect to Ali Abunimah’s Gaza Freedom March blog.
Just arrived by email from the Viva Palestina convoy!
Viva Palestina Press Release: December 28, 2009
The Egyptian Government have placed 3 conditions on the convoy if it wants to enter Egypt.
1. We hand all our vehicles and aid over to UNRAW.
2. We drive 500 miles back to Syria, and take a 24 hour ferry through the Suez Canal.
3. We have to ask Israel for permission to cross from Egypt to Gaza.
All 3 conditions have been flatly rejected by everyone on the convoy, as we want to cross into Gaza and hand our aid over to the Palestinians ourselves.
Would you phone Canada to ask permission to enter the US? Would you ask France for permission to go to Germany? For the 1st time, Egypt have now openly admitted that they are under control of Israel/US.
This has been the lead story on Al Jazeera for the past 24 hours, and there are media teams from all over the Arab world here in Aqaba following this story. Needless to say, everyone watching is totally outraged by Egypt’s complicity with Israel/US in denying this convoy of aid to reach Gaza. Needless to say, the western media have so far refused to cover this story.
Yesterday, Christmas Day, I dressed up as Santa to lighten the mood, and everyones sprirts lifted.
Al Jazeera interviewed Santa, who explained that the children in Gaza were the only ones in the whole world who didn’t recieve any presents. Santa explained that while flying through the air on his sleigh with the reindeers, he was stopped and refused entry. Santa was upset as this was the only place in the world he could not visit.
Tomorrow marks the 1st anniversary of the start of the 22 day massacre of over 1,400 people. In solidarity, we are all going to embark on a fast. We will all fast for as long as it takes for us to get into Gaza with our aid.
We are calling on people all over the world to fast with us, and with the Palestinians, who fast every day due to the illegal siege imposed upon them by Israel/US/Egypt.
It’s time to take a stand and say “Enough Is Enough”. This siege has got to stop, for the sake of humanity, and our aid must be allowed to reach the stricken people in Gaza.
I am calling on you to contact the Egyptian Embassy and demand that we be allowed to enter Gaza, and deliver our aid.
The contact details for the Egyptian Embassy in Dublin are: +353-1-6606718 / +353-1-6606566 / consular@embegyptireland.ie
The contact details for the Egyptian Embassy in London are: 0044-20-7499-3304 / eg.emb_london@mfa.gov.eg”
Please contact them, and express your outrage at their refusal to allow Humanitarian Aid into Gaza, and to let them know that you will never travel to Egypt again, as long as they are the lap dogs for Israel/US.
Please forward this message on to everyone you know, and ask them to do the same. Plus, please reply and leave a message of support for everyone who is stranded here in Aqaba, and for the Palestinians who need our support now, more than ever.
If you are a member of Facebook, please join the following “Ireland To Gaza” group for all the latest updates on our progress:
John Hurson
Stranded in Aqaba, Jordan
Urgent Call from the Palestine Solidarity campaign (bu email)
URGENT ACTION NEEDED
Viva Palestina is a UK charity; some the supplies are rotting at the Aqaba crossing. Please write urgently (in addition to the Egyptian embassies in London and Dublin) to the British embassy in Cairo, David Miliband etc.
Egyptian Embassy in Dublin: +353-1-6606718 / +353-1-6606566 /
consular@embegyptireland.ie
The contact details for the Egyptian Embassy in London: 0044-20-7499-3304 /eg.emb_london@mfa.gov.eg (Consulate: consulate.london@mfa.gov.eg )
Your local MP: http://findyourmp.parliament.uk/
David Miliband (Foreign Secretary) milibandd@parliament.uk – (0191) 456 8910
Nick Clegg (Leader of Lib Dems) – nickclegg@sheffieldhallam.org.uk
cleggn@parliament.uk
British Embassy in Egypt Tel: +(20)(2)27916000 information.cairo@fco.gov.uk
Please email the Egyptian Embassy (copy this to your MP and Foreign Secretary, David Miliband) on the following lines:
Your Excellency,
I am writing to urge your assistance to ensure that the people of Gaza receive the medical aid which British and European citizens have worked hard to provide for the Palestinian people suffering under Israeli siege in the
Gaza Strip.
We understand that the Egyptian government is imposing conditions on the Viva Palestina/ Palestine Solidarity Convoy of 210 aid vehicles which make it impossible for them to leave Aqaba to deliver the ambulances packed with
medical aid and the aid trucks with food and educational materials. As you may be aware, Viva Palestina is a UK registered charity that was formed earlier this year to provide humanitarian relief for the people of Gaza . The two previous convoys, which entered Gaza via Eqypt in March and February this year, successfully delivered hundreds of tonnes of desperately needed aid through the Rafah crossing.
Richard Falk, UN Special Rapporteur stated on 18.12.09
“Two urgent priorities must be stressed on this dismal anniversary: first, Israel’s allies must demand, with a commitment reinforced by a credible threat of economic sanctions, that Israel immediately end its illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip. Second, the Goldstone Report’s recommendations, having confirmed the commission of war crimes possibly amounting to Crimes Against Humanity, by Israel and Hamas, must be fully and swiftly implemented.”
Alas, the Egyptian government appears to be aiding Israel’s blockade of Gaza.
We appeal to you to convey our demand to the Egyptian authorities that the convoy be allowed to travel to Gaza through Egypt and to the Rafah crossing to show the Palestinian people there that they are not forgotten by people
of conscience across the world.
Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Box BM PSA
London
WC1N 3XX
Tel: 020 7700 6192
Fax: 020 7609 7779
Email: info@palestinecampaign.org
Web: www.palestinecampaign.org
From Cairo, Yvonne Ridley is sending this message (by email)
The Middle East’s Master Pimp
By Yvonne Ridley
December 27, 2009 “ICH” Cairo – December 26, 2009 — The activities of the rent boys who parade up and down Al-Shawarby Street in Cairo provide a good metaphor for the relationship the Egyptian Government has with Israel and the US.
Both are quite shameless and ruthless; prepared to do whatever it takes to please … in order to secure a fistful of dollars.
But at least the man whores of Al Shawarby are honest about their trade as they eagerly hustle potential customers.
Yes, they are shameless but so is the Egyptian Government as it continues to enforce the brutal siege in Gaza for Israel’s pleasure and America’s dollars.
The tears it sheds for the besieged people of Gaza are crocodilian.
And today the government stands before its people completely naked, without honour as the last fig leaf of decency floats despairingly to the ground.
I am making this rather crude analogy as I sit in my hotel room over-looking the River Nile. The view is breath-taking and just 50 yards away is the Egyptian Museum which reveals a rich history of a once great country.
The buildings around are decrepit, rundown like much of the country.
But I haven’t sat down to give you a travel report. I am one of 1400 peace activists from across the world who is trapped in Cairo unable to move forward to take part in the Gaza Freedom March planned for New Year’s Day. Most of us answered the rallying call of the US peace activist group Code Pink.
Meanwhile another shameful drama is unfolding just a few hundred miles away as life-long Palestinian supporter George Galloway sits trapped in the port of Aqaba as his latest Viva Palestina convoy has been stopped from moving forward.
The British MP’s convoy of 250 vehicles and hundreds more supporters has been prevented from leaving Jordan with its much needed aid.
Why? Because America and Israel have told Egypt not to let a single vehicle or peace activist pass through its country to the Rafah border and in to Gaza where an entire population is suffering beyond belief and, it seems, beyond humanitarian relief.
So why doesn’t Egypt tell Washington and Tel Aviv to get stuffed? For exactly the same reason a rent boy will do as his master tells him … hard cash.
Proof? Exactly two years ago under the Bush Administration, both houses of US Congress agreed to withhold 100 million dollars in financial assistance to Egypt following Israeli claims that Egyptian authorities were failing to prevent weapons smuggling to the Gaza Strip. Egypt receives nearly two billion dollars in US aid making it the second largest recipient of US largesse after Israel, which receives three billion dollars a year in military assistance.
And now the Middle East’s most active rent boy has a new master pimp – Barack Obama – although his White House enforcers have made sure the same house rules apply.
Now while the Egyptian Government might bend over backwards – or just bend over – the real enforcers will find Viva Palestina and the Gaza Freedom Marchers far less compliant.
We have traveled from more than 40 different countries to Cairo while others have driven thousands of miles to Aqaba to show our solidarity to the people of Gaza – we represent the largest gathering of international solidarity activists in the history of the Middle East.
Using the pretext of escalating tensions on the Gaza-Egypt border, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry said that the Rafah border will be closed over the coming weeks. Our message to the politicians is crystal clear: “Let us enter Gaza and let the Gaza Freedom March proceed.”
Quite simply, you can not buy us. Integrity, freedom and our love for Gaza is not for sale at any price.
Egyptian Security goons have already used fear and intimidation on the management of the venues the Gaza Freedom Marchers have booked, as well as transport companies who contracted buses to carry us from Cairo to Gaza, with the result that these deals have been cancelled.
Egyptian Security even tried to pressurise the management of the Groppi coffee shop on Midan Talaat Harb to shut down while we were organising meetings. Despite warning us that more than six people can not gather in public places our meeting continued.
We will not bow to fear and intimidation but what we will do is increase the pressure on the Rent Boy Government and where injustice is the law resistance is our duty.
And as Malcolm X once said: “Power in defense of freedom is greater than power on behalf of tyranny and oppression.”
*British journalist Yvonne Ridley is travelling with Indy film-maker Warren Biggs making a documentary about the Gaza Freedom March. She is a founder member of Viva Palestina and a member of the RESPECT Party. She also presents the Rattansi & Ridley show and The Agenda for Press TV, as well as writes columns for newspapers across the world. Her website is www.yvonneridley.org
Email report from Cairo by a participant: December 28, 2009
It is very late. Chaos around the French Embassy. Roads blocked …
No I do not need legal assistance as yet … Others are organizing things for various delegations … The worst that is happening to internationals is hotel arrest … No one has been deported yet. We came here to go to Gaza and that is my focus …
The thing tonight with the journalists syndicate was horrifying but we are all safe … This worry is that this is the start of things … No wonder the people of Egypt are submissive … This is a brutal dictatorship and Mubarak is a fraud. This is no Arab! The horror is the immediate isolation of anything that looks like political autonomy … I really do not think anyone could be unsure about this miserable system after all this … How dare this government say they support Palestine. Palestine is a question of justice and there is no justice here! This is a government of toadies … There is this horrendous system that keeps everyone in their place. There is no coherence to it … It is the logic of checkpoints: good days / bad days … no one has the slightest control over their life … this is nothing close to a democracy.
My worry now that something else may be going on in Gaza. Leaflets being dropped in Gaza. There is too much going on for it to be just about us and our trying to get into Gaza … Will they start deporting us ?
What ever else get news circulating about Viva Palestina. They are really getting the worst of it … They have come all this way with wonderful receptions and then they get to the ferry crossing and Egypt begins its games …
Ban Ki-Moon: Gaza reconstruction not being addressed: BBC
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has said more must be done to repair damage done in the Gaza Strip by Israeli military action one year ago.
Mr Ban said Gazans were being denied “basic human rights” and urged Israel to end its “unacceptable and counterproductive blockade”.
He said Israeli well-being depended on conditions improving in the enclave.
Rallies are being held across Gaza to mark a year since the conflict, in which 1,400 Palestinians were killed.
In comments posted on the UN’s website, Mr Ban said he was “deeply concerned that neither the issues that led to this conflict nor its worrying aftermath are being addressed”.
He said that while levels of violence had been low in the past year, there was still no durable ceasefire after Operation Cast Lead and Gazans were “denied basic human rights”.
“The quality and quantity of humanitarian supplies entering Gaza is insufficient, broader economic and reconstruction activity is paralysed,” said Mr Ban.
‘Hopelessness’
Under Israel’s blockade of Gaza, only basic humanitarian supplies are allowed in, meaning Gazans have not been able to obtain materials to repair damaged homes, buildings and infrastructure.
The UN Relief and Works agency (UNRWA) in Gaza told the BBC that public health was suffering as a result of inadequate and unsanitary water supplies, and there had been a rise in infant mortality.
GAZA CONFLICT CASUALTIES
Total Palestinian deaths, according to the following sources:
1,409 (PCHR)
1,387 (B’Tselem)
1,166 (Israeli military)
Palestinian children killed:
326 (under 17, PCHR)
252 (under 16, B’tselem)
89 (under 16, Israeli military)
Palestinian civilians killed: 916* (PCHR)
773* (B’tselem)
295 plus 162 unknown (Israeli military)
Israelis killed:
3 civilians
10 security forces (includes 4 by friendly fire)
*Figs exclude about 250 Hamas police officers
UNRWA spokesman Christopher Gunness said thousands of tonnes of sewage were being pumped into the sea every day, because material for rebuilding treatment plants and other facilities was so scarce.
An international humanitarian aid convoy of some 200 vehicles is hoping to mark the anniversary by delivering supplies to Gaza.
The convoy is currently in Jordan, awaiting permission to cross the Red Sea and proceed to Egypt.
Hamas, which controls Gaza, is holding 22 days of rallies to mark the anniversary.
Senior leader Ahmed Bahar said Gazans remained “steadfast” after the conflict
“The resistance, which defended its land with honour, was not broken,” the AFP news agency quoted him as saying.
Mr Ban called on Israel to end its blockade, uphold international law and make it possible for economic activity and civilian reconstruction to take place. He also urged Hamas to respect the law and bring an end to violence, and for all Palestinians to “work for unity”.
He said there was “a sense of hopelessness in Gaza today for 1.5 million Palestinians, half of whom are under 18” and that “a fundamentally different approach to Gaza is urgently required”.
“Their fate and the well-being of Israelis are intimately connected.”
The BBC’s Katya Adler in Gaza City said the mood on the anniversary of Operation Cast Lead was relatively quiet, but uneasy.
Both Israel and Palestinians in Gaza believe 2010 is bound to bring further violence, our correspondent adds.
1 Year after Gaza Massacre: Over 500 Academics and Cultural Workers Call for Boycott
by United States Campaign for an Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel / December 27th, 2009
December 27, 2009 marks the one-year anniversary of the beginning of “Operation Cast Lead,” Israel’s 22-day assault on the captive population of Gaza, which killed 1400 people, one third of them children, and injured more than 5300. During this war on an impoverished, mostly refugee population, Israel targeted civilians, using internationally-proscribed white phosphorous bombs, deprived them of power, water and other essentials, and sought to destroy the infrastructure of Palestinian civil society, including hospitals, administrative buildings and UN facilities. It targeted with peculiar consistency educational institutions of all kinds: the Islamic University of Gaza, the Ministry of Education, the American International School, at least ten UNRWA schools, one of which was sheltering internally displaced Palestinian civilians with nowhere to flee, and tens of other schools and educational facilities.
While world leaders have tragically failed to come to Gaza’s help, civilians everywhere are rallying to show their solidarity with the Palestinian people, with anniversary vigils taking place this week in New York, Washington DC, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles, and many more cities and towns in the US and world-wide.
The United States Campaign for an Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel was formed in the immediate aftermath of Operation Cast Lead, bringing together educators of conscience who were unable to stand by and watch in silence Israel’s indiscriminate assault on the Gaza Strip and its educational institutions. Today, over 500 US-based academics, authors, artists, musicians, poets, and other arts professionals have endorsed our call. Our academic endorsers include post-colonial critics and transnational feminists Chandra Talpade Mohanty and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Indigenous scholars J. Kēhaulani Kauanui and Andrea Smith, philosopher Judith Butler, Black studies scholars Cedric Robinson, Fred Moten, evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers, and intellectual historian Joseph Massad.
“Cultural workers” who have endorsed our call include well known author Barbara Ehrenreich, Electronic Intifada founder Ali Abunimah, poets Adrienne Rich and Lisa Suhair Majjaj, ISM co-founder and documentary film-maker Adam Shapiro, Jordan Flaherty of Left Turn Magazine, and Adrienne Maree Brown, of the Ruckus Society.
Among the 34 organizations supporting our mission are and the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, the Green Party, Code Pink, INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, .Artists Against Apartheid, and Teachers Against the Occupation.
The Advisory Board of the United States Campaign for an Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI) has grown to include Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Hamid Dabashi, Lawrence Davidson, Bill Fletcher Jr., Glen Ford, Mark Gonzales, Marilyn Hacker, Edward Herman, Annemarie Jacir, J. Kehaulani Kauanui, Robin Kelley, Ilan Pappe, James Petras, Vijay Prashad, Andrenne Rich, Michel Shehadeh, and Lisa Taraki.
Israeli academics, listed among the organization’s International Endorsers, have also joined us, including Emmanuel Farjoun, Hebrew University; Rachel Giora, Tel Aviv University; Anat Matar, Tel Aviv University; Kobi Snitz, Technion; and Ilan Pappe now at Exeter.
The USACBI Mission Statement calls for a boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions in support of an appeal by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. Individual Israelis are not targeted by the boycott.
Specifically, supporters are asked to:
(1) Refrain from participation in any form of academic and cultural cooperation, collaboration or joint projects with Israeli institutions that do not vocally oppose Israeli state policies against Palestine;
(2) Advocate a comprehensive boycott of Israeli institutions at the national and international levels, including suspension of all forms of funding and subsidies to these institutions;
(3) Promote divestment and disinvestment from Israel by international academic institutions;
(4) Work toward the condemnation of Israeli policies by pressing for resolutions to be adopted by academic, professional and cultural associations and organizations;
(5) Support Palestinian academic and cultural institutions directly without requiring them to partner with Israeli counterparts as an explicit or implicit condition for such support.
This boycott, modeled upon the global BDS movement that put an end to South African apartheid, is to continue until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law by:
1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall;
2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and
3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.
DECEMBER 27, 2009: IJAN
RESISTANCE AND SOLIDARITY CAN BE REPRESSED BUT THEIR SPIRIT STAYS STRONG.
At the one-year anniversary of its brutal attack on Gaza, Israel and its allies continue to reveal their disregard for human life, freedom and dignity.
• After closing and controlling its borders, Israel brutally bombed and then invaded Gaza—leaving 1,417 Palestinians dead including 313 children and youth.
• Since the attack, which destroyed houses, wells, factories, schools, hospitals, police stations and other public buildings, the blockade has created conditions for genocide through contamination of water supplies due to white phosphorous, raw sewage pouring into the sea, and the prevention of food, medical, and other humanitarian supplies from entering Gaza. People living in Gaza are already feeling the terrible long term effects including a huge increase in birth defects and in cancers especially in children.
• As the siege and blockade of Gaza continues, Israel escalates its theft of land and home demolition in East Jerusalem—forcibly evicting or demolishing the homes of more than 600 Palestinian people in East Jerusalem and other parts of the West Bank this year, half of them children.
• Israel continues to build and police its Apartheid Wall as part of carving up and repressing the West Bank for purposes of military control, land theft and the control of Palestinian water supplies.
• And, inside of Israel, spearheaded by the Jewish National Fund, land and water theft continues, as Bedouins and solidarity activists resist the call for direct removal of the 70,000 Bedouin occupants from their land in the Negev.
As a result, Israel has faced international condemnation. Its barbaric assault on Gaza was met with mass demonstrations across the globe. Its barbarity has inspired humanitarian efforts to break the siege, calls for prosecution and the issuance of warrants for the arrest of Israeli war criminals, and the breaking of diplomatic ties by Venezuela, Bolivia, and Mauritania.
The Goldstone Report of September 2009, authored by South African Jewish judge and long-time supporter of Israel, Justice Richard Goldstone, condemned the Israeli siege on Gaza for its violation of international law, war crimes and possible crimes against humanity. It recommended that the UN end Israel’s impunity and “urged the Human Rights Council to take action that would ensure the protection of victims, prevent further violence and improve the living conditions of the affected people.”
At the same time, the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel (BDS) is rapidly gaining in impact and active support, both internationally and even within Israel itself.
In response, Israel has increased its repression while the United States—which funds, promotes and protects Israel —has censored information and boycotted international forums to address Israel’s crimes in Palestine, and Egypt collaborates.
• Israeli military arrests of Palestinian grassroots leaders and activists in the West Bank have escalated, including those of Abdallah Abu Rahmeh, Mohammad Othman, Jamal Juma’ and dozens of others.
• The United States rejected the Goldstone report and refuses to allow its review by the United Nations.
• The United States boycotted the World Conference Against Racism and Discrimination in Geneva on the basis that the report from the 2001conference in Durban was up for review and named Israel as an apartheid state—while at the same time silencing any discussion of reparations for its own racist history of genocide and slavery.
• Egypt, colluding with the blockade and defending its brutal regime from its own movement of resistance, the natural allies of the Palestinian struggle, plans to build its own iron wall 20-30 meters deep on their side of the Rafah border.
• Israel and Egypt have together undermined every international effort to provide even the most basic humanitarian aid to Gaza.
One wonders if the real motivation behind Israel’s determination to crush non-violent resistance is to leave violence—however insignificant measured against one of the world’s best-resourced militaries—as the only option and thus constructing a pretext for further ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinian people.
And now, Egypt refuses to allow over 1,400 international delegates to join with 50,000 people in Gaza for a peaceful march to insist on the dignity and humanity of the people living in Gaza. This collusion with the United States and Israel cannot be justified on any grounds. Rather, it reflects the repressive interests and actions of the Egyptian government, which, in exchange for economic and military cooperation, continues to be one of the largest recipients of US aid.
On this anniversary of the siege on Gaza, the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network stands with Palestinian people in Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Israel, including the Bedouins of the Negev who continue to struggle for emancipation and self-determination and refugees. We stand with the activists in Egypt who take inspiration from and struggle in solidarity with the Palestinian people and who fight for the labor, voting, economic, housing and political rights, against sexual repression, and for religious freedom in Egypt. We stand with those struggling against racism, State repression, continued colonization and environmental destruction in and by any country, beginning with those in which we organize.
On December 31, 2009, IJAN activists will march in Gaza, Israel and across the world in solidarity with the people of Gaza and to re-affirm our collective humanity and dignity.
United States Campaign for an Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel is a U.S. campaign focused specifically on a boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions, as delineated by PACBI (Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel). Read other articles by United States Campaign for an Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, or visit United States Campaign for an Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel’s website.
Israel plans to build more homes in E Jerusalem: BBC
Israel has announced plans for nearly 700 homes in mainly Arab East Jerusalem – despite Palestinian and international demands that it freeze building there.
The move follows plans announced last month for 900 homes on occupied land in Gilo, south of Jerusalem.
Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967 and later annexed it, in a move not recognised internationally.
The Palestinians, who want to locate their future capital in East Jerusalem, condemned the move.
They said the plans showed Israel was “not ready for peace”.
Future capital?
The European Union said it was “dismayed” by the announcement.
“Settlements on occupied land are illegal under international law,” it said.
The new plans “contravene repeated calls from the international community and prevent the creation of the an atmosphere conducive to resuming negotiations,” a statement from the Swedish EU presidency said.
Obstacles to peace: Jerusalem
Israel’s housing ministry announced on Monday that it has invited contractors to bid on the construction of 198 housing units in Pisgat Zeev, 377 homes in Neve Yaakov and 117 dwellings in Har Homa, which are built on land captured in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
It is part of an invitation to bid for contracts on 6,500 housing units across the country.
The new buildings will make apartments cheaper and more affordable for young families, the Israeli Housing Ministry said.
Last month, Israel announced a 10-month suspension of new building in settlements in the occupied West Bank, under heavy pressure from the US.
But the right-leaning government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made it clear that it does not regard Jewish areas in Jerusalem as settlements and the restrictions do not apply there.
The Palestinians have refused to resume peace talks without a complete halt to settlement building in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
‘Arab homes planned’
However, Jerusalem municipality said plans had recently been proposed for 500 new homes intended for Arab residents in the mainly Arab area of Silwan in East Jerusalem, and to allow the legalisation of 500 existing Arab homes.
Silwan is a controversial area, where Jewish groups have been attempting to acquire land, and dozens of Arab homes are under demolition orders.
Many of the homes are built without permits, which Israeli-Arab and Palestinian residents say are very difficult for them to get.
Israel says that East Jerusalem is part of the “indivisible and eternal” Israeli capital.
Israel’s annexation of the east of the city has never been recognised by the international community.
About 500,000 Israelis live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, in settlements illegal under international law.
28 Dec 2009: Un Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Jerusalem
Protection of Civilians Weekly Report | 16 – 22 Dec 2009
This week, three Palestinians died in tunnel collapse in Gaza. Tension in Sheikh Jarrah area of East Jerusalem continues; four Palestinians and four settlers were injured during attempts by settlers to take over additional Palestinian property. Settler-related incidents; incidents related to protests by settlers against the freeze of settlement construction continue. New Beit Iba permanently-staffed checkpoint becomes “partial”. In Gaza, explosion targets civil society associations. Death toll of Influenza A (H1N1) virus reaches 13. Concerns over “trapped” students at risk of losing their academic year continues. Weekly average of imports remain below needs.
To read the report:
English
Israel resembles a failed state: The Electronic Intifada,
Ali Abunimah, 27 December 2009
One year has passed since the savage Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip, but for the people there time might as well have stood still.
Since Palestinians in Gaza buried their loved ones — more than 1,400 persons, almost 400 of them children — there has been little healing and virtually no reconstruction.
According to international aid agencies, only 41 trucks of building supplies have been allowed into Gaza during the year.
Promises of billions made at a donors’ conference in Egypt last March attended by luminaries of the so-called “international community” and the Middle East peace process industry are unfulfilled, and the Israeli siege, supported by the US, the European Union, Arab states, and tacitly by the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Ramallah, continues.
Amid the endless, horrifying statistics a few stand out: of Gaza’s 640 schools, 18 were completely destroyed and 280 damaged in Israeli attacks. Two-hundred-and-fifty students and 15 teachers were killed.
Of 122 health facilities assessed by the World Health Organization, 48 percent were damaged or destroyed.
Ninety percent of households in Gaza still experience power cuts for four to eight hours per day due to Israeli attacks on the power grid and degradation caused by the blockade.
Forty-six percent of Gaza’s once productive agricultural land is out of use due to Israeli damage to farms and Israeli-declared free fire zones. Gaza’s exports of more than 130,000 tons per year of tomatoes, flowers, strawberries and other fruit have fallen to zero.
That “much of Gaza still lies in ruins,” a coalition of international aid agencies stated recently, “is not an accident; it is a matter of policy.”
This policy has been clear all along and it has nothing to do with Israeli “security.”
From 19 June 2008, to 4 November 2008, calm prevailed between Israel and Gaza, as Hamas adhered strictly — as even Israel has acknowledged — to a negotiated ceasefire.
That ceasefire collapsed when Israel launched a surprise attack on Gaza killing six persons, after which Hamas and other resistance factions retaliated.
Even so, Palestinian factions were still willing to renew the ceasefire, but it was Israel that refused, choosing instead to launch a premeditated, systematic attack on the foundations of civilized life in the Gaza Strip.
Operation Cast Lead, as Israel dubbed it, was an attempt to destroy once and for all Palestinian resistance in general, and Hamas in particular, which had won the 2006 election and survived the blockade and numerous US-sponsored attempts to undermine and overthrow it in cooperation with US-backed Palestinian militias.
Like the murderous sanctions on Iraq throughout the 1990s, the blockade of Gaza was calculated to deprive civilians of basic necessities, rights and dignity in the hope that their suffering might force their leadership to surrender or collapse.
In many respects things may seem more dire than a year ago.
Barack Obama, the US president, whom many hoped would change the vicious anti-Palestinian policies of his predecessor, George W. Bush, has instead entrenched them as even the pretense of a serious peace effort has vanished.
According to media reports, the US Army Corps of Engineers is assisting Egypt in building an underground wall on its border with Gaza to block the tunnels which act as a lifeline for the besieged territory (resources and efforts that ought to go into rebuilding still hurricane-devastated New Orleans), and American weapons continue to flow to West Bank militias engaged in a US- and Israeli-sponsored civil war against Hamas and anyone else who might resist Israeli occupation and colonization.
These facts are inescapable and bleak.
However, to focus on them alone would be to miss a much more dynamic situation that suggests Israel’s power and impunity are not as invulnerable as they appear from this snapshot.
A year after Israel’s attack and after more than two-and-a-half years of blockade, the Palestinian people in Gaza have not surrendered. Instead they have offered the world lessons in steadfastness and dignity, even at an appalling, unimaginable cost.
It is true that the European Union leaders who came to occupied Jerusalem last January to publicly embrace Ehud Olmert, the then Israeli prime minister — while white phosphorus seared the flesh of Gazan children and bodies lay under the rubble — still cower before their respective Israel lobbies, as do American and Canadian politicians.
But the shift in public opinion is palpable as Israel’s own actions transform it into a pariah whose driving forces are not the liberal democratic values with which it claims to identify, but ultra-nationalism, racism, religious fanaticism, settler-colonialism and a Jewish supremacist order maintained by frequent massacres.
The universalist cause of justice and liberation for Palestinians is gaining adherents and momentum especially among the young. I witnessed it, for example, among Malaysian students I met at a Palestine solidarity conference held by the Union of NGOs of The Islamic World in Istanbul last May, and again in November as hundreds of student organizers from across the US and Canada converged to plan their participation in the global Palestinian-led campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions modeled on the successful struggle against South African apartheid in the 1980s.
This week, thousands of people from dozens of countries are attempting to reach Gaza to break the siege and march alongside Palestinians who have been organizing inside the territory.
Each of the individuals traveling with the Gaza Freedom March, Viva Palestina, or other delegations represents perhaps hundreds of others who could not make the journey in person, and who are marking the event with demonstrations and commemorations, visits to their elected officials and media campaigns.
Against this flowering of activism, Zionism is struggling to rejuvenate its dwindling base of support. Multi-million dollar programs aimed at recruiting and Zionizing young American Jews are struggling to compete against organizations like the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, which run not on money but principled commitment to human equality.
Increasingly, we see that Israel’s hasbara (propaganda) efforts have no positive message, offer no plausible case for maintaining a status quo of unspeakable repression and violence, and rely instead on racist demonization and dehumanization of Arabs and Muslims to justify Israel’s actions and even its very existence.
Faced with growing global recognition and support for the courageous nonviolent struggle against continued land theft in the West Bank, Israel is escalating its violence and kidnapping of leaders of the movement in Bilin and other villages (Mohammad Othman, Jamal Juma’ and Abdallah Abu Rahmeh are among the leaders of this movement recently arrested).
In acting this way, Israel increasingly resembles a bankrupt failed state, not a regime confident about its legitimacy and longevity.
And despite the failed peace process industry’s efforts to ridicule, suppress and marginalize it, there is a growing debate among Palestinians and even among Israelis about a shared future in Palestine/Israel based on equality and decolonization, rather than ethno-national segregation and forced repartition.
Last, but certainly not least, in the shadow of the Goldstone report, Israeli leaders travel around the world fearing arrest for their crimes.
For now, they can rely on the impunity that high-level international complicity and their inertial power and influence still afford them. But the question for the real international community — made up of people and movements — is whether we want to continue to see the still very incomplete system of international law and justice painstakingly built since the horrors of the Second World War and the Nazi holocaust dismantled and corrupted all for the sake of one rogue state.
What we have done in solidarity with the Palestinian people in Gaza and the rest of Palestine is not yet enough. But our movement is growing, it cannot be stopped, and we will reach our destination.
Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. He will be among more than 1,300 persons from 42 countries traveling to Gaza with the Gaza Freedom March this week. This essay was originally published by Al-Jazeera and is republished with the author’s permission.