Islamic Jihad may halt rocket attacks on Israel: The Independent
By Catrina Stewart, Tuesday, 6 April 2010
A spokesman for Islamic Jihad in Gaza has said that the militant group has agreed to stop firing rockets against Israel amid fears of a brewing conflict in the enclave.
In an interview with Islamic Jihad radio, Daoud Shihab said the group “stopped the rocket fire into Israel for internal Palestinian purposes – first and foremost to help end the siege on the Gaza Strip.” Mr Shihab is a senior figure within Islamic Jihad. But suggesting a possible division within the group, Islamic Jihad’s offer of a ceasefire was later denied by Nafez Azzam, one of the group’s leaders, on its website.
Ismail Radwan, a Hamas official, said yesterday that Islamist groups had agreed to co-ordinate their resistance efforts, but he refused to be drawn on whether they had agreed a ceasefire. Tensions are high in Gaza after Israel mounted missile attacks last week and an official threatened a second offensive if rocket attacks do not cease.
EDITOR: Lies again!
The IOF has of course never stopped lying, and by right, this should not be news any more; however, this case is just too much… first the soldiers shoot live ammunition at peaceful demonstrators and murder two of them, then the IOF denies any such deeds, and in the end, of course, they blame the soldiers. Those who killed, and those who lied, should all be prosecuted for murder!
Israeli military criticises troops who killed youths: BBC
The Israeli military has criticised its own soldiers for killing four young Palestinian demonstrators in the West Bank in March.
The Palestinians, one of whom was 15 years old, were shot in the space of 24 hours in two incidents near Nablus.
Israeli Defence Force commander Maj Gen Avi Mizrahi said the incidents were “an unnecessary operational occurrence with dire consequences”.
The IDF will now decide whether to take disciplinary action against soldiers.
X-ray
Mohammed Qadus, 15, and Osayed Qadus, 20, were killed during protests on 20 March in which stones were thrown at soldiers near an Israeli settlement.
Palestinian and human rights groups said the young men were killed with live ammunition.
They produced an X-ray image that appeared to show a bullet lodged in the skull of one of the victims.
The IDF initially denied the allegation, saying troops had been given clearance to use rubber coated anti-riot ammunition.
Tuesday’s report says the IDF were “unable to verify the autopsy”.
Later two men were killed near a military checkpoint.
The IDF investigation said the soldiers opened fire on one man who had attacked them with a broken bottle.
They shot a second man when he raised a sharp object after the first man was shot, the investigation said.
Maj Gen Mizrahi said commanders on the ground should have managed the situation differently and the second man was far away enough for them not to have had to open fire.
Palestinians say the account is false and the men were killed in an unprovoked attack.
The BBC’s Tim Franks in Jerusalem says it is unusual for the Israeli army to criticise its soldiers this quickly and this openly.
EDITOR: Dan David Prize 2010
This year, this prize was awarded to Maragret Atwood and Amitav Ghosh. This is a sure way of getting international authors to visit and praise Israel profusely. There is deep shock that those two important autors have agreed to recieve this prize, in the wake of the Gaza masacre, and from the brutal regime in Jerusalem. The first two letters to Atwood are quoted Below:
Greyson letter to Atwood[1]
April 5, 2010
Margaret Atwood
c/o McClelland & Stewart
75 Sherbourne St., 5th Floor
Toronto, ON
M5A 2P9
Dear Margaret:
Back in 1981, I remember vividly that when the Toronto police raided several
bathhouses and arrested 300 men, you agreed to speak out at a hastily arranged benefit —
the first public figure to do so. Your courage meant a great deal to our gay community
then, and your words were typically memorable: “Why on earth would the police object
to cleanliness?”
I understand you’re going to Israel in May, to accept the Dan David Prize at Tel
Aviv University. Will you find words for the Gaza students who wrote to you yesterday,
44 miles down the coast, asking you to refuse the prize? Will you mention the ongoing
seige of Gaza, and the larger occupation, whose check points and security wall have
reduced the region to an apartheid state? Will you mention the two unarmed teenagers
Mohammed Qadas, 16, and Asaud Qadus, 19, who were shot by Israeli army snipers last
week? His aunt says that Mohammed had gone out to buy ice-cream. Why on earth
would the army object to ice-cream?
I write today as a fan, someone who’s life was changed on reading A Handmaid’s
Tale, someone who still treasures my rare edition of The Journals of Susanna Moodie.
For decades, you’ve been an extraordinary role model for so many of us, embracing the
role of artist as a figure of conscience. You’ve consistently spoken out against a host of
injustices, even as you engaged with the complexities of each issue. In May, will you
decline this prize, in recognition of the growing boycott movement which is trying to
contribute to peace in the region? Will you at least speak out against the war crimes
committed a year ago? Will you perhaps donate a portion to a writers group in Gaza?
Will you at the very least acknowledge the complexities that this award, and this conflict,
represent? Or will you remain silent, making us wonder: why on earth would Margaret
Atwood of all people object to complexity?
Sincerely,
John Greyson
Associate Professor, filmmaker
York University, Toronto
Bresheeth letter to Margaret Atwood
April 5, 2010
Margaret Atwood
c/o McClelland & Stewart
75 Sherbourne St., 5th Floor
Toronto, ON
M5A 2P9
Canada
Dear Margaret,
I have recently learnt that you are to travel to Israel in May, to be awarded the prestigious Dan David prize. In any other circumstances, I would be both enormously pleased and proud for you and for us all. Like so many others (probably many millions) I was moved and influenced greatly by your writing. Your writing appeared at the historical juncture it was most needed, and was welcomed by us all for its courage, the challenges it offered, and the committed feminism which has never become ossified, never turned into a dogma but remained live and real.
The wide recognition your work has received worldwide has affected the life of many, not just women, but of feminist men such as myself. As you have become more than a mere teller of stories, and always were the master (sic) of social narratives, what you do and say carries an enormous weight, something you must be aware of more than anybody.
I am writing to beg you, as an Israeli Jew who is totally committed to Palestine and the human and political rights of the Palestinians, to give all of us your courageous support we have grown to expect and respect, and to take the unlikely stance of refusing this prize. I fully realize how difficult such a request must be for you; the recognition and international fame, not to mention the funds, surely means a lot to a writer who lives by her pen alone, and I do not for a moment wish to overlook this. So what right have I, or for that matter, anyone else, to ask you to deny yourself this mark of appreciation and honour, which I myself am sure you more than richly deserve?
I am asking personally for this great sacrifice on your part, as one of many Jews, and increasingly also Israelis, who recognize a historical duty to stand up and be counted, to stand with the Palestinians against their brutal oppressors, after many decades of an iniquitous and inhuman military occupation, with no end in sight. I am asking you also as a fellow artist, as an independent filmmaker, and as someone whose family was wiped out in Poland by the Nazis. As such, I am bound to disagree with what Israel, and Israeli society, has done in my name for so many years, to no avail but with much suffering caused. Israel is not a tyranny – it is a democracy, for Jews only, of course, and it calls itself a Jewish democracy, which I am sure you will agree is a difficult concept; I would argue it is an oxymoron. I am making this point because by receiving this prize, you will by definition tying your name to this militarized, brutalized and brutalizing society, denting any rights to the Palestinians, exiling them from their land, and killing numerous civilians through a combination of racism, nationalism and Orientalism for the crime of their identity.
This society depends on all of us for its continued violence – it depends on our silence, on our being co-opted, on our international acceptance of the ‘deeds done’; we should never agree to support it, I believe, until it radically changes all its practices and beliefs, and agrees to treat Palestinians as human beings with full rights. The change needed is deeper than that required by the South African society. Would you have travelled to South Africa during apartheid? I cannot believe so, and yet you may travel to a state which uses all the modern technology of warfare against helpless, impoverished and terrorized civilians, like the almost two millions trapped in Gaza? Of course, while Israel keeps doing that, no Israeli will be free; A people oppressing another people cannot itself be free.
By going there now, you would add your immense moral authority to a state of military thugs, a state founded on inequality and plunder, a state which continuously unsettles and terrorizes the Middle East, yet presents itself as a victim! Your support is crucial for Israel – it needs liberals from all over the world to cleanse its image, to help it argue its case, to present it as a normal society – all of which is behind its relentless efforts and expense in luring internationally-renown authors, artists and intellectuals to its halls of culture, to receive prizes for their work which supports humane values…
I would put it to you that you would not have travelled to Chile under Pinochet to receive a literary prize; why would you do so now in Israel?
By refusing this prize, you would be giving moral support for the struggle for just peace in the Middle East, and for the human and political rights of the Palestinians. I put it to you that the courage required for such a deed is the courage your own work have displayed and exemplified over the decades for us all! The refusal of this prize would indeed cement your humane record in a unique way, giving hope to a people whose hope was brutally murdered.
Dear Margaret – please do not forsake us!
Sincerely yours,
Prof. Haim Bresheeth
University of East London
UK
Jonathan Ben-Artzi: Peace for Israelis and Palestinians? Not without America’s tough love: IOA
By Jonathan Ben-Artzi, The Christian Science Monitor – 1 April 2010
Providence, R.I. — More than 20 years ago, many Americans decided they could no longer watch as racial segregation divided South Africa. Compelled by an injustice thousands of miles away, they demanded that their communities, their colleges, their municipalities, and their government take a stand.
As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Today, a similar discussion is taking place on campuses across the United States. Increasingly, students are questioning the morality of the ties US institutions have with the unjust practices being carried out in Israel and in the occupied Palestinian territories. Students are seeing that these practices are often more than merely “unjust.” They are racist. Humiliating. Inhumane. Savage.
Sometimes it takes a good friend to tell you when enough is enough. As they did with South Africa two decades ago, concerned citizens across the US can make a difference by encouraging Washington to get the message to Israel that this cannot continue.
A legitimate question is, Why should I care? Americans are heavily involved in the conflict: from funding (the US provides Israel with roughly $3 billion annually in military aid) to corporate investments (Microsoft has one of its major facilities in Israel) to diplomatic support (the US has vetoed 32 United Nations Security Council resolutions unsavory to Israel between 1982 and 2006).
Why do I care? I am an Israeli. Both my parents were born in Israel. Both my grandmothers were born in Palestine (when there was no “Israel” yet). In fact, I am a ninth-generation native of Palestine. My ancestors were among the founders of today’s modern Jerusalem.
Both my grandfathers fled the Nazis and came to Palestine. Both were subsequently injured in the 1948 Arab-Israli War. My mother’s only brother was a paratrooper killed in combat in 1968. All of my relatives served in the Israeli military for extensive periods of time, some of them in units most people don’t even know exist.
In Israel, military service for both men and women is compulsory. When my time to serve came, I refused, because I realized I was obliged to do something about these acts of segregation. I was denied conscientious objector status, like the majority of 18-year-old males who seek this status. Because I refused to serve, I spent a year and a half in military prison.
Some of the acts of segregation that I saw while growing up in Israel include towns for Jews only, immigration laws that allow Jews from around the world to immigrate but deny displaced indigenous Palestinians that same right, and national healthcare and school systems that receive significantly more funding in Jewish towns than in Arab towns.
As former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in 2008: “We have not yet overcome the barrier of discrimination, which is a deliberate discrimination and the gap is insufferable…. Governments have denied [Arab Israelis] their rights to improve their quality of life.”
The situation in the occupied territories is even worse. Nearly 4 million Palestinians have been living under Israeli occupation for over 40 years without the most basic human and civil rights.
One example is segregation on roads in the West Bank, where settlers travel on roads that are for Jews only, while Palestinians are stopped at checkpoints, and a 10-mile commute might take seven hours.
Another example is discrimination in water supply: Israel pumps drinking water from occupied territory (in violation of international law). Israelis use as much as four times more water than Palestinians, while Palestinians are not allowed to dig their own wells and must rely on Israeli supply.
Civil freedom is no better: In an effort to break the spirit of Palestinians, Israel conducts sporadic arrests and detentions with no judicial supervision. According to one prisoner support and human rights association, roughly 4 in 10 Palestinian males have spent some time in Israeli prisons. That’s 40 percent of all Palestinian males!
And finally, perhaps one of the greatest injustices takes place in the Gaza Strip, where Israel is collectively punishing more than 1.5 million Palestinians by sealing them off in the largest open-air prison on earth.
Because of the US’s relationship with Israel, it is important for all Americans to educate themselves about the realities of the conflict. When they do, they will realize that just as much as support for South Africa decades ago was mostly damaging for South Africa itself, contemporary blind support for Israel hurts us Israelis.
We must lift the ruthless siege of Gaza, which only breeds more anger and frustration among Gazans, who respond by hurling primitive, homemade rockets at Israeli towns.
We must remove travel restrictions from West Bank Palestinians. How can we live in peace with a population where most children cannot visit their grandparents living in the neighboring village, without being stopped and harassed at military checkpoints for hours?
Finally, we must give equal rights to all. Regardless of what the final resolution will be – the so-called “one state solution,” the “two state solution,” or any other form of governance.
Israel governs the lives of 5.5 million Israeli Jews, 1.5 million Israeli Palestinians, and 4 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. As long as Israel is responsible for all of these people, it must ensure that all have equal rights, the same access to resources, and the same opportunities in education and healthcare. Only through such a platform of basic human rights for all humans can a resolution come to the region.
If Americans truly are our friends, they should shake us up and take away the keys, because right now we are driving drunk, and without this wake-up call, we will soon find ourselves in the ditch of an undemocratic, doomed state.
Jonathan Ben-Artzi was one of the spokespeople for the Hadash party in the Israeli general elections in 2006. His parents are professors in Israel, and his extended family includes uncle Benjamin Netanyahu. Mr. Ben-Artzi is a PhD student at Brown University in Providence, R.I.