August 8, 2010

EDITOR: The buildup continues…

As Israel is again preparing for its latest habitual war, the pundits in Israel seem divided between an attack on Iran, an attack on Lebanon, and an attack on both… What is clear is that an attack is coming. The first attack might indeed be one on the new, small flotilla now advancing towards Gaza. Israel, as ever, is spoilt for choice. What has changed is the rest of the world, especially after the Gaza and Flotilla massacres; the world is no longer in thrall to Israeli whims and selective atrocities. The BDS movement has popularised the Palestine case, and works to recruit people everywhere against the Zionist barbarities.

Iran: Lebanon has a right to defend itself against Israel’s hostility: Haaretz

Speaking at a joint press conference with Lebanon FM, Mottaki slams UNIFIL performance, saying it was not able to deter ‘Zionist regime’s aggressions.’

Lebanon has a right to defend itself in the face of Israeli aggression, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said to the official ISNA news agency on Sunday, following a recent border clash between Lebanon and Israel which resulted in the death of two Lebanese soldiers, a Lebanese journalist and one Israel Defense Forces officer.
Last week, Israeli officer Dov Harari was killed during clashes between Israel and the Lebanese army along the border. The 45-year-old father of four from Netanya was a reserves battalion commander in the engineering corps. Another Israeli officer, Ezra Lakia, was seriously wounded in the same exchange of fire.

Speaking at a joint press conference with Lebanese Foreign Minister Ali al-Shami on Sunday, Mottaki said the “Lebanese nation and resistance have the right to end any aggression and pursue the issue through international circles to defend their rights.”
The Iranian FM also condemned the performance of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), saying that “negligence and mistakes of these forces should not be disregarded.”

“The forces are based in southern Lebanon to deter such aggressions, if UNIFIL is not able to deter the Zionist regime’s aggressions, what is its duty in southern Lebanon? What is it doing along Lebanese and Palestinian borders?” Mottaki said.

Also speaking to ISNA at the joint press conference was Lebanese Foreign Minister al-Shami, who said that Israel did “not have the right to invade this region, the region is Lebanon’s shared border.”

The Iranian FM also commented on a rare Lebanon joint visit by Syrian President Bashar Assad and Saudi King Abdullah, underscoring the depth of Arab concern over the possibility that the potential indictment against Hezbollah members over the assassination of former Lebanon PM Rafik Harir would stir unwanted chaos.

Mottaki said that he viewed the joint meeting in a favorable light, adding that the “Islamic Republic of Iran’s strategic policy seeks regional convergence and boosting regional cooperation.”

“We regard regional convergence as a necessary element to strengthen bilateral and multilateral engagement and tackle enemies’ conspiracies,” Mottaki said.

On the subject of Iran’s contentious nuclear program, the Lebanese foreign minister said he supported Iran’s right to a peaceful nuclear program, adding that “the recent unfair Security Council resolution that tightened sanctions on Iran is another instance of double standards and we fully support Iran’s legitimate right to civilian nuclear energy.”

Jordanian Prime Minister Samir Rifai also reiterated on Sunday his country’s support for Lebanon against Israeli “violations,” during a meeting with Lebanese Information Minister Tarek Mitri, the official Petra news agency reported.

The report stated that Prime Minister Rifai “renewed Jordan’s backing to the brethren in Lebanon as well as keenness on the unity and sovereignty of Lebanon, rejecting any violations of the Lebanese sovereignty and stressing the need for all parties to abide by the UN Security Council resolution 1705.”

Rallies mark anniversary of Sheikh Jarrah eviction: Jerusalem Post

By BEN HARTMAN 08/08/2010
Thousands took part in solidarity demonstrations across Israel.

Thousands of Jewish and Arab protesters took part in demonstrations held in cities and towns across the country on Friday, to show solidarity with the Arab residents of the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah and the year-long protest against Israeli housing policies in the district.

The protests, which were held on the hottest weekend of the year, varied in size across Israel, with organizers estimating around 700 participants in Tel Aviv, 100 in Haifa, 60 in Beersheba, 100 in Wadi Ara, 100 in Taibe, 100 in Kfar Yassif and around two dozen in Ra’anana. Another 50 gathered in the Arab neighborhood of Dahmash on the outskirts of Ramle, where at least 13 homes are slated for demolition.

In Tel Aviv, protesters marched down Rothschild Boulevard, accompanied by MKs Haim Oron (Meretz), Ahmed Tibi (Ra’am –Ta’al) and Dov Henin (Hadash), as well as a number of Sheikh Jarrah residents and Israeli cultural and academic figures.

At the end of the march, demonstrators boarded buses for Sheikh Jarrah, where they and hundreds more took part in the weekly protest.

The “Day of Solidarity” was held to mark the one-year anniversary of the eviction of a Palestinian house in August 2009, which came following a 2008 ruling by the Jerusalem District Court which laid down that property in Sheikh Jarrah that was part of the former Jewish neighborhood of “Shimon Hatzadik” belonged to the Sephardi Community Committee. After the evictions, Sheikh Jarrah became the site of weekly protests, which continued to grow as the issue became for many a lightning rod for the battle over the future status of East Jerusalem.

The protest movement began to pick up steam following the arrest of 17 demonstrators at a Friday demonstration in January.

The Jerusalem District Court ruled that the arrest of activists was illegal and the protests lawful, even if they were held without a permit.

Sheikh Jarrah activist Avner Inbar, one of the organizers of Friday’s events, said it had been very successful and that “other than a rally in March that was attended by around 4,000 people, this was our biggest one yet.

Also, all these people took part on a day when there was extreme heat across Israel, when most people don’t even want to leave the house to go to the store.”

Inbar said he hoped the issue of Sheikh Jarrah would continue to grow in the public debate, and advance the cause of Arab and Jewish cooperation.

“We believe the issue of Arab and Jewish solidarity is a very important thing and hope that our efforts will show there is no such thing as a Jewish left wing. The left wing doesn’t need to be exclusively Jewish; it can bring in both Jews and Arabs.”

EDITOR: Is this a war crime or peace crime?…

We are all used to the war crimes committed against Palestinians under occupation. What we sometimes forget is the fact that such crimes are also committed daily against the Palestinian citizens of Israel! The destruction of a Bedouin village, for the second time, makes disturbing reading, and even more disturbing viewing. To see the photographs please use the link below, and view the disturbing video evidence.

Boycott Israel 5, by Carlos Latuff

The “Summer Camp Of Destruction:” Israeli High Schoolers Assist The Razing Of A Bedouin Town: Max Blumenthal

07.31.10
AL-ARAKIB, ISRAEL — On July 26, Israeli police demolished 45 buildings in the unrecognized Bedouin village of al-Arakib, razing the entire village to the ground to make way for a Jewish National Fund forest. The destruction was part of a larger project to force the Bedouin community of the Negev away from their ancestral lands and into seven Indian reservation-style communities the Israeli government has constructed for them. The land will then be open for Jewish settlers, including young couples in the army and those who may someday be evacuated from the West Bank after a peace treaty is signed. For now, the Israeli government intends to uproot as many villages as possible and erase them from the map by establishing “facts on the ground” in the form of JNF forests. (See video of of al-Arakib’s demolition here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvD-2BsPAQU&feature=player_embedded

Moments before the destruction of the Bedouin village of al-Arakib, Israeli high school age police volunteers lounge on furniture taken from a family’s home. [The following four photos are by Ata Abu Madyam of Arab Negev News.
One of the most troubling aspects of the destruction of al-Arakib was a report by CNN that the hundreds of Israeli riot police who stormed the village were accompanied by “busloads of cheering civilians.” Who were these civilians and why didn’t CNN or any outlet investigate further?
I traveled to al-Arakib yesterday with a delegation from Ta’ayush, an Israeli group that promotes a joint Arab-Jewish struggle against the occupation. The activists spent the day preparing games and activities for the village’s traumatized children, helping the villagers replace their uprooted olive groves, and assisting in the reconstruction of their demolished homes. In a massive makeshift tent where many of al-Arakib’s residents now sleep, I interviewed village leaders about the identity of the cheering civilians. Each one confirmed the presence of the civilians, describing how they celebrated the demolitions. As I compiled details, the story grew increasingly horrific. After interviewing more than a half dozen elders of the village, I was able to finally identify the civilians in question. What I discovered was more disturbing than I had imagined.

Arab Negev News publisher Ata Abu Madyam supplied me with a series of photos he took of the civilians in action. They depicted Israeli high school students who appeared to have volunteered as members of the Israeli police civilian guard (I am working on identifying some participants by name). Prior to the demolitions, the student volunteers were sent into the villagers’ homes to extract their furniture and belongings. A number of villagers including Abu Madyam told me the volunteers smashed windows and mirrors in their homes and defaced family photographs with crude drawings. Then they lounged around on the furniture of al-Arakib residents in plain site of the owners. Finally, according to Abu Matyam, the volunteers celebrated while bulldozers destroyed the homes.

“What we learned from the summer camp of destruction,” Abu Madyam remarked, “is that Israeli youth are not being educated on democracy, they are being raised on racism.” (The cover of the latest issue of Madyam’s Arab Negev News features a photo of Palestinians being expelled to Jordan in 1948 juxtaposed with a photo of a family fleeing al-Arakib last week. The headline reads, “Nakba 2010.”)

The Israeli civilian guard, which incorporates 70,000 citizens including youth as young as 15 (about 15% of Israeli police volunteers are teenagers), is one of many programs designed to incorporate Israeli children into the state’s military apparatus. It is not hard to imagine what lessons the high school students who participated in the leveling of al-Arakib took from their experience, nor is it especially difficult to predict what sort of citizens they will become once they reach adulthood. Not only are they being indoctrinated to swear blind allegiance to the military, they are learning to treat the Arab outclass as less than human. The volunteers’ behavior toward Bedouins, who are citizens of Israel and serve loyally in Israeli army combat units despite widespread racism, was strikingly reminiscent of the behavior of settler youth in Hebron who pelt Palestinian shopkeepers in the old city with eggs, rocks and human waste. If there is a distinction between the two cases, it is that the Hebron settlers act as vigilantes while the teenagers of Israeli civilian guard vandalize Arab property as agents of the state.

The spectacle of Israeli youth helping destroy al-Arakib helps explain why 56% of Jewish Israeli high school students do not believe Arabs should be allowed to serve in the Knesset – why the next generation wants apartheid. Indeed, the widespread indoctrination of Israeli youth by the military apparatus is a central factor in Israel’s authoritarian trend. It would be difficult for any adolescent boy to escape from an experience like al-Arakib, where adults in heroic warrior garb encourage him to participate in and gloat over acts of massive destruction, with even a trace of democratic values.

As for the present condition of Israeli democracy, it is essential to consider the way in which the state pits its own citizens against one another, enlisting the Jewish majority as conquerers while targeting the Arab others as, in the words of Zionist founding father Chaim Weizmann, “obstacles that had to be cleared on a difficult path.” Historically, only failing states have encouraged such corrosive dynamics to take hold. That is why the scenes from al-Arakib, from the demolished homes to the uprooted gardens to the grinning teens who joined the mayhem, can be viewed as much more than the destruction of a village. They are snapshots of the phenomenon that is laying Israeli society as a whole to waste.

Israel retreats on flotilla agreement: Jonathan Cook

The National
August 04. 2010

NAZARETH // Israel quickly reined back expectations yesterday over its agreement to co-operate with a UN investigation into the Israeli army’s lethal raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla two months ago.

The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, had hailed Israel’s backing of the investigation on Monday, after weeks of intense international pressure, as an “unprecedented development”.

It is the first time Tel Aviv has agreed to take part in a UN inquiry involving the country’s military. Last year Israel snubbed a UN investigation led by a respected international jurist, Richard Goldstone, that was highly critical of Israel’s attack on Gaza in 2008.

As the panel was announced on Monday, Mr Netanyahu declared: “Israel has nothing to hide. The opposite is true. It is in the national interest of the state of Israel to ensure that the factual truth of the overall flotilla events comes to light throughout the world.”

But faced with stinging rebukes yesterday from Tzipi Livni, the leader of the opposition party Kadima, for agreeing to the inquiry, government officials began to play down the significance of Israel’s concessions to the international community.

Unnamed officials told Ynet, one of Israel’s most popular news websites, that the UN panel’s powers would be limited to reviewing documents available to Israel’s three internal inquiries and a Turkish inquiry, and no military or civilian personnel would be investigated or issued with subpoenas.

If any officials are to be questioned directly, the sources added, they would be senior members of the political leadership – perhaps Mr Netanyahu and his defence minister, Ehud Barak.

That position was confirmed by a terse public statement yesterday defending the government against charges from Ms Livni that the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) were being exposed to a damaging UN investigation.

“If they had bothered to check,” a statement from the prime minister’s office read, “they would have found that IDF soldiers and officers will not be investigated by the UN or any other body.”

The details of the review panel’s mandate are to be determined in the next few days and the committee begins work next week. It is expected to present a progress report in the middle of next month followed by the final report in 2011.

Israel and the US appeared to hope that the UN review panel would sideline, or possibly lead to the cancellation of, a parallel inquiry into the flotilla raid already set up by the UN’s Human Rights Council. The council established the Goldstone Commission and is seen as hostile by Israel.

Last week, Mr Netanyahu told his cabinet that he was still deliberating “how much technical material to provide them with, if at all”. Tel Aviv is reported to fear that an inquiry led by the Human Rights Council may end up becoming a “Goldstone Two”.

Susan Rice, the US envoy to the UN, said Israel’s participation with the review panel would eliminate “the need for any overlapping international inquiries”.

Other comments from Ms Rice suggested that the material to be reviewed by the UN would consist of documents made available by the Israeli and Turkish inquiries but not any investigations conducted by the Human Rights Council.

Mr Netanyahu’s office said contacts with the UN over the past few weeks had ensured that the panel would have “a balanced and fairly written mandate”.

Israeli officials were also reported to be making their co-operation conditional on a promise that there would be no subsequent attempts to refer Israel to the International Criminal Court in the Hague for the flotilla raid.

Yesterday, Israeli government ministers defended their decision by stressing the importance of mending the country’s relations with Turkey after weeks of diplomatic crisis between the two.

Mr Netanyahu and Mr Barak said they had “no choice” but to agree to the inquiry. The US was reported to have pushed hard for its two main allies in the Middle East to repair the damage.

Dan Meridor, a deputy prime minister, told Army Radio Israel that co-operation was “primarily meant, to my knowledge, for Turkey and Israel to find a way to bring relations back to a better place”.

Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey’s foreign minister, told the Anatolia news agency that the establishment of the UN panel showed “every country can be held accountable under international law”.

But Turkish officials also hinted at continuing concerns about how actively Israel would co-operate. A senior Turkish diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “We hope that Israel will be forthcoming with providing access to the panel in gathering information.”

Tensions between Israel and Turkey continued to simmer yesterday. Gaby Levy, Israel’s ambassador in Ankara, was summoned for what was described as a “dressing down” over remarks made by Mr Barak about Hakan Fidan, Turkey’s new intelligence chief.

Last week Mr Barak called Mr Fidan a “friend of Iran” who might leak shared secrets to Tehran.

The UN’s four-person review panel will be headed by Geoffrey Palmer, a former prime minister of New Zealand, with Alvaro Uribe, the outgoing Colombian president, as his deputy. Israel and Turkey will each appoint a representative.

Of Israel’s three inquiries, only the military one has issued a report. The Eiland committee found “errors of judgment” in the planning of the commando raid but held no one accountable. It also blamed the flotilla organisers for instigating the violence.

The Turkel committee is due to begin investigations into the legal ramifications of carrying out a raid in international waters. The third inquiry, whose scope is still unclear, will be conducted by Micha Lindenstrauss, the state comptroller.

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