Month: October 2010

EDITOR: Israeli fascism on the march!

The attacks by fascist groups in Israel are far more blatant and on the increase, and are likely to intensify further. The police is on the whole relauctant to defent Palestinians under attack, and sometimes even joins in attacking them when they try to defend themselves.

Police, protesters clash in Umm al-Fahm amid right-wing rally: Haaretz

Police fire stun grenades, tear gas to scatter crowd; extreme rightists protest in Arab town and call for the Islamic Movement to be outlawed in Israel.

Dozens of extreme rightists held a protest against the Islamic Movement in the Arab town of Umm al-Fahm on Wednesday, which resulted in clashes between Arab residents of the town and police forces stationed at the scene.

Several Arab protesters hurled rocks at the rightists, and police forces fired tear gas and stun grenades at them in order to scatter the crowd. Several people have been arrested, though no serious injuries have been reported.

Hundreds of police officers were sent to Umm al-Fahm to try to prevent clashes between the two sides after an Israeli court allowed the right-wing activists to march in the city.

About 30 right-wing demonstrators traveled in buses from Jerusalem to Umm al-Fahm on Wednesday morning, led by far-right activists Baruch Marzel and Itamar Ben-Gvir, in order to hold a protest march calling for the Islamic Movement to be outlawed in Israel.

The rightists also protested the participation of a prominent leader of the Islamic Movement, Sheikh Raed Salah, in last May’s Gaza-bound flotilla.

“I don’t understand why, when Peace Now comes to demonstrate at my house in Hebron, it’s for the glory of freedom of expression, but when we want to fulfill our legitimate right, suddenly it’s a provocation,” said Ben-Gvir on Tuesday. “We will teach the left what democracy is and we will demand: Outlaw the Islamic Movement.”

On Tuesday, hundreds of people participated in a ceremony in Jerusalem marking the 20th anniversary of the assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane, whose Kach party was banned from the Knesset for inciting racism.

Arab leaders decided this week not to declare a general strike, as they did when a similar march took place in the city last year. Instead, the leaders called on residents to go about their daily routines, urging students to attend school and store owners to open shop.

Umm al-Fahm Deputy Mayor Mustafa Ghalin said Tuesday that the plan was for city representatives and political activists, but not regular citizens, to face the marchers.

Clashes as Israeli nationalists march through Arab town: BBC

Police used tear gas and stun grenades to try to disperse the protesters
Israeli police have clashed with Arab protesters in the northern town of Umm al-Fahm, ahead of a planned protest by Israeli far-right activists.

Police fired tear gas and stun grenades to try to disperse the protesters.

The Jewish activists are followers of a far-right movement, Kach, which believes Arabs should be expelled from Israel and the West Bank.

Dozens of people were wounded when clashes erupted during a similar march in March 2009.

Tensions were running high in Umm al-Fahm after the Supreme Court authorised the march by ultra-nationalist Jews through the mainly Israeli Arab town.

The organisers say they want Israeli authorities to outlaw the Islamic Movement, whose leader Sheikh Raed Salah, comes from the northern town.

“The Islamic Movement is part of the international Islamic jihad,” Michael Ben Ari, a rightwing lawmaker who took part in the protest, was quoted as saying by the AFP news agency.

He accused the movement of having ties to Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Some 20 to 30 Jewish demonstrators travelled from Jerusalem to Umm al-Fahm, under heavy police protection.

Riot police, some on horseback, charged about 200 Arab demonstrators who threw stones at them before retreating.

Several people have been arrested, though no serious injuries have been reported.

Clashes between police and protesters in Israel: The Independent

Reuters
Wednesday, 27 October 2010SHARE PRINTEMAILTEXT SIZE NORMALLARGEEXTRA LARGE
Israeli police fired tear gas and stun grenades to disperse Arab protesters at an Israeli-Arab city today in an effort to prevent a clash with ultranationalist Jews planning to march there.

About 30 Jewish demonstrators travelled from Jerusalem to Umm el-Fahm in northern Israel, the seat of an Islamic movement whose leader, Sheikh Raed Salah, has alleged that Israel endangers Jerusalem’s Muslim holy sites.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said officers were sent to Umm al-Fahm to try to prevent clashes between the two sides after an Israeli court allowed the right-wing activists to march in the city.

Riot police, some on horesback, charged about 200 Arab demonstrators who threw stones at them before retreating.

The Jewish protesters want Israeli authorities to outlaw Salah’s movement. One of their leaders said that as Umm el-Fahm was a part of the Jewish state they had the right to march there unhindered.

“We’re coming to protest in the city of Umm el-Fahm, that’s in the heart of Israel,” organiser Baruch Marzel told supporters before the march.

“We have there a cancer of the Islamic Movement that wants to destroy the state of Israel…from the inside and we want to protest that the government will outlaw the Islamic Movement.”

When Marzel and his group held a similar march in the city in March 2009 clashes erupted and dozens were wounded.

Salah, an Umm el-Fahm resident, was jailed by an Israeli court for disorderly conduct and assault after scuffles with police who confronted protesters during engineering work near at Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third holiest site in 2007.

New bill targeting Israeli Arabs is prejudiced and unnecessary: Haaretz Editorial

New bill aims to preserve communities’ ‘Jewish purity’ by means of willful exclusion that traduces Israel’s Basic Laws.
This morning, the Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee will discuss a proposal to amend the law relating to small communities’ absorption committees. Ostensibly offering admission candidates a right of appeal, the law would effectively ratify and institutionalize the committees’ right to accept candidates according to criteria of “suitability to the community’s fundamental outlook, as defined in its regulations,” and “social suitability with regard to the community’s way of life, spirit and social fabric.”

This is an outrageous proposal that crudely attempts to bypass the High Court of Justice’s Ka’adan ruling, in which the court ruled that an Arab citizen can buy a house in a Jewish community. The communities are located on public land and offer candidates a high-quality lifestyle for relatively cheap prices, for the purpose of fulfilling the controversial goal of “Judaizing” regions around the country.
In its 2003 ruling, the High Court deemed the absorption committees’ classifications of candidates “a grave blow to equality;” yet since then, the communities, whose well-to-do residents are eager only to admit “people like us,” have persisted with their admission policies.

Single mothers, physically challenged persons and others who deviate from the communities’ conservative norms are rejected on sophistic pretenses. Arab candidates are categorically rejected on the hazy grounds of “unsuitability.”

Some residents of the communities are uneasy about these trends.

Now MKs Shai Hermesh, Israel Hasson, Uri Ariel, Moshe Matalon and Yitzhak Vaknin want to enshrine this blatant discrimination in Israeli law.

This is woefully unnecessary litigation: The seventh amendment to the Israel Lands Administration Law, which was recently passed, provides the administration the right to designate restrictions on the sale of land plots in communal villages. It is best that a state authority, that is devoid of local interests and committed to maximal transparency, conduct the admissions process.

It is hard to resist the conclusion that the aim of the proposed law is to preserve the communities’ “Jewish purity” (the villages’ regulations are formulated in a way that constructs non-Jews as being inappropriate to their “community spirit” ), by means of willful exclusion that traduces Israel’s Basic Laws.

Should this atrocious amendment be authorized by the committee, it will join other discriminatory laws that have been accepted recently, and will proffer to the Knesset yet another ignoble stain.

As Israel fires on activists, BDS movement claims victories: The Electronic Intifada

Report, 25 October 2010

At least fifteen Palestinians were injured in the occupied West Bank village of Nabi Saleh on Friday, 22 October, when Israeli forces opened fire at a demonstration against the wall and ongoing land confiscation.

Villagers “marched alongside Israeli and international supporters towards the village lands, where Israel is building the wall,” the Palestinian News Network (PNN) reported. “Soldiers fired rubber-coated steel bullets and tear gas at them, injuring 15 civilians, one critically. Troops also fired tear gas into homes, burning three houses. Soldiers took a fourth house and told the owner they would use it as a military post for 45 days” (“Fifteen injured, Three Homes Burned In Nabi Saleh Village,” 22 October 2010).

That same day, in the village of al-Masara near Bethlehem, one international activist was wounded and two others were arrested by Israeli soldiers during a similar weekly protest against the planned construction of the wall. “Israeli soldiers stopped the protesters near the local school and used tear gas and sound bombs to force them back. A French activist sustained head injuries from a tear gas bomb and soldiers arrested two other internationals,” according to PNN. (“One Injured, Two Arrested, During Wall Protest Near Bethlehem,” 22 October 2010).

Elsewhere in the occupied West Bank, PNN reported that three Palestinian youths were injured that same day by Israeli-fired tear gas canisters during a protest in the village of Bilin. Villagers have waged regular, nonviolent demonstrations for several years against the encroaching Israeli wall and the nearby settlement colonies. Eight-year-old Lamma Abu Rahma, 17-year-old Muhammad al-Khatib and 17-year-old Ahmad Burnat were hit in the legs and feet by the tear gas grenades. (“Three Civilians Injured During Weekly Bil’in Anti Wall Protest,” 22 October 2010).

In related news, EU representatives and consuls general in Jerusalem released a statement on 20 October condemning the imprisonment of Abdallah Abu Rahme, a leader of the nonviolent resistance movement in Bilin who was recently sentenced by a military court to one year in Israeli prison. “The EU considers Abdallah Abu Rahme a human rights defender who has protested in a peaceful manner against the route of the Israeli separation barrier through his village of Bilin,” said the statement. “The EU considers the route of the barrier where it is built on Palestinian land to be illegal. The EU supports the key role of human rights defenders in promoting and furthering of human rights” (“EU Representatives Regret Israeli Military Court Sentence,” 20 October 2010).

Meanwhile, around the globe, solidarity activists accelerated efforts to hold Israel accountable for its repressive policies, as well as corporations that profit from Israel’s human rights abuses.

Ireland
The Irish government has officially refused to grant weapons manufacturer Israel Military Industries a contract to supply 10 million bullets to the Irish Defense Forces, the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) confirmed. Organizers had waged a seven-month campaign of lobbying, letter-writing and protesting outside the constituency offices of Ireland’s defense minister Tony Killeen.

In an 11 October press release, the IPSC National Chairperson Freda Hughes stated “We commend the Irish government’s actions in this instance. For the Irish government to have bought bullets from Israel — the same bullets that have been used to murder thousands of Palestinians over the past decade — would have given succor to that rogue state, and given the impression that it can do what it likes to the Palestinian people and not suffer any consequences. The IPSC is proud of our campaign around this issue, and have no doubt that it played a role, albeit unacknowledged, in bringing about this decision” (“Victory as Palestine campaigners welcome Government scrapping of ‘Israeli bullets’ deal, warn against future deals,” 11 October 2010).

Scotland
On 6 October, student activists in the Scottish capital of Edinburgh were able to shut down a career fair at Edinburgh University in protest of the inclusion of a major weapons manufacturer, BAE Systems, which produces and sells arms and equipment to the Israeli military. According to a press release issued by Edinburgh University Students for Justice In Palestine, a dozen students entered the career fair, holding the Palestinian flag and banners that read “BAE – Blatant Absence of Ethics” and “BAE sells – Israel kills” (“Students Shut Down Careers Fair in Protest,” 7 October 2010).

“Upon being asked to leave by security, the students held a ‘die-in’ in front of the stall, to symbolize all the people killed by BAE’s weapons,” the press release stated.

“BAE Systems is the world’s second-largest arms producer,” the the students’ statement added. “It makes fighter aircraft, armored vehicles, artillery systems, missiles, munitions and much more. In 2008, company sales exceeded £18.5 (USD $29) billion, with about 95 percent of these being for military use. BAE has been under investigation for corruption and was, as a result, forced earlier this year to pay a £30 (USD $40) million fine in the UK and one of $400 million in the US. BAE’s arms are sold indiscriminately around the world, with military customers in over 100 countries. These countries include Israel.”

Norway
In Norway, a petition calling for a widespread institutional cultural and academic boycott of Israel has quickly gathered a hundred signatories, following major divestment actions by the Norwegian government (“Call for an academic and cultural boycott of the state of Israel”). Norway’s state sovereign wealth fund — which is the third-largest in the world, holding more than $300 billion — recently moved to divest from both Elbit Systems and Africa Israel. The two Israeli corporations are deeply involved with the construction of Israel’s wall and the ongoing settlement industry in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, in violation of international law.

The Norwegian petition, drafted by academics and activists in support of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, has been signed by academics, writers, musicians, cultural workers and sports figures, including Egil “Drillo” Olsen, the coach of the Norwegian national soccer team. Following the Israeli commando raid and deadly attack on the Gaza-bound Freedom Flotilla in May, a national public opinion poll found that approximately 40 percent of all Norwegians had already begun to boycott Israeli products or were in favor of doing so.

Spain
After a broad-based grassroots campaign in the town of Cigales, a town in Spain’s Valladolid province, the city council voted to remove bottled water produced by the Israeli company Eden Springs Ltd. from all municipal buildings.

In a press release, activists with the Platform for Solidarity with Palestine-Valladolid stated that with this decision, “the City Council joins the international movement of boycott, divestment and sanctions against the State of Israel. The City Council of Cigales has taken this decision after a strong mobilization of its [residents], including demonstrations, signature event and public awareness campaigns” (“El Ayuntamiento de Cigales retira la marca israelí de agua embotellada Eden de sus dependencias,” 21 October 2010).

Activists say that this is the third successful boycott campaign against Eden products this year in the Valladolid province. In June, teachers and workers at a nursing school at the University of Valladolid pressured the administration to remove Eden water from vending machines; and the City Council of Villanueva de Duero, a nearby town, removed Eden from its municipal buildings as well.

Asia
The Asia to Gaza Caravan, a group of approximately five hundred activists from seventeen different Asian countries, plans to gather in New Delhi, India, on 1 December. Activists intend to march through 18 cities in Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt in an effort to pressure Israel to lift the siege and blockade on Gaza.

Organized by Asian People’s Solidarity for Palestine, activists will be carrying humanitarian supplies intended for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, with the march culminating at the Rafah crossing into southern Gaza.

According to the campaign’s website (www.asiatogaza.net), organizers say that the caravan will coordinate with existing and new solidarity groups during the march. “The aim of this campaign is to build a diverse and inclusive Asian solidarity for the Palestinians and against the blockade that denies the Palestinians their rights,” state the organizers on the website.

Egypt
In Egypt, more than three hundred activists affiliated with the “Viva Palestina” organization arrived in the port town of al-Arish with humanitarian aid — including more than $5 million worth of medical equipment and food supplies, according to the Israeli daily Haaretz (“Viva Palestina Activists Deliver Tons of Aid to Gaza Strip,” 21 October 2010).

United States
At Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the university’s undergraduate council, representing 6,700 undergraduate students, voted on 18 October to approve a bill calling on Harvard President Drew Faust “to establish a commission of concerned faculty, students and administrators to investigate” their decision to honor Martin Peretz. The council also “fully condemned” Harvard’s decision to accept a $650,000 fund for undergraduate social studies research named after Peretz.

Martin Peretz, a former Harvard professor, is the editor-in-chief of the Washington DC-based New Republic magazine, and recently wrote in an op-ed that “Muslim life is cheap,” and that Muslims should not be afforded free speech rights under the US Constitution. Peretz has also opined that Palestinians are “unfit” to govern their own country, and that Arabs in general are “genetically” predisposed to violence.

Peretz also wrote that many African-Americans “are afflicted by cultural deficiencies” and that “in the ghetto a lot of mothers don’t appreciate the importance of schooling.” He also claimed that “Latin societ[ies]” exhibit “characteristic deficiencies” such as “congenital corruption” and “near-tropical work habits.”

Protesting Peretz’ honoring by the university, more than four hundred students and faculty signed a letter written by student organizations including the Harvard Islamic Society, the Black Students Association, Latinas Unidas, the Society of Arab Students and the Progressive Jewish Alliance. “Such an invitation lends legitimacy and respectability to views that can only be described as abhorrent and racist in their implication that the rights guaranteed by the US Constitution should be withheld from certain citizens based on their religious affiliation,” the organizations stated (“Student Letter Criticizes Marty Peretz,” The Harvard Crimson, 20 September 2010).

The bill gained the support of both the university student president and vice president, and passed two council committees before reaching the student union floor and passing by a wide margin: 26-7, with four abstentions.

Canada
And finally, Palestine solidarity activists and groups convened last weekend in Montreal, Canada, for the BDS Conferénce Montréal. The conference, organizers state on the website bdsquebec.org, “aim[ed] to regain the momentum of the international BDS campaign in Quebec, and bring together organizations that stand in solidarity with the plight of Palestinians. Through a collaborative approach, organizations can work together to start building a popular BDS movement in order to educate and inform the Canadian public.” Community and international activists, such as Omar Barghouti, coordinator of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel and the Palestinian Boycott National Committee, and members of the Congress of South African Trade Unions presented panel discussions and workshops over the weekend to hundreds of attendants.

EDITOR: The BDS campaign wins more support!

An important development last week – Mike Leigh refuses to travel to Israel for a workshop at Sam Spiegel Film School in Jerusalem, and speaks about it very openly in an interview with the Jewish Chronicle, on Friday 22nd October (further below). A large group of filmmakers from Palestine and Israel, as well as artists and academics, have written to him to applaud his action:

Open Letter to Mike Leigh

October 25, 2010

Dear Mike Leigh,

We are writing to you as a group of fellow filmmakers and academics, Palestinians, Israelis and others, to thank you for your principled and courageous step of withdrawing from the Jerusalem Sam Spiegel Film School workshop and “implicitly” joining the cultural boycott of Israel. As admirers of your work, from Abigail’s Party to Another Year, we have long appreciated your commitment to those sectors of society that are disenfranchised and normally silenced. Now you have actively and openly intervened in defence of Palestinian rights, and we applaud you for doing so publicly.  You have joined the growing ranks of artists and cultural producers who are refusing to lend their name and prestige to the cover-up of a brutal occupation, already more than four decades old.

Your action also challenges the long silence of most of Israel’s artists and intellectuals who have, unfortunately, been co-opted into the broad Israeli social coalition that supports the brutalities visited by Israel on the Palestinians. Some of those will certainly feel threatened by your stand; we feel supported by it. If a just peace is to be ever achieved in Palestine, Jews elsewhere have to stand together in support of the full rights of the Palestinians. Your action is striking evidence of growing cultural resistance abroad to Israel’s intransigence.  We hope it will encourage others. Only by such concerted action will the situation change in the Middle East.

Thank you, Mike!

Signed by:

Hany Abu Assad – Filmmaker
Udi Aloni – Filmmaker
Oreet Asheri – Artist and researcher
Saleh Bakri – Filmmaker
Avia Ben David – Scriptwriter
Prof. Oren Ben-Dor
Simone Bitton – Filmmaker
Rani Blair – Director
Prof. Haim Bresheeth – Filmmaker
Shai Carmeli Pollak
Scandar Copti – Filmmaker
Anat Even – Filmmaker
Angela Godfrey-Goldstein – Actress
Ala Hlehel
Annemarie Jacir – Director
Prof. Ronit Lentin
Yael Lerer
Prof. Yosefa Loshitzky
Dr. Orly Lubin
Prof. Moshe Macover
Miriam Margolyes – Actress
Audrey Maurion Film Editor
Idit Nathan
Prof. Mica Nava
Osama Qashoo – Director
Prof. Steven Rose
Prof. Hilary Rose
Prof. Jonathan Rosenhead
Daniel Rubinstein
Prof. Ella Shohat
Eyal Sivan – Filmmaker
Ula Tabari – Actress
Yosi Wanunu – Theatre director
Einat Weizman – Actress

The mathematics of strangulation of Gaza: The Only Democracy?

October 25th, 2010, By Jesse  Bacon
When the specifics of Israel’s siege of Gaza came to light, it appeared almost random in its insanity and cruelty. The famous example is the prohibiting of pasta while allowing rice, all the while claiming this was somehow ensuring Israel’s security. Well wonder no longer. Through the heroic efforts of Gisha, whose work we feature regularly here on The Only Democracy?, the actual policy has been released. It turns out there is a detailed series of charts and formulae that look like someone attempted to translate the lectures of Glenn Beck into public policy. In the driest of terms, it represents a calculus of human misery, equations of despair that add up to the starvation of Gazans and a protracted conflict.
Here is Gisha’s summary of the revealed policy, with my annotations.
“Policy of Deliberate Reduction”
The documents reveal that the state approved “a policy of deliberate reduction” for basic goods in the Gaza Strip (section h.4, page 5*). Thus, for example, Israel restricted the supply of fuel needed for the power plant, disrupting the supply of electricity and water. The state set a “lower warning line” (section g.2, page 5) to give advance warning of expected shortages in a particular item, but at the same time approved ignoring that warning, if the good in question was subject to a policy of “deliberate reduction“. Moreover, the state set an “upper red line” above which even basic humanitarian items could be blocked, even if they were in demand (section g.1, page 5). The state claimed in a cover letter to Gisha that in practice, it had not authorized reduction of “basic goods” below the “lower warning line”, but it did not define what these “basic goods” were (page 2).
So, the lower red line is to tell Israel that its policies were working as designed to cause shortages, thus  allowing them to “ignore” the warnings. Even at the upper limit, Israel could keep denying goods if it saw fit to do so. I am reminded of one of those thermometers used to measure  fundraising, only here the goal is deprivation not development.
“Luxuries” denied for Gaza Strip residents
In violation of international law, which allows Israel to restrict the passage of goods only for concrete security reasons, the decision whether to permit or prohibit an item was also based on “the good’s public perception” and “whether it is viewed as a luxury” (section c.b, page 16). In other words, items characterized as “luxury” items would be banned – even if they posed no security threat, and even if they were needed. Thus, items such as chocolate and paper were not on the “permitted” list. In addition, officials were to consider “sensitivity to the needs of the international community”.
These are the source of the infamous regulations on pasta v. rice, and coriander. With a great perversion of cultural sensitivity, the things that Gazans like are to be taken into account and restricted accordingly. International community members, on the other hand, are still able to access their favorite goodies lest they become too vocal in their opposition because of personal inconvenience.
Secret List of Goods
The procedures determine that the list of permitted goods “will not be released to those not specified!!” (emphasis in original) (section j, page 17), ignoring the fact that without transparency, merchants in Gaza could not know what they were permitted to purchase. The list itemized permitted goods only. Items not on the list – cumin, for example – would require a special procedure for approval, irrespective of any security consideration, at the end of which it would be decided whether to let it in or not.
Here is the truly Kafkaesque part, Palestinians were not to know what was on the list and what was not, allowing the Israel to act as a vengeful and obscure deity determining what they could eat and build with. Whenever Israel (or the U.S.) government cites “security” , we should substitute the word “embarrassing.” Try it, it works.
Ban on Reconstructing Gaza
Although government officials have claimed that they will permit the rehabilitation of Gaza, the documents reveal that Israel treated rehabilitation and development of the Gaza Strip as a negative factor in determining whether to allow an item to enter; goods “of a rehabilitative character” required special permission (section g, page 16). Thus, international organizations and Western governments did not receive permits to transfer building materials into Gaza for schools and homes.
Those international organizations may be able to buy their own personal consumer products, but they are not allowed to import goods for Gazans to rebuild after the war. I am reminded of the US-backed, Central American death squads who targetted anyone doing community development work, only in this case the death squads wear suits and sit t desks far away.
Calculation of product inventory
The documents contain a series of formulas created by the Defense Ministry to compute product inventory (pages 8-10). The calculations are presumed to allow COGAT to measure what is called the “length of breath” (section i, page 8). The formula states that if you divide the inventory in the Strip by the daily consumption needs of residents, you will get the number of days it will take for residents of Gaza to run out of that basic product, or in other words, until their “length of breath” will run out.
See the photo below. But don’t allow the fancy graphs to obscure what is going on, which is calculating exactly how much suffering is being inflicted on the people of Gaza.
Although these memos described the policies as of April 2009, we should not hold out too much hope that matters have improved.
According to Gisha Director Sari Bashi: “Instead of considering security concerns, on the one hand, and the rights and needs of civilians living in Gaza, on the other, Israel banned glucose for biscuits and the fuel needed for regular supply of electricity – paralyzing normal life in Gaza and impairing the moral character of the State of Israel. I am sorry to say that major elements of this policy are still in place“.

Richard Silverstein, who also posted the above photo, describes how this policy was actually supposed to be implemented.
The data[on availability of items] will be collected in the economy division, once a week, on Tuesday, and a calculation compiled of products  transferred, then added to existing inventories, and then consumed amounts will be deducted according to the models.
F.# After the calculation is performed, a draft of inventory estimates will be prepared…[and] the following data will be checked:
# 1. Upper level warning – in case inventory of one of the short shelf life products is over 21 days or long shelf life  product inventory is over 80 days.
# 2. Lower level warning – in case inventory of one of the short shelf life products is under 4 days or long shelf life product inventory is under 20 days.
# 3. Shortage – in case inventory of one of the short shelf life products is under 2 days or long shelf life product  inventory is under 5 days.
H. In case inventory of one or more products reached a ‘level of warning,’ the following actions will be taken:
1. Xxxx will verify the information with leading Palestinian merchants.
2. Xxxx will perform mathematical evaluation of the model to verify the data.
3. In case of an upper level warning, the issue will be brought up for discussion and update for a decision on policy of entering the # relevant product.
4.! In case of a lower level warning an update will be transferred, and Gaza DCO will take action to facilitate transferring the relevant product, unless it is an intentional policy of reduction. [ed., italics mine]
5. In case of shortage, the same actions as of ʻlower level warningʻ will be taken. In case it is an intentional policy of  reduction, decision makers will be presented with the consequences of shortage of the relevant product.
“One wonders what warning the decision makers would be presented with: would they be warned that preventing entrance of a piece of medical equipment would cause the death of children?  Or that the categorization of milk, or hummus or any number of staples of the Palestinian diet as “superfluous” might exacerbate the already existent malnutrition among children?  Or that a shortage of fuel and hence water outages would cause women not to be able to cook properly or families to observe hygienic practices.  What type of discussion do you think happened among the decision makers when they were ‘warned’ about these red lines?

Protesting the OECD Conference in Jerusalem: YouTube

Tutu Urges South African Opera Company Not to Perform in Israel: Artsbeat

By DAVE ITZKOFF
Desmond Tutu, the former Anglican archbishop of Cape Town, has urged an opera company there not to perform in Israel, invoking South Africa’s long struggle against apartheid in criticizing Israel’s policy towards Palestinians, The Associated Press reported. The Cape Town Opera is scheduled to perform “Porgy and Bess” at the Tel Aviv Opera House beginning on Nov. 12. But Archbishop Tutu, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize who retired from his official duties earlier this month, said in a statement that the tour should be postponed “until both Israeli and Palestinian opera lovers of the region have equal opportunity and unfettered access to attend performances.”

“Just as we said during apartheid that it was inappropriate for international artists to perform in South Africa in a society founded on discriminatory laws and racial exclusivity, so it would be wrong for Cape Town Opera to perform in Israel,” Archbishop Tutu said in his statement. He added that it would be “unconscionable” for the opera company to perform “Porgy and Bess,” which he said has a “universal message of nondiscrimination.”

Hanna Munitz, the general director of the Israeli Opera, said in a statement that the intent of the collaboration between the companies “is culture and art, and definitely not politics,” adding: “Both houses relate to culture as a bridge, the aim of which is to be above any political dispute. Furthermore, the fact of the matter is that very big performance companies arrive in Israel from abroad all the time.”

Zionism? To hell with all that, says film director: Jewish Chronicle

Mike Leigh’s distaste for Israel is so bad he won’t even visit his 90-year-old aunt
By Stephen Applebaum and Simon Rocker, October 21, 2010

Mike Leigh, the film-maker and playwright who has cancelled a planned trip to Israel next month, has backed a cultural boycott of the country, calling its policies “suicidal”.
In an exclusive and personal outspoken interview in which he justified his decision not to teach a masterclass at a Jerusalem film school, the 67-year-old, Salford-born author said he was now “implicitly part” of the boycott.
Mr Leigh, director of award-winning films such as Secrets and Lies and Topsy-Turvy, had been invited by the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School in Jerusalem to take a workshop for students. During the week that he was due to spend in Israel he had been scheduled to visit Palestinian film-makers in Jenin, on the West Bank, and also to give a wide-ranging press conference.
Mr Leigh admitted to having been “extremely uncomfortable” about agreeing to go to Israel in the first place, but the loyalty oath planned by the Israeli government for new immigrants had proved “the last straw”.
I don’t want to know about rockets. I am concerned with humanity
In his interview, given to publicise his new film, Another Year, Mr Leigh gave his angriest assessment yet of his life as a Jew and his feelings towards Israel.
He complained that he and his fellow former members of the left-wing Zionist movement, Habonim, had been duped by Israeli propaganda, and denounced religion in the strongest terms.
“Religion’s never been an issue. I’ve been sceptical about religion since I was born, basically. And certainly by the time I came to my barmitzvah I had long been sceptical. I think organised religion is bulls***. And I have thought that literally since before I could walk. So that’s not a problem for me. Although I grew up in the north Manchester Jewish scene, in a district that’s now completely where all the frummers live.”
He revealed that he had planned to take his sons with him to Israel, where he has a “lot of very close relatives. My mother’s surviving sister, who went on aliyah in 1949, is still alive. She’ll be 90 very shortly, and she was looking forward to seeing me…
“But in the end, to hell with all that. A decision had to be made that this simply wasn’t good enough.”
Although the argument might be put that “committed, serious, liberal, left artists are not responsible for the Israeli government,” he said, “that simply won’t wash. Because actually, the truth is that what Israel is doing… is suicidal.”
While cultural talks went on “in the nice cinematheques of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa, it is hell on earth in Gaza and I wouldn’t want to be there basically”.
A former member of Habonim, he has only twice visited Israel, once in 1960 and again in 1990.
“Not only was I in Habonim, in the ’50s, but I actually happen to come from a very long, unusually Zionist background in Manchester, at a time when many Jews were not particularly Zionist,” he said. “In fact a lot of Jews were very sceptical about the whole notion of Zionism. My great-grandfather actually edited a Zionist newspaper in Manchester at the turn of the last century. So, I have struggled with this issue, the whole thing, for a very long time.”
All his close friends from Habonim had long since “walked away from Jewish life” but they talked about Israel, he added: “We wring our hands on a daily basis, saying ‘For f***’s sake, what are they doing? They are shooting themselves in the foot’.”
His 2005 play about Jewish identity, Two Thousand Years, would have been “tougher” if he had written it now, he said. He felt that not only had he done “the right thing” in deciding to call off his trip to Israel but “in so far as anything achieves anything, more publicity has come out of what I have done than would have been the case had I simply not gone, or had I gone and merely made a few statements that no one was listening to inside Israel.”
He said he had been “of course exhorted not to go to Israel by a number of factions. That included Israeli factions within Israel. Whilst I have been berated by some Israeli positions, there are also Israelis that are extremely pleased I made that decision.”
Mr Leigh, who insisted that all his work was “unquestionably Jewish”, was dismissive about rocket attacks on Israel. “I don’t want to know about rockets,” he said. “What I am concerned with is humanity, is life being lived properly. And you cannot deal with this issue from an Israeli perspective and not from a Palestinian or a Gaza perspective. You simply can’t. And if you do it’s totally unacceptable. And that’s the bottom line.”

Continue reading October 26, 2010

Israel’s loyalty oath: Discriminatory by design: The Guardian Editorial

New pledge requires future citizens declare their loyalty to an ideology, one intended to exclude Palestinians
Monday 11 October 2010
There are two narratives at work in Israel that have a bearing on the capacity of its leaders to negotiate the creation of an independent Palestinian state next to it. The first is official and intended for external consumption. It is the one that claims Israel is ready to sit down with the Palestinians in direct talks without preconditions and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, should not have wasted so much of the 10 month partial freeze on settlement building before he did so. On Saturday, America was given another month by the Arab League to persuade Binyamin Netanyahu’s government to halt settlement building, the bare minimum required for talks to continue.

There is however a second narrative, which could be called business as usual, and it has nothing to do with occupation, Iran’s nuclear programme, Hizbullah’s rocket arsenal, or any threat which could be called existential. This was evident in all its inglory yesterday when the Israeli cabinet approved a measure requiring candidates for Israeli citizenship to pledge loyalty to “the state of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state”. The naturalisation oath would not apply to Jews, who are granted automatic citizenship under the law of return, so it is, by definition, discriminatory. The existing text binds individuals to declare their loyalty to the state of Israel. The new version requires future citizens to declare their loyalty not just to a state but an ideology, one specifically designed to exclude one fifth of its citizens who see themselves as Palestinian.

Palestinian Israeli leaders have described this proposal as racist. Palestinian Israeli citizens do not have to take this oath, but their partners seeking naturalisation do. Neither could agree with Israel’s characterisation of itself as a Jewish state. It could be a state of Jews and all its citizens, but never a Jewish state. Nor is this the only bill around. There are 20 others in the slipstream that have a similar effect: there is a loyalty law for Knesset members and for film crews; there are bills that make it a criminal offence to deny the existence of Israel; that penalise the mourning of Nakba Day; that force any group financed by a foreign nation to report each contribution; and a bill to deny ethnic minorities’ access to Jewish settlements. The authors of these proposals not only intend to create a state ideology but to police it.

The question that lies behind this is why, and why now? Are these the actions of a nation prepared to make a historical compromise, end occupation and live in peace with its neighbourhood? If they are and we are all wildly misinterpreting this, why alienate and incite the very people who could have helped by their example bring a historic settlement about, people who have accepted the existence of Israel, who have never in their history taken up arms against it? This applies to Christian as well as Muslim. The opposite is happening. The Palestinian Israeli experience of inequality and discrimination only promotes the view that being a minority in a state with a Jewish majority is rapidly becoming untenable.

The Labour minorities minister Avishay Braverman described the loyalty oath yesterday as a terrible mistake. But it is surely more that. Mistake implies miscalculation, and there is calculation in this. It seeks to pre-empt negotiation on the third core issue after borders and the division of Jerusalem – the right of return of Palestinian refugees to sovereign Israeli territory. Abbas happens to be one of those refugees. If Netanyahu refuses to extend the settlement freeze, Abbas, the most pliant Palestinian negotiator Israel is likely to encounter, has threatened to resign, dissolve the Palestinian authority or seek US and UN recognition for a future Palestinian state. Netanyahu is only hastening the day when this happens and in one sense, he is doing the world a service. Future citizens will be swearing loyalty to a state that can not make peace.

PLO chief: We will recognize Israel in return for 1967 borders: Haaretz

Yasser Abed Rabbo says that in exchange for accepting Palestinian territorial claims, it will recognize Israel as ‘whatever it wants.’
Tags: Israel news Middle East peace Palestinians PLO
Senior Palestine Liberation Organization official Yasser Abed Rabbo said on Wednesday that the Palestinians will be willing to recognize the State of Israel in any way that it desires, if the Americans would only present a map of the future Palestinian state that includes all of the territories captured in 1967, including East Jerusalem.

In response to U.S. State Department Spokesman Phillip Crowley’s statement on Tuesday night that the Palestinians should respond to the Israeli demand, Abed Rabbo told Haaretz, “We want to receive a map of the State of Israel which Israel wants us to accept.”

“If the map will be based on the 1967 borders and will not include our land, our houses and East Jerusalem, we will be willing to recognize Israel according to the formulation of the government within the hour,” added Rabbo.
Abed Rabbo continued, “It is important for us to know where are the borders of Israel and where are the borders of Palestine. Any formulation the Americans present – even asking us to call Israel the ‘Chinese State’ – we will agree to it, as long as we receive the 1967 borders. We have recognized Israel in the past, but Israel has not recognized the Palestinian state.”

Israeli troops accused of shooting children in Gaza: The Guardian

• Victims were scavenging for rubble, say rights groups
• Attacks allegedly took place outside 300-metre buffer zone
Harriet Sherwood in Beit Lahiya
Monday 11 October 2010
At least 10 Palestinian children have been shot and wounded by Israeli troops in the past three months while collecting rubble in or near the “buffer zone” created by Israel along the Gaza border, in a low-intensity offensive on the fringes of the blockaded Palestinian territory.

Israeli soldiers are routinely shooting at Gazans well beyond the unmarked boundary of the official 300 metre-wide no-go area, rights groups say.

According to Bassam Masri, head of orthopaedics at the Kamal Odwan hospital in Beit Lahiya in the north of Gaza, about 50 people have been treated for gunshot wounds suffered in or near the buffer zone while collecting rubble in the past three months; about five have been killed.

He estimates that 30% of the injured are boys under 18.

Defence for Children International (DCI) has documented 10 cases of children aged 13 to 17 being shot in a three-month period between 50 and 800 metres from the border. Nine were shot in a leg or arm; one was shot in the stomach.

The creation of the no-go area has forced farmers to abandon land and residents to leave homes for fear of coming under fire. Last month a 91-year-old man and two teenage boys were killed while harvesting olives outside the official zone when Israeli troops fired shells. Forty-three goats also died in the attack.

In another case a mother of five was killed by a shell outside her home near the zone in July.

Israel declared the buffer zone inside Gaza after the three-week war in 2008-9, saying it was intended to prevent militants firing rockets. It has dropped leaflets from planes several times warning local people not to venture within 300 metres of the fence that marks the border or risk being shot.

However, the UN, aid agencies and rights groups say that Israel has unofficially and without warning extended the zone to up to 1km from the fence, leaving residents and farmers uncertain whether it is safe to access their land or property.

“The army knows the kids are there to collect. They watch them every day and they know they have no weapons,” said Mohammed Abu Rukbi, a fieldworker with DCI. “They usually fire warning shots but the kids don’t take much notice.”

Mohammed Sobboh, 17, was shot just above the knee on August 25 when he was 800 metres from the border, he said. The 12 people in his family have no other income and are not entitled to aid from the UN as they are not refugees.

Israeli soldiers shot dead a horse and a donkey used by Mohammed and his brothers to carry the rubble, he said.

His brother, Adham, 22, said children as young as eight collect debris from former settlements and demolished buildings for 30-40 shekels (£5.20-£7) a day. “The price has gone down because a lot of people are collecting,” said Adham.

According to Dr Masri, the number of shootings has increased as more impoverished Gazans turn to collecting rubble to sell as construction material, which is still under Israeli embargo. “Every day we have one or two cases. Some kids are facing permanent disability. Most of the injuries are to the legs and feet, suggesting the soldiers did not aim to kill. That means they know that the people aren’t militants.”

Ziad Tamboura, 27, lying in a hospital bed with a heavily bandaged foot, was shot last week while collecting 500 metres from the border. X-rays showed the bones in the foot to be smashed by the bullet. He collected rubble in order to feed his wife and child. “If I am able to walk again, I will go back. There is no other work.”

The Gaza City-based Al-Mezan Centre for Human Rights is to mount a legal challenge jointly with the Israeli groups Adalah and Physicians for Human Rights to breaches of the official buffer zone. “The area [the Israelis] announced is not the same as what exists on the ground,” said the centre’s Samir Zaqout.

He criticised the Israelis for shooting and shelling unarmed civilians. “They know everything. They have the technological capacity to monitor the area. They have drones in the sky all the time. They are observing and screening everything.”

According to the UN, about 30% of Gaza’s arable land is contained within 300 metres of the 50km border. The difficulty farmers face in reaching their land had had an impact on the availability of crops in Gaza, Zaqout said. “Tomatoes are now 10 shekels a kilo, whereas the price used to be one or two shekels.”

The Abu Said family, whose land lies outside the buffer zone, felt confident that their faces were well known to Israeli troops monitoring the area. “Every day six or seven members of my family are there [on the land],” said Mohammed Abu Said.

But on 12 September, 91-year-old Ibrahim Abu Said, his 17-year-old grandson, Hussam, and a family friend, Ismail Abu Owda, 16, were killed by a shell fired from a tank on the Israeli side of the border. “This was a very old man taking care of his goats,” said Mohammed, Ibrahim’s son. “Our land used to be like a heaven. Now it’s like a desert.”

He blamed Palestinian militants for firing rockets as well as the Israeli military.

In a statement, the Israeli military said the 300-metre buffer zone was created in response to “many incidents of hostile terrorist activity” close to the security fence, often made “under a civilian disguise”.

It added: “The IDF acts in order to prevent harm to civilian populations in its operations and any complaint expressed regarding its soldiers’ conduct will be … examined according to the existing policy.”

In the firing line

Children shot in “buffer zone” while collecting rubble

Mohammad, 17, shot in left leg, 800m from border, 25 August

Khaled, 16, left thigh, 600m from border, 31 July

Hameed, 13, left arm, 50m from border, 14 July

Nu’man, 14, right leg, 300m from border, 10 July

Arafat, 16, left ankle, 50m from border, 10 July

Mohammad, 16, stomach, 500m from border, 23 June

Abdullah, 16, just above right ankle, 60m from border, 22 June

Ibrahim, 16, right leg, 400m from border, 16 June

Awad, 17, just above his right knee, 350m from border, 7 June

Hasan, 17, just below right knee, 300m from border, 22 May

Source: Defence for Children International

Continue reading October 13, 2010

EDITOR: Shock and surprise…

How could anyone still pretend to be surprised by the sun coming up in the morning… Every child in Israel and Palestine must have been quite clear about the situation, so what is this pretense of surprise? Nethanyahu was, and is, an enemy of just peace in Palestine. All and sundry must have already understood this a long time ago, apart from President Obama, or is it still President Bush in the White House? One can get easily confused.

Diplomats: Mitchell misrepresented initial success of peace talks: Haaretz

Netanyahu refused to hold a serious discussion on any of the core issues apart from security, Abbas reportedly told diplomats.

The three meetings held so far between Prime Minister Benjamin Netayahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the current round of peace talks have addressed nothing of substance, diplomatic sources say.

American mediators are still trying to save the talks from collapsing in the crisis following the resumption of construction in settlements.

Netanyahu refused to hold a serious discussion on any of the core issues apart from security, Abbas reportedly told diplomats he met at the UN General Assembly. Israeli and foreign sources say the main problem is that Netanyahu refuses to present fundamental positions or discuss the borders of the Palestinian state.

“I heard nothing from Netanyahu but niceties,” Abbas reportedly told foreign diplomats.

U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell presented the talks as very successful, saying they were moving more rapidly than those in Northern Ireland, where he also served as mediator. He said Abbas and Netanyahu were dealing with all the tough issues and not leaving them to the end of the discussions.

But both Israeli and Palestinian sources said Mitchell’s statement was “inaccurate” at best. A European diplomat who met the Palestinian negotiating team in New York about a week ago told Haaretz the Palestinians were furious with Mitchell. “He gave a false presentation of progress,” the diplomat said a Palestinian official had told him.

Five Israeli and foreign diplomats, who were briefed about the Netanyahu-Abbas meetings by one of the parties or by senior American officials, said prospects for progress in the talks remained gloomy, even if the construction crisis were solved.

The two first meetings, held during the talks’ launch in Washington on September 2 and at the Sharm el-Sheikh summit on September 14, mainly dealt with technical matters like the order of the topics to be discussed and the future of the construction freeze in the settlements.

The first meeting dealt with setting a date for the next meeting and with formulating a “conduct code” for the talks, mainly to prevent leaks. They also discussed the construction freeze and what to discuss first – security or borders.

After the second meeting, Mitchell said the parties had discussed seriously and in detail core issues of the final status arrangement. But officials briefed about that meeting said it dealt with an attempt to define the “core issues” rather than presenting positions on them.

The sources said this discussion was strange as at least two Israeli governments had reached an agreement with the Palestinians on this issue.

The sources said the sterile discussion about whether to discuss borders or security first, or both issues simultaneously, continued.

Mitchell described the third meeting, held on September 15 in Jerusalem, as very positive and said it made considerable progress. Here too officials familiar with the talks said the opposite is true.

Abbas presented Netanyahu with all the details of his talks with former prime minister Ehud Olmert and the current Palestinian stands on borders, security, the refugees, Jerusalem and the settlements. Netanyahu refused to comment on the Palestinian positions, especially on the borders, and would only present his position on the security arrangements.

Abbas was “alarmed” to hear at that meeting that Netanyahu was interested in reaching a framework agreement within a year, but in implementing it over a period of at least 20 years, a European diplomat said.

The American brokers were reportedly extremely frustrated after the meeting in Jerusalem and some of them wondered if the talks hadn’t in fact gone backward.

A source close to the prime minister confirmed that Netanyahu refused to go into core issues such as the borders in detail. As long as the construction crisis was not over and the talks’ continuation was not assured, Netanyahu did not want to present a position that could endanger him politically, the source explained.

Architects against Israeli occupation: The Guardian CiF

Compromising architecture? A construction site in the West Bank settlement of Ariel. Photograph: Uriel Sinai/Getty Images
In deciding to back the boycott of Ariel theatre in the West Bank, Frank Gehry, the Canadian-American architect of Guggenheim fame, joins a growing body of professionals who are making a stand against the illegal settlements. Ariel, a quintessential illegal settlement, is continually expanding to fit the over-generous boundaries staked out over Palestinian land, choking the development of Palestinian villages nearby. Its new state-funded cultural centre, 20 years in the construction, is due to open in November.

Architecture and planning are instruments of the occupation, and constitute part of a continuing war against a whole people, whether as a minority within Israel’s green line, or in the occupied territories. Since this involves dispossession, discrimination and acquisition of land and homes by force, against the Geneva conventions, it can be classified as participation in war crimes.

Arbitrary planning laws are not enforced in the many illegal projects built by settlers, and major development plans are implemented without complete approval. Areas owned by Palestinians are simply declared to be green areas, making their presence there “illegal”.

What can one say about the Israeli architects who follow the state’s policies and aims yet deny that their role is political? Despite all the evidence of illegality under international law and breaches of human rights in the land grabs, house demolitions and evictions, Israeli architects and planners continue their activities. They cannot claim that they do not know: there have been plenty of calls for them to stop.

More of the illegal projects that have been built over the last four decades are ready to go now that the recent settlement freeze has ended – with no sign of resistance or protest from the Israeli Association of United Architects (IAUA). This applies not only to ultra-Zionist architecture firms but mainstream architects of international repute such as Moshe Safdie and Shlomo Aronson. Safdie has been responsible for the now notorious Plan 11555 for the extreme nationalist settler movement Elad that has, in effect, been given control of Silwan, a Palestinian neighbourhood in East Jerusalem.

The International Union of Architects (UIA) has already taken note that Israeli architecture and planning in the West Bank is contrary to its professional ethics and codes of conduct. After Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine raised this issue at the UIA council meeting in Brazil in July 2009, the UIA issued a statement saying:

“The UIA council condemns development projects and the construction of buildings on land that has been ethnically purified or illegally appropriated, and projects based on regulations that are ethnically or culturally discriminatory, and similarly it condemns all action contravening the fourth Geneva Convention.”
With settlers now celebrating the prospect of thousands of new housing units being built in the West Bank, Israeli architects will continue reaping the bonanza of a housing boom that has continued for decades. Writing in Haaretz earlier this month, Esther Zandberg, the paper’s architecture correspondent, said:

“Trends and world-views seep in from the other side of the Green Line and impact on architecture in the rest of Israel more than architects are willing to admit. A protest by established architects within the community, figures with a reputation and influence, could lead to a protest movement that will draw many, restore to architecture its confidence in itself and its values, and may also make its own contribution to the end of the conflict over the land. Architects? Protest? Peace really can happen.”
The international solidarity movement has decided that the best way to change Israel’s behaviour is to take actions against Israeli companies and institutions in order to put pressure on the government there. Last year, as the result of a campaign led by APJP, Pacbi and universities in Europe, Spain disqualified architecture students from the “Ariel University Centre of Samaria” (sic) from a competition to build a solar house in the Solar Decathlon in Madrid. “Spain acted in line with European Union policy of opposing Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land,” a Spanish official said.

Since little seems forthcoming from the Israeli architects’ body, despite appeals over the last decade, the responsibility falls on architects worldwide and the UIA to press for action to end this complicity, and defend the ethics and humanity of their profession.

A Nobel Peace Prize laureate in prison: Haaretz

If the court indeed deports Mairead Corrigan-Maguire we’ll know that our court system is also tainted to the teeth
By Gideon Levy
The photograph was recently distributed by the IDF’s propagandists: Mairead Corrigan-Maguire is seen being taken off the abducted ship Rachel Corrie at Ashdod port, as a soldier from the world’s most moral army holds out his hand to help the honorable woman disembark. It was not long after the IDF’s violent takeover of the Mavi Marmara, and Israeli propagandists were now hastening to peddle their cheap merchandise, showing how Israel treats “real” peace activists, as opposed to the Turkish “terrorists” on the earlier vessel.

Only four months have passed since the earlier event, and the very same lady has now spent a weekend in the deportees’ cell at Ben-Gurion Airport. While we were having another warm, pleasant weekend, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate sat in an Israeli jail and nobody seemed to care. We were not ashamed, we were not outraged, we did not make a sound. It was a spectacle that could only have taken place in Israel, North Korea, Burma (Myanmar ) and Iran – the state imprisoning and deporting a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize – and raised no more than a yawn here.

One court has already upheld the deportation, in a characteristically automatic action, and the Supreme Court will debate it today.

The new Israel is once again portrayed as an indrawn, detestable state, with a branch of the thought police at Ben-Gurion Airport. World-renowned intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein, Spain’s most famous clown Ivan Prado and now Mairead Corrigan-Maguire, are deported from it shamefacedly only because they dared to visit the country. And all this is backed by pathological public indifference.

The Irish Corrigan-Maguire is the victim of state terror. A former secretary at the Guinness Brewery in Belfast, she had three nephews, all children at the time, who were killed during a British targeted assassination in Northern Ireland. Their mother, her sister, who committed suicide some time later, was also badly injured in the attack. Corrigan Maguire eventually married her sister’s widower and adopted his children. The frightful family tragedy turned her into a peace activist, and she began to hoist the flag of non-violent resistance. For this she won the Nobel Peace Prize for 1976 (awarded retroactively the following year ).

In recent years, Corrigan-Maguire has tried to hoist this flag in Israel, which knows a lot about state terror, assassinations and killing passersby, yet is now brutally closing its gates in her face.

Corrigan-Maguire demonstrated in Bil’in a few months ago and took part in two flotillas to Gaza. This is her sin. Israel is also claiming Corrigan-Maguire “ran wild” while officials tried forcibly to put her on an airplane. It is difficult to imagine this gentle woman running wild. She herself says she only tried to resist passively in order to complete the petition procedure granted her by law.

Israel, like North Korea, must have something to hide about its occupation regime and this is why it prevents people of conscience from entering and report about it to the world. Israel, like North Korea, is afraid of anyone who tries to protest against it or criticize its regime. No terrorists will enter here, but neither will anyone who opposes terror yet dares to criticize the occupation. For safety’s sake,let’s call them “terrorists” too, as we falsely called the Turkish activists. It will make it easier for us to deal with them. Yes, we prefer terror, because we know well how to handle it.

All those who are preaching sanctimoniously to the Palestinians to practice non-violent resistance had better take a look at the deportees’ prison in Ben- Gurion Airport. This is how non-violent protesters will be treated. A peace activist is being held there, a woman of conscience who was allowed to receive her personal effects over the weekend only after the invention of the district court in Petah Tikva. She awaits the ruling of our beacon of justice, the Supreme Court, which, one may guess, will also not dare to object to the deportation.

If the court indeed upholds the disgraceful act today, in response to the Adalah organization’s petition, then we’ll know not only what we’ve become – that this is how we treat those who advocate non-violence – but that our court system is also a collaborator in the treachery and is tainted to the teeth.

A Nobel Prize laureate sits in Israeli detention, a few days after Israel hijacked another Gaza-bound aid boat, whose passengers included a Jewish Holocaust survivor, an Israeli father who lost a child to terror, and an air force pilot-turned-conscientious objector. It hijacked the boat to prevent them from reaching their destination and reminding the world of the blockade. This is the portrait of Israel today.

Court: Irish Nobel laureate to be deported from Israel: Haaretz

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Corrigan-Maguire, who was deported from Israel after joining a Gaza-bound aid ship, is currently in a detention facility at the airport pending an appeal to the Supreme Court.
The Petah Tikva District Court rejected Friday an appeal against the deportation of Irish Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Corrigan-Maguire, who has been denied entry to Israel.

The Nobel laureate’s deportation, however, has been suspended for 48 hours in order to allow Corrigan-Maguire to appeal to the Supreme Court.
Corrigan-Maguire has been in a detention facility at Ben-Gurion International Airport since she was stopped by police for contravening a prohibition against entering Israel, imposed after she took part in a mission aimed at violating Israel’s naval blockade on the Gaza Strip, aboard the Rachel Corrie ship, in early June.

The MV Rachel Corrie was intercepted in June after the Gaza-bound aid ship refused to adhere to Israel’s requests to dock in the country and transfer its cargo to Gaza after inspection. The ship was then transported to the Ashdod port, and its passengers were deported from the country.

Before she was deported, Corrigan-Maguire signed a document stating that she was prohibited from entering Israel for the next 10 years. Corrigan-Maguire, however, says she was misled and had not agreed to such a condition.

High Court Justice Esther Hayut ordered the Petah Tikva court to hear Corrigan-Maguire’s case after hearing a petition submitted on behalf of the Irish peace activist on Wednesday at 1 A.M. by Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel.

Adalah asked Justice Hayut to issue a temporary injunction against Corrigan-Maguire’s deportation. In addition to instructing the Petah Tikva District Court to hear the case, Hayut also ordered that Corrigan-Maguire’s belongings be returned to her.

Continue reading October 4, 2010