Month: March 2012

EDITOR: Playing with fire

So now Israel does not know how to stop the fire it started, and not for the first time. Remember Lebanon in summer of 2006? Israel and its allies kept the war going for a month, but as the Israeli loses mounted, they were thrashing about trying to bring an immediate end to it. Here we go again. After days of hammering Gaza with high explosives, they find that it is not so easy to ‘terminate the incident’, and civilians on both sides are paying the price. Israeli TV stations are following the numbers of casualties in Gaza like they were football results, with Israel=0, Gaza=26 headlines, and in the meantime the life of Israelis in the south are very difficult, not to mention the life of Palestinians in Gaza.
Saw the wind, and ye shall reap the storm.

Rockets fired at Be’er Sheva on seventh day of Israel-Gaza violence: Haaretz

IDF strikes Gaza overnight after Palestinian militants fire three Grad rockets at Be’er Sheva and Ofakim, violating an Israeli-Palestinian truce; school canceled in southern Israel.

Palestinian militants fired four Grad rockets toward southern Israel on Thursday morning, after the Israel Air Force launched several strikes on the Gaza Strip overnight.

One rocket landed near the southern Israeli city of Netivot early Thursday, and shortly afterward three Grad rockets were fired toward Be’er Sheva.

Despite an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire between the sides which went into effect early Tuesday morning, Palestinian militant groups continued to fire rockets sporadically into Israel on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Five cities in southern Israel – Be’er Sheva, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Kiryat Malakhi and Gan Yavneh – decided to cancel school on Thursday.

On Wednesday night, three Grad rockets were fired toward Be’er Sheva and Ofakim in southern Israel. Two were intercepted by an Iron Dome anti-missile battery, while the third landed in an open area near Ofakim. There were no casualties or damage to property, altough several suffered from shock.

In response, Israel carried out two air strikes on militant targets in Gaza early Thursday morning, according to the IDF Spokesman.

No Palestinian organization had claimed responsibility for the rockets, but the IDF believes they were launched by one of Gaza’s small, radical Islamist factions. All of the factions’ leaders committed to the truce in talks with Egyptian mediators.

Defense officials said they believe Hamas is not interested in a resumption of violence, and will therefore try to restrain smaller factions. However, they stressed that Israel will continue to carry out targeted killings of terrorists if it receives intelligence warnings of a planned attack.

Earlier on Wednesday, Palestinians fired a mortar shell at the western Negev, but it apparently fell short and landed in the Gaza Strip.

“There’s no magic solution to rockets,” GOC Southern Command Tal Russo said on Wednesday during a visit to a high school in Omer. “There won’t be a complete solution even if we embark on another round of fighting.”

Speaking before the rockets were fired at Be’er Sheva, Russo added, “I don’t know how long the quiet will hold. But if they violate the quiet, we have many tools. In this round, we didn’t use all the tools at our disposal. There could be situations in which a larger operation is needed.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was supposed to leave for Paris and Madrid on Wednesday, where he was meant to discuss Iran’s nuclear program with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and the new Spanish prime minister, Mariano Rajoy.

However, despite the cease-fire declaration, Netanyahu canceled the trip due to the “security situation in southern Israel” – raising the question of whether he expects another round of fighting to erupt.

The killing of Zuhair al-Qaissi exposes Israel’s attitude to its supreme court: Guardian

Did the Palestinian leader killed by Israeli forces plan an attack? Without transparency, there’s no accountability to the court
Mya Guarnieri

The recent escalation between Israel and Gaza began after Israeli forces assassinated Zuhair al-Qaissi, a leader of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), a militant group composed of members of various Palestinian parties. Haaretz noted that the PRC was “the organisation that captured Gilad Shalit”, the Israeli soldier who was freed in October 2011. The army says that al-Qaissi was behind the August 2011 attack that took place on the Israeli-Egyptian border – even though the PRC denied involvement and it was later revealed that the militants came from Sinai, not Gaza.

While army sources took care to point out al-Qaissi’s alleged involvement in the August 2011 incident, his assassination wasn’t just an act of punishment. No, Israel killed him on the basis of secret evidence – evidence that is not subject to legal or judicial review – that supposedly proves that al-Qaissi was planning a terror attack. Never mind that the Israeli supreme court’s December 2006 ruling placed numerous restrictions on such assassinations.

Fatmeh el-Ajou, an attorney with Adalah, the legal centre for Arab minority rights in Israel, explains that while the judgment did not place a blanket prohibition on targeted killings, it stated that the decision to carry out an assassination must be made on a case-by-case basis, “depending on the evidence that [security forces] have”. But, without seeing the security forces’ secret evidence, it’s impossible to know if al-Qaissi was indeed planning an attack, and if the army was in line with the 2006 ruling. There’s no transparency in this so-called democracy and, without transparency, there is no accountability to the state’s highest court. “From the perspective of human rights law,” el-Ajou adds, “assassinations are not legitimate … They should only be carried out if there is a ‘ticking bomb.’ [Suspects] should be brought to trial.”

To some extent, the 2006 ruling dovetails with this, stating that, whenever possible, the person in question must be arrested and tried – which is exactly what didn’t happen in 2007, when the army violated the supreme court’s restrictions on targeted killings and assassinated two men they had the power to detain instead. And then there’s the laundry list of less dramatic examples, instances when state bodies quietly ignore the court, revealing Israel to be the weak democracy it is. Such cases have spurred former deputy attorney general Yehudit Karp to send not one but two letters of complaint to the current attorney General Yehuda Weinstein. Here’s a partial sampling of rulings that Israel can’t be bothered to fully implement:

• In 2002, the supreme court ordered the municipalities of Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Lod, Ramle and Nazareth Illit to “add Arabic to all municipal signs”, Adalah writes. Last April, the supreme court chastised the municipality of Nazareth Illit (upper Nazareth, a predominately Jewish area) for its lack of compliance with the nine-year-old ruling.

• In 2006, the supreme court struck down the binding arrangement, a policy that binds migrant workers to one employer, essentially making his or her visa contingent on his employer’s whim. Last year, the Knesset circumvented this ruling, passing legislation so severe that human rights groups referred to it as the “slavery law”.

• In 2007, the Israeli supreme court ruled that the separation barrier in the West Bank Palestinian village of Bilin served no security purpose in its location and ordered the state to move the fence. While Israel did move it in 2011, more than four years after the court’s decision, villagers are still separated from some of their land.

• During the December 2008 to January 2009 Israeli military operation known as Cast Lead, Israel barred media from the Gaza Strip. Even though the supreme court ruled against the ban, the press was not admitted to Gaza.

• In April 2011, the supreme court overturned the policy that stripped migrant workers who had children in Israel of their legal status, calling it a violation of the state’s own labour laws. Almost a year later, Israel is still deporting some of these women and their children, despite the fact that the very mechanism that made them “illegal” has been nullified.

In his 2006 ruling on targeted killings, former supreme court president Aharon Barak quoted an earlier judgment in which he’d stated: “At times democracy fights with one hand behind her back.” But in its war on Palestinians – and anyone that Israel deems an “other” – not only does the state use both hands, it fights with the proverbial gloves off.

Israel ‘must end imputiny of violence by settlers’: Independent

DONALD MACINTYRE    WEDNESDAY 14 MARCH 2012
EU governments, including Britain, have secretly been urged by their top diplomats in Jerusalem and the West Bank to press Israel to enforce laws against Jewish settlers responsible for an “alarming” rise in violence against Palestinians and their property.

A report sent to Brussels last month, which has been seen by The Independent, calls for an end to “the impunity” of acts that force Palestinians from their land near the settlements and increase the “opportunities” for settlers to expand. The report repeatedly stresses that settlements are illegal in international law and “threaten to make a two state solution impossible”.

Citing recent UN figures showing that the number of settler attacks in 2011 had tripled to 411 in two years, the diplomats also highlight the fact that more than 90 per cent of complaints filed with the Israeli police by Palestinians – against sometimes armed attacks on people, mosques, agricultural land and livestock –go unpunished.

Last month’s dispatch updates an also still confidential report produced by the EU’s diplomatic heads of mission last year, which warned that Israel’s failure to enforce the law risks “engendering more violence and jeopardises political dialogue”. The earlier report also recommended that the EU put settlers with a record of violence or incitement on a travel “watch list” to prevent them entering member countries.

But while the updated report was endorsed by 21 out of 22 EU Consuls-General – ambassador-level representatives to the Palestinians who have offices in Jerusalem or Ramallah – attempts at unanimity have been undermined by the refusal of The Netherlands to sign the document.

The Dutch government is rapidly emerging as the most reluctant in Western Europe to criticise Israeli policy in the occupied West Bank. Close ties between The Hague and Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud government were further cemented by the Israeli Prime Minister’s two-day visit to The Netherlands in January.

The updated report acknowledges that, thanks to an enhanced presence by the Israeli military, last year’s olive harvest, which has traditionally seen a spike in settler attacks on Palestinians and their olive groves, was a “notable exception” to the general steep rise in settler violence. It adds that eight settlers were killed in three separate attacks in 2011, including one on a family in the Itamar settlement, for which two Palestinians were convicted. Three Palestinians were also killed by settlers in 2011.

But the earlier report warned that the Israeli military has limited authority to confront settlers attacking Palestinians, while by contrast they routinely intervene against Palestinians.

Weiss: Zionism has created ‘rivers of blood’: AlJazeera English

Rabbi Yisrael Dovid Weiss explains why he believes that Israel as a state is not legitimate.
When Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, visited Washington last week on the eve of the Purim holiday, he gave Barack Obama, the US president, what he considered a symbolic gift – a copy of the old testament book of Esther.

Netanyahu called it “background reading on Iran”, since its story concerns relations with Jews in the Persian empire some 2,500 years ago.

It is considered by scholars to be mostly fiction, but for Netanyahu Esther represented justification for his stance against modern Iran.

”Israel must reserve the right to defend itself. And after all that’s the very purpose of the Jewish state. To restore to the Jewish people control over our destiny,” Netanyahu said.

But Netanyahu’s controversial reading of history, even his fight to preserve the state of Israel, are questioned by many of Judaism’s own religious authorities.

“This is against the will of the Almighty and this is not what it means to be a Jew,” says Jewish religious scholar Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, a spokesman for “Jews against Zionism”, who believes that Israel as a state is not legitimate. He says that Zionism has created “rivers of blood” and he opposes the occupation of Palestine.

On the threat from Iran and President Ahmadinejad he says: “He gives charity to Jewish communities and he says one thing: he has a problem with the oppression of the Palestinian people. And the words “wipe out” he constantly says that Iran doesn’t have a history and he is not talking about harming anybody he says that God will not allow this crime to happen. We concur with him that Jews are in danger because there is Zionism because it says in the Tora if you rebel against God, it will not be successful and there will be catastrophic results and Zionism has brought catastrophic results and it could be much worse.”

Today on Talk to Al Jazeera Weiss explains why Zionism and Judaism are not necessarily the same thing.

The storm over Bamba and apathy concerning Gaza: Haaretz

In an alert civil society – you keep things clean and throw the Bamba in the garbage bin. However on the other side of the colorful bag of snacks lurks a destructive apathy.
By Gideon Levy
For four consecutive days and nights, millions of citizens of this country once again lived under conditions of fear and terror. The innovation was that, this time, no one tried to whitewash things. The mass terror was to be expected and it stemmed directly from an Israeli act of violence. Nevertheless, no one thought of expressing opposition. Better not to even ask whether indeed a terror attack had been foiled; whether the secretary general of the Popular Resistance Committees was one of those rare people in human history for whom there is no replacement; or whether indeed his assassination was beneficial or legal.

The assassination and the revenge were seen here as a divine edict, as a force majeure, as a storm in the southern skies – a quick strike that would blow away with the wind. The south was scared, the north turned a blind eye, and all together were amazed at the way Iron Dome successfully intercepted the missiles. And at times like these, there is no opposition in Israel.

Not just at times like these. It is possible to imagine a situation in which Israel would have continued with another ground invasion of the Gaza Strip. And would anyone have raised his voice against that? Of course not. Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee’s chairman Shaul Mofaz would be in favor of course, and so apparently would opposition leader Tzipi Livni (whose voice was once again not heard this week ); Labor Party leader Shelly Yachimovich is busy to the hilt with the tycoons; Knesset hopeful Yair Lapid would have made do with another ideological “okay, bye!”; the summer protest movement leader Daphni Leef is traveling across the seas to explain that Israel is not an apartheid nation; on the Facebook page of Meretz leader Zahava Gal-On there is no mention of what happened in the south; and the Arab members of the Knesset are isolated as usual from the public discourse.

And as if that was not enough – it seems to everyone that this is a normal situation. That’s how things are and there is nothing we can do about it. A difficult reality in the south following an act of choice by Israel and no one even considers asking questions, casting doubts, offering alternatives. Hamas held its fire? Rubbish. It announced it had renounced violence? Nonsense. Once again Egypt turned out to be the only party that could bring back quiet despite its Muslim Brothers? So what? Speak with Hamas? What, have we lost our minds? Only a stand-up artist in the south raised that brilliant idea on television: To continue with assassinations in Gaza “until the inventory is completed.” That’s an idea and that’s an idea. Laughter. An Israeli democracy that lacks an opposition, free of any alternative ideas for government – a global innovation.

But just a minute, there are storms here nevertheless. For two days a storm has been raging here over [the children’s snack] Bamba, a storm which was almost wilder than the storm in the south. Had it not been for the summer social protest, the baby icon of the Bamba snack would have turned into the official mascot of Israel’s Olympic team. Only decent public intervention prevented the disgrace.

The Internet was flooded with reactions, the minister of sports and culture threatened to intervene, the chairman of the Knesset’s Education Committee called for an emergency meeting, columnists joined in the struggle, and the cute little Bamba baby will not march at the London Olympics. Psychosis and neurosis. Two days of newspaper headlines. All of a sudden, everyone is interested in sports and concerned about the moral standards of the Olympic team, and they have reservations about using a commercial symbol. Suddenly there is a protest, there is an opposition and there is a popular uprising. Even if this protest is justified in principle and there really is no place for commercial sponsorship of a national mascot, what about the proportions? Where is the proportionality? This exaggeration was intended for one purpose only – to cover the shame of apathy and to give ourselves the superficial appearance of involvement.

That is the other side of the apolitical nature of the summer protest movement – the connection between a vacuous patriot and a hollow protester. Because that’s how things are in an involved democracy, that’s how things are when there is an alert civil society – you keep things clean and throw the Bamba in the garbage bin. However on the other side of the colorful bag of snacks lurks a destructive apathy.

All the futile storms of the past months – Bamba, Big Brother, Pesek-Zman, Hatikva, and even the scandal of cancelling free train rides for soldiers for three consecutive hours per week – cannot hide the disgrace: In the land of Bamba, in Bamba Land, people come to life only the marginal and the meaningless. Let it be known: there is a direct link between the storm over Bamba and the apathy concerning Gaza. Both are driven by blind and cheap patriotism. And which mascot will march in our name at the Olympic stadium in London? That affects us much more deeply than what is done in our name in Gaza.

EDITOR: Haaretz says it clearly

The Editor of Haaretz, Aluf Benn, is clear about what Netanyahu is doing – he is preparing the Israeli public for the attack on Iran. The question is – do they now understand he is not bluffing, and actually means to do the mad thing? Most of them are still thinking this is bluff, I am sure.

Netanyahu is preparing Israeli public opinion for a war on Iran: Haaretz

In response to Netanyahu’s AIPAC speech, Haaretz’s editor-in-chief says that what looks like a preparation for war, acts like a preparation for war, and quacks like a preparation for war, is a preparation for war.
By Aluf Benn
Since his return from Washington, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has mainly been preoccupied with one thing: Preparing public opinion for war against Iran.

Netanyahu is attempting to convince the Israeli public that the Iranian threat is a tangible and existential one, and that there is only one effective way to stop it and prevent a “second Holocaust”: An Israeli military attack on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, which is buried deep underground.

In his speech before the Knesset on Wednesday, Netanyahu urged his colleagues to reject claims that Israel is too weak to go it alone in a war against a regional power such as Iran and therefore needs to rely on the United States, which has much greater military capabilities, to do the job and remove the threat.

According to polls published last week, this is the position of most of the Israeli public, which supports a U.S. strike on Iran, but is wary of sending the IDF to the task without the backing of the friendly superpower.

Netanyahu presented three examples in which his predecessors broke the American directive and made crucial decisions regarding the future of Israel: the declaration of independence in 1948, starting the Six Day War in 1967 and the bombing of the nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981.

The lesson was clear: Just as David Ben-Gurion, Levi Eshkol and Menachem Begin said “no” to the White House, Netanyahu also needs not be alarmed by President Obama’s opposition to an attack on Iran. Netanyahu believes that, as in the previous incidents, the U.S. may grumble at first, but will then quickly adopt the Israeli position and provide Israel with support and backing in the international community.

If Netanyahu had submitted his speech as a term paper to his father the history professor, he would have received a very poor grade. In 1948, the U.S. State Department, headed by George Marshall, opposed the declaration of independence and supported a United Nations trusteeship for Palestine. But President Truman had other considerations.

Like Obama today, Truman was also a democratic president contending for his reelection, who needed the support of the Jewish voters and donors. Under those circumstances, Truman rejected Marshall’s advice, and listened to his political adviser Clark Clifford, who pressured him to recognize the Zionist state. And indeed, Truman sent a telegram with an official recognition of Israel just 11 minutes after Ben-Gurion finished reading the Scroll of Independence. The U.S. opposition to the recognition of Israel was halted at the desk of the president, who repelled the explanations by the Secretary of State and the “Arabists” in his office.

In 1967, the official U.S. position called on Israel to hold back and refrain from going to war, but a different message was passing through the secret channels: go “bomb Nasser,” reported Levi Eshkol’s envoys to Washington, Meir Amit and Avraham Harman. This message tipped the scales in favor of going to war. In 1981, Begin did not bother asking the Americans their opinion before attacking Iraq, but lulled them to sleep and launched a surprise attack.

In these past incidents, Israel acted against the U.S. position formally, but made sure that the Americans will accept the results of the action and support it in retrospect. And indeed, the U.S. recognized Israel in 1948, allowed it to control the territories annexed in 1967, and made do with weak condemnations of the attack on the Iraq nuclear reactor in 1981.

That being the case, then Netanyahu is hinting that in his Washington visit, he received Obama’s tacit approval for an Israeli attack against Iran – under the guise of opposition. Obama will speak out against it but act for it, just as the past U.S. administrations speak against the settlements in the territories but allow their expansion. And in this manner Netanyahu summarized the visit: “I presented before my hosts the examples that I just noted before you, and I believe that the first objective that I presented – to fortify the recognition of Israel’s right to defend itself – I think that objective has been achieved.”

This morning, the editor-in-chief of the Israel Hayom newspaper, Amos Regev, published on his front page an enthusiastic op-ed in support of a war against Iran. Regev writes what Netanyahu cannot say in his speeches: that we cannot rely on Obama – who wasn’t even a mechanic in the armored corps – but only on ourselves. “Difficult, daring, but possible,” Regev promised. We need not be alarmed by the Iranian response: the arrow would take down the Shahab missiles, and Hezbollah and Hamas would hesitate about entering a war. The damage would be reminiscent of the Iraqi scuds in the 1991 Gulf War – unpleasant, but definitely not too bad. The analysts are weak, but the soldiers and the residents of the Home Front have motivation. So onward, to battle!

To use Netanyahu’s “duck allegory”, what looks like a preparation for war, acts like a preparation for war, and quacks like a preparation for war, is a preparation for war, and not just a “bluff” or a diversion tactic. Until his trip to Washington, Netanyahu and his supporters in the media refrained from such explicit wording and made do with hints. But since he’s been back, Netanyahu has issued an emergency call-up for himself and the Israeli public.

 

 Israel’s Latest Ritual Slaughter: ICH

By Stephen Lendman

March 14, 2012

Four days of Israeli terror bombing left at least 25 Palestinians dead and dozens injured, some seriously. Human rights groups expressed outrage. So did Arab League states, Iran, Turkey, and Malaysia.

Israel’s UN envoy Ron Prosor wants the Security Council to condemn Palestinian victims. Like Netanyahu and other Israeli officials, his audacity gives chutzpah new meaning.

On March 12, Egypt’s lower parliamentary house unanimously approved a text declaring Israel Egypt’s number one enemy. It called for expelling its ambassador, halting gas exports at below market prices, and reevaluating its 1978 peace treaty. It followed the 1978 Camp David Accords.

Its text said:

“Revolutionary Egypt will never be a friend, partner or ally of the Zionist entity, which we consider to be the number one enemy of Egypt and the Arab nation.”

“It will deal with that entity as an enemy, and the Egyptian government is hereby called upon to review all its relations and accords with that enemy.”

No Israeli comment followed.

Four days of Israeli terror bombings were unprovoked. Assassinating Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) head Zuhir al-Qaisi and PRC member Mahmoud Hanani began them. Both men died when two IDF missiles struck their car.

Gazan resistance groups launched Grad missiles, home-made rockets, and mortar shells defensively in response. Israel and Washington pointed fingers the wrong way. Absolving Israeli crimes takes precedence.

Naked aggression’s called self-defense. Resistance freedom fighting’s called terrorism. Facts on the ground are inverted. Whatever Israel does it right. Legitimate Palestinian responses aren’t tolerated. Victims get no rights.

Israel’s bloodstained history reflects decades of ritual slaughter and targeted killings. The latest incident shows what Palestinians endure regularly, including from media scoundrels ignoring their suffering and denouncing them.

Usually, Haaretz produces responsible journalism. Not on March 13. An editorial headlined, “War in Israel’s south will not defeat Gaza terror,” asking:

Was killing al-Qaisi worth “disruption….economic damage, (and) danger of plunging into a military ground operation in Gaza?”

Unasked was how targeted killings are ever justifiable. Haaretz approves against alleged “ticking bomb(s).” By whose standard when no evidence linked al-Qaisi to past or claimed planned attacks. Saying so isn’t proof. Israel never supplies it. Why is clear. There’s none, but Haaretz didn’t explain or denounce premeditated murder.

Instead, it sided with southern Israelis living under threat of Gazan rockets. They’re used defensively in response to Israeli attacks. International law permits it.

“The war in the south must end immediately. It will not defeat terror nor reduce the Gaza threat.” Nor will Cast Lead II. Sensibly the editorial ended saying negotiations, not violence, produces solutions.

But how can Palestinians negotiate in good faith without a willing partner! For decades, Israel chose violence, not peace or honest diplomacy. Relations with Netanyahu’s like dealing with a snake. It’s futile, toxic and dangerous. He proves it by committing cold-blooded murder, claiming self-defense.

A same day Haaretz article was just as shameless, headlined, “TIMELINE/A breakdown of number of Gaza rockets fired at Israel over past year.”

Enumerating numbers fired by month from January 2011 through the latest March confrontation, it listed 200 this month alone. Gazans were blamed, not IDF belligerents. Unexplained was that Palestinians respond defensively to Israeli aggression.

Instead, the blame game shamelessly named victims. It also ignored their decades long liberation struggle against lawless, repressive occupation, and for Gazans years of suffocating siege.

Moreover, as Btselem documents, Palestinian rockets killed only 19 Israeli civilians from June 2004 through September 2011. In contrast, from September 29, 2000 through December 26, 2008, Israeli forces killed 4,788 Palestinians. Israeli settlers killed 45 more.

Cast Lead killed over 1,400 Gazans in three weeks, mostly civilians. Only five IDF soldiers died in the conflict, no civilians. Since Cast Lead ended in January 2009, Israeli forces killed another 300 Palestinians. Settlers killed five more. Palestinians killed 15 Israelis.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) said Israeli drone attacks killed 825 Palestinians, mostly civilians, from June 2006 through October 2011. PCHR deputy director Hamdi Shaqqura said:

“For us, drones mean death….When you hear drones, you hear death,” and know it’s coming.

Haaretz omitted this balance sheet from its equation.

Notably, hundreds of Israelis die annually from traffic related accidents. In 2008, it was nearly 450, in 2011, almost 400. Deaths at the hands of Palestinians pale by comparison.

Haaretz’s article was cruel and deceptive. It distorted facts in portraying an entirely one-sided picture. Gazans are wrongfully called terrorists. They’re human beings suffering horrifically from lawless Israeli oppression. It’s not typical Haaretz style. For US major media scoundrels, it’s de rigueur.

Hopefully today’s report and opinion prove aberrant. Hopefully those producing them learn from their mistakes. Haaretz features wonderful writers like Gideon Levy and Amira Hass. They consistently offer responsible journalism. America’s major print media have none like them. If any tried, they’d be fired. Only scoundrels need apply.

It shows up daily in reports like The New York Times headlining, “As Rockets Fly, New Conditions Shape Fight in Gaza,” saying:

Ahead of an Egyptian-brokered truce, Israeli airstrikes continue and Palestinian “militants’ rockets (are reaching farther into Israel.” IDF head Gen. Benny Gantz was cited, saying Palestinian violence will require another Cast Lead type operation. Israeli finance minister Yuval Steinitz said eventually Israel will have to do a “root canal.”

In other words, victims, not perpetrators, deserve blame. Times writers play the same game. Right and wrong are reversed. Aggression’s called self-defense. Legitimate responses are terrorism. Israel’s point of view alone matters. It’s typical Times journalism, betraying their readers through lies, deception, and willful misreporting.

The same article falsely suggested Iran’s an existential threat. Serial liars don’t quit. It’s habit forming. Too many people believe it. It lets Israel and America get away with murder.

Complicit media scoundrels facilitate it. So does scurrilous UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon. He condemned Palestinian self-defense as “unacceptable,” while urging Israel to “exercise maximum restraint.”

Hillary Clinton expressed Washington’s official response, “condemn(ing) Gazan victims “in the strongest terms” while urging “all sides…to make every effort to restore calm.”

In other words, killing Palestinians is OK. Responding to premeditated aggression defensively is terrorism. Views like that secure scurrilous reprobates like her and Ban top jobs. Denouncing Israeli lawlessness assures rebukes.

America and Israel have “shared values.” None support right over wrong. One wonders what’s next.

A Final Comment

After an agreed truce, Israeli forces attacked a funeral procession east of Gaza City. Three Palestinians were injured. Medical spokesman Adham Abu Salmiyah said soldiers fired indiscriminately at mourners. Wounded victims were taken to al-Shifa Hospital.

An Israeli army spokeswoman said soldiers “operating along the security fence identified around 50 Palestinians gathered and in accordance with army procedures fired warning shots.”

Some warning! Soldiers fired directly at nonviolent Palestinians threatening no one. It’s “in accordance with army procedures!”

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening. http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/

EDITOR: There children only in Israel

Of course, there are no children in Gaza, so nothing for us to worry about there; just those Israeli children who are so disturbed by rockets. It makes you puke!

Gaza militants fire rockets at Israel, Iron Dome intercepts projectiles over Be’er Sheva: Haaretz

Attacks come mere days following an Egypt-mediated ceasefire agreement between Israel and militants in the coastal enclave; Be’er Sheva, Ashdod, and Ashkelon call off studies in local schools over renewed violence.

The Israel Air Forces’ Iron Dome anti-missile system intercepted two Grad-type rockets launched toward the southern city of Be’er Sheva on Wednesday, despite a truce reached between Israel and Gaza militants earlier this week, while a third projectile landed in an open field in the vicinity of the town of Ofakim.

Municipalities of the cities of Be’er Sheva, Ashdod and Ashkelon  announced later Wednesday that studies in the cities’ schools would be called off for Thursday, after only two days since announcing a return to studies following the Egypt-mediated ceasefire.

The city’s announcement came despite the IDF’s recommendation, according to which Be’er Sheva residents could send their children to school.

It was not the first time since the ceasefire that rockets were fired at Israel’s south, a Grad-type Katyusha rocket also hitting a residential area in the southern town of Netivot late Tuesday. One person was lightly wounded.

In addition, even prior to the attack on Netivot, seven rockets and five mortar shells were fired toward southern Israel throughout Tuesday. They exploded in open areas and there were no reported casualties.

All in all, about 200 rockets have exploded in Israeli territory since the latest round of violence between Israel and Gaza broke out on Friday and until the Israel Defense Forces and Gaza militants agreed to cease fire.

Responding to rocket fire, the Israel Air Force carried out 37 airstrikes in the Gaza Strip, 19 strikes targeted rocket-launchers and 18 targeted weapons warehouses in response to rocket attacks.

Twenty-six Palestinians were killed as a result of IAF strikes on Gaza. Out of these 22 were militants and 4 were civilians who were in the area of IAF strikes, but were not involved in the rocket fire.

Earlier Tuesday, IDF officials announced that, following the ceasefire, 207,000 schoolchildren in communities 7-40 kilometers from Gaza would be returning to their studies on Wednesday, for the first time since the beginning of the week.

 

EDITOR: Until next time…

Another truce is agreed, to last exactly until Israel decides it is over. As always, Israel started this conflagration, and it did not end because of western or UN involvement, of course. If not for the Egyptians, Israel would still be bombing, though of course its own citizens are suffering the results of this criminal policy as well. The leopard will not change its spots.

Imagine the life of a small child in Gaza – I do not mean a child who was killed or maimed, just a child which needs to get used to the Israeli blitzkrieg. Of course, you cannot get used to it. You are scarred for life.

נקמת דם ילד קטן עוד לא ברא השטן

The Vengeance of a small child was not yet created by Satan (Hebrew, lines from a Bialik poem)

Israel and Gaza militants agree truce after clashes: BBC

A ceasefire is in place between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza after four days of deadly clashes.

The Egyptian-mediated truce took effect at 01:00 local time (23:00 GMT Monday).

The recent violence “appears to be behind us,” said Israeli Cabinet Minister Matan Vilnai.

At least 25 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli air strikes since Friday, reports say. Israel says 35 people were injured in Palestinian rocket attacks.

Officials from Hamas, which governs Gaza, told the BBC that Israel had agreed to stop targeting leaders of militant groups in Gaza, if rocket attacks on its southern cities ceased.

The number of Palestinian attacks dropped sharply after the truce went into effect overnight, and no major towns in southern Israel were targeted.

The Israeli military said a total of six rockets and mortars had hit, causing no casualties, and that there had been no Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip.

Previous ceasefire deals after earlier rounds of fighting have often taken a day or two to take effect fully.

The deal was brokered by the Egyptian authorities, who reportedly negotiated with each side separately.

Four days of cross-border violence was triggered by an Israeli air strike on Friday that killed a senior leader of the militant group, the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), who Israel said had been planning an attack.

Militants in Gaza responded quickly by unleashing a barrage of rockets towards southern Israel, triggering further air strikes.

Most of those killed in Gaza were militants, but several civilians also died, Palestinian medical sources say.

Israel said the major reason for a relatively low number of injuries among its population was the country’s new Iron Dome missile system, which shot down about 50 rockets launched from Gaza.

The US condemned the rocket attacks as “cowardly”; the Arab League called the Israeli air strikes “a massacre”.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon expressed grave concern over the flare-up in violence, describing rocket attacks on Israeli civilians as “unacceptable” and urging Israel to “exercise maximum restraint”.

Islamic Jihad and the PRC – and not Hamas – have said they have been behind the rocket attacks.

The increase in violence has alarmed world powers trying to bring peace talks between Palestinians and Israelis back on track.

Israel and Gaza militants agree to ceasefire after clashes: Guardian

Egyptian-brokered truce between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza after four days of violence killed 25 people

Israel and militant factions in the Gaza Strip have agreed to an Egyptian-brokered truce to end four days of cross-border violence in which 25 Palestinians have been killed, a senior Egyptian security official said.

Both sides had “agreed to end the current operations”, according to the official, with Israel giving an unusual undertaking to “stop assassinations”, and an overall agreement “to begin a comprehensive and mutual calm”.

The agreement was set to take effect at 1am local time (2300 GMT). There was no immediate comment from either side. Previous ceasefire deals after earlier rounds of fighting have often got off to a shaky start.

Israeli media quoted Israeli officials as reiterating the longstanding policy that Israel would “answer quiet with quiet” but stopped short of providing any guarantees to withhold fire in response to rocket attacks.

An Israeli military spokesman declined to comment.

Israel signalled earlier it would not halt what it calls “preventive targeting” operations aimed at stopping rocket fire and cross-border attacks.

“The Israeli army will continue to attack the terrorists in Gaza with strength and determination,” the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, told lawmakers in his Likud party on Sunday.

But while Israel was keen to bar rocket fire at its homefront there seemed to be little public enthusiasm for waging a longer military campaign reminiscent of a 2008-2009 offensive in which 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed.

A Palestinian official close to the talks said “the factions are committed”, alluding to the Islamic Jihad and Popular Resistance Committees, who were most active in the fighting, but that these groups were waiting to see how Israel would respond.

Gaza’s Hamas Islamist leadership, whose own cadres have kept out of the fighting and seemed eager to avoid a larger conflict with Israel, had confirmed on Sunday that Egypt was working on a deal to stop the violence.

The truce agreement also followed appeals from world powers – the US, United Nations, France, European Union and the Arab League – for both sides to exercise restraint.

Israel said Gaza militants had fired about 150 rockets at its southern towns and cities from Gaza since fighting flared on Friday after Israel killed a senior militant it accused of plotting to attack Israel from Egyptian territory.

Eight Israelis were injured by the rockets, dozens of which were shot down harmlessly by Israel’s “Iron Dome” missile interceptor system.

Twenty of the Palestinians killed since fighting flared in the Hamas-controlled enclave were militants and five were civilians, according to medical officials.

At least 80 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been wounded in the violence, which also brought much of southern Israel to a standstill, forcing schools to close and hundreds of thousands to remain indoors.

Gaza, home to 1.7 million people, was under Israeli occupation from 1967 until 2005 and remains under blockade.

Hamas has controlled Gaza since seizing it from West Bank-based Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in 2007, and is fighting for an independent Palestinian state, but has shunned the stalled peace process supervised by international powers and refuses to recognise the Jewish state.

Violent flareups have been frequent between Israel and Gaza’s militant factions in the past few years, in most cases lasting no longer than a week.

The last conflagration of this intensity was in August after a cross-border attack launched from Egypt killed seven in Israel, and Israel struck back killing 15 Gaza gunmen.

Gaza militants fire rocket at Israeli town, despite truce: Haaretz

Mid-range projectile hits residential area of Negev town of Netivot, one person lightliy wounded; earlier in the day the IDF announced that school would resume in southern schools in rocket range

Gaza militants fired a Grad-type Katyusha rocket toward the western Negev on Tuesday, despite a Egypt-mediated cease fire between Israel and militant groups that went into effect earlier in the day.

The rocket struck a residential area if the town of Netivot, with one person lightly wounded. Eleven people were treated for shock.

Despite a ceasefire agreement reached late Monday night, the Kayusha attack on Netivot wasn’t the only launch on Tuesday, with seven rockets and five mortar shells fired toward southern Israel. They exploded in open areas and there were no reported casualties.

All in all, nearly 200 rockets have exploded in Israeli territory since the latest round of violence between Israel and Gaza broke out on Friday and until the Israel Defense Forces and Gaza militants agreed to cease fire.

Responding to rocket fire, the Israel Air Force carried out 37 airstrikes in the Gaza Strip, 19 strikes targeted rocket-launchers and 18 targeted weapons warehouses in response to rocket attacks.

Twenty-six Palestinians were killed as a result of IAF strikes on Gaza. Out of these 22 were militants and 4 were civilians who were in the area of IAF strikes, but were not involved in the rocket fire.

Earlier Tuesday, IDF officials announced that, following the ceasefire, 207,000 schoolchildren in communities 7-40 kilometers from Gaza would be returning to their studies on Wednesday, for the first time since the beginning of the week.

Awad Abdelfattah: Risk of unrest grows as Israel redraws relations with Arab citizens: IOA

By Awad Abdelfattah, 13 March 2012

Israel sees its Arab citizens as a security threat, and their leaders are increasingly under attack. While cooperation and political participation once seemed feasible, systematic discrimination has led to an untenable situation. Secretary general  of The National Democratic Party Assembly (Tajamoa) writes on missed opportunities and grim predictions.

More and more voices among the 1.2 million Palestinians in Israel have been asking whether Israel is trying to redefine the rules of the game that have governed the relationship between the state and the Palestinians since 1948. In recent years, and especially since the outbreak of the second intifada in October 2000, Arab citizens have been re-characterized by the state of Israel as a security and demographic threat, like they were between 1948 and 1966, when they were subject to military rule.

Since 2000, a new series of repressive and discriminatory practices and laws have been implemented and legislated. Palestinian leaders in the Knesset have been systematically threatened and some have been prosecuted. The continued campaign of delegitimization has taken almost unprecedented forms.

MK Haneen Zoabi, from my party, Balad, has repeatedly received death threats from unknown right-wingers, and was been stripped of her diplomatic passport after participating in the 2010 flotilla that tried to break the siege on Gaza. Voices from the ruling Likud party have called to remove her and her party from the Knesset.

Attempts by the right-wing ruling coalition to further marginalize the Arab Palestinian community and its political parties in the Knesset are manifested in a flood of racist laws aimed at restricting their political movement and expression. Our party – the National Democratic Assembly, known as Balad in Hebrew – is the most heavily targeted. Its former leader, Azmi Bishara, faced a fabricated security charge in 2007 involving alleged collaboration with Hezbollah. He preferred to leave the country and remain in exile rather than face such a charge, for which lawyers cannot properly defend their client, since they are not given access to all of the material in the investigation.

But the campaign against him started long before, and it is ideological and political in essence. It was cited clearly in a book written by the former head of the Israel Security Agency, Ami Ayalon, who demanded in 2001 that Bishara be brought to trial for allegedly crossing “red lines.” Ayalon accused Bishara of rejecting the right of the Jews to a Jewish state. The party itself has been subjected to repeated attempts at disqualification from Knesset elections.

The goal of the party as stated in its platform is to reinvent Israel as a state of all its citizens. That would mean that 20 percent of the citizens of the Jewish state, who are an indigenous ethnic minority, would be entitled to full equality, and would have genuine legislative and political power to improve their status and their lives in a democratic secular state.

The emergence of Balad and its platform in 1996 quickly gained wide support from Arab citizens and scores of non-Zionist Jewish Israeli intellectuals. It was viewed by many as the most modern and liberal democratic formula to emerge among the Arab Palestinian community in Israel since 1948.

This community had undergone major social, economic, and political changes since the 1970s. A new intelligentsia emerged, looking for ways to express its needs and aspirations. This epoch witnessed the start of a new national and civic consciousness among the Arab elites who sought collective and individual rights and equal citizenship.  Political thinking changed with regard to participation in elections for the Knesset, which had been viewed by many Arab citizens as a predominantly Zionist institution. Most of the founders of Balad, both individuals and groups (I for example), had previously refrained from engaging in the parliamentary game, and others had previously advocated a one-state solution.

The transition to a norm of participation – i.e., voting in Knesset elections – was painful and has been viewed by many inside the party as a major compromise. The leaders of Balad had hoped this new approach of seeking parliamentary representation would help create a more convenient climate for a dialogue with liberal Israelis and pave the way for the future bi-national entity.

However, the campaign against the party that began with the second intifada has continued and escalated, as members are routinely harassed and interrogated by the police. Israeli officials continue to claim that Arab citizens are not as extreme as their leaders, in order to drive a wedge between them. For most Palestinians in Israel, this claim is a worn-out cliché. Israeli officials can no longer deceive Arab citizens, as was the case in the 1950s and 1960s, when they were subjected to a tight system of control under military rule.

The continued incitement campaign against Arab parties like Balad and their leaders is perceived by many Arab citizens as a tactic to distance them from their representatives. Many also see it as a way to shift attention from Israel’s plans to complete the takeover of Arab lands. Coupled with the discriminatory policies Israeli implements, these land takeovers have led to the impoverishment of the Arab citizens.

The Israeli ruling coalition’s campaign to restrict Arab representation in the Knesset has deepened the Arab citizen’s distrust in the electoral process. In the last two rounds of elections in 2006 and 2009, the percentage of Arab voters dropped, from 90 percent at its peak and an average of 78 percent up until 1999 to 56 percent. It is expected to drop further in light the ongoing and rapid shift of Israeli politics and society to the extreme right. Like in 2001 – after the incidents of October 2000, where 13 Arab citizens of Israel were killed in demonstrations – more and more voices call to boycott elections.

There are two reasons behind this call. First, if they vote, the Arabs legitimize Israel’s ethnic democracy, which systematically exclude them. Second, voting slows or curbs the prospects of real mass struggle. Those who call for a boycott hold that hostile plans by Jewish Israeli politicians against Arab leaders are being drawn up, and they believe that in a few years, a new and harsher reality will emerge. This reality – which could entail separated and besieged ghettos, poverty, violence and social fragmentation – could lead to wide internal civil unrest.

The Arab region is boiling, and revolutions are in the making. Palestinians inside and outside Israel are watching these upheavals closely.

The international community began only recently to shift some of its attention to the plight of the Arab citizens of Israel. It tended to praise Israel as the only democracy in the Middle East, despite the fact that 20 percent of the state’s citizens are being rapidly stripped of their basic rights.

In his 2003 book, Sleeping on a Wire: Conversations with Palestinians in Israel, Israeli writer David Grossman wondered, “How long can a relatively large minority be assumed by the majority to be an enemy without in the end actually turning them into one?”

He continues: “Slowly and steadily, as if slumbering, Israel is missing its chance to rescue itself from a horrible mistake. It is creating for itself the enemy it will run up against after other countries have made their peace with it.”

Awad Abdelfattah is the secretary general of Balad, which holds three seats in the current Knesset (Said Naffaa, Jamal Zahalka, and Haneen Zoabi).

Jonathan Cook: Welcome to the world’s first bunker state: Jcook.net

18 JANUARY 2012
Room for Jews only in Israel’s ‘villa in the jungle’

Nazareth – The wheel is turning full circle. Last week the Israeli parliament updated a 59-year-old law originally intended to prevent hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees from returning to the homes and lands from which they had been expelled as Israel was established.

The purpose of the draconian 1954 Prevention of Infiltration Law was to lock up any Palestinian who managed to slip past the snipers guarding the new state’s borders. Israel believed only savage punishment and deterrence could ensure it maintained the overwhelming Jewish majority it had recently created through a campaign of ethnic cleansing.

Fast-forward six decades and Israel is relying on the infiltration law again, this time to prevent a supposedly new threat to its existence: the arrival each year of several thousand desperate African asylum seekers.

As it did with the Palestinians many years ago, Israel has criminalised these new refugees – in their case, for fleeing persecution, war or economic collapse. Whole families can now be locked up, without a trial, for three years while a deportation order is sought and enforced, and Israelis who offer them assistance risk jail sentences of up to 15 years.

Israel’s intention is apparently to put as many of these refugees behind bars as possible, and dissuade others from following in their footsteps.

To cope, officials have approved the building of an enormous detention camp, operated by Israel’s prison service, to contain 10,000 of these unwelcome arrivals. That will make it the largest holding facility of its kind in the world – according to Amnesty International, it will be three times bigger than the next largest, in the much more populous, and divine retribution-loving, US state of Texas.

Israeli critics of the law fear their country is failing in its moral duty to help those fleeing persecution, thereby betraying the Jewish people’s own experiences of suffering and oppression. But the Israeli government and the large majority of legislators who backed the law – like their predecessors in the 1950s – have drawn a very different conclusion from history.

The new infiltration law is the latest in a set of policies fortifying Israel’s status as the world’s first “bunker state”- and one designed to be as ethnically pure as possible. The concept was expressed most famously by an earlier prime minister, Ehud Barak, now the defence minister, who called Israel “a villa in the jungle”, relegating the country’s neighbours to the status of wild animals.

Barak and his successors have been turning this metaphor into a physical reality, slowly sealing off their state from the rest of the region at astronomical cost, much of it subsidised by US taxpayers. Their ultimate goal is to make Israel so impervious to outside influence that no concessions for peace, such as agreeing to a Palestinian state, need ever be made with the “beasts” around them.

The most tangible expression of this mentality has been a frenzy of wall-building. The best-known are those erected around the Palestinian territories: first Gaza, then the areas of the West Bank Israel is not intending to annex – or, at least, not yet.

The northern border is already one of the most heavily militarised in the world – as Lebanese and Syrian protesters found to great cost last summer when dozens were shot dead and wounded as they approached or stormed the fences there. And Israel has a proposal in the drawer for another wall along the border with Jordan, much of which is already mined.

The only remaining border, the 260km one with Egypt, is currently being closed with another gargantuan wall. The plans were agreed before last year’s Arab revolutions but have gained fresh impetus with the overthrow of Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak.

Israel is not only well advanced on the walls of the bunker; it is also working round the clock on the roof. It has three missile-defence systems in various stages of development, including the revealingly named “Iron Dome”, as well as US Patriot batteries stationed on its soil. The interception systems are supposed to neutralise any combination of short and long-range missile attacks Israel’s neighbours might launch.

But there is a flaw in the design of this shelter, one that is apparent even to its architects. Israel is sealing itself in with some of the very “animals” the villa is supposed to exclude: not only the African refugees, but also 1.5 million “Israeli Arabs”, descendants of the small number of Palestinians who avoided expulsion in 1948.

This has been the chief motive for the steady stream of anti-democratic measures by the government and parliament that is rapidly turning into a torrent. It is also the reason for the Israeli leadership’s new-found demand that the Palestinians recognise Israel’s Jewishness; its obsessions with loyalty; and the growing appeal of population exchange schemes.

In the face of the legislative assault, Israel’s Supreme Court has grown ever more complicit. Last week, it sullied its reputation by upholding a law that tears apart families by denying tens of thousands of Palestinians with Israeli citizenship the right to live with their Palestinian spouse in Israel – “ethnic cleansing” by other means, as leading Israeli commentator Gideon Levy noted.

Back in the early 1950s, the Israeli army shot dead thousands of unarmed Palestinians as they tried to reclaim property that had been stolen from them. These many years later, Israel appears no less determined to keep non-Jews out of its precious villa.

The bunker state is almost finished, and with it the dream of Israel’s founders is about to be realised.

Jonathan Cook won the 2011 Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.

A version of this article originally appeared in The National, published in Abu Dhabi.

Granting No Quarter: A Call for the Disavowal of the Racism and Antisemitism of Gilad Atzmon: By email
– MARCH 13, 2012

For many years now, Gilad Atzmon, a musician born in Israel and currently living in the United Kingdom, has taken on the self-appointed task of defining for the Palestinian movement the nature of our struggle, and the philosophy underpinning it. He has done so through his various blogs and Internet outlets, in speeches, and in articles. He is currently on tour in the United States promoting his most recent book, entitled, ‘The Wandering Who.’

With this letter, we call for the disavowal of Atzmon by fellow Palestinian organizers, as well as Palestine solidarity activists, and allies of the Palestinian people, and note the dangers of supporting Atzmon’s political work and writings and providing any platforms for their dissemination. We do so as Palestinian organizers and activists, working across continents, campaigns, and ideological positions.

Atzmon’s politics rest on one main overriding assertion that serves as springboard for vicious attacks on anyone who disagrees with his obsession with “Jewishness”. He claims that all Jewish politics is “tribal,” and essentially, Zionist. Zionism, to Atzmon, is not a settler-colonial project, but a trans-historical “Jewish” one, part and parcel of defining one’s self as a Jew. Therefore, he claims, one cannot self-describe as a Jew and also do work in solidarity with Palestine, because to identify as a Jew is to be a Zionist. We could not disagree more. Indeed, we believe Atzmon’s argument is itself Zionist because it agrees with the ideology of Zionism and Israel that the only way to be a Jew is to be a Zionist.

Palestinians have faced two centuries of orientalist, colonialist and imperialist domination of our native lands. And so as Palestinians, we see such language as immoral and completely outside the core foundations of humanism, equality and justice, on which the struggle for Palestine and its national movement rests. As countless Palestinian activists and organizers, their parties, associations and campaigns, have attested throughout the last century, our struggle was never, and will never be, with Jews, or Judaism, no matter how much Zionism insists that our enemies are the Jews. Rather, our struggle is with Zionism, a modern European settler colonial movement, similar to movements in many other parts of the world that aim to displace indigenous people and build new European societies on their lands.

We reaffirm that there is no room in this historic and foundational analysis of our struggle for any attacks on our Jewish allies, Jews, or Judaism; nor denying the Holocaust; nor allying in any way shape or form with any conspiracy theories, far-right, orientalist, and racist arguments, associations and entities. Challenging Zionism, including the illegitimate power of institutions that support the oppression of Palestinians, and the illegitimate use of Jewish identities to protect and legitimize oppression, must never become an attack on Jewish identities, nor the demeaning and denial of Jewish histories in all their diversity.

Indeed, we regard any attempt to link and adopt antisemitic or racist language, even if it is within a self-described anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist politics, as reaffirming and legitimizing Zionism. In addition to its immorality, this language obscures the fundamental role of imperialism and colonialism in destroying our homeland, expelling its people, and sustaining the systems and ideologies of oppression, apartheid and occupation. It leaves one squarely outside true solidarity with Palestine and its people.

The goal of the Palestinian people has always been clear: self determination. And we can only exercise that inalienable right through liberation, the return of our refugees (the absolute majority of our people) and achieving equal rights to all through decolonization. As such, we stand with all and any movements that call for justice, human dignity, equality, and social, economic, cultural and political rights. We will never compromise the principles and spirit of our liberation struggle. We will not allow a false sense of expediency to drive us into alliance with those who attack, malign, or otherwise attempt to target our political fraternity with all liberation struggles and movements for justice.

As Palestinians, it is our collective responsibility, whether we are in Palestine or in exile, to assert our guidance of our grassroots liberation struggle. We must protect the integrity of our movement, and to do so we must continue to remain vigilant that those for whom we provide platforms actually speak to its principles.

When the Palestinian people call for self-determination and decolonization of our homeland, we do so in the promise and hope of a community founded on justice, where all are free, all are equal and all are welcome.

Until liberation and return.

Signed:

Ali Abunimah

Naseer Aruri, Professor Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth

Omar Barghouti, human rights activist

Hatem Bazian, Chair, American Muslims for Palestine

Andrew Dalack, National Coordinating Committee, US Palestinian Community Network

Haidar Eid, Gaza

Nada Elia, US Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel

Toufic Haddad

Kathryn Hamoudah

Adam Hanieh, Lecturer, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London

Mostafa Henaway, Tadamon! Canada

Monadel Herzallah, National Coordinating Committee, US Palestinian Community Network

Nadia Hijab, author and human rights advocate

Andrew Kadi

Abir Kobty, Palestinian blogger and activist

Joseph Massad, Professor, Columbia University, NY

Danya Mustafa, Israeli Apartheid Week US National Co-Coordinator & Students for Justice in Palestine- University of New Mexico

Dina Omar, Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine

Haitham Salawdeh, National Coordinating Committee, US Palestinian Community Network

Sobhi Samour, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London

Khaled Ziada, SOAS Palestine Society, London

Rafeef Ziadah, poet and human rights advocate

 

EDITOR: Normality reins

Attacks on Gaza by the IDF are no news, never have been. We are always either after one, in the middle of one, or just before one. So reporting the brutalities is lax and laid back, as this, after all, is the normality of Gaza, of almost two million people living in the largest concentration camp on earth, one they cannot escape or defend effectively. That this is allowed to continue for decades is a mark of our time, of the callousness and indifference which our societies have normalised in the case of Palestine and especially of Gaza. It is also a mark of the innate brutality of the Israeli social structure, where his is hardly noticed. The erstwhile Gideon Levy is a lone voice in the wilderness, again.

Way to go, IDF!: Haaretz

The cyclical ritual of bloodletting between Israel and Gaza always prompts two questions: ‘Who started it?’ and ‘Whose is bigger?’
By Gideon Levy
Here we go again – a targeted killing; retaliation; retaliation to the retaliation. Here we go again – The reflexive act; the harsh rhetoric; the blindness. The Israel Defense Forces carries out a targeted killing. The Palestinian organizations avenge it – and it’s the Palestinians instigating war and terrorism. MK Danny Danon (Likud) has, of course, already called for “all of those in possession of weapons in the Gaza Strip” to be targeted because of the “million people living under fire.”

Those million people, in case you failed to get it, are the residents of southern Israel. Only they live under fire. By yesterday afternoon, the bodies of 15 Palestinians were already laid out on the other side of the Gaza border. There were eight people injured on this side, and the Iron Dome antimissile system chalked up the successful interception of 25 rockets.

This cyclical ritual of bloodletting always prompts two questions: “Who started it?” and “Whose is bigger?” It’s as if both questions were straight from some preschool playground. The response to the first question is always mired in uncertainty, while the answer to the second is always razor-sharp.

Who started it? The IDF and the Shin Bet security service did. The impression is that they carry out the targeted killings whenever they can, and not whenever it is necessary.

When are they necessary? Do you remember the debate on targeted killings sometime in the distant past? Then, it seemed the targets had to be “ticking time bombs” en route to carry out their attacks. In any event, such a vague standard no longer applies. In 2006, in his last court ruling handed down before his retirement, then Supreme Court President Aharon Barak barred such killings when they were meant to be “a deterrent or punishment.”

The latest target killed was Zuhair al-Qaissi, the secretary general of the Popular Resistance Committees in Gaza. IDF sources said he was responsible for the terrorist attack on the Egyptian border last August – which would make his killing an act of “deterrence or punishment.” But to be on the safe side, it was also noted that he had “led and directed plans to carry out a terror attack within Israel, which was in its final stages of preparation.”

This convoluted announcement by the IDF spokesman was enough to get the Israeli public to accept this latest regular dose of targeted killing with automatic understanding and sympathy. And who knows what the late al-Qaissi had planned? Only the Shin Bet does, so we accept his death sentence without unnecessary questions.

Did he really lead and direct plans? And what are “the final stages of preparation”? The military reporters said so, and the military reporters know. Even the question of the effectiveness, rather than the legality of the killings, is no longer a subject for debate. What benefit will it bring Israel, other than more people injured, and additional days of fear in the south? Did this targeted killing really head off a terrorist attack? We won’t know. It’s enough for the news presenters to know. (And they don’t. They just obediently spout what they get from the defense establishment. )

The second question – “Whose is bigger?” – is even more ridiculous and superfluous, of course. It’s the best equipped army in the world against a ragtag army of rocket launchers. Nonetheless, this has to be proven to everyone, both to them and us, over and over.

You have the score right here in front of you. As of yesterday afternoon, it was 15-0 in Israel’s favor. If we measure it by the results of the IDF’s Cast Lead operation in Gaza at the end of 2008 and beginning of 2009 – when it was one Israeli killed per 100 Palestinians – then from a statistical standpoint there’s been backsliding.

And imagine if, God forbid, there were 15 Israelis killed over the weekend? Cast Lead 2 and regional war, with a politically different Egypt as a backdrop. But the killing of 15 Palestinians is allowed, eliciting just a yawn. In another day or two, we should hope that calm will again prevail. And actually, the commentators have been saying that “neither side is interested in a confrontation.” A nameless mediator will handle the negotiations and the weapons will again be locked up.

Until the next round. At that point, the juvenile questions will be asked all over again. Again, Israel will not restrain itself from carrying out additional targeted killings. Again, the Palestinians will not restrain themselves from avenging the killings, both sides locked in their stupidity. Because that’s the routine in this insane asylum.

For those on the inside, everything appears normal and routine – as is always the case among such psychotic patients. So Iran is compared to Auschwitz and, in a blind reflex, a target killing is carried out in Gaza in the middle of a period of calm that had benefited everyone.

The rising star candidate as head of the opposition, Shaul Mofaz (Kadima), who is the winning alternative to the current government, has already welcomed the targeted killing, as did Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar. And Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already contacted the mayors in the south in a show of support. This, too, is part of the standard ritual. Residents of the south sit in shelters while the rest of the country cluck their tongues and tell themselves “That’s how it is”; “Nothing else can be done”; and “Way to go, IDF!” And then they take an afternoon snooze in the wonderful springtime weather.

EDITOR: The delusional ego

While they destroy Gaza and murder people undeterred, and are about to attack Iran and cause untold damage, Israelis are playing at being the victim… The Nazis were also very fond of playing this evil game, and even presented themselves for years as the victim of Judaism. I have no doubt that the people speaking even believe in their own victimhood. At least the article gives a rounded depiction of Israeli identity, with many of the sub-groups represented here, but not all, of course.

Israelis: Portrait of a people in tense times: Observer

Talk of an existential threat to Israel from the Iranian nuclear programme echoed around Washington last week. Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, described the world’s failure to prevent the Holocaust and Barack Obama spoke of the country’s sovereign right to defend its people. But what is the nature of the state that has become central to global diplomacy? Harriet Sherwood listens to Israelis across this diverse nation

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Harriet Sherwood

The Observer, Sunday 11 March 2012
THE KIBBUTZNIK

NAME: Sigal Shoshany

AGE: 45

OCCUPATION: college administrator

LIVES: Degania Alef kibbutz, Galilee

FAMILY: married, four children

RELIGIOUS IDENTITY: secular

Sigal Shoshany was born on Israel’s oldest kibbutz, Degania – now 101 years old – and has lived all her life among its banana and avocado trees on the southern shores of the Sea of Galilee.

Degania has changed since she was a child and there is now more individual freedom. “The kibbutz doesn’t tell you how to live your life any more,” she says. It’s a good thing, she adds; the world has changed and Degania has changed with it. “You can’t stay still.”

She and her non-kibbutznik husband, Shay, decided to stay at Degania to raise their family amid the security of kibbutz life. “The community holds you together,” says Sigal.

The kibbutz movement “symbolises what is best about Israel,” says Shay. The family watched last year’s nationwide demonstrations demanding social justice, knowing that “it already exists here”. Both say that national security is the most important issue facing Israel. At the start of the Arab spring, they welcomed the calls for freedom and democracy but now fear the rise of the “fundamental Islamism” in the region – which they describe as a “crazy neighbourhood”.

The Syrian border is not far from Degania, and they are worried about the outcome of the uprising there. But Iran is the biggest threat, says Shay. “[Ahmadinejad] is not a crazy guy – he is very clear about his intention, and very soon he will get the tools to make practical his ideology. The issue of survival should belong to the era of the Holocaust, but now Israel is again talking about it,” he says, adding that the issue is “not only for Israel but for the entire democratic world”.

The couple have four boys, aged from 23 years to 21 months. “Four sons – four soldiers,” Sigal says ruefully. The eldest, Shahaf, has completed his three-year military service; Snir, 20, will start his this month. “It’s not easy for me to send my boys to the army, but it’s something we must do to defend our country,” says Sigal. “It’s not something you want as a mother, that your son will fight, but it has to be done.”

“This is the meaning and the reality of being Israeli,” adds Shay. He points out that 90% of young people living on kibbutzim serve in the army, compared to only 50% living in Tel Aviv. “It’s part of our sense of public duty.”

Snir, who has been accepted into an elite combat unit, says: “I grew up in an environment that gives me the feeling it is an honour to go to the army. My parents and grandparents served their country. I’m very proud to be Israeli, it’s a special country. People outside only see the bad things, but there are many more good things.”

Both he and his older brother insist the Israeli army has strong humanitarian principles, but its first duty is to protect Israeli citizens.

The Shoshanys have encouraged their children and their community to have contact with Palestinians to overcome mutual suspicions and stereotypes. “It’s possible to live here without being connected to the issue of the Palestinians – apart from through the army,” says Sigal. They are in favour of a two-state solution based on 1967 borders.

The couple are proud of what Israel has achieved in almost 64 years. “It’s a kind of miracle – what we have done in the fields of medicine, agriculture and the economy,” says Shay. “If we could be at peace, it could be a paradise.”

THE RABBI

NAME Moshe Weiss

AGE: 52

OCCUPATION: businessman

LIVES: Jerusalem

FAMILY: married, 10 children, seven grandchildren

RELIGIOUS IDENTITY: ultra-orthodox Jewish

Rabbi Moshe Weiss, born in New York to Holocaust survivors from Hungary, came to Israel at the age of 18. “I grew up in a home which was haredi [ultra-orthodox] but my father was a passionate Zionist. For us, the state of Israel is a homeland for the Jewish people after thousands of years of exile and a place where Jewish people with all their dimensions finally have a home.”

Weiss originally came to study for a year in a yeshiva, a religious school. “I was going to become a corporate lawyer or an architect, but I fell in love with the country. I wanted to be part of Jewish history.” Now he runs a hi-tech company, Netspark, which filters internet content.

The most important issue facing Israel is, he says, the security threat, especially from Iran which is “threatening to wipe us off the map”. He hopes for peace with the Palestinians, but fears “the extremists among them are fighting against compromise. Nevertheless, our leaders are patiently trying to work things out.”

But he speaks mainly of divisions within Israeli society. In the past, he says, Israelis were too busy building and protecting their new state to focus on internal differences. In recent months the Israeli haredi community has come under particular scrutiny following calls by some of its more extreme sects for greater gender segregation and female modesty. The ultra-orthodox have also attracted criticism because many men choose religious study over paid work, relying on state benefits and evading compulsory military service.

Weiss is scathing of the extremists within the community. “The vast majority of haredi people are tolerant, respectful, and totally abhor the behaviour of – I wouldn’t call them zealots or fanatics – they are criminals.” But he says the attention given to the minority has been damaging to the community.

“It comes at a time when we see great effort by the new generation of ultra-orthodox Jews in Israel to integrate, to contribute, so that the secular part of society considers the haredi community as an equal partner.” The current hostility to the ultra-orthodox was counter-productive to that effort, he says, encouraging the community to withdraw.

Ultra-orthodox women are not second-class citizens, he insists. Religious women have a different lifestyle to secular women, but it is chosen by them, not forced on them.

Israel is becoming a more religious society, he says, citing a survey showing 80% of respondents believe in God. But he hopes the country will find a “common denominator” both within its own society and with the Palestinians. “But each part of this multi-dimensional nation and people needs to look inward to see how they relate to other parts of society with more appreciation and respect.”

THE UKRAINIAN

NAME: Alex Yamnitzky

AGE: 50

OCCUPATION: mechanical engineer

LIVES: Sderot

FAMILY: married, one child

RELIGIOUS IDENTITY: secular Jewish

Alex Yamnitzky came to Israel at the age of 28 from Ukraine. “It wasn’t anything ideological or religious. There was antisemitism, but it wasn’t a major factor. Once the borders began to open, people around us started moving in search of a better life.”

The Jewish National Fund paid for tickets and helped support the new beginnings of Alex and a group of Jewish friends who made aliyah [immigrated to Israel] together. Alex worked in construction while learning Hebrew for a year, before finding a job as a mechanical engineer.

He has lived in Sderot for more than 20 years, a town in southern Israel, close to the border with Gaza, which has a big community of immigrants from the former Soviet Union. “We tend to stick together,” he says.

“Now I think of myself as Israeli, not Ukrainian. Being Israeli is not a religious identity for me but a national one – the fact that I’m in my own country. Religion is not part of our daily lives.”

Alex says his economic hopes have been fulfilled, but that the cost of living in Israel is high. “The economy worries me more than the political situation,” he says, meaning the conflict with the Palestinians. “The economy has to do with our everyday lives, whereas the political situation is much further away.”

This is despite living within the target range of rockets and missiles fired into Israel from Gaza. “Of course the qassams [rockets] are part of our lives, but what can you do about it?” He says things have eased in Sderot as the reach of the missiles has extended – “the rockets fly further now”.

He dismisses the Palestinians’ claim to the land, saying “they didn’t really take care of it, and it only started to develop when the Jews came”.

His 18-year-old daughter, Vika, is about to start her two-year military service, which Alex feels is an important process in helping to cement national identity. “The army is a page in every Israeli’s life and it makes you stronger,” he says.

The family is disillusioned with elected politicians. Alex’s wife, Inessa, says they expected more of Avigdor Lieberman, the hardline rightwing leader of Yisrael Beiteinu, a party which has a strong Russian base, “but he does nothing now”.

“The time when Russians would vote for someone because he is Russian is over,” says Alex. “We’ve been here too long.”

THE SETTLER

NAME: Natalie Hershkowitz

AGE: 49

OCCUPATION: settlement secretary

LIVES: Barkan

FAMILY: married, six children

RELIGIOUS IDENTITY: ‘connected to God’ but not traditionally observant

Natalie Hershkowitz moved from Tel Aviv to Barkan 15 years ago because she needed a big house to raise her family in and wanted to live in a “good community”. “The fact that it was across the Green Line [in the West Bank] was a benefit. We come from the right side of the political map, so it was our duty to come here. It was the right thing to do according to our beliefs,” she says.

But the distance – 25 minutes in the car – from Tel Aviv, and the “quality of the air”, helped the decision to move from the city in which she was born and raised. The price of land and property in West Bank settlements was cheap then, she says; now Barkan – which was founded in 1981 – “is very exclusive”.

She describes it as a “village” not a settlement – “although we are not ashamed of the word settlement. But the connotation today of ‘settler’ is someone who came to conquer a foreign land. This is our land. We are not colonialists. God gave us this land.”

Natalie and her husband, Itzhak, say they have a strong connection to and belief in God, but are not conventionally observant Jews. “We go to the synagogue regularly but not every week. We celebrate holy days. We don’t keep a kosher kitchen, but we don’t eat ham or oysters.”

Barkan is a mainly secular settlement. “It’s very important to say that,” says Natalie, “because people think once you cross the Green Line everyone is a religious fanatic. People don’t know that a third of the [Jewish] population across the Green Line is secular.”

The essence of being Israeli, she says, is “to be here on the biblical land of Judea and Samaria [the West Bank]”. The Palestinians who were born on the land should have the right to live there, “but to live in peace with us. They can’t make us disappear, we can’t make them disappear.” She points out that 3,000 Palestinians – or “local Arabs” – work in the settlement’s industrial zone. “We are working together, living together. It’s impossible to divide us.”

She believes a separate Palestinian state is not possible “even if the whole world recognises one. You can never draw a border because it’s all too mixed up now. This land has to be one Israeli Jewish state, but with an Arab minority with human rights. This is meant to be ours, we were here before. I don’t want to drive them away, but I want to live with them in peace.”

She includes Iran among the most important issues facing Israel, but says “it’s not only our problem, it’s a problem of the whole western world”.

The settlement movement is getting stronger, she says. “This situation will be for ever. No politician will ever be able to make a peace [with the Palestinians] without leaving us here.”

THE PALESTINIAN

NAME: Youssef Asfour

AGE: 40

OCCUPATION: history teacher

LIVES: Jaffa

FAMILY: married, one child, triplets due in May

RELIGIOUS IDENTITY: Muslim

Youssef Asfour’s relatives were displaced in the 1948 war, with some scattering to Lebanon and Gaza and his mother and father ending up in Ajami, an area of Jaffa he describes as a ghetto.

“On both sides, the families lost property and land,” he says. “My grandfather used to be a journalist. He finished his life cleaning at a butcher’s shop in Carmel [the main Tel Aviv market].”

Despite his Israeli citizenship, Youssef does not consider himself as Israeli, but a Palestinian who lives in Israel. He shows his Israeli identity card. Until 2005, it used to categorise him as an “Arab”, but after many court battles ID cards now show a row of asterisks for all Israeli citizens. However, Jews are identified as such by their date of birth, shown according to the Hebrew as well as Gregorian calendar.

“I don’t feel part of Israel,” he says. “I’m a native here. Why is it OK for someone who comes from America or Morocco or Russia to be here, but not me?”

He points to laws passed in the Israeli parliament, including one permitting communities to bar individuals who don’t “fit the social fabric” from buying property and another outlawing the commemoration by public bodies of the Nakba, or catastrophe, suffered by the Palestinians in 1948. “Look at these laws, and you will find the discrimination we suffer,” says Youssef.

As a history teacher, he says he is expected to teach a version of events which is disputed by Palestinians. “I think it’s a duty to teach both [Israeli and Palestinian] narratives. We need to teach that the Palestinians were here [before 1948], and that the Jews were victims of persecution in Europe. It is a mistake for both sides to ignore the other.”

Reaching a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the most important issue, he says. “Then all the money that now goes on weapons could be spent on education. If you want real democracy, start by building schools and teaching people how to read and write. This is the real revolution. Violence is never a solution; the solution is in education.”

THE HEDONIST

NAME: Omer Gershon

AGE: 37

OCCUPATION: marketing consultant and events producer

LIVES: Tel Aviv

FAMILY: single

RELIGIOUS IDENTITY: none

Omer Gershon is “a true Tel Avivian”, born and raised in the city, unlike many of its transient residents, and is a standard-bearer for its hedonistic, nihilistic, gay-friendly reputation.

He is, he admits, “the epitome of the bubble boy”, referring to the city’s insulation from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and dedication to partying. As a professional party-thrower, networker and partner in several clubs and bars, he says he is known as the king of nightlife.

Tel Aviv, he says, is “a country within a country – it’s so separate from the rest of Israel. Everyone expects Israel to be a country in conflict, and then they come to Tel Aviv and everyone is partying or sitting in cafes and bars. We have a heightened sense of escapism because we’re aware of life’s fragility. The sense of carpe diem is very strong here.”

Gershon says his Jewishness is part of who he is and part of his family history, but not a big deal. He laughs when asked if he considers himself a Zionist. But he concedes he is a patriot, which he defines as loving his country while hating those who run it.

“I’m proud of my heritage and proud to be Israeli, despite its infamous reputation. But I do realise every now and again that Israel is not so good if you’re not Jewish – and if you’re Arab, it’s one of the worst places to be.”

Tel Aviv “divides between activists who give a shit about everything and the rest of us who don’t give a shit about anything”.

As a gay man, he says, Tel Aviv is a “paradise”. “There is no feeling of ghettoisation. The gay scene is very integrated with the straight scene. There are very few gay bars because there are gay people in every bar.”

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has little relevance to his life, but he insists “the majority of people – both us and them – want peace. There’s no reason for hate. But somehow the government fucks it up. That’s how it feels.”

ISRAEL: FACTS AND FIGURES

Population

7.8 million – 75% Jewish; 20% Arab.

About 70% of the Jewish population is Israeli-born; the rest are immigrants, mainly from Europe and the Americas, but also from Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

Religion

Jewish (75.5%), Muslim (16.8%), Christian (2.1%), Druze (1.7%).

Language

Hebrew, Arabic. English is common; Russian is spoken in areas dominated by immigrants from the former Soviet Union.

Main centres

Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa. About 90% of people live in urban areas. About 325,000 Jews live in West Bank settlements and 200,000 in east Jerusalem.

Compulsory military service

Three years for men; two years for women, beginning at 18. Arabs and most ultra-orthodox Jews are exempt.

Economy

Main industries are electronics, biotech, agriculture, tourism and diamonds.

National anthem

HaTikvah (The Hope) includes the words, “The 2,000-year-old hope will not be lost: To be a free people in our land, The land of Zion and Jerusalem.”

 

 

EDITOR: Israel has again taken the course of blood

Israel has again attacked Gaza, killing 15 Palestinians, including one of the leaders of popular resistance. That Israel can kill many Palestinians, we need no further proof of; That they can seriously speak to them as human beings, we have no proof of. So the killing goes on, and each death takes us further from a just solution. Those who sow the wind, will harvest the storm, for sure.

No, the photograph on the right is NOT an archive photo from Jan 2009. It was taken today in Gaza. That is what Palestinians can expect from Israel, and what they have to suffer constantly! As long as this is the language Israel speaks, and the only language it speaks, there shall be no solution, no peace, no security, no normality in the Middle East. Only Israel can stop this, and we all must force it to do so, through Boycott, Divestment and sanctions, assisting the Palestinian resistance to this barbaric occupation and continuous murder and destruction.

At least 15 killed in Israeli air strikes on Gaza: Guardian

Palestinian militants retaliate with fierce rocket attack on Israel’s southern border communities, seriously wounding one

Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip have killed at least 15 people in an escalation of the worst clashes with Palestinian militants so far this year.

The strikes began on Friday, when Israeli air raids killed the senior militant leader Zohair al-Qaisi, the secretary general of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC). Israel claimed he was targeted because he was planning an attack.

Militants retaliated with a fierce rocket attack on Israel’s southern border communities, which seriously wounded one civilian.

By Saturday, militants had fired 95 rockets at Israel – far more than the total number fired from the beginning of this year, an Israeli military spokesman said. He added that air defence systems intercepted around 25 rockets before they landed.

The Palestinian militants were killed in eight air strikes overnight and on Saturday morning, the Gaza health spokesman, Adham Abu Salmiya, said. He said civilians were also wounded by flying shrapnel.

Tens of thousands of Palestinian mourners marched through the streets in funeral processions following the deaths.

The most recent air strike targeted two Palestinian militants on a motorbike in the border town of Bani Suheila in the south-east of Gaza, Abu Salmiya said. Egypt said it was trying to broker a ceasefire.

Netanyahu: Israel will continue to strike anyone planning to attack its citizens: Haaretz

WATCH: IDF strikes target in Gaza Strip; Since Friday, nearly 100 rockets have been fired at Israel from Gaza; Iron Dome system intercepts 27 of 32 rockets targeted.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with regional council heads in Israel’s south on Saturday, and said Israel will continue to strike whoever plans attacks on Israeli citizens.

The meeting came as the escalation of violence that began on Friday continued on Saturday after several hours of quiet. Five rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel in the early afternoon.

“We will improve the home front defenses even more,” Netanyahu said, “also by purchasing more Iron Dome systems, which proved themselves again this weekend.”

Since Friday, a total of nearly 100 rockets have been fired at Israel from Gaza. During the escalation, the Iron Dome system intercepted 27 of the 32 rockets it targeted. The missile defense system is designed to only intercept rockets identified as heading toward populated areas.

Also on Saturday, Palestinians said that an Israeli air strike killed two people riding on a motorcycle in Gaza’s Khan Younis, bringing the total number of militants reportedly killed to 14.

U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton criticized on Saturday the barrage of rockets fired from Gaza to Israel. Meeting with Kadima chairwoman Tzipi Livni at Newsweek’s annual Women in the World Summit in New York, Clinton added that “Israel has the right to defend itself.” Livni thanked Clinton, saying the international community must act against the terror attacks on civilians in Israel’s south.

Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon said on Saturday that he hopes “Hamas will quickly come to its senses and stop the violence.” Speaking at a panel in Kfar Saba, Ya’alon added: “It is unacceptable for Israeli citizens to be targeted by this or that organization… Hamas’ ideology is that we should not be here, the rest is tactics.”

On Friday afternoon, the Israel Air Force launched a strike in Gaza and killed the leader of the Popular Resistance Committees, Zuhir al-Qaisi, who was believed to be planning a large terror attack on Israel’s southern border.

Israel launches deadly air strikes on Gaza: BBC

Local men battled to extinguish a large car fire caused by the strike

Israeli air strikes on Gaza have killed at least 12 Palestinians, including a senior militant leader.

Zohair al-Qaisi, secretary general of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), was targeted because he was planning an attack, the Israelis said.

Another militant was killed with him. The Islamic Jihad militant group said 10 members of its military wing, the al-Quds Brigades, were also killed.

The Israeli military said dozens of rockets had been fired into Israel.

A spokeswoman said the rocket attacks had injured at least four people, one seriously. Some of the rockets had been intercepted by Israel’s “Iron Dome” anti-missile system, she added.

The rockets were apparently fired in retaliation for the killing of PRC leaders.

Correspondents say it is one of the worst outbreaks of violence along the Gaza border for several months.
Kevin Connolly
BBC Middle East correspondent
There is nothing new in Israel’s use of its air power to target a Palestinian commander in Gaza.

Zohair al-Qaisi only took over as head of the Popular Resistance Committees when his predecessor in the role died in the same manner last August. And he had already survived an unexplained explosion at his family home in Gaza earlier this year in which at least one person died.

This latest air strike may have been a direct response to the firing of two mortar shells from Gaza into Israel a few hours earlier.

But Israel blames Zohair al-Qaisi for a much larger and more significant assault last summer, a wave of gun and bomb attacks in a single day near the country’s southern border with Egypt which left eight Israelis dead.

Ten attackers and five Egyptian soldiers were killed.

The incident was regarded in Israel as an unnerving breach of security, hence the determination to punish those held responsible by the Israeli authorities.

The Israeli strikes mainly took place on Friday, but one militant was killed in a pre-dawn attack on a car on Saturday.

Medical sources say one man was also seriously injured in Friday’s attack on the car carrying Qaisi, near Gaza City.

Witnesses say Israeli drones were heard in the area shortly before the car burst into flames, the Associated Press reports.

The first air strike came a few hours after two mortar shells fired from Gaza landed in Israel without causing injury.

The PRC, which represents a number of armed factions aligned with Hamas, the Islamist movement that runs Gaza, has carried out several rocket and grenade attacks against Israel. It also sometimes operates independently of Hamas.

An Israeli military spokesman said Qaisi was behind a series of gun and bomb attacks near Israel’s border with Egypt last year, in which eight Israelis were killed. Ten of the attackers and five Egyptian soldiers also died.

The spokesman warned Israelis living within range of rockets fired from Gaza to stay indoors overnight.

A spokesman for the PRC in Gaza vowed to take revenge on Israel for the attack.

“All options are open before the fighters to respond to this despicable crime. The assassination of our chief will not end our resistance,” Abu Attiya, a spokesman for the PRC group told Reuters.

The former head of the PRC, Kamal al-Nairab, and its military chief were killed in a similar Israeli attack last year.

Renewed Gaza rocket fire strikes Israel, as escalation in south continues: Haaretz

Several hours of quiet broken by three rockets that exploded in southern Israel; Iron Dome has intercepted 25 of 27 rockets that it has targeted since Friday.

After several hours of quiet on Saturday morning, five rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel in the early afternoon, continuing the escalation of violence that began on Friday.

One of the rockets exploded in an open area near Be’er Sheva. Two fell in the Ramat Eshkol Regional Council, a fourth in the Ashkelon Beach region and a fifth in the Sha’ar Hanegev Regional Council. None caused injuries or damage.

Also on Saturday, Palestinians said that an Israeli air strike killed two people riding on a motorcycle in Gaza’s Khan Younis.

Since Friday, a total of more than 60 rockets have been fired at Israel from Gaza. During the escalation, the Iron Dome system has intercepted 25 of 27 rockets that it has targeted. The Iron Dome is designed to only intercept rockets that are identified as heading toward populated areas.

On Friday, eight people in Israel were wounded by rocket fire and some damage was reported.

On Friday afternoon, the Israel Air Force launched a strike in Gaza and killed the leader of the Popular Resistance Committees, Zuhir al-Qaisi, who was believed to be planning a large terror attack on Israel’s southern border.

Earlier Friday, prior to the IAF’s targeting of al-Qaisi, two mortars were fired into Israel from Gaza.

On Friday night, IAF aircraft struck six targets in Gaza: two weapons manufacturing sites and two rocket launching sites in northern Gaza, a weapons manufacturing site in central Gaza, and a terror activity center in southern Gaza.

Also overnight, the IAF targeted a terrorist in central Gaza and six terrorist cells in northern and central Gaza as they prepared to launch projectiles at Israel, the IDF said.

Palestinian academic Ahmad Qatamesh receives third administrative detention order: Amnesty International on IOA

10 MARCH 2012
By Amnesty International – 6 March 2011
Palestinian academic Ahmad Qatamesh received a new six-month administrative detention order on 1 March. He has been held without charge or trial since 21 April 2011.

Ahmad Qatamesh was given a third administrative detention order on 1 March, the day that his second administrative detention order was due to expire. At the judicial review of the order, which took place on 5 March 2012, the military prosecutor sought the confirmation of the order by the military judge. It is expected that the military judge will confirm the detention order in the coming days.

Ahmad Qatamesh, together with other administrative detainees at Ofer prison in the occupied West Bank, have declared that they do not recognize the legitimacy of the military courts and administrative detention procedures, and have refused to attend judicial hearings. Because the judicial review normally takes place in the presence of the detainee, the prosecution insisted that Ahmad Qatamesh be brought to the court room on 5 March 2012. He again reiterated his rejection of the military court process and immediately returned to his cell.

According to both his wife and his lawyer, Ahmad Qatamesh has been interrogated for no more than a total of 10 minutes by Israel Security Agency (ISA) officers, who alleged that he was a member of the political office of a leftist Palestinian party which has an armed wing: the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). While Ahmad Qatamesh was a political and intellectual supporter of the PFLP in the 1990s, he says he has not been involved with them for 13 years. To Amnesty International’s knowledge, he has never been involved with PFLP-affiliated armed groups or advocated violence. His latest work focuses on political solutions that put an end to the violent conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, which he calls a “nightmare”.

It is Amnesty International’s assessment that the reasons for Ahmad Qatamesh’s arrest and continued administrative detention are his peaceful expression, in his writing and teaching, of non-violent political views and the fact that he is considered a mentor for left-wing students and political activists, some of whom may be affiliated to the PFLP. As such, his detention may be part of the Israeli authorities’ strategy to put pressure on the PFLP organisation. Therefore, Amnesty International considers him to be a prisoner of conscience and is calling for his immediate and unconditional release.

Please write immediately in Hebrew or your own language:

*

Expressing concern that Ahmad Qatamesh is a prisoner of conscience, detained solely for the peaceful exercise of his right to freedom of expression, and calling for his immediate and unconditional release;
*

Calling on the authorities to end the use of administrative detention.

PLEASE SEND APPEALS BEFORE 17 APRIL 2012 TO:

Military Judge Advocate General

Major General Avihai Mandelblit

6 David Elazar Street

Hakirya, Tel Aviv, Israel

Fax: +972 3 569 4526

Email: avimn@idf.gov.il

Salutation: Dear Judge Advocate General

Commander of the IDF – West Bank

Major-General Avi Mizrahi

GOC Central Command

Military Post 01149

Battalion 877

Israel Defense Forces, Israel

Fax: +972 2 530 5724

Salutation: Dear Major-General Avi Mizrahi

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence

Ehud Barak

Ministry of Defence

37 Kaplan Street, Hakirya

Tel Aviv 61909, Israel

Fax: + 972 3 69 16940 / +972 3 691 7915

Salutation: Dear Minister

Also send copies to diplomatic representatives accredited to your country

Please check with your section office if sending appeals after the above date. This is the third update of UA 127/11. Further information: http://amnesty.org/en/library/info/MDE15/031/2011/en

URGENT ACTION

ACADEMIC RECEIVES THIRD DETENTION ORDER
Additional Information

Ahmad Qatamesh is an academic and writer who has previously criticized both the Israeli authorities and the Palestinian Authority. In 1992, he was arrested and held for over a year before being placed under administrative detention after a judge had ordered his release on bail. He reported that he was tortured during his interrogation, and he later documented his experiences in a publication called I shall not wear your tarboosh [fez]. His administrative detention order was renewed repeatedly until he was eventually released on 15 April 1998. During these years, Amnesty International campaigned against his continued detention without charge.

Ahmad Qatamesh was arrested on 21 April 2011 at 2am at the house where he was staying in al-Bireh, in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. The security forces had first gone to his family’s home to arrest him and, when they did not find him there, broke down the door of the neighbour’s house to search for him. According to his daughter, they then ordered her at gunpoint to telephone him. His wife told Amnesty International that Ahmad Qatamesh gave the security forces directions to reach the house where he was staying so they could arrest him. She said that during the arrest, the security forces made no attempt to search the contents of either their home or the house where they arrested him.

Before he was handed a six-month administrative detention order on 3 May 2011, a military court official told Ahmad Qatamesh’s lawyer that he would be released at 5pm that day, and a prison officer gave him the same message. The order of 3 May seemed to have been produced for another detainee, since Ahmad Qatamesh’s name was written over correction fluid. The order was for an “extension” of administrative detention even though this was Ahmad Qatamesh’s first administrative detention order since the 1990s. His lawyer was subsequently informed that the ISA requested his detention based on undisclosed “evidence” relating to allegations that he is active in the PFLP, which he has consistently denied. As in all administrative detention cases, neither Ahmad Qatamesh nor his lawyer have been allowed to examine or challenge this “evidence”.

On 19 May 2011, the military judge confirmed the detention order, but reduced it to four months. She acknowledged that the original order of 3 May had contained factual errors and had been produced for another detainee and adapted for use in Ahmad Qatamesh’s case. Nonetheless, she concluded that the ISA’s secret evidence against him justified his detention for security reasons. He received a second six-month administrative detention order on 2 September 2011. This was later confirmed by a military judge, and his appeal against the second order was rejected by the Military Court of Appeals.

Administrative detention is an Israeli procedure under which detainees are held without charge or trial for periods of up to six months which are renewable indefinitely. For Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, administrative detention orders are issued by an Israeli military commander based on Military Order 1651. No criminal charges are filed against administrative detainees and there is no intention of bringing them to trial. Detainees are held on the basis of “secret evidence” which the Israeli military authorities claim cannot be revealed for security reasons. Hence the “secret evidence” on which the military authorities base their decision to issue an administrative detention order is not made available to detainees or their lawyers, and detainees cannot challenge the reasons for their detention.

As of 31 January 2012, 309 Palestinians were being held as administrative detainees, according to Israel Prison Service statistics, including 21 Palestinian Legislative Council members.

Name: Ahmad Qatamesh

Gender m/f: male

Further information on UA: 127/11 Index: MDE 15/011/2012 Issue Date: 6 March 2012

 

EDITOR: The Unbearable Lightness of Political Hypocrisy

In Summer 2006, Israel attacked Southern Lebanon, destroying its whole infrastructure for the nth time, creating over a million refugees fleeing their home, murdering over 1500 innocent civilians, and forcing thousands to flee Lebanon to Cyprus and beyond. During the month of this brutal carnage, the western democracies, led by the US and UK, have done their best to delay and frustrate any international attempt at controlling or stopping Israel in its wanton destruction. Tony Blair has been especially adept at making sure the murderous attack can go on unhindered. Israel knew it had free hand to murder and destroy at will, and that no power on earth can or will stop it, before it decided to do so itself. In the end, the insane military adventure was stopped when Israeli losses intensified dramatically, caused by Hezbollah fighters.

Few days after Christmas 2008, Israel has attacked Gaza for the nth time. This time the operation, dubbed Cast Lead with typical Israeli militarised humour (‘cast lead’ are words taken from a children’s lullaby sang during Chanouka, the nationalist winter festival in Israel) had lasted 22 days, and brought about the total destruction of infrastructure in Gaza, such that still existed after years of Israeli attacks and illegal blockade. Israel has managed to kill over 1400 Palestinian civilians, over 400 of them small children, at a cost of 13 of its own soldiers killed, four of them by ‘friendly fire’ of the Israeli forces themselves. The brutalities are well known, and beyond description here. Throughout the period, Israel was protected by the same allies, the US and UK, with both leaders making sure that the UN is unable to bring about an end to carnage. Again, Israel was safely allowed to create another bloodbath, one which took the prospect of  peace in the Middle East even further away into the never-neverland of idealised futures.

What rational objective was served by such attacks? Did they serve the interests of Israel in any way, apart from extending its rein of terror? Did they assist a negotiated, just peace in Palestine? Had the carnage improve the security in the region, the security of anyone at all? Even the Israeli government will be hard-pressed to claim such success. Were western leaders not aware that such attacks further undermine the future stability of the whole region? Yet, their actions, and inaction, speak volumes.
On both occasions, like on so many others before, Israel received not just the military and economic assistance that made it the strongest country in the Middle East, but also the political and diplomatic umbrella which allowed it to act illegally and immorally, but with impunity. While nations like North Korea and Iran were hounded when developing nuclear weapons, Israel was actively supported in developing its own, and holds over 300 undeclared nuclear devices. One wonders what use is planned for such an arsenal of destruction, an arsenal larger than that held by China?

But the current iteration of Israeli aggression and western appeasement seems to surpass all others. In a well-orchestrated propaganda campaign, started in 2006, Israel spent untold sums and huge effort in preparing to attack Iran, under the pretext of destroying its nuclear industry, which Iran claims is for non-military purposes, and which no one has yet disproved. The hypocrisy involved is staggering, to put it mildly. A state which attacked and occupied numerous UN  member states is preparing to attack another one, one which is innocent of such aggression itself. A state with hundreds of nuclear weapons, is planning to attack a state with none; A state which has made 800,000 Palestinians refugees in 1948, and refused to allow any of them back into their own land, in open defiance of UN resolutions, is preparing to attack a state which has absorbed an even larger number of refugees created by western aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan; A state which never allowed any international authority to inspect its illicit nuclear facilities, is going to bomb a country which allowed numerous inspections of its own facilities. A state which continues a brutal military occupation for almost five decades, of the territory of four other UN member states, defying UN resolutions to vacate the territory, is now likely to attack another state which has done none of these things.

Now it is true that Ahmadinejad’s Iran is a difficult regime to like or wax lyrically about, and guilty of political oppression of the worst kind. It is also true that it is not alone in this, and that Israel of course has done so much more to oppress and suppress its Palestinian captive population of millions. What is clear is that in the case of Israel, the phrase ‘double standards’ is a somewhat limp attempt to describe a rogue state which instead of being brought to book for its multitude of illegal infractions and transgressions, is actively assisted in breaking international law and breeding more death and aggression. The current state of the US presidential campaign, and the role played by AIPAC in writing US policy for its senior politicians is clear for all to see; no American politician is safe for a moment after mouthing even the mildest criticism against Israel, and none will be elected if they defied its wishes. What was in the past the fevered fabrications of anti-Semites, seems now a daily reality in Washington.

The war Israel wishes to push the west into, another destructive war against Muslims, is as unjustified as the last one in Iraq, and the ‘information’ used to justify it is just as bizarre and false. The same media are again unquestioningly supporting their politicians in sliding into another armed conflict, despite clear knowledge that this is a manufactured conflict, like the last one which brought so much death and destruction. It seems that the west finds its crusader, imperial and colonial heritage difficult to resist, a default knee-jerk reaction to any political difficulty it encounters, and that in this Israel combines the roles of Iago and Macbeth, driving the west into more and more conflict and confrontation with the rising forces of the Arab and Muslim world. That this takes place in the midst of the Arab Spring, and in the middle of a bitter struggle for democracy in the Middle East, is one final irony in this painful play unfolding before us. Will the political leaders of the west be allowed to traipse unthinkingly, again into the historical minefield now facing them, and us all?

Haim Bresheeth

Israel must not bind itself to Netanyahu’s vulgar rhetoric on Iran: Haaretz Editorial

The spine-chilling fear is that one day, all of us will discover too late that we have become hostages to his Churchillian speech, but without a Churchillian victory.
Anyone who cares about Israel’s future could not help but feel a chill upon hearing Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent speech at the AIPAC conference – if not because of the gravity of the existential threat it described, then because of its sheer vulgarity and bad taste. The prime minister, as if he were no more than a surfer leaving feedback on a website, did not hesitate to crassly compare Israel today to the situation of European Jewry during the Holocaust. And to spice up his speech with one of those visual gimmicks he so loves, he even pulled out a photostat of correspondence in order to imply a comparison between U.S. President Barack Obama’s cautious approach toward attacking Iran and President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s refusal to bomb the rail lines to Auschwitz.

Netanyahu sometimes seems like he is holding a debating competition with himself. Every speech is the “speech of his life” and must overshadow its predecessor, while afterward, as if they were rehashing a sporting event, he and his aides gleefully count the number of standing ovations, especially from his American listeners. And in order to wring an ovation from the end of every sentence, it seems as if all means are legitimate: kitsch and death, threats and vows, warnings and rebukes of the entire world.

This time, too, it’s not quite clear what he wanted to obtain via this inane rhetoric – a combination of wretchedness and megalomania – aside from applause. Did he want pity? To prick the conscience of the world? To terrify himself, or perhaps to inflame the Churchillian fantasy in which he lives? But one thing is clear: Aside from the fact that he deepened our feelings of victimhood, insulted the American president and narrowed the options for diplomacy, Netanyahu did not improve Israel’s situation one jot by this speech, just as he hasn’t by any of his others.

Netanyahu isn’t the first Israeli prime minister, especially from the right, to harp on the trauma of the Holocaust. But in contrast to Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon, who at the moment of truth also displayed diplomatic and leadership abilities, Netanyahu was and remains essentially a PR man: someone for whom words and rhetoric replace reality. The spine-chilling fear is that one day, all of us – himself included, despite his caution and hesitation – will discover too late that we have become hostages to his Churchillian speech, but without a Churchillian victory.

War with Iran is not inevitable, says Netanyahu: Guardian

Israeli PM warns Iran has ‘bamboozled the west’ and that only military threat will deter Tehran from developing nuclear weapon
Chris McGreal in Washington

Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has said that an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities is not inevitable. But he claimed it is the threat of military action, not sanctions, that will deter Tehran from developing an atomic bomb.

Following his White House meeting with Barack Obama this week, Netanyahu differed with the president over the value of diplomacy and was sceptical about a fresh round of talks between Tehran and the major powers, telling Fox News that Iran has “bamboozled the west”.

The Israeli prime minister said that, like Churchill, he is sounding the “jarring gong of danger” to wake democracies from their slumber to the coming danger. Asked if “war is inevitable”, Netanyahu replied: “I don’t think so”.

But he brushed off Obama’s demand this week for an end to the “loose talk of war” and “blustering” over Iran – criticisms evidently aimed at months of threats from within Israel – to argue that Tehran is more likely to respond to fear of attack than sanctions.

“We’ve seen, in fact, that Iran backed off from its nuclear programme, its nuclear weapons programme, really only once in the 15, 16 years that I’ve been warning the world about the dangers of a nuclear-armed Iran. And the only time they backed away was in 2003, when they thought there’d be a credible military threat against them,” he said. “So in fact, the paradox is that if they actually believe that they’re going to face the military option, you probably won’t need the military option.”

The US defence secretary, Leon Panetta, reiterated the military threat on Iran by saying that Washington has been preparing the plans for an attack “for a long time”. But, in an interview with the National Journal, he marked out the sharp difference with Israel over the timing of any assault by effectively saying that if an attack becomes necessary it would be better to wait and let the US carry it out.

“If (Israel) decided to do it there’s no question that it would have an impact, but I think it’s also clear that if the United States did it we would have a hell of a bigger impact,” he said.

At their White House meeting this week, Obama sought to persuade Netanyahu to hold off on any attack against Iran with a promise that even if Tehran was able to move its nuclear programme to fortified underground facilities beyond the reach of Israel’s military, the US would still be able to destroy them.

But that requires Netanyahu to place the decision on whether to attack Iran in Washington’s hands, something he has said he will not do.

The Israeli premier declined to discuss a possible timeline for Israeli military action but said the Iranians are getting “very, very close”.

He said that increasingly stringent sanctions are taking their toll on Iran, but not where it matters.

“It’s hurt their economy. But it has not stopped their (nuclear) programme by one wit,” he said.

While Obama has said the US assessment is that Iran has not yet made the decision to develop a nuclear bomb, Netanyahu repeated his assertion that he has no doubt that is what Tehran intends to do.

“Why do you think Iran is doing all of this – developing these underground halls with thousands of centrifuges to enrich uranium? … They’re building ICBM, intercontinental ballistic missiles, to carry, what? Medical isotopes? That’s their explanation? They are absorbing these crippling sanctions,” he said. “So I don’t think anyone seriously thinks that Iran is doing all of this, going through all of this huge investment, taking huge risks for anything but a nuclear programme, and I think we should recognise that.”

Netanyahu was sceptical a new round of talks agreed between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN security council plus Germany will change very much.

The group appealed in a statement on Thursday for Iran to enter into a “serious dialogue” on its nuclear programme and said it was “concerned that, despite efforts made so far, no agreement was reached, including on the access to relevant sites in Iran, requested by the [International Atomic Energy Agency]”.

It called for Iran to fulfil an undertaking to grant access to the Parchin military base where IAEA inspectors suspect Tehran has possibly undertaken research into triggers for nuclear weapons. Diplomatic pressure was ratcheted up on Iran over the site with the release of satellite pictures suggesting it was cleaning up the military base to hide evidence of the research. However, the pictures were met with scepticism by some experts.

Netanyahu said Tehran has previously used negotiations to “deceive and delay” and could do so again.

“The only way you get a result if you got them to agree to freeze their enrichment, take out all the enriched uranium that they have enriched, take it out of Iran, the stuff that can make bombs. If they want to make medical isotopes, you can give them back – uranium that can serve that purpose, a peaceful purpose,” he said. “And they can dismantle this underground facility they have in a place called Qom, which is basically an underground nuclear bunker. They could do all of that. Then you would have an indication that the talks have actually produced something. But personally, I’m sceptical. I think they have bamboozled the west. And they think they can get away with it.”

Asked whether the intelligence on Iran might prove to be as flawed as the false reports of weapons of mass destruction in the runup to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Netanyahu said there was “no comparison”.

“In the case of Iraq, I was on the Israeli cabinet when we discussed this issue. We didn’t know. We couldn’t say that they didn’t have a nuclear weapons programme, we couldn’t say if they did. In the case of Iran there is absolutely no question. We share all of that information. We know the stockpiling of enriched uranium. We know the development of ICBMs. We know a lot more. And we share this information. I don’t think that’s comparable.”

During his visit to Washington this week, Netanyahu persuaded leading members of Congress that Israel is serious about attacking Iran – and that the warnings of military action are not just bluster in order to pressure the west in to ratcheting up sanctions on Tehran.

They include Dianne Feinstein, the chair of the Senate intelligence committee, who told CNN that following her meeting with Netanyahu and discussions with other officials she believes Israel is serious about being prepared to attack Iran.

“I followed the intelligence very carefully, I’ve met with Israeli generals … with the president, and here’s what I believe: I believe that Israel will attack. I believe that it is important that diplomacy be given an opportunity, I believe it is possible to achieve a diplomatic solution,” she said.

Asked about Netanyahu’s attitude, Feinstein said: “His resolve is very firm, no one should doubt that. He told us he’s not asking anything of the United States. Israel believes they are prepared to handle it. Now what happens after an attack is very different.”

But the senator said Netanyahu is likely to respond to Obama’s appeal to give sanctions time to work.

“I believe the Israelis will wait to see what happens,” she said.

Netanyahu: Strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities possible within months: Haaretz

Prime minister says he prefers diplomatic pressure be used to stop the Iranian nuclear program and war be avoided.
By Jonathan Lis
An attack on Iran could take place within a matter of months, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a series of television interviews on Thursday.

“We’re not standing with a stopwatch in hand,” he said. “It’s not a matter of days or weeks, but also not of years. The result must be removal of the threat of nuclear weapons in Iran’s hands.”

Netanyahu gave separate interviews to all three Israeli television stations, the first he has given since his return from Washington earlier this week. The full interviews will air on Saturday night, but excerpts were broadcast Thursday.

“I hope there won’t be a war at all, and that the pressure on Iran will succeed,” the prime minister stressed, noting that his preferred choice would be for Iran to halt its nuclear program and dismantle the uranium enrichment facility located in an underground site near Qom. “That would make me happiest,” he said. “I think every citizen of Israel would be happy.”

“Making decisions isn’t the problem; it’s making the right decision,” Netanyahu added. “If you don’t make the decision and don’t succeed in preventing this [an Iranian nuke], to whom will you explain this – to the historians? To the generations before you, and the generations that won’t come after you?”

He also spoke about the departure of his former bureau chief, Natan Eshel, who was forced to resign over allegations of harassing a subordinate. “I had a connection with Natan Eshel, a connection going back many years,” he said. “This is very painful for me personally, and you part ways humanely.

“On the other hand, what he did, or what he confessed to doing … is very serious. This is a serious, inappropriate thing, and I condemn it.”

Netanyahu insisted that he backs the three officials who informed the attorney general of the suspicions against Eshel: his military secretary, Maj. Gen. Yohanan Locker; Cabinet Secretary Zvi Hauser; and the former head of the National Information Directorate, Yoaz Hendel.

“Let there be no doubt: I also think the men who acted, acted rightly,” he said. “They had to go complain about this.”

Nevertheless, he added, his criticism of them for not informing him was justified: “In my opinion, I’m the head of the system, as prime minister, and they should have told me.”

IDF upgrades notification system in face of growing missile threat: Haaretz

Modified version of the Castle Lake system already in use will allow Home Front Command to view impact points of incoming missiles; MI chief speaking last month: 200,000 missiles aimed at Israel.
By Gili Cohen
The Israel Defense Forces has acquired a new system that will let it see exactly where every missile strike has landed if the home front is under attack.

The new system is a modification of an existing command-and-control system called Castle Lake, which gives details on the location of Israeli forces and, as far as they are known, of enemy targets – anything from rocket launchers to enemy commanders.

With the modification, Castle Lake will now also display a map of the country on which every missile that hits will be marked. In addition to giving the location of the hit, the system will provide information on what kind of missile was launched, how much damage it caused and how long the home front has been under assault. That will enable commanders to factor developments on the home front into their operational decisions.

The home front data will also enable commanders to evaluate the effectiveness of Israel’s operations against the enemy: for instance, whether attacking a Hezbollah stronghold in Lebanon had any effect on the rate of rocket launches from Lebanon.

The system was used for the first time last week, as part of a large-scale war games exercise.

“Essentially, commanders can see the effectiveness of the decisions they made and the way in which forces are being deployed,” an officer in the army’s C4I directorate explained. “It will be possible to go into the details of every launch – where it was fired from, what kind of missile it was, and how much damage it caused.”

Last month, speaking at the annual Herzliya Conference, Military Intelligence director Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi warned that there are currently some 200,000 rockets and missiles aimed at Israel. MI estimates that most of these missiles have a maximum range of 40 kilometers, but thousands of them have ranges of hundreds of kilometers.

“These ranges cover all of Gush Dan, from Syria, Lebanon and Iran,” said Kochavi, referring to the coastal plain around Tel Aviv. “The warheads on these missiles are becoming ever more deadly, weighing hundreds of kilograms. They are becoming ever more accurate, and the entire network is becoming more dispersed, more concealed, and more integrated into an urban environment. Every tenth house in Lebanon has a missile arsenal or a launching pad.”

Kochavi’s remarks underscored the growing missile threat on Israel’s home front. While the Home Front Command has been working on a plan to reinforce buildings in the most vulnerable parts of the country, even after it is complete, 1.5 million Israelis will lack appropriate access to shelters.

During the Second Lebanon War of 2006, some 4,000 rockets were launched at Israel. The IDF expects the number of missile launches in the next war to be ten times that figure, of which it expects several thousand to actually hit: around 7,500 to 10,000 short-range rockets, 1,800 to 2,300 medium-range rockets and some 300 long-range rockets. It predicts that these missiles will kill about 200 civilians and destroy thousands of homes.

To counter this, Israel has developed a range of missile-defense systems, including Iron Dome for short-range rockets, David’s Sling (also known as Magic Wand ) for medium-range missiles and the Arrow for long-range missiles. The IDF believes that nine Iron Dome batteries could protect a sizable percentage of the population in any future war, and that without these batteries, civilian deaths would be double the 200 cited above.

Nevertheless, IDF officers stress that these systems can’t provide hermetic protection: People will still have to run for shelters if they want to maximize their chances of survival.

 

 

EDITOR: Who controls Washington’s policy?

Well, you may well ask. Not Obama, that’s for sure. He can say what he likes (actually, he can’t!) but not do anything the boss does not like… and the boss is AIPAC, with its financial contribution to all but 5 senators and congressmen, and with its hosting of all presidential candidates, it is clear who controls Washington, and AIPAC is not even shy or coy about it. Of course, you cannot quite quite this in the media in so many words, but read below and see if you disagree. While in earlier times you needed Anti-Semites to invent racist lore about Jewish control, today AIPAC supplies the narrative, and it is not an invention. As usual, the west has bought the Israeli policy, hook, line and sinker. They are hooked.

Obama’s Iran strategy backed by US defence secretary amid GOP criticism: Guardian

Defence secretary Leon Panetta tells Aipac that critics of Obama’s Iran policy should not mistake diplomacy for weakness
Chris McGreal in Washington

The US defence secretary, Leon Panetta, has warned critics of Barack Obama’s Iran policy not to mistake a willingness to pursue diplomacy for weakness.

Panetta, speaking to a largely sceptical audience at the annual conference of the powerful pro-Israel lobby in Washington, derided the aggressive posturing of some of the president’s opponents and more hawkish supporters of Israel, who have pressed for an explicit commitment to the use of force against Iran by setting “red lines” that Tehran’s nuclear programme must not cross.

Panetta said the military option is on the table as a last resort if sanctions fail, and the president’s record demonstrates he will use it if he believes there is no alternative.

“As the president made clear, the United States does not bluff. In this town it’s easy to talk tough. Acting tough is a hell of a lot more important,” he told the the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) conference.

“The president ordered 30,000 additional troops to battle in Afghanistan to confront a resurgent Taliban. He launched a comprehensive precision bombing campaign to protect the Libyans and ultimately toppled a brutal dictator. He has ordered US warships to pass through the straits of Hormuz – despite the threats that we have received from Iran.

“And he has been the driving force behind the most successful and lethal counter-terrorism campaign in US history, culminating in the bold decision to send US special operations forces hundreds of miles into Pakistan to take the risk to take down Bin Laden. And he did.”

Panetta’s speech was a clear rebuke to other speakers at Aipac, including three of the four Republican presidential candidates who also addressed the conference on Tuesday. Ron Paul was not invited following his calls to cut off aid to Israel, along with every other country, and because of his criticism that sanctions on Iran are driving it toward developing a nuclear weapon.

The other candidates also came out swinging against Obama’s Iran strategy.

Mitt Romney called Obama’s policy of “engagement” with Tehran naive, and said it gave the Iranian leadership time to develop its nuclear programme.

“Hope is not a foreign policy. The only thing respected by thugs and tyrants is our resolve backed by our power and our readiness to use it,” he said.

“In recent days and weeks we’ve heard a lot of words from the administration. Its clear message has been to warn Israel to consider the costs of military action against Iran. I don’t believe we should be issuing public warnings that create distance between the United States and Israel.”

But in the end, Romney’s position was not so far from Obama’s.

“I will bring the current policy of procrastination toward Iran to an end. I will not delay in imposing further crippling sanctions,” he said. “As president I’ll be ready to engage in diplomacy but I will be just as ready to engage our military might.”

Newt Gingrich, also speaking via video link, went furthest in saying that as president he would give Israel the means to attack Tehran’s nuclear facilities and let it do so without question.

“I will initiate a strategy in the tradition of Reagan, Thatcher and Pope John Paul II to undermine and replace the Iranian dictatorship by every possible method short of war in order to achieve a government we could trust and could deal with,” he said.

“At the same time I would provide all available intelligence to the Israeli government, ensure that they had the equipment necessary and reassure them that if an Israeli prime minister decides he has to avoid the threat of a second Holocaust through preemptive measures that I would require no advance notice to understand why I would support the right of Israel to survive in a dangerous world.”

Rick Santorum was the only candidate to appear in person at Aipac.

“As I’ve sat and watched this play out on the world stage I’ve seen a president who has been reticent. He says he has Israel’s back. From everything I’ve seen from the conduct of this administration, he’s turned his back on the people of Israel,” Santorum said to applause.

He accused Obama of appeasement over today’s news that the US will join Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany in a fresh round of negotiations with Iran.

“Another appeasement, another delay. Another opportunity for them [Iran] to go forward while we talk,” he said.

Santorum – breaking with the tradition that the president’s opponents do not generally side with other powers on the question of foreign policy – said there was a “tragic disconnect” between how Obama and the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, viewed the urgency of the situation.

“We need to set forth a clear ultimatum to the Iranian government. We need to say to the Iranian government: the time is now – you will stop your nuclear production now, you will open up your facilities for inspectors from the United States ad other countries so we can certify that those efforts are stopping and being dismantled, now,” he said to strong applause from the Aipac audience.

“We need to put that ultimatum in place and we need to be prepared if that ultimatum is not met … that if they don’t tear down those facilities, we will tear down them ourselves.”

The Republican candidate also had stinging criticism for the US military chief, General Martin Dempsey, who called Iran a “rational actor”.

“Rational actors don’t call for the destruction of other states, call them cancers, preach radical theologies,” he said. “Rational actors do not develop nuclear capability, calling for nuclear power, when they have hundreds of years of oil and gas to provide for their power and their medical research.”

Romney broke with the focus on Iran to mention the Palestinians – who have been virtually invisible as an issue at this Aipac conference to the gratification of the Israeli government – although his comments will have brought them little comfort.

“The current administration has distanced itself from Israel and visibly warmed to the Palestinian cause. It’s emboldened the Palestinians. They’re convinced that they can do better with America directly than they can at the bargaining table with Israel,” he said.

Romney took a stab at Obama’s assertion last year that a two-state solution will be based on the 1967 armistice lines with land swaps – a statement long accepted as the basis of a deal but which brought a torrent of accusations from the Republican right and some of Israel’s more militant supporters that he was selling out the Jewish state.

“I’ve seen Israel by land and by air. I’ve seen its narrow waist and its vulnerability,” said Romney. “I would never call for a return to the indefensible ’67 lines because I understand that, in Israel, geography is security.”

By conjuring the Holocaust, Netanyahu brought Israel closer to war with Iran: Haaretz

Haaretz’s editor-in-chief says that the Prime Minister publicly booby-trapped himself to war with Iran by comparing the need to strike its nuclear program with the Jewish request to bomb Auschwitz.
By Aluf Benn
In his speech to the AIPAC conference Monday night Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu moved closer than ever to the point of no return en route to war with Iran.

Netanyahu compared Iran to Nazi Germany, its nuclear facilities to death camps, and his current trip to the White House to a desperate plea to former U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt by the U.S. Jewish community to bomb Auschwitz.

The request, as Netanyahu told a sympathetic AIPAC crowd, was denied, using justifications similar to those used today by those who object to a military strike against Iran.

“Israel has patiently waited for the international community to resolve this issue. We’ve waited for diplomacy to work, we’ve waited for sanctions to work. None of us can afford to wait much longer,” Netanyahu warned, adding that, as Israeli premier, he would “never let Israel live under the shadow of annihilation.”

It was the same reason former Prime Minister Menachem Begin used to bomb the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981: preventing the possibility that Jewish children would face the peril of another Holocaust. Now it’s the turn of his successor, Netanyahu, to remove the danger hovering over the heads of Jewish children.

Netanyahu was in the habit of comparing the Iranian nuclear threat to the Holocaust back when he was opposition leader, claiming that the western powers were not doing enough to thwart it. But, since coming back to power, three years ago, he has refrained from making these kinds of statements, opting for a vaguer rhetoric and asking his ministers to keep the fervor down. That vagueness dissipated on Monday. In his speech to AIPAC, coming mere hours after his meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama in the White House, Netanyahu escalated the tone, both in his reference to a clock that was running out, and in his expressed disappointment from U.S.-led diplomatic sanctions.

The Holocaust talk has but one meaning: they force Israel to go to war and strike the Iranians. The justifications against an attack, weighty as those may be, turn to fumes when put up against the Warsaw Ghetto, Auschwitz, and Treblinka. No calculus of missiles falling on Tel Aviv, rising oil prices and economic crisis can hold water when compared to genocide. If that’s the situation, the option of sitting quietly, expecting the “world” to neutralize Iran, or of a stable balance of terror, becomes nonexistent. If Netanyahu doesn’t act and Iran achieves nuclear weapons capabilities, he’ll go down in history as a pathetic loud mouth. As a poor man’s Churchill.

But Netanyahu booby-trapped himself back when he was still making his way to Washington, when he presented Iran with a public ultimatum: dismantle the underground enrichment facility near Qom, cease all enrichment activity, and remove the medium-grade uranium from Iranian territory. He realizes that the Iranian government will never agree to those terms, which seems more like setting up a casus belli that a reasonable diplomatic demand. But Netanyahu’s Holocaust speech at the AIPAC conference went much further than that.

Obama asked Netanyahu to avoid inflammatory statements in regards to Iran, to keep gas prices down in America’s gas station. It’s an important issue when trying to rebuild the American economy as well as, of course, his reelection bid. And while Obama’s thinking may seem reasonable, he’s living in an entirely different world than that of Israel’s prime minister. From the White House, Iran looks like a strategic problem, not as a Holocaust. Thus, time isn’t of the essence, and diplomacy and sanctions should still be given a chance. Netanyahu is motivated by other things.

It’s possible to detect enough loopholes that would allow Netanyahu to escape an imminent decision to go to war. Netanyahu has a political interest to aid his Republican friends against Obama, so his statement that “there wasn’t a decision to attack” seems more like an attempt to stir things up ahead of the U.S. presidential elections than a command to Israel Air Force units. There are those who believe he’s just a second-guessing coward who would never take it upon himself to initiate a war. It could be that all those interpretations are true. Nevertheless, Netanyahu took on a public obligation on Monday that would make it very hard for him to back away from the path of war with Iran.

Continue reading March 8, 2012

WATCH: Jewish activist disrupts AIPAC breakout session: +972

Monday, March 5 2012|Roee Ruttenberg
WASHINGTON – Liza Behrendt, a 22-year old Jewish-American activist, accused the American pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC and its supporting organizations of stifling debate on Israel and particularly on settlements.
On Sunday, the first day of the 2012 Annual Conference, Behrendt attended a breakout session called “The Struggle to Secure Israel on Campus.”  Wayne Firestone, CEO of Hillel (the largest Jewish organization on American campuses) was among the speakers at the session.  Behrendt accused Firestone’s organization of denying membership to her group (which criticizes Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the presence and construction of settlements on that land) while she was a student at the predominantly-Jewish Brandeis University in Boston.  She said she was not allowed to speak about Israel at Hillel.  The event was filmed and broadcast on youtube:

According to the group OccupyAIPAC, last year Firestone “issued controversial guidelines barring Hillel groups from partnering with organizations that support any facet of the BDS [Boycott, Divest, Sanction] movement or that lack a specifically Zionist stance.”  After the incident, Behrendt told OccupyAIPAC:
I felt it was necessary to confront Wayne Firestone, whose condescending guidelines barred my Brandeis University chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace from joining Hillel last spring. Hillel’s guidelines are part of organized efforts to enforce an ideological status quo among young Jews on Israel, but they are completely out of touch with what’s happening among young people.
Disruptions of AIPAC events by activists – even Jewish ones – are nothing new.  However, the outbursts are usually reserved for big headlining events, like the speeches of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.  AIPACers have gotten so used to the interruptions that they now collectively respond by instantly rising in applause to drown out the yelling activist.  At the 2011 Conference, a number of activists who were critical of Israeli policy interrupted Netanyahu’s address before the AIPAC gathering, but were immediately escorted out — in a matter of seconds — by security.  This footage I filmed last year shows one such incident:

The smaller breakout sessions are rarely interrupted, presumably for two reasons.  First, admission to the AIPAC conference is relatively pricey.  A ticket to the 3-day event costs about $400 per person, so if one is going to make a splash, one would likely want to do it in front of as many people as possible and as visibly as possible.  There’s only one chance!  Second, the interruptions at the keynote addresses are so frequent that, as a result, there is an abundance of security on-hand ready to drag the heckler out, much to the amusement of AIPACers.   Im comparing the two clips above, one can note that Behrendt had a much longer window of time to state her case before security arrived.  Even the small number of people in that particular breakout session were caught off-guard by the action.
Sadly, most of the people at AIPAC who saw this incident or, more likely, heard about it from someone else, will completely ignore the point of what Behrendt was saying.  Namely, the American Jewish community is defensive when it comes to tackling the real moral issues facing Israel.  These debates are frequently happening within Israeli societies and, of course, on websites like +972, but most American Jews are made uneasy by outbursts like these.  They find themselves under attack, which, ironically, feeds into the narrative they are being fed.
One may disagree with the tactic used to raise such an issue, but that does not negate the subject or its merits.  As 972′s Ami Kaufman pointed out, missing from President Barack Obama’s speech on Sunday was any real recognition of the more urgent issues facing Israel.  Syria was practically a non-issue, and the word “Palestinian” was only uttered by President Obama five times.  And this isn’t new: Iran has been the top issue on the AIPAC agenda for the last half-decade.  So why are American Jews not demanding these conversations?  Why are they not insisting that these issues be addressed by their leaders?  So long as that continues to happen, activists like Behrendt are vital.  Even if you don’t like they way they are saying it, at some point you have to at least try to listen to what they are saying.