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Protests at Israeli science event: BBC
Israeli Day of Science events taking place at museums in London and Manchester have been hit by protests.
More than 400 people have signed a British Committee for the Universities of Palestine letter attacking the Zionist Federation event.
Universities whose academics are attending were “complicit” in the policies and weaponry used during the Gaza offensive, the letter claimed.
Organisers insist the events, aimed at secondary schools, are non-political. They say the events are aimed at igniting young people’s interest in science. Senior Israeli academics are lecturing on topics from medical research to energy and water technologies. However, the letter’s author, Professor Jonathan Rosenhead, said: “This is a dubious venture at the best of times but at this particular moment, after the offensive in Gaza, it’s particularly insensitive.” It is estimated that 1,300 people were killed, including more than 400 children, during an Israeli offensive in December and January.
MIDEAST: Israel Boycott Movement Gains Momentum: IPS
RAMALLAH, Mar 3 (IPS) – “Standing United with the People of Gaza” is the theme of this week’s Israel Apartheid Week (IAW), which kicked off in Toronto and another 39 cities across the globe Sunday.
A movement to boycott Israeli goods, culture and academic institutions is gaining momentum as Geneva prepares to host the UN’s Anti-Racism Conference, Durban 2 next month amidst swirling controversy. Both Canada and the U.S. are boycotting the Durban 2 conference in protest over what they perceive as a strongly anti-Israel agenda. The first UN Anti-Racism conference, held in the South African city Durban in 2001, saw the Israeli and U.S. delegates storm out of the conference, accusing other delegates of focusing too strongly on Israel. U.S. and Canadian support might have offered some comfort for Israel. However, international criticism of Israel’s three-week bloody offensive into Gaza, which left more than 1,300 Palestinians dead and thousands more wounded, most of them civilian, has breathed fresh life into a Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) campaign. The BDS campaign followed a 2005 appeal from over 170 Palestinian civil society groups to launch a divestment campaign “as a way of bringing non- violent pressure to bear on the state of Israel to end its violations of international law.” In the wake of the BDS campaign, critics of Israel have lashed out at what they see as parallels between South Africa’s former apartheid system and Israeli racism. They point to Israel’s discriminatory treatment of ethnic Palestinians within Israel who hold Israeli passports, and the extensive human rights abuses against Palestinians in the occupied territories by Israeli security forces. During the apartheid era, ties between Israel and South Africa were extremely strong, with the Jewish state helping to train South Africa’s security forces as well as supplying the regime in Pretoria with weapons.
Meanwhile, Toronto, where the Israel Apartheid Week movement was born, will hold forums, film shows, cultural events and street protests to mark IAW week. One of the guest speakers is former South African intelligence minister Ronnie Kasrils.
The Israel donors conference: Ha’aretz
By Amira Hass
The extent of the funding pledged to the Palestinian Authority by donor countries reflects the extent of their support for Israel and its policies. The American taxpayers’ contribution to the Ramallah government’s bank account is dwarfed by the large sums the U.S. government donates to Israel every year. It’s impossible to get excited over the American pledge of $900 million (two-thirds of it for strengthening Salam Fayyad’s government and the rest for Gaza’s recovery) and forget the $30 billion the United States has promised Israel in defense aid by the end of 2017, as last week’s Amnesty International report noted. The $900 million pledged to the Palestinians in Sharm el-Sheikh should be seen as part of the regular American aid to Israel. As an occupying power, Israel is obligated to assure the well-being of the population under its control. But Israel is harming it instead, after which the United States (like other countries) rushes to compensate for the damage. The Clinton and Bush administrations – and Barack Obama appears to be following in their footsteps – erased the phrase “Israeli occupation” from their dictionaries and collaborated with Israel in ignoring its commitments as enshrined in international law. The billions of dollars that Israel receives from the United States for weapons and defense development – which played a significant role in the destruction in the Gaza Strip – are part of Israel’s successful propaganda, which presents the Rafah tunnels and Grad rockets as a strategic threat and part of the Islamic terror offensive against enlightened countries. The West has blown the Hamas movement out of proportion, exaggerating its military might to the point of mendacity; this allowed for an extended siege and three weeks of Israeli military intractability. In the Palestinian and larger Arab world, this embellishment helps Hamas depict itself as the real patriotic force.
Aid as a weapon: The Guardian CiF
International donors’ approach to the Palestinian people lacks consistency, courage, and plain common sense
Ben White
Ever since the beginning of the second intifada in 2000, there has been a familiar pattern in the Occupied Territories: Israel destroys Palestinian civilian infrastructure, and the international community foots the bill. This has been reproduced once more, on a grand scale, as billions of dollars were promised this week at the Egypt-hosted donor conference for devastated Gaza, far exceeding the Palestinian Authority’s initial target.
It remains to be seen how much of this aid will actually get through to the Palestinians imprisoned in Gaza, who continue to live in the rubble of thousands of homes, and hundreds of businesses, factories and schools. Two-thirds of the US contribution of $900 million, for example, is not even earmarked for Gaza. There is also the question of how the aid will make a practical difference on the ground, given that Israel refuses to let in even tomato paste and paper – not to mention construction materials, generators (or “an entire water purification system”). Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth observed: “Israel’s blockade policy can be summed up in one word and it is punishment, not security.”
U.K. embassy nixes move to offices of company behind West Bank construction: Ha’aretz
The British embassy in Tel Aviv has stopped negotiations to lease a floor in Africa-Israel’s Kirya Tower because of the company’s role in West Bank settlement construction. The British embassy had been expected to move from its current Hayarkon Street location into the office tower on the corner of Kaplan and Begin. The lease would have cost $162,000 a year, the British press reported. Africa-Israel is owned by Lev Leviev, a tycoon who recently left Israel and settled in Britain.
After the planned move was publicized in the daily Globes about a year ago, British pro-Palestinian groups began protesting. The press ran several pieces detailing the activities of Africa-Israel and its subsidiary Danya Cebus, and its role in three West Bank construction projects: Matityahu East, Har Homa in Jerusalem, and in Ma’aleh Adumim. The British press also published several petitions calling on the Foreign Office not to move its embassy to Africa-Israel’s building. One such petition, which appeared in the Guardian several months ago, was signed by Palestinian Authority parliamentarians including Hanan Ashrawi and Mustafa Barghouti.
Abuse of science: The Times online
Protests against Israeli universities are the voice of anti-intellectualism
The Science Museum in London is holding workshops this week that will expound scientific achievements to schoolchildren. More than 400 academics and a Nobel laureate are protesting and organising pickets.
It will appear extraordinary that the educational efforts of a great public institution should provoke anger among those who nominally uphold intellectual inquiry. But the scientists and universities whose work is being introduced are Israeli, and the event is billed as an Israeli Day of Science. All will now fall into place. Israel, its independence and its security policies in the West Bank and Gaza stir passions among the politically committed. In a reversal of the normal pattern of prejudice, anti-Israeli sentiment finds traction among the highly educated. Yet in its animus and malignancy, this protest is a model of anti-intellectualism. The late Conor Cruise O’Brien, Irish statesman and polymath, once aptly denounced a boycott of academics of a particular nationality as “an intellectually disreputable attempt to isolate what I know to be an honest, open and creative intellectual community”. The scholars’ offence was that they were from South African universities during the apartheid era. Apartheid was an evil system against which it was right to impose economic and diplomatic sanctions. But scholarship is independent of politics; the academics were private citizens who neither served the regime nor had the capacity to change its policies. Retribution against the life of the mind in order to make a political point is the approach of movements for whom inquiry is a frivolity rather than a way of life. That is why academic boycotts are iniquitous even when the cause is right. Yet the protest outside the Science Museum is not even in an obvious moral cause. It is hysterical and, in its analysis, plainly unscientific.
To be expected from this stuffy and outdated publication.
Gaza Call to Action: “We stand with the majority. We will not be silent on Gaza.”: IJAN
These are terrible times in Gaza. 1400 people have been murdered, 5,000 wounded. 25,000 houses have been made uninhabitable. Electricity, water and food are lacking. Schools and public buildings are unusable and Israel is blocking reconstruction. It has also been a difficult time for those of us witnessing the deprivation, the terrorizing assaults, the murder and the devastation from afar. The recent elections in Israel saw the strengthening of the most openly racist elements in Israeli politics, elements that are attacking the right of Palestinians to continue living inside 48. The elections also made manifest the moral and political bankruptcy of the so-called Zionist “peace camp.”
In the short and critical time of activity since our public launch and this most recent, outrageous escalation of Israeli violence, the network has grown in numbers, activities and partnerships. Organizing is occurring at local, regional, and international levels. We are also now able to welcome people to formally affiliate with the network.
In Solidarity, IJAN
The Russell Tribunal on Palestine
he recent war waged by the Israeli government and the Israeli army on the Gaza strip, already under a blockade, underlines the particular responsibility of the United States and of the European Union in the perpetuation of the injustice done to the Palestinian people, deprived of its fundamental rights. It is important to mobilize the international public opinion so that the United Nations and Member States adopt the necessary measures to end the impunity of the Israeli State, and to reach a just and durable solution to this conflict.
Following an appeal from Ken Coates, Nurit Peled, and Leila Shahid, and with the support of over a hundred well-known international personalities, it has been decided to organise a Russell Tribunal on Palestine. Based on the Opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued on the 9th of July 2004 and on the relevant resolutions of the United Nations Organisation, this Russell Tribunal on Palestine is a civic initiative promoting international law as the core element of the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Further than Israel’s responsibility, it aims to demonstrate the complicity of Third States and International Organisations which, through their passivity or active support, allow Israel to violate the rights of the Palestinian People, and let this situation be continued and aggravated. The next step will then be to establish how this complicity results in international responsibilities. Through a decentralised functioning, the organisation of public sessions and other public events, the organisation of a Russell Tribunal on Palestine is designed as a large communication event, with widespread media coverage over the tribunal and its outcomes. Indeed, the Russell Tribunal on Palestine having no official mandate, its impact rests on its ability to mobilise public opinion, so that the latter puts pressure on governments to obtain that they change their policies in the ways that are necessary to reach a just and lasting peace in the Middle East.
Aftermath (4) Hammad’s death barely made the news: PCHR
In this new series of personal testimonies, PCHR looks at the aftermath of Israel’s 22 day offensive on the Gaza Strip, and the ongoing impact it is having on the civilian population. The only surviving photograph of 13 year old Hammad Silmiya, taken when he was seven. On the 14 of February 2009, almost a month after Israel declared a unilateral ceasefire in Gaza, thirteen year old Hammad Silmiya was grazing his sheep and goats in northeast Gaza, about 500 metres from the border with Israel. An Israeli military jeep patrolling the border opened fire on him and his teenage friends. Hammad was shot in the head and he died almost instantly. Hammad’s death barely made the news – just another casualty in the Gaza Strip, where civilian injuries and deaths continue to mount daily. His family had already endured the killing of Hammad’s grandmother, his two cousins, aged four and eighteen months, and the destruction of their homes and livestock during Israel’s offensive.
UEL Occupation Victory!
We are completely overjoyed at the news from the Vice Chancellor that all 7 of our demands have been met!
Right now we are clearing away our occupied room in a hasty attempt to get to the bar and start celebrating… although obviously there is still a lot things to do, writing press releases, organising victory rally for tomorrow, and of course, setting up a delegation of students and staff to ensure that all points are followed up. Our greatest success has to be the scholarships. Having asked for 5 (in the hope of gaining 2 or 3!) we have gained 6! All including residential and tuition fees – and totally funded by the University! In the first year 3 are guaranteed for students from the Islamic University in Gaza, and this will of course be followed up depending on the success for the following years. The remaining three are for students from conflict zones all around the world. This is a real achievement, and to think that in a few months we shall have 6 students studying here with us at UEL, who otherwise would be struggling to study in a war zone, is incredible.
We shall give full details later of each demand – now we have to clean and celebrate!
Thanks to everyone who has supported us, and who has visited us, spoken to us, brought us food, and most importantly – joined us in the struggle for justice for Palestine!
VIVA VIVA PALESTINA!
The US and the Palestinian Legislative Elections: “Shocking Results,” Same Policy: Alternative Information Centre
In the wake of the recent Palestinian Legislative elections, analysts in the US began talking about the potentially devastating consequences of a Hamas controlled government for President Bush’s Middle East peace plan.
With Hamas in power – a party which will prove significantly more difficult for the US and Israel to deal with – many analysts and US officials have expressed reservations about the viability of President Bush’s policy in the region and foresee a decrease of US involvement in Israeli-Palestinian politics. As predicted, President Bush has officially refused to fund or negotiate with Hamas until it disarms its militant wing and officially recognize Israel. Hamas, for its part, seems unlikely to oblige. The movement gained power in Palestinian society not only by presenting itself as an alternative to the corruption of Fatah, but largely due to the reputation it cultivated for resistance to exactly the sort of pressure the US is trying to apply. Hamas has already suggested it will look to alternative sources of funding, and continues to express its unwillingness to cave under international pressure.
The US reaction should hardly come as a surprise. Even if the Bush Administration intended to negotiate with Hamas, the movement is listed as a terrorist organization according to the US State Department – a classification that makes negotiation with and funding of a Hamas controlled PA not simply difficult, but technically illegal. Moreover, many of those who have traditionally wielded influence inside the White House – namely the Christian Right and the hawkish neo-conservatives – have generally taken an even more hard-line stance than the Bush Administration. Many are calling on both the White House and US Congress to not only shun Hamas, but also to label the Palestinian Authority itself a terrorist organization.
Of course, the response in the US has not been uniform, and there are voices of dissent and moderation. For example, members of prominent think tanks such as the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Middle East Institute (MEI) have urged more practical approaches. In the words of Clinton Swisher, program director for MEI: “We in the West are going to have to stop looking at Hamas as if they’re al-Qaeda or the Taliban: they’re not. […] We’ll have to deal with a group [Hamas] that is authentic of the Palestinian street. […] We have to come to terms with this.” (1) However, because such sentiments tend to arise, in general, from more liberal, progressive, or leftist circles, they maintain little clout with the current administration.
With regards to public opinion within the United States, matters concerning Islam and politics fit into a paradigm that does not easily lend itself to calm, careful analysis like that of Swisher. Historically, and especially since 9/11, the popular discourse on Islam within US society has rarely been characterized by the type of nuance one might expect in dealing with a religion that spans vastly different social, linguistic, historical, and political contexts. Particularly when it comes to political Islam, the fact that the religion maintains a different relationship to politics in, for example, Indonesia or Turkey, as opposed to, say, Afghanistan has not impeded the tendency in the US to lump together movements like Hamas or Hezbollah with the markedly different al-Qaeda. This is not to suggest that Hamas’s ascendance in Palestinian society is wholly disconnected from the rise of political Islam in the region, but only to point out that, in the United States, accounts of Hamas have tended to ignore those factors specific to Palestinian society – the consequences of the first and second intifadas, the ongoing Israeli occupation, and the political, cultural and economic effects of the Oslo process – out of which the Hamas emerged. In the US, one has come to expect the sort of over-dramatized and oversimplified reactions to matters of Islam and politics like those that accompanied the Hamas victory.
Clinton concern over demolitions: BBC
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says Israeli demolitions of Palestinian homes in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem are of “deep concern”.
She renewed her commitment to an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement, saying it was a “commitment I carry in my heart, not just my portfolio”.
She was speaking after meeting Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank. It is Mrs Clinton’s her first trip to the region as secretary of state. In Jerusalem and Tel Aviv on Tuesday, Mrs Clinton expressed “unshakeable” support for Israel, but restated the Obama administration’s commitment to the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. She will not meet leaders of the rival Palestinian group Hamas, which has dismissed her visit. Observers say they are watching for signs that Washington is determined to make advances on the – until now intractable – problem of securing a peace settlement in the Middle East.
What gets into the Gaza Strip: BBC
The BBC News website looks at what is and is not allowed into Gaza via the Israeli controlled crossing points.
Basic food and medical items are allowed in. Very few people and virtually no raw materials and building materials are allowed in.
Apart from a core list of humanitarian basics – fruit, dairy, flour, oil, sugar, meat, rice – items have to be approved on a case-by-case basis.
The list of items allowed in changes over time. During the six-month ceasefire in 2008, items such as clothes, shoes, car parts and agricultural supplies entered the Gaza Strip at times. This has not been the case since the Israeli assault on Gaza started in late December 2008.
Since the conflict, shipments have mainly been limited to food, medical supplies, plastic sheeting, blankets, mattresses and hygiene and cooking kits.