Abdullah advocates attack on foreign navies if they halt arms smuggling
One of the UK’s most influential Islamic leaders, who has helped counter extremism in the country’s mosques, is accused of advocating attacks on the Royal Navy if it tries to stop arms for Hamas being smuggled into Gaza.
Dr Daud Abdullah, deputy director-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, is facing calls for his resignation, after it emerged that he is one of 90 Muslim leaders from around the world who have signed a public declaration in support of Hamas and military action.
Abdullah, who led the MCB’s boycott of Holocaust Memorial Day, was a member of the Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board, the body endorsed by the government that trains imams and was set up to curtail the activities of extremist clerics. In January, he briefed the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, and communities secretary Hazel Blears on the situation in Gaza and its likely impact on social cohesion in the UK.
Charles (Chas) Freeman, who was slated to be picked as the new chairman of the National Intelligence Council, withdrew his candidacy for the post on Tuesday. The move was announced in Washington by Dennis Blair, the director of National Intelligence. Since news of Freeman’s nomination, Jewish organizations have leveled criticism at the pick due to his history of opposition to Israel’s policies in the Palestinian territories. Some lawmakers protested about remarks he made in the past on Israeli “oppression” of Palestinians, and about China.
Freeman’s withdrawal came just hours after Blair defended him in Congress as a man of “strong views, of an inventive mind and the analytical point of view.” “I think I can do a better job if I’m getting strong analytical viewpoints to sort out and pass on to you and to the president than if I am getting pre-cooked pablum judgments that don’t really challenge,” Blair told the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier on Tuesday.
That will teach him to hold ‘views’. “one can only hold views if they are our views”
Part of a 99-vehicle convoy bringing medicine, food, clothing and toys from the UK has reached Gaza after a 24-day journey through Europe and Africa. Organised by the Viva Palestina group and backed by UK MP George Galloway, the convoy entered Gaza from Egypt. It was held for a day because the Egyptian authorities objected to its carrying some non-medical goods. Gaza is under a tight blockade by the Israeli military, which Egypt helps to enforce at the Rafah border crossing. The Viva Palestina website said it took more than 90 minutes for all the vehicles to leave the two car parks in the Egyptian town of El-Arish where they stayed the night. It said some non-medical aid had been unloaded in the line with negotiations with the Egyptians and would be delivered by the Egyptian Red Crescent. The Egyptian RC is expected to deliver the non-medical aid via one of Israel’s crossing points where it can be checked by the Israeli military.
First launched in Toronto in 2005, IAW has grown to become one of the most important global events in the Palestine solidarity calendar. Last year, more than 25 cities around the world participated in the week’s activities, which also commemorated 60 years since the expulsion of the Palestinian people from their homes and land in 1947-1948. IAW 2008 was launched with a live broadcast from the South African township of Soweto by Palestinian leader and former member of the Israeli Knesset, Azmi Bishara.
This year, IAW occurs in the wake of Israel’s barbaric assault against the people of Gaza. Lectures, films, and actions will make the point that these latest massacres further confirm the true nature of Israeli Apartheid. IAW 2009 will continue to build and strengthen the growing Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement at a global level.
Israel believes Iran is only one step away from building an atom bomb saying Tehran must work the goal of producing a bomb into its plans.
Israel’s military intelligence chief Major General Amos Yadlin told Israeli cabinet ministers on Sunday that Iran has “crossed the technological threshold” to build a nuclear bomb. For Iran “reaching a military nuclear ability is only a matter of matching the strategy to the goal of creating a nuclear bomb,” the Israeli general claimed. The conclusion was based on the latest report by the International Atomic Energy Agency stating that Iran has produced a total of some 1,010 kilograms of low enriched uranium (LEU) hexafluoride as of January 31, 2009. An Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) claimed later that Iran has in theory stockpiled sufficient low-enriched uranium – between 1,000 to 1,700kg – to produce the 20-25kg of highly enriched uranium necessary for one small bomb.
Russia’s transfer of its S-300 air-defense systems to Iran would be the trigger point for Israel to take Iran to war, says a US think-tank.
As Iran’s quest to obtain the sophisticated Russian-made anti-aircraft missile system S-300 continues to spark controversy, a new “Presidential Task Force” report on Iran by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy warns about the consequences of Iran acquiring the weapon.
The report says the potential transfer of the S-300 systems to Iran “gives rise to the grave risk that Israel could feel compelled to act before the cost of doing so is too high.” The bi-partisan authors of the document, titled, “Preventing a Cascade of Instability,” propose that the US “should promptly provide Israel with the capabilities — modern aircraft — to continue to threaten high-value Iranian targets” once Russia starts the S-300 delivery. The “Presidential Task Force” report maintains that the US arms offer to Israel could be used as leverage in pressuring Russia against the sale of S-300 systems to Iran. The “rebalance of the strategic equation” would come as a result of an assessment of the S-300 system by US and Israeli weapons experts which has described the weapon as an element that can effectively rule out a successful attack against Iran.
Open Letter to university community regarding Palestinian Rights and Canadian Universities
The last two years have seen increasing efforts to limit advocacy of Palestinian rights on Canadian universities, amounting to a pattern of the suppression of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. These include:
Statements from 19 university presidents in the summer of 2007 to foreclose debate on the academic boycott of Israel, citing “academic freedom”.
Visits to Israel by eight university presidents in the summer of 2008, with no equivalent outreach to Palestinian institutions.
Efforts to ban the use of the term “Israeli Apartheid” at McMaster University in February-March 2008, overturned only through a campaign of protest
Discipline against students involved in peaceful protests for Palestinian rights at York University in March in 2008
Attempted discipline against a faculty member who addressed a rally against Israeli Apartheid at York University in 2008
A pattern of cancellation of room bookings for meetings concerning Palestinian rights at the University of Toronto and York University in 2008
The use of security clearance requirements and fees to cover security costs to impede campus meetings about Palestinian rights
Link above for the whole letter and for signing it!
Naomi Klein first marched against the South African Apartheid when she was just a student at the University of Toronto.
Almost 20 years later the activist and international best selling author of No Logo and the Shock Doctrine joins a new student-led protest against racial segregation. Klein kicked off Israeli Apartheid Week Monday, March 3 at Ryerson University. Lectures, films and other actions will be taking place in more than 40 cities around the world to campaign for equal rights for Palestinian people in Gaza.
BY NAOMI KLEIN | JANUARY 9, 2009
It’s time. Long past time. The best strategy to end the increasingly bloody occupation is for Israel to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa.
In July 2005 a huge coalition of Palestinian groups laid out plans to do just that. They called on “people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era.” The campaign Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions – BDS for short – was born.
Every day that Israel pounds Gaza brings more converts to the BDS cause, and talk of cease-fires is doing little to slow the momentum. Support is even emerging among Israeli Jews. In the midst of the assault roughly 500 Israelis, dozens of them well-known artists and scholars, sent a letter to foreign ambassadors stationed in Israel. It calls for “the adoption of immediate restrictive measures and sanctions” and draws a clear parallel with the antiapartheid struggle. “The boycott on South Africa was effective, but Israel is handled with kid gloves…. This international backing must stop.”
Yet many still can’t go there. The reasons are complex, emotional and understandable. And they simply aren’t good enough. Economic sanctions are the most effective tools in the nonviolent arsenal. Surrendering them verges on active complicity. Here are the top four objections to the BDS strategy, followed by counterarguments.
The Defense Ministry, Health Ministry and IDF said they took “full responsibility” for all side effects suffered by participants in a test of an anthrax vaccine, in a joint statement issued Wednesday. The statement will be submitted to the High Court next week as a reply to petitions submitted by two IDF soldiers who took part in the trial and suffered negative aftereffects. The petitioners raised questions about the way the vaccine trial was conducted, and are claiming the monitoring of volunteers and subsequent care provided to them was inadequate.The vaccine trial, code-named Omer 2, took place between 1998 and 2006, and sought volunteers from elite IDF units. Following the test, a number of participants complained of breathing problems and skin conditions. A quarter of participants were given an American version of the vaccine, while 75 percent were injected with the Israeli vaccine, which had not been previously tested. Members of both groups suffered side effects.
Next time you get one of those annoying Zionist e-mails extolling the merits of Israeli research and technology, you can respond with this report from the Jerusalem Post.
2 March 09: We have taken down the blog post The wounds of Gaza because of factual inaccuracies. We would like to point out that our editorial decision process to post blog entries (and their comments) on The Lancet Global Health Network is very different from our rigorous peer review process in The Lancet and TheLancet.com. We want to encourage debate and we see The Lancet Global Health Network as a good forum to do this. We do not endorse any particular side of a debate and so post a range of views and comments.
A gym which offers free membership to Maccabi GB athletes as they prepare for the Maccabiah Games has been targeted by anti-Israel campaigners. Stickers proclaiming “Boycott Israeli Goods”, and displaying the Palestinian flag, were placed in changing room lockers at the Village Hotel in Elstree, Hertfordshire. The company agreed a £250,000 sponsorship package with Maccabi GB in December. As part of the deal, every member of the British team due to take part in the games in Israel in July was given free access to Village gyms around Britain. Village director Michael Bibring said staff immediately removed the stickers after they were reported on Wednesday morning. “We were outraged to discover this anti-Israel propaganda in our locker room and utterly abhor the fact that someone has used our premises to display this literature,” he said. Meanwhile, a proposed boycott of Israeli-supplied medical devices used by the NHS turned out to be a hoax.
And they entered side by side like heroes, some on foot some in their vehicles, tears, smiles, hugs, flowers. It was historic, it was legendary. Gaza we are here. We have fulfilled the promise – Viva Palestina! The lifeline from the people of Britain to you, the people of Gaza, has arrived.
We have broken the barriers, we have opened closed borders, we have defied the odds,we have overcome the challenges across thousands of miles and three continents. We are here to be with you, to embrace you, to share your tragedy with you.
After another morning of intense negotiations, a deal was reached to allow all of the members of the convoy to go through. In the end, Viva Palestina had to make the sacrifice of agreeing that some vehicles will have to cross the border from the Al Ouja Israeli controlled crossing point. This includes our mascot, the fire engine and the boat. This was due to the restrictions imposed by Egyptian law governing the Rafah Crossing.
A tearful Talat Ali told me that ‘Rafah is the most beautiful crossing in the world’, he also said that the time , effort and sacrifices put in by all the Viva Palestina family meant that history has been made today – on the day the prophet Mohammed (PBUH) was born.
Lobby of Parliament for Gaza
Wednesday 11 March
2-6pm, House of Commons, London
(nearest tube Westminster)
Please make an appointment to lobby your MP now.
Download the Lobby briefing pack with the demands for your MP. Download the information pack for practical information on how to lobby.
By Zeev Sternhell
Admittedly, the choice is not an easy one, but the political reality and moral climate in Israel are beginning to be far too reminiscent of Europe between the two World Wars. The danger of the break-up of democracy lurking behind a Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu-National Union government is far greater than the pull to the right that Kadima would risk in a Benjamin Netanyahu-Tzipi Livni government. If something can be learned from the European experience, it is the fact that beyond the deep cultural reasons, at the immediate political level the collapse of democracy was not the result of force majeure, but rather primarily the result of blindness in understanding the needs of the hour. Democracy fell in Germany and Italy, where the left and the conservative and liberal right refused to cooperate in order to block the revolutionary right. In France, democracy was saved thanks to an opposite process: There a popular front was formed, at the center of which was the socialist party with the liberal center at its right and the communists at its left. There were other reasons for this coalition, but the very fact of its formation sufficed to create a dynamic opposite to that in the two neighboring countries.
Anti-Israel protesters have clashed with police outside a Davis cup match played in Malmo in southern Sweden.
The game between Sweden and Israel is being played without an audience because the police could not guarantee the security of the players. About 100 masked protesters tried to storm the arena in Malmo on Saturday afternoon, throwing rocks and firecrackers at the police who had put up barricades outside the stadium. Hundreds of police pushed the crowd back using truncheons. After the protesters dispersed, clashes continued in other parts of the city. Around 100 people were apprehended and at least six were formally arrested, according to Ewa Westford, a police spokeswoman. No injuries were reported. About 7,000 people gathered at a square in the centre of the city for a peaceful protest, with speakers condemning Israel’s offensive in Gaza and urging support for the Palestinians. As they marched towards the arena, they were joined by the masked demonstrators who attacked police with eggs, rocks and firecrackers.
Tight security
About 1,000 police were deployed in Malmo to keep the protesters from entering the arena. Special riot vehicles had been brought in from Denmark. Henrik Kallen from the Swedish Tennis Federation spoke to Al Jazeera from inside the arena. He said the match had not been disturbed. “I can’t comment on if it was right or wrong to from a security stand [to ban fans from the match] but what is unfortunate is that some local politicians have used it for their own agenda, mixing sports and politics and making national politics out of something they should not get into.” Since Israel’s three-week war on Gaza ending in January, activists and politicians have called for the game to be stopped. The municipality of Malmo said its decision that the match be played in an empty arena was taken due to security concerns, without any political motives. But Ilmar Reepalu, the mayor of Malmo, told the newspaper Sydsvenska Dagbladet after the war on Gaza that his personal opinion was that the game should not be played at all.
Let’s have more of those!
Histadrut: Israel’s racist “trade union” : The electronic Intifada
A Zionist poster from the 1930s encourages settlers to buy only watermelons that are produced in Jewish settlements. (Israel MFA)
Tony Greenstein
Histadrut has always been a strange creature. In most countries one joins a trade union which is affiliated to a national trade union federation. In Israel one first joins Histadrut and then one is allocated to a union. It is only outside Israel that Histadrut is seen as a normal trade union, the Israeli equivalent of the British Trade Union Congress or the American union movement AFL/CIO.
Less well known is the fact that Histadrut, an organization of the settler Jewish working class, was the key Zionist organization responsible for the formation of the Israeli state. As former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir remarked: “Then [1928] I was put on the Histadrut Executive Committee at a time when this big labor union wasn’t just a trade union organization. It was a great colonizing agency.” [1] Pinhas Lavon, as secretary-general of Histadrut, went so far as to describe it in 1960 as “a general organization to its core. It is not a trade union …” [2] Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, held that without Histadrut, “I doubt whether we would have had a state.” [3]
Today Histadrut is a shadow of its former self. From a position where it was the second-largest employer, owning 25 percent of Israeli industry, the 1980s and 1990s saw the privatization of nearly all of its industries. The National Health Law of 1995, which severed the ties between Kupat Holim (Israel’s National Health Service) and Histadrut, dealt the final blow. Histadrut membership plummeted from 1.6 million in 1994 to 650,000 in 1996 and its 150,000 Arab members declined to less than 50,000. [4]
Politically, Histadrut operated as an arm of Israeli and US foreign policy. In 1958, the International Institute for Development, Co-operation and Labor Studies was established as a means of furthering western interests in the third world. Half of its graduates came from Africa and a further 40 percent from Asia. [5] And in 1960 Histadrut formed the Afro Asian Institute for Labor Studies and Co operation, funded by the CIA through the AFL-CIO. It operated on behalf of the US in African countries such as Zaire and Kenya. [6]
Ethnic cleansing in East Jerusalem: The Electronic Intifada
An Israeli flag hangs from a Palestinian home in Silwan taken over by Israeli settlers.
Dr. Marcy Newman writing from occupied East Jerusalem, Live from Palestine
Last week when US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton held a press conference in Ramallah with Mahmoud Abbas, whose term as Palestinian Authority president officially expired on 9 January, a Washington Post reporter questioned her about the 143 Palestinian homes in Jerusalem that Israel intends to demolish in the coming weeks. She responded: “clearly, this kind of activity is unhelpful and not in keeping with the obligations entered into under the roadmap.” While some hailed this remark as a condemnation of Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing project, it appeared to many on the ground as callous and flippant.
Since the press conference, the number of Palestinian homes Israeli occupation forces intend to level has increased from 143 to 179. It seems that the number of homes and families who will be forced from their homes, and many from their villages entirely, increases every day. Just this past week in the East Jerusalem area, 88 homes in al-Bustan, 55 homes in Shufat refugee camp, 35 Bedouin homes on the Jerusalem-Jericho Road, and 66 homes in al-Isawiyya were slated for destruction, affecting more than 2,000 Palestinians, most of whom have lived there for generations. Ras al-Amoud, al-Abasiyya, Sheikh Jarrah and Ras Khamis appear to be next on the list of targeted areas. The affected families see this method of adding new neighborhoods to the demolition list every day as a means of making it more difficult to challenge and protest these eviction orders.
Jonathan Cook
As spring sets in early, Israelis have been pouring into one of the country’s most popular leisure spots. Visitors to Canada Park, a few kilometers northwest of Jerusalem, enjoy its spectacular panoramas, woodland paths, mountain-bike trails, caves and idyllic picnic areas.
A series of signs describe the historical significance of the landscape, as well as that of a handful of ancient buildings, in terms of their Biblical, Roman, Hellenic and Ottoman pasts. Few, if any, visitors take notice of the stone blocks that litter sections of the park. But Eitan Bronstein, director of Zochrot (Remembering), is committed to educating Israelis and foreign visitors about the park’s hidden past — its Palestinian history.
“In fact, though you would never realize it, none of this park is even in Israel,” he told a group of 40 Italians on a guided tour this past weekend. “This is part of the West Bank captured by Israel during the 1967 war. But the presence of Palestinians here — and their expulsion — is entirely missing from the signs.” Zochrot also seeks to remind Israelis of the Nakba, the uprooting of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during Israel’s creation in 1948. Its tours are not popular with most Israelis, suggesting, he says, how far they still are from understanding the territorial compromises needed to reach the kind of peace agreement with the Palestinians currently being promoted by the new US administration.
GAZA CITY, occupied Gaza Strip (IRIN) – UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Executive Director Ann M. Veneman recently paid a visit to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) to assess the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, with special focus on children. As of 5 February, 431 Palestinian children had died and 1,872 had been wounded in the 22-day Israeli offensive which ended on 18 January, according to the Gaza health ministry.
Veneman spoke to IRIN in Gaza City during her visit.
IRIN: After visiting Gaza, what are your first impressions and priorities?
Ann M. Veneman: We focused on the impact of the conflict on children. So often children are the ones that are hurt by the wars of adults. The total population of Gaza is about 1.4 million, of which 56 percent — approximately 793,520 — are children, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. Humanitarian access to all, especially to the most vulnerable, must be unhampered.
IRIN: How are the health and nutrition standards for Gaza’s children since the recent war?
AV: UNICEF remains concerned that the nutritional status and general health of children in Gaza is likely to deteriorate given the dependency of Gazan families on food aid and cash assistance, as well as the lack of access to clean tap water.
From mid-January, UNICEF has provided basic essential supplements of vitamin A and D, and iron-folate, to 50,000 infants and children under five through health ministry centers and UNRWA [the UN agency for Palestine refugees] clinics.
We saw lines of people [in Gaza] queuing for gas, fuel and food aid. Right now many families are living in tents and with relatives. Certainly a lack of adequate housing can lead to a lack of clean water.
I am sure some Zionist or other will tell us soon why Gaza children don’t need water.
CAIRO (IPS) – Magdi Hussein, secretary-general of Egypt’s suspended Socialist Labor Party, has been sentenced to two years in prison by a military tribunal. Hussein, along with two others, was charged with “infiltrating” into the Gaza Strip following Israel’s recent campaign against the coastal enclave.
Protests against his arrest continue to be ineffective.
“It was an illegitimate, vindictive sentence, for which there is no moral or legal excuse,” Gamal Fahmi, managing editor of opposition weekly Al-Arabi Al-Nassiri, and board member of the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate told IPS.
Hussein was arrested by Egyptian authorities on 1 February while returning to Egypt via the Rafah crossing, the sole transit point along Egypt’s 14-kilometer border with the Gaza Strip. Hussein was on his way back from a week-long visit to the territory, still reeling from Israel’s military campaign from 27 December to 17 January.
“People are free to travel from one country to another,” Hussein told independent daily Al-Dustour shortly after his arrest. “When did it become a crime to visit our besieged Arab brethren?”
While in the Gaza Strip, governed by Palestinian resistance faction Hamas, Hussein witnessed the destruction wrought by Israel’s recent campaign, during which more than 1,300 Palestinians were killed, and infrastructure demolished. Hussein visited numerous bombed-out mosques and homes, as well as the badly damaged Palestinian parliament building, Gaza’s Islamic University and the al-Shifa Hospital, teeming with critically injured civilians.
Research Report: Dutch economic links in support of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian and/or Syrian territories
Since 1967, Israel has occupied the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights. These territories are beyond the Green Line, which is the internationally recognized border of the State of Israel. Israel has established settlements in these occupied territories, which is illegal according to international law (the Fourth Geneva Convention).
Israel’s settlements in the Gaza Strip were only dismantled in August 2005. In the West Bank and on the Golan Heights, however, settlements are expanding and new ones are being established. These settlements are a source of grave and systematic human rights violations, harming the daily lives of millions of Palestinians and a few thousand Syrians living under Israeli occupation. Moreover, these settlements pose a serious obstacle to
peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
Yesh Din said Israel’s mining broke international laws
An Israeli human rights group has filed a petition at the High Court demanding an immediate halt to Israeli mining operations in the West Bank.
The group, Yesh Din, accuses Israel of breaking international law by exploiting the occupied territory’s resources for its own gain. It says Israel has never conducted a thorough review of the practice. But Israel says the procedures are in line with both international law and agreements with the Palestinians. Yesh Din cites military documents which show nine million of the 12 million tonnes of rock and gravel mined in the West Bank each year are sold in Israel – and says Israel is “addicted to the exploitation”. It says its High Court petition addresses “the illegal practice of brutal economic exploitation of a conquered territory to serve the exclusive economic needs of the occupying power”.
![The match was played without fans in the arena [AFP]](http://gaza.haimbresheeth.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/match-without-fans.jpg "match-without-fans")
