Archive of the blogs published during the Gaza Carnage crisis, started in December 2008
April 2, 2009
For all the good people who still speak as if the two-state solution has not died some decades ago, before it was properly born,Lieberman’s speech may provide a powerful anti-dote to reality-avoidance blues. After 42 years, do you wish to wait another 42 years before you give up on this charade by Israel and its erstwhile partners in crime, the USA and Europe?The Palestinians have not got another four decades to wait and suffer…
New foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Wednesday that Israel was changing its policies on the peace process and was not bound by commitments it made at a U.S.-sponsored conference to pursue creation of a Palestinian state. During an official ceremony at the President’s Residence on Wednesday, Lieberman said: “There is one document that obligates us – and that’s not the Annapolis conference, it has no validity. His speech was made in reference to a 2007 gathering in Annapolis, Maryland attended by participants from about 40 countries, including Saudi Arabia, Syria and Indonesia. “The Israeli government never ratified Annapolis, nor did Knesset,” Lieberman said. He said that instead, Israel would follow a course charted by the U.S.-backed peace road map. Lieberman said later that the declaration was not an empty statement, but “an expression of a change in Israel’s policy regarding the peace process,” Channel 10 reported.
The peformance-based plan made the creation of a Palestinian state contingent on the Palestinians reining in militants. It also obligated Israel to freeze all settlement activity on Palestinian land. The joint statement drafted at the 2007 conference, which was hosted by then U.S. president George Bush, declared: “We express our determination to bring an end to bloodshed, suffering and decades of conflict between our peoples, to usher in a new era of peace, based on freedom, security, justice, dignity, respect and mutual recognition, to propagate a culture
of peace and non-violence, and to confront terrorism and incitement, whether committed by Palestinians or Israelis. “In furtherance of the goal of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security: We agree to immediately launch good faith bilateral negotiations in order to conclude a peace treaty resolving all outstanding issues, including all core issues, without exception, as specified in previous agreements. A source in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s party confirmed Wednesday that his new government intended to distance itself from U.S.-sponsored understandings on working towards a Palestinian state.
Opposition leader Tzipi Livni on Thursday called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to disavow Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s remarks that Israel was not bound by commitments it made at a U.S.-sponsored conference to pursue creation of a Palestinian state. “When such dramatic things are said without a response, it either reflects Bibi’s [Netanyahu’s] weakness or the fact that he essentially agrees with it,” Livni told Army Radio Thursday. “Although there is a difference of opinion between Bibi and myself, the remarks do not represent Israel. These are remarks that hurt Israel,” she said.
Hardline nationalist Lieberman was a controversial foreign ministry choice
Israel’s new ultra-nationalist foreign minister has said it is not bound by a US-sponsored 2007 agreement to reach a peace deal with the Palestinians. “The Annapolis conference, it has no validity,” Avigdor Lieberman said.
He was speaking at a handover ceremony at the foreign ministry, prompting his predecessor Tzipi Livni to interrupt and diplomats to shift uncomfortably. At Annapolis, each side agreed to further discussions aimed at creating an independent Palestinian state. Palestinian officials described Mr Lieberman as an “obstacle to peace” whose policies would rebound negatively on Israel. “Nothing obliges us to deal with a racist person hostile to peace such as Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister Lieberman,” Yasser Abed Rabbo said in comments to AFP news agency. Correspondents say officials at the foreign ministry seemed taken aback at such a sudden and public repudiation of one of the main planks of Israeli diplomatic activity. “There is one document that obligates us – and that’s not the Annapolis conference, it has no validity,” Mr Lieberman said. The document he was referring to was the international peace plan known as the Road Map, signed in 2003, while “the Israeli government never ratified Annapolis, nor did parliament”.
US stands by two-state solution: BBC
The Obama administration has renewed Washington’s commitment to a two-state solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
As a row raged over the new Israeli government’s stance, the White House said Barack Obama looked forward to working with Israel’s new leaders. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has said the government will not be held by commitments made by its predecessors. A US-hosted 2007 agreement had, he declared, “no validity”. Each side had agreed at talks in Annapolis to further discussions aimed at creating an independent Palestinian state. But Mr Lieberman, an ultra-nationalist, argues that the accord was never ratified either by the Israeli government or parliament. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the world should put pressure on the new Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu.
“We want to tell the world that this man doesn’t believe in peace and therefore we cannot deal with him,” he told an Arab summit in Qatar.
The reality-avoidance machnism is showing signs of stress, but is cranked up and playing again by the new organ grinder in Washington. The Messiah has come, has won, but has not read the papers, not to mention the writing on the wall…
Israeli military police have closed an investigation into soldiers’ accounts of abuses committed in Gaza, saying they were based on hearsay.
An Israeli military college published the accounts, which included claims that soldiers fired on civilians and vandalised property. The probe concluded that the stories were “purposely exaggerated”. Rights groups fear war crimes took place during the January assault which Israel said aimed to end rocket fire. In a written statement, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said the investigation had focused on two stories which alleged that civilians had been fired on, but found the soldiers who told them were not direct witnesses.In one of them, a commander was said to have ordered troops to kill an elderly woman walking on a road, even though she was easily identifiable and clearly not a threat. “In fact, the soldier witnessed no such thing, and was only repeating a rumour he had heard,” the statement read.
While the BBC never question or criticise the IOF charade (thank you, auntie, foe an excellent job of supporting a coverup!), read below the Gideon Levy article if you wish to understand what is really happening:
Anyone who cares about the rule of law and Israel’s moral image, and is worried that its soldiers may have carried out war crimes in the Gaza Strip, can now sigh with relief. The military advocate general, Brig. Gen. Avichai Mendelblit, ordered that the investigation into soldiers’ testimonies on their experiences in Operation Cast Lead be closed. A flash operation of instant justice buried a story that had rocked worlds. There are judges in Jerusalem, and a military advocate general in Tel Aviv. All he needed was a day or two – no Palestinian testimonies were deemed necessary. There was no real investigation whatsoever – the case was instantly disposed of. Mendelblit’s effective and scandalously quick conduct proved beyond doubt what everyone already knew: His office is a propaganda machine, part of the Israel Defense Forces’ information activities. It has the same relation to justice as military marches do to music, to borrow a phrase from French statesman Georges Clemenceau. It is inconceivable that the IDF would investigate itself. It doesn’t have the slightest intention to do so. Just as the police don’t investigate suspicions against policemen, neither would the IDF investigate charges against its soldiers. Let the IDF have a body similar to the Justice Ministry’s Police Investigation Department. Only an independent judicial system can consider the hard questions arising from the death and havoc in Gaza. While half the world is still inquiring about suspicions of war crimes, the use of white phosphorous on civilians, disporportionate destruction, and attacks on medical teams and UNRWA installations, the military advocate general has cast his verdict: The soldiers’ testimonies were “rumors.” In other words, they lied, our army is pristine and our weapons pure. Mendelblit pleased his superiors. The prosecutor became an advocate, the investigator covered for his suspects.
Not that anything different could have been expected. From the day the military advocate general announced that unlike in the first intifada, not every killing in the territories would be investigated, battle ethics were condemned. When the killing of 4,747 Palestinians in the second intifada, 942 of them women and children, according to B’Tselem, is followed by 30 indictments, five convictions and only one prison sentence of any considerable length, the IDF is sending a clear message: The killing of Palestinian civilians is of no concern to the military justice system.
I quoted at length due to the importance of this article. To read in full use the link above.
As early as this month, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman could face international pressure to clarify their position on the creation of a Palestinian state. At a closed-door dinner of European Union diplomats held Friday in the Czech Republic, several senior officials said Israel must be required to present an explicit commitment accepting the principle of “two states for two peoples,” and if it fails, the process of upgrading Israel-EU relations should be frozen. At least 10 communiques from Israeli embassies in Europe arrived at the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem in recent days painting a difficult picture of the level of trust felt in Europe towards the Netanyahu government, particularly on diplomatic matters.
Maybe the EU could treat the Israel democratically-elected governemnt like it treated the Democratically-elected Palestinian government? This may produce some results, instead of posturing again, pretending to havea position, while still continuing the full support?
WASHINGTON – The American Jewish community, whose leaders had kept silent about the results of the Israeli elections, has begun to speak out, cautiously.
The picture that emerged from talks with community leaders in Washington this week is that not everyone is thrilled with the new Israeli government, but most believe that support for Israel is more critical now than ever in the face of the current threats, chief among them Iran. The head of one of the most influential local Jewish Federation branches in the United States, who declined to be named, admitted that the appointment of Avigdor Lieberman is “not good” in terms of public relations. He quickly added, however, that the American Jewish community must nevertheless express support for Israel’s government. “I know Lieberman, he’s not an outsider. His views have support in Israel, even if the American Jewish community doesn’t support him,” he said.
“It’s a problem that in the press he’s been labeled a fascist, but we must tell the new [U.S.] administration in no uncertain terms: ‘He’s a minister, talk to him.’ Jewish Democratic congresspeople also expressed support in the new government.
Now there is a real shock and surprise… US Jewry supports a right-wing, aggressive government in Israel, intent on continuing the occupation and opression… What does it take to get them to think? More than we know on this earth, apprently.
‘Israel unlikely to attack Iran this year’: Ha’aretz
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates told the Financial Times on Wednesday that Israel is unlikely to launch military operations against Iranian nuclear installations this year in a bid to derail the Islamic regime’s drive to attain atomic weapons. “I guess I would say I would be surprised if they did act this year,” Gates told the Financial Times. Upon taking office this week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has indicated that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose a strategic threat to Israel, and that neutralizing that threat is a top priority of his new administration.
Is this an attempt to call off the dog, by the new kennel owner (well, he is not exactly new either…) or another attempt to fighten Teheran into submission? Maybe both, but he might yet be ‘surprised’ by the Israelis, which he thinks are under his full control. Dr, Frankenstein definitely was surprised, I seem to remember, when the creature rebelled. The masters are always ‘surprised’, sometimes pleasantly.
‘Tell Her the Truth’: The Nation
Caryl Churchill has made Seven Jewish Children available for productions without licensing or royalties for presenters who request audience contributions for the London-based relief organization Medical Aid for Palestinians.
The siege of Gaza over the past several years, which nearly starved a high proportion of the population, was unconscionable in humanitarian terms, but an even worse corner was turned this past winter. A placard at a peace-movement demonstration in Tel Aviv in January proclaimed, Slaughter Is Not Security. Apart from some brave thousands who took to the Israeli streets throughout the weeks of Operation Cast Lead, a large majority of Israelis–and their supporters in America–were convinced that the carnage was, indeed, justified as defense. Some even boasted about it. In America’s weekly Jewish newspaper, the Forward, the president of the Reform movement, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, in an op-ed defending the Gaza invasion, disparaged more hawkish Israel supporters for “the obscene, cowboy-like delight” in “the damage Israel’s army is able to inflict.” But even when softened into Yoffie’s remorseful notion of the Gaza offensive as a “tragic necessity, unwelcome but inevitable,” the justification amounts to the same thing: better them than us. Such dehumanizing rhetoric is common in mainstream Jewish-American and Israeli discourse (and, in fact, in all military conflicts). Churchill, a non-Jew, had the chutzpah to strip that rhetoric of its hangdog, contrite camouflage and reflect it back to us: “tell her all I feel is happy it’s not her.”
That hideous sentiment, however, is not the play’s final word. There are three more lines:
Don’t tell her that.
Tell her we love her.
Don’t frighten her.
A playwright’s presumptuous job is to imagine others, and the others Churchill has imagined in this play are Jews. If there’s anger in the writing, there’s also empathy, tenderness and intimacy. Nothing is more intimate than discussions between parents about what to tell their children; no act of speech is more carefully weighed or more fiercely protected. This is a family play, told from within the family. It concludes with love, and it concludes with fear.
Israel’s new Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has been questioned by police for at least seven hours over corruption allegations.
Police said Mr Lieberman was questioned under caution on suspicion of “bribery, money-laundering and breach of trust” as part of an ongoing investigation. Mr Lieberman was sworn in as foreign minister on Tuesday. He has previously denied any wrong-doing and says the corruption probe against him is politically motivated. Police confirmed that the interview had been scheduled in advance with Mr Lieberman.
Micky Rosenfeld, a police spokesman, said Mr Lieberman had been questioned over the long-standing investigation into his business dealings, the Associated Press reported. The accusations are believed to relate to a company run by Mr Lieberman’s daughter. A spokesman for Mr Lieberman said it was “the same investigation that has been ongoing for the past 13 years and which he has petitioned the courts to have speeded up. “He co-operated fully with police investigators and answered all their questions and enjoyed drinking their coffee,” said the unnamed spokesman.
Does anyone know about another country where the President is on trial for multiple rapes, the finance minister was indicted, the Fireign minister is being investigated for links with the mafia and for corruption, and the Prime Minster was sacked for corruption? This as the ex-minister of the Interior has just come out of jail… I may well have forgotten another minister or two who are also being investigated, in which case, apologies. The Defence minister, more importantly, is likely to face a UN inquiry about war crimes. Some governement, some country, the only democracy in the Middle East… and that is before we have started to speak of the real crimes of Lieberman, which are political rather than merely criminal… We can look forward to some exciting and interesting times. The scriptwriters should get busy now; why wait? The Godfather of Nokdim is going to be a hit.
The extent of Israel’s brutality against Palestinian civilians in its 22-day pounding of the Gaza Strip is gradually surfacing. Israeli soldiers are testifying to lax rules of engagement tantamount to a license to kill. One soldier commented: “That’s what is so nice, supposedly, about Gaza: You see a person on a road, walking along a path. He doesn’t have to be with a weapon, you don’t have to identify him with anything and you can just shoot him.”
What is less appreciated is how Israel is also brutalizing international law, in ways that may long outlast the demolition of Gaza. Since 2001, Israeli military lawyers have pushed to re-classify military operations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip from the law enforcement model mandated by the law of occupation to one of armed conflict. Under the former, soldiers of an occupying army must arrest, rather than kill, opponents, and generally must use the minimum force necessary to quell disturbances. While in armed conflict, a military is still constrained by the laws of war – including the duty to distinguish between combatants and civilians, and the duty to avoid attacks causing disproportionate harm to civilian persons or objects – the standard permits far greater uses of force. Israel pressed the shift to justify its assassinations of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, which clearly violated settled international law. Israel had practiced “targeted killings” since the 1970s – always denying that it did so – but had recently stepped up their frequency, by spectacular means (such as air strikes) that rendered denial futile. President Bill Clinton charged the 2001 Mitchell Committee with investigating the causes of the second Palestinian uprising and recommending how to restore calm in the region. Israeli lawyers pleaded their case to the committee for armed conflict. The committee responded by criticizing the blanket application of the model to the uprising, but did not repudiate it altogether.
Today, most observers – including Amnesty International – tacitly accept Israel’s framing of the conflict in Gaza as an armed conflict, as their criticism of Israel’s actions in terms of the duties of distinction and the principle of proportionality betrays. This shift, if accepted, would encourage occupiers to follow Israel’s lead, externalizing military control while shedding all responsibilities to occupied populations. Israel’s campaign to rewrite international law to its advantage is deliberate and knowing. As the former head of Israel’s 20-lawyer International Law Division in the Military Advocate General’s office, Daniel Reisner, recently stated: “If you do something for long enough, the world will accept it. The whole of international law is now based on the notion that an act that is forbidden today becomes permissible if executed by enough countries … International law progresses through violations. We invented the targeted assassination thesis and we had to push it. At first there were protrusions that made it hard to insert easily into the legal molds. Eight years later, it is in the center of the bounds of legitimacy.”
First produced at the Royal Court earlier this month, Caryl Churchill’s play for Gaza has divided critics and audiences. The Guardian’s Michael Billington called it a ‘heartfelt lamentation’, while the Times found it ‘straitjacketed political orthodoxy’. For Howard Jacobson, it is ‘wantonly inflammatory’. Bloggers have debated whether the play is antisemitic. Judge for yourself:
No children appear in the play. The speakers are adults, the parents and if you like other relations of the children. The lines can be shared out in any way you like among those characters. The characters are different in each small scene as the time and child are different. here is the full text of Churchill’s play:
British MP George Galloway Speaks
Video
A defiant George Galloway took direct aim at Canada’s immigration minister. in a speech Monday night for being branded a terrorism supporter and being denied entry to the country. Galloway was beamed into, via the Internet, a nearly full 588-seat MiST theatre at the University of Toronto Mississauga.
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22332.htm
British MP George Galloway Speaks
Banned British MP George Galloway thanked Canada’s immigration minister “for giving the anti-war movement such a tremendous boost.” Galloway lashed out at Federal Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Jason Kenney when he was beamed into, via the Internet, a nearly full 588-seat MiST theatre at the University of Toronto Mississauga. The controversial Brit was speaking from New York City because the Canada Border Service Agency ruled he was a threat to our national security and banned him from entering the country. “What was meant as a four-city tour has turned into a national and international story. Mr. Kenney, thank-you for giving the anti-war movement such a tremendous boost with your eternal blundering,” said Galloway.
