Read the following: One could not make this up…
Auschwitz survivor: ‘Israel acts like Nazis’: HeralScotland
Dr Hajo Meyer’s lecture tour includes three dates in Scotland
Exclusive: Graeme Murray and Chris Watt
Published on 24 Jan 2010
One of the last remaining Auschwitz survivors has launched a blistering attack on Israel over its occupation of Palestine as he began a lecture tour of Scotland.
Dr Hajo Meyer, 86, who survived 10 months in the Nazi death camp, spoke out as his 10-day tour of the UK and Ireland – taking in three Scottish venues – got under way. His comments sparked a furious reaction from hardline Jewish lobby groups, with Dr Meyer branded an “anti-Semite” and accused of abusing his position as a Holocaust survivor.
Dr Meyer also attended hearings at Edinburgh Sheriff Court on Thursday, where five pro-Palestine campaigners are accused of racially aggravated conduct after disrupting a concert by the Jerusalem Quartet at the city’s Queen’s Hall.
Speaking as his tour got under way, Dr Meyer said there were parallels between the treatment of Jews by Germans in the Second World War and the current treatment of Palestinians by Israelis.
He said: “The Israelis tried to dehumanise the Palestinians, just like the Nazis tried to dehumanise me. Nobody should dehumanise any other and those who try to dehumanise another are not human.
“It may be that Israel is not the most cruel country in the world … but one thing I know for sure is that Israel is the world champion in pretending to be civilised and cultured.”
Dr Meyer was born in 1924 in Bielefeld, Germany. He was not allowed to attend school there after November 1938. He then fled to the Netherlands, alone. In 1944, after a year in the underground, he was caught by the Gestapo and survived 10 months at Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland.
He now lives in the Netherlands, and is the author of three books on Judaism, the Holocaust and Zionism.
Dr Meyer also insisted the definition of “anti-Semitic” had now changed, saying: “Formerly an anti-Semite was somebody who hated Jews because they were Jews and had a Jewish soul. But nowadays an anti-Semite is somebody who is hated by Jews.”
A spokesman for the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, of which Dr Meyer is a member, said criticising Israel was “not the same” as criticising Jews.
Mick Napier, Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign chairman and one of the five demonstrators facing charges when the court case continues in March, said: “Palestinians are happy to have him as an ally in their cause.
“Hajo knows that Israel has a long history of abusing the tragic history of the Holocaust in order to suppress legitimate criticism of its own crimes.
“Especially since Gaza, people are no longer taken in by their claim that anyone that criticises Israel is anti-Semitic.”
Dr Meyer’s claims met with a furious reaction from pro-Israel groups, who branded him “a disgrace”.
Jonathan Hoffman, co-vice-chairman of the Zionist Federation, said: “I shall be telling him he is abusing his status as a survivor, and I shall be telling him that if Israel had been created 10 years earlier, millions of lives might have been saved.
“Whether he is a survivor or not, to use Nazi comparisons in relation to Israel’s policies is anti-Semitic, unquestionably.”
The tour was cynically timed, Mr Hoffman added, to coincide with Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27.
Dr Ezra Golombok, Scottish spokesman for the Israel Information Office, accused the anti-zionist lobby of “exploiting” Dr Meyer, who he described as someone “who’s got into a situation he doesn’t understand”.
“This is a propaganda exercise by Mick Napier and his friends, and nothing more. It’s preposterous to compare Israel with Nazi tactics.”
The lecture series, entitled Never Again – For Anyone, continues until January 30.
While it is interesting to see the junk published about one in the Israeli press, it would be even better if they got the spelling of my name right…
UK boycott initiator slams Ariel university : YNet
Israeli-British Prof. Haim Bereshit slams ‘war criminal Barak, suggests he ‘occupy additional territories and declare universities there as well’
LONDON – Israeli-British Professor Haim Bereshit, one of the initiators of the British academic boycott against Israel more than two years ago, had slammed Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s decision to recognize the Ariel College as a university.
“There are thousands of professors living in Israel, many of them known worldwide. If they eat this vermin, we will continue to act against the Israeli academia as an agent of the occupation,” he told Ynet on Friday.
Leftist members of Knesset and Arab parties protest defense minister’s decision first published in Ynet to recognize Ariel College as university. Meretz chairman: Hard to find differences between Barak and Netanyahu. Initiative also advocates establishing university in Nazareth
“We are deluding ourselves that Israel is a normal country, because in a normal country the defense minister does not deal with university permits, and particularly not in an illegal university in occupied territories,” Bereshit argued.
On Wednesday, five years after the Israeli government decided to declare the Ariel College a recognized university, the defense minister agreed to implement the decision that was part of the political clashes within the coalition.
In the first stage, the college will be officially recognized as a “university center”, as it defines itself today, and another discussion will be held in several years ahead of making it Israel’s eighth university.
Bereshit used particularly blatant words to describe the move: “We are unfazed by the fact that an Israeli general, a war criminal, declares a university. Perhaps in order to expand the education institutions, he will think it right to occupy additional territories and declare universities in those places as well.
“The most serious thing, which should not be seen as insignificant, is the fact that there is an educational institution in occupied territories,” Bereshit claimed. “We in the British professors’ organization have not waited and have worked even before this happened to include the Ariel College in the ‘gray list’, which does not allow academic institutions to have any ties with this institution. This is in fact a boycott process, although it is not defined as such due to the complexity of this matter.”
According to the professor, academic institutions in South Africa were included in the same list during the apartheid era.
“I have never heard of any academic institution or academic organization in Israel adopting a resolution against the killing of innocent civilians in Gaza, or any mass student protests on this matter, and this leads me to believe that no one cares,” Bereshit accused. He added that the Israeli population was one of the best in the world in terms of academic training.
Palestinians: Netanyahu’s claim to West Bank destroys peace efforts: Haaretz
The Palestinian Authority on Sunday condemned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for taking part in a tree planting ceremony in a West Bank settlement bloc, saying the move undermined efforts to return to the negotiating table.
“This is an unacceptable act that destroys all the efforts being exerted by Senator [George] Mitchell in order to bring the parties back to the negotiating table,” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ aide Nabil Abu Rudeineh said, referring to U.S. President Barack Obama’s special Middle East envoy.
Contacts with the Americans would continue, Rudeina said, but a return to negotiations with Israel appeared unlikely anytime soon.
Netanyahu pledged on Sunday that Israel would keep parts of the West Bank forever, planting trees in a settlement bloc to reaffirm a land claim long rooted in Israeli government policy.
“Our message is clear: We are planting here, we will stay here, we will build here, this place will be an inseparable part of the State of Israel for eternity,” Netanyahu said in the Gush Etzion enclave.
Speaking after meeting Mitchell in Jerusalem, Netanyahu vowed Israel would also keep its two biggest West Bank settlements, Maale Adumim and Ariel.
His comments came as no surprise to the Palestinians, who were put on notice by previous Israeli leaders that Israel intended to hang on to major settlement blocs in the West Bank in any future peace accord.
Criticized by settler leaders for ordering in November – under U.S. pressure – a slowdown in constructing settlements, Netanyahu visited the West Bank to plant trees marking Israel’s arbor day.
He made the symbolic visit just hours after meeting Mitchell, who has been trying to revive talks on Palestinian statehood suspended for the past 13 months.
“Today I heard some interesting ideas for renewing the [peace] process,” Netanyahu said at the weekly meeting of his cabinet, without elaborating.
“I also expressed my hope that these new ideas will allow for the renewal of the process. Certainly if the Palestinians express a similar readiness, then we will find ourselves in a diplomatic process,” Netanyahu said.
Mitchell told Palestinian leaders on Friday they must resume talks with Israel if they want U.S. help to achieve a peace treaty that creates a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The Palestinians refuse to talk with Israel until it stops all settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, areas it captured in the 1967 Six-Day War.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas repeated that demand in talks later on Sunday with Mitchell in Amman, a spokesman for Abbas said.
“It’s premature to talk about a real breakthrough,” said the spokesman, Nabil Abu Rdainah. “President Abbas reassured [Mitchell] about his commitment to peace.”
Mitchell also gave no sign that any progress had been made, telling told reporters in the Jordanian capital he had a “productive meeting” with Abbas on a full range of issues, and that he looked forward to continuing their discussions.
Netanyahu has said the housing-start freeze he ordered in West Bank settlements, other than those around Jerusalem, for 10 months was aimed at reviving peace negotiations.
Despite U.S. pressure, Abbas has not relented on settlements, citing a 2003 peace “road map” obliging Israel to freeze “all settlement activity” and the Palestinian Authority to begin “dismantlement of terrorist capabilities and infrastructure”.
The World Court has ruled that Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are illegal. Many Jewish settlers claim a God-given right to the West Bank, which they call by the biblical names Judea and Samaria
Good news for Zionism – antisemitism is spreading… But read this through, to realise how misleading and enraging this presentation is:
More global anti-Semitic incidents reported in 2009 than any year since WWII: Haaretz
Annual Jewish Agency report cites poll finding 42% of West Europeans believe Jews exploit past to extort money.
Nearly half of Western European believe that Jews exploit the persecution of their past as a method of extorting money, according to an annual Jewish Agency report released on Sunday.
A joint report on anti-Semitism conducted by the Agency and the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs found that 42 percent of those polled by the University of Bielefeld in Germany agreed that “Jews exploit the past to extort money.”
he countries in which the highest percentage of the population agreed with that statement were Poland and Spain.
According to the Jewish Agency, there were more anti-Semitic incidents in 2009 than in any year since the Second World War. In the first three months of 2009 – immediately following Israel’s three-week offensive on the Gaza Strip – there were as many anti-Semitic incidents recorded as in the entire year of 2008.
In France, for example, there were 631 anti-Semitic incidents recorded in the first half of 2009, compared to 474 in all of 2008.
Worldwide, eight people were killed in attacks last year.
The report indicates that there were two murders linked with anti-Semitism in the United States in 2009 – one of a female university student in Connecticut and the other of a non-Jewish guard at the Holocaust museum in Washington, D.C.
This rise in anti-Semitism is stemming from both the political Left and Right, according to the Jewish Agency.
At the press conference at which the report was released, officials referred to a film that has been making the rounds in recent days that charges Israel with stealing organs at the IDF hospital in Haiti
Sock! Horror! Amazing surprise! The most unbeleivable story below:
Israel official reply on Goldstone Gaza report: Probe biased, flawed: Haaretz
Israel was set to submit its rebuttal on Thursday to a United Nations report accusing it of having committed war crimes in Gaza last winter. Though the Israeli response has been kept under wraps, it is expected to list the essential flaws in the report and explain why the report is biased against Israel and tainted with many problems.
By February 5, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was to file a compilation of all the responses to the report, authored by renowned South African jurist Richard Goldstone.
In its rebuttal, Israel was to explain the reasons behind the offensive in the Gaza Strip and what it terms the hardships of fighting against a terror organization that operates inside civilian homes, schools, hospitals and UN facilities.
Israel launched its three-week offensive in Gaza in December 2008 in an effort to halt near daily rocket fire from the coastal strip onto its southern communities.
The Goldstone report has demanded that both Israel and Hamas carry out independent investigations into the war crimes allegations it raises. It has not yet been decided whether, in its rebuttal, Israel will inform Ban that it will not carry out any investigations beyond the military probe already completed. It is also not yet clear whether Israel will eventually establish an investigation committee to neutralize the effect of the Goldstone report and to ward off possible UN resolutions that could stem from it.
Officers involved in writing the rebuttal gave the New York Times some details.
One concerned the destruction of Gaza’s sole flour mill, the New York Times reported on Saturday. In its rebuttal, Israel will apparently offer photographic proof contradicting the Goldstone report allegation that the Bader flour mill “was hit by an airstrike, possibly by an F-16.” Israeli investigators say they can prove the mill was accidentally hit by artillery during the course of a firefight with Hamas militiamen, the paper reported.
The distinction is significant, the paper continued, since the UN report asserts that “the destruction of the mill was carried out for the purpose of denying sustenance to the civilian population,” an explicit war crime.
Another detail disclosed to the New York Times concerns the destruction of a wastewater plant, which led to a massive flooding of raw sewage. The Goldstone report argues that Israel deliberately hit the plant, while Israel denies any connection to the incident and suggests the plant may have been destroyed by Hamas explosives.
And another amazing surprise… don’t we know that Jews and Gypsies are responsible for crimes?
Poll: Most Israelis think immigrants to blame for rising crime: Haaretz
A majority of the Israeli public believes that immigrants from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia have contributed to a rise in crime and alcoholism among teenagers, according to a poll set for release this week.
Despite this, 73 percent of Israelis think that immigration is essential for Israel.
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These findings are from a poll on immigration and racism taken in advance of the third Immigration and Absorption conference which begins Monday in Ashdod.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky will participate in the conference along with Absorption Ministry officials.
The following Haaretz editorial is most welcome, but will change, nothing, of course.
Israel must comply with UN, probe Goldstone report: Haaretz Editorial
Next week the deadline expires for both Israel and Hamas to investigate the Goldstone report’s accusations regarding violations of the laws of war and perhaps even the commission of war crimes during Operation Cast Lead. On November 3, 2009 the United Nations General Assembly approved by a large majority a resolution directing the organization’s secretary general to report to the plenum on the conclusions of these investigations within three months, after which the Security Council is to take up the matter.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has only a few days left to halt Israel’s slide down the slippery slope of its fight to bring down the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip. As Haaretz revealed last week, the decision by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in October to ask the United Nations Human Rights Council to postpone the vote on the Goldstone report followed a threat by Shin Bet security service head Yuval Diskin to “turn the West Bank into a second Gaza.” The deferment caused a great deal of damage to Abbas’ already shaky status with the Palestinian public, and did not lift the heavy cloud of suspicion hanging over Israel.
Instead of wasting the little remaining time with further attacks on the credibility of Judge Richard Goldstone, the prime minister would be well advised to heed the advice of several public figures, among them former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak and Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor, a former justice minister, and immediately appoint a state commission of inquiry. The U.S. administration also is urging the Israeli government to treat the UN General Assembly resolution with appropriate gravity, and warning that in the absence of an internal inquiry the United States will find it difficult to stop the snowball of the Goldstone report.
Even if the prime minister is convinced that the UN has it in for Israel, he must respect the organization’s resolutions. How can he demand the international community’s enforcement of the UN resolutions on Iran while Israel itself is violating that body’s resolutions? But an Israeli investigation is needed not only out of fear of the International Criminal Court and of the arrest of Israelis abroad; the Israeli public has the right to know whether the country’s leaders and military obeyed the laws of war and moral principles during the operation in Gaza. That is the way to avoid the next Goldstone report.
Gaza’s thin red line one year later: The Electronic Intifada
Eva Bartlett, 22 January 2010
“The last Israeli attacks were the hardest, the most dangerous. It wasn’t a war, it was a massacre. They shot anyone walking, anyone outside of their home, in their home … it didn’t matter. And it didn’t matter if the victims were children or adults; there was no difference.”
Ali Khalil, 47, has served as a medic with the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) and private hospitals in Gaza for more than 20 years. He has seen some of the worst atrocities committed by the Israeli army. During Israel’s war on Gaza last winter, Khalil worked in Gaza’s northern region, venturing repeatedly into high-risk areas bombarded by Israeli tanks, helicopters and warplanes to rescue the injured and retrieve the dead.
During the 23-day invasion, the Israeli army warplanes, drones, warships, tanks and snipers rendered entire areas off-limits and impossible for ambulances and civil defense fire and rescue trucks to reach. In the north, Ezbet Abed Rabbo and Attatra, east and northwest of Jabaliya, respectively, were among the districts occupied by the Israeli army.
Through the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Palestinian rescuers were sometimes able to coordinate with the Israeli army to gain access to areas they controlled.
“We’d wait five hours, even over 30 hours, for coordination from the Israelis to enter the area to retrieve wounded or martyred,” says Khalil. “And much of the time, we wouldn’t get it.”
Even coordination, however, did not ensure access or safety.
“On 9 January, we went to retrieve wounded and martyred. There were three ambulances, and one ICRC jeep in front. We had coordination via the ICRC,” says Khalil.
Marwan Hammouda, 33, a PRCS medic for the last 10 years, was on the same call. “We were driving to the area, speaking with the Israelis on the phone. They’d tell us which way to drive, what road to take. When we got near the wounded, Israeli soldiers started firing. I told them, ‘We have coordination’ and they said to wait. Then they began firing at us again.”
Emergency workers under fire
According to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), that same day, 9 January, Israeli soldiers fired on a convoy of 11 ambulances led by a clearly marked ICRC vehicle in central Gaza, injuring an ICRC staff member and damaging the vehicle.
This was not the only that occasion emergency medics came under fire. During the invasion, Israeli forces killed 16 medical rescuers, four in one day alone. Another 57 were injured. At least 16 ambulances were damaged with at least nine completely destroyed.
Although the Geneva Conventions explicitly state that “medical personnel searching, collecting, transporting or treating the wounded should be protected and respected in all circumstances,” throughout Israel’s invasion this was not the case. Indeed, as the injured and emergency workers testify, Israeli forces targeted and prevented medical workers from reaching the wounded.
“If we can’t even access areas with ICRC coordination, how are we supposed to help people?” asks Khalil.
Without coordination, many ambulances did not dare risk Israeli gunfire and shelling, meaning hundreds of calls went unanswered, according to PCHR. Denied medical care, many victims succumbed to their wounds.
It was days before ambulances could reach the bodies of at least five members of the Abu Halima family who were killed when Israeli shelling and white phosphorous struck their home. In addition, two young male cousins, Matar and Muhammad, were shot dead by Israeli soldiers as they tried to drive a tractor-pulled wagon carrying the injured and martyred.
Ambulances trying to answer the calls were fired upon by machine guns and further shelling. Ali Khalil is still traumatized by what he and other emergency workers finally found days later.
“I brought back baby Shahed’s burned, gnawed corpse.”
The infant body that Khalil carried out, burned by white phosphorous, left in the tractor wagon, had been partially eaten by stray dogs.
“For the rest of my life I’ll remember that day. I’ll never get over it.”
Khalil is among many veteran medics who feel all the emergency workers need counseling for the stresses and traumas endured in their work.
Ahmed Abu Foul in the destroyed Palestine Red Crescent Society station, Ezbet Abed Rabbo.
The ambulance which Arafa Abd al-Dayem was loading when he was fatally struck by an Israeli-fired dart bomb.
Ahmed Abu Foul, 26, works as a medic and coordinator of all the PRCS volunteers in northern Gaza. He also works as a medic and coordinator with the Civil Defense, Gaza’s fire and rescue services. He is newly a father of a baby girl.
Abu Foul has narrowly escaped death while working on many occasions, and his body bears the scars of Israeli-fired bullet, shrapnel and flechette (dart bomb) injuries. In the last invasion alone, Abu Foul was twice targeted by snipers, was at the Fakhoura school when it was hit by white phosphorous shells on 6 January, and was in a building that was being bombed while emergency workers tried to evacuate the victims. In the latter incident, Abu Foul’s colleague was killed and Abu Foul was lacerated with shrapnel to the leg and head.
Despite his many close calls, Abu Foul maintains a convincingly cheerful attitude, and continues to work full time for both the Civil Defense and the PRCS. However, he admits the psychological and physical pain have not abated since the last Israeli attacks.
“My left leg is useless. When I walk too much, the pain becomes unbearable and my leg won’t support me. There’s still shrapnel in it, and the nerves were badly damaged by the shrapnel.”
It’s the same leg that was shot in May 2008 while Abu Foul was on a mission for PRCS, he says. Just above the support bandage around his calf, a hollow in his leg above his kneecap shows where the bullet bored straight through.
“A doctor here said he could remove the shrapnel and repair the nerves, but wanted to open it up from my foot all the way to my thigh,” he says of his recent injury.
“I have pain in my head also, especially when it is sunny,” he adds. “There’s still shrapnel in it from the shelling, although doctors already removed three pieces.”
He endures both injuries, waiting for specialists and the means outside of Gaza to remove the shrapnel. “It’s too dangerous here; we don’t have the means nor the medical equipment to locate the shrapnel before removing it.”
Medical shortages under siege
Under siege since after Hamas’ election in early 2006, Gaza is still not receiving all the necessary medical supplies needed, nor the spare parts to repair aged machinery. Doctors, unable to leave Gaza, cannot obtain advanced and specialized training. The health care system, post-invasion and under siege, is in more dire condition than before the Israeli attacks one year ago. According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, stocks of 141 types of medicines are depleted, as are 116 types of essential medical supplies.
Aside from Abu Foul’s very present physical pain, it is memories of the wounded, the martyred, and the loss of his colleagues that still troubles him.
“I was with Dr. Issa Saleh coming down the stairs from the sixth floor of an apartment building in Jabaliya, evacuating a martyr, when the Israelis again shelled the building. They knew there were medics inside. They could see our uniforms and the ambulances outside. Dr. Saleh was hit by the missile.”
Abu Foul describes in testimony to the al-Mezan Center for Human Rights how he believed he’d been mortally wounded.
“I put my hand on the back of my head and I found blood and brain. I then saw Dr. Issa had been decapitated and realized it must have been his head hitting my head and his brain on the back of my head.”
Just days earlier, Abu Foul and other medics came under heavy Israeli fire for several minutes as they attempted to reach the injured.
The extreme stress and loss have manifested in Abu Foul’s daily life. “I feel as though I don’t care about anything now. Now, when I get angry I find myself hitting and throwing things. I feel nervous and I shout a lot now,” he told al-Mezan.
Yet Abu Foul takes his role as an emergency rescuer seriously and is not daunted in his work, in spite of how it has affected his personal life. Abu Foul now continues to seek replacement equipment, requesting delegations visiting Gaza to bring any sort of emergency equipment.
“Ten out of sixteen fire engines are functional. We need fire hoses, spotlights for the trucks, handheld spotlights for searching in the dark, chemical extinguishing spray, electric saws for cutting through wreckage …” The list is long and seems impossible when the Israeli siege on Gaza is tighter than ever.
A Palestine Red Crescent Society ambulance, destroyed by Israeli bombing at the al-Quds hospital and PRCS station, Tel al-Hawa, Gaza City.
Duty calls
“Each invasion becomes harder than the last,” says Marwan Hammouda. Like his colleagues, Hammouda has no fear of death, and like them he has a history of injuries in the line of work, the latest being a gunshot to his left foot when the ambulance he was driving came under Israeli fire in Jabaliya.
Since Israel’s invasion, Hammouda has developed a thyroid disorder, a condition doctors say is a result of post-traumatic stress.
“You saw the last war,” he says. “There was nowhere safe, not homes, not schools, not kindergartens, not media buildings.” And not ambulances.
“So do I want to die in my home, or in my work, at least helping people who have been injured?” Hammouda asks. “The Israelis don’t have any respect for international law. And I have absolutely no confidence that things will change because American politicians give sweet speeches.”
“My children got used to the idea that I could die at any moment in our work,” says the father of six. “During the Israeli attacks, I only saw them for five or ten minutes a day. Some days I didn’t see them at all because I was always with the ambulances.”
Hassan al-Attal, 35, a father of three, was shot by an Israeli sniper while carrying a body from Zimmo crossroads east of Jabaliya back towards the wailing, flashing ambulance.
Since the Israeli tanks rolled in with the land invasion after the first week of aerial bombardment, injured and trapped residents of Ezbet Abed Rabbo — one of the hardest-hit areas during the Israeli attacks — had been calling for ambulances to evacuate the wounded and the dead. In almost all cases, emergency rescuers were unable to reach these calls, hindered by Israeli army shooting and shelling.
A medic for ten years, Attal has on many occasions come under Israeli fire and aggression while working.
His gunshot injury during the 7 January mission at 1:30pm came during Israel’s self-declared “humanitarian cease-fire hours,” when civilians were told they could safely walk the streets to buy food supplies or otherwise leave their homes.
After carrying the corpse only a few meters, Israeli sniper fire broke out on Attal and Jamal Said, 21, the volunteer with him.
“We came under heavy fire, around 20 shots. I was shot in the left thigh,” says Attal.
Hazem Graith, 35, a father of four and a medic with the PRCS since 1999, worked in Gaza’s north during the Israeli attacks.
Like most medics, Graith came to the profession out of a sense of obligation to his community. “Because I love to help people,” he says.
Graith too has come under Israeli fire on many occasions. However, he is quick to emphasize that while the Israeli attacks on rescuers during last winter’s invasion were the most savage and numerous yet, they were not isolated incidents. Rather, they were part of a larger Israeli policy of denying access of emergency personnel to the wounded which dates back to the beginning of the second Palestinian intifada in September 2000.
Targeting hospitals and medical facilities
In addition to attacking rescuers, Israeli warplanes and tanks attacked medical facilities and clinics during the Israeli war on Gaza. An investigative report published by the Guardian in March 2009 found that 15 of Gaza’s 27 hospitals were bombed, and another 44 clinics were damaged — two destroyed completely — although the Israeli military knew the coordinates of all the facilities.
On 15 January, the al-Quds hospital complex in Tel al-Hawa was shelled repeatedly, including with white phosphorous, causing fires to break out, extensive damage and forced the evacuation of all patients from the hospital.
The al-Wafa rehabilitation hospital in eastern Gaza — the only one of its kind in the entire territory — was attacked on the night of 15 January by tank shelling, including with phosphorous, and machine gun fire. Hospital residents included the disabled and immobile patients, as well as the elderly. Fire broke out on the roof of the hospital, and most buildings in the complex sustained extensive damage.
When medics were forced to evacuate the Ezbet Abed Rabbo PRCS station on the second day of the land invasion, the small band of ambulances temporarily stationed outside of Hamid’s home in Jabaliya. Days later, they moved to Beit Lahia’s al-Awda hospital, where they were based for the rest of the Israeli attacks.
“It was the most dangerous invasion we faced. Everywhere was dangerous, there was no safe place. Especially after 4pm it was extremely dangerous to be on the streets. But if we didn’t go out, who would help the people?”
Dodging missiles and gunfire on the streets and at attack sites, medics were further hounded at their temporary station at al-Awda hospital.
“The Israelis launched missiles on al-Awda, a hospital. Fortunately no one was killed in that attack, but it’s a hospital, and our ambulance base,” says Hamid.
Lost colleagues
Khaled Abu Sada, 43, another long-term medic, will never forget the Israeli attack that savagely martyred his colleague Arafa Abd al-Dayem.
On 4 January, at around 10am, medics Sada, Abd al-Dayem and PRCS volunteer Ala Sarhan, 23, answered the call of civilians targeted by Israeli tank shelling in northern Gaza’s Beit Lahiya.
As they brought the injured and martyred to the ambulance, the medic team was struck by an Israeli tank-fired dart bomb. The flechettes, just two inches long and dart-shaped, are designed to bore through anything, to break apart upon impact, to ensure maximum damage. Arafa Abd al-Dayem, 35, a father of four and volunteer medic for eight years, was shredded by the darts.
Abu Sada testified to the Guardian: “I came round here and found Arafa kneeling down with his hands in the air and praying to God. They found his body full of these nails. The guy that had been brought to the ambulance was in pieces. He was now missing his head and both his legs.”
Arafa Abd al-Dayem went into shock and died an hour or so after the attack, while Ala Sarhan was paralyzed by the injuries sustained in the attack.
Arafa Abd al-Dayem, the night before he was killed by Israeli fire while on duty.
The first night of Israel’s land invasion during last winter’s attacks; the Ezbet Abed Rabbo PRCS station had to be evacuated because of Israeli shelling.
Powerless to help
Ashraf al-Khatib has been a medic for 11 years. During the Israeli attacks, he worked at Rafah’s PRCS station. “On 15 January we got a call from a man who said his brother was dead and he was injured by multiple Israeli gunshots. Ahmed and Ibrahim Thabet didn’t know the Israeli army were nearby when they rode their motorcycle through a district of eastern Rafah.”
Called at 11am, al-Khatib attempted to get Israeli coordination via the ICRC to reach the injured man.
“We tried for hours. Ibrahim kept calling us, crying, panicked. We explained we couldn’t reach the area because of the Israeli army. We told him how to stop his bleeding to his chest and leg until we arrived.”
Unable to wait any longer, al-Khatib and colleagues made the decision to risk going without Israeli coordination.
“I told them, we may die. But we agreed to go.”
Two ambulances reached the area and brought out the dead and injured men.
“We had snipers trained on us, lasers on our foreheads and chest,” he says.
Having reached the Thabet brothers, the medics saw more victims.
“It was a busy area. People didn’t know there were Israeli snipers nearby.”
But because of renewed Israeli firing, al-Khatib’s ambulances were forced to retreat, leaving the victims behind.
Al-Khatib recalls another well-known case in Gaza, that of the Shurrab family in Rafah.
“We got a call from Muhammad Shurrab saying he and his sons had been evicted from their home by Israeli soldiers, then shot. They were all living but injured,” he explained.
The family waited, trapped between an Israeli tank and their home, bleeding of their injuries, he says.
“We went, when we tried to reach them Israeli soldiers fired on us, so we retreated and tried to get coordination. Shurrab would call every so often; I’d tell him to be patient while we tried. It was winter, so in addition to their injuries, they were freezing.”
Al-Khatib relates the saga which went on through the night.
“Later, the father called to say one son had died. We called Al-Jazeera television and told them the Israelis were preventing us from reaching Shurrab. Al-Jazeera took his mobile number and interviewed him live on the air. By that time his second son had died. Twelve hours later the Israelis finally allowed us to reach him, but his sons were both dead.”
Al-Khatib says this was the worst challenge he has faced as a medic.
“I knew they were injured but there was no way to reach them, then the kids died. The Israeli army was playing with us,” he says.
Muhammad, who declined to give his last name, 30, a volunteer medic and ambulance driver at the Tel al-Hawa PRCS station, was among the team sent to retrieve injured from the Samouni neighborhood in Zaytoun, eastern Gaza, while the attacks were still raging.
“When we arrived, we saw two tanks and a bulldozer between the trees. The tanks aimed their machine guns at the ambulance and the Israelis told us to continue forward. We went about 500 meters. Suddenly 20 or 30 soldiers appeared on foot and surrounded the ambulance, pointing their guns at us. They told me to get out of the ambulance, slowly. I did. They told me to take off my clothes. I did, at the same time telling them we’d come to bring out injured.”
They ordered his colleague Rami, a volunteer medic, to get out and strip his clothes.
“They forced us to lie on the ground.”
For the next 30 minutes, Muhammad says, they lay on the cold ground in their underwear, soldiers sitting on their backs, guns trained on them.
“Finally, after maybe 30 minutes, they let us go. But they didn’t let us retrieve the injured or the children.”
“Why shoot at ambulances?”
Throughout Gaza, during and before Israel’s latest invasion there, stories of detention, attack, delay and bombardment of stations of both medic rescuers and the Civil Defense abound. Despite the scale of the aggression, the last Israeli war on Gaza was not a precedent for emergency workers, but the continuation of a deeply-entrenched Israeli policy violating international law.
In April 2009, journalist Amira Hass reported in the Israeli daily Haaretz finding a note in Gaza ordering soldiers to “open fire also upon rescue.” Written in Hebrew, Hass reports that the note was found in a home occupied by Israeli forces during the war on Gaza. A military spokesperson, she writes, denied the note represents official Israeli army policy. But the facts on the ground and bodies in the graveyard point to a different conclusion.
Although one year has passed since the Israeli invasion, throughout Gaza the psychological wounds are still wide open. For the emergency rescuers, the prospect of the next Israeli attack is all too real and all too routine.
“Nothing is forbidden here, there is no international law where Israel is concerned. Even though the Geneva Conventions say we have the right to reach the wounded, Israel does not pay attention to international law,” says medic Hazem Graith.
Like Hammouda, Graith speaks wryly of the Israeli explanation for such attacks.
“Why shoot at ambulances? Why destroy them? Why kill medics?” he asks. “The Israelis say we are militants or are carrying militants, that’s the reason they give for targeting medics. Lies, all lies. In our ambulances there are only ever wounded or martyred.”
While the destruction of ambulances is a major obstacle to medics’ work, Graith calls for more than mere aid.
“We don’t want new ambulances from the international community. We want you to see what Israel does and apply pressure to stop Israel from firing on ambulances.”
He emphasizes, “Go to the root of the problem.”
Eva Bartlett is a Canadian human rights advocate and freelancer who arrived in Gaza in November 2008 on the third Free Gaza Movement boat. She has been volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement and documenting Israel’s ongoing attacks on Palestinians in Gaza. During Israel’s recent assault on Gaza, she and other ISM volunteers accompanied ambulances and documenting the Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip.
Ariel College student says taken off bus for speaking Arabic: IOA
Ariel College student says taken off bus for speaking Arabic: YNet
Israel-Arab claims she was humiliated by two security guards who ordered her off bus after hearing her speak Arabic on cell phone. College: First such incident in 15 years
An Arab-Israel student at the Ariel College in the West Bank claimed she was told to get off a bus because she “dared” to speak Arabic on her cell phone.
Hanin Muslah said that during Thursday’s incident she was also subjected to a full body search.
Muslah, who is originally from the Wadi Ara area and is studying for a degree in engineering at the establishment’s architecture and interior design department, said two armed security guards boarded the bus near a checkpoint as it was leaving Ariel. She claimed that the guards questioned her after hearing her speak Arabic and eventually ordered her to get off the bus.
UK boycott initiator slams Ariel university recognition / Hagit Klaiman
Israeli-British Prof. Haim Bereshit slams ‘war criminal Barak, suggests he ‘occupy additional territories and declare universities there as well’
“As I was talking on my cell I noticed they were pointing at me,” said Muslah, who takes the same bus home every day. “I started to cry. I have never been so humiliated in my entire life. They took me off the bus in the middle of nowhere. I told them, ‘I’m an Israeli, just like you are, so why are you treating me like this? Why take me off the bus in such a degrading manner?'”
“I don’t wear a veil or traditional dresses; I don’t look Arab,” said the student, “I was taken off the bus only because I spoke Arabic.”
The Ariel Municipality said the guards in question work for a security company that operates “according to IDF guidelines,” adding that “non-Jewish citizens, including students, pass through Ariel’s gate every day.”
Ariel College said in response that the establishment’s Arab-Israeli students make up four percent of the entire student body. “Many of them live in the dorms and are involved in the student community and the city itself. We regret the incident and will check it with the company responsible for security at the roadblock. This is the first time since Arab students began enrolling in the institution (15 years ago) that such an incident has taken place,” it said.
Despite the college’s claim, Muslah said other female Arab students have also been humiliated at the Ariel checkpoints, adding that they are considering taking legal action.
“Israel’s Arabs – they are not a threat. They only want to go about their business in peace,” she said.
The intro below evaluates Zvi Barel’s article in Haaretz, and was written by Omar Barghouti of
A relatively daring article — by Israeli standards, that is — that delves into the hypocrisy of the so-called Israeli “left.” It is still stuck, though, in the occupation paradigm, as if everything Israeli outside the realm of occupation is kosher!
The author, for instance, leaves out the other two major forms of Israeli oppression stated in the BDS Call, namely denial of the UN-sanctioned refugee rights to return and the system of apartheid inside Israeli itself. In fact, ignoring those and diverting attention to the occupation alone is another form of patent Israeli-left double standard, to put it mildly.
All the buzz about Ariel in the Israeli academy and intellectual ivory tower is mainly due to pragmatic reasons, as this article amply explains, never out of principle. But that is self-consistent, at least! For how can an academic at Tel Aviv University, say, have the chutzpah to condemn Ariel “University Center” simply because it is illegally built on occupied Palestinian land? Wasn’t Tel Aviv University also built on ethnically cleansed, occupied and illegally expropriated land of the Palestinian village, Sheikh Muwannis, a fact that TAU refuses to even acknowledge? Doesn’t the pride of the Israeli academy design weapon systems and develop army doctrines that are used to commit war crimes, as during the massacre in Gaza last year?
And what about Hebrew University, Israel’s most prestigious, with one of its campuses sitting on occupied Palestinian territory in Jerusalem and its dorms, other than being involved in racist admissions policies, constituting arguably a war crime (transferring population from the occupying state to occupied territory)?
And what of the ultra liberal, “post-Zionists” infested Ben Gurion University with its complicity in ethnically cleansing Palestinians in the Naqab (Negev) desert and the collusion of some of its departments even in hiding cancer research results that implicate the Israeli army’s live weapons tests in the soaring incidence of cancer among Bedouin Palestinian communities?
Even a secular person like myself cannot but recall the Bible here:
Let He Who Is Without Sin Cast The First Stone!!
Ariel should be a clear target for the academic boycott simply out of pragmatic considerations, being the easiest target. But anyone with a modicum of moral consistency and a still-functioning faculty of reason cannot but see that all the other Israeli universities should be boycotted as well, for reasons far more sinister than little Ariel’s crimes!
In the Israeli jungle of institutional academic sinners, casting a stone on Ariel college alone is sheer hypocrisy.
Omar
A meeting of minds: Haaretz
By Zvi Bar’el
Much like angry passengers on a bus that skipped their stop, those who are opposed to “the announcement” that Ariel College was upgraded to university status are hanging onto the bumper while shouting at the driver to stop, or else – or else what? This college, which before last week was consistently referred to by its chief officials as “The Ariel University Center of Samaria,” has been in existence since 1982. Has anybody raised a fuss since then over the fact that an Israeli college is even operating in the territories?
In 1992, the year when the college sought academic recognition for its two departments (electrical engineering and electronics, and chemistry and biotechnology), the Council for Higher Education – Judea and Samaria was established. This body was intended to circumvent the fact that the Council for Higher Education’s guidelines do not apply to the territories. The CHE-J&S actually went further. It required the State of Israel to ratify the CHE-J&S law and implement it throughout the country. A law born of occupation morphed into a binding law for all of Israel. From that time forward, has anyone uttered a whisper of protest against this anomaly?
But lest anyone risk sounding political, since we are dealing here with the purity of academe, those who oppose “the university of the settlements” are suddenly perturbed by the academic level of the college. They are particularly disturbed over the prospect that the coffers of the CHE’s planning and budget committee will empty out on account of this academic settlement’s laboratories and classrooms.
When was the last time the commissars of education lodged a complaint over the academic When was the last time the commissars of education lodged a complaint over the academic quality of the Ariel University Center? Is the quality of the college’s students and teachers no less important than that of a university? During a radio interview, even former education minister Yuli Tamir was adamant that “this is an excellent college – I have no complaints as to the academic level.”
Accusations of substandard quality are intriguing given that they are usually uttered by the institution’s opponents. What it means is that an Israeli academic index must be applied to a college in the territories before it can become a university. Is there a more unadulterated form of annexation?
What about the money? Is that what really disturbs the naysayers all of a sudden? Not the billions of shekels that have been invested in the settlements and used to pave roads leading to nowhere, subsidize security for residents, and, no less, build the grandiose infrastructure upon which rests the Ariel University Center. Whoever is incapable of sticking their finger in the huge dam of money that is pumped into the settlements will find themselves some shelter in a puddle.
If academic purity is the issue, now the naysayers are trotting out another trump card with which to scare us. An international academic boycott will be levied against Israel in the wake of the academic annexation. But what has been the situation thus far? Why haven’t Israeli professors been invited to academic symposia abroad? What was all that anti-Israel noise on the campuses of Norway and Britain about? All of a sudden, the college’s upgraded status to university – and not the sin from which it spawned – has become the national threat.
The boycott stems from the fact that a town like Ariel even exists. It stems from the occupation and from Israel’s insufferable policies in the territories. If the academic community is – rightly – worried about an international boycott, it would behoove it to raise its voice against the continued occupation, the inhumane closure of the Gaza Strip, the denial of the right of Palestinian students to matriculate. It must do so with the same conviction with which it is now objecting to university status for the college in Ariel. The Ariel University Center certainly does not endanger the welfare of Israeli academe more than Rabbi Eliezer Melamed’s hesder yeshiva, or the yeshiva in Hebron.
To this litany of complaints let us add another grievance. How can it be none other than Ehud Barak, the flesh and blood of the left, this pursuer of peace, this Herculean foe of the settlements, this dismantler of outposts, who has now decided to legitimize this ignominy? This is truly unconscionable. If Avigdor Lieberman or Benjamin Netanyahu would have given their blessing, nobody would have uttered a peep. This is because we are a country that loves order, according to which “right is right, and left is left.” What does a priest (Barak) have to do with the settlers’ church of reason?
The main anomaly, however, the one which has Barak continuing in his job as defense minister in a government that includes Lieberman, does not bother them.
Granting university status to the college in Ariel actually did the left a favor. It provided it a playground whose dimensions are befitting and commensurate with its abilities. It allows for a fair amount of breathing space for those who are incapable of contending with the large, cruising settler bus. When the left descends on the streets of Gaza, Abraham’s Tomb in Hebron, or reinforces the ranks of demonstrators in Bil’in, it can also scream toward the walls that surround the college in Ariel.