Month: February 2010

EDITOR: After intense pressure by a large number of organisations and individuals, led by BRICUP (British Committee for Universities in Palestine) the well-known botanist, David Bellamy has pulled out of a ZF event. The ZF now threaten to sue him… nice guys. It is also interesting to find how opponents to Israel are treated.

Zionist Federation may sue David Bellamy over talk pull-out: Jewish Chronicle

The British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (Bricup) has claimed its campaign led TV botanist David Bellamy to pull out of a Zionist Federation science event.
Prof Bellamy was scheduled to be guest speaker at the Israel Blue White and Green event last week, but withdrew offering no explanation for his absence.
The JC understands that the ZF is now considering taking legal action against Prof Bellamy for breach of contract.

Bricup’s Jonathan Rosenhead said there was a “reasonable inference that his withdrawal is related to our letter to him asking him to do so”. Nevertheless, he admitted that the organisation had not had a response from Prof Bellamy.
Bricup supporters including Lord Ahmed and Baroness Tonge had earlier written to the botanist and academic saying he should be “outraged” by the “greenwashing of the occupation”.

Prof Bellamy’s agent, Olivia Guest, this week again declined to clarify why he had not attended the event.
Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, secretary of Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods, (JBIG) was evicted from the session with Israeli scientists after shouting questions about Israel not allowing Palestinians fair access to water. She claimed she was “physically dragged out of the meeting” by CST security staff and “frog-marched up the stairs”.

A second JBIG activist said he had been “carried out” by CST. The pair said they were considering getting legal advice over the evictions.
But a CST spokesman said: “Bricup’s claims are exaggerated and untrue. Nobody was ‘carried’ anywhere.”
Alan Aziz, ZF director, said: “Two people were making speeches and shouting. People asked for them to be removed, we decided to remove them and CST carried out our wishes.”

He said discussions with Prof Bellamy’ agents were continuing.

EDITOR: A film by an Israel ex-paratrooper, Yariv, interviewing his colleagues from the army unit, and getting them to tell the truth about the brutalities and torture involved daily in the occupation, about the sadistic pleasure of oppressing the Palestinians they met every day. After 8 years he brings together some of them to exchange views about the formative experience of their twenties. The details, limited as they are in this 23-minute film, are still horrifying in their brutality; The banality of evil is staring at us from the screen. They admit not just to torture, but to multiple murders of Palestinians by beating this up.

When you watch this film, please do not expect a critique of Israel. It isn’t. Even for those who are prepared to admit the crimes they committed daily, it is not ever possible, it seems, to question the system that brutalised them, that made them into torturers and murderers; they look back with nostalgia, and in the last scene, meeting their commander who is now a Lieutenant Colonel, they all bond as if nothing wrong ever took place. “nothing has changed” they say to each other, as they join an army patrol after 8 years. Nothing indeed has changed to the better, and many things have become worse. Those Israelis cannot, and will not bring change; what they wish for is absolution, the grace of the murderer who is forgiven, but without asking for forgiveness, without facing the fact that they were the system of death and destruction, and the system continues with their support. Deeply depressing.

A Video by an Israeli Ex-soldier

EDITOR: As there are no good news stories to be had this week, the NYT has no news from Israel. Again. Why are we surprised? It is, after all, one of the most potent instruments of the Zionist Lobby, all the more potent for being underplayed and sophisticated. Check for yourself – no Dubai murder, no troubled public:

The New York Times

ne of the most potent instruments of the Zionist Lobby.

http://www.nytimes.com/

Omar Barghouti speaks on the BDS campaign

Omar Barghouti, a key member of PACBI, speaks in a YouTube video about the reasons for the boycott campaign and talks about the progress we have made and what we need to do next.

Daily realities in Palestine: The battle of Al Massara

EDITOR: Video of Israeli military attack on Palestinian nonviolent demonstration at Al-Masara on Friday, February 19, 2010. Without warning the Israeli army shoots concussion grenades and tear gas canisters. These daily brutalities are totally ‘normal’, and happen every day across Palestine.

Today there were demonstrations and confrontations in a number of locations in the occupied West Bank with three enduring particularly vicious Israeli attacks: Ni’lin, Bil’in, Al-Ma’sara.   It is impossible to be in many places at one time so I chose to go to Al-Ma’sara for their weekly demonstration.
There, the demonstrators decided to go on the main street and as soon as we got there, the occupation army attacked the peaceful demonstrators. There were no warnings but immediate volley of concussion grenades and tear gas canisters.  The soldiers chased people into the village and continued firing. I stayed close to the soldiers and tried to reason with them. In one instance they used a stun grenade to prevent me from talking to soldiers who are mindlessly obeying officers.  I could not help think of Nazis and Apartheid soldiers.  I persisted in trying to reason with them. As we were leaving, a higher ranking military intelligence officer stopped me and did get my name and coordinates.

Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh

EDITOR: The Desecration of the Mamila cemetery in the name of ‘Tolerance’

This horrid story would be funny and bizarre, if it wasn’t so cruel and terrifying. The Simon Wiesenthal Centre is building its ‘Museum of Tolerance’ right on the Mamila ancient Moslem cemetery in Jerusalem. Imagine someone building such a museum on a Jewish cemetery somewhere… The Israeli government sees no problem with this – after all, hundreds of such Palestinian cemeteries were desecrated since 1948. The Tel Aviv Hilton and the city’s Independence Park are built on another such cemetery, so what’s the problem, really. Tolerance, naturally, does not extend to Arabs. Tolerance, indeed.

Jerusalem families come out against museum built on ancestors’ graves: The Electronic Intifada

Marian Houk,  19 February 2010

Members of prominent Palestinian families from Jerusalem came out last week in protest against plans by the Simon Wiesenthal Center to build a Museum of Tolerance on top of part of the ancient Mamilla Cemetery where their ancestors are buried.
The initiative includes filing a petition in Geneva to various United Nations human rights bodies and to UNESCO, the Paris-based UN agency responsible for protecting the world’s cultural heritage. The petition was also addressed to the Swiss Government, which is the repository for the Geneva Conventions.

One family member behind the initiative said it is not just symbolic, but instead a full-blown campaign. He expects this issue to be included in a resolution being drafted for a March session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
In the East Jerusalem press conference at which this initiative was announced last week, petitioner Asem Khalidi noted that a number of men from Salah al-Din’s army, who liberated Jerusalem from the Crusaders, were buried in the Mamilla Cemetery.
Much of the momentum behind the initiative comes from Palestinians who grew up and who still live in the Diaspora, many of them in the United States. Press conferences were held in Jerusalem, Geneva and Los Angeles, home of the Simon Wiesenthal Center (and the first Museum of Tolerance, built in 1993), which says it is moving forward with its plans despite passionate legal and moral opposition.

Mamilla Cemetery
The corner of the Mamilla Cemetery slated for construction was paved over in the 1960s, and used as a car park. When excavations began on the site in 2005, human remains were found, and the chief archeologist stated that he believed there were many thousands of graves in many levels in that section of the cemetery.
The cemetery is situated in West Jerusalem, which fell under Israeli control during the fighting that surrounded the proclamation of the self-declared Jewish state in mid-May 1948. There have been no new burials since that time. From the May 1948 war, until the June 1967 war when Israeli forces captured East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank, the cemetery was inaccessible to many if not most of the Palestinian families concerned, who were living under Jordanian administration.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center claims that it has spent a lot of money on reburying — in “a nearby Muslim cemetery” — the remains it has excavated there. However, a press release announcing the initiative of the Palestinian families said that “It was an active burial ground until 1948, when the new State of Israel seized the western part of Jerusalem and the cemetery fell under Israeli control … The construction project has resulted in the disinterment and disposal of hundreds of graves and human remains, the whereabouts of which are currently unknown.”
The Los Angeles-based center broke ground for the Jerusalem branch of the Museum of Tolerance in a corner of the Mamilla Cemetery in May 2004. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger delivered the keynote address.

Families denied justice
There are 60 individual Palestinian petitioners from some 15 Jerusalem families including Adnan Husseini, the Palestinian Authority’s appointed Governor of Jerusalem; AbdulQader Husseini, the son of the late Faisal Husseini, who was the Palestine Liberation Organization representative in Jerusalem; and Sari Nusseibeh, head of Al-Quds University in Abu Dis.

Rashid Khalidi, Professor of History at Columbia University in New York, who is also a petitioner, has been closely involved in organizing this effort. In an interview with Democracy Now! he explained that the petitioners are asking that the Mamilla Cemetery be treated as a heritage site. “This is a cemetery where people have been buried since the 12th century … The fact that it is still being desecrated, not just by this Museum, but by vandalism of the remaining tombs, is a scandal”. He said the families were also asking for “reinterment of the excavated remains under religious supervision”, with information provided to the families about exactly where “within the cemetery.”

Palestinian and Israeli co-petitioners include the organizations Al-Haq, Addameer, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, the Arab Association for Human Rights, Badil and the Zochrot Association.
Because it is in West Jerusalem, Palestinians have been hesitant to take any high-profile action asserting either physical or moral claims.
Until now, much of the opposition to the building plan has come from Israeli and Jewish rights activists who have argued, in part, that the construction on this site offended their Jewish beliefs and values. They have worked through the Israeli court system, and through appeals directed mainly to Israeli and international Jewish public opinion.

Gershon Baskin, co-director and founder of the Israeli Palestinian Center for Research and Information (IPCRI), told this reporter that the first he heard of the Museum of Tolerance project was in newspaper reports of the ground-breaking ceremony. “We came in only after the whole thing was licensed and all the legal proceedings were finished — and this is one argument that the court used against our petitions.”
The Israeli high court has recently dismissed another challenge and ruled that the Museum of Tolerance construction project is legal, and can proceed. Baskin believes that the legal avenues in Israel are now basically now closed.
Meanwhile, a private Palestinian offer to donate an alternative location for the Museum of Tolerance hasn’t been taken up by the Wiesenthal center.

At a public discussion sponsored by IPCRI in East Jerusalem in March 2009, attended by lawyers representing the Wiesenthal Center and the Museum of Tolerance project in West Jerusalem, Dr. Mohammad Dajani of Al-Quds University in Abu Dis offered to donate alternative land for construction of the museum in Anata near the concrete wall that Israel is currently building around the Jerusalem area. The offer was for 12 dunams (one dunam is approximately 1,000 square meters). At that alternative site, Dr. Dajani said to the public meeting, both Israelis and Palestinians could visit the future Museum of Tolerance — which many Palestinians would not be able to do if it were built in the heart of West Jerusalem, as is currently planned.

The lawyers for the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Museum of Tolerance merely smiled, without replying.

About six months ago, Dr. Dajani said, he was surprised by an Israeli military decision to confiscate, “for security reasons,” about half of the parcel of land he had offered for the museum project. Just this past week, he said, he received a new notification that the military intends to take the remaining six or so dunams as well. He said he is challenging the order.

Marian Houk is a journalist currently working in Jerusalem with experience at the United Nations and in the region. Her blog is www.un-truth.com.

Continue reading February 20, 2010

Jonathan Cook: Jaffa struggles to be left in peace: IOA

JAFFA, ISRAEL–Over the past few days graffiti scrawled on walls around the mixed Jewish and Arab town of Jaffa in central Israel exclaims: “Settlers, keep out” and “Jaffa is not Hebron”.
Although Jaffa is only a stone’s throw from the bustling coastal metropolis of Tel Aviv, Arab residents say their neighbourhood has become the unlikely battleground for an attempted takeover by extremist Jews more familiar from West Bank settlements.
Small numbers of nationalist religious Jews, distinctive for wearing knitted skullcaps, have begun moving into Jaffa’s deprived main Arab district, Ajami, over recent months.
Tensions have been simmering since a special seminary was established last year in the heart of Ajami for young Jewish men who combine study of the Bible with serving in the Israeli army. Many such seminaries, known as “hesder yeshivas”, are located in the occupied territories and have earnt a reputation for turning out extremists.
Last week Ajami’s residents were dealt a further blow when an Israeli court approved the sale of one of the district’s few remaining building plots to B’Emuna (Hebrew for “with faith”), a construction company that specialises in building subsidised homes for religious families, many of them in West Bank settlements.
The Association of Civil Rights in Israel, the country’s largest human rights law centre, which petitioned the courts on the Arab residents’ behalf, called the company’s policy “racist”.
B’Emuna, which is expected to complete 20 apartments in the next few months, is applying for approval for a further 180, as well as a second seminary and a synagogue.
“We have no problem living peacefully with Jewish neighbours,” said Omar Siksik, an Arab councillor representing Jaffa in Tel Aviv’s municipality. “But these Jews are coming here as settlers.
“Like in Hebron, their policy is to weaken us as a population and eventually push us out of our homes,” he said, referring to a West Bank city where an enclave of a few dozen settlers has severely disrupted life for tens of thousands of Palestinians.
Jaffa’s fortunes have changed dramatically since early last century when it was the commercial hub of Palestine, famously exporting its orange crop around the world. During Israel’s founding in 1948, most of the town’s Palestinians were expelled or forced to flee, with the few remaining inhabitants confined to Ajami.
Today, Jaffa’s 18,000 Arab inhabitants are outnumbered two to one by Jews, after waves of immigrants were settled in empty homes during the 1950s.
Arab residents have long complained of being neglected by a municipality controlled from Tel Aviv. Ajami’s crumbling homes, ramshackle infrastructure and crime-ridden streets were on show in this year’s much-feted eponymous movie, nominated for an Oscar as best foreign-language film.
But the latest arrivals in Ajami are causing considerable anxiety, even from officials in Tel Aviv. Gilad Peleg, head of the Jaffa Development Authority, said he was “deeply concerned” at the trend of extremist organisations arriving “to shake up the local community”.
Nasmi Jabali, 56, lives in a modest single-storey home close to the olive grove where the new apartments will be built. “We’ve seen on TV how these settlers behave in the occupied territories, and don’t want them living next to us,” she said. “They’ll come here with the same attitudes.”
But despite widespread opposition, the Tel Aviv District Court last week rejected a petition from 27 residents who argued that the Israel Lands Authority had discriminated against them by awarding the land to B’Emuna, even though its policy is to build apartments only for Jews.
Yehuda Zefet, the judge, accused the residents of “bad faith” in arguing for equality when they wanted the interests of the local Arab community to take precedence over the interests of Jews.
Mr Siksik said the judge had failed to take into account the historical injustice perpetrated on Ajami’s population. “For six decades the authorities have not built one new house for the Arab population, and in fact they have demolished many Arab homes, while building social housing for Jews.”
Fadi Shabita, a member of the local Popular Committee for the Defence of Jaffa’s Lands, said the plots in Ajami being sold by the government originally belonged to Palestinian families, some of whom were still in the district but had been forced to rent their properties from the state.
“The land was forcibly nationalised many years ago and the local owners were dispossessed,” he said. “Now the same land is being privatised, but Ajami’s residents are being ignored in the development plans.
“For the settlers, the lesson of the disengagement [from Gaza in 2005] was that they need to begin a dialogue with Jews inside Israel to persuade them that a settlement in the West Bank is no less legitimate than one in Jaffa.”
B’Emuna told Israel National News, a settler website, that it was developing Jewish-only homes in several of the half dozen “mixed cities” in Israel to stem the flow of Jewish residents leaving because of poverty and falling property values caused by the presence of an Arab population.
B’Emuna has said it is looking to buy more land in Jaffa.
A short distance from the olive grove that is about to be developed is the Jewish seminary established last year. An Israeli flag is draped from the front of the building and stars of David adorn the gate at its entrance.
The manager, Ariel Elimelech, who was overseeing two dozen young men on Sunday as they pored over the Torah, said he commuted daily to Ajami from his home in Eli, an illegal settlement deep in the West Bank south of the Palestinian city of Nablus.
Mr Elimelech said he favoured coexistence in Jaffa but added that the seminary’s goal was to strengthen Jewish identity in the area. “We don’t call this place Ajami; it’s known as Givat Aliyah,” he said, using a Hebrew name that refers to the immigration of Jews to Israel.
He said the students performed a vital service by visiting schools to help in the education of Jewish children before performing 18 months of military service.
Kemal Agbaria, who chairs the Ajami neighbourhood council, said residents would launch an appeal to the Supreme Court and were planning large-scale demonstrations to draw attention to their plight.

EDITOR: Meanwhile, on the farm: The great unexplained mysterious killing in Dubai…

When apart from Lieberman’s fingerprints, everything else points to a Mossad murder, Lieberman has an alibi, he was with his wife and friends playing canasta, and ate pizza and he has the the receipt to prove it… It is really beyond belief. But, what difference does it make? Britain and Ireland are keeping mum about Israel using their passports as cover, as are the other countries in Europe. Another example of Israeli exceptionalism. By denying it in this inept manner, Lieberman provides all the proof which is needed in Israel, as one can see from the many articles appearing on all channels, there is not even a single person who doubts this was the Mossad. I suspect there are few outside Israel.

Israel refuses to rule out Mossad plot in Dubai: The Guardian

Israeli foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, says there is no proof Mossad was behind Dubai killing of Hamas commander

Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman broke his government’s silence over the Dubai assassination of a Hamas commander today and said there was no proof the Mossad intelligence agency was behind the killing.

However, he did not explicitly deny any Israeli involvement, saying his government had a “policy of ambiguity” on intelligence issues.

“I don’t know why we take it for granted that it was Israel or Mossad that used those passports or the identities of that British citizen, yes or no. It’s just not correct. Why are we in such a hurry to take all kinds of tasks upon ourselves?” Lieberman said in an interview with Israel’s Army Radio.

He was speaking after details in the case began to point back to Israel. Seven Israelis with dual foreign citizenship, six of them apparently Britons and one American, had their identities stolen to be used in the forged passports relied on by the suspected assassins. The seven, who appear unconnected, have denied any involvement in the affair and say they have no idea how their identities were stolen.

Dubai police released on Monday the passport details of 11 people – six from Britain, three from Ireland and one each from France and Germany –that they said were behind the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was murdered in his Dubai hotel room last month.

The New York Times reported this morning that the hit team included a total of 17 people, six of whom had not yet been identified.

Some Israeli commentators delivered the first criticisms of Mossad today , saying the operation was beginning to look like a blunder. One even called on the Mossad chief, Meir Dagan, to resign and suggested the incident could provoke a diplomatic row with Britain over the use of forged British passports.

But Lieberman said he believed that relations with Britain would not be damaged. “I think Britain recognises that Israel is a responsible country and that our security activity is conducted according to very clear, cautious and responsible rules of the game. Therefore we have no cause for concern,” he said.

Rafi Eitan, a former Israeli minister and intelligence officer, told Army Radio that Mossad was not behind the killing and that a foreign organisation was trying to frame Israel.

There was a mixture of praise and criticism of the Mossad in the Israeli press. Yossi Melman, a respected security correspondent for Ha’aretz, said the agency had used forged passports on operations in the past and noted that in this case all the “operatives” involved in the assassination left Dubai safely without being caught.

“As such, unless dramatic evidence is found to definitively prove an Israeli connection, it is likely that the State of Israel will emerge from this affair unblemished and Mossad will continue enjoying a reputation of fearless determination and nearly unstoppable capabilities,” Melman wrote.

However, another Ha’aretz columnist, Amir Oren, said there were now “enormous question marks” over the operation and said the Mossad chief, Meir Dagan, who he described as “belligerent and heavy-handed,” should resign. He said the case would likely bring a diplomatic crisis for Israel and added: “Even if whoever carried out the assassination does reach some kind of arrangement with the infuriated western nations, it still has an obligation to its own citizens.”

Ben Caspit, in the Ma’ariv newspaper, described the incident as “a tactical operational success, but a strategic failure”. “When it becomes apparent that the passports belong to innocent Israeli citizens, who will now be subject to an international manhunt by Interpol, the embarrassment is great,” he wrote.

Continue reading February 17, 2010

Israel’s new strategy: “sabotage” and “attack” the global justice movement: The Electronic Intifada

Ali Abunimah,  16 February 2010

An extraordinary series of articles, reports and presentations by Israel’s influential Reut Institute has identified the global movement for justice, equality and peace as an “existential threat” to Israel and called on the Israeli government to direct substantial resources to “attack” and possibly engage in criminal “sabotage” of this movement in what Reut believes are its various international “hubs” in London, Madrid, Toronto, the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond.

The Reut Institute’s analyses hold that Israel’s traditional strategic doctrine — which views threats to the state’s existence in primarily military terms, to be met with a military response — is badly out of date. Rather, what Israel faces today is a combined threat from a “Resistance Network” and a “Delegitimization Network.”
The Resistance Network is comprised of political and armed groups such as Hamas and Hizballah who “rel[y] on military means to sabotage every move directed at affecting separation between Israel and the Palestinians or securing a two-state solution” (“The Delegitimization Challenge: Creating a Political Firewall, Reut Institute, 14 February 2010).
Furthermore, the “Resistance Network” allegedly aims to cause Israel’s political “implosion” — a la South Africa, East Germany or the Soviet Union — rather than bring about military defeat through direct confrontation on the battlefield.

The “Delegitimization Network” — which Reut Institute president and former Israeli government advisor Gidi Grinstein provocatively claims is in an “unholy alliance” with the Resistance Network — is made up of the broad, decentralized and informal movement of peace and justice, human rights, and BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) activists all over the world. Its manifestations include protests against Israeli officials visiting universities, Israeli Apartheid Week, faith-based and trade union-based activism, and “lawfare” — the use of universal jurisdiction to bring legal accountability for alleged Israeli war criminals. The Reut Institute even cited my speech to the student conference on BDS held at Hampshire College last November as a guide to how the “delegitimization” strategy supposedly works (“Eroding Israel’s Legitimacy in the International Arena,” Reut Institute, 28 January 2010).
The combined “attack” from “resisters” and “delegitimizers,” Reut says, “possesses strategic significance, and may develop into a comprehensive existential threat within a few years.” It further warns that a “harbinger of such a threat would be the collapse of the two-state solution as an agreed framework for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the coalescence behind a ‘one-state solution’ as a new alternative framework.”

At a basic level, Reut’s analysis represents an advance over the most primitive and hitherto dominant layers of Israeli strategic thinking; it reflects an understanding, as I put it in my speech at Hampshire, that “Zionism simply cannot bomb, kidnap, assassinate, expel, demolish, settle and lie its way to legitimacy and acceptance.”
But underlying the Reut Institute’s analysis is a complete inability to disentangle cause and effect. It seems to assume that the dramatic erosion in Israel’s international standing since its wars on Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza in 2009 is a result of the prowess of the “delegitimization network” to which it imputes wholly nefarious, devious and unwholesome goals — effectively the “destruction of Israel.”

It blames “delegitimizers” and “resisters” for frustrating the two-state solution but ignores Israel’s relentless and ongoing settlement-building drive — supported by virtually every state organ — calculated and intended to make Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank impossible.
It never considers for a moment that the mounting criticism of Israel’s actions might be justified, or that the growing ranks of people ready to commit their time and efforts to opposing Israel’s actions are motivated by genuine outrage and a desire to see justice, equality and an end to bloodshed. In other words, Israel is delegitimizing itself.

Reut does not recommend to the Israeli cabinet — which recently held a special session to hear a presentation of the think tank’s findings — that Israel should actually change its behavior toward Palestinians and Lebanese. It misses the point that apartheid South Africa also once faced a global “delegitimization network” but that this has now completely disappeared. South Africa, however, still exists. Once the cause motivating the movement disappeared — the rank injustice of formal apartheid — people packed up their signs and their BDS campaigns and went home.
Instead, Reut recommends to the Israeli government an aggressive and possibly criminal counter-offensive. A powerpoint presentation Grinstein made to the recent Herzliya Conference on Israeli national security actually calls on Israel’s “intelligence agencies to focus” on the named and unnamed “hubs” of the “delegitimization network” and to engage in “attacking catalysts” of this network. In its “The Delegitimization Challenge: Creating a Political Firewall” document, Reut recommends that “Israel should sabotage network catalysts.”

The use of the word “sabotage” is particularly striking and should draw the attention of governments, law enforcement agencies and university officials concerned about the safety and welfare of their students and citizens. The only definition of “sabotage” in United States law deems it to be an act of war on a par with treason, when carried out against the United States. In addition, in common usage, the American Heritage Dictionary defines sabotage as “Treacherous action to defeat or hinder a cause or an endeavor; deliberate subversion.” It is difficult to think of a legitimate use of this term in a political or advocacy context.
At the very least, Reut seems to be calling for Israel’s spy agencies to engage in covert activity to interfere with the exercise of legal free speech, association and advocacy rights in the United States, Canada and European Union countries, and possibly to cause harm to individuals and organizations. These warnings of Israel’s possible intent — especially in light of its long history of criminal activity on foreign soil — should not be taken lightly.

The Reut Institute, based in Tel Aviv, raises a significant amount of tax-exempt funds in the United States through a nonprofit arm called American Friends of the Reut Institute (AFRI). According to its public filings, AFRI sent almost $2 million to the Reut Institute in 2006 and 2007.
In addition to a state-sponsored international “sabotage” campaign, Reut also recommends a “soft” policy. This specifically involves better hasbara or state propaganda to greenwash Israel as a high-tech haven for environmental technologies and high culture — what it terms “Brand Israel.”

Other elements include “maintain[ing] thousands of personal relationships with political, cultural, media and security-related elites and influentials” around the world, and “harnessing Jewish and Israeli diaspora communities” even more tightly to its cause. It even emphasizes that Israel should use “international aid” to boost its image (its perfunctory foray into earthquake-devastated Haiti was an example of this tactic).
What ties together all these strategies is that they are aimed at frustrating, delaying and distracting attention from the fundamental issue: that Israel — despite its claims to be a liberal and democratic state — is an ultranationalist ethnocracy that relies on the violent suppression of the most fundamental rights of millions of Palestinians, soon to be a demographic majority, to maintain the status quo. There is no “game changer” in Reut’s new strategy.

Reut is apparently unaware even of the irony of trying to reform “Brand Israel” as something cuddly, while at the same time publicly recommending that Israel’s notorious spies “sabotage” peace groups on foreign soil.
But there are two lessons we must heed: Reut’s analysis vindicates the effectiveness of the BDS strategy, and as Israeli elites increasingly fear for the long-term prospects of the Zionist project they are likely to be more ruthless, unscrupulous and desperate than ever.

Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.

EDITOR: The preparation for the war on Iran

As Israel continues to gear up for this war, with the active support of the western nations, headed by the US and EU, with the same prapartions for tougher sanctions at the UN, which have paved the way to the attack on Iraq, the Haaretz editorial is seemingly trying to stop this war machine, more or less on its own… for the last four or five years, when they could shape the public opinion in Israel against this mad and criminal war-mongering, they were more or less absent. Now the the engines are being warmed up, they woke up. As the ‘liberal’ paper in Israel, the editors have again failed to stand outside the criminal consensus. So, now they are too late, and try hard to read the Obama nonesensical noises as a warning to Netanyahu. They are nothing of the kind. Obama is playing all the way with Netanyahu, who will do an important service for US war mongers, by attacking Iran ‘despite’ Obama’s ‘friendly warning’. It is the famous ‘a nod and a wink’ again…

Israel should heed Obama’s warning not to strike Iran: Haaretz Editorial

Israel should heed the friendly warning it received from the Obama administration, which opposes a preemptive Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, warned in Tel Aviv on Sunday of the unexpected consequences of an Israeli attack on Iran, just as he did during the days of the Bush administration. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in Qatar that Iran’s neighbors, who are worried about its nuclear plans, must rely on the American defense umbrella. And next week, Vice President Joseph Biden will visit Israel to pass on a similar message.

Both Israeli and Iranian leaders have escalated the threats they have been exchanging over the past few weeks. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at Auschwitz about a new Amalek. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told his Syrian counterpart Bashar Assad that if Israel goes to war, “we need to put an end to the Zionist regime once and for all.” And last week, on the anniversary of the Iranian revolution, Ahmadinejad announced that Iran will enrich uranium to 20 percent and declared that his country is capable of building an atomic bomb.

In these circumstances, the U.S. administration was right to send its senior officials to the Middle East in an attempt to calm both Israel and the Arab nations who are afraid of the Iranian nuclear threat.
U.S. President Barack Obama, after failing in his attempts at dialogue with Iran’s leaders, has toughened his stance and is now trying to recruit international support for harsher sanctions against Iran than were imposed in the past.
The likelihood that the American move will succeed is unclear, but Israel is required to give Obama a chance, for one simple reason: Israel will need full American support for any actions it may decide to take against the Iranian threat. If Israel goes to war, it will need intelligence help, prior warning, military equipment and diplomatic support from the United States.
No other country would or could aid Israel, and uncoordinated Israeli action would justifiably arouse U.S. anger, since it would endanger America’s vital interests in the region.

Thus, despite all the anger and fear that Ahmadinejad’s threats raise in Israel, for now, Israel should respond quietly and let Obama lead the effort to stop the Iranian nukes. Netanyahu has no better option.

Continue reading February 16, 2010

EDITOR: Am now back home after a week in hospital, so will try and close the gap as soon as I can; bear with me…

State of denial: Robert Fisk searches for peace in Israel: The Independent

Can peace in the Middle East be achieved while both Israelis and Palestinians refuse to give ground? Robert Fisk takes a road trip through a divided land, from Ben-Gurion’s Tel Aviv villa to Jerusalem, Bethlehem and the besieged Gaza Strip
There are no armed guards on the gate of Number 17 Ben-Gurion Boulevard in Tel Aviv, just a tired, two-storey villa set back from the street and an open door that leads to a dark kitchen and a little room with a cot on the floor.

There are bricks over the window above the neat little bed – to protect its owner and his wife Paula from Egyptian bombs during the 1956 Israeli invasion of Sinai, and the 1967 war – but upstairs is the bejewelled centre of this little home, David Ben- Gurion’s library of 20,000 books. I pad through this den, scribbling in my notebook any clues to the mind of this most persuasive of Israeli leaders. Most of the books are in Hebrew – on religion, histories of the Zionist movement, research on Eretz Israel – but the creator of Israel and its first prime minister was also a linguist. There are Demosthenes and Homer in Greek, a three-volume history of the Hellenistic world, Julius Caesar in French, Duff Cooper’s life of Tallyrand, George Bernard Shaw’s complete works, a history of Vichy France, Henry Picker’s Hitler’s Table Talk (in English), Freud on psychology (in German), Guy Chapman’s The Dreyfus Case, histories of Israel (including his own), a series on Jewish Influences on Christian Reform Movements. Ben-Gurion learned Spanish so that he could read a new biography of Cervantes. He loved Spinoza.

Then there are the photographs. Ben-Gurion with de Gaulle, with Kennedy and with a sad and debilitated Churchill, in 1961. Ben-Gurion wanted to read Churchill’s almost forgotten essay on Moses; Churchill’s letter to him, enclosing a copy of Thoughts and Adveures, is a little classic. “I have re-read it,” Churchill wrote, “…and I would not particularly wish it to be remembered as one of my literary works.”
But it was the set of Ben-Gurion’s quotations that caught my eye: statements on the eternal morality of the State of Israel, messages from the great man – who physically was a very little man (I opened his bedroom cupboard and there were jackets and trousers of almost midget size) – in time of war. Here is Ben-Gurion, for example, during Israel’s War of Independence – the Palestinian Arab ‘Nakba’ – when he feared that Jewish forces would destroy Muslim holy places in Jerusalem, cabling on 15 July 1948. “Further to my previous order relating to the Old City – you should see to it that the special force to be appointed for guarding the Old City uses mercilessly machine-guns against any Jew, and especially any Jewish soldier, who will try to pillage or to desecrate any Christian or Moslim holy place.” In 1967, he was boasting of how, during the establishment of the state of Israel, “we did not damage any single mosque.” Yet he was already creating myths. The undamaged mosques, he wrote in the same statement, were found in villages “without a single Moslem, as all of them had already fled during the [British] Mandatory rule and before the declaration of the State…” Amid the detritus of Ben-Gurion’s life, his thick-framed spectacles, his Quink fountain pen ink (“permanent black”), the willow-pattern plates, the original 1951 Marc Chagall sketch of a rabbi with a harp, the old transistor radio in the shelter – we shall forget the elephant tusk from the president of Gabon – there are musings on the morality and nobility and purity of arms of Israel’s army. “The fate of Israel depends on two factors: her strength and her rectitude.” And again. “The State of Israel will not be tried by its riches, army or techniques, but by its moral image and human values.”

During the blood-soaked Israeli siege of Beirut in 1982, an event which marked the decline of that rectitude and moral image, a wonderful Doonesbury cartoon depicted a press conference in which an anonymous voice asked an Israeli spokesman: “What has become of the Israel we knew and loved?” And the immediate rejoinder to the questioner? “Come off it, Yasser!” For in a sense, the lugubrious Arafat did adhere to Ben-Gurion’s myth-making. In the end, he even signed up for peace with the state which had already taken 78 per cent of the land he called home. He was a super-terrorist who became a super-statesman and then – after refusing to submit at the final Camp David meeting – became a super-terrorist again.

The truth is that Israel has destroyed many mosques, that the original Palestinian Arab victims of the 1947-8 war did not all flee, as Ben-Gurion suggested; many, like the doomed men and women of the Deir Yassin massacre, were murdered in their villages. The Israeli army, to some of us who have watched it in action, is a rabble, little different from the Arab armies of the Middle East. The numbers of civilian dead in the Gaza war were as much an outrage as the Sabra and Chatila massacre of 1982 when Israeli soldiers watched – quite literally – as the Lebanese militia they had sent into the refugee camps eviscerated the Palestinian civilians inside. Foreign journalists continue to prattle on about the supposed purity of Israel’s soldiers.

“Israel has already proved itself the most restrained nation in history. It has set an all-time record for restraint,” one Robert Fulford waffled in the Canadian National Post in January last year, at the height of the Gaza slaughter, when even Tzipi Livni admitted Israel’s soldiers had been allowed to “go wild”. Israel’s own rightist correspondents still portray the outside world as a dark, malevolent planet in which every criticism of Israel emerges from endemic anti-semitism, in which Nazism did not die in the embers of Berlin in 1945. The Jerusalem Post, bashes the drum of racism almost daily. “Berlin Holocaust studies professor slammed for defending Nazi mentor.” “Weisenthal slams Ukraine award to nationalist linked to Nazis.” “Dershowitz: Goldstone is a traitor to the Jewish people.”

I don’t doubt that Stepan Bandera’s Ukrainian nationalist movement was a dodgy bunch of racists – and its original adherents were indeed anti-semitic murderers in the Second World War – but where does this end? The Simon Weisenthal Centre – named after a truly honourable man whom I once met in Vienna as he campaigned for Gypsy as well as Jewish victims of the Nazis – is the same organisation which is now proposing to build a ‘Museum of Tolerance’ on an ancient Muslim graveyard in west Jerusalem. And poor old Richard Goldstone, a Jewish jurist and another honourable man whom I met in the Hague when he was investigating war crimes in ex-Yugoslavia, is a ‘traitor’ because he said that Israeli soldiers may have committed war crimes in Gaza; in other words, Goldstone – for this is the point – should have allowed his ethnic origins to rule in Israel’s favour rather than abide by the rule of law.

Last week, in the dog-day resort of Herzliya, I attended much of the vast conference of Israel’s great and good – or at least the largely right-wing variety – to find out how they now saw the country that was founded amid such danger by Ben-Gurion 62 years ago. It was the same old story.

“The Palestinians are the ones who are today the naysayers” – this from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ‘security advisor’, Uzi Arad – and the Goldstone Report had now become part of an insidious campaign against Israel, an attempt to “delegitimise” (this is the newest cliché) the state. There were boycotts of Israeli goods. Bonfires were made of Israeli products. “I do not know anyone whose stomach does not turn” at such a sight, said Arad.

Michael Hoenlein, vice-chairman of the immensely powerful Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organisations, ann- ounced that Obama’s “engagement” with Syria and Iran had failed. Obama’s administration had been “supportive” over Goldstone (i.e. gutlessly supine in criticising a report which it had not even read). Obama now realised it had to work with Israel. There was unanimous consent in the US Senate over Iranian sanctions. No-one mentioned settlements or colonies. I was reminded of Hannah Arendt’s observation that the congress of World Zionist Organisation’s American section in October 1944 would “embrace the whole of Palestine, undivided and undiminished”. She went on: “This is a turning point in Zionist history… This time the Arabs were simply not mentioned in the resolution, which obviously leaves them the choice between voluntary emigration or second-class citizenship.”

For the whole article, please use the link above

EDITOR: The new victims – the Israeli mock0-left and their comeuppence

In many years of the conflict, we have not heard Naomi Chazan and her followers uttering such excited noises as they now do. It may well be that they were so quiet, because it was mere Palestinians who were getting treated roughly, of course. Now, that Ms Chazan has been sacked from her job in Israel’s most right-wing paper, the Jerusalem Post, there is much commotion and accusations of McCarthyism; well, did this just start last week, really? Did Ms Chazan had much to say about the rightist and extereme positions taken by the same paper all those years? Dis Prof. Chazan go on strike or demonstrate when Palestinian universities like Bir Zeit were closed by the IOA (Israel Occupation Army) for more than four years? It seems that the degeneration of the social structure is better noticed when it affects the well-heeled sectors of the Jewish elite.

Naomi Chazan’s limp brand of liberal politics was always based on her being part of the Zionist enterprise, and what she and her friends always tried is to make things look better – to improve Israel’s image abroad, mainly. For that role, she was invaluable. Well, the style has changed, and she is no longer crucial in that role, it seems. So now she has noticed quite a lot of worrying signs… it is amazing how such sacking sharpens one’s perceptive skills:

The new McCarthyism sweeping Israel: The Independent

To disagree with the state is to ‘delegitimise’ the state: that is the increasingly strident response of the country’s political and military establishment to those who dare to criticise its conduct

It’s hard, sitting on the other side of the office table from which Naomi Chazan is picking at her modest hummus and salad snack lunch, to believe that the amiable 63-year-old university professor with a self-deprecating sense of humour has suddenly become the most discussed, not to say demonised, woman in Israel.

Ms Chazan is president of a long-established agency with large numbers of Jewish donors in the US and Britain, which is committed to fighting for “social justice and equality for all Israelis”. The New Israel Fund has over the last 30 years disbursed some $200m to around 800 charitable, social and human rights groups, and justly claims much of the credit for building modern Israel’s still vibrant civil society.

But in the last fortnight the former Knesset member who by her own account loves her native Israel “without reservation” has been sacked as a columnist on the Jerusalem Post after 14 years, had rowdy demonstrators outside her house brandishing a chilling caricature of her with a horn obtruding from her forehead, and most far-fetched of all, been accused, in a newspaper article circulated to foreign journalists by the Government Press Office, of “serving the agenda of Iran and Hamas”.

The onslaught has prompted Nicholas Saphir, the Jewish businessman who runs the New Israel Fund in the UK, to warn that the “Jewish values of social justice and our duty to tikkun olam (repairing the world) have come under serious threat in the state of Israel”.

The row has come to symbolise a new mood of establishment intolerance in Israel towards criticisms by Israeli human rights groups of such episodes as last year’s military operation in Gaza. This harsh new mood has been fuelled by ministers, right-wing politicians and military figures who have closed ranks behind accusations that the UN-commissioned report into the war, led by Richard Goldstone, which accused both sides of war crimes, is being used to “delegitimise Israel”.

The NIF’s travails began when a right-wing group called Im Tirtzu provoked accusations of latterday McCarthyism by charging that “without the NIF there could be no Goldstone report and Israel would not be facing international accusations of war crimes”. It is a charge which Abe Foxman, director of the US-based Anti- Defamation League and no great friend of the Israeli left, told New York Jewish Week was “absurd”.

Ms Chazan does not herself talk about McCarthyism –though several of her agency’s defenders, including Isaac Herzog, a Labour party minister in the governing coalition, have done so. But she told The Independent: “Every country has its own version of things but the general climate is very problematic. It’s ugly.” She said the mood reminded her of the hate-laced run-up to Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination in November 1995. “But it’s different, because that was an avowedly political disagreement. This is the beginning of a rather systematic campaign against really the very essentials of Israeli democracy.”

Ms Chazan cites the arrests of Israelis at demonstrations against the encroachment of Jewish settlers in the Arab East Jerusalem district of Sheikh Jarrah. And the interrogation and fingerprinting last month of her friend Anat Hoffman, of the reform group Religious Action Centre, who for 20 years has challenged ultra-Orthodox control of the Western Wall by seeking to entrench the right of women to pray in shawls there.

“There is an assault on the basics of law and order but most important I see this as part of a very pernicious attempt to stifle alternative voices, and most seriously to equate criticism with betrayal. And there is a very strong political underpinning to that. I would go further … behind this [is] a group of people who don’t want a political settlement. They don’t want peace, so they’re trying to delegitimise the human rights movement.”

She says that Im Tirtzu “expropriated” the term Zionism while “probably acting in the most anti-Zionist way I can imagine. They forgot to read the [1948] Declaration of Independence which talks of equality of all citizens of race, colour, creed, gender, nationality, etc. They also forgot the chapters in the Declaration where Israel extends its hand to its neighbours, they forgot basic democratic principles. They are hellbent to denounce anyone who dissents from the government line. Or dissents from their definition of what being a loyal Israeli is. That is ridiculous. Democracies are all about disagreements.”

She herself is a Zionist? “Right now they debased the term. Am I someone who believes that Israel has the right to exist as a democratic state with a Jewish majority? My answer is a resounding yes. Just as the Palestinians have the right to a Palestinian state with a Palestinian majority alongside Israel. And I think in that regard I express the view of the vast majority of Israelis.”

The NIF, excoriated by a series of right-wing columnists, has seen off- – for now – the prospect of a parliamentary commission of inquiry into its activities. And Ms Chazan welcomes the alternative prospect that a Knesset subcommittee will launch a probe of foreign funding of NGOs. But she adds: “We hope, are insisting, that they investigate the funding of all NGOs, including the NGOs of the right.”

Indeed Im Tirtzu, whose chairman was a prominent opponent of Ariel Sharon’s withdrawal of settlers from Gaza and has received funds from – among others – John Hagee Ministries, run by an ultra-conservative evangelical US pastor who has appeared to argue that the Holocaust was a good thing because it created the state of Israel.

The organisation’s accusations were based on a curious reading of the footnotes of the Goldstone report claiming that 92 per cent of those citing “non-official” Israeli sources came from human rights organisations supported by the New Israel Fund.
In fact NIF-supported groups account for only 14 per cent of citations in Goldstone, and many of these do not deal with Gaza at all, and even include references that are not critical of Israeli policy. Moreover while the main human rights organisations, from the Association of Civil Rights in Israel to the army veterans’ group Breaking the Silence, are supported by the NIF, as well as by European governments, they absorb less than 10 per cent of its funds, which also go to new Jewish immigrants, disabled, and women’s groups, among many others.
Human rights groups funded by the NIF were early advocates of an independent Israeli investigation. But the widely respected B’Tselem, for example, while tireless in highlighting Palestinian civilian deaths, has questioned the Goldstone conclusion that the Israeli military set out to target civilians. Ms Chazan strongly endorses the groups’ calls for the independent investigation which the Israeli government has so far resisted. “Israel has investigated every war since 1973. This is the first war where we have not set up an investigation. That’s hard to understand.”

Had the Netanyahu government helped to create the space for the right-wing onslaught on the NIF? “Look, it hasn’t denounced this vilification; and therefore draw your own conclusions.”

EDITOR: The right wing ‘think tank’ Reut, more to do with tanks than with thinking, and an arm of government, is discovering the new Elders of Anti-Zion:

Think tank: Israel faces global delegitimization campaign: Haaretz

Israel is facing a global campaign of delegitimization, according to a report by the Reut Institute, made available to the cabinet on Thursday. The Tel Aviv-based security and socioeconomic think tank called on ministers to treat the matter as a strategic threat. The report cites anti-Israel demonstrations on campuses, protests when Israeli athletes compete abroad, moves in Europe to boycott Israeli products, and threats of arrest warrants for Israeli leaders visiting London.

Reut says the campaign is the work of a worldwide network of private individuals and organizations. They have no hierarchy or overall commander, but work together based on a joint ideology – portraying Israel as a pariah state and denying its right to exist. Reut lists the network’s major hubs – London, Brussels, Madrid, Toronto, San Francisco and the University of California, Berkeley.

The network’s activists – “delegitimizers” the report dubs them – are relatively marginal: young people, anarchists, migrants and radical political activists. Although they are not many, they raise their profile using public campaigns and media coverage, the report says. The “delegitimizers” cooperate with organizations engaging in legitimate criticism of Israel’s policy in the territories such as Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, blurring the line between legitimate censure and delegitimization. They also promote pro-Palestinian activities in Europe as “trendy,” the report says.

The network’s activists are not mostly Palestinian, Arab or Muslim. Many of them are European and North American left-wing activists. The Western left has changed its approach to Israel and now sees it as an occupation state, the report says. To those left-wing groups, if in the 1960s Israel was seen as a model for an egalitarian, socialist society, today it epitomizes Western evil. The delegitimization network sees the fight against the former regime in South Africa as a success model. It believes that like the apartheid regime, the Zionist-Israeli model can be toppled and a one-state model can be established.

The Reut team says the network’s groups share symbols and heroes such as the Palestinian boy Mohammed al-Dura, American peace activist Rachel Corrie and joint events like the Durban Conference. Israel’s diplomats overseas, meanwhile, must counter the attempts to delegitimize the country. “The combination of a large Muslim community, a radical left, influential, English-language media and an international university center make London fertile ground for Israel’s delegitimization,” says Ron Prosor, Israel’s ambassador in London. Prosor gives many interviews to the British media and lectures at university campuses throughout the country.

Although he says he has encountered anti-Israel demonstrations on almost every campus, Prosor has told his people to increase their campus activity. “What is now happening in London universities will happen, at most, in five years at all the large universities in the United States,” he says. The Reut report says Israel is not prepared at all to deal with the threat of delegitimization. The cabinet has not defined the issue as a threat and sees the diplomatic arena as marginal compared to the military one. “The Foreign Ministry is built for the challenges of the ’60s, not the 2000s,” the report says. “There are no budgets, not enough diplomats and no appropriate diplomatic doctrine.” Reut recommends setting up a counter-network, in which Israel’s embassies in centers of delegitimization activity would serve as “front positions.”

The report says the intelligence service should monitor the organizations’ activities and study their methods. The cabinet should also confront groups trying to delegitimize Israel but embrace those engaged in legitimate criticism. The report adds that Israel should not boycott these groups, as Israel’s embassy in Washington does with the left-wing lobby J Street. Boycotting critics merely pushes them toward joining the delegitimizers, Reut says.

EDITOR: Destroying Gaza – fishing and agriculture made impossible

The Gaza Strip used to export large amount of fish, vegetables, fruit and other food products, and this has played a crucial role in feeding the almost two million people living within its boundaries, in what is the densest human habitation on earth. Fishermen and farmers were proudly contributing to the economy, and to the sense of community so prevalent in Gaza, despite all the privations and carnage Israeli has inflicted ever since 1947. Israel has been fighting to limit the Gazan food production for decades, and quite successfully; the fishermen have been stopped from fishing by a blockade, thousands of fruit trees were uprooted under the pretence of ‘security’, and the very limited amount of bitter, salty water was further hurt by the destruction of wells. It suits Israel to have the Gazan population totally dependent on food and other imports, and makes the illegal blockade since 2006 more painful and ‘effective’. Israel is thus moving the costs, as well as the responsibility of supporting Gaza directly onto the international community. This illagal aspects of the continued occpation are not less damaging than the mass killing by force of arms. In the long run they are even more frightening, as they will maker a total starvation possible in the near future. The report below uncovers some of the aspects of this continuing war crime.

Israel bombs Gaza’s agricultural sector to the brink: The Electronic Intifada

Eva Bartlett, 15 February 2010

“If we didn’t get the wheat planted today, we would not have had crops this year,” says Abu Saleh Abu Taima, eyeing the two Israeli military jeeps parked along the border fence east of Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip. Although his land is more than 300 meters away, technically outside of the Israeli-imposed “buffer zone,” Abu Taima has reason to be wary.
“They shot at us yesterday. I was here with my wife and nephews.”
Like many farmers along Gaza’s eastern and northern borders, Abu Taima has been delayed planting by the absence of water and the threat from Israeli soldiers along the border.
With most of Gaza’s border region wells, cisterns and water lines destroyed by Israeli forces during last winter’s attacks, farmers have been largely left with no option but to wait for heavier rains.

“Israeli soldiers started intensively bulldozing the land in 2003. But they finished the job in the last war on Gaza,” says Hamdan Abu Taima, owner of 30 dunams (1 dunam is approximate to 1,000 square meters) dangerously close to the buffer zone.
Nasser Abu Taima has 15 dunams of land nearby. Another 15 dunams lie inaccessibly close to the border, rendered off-limits by the Israeli military. “My well was destroyed in the last Israeli war on Gaza. Five years ago I had hothouses for tomatoes, a house here, many trees. It’s all gone. Now I just plant wheat if I can. It’s the simplest.”
Nasser points out the rubble of his home, harvests some ripe cactus fruit and shakes his head. “Such a shame. Such a waste. I knew every inch of this area. Now, I feel sick much of the time because I cannot access my land. And I’ve got 23 in my family to provide for.”

Israel imposed the “buffer zone” along Gaza’s side of the internationally-recognized “Green Line” boundary nearly ten years ago. Israeli bulldozers continue to raze decades-old olive and fruit trees, farmland and irrigation piping, and demolish homes, greenhouses, water wells and cisterns, farm machinery and animal shelters.
Extending from Gaza’s most northwestern to southeastern points, the unclearly-marked buffer zone annexes more land than the 300 meters flanking the border. Israeli authorities say anyone found within risks being shot at by Israeli soldiers. At least 13 Palestinian civilians have been killed and 39 injured in border regions in and outside of the buffer zone since the 18 January end of Israel’s attacks last year, among them children and women.

A sector destroyed
Farmers in southeastern Gaza take shelter from bullets fired by Israeli soldiers at the border nearly one kilometer away. The United Nations agency OCHA reports that roughly one-third of Gaza’s agricultural land lies within the buffer zone, its width varying from half a kilometer to two kilometers.

Ahmed Sourani, of the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committee (PARC), told the Guardian newspaper: “It is indirect confiscation by fear. My fear is that, if it remains, it will become de facto.”
According to PARC, the fertile farmland in and next to the buffer zone was not long ago Gaza’s food basket and half of Gaza’s food needs were produced within the territory.
In 2008, the agricultural sector employed approximately 70,000 farmers, says PARC, including 30,000 farm laborers earning approximately five dollars per day.
One of the most productive industries some years ago, farming now yields the least and has become one of the most dangerous sectors in Gaza, due to Israeli firing, shelling and aggression against people in the border regions.

Of the 175,000 dunams of cultivable land, PARC reports 60 to 75,000 dunams have been destroyed during Israeli invasions and operations. The level of destruction from the last Israeli war on Gaza alone is vast, with 35 to 60 percent of the agricultural industry destroyed, according to the UN and World Health Organization. Gaza’s sole agricultural college, in Beit Hanoun, was also destroyed.
Oxfam notes that the combination of the Israeli war on Gaza and the buffer zone renders around 46 percent of agricultural land useless or unreachable.
More than 35,000 cattle, sheep and goats were killed during the last Israeli attacks, as well as 1 million birds and chickens, according to a United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) September 2009 report.
Even before Israel’s last assault, PARC reported on the grave shortage of agricultural needs due to the Israeli siege on Gaza: “saplings, pesticides and fertilizers, plastic sheets for greenhouses and hoses for irrigation are no longer available,” reads its 2008 report.

A March 2009 OCHA report lists nylon, seeds, olive and fruit tree seedlings, plastic piping and valves, fertilizers, animal feed, livestock and many other items as scarce, many of which are “urgently” needed.
The dearth of agricultural goods, combined with Israel’s policies of destruction and aggression in the buffer zone, has meant that farmers have changed practice completely, planting low-maintenance wheat and rye where vegetables and orchards once flourished, or not planting at all.
Water sources were particularly hard hit during Israel’s attack on Gaza last winter.
A UNDP survey following the attacks found that nearly 14,000 dunums of irrigation networks and pipelines have been destroyed, along with 250 wells and 327 water pumps completely damaged, and another 53 wells partially damaged by Israeli bombing and bulldozing. This is excluding the many destroyed cisterns and irrigation ponds.
Farmers now either hand deliver water via plastic jugs or wait for the heavy rains in order to salvage some of their crops. Many others have given up working their land.

Farming under fire
Mohammed al-Ibrim, 20, of Benesuhela village near Khan Younis was injured by Israeli shooting in the border region.
“On 18 February 2009, I was working with other farm laborers on land about 500 meters from the border. We’d been working for a couple of hours without problems, and the Israelis had been watching us. Israeli soldiers began shooting from the border as we pushed our pickup truck which had broken down. I was shot in the ankle.”
His injury came just weeks after cousin Anwar al-Ibrim was martyred by an Israeli soldier’s bullet to the neck. Anwar al-Ibrim leaves behind a wife and two infants.

Meanwhile, in Gaza’s north, Ali Hamad, 52, has 18 dunams of land roughly 500 meters from the border east of Beit Hanoun.
“The Israelis bulldozed my citrus trees, water pump, well and irrigation piping in the last war. No one can come here to move the rubble of my well — everyone is afraid of the Israeli soldiers at the border. So now we are just waiting for the winter rains.
All but one well and pump have been destroyed in this region.
“I haven’t watered my few remaining trees since the war. I used to water them once a week, three to four hours per session. Now, they are dehydrated, the lemons and oranges are miniature.”
Mohammed Musleh, 70, lives east of Beit Hanoun, roughly 1.5 kilometers from the border, and owns the only working well and pump in his region.
“There used to be many birds in this area, because it was so fertile, until the Israelis started bulldozing all of the trees, including mine. When people replanted them, the Israelis began destroying the water sources instead.”

Ahmed al-Basiouni, 53, owned the first well established in the east Beit Hanoun area, built in 1961.
“My brothers and I have 60 dunams of land. Many people took water from our well. It was destroyed in 2003, and again in the last Israeli war. Now when I water my remaining trees, I do it by hand, tree by tree.”
In its September 2009 report, the UNEP warned that Gaza’s aquifer is in “serious danger of collapse,” noting that the problem has roots in the “rise in salt water intrusion from the sea caused by over-extraction of ground water.” According to the report, the salinity and nitrate levels of water are far above WHO-accepted levels. Between 90 and 95 percent of the water available to Palestinians in Gaza is contaminated and hence “unfit for human consumption,” according to WHO standards.
Water has been further contaminated by chemical agents used by the Israeli army during its war on Gaza. More contamination from destroyed asbestos roofing, the toxins produced by the bodies of thousands of animal carcasses, and waste sites which were inaccessible and damaged during and after the attacks on Gaza exacerbates the situation.
Further up the lane, Hassan al-Basiouni, 54, says he has lost a quarter of a million dollars to the Israeli land and well destruction.
“My brothers and I have 41 dunams. Our well was destroyed once before this last war. The materials to make a new well aren’t available in Gaza. The 180 people who earned a living off this land are out of work.”
According to Bassiouni, it costs $200 to raise just one fruit tree to fruit bearing maturity.
“We had 1,500 citrus trees, some destroyed in random Israeli shelling and the rest destroyed during the last Israeli war on Gaza. The few remaining trees are only one year old and produce nothing.”
“This water we’re using,” says Basiouni, referring to the contamination, “actually dehydrates the trees.”

Weathering the storm
In eastern Gaza’s Shejaiye area, Sena, 74, and Amar Mhayssy, 78, are devastated. “Our land has been bulldozed four times. We have nine dunams of land in the buffer zone which we can’t access because the Israelis will shoot at us. We have 10 dunams of land over 500 meters from the border fence. Our olive trees, over 60 years old, were all bulldozed by the Israeli army.”
They persevere in the face of danger and futility.
“Now we’re growing okra and have replanted 40 olive trees. But they will take years before they produce many olives. We need to water the new trees every three days, but our water source was destroyed. So we bring containers to water them. There are 13 people in our family, with four in university. Aside from farming, we have no work.”

In al-Faraheen village, east of Khan Younis, Jaber Abu Rjila now can only work his land on a small scale.
“My chicken farm — over 500 meters from the border — as well as 500 fruit and olive trees and 100 dunams of wheat and peas of my and my neighbors’ land were destroyed in May 2008 by Israeli bulldozers. My cistern, the pump and motor and one of my tractors were destroyed. The side of our house facing the border is filled with bullet holes from the Israeli soldiers. Now, because of the danger we rent a home half a kilometer away. I’ve lost my income, how can I pay for rent?”
Since the first constraints of the siege on Gaza were imposed nearly four years ago, the destruction of Gaza’s agricultural sector and potential to provide produce and economy to a severely undernourished Strip has dramatically worsened.
With Palestinians in Gaza now largely dependent on the expensive Israeli produce that is inconsistently allowed into Gaza, the plight of the farmers reverberates throughout the population.

All images by Eva Bartlett.

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.

Continue reading February 13, 2010

EDITOR: Preparations for War: A whole series of local wars planned by Israel

It seems that Israel is preparing four wars at the same time: in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Iran! They plan to pick and chose the one to start at any point in time, and Israeli commentators are pointing out the links between those military adventures: a war against Iran will, by necessity, also mean attacking Hizbullah in Lebanon, for example… so at last, the US has the Sheriff it always wanted in the Middle East, spewing fire and destruction in all directions, and at the same time claiming to be the underdog, and under attack from all sides. The amazing fact is that this seems to be an efficient policy, working well on otherwise seemingly intelligent politicians, like the western leaders, without whom it could never succeed. This is hardly an accident: at a time that the west has become ever more aggressive towards the Arab and Islamic world, Israel’s value as a local terrorising agent has never been clearer, in subduing parts of the Middle East at will, assisting the greater plan. Below one can easily detect the ominous strands coming together:

Lebanese Prime Minister Hariri warns of Israel ‘threat’: BBC

Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri says he is concerned about “escalating” threats posed to the Middle East by Israel.
Mr Hariri told the BBC that Israeli planes were entering Lebanese airspace every day, and he feared the prospect of another war with Israel.
He accused Israel of making a huge mistake by allegedly threatening both Lebanon and neighbouring Syria.
His comments come days after Syria and Israel exchanged hostile accusations.
The BBC’s Natalia Antelava in Beirut says that while such rhetoric is hardly new, there is concern it could lead to more serious confrontation.
In an interview with the BBC, Mr Hariri said: “We hear a lot of Israeli threats day in and day out, and not only threats.
“We see what’s happening on the ground and in our airspace and what’s happening all the time during the past two months – every day we have Israeli war planes entering Lebanese airspace.
“This is something that is escalating, and this is something that is really dangerous.”
Mr Hariri also said that Lebanon was united, and that the government would stand by Hezbollah – the Lebanese militant group which fought Israel in 2006.
“I think they’re betting that there might be some division in Lebanon, if there is a war against us.
“Well, there won’t be a division in Lebanon. We will stand against Israel. We will stand with our own people.”
His comments come just days after the foreign ministers of Syria and Israel exchanged aggressive accusations, which fuelled both media speculation and public fear about what many in the region describe as the “imminent next war”.
Such hostile rhetoric is hardly new to the Middle East, and yet, because calm in this is region is so fragile, many are concerned that it could lead to a more serious confrontation.

Lebanese PM: We will stand united against Israeli threat: BBC

Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri on Wednesday said that he was concerned over Israel’s “escalating” threats to Lebanon and Syria, and that if Israel were to attack, he would stand united with his own people.
“I think they’re betting that there might be some division in Lebanon, if there is a war against us,” Hariri said in an interview with BBC News.
“Well, there won’t be a division in Lebanon. We will stand against Israel. We will stand with our own people,” he said, referring to Hezbollah’s role in the divided country.
The Lebanese premier also said that Israeli planes enter Lebanese and Syrian air space on a regular basis.
“We see what’s happening on the ground and in our airspace and what’s happening all the time during the past two months – every day we have Israeli planes entering Lebanese airspace,” Hariri said. “This is something that is escalating, and this is something that is really dangerous.”
Hariri’s remarks follow a week of increased tensions between Israel and Syria.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman responded to Hariri’s remarks Wednesday, saying, “Hezbollah murdered his father and he is in the position of being a hostage,” Channel 10 reported, quoting Army Radio.
Addressing a business conference at Bar-Ilan University last week, Lieberman warned Syrian President Bashar Assad that if his country entered a conflict with Israel, it would not only lose, but his regime would also disintegrate.
“Assad should know that if he attacks, he will not only lose the war. Neither he nor his family will remain in power,” Lieberman told the audience.
The foreign minister’s remarks come after Assad on Wednesday told Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos that Israel was pushing the Middle East toward a new war.
“Our message should be that if Assad’s father lost a war but remained in power, the son should know that an attack would cost him his regime,” Lieberman continued. “This is the message that must be conveyed to the Syrian leader by Israel.”

Israeli PM plays down minister’s Lebanon war claim: BBC

Israel’s prime minister has distanced himself from comments by a member of his cabinet who suggested Israel was heading for a new war with Lebanon.
Israel was “not seeking any conflict” with Lebanon, Benjamin Netanyahu said.
Earlier, Yossi Peled, minister without portfolio and a reserve army general, had said that a repeat of the 2006 war with Lebanon was only a matter of time.
More than 1,000 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and about 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers, died in the conflict.
“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clarifies that Israel is not seeking any conflict with Lebanon,” the Israeli leader said in a statement on Saturday.
“Israel seeks peace with its neighbours.”
The statement came shortly after comments by Mr Peled were broadcast in which the minister said Israel was “heading towards a new confrontation”.
“In my estimation, understanding and knowledge it is almost clear to me that it is a matter of time before there is a military clash in the north,” he said.
In 2006 the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah launched a raid into Israel in which it captured two Israeli soldiers. Hezbollah also sent thousands of rockets into northern Israel.
Israel launched huge air and sea attacks on targets all over Lebanon, and then a land invasion.

Obama vows ‘significant’ sanctions against Iran: BBC

US President Barack Obama has said the US and its allies are developing a “significant regime of sanctions” against Iran for its nuclear programme.
He said the international community was unified over Iran’s “misbehaviour”.
Speaking in Washington, he said despite Tehran’s denials, it was clear Iran was working to build nuclear weapons.
His remarks came after Iranian state media reported that Iran had started the process of enriching uranium to 20% for use in a medical research reactor.
Russian disapproval
In an unexpected appearance in the White House briefing room, Mr Obama said the US was confident the international community was “unified around Iran’s misbehaviour in this area”.
He said the new push for sanctions on Iran was “moving along fairly quickly” and should be completed in the next few weeks.
Mr Obama also said he was pleased at Russia’s quick disapproval of Iran’s latest move.
But he said it was unclear how China would respond to a new push at the UN Security Council for another round of sanctions against Iran.
China, a UN Security Council member, has called for further talks over the issue.
China and Russia have been reluctant in the past to support international sanctions against Iran.
“How China operates at the Security Council as we pursue sanctions is something we’re going to have to see,” Mr Obama said.
The five permanent members of the Security Council – the US, Russia, China, France and Britain – have a veto over resolutions, including sanctions.
Iran currently enriches uranium to a level of 3.5% but requires 20% enriched uranium for its research reactor, which is meant to produce medical isotopes. A bomb would require uranium enriched to at least 90%.
The US and its Western allies say Iran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon – a charge Iran denies.
In October, a deal brokered by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was thought to have been struck for Iran to send its uranium to Russia and France for enrichment.
But last month, diplomats said Iran had told the IAEA that it did not accept the terms of the deal – though there have since been other, conflicting messages.
Also on Tuesday, US state department spokesman PJ Crowley said the international community was willing to help Iran secure medical isotopes from abroad.
The offer would help to “build some confidence” and show Iran that enriching uranium to 20% purity was “unnecessary”, Reuters news agency quoted him saying.

Continue reading February 10, 2010