EDITOR: Seeking blood all around
The UNESCO vote on Palestine have brought about the usual hysteria in Israel – any visibility of the word Palestine internationally is apparently dangerous to the continuation of mankind – and started a flood of quite mad demands to exterminate UNESCO and its personnel. One such expression was the caricature in Haaretz, where Netanyahu is seen briefing the pilots who are about to attack Iran :”and on the way back, bomb the UNESCO offices in Ramallah”. Understandably, this was not much appreciated by UNESCO, who complained to the Israeli ambassador, who was happy to blame UNESCO for this, as can be seen below.
This is quite a good illustration of the current state of mind on the Israeli public, including the so-called ‘inlltelligentsia’, the intellectuals and artists. It is almost unheard of for Israelis to doubt their way of seeing the world, to question their own point of view. This inability is behind all which is now happening in Israel – the fascisation of the state and its mechanisms, the pronounced rightward lurch of the whole of society, the total backing given to the racist occupation and its machinery of repression and murder, the preparation for an attack on Iran for developing Nuclear Energy, by a country with more than 300 undeclared nuclear devices of mass destruction, and the growing Nazi style attacks nicknamed ‘price-tag’ on Palestinians in Israel and in the Occupied Territories. At some point in the future, after a series of terrible events will bring Zionist hegemony to an end, most Israelis will be heard to say:”we had no idea all this was taking place”…
The Israelis and their partners in crime across the world, who support Zionist aggression and expansion, are on the lookout for antisemitism everywhere. They would do better to look under their own beds – Israel has become one of the most racist, arrogant and anti-semitic societies in existence, and the longer this is avoided, the deeper this society will decline and fall.
‘Death to Arabs’ scrawled across Muslim gravestones in Jerusalem: Haaretz
Assailants desecrate some 15 Muslim headstones in what is suspected to be the latest ‘price tag’ attack by right-wing extremists.
By Oz Rosenberg
Some 15 Muslim gravestones were found desecrated in Jerusalem with the slogan “Death to Arabs” on Thursday, in what is suspected to be the latest “price tag” attack by right-wing extremists.
“Death to Arabs” and “Givat Asaf” – the name of a West Bank settlement outpost that is slated for demolition – were spray painted on the gravestones in the Bamamila Cemetery, next to the Jerusalem Museum of Tolerance.
It is still not known who is responsible for the desecration of the gravestones, or even exactly when it took place.
A month ago, on Yom Kippur, graves were desecrated with anti-Arab graffiti in two cemeteries in Jaffa, Christian and Muslim.
Police arrested a 21-year-old on Wednesday on suspicion of spray-painting ‘price tag’ and anti-Arab slogans, and on suspicion of being behind a false a bomb scare at the offices of left-wing political activists Peace Now. The young man had already being arrested in the past after he rang the doorbell of Yariv Oppenheimer, head of Peace Now, and threatened to harm him.
After police interrogated the man over the threats he uttered, he was released. A Jerusalem court remanded the man for another six days on Wednesday.
The man took responsibility for some of the crimes attributed to him at the beginning of his interrogation, including causing damage to the car of an Arab. He said that he did it because he “hates Arabs and hates Leftists.” But later he retracted his confession, and he is currently denying all accusations made against him.
The man’s lawyer, Shaul Ezra, claims that his client’s confession is inadmissible because it was extracted by force. Even when he confessed to some acts at first, the young man denied that accusation that he was responsible for spray-painting graffiti at the home of Hagit Ofran, the Settlement Watch Committee of Peace Now.
Israel Police Commander Yohanan Danino vowed to Peace Now activists on Wednesday that the police was taking every measure to ensure their security and apprehend those responsible for the attacks.
The police struck out in court in another incident that had triggered suspicions of being a ‘price tag’ attack. The police believed that they had enough evidence against three suspects who were caught in Wadi Ara soon after the murder of a family in the West Bank settlement of Itamar, carrying bottles of propane.
The three men claimed in court that they were on their way to visit the graves of Jewish saints and had taken propane will them in the event of an emergency.
UNESCO files complaint against Israeli delegation over Haaretz cartoon: Haaretz
A cartoon published in Haaretz causes a rift between Israel’s ambassador to UNESCO and the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
Israel’s ambassador to UNESCO didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when a senior official at the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization called him in for a tongue-lashing on Wednesday. The reason? A cartoon published in Haaretz.
The November 4 cartoon, a riff on the government’s anger at UNESCO’s decision to accept Palestine as a full member, showed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak sending an air force squadron to attack Iran, with Netanyahu ordering, “And on your way back, you’re gonna hit the UNESCO office in Ramallah!”
When he met with Eric Falt, UNESCO’s assistant director general for external relations and public information, Ambassador Nimrod Barkan was stunned to be handed a copy of this cartoon and an official letter of protest from UNESCO’s director general, Irina Bokova. Falt told Barkan the cartoon constituted incitement.
“A cartoon like this endangers the lives of unarmed diplomats, and you have an obligation to protect them,” Falt said, according to an Israeli source. “We understand that there is freedom of the press in Israel, but the government must prevent attacks on UNESCO.”
Barkan pointed out that the government has no control over editorial cartoons printed in the papers. “Ask yourselves what you did to make a moderate paper with a deeply internationalist bent publish such a cartoon,” he suggested. “Perhaps the problem is with you.”
After Barkan reported the conversation to the Foreign Ministry, it cabled back: “What exactly does UNESCO want of us – to send our fine boys to protect UNESCO’s staff, or to shut down the paper? It seems your work environment is getting more and more reminiscent of ‘Animal Farm.'”
Gilbert Achcar: on the US Likudniks’ racist smear campaign: IOA
11 NOVEMBER 2011
Glibert Achcar
This past October, I gave talks about my book, The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives, at five California universities – Stanford, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC San Diego and UCLA. These weren’t my first talks at North American universities on the same book: I had already made presentations at Columbia, NYU, Rutgers, Harvard, U of Chicago, U of Michigan, U of Wisconsin-Madison, U of Toronto and Rice.
U.S. Likudniks, who had remained relatively restrained on this issue until now, could not stand it any longer. They launched a massive attack against me in the form of a smear article – their trademark type – written by two Campus Watch vigilantes and first published on FrontPageMag, the online magazine of the notorious ultra-right-winger David Horowitz. From there, the article was reproduced by countless websites and blogs belonging to the same ideological swarm, and distributed by them to their extensive email lists.
What drove my detractors especially mad was the fact that my talks were often hosted by scholars of Jewish background, if not by Jewish Studies Centers, like the one at UC Davis that was the first target of this latest smear campaign. I have also been invited by Jewish Studies Centers at the Universities of Chicago and Toronto to talk about my book, a book that was reviewed – rather positively – in the Jewish Review of Books and the Journal of Jewish Studies. My detractors lament: “The rot is so pervasive that it’s infected Middle East studies, Israel studies, Jewish studies, and Holocaust studies alike. At this rate, there will be no bastions of true scholarship left.” By these sorts of malicious attacks, of which I am only the most recent target among many others, they are trying to deter and intimidate the whole of U.S. academia, especially Jewish scholars, from any independent thinking. They are AIPAC’s academic vigilantes.
I will not waste my time – nor that of the readers – discussing in detail what amounts to an accumulation of slanders and distortions combined with rightwing Likudnik-type comments that any intelligent and progressive person can easily recognize for what they are worth. As I usually do in such cases, I will only take one example illustrating the method of my detractors. The two Campus Watch vigilantes’ article starts with this sentence that they attribute to me: “Don’t expect me to take a pro-Israel view. I’m an Arab.” They then go on commenting: “Those in the audience hoping for scholarly objectivity were thus informed that Achcar’s ethnicity trumped intellectual independence…” And to add racist insult to injury, they then find it necessary to emphasize my “heavy accent.”
Fortunately, my lecture at Berkeley, which they comment upon, is available online (see also here). Here is what I said in my opening remarks:
“Let me say from the start that I don’t claim to be neutral, because I don’t think that anyone can be neutral with regard to such issues. What I claim and purport to be is honest. It is a matter of intellectual honesty and this is what I try to display in the book. But I think it would be dishonest to say ‘This is purely scholarly, there’s no politics here, I’m above politics.’ It’s in itself a political statement usually when people say such things, especially on such topics. So, it’s clear that this is a book written by – okay – a scholar, but a scholar who, like any scholar, has a sociology, an origin. I’m myself from the Middle East, I’m from Lebanon, so I’m Arab ethnically speaking, and dealing with the Arabs and the Holocaust, one won’t expect me to take a pro-Israeli view in this regard. Again, my main claim here is one of intellectual honesty. It’s up to the readers to judge, but I didn’t try to hide any embarrassing facts whatsoever, and the book is informed by a perspective which may be described as basically antiracist, against any type of racism be it anti-Semitism, or anti-Arab racism for that matter, or whatever form of prejudice.”
Prisoners reps: Israel not honoring commitments to detainees: Ma’an News
Published Thursday 10/11/2011
Palestinian Authority Minister of Prisoners Issa Qaraqe said the situation of Palestinian prisoners was worse than before the Oct. 18 prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas. The deal also included an end to solitary confinement and punitive measures, he said.
Director of the parliamentary prisoners’ committee Khalida Jarar said Israel has detained 110 Palestinians since the deal was made.
The comments were made at a news conference at the Government Media Center in Ramallah on Thursday, where representatives spoke out on the situation of some 5,000 Palestinians still in Israeli jail after 477 were released in the first stage of the swap deal three weeks ago.
In late September, detainees launched a 3-week mass hunger strike in jails across Israel to protest worsening conditions. Prisoners suspended the strike on Oct. 17 after they said Israel had announced it would meet a key demand by ending the practice of solitary confinement.
But since ending the strike, isolation cells continue, prisoners’ visiting periods were not increased, and they are still barred from moving between cells to see fellow prisoners, representatives said Thursday.
Qaraqe condemned Israel’s sentencing of Fatah-affiliated lawmaker Jamal Tirawi to 30 years in jail on Oct. 31. Tirawi was already held in Israeli jail for over four years as his trial was postponed repeatedly.
The international community has a responsibility toward democratic representatives jailed in Israel, as they were elected in a national election in 2006 declared free by international observers, Qaraqe said.
Israel’s military prosecution admits that the measures against prisoners is for political, rather than security, reasons, Qaraqe said.
Director of Palestinian Prisoners Society Fares Qaddura said none of the charges against the 23 elected representatives in Israeli jail could be proved, and the sentencing of Tirawi contradicted an agreement to free the lawmaker between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
Jarar noted that the Inter-Parliamentary Union adopted resolutions calling for the release of Palestinian members of parliament detained in Israel in April 2011, and union delegates were prevented from visiting prominent lawmakers Ahmad Saadat and Marwan Barghouthi.
The Inter-Parliamentary Union should ban Israeli politicians from entering member countries to pressure them to release the Palestinian legislators, Jarrar said.
Abbas: Palestinians to continue efforts to seek full UN membership: Haaretz
Speaking to reporters in Tunisia, Palestinian President rules out the possibility of dissolving the Palestinian Authority if UN efforts fail.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his officials stressed Saturday that they will continue efforts to seek full United Nations membership in spite of the latest setbacks at the UN Security Council.
A Palestinian application for full UN membership Abbas submitted on September 23 hit a snag on Friday when a committee reviewing it was not able to agree on the application.
The Palestinians also preferred not to call for a Security Council vote after it became clear they do not have the nine votes needed to bring it before the council for a full vote.
Speaking to reporters in Tunisia, where he is on an official two-day visit, Abbas said late Friday that even if efforts at getting full membership fail at this time, the Palestinian Authority will continue in its efforts in the future. He ruled out the possibility of dissolving the Palestinian Authority if the UN efforts fail.
Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Malki also said Saturday that these efforts will continue, “even for the 1,000th time,” until Palestine is granted full membership. “Our goal is to get full membership,” he said, stressing that becoming a non-member state of the UN remains an option that the Palestinians can embark on at any time and most likely get, but it was not the primary goal.
“We always knew that one round to get full membership would not be enough,” Malki told Voice of Palestine radio from New York, where he was following up on the Palestinian application.
“The option to join the UN as non-member state is open for us and we can do it whenever we want,” he said. “But our focus is to get full membership because this is what we want.”
He said that the Palestinian Authority may opt for a non-member state but that will not be an alternative to getting full membership. “If we decide to go for a non-member state, it will be for tactical reasons and to join UN agencies. But this will not be an alternative to efforts to ask the Security Council for full membership,” he said. “We do not want to just be observers; we want to be full members.”