Haim Bresheeth

May 14, 2009

Elite IDF soldier confesses to looting Gaza home during war: Ha’aretz

An elite Israel Defense Forces soldier confessed on Tuesday to stealing a credit card from a home in northern Gaza during the recent offensive against Hamas and using it to withdraw NIS 1,600 in Israel. The soldier, who serves in the Givati infantry unit’s reconnaissance battalion, was arrested last week with one of his comrades. The second soldier was released after his friend confessed.Following the soldier’s confession, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit relayed: “The IDF examines every incident that is not in line with the laws of the state and the principles of the IDF.” The army’s police investigative unit launched a probe into the allegations last month after receiving a complaint. A Palestinian residing in the northern Gaza Strip claimed his credit card was stolen during Operation Cast Lead, the codename for Israel’s offensive against Hamas. A short while later, his credit card statement revealed that a number of products were purchased in Israel. In the statement released Tuesday by the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, the army further said: “In light of the nature of the complaint, the military prosecution ordered the Military Police Investigation unit to open probes in which they would take evidence in order to examine the claims.”

“As is customary,” the unit added, “the investigations are accompanied by prosecutors for operational matters who will check the findings and recommend steps to take, should this be found necessary. “Following these claims two soldiers were arrested for investigation by the Military Police Investigation unit.”

New report: The Electronic Police State

2008 National Rankings
Most of us are aware that our governments monitor nearly every form of electronic communication. We are also aware of private companies doing
the same. This strikes most of us as slightly troubling, but very few of us say or do much about it. There are two primary reasons for this:
1. We really don’t see how it is going to hurt us. Mass surveillance is certainly a new, odd, and perhaps an ominous thing, but we just
don’t see a complete picture or a smoking gun. 2. We are constantly surrounded with messages that say, “Only crazy people complain about the government.”
However, the biggest obstacle to our understanding is this: The usual image of a “police state” includes secret police dragging people out of their homes at night, with scenes out of Nazi Germany or Stalin’s USSR. The problem with these images is that they are horribly outdated. That’s how things worked during your grandfather’s war – that is not how things work now. An electronic police state is quiet, even unseen. All of its legal actions are supported by abundant evidence. It looks pristine. An electronic police state is characterized by this:
State use of electronic technologies to record, organize, search and distribute forensic evidence against its citizens.
The two crucial facts about the information gathered under an electronic police state are these:
1. It is criminal evidence, ready for use in a trial.
2. It is gathered universally and silently, and only later organized for use in prosecutions.
In an Electronic Police State, every surveillance camera recording, every email you send, every Internet site you surf, every post you make, every
check you write, every credit card swipe, every cell phone ping… are all criminal evidence, and they are held in searchable databases, for a long,
long time. Whoever holds this evidence can make you look very, very bad whenever they care enough to do so. You can be prosecuted whenever
they feel like it – the evidence is already in their database.

The list includes 52 states, and here are the first nine:

Here are the 52 states and their rankings:
1. China
2. North Korea
3. Belarus
4. Russia
5. United Kingdom: England & Wales
6. United States of America
7. Singapore
8. Israel

Surprise, surprise!

Continue reading May 14, 2009

May 12, 2009

To all our critics who jhave already written off the Leonard Cohen call which we have made, please read the report below, and reassess your certainties… I really do not believe we have heard the last on this issue.

Anti-Israel activists urge Leonard Cohen to nix T.A. show: Ha’aretz

Anti-Israel activists are stepping up efforts to dissuade Leonard Cohen from performing in Israel in September. The activists urge supporters to “apply pressure during his tour by local groups along his path,” in their most recent appeal, which was circulated on Monday in various pro-Palestinian mailing lists. They added that letters “and various actions” might prove “instrumental in helping him take the decision to cancel his last concert.” This, they explain, is because “it is obvious the situation in Palestine and Israel is quite clear to Leonard Cohen, to judge by his song entitled Questions for Shomrim. The poem begins with the words “And will my people build a new Dachau
and call it love, security, Jewish culture.” It also reads: “You were our singing heroes in ’48, do you dare ask yourselves what you are now” and: “now my son must die for he’s an Arab.” The anti-Israel activists called on supporters to write to Cohen’s manager and leave messages on his official online forum. They published a list of destinations on Cohen’s tour, ending with Israel “if we are not successful.” In the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Leonard Cohen flew to Israel to perform before reserves and regular soldiers fighting in the Sinai desert. Two main letters of protest against the concert have been circulated so far. The most recent one was co-signed by a hundred Israelis and Palestinians, who wrote that Israel’s “ruthless, criminal bashing of the Palestinians has met with little international criticism.” Addressing Cohen and urging him to cancel, the Israelis said: “We cannot envision you cooperating with continued Israeli defiance of justice and morality; we cannot envision you playing a part in the Israeli charade of self-righteousness.” They included the poem Questions for Shomrim in their appeal.
The first letter of protest was published last month by Pro-Palestinian professors from the U.K. from the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine, who warned Cohen that he would be performing “for a public that by a very large majority had no qualms about its military forces’ onslaught” in Gaza. The scholars – Haim Bresheeth, Mike Cushman, Hilary Rose and Jonathan Rosenhead, added: “You will perform in a state whose propaganda services will extract every ounce of mileage from your presence. They will use it to whitewash their war crimes.” The authors of the letter explained that Cohen needs to cancel the show in Ramat Gan lest it be attended by Arab-killing Israeli soldiers who are “drinking beer” and “playing backgammon with their mates and going to discotheques.”

Below you can read the letter sent to the Jewish Chronicle, affter they published the article by Mr. Freedland. We have asked them to publish it as a ‘right of reply’ letter, but we got no reply, of course… So much for the openness of the JC to other Jewish voices, apart from their own!

Open Letter to Jonathan Freedland at the Jewish Chronicle:

In a typically snide and self-satisfied article, published in last week’s JC (“A very futile boycott”, April 30th, 2009), the Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland is oozing schadenfreude over the ‘failure of the boycott’ against Israeli institutions. He obviously does not follow the news, or maybe he just ignores it. In gloating over Leonard Cohen’s planned visit to Israel, he manages to carefully disregard the growing success of the boycott, both in the UK and abroad. Only a couple of weeks ago, a motion for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel was passed by the Scottish TUC. Recently Veolia, the multinational building the Jerusalem tram lines on occupied land held illegally, has lost very large contracts in Sweden and Bordeaux, as a result of the boycott campaign. We could go on. This success is the result of a number of important factors: Many Jews have joined (or initiated) the local campaigns, and at last, ordinary people feel they can playa role in this endless saga, and act like they did against apartheid, rather than rely on spineless diplomacy delivering only further disasters.

The rationale for Freedland’s festive tone is an odd one: a ‘mistake’ made by us because we wrote to Leonard Cohen invoking his Buddhism rather than his Judaism. Freedland could have worked this out for himself. Most of Judaic current sentiment seems to be anchored in that part of the Jewish tradition which is Xenophobic and hateful towards the other, supporting any military excess with nationalistic and racist arguments. Of course, there is in Judaism a very different tradition, not one which Freedland himself appears to support, unfortunately. This is the tradition of Hillel the Elder: “Do not do unto your friend, that which you will not have done unto you”. This is the best of Judaism – a liberal, progressive, and open-minded attitude towards the Ger, the ‘other in your midst’. This attitude was clearly missing from most of Israeli politics and public discourse in the last few decades, and is even more absent now. Would Hillel the Elder have backed the massacre of the innocents which Israel has carried out in Gaza, Lebanon, and so many other places? It seems clear to us what his position would be – support the weak, disenfranchised and dispossessed. If Leonard Cohen, hardly ‘our hero’, as stated by Freedland, also chooses to ignore Hillel the Elder, then he is neither a good Buddhist, nor a good Jew. That would, indeed, be a great pity, as he is held in high regard by many who like his music and enjoy it.

Prof. Haim Bresheeth, UEL
Mike Cushman, LSE
Prof. Jonathan Rosenhead, LSE

Below you can see the letters page of today’s Guardian, with comments about the Max Hastings article on Saturday. While he quite appropriately decribes how ‘he fell out of love’ with Israel, it is important to read his article and realise how misguided he still is, though he now thinks he has already worked things out…

Military myths in the history of Israel: The Guardian

The Guardian, Tuesday 12 May 2009

Max Hastings proves not just what he set out to do – that Israel no longer should have our support (How I fell out of love with Israel, 9 May). What oozes at us from every line is his biased and one-sided view of the conflict. The Zionist myth which drove him to Israel in 1969 is alive and well in his memory – it is the physical reality which has failed him. In his adulatory description, all Israelis and their deeds seem to him “brilliant”, “stunning” and “bright”, terms he could not apply to any Palestinian, essentially because he relates no meetings he had with any of them, on the same terms he describes his many meetings with Israelis. This gives away some of his political perspective. Arabs and Palestinians are but extras in this narrative, it seems.
When discussing the Israeli occupation army, the so-called IDF, he notes that “morally, if not militarily, it is a shadow of the force that fought in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973”. Well, well … Any reading of Israeli history by the group known as the New Historians, such as Benny Morris and Ilan Pappe, would have proved to him that his misguided view of Israel, Zionism and the IDF was, and is, totally inaccurate. This army, which destroyed Gaza, had also destroyed Beirut. This is the army which set out on a bizarre colonial journey in 1956, together with the dying empires. Time to give up on the militarised myth!
Professor Haim Bresheeth
University of East London

Max Hastings’s account of how he fell in love and then out of love with Israel is certainly touching. But his belief that Amos Oz’s 1979 prophecy to him has been fulfilled, ie that Israel would end up behaving no better than its neighbours, is unjustified, and his reference to “Israeli military excesses in Gaza” wrong. Rather than resign himself to Oz’s negative prognostications, he should heed the words of Colonel Richard Kemp, a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, who during the recent Gaza war gave this assessment of Israel’s operations: “I don’t think there has ever been a time in the history of warfare when any army has made more efforts to reduce civilian casualties and deaths of innocent people than the IDF is doing today in Gaza.”
Alastair Albright
London

Max Hastings has said, far more eloquently than I could, exactly how I feel about Israel. I too was an enthusiast at its creation in 1948 but then the horrors of Auschwitz were still fresh in our minds and we chose to overlook the terrorist activities of the Stern Gang and the Irgun in achieving the Zionist goal of nationhood and to ignore the plight of hundreds of thousands of Arab refugees. Palestinians are living in hopeless misery which can only find expression in the hatred of their oppressors. Only an imposed arbitration can have any prospect of bringing peace, and that would have to involve the return of the occupied territories under UN resolutions 242 and 338.
Harvey Quilliam
Maghull, Merseyside

Below is the link to Max Hastings’ article, for those of you who have missed reading it.

The paradox of Israel’s pursuit of might: The Guardian

My fuller comment has appeared on Comment is Free/The Guardian:

Time to give up the myth!

By Haim Bresheeth
Old myths die hard! One of the most resilient myths in progressive circles is that of the ‘pure Zionist project, which was defiled by late practice. One such example of this myth in action was the recent article by Max Hastings (How I fell out of love with Israel, Guardian, May 9th) where he indeed admits to no longer being hooked by this specific political movement, as he was some decades ago, but in describing his process of reckoning, he is also describing how difficult it is to shake the Zionist habit.
What oozes at us from every line, is his biased and one-sided view of the conflict, without the slightest attempt at balancing it. It is not difficult to see where exactly he got that version of reality – he ‘always liked soldiers and spent many months over the decades speaking to them ‘under the starry skies of the Middle East; it hardly needs saying that the soldiers he was fraternising with were exclusively Israeli – he mentions no others – and from his many expressions of admiration for their deeds and their manner, and the fact that he started dressing in what he calls a ‘thinly-disguised version of the IDF uniform, it is clear that he had a model before him, one he wished to emulate. All this may be understandable in young and impressionable journalist, and Israel has made a science of luring and snaring such people over the decades. What is less obvious is how the myth has stuck, and how even now, some four decades after his first fateful visit to Israel, he still describes an odd Arcadian utopia of soldiery, as the pure and moral Zionism. The Zionist myth which drove him to Israel in 1969, seems to be alive and well in his memoires and memory – it is the physical reality which has failed.
One cannot escape the nagging suspicion that Hastings has avoided reading about Israels wars, which, for a mature journalist is less understandable. When discussing the Israeli occupation army, the so-called IDF, he notes that morally, if not militarily, it is a shadow of the force that fought in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973. So the IDF in those wars, Hastings is telling us, in no uncertain terms, was ‘moral, and superior to the occupation army of today. Well, well…
Any serious reading of Israeli history by members of the group widely known as the ‘New Historians, such as (the racist) Benny Morris and the historian of the ethnic cleaning of Palestine, Ilan Pappe, would have proved to him, once and for all, that his misguided view of Israel, Zionism and the IDF was, and is, highly ideological and imaginary. Which one of those wars was exactly ‘moral? The 1948 war, in which Israel has expelled 760,000 Palestinians from their own country, then denied them a return, as demanded by the UN? Maybe he is not aware of the many massacres which those researchers has unearthed, by simply ploughing through the IDF archives?
Now, could he possibly mean the 1956 war? This is a war in which Israel has joined the two sinking empires of Great Britain and France, a war so colonially outrageous and illegal, that the USSR and the USA have together called it so, and have forced the combatants out of Sinai by a nuclear warning? What reason could Israel possibly have to attack Egypt, but as an accessory to a bizarre colonial adventure, reminiscent of the worst gunboat diplomacy of the 19th century? Was this the moral war Hastings has referred to? Let us also remember that for over three years before that war, a young IDF officer by the name of Ariel Sharon, a commander of Israels death squad named ‘Unit 101, has attacked a number of Palestinian villages, towns and refugee camps, with a terrifying toll in civilian lives? Was this the high moral standard he holds so dear?
Of course, the 1967 war is a candidate for a moral war, we may be told by Hastings, and by other naïve supporters of military Zionism; there is nothing further from the truth. This was a war, which like in 1956, Israel started and shot the ‘first bullet as President De Gaulle has famously put it. President Nasser was unable and unwilling to go to war against Israel, and has indeed asked Israel for a peace treaty a short time beforehand, only to be ignored. The war had two objectives, and achieved both: To break Nasser grip on middle eastern politics, and to gain control of the parts of Palestine still in Arab hands – the 22% of Palestine which Israel did not control. The results of this ‘moral war were the occupation lasting till now, the hundreds of Jewish settlements built in Syria, Palestine (then still part of Jordan) and Egypt, including the Gaza Strip. A campaign of terror has started against Palestinian aspirations for their own country, following UN resolutions to this effect, and it was this highly ‘moral army that has continually quashed Palestinian hopes for some kind of normality in their lifetime.
Time to give up the myth!

Continue reading May 12, 2009

May 10, 2009

Ask your sons: Ha’aretz

By Gideon Levy

It is behavior well known to every police investigator: First the suspect denies everything, then attacks his interrogators, then admits to a small portion of the accusations (saying he merely did what everyone does), and finally breaks down and confesses. The Israel Defense Forces returned from Operation Cast Lead and, of course, denied everything. The people applauded it for its bogus victory and no one paid much attention to the awful price paid by the Palestinians. But after the smoke (in this case, white phosphorus) cleared a bit, the blood began crying out from the ground. Foreign journalists and human rights groups investigated and reported their findings. The United Nations said the IDF intentionally targeted its facilities, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International accused the army of illegally using phosphorous bombs, the International Red Cross reported on the injured being denied medical attention and strikes on medical crews, officers at a premilitary course spoke of civilians killed, and Amira Hass wrote for Haaretz about the killing of people flying white flags, the use of flechette shells and the annihilation of entire families. The ground began trembling beneath Israel’s feet when it started attacking the emissaries of these organizations. The country’s gates were closed to the UN fact-finding mission headed by Jewish South African Richard Goldstone, as if it were Zimbabwe or North Korea, as if it had much to hide. The president brusquely rebuked the UN’s Ban Ki-moon and suggested he visits Auschwitz, until eventually the secretary general was forced to shrink from supporting his organization’s damning report. Anyone who dared investigate and report was branded anti-Semitic. Little has changed since the early-1970s report by a group of American lawyers on the Shin Bet security service’s alleged torture methods. These attorneys were immediately labeled anti-Semites. We deny, repress, lie, attack and compare ourselves to others, and our conscience remains clear. Even when the IDF admits to killing 300 civilians – 90 of them children, 50 women and 160 whose identities the army says is unclear – our story remains the same: the most moral army in the world. Not the third most, not the second – the most. After all, Yedioth Ahronoth gave that view its seal of approval in a special propaganda supplement entitled “The most moral in the world.” But let’s assume Amnesty is lying, Human Rights Watch is fabricating, B’Tselem is embellishing, the UN is anti-Israel and the media is full of hatred against us – isn’t there enough in the IDF’s own figures to shake us to the core? Three hundred civilians killed, including 90 children – isn’t that enough to expose the propagandistic lie of “the most moral” army? How many innocent people must be killed for that to happen? The IDF conducted five “investigations” (in which, naturally, only soldiers’ actions were examined), lamented one family’s tragedy, and the military correspondents applauded again. The IDF Spokesman’s Office sent battalion commanders to recite declarations on their own lofty battle ethics – with faces concealed, of course, as suspects often are – and the media didn’t burden them with questions. No one believes this war should be subjected to a serious investigation because in this war, unlike its predecessors, not enough soldiers were killed to justify that. But the truth cries out even from the collapsed and perforated rubble of what was once a home: The soldiers who were in Gaza know, as do their friends, that something terrible happened there – just as those who served in the West Bank know. Ask your sons; they know the truth – the truth is sitting in your own home. And ask the friends of your sons, and the sons of your friends – they know. Many of them are brainwashed, and for now are keeping mum. Israel is holding back the tide of reports and investigations, and putting its head in the sand of propaganda and victimization, but in the end the truth will emerge. Even the excuse “everyone does it” will not do any good, as it does no good for a driver caught speeding. The Americans kill more? The French slaughtered more? That may do for the Foreign Ministry’s automatic statements. We deserve more, we deserve the full truth – what exactly our soldiers did in our name, each of our names, on the streets of Gaza, imprisoned and bleeding for the 22 days of a useless war.

Continue reading May 10, 2009

May 9, 2009

: The Guardian, May 7, 2009. Copyright © Steve Bell 2008

The paradox of Israel’s pursuit of might: The Guardian CiF

Forty years ago, I was enraptured by Israel’s courageous sense of mission. For me today, as for many, that idealism has palled

I first visited Israel in 1969. It was a time when much of the western world was still passionately enthused about the country’s triumph in the 1967 six-day war. President Nasser had for years promised to sweep the Israelis into the sea. Instead, the tiny Jewish state, less than 20 years old, had engaged the armies of three Arab nations, and crushingly defeated them all. The Israelis successively smashed through Nasser’s divisions on the western front, scaled and seized the Golan Heights, and snatched east Jerusalem and the West Bank in the face of Hussein’s highly capable Jordanian army. Sinai was left strewn with the boots of fleeing Egyptians. The Israeli victory was an awesome display of command boldness, operational competence and human endeavour.
There was a euphoria in Israel in those days, which many visitors shared. We watched Jews from all over the world gathering to pray at the Wailing Wall for the first time in almost 2,000 years; Israelis of all ages revelling in the sensation of being able to work the kibbutzim of the north free from Syrian shells. From inhabiting one of the most claustrophobic places in the world, suddenly they found themselves free to roam miles across Sinai on a weekend. The soldiers of the Israeli army, careerists, conscripts and reservists alike, walked 10ft tall – the image of an exulting soldier made it on to the cover of Life magazine. They had shown themselves one of the greatest fighting forces of history, expunging almost at a stroke the memory of Jewish impotence in the face of centuries of persecution, of six million being herded helpless into cattle trucks for the death camps.
In the years that followed, I gazed across the Suez Canal during the artillery bombardments of the 1970 war of attrition with Egypt. I was a correspondent there in October 1973, during the Yom Kippur war. It was an extraordinarily moving spectacle, to behold the people of Israel rallying to meet what they perceived as a threat to their national survival. One morning I stood on the Golan Heights and watched Israeli tanks duelling with the Syrians, amid pillars of smoke and flame. A few nights later I bivouacked in the Sinai passes, talking for hours under the stars to Israeli reservists about their hopes and fears. With a colleague from the Financial Times, having thinly disguised ourselves as Israeli soldiers, we made an illicit night crossing of the Suez canal, to report Ariel Sharon’s stunning encirclement operation which trapped the Egyptian army on the east bank. In those days I loved those people, and boundlessly admired their achievement. I wrote in one of my less temperate dispatches, expressing faith in Israel as a bastion of western civilization in the Middle East: “These last three weeks, I am proud to have shared the Israelis’ camp fires in Sinai. They are a very great people who three weeks ago came closer to destruction than blind Europe seems willing to recognise.”

Obama renews U.S. sanctions on Syria: Ha’aretz

U.S. President Barack Obama said on Friday he had renewed sanctions against Syria because it posed a continuing threat to U.S. interests. Obama, in a letter to Congress notifying it of his decision, accused Damascus of “supporting terrorism, pursuing weapons of mass destruction and missile programs, and undermining U.S. and international efforts with respect to the stabilization and reconstruction of Iraq.” “For these reasons I have determined that it is necessary to continue in effect the national emergency declared with respect to this threat and to maintain in force the sanctions,” Obama said in the letter to Congress. Renewal of the sanctions is required each year by Congress. The announcement came following the visit of two U.S. envoys to Damascus this week to try to improve ties. The sanctions, imposed by former President George W. Bush, prohibit arms exports to Syria, block Syrian airlines from operating in the United States and deny Syrians suspected of being associated with terrorist groups access to the U.S. financial system. While the United States has made clear it wants better relations with Syria, a nation it has long accused of supporting terrorism, the renewal of sanctions shows Washington is not yet ready for a dramatic improvement in relations.

Thank you, O’Bomber, for punishing the victims of occupation, rather than those who perpetrate war! This will make you supporters really happy... Below you can also read about the real background for this announcement:

Netanyahu: Israel will never withdraw from Golan: Ha’aretz

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a group of Russian-language reporters Thursday that Israel will never withdraw from the Golan Heights. “Remaining on the Golan will ensure Israel has a strategic advantage in cases of military conflict with Syria,” Netanyahu said during a briefing he gave to the reporters. His comments were published Friday on several Russian-language Israeli Web sites. A week-and-a-half out from Netanyahu’s scheduled visit to Washington, the prime minister stressed that he is ready to stand up to U.S. President Barack Obama and that he would not give up on matters that in his opinion are critical to Israel’s security.
Netanyahu said that he intends to emphasize to Obama the need to deal with Iran and its “nuclear program, which is a major obstacle to peace in the Middle East.”
“If Iran turns into a nuclear power they will force all Arab states to ally with it, and the extreme Iranian regime that revealed its plan to eliminate Israel will not allow Arab states to normalize relations with Israel,” Netanyahu said. Netanyahu also told the reporters that he would not present preconditions for negotiations with the Palestinians and would not accept preconditions from them.

UN laments choking of Bethlehem: BBC

The UN has accused Israel of restricting development of the Bethlehem region in the West Bank.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) said just 13% of land around Bethlehem was open for use by the Palestinian population. It said the traditional birthplace of Jesus Christ was hemmed in by Israeli settlements and military zones as well as Israel’s West Bank barrier.
An Israeli foreign ministry official said the issue was beyond Ocha’s remit. Next week, Pope Benedict is due to celebrate Mass in Bethlehem , a Palestinian governorate which is home to 175,000 inhabitants, including many Christians. Two-thirds of the governorate’s 660 sq km (255 sq miles) has been under Israeli control and about 86,000 Israelis live in settlements and outposts in the governorate, Ocha says. Israel occupied the West Bank in the 1967 war and its settlement activity is regarded as illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.
Cut off
“Israeli measures have radically reduced the space available to the inhabitants of Bethlehem, compromising the future economic and social development of the governorate,” the Ocha report says. The report says that in addition to the land put under Israeli control under past interim agreements between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), 20% of the remainder is an Israeli-controlled “nature reserve”. Meanwhile, the West Bank barrier cuts through Bethlehem’s western edges blocking off grazing and agricultural land, the report says. “As a result, Bethlehem’s potential for residential and industrial expansion and development has been reduced, as well as its access to natural resources,” the report said. Israel says the barrier is needed to keep out Palestinian attackers, including suicide bombers. Palestinians call it a land grab since it juts into the West Bank. Yigal Palmor of the Israeli foreign ministry said he had not seen the report but accused past reports by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs of containing “distorted information”.
Settlement drive
Separately, information released by an Israeli anti-settlement group, Yesh Din, said settlement activity in the West Bank had been accelerating at the fastest rate since 2003. It cited more than 20 cases of new Israeli building on occupied territory since January, on both sides of the barrier, including a number of outposts built without Israeli permits. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon promised the previous US administration that he would evacuate all unauthorised outposts built after March 2001, but critics say evacuations are carried out intermittently and without rigour. The international peace plan known as the road map called on Israel to halt all construction in the settlements, although observers say construction has never ceased. Israel says it is not building new settlements, but claims the right to foster “natural growth” within the confines of existing communities.

Gaza: pursuit of the laws of war: The Guardian, CiF

If the UN fails to further investigate crimes committed during the conflict it will ensure stalemate, and more suffering for civilians

The Israeli government and its supporters have lashed out at the report of the UN board of inquiry into Israeli attacks on UN installations during Israel’s latest offensive in Gaza. The report, they say, is biased, tendentious and inaccurate. According to Robbie Sabel, writing in Comment is Free, the “unbalanced report” does “little to bring understanding or justice to the conflict in Gaza”.
The full report has not been published, but there’s little in the summary that UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon sent to the security council on Tuesday to support such claims. On the contrary, it provides careful but compelling evidence that Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) violated the laws of war during their military operations around UN installations in Gaza.
According to the summary, the board of inquiry concluded that “IDF actions involved varying degrees of negligence and recklessness with regard to United Nations premises and the safety of United Nations staff and other civilians within those premises, with consequent deaths, injuries and extensive physical damage and loss of property”. The board also holds “Hamas or another Palestinian actor” responsible for one attack on a UN installation – a World Food Progamme warehouse hit by a Qassam rocket.
The terms of reference of the UN inquiry were extremely narrow. Its job was to look at attacks on eight UN installations and one UN convoy during the period of Israel’s military offensive. As far as one can tell from the summary, the board has been meticulous in sticking to these terms of reference.
However, the conclusions of the inquiry, as represented in the summary (which, it should be noted, was not written by those who wrote the full report), raise broader questions about the use of force by the IDF during the conflict. It appears the authors of the UN report felt these questions should not be ducked. The summary notes that the board of inquiry was “deeply conscious” that the attacks on UN installations investigated in its report “are among many incidents during Operation Cast Lead involving civilian victims”.
The board therefore recommended that “these incidents should be investigated as part of an impartial inquiry, mandated and adequately resourced, to investigate violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza and southern Israel by the IDF and by Hamas and other Palestinian militants”.

UN report accuses Israeli military of negligence in Gaza war: The Guardian

Inquiry finds Israel responsible for deaths, injuries and damage to UN buildings

: A fire at the UN building in Gaza City after Israeli strikes Photograph: Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty

A UN inquiry accused the Israeli military today of “negligence or recklessness” in its conduct of the war in Gaza. The summary of the UN report, commissioned by the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, censured the Israeli government for causing death, injuries and damage to UN property in seven incidents involving action by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF). It said: “The board concluded that IDF actions involved varying degrees of negligence or recklessness with regard to United Nations premises and to the safety of United Nations staff and other civilians within those premises, with consequent deaths, injuries, and extensive physical damage and loss of property.” However, in a blow to human rights campaigners, Ban said there would be no further investigation despite the report calling for a full impartial inquiry.
Although the full, 184-page findings of the UN board of inquiry will not be made public, the 27-page summary emphasised that UN premises are inviolable, and that inviolability cannot be set aside by the demands of military expediency. “UN personnel and all civilians within UN premises, as well as civilians in the immediate vicinity of those premises, are to be protected in accordance with the rules and principles of international humanitarian law,” the summary says.

The next report explains the incredible move by the UN Secretary General, against a proper UN investigation of the killings outside the narrow confines of its own buildings in Gaza. It seems, according to the SG, that the UN is only mandated to defend itself, but not the rest of humanity, in which it has little interest, especially in those without a powerful army behind them…

UN chief rejects further inquiry in Gaza: The Guardian

One of the more striking features of today’s UN inquiry into the Gaza war is the secretary general’s prompt rejection of one of its key findings.
In its 11th and final recommendation, the board of inquiry said the killings and injuries that happened beyond its narrow remit, outside the walls of the UN compound in Gaza, “should be investigated as part of an impartial inquiry mandated, and adequately resourced, to investigate allegations of violations of international humanitarian law”. In his covering letter, however, Ban Ki-moon, said he did not “plan any further inquiry”, opting not to use the secretary general’s prerogative to order his own inquiries into allegations of serious human rights abuses.
Ban’s predecessor, Kofi Annan, set up such an inquiry in April 2002 after the shelling of the West Bank town of Jenin, but had to abort it in the face of Israel’s refusal to co-operate with an investigation it saw as biased from the outset. A UN official said today Ban’s decision had not been influenced by the failure of the Jenin enquiry, but added that Ban had stressed the desire to co-operate with Israel in further investigation of the shelling of the UN compound. In his remarks Ban made no reference to a UN investigation of the Gaza violence that has already been set in train by the UN human rights council. The council has in the past been rejected as ideologically anti-Israel by the west, and an inquiry under its auspices carries less weight than one ordered by a UN secretary general. But the selection of Richard Goldstone, a South African judge with strong human rights credentials (he was chief prosecutor for international war crimes tribunals on Yugoslavia and Rwanda), gives this inquiry greater clout than would otherwise be the case. And unlike the Jenin enquiry, an investigation focused on Gaza does not necessarily require Israeli cooperation, as entry is possible from Egypt.
“Goldstone has a lot of integrity and a wealth of experience in international justice,” said Tom Porteous, London director of Human Rights Watch. “We think his investigation should be given a chance, and we think Ban should have used this occasion to put his full weight behind it.”

Israel dismisses UN accusation of ‘grave offences’ in Gaza war: The Guardian

Report claiming deliberate targeting of UN civilians and institutions is biased, Israel says

Israel has dismissed as “tendentious” and “patently biased” an unpublished UN inquiry into Israel’s conduct during the January war in Gaza.
The UN investigation is the first into the war and looked only at deaths, injuries and damage caused at UN sites in Gaza during the three-week conflict. Some of the findings may be released today. According to Israeli media reports, a senior foreign ministry official has already received a draft copy of the report. One newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, was briefed on some of its contents and reported that it accuses Israel of “grave offences”, including “disproportionate shooting and deliberately hitting UN civilians and institutions”. The paper said the report “determined unequivocally: Israel deliberately fired at UN institutions even though it knew it was forbidden”. The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, was due to send his response to a summary of the report to the security council, Israel’s foreign ministry said. Yedioth said the report’s main recommendation was to call for an independent investigative committee to look more deeply into the war and to determine whether Israel violated international law. Israel’s foreign ministry said it believes Ban will not take up that recommendation.
The document has been compiled by a board of inquiry – a team of four led by Ian Martin, a Briton who is a former head of Amnesty International and a former UN special envoy to East Timor and Nepal. It is still unclear if the full report will be made public.
Israel’s foreign ministry attempted to pre-empt the report today, saying the Israeli military had already investigated its own conduct during the war and “proved beyond doubt” that it did not fire intentionally at UN buildings. It dismissed the UN inquiry.
“The state of Israel rejects the criticism in the committee’s summary report, and determines that in both spirit and language the report is tendentious, patently biased, and ignores the facts presented to the committee,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
It said the inquiry had “preferred the claims of Hamas, a murderous terror organisation, and by doing so has misled the world”.
International human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have accused both Israel’s military and Palestinian militant groups of serious violations of international law and possible war crimes during the conflict. The UN board of inquiry report has a limited scope. It is confined to investigating death or injuries or damage at UN buildings or during UN operations. The UN human rights council is also to dispatch a fact-finding mission to Gaza, but Israel has already suggested it will not co-operate, saying the council is biased.

UN report on Israeli attacks in Gaza: ‘It calls for reparations against Israel’: BBC

Ed Pilkington on UN report claiming Israeli attacks on UN buildings during the Gaza war were a violation

Play Ed Pilkington’s report

Washington negotiator calls on Israel to sign nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty: The Guardian

• Move breaks US tradition of discretion over Israeli arsenal
• NPT comes up for review in 2010

A diplomatic row broke out today between the US and Israel after Washington’s chief nuclear arms negotiator called on Israel to sign the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT), breaking a US tradition of discretion over Israel’s nuclear arsenal.
Israeli officials said they were puzzled by a speech to an international conference in New York by Rose Gottemoeller, an assistant secretary of state, who said: “Universal adherence to the NPT itself – including by India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea – also remains a fundamental objective of the United States.”
By including Israel on a list of countries known to have nuclear weapons. Gottemoeller broke with normal US diplomatic practice. Since 1968 when the CIA reported Israel had developed a nuclear weapon , Washington has pursued a policy of not demanding transparency from its close ally, and in return Israel agreed not to test a bomb or declare its nuclear capability – a policy of “strategic ambiguity”.
“As far as we are concerned, there is no change to the close dialogue we have with Washington,” Yossi Levy, Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, told Reuters. Privately, Israeli officials played down the importance of the NPT as a means of controlling proliferation.
Attempts to stop spread of nuclear weapons face a critical moment over the next year before the NPT comes up for review in 2010, at a time when North Korea has declared the resumption of its nuclear weapons programme, and fears over Iran’s intentions threaten to trigger a Middle East arms race. Gottemoeller’s speech was made at a meeting to prepare the way for next year’s critical NPT review conference.
Daryl Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association in Washington, said that Gottemoeller had not changed the long-held US position – that all states should join the NPT. However, she spelt that position out more explicitly in relation to Israel.

What Obama must tell Bibi: The Guardian CiF

The toughest meeting of Barack Obama’s young presidency is approaching. In the next few weeks, he will have to sit down with Israel’s Binyamin Netanyahu. The difficulty is not just that the prime minister refuses to accept the right of a Palestinian state to exist and thereby shows the Palestinians have no partner for peace.
Far more burdensome are the ghosts of US policies past. If Obama is sincere in wanting to break the stalemate of the Middle East’s core conflict, he will have to launch the US relationship with Israel on to radically new lines. Israel must be treated as a normal country. It cannot enjoy permanent licence to escape criticism for practising policies that would be condemned if carried out by any other country’s government. Even if Israelis, through their complex coalition arrangements, had anointed a more progressive and enlightened leader, this would be necessary. It is doubly essential now that Israel has chosen a man of aggressive and narrow vision.

The day of the blank cheque must be over. The day of the huge cheque must be over, too. Why should a country with one of the world’s highest per capita incomes receive around $3bn annually, or roughly a third of the US foreign aid budget (not including extra support from the Pentagon)? Why should it not have to account for its purchases like every other recipient country – a conscious lack of oversight that allows Washington to turn a blind eye to the fact that US tax dollars are financing illegal settlements in Jerusalem and the West Bank and helping to build the so-called apartheid wall? Unless Obama ends America’s special relationship with Israel, this omission will be the achilles heel of his foreign policy. America’s standing in the Middle East, its influence in the Gulf, its image in the Muslim world, its relationship with Iran, and even its support in Europe are all linked to the way it treats Israel. Obama’s fulsome comments about Israel before his election already suggested that this was likely to be his most dangerous weakness. His first 100 days in power have done nothing to negate that. His speeches in Turkey, which were directed at Muslim audiences, showed no recognition of the fact that most Turks, Arabs and Iranians see US policy towards Israel as unfair and partisan.His resounding appeal in Prague for a nuclear-free world contained no reference to Israel’s nuclear arsenal or the need for all nuclear countries (including India and Pakistan) to join the non- proliferation treaty. If Iran, a signatory of the NPT, is rightly pressed to adhere to the requirement for transparency, it is hypocrisy not to press the non-signatories to be as honest. To argue that countries which have not signed up are exempt from the rules may be legally right, but is politically absurd. Obama’s admirable wish to reduce the world’s nuclear stockpile cannot stop at the gates of Dimona and the sites where Israel’s nuclear warheads are kept. Only a dramatic break from previous US policy on Israel can end the Middle East deadlock.

US pro-Israeli group attempts to stop shift in White House Middle East policy: The Guardian

Aipac urges Congress members to sign letter to Barack Obama calling for Israel to set pace of negotiations with Palestinians

US congressional leaders and the most powerful pro-Israel lobby group in the US are attempting to forestall a significant shift in the White House’s Middle East policy.
The move comes amid growing signs that the US president, Barack Obama, intends to press for urgent efforts to be made towards the creation of a Palestinian state. The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, is visiting Washington later this month amid growing expectations that Obama is preparing to take a tougher line over Israel’s reluctance to actively seek a two-state solution to its conflict with the Palestinians. It will be the first time that Netanyahu and Obama have met since both were elected. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) this week sent hundreds of lobbyists to urge members of Congress to sign a letter to Obama. The letter, written by two House of Representatives leaders, calls for Israel to be allowed to set the pace of negotiations. The lobbying came despite critics saying Netanyahu has consistently failed to commit himself to the creation of a Palestinian state. The letter calls for the maintenance of the status quo, with an emphasis on Palestinian institution-building before there can be an end to Israeli occupation. It says the US “must be both a trusted mediator and devoted friend of Israel”. Aipac’s move to put pressure on members of Congress came at the end of its annual conference in Washington this week.
Some of the loudest applause at the gathering came in response to calls for military attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities – something Netanyahu has attempted to portray as a more urgent issue than the Palestinian question.
But Aipac delegates were told by the US vice-president, Joe Biden, that the administration favours “mutual respect” in dealing with Iran.
Biden said the Israeli-Palestinian conflict strengthened Iran’s strategic position and Israel must take concrete steps – including fulfilling often-broken commitments to stop the expansion of Jewish settlements – towards the creation of a Palestinian state.
Last week, General James Jones, Obama’s national security adviser, told a European foreign minister that the new administration would be “forceful” with Israel, according to a classified Israeli memo reported by the Ha’aretz newspaper.
Jones was quoted as saying that Obama believes Washington, the EU and moderate Arab states must define “a satisfactory endgame solution”.
“The new administration will convince Israel to compromise on the Palestinian question,” he was quoted as saying. “We will not push Israel under the wheels of a bus, but we will be more forceful toward Israel than we have been under Bush.” During his election campaign, Obama alarmed Israel’s hardline supporters by saying he regarded the lack of a resolution to the conflict as a “constant sore” that “infect[s] all of our foreign policy”. Netanyahu dare not openly defy Washington, and yesterday told the Aipac conference by satellite that he was ready for negotiations with the Palestinians.
But Aipac has moved to counter any new White House initiative by trying to mobilise Congress against it through the letter, written by two people seen as extremely close to the lobby group – Steny Hoyer, the Democratic majority leader in the House of Representatives, and Eric Cantor, the Republican whip. The two men addressed an Aipac banquet attended by more than half the members of Congress on Monday, each standing in turn at a “roll call” of support for Israel. On the face of it, the letter is a call for a peace, but its specifics urge Obama to maintain years of US policy that has tacitly accepted Israeli stalling of peace negotiations. The letter says that “the best way to achieve future success between Israelis and Palestinians will be by adhering to basic principles that have undergirded our policy”.
These include “acceptance that the parties themselves must negotiate the details of any agreement” as well as demanding that the Palestinians first “build the institutions necessary for a viable state” before gaining independence.
Jeremy Ben-Ami, the leader of J-street, a pro-Israel lobby group that favours the swift establishment of a Palestinian state, said that, while Aipac claims it supports a two-state solution, the letter is an attempt to prevent the White House from putting pressure on Israel to make that happen.
“They don’t come right out and say we don’t want Israel to make concessions, we don’t want Israel to leave the West Bank,” he said.
“They’ll say, ‘Of course we believe there should be peace’. But then they’ll do what this letter does. “They’ll say, ‘When the Israeli government decides it is ready to have a two-state solution, then there’ll be a two-state solution’.” Aipac wields considerable influence in the US Congress. Its critics say that what amounts to bullying pressure tactics has narrowed the room for debate about Israel, and claim the group has played a leading role in unseating some members of Congress who were critical of the Jewish state’s policies.

Robert Fisk: Civilians pay price of war from above: The Independent

Of course there will be an inquiry. And in the meantime, we shall be told that all the dead Afghan civilians were being used as “human shields” by the Taliban and we shall say that we “deeply regret” innocent lives that were lost. But we shall say that it’s all the fault of the terrorists, not our heroic pilots and the US Marine special forces who were target spotting around Bala Baluk and Ganjabad.
When the Americans destroy Iraqi homes, there is an inquiry. And oh how the Israelis love inquiries (though they rarely reveal anything). It’s the history of the modern Middle East. We are always right and when we are not, we (sometimes) apologise and then we blame it all on the “terrorists”. Yes, we know the throat-cutters and beheaders and suicide bombers are quite prepared to slaughter the innocent.
But it was a sign of just how terrible the Afghan slaughter was that the powerless President Hamid Karzai sounded like a beacon of goodness yesterday appealing for “a higher platform of morality” in waging war, that we should conduct war as “better human beings”.
And of course, the reason is quite simple. We live, they die. We don’t risk our brave lads on the ground – not for civilians. Not for anything. Fire phosphorus shells into Fallujah. Fire tank shells into Najaf. We know we kill the innocent. Israel does exactly the same. It said the same after its allies massacred 1,700 at the refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila in 1982 and in the deaths of more than a thousand civilians in Lebanon in 2006 and after the death of more than a thousand Palestinians in Gaza this year.
And if we kill some gunmen at the same time – “terrorists”, of course – then it is the same old “human shield” tactic and ultimately the “terrorists” are to blame. Our military tactics are now fully aligned with Israel.
The reality is that international law forbids armies from shooting wildly in crowded tenements and bombing wildly into villages – even when enemy forces are present – but that went by the board in our 1991 bombing of Iraq and in Bosnia and in Nato’s Serbia war and in our 2001 Afghan adventure and in 2003 in Iraq. Let’s have that inquiry. And “human shields”. And terror, terror, terror. Something else I notice. Innocent or “terrorists”, civilians or Taliban, always it is the Muslims who are to blame.

ANALYSIS / Netanyahu is beginning to look worried: Ha’aretz

This week, for the first time since he took office, Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu has been looking worried. People who have spoken with him found him short-tempered, almost testy. The problems piling up on his desk are burying the sweet victory of his return to the Prime Minister’s Bureau: His approaching visit with U.S. President Barack Obama is looking less and less like cause for rejoicing amid the ill winds emanating from Washington. Before that he has Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to deal with, and in between, a budget that skimps on education, welfare and health, and is cruel to children at risk, the unemployed, demobilized soldiers, widows and new mothers.
After the draft budget was submitted to government ministers Wednesday night – proposing cuts in funds for Holocaust survivors, the elderly and the disabled – Netanyahu’s bureau sent out a hysterical beeper notice to reporters retracting the cuts. Labor Party ministers who just a week ago were singing Netanyahu’s praises boycotted the Knesset session on Monday, when the plenum voted to split various ministerial portfolios.
However, the one who blew Netanyahu’s fuse this week was his protege and right-hand man, who put together his coalition: Gideon Sa’ar, the new education minister. This week, for the first time, Netanyahu found out what it means to be in Sa’ar’s sights, when the latter decided to fight for the education budget, which has already been cut numerous times over the past decade. It began at the meeting of the Likud ministers last Friday, when Netanyahu and Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz presented the budget. At the end of the discussion Netanyahu said something along the line of: Okay, we’re deciding that we support the government’s budget.

Introducing the propaganda minister: Ha’aretz

By Gideon Levy
Cancel the new Information and Diaspora Ministry, let the new foreign minister go, and we may as well shut down the information departments at Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu – we have a new propaganda minister. We’ve had better and worse presidents, but we’ve never had a president who served as government propagandist. Now we do: Shimon Peres has appointed himself to the unworthy task. Since the new government formed – the most right-wing government in Israel’s history – the (seemingly) left-wing (former) peace man has become its public relations agent.
Indefatigable as always, he has launched a worldwide campaign consisting of phone calls to statesmen, media interviews and visits overseas. His goal – slapping the kosher stamp of approval on what the world sees as an abomination. Instead of the real picture, he is giving them another masquerade.

First he legitimized Avigdor Lieberman (who said on Tuesday in Italy that “nothing has come from this whole peace industry,” which Peres cogenerated), then Benjamin Netanyahu – both men of peace par excellence in our president’s eyes. On what basis exactly? Trust Peres. It culminated of course during his visit in Washington, when Peres told his hosts: “Netanyahu is seeking a historic peace,” and “Since he was elected I haven’t heard him speaking against a two-state solution … peace is at the top of his priorities.” No less. Netanyahu’s spokesmen couldn’t have done it better. Do we have to ask who put him in that role? Is the president’s job to act as the prime minister’s spokesman? Is it appropriate for the president to reward Netanyahu this way for arranging him a visit to the White House?

And let’s assume Peres thought otherwise – that Netanyahu is the obstacle to peace and that Lieberman is no less than a declared racist – would he have dared to say so? And if he had, what a scandal that would have erupted over the state president’s forbidden involvement. But to praise in vain is permitted. Peres did not skip even the perverse comparison of Iran to Nazi Germany. The Israeli president may cheapen the Holocaust’s memory like this; he is allowed to compare. But when Israel’s critics dare draw such a parallel, they are automatically branded as Israel haters and anti-Semites. Peres, the statesman who firmly objected to the Begin government’s bombing of Iraq’s nuclear reactor, is now the lead vocalist in the national intimidation choir against Iran, conducted by maestro Netanyahu. This, too, is inexplicable. Peres also hasn’t forgotten the shopworn, hollow old slogans about Israel’s yearning for peace, slogans for which one might still find dubious buyers only occasionally in America.

Caution in revoking citizenship: Ha’aretz editorial

Interior Minister Eli Yishai has announced he intends to begin proceedings to revoke the citizenship of four Arab citizens suspected of hostile activity against the State of Israel. Yishai says he is seeking to reassert his authority to revoke citizenship by changing the law delegating that authority to district courts. The amendment made to the Citizenship Law last August transferred authority to revoke citizenship to district courts sitting as courts for administrative affairs, so that such action could not be taken by a politically-motivated official such as the interior minister.

Revoking citizenship is a tremendous responsibility, the use of which is supposed to be made only in rare or extraordinary circumstances so as to prevent unnecessarily compromising a legally-enshrined right. The law, however, defines the right to revoke citizenship broadly – if the suspect has committed a breach of trust against the state through an act of terrorism, active participation in a terror group, an act of treason or espionage, or acquisition of citizenship or permanent residence in an enemy country – but even then, it is clear it should be a last resort, implemented when there is no alternative.
The interior minister is authorized to file a petition to a court toward revoking citizenship, but only with the written consent of the attorney general. In 2002, before the Citizenship Law was amended, Yishai sought to revoke the citizenship of several Arab citizens. Then-attorney general Elyakim Rubinstein said it would be a “grave and far-reaching step,” as committing an act of breach of trust could be interpreted so broadly that intelligence indicating hostile activity towards the state would be enough to revoke citizenship, even if there were not sufficient evidence for even a criminal conviction. The decision to revoke citizenship can be upheld from a legal perspective only if it can be proven that taking such drastic action towards an individual is necessary, and the goal of enhancing security cannot be met through lesser means. The prime minister, defense minister and justice minister – and not only the interior minister – must consider the political and diplomatic damage likely to be caused by taking such extraordinary measures. All the more so during the term of an administration in which a central faction is seeking to obligate Israeli citizens to take an oath of loyalty.

Like the Third Reich, the Israeli regime does everything legally… this is an obvious Nazi move against the people of Palestine, and should be understood and explained as such.

May 8, 2009

A most welcome development is the establishment of a strong and well-organised campaign in the Land of the Free… we waited a long time to see this starting to roll ahead!

US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel

Responding to the call of Palestinian civil society to join the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction movement against Israel, we are a U.S. campaign focused specifically on a boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions, as delineated by PACBI (Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel):
“In light of Israel’s persistent violations of international law, and Given that, since 1948, hundreds of UN resolutions have condemned Israel’s colonial and discriminatory policies as illegal and called for immediate, adequate and effective remedies, and Given that all forms of international intervention and peace-making have until now failed to convince or force Israel to comply with humanitarian law, to respect fundamental human rights and to end its occupation and oppression of the people of Palestine, and In view of the fact that people of conscience in the international community have historically shouldered the moral responsibility to fight injustice, as exemplified in the struggle to abolish apartheid in South Africa through diverse forms of boycott, divestment and sanctions;
Inspired by the struggle of South Africans against apartheid and in the spirit of international solidarity, moral consistency and resistance to injustice and oppression, We, representatives of Palestinian civil society, call upon international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era. We appeal to you to pressure your respective states to impose embargoes and sanctions against Israel. We also invite conscientious Israelis to support this Call, for the sake of justice and genuine peace.

Just look at how things are really decided for Obama, by hundreds of US lawmakers at the best show in town… Of course, we all know there is NO Israeli or Jewish lobby, and that Jews in the US do NOT exert their influence, such as it may be, on the administration in ANY way…

Recap of 2009 AIPAC Policy Conference:YouTube

But behind the glitz, AIPAC knows they are loosing the argument in the US:

AIPAC HEAD fears the growing movement to sanction Israel could fundamentally change US policy towards Israel. He’s right.

One of the most interesting speeches given at the AIPAC Policy Conference was one that received the least media attention. AIPAC Executive Director Howard Kohr addressed the capacity crowd Sunday night before Newt Gingrich, and he came with a stern and clear warning – there is a growing movement to de-legitimize Israel in the eyes of its allies. He warned it’s growing, it’s successful and it’s coming to the US. In a conference full of fire and brimstone bluster about Iran and the omnipresent threat of annihilation, when it came to this speech Kohr was exactly on the mark.

Kohr moved beyond simply focusing on the familiar bogeymen of Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez and the Durban II conference, and took on what is clearly viewed as a grave threat – the growing movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. During his rundown of the gathering storm he included “400 British academics demanded that Britain’s Science Museum cancel an event highlighting the work of Israeli scientists” and an Italian “trade union calls for a boycott of Israeli products.” He also included the increasing comparisons between Israel and apartheid South Africa. As part of this trend he mentioned Israel Apartheid Week (twice) which he explained,”Its aim, to build boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaigns as part of a growing global movement.” He’s right.

More impressively, he gave real attention to this movement. Rather than attempting to simply de-legitimatize it with charges of anti-Semitism, he recognized its true motivation: “This is more than the simple spewing of hatred. This is a conscious campaign to shift policy, to transform the way Israel is treated by its friends to a state that deserves not our support, but our contempt; not our protection, but pressured to change its essential nature.” And even more, he knows the movement is building steam:

“No longer is this campaign confined to the ravings of the political far left or far right, but increasingly it is entering the American mainstream: an ordinary political discourse on our T.V. and radio talk shows; in the pages of our major newspapers and in countless blogs, in town hall meetings, on campuses and city squares . . .

And I want to be clearly understood here. I’m not saying that these allegations have become accepted. But they have become acceptable. More and more they are invading the mainstream discourse, becoming part of the constant and unrelenting drumbeat against Israel. These voices are laying the predicate for a abandonment.”

Finally, Kohr threw down the gauntlet:

“There is a battle for basic perception underway, a fight to focus the lens through which our policy makers will receive and perceive all events in Israel and the broader Middle East. And the stakes in that battle are nothing less than the survival of Israel, linked inexorably to the relationship between Israel and the United States. In this battle we are the firewall, the last rampart.”

Kohr said, “in the moment – we find our mission.” And in many ways the threat Kohr identified was an undercurrent throughout the conference. This was seen in the effort by AIPAC to co-opt the divestment mantle by pushing divestment from Iran. Not only is this a focus in Congress, but on campuses and in municipalities as well. After Kohr’s speech it was difficult to see these as anything but a diversionary tactic to keep attention on the real movement for divestment Kohr outlined growing across the world.

As with almost everything at the AIPAC convention, Kohr’s speech was one part theater, one part policy. I do think his presentation was a bit overblown in an effort to light a fire under his troops as they headed into battle. But he could have chosen many other topics to do that with. Kohr understands that the fight is over themes and frames and that regardless of the millions put into the AIPAC convention or the thousands of lobbyists that head off for the Hill, once the discourse shifts and Israel is a pariah, the battle is lost. He explained to the crowd:

“You know, we’ve all heard many times Israel accused of being a Western outpost in the Middle East. To those who make that accusation I say you are right. Israel is the only democratic country in the region that looks West, that looks to the values and the vision we share of what our society, our country should aim at and aspire to. If that foundation of shared values is shaken, the rationale for the policies we pursue today will be stripped away. The reasons the United States would continue to invest nearly $3 billion in Israel’s security; the willingness to stand with Israel, even alone if need be; the readiness to defend Israel’s very existence,all are undermined and undone if Israel is seen to be unjust and unworthy. . .

Yes, we must lobby for the particulars –Iran sanctions, peace process principles, foreign aid –but our mission now is to do more than work our talking points. We must add context and foundational arguments that help America’s leaders understand the rightness of our cause.”

That is the fight at hand, and it’s a fight that AIPAC and others have been incredibly good at fighting. But Kohr can see the ground is shifting. And in the end, the influence AIPAC holds over the US policy towards Israel/Palestine may end up disintegrating as the myth of shared values is revealed, and more people realize that funding a “Western outpost in the Middle East” is not only no longer in our interest, but is not in the interests of Israelis and Palestinians as well.

Well, we will certainly give them a fight for their money…

Continue reading May 8, 2009

May 5, 2009

Just wait for it – the accusations of bias, anti-semitism, and whatnot… read below:

UN rebukes Israel over Gaza raids: BBC

A United Nations inquiry into attacks by Israeli forces on UN property during the Gaza conflict four months ago has heavily criticised Israel’s army. It found Israel to blame in six out of nine incidents when death or injury were caused to people sheltering at UN property and UN buildings were damaged. In one case, Palestinian militants were found to have fired at a UN warehouse. The Israeli Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, rejected the report, saying it was biased. “We have the most moral army in the world,” he said. “IDF [Israeli Defense Force] commanders and soldiers made every effort to avoid hurting uninvolved civilians. He accused Hamas of hiding its fighters among civilians and in the vicinity of UN installations.
The UN report recommends further investigation into possible war crimes. The investigation rejects Israel’s claim that militants were firing from the Fakhura school when at least 40 people outside the school were killed in shellfire. The board of inquiry also criticises Israel’s use of white phosphorus shells which caused the incineration of the UN’s main food warehouse in Gaza.

Reparations sought
The BBC’s Laura Trevelyan at the UN says it is a hard-hitting report which includes heavy criticism of the Israeli military’s actions and subsequent explanations and justifications. The UN board’s first recommendation seeks “formal acknowledgment” by Israel that its public statements that Palestinians fired from a UN school and from within the UN’s field office compound “were untrue and are regretted”. Another recommendation says the UN should take appropriate action to seek reparation for all deaths and injuries involving its personnel and property.
The report says Israel’s actions were in breach of the agreement that UN premises and those sheltering within them should be immune from attack, something which cannot be set aside for military action. The board says investigating the deaths of the 40 people killed outside the Fakhura school is outside its remit. It recommends that this and allegations of war crimes committed in Gaza and southern Israel by Palestinian militants and Israel should be investigated by another inquiry. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has stressed this report is not a legal document.

Continue reading May 5, 2009

May 4, 2009

This issue of the blog is heavily peppered with Electronic Intifada article. This excellent website is a must for all who are interested in Palestine and has been doing a most admirable job over many years, led ably by Ali Abunimah. You are well advised to use its RSS feeds, hence always being informed of the latest articles.

Spain okays Gaza war crimes probe against Israelis: Ha’aretz

Spanish National Court judge Fernando Andreu announced Monday that he will pursue his investigation into a 2002 Israeli bombing in the Gaza Strip, despite contrary advice by prosecutors at the court. The prosecutors had argued that the attack, which killed Hamas leader Salah Shehade and 14 others, was still under investigation by Israel. Andreu said that did not appear to be the case and, even if it were, the Spanish judiciary could simultaneously investigate the charges because they could be classified as war crimes. The National Court has become known for its inquiries into alleged human rights abuses in other countries, ranging from Chile and Argentina to Tibet and Western Sahara. The suspects named by Andreu include former Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer and six current or former army officers or security officials. The probe is based on a complaint lodged by a Palestinian human rights group at the National Court. The case has created some tension between Spain and Israel. The Spanish government told Israel that it planned to limit the possibilities of Spanish courts to investigate possible human rights abuses in other countries.

Continue reading May 4, 2009

May 1, 2009

Activists face off over draft-dodging: Ha’aretz

The police raid this week on the Ramat Hasharon home of Dutch-born activist Annelien Kisch comprised, to her, yet another sign that Israeli society rejects her “Western, anti-militaristic and peace-minded world view.” Opponents call it hypocritical for her to brandish Western values to justify breaking the law.
Officers were looking in her house near Rothberg High School for evidence the 70-year-old Kisch had abetted suspected draft-dodgers in allegedly lying to army authorities to receive an exemption from service. Kirsch is the cofounder of New Profile, which encourages youths to avoid conscription. New Profile describes itself as a feminist group devoted to “demilitarizing” Israeli society. The home of Dutch cofounder Mirjam Hadar, a neighbor of Kisch, was also raided. The two women formed the group in 1998 together with Ruth Hiller from the U.S., who also lives in the Sharon area.
Hadar, Kisch and five other people linked to New Profile were arrested on suspicion of allegedly inciting the youths to illegally obtain the service exemption (see box). Police confiscated several of the activists’ computers. All detainees were released on bail after questioning. Police forbade Hadar and Kisch to communicate with one or with the remaining five activists under investigation.
“Israeli society has zero acceptance of our message,” Kisch, who is an artist, told Anglo File on Monday in her usual, animated voice. She says people from the West are “much more receptive” to the group’s ideas than Israelis. “Israel is moving in the direction of the area in which it is located,” she observes.

Blow you can see how violent the Israeli police is against Jewish women protesters, from you can work out how nice they are to Palestinians:

Protest the investigation of New Profile and political persecution, 30-4-09 17:30, TEL AVIV‏

Continue reading May 1, 2009