Day by day Archive

EDITOR: Who poisoned Arafat?

Now that Al Jazeera has proven the likelihood of Arafat’s poisoning by Plutonium, it remains to find out who poisoned him. Well, like is any detective novel, one needs to first find out who would be benefiting from his death, and who would be in a position to carry out this poisoning. As Plutonium is only available to nations with a nuclear reactor that cuts down the number of suspects… No prizes are offered for the right answer.

Report: Arafat was poisoned by radioactive substance: Haaretz

According to a report by Al-Jazeera, Swiss experts found high levels of polonium, a highly radioactive element, in Arafat’s personal belongings.

By Haaretz | Jul.03, 2012 | 9:45 PM |  10

Arafat’s death on November 11, 2004, has generated no small number of conspiracy theories Photo by Reuters

Eight years after the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Al-Jazeera network published on Tuesday findings of an investigation which attempts to shed light on the circumstances of his death. According to the report, Swiss experts found high levels of polonium, a highly radioactive element, in his personal belongings.

Arafat’s death on November 11, 2004, had generated no small number of conspiracy theories, including poisoning by Israel and even HIV.

Al-Jazeera’s report cites experts from the Institut de Radiophysique in Lausanne, Switzerland, who examined Arafat’s belonging. “Tests reveal that Arafat’s final personal belongings – his clothes, his toothbrush, even his iconic kaffiyeh – contained abnormal levels of polonium, a rare, highly radioactive element,” Al-Jazeera reported.

The tests that were conducted in Paris immediately after Arafat’s death found no evidence of poisoning. Al-Jazeera’s research indicated that Arafat was in good health until falling suddenly ill in October.

In 2005, Haaretz reported that Israeli experts who analyzed the report drawn up by the medical team that treated Yasser Arafat in Paris say that the most likely possibility is that he was poisoned in a dinner meal on October 12, 2004.

Hebron: Border Police officer kicks Palestinian child, 2012: BTselem

EDITOR: Israel tries to save its subcontractor in Palestine…

As the PNA is running huge debts, in its corrupt and inefficient operation, so crucial for the continuation of the Israeli occupation, Israel rallies to help the dog it has done so much to subdue… Ironically, the PNA has no right to demand help on its own.

Israel sought to borrow $100 million from IMF to prevent collapse of Palestinian Authority: Haaretz

Request was turned down because Palestinian Authority is not a state, and cannot ask the IMF for help on its own.

From left: Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz, PM Benjamin Netanyahu, BoI governor Stanley Fischer and c’tee chairman Haim Shani. Photo by Tomer Appelbaum

By Avi Issacharoff | Jul.02,2012 | 12:48 AM |  12

Israel recently asked the International Monetary Fund for a bridge loan of a $100 million dollars that it planned to transfer to the Palestinian Authority to help prevent its financial collapse, but the IMF turned down the request.

The PA, which is not a state, cannot ask the IMF for help on its own. The plan therefore, was for Israel to take the loan on the Palestinians’ behalf, have the PA repay the loan to Israel, and Israel would repay the IMF.

The IMF rejected the Israeli request, however, saying it did not want to set a precedent of a state taking a loan on behalf of a non-state entity.

Israel’s approach to the IMF began to take shape during the IMF’s annual conference in Washington in mid-April. PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad met during the conference with Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer and the two discussed the PA’s serious financial crisis.

According to a senior Israeli official, Fayyad explained to Fischer that the euro crisis in Europe and the financial crisis in the United States made it impossible for Western nations to increase their financial assistance to the PA. At the same time, Arab states were not transferring funds that they had promised, and Palestinian banks were refusing to extend any more credit to the government due to its inability to make debt payments.

This economic squeeze was giving the PA a serious cash-flow problem that was making it hard to pay salaries to government workers, particularly to security personnel. Salaries are being paid late, and many only get half their salaries when they are paid.

Fayyad told Fischer that the PA needed $100 million to make its payments for the coming year and asked him to help the Palestinians get a bridge loan from the IMF. Since the PA is not a state and not a member of the IMF, it cannot qualify for a loan, even if its circumstances might merit it.

Fischer discussed the matter with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and got a green light to proceed.

“Netanyahu is interested in preventing a situation whereby the PA collapses financially, which is liable to have a very negative impact on the West Bank security situation,” a senior Israeli official said.

Fischer approached IMF officials and suggested that Israel would take the loan from the IMF and would in turn loan the money to the Palestinians. The PA would pay Israel back, and Israel would forward the money to the IMF.

The IMF considered the request, but in the end, refused it, saying that the proposal was against its regulations and was liable to set a problematic precedent.

Despite the refusal, Fischer and Fayyad are trying to find an alternate solution.

Fischer and Fayyad know each other well from the period when the two of them worked at the IMF from the end of the 1990s until 2001. During those years Fayyad was the IMF representative to the PA and Fischer was the fund’s deputy director. Both ended their terms at the IMF at about the same time; Fayyad was named finance minister in the PA government and Fischer went to the private sector, becoming Bank of Israel governor in 2005.

In 2011, when Fischer was contending for the post of IMF director after the resignation of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who was caught up in a sex scandal, Fayyad publicly supported Fischer.

Former Israeli PM Yitzhak Shamir dies aged 96: Guardian

Shamir, who earned reputation as uncompromising opponent of Palestinian statehood, has died after long illness

Yitzhak Shamir, the former Israeli PM, who has died aged 96. In 2001 he was awarded his nation’s highest honour, the Israel prize. Photograph: Michel Lipchitz/AP

Former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir, who earned a reputation as an uncompromising opponent of Palestinian statehood, has died aged 96.

The former soldier, spy and statesman died at a nursing home in Herzliya after a long illness. In a statement announcing his death, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu paid tribute to his “deep loyalty to Israel“.

He said: “He was a paragon of loyalty to the land of Israel and the eternal values of the Jewish people.

“Yitzhak Shamir belongs to a generation of giants, who founded the state of Israel and fought for the freedom of the Jewish people in its land. He led Israel with deep loyalty to both the people and the land.”

As head of the right-wing Likud party, Shamir was prime minister between 1983-84 and 1986-1992. He was known for his firm opposition to the idea of trading occupied land for peace with the Palestinians.

Born in Poland in 1915, Shamir moved to Palestine in 1935. His mother and sisters were killed in the Holocaust.

He joined Lehi, a Jewish movement opposed to British mandatory authorities, and took over leadership after its founder was killed. Shamir was captured twice by British authorities but escaped from two detention camps and returned to resistance action.

After Israel was founded in 1948, Shamir joined the intelligence service Mossad before launching a political career. During his second term as prime minister, he ordered a military solution to the first Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation in 1986.

He embraced the creation of a Greater Israel, encompassing all of the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan river.

Despite his ideology, he reluctantly took Israel into negotiations with its Arab neighbours, which paved the way for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process under his successors.

Following his defeat in the 1992 elections, Shamir retired from politics. In 2001, he was given his nation’s highest civilian honour, the Israel Prize.

EDITOR: You have to laugh… even if it is bitter laugh

It is funny, isn’t it? The Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv has been a UNESCO World Heritage site for years… this is a stretch of some houses built since 1916, in which some banks have their headquarters and rich people of Tel Aviv are languishing in Bauhaus buildings, so it obviously IS a world heritage! The birthplace of Christ so obviously isn’t! And this something that the two world powers, Israel and its junior partner, the USA, are against… Israel (and the USA) never knew what shame was, but now it also lost connection to the real world!

Palestinians win endangered world heritage status for Bethlehem church: Guardian

US ambassador condemns Unesco decision to grant protection for Church of the Nativity on site seen as Jesus’s birthplace

Unesco has granted endangered world heritage status and funding for repairs to the site seen as Jesus’s birthplace in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, despite objections from the US and Israel.

Israeli officials have questioned the need for Bethlehem to be registered as an endangered site and see Palestinian moves at Unesco and other UN bodies as an effort to embarrass Israel on the world stage.

Thirteen out of 21 members of the world heritage committee voted in favour of the move at a meeting in St Petersburg. The decision was met by a standing ovation. Six members voted against and two abstained.

The fourth-century Church of the Nativity, built over a grotto where Christian tradition says Jesus was born, needs repairs but the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, is short of funds.

The Palestinian Authority’s request included part of the Pilgrimage Route, the path which tradition says Joseph and Mary took into the city in their trek from Nazareth 2,000 years ago.

Palestinians had pointed to what they describe as the dangers of Israeli occupation and cited in particular Israel’s 2002 siege of the Church of the Nativity, where militants took sanctuary during a Palestinian uprising. Violence has subsided in recent years and more than two million people now visit the church annually.

Independent experts sent by Unesco to examine the church recommended turning down the request, saying that while the church roof needed patching up the shrine could not be considered “to have been severely damaged or to be under imminent threat”.

Friday’s meeting in St Petersburg was attended by the Palestinian foreign minister. The Palestinian Authority has viewed its entry into Unesco as a strategic milestone before the broader international recognition it seeks for a future state.

“This gives hope and confidence to our people on the inevitable victory of our just cause,” said the prime minister, Salam Fayyad, in a statement following the decision.

“It increases their determination to continue efforts at deepening readiness for the establishment of an independent state of Palestine, with its capital in East Jerusalem within the 1967 borders,” Fayyad said.

“This is an irresponsible decision,” said Gideon Koren, Israel’s vice-president of the International Council on Monuments and Sites. The US ambassador to Unesco, David Killion, said he was “profoundly disappointed by the decision”.

The Palestinian government plans to register about 20 more sites with Unesco, including the ancient city of Jericho and the archaeological site of Sebastia, and has dismissed Israel’s accusations.

“Our goal is to preserve and safeguard these sites in spite of the threat from Israeli occupation,” Hanan Ashrawi, head of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation’s department of culture and information, said.

Last year, Unesco granted the Palestinians full membership, a decision seen at the time as a boost to their bid, since largely stalled, to win unilateral statehood recognition from the United Nations in the absence of peace talks with Israel.

Israel and the US, which subsequently cut off its $80m (£50m) annual funding of Unesco, condemned the decision, saying peace negotiations – which collapsed in 2010 – were the only path to a Palestinian state. (Writing by Gleb Bryanski; Editing by Louise Ireland)

EDITOR: The J14 movement tries to rise again, despite growing police brutality

It seems that in Israel, not only the protesters are learning from the Arab Spring developments, but also the regime and its police. Used to act extremely violently against the Palestinians, the police now acts in a similar manner against the few hundreds who came out trying to continue last year’s unsuccessful protest during the summer of 2011. Netanyahu takes no chances he made sure the police sent a brutal message to the protesters.

Will this also persuade the J14 movement that excluding the occupation and Palestine from their campaign was a mistake? I personally doubt this. The J14 movement was a middle-class, nationalist uprising of an odd sort – making sure by all means that no Jews were excluded, thus excluding the Palestinians, both inside Israel and out, and insisting that this is is not ‘political’ protest, but ‘social’ only, as if one could so neatly divide such activities. What they meant by this claim, is that they are not entering the minefield of anti-occupation action, and remain withing the Jewish, nationalist collective, well-represented by the new right-wing leader of the Labour party, Shelly Yachimowich. If they thought this ploy will persuade the government not to touch them, they have failed. The two leaders of the J14 campaign have even been sent by the government to Britain on a special anti-BDS mission last year, after the protest died, in order to persuade academics in Britain that the BDS campaign is wrong. This has not stopped the police from acting brutally, once the campaign has been renewed. The fact that J14 has never been courageous or principled enough to stray away from the right wing nationalism now ruling Israel, makes it totally unlikely that it may embrace the case of Palestinian freedom and rights. A campaign dividing rights on imperialist lines – fighting for rights of the occupier, including the right to occupy – is likely to fail even on its own despicable terms! Justice, rights, peace – cannot be divided according to nationalist criteria – they are indivisible.

Thousands of Israelis Join “Citizen’s Mutiny”: TheRealNews

After violent arrest of the symbolic leader of Israel’s social justice movement, thousands pour onto streets in rage

EDITOR: One down, more than 500 to go…

So, at last, one settlement is vacated, months after the High Court decision that it is illegal… Well, there are NO legal settlements in the Occupied Territories! All of them are illegal, as is the Apartheid wall! Nothing that Israel is doing there is legal, and it is about time not just Israel, but its many western allies, understand this.

West Bank Jewish settlers leave Ulpana outpost: BBC

Israeli authorities have begun to evacuate Jewish settlers from an unauthorised West Bank outpost after a court ordered it to be dismantled.

Officials arrived on Tuesday morning to help the first of 30 families relocate from Ulpana to temporary housing in adjoining settlement of Beit El.

There had been fears the settlers would resist and have to be forcibly removed.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the construction of 300 new homes in Beit El.

The move was seen as an effort to placate the settler movement and right-wing critics in Mr Netanyahu’s own Likud party

All settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.

The settler outposts are also illegal under Israeli law and the government agreed to remove them under the 2003 Road Map peace plan.

The fate of Ulpana, which was built on private Palestinian land, has been a source of tension between settlers and the government.

Ulpana is part of the bigger settlement of Beit El, north of Jerusalem, which is built on land captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war. Palestinians say it should be part of their future state.

The decision to build the new homes in Beit El was criticised by the Palestinians and the US, which said it undermined peace efforts.

Israel Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial attack: Three held: BBC

Three ultra-Orthodox Jewish men have been arrested in Israel, suspected of defacing the national Holocaust memorial with anti-Zionist graffiti.

One of the slogans daubed in paint on the walls of the memorial read: “If Hitler had not existed, the Zionists would have invented him.”

The suspects have admitted vandalising the site, a police spokesman said.

Suspicion for the attack had fallen on radical ultra-Orthodox Jews who oppose the creation of the state of Israel.

One of the slogans, all in Hebrew, was signed “world ultra-Orthodox Jewry”.

Another read: “Thanks Hitler for the wonderful Holocaust you organised for us. Only thanks to you we got a state from the UN.”

A third went: “Honourable government of Poland, stop allowing the Zionists to hold manipulative ‘memorial’ ceremonies in Auschwitz.”

Some ultra-Orthodox Jews believe a Jewish state can be established only after the coming of the Messiah, and that the state of Israel is therefore illegitimate.

A small number of extremists believe the myth that Israel’s founders conspired with Hitler to bring about the Jewish state.

In a statement, Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev said: “I believe that it was important to know the identities of those who spray-painted the graffiti. The suspects are extremist ultra-Orthodox Jews, anti-Zionists, who are on the fringes of society, and do not represent the majority who respect the memory of the Holocaust.”

Yad Vashem was established in 1953 and commemorates the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis during World War II.

The three suspects are to appear before a Jerusalem court later on Tuesday.

EDITOR: Read about typical US Jewish hysteria

To most people, the item below reads like the hysterical rant that it is. To US Jews, it reads like a genuine debate about positions to take in support of Israel. That US have adopted the worst possible position – combining racism with Islamophobia, is hardly a surprise to anyone who followed the growing bigotry of the last decade in US Jewish circles. They are combining with Born Again and other extreme Christian Zionist circles to support an agenda of hate and conflict, vying with each other as to who displays the more extreme positions.

Conservative blogger Pamela Geller lashes out at L.A. Jewish federation over nixed speech: Haaretz

Geller, a fiery critic of Muslims, liberals and mainstream Jewish organizations, took to her blog to blast the federation, comparing modern-day Jewish leaders to those who did not do enough to protest the Nazis in the years leading up to the Holocaust.

Blogger Pamela Geller

Conservative blogger Pamela Geller is lashing out at the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles for what she says was its decision to cancel her Sunday appearance.

Geller, a fiery critic of Muslims, liberals and mainstream Jewish organizations, took to her blog, Atlas Shrugs, to blast the L.A. federation, comparing modern-day Jewish leaders to those who did not do enough to protest the Nazis in the years leading up to the Holocaust.

“This is tragic. Imagine, without so much as firing a shot, they’re caving in to a Hamas front group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations,” Geller wrote.

CAIR had issued its own statement criticizing the L.A. federation for agreeing to allow its space to be used for Geller’s appearance, which was sponsored by the Zionist Organization of America. The scheduled talk was titled “Islamic Jew-Hatred: The Root Cause of the Failure to Achieve Peace.”

Geller gained national attention by leading the efforts to stop the development of an Islamic community center near Ground Zero and has been a leading voice in warning against what she describes as a campaign to impose Islamic law on the United States. She is the author of “Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance” and “The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America.”

The Anti-Defamation League, which also opposed the Islamic community center, has accused one of Geller’s organizations of promoting “a conspiratorial anti-Muslim agenda under the guise of fighting radical Islam” and seeking “to rouse public fears by consistently vilifying the Islamic faith.”

Geller has lashed out at the ADL and other mainstream Jewish organizations. She sounded a similar note in attacking the L.A. federation.

“Shame on our cowardly leadership for throwing one of our own under the bus,” Geller wrote Sunday. “We expect that from kapos, not from proud Jews who should hold the freedom of speech as a fundamental Jewish value.”

As of press time, the L.A. federation could not be reached for comment.
In its own statement, the ZOA said the L.A. federation cited security concerns in cancelling the event.

“We believe that the Jewish Federation has succumbed to political pressure by Muslim and Left-wing Jewish groups not to let a rational voice of criticism of Islam and its war against Israel be heard on its premises,” the ZOA said in a statement, as cited on Geller’s website. “These Muslim and Jewish groups have blown up the blogosphere with lies about Ms. Geller and harsh criticism of the ZOA for hosting her at the Jewish Federation.”

ZOA said that such an approach “effectively shuts down free speech.”

Supporters of ZOA have faced similar criticism for their efforts to block communal organizations from providing space to the liberal group J Street and speakers critical of Israeli policy.

Israel’s historic city of Acre faces tourist and settler tensions: Guardian

Mixed Arab-Jewish ‘sleeping beauty’ city awakes to gentrification and influx of nationalist-religious Jews

•     Sunday 24 June 2012
  

Acre in Israel: the city is potentially a magnet for wealth tourists and investors. Photograph: Chameleons Eye / Rex Features

Amid narrow winding alleys, crumbling courtyards and dark doorways of neglected buildings, a work of art gleams within the walls of Israel‘s ancient but dilapidated city of Acre. The Efendi Palace hotel opened in March after eight-and-a-half years of painstaking restoration.

A team of experts was brought from Venice to work on Ottoman-era wall and ceiling paintings; stone walls dating from the Byzantine and Crusader eras have been carefully preserved in what is now the wine cellar; a 400-year-old Turkish bath has been restored. Light floods through the windows, from which there are views across the rooftops and ramparts of the historic old city to the Mediterranean.

The Jewish owner is Uri Jeremias, known to everybody in Acre as Uri Buri after his eponymous avant garde seafood restaurant five minutes’ walk from the Efendi Palace, and instantly recognisable from his magnificent long grey beard.

Describing the old city as “a sleeping beauty”, he says the restoration was “an investment of the soul” as well as a huge, but unspecified, amount of money. The Efendi Palace is a symbol of Acre’s potential as a magnet for wealthy tourists and investors.

It has also become emblematic of growing tensions between the Arab and Jewish populations of one of Israel’s few mixed cities. Arabs, who make up 28% of Acre’s population but 100% of the old city, fear that a programme of gentrification funded by Jewish investors will – either by design or simply as a consequence – drive them out.

The hotel, whose 12 rooms range in price from $300 (£191) to more than $800 (£510) a night, is a nugget of luxury amid the decrepit homes of impoverished Arab residents. For now it is unique, but not for much longer: the Old Acre Development Company, a subsidiary of the Israeli tourism ministry, is marketing many of the old city’s historic buildings for development as luxury hotels, restaurants, boutique shops and exclusive apartment complexes. The magnificent arched Khan el-Umdan, where weeds sprout from cracks in the 40 stone pillars, is being offered for immediate development alongside its neighbour, the Khan a-Shuna, as a 170-room hotel and commercial space. The two khans, says the development company, are the most important buildings in the old city, which was declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco in 2001.

It describes another, el-Shawarda, as one of the oldest and most elegant khans, constituting part of the sea wall. It is earmarked for a 60-room hotel and commercial complex.

According to Arab activists in Acre, this is part of a grand plan, driven by the city’s Jewish mayor, to gentrify and rebrand the old city – and persuade, induce or coerce Arabs to leave. But they also say there is a wider context that reaches beyond the walls of the old city into the newer neighbourhoods of Acre. In recent years there has been an influx of nationalist-religious Jews, associated with the hardline West Bank settler movement, seeking to “reclaim” mixed cities such as Acre and prevent their Arab populations becoming a majority.

In the new city of Acre, housing developments reserved exclusively for religious Jews have alarmed Arab residents. “More and more extreme people from settlements are targeting the Arab community [in Israel],” says Ja’far Farah of Mossawa, a civil rights organisation. “The settlers want to prove that the conflict is not just about the [West Bank] but all of Israel. They are targeting mixed cities in an attempt to prove there is no future for coexistence.”

It is “a very tense city”, says local activist Sami Hawari. The edginess boiled over into violent clashes between the two communities three years ago, the underlying causes of which have not been resolved. “When Jewish leaders call the muezzin [the Muslim call to prayer] ‘environmental pollution’, and when they consider us a demographic threat even though they are more than 70% of the population, when the mayor constantly declares Acre a ‘Jewish city’, it adds tension to the lives of people.”

The mayor, Shimon Lankry, says these are “ridiculous accusations, only voiced by extremists”. He points out that not a single Jewish family has moved into the old city, and says that “in spite of the fact that there is not a great love between the two communities, we walk the same streets, shop in the same supermarkets and live in the same apartment buildings. We want to keep the old city as a historical site with its original population living in it, but we want to develop businesses, hotels and restaurants.”

Ahmed Odeh, an Arab member of the city council, claims that about 50 properties in the old city have been acquired by Jewish investors for redevelopment. He says a number of ruses have been employed to encourage Arab residents to give up their properties – whose ownership was taken by the Israeli state after the 1948 war – to developers. These include straightforward cash offers, often irresistible to poor families; orders for expensive repairs; and eviction if debts are defaulted on.

Uri Buri – who has no connection to the nationalist-religious groups – says the purchase of the properties which became the Efendi Palace is above-board and fully documented. He declines to say how much he paid, but says that he was the only person to place an offer during the tender process. “My conscience is clear. I’m not doing anything to harm anyone and I obey the law. I’m not saying everything is honey, but [the Arabs] shouldn’t fight people coming to help and develop Acre.”

His investments have brought benefits for the local population, he says. Affluent tourists spend money in the souks of the old city. His hotel, restaurant and an ice cream shop employs around two dozen Arabs alongside a similar number of Jewish workers.

“This doesn’t have anything to do with Arabs and Jews,” he says. “This is a poor area and when it’s developed the poor people are pushed out and the rich people move in. This is how it works everywhere in the world.” He cites Canary Wharf in London as an example.

“Since my childhood I’ve said Acre is a miracle. I’ve travelled a lot and I’ve seen very few cities with such undeveloped potential. But I don’t see any Arabs coming to invest.”

Not on the scale of the Efendi Palace, perhaps, but one local Arab investor is Reem Hazzan, who opened Beit Maha, a restaurant and bar, in her family’s waterfront property seven months ago. “We opened this place because we believe investors should be local,” she said. “This may be one of the last old cities in the world which is not a tourist centre.”

She rejects Uri Buri’s assertion that the tension is only about rich and poor. “Yes, it is a class issue, but it’s also about Arabs and Jews. When the investors are Jews, and when the poor people are Arabs, you can’t ignore that. We need investors who believe in the potential of local people, and who will invest in a socially responsible way. If you take the people out of the old city, it will lose its soul.”

Violence sponsored by the state: Haaretz Editorial

We can only hope that the attempt to forcibly silence the social protest won’t succeed. But the police’s illegitimate action reveals system-wide contempt for the foundations of Israeli democracy.
Jun.24, 2012

The police’s violent suppression of a demonstration Friday on Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard, with the close cooperation of municipal inspectors, clearly reflects the government’s intent to prevent more social protests this summer. The inability to come to terms with legitimate protest is another worrisome stage in the government’s disparaging approach to protecting democratic society.

The scene Friday will not soon be forgotten: Daphni Leef, lying on the sidewalk and surrounded by riot police, trying to protect herself from the representatives of public order. Another demonstrator, her hands shaking and her voice gone, displayed the scratches and bruises caused by the people who are supposed to protect us.

This time, stuttered apologies and innocent looks from Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch and Police Commissioner Yohanan Danino will not help. Summoning activists to police stations to find out their plans for the summer is not legitimate. An attempt to gather information ahead of a legal demonstration is not legitimate. Conveying messages such as “don’t cross the line” is not legitimate.

We can only hope that the attempt to forcibly silence social protest won’t succeed. But the police’s illegitimate action, without opposition from their superiors, reveals system-wide contempt for the foundations of Israeli democracy. If the police and the minister in charge of them do not understand that they must respect the protest, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must make a clear statement on the matter.

Experience shows that the chance this simple expectation will be met is not particularly high. Under such circumstances, the attorney general must make clear to the authorities that protest is an inseparable part of democratic life.

Israel launched two air strikes in Gaza on Friday, killing a Palestinian militant and wounding six people, after rockets were fired from the enclave into southern Israel, threatening to unravel an Egyptian-brokered truce. Palestinian officials in Gaza said the militant killed in a strike on a refugee camp was a member of a pro al-Qaida fringe Salafist Islamist group which Israel blamed in part for a cross-border attack from Egypt’s Sinai that killed an Israeli man on Monday. A second air strike launched after darkness fell wounded four other men in northern Gaza, Hamas medical officials said.

Jonathan Cook: Israel’s ‘price tag’ terrorism has tactical political goals: Jonathan Cook

EDITOR: The fascist attacks continue unabated

In Israel, few things are certain. Still, we can be certain about the continuation and increase of racism, fascism and extreme nationalism, stoked by the government and large sectors of society. The attacks on Palestinians in the Occupied Territories will continue, as their final aim is to rid the territory of its people, and replace them with settlers. It was ever thus, since Herzl wrote such lines in his diary in June 1896, and it has never changed. The differences are mainly of style. Some Zionist call it the ‘Lorry solution’, while others prefer better transportation for the expelees…

Mosque in West Bank village set alight in suspected ‘price tag’ attack: Haaretz

Unidentified vandals set fire to a Palestinian mosque, spray-paint graffiti on its walls; IDF: Attack could undermine security in the area.
By Chaim Levinson and Gili Cohen Jun.19, 2012

A mosque in the West Bank village of Jab’a, located south of Ramallah, was set on fire in a suspected “price tag” arson attack early Tuesday morning.

Graffiti carrying messages such as “The war has begun” and “You will pay the price” was spray-painted on the mosque’s walls.

Shin Bet agents and police, accompanied by a heavy contingent of IDF soldiers, were combing the area for clues and interrogating witnesses in the village on Tuesday morning.

The mosque appears to have been attacked around 1:30 A.M. While none of the villagers saw the arsonists, they noticed the fire following the attack and hurried to extinguish it.

According to villagers, while the incident was immediately reported to the IDF, the army only arrived on the scene around 6 A.M.

Jab’a is located near Highway 60, a central traffic artery in the West Bank, but the access road to the village is blocked by large dirt mounds. Police are still investigating whether the attackers arrived by car or on foot.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak condemned the attack on Tuesday morning, calling it “a grave and criminal act, meant to harm the fabric of life in the area and distract the IDF and the security forces from their missions, which include protecting Israeli citizens in the area.”

Barak added that he had instructed the IDF and Israel’s security forces to use “all means” to find the perpetrators of the attack and bring them to justice.

The IDF said it views the incident gravely and that it could undermine the stability of security in the area.

“Price tag” attacks are generally carried out by West Bank settlers and their supporters against Palestinian targets, often in retaliation for moves against settlements.

Tuesday morning’s attack followed an extensive drill by Israel Police on Monday, held in preparation for the expected evacuation of the Ulpana Hill neighborhood in the West Bank settlement of Beit El.

Earlier this month, vandals carried out similar actions in the East Jerusalem neighborhood Shuafat, as well as in the Jewish-Arab village of Neveh Shalom.

Also in early June, a number of Middle East experts warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that continued settlement construction or the burning of a major mosque by Jewish extremists could ignite a third intifada in the West Bank.

Amira Hass: The law, ass or donkey?: Haaretz on IOA

18 JUNE 2012
By Amira Hass, Haaretz – 18 June 2012

Three High Court justices sit down to familiarize themselves with the facts: The residents continue to build without construction permits. And the three justices issue an interim order against any such construction within the two clusters that the petition relates to. The order was issued on June 7, the day after the petition and had been discussed.

Subject of the petition: Illegal outpost

Essence of the petition: Disregard of the laws of symmetry and the failure to implement the house-demolition orders issued regarding the structures of the said outpost. The subtext is clear: You ruled against Migron and the Ulpana neighborhood; why are you silent this time?

The justices: Asher Grunis, Hanan Melcer and Daphna Barak-Erez

The buildings: Neither low-rise apartment blocks like the ones in the Ulpana neighborhood nor single-family villas similar to housing in the West Bank settlement of Ofra (the vast majority of which is constructed on private land belonging to the villages of Silwad and Ein Yabrud, and therefore also lacks a detailed construction and development plan ), not even trailers hooked up to water and electricity like the ones in Migron and Givat Assaf. Only a cluster of hovels, tents and concrete rooms slapped together in a hurry.

Guess: The residents are Palestinians (only Palestinian “illegal outposts” remain unconnected to the electricity grid, phone and water lines ).

The land: Private Palestinian land, just like in Migron, Givat Assaf and Ofra, but unlike the Jewish outposts, this “outpost” is located on land owned by its inhabitants. No forged signatures or documents, no other acts of fraud perpetuated.

Name: Susya, southern slope of Mount Hebron

Some history: The adjacent Jewish West Bank settlement of Susya was erected in 1983.

1986: A confiscation order is issued against the lands of the Palestinian village Susya. The village is decreed an archaeological site (because of remnants of an ancient Jewish settlement ). And the Palestinian residents? Instead of treating them with respect and thanking them for preserving the location over the centuries, the IDF and Civil Administration expel them from their homes (caves located among ancient stone structures ), wells and fields.

And then? Susya’s Palestinian residents, members of the Nawaj’ah family, move onto the land they’ve been farming, into caves and tents.

July 2001: Under the guise of the second intifada, the IDF and Civil Administration expel the Nawaj’ah family for a second time. Tents are crushed, caves and wells sealed and wrecked, farmland destroyed, animals killed.

A small but surprising twist: On September 26, 2001, the High Court of Justice instructs the authorities to stop destroying the buildings at the height of a public campaign by the residents and left-wing groups, and the residents’ legal battle led by attorney Shlomo Lecker.

Despite the injunction, Jewish settlers and the army prevent the residents’ access to some 3,000 dunams (about 740 acres ) of their land.

The court orders an end to the demolition and expulsion, but does not instruct the Civil Administration to allow the Palestinians to build, forcing them to build without permits, for example, a school. As of May 2012, 18 demolition orders have been issued against hovels and buildings, including a school.

Another plot twist: Via the organization Rabbis for Human Rights, Susya residents appeal the blocked access to their private land and the fact that Jewish settlers are making a grab for it.

Another surprise twist: In October 2011, the military commanding officer declares a large part of their land as “closed to Israelis,” i.e., Jewish settlers, in order to stop the encroachment and land grab.

An attempt to fix the twist, February 2012: Regavim, a nonprofit association to protect the Jewish nation’s land, and the Jewish settlement of Susya petition the High Court to accelerate the pace of the Palestinian Susya demolition orders and to stop construction. In other words: a recipe for a third expulsion.

In her response, Attorney Avital Sharon of Rabbis for Human Rights points to the petition’s lack of good faith, and why it should be rejected outright. For example, she points to unauthorized construction in Jewish Susya and to the fact that the director general of Regavim himself lives in an unauthorized outpost.

Sharon also also gives reasons for the case in question: the earliest expulsion. The Civil Administration discriminates against Palestinians by not creating construction and development plans for them. Contrary to what is stated in the petition, the Civil Administration tirelessly demolishes Palestinian structures. In the last four years alone, 1,101 such structures have been demolished. Susya and the rabbis are busy working on a construction and development plan for the village (even though this is the responsibility of the official authorities ).

The judges listen to the supposed voice of symmetry coming from the petition submitted by Regavim and the Jewish settlement of Susya and do not reject the petition outright. They even issue an interim order to stop new construction in the village of Susya.

Construction in the Jewish settlement Susya continues, as it does in its satellite outposts.

As a result of the High Court ruling, officers of the Civil Administration show up in Susya on June 12 and hand out six collective demolition orders affecting 52 buildings, including a preschool, a clinic and a solar panel system supplying electricity to the village and its steadfast residents.

Demolition time frame: within three days (Attorney Quamar Mishirqi Assad of Rabbis for Human Rights manages to get a 10-day extension to submit challenges to the demolition orders ).

The residents of Susya ask the honorable justices Grunis, Melcer and Barak-Erez: Is this how you understand the word “justice” of your titles?

Israel uses Jenin murder probe as pretext to arrest, harass Freedom Theatre staff: Electronic Intifada

Jillian Kestler-D’Amours

The Electronic Intifada

18 June 2012

Since the murder of Juliano Mer-Khamis, the Israeli army continues to harass and arrest members and staff of the Freedom Theatre.

(Wagdi Eshtayah / APA images)

Micaela Miranda’s two-year-old daughter is having nightmares, two weeks after her father was taken away in the middle of the night by the Israeli army.

“She saw her father being taken away,” Miranda said. “It’s very difficult. This is the second time that he was taken.”

Miranda’s husband, Nabil al-Raee, is the artistic director of the renowned Freedom Theatre in the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank. A group of armed Israeli soldiers arrested him at the family’s home in the early morning hours of 6 June.

Currently held in Jalameh prison in northern Israel, al-Raee has, to date, been denied access to a lawyer and from contacting his family. According to Miranda, his arrest and detention seem to be related to the investigation into the 2011 murder of Juliano Mer-Khamis, a founder of the Freedom Theatre.

“For us, this is not acceptable because we have been in interrogation before. We went by our own feet and we talked with them. They don’t have anything else so they just keep him in prison,” Miranda said.

“I see it as harassment. I don’t know why the Israeli authorities are doing this. Do they have the wrong information from the Palestinian Authority? Or are they doing this for several reasons: to harass the theater, to shut down the theater, or to see what is the reaction of other people while Nabil is under arrest?” she said.

Meant to intimidate

Al-Raee is the latest in a string of people affiliated with the Freedom Theatre — including a young lead actor and a member of the theater’s board of directors — who have been arrested over the past year.

The Israeli army has also broken theater windows and equipment and shot live ammunition during night raids conducted in the camp, and intimidated and ransacked homes of theater employees.

Mer-Khamis, a well-known actor and director, was an Israeli citizen born to a Palestinian father and Jewish Israeli mother. He was shot and killed in front of the theater in April 2011. The Israeli authorities continue to say that the arrests were related to the probe into his murder.

But most people close to the theater aren’t convinced.

“These kinds of abductions and attacks on the Freedom Theatre physically have happened too many times now, which leads us to believe that maybe this is not conducted entirely, or even at all, as part of an investigation surrounding Juliano’s murder,” explained Jonatan Stanczak, the theater’s managing director. “It may actually be a way for the Israeli army to harass and break the Freedom Theatre.”

Stanczak said that since Freedom Theatre staff members have cooperated with the Israeli authorities in their investigation into Mer-Khamis’s death, arresting people in the middle of the night is an unnecessary measure.

“We are calling for people of conscience around the world to talk to their local Israeli representative in order to get an explanation of what motivates a large scale military operation in order to abduct the artistic director of the Freedom Theatre, and why this could not have been done through a simple phone call?” he said.

The Jenin refugee camp is a 0.42-square kilometer area in the north of the occupied West Bank that is home to approximately 16,000 registered Palestinian refugees, more than half of whom are under the age of 24.

Today, the Palestinian Authority has jurisdiction over the camp, and it began a criminal investigation into Mer-Khamis’ death immediately after he was killed. The Israelis also began their own investigation shortly thereafter, run jointly by the Israeli army, police and the Shabak security agency, also known as the Shin Bet (according to its Hebrew acronym).

To date, no one has been charged.

International pressure building

On 13 June, 50 European parliamentarians sent a letter to Catherine Ashton, theEuropean Union’s foreign policy chief, demanding al-Raee’s release. The letter was published on the Freedom Theatre’s website.

“We consider that it is a duty of the international community and much more of the European Union, to demand from the leaders of the State of Israel to respect international law and cease maintaining the repressive and brutal wave of detentions, contrary to the provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention,” the letter stated.

“Furthermore, the EU should support the cultural work done that helps bring about a climate of understanding. Given the urgency of the situation, we would appreciate your response to safeguard and protect the life of Nabil al-Raee,” it added.

Petitions demanding that al-Raee be released from prison are also circulating across Europe and North America, and the Freedom Theatre has encouraged individuals to appeal directly to Israeli politicians and to the Israeli army’s District Coordination Office.

Not losing hope

The next hearing into Nabil al-Raee’s arrest and detention is scheduled for 19 June at Israel’s Salem Detention Center, near Jenin. According to Micaela Miranda, the Palestinian Authority should also be held responsible for her husband’s fate.

“There is cooperation between the PA and the Israelis. We don’t even know if this arrest has its origin in wrong information from the PA because they’re supposed to be giving the Israelis information from inside [about] what is going on [in Jenin],” Miranda told The Electronic Intifada, adding that the Israeli army enters Jenin at least three times each week to make arrests.

“[When] we see there is no PA [police] in the street, we know they’re all inside and the [Israeli] army’s coming. For us, it’s clear that the PA is not here to protect the Palestinians.”

Despite this reality, Miranda said she continues to hope that her husband will soon be released.

“The pressure we can make is very small because the Israeli system and Israeli law is built in a very smart way, and so we feel helpless. We just have to accept it like this and wait and see how it goes,” she said. “We are continuing and hoping for Nabil to come home.”

Jillian Kestler-D’Amours is a reporter and documentary filmmaker based in Jerusalem. More of her work can be found at http:jkdamours.com.

Arab educators in uproar over plan to study Begin and Ben-Gurion: Haaretz on IOA

18 JUNE 2012
By Jack Khoury and Talila Nesher, Haaretz – 18 June 2012
Principals and teachers at Arab schools in Israel are furious over the Education Ministry’s plans to make all the country’s schools – including those in Arab towns – focus their curriculum next year on two of Israel’s most prominent leaders.

Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar announced several weeks ago that the curriculum for the next school year will focus on the leadership of the late prime ministers David Ben-Gurion and Menachem Begin. Students will be visiting Ben-Gurion’s home in the Negev and the Etzel Museum, which commemorates the pre-state underground militia led by Begin.

Over the last few days, educators at the country’s Arab schools have come to realize that the Ben-Gurion-Begin curriculum may be used in their schools too. Arab principals, teachers and intellectuals have asked the Follow-up Committee on Arab Education, a professional body addressing pedagogic issues related to Israeli Arabs, to take action.

“From the perspective of the Arab population, which was part of the Palestinian people, David Ben-Gurion and Menachem Begin are not just prime ministers,” said committee spokesman Raja Zatara. “The former is identified with the Nakba, from our perspective, and with the repression and land appropriation during military rule, while the latter is identified with the activities of Etzel, with the Lebanon War and the massacre at Sabra and Chatila, and with the use of emergency measures for oppressing the Arab population.”

He said the issue shows that the Arab school system needs to be governed independently and should have its known autonomous pedagogic secretariat made up of Arab educators and other experts.

The Arab education committee is considering creating an alternative curriculum that addresses the way many Arabs think of Ben-Gurion and Begin, and focuses on two Arab figures as a counterweight to the Jewish ones. Two of the figures being considered are Palestinian literary theorist Edward Said, who next year will have been dead a decade, and the poet Abdelrahim Mahmud, who was born in 1913. The committee will make a final decision in the coming days.

The founding director of the Arab Center for Law and Policy, also called Dirasat, said the Education Ministry’s move is alienating Arab students.

“This is a continuation of the Education Ministry’s policy of denying the cultural and national uniqueness of Arab students, and pours oil on the fire of the exclusion and alienation of the Arab students in the system,” said Yousef Jabareen. “Proper treatment of Arab education would have required sensitivity to the special situations of the Arab students,” which could be shown in the selection of Arab leaders whom the Arab population sees as heroes, like Nazareth Mayor Tawfik Ziad, a former MK, or former MK Tawfik Toubi. Both of those people “fought for the equality of the Arab population for decades,” said Jabareen.

The Dirasat director said the Education Ministry decision seeks to force the Zionist narrative on Arab students.

Professional educators are seeking to match the curriculum to Arab schools by integrating figures from Palestinian history and presenting all the historical facts about Begin and Ben-Gurion, “and not just the positive side,” said one.

The Education Ministry said it was in the process of discussing a possible alternative curricular focus for non-Jewish schools next year. But in his initial announcement, Sa’ar said in a press release in Hebrew and Arabic that the topic was chosen because next year marks the 100th anniversary of Begin’s birth and the 40th anniversary of Ben-Gurion’s death.

“Engaging with their visions and actions will allow students an in-depth familiarity with figures who left their mark on the nature and character of the State of Israel, along with historic events in the history of the state,” Sa’ar said. He added that students would learn about the significant decisions Ben-Gurion and Begin made, and examine the complexity of those decisions, the considerations that went into them and the values that guided the leaders.

Documentary offers damning critique of how Western media covered Gaza attack: The Electronic Intifada

Sarah Irving Amman  15 June 2012

Only two English-language journalists reported from Gaza as it suffered an all-out attack from Israel in late 2008 and early 2009. The War Around Us is a powerful, deeply moving new documentary through the eyes of these two reporters, Ayman Mohyeldin and Sherine Tadros.

Directed by Abdallah Omeish (whose best-known film is Occupation 101), The War Around Us is just 75 minutes long. But that’s enough. Tightly focused and intentionally restricted in its scope and aims, it follows in chronological order the course of the conflict, intercut with post facto interviews with Mohyeldin and Tadros. At the time both were reporting for Al Jazeera English. Mohyeldin was based in Gaza, but Tadros was there on an assignment to cover reactions to the election of US President Barack Obama.

With apparently free access to Al Jazeera footage of the attack, as well as images from the Palestinian news agency Ramattan, the film is extremely graphic and disturbing. Scenes include that of a mother and her two dead children lying side-by-side on a hospital floor; another man screaming with grief as the body of his little girl flops on a blanket; young men lying in the courtyard of a police station hit by Israeli air strikes, each with one hand raised as they say the final prayers of the dying. A victim of the horrific burns inflicted by illegal white phosphorous munitions (made in the US, fired by the Israeli military) lies in a hospital bed; huge pools of blood lie clotting on the steps of a school in Jabaliya refugee camp run by the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA).

Icy fury
Less graphic but equally devastating is the interview footage. Rima, a beautiful and intensely dignified young mother, tells Tadros how her children no longer say they are afraid of dying — they just want to make sure that they die along with her so they’re not left alone. John Ging, then a leading figure in UNRWA, speaks with icy fury as desperately-needed food supplies burn behind him. And 16-year-old Ahmad Samouni’s face writhes in pain as he describes lying for days surrounded by the bodies of his family, waiting for the Israeli army to allow ambulances to fetch him.

Many viewers are perhaps now inured to the kind of violence we regularly see on YouTube and activist media, but to watch news media footage — where cameramen have often risked their lives to chase the most graphic images, and which has been edited and soundtracked for intensity and impact — for over an hour is hard to stomach, even now.

It is, then, something of a relief that the film intercuts the material from the attack on Gaza with extended interviews with Mohyeldin and Tadros. They reflect on the roles and responsibilities of journalists in such a situation, on their “anger” at finding that they were the only mainstream Western journalists reporting from inside Gaza, and on the personal impacts of covering such a horrific story.

“Where was the outrage?”
Mohyeldin, already a seasoned conflict reporter when he was posted to Gaza, is the more political one in his comments. He is patently furious at the Western media for their failure to adequately deliver to their audiences the truth of what he calls in the film “a story of great shame to humanity.” American and British news channels, he says, “neglected the story and then had the audacity to question the only journalists on the ground … they tried to spin it in a way that would marginalize or diminish what was happening.” He condemns the “silence of the international community. Where was the outrage?”

Tadros’s comments are more personal. A newcomer to frontline reporting, she is frank in saying that she will never put herself in that position again. Obviously hugely affected by the mothers and children she interviewed — in their homes and hospital beds — she recounts how, coming home to London after the attacks, she couldn’t hold her one-year-old nephew because she imagined blood seeping through his clothes. She also describes vividly the difficulty of facing death day after day, not from one’s own perspective, but from that of the family, thousands of miles away, who are powerless to help.

Tadros admits that during the attacks, Mohyeldin found her to be a “princess.” But behind-the-scenes footage shows a drained, haggard woman working 19 hours a day, snatching sleep on an office floor, desperate to achieve her role of showing the human impacts of a conflict which much of world was seeing only from Western reports in southern Israel or the insidious lies of Mark Regev and Avital Leibovich, chief mouthpieces for the Israeli government and military.

Specific aim
Ayman Mohyeldin, in a question and answer session following a screening of the film in Amman, acknowledged criticism of the documentary for its focus on two mainstream journalists, rather than telling the story from a Palestinian perspective. Although Mohyeldin has a Palestinian mother, he doesn’t labor this as a claim to authenticity. Instead, he insists that the film has a very specific aim — to speak to Western audiences, to use himself and Tadros, two Western journalists of Arab origin, as a bridge to the sympathies of Western viewers, and to “make people question their own media for not telling [the truth about the attacks].”

Ultimately, The War Around Us is a damning critique — from within the industry — of the Western media’s reporting of Palestine, as well as a powerful tool in the hands of Palestine solidarity campaigners. There is no way to walk away from this film not feeling angry and deeply distressed, but also with a visceral and fundamental grasp on the depth of Israel’s denial of the Palestinian right not only to life and liberty but, in Ayman Mohyeldin’s words, “of the right to aspire.”

For details of future screenings of The War Around Us, see http://thewararoundus.com

Sarah Irving is a freelance writer. She worked with the International Solidarity Movement in the occupied West Bank in 2001-02 and with Olive Co-op, promoting fair trade Palestinian products and solidarity visits, in 2004-06. She is the author of a biography of Leila Khaled and of the Bradt Guide to Palestine and co-author, with Sharyn Lock, of Gaza: Beneath the Bombs.

• Saeed Kamali Dehghan
• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 14 June 2012 15.05 BST

Iran has claimed it has arrested the “main elements” behind the assassination of two of its nuclear scientists, alleging they were spies working for Israel.

The intelligence ministry said on Thursday it had identified a number of agents affiliated with the “Zionist regime” involved in the January assassination of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a key figure at one of Iran’s main uranium-enrichment facilities and the 2010 killing of Majid Shariari, a senior nuclear scientist.

Local news agencies published what appears to be a terse statement by the ministry, which does not shed light on the numbers, names or nationalities of those said to be detained nor clarifies where and when they were arrested.

“A series of heavy and thorough intelligence operations which begun after the assassination of our first nuclear scientists … led to the identification of a number of agents [gathering information] for the fake regime that rules over the occupied territories,” it said.

In January, attackers on a motorbike stuck a magnetic bomb to a car carrying Roshan, deputy director of the Natanz plant. The car’s driver, Reza Ghashghaee, was also killed in the attack, which took place during morning rush-hour in Tehran.

Roshan was the latest victim in what is widely seen as a covert war against the Islamic republic’s nuclear programme. It was the fifth assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist in the past two years.

Shariari, a member of the nuclear engineering faculty at Tehran’s Shahid Beheshti University, was killed in November 2010 when bomb attacks targeted two Iranian nuclear scientists.

Shahriari was killed. His colleague, Fereidoun Abbasi-Davani, who was wounded in the attack, was later promoted as head of the country’s atomic energy agency.

Shahriari and Abbasi-Davani were targeted by attackers on motorcycles who attached bombs to the victims’ cars.

In recent years, Iran’s nuclear programme has experienced setbacks including the assassination of its scientists and the release of the Stuxnet computer worm, designed to sabotage its atomic facilities and halt its enrichment programme. The malware is believed to have targeted a control system used in Iran’s nuclear sites in July 2010.

Embarrassed domestically by the inability to protect its scientists, Iran claims it has launched various sophisticated operations to identify the culprits.

In May this year, Iran hanged 26-year-old Majid Jamali Fashi, who the authorities alleged was responsible for the assassination of Masoud Ali-Mohammadi, a particle physicist killed in January 2010.

According to Iran, Jamali-Fashi confessed to having attached a remote-controlled bomb to a motorcycle parked on the street, which detonated and killed Ali-Mohammadi while he was leaving home for work. The extent of Ali-Mohammadi’s involvement in the country’s nuclear programme is unclear.

In the face of little independent information available on Jamali-Fashi, observers have questioned whether he was involved in the killing of Ali-Mohammadi. Some suspect Iran is struggling to cover its embarrassment at home by staging a series of show trials and claims of arrests.

Iran says its nuclear activities are peaceful and has accused the west – the US and Israel in particular – of attempting to prevent Tehran from acquiring a technology it claims to want for medical and energy supply purposes.

The west fears Iran’s nuclear programme may have military applications and has imposed sanctions to force the authorities to permit the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors full access to its nuclear sites.

Iran is due to hold nuclear talks with the world’s major powers in Moscow next week, when its top officials meet their counterparts from the US, France, Germany, China, Russia and Britain, the group known as P5+1.

Madonna sings for apartheid; yet campaign to boycott Israel grows stronger: Electronic Intifada

EDITOR: The perfect ploy…

Having made some 800,000 Palestinians refugees in 1948, and over 250,000 in 1967 (according to Israeli figures…) and then never allowing them to return to their homes, which were then destroyed or given to Israeli Jews, Israel is not quite happy enough with the result. It must now stop the payment to the refugees and their families, as to lower the figures of the refugee total. The morality of this is really beyond me, or as the biblical prophet has said: “Have thou murdered and then inherited?” (Hebrew: Hartsachta Vegam Yarashta) – yes, they have murdered and expelled, then destroyed and inherited. But, this seems to be OK, because they are the Chosen People.

And you know what? They are likely to succeed this time also, unless we kick up a mighty fuss about this travesty! We must stop this; This kind of atrocious behaviour, amongst other evils,  also gives rise to anti-Semitism.

In the meantime, back on the farm: Israeli border Police are searching high and low for anyone black and arresting them, to later deport them by force. Strange Fruit, indeed… the fruit of Zionist racism.

Israeli MK, AIPAC behind Senate bid to cut total number of Palestinian refugees: IOA

12 JUNE 2012
By Barak Ravid, Haaretz – 12 June 2012

Newly passed amendment requires State Department to specify how many of the 5 million Palestinians who receive aid from the UN are refugees who were personally displaced from their homes in 1948, and how many are their descendants.

Capitol Hill in Washington was rocked late last month when the Senate Appropriations Committee approved an amendment requiring the State Department, for the first time, to do a “count” of Palestinian refugees.

The amendment required the State Department to specify how many of the five million Palestinians who receive aid from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency are refugees who were personally displaced from their homes in 1948, and how many are descendants of those refugees.

Known as the Kirk Amendment, after its sponsor, Senator Mark Kirk (R-Illinois), considered one of Israel’s strongest supporters in Washington, the bill conceals within its 150-plus words a fierce battle between Republican legislators and the State Department over the United States’ relationship with UN institutions.

Every year the United States allocates $250 million to UNRWA, which provides food as well as health, education and employment services to millions of Palestinians in Jordan, Lebanon, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. For years Congressional representatives have been trying to reduce U.S. contributions to the agency, on the grounds that UNRWA was born in sin and that its policies are anti-Israeli.

What is not common knowledge in the Beltway is that the Kirk Amendment got its start in the Jerusalem office of MK Einat Wilf (Atzmaut ), who toiled for months, together with AIPAC lobbyists and Kirk’s staff, to promote the change.

Last September, as the Palestinians prepared their unilateral bid at the UN, Wilf met with representatives of the pro-Israel lobby in Israel. “I asked them why they weren’t doing anything about UNRWA,” Wilf says, adding: “The answer I got was that figures in the Israeli government had blocked such moves in the past.”

Wilf met with senior Defense Ministry policy official Amos Gilad and explained that she sought to end the agency’s policy of giving refugee status to successive generations of Palestinian refugees. “UNRWA’s activities perpetuate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict instead of solving it,” Wilf says.

In a letter he sent Wilf in January, Gilad set the boundaries for her initiate, writing that the UNRWA budget should not be harmed , and that “UNRWA plays an important role in aiding the Palestinian population.”

“One must prevent a circumstance which endangers the continued transfer of these [UNRWA] services, services that align with Israeli interests,” Gilad added.

After Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Ron Dermer, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s foreign-policy adviser, gave their approval to Wilf’s efforts, she returned to AIPAC staffers and also approached Steven J. Rosen, a former foreign policy director for the organization who now works for a Washington think tank, to get things rolling on Capitol Hill.

In April Wilf and Rosen met with Kirk’s deputy chief of staff, Richard Goldberg. Kirk is recovering from a stroke he suffered a few months ago, and Goldberg is promoting the senator’s legislative efforts.

After a preliminary draft of the bill was worded, AIPAC officials went on board in an attempt to pass it, holding meeting with many of the senators on the appropriations committee in an attempt to sway them into supporting the legislation.

However, opposing the move were State Department officials, who went as far as sending a harshly worded letter to the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriations Patrick Leahy.

In the letter, the State Department indicated that the United States recognized the refugee status of 5 million Palestinians, and accepts UNRWA’s definition of refugee descendents as refugees themselves.

While the State Department’s opposition succeeded in altering the bill, it did not bring about its cancellation, with the legislation eventually passed in the panel.

The amendment serves as a precedent since it represents the first time that a Senate committee sets demands to the American administration concerning UNRWA’s through legislation, even if it’s only the demand to report.

Responding to the report, Wilf said that her position was that “settlement building and the continued status of Palestinian refugees are both obstacles to peace.”

“I have nothing against the descendents of refugees and I’m not asking them to give up of their dream of returning, but if we want a two-state solution, UNRAW can’t continue to aid an inflation of refugees,” she added, saying: “It ends up harming peace.”

How hunger strikers “tied the hands of the occupation”: a view from Israeli prison: The Electronic Intifada

Ameer Makhoul,  Gilboa Prison 9 June 2012

Palestinians have achieved three consecutive victories in the last few months. In October 2011, there was the release of prisoners (the exchange deal involving the kidnapped Israeli soldier).

Then there was a series of individual hunger strikes, which lasted for unparalleled periods of time. These began with Khader Adnan, who went on hunger strike to protest against the Israeli policy of administrative detention.

Adnan’s action spurred an open-ended hunger strike by prisoners, started by more than a thousand prisoners on 17 April. It ended on 14 May, with more than 2,000 prisoners taking part. The strike began a new page in the history of the Palestinian struggle for liberation, written by the prisoners along with their Arab and international supporters.

The agreement signed on 14 May 2012 between the authorities in charge of the strike and Israel — with Egyptian and international mediation and guarantees — confirmed that the prisoner movement not only scored a major achievement, but realized a clear victory. We can now speak of two periods, the before and after, with the watershed moment being the hunger strike of 2012.

Clear aims, coordination and preparation

From the beginning, the strike had several strong points. The most important of these was the clarity of its aims — key goals achievable through struggle and determination. These goals fused with the significant and highly conscious coordination between the prisoners on strike and those leading it inside the prisons, and between the latter and the wider political authorities outside.

Strong points became clear. There was no detailed involvement with everyday demands and issues. Thereby, a situation was avoided where larger aims would become entangled with specific demands. This tied the hands of the occupation, which could not manipulate these aims.

A huge role was also played by the strong, clear approach to the media taken by the leadership of the strike, while Israel failed in its attempts to broadcast a contrary view. There was also an accurate reading of Palestinian, Arab and international realities. A central goal was determined through prior planning — the possibility of reviving the Palestinian popular movement and making the most of the significant Egyptian role as a principal party to support the strike and guarantee the achievement of its goals. This risk proved worthwhile as was evident in the Egyptian sponsorship of the agreement to end the strike.

Another significant achievement was the clear preparation and the impressive readiness of the international solidarity movements to launch their campaigns all over the world, particularly in Europe and America, to support the prisoners in their fight for freedom. They declared 17 April as Palestinian Prisoners’ Day.

This resulted in international public pressure in favor of the Palestinians’ right to confront the collusion of their government with the Israeli occupiers. These movements adopted a clear discourse on the humanitarian and political rights demanded by the prisoners. They also proved the importance of cumulative efforts to internationalize the cause of the prisoners and the cause of Palestine.

The strike adopted an approach which has blown the policy of “postponement” — imposed by Israel with official American and European support — out of the water. This is what happened in Oslo, where crucial components of the Palestinian issue were postponed to fit the policy of dictation and domination over the Palestinian leadership.

One of the issues postponed under that formula was the release of prisoners, but this too was brought back to the top of the official Palestinian agenda by the strike. The strikers refused to accept that the prisoners were pawns under the mercy of the occupation.

The strike also succeeded in neutralizing the negative effect of Israeli public opinion by not addressing it at all. This is because if it had moved, it would have gone against the just demands of the prisoners. It is a colonialist public opinion, extremely hostile to Palestinian rights, and therefore cannot support its own victims.

Only one victorious side

There is a difference between achieving specific matters within a wider set of demands and achieving all the goals of a decisive act of struggle. There is also a difference between a clear victory and a case in which each side thinks they’ve won. The outcome of the strike, as expressed in the agreement, is clear — there is only one victorious side, the prisoners.

This was the first time that negotiations were carried out directly with those involved in the case. It is also the first time a decision has been made by the occupier — the General Security Service (Shabak or Shin Bet) — not the Israeli Prison Service, which in the scale of Israeli oppression is just a subcontractor of the Shabak and the security services.

The strike neutralized the Israeli Prison Service and the longer it went on the more direct the dealings with the principal player, the Shabak, became. This is because of the strength of the strike and its solid basis. It forced the Israeli apparatus to reveal itself, because it limited its ability to manipulate and maneuver.

But the most important issue here is the success of the strike in removing the strategic oppression tools the Shabak has used for decades, particularly the laws of administrative detention and solitary confinement in prisons. In this way, the rules of a deeply rooted, coercive game were broken.

As a result of its strength, the strike also revealed the hostility and criminality of the Israeli judicial system, which since its conception has been an instrument to whitewash the racist colonialist project, the Israeli state’s crimes. It gave them legitimacy, justifying administrative procedures, the British mandate’s emergency laws, and continuous solitary confinement, all under the guise of security. And here we saw the Shabak forced to back down over some of them, confirming that the Israeli judicial system played and still plays the role of “palace guards” for the ruling security apparatus.

As for the popular international movement, which turned into official efforts, the Arab role, particularly the Egyptian, and the carrying out of multi-sided negotiations (the prisoners, Israel, Egypt and international pressure) — all these created a new atmosphere, an equation more akin to real negotiations than simply an occupying country dealing with its victims. The strike also confirmed that Israel’s power is not absolute, that its strength and sway can crumble in the face of targeted Palestinian efforts.

Dissolving divisions and boundaries

It is true that the strike was not comprehensive. It was Hamas who took the decision to launch it, along with Islamic Jihad, and with the support of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Members of the Palestine Liberation Organization/Fatah took part in it. Those who initiated the strike kept their word when they guaranteed that all factions were represented in the authoritative body and leadership of the strike, each according to their role and numbers.

Although the strike included no more than a third of the prisoners, with Hamas being the most heavily represented, this in no way weakens its legitimacy. There might have been an argument prior to the strike about declaring it officially, but the moment it began, it became the prisoners’ strike. It became the responsibility of those prisoners taking part in it, and even those who were not, to make it succeed, support it, and share responsibility for it.

The strike proved that when our people or the prisoners’ movement engage in large-scale battles with the occupying oppressive state, the whole nation gets involved.

It is worth confirming that support for the Palestinian cause and Palestinian rights in their entirety is above political factions, rendering such divisions marginal and the people united. When the struggle of our people in Galilee, the Triangle, the Naqab desert and the coast meets with that in Jerusalem, Gaza, the West Bank and those in exile, all boundaries between our people dissolve.

Mobilizing every corner of the homeland

Reconciliation is not the goal of the Palestinian people, it is the responsibility of the political factions involved. The goals of the Palestinian people are return, freedom, liberating the homeland and the people, and self-determination. What is more important than reconciliation is the unity of the struggle and its integration on the basis of the fundamentals of Palestinian rights, not on curtailing them.

This is where the strike succeeded in mobilizing an unprecedented Palestinian movement in every corner of the homeland. With the support of the international movement, this turned the equation on its head in the last stages of the strike, when the prisoners became the ones holding the occupiers and the prisons under siege.

The Palestinian popular movement was followed by an important and effective movement. The initiative launched by the prisoners’ affairs ministry, the freed prisoners, the leadership of the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization is a promising model for overcoming factional divisions.

It is now clear that coordination is possible, roles can be complementary, even if the divisions continue. It is clear that the unity of the goal and the people over the prisoners’ struggle is the basis. This is an integrated working model which is capable of achieving victories.

In his last speech in February 1965, Malcolm X said: “The only thing power respects is power.” This is one of the most important lessons of the strike. How do we create this power through determination and justice, and how do we use it well as prisoners and as a people? We must not forget that the most important goal of the prisoners, and the people, is freedom, and that requires more power. The hunger strike in 2012 is a victory on the road to freedom.

Ameer Makhoul is a Palestinian civil society leader and political prisoner at Gilboa Prison.

This article is co-published by Al Akhbar English and translated from Arabic.

Continue reading June 12, 2012