Day by day Archive

Gaza: One Year On: Al Jazeera online

Displaced and desperate in Gaza
By Safa Joudeh in Gaza
A year after the war, many displaced families still live in tents [GALLO/GETTY]
One year has passed since the beginning of Operation Cast lead, Israel’s 22-day military assault on the besieged Gaza Strip and suspended is a word that best describes daily life in the Strip; the internal reconciliation process, peace talks with Israel, and most importantly, reconstruction being halted until further notice.
On the street, conversations shift between two topics: The first is the ‘internal peace process’ between rival parties Fatah and Hamas. The other is a possible, even partial opening of the borders by Israel to allow rebuilding to begin; a topic alluded to casually with much cynicism and little hope.
Israeli ground and air raids between December 27, 2008 and January 17, 2009 left extensive damage and mass devastation in its wake.
Factories, businesses, public service buildings, farms, mosques and schools were targeted, hundreds destroyed or damaged. About 15,000 homes were either demolished or severely damaged.
One year later and 20,000 people are still displaced, living with relatives, or in makeshift shacks. Many of them have almost resigned themselves to living in temporary accommodations permanently.

‘Help is not coming’
Abu Subhi, a resident of Beit Lahi, is one of thousands who received a tent from the Red Cross, following the destruction of his home during the war on Gaza.
Today, his tent serves as an extra room to an adjoining shack he built from wooden planks and corrugated iron sheets to house his family.
“I used to have a home and six children. My oldest son was killed in the war and I lost my home. It has been one year and all I’ve gained is the knowledge that help is not coming. The siege before the war was brutal. The siege after the war is pure evil,” he says.
And while a small number of displaced families remain in tents, shacks like Abu Subhi’s have sprung up on the sites of demolished homes all over the Strip.
The few who can afford it have rented apartments, but in one year not one single house has been rebuilt.
Nevertheless, there have been efforts on the part of international NGOs to prepare for the reconstruction of public and private buildings.
The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) launched a rubble removal project that discarded 600,000 tonnes of rubble left over after the war, as part of its early recovery process.

Frustration and despair
The images of the mounds of rubble in the Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza City, one of the areas most heavily hit during the war, became representative of the scale of the destruction left behind.
Today, the same areas of this neighbourhood have been cleared, and where residents hoped new homes would be built, shacks, trailers and even mud houses have been erected.
According to a report issued by the UN Conference on Trade and Development, the damage to the civilian infrastructure after the war equals four times the size of the Gaza economy.
Over $4bn were pledged by the international community for reconstruction in March.
The reconstruction process would not only put the Strip on the road to recovery, but would also provide hundreds of thousands of jobs in a multitude of sectors, and assist in decreasing the unprecedented 60 per cent unemployment rate.
But, the continued indefinite delay has created an overwhelming sense of frustration and despair among Gazans.

‘Downhill from rock bottom’
At least 20,000 people were displaced by Israel’s war on Gaza [EPA] In the vegetable market in Gaza City vendors arrange and rearrange their produce, occasionally catering to the odd customer; a far cry from the hustle and bustle of what was once one of the liveliest areas in Gaza.
Raafat Hijazi supports a family of 15, his wife and three daughters, in addition to 11 nephews and nieces whose parents – Rafaat’s brothers and their wives – were killed during the Israeli aggression.
Raafat considers himself fortunate. Although business is slow, there will always be customers to buy his fruit and vegetables.
“Before the war we thought it could not get any worse. But despite the siege, things weren’t as bleak as they are now. You really can go downhill from rock bottom. At most only 10 truckloads of produce are allowed in through the Israeli controlled crossings,” he says.
This is compared to 70 truckloads during the two year blockade preceding the war on Gaza; already only 25 per cent of the amount required to meet the needs of the population.
Paying tunnel prices
But the tunnels between Gaza and Egypt are yet again a means to make up the shortages of produce in the market.
Items such as oranges and Guava are now being brought in through the tunnels.
But Raafat points out that the prices are so high, shoppers prefer not to waste money on what they call ‘luxury items’ such as fruit.
“By the time the produce, or any other items, make it to the stalls and shelves in the market they cost three or four times as much as they typically should,” he explains.
The same goes for items ranging from fish and cattle, to electronics, clothing and fuel, each ranging in the disparity between original price and tunnel price.
On one hand, the tunnels allow for the entry of necessities that would otherwise not be available, on the other tunnel trade is costly to both merchants and customers.
During the past 12 months the amount and range of items brought in through the tunnels has increased significantly, a development resulting directly from Israel’s tightening of the siege on the Strip.
Today, 15 per cent of food requirements in the Gaza Strip are being met by items that come in through tunnels, and yet 76 per cent of the population has become food insecure, as opposed to 53 per cent before the war.

‘Dying a slow death’
But despite ingenuity in dealing with the challenges posed by the continued blockade, Israel’s war on the Strip, resulted in billions of dollars worth of damage to the civilian infrastructure, which was already suffering major breakdowns following a two year blockade before the war.
One year later, electricity, water and sanitation systems not only fall short of providing the residents of the Strip with the minimum supply required for each household, but are also on the verge of collapse.
One fifth of the Gaza shore is polluted due to improper disposal of waste water into the sea. The waste water system sustained extensive during the war, and one year later there have been no repairs or maintenance.
A large portion of the costal area in Gaza is not fit for swimming or fishing, depriving Gazans of one of their only recreational outlets and most important industries.
But the majority of the population believes that this is the lesser of two evils.
In the town of Khan Younes in the central Gaza Strip locals are only too familiar with the occurrence of sewage water flooding their streets and even their homes.
Nabil Shakshak, a schoolteacher and father of three, lives only metres away from a sewage lake, created as a temporary holding place for the neighbourhood’s waste water until reconstruction of a waste water treatment plant can begin.
“This is a health and environment hazard,” he says. “My children are constantly sick, the ground, air and water we drink is contaminated.”
“What we don’t understand is that the resources, the funding, the workers, the skill, it’s all there. We’re dying a slow death because Israel chooses to say no repairs can be made. Someone explain this to my children.”
Nabil’s sentiments are not uncommon among the population of the Gaza Strip.
Many also believe that until the international community actively takes a stand against Israel’s collective punishment measures, Israel will never allow the rebuilding process to begin.

Israel Defends Its Inquiry Into Gaza War: New York Times

By ISABEL KERSHNER
Published: January 29, 2010
JERUSALEM — Israel sent a letter to the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, on Friday, defending the credibility of its internal military investigation into the Israeli Army’s conduct during last winter’s Gaza war.

Israel Signals Tougher Line on West Bank Protests (January 29, 2010)
The 40-page document was the first official Israeli response to a harshly critical United Nations study called the Goldstone report and formed part of Israel’s effort to stave off accusations of war crimes.
But the document did not address the possibility of an independent, nonmilitary commission of inquiry, as called for by the United Nations report into the war and by many concerned parties in Israel and abroad.
A copy released by the Israeli Foreign Ministry late Friday outlined the findings so far of various kinds of military investigations into several episodes. Among the conclusions, Israel stated that “the strategies adopted by Hamas, and in particular its systematic entrenchment in the heart of civilian areas, created profound operational dilemmas.” The document also declared that in complex combat situations, errors of judgment, even with tragic results, did not necessarily mean that war crimes had occurred.
The Israeli government has been considering the establishment of some kind of judicial investigative committee. While some prominent Israelis favor one, others have been opposed, including the defense minister, Ehud Barak. “All of the soldiers and officers whom we sent into battle need to know,” Mr. Barak said Friday, “that the State of Israel stands behind them, also the day after.”
The report, which was published in September, accused mainly Israel, but also Hamas, which controls Gaza, of possible war crimes during the three-week war. It was researched and written by a fact-finding mission created by the Human Rights Council and led by the respected international jurist Richard J. Goldstone, a South African judge and veteran war crimes prosecutor. In November, the General Assembly endorsed the Goldstone report and asked the secretary general to report back by Feb. 5 on Israeli and Palestinian progress in investigating their respective roles in the war.
Among other things, the report accused Israel of deliberate attacks against the civilian population of Gaza and of willful destruction of civilian infrastructure, a violation of international law.
Up to 1,400 Gazans were killed, including hundreds of civilians. Israel rejected the Goldstone report as biased.
The Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, said that the Palestinian government had delivered a letter to the secretary general saying it had established a special commission that would review the accusations raised in the Goldstone report and carry out whatever investigations the commission deemed necessary.
The report accused Hamas of firing rockets into Israel from Gaza, and Hamas said separately that it had responded to the United Nations demands for an investigation by calling Israeli civilian deaths a “mistake.”
The report called for “appropriate investigations that are independent and in conformity with international standards” into what it called “serious violations” of international law.
If no good-faith, independent investigations were under way within six months, the report recommended, the Security Council should refer the Gaza case to the International Criminal Court.
Many in Israel argue that the military investigation is not enough. Israel’s attorney general, Menachem Mazuz, said Israel was at risk of “Serbianization,” even though he considered the Goldstone report biased.
“Therefore, I believe that Israel has a clear interest in conducting a serious, expert examination that will deal with the report and produce an opposing report,” Mr. Mazuz said in an interview published Friday in the newspaper Haaretz.

Continue reading January 31, 2010

Have a look and listen to the Great Man… Surprise, surprise! Barack Obama (otherwise known as O’Bomber) is really a thinking man’s president, not just someone who acts like one! He is thinking himself some time, though you will find no evidence of it in the following clip. What you will certainly find is the grand-master of evasion, trying ever-so-smooth, ever so condescending talk, with further proof, if proof be needed, that he is totally unable and unwilling to make any change in the long-term racist US policy in the Middle East. What is also interesting, is the fact the question asked is one he must have prepared himself for a million times, yet he is not only unable to answer it, he is unable to finish a single sentence properly, ahms and ahs like some granny on ganja, and on the whole, gives a performance worthy of Dubya. Hurray to George Bush the Third!
I just hope he goes on like this. Then all will be clear at last – how Israel has reduced a bright academic to the stature of a Neanderthal in just one year, proving that Darwin also works in reverse…

President O’Bomber loosing his pants in front of American students

The long arm of murder and devastation reaches everywhere. Zionist justice needs no courts, no trials, no witnesses – a shot in a dark alleyway, by the heroic murderers. No doubt Spielberg will immortalize them in his next installment of “After Munich: How we kill them everywhere with impunity”:

Hamas military commander ‘assassinated in Dubai’: BBC

A senior Hamas military commander has been assassinated by Israel in Dubai, the Palestinian Islamist group claims.
Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, 50, a founder of the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, “died a martyr on 20 January in suspicious circumstances”, a statement said.
Hamas gave no further details, but vowed to “retaliate for this Zionist crime at the appropriate moment”.
An Israeli government spokesman would not comment, in line with Israel’s usual policy on similar allegations.
The authorities in the UAE have also not yet commented.
‘Close to leader’
A Hamas political bureau member in Damascus, Izzat al-Rishq, told the BBC that Mr Mabhouh, who had been living in Syria since 1989, had been very close to its exiled political leader, Khaled Meshaal.
“Mabhouh died a martyr in Dubai on 20 January 2010 in suspicious circumstances that require an inquiry in co-operation with the United Arab Emirates authorities,” Hamas said in a statement.
“We in Hamas hold the Zionist enemy responsible for the criminal assassination of our brother, and we pledge to God and to the blood of the martyrs and to our people to continue his path of jihad and martyrdom,” it added.
Hamas has not given details of how he was killed, but Mr Mabhouh’s brother told French news agency AFP that he was killed with an electric shock to the head.
Material had been sent to a Paris laboratory which “confirmed he was killed by electric shock”, Fayed al-Mabhouh told AFP.
Kidnap and murder
Hamas said Mahmoud al-Mabhouh had been responsible for the abduction in 1989 of two Israeli soldiers, who were both later killed.
Sgt Avi Sasportas and Sgt Ilan Sa’adon were kidnapped a few months apart as they hitchhiked from military bases to their homes during the first Palestinian Intifada.
Sgt Sasportas’s body was discovered close to where he was picked up as he went home to Ashdod.
Sgt Sa’adon’s body was not recovered for seven years.
Mr Mabhouh also masterminded a number of other attacks, for which the Israeli authorities demolished his home in Gaza, Hamas added.
He spent several periods in Israeli custody. After his last release, “he spent his life being hounded by the Zionist occupier until he succeeded in leaving the Gaza Strip,” it said.
“Our brother had been a target for the occupier ever since his participation in the kidnapping operation against the two Zionist soldiers, and for his role and support for the resistance.”
Mr Mabhouh’s body was flown to Syria on Thursday and his funeral is due to be held in the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp, on the outskirts of Damascus, later on Friday.
Rockets
The Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades have carried out hundreds of attacks and suicide bombings targeting Israeli troops and civilians.
The Brigades have launched rockets from the Gaza Strip into Israeli towns close to the border.
The rocket fire at civilian areas was the reason the Israeli military gave for launching a 22-day attack on Gaza beginning in December 2008.
Hamas’s charter effectively calls for the destruction of Israel, although its leaders have more recently said they would consider a long-term ceasefire in exchange for a state on the land Israel occupied in 1967.
Israel has a long history of assassination operations targeting militants. Most famously, in 1987 in Tunisia, agents killed Abu Jihad, the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s military leader.
But in 1997, one mission went wrong, when two agents were arrested in Jordan after attempting to poison Mr Meshaal and Israel was forced to hand over an antidote by the US government.
More recently, Israel denied that it was behind the assassination of Imad Mughniyeh, the military commander of the Lebanese Shia militant group, Hezbollah, in Damascus in 2008.

Swedish mayor calls both Anti-Semitism and Zionism forms of ‘unacceptable extremism’: Haaretz

Swedish Jews are upset about comments made this week by the mayor of Malmo, who said anti-Semitism and Zionism were both forms of “unacceptable extremism,” and urged local Jews to disassociate themselves from Israeli actions in the Gaza Strip.
“These statements and other events in Malmo are making the Jewish community feel very uncomfortable and some people, especially the young, are leaving the city,” George Braun, the president of the Jewish community in Gothenburg, about 250 kilometers from Malmo, told Haaretz. Ilmar Reepalu, mayor of Malmo, Sweden’s third largest city, spoke in an interview published in a Swedish newspaper on Wednesday, International Holocaust Remembrance Day. “We accept neither Zionism nor anti-Semitism,” Reepalu said. “They are extremes who put themselves above other groups, seeing others as something lesser.”
He said it was “terrible” that Jews felt so insecure in Malmo that they felt compelled to leave, but that a recent city-center demonstration in solidarity with Israel by local Jews stirred up feelings against them
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“I wish the Jewish Community would distance itself from Israel’s violations of the rights of the civilian population in Gaza,” he said. I wish that representatives of Muslims in Malmo would clearly say that the Jews in Malmo shouldn’t be mixed up in the Israel-Palestine conflict.”
Malmo’s Jewish community has complained about harassment by extreme left-wing and right-wing activists, but mostly by radical elements from the city’s Muslims, who make up about 15 percent of the population of 250,000.
Malmo drew international attention last March when the city council barred spectators from a Davis Cup tennis match in which Israelis were competing, citing public order concerns because of planned anti-Israel protests.
The Israelis won and the International Tennis Federation banned Malmo from hosting Davis Cup events for five years. Dr. Mikael Tossavainen of Tel Aviv University’s Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism, said Reepalu’s statements were “far from helpful in indicating that the Jews themselves have a share in the responsibility for their precarious position.”
He added: “Mr. Reepalu’s statements risk strengthening those who take out their frustration against Israel on the local Jews.”

Continue reading January 30, 2010

After much public pressure, Santana cancels his concert in Israel. Another small victory in the march towards BDS:

Santana cancels Tel Aviv concert: igoogledisrael.com

Guitar legend Carlos Santana tonight canceled his summer gig in Tel Aviv, thanks largely to a busy schedule which has meant the reorganizing of a few shows and the canceling of some. Israel was one of the unlucky ones.

His management promised a full refund to the many thousands who had already purchased tickets. And Israeli promoter Shuki Weiss, the man behind nearly all of the big-name concerts in Israel, was surprised and disappointed to hear of the news.

The official statement went like this:

Due to unforeseen concert scheduling conflicts on the upcoming Middle East Tour, Santana regretfully announces the postponement of some dates previously scheduled. These dates include the previously announced performance in Israel, it was announced by management today.

“We are sorry that our schedule has forced the postponement of certain dates previously scheduled,” Michael Vrionis, CEO of Santana Management, said. “We look forward to performing in the many historic places that Santana has long wanted to return to.”

But don’t worry, the list of stars coming to perform in Israel in 2010 is only going to get longer! And Santana’s loss is surely, er, Rod Stewart’s gain…

Or so they tell themselves… soon no serious artist will even consider going there.

According to those two young Palestinians below, the Israeli invasion was indeed successful, turning their young brothers to little wariors…

Child’s eye: ‘My brothers think about weapons, not toys’:The Guardian

Two young Palestinian girls – 15-year-old Reem and 10-year-old Ameera – describe their ongoing fears in the aftermath of last year’s bombing of Gaza by Israel

To watch the short film, click here

Does Israel Use The Holocaust as a Blackmail Weapon?

Norman Finkelstein and Israel W. Charny discuss the issue in a heated debate.
Sixty-five years ago, Auschwitz was liberated by Soviet troops. Peter Lavelle asks his guests what the legacy of the Holocaust is today. Is its memory being abused? Does Israel use Holocaust as a blackmail weapon?
Posted January 27, 2010

With no ‘terrorists’ they arrest human rights activists, who are, after all, more dangerous to the occupation regime:

Bilin grassroots leader Mohammed Khatib arrested in late-night raid: Electronic Intifada

Press release, Popular Struggle Coordination Committee, 28 January 2010
The following edited press release was issued today by the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee:
Today, Mohammed Khatib, his wife Lamia and their four young children were woken up by Israeli soldiers storming their home, which was surrounded by a large military force. Once inside the house, the soldiers arrested Khatib, conducted a quick search and left the house.
Roughly half an hour after leaving the house, five military jeeps surrounded the house again, and six soldiers forced their way into the house, where Khatib’s children sat in terror. The forces conducted another very thorough search of the premises, without showing a search warrant. During the search, Khatib’s phone and many documents were seized, including papers from Bilin’s legal procedures in the Israel high court.
The soldiers exited an hour and a half later, leaving a note saying that documents suspected as “incitement materials” were seized. International activists who tried to enter the house to be with the family during the search were aggressively denied entry.
Mohammed Khatib was previously arrested during the ongoing wave of arrests and repression on 3 August 2009 with charges of incitement and stone throwing. After two weeks of detention, a military judge ruled that evidence against him was falsified and ordered his release, after it was proven that Khatib was abroad at the time the army alleged he was photographed throwing stones during a demonstration.
Khatib’s arrest today is the most severe escalation in a recent wave of repression again the Palestinian popular struggle and its leadership. Khatib is the 35th resident of Bilin to be arrested on suspicions related to anti-wall protest since 23 June 2009.
The recent wave of arrests is largely an assault on the members of the Popular Committees — the leadership of the popular struggle — who are then charged with incitement when arrested. The charge of incitement, defined under Israeli military law as “an attempt, whether verbally or otherwise, to influence public opinion in the area in a way that may disturb the public peace or public order,” is a cynical attempt to punish grassroots organizing with a hefty charge and lengthy imprisonment. Such indictments are part of the army’s strategy of using legal persecution as a means to quash the popular movement.
Similar raids have also been conducted in the village of al-Maasara, south of Bethlehem, and in the village of Nilin — where 110 residents have been arrested over the last year and half — as well as in the cities of Nablus, Ramallah and East Jerusalem.
Among those arrested in the recent campaign are three members of the Nilin Popular Committee, Said Yakin of the Palestinian National Committee Against the Wall, and five members of the Bilin Popular Committee — all suspected of incitement.
Prominent grassroots activists Jamal Juma’ (East Jerusalem) and Mohammed Othman (Jayyous) of the Stop the Wall nongovernmental organization, involved in anti-wall and boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigning, have recently been released from detention after being incarcerated for long periods based on secret evidence and with no charges brought against them.

A story of hope from Jenin, at least until the next IOF invasion:

Renovated cinema to bring new life to Jenin: BBC

Heart of Jenin followed the story of the death of the 11-year-old son of Ismail Khatib
Standing in the dusty, half-lit lobby of Cinema Jenin with paint splattered builders beavering away all around, it’s hard to imagine that this venue was once the place to be on the Jenin social scene.
The cinema in the centre of the West Bank city was first opened in 1957.
But over the years, Jenin has seen some of the worst violence between Israelis and Palestinians, and the cinema was eventually forced to close during the first Intifada, or Palestinian uprising, in the mid 1980s.
The whole project is a real positive change for Jenin. We have high unemployment here and it will provide jobs and boost the economy. Also its fun. People here need something to enjoy
But now it is being renovated, and is due to re-open in August 2010.
“It will be finished. It will definitely be finished,” says assistant project manager Mamoun Kanan with a cheeky smile, as he stands on the pile of rubble that will eventually be the cinema’s main entrance.
The cinema will seat more than 300 people, in the original chairs from the 1950s and 1960s, which are now being restored.
The inspiration for the cinema’s renovation followed the success of the film Heart Of Jenin.
The award-winning documentary directed by German filmmaker Marcus Vetter followed the story of Palestinian Ismail Khatib.
Five years ago, Mr Khatib’s 11-year-old son Ahmed was shot dead by Israeli soldiers who mistook his toy gun for a real one during the second Intifada.
The Israeli military expressed regret for the death.
Lives saved
Cinema Jenin’s renovation will cost more than half a million pounds
Remarkably, Khatib chose to donate his son’s organs to five children and a woman in Israel. Ahmed’s kidneys, liver, heart and lungs were transplanted into Israeli citizens including Jews, Arabs and a Druze girl.
For five of them, the organ donations saved their lives.
“For me this new cinema is for Ahmed, ” Mr Khatib says. “It’s for all his friends. They can come here and feel Ahmed all around them.”
At the time, Mr Khatib said saving lives was more important than religion, adding “I feel that my son has entered the heart of every Israeli”.
I ask him how it would feel to one day watch an Israeli film in Cinema Jenin.
“No problem,” he says, “it’s all about respecting each others’ culture and learning.”
Until a few years ago, Jenin was a dangerous place. It was not uncommon to see gunmen from different Palestinian militant groups on the streets.
Five-year-old Safedin hopes Toy Story will top the new cinema’s bill
Incursions from the occupying Israeli army were frequent.
Now things seem relatively calm. The Palestinian Authority has stepped up security and Israel has relaxed some of the checkpoints into the city.
Some militants have sought work in the security forces. One has even opened a theatre company.
‘Red carpet’
It is estimated the new cinema will cost close to 500,000 euros. Much of the money has come from the Palestinian Ministry of Culture. The German government has contributed 170,000 euros.
The musician Roger Waters from Pink Floyd has also donated a state-of-the-art sound system for the cinema.
In August 2010, the cinema is due to host the first Jenin International Film Festival. Heart of Jenin will be shown on the opening night.
“The whole project is a real positive change for Jenin,” says Mr Kanan. “We have high unemployment here and it will provide jobs and boost the economy.”
“Also its fun. People here need something to enjoy.”
Kanan says the cinema will eventually show films from all around the world.
“Israeli films?” I ask him. “Yes of course, because we are looking for peace. International movies, Palestinian movies, Israeli movies. It’s all the same. We are all human above everything.”
A special council is being set up including the mufti, the local Muslim religious leader, to help decide the films that will be shown.
In the 1960s and 1970s, locals say the cinema used to show sex films one night a week.
“There’ll be none of that this time,” laughs projectionist Franz Macher, who’s over from Germany to train young Palestinian projectionists.
“These days society is much more conservative so we need to be careful what we show. We don’t want to censor films, but we would rather show a good film censored than not show it at all.”
“What about violent films?” I ask.
“Yes the mufti has not forbidden it but he has asked us to be careful about violent films. People have seen enough violence here already.”
That will be no problem for five-year-old Safedin, who I meet outside the cinema.
He is keen to see Toy Story – while his eight-year-old sister Kutel is hoping for Barbie on the opening night.
In a ramshackle room at the back of the building sits the old cinema’s projector.
Two metres high, the machine still whirs into action after a bit of tinkering from Mr Macher.
“In the summer we’ll be rolling out the red carpet,” says Felix Gebauer, who’s organising the 2010 Jenin Film festival.
He says they are expecting Hollywood star Leonardo Di Caprio and the former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to be among the guests, although neither have given public confirmation of their attendence.
But 15-year-old Rassan, who runs the food kiosk next to the cinema, is not impressed.
“I want to see the Barcelona football!” he demands, “I hear they are coming too.”

Continue reading January 29, 2009

UN impatient as blockade stalls Gaza building: BBC

By Tim Franks

There is a place of strange quiet in the cramped and crowded Gaza Strip.
It looks, from the roof of a nearby United Nations school, like a film set, or perhaps an army’s urban warfare training ground.
Ranged across the sandy earth of Khan Younis is a large housing estate: 151 apartments, with space for a further 450. Most are three-quarters complete. All are uninhabited.
The project is one of 26 schemes, ranging from houses to schools to medical clinics, that have been years in the making.
They all made good progress until June 2007. At that point, the Islamist Hamas movement – which has fired hundreds of rockets at southern Israeli towns – took control of the Gaza Strip after months of violent struggle with its more secular rival, Fatah.
In response, Israel and Egypt tightened their blockade of the Gaza Strip, allowing in little more than basic food and medicine.
For the past 10 months, the UN has been holding intensive, high-level negotiations with Israel, seeking permission to bring in materials such as doors, windows, pipes and tiles to complete these 26 projects.
But UN officials say they have made no headway. Their expressions of dismay are growing stronger.
‘Huge price’
Fouad Faqawi, a Gazan who works for the United Nations relief agency Unrwa, strides up the rough concrete staircase of one of the Khan Younis housing blocks.
“Nobody can live here,” he says, pausing to look inside the shell of a family home for six. “No way – how can people live without plumbing or sewage, or windows or doors?”
Nearly 100 people, including many children, live in this collection of shacks
Unrwa’s head in Gaza, John Ging, surveys the housing estate on a grey and windy winter’s day. His voice crackles with incomprehension and frustration, as he talks of the people waiting for the new homes to be finished.
“These are civilians, who are of course the victims of this conflict. And yet they’re paying this massive price, in terms of human misery. And the frustration and despair are creating a lot more extremism.”
Barbed wire
Were the estate finished, it might benefit Maryam Ataya.
Along with almost 100 relatives, she lives in a squalid little enclosure a short drive away.
Their home was destroyed during the Israeli offensive last year.
Mrs Ataya’s temporary home is surrounded by rubble and rusted metal
Now, she and her four children live in a collection of shacks, huts and lean-tos.
Children careen bare-footed over the mounds of rubble, barbed wire, and rusted metal within the rickety perimeter walls.
“It’s a disaster,” says Maryam flatly. She stokes the family pot using scraps of wood. “We have no electricity, no running water.”
The Israeli government’s general position on the blockade is that it will remain in place – in the words of a senior official – “as long as Hamas remains committed to destroying Israel and killing Israelis”.
But what of these specific UN projects? In a statement, the defence ministry told the BBC: “Recently, the UN began to submit detailed equipment lists (for the 26 projects). Once the administrative work is completed, it will be agreed with the UN… which projects will be realised, and the timetables for their execution.”
Strong language
The 26 schemes have become known as the “Serry projects”, after Robert Serry, the UN special co-ordinator for the Middle East peace process.
The mild-mannered, quietly spoken Dutch diplomat speaks in the UN’s Jerusalem headquarters with a clear tinge of exasperation.
“Let make this very clear,” he says. “I am disappointed and also frustrated, that after months of discussions… Israel is not yet willing to discuss any of the social housing projects which the (UN) secretary general has been asking Israel now to move on. Frankly, we’re getting impatient.”
For the UN envoy, this is strong language.
Israeli officials have long warned of the danger that Hamas could divert building materials for military ends, such as bunkers and reinforcements.
But the UN stresses that every single tile, pipe or bag of cement is tracked from the border crossing to its final use.
“I fail to see how these kinds of projects, which would help the people of Gaza – not Hamas – would impact on Israel’s security,” Mr Serry adds.
And at Abdelsalaam Al-Shobaki’s small concrete factory, in the north of Gaza, there is proof that the blockade has failed to seal the strip.
There is a large pile of empty packets of cement from Turkey and Egypt, which have been smuggled through the tunnels connecting Gaza to Egypt.
As he mixes the grey slurry, Mr Shobaki says the much-needed building material is punishingly expensive.
But the cement is clearly there, if you have money or power – and Hamas has both.
There is no sign that the struggle between Hamas and Israel will be eased any time soon.
As long as that is the case, there seems little prospect of Gaza’s borders opening.
And that will leave Gazans mired in lives of privation and shortages.

Barack Obama criticised for falling short on human rights: The Guardian

President has set different tone to Bush, but failed to end abuses, says Human Rights Watch

America’s leading human rights organisation has said that Barack Obama is falling far short of his rhetoric by continuing some of the abuses of George Bush’s war on terror and by shielding foreign allies responsible for an assault on human rights activists not seen since the end of the cold war.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch praised Obama for setting a different tone to President Bush, and for ending some of the practices of the previous administration including torture and abduction to secret CIA prisons. But its director, Kenneth Roth, told the Guardian that Obama had failed to end other abuses, such as holding suspected terrorists indefinitely without trial and retaining military commissions.
Roth also criticised Obama for undermining human rights by failing to challenge key allies, such as Pakistan and Egypt, who are at the forefront of a renewed crackdown on activists, and for protecting Israel from accountability for war crimes in Gaza.
Human rights activists were under renewed siege in many parts of the world, he said.
“As human rights groups have put more and more pressure on governments, there’s been an increase in counterattacks of growing sophistication. The thing we’ve noticed is an increase in the deniable repression, the repression that has a facade of bureaucratic legality about it. Using the pretext of criminal prosecutions which are really trumped up charges,” Roth said. “You can really see that in a place like Pakistan where there is a human rights movement but they are fighting for their lives. You see a lot of countries using criminal libel, including Russia.”
Roth said that Moscow led the way in using laws and regulations to curb activists and other states had followed its example.
“Ethiopia is the big new entrant in the field this year with a new law that prohibits any organisation that receives more than 10% of its money from abroad from engaging in any human rights work. Ethiopia has effectively shut down the human rights community. In Rwanda there is a small human rights community that has been largely silenced. These are US allies,” he said.
The Human Rights Watch director said that the Obama administration was continuing a longstanding US practice of selectively challenging foreign governments over human rights.
“He has been a huge improvement at the rhetorical level. The issue has been translating that shining rhetoric into policy practice. If you look for example in Accra … he said that Africa doesn’t need strong leaders, it needs strong institutions, which is a great line,” he said. “But then what have they done about that?
“They’ve defended themselves by saying they’re trying to build up goodwill for use on human rights in the future but it is not credible.”

African leaders have challenged the international criminal court, accusing it of focusing disproportionately on Africa, particularly with its indictment of Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese president, while ignoring alleged war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Roth dismisses the assertion as self-serving.
“You could have imagined African leaders saying: Isn’t it great that finally an international institution is taking seriously the plight of African victims? But that’s not the way they look at it. Instead they’ve identified with African leaders who have been repressing everybody. They treat themselves as a club of dictators who look after their own.”
But Roth added that the court’s position was undermined by US policy, particularly its protection of Israel.
“The US wouldn’t even put pressure on Israel to pursue serious domestic investigations of its war crimes in Gaza. People see that double standard and they say if the west is going to protect its own why can’t we do the same?” he said.
“If Israel was not going to allow an independent domestic investigation, it warranted international scrutiny and the US wouldn’t even allow the first step in the process to be taken. That infuriated people because they did see Washington protecting its own. The Gaddafis of the world had a stronger argument: if this is what the west is going to do, why shouldn’t we protect Bashir?”
Roth said Obama should be given credit for shutting down secret CIA detention facilities and barring the agency from torturing captives.
“Where he’s still falling short is refusing to investigate and prosecute the people who ordered torture, the people who provided the civil and legal justifications for it. It creates a climate of impunity.”
Human Rights Watch has also taken Obama to task about the continued use of military trials and the prospect of about 50 Guantánamo inmates being held indefinitely without charge.

Continue reading January 27, 2010

Below is Norman Finkelstein faced with a performance by Zionist hysterical students (who speak as if they “suffered in the Holocaust”…) – he definitely does not fall for this despicable behaviour displayed by them:

In the light of the debate in Norway about the academic boycott of Israeli Universities, this letter from Palestinian students is most welcome, and makes many crucial points:

Palestinian Students Open Letter to the Board of Governors of Trondheim University

Posted by RORCoalition on Tue, 11/10/2009 – 10:45
We are Arab students at the Israeli universities writing to you in support of the proposed academic boycott of Israeli academic institutions. We believe that the boycott is timely and hopefully will help in upholding moral values of fairness, justice and equality which have been sorely missed in our region.

While the reason for the boycott is rightly what has been going on in the 1967 occupied territories, we propose another angle which affirms the need for boycott, namely our daily experience as Arabs in Israeli institutions. We are the lucky ones who have been able to pursue our studies in institutions of Higher Education, to which we arrived against great odds. Only very few among our generation have been qualified to attend universities due to the State’s discriminatory policies. Our schools mostly lack the basic facilities needed for education, and the curriculum is structured to serve the State’s goal in socializing the pupils for self-estrangement. It contains very little, if any at all, on our history and culture. Additionally, it aims to erase our historical memory and promote the official policy line of divide and rule. In short, it is modeled on curriculums that dark regimes, like Apartheid South Africa, have used to indoctrinate rather than educate. We arrive to universities with this “educational” baggage.

The idea that Israeli universities adhere to the values of free academic institutions, where academic freedom, objectivity and meritocracy prevail is widely accepted in the West. From our experience we attest – and indeed prove beyond doubt – that this is not the case. In recent years Israeli universities have changed the criteria of acceptance to various faculties in order – as a certain president of an Israeli university put it – to prevent large number of undesirable [i.e. Arab] students from attending prestigious faculties such as Medicine and Natural Sciences. Moreover, lecturers who presented findings which are at odd with the official ideology – such as Ilan Pappe and Neve Gordon – are bullied and harassed or forced to resign. Meanwhile raw racist statements by many lecturers are considered by the administrations of the universities as benign or even objective statements. For example, recently Dr. Dan Scheuftan stated in one of his lectures: “The Arabs are the biggest failure in the history of the human race… there’s nothing under the sun that’s more screwed up than the Palestinians”; “Throughout the Arab world, people fire guns at weddings in order to prove that they have at least one thing that’s hard and in working order that can shoot.”

It goes without saying that none of these lecturers has ever been disciplined. Moreover, foreign students are warned by the security authorities of Haifa University not to visit Arab villages or towns.

Although some Israeli universities – such as the University of Haifa – pride themselves on promoting “co-existence”, yet nothing is further from the truth than this. We are prevented from forming our [i.e. Arab] students’ union, and racial discrimination against us – under the pretext of not serving in the army – is widely practiced in the granting of scholarships, as well as in the provision of housing at the universities’ residential halls . This is particularly grave as the universities are located in Jewish towns, and Arab students face many obstacles and hardships in finding appropriate housing due to prevailing prejudices and anti-Arab sentiments in Israeli society.

Yet, the restrictions imposed on our freedom of expression are more stifling. We are not allowed to express our collective sentiments or ideas publicly. It is quite often that our public gatherings are not only violently interrupted by extreme right-wing Jewish students, but also in various occasions the universities called on the police to intervene. In several occasions, as during our peaceful demonstration in Haifa University against the War on Gaza, the police sent in large number of its special units which are infamous for their brutality (pictures and videos attached). Needless to say that they do the job they are trained for . Moreover, the universities collaborate with the internal security services (the feared Shin Bet) and provide it with names of the activists among the students who are regularly summoned, investigated and threatened.

In the end, we are hopeful that you will take a decision which reaffirms the true meaning of human values, and provide a proof that racism, religious tribalism, obfuscation and disregard for human dignity are no longer tolerated.

Sincerely yours
Abnaa el-Balad- The Student Movement
Iqraa Student Association- Islamic Movement
National Democratic Assembly (NDA)- The Student Movement
For contact: ghwassim@gmail.com

References:
http://www.adalah.org/features/prisoners/GAZA_REPORT_ENGLISH_FOR_THE_NEW…
http://www.adalah.org/eng/pressreleases/pr.php?file=06_08_22
http://www.adalah.org/features/prisoners/protestors%20report.pdf
http://www.adalah.org/eng/pressreleases/pr.php?file=09_09_22
video of the police aggression towards Arab students:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YqAc7VUyC4

Israeli troops kill Palestinians: Al Jazeera online

Special forces of the Israeli army killed three Palestinians in the West bank [EPA]
Israeli soldiers have killed six Palestinians in two separate incidents.
Three of the deaths occurred when Israeli forces shot at Palestinians apparently trying to cross the security barrier from the Gaza Strip into Israel on Saturday, according to the Israeli military.
Palestinian medics said the other three Palestinians were killed by Israeli soldiers during a West Bank raid.
Palestinian medics and sources said the other three Palestinians were killed by Israeli soldiers during a West Bank raid.
An Israeli military spokeswoman confirmed that soldiers shot and killed three Palestinians suspected of trying to infiltrate from Gaza, which is governed by Hamas.
However, a Hamas security source said the three were apparently civilians collecting scrap metal in an industrial zone near the Israeli border.

Palestinian condemnation
Palestinian officials accused the Israeli government of attempting to escalate the situation in the Palestinian territories.
“The Israelis have committed a crime that proves they do not want and do not even think about peace with the Palestinians,” Nabil Abu Rudaina, a spokesman for the Palestinian presidency, said.
“By committing this, Israel seeks to abort the US and international effort to resume negotiations.”
Describing the West Bank raid, Palestinian medics and witnesses said Israeli soldiers surrounded the homes of three members of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed group loosely linked to Fatah, the party of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and then killed all three.
The raid took place two days after the same group was one of two to claim responsibility for the fatal shooting of an Israeli settler on Thursday on a West Bank road.

‘Cycle of violence’
Al Jazeera’s Nisreen El-Shamayleh, reporting from the West Bank city of Nablus, said thousands of Palestinians turned out in Nablus to participate in a funeral for the three al-Aqsa Brigade members.
“This comes at a very emotional time for all Palestinians, just one day before they prepare to commemorate the one year anniversary of Israel’s war on Gaza where many lives were lost,” she said.
“The Palestinian Authority has said in a statement that this is just a move by Israel to push Palestinians into a vicious cycle of violence in order to escape international pressures.
“The Israeli army, for its part, has said that this comes as retaliation against the death of an Israeli settler in the area on Thursday night.”
The Israeli was the first to get killed in a Palestinian attack in about eight months in the West Bank, territory Israel captured in a 1967 war and which Palestinians seek for a state.
Sources in Fatah said the three men targeted by the Israelis had been disarmed under security measures taken by Abbas’s police force.
At least one had previously been on an Israeli wanted list.

Benjamin Netanyahu: Israel will never quit settlements: BBC

The Israeli prime minister has taken part in tree-planting ceremonies in the West Bank while declaring Israel will never leave those areas.
Benjamin Netanyahu said the Jewish settlements blocs would always remain part of the state of Israel.
His remarks came hours after a visit by US envoy George Mitchell who is trying to reopen peace talks between Israel and Palestinians.
A Palestinian spokesman said the comments undermined peace negotiations.
“Our message is clear: We are planting here, we will stay here, we will build here. This place will be an inseparable part of Israel for eternity”, the prime minister said.
Mr Netanyahu’s comments have angered Palestinians, who want a state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem.
“This is an unacceptable act that destroys all the efforts being exerted by Senator Mitchell in order to bring back the parties to the negotiating table”, Palestinian spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina told the Associated Press.
Meanwhile, in the Jordanian capital Amman, Mr Mitchell emphasised the US commitment to the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
“We intend to continue to pursue our efforts until that objective is achieved”, he told AP.
US attempts to revive peace talks have stalled over the Jewish settlement issue.
Palestinians say they will not return to peace talks unless Israel stops settlement building in the West Bank.
Israel has a long-standing commitment under an existing peace plan to stop settlement growth.
But the Israeli government has temporarily curbed construction as a goodwill gesture, though not in East Jerusalem.
The two sides appear no closer even to sitting in the same room, says the BBC’s Tim Franks in Jerusalem.
All settlements in the the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.

Premier: Israel to keep parts of West bank forever: Beaver County Times

Israel’s leader declared his country’s permanent claim to parts of the West Bank on Sunday, angering Palestinians again and complicating efforts by President Barack Obama’s Mideast envoy – though the same claim was also made by previous, more moderate premiers.

Timing and context lent weight to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to two Jewish settlements and his declaration that they would remain in Israel forever. He planted a tree at one of them _ Maaleh Adumim, home to about 30,000 Israelis about two miles (three kilometers) from Jerusalem _ a symbolic act of ownership.
“Our message is clear: We are planting here, we will stay here, we will build here. This place will be an inseparable part of the state of Israel for eternity,” Netanyahu proclaimed, just as envoy George Mitchell was trying to restart peace talks after a yearlong stalemate.

In his claim, Netanyahu was referring to what Israel calls its “main settlement blocs,” most of them close to Israeli population centers. Israel has long said it would keep the blocs, where about 80 percent of its 300,000 settlers live, and trade Israeli land to the Palestinians in exchange for the blocs.
In failed negotiations with former, relatively moderate Israeli premiers like Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert, Palestinians have indicated they might accept such a trade.
But Netanyahu is suspect in Palestinian eyes, since he has traditionally opposed ceding control of any of the West Bank and has backed settlement expansion. Only under heavy U.S. pressure did he express grudging acceptance of the idea of a Palestinian state in a speech last June.

Netanyahu responded to Palestinian demands for a total construction freeze in the settlements by limiting new building in the West Bank but not in east Jerusalem, claimed by the Palestinians as their capital.
Palestinians rejected the partial freeze as insufficient to get them back to the negotiating table.
Israel countered that by demanding a total freeze in construction in the settlements and east Jerusalem’s large Jewish neighborhoods _ also considered settlements by the Palestinians _ they have climbed out on a limb and are trapped by their own conditions.
On Sunday, claiming Maaleh Adumim and the Gush Etzion bloc south of Jerusalem, Netanyahu once again provided fuel for Palestinian outrage.
“This is an unacceptable act that destroys all the efforts being exerted by Senator Mitchell in order to bring the parties back to the negotiating table,” said Nabil Abu Rdeneh, an aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
This came as Mitchell was conducting his latest round of talks in the region to try to get peace talks back on track.

In Amman, Jordan, Mitchell appeared unmoved by Netanyahu’s declaration on Maaleh Adumim, restating the U.S. goal of a Palestinian state living next to Israel in peace. “We intend to continue to pursue our efforts until that objective is achieved,” he said after meeting Abbas and Jordanian King Abdullah II.
On the eve of Mitchell’s arrival last week, Netanyahu said Israel would demand a presence on the Jordanian border of the West Bank to stop weapons and rocket smuggling even if a peace deal is reached, in order to protect Israel’s heartland from militant attacks like those from Gaza.
Palestinians rejected that as well. They want a state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem and say they will not accept any Israeli presence there _ soldiers or settlers.
After his meeting with Mitchell, Netanyahu told his Cabinet he had heard “a few interesting ideas” on renewing peace talks. No details were forthcoming.

Even Mitchell’s boss, Obama, has been sounding pessimistic about the prospects.
Last year, Obama took office with the ambitious aim of putting Mideast peacemaking on a fast track. Instead, the peace mission has stalled over Israel’s settlements on occupied lands and the refusal by the Palestinians to return to peace talks.
Obama acknowledged in an interview published last week that he underestimated the domestic political forces at play in the region and overreached in expecting a quick breakthrough.
Also Sunday, a Belgian official protested after Israel prevented him from visiting Gaza. Development Minister Charles Michel said European officials must be able to visit the territory because they have aid projects there.
“This situation is unacceptable,” he told RTL TV.
Israel routinely bans foreign officials from crossing into Gaza, maintaining that such visits bolster the Islamic Hamas rulers of Gaza. Officials can enter Gaza from Egypt.

Associated Press Writer Jamal Halaby contributed to this report from Amman, Jordan.

Continue reading january 26, 2010

Read the following: One could not make this up…

Auschwitz survivor: ‘Israel acts like Nazis’: HeralScotland

Dr Hajo Meyer’s lecture tour includes three dates in Scotland
Exclusive: Graeme Murray and Chris Watt
Published on 24 Jan 2010
One of the last remaining Auschwitz survivors has launched a blistering attack on Israel over its occupation of Palestine as he began a lecture tour of Scotland.
Dr Hajo Meyer, 86, who survived 10 months in the Nazi death camp, spoke out as his 10-day tour of the UK and Ireland – taking in three Scottish venues – got under way. His comments sparked a furious reaction from hardline Jewish lobby groups, with Dr Meyer branded an “anti-Semite” and accused of abusing his position as a Holocaust survivor.
Dr Meyer also attended hearings at Edinburgh Sheriff Court on Thursday, where five pro-Palestine campaigners are accused of racially aggravated conduct after disrupting a concert by the Jerusalem Quartet at the city’s Queen’s Hall.
Speaking as his tour got under way, Dr Meyer said there were parallels between the treatment of Jews by Germans in the Second World War and the current treatment of Palestinians by Israelis.
He said: “The Israelis tried to dehumanise the Palestinians, just like the Nazis tried to dehumanise me. Nobody should dehumanise any other and those who try to dehumanise another are not human.
“It may be that Israel is not the most cruel country in the world … but one thing I know for sure is that Israel is the world champion in pretending to be civilised and cultured.”
Dr Meyer was born in 1924 in Bielefeld, Germany. He was not allowed to attend school there after November 1938. He then fled to the Netherlands, alone. In 1944, after a year in the underground, he was caught by the Gestapo and survived 10 months at Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland.
He now lives in the Netherlands, and is the author of three books on Judaism, the Holocaust and Zionism.
Dr Meyer also insisted the definition of “anti-Semitic” had now changed, saying: “Formerly an anti-Semite was somebody who hated Jews because they were Jews and had a Jewish soul. But nowadays an anti-Semite is somebody who is hated by Jews.”
A spokesman for the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, of which Dr Meyer is a member, said criticising Israel was “not the same” as criticising Jews.
Mick Napier, Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign chairman and one of the five demonstrators facing charges when the court case continues in March, said: “Palestinians are happy to have him as an ally in their cause.
“Hajo knows that Israel has a long history of abusing the tragic history of the Holocaust in order to suppress legitimate criticism of its own crimes.
“Especially since Gaza, people are no longer taken in by their claim that anyone that criticises Israel is anti-Semitic.”
Dr Meyer’s claims met with a furious reaction from pro-Israel groups, who branded him “a disgrace”.
Jonathan Hoffman, co-vice-chairman of the Zionist Federation, said: “I shall be telling him he is abusing his status as a survivor, and I shall be telling him that if Israel had been created 10 years earlier, millions of lives might have been saved.
“Whether he is a survivor or not, to use Nazi comparisons in relation to Israel’s policies is anti-Semitic, unquestionably.”
The tour was cynically timed, Mr Hoffman added, to coincide with Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27.
Dr Ezra Golombok, Scottish spokesman for the Israel Information Office, accused the anti-zionist lobby of “exploiting” Dr Meyer, who he described as someone “who’s got into a situation he doesn’t understand”.
“This is a propaganda exercise by Mick Napier and his friends, and nothing more. It’s preposterous to compare Israel with Nazi tactics.”
The lecture series, entitled Never Again – For Anyone, continues until January 30.

While it is interesting to see the junk published about one in the Israeli press, it would be even better if they got the spelling of my name right…

UK boycott initiator slams Ariel university : YNet

Israeli-British Prof. Haim Bereshit slams ‘war criminal Barak, suggests he ‘occupy additional territories and declare universities there as well’
LONDON – Israeli-British Professor Haim Bereshit, one of the initiators of the British academic boycott against Israel more than two years ago, had slammed Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s decision to recognize the Ariel College as a university.

“There are thousands of professors living in Israel, many of them known worldwide. If they eat this vermin, we will continue to act against the Israeli academia as an agent of the occupation,” he told Ynet on Friday.

Leftist members of Knesset and Arab parties protest defense minister’s decision first published in Ynet to recognize Ariel College as university. Meretz chairman: Hard to find differences between Barak and Netanyahu. Initiative also advocates establishing university in Nazareth

“We are deluding ourselves that Israel is a normal country, because in a normal country the defense minister does not deal with university permits, and particularly not in an illegal university in occupied territories,” Bereshit argued.
On Wednesday, five years after the Israeli government decided to declare the Ariel College a recognized university, the defense minister agreed to implement the decision that was part of the political clashes within the coalition.
In the first stage, the college will be officially recognized as a “university center”, as it defines itself today, and another discussion will be held in several years ahead of making it Israel’s eighth university.
Bereshit used particularly blatant words to describe the move: “We are unfazed by the fact that an Israeli general, a war criminal, declares a university. Perhaps in order to expand the education institutions, he will think it right to occupy additional territories and declare universities in those places as well.

“The most serious thing, which should not be seen as insignificant, is the fact that there is an educational institution in occupied territories,” Bereshit claimed. “We in the British professors’ organization have not waited and have worked even before this happened to include the Ariel College in the ‘gray list’, which does not allow academic institutions to have any ties with this institution. This is in fact a boycott process, although it is not defined as such due to the complexity of this matter.”
According to the professor, academic institutions in South Africa were included in the same list during the apartheid era.
“I have never heard of any academic institution or academic organization in Israel adopting a resolution against the killing of innocent civilians in Gaza, or any mass student protests on this matter, and this leads me to believe that no one cares,” Bereshit accused. He added that the Israeli population was one of the best in the world in terms of academic training.

Palestinians: Netanyahu’s claim to West Bank destroys peace efforts: Haaretz

The Palestinian Authority on Sunday condemned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for taking part in a tree planting ceremony in a West Bank settlement bloc, saying the move undermined efforts to return to the negotiating table.
“This is an unacceptable act that destroys all the efforts being exerted by Senator [George] Mitchell in order to bring the parties back to the negotiating table,” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ aide Nabil Abu Rudeineh said, referring to U.S. President Barack Obama’s special Middle East envoy.
Contacts with the Americans would continue, Rudeina said, but a return to negotiations with Israel appeared unlikely anytime soon.
Netanyahu pledged on Sunday that Israel would keep parts of the West Bank forever, planting trees in a settlement bloc to reaffirm a land claim long rooted in Israeli government policy.
“Our message is clear: We are planting here, we will stay here, we will build here, this place will be an inseparable part of the State of Israel for eternity,” Netanyahu said in the Gush Etzion enclave.
Speaking after meeting Mitchell in Jerusalem, Netanyahu vowed Israel would also keep its two biggest West Bank settlements, Maale Adumim and Ariel.
His comments came as no surprise to the Palestinians, who were put on notice by previous Israeli leaders that Israel intended to hang on to major settlement blocs in the West Bank in any future peace accord.
Criticized by settler leaders for ordering in November – under U.S. pressure – a slowdown in constructing settlements, Netanyahu visited the West Bank to plant trees marking Israel’s arbor day.
He made the symbolic visit just hours after meeting Mitchell, who has been trying to revive talks on Palestinian statehood suspended for the past 13 months.
“Today I heard some interesting ideas for renewing the [peace] process,” Netanyahu said at the weekly meeting of his cabinet, without elaborating.
“I also expressed my hope that these new ideas will allow for the renewal of the process. Certainly if the Palestinians express a similar readiness, then we will find ourselves in a diplomatic process,” Netanyahu said.
Mitchell told Palestinian leaders on Friday they must resume talks with Israel if they want U.S. help to achieve a peace treaty that creates a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The Palestinians refuse to talk with Israel until it stops all settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, areas it captured in the 1967 Six-Day War.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas repeated that demand in talks later on Sunday with Mitchell in Amman, a spokesman for Abbas said.
“It’s premature to talk about a real breakthrough,” said the spokesman, Nabil Abu Rdainah. “President Abbas reassured [Mitchell] about his commitment to peace.”
Mitchell also gave no sign that any progress had been made, telling told reporters in the Jordanian capital he had a “productive meeting” with Abbas on a full range of issues, and that he looked forward to continuing their discussions.
Netanyahu has said the housing-start freeze he ordered in West Bank settlements, other than those around Jerusalem, for 10 months was aimed at reviving peace negotiations.
Despite U.S. pressure, Abbas has not relented on settlements, citing a 2003 peace “road map” obliging Israel to freeze “all settlement activity” and the Palestinian Authority to begin “dismantlement of terrorist capabilities and infrastructure”.

The World Court has ruled that Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are illegal. Many Jewish settlers claim a God-given right to the West Bank, which they call by the biblical names Judea and Samaria

Good news for Zionism – antisemitism is spreading… But read this through, to realise how misleading and enraging this presentation is:

More global anti-Semitic incidents reported in 2009 than any year since WWII: Haaretz

Annual Jewish Agency report cites poll finding 42% of West Europeans believe Jews exploit past to extort money.
Nearly half of Western European believe that Jews exploit the persecution of their past as a method of extorting money, according to an annual Jewish Agency report released on Sunday.

A joint report on anti-Semitism conducted by the Agency and the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs found that 42 percent of those polled by the University of Bielefeld in Germany agreed that “Jews exploit the past to extort money.”
he countries in which the highest percentage of the population agreed with that statement were Poland and Spain.
According to the Jewish Agency, there were more anti-Semitic incidents in 2009 than in any year since the Second World War. In the first three months of 2009 – immediately following Israel’s three-week offensive on the Gaza Strip – there were as many anti-Semitic incidents recorded as in the entire year of 2008.
In France, for example, there were 631 anti-Semitic incidents recorded in the first half of 2009, compared to 474 in all of 2008.
Worldwide, eight people were killed in attacks last year.
The report indicates that there were two murders linked with anti-Semitism in the United States in 2009 – one of a female university student in Connecticut and the other of a non-Jewish guard at the Holocaust museum in Washington, D.C.
This rise in anti-Semitism is stemming from both the political Left and Right, according to the Jewish Agency.
At the press conference at which the report was released, officials referred to a film that has been making the rounds in recent days that charges Israel with stealing organs at the IDF hospital in Haiti

Sock! Horror! Amazing surprise! The most unbeleivable story below:

Israel official reply on Goldstone Gaza report: Probe biased, flawed: Haaretz

Israel was set to submit its rebuttal on Thursday to a United Nations report accusing it of having committed war crimes in Gaza last winter. Though the Israeli response has been kept under wraps, it is expected to list the essential flaws in the report and explain why the report is biased against Israel and tainted with many problems.
By February 5, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was to file a compilation of all the responses to the report, authored by renowned South African jurist Richard Goldstone.
In its rebuttal, Israel was to explain the reasons behind the offensive in the Gaza Strip and what it terms the hardships of fighting against a terror organization that operates inside civilian homes, schools, hospitals and UN facilities.
Israel launched its three-week offensive in Gaza in December 2008 in an effort to halt near daily rocket fire from the coastal strip onto its southern communities.
The Goldstone report has demanded that both Israel and Hamas carry out independent investigations into the war crimes allegations it raises. It has not yet been decided whether, in its rebuttal, Israel will inform Ban that it will not carry out any investigations beyond the military probe already completed. It is also not yet clear whether Israel will eventually establish an investigation committee to neutralize the effect of the Goldstone report and to ward off possible UN resolutions that could stem from it.
Officers involved in writing the rebuttal gave the New York Times some details.
One concerned the destruction of Gaza’s sole flour mill, the New York Times reported on Saturday. In its rebuttal, Israel will apparently offer photographic proof contradicting the Goldstone report allegation that the Bader flour mill “was hit by an airstrike, possibly by an F-16.” Israeli investigators say they can prove the mill was accidentally hit by artillery during the course of a firefight with Hamas militiamen, the paper reported.
The distinction is significant, the paper continued, since the UN report asserts that “the destruction of the mill was carried out for the purpose of denying sustenance to the civilian population,” an explicit war crime.
Another detail disclosed to the New York Times concerns the destruction of a wastewater plant, which led to a massive flooding of raw sewage. The Goldstone report argues that Israel deliberately hit the plant, while Israel denies any connection to the incident and suggests the plant may have been destroyed by Hamas explosives.

And another amazing surprise… don’t we know that Jews and Gypsies are responsible for crimes?

Poll: Most Israelis think immigrants to blame for rising crime: Haaretz

A majority of the Israeli public believes that immigrants from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia have contributed to a rise in crime and alcoholism among teenagers, according to a poll set for release this week.
Despite this, 73 percent of Israelis think that immigration is essential for Israel.
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These findings are from a poll on immigration and racism taken in advance of the third Immigration and Absorption conference which begins Monday in Ashdod.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky will participate in the conference along with Absorption Ministry officials.

Continue reading January 24, 2010

Ehud Barak, Israel war criminal of a ‘Defence’ Minister, is now moving into education… Having presided over the murder of over 400 Palestinian children in Gaza, why should we be surprised? Yesterday, he pronounced an illegal college in Ariel, a “university’. Read all about the democracy, in which war criminals make universities overnight:

Barak under fire for granting university status to West Bank college: Haaretz

Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Wednesday ordered a college in the West Bank town of Ariel to be recognized as a “university center,” thereby winning praise from the right but an outraged response from both the political left and many academics.
The move is also likely to grant new momentum to overseas supporters of an academic boycott of Israel, leaders of the campaign against the boycott said. However, they added, it will not change the legal realities that have so far prevented any such boycott from taking effect.
The decision was vehemently opposed by the Council for Higher Education, which oversees all colleges and universities inside the Green Line. But because the Ariel University Center of Samaria is located in the West Bank, it is subordinate to a different, parallel, body, the Council for Higher Education in Judea and Samaria – which, like all Israeli institutions in the West Bank, is formally subordinate to the Israel Defense Forces’ GOC Central Command, who in turn answers to the defense minister. The CHE-JS approved Ariel’s status upgrade back in 2007, and yesterday, Barak – who is also the Labor chairman – ordered GOC Avi Mizrahi to confirm this.
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Recognition as a university center moves the college closer to full recognition as Israel’s eighth university, and Barak’s approval of this step had been part of the coalition agreement between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party and a third coalition member, Yisrael Beiteinu.
Aside from prestige, the main advantage that comes from being a university rather than a college is substantially higher funding. But the CHE, in keeping with its protest over the move, announced that Ariel would continue to receive the same amount from the state that it does now. And since the CHE controls the distribution of state funds to all academic institutions, it has the power to make this decision stick.
Last year, Ariel received NIS 75 million from the state, just under a third of its total budget of NIS 240 million. That, due to its unusually large student body, is more than most colleges get.
Prof. Itzhak Galnoor, a former deputy chairman of the CHE, slammed Barak’s decision. “The term ‘university center’ doesn’t exist in Israel’s law books,” he said. “We’re in an anomalous situation, where a college outside the state’s borders thinks it’s possible to write its own rules. The defense minister would have done better to consult the CHE before exercising his authority over educational matters, about which he understands even less than CHE members understand about security issues.”
Former education minister Prof. Yuli Tamir was also up in arms, saying the CHE should have been given the final word, and its opposition was well-known. Moreover, she charged, the upgrade will allow Ariel to take funding away from existing universities.
Ariel’s president, Prof. Dan Meyerstein, said the college never accepted the argument that the CHE-JS decision to upgrade its status required confirmation by the GOC Central Command, “but now, it seems, that’s happened, too.”
He also stressed that all of Ariel’s study programs are approved first by the CHE-JS, and then by the CHE, and the latter has never yet rejected any program approved by the former. However, he readily agreed that the term “university center” – and how it differs from an ordinary college – is unclear.
Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar, who chairs the CHE, said he “hoped and expected” that Ariel would receive full university status in the next few years. Other CHE members, however, were less enthusiastic – adding that the council had been promised no such thing would happen without it being consulted.
The upgrade process effectively began in 2005, when the cabinet, led by then prime minister Ariel Sharon, passed a resolution saying it “saw national importance” in converting the college to a university. In late 2006, a subcommittee of the CHE-JS concluded that the college “is effectively functioning as a university in every respect” and recommended giving it the temporary status of a “university center” for three years. In summer 2007, the CHE-JS adopted this recommendation.
The subcommittee was comprised of six senior professors from other universities, including Nobel Prize laureate Yisrael (Robert) Aumann and Israel Prize laureates Daniel Sperber and Yuval Ne’eman. The latter is also a former MK, from the now-defunct Tehiya party. At the time, a member of the CHE said, “They’re all people of the first rank in research, and they’re also all right-wing in their views.”
The CHE, however, flatly refused to recognize the CHE-JS decision, because it “contradicts our decision that as of today, and for the next five years, there is no academic need for another university,” in the words of the council’s powerful Planning and Budgeting Committee.

Yossi Sarid / Barak legitimizes the evils of Israeli occupation: Haaretz

The settlers and their allies should be thanking their God for their good fortune. Ehud Barak, of all people, was appointed defense minister and is doing their dirty work. Anyone else – Benjamin Netanyahu, for example, or even Avigdor Lieberman wouldn’t have been able to pull it off. They wouldn’t have dared.
But Labor’s chairman – the moderate, balanced man in the cabinet – has no inhibitions about what people will say. Everything, it seems, has already been said about him and his flip-flops and deceit. His skin has grown so tough that arrows of criticism slip off his oily complacency. What difference would another arrow, more or less, make?
Barak is following in the footsteps of Golda, Galili, Dayan and Peres. Begin and Sharon found the work had been done. Labor has always been the great legitimizer of the occupation’s evils. This is the historical mission it has taken on, and no other party could have done it better.
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Now Labor is legitimizing another evil. Having once served as chairman of the Council for Higher Education, I can assert: There is no academic justification for recognizing Ariel College as a university. Nor as a “university center” – a smart-aleck term trying to bypass the rules.
Barak always believes he can build a new career with tricks and ruses but ends up tripping himself with his ploys.
This college, soon to become a university, has not scored any impressive achievement. It is far inferior to other Israeli colleges. Had it not established itself in occupied territory, it wouldn’t have had the slightest chance of upgrading its status. The defense minister’s decision is evidently political. It is taking advantage of a breach in the law. Instead of having the issue examined and determined by an academic authority, as is customary, the military commander of the occupied territory is making the decision. After receiving instructions from the politician in charge of him.
Barak will be remembered – among other things – for his unique contribution to degrading higher education in Israel. Thanks to him, we will have the only university in the free world whose founders and owners are uniformed officers. Now those boycotting Israeli universities have a case – proof of the tightening knot between the occupation, military administration and academe.
No doubt, Barak’s move will raise more calls to boycott Israeli universities and academics.
We can only hope the Council for Higher Education will not cooperate with this outrageous move. Otherwise, it would betray the public’s trust and do irreparable damage to all the universities and colleges under its charge.

TA university scholar to advocate Israel boycott: Jerusalem Post

A Tel Aviv University academic will call for a boycott of Israel, speaking at a London university event next month to commemorate “one year since Israel’s attack” on Gaza.
Dr. Anat Matar of TAU’s Philosophy Department will be speaking on February 17 at London University’s School for Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) – a campus renowned for anti-Israel activity.
Matar’s talk is to be titled “Supporting the Boycott on Israel: A View from Within.”
She is taking part in a series of events over the coming weeks organized by the Palestinian societies at five University of London campuses – University College London, SOAS, Imperial College, Kings College and Goldsmiths – as well as at the University of Westminster.
In an article in Haaretz in August, Matar accused her own university of being complicit with the “occupation” and questioned Israel’s stance on Palestinian academic freedom and basic education.
A mother of a conscientious objector, on her profile page on the university’s Web site Matar lists her main nonacademic activities as “movements against military service” and the “Israeli Committee for Palestinian Prisoners.”
Dr. David Hirsh, a sociology lecturer at University of London’s Goldsmiths College and editor of Engage, a campaign against the academic boycott call against Israel, strongly criticized such moves, saying they were “delusional” and “dangerous.”
“Israeli anti-Zionists boast that their country carries out the most important and horrific genocides in the world,” he said. “The delusions of grandeur of Israeli anti-Zionists are as puerile as those of the most naive and proud nationalists. But it is dangerous to tell Europeans that the Israelis are a unique evil on the planet, because this lie finds a resonance in the collective memory and it feels plausible to some contemporary Europeans.”
The series of events is titled, “Gaza: Our Guernica,” in reference to the bombing of a Basque town during the Spanish Civil War. The 1937 attack caused widespread destruction and civilian deaths, with 1,650 reportedly killed.
“In April 1937, on a market day, the Nazis attacked Guernica from the air, first with bombs and then with incendiaries. Fighter planes followed the bombers to machine-gun survivors. It was the first time anybody had launched an attack from the air to kill a civilian population. A third of the population was killed or seriously injured in an afternoon,” Hirsh said.
The series of events opened last Thursday with a candlelight vigil at University College London, recently in the headlines after it was discovered that failed Detroit airline bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was a former president of the Islamic Society there.
Two other Israelis are taking part in the series. On Monday, journalist Daphna Baram spoke at SOAS in a talk titled, “Besieged in Self-Righteousness: Israeli public discourse after the last invasion of Gaza.”
Next Wednesday, Israeli academic Avi Shlaim, professor of International Relations at Oxford University, will speak about “Gaza: Past and Present” at Goldsmiths.

BOYCOTT! Supporting the Cairo Declaration

To the Initiators of the Cairo Declaration,

We, members of BOYCOTT!, would like to express our vote of support for the “Cairo Declaration”, issued by the Gaza Freedom Marchers on January 1st, 2010. We are proud to stand together with fellow responsible citizens of the world and reiterate our shared commitment to demanding human rights for all and respect for International Law.

As citizens and residents of Israel, we understand that acting from within Israel itself to end the criminal policy which is carried out in our name, is not enough. It is vital at this juncture that the international community and its civil society undertake the needed complementary actions of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel. It is time to suspend ongoing international normalization with Israeli institutions until they end their complicity in the brutal military occupation of Palestine, in the crime of Apartheid and in daily violations of International Law and basic human rights.

In light of previous baseless attacks on supporters of BDS, it is important to stress that the Palestinian campaign, which we fully support, is neither anti-Semitic nor is it targeting individual Israelis. Rather, it calls on all of us to stop glossing over Israel’s crimes, to cease lending a hand to normalization with those responsible, and instead to actively insist on the promotion of true democracy, equality and respect for human rights in this land, for the benefit of all.

Like the Cairo signers, we, too, believe that the BDS campaign can evolve into a growing international awareness movement, as evidenced by the diversity of the Cairo delegations and their courageous joint declaration. We strongly endorse that declaration along with its goals and methods, and append our signatures as a group and as individuals.

On behalf of
BOYCOTT! Supporting the Palestinian BDS Call from Within

Neta Golan
Yana Ziferblat
Prof. Yoram Bar-Haim
Yael Lerer
Iris Hefets
Matan Cohen
Dr. David Nir
Ronnen Ben-Arie
Michal Zak
Merav Amir
Elian Weizman
Dr. Dorothy Naor
Yonatan Shapira
Haggai Matar
Marcelo Svirsky
Dr. Anat Matar
Dr. Dalit Baum
Yoav Beirach Barak
Rela Mazali
Ayala Shani
Ofer Neiman
Prof. Rachel Giora
Tirtza Tauber
Nitzan Aviv
Ronnie Barkan
Tal Shapira
Edo Medicks
Kerstin Sodergren
Prof. Uri Davis
Reuven Abergel
Inbar Shimsho
Deb Reich

Continue reading January 21, 2010

So, people in Turkey are at last moving, thanks to Israeli bullying! Soon the war criminals will only be able to visit the US, where war crimes are respected achievements:

Turkish human rights group seeks to prosecute Barak for alleged Gaza war crimes: Haaretz

An Islamic human rights group on Friday petitioned a prosecutor to start legal proceedings against Defense Minister Ehud Barak for alleged crimes committed against Palestinians during the Gaza war.
The demand came two days before the Defense Minister is scheduled to visit Turkey, where he is expected to try and mend strained relations following last year’s war in Gaza and an Israeli official’s humiliation of the Turkish ambassador.
Turkey’s Justice Ministry has previously rejected similar appeals against Israeli officials, and authorities haven’t acted on the petition authored by the Istanbul-based Mazlum-Der group.
Turkey’s relations with Israel have been hurt by the fury that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed about Israel’s war in Gaza a year ago.
Last month, an arrest warrant was issued in Britain against opposition leader and former foreign minister Tzipi Livni on the basis of her alleged war crimes in last year’s Gaza offensive.
Lawyers working with Palestinian activists in recent years have sought the arrest of senior Israeli civilian and military figures under terms of universal jurisdiction. This ill-defined legal concept empowers judges to issue arrest warrants for visiting officials accused of war crimes in a foreign conflict.

Voice in the wilderness – from some rare human beings at Westminster:

We must not renege on war crime laws: The Guardian

Saturday 16 January 2010

We are shocked at suggestions by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office minister Ivan Lewis and foreign secretary David Miliband that Britain may consider changing its laws to avoid any future attempts to prosecute suspected war criminals, Israeli or otherwise. The UK must not renege on its international treaty obligations, particularly those under the fourth Geneva convention to seek out and prosecute persons suspected of war crimes wherever and whoever they are, whatever their status, rank or influence, against whom good prima facie evidence has been laid. We reject any attempt to undermine the judiciary’s independence and integrity. A judge who finds sufficient evidence of a war crime must have power to order the arrest of a suspect, subject to the usual rights to bail and appeal.

The power to arrest individuals reasonably suspected of war crimes anywhere in the world should they set foot on UK soil is an efficient and necessary resource in the struggle against war crimes, and must not be interfered with (Report, 6 January). Nor should the government succumb to pressure from any foreign power to alter this crucial aspect of the judicial process. We urge the government to state clearly that it will not alter the law on universal jurisdiction and will continue to allow victims of war crimes to seek justice in British courts.

John Austin MP

Katy Clark MP

Frank Cook MP

Jeremy Corbyn MP

Ann Cryer MP

Paul Flynn MP

Neil Gerrard MP

John Hemming MP

Paul Holmes MP

Kelvin HopkinsMP

Brian Iddon MP

Lynne Jones MP

Tom Levitt MP

Martin Linton MP

Bob Marshall-Andrews MP

Gordon Prentice MP

Linda Riordan MP

Terry Rooney MP

Baroness Jenny Tonge

Baroness Lindsay Northover

Bob Russell MP

Clare Short MP

Phyllis Starkey MP

Sir David Steel

Sandra White MSP

Derek Wyatt MP

Tayab Ali, Partner, Irvine Thanvi Natas Solicitors

Sir Geoffrey Bindman

Richard Burgon, solicitor

Daniel Carey, Public Interest Lawyers

Ian Cross, solicitor

Jim Duffy, Public Interest Lawyers

Shauna Gillan, barrister, 1 Pump Court

Andrew Gray, solicitor

Tessa Gregory, Public Interest Lawyers

Beth Handly, Partner, Hickman and Rose solicitors

Michael Hagan, solicitor

Michelle Harris, barrister, 1 Pump Court

Susan Harris, solicitor

Jane Hickman, Partner, Hickman and Rose solicitors

Sam Jacobs, Public Interest Lawyers

Salma Karmi-Ayyoub, barrister

Paul Kaufman, solicitor

Aonghus Kelly, Public Interest Lawyers

Daniel Machover, Chair of Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights

Michael Mansfield QC

Anna Mazzola, Partner, Hickman and Rose solicitors

Sarah McSherry, Partner, Christian Khan solicitors

Clare Mellor, solicitor

Karen Mitchell, solicitor

Simon Natas, Partner, Irvine Thanvi Natas solicitors

Sophie Naftalin, Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights

Mary Nazzal-Batayneh, Human Rights Legal Aid Fund

Henrietta Phillips, solicitor

William Seymour, solicitor

Navya Shekhar, solicitor

Phil Shiner, Public Interest Lawyers

David Thompson, solicitor

Paul Troop, barrister

Mohammed Abdul-Bari, Secretary-General, Muslim Council of Britain

Anas Altikriti, British Muslim Initiative

Lindsey German, Stop the War Campaign

John Hilary, Director, War on Want

Kate Hudson, Chair, CND

Betty Hunter, General Secretary, PalestineSolidarity Campaign

Dan Judelson, Jews for Justice for Palestinians

Hugh Lanning, PCS Deputy General Secretary

John McHugo, Chair, Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine

Gerry Morrissey, General Secretary, BECTU

Tony Woodley, Joint General Secretary, UNITE.

Kate Allen, Director, Amnesty International UK

Jackie Alsaid LLM

Rachel Bowles

Prof Haim Bresheeth

Dale Egee

Sarah El-Guindi

Deborah Fink

David Halpin

Sharif Hamadeh

Samira Hassassian

Professor Ted Honderich

Victor Kattan

Asad Khan

Miriam Margolyes

Professor Nur Masalha

Professor Steven Rose

Professor Jonathan Rosenhead

Andrew Sanger

Dr Aisha Sarwar

Tareq Shrouru

Tony Woodley, UNITE Joint General Secretary

Israeli democracy in action… a freedom of speech to shut up:

Police arrest CEO of Israeli civil rights group in Sheikh Jarrah: Haaretz

Police arrested 15 left-wing protestors in the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem on Friday, among them the CEO of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Hagai Elad.
Leftist activists have held weekly demonstrations in Sheikh Jarrah for the past three months, in protest of the eviction of Palestinians from their homes and their replacement with Jewish families.
According to activists, the protest that took place on Friday was not authorized, unlike previous weeks’ protests. At the onset of the demonstration, police declared it illegal and threatened to arrest its participants. An eye witness reported that police began arresting the main participants, Hagai Elad and a protestor waving a Palestinian flag among them.
In a statement, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel condemned its CEO’s arrest. “We harshly condemn the police’s suppression of the freedom of speech which had no legal grounds. The demonstration was forcefully scattered even though it took place legally, with no provocations or disruptions of public order,” it was written.
Jerusalem police responded, saying it was an illegal protest of anarchists and leftist activists who did not listen to police orders. Regarding the arrest of Elad, the police said that if the CEO of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel allows himself to participate in an illegal protest, he shouldn’t be surprised he got arrested.

British MP: Israel and Egypt’s blockade of Gaza is ‘evil’: Haaretz

Israeli officials who authorized the use of white phosphorous in densely populated Gaza should be tried for war crimes, a British Labour Party legislator said Friday, after entering the Hamas-ruled territory with 60 European parliamentarians.
Human rights groups have alleged that both Israel and Hamas committed war crimes during Israel’s three-week offensive against Gaza, which ended a year ago. Among other things, Israel was cited for firing white phosphorous flares, which can cause horrific burns.
Israel and Hamas have denied war crimes allegations.
“The lawmakers are visiting Gaza to draw attention to the territory’s evil blockade by Israel and Egypt,” said the Labour legislator, Gerald Kaufman.
Kaufman also spoke in support of attempts by pro-Palestinian groups in Britain to get Israeli politicians and army officers arrested once they step on British soil. Britain has a universal jurisdiction law that allows prosecution of alleged war criminals whose crimes have no direct connection with Britain.
“We have had a fuss in our country about the inability of certain Israeli politicians to visit Britain for fear of being arrested,” said Kaufman, frequently an outspoken critic of Israeli policies. “Anybody who uses white phosphorus should be arrested and should be tried for war crimes.”
“But when we read of an Israeli politician being afraid of being arrested in Britain, we remember that 1.5 million people in Gaza are under arrest every day of their lives by the Israelis, suffering depravation, hunger, lack of satisfactory medical treatment, lack of screws to put school desks together so your children can learn,” Kaufman added.
Last week, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said that aid convoys bound for the Gaza Strip will now be banned from traveling across Egypt after activists led by British MP George Galloway clashed with police.
Last Tuesday clashes erupted between members of the convoy and Egyptian riot police in the Mediterranean port city of El-Arish that left one Egyptian security guard dead and dozens of protesters and police injured.
Aboul Gheit told government newspaper Al-Ahram that members of one convoy led by Galloway committed “criminal” acts on Egyptian soil on their way to Gaza.

The old Newspeak: how in the name of ‘freedom’, US pressure group supports and abets tyranny:

The United States, Israel and the retreat of freedom: The Electronic Intifada

Ali Abunimah,  14 January 2010

Epitomizing freedom: an Israeli soldier aims a gas grenade launcher at a Palestinian demonstrator in the occupied West Bank. (Oren Ziv/ActiveStills)

The world is suffering from a “freedom recession” according to a new report from the American think tank Freedom House (“Freedom in the World 2010,” 12 January 2010).

Established in 1941, Freedom House markets itself as “an independent watchdog organization that supports democratic change, monitors the status of freedom around the world, and advocates for democracy and human rights.” Its board of directors, chaired by a former US deputy secretary of defense, is a who’s who of Democratic and Republican former US government officials, prominent neoconservatives and Israel lobby stalwarts such as Tom Dine, former executive director of AIPAC. In 2007, more than two-thirds of its $16 million budget came directly from the United States government.

Not surprisingly then, Freedom House’s report reveals more about the groupthink of the US establishment — especially with respect to its continued efforts to dominate the Middle East and ensure Israel’s supremacy — than it does about the countries surveyed.
Focusing on two categories of “freedom” — “civil liberties” and “political rights” — the report divides the world’s 194 countries into three groups: “free” (89), “partly free” (58), and “not free” (47).
Interestingly, Freedom House records “declines in freedom” in “countries that had registered positive trends in previous years, including Bahrain, Jordan, Kenya and Kyrgyzstan.” Jordan was one of only six countries to move from the “partly free” category to “not free.” What does it say about US “democracy promotion” that Jordan, Bahrain and Kyrgyzstan — major political and military operating bases for the “war on terror” and US-led occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan — have become less free as their dependence on the US has increased?

Sadly, while the report frets that “the most powerful authoritarian regimes [such as Russia and China] have become more repressive, more influential in the international arena, and more uncompromising,” it has nothing at all to say about the US role in restricting freedom and spreading mayhem around the world. Sometimes this is truly absurd as the report points to “continued terrorist and insurgent violence in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and Yemen,” but fails to note that two of these countries are under direct US military occupation (Afghanistan and Iraq) while the US is intervening militarily in the other three. (The report presents a mixed picture for the US-occupied countries; both are “Not Free” but Iraq allegedly became more free during 2009 and Afghanistan less free.)
Rather than offer any introspection on the inverse relationship between US efforts at global domination on the one hand, and the spread of freedom on the other, the report’s overview essay concludes with a call for more vigorous intervention: “The United States and other democracies should take the initiative to meet the authoritarian challenge …”
Freedom House’s approach to Israel provides the starkest example of the abyss into which liberal thinking has fallen on the relationship between colonialism and freedom. Israel, we are told, “remains the only country in the [Middle East] region to hold a Freedom in the World designation of Free.” We are informed euphemistically that “The beginning of the year [2009] was marred by fierce fighting between the Israeli military and the Hamas movement in the Gaza Strip.”
There is no mention of the deliberate targeting by Israel of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure and the resulting massive destruction, and death and injury to thousands of Palestinian civilians. Nothing is said of the denial of fundamental political, civil and human rights, or freedom of movement, association and education to four million Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation and siege in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. There is no mention of the systematic discrimination, and social and political exclusion faced by 1.5 million Palestinian citizens of Israel, nor of the denial of the right of return of millions of Palestinian refugees.

There is an acknowledgment that “Hundreds of people were arrested during demonstrations against the Gaza conflict, and the parliamentary elections committee passed a measure banning two political parties from national elections, though the ban was quickly overturned by the Supreme Court.”
Despite this, on the tables accompanying the report, “Israel” receives the highest score of “1” for political rights, and a very respectable “2” for civil liberties — on a par with Italy and Japan. The overall impression is of minor glitches that could occur in any exemplary “Western” democracy.
Then on a separate table of “Disputed Territories” we find “Israeli-occupied territories” and “Palestinian Authority-administered territories” both listed. Both are given the designation “Not Free” and nearly the lowest scores for political rights and civil liberties. There is no narrative to explain who is responsible for this dire state of affairs. This convenient separation allows for all the ugly realities of what “free” Israel does in the occupied territories to be pushed out of sight and ignored.
But in what scheme can Israel be awarded freest of the free status when for two-thirds of its existence, since 1967, it has ruled directly over millions of disenfranchised Palestinians through violence and repression? The idea that the political regime in Israel’s pre-1967 boundaries can be looked at as a “democracy” even while the situation in the occupied territories can be criticized as undemocratic is very widespread among Israelis and American liberals.

Former US President Jimmy Carter has been excoriated (and recently forced to apologize) by the Israel lobby for calling the situation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip “apartheid.” Yet even he had simultaneously claimed that within its pre-1967 boundaries, “Israel is a wonderful democracy with equal treatment of all citizens whether Arab or Jew.” True, Palestinian citizens of Israel can vote and are accorded civil rights far wider than their Palestinian counterparts in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But even Israeli Jews commonly concede that Palestinian citizens suffer systematic and severe disadvantage and total exclusion from key political decisions about the country.
Israeli Jewish leftists (a rapidly dwindling group) and Western liberal sympathizers tend to view Israel within its 1967 boundaries as a flawed democracy — perfectible with a reallocation of resources and less discrimination against non-Jews, even as they remain fully invested in maintaining Israel as a “Jewish state” with a Jewish demographic majority.
They view the 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip as the original sin that corrupted a purer Zionist vision, and thus remain fixated on the chimera of “ending the occupation” through a “two-state solution.” Once this nirvana is reached, so they believe, Israel can resume its destiny as a liberal democratic state among others.
But it is not just the discrimination and limited rights of Palestinian citizens and other non-Jews that undermine the claim that Israel — considered separately from the West Bank and Gaza Strip — is a democracy. Nor is it even that Israeli settler-citizens in the West Bank have full voting rights for the Israeli parliament while Palestinians in the same territory have none. It is that “Israel” and the “occupied territories” are two sides of the same coin.
Israel’s 1948 and subsequent ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and ongoing repressive rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are not exceptional or temporary conditions. They are constitutive of the situation that allows Israeli Jews to currently claim they live in a (flawed) liberal democracy.

To be clear, the argument is not that conditions in Israel and the occupied territories are indistinguishable; rather it is that they form a single interdependent system. Israeli Jews can “freely” elect a Jewish government in Israel only because most Palestinians have already been ethnically cleansed. Thus the maintenance of this “liberal democratic” Jewish space depends directly on the permanent denial of fundamental rights to Palestinians.
Palestinian citizens of Israel — who form 20 percent of the population within Israel’s pre-1967 boundaries — are, as noted, accorded limited liberal rights. This helps boost Israel’s external image as a “wonderful democracy,” but if the exercise of these rights ever threatens Jewish domination, they are curtailed. Examples include the constant legal harassment of Palestinian members of the Knesset, and various legislative projects for loyalty oaths or to ban commemoration of the Nakba, the 1948 ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians. Overwhelming Israeli Jewish opposition to calls by Palestinians in Israel for the country to be a “state of all its citizens” is an indication that Israeli Jews value their own supremacy over democracy.
Israel has sometimes been described as an “ethnocracy” — a state where one ethnic group dominates and enjoys a wide range of liberal rights which are denied to others. But these liberal rights depend directly on the successful repression of the non-privileged ethnic group(s). As rebellions by the disenfranchised require ever greater levels of repression and violence to control, the repression must also be turned inwards.

In recent days, Israel extended for six months a ban on Sheikh Raed Salah, an Israeli citizen, and leader of the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, from traveling to Jerusalem, Israel’s ostensible capital, where he had been exercising his civil rights to campaign against Israeli efforts to “Judaize” the city. (Separately Salah was also sentenced to nine months in prison for allegedly assaulting a police officer during a 2007 demonstration; a conviction condemned as political persecution by other Palestinian leaders inside Israel.)
Such repression does not only affect non-Jews. The United Nations-commissioned Goldstone report noted “that actions of the Israeli government” within Israel, during and after Israel’s invasion of Gaza last winter, “including interrogation of political activists, repression of criticism and sources of potential criticism of Israeli military actions, in particular nongovernmental organizations, have contributed significantly to a political climate in which dissent with the government and its actions in the Occupied Territories is not tolerated.”

These means of “internal” repression resemble the movement bans, censorship and other forms of harassment that the South African apartheid regime began to deploy in its late stages against dissenting whites, eroding the “liberal democratic” space they had for so long enjoyed at the expense of the country’s black majority.
Maintaining a Jewish-controlled “liberal democratic” regime in Palestine/Israel is incompatible with the exercise of the inalienable rights of Palestinians. It emphatically depends on their permanent violation, especially the right of return. But the exercise of the inalienable rights of Palestinians — an end to discrimination against Palestinian citizens, dismantling the 1967 occupation regime, and the right of return for refugees — is fully compatible with Israeli Jews exercising the human, civil, political and cultural rights to which they are unquestionably entitled.
As a first step toward imagining and creating such a framework, we have to ditch the absurd idea reproduced by Freedom House, that Israeli Jews can epitomize perfect freedom while imposing perfect tyranny and dispossession on a greater number of human beings who belong to the same country.

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

Continue reading January 16, 2010