Tag: Freedom Flotilla

August 7, 2010

EDITOR: The war on Iran seems closer

For an Israeli government which has run out of options and has managed to alienate its few friends left, and for an USA President with lower than ever polls, and a mountain to climb at the November elections for Congress, it seems mad to invest in another war, just as it becomes clear what disaster the war on Iraq, Afghanistan and Gaza really are. Yet, this is what seems to go forward, as the only new policy of the Obama administration. God save us from smart alecs like Barack…

How smart is this in comparison to the Dubya policies, you have to ask yourself?

War on Iran, by Khalil Bendib

Gaza aid flotilla to set sail from Lebanon with all-women crew: The Guardian

Arabic singer joins crew of nuns, doctors, lawyers and journalists for humanitarian mission despite Israeli warning
Israel’s deadly assault on a Gaza aid flotilla in June led to anger in the Muslim world and beyond. Photograph: Dita Alangkara/AP
A ship bearing aid for Gaza is preparing to leave Tripoli in Lebanon this weekend in the latest attempt to defy the Israeli blockade – with only women on board.
The Saint Mariam, or Virgin Mary, has a multi-faith international passenger list, including the Lebanese singer May Hariri and a group of nuns from the US. “They are nuns, doctors, lawyers, journalists, Christians and Muslims,” said Mona, one of the participants who, along with the other women, has adopted the ship’s name, Mariam.

The Mariam and its sister ship, Naji Alali, had hoped to set off several weeks ago but faced several delays after Israel launched a diplomatic mission to pressure Lebanon to stop the mission.
The co-ordinator of the voyage, Samar al-Haj, told the Guardian this week the Lebanese government had given permission for the boats to leave for Cyprus, the first leg of the journey, this weekend.
Israel says it is concerned a flotilla from Lebanon, with whom it has ongoing hostility, will smuggle weapons to Gaza. Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Gabriela Shalev, has warned that Israel reserves the right to use “necessary measures” in line with international law to stop the ship.

But al-Haj says the mission is purely humanitarian. “Our goal is to arrive in Gaza,” she said. “It is the responsibility of the government to deal with the politics. We are not political.”
She said that once news of the flotilla was out organisers were inundated with requests to join the voyage, with more than 400 from the US alone. At least 10 Americans will be on board.
The boat has been stocked with medical instruments and medicines to take to the Palestinians.
In preparation for the voyage the participants gathered at a hotel in Beirut to discuss their plans. The logistics are many: minimal grooming, strict food rationing, and limited water supply.
“There will be no showers, no skirts and no makeup,” al-Haj told the group.

The participants are aware of the dangers, having followed the fate of another flotilla carrying aid for Gaza that was attacked by Israel in May.
Israeli forces landed on the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish vessel, killing nine activists on board. Al-Haj reminded the women to be prepared for a confrontation.
“Have blood tests in case we come under attack from Israel and you need a blood transfusion,” she said. She added that organisers were going out of their way not to provoke Israel.
“We will not even bring cooking knives,” she said.
Serena Shim, who is heavily pregnant, decided to join the voyage because of her belief that the blockade is unjust. “These people need aid,” she said.
Asked how they would react to an Israeli military assault, one activist, Tania al Kayyalisaid: “We are not planning to fight or attack – but we will not leave the St Mariam.”

Academic Boycott on Israel Flexes Its Muscles: The Washington Report

WRMEA, August 2010, Pages 44-45, Southern California Chronicle

By Pat and Samir Twair ISIS protester Dr. Vida Samiian. (Staff Photo S. Twair)

WERE IT not for the eagle eyes of Nur Marsalha, a professor of religion and politics in England, perusing the program for the biennial conference of the International Society for Iranian Studies (ISIS), Israel might have won a small victory in its efforts to legitimize its military occupation of the West Bank.

The May 27-30 conference at the Doubletree Inn in Santa Monica featured 66 panels, but Marsalha questioned the institutional affiliation of one particular participant: Ronen Cohen, who stated he was from Ariel University in Samaria, Israel.

Not only is Ariel University situated in Israel’s fourth largest illegal West Bank settlement, but it originally was a satellite campus of Bar Ilan University—until Israel’s Minister of Defense Ehud Barak rushed through its accreditation, without evaluating its academic qualifications.

As a result, a total of 120 academics registered their objections in a letter to ISIS arguing that the Ariel settlement is a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which states that an occupying power cannot populate a territory it occupies.

ISIS claimed that it was being victimized by the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. In response, ISIS member Vida Samiian, dean of the College of Arts and Humanities at Fresno State University, explained: “We tried to present a resolution allowing the general membership to vote on the matter. ISIS leadership blocked this.”

While ISIS did remove “Samaria” as the site of the Ariel institution, it blocked Internet access to Cohen’s paper, titled “The Hojjatiyeh: The Real Bringers of the Islamic Revolution of Iran.” Meanwhile, the chair and three other participants on the “Shi’ism, Clerics and Movements of Revolution and Reform” panel dropped out, leaving Cohen as the sole remaining member.

Finally, days before the conference, three new participants and a chair were announced—too late to review their abstracts for the session renamed “Dialogues and Contentions.”

Incredibly, one of the new panelists was Judea Pearl, a UCLA computer science professor and father of journalist Daniel Pearl, who was murdered by extremists in Pakistan. The title of his paper, “Carving a Dialogue between Muslims and Jews,” was a misleading one for Pearl, who vociferously rants about Islamist violence. He is the polar opposite of Cindy and Craig Corrie, who have responded to Israel’s killing of their daughter Rachel with a message of reconciliation.

On the second day of the conference, when Cohen was scheduled to speak, about 20 concerned academics and activists handed fliers to people arriving at the Doubletree Inn. Many stood behind a cardboard apartheid wall and held signs stating that ISIS approves of apartheid.

(L-r) Steve Gilula, president of Fox Searchlight; “My Name Is Khan” director Karan Johar; and MPAC’s Noor Khan. (Staff Photo S. Twair)

“We don’t object to an Israeli participating in the conference,” stated economics professor Sasan Faymazman during the informational May 28 picket. But “why did ISIS include a paper from a settler institution? Why did ISIS block the membership from reading Cohen’s abstract which deals with a so-called nuclear Iran and its ‘threat to the Middle East or maybe to the world?'”

The picketing was a success, as Iranian-American photographers and reporters left the conference to interview dissenting scholars. Dr. Ahmad Karimi, a past ISIS president, confronted the picketers and voiced his objections to their accusations that ISIS supported apartheid. Agreeing that military occupation is wrong, he stated that the controversy will be reviewed at the Middle East Studies Association convention in November.

The incident gives notice to Israel that no trick to gain cultural or academic legitimacy is too small for Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) activists to uncover and expose. For more information, visit <www.usacbi.org>.

MPAC Media Awards

What do best-selling author Dave Eggers, the Emmy-award winning TV series “Grey’s Anatomy,” and feature films “Amreeka” and “My Name Is Khan” have in common? All are recipients of the Muslim Public Affairs Council’s (MPAC) 2010 media awards, presented May 1 at the Westin Bonaventure in Downtown Los Angeles. More than 600 members and guests gathered for the 19th annual event honoring film, TV and literary projects that cast Muslims in realistic roles.

Eggers has been the hero of the Arab-American and Muslim-American communities since July 2009, when he published his best selling book, Zeitoun (available from the AET Book Club), which chronicles the harrowing post-Hurricane Katrina ordeals of Abdulrahman Zeitoun. Accepting the award, Eggers recalled how, when he began to interview them, Abdulrahman and his wife, Kathy, protested “Who will care about our story?” Instead they became the first Muslim family many American readers came to know.

MPAC selected an episode from “Grey’s Anatomy” for its media awards because it focused on the deep faith of a Muslim lab technician (Faran Tahir) who insists on surgery for an inoperable tumor. In the November 2009 episode, entitled “Give Peace a Chance,” the Muslim patient makes du’a, and his faith enlightens the surgeon (Patrick Dempsey).

Accepting the award were Pakistani-American actor Tahir, executive producer Mark Wilding and writer Peter Nowak.

Bollywood director Karan Johar traveled from India to receive his MPAC award for his film, “My Name Is Khan.”Inspired by political events in the U.S., the feature film tells the story of Rizvan Khan, a Muslim afflicted with Asperger’s syndrome who travels to the post-9/11 U.S.

In the U.S., Khan falls in love with and marries a Hindu divorcee, helps a small town in Georgia cope with a Hurricane Katrina-like flood, and launches a mission to tell newly elected President Barack Obama that his name is Khan and he’s not a terrorist.

Cherien Dabis’ film “Amreeka” explores how someone from the West Bank starts life over in the Midwest. The screenwriter and director was applauded by MPAC for her tragicomedic view of a Palestinian divorcee’s rough awakening to life in post-9/11 America.

Dabis used her own experience of coming of age in the Midwest during the first Gulf war to tell the story of her fictional heroine, Munah, and her teenage son, Fadi. Dabis’ Palestinian parents emigrated to Ohio shortly before her birth. Her father was a highly respected physician until the first Gulf war began. Soon, the Arab-American family was treated like a pariah.

SAWA Fetes Syrian Stars

SAWA gala headliners (l-r) Dr. Hazem Chehabi, incoming SAWA president Salwa Chehabi, and outgoing SAWA president Ilham Kalioundji. (Staff Photo S. Twair)

The Syrian American Women’s Association (SAWA) has been providing medical assistance to hearing-impaired children in Syria for a decade. On May 1, it celebrated its 10th anniversary with a gala dinner in the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles.

Dr. Kamal Batniji, who has helped SAWA perform cochlear implants to deaf children in Syria, received the group’s Golden Heart award. Also receiving the award for their assistance were Dr. Hatem and Salwa Chehabi, Dr. Abdallah and Daad Farrukh, and Jim and Pricilla Khoury.

A highlight of the charitable organization’s annual event is the presentation of al-Ataa awards to Syrian stage and screen stars. This year’s recipients were actress Sulaf Fawakheri and producer/director/actor Jamal Soliman. Presenting the awards were Farouk Ubaysi and SAWA president Ilham Kalioundji.

Over the past year, SAWA provided eight cochlear implants to deaf children and donated 250 hearing aids. It also spearheaded the development and implementation of a speech rehabilitation curriculum at Damascus University.

Pat and Samir Twair are free-lance journalists based in Los Angeles.

MSU Appeals UCI Suspension Recommendation

The showdown for the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), Orange County Jewish Federation and Israel’s Consul General in Los Angeles Jacob Dayan versus the Muslim Students Union (MSU) of the University of California at Irvine (UCI) took place June 14 when the Jewish Federation went public with a confidential UCI recommendation to suspend the MSU for one year.

At UCI, where Muslim and Arab students are equal in number to Jewish undergrads, creative MSU programs have outraged off-campus Zionist leaders. In 2007, the U.S. Department of Education Office on Civil Rights determined ZOA complaints of UCI campus anti-Semitism were unfounded.

The conflict came to a head Feb. 8, when Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren spoke at UCI and his speech was interrupted 10 times by 11 students—two of whom had lost relatives killed during Israel’s 22-day blitzkrieg of Gaza (see May/June 2010 Washington Report, p. 36).

A delegation from the Orange County Jewish Federation traveled to Oakland, CA to present their allegations to UC Chancellor Mark G. Yudorf.

With the June 14 release of the recommendation of the suspension of MSU for one year effective in September, and an additional one year of probation, attorney Reem Salahi filed an appeal on behalf of the MSU. “Even the fraternity at UC San Diego which hosted the racist ‘Compton Cookout’ wasn’t suspended,” she noted. “It appears UCI is applying a different standard of punishment against the MSU than any other campus organization.”

Emphasizing that MSU is primarily a religious organization that provides prayer services on campus, Salahi said as many as 250 Muslim students would be affected by the suspension, leaving them without a voice or means of association.

“UCI is clearly caving into the pressure of these external organizations who seek to silence dissent and criticism of the Israeli state,” Salahi concluded. “Collectively punishing the entire Muslim population is truly chilling.”

Stated UCLA anthropology professor Sondra Hale: “This ruling will be a major setback to activist students everywhere and a blow to academic freedom, not to mention underscoring the degree to which officials of the UC system cater to outside proponents of Israel’s government policy.”—Pat McDonnell Twair

Jonathan Cook: Negev village torn down for second time: IOA

By Jonathan Cook in al-Araqib – 6 Aug 2010
Israel plans mass forced removals of Bedouin
Israeli security forces destroyed a Bedouin village this week for the second time in a matter of days, leaving 300 inhabitants homeless again after they and dozens of Jewish and Arab volunteers had begun rebuilding the 45 homes.
Human rights groups warned that these appeared to be the opening shots in a long-threatened campaign by the Israeli government to begin mass forced removals of tens of thousands of Bedouin from their ancestral lands in the northern Negev.
The High Follow-Up Committee, the main political body for Israel’s Arab minority, vowed this week to help rebuild the village for a second time and said it would call on the UN to investigate Israel’s treatment of the Bedouin.
Al Araqib village, which is a few kilometres north of the Negev’s main city Beersheva, has become a symbol of the struggle by about 90,000 Bedouin to win recognition for dozens of communities the government claims are built on state land.
In a test case before the Israeli courts, an inhabitant of al Araqib has been presenting documents and expert testimony to show his ancestors owned and lived on the village’s lands many decades before Israel’s establishment in 1948. The judge is expected to rule within months.
“Tearing down an entire village and leaving its inhabitants homeless without exhausting all other options for settling longstanding land claims is outrageous,” said Joe Stork, the deputy Middle East director of Human Rights Watch.
A force of 1,500 police, including a special riot squad wearing black balaclavas, entered the village early on Wednesday to pull down a dozen wooden shacks and a half-built concrete home. The local Aturi tribe had been in the process of rebuilding the village after it was razed by bulldozers a week earlier.
The Israeli forces also uprooted 850 olive trees, said Ortal Tzabar, a spokeswoman for the government’s Land Administration.
Yesterday Adalah, a legal group for Israel’s 1.3 million Arab citizens, demanded a criminal investigation into what it called “police brutality” during both demolition operations.
Sawsan Zaher, a lawyer, said assaults on villagers, confiscation of their property and the security forces’ decision to cover their faces and not wear identity tags were all designed to “instil fear” in the residents.
Taleb a-Sanaa, a Bedouin member of the Israeli parliament who was left unconscious on Wednesday after police dragged him from a tent in which he was staging a protest, warned that the government was risking “an uprising in the Negev”.
Six village leaders were arrested shortly afterwards when they refused to sign a paper committing not to return to al Araqib.
Awad Abu Freih, a village spokesman, said they remained defiant. “The authorities want to break our connection to this land so it can be turned over to Jews. They can keep destroying, but we will continue rebuilding. We will not leave.”
The first demolition of the village, late last month, came shortly after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned his cabinet that the growth of the country’s Arab minority, already a fifth of the population, posed a “palpable threat” to the state’s Jewishness.
“The effect could be that different elements will demand national rights within Israel – for example, in the Negev – if we allow for a region without a Jewish majority.”
Last month the government announced a $50 million assistance programme to encourage army personnel to relocate to Jewish communities in the Negev.
The Bedouin’s increasing assertiveness about their indigenous status, which is backed by international groups, has led to a backlash from officials, who regularly refer to the Bedouin as “squatters” and “invaders” of state land.
Nili Baruch of Bimkom, an Israeli planning rights group, said a master plan currently being approved for the metropolitan area of Beersheva required “more house demolitions and more forced removals of the Bedouin population”, such as occurred at al-Araqib.
In addition, she said, the authorities had approved a special operation known as “Hot Wind” to carry out the demolitions.
The government’s conflict with the Bedouin dates back to Israel’s founding, when most of the Negev’s population were driven out of the new state.
With the highest birth rate in Israel, the surviving tribes have grown rapidly and now number 180,000, more than a quarter of the Negev’s population despite waves of state-sponsored Jewish migration.
Israel has refused to recognise most of the Bedouin’s traditional communities and insists they move into seven deprived townships built by the government several decades ago. Only about half have done so, with the rest insisting on their right to continue with their pastoral way of life.
Al-Araqib has become a particular point of friction because most of the Aturi moved into a nearby township, Rahat, in the 1970s, after their lands had been declared a closed military zone.
But faced with severe overcrowding in Rahat and no new land for expansion, many young families began moving back to al-Araqib a decade ago.
Like 45 other unrecognised villages, al Araqib is denied all services, including water and electricity, and its buildings are illegal.
A recent government commission found that tens of thousands of Bedouin buildings are subject to demolition orders, though until now individual buildings have been targeted, not whole communities.
Last month the Beersheva planning committee approved a scheme to recognise 13 Bedouin villages and force the other inhabitants into the townships.
In that plan, al Araqib’s lands are designated for a “peace forest” – funded by an international Zionist organisation, the Jewish National Fund – a move Mr Abu Freih said was designed to prevent the villagers’ return.
Ms Baruch said the authorities were demanding the inhabitants move to Rahat, even though no homes were provided for them.
Mr Abu Freih said other parts of the tribe’s lands nearby had been secretly settled by Jews in 2004. In a night-time operation JNF and government officials set up caravans that subsequently became an exclusively Jewish known as Givat Bar.
From 2002, Israel began a policy of annually spraying herbicide on al-Araqib’s crops, in an attempt to move them off the land, until the supreme court deemed the practice illegal in 2007.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
A version of this article originally appeared in The National, published in Abu Dhabi.

Continue reading August 7, 2010

August 3, 2010

Academic Boycott against Israel? Umberto Eco misses the point: PACBI

This opinion piece has a story behind it. When Umberto Eco’s harsh opinion piece against the cultural boycott of Israel appeared in the Italian newspaper L’espresso [1], PACBI decided that a rebuttal was in order. Two PACBI members contacted the newspaper through an Italian colleague to ask that a rebuttal be published in the newspaper. After much negotiation and many emails exchanged with one of the editors, the rebuttal was pared down to a bare minimum, and the newspaper agreed to publish it on 2 July 2010 in the letters section of the paper [2]. However, it transpired that the published version had been further cut down, and that the identities of the authors had not been included. This is indeed a sad commentary on the state of press freedom in Italy, where influential figures are allowed freedom to defend Israel and its criminal acts while those with opposing views are not accorded the space to express their opposition to these views.

[1] http://espresso.repubblica.it/dettaglio/boicottiamo-i-latinisti-israeliani/2127031
[2] http://espresso.repubblica.it/dettaglio/per-posta-per-email/2130083

*********
On 14 May 2010, on the pages of L’espresso [1], Umberto Eco attacked the growing efforts in Italy in support of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), arguing that “any political position, any polemic against a government, should not involve a whole people and an entire culture.” We agree. But how is that relevant to the debate on the merits of an academic boycott against Israel? Our campaign has consistently targeted Israel and its complicit institutions, not individuals.

One of the most important lessons learned from the global struggle against apartheid South Africa is that refusing to deal on a business-as-usual basis with institutions that are complicit in grave and persistent human rights violations is not only justified; it is an ethical duty for conscientious intellectuals the world over. By colluding in policies that are contrary to international law and infringe fundamental rights, institutions become responsible and therefore accountable. All Israeli academic institutions, without exception, fall into this category, making a call to boycott them imperative in the struggle for upholding Palestinian rights and ending Israel’s occupation and system of racial discrimination that fits the definition of apartheid in the UN Convention for the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid.

At a time when Israel is flouting international law with utter impunity, attacking civilian ships carrying humanitarian relief to 1.5 million Palestinians suffering under years of an illegal Israeli siege, killing and injuring scores of unarmed aid workers and other activists, the silence of the Israeli academy is louder than ever. This is quite predictable, though. At no time in their history have Israeli academic institutions, professional associations, or unions of academics condemned the occupation. They never voiced any opposition to repeated Israeli military closures of Palestinian universities, sometimes for four consecutive years, let alone to the denial of the UN-sanctioned rights of the Palestinian refugees. When Palestinian students were detained during the first intifada (1987-92) for carrying textbooks or lecturers arrested for conducting “clandestine” classes, the Israeli academy remained shamefully silent, and Israeli academics for the most part continued propagating a deceptive image of Israel as an enlightened “democracy.”

Israel has, in fact, imposed a strict siege upon Palestinian institutions of higher education for the past three decades. That these institutions have survived and are flourishing is a testimony to their determination and perseverance to resist in their own way an oppressive military regime bent on silencing the voice of the Palestinian academy. In Gaza, Israel imposes a blanket academic boycott, among other forms of siege, preventing almost all scholars from entering or leaving the Strip. The latest manifestation of the siege on Palestinian universities—boycott, in fact– was the disdainful and arrogant Israeli act of denying entry to renowned scholar Noam Chomsky to speak at Birzeit University.

Understanding the entrenched collusion of the Israeli academy with the structures of oppression in that country, prominent Israeli historian Ilan Pappe stated as early as 2005 that “the boycott reached academia because academia in Israel chose to be official.” [2] Citing research by a fellow Israeli academic that revealed that “out of 9,000 members of academia in Israel, only 30-40 are actively engaged in reading significant criticism, and a smaller number, just three or four, are teaching their students in a critical manner about Zionism and so on,” Pappe concludes, “academia has chosen to be the official Israeli propaganda. … Academia is Israel’s most important ambassador in making the claim that we are the only democracy in the Middle East.”

During Israel’s war of aggression on Gaza in 2008-2009, when more than 1400 people, predominantly civilians, were killed; thousands of homes were destroyed along with tens of schools and UN shelters, hospitals and clinics were targeted and the largest Palestinian university was bombed by F-16s, the Israeli academy was not just a “neutral observer.” Several universities contributed actively to the war crimes committed against Palestinians.

For instance, Tel Aviv University (TAU) directly collaborated in developing weapons and military doctrines that were used in Israel’s massive aggression against Gaza, a war that was condemned by the Goldstone Report and the UN General Assembly as constituting war crimes and possible crimes against humanity. [3]

Other universities in Israel fared no better. A study [4] commissioned by the Israeli Alternative Information Center (AIC) documents myriad facets of academic complicity in Israel. Ariel College is built on occupied Palestinian territory, making it an illegal “academic” colony. So is one of the two campuses of the Hebrew University, built in occupied East Jerusalem, in direct violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The Technion plays a key role in developing weapons systems used against Palestinian civilians. In fact, institutional complicity with Israel’s security and military establishment is the norm in the entire academy, which takes pride, openly, in this partnership.

Even speaking out for the most basic demands of academic freedom for Palestinians is opposed by an overwhelming majority of Israeli academics. Expressing “great concern regarding the ongoing deterioration of the system of higher education in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip,” four Jewish-Israeli academics in 2008 drafted a petition [5] calling on their government to “allow students and lecturers free access to all the campuses in the Territories ….” Although the petition was sent to all 9,000 plus Israeli academics, only 407 signed it – slightly over 4%.

Despite this widespread complicity, PACBI has consistently made a clear distinction between targeting institutions and individual academics; we rejected the latter, focusing all our energies on an institutional boycott. This stems from our opposition, on principle, to political tests or “black-listing.”

Inspired by the South African struggle for freedom, PACBI and the increasing number of academic boycott campaigns around the world believe that the Israeli academy should not be automatically exempted from the boycott, especially when its role in whitewashing and perpetuating war crimes is beyond doubt.

[1] http://espresso.repubblica.it/dettaglio/boicottiamo-i-latinisti-israeliani/2127031
[2] Meron Rapoport, “Alone on the Barricades” (interview with Ilan Pappe), Haaretz. 6 May 2005
[3] http://www.electronicintifada.net/downloads/pdf/090708-soas-palestine-society.pdf
[4] http://alternativenews.org/images/stories/downloads/Economy_of_the_occupation_23-24.pdf
[5] http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=792&key=407

Boycott of Israel 2, by Carlos Latuff

Editor: Preparations for another war?

It is customary for Israel to destroy South Lebanon and Beirut every couple of years, as we all know. The last time it was done for Summer 2006, so it is high time for the next madness to begin. The activities which led to this latest incident may well be part of the preparation for the next war.

Four die as Lebanon and Israel clash: The Independent

Tuesday, 3 August 2010
Toops exchanged fire on the border today in a battle which started over the trimming of a tree

Four people died when Lebanese and Israeli troops exchanged fire on the border today in a battle which started over the trimming of a tree.

It was the most serious clashes in four years, the victims included two Lebanese soldiers and an Israeli army officer.
The violence apparently erupted after Israeli soldiers went to cut down a tree along the fence dividing the two countries, a sign of the level of tensions in an area where Israel fought a war in 2006 with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

The UN urged “maximum restraint” and said it was working with both sides to restore calm. After an initial clash of about five minutes, intermittent shelling and gunfire went on for several hours until the fighting stopped by mid-afternoon.

A Lebanese army officer said the battle started when Israeli troops tried to remove a tree from the Lebanese side of the border.

“It was over the fence but still within Israeli territory,” a military spokesman said.

Ronith Daher, 32, a Lebanese journalist who was at the scene, said she saw a UN peacekeeper ask Israel not to allow the Israeli soldier to cross the fence and warned them the Lebanese troops would open fire. The Israelis proceeded, however, and Lebanese soldiers fired into the air. She said the Israelis fired back directly at the Lebanese soldiers.

The Israeli military’s northern commander, Maj. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot, however, accused Lebanese forces of shooting toward forces inside Israeli territory without any provocation.” He said that while soldiers were removing bushes by the fence, Lebanese military snipers shot two officers who were more than 300 yards away from the fence.

The military announced that a 45-year-old battalion commander was killed and a captain was critically wounded.

A spokesman said Israel responded with infantry, tanks and artillery fire, and later sent helicopters and artillery fire at a Lebanese army base and command centre.

Residents near the Fatima Gate, a one-time border crossing with Israel, briefly blocked a road as UN peacekeepers tried to pass, shouting: “Are you here to protect us or are you here to run away?”

Many in the area view the international force with mistrust, and there have been skirmishes between residents and the peacekeepers in the past.

Lebanese President Michel Suleiman denounced the fighting and urged the army commander to “confront any Israeli aggression whatever the sacrifices.”

A Lebanese officer said one of the Israeli shells hit a house in the Lebanese border town of Adeisseh. One civilian was wounded in the shelling, he said. A security official also said a Lebanese journalist working for the daily Al-Akhbar newspaper, Assaf Abu Rahhal, was killed when an Israeli shell landed next to him in Adeisseh.

The border has been relatively quiet since the summer 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war that left 1,200 Lebanese and about 160 Israelis dead.

EDITOR: Academic Freedom Israeli style

Academics can say anything they wish, in Israel – it is of course a Jewish democracy – a democracy for Jews only – but even Jews are to be targeted if they speak; They will still be able to say whay they wish, for the time being, but will lose their livelihood. Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it?

Head of Israeli University Demands Ouster of Professors Who Support Boycott: PACBI

The president of Bar-Ilan University has called for Israeli professors who support an academic boycott of their country to quit or be fired.

The statement comes as Israel’s parliament debates legislation that would allow lawsuits against academics and others who support various boycotts of the Jewish state. The bill is not expected to become law, but it is generating questions about the role of scholars at public universities in Israel.

Bar-Ilan’s Moshe Kaveh, a former chairman of Israel’s Committee of University Presidents, is the first leader of an Israeli university to back the dismissal of the handful of Israeli professors who publicly expressed support for a boycott. Last year the president of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev had no kind words for Neve Gordon, a professor of politics and government, for advocating an international academic boycott, but did not fire him.

“It’s easy to be brave when criticizing, but someone who has the courage to criticize the institution where he works should also have the courage to quit—and, if not, I as president will make it happen,” Mr. Kaveh told a Jewish education-and-culture festival on Thursday during a panel discussion with the education minister, Gideon Sa’ar, on the nature of Jewish identity.

“How can it be that a faculty member can stand in class and say to his students, ‘Boycott the State of Israel?’ Someone who criticizes the place where he works is ethically obliged to resign,” said Mr. Kaveh.

His remarks were greeted with warm applause from the audience and from the education minister, Israel Army Radio reported.

“When you call for an academic boycott of Israel, you don’t just do harm to the institution that pays your salary. You also harm academic freedom,” Mr. Sa’ar responded.

Menachem Klein, a professor of political studies at Bar-Ilan who is firmly opposed to a boycott, said nonetheless that Mr. Kaveh “disregards the fundamental element of academic research.”

“I wish to remind Professor Kaveh.” he said, “that university researchers’ primary responsibility and loyalty are to universal-humanistic values that direct their scientific research, not to their employer.”

http://chronicle.com/article/Head-of-Israeli-University/123679/

Israeli officer killed in clash on Israel-Lebanon border: Haaretz

3 Lebanese soldiers, one journalist killed as Israeli and Lebanese soldiers exchange fire at border; second Israeli officer seriously wounded.
One Israeli officer was killed during clashes between Israel and the Lebanese army along the border on Tuesday. 45-year-old Lt. Col. Dov Harari, from Netanya, was a reserves battalion commander in the engineering corps.
Another Israeli officer sustained severe wounds and has been admitted to Rambam Medical Center in Haifa. He is in stable condition.

Lebanese and Israeli troops exchanged fire on the border Tuesday in the most serious clashes since a fierce war four years ago, and Lebanon said at least three of its soldiers and a journalist were killed in shelling.

The violence apparently erupted over a move by Israeli soldiers to trim some hedges along the border, a sign of the level of tensions at the frontier where Israel fought a war in 2006 with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

Harari, father of four, was killed by sniper fire directed at his post. The other officer at the post was captain Ezra Lakia, who was seriously wounded. The two were situated some 300 meters from the border within Israel in a position to oversee the trimming of the bushes along the border fence.

Israel Defense Forces GOC Northern Command Maj. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot announced Tuesday that the two Israeli officers had been very seriously hit during the exchange of fire. Eizenkot said that the incident had been a “deliberate ambush.”

Eizenkot told Israeli media that “a routine operation was carried out during the afternoon near Misgav Am – an operation whose purpose was to trim some bushes near the border, in our [Israeli] territory. It was on both sides of the border but still within [Israeli] territory. Officers oversaw the operation from a permanent position. Sniper fire was directed at the officers, and two of them were wounded as a result.”

The GOC Northern Command stressed that “this was a pre-planned event, aggression by the Lebanese army who shot at soldiers inside Israeli territory without any provocation. We view this as a very severe incident.”

Continue reading August 3, 2010

July 19, 2010

Israel set to force all citizens to swear oath to Jewish state: The Independent

By Catrina Stewart In Jerusalem
Saturday, 17 July 2010
New Israeli citizens may soon be required to swear an oath of loyalty to a “Jewish and democratic” state, a step that has drawn harsh criticism from human rights groups.

Israel’s Cabinet, which meets tomorrow, is expected to approve this and extend a raft of existing measures that make it harder for Palestinians to achieve citizenship.
The wording of the oath, which would apply to new applicants for citizenship, was slammed by Arab advocacy groups, who accused Israel of “racist” policies that attempt to link citizenship to ideology.

“It’s another step in the direction of getting the Arabs out of Israel,” said Uri Avnery, a former MP and founder of the Israeli Gush Shalom peace movement. “Parliament has become a lynching mob.”

The move comes on the back on a series of strikes against Palestinians seeking citizenship and Israeli Arabs who already have it. The Knesset, Israel’s parliament, voted this week to strip Hanin Zuabi, an Israeli Arab politician, of her parliamentary privileges for taking part in the Gaza flotilla aimed at breaching Israel’s sea blockade.

The new oath of allegiance, which would replace an existing oath to the “State of Israel,” appears to represent a watered-down version of legislation enthusiastically promoted by Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s Foreign Minister. His law, which failed to clear parliament, was aimed at stripping Israeli Arabs of their citizenship if they failed to swear allegiance to the Jewish state.

Yisrael Beitenu, Lieberman’s ultra-nationalist party, vaulted to third place in last year’s elections on a platform that played on the electorate’s distrust of Israeli Arabs and their perceived disloyalty to Israel.

Israeli Arabs, who comprise 20 percent of the population and live in some of the country’s most under-privileged communities, have resisted such a loyalty oath on the grounds that only a state defined by all its different ethnic groups would make them feel equal.

Adalah, a prominent Israeli Arab advocacy group, said the new policy “requires all non-Jews to identify with Zionism and imposes a political ideology and loyalty to the principles of Judaism and Zionism”.

In recent months, the Knesset has introduced a number of bills that have drawn criticism from liberals, not least legislation that would ban anyone from promoting or even supporting boycotts against Israel.

“There’s a steady deterioration of Israeli democracy and a steady rise of right-wing ideologies in the Knesset,” said Avnery. “Parliament is turning into a danger for Israeli democracy.”

I am not declaring loyalty: Haaretz

The time has come that all of us, irrespective of whether we are Jews or Muslims, ultra-Orthodox or secular, declare our loyalty to the only Jewish democracy in the world. On one condition: the declaration ceremony would take place in the courtyard of the Tomb of the Patriarchs, following a tour of the center of Hebron.
By Akiva Eldar
HEBRON – Why is the government requiring only those seeking citizenship to have to declare their loyalty to a Jewish and democratic state? I want to do it too!

The time has come that all of us, irrespective of whether we are Jews or Muslims, ultra-Orthodox or secular, declare our loyalty to the only Jewish democracy in the world. On one condition: the declaration ceremony would take place in the courtyard of the Tomb of the Patriarchs, following a tour of the center of Hebron.

Every Israeli citizen will then know what his country is doing in his name in the city of the patriarchs. Every Hebrew mother will know “where the only democracy in the Middle East” is sending its sons. Those who like what they see will sign the declaration. Those who will not find in Hebron proof of Jewish values and principles of democracy will refuse.

Before embarking on an educational tour in the center of Hebron, we should take a refresher course: the Hebron Agreement, which was signed in 1997 between the Netanyahu government and the Palestinian Authority, divided Hebron into an Arab area controlled by the PA (H1 ), and a Jewish area controlled by the IDF (H2 ). In the Arab area live 120,000 Palestinians, and in the Jewish area, which includes the old city and the city’s commercial center, there are 500 Jews and 30,000 Arabs. In order to prevent friction, Israel has imposed tough rules of physical separation between the two populations and harsh limits on the movement of the Palestinian population in most of H2.

A pack of panting dogs met us at the beginning of Shuhada Street, which cuts through the old quarter of Hebron toward the Tomb of the Patriarchs. The doors of the shops were shut and the market was empty.

Someone covered racist graffiti with smiling faces on a pink background.

A survey of the area around Jewish settlement in the city conducted by B’Tselem and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel in late 2006 found that 1,829 Palestinian businesses (more than 75 percent of all businesses in the area surveyed ) had been closed in recent years. More than 1,000 housing units (42 percent ) in the area surveyed were abandoned.

Yehuda Shaul, founder of Breaking the Silence, says that more than 40 percent of the Palestinian residents have left the area.

Bored soldiers peered at the visitors, and once they were sure that they were “ours” they moved on (perhaps for dance practice ). Even though the IDF told the High Court of Justice two years ago that the ban on Palestinians movement in the streets was lifted, they do not dare come close to this area.

They know that at every street corner they will be asked to show their identity cards and they will be searched. Eran Efrati, who served at the Abu Snuneh post in 2007, says that instructions in the briefing room contained an order to make the residents “feel persecuted.”

In the Breaking the Silence database there are testimonies of soldiers who describe creative ways for creating such a feeling. For example, holding a population survey in the middle of the night (the IDF calls it “mapping” ), or banging on pots.

A skinny youth, fringes hanging from under his shirt, is galloping through a field on a white horse. At the bottom of Beit Hadassah, Shaul fixes his black kippa and points to the Palestinian girls’ school.

He says that he has a video clip in his office which shows the customary way the neighboring Jewish kids kill their boredom over Shabbat, by throwing stones at the girls.

In an alley leading to the wholesale market, closed following the massacre at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in early 1994, a group of young Jews pushes a cart loaded with building materials. Behind the barred doors of the shops, under the noses of the soldiers, another small settlement is staring.

At the entrance to the Tomb of the Patriarchs our path was blocked by six Border Policemen. Their commander, who was rushed to meet us says that we had been barred from entering the site with Yehuda Shaul, because he belongs to a group with a “political character.” The officer confirmed that one or two days earlier, Noam Arnon, the spokesman for the Jewish community in Hebron, accompanied a group of visitors into the Tomb of the Patriarchs on behalf of the Foreign Ministry. The settlers in Hebron, as is well known, are a group without “political character.”

The actions of the state in the city where the Patriarchs of the nation are buried, in Sheikh Jarrah, in the Jordan Valley and in the Gaza Strip, have nothing to do with Judaism or democracy. So long as this is the face of the Jewish democratic State, I refuse to declare my loyalty to it.

US voters can demand Palestine’s freedom: The Electronic Intifada

Cynthia McKinney, 19 July 2010
In response to Israel’s deadly attack on the Gaza-bound Freedom Flotilla, more than 800 labor and community activists picketed America’s sixth largest port in Oakland last month. The result was a historic blockade of a large Israeli cargo ship for 24 hours. Across the world, dockworkers and activists engaged in similar actions. In Sweden, the Dockworkers Union completed a week-long boycott of Israeli ships and containers, resulting in the blocking of 500 tons of goods to and from Israel.

Turkish dockworkers’ union Liman-Is also announced that their workers would refuse to handle Israeli ships. In South Africa, Durban dockworkers blocked Israeli ships in February 2009 in response to Israel’s 22-day war of aggression on the Gaza Strip. The Union of South African Municipal workers announced last month their intention to declare all South African municipalities as “Israeli Apartheid-Free Zones.” The message behind all these courageous actions worldwide was clear: Israel should no longer be allowed to act with impunity. Israel should be held accountable to universal principles of human rights.

The worldwide wave of protests against Israel’s assault in international waters and the killing of at least nine activists, including one Turkish American, is accompanied with a growing sense of revulsion at the double standards the US government and its allies apply to Israel. Its persistent lawless actions are jeopardizing America’s public image, where it is becoming more difficult than ever to justify Israeli crimes without harming our relationships with other ally countries. More importantly, this blind support for Israel’s policies is creating vigorous grassroots opposition, largely expressed through the global campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel.

This movement is taking upon itself what governments have failed to do: to hold Israel accountable for its crimes. The dockworkers’ refusal to deal with Israeli ships is part of this vibrant movement and comes in response to the appeal in 2005 from Palestinian civil society. Other initiatives include campaigns for the boycott of Israeli products, divestment from companies aiding Israeli war crimes, and cultural isolation, so as to not entertain Israeli apartheid, demonstrated by the cancellation of concerts in Israel by renowned artists like Elvis Costello and Gil Scott-Heron.

Israel’s latest massacre, sadly, does not come as a surprise, but rather constitutes a progression of Israel’s continued abuse of power as the world turns a blind eye to its aggression. In 2003, and again in 2007, I was ejected from the US Congress after being targeted by the pro-Israel lobby in this country for daring to veer from standard political operating practice by actually believing that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights applies to all human beings, including Palestinians. It was this first experience that gave me a true picture of the ruthlessness of Israel’s supporters in this country and the silence of those in a position to object.

In December 2008, I joined activists aboard the pleasure boat, Dignity, in an attempt to break the siege of Gaza. We left Cyprus heading for Gaza, carrying with us badly needed medical supplies among other necessities. It was when we got to what Israel deemed a “closed military zone” that the Israeli navy attacked us. Our boat was rammed, disabled and forced to dock in Lebanon rather than deliver aid to those in need because of Israel’s violent onslaught against Gaza, the 22-day Operation Cast Lead. In late June 2009, I again attempted to deliver humanitarian supplies to Gaza by boat and the Israeli navy, in international waters, commandeered the boat, kidnapped 21 of us onboard and imprisoned us in an Israeli prison for seven days. Despite the parallels with the recent Freedom Flotilla attack, my own government completely disregarded these illegal actions, and the media deliberately misled the public, as is too often the case.

All of this has an undeniable historical parallel with the South African anti-apartheid struggle — one that we must all learn from. The apartheid regime enjoyed wide support from Western governments, and it was only in 2008 that the US begrudgingly removed travel restrictions on Nelson Mandela. He, too, had been vilified for standing up for the rights of black people. In 1963, just four years after the anti-apartheid movement was formed, Danish dockworkers refused to offload a ship with South African goods, and Swedish workers followed suit. Dockworkers in the San Francisco Bay Area and, later, in Liverpool also refused to offload South African goods.

The Palestinian BDS movement, which seeks to end discrimination in Palestine, is inspired by the South African anti-apartheid struggle. The Palestinian civil society call for BDS has been answered by thousands of people of conscience around the world. The Oakland dockworkers’ boycott brings back memories of a time when we dared not to be silent and refused to be complicit with US human rights crimes in Vietnam, the segregated US south, and in apartheid South Africa.

The struggle for freedom and justice for the Palestinian people has become the litmus test of our time (Gaza today has become the test of our universal morality and our common humanity). The US Congress in 1986 imposed a comprehensive boycott of apartheid South Africa, at a time when the citizen-led boycott movement deemed US government collaboration with the racist regime impossible to sustain. As Israel continues to commit massacres, and citizens of conscience respond vigorously to isolate what is now a pariah state, the US government will be forced into a similar position.

I was targeted and kicked out of the Congress because I believe in justice and peace. It is only a matter of time before voters of conscience turn what happened to me on its head by making it clear that elected policy-makers who collaborate in America’s unconditional partnership with Israel will be exposed as shameful; and by making it clear to policy-makers that such shameful behavior is unsustainable because collaborators in injustice will be ejected from office by the people. When this moment comes, Palestinians will finally see justice and be allowed to live freely in their homeland.

Cynthia McKinney is a former member of the United States House of Representatives, 2008 Green Party presidential nominee, and a human rights activist.

Continue reading July 19, 2010

July 11, 2010

Israel Inquiry, by Khalil Bendib

EDITOR: BDS is taking a hold and dictating the new agenda

Not a day passes without some major news on the BDS issue, from all parts of the globe. This rising movement, with supporters in most countries, and with growing effect, is now assisting the isolation of the Israeli regime of militarised, brutal colonial settlement. While Israel’s universities and colleges do all they can to support the coniued occupoation, there are many academics who are increasingly voicing their opposition to the regime and its war crimes. This struggle is likely to intensify, as the regime is moving to stop all crticism by using the legal machinery to silence academics. This vert act is a proof on the increasing efficacy of the BDS campaign.

Israeli academics hit back over bid to pass law that would criminalise them: The Observer

Backlash over threat to outlaw supporters of boycott movement aimed at ending the continued occupation of the West Bank

An academic backlash has erupted in Israel over proposed new laws, backed by the government of Binyamin Netanyahu, to criminalise a handful of Israeli professors who openly support a campaign against the continuing occupation of the West Bank.

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel has gained rapid international support since Israeli troops stormed a Gaza-bound flotilla of aid ships in May, killing nine activists. Israeli attention has focused on the small number of activists, particularly in the country’s universities, who have openly supported an academic boycott of Israeli institutions.

A protest petition has been signed by 500 academics, including two former education ministers, following recent comments by Israel’s education minister, Gideon Saar, that the government intends to take action against the boycott’s supporters. A proposed bill introduced into the Israeli parliament – the Knesset – would outlaw boycotts and penalise their supporters. Individuals who initiated, encouraged or provided support or information for any boycott or divestment action would be made to pay damages to the companies affected. Foreign nationals involved in boycott activity would be banned from entering Israel for 10 years, and any “foreign state entity” engaged in such activity would be liable to pay damages.

Saar last week described the petition as hysterical and an attempt to silence contrary opinions. While the vast majority of the signatories do not support an academic boycott of Israel, they have joined forces over what they regard as the latest assault on freedom of expression in Israel. The petition states: “We have different and varied opinions about solving the difficult problems facing Israel, but there is one thing we are agreed on – freedom of expression and academic freedom are the very lifeblood of the academic system.”

Daniel Gutwein, a history professor at Haifa University who is one of the signatories, described the minister’s intervention as an attempt “to make Israeli academia docile, frightened and silent”.

Although the BDS campaign – in various forms – has been running for over half a decade, it has become an increasingly fraught issue inside Israel in the past year since a small number of academics publicly declared support for a boycott, including Neve Gordon, author of Israel’s Occupation and a former paratrooper who was badly injured while serving with the Israeli Defence Force.

Speaking to the Observer last week, Gordon said that many Israelis saw support for the BDS as “crossing a red line”. Adding that he had received recent death threats, he said: “I am worried about what is happening to the space for debate in Israel. I find that there is a proto-fascist mindset developing. One of the slogans you hear a lot now is no citizenship without loyalty. It is an inversion of the republican idea that the state should be loyal to the citizen.”

Israeli campaigners believe the Gaza flotilla incident represents a tipping point in raising support for boycotts. Musicians including Elvis Costello, Gil Scott Heron and the Pixies have cancelled shows in Israel. Hollywood actors also snubbed Jerusalem’s international film festival and internationally acclaimed writers have supported the BDS movement, which is gaining support in dozens of countries.

“It’s a different world to what it was even a month ago,” says Kobi Snitz, member of an Israeli BDS group. “Suddenly, all sorts of people are supporting it – people that you wouldn’t expect.”

What is most interesting, however, has been the impact in Israel itself. Israeli journalist and blogger Noam Sheizaf wrote recently that such actions are now forcing Israelis “to think about the political issues and about their consequences… For a country in a constant state of denial regarding the occupation, this is no small thing.” Sheizaf does not promote the boycott, but says: “I will gladly return concert tickets if that is the price for making Israelis understand that the occupation cannot go on.”

Adi Oz, culture editor on the Tel Aviv weekly Ha’ir, appeared on Israeli national radio explaining her support for recent boycott activity. “When the Pixies cancelled their concert here I was disappointed,” she says. “But I was not critical of the Pixies, I was critical of our government, because they are responsible for Israel’s isolation.” She adds that, post-flotilla, the cultural boycott is “something that everyone has a stand on – and some people are realising that they are in favour of it, without having thought about it before.” There has also been a spate of boycott-related discussion in the financial press. The daily business newspaper Calcalist ran an uncritical profile of the Israeli campaigners behind Who Profits, an online database of Israeli and international companies involved in the occupation of the West Bank.

The project’s co-ordinator, Dalit Baum, of the Coalition of Women for Peace, says: “Every day there is an article about this issue in the Israeli media, which creates a discussion about the economy of the occupation and raises the fact that there’s a problem.”

Lebanon UN force urges co-operation with peacekeepers: BBC

The head of the UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon has appealed for calm, following recent incidents in which villagers attacked soldiers.
Locals were angered by what they saw as plans by the UN force to undermine the Hezbollah militant group in the event of a renewed conflict with Israel.

The area is a Hezbollah stronghold.
In an open letter to residents, Maj Gen Alberto Asarta Cuevas said the best way to deal with any concerns was through dialogue, not by beating peacekeepers.

In the latest of the clashes, villagers on Saturday disarmed a French patrol of UN peacekeepers in the village of Tuline and attacked them with sticks, rocks and eggs before the army intervened.
Residents have complained that Unifil has stepped up its patrols in southern Lebanon, which has been under the de facto control of Hezbollah since the withdrawal of Israeli forces in 2000.

Open letter
“As you all know, some recent incidents have cast a shadow on the positive environment in which Unifil peacekeepers have been working, in close co-ordination with the Lebanese army, for your safety and security,” Maj Gen Cuevas said in a rare open letter released on Thursday.

The UN commander said Unifil respected the privacy and property of the villagers in the south, and that problems should be resolved by discussion “not by obstructing the work of the peacekeepers or by beating them”.

Tensions in southern Lebanon have increased after recent Israeli claims that weapons were flowing in to Hezbollah fighters.
On Wednesday, the Israeli military published an aerial photograph purporting to show Hezbollah weapons caches in the southern Lebanese village of al-Khiam.
Following the recent clashes, Hezbollah – which fought a devastating 2006 war with Israel – urged the peacekeepers to stick to their mandate.
“Unifil should always carry out its role… in a way so as not to arouse mistrust and worry of citizens as was the case during the latest exercises,” Hezbollah’s number two, Naim Qassem, said in a newspaper interview.
The UN Security Council is due to meet later on Friday, at France’s request, to discuss the confrontations and reaffirm the peacekeeping force’s right to free movement.

The UN force was originally formed in 1978 after Israeli troops entered southern Lebanon and began a 22-year occupation.
Security Council Resolution 1701, that ended the 2006 war, expanded the mandate of Unifil and paved the way for the Lebanese army to deploy in the sensitive border area.

Racism in the name of halakha: Haaretz Editorial

Rabbis are exploiting fears and inflaming emotions under pretense of enforcing Jewish religious law.
The letter circulated by three rabbis in south Tel Aviv in which they direct residents not to rent their apartments to migrants and refugees trying to settle in the city makes a pretense of concern for the welfare of the residents and compassion for asylum seekers. But it hardly manages to conceal the blatant racism lurking between the lines.

The rabbis warn residents not to give access to their homes to “illegal workers,” but it is clear that maintaining the rule of law is not their concern, inasmuch as they are not demanding similar treatment for Israeli citizens. As for the argument that the presence of the foreigners is causing a rise in crime and intermarriage, the rabbis are even taking the law into their own hands and bypassing city hall and the police.

The weaker population groups living in south Tel Aviv find themselves pressed to take in refugees, migrant workers and collaborators. This situation creates troubling friction that aggravates the residents’ sense of unfair treatment and alienation. It’s hard to ask the inhabitants of these deprived neighborhoods to take in the outcasts of the world with open arms without feeling threatened. In this complex reality, the role of religious and secular leaders is to try to bridge the gaps and find creative ways of living together.

The rabbis who signed the letter are not civil servants. However, the public is greatly influenced by their opinions. The Tel Aviv municipality has expended more than a little effort in taking care of migrant workers and could have used the rabbis’ help in making contact with the migrants and their leaders and attempting to integrate the newcomers into the neighborhood in the ways that have been done in many other countries. The rabbis, however, prefer to exploit residents’ fears and inflame emotions in the name of halakha, Jewish religious law.

Over the weekend, a courageous leader, Rabbi Yehuda Amital, who founded the Meimad political movement, passed away. His party carried the banner of tolerance, humanism and the search for peace in the name of religious faith, and though the members of his movement were always a minority, they provided an important alternative to ultra-Orthodox-nationalist radicalization.

In recent years, Rabbi Amital’s students and followers have fallen silent, and the status of rabbis such as those who wrote the letter about the migrants has grown stronger. It can be hoped that the municipality will understand the damage they are doing and will publicly disassociate the city from their questionable activities and instead provide the option of an alternative, one of coexistence for all of the city’s residents – both temporary and permanent – a coexistence free of fear and racism.

A peace crime: Haaretz

What more can Assad say that he hasn’t already? How long must he knock in vain on Israel’s locked door?
By Gideon Levy
It couldn’t have been spelled out more explicitly, clearly and emphatically. Read and judge for yourselves: “Our position is clear: When Israel returns the entire Golan Heights, of course we will sign a peace agreement with it …. What’s the point of peace if the embassy is surrounded by security, if there is no trade and tourism between the two countries? That’s not peace. That’s a permanent cease-fire agreement. This is what I say to whoever comes to us to talk about the Syrian track: We are interested in a comprehensive peace, i.e., normal relations.”

Who said this to whom? Syrian President Bashar Assad to the Lebanese newspaper As-Safir last week. These astounding things were said to Arab, not Western ears, and they went virtually unnoticed here. Can you believe it?

What more can Assad say that he hasn’t already? How many more times does he have to declare his peaceful intentions before someone wakes up here? How long must he knock in vain on Israel’s locked door? And if that were not enough, he also called on Turkey to work to calm the crisis with Israel so it can mediate between Israel and Syria.

Assad’s words should have been headline news last week and in the coming weeks. Anwar Sadat said less before he came to Israel. In those days we were excited by his words, today we brazenly disregard such statements. This leads to only one conclusion: Israel does not want peace with Syria. Period. It prefers the Golan over peace with one of its biggest and most dangerous enemies. It prefers real estate, bed and breakfasts, mineral water, trendy wine and a few thousand settlers over a strategic change in its status.

Just imagine what would happen if we emerged from the ruins of our international status to sign a peace agreement with Syria – how the international climate regarding us would suddenly change, how the “axis of evil” would crack and Iran’s strongholds weaken, how Hezbollah would get a black eye, more than in all the Lebanon wars. And maybe even Gilad Shalit, held by the Damascus-based Hamas, would be freed. Sound too good to be true? Maybe, but Israel is not even trying. A prime minister who ignores this chance is no less than a peace criminal.

Instead of the Shalit march that has just ended, a different march should have set out this week, one more massive and determined, calling on the Israeli government, the peace refuser, to do something. Hoarse shouts should have gone up: Peace with Syria now. But this march will not go forward this week. Apparently it will never happen. Singer-songwriter Shlomo Artzi, Zubin Mehta and the respectable demonstrators who marched on behalf of one soldier will not do so to support a move that could save the lives of many soldiers and civilians. Why? Because that takes courage. Why? Because Assad was right when he told La Repubblica in Italy: “Israeli society has tilted too far to the right, and it is not capable of making peace with Syria.”

True, they say the Mossad chief thinks that Assad will never make peace because the whole justification for his regime is based on hostility toward Israel. Our experts are never wrong, but similar things were said about Sadat. True, Assad also said other things. Other? Not really. He said that if he does not succeed through peace, he will try to liberate the Golan through resistance. Illogical? Illegitimate? Not a reason to try to challenge him? What do we have to lose but the chance? Even the latest fig leaf a few prime ministers have used here – the assessment that the U.S. opposes peace with Syria – is absurd. Does anyone see U.S. President Barack Obama opposing a peace move with Syria? What a pity that he is not pressing Israel to move ahead with it.

And then there is the old refrain: “Assad doesn’t mean it.” When Arab leaders make threats, they mean it; when they talk peace, they don’t. And also: “We’ll return the Golan and end up with a piece of paper and missiles.” Remember how that was said about Egypt? But we persist: The prime minister is criminally missing a historic chance for peace, and we yawn apathetically. Sounds logical, right?

Continue reading July 11, 2010

July 10, 2010

Israeli Arab MK: Libyan aid ship won’t change course, headed for Gaza: Haaretz

Foreign Ministry announced earlier that organizers of Gaza-bound mission agreed to dock in Egypt rather than violate Gaza naval blockade.
A Libyan aid ship will head to Gaza’s port and will not be diverted, Palestinian Legislative Council member Jamal Al-Khudari and Israeli Arab MK Ahmed Tibi told the Palestinian news agency Ma’an on Saturday.
Al-Khudari, head of the Popular Committee Against the Siege, told Ma’an that he had been in constant contact with the organizers of the ship, who are expected to bring 2,000 tons of humanitarian aid to Gaza despite an Israeli naval blockade on the Hamas-ruled territory.

Earlier Saturday, Israel’s Foreign Ministry said that the Moldavian-flagged ship would not dock in Gaza, but would instead dock in Egypt’s el-Arish on the coast of the Sinai Peninsula.
According to the ministry, the change in destination was agreed to by the ship’s captain. It reportedly followed talks between Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and his Greek and Moldavian counterparts.
A spokesman at the Greek Foreign Ministry said the ship would head for El Arish. An official from ACA Shipping, which owns the ship, told Reuters ahead of the ship’s departure that “the ship will leave in a few minutes for Gaza. If they don’t let us reach there [Gaza] we will head to El Arish harbor in Egypt.”

The ship – named the “Amalthia” – was set to depart Saturday from the Greek port of Lavrio with 12 crew and 15 activists and supporters on board, and about 2,000 tons of humanitarian aid supplied by the Gadhafi International Charity and Development Association, headed by Saif Al-Islam Gaddafi, the second-born son of the Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi.

Tibi, of Israel’s Ra’am Ta’al party, confirmed that the ship had set sail and would arrive in Gaza some 40 hours after the departure. The Israeli Arab MK had told Israel Radio earlier that “sailing to Gaza is a political and humane act. I don’t know what Israel will do, because it has vowed to stop the ship, but Gaza remains the destination.”

“Sailing [the aid ship] is a form of passive resistance, which is preferable to any other form of resistance,” Tibi added.
Tibi had assisted the ship’s Libyan organizers, providing them with a list of items needed by residents of the Gaza Strip.
In an interview with Army Radio, Tibi confirmed a report in the Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper that the list included medicines, generators for hospitals and a type of children’s milk not available in Gaza.

On Friday, Israel launched a diplomatic move at the United Nations in efforts to enlist the international community to help prevent the Libyan aid ship from sailing to Gaza.
In an official letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Israeli ambassador to the UN Gabriela Shalev wrote that “Israel calls upon the international community to exert its influence on the government of Libya to demonstrate responsibility and prevent the ship from departing to the Gaza Strip.”

Shalev’s letter to Ban went on to clarify that “Israel reserves the right under international law to prevent this ship from violating the existing naval blockade on the Gaza Strip.”
Israel imposed the blockade on Gaza in 2007 following a bloody Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip. Israel recently eased the terms of the land blockade on the territory, following a deadly raid of a Turkish aid ship, but the naval blockade has so far remained in place.

In the letter, Shalev further urged the international community “to discourage their nationals from taking part in such action,” adding that Israel “expects the international community to ensure that this ship does not sail.”

“The declared intentions of this mission are even more questionable and provocative given the recent measures taken by Israel to ensure the increase of humanitarian aid flowing into the Gaza Strip,” the letter went on to say, adding that Israel has taken upon itself the responsibility of ensuring the transfer of humanitarian aid into the Palestinian territory.
Copies of the letter were also submitted to the current president of the UN Security Council as well as the president of the General Assembly, a Libyan national who previously served as Libya’s foreign minister.

Gaza aid ship to dock in Egypt after Israel pressure: BBC

E-mail this to a friendPrintable version The Amalthea is carrying 2,000 tonnes of food, medicine and other items
A ship with supplies for Gaza will dock at el-Arish in Egypt, officials say, after Israeli pressure to stop the vessel breaking its Gaza blockade.

The Moldovan-flagged ship chartered by a charity run by the son of Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi, left a Greek port on Saturday.

Israel asked for help from the UN, and had talks with Greece and Moldova. But organisers insist they will go to Gaza.

An Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound ship in May killed nine Turkish activists.

Israel insisted its troops were defending themselves but the raid sparked international condemnation.

Israel recently eased its blockade, allowing in almost all consumer goods but maintaining a “blacklist” of some items.

Israel says its blockade of the Palestinian territory is needed to prevent the supply of weapons to the Hamas militant group which controls Gaza.

Diplomatic drive
The Amalthea, renamed Hope for the mission, set off from the Greek port of Lavrio, loaded with about 2,000 tonnes of food, cooking oil, medicines and pre-fabricated houses.

It has been chartered by the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation. Its chairman is Saif al-Islam Gaddafi.

The organisation said the 92m (302ft) vessel would also carry “a number of supporters who are keen on expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people”.

The BBC’s Malcolm Brabant in Lavrio says the Libyans clearly believe the time is right to test Israel’s resolve to maintain the naval blockade.

We are heading to Gaza for purely humanitarian reasons, we are not out to provoke anyone or to seek media attention

Youssef Sawwan
Director, Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation
Israel carried out intense diplomatic activity to prevent the Amalthea reaching Gaza.

A foreign ministry statement said that Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman had spoken with his Greek and Moldovan counterparts on the issue.

The statement said: “The foreign ministry believes that due to these talks, the ship will not reach Gaza.”

And Libya has now told the Greek government that the ship will now dock in Egypt’s el-Arish on the coast of the Sinai Peninsula.

“We confirmed their destination in talks with the Libyan ambassador and the ship’s agent,” foreign ministry spokesman Grigoris Delavekouras told Associated Press news agency.

Israel also lobbied the UN to take action.

Israel’s UN Ambassador Gabriela Shalev said in a letter: “Israel calls upon the international community to exert its influence on the government of Libya to demonstrate responsibility and prevent the ship from departing to the Gaza Strip.”

Ms Shalev also warned: “Israel reserves the right under international law to prevent this ship from violating the existing naval blockade on the Gaza Strip.”

She said the motives of the operators were “questionable and provocative”.

However, the director of the Libyan charity told the BBC the vessel was heading for Gaza.

“We have not cut deals with anyone,” Youssef Sawwan, told the BBC Arabic service.

“We are heading to Gaza for purely humanitarian reasons, we are not out to provoke anyone or to seek media attention,” Mr Sawwan said.

Report: Hezbollah on high alert over concern Israel ‘preparing something for us’: Haartez

Israel offered evidence of what it says is a growing threat from Hezbollah in southern Lebanon; Hezbollah says wants to avoid confrontation, Asharq al-Awsat reports.
Hezbollah warned on Saturday that Israel was preparing “something” in Lebanon and that the organization has been on high alert since Israel released aerial images to highlight the militant group’s activities close to the Israeli border earlier this week, the London-based Arabic language daily Asharq al-Awsat reported.

On Wednesday, Israel offered evidence of what it says is a growing threat from Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
In a briefing to journalists, Israel Defense Forces Colonel Ronen Marley revealed previously classified photographs to show what he said was a unit of 90 Hezbollah militants operating in the village of Al-Hiyam, where they were storing weapons close to hospitals and schools.
The Hezbollah official told Asharq al-Awsat that they were concerned that Israel was “preparing something for us” and added that they would act with restraint.

“We want to avoid heated political debates because we want the summer season to be perfect for the Lebanese despite Israeli attempts to execute what it failed to achieve in 2006,” Asharq al-Awsat quoted the Hezbollah official.
“We are sensing suspicious international activity, especially after Israeli chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi’s recent statements, all aimed at pressuring the Resistance,” the sources stressed.

Exposed: The truth about Israel’s land grab in the West Bank: The Independent

As President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meet, a report reveals 42 per cent of territory is controlled by settlers
By Catrina Stewart in Jerusalem and David Usborne
Wednesday, 7 July 2010
Jewish settlers, who claim a divine right to the whole of Israel, now control more than 42 per cent of the occupied West Bank, representing a powerful obstacle to the creation of a Palestinian state, a new report has revealed.

The jurisdiction of some 200 settlements, illegal under international law, cover much more of the occupied Palestinian territory than previously thought. And a large section of the land has been seized from private Palestinian landowners in defiance even of an Israeli supreme court ruling, the report said, a finding which sits uncomfortably with Israeli claims that it builds only on state land.

Drawing on official Israeli military maps and population statistics, the leading Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem, compiled the new findings, which were released just as the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, arrived in Washington to try to heal a gaping rift with US President Barack Obama over the issue of settlements.

“The settlement enterprise has been characterised, since its inception, by an instrumental, cynical, and even criminal approach to international law, local legislation, Israeli military orders, and Israeli law, which has enabled the continuous pilfering of land from Palestinians in the West Bank,” the report concluded.

Mr Obama’s demand for a freeze on illegal building has caused months of friction between his administration and the Israeli government. But the US president, facing mid-term elections in November, appeared eager to end the dispute with Israel yesterday.

He said the country was making “real progress” on improving conditions in the Gaza Strip and was serious about achieving peace.

The two men made a joint public appearance, carefully choreographed to convey mutual ease and friendship.

When Mr Netanyahu last visited the White House, in March, US anger at his refusal to end construction meant the Israeli premier was denied a joint appearance with Mr Obama before the cameras. This time the photo-op was granted and the two men afterwards shared a meal – although not a state dinner but a working lunch.

“Reports about the demise of the special US-Israel relationship aren’t premature, there are just flat wrong,” Mr Netanyahu said, in response to a reporter’s question about the perceived tensions. Playing to the same script, Mr Obama said that the “bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable”.

But the revelations in the B’Tselem report suggest that despite Mr Netanyahu’s stated desire for peace, his policy on settlements remains a dangerous obstacle to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state and therefore to a durable peace.

They cast an uncompromising spotlight on Israeli practices in the Palestinian territories that have long drawn international criticism for establishing “facts on the ground” hampering the creation of a viable Palestinian state.

While most of the Jewish settlement activity is concentrated in 1 per cent of the West Bank, settler councils have in fact fenced off or earmarked massive tracts of land, comprising some 42 per cent of the West Bank, B’Tselem said.

And despite the outlawing by Israel of settlement expansion on private Palestinian land, settlers have seized 21 per cent of land that Israel recognises is privately-owned.

B’Tselem alleged that Israel had devised an extensive system of loopholes to requisition Palestinian land.

At the same time, Israel has built bypass roads, erected new checkpoints, and taken control of scarce water resources to the benefit of the settlers. The measures have effectively created Palestinian enclaves within the West Bank, the report said.

Under international law, any Jewish settlements built on occupied territory are illegal. These include all the settlements in the West Bank, and thousands of Jewish homes in East Jerusalem, the Arab-dominated sector of the city annexed by Israel after the 1967 Six Day War. The international community still regards East Jerusalem as occupied territory. Despite firm commitments from successive Israeli governments to dismantle illegal outposts built after 2001 and to cease expansion of the settlements, Israel has provided millions of dollars worth of incentives to encourage poorer families to move into the West Bank. Some 300,000 settlers live in the West Bank.

Settlers immediately attacked the report, claiming it was timed as a spoiler to the Washington meeting.

In Washington, no concrete breakthroughs were announced but Mr Obama said that he believed the Israeli leader was ready to move towards direct talks with the Palestinians. Indirect talks began earlier this year, mediated by special US envoy George Mitchell.

Mr Netanyahu showed signs of responding to the pressure. “Peace is the best option for all of us and I think we have a unique opportunity to do it,” he said. “If we work together with [Palestinian] President [Mahmoud] Abbas then we can bring a great message of hope to our peoples, to the region and to the world.”

The Palestinians continue to refuse direct talks with Israel while new settlement construction is allowed. Settlement activity continues in East Jerusalem, which Palestinians aim to include in a new state.

With US-Israel ties already frayed, Mr Netanyahu postponed a visit to the White House last month in the aftermath of Israel’s deadly raid on a Turkish-led flotilla trying to deliver humanitarian goods to Gaza.

For Mr Obama, the danger is clear that any long-lasting record of animosity towards Israel could translate into lost votes at the mid-term elections.

Continue reading July 10, 2010

June 8, 2010

EDITOR: Name change required in order to bring peace to the Middle East!

Obama has at last worked out what is wrong with Israelis. No, it is not the fact that they feel the need to kill Palestinians and other Arabs, neither their brutal occupation. It is their deep suspicion of his middle name! So as his first name is already a Hebrew one, why not change his middle name to a Hebrew one also? Maybe Benjamin? Shimon? Avigdor? Just think how esteemed a US president will be with a name like Barack Avigdor Obama… on second thoughts, it will not work; he needs also to change Obama, it seems, in order to really increase the appeal. Go for it – Barack Avigdor Peres sounds so much better! Even the pictures look better!

Obama: Israelis suspicious of me because my middle name is Hussein: Haaretz

U.S. president tells Channel 2 Israel is unlikely to attack Iran without coordinating with the U.S.
U.S. President Barack Obama told Channel 2 News on Wednesday that he believed Israel would not try to surprise the U.S. with a unilateral attack on Iran.

U.S. President Barack Avigdor Peres and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu walking at the White House, on July 6, 2010. Photo by: Reuters

In an interview aired Thursday evening, Obama was asked whether he was concerned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would try to attack Iran without clearing the move with the U.S., to which the president replied “I think the relationship between Israel and the U.S. is sufficiently strong that neither of us try to surprise each other, but we try to coordinate on issues of mutual concern.”
Obama spoke to Channel 2’s Yonit Levy one day after what he described as an “excellent” meeting with Netanyahu at the White House. The two leaders met alone for about 90 minutes Tuesday evening, during which time they discussed the peace process with the Palestinians, the contested Iranian nuclear program, and the strategic understandings between their two countries on Tehran’s efforts to achieve nuclear capabilities.

Netanyahu promised Obama during their meeting that Israel would undertake confidence-building measures toward the Palestinian Authority in the coming days and weeks. These steps are likely to include the transfer of responsibility over more parts of the West Bank over to PA security forces.

During the interview Wednesday, when confronted with the anxiety that some Israelis feel toward him, Obama said that “some of it may just be the fact that my middle name is Hussein, and that creates suspicion.”

“Ironically, I’ve got a Chief of Staff named Rahm Israel Emmanuel. My top political advisor is somebody who is a descendent of Holocaust survivors. My closeness to the Jewish American community was probably what propelled me to the U.S. Senate,” Obama said.

“I think that sometimes, particularly in the Middle East, there’s the feeling of the friend of my enemy must be my enemy, and the truth of the matter is that my outreach to the Muslim community is designed precisely to reduce the antagonism and the dangers posed by a hostile Muslim world to Israel and to the West,” Obama went on to say.

Obama added that he believed a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians could be achieved within his current term. “I think [Netanyahu] understands we’ve got a fairly narrow window of opportunity… We probably won’t have a better opportunity than we have right now. And that has to be seized. It’s going to be difficult.”

The American President entirely sidestepped the question of whether the U.S. would pressure Israel to extend a current 10-month moratorium on construction in West Bank settlements, failing to give a clear answer. The moratorium is set to expire in September, and Netanyahu has announced that he would not extend the timeframe. The U.S., however, views continued Israeli settlement construction as a serious obstacle to peace efforts.

When asked whether he thought Netanyahu was the right man to strike a peace deal with the Palestinians, the U.S. President said that “I think Prime Minister Netanyahu may be very well positioned to bring this about,” adding that Israel will have to overcome many hurdles in order to affect the change required to “secure Israel for another 60 years”

In a separate interview with another Israeli media outlet, Obama proclaimed that he was not “blindly optimistic” regarding the chances of a Middle East peace agreement.
Israel is right to be skeptical about the peace process, he said in another yet-to-be-aired interview that was taped on Wednesday. He noted during the interview that many people thought the founding of Israel was impossible, so its very existence should be “a great source of hope.”

Meanwhile on Wednesday, Netanyahu told U.S. Jewish leaders that direct Palestinian-Israeli talks would begin “very soon”, but warned that they would be “very, very tough.”
Netanyahu told his cabinet earlier this week before flying to Washington that the time had come for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to prepare to meet directly with the Israelis, as it was the only way to advance peace.

Israelis and Palestinians have been holding indirect talks mediated by Obama’s special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell. Aides to Obama sounded a hopeful tone regarding the negotiations last week, telling reporters that the shuttle diplomacy between the two sides had paid off and the gaps have narrowed.

At a meeting with representatives of Jewish organizations at the Plaza Hotel late Wednesday, Netanyahu discussed the efforts to promote Middle East peace. “This is going to be a very, very tough negotiation,” he said, adding “the sooner the better.”
“Direct negotiations must begin right away, and we think that they will,” he said.

Israel threatens to expel Palestinian politicians from Jerusalem: The Guardian

Case of four men with affiliation to Hamas is first in which Israel has cited political grounds for expulsion from city
Mohammed Abu Tir, of the Palestinian Legislative Council, is in police custody for failing to leave the city by the end of June. Photograph: Stoyan Nenov/Reuters
Israeli authorities have threatened four Palestinian politicians with expulsion from Jerusalem because of their affiliation to Hamas in a case which could have wide ramifications for others deemed undesirable by the Jewish state.

Mohammed Abu Tir, 59, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), is in police custody for failing to leave the city by the end of last month. Instantly recognisable for his dyed orange beard, Abu Tir was released from an Israeli prison in May after almost four years, and was immediately told he must abandon political activity or leave Jerusalem.

Two other members of the PLC and a former Palestinian minister have moved into the grounds of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent in East Jerusalem in protest at the deportation orders.

The men’s cases are to be heard by the supreme court in September. However the court rejected a plea to prohibit deportation in the interim, so the men are at risk of being expelled from the city at any time.

The threatened deportations are part of a wider pattern of revoking the Jerusalem residency permits of Palestinians from the city. In most cases, Israel claims that the people it strips of the right to live in Jerusalem have voluntarily relocated to the West Bank or abroad. This is often contested by the individuals concerned and human rights groups representing them.

In 2008, more than 4,500 Palestinians were excluded from Jerusalem.

However the case of the four Hamas politicians is the first time Israel has cited political grounds for expelling people from the city.

“For the first time Israel is using a claim of disloyalty to revoke residency,” said Hasan Jabarin, director of the Israeli human rights group Adalah. “The consequences for Palestinians in East Jerusalem are dangerous. This case could open a new window to revoking residency on purely political grounds.”

Abu Tir was imprisoned with dozens of Hamas politicians and activists after the Palestinian election in January 2006, which was won by the Islamic militant party.

“The election was legal and transparent. They found themselves in jail simply because they were elected,” said Jabarin.

The men’s case has been raised in the past week in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Labour MP Andrew Slaughter asked whether the British government had raised the issue with the Israeli government.

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, urged Israel to “stop these sort of actions”. Ahmad Bahar, the deputy speaker of the Palestinian parliament, described the revocation of residency permits as a “massive ethnic cleansing campaign”.

More than 270,000 Palestinians live in East Jerusalem, which Israel occupied and annexed in 1967.

In a separate development, Israel’s supreme court has rejected a petition on behalf of Gazan lawyer Fatima Sharif to be allowed to travel to the West Bank to begin a masters degree in human rights, citing the “current political-security situation”.

The Israel Defence Forces made it clear in the court hearing yesterday that there would be no relaxation of the policy restricting the movement of Palestinians in and out of Gaza except in the most extreme circumstances, despite Israel’s decision to ease its blockade of the territory.

EDITOR: Good news! Fewer war criminal to travel in Europe this year!

Counter Terrorism Bureau warns all Israelis traveling abroad: Haaretz

Bureau issues travel advisory warning of likely revenge attacks against Israelis by Iran or Hezbollah.
Israel’s Counter Terrorism Bureau on Thursday issued a travel advisory calling for Israelis to keep their wits about them in all parts of the world, suspicious of revenge attacks by Iran and Hezbollah.
According to the warning, Hezbollah continues to blame Israel for the assassination of Imad Mughniyeh, the Lebanese militia’s former operations officer, and Iran blames Israel for the death of a nuclear scientist in Tehran.

The bureau statement reads “according to our intelligence, there continue to be threats of revenge killings or kidnappings of Israelis traveling outside the country, especially businesspeople and high-ranking ex-government officials.”

The bureau advised Israelis traveling abroad to take precautions, completely avoid visiting countries mentioned in travel advisories and refuse all unexpected or tempting business or social offers and refuse all unexpected invitations to meetings, especially in remote areas and after dark.

The bureau further advised Israelis to refrain from entering a hotel room or place of residence and from receiving suspicious or unexpected visitors.

On extended stays abroad, the bureau advised altering one’s personal habits by varying traffic routes, restaurants, entertainment venues and hotels frequented.

An excellent meeting: Haaretz

Two statesmen met in Washington on Tuesday who are looking smaller and smaller, who are taking smaller and smaller steps.
By Gideon Levy
It really was an excellent meeting: The chance that a binational state will be established has improved as a result; relations between Israel and the United States are indeed “marvelous.” Israel can continue with the whims of its occupation. The president of the United States proved Tuesday that perhaps there has been change, but not as far as we are concerned.

If there remained any vestiges of hope in the Middle East from Barack Obama, they have dissipated; if some people still expected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to lead a courageous move, they now know they made a mistake (and misled others ).
The masked ball is at its peak: Preening each other, Obama and Netanyahu have proved that even their heavy layer of makeup can no longer hide the wrinkles. The worn-out, wizened old face of the longest “peace process” in history has been awarded another surprising and incomprehensible extention. It’s on its way nowhere.

The “warm” and “sympathetic” reception, albeit a little forced, including the presidential dog, Bo, the meeting of the wives, with the U.S. president accompanying the Israeli prime minister to the car in an “unprecedented” way, as the press enthused, cannot obscure reality. The reality is that Israel has again managed to fool not only America, but even its most promising president in years.

It was enough to listen to the joint press conference to understand, or better yet, not understand, where we are headed. Will the freeze continue? Obama and Netanyahu squirmed, formulated and obfuscated, and no clear answer was forthcoming. If there was a time when people marveled at Henry Kissinger’s “constructive ambiguity,” now we have destructive ambiguity. Even when it came to the minimum move of a construction freeze, without which there is no proof of serious intent on Israel’s part, the two leaders threw up a smoke screen. A cowardly yes-and-no by both.

More than anything, the meeting proved that the criminal waste of time will go on. A year and a half has passed since the two took office, and almost nothing has changed except lip service to the freeze. A few lifted roadblocks here, a little less blockade of Gaza there – all relatively marginal matters, a bogus substitute for a bold jump over the abyss, without which nothing will move.

When direct talks become a goal, without anyone having a clue what Israel’s position is – a strange negotiation in which everyone knows what the Palestinians want and no one knows for sure what Israel wants – the wheel not only does not go forward, it goes backward. There are plenty of excuses and explanations: Obama has the congressional elections ahead of him, so he mustn’t make Netanyahu angry.

After that, the footfalls of the presidential elections can be heard, and then he certainly must not anger the Jews. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman is pressuring Netanyahu now; tomorrow it might be Likud MK Danny Danon, and after all, you can’t expect Netanyahu to commit political suicide. And there you have it, his term in office is over, with no achievements. Good for you, Obama; bravo Netanyahu. You managed to make a mockery of each other, and together, of us all.

Netanyahu will be coming back to Israel over the weekend, adorned with false accomplishments. The settlers will mark a major achievement. Even if they don’t not admit it – they are never satisfied, after all – they can rejoice secretly. Their project will continue to prosper. If they have doubled their numbers since the Oslo Accords, now they can triple them.

And then what? Here then is a question for Obama and Netanyahu: Where to? No playing for time can blur the question. Where are they headed? What will improve in another year? What will be more promising in another two years? The Syrian president is knocking at the door begging for peace with Israel, and the two leaders are ignoring him. Will he still be knocking in two years? The Arab League’s initiative is still valid; terror has almost ceased. What will the situation be after they have finished compromising over the freeze in construction of balconies and ritual baths?

Two statesmen met in Washington on Tuesday who are looking smaller and smaller, who are taking smaller and smaller steps. They have decided not to decide, which in itself is a decision. When the chance of a two-state solution has long since entered injury time, they have decided on more extra time. Get ready for the binational state, or the next round of bloodletting.

Continue reading June 8, 2010

July 6, 2010

EDITOR: The love story hots up again…

After all the entreaties, demands, threats and sweet-talk, and after the Gaza and Flotilla massacres, a freeze on settlements that never was, and the new huge Jerusalem settlements, you would have thought that Obama has by now found out the basic facts about Israeli occupation, and he might actually DO something, rather than talk about it. Instead, Netanyahu is invited for a grand visit to the White House, which must be the prize for the massacres, or else it is difficult to explain…

After all is said and done, Obabma seems to be even more supportive than those before him, Clinton and Bush the Father and the Son. While talking tough, he has been walking with a big carrot, as far as Israel is concerned. It is now even clearer than before, that we have nothing to expect for from the American administration, whoiever happens to live in the White House at the time.

The differences between Binyamin Netanyahu and Barack Obama: The Guardian

Why the two politicians have not enjoyed the rapport of their predecessors
Binyamin Netanyahu at a press conference. Photograph: Jim Hollander/EPA
Binyamin Netanyahu and Barack Obama, who took office within a month of each other, have not enjoyed the warm rapport felt between many of their predecessors.

Obama’s early demand for a halt to settlement expansion in the West Bank was met with evasion and foot-dragging by Netanyahu, who clearly believed he had outflanked the new US president.

A temporary freeze was eventually wrung out of Israel. But things went further downhill when a big settlement housing project was announced during vice-president Joe Biden’s visit to Jerusalem in March.

The White House made its displeasure known during Netanyahu’s subsequent visit to Washington when the customary photo opportunity was humiliatingly denied to him.

The US was further angered by Israel’s deadly interception of the flotilla carrying aid to Gaza, followed by its refusal to accept demands for an international inquiry.

Ahead of today’s attempts to publicly paper over the cracks between the two sides, many Israeli commentators have been critical of Netanyahu for endangering the traditionally close and supportive relationship between the two countries.

Americans for Peace Now to Obama: Extend settlement freeze: Haaretz

Ahead of PM Netanyahu’s White House meeting with U.S. President Obama, Americans for Peace Now deliver petition to Obama with nearly 16,000 signatures calling for extension of settlement freeze.
Americans for Peace Now delivered a petition to U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday, calling on him to press Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to extend the freeze on Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank, set to expire in late September.

The petition, with 15,962 signatures, arrived ahead of a meeting between Obama and Netanyahu at the White House on Tuesday.
“These thousands of voices are expressing what we all know: Peace for Israel is more important than settlement expansion. American leadership toward a two-state solution is essential, and Israel’s future depends on reaching such a solution,” APN’s president and CEO Debra DeLee said.

Last November, Netanyahu declared a 10-month freeze in settlement construction. The upcoming expiration of the freeze is expected to be an issue discussed during Tuesday’s meeting between Obama and Netanyahu at the White House.

Israeli soldier charged with manslaughter during Gaza offensive: The Guardian

Unnamed staff sergeant indicted in connection with killing of two Palestinian women during 2008-09 Israeli Defence Force operation
Israeli infantry soldiers on the Gaza border: A soldier has been charged with manslaughter after the 2008-09 Israeli offensive. Photograph: Baz Ratner/Reuters
An Israeli soldier was today charged with manslaughter during the 2008-09 offensive in Gaza – a move that will bring the military’s conduct during the conflict, in which hundreds of Palestinian civilians were killed, into fresh focus.

The unnamed staff sergeant was indicted in connection with the killing of two Palestinian women who were part of a group witnesses said were carrying white flags.

According to reports and testimonies at the time, 35-year-old Majda Abu Hajaj and her mother, Rieyh, 64, were among 30 people, including children, trying to leave a house where they had taken shelter on 4 January 2009. The group was fired on and the two women were killed.

An Israeli military statement issued today said the charge was based on evidence that the soldier, a marksman, “deliberately targeted an individual walking with a group of people waving a white flag without being ordered or authorised to do so”.

In a second case, a battalion commander was disciplined in connection with a claim that a Palestinian man, Majdi Abed-Rabo, had been used as a “human shield”.

An Israeli Defence Force (IDF) investigation found the commander had “authorised the sending of a Palestinian man into a house … sheltering terrorists in order to convince them to exit the house”.

This, according to the IDF statement, was a deviation from “authorised and appropriate IDF behaviour”.

According to a graphic account of the incident given to reporters at the time, Abed-Rabo said he was forced, at gunpoint, to go ahead of Israeli soldiers into buildings suspected of housing Palestinian militants. The use of human shields is prohibited under the fourth Geneva convention.

Disciplinary action has also been taken against a third soldier, a captain, for failing to exercise appropriate judgment in ordering an air strike close to a mosque. The IDF said the strike was targeted at a militant launching rockets at Israel.

According to witnesses, around 200 people were praying in the Ibrahim al-Maqadna mosque at the time and at least 13 people, including six children, were killed.

The IDF today said an investigation had concluded that the attack “did not violate the international laws of warfare because the attack did not target the mosque, rather it targeted a terror operative”. It said “no possibility of harming civilians was identified”.

A criminal investigation has been ordered in a fourth case, an airstrike on a residence in Zaitoun, where around 100 members of one family, the al-Samounis, were staying.

There were two earlier indictments arising out of the three-week military operation in Gaza – one for theft and the other for overstepping authority in a case in which soldiers ordered a Palestinian child to open a suspicious bag.

Turkey’s president says Israel acting ‘irrationally’: Haaretz

Turkish President Abdullah Gul says that divisions within Israel’s governing coalition were stopping Israel from repairing relations with Turkey in the wake of the Gaza flotilla affair.
Turkey’s President Abdullah Gul said on Tuesday that divisions within Israel’s governing coalition were stopping Israel from repairing relations ruined by the storming of a Gaza-bound aid ship over a month ago.

Gul said Israel’s apparent readiness to become more isolated by ditching relations with a country that had been its only Muslim ally was irrational.
“They don’t have many friends in the region, ” Gul said. “Now it seems they want to get rid of the relationship with Turkey.”

The United States, a mutual ally of Israel and NATO-member Turkey, has quietly encouraged the two governments to overcome their differences.
But in comments as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prepared to meet President Barack Obama in the United States on Tuesday, Gul said that he believed bitter rivalries within the Israeli coalition were stopping a rapprochement.

“As far as I can see, the internal political strife in Israel is very harsh. They undermine each other… they always block one another,” Gul said.
“It is important that everyone is aware of what kind of politics is going on there,” Gul said. “My own impression is that they don’t have the ability to act rationally.”

Nine Turkish pro-Palestinian activists were killed when Israeli marines stormed the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara in international waters on May 31, after which Turkey withdrew its ambassador, suspended joint military exercises and closed Turkish airspace to Israeli military planes.
Turkey has demanded an apology, compensation for victims’ families and an international inquiry into the incident. It doubts the impartiality of an Israeli inquiry begun last month.

Turkey also led calls for an end to the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu warned on Monday that Turkey would not wait forever and without going into specifics he said Turkey would cut off ties if Israel failed to start making amends.

Should the Israeli commission rule that the raid was indeed unfair and the Israeli government apologized in line with those findings, Turkey could be satisfied, Davutoglu added.

On Tuesday, the Turkish foreign minister renewed his demand for an Israeli apology and criticized his Israeli counterpart Avigdor Lieberman’s approach to the issue.

“What Lieberman says has no value for us,” Davutoglu said in an interview with Turkish television network TGRT.

Davutoglu said he did not view his Israeli counterpart as a proper go-between “owing to his rhetoric and attitude.”

Israel maintains the marines fired in self defense after a boarding party was attacked by activists armed with metal clubs and knives.

Israel has partially relaxed its blockade of Gaza following the international outcry over the incident, but argues that a blockade is needed to choke off the supply of arms to Hamas Islamists running the enclave of 1.5 million people.

Gul said a meeting between ministers of the two governments in Brussels last Wednesday was requested by the Israeli side and was supposed to have been secret; but news of the talks was leaked by other factions in Netanyahu’s cabinet who wanted to stop any progress.

“There were those who were not happy with this, and the situation remains frozen.”

The meeting between Davutoglu and Israeli Trade and Industry Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer had been the first face to face contacts between senior officials since the attack on the aid flotilla on May 31.

Lieberman said he had not been informed of the meeting as a row broke out within the Israeli cabinet.

Netanyahu subsequently said that while his government regretted the loss of life and wanted to stop relations deteriorating further there would be no apology as the Israeli soldiers had acted in self-defense. Lieberman also ruled out an apology.

Although Turkey is heading towards an election a year away, and politics are highly charged, there has been cross-party support for the government’s stance towards Israel.

Threat to Palestinian parliamentarians: The Guardian Letters

Mohammed Abu Tir, Ahmed Othwan and Mohammed Tutah, in addition to the former minister for Jerusalem affairs, Khalid Abu Arafa, have been issued with notices by the Israeli authorities of eviction to leave their homes in occupied east Jerusalem. On 30 June, the Israelis detained Abu Tir in preparation for his expulsion, whilst Othwan, Tutah and Abu Arafa have sought refuge in the office of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Jerusalem. Israel, the occupying power, claims these members of the Palestinian legislature are being served with notices as their participation in the Palestinian legislature proves non-allegiance to Israel. The parliamentarians have been informed that they may only remain if they resign from the Palestinian legislature.

It is without doubt that as elected representatives of the Palestinian Legislative Council they should not be removed from the areas which they have been elected to represent. We call for the British government to support the right of these parliamentarians to live in their home and to uphold the principles of the fourth Geneva convention which prohibits the expulsion of a protected people by an occupying power “regardless of their motive”. Any breach of this convention constitutes a war crime and as such Israel’s political and military leadership should be held accountable.

Caroline Lucas MP (Green)

John McHugo Chair, Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine

Betty Hunter General secretary, Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Ismail Patel Chair, Friends of Al-Aqsa

Richard Burden MP and Martin Linton Labour Friends of Palestine

Continue reading July 6, 2010

July 5, 2010

Ultra Orthodox, by Khalil Bendib

Drop the security excuse: Haaretz Editorial

The prime minister needs to make the difficult decision to secure Gilad Shalit’s release immediately and stop hiding behind security rationales to avoid that decision.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s explanations for the delay in a deal for the return of captive soldier Gilad Shalit are gradually being reduced to a single key argument: It is impossible to free heavyweight prisoners – people responsible for major terror attacks – because they will then endanger the welfare of all Israelis. In his speech last Thursday, Netanyahu explained that he is not willing to release such prisoners into the West Bank, because once there, they are liable to establish new terrorist networks that would threaten both Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

To refute this argument, it is sufficient to listen to what GOC Central Command Avi Mizrahi told Haaretz about six weeks ago: “The IDF can deal with this. … I’m not afraid of the return of these terrorists; it takes them a long time to reconnect to the territory.”
Mizrahi, who is responsible for the West Bank, can be relied on to know what he is talking about, even if his view contradicts that of Netanyahu.
But one need not rely on the view of any particular officer, because it is clear that the decision is not military, but political. The Israel Defense Forces’ ability to deal with 40 or 400 terrorists is not in question. Were it not for this ability, these prisoners would not currently be in jail.

The prime minister’s argument essentially equates the threat that these dozens of terrorists would pose if released with the far greater threats posed, for example, by Hezbollah or Iran. Yet Netanyahu has never been heard to say that Israel is incapable of dealing with these threats.

There is no choice but to conclude that the prime minister is trying to hide behind security rationales in order to avoid a difficult political and diplomatic decision. No one disputes that the price Hamas is demanding for the kidnapped soldier is a heavy one, but both in principle and in practice, Israel has already agreed to pay it. The proof of this is those 1,000 prisoners whom Netanyahu himself described as the agreed-upon price.

The prime minister would be wise not to put the public and its support for the Shalit family to the test. His weak arguments merely deepen the public’s distrust of his position.

He must make the difficult decision to secure Shalit’s release immediately. Four years of negotiation are a heavy price in and of themselves – both for Shalit and his family, and for a frustrated public.

US to press Binyamin Netanyahu to extend freeze on settlements: The Guardian

Barack Obama is anxious to build on what has been achieved since settlements freeze started in November
An armed Jewish settler in the occupied West Bank with Israeli soldiers during a demonstration in Beit Omar village near Hebron on Saturday. Photograph: Hazem Bader/AFP/Getty Images
Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, will come under intense pressure on Tuesday to extend his 10-month freeze on the building of settlements in the West Bank when he meets President Barack Obama in Washington – amid warnings from the Israeli right that they will vigorously oppose such a move.

An armed Jewish settler in the occupied West Bank with Israeli soldiers during a demonstration in Beit Omar village near Hebron on Saturday. Photograph: Hazem Bader/AFP/Getty Images

Despite the moratorium, building in settlements has continued in the past seven months thanks to loopholes and violations. Preparations are under way for a construction boom this autumn.

Obama is expected to press hard for a continuation of the ban in the knowledge that large-scale settlement expansion would imperil the fragile “proximity” talks between Israel and the Palestinians. White House aides last week made it clear that the president wants to “capitalise on the momentum” provided by the freeze.

Today, Netanyahu said the main goal of the White House meeting would be to move toward direct peace talks with the Palestinians. “Whoever wants peace must hold direct talks for peace. I hope this will be one of the results of the visit to Washington,” he said. But he has given little indication which concessions he is prepared to make and said in a TV interview on Friday that the government’s position on settlements had not changed.

The 10-month moratorium, which excludes building in East Jerusalem, is due to end at around the same time as the four-month period set for proximity talks comes to an end. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, set a building freeze as a precondition for entering talks.

Israel’s combative foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman – a settler himself – has publicly urged Netanyahu to resist pressure to extend the freeze, saying concessions to Palestinians have not brought results. September would pose a “big test” for Israel, he said.

At least two other members of Netanyahu’s inner cabinet of seven have made their position clear. “We will renew building when the moratorium ends,” said Moshe Ya’alon. “There is no chance that Netanyahu will extend the freeze,” said Benny Begin.

Last week, leaders of the settlers warned that they would launch an “unprecedented struggle” if they were not permitted to resume building.

“If Netanyahu returns from the US with another commitment to a freeze, he will encounter an unprecedented response of settlers who will hound him no matter where he goes,” they said in a statement.

Settlers’ organisations have taken advertisements in the Israeli press, accusing the prime minister of “trampling on” the settlements. And Settlement Watch, an Israeli organisation, said that preparations are being made for a massive construction boom this autumn on the assumption the moratorium will be lifted.

“There are approved plans for between 40,000 and 50,000 housing units waiting,” said Hagit Ofran. “The only thing they need is for the mayor [of each settlement] to sign the permit. On 26 September, those mayors will have a big pile of permits on their desks.”

Under the terms of the freeze, plans can be drawn up for new buildings, but construction cannot begin. The order, which covers both private and public projects, expires at midnight on 25 September.

There are more than 300,000 Israelis living in settlements on occupied land on the West Bank, which are illegal under international law. There are another 200,000 settlers in East Jerusalem. The Palestinians argue that the massive growth in settlements, along with their infrastructure of roads and services, plus military protection, is making a viable state an impossibility.

The freeze, which began last November, was wrung out of Netanyahu by the White House after months of negotiation and against the opposition of the prime minister’s rightwing coalition partners. Work that had already begun was exempted. In the months running up to November, when a moratorium was widely anticipated, there was “a race” to start new projects, according to Settlement Watch. Around three-quarters of the way through the freeze, there are more than 2,000 housing units under construction in West Bank settlements, she said.

The defence ministry said in February that 29 settlements – including Ma’ale Adumim, a massive settlement east of Jerusalem – were in breach of the freeze order. Settlement Watch claims another 14 are also in violation.

In the large settlement of Qiriyat Arba, near the southern West Bank city of Hebron, building continued last week on a substantial number of homes. Settlement Watch says that work started on most of the units after the freeze and they are therefore in breach of the moratorium. No one from the settlement’s council was available for comment.

There are suggestions that, rather than a simple end or extension to the moratorium, Netanyahu could attempt to fudge the issue by granting more exemptions while maintaining that the “freeze” continues.

Deputy prime minister Dan Meridor has proposed lifting the moratorium in the big settlement blocs that are widely expected to remain part of Israel in a peace deal, but maintaining a freeze in smaller – often ideologically-driven – settlements.

“I have suggested that we build in areas that will remain part of Israel in the future, and not in those areas that won’t be part of Israel,” he said. “We have to build [in the settlements] wisely so as not to harm the negotiations with the Palestinians.”

EDITOR: The real face of the occupation

The next item is illuminating for those not fully cognisant of the brutality of the IOF. The danse macabre in this video is evidence of what soldiers really think, and how they are perceiving their function.

IDF soldiers face penalty after uploading Hebron dance video to YouTube: Haaretz

WATCH: Video of soldiers, armed and wearing bulletproof vests, patrolling as a Muslim call to prayer is heard. Then the music changes and they break into a Macarena-like dance.
A number of Israel Defense Forces soldiers could face disciplinary action after they uploaded to YouTube a video of themselves stopping a patrol in the West Bank to dance to American electro-pop singer Kesha’s hit Tick Tock.

The video “Batallion 50 Rock the Hebron Casbah” shows six dancing Nahal Brigade soldiers, armed and wearing bulletproof vests, patrolling as a Muslim call to prayer is heard. Then the music changes and they break into a Macarena-like dance.

The video was uploaded over the weekend, and quickly spread across Facebook pages and blogs.

By late afternoon on Monday, the video was removed by those who uploaded it. Another version of the video was then uploaded by a different YouTube user, who titled it “It’s easy to laugh at the occupation when you’re the repressor (and a douche bag).”

The IDF said the video was a stunt carried out a few soldiers and that the issue was being taken care of by the commanding officers.

Similar clips involving other armies have grabbed headlines in recent months, including one of American forces in Afghanistan doing their take on a Lady Gaga song.

Continue reading July 5, 2010