• One day soon Israel and its blind defenders will speak like De Klerk
• Don’t worry, vulture capitalists will make money in Afghanistan for years to come
• Step by step, private companies must be held accountable for torture
• The Blogging Revolution gets endorsement in Calcutta

NOVANEWS

• State Dep’t has nothing to say about hunger strikers ‘one way or another’
• Thousands march across the West Bank in support of the prisoners’ hunger strike
• CNN’s Amanpour interviews Kopty and Pollak on Palestinian prisoner strike
• The Israeli consul is selling ‘brand Israel’, but very few in one upper west side synagogue are buying
• Liberal Zionists are afraid their parents will reject them if they come out
• Palestinians shut down a second int’l aid organization to demand action on dying hunger strikers
• ‘NYT’ child abuse story is latest episode in a great awakening
• Settlers knew Ulpana was built on privately-owned Palestinian land but went ahead
• Neocons + Goldberg see coalition as heightening likelihood of war

State Dep’t has nothing to say about hunger strikers ‘one way or another’

May 11, 2012

Philip Weiss

Today’s State Department briefing. And spokesperson Victoria Nuland has nothing to say about the hunger strikers, even as the news is all over global media. She takes the question. Meaning she might get back with a statement later. These people are on the verge of death. Shameful. Oh but Sec’y Clinton congratulated Netanyahu on his new unity government.

QUESTION: Okay. And one – a couple more. On the Palestinian prisoner issue, I wonder if you are aware of the situation of striking – hunger striking Palestinian prisoners?

MS. NULAND: I don’t have anything for you on that, Said.

QUESTION: Well, do you have a position on the hunger strike of prisoners who have not been charged with anything and they have been held for a long time? They’ve gone today – their 70^th day of a hunger strike. Thaer Halahla and many others, five others, are probably – are likely to – they could face – I mean, they could die in the next day or so. Would the United States Government take a position on that?

MS. NULAND: Well, let me take the question, Said, because frankly, I don’t have anything one way or the other. I don’t know if we have a comment on it.

QUESTION: Because, lastly, I mean, it – if something happens to these prisoners, it could be a flashpoint between Israelis and the Palestinians.

MS. NULAND: No, I understand the question. Let me take it, okay?

QUESTION: Thank you.

Thousands march across the West Bank in support of the prisoners’ hunger strike

May 11, 2012

Popular Struggle Coordination Committee

Palestinians march in support of prisoners on hunger strike, Nablus, May 11, 2011.
(Photo: Ahmad Al-Bazz/ActiveStills)

Press Release
Friday, May 11, 2012

Marches, demonstrations and clashes took place all across the West Bank in solidarity with the Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strike, on its 25th day.

Thousands took to the streets today in Palestinian cities and villages across the West Bank, in solidarity with over 2,000 Palestinian political prisoners on hunger strike.

Hundreds protested in the town of Beitunia, adjacent to Ramallah, in front of the Israeli Ofer prison and military court, which have become a recent flashpoint with nearly daily demonstrations. Several moderate injuries from rubber-coated bullets and tear-gas projectiles were recorded, including one to the head.

Twenty year-old Majd Barghouti was injured in the eye by a rubber-coated bullet shot by Israeli soldiers who tried to suppress another demonstration, in the village of Aboud, north-east of Ramallah. He was evacuated to the Ramallah hospital, where he is expected to undergo surgery.

In the village of Kufer Qaddoum, south-east of Nablus, hundreds went out to demonstrate despite a tight siege laid over the town from all sides. In their attempt to quell the protest, Israeli forces used tear-gas, rubber-coated bullets and a high-pressure water cannon hosing a foul-smelling liquid, which Israel calls the Skunk. About an hour into the demonstration, a group of soldiers shot live ammunition towards the protesters from a fairly short range, but did not manage to hit anyone.

Some 300 demonstrators gathered in the village of al-Walajeh, east of Bethlehem, which will soon be encircled by Israel’s Wall from all sides. The march advanced towards a nearby settler-road, and for a short time, protesters managed to re-take a house whose residents were expelled by Israel in 1948. As they pushed the protesters back into the village, soldiers used mass amounts of tear-gas and shot rubber-coated bullets.

Additionally, thousands of people marched through the cities of Hebron, Ramallah and Nablus, as well as in the villages of Bil’in, Nabi Saleh, Ni’ilin and al-Ma’asra.

Background
25 days ago, on April 17, some 2,000 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails launched an open-ended hunger. Their demands are simple and the strike’s slogan, echoing through the prison walls, is just as plain – liberty or death. The lives of all prisoners on strike are currently in danger, but among them is a smaller group, which has been striking for a longer period and whose lives are under immediate threat.

Thaer Halahleh and Bilal Diab have not eaten for well over 70 days – since the 29th of February. Israeli courts have rejected their appeals and refused to free them from administrative detention where they remain without charge or trial, subject to secret evidence and secret allegations. They are in critical condition.

Hassan Safadi has been refusing food since the 2nd of March, Omar Abu Shalal, 54, since the 4th of March, Mahmoud Sarsak, the only Gazan to have been incarcerated under Israel’s Illegal Combatants Law, since the 24th of March, Mohammed al-Taj, 40, also since the 24th of March and Ja’afar Ezzadeen, 41, since the 27th of march.

The prisoners’ key demands include:

Ending the policy of solitary confinement and isolation;
End to the use of administrative detentions;
The restoration of visitation rights to families of prisoners from the Gaza Strip, a right that has been denied to all families for more than 6 years;
Canceling ‘Shalit’ law, which restricts prisoners’ access to educational materials as punitive measure. The law remains intact despite a prisoner swap deal last October.
Ending systematic humiliation, including arbitrary strip searches, nightly raids and collective punishment.

Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike have been hit hard with retaliation from Israel Prison Services, including beatings, transferring from one prison to another, confiscation of salt (an act that could have severe health consequences for hunger strikers), denial of family and lawyer visits, and isolation and solitary confinement of hunger strikers.

CNN’s Amanpour interviews Kopty and Pollak on Palestinian prisoner strike

May 11, 2012

Adam Horowitz

The Israeli consul is selling ‘brand Israel’, but very few in one upper west side synagogue are buying

May 11, 2012

Philip Harris

Brand Israel

On Wednesday evening, May 9, Ido Aharoni, the Israeli consul general in New York, spoke at Ansche Chesed, a Conservative synagogue on New York’s Upper West Side to which our family belongs. I attended with two aims: to see how members of our quite liberal but strongly Zionist congregation responded to the talk, and secondarily to ask a question or make a comment if the audience turned out to be too willing to swallow what I was sure would be a large dose of Israeli hasbara. I was pleasantly surprised on several counts.

First, attendance was miniscule, with only 29 or 30 people in attendance out of a congregation of two to three hundred families. When I was growing up in Connecticut in the nineteen fifties and sixties, a talk by the Israeli consul would have packed the auditorium at my Conservative shul. Although there were no doubt other factors, including the fact that the talk was on a week night and not in the middle of one of Israel’s many wars, it had been announced in the synagogue’s newsletter and placed on the events calendar, and the rabbi followed up with an email on the morning of the talk. I interpret the scant turnout as a clear sign that large numbers of liberal, congregationally affiliated Jews are no longer interested in listening to what they probably peg as official Israeli propaganda.

By way of contrast I also note that a couple of years ago our rabbi, Jeremy Kalmanofsky, to his great credit scheduled a talk by Rabbi Arik Ascherman, Israeli-American co-founder of Rabbis for Human Rights in Israel. The talk, on the subject of Israeli house demolitions and anti-Arab violence by settlers in the Occupied Territories, was held in the same room as Wednesday’s gathering, but drew twice as many people.

Second, I expected the audience, which was heavily skewed in an elderly direction, would be very supportive of the Israeli consul, but I was wrong. The consul’s talk was entirely about the “Brand Israel” marketing campaign as the wave of the future in Zionist PR. Aharoni spoke frankly as if we were close allies, which I guess was his expectation. Instead, many in the overwhelmingly Zionist audience were quite dissatisfied with, and even hostile to, the hollow hasbara discourse and marketing plan which the consul described.

Although the talk had been billed as a discussion of the “successes and challenges of Israeli diplomacy,” the consul began by asking Rabbi Kalmanofsky what subject he should focus on. The rabbi specified the“delegitimization” of Israel and what could be done about it.

Aharoni then proposed to the audience a psychological experiment. How would we rate a Mr. Smith, a well-dressed, apparently prosperous man in his early sixties — “he’s actually sixty-four” — who appeared before us if we knew nothing about him? He answered this question by stating that “psychological research” has shown that, knowing nothing about him, we would rate him a five on a scale of one to ten.

Aharoni told us that a Mr. Jones, younger and not well-dressed, apparently poor, would appear next, and tell us that Mr. Smith was his next door neighbor, had built a fence between them that stole part of Mr. Jones’s land, and was settling some of his relatives on the stolen land. Now how would we rate Mr. Smith? Again he answered the question by stating that “research has shown” that we would lower our rating of Smith to a three.

Finally, Mr. Smith re-appears and denies Mr. Jones’s claims, stating that the supposedly stolen land has actually been in his family for three thousand years, and he has a document — the bible — to prove it. According to Aharoni our rating of Smith would now return to a five.

The point of this story is that Mr. Smith (Israel) can never get above a five in this context, that being what Aharoni referred to as the “geopolitical” aspects of the situation. According to Aharoni about seventy percent of Americans support Israel, but actually neither know nor care much about it. This is a result of that seventy percent being bombarded by an endless stream of news about the Arab-Israel conflict, which causes them to turn away from the whole subject.

Aharoni’s solution to the problem — Israel being stuck at a neutral five rating, large segments of the public not really caring about or identifying with Israel — is to completely change the conversation from a broadly targeted campaign selling Israel’s side of the conflict story, to a narrowly targeted campaign that totally ignores the conflict and instead promotes Israel’s positive aspects to specific niche markets. Ths campaign is “Brand Israel”, and unless I misheard him, Aharoni claimed that he had been an originator of the concept. The target markets he mentioned included:

• Gays — the infamous pinkwashing with Tel Aviv’s gay scene as the lure
• Runners — Israel has three marathons and one Ironman triathlon each year, as well as a number of half marathons
• Investors — (see Start-up Nation by Dan Senor and Saul Singer)
• Birding — many inter-continental bird migration routes meet over Israel, making Israel a birder’s paradise every spring and fall, as hundreds of avian species cross the region
• Environmentalists (e.g., Green Zionist Alliance)
• Art, music, film, fashion (e.g. AbbaNibi.com)

Aharoni claimed that “Brand Israel” is having its intended effect, that tourism in Israel is up substantially since the campaign began. Almost as an afterthought, as if to say “we’re getting our money’s worth”, he added that the Israeli government has spent a lot of money on market research to design the “Brand Israel” campaign, including hiring the big four accounting and consulting firm Ernst and Young to do a detailed study. The study included a comparison of Israel’s marketing problem with that of New York City following the city’s fiscal and crime crises in the nineteen seventies.

But when he went on to compare “Brand Israel” to New York City’s “Big Apple” marketing campaign, asserting that the campaign turned the city’s image around and led to a huge increase in tourism, a woman in the back spoke out: “But crime really did decline.” This opened the floodgates. A minute or two later Rabbi Kalmanofsky commented that the woman’s point was a good one, that the consul (and presumably Israel) was not addressing the substantive issues (i.e., human rights) that concern most liberal Zionists.

A man who appeared to be in his late forties or early fifties brought up the issue of Israel’s treatment of J Street. After apologizing profusely for what he was about to say, he complained that the Israeli government did not respect J Street or engage in genuine dialogue with them. Aharoni responded that J Street is a special case because they lobby on behalf of Israel’s opposition parties, activity which he claimed disrespected Israeli democracy and was beyond the pale.

There’s chutzpah and then there’s chutzpah, but this was really too much. I interrupted Aharoni to point out that the behavior he was (I believe falsely) imputing to J Street was in fact what Israeli governments, politicians and AIPAC (de facto agency of the current Israeli government) do in the United States as a matter of routine.

One of the older women present, probably in her eighties, sounding very agitated, accused Aharoni of ignoring the substance of the problem. Others made similar comments. There were a few supportive comments as well, but even a fortyish self-professed AIPAC supporter seemed miffed that what Aharoni was describing was not specific enough — he wanted proof that this plan was working.

At the end of the question period, as people rose and began to leave the room, an acquaintance who has many Israeli relatives turned to me and said in a tone of semi-disgust, “he didn’t say anything about the real issues.” I think that about summed up the night.

While I would not draw any exaggerated conclusions about the declining power of hasbara from this event, I do think that the evening clearly demonstrated the slowly but steadily fading allure of the Zionist project for liberal Jews . And the open and detailed description of the Israeli marketing campaign, “straight from the horse’s mouth,” while not surprising in its gist, was a fascinating glimpse into the official Israeli mentality.

Liberal Zionists are afraid their parents will reject them if they come out

May 11, 2012

Philip Weiss

Ilyse Hogue

For weeks now I have been meaning to post the speech below, an astonishing speech given at J Street’s conference last March 26 by a longtime progressive activist, Ilyse Hogue. It’s best I get out of the way and let Hogue speak for herself, but a few words in advance.

Hogue’s was the most majestic performance at J St after Mustafa Barghouti’s appearance. Her ten-minute speech was beautifully written, and beautifully delivered. Its thrilling surprise ending brought the crowd to its feet.

But the speech is tragic. You will see in Hogue’s words everything that is problematic in American progressive Jewish identity: our vanguard liberal position in American politics and culture coupled with our reactionary stance on Israel and Palestine and the Arab Spring, our cowardice on the one issue for which we have the greatest responsibility, and our inability to grapple with our wealth and influence, even as we are shouting down the Tea Party. You will see in Hogue’s emotionally-honest account what Israel represents to countless American Jews: family but also sexuality, and connection to a more primal, earthy, less materialistic existence.

When you wonder why Paul Krugman was so afraid to speak out, and why Rick Perlstein was afraid to speak out — big brave liberals– it’s because of these community adhesions and constraints.

Finally, notice that when Hogue does advocate a political position (on prisoners), it is a retrograde position, completely divorced from Palestinian reality, from any awareness of Palestinian conditions, from any interaction with the beautiful young people in Tahrir.

That said, I honor Hogue’s feelings. She was brave to address them so honestly. And she is representative of a huge segment of Jewish life in the Zionist captivity. But listen to her:

I’m Ilyse Hogue, and as I was listening to the incredible rich portfolio of all the speakers that precede me, I have this tune going through my head. Anyone here remember ‘Schoolhouse Rock’? I kept thinking, ‘I’m just a Jew yeah, I’m only a Jew.’ And the reason for that is, while my progressive political resume is long, when I stand here before you today, I stand here as a Jew. I’ve not been involved in progressive Jewish politics the way all the speakers that I follow have. And that’s really important for what I have to say today.

Anyone here ever seen the movie ‘Milk’? About Harvey Milk in San Francisco. Really, really, really powerful movie. For me one of the most incredible scenes in that movie was when Sean Penn playing Harvey Milk gathered all his core community together in his living room after a political loss and said to them, ‘I figured out what our obstacle to victory is. I have it now, it is that until every American knows that they know one of us, we will never win.’ When I got the call from Carinne [Luck, J Street's vice president of field and campaigns] to be on this panel, my mind went to that scene. My mind went to that scene, because I’m not out, I’m not out as a J street supporter.

So I went to the same place that that man in the scene went to when Harvey Milk handed him the telephone and said, ‘Call your parents now, tell them that you’re out.’ I felt the same determination that now is the time to speak out and that same terrified feeling that I could be rejected by those I most love.

I’m not a shy person. I don’t scare easily. I was the political advocacy communication director for move.on org for six years, I got in my fair share of fights. [wild applause] I have negotiated with bank CEOs for stronger environmental standards on their lending policies. I have stood my ground when rightwing radical activists have shouted down congresspeople supporting the health care law in town halls of 2009. None of that stuff has scared me as much as standing here right today with you all, right now with the cameras rolling and the tweeters tweeting and saying, ‘I’m out, I’m a J Street supporter.’

I come from a very conservative Jewish Texan family. I love my parents. They’re wonderful people. I get my activism from them. My mom was the president of the JCC in Dallas, my dad was the president of the [Jewish] Federation. Some of my earliest memories are of my mom being very involved in Operation Moses airlifting Ethiopian Jews to save them from famine. My dad in his role as as president of the Holocaust Museum in Dallas has expanded the content of that museum from the the persecution of Jews in World War 2 to include the persecution of African Americans in Texas. I’m very proud of that.

My parents as well as most of our tightknit Jewish political community in Texas are also AIPAC supporters. They do lobby days in Dallas. And they are that 7 percent you hear about where Israel does decide their vote in elections. Because I love my parents, I have made sure to avoid this topic at all costs in my progressive activism. I have not wanted to go there, to disappoint them, to make them sad, to make them want to reject me.

But I love Israel, I love Israel with all my heart. The family lore has it that when I was a child and they took me I didn’t sleep for two weeks straight because I was so invigorated by my surroundings and I didn’t want to miss a single thing. I love Israel the way you do when you’re 16 and you’re free from your parents’ grasp for the first time and go on a team tour and you get to go out and experience things on your own. I fell in love with Israel when I fell in love for the first time, with a boy in Israel, drinking Maccabi beers and dancing at the nightclubs in Tiberas. Anyone been there? ‘You spin me right round, right round.’ That was the tune that will always remind me of Israel and my first boyfriend. It will always take me back there.

I remember being young and playing hide and seek in the Old City inside the Dung Gate with my Israeli cousins and teaching them how to shout, ‘Come out, come out wherever you are’ as we ran along the twisty turns in the stone walls. I remember watching my older cousins bargain in the shouk. It was a sport, I wanted to learn it, I wanted to be as exciting and passionate as my Israeli cousins. It was such a contrast to the safety of my strip mall existence back in Texas.

I love Israel with everything I have, and because I love Israel, I can’t not notice that the range is getting smaller. That when American teen tours go, they don’t go to the souk as much. They’re not free to wander the Arab quarter. Many of them don’t go to Bethlehem anymore. And the place that I used to go when I was in my mid 20s and went back to study in college… the night club I went to hang out in Tel Aviv where they played Grateful Dead tunes, that was bombed. That was bombed several years ago. It’s no longer there.

I cant help but notice, we’re retracting, that we’ve taken the unprecedented step of trading one soldier for thousands of Palestinians, emboldening Hamas, and undercutting Fatah.

And I can’t help but notice when I do talk to, when I do venture into political terrain with my Israeli and my American family that hope seems to be retreating and everybody seems to be hunkering down. And it is for this reason that I’m here today. I’m not an expert. I’m not an expert on this issue at all. Everybody who will speak here this weekend will be more an expert than me. I have probably already belied my stature by some of the language I’ve chosen to use in this talk.

It’s part of what’s kept me silent– that nuance, that sophistication that’s required to avoid the rhetorical and political landmines that we don’t even know we’ve hit until we step on them, that’s what’s kept me silent.

But I cant be silent anymore, because I understand that in order to secure the future of Israel so that my nieces can go back and create the kinds of memory– experience the magic of floating in the Dead Sea and the power of watching the sunrise over Masada– we cannot continue with the status quo. We have to open an honest conversation, and opening an honest conversation requires us to challenge the conventional wisdom that questioning– questioning in itself is heresy.

And in order to achieve the questions and the open dialogue, we all need to go somewhere where we fear to tread. When we’re in rooms like this, it’s really easy to feel like we’re the majority. But I know I’m not the only one who has to go home and get nervous and have my heart clutch when I have to have this conversation. But it’s more important than ever– to walk to the seder table, to walk into the living room, to walk into the communities, and say, I’m out, I’m proud, I support J street. And I support an incredibly open conversation, so we can secure a safe future for Israel.

I am the future of pro-Israel and I invite you to join me and ‘come out come out wherever you are.’

Palestinians shut down a second int’l aid organization to demand action on dying hunger strikers

May 11, 2012

Allison Deger

Hunger striker Tha’er Halahleh’s father protesting on Thursday, May, 10, 2012 outside of the ICRC building in Ramallah.

For the second day in a row Palestinians shut down the offices of an international organization in Ramallah, expressing dissatisfaction over a lack of action on behalf of 2500 Palestinians in their fourth week of a hunger strike against conditions of Israeli detention and imprisonment. Families of the dissident prisoners organized today’s action, which follows yesterday’s closure of a United Nations building, also in Ramallah.

And across the region additional protests were staged at Ofer prison, Megiddo prison, el-Krom, Haifa and Yaffa.

Protestor outside of the ICRC. (Photo: @occupy2gether)

“We are targeting those who we believe can help to bring an end to the hunger strike and save the lives of our prisoners,” said protester and activist Ahmad, who requested his last name not be used.

After the protesters blocked the entrance of the International Committee for the Red Cross, the aid organization issued a video response.

Elpida Papachatzi, with the ICRC’s protection department for Israel and the occupied territories, addressed protesters’ concerns on camera.

“We ask the detainee authority to transfer actually those detainees who have been on hunger strike for long term without delay.” She continued: “We urgently request the Israeli authorities to allow detainees on long term hunger strike to receive visits from their families.”

Additionally, Papachatzi said the ICRC meets with prisoners on long term hunger strike and after the visits, “we share oral messages with the families of the detainees.” And, “at the end of each visit we share our findings with the Israeli authorities in a confidential and bi-lateral discussion,” said Papachatzi.

(Photo: @occupy2gether)

At today’s ICRC protest, a group of between 10 and 12 demonstrators were present, including the father of long term hunger striker Tha’er Halahleh, who along with Bilal Diab is now in the 74th day of fast. Both Halahleh and Diab are edging closer to death. In-depth information about their health has not been widely reported, as both hunger strikers have been denied regular visits by independent physicians from Doctors without Borders.

Providing insight on their deteriorating conditions, today the Telegraph published a letter written two days ago by Halahleh, to his family:

To his parents, he wrote: “I salute you from the middle of the battle and from the depth of my suffering. My morale is very high and my will very strong. Do not worry about me.”

Turning to his wife Shireen and his daughter Namer, born a fortnight after his arrest two years ago, he added: “I cannot explain with words my love for you. I do this for the sake of God and my homeland, my wife and my daughter. Take care of her and take care of your health and forgive me that I cannot be there to hug you.”

But in a letter to his lawyer on the same day, he struck a more sombre note, writing that he had lost more than 50lb.

“I have inflammation in my hands. It comes and goes. I’m bleeding in my stomach and from my gums. I have mouth ulcers and my muscles are shrinking — I feel my body has stopped operating normally,” he wrote.

“My excrement is black and I feel very cold. The doctors have been insulting. One told me: ‘I hope you die.’”

Earlier this week, Halahleh and Diab appealed their sentences to an Israeli military judge. The court ruled to extend their detention and re-interrogate both hunger strikers, stating, “hunger strikes are not relevant to decide on length of administrative detention as such.” Without hesitation, activists said the ruling was a “death sentence.” Later that same day reports circulated that both hunger strikers had received an offer from the Israeli authorities to end their imprisonment, conditioned by deportation to Gaza. The Palestine Information Centre (PIC) was notified on the deal through Azzam Diab, brother of Bilal Diab. The PIC reported:

Detainee Azzam Diab, the brother of Bilal, said that he was surprised at the presence of Askalan jail wardens in his cell on Sunday morning. He said that they asked him to go with them to Ramle prison hospital to convince his brother and Halahle to agree to end their strike in return for their deportation to Gaza.

For decades, Israel has used deportation as a mechanism to squash the dissidence of prisoners with rumbling stomachs. During the first Intifada busloads of prisoners, sometimes hundreds were transported over the borders of both Israel and the West Bank into Lebanon.  And in 1992, Israel deposited 400 Palestinians in Lebanon, handing them each $50 and some clothes as they exited their homeland. More recently, former hunger striker Hana Shalabi, whose protest lasted 43 days, was expelled to Gaza upon her release.

Critics of Israel’s deportation policy denounced the practice as a violation of the 4th Geneva Convention, which prohibits moving populations across state lines. Both Halahleh and Diab rejected Israel’s proposal, opting to continue striking against their administrative detention, or imprisonment without charge.

In addition to Halahleh and Diab, six other long-term hunger strikers are in critical condition. They are Hassan Safadi- Day 68 of hunger strike; Omar Abu Shalal; Day 66 of hunger strike; Mohammad Taj; Day 55 of hunger strike_Jaafar Azzedine; Day 51 of hunger strike; Mahmoud Sarsak; Day 50 of hunger strike; Abdullah Barghouti; Day 30 of hunger strike.

Prisoners are demanding their most basic rights from the Israeli authorities, including family visits and an end to solitary confinement, or isolation. There are a total of 19 Palestinian prisoners locked behind iron doors in isolation, including Mahmoud Issa who has spent a decade in solitary confinement. In an unexpected move today, Israeli prison authorities offered to release Issa along with 15 others, from isolation. The terms of their reintroduction into the general prison population are not yet confirmed.

But, for Ahmad who joined the prisoners’ families outside of the ICRC building today, the pressure to release those in isolation did not come from international monitors, rather “all of the pressure came from behind bars.”

‘NYT’ child abuse story is latest episode in a great awakening

May 11, 2012

Philip Weiss

Many readers think that I posted yesterday about the ultra-Orthodox child abuse exposed by the New York Times because I want to embarrass Jews. While it is true that I will use embarrassment (and rage and scorn and anything else in the armamentarium) against Jews who support the oppression of Palestinians (and partly for selfish reasons, to save my religious group from a cult), this was not my motivation yesterday. In fact, I meant to celebrate the progress of social attitudes. So let me clarify.

The Catholic child abuse scandal took me by surprise. When I was covering the Bush-Gore election in December 2000, I ran into a lonely middle-aged guy picketing a Catholic church  in Washington who said he came out there every weekend to protest what was done to him. And from his shirt pocket he got out a photograph of himself as a smiling boy and said, This was me before my soul was crushed… I came home telling my wife I wanted to write about it. In one of her rare errors, she advised me not to, it was too offbeat.

Fast forward. Last Christmas I was at my wife’s cousin’s house in Philadelphia standing outside at a small bonfire with several of her cousins. We were all talking about the Bill Conlin story, which had just broken in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Conlin is a great sportswriter in Philly; I knew him when I worked at the Daily News with him many years ago. And because of the Penn State Sandusky-Paterno story, which had broken earlier that fall, three women and a man had come forward to say that in the ’70s when they were children, Conlin had touched their genitals.

[Conlin's niece Kelly] Blanchet, now a prosecutor in Atlantic City, and the others said they were speaking out now because the alleged sexual assaults and cover-up at Pennsylvania State University brought back painful memories and reminded them of the secrecy that shrouded their own assaults.

Conlin retired when the story broke, and standing at the fire, I said I found this moving in many ways. I had thought the sexual abuse issue was special to the Catholic church– to the celibacy and hierarchy and authoritarianism of the church. No: it had bedeviled other institutions, including the militaristic sports establishment…

Well, then my wife and her cousins piped up and began talking about sexual abuse in schools they had gone to. In essence, they stated that at every school they had attended a teacher was well known as an abuser. And this had gone on everywhere in the 70s– and from time immemorial. I found their stories shocking.

It struck me that night that because of the Catholic church scandal and its sequels, our society is experiencing an awakening. We are uncovering important new terrain of man’s inhumanity to man. The truth is that sexual abuse has gone on everywhere, in countless institutions where children and power intersect. The discovery of these horrors is now widespread and imperative, and it will make society better. That is why I jumped on the Ultra Orthodox story yesterday.

(H/t ScottRoth76.)

Settlers knew Ulpana was built on privately-owned Palestinian land but went ahe

ad
May 11, 2012

Kate

and other news from Today in Palestine

Land, property theft & destruction / Ethnic cleansing / Exile

Video: West Bank barrier threatens villagers’ way of life
BBC Magazine 9 May — Anthropologists say Battir and its lands should be given protected status — Israel is being urged to reroute its controversial West Bank barrier away from the lands of an ancient Palestinian village with a unique agricultural system. The BBC’s Wyre Davies visited Battir, whose inhabitants fear their traditional way of life will disappear … For more than 2,000 years, seven natural springs have given life to the village and its fields. Children still play, almost incongruously, in an old Roman bath built centuries ago at the spot, in the middle of the village, where one of the springs emerges. The simple irrigation system used today is as it was in ancient times. Water is shared between Battir’s eight main extended families. A simple system of manually diverting water via sluice gates means that fruit and vegetables from the small plots on the lower slopes are renowned for their freshness and quality.
link to www.bbc.co.uk

Karmei Tsur: Poisoning the vine with Zionism
ISM 8 May by ‘Joseph’ — When Ali Awad visited his orchard on Friday morning before the midday prayer he noticed nothing out of the usual. But eight hours later, when he returned to his land in order to gather grape leaves to sell in the local market, he was shocked to find that his trees had been poisoned. The grape leaves, which Ali depends on substantially for income, had died and shriveled up, making them impossible to sell. Twelve peach trees belonging to Ali’s neighbor were also destroyed. Ali’s three dunums of farm land, where 28 grape trees have been growing for over 30 years, are directly adjacent to the barbed wire fence which separates the Palestinian village of Beit Ummar from the illegal Zionist settlement of Karmei Tsur.
link to palsolidarity.org

The Occupation demolishes a water well near Beit Hanina
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (PIC) 9 May — The occupation authorities demolished, on Wednesday 9th May, a water well owned by the citizen Walid Dkidk in Al-Merwaha neighborhood in Beit Hanina in occupied Jerusalem. According to local sources, bulldozers of the occupation Municipality, demolished the well under the pretext of being built without a permit, mentioning that the municipality refuses to issue building permits to Palestinians in the region. The sources pointed out that the occupation bulldozers demolished the well without any prior warning
link to www.palestine-info.co.uk

IOF soldiers destroy Palestinian crops south of Al-Khalil
AL-KHALIL (PIC) 10 May — Israeli occupation forces (IOF) destroyed vast areas of Palestinian cultivated land lots south of Al-Khalil on Thursday. Othman Jabarin, the coordinator of the popular committee in Janba to the south east of Yatta town, told Quds Press that IOF soldiers deployed in a large area of land and pitched tents to launch military exercises. He said that the soldiers destroyed one thousand square dunum of land cultivated with wheat and barley. Jabarin underlined that the IOF soldiers’ act inflicted heavy losses on farmers who were about to reap their crops.
link to www.palestine-info.co.uk

Settlers prevent farmers from reaching their land
IMEMC 10 May — The General Director of the Tekoa Municipality, Tayseer Abu Mifrih, reported to WAFA News Agency that a group of settlers from the Tekoa settlement, built on Palestinian land in the Roman area, prevented the Palestinian owners of the land from accessing it for cultivation. The land is next to the settlement and is planted with olive trees, wheat and barley  He added that settlers’ attacks on the Palestinian people of the town have been ongoing for approximately one week.
link to www.imemc.org

NPA orders to remove the sign of the Information Center, flags, and the decoration lights in Wadi Hilweh
Silwan, Jerusalem (SILWANIC) 10 May — The Banna family received an order from Israeli national Parks Authority to remove a sign thats written on it “Behind the tourist site” that belongs to Wadi Hilweh Information Centre-Silwan and to remove the flag that says “I love you Silwan” and remove the lights as well. The locals considers this order as a racist move since these kind of orders do not apply on the settlers, the opposite is right, the settlers put signs whenever and wherever they wish without asking anyone or any authority.  The Israeli National Parks  Authority explained that the signs, the flags and the lights are affecting the whole view of their new National Park. The removing order had a deadline, the signs must be removed [by] Saturday 12.5.12
link to silwanic.net

Court injunction delays demolitions of Jerusalem-area Bedouin homes
IMEMC 10 May — The Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center obtained on Wednesday an injunction order for Khan al-Ahmar Kurshan community. This temporary injunction prevents the demolition of homes of the eight families that received 24-hour eviction notices on Sunday, 6 May … The injunction does not have an expiry date. However, the Israeli Civil Administration has seven days to provide its response to the court regarding this decision. This response will guide any further decisions of the court …The ICA officers informed those present in the community that “the community had built illegally, and that Area C was not for Palestinians.”
link to www.imemc.org

Court reverses decision, prevents eviction of Palestinian family by JNF / Mairav Zonszein
[photo of family] 972mag 9 May — The Jerusalem District Court ruled in favor of the Ruweidi family from East Jerusalem last week (May 2), accepting the claim that their home is not ‘absentee property’, as the Jewish National Fund has sought to prove in court since the 1990s. The Ruweidi family will thus be able to continue living in their home … Sameer abu Alaa al Ruweidi, Juma‘a’s nephew, expressed the family’s relief at the court’s decision: “This house was one of the first four houses in Wadi Hilweh, built by my great great great great grandfather. First of all, we give thanks to God. We also pray that the rest of the land that we own, which has been taken by the settlers, will be returned to us, and that all of the Palestinian houses that have been taken over by settlers in Jerusalem will be returned to their owners.” The court affirmed that the house, located in the Wadi Hilweh neighborhood of Silwan and referred to as “Plot 51,” is in fact owned by Juma’a Muhammad Saalim al-Ruweidi, now 85 years old, who was born raised in the house.
link to 972mag.com

Settler leaders knew homes were built on private Palestinian land, says Ulpana developer
Haaretz 10 May — Settler leaders knew from the start that Beit El’s Ulpana neighborhood was built partly on privately owned Palestinian land, police documents reveal, even though residents claim they bought the houses in good faith. Yoel Tsur, CEO of the company that built the neighborhood and owns 24 of the 30 houses that the High Court of Justice has ordered razed, admitted in a police interrogation three years ago that it was built on land whose purchase was never finalized.
link to www.haaretz.com

Netanyahu: Israeli cabinet to weigh approval of illegal West Bank outpost
Haaretz 10 May — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu scheduled Thursday a special cabinet meeting to discuss the possibility of sanctioning the West Bank outpost of Ulpana Hill through High Court-bypassing legislation. The meeting, due to be held on Friday, will be the first to include Kadima head and new Vice Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz, following a recently signed unity government deal.
link to www.haaretz.com

Ten years on from Nativity Church siege, deportees ‘forgotten’
[with 2002 video] BETHLEHEM (Ma‘an) 10 May  — Ten years after Israel exiled 39 Palestinians taking refuge in Bethlehem’s Nativity Church, deportees say they have been forgotten by Palestinian leaders. On May 10, 2002, Israeli forces ended a 39-day siege on the church after striking a deal with Palestinian leaders to send 39 people given sanctuary in the church to Gaza and Europe. When Israeli tanks surrounded Bethlehem on April 2, 2002, around 220 locals — including around 40 priests and nuns — took shelter in the church. Over the next 39 days, eight Palestinians were killed inside the church and 27 others injured. The siege on the site believed to be Jesus’ birthplace sparked outrage in the Vatican as monks sheltering inside pleaded for international assistance. Former Bethlehem Governor Salah Tamari headed the negotiations team to end the siege, and told Ma‘an TV the deportation deal was reached without his knowledge.
After a decade in exile, deportees say they have been abandoned by the Palestinian Authority and all political factions. They have not been allowed to return to their families in the West Bank.
link to www.maannews.net

Israeli rights group: Destroying Palestinian homes illegal
Al-Akhbar 10 May — A leading Israeli human rights group has written to the country’s Attorney General to urge him to abandon plans to destroy the houses of two Palestinians who killed five Israelis. The B’Tselem letter said it was wrong to punish the families of Amjad and Hakim Awad, convicted of murdering five members of the Fogel family in 2011, for actions they did not commit. The Israeli Security Agency had urged the houses to be demolished, punishing the family for the actions of the brothers. B’Tselem stressed that such a decision would be both illegal and immoral.
link to english.al-akhbar.com

Gaza

Israeli forces detain Gaza fishermen
GAZA CITY (Ma‘an) 10 May — Israeli naval forces on Thursday detained two fishermen off the northern Gaza coast, Gaza’s Ministry of Agriculture said. The men, from Beit Lahiya, were fishing north of Gaza City, the ministry said in a statement … The ministry said that fishing provides the sole source of income for many families in Beit Lahiya. It said there has been a recent increase in the number of fishermen detained by Israeli forces.

• Look over here, terrorists are always out to get us
• How dare our own paper calls Israel apartheid state, says lover of free Zionist lobby trips
• Norman Finkelstein on BBC talks Zionist lobby and Israeli self-destruction

• Not every frightful terror story is really so frightful
• Killing all Muslims key idea of US military lesson
• Calling for ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and Zionist lobby remains silent

NOVANEWS

• US military officers taught to target civilians and wage ‘total war’ on Islam
• Right of Return key goes on tour
• Rejecting boycott, Tom Rob Smith and Tracy Chevalier prepare for Jerusalem International Writers Festival
• ‘NYT’ exposes pattern of Ultra Orthodox community covering up sexual abuse, punishing accusers
• Netanyahu gets special audience on nuclear talks
• The media Israel complex
• ‘Follow the money’ rule suddenly applies when the issue is gay marriage
• Under mounting pressure from hunger-strikers and UN protest, Ban Ki-moon criticizes administrative detention (but weakly)
• New ‘Via Dolorosa’: Palestinian patients face ordeal trying to reach East Jerusalem hospitals
• Nowhere to go — Jahalin Bedouin homes slated for destruction outside Jerusalem

US military officers taught to target civilians and wage ‘total war’ on Islam

May 10, 2012

Alex Kane

The slide above was one of many anti-Muslim presentations US military officers sat through (Picture via Wired)

Over the past decade, fringe ideas about Muslims and Islam have seeped into law enforcement agencies across the country. Now we know the details about what some members of the US military have been learning about Muslims. It’s not pretty.

Wired’s Spencer Ackerman first broke the story last month, when he revealed that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had ordered a thorough review of the entire military to ensure that anti-Muslim ideas were not being taught to soldiers. The order from General Martin Dempsey was issued after an anti-Muslim course was found to have been taught at the Joint Forces Staff College in Virginia.

Today, Ackerman and Noah Shachtman published an extensive story in Wired detailing the exact contents of the course, titled “Perspectives on Islam and Islamic Radicalism.” It’s been taught since 2004 by Lt. Col. Matthew A. Dooley, who is still working at the college currently.

Wired has published some of the documents used in the course. Among the lectures military officers heard was a presentation by Dooley in which he suggested that Saudi Arabia should be threatened with starvation and that the historical precedents of Hiroshima and Dresden should be considered to deal with holy sites in Saudi Arabia. Dooley also said that the Geneva Conventions were “no longer relevant or respected globally” because of the “current common practices of Islamic terrorists” and that “total war” should be waged on Islam.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is calling for the Defense Department to dismiss Dooley. “It is imperative that those who taught our future military leaders to wage war not just on our terrorist enemy, but on the faith of Islam itself be held accountable,” Nihad Awad, CAIR’s director, wrote in a letter to Leon Panetta, the Secretary of Defense. “If left uncorrected, the biased, inaccurate and un-American training previously given to these officers will harm our nation’s security, image and interests for years to come.”

More excerpts from the story:

Dooley, who has worked at the Joint Forces Staff College since August 2010, began his eight-week class with a straightforward, two-part history of Islam. It was delivered by David Fatua, a former West Point history professor. “Unfortunately, if we left it at that, you wouldn’t have the proper balance of points of view, nor would you have an accurate view of how Islam defines itself,” Dooley told his students. Over the next few weeks, he invited in a trio of guest lecturers famous for their incendiary views of Islam.

Shireen Burki declared during the 2008 election that “Obama is bin Laden’s dream candidate.” In her Joint Forces Staff College lecture, she told students that “Islam is an Imperialist/Conquering Religion.” (.pdf)

Stephen Coughlin claimed in his 2007 master’s thesis that then-president George W. Bush’s declaration of friendship with the vast majority of the world’s Muslims had “a chilling effect on those tasked to define the enemy’s doctrine.” (.pdf) Coughlin was subsequently let go from his consulting position to the military’s Joint Staff, but he continued to lecture at the Naval War College and at the FBI’s Washington Field Office. In his talk to Dooley’s class (.pdf), Coughlin suggested that al-Qaida helped drive the overthrow of Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak and Libyan dictator Muammar Gadhafi. It was part of a scheme by Islamists to conquer the world, he added. And Coughlin mocked those who didn’t see this plot as clearly as he did, accusing them of “complexification.”

Coughlin titled his talk: “Imposing Islamic Law – or – These Aren’t the Droids Your Looking For!”

Former FBI employee John Guandolo told the conspiratorial World Net Daily website last year that Obama was only the latest president to fall under the influence of Islamic extremists. “The level of penetration in the last three administrations is deep,” Guandolo alleged. In his reference material for the Joint Forces Staff College class, Guandolo not only spoke of today’s Muslims as enemies of the West. He even justified the Crusades, writing that they “were initiated after hundreds of years of Muslim incursion into Western lands.”

Ackerman has also exposed how the Federal Bureau of Investigation was teaching its agents incendiary ideas about Muslims and Islam. The Obama administration has since ordered a “widespread review of government counterterrorism training materials.”

As for the military, Ackerman reports that a senior officer will “investigate how precisely Dooley managed to get away with that extended presentation in an official Defense Department-sanctioned course. The results of that review are due May 24.”

Right of Return key goes on tour

May 10, 2012

Annie Robbins

What a fantastic idea!

Al Arabiya News

A huge key that weighs approximately a ton and symbolizes the right of return for Palestinian refugees was transported from the Aida Refugee Camp in Bethlehem to the Berlin Biennale in Germany.

The key, which is nine meters long and has inscriptions in several languages, started its journey in March when it was dismounted from its place on top of the camp gate.

The steel key was made by Palestinian refugees at the Aida Social Youth Center in Bethlehem. For center manager Monther Amayra, displaying the key in Berlin gives Palestinians a chance to communicate their aspirations to the world.

“This is an excellent opportunity for us as refugees and as the makers of the Right of Return Key,” he said.

“It is a major event expected to receive more than two million visitors who will be acquainted with the demands of the Palestinian people, on top of which is the right of return.”

The key is presented as “a symbol of peaceful resistance” while teaching Palestinian history. It has already been invited to tour other cities. Please bring the key to America!

(Hat tip Karen Platt)

Rejecting boycott, Tom Rob Smith and Tracy Chevalier prepare for Jerusalem International Writers Festival

May 10, 2012

Eleanor Kilroy

‘If a single dominant theme could be said to emerge more from the especially diverse program of the third Jerusalem International Writers Festival, which opens this Sunday night at Mishkenot Sha’ananim and runs through Friday morning, it’s evil’, writes editor of Haaretz Books, David B. Green. He specifies: ‘Nazism, Marxism, radical Islam, nationalism’.

A lesser evil, narcissism, may be a prerequisite for being a successful writer, so it is perhaps unsurprising that in his only response to a public appeal to boycott the International Writers Festival, British novelist Tom Rob Smith began by underlining his importance to the Hebrew-speaking Israeli public on his Facebook page:

As a writer I’m already highly engaged with my Israeli readers and have been for several years, my three novels are translated into Hebrew, I’ve celebrated their success, conducted interviews with newspapers, answered emails from readers – this visit is a continuation of my relationship with those readers and I’m looking forward to meeting some of them for the first time.

He had no answer for commenter and Israeli citizen from Jerusalem, Ofer N. who invited him to ‘By all means, please engage with your Israeli readers. Naomi Klein and Judith Butler have done that. But the writers’ Festival is an Israeli advocacy tool, sponsored by the highest echelons of Israeli corruption, apartheid corruption to be precise. You and other international friends will be rubbing shoulders and legitimizing people like Shimon Peres, a serial offender against elementary principles of human rights.’

The festival is sponsored by the Jerusalem Foundation which, together with the Jerusalem municipality and settler organizations, is responsible for projects of ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem. From their own documents:

The Jerusalem Foundation has pioneered much of the archaeological discovery and preservation projects including the City of David excavations, the major gates of the Old City Walls, the Tower of David Museum and much more.

This gives rather a different meaning to their spiel about how the Foundation’s work ‘touches every population – Jewish, Muslim and Christian – of every social group of every age, in every neighborhood of the city.’ Indeed, the impact is huge and devastating for non-Jews. As War on Want recently reported:

Seven new demolition orders have been issued in the Palestinian town of Silwan. Israeli officials, accompanied by soldiers, sealed off part of Silwan’s al-Bustan neighbourhood on Tuesday while they issued the demolition orders to several homes and businesses. Residents have been given 30 days to appeal.

These new demolition notices come on top of 88 demolition orders already out on homes in the area. The bulldozers can come at any time, and the population lives in fear of imminent eviction. Children in Silwan often take their favourite toys to school, in case their homes are demolished during the day.

The planned destruction of al-Bustan is to make way for a ‘City of David’ tourist site. The tourist industry is a particular flash point, and tensions are running extremely high in East Jerusalem. The new demolition orders in Silwan come on top of the Jerusalem authorities’ announcement that they will build 1,100 new hotel rooms in East Jerusalem in Givat Hamatos, another Palestinian site over the Green Line, and the recent founding of a new settlement in nearby Beit Hanina.

Tom Rob Smith continued, ‘I have no idea what topics of conversation will arise during my sessions. No one at the festival has given me any instructions, or made any demands – I can speak freely.’ This appears to be corroborated by Uri Dromi, director of the Mishkenot Sha’ananim cultural center who was forced to issue a press statement denying the embarrassing assertion of festival director Tal Kremer just one day earlier that “in light of what happened with Nir Baram, we asked this year’s authors to give us the text of their speeches.”

Other writers targeted by the boycott call, including Tracy Chevalier, are attempting to ‘balance out’ their naïve endorsement of Israeli state apartheid policies by asking Dromi to facilitate meetings with Palestinian authors in Israeli occupied territory, according to Ynet. This is in spite of a further fact they seem to be ignorant of – that the General Union of Palestinian Writers are active members of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC).

Palestinians artists and intellectuals do not exist to help ease the consciences of international guests of the Israeli state and agonised Israeli liberals who just want to be ‘better’ soldiers. It is extraordinary to see the number of pitiful appeals by Jewish Israelis targeted by the boycott for ‘support’ and ‘understanding’ from the international community, whilst insisting they cannot give up the privileges they enjoy in an ethnocracy. The BDS campaign asks international artists to ignore these ‘shoot and cry’ Israelis, set aside their own egocentric and private concerns or interests, and stand on the side of the oppressed.

‘NYT’ exposes pattern of Ultra Orthodox community covering up sexual abuse, punishing accusers

May 10, 2012

Philip Weiss

The Catholic church’s sex abuse scandal turns out to be epochal: it is having salutary effects across society in institutions that have covered up abuse– at university athletic programs, for instance. Now the New York Times is exposing patterns of covering up sexual abuse inside the community of a quarter million ultra-Orthodox Jews in New York. This is great reporting by Sharon Otterman and Ray Rivera:

Abuse victims and their families have been expelled from religious schools and synagogues, shunned by fellow ultra-Orthodox Jews and targeted for harassment intended to destroy their businesses….

“There is no nice way of saying it,” Mrs. [Pearl] Engelman [mother of sexual abuse victim] said. “Our community protects molesters. Other than that, we are wonderful.”

Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg of Williamsburg, for example, has been shunned by communal authorities because he maintains a telephone number that features his impassioned lectures in Yiddish, Hebrew and English imploring victims to call 911 and accusing rabbis of silencing cases. He also shows up at court hearings and provides victims’ families with advice. His call-in line gets nearly 3,000 listeners a day.

In 2008, fliers were posted around Williamsburg denouncing him. One depicted a coiled snake, with Mr. Rosenberg’s face superimposed on its head. “Nuchem Snake Rosenberg: Leave Tainted One!” it said in Hebrew. The local Satmar Hasidic authorities banned him from their synagogues, and a wider group of 32 prominent ultra-Orthodox rabbis and religious judges signed an order, published in a community newspaper, formally ostracizing him. “The public must beware, and stay away from him, and push him out of our camp, not speak to him, and even more, not to honor him or support him, and not allow him to set foot in any synagogue until he returns from his evil ways,” the order said in Hebrew.

“They had small children coming to my house and spitting on me and on my children and wife,” Rabbi Rosenberg, 61, said in an interview….

“If a guy in our community gets diagnosed with cancer, the whole community will come running to help them,” [Rabbi Tzvi Gluck] said. “But if someone comes out and says they were a victim of abuse, as a whole, the community looks at them and says, ‘Go jump in a lake.’ ”

Netanyahu gets special audience on nuclear talks

May 10, 2012

Ira Glunts

Catherine Ashton, the EU Foreign Affairs Chief, visited Jerusalem yesterday to consult with Benjamin Netanyahu about the Iran negotiations.  Ashton is a key player in the nuclear talks. Apparently presenting an Israeli united front, cabinet ministers Ehud Barak, Avigdor Lieberman and Netanyahu’s new coalition partner, Shaul Mofaz of Kadima, also attended the meeting.  According to Haaretz , Netanyahu repeated his government’s rigid view:

During the meeting, the Israelis presented a rigid set of demands for the Iranians, a senior Israeli official said. Netanyahu and the three ministers told Ashton that Israel’s position leading up to the Baghdad talks is that the talks will be considered as progress only if they would yield an Iranian guarantee – with a clear timetable – to halt uranium enrichment, to remove all enriched uranium out of Iranian soil, and to dismantle the underground enrichment facility in Fordo, which is near Qom.

How appropriate is it for Ashton to travel to Israel in order to brief the Israeli Prime Minister?  After all, Israel is not an official party to the talks and has made it known that it is hoping that the diplomatic effort will fail.   Considering the enmity between the Israelis and Iranians, it is doubtful if these public consultations will inspire trust in Tehran.

The Ashton trip to Jerusalem was apparently arranged by Yaakov Amidror, who last week toured European capitals consulting with officials involved in the negotiations.  Apparently, one of the results of his tour was convincing the EU foreign policy chief to come to Israel.

The Israeli demand that Iran not be permitted to enrich uranium even at lower levels is probably a deal breaker.  Iran has always insisted that it be permitted to enrich at least at low levels while it has agreed to stop enrichment at higher levels.  The optimism that was generated after the initial round of the talks was reported to be based on a framework of allowing Iran to enrich, but only at lower levels.    The actual six power position on Iranian uranium enrichment is not clear.

The initial round of the current talks was all about building confidence, according to officials.  I wonder how the recent insertion of the Israelis into the mix is going to affect Iranian confidence concerning the trustworthiness and reliability of the Western powers.

If the leaders of the six powers cannot stop the Israelis from making provocative statements geared to sabotaging the talks,  the Iranians may conclude that  these same world leaders could not prevent Israel from vetoing any agreement by initiating a unilateral attack.

The media Israel complex

May 10, 2012

Philip Weiss

I was shocked to hear this promotion of the Israeli Technion — which is partnering with Cornell to develop a new high-tech campus on Roosevelt Island in the East River opposite Manhattan — on WNYC radio yesterday. It’s by Stan Alcorn. I suppose we should be grateful to the reporter for reporting how much the Technion has depended on money from American Jews. But evidently our countries are now joined at the hip. Alcorn also focused on the role of military innovation in fostering the Technion, thanks to IDF veterans with mad skills. Good times.

The history of the Technion can be traced back to money from New York City.

The Technion was founded in 1912 with a donation from New York financier and philanthropist Jacob Schiff….

One hundred years later, the relationship between the Technion and New York continues.

The school’s operating budget comes from the Israeli government, but two-thirds of all private fundraising come from the U.S. – and the biggest donor region is the New York metro area, according to Melvyn Bloom of the American Technion Society, an affiliated fundraising organization.

The results can be seen on the Israeli campus: The computer science building is named after New Jersey payroll processing mogul Henry Taub. The Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute is named after a New Jersey philanthropist who made his money from Russ Toys, famous for its teddy bears. [Berrie foundation is in part dedicated to American Jewish continuity via a connection to Israel]

Local donors are excited about the Technion’s arrival in New York, and see it as an opportunity to replicate the innovation they see in Israel.

“It is like transferring something from one petri dish to another,” said Angelica Berrie, Russell Berrie’s widow and the head of his eponymous foundation.

But the role of the Technion in innovation may be inflated, some say. It is a part of Israel’s start-up ecosystem, but not necessarily the primary driver.

“It may be that the people who chose the Technion above other institutions in New York thought that because the Technion was in Israel and Israel is extremely entrepreneurial, Technion caused entrepreneurship,” said Dan Isenberg, writer and founder of the Babson Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Project. “It’s an optical illusion.”

‘Follow the money’ rule suddenly applies when the issue is gay marriage

May 10, 2012

Philip Weiss

I rage at the media for failing to scrutinize the role of conservative Jewish contributions as a factor in Obama’s collapse on the occupation and threats to Iran, two questions that affect world peace. Because the media ignore that ancient command of American political corruption: Follow the money.  Well, here is Andrew Sullivan being interviewed by Audie Cornish on NPR’s All Things Considered yesterday, about President Obama’s declaration in support of gay marriage.

CORNISH: It’s also been noted that a lot of the big-money donors in the Democratic Party are gay and lesbian. And you’ve suggested that maybe this all just has to do with money. And do you still feel that way?

SULLIVAN: I told you how I feel. Analytically, I do think, look, we’re talking about politics here. And I do think that with Wall Street being less generous than they were in 2008, gay donors and gay support is actually critical to fundraising. And I think many leading gay activists just told the White House quite clearly that if you were not do to this, then their support would not be forthcoming, especially after he declined to enforce an executive order banning discrimination against homosexuals in federal contracting.

So – but I didn’t see that today. I mean, I’ll see the whole thing tonight. I didn’t see it today. I saw today the man I watched for five years now. And that is whom I heard in, as long ago as 2007, tell the mother of a gay son, I want your son to be equal and to have every right that a heterosexual has. I think getting past the M-word for him was a struggle. I don’t he’s alone in this. And I don’t think it’s crazy for people to feel this way. But I think he’s evolved as Americans have evolved, suddenly rather quickly. And I think this is how it happens, suddenly rather quickly. What seemed unthinkable becomes obviously right.

Under mounting pressure from hunger-strikers and UN protest, Ban Ki-moon criticizes administrative detention (but weakly)

May 10, 2012

Allison Deger

Video by Scott Campbell/Angry White Kid.

Following 23 days of open-ended hunger strike by more than 2,500 prisoners, yesterday Palestinians fed up with the lack of support to their cause shut down a United Nations building in Ramallah.

From 7:30 am to 5 pm approximately 50 protestors blocked the entrance to the UN Ramallah Common Premises building and called for the international organization to take strong measures in condemning Israel’s use administrative detention and lack of human rights for prisoners. UN staff were spotted leaving the building around 8:30am, and the building remained closed for the remainder of the day.

Palestinians locking down the UN in Ramallah. (Photo: Scott Campbell/Angry White Kid)

While the facility was shut down, demonstrators denounced the UN in both English and Arabic, chanting, “UN chose a side! Human rights or apartheid.” And event posters reflected a similar sentiment, reading “UNFAIR, UNJUST,” and “Your Silence = Death Sentence.” Palestinians for Dignity, the youth who organized the event, are angered by the UN’s lax response to the hunger strikers, the largest strike since October 2011. The UN has “done nothing. It hasn’t spoken not one word on the prisoners,” said protestor and activist Linah Alsaafin. At the time of the direct action, the UN and Ban Ki-Moon had yet to make a public statement regarding the prisoners and their demands for treatment in accordance to international law.

(Photo: @ANimer)

After today’s demonstration, the UN issued a statement with indirect quotes by UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, made via a spokesperson. Ki-moon urged “all concerned to reach a solution without delay.”

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today stressed the importance of averting any further deterioration in the condition of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody who are on hunger strike, and urged everyone concerned to reach a solution to their plight without delay.

‘The Secretary-General continues to follow with concern the ongoing hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody, in particular those held in what is known as administrative detention,’ according to information provided by his spokesperson.

‘He stresses the importance of averting any further deterioration in their condition,’ the spokesperson added. ‘He reiterates that those detained must be charged and face trial with judicial guarantees, or released without delay.’

In response, Palestinian organizers of the UN action wrote a public letter to Ban Ki-moon:

We note with disappointment your silence ever since this protest movement began in December 2011 with Khader Adnan’s arbitrary arrest and subsequent hunger strike. This stands in stark contrast to your vocal and persistent remarks in support of formerly incarcerated Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Though Shalit has been released, Palestinian prisoners are still suffering under the so-called ‘Shalit Law’, which imposed harsher measures on their conditions of detention.

We remind you of your responsibilities as Secretary-General of the UN. We invoke the norms of international law that guarantee basic rights to Palestinian prisoners, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions, the UN Convention Against Torture and the World Medical Association Malta Declaration on Hunger Strikers.

We urge you to take a firm and vocal position in opposition to Israel’s abuse and violation of Palestinian prisoners’ rights and encourage, through UN mechanisms at your disposal, measures of accountability for these violations. We urge you to take an official position in line with the Palestinian prisoners’ demands and to encourage member states to stand against these gross human rights’ violations. We await your urgent response.

Read the full letter by Palestinians for Dignity.

Kindergarteners protest in Gaza with signs stating, “No to solitary confinement,” “Freedom       and dignity for Palestinian political prisoners,” “Our little heart and minds are with you.”            (Photo: Joe Catron)

Meanwhile in Gaza, a demonstration was also staged in the protest tent, the site of daily dissidence in support of the hunger strikers. Over 100 children led today’s protest. Blogger Shahd Abusalama attended the event. Her account:

This morning was very eventful one in the Gaza sit-in tent. As I arrived around 10:00 am, more than a hundred kids, each about four years old, entered the tent. They looked very beautiful and innocent. They came from Gassan Kanafani’s kindergarten carrying signs like ‘I want to hug Dad,’ ‘I want Dad to be free,’ or ‘Freedom for Palestinian political prisoners.’

They didn’t fully understand why they were there, but their participation put smiles on the faces of the hunger strikers and the detainees’ families, who joined their soft voices while chanting along with them: ‘Free, free Palestine!’ All generations united their voices to call for the victory of our political prisoners’ battle of dignity, which continues for the 23rd day

Palestinians demonstrating in Jaffa on May 7, 2012. (Photo: Shady Khafaga)

Meanwhile, inside of Israel’s prisons outcry persists. Since April 17, 2012 when the hunger strike began, the number of participants has jumped to 2,500 strikers, with some outlets reporting 3,000 strikers. And almost daily additional groups join the cause. These strikers are noted for their diverse composition, reflective of all sectors of Palestinian society. They span party affiliation, gender and even nationality. Last week a group of 40 Egyptians in an Israeli prison entered the strike. Their demands include an end to solitary confinement, reinstatement of family visits and access to high school and university education.

Yet for detainees on strike, fasting is but one difficulty. Israel applies punitive measures to strikers, which has brought up charges of collective punishment for their use of daily raids by “special forces,” transfers to other prisons, axed family visits, and fines. Detainees who banged on their jail cells in support of the hunger strikers today where charged a fine 450 Shekels.

New ‘Via Dolorosa’: Palestinian patients face ordeal trying to reach East Jerusalem hospitals

May 10, 2012

Kate

and other news from Today in Palestine:

Land, property theft & destruction / Ethnic cleansing / Restriction of movement

Settlers cut hundreds of trees in Nablus area
NABLUS (WAFA) 9 May – Jewish settlers Wednesday cut down hundreds of trees in the Nablus area and chased shepherds away from their pastures, according to a local activist. Ghassan Daghlas, who monitors settlers’ activities in the north of the West Bank, said settlers from the illegal settlement of Tapouch, built on land belonging to the village of Jamaeen, cut down and set on fire 250 trees in the village. [also in Yasouf village, acc. to PIC]
In nearby Bourin village, settlers cut 17 trees while forcing shepherds to leave pastures in the villages of Aqraba and Yanoun.
In the village of Sabastia, also in the Nablus area, Israeli forces demolished a tin shack used by a local villager
link to english.wafa.ps

Israeli army demolishes three buildings near Bethlehem
BETHLEHEM (WAFA) 9 May — Israeli army bulldozers demolished early Wednesday three buildings in the West Bank village of Housan, west of Bethlehem, said local sources.  Head of the village council, Jamal Sabatin, told WAFA that a large force with bulldozers raided the village and demolished three buildings after blocking all roads leading to the site. He said that one of the buildings was demolished by the Israeli army for the third time in one year.
Sabatin said that not only Israeli soldiers demolish houses but they also seize land, uproot trees and prevent farmers from accessing their land.
link to english.wafa.ps

Israeli authorities demolish building in East Jerusalem
JERUSALEM (Ma‘an) 9 May — Israeli authorities demolished an under-construction house in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Hanina on Wednesday morning, witnesses said. Forces blocked off the Al-Mouroha district and broke into the house, demolishing its foundations, the owner Waleed Sadeq Idkedek said. Idkedek said the demolition took place without prior warning, and called on human rights organizations and the Red Crescent to intervene in the continuous forced displacement of Palestinians in Jerusalem.
link to www.maannews.net

Outpost advocates pursue price tag demolitions in court
BETHLEHEM (Ma‘an) 9 May by Charlotte Silver — A tiny village of Palestinian families in the southern West Bank has had an unwelcome visitor in recent months. “He comes with small weapons and his camera, sometimes with armed forces, sometimes with settlers,” Susiya resident Nasser Nawaja says. The armed visitor is Ovad Arad, the Judea and Samaria Director of Regavim, an Israeli non-governmental organization. Arad’s job is to roam the West Bank photographing Palestinian buildings for the group’s legal petitions, which demand the Israeli government expedite their demolitions. Susiya, a hamlet of 350 people, including 120 children, is now at immediate risk of forced displacement as a result of Regavim’s petition, the United Nations humanitarian affairs office says.
link to www.maannews.net

Bedouin land and culture threatened by Israel’s plan for resettlement / Phoebe Greenwood
Tel Aviv (Guardian) 9 May — A stench of rubbish wafts over the Palestinian town of As Sawahirafrom the al-Abdali dump. The vast tip sprawls over an excavated hillside on the outskirts of the town and receives a constant stream of trucks carrying waste from nearby Jerusalem.  Israeli authorities are proposing to relocate 2,300 Bedouins from the surrounding hills to this site as part of their push to resolve “the Bedouin problem”. Simultaneously, plans are proceeding through the Israeli parliament this month to move a further 90,000 Bedouin from their ancestral land in the Negev desert in Israel’s south to government-planned townships.The Israeli administration argues that a move to purpose-built communities will lift the indigenous population from unacceptable depths of poverty. Across Israeli-controlled territory, Bedouin communities argue that their culture, along with centuries-old ties to land, is being swept aside to make way for Jewish expansion.
link to www.guardian.co.uk

Victory for the Ruweidi family and for Silwan
Rabbis for Human Rights 8 May — We congratulate the Ruweidi family, the Wadi Hilweh Information Center and Peace Now on this victory –Last evening, on May 7th,2012, a ruling was delivered from the District Court inJerusalem concerned the case of the Ruweidi family from Silwan. The Court accepted the Ruweidis’ claim that their house is not ‘absentee property,’ as the JNF-KKL/Himanutah, together with the extreme right wing settler organization ELAD, have sought to prove in court over the past two decades. The JNF-KKL/Himanutah’s claim was based on a single, falsified declaration by a Palestinian man with no connection to the family or to Silwan, who claimed that the house’s owner died in Jordan (at a time in which Jordan was an enemy country to Israel), and therefore, according the Absentee Property Law, the State can wrest control over the property … It is important to note that the Sumarin family remains under threat of eviction by the JNF and its partners, through the Absentee Property Law. We call, again, on the JNF to cancel all efforts to take over the Sumarin property.
link to rhr.org.il

‘Back-to-back’ procedure: Patients at checkpoints / Tamar Fleishman
Palestine Chronicle 9 May — The detainment of a person that is being transferred by an ambulance to one of the six Palestinian hospitals in East Jerusalem, until the completion of the bureaucratic procedures, falls under the euphemistic title of: “co-ordinations”. These entail nothing more than the authorization of the secret services that grant the patient permission to pass through the checkpoint, but they are only the first step on the Via Dolorosa unfolding before the patient until he does (or does not) arrive at his destination … According to the regulations of the occupation, only one person is allowed to escort the patient. A woman’s “dangerousness assessment” is lower than a man’s. That is why in most cases a woman (a mother or a wife) would receive a permit to escort the patient on his way to the hospital, while a man (a father or a husband) would be rejected. But this right as well, as limited as it already is, doesn’t obligate the authorities. The common argument is: “prevented”, and it holds more power than the right for an escort and therefore annuls it. I was once present when a baby of seven months, sedated and on life support, was being transferred on her own. Her tiny body lied inside an intensive care unit and a doctor that was summoned was striving to keep her alive. “Where are the parents?” I asked the ambulance driver whom I knew. “They are prevented passage” he replied.
link to www.palestinechronicle.com

In turnabout, Netanyahu urges ministers to find way to leave Ulpana intact
Haaretz 9 May — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has backtracked and asked ministers to consider crafting bills to prevent the demolition of the Ulpana neighborhood in the Beit El settlement.
link to www.haaretz.com

Violence / Raids / Detentions

Activist in Nabi Saleh loses eye as Israel escalates repression
PNN 9 May — The second anniversary of the start of the popular resistance by the people of Nabi Saleh, located 30 kilometers northeast of Ramallah, was marked by the brutal injury of young Mustafa Abdul-Razzaq al-Tamimi, 27, who was shot in the face at less than 10 meters. This occurred while the UN Special Rapporteur for the Freedom of Opinion and Expression was visiting the village. Al-Tamimi was seriously wounded in the head by a tear gas canister fired by the soldiers directly at him from a close distance. From the impact of the gas bomb, his face was split, losing a large amount of blood before being transferred by car to the hospital. The ambulance was stopped at the Nabi Saleh checkpoint by the occupation forces for 30 minutes. Subsequently he was flown for treatment at an Israeli hospital in Tel Aviv…
The repression of today’s protest lead to the injury of six other people. A cameraman from Palestine TV, Najib Fraona, and Ahmed Abdullah Khreish were both hit by rubber bullets. Wa’de Tamimi was hit by a tear gas canister that fractured his foot and a girl, Nissan Tamimi, was shot with a tear gas bomb that broke her hand. Fadel al-Tamimi was wounded by a rubber bullet in his ear and another one in his foot. Muhammad Abu Samra was wounded by a rubber bullet in his ear. Additionally, dozens of people suffered from tear gas suffocation. In response, the people of the village of Nabi Saleh attacked the Israeli military tower at the entrance to the village of Nabi Saleh and broke the main gate that closes the entrance to the village, venting their anger at the injury of Mustafa and others.
link to english.pnn.ps

IOF launch military drills in Dura town, terrorize citizens
AL-KHALIL (PIC) 9 May — The Israeli occupation forces (IOF) carried out Tuesday evening military exercises and helicopter landings in different area of Dura town in Al-Khalil city and terrorized its Palestinian residents. Eyewitnesses told the Palestinian information center (

• Look over here, terrorists are always out to get us
• How dare our own paper calls Israel apartheid state, says lover of free Zionist lobby trips
• Norman Finkelstein on BBC talks Zionist lobby and Israeli self-destruction

NOVANEWS

• Akiva Tor: Arab Spring at fault for blocking a future Palestinian state
• Why I Am Not a Liberal Zionist: A response to the Huffington Post’s ‘Liberal Zionists Speak Out’
• Oren-Asali photo leads to call for Asali to resign from American Task Force on Palestine
• New Pew Center poll highlights growing Egyptian revulsion at peace treaty with Israel
• Al Jazeera’s ‘The Stream’ tackles racism against African refugees in Israel
• Standing up for equality at the ‘Equality Forum’ celebration of Israel
• Publicly-funded Hebrew charter schools serve as ‘vanguard’ for Israel –Forward
• Report from the Palestinian prisoner hunger strike, and the movement growing to support it
• ‘You see that we are rising–no longer in the shadows of the ghosts of Deir Yassin’ –Phil Monsour/Rafeef Ziadah
• Michael Scheuer says Israeli lobby has tied American gov’t down like Gulliver

Akiva Tor: Arab Spring at fault for blocking a future Palestinian state

May 09, 2012

Allison Deger

Akiva Tor spoke in San Francisco Monday, May 6, 2012.

On Monday, Akiva Tor, Israeli consul general of the Pacific Northwest, shed more light on the bitterness Israel feels towards the Arab Spring in a lecture at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. Although the event was supposed to focus on the implications of political shifts in the region for Israel, Tor used the event to scapegoat the Palestinians for the stagnant peace process while all the audience wanted to talk about was Iran.

Beginning with Egypt, Tor decried the landslide of votes casted for the Salafis and Muslim Brotherhood, stating, “Political Islam won the elections.” Continuing, “even when this earthquake will cease its tremor,” relations with Israel will not likely improve. And while the former Mubarak regime was Israel’s insurance for “peace with the Egyptian government for more than 30 years,” the new leadership evoked apprehension for the diplomat. Tor then expressed concerns over the government not honoring treaties previously made with Israel because of their “religio-historical” worldview. Israel, by comparison he said, has a “secular historical” outlook.

Also relating to the Muslim Brotherhood, Tor stated Egypt would no longer act as an arbitrator between Hamas and Fatah, determining this will usher in the end of the possibility for Palestinian self-determination. “The opportunity for a peace process agreement has receded,” said Tor, elaborating, while “both Israel and the Palestinian Authority [PA] believe that the correct way to establish peace between us is the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel,” without an external push for unity, he explained, the peace process is over. Then again, Tor emphasized the moment for a Palestinian state has “receded.” Yet, he applauded the PA’s Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad for “incredible work to decrease corruption.”

Moving on to the settlements Tor said, “Israel has not allowed new settlements in over a decade” stating they do “not at all,” a hinder peace with the Palestinians. Of course, during the past ten years there has been unprecedented settlement growth in the West Bank, however, exclusively from illegal construction. Even still, within the past two weeks Israel motioned to retroactively legalize Bruchim, Sansana, and Recheilim, violating the status quo settlement freeze, along with the 1965 Planning and Building Act, which forbids retroactively legalizing communities.

During the Q & A the audience was largely uninterested in discussing settlements, Palestinians, or the lecture’s topic (the Arab Spring). Rather, Iran was the centerpiece. (Incidentally the only question on the Palestinians was from me. And when my comment card on the hunger strikers was read, the moderators voice was accompanied by a low, audible hiss from the attendees who averaged as white, affluent and 40 years my senior.) Four questions in a row noted fears of an Iranian nuclear program and displayed a disdain for diplomatic efforts. Tor addressed their concerns and advocated to prevent the Iranian “worldwide” threat by using “deeper and more stringent sanctions” supported by a consumer protest; effectively he endorsed a movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Iran.

After the lecture, I asked Tor if the three legalized outpost violate the freeze? He said no, elaborating that they were “not illegal” to begin with. (this is false.) I then asked if that meant Israel viewed the outposts as already legal? Tor did not answer directly and reiterated that the settlements were “not illegal,” when they were established, though he did agree that their permits were changed. Tor then amicably handed me his card and offered to email me a position paper on this issue from the Israeli government.

Why I Am Not a Liberal Zionist: A response to the Huffington Post’s ‘Liberal Zionists Speak Out’

May 09, 2012

Anat Biletzki

In March 2001 I was interviewed on Israeli TV, on a prime-time talk show, which had the interviewer, Dov Elboim, talking leisurely and deeply with the interviewee for half-an-hour. Lots can be said in half-an-hour. Those were the early days of the second Intifada, a few months after the dismal failure of Camp David II, when Israelis of the Liberal Zionist badge retreated into their shells, went underground, or, most crudely, moved to the right. Those were the days when several mantras were established — by Ehud Barak, among other manipulators of public opinion — such as “we offered them generous concessions and they retorted with violence” or “there is no partner for peace.” Only a few of us held our ground, insisting that the offers at Camp David had not been generous at all (as several reports subsequently attested) and that the Palestinians were equally justified in claiming they had no partner for peace. Those of us who refused to be swept into the general right-swing that, as we now know, demolished the Israeli left were labeled “radical left.”

One of the first questions that Elboim posed, wanting to clear up the terms of debate, was, “What does it mean to be a radical leftist today in Israel?” I recall answering in three parts. First, I said, a real Israeli leftist believes that Israel is unequivocally in the wrong in holding on to any of the Occupied Palestinian Territories (the OPT) and must therefore vacate all those lands unilaterally. Secondly, a real Israeli leftist recognizes the Palestinian right of return. (Rights, as we know, can be realized in various ways; and when there is a clash between rights, solutions have to be worked out. But before any realizations and solutions can come about, the rights must be recognized.) And finally, a real Israeli leftist puts the democratic values that Israel purports to ascribe to before the Jewish values that it insists on ascribing to when these are in conflict.

Within the hour phone calls started streaming in — to the TV station, to my home and to my mother, who is of that unique generation, the Palmach generation, credited with bringing the Jewish State into existence. The consensual attack was based on stupefaction: How could I deny Zionism? As a matter of fact, I do not remember having used the word Zionism, or, for that matter having talked about Zionism in the interview. This was an immediate inference made by listeners: one could not say what I had said and remain a Zionist. So unspeakable was my transgression that a few days later, at a family event, then Minister of Finance, Avraham (Baiga) Shochat, came up to me with a derisive smile and said: “Would you really want an Arab living next door to you?” The stupefaction was then — and still is — on my part. That a serving government minister could so bluntly voice such a racist comment is something that any person with democratic proclivities shudders at. That far more racist epitaphs are now regularly expressed by Israeli officials, and that the possibility of refusing Arab citizens residence in certain communities has now passed into law in Israel, is a sign of where we’ve come since then, and where we’re headed.

*****
It’s been over a decade since those opening, unsettling times of the second Intifada. It has been over a decade that those of us who are accused of being post-Zionist or, god forbid, anti-Zionist have been working out the implications of our deeply held democratic convictions. Things have become clearer (though they are muddied up viciously by those who equate either post- or anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism). Although many would like to redefine Zionism, there is no getting away from the fact that Zionism was and is the articulated project of creating and buttressing a Jewish state for the Jewish people. So contrary to what Michael Walzer claims, that this being a project based on Jewishness (peoplehood) rather than Judaism (religion) makes it different, the insistence on a Jewish state makes it impossible for those who are not of that people, not to mention that religion, to be equal citizens. Minority groups in Norway can be Norwegian; minority groups in England can be English; even minority groups in Israel can be Israeli, but they can’t be Jewish! And if Jewishness is a matter of peoplehood rather than religion, then we are indeed saddled with a formal ethnocracy, not much better than a theocracy. (It is poignant to see that Walzer begins his thoughts by connecting to his Bar Mitzvah, an explicitly religious ceremony. Not for naught is this whole series taking place on the Religion page of the Huffington Post…)

More significantly, it seems that liberal Zionists will never forsake the Jewish majority as the essence of the State of Israel since precisely that majority is what — they think – makes the state a democracy. But no democracy should determine or foretell the identity of its citizenry. What shall we do in a century or two from now if or when Israeli Arabs, i.e., Palestinian citizens of Israel, just naturally become a majority (through natural reproduction rates, or Jewish emigration, or any other unforeseeable vagary of history)? Shall we cast all Arab sons born into the sea?

So, beyond all the casuistic debates and long-winded conceptual to-and-fros, the impossibility of being a consistent liberal Zionist derives, as I realized in that interview long ago, from the dead-end one reaches with the conflict between values. If Zionism has been based on a set of values — any values — that “override whatever injustices statehood has brought” (Walzer), then it has taken us as far as one can get from the set of values that undergird liberal democracy. Holding on to those values means cherishing the option of a Palestinian living next door, and rejecting Jews who refuse the Palestinian next door. I would rather be righteous than self-righteous.

This post originally appeared in the Huffington Post in response to its series Liberal Zionists Speak Out.

Oren-Asali photo leads to call for Asali to resign from American Task Force on Palestine

May 09, 2012

Adam Horowitz

Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren and the American Task Force on Palestine’s Ziad Asali at an “independence day” celebration organized by the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C.

Controversy has surrounded the American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP) since Haaretz’s Natasha Mozgovaya tweeted a photo of the Task Force’s President Ziad Asali at an “Independence Day” party held at the Israeli embassy in Washington DC. ATFP’s Hussein Ibish has issued a response to critics at the Daily Beast’s Open Zion blog:

ATFP works to bring Palestinians and Americans closer together, and to maintain strong relations with Palestinian and American leaders and working relations with Israeli officials. This is the only approach that anyone based in the United States who seriously wants to achieve anything practical for peace, or to improve the lives of Palestinians, can actually take.

Mozgovaya’s photograph merely reconfirms what ATFP has always openly and frankly pursued: a public and strategic display of continued contact with the Israeli establishment to promote the goals of peace and ending the occupation.

Not sure that will assuage the critics. There is a petition at Change.org calling for Asali to step down. From the petition:

Dear Members of the Board of Directors of the American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP):

We—Palestinian-Americans, Palestinians living, working, and studying in the United States, and Americans in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle—are writing to express our outrage at the conduct of Ziad Asali, ATFP President. Most recently, we are appalled by his decision to attend an “independence day” celebration organized by the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C.

As Palestinians all over the world gather to mourn and remember the Nakba, the great trauma and crime of ethnic cleansing committed against our society, it is intolerable to find that Ziad Asali, a man who purports to represent Palestinians, chose to celebrate this time with the very perpetrators of the Nakba.

More than 800,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their historic homeland during the Nakba in 1947-48. These were our grandparents, our parents and their grandparents. Everything was stolen from them – from all of us. Our hearts have been carved out by this monumental crime that has never really ceased. The Nakba continues to this day with daily expulsions, home demolitions, and the constant death that rains on our people without mercy by a state with the most powerful military machine in the Middle East, the same state that Asali celebrated!

We are all baffled, stunned, and left feeling betrayed by the images of Asali posing with smiles in a suit next to Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. in what amounts to a celebration of the greatest wound in the Palestinian psyche – a boundless collective pain that we pass on from one generation to another in hope of redemption, of justice, and the restoration of our dignity as native sons and daughters of Palestine.

How dare he? At a time when Palestinian prisoners are on the brink of death by starvation to protest the endless injustice against our people, Asali poses with smiles next to Oren, an American immigrant to Israel and chief propagandist in the U.S. for Israeli state policies that are tantamount to war crimes.

By attending this Israeli celebration, Asali is complicit in the attempts to legitimize a monumental trauma that we have suffered as a people and a nation struggling for its very survival. There can be no retreat from such a disgrace. There can be no justification. And no credibility can be salvaged for ATFP as long as Asali remains associated with this organization.

Ahmed Moor sent along the petition and adds:

Ziad Asali, one of Washington’s dim-lit, flickering lampposts, made a silly blunder recently. The president of the American Task Force on Palestine recently attended an “independence day” celebration. But it wasn’t anything to do with the Fourth of July – the event was organized by the Israeli embassy in Washington. And the celebration was in honor of Israel – that light unto nations.

It’s worth noting that Asali’s lack of integrity and historical sensibility (what is the Nakba, anyway?) is nothing exceptional for ATFP. The organization has long been a integral part of the Israel Lobby.

Read the full petition here.

New Pew Center poll highlights growing Egyptian revulsion at peace treaty with Israel

May 09, 2012

Alex Kane

An Egyptian protester outside the Israeli embassy last August (Photo: AP)

Noam Chomsky’s analysis of US foreign policy after the Arab Spring boils down to this maxim: “The U.S. and its allies will do anything they can to prevent authentic democracy in the Arab world.” Anewly released poll from the Pew Research Center on Egyptian political attitudes explains why Chomsky is right.

The Pew Research Center poll shows antipathy towards the US and Israel–an expected result if you follow data on Arab and Muslim attitudes towards the West and Israel.

Here are the relevant numbers: 60% of Egyptians say that US economic and military aid to Egypt has a “detrimental impact”; almost 40% want a distancing of the Egypt-US relationship; 80% view the US unfavorably; and 61% of Egyptians want to annul the peace treaty with Israel. That result is up from last year’s, which showed that 54% of Egyptians wanted to toss the treaty out.

The Pew Center also notes that “opposition to the treaty has grown significantly over the last year among young people and the highly educated. Support for annulling the treaty has increased by 14 points among 18-29 year-olds and by 18 points among the college-educated.”

The fact that about the same number of Egyptians dislike US aid and the country’s treaty with Israel is no coincidence. The $1.3 billion in funds the US transfers to Egypt’s military every year is, first and foremost, about making sure the military keeps the treaty with Israel, a sacrosanct pillar of US policy in the region.

There will be those on the right who say that these types of poll numbers show that Israel needs to hunker down in its fortress literally protected by walls on all sides. They will say that Benjamin Netanayhu, Israel’s prime minister, was right when he told the Knesset that the Arab Spring is an “Islamic, anti-Western, anti-liberal, anti-Israeli and anti-democratic wave.” Netanyahu went on to say that the Arab uprisings show why Israel cannot move forward on peace with the Palestinians.

Netanyahu’s right on one thing: the new uprisings in the Arab world are not good for Israel. But it’s precisely because of Israeli policy that a new democratic region would mean a loss of Israeli power. Egyptians want the 1979 peace treaty to be overturned because of their disgust with Israel’s system of control over the Palestinians. The treaty spoke of moving towards “autonomy” for Palestinians, something that we’re not any closer to 30-plus years later. So in fact, the precise reason why Israel’s footing in the region is off-balance is because the masses of people in the Arab world are fed up with Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.

The Obama administration talks of democracy in the Middle East. But their actions speak to the truth that the US still wants to prevent authentic democracy. In March, the State Department “certified to Congress that Egypt is meeting its obligations under its Peace Treaty with Israel,” paving the way for the $1.3 billion to be forked over even as a dispute over a crackdown on NGOs in Egypt continued. The State Department announcement of the certification repeatedly praised Egypt’s new democratic turn.

Over a month later, Egyptian security forces killed 9 protesters calling for an end to the rule of Egypt’s military council. The weapons used to kill were made here and bought with US dollars–all for the purpose of quelling further protests that could destabilize an Egyptian regime eager to stay close to the US and Israel. No wonder why, as Chomsky says, “the U.S. and its allies will do anything they can to prevent authentic democracy in the Arab world.”

Al Jazeera’s ‘The Stream’ tackles racism against African refugees in Israel

May 09, 2012

Allison Deger

Over the past five years racism in Israel against Africans, Sudanese and Eritrean refugees, has swelled. In discourse, it rivals that of racism against Palestinians. And with 40,000 to 45,000 refugees entering Israel since 2007, coupled with no comprehensive placement policies for asylum seekers, racism against this group will only increase. Yesterday, Al Jazeera‘s The Stream covered the recent vigilante attacks against African communities in Israel, increases in prison terms for undocumented immigrants (up to three years incarceration before deportation) and the existential questions of Israel’s Jewish character. Guest of the program and writer for +972 Magazine, Mya Guarnieri, closes the show with: if Israel is a Jewish state, “where do non-Jews fit into it?”

Watch the program in full here.

All Tweets tagged with #ajstream appear live online in The Stream’s website Twitter feed.

Guarnieri was joined by fellow guests, Sanjeev Bery, Middle East Director at Amnesty International; Yohannes Bayu, Founder and Executive Director for the African Refugee Development Center; and Mondoweiss contributor David Sheen.

Exposing racism as a day-to-day practice, The Stream also showed this video clip first posted on the Electronic Intifada by Jalal Abukhater where an Israeli woman is asking people on the street to sign a petition to not deport refugees.  The first petition is for a Danish girl and all of the people stopped sign it.  The second petition is for a Sudanese child. No one signs it.

Standing up for equality at the ‘Equality Forum’ celebration of Israel

May 09, 2012

Matthew Graber

Members of Philly’s LGBTQ community protest
outside Equality Forum

Last Thursday evening, I was a part of a group of about 20 people gathered outside of the Doubletree Hotel in downtown Philadelphia to demonstrate against the decision of the “Equality Forum” to have Israel as this year’s “featured nation” and to partner with the Israeli Ministry of Tourism and the Israeli Embassy in Washington.

By collaborating with the Government of Israel, the “Equality Forum” is lending itself to a seven-year multi-million dollar advertising campaign by the state, called “Brand Israel”, which seeks to portray Israel as “modern and progressive”, and to distract from Israel’s violent policies towards the indigenous Palestinian population of segregation and expulsion. The “Equality Forum”, as a conduit to the Philadelphia LGBTQ community, is the ideal venue for Israeli government officials and those they have paid to speak to pinkwash Israel – to appropriate queer voices in an effort to portray Israel as a “gay haven”, and to silence critique of Israel’s policies towards Palestinians.

The majority of passersby were curious and supportive of the demonstration. They were also outraged by Israel’s continuing treatment of Palestinians, and they wanted to learn more about pinkwashing. But there were several individuals who confronted us and threatened us.

One woman passing by was disturbed by the prospect of granting equal rights to non-Jewish Palestinians living under military occupation. Invoking the holocaust, she said that the Jewish people must have a safe place to go. I agree completely with this, but the Zionist mentality behind this sentiment – the idea that there must be an exclusive Jewish state – is used to justify the Government of Israel’s home demolitions, evictions, and violence against Palestinians.

Another disturbing confrontation occurred between a worker at the Doubletree Hotel and one member of our group, Ahuviya Harel. The worker was telling us to leave the public sidewalk in front of their property. Harel, a transgender woman in our group, needed to correct his pronoun usage at one point, saying, “I am a woman. Use the ‘she’ pronoun when you are speaking about me!”

The Doubletree worker responded by saying, “Oh yeah? Let me go clock out and then I will show you what I really think.”

Then, as the “Israel panel” of the “Equality Forum” concluded, the moderator of the panel, Nurit Shein, came out as we were wrapping up our demonstration. We told her why we were there, and what she was supporting by collaborating with the Government of Israel. Harel then told Shein that she was threatened with violence because of her appearance in regards to gender and presentation.

“Don’t play the trans card with me!” Shein lashed back.

Such a statement takes the side of the worker of the Doubletree Hotel, and ignores Harel’s own need for safety and protection. Shein also repeatedly referred to Harel using the pronoun ‘he’, intentionally perpetrating transphobia. Shein justified her support for violence, transphobia, and transmisogyny by saying to Harel, “You disrespect the trans people I work with every day,” as though Harel’s status as a transgender woman who stands up for Palestinian rights precludes her from the safety and consideration of other transgender individuals.

Shein is the Executive Director of the Mazzoni Center, the largest provider of LGBTQ health services in Philadelphia. She previously served for 20 years as a Colonel for “Military intelligence” in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

The confrontations and conversations we had highlight why we were there in front of the Doubletree Hotel. Only by offering mutual support to victims of state and interpersonal violence and trauma – whether perpetrated in the name of anti-trans misogyny or ethnic cleansing and demographics in a Jewish state – can true equality be created.

Publicly-funded Hebrew charter schools serve as ‘vanguard’ for Israel –Forward

May 09, 2012

Philip Weiss

Great reporting by Naomi Zeveloff and Nathan Guttman at the Forward on the extent to which the Jewish charter school movement, which establishes Hebrew-language schools using public funds, is serving a frankly Zionist agenda. The piece demonstrates that Zionism has become central to American Jewish identity, and also, I hope, marks a turning point in American Jewish attitudes towards these schools, dedicated to helping a foreign country. Excerpt:

Yet, as Hebrew charters have overcome stereotypes of being parochial Jewish institutions, they’ve also positioned themselves as more than just schools. Many, though not all, Hebrew charters see themselves as fonts of Israel education that will cultivate students — both Jews and non-Jews — to serve as goodwill ambassadors for Israel in the years ahead.

“I often dream of what the graduates of our Hebrew-language charter schools will look like 20 years from now,” wrote Sara Berman, the chair of the Hebrew Charter School Center [HCSC] in the Spring 2011 issue of Contact, the journal of the Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life. “I see them as a vanguard of understanding for Israel and for cultural respect in general.”

Charter schools are publicly funded but privately sponsored primary and secondary schools that pledge, in exchange for their taxpayer support, to meet certain standards put forth in charter agreements with state or local education boards. Many also receive private funds from their sponsoring institutions. Most charter schools operate on a lottery system; families who want to send their children to the schools are picked at random…

One goal of the curriculum at Brooklyn’s Hebrew Language Academy [HLA]— HCSC’s first school [Hebrew Charter School Center]— “is to foster a love for the country of Israel in all of its diversity,” said Principal Laura Silver.

At HLA, whose 306 students are 45% non-white, the Israeli flag hangs alongside the Stars and Stripes…

“A passionate, Israel-oriented, Hebrew-speaking community will almost certainly support Israel and stay connected to Judaism,” wrote [San Diego's Jennie] Starr in the Autumn 2011 issue of Contact, describing Kavod

Report from the Palestinian prisoner hunger strike, and the movement growing to support it

May 09, 2012

Adam Horowitz

Physicians for Human Rights-Israel is holding an emergency fundraising drive to cover the work they’re doing to support the prisoner hunger strike. From their website:

Physicians for Human Rights-Israel is fighting for the medical rights of Bilal Diab and Thaer Halahala, among others, Palestinian administrative detainees in the advanced stages of a hunger strike. We are in urgent need of financial support. Following the submission of 16 court petitions on behalf of hunger strikers since January, PHR-Israel’s allotted legal funds for the year are now fully depleted.

We are concerned that we will not be able to continue to defend the rights of of prisoners on hunger strike, nor take on any more of the scores of new cases we are currently monitoring.

To learn more see here.

‘You see that we are rising–no longer in the shadows of the ghosts of Deir Yassin’ –Phil Monsour/Rafeef Ziadah

May 09, 2012

Annie Robbins

Look at the children’s faces. And the old people’s. “They pretend that it’s forgotten… You see that we are rising… Our day is surely coming… No longer in the shadows of the ghosts of Deir Yassin”

They pretend that it’s forgotten
But somewhere small flowers grow
On the weathered stones of destroyed homes
Somewhere the light’s still in the window

You see that we are rising our day is surely coming
No longer in the shadows
Of the ghosts of Deir Yassin

They change the names on the signs
But it’s in our hearts these words are written
Of the children who don’t know their homes
They will walk the streets from which they are forbidden

You see that we are rising our day is surely coming
No longer in the shadows
Of the ghosts of Deir Yassin

Of the old ones now passed on
But it’s their blood our hearts are pumping
They will walk with us when we return to their towns
Whose names will live again

You see that we are rising our day is surely coming
No longer in the shadows
Of the ghosts of Deir Yassin
You see that we are rising
You know the fear is gone
We will return

You see that we are rising our day is surely coming
We are no longer in the shadows
Of the ghosts of Deir Yassin
You see that we are rising our day is surely coming
No longer in the shadows
Of the ghosts of Deir Yassin

Michael Scheuer says Israeli lobby has tied American gov’t down like Gulliver

May 09, 2012

Philip Weiss

In Chicago, WLS drive-time radio interviews former CIA official Michael Scheuer (thanks to this neocon site and Mark). Excerpts:

Sixteen years after the start of this war, we still hear Mr. Obama and John McCain and Mitt Romney and the British Prime Minister and the rest of them teling their electorates that we’re at war because they hate women in the work place and they hate elections and liberties….

They’re at war with us because of what our government does, not the way we live at home. As long as we are not adult enough to accept that… it certainly means that we ought to know that our policies are having an immense cost.

Host: What policies?

Surely our support for the Saudi Police state, our presence on the Arab peninsula, in Iraq, in Yemen, in Afghanistan, our unqualified support for Israel. The intersting thing sir is that these were all outlined by bin Laden in his declaration of war in 1996. Our political leaders in both parties have consistently told Americans in essence, forget what our enemy is saying, we know better what they’re thinking than they do. So we’re in this position that we believe that they’re all madmen and there’s only a limited number of them that we can kill one at a time.

Host: Would you change our policy with Israel and Saudi?

We can’t sir, we can’t do either one. The Israeli lobby controls our politics and the Saudi Arabians controls the most important reserves of oil. The United States government is like Gulliver, it’s strapped to the ground…. We’re stuck in the middle east and we’ll have to keep taking the pounding we’ve been taking….

Because we’ve taken no cognizance of [our enemies' motivation], we’ve given the next generation away to the Islamists. We’ve made no dent in the appeal of people who want to get us out of their neighborhood…

You don’t have to change your policies. If you want to support the Israelis [that's fine].. But we ought not to believe that the enemy is not inspired by that…

NOVANEWS

• Biden gives Israel the green light on Iran in speech to rabbinical convention
• Israeli military raids office of human rights organization ‘Stop the Wall’; steals computers and hard drives
• Shaul Mofaz, Netanyahu’s new partner, ordered ‘revenge’ op that killed Palestinian police in 2002
• ‘Battle of the Empty Stomachs’: Thaer Halahleh and Bilal Diab surpass 70 days on hunger strike
• In ‘Nation’ BDS debate, Barghouti demands rights, Avishai pleads to protect ‘progressive and creative’ Israeli elites
• Ehud Barak looks to revive collective punishment policy in the West Bank
• ‘Death of a Salesman’ came out of an intermarriage
• Why no condolences from Obama to David Cameron?
• ‘Liberal and enlightened’– and all white
• Israel destroys al-Araqib for the 38th time

Biden gives Israel the green light on Iran in speech to rabbinical convention

May 08, 2012

Nima Shirazi

Joe Biden addressing the the 2012 Rabbinical Assembly National Convention
(Photo: Creative Loafing)

“The window has not closed in terms of the Israelis if they choose to act on their own militarily,” the Vice President told the congregation.  “I would not contract out my security to anybody, even a loyal, loyal, loyal friend like the United States.”

This is not the first time Biden has made such a comment.  During an appearance on the ABC’s “This Week,” Biden told George Stephanopoulos, “Look, we cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do when they make a determination — if they make a determination — that they’re existentially threatened and their survival is threatened by another country.”  Biden comments were immediately walked back by the Obama campaign.

The claim that Iran somehow poses an “existential threat” to Israel is of course a long-running propaganda line often employed to fear-monger about Iran’s nuclear energy program.  This view, however, is not shared by numerous Israeli officials including former IDF chief of staff Dan Halutz, former Mossad head Ephraim Halevy, and current Mossad head Tamir Pardo.  Even Israel’s hawkish Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who is leading the push toward an Israeli attack on Iran, said in 2009, “I am not among those who believe Iran is an existential issue for Israel.  Israel is strong, I don’t see anyone who could pose an existential threat.”

Still, Biden declared, “We will prevent Iran from acquiring a nuke by whatever means necessary, period.”  A strong claim, to be sure, but one that rings a bit silly considering that accordingto the United States, the IAEA, and Israel - Iran isn’t building nuclear weapons.

The Jewish Telegraph Agency reports that, during his speech today, the “vice president also called efforts to delegitimize Israel ‘the most significant assault’ on Israel since its independence.”  In an effort to burnish the Obama administration’s Zionist credentials, Biden insisted, “At every point in our Administration, at every juncture, we have stood up for the legitimacy of the state of Israel.”

For Biden, it seems, Israel’s war crime light is still green…even if its armistice line isn’t.

In the strangest comment of the day, though, Biden spoke of internal Iranian politics:

“The dissension between Ahmadinejad and the Supreme Leader is palpable. They will not both be around two years from now, and my bet is that Ahmadinejad is gone.”

Clearly, Biden is nothing if not a deft gambler.  Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will absolutely not be in office two years from, but it’s not because of Biden’s prescient prophesy.  Iran has constitutionally mandated presidential term limits, just like we do here in the U.S.  Ahmadinejad is almost three years into his second terms as president, which means that, by 2014, he will undoubtedly be “gone” from the Iranian executive regardless of what tea leaves Biden is reading…or smoking.

But Biden has long had problems understanding and retaining facts when it comes to foreign policy.  For instance, in his 2008 debate against Sarah Palin, he bizarrely claimed, among other things, that prior to 2006, the United States, together with France, “kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon” and insisted that the United States has the right and obligation “to keep the UN in line.”  It is unsurprising that, at a campaign stop in Seattle in October 2008, Biden admitted, “I’ve forgotten more about foreign policy than most of my colleagues know.”

Regarding the Obama administration’s pro-Israel efforts, Biden told the crowd of rabbis, “I’m proud of our record.  No president since Harry Truman has done more for Israel’s physical security than Barack Obama.”

Evoking Truman is a bold move.  Yes, is it true that the only person in history to authorize a nuclear attack on a civilian population (twice) that resulted in calculated, deliberate mass murder, dismissed the advice of his own State Department officials when he recognized the nascent State of Israel on May 14, 1948, just eleven minutes after it declared itself a nation.

In November 1945, Truman reportedly told a gathering of U.S. diplomats who were urging a more balanced American approach to the looming Palestine issue, “I’m sorry, gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism. I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents.”  Of course, there were hundreds of thousands of citizens of Arab descent living in the U.S. at the time, but since they were not as well organized or funded as their Zionist counterparts, from a political standpoint they might as well not have existed at all.

Of course, the same goes for Biden, his boss, and the U.S. Congress now.

Yet, in a diary entry written on July 21, 1947, Truman reacted harshly to demands made of him that day by his Treasury Secretary and staunch Zionist Henry Morganthau, Jr. regarding the Jewish refugees from Europe settling in Palestine.  Truman wrote, “He’d no business, whatever to call me. The Jews have no sense of proportion nor do they have any judgement on world affairs.”  He continued,

The Jews, I find are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as D[isplaced] P[ersons] as long as the Jews get special treatment. Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the under dog. Put an underdog on top and it makes no difference whether his name is Russian, Jewish, Negro, Management, Labor, Mormon, Baptist he goes haywire. I’ve found very, very few who remember their past condition when prosperity comes.

Biden didn’t relay this particular tidbit to the assembly of rabbis.

Israeli military raids office of human rights organization ‘Stop the Wall’; steals computers and hard drives

May 08, 2012

Stop the Wall

Broken door to the Stop the Wall office in Ramallah. (Photo: Stop the Wall)

Today, Stop the Wall issued the following press release:

At 1.30am this morning ten armored jeeps of the Israeli Occupation Forces surrounded and raided the offices of Stop the Wall in Ramallah. Israeli military stole 2 laptops, 3 hard drives and 10 memory cards containing files and photos as well as archive material relating to the work that the organisation does in opposition to Israel’s apartheid wall and the attack on Palestinian human rights that the wall and the settlements represent. This is yet another attack upon Palestinian civil society and their struggle against the physical and psychological oppression, land confiscation and ethnic cleansing policies of Israel.

Computer hardrives confiscated during this morning’s raid. (Photo: Stop the Wall)

Stop the Wall is one of the most vibrant organizations of human rights defenders in Palestine, and has been promoting, for almost ten years, civil resistance and advocacy campaigns against the Wall and in defense of Palestinian rights to self determination. Human Rights Defenders are internationally recognized as an essential element in political processes and their repression further underlines Israeli unwillingness to achieve a just peace.

Broken door to the Stop the Wall office. (Photo: Stop the Wall)

Jamal Juma, coordinator of the Stop the Wall Campaign, comments:

‘It is not surprising that the Israeli authorities have chosen this moment to escalate their repression against the Stop the Wall grassroots network of civil resistance against the Wall and the settlements, choosing to act on the same day that the Israeli High Court rejected the appeals of Palestinian hunger strikers Bilal Diab and Tha’ir Halahleh, imprisoned without charge and without trial, effectively condemning them to death.

The courageous steadfastness of the more than 2000 hunger strikers in Israeli jails is underlining once more the power of civil resistance as part of the Palestinian struggle. Almost daily people are out in the streets to protest in solidarity with the Palestinian political prisoners, and the discontent with the fruitless and completely stalled diplomatic processes is growing stronger. At the same time, the Israeli authorities announced in 2011 to UN agencies that throughout 2012 year they will systematically displace the Palestinian population in area C. While the displacement drive is underway in the Jordan Valley, home demolitions are rising and the settlement construction is accelerated, the people across the West Bank are always more constraint behind the cantons of the wall.

This raid on the Stop the Wall offices is a clear message that the Israeli authorities are fearing widespread nonviolent action will challenge their policies effectively. Israel is preparing for confrontation and more repression, clearly showing that it is not ready to relinquish any of the international sanctioned rights the Palestinian people are struggling for.’

This is not the first time Stop the Wall has been the target of Israeli repression. In September 2009 Stop the Wall youth coordinator was arrested and the Stop the Wall coordinator, Jamal Juma’, was arrested a few months later, in December 2009. The Israeli authorities were not able to formulate any accusations against either of them and after a sustained international campaign, that saw the active involvement of the diplomatic missions in Palestine and European foreign ministries as well as countless human rights organizations around the world, both had to be freed in January 2010. This attack was followed only a few months later by an extensive office raid by the Israeli military on February 8 2010 and mass arrests of grassroots human rights defenders in the villages most actively protesting against the Wall.

Shaul Mofaz, Netanyahu’s new partner, ordered ‘revenge’ op that killed Palestinian police in 2002

May 08, 2012

Alex Kane

Benjamin Netanyahu and Shaul Mofaz (Photo: Getty Images Europe)

For analysis of what the new coalition deal struck by Benjamin Netanyahu means, read Paul Mutter’s take. But I wanted to look at the other man at the center of the deal: Shaul Mofaz.

Mofaz is a military man; he was the Israeli military’s Chief of Staff during the Second Intifada. And as part of the conditions for Kadima entering Netanyahu’s coalition, Mofaz gets inside Netanayhu’s cabinet and will be appointed deputy prime minister.

The speculation is that Mofaz will now play a role in formulating the Netanyahu government’s policy towards the Palestinians. JJ Goldberg of the Forward describes the new government as the “smartest move by any Israeli peace advocate in a long time.” Goldberg points to Mofaz’s “peace place,” which “calls for immediate recognition of a Palestinian state with provisional borders, controlling 60% of the West Bank for now, followed promptly by state-to-state negotiations toward a final-status agreement.”

But if you look at the fine print of the Mofaz plan, it’s nothing special. Mofaz calls for keeping the major settlement blocs, including Ariel, making any talk of a Palestinian state moot. Jerusalem would remain under Israeli control. There would be no settlement freeze. You call that a peace plan?

And then there’s Mofaz’s record in the Israeli military. Here’s Haaretz’s Gideon Levy on Mofaz:

Mofaz was also one of our crueler defense ministers – no less than 1,705 Palestinians were killed on his watch, including 372 children and teens and 191 targeted killings: that is no great honor, either. True, those were the days of the second intifada, but Mofaz was also one of the fathers of the doctrine of targeted killings, which has been completely forgotten. He was also the one heard whispering into a microphone that Yasser Arafat should be expelled from Ramallah, another genius idea at the time.

“I thought we should strike very hard,” he told the Winograd Commission investigating the Second Lebanon War, and in so doing said everything there was to say about his doctrine of warfare and his military-political creed. Perhaps he has changed his mind since then, but it is up to him to prove it, and he has not yet done so.

In September 2005, the Independent’s Donald Macintyre reported on Breaking the Silence, the courageous Israeli organization of ex-soldiers who speak out about the violent abuse heaped on Palestinians living under occupation. Macintyre mentions a book authored by Israeli journalists to back up Breaking the Silence’s claim that  Israeli army officials order soldiers to violate international law:

Breaking the Silence contends that the inspiration for many orders, which it says directly violate the international legal obligations of an occupying power, came from the highest ranks. Certainly, Booomerang, a new book by two prominent Israeli journalists, Ofer Shelah and Raviv Druker, reports that at a conference of officers as early as May 2001, Shaul Mofaz, now the Defence Minister but then Chief of Staff, asked for the tape to be switched off before telling them that he wanted a “price” exacted from the Palestinians of 10 killed a day on each of the Army’s seven fronts.

And after six Israeli soldiers were killed in Ein Arik in February 2002, the book says, Mr Mofaz personally ordered a revenge operation in which for the first time Palestinian police officers would be shot, whether they posed a threat or not. One soldier who took part in a raid which killed four or five Palestinian policemen at a checkpoint 24 hours after Ein Arik told the IoS: “It felt bad even at that time. They said Palestinian police are connected to terror and that the [killers] passed through the checkpoint. Maybe the police are connected to terror but for sure they didn’t pass through all the checkpoints [attacked that day].”

Now of course, whether Mofaz in the government or not will make very little difference for Palestinians looking for an end to Israel’s occupation. The occupation and settlement project is much larger than one man or coalition government. But, you can forget about Mofaz saving peace negotiations. Perhaps even more importantly, Mofaz’s record is no comfort to those worried about the next Israeli escalation in the Gaza Strip.

‘Battle of the Empty Stachs’: Thaer Halahleh and Bilal Diab surpass 70 days on hunger strike

Today in Palestine

Palestinian Prisoners’ “Battle of the Empty Stomachs” Continues: Thaer Halahleh and Bilal Diab Surpass 70 Days on Hunger Strike
Ramallah, 8 May 2012 – Thaer Halahleh and Bilal Diab’s petitions to the Israeli High Court regarding their administrative detention orders were rejected yesterday, four days following their High Court hearing on 3 May. Thaer and Bilal are on their 71st day of hunger strike and at immediate risk of death. In complete disregard to their critical medical condition, the High Court judges stated in their decision that the hunger strikes do not provide reason for releasing Thaer and Bilal from administrative detention or reducing the period of detention.
link to www.addameer.org

Hundreds protest in solidarity with Palestinian hunger strikers
Hundreds of people have protested in the West Bank in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners being held by Israel. People gathered in Al Manara Square in Ramallah on Tuesday, as almost 2,000 Palestinian prisoners entered the fourth week of a hunger strike. Two others have refused food for more than 70 days. Israel’s Supreme Court on Monday denied their appeals against administrative detention.

Hunger Strikers

Halahle refrains from drinking water after 70 days of hunger strike
The family of Palestinian detainee Thaer Halahle said that their son had refrained from drinking water and taking medicine after 70 days of his hunger strike.
link to www.palestine-info.co.uk

The Red Cross is worried about the striking prisoners’ health conditions
The International Committee of the Red Cross expressed, on Monday, its concern for the health conditions of the hunger striking Palestinian prisoners in occupation jails.
link to www.palestine-info.co.uk

EU: Israel must allow medical, family visits to hunger-strikers
Ma`an – Physicians for Human Rights — Israel on Monday said Israeli authorities rejected its appeal for Diab`s family to visit him. “Allowing family visits to people at such deteriorated medical condition, some that can die any day, is a requirement emphasized in medical ethics and in Israel`s Patient Right Law. In addition to mental support, consultation with the family can save lives.”
link to www.maannews.net

Two Palestinians on hunger strike nearing death, lawyer says
(CNN) — The lawyer representing two Palestinian prisoners entering the 70th day of a hunger strike said his clients were nearing death and accused an Israeli high court of procrastination in delivering a ruling that could save their lives. ”Their medical condition has gone from very bad to extremely worse,” Jamil al-Khatib said of clients Bilal Diab, 27, and Tha’er Halahlah, 33, ”I believe what the court is doing here is trying to break the will of both prisoners so they will back down in their hunger strike.”
link to edition.cnn.com

Jihad Movement: the Occupation Decides to Execute Diab and Halahleh
The Islamic Jihad Movement has considered the Israeli court refusal of the appeal submitted by the lawyer of Bilal Diab and Thaer Halahleh, against their administrative detention as a death sentence.
link to www.palestine-info.co.uk

Statement No. 4 of the Hunger Strikers’ Leadership
link to samidoun.ca

Detainee Hassan Safadi continues his hunger strike for the 63 days
Mahmoud Hassan, the lawyer of Addameer Foundation for Prisoners and Human Rights, met, on Sunday in Ramla prison hospital, the detainee Hassan Safadi who has been on hunger strike for 63 days.
link to www.palestine-info.co.uk

IPS isolates hunger striking detainee
The Israeli prison service (IPS) has isolated a hunger striker detainee in the Negev jail in line with its penal measures against those prisoners.
link to www.palestine-info.co.uk

Rights group submits court appeal to visit hunger striker
RAMALLAH (Ma’an) — A human rights group has submitted an appeal to Israel’s courts to allow doctors to visit hunger-striking prisoner Bilal Diab. Physicians for Human Rights submitted an appeal based on the recommendation of Ahmad Tibi, a Palestinian member of the Israeli Knesset. “After 68 days on hunger strike, Bilal Diab’s medical condition has become serious and he must be checked by a doctor from outside the prison service,” a statement from the group said. A report from Tibi was attached to the appeal.
link to www.maannews.net

Duqmaq: The incarceration conditions of isolated prisoners are very harsh
Lawyer of Mandela foundation Buthaina Duqmaq said the Palestinian prisoners in solitary cells have been on hunger strike because they are deprived of the most basic human rights in Israeli jails.
link to www.palestine-info.co.uk

Prisoners are continuing the strike despite attempts to break it
The Central Strike Committee confirmed, in an urgent statement to the Ministry of Prisoners’ Affairs in Gaza , that it rejects any attempt to undermine the strike that entered its twentieth day.
link to www.palestine-info.co.uk

Prisoner Sabha: The hunger strikers enjoy high morale
Senior Hamas official and prisoner Mohamed Sabha said on Monday that the hunger strike is going better than what has been planned for and the hunger strikers are in high spirits.
link to www.palestine-info.co.uk

‘Victory will be greater if hunger strikers die’
Khader Adnan, who refused food for two months until Israel agreed to release him, says Palestinian prisoners’ strike will be hailed as victory regardless of its outcome.
link to www.ynetnews.com

Haneyya delivers message from prisoners to Erdogan
Palestinian prisoners in Israeli occupation jails have addressed a message to Turkish premier Recep Erdogan asking for his personal intervention to support their cause.
link to www.palestine-info.co.uk

Mother of hunger striker taken to hospital unconscious
The mother of hunger striker Thaer Halahle, who has been on hunger strike for 65 days, was taken to Al-Khalil government hospital on Saturday after she fainted.
link to www.palestine-info.co.uk

Mothers worry about sons who fast in Israel jails
Ramallah Motasser Abd Al Haleem was barely out of his teens when the Israeli army took him away. Now the fresh-faced Palestinian stares out from a framed portrait clutched to his mother’s chest. “When they arrested him, he was only 20 years old,” she says in the centre of Ramallah, the capital of the West Bank, just miles from the barbed wire barrier that divides Israel from Palestine.
link to gulfnews.com

Solitary confinement and administrative detention
Administrative detention provides a vehicle for the arrest of Palestinians where there is no genuine reason for them to be taken into custody, even under Israel’s draconian military occupation. Nobody sees the “evidence” provided by intelligence officers apart from the Israeli judge. The lawyers acting for the detainee can’t see what the evidence against their client is; in any case, it is probably fabricated by a spy. The intelligence service is not bothered by this as long as it has something to put before a judge and claim that the detainee “threatens the security of Israel”.
link to www.middleeastmonitor.org.uk

Palestinian Hunger Games, Juan Cole
Some 2000 of the estimated 4600 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons are now hunger striking. Three hundred of them have been deprived of the right of habeas corpus and are being held in without charge or trial. Others are routinely tossed into solitary confinement, which, depending on how it is deployed, could be a severe violation of their human rights. Some 10 of the hunger strikers are severely affected and some near death.
link to www.juancole.com

Solidarity with our Hunger Strikers

IOF soldiers violently quell solidarity demonstrations
Dozens of Palestinians were treated for breathing difficulty when Israeli occupation forces fired tear gas canisters at them near Ofer in Ramallah and near Arub refugee camp in Al-Khalil on Monday.

5 hunger strikers in solidarity with prisoners transferred to hospital in Gaza
Local sources stated that four people in Gaza City were taken to the hospital on Saturday 5th May after fainting due to their hunger strike in solidarity with the hunger striking prisoners.
link to www.palestine-info.co.uk

Hundreds Of Gaza Women March To Join Hunger Strikers Rally
Hundreds of women today marched to “Al Jundy,” the Square of the Unknown Soldier in Gaza City to join those already gathered in solidarity for the Palestinian hunger-strikers in Israeli jails. Some 40 released prisoners have set up beds in the solidarity tents, in an open-ended public hunger strike in support of the current prisoners, whose situation they know only too well. (link to video Helal Jaradat video) Thousands of locals pass through every day, staying a few hours or all day, to support them all in their demands for the treatment of Palestinian prisoners in accordance with international law.
link to www.scoop.co.nz

Students, public employees to join solidarity sit-ins
RAMALLAH (Ma’an) — School students and civil servants will suspend work on Tuesday to take part in a public sit-in to support Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike, their union said. The Union of Workers said public employees and students would stop work at 11 a.m. to allow participation in rallies centered on protest tents in cities across the West Bank. On April 17, Palestinian prisoners day, over 1,000 prisoners joined a group of hunger-strikers protesting detention without charge. Around 2,000 are now taking part in the strike, prisoners rights groups estimate. Administrative detainees Bilal Diab, 27, from Jenin, and Thaer Halahla, 33, from Hebron — are in a precarious condition after 69 days without food, a doctor from Physicians for Human Rights-Israel warned last week.
link to www.maannews.net

PFLP members protest in Ramallah
RAMALLAH (Ma’an) — Members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine protested in Ramallah on Saturday in support of prisoners’ rights. Protesters burned Israeli, US, Arab League, EU and UN flags in response for their perceived silence in the face of Israeli violations. PFLP members called for armed resistance against Israel, saying that it is the only way to liberate occupied land and free prisoners. The group of demonstrators also called for a mass popular uprising to support prisoners, adding that Israel has violated all boundaries and norms.
link to www.maannews.net

Bahrain and Palestine
Political prisoners in Bahrain declare solidarity with Palestinian prisoners.
link to angryarab.blogspot.com

Children in Amman protest in support of hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners
In solidarity with the prisoners illegally incarcerated by the Israeli occupation throughout Palestine and conducting an open-ended hunger strike in Israeli jails, a sit-in protest took place on Wednesday May 2nd in Amman, Jordan, in front of the office of the International Committee of the Red Cross. The protest, organized by independent activists, included many children, and the theme of this protest was banging on pots and pans and blowing whistles, to grab the attention of the ICRC in particular and the society/international community at large, to alleviate the suffering of said prisoners and demand their rights.
link to samidoun.ca

AOHR Egypt announces solidarity hunger strike
AOHR in Egypt announced a series of solidarity activities in support of the Palestinian prisoners’ on hunger strike, starting by a solidarity hunger strike, on Sunday for 12 hours.
link to www.palestine-info.co.uk

Seattle: Educational vigil for Palestinian prisoners May 5
As reported by SIRATYST, Seattle’s Voices of Palestine held an educational vigil on Palestinian prisoners on May 5, 2012. Voices of Palestine holds educational vigils every 1st & 3rd Saturday, near Westlake Park, 4th & Pine, Seattle.  Join them next Sunday, May 13, 2012, from noon-5 p.m. at Westlake Park for Nakba Commemoration, Palestine Stolen Homeland.
link to samidoun.ca

Land Theft & Destruction / Ethnic Cleansing / Refugees

Knesset panel passes benefits for West Bank settlements
Opponents say Likud bill tailored for West Bank settlements; proponents insist it can help Arab settlement, too.
link to www.haaretz.com

Stunned by High Court decision, Ulpana settlers unwilling to negotiate evacuation
Residents of West Bank outpost argue that state must solve their problem; Yesha Settlement Council to convene Tuesday.
link to www.haaretz.com

Court orders Palestinians out of Jerusalem home
Israel’s Supreme Court on Monday ordered two Palestinians to leave their properties in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, ruling that the properties were owned by Jews, their lawyer told AFP.
link to news.yahoo.com

Israel issues eviction orders to Sheikh Jarrah home
JERUSALEM (Ma’an) — Israeli officials on Monday issued an eviction order to a home in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem, Wafa news agency reported. The eviction notice was issued to Fatima Salamieh, who has lived in the home since the 1950′s. The Salamieh family say that the authorities want to hand the property over to settlers, who claim it is owned by Jews. On April 18, Israeli police forcibly evicted 14 members of the Natsheh family after an Israeli court ruled in favor of settlers, who moved into the property.
link to www.maannews.net

Kufur Qaddoum: More homes to be demolished in the West Bank
The Israeli occupation forces have recently handed notices to citizens in Kufur Qaddoum village in Qalqilia district, stating its intention to demolish houses in the village and ordering the cessation of the construction of other houses that are currently being built. The village lies in Area B* of the West Bank, in the south west. Villagers said the occupation forces attacked the village on April 30 in the morning and handed out notices to Shaker Radwa, Basem Barham, Mousa Barham, Ahmad Barham, and Subhi Barham.
link to www.stopthewall.org

Israel serves notification for more demolitions in occupied territories
The Israeli occupation authorities handed over, on Sunday, May 6, notifications for the demolition of Palestinian farmers’ houses and sheds used for livestock in Khirbet At-Taweel, near Akraba town, in the West Bank. Hamza Deria, a member of the committee for defending Akraba lands, reported that soldiers and representatives of Israel’s Department of Planning and Building handed over the notices; giving the farmers 72 hours to evacuate their property before they proceed with demolition. Israel claims the area is a closed military zone and the establishment of all facilities in it is strictly prohibited.
link to www.middleeastmonitor.org.uk

New settlement on a former Jordanian military base near Al Khalil
The Israeli army has recently handed an abandoned military base built on Palestinian land near Dura village, to the south of the southern West Bank city of Al-Khalil, to be used by Zionist settlers.
link to www.palestine-info.co.uk

IOF digs tunnel along Gaza border
Israeli occupation forces (IOF) are digging a big tunnel along the Gaza eastern and northern borders with Palestine occupied in 1948, the Quds Press reported.
link to www.palestine-info.co.uk

Israeli authorities ‘uproot trees in Hebron village’
HEBRON (Ma’an) — Israeli authorities uprooted around 350 trees while leveling fields in a southern West Bank village on Tuesday morning, the Land Research Center said. Bulldozers, escorted by Israeli forces, demolished stone terraces and uprooted around 100 olive trees on 13,000 square meters of land belonging to Hasan Muhammad Abdul-Ghani Al-Amlah in the Attous area of Beit Ula village, the center said. Authorities razed approximately 250 fruit trees in and uprooted irrigation networks in nearby groves belonging Fayiz Muhammad Abdul-Ghani Al-Amlah, they added. The Jerusalem-based research group said Israeli authorities designate Al-Amlah’s land as Israeli state property and ordered him to vacate. A court hearing was scheduled for Tuesday, but forces razed the land before it could take place, the center said.
link to www.maannews.net

Easing the burden: maternal health care in Palestinian camps
Sitting in a dark, cramped living room in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain al-Hilweh, Sawsan, 24, tenderly rocks her three-month-old son Bayan on her knee, whispering sweet-nothings to calm the agitated baby. As his crying subsides, Sawsan gingerly hands Bayan over to Zeina, one of five midwives and nurses employed in Ain al-Hilweh by the non-governmental organization Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), as part of its maternal and child health care program. Zeina takes the child and smiles affectionately at him while gently wrapping a blood pressure cuff around his delicate arm.
ttp://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-mct-easing-the-burden-maternal-health-care-in-20120505,0,840357.story

In Their Name, We Remember the Nakba
To the memory of all who have lost their land, homes, lives during the Nakba and to this day, may Palestinians around the world never lose hope. In Their Name, We Remember The NAKBA.  Come congregate with us- 531 of us, 1 for every village lost,-for a memorial in front of the White House on Tuesday, May 15, 2012 from 6:30pm till sunset. We will be joined by local students on a hunger strike in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners.
link to blog.endtheoccupation.org

Siege on Gaza

Gaza health authorities sound alarm on depleting medicines
Gaza City, May 6 (Petra) — The Gaza government’s health ministry on Sunday warned of a “humanitarian catastrophe” resulting from an impending collapse of the health system as stocks of medicine in the Israeli-blockaded territory continued to decline sharply. “Gaza hospitals are suffering from a huge crisis as 186 items of medications had run out totally from the ministry’s warehouses and that large types of medicines will also be depleted in the next three months, said Director of the General Administration for Pharmaceuticals, Munir Al-Barsh. He said that some hospital wards had run the risk of closure due to the severe shortage of medicines and medical supplies, but stressed that service at the wards would continue even at a minimum. The ministry called for intervention by rights groups and international health bodies to ease the hardship at Gaza health facilities and ensure a steady supply of medicine. Marking International Thalassaemia Day, the Gaza health ministry warned that running out supplies of medicine had put at risk the lives of 75 Palestinian children suffering from excess iron in blood and body tissue.
link to www.petra.gov.jo

Gaza health catastrophe likely due to lack of essential drugs
A catastrophic situation is likely in Gaza due to a lack of more than 200 essential drugs, a senior official in Gaza’s Ministry of Health has warned. Ashraf Al-Qudra, the Director of Public Relations and Information at the ministry said that the level of supplies in Gaza’s hospitals and the government’s central warehouse is “dangerously low”.
link to www.middleeastmonitor.org.uk

Israel ‘must lift blockade, not just for tomatoes’
GAZA CITY (Ma’an) — Israel must lift its blockade on Gaza and stop limiting exports to the needs of the Israeli market, the deputy agricultural minister said Monday. The Vegetable Growers’ Association in Israel is considering buying tomatoes from the Gaza Strip in response to a sudden price hike in Israeli tomatoes, Voice of Israel radio reported Sunday.
link to www.maannews.net

Israeli Violence / Raids

Action alert: STW office raided by Israeli military
At 1.30am this morning ten armoured jeeps of the Israeli occupation forces and intelligence surrounded and raided the offices of Stop the Wall in Ramallah. Israeli military stole 2 laptops, 3 hard drives and 10 memory cards containing files and photos as well as archive material relating to the work that the organisation does in opposition to Israel’s apartheid wall and the attack on Palestinian human rights that the wall and the settlement represent. This is a renewed attack upon Palestinian civil society and their struggle against the physical and psychological oppression, land confiscation and ethnic cleansing policies of the Israel.
link to www.stopthewall.org

Jewish settlers sneak into Aqsa mosque
Jewish settlers sneaked into the Aqsa mosque on Sunday morning and offered rituals on the eve of calls for breaking into the holy site.
link to www.palestine-info.co.uk

Slamming the door to justice on Palestinians, Ali Abunimah
Israel’s ability to commit crimes against Palestinians with impunity relies on international complicity. There is a determined international effort to ensure that Palestinians are shut out of every legal forum where they could pursue justice for Israel’s crimes against them. Nothing illustrates this better than the horrifying case of the Samouni massacre.
link to www.aljazeera.com

 NOVANEWS

• Inside the Free Syrian Army
• Legalising apartheid in Palestine
• Promo video for Call of Duty Black Ops game shows future of warfare
• New Zealand radio interview about Wikileaks
• Corporate press routinely ignores real people in Papua New Guinea

• Assange interviews two key Arab revolutionaries
• Highlighting the Western obsession with disaster tourism
• How to treat corporations complicit in human rights abuses