Students Allied for Freedom and Equality

Viewpoint on IDF Campus Visit Protest

2010-10-26T23:12:00.007-04:00

     In an effort to contain growing outrage over Israel’s overt disregard of international law and human rights, the Israeli military has launched a PR campaign in which it sends its former soldiers all over the United States to speak about their personal experiences. Last Wednesday, Ann Arbor bore the dubious honor of providing the platform for a military with a history of war crimes to rationalize its actions.

     At 4 p.m., students, faculty, staff, and community members seated themselves in the League's Henderson room where the two Israeli soldiers would soon speak. At 4:05 when the first soldier began his narrative, the room was full to capacity. As the first soldier, Omer, started speaking, nearly all of the event’s attendees stood up, taped their mouths shut and revealed red shirts bearing the names and ages of children killed during the Gaza invasion. Omer continued to give his presentation to a sea of red-garbed, silent protestors and went on to claim that Israel goes out of its way to avoid targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure when engaging in counter-terrorism. terrorism. He spoke of how proud he was to have served in an army with a moral code that preserves human life. About fifteen minutes into Omer’s speech, the protestors stood up in unison and filed out in utter silence. As they walked out, two students held up signs that read: “We stand today for those who have been silenced” and “Stand with us against injustice and walk out on oppression.” At this, several of the remaining attendees also rose and left. By 4:20 the room was nearly empty, with only a handful of people still seated.

     The events’ attendees were protesting the presence of representatives from Israel’s military, called the Israel Defense Forces, which is accused of war crimes by the United Nations and condemned by major human rights organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Israel's own B'Tselem. Early last year, Israel caused global outrage with its aerial bombardment and armed invasion of the impoverished Gaza Strip in 22 days during December 2008-January 2009, killing over a thousand civilians including more than 300 children. In the three-week war, Israel destroyed nearly all of the civilian infrastructure in Gaza, even attacking a UN hospital and Red Cross ambulances, despite the fact that medical vehicles, personnel, and buildings are protected under international law. In addition, Israel's military shelled the U.N. Works and Relief Agency's compound in Gaza City, which stored and distributed food aid and medicine for the entire population of the Gaza Strip.

     According to a UN inquiry, the Gaza campaign intended to destroy the civilian economic output of the Strip and exacerbate the suffering of a populace that has already endured a four-year long siege by Israel. This siege continues to block basic supplies like pasta, paper, and shoes from entering Gaza, and has brought the local economy to a near standstill. The siege is condemned by both the United Nations and leading international human rights organizations as illegal because it engages in collective punishment and uses starvation of civilians as a method of warfare.

     In late May of this year, Israeli Special Forces stormed a humanitarian flotilla heading for Gaza while it was still in international waters. The flotilla was carrying aid including medicines, wheelchairs, school supplies, and children's toys, aiming to break the siege of Gaza and to bring the world’s attention to the disproportionate suffering of Palestinian civilians. The flotilla was crewed by over 600 activists from 37 nations, including a Nobel Laureate, a holocaust survivor, and several members of European parliaments. The Israeli military went on to kill nine activists aboard the flotilla and injure dozens more with automatic weapons.

     In an effort to contain the international fallout from Israel's actions, the Israeli government has launched what is essentially an international propaganda campaign. This campaign attempts to shift attention away from recent events by focusing on Israel’s technological and biomedical achievements, its humanitarian aid to other countries, and a framing of the flotilla massacre and Gaza invasion in terms of 'self-defense'. Ann Arbor was the latest stop in this rebranding campaign. Moreover, the soldiers present Wednesday were not merely representatives of a military that has committed war crimes, they themselves could be traced back to the violence. The organizing group StandWithUs described the second soldier present on Wednesday, Shai, as a member of the “elite Givati infantry brigade.” This brigade was investigated by the Israeli Military Police for an airstrike during the Gaza invasion that targeted a civilian home, killing 21 civilians, including women and children, and wounding 19 more.

     On Wednesday, the silence spoke clearly: the justification of atrocities will not be welcomed at Michigan. Similarly, the international community’s continued outrage with Israel’s government signifies the approach of a day when the audience willing to listen to its self-exonerations will also disappear.

IDF Campus Visit Protest Video

2010-10-23T16:28:00.002-04:00

End Israeli Apartheid Week 2010

2010-02-22T10:45:00.003-05:00

Students Allied for Freedom and Equality presents:
End Israeli Apartheid Week
A week of art, education, and resistance

February 22-25, 2010

Examining Israeli Apartheid through Art
with Toby Millman
Monday, February 22nd, 7-8:30pm
South Quad Ambatana Lounge
Toby will present her artwork, which highlights the struggles Palestinians endure under Israel's military occupation of the West Bank. Her unique style provides a different perspective on the conflict that forces people to reevaluate their preconceived notions about Israel/Palestine.

Painting the Separation Wall
Tuesday, February 23rd, 5pm
Diag
Many Palestinians and human rights activists resist the West Bank separation wall that encloses them through art, painting murals and statements on the wall which often cuts them off from their land, their families, and their homes. Join SAFE in painting our own mural to symbolize such segregation and resistance.

Film Screenings: Jenin, Jenin & Remnants of a War
in collaboration with Lebanese Students Association
Wednesday, February 24th, 8pm
Dana Building, Room 2024
During the Israeli army's Operation Defensive Wall operation in the city of Jenin in the West Bank in 2002, the city was sealed and the operation ended with Jenin flattened and scores of Palestinians dead. For Jenin, Jenin, Mohamed Bakri interviews Jenin residents in the aftermath on what they experienced and witnessed during the operation, giving a revealing look into life under Occupation and how it affects the state of mind of the occupied.

Remnants of a War takes an intimate look into the lives of brave Muslims and Christians, Sunni and Shia, women and men of Southern Lebanon as they work to make their land safe again after the 2006 Israeli invasion. The film is a primer on the cluster munition problem, and a portrait of a people struggling to make a living and return the land to their fellow Lebanese.

Holding the State Accountable: Peoples' Struggles for Civil Rights
in collaboration with Black History Month 2010, MSA Peace & Justice Commission, University Housing, Office of Cultural Awareness and Diversity Education, South Quad MPA, Black Student Union, and Multi-Ethnic Student Affairs
Thursday, February 25th, 7pm
South Quad Ambatana Lounge
Israel's systematic colonization, intimidation, and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians is just another example of a highly militarized State denying people their right to freedom, self-determination, and civil rights. This panel explores the similarities and differences in the experiences African Americans, South Africans, Palestinians, and Native Americans face as they continue to struggle for the most basic human rights.

Israel: UN 'detached from reality' for adopting Goldstone report

2009-11-06T21:54:00.002-05:00

Israel on Friday rejected a United Nations General Assembly resolution urging an investigation into a report saying war crimes were committed in Gaza, and condemned the world body vote as "completely detached from realities".

In a statement, the Foreign Ministry said in response to Thursday's vote that Israel "maintains the right to self-defense", and would "continue to act to protect the lives of its citizens from the threat of international terrorism".

(read more)

Greenwald on Gideon Levy: Ongoing U.S. efforts to protect and coddle Israel

2009-11-03T22:01:00.000-05:00

The latest Haaretz column by the outstanding and courageous Israeli columnist, Gideon Levy, is entitled "America, Stop Sucking Up to Israel," and it highlights one of the most bizarre political facts: criticism of Israeli actions is far more tolerated and permitted in Israeli political discourse than it is in America's. It's simply inconceivable that any establishment journalist or national politician would ever echo Levy's scathing indictments of Israel's conduct and his calls for the U.S. to apply serious pressure and even threats to coerce changes in Israeli behavior.

(read more)

Judge Goldstone's letter to the sponsors of the US Congressional resolution condemning his report --

2009-11-03T01:27:00.002-05:00

published in Tikkun Magazine

The Honorable Howard Berman
Chairman, House Committee on Foreign Affairs

The Honorable Ileana Ros-Lehtinen
Ranking Member, House Committee on Foreign Affairs

October 29, 2009

Dear Chairman Berman and Ranking Member Ros-Lehtinen,

It has come to my attention that a resolution has been introduced in the Unites States House of Representatives regarding the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, which I led earlier this year.

I fully respect the right of the US Congress to examine and judge my mission and the resulting report, as well as to make its recommendations to the US Executive branch of government. However, I have strong reservations about the text of the resolution in question – text that includes serious factual inaccuracies and instances where information and statements are taken grossly out of context.

(read more)

Six Questions for Desmond Travers on the Goldstone Report

2009-10-30T01:07:00.004-04:00

by Ken Silverstein, published in Harper's Magazine

Desmond Travers was one of the four members of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, which produced the controversial Goldstone Report. Travers is a retired Colonel of the Army of the Irish Defence Forces. His last appointment was as Commandant of its Military College. He also served in command of troops with various UN and EU peace support missions. I recently spoke to Travers by phone about the report. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

1. Were you surprised by the criticism of the report?

There was a lot of criticism even before the report came out, primarily against individuals, especially Justice Richard Goldstone. So we were not unduly surprised by the whinging when the report was released, except for the intensity and viciousness of the personal attacks. Justice Goldstone has publicly invited the critics, especially within the U.S. government, to come forward with substantive evidence of incorrect or inaccurate statements. But there has been no credible criticism of the report itself or of the information elucidated in it.

(read more)

Gaza Report Author Asks U.S. to Clarify Concerns

2009-10-30T01:06:00.001-04:00

by Sharon Otterman, published in The New York Times

Richard Goldstone, the lead author of a United Nations report that found evidence of war crimes committed by Israel and Hamas during last winter’s Gaza war, challenged the Obama administration in an interview broadcast Thursday to explain what it has called serious concerns about his report.
In the interview on Al Jazeera, Mr. Goldstone, a South African jurist, said that the official American response to the 575-page report had been ambivalent. The Obama administration, he said, “joined our recommendation calling for full and good-faith” domestic investigations of the alleged crimes in both Israel and Gaza, “but said that the report was flawed.”
“But I have yet to hear from the Obama administration what the flaws in the report that they have identified are,” Mr. Goldstone said. “I mean, I would be happy to respond to them, if and when I know what they are.”

(read more)

Article: Disillusioning interview with founder of J Street

2009-10-26T11:28:00.003-04:00

J Street, purporting to be the leftist answer to AIPAC, is a relatively new lobbying group in Washington. However, this interview with its founder shows that the lobby group espouses many of the same values as AIPAC, values which result in US policies that prolong the dispossession of Palestinians.

J Street's Ben-Ami On Zionism and Military Aid to Israel
by Jeffrey Goldberg, published in the Atlantic

Jeremy Ben-Ami of the liberal lobbying group J Street is the man of the moment: The group's upcoming conference in Washington has become a source of great controversy for many reasons. I interviewed Ben-Ami yesterday by telephone, and here is an edited transcript of our conversation. In our talk, he showed that he learned a bit about triangulation during his years in the Clinton White House.

(read more)

Article: Israel's attacks will lead to its isolation

2009-10-25T18:53:00.002-04:00

by Gideon Levy, published in Ha'aretz

Israel has been dealing one blow after another to the rest of the world. While China has still not recovered from Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's absence from the reception at its Tel Aviv embassy - a serious punishment for China's support for the Goldstone report - France is licking its wounds after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "vetoed" a visit by the French foreign minister to Gaza. And Israel has dealt another blow: Its ambassador in Washington, Michael Oren, will boycott the conference next week of the new Israel lobby J Street.

(read more)

Article: Goldstone dares US on Gaza report

2009-10-25T18:50:00.002-04:00

The January-December war on Gaza left about 1,400 Palestinians dead and prompted a UN-led investigation.

Goldstone dares US on Gaza report
Published by Al Jazeera English

Richard Goldstone, the jurist who authored a UN report accusing Israel of war crimes and crimes against humanity during its war on Gaza, has challenged the US to justify its claims that his findings are flawed and biased.

Goldstone told Al Jazeera on Thursday that he had not heard from the administration of Barack Obama, the US president, about the flaws Washington claims to have identified in the report.

(read more)

Article: Goldstone on the Goldstone Report

2009-10-20T16:10:00.003-04:00

My mission - and motivation
by Richard Goldstone, published in the Jerusalem Post

Five weeks after the release of the Report of the Fact Finding Mission on Gaza, there has been no attempt by any of its critics to come to grips with its substance. It has been fulsomely approved by those whose interests it is thought to serve and rejected by those of the opposite view. Those who attack it do so too often by making personal attacks on its authors' motives and those who approve it rely on its authors' reputations.

(read more)

Article: Our exclusive right to self-defense

2009-10-20T16:04:00.001-04:00

by Larry Derfner, published in the Jerusalem Post

Virtually all of Israel is now speaking in one voice against the Goldstone report, against any attempt to blame us over the war in Gaza. We've honed our message to a sharp point and, inspired by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's performance at the UN, we're delivering it with just the right tone of outrage:

How dare anyone deny us the right to self-defense! How dare anyone deny us the right to fight back against terrorism!

(read more)

Article: Last Straw for the Palestinian "Authority"?

2009-10-20T15:58:00.001-04:00

by Saree Makdisi, published in the Huffington Post

If there were any lingering doubts concerning the status and integrity of the Palestinian National Authority -- and its so-called President, Mahmoud Abbas ("so-called" because his term of office, such as it was, expired almost a year ago) -- they were surely dispelled once and for all by its decision to drop its support for a UN resolution that would have referred the Goldstone Report on Israel's post-Christmas 2008 attack on Gaza to the UN Security Council.

(read more)

Article: Warmonger Wins Peace Prize

2009-10-20T15:52:00.003-04:00

by Paul Craig Roberts, published in Counterpunch

It took 25 years longer than George Orwell thought for the slogans of 1984 to become reality.

“War is Peace,” “Freedom is Slavery,” “Ignorance is Strength.”

I would add, “Lie is Truth.”

The Nobel Committee has awarded the 2009 Peace Prize to President Obama, the person who started a new war in Pakistan, upped the war in Afghanistan, and continues to threaten Iran with attack unless Iran does what the US government demands and relinquishes its rights as a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty.

(read more)

Article: Seeking Solutions in Palestine

2009-10-20T15:48:00.001-04:00

by Students Allied for Freedom and Equality, published in the Michigan Daily

Since his address to the Muslim world from Cairo, Egypt, President Barack Obama has called on Israel to halt settlement construction in the West Bank, rightfully identifying the expansion of Israel’s illegal settlements as one of the primary roadblocks to peace. But under the leadership of right-wing politician Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel has rebuffed Obama’s request, claiming a “fundamental right” to expand existing settlements and, in some instances, grant new building permits to Jewish settlers.

(read more)

Article: Israeli official: No peace deal for many years

2009-10-20T15:39:00.003-04:00

msnbc.com news services

JERUSALEM - Israel's powerful foreign minister Thursday said he would tell a visiting U.S. Middle East envoy that there was no chance of reaching a comprehensive peace deal with the Palestinians for many years.

Peacemaking policy in Israel is decided by the prime minister's office, and not the foreign ministry. But Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman carries significant weight in Israeli decision-making, and his is a sentiment common among confidants of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

(read more)

Article: The Trial of Israel’s Campus Critics

2009-10-20T15:18:00.001-04:00

by David Theo Goldberg and Saree Makdisi

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains one of the most visible political issues on campuses around the nation. A rising level of concern about the continuing Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory (now in its fifth decade), as well as the precarious position of Israel's beleaguered Palestinian minority, have been countered by increasingly strident, even furious, attempts to silence or stifle criticism of Israeli policy on American college campuses.

(read more)

2009-03-26T11:03:00.001-04:00

Dr. David Wesley Lecture

2009-03-16T21:11:00.000-04:00

Norman Finkelstein

2009-02-15T22:39:00.006-05:00

Students Allied for Freedom and Equality, Jewish Voice for Peace-Detroit, and
American Jews for a Just Peace-Detroit present..

Norman Finkelstein

Internationally renown scholar and author will speak on The Israel-Palestine Conflict: What We Can Learn From Gandhi Tuesday, February 17, 2009 • 7:30 pm Rackham Amphitheater, Fourth Floor 915 E. Washington St., Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1070

Norman Finkelstein has authored numerous books and articles on the Israel-Palestine conflict and related issues, including "Beyond Chutzpah: On the Abuse of Anti-Semitism and the Misuse of History", now available as an updated edition with a new preface; "The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (2nd ed.) ; and "Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict", (new revised ed.).

Finkelstein received his PhD in Political Science from Princeton University and has held faculty positions at Brooklyn College, Rutgers University, Hunter College, New York University, and DePaul University. He was denied tenure at DePaul after interference by Alan Dershowitz. On May 23, 2008, Finkelstein was denied entry to Israel and deported because of suspicions that "he had contact with elements 'hostile' to Israel."
For more info: Andrew Dalack or Bre Arder at ajdalack@umich.edu or barder@umich.edu respectively

2009-01-17T15:11:00.000-05:00

UN accuses Israel over phosphorus

Mr Ging said the fire caused by the phosphorus was very difficult to extinguish

The head of the UN aid agency in Gaza has accused the Israeli military of firing what was believed to be white phosphorus shells at its compound.

John Ging told the BBC that in spite of discussions with the Israeli liaison, "three rounds that emitted phosphorus" hit a corner of the Gaza City facility.

Israel's military said all weapons it used complied with international law.

Phosphorus shells are legal to use as a battlefield obscurant, but are banned from use where civilians may be harmed.

Human Rights Watch says it has observed "dozens and dozens" of white phosphorus shells being fired by Israel at the Gaza Strip - a heavily populated civilian area where its use is prohibited.

UN accuses Israel over phosphorus

Palestinian medical officials said they had treated large numbers of casualties with unusual burns that were extremely painful to treat and could be consistent with exposure to white phosphorus (WP).

The Israeli military has declined to comment on specific munitions used during the 20-day offensive, but said any its weapons were used in compliance with international law.

There is no way independently to explain the contradiction between both sides' reports, as Israel has prevented international journalists from entering Gaza since its offensive began on 27 December.

'Relentless bombardment'

In an interview with the BBC, Mr Ging, director of operations in Gaza for the UN Relief and Works Agency (Unrwa), said the area surrounding its compound had been under "relentless artillery and tank bombardment all night and all day".

Some rounds, Mr Ging said, had struck a part of the compound where about 700 residents of nearby blocks of flats were taking shelter. Three people were injured in the bombardment.

Evidence of white phosphorus munitions used in Gaza, HRW says

In pictures

"Then an hour later, in spite of our protests and real-time discussions with the Israeli liaison, three rounds that emitted phosphorous struck the other corner of the compound," he added.

The compound is Unrwa's main distribution hub in Gaza and Mr Ging said the shells set alight part of a warehouse in which there were stored thousands of tonnes of food and medicine, and the workshop area.

The fires then threatened to engulf five fuel tankers, which had been due to be sent out that morning, but could not leave because it was too dangerous outside.

"When the fires broke out, five of our brave staff dashed down there and moved the trucks out of the area, so we avoided a massive explosion," he said.

Mr Ging told CNN the fire was very difficult to extinguish because the smoke from WP becomes toxic if water is used.

Following the incident, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon - in Israel to push for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip - expressed his "outrage" and demanded a full explanation from the Israeli government.

"The defence minister said to me it was a grave mistake and he took it very seriously. He assured me that extra attention will be paid to UN facilities and staff and this will not be repeated," Mr Ban said.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the compound had been targeted after militants had opened fire from there.

"It is absolutely true that we were attacked from that place, but the consequences are very sad and we apologise for it," he said. "I don't think it should have happened and I'm very sorry."

'Indiscriminate'

White phosphorus sticks to human skin and will burn right through to the bone, causing death or leaving survivors with painful wounds which are slow to heal.

The international convention on the use of incendiary weapons says it should not be used where there is a possibility of hitting civilians. An Israeli military spokesman said it was investigating the reports, but reiterated earlier assurances about the legality of its weaponry.

The Israeli military may be using legal weapons, but it is using the weapons in an illegal manner

Marc Garlasco
Human Rights Watch

Israel denies banned weapons use

Weapon on the edge

Q&A: White phosphorus

Eyewitness: Gaza's medical crisis

White phosphorus is permitted on the battlefield to make smoke screens to allow troops to move undetected, and also to impede infrared anti-tank weapons.

But its use in the densely populated areas of central Gaza City would be "unlawful", as it dispersal would be indiscriminate and could put civilians at risk, says Human Rights Watch military analyst Marc Garlasco.

"The Israeli military may be using legal weapons, but it is using the weapons in an illegal manner," Mr Garlasco told the BBC News website.

He said he had observed dozens and dozens WP shells used by the Israeli army over Gaza since 27 December, both ground-burst shells and air-burst, scattering distinctive burning lumps of phosphorus which left white smoke trails.

"We are absolutely certain this is white phosphorus, this is the singular, unique visual signature of white phosphorus on the battlefield. Not only have I seen it for myself but I have checked with US artillery," Mr Garlasco added.

Mr Garlasco also examined a press photograph which showed a burning lump of matter in the UN compound. He said it "definitely appeared" to be WP, but that the photo was not detailed enough to say with complete certainty.

2009-01-17T12:14:00.000-05:00

Israel 'to announce ceasefire'

A large number of civilians have died in the three weeks of conflict

The Israeli cabinet is set to back an end to offensive military activities in the Gaza Strip, three weeks after attacks began, the BBC understands.

Israel's leaders are expected to approve a ceasefire at a meeting later on Saturday, after which PM Ehud Olmert will address the nation, sources said.

The sources said the ceasefire deal did not involve Hamas.

It is not clear how Hamas will respond; its officials say the group will ignore any truce unless its demands are met.

Ahead of the move violence continued in Gaza, with 50 Israeli air strikes overnight. Rocket fire from Hamas militants also continued.

About 1,200 Palestinians have been killed since the violence began on 27 December. Thirteen Israelis - three civilians and 10 soldiers - have been killed during the campaign.

'H-Hour'

The Israeli move comes amid intense diplomacy aimed at ending the conflict.

Israeli sources told the BBC's Middle East editor, Jeremy Bowen, that Mr Olmert would announce an end to offensive military operations from "H-Hour", the exact timing of which is not yet clear.

Mr Olmert was expected to link the move to Israel having achieved its goal of curtailing rocket fire from Hamas-linked militants, the sources said.

If rocket fire continued after "H-Hour", Israel would respond, the sources said. If there was a single incident, Israel would hit back surgically. If there were more attacks Israel would go back on the offensive, they said.

The sources stressed that this was a unilateral action by Israel. How Hamas responds remains to be seen.

Hamas insists that any ceasefire must involve Israeli troops withdrawing from Gaza and an immediate lifting of the Israeli blockade.

UN strike

The announcement came on the 22nd day of violence in Gaza.

United Nations officials said two children, aged five and seven, were killed when Israeli tank fire hit a UN school where hundreds had taken shelter in the northern town of Beit Lahiya.

John Ging, the Unrwa chief in Gaza, told the BBC that there was "nowhere safe in Gaza".

"I'm ashamed of this - there's international legal responsibility to protect civilians in conflict, and we're not doing it," Mr Ging said.

An Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, Yigal Palmor, told the BBC that Israel was waiting for more information on what happened.

The Israel military said Hamas fired seven rockets into Israel on Saturday; there were no casualties.

Demonstrate for an end to Israel's assault on the people of Gaza

2009-01-14T17:19:00.001-05:00

Wednesday, January 14th at 8pm Outside the Michigan Union on State St.
Demonstrate for an end to Israel's assault on the people of Gaza

Demand an unconditional and immediate cease-fire and total withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza

The Michigan is located at 530 S. State Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1308

*******Notice********
Please do not bring the flags of any political parties

We support an immediate and unconditional cease-fire in Gaza, in addition to a complete withdrawal of all Israeli Occupying Forces from the Gaza Strip. We support an immediate and unconditional end to Israel's illegal siege of the Gaza Strip and demand that all border crossings be opened for the purposes of humanitarian aid and economic freedom. We support a comprehensive halt to all United States military aid to Israel.

ARMBANDS FOR JUSTICE

Black armbands will be distributed campus-wide for people to wear in support of an unconditional and immediate cease-fire and total withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza. They will be distributed by members of the Action Gaza committee and will be available at the informational tables set up near the posting wall in Mason Hall TODAY, Wednesday, January 14 from 10 AM to 4 PM. Armbands will also be distributed at TODAY's demonstration in front of the Michigan Union from 8 PM to 10 PM.

Wear your armbands daily until a ceasefire is issued. When people ask about your armband, talk to them about the atrocities being committed in Gaza, the devastatingly disproportionate attacks upon the Palestinian people and Israel's blatant abuse of human rights and repeated violations of international law. If you would like to get an armband, please contact Kamelya Youssef at kyoussef@umich.edu.

Israel Puts Media Clamp on Gaza

2009-01-07T22:59:00.000-05:00

By ETHAN BRONNER

JERUSALEM — Three times in recent days, a small group of foreign correspondents was told to appear at the border crossing to Gaza. The reporters were to be permitted in to cover firsthand the Israeli war on Hamas in keeping with a Supreme Court ruling against the two-month-old Israeli ban on foreign journalists entering Gaza.

Each time, they were turned back on security grounds, even as relief workers and other foreign citizens were permitted to cross the border. On Tuesday the reporters were told to not even bother going to the border.

And so for an 11th day of Israel’s war in Gaza, the several hundred journalists here to cover it waited in clusters away from direct contact with any fighting or Palestinian suffering, but with full access to Israeli political and military commentators eager to show them around southern Israel, where Hamas rockets have been terrorizing civilians. A slew of private groups financed mostly by Americans are helping guide the press around Israel.

Like all wars, this one is partly about public relations. But unlike any war in Israel’s history, in this one the government is seeking to entirely control the message and narrative for reasons both of politics and military strategy.

“This is the result of what happened in the 2006 Lebanon war against Hezbollah,” said Nachman Shai, a former army spokesman who is writing a doctoral dissertation on Israel’s public diplomacy. “Then, the media were everywhere. Their cameras and tapes picked up discussions between commanders. People talked on live television. It helped the enemy and confused and destabilized the home front. Today, Israel is trying to control the information much more closely.”

The government-commissioned investigation into the war with Hezbollah reported that the army had found that when reporters were allowed on the battlefield in Lebanon, they got in the way of military operations by posing risks and asking questions.

Maj. Avital Leibovich, an army spokeswoman, said, “If a journalist gets injured or killed, then it is Central Command’s responsibility.” She said the government was trying to protect Israel from rocket fire and “not deal with the media.”

Beyond such tactical considerations, there is a political one. Daniel Seaman, director of Israel’s Government Press Office, said, “Any journalist who enters Gaza becomes a fig leaf and front for the Hamas terror organization, and I see no reason why we should help that.”

Foreign reporters deny that their work in Gaza has been subject to Hamas censorship or control. Unable to send foreign reporters into Gaza, the international news media have relied on Palestinian journalists based there for coverage.

But it seems that many Israelis accept Mr. Seaman’s assessment and shed no tears over the restrictions, despite repeated protests by the Foreign Press Association of Israel, including on Tuesday.

A headline in Tuesday’s issue of Yediot Aharonot, the country’s largest selling daily newspaper, expressed well the popular view of the issue. Over a news article describing the generally negative coverage so far, especially in the European media, an intentional misspelling of a Hebrew word turned the headline “World Media” into “World Liars.”

This attitude has been helped by supportive Israeli news media whose articles have been filled with “feelings of self-righteousness and a sense of catharsis following what was felt to be undue restraint in the face of attacks by the enemy,” according to a study of the first days of media coverage of the war by a liberal but nonpartisan group called Keshev, the Center for the Protection of Democracy in Israel.

The Foreign Press Association has been fighting for weeks to get its members into Gaza, first appealing to senior government officials and ultimately taking its case to the country’s highest court. Last week the justices worked out an arrangement with the organization whereby small groups would be permitted into Gaza when it was deemed safe enough for the crossings to be opened for other reasons.

So far, every time the border has been opened, journalists have not been permitted to go in.

On Tuesday, the press association released a statement saying, “The unprecedented denial of access to Gaza for the world’s media amounts to a severe violation of press freedom and puts the state of Israel in the company of a handful of regimes around the world which regularly keep journalists from doing their jobs.”

At the same time that reporters have been given less access to Gaza, the government has created a new structure for shaping its public message, ensuring that spokesmen of the major government branches meet daily to make sure all are singing from the same sheet.

“We are trying to coordinate everything that has to do with the image and content of what we are doing and to make sure that whoever goes on the air, whether a minister or professor or ex-ambassador, knows what he is saying,” said Aviv Shir-On, deputy director general for media in the Foreign Ministry. “We have talking points and we try to disseminate our ideas and message.”

Israelis say the war is being reduced on television screens around the world to a simplistic story: an American-backed country with awesome military machine fighting a third-world guerrilla force leading to a handful of Israelis dead versus 600 Gazans dead.

Israelis and their supporters think that such quick descriptions fail to explain the vital context of what has been happening — years of terrorist rocket fire on civilians have gone largely unanswered, and a message had to be sent to Israel’s enemies that this would go on no longer, they say. The issue of proportionality, they add, is a false construct because comparing death tolls offers no help in measuring justice and legitimacy.

There are other ways to construe the context of this conflict, of course. But no matter what, Israel’s diplomats know that if journalists are given a choice between covering death and covering context, death wins. So in a war that they consider necessary but poorly understood, they have decided to keep the news media far away from the death.

John Ging, an Irishman who directs operations in Gaza for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, entered Gaza on Monday as journalists were kept out. He told Palestinian reporters in Gaza that the policy was a problem.

“For the truth to get out, journalists have to get in,” he said.

Brian Eno Decries Gaza Attacks

2009-01-07T22:51:00.001-05:00

Art-rock eminence Brian Eno is not happy at all about Israel's recent attacks on Gaza, and we recommend that Israel stop all these attacks right now because you do not want to see what happens when Brian Eno gets pissed. In an editorial on the Counterpunch weekend edition (via Daily Swarm), Eno had this to say:

"The Israelis are a gifted and resourceful people who fully deserve the right to live in peace, but who seem intent on squandering every chance to allow that to happen. It's difficult to avoid the conclusion that this conflict serves the political and economic purposes of Israel so well that they have every interest in maintaining it. While there is fighting they can continue to build illegal settlements. While there is fighting they continue to receive huge quantities of military aid from the United States. And while there is fighting they can avoid looking candidly at themselves and the ruthlessness into which they are descending.

"Gaza is now an experiment in provocation. Stuff one and a half million people into a tiny space, stifle their access to water, electricity, food and medical treatment, destroy their livelihoods, and humiliate them regularly...and, surprise, surprise - they turn hostile. Now why would you want to make that experiment?"

And on Saturday, Eno showed up to the Stop Gaza Massacre protest in London to read his editorial and to make a confusing reference to "middle-class English people like me." Eno: When you're making that Coldplay money, you no longer get to call yourself middle-class.

Some of Eno's recent projects include the score for Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones, an iPhone app, and a really good album with David Byrne.

Obama's Silence on Gaza is Deafening

2009-01-06T02:01:00.000-05:00

Barack Obama must be given a lot of credit for his remarkable ascent to power, particularly in terms of the dignified way in which he did it. But there is a dark side to his rise to the Presidency, one progressives and liberals do not like to acknowledge.

Barack Obama had to do two things to persuade the powers that be that he was a viable candidate for President. The first was to assure the financial community that he would commit to a centrist economic platform, and the second was to sell out the Palestiniansimmediately and jump in bed with AIPAC.

Obama did both, and the consequences will be felt immediately. Economically, Obama has not surrounded himself with the type of people committed to real change. The enormous financial crisis has given him more room to move, but he won't do anything dramatic (like hold Wall St to account, or provide a meaningful bailout to the average American). The results during his Presidency will mean extraordinary pain for the middle classes and poor, while the burden is shifted from those who caused it. It would no doubt be worse under a Republican, but it will not be pleasant.

With the latest Israeli assault on the Gaza strip, Obama's wholesale sellout of the Palestinian people is being felt even more acutely. His unique position to speak up for a bitterly oppressed people has been wasted in the name of political convenience.

Western responses to the massacre has been pathetic to say the least. The U.S, U.K and European Union have done little to stop the Israelis pounding Gaza with it's hi tech weaponry, with the Bush Administration laying the blame squarely on Palestinians. "The United States strongly condemns the repeated rocket and mortar attacks against Israel and holds Hamas responsible for breaking the cease-fire and for the renewal of violence in Gaza," said Condoleezza Rice. "The cease-fire should be restored immediately." Gordon Brown merely asked the Israelis to 'Show restraint'.

And Obama's response? A half hearted critique of Hamas through former campaign managerDavid Axelrod on CBS, where Obama's allegiance to Israel was reiterated and belief that Israel has the right to respond how it likes to Palestinian attacks.

One of the writers on my site, Hugo Foster has written a brilliant analysis of the Israeli action in the Gaza strip, explaining why the incursion is basically counterproductive and unnecessarily violent:

Publicly, Israel has stated it wants to create a new security environment, to deliver the 'knockout blow' that will definitively destroy Hamas' rocket-launching capability. To be sure, Hamas' military infrastructure has been truly battered in the past couple of days. Yet toppling Hamas' rule in Gaza is just not feasible. Logistically it would require precisely the sort of costly ground fighting that the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) have tried to avoid since they withdrew from the territory in 2005. And given the close proximity of military and civilian infrastructure in Gaza, it would inflict a level of human damage (beyond the 56 civilian lives already lost) that would eventually weaken tacit international support for Israel's 'right to self-defence', as happened belatedly in Lebanon two years ago.

The brash move by Israel was clearly taken due to the economic turmoil in the West. While we concern ourselves with job cuts, food shortages and plummeting house prices, Israel has taken brutal measures that even the most hawkish U.S politicians would have tried to avert.

Obama has massive political capital, and could have injected himself into the crisis before it happened. He did so during the beginning of the economic meltdown, and could have lent his credibility to a situation that has spiralled dangerously out of control. Obama has stated that 'There is only one President at a time', abdicating responsibility and essentially passing the buck.

Obama has pointed out the Qassan rockets Hamas has been firing into Israeli towns over recent months, but has failed to mention the illegal sanctions Israel has placed on Gazans, turning the already squalid land into a virtual prison of starvation and targeted assassinations.

The massacre over the past few days will enrage Palestinians further, strengthen Hamas, and solidify hatred towards Israel and the United States in the Arab world. If Obama wants meaningful change in the Middle East, he must start speaking up. For now, his silence is deafening.

Dr. Gilbert Confirms dense metal explosives used on palestinians

2009-01-06T01:34:00.000-05:00

Israeli Troops Launch Attack on Gaza

2009-01-06T01:18:00.000-05:00

By ISABEL KERSHNER and TAGHREED EL-KHODARY

JERUSALEM — Israeli tanks and troops swept across the border into Gaza on Saturday night, opening a ground war against the militant group Hamas after a week of intense airstrikes.

Israel’s stated goal was to destroy the infrastructure of Hamas, the militant Islamic group that controls Gaza’s government, and the military warned that the campaign could take “many long days.”

The assault brings new risks and the prospect of many new casualties on both sides in a confrontation that, before this phase began, had already cost the lives of more than 430Palestinians and 4 Israelis.

While a ground war in densely populated Gaza is likely to increase the civilian toll there, the Israeli Army also faces new threats. Since seizing control of the territory a year and a half ago, Hamas has been able to smuggle in more and better weapons. Its more sophisticated arsenal has been on display in recent weeks, and even under heavy fire the group has shown its ability to keep hitting Israeli cities with long-range rockets.

Sharp explosions rang out across Gaza, and tank fire and airstrikes lit the darkened sky well into Sunday as Israel continued to pound the area by land, air and sea. The Hamas military wing said it was firing mortars at approaching Israeli troops.

Palestinian hospitals reported three civilians killed by midnight, and Al Aksa television, run by Hamas, reported that five Israeli soldiers had been killed. An Israeli military spokesman rejected that claim. Israel did say, though, that 30 of its soldiers had been wounded since the start of the ground campaign.

World leaders called on Hamas and Israel to accept an immediate cease-fire, and in several European cities tens of thousands of protesters demanded that Israel end its campaign. Meanwhile, the Bush administration said it was working toward a new cease-fire, but rather than calling for a halt to military action urged Israel to “be mindful of the potential consequences to civilians.”

In a statement, the Israeli military said a key objective was “taking control” of the rocket launching sites Hamas has used to fire at southern Israel. Rockets fired from Gaza have plagued southern Israel for years, and they have drawn the military into the coastal territory repeatedly since troops formally withdrew and the Jewish settlements there were evacuated in 2005. A 48-hour raid in March 2008, aimed at inflicting a cost on Hamas for its continuing rocket fire, killed nearly 100 Palestinians.

Israeli officials have said repeatedly that it is not their aim now to fully reoccupy Gaza. But it was clear that the military expected a grueling operation.

“This will not be easy and it will not be short,” Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on national television shortly after the ground invasion began. He did not elaborate on how long Israel hoped to hold the rocket-launching sites.

The ground operation began after eight days of intensive attacks by Israeli air and naval forces on Hamas security installations, weapons stores and symbols of government in the Palestinian enclave.

“This has always been a stage-by-stage process,” Shlomo Dror, a Defense Ministry spokesman, said in a telephone interview. “Hamas can stop it whenever it wants,” by stopping its rocket fire, he said.

Hamas leaders in Gaza were in hiding, but a Hamas spokesman said Saturday night by video that the “moment of decision has arrived” and that Gaza would be the Israeli Army’s “graveyard.”

Hamas has also threatened to use the invasion as an opportunity to capture Israeli soldiers. The group has been holding an Israeli corporal, Gilad Shalit, hostage for more than two years.

The exact number of troops entering Gaza was not being publicized, but the military said the operation involved “large numbers” of forces including infantry, tanks, engineering and artillery corps. On Saturday night, the Israeli prime minister’s office said that a call-up of thousands of army reserve troops, approved earlier, had begun.

Before Israel started the invasion, warplanes and ground artillery carried out heavy strikes on Saturday. Many of those attacks were on open areas around Beit Hanoun and the main route connecting the north and south of Gaza, most likely to clear those areas of mines and tunnels and to hamper movement before troops entered.

A mosque in northern Gaza was also hit, during evening prayer time, in what witnesses said was an Israeli airstrike. At least 11 worshipers were killed and about 30 wounded, according to Palestinian hospital officials. The Israeli military had no immediate comment.

The air force has struck several mosques in the past week, with the military saying they served as Hamas bases and weapons stores.

The Israeli Army also dropped thousands of leaflets into some residential districts warning inhabitants to evacuate their homes. Because of “the activity of terrorist groups,” the leaflets said in Arabic, the army “is obliged to respond quickly and work from inside your residential area.” Many residents of one apartment block in Gaza City said they had nowhere else to go and would stay in their homes.

An Egyptian-brokered truce between Israel and Hamas, which took effect last June, began to break down in November, and Hamas declared it over on Dec. 19. Since then, rocket fire out of Gaza has intensified.

On Saturday, a rocket hit an apartment building in the major port city of Ashdod, about 20 miles north of Gaza, lightly wounding two Israelis. Other rockets landed in the coastal city of Ashkelon and in the Negev Desert town of Netivot.

The latest round of rocket fire has demonstrated the extent to which Hamas has been able to upgrade its arsenal with weapons parts smuggled into Gaza, according to American and Israeli officials. Compared with the crude, homemade Qassam rockets it had used in the past, the latest rockets have been more accurate and have flown farther — close to two dozen miles, enough to reach the southern Israeli cities of Ashdod and Beersheba.

President Bush, in his weekly radio address to the nation on Saturday, said Hamas had instigated the violence last week with rocket barrages “that deliberately targeted innocent Israelis.”

Expressing concern about the humanitarian situation facing the people of Gaza, he added that the United States was “leading diplomatic efforts to achieve a meaningful cease-fire that is fully respected.”

President-elect Barack Obama continued to defer publicly to the Bush administration after the ground campaign began. “The president-elect is closely monitoring global events, including the situation in Gaza,” said Brooke Anderson, his chief national security spokeswoman. “There is one president at a time, and we intend to respect that.”

The United Nations Security Council held a closed meeting, called by France, on Saturday. Earlier, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called for “an immediate end” to Israel’s ground operation, and asked Israel to “ensure the protection of civilians and that humanitarian assistance is able to reach those in need.”

Before the ground war began, hospital officials in Gaza City put the first week’s Palestinian death toll at more than 430, including 26 women, 74 children and an unknown number of male civilians. Three Israeli civilians and one soldier had been killed by rocket fire.

World reaction was intense and mixed. While thousands of protesters marched in cities across Europe to demand a halt to the Israeli bombing, in Prague, a spokesman for the new Czech presidency of the European Union said Israel’s actions were “defensive, not offensive.”

Other European countries quickly distanced themselves from the Czech position. The French Foreign Ministry condemned “the Israeli ground offensive against Gaza as it condemns the continuation of rocket firing.”

In London, the British foreign secretary, David Miliband, urged both sides to accept an immediate cease-fire.

More than 20,000 demonstrators marched against the Israeli air campaign in Paris and more than 10,000 in London, where some threw shoes at the prime minister’s residence, a particularly Arab form of protest that has gained worldwide currency since an Iraqi journalist hurled his shoes at President Bush last month in Baghdad.

Both protests were held before the ground invasion began. Large protests also took place in at least seven other European countries and in Kuwait, Israel and New York.

The Israeli military said Saturday evening that the air force had struck about 40 Hamas targets during the day, including weapons storage facilities, smuggling tunnels, rocket launchers and launching sites. Palestinians said the airstrikes also hit the American International School, a private institution in northern Gaza, killing a school guard.

Israel has also been firing on the homes of Hamas’s military leaders, and on Saturday struck a vehicle in Khan Yunis carrying Mohammed Maaruf, whom the Israeli military described as an officer in the Hamas ground forces. Another strike killed Mohammad al-Jammal, 40, who was said in Gaza to be a Hamas military commander, according to the news service Agence France-Presse. Israel said he was responsible for the entire rocket-launching operation in all of Gaza City.

But in Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, most of the wounded being brought in on Saturday seemed to be civilians.

Salah Abu Rafia, 38, was accompanying wounded relatives, including his 10-year-old son, Zeid. Mr. Abu Rafia said that an F-16 warplane fired missiles around his house in the Zeitoun neighborhood, west of Gaza City, while the family was sitting outside. He said that Hamas fighters had been in the area, but that he had been afraid to tell them to go away. They disappeared as soon as they heard the planes, he said, escaping without injury.

“We are the ones paying the price,” he added.

The Facts about Israel’s War on Gaza

2009-01-06T01:16:00.000-05:00

Adam Sheets
December 31, 2008

t is crucial that one has her/his facts straight about Israel’s war on Gaza. What events brought about this dreadful situation? What needs to be done to make it stop? These questions will be answered in the content of this article, using concrete facts from a variety of news sources.

Let’s first investigate the recent cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. The cease-fire began in June 2008. The terms were as follows:

Israel would drastically reduce its military blockade of Gaza.
Israel would halt all military incursions into Gaza.
Hamas would halt all rocket attacks into Israel.

From the outset of the cease-fire, Israel did little to ease its military blockade. As a result, Gazans continued to suffer from a lack of food, fuel, financial aid, electricity, clean water, medical supplies, and more. This has been, inarguably, an attack on innocent Palestinian civilians.

Gaza faces a humanitarian "catastrophe" if Israel continues to prevent aid reaching the territory by blocking crossing points, the head of the main UN aid agency for the Palestinians said on Friday... Israel had restricted goods into Gaza despite the truce, which calls on militants to halt rocket attacks in return for Israel easing its embargo on the territory... Israel also held up deliveries of European Union-funded fuel for the power plant, which generates about a third of the electricity consumed by Gazans... Ailments associated with insufficient food were surfacing among the impoverished coastal strip's 1.5 million population, including growing malnutrition.
--Haaretz Israel News, Nov. 21, 2008 ¹
A former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, has told the BBC she was taken aback by the "terrible" conditions in Gaza on a recent visit. Mrs Robinson said it was "almost unbelievable" that the world did not care about what she called "a shocking violation of so many human rights"... Israel tightened a blockade on Gaza after Hamas took control there in 2007... "Their whole civilisation has been destroyed, I'm not exaggerating," said Mrs Robinson...Israel says the blockade, under which it has allowed little more than basic humanitarian aid into Gaza, is needed to isolate the militant group and stop it and other militants from firing rockets into Israel. Israel came to a truce with Palestinian groups in June this year, but Mrs Robinson said this had had little effect on people's lives and "just brought a bitter taste in the mouth".
--BBC News, Nov. 4, 2008 ²
The UN in the Gaza Strip says it will run out of food aid in two days unless Israel's blockade – which it describes as "shameful and unacceptable" – eases. The UN refugee agency UNWRA, which distributes food to half of Gaza's 1.5m people, called the blockade "a physical as well as a mental punishment". Israel is now allowing a limited amount of fuel across the border, but it is still blocking food deliveries... In a statement, UNWRA spokesman Christopher Gunness said food distribution operations would end on Thursday unless Israeli authorities allowed deliveries of wheat, luncheon meat, powdered milk and cooking oil without delay. "This is both a physical as well as a mental punishment of the population – of mothers and parents trying to feed their children – who are being forced to live hand to mouth," he said... "It is a further illustration of the barbarity of thisinhuman blockade."... "It is also shameful and unacceptable that the largest humanitarian actor in Gaza is being forced into yet another cycle of crisis management," Mr Gunness added.
--BBC News, Nov. 11, 2008 ³
International aid agencies, including the International Committee of the Red Cross, have said virtually no medical supplies were reaching Gaza.
--Haaretz Israel News, Nov. 9, 2008 ¹⁴
The UN has no more food to distribute in the Gaza Strip, the head of relief efforts in the area has warned. John Ging said handouts for 750,000 Gazans would have to be suspended until Saturday at the earliest, and called Gaza's economic situation "a disaster". Israel earlier denied entry to a convoy carrying humanitarian supplies... The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) distributes emergency aid to about half of Gaza's 1.5m population. "We have run out [of food aid] this evening," said Mr Ging, UNRWA's senior official in Gaza. "Unless the crossing points open... we won't be able to get that food into Gaza," he told Reuters news agency... Also on Thursday,Israel refused permission for a group of senior European diplomats to visit the coastal enclave. It has also prevented journalists, including those from the BBC, from entering the territory.
--BBC News, Nov. 13, 2008 ⁴
Since June 2007, Israel has allowed little more than basic humanitarian aid to enter the Gaza Strip. Many there hoped that policy would change, five months ago, when Hamas and Israel agreed to a truce. But while there were some increases in the amount of aid allowed in, Israel's strict restrictions on the movement of goods and people into and out of Gaza largely remained... Serious fuel shortages have led to widespread power cuts across Gaza City. That, in turn, has caused problems in pumping water to homes, and sewage to treatment plants. Israel is preventing many aid workers, and all journalists from entering Gaza too... "I never thought we would see days like this," says Monther Shublak, head of Gaza's water authority. "The water system was severely stretched even before this crisis, but now, things are much worse. For the last four days, around 40% of people in Gaza City have had no access to running water in their homes at all."... "But we are putting all of our resources into sewage pumping. The health consequences of that system totally failing are too worrying to think about, but it could happen unless things change."
--BBC News, Nov. 20, 2008 ⁵
Israel has refused to allow cash to enter Gaza in recent weeks to ratchet up pressure on the ruling Hamas militant group. With the supply of currency dwindling, banks have limited withdrawals over the past two weeks, and some have posted signs telling customers they cannot take out any more money... The United Nations halted cash handouts to 98,000 of Gaza's poorest residents last week, and economists and bank officials warn that tens of thousands of civil servants won't be able to cash their paychecks next month... "No society can operate without money, but that's the situation we are reaching in Gaza," said Gaza economist Omar Shaban... Israel and Egypt have restricted movement through Gaza's border crossings since the Islamic militants of Hamas violently seized control of the coastal territory in June 2007. Since then, closures have been eased or tightened, depending on the security situation. But even in quiet times, when Gaza militants refrained from firing rockets at Israeli border towns, only limited shipments of food, medicine and commercial goods were allowed in... Shlomo Dror, an Israel Defense Ministry spokesman, questioned the seriousness of the currency shortage. "We are used to the Palestinians inventing things and we are looking into their claim,” he said.
--Washington Post, Nov. 24, 2008 ⁶

Despite the intense blockade against Gazan civilians, the cease-fire held until November 4, 2008. On that date, the Israeli military made an incursion into Gaza and killed six Palestinians. The Israeli government sought to justify these actions, saying that they suspected these Palestinians of plotting to kidnap Israeli soldiers. Palestinian fighters responded to the attack by launching rockets into Israel. Thus began the unraveling of the cease-fire.

At least six Hamas militants have been killed after Israel's first incursion into the Gaza Strip since June's truce. Israel said its troops had uncovered a tunnel along central Gaza's frontier which had been dug by militants intending to abduct Israeli soldiers. Clashes ensued when troops were sent to thwart the threat, Israel said. One militant died, Palestinian reports say. A subsequent Israeli air strike on Hamas positions in southern Gaza killed at least five fighters, medics said. An Israeli army spokeswoman said the air strike targeted militants who had fired mortars at Israeli forces... Tuesday evening's fighting broke out after Israeli tanks and a bulldozer moved 250m into the central part of the coastal enclave, backed by military aircraft, says the BBC's Aleem Maqbool in Ramallah. Residents of central Gaza's el-Bureij refugee camp said a missile fired from an unmanned Israeli drone flying over the area injured another three Hamas gunmen. A truce between the two sides had held since it was declared on 19 June. Israel said the raid was not a violation of the ceasefire, but rather a legitimate step to remove an immediate threat.
--BBC News, Nov. 5, 2008 ⁷
An Israel Air Force air strike in the southern Gaza Strip killed at least five militants and wounded several others on Tuesday, Palestinians said. Earlier, Israel Defense Forces soldiers killed a Hamas gunman and wounded two others on Tuesday in the first armed clash in the Gaza Strip since a ceasefire was declared in the territory in June, Palestinian medics said... An Egypt-brokered cease-fire agreement between Israel and the Gaza Strip was signed earlier this year, and went into effect on June 19. The IDF argued that the raid did not constitute a violation of the cease fire, but instead was a legitimate step to remove an immediate threat to Israel from Gaza, which is controlled by the Islamic militant group Hamas.
--Haaretz Israel News, Nov. 5, 2008 ⁸
Two weeks ago, an already fragile humanitarian situation resulting from the mounting effects of months of shortages, saw a dramatic downturn.The fighting resumed, with an Israeli army incursion into Gaza and a retaliatory barrage of militant rocket fire.
--BBC News, Nov. 20, 2008 ⁵

As the cease-fire began to crumble, the violence from both sides intensified. Efforts to redeem the cease-fire ultimately failed.

Palestinian armed groups in Gaza remain committed to a truce with Israel if Jerusalem reciprocates, Hamas's Gaza leader said on Friday, even as militants launched more attacks from the coastal territory... "I have met with armed factions over the past two days and they stated their position clearly: they are committed to calm as long as (Israel) abides by it," said Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas's most senior representative in Gaza.
--Haaretz Israel News, Nov. 21, 2008 ⁹
Hamas announced on Sunday that militant groups in Gaza have agreed to cease cross-border attacks if Israel opens crossings into the coastal territory, Ma'an news reported.
--Haaretz Israel News, Nov. 24, 2008 ¹⁰
After expressing contradictory positions on Sunday, Hamas' leadership on Monday adopted a united stance: The cease-fire with Israel, which expires this Friday, will not be extended... Hamas' spokesman in the Gaza Strip, Ayman Taha, said the movement had concluded that there was no point in extending the truce "as long as Israel isn't abiding by its terms" – though he added that talks on continuing the cease-fire were still taking place. Specifically, Taha said, Israel was supposed to have expanded the truce to the West Bank – something Hamas demanded but Israel in fact never promised – and opened the Gaza border crossings, and "this hasn't happened."
--Haaretz Israel News, Dec. 16, 2008 ¹¹

Following the end of the cease-fire, Israel moved closer to an invasion of the territory. The Israeli government claimed that this was the only remaining option to eliminate rocket attacks from Gaza. However, as cited in the sources above, this was clearly not the case. Israel had failed to abide by the terms of the cease-fire. For the overwhelming majority of the six-month truce, Israel had refused to ease its military blockade of Gaza to any significant degree. In addition, it was the initial violator of the cease-fire when it sent tanks and aircraft into Gaza and killed six Palestinians on November 4, 2008. In fact, there is evidence that Israel was planning to strike Gaza even while the cease-fire was still in effect.

Barak told the assembled lawmakers that the defense establishment spent months preparing for the Gaza operation.
--Haaretz Israel News, Dec. 29, 2008 ¹⁶

In the interest of peace, Hamas, and especially Fatah, have firmly established that they are willing to participate in negotiations that are based on internationally recognized borders and rights.

On June 6, 2006, Haniyeh met Dr. Jerome Segal of the University of Maryland in the Gaza Strip... At the end of the meeting, Haniyeh dictated a short message he asked Segal to transmit to President Bush... In the second paragraph, Haniyeh laid out the political platform he maintains to this day. "We are so concerned about stability and security in the area that we don't mind having a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders and offering a truce for many years," he wrote... Haniyeh called on Bush to launch a dialogue with the Hamas government. "We are not warmongers, we are peace makers and we call on the American government to have direct negotiations with the elected government," he wrote... In his own letter, Segal emphasized that a state within the 1967 borders and a truce for many years could be considered Hamas' de facto recognition of Israel. He noted that in a separate meeting, Youssuf suggested that the Palestinian Authority and Israel might exchange ambassadors during that truce period. This was not the only covert message from Hamas to senior Bush administration officials. However, Washington did not reply to these messages and maintained its boycott of the Hamas government.
--Haaretz Israel News, Nov. 14, 2008 ¹²
The Hamas leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, said on Saturday his government was willing to accept a Palestinian state alongside Israel within the 1967 borders... Haniyeh told his guests Israel rejected his initiative... He said the Hamas government had agreed to accept a Palestinian state that followed the 1967 borders and to offer Israel a long-term hudna, or truce, if Israel recognized the Palestinians' national rights... In response to a question about the international community's impression that there are two Palestinian states, Haniyeh said: "We don't have a state, neither in Gaza nor in the West Bank. Gaza is under siege and the West Bank is occupied.What we have in the Gaza Strip is not a state, but rather a regime of an elected government. A Palestinian state will not be created at this time except in the territories of 1967."... “Our conflict is not with the Jews, our problem is with the occupation," Haniyeh said.
--Haaretz Israel News, Nov. 9, 2008 ¹⁴
The Palestinian Authority has placed a full-page advert in Israel's Hebrew newspapers to promote an Arab peace plan first proposed in 2002. The Saudi-backed initiative offers Arab recognition of Israel in exchange for an end to Israel's occupation of land captured in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. It also proposes what it calls a just solution for Palestinian refugees. The Israeli government has noted "positive aspects" in the plan but has not formally accepted it... Peace Now, and Israeli campaign group, welcomed the publication of the adverts. "On behalf of a majority of Israeli citizens who support peace with the Palestinian people on the basis of a two state solution – we embrace the Arab Peace Initiative and urge both governments to endorse it and negotiate the final status agreement in its spirit," a statement from the group said... The text reads: "Fifty-seven Arab and Muslim countries will establish diplomatic relations with Israel in exchange for a full peace accord and the end of the occupation."
--BBC News, Nov. 20, 2008 ¹³
U.S. President-elect Barack Obama proclaimed himself "very impressed" with the Arab League's peace plan when he discussed it with President Shimon Peres during a brief visit to Israel four months ago, Peres said Tuesday... The plan, originally proposed by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia in 2002 and later adopted by the Arab League, states that Israel would receive full relations with the entire Arab world in exchange for a full withdrawal from all the territory it captured in 1967, including East Jerusalem, plus a solution to the refugee problem. The Bush Administration has said it views the plan positively, but its own road map peace plan and the understandings reached at last year's Annapolis summit have served as the basis of its diplomatic program.
--Haaretz Israel News, Nov. 19, 2008 ¹⁵

Since Israel began its strike on Gaza, 4 Israelis and 391 Palestinians have been killed ¹⁸. The White House said that Israel will cease its attack when Hamas has agreed to a truce. Hamas said they are open to any cease-fire propositions. A cease-fire has been proposed, but Israel rejected this offer.

"In order for the violence to stop, Hamas must stop firing rockets into Israel and agree to respect a sustainable and durable ceasefire," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.
--BBC News, Dec. 29, 2008 ¹⁷
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has rejected international calls for a 48-hour truce in the Gaza Strip to allow in more humanitarian aid... The 48-hour ceasefire plan to allow more aid into Gaza, was proposed by French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner. Hamas spokesman Ayman Taha told AFP news agency that his group was open to any ceasefire propositions as long as they meant an end to the air strikes and a lifting of the Israeli blockade of Gaza.
--BBC News, Dec. 31, 2008 ¹⁸

The international community must continue to demand that a cease-fire be implemented. In order to be successful, any agreement must call for 1) an end to Israel’s blockade of Gaza, 2) an end to the Israeli invasion of Gaza, and 3) an end to all rocket attacks into Israel.

Al Jazeera English - War on Gaza - Israel's fait accompli in Gaza

2009-01-06T01:13:00.000-05:00

Israel's fait accompli in Gaza

By Eric S. Margolis

Gaza is one of the world's most densely populated places [GALLO/GETTY]

There are two completely different versions of what is currently happening in Gaza.

In the Israeli and North American press version, Hamas - 'Islamic terrorists' backed by Iran - have in an unprovoked attack fired deadly rockets on innocent Israel with the intent of destroying the Jewish state.

North American politicians and the media say Israel "has the right to defend itself".

True enough. No Israeli government can tolerate rockets hitting its towns, even though the casualty totals have been less than the car crash fatalities registered during a single holiday weekend on Israel's roads.

The firing of the feeble, home-made al-Qassam rockets by Palestinians is both useless and counter-productive.

It damages their image as an oppressed people and gives right-wing Israeli extremists a perfect reason to launch more attacks on the Arabs and refuse to discuss peace.

Israel's supporters insist it has the absolute right to drop hundreds of tonnes of bombs on 'Hamas targets' inside the 360sq km Gaza Strip to 'take out the terrorists'.

Civilians suffer, says Israel, because the cowardly Hamas hide among them.

Actually, it is more like shooting fish in a barrel.

Omitting facts

As usual, this cartoon-like version of events omits a great deal of nuance and background.

Seventy per cent of Palestinian children suffer from psychological trauma [GALLO/GETTY]

While firing rockets at civilians is a crime so, too, is the Israeli blockade of Gaza, which is an egregious violation of international law and the Geneva Conventions.

According to the UN, most of Gaza's 1.5 million Palestinian refugees subsist near the edge of hunger. Seventy per cent of Palestinian children in Gaza suffer from severe malnutrition and psychological trauma.

Medical facilities are critically short of doctors, personnel, equipment, and drugs. Gaza has quite literally become a human garbage dump for all the Arabs that Israel does not want.

Gaza is one of the world's most-densely populated places, a vast outdoor prison camp filled with desperate people. In the past, they threw stones at their Israeli occupiers; now they launch home-made rockets.

Call it a prison riot, writ large.

Eyeing the elections

When the so-called truce between Tel Aviv and Hamas expired on December 19, Israeli politicians were in the throes of preparing for the February 10 national elections.

Israeli politics are playing a key role in this crisis.

Ehud Barak, the defence minister and leader of the Labour party, and Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister and leader of the Kadima party, are trying to prove themselves tougher than Benjamin Netanyahu's hard-line Likud party - and one another.

Israel's elections are only six weeks away, and Likud was leading until the air raids on Gaza began. Kadima and Labour are now up in the polls.

The heavy attacks on Gaza are also designed to intimidate Israel's Arab neighbours, and make up for Israel's humiliating 2006 defeat in Lebanon, which still haunts the country's politicians and generals.

A fait accompli

When the air raids on Gaza began, Barak said: "We have totally changed the rules of the game."

He was right. By blitzing Hamas-run Gaza, Barak presented the incoming US administration with a fait accompli, and neatly checkmated the newest player in the Middle East Great Game - Barack Obama, the US president-elect - before he could even take a seat at the table.

IN DEPTH

Latest news and analysis from Gaza and Israel

Send us your views and videos

Watch our coverage of the war on Gaza

The Israeli offensive into Gaza now looks likely to short-circuit any plans Obama might have had to press Israel into withdrawing to its pre-1967 borders and sharing Jerusalem.

This has pleased Israel's supporters in North America who have been cheering the war in Gaza and have been backing away from their earlier tentative support for a land-for-peace deal.

Israel's successes in having Western media portray the Gaza offensive as an 'anti-terrorist operation' will also diminish hopes of peace talks any time soon.

Obama inherits this mess in a few weeks. During the elections, Obama bowed to the Israel lobby, offering a new US carte blanche to Israel and even accepting Israel's permanent monopoly of all of Jerusalem.

As he concludes forming his cabinet, his Middle East team looks like it may be top-heavy with friends of Israel's Labour party.

Obama keeps saying he must remain silent on policy issues until George Bush, the outgoing US president, leaves office, but his staff appear happy to avoid having to make statements about Gaza that would antagonise Israel's American supporters.

Obama will take office facing a Middle East up in arms over Gaza and the entire Muslim world blaming the US for the carnage in Gaza.

Unless he moves swiftly to distance himself from the policies of the Bush administration, he will soon find himself facing the same problems and anger as the Bush White House.

Arab deal killed

Israel's Gaza offensive is also likely to torpedo the current Saudi-sponsored peace plan, which had been backed by all members of the Arab League.

The plan, now likely defunct, had called for Israel to withdraw to its 1967 borders and share Jerusalem in exchange for full recognition and normalised relations with the Muslim world.

Arab governments will now be unable to sell the deal as they face a storm of criticism from their own people over their powerlessness to help the Palestinians of Gaza.

Egypt, in particular, is being widely accused of collaborating with Israel in further sealing off and isolating Gaza. It seems highly unlikely they will be able to advance a peace plan with Israel for now.

This is a bonus for right-wing Israelis, who have always been dead set against any withdrawal and strongly supported the attack on Gaza.

Other Israeli factions who were always lukewarm about the Saudi peace plan are now unlikely to reconsider it.

Israel's security establishment is committed to preventing the creation of a viable Palestinian state, and refuses to negotiate with Hamas. Unable to kill all of Hamas' men, Israel is slowly destroying Gaza's infrastructure around them, as it did to Yasser Arafat's PLO.

Israel's hardliners point to Gaza and claim that any Palestinian state on the West Bank would threaten their nation's security by firing rockets into Israel's heartland.

Mighty information machine

Israel is confident that its mighty information machine will allow it to weather the storm of worldwide outrage over its Biblical punishment of Gaza. Who remembers Israel's flattening of parts of the Palestinian city of Jenin, or the US destruction in Falluja, Iraq, or the Sabra and Shatilla massacres in Beirut?

The US media has focused on the rockets being fired on Israel from Gaza [GALLO/GETTY]

Though the torment of Gaza is seen across the horrified Muslim world as a modern version of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising by Jews against the Nazis during World War Two, Western governments still appear bent on taking no action.

Though Israel's use of American weapons against Gaza violates the US Arms Export Control and Foreign Assistance Acts, the docile US Congress will remain mute.

Israel's assault on Gaza was clearly timed for America's interregnum between administrations and the year-end holidays, a well-used Israeli tactic.

Hamas refuses to recognise Israel as long as Israel refuses to recognise Hamas and the rights of millions of homeless Palestinian refugees.

It calls for a non-religious state to be created in Palestine, meaning an end to Zionism. Ironically, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder and late leader of Hamas, had spoken of a compromise with Tel Aviv shortly before he was assassinated by Israel in 2004.

An inherited mess

Israel's hopes that it can bomb Gazans into rejecting Hamas are as ill-conceived as its failed attempt in 2006 to blast Lebanon into rejecting Hezbollah.

The Fatah regime on the West Bank installed by the US and Israel after Yasser Arafat's suspicious death will be further discredited, leaving the militants of Hamas as the sole authentic voice of Palestinian nationalism.

Hamas, the militant but still democratically elected government of Gaza, is even less likely to compromise.

The Muslim world is in a rage. But so what? Stalin liked to say "the dogs bark, and the caravan moves on," and as long as the US gives Israel carte blanche, it can do just about anything it wants.

The tragedy of Palestine will thus continue to poison US relations with the Muslim world.

Those Americans who still do not understand why their nation was attacked on 9/11 need only look to Gaza, for which the US is now being blamed as much as Israel.

Unless Israel can make 5 to 7 million Palestinians disappear, it must find some way to co-exist with them. Israeli leaders on the centre and right continue to avoid facing this fact.

The brutal collective punishment inflicted on Gaza will likely strengthen Hamas and reverse any hopes of a Middle East peace in the coming years.

Eric S. Margolis is an author, syndicated foreign affairs columnist, broadcaster, and veteran war correspondent. His latest book is American Raj: America and the Muslim world.

The views expressed by the author are not necessarily those of Al Jazeera.

Did the IAF bomb a Gazan welding truck or a Hamas Grad transport?

2009-01-02T21:49:00.000-05:00

By Amira Hass, Haaretz Correspondent

Just before midnight, on December 29, the Israel Defense Forces Spokesman's Office posted an urgent headline on its Web site: Truck packed with weapons attacked near Jabalya.

The subheadline went on to read: "At around 6 P.M., the Israel Air Force attacked a Hamas truck carrying dozens of Grad rockets."

According to the article, the rockets in the truck caused a secondary explosion, shooting pieces of weaponry in all directions. The rockets were being transferred, said the article, due to militants' fear that their present storehouse would be attacked by the IAF, as well as to be put to use for launching at Israel.

The article was accompanied by a video just over 2 minutes showing the IAF's perspective from the sky, until just a moment before the explosion. The video shows 15 white figures casually milling between two vehicles. Three long black objects appear between their hands and the white figures lay these objects down on what seems to be a truck. The second vehicle takes off at a certain point and suddenly an explosion sounds and flames cover the screen. An eyewitness said the explosion was caused by an overhead drone.

Human rights groups' investigations, however, present a different testimony altogether.

According to B'tselem and the Mezan center for human rights, the truck belongs to Ahmed Samur, 55, and is still standing, burnt, beside his workshop in the Jabaliya refugee camp. Next to it hang scorched oxygen balloons, a blade and cables. Nobody dares move the truck or the accompanying accoutrements for fear that the UAVs filming every detail from above will bomb whoever approaches.

"Everything is still there on the ground," said Samur on Thursday. "We only moved the dead."

Just three hours before the attack, Samur's daughter told him that she had heard on the local radio that a house next to his workship had been bombed.

He immediately got into his Mercedes truck, along with his son and a few neighbors and relatives, and went to the workshop to see the damage.

They were shocked to discover that the neighboring house had collapsed onto his workshop and decided to pack up the expensive tools and take them home before they could be looted.

On the first round, they brought home a drill, a welding torch, a scale, other tools and a gas balloon for cooking. Then they went back to the workshop to pack up the rest: three of six oxygen balloons used for welding, two jerrycans filled with benzene and two filled with diesel.

As Samir's son Imad organized the tools in the truck, his brother-in-law packed his own smaller car with 50 packages of welding electrodes, 4 kilograms each, and drove off.

Samur himself stood on the other side of the street to keep the dust particles from the burning nearby house from flying into his lungs. He looked at the youths packing the truck and was reminded of working bees in a honeycomb - this was just before 5 P.M., he estimates.

"Suddenly I saw a flash of light next to my truck and then it caught fire and I heard the sound of an explosion. I started to run toward the blast, and when I got close and the smoke cleared, I saw bodies, one of them belonging to my son Imad. I fainted. When I woke up they told me that Imad and the seven other young people who were helping him had been killed," he recounted.

Speaking to Haaretz by phone, Samur said: "These were not Hamas, they were our children, and I will tell you their names. Imad Samur, 32; Ashraf al-Dabar, 30; Mahmoud Rabayan, 15; Rami Rabayan, 23; Ahmed Hila, 19; Mohammed Mahdi, 17; Wissam Eid, 14; Mohammed Haber, 20. Four others were hurt, two of them seriously: Bilal Rabayan, 19 and his brother Baha, 16.

"You have experts and smart people in Israel," he said. "They should come and check my truck and the oxygen balloons. They should see that they were not Grad missiles and they were not anything else. You people are saying they burnt a big truck filled with Grads. Well come and see for yourself."

Haaretz asked the IDF spokesperson if the video depicts the truck in question, and was told "the truck's contents were taken from a building that was housing ammunition and rockets."

No one in Gaza has denied that Qassams are being manufactured and launched from the Strip, but there are many targets hit by the IAF whose military importance is unclear at best. For instance, a small, empty building in the middle of a playground in the Shabura refugee camp in Rafah which was blown up by the IAF two days ago, in an attack that left two dead.

Mezan said the unending IAF attacks have made it very difficult to determine how many of the targets hit were military and which were civilian.

Russia bids for control over the Middle East

2008-12-26T11:45:00.001-05:00

Russian FM Lavrov announced the upcoming financial support for Palestinians during Abbas’ visit to Moscow. As his presidential term expires on January 9, this seems Abbas’ last official visit - significantly, to Chechnya.

Russian support to Palestinians will come largely in military sphere. In Lavrov’s diplomatic speak, Russia supports Abbas’ “security measures.” The only Fatah’s security measures we see in Israel are related to terrorist attacks: scores of Fatah policemen are vacationing in Israeli jails for terror activity. Not a single Palestinian terrorist was intercepted by Fatah policemen. The few terrorists comfortably jailed in Palestine were arrested by IDF and released to Fatah.

Russian pledge to Palestine has nothing to do with humanitarian concerns. Russians never delivered food or other humanitarian supplies to Palestinian refugee camps, but look for “security cooperation” with Palestinians. In plain English, Russians seek a military foothold at Israeli borders. To that end, they pledged ten MIG-29 jets to Lebanon’s Hezbollah government free, and build a mammoth navy base in Syrian port of Tartus. The navy base will host S-300 and later S-400 anti-aircraft defense which would protect most of Syria against Israeli reprisals. Under the Russian ABM umbrella, Syria can develop its nuclear weapons without fearing Israeli preemption.

Russia’s Middle East policy also includes TOR-1M and S-300 deliveries to Iran and joint nuclear program with Egypt.

Russian expansion comes despite that country’s economic troubles. Russian economy relies on oil, gas, and other natural resources almost as much as Saudi Arabia. Oil and gas revenues account for about 60% of Russian budget (both directly and through taxes on businesses which thrive on high oil prices). During the years of windfall oil profits, Russian government built currency reserves, but they dwindle quickly as oil prices fell.

Instead of minding its own business and building a modern economy, Putin-Medvedev’s government grew increasingly hostile. Domestically, the regime amended the high treason law: the new formulation easily includes all dissidents. The tax administration hunts down crisis-stricken businesses: the reduced tax revenues are blamed on evasion rather than economic downturn. In the “near abroad”, Russia continues military incursions in Georgia and introduced gas blockade of Ukraine. Russian Gazprom monopoly refused transporting Asian gas to Ukraine, and slapped it with gas prices substantially higher than those offered to West European customers.

Russia cannot gain rich or advanced countries on its side. They are either not interested in Russian overtures, or prefer relations with the West, if only for economic reasons. Russians have nothing to offer Saudi Arabia or Emirates, but court the world’s outlaws such as Iran or Venezuela.

The Old Europe also falls victim to Russian bullying: France and Germany, the EU cheerleaders, depend on Russia for gas supplies, as are most other European countries. Staunchly anti-American EU embraces Russia if not for any other reason than to slap the United States. In its latest meeting at FM level, NATO discussed Georgia: not the way of defending it from Russia, but how to get over it and re-establish ties with Russia.

US-Russian nuclear cooperation, arms reduction, and anti-missile treaties are practically abandoned. Russia threatened to stop dismantling its nuclear warheads and selling the uranium to America, though the deal went on smoothly for fifteen years. Putin resumed militarily useless but highly provocative flights of Russian nuclear-armed strategic bombers around Europe.

Russia’s increasingly strong relations with Hezbollah, Hamas, and PLO are best viewed on the background of its worldwide strategy. Lacking funds to buy clients with aid, having too little economic clout to obtain friends with trade advantages, Russia resorted to the old Soviet tactics of stirring trouble. That policy amounts to racketeering: if Russian role is not acknowledged, regional troubles ensue. Propping the miscreants like Iran or PLO is way cheaper than staging conflicts and immensely cheaper than any civilized way of spreading one’s influence.

Unless Russia breaks again into the post-democratic anarchy, it is out to create major troubles for the world.

Clashes erupt in Israeli-run prison

2008-12-24T20:58:00.000-05:00

Clashes erupt in Israeli-run prison

Israeli police entered Ofer prison outside Ramallah to quell the riot which erupted on Saturday [Reuters]

At least seven Palestinian detainees and three Israeli guards have been injured in a prison riot, according to Yaron Zamir, a prison service spokesman.

The clashes in the Ofer detention centre near the West Bank town of Ramallah erupted on Saturday when dozens of Palestinian inmates started throwing objects at guards who had entered to search a prison ward, Zamir said.

"Following the violence a larger force was sent into the ward and order was restored shortly afterwards," he told the AFP news agency.

Seven prisoners injured after inhaling tear gas were treated at the jail. Three guards were lightly injured by objects thrown at them, Zamir said.

More than 11,000 Palestinians are held in Israeli prisons, many of them detained for long periods without trial.

Nour Odeh, Al Jazeera's correspodent reporting from Ramallah, said: "Palestinian detainees inside the miltary camp tried to prevent Israeli prison authorities from raiding their sections and undertaking a search of the wards.

"We have heard repeatedly from these detainees about the humiliation they undergo on a daily basis during these searches.

"And it was at this point they [inmates] wanted to protest against the measures undertaken by the Israeli prison authorities."

She said that calm appears to have been restored and situation brought under control. But it is unclear whether the Israeli authorities will respond to the Palestinian prisoners' frustrations and grievances after the latest incident.

Gaza fatality

In the Gaza Strip, meanwhile, a Palestinian man has been killed in an Israeli missile attack - the first death since the end of a six-month-old ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, which controls the Palestinian territory.

Ali Hijazi, 22, and two other men who were wounded in Saturday's incident were members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, witnesses said.

IN VIDEO

	Palestinian fighters ready to fight
	Israeli forces on high alert at border
	Truce no protection for Sderot
	Gaza residents suffer under truce

The air raid targeted a group of fighters firing rockets towards Israel, an Israeli military official said.

The attack in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip came a day after the end of the ceasefire.

Sherine Tadros, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Gaza, said: "The [Israeli] military told us that six projectiles have been launched from the Gaza Strip towards southern Israel.

"This is coming as very sad news for the people here who once again find themselves in the position they were in before the ceasefire, in terms of this almost daily aggression by Israel and very uncertain times in terms of what will happen next.

"From the Israeli side they have said that ... as long as there is peace from the Palestinian side they will respond with peace. But if there is aggression by Palestinian factions, they will fight back with force."

A ceasefire agreed in June officially ended at daybreak on Friday, after Hamas said it would not renew it.

Hamas blamed Israelis for the failure of the ceasefire, saying that they had not lived up to their obligations under the deal by continuing a blockade of the Gaza Strip.

McCain's Shameful Slur

2008-11-03T20:19:00.001-05:00

fighting words

McCain's Shameful Slur

The Republicans' appalling attack on Rashid Khalidi.

By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, Nov. 3, 2008, at 12:09 PM ET

On the clouded synapses of Sen. John McCain, it became clear as his campaign limped and lurched to its close, the termites had been dining long and dining well. However much one might have admired the low comedy of his closing routine on Saturday Night Live, it had to be admitted that even in that context, he looked a trifle glassy and elderly, not to say lost. No doubt there was some safe refuge to be taken, by himself and his absurd choice of running mate, in self-deprecation. The true ghastliness, however, was revealed in the crudeness of the McCain-Palin attempt to deprecate others.

A few feeble cracks on a comedy show are not enough to erase the memory of a vulgar and vicious attack, mounted on a rival candidate McCain has publicly called "honorable," only a few days earlier. It had been said that Sen. Barack Obama had once attended a dinner for professor Rashid Khalidi, a distinguished Palestinian academic. It was further said that the Los Angeles Times, which had first reported the five-years-ago dinner in Chicago, was deliberately withholding a videotape of the evening that would show Obama in the audience while tough criticism of Israel was being voiced. Here is how the Republican nominee for the presidency of the United States described the situation in a radio interview in Miami:

I'm not in the business of talking about media bias, but what if there was a tape with John McCain with a neo-Nazi outfit being held by some media outlet? I think the treatment of the issue would be slightly different.

I presume that in this fantastic piece of semicoherent Florida pandering McCain meant to imply the wearing of a neo-Nazi outfit rather than the membership of one, but it was hardly necessary for him to be so arch as to disclaim an interest in "talking about media bias." After all, his campaign maintains and accouters a running mate who will do all that for him and will furthermore read anything that is put in front of her (or, if it is a hoax call, will believe anything that is told to her) and who opined, on the same subject:

What we don't know is how Barack Obama responded to these slurs on a country that he professes to support, and the reason we don't know is the newspaper that has this tape, the Los Angeles Times, refuses to release it. It must be nice for a candidate to have major news organizations looking out for their best interests like that.

And it must be easy for a woman who couldn't, when first asked, name a single newspaper or magazine that she had ever read, to become such an instant expert on the press. It was last April when the paper disclosed the original event. Now it's being accused of covering up the event!

My main point, though, is not to call attention to the bullying and demagogy of McCain's attack. It is to observe how completely it undermines any claim on his part to foreign-policy experience. Khalidi has been known to me for some time and can easily be read and consulted by anyone with the remotest curiosity about the Israeli-Arab dispute. He is highly renowned, well beyond the borders of his own discipline, for his measure and care and scruple in weighing the issue. If he is seriously to be compared to a "neo-Nazi," then the Republican nominee has put the United States in the unbelievable position of slandering the most courageously "moderate" of the Palestinian Arabs as a brownshirt and a fascist. What then has been the point of every negotiation on a two-state solution since President George H.W. Bush convened the peace conference in Madrid in 1991? Nazis, after all, are to be crushed, not accommodated. One would have to think hard before coming up with a more crazy and irresponsible statement on any subject. Once again, it seems that McCain utterly lost his bearings.

I put the word moderate in quotation marks above because I dislike employing it in its usual form. Rashid Khalidi's family is a famous one in Jerusalem, long respected by Arab and Christian and Jew and Druze and Armenian, and holding a celebrated house and position in the city since approximately the time of the Crusades. I have had the honor of being invited to this very house. If Rashid chooses to state that he doesn't care to be evicted from his ancestral home in order to make way for some settler from Brooklyn who claims to have God on his side, I think he has a perfect right to say so. I would go further and say that if Barack Obama was looking for a Palestinian friend, he could not have chosen any better. But perhaps John McCain has decided that he doesn't need any Palestinian friends and neither do we. Perhaps he thinks it's all right to refer to refugees and victims of occupation, who have been promised self-determination and statehood at the podium of the United Nations and the U.S. Congress by George Bush and Condoleezza Rice, as if they were Hitlerites. How shameful. How disgusting. How ignorant.

One could go a step further and say that many Israelis have used the words apartheid and terrorist to describe at least some of their government's policies. In just the same way, one could note that Khalidi has clearly denounced violence when used by his "own" side, and also—this I remember very well from meeting him in Beirut in the 1970s and '80s—when employed by regimes like the Syrian. But somehow this evidence and this reflection has become beside the point. McCain saw a chance to deal a cheap and low blow, and he had the ideally ignorant deputy to reinforce him. The slander, after all, might get them through another news cycle and perhaps adhere some defamatory mud to their opponent. Who cares that it made the United States of America look thuggish and ignorant and petty in the eyes of any thinking person in the Middle East? Anyone who does care should be getting ready to vote against this humiliating ticket, a team that so farcically and horribly unites the senescent and the puerile.

Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2203619/

Allison Weir Public Event

2008-10-07T00:28:00.003-04:00

Allison Weir Public Event

Alison Weir is a reporter and executive director of If Americans Knew (ifamericansknew.org), a website devoted to misreported or unreported events regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Event Info
Host:	S.A.F.E.
Type:	Education - Workshop
Network:	Global

Time and Place
Date:	Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Time:	7:30pm - 9:30pm
Location:	TBA
City/Town:	Ann Arbor, MI

Contact Info
Email:	barder@umich.edu

Description

Alison Weir is a reporter and executive director of If Americans Knew (ifamericansknew.org), a website devoted to misreported or unreported events regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Weir will be in town for two days. The first day, she will hold an informal workshop with members of SAFE and interested members of co-sponsoring organizations, offering information and support about effectively reporting and addressing media bias. The second day, she will hold a lecture on campus speaking about American media bias concerning the ongoing conflict, as well as sharing some of her experiences in Israel and the Occupied Territories. The overall purpose is to encourage the audience to question and further engage media representations of conflict, and to develop a greater sense of intellectual curiosity and in response to American media outlets. The event will impact campus by enriching the always-lively Israeli-Palestinian campus debate.

If Americans Knew is a non-profit organization that focuses on the Arab-Israeli conflict and United States foreign policy regarding the Middle East, offering analysis of American media coverage of these issues. Its mission, according to the group's website, is to provide "what every American needs to know about Israel/Palestine."[1] The site is generally critical of U.S. financial and military support of Israel. The group blames the pro-Israeli lobby in the US, AIPAC, for advancing support for Israel.

In addition to the freelance journalist and founder Alison Weir [2], board members [3] and staff include critics of Israel, such as Francis Boyle, a law professor, Eugene Bird, the president of the Council for the National Interest, Paul Findley, a former United States Representative, Andrew I. Killgore, a former ambassador of the United States to Qatar [4], and Pete McCloskey, a Democratic politician from California.

Presenting: DAM & Jackie Salloum

2008-10-07T00:27:00.002-04:00

Presenting: DAM & Jackie Salloum

Slingshot Hip-Hop

Event Info
Host:	S.A.F.E.
Type:	Music/Arts - Exhibit
Network:	Global

Time and Place
Date:	Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Time:	8:00pm - 10:30pm
Location:	Michigan League Ballroom
City/Town:	Ann Arbor, MI

Contact Info
Email:	barder@umich.edu

Description

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgSVXjNLFgo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DAM_(band)
http://www.dampalestine.com/
http://www.jsalloum.org/
http://www.slingshothiphop.com/

SAFE is planning to bring renowned up-and-coming Palestinian American filmmaker Jackie Salloum to present an exclusive screening of her newest film “Slingshot Hip Hop”. The film, featured at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, is a feature-length documentary chronicling the lives of Palestinian rappers in Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel. The event will raise awareness about the film, drawing attention to oppression and how art can be used to express social justice. After the screening, Jackie will lead a discussion about the film. Our goal for the event is to spark meaningful dialogue around Palestinian issues while raising cultural awareness about this facet of Palestinian life.
Palestinian rap group DAM, heavily featured in the documentary, will also give a performance after the film. The audience will have the opportunity to experience DAM’s story full circle as they can enjoy their performance at the Michigan Theater right after watching raw and emotional footage of their struggles in Palestine.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

The young Palestinian-American artist, whose work was featured at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, was born in Dearborn, Mich. She grew up in a traditional home, surrounded by Middle Eastern food and music. Arabic was her first language.

In 2001, Salloum moved to New York City to pursue her interest in art as a graduate student. Her early work depicted conflict in Latin America. However, when the Israeli military raided Jenin in April 2002, Salloum was galvanized into a new focus on her Palestinian roots.

After the "Meen Erhabe" video, Salloum went on to make a movie montage for her senior thesis. She named it "Planet of the Arabs", and illuminated Hollywoodï¿½s widespread depictions of Arabs as villains and terrorists. Then Salloum experienced "a big shock." "Planet of the Arabs" went on to become an official selection at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival.

Her early successes inspired Salloum to create the world's first full-length feature film about Palestinian Hip-Hop. "SlingShot Hip Hop" will premiere at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.

Da Arabian MC's Suhell Nafar, Tamer Nafar, Mahmoud Jreri DAM is the first and leading Palestinian Rap Group. It is composed of Tamer Nafar, 27, his younger brother Suhell, 23, and Mahmoud Jreri, 24. The group has been performing together since the late 90s. Tamer, who had been performing Rap since 1998 with his brother, was first contacted by Mahmoud Jreri. Mahmoud was writing his own lyrics so they quickly decided to join forces and the group was born in 1999. All three members of the group were born and grew up in the slums of Lod, a mixed town of Arabs and Jews, 20 km from Jerusalem.

DAM's music is a unique fusion of East and West, combining Arabic percussion rhythms, Middle Eastern melodies and urban Hip Hop/Rap

The lyrics of DAM are influenced by the continuing Israeli - Palestinian conflict as well as by the Palestinian struggle for freedom and equality. DAM also draw their influence from such controversial issues as terrorism, drugs and womens rights.

Musically they take their inspiration from both Hip Hop artists (Nas, 2Pac, Mos Def, IAM, NTM, Saian Supa Crew, MBS etc.) and Arabic music (Marcel Khalifa,Kazem Saher,George Wassouf, Majda al Romi etc.)

The songs, lyrics and music, are written and arranged by all members of the group and musically produced by them and other known producers.

DAM's debut album "Stop Selling Drugs" was released locally in 1998, followed by the second album called "Min Irhabi" (who's the terrorist?) which was released in 2001. The controversial title track of this album was released on the net and more than 1 million people downloaded it within one month from the website ArabRap.Net. The song was also distributed free with Rolling Stone magazine in France and became a "street" anthem. It was also featured in a compilation in France with Manu Chao, Zebda, Noir Desir and many other top artists.

Furthermore, the lyrics of the song were taught in some Universities around the world because of their deep meaning, and were also used in pro-Palestinian demonstrations around the world.

DAM are now gaining increased international popularity around the world through their unique message and ground-breaking live shows.

The growing international profile and interest in this unique band have led to participation in various films, events and collaborations including:

- "Local Angel", a 2002 documentary by Israeli director and political activist Udi Aloni. - Appearance in Forgiveness, Udi Alonis latest film selected at the Berlin Festival 2006. - Key appearance in the documentary Slingshot Hip Hop about todays Palestinian rap scene, by apalestnine amrican director Jackie Salloum. - Key appearance in the documentary film "Channel of rage", by Anat Halahmi, that showed the Israeli-Palestine struggle from the Israeli and Palestinian Rappers point of view - Appearance in the soundtrack of the film Ford Transit by Palestinian director Hany Abu Assad, who won a golden Globe for his film Paradise now. - Participation in the photoshoot by Magnum/National Geographic photographer David Alan Harvey about rap artists around the world. - Many live shows in Europe (France, England, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland etc.) and in the USA.

The band perform at the important TRANSMUSICALES DE RENNES festival in France in December 2006.

Dedication is DAMs long-awaited first international album which will be released autumn 2006.

Fiction meets fact in Hebron film

2008-10-07T00:23:00.001-04:00

It is an ordinary story, in an extraordinary setting.

Hebron is the site for what its Israeli makers claim is the first fictional feature film ever to be shot in the city.

The city has become a byword for some of the sharpest tensions on the West Bank. It is the only West Bank city where Jewish settlers live in the midst of Palestinians.

The plot of Graduation is slender: it tells the story of a young Palestinian woman called Ayat, who is played by 23-year-old actress Yousra Barakat.

Ayat is attempting to reach her college graduation on the night of the Jewish festival of Purim. The Palestinians in the centre of the city are under curfew, so that the Jewish settlers can hold their Purim parade - a wild whirligig of coloured lights, loud music, fancy dress and feverish dancing.

I wanted to make the smallest story I could possibly tell, so that people could identify with it, but also say to themselves, 'This is really crazy, how can people live like this?' But yet this is the routine
Yaelle Kayam
Director

Ayat decides, along with her younger brother, to break the curfew. Theirs is an attempted journey past roadblocks, sealed entrances and checkpoints, and past soldiers and settlers.

The film's director is Yaelle Kayam, a 28-year-old from Tel Aviv and graduate of the Sam Spiegel Film School in Jerusalem.

"I wanted to make the smallest story I could possibly tell," she says, "so that people could identify with it, but also say to themselves, 'This is really crazy, how can people live like this?' But yet this is the routine."

Ms Kayam believes that the majority of people in Israel are "not aware at all" about what life is like for Palestinians in Hebron, or how the settlers behave.

She says that when she showed friends in Tel Aviv some of the earlier material she had shot, from the Purim parade, they thought that it had all been staged.

'Not allowed'

We watched rehearsals under a baking September sun, during Ramadan.

From the rooftop, where the actors were peering at the imaginary parade beneath, there was a clear view of the streams of men pouring towards the Ibrahim Mosque.
Director Yaelle Kayam
Kayam wants her film to increase awareness of restrictions in Hebron

Hebron is the West Bank's largest city, home to 160,000 Palestinians. Dotted through the centre of the city are the few hundred Jewish settlers, guarded by several hundred Israeli soldiers.

It is the presence of these settlers that has turned Hebron into a patchwork of internal checkpoints and closures.

From the material already shot by Yaelle Kayam and her Israeli crew, one of the most arresting, almost other-worldly scenes, shows Yusra watching, from the caged first-floor balcony of a Palestinian house, the Purim parade below.

In real life, the house belongs to Zlika Muhtaseb, a 46-year-old teacher, and life-long resident of Hebron.

As with all the houses along this street, Zlika's balcony is enclosed in a stout metal mesh to guard against the stone-throwing from young settlers. She says that, in any case, she is rarely allowed out on to the street which her home overlooks.

"It was the main street in Hebron, connecting the north with the south," she said. "But the settlers said that Palestinians shouldn't use it, because of security."

She last used the door onto Shuhada Street more than a month ago. At the roundabout 200m from her house, she was stopped by a soldier.

"He was surprised to see me. 'Where did you come from?' he said. I showed him my house. He said: 'You're not allowed to use this street. Go back.'

"I showed him my permit. He said: 'It's not valid. It does not apply here.' I asked him where I should use it. He said: 'I don't know, it doesn't apply here.'"

Welded shut

Zlika does have another doorway she can use, but it takes her on a much longer detour, through several more checkpoints, to get to where she wants to go.
Tim Franks, on the roof of the house
The Qafisha family must cross to a neighbour's roof to go outside

At least she does have another entrance. That is an improvement over the Qafisha family, who live a short walk away, and whose house has also been the site for some of the filming.

Five years ago, their only door to the street was welded shut by the Israeli army. Since then, the 10 members of the family - from grandparents to grandchildren - have a rather more complicated route to the outside.

They have to ascend uneven, switchback stone steps, stooping to avoid the ceiling, in order to reach their roof. There they cross through a ragged hole in an outside wall on to their neighbours' roof.

They then make their way down a series of steep stairways to the neighbouring doorway.

The older women of the family say that they have been left depressed and sometimes injured by the ordeal of just coming and going from their home.

Graduation is due to premiere next April. It is a work of fiction. But only just.

Israeli security forces black performer to dance

2008-09-13T21:00:00.000-04:00

MSN Tracking Image
MSNBC.com
Israeli security forces black performer to dance
Alvin Ailey troupe member allegedly singled out because of Muslim name
The Associated Press
updated 11:38 a.m. PT, Tues., Sept. 9, 2008

JERUSALEM - A performer with the famed Alvin Ailey dance troupe on Tuesday said he was twice forced to perform steps for Israeli airport security officers to prove his identity before he was permitted to enter the country.

Abdur-Rahim Jackson, an eight-year veteran of the dance ensemble, said he was singled out by Israel’s renowned airport security because he has a Muslim name. He called the experience embarrassing and said at one point, one of the officers even suggested he change his name.

“To be greeted like this because of my name, it took me back a little bit,” said Jackson, who is black.

Israel is the first stop on a six-nation tour celebrating the New York-based dance company’s 50th anniversary. Earlier this year, Congress passed a resolution calling the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater a “vital American cultural ambassador to the world.”

Jackson said he was pulled aside from other members of the troupe when they arrived at Israel’s international airport on Sunday night. He said he was taken to a holding room, where he was asked about the origins of his name. When he explained he was part of the dance group, he was asked to perform.

“I stood up. I asked what type of dance?” he explained. “He said, “Just do anything.’ I just moved around.”

Minutes later, he said a female officer put him through a similar interrogation and asked him to dance again.

“The only time I’m really expected to dance is when I’m performing,” he said.

Jackson said he received his name because his father was a convert to Islam. Jackson said he was not raised a Muslim, does not consider himself religious and is engaged to a Jewish woman in the troupe who has relatives in Israel.

Jackson said he did not plan to press the matter further, saying the numerous apologies he has received from American dignitaries and his Israeli hosts is “enough for me.” The Israel Ports Authority said it had no comment because it did not receive a formal complaint.

The incident was reported in Israel’s largest newspaper and on an Israeli television news and interview program. “The security guards should be sent home or (the airport) will become a mental asylum,” said Motti Kirshenbaum, a veteran commentator and host of the Channel 10 TV program.

Israel is constantly on the alert for attack because of the Israel-Palestinian conflict and extremist Islamic rejection of the Jewish state’s existence. Security is strict at all entry points and inside the country.

Israel is famous for the effectiveness of its airport security. But a key element in its security checks is ethnic profiling. The practice has been criticized by Israeli human rights campaigners as racist because it singles out Arabs for tougher treatment.

Such profiling is illegal in the United States, but Jackson said that the only place he has had the similarly humiliating experience of being forced to dance in the past was at a U.S. airport when he returned from a vacation in the Dominican Republic. He did not say when or where that took place.

Jackson said that since the Israeli airport incident, the reception in Israel has been “amazing.”

“We’re only here to bring positive light to our lives and the people here,” he said, calling the group’s multicultural appeal “an amazing bind you can’t touch, you can only experience.”

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26623540/
MSN Privacy . Legal
© 2008 MSNBC.com

Jeremy Scalhill

2008-09-13T19:45:00.001-04:00

Visit of Journalist Jeremy Scahill, October 30, 2008

This event will bring independent scholar and journalist Jeremy Scahill to speak to a
wide university audience on October 30, from 5-7. He is also scheduled to meet with two
grad/undergraduate seminars in Communications that day. Depending on how much money we
raise for this event, there will also be an opportunity to meet with one or two other
small groups of faculty and students.

Scahill is a nationally known and highly regarded journalist whose recent contributions
to understanding the political, social, international, legal, military, gender, and
business/economic implications of the war in Iraq have been receiving a great deal of
prominent attention both at home and around the world, Several of us have read his
prize-winning book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World?s Most Powerful Mercenary Army,
which is not narrowly about the meteoric rise of one particular private security firm,
but about the links of a vast number of conservative politicians in Congress and other
sectors of the Federal Government, including the Executive Branch, the CIA and the FBI,
to a variety of free-market mercenary corporate enterprises, of which Blackwater is
simply the best known exemplar. Those enterprises include the expansion of American
corporations?such as oil producers?abroad, as well as the concurrent expansion of the
business of providing private security to these corporations, not least because they
operate in areas of the globe where nation-state armies (including that of the US) cannot
easily be deployed, whether for practical or geopolitical reasons. This research has
been breathtakingly revelatory with respect to the hidden processes by which American
democracy can be undermined. There remains little public awareness of the threat such
privatized militaries pose to civil liberties at home and international law, since they
are removed from the kind of accountability and prosecution which the US military has to
observe. Furthermore, as Scahill demonstrates, when privatized firms make millions of
dollars from the capacity to fight wars, the incentives for taking peace seriously
diminish. Profits trump international law, while American taxpayers pick up the tab of
rising national deficits and shaky financial markets.

Professor Morantz-Sanchez recently had the pleasure of meeting Scahill and hearing him
give a talk: he is a dynamic and inspiring speaker and an entirely accessible and
engaging individual--generous, down to earth, but also charismatic. He has received
numerous awards for his reporting, including the prestigious George Polk Award, which he
won twice. In the past, he has written extensively from Yugoslavia (recently debating
Harvard Professor Samantha Powers on the issue of Serbia and Kosovo) and Nigeria. During
both the Clinton and Bush Administrations, his acute and perceptive reports from Iraq,
while a correspondent for Democracy Now! , have earned
him widespread praise. He is currently a Puffin Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute.
Blackwater: The Rise of the World?s Most Powerful Mercenary Army (2007), his first book,
has been widely reviewed, creating somewhat of a sensation among politicians, critics,
and general readers alike.

Sample reviews of Blackwater:

?A crackling exposé of the secretive military contractor Blackwater.?
New York Times

?[Scahill] is a one-man truth squad.?
Bill Moyers
?Scahill provided me with information which I have not been able to get from the U.S.
military?.I?ve read more from Mr. Scahill than I got from our own government.?
Representative Marcy Kaptur, Defense Appropriations Committee

?Fascinating and magnificently documented?.Jeremy Scahill?s new book is a brilliant
exposé and belongs on the reading list of any conscientious citizen.?
Scott Horton, International and Military Law Expert, Columbia University Law School

?Blackwater being rarely out of the news lately, this is a very useful survey of modern
mercenaries, or, as they prefer to be called, ?private security contractors? in the
?peace and stability industry?.Scahill is a sharp investigative writer?.?
The Guardian

?Scahill?s page-turning collection of intrigue and insight into the underworld of
privatized warfare is well researched, thoroughly documented, and as a result extremely
frightening?.?
The Globe and Mail

?[T]his is no uninformed partisan screed?.Meticulously documented and encyclopedic in
scope?..it?s a comprehensive and authoritative guide?.this book serves as a provocative
primer for advancing the debate.?
Bill Sizemore, Pulitzer-prize nominated journalist, Virginian-Pilot 2007

Daily - Group efforts of SAFE

2008-03-31T13:27:00.000-04:00

Recognizing the importance of the group behind a leader

To the Daily:

While I am thoroughly honored to have been recognized by the Daily in its "Students of the year" (03/26/2008) for my participation in Students Allied for Freedom and Equality - a diverse group of student activists organized to promote justice, human rights, liberation and self-determination for the Palestinian people - I would like to note that our success as an organization cannot be attributed to just one person. Nothing could have been achieved this year had it not been for the hard work and dedication of all SAFE's members, especially my co-chair Hena Ashraf, Bre Arder, Faria Jabbar, Ryah Aqel and Kamal Abuarquob.

This year, SAFE was steadfast in its effort to provide the campus community with a holistic and analytical outlook at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It did this in spite of being harassed by Internet and campus watchdogs who attempted to intimidate SAFE into silence through libelous blog postings and offensive fliers, which sometimes compared the SAFE members to the Ku Klux Klan. By ignoring and properly reporting these cowardly acts of hate and discrimination, SAFE demonstrated that it is possible to engage in a civil and analytical debate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

As members of an institution of higher learning, we have a fundamental obligation to uphold the principles of freedom and equality. SAFE calls on people from all backgrounds and political persuasions to support peace and justice in the Middle East.

Andrew Dalack

LSA sophomore

The letter writer is the co-chair of SAFE

Palestinians Fear Two-Tier Road System

2008-03-28T13:19:00.004-04:00

By ETHAN BRONNER
Published: March 28, 2008
Khaled Abu Aker contributed reporting from A Tira, West Bank.

BEIT SIRA, West Bank — Ali Abu Safia, mayor of this Palestinian village, steers his car up one potholed road, then another, finding each exit blocked by huge concrete chunks placed there by the Israeli Army. On a sleek highway 100 yards away, Israeli cars whiz by.

“They took our land to build this road, and now we can’t even use it,” Mr. Abu Safia says bitterly, pointing to the highway with one hand as he drives with the other. “Israel says it is because of security. But it’s politics.”

The object of Mr. Abu Safia’s contempt — Highway 443, a major access road to Jerusalem — has taken on special significance in the grinding Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For the first time, the Supreme Court, albeit in an interim decision, has accepted the idea of separate roads for Palestinians in the occupied areas.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel told the Supreme Court that what was happening on the highway could be the onset of legal apartheid in the West Bank — a charge that makes many Israelis recoil.

Built largely on private Palestinian land, the road was first challenged in the Supreme Court in the early 1980s when the justices, in a landmark ruling, permitted it to be built because the army said its primary function was to serve the local Palestinians, not Israeli commuters. In recent years, in the wake of stone-throwing and several drive-by shootings, Israel has blocked Palestinians’ access to the road.

This month, as some 40,000 Israeli cars — and almost no Palestinians — use it daily, the court handed down its decision, one that has engendered much legal and political hand-wringing.

The one-paragraph decision calls on the army to give a progress report in six months on its efforts to build separate roads and take other steps for the Palestinians to compensate them for being barred from Highway 443. It is the acceptance of the idea of separate road systems that has engendered commentary, although legal experts say there is a slight chance that the court could reconsider its approach when it next examines the issue.

“There is already a separate legal system in the territories for Israelis and Palestinians,” said Limor Yehuda, who argued the recent case for the civil rights association on behalf of six Palestinian villages. “With the approval of separate roads, if it becomes a widespread policy, then the word for it will be ‘apartheid.’ ”

Many Israelis and their supporters reject the term, with its implication of racist animus.

“The basis of separation is not ethnic since Israeli Arabs and Jerusalem residents with Israeli ID cards can use the road,” argues Dore Gold, president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, a conservative research organization. “The basis of the separation is to keep out of secure areas people living in chaotic areas. If the Palestinian Authority, which has thousands of men under arms, had fought terror, this wouldn’t have been necessary.”

The court’s latest decision is significant because it accepted the idea in principle put forth by the army — that while it had no choice but to ban Palestinian traffic from the road because of anti-Israel attacks on it, some of which it says originated from the surrounding villages, it would build separate roads for the Palestinians.

The court has never ruled on the legality of separate roads, despite a growing network of them around the West Bank. If this interim decision reflects its view that such a system is legally acceptable, that represents a big new step. A court spokeswoman said the justices would not comment.

David Kretzmer, an emeritus professor of international law at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, wrote in an op-ed article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz of what he called the “judicial hypocrisy” of Israel’s reign over the territories manifest in this case.

He said that while the changed security circumstances of recent years may have forced a change in the road’s mixed use, “the unavoidable conclusion is that, as unfortunate as this may be, Israelis should not be allowed to travel on the road that was built, let’s not forget, for the benefit of the local population.

“But the military government has, of course, decided otherwise: Israelis will be allowed to travel on the road, while Palestinians — for whom, the court’s ruling says, the road was paved — cannot use it, and access to the road from local Palestinian villages will be blocked.”

For many Israelis, however, the dozens of attacks that have taken place on the road in recent years are reason enough to ban Palestinian traffic there and to limit Palestinians to other routes. In 2001, for example, five Israelis were killed by gunfire on Highway 443 and since then a number of others have been injured from stone-throwing.

Still, the legal case seems more complicated. In The Jerusalem Post, Dan Izenberg wrote that international law and Israeli court decisions were unambiguous on the fact that the road should primarily serve Palestinians rather than Israelis, but that the court was in a delicate position just now because of growing public discontent with it over other issues.

“The High Court in this case cannot stray too far from the interests of the Israeli public, especially at a time when it has more than its share of enemies,” he wrote. “The court knows that Israelis who rely on Highway 443 would not easily accept a ruling that causes them such inconvenience.”

Gershom Gorenberg, an Israeli who wrote a book critical of Israeli settlements, runs a blog called South Jerusalem (www.southjerusalem.com) on which he has posted documents from the 1960s and 70s showing that the governments planned to expand the Jerusalem corridor with settlements and a bigger road after conquering East Jerusalem in the 1967 war. In that sense, he says, the government and army were never honest in what they told the Supreme Court about the purpose of Highway 443.

“Think of the road itself as a settlement,” he said, “part of the conscious effort to change the character of the area, giving it an Israeli stamp. The point was to make it impossible for Israel ever to return certain parts of the land. It is true that Palestinians had free movement on 443 in the 1980s and 1990s before the restrictions were imposed. But to claim that it was built for them does not line up with the paper trail. The cover story of this road has been blown.”

For the 30,000 Palestinians who live in the surrounding villages, lack of access to Highway 443 has been a constant source of difficulty. In one village, A Tira, 14 taxis have permits to travel the road during daylight but locals say that has not eased the burden much.

Each morning, a crowd gathers at the blocked entrance to A Tira, waiting for the Israeli soldiers to open a gate so they can take one of the taxis to Ramallah, the capital of the West Bank.

“Ten days ago, my brother had a heart attack and we had trouble transferring him to a Ramallah hospital,” lamented Said Salameh, 51, a taxi driver who has a permit for the road, as he stood by the entrance one recent morning. “When the gate closes at night, we can’t move outside the village.”

Sabri Mahmoud, a 36-year-old employee of the Palestinian Authority, agreed. “I am always late to work because of this,” he said. “Our life is controlled by the opening hours of the gate. You feel like you live in a cage.”

For many legal commentators in Israel, the most distressing part is that by giving Highway 443 to Israelis and barring Palestinians, Israel is protecting its citizens not from terrorism but from traffic — granting them an alternative to the crowded main Jerusalem road.

Ms. Yehuda, the civil rights lawyer, said that the Supreme Court’s 1982 ruling specifically stated that if the point of the road was primarily to serve Israelis, then it may not be built. Yet now, she added, “The state is essentially aiming to safeguard the convenience of the service road for Israelis who commute from Tel Aviv and the central plains to Jerusalem and vice versa.”

Daily - Students of the Year

2008-03-26T13:29:00.001-04:00

The civil debater

Andrew Dalack

When Fadi Kiblawi created Students Allied for Freedom and Equality, a pro-Palestinian student group, in 2001, the group's initial attempts to discuss the contentious Israeli-Palestinian conflict with other campus groups often ended in bickering.

"Back then, around the beginning of the Second Intifada, it was a very emotional issue that often became very personal and ugly - and that affected the discourse," Kiblawi said. "There wasn't that level of civility."

Seven years later, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains as contentious as ever. But campus discourse on the conflict, Kiblawi said, is far more constructive and civil than it was during his days as a leader of SAFE.

Kiblawi attributes much of that change in the dialogue on Middle East issues to LSA sophomore Andrew Dalack, one of SAFE's current co-chairs.

"Andrew has done a great job this year opening up the debate, creating civil discussion on campus," Kiblawi said.

Increased civility in Israeli-Palestinian discourse was unexpected this year, considering the controversy in September over the University Press's distribution of a book called "Overcoming Zionism" that advocates a single-state solution. But under Dalack's leadership, the group organized events that garnered greater attention than SAFE has typically received on campus, like speeches by Joel Kovel, the author of "Overcoming Zionism," and Profs. John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, whose lecture drew a capacity crowd at the Natural Science Building earlier this month.

SAFE also hosted Palestinian Awareness Week in February, featuring a week of events focusing on Middle Eastern issues that included a lecture by an Israeli professor who spoke on the occupation of Palestinian territories from Israel's perspective.

By bringing academics, journalists and scholars of varying viewpoints to campus, Dalack said he was trying to "raise the bar" of the debate surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to a more academic level.

"We wanted to make sure that anybody who wanted the tit-for-tat, back and forth arguing would be marginalized, and that people who really wanted to engage in a more intellectual discussion could do so," Dalack said.

-Andy Kroll

UM 'Israel Lobby' event draws hundreds

2008-03-21T16:16:00.000-04:00

By Will Youmans - The Arab American News
Friday, 03.21.2008

ANN ARBOR — Two years ago, two prominent American scholars broke the silence on a taboo often referred to as the "third-rail of politics," the disproportionate power of the Israel lobby. A fairly obscure intellectual journal, "The London Review of Books," published their essay, "The Israel Lobby."

In it, John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, and Stephen Walt of Harvard, claimed that American policy in the Middle East is not guided by national interests. Instead "U.S. policy in the region derives almost entirely from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the "Israel Lobby.'"

This article sparked a thunderous debate, bringing about backlash from pro-Israel scholars, activists and politicians. Organizations like the Anti-Defamation League criticized the essay and its authors, claiming it resembled the "Jewish conspiracy" tales peddled by anti-Jewish racists.

Despite the anger directed towards these leading scholars of politics, hundreds of thousands of people downloaded the article and a longer version from a Harvard website. The authors released a book in which they refined their arguments and bolstered them with research. It became a New York Times bestseller.

It is no surprise then that four hundred and fifty people crammed into an auditorium at the University of Michigan on Friday, March 14, 2008 to hear them present their case.

The event was arranged by the Students Allied for Freedom and Equality, a student group at the university founded in 2001.

Campus officials were concerned the event would invite hostility from Israel's supporters on campus. The student newspaper reported that Sue Eklund, the outgoing associate vice president for student affairs and dean of students, wanted to create a "notion of campus climate" by welcoming controversial speakers.

The event went smoothly, however. Pro-Israeli activists passed out literature before the event and were not disruptive.

Professor Ron Stockton, who teaches political science at the University of Michigan, Dearborn, introduced the professors by explaining the impact of their writings and suggesting that communication technologies enhance the flow of such ideas. He said such advances can transform societies, citing the rise of Barack Obama as an example.

Professor Walt opened with a detailed and thorough argument proving the lobby, a "loose network" exists. He clarified that such a lobby is "as American as apple pie." However, he said he was concerned because of its disproportionate weight in foreign policymaking. Professor Meirsheimer centered on the more difficult part of their work, that the lobby's policy positions and influence are bad for the United States and Israel.

Not everyone was pleased with everything they said. Sairah Husain, a junior at the university, said "although I disagreed with their support for the existence of the state of Israel, to even say what they did was big." Many questioned them on this point during the question and answer session.

They cited centuries of Jewish suffering as one reason Israel has a right to exist.

However, Mearsheimer and Walt argued that Jimmy Carter was correct. In the absence of a viable two-state solution, the situation there will resemble apartheid.

After the event, I asked Professor Mearsheimer what is the difference between that point and now. He said when the demographic balance swings in the Palestinians' favor, their largely rightsless existence will mirror apartheid. This, he pointed out earlier, is an analysis shared by Israel's Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert.

The professors wrote about this topic in the hope of opening up the debate on America's relationship with Israel. They felt this discussion was muffled by those who are quick to silent critics and unwilling to engage in open debate. At the University of Michigan last Friday, they found a large group of people more than happy to listen and consider their views.

Israelis, Palestinians fight on Facebook

2008-03-19T16:38:00.001-04:00

By LAURIE COPANS, Associated Press Writer
Tue Mar 18
JERUSALEM - Israelis and Palestinians have taken their conflict to Facebook.

Jewish settlers living in the West Bank were incensed to discover they had to choose Palestine, not Israel, when filling out the address section of their profile pages on the popular social networking site.

Palestinians hope the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem will make up a Palestinian state as the result of peace negotiations now under way. But Jewish settlers want the land to remain under Israeli control, rejecting their own government's policy favoring creation of a Palestinian state.

Following an Israeli campaign, Facebook decided to allow residents of some Jewish settlements the option of listing Israel or Palestine as their country, settlers said.

Facebook Inc. did not immediately respond to an e-mail requesting comment.

Channah Lerman, a Jewish settler who organized a protest of the issue, said Tuesday that Facebook was letting some settlers list their state as Israel.

"Slowly they have added a few bigger settlements to the list," Lerman wrote. "But the bottom line is that the majority of settlements are not (yet) listed."

Some Jewish settlers were upset that Palestine is even among the options.

"I am still not happy about Palestine being listed as a country of residence on Facebook (or any other site for that matter)," wrote Facebook member Ahuvah Berger. "But at least Facebook understood and respected their users enough to give them options."

Palestinians have fought their own battle with Facebook. Initially, they could only choose the West Bank or Gaza Strip as a country option. Facebook has since agreed to list Palestine as well. But more than 200,000 Palestinians living in east Jerusalem are unable to opt for Palestine as their country.

Israel annexed east Jerusalem shortly after capturing it in the 1967 Middle East war, but Palestinians claim it as their capital.

"This is a very sensitive, complicated, and emotional issue for millions of Palestinians around the world," wrote a group calling itself All Palestinians on Facebook. "For you to interfere in such a political issue and (side) with one party in the conflict is simply outrageous."

In addition, some Arab citizens of Israel want their towns designated on Facebook as part of Palestine — which the area was called before Israel was established in 1948. Israeli Arabs comprise about 20 percent of Israel's population.

Israeli and Palestinian groups on Facebook also compete to gain the most members, displaying their enrollment as the numbers grow into the thousands.

One Facebook member fed up with Israelis and Palestinians fighting on the Web has formed a group called "Arguing on Facebook is the Only Way to Solve the Israel/Palestine Problem."

"If you truly love whichever side you claim to love, you will step up to the challenge, make it your personal struggle, to (anger) people and look like the (idiot)," the group wrote.

Birthright Palestine - Summer 2008

2008-03-18T16:52:00.000-04:00

New for 2008 - Introducing Birthright Palestine!

Birthright Palestine is a unique program by native Palestinians for Diaspora Palestinians, so as to assimilate them back into their homeland via cultural immersion. It is meant to gather first-generation, western-born Palestinians (over the age of 18-years old) in their ancestral homeland, so that they can reunite and witness firsthand how their brethren are living under illegal Israeli military occupation, while assimilating them into Palestinian society.

The program is made-up of four major components, education, tourism, hospitality, and volunteering, and was created to maintain Palestinian unity on an international level and to make foreign-born Palestinians feel at home in their homeland.

The First Annual Birthright Palestine program is to launch this summer, marking the 60th Anniversary of Al-Nakba, and is meant to counter the effects of Birthright Israel, which over the years has brought thousands of Jewish people from around the world to 'Israel' in order to encourage their adoption of Zionist ideals and learn about their 'promised land' - many of participants end up becoming Israeli citizens and illegal settlers.

Moreover, Birthright Palestine will allow for the international Palestinian community, largely living in exodus, to become more closely knit, because this program will nurture relationships between participants of Palestinian ethnic origin whom were born in different countries around the world, as well as relationships between Diaspora-born and native-born Palestinians. Also, an exchange of ideas will take place, as local Palestinians will begin to better understand the situation of Diaspora Palestinians and vice versa - possibly leading to a cohesive consensus on core issues of importance to the Palestinian Nation.

Who are we?

The concept was created by the Palestine Center for National Strategic Studies (PCNSS) is a new, non-profit, non-violent, non-factional, non-governmental organizational think tank based out of the Dheisheh Refugee Camp that facilitates student-based research guided by PhD mentors, so as to force Palestinian college students to be more critical of national political and socio-economic policies. Thus, we are primarily fueled by youth, specifically students. We also host and accommodate foreign researchers in conducting their studies in Palestine, and conduct social experiments of our own in the form of projects.

What you can do to help:

Forward this e-mail to as many Diaspora Palestinians as possible, circulate our flyer at your local events and spread the word!

For more information:

Log onto: www.birthrightpalestine.com

E-mail: info@birthrightpalestine.com

Call: +972-2-274-6955

Daily covers Israel Lobby event

2008-03-17T16:21:00.002-04:00

Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, authors of the book Israel Lobby, talk before their lecture in the Natural Science Auditorium on Friday.

Controversial authors discuss book, U.S. relationship with Israel

Mearsheimer and Walt draw capacity crowd to Natural Science Building
By Andy Kroll, Daily News Editor on 3/17/08

Political scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, co-authors of the hotly-contested book "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," described to a capacity crowd Friday at the Natural Science Building who comprised the Israel lobby in the United States and why the influence was so detrimental to foreign policy decisions made by the U.S. government.

Students Allied for Freedom and Equality, a pro-Palestinian group, invited Mearsheimer and Walt, who said the U.S. shares a "special relationship" with Israel in which the American government provides Israel with "unconditional support" and an unending amount of aid - both of which result from influence of the immensely powerful Israel lobby interest group.

For the first half of the speech, Walt, a political science professor at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, described the Israel lobby as a "loose coalition" of individuals and organizations that "works openly to influence U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction and encourage that special relationship" between the U.S. and Israel.

This coalition, he said, includes pro-Israel organizations like The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, Christians United for Israel and Zionist Organization of America; think-tanks like the Washington Institute for Near East Policy; and publications like The Weekly Standard and The New Republic.

Walt emphasized early on in his speech that he and Mearsheimer didn't believe the Israel lobby to be a conspiracy group or cabal, but rather an interest group like those that lobby on behalf of pharmaceutical companies or the National Rifle Association.

The actions of the Israel lobby, Walt said, "are as American as apple pie."

In working to ensure that the U.S. continues its special relationship with Israel, the Israel lobby functions in two main ways, Walt said.

First, he said, the lobby operates inside the Washington, D.C., beltway and within American politics by getting Israel sympathizers elected to key positions in government. He said the lobby then gives politicians clear incentives to act in the interest of the lobby and, in effect, Israel.

Walt added that pro-Israel political action committees have given $55 million over the past 15 years to congressional candidates and presidential candidates, which he compared with the $800,000 Arab-American political action committees gave to the political figures sympathetic to Arab-American interests over the same period.

In citing these statistics, Walt stressed to members of the audience the Israel lobby's political clout.

"The lobby doesn't win every election, doesn't win every time, but every congressman and presidential candidate knows you're playing with fire if you question the special relationship," he said.

The Israel lobby also works to shape public perceptions and public discourse in the U.S. so Americans view Israel favorably, Walt said.

He argued that editorial commentary, op-ed columnists and political pundits in the U.S. tend to favor Israel, and that voices critical of Israel were entirely absent from mainstream media in the U.S.

Walt also said that the lobby, in its defense of Israel, seeks to suppress and discredit anyone who does criticize the country and its actions.

He cited the criticisms of his and Mearsheimer's book by publications such as The Washington Post, The New York Sun and The Wall Street Journal, which called the claims anti-Semitic, as an examples of the media's attacks on anyone who might appear to criticize the U.S.' unconditional support for Israel.

The reason they use charges of anti-Semitism, he said, is because the case for unconditional support of Israel is so weak.

"Because that case is so weak, they have to smear, silence and discredit anyone who casts doubt on it," he said.

In the final half of the speech, Mearsheimer, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, said the lobby's influence has been largely negative and has pushed U.S. Middle East policy in ways that are neither in the American national interest nor in the interest of Israel.

Mearsheimer said no president in the last 40 years has put meaningful pressure on Israel to stop colonizing the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which directly stems from the influence of the lobby.

More importantly, Mearsheimer said the U.S.'s unconditional support of Israel and its efforts to colonize the West Bank and Gaza Strip has angered large numbers of people in the Arab and Islamic world and helped fuel terrorism against the U.S.

"American support isn't the only cause, but it is a major cause," Mearsheimer said. "Specifically, it motivates some individuals to attack the and U.S., it serves as a powerful recruitment for terrorist organizations and it generates sympathy and support for terrorists among huge numbers of people in the Arab world."

In his concluding remarks, Mearsheimer said the U.S. should end its special relationship with Israel, and instead treat Israel as it treats other democracies such as Britain, Italy and India.

"This means when Israel is acting in ways that are consistent with American interests, Washington should back the Jewish state," he said. "But when Israel is acting in ways that harm U.S. interests, Washington should distance itself from Israel and use its considerable leverage to get Israel to change its behavior, just as it would do with any other country that was acting in ways that might hurt the U.S."

Although critics of Mearsheimer and Walt have called "The Israel Lobby" an anti-Semitic work and an attack on Israel, both peppered their speeches with disclaimers expressing their support of Israel's right to exist.

Ross School of Business sophomore Sasha Gribov, chair of the American Movement for Israel, said the presence of a lobby working on behalf of Israel wasn't surprising at all to him, considering the vast amount of lobbying groups in Washington, D.C.

However, Gribov felt Mearsheimer and Walt's comments on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were one-sided, in that the pair placed a majority of the blame on the Israel lobby, the American Jewish community and Israel for the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

"We definitely respect the right of them to express their opinion and to talk about this conflict, but they dismiss the U.S.-Israel relationship as something that is negative to American foreign policy," he said. "And we strongly believe that the U.S.-Israel relationship is of such great importance to both America and Israel."

Andrew Dalack, co-chair of SAFE, said the group hosted Walt and Mearsheimer on campus in an effort to debunk the idea that the arguments presented in their book were radical.

Prior to the talk, students distributed pamphlets outside of the Natural Science Building published by Stand With Us, a pro-Israel group, saying the claims made in "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" were based on "shoddy scholarship," amounted to a "conspiracy theory" and contained "anti-semitic undertones."

Thank you for coming to "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy"

2008-03-15T17:00:00.001-04:00

SAFE's event "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" was an amazing success, with an overcrowded auditorium of 480 people showing up to hear the professors talk. SAFE thanks Professors John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt for their enlightening talk and discussion, and thank you to all of those who attended, and for your support.

India’s progressive parties unite: stop military ties with Israel

2008-03-10T16:40:00.000-04:00

Worldwide Activism, Palestinian grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, March 5th, 2008

On Wednesday, March 5 2008, progressive parties blasted the Indian government in a press conference, accusing it of “aiding and abetting” Israel in its attacks on Palestine and calling for an end to military and security ties.

Convened by the All India Peace and Solidarity Organisation and the Committee for Independent Foreign Policy, the conference launched a mass campaign as well as a signature campaign in parliament to enroll support for cutting Indo-Israeli military ties.

The conference comes only days after the major Palestinian civil society networks and the Palestinian National and Islamic Forces had released a joint appeal to the Indian people and government to cease all military trade and relations.

Key figures of five political parties addressed the media. The CPI(M), whose external backing of government is vital to the ruling alliance, were joined by the NCP, part of the government coalition, and the Samajwadi Party, the house’s fourth largest party, as well as CPI and RJD. Main national news outlets are already covering the press statements extensively.

CPI(M) General Secretary Prakash Karat said India is "betraying" Palestine and has called for a campaign to force the Indian Government to change its stance. He was particularly critical of External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee's statement in Parliament on the situation in West Asia. The External Affairs Minister, while pledging to help the Palestinians in the midst of their hardship and misery, failed to mention or condemn the actions of the Israeli state.

"If somebody from outside this planet reads this paragraph (in Mukherjee's statement) they would think that there has been an earthquake in Palestine or a plague. The suffering, the misery. Israel is not mentioned," he said sarcastically.

Karat added that the government’s refusal to acknowledge Israeli actions must be reversed if talk about helping Palestinians is to be taken seriously.

"On the contrary the Indian government is aiding and abetting Israel through military and security collaboration," he said.

Addressing the press conference, NCP leader D K Tripathi said that the people of India are committed to the Palestinian cause, and thus there should not be any relationship with any country at the cost of the rights of Palestinians.

Asserting that the Left has already spoken out against the Government's silence on the West Asia conflict, Karat said, "my party and the other parties will get together to launch a popular campaign to mobilise people to get the Government to change this stand."

This call comes after India, which has historically been one of Palestine’s strongest allies, has recently been openly developing its military ties with Israel. Over the past 15 years, India has become Israel’s largest buyer of arms and spends more on Israeli military equipment than the Israeli military itself. In January India launched a spy satellite for Israel that gathers intelligence on Iran. India also carries out joint research projects with Israel on missiles and drones and has started intelligence sharing.

Mearsheimer and Walt Coming to UM

2008-03-09T17:52:00.001-04:00

The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy

with Professor John J. Mearsheimer
Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago

and Professor Stephen Walt
former Academic Dean, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

When: Friday, March 14th @ 7:30pm

Where: Natural Science Auditorium, Rm. 2140
830 N. University, Ann Arbor, MI

Professors John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt will discuss the impact of The Israel Lobby on US Foreign Policy. Their presentation will focus on their widely-renowned book "The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy", a New York Times bestseller. There will be a question and answer session and a book-signing immediately following the event.

This event is hosted by Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE).

Article in London Review of Books

The Gaza Strip: A Humanitarian Implosion

2008-03-08T16:43:00.000-05:00

Click on the title to view the link to full report put out by 8 human rights groups in Gaza, in which it says that conditions in Gaza have reached a 40-year low.

Gaza "man-made" crisis: rights orgs

2008-03-06T16:41:00.000-05:00

Report, The Electronic Intifada, 6 March 2008

Palestinians stand inside their home in the Jabaliya refugee camp, damaged recently during an Israeli incursion and air strikes which left about 115 Palestinians dead in Gaza over five days.

JERUSALEM, 6 March (IRIN) - The humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is "man-made" and worse than it has ever been since the Israeli occupation in 1967, a coalition of British organizations said in a new report released on 6 March, urging better regional cooperation and saying Hamas can no longer be ignored.

Entitled "A Humanitarian Implosion," the 16-page report details the various effects the Israeli-imposed blockade has had in the last nine months since the Hamas takeover of the enclave, and concluded that all aspects of life have been negatively affected, including healthcare, employment and education.

The agencies, such as CARE, Amnesty, Christian Aid, and Oxfam, quoted UN statistics showing that aid dependency has risen significantly.

While in 2006 some 60 percent of Gazans needed food aid, in 2008 that number rose to 80 percent, and is expected to increase.

In 1999, before the second intifada (Palestinian uprising against Israel's occupation), UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, provided food to some 16,000 families in the enclave, while now it and the World Food Programme distribute aid to over 1.1 million people.

The report said Gaza's economy has collapsed as a "majority of private businesses have shut down and 95 percent of Gaza's industrial operations are suspended." The restrictions on imports and exports were also the cause of failings in the agricultural sector.

"As a result of the blockade and collapse of the economy, there is little money to buy food and limited food to buy. Food prices are rising and wheat flour, baby milk and cooking oil are increasingly scarce," the report said.

The Gaza Strip suffers from power outages due to the Israeli air strike on the power plant in 2006 and the restrictions on fuel imports, affecting the plant's productivity and vital institutions like hospitals, which lack 60-70 percent of their diesel needs for generators. Power outages are also affecting the water supply to about 30 percent of Gaza's residents. About 40-50 million liters of sewage are pumped into the sea daily for the same reason.

The agencies also noted a drop in the percentage of patients allowed out of the Strip for medical treatment, adding that over 20 people have died since June 2007 as a result.

Israeli response

In a response issued to IRIN, the Israeli Ministry of Defense said some 90 percent of patients are able to leave for treatment, and Israel allows in all medication and other humanitarian supplies needed in spite of Palestinian rocket fire targeting crossing points. It insisted the amount of fuel it lets in is enough for humanitarian purposes, blamed Hamas for internal distribution problems and noted that it continues to supply electricity to Gaza.

"Israel has the right and duty to defend itself and its people," Neil Durkin of Amnesty International in London told IRIN, condemning rocket fire at Israeli towns. However, security concerns could not explain bans on basic imports or patient movement, he said.

Report's conclusions

The report concluded that the violence on all sides should cease, and Israel should end its power and fuel cuts to Gaza and open the borders. In the meantime Israel's definition of humanitarian aid should be extended to include items like cement and spare parts.

"We ask that the UK government and EU [European Union] put pressure on the government of Israel to ensure that emergency assistance essential to fulfilling fundamental human rights is never used as a bargaining tool to further political goals," the report said.

Finally, the groups called for an inclusive policy that would mean dialogue with Hamas, which rules Gaza but is shunned by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, Israel and the US-led international Quartet.

Gaza conditions 'at 40-year low'

2008-03-06T16:36:00.000-05:00

Gaza's humanitarian situation is at its worst since Israel occupied the territory in 1967, say UK-based human rights and development groups.
They include Amnesty International, Save the Children, Cafod, Care International and Christian Aid.

They criticise Israel's blockade on Gaza as illegal collective punishment which fails to deliver security.

Israel says its military action and other measures are lawful and needed to stop rocket attacks from Gaza.

Israel pulled its troops and settlers out of the Gaza Strip in 2005, but retains control over Gaza's airspace and coastline, and over its own border with the territory.

It tightened its blockade in January amid a surge in rocket attacks by Palestinian militants in Gaza.

Israel's Defence Ministry rejected the criticism in the report, blaming the Hamas militant group which controls Gaza.

"The main responsibility for events in Gaza is the Hamas organisation, to which all complaints should be addressed," a statement read.

'Disaster'

The groups' report, Gaza Strip: A Humanitarian Implosion, says the blockade has dramatically worsened levels of poverty and unemployment, and has led to deterioration in education and health services.

More than 1.1 million Gazans are dependent on food aid and of 110,000 workers previously employed in the private sector, 75,000 have now lost their jobs, the report says.

"Unless the blockade ends now, it will be impossible to pull Gaza back from the brink of this disaster and any hopes for peace in the region will be dashed," said Geoffrey Dennis, of Care International UK.

Last week Israeli forces launched a bloody and destructive raid in northern Gaza, in which more than 120 Palestinians - including many civilians - were killed.

Israel says the measures are designed to stamp out frequent rocket fire by Palestinian militants.

Recent rocket attacks have hit deeper into southern Israel, reaching Ashkelon, the closest large Israeli city to the Gaza Strip.

Occupying power

The UK-based groups agree that Israel has the right and obligation to protect its citizens, urging both sides to cease unlawful attacks on civilians.

But they call upon Israel to comply with its obligations, as the occupying power in Gaza, to ensure its inhabitants have access to food, clean water, electricity and medical care, which have been in short supply in the strip.

"Punishing the entire Gazan population by denying them these basic human rights is utterly indefensible," said Amnesty UK Director Kate Allen.

"The current situation is man-made and must be reversed."

Other recommendations from the groups include international engagement with the Hamas movement, which rejects Israel's legitimacy and has been shunned by Israel's allies, and the Fatah party of Palestinian West Bank leader Mahmoud Abbas.

"Gaza cannot become a partner for peace unless Israel, Fatah and the Quartet [the US and UN, Europe and Russia] engage with Hamas and give the people of Gaza a future," said Daleep Mukarji of Christian Aid.

Attention - Vigil for Gaza, Thursday 1pm, Union

2008-03-05T16:48:00.007-05:00

The destroyed Palestinian General Fedration of Trade Unions building in Gaza City, 29 February 2008

Please read and forward:
At least 66 Palestinian civilians have been killed in the Gaza Strip over the weekend, at the hands of the Israeli military. These are atrocious crimes, and we as UM students, urge other students to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people, and to mourn for the victims. We request students to join us in the following actions:

On Thursday we will have 200 tshirts for people to wear, on the steps of the Union, at 12pm, for up to an hour. The tshirts will say 'Free Palestine' and each tshirt will have a different name of a Palestinian that was killed in Gaza over the last few days. The point is to have a
visible vigil that will raise awareness about the crisis in Gaza. We are also aiming to have informational flyers available to hand out.

Please join us in these efforts. If you have any questions, please email either Hena Ashraf (hashraf@umich.edu), Andrew Dalack (ajdalack@umich.edu), Ryah Aqel (aqelryah@umich.edu), Nicola Kaba (nicolaka@umich.edu), or Kamelya Youssef(kyoussef@umich.edu).

http://umichigan.facebook.com/event.php?eid=9283379855

Revealed: the US plan to start a Palestinian civil war

2008-03-04T17:11:00.001-05:00

Report, The Electronic Intifada, 4 March 2008

Muhammad Dahlan speaks during a Fatah rally in the West Bank town of Ramallah, 15 January 2006.

United States officials including President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice participated in a conspiracy to arm and train Contra-style Palestinian militias nominally loyal to the Fatah party to overthrow the democratically-elected Hamas government in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, an investigative article in the April 2008 issue of Vanity Fair has revealed. [1]

The allegations of such a conspiracy, long reported by The Electronic Intifada, are corroborated in Vanity Fair with confidential US government documents, interviews with former US officials, Israeli officials and with Muhammad Dahlan, the Gaza strongman personally chosen by Bush.

The article, by David Rose, recounts gruesome torture documented on videotape of Hamas members by the US-armed and funded militias under Dahlan's control. Hamas had repeatedly alleged such torture as part of its justification for its move to overthrow the Dahlan militias and take full control of the interior of the Gaza Strip in June 2007.

Vanity Fair reported that it has "obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the US and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams to provoke a Palestinian civil war." The magazine adds that the plan "was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America's behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically-elected Hamas-led government from power."

Abrams was one of the key Reagan administration figures involved in the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s, whereby the US illegally armed militias in Nicaragua to overthrow the ruling Sandinista government. Abrams was convicted and later pardoned for lying to Congress.

While it has been known that the US engaged in covert activity to subvert Palestinian democracy and provoke Palestinians to shed each other's blood, the extent of the personal involvement of top US officials in attempting to dictate the course of events in Palestine -- while publicly preaching democracy -- has only now been brought to light.

Bush met and personally anointed Dahlan as "our guy" in 2003. In July 2007, The Electronic Intifada reported on a leaked letter written by Dahlan and sent to the Israeli defense minister in which he confirmed his role in a conspiracy to overthrow then Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat for whose replacement Bush had publicly called. Dahlan wrote: "Be certain that Yasser Arafat's final days are numbered, but allow us to finish him off our way, not yours. And be sure as well that ... the promises I made in front of President Bush, I will give my life to keep."

The US planning to overthrow the government elected by Palestinians under occupation began immediately after the Hamas movement won a clear victory in the January 2006 election for the Palestinian Legislative Council. Hamas, however, proved "surprising resilient."

At a meeting at Abbas' Ramallah headquarters in October 2006, Rice personally ordered Abbas to dissolve the government headed by Hamas' Ismail Haniyeh "within two weeks" and replace it with an unelected "emergency government."

When Abbas failed to act promptly on Rice's order, the US stepped up its efforts to arm Dahlan in preparation for the attempted coup. Hamas foiled the coup plot by moving preemptively against Dahlan's gangs, many of whom refused to fight despite being furnished with tens of millions of dollars in weapons and training. The US-conceived "emergency government" headed by a former World Bank official, Salam Fayyad, was eventually appointed by Abbas, but its authority is limited to parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

While the United States and Israel were the driving forces behind the civil war and coup plot, others had a hand including several Arab states and their intelligence services. "The scheme," Rose writes, "bore some resemblance to the Iran-contra scandal" in that "some of the money for the [Nicaraguan] contras, like that for Fatah, was furnished by Arab allies as a result of US lobbying."

The Gaza Bombshell

2008-03-04T13:32:00.001-05:00

After failing to anticipate Hamas’s victory over Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian election, the White House cooked up yet another scandalously covert and self-defeating Middle East debacle: part Iran-contra, part Bay of Pigs. With confidential documents, corroborated by outraged former and current U.S. officials, David Rose reveals how President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever.
by David Rose April 2008

The Day the Earth and Sky Traded Places

2008-03-03T17:06:00.001-05:00

Gazan Holocaust

By JENNIFER LOEWENSTEIN

Around 10:30pm on the night of February 28, M and his wife S spoke in low tones in a dark room dimly lit by a battery-operated lamp. They were trying to decide if it was still safe to send their children to school and decided in favor because the elementary school building is in a safer part of the city near a number of international offices. The electricity in the building had been out 10 hours by then and the couple pulled blankets around them to keep warm in the damp winter air. They live on the 6th floor of Shifa Tower, an 11-story apartment building housing more than a hundred families.

When the blast occurred that took out the Interior Ministry building across the street, there was no time to think about what to do. M flew into his children's bedroom and threw himself over the sleeping body of his son, Basel, to shield the young boy's body from the glass shattering in the windows beside his bed. Then after a matter of seconds the three young children, two girls and the boy, were taken to the windowless kitchen, all of them now fully awake and crying out in terror. M threw blankets and pillows around them where they huddled for the night in restless sleep and dreams of horror, their mother sobbing silently over them as she caressed their faces.

M returned to the children's room in time for the second deafening blast that made him put up his arms instinctively. When he let them down and looked out into the night sky, it was all brown, the earth from underneath the destroyed buildings was swirling around outside the bedroom windows and he could see nothing but flying debris, smoke and a wall of dirt. For some time he could not hear well, only watch-dazed- hypnotized by the silence after the aerial strikes.

In the morning, no one went outside. "This is a black day in Gaza," M wrote; "a holocaust as (Israeli deputy defense minister Matan) Vilnai put it. There is an attack every five or ten minutes. It keeps our nerves on edge and our senses strained. There is so much rage at what is happening; especially the scenes of murdered children and babies. I am so busy I don't know how to describe my feelings. I work to avoid feeling because right now that's too unbearable."

Watch as A, a Hamas soldier, runs for his life into his house. His pursuers miss shooting him so they launch three rockets into the house on the edge of Jabalya camp killing everyone inside (four family members). They are angry now so every house in the way gets the same treatment and without the "militant" to guide their next moves: rockets fired into the interiors of homes with no knowledge of who is inside. Eye-witnesses report this and worse: a six month old baby girl becomes tiny body parts with her mother and brother. A small child is cut apart by shrapnel and screams that she doesn't want to die just before leaving this world. The mothers and fathers cannot protect them so they weep and scream at the funerals that this side of the world never views, especially during basketball season.

Who really cares about these children? Every Palestinian is a militant because everyone (sooner or later) wants Israel off their land, out of their lives, and forgotten like a horrible dream. It is for this reason that they are all equal targets: none of them is intelligent enough to understand that their land isn't their land, their lives are not their lives, and their horrible dream is their present and future. Have no pity on those who don't get it.

The night strikes from F-16s and helicopter missiles continued throughout the day on Friday the 29 and into the first weekend in March, unceasing in their ferocity and indiscriminate killing revenge for the death early last week of an Israeli student at Sapir College outside Sderot. For every one Israeli life, scores of Palestinians must die. God help us now that two Israeli soldiers have been killed fighting on occupied land, against unwilling slaves; killing innocent people to maintain a 60-year-old injustice. Brace yourself, Gaza. You will pay dearly for the continuation of this crime.

Let us not reflect too much on what all this means. How, for example, would the 47-year-old Sapir College student like to know that his death has been far more useful to his State than his life? For in death he provided another pretext to carry out mass murder of the Arab Untermenschen blocking the otherwise pleasant view to the sea in the southeastern Promised Land. His death challenged the Israeli rules of combat: the "We kill and You Die" warfare, the only type allowed by the Neo-Jewish Masters and their allies in the United States who have no intention of making a just peace with the lower forms of life in their midst. The sanctimonious demand that the Qassams must be stopped is a deliberate lie intended to make you forget that the Qassams provide a near fool-proof pretext for grabbing more of Gaza and setting more of it to ruin; and that the Qassams are the result of systematic national torture and evisceration, borne themselves of occupation, caused by it, improved upon by periods of siege, sadism and mass killing.

Peace would require relinquishing regional hegemony. Peace would demand sharing the land and the resources equally. Peace might, heaven forbid, require democratic decision making in a region where the Israelis are not better, more entitled, more deserving of Their Way than everyone else in the neighborhood. Well, sorry, but these are not on Israel's agenda. The leaders of the hapless Sderot student's racially pure dreamland are grateful for his dying: Now the angry flames of intolerance can burn on feverishly. Into those flames the bodies of each dead Gazan man, woman or child should be flung, like books, to consecrate the ritual, the burnt offering, of those who owe the latter-day Israelites their Modern Day Zion. In Holy Victimhood shall We Reign Supreme.

Surely this would satisfy Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit who bellowed that if it were up to him, Israeli soldiers going into Gaza should shoot "everything that moves" like babies and toddlers, grandfathers and mothers, orange trees and wasted-away donkeys pulling cartloads of rotten vegetables; like flowers and seabirds, chickens and goats, rats and cockroaches. A scorched-earth policy will suffice. They'll create their apocalyptic wilderness and will call it peace.

No one needed Sheetrit to legitimize the strategy of creating oblivion from hell. Untermenschen who can be denied food, water, fuel, electricity, medical supplies, the right to leave and return home, the right to not to die in an ambulance that without the proper permits, the right to their own land and their own nationhood precisely because they are lesser human beings can also be picked off one by one or in groups or in families or because they are "militants," or all of the above, who deserve no fair hearing, due process, photographs, names, headlines, stories, grief or televised tear-jerker funerals to commemorate their sacrifices. In such a world contexts are an insult to the intelligence of the policy-makers.

Plea after plea from human rights organizations, legal organizations, religious charities and leaders, children's welfare organizations, medical aid projects, refugee relief societies, international humanitarian agencies, celebrities, parliamentarians, foreign policy analysts and countless others go not only unheeded but unread, unheard, a waste of one's time. Is there a reason why the carnage in Gaza is continuing before our very eyes and no State or Non-state actor strong enough to make a difference is bothering to step in? The shame is ours, for Israel and its US Master have long since resided in the lowest circle of Hell for betraying the name of humanity.

The Gaza genocide

2008-03-02T17:01:00.000-05:00

Laila El-Haddad writing from the US, Live from Palestine, 2 March 2008

Palestinian families are forced to flee constant Israeli air strikes just outside the Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, 1 March 2008.

We celebrated Yousuf's fourth birthday today. We ate cake. And we counted the bodies. We sang happy birthday. And my mother sobbed. We watched the fighter jets roar voraciously on our television screen, pounding street after street, then heard a train screech outside, and shuddered. Yousuf tore open his presents, and asked my mother to make a paper zanana, a drone, for him with origami; we were torn open from the inside, engulfed by a feeling of impotence and helplessness, fear and anger and grief, despondence and confusion.

"We are dying like chickens" said my husband Yassine last night as we contemplated the media's coverage of the events of the past few days.

Even The Guardian (UK), in a newswire-based piece, mentioned the Palestinian dead, including the children, in the fourth to last paragraph.

In fact, a study by If Americans Knew found that the Associated Press Newswire (AP) coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict significantly distorts reality, essentially over-reporting the number of Israelis killed in the conflict and underreporting the number of Palestinians killed. The study found that AP reported on Israeli children's deaths more often than the deaths occurred, but failed to cover 85 percent of Palestinian children killed. A few years ago, they found that The New York Times was seven times more likely to comment on an Israeli child's death than that of a Palestinian.

Is it only when Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai used the word shoah to describe what will come to Gaza that some media outlets took note. Here was an Israeli government official himself invoking the Holocaust, of his people's most horrific massacre, in reference to the fate of Gaza. But it was not necessarily because Gazans may suffer the same fate that they were perturbed, but rather that this event, this phrase -- genocide or holocaust -- could be used with such seeming levity, that using such a loaded term may somehow lessen the true horror of the original act.

It is as though what has been happening in Gaza -- what continues to happen -- whether by way of the deliberate and sustained siege and blockade, or the mounting civilian death toll, is acceptable, and even encouraged. Israeli historian Ilan Pappe has said that genocide "is the only appropriate way to describe what the Israeli army is doing in the Gaza Strip" after much thought and deliberation.

But the real genocide in Gaza cannot or will not be assessed through sheer numbers. It is not a massacre of gas chambers. No.

It is a slow and calculated genocide -- a genocide through more calibrated, long-term means. And if the term is used in any context, it should be this. In many ways, this is a more sinister genocide, because it tends to be overlooked: all is ok in Gaza, the wasteland, the hostile territory that is accustomed to slaughter and survival; Gaza, whose people are somehow less human; we should not take note, need not take note, unless there is a mass killing or starvation.

As though what is happening now was not a slow, purposeful killing, a mass strangulation. But the governments and presidents of the civilized world, even our own "president" (president of what?) are hungry for peace deals and accords, summits and states. So they say, "let them eat cake!" And we do.

I Want to be Awake, So I Know I'm Dying -- And by Whom

2008-03-01T17:08:00.001-05:00

Fear in Gaza

By MOHAMMED OMER

I had a long day, an awful day, taking photos and writing from on the ground in Gaza City and northern Gaza.

I met with two children who survived Wednesday's Jabalyia soccer bombing: the other 4 kids were, as you likely know, killed. One of the children I saw had no flesh on their legs, had burns all over their bodies from the tank's shelling. This was one of the scariest things I have seen yet, and I have seen a lot more than that. Only today, 35 killed, still going on and 180 injured, many were women and child. Hospitals appeal for blood donation and fuel for ambulances.

I asked one boy to give me details of what happened that Thursday afternoon. The 9 year old boy cried while he told that he'd seen the decapitated head of his cousin strewn far from his body, arms and legs, far away from where they were all playing soccer. His mother added that there wasn't any electricity when her son was admitted to the hospital.

He was crying as he told the story, his tears hurting him even more than his psychological pain, as he has burns in his eyes. His mother uncovered his wounded leg where I could only see bones without flesh in places. I could not understand how he managed to lay down conscious, but knew it was a consciousness full of pain and anguish. I felt this pain in my own heart and head.

As I talked this child's mother, she said that she'd had to evacuate her children, as it's no longer safe to be in that area where the children had been playing. The kids ranged from 6 to 14 years old. The two ones who survived said they had all been playing soccer in front of the door of their house in Jabalyia when the Israeli missile hit them.

I finally came back home some hours ago, after waiting a long time to find transportation. But, eventually managing to make it back to Rafah, I collapsed for a nap for an hour. My sleep was disrupted: I awoke scared by the bombing of F-16s (I learned later on). I ran from my bed through our dark house, and seeing no one from my family inside, I ran without shoes into the street. People were out in the street, young men running. I didn't understand, didn't know what I was doing other than that I was running but didn't know to where. Most people's windows were down, shutters closed, as it is freezing cold at moment.

I was glad not to be injured by shattered glass and debris on the streets. I made it back home to write this on my laptop. But I've decided going back to sleep is not a good idea, no matter how exhausted I am. If I have to die (not my wish) , I want to be awake, so I know I'm dying, and by whom. Not asleep.

A human chain against the siege

2008-02-28T16:58:00.001-05:00

Rami Almeghari writing from the occupied Gaza Strip, Live from Palestine, 28 February 2008

Palestinian schoolchildren in Gaza attend take part in a human chain demonstration calling for an end to the Israeli blocklade, 25 February 2008.

On 25 February, the besieged people of Gaza spoke out against the Israeli-imposed closure of their territory when thousands of Palestinian men, women, schoolchildren and members of parliament formed a human chain on the main roads along the border with Israel.

Participants chanted slogans against the crippling Israeli siege which has been branded by human rights organizations and many Western governments as collective punishment against Gaza's population of 1.5 million.

Mosheera, a schoolteacher, stood with her pupils who were lined up and carrying posters at the Zemo junction close to the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip.

"We have been besieged by the world, the Arab world, with no one listening to us. Therefore, we decided as one people to come here today in this chain to send out one message to the whole world: enough silence over the Gaza siege, enough silence over the killings of Palestinians, enough the silence over the deaths of patients because of the blockade," Mosheera said with anger.

Early in the week, a popular campaign to end the siege launched a one-week protest, locally and internationally, with many stores in Gaza closing for three hours.

Monday's human chain came during a devastating Israeli blockade which began in June 2007 immediately after the elected Hamas party took control of the coastal territory amidst a power struggle with Mahmoud Abbas' rival Fatah party.

Rami Abdo, organizer of the human chain and the campaign's coordinator, spoke about the grave consequences of the eight-month siege: "Every month, 600 patients apply ... for referral [for treatment] outside Gaza, and according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, 20 to 25 percent of such applications have been rejected [by Israel]."

"This means that Israel has already sentenced ... patients to death, the majority of them children," Abdo said, referring to patients who have already died since the June closure because they were not able to receive necessary treatment. By not issuing travel permits, Abdo added, "Israel has already sentenced to death [an additional] 1,200 patients over the past eight months."

The al-Dameer Center for Human rights, based in Gaza where specialized treatment is often unavailable and the siege has severely impacted medical services, reported that since June 100 patients who were in need of medical care outside of Gaza have died after their applications were denied or delayed.

In addition, the Palestinian Ministry of Economy in Gaza reported that more than 90 percent of Gaza's industrial facilities have been forced to shut down, leaving more than 70,000 local laborers jobless.

UN records indicate that more than 80 percent of Gaza's 1.5 million residents now depend entirely on food assistance currently provided by the UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, as the closures have hastened the collapse of Gaza's already fragile economy.

The human chain ended with a press conference by Hamas parliamentarians just a few hundred meters away from the Erez crossing with Israel in northern Gaza. The Hamas officials conveyed a strongly-worded message of protest against the crippling closure that many contend is a bid to erode popular support for the Islamist party.

"Today, the Palestinian people are sending a message to the world that we are against the siege, against the threats from our enemy who tries to kill us, to kill our spirit. But we are here today to tell the world that we are still alive, we are steadfast and nothing will kill us," Jamila al-Shanti, member of parliament and chairwoman of its women's committee told The Electronic Intifada.

Another human chain participant, a high school student named Samar, stated, "I would like to ask a question to the Arab leaders around us: when will you wake up? Will you wake up after the entire Palestinian people have already died?"

If Not Now, When?

2008-02-21T19:00:00.001-05:00

If Kosovo, Why Not Palestine?

By JOHN V. WHITBECK

Kosovo has now issued its anticipated unilateral declaration of independence, and the United States and most European Union countries, with which this declaration was coordinated, are rushing to extend diplomatic recognition to this "new country", a course of action which should strike anyone with an attachment to either international law or common sense as breathtakingly reckless.

The potentially destabilizing consequences of this precedent (which the U.S. and the EU insist, bizarrely, should not be viewed as a precedent) have been much discussed with reference to other unhappy portions of other internationally recognized sovereign states with strong separatist movements practicing precarious but effective self-rule, such as Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transniestria, Ngorno-Karabakh, Bosnia's Republika Srpska, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and Iraqi Kurdistan, as well as to discontented minorities elsewhere. One potentially constructive consequence has not yet been discussed.

The American and EU impatience to amputate a portion of a UN member state (universally recognized, even by them, to constitute a portion of that state's sovereign territory), ostensibly because 90% of those living in that portion of the state's territory support separation, contrasts starkly with the unlimited patience of the U.S. and the EU when it comes to ending the 40-year-long belligerent occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (no portion of which any country recognizes as Israel's sovereign territory and as to which Israel has only even asserted sovereignty over a tiny portion, occupied East Jerusalem). Virtually every legal resident of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip seeks freedom -- and has for over 40 years. For doing so, they are punished, sanctioned, besieged, humiliated and, day after endless day, killed by those who claim to stand on the moral high ground.

In American and EU eyes, a Kosovar declaration of independence from Serbian sovereignty should be recognized even if Serbia does not agree. However, their attitude was radically different when Palestine declared independence from Israeli occupation on November 15, 1988. Then the U.S. and the EU countries (which, in their own eyes, constitute the "international community", to the exclusion of most of mankind) were conspicuously absent when over 100 countries recognized the new State of Palestine, and their non-recognition made this declaration of independence purely "symbolic" in their own eyes and, unfortunately, in most Palestinian and other eyes as well.

For the U.S. and the EU, any Palestinian independence, to be recognized and legally effective, must still be directly negotiated, on a wildly unequal bilateral basis, between the occupying power and the occupied people -- and must be agreed to by the occupying power. For the U.S. and the EU, the rights and desires of a long-suffering and brutalized occupied people, as well as international law, are irrelevant.

For the U.S. and the EU, Kosovar Albanians, having enjoyed almost nine years of UN administration and NATO protection, cannot be expected to wait any longer for their freedom, while the Palestinians, having endured over 40 years of Israeli occupation, can wait forever.

With the "Annapolis process" going nowhere, as was clearly the Israeli and American intention from the start, the Kosovo precedent offers the Ramallah-based Palestinian leadership, accepted as such by the "international community" because it is perceived as serving Israeli and American interests, a golden opportunity to seize the initiative, to reset the agenda and to restore its tarnished reputation in the eyes of its own people.

If this leadership truly believes, despite all evidence to the contrary, that a decent "two-state solution" is still possible, now is an ideal moment to reaffirm the legal existence (albeit under continuing belligerent occupation) of the State of Palestine, explicitly in the entire 22% of Mandatory Palestine which was not conquered and occupied by the State of Israel until 1967, and to call on all those countries which did not extend diplomatic recognition to the State of Palestine in 1988 -- and particularly the U.S. and the EU states -- to do so now.

The Kosovar Albanian leadership has promised protection for Kosovo's Serb minority, which is now expected to flee in fear. The Palestinian leadership could promise to accord a generous period of time for the Israeli colonists living illegally in the State of Palestine and the Israeli occupation forces to withdraw, as well as to consider an economic union with Israel, open borders and permanent resident status for those illegal colonists willing to live in peace under Palestinian rule.

Of course, to prevent the U.S. and the EU from treating such an initiative as a joke, there would have to be a significant and explicit consequence if they were to do so. The consequence would be the end of the "two-state" illusion. The Palestinian leadership would make clear that if the U.S. and the EU, having just recognized a second Albanian state on the sovereign territory of a UN member state, will not now recognize one Palestinian state on a tiny portion of the occupied Palestinian homeland, it will dissolve the "Palestinian Authority" (which, legally, should have ceased to exist in 1999, at the end of the five-year "interim period" under the Oslo Accords) and the Palestinian people will thereafter seek justice and freedom through democracy -- through the persistent, non-violent pursuit of full rights of citizenship in a single state in all of Israel/Palestine, free of any discrimination based on race and religion and with equal rights for all who live there, as in any true democracy.

Palestinian leaderships have tolerated Western hypocrisy and racism and played the role of gullible fools for far too long. It is time to kick over the table, constructively, and to shock the "international community" into taking notice that the Palestinian people simply will not tolerate unbearable injustice and abuse any longer.

If not now, when?

A state of war and peace

2008-02-20T18:40:00.002-05:00

Palestinians mourn over the bodies of eight Palestinians who were killed in an explosion in al-Bureij refugee camp, central Gaza Strip, on 6 February 2008. (Wissam Nassar/MaanImages)

Hasan Abu Nimah, The Electronic Intifada, 20 February 2008

The car bomb assassination in Damascus of Imad Mughniyeh has created a heightened state of tension in the region. Almost every commentator, no matter what perspective he/she comes from, expects the killing to spark a fresh round of deadly violence; as if the region had room for more.

It is hard to speculate on the outcome of this serious development, but it is very unlikely that it will pass without dire consequences, for Lebanon and the region.

Unfortunately, neither tension nor violence is unusual in our part of the world. Wars, active or dormant, are the norm between Israel and its neighbors. This state of affairs was once described as "no war no peace," but in fact it is an unstable state of "war and peace" at the same time.

Israel is in an active and deadly war against the Palestinians, and at "peace" with them at the same time. Every day, Israeli occupation forces and settlers inflict brutal violence on the Palestinians, killing and kidnapping innocent people, destroying houses and confiscating land for colonization.

Just two days after the assassination in Damascus, another resistance leader from Islamic Jihad was killed by a huge explosion in Gaza along with three of his children, his wife and three of his neighbors. Dozens of other people, including many children, were injured, some very seriously.

As I write, it is not clear if his house, which was entirely demolished, and six neighboring houses also severely damaged, were bombed by an Israeli F-16 from the sky, as initially reported, or by another method. That makes no difference. The carnage is daily and continuing.

By any account, this is a very high human toll in only one incident in a day that may include many others on the Palestinian theatre alone. The Palestinians have retaliated by firing barrages of Qassam rockets on Israeli targets, but because they are "futile," they cause few injuries. No day passes without injuries, deaths and attacks. Israel has denied its involvement in this murder, as it did in the one that had earlier taken place in Damascus.

While this brutal war goes on, cordial (though utterly sterile) negotiations and daily contacts are conducted with Palestinian "leaders" in Ramallah as if they were the best of allies and friends. Not once did the leaders of the Israeli-recognized Palestinian Authority refrain from attending meetings with their Israeli counterparts in protest over Israeli state terrorism against other Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza, or in protest at the continuation of settlement activity and land theft. It is a state of war and peace with the Palestinians at the same time.

In a wider context, Israel has peace treaties with some Arab countries, such as Egypt and Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority if the Oslo accords, or what is left of them, count as one. It has diplomatic relations and other formal ties with Mauritania and some Gulf states, but it remains at war with other Arab countries, such as Syria, whose land Israel has occupied in 1967.

Israel's position vis-a-vis the other Arab countries could either be a state of "war and peace" or "no war no peace"; it makes no difference. More broadly, Israel's visibly cordial relations with some willing Palestinians and Arabs are designed to spread the impression that it has resolved its problems with the Palestinians and the Arabs and that the determined resistance to its continued occupation, racism and aggression is unjustifiable "extremism," not the natural reaction to its policies.

In the case of Lebanon, part of the country is not necessarily aligned with Israel, but shares its hostility to Hizballah, which millions of Lebanese see as both a legitimate resistance movement until all the land of Lebanon is freed from occupation and a political party. Playing on these divisions, external powers have tried to forge a de facto alliance between Israel and those they define as "moderates" in the region. This meddling in Lebanon is driving the country further apart and, some fear, a renewed civil war.

The assassination of Mughniyeh could tip the Israeli-Lebanese front into open war, just as it could fuel the tension in Lebanon.

Hizballah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, despite Israeli denial of any involvement, has promised to avenge Mughniyeh's killing vowing "open war." Israel is putting its entire military potential on high alert to "retaliate" to any retaliation. The United States, which normally claims to oppose terrorism, openly celebrated the killing of Mughniyeh, something that might reinforce the impression that it only opposes terrorism directed at itself or its friends. Israel will see this open US support as a green light for further provocations, irrespective of whether it was responsible for killing Mughniyeh or not. That is extremely dangerous, particularly in view of the fact that the assassination violated Syrian sovereignty, regardless of the target's classification.

It is a frightening situation which, one hopes, will not escalate. But in view of the fact that both Hizballah and Israel seem to be desperate for another round in a war that neither side considers finished, this may be the opportunity. Israel is still reeling from its failed attempt to destroy Hizballah in 2006 and the humiliating aftermath that demolished the myth of an all-powerful Israeli army. Israeli strategists do not want that defeat to be the last word and may want to erase its bitter memory either with another war on Lebanon or with a large-scale attack on Gaza to try to remove Hamas.

For its part, Hizballah is unlikely to allow Mughniyeh's murder to go without retaliation. What is unclear is how it will respond. Even if the organization avoids a straightforward repeat of the July 2006 incident, when the abduction of two Israeli soldiers and the killing of others provided Israel with the pretext for its devastating assault on Lebanon's infrastructure and civilian population, there is no guarantee that Israel will not repeat its approach of indiscriminate and massive violence. In confrontations such as these, one can try to play a "safe" game, without being sure that the opponent will abide by the same rules.

The Mughniyeh killing, much like the abduction of two Israeli soldiers in July 2006, will go down in the records of history as the cause of any violence that may rage after, with the implied assumption that it would have been avoided if there had been no killing. That is unfortunately not true. With such a highly charged situation, ignition sparks can happen any time from many sources. It is no more a hidden fact that the 2006 Israeli attack on Lebanon was planned long before the abduction of the soldiers.

Construction continuing in West Bank settlements despite PM's pledge

2008-02-20T18:10:00.002-05:00

By Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondent

A new neighborhood comprising 27 trailers is currently under construction at the settlement of Eli, north of Ramallah, even though Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed publicly after the Annapolis conference that any such building would cease.

Even though some of the trailers are being set up on land privately owned by Palestinians, the authorities are taking no action.

Similar unauthorized construction has taken place in the settlement of Maskiot in the northern Jordan Valley. Last December, after the Annapolis conference, Olmert promised to freeze construction in the settlements. But developments in a number of settlements suggest that the settlers are trying to initiate a new wave of construction.

The most notable case is Eli, where work is underway to link the 27 trailers to infrastructure. The construction, which began about a month ago, is expected to be completed in the coming days.

The trailers were put up on site because the Civil Administration imposes severe restrictions on moving complete trailers in the West Bank.

The trailers were placed on land near the Palestinian village of Luban al-Sharqiyah, on the other side of Route 60, connecting Jerusalem and Nablus. They are near the Kinor neighborhood at the Eli settlement.

According to Hagit Ofran, who heads the monitoring of settlement activity for Peace Now, the trailers were set up on privately owned Palestinian land. Ofran bases her claims on comparisons between the trailers' location and data the Civil Administration gave to Peace Now on land ownership in the West Bank.

Security sources also confirmed to Haaretz that at least some of the trailers were placed on privately owned land. For its part, the Yesha Council, which represents settlers in the territories, maintains that the construction has been undertaken on state-controlled land.

Regardless of who owns the land, it is certain that the construction at Eli is being done without authorization. The settlement lacks an approved blueprint for construction and expansion, and if the land is indeed private Palestinian property, there is no way to issue authorization for building.

There is also no evidence that the construction has been carried out with any authorization from the political leadership.

The Civil Administration has not taken any practical steps to prevent the new construction. The defense establishment is investigating the building at Eli and the nearby outposts, because it seems that large portions of the settlement were put up illegally.

Last week, Channel 1 reported that 10 settler families moved in at Maskiot in the Jordan Valley. Maskiot began as a base for Nahal, a military unit, and several years ago included a pre-conscription military academy for national-religious youth.

In December 2006, then-defense minister Amir Peretz approved the decision to build 30 new homes there, where the evacuees from the settlement of Shirat Hayam in Gush Katif could be housed. Peretz revoked his decision after he came under criticism.

Construction was renewed in Maskiot recently, without government approval, and earlier this month the families were brought in to live in the new houses. The Civil Administration issued orders for razing seven homes that were built illegally.

According to Captain Tzidki Maman, spokesman for the Civil Administration, "the illegal construction at Eli is known and is being examined. Another part of the construction is being considered by the High Court of Justice."

He says that the Maskiot construction "is under constant monitoring and orders to raze the illegal construction have been issued. The implementation of the orders will be carried out on the basis of broader policy and considerations."

London School of Economics student union votes for divestment

2008-02-19T18:25:00.001-05:00

Press Release, LSE SU Palestine Society, 19 February 2008

The London School of Economics Students' Union (LSESU) on 14 February voted overwhelmingly to call on its university and the National Union of Students (NUS) to divest from companies that provide military and commercial support for the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, condemning the decades of human rights abuses and systematic oppression that has occurred as a result.

A motion, brought to the weekly Union General Meeting of more than 400 LSE students by the LSESU Palestine Society, resolved to lobby the LSE and NUS to divest from companies that provide military support for the Israeli occupation, facilitate the maintenance of the illegal "annexation" wall or operate on illegally occupied land or within Jewish only settlements. With a six to one margin, the Union voted to support the aim of targeted divestment until companies cease such practices or until Israel ends its discriminatory oppression and colonization of Palestinian communities.

The Union also resolved to affiliate to the international campaign to end the siege on Gaza and engage in education campaigns to publicize more widely the injustices of Israel's discriminatory polices. This includes working with Palestine solidarity organizations such as Jews for Justice for Palestinians, the British Committee for Universities in Palestine, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Zochrot and the Israeli Committee Against House Demolition, in a bid to end the legalized racial and religious discrimination in Israel.

This has been the result of much debate on LSE's campus over recent weeks, following an earlier motion which acknowledged growing public comparisons made between Apartheid South Africa and the legalized ethnic segregation that has been imposed for decades by the Israeli state. As such, the original proposed motion was amended to provide consensus across the Union in unequivocally condemning Israel's policy of ethnic segregation, with 339 students voting in favor of divestment compared to just 46 against.

Irene Calis of the LSESU Palestine Society stated: "This is an historic moment in the struggle for justice and peace for all citizens of the Middle East. It is time for us to demand our universities divest and stop funding Palestinian oppression. By putting political and economic pressure on the Israeli state, the student movement can not only show continued solidarity with the Palestinian people, but also expedite the end of the Israeli occupation."

Emilano Huet-Vaughn, who spoke in favor of the motion, added, "The resounding support for divestment after lengthy debate shows growing awareness of Israel's systematic discrimination against the Palestinian people and a disgust with the colonial settler regime in the West Bank, and the brutal siege of the Gaza Strip. As a result many LSE students of all backgrounds have voted to take a stand for justice, equality and human rights for all."

Severe misrepresentation of Palestine Awareness Week

2008-02-17T22:37:00.000-05:00

unpublished

On Tuesday night, visiting Professor Neve Gordon from Ben-Gurion University of the Political Science Department gave a lecture titled "From Colonization to Separation: Exploring the Structure of Israel's Occupation" on behalf of Students Allied for Freedom and Equality. This event was the second event of Palestine Awareness Week, an attempt by SAFE to educate and engage the campus body regarding issues surrounding Palestine and the Zionist-Palestinian conflict.

Gordon's lecture proposed several different arguments regarding the nature of Israel's current occupation of the sovereign Palestinian West Bank and Gaza Strip. During his presentation, Professor Gordon explained Israel's fundamental responsibility to the Palestinians under direct Israeli control. Professor Gordon explained that because the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are under total Israeli domination, deemed illegal under international law by UN Resolution 242, Israel has a fundamental and inescapable obligation to the wellbeing of the Palestinians. In addition, Professor Gordon noted the difference and increase in Israeli state violence toward the Palestinians as part of a vicious cycle of bloodshed initiated by Israel's maltreatment of the occupied Palestinians since 1967 and the subsequent Palestinian response in 1987. Specifically, Professor Gordon juxtaposed the amount of Palestinians and Israelis killed between 1987 and 2000 to the number of Palestinians and Israelis killed between 2000 and 2006. Professor Gordon's numbers demonstrated that there was a substantial increase in the loss of Palestinian life; twice as many Palestinians were killed during the second Intifada than in the prior 34 years of occupation. Professor Gordon's statistics also showed that the number Israelis killed increased between these two respective periods.

Daniel Strauss, who covered the event, grossly misrepresented the content and message of Professor Gordon's lecture. First, Strauss both misquoted and misreported Gordon's discussion of the increase in violence by only citing Gordon's presentation of the increase in Israeli deaths in the period between 1987 and 2000 and that of 2000 and 2006. Professor Gordon's purpose in presenting these statistics was to demonstrate the dramatic increase in violence on both sides and that far more Palestinians had died than Israelis. Strauss's reporting made it appear that Gordon was trying to paint the Israelis as the ultimate victims of the increase in violence.

Second, Strauss implied that Palestinian laborers have benefited from Israeli occupation because they are in a better financial position than under traditional landowning. This is out of context, as Gordon explained that the occupier always has a responsibility to the occupied. The occupation has forced Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to be fully dependent on a colonizing power. Because of the occupation, the Palestinians are forced to endure ever-increasing Israeli attacks on every aspect of their lives, locking them into a subhuman and subjugated existence.

How the EU helps Israel to strangle Gaza

2008-02-14T17:00:00.001-05:00

David Morrison, The Electronic Intifada, 14 February 2008

How is Israel able to strangle the Gaza Strip when there is supposed to be an international crossing between Gaza and Egypt not controlled by Israelis?

Certainly, free movement was the promise held out in the comprehensive Agreement on Movement and Access, signed more than two years ago by Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA). The first of the six components of this agreement was that there would be a crossing between Gaza and Egypt at Rafah, controlled by the PA and Egypt. At the time, this was hailed as an historic step on the road to a Palestinian state -- for the first time, it was said, Palestinians would have access to the outside world free from Israeli control.

So, how was Israel still able to impose a suffocating blockade on the Strip, home to almost 1.5 million Palestinians, eighty percent of them refugees? After Palestinian forces opened the border wall on 23 January, breaking the siege, many Palestinians blamed Egypt for not doing the same much earlier to relieve the suffering and deprivation that had brought Gaza to within days of running out of food and medicine. But however complicit Egypt may have been it was not alone.

It was primarily through the good offices of the European Union (EU), which had a formal role in managing the Rafah crossing, that Israel always had a veto on the opening of the crossing. In practice, whenever Israel didn't want the crossing open, the EU obligingly kept it shut.

The Rafah crossing was open almost every day from 25 November 2005 to 24 June 2006, though not for 24 hours a day as intended. However, after 24 June 2006, when an Israeli soldier was captured by Palestinians, the EU, at Israel's insistence, prevented it from opening regularly and then kept it closed completely since 9 June 2007, after Hamas took control of Gaza.

Quartet midwife

The so-called Middle East Quartet (the US, the EU, Russia and the UN) was the midwife of the agreement, and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Javier Solana (EU High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy) were in Jerusalem on 15 November 2005 to launch it.

Rice said that the agreement "is intended to give the Palestinian people freedom to move, to trade, to live ordinary lives." She added that "for the first time since 1967, Palestinians will gain control over entry and exit from their territory. This will be through an international crossing at Rafah."

Solana also hailed the arrangements: "This is the first time that a border is opened and not controlled by the Israelis. ... So as you can imagine, this is a very important step that is the first time that takes place."

One could be forgiven for thinking that the US and the EU had made arrangements for a border crossing between Gaza and Egypt that was "not controlled by the Israelis" and that from then on Gaza couldn't be strangled by Israel.

EU third party

But reality fell far short of Rice and Solana's claims. The agreement did not provide for commercial goods traffic through the Rafah crossing into Gaza, so it did not facilitate trade. And despite the cosmetics, the crossing has always been controlled by the Israelis. Even though Israel has no personnel, military or otherwise, physically present at the crossing, it has been able to close the crossing at will, just as it can close the crossings between Gaza and Israel itself.

This came about because, under the agreement, a third party must have personnel present at the Rafah crossing before it is allowed to open. The third party is the EU -- and the EU has always refused to man the crossing when Israel didn't want the crossing open. In effect, the EU has acted as a proxy for Israel.

The agreement gives EU personnel at the crossing the authority "to ensure that the PA complies with all applicable rules and regulations concerning the Rafah crossing point and the terms of this agreement" and in the event of perceived non-compliance "to order the re-examination and reassessment of any passenger, luggage, vehicle or goods."

For this purpose, the EU established the grandly titled EU Border Assistance Mission for the Rafah Crossing Point, or EUBAM Rafah. This is a force of less than a hundred, mostly policemen, which is based in Ashkelon in Israel.

In addition to the EU monitors, who are physically present at the crossing, Israeli security forces are able to monitor activity at the crossing remotely, via closed circuit TV and other data links, and can make a record of the individuals crossing. The Israeli monitors are based in Israel at the Kerem Shalom crossing with Gaza, where a liaison office (for liaison between Israel and the PA) is located. One of the duties of the EU, as the third party to the agreement, is to "lead" this office:

"A liaison office, led by the third party, will receive real-time video and data feed of the activities at Rafah and will meet regularly to review implementation of this agreement, resolve any disputes arising from this agreement, and perform other tasks specified in this agreement."

Israeli veto

Ridiculous as it may seem, the EU takes the view that the opening of the crossing is a matter that may be disputed by Israeli representatives in the liaison office. And if they don't agree to it opening, the EU doesn't send its monitors to the crossing, as required for its opening under the terms of the agreement. So, Israel has a veto over the opening of the crossing, even though, according to Rice and Solana, it is "not controlled by the Israelis."

But on the EUBAM website, the answer given to the question "Can EUBAM open the crossing point?" is:

"RCP [Rafah Crossing Point] can only be opened by agreement between the Parties. EUBAM cannot itself open the crossing point."

That is as plain as a pikestaff: in the opinion of the EU, the agreement gives Israel a veto on whether the crossing should open. There is nothing in the agreement to warrant such an interpretation -- and it is in flat contradiction to the words of Rice and Solana that the crossing would "not be controlled by Israelis."

What is more, in the opinion of the EU, the agreement gives Israel the right to close the crossing when it is open. According to a press statement on 14 December 2006, after the crossing opened that day, "the Government of Israel had requested that the crossing be closed due to the expected arrival of Prime Minister Haniyeh, who was reportedly carrying a large sum of money." After consultations with Brussels, the EU closed the crossing.

Since the Israeli-built Gaza-Egypt border wall was torn down, Israel, the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, Egypt and the EU have met to try to restore the arrangements under the agreement. Hamas, excluded from these meetings, has stated that it will not allow a return to the situation of de facto Israeli control through the "third party" proxy and has demanded a role in managing the crossing.

If Gaza is to be immune from strangulation by Israel in future, then the Israeli veto over the opening of the Rafah crossing will have to be ended. In addition, the crossing must cater for commercial traffic into Gaza, which is not provided for under the present agreement.

Jerusalem off the radar

2008-02-13T17:04:00.002-05:00

Ben White, The Electronic Intifada, 13 February 2008

Recently, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was reported to have suggested that the question of Jerusalem would be "left to last" in negotiations with the Palestinians. This was apparently on account of the issue being "too sensitive and complex," as well as fears that talks on Jerusalem would cause the departure of religious right-wingers from Olmert's ruling coalition.

Domestic political considerations will certainly have played a part in the prime minister's thinking, but there is another possible motivation for leaving this "final status issue" for further down the road. In recent weeks, and indeed, going back to the December announcement of the expansion of West Bank settlement Har Homa, the Israeli government's approach to Jerusalem has been at best contradictory, and at worst, deeply cynical.

During January there was a rash of reports -- barely covered in the Western media -- about Jewish construction in occupied East Jerusalem. On 23 January, it was reported Agence France-Presse that 30 percent (almost 2,500 housing units) of newly-authorized construction in Jerusalem municipality was slated for areas in occupied or illegally annexed East Jerusalem. Just last week, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported that plans were advanced for 200 Jewish homes in a "strategic location" in East Jerusalem requiring "Palestinian buildings" to "be demolished to make room."

Another example is the new housing units in Maaleh Hazeitim, a project initially funded by the patron of ultra-nationalist Ateret Cohanim group, Irwin Moskowitz, and backed by Jerusalem mayor at the time, Ehud Olmert. Those behind the increasing construction, Haaretz reports, intend Maaleh Hazeitim to be an obstacle to creating Palestinian territorial continuity "between the West Bank to the east, and the Temple Mount."

There is more, such as the private developments of Nof Zion and the City of David housing project, the former specifically targeted at Jewish-Americans. While not official government initiatives, Israeli architect Efrat Cohen-Bar, from the planning rights non-governmental organization Bimkom, pointed out that "all small settlements of Jews in the heart of Palestinian neighborhoods make it impossible to divide."

Olmert's office, meanwhile, continues to send confusing messages about official policy towards the settlements. One week, there is a much-heralded freeze on settlement expansion in the West Bank -- but excluding East Jerusalem. The next week, it is a total ban, including construction in existing settlements. Then to make all of that seem academic, brand new buildings spring up in occupied East Jerusalem.

It is actually a misnomer to describe Jerusalem as being any more or less complicated than the other elements of a future agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. International law already caters to the broad territorial questions about dividing the city, and there are numerous, highly practical, solutions available for the delicate matter of sovereignty over the Old City's holy places.

In reality, what makes it so difficult to find a solution is the cross-party consensus in the Israeli political establishment that Jerusalem is the "eternal, undivided" capital of the Jewish state. From the Knesset's 1980 declaration to then Prime Minister Ehud Barak's party election manifesto in 2000 and public declarations by former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, there is complete unity around this compromise-defying policy.

Such a position can never be accepted by the Palestinians, who, for their part, are simply demanding that international law be heeded, that Israel's post-1967 annexation and occupation should not be recognized, and that East Jerusalem becomes the sovereign capital of their independent state. Yet as any map of Jerusalem shows, successive Israeli governments of the last forty years have deliberately used settlement construction in order to encircle the unilaterally-expanded municipality and render equitable partition impossible.

Reports that Olmert is feeling the heat from the ultra-Orthodox members of his coalition may be read by some as yet another example of the deleterious effects of religious extremism. In fact, persisting in the fiction not only that Jerusalem is "eternal and undivided," but that peace can be built on such a position, is part of the Israeli mainstream. Thus it might well be the case that leaving Jerusalem "to last" is actually an intentional move, freeing up Israel to create yet more "facts on the ground" in the meantime.

Israel's "next logical step"

2008-02-12T18:49:00.001-05:00

Israeli border police take position during a protest against the Israeli wall in the West Bank village of al-Khader, 8 February 2008. (Luay Sababa/MaanImages)

Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 11 February 2008

"The next logical step" for the Israeli government "will have to be a decision whether to target the top political leadership" of Hamas. So said an Israeli official quoted in The Jerusalem Post. Tzahi Hanegbi, a senior member of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's Kadima party and chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, echoed the call, arguing that "There's no difference between those who wear a suicide suit and a diplomat's suit." Following a cabinet meeting on 10 February, Israel's Interior Minister Shimon Sheetrit specifically called for the execution of Ismail Haniyeh, the democratically-elected Hamas prime minister, and added that for good measure "We must take a neighborhood in Gaza and wipe it off the map."

Last September, Yossi Alpher, the co-founder of the European Union-funded publication Bitterlemons, wrote an article advocating "decapitating the Hamas leadership, both military and 'civilian.'" Alpher, a former special adviser to Israel's defense minister Ehud Barak when the latter was prime minister, worried that Israel would "pay a price in terms of international condemnation," for "targeting legally elected Hamas officials who won a fair election," but that overall it would be well worth it.

Executing democratically-elected leaders may require more chutzpah than even Israel has shown, but the possibility and its disastrous consequences have to be taken seriously given Israel's track record. Israel executed Hamas' elderly, quadriplegic and wheelchair-bound co-founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, in 2004, followed shortly afterwards by the execution his successor as the movement's leader, Dr. Abdel Aziz Rantisi.

Aside from the United States, Israel is the only country where the murder of foreign leaders is openly debated as a policy option.

Israeli official propaganda presents all its recent actions as defensive and necessary to stop the rockets fired by Palestinian fighters in Gaza. But if Israel's goal was to achieve calm and a cessation of violence, the first logical step would not be to contemplate new atrocities, but to respond positively to Hamas' repeated ceasefire proposals.

When it was elected in January 2006, Hamas had observed a unilateral ceasefire for more than a year. After the election, Hamas' leaders offered a long-term total truce, tentatively following the political path of other militant groups including the Irish Republican Army (IRA), whose 1994 ceasefire paved the way for the peace agreement in Northern Ireland. (In December, US President George W. Bush received Martin McGuinness, former second in command of the IRA, and now Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, at the White House.)

Last December, Haaretz reported that Hamas had secured the agreement of all factions to end rocket fire on Israel, provided Israel reciprocated. Hamas was also engaged in indirect negotiations for the release of Palestinian political prisoners in exchange for an Israeli prisoner of war held in Gaza.

Olmert rejected the December ceasefire offer. "The State of Israel," he said, "has no interest in negotiating with entities that do not recognize the Quartet demands." In other words there could be no ceasefire until Hamas unilaterally accepted all of Israel's demands before negotiations could even begin.

The problem was not that Israeli officials did not believe Hamas could deliver. Barak was reported to be in favor of considering a hudna -- a renewed truce, and a "senior Israeli security official" told Haaretz that "There's no doubt that Hamas is capable of forcing a let-up on Islamic Jihad and the other small factions in the Strip ... It won't be a 100 percent decrease, but even 98 percent would be a big change." ("Olmert rejects Hamas cease-fire offer," Haaretz, 25 December 2007).

If even Israel believed that Hamas could reliably enforce a truce, why does it refuse to accept one? Why has it refused to engage with Hamas, as American and British policy-makers did with the IRA?

For Israel the potential that Hamas could turn to politics presents a threat, not an opportunity. Israel has no interest in facing Palestinian leaders who are at once committed to basic Palestinian rights, capable of delivering, and enjoy popular legitimacy and support.

So instead of engaging with Hamas, the US and Israel announced a complete boycott which was intended to turn the Palestinian population against the movement.

At the same time, the peace process show relaunched in Annapolis last November, followed by the international donors meeting in Paris where pledges of cash were showered on the Palestinian Authority to elevate the unelected, Israeli-backed Ramallah "government" of Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad in the eyes of Palestinians. With this renewed patronage and prestige, Abbas and company were to be pushed to sign a deal giving up Palestinian refugee rights and agreeing to a Palestinian Bantustan under permanent Israeli domination.

Of course much more than Hamas stands in the way of the fulfillment of this Israeli fantasy. The Palestinian people would unite against such a deal. But Hamas is the most visible and well-organized obstacle.

Rather than breaking under pressure, Hamas has made some impressive tactical gains, even as Gaza's agony increases. Even the dubious opinion polls that come out of EU-funded non-governmental organizations showed Hamas enjoying an upsurge of support after the breach of the Gaza-Egypt border. But with Israel and its backers steadfast in refusing to grant Hamas a political role, not even in operating the border crossings, the movement has no way to translate these tactical victories into strategic gains. Except for one: in the arena of world public opinion.

Israel and Egypt, the two countries most responsible for the blockade of Gaza, were deeply embarrassed by the popular surge that temporarily broke the siege. No recent event has done as much to bring attention to the plight of Palestinians and expose Israel's crimes to international scrutiny. But one such action is not enough; already, Israel and Egypt with support from the quisling regime in Ramallah, the EU and the US are trying to reimpose the blockade. (In a repulsive echo of Yitzhak Rabin's infamous order to Israeli soldiers during the first Intifada to break the bones of Palestinians, Egypt's foreign minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit promised to do the same to Palestinians if they continued to enter Egypt.)

Some Hamas leaders appear to understand the necessity and indeed the risks of mass, nonviolent resistance. "The next time there is a crisis in the Gaza Strip, Israel will have to face half a million Palestinians who will march toward Erez [crossing with Israel]," said Ahmed Yousef, a senior advisor to Ismail Haniyeh. "This is not an imaginary scenario and many Palestinians would be prepared to sacrifice their lives." Properly planned, repeated mass actions of this kind could galvanize public opinion in Arab and European countries and even North America forcing some governments to abandon the pro-Israel consensus.

But here is where the great danger lies: with its escalation in Gaza and refusal to accept a ceasefire, Israel may be trying to provoke more rocket attacks and force Hamas into abandoning its political strategy altogether to provide the needed pretext to "decapitate" the organization. Unfortunately, there are signs that Hamas is jumping into the trap.

Some Hamas political leaders appeared to have been taken by surprise when the movement's military wing took credit for a suicide attack inside Israel for the first time since 2004. The attack in the Israeli town of Dimona on 6 February killed an elderly woman as well as the bomber. As a consequence of Israel's and the "international community's" rejection of all of Hamas' political initiatives, those within the organization advocating a resumption of full-scale armed struggle may be gaining the upper hand.

If they make such a tragic miscalculation, Israeli leaders may breathe a sigh of relief. After all, Israel is much more comfortable with rockets falling on Sderot, than it would be with hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians marching on the checkpoints in Gaza or the West Bank.

The next logical step is for all Palestinian leaders still loyal to their people's cause to work together to mobilize the population, not to gain factional advantage, but to expose Israeli apartheid to a sustained and irresistible surge of people power.

"Where are you from?"

2008-02-11T17:12:00.000-05:00

Rima Merriman writing from Jenin, occupied West Bank, Live from Palestine, 12 February 2008

I live in an apartment building adjoining the Arab American University - Jenin (AAUJ) on a hill surrounded by farmland and quiet villages. As I write, the wind outside my leaky windows has been howling for hours, adding to the desolation of the campus. The protracted semester, beset by student and faculty unrest, has finally ended. It is time to take stock and to plan ahead for the following semester.

When the weather is good, the view from the roof of my apartment building is breathtaking. There isn't a single Israeli settlement in sight to mar the gently rolling hills and the Palestinian villages nestled among them. (As with any part of the West Bank, though, one doesn't have to go far to come up against illegal Israeli settlements and the illegal wall). Here and there, one can see the start of development -- the first ragged impression of a road slicing through a field, hills being divided into "lots," a stone building coming up much too close to the dilapidated main road blocking the poverty behind it.

The scene is far different from the densely wooded college town in the Midwestern United States where I raised my family, where the ragged road of displacement took this particular Palestinian. When my husband and I bought a piece of land there in the '80s, I stood at the highest point on top of a tree stump and tried hard to see the horizon through the surrounding pines. "I must see the horizon," I told my husband. Around me now, there is nothing but horizon.

For Palestinian expatriate nationals like me who have managed to find their way back to Palestine in order to contribute in some fashion, what's on the horizon is far from clear. Our foothold is tenuous; we are here on sufferance by the Israelis who control the borders and the areas between towns and villages and let us in carefully or not at all. Sometimes, even Palestinians fortunate enough (or unfortunate enough as the case may be) to possess Palestinian IDs wonder why we are here when we didn't have to be, suspecting ulterior motives of some sort.

Through Israeli noblesse oblige, we are here on B2 visitor visas stamped with "not permitted to work." Locally, we are sometimes made to feel like visitors from outer space. Even among people amongst whom any conversation initiated by "Where are you from?," if long enough, will uncover very few degrees of separation, bonds have slackened. Individual energies are, by necessity, focused on survival in the difficult present, and Palestinian collective "memory" is becoming increasingly fragmented.

The farther away geographically one's origins are from a certain community or clan, the more frayed the bond. And there is nothing in the world farther away from the West Bank and Gaza than the Palestinian villages and towns taken over or destroyed by Israel since 1948. "Where are you from?" students and faculty ask me continually. "Lifta," I answer, only to be confronted by blank stares here in the north of the West Bank. (Lifta, a Palestinian village only a few kilometers west of Jerusalem, is about to be turned into a luxury residential community for Jews, even as many of its original Palestinian inhabitants, especially the ones who live in annexed East Jerusalem now, are trying in vain to regain access to their homes and lands.)

"Where are you from?" asks the Israeli soldier at the checkpoint as he quizzically examines my American passport. I answer that, as he can clearly see from my passport, I am American. "No, but where are you from?" he asks again. "What do you mean?" I counter, to the discomfort of the driver of the van and my fellow passengers, who are holding their breaths now, wondering what illegality I am likely to fall under. "Do you mean where in America?" He gives up and satisfies himself by studying my tourist visa again. Should I have explained to this young person hailing from Russia or Ethiopia about Lifta?

In the small Midwestern college town in which I studied, worked and lived for decades in the United States, there weren't many other Palestinians. Although I have American and Jordanian citizenships and, more importantly, I have American children, I never could think of myself as anything but Palestinian. I know only too well what it means to be a Palestinian. I am still sorting out what it means to be Jordanian or American. "Where are you from?" other Americans ask me. The answer is much too complicated.

Teaching at AAUJ, I feel a pressing need, especially when I am discouraged, to ask myself what I am doing here. A recent World Bank report describes the quality of education in the Middle East and North Africa as not having kept up with economic challenges. It calls for reforms in order "to redirect educational approaches across all stages and all forms, to educate students on how to think and not what to think," as a World Bank senior vice president puts it. In my experience, though, resistance to change, to new ideas, is everywhere I turn, especially if the impetus for change is being pushed by someone who must be asked, "Where are you from?" Nevertheless, the need in Palestine for qualified and dedicated individuals trained outside the Middle East is high.

There is a joke circulating on the Internet, a tongue-in-cheek audio telephone call between a Palestinian father somewhere from the West Bank speaking in the fellahi (peasant) dialect and a son, who is apparently settled in England, married to "Barbara" and announcing the birth of a grandchild, whom he has called "Mike" rather than "Shafiq," after the grandfather. The conversation is one-sided. Shafiq gives his son news about various mishaps that have befallen the family from divorce of a sister and abandonment of children, to maiming by Israeli gunfire, to illness, to severe economic need, all the time assuring his son that the family in Palestine is perfectly fine and that he need not worry about them. The conversation ends with the father thanking the son for having contributed $100 to an NGO.

For Palestinians in the Diaspora, the joke is far too close to home to be funny. We can and must do better. To rephrase part of a speech by John F. Kennedy, we need to stop asking what Palestine can do for us, and ask, instead, what we can do for Palestine.

Events of Palestine Awareness Week

2008-02-11T01:27:00.003-05:00

Palestine Awareness Week - this week

2008-02-10T01:00:00.002-05:00

It's coming...

2008-01-30T13:43:00.003-05:00

Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE) is sponsoring Palestine Awareness Week, a five-day presentation of different aspects of Palestinian issues, from February 11th through February 15th. Event topics include Introducing Palestine, Exploring the Structure of Israel's Occupation, The Cultural Resistance of Palestinian Film, Aspects of Apartheid: South Africa and Israel, and Visions of Peace. Speakers include Thomas Abowd (WSU professor), Neve Gordon (visiting associate professor), Rima Hassouneh (UM professor), Tirtza Even (UM School of Art), Hani Bawardi (UM-Dearborn professor), and Ali Abunimah (prominent Palestinian academic). The overall purpose of the events are to further educate the campus body about a variety of issues concerning Palestine and Palestinians.

Monday, Feb 11th, 7:30pm, 100 Hutchins Hall
Introducing Palestine
- Prof Thomas Abowd (Wayne State)

Tuesday, Feb 12th, 8pm, 100 Hutchins Hall
From Colonization to Separation, Exploring the Structure of Israel's Occupation
- Prof Neve Gordon (Ben-Gurion Univ)

Wednesday, Feb 13th, 7:30pm, 100 Hutchins Hall
The Cultural Resistance of Palestinian Film
- Rima Hassouneh and Tirtza Even (UM)

Thursday, Feb 14th, 7:30pm, 100 Hutchins Hall
Aspects of Apartheid: South Africa and Israel
- Prof Hani Bawardi (UM-Dearborn)

Friday, Feb 15th, 5pm, 100 Hutchins Hall
Visions of Peace
- Ali Abunimah (Univ. of Chicago)

Also on Friday, 8:30pm, Koessler Room, Michigan League -
Words of Struggle - a poetry slam promoting Palestine
awareness and civil rights, in honor of Black History Month.

Co-sponsored by:
Human Rights Through Education
Physicians for Human Rights
Anti-War Action
Amnesty International
Students for Multiculturalism
Student World Assembly
Migrant and Immigrant Rights Awareness
United Asian American Organizations
Black Student Union
Native American Students Association
Palestinian Students Association
Lebanese Students Association
Iraqi Students Association
Muslim Students Association
Arab Unity Movement
Program in American Culture
Arab-American Studies Program
Dept. of Screen Arts and Cultures

RSVP at:
http://umichigan.facebook.com/event.php?eid=7706808822
umich.edu/~umsafe

The Blockade of Gaza: Worse Than a Crime

2008-01-28T01:58:00.001-05:00

January 26 / 27, 2008
By URI AVNERY

It looked like the fall of the Berlin wall. And not only did it look like it. For a moment, the Rafah crossing was the Brandenburg Gate.

It is impossible not to feel exhilaration when masses of oppressed and hungry people break down the wall that is shutting them in, their eyes radiant, embracing everybody they meet - to feel so even when it is your own government that erected the wall in the first place.

The Gaza Strip is the largest prison on earth. The breaking of the Rafah wall was an act of liberation. It proves that an inhuman policy is always a stupid policy: no power can stand up against a mass of people that has crossed the border of despair.

That is the lesson of Gaza, January, 2008.

ONE MIGHT repeat the famous saying of the French statesman Boulay de la Meurthe, slightly amended: It is worse than a war crime, it is a blunder!

Months ago, the two Ehuds - Barak and Olmert - imposed a blockade on the Gaza Strip, and boasted about it. Lately they have tightened the deadly noose even more, so that hardly anything at all could be brought into the Strip. Last week they made the blockade absolute - no food, no medicines. Things reached a climax when they stopped the fuel, too. Large areas of Gaza remained without electricity - incubators for premature babies, dialysis machines, pumps for water and sewage. Hundreds of thousands remained without heating in the severe cold, unable to cook, running out of food.

Again and again, Aljazeera broadcast the pictures into millions of homes in the Arab world. TV stations all over the world showed them, too. From Casablanca to Amman angry mass protest broke out and frightened the authoritarian Arab regimes. Hosny Mubarak called Ehud Barak in panic. That evening Barak was compelled to cancel, at least temporarily, the fuel-blockade he had imposed in the morning. Apart from that, the blockade remained total.

It is hard to imagine a more stupid act.

THE REASON given for the starving and freezing of one and a half million human beings, crowded into a territory of 365 square kilometers, is the continued shooting at the town of Sderot and the adjoining villages.

That is a well-chosen reason. It unites the primitive and poor parts of the Israeli public. It blunts the criticism of the UN and the governments throughout the world, who might otherwise have spoken out against a collective punishment that is, undoubtedly, a war crime under international law.

A clear picture is presented to the world: the Hamas terror regime in Gaza launches missiles at innocent Israeli civilians. No government in the world can tolerate the bombardment of its citizens from across the border. The Israeli military has not found a military answer to the Qassam missiles. Therefore there is no other way than to exert such strong pressure on the Gaza population as to make them rise up against Hamas and compel them to stop the missiles.

The day the Gaza electricity works stopped operating, our military correspondents were overjoyed: only two Qassams were launched from the Strip. So it works! Ehud Barak is a genius!

But the day after, 17 Qassams landed, and the joy evaporated. Politicians and generals were (literally) out of their minds: one politician proposed to "act crazier than them", another proposed to "shell Gaza's urban area indiscriminately for every Qassam launched", a famous professor (who is a little bit deranged) proposed the exercise of "ultimate evil".

The government scenario was a repeat of Lebanon War II (the report about which is due to be published in a few days). Then: Hizbullah captured two soldiers on the Israeli side of the border, now: Hamas fired on towns and villages on the Israeli side of the border. Then: the government decide in haste to start a war, now: the government decided in haste to impose a total blockade. Then: the government ordered the massive bombing of the civilian population in order to get them to pressure Hizbullah, now: the government decided to cause massive suffering of the civilian population in order to get them to pressure Hamas.

The results were the same in both cases: the Lebanese population did not rise up against Hizbullah, but on the contrary, people of all religious communities united behind the Shiite organization. Hassan Nasrallah became the hero of the entire Arab world. And now: the population unites behind Hamas and accuses Mahmoud Abbas of cooperation with the enemy. A mother who has no food for her children does not curse Ismail Haniyeh, she curses Olmert, Abbas and Mubarak.

SO WHAT to do? After all, it is impossible to tolerate the suffering of the inhabitants of Sderot, who are under constant fire.

What is being hidden from the embittered public is that the launching of the Qassams could be stopped tomorrow morning.

Several months ago Hamas proposed a cease-fire. It repeated the offer this week.

A cease-fire means, in the view of Hamas: the Palestinians will stop shooting Qassams and mortar shells, the Israelis will stop the incursions into Gaza, the "targeted" assassinations and the blockade.

Why doesn't our government jump at this proposal?

Simple: in order to make such a deal, we must speak with Hamas, directly or indirectly. And this is precisely what the government refuses to do.

Why? Simple again: Sderot is only a pretext - much like the two captured soldiers were a pretext for something else altogether. The real purpose of the whole exercise is to overthrow the Hamas regime in Gaza and to prevent a Hamas takeover in the West Bank.

In simple and blunt words: the government sacrifices the fate of the Sderot population on the altar of a hopeless principle. It is more important for the government to boycott Hamas - because it is now the spearhead of Palestinian resistance - than to put an end to the suffering of Sderot. All the media cooperate with this pretence.

IT HAS been said before that it is dangerous to write satire in our country - too often the satire becomes reality. Some readers may recall a satirical article I wrote months ago. In it I described the situation in Gaza as a scientific experiment designed to find out how far one can go, in starving a civilian population and turning their lives into hell, before they raise their hands in surrender.

This week, the satire has become official policy. Respected commentators declared explicitly that Ehud Barak and the army chiefs are working on the principle of "trial and error" and change their methods daily according to results. They stop the fuel to Gaza, observe how this works and backtrack when the international reaction is too negative. They stop the delivery of medicines, see how it works, etc. The scientific aim justifies the means.

The man in charge of the experiment is Defense Minister Ehud Barak, a man of many ideas and few scruples, a man whose whole turn of mind is basically inhuman. He is now, perhaps, the most dangerous person in Israel, more dangerous than Ehud Olmert and Binyamin Netanyahu, dangerous to the very existence of Israel in the long run.

The man in charge of execution is the Chief of Staff. This week we had the chance of hearing speeches by two of his predecessors, generals Moshe Ya'alon and Shaul Mofaz, in a forum with inflated intellectual pretensions. Both were discovered to have views that place them somewhere between the extreme Right and the ultra-Right. Both have a frighteningly primitive mind. There is no need to waste a word about the moral and intellectual qualities of their immediate successor, Dan Halutz. If these are the voices of the three last Chiefs of Staff, what about the incumbent, who cannot speak out as openly as they? Has this apple fallen further from the tree?

Until three days ago, the generals could entertain the opinion that the experiment was succeeding. The misery in the Gaza Strip had reached its climax. Hundreds of thousands were threatened by actual hunger. The chief of UNRWA warned of an impending human catastrophe. Only the rich could still drive a car, heat their homes and eat their fill. The world stood by and wagged its collective tongue. The leaders of the Arab states voiced empty phrases of sympathy without raising a finger.

Barak, who has mathematical abilities, could calculate when the population would finally collapse.

AND THEN something happened that none of them foresaw, in spite of the fact that it was the most foreseeable event on earth.

When one puts a million and a half people in a pressure cooker and keeps turning up the heat, it will explode. That is what happened at the Gaza-Egypt border.

At first there was a small explosion. A crowd stormed the gate, Egyptian policemen opened live fire, dozens were wounded. That was a warning.

The next day came the big attack. Palestinian fighters blew up the wall in many places. Hundreds of thousands broke out into Egyptian territory and took a deep breath. The blockade was broken.

Even before that, Mubarak was in an impossible situation. Hundreds of millions of Arabs, a billion Muslims, saw how the Israeli army had closed the Gaza strip off on three sides: the North, the East and the sea. The fourth side of the blockade was provided by the Egyptian army.

The Egyptian president, who claims the leadership of the entire Arab world, was seen as a collaborator with an inhuman operation conducted by a cruel enemy in order to gain the favor (and the money) of the Americans. His internal enemies, the Muslim Brothers, exploited the situation to debase him in the eyes of his own people.

It is doubtful if Mubarak could have persisted in this position. But the Palestinian masses relieved him of the need to make a decision. They decided for him. They broke out like a tsunami wave. Now he has to decide whether to succumb to the Israeli demand to re-impose the blockade on his Arab brothers.

And what about Barak's experiment? What's the next step? The options are few:

(a) To re-occupy Gaza. The army does not like the idea. It understands that this would expose thousands of soldiers to a cruel guerilla war, which would be unlike any intifada before.

(b) To tighten the blockade again and exert extreme pressure on Mubarak, including the use of Israeli influence on the US Congess to deprive him of the billions he gets every year for his services.

(c) To turn the curse into a blessing, by handing the Strip over to Mubarak, pretending that this was Barak's hidden aim all along. Egypt would have to safeguard Israel's security, prevent the launching of Qassams and expose its own soldiers to a Palestinian guerilla war - when it thought it was rid of the burden of this poor and barren area, and after the infrastructure there has been destroyed by the Israeli occupation. Probably Mubarak will say: Very kind of you, but no thanks.

The brutal blockade was a war crime. And worse: it was a stupid blunder.

Border crisis key to Gaza's future

2008-01-28T01:46:00.001-05:00

Friday, 25 January 2008
By James Robbins
BBC diplomatic correspondent

GAZA BLOCKADE
17 January: Israel seals border following rise in rocket attacks
20 January: Gaza's only power plant shuts down
22 January: Israel eases restrictions
22 January: Egyptian border guards disperse Palestinian protest against closure
23 January: Border wall breached

Borders - especially closed borders - divide families.

So we should not be surprised by reports that one Egyptian family responded to dramatic pictures of tens of thousands of Palestinians streaming into Egypt through the breached Rafah barriers by bringing forward the date of a wedding in the hope that cousins, normally shut off inside the Gaza Strip, might be able to join them.

Egypt is under enormous pressure - from Israel and much of the international community - to get a grip and reseal the border.

Israel fears wholesale arms smuggling to extremists in Gaza.

Other governments fear the breakdown of delicately balanced international agreements meant to reassure Israel and help open the way to a comprehensive peace - the Israel-Palestine "two-state solution".

End of arrangement

But the breaches of the past few days have drawn global attention to the near total isolation of the civilians of Gaza, so that simply closing the frontier again may prove politically all but impossible.

The border was not meant to be completely closed, of course.

At the time of Israel's "disengagement" or withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, an international agreement launched new policing of the Rafah border.

Essentially, a combination of CCTV cameras providing live pictures to the Israeli authorities and a team of EU monitors at crossing points was intended to ensure proper control, and protection against the smuggling of guns and explosives which could be used to launch attacks against Israel from Gaza.

Those arrangements broke down progressively, partly after Hamas won the parliamentary elections in Gaza of January 2006, and totally after the final seizure of all power in Gaza by Hamas in 2007.

The EU teams withdrew. The border closed.

'Unsustainable situation'

It has become part of Israel's blockade of Gaza, which Israel says is a necessary response to rocket attacks from Gaza which kill and injure Israeli citizens.

Others insist the blockade amounts to illegal collective punishment of Gaza's civilian population.

Egypt is in a bind. It did not want the border breached.

The Egyptian government despises and fears Hamas. It fears opposition forces within Egypt, including religious fundamentalists, being strengthened by Hamas ideology.

But equally, Egypt does not want to be seen directly as "Gaza's jailer". So closing the border, amid scenes of Arab fighting Arab - Palestinian stones against Egyptian riot shields - is also very unwelcome.

Israel has moved to suggest that any failure to close the border by Egypt would justify Israel in handing over responsibility for the future welfare of the people of Gaza to Egypt - neatly ridding Israel of a problem, and the source of so much international criticism.

That will not happen, but the Rafah border breach and the extraordinary scenes of a mass Palestinian breakout for shopping or simply for fresh air may yet have profound political effects on the entire Middle East peace process.

The downside could be a hardening of attitudes on all sides, further complicating or poisoning the climate for concessions in the dialogue which US President George W Bush is hoping to accelerate.

The upside could be a realisation that the present situation in Gaza, and the split between Hamas there, and Fatah in the West Bank, is utterly unsustainable.

Only a comprehensive final settlement between Israelis and Palestinians offers the prospect of security, and possibly prosperity too, for all.

Gaza's last gasp

2008-01-25T00:46:00.001-05:00

Sonja Karkar, The Electronic Intifada, 23 January 2008

By now, people watching their news programs around the world would have caught a glimpse of Gaza City in candle-lit darkness. A pretty sight indeed if it were not for the fact that most of the people in the Gaza Strip will have to depend on these candles as their only source of light now that the power plant servicing much of Gaza's population has shut down completely. There is no fuel to keep the plant running because Israel has imposed a complete lock-down of this most densely populated place on earth. That means no movement in or out of the Gaza Strip for people, or any kind of shipments in of vital food, fuel supplies and medicines. It is more than a miserable existence: it is a slow death.

This is the sixth day of Israel's draconian action against a people already suffering from the punitive sanctions imposed on them after their democratic elections in January 2006 did not yield a result palatable to Israel and parts of the international community. Israel's latest 24-hour reprieve to let in some supplies is not going to change the circumstances under which the Palestinians have had to live for the last two years. At most, these supplies will last two days. The Palestinians have been struggling to survive in conditions that reached emergency levels even before this latest siege. Hunger, poverty and unemployment are widespread and in this maximum-security prison surrounded by Israel's military cordon, disease, malnutrition and anarchy are dangerously close to breaking out.

Israel claims that its actions are in response to the homemade rocket fire aimed at the Israeli town of Sderot bordering the Gaza Strip. But by no stretch of the imagination is the firing of rockets compared to Israel's ongoing siege of Gaza an even contest. The Palestinians are imprisoned in Gaza and have no military force other than guns and homemade rockets. Israel, on the other hand, has the most sophisticated weaponry in the world at its disposal and uses it with merciless ferocity. It is bombing the Gaza Strip with its F-16 fighter planes and helicopter gun ships and is launching artillery fire from the tanks it has surrounding this tiny stretch of land. In just the last few days, some 40 people have been killed and 120 injured, most of them civilians.

Israel's responses are completely disproportionate to the damage caused by the rocket fire from Gaza, which is a symbolic retaliation for Israel's aggression and its effect is largely psychological. While it certainly makes life miserable for the residents of Sderot, Israel itself is not under threat. The number of Israelis killed and injured by these rockets has been very few compared to the exponentially more Palestinians killed in Gaza. In six years, twelve Israelis have been killed while hundreds of Palestinians have been killed in retaliation, not to mention the hundreds more that have been wounded, often permanently maimed.

Such collective punishment of an entire population is illegal under international law. Most of the Palestinians in Gaza are not combatants. Like in any other population, there is the usual mix of civil servants, doctors, teachers, lawyers, health care workers, engineers, journalists, politicians, students and the thousands of people upon whom any society depends to keep services running -- except that hundreds of thousands are now unemployed. And then of course, there are the mothers and children, the elderly and the sick, the incapacitated, the mentally impaired, the charity workers, volunteers, people who do not have a say about what decisions are made. There are also angry young men who feel helpless to protect their families and people already burdened by decades of humiliation and oppression, and many of them are fighting back as any people would do under attack, but their means are primitive and limited because they cannot leave the confines of Gaza.

Over 1,000 Palestinian civilians have gone out on the streets in protest and to beg the world to put an end to this enforced starvation and siege. People are queuing up to find bread, but no one is baking because there is no electricity. Connections with the outside world are dwindling as mobile phones and laptops run out of battery power. There is no water because the pumps need electricity. Washing machines, cook tops and ovens are useless. People cannot get to work because there is practically no fuel for cars and buses. Hospitals with generators are running out of fuel to power them, halting all surgery procedures. Babies in incubators will die once the power goes. Asthmatics on ventilators will suffer. People needing dialysis machines and heart monitors will collapse. Clinics and laboratories will lose their tests and vaccines. Soon, all communication with the outside world will cease and what are we going to do about it?

Najwa Sheikh Ahmad who works for UNRWA in Gaza and began the Candles for Gaza Campaign with her husband last year in October has written to say, "The Israeli side is doing its best to steal every joyful moment in our lives. Starting from treating us like another weird species that should have no mercy, to destroying the best happy moments that a family can have, the wedding of a son, to the slow killing of my people, like banning their right to have medical treatment outside Gaza which has seen 72 people die already, to finally controlling every border and banning the regular rights of having electricity, water and fuel -- basic needs that no one should have to bargain over. I am sitting in the dark cold with my three children and I try to keep them busy, but the days are long and dark and they feel bored and are starting to make trouble. Oh God, how exhausting it is to live this way in the 21st century."

John Dugard, UN special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories said that "The killing of some 40 Palestinians in Gaza in the past week, the targeting of a government office near a wedding party venue with what must have been foreseen loss of life and injury to many civilians, and the closure of all crossings into Gaza raise very serious questions about Israel's respect for international law and its commitment to the peace process."

Luisa Morgantini, the vice president of the European parliament, has expressed concern over the escalating acts of murder committed by the IOF troops in Gaza and the West Bank and has urged the EU high representative Javier Solana and the world community to work side by side to force the Israeli government to stop the violence and mass punishment against Palestinian civilians.

The UN's Emergency Relief Coordinator, the Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes said that "This kind of action against the people in Gaza cannot be justified, even by those rocket attacks".

Israel's actions have done nothing to further the peace process over which there was so much fanfare only a few weeks ago. Where will it all stop if Israel is allowed to continue its siege? When people are taking their last gasps in their battle for survival, who knows where desperation will lead them -- mass riots, anarchy, and absolute despair where death will be better than life?

Israel might find that giving the Palestinians their freedom and allowing them the dignity of self-determination in their own land might be far more effective in bringing about a peaceful solution than all this bloodshed and misery. Fifty years have passed since Israeli Chief of Staff Moshe Dayan said, "How can we complain about Gaza's hatred towards us? For eight years, they have been sitting in refugee camps while right in front of them, we are turning the land and villages of their forefathers into our home." How much deeper must the hatred be after decades of oppression that has reduced their existence to a mere specter of life? Without a political solution that includes Gaza in negotiations to settle the wrongs done to the Palestinians, a just peace for Palestinians and Israelis is as remote as ever.

The Palestinians need candles desperately and they need your voice to speak for them. There are many ways that you can do this. Organize demonstrations or vigils, or take part in ones that are already being organized. Take the time and write to newspapers and politicians urging them to take action and bring an end to this humanitarian disaster. Also, a deluge of letters to the Israeli Embassy would allow the Israelis to see that the world does not support a siege on the people of Gaza. The power is in your hands to spread the word through your churches, work groups, clubs, neighborhood networks, and simply by talking to everyone you know. We cannot stand by and allow this slow agonizing death of a whole people to continue whatever justification Israel gives for its actions. There has to be another way that gives succor to the people of Gaza and hope for a better future than the ominous one being forced on them right at this moment.

Palestinians break out from Gaza seige - 23 Jan 07

2008-01-25T00:40:00.002-05:00

"Jenin, Jenin" today, Gaza Vigil tomorrow

2008-01-23T14:59:00.001-05:00

The film, directed and co-produced by Palestinian actor and director
Mohammed Bakri, includes testimony from Jenin residents after the
Israeli army's Defensive Wall operation, during which the city and
camp were the scenes of fierce fighting. The operation ended with
Jenin flattened and scores of Palestinians killed. Palestinians as
well as numerous human rights groups accused Israel of committing war
crimes in the April 2002 attack on the refugee camp. "Jenin, Jenin"
shows the extent to which the prolonged oppression and terror has
affected the state of mind of the Palestinian inhabitants of Jenin.

For more information on the film, please visit:
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article927.shtml

RSVP at:
http://umichigan.facebook.com/event.php?eid=9427036948

Co-sponsored by the Arab American Studies Department

For more information on the Jenin massacre:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1937048.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1937387.stm

Tomorrow:
Candlelight Vigil for Gaza Humanitarian Crisis

U of M Diag Thursday 8:30 PM
http://umichigan.facebook.com/event.php?eid=9699416699

The entire Gaza Strip has been under a total blockade for more than a week and on Sunday at 8pm, the only power plant in Gaza ran out of fuel and shut down, furthering the humanitarian crisis. 40% of Gazans lack running water, and approximately 75 Palestinians have reportedly died from the closure. A number of patients in intensive care units have died as their emergency life support equipment cannot function from electricity. These patients include people on dialysis, oxygen tanks, and babies in incubators -- either premature babies, or babies whose parents took them to the hospital to escape from their houses because of the cold weather. These are human beings treated like sub-humans and there has been almost nonexistent mainstream media coverage of this terrible situation in the American press. Come out and help raise awareness.

This is collective punishment and it is a direct violation of the Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a signing party.

For more on the siege in Gaza:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/default.stm
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/947099.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01hqVzViFTw

Europe's Collusion in Israel's Slow Genocide

2008-01-22T03:10:00.001-05:00

January 21, 2008

Never Again?

Europe's Collusion in Israel's Slow Genocide

By OMAR BARGHOUTI

The European Union, Israel's largest trade partner in the world, is watching by as Israel tightens its barbaric siege around Gaza, collectively punishing 1.5 million Palestinian civilians, condemning them to devastation, and visiting imminent death upon hundreds of kidney dialysis and heart patients, prematurely born babies, and all others dependent on electric power for their very survival.

By freezing fuel and electric power supplies to Gaza, Israel, the occupying power, is essentially guaranteeing that "clean" water -- only by name, as Gaza's water is perhaps the most polluted in the whole region, after decades of Israeli theft and abuse -- will not be pumped out and properly distributed to homes and institutions; hospitals will not be able to function adequately, leading to the eventual death of many, particularly the most vulnerable; whatever factories that are still working despite the siege will now be forced to close, pushing the already extremely high unemployment rate even higher; sewage treatment will come to a halt, further polluting Gaza's precious little water supply; academic institutions and schools will not be able to provide their usual services; and lives of all civilians will be severely disrupted, if not irreversibly damaged. And Europe is apathetically watching.

Princeton academic Richard Falk considered Israel's siege a "prelude to genocide," even before this latest crime of altogether cutting off energy supplies. Now, Israel's crimes in Gaza can accurately be categorized as acts of genocide, albeit slow. According to Article II of the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the term is defined as:

"[A]ny of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; ."

Clearly, Israel's hermetic siege of Gaza, designed to kill, cause serious bodily and mental harm, and deliberately inflicts conditions of life calculated to bring about partial and gradual physical destruction, qualifies as an act of genocide, if not all out genocide yet. And the EU is suspiciously silent.

But why accuse Europe, in particular, of collusion in this crime when almost the entire international community is not lifting a finger, and the UN's obsequious Secretary General, who surpassed all his predecessors in obedience to the US government, is pathetically paying only lip service? In addition, what of the US government itself, Israel's most generous sponsor that is directly implicated in the current siege, especially after president George Bush, on his recent visit, gave a hardly-subtle green light to Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, to ravage Gaza? Why not blame the Palestinians' quiet Arab brethren, particularly Egypt -- the only country that can immediately break the siege by reopening the Rafah crossing and supplying through it the necessary fuel, electric power and emergency supplies? And finally, why not blame the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority, whose subservient and visionless leader openly boasted in a press conference its "complete agreement" with Bush on all matters of substance?

After Israel, the US is, without doubt, the guiltiest party in the current crime. Under the influence of a fundamentalist, militaristic, neo-conservative ideology that has taken over its helms of power and an omnipotent Zionist lobby that is unparalleled in its sway, the US is in a category by itself. It goes without saying that the PA, the UN, as well as Arab and international world governments maintaining business as usual with Israel should all be held accountable for acquiescing, whether directly or indirectly, to Israel's crimes against humanity in Gaza. It is also true that each one of the above bears the legal and moral responsibility to intervene and apply whatever necessary pressure to stop the crime before thousands perish. But the EU commands a unique position in all this. It is not only silent and apathetic; in most European countries Israel and Israeli institutions are currently welcomed and sought after with unprecedented warmth, generosity and deference in all fields -- economic, cultural, academic, athletic, etc. For instance, Israel was invited as the guest of honor to a major book fair in Turin, Italy. Israeli-government funded films are featuring in film festivals all over the continent. Israeli products, from avocadoes and oranges to hi-tech security systems, are flooding European markets like never before. Israeli academic institutions are enjoying a special, very lucrative, association agreement with the relevant organs in the EU. Israeli dance groups, singing bands and orchestras are invited to European tours and festivals as if Israel were not only a normal, but in effect a most favoured, member of the so-called "civilized" world. Official Europe's once lacklustre embrace of Israel has turned into an intense, open and enigmatic love affair.

If Europe thinks it can thus repent for its Holocaust against its own Jewish population, it is in fact shamefully and consciously facilitating the committal of fresh acts of genocide against the people of Palestine. But Palestinians, it appears, do not count for much, as we are viewed not only by Israel, but also by its good old "white" sponsors and allies as lesser, or relative, humans. The continent that invented modern genocide and was responsible for massacring in the last two centuries more human beings, mostly "relative humans," than all other continents put together is covering up crimes that are reminiscent in quality, though certainly not in quantity, of its own heinous crimes against humanity.

In no other international affair, perhaps, can the European establishment be accused of being as detached from and indifferent to its own public opinion. While calls for boycotting Israel as an apartheid state are slowly but consistently spreading among European civil society organizations and trade unions, drawing disturbing parallels to the boycott of South African apartheid, European governments are finding it difficult to distinguish themselves from the overtly complicit US position vs. Israel. Even European clichés of condemnation and "expressing deep concern" have become rarer than ever nowadays. Moreover, Israel's relentless and defiant violation of Europe's own human rights laws and conditions are ignored whenever anyone questions whether Israel should continue to benefit from its magnanimous association agreement with the EU despite its military occupation, colonization and horrific record of human rights abuse against its Palestinian victims. If this is not complicity, what is?

Morality aside, sinking Gaza into a sea of darkness, poverty, death and despair cannot bode well for Europe. By actively propping up an environment conducive to the rise of fanaticism and desperate violence near its borders, Europe is foolishly inviting havoc to its doorstep. Instead of heeding -- or at least seriously considering -- calls for boycott, divestment and sanctions against apartheid Israel, adopted by virtually the entire spectrum of Palestinian civil society, it may soon have to reckon with uncontainable forces of irrational and indiscriminate violence and its resulting chaos.

It seems European elites are currently determined never to oppose Israel, no matter what crimes it commits. It is as if the bellowing -- and increasingly hypocritical -- slogan upheld by Jewish survivors of European genocide, "Never Again!", is now espoused by European elites with one difference: the two letter, 's' and 't', are added at the end.