Sunday, January 25, 2009
Is Peace Out of Reach?
Watch CBS Videos Online
The following is an expose done by 60 Minutes on the settlements in Palestine and their effect and the impact of the occupation on Palestinians, the settlers, and the two-state solution and peace.
Marilyn.
Watch CBS Videos Online
This was filmed in December 2003 about the Separation Wall in the West Bank.
Marilyn.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Israeli Military War Crimes Surfacing
Palestinians mourners carry the bodies of three toddlers, Ahmed, Mohamed, and Issa Samouni in Zeitoun Photo: AP
In the absence of foreign journalists in Gaza due to an Israeli ban on allowing news agencies inside the Palestinian territory, Israeli war crimes have been difficult to verify on the spot. With the current fragile ceasefire, as more surviving witnesses are interviewed and as more people survey the neighborhoods and dig up the dead, the extent of the terrorist assault on Palestinian civilians is becoming more apparent.One such case is the Samouni family that was ordered into a building by the Israeli military for "their safety" and then were buried under the rubble after the Israeli bombed that same building a day later.
Marilyn.
Gaza bombing witnesses describe horror of Israeli strike
When the first accounts emerged this week of what the Israeli armed forces did to the extended Samouni clan in Gaza they were initially lost in an already crowded chorus of civilian suffering.
By Tim Butcher in Jerusalem
Last Updated: 6:12PM GMT 09 Jan 2009
But as more survivors surfaced to give largely consistent testimony the horrific realisation emerged what happened to the Samouni family could constitute war crimes by Israel.
Israel is barring foreign journalists from Gaza so it is difficult to verify completely the survivors' accounts about an incident that left up to 70 civilians dead.
They contain allegations that Israeli forces shelled a building where they had previously put a large number of civilians, killed a child in cold blood, used human shields and failed to provide proper treatment to survivors.
Even though they were nearby, Israeli soldiers were found not to have taken action to help four children who spent 48 hours clinging to what the ambulance crew believed to be their mothers' corpses.
The Gazan town of Zeitoun has been home to the Samouni clan for generations but its location in the sandy southern approaches to Gaza City made it a strategic target for Israel on the first night of their ground offensive.
After Israeli tanks and infantry rolled through the Gaza perimeter fence on last Saturday night one of the units headed straight to Zeitoun.
Known to be an area where Hamas militants have been active, Israeli commanders wanted to make sure they took the town as part of a strategy of encircling Gaza City and cutting it off from the rest of the Gaza Strip.
Surviving members of the Samouni family said that at around dawn on Sunday Israeli soldiers arrived in large numbers, knocking on doors and detaining men of fighting age.
Meysa Samouni, 19, described how the Israeli soldiers had "blackened'' their faces for night combat.
The troops went from house to house detaining younger men and then crowding a large number, mostly women and children, into a building owned by Wael Samouni.
Described by Meysa as a "warehouse'', up to 110 members of the Samouni family were forced inside without running water or food.
Conditions grew more dire and tensions rose so by dawn on Monday Rashed Samouni, 41, Meysa's father-in-law and two other men prepared to leave to go in search for missing family members and supplies.
As they left the door of the warehouse they were hit by a barrage.
"My husband went over to them to help, and then a shell or missile was fired onto the roof of the warehouse,'' Meysa said. "Based on the intensity of the strike, I think it was a missile from an F-16.
"When the missile stuck, I lay down with my daughter under me. Everything filled up with smoke and dust, and I heard screams and crying.
"After the smoke and dust cleared a bit, I looked around and saw twenty to thirty people who were dead, and about twenty who were wounded.
"The persons killed around me were my husband, who was hit in the back, my father-in-law, who was hit in the head and whose brain was on the floor, my mother-in-law Rabab, my father-in-law's brother Talal, and his wife Rhama Muhammad a-Samuni, 45, Talal's son's wife, Maha Muhammad a-Samuni, 19, and her son, Muhammad Hamli a-Samuni, 5 months, whose whole brain was outside his body, Razqa Muhammad a-Samuni, 50, Hanan Khamis a-Samuni, 30, and Hamdi Majid a-Samuni, 22.'' She said she tended to her nine month old daughter, Jumana, whose thumb and two fingers had been cut off one hand.
According to her count up to 30 died in the building but other witnesses suggest the death toll among the 110 crowded inside was higher.
Meysa said survivors and walking wounded eventually emerged and found some Israeli soldiers who took two of the male survivors and let the rest pass. She believed the men were to be used as human shields.
According to Majed Samouni, a 42-year-old farmer, he was corralled into another house in Zeitoun on Sunday by Israeli soldiers.
He alleged when Israeli soldiers went from house to house rounding up members of his family a cousin Atiyeh Samouni, 43, was shot dead by Israeli soldiers as he opened the door to his house.
Majed also alleged Israeli soldiers shot Atiyeh's two-year-old son, Ahmad, in cold blood.
Majed said 80 Samouni family members ended up crowded in his two-storey house before they too fled after the barrage early on Monday morning.
There were other allegations that Israeli soldiers picked off at least one member of the Samouni family as they fled.
By midday on Monday the first Samouni survivors got to Shifa hospital in Gaza City carrying mortally wounded children.
By Tuesday the mortuary had records of ten Samounis having died including three infants who were buried in funeral in Gaza City. A photograph of the funeral appeared on the front of the International Herald Tribune newspaper.
But the number of Samounis who had died but still lay in Zeitoun was unknown. The International Committee of the Red Cross and the local Palestinian Red Crescent twice tried to reach Zeitoun but it was too dangerous.
On Wednesday the ambulances were finally given permission by Israel but with Israeli earth berms on the roads and war damage it was difficult and dangerous for them to search Zeitoun properly.
Around 15 wounded were found including four traumatised children next to what ambulance crew took to be the corpses of their mothers.
The fact Israeli soldiers were within a hundred yards of the children but did not help them led to the ICRC to issue an uncharacteristically strong condemnation pointing out failing to help wounded violates the rules of war.
"The ICRC believes that in this instance the Israeli military failed to meet its obligation under international humanitarian law to care for and evacuate the wounded,'' the statement said.
"It considers the delay in allowing rescue services access unacceptable.'' And it demanded full access to Zeitoun to recover wounded civilians it believes are still there.
Israel has so far refused permission for the ambulances to carry out a full sweep.
Last night an Israeli army spokesman said an initial internal investigation had found no evidence Israeli armed forces had done anything wrong during combat around the Samouni family homes in Zeitoun.
He denied the army massed civilians in specific locations and said there was no record of a “specific attack on a specific target’’ in the area last Monday.
“This does not rule out exchanges of fire but it does rule out targeting of a specific building,’’ he said.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
White Phosphorus
No --- this is not a Christmas light show but white phosphorus whose use against civilian areas and civilians is forbidden under International Humanitarian Law. Although the ICRC claims that there is "no evidence to suggest the incendiary agent is being used improperly or illegally," doctors and other human rights organization working with the victims of the bombardment claim otherwise.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Gaza is Dying
The people of Gaza are dying in more ways than one. There are increasing campaigns to free the people from the violent grip of occupation and genocide and to stop the war on all civilians on all sides and to encourage the silent and complicit Arab and Western nations to intervene. Please read and sign the petition by the grassroots global movement Avaaz. Nothing justifies this kind of slaughter.
Marilyn.
Dear friends,
As the awful Gaza death toll passes 1000, our Ceasefire Now petition is being delivered worldwide through ads, phone calls, and meetings with world leaders. We urgently need to reach 1 million signatures this week, act now:
Sign Ceasefire Petition,
see our US ads!
Gaza is dying -- the battle is advancing into cities packed with 1.5 million terrified civilians lacking food, medicine or water. President Bush undermined Thursday's United Nations ceasefire resolution, over 1000 people are dead, the UN headquarters and Gaza's main hospital are burning: there is nowhere safe. The borders remain closed -- journalists can't get in, and desperate civilians can't get out.
But the global movement to end this war is building -- our petition is at 430,000 signatures and rising , it has been delivered to top leaders at the EU, UN and Arab League, our US members are flooding their representatives with phone calls, and Avaaz members worldwide have donated over $120,000 to an ad campaign in key newspapers.
The pressure is working -- so we're ratcheting it up with hard-hitting US ads pressing Barack Obama personally for an immediate change of tack , face-to-face petition deliveries to European leaders this week to get them to act, and working with Palestinians and Israelis to plan bold actions on the ground. But every one of these actions becomes stronger as more of us join the campaign. We need to reach 1 million signatures this week -- sign the petition now and let's forward this email to all our friends and family :
http://www.avaaz.org/en/gaza_
Voices for a ceasefire are finally being heard in the Israeli cabinet and media, Hamas is signalling it could accept a deal including Turkish forces and EU monitors, but the sides are too far apart to end this themselves.[3] That's why action by world powers is critical to break the deadlock -- and global citizens' voices can make all the difference if we raise an unstoppable voice calling on incoming President Obama, the EU and Arab and Muslim states to guarantee a fair and lasting ceasefire.
This week we are lobbying European and Muslim states for a more effective international initiative to end the violence , protect civilians on all sides and make normal life possible again in Gaza, while reaching out to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon who is in the Middle East working for a deal (we met him last year to deliver our food crisis campaign). Meanwhile we're challenging contacts on both sides to think creatively and accept a fair, internationally-overseen agreement.
We've already run member-funded ads in the influential Washington Post and Roll Call, the US Congress newspaper -- on the day of his inauguration this coming Tuesday, we will press Barack Obama to abandon Bush's failed policies and act immediately to end this war , using his own words alongside hard facts to make the case in ads, US media debates and directly lobbying his team.
It's amazing what we can do when hundreds of thousands of us come together arond the world -- and if we raise our efforts to another level this week, we could help to finally end the Gaza horror. Follow the link below to take the first step by signing the petition, then spread the word so others can do the same:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/gaza_
With hope and determination,
Paul, Graziela, Alice, Ricken, Luis, Brett, Ben, Iain, Paula, Veronique, Milena and the whole Avaaz team
P.S. For a report on some of Avaaz's other campaigns so far, see: https://secure.avaaz.org/en/
Sources:
1. "White House behind US volte-face on ceasefire call":
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
"Israeli PM Ehud Olmert claims to be able to order Bush around":
http://www.juancole.com/2009/
2. Washington Post : Israelis Push to Edge of Gaza City:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
3. Haaretz , "Olmert ignoring calls from Barak, Livni for immediate Gaza truce":
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/
Other Voice - Sderot and Gaza residents calling for a ceasefire:
http://www.othervoice.org/
On Hamas acceptance of a Turkish force, first reported in the Arabic Al-Hayat newspaper, see:
http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/
"Gaza bloodshed continues despite UN calls for ceasefire" , 9 January 2009:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
"Reigniting Violence: How Do Ceasefires End?" (6 January 2009) is a statistical analysis by an MIT professor, based on Israel's own data for rocket fire (which it shows stopped for four months) and on which side struck first. It provides useful factual background for how the Israel-Hamas truce effectively collapsed in November well before it expired (facts poorly reflected in some news reporting):
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
International Crisis Group's Ending the War in Gaza report (5 January 2009):
http://www.crisisgroup.org/
This Rasmussen Reports poll from the US is of interest: Only 31% of Democrats support offensive, most prefer a diplomatic solution :
http://www.rasmussenreports.
"Gaza: outlines of an endgame" , Ghassan Khatib (6 January 2009)
http://www.opendemocracy.net/
Jerusalem Post: "Israel must get out of Gaza now" , 8 January 2009: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/
Reuters: "Hamas seeks truce but says lifting siege a must" (5 January 2009) http://www.alertnet.org/
The US Army War College has just released a substantial report supporting the view that Hamas can and must be brought into negotiations and is capable of sustaining a long-term truce, or even peace with Israel. Linked via:
http://ricks.foreignpolicy.
The inside story of the civil strife between Fatah and Hamas and the Bush administration's involvement in this debacle is best-told in The Gaza Bombshell , an investigative article published in the leading US magazine Vanity Fair in April 2008:
http://www.vanityfair.com/
ABOUT AVAAZ Avaaz.org is an independent, not-for-profit global campaigning organization that works to ensure that the views and values of the world's people inform global decision-making. (Avaaz means "voice" in many languages.) Avaaz receives no money from governments or corporations, and is staffed by a global team based in Ottawa, London, Rio de Janeiro, New York, Buenos Aires, and Geneva. Call us at:
To contact write to info@avaaz.org. You can also call at
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Let Gaza Live
Rally for Gaza by Students for Justice and Peace in the Middle East
8 January 2009
California Polytechnic State University
San Luis Obispo, CA, USA
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Holocaust Denied
"It is not enough for journalists to see themselves as mere messengers without understanding the hidden agendas of the message and myths that surround it."-- John Pilger
Holocaust Denied
The lying silence of those who know
By John Pilger
Writing in the New Statesman, John Pilger calls on 40 years of reporting the Middle East to describe the 'why' of Israel's bloody onslaught on the besieged people of Gaza - an attack that has little to do with Hamas or Israel's right to exist.
January 08, 2009 "Information Clearinghouse"
"When the truth is replaced by silence," the Soviet dissident Yevgeny Yevtushenko said, "the silence is a lie." It may appear the silence is broken on Gaza. The cocoons of murdered children, wrapped in green, together with boxes containing their dismembered parents and the cries of grief and rage of everyone in that death camp by the sea, can be viewed on al-Jazeera and YouTube, even glimpsed on the BBC. But Russia's incorrigible poet was not referring to the ephemeral we call news; he was asking why those who knew the why never spoke it and so denied it. Among the Anglo-American intelligentsia, this is especially striking. It is they who hold the keys to the great storehouses of knowledge: the historiographies and archives that lead us to the why.
They know that the horror now raining on Gaza has little to do with Hamas or, absurdly, "Israel's right to exist." They know the opposite to be true: that Palestine's right to exist was canceled 61 years ago and the expulsion and, if necessary, extinction of the indigenous people was planned and executed by the founders of Israel. They know, for example, that the infamous "Plan D" resulted in the murderous depopulation of 369 Palestinian towns and villages by the Haganah (Jewish army) and that massacre upon massacre of Palestinian civilians in such places as Deir Yassin, al-Dawayima, Eilaboun, Jish, Ramle and Lydda are referred to in official records as "ethnic cleansing." Arriving at a scene of this carnage, David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, was asked by a general, Yigal Allon, "What shall we do with the Arabs?" Ben-Gurion, reported the Israeli historian Benny Morris, "made a dismissive, energetic gesture with his hand and said, ‘Expel them'. The order to expel an entire population "without attention to age" was signed by Yitzhak Rabin, a future prime minister promoted by the world's most efficient propaganda as a peacemaker. The terrible irony of this was addressed only in passing, such as when the Mapan Party co-leader Meir Ya'ari noted "how easily" Israel's leaders spoke of how it was "possible and permissible to take women, children and old men and to fill the roads with them because such is the imperative of strategy … who remembers who used this means against our people during the [Second World] war … we are appalled."
Every subsequent "war" Israel has waged has had the same objective: the expulsion of the native people and the theft of more and more land. The lie of David and Goliath, of perennial victim, reached its apogee in 1967 when the propaganda became a righteous fury that claimed the Arab states had struck first. Since then, mostly Jewish truth-tellers such as Avi Schlaim, Noam Chomsky, the late Tanya Reinhart, Neve Gordon, Tom Segev, Yuri Avnery, Ilan Pappe and Norman Finklestein have dispatched this and other myths and revealed a state shorn of the humane traditions of Judaism, whose unrelenting militarism is the sum of an expansionist, lawless and racist ideology called zionism. "It seems," wrote the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe on 2 January, "that even the most horrendous crimes, such as the genocide in Gaza, are treated as desperate events, unconnected to anything that happened in the past and not associated with any ideology or system … Very much as the apartheid ideology explained the oppressive policies of the South African government, this ideology – in its most consensual and simplistic variety – has allowed all the Israeli governments in the past and the present to dehumanize the Palestinians wherever they are and strive to destroy them. The means altered from period to period, from location to location, as did the narrative covering up these atrocities. But there is a clear pattern [of genocide]."
In Gaza, the enforced starvation and denial of humanitarian aid, the piracy of life-giving resources such as fuel and water, the denial of medicines and treatment, the systematic destruction of infrastructure and the killing and maiming of the civilian population, 50 per cent of whom are children, meet the international standard of the Genocide Convention. "Is it an irresponsible overstatement," asked Richard Falk, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and international law authority at Princeton University, "to associate the treatment of Palestinians with this criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity? I think not."
In describing a "holocaust-in-the making," Falk was alluding to the Nazis' establishment of Jewish ghettos in Poland. For one month in 1943, the captive Polish Jews led by Mordechaj Anielewiz fought off the German army and the SS, but their resistance was finally crushed and the Nazis exacted their final revenge. Falk is also a Jew. Today's holocaust-in-the-making, which began with Ben-Gurion's Plan D, is in its final stages. The difference today is that it is a joint US-Israeli project. The F-16 jet fighters, the 250-pound "smart" GBU-39 bombs supplied on the eve of the attack on Gaza, having been approved by a Congress dominated by the Democratic Party, plus the annual $2.4 billion in war-making "aid," give Washington de facto control. It beggars belief that President-elect Obama was not informed. Outspoken on Russia's war in Georgia and the terrorism in Mumbai, Obama's silence on Palestine marks his approval, which is to be expected, given his obsequiousness to the Tel Aviv regime and its lobbyists during the presidential campaign and his appointment of Zionists as his secretary of state, chief of staff and principal Middle East advisers. When Aretha Franklin sings "Think," her wonderful 1960s anthem to freedom, at Obama's inauguration on 21 January, I trust someone with the brave heart of Muntadar al-Zaidi, the shoe-thrower, will shout: "Gaza!"
The asymmetry of conquest and terror is clear. Plan D is now "Operation Cast Lead," which is the unfinished "Operation Justified Vengeance." The latter was launched by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2001 when, with Bush's approval, he used F-16s against Palestinian towns and villages for the first time. In the same year, the authoritative Jane's Foreign Report disclosed that the Blair government had given Israel the "green light" to attack the West Bank after it was shown Israel's secret designs for a bloodbath. It was typical of New Labor Party's enduring, cringing complicity in Palestine's agony. However, the 2001 Israeli plan, reported Jane's, needed the "trigger" of a suicide bombing which would cause "numerous deaths and injuries [because] the 'revenge' factor is crucial." This would "motivate Israeli soldiers to demolish the Palestinians." What alarmed Sharon and the author of the plan, General Shaul Mofaz, the Israeli Chief of Staff, was a secret agreement between Yasser Arafat and Hamas to ban suicide attacks. On 23 November, 2001, Israeli agents assassinated the Hamas leader, Mahmud Abu Hunud, and got their "trigger"; the suicide attacks resumed in response to his killing.
Something uncannily similar happened on 5 November last, when Israeli special forces attacked Gaza, killing six people. Once again, they got their propaganda "trigger." A ceasefire initiated and sustained by the Hamas government – which had imprisoned its violators – was shattered by the Israeli attack and homemade rockets were fired into what used to be Palestine before its Arab occupants were "cleansed." The On 23 December, Hamas offered to renew the ceasefire, but Israel's charade was such that its all-out assault on Gaza had been planned six months earlier, according to the Israeli daily Ha'aretz.
Behind this sordid game is the "Dagan Plan," named after General Meir Dagan, who served with Sharon in his bloody invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Now head of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence organization, Dagan is the author of a "solution" that has seen the imprisonment of Palestinians behind a ghetto wall snaking across the West Bank and in Gaza, effectively a concentration camp. The establishment of a quisling government in Ramallah under Mohammed Abbas is Dagan's achievement, together with a hasbara (propaganda) campaign relayed through a mostly supine, if intimidated western media, notably in America, that says Hamas is a terrorist organization devoted to Israel's destruction and to "blame" for the massacres and siege of its own people over two generations, long before its creation. "We have never had it so good," said the Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Gideon Meir in 2006. "The hasbara effort is a well-oiled machine." In fact, Hamas's real threat is its example as the Arab world's only democratically elected government, drawing its popularity from its resistance to the Palestinians' oppressor and tormentor. This was demonstrated when Hamas foiled a CIA coup in 2007, an event ordained in the western media as "Hamas's seizure of power." Likewise, Hamas is never described as a government, let alone democratic. Neither is its proposal of a ten-year truce as a historic recognition of the "reality" of Israel and support for a two-state solution with just one condition: that the Israelis obey international law and end their illegal occupation beyond the 1967 borders. As every annual vote in the UN General Assembly demonstrates, 99 per cent of humanity concurs. On 4 January, the president of the General Assembly, Miguel d'Escoto, described the Israeli attack on Gaza as a "monstrosity."
When the monstrosity is done and the people of Gaza are even more stricken, the Dagan Plan foresees what Sharon called a "1948-style solution" – the destruction of all Palestinian leadership and authority followed by mass expulsions into smaller and smaller "cantonments" and perhaps finally into Jordan. This demolition of institutional and educational life in Gaza is designed to produce, wrote Karma Nabulsi, a Palestinian exile in Britain, "a Hobbesian vision of an anarchic society: truncated, violent, powerless, destroyed, cowed … Look to the Iraq of today: that is what [Sharon] had in store for us, and he has nearly achieved it."
Dr. Dahlia Wasfi is an American writer on Palestine. She has a Jewish mother and an Iraqi Muslim father. "Holocaust denial is anti-Semitic," she wrote on 31 December. "But I'm not talking about World War Two, Mahmoud Ahmedinijad (the president of Iran) or Ashkenazi Jews. What I'm referring to is the holocaust we are all witnessing and responsible for in Gaza today and in Palestine over the past 60 years … Since Arabs are Semites, US-Israeli policy doesn't get more anti-Semitic than this." She quoted Rachel Corrie, the young American who went to Palestine to defend Palestinians and was crushed by an Israeli bulldozer. "I am in the midst of a genocide," wrote Corrie, "which I am also indirectly supporting and for which my government is largely responsible."
Reading the words of both, I am struck by the use of "responsibility." Breaking the lie of silence is not an esoteric abstraction but an urgent responsibility that falls to those with the privilege of a platform. With the BBC cowed, so too is much of journalism, merely allowing vigorous debate within unmovable invisible boundaries, ever fearful of the smear of anti-Semitism. The unreported news, meanwhile, is that the death toll in Gaza is the equivalent of 18,000 dead in Britain. Imagine, if you can.
Then there are the academics, the deans and teachers and researchers. Why are they silent as they watch a university bombed and hear the Association of University Teachers in Gaza plea for help? Are British universities now, as Terry Eagleton believes, no more than "intellectual Tescos, churning out a commodity known as graduates rather than greengroceries"?
Then there are the writers. In the dark year of 1939, the Third Writers' Congress was held at Carnegie Hall in New York and the likes of Thomas Mann and Albert Einstein sent messages and spoke up to ensure the lie of silence was broken. By one account, 3,500 jammed the auditorium and a thousand were turned away. Today, this mighty voice of realism and morality is said to be obsolete; the literary review pages affect an ironic hauteur of irrelevance; false symbolism is all. As for the readers, their moral and political imagination is to be pacified, not primed. The anti-Muslim Martin Amis expressed this well in Visiting Mrs. Nabokov: "The dominance of the self is not a flaw, it is an evolutionary characteristic; it is just how things are."
If that is how things are, we are diminished as a civilized society. For what happens in Gaza is the defining moment of our time, which either grants the impunity of war criminals the immunity of our silence, while we contort our own intellect and morality, or gives us the power to speak out. For the moment I prefer my own memory of Gaza: of the people's courage and resistance and their "luminous humanity," as Karma Nabulsi put it. On my last trip there, I was rewarded with a spectacle of Palestinian flags fluttering in unlikely places. It was dusk and children had done this. No one told them to do it. They made flagpoles out of sticks tied together, and a few of them climbed on to a wall and held the flag between them, some silently, others crying out. They do this every day when they know foreigners are leaving, believing the world will not forget them.
The Time of the Righteous
The Israeli journalist, Gideon Levy, writes about the hypocrisy of unjust wars and the current assault on Gaza, where the "morally righteous" can feel good about the killing of the innocents of others while decrying the deaths of their own using hypocritical moral arguments. Marilyn
From Haaretz, 01/09/2009
by Gideon Levy
This war, perhaps more than its predecessors, is exposing the true deep veins of Israeli society. Racism and hatred are rearing their heads, as is the impulse for revenge and the thirst for blood. The "inclination of the commander" in the Israel Defense Forces is now "to kill as many as possible," as the military correspondents on television describe it. And even if the reference is to Hamas fighters, this inclination is still chilling.
The unbridled aggression and brutality are justified as "exercising caution": the frightening balance of blood - about 100 Palestinian dead for every Israeli killed, isn't raising any questions, as if we've decided that their blood is worth one hundred times less than ours, in acknowledgement of our inherent racism.
Rightists, nationalists, chauvinists and militarists are the only legitimate bon ton in town. Don't bother us about humaneness and compassion. Only at the edges of the camp can a voice of protest be heard - illegitimate, ostracized and ignored by media coverage - from a small but brave group of Jews and Arabs.
Alongside all this, rings another voice, perhaps the worst of all. This is the voice of the righteous and the hypocritical. My colleague, Ari Shavit, seems to be their eloquent spokesman. This week, Shavit wrote here ("Israel must double, triple, quadruple its medical aid to Gaza," Haaretz, January 7): "The Israeli offensive in Gaza is justified ... Only an immediate and generous humanitarian initiative will prove that even during the brutal warfare that has been forced on us, we remember that there are human beings on the other side."
To Shavit, who defended the justness of this war and insisted that it mustn't be lost, the price is immaterial, as is the fact that there are no victories in such unjust wars. And he dares, in the same breath, to preach "humaneness."
Does Shavit wish for us to kill and kill, and afterward to set up field hospitals and send medicine to care for the wounded? He knows that a war against a helpless population, perhaps the most helpless one in the world, that has nowhere to escape to, can only be cruel and despicable. But these people always want to come out of it looking good. We'll drop bombs on residential buildings, and then we'll treat the wounded at Ichilov; we'll shell meager places of refuge in United Nations schools, and then we'll rehabilitate the disabled at Beit Lewinstein. We'll shoot and then we'll cry, we'll kill and then we'll lament, we'll cut down women and children like automatic killing machines, and we'll also preserve our dignity.
The problem is - it just doesn't work that way. This is outrageous hypocrisy and self-righteousness. Those who make inflammatory calls for more and more violence without regard for the consequences are at least being more honest about it.
You can't have it both ways. The only "purity" in this war is the "purification from terrorists," which really means the sowing of horrendous tragedies. What's happening in
Yet there are some who still want it both ways. To kill and destroy indiscriminately and also to come out looking good, with a clean conscience. To go ahead with war crimes without any sense of the heavy guilt that should accompany them. It takes some nerve. Anyone who justifies this war also justifies all its crimes. Anyone who preaches for this war and believes in the justness of the mass killing it is inflicting has no right whatsoever to speak about morality and humaneness. There is no such thing as simultaneously killing and nurturing. This attitude is a faithful representation of the basic, twofold Israeli sentiment that has been with us forever: To commit any wrong, but to feel pure in our own eyes. To kill, demolish, starve, imprison and humiliate - and be right, not to mention righteous. The righteous warmongers will not be able to allow themselves these luxuries.
Anyone who justifies this war also justifies all its crimes. Anyone who sees it as a defensive war must bear the moral responsibility for its consequences. Anyone who now encourages the politicians and the army to continue will also have to bear the mark of Cain that will be branded on his forehead after the war. All those who support the war also support the horror
Monday, January 5, 2009
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Israel's Fait Accompli in Gaza
Gaza is one of the world's most densely populated places [GALLO/GETTY]The real motives behind the Israeli assault on Gaza is discussed in the following article by Eric Margolis. It focuses on the discrepancy between what is portrayed in the media in the United States and what is actually happening and how the Zionist propaganda machinery is slanting coverage to minimize the effect of the war and the months old blockade on civilians. The Obama administration is also analyzed in its relationship to Israel. It seems it is still business as usual where the incoming administration will be in the grip of biblical war-mongering Zionists.
The rest of the world sees the situation differently, though.
Marilyn.
Israel's Fait Accompli in Gaza
by Eric S. Margolis
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.
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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.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Where is the Academic Outrage?
The silence surrounding the bombing of the Islamic University in Gaza is deafening. The double standard of the international academic community is highlighted in the following article by Neve Gordon and Jeff Halper in Counterpunch. As a result of the article, a group of 100 California academics issued a statement opposing the actions of the occupying power and calling for a halt on the attacks against institutions of higher learning and their students. Following the article is a statement by California Scholars for Academic Freedom.Marilyn.
Where's the Academic Outrage Over the Bombing of a University in Gaza?
By NEVE GORDON and JEFF HALPER
Not one of the nearly 450 presidents of American colleges and universities who prominently denounced an effort by British academics to boycott Israeli universities in September 2007 have raised their voice in opposition to Israel’s bombardment of the Islamic University of Gaza earlier this week. Lee C. Bollinger, president of
While the extent of the damage to the Islamic University, which was hit in six separate airstrikes, is still unknown, recent reports indicate that at least two major buildings were targeted, a science laboratory and the Ladies’ Building, where female students attended classes. There were no casualties, as the university was evacuated when the Israeli assault began on Saturday.
Virtually all the commentators agree that the Islamic University was attacked, in part, because it is a cultural symbol of Hamas, the ruling party in the elected Palestinian government, which
Established in 1978 by the founder of Hamas — with the approval of Israeli authorities — the Islamic University is the first and most important institution of higher education in
Those restrictions became international news last summer when
Notwithstanding the importance of the Islamic University, Israel has tried to justify the bombing. An army spokeswoman told The Chronicle that the targeted buildings were used as “a research and development center for Hamas weapons, including Qassam rockets. … One of the structures struck housed explosives laboratories that were an inseparable part of Hamas’s research-and-development program, as well as places that served as storage facilities for the organization. The development of these weapons took place under the auspices of senior lecturers who are activists in Hamas.”
Islamic University officials deny the Israeli allegations. Yet even if there is some merit in them, it is common knowledge that practically all major American and Israeli universities are engaged in research and development of military applications and receive money from the Pentagon and defense corporations. Weapon development and even manufacturing have, unfortunately, become major projects at universities worldwide — a fact that does not justify bombing them.
By launching an attack on Gaza, the Israeli government has once again chosen to adopt strategies of violence that are tragically akin to the ones deployed by Hamas — only the Israeli tactics are much more lethal. How should academics respond to this assault on an institution of higher education? Regardless of one’s stand on the proposed boycott of Israeli universities, anyone so concerned about academic freedom as to put one’s name on a petition should be no less outraged when
Neve Gordon is chair of the department of politics and government at
Jeff Halper Jeff Halper is the Director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) and author of An Israeli in Palestine: Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israel (Pluto Press, 2008). He can be reached at jeff@icahd.org.
California Scholars for Academic Freedom
Condemn Bombing of Gaza Educational Institutions
Contacts:
Sondra Hale, 310-836-5121 (UCLA) [sonhale@ucla.edu]
Rabab Abdulhadi, 914-882-3180 (AMED-SFSU) [amed@sfsu.edu]
Sherna Berger Gluck, 310-455-1028 (CSULB) [sbgluck@csulb.edu]
Jess Ghannam, 415-726-3951 (UCSF) [jess.ghannam@ucsf.edu]
CALIFORNIA SCHOLARS FOR ACADEMIC FREEDOM (CS4AF), a group of 100 scholars at 20 California institutions of higher learning, condemns in the strongest possible terms the Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip that have targeted the Islamic University and other educational sites.
While we decry Israeli war crimes and violations of human rights, and condemn the massive Israeli bombardment of Gaza which has caused hundreds of deaths, as educators in California institutions of higher learning, we are especially appalled at the destruction of educational institutions and student casualties.
On December 27th, Human Rights Watch reported that an Israeli air-to-ground missile struck a group of students leaving the
These direct assaults on Palestinian students and educational institutions are only the latest chapter in
The background to the current crisis is too complicated to detail in a press release. It is, however, important to note, first, that under international law,
As CALIFORNIA SCHOLARS FOR ACADEMIC FREEDOM, we will continue to play our mandated role to educate the international public about the right to education and the egregious violation of that right by the Israeli government. We will participate in campaigns aimed at exerting pressure on international authorities and the governments of Israel and the U.S. to implement an immediate cease-fire and begin preparations for an end to the blockade and the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank.
We insist that
CALIFORNIA SCHOLARS FOR ACADEMIC FREEDOM is a one-year-old group of 100 academics who teach in 20 California institutions. The group formed as a response to various violations of academic freedom that were arising from both the post-9/11/2001 climate of civil rights violations and the increasing attacks on progressive educators by neo-conservatives. Many attacks were aimed at scholars of Arab, Muslim or Middle Eastern descent or at scholars researching and teaching about the Middle East, Arab and Muslim communities. Our goal of protecting California Scholars based mainly in institutions of higher education has grown broader in scope. We recognize that violations of academic freedom anywhere are threats to academic freedom everywhere.
For statements by other academicians see Neve Gordon and Jeff Halper’s “Targeting Islamic University: Where’s the Academic Outrage Over the Bombing of a University in Gaza?”
http://www.counterpunch.org/gordon12312008.html
.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Thursday, January 1, 2009
The Most Moral Army in the World
There is a sad joke that crosses the minds and lips of many in the Middle East, including some bloggers on the internet. If you want your house demolished or if you want to get rid of a troublesome human pest, no problem, the Israeli " Defense" Forces will gladly oblige. No need to ask. They have empathetic powers and will anticipate your problems, even during Christmastime. The Lebanese and Gazan people will attest to that. After all, the "most moral army" in the world has to live up to its name. Be it bulldozers, colonists who do the grunt work, "smart bombs," nerve gas, booby traps, airplanes, cluster bombs, fire to nourish your olive trees, all are provided free of charge to everyone who is not a Jewish Israeli and who exhibits any sign of discomfort, including protest against blockades, occupation, land grabbing, murder, and plain bullying.
No need to keep re-building. The average life-span of a house in Palestine and Southern Lebanon is about 10 years.
The "most moral army" is on a mission to discipline all you lowly Arabs out there. Their killings and economic blockades are to protect their people. It is a funny age when the only nuclear power in the Middle East needs to protect itself from those who do not even have one airplane. Blockades, separation walls, apartheid policies, wars, child murders, extrajudicial killings, occupations, torture, and violations of International Law and UN Security resolutions, have been going on for over 60 years. IDF biblical dictate states: A thousand eyes for an eye and a million teeth for one tooth." One has to acknowledge morality when one witnesses its outcome.
The children of Lebanon are thankful for the gifts left behind after the July 2006 War. Laos and Lebanon are the two countries most littered with cluster munitions that continue to kill and maim children every year. Let us all send flowers to Livni and thank her for caring about Arab children so much; after all isn't she one of the many "moral" demagogues who state that Arabs (and the kind of Arab changes based on the campaign of the day) do not care about their own children and all Arab children deaths are a result of Hizbollah and Hamas action?
Should we tell Ms. Livni the same about Jewish children who died during WWII or during the invasion of Lebanon and the occupation of Palestine? When an Israeli helicopter sprays a university, a school, or a hospital in Gaza, and Hamas (and by proxy, all of the Palestinian people) are blamed for those deaths, should we state a similar argument when a suicide bomber blows himself up in a market place in Israel? Could those deaths be the result of the actions of the Zionist state that forced the hand of Hamas to resort to such tactics to "protect" THEIR own people from annihilation?
But I doubt if Ms. Livni and her right arm of the "most moral army" have even given such an analogy any thought, not because she and her "most moral" band of killers do not possess adequate powers of reasoning, but because they really don't give a damn about any Arab life and, that is where the moral argument crumbles and that is where the basis of the ideological birth of a "just" nation lies in shambles.
The Zionist Israeli State has continuously proven that it will "protect" its citizens till the last man, woman, and child on Earth (Sharon did not mince any words when he stated that in other terms), including their own.
But hope glimmers in the conscience of the few within Israel who have looked within and who have explored the relationship between the history of their parents and grandparents under unbearable situations and the Palestinians under a brutal occupation. They are asking the right questions and addressing the moral argument. Sara Roy is one of those people. She wrote a detailed article about the situation in Gaza, entitled: If Gaza Falls
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