Jerusalem families waiting for US action

by Marcey Gayer, The Electronic Intifada, 14 August 2009

In the early morning hours of Sunday, 2 August, a force of hundreds of police and border guards invaded the quiet East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah and systematically evicted the sleeping Hanoun and Gawi families from their homes. The sun dawned upon a new reality: chaos in the streets, children crying and elders in anguish. The police blocked every entrance to the area, preventing friends from coming to the aid of the distressed families or even helping them to remove their belongings from their homes. Revealing prior coordination with the authorities, the homes were quickly occupied by ultra-orthodox Jewish settlers.

The Hanoun and Gawi families, consisting of 16 and 38 members, respectively, lived in their homes for 53 years. Built in 1956 by the UN and the Jordanian government (who had sovereignty over East Jerusalem at the time) as part of a temporary housing complex for refugees of the 1948 war, these were homes for those who already knew eviction and ethnic cleansing. However, this time the dispossession was accomplished "legally."

Since the 1967 conquest of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel has been building settlements along the eastern flank of Jerusalem to prevent expansion of its Arab neighborhoods. Moreover, within the past 20 years, the Israeli settlement project has begun encroaching upon the Arab neighborhoods themselves, installing nationalist Jewish families within their perimeters by force. Slowly but relentlessly, Israel is attempting to Judaize these neighborhoods in a manner designed not to attract international scrutiny and criticism.

Thus Maher Hanoun, the head of the Hanoun family, was ordered by Israeli courts to hand over the keys to his home to the Association of Sephardic Jewry on 19 July. Rather than comply with the court order, he held a press conference outside his house accompanied by several top officials, including Nils Eliasson of the Swedish Consulate representing the European Union, Robert Serry representing the UN, and Dr. Rafik Husseini of the Palestinian Authority. They all condemned the proposed eviction, calling it an affront to norms of international justice. In spite of US President Barack Obama's call to freeze Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, no representative from the US was present.

Hanoun, a 51-year-old salesman for the Nestle Corporation whose sales territory includes Jerusalem, the occupied West Bank, and Tel Aviv, is fluent in Arabic, Hebrew and English. He is a man of culture and conscience, a believer in peaceful co-existence. He is soft-spoken, dignified and humorous, a devoted husband and the father of three wonderful children. He is the global everyman -- simple, honest, hard-working -- hardly deserving to be evicted from his home. But he and his family were evicted, simply because they are Palestinian.

Where does this all leave us? Maher Hanoun, his two brothers and their wives and children and the Gawis, 54 persons all together, are now sleeping under trees 50 feet from their former homes. Menacing armored vehicles are parked in front of each house and the neighborhood is overrun with police, border guards and stone-throwing settlers.

The dispossession of the Hanoun and Gawi families is a clear act of defiance directed at the Obama administration's call to freeze settlements. If it succeeds, this will be a green light for Israel to continue with its ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in East Jerusalem. Already five additional Sheikh Jarrah families have received court summonses and they are fated to join the Hanouns and the Gawis in the street if this supposedly "legal" land grab isn't stopped. If the new US president is to have any credibility on the international stage, he must keep faith with Maher Hanoun. Outside his home, Hanoun hung a big banner bearing President Obama's picture and the slogan "OBAMA,YES YOU CAN stop housing evictions in Sheikh Jarrah."

He and the world are still waiting.

Marcey Gayer is an Israeli-American activist residing in Tel Aviv.

Watch also the clip - Homeless in Jerusalem.

Zionism - Ruin of the Soul

Israel’s Discriminatory Land Policies

In 1973, former Israeli scholar, critic, and lifelong human rights activist, Israel Shahak (1933-2001), wrote a paper titled, “What is the Meaning of the Jewish State” in which he said:

“The real situation in Israel is really very simple: Israel is not an ‘Israeli’ state, or a state of its citizens but it is a ‘Jewish state.’” With regard to land, “More than 90% of the inhabited areas of the State of Israel are under the rule of the Jewish National Fund regulations, under which non-Jews cannot rent or buy a house or flat, open a business, in short cannot live. This land is called in Hebrew ‘the land’ saved. The land which belongs to non-Jews is called unsaved not national (meaning Jewish) and by buying or confiscating it from a non-Jew by a Jew, the land is supposed to be ’saved.’ ”

It’s only the beginning. Numerous privileges are afforded Jews alone that include:

• not only the right to the land but to a mortgage or loan to finance it;
• on confiscated West Bank land, “Jewish inhabitants enter into prepared houses, with water and electricity;” unconnected Arab villages are forbidden to use either; and
• “A building project for the newly-married applies only for the Jewish newly-married and so forth; to be a Jew in a Jewish state is to be both a privileged being, and to be able to receive a lot of ‘easy’ money a non-Jew can not ever get.”

Read further here.

The Zionist faith

Their soldiers commit cold blooded murder; use human shields, kill innocent people, commit massacres and Israelis see nothing wrong with it. They simply adore some one like Rabbi Meir Kahane, they worship Rabbi Goldstein who mowed down Muslim worships in Hebron, they adore their own army that fires tank rounds at children playing on the beach, target civilian apartments, destroy farms and uproot century-old Olive trees for the hell of it. They simply stand up and cheered as their tanks, jets, artillery level Gaza, killing so many innocent women and children and simply destroying the entire Gaza Strip. It looked like the 4^th of July and they were cheering as the jets dropped phosphorous bombs on civilian targets. They cheered the power of their destructive force and they simply have no remorse for what they have done to so many hundreds of thousands of people. They are taught in their Yeshivas, killing Arabs is simply an act of divine order and is part of the new Zionist’s faith.

They try to create facts on the ground, through land and water theft, and they claim they are building a “security wall” rather than an “Apartheid Wall” knowing well they are simply stealing the land, the water, destroying farms simply because they see nothing wrong with it and then they tell the world it is for “security” as if only the Israeli Jews are entitled to have peace and security and the Palestinians are simply God’s trash. If they are talking security then let them build their own wall a mile high along the 67 borders and no one will give a damn. Let them live in the Ghetto they have formed around themselves.

The daily humiliations, millions of Palestinians had to endure should tell all of us something about this new Israeli “Jewish” psyche as part of a grand scheme to dehumanize the Palestinians just like the Nazis did when they commenced to dehumanize the Jews and ended up putting them in death camps. Palestinians have to wait for hours simply to go from one village to an adjacent village or to access their farms, and Israelis do this to supplement their land theft, ethnic cleansing of Arabs from Jerusalem, destruction and demolition of thousands of homes, with 6,000 Palestinian homes slated for demolition in Jerusalem. The Israelis simply do not see anything wrong with their occupation; they see nothing wrong with what they and their army and government are doing to the Palestinians. Israelis and their cousins in the US have some serious issues.

Text taken from Sami Jamil Jadallah - What is wrong with Israeli “Jews”? A whole lot!.

Read Also "Breaking the Silence:" Testimonies of Israeli Soldiers.

"Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid?: A re-assessment of Israel's practices in the occupied Palestinian territories under international law.

The Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa (HSRC) has released a report confirming that Israel is practicing both colonialism and apartheid in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).

The HSRC commissioned an international team of scholars and practitioners of international public law from South Africa, the United Kingdom, Israel and the West Bank to conduct this study. The resulting 300-page report, titled "Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid?: A re-assessment of Israel's practices in the occupied Palestinian territories under international law," represents 15 months of research and constitutes an exhaustive review of Israel's practices in the OPT according to definitions of colonialism and apartheid provided by international law. The project was suggested originally by the January 2007 report by eminent South African jurist John Dugard, in his capacity as Special Rapporteur to the United Nations Human Rights Council, when he indicated that Israeli practices had assumed characteristics of colonialism and apartheid.

Regarding colonialism, the team found that Israel's policy and practices violate the prohibition on colonialism which the international community developed in the 1960s in response to the great decolonization struggles in Africa and Asia. Israel's policy is demonstrably to fragment the West Bank and annex part of it permanently to Israel, which is the hallmark of colonialism. Israel has appropriated land and water in the OPT, merged the Palestinian economy with Israel's economy, and imposed a system of domination over Palestinians to ensure their subjugation to these measures. Through these measures, Israel has denied the indigenous population the right to self-determination and indicated clear intention to assume sovereignty over portions of its land and natural resources. Permanent annexation of territory in this fashion is the hallmark of colonialism.

Regarding apartheid, the team found that Israel's laws and policies in the OPT fit the definition of apartheid in the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. Israeli law conveys privileges to Jewish settlers and disadvantages Palestinians in the same territory on the basis of their respective identities, which function in this case as racialized identities in the sense provided by international law. Israel's practices are corollary to five of the six "inhuman acts" listed by the Convention. A policy of apartheid is especially indicated by Israel's demarcation of geographic "reserves" in the West Bank, to which Palestinian residence is confined and which Palestinians cannot leave without a permit. The system is very similar to the policy of "Grand Apartheid" in Apartheid South Africa, in which black South Africans were confined to black Homelands delineated by the South African government, while white South Africans enjoyed freedom of movement and full civil rights in the rest of the country.

The full report here ( 3 Mb Pdf)

What kind of Palestinian state will Israel allow to come into being?

Manchester, England. 6th June 2008. Israeli historian Ilan Pappé speaks at a rally sponsored by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign on the anniversary of al Nakba (the catastrophe). The catastrophe was the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians carried out by the Zionists to establish the state of Isreal in 1948. Pappé exposed the suppressed history of this episode in his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.

Pappé was formerly an academic at Haifa University. He now teaches at Exeter University in England.

Watch the clip.

No Sovereign Palestinian state in the real meaning of a state will come ever for Palestinians within the existing power structure in the Middle East.

The 1967 designed strategy is manifested in the Likud – Platform that stated,

“The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river. The Palestinians can run their lives freely in the framework of self-rule, but not as an independent and sovereign state. Thus, for example, in matters of foreign affairs, security, immigration and ecology, their activity shall be limited in accordance with imperatives of Israel’s existence, security and national needs."

To realize the architected prison, terms are mixed up. Terrorist is used instead of resistant; moderates instead of collaborators and subordinates and economic enticements instead of sovereignty and political aspiration. Collusive projects to maintain the status quo of the political landscape go on. The New-Middle East project that aimed at exterminating the resistance movement is one of them.

The only legitimate Palestinian authority and peace partner, in the eyes of the Israeli governments, is the one who accepts to act as a security contractor or a “watchdog” of their own people to control resistance in all forms under pretexts of fighting violence and terrorism and promoting a culture of “moderation”. The Likud - in their platform, demand blatantly that ‘The Palestinian Authority must wage a systematic war on the terror organizations and their infrastructure. The PA must not only intensify its efforts to prevent attacks, but act with determination to prevent potential terrorist acts by dismantling the terrorist infrastructure that has developed and expanded in PA areas since the Oslo accords’. Between the lines, that denotes the resistance to occupation in all sorts.

What does matter as a political end for Israel, the US and their allies is to realize the security of the Israeli state according to the sick mindset of Zionists that perceives the mere existence of Palestinians as a threat.

US rhetoric is full of devious political Language. How can you keep silent and rationalize the political act of blockade of 1.5 million people in Gaza?

Gilad Atzmon - For God's sake, Let them be Sad

As part of their racist campaign against the indigenous Palestinians, Israeli lawmakers are now insisting upon making the commemoration of the Nakba illegal. Recently a number of Israeli cabinet and Knesset Members proposed a "draft law" that would criminalize the remembrance of 1948 Palestinian holocaust (Nakba) by Palestinians holding Israeli citizenship. Interestingly enough, the Jewish state that sets its raison d'être around the remembrance of Jewish suffering is attempting to ban Palestinians from doing exactly the same with their own.

As we know, Israel had wiped out every possible remnant of Palestinian existence on the ground. Palestinian villages, towns, orchards, fields and cultural assets had been erased soon after 1948. Currently, the Israeli lawmakers are taking the war against the Palestinian heritage one step further. It is not just a physical expulsion and erasure of facts on the ground, it is not just racially motivated ethnic cleansing, starvation, land confiscation, house demolition, bombing schools or spreading white phosphorous over populated neighbourhoods, from now on, Israel wants to invade the Palestinian mind. Israeli Knesset members insist upon eradicating the Palestinian collective memory. At least formally, they are trying to ban the right to remember.

Zionism and liberal Jewish thought have very little to do with humanism, ethics or universalism. If anything, Zionism and humanism are opposing concepts for the simple reason that Zionism is a racially orientated tribal philosophy and humanism aims at the universal.

Read further here.

Auschwitz survivor: "I can identify with Palestinian youth"

What motivated you to write your book, The End of Judaism?

In the past, the European media have written extensively about extreme right-wing politicians like Joerg Haider in Austria and Jean-Marie Le Pen in France. But when Ariel Sharon was elected [prime minister] in Israel in 2001, the media remained silent. But in the 1980s I understood the deeply fascist thinking of these politicians. With the book I wanted to distance myself from this. I was raised in Judaism with the equality of relationships among human beings as a core value. I only learned about nationalist Judaism when I heard settlers defend their harassment of Palestinians in interviews. When a publisher asked me to write about my past, I decided to write this book, in a way, to deal with my past. People of one group who dehumanize people who belong to another group can do this, because they either have learned to do so from their parents, or they have been brainwashed by their political leaders. This has happened for decades in Israel in that they manipulate the Holocaust for their political aims. In the long-run the country is destructing itself this way by inducing their Jewish citizens to become paranoid. In 2005 [then Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon illustrated this by saying in the Knesset [the Israeli parliament], we know we cannot trust anyone, we only can trust ourselves. This is the shortest possible definition of somebody who suffers from clinical paranoia. One of the major annoyances in my life is that Israel by means of trickery calls itself a Jewish state, while in fact it is Zionist. It wants the maximum territory with a minimum number of Palestinians. I have four Jewish grandparents. I am an atheist. I share the Jewish socio-cultural inheritance and I have learned about Jewish ethics. I don't wish to be represented by a Zionist state. They have no idea about the Holocaust. They use the Holocaust to implant paranoia in their children.

Read more here.

Zionist in Action

Israel Regime : The Liar

The Israeli Regime has been selling nothing but lies and delusions to the its people, as well as the rest of the world.

Stop the Press! This is what Israeli Democracy Looks Like

Controlling the message is vital for Israel and its apologists because truth, morality, and justice are inherently anathema to Zionism. It is through this control that, for decades now, the word Palestinian has been nearly synonymous with the word terrorist, and therefore any resistance to colonialism, imperialism, military occupation, and economic hegemony is deemed irrational, unprovoked, inhuman terrorism. By controlling this message, the Zionist propagandists are able to pull off an astounding slight of hand on reality: the oppressed becomes the oppressor, the culprit becomes the victim, illegal colonization is cultural liberation, aggressive expansion is righteous reclamation, genocide is self-defense, apartheid is security, and ethnic cleansing is peace.

Int'l study: Israeli control in occupied territories 'is a breach of the prohibition of apartheid'

What follows are some of the highlights of the Executive Summary, but first a few observations. Describing Israel or Israeli policies in terms of apartheid has become more common in recent times, but has also provoked a strong backlash. It is interesting to note, therefore, that this study is a measured assessment written by legal experts on the specific ways in which Israel's policies in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) can be considered to be 'colonialism' and/or 'apartheid', as defined by international law. It is not, quite clearly and openly, saying Israel=South Africa.

The new report was carried out by the Middle East Project of the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa. The Middle East Project is:

an independent two year project of the HSRC to conduct analysis of Middle East politics relevant to South African foreign policy. Its funding was provided by the Department of Foreign Affairs of the Government of South Africa. The analysis in this report is entirely independent of the views or foreign policy of the Government of South Africa and does not represent an official position of the HSRC. It is intended purely as a scholarly resource for the Department of Foreign Affairs and the concerned international community.

Read further here.

Israel's Guantanamo Bay

UN watchdog demands access to Israel's secret prisons

The United Nation's watchdog on torture has criticized Israel for refusing to allow inspections at a secret prison, dubbed by critics as "Israel's Guantanamo Bay," and demanded to know if more such clandestine detention camps are operating.

In a report published on Friday, the Committee Against Torture requested that Israel identify the location of the camp, officially referred to as "Facility 1391," and allow access to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Findings from Israeli human rights groups show that the prison has in the past been used to hold Arab and Muslim prisoners, including Palestinians, and that routine torture and physical abuse were carried out by interrogators.

The UN committee's panel of 10 independent experts also found credible the submissions from Israeli groups that Palestinian detainees are systematically tortured despite the banning of such practices by the Israeli high court in 1999.

The existence of Facility 1391 came to light in 2002, when Palestinians were detained there for the first time during Israel's reinvasion of the West Bank.

Read more here and here.

61 years of Nakba, 418 Palestinian villages destroyed

Palestinians remember and they are not defeated. They will not renounce their rights and their land. The land, the culture is their life, and no one has the right to deny it to them. One day, Palestinian wounds will heal, but until then, let no one forget. Let everyone bear witness to what the Israeli Jews and their supporters did to the Palestinian people.

Watch the clip.

Legality & Legitimacy of Palestine Arm Struggle

“The (Israeli) occupation of (Palestine) is illegal and cannot be made legal. All that has derived from (it) is illegal and illegitimate and cannot gain legitimacy. The facts are incontrovertible. What are the consequences?”

“Peace, stability and democracy in (Palestine) are impossible under occupation. Foreign occupation is opposed by nature to the interests of the occupied people, as proven” by:

• the forced diaspora;
• many others internally displaced or in refugee camps for decades;
• harsh military subjugation;
• a regimented matrix of control;
• the genocidal Gaza siege;
• state-sponsored mass incarceration, violence, and torture;
• the flaunting of international law and dozens of UN resolutions;
• targeted assassinations;
• the many tens of thousands of Palestinians killed, injured, or otherwise grievously harmed;
• massive land theft and home demolitions;
• the lack of judicial redress;
• denying all rights to non-Jews; and
• a decades-long reign of terror against defenseless Palestinian civilians.

Western propaganda tries to justify the unjustifiable, vilify ordinary people, call the legitimate government “terrorist,” rationalize savage attacks as self-defense, reject the rights of the occupied, and deny their self-determination.

“In (Palestine, people) resist the occupation by all means (including armed struggle), in accordance with international law. “The Commission on Human Rights has routinely reaffirmed” it. So have numerous General Assembly resolutions. The March 1987 Geneva Declaration on Terrorism states:

“Terrorism originates from the statist system of structural violence and domination that denies the right of self-determination to peoples….that inflicts a gross and consistent pattern of violations of fundamental human rights….or that perpetuates military aggression and overt or covert intervention directed against the territorial integrity or political independence of other states,” such as Palestine.

The UN General Assembly has “repeatedly recognized” the rights of “peoples who are fighting against colonial domination and alien occupation and against racist regimes in the exercise of their right of self-determination (to) have the right to use force to accomplish their objectives within the framework of international humanitarian law.”

It also recognizes the legitimacy of self-determination seeking national liberation movements and their right to strive for and receive appropriate support for their struggle. Further, under the UN Charter’s Article 51, “individual or collective self-defense (shall not be “impair(ed) to respond against) an armed attack.”

In other words, armed force is a legitimate form of self-defense as distinguished from “acts of international terrorism,” especially by one state against another or any group, organization, or individual. Israel refuses to accept this. It continues an illegal occupation, calls armed resistance “terrorism,” and imposes its will oppressively and illegally.

Read further The Russell Tribunal on Palestine.

Joseph, the fifteen-month-old Palestinian Prisoner

Fatima pleaded to meet her eight children to a lawyer during his visit to the prison, she suffers like all prisoners from the Gaza Strip, and she is disappointed of the lack of interested human rights organizations in Palestinian prisoners’ suffering. She said that the prisoners lack many basic needs, and that the Israeli prison administration refuse to provide them with the essentials, besides preventing them from gaining access to such needs sent to them by their families, besides being denied visits, she herself has not seen any member of her family for more than 20 months. Fatima was distressed because the prison administration confiscates the prisoner’s letters as well which are considered the only means of communication with their families considering the fact that the family visits are banned.

Fatima managed to send only one letter to her family when she was first detained: “the first cell they put me in is more like a grave under the ground, the sewage are overflowing, attracting lots of insects and the smell stinks. I developed skin infections and pimples all over my head, the place are a health hazard’ wrote Fatima.

Regarding the treatment she was receiving by the Israeli female prison wardens she wrote ‘the female soldiers used to ask me …since when I became a practicing Muslim, I told them since a long time when I was a little girl because I was raised in a practicing family…they used to shout in my face and call me a terrorist’ she wrote. ‘They tried to force me to miscarriage by offering me different medicines I refused to take, I told them babies are a blessing from God’ she explained in her letter.

Fatima and other Palestinian women prisoners have sent dozens of letters through the Red Cross to their families but none was delivered to their families they said, and they did not receive any letters sent to them by their families either, such procedures left the Palestinian women isolated totally suffering emotional distress. Such isolation was described by the prisoners as a tragedy. But Fatima’s tragedy is greater than any of the other women because her baby “Joseph” suffers the lack of many essentials that she could not provide him with in such state of total isolation, besides the fact that he was deprived of a normal life or enjoy seeing his father or any of his brothers being brought up in the most unusual way a child can be brought up in.

Ra'fat Hamduna Director of the Centre for Studies of prisoners called upon the authorities of the prisons and the legal system to facilitate a meeting between Fatima and her children, and is pressuring the occupation authorities to free her and her baby "Joseph", and ensure the essential needs of the prisoners must be met, especially providing them with the clothing needed, but until the writing of this article no accomplishments were made in this respect, and baby Joseph is still in prison with no contact of other children. I am worried, what kind of vocabulary he will pick up in prison. He never heard a bird, or giggles of other children, he is only used to hearing the doors of the cells slammed close.

Read further here.

Q&A: The truth about Gaza

Myth: Israel is a law-abiding nation seeking to live in peace with its neighbours.

The truth: In 1948, shortly after the embryonic UN gave 56% of Palestine to the largely immigrant, minority Jewish population, the Zionist forces drove out most of the indigenous Palestinians and took 78% of the land. They razed to the ground over 400 Palestinian villages, so that the refugees could not return. In 1967 they occupied the rest of Palestine, including Gaza, and began to settle their citizens in these areas, in contravention of the Fourth Geneva Convention. In 2002 they began the construction of the 400mile long barrier, largely on Palestinian land, using it to take land and water resources from what is left of the West Bank. The centres of population in the West Bank have been isolated into ghetto-like enclaves, surrounded by the Israeli army and illegal settlements. Many methods are being used to drive Palestinians out of their homes in East Jerusalem, which Israel has annexed, in contravention of international law.

Israel is in violation of over 60 UN Resolutions, which call for the return of refugees, withdrawal of the settlers, dismantling of the wall and a lifting of the siege on Gaza.

Myth: Israel is threatened by its Arab neighbours

The truth: Egypt and Jordan have diplomatic relations and trade agreements with Israel. Lebanon and Syria do not, as Israel still occupies part of their territory. Nevertheless, on several occasions the Arab League has offered Israel full normalisation in return for a viable Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza. Israel has refused.

Myth: Israel withdrew its settlers and the army from Gaza in 2005, but the Palestinians rejected this peace offering and simply resorted to more violence.

The truth: Israel did withdraw 8000 settlers from Gaza, after 38 years of occupation — but immediately sent 30,000 more to the illegal settlements in the West Bank (which now has over 450,000 settlers).

At the same time, it placed extremely tight restrictions on all entry points to the Gaza Strip, making it almost impossible for the local economy to function. From 2005–7 the Israeli army killed 1,290 Palestinians in Gaza, including 222 children. From 2005–2008, 11 Israelis were killed by rocket fire.

Myth: Israel has for many years suffered terribly from thousands of missiles fired from North Gaza.

The truth: The first homemade Qassam missile was fired across the Israeli border in October 2001; the first fatality occurred in March 2007.

Up to November 2008 13 Israelis were killed by Qassam rockets. By contrast, between September 2000 and the end of November 2008 nearly 5000 Palestinians were killed, more than half of them in Gaza. The rockets have in the last year reached more distant targets, but in military terms they are ineffectual, compared to the fire-power of the US F-16s, Apache helicopter gunships, Merkava tanks and naval gunships with which Israel is equipped.

Hamas say the missiles are in retaliation not only for the many deaths Israel has caused both in Gaza and the West Bank, but also for the continued occupation and expropriation of land (see above). They say they hope to end the occupation in this way, much as Israel was forced to end the occupation of South Lebanon by Hizbollah.

Myth: Hamas broke the recent ceasefire, prompting Israel’s bombardment and invasion of Gaza.

The truth: In November 2008, during the six-month ceasefire, the Israeli army killed 14 Palestinians and tightened the siege on Gaza even more. In retaliation, Qassam rockets were fired on the Negev, killing no-one.

Israeli spokesmen have freely admitted that the assaults on Gaza were planned eight months ago — before the ceasefire. They clearly went into the ceasefire agreement without the intention of respecting it.

Myth: Hamas is an illegal terrorist organisation bent on Israel’s destruction. There is no possibility of Israel negotiating with them.

The truth: Hamas is a nationalist, Islamist organisation consisting of a political party, with a military wing, which for years was largely responsible for running hospitals and schools in Gaza, in a situation of military occupation. Even secular Palestinians saw them as efficient and non-corrupt.

When they came to power they offered Israel a ten-year truce, during which time negotiations could take place. Israel rejected this, and continued to quote earlier Hamas manifestos which called for the return of Palestinian land and property.

Myth: Hamas took over Gaza in a coup in June 2007, ousting the rightful government headed by Mahmoud Abbas.

The truth: Hamas won the 2006 general elections, which international observers considered free and fair, and formed a unity government in which MPs from Fatah and other parties were offered ministerial posts. However, in June 2006 Israeli troops abducted dozens of Hamas ministers and parliamentarians and put them in jail, while the US and other western governments joined Israel in refusing to recognise or speak to Hamas.

Israel and the US encouraged Fatah to stage a coup in Gaza, but Hamas pre-empted this in June 2007. Mahmoud Abbas is the elected President of the Palestinian people, but his party, Fatah, does not have a mandate.

Myth: Israel always tries to minimise civilian casualties — it is targeting only Hamas.

The truth: Israel has the most technically advanced weaponry in the world, with the exception of the US. Its computerised drone planes (which it sells to the UK) send back extremely detailed information about every square foot of the Gaza Strip. And yet hundreds of civilians have been killed and wounded, with the one power plant, ambulances, schools and hospitals being hit.

Myth: Any nation faced with missile or bomb attacks would respond with massive fire power.

The truth: For years Britain experienced terrorist attacks by the IRA, with many more fatalities than Israel has suffered. It never resorted to bombing civilian targets and infrastructure, but succeeded through patient negotiation.

Myth: Hamas uses the citizens of Gaza as ‘human shields’.

The truth: Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas on earth, with 1.5 million inhabitants living in an area about 25 miles long and five miles wide. There are no caves or forests to hide in or operate from — only urban areas..

Myth: Israel has the welfare of the people of Gaza at heart

The truth: Since June 2007 Israel has sealed off the Gaza Strip from the outside world, so that it is almost impossible to get in or out, or to import or export goods. Patients used to be able to leave Gaza to seek medical treatment elsewhere, but in the last year Israel has denied permits to most patients and dozens have died.

Myth: The people of Gaza are not really suffering — this is exaggerated for propaganda purposes.

The truth: John Ging, director of the UN agency for refugees in Gaza, Professor Richard Falk, UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Territories and representatives of Oxfam and other international aid organisations reacted angrily to Israel’s claims. For years they have been monitoring the situation and calling attention to the desperate and deteriorating plight of the people of Gaza.

Myth: People who criticise Israel are anti-Semitic.

The truth: To be anti-Semitic is to be racist towards Jews. But many Jews, and even Israelis, are highly critical of Israel’s policies. The policies of ethnic cleansing and seizure of land are rooted in Zionism, or the belief that Jews have exclusive rights to Palestine. To be anti-Zionist is to oppose this ideology and these policies. But Israel uses the anti-Semitism argument to intimidate people into silence.

Text taken with thanks to Palestine Solidarity Campaign: www.palestinecampaign.org

Ban Ki-moon's moral failure

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at a press conference in Gaza City outside the UN headquarters, still smoldering from the Israeli bombardment of the facility, 20 January 2009.

Late last week, according to the BBC Arabic news website, a report was submitted to the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon about the scale of destruction Israel inflicted on UN installations in Gaza. This was also mentioned on a BBC news bulletin on 1 May, but I could find little trace of this story anywhere else.

The brief news item stated that the UN report contained secret information supplied by Israel about an incident in which more than 40 Palestinian civilians were massacred when Israeli shells fell "outside" a UN school where many Palestinians were taking shelter. The secretary-general is reportedly considering how much of the information he can release without revealing the information supplied by Israel, the news item said, adding that the UN report concluded that Hamas fighters were not inside UN buildings but close to them.

Commenting on the report, the BBC said that it was informed by a diplomatic source, that the United States has informed Ban's office that the report should not be published in full due to the damage that that could cause to the Middle East peace talks; in other words (mine, in fact) to Israel.

Read further here.

True Lies

After the Shoah (The Holocaust), Jews had an opportunity to transform their fate, to turn a new page. They could even explore collectively the notion of forgiveness and mercy. A few Jewish intellectuals insisted that Jews must locate themselves at the forefront of the battle against racism and oppression. As it happened, it took just six decades for the Jewish national state to establish its primacy as the ultimate racist nation state that employs the ultimate sadistic ruthless oppressive tactics.

”Don’t frighten her,” says Churchill.

Caryl Churchill’s play Seven Jewish Children, that was written and performed in the light of the last Israeli military devastating campaign in Gaza, turns the floodlights on the confusion within Jewish identity.

On the face of it, the short play is an historical journey form victimhood into aggression. In just nine minutes we are joining an expedition that departs in the horror of the Shoah:

“Don’t tell her they’ll kill her..
Tell her it’s important to be quiet..
Tell her to curl up as if she’s in bed..”
and eventually ends up with the Israelis taking the role of the Nazis

“Tell her they (the Palestinians) are animals
living in rubble now, tell her I wouldn’t care if we wiped them out,
….tell her I look at one of their children covered in
blood and what do I feel? Tell her all I feel is happy it’s not her…”

As much as Churchill’s reading of Jewish’s recent history as a transformation from innocence into ruthless barbarism is not a revelation, the message is delivered in a rather profound and sensitive manner.

Watch the clip.

Text taken from Gilad Atzmon - From Victimhood to Aggression: Jewish Identity in the light of Caryl Churchill’s Seven Jewish Children.

Instead Churchill should...

Tell her she should reject discrimination and call for equal rights for all when she grows up… No… do not tell her that now… discrimination is a big word… just tell her every human being is special and we are all equal, you might have to tell her why some people are more equal than others. Tell her if the killing stops we will enjoy art, music, and literature… don't tell her that, just tell her that she will play outside as much as she wants, and she can play with all the children.

Tell her to demand an apology of the Israeli state to every mother who lost a child. No… don't… just tell her no more children are going to be killed.

"History will not forgive those who are partners in crime"

In this videotape, Bassem Aburahma (nick named ElFeel, the elephant, for he was always thought of as a giant among his peers) is seen pleading with Israeli soldiers to wait (saying Raiga in Hebrew) as Palestinians, Israelis and Internationals protested the land confiscation and building of the apartheid fence on village land. The soldiers then shoot Bassem point blank with a high velocity gas grenade which kills him within five minutes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlbzuZ_50mU

and here is a video of the funeral the next day

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F91H8sR64Ro
Please share these videos with media, politicians and others to see what is being done daily under occupation.