On November 2nd many western leaders gathered at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany, to celebrate the downing of the notorious Berlin Wall. These hypocrite leaders; German Chancellor Merkel, French President Sarkozy, Russian President Medvedev, British Prime Minister Brown, US Secretary of State Clinton, and US President Obama, praised those who tore down the wall, emphasized the need to “overcome the walls of our time,” “keep fighting for freedom … so people get to live their dreams,” and emphasized that “all men are created equal … have the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness,” yet none of them recognized the rights of Palestinians and Iraqis to their freedom, and none of them condemned the uglier Israeli separation and imprisoning wall that cuts the West Bank into smaller Bantustans, or the Baghdad wall that divides the city into smaller sections. Contrary to their cajoling speeches the foreign policies of these leaders have encouraged the erection of these walls. Their political support and their citizens’ tax money had encouraged rogue Israel to violate international laws and to keep constructing its separation wall. The erection of the Baghdad concrete wall, similar to Berlin Wall, exposes the hollow rhetoric of Obama and Hillary In 2004 the International Court of Justice (ICJ) had ruled the Israeli wall as a flagrant violation of international laws. Fourteen out of the fifteen judges in the ICJ voted against the Israeli wall. The sole backer of the wall was US judge Thomas Buerghenthal, who echoed the sentiments of then US president Bush and the presidential candidate John Kerry. Read further the article here.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Walls of Shame
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Jerusalem families waiting for US action
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.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
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:
Read further here.
Friday, July 24, 2009
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 4th 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!.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Gilad Atzmon - For God's sake, Let them be Sad
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.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
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.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
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.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
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.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Ban Ki-moon's moral failure
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.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Dima Omar - So what did we learn about anti-Semitism?
Cohen certainly conceded that whenever Israel launches a fresh attack on Gaza or Lebanon, synagogues and Jewish cemeteries are attacked in the UK. Yet somehow he refuses to accept the correlation between Zionist policies and anti-Semitism. He wants us to believe that anti-Semitism is fuelled by pure hatred for the Jews. After all, Chinese property wasn’t attacked in the aftermath of the Tibetan clashes last year. Sudanese property wasn’t attacked when Darfur was in the media.
Well, Mr. Cohen, maybe it’s because China and Sudan are being condemned in the international community, especially in Britain, while Israel to this day is being hailed as the West’s indispensable partner. Maybe it’s because what Israel has committed in Gaza during “Operation Cast Lead” earlier this year has created more devastation than what happened in Darfur (and this is according to the head of the International Red Cross). Maybe it's because it is acceptable for British Jews to join the IDF, and actively take part in Israel's wars, while British Muslims or Chinese or whatever would never dare join a non-British army.
Read further the article here.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Shame on us!
I am not against showing genuine sympathy with the victims of the holocaust. However, a sympathy that is manipulated to justify, rationalize or even extenuate the crime against humanity that is Israel is worse than a crime if only because it serves to promote and perpetuate oppression.
As human beings, we Palestinians do sympathize with all victims of Nazism, Stalinism and imperialism, the wept, the over-wept, and especially the unwept who constitute the vast majority of victims.
Having said that, however, I strongly believe that no honest person under the sun has the slightest right to demand that we pay the price for what the Nazis did or may have done to European Jews nearly 70 years ago.
We didn’t send Jews to the ovens. The Germans did. We didn’t starve Jews to death as Jews are doing to us today in the Gaza Strip.
We didn’t incinerate Jews in Gas chambers as Jews have recently incinerated Palestinian children with White Phosphorus.
Hence, of all people in this world, Palestinians must never be made to feel guilty for what the Nazis and other Europeans did to Jews. I say so because a feeling of guilt, even a modicum of guilt, on our part, would be construed or misconstrued as a vindication of Zionism, the Nazism of our time.
And now, Jews in Israel are doing the same thing to Palestinians, Nazism’s vicarious victims.
Last week, a few innocent kids from the Jenin refugee camp were surreptiously taken to Tel Aviv to “cheer up and take part in peace-promoting activities.”
However, once there the kids were unceremoniously driven to a reception where they were made to play music and sing to “holocaust survivors,” some of them are former members of the Hagana and Irgun terrorist gangs who had taken part in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and expulsion of Palestinians form their homeland.
God knows how much Palestinian blood did these so-called “holocaust survivors” shed in 1948 and subsequent years. Certainly, Deir Yasin, Tantura, Dawaymeh, and the numerous other massacres were not committed by UFOs. They were committed in cold blood by these very people our children are now cheering up.
Shame on us a thousand times!
Some of the kids were instructed to utter words that should never be uttered by the victims of Zionism. One of the participants reportedly dedicated a special song to Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier taken prisoner by Palestinian fighters in Gaza nearly three years ago. No mention, not even an allusion, was made of the estimated 10,000 Palestinian political and resistance prisoners languishing in Israeli dungeons and concentration camps.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Discard the mythology of 'the Israel Lobby', the reality is bad enough
Now they have their Joan of Arc. Those who have long claimed that the sinister, shadowy forces of "the Israel Lobby" pull the strings of US foreign policy at last have a martyr. Last week Charles Freeman, a former diplomat, said he would not take the job he had been offered, chairing the US National Intelligence Council: he had, he said, been the victim of a campaign of "character assassination" conducted by an "Israel Lobby [willing to] plumb the depths of dishonour and indecency". In a furious statement, he declared that the "aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process".Those who in 2006 lapped up the thesis argued by the US academics John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, attributing to the mighty lobby the power to divert the US from its own interests, seized on Freeman's fall as decisive proof. Walt himself declared: "For all of you out there who may have questioned whether there was a powerful 'Israel lobby'," he blogged, "think again."
Read further the article written by Jonathan Freedland here.
Nizar Sakhnini – Zionism: The Game is Over
During the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, the Zionists asked for the creation of a state in the territory that includes all of Mandate Palestine, Southern Lebanon up to the Litani River, the Golan Heights and part of Western Jordan along a line parallel to the Hijaz railway and ends in Aqaba. From there, the line goes northwest to Al Arish in Egypt. (David McDowall, Palestine and Israel: The uprising and Beyond, Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989, p. 20. See also: Simha Flappan, The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities, New York: 1987, p. 17)
In 1948, Ben-Gurion considered acceptance of a Jewish state in part of Palestine as a bridgehead for future expansion whenever the time was right. His vision was spelled out in a letter to his son, Amos, stating that “A partial Jewish State is not the end, but only the beginning… We shall bring into the state all the Jews it is possible to bring… We shall organize a modern defense force, a select army…and then I am certain that we will not be prevented from settling in the other parts of the country, either by mutual agreement with our Arab neighbors or by some other means. Our ability to penetrate the country will increase if there is a state…” (Michael Bar-Zohar, Ben-Gurion: A Biography. New York: Delacorte Press, 1977, pp. 91 - 92)
In a round table meeting with the French at the Sévres Conference, Ben-Gurion proposed a plan for settling all the issues in the Middle East. The plan included eliminating Nasser in Egypt and partition of Jordan, with the West Bank going to Israel and the East Bank to Iraq. In exchange, Iraq would sign a peace treaty with Israel and undertake to absorb the Palestinian refugees. Moreover, Ben-Gurion requested that Israel would annex southern Lebanon up to the Litani , with a Christian state established in the rest of the country. Ben-Gurion added that the Suez Canal would enjoy international status, that the Straits of Tiran would be under Israeli control, and that Syria should be placed under a pro-Western ruler in order to stabilize the Syrian regime. Official confirmation of the Sévres protocol was received by Ben-Gurion on 26 October and was warmly congratulated by Menachem Begin. (Ibid, pp. 236-244)
Golda Meir even denied the mere existence of the Palestinians by stating that there is no such thing as the Palestinians.
Within 5 decades, the Zionist dream began to evaporate.
In spite of all the Zionist atrocities aimed at Ethnic Cleansing, Palestinian Arabs living within the borders of Mandate Palestine are approximately 4.5 million. Within ten to fifteen years, Arabs living in Palestine would become the majority even if the Palestinian Refugees living outside Palestine were not allowed to return to the homes and lands that were usurped from them.
In spite of having a large army equipped with all the high-tech weaponry provided by the U.S., Israel failed to deter or stop Arab resistance.
In March, 1968, Israel attacked the village of Karama on the East Bank of the Jordan and faced a bloody and heroic stand by the Palestinians. This battle gave the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) a psychological boost and increased its influence.
On 24 May 2000, Israel was obliged to withdraw from Southern Lebanon, which was occupied since 1978.
On 12 July 2006, Israel started an ‘open war’ against Lebanon. The war stopped on 14 August 2006. During this war, another massacre was committed in Kana, about 54 innocent civilians, including about 37 children, were killed in an air raid, and there was a lot of damage and destruction. However, Israel failed in achieving its goal of ending Hizbullah.
On 27 December 2008, Israel launched ‘Operation Cast Lead’ against the Gaza Strip and committed a massacre killing more than 1300 men, women and children and injuring more that 5500. The war was ended on 18 January 2009 without achieving Israel’s goal of ending Hamas.
Article taken from here.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Gaza 2009: De-Osloizing the Palestinian Mind
Put differently, to aim at creating the two-state Palestinian is to aim at creating false consciousness led by assimilated intelligentsia, some of whom have a revolutionary past record. Singing the slogans of "the two state solution," "two states for two peoples," "return to the 1967 borders,"–or even "a long-term Hudna" (as proposed by Hamas) — is intended to guarantee the subordination and conformity of the Palestinians, especially those with revolutionary ideas. Gone are the right of return of 6 million refugees and their compensation, and the national and cultural rights of the indigenous population of Palestine 1948.
This goal, however, never sees the antithesis it creates as a result of displacement, exploitation, and oppression; it ignores the revolutionary consciousness that has been formulated throughout the different phases of the Palestinian struggle. Nor does it take into account the legacy of civil and political resistance that has become a trademark of the Palestinian struggle. Hence the necessity of the formulation of Palestinian alternative politics. To be conscious of the corruption of the Palestinian Authority, and of the huge class gape that the Oslo Accords have created has definitely been the beginning of De-Osloization represented in the Al-Aqsa uprising and the outcome of the 2006 elections. This is an oppositional consciousness that the signatories of Oslo did not take into account. Both events represent an outright rejection of the Oslo Accords and their consequences.
Repeating the two-state mantra, carrying the Palestinian flag, singing the national anthem and— more importantly—recognizing Israel, regardless of the rights of two thirds of the Palestinian people, are what Oslo is all about.
The lesson we learn from Gaza 2009 is to harness all effort to fight the outcome of the Oslo Accords, and to form a United Front on a platform of resistance and reforms. This cannot be achieved without dismantling the PA and realizing that ministries, premierships, and presidencies in Gaza and Ramallah are a façade not unlike the South African Independent Homelands with their tribal chiefs. The classical national program, created and adopted by the Palestinian bourgeoisie has reached its end unsuccessfully. Most political forces, including the governing party in Gaza, fail to explain how 6 million Palestinian refugees will return to the Israeli State of the Jews and an independent Palestinian state will be created at the same time.
Read further the article here from Haidar Eid, Associate Professor in the Department of English Literature, Al-Aqsa University, Gaza Strip, and a member of the One Democratic State Group
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
The Egypt-hosted Donor Conference to despose Hamas.
Ever since the beginning of the second intifada in 2000, there has been a familiar pattern in the Occupied Territories: Israel destroys Palestinian civilian infrastructure, and the international community foots the bill.
This has been reproduced once more, on a grand scale, as billions of dollars were promised this week at the Egypt-hosted donor conference for devastated Gaza, far exceeding the Palestinian Authority's initial target.
It remains to be seen how much of this aid will actually get through to the Palestinians imprisoned in Gaza, who continue to live in the rubble of thousands of homes, and hundreds of businesses, factories and schools. Two-thirds of the US contribution of $900 million, for example, is not even earmarked for Gaza.
The root of Gaza's problem is not a lack of aid, but Israel's politically-motivated blockade. It's not primarily about the rockets, or even Gilad Shalit: it is "a siege designed to depose Hamas rule".
Some people can have short memories. Israel's "ever-tighter economic blockade" goes back to the redeployment of summer 2005 and it considerably worsened after the Palestinian parliamentary elections. Israel's goal, as Ha'aretz described, "was to prevent Hamas from enabling the population to lead a normal life", an act that "constituted collective punishment for 1.5 million Palestinians", with the assumption being "that economic distress would bring down the Hamas regime".
The second problem with the donor conference is the way in which it was another exercise in denying the obvious: Hamas has to be engaged, not sidelined. There's something absurd, for example, about the British government's parallel recognition of the need to talk with Hamas (itself a relatively new development), as long as it's not '"us" doing the talking.
The donor conference then, called on behalf of a territory whose ruling authorities are to be excluded from both the planning and implementation of reconstruction, is a continuation of a bankrupt and failed strategy. In a superb bit of unintended irony, Blair was asked on al-Jazeera about the prospect of working with a hard-right Netanyahu government. His reply – "We've got to work with whoever the Israeli people elect" – should tell the Palestinians exactly how much their democratic will is valued in comparison.
The third problem with the donor conference is the hypocrisy of seeing countries that are responsible for Gaza's miserable state lining up to score political points by donating money for aid. It's not only that Israel received military hardware and diplomatic cover from the same dignitaries now shaking their heads at the "devastation" they did nothing to stop. In fact, Gaza was suffering under abysmal conditions before Operation Cast Lead, on account of the international community's policies of punitive isolation and aid-as-weapon.
There is also the question of how the aid will make a practical difference on the ground, given that Israel refuses to let in even tomato paste and paper – not to mention construction materials, generators (or "an entire water purification system"). Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth observed: "Israel's blockade policy can be summed up in one word and it is punishment, not security."
Text taken from Aid as a weapon by Ben White.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Remembering Jaffa
The early years of Jaffa's Nakba
Zionist forces initiated a cruel siege on the city of Jaffa in March 1948. The youth of the city formed popular resistance committees to confront the assault. On 14 May 1948, the Bride of the Sea fell to the Zionist military forces; that same evening the leaders of the Zionist movement in Palestine declared the establishment of the state of Israel. Approximately 4,000 of the 120,000 Palestinians managed to remain in their city after it was militarily occupied. They were all rounded up and ghettoized in al-Ajami neighborhood which was sealed off from the rest of the city and administered as essentially a military prison for two subsequent years; the military regime under which Israel governed them lasted until 1966. During this period, al-Ajami was completely surrounded by barbed wire fencing that was patrolled by Israeli soldiers and guard dogs. It was not long before the new Jewish residents of Jaffa, and based on their experience under Nazism in Europe, began to refer to the Palestinian neighborhood as the "ghetto."
In addition to being ghettoized, the Palestinians who remained in Jaffa had lost everything overnight: their city, their friends, their families, their property and their entire physical and social environment. Most had lost their homes as the Israeli military forced them into al-Ajami. Legislator, judge and executioner in the Ajami ghetto was the military commander; without his permission one could not enter or leave the ghetto, and rights to things like education and work were among those rights that Palestinians were denied. Arab states were classified as enemy states, and so making contact with the expelled family and friends, the refugees, was strictly prohibited. This was the nightmare lived by the Palestinians of Jaffa after the 1948 Nakba.
In the early 1950s, Jaffa was administratively engulfed by the Tel Aviv municipality that became known as Tel Aviv-Yafo; the Palestinians of Jaffa went from being a majority in their city and homeland to the two-percent "enemies of the state," a minority of Israel's main metropolis. The municipality immediately began drawing up plans for what they called the "Judaization" of the city, renaming the Arabic streets of the city after Zionist leaders, demolishing much of the old Arab architecture, and completely destroying the buildings in the surrounding neighborhoods and villages that were depopulated during the 1948 Nakba. The new curriculum introduced in Palestinian schools denied that the place had any Arab-Palestinian history at all, a facet of the Israeli education system that continues until today.
The largest armed robbery of the 20th century
After expelling most of Jaffa's residents, militarily occupying the city and ghettoizing the remaining original inhabitants, Israeli authorities passed the Absentee Property Law (1950) through which it seized the property of all Palestinians who were not in possession of their immovable properties after the Nakba. Through the implementation of this unjust law, the state of Israel sent its operatives to all corners of the land, surveying the properties left behind by the expelled refugees, the internally displaced Palestinians banned from returning to their lands, and those relocated to the ghettos of Palestine's cities. Title to these lands, buildings, homes, factories, farms and religious sites were then transferred to the state's "Custodian of Absentee Property." This is how the Palestinians of Jaffa, the refugees and the ghettoized, had their properties "legally" stolen by the State of Israel.
In the interviews conducted for our research, we heard dozens of stories from Nakba survivors telling us about how their homes, often just meters away from the ghetto, were seized, and how they could do nothing about it. Many told us stories of how their homes were given to, or simply taken by, new Jewish immigrants, and how they would try to convince the new residents of their homes to give them back some of their furniture, or clothes, or documents, or photographs. In some of these cases, the house's new resident would give back some of the items, in most of the cases the response was to consider the original Palestinian owner an intruder, and to call the police or report him to the military commander. Former residents of the al-Manshiyya neighborhood, one of the city's wealthier areas before the Nakba, described the sorrow they felt as they walked past their old houses, and the pain of seeing what remained of the neighborhood demolished to be replaced by a public recreation area.
Some of the most difficult stories are those of the Palestinian farmers and peasants from the villages of the Jaffa district. They describe how they were forced off of their land, how they managed to stay in Palestine, how the Israeli government handed their land over to Jewish settlers, and how these settlers then hired the same Palestinian farmers to work on their own land as day laborers exploited for the personal profit of the Jewish settler off the produce of the land that Palestinians had cultivated for generations. In fact, after their properties and enterprises were seized or shut down, the vast majority of the Jaffa Palestinians who remained became cheap labor for Jewish employers. Their employment was contingent on their "loyalty" to the new state. And so it was that the people who ran the economic hub of Palestine before 1948, became its orphans feigning loyalty to the ones who orphaned them in order to feed their own children.
Text taken from the article Jaffa: from eminence to ethnic cleansing.
Monday, February 23, 2009
"Israeli Apartheid Week": Carleton University Administration violates free expression - bans and confiscates posters
The poster was created by noted cartoonist Carlos Latuff and depicts a situation - a child being killed by aerial bombardment ? that occurred over 430 times in Israel's latest attack on Gaza according to United Nations reports.
This is part of a wider pattern of repression of academic freedom and rights to free expression, especially on Israel/Palestine, on Canadian campuses, including Carleton University. It is accompanied by double standards. When 56 Carleton professors asked President Roseanne Runte to condemn Israel's bombardment of the Islamic University of Gaza, the President refused. Neither the direct killing of hundreds of children nor the direct bombing of a campus are enough to elicit condemnation, but her administration has decided that a poster inviting people to discuss the conflict ought to be banned. Instead of being lauded by their university, students affirming the humanity of all peoples and the universality of international law have been threatened by Carleton University's Provost with expulsion.
The Carleton administration had already taken a biased political stand on the Israel-Palestine conflict, and is now violating free expression to prevent alternative views. Both the current and former Carleton Presidents have taken very clear positions on the Israel-Palestine conflict by condemning the academic boycott of Israel out of hand, offering no alternative to this justice-oriented civil-society initiative. Students and faculty at Carleton have requested that the administration hold a public debate on the issue, to allow the Carleton community to determine the most responsible course of action, yet have been repeatedly rebuffed.
Far from defending human rights, the Carleton administration is treating them with contempt. In a memo to students on February 12, the Provost wrote that "all reported incidents of racial or religious intolerance will be investigated vigorously and addressed regardless of the persons or groups involved." The administration should begin a vigorous investigation of its own behaviour, including its discrimination against students who seek an open debate on a political issue but are being silenced because they happen to disagree with the president's stand.
That Carleton's administration is using human rights grounds to violate free expression on its campus is a double insult. Internationally, the movement against Israeli apartheid has been endorsed by hundreds of universities, unions, religious groups and social justice organizations. This campaign is proudly anti-racist, and founded on the principles of opposition to all forms of racism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. It draws its inspiration from the global campaign to end South African apartheid and is led by many of the same individuals who were at the forefront of that earlier struggle. By contrast, the administration that banned the poster could not summon enough concern for human rights or the right to education to speak against the bombing of a Gazan university.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Israel calls this democracy. South Africa called it apartheid. Nazi Germany called it fascism.
"The Knesset shall be elected by general, national, direct, equal, secret and proportional elections, in accordance with the Knesset Elections Law." Every Israeli citizen 18 or older may vote, including Arabs who are nominally enfranchised, may serve in the parliament, but can't govern or in any way influence policy.Knesset seats are assigned proportionally to each party's percentage of the total vote. A minimum total is required to win any seats. Jewish parties alone are empowered. Arab parliamentarians have no decision-making authority. They're also constrained by the 1992 Law of Political Parties and section 7A(1) of the Basic Law that prohibits candidates from denying "the existence of the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people."
Under the law for Arabs and Jews, no candidate may challenge Israel's fundamental Jewish character or demand equal rights, privileges, and justice. The essential Zionist identity is inviolable. The law works only for Jews. Israeli Arabs have no rights. They're denied equal treatment and justice, even those elected to public office. Israel calls this democracy. South Africa called it apartheid. Nazi Germany called it fascism.
A Jew mother speaks : Will Gaza Change you Forever?
As a Jew, an American and a mother, I felt compelled to witness, firsthand, what my people and my taxdollars had done during this invasion. Visiting Gaza filled me with unbearable sadness. Unlike the primitive weapons of Hamas, the Israelis had so many sophisticated ways to murder, maim and destroy-unmanned drones, F-16s dropping "smart bombs" that miss, Apache helicopters launching missiles, tanks firing from the ground, ships shelling Gaza from the sea. So many horrific weapons stamped with Made in the USA. While Hamas' attacks on Israeli villages are deplorable, Israel's disproportionate response is unconscionable, with 1,330 Palestinians dead vs. 13 Israelis.
If the invasion was designed to destroy Hamas, it failed miserably. Not only is Hamas still in control, but it retains much popular support. If the invasion was designed as a form of collective punishment, it succeeded, leaving behind a trail of grieving mothers, angry fathers and traumatized children.
To get a sense of the devastation, check out a slide show circulating on the internet called WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT - Gaza: Massacre of Children. It should be required viewing for all who supported this invasion of Gaza. Babies charred like shish-kebabs. Limbs chopped off. Features melted from white phosphorus. Faces crying out in pain, gripped by fear, overcome by grief.
Anyone who can view the slides and still repeat the mantra that "Israel has the right to self-defense" or "Hamas brought this upon its own people," or worse yet, "the Israeli military didn't go far enough," does a horrible disservice not only to the Palestinian people, but to humanity.
Compassion, the greatest virtue in all major religions, is the basic human emotion prompted by the suffering of others, and it triggers a desire to alleviate that suffering. True compassion is not circumscribed by one's faith or the nationality of those suffering. It crosses borders; it speaks a universal language; it shares a common spirituality. Those who have suffered themselves, such as Holocaust victims, are supposed to have the deepest well of compassion.
The Israeli election was in full swing while was I visiting Gaza. As I looked out on the ruins of schools, playgrounds, homes, mosques and clinics, I recalled the words of Benjamin Netanyahu, "No matter how strong the blows that Hamas received from Israel, it's not enough." As I talked to distraught mothers whose children were on life support in a bombed hospital, I thought of the "moderate" woman in the race, Tzipi Livni, who vowed that she would not negotiate with Hamas, insisted that "terror must be fought with force and lots of force" and warned that "if by ending the operation we have yet to achieve deterrence, we will continue until they get the message."
"The message," I can report, has been received. It is a message that Israel is run by war criminals, that the lives of Palestinians mean nothing to them. Even more chilling is the pro-war message sent by the Israeli people with their votes for Netanyahu, Livni and anti-Arab racist Avigdor Lieberman.
How tragic that nation born out of the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust has become a nation that supports the slaughter of Palestinians.
Text taken partly from Once You See What Truly Happened in Gaza, It Will Change You Forever.
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Sunday, February 15, 2009
Divesting from Israel’s “Weapon of Mass Destruction”
This House of God had about £2.5m invested in a company that manufactures one of Israel’s weapons of mass misery and destruction. After saying for years that they couldn’t see anything unethical about it, Church bosses finally agreed with the rest of us that Caterpillar’s D-9 bulldozer, which is used in the Holy Land for the ugly purpose of demolishing Palestinian homes, uprooting olive groves and destroying civilian infrastructure, is more like a vicious weapon in Israel’s hands than a civil engineering tool.
Caterpillar simply didn’t look good on the Church’s ethical investments list any more.
The wholesale destruction of Palestinian homes, and Caterpillar’s part in it, has been going on for a very long time. At the Jenin refugee camp in March/April 2002 Israel’s massive, armoured D-9 Caterpillar bulldozers - driven by army reservists - worked non-stop for three days and nights. More than 300 homes in the densely packed camp were flattened. The bulldozer drivers were instant heroes and showered with medals for valour.
One such driver did not get down from the cab of his Caterpillar for 75 hours straight."For three days I just erased and erased… the entire area. I took down any house from which there was shooting. To take it down, I would take down several more. The soldiers warned with a speaker, that the tenants must leave before I came in, but I did not give anyone a chance. I did not wait… I would just ram the house with full power, to bring it down as fast as possible. I wanted to get to the other houses. To get as many as possible. Others may have restrained themselves, or so they say. Who are they kidding? Anyone who was there, and saw our soldiers in the houses, would understand they were in a death trap… I didn’t give a damn about the Palestinians, but I didn’t just ruin with no reason. It was all under orders.
This was the largest single orgy of destruction carried out by the Israeli army, according to Amnesty International. The al-Hawashin quarter was completely destroyed and two further areas of the refugee camp were partially destroyed, leaving more than 800 families, totaling some 4,000 people, homeless.
Many people where inside houses we set to demolish. They would come out of the houses we where working on. I didn’t see, with my own eyes, people dying under the blade of the D-9. and I didn’t see house falling down on live people. But if there were any, I wouldn’t care at all. I am sure people died inside these houses, but it was difficult to see, there was lots of dust everywhere, and we worked a lot at night. I found joy with every house that came down, because I knew they didn’t mind dying, but they cared for their homes. If you knocked down a house, you buried 40 or 50 people for generations. If I am sorry for anything, it is for not tearing the whole camp down…"
ICAHD reports that between 1948 and the 1960s Israel systematically demolished 418 Palestinian villages inside what has become the State of Israel. Residents who were put to flight could not return and their lands were turned over to the Jewish population.
The Israeli township of Sderot, which the world is meant to feel sorry for, is built on stolen lands belonging to a Palestinian village that was ethnically cleansed and erased.
At the start of the Occupation in 1967 demolition was carried across the ‘Green Line’ into the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. Since then some 12,000 Palestinian dwellings have been destroyed, many of them the homes of people who had fled from the bulldozers in 1948.
Dozens of ancient homes were destroyed in the Mughrabi Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City to make room for a plaza for the Wailing Wall.
In 1971 Ariel Sharon, then in charge of Southern Command, cleared 2,000 houses in the Gaza refugee camps to facilitate military control. After becoming Prime Minister in 2001 he oversaw the demolition of another 1500 homes in Gaza.
At least 2,000 houses in the Occupied Territories were destroyed in a bid to quell the first Intifada in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Nearly 1,700 more were demolished by the Civil Administration during the Oslo peace process (1993-2000).
Since the start of the second Intifada in September 2000, the Israeli military has destroyed 4,000 to 5,000 Palestinian homes, including hundreds in Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Hebron and other cities of the West Bank, and more than 2,500 in Gaza. Tens of thousands of other homes have been left uninhabitable. Altogether around 50,000 people were left homeless. Hundreds of shops, workshops, factories and public buildings, including Palestinian Authority ministry offices in all the West Bank cities, have been destroyed or damaged beyond repair.
Figures suggest that 60% of the Palestinian homes demolished in the Occupied Territories were bulldozed as part of military “clearing operations,” 25% for being “illegal” (not having permits), and 15% for collective punishment. Amnesty International says that more as than 3,000 hectares of cultivated land were cleared during this time. Wells, water storage pools and water pumps which provided water for drinking, irrigation and other needs for thousands of people, have also been destroyed, along with miles of irrigation networks.
