Israel's War Against Palestine: Documenting the Military Occupation of Palestinian and Arab Lands
“The West Bank today is a hothouse for weeds,” the officer said. However, he stressed, most of the Jewish settlers are “normative” individuals.
IOA Editor: As “normative” as an Occupier is.
For an excellent analysis of the settlers role and impact, see Nicolas Pelham’s Israel’s Religious Right and the Peace Process.
The United States would find it difficult not to join an Israeli air strike in the event that Jerusalem decides to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, a former top-ranking U.S. Air Force officer told participants at a conference this weekend organized by a Washington think tank.
IOA Editor: So the tail will be wagging the dog? Or might it be the dog’s own doing, after all?
Israel’s Education Ministry has recalled all copies of a history textbook because of a passage alleging “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians during the 1948 war, a newspaper reported on Monday. Israel’s Haaretz newspaper said the secondary school textbook was removed from shelves because it sought to present both Israeli and Arab perspectives on the departure of some 750,000 Palestinians during the fighting that erupted after the creation of the Jewish state.
IOA Editor: “Deny, deny, deny…” see No Atonement
Sixty-four percent of Israelis support the creation of a Palestinian state, a new poll carried out by researchers at Tel Aviv university shows. The poll… shows that 33% of Israelis oppose the “two-state solution.” The survey also showed that 60% of the Israelis believe that continued settlement expansion reducing the chances of a two-state solution or would lead to a bi-national state while 33% have the opposite view.
The siege against Gaza, which began years ago, tightened to an almost total lockdown in June 2007 and continues to this day. And though the United States, Egypt, the EU and the UN move slowly – if at all – international groups and activists are working to end it.
Abu Awad lost 70 olive and 10 almond trees in the pogrom. A neighbor, Sudki Abu Aleiah, lost 120 olive trees. The Shehadah family lost 120 olive and 20 fig trees. Altogether, 340 fruit trees were cut down in one night of savagery… On one of the stumps, a single branch has survived, torn and twisted sideways. Abu Awad cuts it off and hands it to us as a memento. An olive branch from a tree that has been cut down. There are tears in his eyes.
Richard Goldstone responds to Israel: “In Gaza, I was surprised and shocked by the destruction and misery there. I had not expected it. I did not anticipate that the IDF would have targeted civilians and civilian objects. I did not anticipate seeing the vast destruction of the economic infrastructure of Gaza including its agricultural lands, industrial factories, water supply and sanitation works. These are not military targets.”
[T]he [Gaza] victory was a Pyrrhic one. Israel did not realize that the rules have changed with Barack Obama’s election as U.S. president… the Gaza campaign continues being fought – in the diplomatic arena and in public opinion – and Israel must cope with its consequences in a less-friendly Obama era.
IOA Editor: This is a useful, Israel-centric analysis in that it reflects Israel’s concerns for its ability to maintain an upper hand in view of global opposition to the Occupation. Benn’s implied assertion that there is a profound change toward Israel under the Obama administration is, at best, premature; more likely, it is simply unfounded. So far, there is no evidence of US pressure on Israel to ‘change its ways’, and this ‘would-be’ pressure can only be added to the long list of theoretical, invisible Obama changes of past US ME policies – widely assumed, incorrectly.
Also, unlike Benn, some pointed to Israel’s failed Gaza attack soon after it took place. To cite the obvious, see Gideon Levy’s Everyone Agrees War in Gaza Was a Failure – aside from its profound immorality, which Levy has been pointing to repeatedly from day one.
Over 750 individuals and organizations from around the world signed on to the US Palestine Community Network’s letter to Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations, demanding the full implementation of the Goldstone report into Gaza war crimes. Sign letter.
Human rights activists monitoring the West Bank report that… widespread building activity commenced three weeks ago in at least 12 settlements: ground preparation, pouring concrete and drilling construction foundations. This work is not part of the projects that Israel and the United States had reached an understanding on.
IOA Editor: Occupation as usual.
Approximately 30 activists disrupted a lecture given in Chicago by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert yesterday which was hosted by the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy. While Olmert’s speech was disrupted inside the lecture hall, approximately 150 activists protested outside the hall in the freezing rain.
[I]t is not certain UNRWA will manage to overcome Hamas’ objection to instituting Holocaust studies in Gaza… but the attempt should be encouraged, because it is impossible to understand Israel without understanding the place of the Holocaust in the Israelis’ universe, and one who does not understand his enemy will not be able to make peace with him either.
Economics professor and [Israeli] government minister Avishay Braverman confirms that per-capita income in the West Bank in 2009 is still far below the figures for the nine months that preceded the last intifada, in 2000. The prospects for sustained growth that will last several years and demonstrate true economic stability there, he says, are thus very poor.
J Street in open letter to Israeli Ambassador: “what J Street shares in common with you far outweighs that on which we disagree…” [J Street] invited Oren to “argue over how best to ensure the health, safety and vibrancy of the Jewish people and of Israel for generations to come.”
[U]nderneath those still waters on which Israel’s ship is sailing lurks an iceberg. The Goldstone report marked the iceberg’s first appearance. Turkey turning its back on Israel was the second. Attempts by European courts to try Israel Defense Forces officers were the third; the boycott of Israeli products and companies in various places round the world was the fourth;
IOA Editor: Shavit represents Israel’s self-righteous center-right: profoundly immoral – in fact, evil. In Gideon Levy’s The Golda wars, Shavit falls into the category of Israeli Government and IDF “demagogic cheerleaders:” he cheered Israel’s Gaza attack, and now he whines about the Goldstone report.
Shavit omits the most obvious: it’s Israel’s own actions that delegitimize Israel – the Gaza closure and attack being only the most recent. Rather than proposing a “diplomatic initiative that would prove that Israel is truly and genuinely striving to end the occupation,” how about taking actual steps to End the Occupation? It could start with a complete freeze on settlements and a large scale release of Palestinian prisoners, followed by a unilateral declaration of intentions to withdraw, etc. Instead, Shavit goes back to “Hasbara” – the propaganda approach to gaining legitimacy: an old, familiar Israeli method.
Importantly, Shavit’s “iceberg appearances,” above, can form the basis for an effective anti-Occupation campaign.
IDF Chief of General Staff Gabi Ashkenazi told his French counterpart Jean-Louis Georgelin that Israel is not planning to bomb Iran, but may send elite troops to conduct activities on the ground there.
IOA Editor: Information, misinformation, or disinformation?
Cast Lead is what is bringing down Israel’s standing, not the reports written in its wake. Those are intended to prevent another Cast Lead, of the kind that the Goldas monstrously characterize as creating “an infrastructure of stability.” Nearly 1,400 were killed and tens of thousands were maimed and left homeless for an “infrastructure of stability,” which is neither an infrastructure nor stable.
Yossi Melman, Haaretz chief military intelligence analyst: “The reason Turkey banned Israel from this week’s NATO air force exercises had nothing to do with January’s war in the Gaza Strip. Rather, it was because of delays in the delivery of unmanned aerial vehicles to the Turkish army, a source in the Turkish Air Force said.”
IOA Editor: Whether it was Israel’s attack on Gaza or the failure to deliver Israeli killer-drones to Turkey on schedule, note that the right to use force, by either country, is assumed to be absolute. Melman doesn’t even mention it, let alone question it.
Turkey agreed four years ago to buy 10 Heron UAVs [drones] for over $180 million from Israeli Aerospace Industries (IAI) and Elbit Systems, Ltd. However, the Israeli firms missed the deadline for delivery.
“It’s quite simple and smart but evil,” said Michael Sfard, a lawyer with the Israeli human rights group Yesh Din. “They attack Palestinian property, people, and blockade roads every time the Israeli security forces do something they don’t like” — such as demolish outposts.
Fayyad is a former World Bank economist who has been praised internationally and by Israel for reforming Palestinian finances and improving security in the occupied West Bank. He said he remains committed to a plan announced in August to build all the institutions of a viable state within two years.
Dr. Samir Awad, Birzeit University: “The Turks could bring pressure to bear on the Israelis to moderate their treatment of the Palestinians as Israel values its strategic relations with Turkey. The Palestinians can only benefit from this… Turkey could also exert influence on the Americans to lean on their Israeli ally”.
Four Republican lawmakers have accused the most prominent Islamic advocacy group in Washington of trying to plant “spies” as interns on Capitol Hill… The proclamation… came in advance of a book, entitled “Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld that’s Conspiring to Islamize America”.
On Wednesday we – members of the Combatants for Peace movement, women of Machsom Watch, members of the Forum of Bereaved Families for Peace and writer David Grossman – attended a hearing at the [Israeli] High Court of Justice on the matter of the closing, due to lack of evidence, of the investigatory file on the killing of ten-year-old Abir Aramin about three years ago.
IOA Editor: Reported by Nurit Peled-Elhanan, an Israeli peace activist and professor at Hebrew University, among the founders of the Bereaved Families for Peace. After the death of Elhanan’s 13 year-old daughter in a 1997 suicide bombing attack she became an outspoken critic of the Israeli Occupation.
Israel is violating international law by detaining hundreds of Palestinians, some of them for years without charge or trial, two leading human rights groups in the country have said.
READ the B’Tselem report announcement
WATCH the Al Jazeera TV report
“We cannot ignore the truth – the occupation is a violent, racist, inhumane, illegal, undemocratic, immoral and an extreme condition that presents a mortal danger to both peoples,” the letter read. “We, who were educated on the values of liberty, justice, honesty and peace, cannot accept it.”
Abe Hayeem, an architect and founding member of Architects & Planners for Justice in Palestine writes about Tel Aviv and its deeply-rooted colonial history.
Key questions:
- What are the implications of a Turkey-Israel rift on the international effort to stop Iran’s nuclear quest?
- Does this signal a dramatic change in relations between the Turkish military and the moderate Islamic Administration of the ruling AK party?
- Will the Turkish ban on Israel prove to be the first tangible boycott by a country allied with Israel?
- And, what effect will this have on Israel’s obdurate policies with respect to easing their unrelenting pressure on the Palestinians?
“Israel has no intention of relinquishing its control over all of Palestine and, moreover, that it is actually bent on destroying Palestine as a nation through killing or expelling its people, appropriating its land, and strangling its economy.”
The foreign, defence, interior, economy, oil, electricity, agriculture and health ministers of the two countries attended the strategic talks in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo.
“… When phosphorus bombs were rained on innocent children in Gaza, the whole world, all of humanity, watched…” the Turkish prime minister said. “… unfortunately from time to time in international discussion platforms, the term ‘Islamic terror’ began to be used, and efforts were made to place blame on the Muslims and Islam.”
Israeli authorities are planning to demolish 150 Palestinian houses, home to about 1,000 people in East Jerusalem, according to a new report from the Jerusalem Center for Social and Economic Rights… [This figure does] not include another 125 houses and apartments whose owners were given demolition orders.
“The police commissioner has apparently forgotten that Umm al-Fahm and Ramle are parts of the State of Israel,” Al-Sana said. “The residents of these Arab communities are not demanding independence and are not undermining Israeli sovereignty – and are fighting for their equal civil rights and social justice.”
While Israel often accuses Palestinians of misusing ambulances as cover for attacks, a new report from the country’s second-largest newspaper suggests Israel may want to clean up its own house.
The United States sent a message to Egypt stating it does not support the proposed reconciliation agreement between Fatah and Hamas as it would undermine negotiations with Israel, Haaretz has learned.
IOA Editor: Divide and Rule.
NOAM CHOMSKY:
