[C]orruption on the hill in West Jerusalem is nothing compared to the theft of land, identity rape, and the body of lies and criminal discrimination against 270,000 residents of the eastern part of the city. Although these despicable acts have been going on in broad daylight for years, the public and the media don’t find them interesting. After all, it’s about Arabs.
2010
Attorney Shatz: “We are pleased that the state has finally admitted that it is the authority in Area A, as if the Oslo Accords have disappeared, and that the ‘bantustan’ known as the Palestinian Authority has no significance. This straightforward position will certainly interest the U.S. secretary of state, in light of the start of proximity talks.”
Cairo – Egyptian opposition groups on Sunday called for arresting Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on “war crimes” when he visits Egypt this week. Representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Kifaya (Enough) coalition, along with a number of independent politicians filed a report to state prosecutor Abdel Meguid Mahmoud demanding the immediate arrest of Netanyahu when he arrives in Egypt Monday for talks with President Hosny Mubarak.
A new leftist European Jewish group, JCall, has written a letter to be delivered Sunday to the European Parliament calling for a cessation of what it calls systematic support for Israeli government decisions… The letter calls occupation and settlements “morally and politically wrong,” noting that they “feed the unacceptable delegitimization process that Israel currently faces abroad.”
Many of Israel’s critics blame an “Israel lobby” for the near-total complicity of the US in Israeli annexation, colonization and cleansing programs in the occupied West Bank… Years after Noam Chomsky, Stephen Zunes, Walter Russell Mead published their critiques of the Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer “Israel lobby” thesis, many of the sharpest critics of Israel continue to attribute US foreign policy in the Middle East to the influence of the lobby. Given the prevalence of the Israel lobby argument, and the latest diplomatic confrontation between the US and Israel, it is important to revisit the flaws in the thesis, and properly attribute US behavior to the large concentrations of domestic political and economic power that truly drive US policy.
IOA Editor: The question: Noam Chomsky or Stephen Walt/John Mearsheimer? Very important!
MORE:
Noam Chomsky: A Middle East Peace That Could Happen (But Won’t)
John Mearsheimer: “The Future of Palestine – Righteous Jews vs. the New Afrikaners”
A new law tabled on Wednesday in the Israeli Knesset, seeks to forbid registration of Israeli organizations (NGOs) that are suspected of provision of information or involvement in law suits against Israeli officials or commanders for breaches of International Humanitarian Law, or war crimes.
“The [Israeli] enlightened camp” is busy with the endless theatrical performance of their moral difficulties, whose real purpose is to create a barrier between them and all those actions for which they refuse to take responsibility. Thus, when the order arrives, the leftist climbs into the tank without a second thought, but later he will do an anguished film about it for the Cannes festival. Thus the obsessive persecution of settlers. Thus Tel Aviv behaves as if it were a Mediterranean suburb of London while in a spitting distance from it eastward and southward lies an immense jail holding millions of people without rights for over half a century.
The story I will tell is straightforward. Contrary to the wishes of the Obama administration and most Americans – to include many American Jews – Israel is not going to allow the Palestinians to have a viable state of their own in Gaza and the West Bank. Regrettably, the two-state solution is now a fantasy. Instead, those territories will be incorporated into a “Greater Israel,” which will be an apartheid state bearing a marked resemblance to white-ruled South Africa. Nevertheless, a Jewish apartheid state is not politically viable over the long term. In the end, it will become a democratic bi-national state, whose politics will be dominated by its Palestinian citizens. In other words, it will cease being a Jewish state, which will mean the end of the Zionist dream.
The deep racism of the Israeli psyche is on the rise. The 1990s, at least in hindsight, marked some liberalization of the public discourse; the first decade of this century crushed it, and now the mildly critical, left-liberal discourse hardly exists in the mainstream. No wonder the liberal left has just 3 seats out of 120 in the Knesset; all the other parties are various shades of right-wing, far right, or fascism (except the small outcast “Arab” parties).
The US has given private assurances to encourage the Palestinians to join indirect Middle East peace talks, including an offer to consider allowing UN security council condemnation of any significant new Israeli settlement activity, the Guardian has learned.
IOA Editor: As they used to say in New York, “that and a token will get you into the subway.”
Israel is about to be admitted to an exclusive economic club, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Despite the Government of Israel’s failure to comply with OECD demands and standards, the organization announced in January 2010 that it will “complete” Israel’s membership by 2010. However, the OECD needs consensus to admit a new member state into the organization, so it only takes ONE country’s dissent to stop Israel from joining until it has met international human rights standards. The Israeli Government has yet to comply with the Goldstone Recommendations and until it does, admission to the OECD should be withheld.
The fact that the Israel-Palestine conflict grinds on without resolution might appear to be rather strange. For many of the world’s conflicts, it is difficult even to conjure up a feasible settlement. In this case, it is not only possible, but there is near universal agreement on its basic contours: a two-state settlement along the internationally recognized (pre-June 1967) borders — with “minor and mutual modifications,” to adopt official U.S. terminology before Washington departed from the international community in the mid-1970s.
Meron Benvenisti: “The whole notion of a Palestinian state now, in 2010, is a sham… The entire discourse is wrong. By continuing that discourse you perpetuate the status quo. The struggle for the two-state solution is obsolete… For the last 20 years I have questioned the feasibility of the partition of Palestine and now I am absolutely sure it is impossible… Or, it is possible if it is imposed on the Palestinians but that will mean the legitimisation of the status quo, of Bantustans, of a system of political and economic inequality.
Hamas spokesman: “This is a terrible crime committed by Egyptian security against simple Palestinian workers who were trying to earn their daily bread.” Egyptian security officials admitted that they had destroyed four tunnels north of the Rafah border crossing with Gaza on Wednesday.
The only democracy in the Middle East is perhaps unique, but it’s doubtful if it’s the real thing. Results of a poll published in Haaretz yesterday reflect what has been known for a long time: a combination of ignorance, a basic lack of understanding and a fascist mood. An ill and dangerous wind is blowing toward a government that is threatened with collapse.
More than half of Jewish Israelis think human rights organizations that expose immoral behavior by Israel should not be allowed to operate freely, and think there is too much freedom of expression here, a recent survey found.
IOA Editor: Very important. The unveiling of Israel’s ‘democratic’ facade – by Jewish, and democratic, Israeli scientists.
With respect to the Israeli-Arab-Palestinian conflict, Israel has contributed and is contributing to the inability to reach a solution; it is also contributing to the inability to manage the conflict reasonably and fairly. The gap between Israeli politicians’ statements and deeds is large, and contributes a great deal to the continuation and exacerbation of the conflict, parallel to the other side’s contribution. Note, for example, the decision to approve military orders enabling the deportation of thousands of Palestinians from the West Bank.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has told his Israeli counterpart Shimon Peres that he is disappointed with Benjamin Netanyahu and finds it hard to understand the prime minister’s diplomatic plan. Sarkozy made his comments at the Elysee Palace two weeks ago.
“When will the University of California stop funding war crimes against Palestinian civilians and the occupation of Palestinian land? How much longer will grieving mothers have to wait for justice?” UC Berkeley student and JVP activist Matthew Taylor covers the final stretch before tomorrow’s Student Senate vote.
No less than 60 percent [of Israeli Jews] at all income levels responded in that they would take off [and move to the United States] if given the chance.
The most educated, respectable and wealthy Palestinian citizen will always fare worse at the airport security check than the most disreputable Jewish citizen, or the one who espouses extremist opinions or even the Jewish citizen with a criminal record.
Hamas released an animated cartoon on Sunday showing abducted Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit, who has been captive in Gaza for nearly four years, returning to Israel in a coffin. The three-minute 3D animation [is] shown on the website of Hamas’ armed wing.
IOA Editor: A very sophisticated — both substantively and graphically — Hamas message to Israel: Exchange the Palestinian prisoners for Gilad Shalit, while he’s alive. It immediately proved to irritate the Netanyahu government.
[T]he line that separates the two sides today is not between Arabs and
Israelis or Jews and Muslims. Today the line is between those who want peace
and are ready to pay the price for it, and all the rest. They are the other
side! And today, that other side, to my dismay, is the corrupt group of
politicians and generals that leads us and behaves like a bunch of mafia
dons, war criminals, who play ping-pong in blood among themselves, who sow
hatred and reap death.
The Arab-Israeli war of narratives that has led to Holocaust-denial on the one hand and Nakba-denial on the other opposes two entirely symmetrical visions of the origins of this intractable conflict. In The Arabs and The Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives, Gilbert Achcar traces a complex history of interpretations from Arab responses to the earliest intimations of the Nazi genocide, through the creation of Israel and the occupation of Palestine, to last winter’s Israeli offensive against Gaza.
This morning [22 April 2010], the Israeli Border Police prevented Mr. Ameer Makhoul, the Director of Ittijah – Union of Arab Community-Based Associations inside Israel, from leaving the country. Makhoul, who also serves as the head of the Popular Committee for the Defense of Political Freedoms, received a prohibition order from leaving the country upon his arrival to the Jordan River Crossing. The order, which was issued by the Israeli Minister of the Interior, Eli Yishai, prohibits Makhoul from leaving the country for a period of two months.
Defining a Palestinian with a Gaza Strip address as a punishable infiltrator if he is found in the West Bank – as implied by a military order that has now gone into effect – is one more link in a chain of steps that Israel has taken, whose cumulative effect is to sever the Strip from Palestinian society as a whole.
ALSO:
Israel deports West Bank prisoner to Gaza
Has Israel Reneged on the Unity of West Bank and Gaza?
Israeli Military Order enables IOF to expel Palestinians from West Bank
IDF bid to expel West Bank Palestinians is a step too far
There are times when civil society has to take the initiative when government leaders are unable or unwilling to do so. Indeed, today, with tensions rising between Israel and Iran… it is time to talk, before it is too late.
Haaretz correspondent Aluf Benn: “Only one thing does bother the Israelis, according to the polls: fear of a diplomatic embargo and an international boycott. The Goldstone Report and the International Court of Justice in The Hague are arousing concern and interest, far more than Obama’s peace speeches.”
Finkelstein concludes that Gaza was not a war but a massacre, “like shooting fish in a barrel”. Israel maintained undisputed control of the air, carrying out 3,000 sorties virtually unhindered. Amnesty International could not find cases where civilians were caught up in crossfire, because there wasn’t a single battle during the 22-day assault: “‘Most of the time it was boring,’ one soldier confirmed to Amnesty, ‘there was supposed to be a tiny resistance force upon entry, but there just wasn’t’”.
We, at BOYCOTT!, a group of Israeli citizens, strive to stop our government’s human rights and international law violations, which have been facilitated by the cooperation of international companies. Your company has gone to great lengths in getting involved with the Israeli land and resources annexation, segregation and continued colonization of Palestine.
A Palestinian citizen of Israel was struck in the head with a high-velocity canister during a Friday protest against the separation wall in the West Bank village of Bil’in. The man, identified as 43-year-old Imad Risqa from Yaffa, was transported to hospital.
Please stop selling Ahava products. The theft by Israeli colonizers of these resources from stolen Palestinian land supports the illegal displacement and dispossession of the indigenous population. I ask Ulta to cease supporting such violations of international law and human rights.
American voters believe U.S. President Barack Obama is not a strong supporter of Israel, a new Quinnipiac University survey revealed Thursday, also showing a large majority of Jewish voters as disappointed with the administration’s handling of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
An often-overlooked factor in the field of sustainable development and resource management is the impact of the military on the environment and unfortunately this is no exception in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt). Whilst there have been many studies and reports on the economic, social and political repercussions of the continued Israeli occupation, there has been scant attention paid to the detrimental effects on the environment from Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) activities and the military infrastructure which supports them. This is in no small part because of the lack of information provided by the Israeli authorities and the high level of secrecy surrounding the IOF. For example, whilst conducting research for this paper it was not possible to view any images of the military bases in the oPt post 2004 because all sources have been doctored to erase any evidence of their presence.
On the 40th Earth Day, a consideration of some of the environmental impacts of the 42-year long Israeli Occupation, presented in a report by Applied Research Institute (ARIJ) – Jerusalem.
