Israel’s War Against Palestine: Documenting the Military Occupation of Palestinian and Arab Lands

IOA content is now updated mostly on Facebook.
More on the current status of the IOA HERE.

Yousef Munayyer: Palestine’s Hidden History of Nonviolence

22 May 2011

For those who have never lived in a system of violence like the Israeli occupation, it is hard to understand how simply not going anywhere constitutes resistance, but when the objective of your oppressor is to get you to leave your land, staying put is part of the daily struggle. In this sense, every Palestinian living under the Israeli occupation is a nonviolent resister.

Move Over AIPAC Flashmob (DC Union Station)

21 May 2011

Move Over AIPAC / CodePink flashmob event at Union Station, Washington DC on 20 May 2011, during the annual AIPAC convention and the Move Over AIPAC convention and series of protest in Washington DC.

Rona Sela: It took a village

21 May 2011

In retrospect, the [Nakba] village files… sometimes constituted the last testimonies of the Arab villages, just before they were emptied of their inhabitants. They are the last remaining vestiges of the villages before they were destroyed or settled by Jewish immigrants who streamed into the country in its first years; villages which were erased from the Israeli map because of their Arab identity.

IOA Editor: Newly revealed documents on the Nakba, directly from the files of its perpetrators. This Israel-centric exposure of Israeli war crimes might, over time, help change Israelis’ view of history, or so one hopes.

Robert Fisk: Lots of rhetoric – but very little help

21 May 2011

It was the same old story. Palestinians can have a “viable” state, Israel a “secure” one. Israel cannot be de-legitimised. The Palestinians must not attempt to ask the UN for statehood in September. No peace can be imposed on either party. Sometimes yesterday, you could have turned this into Obama’s forthcoming speech to pro-Israeli lobbyists this weekend. Oh yes, and the Palestinian state must have no weapons to defend itself. So that’s what “viable” means!

Alan Levine: Jews are dishonored by a blind defense of Israel

20 May 2011

Two Jews, three opinions, is the old adage. On “everything but Israel,” is the present reality. Despite its belief to the contrary, neither the Jewish community nor Israel is well-served by that reality. Mainstream Jewry is dishonored by having the likes of Wiesenfeld and Hikind be its public voice on such matters, and by insisting that unquestioning and irrational loyalty to Israel substitute for rational debate and a commitment to what is just.

Amira Hass: Israel turned the Nakba into a 63-year process

18 May 2011

As the state which claims to be the heir of the Holocaust martyrs, Israel crowns itself as the winner in the global, historical competition of victimhood. Yet it manufactures methods of oppression and dispossession of the individual and the collective, methods which turn the Nakba into a continuing, 63-year process.

Jonathan Cook: On an old anniversary, a new sense that change is possible

17 May 2011

Unlike previous years, this Nakba Day was not simply a commemoration of the catastrophe that befell the Palestinians in 1948, when their homeland was forcibly reinvented as the Jewish state. It briefly reminded Palestinians that, despite their long-enforced dispersion, they still have the potential to forge a common struggle against Israel.

Lia Tarachansky: Palestinians break Syrian border on day of protests

17 May 2011

On the 63rd commemoration of the Nakba Palestinians coordinate a wave of historic demonstrations. Protests at the Lebanese, Syrian, West Bank, and Gazan borders and inside Egypt took place. Many died as a result of live fire, and hundreds were injured both from Israeli forces and others such as the Egyptian and Lebanese armies.

Chris Hedges: The Obama Deception – Why Cornel West went ballistic

17 May 2011

[Cornel West] now nurses, like many others who placed their faith in Obama, the anguish of the deceived, manipulated and betrayed. He bitterly describes Obama as “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats. And now he has become head of the American killing machine and is proud of it.”

Why has University of Haifa banned on-campus political activity?

17 May 2011

MK Hanin Zuabi (Balad ) canceled a scheduled lecture at the University of Haifa Sunday after the university announced it was banning on-campus political activity and called in security forces. The lecture, which would have coincided with Nakba Day, was arranged and approved by the university a month ago. Zuabi, who was invited by the Balad student association, had planned to discuss anti-Arab discrimination and other issues.

Former Israeli soldiers break the silence on military violations

16 May 2011

IDF soldier describes the distress of a young woman who tearfully pleaded to be allowed to pass through a Jenin checkpoint in order to sit an important exam. He gradually came to understand, he says, that the Israeli army’s intention was “to enforce tyranny on people who you know are regular civilians” and to “make it clear who’s in control here”.

Dramatic video shows Palestinians, Syrians entering Israeli-occupied Golan Heights

16 May 2011

A dramatic video published by the website baladee.net shows the moment when hundreds of Palestinian refugees and Syrians break through the border fence from Syria into the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights (part of Syria occupied by Israel in 1967 and illegally annexed in 1981).

Noam Chomsky: The US and its allies will do anything to prevent democracy in the Arab World

16 May 2011

Noam Chomsky: “Across the [Middle East], an overwhelming majority of the population regards the United States as the main threat to their interests… The reason is very simple… Plainly, the US and its allies are not going to want governments which are responsive to the will of the people. If that happens, not only will the US not control the region, but it will be thrown out.”

Radical leftists: Soldiers are killers

15 May 2011

Ynetnews: Around 100 extreme leftists are protesting near Tel Aviv’s Cinematheque in a show of support for the Palestinian “Nakba Day,” “the Just people’s uprising”, and against “the killing of innocent civilians”.

IOA Editor: Interesting that Israel’s most popular Hebrew newspaper describes Israeli-Jews demonstrating in solidarity with Palestinians on Nakba Day as “extreme leftists” when all they do is protest against violations of international law. We now say, “We’re all extreme leftists…”

Gideon Levy: Israeli Jews should mark Nakba Day, too

15 May 2011

It is necessary to know that there were 418 villages here that were wiped off the face of the earth, and it should be remembered that there were more than 600,000 natives of this land who fled or were expelled not to return to their homes, and that to this day most of them … and their offspring live in terrible conditions, carrying keys to their lost homes… We must know that under nearly every patch of Jewish National Fund forest rest the ruins that Israel was keen to erase, to ensure that they not serve as evidence of a different heritage. We can know that under our flourishing Canada Park hide the ruins of three villages which Israel razed after the Six Day War, putting its residents on a bus and expelling them.

Lia Tarachansky: Israelis defy Nakba Law on Independence Day

15 May 2011

At the end of March, the Israeli parliament passed the Nakba Law which states that any body that receives government funding, such as schools, can be fined for commemorating the Nakba on Israel’s Independence Day. The Nakba means “Catastrophe” in Arabic and refers to the 1948 war, the result of which was the depopulation of two thirds of the Palestinian population, which today numbers millions of refugees. To this day many still hold the keys to their original homes, but are not allowed to return. In defiance of the law, the Israeli organization Zochrot posted a sign with the law in German throughout the core of Tel Aviv where thousands celebrated. Within minutes, police surrounded the Zochorot office.

Ziyad Clot: Why I blew the whistle about Palestine

15 May 2011

The “peace negotiations” were a deceptive farce whereby biased terms were unilaterally imposed by Israel and systematically endorsed by the US and EU. Far from enabling a negotiated and fair end to the conflict, the pursuit of the Oslo process deepened Israeli segregationist policies and justified the tightening of the security control imposed on the Palestinian population, as well as its geographical fragmentation. Far from preserving the land on which to build a state, it has tolerated the intensification of the colonisation of the Palestinian territory.

Haaretz editorial: Israel opens its gates to the world, shuts them to Palestinians

13 May 2011

The sweeping denial of residency status from tens of thousands of Palestinians and deporting them from their homeland in this way cannot be anything but an illegitimate demographic policy and a grave violation of international law. It’s a policy whose sole purpose is to thin out the Palestinian population in the territories.

Allegra Pacheco: Recognizing the reconciliation

13 May 2011

Money aside, a PA crisis and/or collapse resulting from a boycott of the new Hamas-Fatah government could ultimately lead to further violence and chaos. This is what happened when the first Hamas-Fatah national unity government, formed under the Mecca Agreement in 2007, failed, after the decision by all the Quartet’s members but Russia to boycott and isolate it.

BBC under fire for ‘censoring’ Palestine lyric

13 May 2011

Rapper Mic Righteous’s improvised set on BBC 1Xtra met with complaints after corporation masks the words ‘free Palestine’.

IOA Editor: What a sorry bunch running that ‘venerable institution’ called BBC.

Gideon Levy: It’s called ethnic cleansing

12 May 2011

While we are still desperately concealing, denying and repressing our major ethnic cleansing of 1948 – over 600,000 refugees, some who fled for fear of the Israel Defense Forces and its predecessors, some who were expelled by force – it turns out that 1948 never ended, that its spirit is still with us. Also with us is the goal of trying to cleanse this land of its Arab inhabitants as much as possible, and even a bit more.

IOA Editor: This is exactly what we’ve been saying all along, including on the very story Levy cites. It is good to see that Gideon Levy is now reaching the same conclusion. The IOA is far from alone in making these charges. Others include historians Benny Morris and Ilan Pappe. Most recently, American playwright Tony Kushner was rejected by the CUNY Board of Trustees from receiving an honorary doctorate on account of expressing such views. (A decision the Board quickly reversed in the face of mounting criticism.)

Israel admits it covertly canceled residency status of 140,000 Palestinians

11 May 2011

Israel has used a covert procedure to cancel the residency status of 140,000 West Bank Palestinians between 1967 and 1994, the legal advisor for the Judea and Samaria Justice Ministry’s office admits, in a new document obtained by Haaretz. The document was written after the Center for the Defense of the Individual filed a request under the Freedom of Information Law.

IOA Editor: This important story sheds light on just one instance of many that is part of a far larger, planned and coordinated effort by the Israeli government to replace Palestine’s Arab population with Israeli Jewish population: in other words, opportunistic Ethnic Cleansing, in small steps incrementally leading towards the desired result – reducing one population and increasing the other. Amira Hass has written on this extensively, as have others.

UPDATE Top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat: “This policy should not only be seen as a war crime as it is under international law; it also has a humanitarian dimension: we are talking about people who left Palestine to study or work temporarily but who could not return to resume their lives in their country with their families.”

RELATED Gideon Levy: It’s called ethnic cleansing

Danny Schechter: Is Tony Kushner the new Helen Thomas?

10 May 2011

The problem, of course, is that Kushner’s status earned him reconsideration; other less well-known personages critical of Israel, including academic and political analysts, are often targeted in ways that generate less attention and debate. Many conclude it’s just not worth it to speak up about Israeli policy, less they became targeted and smeared – and even lose their jobs.

Rashid Khalidi: the Hamas-Fatah agreement

10 May 2011

Palestine Studies TV speaks with Rashid Khalidi, professor at Columbia University and editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies, on the Fata-Hamas reconciliation agreement.

Egyptians to mark Nakba with a march to Palestine

10 May 2011

Following Egypt’s January 25 Revolution, Egyptians are pushing for some of the country’s foreign relations policies to change, especially those related to Israel and Palestine. Aid or protest convoys to Gaza were frequently stopped or arrested during the Mubarak era by the ousted president’s regime, and now for the first time since the revolution thousands of activists are planning to march to the Rafah border town.

Deutsche Bahn pulls out of Israel project

10 May 2011

“Who Profits” activist Merav Emir: “I want to congratulate the German government for making such a clear and bold statement about the illegality of this train route under international law. We call on other European governments to follow suit in making sure that companies in their countries abide by international law.”

Israel to invest $1 billion in Iron Dome missile defense system

9 May 2011

Israeli Defense Ministry director general: Five countries interested in Iron Dome, Israel’s anti-missile system.

IOA Editor: There’s no business like arms business… The Occupation has been very good to Israel’s arms industry, serving as a live shooting range, practice killing fields for the high tech systems Israel is marketing to countries around the world. As Amira Hass wrote in 2009, Israel knows that peace just doesn’t pay. For more on the economic benefits of the Occupation, see the Shir Hever interview series The Political Economy of Israel’s Occupation.

Noam Chomsky: My reaction to Osama bin Laden’s death

9 May 2011

We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic.

Uri Avnery: Rejoice not

8 May 2011

Hamas did not die when the Israeli air force killed Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, the paralyzed founder, ideologue and symbol of Hamas. As a martyr he was far more effective than as a living leader. His martyrdom attracted many new fighters to the cause. Killing a person does not kill an idea.

Former Mossad chief: Israel air strike on Iran ‘stupidest thing I have ever heard’

7 May 2011

When asked about what would happen in the aftermath of an Israeli attack Dagan said that: “It will be followed by a war with Iran. It is the kind of thing where we know how it starts, but not how it will end.” The Iranians have the capability to fire rockets at Israel for a period of months, and Hizbollah could fire tens of thousands of grad rockets and hundreds of long-range missiles, he said.

Mordechai Vanunu: Revoke my citizenship

7 May 2011

Morderchai Vanunu demands to apply a recently passed law and revoke his Israeli citizenship. “I have no interest in Israeli citienship, I don’t want to go on living here.”

US Boat to Gaza: New York harbor sunset cruise

6 May 2011

Join a sunset cruise in New York Harbor: Wednesday, 25 May 2011
The Marco Polo Marina
23rd Street & FDR Drive ~ New York
BOARDING 6:30 pm · RETURNING 10:30 pm

To Gaza with Love letters campaign

6 May 2011

The U.S. Boat to Gaza, The Audacity of Hope, is committed to breaking the siege of Gaza. Around the U.S. thousands of people have been contributing. Not everyone can sail on the boat but you all are just as much a part of the campaign as the passengers and the crew.

A. Friend: Visiting the Land

5 May 2011

To an outside observer, Israel looks like a nation obsessed with finding a technological fix for problems that are historical, national, and moral – but entirely not ‘technical.’ [Instead,] the Occupation must be dismantled.

Tony Kushner Responds to CUNY Board Decision

5 May 2011

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner was to receive an honorary doctorate from CUNY’s John Jay College. Not for critics of the Israeli occupation, said CUNY’s Board of Trustees.

Tony Kushner: I believe that the historical record shows, incontrovertibly, that the forced removal of Palestinians from their homes as part of the creation of the state of Israel was ethnic cleansing, a conclusion I reached mainly by reading the work of Benny Morris, an acclaimed and conservative Israeli historian…

UPDATE
New York Times: In Reversal, City University Trustees Approve Honorary Degree for Tony Kushner
New York Times Editorial: CUNY Shamed Iteself
New York Times: After Reversal, Honor Is Likely for Kushner

Daniel Barenboim brings ‘solace and pleasure’ to Gaza with Mozart concert

5 May 2011

[Daniel Barenboim] said the Israeli and Palestinian conflict was one between two peoples who believe they are entitled to live on a single piece of land rather than a conflict between two nations about borders, adding that the whole world understood that a Palestinian state should be established on the land that Israel occupied in 1967. “Everyone has to understand that the Palestinian cause is a just cause therefore it can be only given justice if it is achieved without violence. Violence can only weaken the righteousness of the Palestinian cause,” he said.