Israeli Occupation Archive – Israel’s war against Palestine

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

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

Gideon Levy: Israel can’t put occupation up for immoral referendum

28 November 2010

Israeli democracy at its best: The entire people will decide on the next peace arrangement, but not on the question of settlements and annexation, and not on the question of wars. Israeli trickery at its best: Legislators pass laws relating to the day an arrangement is forged whose point is to defer that day’s arrival for as long as possible. And Israeli morality at its best: A manifestly immoral question is formulated for a referendum, and insult is added to injury because only we Israelis, members of the chosen people, will decide on the fate of another people which has for generations lived under occupation, and we dare to call all this tomfoolery democracy. In fact, this is Israeli chutzpah at its worst.

Mustafa Barghouthi: Our Story

27 November 2010

A trailer for Our Story, an important presentation by Mustafa Barghouthi, documenting Palestinian history, the Occupation, the dispossession and displacement of the Palestinian people by Israel from 1948 to the present day.

Jonathan Cook: Publish it Not

26 November 2010

Jonathan Cook, reporting on Israel and the Occupation for over a decade now, provides a comprehensive review of the many ways in which Israel attempts to suppress, control, shape and bias media coverage of the Occupation – globally, locally, and via its far-reaching international Hasbara propaganda network.

RELATED Why NGO Monitor is attacking The Electronic Intifada

Jonathan Cook: Publish it Not – Part II

26 November 2010

Aharon Shabtai: As We Were Marching

25 November 2010

Two days ago in Rafi’ah

nine Arabs were killed,

yesterday six

were killed in Hebron,

and today — just two.

Last year
as we were marching
from Shenkin Street

Judith Butler: “What shall we do without exile” Mahmoud Darwish and Edward Said addressing the future (video)

25 November 2010

The sixth Annual Edward Said Memorial Lecture organized by the Department of English and Comparative Literature, American University in Cairo, by Judith Butler.

Israeli referendum bill uses public as peace deal rubber stamp

25 November 2010

Knesset approves bill mandating referendum before decision to withdraw from Israeli territory, but does not enable appeal against decision to reject a peace agreement… The wording of the question contradicts Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement that the referendum “enables to pass with strong public support an agreement that answers the national interests of Israel.”

Israeli settlers win ownership of East Jerusalem home after lengthy battle

24 November 2010

Palestinian resident of the building: “The settlers arrived in the morning and began to break the lock… We were frightened. The children are scared of them and of their guards… Why do they come here? They have a whole country. So why here of all places, in our house?”

Arab League slams Israel referendum law

24 November 2010

The Arab League slammed a new Israeli law mandating a national referendum ahead of any withdrawal from annexed east Jerusalem or the Golan Heights. The League’s deputy secretary general, Ahmed bin Helli, said the law “showed clearly the hostile nature of the Israeli government and the fact that it does not take international law and the foundations of the peace process seriously.” (See next item.)

Minnesotans call for divestment from Israel!

24 November 2010

[The State of] Minnesota’s investment in two Israel bonds supports Israel’s apartheid system in both Israel and the Palestinian Territories and enables widespread abuse of human rights. Israel Bonds finance infrastructure projects including settlement building on the Palestinian West Bank and in East Jerusalem; these settlements displace Palestinians from their own lands.

Israeli student joins other side of conflict

24 November 2010

Columbia University student Maya Yechieli Wind organizes campus display depicting IDF soldiers abusing Palestinian students at checkpoints. Israeli students form counter-protest. ‘Many think this is what really goes on,’ one of them says.

IOA Editor: Perhaps it is precisely because this is what actually goes on… Flag-wrapping not withstanding, even this ‘pro-Israeli’ coverage of anti-Occupation activism at Columbia University fails to materially challenge the protesters’ message.

Jonathan Cook: Palestinian calls grow to seek UN resolution

23 November 2010

Top Palestinian officials, including President Mahmoud Abbas, are engaged in “very serious” discussions about whether to abandon negotiations with Israel and seek United Nations recognition of a Palestinian state, a senior Palestinian official said yesterday.

Israel must hold poll on any peace plan withdrawal after Knesset vote

23 November 2010

Israeli political analyst Yossi Alpher: “In effect, [the new law] weakens the authority of the Knesset to decide these issues and turns it over to a system that has never been tried in Israel. It’s extremely difficult to predict how the [new] system will behave. It is clearly intended to make it more difficult to approve withdrawal from these territories. It really strikes at the heart of the Israeli parliamentary system.”

IOA Editor: Why is this important? The new law makes Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem and of Syria’s Golan Heights more permanently secured by making a negotiated compromise by a future Israeli government (however theoretical and hard to imagine) much more difficult to carry out.

For historical context, read about the 1967 expulsion of Syria’s Golan Height population, which was strikingly similar in methods and means to Israeli actions in the 1948 Nakba:

The Disinherited: Syria’s 130,000 Golan Height Refugees

Lamis Andoni: Let Israel keep its freeze

23 November 2010

At the beginning of his term, Barack Obama became the first US president to call for a halt in Jewish settlement construction in the Israeli occupied Palestinian territories as a prerequisite for the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. But if a deal that stipulates a partial 90-day freeze of settlement building in return for US military and political incentives is reached, he will become the first US president to legitimise the Jewish colonies.

Ramzy Baroud: More than a bribe – Obama surrenders Palestinian rights

23 November 2010

The Middle East policies of US President Barack Obama may well prove the most detrimental in history so far, surpassing even the right-wing policies of President George W. Bush. Even those who warned against the overt optimism which accompanied Obama’s arrival to the White House must now be stunned to see how low the US president will go to appease Israel — all under the dangerous logic of needing to keep the peace process moving forward.

Allegations of West Bank torture increase

23 November 2010

Many analysts and observers fear that life in the west Bank is taking on an increasingly authoritarian hue. “I feel real concern that we are reaching the level of a police state,” says Shawan Jabarin, the director of al-Haq, a Ramallah-based human rights group.

Robert Fisk: An American bribe that stinks of appeasement

22 November 2010

In any other country, the current American bribe to Israel, and the latter’s reluctance to accept it, in return for even a temporary end to the theft of somebody else’s property would be regarded as preposterous. Three billion dollars’ worth of fighter bombers in return for a temporary freeze in West Bank colonisation for a mere 90 days? Not including East Jerusalem … [T]here is only one word for Barack Obama’s offer: appeasement.

Amy Kaplan: In Palestine, occupational hazards

22 November 2010

I was eager to return to Palestine, to see what Edward Said called “Zionism from the standpoint of its victims.”

Tibi: For Israel, the life of an Arab has less value

22 November 2010

By handing light sentences to IDF soldiers who knowingly risked the life of a non-combatant Palestinian child, an Israel Defense Forces court has conveyed a message that the lives of Arabs have less value than the lives of Jews, Deputy Knesset Speaker Ahmed Tibi said Sunday.

Settlers make water sources a tourist site and bar Palestinians from entering

22 November 2010

According to Dror Etkes, who has been researching construction in the settlements for several years, at least 25 springs are undergoing development for tourism. “Access to these springs has been blocked to the Palestinians, and there are dozens of other springs that the settlers have marked as targets for takeover,” he says.

Noam Chomsky on post-midterm America

21 November 2010

Noam Chomsky on the illusion of US democracy, liberal-conservative politics, the economy, unions and much more in a Paul Jay (the Real News Network) interview.

Amira Hass: 2010 Eqbal Ahmad memorial lecture (video)

21 November 2010

Amira Hass has been a correspondent in the Occupied Territories for the Israeli daily Ha’aretz since the early 1990s. Hass describes her work as “writing about the Israeli occupation and Apartheid regime and about Israelis through the experiences of Palestinians.” She also covers internal Palestinian issues. She is the author of the widely acclaimed Drinking the Sea at Gaza and two books of collected articles.

Gideon Levy: Israeli press is censoring the truth away

21 November 2010

A press that excels in many ways has shirked its task in covering the occupation; it’s the occupation’s greatest collaborator. It helps Israelis feel that there is no occupation. Without the dehumanization campaign in the press, Israelis would feel less self-satisfied, and perhaps more moral doubts would be raised about what we are doing.

Mock Israeli checkpoint at Columbia University (video)

21 November 2010

Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine staged a very impressive mock Israeli checkpoint for Right to Education Week – watch video.

Ali Abunimah asks the Jewish Federatioin to apologize

21 November 2010

Ali Abunimah, speaking at the University of New Mexico, asks the Jewish Federation of New Mexico to apologize for publishing a Dry Bones cartoon which compared BDS supporters with Hitler.

Stephen R. Shalom: anti-Semitism and the Israel-Palestine conflict – assessing the claim of double standards

19 November 2010

As it becomes increasingly difficult to justify Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people, Israel’s apologists — whether based in Israel or at pseudo-academic centers such as the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism — resort to another line of defense: namely, they accuse Israel’s critics of being anti-Semitic. Not the sort of classic anti-Semitism found for example in Hamas’s Charter, but instead the anti-Semitism of an anti-Israel double standard.

Stephen R. Shalom: anti-Semitism and the Israel-Palestine conflict (Appendix)

19 November 2010

Appendix to Anti-Semitism and the Israel-Palestine conflict – assessing the claim of double standards, by Stephen R. Shalom, Israeli Occupation Archive – IOA (19 Nov 2010).

Rashid Khalidi and John Mearsheimer: Why have US efforts to deliver Israeli-Palestinian peace failed?

19 November 2010

Despite lavish incentives offered by the U.S. to bring about a 90-day settlement freeze Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has intensified illegal settlement construction in the occupied territories, further casting doubt on the future of peace talks and on the Obama Administration’s ability to secure Israeli cooperation. Listen in on an earlier IMEU briefing with historian Rashid Khalidi and author John Mearsheimer.

Irene Gendzier: Dying to forget the foundations of US foreign policy in the Middle East 1945-1949

19 November 2010

Irene Gendzier, professor of Political Science at Boston University (and IOA Advisory Board member), will present her research on the foundations of US foreign policy in the Middle East in 1945 – 1949. The findings point to very early recognition on the part of US foreign policy planners of the future role the newly created State of Israel could have in protecting US interest in the region.

The talk by Irene Gendzier is THIS Monday, 22 November 2010- Columbia University, 207 Knox Hall, at 12:30pm

Don’t say you didn’t know, Tel-Aviv film festival participants

19 November 2010

Following is a list of the artists who were scheduled to perform in Israel and asked not to cross the picket lines of this struggle, but instead chose to follow the footsteps of Elton John who entertained apartheid South-Africa, and gave their stamp of approval to a reality in which a Palestinian under Israeli occupation is barred from coming to their show in Tel-Aviv.

Al-Shabaka Policy Advisors: Strategies if Talks “Succeed”

18 November 2010

Al-Shabaka Policy Advisors discuss strategies for Palestinians and their supporters if peace talks “succeed.” Over the past few weeks, Al-Shabaka Policy Advisors Bashir Abu Manneh, Ali Abunimah, Naseer Aruri, Diana Buttu, Mary Nazzal-Batayneh, Mouin Rabbani and Samah Sabawi commented on Nadia Hijab’s policy brief, What if Peace Talks “Succeed?” Their comments are published here.

Nadia Hijab: What if Peace Talks “Succeed?”

18 November 2010

Among the strategies used in the struggle for human rights, the Palestinians urgently need to identify the most effective ways to stay on the land of Palestine… Israel is still relentlessly carving up the West Bank and depopulating the Jordan Valley and East Jerusalem, as it is [in] the Negev and other areas where Palestinians are the majority inside Israel. Without Palestinians on the land of Palestine, as Israel knows only too well, the Palestinian cause will be impossible to sustain.

Followed by comments by Al-Shabaka Policy Advisors Bashir Abu Manneh, Ali Abunimah, Naseer Aruri, Diana Buttu, Mary Nazzal-Batayneh, Mouin Rabbani and Samah Sabawi: Strategies if Talks “Succeed”?

Henry Siegman: Dishonesty and East Jerusalem

18 November 2010

As … Netanyahu knows very well, it is not “settlements” per se that are illegal. It is the transfer of an occupier’s population into the occupied territories that violates the Fourth Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a signatory. Such transfers are illegal irrespective of where they take place—whether in settlements in the West Bank countryside or in apartment buildings in East Jerusalem.

Website reveals details of hundreds of IDF ‘war criminals’

18 November 2010

“In underlining them we are purposefully directing attention to individuals rather than the static structures through which they operate,” the website states while calling on visitors to spread the info “widely”.

UPDATED: ‘War criminals’ site exposing personal details of IDF soldiers taken down.

Jonathan Cook: Obama’s bribe

17 November 2010

In addition to the concession in the Jordan Valley and the [$3.00B] offer of combat jets that would effectively double the annual aid from the US, the deal is said to include a promise by Washington to veto for the next year any UN resolutions Israel opposes and to refrain, after borders have been agreed, from demanding any future limits on settlement growth.