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

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Israeli army’s female recruits denounce treatment of Palestinians

22 August 2010

It was a single word scrawled on a wall at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem that unlocked something deep inside … two years after she had completed compulsory military service in the IDF. The word was “occupation”. “I really felt like someone was speaking the unspoken… It was really shocking to me. There was graffiti saying, ‘end the occupation’. And I felt like, OK, now I can talk about what I saw.”

UN receives over 100 complaints of police, IDF abuse of West Bank teenagers this year

22 August 2010

Since September 2009, Defence for Children International has given the UN details of more than 100 cases in which the military authorities allegedly abused minors who were held in detention.

Ran Greenstein: Israel/Palestine and the apartheid analogy – critics, apologists and strategic lessons

22 August 2010

“There is no doubt that the occupation is the biggest festering sore in Israeli-Palestinian relations. Futile negotiations over the last two decades have led to its intensification rather than mitigation. The only way forward is an ongoing campaign to put an end to it, without having anything to do with the diplomatic process or with the one-state, two-states, debate.”

Is Israel an apartheid state? The notion of apartheid may be applicable in different ways to different components of the system. While Israel clearly is different from South African historical apartheid, in crucial respects it has affinities with apartheid in its generic sense. (Part I of a two-part essay.)

Charles Glass: Land and Sovereignty

22 August 2010

What is at stake in the conflict over Israel and Palestine are land and sovereignty — the traditional core issues of colonial and anti-colonial rivalry — not theology… Until the US withholds the subsidies that Israel uses to pay for the confiscation and settlement of Palestinian land, there will be no resolution to the conflict in Palestine-Israel.

MJ Rosenberg: Israel and the anti-Muslim blow-up

22 August 2010

Bottom line: it’s a witches’ brew that is being stirred up, and it is one that will no doubt produce violence. But the witches are not all on the right. Just as many liberals are stirring the pot to please some of their donors.

Jerusalem train company asks passengers: ‘Do you mind traveling with Arabs?’

20 August 2010

Among those surveyed … was Ofra Ben-Artzi, a left-wing activist and the sister-in-law of Sara Netanyahu, wife of the prime minister. “I told the pollster, ‘Imagine this kind of question being asked in London or New York.’ It testifies to the level of racism we’ve reached,” she said.

Descendants appeal to UN over latest Mamilla Cemetery demolitions

18 August 2010

Yesterday, parties defending a 12th century Muslim burial ground in Jerusalem from disinterment and desecration provided new information on the latest demolitions by Israel’s Jerusalem Municipality to the United Nations and other international officials whom they initially petitioned on the matter in February 2010. The letter was sent by US academic Rashid I. Khalidi on behalf of the Campaign to Preserve Mamilla Jerusalem Cemetery.

Tel Aviv University and Sheikh Muwanis: Israel and Palestine

18 August 2010

Tel Aviv University was partially built on the lands of the Palestinian village of Sheikh Muwanis… Zochrot, an organization that encourages the Israeli state and its institutions to recognize the moral debt for the injustices caused to the Palestinian people during the establishment of the state of Israel, has started a campaign requesting that Tel Aviv University acknowledge the history of Sheikh Muwanis.

PLEASE HELP this effort by sending a letter to Tel Aviv University President Itamar Rabinowich.

US [popular] support for Israel is decreasing, new poll shows

18 August 2010

American support for Israel is waning, a poll presented to senior Israeli officials in Jerusalem last week revealed. [And it is even lower in western Europe.]

Zuheir Andreus: We are all Zuabi

18 August 2010

The Palestinians in Israel will not agree to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. The Palestinians, the authentic owners of the land here, are an inseparable part of the Arab nation. They were here before Israel, they are not transients and they are certainly not guests in their native land.

Chris Hedges: Formalizing Israel’s Land Grab

18 August 2010

UN special rapporteur, Richard Falk: “[The Occupation] is presently a de facto annexation. The creation of a single state would give the arrangement a more legalistic cover. It would seek to resolve the issue of occupied territory without the bother of international negotiations… The effect is to fragment the Palestinian people in such defining ways as to make it almost impossible to envision the emergence of a viable Palestinian sovereign state… The longer it continues, the more difficult it is to overcome, and the more serious are the abridgements of fundamental Palestinian rights.”

Jonathan Cook: Israel should not keep its history behind lock and key

17 August 2010

Ethnic cleansing is the common theme of [the 1948 and 1967 Golan Height] Israeli conquests. A deeper probe of the archives will almost certainly reveal in greater detail how and why these “cleansing” campaigns were carried out – which is precisely why Mr Netanyahu and others want the archives to remain locked.

Jonathan Cook: Racist universities?

17 August 2010

Yousef Jabareen, Dirasat’s director, said [Tel Aviv] university’s decision represented an increasingly hardline attitude from its officials. “What is so worrying is that a supposedly liberal academic institution — not the right-wing government — is promoting discrimination,” he said.

Harvard insists Israeli shares sale not driven by boycott

17 August 2010

Harvard University has insisted that the sale of shares in Israeli companies is not driven by pro-Palestinian boycott and divestment campaign.

ALSO
Globes (Updated): Harvard denies divestment from Israel
Foreign Policy: Harvard not divesting from Israel

IOA Editor: Harvard’s sale of all its Israeli holdings will remain a bit of a mystery, at least for a while. The manner in which it was done – an entire country-portfolio, sold at once – during the second quarter of 2010 which, coincidentally or not, was also when the Berkeley BDS struggle culminated, suggests it may be more than just a matter of investment management.

If the Harvard Corporation wanted to avoid becoming embroiled in a BDS struggle connected to the Israeli Occupation – say, the next time Israel commits war crimes on sea or land – its best strategy would be to make a ‘business decision’ to pull out of Israel, quietly and without fanfare: not to make a principled, morally-based and publicly explained University policy decision, one that would be controversial and may cause some of Harvard’s donors to put their money elsewhere. And this is exactly what it did. Only time will tell.

‘Facebook photos of soldiers posing with bound Palestinians are the norm’

17 August 2010

Breaking the Silence: Facebook photos depicting Israel Defense Forces soldiers pictured alongside handcuffed and blindfolded Palestinian detainees represent the norm, not the exception, in IDF conduct … refuting an official army statement claiming the opposite.

Amira Hass: What Hamas is really afraid of

16 August 2010

“I wish these pictures reached leftists abroad,” my friend said … as she watched Hamas police use rifle butts and clubs to beat her friends – activists from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Although my friend has never been a fan of the Fatah government in the West Bank, she is outraged by the romanticization of Hamas rule by foreign activists.

Harvard University fund sells all Israel holdings

16 August 2010

In another blow to Israeli shares, the Harvard Management Company notified the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Friday that it had sold all its holdings in Israeli companies during the second quarter of 2010. No reason for the sale was mentioned. The Harvard Management Company manages Harvard University’s endowment.

IOA Editor:The Harvard Management Company — a subsidiary of Harvard University charged with managing the university’s endowment, pension assets, working capital, and non-cash gifts — is best known for managing the university’s $26 billion endowment, the largest endowment in US higher education. Historically, the HMC has been the leading university investment management company, receiving a great deal of attention from all other university funds.

This is probably the first reported university endowment divestment from all Israeli holdings. Coming from Harvard, it sets a very important precedent: it is likely to be reviewed, scrutinized, and possibly followed, by other universities. Because Harvard, or HMC, has yet to make a public statement on the decision, one can only assume that it took place as a preventive measure, to avoid becoming the “next Berkeley.”

IDF soldier posts images of blindfold Palestinians on Facebook, from ‘best time of my life’

16 August 2010

Yishai Menuchin, director of the Public Committee Against Torture: “The horrible pictures demonstrate a norm of treating Palestinians like objects instead of human beings – treatment that disregards their feelings as humans and their right to privacy.”

US issues arms deal ultimatum to Turkey

16 August 2010

President Barack Obama has personally warned Turkey’s prime minister that unless Ankara shifts its position on Israel and Iran it stands little chance of obtaining the US weapons it wants to buy.

Akiva Eldar: Citizens, but not equal

15 August 2010

Sixty-two years after the founding of the state … it is time to acknowledge that the Jewish state is not interested in also being the state of its Arab citizens. The predicament of the Arab minority between the Mediterranean Sea and the Green Line, especially the Muslim Arab minority, is an indication of the attitude of the Jewish democratic state toward those who do not belong to the lords of the land.

Gideon Levy: “Arabs, get out”

15 August 2010

The fact that [Israeli Arabs] have yet to choose to boycott the state and its institutions and to stop participating in the game of democracy, which is corrupt to begin with, as far as they are concerned – a game from which they are almost completely excluded – is nothing short of amazing.

Barak approves purchase of F-35s

15 August 2010

Barak: “The F-35 is a fighter jet of the future that will enable Israel to continue its air superiority and mainatain its qualitative edge in the region… The plane will provide the air force with better long-range and short-range capabilities in a manner that will help ensure national security.”

George Bisharat and Nimer Sultany: Second-class citizens

15 August 2010

Adalah, the Legal Center for Minority Rights in Israel, counts more than 35 Israeli laws explicitly privileging Jews over non-Jews. Other Israeli laws appear neutral, but are applied in discriminatory fashion. For example, laws facilitating government land seizures make no reference to Palestinians, but nonetheless have been used almost exclusively to expropriate their properties for Jewish settlements.

Omar Barghouti: Besieging Israel’s siege

14 August 2010

Despite Israel’s siege of Gaza, and the escalating displacement in the Negev and East Jerusalem, Palestinians have some reason to celebrate. In Washington [state] a food co-op has passed a resolution calling for a boycott of Israeli products, confirming that the boycott movement – five years old last month – has finally crossed the Atlantic.

Jeff Halper: Ramadan Kareem from the Netanyahu and Obama Administrations

14 August 2010

Yesterday, the day before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan began, at 2:30 in the morning, workers sent by the Israeli authorities, protected by dozens of police, destroyed the tombstones in the last portion of the Mamilla cemetery, an historic Muslim burial ground with graves going back to the 7th Century, hitherto left untouched. The government of Israel has always been fully cognizant of the sanctity and historic significance of the site.

IMEU: FAQ on Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS)

14 August 2010

A primer on BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions), its history, participants, and recent successes.

IOA Editor: An Appeal from April 2001, which predates by several years actions covered in the summary presented here by IMEU, can be found on the Matzpun website. A co-author of the Matzpun Appeal reports that, to the best of his knowledge, it was the first call for boycott of Israeli products and tourism, covering both Israel and the occupied territories. At the time, the initiative was very isolated, not receiving support from organizations that now support BDS.

Joseph Dana: The “banality of evil” and Israel’s destruction of al-Araqib (video)

13 August 2010

In the early hours of 10 August, Israeli forces destroyed — for the third time — the Bedouin village of al-Araqib in the northern Negev desert. Israel had first destroyed the village on 27 July as the Electronic Intifada reported, and each time the villagers have attempted to rebuild.

Veritas Handbook: a new guide puts Palestine history, debates in activists’ hands

12 August 2010

For 62 years, the Palestinian people have been misunderstood and oppressed, and in a small way, we hope to change that. It is in the spirit of justice that we found the inspiration to compile The Veritas Handbook.

FREE DOWNLOAD OF THE VERITAS HANDBOOK

Just get out: Palestine’s Jerusalem MPs

12 August 2010

If Israel’s latest order to deport the Hamas MPs was intended to curb support for the movement, it has failed. An array of prominent figures … have flocked to the Red Cross’s doors to offer solidarity. On Fridays the street outside doubles as an open-air mosque. The Hamas MPs, hitherto minor figures, have become celebrities.

Palestinian women smuggled into Tel Aviv for day of fun

11 August 2010

A group of Israeli women smuggled 12 Palestinian woman and four children, among them a year-old baby, into Tel Aviv for a day of fun about two weeks ago. The women, among them writers Ilana Hammerman and Klil Zisapel, picked up the women from their villages, following two earlier meetings with them.

RELATED: Israeli and Palestinian Women Find New Way to Challenge The Occupation

Jonathan Cook: The US arms ‘bonanza’ in Middle East

11 August 2010

Two of the US closest allies in the ME, Israel and Saudi Arabia, are on the brink of signing large arms deals with the US in a move designed to ratchet up the pressure on Iran, according to defence analysts. [T]he joint strengthening of the Saudi Arabian and Israeli militaries was seen as a key regional interest for the US.

Chris Hedges: The tears of Gaza must be our tears

11 August 2010

I would like to remind [Israelis] that it is they who hide in darkness. It is we who stand in the light. It is they who deceive. It is we who openly proclaim our compassion and demand justice for those who suffer in Gaza. We are not afraid to name our names. We are not afraid to name our beliefs. And we know something you perhaps sense with a kind of dread. As Martin Luther King said, the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice, and that arc is descending with a righteous fury that is thundering down upon the Israeli government.

Amira Hass: A soldier’s word

11 August 2010

The violence of the occupier is the norm that no one questions, so much so that it becomes invisible. Only the response to that norm is presented and perceived as criminal, and the occupying nation wallows pleasurably in its eternal victimhood to justify its violent actions.

Midnight on the Mavi Marmara (new book)

9 August 2010

Henning Mankell, aboard the Gaza Freedom Flotilla: “We have been attacked while in international waters. That means the Israelis have behaved like pirates … The moment they start to steer this ship towards Israel, we have also been kidnapped. The whole action is illegal.”

US to Sell F-15s to Saudis

9 August 2010

The Obama administration plans to sell advanced F-15 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia but won’t equip them with long-range weapons systems and other arms whose inclusion was strongly opposed by Israel, diplomats and officials said.

Historian Tony Judt, 62, Dies After Battle with Lou Gehrig’s Disease (video)

9 August 2010

Widely regarded as one of the most important historians of contemporary Europe, Tony Judt died on Friday… Judt is perhaps most controversial for his critique of Israel: in 2003 he famously called Israel an anachronism and outlined the argument for a one-state solution with Palestinians and Israelis living in secular, binational state.