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

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Shir Hever: The Political Economy of Israel’s Occupation – Part II

15 July 2010

A seven-part series on the political economy of the Israeli Occupation. Paul Jay of The Real News Network interviews Shir Hever, an Israeli economist and expert in the political economy of the Occupation whose forthcoming book is The Political Economy of Israel’s Occupation.

Part II: Israel Inflates National Security Concerns in Order to Invalidate Labor and Class Disputes

IOA Editor: This is a very important series, confirming Amira Hass’s assertions, made regularly, that Israel knows that peace just doesn’t pay.

Shir Hever: The Political Economy of Israel’s Occupation – Part III

15 July 2010

A seven-part series on the political economy of the Israeli Occupation. Paul Jay of The Real News Network interviews Shir Hever, an Israeli economist and expert in the political economy of the Occupation whose forthcoming book is The Political Economy of Israel’s Occupation.

Part III: Israeli Elite Profited through Privatization of Public Assets – Workers Are Asked to Sacrifice

IOA Editor: This is a very important series, confirming Amira Hass’s assertions, made regularly, that Israel knows that peace just doesn’t pay.

Shir Hever: The Political Economy of Israel’s Occupation – Part IV

15 July 2010

A seven-part series on the political economy of the Israeli Occupation. Paul Jay of The Real News Network interviews Shir Hever, an Israeli economist and expert in the political economy of the Occupation whose forthcoming book is The Political Economy of Israel’s Occupation.

Part IV: Rational and Irrational Zionism – The Moderates and the Right

IOA Editor: This is a very important series, confirming Amira Hass’s assertions, made regularly, that Israel knows that peace just doesn’t pay.

Shir Hever: The Political Economy of Israel’s Occupation – Part V

15 July 2010

A seven-part series on the political economy of the Israeli Occupation. Paul Jay of The Real News Network interviews Shir Hever, an Israeli economist and expert in the political economy of the Occupation whose forthcoming book is The Political Economy of Israel’s Occupation.

Part V: One State or Two, There Should Be Economic Justice – The Only State Now is Israel, It Has Obligations

IOA Editor: This is a very important series, confirming Amira Hass’s assertions, made regularly, that Israel knows that peace just doesn’t pay.

Shir Hever: The Political Economy of Israel’s Occupation – Part VI

15 July 2010

A seven-part series on the political economy of the Israeli Occupation. Paul Jay of The Real News Network interviews Shir Hever, an Israeli economist and expert in the political economy of the Occupation whose forthcoming book is The Political Economy of Israel’s Occupation.

Part VI: Israel’s Elite and the Far Right – Israel Sells Itself As ‘Frontline’ Against Islam

IOA Editor: This is a very important series, confirming Amira Hass’s assertions, made regularly, that Israel knows that peace just doesn’t pay.

Shir Hever: The Political Economy of Israel’s Occupation – Part VII

15 July 2010

A seven-part series on the political economy of the Israeli Occupation. Paul Jay of The Real News Network interviews Shir Hever, an Israeli economist and expert in the political economy of the Occupation whose forthcoming book is The Political Economy of Israel’s Occupation.

Part VII: The Boycott Israel Movement – The Reasons for Boycotting Israel

IOA Editor: This is a very important series, confirming Amira Hass’s assertions, made regularly, that Israel knows that peace just doesn’t pay.

Israel’s nuclear program implicated in US investigation

15 July 2010

According to the investigation … the goods could have been used to manufacture nuclear weapons and missile programs… It is worth mentioning that in the 1980s … Israeli companies and individuals have been involved in all sorts of technological espionage, steeling US secrets, technology and equipment.

Israelis inciting anti-Israel boycotts could soon be forced to pay dearly

14 July 2010

Under the new law [if enacted], any group could sue damages of up to NIS 30,000 from anyone who launched a boycott against them, or incited a boycott, without having to prove that damage was indeed caused. An additional sum could then be demanded once damages were proven.

Neve Gordon, David Shulman: Ezra Nawi needs your help

14 July 2010

A few weeks ago, human rights activist, Ezra Nawi, was released from jail after serving a month’s sentence following his attempt to prevent a bulldozer from destroying Palestinian homes in the South Hebron Hills… Today, his pickup truck is falling apart, and he desperately needs to replace it. Ezra cannot afford to buy a car, so a group of friends has decided to collect donations so that Ezra can buy a newer car, which will, in turn, enable him to continue his important work in the West Bank.

Janan Abdu: A Prisoner’s Wife – the Case of Ameer Makhoul

14 July 2010

Throughout his life, Ameer has struggled for the rights of the Palestinian citizens of Israel … as well as those of the Palestinian people overall. He has the ability to lead and to convene diverse viewpoints, bringing them together across sect and ideology. His ability to network locally, at the Arab level, and internationally, coupled with his clear strategic vision – this is what Israel is trying to silence.

IDF shunning sunlight, says treasury

14 July 2010

It has become impossible to supervise the defense budget … It is utterly opaque. The system does everything to deflect true supervision… [T]he army is completely opaque to us. There is no civilian supervision over the IDF.

IOA Editor: This is an important story, confirming Amira Hass’s assertions, made regularly, about the power of the Israeli defense industry — from the professional classes of the IDF to the private sector arms manufacturers, dealer/exporters, “consultants,” and the rest — and the inherent financial and personal interest it has in continuing the Occupation. The Occupation is an essential part of the “business environment” of Israel’s largest and most influential economic sector. Civilian financial oversight of the IDF is only one aspect of a much bigger picture. See also:

Amira Hass: Israel knows that peace just doesn’t pay
Jonathan Cook: Remote-Controlled Killing
The Political Economy of Israel’s Occupation

Jonathan Cook: remote-controlled killing

13 July 2010

Spot and Shoot, as it is called by the Israeli military, may look like a video game but the figures on the screen are real people — Palestinians in Gaza — who can be killed with the press of a button on the joystick. The [Israeli] female soldiers, located far away in an operations room, are responsible for aiming and firing remote-controlled machine-guns mounted on watch-towers every few hundred metres along an electronic fence that surrounds Gaza.

Israel’s parliament revokes Arab MK Zuabi’s privileges over Gaza flotilla

13 July 2010

Haneen Zoabi: “It’s not surprising that a country that strips the fundamental rights of its Arab citizens would revoke the privileges of a Knesset member who loyally represents her electorate… You are punishing me out of vengeance… When you threaten the Arab MKs and the Arabs’ protectors, you threaten democracy and co-existence between Jews and Arabs.”

Palestinians outraged at demolition of East Jerusalem homes – immediately following Obama-Netanyahu meeting

13 July 2010

The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions said one of the homes … was inhabited, although the family was not home at the time. The demolition is the first this year of an inhabited home, according to group … and four of the six people who lived there are children. In the Issawaieh village… one house was being built by a single mother of five, who fainted on the scene of the demolition and was taken to a local hospital.

Mya Guarnieri: Israel’s ‘street apartheid’

13 July 2010

Yousef Jabareen: “It’s a feeling of frustration and of not belonging … That the … state is excluding you and you are not counted as an equal… In some areas you could identify some characteristics of apartheid that should raise a lot of concern about the future.”

Young Israeli Jew: “It’s a kind of psychological warfare. The idea is to get [Palestinians] to leave.”

Israel weighs responses to ‘barrage’ of international criticism

13 July 2010

Israel’s diplomatic and defense establishments will hold several meetings this week on how to contend with what some officials described as a “barrage” of international investigations into Israel’s conduct. Officials say particularly concerned over UN probe of country’s court system in the wake of the Goldstone report on the Gaza war.

Israel bans Gaza woman from studying human rights in West Bank

12 July 2010

Amira Hass: The court agreed with the state’s position that … easing the blockade “did not say anything about extending the present policy about travel,” a policy that allows Gazans to leave “only in humanitarian cases, with the emphasis on urgent medical cases.”

Shin Bet visits West Bank cities to boost security ties with PA

12 July 2010

Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin travels to Jenin and Ramallah as a guest of the Palestinian Authority security service.

Gaza farmers risk being shot (video)

12 July 2010

As a Libyan backed aid ship sails for the Gaza Strip, another group of international activists has been defying the blockade, but this time on the land. Foreigners acting as human shields have been helping farmers in Gaza harvest their crops.

Education witch-hunt begins in Israeli schools and colleges

12 July 2010

Hundreds of Israeli college professors have signed a petition accusing the education minister of endangering academic freedoms after he threatened to “punish” any lecturer or institution that supports a boycott of Israel.

Israeli academics hit back over bid to pass law that would criminalise them

11 July 2010

Neve Gordon: “I am worried about what is happening to the space for debate in Israel. I find that there is a proto-fascist mindset developing. One of the slogans you hear a lot now is no citizenship without loyalty. It is an inversion of the republican idea that the state should be loyal to the citizen.”

Hollywood stars snub film festival

10 July 2010

Hollywood actors Meg Ryan and Dustin Hoffman backed out of attending this year’s annual Jerusalem Film Festival, which is set to kick off this coming Thursday, following the international outcry over Israel’s attack on the Gaza aid flotilla.

UN: West Bank barrier a “health hazard”

10 July 2010

The report, prepared by the Office of the Co-ordinator for Humanitarian Affairs, found that thousands of Palestinians have limited access to East Jerusalem hospitals because of the barrier. Ambulances are routinely delayed at checkpoints, and Palestinian vehicles are not allowed to pass through barrier checkpoints, forcing sick or elderly patients to walk.

Tom Segev: Benny Morris’s “1948” (Hebrew)

10 July 2010

Tom Segev dismantles Morris’s assessment of the 1948 War and the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian from their homeland. Pointing to Morris’s lack of concern for Palestinian victims, Segev counters Morris’s false claims on the actual war crimes carried out by the Israelis, for example, in Deir Yassin – acts which the the State of Israel and its Supreme Court still keep secret.

Winning on points

9 July 2010

Haaretz: “An increasing number of complaints of abuse during the interrogation of Palestinians from the Hebron area can apparently be traced to a computer program that grades police performance. An investigative report on the digitization of evil.”

IOA Editor: This important report shows how the Israeli Occupation authorities combine sophisticated performance management techniques, taken from the American corporate world, with traditional interrogation/torture techniques – resulting in sheer horror for their Palestinians subjects.

Norman Finkelstein on GRITtv: Results, Not Rhetoric

9 July 2010

Norman Finkelstein discusses the Obama – Netanyahu meeting with Laura Flanders of GRITtv, calling the “peace process” a “colonization process” and detailing Israel’s settlement enterprise.

Joseph Dana: Another Palestinian Gandhi Crushed by Israel

9 July 2010

Commentators of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict often complain that there has not yet been a legitimate Palestinian Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. to emerge from within Palestinian civil society. The reality is that there are many Palestinians engaged in popular unarmed resistance to the Israeli occupation, preferring organized demonstrations in the West Bank to suicide bombs in Tel Aviv.

Ex-CIA chief: Secrecy after attack on Syrian nuclear plant unjustified

9 July 2010

The secrecy surrounding the attack on the nuclear plant in eastern Syria in September 2007 was justified only for the period immediately after the operation, according to the CIA head at the time, Gen. Michael Hayden. That secrecy had been meant to save President Bashar Assad from embarrassment that could have provoked him to retaliate.

Gideon Levy: An excellent meeting

8 July 2010

A question for Obama and Netanyahu: Where to? … Where are they headed? What will improve in another year? What will be more promising in another two years? The Syrian president is knocking at the door begging for peace with Israel, and the two leaders are ignoring him. Will he still be knocking in two years? The Arab League’s initiative is still valid; terror has almost ceased. What will the situation be after they have finished compromising over the freeze in construction of balconies and ritual baths?

Israeli professors slam education minister over stance on academic boycott

8 July 2010

“Israeli academia will suffer great damage if politicians dictate to it what is right and wrong to say, think, research and teach, and force it to adopt that kind of criteria for admitting, promoting or rejecting researchers and professors. Your statement about intending to use your authority to act against professors who support an academic boycott of Israel are causing just such damage.”

Rami Elhanan: a call for help

8 July 2010

At the end of this month, my brother Bassam Aramin, the persistent Combatant for Peace, was meant to … go with his family to Bradford University in the UK, to complete his masters in Conflict Resolution. … Unfortunately, there is still £20,000 needed, despite considerable efforts.

DAM: Who Is A Terrorist?

8 July 2010

A Palestinian music video.

Amira Hass asks Obama to Imagine life as a Palestinian under occupation

8 July 2010

Meeting at the White House, President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu emphasized the “unbreakable” bond between Israel and the United States. Despite ongoing Israeli settlement expansion, roadblocks, closures and the attack on the Gaza-bound aid flotilla, Obama said he thinks Israel “has shown restraint.” Democracy Now! speaks to veteran Israeli journalist Amira Hass.

Breaking the Silence founder Yehuda Shaul, is there a crack in the Israeli army’s wall of silence?

8 July 2010

“What’s really disturbing about Operation Cast Lead is not the ordinary soldiers. The true problematic situation is the general policy, that they tell soldiers ‘Go in and shoot, you’re at war – whatever moves should be taken down.’”

Brian Klug: Ending the ‘War of Narratives’

8 July 2010

Commentary on Gilbert Achcar’s work and a review of his recently published book: The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives.”

New York City AHAVA Boycott Demonstrations

7 July 2010

This week we will join with other groups using the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Campaign to pressure the Israeli government to respect human rights & international law, and to raise money for an important documentary film about Operation Cast Lead, the assault on Gaza.