Beit Hanoun invasion 01.11.2006 - 07.11.2006

Since the capture of an Israeli soldier in a cross-border raid by Palestinian militants on 25 June, Israel launched a major military operation that has gone on for more than four months and led to the death of around 350 Palestinians many of them civilians. During that time, three Israelis soldiers have died.

In one of Israel's biggest raids into Gaza in recent months, troops carried out three air strikes and moved to encircle the town of Beit Hanoun. The town in northern Gaza Strip was at the centre of a major, ongoing Israeli military operation during the week, Israeli army says its aim is to prevent groups like Islamic Jihad firing missiles across the nearby border into southern Israel. The rocket attacks are simply retaliation for daily Israeli raids and killings in Gaza, and over in the occupied West Bank. The crudely made rockets often cause panic and minor injury, but they very rarely kill.

The town of Beit Hanoun has been under the very tight control of a large force of tanks and troops who have ordered the tens of thousands of local people to stay off the streets for all but very brief periods. The Israelis destroyed Beit Hanoun, they destroyed the infrastructure, cut the water pipes and the telephone lines. Hundreds of men have been rounded up and questioned, and some have been taken away to Israel. The entire town of Beit Hanoun remains under Israeli control and troops have ordered residents to stay indoors.

More than 60 Palestinians and an Israeli soldier were killed in a week-long operation.

A senior United Nations official, John Ging, has described the atmosphere in Beit Hanoun as one of "death, destruction and despair". It is almost impossible for journalists to get into the town, but the World Food Programme spokeswoman, Kirstie Campbell, was among United Nations aid workers allowed to bring in emergency rations and medicines, "The atmosphere was extremely stressful," she said. "The people were asking for a lot of things. They were asking for food, for milk, and they were very worried about relatives that have been detained." "You could really see that the people are suffering."

A young Palestinian woman has blown herself up in a bomb attack on Israeli troops in northern Gaza, injuring one soldier but also wounding a number of civilians. The bombing came in the northern town of Beit Hanoun. Palestinians regard the attack as an act of desperate resistance.

Earlier, a 17-year-old Palestinian boy was killed in an air strike on the northern town of Jabaliya. During the Jabaliya air strike, at least four people were hurt in the attack near a school. The Israeli military said its aircraft had attacked a group of militants retrieving a device used to fire a missile. But the Palestinians said the plane missed its target and, instead, struck close to a school.

At least two women died when an Israeli shell struck the home of Jamila Shanti, an MP from the ruling Palestinian party Hamas. Ms Shanti has been identified as the organiser of a women's protest on Friday to free militants sheltering in a mosque, that was fired on by Israeli troops killing two unarmed protesters.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Ismail Haniya have called the operation a "massacre" and urged the UN Security Council to convene to discuss the issue. Pope Benedict XVI said he was very worried about the situation in Gaza, and called on all sides to work to stop the bloodshed and to immediately resume direct and concrete negotiations. The European Union presidency, currently held by Finland, has issued a statement deploring "the growing number of civilian casualties the Israeli military operation has caused". The Red Cross has criticised the killing by Israeli force of paramedics. The International Red Cross also criticised Israel for the killing of two medical workers, saying that the paramedics and their vehicle were clearly marked.

http://www.palestinehistory.com/issues/gaza2006/beithanoun.htm


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March 30th Day of the Land Listen to Palestine

On Land Day, listen to Palestine. Listen to Palestine tell you about a people steadfast in their land. Listen to Palestine tell you of a people carrying the keys to their homes in their hearts. Listen to Palestine tell you of young people dancing the dabkeh in Yafa, Haifa, and Bethlehem, joining hands from Jerusalem to Bisan and singing of Gaza and Al-Jalil. Listen to Palestine tell you of a people determined to resist the occupier, never to tire, never to rest, never to give up, never to allow the flame of resistance to fade, always to keep it burning until total liberation. On Land Day, listen to Palestine tell you of land that was and forever will be Palestinian from the River to the Sea and from Ras In-Naqoura to Im Ir-Rishrash.
On Land Day listen to Jerusalem tell you: I am Palestinian.
Listen to Yafa tell you: I am Palestinian.
Listen to Bethlehem tell you: I am Palestinian.
Listen to Haifa tell you: I am Palestinian.
Listen to Gaza tell you: I am Palestinian.
Listen to Acca tell you: I am Palestinian.
Listen to Nablus tell you: I am Palestinian.
Listen to Nazareth tell you: I am Palestinian.
Listen to Deir Al-Balah tell you: I am Palestinian.
Listen to Um Il-Fahim tell you: I am Palestinian.
Listen to Jenin tell you: I am Palestinian.
Listen to Tarshiha tell you: I am Palestinian.
Listen to Ramallah tell you: I am Palestinian.
Listen to Beir Is-Sabi’ tell you: I am Palestinian.
Listen to Hebron tell you: I am Palestinian.
Listen to Bisan tell you: I am Palestinian.
Listen to Rafah tell you: I am Palestinian.
Listen to Arraba tell you: I am Palestinian.
Listen to Tulkarim tell you: I am Palestinian.
Listen to Safad tell you: I am Palestinian.
Listen to Qalqilia tell you: I am Palestinian.
Listen to Al-Lyd tell you: I am Palestinian.
Listen to Jericho tell you: I am Palestinian.
Listen to Ar-Ramleh tell you: I am Palestinian.
Listen to Salfit tell you: I am Palestinian.
Listen to Sakhnin tell you: I am Palestinian.
Listen to Khan Younis tell you: I am Palestinian.
Listen to Tabaria tell you: I am Palestinian.
Listen to Toubas tell you: I am Palestinian.
Listen to Kufr Kanna tell you: I am Palestinian.
On Land Day, listen to every inch of the land between the Jordan River
and the Mediterranean Sea tell the whole world: This land is Palestine.
http://avoicefrompalestine.wordpress.com/2011/03/30/on-land-day-listen-to-the-land/
March 31

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War-Time Contingency and the Balfour Declaration of 1917

Rejecting deterministic views of the 1917 Balfour Declaration as an expression of the inevitable work of history returning Jews to their ancient homeland, this article argues that Britain's fateful endorsement of the idea of a national home for Jews in Palestine was, in fact, the result of a combination of fortuity and contingency related primarily to World War I and the concerns and personalities of the British politicians involved. The article highlights the historic improbability of the Declaration and its implementation in the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, noting the regression it represented at a time when British imperial policy aspired to more flexible accommodations with colonial populations.

FOR MANY ZIONISTS in the early twentieth century, the establishment of a national home for the Jews in Palestine through the British government’s Balfour Declaration of 1917 and its League of Nations Mandate of 1922 represented, momentously, the now-imminent return of a diasporic people, comparative aliens in gentile societies, to their ancient home in the Levant. The mystic Zionist, Abraham Isaac Kook, saw it all as an expression of divine purpose, a great restorative sweep of God-driven history. Such ideas were rooted, albeit with a political twist, in the ancient Jewish sense of a “sacred” history and a related metaphysic of material events. There was an even grander reclamation: a “return to history” (ha-shiva la-historia) itself. Until that point, lacking territoriality and incoherent as a nation, the Jews had been, in David Ben-Gurion’s words at the time of the Balfour Declaration, “extricated from world history.” Now, through the official agency of the British, they were poised for a dramatic reentry.

REGRESSION

To the disinterested historian, however, what commands attention is not some working through of ineluctable religious or secular historical forces but rather the sheer short-term contingency, much of it war related, of the enabling factors underlying both the Declaration and Britain’s Mandate over Palestine in which it was ultimately incorporated. If there was any great movement of events, it was more a regression than an advance, involving as it did the establishment of a European settler community in an already well-peopled and well-charted territory. Britain’s sponsorship of the Zionist project stood in contradiction to the “Wilsonian” spirit of the times, in which self-determination for formerly imperialized societies had been, notionally at least, a significant concern in post–World War I political dispositions.

The British were remarkably explicit in their denial of democratic rights to the Palestinian Arabs. The author of the Declaration, Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour, insisted, in an oft-quoted remark, that the aspirations of Zionists were “of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land,” and that Arab claims to Palestine were “infinitely weaker than those of the Jews.” These views were consistent with the Declaration’s promise of protection for the “civil and religious,” but not “political,” rights of the so-called “non-Jewish” population of Palestine. Lord Alfred Milner, one of the drafters of the Declaration, suggested that history and tradition of “the most sacred character” made it “impossible . . . to leave it to the Arab majority . . . to decide what shall be the future of Palestine.” The prime minister, David Lloyd George, was more succinct: “You mustn’t give responsible government to Palestine.” Nor could the indigenous population do much by way of effective complaint: Sir Ronald Storrs, successively military governor of Jerusalem and civil governor of Jerusalem and Judea between 1917 and 1926, observed that the Palestinian Arabs, in making pleas for political justice, had “about as much chance as had the Dervishes before Kitchener’s machine guns at Omdurman.”

There was, of course, a widespread failure on the part of European colonial powers to deliver self-determination to their subordinate societies: It took a second world war to bring that about. But there was a distinct sense in British imperial policy that aspired to more flexible accommodations with colonial populations—notably in India, Ireland, and Egypt. Winston Churchill as colonial secretary had, despite his own vigorous Zionism, a clear sense of the inflammatory inconsistency involved, declaring in 1922 that the problem with the idea of a Jewish homeland was “that it conflicted with our regular policy of consulting the wishes of the people in mandate territories and giving them a representative institution as soon as they were fitted for it.” Another friend of Zionism, Sir Mark Sykes, insisted in 1918: “If Arab nationality be recognised in Syria and Mesopotamia as a matter of justice it will be equally necessary to devise some form of control or administration for Palestine” that recognizes “the various religious and racial nationalities in the country . . . according equal privileges to all such nationalities.”

The regression, however, was implemented, and proved to be of the greatest historical significance, with bloody consequences for the near-century ahead. The clear implication was that the Jewish national home in Palestine, inserted in newly conquered British territory, could survive only through radical moderation of its colonialist instincts and an historic compromise with the Arab majority; or, alternatively, by iron-fisted attempts to impose unmoderated Jewish political will. The second approach—the one that came to govern events—was well articulated by the “revisionist” Zionists, most notably by the Odessa-born Vladimir Jabotinsky. As Avi Shlaim indicates, Jabotinsky did not subscribe to the common, tendentious illusion that “backward” Arabs would welcome “modernizing” Jews into their midst. Conflict was bound to ensue, he maintained, and it was incumbent upon the arriving settlers to prepare psychologically and militarily for the battles to come. “Any native people,” Jabotinsky wrote in 1923, “views their country as their national home, of which they are complete masters. They will not voluntarily allow, not even a new master, but even a new partner. And so it is for the Arabs. . . . They look upon Palestine with the same instinctive love and true fervor that any Aztec looked upon his Mexico or a Sioux looked upon the prairie.” The analogies were not happy ones.

http://www.palestine-studies.org/journals.aspx?id=10925&jid=1&href=abstract

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Jewish settlers savagely attack Palestinians in Hawara

NABLUS, (PIC)– Hundreds of armed Jewish settlers attacked at midnight Saturday Palestinian homes in Hawara village, south of Nablus city.

Eyewitnesses told the Palestinian information center (PIC) that the settlers went on the rampage through the villages damaging property, assaulting residents, burning cars and throwing stones at everything.

Consequently, the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) closed road 60 between Ramallah and Nablus.

The PIC reporter said the villagers in Hawara and nearby villages used the speakers of mosques to urge the Palestinians to defend their homes and property against settlers’ attacks, which were described as the most violent since a long time.

Hundreds of villagers stood up for themselves using stones and sticks to confront the armed settlers who were escorted by some Israeli troops. The size of damage and injuries is still unknown.

Source

This type of aggression is very common in the occupied areas. Even children going and coming from school are constantly harassed.



Settlers attacking Palestinians and peace activist during an olive harvest



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Israeli navy shells Palestinian fishing boat in Gaza

Gaza Strip, (Pal Telegraph)-As occupation military offensive continues, Israeli gunboats near the shore of Rafah city in the south part of Gaza Strip targeted Tuesday evening a Palestinian fishing boat causing damage with one boat.

Local sources reported that Israeli navy opened massive fire at Palestinian fishermen, while they were practicing their job.

Israeli gunboats regularly attack Palestinian fishing boats leaving many families without support since more than 3500 residents of Gaza Strip depend on fishing as a source of their income.

On 17th February, three Palestinian fishermen were killed by Israeli shells fired from the northern coast .

Source




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AYMAN QWAIDER: HEROISM IN PALESTINIAN CULTURE

Among the Arab world, the Palestinian people have become icons and heroes in a particular way. Listening to some Palestinian national songs generates intense reminiscence of Gaza and the ongoing Israeli’s government violence in that territory. It also paints a portrait of the Palestinian struggle and how this contributes to the culture of resistance.

The Palestinian people brought up in an unstable environment dominated by all manner of violence for decades. Regularly different areas in the Gaza Strip are exposed to Israeli invasion resulting in the killing of people and demolishing of homes. Palestinian people always show struggle and patience against invasions. After invasion, people keep speaking about the consequences of the invasion for a long time and how resistance and non-violent resistance highly highlight the violence of these military operations. Obviously, this has ensured that resistance has become a culture within the Palestinian society.

In the Islamic world, there are two special occasions “Eid” where people celebrate and enjoy. From the very early part of my life, I noticed that gun game is unfortunately the main and favorite game for little children even during these moments of celebrations. I still remember how little kids named this game “let’s play Yahood & Arab” that means “let’s play Arab against Jewish”. This abnormal environment has a crucial role to play in drawing attention to the culture of resistance inside the Palestinian community.

A Culture Sprung from Occupation and Resistance

Palestine was placed under the British control after the First World War by the League of the United Nations. The Balfour Declaration[1] (1917) proclaimed Palestine as a national home for Jewish settlers (Allain, 2004: 80-84). The British mandate facilitated the Jewish occupation and settlement in Palestine. As a result of repeated colonisations, Palestine has a long history of being occupied. Accordingly, this has often compelled Palestinians to revolt against these despotic occupations. Palestinians, since the occupation of their land in 1948, have never stopped resisting.

Resistance under the British Mandate

The Palestinian resistance did not start with the establishment of the State of Israel but dates back to the British mandate period, starting in 1917. The British mandate and the establishment of Israel are both strongly integrated in the Palestinian history where the British mandate is considered the root of the conflict in Palestine.

The 1936-1939 Arab revolt in Palestine came up as an example of uprising in protest against the British mandate and their role in bringing more Jewish immigrants to Palestine. In 1936, a general strike marked the start of the great Palestinian revolt.

The 1936 Palestinian general strike and the armed revolt that followed were momentous events for the Palestinians, the Region, and the British Empire. The six-month general strike, which ran from April until October and involved work stoppages and boycotts of the British- and Zionist–controlled parts of the economy was the longest anti -colonial strike of its kind until that point in history, and perhaps the longest ever (Khalidi, 2006:106).

From Nakba (Catastrophe) to Naksa (Tragedy)

The history of Palestine became a long chain of losses, feelings of being outdone, dispossessed. From the partition plan (1947) to the numerous massacres and mass expulsions, Palestinians suffer to the chore the lack of a real Hero able to transcend an overwhelming situation. To survive the Creation of Israel’s State in 1948 to the “Tragedy” of 1967, survival in itself becomes heroic, and this explains too, the importance of the Hero, the love of heroic acts in Palestinian culture.

The First Intifada: Mass Mobilization

The first Intifada began in December 1987 when a military Israeli truck killed Palestinian workers awaiting permission to cross into Israel to work. It is important to realize that the intifada was a strong example of a mass mobilization uprising but not a politically-based discussion (Holt, 1996:28).

Due to the aggression of the Israeli military over the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, Palestinians revolted against this subjugation. Evidently, it had become a crucial part of the Palestinian daily life as it mobilized all population, including women, children and the elderly to participate. The first Intifada took the form of civil resistance where all population was participating to protest against the Israeli occupation (Ben-Ami, 2006:188). It also took the form of boycotts of the occupation’s institutions and goods. Further, the Palestinian people at that time disobeyed the occupation and regularly organized general strikes around all villages. At the same time, there were the stone demonstrations where young people threw stones against the aggressive Israeli armed occupation troops (Beinin and Hajjar). In contrast, the Israeli army always responded with violence against unarmed vulnerable Palestinians. It was obvious that the Palestinian youths battled the Israeli tanks and soldiers with their bodies without any means of violence (Rosen, 2005:116). Palestinian youth considered that the days of fighting with the Israeli soldiers were regarded as the glorious days of the Palestinian resistance.

Manal who was thirteen years old when the Intifada broke out and she was shot at her chest at the age of fifteen. I miss those days a lot. They were the most beautiful days of my life. True, everyone was scared of the soldiers and their guns but we had dignity and it was our dignity that made us so defiant (Rosen, 2005:118).

It is interestingly attractive when I read a story that happened in refugee camp “Al Bureij Camp”, where I received my primary education, which shows how the Palestinian women importantly participated during the first Intifada. For example, a woman spoke of routine raids by the Israeli soldiers. “The soldiers come,” she says:

Enter some houses without knocking and take the men and the boys away. We try to be quicker than the army and as soon as we hear the warning whistles from the guarding shabab (young men) at the edge of the camp, we women go out into the roofs and give signs to the shabab in our area that they have to run away. We signal to them from which direction the soldiers are coming. This is one of the roles of women during the uprising (Augustine, 1993:124).

The culture of resistance in the first intifada happened to be relatively non-violent. Further, it was dominated by the population through their disobedience of the Israeli occupation regarding their everyday life affairs. It’s an interesting case of “mass-heroism”.

The Second Intifada

The second Intifada is remarkably considered to be a religious uprising. It erupted as a reaction to the accumulation of the daily Israel oppression and violence. The visit of Ariel Sharon[2] to the Dome of the Rock[3] ”Al Aqsa Mosque” in Jerusalem in late September 2000 was the start of the Intifada. Therefore, Palestinians give this Intifada the name of “Intifada AL Aqsa” so as to keep it linked with most religious places in Palestine. This visit was provocative for the Palestinian Muslim people as Sharon violated their holiest mosque. Israelis consequently fired upon the Palestinian worshipers and demonstrators sparking the second Intifada.

The resistance during the Intifada as it is characterized with the increase of Israeli violence toward Palestinians was more brutal than the first Intifada. According B’Tselem organization, in the first intifada around 100 Israelis were killed, about two-fifths of those security forces, and 1000 Palestinians were killed, the majority were civilians. The second Intifada was much more aggressive and bloody as around 5050 were killed, tens of thousands injured, and approximately 5113 houses were demolished (Palestinian Center for Human Rights: 2010).

It is believed that occupied people have to right to resist and International Law guarantees this right. In this respect, the Palestinian people have all possible right to resist either violently or non-violently. The violent resistance in Palestine always emerged as a reaction of the daily Israeli oppression on the Palestinians which is characterized by brutality.

Obviously, the second Intifada also took the form of non-violent resistance. This kind of resistance has powerfully sustained and empowered the second Intifada through exploring non-violence to control the Israeli power. For instance, there is a one weekly demonstration taking place in two of the Palestinian villages in the occupied West Bank (Ba’leen and Ni’lin). In these demonstrations, there is a popular participation including Palestinians, Israeli peace activists and foreigners who struggle none violently. This includes the desire to halt Israeli’s illegal confiscation of land for its notorious separation wall which Palestinians refer to as “Apartheid wall”. This wall paralyzes the Palestinian daily life as it cuts them off from their villages and their neighbors (Dowty, 2005:172). The International Court of Justice describes the construction of the Separation Wall as illegal and gravely infringes on Palestinian rights. Additionally, the court considered the wall constitutes violation of the International Law (International Court of Justice, 2004).

Such non-violent conquests as demonstrated by the two intifadas produce different forms of heroism: At individual level and at the collective level. At the collective level, it is remarkable to observe that the Palestinian people, who in the face of comparative weakness and disadvantage, have demonstrated courage and the will power to fight non-violently for what legitimately belongs to them: their land. Such-non violent resistance also indicates the sacrifices of Palestinians which aims at producing a better good for its people. Such collective heroism is also demonstrated by the international awareness which the Palestinian people are able to create regarding the occupation of their land and their self determination.

At the individual level, Palestinians as a people have learnt to live non-violently. Suffice it to mention that as recently as February, 2010 one student, Ayman Qwaider, gallantly demonstrated heroism by exploring exhaustive non violent campaigns to achieve his right and noble objective of studying outside his country (McIntyre:2010).

Throughout the quick overview of the two Palestinian Intifadas, we would easily realize these Intifadas have created a real Palestinian heroism. Regarding the culture of resistance, the Palestinian heroism would be defined as the ability of Palestinians to dedicate their lives to struggling and resisting the occupation their land. Moving to discuss the hero in the Palestinian constitution would actually illustrate the Palestinian perspective about the occupation as both heroes have been influenced by the occupation.
[1]On 2 November 1917, British Foreign Secretary Author Balfour, in a letter to a leading British Zionist Lord Rothschild wrote: “His Majesty’s Government views with the favour the establishment in Palestine of a national Home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object. It is being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jewish any other country.

[2] Sharon is an Israeli general and politician, who served as Israel’s 11th Prime Minister. He is currently in a permanent vegetative state after suffering a stroke on 4 January 2006.

[3]Al-Aqsa Mosque is the second oldest mosque in Islam after the Ka’ba inMecca, and is third in holiness and importance after the mosques in Meccaand Medina. It is great stature in Muslim and Palestinians’ heart.



I am Ayman Talal Quader. I’m a Palestinian born and raised in Gaza. I’m 23 years old. I have a bachelor degree in English Language and Education. I have worked in several different fields’ pre and post of my university studies for almost 4 years. I have worked as volunteer in civil societies where I practiced tasks to help people and educate children. i always try to bring the suffering of Palestinian to the whole world.I Do Love Gaza and its people, its land, its the breezes. i believe that justice and freedom should prevail one day.

http://www.intifada-palestine.com/2011/01/ayman-qwaider-heroism-in-palestinian-culture/

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Landscapes of Occupation in Palestine

Ex-Communicated tells the story of Israeli occupation in Palestine through the genre of landscape and the perspective of a camera lens. In his series of remarkable photographs, Gary Fields, a professor of communication at the University of California, San Diego takes us behind the walls, gates, and fences of this deliberately fragmented geography in revealing Palestinian life under Israeli military rule. What he shows in these images is how the forces of occupation use the landscape as an instrument of control over Palestinians and a mechanism for dispossessing them of land and property. Much of this story is untold and largely unseen. These photos convey forcefully how the process of enclosure on the landscape has “ex-communicated” Palestinians, immobilizing them into ever-diminishing spaces, while at the same time inspiring them into heroic acts of peaceful resistance.





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Israel closes Gaza's commercial crossings

Gaza, April 18, (Pal Telegraph) The Israeli occupation authorities announced the closure of Gaza’s commercial crossings today and tomorrow because of Jewish holidays.

Raed Fattouh, Chairman of goods entry to Gaza Committee, said that the Israeli occupation forces closed the Kerem Abu Salem and Carney commercial crossings today and tomorrow due to jewish holidays, to be re-opened on next Wednesday’s morning.

Fattouh, added that the Israeli occupation authorities allowed the introduction of 69 trucks through the Kerem Abu Salem crossing, including two trucks of aid, in addition to pumping 223,437 liters of gasoline for power plant and 111,300 liters of cooking gas, and exported one truck loaded with flowers.



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The Dangers and Difficulties of Reporting from Gaza: Two Journalists Recount Their Experiences

We speak with two journalists who have covered Gaza extensively about the dangers and difficulties of reporting from the Occupied Territories: Mohammed Omer, an award-winning Palestinian journalist who was interrogated and beaten by armed Israeli security guards on his way back home to Gaza after receiving the prestigious Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in London in July of 2008, and Ayman Mohyeldin, the Gaza correspondent for Al Jazeera English, who was one of the only international journalists reporting from inside Gaza during the twenty-two-day Israeli assault last year.

Watch Videos here at Democracy Now

Part two




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Your Tax Dollars at Work: Israel to deport...well...just about the entire West Bank, apparently

In the most recent round of Kafka-esque absurdity from the U.S.-funded Israeli military, new military orders would allow the occupying army to deport anyone in the West Bank without an army-granted permit--which could include just about anyone


According to an editorial in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, "The order's vague language will allow army officers to exploit it arbitrarily to carry out mass expulsions, in accordance with military orders which were issued under unclear circumstances....This would be a grave and dangerous move, unprecedented during the Israeli occupation."

And The Guardian reports on efforts by Israeli human rights groups to combat this order:

"Israel's leading human rights groups are trying to stop two new Israeli military orders which will make any resident of the occupied West Bank who does not have an Israeli-issued permit liable for deportation or jail.
The new Order Regarding Prevention of Infiltration and Order Regarding Security Provisions, which comes into force on Tuesday have "severe ramifications," the rights groups say. Palestinians, and any foreigners living in the West Bank, could be labelled infiltrators and deported within 72 hours or jailed for seven years if they are found without the correct permit. It does not define what Israel considers a valid permit.

"The orders … are worded so broadly such as theoretically allowing the military to empty the West Bank of almost all its Palestinian inhabitants," said the 10 rights groups, which include Ha-Moked, B'Tselem, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, and Rabbis for Human Rights. Until now the vast majority of Palestinians in the West Bank have not been required to hold a permit just to be present in their homes, the groups say."


Meanwhile, deported American journalist Jared Malsin writes at Huffington Post that the recent Anat Kam/Uri Blau cover-up scandal, which involves an expose of Israeli assassination orders that violated even the country's own laws (much less international law regarding extrajudicial assassination), is the latest front in Israel's "crisis of legitimacy."

Crisis of legitimacy, indeed. Racist permit systems. Arbitrary deportation. Extrajudicial assassinations. There is nothing legitimate about any of it.

Find out how much money you and your community are spending to support this sort of absurdity, and what you can do to stop it, at AidtoIsrael.org

http://endtheoccupationblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/your-tax-dollars-at-work-israel-to.html



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Attack on Berkeley divestment bill dishonest and misleading

A coalition of nearly 20 Jewish groups, ranging from the right-wing David Project and the Jewish National Fund to the liberal J Street, is distributing a misleading statement condemning a Student Senate bill at the University of California, Berkeley ("Troubling UC Berkeley Student Senate Bill on Israel, 5 April 2010). The ground-breaking bill calls for divestment from companies that profit from the perpetuation of the Israeli military occupation in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza. They refer to the bill as "dishonest" and "misleading" and "based on contested allegations."

Yet it is their letter that is both dishonest and misleading.

The bill is based on extensive, footnoted research (see A Bill in Support of UC Divestment from War Crimes).

Yet this coalition of Jewish groups does not contest any of the facts. Without offering any evidence, they dismiss findings by reputable organizations like the Red Cross, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Instead of condemning these human rights violations, they prefer to misinform the public by suggesting that it is somehow wrong to "take sides" against universally-recognized injustice. In so doing, they effectively defend illegal Israeli settlements and the Israeli military occupation that continues to disrupt everyday features of Palestinian life: education, health care, economic life and art and culture.

Further, they claim that the Berkeley bill calls on the university "to divest exclusively from Israel." They imply that the bill calls for divestment "from any company doing business with Israel."

But this is simply not true.

The Berkeley bill focuses specifically on the Israeli occupation, not on Israel. While a vibrant and necessary debate on the merits of a total boycott and divestment from Israel continues around the world, it is not at issue here.

In reality, the bill divests only from two American companies that make money by equipping the occupation, General Electric and United Technologies -- but no Israeli companies. It also announces an intention to divest from any company -- whatever the nationality, and only after further research -- that similarly profit from the occupation.

These groups choose to deliberately misreport the language of the bill, which refers specifically and exclusively to companies that:

Provide military support for or weaponry to support the occupation of the Palestinian territories; or facilitate the building or maintenance of the illegal wall or the demolition of Palestinian homes; or facilitate the building, maintenance, or economic development of illegal Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian territories.

By condemning the humane and ethical policy of what is essentially morally responsible investment, do these groups mean to encourage investing in companies that provide the weapons of occupation, build the settlements of colonization, and render thousands of innocent Palestinians homeless?

They claim that the bill "unfairly targets the State of Israel." But Israel is the country building the settlements and administering the occupation. And it is one of the world's best known human rights abusers that is not already sanctioned by the United States -- which provides Israel with more than $3 billion annually. Who else should the bill address?

There is no reason not to name Israel when it violates human rights, but these groups suggest that students should instead pass a bill with no teeth, a bill that merely condemns human rights violations in general without referring specifically to Israel. But it is absurd to suggest that students do not already condemn those violations in the abstract, or have not already worked to apply similar standards to countries like Sudan and South Africa and will not apply them similarly to other countries in the future. The bill merely applies widely-held principles to a particular situation.

In effect they are calling on students not to apply the same principles applied elsewhere to Israel. These groups want us to ignore reality and to allow Israel to be the one and only human rights violator that escapes accountability and condemnation. Perversely, they themselves are guilty of singling out Israel in order to defend occupation and the unjustifiable oppression of the Palestinian people.

The statement acknowledges no wall, no home demolitions, no Israeli settlements, no Palestinian suffering. All of these, the letter calls "discrete incident[s] without consideration of the larger picture." How many more decades of occupation and dispossession will it take for our nation's major Jewish organizations to issue a statement calling these injustices what they are, an inhumane and morally indefensible system of occupation?

By reducing these coordinated events to isolated incidents, they diminish their significance, aid the settlement efforts, and obstruct Palestinian freedom and human rights.

Most perniciously, they refer to the bill as "marginalizing Jewish students on campus who support Israel." The fact that they mention only Jewish students and not other students who might hold similar political positions reveals the true meaning of this statement: this is an intellectually dishonest and misleading accusation of anti-Semitism that cannot be taken lightly. The bill does not target any students: it only targets corporations that facilitate occupation.

In fact, the Berkeley bill was co-authored by an Israeli Jewish student on campus and is supported by many Jews who have testified in favor of the bill and have written thousands of letters of support to the student senators.

Ironically, these groups' statement actually marginalizes both Jews and non-Jews who oppose the Israeli occupation. It especially harms American and Palestinian students who may be affected by such investments when studying, conducting research, or visiting relatives in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

The misinformation campaign targeting UC Berkeley follows the same script that was used to defame similar efforts by the Presbyterian Church in 2008, which endeavored to ensure that it was "invested only in peaceful pursuits."

Then, a similar coalition accused the Presbyterian Church of "one-sidedness" and in much more explicit terms, anti-Semitism. In other words, they recast the very idea that one should be "invested only in peaceful pursuits" in Israel-Palestine as biased or racist.

This year the Presbyterian Church is considering divestment from Caterpillar because of the company's refusal to take responsibility for the destruction its bulldozers create in the West Bank and Gaza. The Simon Wiesenthal Center cast all logic aside and accused the church of engaging in "nothing short of a declaration of war on Israel." This kind of hyperbolic language is untrue, harms civil discourse and only serves to hamper the efforts of those rightfully opposed to the demolition of Palestinian homes and the uprooting of Palestinian orchards.

Now in Berkeley, a constellation of Jewish organizations has regrettably mobilized its resources to stand in the way of yet another progressive victory. The letter's deliberate distortions call into question whether the signers would support any method of monitoring, discouraging and preventing Israeli human rights violations.

Instead, the letter's signers suggest that Americans should act with their hands tied behind their backs, without the full toolkit of nonviolent resistance tactics that have been an essential part of all successful human justice movements.

However, not engaging in morally responsible investment when faced with the clear findings of human rights organizations and the international community would be morally indefensible.

Choosing to do something about Israel's human rights violations does not require turning a blind eye to other injustices in the world as these groups suggest; but refusing to take action because of other examples would indeed turn a blind eye to this one. Now is the time to support Palestinian freedom and human rights. Berkeley students have done the right thing. Others should follow suit and divest from the occupation, as part of their general commitment to ethical investment policies.

Sydney Levy is the Director of Campaigns for Jewish Voice for Peace, a national grassroots organization dedicated to full equality between Israelis and Palestinians.

Yaman Salahi, a UC Berkeley alumnus and member of Students for Justice in Palestine, is currently a student at Yale Law School.

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11198.shtml



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Talking Palestine to power

Today, there is no excuse for not knowing the truth about Palestine, especially what is happening in Gaza. Even taking into account the disinformation spread in mainstream media, there are enough glimpses one gets of a ravaged Gaza and a brutalized people that should compel us to ask questions. There are enough websites and blogs easily available for anyone to learn more, even if it requires sifting through and evaluating the available information. Certainly, the alarm bells should be ringing when our political leaders declare undying fealty to Israel or cavalierly wear it as a badge of honor, despite the documented reports of Israel's war crimes by human rights groups and official enquiries.

But the world lacks courage from government leaders, acquiescent mainstream media, nongovernmental organizations dependent on government support, academics looking for tenure and populations too long fed on a diet of Zionist myths. People are terrified of being labelled anti-Semitic, a mendacious charge against anyone criticizing Israel. Palestinians too, afraid of being further shunned and disadvantaged in countries that give them refuge, so often remain silent. Not only do people fear repercussions, but speaking the truth or even just hearing it has a way of taking people out of their comfort zones. They fear their troubled consciences may require them to act and so they bury their heads deeper into the sand where they hope even the sounds of silence might be extinguished.

This then is the challenge for advocates the world over. How does one talk Palestine to power if one cannot even talk Palestine to the people who are in fear of the powerful?

In the face of media saturation with Zionist viewpoints and the new "Brand Israel" campaigns, many wanting to advocate for Palestine might feel defeated, but time and again we see that the power of one can be enormously effective.

The great scholar and public intellectual Edward Said showed more than anyone else that individuals can make a difference in the public defense of Palestine. He particularly saw the intellectual's voice as having "resonance."

But one does not need to be an intellectual. Said's words can just as aptly apply to any one of us. He said avoidance was "reprehensible" and in his 1994 book Representations of the Intellectual, described it as "that characteristic turning away from a difficult and principled position which you know to be the right one, but which you decide not to take. You do not want to appear too political; you are afraid of seeming too controversial; you need the approval of a boss or an authority figure; you want to keep a reputation for being balanced, objective, moderate; your hope is ... to remain within the responsible mainstream ... ."

In 1993 when almost everyone else thought the handshakes at the White House steps would seal the negotiated Oslo accords and at long last give the Palestinians their freedom and bring peace to the region, Edward Said saw that these accords would merely provide the cover for Israel to pursue its colonial expansionism and consolidate its occupation of Palestine. However, he knew to criticize Oslo meant in effect taking a position against "hope" and "peace." His decision to do so flew in the face of the Palestinian revolutionary leadership that had bartered for statehood.

Although Said was denounced for his views, he was not prepared to buy into the deception that he knew would leave the Palestinians with neither hope nor peace. And just as he predicted, each fruitless year of peacemaking finally exposed the horrible reality of Oslo as Palestinians found themselves the victims of Israel's matrix of control, a term first used to describe the situation by Israeli professor Jeff Halper in 1999. And this domination of one people over another without any intention of addressing the injustices against the Palestinians ethnically cleansed from their homeland, has undeniably reduced Israel to an apartheid state.

The Palestinians have nothing left worth calling a state and they are facing an existential threat on all fronts. Yet, some intellectuals are still talking about a two-state solution in lock step with politicians, a mantra that is repeated uncritically, even mendaciously, in the mainstream media.

This pandering to an idea for decades has been undermined by the furious sounds of drills and hammers reverberating in illegal settlements throughout the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the catastrophic societal ruptures engineered in Gaza. Now those sounds are muffled by the rhetoric of "economic peace," "institution-building," "democracy," "internal security" and "statehood." They are words that must be challenged at every opportunity, for they are not mere words, but dangerous concepts when isolated from truth on the ground.

It is no use talking about "economic peace" when industrial estates built for Palestinian workers are intended to provide Israel with slave labor and cheap goods. It is useless to support "institution-building" when Israel continues to undermine and obstruct those programs already struggling to service Palestinian society. It is a lie to speak of "democracy" when fair elections in 2006 had Israel and the "international community" denying Hamas the right to govern. It is a charade to accept "internal security" when arming and training Palestinians to police their own people covers for Israel's and America's divide-and-conquer scheme. It is hollow to speak of "statehood" when Israel keeps stealing land and building illegal settlements that deprive the Palestinians of their homes and livelihoods while herding them into isolated and walled-in ghettoes.

Edward Said was proven right. Now, it is our turn to speak the truth and act fearlessly, regardless of the censure we are likely to encounter. The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer is believed to have said that truth passes through three stages: "first, it is ridiculed; second, it is violently opposed; third, it is accepted as being self-evident." Today, we are at the third stage: the 11 million Palestinians living under occupation, apartheid and as stateless refugees are the living truth. That is Israel's Achilles' heel.

The Palestinians are no longer the humble shepherds and farmers that Zionist forces terrorized into fleeing to make way for the Jewish State of Israel. A new generation wants justice and it is demanding it eloquently, nonviolently and strategically. Their message: no normal relations with Israel while it oppresses Palestinians, denies their rights and violates international law. And boycott, divestment and sanctions have to be legitimate tools for challenging a state that claims exceptionalism no matter how extreme and criminal its actions.

The temptation of course is always to opt for the path of least resistance. Therefore, we must appeal to the individual, not even to sacrifice for others, but to recognize that no matter where we live in this global village, we are all vulnerable if we do not stand up for universal human rights and uphold the principles and application of international law.

Despite his own Zionist affiliations and loyalty to Israel, Justice Richard Goldstone saw the danger of tailoring his UN-backed report on war crimes in Gaza to exonerate Israel. He had the decency and courage to put the rule of law and humanity ahead of the savage condemnation he knew would come from talking truth to power.

The same can be said of Richard Falk, the Jewish professor emeritus from Princeton University and UN special rapporteur in the occupied Palestinian territories, who was denied entry into Israel because he described Israel's siege on Gaza as a "Holocaust in the making" ("Israel deports American academic," Guardian, 15 December 2008). Israel's treatment was insulting enough, but now shamefully, the Palestinian Authority has asked the Human Rights Council to "postpone" his report on Gaza and, as Nadia Hijab reported, is asking him to resign ("PA's betrayal of human rights defenders the unkindest cut," Nadia Hijab, 14 March 2010).

These are honorable men, but we too can stand on principle in smaller ways, whether that is refusing to buy Israeli goods at our local store, boycotting an Israeli-government sponsored event or exposing and protesting the collusion between governments and corporations with Israel. That is what it means to become part of a worldwide civil movement that will do what our leaders will not: pressure Israel to dismantle the matrix of control on Palestine and make reparations for the decades of injustices it has perpetrated against its people.

It is indeed possible for all of us to "squeeze out of reality some of its potentialities," the reality that University of Melbourne Professor Ghassan Hage has said is found in those utopic moments that come from challenging our own thoughts, fears and biases. In that space lies the untapped power we seek, to speak the truth without fear or favor. In that space lies the potential for political change. In that space, there will always be hope for Palestine.

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11197.shtml



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Massive oppression and rising temperatures don't stop the popular struggle

Some 25 Israelis, over 30 internationals, Palestinian supporters, a DFLP delegation and the Palestinian Minister of Culture joined Bil'in locals for the weekly demonstration against the wall. Demonstrators carried posters of Tristan Anderson, who was hit in his head a year ago by a gas canister in Ni'lin, and is still in critical condition.
This time the army decided to set a "honey trap" for the protesters. The gates in the fence were left open for them to charge through, while soldiers without protective gear (so they can run faster) hid on the Palestinian side of the fence, waiting to charge the protesters from behind and make arrests. The local shabab, however, quickly picked up the soldiers in hiding, and stormed forward despite the showers of gas canisters and rubber bullets that injured two youths. The soldiers retreated back behind the fence, and the shabab celebrated by charging to the fence. Soon enough, the organizers took over, restrained the local youth, and led some 30 protesters to the fence for a peaceful demonstration. As the wind was favorable and the soldiers slightly less trigger happy than usual, an Israeli recovered ex-soldier took advantage of the opportunity to preach to the soldiers, urging them to recognize their exploitation by Israeli politicians and contractors and to cross over and join the Palestinians demonstrating against occupation.

A smaller than usual weekly demonstration in Ma'asara, no more than fifty people strong (of different nationalities), was met after marching in the heavy heat through the village streets by a larger than usual combined army and border police force. Soldiers set up near the first houses of the village, deeper than ever before, and prevented the demonstration from proceeding towards the village lands.

After giving speeches in Arabic, English and Hebrew, a small group of demonstrators went through the barbed wire set on the road, and was pushed by the soldiers who also threatened activists will be arrested as the area is a closed military zone. Demonstrators on both sides sat on the ground, beat drums, sang songs, and called upon the soldiers to abandon the oppression of the popular struggle and join it in stead. The soldiers, already with stun and tear gas grenades at hand, were somewhat taken aback faced with this act of non-violent resistance and the many cameras documenting all over the place. And so, with nobody arrested and no attack on the demonstrators, activists eventually decided to leave willingly and escape the burning sun, promising to return next week as well.

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