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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Showing posts with label occupation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label occupation. Show all posts
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappe
Ilan Pappe is an Israeli historian and senior lecturer at Haifa University. He's also Academic Director of the Research Institute for Peace at Givat Haviva and Chair of the Emil Touma Institute for Palestinian Studies. Pappe is an expert on Israel and Zionism and the Palestinians' Right of Return to their homeland, is considered "an honourable academic with integrity and conscience," and is a member of the Advisory Board of the Council for Palestinian Restitution and Repatriation (CPRR), an organization declaring that "every Palestinian has a legitimate, individual right to return to his or her original home and to absolute restitution of his or her property."
Pappe is also one of Israel's "new historians" whose scholarship and writings are based on access to material now available from British Mandate period and Israeli archives that provide the most accurate and authentic documented history of Israel before and after it became a state and which now serve to debunk the myths about the years leading up to the Jewish State's founding and those following it to this day.
Pappe has also authored, contributed to or edited nine books. His latest is the one this review covers in detail so readers will know about its powerful and shocking content, unknown to most in the West and in Israel, that hopefully will arouse them enough to get the book and learn in full detail what Pappe documented. He proves from official records how the Israeli state came into being with blood on its hands from lands forcibly seized from its Palestinian inhabitants who'd lived on it for hundreds of years previously. Since the 1940s, they were ethnically cleansed and slaughtered without mercy so their homeland would become one for Jews alone.
The shameful result is that Palestinians then and today have almost no rights including being able to live in peace and security on their own land in their own state that no longer exists. Survivors then and their offspring either live in Israel as unwanted Arab citizens with few rights or in the Occupied Palestinians Territories (OPT) where their lives are suspended in limbo in an occupied country in which they're subjected to daily institutionalized and codified racism and persecution. They have no power over their daily lives and live in a constant state of fear with good reason. They face economic strangulation; collective punishment for any reason; loss of free movement; enclosures by separation walls, electric fences and border closings; regular curfews, roadblocks, checkpoints, loss of their homes by bulldozings and crops and orchards by wanton destruction and seizure; arrest without cause, and routine subjection to torture while in custody.
They're targeted for extra-judicial assassination and indiscriminate killing; taxed punitively and denied basic services essential to life and well-being including health care, education, employment and even enough food and water at the whim of Israeli authorities in a deliberate effort to destroy their will to resist and eliminate those who won't by expulsion or extermination. Palestinians have no power to end these appalling abuses and crimes against humanity or receive any redress for them in Israeli, the West or through the International Criminal Court Israel ignores when it rules against its interests.
How can they as Muslims in a racist Jewish state where Israelis oppressive them with impunity, the US goes along with huge financing and supplying of the most modern and destructive weapons of war, and the West and most Arab states are indifferent preferring to ally with Israel and the US for benefits received while writing off Palestinians as a small price worth paying. It created state of appalling human misery and desperation severely aggravated by crushing economic sanctions for the past year imposed for the first time ever on an occupied people. They're responsible for poverty and unemployment levels of 80% or more and increasing instances of starvation and unreported deaths from all causes because Israel controls everything and everyone allowed in and out of the territories. Those inside them suffer painfully as a result. Others with power to help, don't care and do nothing.
Pappe documents how it all began in 12 chapters with a short epilogue plus 18 graphic pictures needing no explanation. He calls the book his "J'Accuse against the politicians who devised the plan and the generals who carried out the ethnic cleansing" naming the guilty, the villages and urban areas destroyed, and the cruelest crimes committed against defenseless people only wanting to live in peace on their own land and were willing to do it with Jews as neighbors but not as overlords or oppressors.
This review is lengthy so readers will know in detail what Israeli authorities successfully suppressed for decades. Pappe courageously revealed it in a book begging to be read and discussed by all people of conscience and good faith. They need to take the lead building a groundswell consensus to stand up to this long-festering injustice against defenseless people fighting for their rights and existence against overwhelming odds.
Pappe provides them help with his extensive documentation and other suggested reading on the origins of Zionist ideology leading to the ethnic cleansing in the 1940s and thereafter. He particularly mentions two of Nur Masalha's important books - Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of Transfer in Zionist Political Thought, 1882 - 1948 and The Politics of Denial: Israel and the Palestinian Refugee Problem. Readers are encouraged to explore this issue further with these and other books exposing ugly truths long suppressed in the West and needing to be freely aired.
The Beginning - Initial Planning for Ethnic Cleansing
In his preface, Pappe writes about the "Red House" in Tel-Aviv that became headquarters for the Hagana, the dominant Zionist underground paramilitary militia during the British Mandate period in Palestine between 1920 and 1948 when the Jewish state came into being. He details how David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, met with leading Zionists and young Jewish military officers on March 10, 1948 to finalize plans to ethnically cleanse Palestine that unfolded in the months that followed including "large-scale (deadly serious)intimidation; laying siege to and bombarding villages and population centres; setting fire to homes, properties and goods; expulsion; demolition; and finally, planting mines among the rubble to prevent any of the expelled inhabitants from returning."
The final master plan was called Plan D (Dalet in Hebrew) following plans A, B, and C preceding it. It was to be a war without mercy complying with what Ben-Gurion said in June, 1938 to the Jewish Agency Executive and never wavering from later: "I am for compulsory transfer; I do not see anything immoral in it." Plan D became the way to do it. It included forcible expulsion of hundreds of thousands of unwanted Palestinian Arabs in urban and rural areas accompanied by an unknown number of others mass slaughtered to get it done. The goal was simple and straightforward - to create an exclusive Jewish state without an Arab presence by any means including mass-murder.
Once begun, the whole ugly business took six months to complete. It expelled about 800,000 people, killed many others, and destroyed 531 villages and 11 urban neighborhoods in cities like Tel-Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem. The action was a clear case of ethnic cleansing that international law today calls a crime against humanity for which convicted Nazis at Nuremberg were hanged. So far Israelis have always remained immune from international law even though names of guilty leaders and those charged with implementing their orders are known as well as the crimes they committed.
They included cold-blooded mass-murder; destruction of homes, villages and crops; rapes; other atrocities; and massacres of defenseless people given no quarter including women and children. The crimes were suppressed and expunged from official accounts as Israeli historiography cooked up the myth that Palestinians left voluntarily fearing harm from invading Arab armies. It was a lie covering up Israeli crimes Palestinians call the Nakba - the catastrophe or disaster that's still a cold, harsh festering unresolved injustice.
Even with British armed presence still in charge of law and order before its Mandate ended, Jewish forces completed the expulsion of about 250,000 Palestinians the Brits did nothing to stop. It continued unabated because when neighboring Arab states finally intervened, they did so without conviction. They came belatedly and with only small, ill-equipped forces, no match for a superior, well-armed Israeli military easily able to prevail as discussed below.
Ethnic Cleansing Defined
Pappe notes that ethnic cleansing is well-defined in international law that calls it a crime against humanity. He cites several definitions including from the Hutchinson encyclopedia saying it's expulsion by force to homogenize the population. The US State Department concurs adding its essence is to eradicate a region's history. The United Nations used a similar definition in 1993 when the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) characterized it as the desire of a state or regime to impose ethnic rule on a mixed area using expulsion and other violence including separating men and women, detentions, murder of males of all ages who might become combatants, destruction of houses, and repopulating areas with another ethnic group.
In 1948, Zionists waged their "War of Independence" using Plan D to "cleanse" Palestine according to the UN definition. It involved cold-blooded massacres and indiscriminate killing, targeted assassinations and widespread destruction as clear instances of crimes of war and against humanity, later expunged from the country's official history and erased from its collective memory. It was left it to a few courageous historians like Ilan Pappe to resurrect events to preserve the truth too important to let die. His invaluable book provides an historic account of what, in fact, happened. It needs broad exposure but won't get it in the corporate-controlled Israeli, US or Western media overall. It will on this important web site with the courage to publish it.
Zionism's Ideological Roots
Pappe traces the roots of Zionism to the late 1880s in Central and Eastern Europe "as a national revival movement, prompted by the growing pressure on Jews in those regions to assimilate totally or risk continuing persecution." Founded by Theodor Herzl, the movement became international in scope supporting a Jewish homeland in the Land of Israel, or Eretz Israel, even though early on many in the movement were ambivalent about its location. That changed following Herzl's death in 1904 when it was decided the goal was to colonize Palestine because of its biblical connection that happened to be land occupied inappropriately by "strangers" meaning anyone not Jewish having "no right" to be there.
So as justification, the myth was created of "a land without people for a people without a land" even though this "empty land" had a flourishing Palestinian Arab population including a small number of Jews. Zionist leaders wanted a complete dispossession of indigenous Arabs to reestablish the ancient land of Eretz Israel as a Jewish state for Jews alone and got help doing it from the British after Palestine became part of its empire post-WW I. With duplicity, the Brits crafted the 1917 Balfour Declaration supporting the notion of a Jewish homeland in Palestine while simultaneously promising indigenous Arabs their rights would be protected and land would be freed from foreign rule.
Palestinian Arabs saw through the scheme wanting no part of it. It was their land, and they weren't about to give it up without a struggle. They strongly opposed further Jewish immigration but to no avail, as their wishes conflicted with British plans for the territory. It set off decades of conflict leading to the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948 with British help under their Mandate and neighboring Arab state indifference doing little to prevent it. Palestinians lost their homeland, their struggle for justice goes on unresolved, and these beleaguered people are virtually isolated from the West and their Arab neighbors preferring alliance with Israel for their own interests that exclude helping Palestinian people get theirs served including a viable independent state free from Israeli occupation.
Pappe traces the early post-Balfour history when Palestinians comprised 80 - 90% of the population. Even then they fared poorly under British Mandate rule giving Zionist settlers preferential treatment. It led to uprisings in 1929 and 1936, the later one lasting three years before being brutally suppressed. In its wake, Britain expelled Palestinian leaders making their people vulnerable to Jewish forces post-WW II that led to their defeat and subjugation. The sympathetic British Mandate made it possible by helping Jewish settlers transform their 1920 paramilitary organization into the Hagana, a name meaning defense. It then became the military arm of the Jewish Agency or Zionist governing body now called the Israel Defense Forces or IDF.
Planning the Expulsion of the Palestinians
David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, led the Zionist movement from the mid-1920s until well into the 1960s. He played a central role and had supreme authority planning the establishment of a Jewish state serving as its "architect" with full control over all security and defense issues in the Jewish community. His goal was Jewish sovereignty over as much of ancient Palestine as possible achieved the only way he thought possible - by forceable removable of Palestinians from their land so Jews could be resettled in it.
To do it, he and other Zionist leaders needed a systematic plan to "cleanse" the land for Jewish habitation only. It began with a detailed registry or inventory of Arab villages the Jewish National Fund (JNF) was assigned to compile. The JNF was founded in 1901 as the main Zionist tool for the colonization of Palestine. Its purpose was to buy land used to settle Jewish immigrants that by the end of the British Mandate in 1948 amounted to 5.8% of Palestine or a small fraction of what Zionists wanted for a Jewish state. Early on, Ben-Gurion and others knew a more aggressive approach was needed for their colonization plan to succeed.
It began with the JNF Arab village inventory that was a blueprint completed by the late 1930s that included the topographic location of each village with detailed information including husbandry, cultivated land, number of trees, quality of fruit, average amount of land per family, number of cars, shop owners, Palestinian clans and their political affiliation, descriptions of village mosques and names of their imams, civil servants and more. The final inventory update was finished in 1947 with lists of "wanted" persons in each village targeted in 1948 for search-and-arrest operations with those seized summarily shot on the spot in cold blood.
The idea was simple - kill the leaders and anyone thought to be a threat the British hadn't already eliminated quelling the 1936-39 uprising. It created a power vacuum neutralizing any effective opposition to Zionists' plans. The only remaining obstacle thereafter was the British presence Ben-Gurion knew was on the way out by 1946 before it finally ended in May, 1948.
Partition, Ethnic Cleansing, War, and Establishment of the State of Israel
Ethnic cleansing began in early December, 1947 when Palestinians comprised two-thirds of the population and Jews, mostly from war-torn Europe, the other third. The British tried dealing with two distinct ethnic entities choosing partition as the way to do it. By 1937, this solution became the centerpiece of Zionist policy, but it proved too hard for the Brits to resolve and be able to satisfy both sides. It instead handed the problem to the newly formed UN to deal with before their Mandate ended.
It put the Palestinians' fate in the hands of a Special Committee for Palestine (UNSCOP) whose members had no prior experience solving conflicts and knew little Palestinian history. It was a recipe for disaster as events unfolded. UNSCOP opted for partition favoring the Jews as compensation for the Nazi holocaust that became General Assembly Resolution 181 on November 29, 1947 giving them a state encompassing 56% the country with one-third of the population while making Jerusalem an international city. Palestinians were justifiably outraged. They were excluded from the decision-making process concluded against their will and at their expense.
From that moment on, the die was cast leading to partition, ethnic cleansing, the first Arab-Israeli war, the others to follow, and decades of disregard for their rights to this day creating their desperate state with no resolution in prospect. Resolution 181 was even worse than an unfair 56 - 44% division of territory as it allotted the most fertile land and almost all urban and rural territory in Palestine to the new Jewish state plus 400 of the over 1000 Palestinian villages their residents lost with no right of appeal.
Pappe explains Ben-Gurion simultaneously accepted and rejected the resolution. He and other Zionist leaders wanted official international recognition of the right of Jews to have their own state in Palestine. He was also determined to make Jerusalem the Jewish capital, intended final borders to remain flexible wanting to include within them as much future territory as possible, and today Israel is the only country in the world without established borders. Ben-Gurion decided borders would "be determined by force and not by partition resolution." He headed the Consultancy or Consultant Committee, an ad-hoc cabal of Zionist leaders created solely to plan the expulsion of Palestinians to cleanse the land for Jewish habitation only.
The process began in early December, 1947 with a series of attacks against Palestinian villages and neighborhoods. They were engaged ineffectively from the start on January 9 by units of the first all-Arab volunteer army. It resulted in forced expulsions beginning in mid-February, 1948. On March 10, final Plan Dalet was adopted with its first targets being Palestinian urban centers that were all occupied by end of April with about 250,000 Palestinians uprooted, displaced or killed including by massacres, the most notorious and remembered being at Deir Yassin even though Tantura may have been the largest.
Deir Yassin was Palestinian land on April 9 when Jewish soldiers burst into the village, machine-gunned houses randomly killing many in them. The remaining villagers were then assembled in one place and murdered in cold blood including children and women first raped and then killed. Recent research puts the number massacred at 93 (including 30 babies), but dozens more were killed in the fighting that ensued making the total number of deaths much higher.
Read :http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=4715
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Pappe is also one of Israel's "new historians" whose scholarship and writings are based on access to material now available from British Mandate period and Israeli archives that provide the most accurate and authentic documented history of Israel before and after it became a state and which now serve to debunk the myths about the years leading up to the Jewish State's founding and those following it to this day.
Pappe has also authored, contributed to or edited nine books. His latest is the one this review covers in detail so readers will know about its powerful and shocking content, unknown to most in the West and in Israel, that hopefully will arouse them enough to get the book and learn in full detail what Pappe documented. He proves from official records how the Israeli state came into being with blood on its hands from lands forcibly seized from its Palestinian inhabitants who'd lived on it for hundreds of years previously. Since the 1940s, they were ethnically cleansed and slaughtered without mercy so their homeland would become one for Jews alone.
The shameful result is that Palestinians then and today have almost no rights including being able to live in peace and security on their own land in their own state that no longer exists. Survivors then and their offspring either live in Israel as unwanted Arab citizens with few rights or in the Occupied Palestinians Territories (OPT) where their lives are suspended in limbo in an occupied country in which they're subjected to daily institutionalized and codified racism and persecution. They have no power over their daily lives and live in a constant state of fear with good reason. They face economic strangulation; collective punishment for any reason; loss of free movement; enclosures by separation walls, electric fences and border closings; regular curfews, roadblocks, checkpoints, loss of their homes by bulldozings and crops and orchards by wanton destruction and seizure; arrest without cause, and routine subjection to torture while in custody.
They're targeted for extra-judicial assassination and indiscriminate killing; taxed punitively and denied basic services essential to life and well-being including health care, education, employment and even enough food and water at the whim of Israeli authorities in a deliberate effort to destroy their will to resist and eliminate those who won't by expulsion or extermination. Palestinians have no power to end these appalling abuses and crimes against humanity or receive any redress for them in Israeli, the West or through the International Criminal Court Israel ignores when it rules against its interests.
How can they as Muslims in a racist Jewish state where Israelis oppressive them with impunity, the US goes along with huge financing and supplying of the most modern and destructive weapons of war, and the West and most Arab states are indifferent preferring to ally with Israel and the US for benefits received while writing off Palestinians as a small price worth paying. It created state of appalling human misery and desperation severely aggravated by crushing economic sanctions for the past year imposed for the first time ever on an occupied people. They're responsible for poverty and unemployment levels of 80% or more and increasing instances of starvation and unreported deaths from all causes because Israel controls everything and everyone allowed in and out of the territories. Those inside them suffer painfully as a result. Others with power to help, don't care and do nothing.
Pappe documents how it all began in 12 chapters with a short epilogue plus 18 graphic pictures needing no explanation. He calls the book his "J'Accuse against the politicians who devised the plan and the generals who carried out the ethnic cleansing" naming the guilty, the villages and urban areas destroyed, and the cruelest crimes committed against defenseless people only wanting to live in peace on their own land and were willing to do it with Jews as neighbors but not as overlords or oppressors.
This review is lengthy so readers will know in detail what Israeli authorities successfully suppressed for decades. Pappe courageously revealed it in a book begging to be read and discussed by all people of conscience and good faith. They need to take the lead building a groundswell consensus to stand up to this long-festering injustice against defenseless people fighting for their rights and existence against overwhelming odds.
Pappe provides them help with his extensive documentation and other suggested reading on the origins of Zionist ideology leading to the ethnic cleansing in the 1940s and thereafter. He particularly mentions two of Nur Masalha's important books - Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of Transfer in Zionist Political Thought, 1882 - 1948 and The Politics of Denial: Israel and the Palestinian Refugee Problem. Readers are encouraged to explore this issue further with these and other books exposing ugly truths long suppressed in the West and needing to be freely aired.
The Beginning - Initial Planning for Ethnic Cleansing
In his preface, Pappe writes about the "Red House" in Tel-Aviv that became headquarters for the Hagana, the dominant Zionist underground paramilitary militia during the British Mandate period in Palestine between 1920 and 1948 when the Jewish state came into being. He details how David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, met with leading Zionists and young Jewish military officers on March 10, 1948 to finalize plans to ethnically cleanse Palestine that unfolded in the months that followed including "large-scale (deadly serious)intimidation; laying siege to and bombarding villages and population centres; setting fire to homes, properties and goods; expulsion; demolition; and finally, planting mines among the rubble to prevent any of the expelled inhabitants from returning."
The final master plan was called Plan D (Dalet in Hebrew) following plans A, B, and C preceding it. It was to be a war without mercy complying with what Ben-Gurion said in June, 1938 to the Jewish Agency Executive and never wavering from later: "I am for compulsory transfer; I do not see anything immoral in it." Plan D became the way to do it. It included forcible expulsion of hundreds of thousands of unwanted Palestinian Arabs in urban and rural areas accompanied by an unknown number of others mass slaughtered to get it done. The goal was simple and straightforward - to create an exclusive Jewish state without an Arab presence by any means including mass-murder.
Once begun, the whole ugly business took six months to complete. It expelled about 800,000 people, killed many others, and destroyed 531 villages and 11 urban neighborhoods in cities like Tel-Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem. The action was a clear case of ethnic cleansing that international law today calls a crime against humanity for which convicted Nazis at Nuremberg were hanged. So far Israelis have always remained immune from international law even though names of guilty leaders and those charged with implementing their orders are known as well as the crimes they committed.
They included cold-blooded mass-murder; destruction of homes, villages and crops; rapes; other atrocities; and massacres of defenseless people given no quarter including women and children. The crimes were suppressed and expunged from official accounts as Israeli historiography cooked up the myth that Palestinians left voluntarily fearing harm from invading Arab armies. It was a lie covering up Israeli crimes Palestinians call the Nakba - the catastrophe or disaster that's still a cold, harsh festering unresolved injustice.
Even with British armed presence still in charge of law and order before its Mandate ended, Jewish forces completed the expulsion of about 250,000 Palestinians the Brits did nothing to stop. It continued unabated because when neighboring Arab states finally intervened, they did so without conviction. They came belatedly and with only small, ill-equipped forces, no match for a superior, well-armed Israeli military easily able to prevail as discussed below.
Ethnic Cleansing Defined
Pappe notes that ethnic cleansing is well-defined in international law that calls it a crime against humanity. He cites several definitions including from the Hutchinson encyclopedia saying it's expulsion by force to homogenize the population. The US State Department concurs adding its essence is to eradicate a region's history. The United Nations used a similar definition in 1993 when the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) characterized it as the desire of a state or regime to impose ethnic rule on a mixed area using expulsion and other violence including separating men and women, detentions, murder of males of all ages who might become combatants, destruction of houses, and repopulating areas with another ethnic group.
In 1948, Zionists waged their "War of Independence" using Plan D to "cleanse" Palestine according to the UN definition. It involved cold-blooded massacres and indiscriminate killing, targeted assassinations and widespread destruction as clear instances of crimes of war and against humanity, later expunged from the country's official history and erased from its collective memory. It was left it to a few courageous historians like Ilan Pappe to resurrect events to preserve the truth too important to let die. His invaluable book provides an historic account of what, in fact, happened. It needs broad exposure but won't get it in the corporate-controlled Israeli, US or Western media overall. It will on this important web site with the courage to publish it.
Zionism's Ideological Roots
Pappe traces the roots of Zionism to the late 1880s in Central and Eastern Europe "as a national revival movement, prompted by the growing pressure on Jews in those regions to assimilate totally or risk continuing persecution." Founded by Theodor Herzl, the movement became international in scope supporting a Jewish homeland in the Land of Israel, or Eretz Israel, even though early on many in the movement were ambivalent about its location. That changed following Herzl's death in 1904 when it was decided the goal was to colonize Palestine because of its biblical connection that happened to be land occupied inappropriately by "strangers" meaning anyone not Jewish having "no right" to be there.
So as justification, the myth was created of "a land without people for a people without a land" even though this "empty land" had a flourishing Palestinian Arab population including a small number of Jews. Zionist leaders wanted a complete dispossession of indigenous Arabs to reestablish the ancient land of Eretz Israel as a Jewish state for Jews alone and got help doing it from the British after Palestine became part of its empire post-WW I. With duplicity, the Brits crafted the 1917 Balfour Declaration supporting the notion of a Jewish homeland in Palestine while simultaneously promising indigenous Arabs their rights would be protected and land would be freed from foreign rule.
Palestinian Arabs saw through the scheme wanting no part of it. It was their land, and they weren't about to give it up without a struggle. They strongly opposed further Jewish immigration but to no avail, as their wishes conflicted with British plans for the territory. It set off decades of conflict leading to the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948 with British help under their Mandate and neighboring Arab state indifference doing little to prevent it. Palestinians lost their homeland, their struggle for justice goes on unresolved, and these beleaguered people are virtually isolated from the West and their Arab neighbors preferring alliance with Israel for their own interests that exclude helping Palestinian people get theirs served including a viable independent state free from Israeli occupation.
Pappe traces the early post-Balfour history when Palestinians comprised 80 - 90% of the population. Even then they fared poorly under British Mandate rule giving Zionist settlers preferential treatment. It led to uprisings in 1929 and 1936, the later one lasting three years before being brutally suppressed. In its wake, Britain expelled Palestinian leaders making their people vulnerable to Jewish forces post-WW II that led to their defeat and subjugation. The sympathetic British Mandate made it possible by helping Jewish settlers transform their 1920 paramilitary organization into the Hagana, a name meaning defense. It then became the military arm of the Jewish Agency or Zionist governing body now called the Israel Defense Forces or IDF.
Planning the Expulsion of the Palestinians
David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, led the Zionist movement from the mid-1920s until well into the 1960s. He played a central role and had supreme authority planning the establishment of a Jewish state serving as its "architect" with full control over all security and defense issues in the Jewish community. His goal was Jewish sovereignty over as much of ancient Palestine as possible achieved the only way he thought possible - by forceable removable of Palestinians from their land so Jews could be resettled in it.
To do it, he and other Zionist leaders needed a systematic plan to "cleanse" the land for Jewish habitation only. It began with a detailed registry or inventory of Arab villages the Jewish National Fund (JNF) was assigned to compile. The JNF was founded in 1901 as the main Zionist tool for the colonization of Palestine. Its purpose was to buy land used to settle Jewish immigrants that by the end of the British Mandate in 1948 amounted to 5.8% of Palestine or a small fraction of what Zionists wanted for a Jewish state. Early on, Ben-Gurion and others knew a more aggressive approach was needed for their colonization plan to succeed.
It began with the JNF Arab village inventory that was a blueprint completed by the late 1930s that included the topographic location of each village with detailed information including husbandry, cultivated land, number of trees, quality of fruit, average amount of land per family, number of cars, shop owners, Palestinian clans and their political affiliation, descriptions of village mosques and names of their imams, civil servants and more. The final inventory update was finished in 1947 with lists of "wanted" persons in each village targeted in 1948 for search-and-arrest operations with those seized summarily shot on the spot in cold blood.
The idea was simple - kill the leaders and anyone thought to be a threat the British hadn't already eliminated quelling the 1936-39 uprising. It created a power vacuum neutralizing any effective opposition to Zionists' plans. The only remaining obstacle thereafter was the British presence Ben-Gurion knew was on the way out by 1946 before it finally ended in May, 1948.
Partition, Ethnic Cleansing, War, and Establishment of the State of Israel
Ethnic cleansing began in early December, 1947 when Palestinians comprised two-thirds of the population and Jews, mostly from war-torn Europe, the other third. The British tried dealing with two distinct ethnic entities choosing partition as the way to do it. By 1937, this solution became the centerpiece of Zionist policy, but it proved too hard for the Brits to resolve and be able to satisfy both sides. It instead handed the problem to the newly formed UN to deal with before their Mandate ended.
It put the Palestinians' fate in the hands of a Special Committee for Palestine (UNSCOP) whose members had no prior experience solving conflicts and knew little Palestinian history. It was a recipe for disaster as events unfolded. UNSCOP opted for partition favoring the Jews as compensation for the Nazi holocaust that became General Assembly Resolution 181 on November 29, 1947 giving them a state encompassing 56% the country with one-third of the population while making Jerusalem an international city. Palestinians were justifiably outraged. They were excluded from the decision-making process concluded against their will and at their expense.
From that moment on, the die was cast leading to partition, ethnic cleansing, the first Arab-Israeli war, the others to follow, and decades of disregard for their rights to this day creating their desperate state with no resolution in prospect. Resolution 181 was even worse than an unfair 56 - 44% division of territory as it allotted the most fertile land and almost all urban and rural territory in Palestine to the new Jewish state plus 400 of the over 1000 Palestinian villages their residents lost with no right of appeal.
Pappe explains Ben-Gurion simultaneously accepted and rejected the resolution. He and other Zionist leaders wanted official international recognition of the right of Jews to have their own state in Palestine. He was also determined to make Jerusalem the Jewish capital, intended final borders to remain flexible wanting to include within them as much future territory as possible, and today Israel is the only country in the world without established borders. Ben-Gurion decided borders would "be determined by force and not by partition resolution." He headed the Consultancy or Consultant Committee, an ad-hoc cabal of Zionist leaders created solely to plan the expulsion of Palestinians to cleanse the land for Jewish habitation only.
The process began in early December, 1947 with a series of attacks against Palestinian villages and neighborhoods. They were engaged ineffectively from the start on January 9 by units of the first all-Arab volunteer army. It resulted in forced expulsions beginning in mid-February, 1948. On March 10, final Plan Dalet was adopted with its first targets being Palestinian urban centers that were all occupied by end of April with about 250,000 Palestinians uprooted, displaced or killed including by massacres, the most notorious and remembered being at Deir Yassin even though Tantura may have been the largest.
Deir Yassin was Palestinian land on April 9 when Jewish soldiers burst into the village, machine-gunned houses randomly killing many in them. The remaining villagers were then assembled in one place and murdered in cold blood including children and women first raped and then killed. Recent research puts the number massacred at 93 (including 30 babies), but dozens more were killed in the fighting that ensued making the total number of deaths much higher.
Read :http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=4715
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Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Last kaffiyeh factory struggles to stay afloat in Palestinian territories
The kaffiyeh became a symbol of resistance because of its most famous exponent, Yasser Arafat. Its popularity as a fashion item came later. Photograph: AFP
In a rundown office to the side of a gloomy and deserted breeze-block factory, 76-year-old Yasser Hirbawi is hunched on a low couch turning his life's work over and over between his fingers.
In his lap – and on his head – are specimens of what has become the internationally recognised symbol of the Palestinian national struggle, the kaffiyeh, the chequered headscarf worn by politicians and militants alike and adopted not just by their supporters but by fashionistas across the globe.
But the kaffiyeh's ubiquity is of small comfort to Hirbawi, his two sons and the sole employee left in the last factory making the headscarves in the Palestinian territories. After almost 50 years, the family business is struggling to keep afloat amid a flood of cheap Chinese imports.
"The Chinese kaffiyehs are like a cigarette paper," says Jouda Hirbawi, 44. "They are cheaper, but the quality is lower."
According to the Hirbawis, the Chinese manufacturers use polyester and poor-quality cotton in their kaffiyehs. In contrast, a Hirbawi kaffiyeh is laboriously produced with high-quality material and – just as importantly – a sense of history.
But the Chinese products sell at less than two-thirds the price of the Palestinian scarves. "We sell a dozen for 100 shekels (£17). The Chinese sell a dozen for 60 shekels (£10)," says Jouda. "The people who are importing this garbage from China are killing the local product."
Hirbawi Textiles once employed 15 men in the factory, plus perhaps another 25 women finishing the scarves in their homes, between them supporting about 300 people and producing hundreds of kaffiyehs daily. "We were working 17 or 18 hours a day, supplying the local market. It's very intensive and tedious work."
Now one loyal employee is left working alongside the Hirbawi brothers. All but one of the looms was idle today, its clacking echoing around the factory floor. A low-wattage fluorescent strip casts a pool of light over the machine in the factory gloom.
The change in fortunes followed the signing of the Oslo accords in the early 1990s, after which the newly formed Palestinian Authority opened up its market to imports. In 1995, Hirbawi Textiles closed down. "There was no demand," says Jouda. "We shut for five years. Then we said, 'This is the only thing we know how to do', so we decided to try again."
The family is bitter at the PA's refusal to protect Palestinian businesses and what it describes as a "national product".
"There should be high taxes imposed on outside products," says Yasser Hirbawi. "They should not be helping outside products against local products. A falafel stand makes more money than this factory."
He is dismissive of the Palestinian businessmen importing Chinese kaffiyehs. "They are merchants, they just want to make a profit."
The factory's main source of income now is from foreign visitors, without whom "we would have closed a long time ago," says Jouda. "A lot of foreigners wear kaffiyehs to show their support for the Palestinians."
In the factory office, a small boy is rearranging bagged kaffiyehs on banks of shelves awaiting the next group of foreigners to descend with shekels to spend. On the wall is a poster of Palestinian icon Yasser Arafat, sporting, as always, a kaffiyeh. Is it one from the factory? "Yes," says Yasser Hirbawi. "Maybe," says his son more realistically.
As they show their visitors out, they shut down the one working loom and switch off the overhead light. It's lunchtime and perhaps production is over for the day.
Jouda Hirbawi insists the family will not give up its struggle to keep the factory going. "We will continue. This is the fruit of 50 years of continuous work – it's more than a business. We are trying to be competitive but we want to manufacture a high-quality kaffiyeh."
The family finds it hard to believe that the item they have been producing for almost half a century is in such global demand yet their business is on its knees.
"All over the world the kaffiyeh has become a symbol of resistance – even on protests that have nothing to do with the Palestinian people, you see people wearing them," says Jouda.
His father, weary and bitter, adds: "Everyone all over the world is benefiting from this symbol – except us."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/02/last-kaffiyeh-factory-palestinian-territories
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In a rundown office to the side of a gloomy and deserted breeze-block factory, 76-year-old Yasser Hirbawi is hunched on a low couch turning his life's work over and over between his fingers.
In his lap – and on his head – are specimens of what has become the internationally recognised symbol of the Palestinian national struggle, the kaffiyeh, the chequered headscarf worn by politicians and militants alike and adopted not just by their supporters but by fashionistas across the globe.
But the kaffiyeh's ubiquity is of small comfort to Hirbawi, his two sons and the sole employee left in the last factory making the headscarves in the Palestinian territories. After almost 50 years, the family business is struggling to keep afloat amid a flood of cheap Chinese imports.
"The Chinese kaffiyehs are like a cigarette paper," says Jouda Hirbawi, 44. "They are cheaper, but the quality is lower."
According to the Hirbawis, the Chinese manufacturers use polyester and poor-quality cotton in their kaffiyehs. In contrast, a Hirbawi kaffiyeh is laboriously produced with high-quality material and – just as importantly – a sense of history.
But the Chinese products sell at less than two-thirds the price of the Palestinian scarves. "We sell a dozen for 100 shekels (£17). The Chinese sell a dozen for 60 shekels (£10)," says Jouda. "The people who are importing this garbage from China are killing the local product."
Hirbawi Textiles once employed 15 men in the factory, plus perhaps another 25 women finishing the scarves in their homes, between them supporting about 300 people and producing hundreds of kaffiyehs daily. "We were working 17 or 18 hours a day, supplying the local market. It's very intensive and tedious work."
Now one loyal employee is left working alongside the Hirbawi brothers. All but one of the looms was idle today, its clacking echoing around the factory floor. A low-wattage fluorescent strip casts a pool of light over the machine in the factory gloom.
The change in fortunes followed the signing of the Oslo accords in the early 1990s, after which the newly formed Palestinian Authority opened up its market to imports. In 1995, Hirbawi Textiles closed down. "There was no demand," says Jouda. "We shut for five years. Then we said, 'This is the only thing we know how to do', so we decided to try again."
The family is bitter at the PA's refusal to protect Palestinian businesses and what it describes as a "national product".
"There should be high taxes imposed on outside products," says Yasser Hirbawi. "They should not be helping outside products against local products. A falafel stand makes more money than this factory."
He is dismissive of the Palestinian businessmen importing Chinese kaffiyehs. "They are merchants, they just want to make a profit."
The factory's main source of income now is from foreign visitors, without whom "we would have closed a long time ago," says Jouda. "A lot of foreigners wear kaffiyehs to show their support for the Palestinians."
In the factory office, a small boy is rearranging bagged kaffiyehs on banks of shelves awaiting the next group of foreigners to descend with shekels to spend. On the wall is a poster of Palestinian icon Yasser Arafat, sporting, as always, a kaffiyeh. Is it one from the factory? "Yes," says Yasser Hirbawi. "Maybe," says his son more realistically.
As they show their visitors out, they shut down the one working loom and switch off the overhead light. It's lunchtime and perhaps production is over for the day.
Jouda Hirbawi insists the family will not give up its struggle to keep the factory going. "We will continue. This is the fruit of 50 years of continuous work – it's more than a business. We are trying to be competitive but we want to manufacture a high-quality kaffiyeh."
The family finds it hard to believe that the item they have been producing for almost half a century is in such global demand yet their business is on its knees.
"All over the world the kaffiyeh has become a symbol of resistance – even on protests that have nothing to do with the Palestinian people, you see people wearing them," says Jouda.
His father, weary and bitter, adds: "Everyone all over the world is benefiting from this symbol – except us."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/02/last-kaffiyeh-factory-palestinian-territories
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Sunday, June 6, 2010
Shaikh Raed Salah
* Raed Salah was born in 1958 in the Palestinian town of Umm al-Fahm, in the territories occupied by the nascent state of Israel in 1948. Being one of the "1948 Palestinians" (i.e. those governed by the Israeli occupation since 1948), he holds an Israeli passport, which enables him to move relatively easily across the occupied Palestinian territories, including Jerusalem. He also visits several European countries to attend gatherings of the Palestinian diaspora and conferences for solidarity with the Palestinian people and occupied Jerusalem.
* Shaikh Raed enjoys unprecedented popularity among Palestinians, especially because despite facing numerous threats from Israeli officialdom he remains one of the most daring Palestinian figures in his fight against the occupation. This struggle led to him being imprisoned more than once. Aside from his charismatic personality, he is known for his close relationship with ordinary Palestinian people, having a very modest lifestyle, high moral standards, a quiet character and a kind smile always on his face.
* He began his political and public career in 1989 through his candidacy for mayor of Umm al-Fahm and earning a tremendous victory with more than 70% of the votes cast. He won the municipal elections twice in 1993 and 1997 before, in 2001, he gave up his post voluntarily to defend the Palestinian cause and stand up for the city of Jerusalem and its inhabitants in the face of growing Israeli threats.
* As a leader of the “Islamic Movement in Palestine '48", the most popular political force in that area, Shaikh Raed Salah rejected the opportunity to stand for election to the Israeli parliament (Knesset). He believes that there are no opportunities to end the occupation of Palestine through parliamentary life due to the dominance of military, intelligence, extremist and racist forces over Israeli political life.
* He is famous for his tireless and peaceful protests against the Israeli occupation and its continued violations. His reliance on non-violent means meant that he is sometimes known as the "Gandhi of Palestine." In addition to the social programmes and the humanitarian and educational projects he stands behind, in 1998 Shaikh Raed launched the "self-reliant community" initiative which aimed to achieve the ’48 Palestinians’ self-development and economic independence from the Israeli occupation.
* He draws attention repeatedly to successive Israeli governments’ use of “peace agreements” with the Palestinian side as pretexts for continuing its expansionist policies on Palestinian lands against the Palestinian citizens. This includes the ongoing violations against the city of Jerusalem and its inhabitants, and the occupation of the Palestinian territories.
* In 2002, the Israeli Ministry of Interior issued an order banning him from travelling abroad, and the Israeli Supreme Court of Justice turned down Sh. Raed’s appeal against the order. He went on to be among the first to launch mass campaigns against the policies of the Israeli occupation in the city of Jerusalem, especially the attacks on Islamic and Christian holy places, and the destruction of tombs and encroachment on the historic Ma`man Allah cemetery.
* In 2009 and 2010, the Israeli occupation authorities issued military orders banning Sh. Raed from entering Jerusalem, after he discovered a series of secret Israeli plans for the implementation of wide-ranging archaeological digs around Al-Aqsa Mosque and the construction of complex tunnels under Muslim and Christian holy sites and the historic walls of Jerusalem.
* He led many solidarity actions with the inhabitants of the city of Jerusalem against the Israelis’ plans to expel them from their homes, withdraw their identity cards and cancel their residence permits in the city. He had a direct role in organizing daily convoys of buses loaded with people from the Arab towns and villages occupied in 1948 showing solidarity with inhabitants of the Old City of Jerusalem.
* Over the last few years, Shaikh Raed has played an effective role in demanding implementation of the right of return for Palestinian refugees who were expelled by Israeli forces from their towns and villages in 1948. For this purpose, he regularly participates in gatherings and conferences organized by the Palestinian refugees in living in Europe to claim their right to return to Palestine. Raed Salah is famous for his dictum declared on the sixtieth anniversary of the Nakba (the catastrophe of 1948) which said, "No retreat from the right of return”.
* In 2000, Israeli troops shot him in the head in what was considered by observers as an attempted assassination; needless to say, he survived. The Israeli occupation authorities arrested him several times, the first being in 1981. Between 2003 and 2005, Shaikh Raed Salah was imprisoned for two years but after his release he continued with his public and popular movements against the occupation, facing further arrest a number of times for his contribution to protest rallies in solidarity with the city of Jerusalem and its inhabitants. On January 13, 2010, an Israeli court sentenced him to nine months in prison plus a six-month suspended sentence in addition to a fine. The sentence was supposed to take effect from February 28, 2010.
http://www.middleeastmonitor.org.uk/resources/fact-sheets/1082-shaikh-raed-salah
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* Shaikh Raed enjoys unprecedented popularity among Palestinians, especially because despite facing numerous threats from Israeli officialdom he remains one of the most daring Palestinian figures in his fight against the occupation. This struggle led to him being imprisoned more than once. Aside from his charismatic personality, he is known for his close relationship with ordinary Palestinian people, having a very modest lifestyle, high moral standards, a quiet character and a kind smile always on his face.
* He began his political and public career in 1989 through his candidacy for mayor of Umm al-Fahm and earning a tremendous victory with more than 70% of the votes cast. He won the municipal elections twice in 1993 and 1997 before, in 2001, he gave up his post voluntarily to defend the Palestinian cause and stand up for the city of Jerusalem and its inhabitants in the face of growing Israeli threats.
* As a leader of the “Islamic Movement in Palestine '48", the most popular political force in that area, Shaikh Raed Salah rejected the opportunity to stand for election to the Israeli parliament (Knesset). He believes that there are no opportunities to end the occupation of Palestine through parliamentary life due to the dominance of military, intelligence, extremist and racist forces over Israeli political life.
* He is famous for his tireless and peaceful protests against the Israeli occupation and its continued violations. His reliance on non-violent means meant that he is sometimes known as the "Gandhi of Palestine." In addition to the social programmes and the humanitarian and educational projects he stands behind, in 1998 Shaikh Raed launched the "self-reliant community" initiative which aimed to achieve the ’48 Palestinians’ self-development and economic independence from the Israeli occupation.
* He draws attention repeatedly to successive Israeli governments’ use of “peace agreements” with the Palestinian side as pretexts for continuing its expansionist policies on Palestinian lands against the Palestinian citizens. This includes the ongoing violations against the city of Jerusalem and its inhabitants, and the occupation of the Palestinian territories.
* In 2002, the Israeli Ministry of Interior issued an order banning him from travelling abroad, and the Israeli Supreme Court of Justice turned down Sh. Raed’s appeal against the order. He went on to be among the first to launch mass campaigns against the policies of the Israeli occupation in the city of Jerusalem, especially the attacks on Islamic and Christian holy places, and the destruction of tombs and encroachment on the historic Ma`man Allah cemetery.
* In 2009 and 2010, the Israeli occupation authorities issued military orders banning Sh. Raed from entering Jerusalem, after he discovered a series of secret Israeli plans for the implementation of wide-ranging archaeological digs around Al-Aqsa Mosque and the construction of complex tunnels under Muslim and Christian holy sites and the historic walls of Jerusalem.
* He led many solidarity actions with the inhabitants of the city of Jerusalem against the Israelis’ plans to expel them from their homes, withdraw their identity cards and cancel their residence permits in the city. He had a direct role in organizing daily convoys of buses loaded with people from the Arab towns and villages occupied in 1948 showing solidarity with inhabitants of the Old City of Jerusalem.
* Over the last few years, Shaikh Raed has played an effective role in demanding implementation of the right of return for Palestinian refugees who were expelled by Israeli forces from their towns and villages in 1948. For this purpose, he regularly participates in gatherings and conferences organized by the Palestinian refugees in living in Europe to claim their right to return to Palestine. Raed Salah is famous for his dictum declared on the sixtieth anniversary of the Nakba (the catastrophe of 1948) which said, "No retreat from the right of return”.
* In 2000, Israeli troops shot him in the head in what was considered by observers as an attempted assassination; needless to say, he survived. The Israeli occupation authorities arrested him several times, the first being in 1981. Between 2003 and 2005, Shaikh Raed Salah was imprisoned for two years but after his release he continued with his public and popular movements against the occupation, facing further arrest a number of times for his contribution to protest rallies in solidarity with the city of Jerusalem and its inhabitants. On January 13, 2010, an Israeli court sentenced him to nine months in prison plus a six-month suspended sentence in addition to a fine. The sentence was supposed to take effect from February 28, 2010.
http://www.middleeastmonitor.org.uk/resources/fact-sheets/1082-shaikh-raed-salah
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Tuesday, April 13, 2010
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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Stuck between a wall and an occupation
When Bilal Jadou's grandmother was sick last year, and in need of immediate medical care, the family called the Jerusalem emergency service and requested an ambulance -- only to hear on the other end of the line that no Israeli ambulances would be permitted to reach the house without permission from the Israeli military. "Try the Bethlehem ambulance service," the emergency dispatcher told Jadou. When he called the Bethlehem ambulance, they told him to have his grandmother meet them at the other side of the main Bethlehem-Jerusalem checkpoint because they weren't allowed to cross. Jadou's house is on the other side of the sprawling apartheid wall, separated from his community and the West Bank, and in a permanent state of oppressive bureaucratic and administrative limbo as nearby settlements are intended to spread onto his land.
The Electronic Intifada correspondent Nora Barrows-Friedman interviewed Jadou, 26 years old, about his situation. They spoke inside Aida refugee camp, in Bethlehem.
Nora Barrows-Friedman: Tell us about your situation and why this story is so important in the context of what's happening here in the Bethlehem area, especially in Aida camp, which is right up against the wall, cutting the land of families here in half.
Bilal Jadou: My family is separated from each other. We used to live in the refugee camp here and in our other house that used to be within five minutes walking distance from here. Since the wall was built, we can't communicate as a family. Some of us live in this house in Aida, and the others live in our other house on the other side of the wall.
I have six brothers and three sisters. Two of the brothers, including me, and one of our sisters, are allowed by Israel to live in the house on the other side of the wall. No one else is allowed to be there. Now it sometimes takes two hours to cross the checkpoint in Bethlehem to see our family in Aida camp. Other times, the Israelis close the checkpoint entirely and we can't see each other at all.
NBF: How did the Israelis choose who was able to live in the house on the other side of the wall?
BJ: They said it was purely because of "security reasons," and we still don't know why some got permission and some didn't. Also, we can't add anything to the house; we can't build onto the house. At any time, they can come and take my permission and say it's for "security reasons."
NBF: Do you have a special ID card now? Such as a Jerusalem residency card? How are you identified as someone who lives on the other side of the wall?
BJ: I still have a West Bank Palestinian ID, with a special permission slip for just the Tantur area [where the house is]. If Israeli police catch me anywhere else other than at my house, or if they catch me working inside Jerusalem, they will take my permission away. I can just be inside the house, and nothing more.
The Israeli wall runs along the Aida refugee camp.
NBF: So, if you want to buy groceries, or go to the bank, or get gasoline for your car, or get to the hospital, what do you do?
BJ: We can't do any of these things. I can't even drive a car inside the area near the house. We're not allowed. We can't even take a taxi to the checkpoint. We have to walk. If we want to buy groceries, we can only buy them inside the Palestinian territories. But we are not allowed to bring anything from inside the Palestinian territories to my house. So the only way I can get food and supplies to my house is to have friends inside Jerusalem buy our groceries, or whatever we need, and bring them to us.
We have no services except water and electricity, which come from the Palestinian side of the wall. Israel won't allow us to have anything else. It's a way to push us to leave this area and go to the other side of the wall. This is the only reason they're doing this to us.
My grandmother got sick and we called the Israeli ambulance. They told us to coordinate with the Israeli soldiers, who then refused to allow the ambulance to reach us. The Palestinian ambulance told us that since they couldn't cross the checkpoint, we had to bring my grandmother to the checkpoint and they would take her to the hospital in Bethlehem. Since we couldn't use a car to bring her to the checkpoint, we put her on a donkey and walked her over there. But before we reached the checkpoint, my grandmother died.
NBF: On the other side of the wall, there is a lot of land that was cultivated by families in Beit Jala and Aida camp until the wall was completed in 2004. And then you have Gilo and Har Gilo settlements, right next to your house on the other side. Talk more about this policy of taking land, using the wall to separate communities, and forcing Palestinians to stay inside these ghettos in the West Bank.
BJ: There is a lot of land near our house owned by Palestinians. But we're the last family who are allowed to stay there. Just a few months ago, we tried to expand our house a little bit; we built a shed that was only two meters squared. The Israeli police came and told us that we had to stop building. If we want to fix the house, the police come. If we paint our house, the police ask us to remove the paint. But then you look across the street, and you see Gilo settlement with their cranes and bulldozers and construction teams building all the time, expanding all day long.
NBF: The police come often to check to see if you have put paint on the walls. But what about the treatment you receive by settlers?
BJ: The settlers attacked us once. They built a fence around our house and told us to leave. But we went to the court to prove that this was our house, with deeds and documents since the Ottoman period. The court gave us back our land and the permission to stay on our land. Most of the time, though, we get the most terrible treatment from the Israeli soldiers. They come and attack us. Once, they came and took all of our furniture from inside the house and threw it outside. They told us, "find another place to live!" They sometimes come at 2:00 in the morning, taking us outside of the house, and searching to make sure we haven't built anything or fixed anything inside the house.
I was once told by a soldier, after he took my ID card one night, to go to the checkpoint to retrieve it. I got to the checkpoint, and the soldier called me on my mobile phone, telling me that he was outside of the house, and I should come back to get it. I went back to the house, and then he called and said that he was at the checkpoint. This went on until 6:00 in the morning. Sometimes they take my ID card to other checkpoints so I'm forced to travel a long distance to retrieve it. They're trying to put a lot of pressure on us so that we leave the area and they can expand the settlement.
NBF: Tell me about your family's history. We're sitting inside your home in the refugee camp. Where was your family from, originally, before they were expelled in 1948?
BJ: Originally, we're refugees from al-Malha. It's just one kilometer away, five minutes away by car. Some of my family fled in 1948 and came here. Even part of the refugee camp is on al-Malha land, inside the West Bank borders. When the Israelis invaded and occupied the West Bank in 1967, some of the family decided to go back to the house in al-Malha, inside the so-called Israeli area. So now we're separated into three parts -- my family in Aida camp, my brothers and sisters inside the house on the other side of the wall, and the rest in al-Malha. We haven't been together as a family -- we haven't all sat down to dinner together -- for six years.
Sometimes, if something is happening inside the camp, like a wedding for a friend or neighbor, we have to leave our house at nine in the morning to be sure we're at the wedding by three in the afternoon. We're affected a lot by the separation.
NBF: It used to take you five minutes to get to the camp from the house before the wall was built.
BJ: Yes, five minutes, not more. Sometimes, if I walk quickly, it used to take three minutes. Now, it's half an hour just to walk to the checkpoint. Then I spend sometimes two, three hours inside the checkpoint.
NBF: What do you think about the next generation of Palestinians who are facing similar situations? When you get married and have children, what do you want for them?
BJ: I hope everything changes. The situation is extremely difficult, and I hope that the new generation can live in peace without any conflicts. Actually, when you mentioned marriage, this is a very depressing issue for me. I tried to get married recently. But I can't, because I'm living in this area. If I marry a girl from Bethlehem, I can't live with her in Bethlehem because then I'd have to move to the city and lose my land and my house. If I want to marry a girl from Jerusalem, she'd refuse. I don't have an Israeli ID and I can't go anywhere inside Jerusalem. This is no way to make a family. So I'm stuck.
I think I'll never get married, because I need to protect my house. Maybe there'll be a solution soon, and things will change.
All images by Nora Barrows-Friedman.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11168.shtml
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The Electronic Intifada correspondent Nora Barrows-Friedman interviewed Jadou, 26 years old, about his situation. They spoke inside Aida refugee camp, in Bethlehem.
Nora Barrows-Friedman: Tell us about your situation and why this story is so important in the context of what's happening here in the Bethlehem area, especially in Aida camp, which is right up against the wall, cutting the land of families here in half.
Bilal Jadou: My family is separated from each other. We used to live in the refugee camp here and in our other house that used to be within five minutes walking distance from here. Since the wall was built, we can't communicate as a family. Some of us live in this house in Aida, and the others live in our other house on the other side of the wall.
I have six brothers and three sisters. Two of the brothers, including me, and one of our sisters, are allowed by Israel to live in the house on the other side of the wall. No one else is allowed to be there. Now it sometimes takes two hours to cross the checkpoint in Bethlehem to see our family in Aida camp. Other times, the Israelis close the checkpoint entirely and we can't see each other at all.
NBF: How did the Israelis choose who was able to live in the house on the other side of the wall?
BJ: They said it was purely because of "security reasons," and we still don't know why some got permission and some didn't. Also, we can't add anything to the house; we can't build onto the house. At any time, they can come and take my permission and say it's for "security reasons."
NBF: Do you have a special ID card now? Such as a Jerusalem residency card? How are you identified as someone who lives on the other side of the wall?
BJ: I still have a West Bank Palestinian ID, with a special permission slip for just the Tantur area [where the house is]. If Israeli police catch me anywhere else other than at my house, or if they catch me working inside Jerusalem, they will take my permission away. I can just be inside the house, and nothing more.
The Israeli wall runs along the Aida refugee camp.
NBF: So, if you want to buy groceries, or go to the bank, or get gasoline for your car, or get to the hospital, what do you do?
BJ: We can't do any of these things. I can't even drive a car inside the area near the house. We're not allowed. We can't even take a taxi to the checkpoint. We have to walk. If we want to buy groceries, we can only buy them inside the Palestinian territories. But we are not allowed to bring anything from inside the Palestinian territories to my house. So the only way I can get food and supplies to my house is to have friends inside Jerusalem buy our groceries, or whatever we need, and bring them to us.
We have no services except water and electricity, which come from the Palestinian side of the wall. Israel won't allow us to have anything else. It's a way to push us to leave this area and go to the other side of the wall. This is the only reason they're doing this to us.
My grandmother got sick and we called the Israeli ambulance. They told us to coordinate with the Israeli soldiers, who then refused to allow the ambulance to reach us. The Palestinian ambulance told us that since they couldn't cross the checkpoint, we had to bring my grandmother to the checkpoint and they would take her to the hospital in Bethlehem. Since we couldn't use a car to bring her to the checkpoint, we put her on a donkey and walked her over there. But before we reached the checkpoint, my grandmother died.
NBF: On the other side of the wall, there is a lot of land that was cultivated by families in Beit Jala and Aida camp until the wall was completed in 2004. And then you have Gilo and Har Gilo settlements, right next to your house on the other side. Talk more about this policy of taking land, using the wall to separate communities, and forcing Palestinians to stay inside these ghettos in the West Bank.
BJ: There is a lot of land near our house owned by Palestinians. But we're the last family who are allowed to stay there. Just a few months ago, we tried to expand our house a little bit; we built a shed that was only two meters squared. The Israeli police came and told us that we had to stop building. If we want to fix the house, the police come. If we paint our house, the police ask us to remove the paint. But then you look across the street, and you see Gilo settlement with their cranes and bulldozers and construction teams building all the time, expanding all day long.
NBF: The police come often to check to see if you have put paint on the walls. But what about the treatment you receive by settlers?
BJ: The settlers attacked us once. They built a fence around our house and told us to leave. But we went to the court to prove that this was our house, with deeds and documents since the Ottoman period. The court gave us back our land and the permission to stay on our land. Most of the time, though, we get the most terrible treatment from the Israeli soldiers. They come and attack us. Once, they came and took all of our furniture from inside the house and threw it outside. They told us, "find another place to live!" They sometimes come at 2:00 in the morning, taking us outside of the house, and searching to make sure we haven't built anything or fixed anything inside the house.
I was once told by a soldier, after he took my ID card one night, to go to the checkpoint to retrieve it. I got to the checkpoint, and the soldier called me on my mobile phone, telling me that he was outside of the house, and I should come back to get it. I went back to the house, and then he called and said that he was at the checkpoint. This went on until 6:00 in the morning. Sometimes they take my ID card to other checkpoints so I'm forced to travel a long distance to retrieve it. They're trying to put a lot of pressure on us so that we leave the area and they can expand the settlement.
NBF: Tell me about your family's history. We're sitting inside your home in the refugee camp. Where was your family from, originally, before they were expelled in 1948?
BJ: Originally, we're refugees from al-Malha. It's just one kilometer away, five minutes away by car. Some of my family fled in 1948 and came here. Even part of the refugee camp is on al-Malha land, inside the West Bank borders. When the Israelis invaded and occupied the West Bank in 1967, some of the family decided to go back to the house in al-Malha, inside the so-called Israeli area. So now we're separated into three parts -- my family in Aida camp, my brothers and sisters inside the house on the other side of the wall, and the rest in al-Malha. We haven't been together as a family -- we haven't all sat down to dinner together -- for six years.
Sometimes, if something is happening inside the camp, like a wedding for a friend or neighbor, we have to leave our house at nine in the morning to be sure we're at the wedding by three in the afternoon. We're affected a lot by the separation.
NBF: It used to take you five minutes to get to the camp from the house before the wall was built.
BJ: Yes, five minutes, not more. Sometimes, if I walk quickly, it used to take three minutes. Now, it's half an hour just to walk to the checkpoint. Then I spend sometimes two, three hours inside the checkpoint.
NBF: What do you think about the next generation of Palestinians who are facing similar situations? When you get married and have children, what do you want for them?
BJ: I hope everything changes. The situation is extremely difficult, and I hope that the new generation can live in peace without any conflicts. Actually, when you mentioned marriage, this is a very depressing issue for me. I tried to get married recently. But I can't, because I'm living in this area. If I marry a girl from Bethlehem, I can't live with her in Bethlehem because then I'd have to move to the city and lose my land and my house. If I want to marry a girl from Jerusalem, she'd refuse. I don't have an Israeli ID and I can't go anywhere inside Jerusalem. This is no way to make a family. So I'm stuck.
I think I'll never get married, because I need to protect my house. Maybe there'll be a solution soon, and things will change.
All images by Nora Barrows-Friedman.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11168.shtml
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Saturday, February 28, 2009
Peace, properganda and the promise land
Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land provides a striking comparison of U.S. and international media coverage of the crisis in the Middle East, zeroing in on how structural distortions in U.S. coverage have reinforced false perceptions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This pivotal documentary exposes how the foreign policy interests of American political elites--oil, and a need to have a secure military base in the region, among others--work in combination with Israeli public relations strategies to exercise a powerful influence over how news from the region is reported
apartheid
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Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Depopulation, Destruction and Displacement of the Palestinian People
For Palestinians, the Nakba "Catastrophe" is their "Holocaust" six-month slaughter and displacement before and after the May 1948 establishment of Israel. In December 1947, Jews in Palestine numbered 600,000 compared to 1.3 million Palestinians. David Ben-Gurion ordered them removed and for "Every attack....to end with occupation, destruction and expulsion."
He meant depopulation, destruction, mass slaughter, displacement, and erasing a proud people's history. Palestine was to become Israel. Most of the job was completed, more in 1967, and thereafter incrementally until total dispossession is achieved. Gaza is the latest battleground. More ahead is planned. The struggle for liberation continues.
In all respects, Gaza's situation is dysfunctional and calamitous. Consider the dire medical state alone.
The UK Lancet Medical Journal on Gaza
The prestigious Lancet issued the following statement:
"We find it hard to believe that an otherwise internationally respected, democratic nation can sanction such large and indiscriminate human atrocities in a territory already under land and sea blockade. The heavy loss of civilian life and destruction of Gaza's health system is unjustified and disproportional....The collective punishment of Gazans is placing horrific and immediate burdens of injury and trauma on innocent civilians." These acts are lawless, and we deplore "the silence of national medical associations and professional bodies worldwide....Their leaders....are complicit in a preventable tragedy" with potential long lasting consequences.
The Lancet followed with a lengthy overall assessment. In an introductory overview, it deplores conditions on the ground.
-- violence directed at civilians;
-- the unjustifiable toll;
-- the deaths, injuries and social infrastructure destruction;
-- the breach of "international norms of humanitarian behaviour;"
-- ambulances attacked;
-- medical personnel killed;
-- hospitals short or depleted of everything - power, equipment, medicines, anesthetics, beds, and overworked staffs pulling round the clock shifts;
-- vaccination programs, lab services, pre and postnatal care, and school health services disrupted;
-- severe restrictions on ICRC personnel; and much more; in short, a calamitous situation bring all normal life to a halt.
Despite banning foreign journalists, carnage reports are heard, read, and seen worldwide. Justifiable outrage followed and grows. Testimonies on the ground are heart-rending. Fear grips everyone. People have nowhere to go. The indifference of influential politicians is reflected in Tony Blair's failure once to visit Gaza since his 2007 appointment as the (US, UN, EU, Russia) Quartet special envoy - one for war, not peace, for Israel, not Palestine, for injustice, not liberation.
His absence and silence in the face of a Gaza "Holocaust" reflects his complicity with Israeli terrorism, contempt for Palestinians overall, and another war crime with the others during his tenure as prime minister.
Now and ahead, Israel will be judged by its attitudes and actions towards the non-Jews it controls. America, the West, and complicit Arab regimes share equal guilt for their complicity. Palestinians are isolated on their own, yet for six decades have been resolute and resilient. Their struggle continues.
Contrary to popular perception, the Israeli - Palestinian conflict boils down to this. Over 90 years ago, imperial Britain promised Palestine to two peoples in one 1917 Balfour Declaration sentence from the British Foreign Secretary to the head of Anglo-Jewry:
'His Majesty's Government view with 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 being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine."
This was duplicitous on its face. Britain wanted a Western presence in an oil-rich part of the world to assure it got the lion's share. Decades later, neither side will leave so conflict persists. The international community is complicit. It fuels struggle and threatens regional and world peace as a result.
The Dire State of Gaza's Medical Facilities
The 585-bed Al Shifa Hospital, Gaza's best equipped in normal times, "resemble(s) a charnel house" with corpses strewn everywhere, many torn apart patients for too few beds, and doctors having to treat them on the floor and do surgery with little or no anesthesia, at times by flashlight in less than ideal sanitary conditions.
Hospital director Hussain Ashaur worries about risked infection, severe trauma, and horrific burn cases. As bad are "scenes out of Dante's Inferno." Patients arrive with no arms or legs, crushed limbs, bodies torn apart by flesh-shredding DIME weapons, and terrible shortages of everything for normal functioning.
Neonatal deaths are up 10% as new mothers are sent home early for lack of space. Vaccinations have been suspended. Nearly 70% of chronically ill patients aren't treated. Most basic clinics are now just first aid centers.
Accessing the wounded has been hazardous. At least a dozen paramedics were targeted and killed inside clearly marked vehicles and ambulances. Others were shot treating civilians where they lay. The extent of Israeli war crimes is shocking but not surprising under its Dahiyah Doctrine strategy to:
"wield disproportionate power against every village from which (suspected) shots are fired on Israel, and cause immense damage and destruction. From our perspective, these are military bases." Civilian areas are "legitimate military targets," and non-combatants are as fair game as fighters.
The ICRC issued a "harshly critical statement" accusing Israel of denying aid workers access to sites for days and finding shocking scenes when allowed in - the sights and sounds of death, horrific wounds, pain, suffering, despair, and starvation.
Because of the siege, conditions were dire before December 27. After three weeks of attack and in the aftermath, health services are near collapse. Doctors report:
"the most horrific war injuries in men, women, and children of all ages in numbers too large to comprehend. The wounded, dying, and dead have streamed into the overcrowded hospital in endless convoys of ambulances and private cars, and wrapped in blankets in the caring arms of others. The endless and intense bombardment from Israeli air, ground, and naval forces have missed no targets, not even hospitals."
Gaza is now "a shattered, attacked, and drained health-care system trying to help an overwhelming amount of casualties in a war between clearly unequal (sides), where the attacker spares no civilian lives - be it man, woman, or child - not even the much-needed health workers of all professions."
Doctors with war zone experience say they're overwhelmed and never saw anything like it. Gaza is tiny for its 1.5 million people. It has five cities, seven refugee camps for two-thirds of the population, and a bare 24 square kilometers of potentially productive farmland now decreased because of the siege, fighting, and deliberate Israeli razing of the land. It's a "cage, an enormous prison or a completely sealed off ghetto" with its life being extinguished by violence and Israeli-enforced neglect and terror.
Gaza City's Al-Shifa Hospital is a five story structure with several pavilions for medical specialties. It has 1011 employees, seven clinics, six operating rooms with worn-out poorly operating equipment, and about 406 doctors, including in seven surgical specialties. It's been reduced to a "makeshift, field hospital after years of siege, as well as a lack of maintenance and upgrading" because none is possible. Everything needed for normal functioning is in short supply or absent. Nonetheless, doctors and staff do all they can, at times in 24-hour shifts that tax the most committed, especially when it's common practice.
Through it all, "the morale, strength, and tireless work done by the health workers in Al-Shifa and (throughout) Gaza to save the injured from death is beyond belief." Gaza reflects heroism and resilience despite shocking Israeli state terror and scenes out of Dante's Inferno.
End Game and Prospects in Occupied Palestine and Gaza under Hamas
For six decades, Israel has pursued a colonization, dispossession, and decapitation agenda for total control of historic Palestine. Gaza 2008 - 09 is the latest battleground. Its outcome is undetermined and for the Obama administration to address with a new Israeli government after February 10 elections are held. Continued occupation, oppression, terror wars, and dispossession is their already familiar script.
In 1895, Zionism's founder, Theodor Herzl, wrote: "We must expropriate gently the private property on the state assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by....denying it employment in our country." In 1967, Israeli defense minister, Moshe Dayan, said: Palestinians "shall continue to live like dogs" so they'll leave.
In 1948, David Ben-Gurion stated: "We have taken their country....We must do everything to insure they never return....We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population." In 1988, former prime minister Yitzhak Shamir told Jewish settlers that Palestinians "would be crushed like grasshoppers (with their) heads smashed against the boulders and walls."
Through it all, Palestinians survived, Hamas though battered is unbowed, and if Middle East expert Juan Cole is right:
"the Gaza fighting is likely to underline the self-delusion that has framed the US-Israeli perspective on major groups like Hamas for years, namely that Israel may choose its Palestinian interlocutors, and marginalize and criminalize those who are unwilling to negotiate on Israel's terms. While Hamas by no means speaks for all Palestinians, it is fatuous to assume (it can) be ignored politically or diplomatically."
In 1982, Israel failed to defeat Palestinian nationalism in Lebanon in spite of slaughtering 18,000 people. It merely sidetracked it for a time. The First Intifada followed. In the 1990s, Oslo, Oslo II, Wye River, Camp David, Taba, and other one-sided arrangements bought time until Intifada anger and more conflict erupted. The Road Map and Annapolis didn't halt it. In 2006, Israel failed to defeat Hezbollah. Cole believes that "Hamas is likely to emerge stronger politically than it was when the fighting began" despite all the IDF's might against it. That clearly appears to be right.
But given Arab street anger in the wake of Gaza's carnage, it's possible that "more extreme (Islamic) groups will strengthen, vying with Hamas (and Fatah) for control (as they already do in Lebanese Palestinian refugee camps)." Cole believes that "the Gaza war will change the political landscape of the Middle East" and present "enormous" and perhaps "unwelcome" challenges for Obama and Israel.
Muslim anger is intense, peacemaking an illusion, and if more regional wars are planned (as is likely), all bets are off on their potentially catastrophic consequences.
The Aftermath
During a January 16 Arab League meeting, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia called for Palestinian unity under Fatah while Abbas advisor Yasser Abed Rabbo told a news conference that the "president" would not engage in a dialogue with "killers," meaning Hamas.
At the same time, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed the same sentiment as Washington's man at the world body. He urged Arab leaders to unite for Abbas and Fatah. So did Terje Roed-Larson, former UN Middle East envoy and current International Peace Academy president. He accused Hamas of carrying out a de facto coup against Gazans and never mentioned it's the legitimate government, not the corrupted Fatah under Abbas.
Unmentioned also were prominent Hamas figure Salah al-Bardaweel's charges. On January 19, he accused Abbas of spying on Hamas and conspiring with Israel. He said Fatah spies gave the IDF strategic intelligence on leadership homes and weapons locations. A number were arrested and confessed. "They admitted their guilt and told us names of their masters, who would, in turn, inform the Israeli intelligence apparatus....to facilitate the Israeli mission."
Gazan activist, photojournalist, and blogger voice of truth Sameh Habeeb reported this on the war's aftermath:
Thousands on Gaza's streets are "trying to explore what has happened to relatives, houses and areas. I have documented a massive destruction throughout east, north and west of Gaza Strip. The devastation storms everything needed for normal life. Houses, schools, hospitals, clinics, police stations, charities, universities and streets totally (or) partially destroyed."
Today, paramedics found over 100 bodies, mostly civilians, including eight members of one family. The "Samouni family which was massacred before found 17 more dead bodies under the rubble. Many families still seek (other) members and relatives who were lost during the war time."
On January 18, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) reported that Israeli forces still cut off Gaza City and the northern Strip from other areas in the south. In addition, field workers, especially around Gaza City, the north, and Egyptian border said "these areas looked (like) they were struck by a heavy earthquake." Decomposing bodies are unearthed. Israeli aircraft patrol the skies. The IDF redeployed "outside residential areas" but continue to fire at civilians, especially in border areas.
After declaring a "ceasefire:"
-- Israeli artillery shelled houses in al-Juron Square in Jabalya damaging two homes, killing three children, and wounding other residents;
-- an IDF drone fired a missile at Palestinian civilians in al-Zarqaa' area, south of Jabalya killing a man and his son;
-- Israeli forces killed a resistance activist near al-Karama apartment buildings, southwest of Jabalya;
-- another drone fired two missiles at Palestinian civilians in al-Amal quarter, east of Beit Hanoun; a woman and child were seriously wounded; she lost a leg; her child later died;
-- IDF naval vessels shelled the Palestinian General Intelligence headquarters and open areas near Gaza City;
-- Israeli forces fired on Wadi al-Salqa village, southeast of Deir al-Balah; no casualties were reported;
-- before redeploying, the IDF demolished at least 30 houses and razed agricultural land in the al-Fukhari area;
-- near the Israeli - Gaza border, Israeli forces opened fire at Palestinian civilians checking their homes and land; one man was reported killed;
-- an IDF explosive charge killed two children playing in the Al-Sha'af area east of Gaza City;
-- Israeli forces killed a farmer while he was working on his land;
-- redeployed soldiers demolished houses, damaged others, and razed agricultural land outside al-Shouka village, east of Rafah; and
-- Israeli tanks bulldozed dozens of dunnums of agricultural land in central Gaza; other tanks moved towards the Al-Maghazy area in central Gaza;
All this happened after Israel's "ceasefire." PCHR warned that Gazans are endangered "in light of (continued Israeli threats) to (renew or) expand military operations against the population of the Gaza Strip."
PCHR is calling for the "international community to immediately intervene;" to establish "inquiry commissions to investigate (war) crimes....against Palestinian civilians," including the use of illegal weapons. It also wants "all political and military officials responsible" prosecuted for their crimes.
Through January 20, the official death toll rose to 1415 with around 5500 injured, many seriously. New deaths will be reported as bodies are discovered under rubble and wounded people die.
PCHR's Gaza Testimonies
"I am still alive," said Ayman Al-Majdalawi, a Jabalia nurse after the IDF shelled the nearby Al-Fakhoura school used by UNWRA as a shelter. It killed dozens of civilians and wounded many more. "Women, men and children had limbs torn from their bodies by the force of the explosions. The ambulance drivers told me the Israelis were shooting at them as they were trying to evacuate the dead and injured." At her hospital "there was chaos. Our ambulances are in danger, and some of the injured people bled to death because we couldn't reach them. I try to go to other hospitals if I am needed, but it is very dangerous, and like everyone else, we are very frightened."
Ambulance drivers reported that they risked their lives to help the maimed and wounded. "We are working twenty four hours a day - we only sleep when there is no Israeli shelling....I have not been to my home for days....Ninety percent of the injured victims....have already lost legs or arms, or both."
Khalid Yusef Abu Sa'ada said:
"I was driving my ambulance in Beit Lahia....when the Israelis shelled us....I was with two paramedics. The Israeli shells killed one of them." The other was badly injured. He's now paralyzed. "A few days ago the Israelis bombed us" while we were trying to rescue a boy. The explosion "ripped (his) head off."
The Israelis killed other ambulance drivers and paramedics by bombing and shelling them. Dr. Eysa Saleh was on duty with the Medical Security Services when a shell blew his head off in Jabaliya. Everyone is exhausted, overwhelmed and horrified while fearing for their own lives on the frontline. "We know there are many people we cannot reach because some areas are too dangerous, and our ambulances are deliberately targeted." Earlier, "as I was driving, I saw a man struck by a missile that tore his body in two in front of our eyes. The situation is unbelievable, but we are doing the best we can, because this is our duty."
Professor Said Abdelwahed Emails from "Destroyed Gaza"
"This morning (January 18), Israel declared a ceasefire" but they keep shooting anyway. Meanwhile, drones and F-16s are overhead and firing missiles "12 hours" later. Over "100 new dead bodies were found under debris and in other places in fields and back streets in Zietoun neighborhood and northern Gaza. Whole families were found under rubble and demolished homes."
"It's unbelievable, incredible and mind-boggling! Innocent civilians paid the most expensive price (with) their lives. It was genocide." All of Gaza is depressed and traumatized. "I am shaken by the psychological situation around! The Israelis still call Palestinian homes by telephone threatening them with another punishment."
Aircraft drop anti-Hamas leaflets in western Gaza. It's "stupid behavior. It didn't move anyone after the ruthless attacks everywhere in Gaza....Tonight is a time of cautious silence and anticipation (that) the whole situation may flare up or explode at any moment. There are still untold stories of horror, destruction and death everywhere in Gaza," and most of us still have no electricity or much of anything else.
An Interregnum Truce Before the Next Onslaught
On January 19, Haaretz reported that: "Israeli officials said that troops would withdraw completely before Barack Obama's inauguration...." They never "withdraw." They just redeploy and maintain border, air and coastal control to keep committing random atrocities unreported in the major media.
While saying Israel has no aim to conquer, control or stay in Gaza, prime minister Olmert made no commitments and promised to "renew military actions" if "smuggling" continues and rockets are fired into southern Israel. On Israeli Radio, foreign minister Livni said about the same thing to sound tough ahead of the February 10 elections.
Like others for decades, calm is an illusion before more planned violence. Each conflict begets the next one that may be harsher than the last. Last October, Amos Harel headlined in Haaretz: "IDF plans to use disproportionate force in next war." Israel's Northern Command head, General Gadi Eisenkot, said "the IDF will continue to give first priority to firepower" regardless of the target struck.
In a daily Yedioth Ahronoth interview (Israel's major Hebrew language newspaper), Eisenkot "presented his 'Dahiyah Docrtine,' under which the IDF" will use disproportionate power "at the heart of the enemy's weak spot" and target civilians.
Major General Giora Eiland, former head of Israel's National Security Council, was even blunter in admitting defeat in the Second Lebanon War because it was against the "wrong enemy - Hezbollah, instead of the state of Lebanon itself." He said it's impossible to defeat an efficient guerrilla army supported by a state immune from retribution. "Hezbollah operates under optimal conditions from our perspective. A legitimate government runs Lebanon, supported by the West, but it is in fact entirely subordinate to the will of the Shiite organization."
Eiland's recommendation: "preemptive action....as soon as possible" in the next war to destroy the Lebanese army and entire civilian infrastructure with heavy use of air power.
Last September, former IDF chief of staff Moshe Ya'alon said the Israeli Air Force failed in the Second Lebanon War. "If they had determined the right objectives, the war could have been finished from the air within five days" and the mission accomplished.
Around the same time, prime minister Olmert warned that if Lebanon becomes a "terrorist state" under Hezbollah, Israel would unleash more massive firepower and hit back harder than before. Israel "did not use all means to respond then, but if Lebanon becomes a Hezbollah state, then we won't have any restrictions in this regard." Without elaborating, he's targeting all Lebanon - its government, infrastructure, military, and civilian population.
Earlier, the Lebanese unity government approved a political platform under which Hezbollah is free to use all means "to liberate land occupied by Israel."
Gaza was a dress rehearsal. A Third Lebanon War appears next, perhaps against Iran, Syria and more on Hamas as well. On January 18, Haaretz correspondent Barak Ravid cited Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin saying that "Hamas would resume smuggling arms into Gaza within a few months, despite Israel's destruction of many tunnels...." They'll be rebuilt, so Israel will attack and destroy them.
On January 20, the right wing Jerusalem Post reported that:
"Iran has renewed efforts to supply advanced weaponry to Hamas and the IDF is concerned that the terror group will try to smuggle long-range Fajr missiles into the Gaza Strip" - easily able to reach Tel Aviv with a range of 70 km. Tzipi Livni said renewed weapons smuggling would be legitimate grounds for renewed Gaza attacks.
Israel is always preparing for the next war and looking for pretexts to launch it. Clearly there are plans. It remains to be seen what, when, and against whom.
For now, Olmert, Diskin and other Israeli officials claim a great victory despite not defeating Hamas, enhancing its popularity and support, and engendering global condemnation still evident on world streets and inside Israel.
For its part on January 18, Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh said Israel's offensive failed and hadn't cowed the Palestinians. In a televised speech, he claimed that "The enemy has failed to achieve its goals," and despite thousands of Palestinian casualties, the war was a "popular victory." Contradicting Israeli assertions, Hamas announced it lost 48 fighters and killed 80 Israeli soldiers. The IDF said five soldiers died fighting and four others were killed by friendly fire.
On January 18, The Israeli English language web site, Ynetnews.com, reported that during the Gaza operation, about 800 Israeli soldiers and civilians needed hospital treatment. As of January 18, 51 soldiers and 13 civilians are still patients, some in serious condition.
A weekend Reuters report estimated that Gaza rebuilding will cost $1.6 billion even before accounting for all damage and assessing what's needed for reconstruction. Human costs and humanitarian needs aside, undoing Israel's damage will take years and likely cost billions. At issue is who'll pay. Given past indifference to Palestinian needs, the answer is likely few or perhaps no other nation despite Saudi King Abdullah promising $1 billion in aid. Palestinians are tired of promises.
They want fulfillment, but won't get it according to EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner. Without explicitly mentioning Hamas, she said reconstruction won't begin until the EU has an acceptable Palestinian partner. She then accused Hamas for confrontation and for hindering Gazans' prospects for a better life. Following a Western tradition, she blamed the victim, absolved the aggressor, let the people of Gaza be damned, and called their democratically elected government "terrorists" and on their own.
For its part, Olmert assigned Yetshak Hertzog, Israel's social welfare minister, to coordinate whatever Gaza reconstruction is planned and insisted that no funds go to Hamas or other resistance groups. Further, Israel wants control of everything, will decide what will or won't be done, will require permits for projects, and says the UN must have no direct dealings with Hamas.
Tel Aviv may have other plans as well. It's erecting hundreds of tents in the Sinai near Rafah. Egyptian blogger Ahdaf Souif said:
"Outside the general Hospital in Egyptian Rafah, a city of tents has sprung up. I counted 200. But soldiers there told me they have many more and can set them up immediately. They said the beds and furnishings for all the camps are ready. I was also told that other camps are being set up, in el-Arish and other locations. I was told these camps were" for Palestinians - and may be a first step toward mass-transfering Gazans to Egypt as Israeli extremists, like Avigdor Lieberman, advocate.
Egypt knows what's happening, but is silent. It's believed Mubarak agreed to the plan in secret negotiations, just prior to Israel's "ceasefire." All along, Egypt has collaborated with Israel and Washington, a familiar role for its leader in return for ample compensation.
Gaza municipal authorities estimate that 20,000 government, residential and commercial buildings were damaged, many badly. Another 4000 were demolished. In addition, about 50 of the UN's 220 schools, clinics, warehouses and other facilities were also damaged or destroyed. The enormity of destruction can't be underestimated or the task needed to rebuild it. Reuters compared it to "Stalingrad" and AP to a "moonscape." The UN said more than 50,000 Gazans are homeless. Other reports say 100,000 or more.
"Travel advisory issued for top IDF officers"
On January 19, Ynetnews.com reported that Israel is concerned about "international human rights groups' intention(s) to file war crimes charges against military personnel with the Hague, local European courts, (and advises) officers planning to travel (to) contact (the) Judge Advocate General's office first....some may be instructed not to leave the country."
Reports say evidence is being collected in photos and testimonies, and Attorney General Menachem Mazuz said Israel is "preparing for a wave of international lawsuits over the operation in Gaza."
Police State Israel - Suppressing Internal Dissent
On January 19, 2009 for Inter Press Service (IPS), Nora Barrows-Friedman reported that:
"The Israeli government is stepping up efforts to suppress dissent and crush resistance in the streets" in the wake of pro-Gaza demonstrations. "Police have been videotaping (street protests and then) arresting (participants) in large numbers."
Police reports show "at least 763 Israeli citizens, the majority of them Palestinian (of whom 244 are under 18), have been arrested, imprisoned or detained for" their participation. Most held are then released, but "at least 30" are still being held. The idea is to harass, intimidate, and discourage further demonstrations.
Ameer Makhoul, director of Ittijah, the Union of Arab Community-Based Associations in Haifa is quoted saying: these demonstrations "are part of the uprising here inside the Green Line, to share responsibility and to share the challenge with the people in the Gaza Strip."
Israel's internal security Shin Bet arrested Makhoul for organizing demonstrations. "They called me, came to my home and held me for four hours. They accused me of being a terrorist and supporting terror. They said that they are watching me and monitoring me. Israel has become a terror state" against Palestinians, Arab Israelis, independent regional states, and dissent.
Shin Bet accused Makhoul and others arrested of "threatening the security of the State of Israel during war time." Israeli Professor Kobi Snitz expressed alarm about "the current social climate inside the state." He explained that "People are made to be afraid....police operate under the assumption and guidelines that every political expression (including by Jews) now is to be repressed and prevented."
Most Israelis support their government's war on Gaza and believe Hamas is at fault. The media trumpet it daily although contrary views can also be found. Most Israelis don't bother to look like in America where people rely mainly on television for news and information, and thus are terribly misinformed.
Despite being monitored, harassed and arrested, activist demonstrations continue with a notable January 17 one in Jaffa, south of Tel Aviv. Several thousand "peace groups, Israeli anarchists, and teenaged refusniks fresh from jail (for their activism against Palestinian oppression) marched (with) flags, banners, and vociferous determination (against) their government's" state terror on Gaza. Security forces were visible and took note. Defying Israel is hazardous even for Jews, much like it is in America under Republicans and Democrats.
Looking Ahead
Editor Ali Abuninah of the Electronic Intifada reports that Israel's Gaza war failed to weaken Hamas and other resistance groups to clear the way for negotiating with its "chief Palestinian collaborator Mahmoud Abbas to manage Palestinians on (its) behalf until they (can) be forced out once and for all."
Regional dictators like Mubarak and the Saudi and Jordanian monarchies are on board "to demonstrate to their own people that resistance" is futile. "To win, Israel had to break Palestinian resistance. It failed....it galvanized and unified Palestinians like never before." Hamas and other resistance fought heroically for 23 days and stand ready to do it again.
"According to well-informed and credible sources, Israel did little harm to the modest but determined military capacity of the resistance. So Israel did what it does best: it massacred civilians" to get people to turn against their government. Instead, Palestinians and the Arab street are together against Israel.
"In popular esteem, Hamas and other Palestinian resistance factions (stand) alongside Hizbollah as effective bulwarks against Israeli and Western colonialism." Israel lost its legitimacy and can't win it by bombing and mass slaughter. It survives through violence, intimidation, and billions in US aid, but for how long.
Even the Wall Street Journal admits that Hamas gained support from the fighting. On January 20, correspondent Charles Levinson quoted Israeli Col. Shmuel Zakai saying that his country doesn't understand that winning hearts and minds is as important as battlefield victories. "We just keep creating bigger problems," he said. "Military power alone is not enough."
Palestinians remained steadfast through it all, and world public opinion now backs them and Hamas like never before. Yet their struggle for liberation persists - against America, the West, complicit Arab regimes, and racists like Israeli Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger who wants Gazans dumped in a Palestinian state in the Sinai.
He told the British weekly Jewish News that Jerusalem belongs to the Jews. Muslims have Mecca and Medina, and they "don't need a third place." Metzger wants Britain, the EU and America to build a desert state and arrange for a transfer. He called it a great idea and will discuss it with Olmert.
Earlier on January 13, Israeli election authorities banned two of the three main Arab parties from contesting in the February general elections - the United Arab List-Ta'al (UAL - Ta'al) and the National Democratic Assembly (or Balad). Both parties were accused of "not recognizing Israel's right to exist (and) incit(ing) and supporting terrorist groups." Heads of two rival Arab parties condemned the action and called it "a political trial led by a group of fascists and racists who are willing to see the Knesset without Arabs and want" none of them in their country. If these members "had weapons, they would have shot us in the head."
Arabs currently hold seven of the 120 Knesset seats but have no power whatever in the body. Nonetheless, Avigdor Lieberman, the Yisrael Beiteinu party leader, called Arab legislators a "fifth column" and wants Israel's High Court to side with the decision to ban them. Israel keeps finding new ways to expose its illegitimacy as a lawful democratic state. Growing calls accuse it of waging an extermination war against Gazans, and West Bank Palestinians will be next unless outcries are great enough to stop it.
This terror persisted for over 60 years, yet Palestinians remain resolute and by 2010 will surpass Jews in number, according to population projections. Their message is firm: This is our land, our country. We're ready to live in peace, and despite all your might and terror, we'll never surrender. Not now. Not ever.
Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday through Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11822
Stephen Lendman is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Stephen Lendman
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He meant depopulation, destruction, mass slaughter, displacement, and erasing a proud people's history. Palestine was to become Israel. Most of the job was completed, more in 1967, and thereafter incrementally until total dispossession is achieved. Gaza is the latest battleground. More ahead is planned. The struggle for liberation continues.
In all respects, Gaza's situation is dysfunctional and calamitous. Consider the dire medical state alone.
The UK Lancet Medical Journal on Gaza
The prestigious Lancet issued the following statement:
"We find it hard to believe that an otherwise internationally respected, democratic nation can sanction such large and indiscriminate human atrocities in a territory already under land and sea blockade. The heavy loss of civilian life and destruction of Gaza's health system is unjustified and disproportional....The collective punishment of Gazans is placing horrific and immediate burdens of injury and trauma on innocent civilians." These acts are lawless, and we deplore "the silence of national medical associations and professional bodies worldwide....Their leaders....are complicit in a preventable tragedy" with potential long lasting consequences.
The Lancet followed with a lengthy overall assessment. In an introductory overview, it deplores conditions on the ground.
-- violence directed at civilians;
-- the unjustifiable toll;
-- the deaths, injuries and social infrastructure destruction;
-- the breach of "international norms of humanitarian behaviour;"
-- ambulances attacked;
-- medical personnel killed;
-- hospitals short or depleted of everything - power, equipment, medicines, anesthetics, beds, and overworked staffs pulling round the clock shifts;
-- vaccination programs, lab services, pre and postnatal care, and school health services disrupted;
-- severe restrictions on ICRC personnel; and much more; in short, a calamitous situation bring all normal life to a halt.
Despite banning foreign journalists, carnage reports are heard, read, and seen worldwide. Justifiable outrage followed and grows. Testimonies on the ground are heart-rending. Fear grips everyone. People have nowhere to go. The indifference of influential politicians is reflected in Tony Blair's failure once to visit Gaza since his 2007 appointment as the (US, UN, EU, Russia) Quartet special envoy - one for war, not peace, for Israel, not Palestine, for injustice, not liberation.
His absence and silence in the face of a Gaza "Holocaust" reflects his complicity with Israeli terrorism, contempt for Palestinians overall, and another war crime with the others during his tenure as prime minister.
Now and ahead, Israel will be judged by its attitudes and actions towards the non-Jews it controls. America, the West, and complicit Arab regimes share equal guilt for their complicity. Palestinians are isolated on their own, yet for six decades have been resolute and resilient. Their struggle continues.
Contrary to popular perception, the Israeli - Palestinian conflict boils down to this. Over 90 years ago, imperial Britain promised Palestine to two peoples in one 1917 Balfour Declaration sentence from the British Foreign Secretary to the head of Anglo-Jewry:
'His Majesty's Government view with 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 being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine."
This was duplicitous on its face. Britain wanted a Western presence in an oil-rich part of the world to assure it got the lion's share. Decades later, neither side will leave so conflict persists. The international community is complicit. It fuels struggle and threatens regional and world peace as a result.
The Dire State of Gaza's Medical Facilities
The 585-bed Al Shifa Hospital, Gaza's best equipped in normal times, "resemble(s) a charnel house" with corpses strewn everywhere, many torn apart patients for too few beds, and doctors having to treat them on the floor and do surgery with little or no anesthesia, at times by flashlight in less than ideal sanitary conditions.
Hospital director Hussain Ashaur worries about risked infection, severe trauma, and horrific burn cases. As bad are "scenes out of Dante's Inferno." Patients arrive with no arms or legs, crushed limbs, bodies torn apart by flesh-shredding DIME weapons, and terrible shortages of everything for normal functioning.
Neonatal deaths are up 10% as new mothers are sent home early for lack of space. Vaccinations have been suspended. Nearly 70% of chronically ill patients aren't treated. Most basic clinics are now just first aid centers.
Accessing the wounded has been hazardous. At least a dozen paramedics were targeted and killed inside clearly marked vehicles and ambulances. Others were shot treating civilians where they lay. The extent of Israeli war crimes is shocking but not surprising under its Dahiyah Doctrine strategy to:
"wield disproportionate power against every village from which (suspected) shots are fired on Israel, and cause immense damage and destruction. From our perspective, these are military bases." Civilian areas are "legitimate military targets," and non-combatants are as fair game as fighters.
The ICRC issued a "harshly critical statement" accusing Israel of denying aid workers access to sites for days and finding shocking scenes when allowed in - the sights and sounds of death, horrific wounds, pain, suffering, despair, and starvation.
Because of the siege, conditions were dire before December 27. After three weeks of attack and in the aftermath, health services are near collapse. Doctors report:
"the most horrific war injuries in men, women, and children of all ages in numbers too large to comprehend. The wounded, dying, and dead have streamed into the overcrowded hospital in endless convoys of ambulances and private cars, and wrapped in blankets in the caring arms of others. The endless and intense bombardment from Israeli air, ground, and naval forces have missed no targets, not even hospitals."
Gaza is now "a shattered, attacked, and drained health-care system trying to help an overwhelming amount of casualties in a war between clearly unequal (sides), where the attacker spares no civilian lives - be it man, woman, or child - not even the much-needed health workers of all professions."
Doctors with war zone experience say they're overwhelmed and never saw anything like it. Gaza is tiny for its 1.5 million people. It has five cities, seven refugee camps for two-thirds of the population, and a bare 24 square kilometers of potentially productive farmland now decreased because of the siege, fighting, and deliberate Israeli razing of the land. It's a "cage, an enormous prison or a completely sealed off ghetto" with its life being extinguished by violence and Israeli-enforced neglect and terror.
Gaza City's Al-Shifa Hospital is a five story structure with several pavilions for medical specialties. It has 1011 employees, seven clinics, six operating rooms with worn-out poorly operating equipment, and about 406 doctors, including in seven surgical specialties. It's been reduced to a "makeshift, field hospital after years of siege, as well as a lack of maintenance and upgrading" because none is possible. Everything needed for normal functioning is in short supply or absent. Nonetheless, doctors and staff do all they can, at times in 24-hour shifts that tax the most committed, especially when it's common practice.
Through it all, "the morale, strength, and tireless work done by the health workers in Al-Shifa and (throughout) Gaza to save the injured from death is beyond belief." Gaza reflects heroism and resilience despite shocking Israeli state terror and scenes out of Dante's Inferno.
End Game and Prospects in Occupied Palestine and Gaza under Hamas
For six decades, Israel has pursued a colonization, dispossession, and decapitation agenda for total control of historic Palestine. Gaza 2008 - 09 is the latest battleground. Its outcome is undetermined and for the Obama administration to address with a new Israeli government after February 10 elections are held. Continued occupation, oppression, terror wars, and dispossession is their already familiar script.
In 1895, Zionism's founder, Theodor Herzl, wrote: "We must expropriate gently the private property on the state assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by....denying it employment in our country." In 1967, Israeli defense minister, Moshe Dayan, said: Palestinians "shall continue to live like dogs" so they'll leave.
In 1948, David Ben-Gurion stated: "We have taken their country....We must do everything to insure they never return....We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population." In 1988, former prime minister Yitzhak Shamir told Jewish settlers that Palestinians "would be crushed like grasshoppers (with their) heads smashed against the boulders and walls."
Through it all, Palestinians survived, Hamas though battered is unbowed, and if Middle East expert Juan Cole is right:
"the Gaza fighting is likely to underline the self-delusion that has framed the US-Israeli perspective on major groups like Hamas for years, namely that Israel may choose its Palestinian interlocutors, and marginalize and criminalize those who are unwilling to negotiate on Israel's terms. While Hamas by no means speaks for all Palestinians, it is fatuous to assume (it can) be ignored politically or diplomatically."
In 1982, Israel failed to defeat Palestinian nationalism in Lebanon in spite of slaughtering 18,000 people. It merely sidetracked it for a time. The First Intifada followed. In the 1990s, Oslo, Oslo II, Wye River, Camp David, Taba, and other one-sided arrangements bought time until Intifada anger and more conflict erupted. The Road Map and Annapolis didn't halt it. In 2006, Israel failed to defeat Hezbollah. Cole believes that "Hamas is likely to emerge stronger politically than it was when the fighting began" despite all the IDF's might against it. That clearly appears to be right.
But given Arab street anger in the wake of Gaza's carnage, it's possible that "more extreme (Islamic) groups will strengthen, vying with Hamas (and Fatah) for control (as they already do in Lebanese Palestinian refugee camps)." Cole believes that "the Gaza war will change the political landscape of the Middle East" and present "enormous" and perhaps "unwelcome" challenges for Obama and Israel.
Muslim anger is intense, peacemaking an illusion, and if more regional wars are planned (as is likely), all bets are off on their potentially catastrophic consequences.
The Aftermath
During a January 16 Arab League meeting, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia called for Palestinian unity under Fatah while Abbas advisor Yasser Abed Rabbo told a news conference that the "president" would not engage in a dialogue with "killers," meaning Hamas.
At the same time, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed the same sentiment as Washington's man at the world body. He urged Arab leaders to unite for Abbas and Fatah. So did Terje Roed-Larson, former UN Middle East envoy and current International Peace Academy president. He accused Hamas of carrying out a de facto coup against Gazans and never mentioned it's the legitimate government, not the corrupted Fatah under Abbas.
Unmentioned also were prominent Hamas figure Salah al-Bardaweel's charges. On January 19, he accused Abbas of spying on Hamas and conspiring with Israel. He said Fatah spies gave the IDF strategic intelligence on leadership homes and weapons locations. A number were arrested and confessed. "They admitted their guilt and told us names of their masters, who would, in turn, inform the Israeli intelligence apparatus....to facilitate the Israeli mission."
Gazan activist, photojournalist, and blogger voice of truth Sameh Habeeb reported this on the war's aftermath:
Thousands on Gaza's streets are "trying to explore what has happened to relatives, houses and areas. I have documented a massive destruction throughout east, north and west of Gaza Strip. The devastation storms everything needed for normal life. Houses, schools, hospitals, clinics, police stations, charities, universities and streets totally (or) partially destroyed."
Today, paramedics found over 100 bodies, mostly civilians, including eight members of one family. The "Samouni family which was massacred before found 17 more dead bodies under the rubble. Many families still seek (other) members and relatives who were lost during the war time."
On January 18, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) reported that Israeli forces still cut off Gaza City and the northern Strip from other areas in the south. In addition, field workers, especially around Gaza City, the north, and Egyptian border said "these areas looked (like) they were struck by a heavy earthquake." Decomposing bodies are unearthed. Israeli aircraft patrol the skies. The IDF redeployed "outside residential areas" but continue to fire at civilians, especially in border areas.
After declaring a "ceasefire:"
-- Israeli artillery shelled houses in al-Juron Square in Jabalya damaging two homes, killing three children, and wounding other residents;
-- an IDF drone fired a missile at Palestinian civilians in al-Zarqaa' area, south of Jabalya killing a man and his son;
-- Israeli forces killed a resistance activist near al-Karama apartment buildings, southwest of Jabalya;
-- another drone fired two missiles at Palestinian civilians in al-Amal quarter, east of Beit Hanoun; a woman and child were seriously wounded; she lost a leg; her child later died;
-- IDF naval vessels shelled the Palestinian General Intelligence headquarters and open areas near Gaza City;
-- Israeli forces fired on Wadi al-Salqa village, southeast of Deir al-Balah; no casualties were reported;
-- before redeploying, the IDF demolished at least 30 houses and razed agricultural land in the al-Fukhari area;
-- near the Israeli - Gaza border, Israeli forces opened fire at Palestinian civilians checking their homes and land; one man was reported killed;
-- an IDF explosive charge killed two children playing in the Al-Sha'af area east of Gaza City;
-- Israeli forces killed a farmer while he was working on his land;
-- redeployed soldiers demolished houses, damaged others, and razed agricultural land outside al-Shouka village, east of Rafah; and
-- Israeli tanks bulldozed dozens of dunnums of agricultural land in central Gaza; other tanks moved towards the Al-Maghazy area in central Gaza;
All this happened after Israel's "ceasefire." PCHR warned that Gazans are endangered "in light of (continued Israeli threats) to (renew or) expand military operations against the population of the Gaza Strip."
PCHR is calling for the "international community to immediately intervene;" to establish "inquiry commissions to investigate (war) crimes....against Palestinian civilians," including the use of illegal weapons. It also wants "all political and military officials responsible" prosecuted for their crimes.
Through January 20, the official death toll rose to 1415 with around 5500 injured, many seriously. New deaths will be reported as bodies are discovered under rubble and wounded people die.
PCHR's Gaza Testimonies
"I am still alive," said Ayman Al-Majdalawi, a Jabalia nurse after the IDF shelled the nearby Al-Fakhoura school used by UNWRA as a shelter. It killed dozens of civilians and wounded many more. "Women, men and children had limbs torn from their bodies by the force of the explosions. The ambulance drivers told me the Israelis were shooting at them as they were trying to evacuate the dead and injured." At her hospital "there was chaos. Our ambulances are in danger, and some of the injured people bled to death because we couldn't reach them. I try to go to other hospitals if I am needed, but it is very dangerous, and like everyone else, we are very frightened."
Ambulance drivers reported that they risked their lives to help the maimed and wounded. "We are working twenty four hours a day - we only sleep when there is no Israeli shelling....I have not been to my home for days....Ninety percent of the injured victims....have already lost legs or arms, or both."
Khalid Yusef Abu Sa'ada said:
"I was driving my ambulance in Beit Lahia....when the Israelis shelled us....I was with two paramedics. The Israeli shells killed one of them." The other was badly injured. He's now paralyzed. "A few days ago the Israelis bombed us" while we were trying to rescue a boy. The explosion "ripped (his) head off."
The Israelis killed other ambulance drivers and paramedics by bombing and shelling them. Dr. Eysa Saleh was on duty with the Medical Security Services when a shell blew his head off in Jabaliya. Everyone is exhausted, overwhelmed and horrified while fearing for their own lives on the frontline. "We know there are many people we cannot reach because some areas are too dangerous, and our ambulances are deliberately targeted." Earlier, "as I was driving, I saw a man struck by a missile that tore his body in two in front of our eyes. The situation is unbelievable, but we are doing the best we can, because this is our duty."
Professor Said Abdelwahed Emails from "Destroyed Gaza"
"This morning (January 18), Israel declared a ceasefire" but they keep shooting anyway. Meanwhile, drones and F-16s are overhead and firing missiles "12 hours" later. Over "100 new dead bodies were found under debris and in other places in fields and back streets in Zietoun neighborhood and northern Gaza. Whole families were found under rubble and demolished homes."
"It's unbelievable, incredible and mind-boggling! Innocent civilians paid the most expensive price (with) their lives. It was genocide." All of Gaza is depressed and traumatized. "I am shaken by the psychological situation around! The Israelis still call Palestinian homes by telephone threatening them with another punishment."
Aircraft drop anti-Hamas leaflets in western Gaza. It's "stupid behavior. It didn't move anyone after the ruthless attacks everywhere in Gaza....Tonight is a time of cautious silence and anticipation (that) the whole situation may flare up or explode at any moment. There are still untold stories of horror, destruction and death everywhere in Gaza," and most of us still have no electricity or much of anything else.
An Interregnum Truce Before the Next Onslaught
On January 19, Haaretz reported that: "Israeli officials said that troops would withdraw completely before Barack Obama's inauguration...." They never "withdraw." They just redeploy and maintain border, air and coastal control to keep committing random atrocities unreported in the major media.
While saying Israel has no aim to conquer, control or stay in Gaza, prime minister Olmert made no commitments and promised to "renew military actions" if "smuggling" continues and rockets are fired into southern Israel. On Israeli Radio, foreign minister Livni said about the same thing to sound tough ahead of the February 10 elections.
Like others for decades, calm is an illusion before more planned violence. Each conflict begets the next one that may be harsher than the last. Last October, Amos Harel headlined in Haaretz: "IDF plans to use disproportionate force in next war." Israel's Northern Command head, General Gadi Eisenkot, said "the IDF will continue to give first priority to firepower" regardless of the target struck.
In a daily Yedioth Ahronoth interview (Israel's major Hebrew language newspaper), Eisenkot "presented his 'Dahiyah Docrtine,' under which the IDF" will use disproportionate power "at the heart of the enemy's weak spot" and target civilians.
Major General Giora Eiland, former head of Israel's National Security Council, was even blunter in admitting defeat in the Second Lebanon War because it was against the "wrong enemy - Hezbollah, instead of the state of Lebanon itself." He said it's impossible to defeat an efficient guerrilla army supported by a state immune from retribution. "Hezbollah operates under optimal conditions from our perspective. A legitimate government runs Lebanon, supported by the West, but it is in fact entirely subordinate to the will of the Shiite organization."
Eiland's recommendation: "preemptive action....as soon as possible" in the next war to destroy the Lebanese army and entire civilian infrastructure with heavy use of air power.
Last September, former IDF chief of staff Moshe Ya'alon said the Israeli Air Force failed in the Second Lebanon War. "If they had determined the right objectives, the war could have been finished from the air within five days" and the mission accomplished.
Around the same time, prime minister Olmert warned that if Lebanon becomes a "terrorist state" under Hezbollah, Israel would unleash more massive firepower and hit back harder than before. Israel "did not use all means to respond then, but if Lebanon becomes a Hezbollah state, then we won't have any restrictions in this regard." Without elaborating, he's targeting all Lebanon - its government, infrastructure, military, and civilian population.
Earlier, the Lebanese unity government approved a political platform under which Hezbollah is free to use all means "to liberate land occupied by Israel."
Gaza was a dress rehearsal. A Third Lebanon War appears next, perhaps against Iran, Syria and more on Hamas as well. On January 18, Haaretz correspondent Barak Ravid cited Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin saying that "Hamas would resume smuggling arms into Gaza within a few months, despite Israel's destruction of many tunnels...." They'll be rebuilt, so Israel will attack and destroy them.
On January 20, the right wing Jerusalem Post reported that:
"Iran has renewed efforts to supply advanced weaponry to Hamas and the IDF is concerned that the terror group will try to smuggle long-range Fajr missiles into the Gaza Strip" - easily able to reach Tel Aviv with a range of 70 km. Tzipi Livni said renewed weapons smuggling would be legitimate grounds for renewed Gaza attacks.
Israel is always preparing for the next war and looking for pretexts to launch it. Clearly there are plans. It remains to be seen what, when, and against whom.
For now, Olmert, Diskin and other Israeli officials claim a great victory despite not defeating Hamas, enhancing its popularity and support, and engendering global condemnation still evident on world streets and inside Israel.
For its part on January 18, Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh said Israel's offensive failed and hadn't cowed the Palestinians. In a televised speech, he claimed that "The enemy has failed to achieve its goals," and despite thousands of Palestinian casualties, the war was a "popular victory." Contradicting Israeli assertions, Hamas announced it lost 48 fighters and killed 80 Israeli soldiers. The IDF said five soldiers died fighting and four others were killed by friendly fire.
On January 18, The Israeli English language web site, Ynetnews.com, reported that during the Gaza operation, about 800 Israeli soldiers and civilians needed hospital treatment. As of January 18, 51 soldiers and 13 civilians are still patients, some in serious condition.
A weekend Reuters report estimated that Gaza rebuilding will cost $1.6 billion even before accounting for all damage and assessing what's needed for reconstruction. Human costs and humanitarian needs aside, undoing Israel's damage will take years and likely cost billions. At issue is who'll pay. Given past indifference to Palestinian needs, the answer is likely few or perhaps no other nation despite Saudi King Abdullah promising $1 billion in aid. Palestinians are tired of promises.
They want fulfillment, but won't get it according to EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner. Without explicitly mentioning Hamas, she said reconstruction won't begin until the EU has an acceptable Palestinian partner. She then accused Hamas for confrontation and for hindering Gazans' prospects for a better life. Following a Western tradition, she blamed the victim, absolved the aggressor, let the people of Gaza be damned, and called their democratically elected government "terrorists" and on their own.
For its part, Olmert assigned Yetshak Hertzog, Israel's social welfare minister, to coordinate whatever Gaza reconstruction is planned and insisted that no funds go to Hamas or other resistance groups. Further, Israel wants control of everything, will decide what will or won't be done, will require permits for projects, and says the UN must have no direct dealings with Hamas.
Tel Aviv may have other plans as well. It's erecting hundreds of tents in the Sinai near Rafah. Egyptian blogger Ahdaf Souif said:
"Outside the general Hospital in Egyptian Rafah, a city of tents has sprung up. I counted 200. But soldiers there told me they have many more and can set them up immediately. They said the beds and furnishings for all the camps are ready. I was also told that other camps are being set up, in el-Arish and other locations. I was told these camps were" for Palestinians - and may be a first step toward mass-transfering Gazans to Egypt as Israeli extremists, like Avigdor Lieberman, advocate.
Egypt knows what's happening, but is silent. It's believed Mubarak agreed to the plan in secret negotiations, just prior to Israel's "ceasefire." All along, Egypt has collaborated with Israel and Washington, a familiar role for its leader in return for ample compensation.
Gaza municipal authorities estimate that 20,000 government, residential and commercial buildings were damaged, many badly. Another 4000 were demolished. In addition, about 50 of the UN's 220 schools, clinics, warehouses and other facilities were also damaged or destroyed. The enormity of destruction can't be underestimated or the task needed to rebuild it. Reuters compared it to "Stalingrad" and AP to a "moonscape." The UN said more than 50,000 Gazans are homeless. Other reports say 100,000 or more.
"Travel advisory issued for top IDF officers"
On January 19, Ynetnews.com reported that Israel is concerned about "international human rights groups' intention(s) to file war crimes charges against military personnel with the Hague, local European courts, (and advises) officers planning to travel (to) contact (the) Judge Advocate General's office first....some may be instructed not to leave the country."
Reports say evidence is being collected in photos and testimonies, and Attorney General Menachem Mazuz said Israel is "preparing for a wave of international lawsuits over the operation in Gaza."
Police State Israel - Suppressing Internal Dissent
On January 19, 2009 for Inter Press Service (IPS), Nora Barrows-Friedman reported that:
"The Israeli government is stepping up efforts to suppress dissent and crush resistance in the streets" in the wake of pro-Gaza demonstrations. "Police have been videotaping (street protests and then) arresting (participants) in large numbers."
Police reports show "at least 763 Israeli citizens, the majority of them Palestinian (of whom 244 are under 18), have been arrested, imprisoned or detained for" their participation. Most held are then released, but "at least 30" are still being held. The idea is to harass, intimidate, and discourage further demonstrations.
Ameer Makhoul, director of Ittijah, the Union of Arab Community-Based Associations in Haifa is quoted saying: these demonstrations "are part of the uprising here inside the Green Line, to share responsibility and to share the challenge with the people in the Gaza Strip."
Israel's internal security Shin Bet arrested Makhoul for organizing demonstrations. "They called me, came to my home and held me for four hours. They accused me of being a terrorist and supporting terror. They said that they are watching me and monitoring me. Israel has become a terror state" against Palestinians, Arab Israelis, independent regional states, and dissent.
Shin Bet accused Makhoul and others arrested of "threatening the security of the State of Israel during war time." Israeli Professor Kobi Snitz expressed alarm about "the current social climate inside the state." He explained that "People are made to be afraid....police operate under the assumption and guidelines that every political expression (including by Jews) now is to be repressed and prevented."
Most Israelis support their government's war on Gaza and believe Hamas is at fault. The media trumpet it daily although contrary views can also be found. Most Israelis don't bother to look like in America where people rely mainly on television for news and information, and thus are terribly misinformed.
Despite being monitored, harassed and arrested, activist demonstrations continue with a notable January 17 one in Jaffa, south of Tel Aviv. Several thousand "peace groups, Israeli anarchists, and teenaged refusniks fresh from jail (for their activism against Palestinian oppression) marched (with) flags, banners, and vociferous determination (against) their government's" state terror on Gaza. Security forces were visible and took note. Defying Israel is hazardous even for Jews, much like it is in America under Republicans and Democrats.
Looking Ahead
Editor Ali Abuninah of the Electronic Intifada reports that Israel's Gaza war failed to weaken Hamas and other resistance groups to clear the way for negotiating with its "chief Palestinian collaborator Mahmoud Abbas to manage Palestinians on (its) behalf until they (can) be forced out once and for all."
Regional dictators like Mubarak and the Saudi and Jordanian monarchies are on board "to demonstrate to their own people that resistance" is futile. "To win, Israel had to break Palestinian resistance. It failed....it galvanized and unified Palestinians like never before." Hamas and other resistance fought heroically for 23 days and stand ready to do it again.
"According to well-informed and credible sources, Israel did little harm to the modest but determined military capacity of the resistance. So Israel did what it does best: it massacred civilians" to get people to turn against their government. Instead, Palestinians and the Arab street are together against Israel.
"In popular esteem, Hamas and other Palestinian resistance factions (stand) alongside Hizbollah as effective bulwarks against Israeli and Western colonialism." Israel lost its legitimacy and can't win it by bombing and mass slaughter. It survives through violence, intimidation, and billions in US aid, but for how long.
Even the Wall Street Journal admits that Hamas gained support from the fighting. On January 20, correspondent Charles Levinson quoted Israeli Col. Shmuel Zakai saying that his country doesn't understand that winning hearts and minds is as important as battlefield victories. "We just keep creating bigger problems," he said. "Military power alone is not enough."
Palestinians remained steadfast through it all, and world public opinion now backs them and Hamas like never before. Yet their struggle for liberation persists - against America, the West, complicit Arab regimes, and racists like Israeli Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger who wants Gazans dumped in a Palestinian state in the Sinai.
He told the British weekly Jewish News that Jerusalem belongs to the Jews. Muslims have Mecca and Medina, and they "don't need a third place." Metzger wants Britain, the EU and America to build a desert state and arrange for a transfer. He called it a great idea and will discuss it with Olmert.
Earlier on January 13, Israeli election authorities banned two of the three main Arab parties from contesting in the February general elections - the United Arab List-Ta'al (UAL - Ta'al) and the National Democratic Assembly (or Balad). Both parties were accused of "not recognizing Israel's right to exist (and) incit(ing) and supporting terrorist groups." Heads of two rival Arab parties condemned the action and called it "a political trial led by a group of fascists and racists who are willing to see the Knesset without Arabs and want" none of them in their country. If these members "had weapons, they would have shot us in the head."
Arabs currently hold seven of the 120 Knesset seats but have no power whatever in the body. Nonetheless, Avigdor Lieberman, the Yisrael Beiteinu party leader, called Arab legislators a "fifth column" and wants Israel's High Court to side with the decision to ban them. Israel keeps finding new ways to expose its illegitimacy as a lawful democratic state. Growing calls accuse it of waging an extermination war against Gazans, and West Bank Palestinians will be next unless outcries are great enough to stop it.
This terror persisted for over 60 years, yet Palestinians remain resolute and by 2010 will surpass Jews in number, according to population projections. Their message is firm: This is our land, our country. We're ready to live in peace, and despite all your might and terror, we'll never surrender. Not now. Not ever.
Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday through Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11822
Stephen Lendman is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Stephen Lendman
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Redefining the Occupation in Palestine
Other Voices TV: Redefining the Occupation in Palestine
Peninsula Peace and Justice Center - www.peaceandjustice.org
A conversation with Mark Turner Founder & Director, Research Journalism Initiative Human Rights Activist, Nablus, Palestine Nora Bar...all » A conversation with Mark Turner Founder & Director, Research Journalism Initiative Human Rights Activist, Nablus, Palestine Nora Barrows-Friedman Executive Producer & Co-host, Flashpoints, KPFA As the US corporate establishment media pretends not to notice the daily Israeli incursions, kidnappings, extra-judicial assassinations, torture, land theft, and economic subjugation inside the West Bank and Gaza strip, it is more important than ever to educate ourselves and our communities about the reality in which Palestinians are forced to live; and better understand the role that we play here in the States as taxpayers -- and as global citizens of conscience. The Research Journalism Initiative is a cooperative education partnership between Najah University in the besieged West Bank city of Nablus and a growing number of High Schools in the United States. RJI's founder and director, Mark Turner, has just returned from another 9-month stay in Nablus. He will discuss the current and historical situation inside occupied Palestine. Nora Barrows-Friedman, 29, is the Executive Producer and co-host of Flashpoints, a daily investigative newsmagazine on Pacifica Radio. Since 2004, she has been reporting regularly from the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip for Flashpoints and as a correspondent for Inter Press Service, a news agency based in Europe. Nora is on the board of directors of the Research Journalism Initiative. Her website is http://www.norabf.com/, and she can be heard daily on http://www.flashpoints.net/
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Peninsula Peace and Justice Center - www.peaceandjustice.org
A conversation with Mark Turner Founder & Director, Research Journalism Initiative Human Rights Activist, Nablus, Palestine Nora Bar...all » A conversation with Mark Turner Founder & Director, Research Journalism Initiative Human Rights Activist, Nablus, Palestine Nora Barrows-Friedman Executive Producer & Co-host, Flashpoints, KPFA As the US corporate establishment media pretends not to notice the daily Israeli incursions, kidnappings, extra-judicial assassinations, torture, land theft, and economic subjugation inside the West Bank and Gaza strip, it is more important than ever to educate ourselves and our communities about the reality in which Palestinians are forced to live; and better understand the role that we play here in the States as taxpayers -- and as global citizens of conscience. The Research Journalism Initiative is a cooperative education partnership between Najah University in the besieged West Bank city of Nablus and a growing number of High Schools in the United States. RJI's founder and director, Mark Turner, has just returned from another 9-month stay in Nablus. He will discuss the current and historical situation inside occupied Palestine. Nora Barrows-Friedman, 29, is the Executive Producer and co-host of Flashpoints, a daily investigative newsmagazine on Pacifica Radio. Since 2004, she has been reporting regularly from the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip for Flashpoints and as a correspondent for Inter Press Service, a news agency based in Europe. Nora is on the board of directors of the Research Journalism Initiative. Her website is http://www.norabf.com/, and she can be heard daily on http://www.flashpoints.net/
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January 11, 2009 C-SPAN Saree Makdisi talked about his book Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, published by W.W. Norton.
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Monday, February 23, 2009
Palestine: 40 Years of Occupation, 60 Years of Dispossession
Columbia University Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies, Rashid Khalidi's keynote address at the "Palestine: 40 Years of Occupation, 60 Years of Dispossession" conference in Portland, Oregon, on June 23, 2007
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