So for all those who demonstrated in support of the Gazans when they were trapped under Israeli fire, all those planners of past and future flotillas, this is your moment to raise your voices and say clearly: The Qassams merely feed Israel’s madness. It is not the Qassams that will ensure the Palestinians, both in and out of Gaza, a life of dignity. It is not the Qassams that will topple the Israeli walls around the world’s largest prison camp.
2011
Israel admitted this week that it was behind the abduction of a Gazan engineer who went missing more than a month ago while travelling on a train in the Ukraine… Victor Kattan, an international law expert at the School of Oriental and African Studies at London University, said Israel had broken several human rights laws in seizing him rather than invoking treaty agreements between the Ukraine and Israel and requesting his extradition.
Like most Arab residents of East Jerusalem who chose not to apply for Israeli citizenship, Fahmi had Israeli residency, but not citizenship. Residency is automatically revoked in the event of an absence of many years or the acquisition of citizenship from another country.
IOA Editor: This seemingly small matter, one case among thousands, reflects the essence of the Israeli-Palestinian “conflict:” It is part of an ongoing, systematic effort on Israel’s part to replace the Palestinian Arab population with a Jewish population: a long term process of Ethnic Cleansing. To that end, a complex web of laws covering citizenship and immigration, land ownership and use, town development and residency, economic benefits, and much more has been set up. New laws are added as deemed necessary, such as the law authorizing ‘admission committees’ approval for residency in Israeli towns, which is designed to exclude Palestinians and others who do not conform to a vague lifestyle standard.
Israel’s Military Intelligence is collecting information about left-wing organizations abroad that the army sees as aiming to delegitimize Israel, according to senior Israeli officials and Israel Defense Forces officers.
IOA Editor: Israel is at the forefront of high technology and Internet surveillance, but it is not alone in the pursuit of ‘democracy’ via a spying campaign on the general public. Read the following Guardian story:
Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media
Frank Barat asks Noam Chomsky six questions sent to him by Alice Walker, John Berger, Ken Loach, Paul Laverty, Amira Hass and Chris Hedges.
During the five day curfew in the village of Awarta, south of Nablus, the Israeli military raided homes and detained around 300 people, the youngest 14 years old. Some of the men were taken to the local boy school were they had to leave their finger prints and DNA and some were taken to the military base at Huwwra checkpoint. According to mayor, Qays Awwad, 55 men are still in Israeli custody. Some of the detainees reported that they had been abused by the soldiers while they were detained and handcuffed. It has been reported that a 75 year old woman was handcuffed and had to sit on the ground while the soldiers went through her home, and that an 80-year-old woman was beaten by soldiers.
Francis Boyle: Basically, the resolution as currently drafted authorizes a war across the board against Libya — air-strikes, naval blockade, even a land invasion. The only exception in there is against a foreign military occupation force. But under the laws of war, there is a distinction between a land invasion and an occupation force.
Now there are not enough safeguards in the wording of the resolution to bar its use for imperialist purposes. Although the purpose of any action is supposed to be the protection of civilians, and not “regime change,” the determination of whether an action meets this purpose or not is left up to the intervening powers and not to the uprising, or even the Security Council. The resolution is amazingly confused. But given the urgency of preventing the massacre that would have inevitably resulted from an assault on Benghazi by Gaddafi’s forces, and the absence of any alternative means of achieving the protection goal, no one can reasonably oppose it.
The National Lawyers Guild (U.S.) strongly urges the Human Rights Council of the United Nations to pass a resolution supporting the referral of the Israeli siege, blockade, and war on Gaza to the International Criminal Court. Such a resolution would pave the way for the UN Security Council to make such a referral.
[T]he UN security council resolution is an extraordinary achievement. It is unrelenting in its commitment to saving lives, yet nuanced enough to take into account Libya’s sensitivity to foreign intrusion – a result of its exceptionally brutal colonial experience under the Italians – and seems committed to Libyan sovereignty and political independence. Its authors would do well to remain true to these sentiments.
I just wanted to look at Tanya –
how she stood tall in her coat
at the end of the hall
on her department’s floor
as I came out of the elevator;
how she lit her cigarette
at the entrance archway
as we walked out to Broadway…
IOA Editor: We remember Tanya Reinhart, a courageous anti-Occupation activist, great moral thinker, world renowned linguist, a comrade and a friend. (Born 23 July 1943, Palestine; died 17 March 2007, New York.)
Abdallah Abu Rahmah was given a hero’s welcome in the West Bank village of Bil’in after being released from Ofer Prison on Monday. He was greeted by over a hundred and fifty townsfolk who escorted him home waving flags and letting off fireworks in his honor.
[S]ecurity officials who heard of the volunteer detail said excessive motivation, weapons and the lack of an organized unit could lead to disaster in case of emergency.
Noam Chomsky speaking in Amsterdam (video) 13 March 2011.
“Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reforms,” Frederick Douglass said in 1857. “The whole history of the progress of human history shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of struggle. … If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
IOA Editor: Chris Hedges, whose speech delivery may well rival that of Frederick Douglass, will be speaking at Barnard College (New York) 6:30pm on 30 March 2011 – James Room, Barnard Hall (4th Floor). Chris’ most recent book is Death of The Liberal Class (2010). More about Chris Hedges and the lecture…
While portraying the image of the “honest broker” Canada’s military and intelligence cooperation and arms trade with Israel paint a different picture. The Real News’ Lia Tarachansky interviews Yves Engler, the author of Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid about the political, military, and corporate support Canada extends Israel and its meddling in Palestinian internal politics. She also speaks to Richard Sanders of the Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade about Canada’s weapons export to Israel and the government’s failure to report accurate exports statistics.
Julian Schnabel’s Miral – Trailer. Stars Freida Pinto, Willam Dafoe, Hiam Abbass and Vanessa Redgrave. To the displeasure of Israeli officials, the full film was shown today at the UN headquarters in New York.
Ministerial committee on settlements with participation of Netanyahu and Barak approve further settlement building as response to the fatal stabbing in West Bank settlement in which family of five were slain.
Not for the first time, Seattle, WA-based Richard Silverstein plays a key role in revealing news stories about Israeli government activities — whether anti-democratic acts or outright crimes, as is the case now. Silverstein’s role in exposing such Israeli actions has been very important in that it exposed Israeli acts against Palestinians and others who stand in the way of “The Only Democracy in the Middle East.” The latest story involves the kidnapping in the Ukraine of a Palestinian man responsible for running the Gaza power plant, suspected to have been carried out by the Israeli Mossad, and his jailing at a secret location in Israel by the Shabak (Shin Bet). In addition to the kidnapping, Israel has also placed a gag-order on the case.
The central slogan in the Egyptian movement is “the people want to overthrow the regime”; the equivalent that has been put forward by some forces in Palestine is: “the people want to end the division”… It means they want a democratic solution to the dead end that they have reached; it would mean elections in both the West Bank and Gaza, and deciding political issues through elections, instead of these two governments holding onto power, each in its “own” territory.
Q: How old are you now?
A: 82.
Q: Why haven’t you mellowed?
A: Because I look at the world… and there’re things happening in the world which should lead anyone to become indignant, outraged, active, and simply engaged.
[T]he abhorrent and draconian control that Israel wields over the besieged Palestinians in Gaza and the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank (including East Jerusalem), coupled with its denial of the rights of refugees to return to their homes in Israel, demands that fair-minded people around the world support the Palestinians in their civil, nonviolent resistance.
Leila Farsakh discusses the implications of the protest movements in the Arab world on Palestinian politics and the Arab-Israeli conflict in a video interview with The Journal of Palestine Studies.
[T]he ideology behind these tours … builds on the Zionist selectivity we were taught in our schools, claiming a Jewish right over the land and erasing that of the Palestinians who have lived there for centuries. It prepares us for army service and it underlines the legal designation of Palestinians as ‘foreigners’ making them outsiders…
Noam Chomsky speaks about Cairo and Wisconsin – social struggles in both Egypt and the US, including the history of union activism.
[S]ome American officials and pundits are searching for any kind of interpretation that will enable them to divorce US support for the Israeli occupation from America’s relations with the Arab world. By claiming that the Palestinian issue is no longer central to Arab thinking, they imagine that the US can simply impose a ‘solution’ that ensures Israeli hegemony in the region and falls short of accepting the Palestinian people’s right to exercise self-determination.
For several months we have been witness to various and sundry Knesset bills that have turned Israeli legislation into a circus. First some religious conversion bill or another, then a bill regulating admission to “Jews-only” communities; next, a bill against foreign boycotts of the settlements, and a loyalty law whose purpose is to deny citizenship. And all this, with an air of arrogance. Which brings to mind the saying that the Arabs are gifted with a vivid imagination, intended not as a compliment to their literary skills but rather just the opposite.
Yossi Alpher: “At this point it’s all spin designed to fend off pressures… The object of the exercise is to gain a day, or a week, or a month, before having to come up with some sort of new spin.”
BBC poll surveying 27 countries shows that Israel is viewed as having a negative influence in the world; negative opinions in US and UK increased over past year.
Israeli security service agents have obscured their identities in the past when confronting Palestinians, but this is a new phenomenon for Israeli citizens.
IOA Editor: No mask could possibly conceal Israeli Occupation crimes.
The author is reminded that the Palestinians are under occupation when almost all Egyptians refuse to meet with her because she writes for an Israeli newspaper.
According to data by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, settlers began building over 114 houses during the 10-month settlement freeze, and began construction of over 427 houses since October 2010.
Roger Waters, founding member, vocalist and bassist of the iconic rock band ‘Pink Floyd’ has voiced his support for a cultural boycott of Israel.
Suddenly, to be an Arab has become a good thing. People all over the Arab world feel a sense of pride in shaking off decades of cowed passivity under dictatorships that ruled with no deference to popular wishes. And it has become respectable in the West as well. Egypt is now thought of as an exciting and progressive place; its people’s expressions of solidarity are welcomed by demonstrators in Madison, Wisconsin; and its bright young activists are seen as models for a new kind of twenty-first-century mobilization.
don’t mention Zionism
if you mention Zionism
they’ll call you anti-Semitic
and people will believe them
don’t cite Palestinian sources
no one will believe you
I won’t believe you
trust Israeli sources…
IOA Editor: It was a thrill watching Remi Kanazi in action last night at a Columbia University book release party for his latest book Poetic Injustice. It was poetry of defiance at its best. We wish him well, and know he’ll do well.
(1) The Israeli occupation and its policy of building settlements and displacing the local population are unequivocally illegal and unjustified. (2) The Israeli occupation has been a vicious one, in flagrant violation of international humanitarian law. (3) The Israeli occupation has been the most long-standing occupation in the world. (4) Our government, the US government, has made possible this sordid record of occupation and abuse.
