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

February 2012

Haneen Zoabi in a highly biased interview with Israel’s Channel 2 TV. Her courage stands out, rising above the abrupt Israeli interviewing style: she keeps to her principled positions. (Hebrew with English subtitles.)

Israeli-Palestinian Supreme Court Justice Salim Joubran refused to sing ‘Hatikva’ at retirement ceremony of Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch, prompting calls for his removal.

Norman Finkelstein: “They don’t want Israel… They think they’re being very clever. They call it their three tiers… We want the end of the occupation, we want the right of return, and we want equal rights for Arabs in Israel. And they think they are very clever, because they know the result of implementing all three is what? What’s the result? You know and I know what’s the result: there’s no Israel.”

On Thursday, 8 March 2012, Barnard College [New York] will be hosting the event “Why I Call Myself a Socialist: A Reading and Book Signing” with playwright, actor, and essayist Wallace Shawn. The event will begin at 6pm in the Event Oval at the Diana Center.

In recent years, the government has adopted the so-called Prawer Plan, reversing several earlier decisions to recognize unrecognized Bedouin villages in the Negev desert. The new plan, explained by Association for Civil Rights in Israel lawyer Rawia Abu Rabia, will relocate 40,000 Bedouins in southern Israel for the establishment of 10 Jewish villages in their place.

The Transportation Ministry confirmed that it was pursuing the plan for the new rail lines “so as to permit it to be carried out in the future,” and in accordance with “a legal commitment the ministry made to the High Court of Justice.”

IOA Editor: This appears to be a scheme to navigate a plan to provide rail service to Ariel, an illegal Jewish settlement at the heart of the West Bank, through the various legal hurdles that it is certain to face. A similar gimmick was used in 2005 because, “by law, private Palestinian land cannot be expropriated for purposes of constructing a transportation route unless it was proven this route will serve the Palestinians as well.” [YNet, 2005] Thus, an imaginary rail network, “under consideration,” provides a legitimizing context for the actual planning of a transport service providing quick access to the center of Israel for thousands of West Bank settlers.

Adalah: “When the issue of ‘equality’ for Palestinian citizens of Israel is seen as a political rather than a constitutional question, it is then a short step to also view human rights groups that strive to achieve the rights of dignity and equality for Palestinian citizens as political organizations, and the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence in such cases as political, and thus subject to intervention by the Knesset. However, the Knesset’s interference in the work of the Supreme Court threatens the fundamental principle of the separation of powers.”

National Union MK Michael Ben Ari believes he was barred from US for being a member of far-right Kach organization, says in response that this type of ‘US blindness’ is what brought about the 9/11 attacks.

It is doubtful whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has expressed great concern over the fate of Migron’s residents, has heard of Tha’lah. Unfortunately for the village’s residents, Tha’lah is situated in Area C, which is under Israel jurisdiction. Minister Benny Begin, who worked so tirelessly on the questionable “agreement” that will leave the Migron criminals on stolen land for a few more years (if it is ever implemented ), presumably does not know what happened to the residents of this tiny village in the Southern Hebron Hills. And the Israeli media didn’t stop focusing on an Iranian nuclear bomb that threatens to destroy our homes long enough to cover a boring story about a Palestinian family whose home we Israelis razed.

The following statement will be distributed to the International Committee of the Red Cross, Israeli officials, and the US State Department urging immediate action for the freedom of Khader Adnan. Please join.

Israel’s High Court of Justice scheduled a petitions hearing regarding the case of Khader Adnan on Thursday, 23 February 2012. The High Court of Justice was provided with a detailed medical report prepared on 14 February by an Israeli-accredited doctor on behalf of Physicians for Human Rights-Israel. Despite the elaborate medical report, which confirmed that Khader Adnan “is in immediate danger of death,” and that “a fast in excess of 70 days does not permit survival,” the Israeli High Court appointed the petition session for 23 February with no guarantees that a decision will be made on the same day. By then, Khader Adnan—if alive—will have reached the 68th day of his ongoing hunger strike.

UPDATED   Israel’s Supreme Court moves up Khader Adnan’s hearing to 21 Feb, 2012.

For over 50 years, Fouzi El-Asmar has been one of the most important public intellectuals of the Palestinian liberation struggle. He is most well-known as the author of the landmark autobiographical work, To Be an Arab in Israel (1975), published in seven languages including Arabic and Hebrew, and as a prolific journalist specializing in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict with particular focus on matters of concern to Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Settlers from West Bank outposts have taken control of land in Area B and are thus in breach of the 1995 Oslo agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, says Dror Etkes, an anti-settlement activist. Area B was defined in the Oslo Accords as land under Palestinian civil control and Israeli military control.

The world watches as tragedy unfolds beneath its gaze. Khader Adnan is entering his 61st day as a hunger striker in an Israeli prison, being held under an administrative detention order without trial, charges, or any indication of the evidence against him. The Palestinian prisoner’s case is a microcosm of the unbearable cruelty of prolonged occupation.

Coverage of Khader Adnan, a Palestinian prisoner held by Israel under administrative detention, as his hunger strike enters its 61st day.

Yitzhak Laor on the inability of social-networks-based movementsto bring about a lasting change:

The blogosphere is a salient expression of this hermetically closed system… a ridiculous extension of the cage [the Internet and television]: “I live among people who are like me so as not to fear people who are unlike me”… You do not take the power you have gathered onto the streets, in order to build an organization that will transcend the street and reach former opponents who have experienced a turning point in their lives.

Construction of the new cultural auditorium in Ariel, taking students on tours of the West Bank, and now the plan to turn the ‘university center’ in Ariel into a full-fledged university, are erasing the pre-1967 borders from the collective consciousness of both Palestinians and Israelis.

In Israel, the debate over whether to attack Iran has seen the political leadership of the Minister of Defense, Ehud Barak, and the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, face a resistant security echelon with the heads of Israel’s intelligence agencies (and their predecessors) opposing such an attack. The question of Iran was at the top of the agenda at this year’s Herzeliya Conference last week.

We managed to delete Mount Hermon’s original, Syrian name as if it had never existed. Precious few Israelis have ever heard the name, or are aware of the 200 towns and villages that were obliterated in the Golan Heights. Most Israelis, we might assume, aren’t aware that they were ever there, since Israeli collective consciousness also erased the existence of their 120,000 residents – refugees that no one knows or cares about.

Sarah Leah Whitson: “Israel should end, today, before it’s too late, its almost two-month-long refusal to inform [Khader] Adnan of any criminal charge or evidence against him.”

American politicians appear to be using precious little long-term thinking when it comes to Israel and Palestinians. Falsehoods declared on national television about textbooks are debunked by no one in the US government. The silence appears to be less a consequence of ignorance than of fear. Politically, there is little to gain from saying an honest word regarding US policy on Israel and Palestine.

One thing is beyond any doubt: a major aim of Israel’s foreign policy is the overthrow of the Iranian regime. What is not generally understood are the motives behind this aim, and the present Israeli government’s preferred means of achieving it. Moshé Machover covers the motives and explains why prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s preferred means is war – one that is likely to ignite a major conflagration.

Michael Sfard: “It’s the first report of its kind which, looking from a bird’s-eye view, sees not just demolitions, not just loss of residency, and not just discrimination between Jewish and Palestinian [inhabitants] – but also displacement based on ethnic origins.”

To the government of the state of Israel: We are Anonymous. For two long we have tolerated your crimes against humanity and allowed your sins to go unpunished. Through the use of media deception and political bribery, you have amassed the sympathies of many. You claim to be democratic, yet in reality this is far from the truth, in fact your only goal is to better the lives of a select few while carelessly trampling the liberties of the masses. We see through the propaganda that you circulate through the mainstream media and lobby through the political establishment.

New Facebook group asks Prime Minister to postpone any plans to a strike of Iran’s nuclear facilities until after the Queen of Pop’s planned May 29 visit.

IOA Editor: On the trivialization of the ‘inevitable’ war with Iran, possibly the largest ever Middle East war, with consequences too unthinkable to consider.

There are tens of thousands of Jerusalem-born Palestinians who have been stripped of their residency status in the city by heartlessness disguised as Israel’s residency law. Celebrities make no special effort to defend these people’s natural-born right to live in their own city. The Jerusalem District Prosecutor’s Office is now accusing two of them, Mohammed Totah and Khaled Abu Arafa, of staying in the city illegally.

Ben White: I hope that this book can be a useful resource for university students and also for human rights and solidarity activists who seek a better grasp of Israel’s discriminatory policies towards Palestinian citizens. But I also would like this to be read by those people who have an interest in the issue or region as a whole, as well as those who have never had a chance to seriously unpack the implications of Israel’s definition as a “Jewish and democratic” state. There are insights here, I believe, that are crucial for an approach to the conflict that realistically appreciate what it will take to reach a settlement.

Jerusalem report: ‘Death to Arabs’ and ‘Kahane was right’ daubed outside bilingual school; Christian monastery defaced with ‘Death to Christians’ and ‘price tag’ inscriptions; Jerusalem police investigating both incidents.

IOA Editor: Israeli “price-tag” extremists do not discriminate: they hate both Christians and Muslims, and do what they can to encourage them to leave Jerusalem and Palestine.

Khader Adnan has already broken a Palestinian record for the longest solo hunger strike. Yesterday he passed his 50th day as a hunger striker, protesting what he regards as humiliating practices exercised by Shin Bet security service interrogators. Posters displayed at support rallies have above his portrait the statement: “Dignity above food”, a statement repeated in a Facebook page titled “We are all Sheikh Khader Adnan.”

Looking for a way to oppose US and Israeli war threats against Iran while at the same time condemning the terrible repression taking place inside Iran? This Saturday, February 4th, New Yorkers can do just that by joining a contingent of Iranians and non-Iranians gathering from 1pm to 4pm at the corner of 46th Street and Seventh Avenue under the slogans of “No Sanctions, No War, No Dictatorship in Iran” to participate in the march against war on Iran.

Henley College should NOT rescind its invitation for Norman Finkelstein to guest lecture. Norman Finkelstein’s lecture at Henley College (UK) is threatened by a ‘disinvitation’ prompted by a letter from the Zionist Federation to the college asking to reconsider the choice of speaker or to add a second more “moderate” speaker. PLEASE FOLLOW PAGE TO VOTE NO.

Noam Chomsky remembers Howard Zinn, the great American activist and historian, and his close friend of 45 years. A moving political and personal history of the leading activists of a generation — people who are nearly gone but will always remain for generations to follow.