On April 28th, formerly rivaling Palestinian parties announced their intention to begin reconciliation and hold an election within one year. Hamas is in power in the Gaza strip and Fateh is the leading party in the Palestinian Authority, ruling the West Bank. Since 2006 the parties have fought each other, leading to hundreds of casualties and many failed attempts to reach reconciliation.
Lia Tarachansky
On April 15, 2011, Italian journalist and activist Vittorio Arrigoni was kidnapped and killed in the Gaza strip. According to a video released by his kidnappers, they belonged to a Salafi group, which Hamas identified as including a former Hamas policeman. While the mainstream media portrayed the killing as an act of an extremist group identifying with Al Qaeda, many are saying the group, as other Salafi groups operating in Gaza represents a growing force from inside Hamas itself.
Vittorio Arrigoni, killed Friday, April 15 is the first international activist killed by Palestinian kidnappers in living memory of the conflict. Mystery surrounding his kidnapping and death leaves significant questions about the those allegedly responsible, the investigation, and the future of the region.
Paul Jay interviews Lia Tarachansky, The Real News Middle East correspondent. Tarachansky covers the political economy of the occupation, while also focusing on international law and its applicability to the conflict. Having grown up in an Israeli settlement in the heart of the occupied West Bank, Tarachansky speaks about how denial of narrative fuels a conflict where the two peoples, the Israelis and Palestinians, become further segregated, physically, socially, and psychologically.
It used to be that when you counted off Israel’s top allies, the obvious names came to mind. Germany, the UK, and of course, the US. These days, Canada seems determined to soar to the top of that list. Taking it straight from the horse’s mouth – Avigdor Lieberman – Israel’s Foreign Minister. While visiting Canada in 2009 he said, “Canada is so friendly that there was no need to convince or explain anything to anyone… We need allies like this in the international arena.” In fact Canada’s arms trade with Israel, its military cooperation with the Israeli occupation and its political support make Canada a very dear ally for Israel indeed.
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.
[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…
Seven Deadly Myths examines the concept of knowing and not knowing at the same time. Seeing and not comprehending what you see. It starts in the West Bank colony of Ariel where director Lia Tarachansky grew up. As she returns to the settlement, she discovers as though for the first time that it is surrounded by Palestinian villages, that the dispossessed are right next door, behind electrical fences, under watch towers, locked behind walls. But the Palestinians were not made invisible by accident.
IOA Editor: Highly recommended! And, this trailer will be removed this coming weekend – very few days left to watch it.
A brilliant skit from the Israeli comedy show “Eretz Nehederet” (“Wonderful Country”) on Israel’s Channel 2 TV showing anti-Arab racism introduced to young Israeli children very early in life.
IOA Editor: If you think that this is some sort of an abstract humor, think again. For the latest, see Student’s answer on civics test: Death to Arabs
Lieberman reads the political map clearly and understands that the Zionist parties will not be able to stop the process of suppressing democracy for ethnicity… Netanyahu, it seems, won’t be taking a strong position and then it will only take the foreseeable economic crisis for Lieberman to come out as the leader of a fascist Israel.
The Israeli Parliament approved the first of three readings of a new law which, if passed, will make it illegal to declare a boycott on Israel or Israeli companies, participate in a boycott, or provide aid in the form of information to anyone who is part of the BDS campaign. The bill also penalizes the PA for its decision in May 2010 to ban the use by Palestinians of settlement products. The law even affects international citizens who will be banned from entry into Israel for 10 years and will be effective retroactively.
In the past two weeks the Israeli internal intelligence agency, the Shabak / Shin Bet, arrested two prominent Israeli activists in the middle of the night. The men are well known leaders of Palestinian organizations inside Israel… arrested under secret evidence and a gag order was issued to the Israeli press regarding their arrests.
Lia Tarachansky interviews Israeli economists Shir Hever and Shlomo Swirski. The OECD finds Israel has the highest poverty rate in the developed world; the economists blame neo-liberal reforms.
