Israeli Occupation Archive – Israel’s war against Palestine

Nation-State of the Jewish People: The Law of Return

APJP: Petition to Eduardo Souto de Moura to reject the Wolf Prize for Architecture

11 April 2013

[W]e were saddened to hear that you have been awarded the 2013 Israeli Wolf Prize for Architecture, not because you are not deserving of such awards, but that it is being offered to you by the Israeli state, in a very cynical move that would give them the respectability that is not deserved. It is ironic that the award is for architecture, since the practice of architecture in Israel defies international norms and codes of ethics and demeans the humanity and high ideals of our profession.

WikiLeaks: US blamed Israel for peace delay in 1975

10 April 2013

US diplomats: “Before talking about extermination, and before allowing either the Masada or the Samson complex to progress to obsession, the Israelis might usefully examine their own position and that of the Arabs… All reports we have heard and read from Egypt and Syria lead us to believe that those two countries strongly yearn for peace and that they would like to devote their energies to reconstruction of their countries.”

Warsaw Ghetto fighter to Israeli youth: Rise up against the occupation

8 April 2013

Statements challenging the national narrative aren’t exactly common in Israel on Holocaust Remembrance Day. So it was particularly refreshing to read … about a different sort of speech delivered in honor of the day.
UPDATED

Iain Banks: Why I’m supporting a cultural boycott of Israel

8 April 2013

I support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign because, especially in our instantly connected world, an injustice committed against one, or against one group of people, is an injustice against all, against every one of us; a collective injury.

Jonathan Cook: Arab funding for Jerusalem comes a decade too late

6 April 2013

Assuming the Arab League makes good on its commitment … the fund will serve only to highlight the very problems it seeks to alleviate… The reality is that Mr Abbas and the Arab League are at least a decade too late to protect East Jerusalem. In the current circumstances, such a cash fund will do little more than salve consciences.

Nadia Hijab: Obama and Abbas’ fig leaf

4 April 2013

Unfortunately for Abbas, Obama used his remarks in Ramallah to insist the Palestinians enter direct negotiations without preconditions, not even the settlement freeze he himself had urged. At the same time, he insisted on preconditions for the Palestinians, who “must recognise that Israel will be a Jewish state”, effectively condemning the Palestinian citizens of Israel to perpetual second-class citizenship. His conversion has doubtless encouraged Israel’s most annexationist government to date to carry on with legislation to define itself as the national state of the Jewish people.

Awad Abdel Fattah: Just another Shin Bet interrogation

4 April 2013

We are struggling not only to liberate the Palestinian people from the occupation and from Israel’s racist apartheid regime, but also to liberate you from the illness of racism, so you can stop inflicting harm on me and on millions of people who are the natives of this country. And then we can live together equally and peacefully.

Chris Hedges resigns from human rights organization PEN

2 April 2013

Chris Hedges: The suffering of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation and the plight of those caught up in our imperial wars in countries such as Iraq are not abstractions to me. Nossel’s relentless championing of preemptive war — which under international law is illegal — as a State Department official along with her callous disregard for Israeli mistreatment of the Palestinians and her refusal as a government official to denounce the use of torture and use of extra-judicial killings, makes her utterly unfit to lead any human rights organization…

Boycott resolution passed by York University’s undergraduate student union

31 March 2013

The resolution demands that the university administration “abides by the BDS call” and urges York to “withdraw its investments from Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, Amphenol and other companies that are selling weapons and military equipment to Israel.”

Noam Chomsky: Violence and dignity – reflections on the Middle East (text)

29 March 2013

Professor Noam Chomsky’s 2013 Edward Said Memorial Lecture: Violence and Dignity – Reflections on the Middle East at Friends House in London on 18 March 2013 (text).

Moshé Machover: Remembering Akiva (Aki) Orr

26 March 2013

Moshé Machover remembers his friend and comrade, Matzpen co-founder Akiva (Aki) Orr (19 June 1931 – 7 February 2013).

Noam Chomsky: Violence and dignity – reflections on the Middle East (video)

26 March 2013

Professor Noam Chomsky, delivering the 2013 Edward Said Memorial Lecture: Violence and Dignity – Reflections on the Middle East at Friends House in London on 18 March 2013 (video).

Moshé Machover: Anti-war anniversary – party with all-round strategy needed

22 March 2013

We should never support a war undertaken by our own ruling classes. Often they are undertaken for domestic reasons. Kissinger said of Israel: it has no foreign policy, only domestic policy; and this is actually true of most states – their foreign policies result from internal class contradictions.

End the charitable status of JNF UK

21 March 2013

Since 1901 KKL-JNF, known as Jewish National Fund (JNF) in the UK, has worked successfully for the ethnic cleansing of historic Palestine and their project has not been completed… Today sees a fresh and determined initiative to strip JNF UK of its charitable status. This effort can succeed with your help, for the JNF UK is vulnerable as never before. Whereas this racist body used to enjoy virtually automatic patronage from the leaders of all three major UK political parties, today Cameron, Clegg and Miliband have each turned their back on this openly racist ‘charity’ as being increasingly impossible to defend.

Jonathan Cook: Obama comes to bless Israel’s government of settlers

20 March 2013

The unspoken message of Obama’s visit is that the Netanyahu government is free to pursue its hardline agenda with little danger of anything more than symbolic protest from Washington.

Adalah: Discriminatory-laws database

20 March 2013

On the occasion of the swearing in of the new Israeli government and the 19th Knesset (18 March 2013) and the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (22 March 2013), Adalah is pleased to launch the Discriminatory Laws Database,

Mustafa Barghouti: Palestinians are unenthusiastic about passive US President Obama‘s visit

19 March 2013

Mustafa Barghouthi: “The main goal of Obama’s visit … is to listen… We Palestinians have been listening for too long. This passivity on Obama’s part is unacceptable and dangerous at a time when the two state solution is under risk.”

Ya’alon – forever tainted by cancer

19 March 2013

Ya’alon spent a year working for the AIPAC-created Washington Institute for Near East Policy and also spent time at the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies of the infamous Shalem Center. If you want neocon research credentials, these are the places to go. Such a scholarly pedigree confirms Ya’alon’s status as a provincial ex-military officer, with a predictably Manichean worldview.

Nadia Hijab: Israel, Obama, and other people’s oil

17 March 2013

Of course, Israel thinks it can get away with [drilling for oil on the occupied Golan Heights]. It has violated international law with impunity since it prevented the Palestinian refugees’ return, annexed East Jerusalem, and extended Israeli law to the Golan Heights, among other transgressions. Moreover, although Israel’s settlement building in the territories is regularly condemned, international sanctions have yet to be imposed.

Noam Sheizaf: NY Times Magazine article shows reality through Palestinian eyes

17 March 2013

Of all the Hebrew-language media outlets, it was the liberal Haaretz that labeled Ben Ehrenreich’s excellent feature on the protest in Nabi Saleh as a “pro-Palestinian manifesto.” The piece, detailing the history of weekly demonstrations against the occupation in the tiny Palestinian village … is indeed “unusual” … not because it is “pro-Palestinian” … but because its point of departure is the plight of Palestinians under occupation, and not the internal Israeli debate over the future of “the territories.”

Researcher uncovers hidden facts of Israeli-Palestinian water politics

9 March 2013

The Israeli government has been forcing the Palestinian Authority into approving water infrastructure for illegal West Bank settlements for the past 15 years, according to research by a University of Sussex academic.

Rashid Khalidi: Brokers of Deceit – How the US Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East

8 March 2013

For more than seven decades the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people has raged on with no end in sight, and for much of that time, the United States has been involved as a mediator in the conflict. In this book, acclaimed historian Rashid Khalidi zeroes in on the United States’s role as the purported impartial broker in this failed peace process.