Israeli Occupation Archive – Israel’s war against Palestine

The Nakba - Port of Haifa

Gideon Levy: Mount Hermon’s pure snow can’t hide Israel’s dark past

12 February 2012

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.

HRW to Israel: charge or free Palestinian hunger striker

11 February 2012

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.”

Daoud Kuttab: Myth debunked – Palestinian textbooks don’t teach hatred

11 February 2012

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.

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Moshé Machover: Netanyahu’s war wish

10 February 2012

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.

Marian Houk: Ethnic Cleansing continues – Israeli lawyers tell UN Palestinian Jerusalemites targeted

10 February 2012

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.”

Anonymous message to the State of Israel

10 February 2012

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.

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Israeli fans beg PM to hold off Iran attack over Madonna show

10 February 2012

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.

Amira Hass: Small triumphs in a Sisyphean war

8 February 2012

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.

NEW BOOK: Ben White, Palestinians in Israel – Segregation, Discrimination and Democracy

8 February 2012

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 monastery, Jewish-Arab school defaced in suspected ‘price tag’ attack

7 February 2012

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.

Otherwise Occupied: for the sake of his dignity

7 February 2012

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.”

No Sanctions, No War, No Dictatorship in Iran

3 February 2012

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.

Norman Finkelstein’s Henley College lecture – VOTE NOW!

2 February 2012

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.

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Noam Chomsky: Remembering Howard Zinn

1 February 2012

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.

The Palestine Nakba: decolonising history

30 January 2012

Rashid Khalidi: ‘This book is the most comprehensive and penetrating analysis available of the catastrophe that befell Arab Palestine and its people in 1948, known as the nakba. It shows how the expulsion and physical obliteration of the material traces of a people was followed by what Masalha calls ‘memoricide’: the effacement of their history, their archives, and their place-names, and a denial that they had ever existed.’

Gideon Levy: God rules all in 2012 Israel, even the state

29 January 2012

From Jenin to Hebron, we are in the West Bank above all because the majority of Israelis believe that it is not only the land of the patriarchs, but that this fact gives us a patrimonial right to sovereignty, to cruelty, to abuse and to occupation – and to hell with the position of the international community and the principles of international law, because, after all, we were chosen from among all other peoples.

IOA Editor: From “Chosen People” to the “Promised Land,” Zionism, and the occupation: it’s a hop, skip, and a jump. Indeed, the belief in the ‘promised land’ is a prerequisite for Zionism — yes, even secular Zionism. The ‘chosen people’ concept goes hand in hand with the ‘promised land.’

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Jewish Voice for Peace statement on BDS

29 January 2012

JVP has grown dramatically in size and influence in the past two years. As part of the ongoing assessment sparked by this growth, JVP reviewed its BDS policy. On the basis of an organization-wide conversation about BDS, we have refined our position while maintaining our strategy. JVP shares the aims of the Palestinian Boycott National Committee — ending the occupation, achieving equality for Palestinians now living in Israel, and recognizing Palestinian refugees’ right of return. JVP focuses our efforts on boycott and divestment campaigns that directly target Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and its blockade of the Gaza Strip. We believe this to be the most effective way for JVP to help bring about the aims we share with the Palestinian BDS call.

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Leandros Fischer: Left Zionism exposed

28 January 2012

Herein lies the Zionist left’s main international success: namely the framing of the conflict as being about war and peace between two equal parties, ‘two peoples who fight for the same territory’, rather than that involving colonisers and colonised… Included in this success is also the spreading of the idea of a conflict starting in 1967, with its fictitious semantic differentiation between ‘Israel proper’ and the ‘occupied territories’. These premises have for years succeeded in banishing the Israel-Palestine conflict to a completely different moral universe than other conflicts like Algeria, Vietnam or South Africa under apartheid.