Memoirs of a Palestine

2009-02-02T00:34:00.001-05:00

Gazan Family Opens What's Left Of A Home

THE GAZA STRIP, Jan. 24, 2009

(CBS) This story was written by CBS News correspondent Allen Pizzey.

By its very definition, war would seem to negate civility. Why would people who have no reason to be anything other than angry, bitter and infused with a desire for vengeance offer hospitality to strangers intruding upon their suffering?

And yet, in this reporter’s experience at least, more often than not they do.

The ordinary Palestinians of Gaza take it to new levels.

Bumping our way through the devastation of an area that had been repeatedly pulverized by air strikes and tank shelling, we came across the men of the al-Ajrami family hammering a two-by-four across a gaping space in what was once (by Gaza standards) an upper-middle-class home.

They were trying, with a few nails, a hammer and a pair of pliers, to fix what for most of us would have been written off as an insurance claim. The difference is that here there is no insurance, and the home owners have nowhere else to go.

The Palestinians trapped in Gaza hold it as a truism that every bomb, rocket, mortar, tank and artillery shell that explodes among them is either made in or paid for by America. But even though we identified ourselves as being from a U.S. television network, they invited us into what remained of the house, into which they had sunk their savings barely a year ago.

Not a pane of glass remained. Holes had been smashed through walls by shells - and the occupiers making entrances and sniping positions. Doors were broken, furniture wrecked. Everything was covered with dust, broken masonry and plaster.

One had to wonder what kind of a reception a TV crew from an Arabic network - al-Jazeera, for example - would find if they crossed the property line of an American home blown apart by an Islamic faction.

Family patriarch Abdel Nasser al-Ajrami said the entire family had been sheltering in the room he was trying to close off when an Israeli soldier burst into the adjacent room, tossed a grenade, and closed the door. The carpet is seared. A pit has been blown in the floor, and the walls and ceiling are peppered with holes from small, sharp-edged, arrow-shaped projectiles called flechettes, a weapon designed to clear enemy positions like bunkers, not family living rooms.

The al-Ajramis were ordered to leave, and their home became an Israeli base.

When the fighting was over, the family came back to chaos.

“They even destroyed our personal memories,” Abdel Nasser’s wife Samaia said as she swept dirt, while her three-year-old granddaughter Saly, dressed in a pink jump suit, collected stray bits of debris. “They broke everything. Is this the culture of Israel? I don’t know how those people could come into a well-organized house and leave it destroyed. With no reason.”

All the Hamas rockets that had fallen on Israel, she believed, did not inflict as much damage as the Israeli shells had done to her home.

(CBS)

Nonetheless, Mrs al-Ajrami was determined to clean up, clear up and make it home again. Her family, she said, had to stay together.

“I wish that the American people could come to see the tragedy we have to live in,” she said. “I want the American people to understand that we have been destroyed without any reason. I’d like them to sympathize with us and help us.”

It came out not as a whine, but as a simple statement - a message from a woman who perhaps hoped other women might understand and, one supposes, in so doing make some small difference.

As for what difference she thought a TV crew might make, Mrs al-Ajrami didn’t say. But she did insist we join the men of her family in what remained of their living room for a cup of sweet, steaming tea.

As we sipped it, Abdel Nasser said there was something that puzzled him. Why, he asked, did we think that in a house with three bathrooms the Israeli soldiers who had taken it over would choose to defecate in his wife’s cooking pots?

He seemed more perplexed than angry, but perhaps he felt that to vent rage in front of guests would be a breach of hospitality.

2009-01-23T15:55:00.000-05:00

Why I'm boycotting Israeli produce

Fruit and vegetable exports are crucial to the Israeli economy. A consumer boycott of agricultural produce exerts direct economic pressure where it matters

Men of the Salmi family salvage some belongings from the rubble of their home in the Gaza City district of Zeitoun. Photograph: Lefteris Pitarakis/AP

If you're not in the habit of checking the country of origin on fruit and vegetables to minimise food miles, you may not have noticed just how much Israeli produce is in our shops and supermarkets. At the moment, there are piles of new potatoes (though it's hard to see why anyone with a scrap of environmental awareness would buy these when our indigenous main crop spuds are still firm and abundant), and that's just for starters.

If you go out today and buy avocadoes, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, Medjoul dates, sharon fruit (persimmons), chillies, oranges, pomegranates, grapefruit or fresh herbs, it's extremely likely that they will be Israeli. Most of this produce carries country of origin labelling or is branded as Carmel, Bio-Top or Jaffa. In the herb category, there's room - intentional or otherwise - for confusion. Increasingly your dill, tarragon or basil may be labelled as 'West Bank'. This is not a Palestinian alternative to the Israeli option; it comes from Israeli settlements in Palestine's occupied territories.

Israel's agricultural exporting company, Carmel Agrexco, is one of the biggest suppliers of fresh produce to the UK. As the company puts it:

Israel's sunny climate enables Agrexco to tap the resources of its Carmel growers most of the annum. By lining up other complementary supply sources – such as fruit, vegetable and root crop growers located in countries in the Mediterranean basin, South America, and Africa – the Carmel label is available year-round

An expert in air-freighting with a base near Heathrow, Agrexco supplies the UK with everything from sweetcorn, rocket and radishes through to melons, strawberries and kumquats, so delivering the 'permanent global summertime' of horticultural produce that food retailers have educated British consumers to expect.

As a business, it's impressive, but I don't intend to buy any of it. For people aware of the recent horror that unfolded in Gaza and the emerging evidence of the scale of destruction, this cornucopia of fruit and vegetables represents a ready-made target for taking personal action in our daily lives to express disapproval at Israel's ongoing aggression against the Palestinian people.

We can use the same tactic against Israel that was so effective in showing up South Africa as the apartheid state it once was. The parallels with South Africa are striking. Writing in the Guardian, Naomi Klein recently reminded us of the words of Ronnie Kasrils, a prominent South African politician, who said in 2007 that the segregation he saw in the West Bank and Gaza was "infinitely worse than apartheid".

So what, exactly, is he talking about? While we have been munching our way through its avocadoes, Israel has demolished Palestinian homes, evicted their occupants and expropriated their land and water resources. It has illegally colonised productive Palestinian land with waves of settlers. A boycott of Israeli fruit and vegetables, as opposed to other sorts of boycott (academic, sporting), is particularly apt because horticulture has been a major plank of Israeli expansion. Medjoul dates in the Jordan Valley, for example, base their operations on confiscated Palestinian land, in contravention of international law and the Fourth Geneva Convention.

As if that wasn't enough, Israel has effectively imprisoned Palestinians with checkpoints, an illegal wall and an oppressive system of travel permits and colour-coded identity cards, so scuppering Palestinian economic development. As OXFAM told the House of Commons International Development Committee (pdf), costs for Palestinians who want to export products are up to 70% higher than for Israelis. Settlers in the West Bank get direct access to markets in and through Israel without the disruptive road blocks and transfers faced by the Palestinians who are obliged to rely on Israeli intermediaries. The revenue from taxes and customs goes to Israel, which costs the Palestinian economy 3% of its GDP a year.

Left to develop its agricultural economy, Palestine could be a fertile and productive land. Olive oil used to be a profitable export crop but according to the Applied Research Institute in Jerusalem, over 500,000 ancient olive trees have been bulldozed and cut down since 2000 (see zaytoun.org) to make way for the construction of Israeli settlements, settler-only roads and the Separation Wall. Yet in recent years, and despite all the odds stacked against them, marginalised Palestinian growers have produced good extra virgin olive oil, recently gaining organic status for some of their production.

Palestinian growers tenaciously produce the Nabali green olive (pickled in the Palestinian tradition with olive oil, water and salt) tree-ripened black olive, the Middle Eastern favourite Za'atar (a herb and seed mix of wild thyme, toasted sesame and sour-tasting sumac berries), Medjoul dates from Jericho, and the celebrated large, sweet 'Om Al-Fahem' almond grown in Jenin. All this is available through the ethical business, Zaytoun. It also used to sell couscous from a women's co-operative in Gaza, but even before the latest bombardment, Israel's tightening seige of Gaza made any type of export from that area impossible.

With intractable political conflicts, sometimes it's hard to see how individual action can make even the slightest difference. But fruit and vegetable exports to Europe are crucial to the Israeli economy, representing 80% of that country's total exports. The UK is its largest market, eating up a 60% share. Carmel Agrexco itself is 50% owned by the Israeli state, so a consumer boycott of agricultural produce exerts direct economic pressure where it matters.

By refusing to buy Israeli produce, ethically-minded consumers can be part of the wider Boycott Israeli Goods campaign (BIG) and add to the international condemnation of Israel's tactics in Palestine. The reasons for a boycott precede the most recent open conflict and are ever-more important. Even if the current shaky ceasefire holds, Gaza will still be an open prison and Palestine will still be a country whose food economy is actively sabotaged by its powerful neighbour. Just at the moment, many people don't have any appetite for Israeli produce. A boycott gives us something to do about it.

2009-01-23T15:54:00.000-05:00

From London to Gaza

Despite official apathy to the suffering in Gaza, Londoners are gathering for a solidarity convoy to deliver aid to Palestine

- George Galloway
- guardian.co.uk, Friday 23 January 2009 10.00 GMT
- Article history

The government is always looking for some Islamic organisation to proscribe or some Muslim cleric – preferably with a steel claw – to ban. All in the name of community cohesion and preventing violent extremism. But how many Muslims does the government think have been radicalised by the horrific scenes coming out of Gaza and the complacent hypocrisy of the British foreign office?

The appeal for a policy that breaks with slavish support for Israel's actions operates on a number of different levels. I've long since stopped addressing the great lacuna which passes for an ethical sense at King Charles Street. An argument based on naked self-interest stands a better chance. And from that point of view the efforts by various branches of government not only to justify the unjustifiable in Palestine, but to delegitimise protests over it are extremely difficult to fathom.

Take the official policy of systematically undercounting the number of people who take part in protests. Among other things, that tells those who take part in the hope of making a difference that peaceful, democratic protest will not even be registered properly, let alone make a difference to political outcomes. Then there are the extraordinary attempts to clamp down on protest. In Birmingham, for example, the council, the largest local authority in Europe, withdrew permission for a demonstration over Gaza just days before it was due to take place. It went ahead, without incident, thanks to the leadership of my friend Councillor Salma Yaqoob, who marshalled a cross-section of politicians behind it.

In Tower Hamlets young people organised a 100-strong car cavalcade in protest at the massacres in Gaza and advertising a national demonstration in central London. The following day the police were handing out fliers at Brick Lane mosque telling people that such activities were illegal. Of all the problems we face in Tower Hamlets – including illegal activities – not one of them is young men cooperating with one another and using their cars to form peaceful convoys with a socially engaged message. I'm sure the same is true elsewhere in the capital.

If the authorities in London and across Britain thought this through they would welcome this efflorescence of political protests over Gaza. How better to marginalise the violent extremists than by creating the space for radical but democratic political engagement?

And that space is burgeoning, whether the government likes it or not. The upsurge in solidarity and political engagement over Palestine is astonishing – and almost wholly outwith the political mainstream. The kinds of meetings I and others in the anti-war movement have been addressing across Britain are reminiscent of 2002 and the build-up to the Iraq war. This time, however, people want to do much more than march and rally. There is a groundswell of solidarity.

That's why I've taken the initiative to launch a solidarity convoy from Britain to Gaza, through north Africa, headed by firefighting equipment donated by the Fire Brigades Union. The convoy will contain trucks and vans from towns and cities across the country containing medicines and other necessities the Palestinians of Gaza desperately need.

This is not an alternative, of course, to the vast amounts of aid that ought to be airlifted now to Gaza. The purpose of the convoy, however, is not simply to bring aid. It is to provide a focus for solidarity and actions such as those in Birmingham city council, which has taken a big step towards boycotting Israel. I think the time is ripe to push these issues into London councils and the London Assembly. The mayor of London's silence over Gaza is out of step with the feeling of most Londoners. That gap is going to be keenly felt in the coming months.

The convoy's route through north Africa is deliberately chosen. It will take it through big Arab centres and into Egypt, which holds the key to the liberation of Gaza and Palestine. The response to the call for the convoy has been overwhelming. Mosques, community groups, trade unions and other organisations are busy organising to get a truck on the road and to fill it with useful things.

In my experience it is tapping something wider than a basic humanitarian response to the suffering in Gaza. I cannot think of anything better to forge the bonds of social solidarity the government says it wants to see. In the 1930s ordinary people across Europe rallied to aid the people of Republican Spain, who faced the bombing of towns and the massacres of civilians by the jackbooted General Franco. The cry was "Aidez L'Espagne!" – today the call should be "Viva Palestina!"

George Galloway will be speaking with Ken Livingstone, Venezuelan Ambassador Samuel Moncada and others on the emerging politics of the 21st century at the Progressive London conference on Saturday 24 January

2009-01-20T23:13:00.000-05:00

'I felt it was my duty to protest'

The Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe, tells Chris Arnot that speaking out for the Palestinians turned him into a pariah

Chris Arnot
The Guardian, Tuesday 20 January 2009
Article history

For an academic to describe himself as "feeling for a while like public enemy No 1" suggests either an inflated ego or an incurable case of paranoia. Professor Ilan Pappe gives every appearance of suffering from neither. He is an amiable character with an engaging grin. By his own admission, he "likes to be liked". Not a natural rebel then? "Certainly not," he says.

Yet in 2005 and 2006, this Israeli son of German-Jewish emigrants found himself in the eye of a storm that would lead him to leave the country of his birth and seek sanctuary in the English west country. He has been chair in the history department at Exeter University for the last 18 months. By the time he left the University of Haifa, he had been condemned in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset; the minister of education had publicly called for him to be sacked; and his pictures had appeared in the country's biggest-selling newspaper at the centre of a target. Next to it, a popular columnist addressed his readers thus: "I'm not telling you to kill this person, but I shouldn't be surprised if someone did."

The death threats had already been arriving by post, email and phone since Pappe, 54, had been asked on national radio whether he was going to take his complaints about the treatment of Palestinians to the UN security council. "I had to point out that I was not a politician or a diplomat," he says, "I was an academic." Albeit an academic who had recently published a book called The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. A somewhat provocative title, I suggest.

"It was," he concedes. "I thought long and hard before using it, and my publisher [Oneworld Publications] hesitated. But I don't think that the military and political elite has given up on the policy of ethnic cleansing. They think that the survival, and certainly the prosperity, of the Jewish state is connected to its ability to minimise the numbers of Palestinians living within its borders - although it has not yet decided where those borders should be."

In 2005, Pappe and two friends wrote a warning online that Israeli settlers were being moved out of Gaza to allow government forces a free hand to bomb the residents of that overcrowded strip of land. When the current bombardment began at the end of last year, the Israeli government argued that it was trying to protect its citizens from rocket attacks by Hamas. But, says Pappe: "Those rocket attacks didn't start until after Israel had blockaded Gaza."

Anglophile

The conflict seems a million miles from where we're sitting, overlooking a peaceful river valley in an idyllic part of Devon. Pappe did his PhD at Oxford in 1984 and remains a self-confessed Anglophile, despite reservations about the food and the weather. He has rented a property not far from Exeter for himself, his partner and two sons, aged 11 and 14. Fear for their safety was one reason why he felt impelled to leave Haifa. "The other reason was that I felt stifled as an intellectual."

Having backed down from dismissing him through a disciplinary court, the university authorities in Haifa barred him from participating in seminars or conferences. "One of my colleagues was rung up and told: 'You were seen having coffee with Ilan Pappe. Is that wise?'," he says.

All the same, he says, he continued to receive support from some colleagues and many students, particularly Palestinian ones. There was external support, too, including from what was then the Association of University Teachers (AUT) in the UK. "I think my worst crime had been to back the academic and cultural boycott on Israel to end the occupation of Palestinian lands," he says. "When the AUT approached me to ask whether I thought they were morally justified in doing it, I said yes. Only strong external pressure will stop the Israeli policy of destroying the Palestinian people."

Since then, the AUT has evolved into the University and College Union (UCU)and, faced with legal action, has dropped proposals for a collective boycott.

"I think what's really important," says Pappe, diplomatically, "is that a growing number of individual academics feel they can no longer tolerate co-operating with their Israeli counterparts, except for those who oppose current government policies."

Revulsion in the UK at the carnage in Gaza is likely to have strained relations even further. Any temptation by Pappe to claim that he saw this coming has been overwhelmed by outrage, tinged with considerable sadness, at the media images of civilian victims. "For me these figures are not anonymous," he says. "I fear for people I know personally." He speaks Arabic and socialises with Arab as well as Jewish friends and colleagues. "The Israeli government may find it difficult to justify its butchery to the rest of the world, but they can still rely on widespread support internally," Pappe says. "Loyalty to the state and Zionist ideology supersedes anything else."

Can he not, I wonder, understand the siege mentality of people who feel themselves under threat from growing Islamic militancy?

"Yes, I can," Pappe replies. "There are genuine collective fears that have to do with past and present dangers. But I think those fears are manipulated through the education system and the media to seem worse than the reality suggests. And Israelis don't seem to realise that their behaviour is contributing to those dangers. Anyone who endorses a militantly aggressive policy towards Israel can only have benefited from what's been going on in Gaza."

Facing the Syrians

When Pappe was 19, he found himself on the Golan Heights facing the Syrians in the Yom Kippur war of 1973. "I remember the sergeant major telling us that we should kill Arabs young or they'll grow up to kill us," he says. "And that attitude is widespread. That's why tank drivers, F16 pilots or artillery commanders will kill civilians without hesitation. They've been taught to dehumanise them all their lives."

Pappe's parents, like many others, fled Germany in the 1930s because they could see that Jews would be treated as less than human. Members of both their families perished in the subsequent genocide. "My mother had seven sisters, and only three survived," Pappe says. "There were similar stories on my father's side. They saw Palestine and, later, the state of Israel as a safe haven. And that's the part of me that can't totally condemn Zionism. Had it not been for the Zionist movement, my parents and many like them would not have escaped.

"I've never underestimated those achievements. But my parents could never see that setting up a Jewish state was done by dispossessing Palestinians. They turned a blind eye, in the same way that many Germans did in the 30s and 40s."

Neither parent is still alive. "My brother and sister don't share my politics, but we still get on," he adds. "Some relatives in the wider family find it difficult to talk to me. To my mind, though, I belonged to a society that was doing terrible things to Palestinians. I felt it was my duty to protest, even if that made me a pariah."

The best way to protest in exile is to write, he feels. Right now, he has three books on the go. One is to be called The Forgotten Palestinians ("those living in Israel"); another The Bureaucracy of Evil, an examination of the way Israeli officials have managed day-to-day life in those territories beyond the country's original borders that the state has occupied since 1967. He is also editing a collection of essays from scholars around the world comparing the Zionist system and ideology with the government of apartheid South Africa. "There's plenty to compare," he insists.

Ilan Pappe may not be a natural rebel, but nobody could accuse him of settling for a quiet life in the west country.

Curriculum vitae

Age 54

Job Chair in the history department at University of Exeter

Before that Senior lecturer in political science at University of Haifa and president of Israeli Association for Multicultural Education

Likes 19th-century English novels, cinema, classical music, Liverpool FC

Dislikes systemised state injustice

2009-01-14T16:46:00.001-05:00

Al Jazeera's crucial reporting role in Gaza

War reporters are crucial to report Gaza's true horror, writes Jennifer O'Mahony in an excellent First Post article.

As she notes, there are journalists inside Gaza, notably from Al-Jazeera, but Israel refuses to allow the rest of the international press to join them. O'Mahony writes:

"Firstly, we simply do not know what is happening inside Gaza at any one time. We are ignorant, for example, of the reasons for the bombing of a UN school packed with civilians which left 40 dead. The rumours of a text message which indicated Hamas leaders were hiding out in the building show that hearsay is not an excuse when the phrase 'war crimes' is being used by the UN...
"Secondly, Israel's blockade on information has led to skewed coverage of both sides... as the journalists stuck on the border are forced to interview the only sources of information they have access to: the Israelis.
"Hamas issue statements as best they can, but with some of the leadership hiding in Damascus, and the bombing of their government buildings and TV station by Israel, a media offensive is difficult at best. This means that Hamas is lacking in the most important currency in international opinion: good PR."

It is clear from Oliver Luft's article on Media Guardian today that journalists across the world are furious at being denied access to a theatre of war (and, yes, it is a war).

However, we should not overlook the work of Al Jazeera English, exemplified by its TV broadcasts and the material available on its website. For many of us trying to follow what's happening, it is an essential news outlet.

It has two reporters on the ground - Ayman Mohyeldin, a 29 year-old American of Egyptian and Palestinian descent and Sherine Tadros, 28, who holds joint British and Egyptian citizenship. There is also one staff cameraman. They have been in Gaza since last year, shortly before the border was closed.

I understand that their sterling work for Al Jazeera is now being watched in 130m households and the number is growing by the day as more and more people switch to the broadcaster to find out what is really happening in Gaza.

So, in many ways, this conflict means as much to Al Jazeera's profile as the first gulf war meant to CNN. In that sense, it could be seen as a seminal point in the channel's history. However, it has still not overcome the fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans cannot see its TV output.

The channel has been marginalised in the US, as the International Herald Tribune reported this week. It is only carried by cable providers in Burlington, Vermont; Toledo, Ohio; and Washington DC. IHT's Noam Cohen writes:

"The near-total blackout in the United States is no doubt related to the sharp criticism Al Jazeera received from the US government during the initial stages of the war in Iraq for its coverage of the American invasion.
"Officials like vice president Dick Cheney and the defence secretary at the time, Donald Rumsfeld, said the network's reporting was inflammatory, irresponsible and frequently misleading."

I don't think that was true at the time and it certainly isn't the case now. I often tune into Al Jazeera English and respect what those Gaza reporters are doing, and how they are going about their work.

Anyway, even Americans cannot be denied the website. No wonder the channel has begun an ad campaign to publicise its site in the US, the country that is most in need of receiving more balanced reportage on the conflict.

2009-01-14T16:42:00.001-05:00

Media frustration over Gaza ban grows

Oliver Luft
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 14 January 2009 07.05 GMT
larger | smaller
Article history

Flares and smoke are seen during an Israeli military operation in Gaza City. Photograph: Khalil Hamra/AP

UK news organisations are becoming increasingly frustrated by the continuing ban preventing foreign correspondents from crossing into the Gaza Strip, more than two weeks after Israel's military offensive against Hamas began.

After months of attempting to limit access, the Israel Defence Forces are still refusing to open the Erez crossing they closed on 27 December, when the bombing campaign began, to anything other than humanitarian aid – despite a supreme court ruling ordering the government to allow members of the international press into Gaza.

David Mannion, the ITV News editor-in-chief, branded the Israeli media ban "disgraceful", while Dominic Wagthorn, the Sky News Middle East correspondent, said the "unprecedented" level of interference was "very frustrating".

However, a spokesman for the Israeli embassy in London responded that his government was only limiting media access to a war zone as other countries, including the UK, would do in the same situation.

Mannion accused the Israelis of censoring the war. While pictures were coming out of Gaza from news agencies Reuters and Associated Press, having his crews stuck on the border, he said, meant events were increasingly difficult to verify.

"If Israel is saying that Hamas fired rockets from inside a school complex then let us in to verify that. It is frankly disgraceful for any democracy to prevent us from entering an area to report. It is up to us, not them, to decide if it is too dangerous to enter," he added.

Channel 4 News, similarly blocked from entering the territory, is using a local Palestinian team of cameramen and producers to report on the effect of air strikes and fighting on the Palestinians.

"I imagine that the Israelis are calculating that the longer they keep people out, the more interest will wane," Ben dePear, Channel 4 News foreign editor, told MedianGuardian.co.uk.

Sky News, along with other international news groups, was prevented from filming in areas on the Israeli side of the border as the IDF created a closed military zone and moved reporters on to a specially designated hill overlooking the territory, but away from the fighting.

"The hill was full of experts and spokesmen from various Israeli departments and agencies. They are able to spin it. Meanwhile there is a terrible loss of life going on that we can't cover. It's very frustrating," said Wagthorn.

He added the level of interference was "unprecedented" in the region. "They have made the calculation: what makes them look worse? Being banned together with Zimbabwe and Burma in restricting press freedom or letting us go in there?" he said.

However, the BBC's head of world newsgathering, Jon Williams, was not convinced the Israeli PR machine had any greater effect than normal.

"This is not like the Georgian/Russian conflict where they were putting waves of people forward. The Israeli government has always been smart and smooth about getting its message across. The trick is for us to then get other people in to make it fair and balanced," Williams said.

The Israeli Embassy spokesman said Gaza was now a war zone and Israel was only limiting media access in the way other countries involved in wars, including Britain, had previously done.

"We urge everyone to understand that it is a war zone, that is why we don't allow free access to Gaza," the spokesman added.

"Gaza is not hermetically sealed... there is a direct border between Gaza and Egypt. I wonder whether journalists applied to the Egyptian authorities for access to Gaza?" he said.

Complaints about the Israeli authorities blockade came because Israel was an open-minded, pluralistic and liberal society, he added. "They did not apply to Egypt because they know Egypt would automatically refuse but we don't see similar complaints [against them]."

Tim Butcher, Daily Telegraph Middle East editor, told MediaGuardian.co.uk that the Israelis were unwilling to give the foreign media access as they were seen as a propaganda tool for the other side.

Last week Daniel Seaman, director of Israel's government press office, said any foreign journalists in Gaza would become a "fig leaf and front for the Hamas".

Despite this damning assessment, Butcher added, journalists were powerless to do anything other than wait for access. "There is no other option. You can't just jump the fence, You have to play their games," he said.

David Munk, Guardian deputy editor for international news, said Seaman's comments were outrageous. The Guardian is also using a local stringer to supply stories and information, alongside a variety of sources which includes non-governmental organisations in Gaza and traditional wire services.

"Just because you happen to be in a place that Israel doesn't like you operating doesn't mean we'll be swept along by their [Hamas] propaganda," Munk added. "It is a deeply depressing situation when a country like Israel that prides itself on openness is not providing access to people from outside Gaza to see the full picture."

Richard Beeston, the Times foreign editor, said that given the difficult conditions he had been pleased with the paper's coverage. However, Beeston conceded that his operation had been hampered by the blockade and had placed greater reliance on local stringers to gather information.

• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000.

2009-01-14T16:36:00.002-05:00

January 14, 2009

War reporters are crucial to report Gaza’s true horror

Israel’s ban on journalists in the Gaza Strip has led to skewed information on both sides in the crisis

By Jennifer O'Mahony

FIRST POSTED JANUARY 14, 2009

Martha Gellhorn, the legendary American war correspondent, had little faith in the power of her writing to change the sometimes wretched lives of those she encountered.

Indeed, she said that journalists had but one redeeming role to play: "If he can do nothing positive, to make the world more liveable or less cruel or stupid, he can at least record truly, and that is something no one else will do, and it a job that must be done. It is the only revenge that all the bastardised people will ever get: that somebody writes down clearly what happened to them".

One could never accuse her of hypocrisy. Gellhorn reported compulsively, continuing to write well into her eighties, even as she progressively lost her sight. Her career spanned five decades, encompassing the Spanish Civil War and Vietnam, as well as various Central American conflicts. She was one of the first to report on the horror of Dachau after its liberation.

Israel has won the PR war; at best Hamas has managed one article in the Guardian

Her words are just as pertinent today. As the escalation between Israeli forces and Hamas continues without the watchful eye of the international press pack, her belief in the importance of someone "writing down clearly what happened to them" is at stake.

There are journalists inside Gaza, notably from Al-Jazeera, but Israel's refusal to allow the press inside to report fully on conditions for civilians is preventing the proper scrutiny of events. The effect of this is twofold.

Legendary journalist Martha Gellhorn's belief that a war correspondent should 'at least record truly' is still pertinent

Firstly, we simply do not know what is happening inside Gaza at any one time. We are ignorant, for example, of the reasons for the bombing of a UN school packed with civilians which left 40 dead. The rumours of a text message which indicated Hamas leaders were hiding out in the building show that hearsay is not an excuse when the phrase 'war crimes' is being used by the UN.

Brave journalists who are willing to put their own safety at risk to tell the world what is really going on in Gaza cannot do their job, ostensibly over concerns about safety.

The Israelis are of course aware that war zones are always dangerous, and that danger is clearly not the first priority of the Jeremy Bowens and Kate Adies of this world, for whom reporting the facts amid hazardous conditions is a right and a privilege.

Secondly, Israel's blockade on information has led to skewed coverage of both sides. The Israelis have had statements from

By Jennifer O'Mahony

FIRST POSTED JANUARY 14, 2009

Tzipi Livni and Ehud Barak representing them across media platforms, as the journalists stuck on the border are forced to interview the only sources of information they have access to: the Israelis.

Hamas issue statements as best they can, but with some of the leadership hiding in Damascus, and the bombing of their government buildings and TV station by Israel, a media offensive is difficult at best. This means that Hamas is lacking in the most important currency in international opinion: good PR.

Israel has been unable to prevent the release of photos of dead children in Gaza, which have appalled the world

From Twitter to TV, Israel have dominated the information streams which have such a huge role to play in the resolution of this kind of conflict. Ha'aretz commentators have been far more widely quoted in this conflict than any Palestinian publication, and at best Hamas has managed one article in the Guardian by the leader of their political bureau, Khalid Mish'al.

If any more proof were needed of the absolute necessity of war correspondents, we need only look at those who believe the press shouldn't have a role to play during conflicts. Joe the Plumber, the tradesman used by John McCain as a prop against Barack Obama's tax plans, has weighed in as Pajamas Media's new war correspondent.

His view is that: "Media should be abolished from, uh, you know, reporting. You know, war is hell. And if you're gonna sit there and say, 'Well look at this atrocity' well you don't know the whole story behind it half the time, so I think the media should have no business in it."

That the media's responsiblity is to find the "whole story" is, of course, the point. If unchecked ignorance is allowed to take the place of reporting, the result is that atrocities like the ones Joe so astutely points to get missed.

There is one aspect

Joe the Plumber - aka Samuel Wurzelbacher - with local plumber Moshe Nisimpur (right) in Israel, where he claims to be reporting on the war

in which the Israelis are losing this PR war, despite their best efforts. The photographs of dead children lying in the streets outside overflowing hospitals have appalled the world. The images of screaming mothers and weeping fathers will not be wiped from the public consciousness as easily as Israel would like, especially as the IDF protest they are doing "all they can" to prevent civilian suffering.

We need objectivity and a calm, informed explanation of what is happening in Gaza. Martha Gellhorn put it this way: "The lousier the world, the harder a writer should work."

This situation seems lousier than most, so all we can do is hope that the reporters willing to put their lives on the line can push Israel hard enough to give the people of Gaza a chance to be heard.

FIRST POSTED JANUARY 14, 2009

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/46282,opinion,why-we-need-war-correspondents-gaza-israel

2009-01-13T15:04:00.000-05:00

UK has led efforts for Gaza ceasefire

The Guardian, Saturday 10 January 2009
Article history

Your piece on British Muslims' attitudes over the Gaza conflict (Gaza conflict fuelling anger in UK, Muslims warn Brown, 8 January) said that the UK's position on Gaza could provoke domestic terrorist attacks. Nothing justifies violent extremism and in fact the UK has led international efforts for an immediate and sustainable ceasefire. Criticisms of our approach are neither fair nor accurate.

We are seeing a humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza - innocent civilians, including women and children, have died. Thousands are living in terrifying conditions of fear and insecurity. Israelis are also suffering from the fear of rocket attacks from Gaza. That is why we have worked so hard to try to bring this conflict to an end. The prime minister and the foreign secretary have consistently argued for an urgent, immediate and sustainable ceasefire. David Miliband spent three days in New York this week for urgent negotiations with the UN security council and Arab countries. The security council resolution that we negotiated on Thursday underlines the international community's consensus and determination to do all we can to end this tragedy. Of course a ceasefire can only come about through decisions taken by the parties involved - but in the interests of people in both Gaza and Israel, we will expend every diplomatic effort to stop the violence.
Bill Rammell MP
Minister of state for the Middle East

We the undersigned are all of Jewish origin. When we see the dead and bloodied bodies of young children, the cutting off of water, electricity and food, we are reminded of the siege of the Warsaw Ghetto. When Dov Weisglass, an adviser to the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, talked of putting Gazans "on a diet" and the deputy defence minister, Matan Vilnai, talked about the Palestinians experiencing "a bigger shoah" (holocaust), this reminds us of Governor General Hans Frank in Nazi-occupied Poland, who spoke of "death by hunger".

The real reason for the attack on Gaza is that Israel is only willing to deal with Palestinian quislings. The main crime of Hamas is not terrorism but its refusal to accept becoming a pawn in the hands of the Israeli occupation regime in Palestine.

The decision last month by the EU council to upgrade relations with Israel, without any specific conditions on human rights, has encouraged further Israeli aggression. The time for appeasing Israel is long past. As a first step, Britain must withdraw the British ambassador to Israel and, as with apartheid South Africa, embark on a programme of boycott, divestment and sanctions.
Ben Birnberg, Prof Haim Bresheeth, Deborah Fink, Bella Freud, Tony Greenstein, Abe Hayeem, Prof Adah Kay, Yehudit Keshet, Dr Les Levidow, Prof Yosefa Loshitzky, Prof Moshe Machover, Miriam Margolyes, Prof Jonathan Rosenhead, Seymour Alexander, Ben Birnberg, Martin Birnstingl, Prof. Haim Bresheeth, Ruth Clark, Judith Cravitz, Mike Cushman, Angela Dale, Merav Devere, Greg Dropkin, Angela Eden, Sarah Ferner, Alf Filer, Mark Findlay, Sylvia Finzi, Bella Freud, Tessa van Gelderen, Claire Glasman, Ruth Hall, Adrian Hart, Alain Hertzmann, Abe Hayeem, Rosamene Hayeem, Anna Hellmann, Selma James, Riva Joffe, Yael Kahn, Michael Kalmanovitz, Ros Kane, Prof. Adah Kay, Yehudit Keshet, Mark Krantz, Bernice Laschinger, Pam Laurance, Dr Les Levidow, Prof. Yosefa Loshitzky, Prof. Moshe Machover, Beryl Maizels, Miriam Margolyes, Helen Marks, Martine Miel, Diana Neslen, O Neumann, Susan Pashkoff, Hon. Juliet Peston, Renate Prince, Roland Rance, Sheila Robin, Ossi Ron, Manfred Ropschitz, John Rose, Prof. Jonathan Rosenhead, Leon Rosselson, Michael Sackin, Ian Saville, Amanda Sebestyen, Sam Semoff, Prof. Ludi Simpson, Viv Stein, Inbar Tamari, Ruth Tenne, Norman Traub, Eve Turner, Tirza Waisel, Karl Walinets, Renee Walinets, Stanley Walinets, Philip Ward, Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, Ruth Williams, Jay Woolrich, Ben Young, Myk Zeitlin, Androulla Zucker, John Zucker

2009-01-13T14:32:00.000-05:00

Enough. It's time for a boycott

The best way to end the bloody occupation is to target Israel with the kind of movement that ended apartheid in South Africa

- Naomi Klein
- The Guardian, Saturday 10 January 2009
- Article history

It's time. Long past time. The best strategy to end the increasingly bloody occupation is for Israel to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa. In July 2005 a huge coalition of Palestinian groups laid out plans to do just that. They called on "people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era". The campaign Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions was born.

Every day that Israel pounds Gaza brings more converts to the BDS cause - even among Israeli Jews. In the midst of the assault roughly 500 Israelis, dozens of them well-known artists and scholars, sent a letter to foreign ambassadors in Israel. It calls for "the adoption of immediate restrictive measures and sanctions" and draws a clear parallel with the anti-apartheid struggle. "The boycott on South Africa was effective, but Israel is handled with kid gloves ... This international backing must stop."

Yet even in the face of these clear calls, many of us still can't go there. The reasons are complex, emotional and understandable. But they simply aren't good enough. Economic sanctions are the most effective tool in the non-violent arsenal: surrendering them verges on active complicity. Here are the top four objections to the BDS strategy, followed by counter-arguments.

Punitive measures will alienate rather than persuade Israelis.

The world has tried what used to be called "constructive engagement". It has failed utterly. Since 2006 Israel has been steadily escalating its criminality: expanding settlements, launching an outrageous war against Lebanon, and imposing collective punishment on Gaza through the brutal blockade. Despite this escalation, Israel has not faced punitive measures - quite the opposite. The weapons and $3bn in annual aid the US sends Israel are only the beginning. Throughout this key period, Israel has enjoyed a dramatic improvement in its diplomatic, cultural and trade relations with a variety of other allies. For instance, in 2007 Israel became the first country outside Latin America to sign a free-trade deal with the Mercosur bloc. In the first nine months of 2008, Israeli exports to Canada went up 45%. A new deal with the EU is set to double Israel's exports of processed food. And in December European ministers "upgraded" the EU-Israel association agreement, a reward long sought by Jerusalem.

It is in this context that Israeli leaders started their latest war: confident they would face no meaningful costs. It is remarkable that over seven days of wartime trading, the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange's flagship index actually went up 10.7%. When carrots don't work, sticks are needed.

Israel is not South Africa.

Of course it isn't. The relevance of the South African model is that it proves BDS tactics can be effective when weaker measures (protests, petitions, backroom lobbying) fail. And there are deeply distressing echoes of apartheid in the occupied territories: the colour-coded IDs and travel permits, the bulldozed homes and forced displacement, the settler-only roads. Ronnie Kasrils, a prominent South African politician, said the architecture of segregation he saw in the West Bank and Gaza was "infinitely worse than apartheid". That was in 2007, before Israel began its full-scale war against the open-air prison that is Gaza.

Why single out Israel when the US, Britain and other western countries do the same things in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Boycott is not a dogma; it is a tactic. The reason the strategy should be tried is practical: in a country so small and trade-dependent, it could actually work.

Boycotts sever communication; we need more dialogue, not less.

This one I'll answer with a personal story. For eight years, my books have been published in Israel by a commercial house called Babel. But when I published The Shock Doctrine, I wanted to respect the boycott. On the advice of BDS activists, including the wonderful writer John Berger, I contacted a small publisher called Andalus. Andalus is an activist press, deeply involved in the anti-occupation movement and the only Israeli publisher devoted exclusively to translating Arabic writing into Hebrew. We drafted a contract that guarantees that all proceeds go to Andalus's work, and none to me. I am boycotting the Israeli economy but not Israelis.

Our modest publishing plan required dozens of phone calls, emails and instant messages, stretching between Tel Aviv, Ramallah, Paris, Toronto and Gaza City. My point is this: as soon as you start a boycott strategy, dialogue grows dramatically. The argument that boycotts will cut us off from one another is particularly specious given the array of cheap information technologies at our fingertips. We are drowning in ways to rant at each other across national boundaries. No boycott can stop us.

Just about now, many a proud Zionist is gearing up for major point-scoring: don't I know that many of these very hi-tech toys come from Israeli research parks, world leaders in infotech? True enough, but not all of them. Several days into Israel's Gaza assault, Richard Ramsey, managing director of a British telecom specialising in voice-over-internet services, sent an email to the Israeli tech firm MobileMax: "As a result of the Israeli government action in the last few days we will no longer be in a position to consider doing business with yourself or any other Israeli company."

Ramsey says his decision wasn't political; he just didn't want to lose customers. "We can't afford to lose any of our clients," he explains, "so it was purely commercially defensive."

It was this kind of cold business calculation that led many companies to pull out of South Africa two decades ago. And it's precisely the kind of calculation that is our most realistic hope of bringing justice, so long denied, to Palestine.

A version of this column was published in the Nation (thenation.com)

naomiklein.org

2009-01-13T14:31:00.001-05:00

The world gives Israel a free hand

The initial response to the crisis in Gaza from countries including Britain has comprised only routine expressions of dismay

- Simon Tisdall
- guardian.co.uk, Monday 29 December 2008 20.00 GMT
- Article history

The clamour for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza is growing in intensity even as Israel's determination to press home its attack on Hamas grows more dogged. The unfolding result of this fatal divergence is both an escalating humanitarian disaster and a diplomatic debacle for the "international community" that tasked itself with bringing peace to Israel-Palestine.

The formidable capacity of Israel's leaders for ignoring international opinion is nothing new. But if they calculated, before launching the Gaza operation, that they would face only limited external opposition, they have been proven largely correct. The past few days have exposed just how little leverage foreign governments and organisations are able, or are willing, to bring to bear.

As always, the US wields the most clout. But as with Israel's ill-fated 2006 invasion of Lebanon, the Bush administration is sitting on its hands. US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, whose endless shuttle diplomacy this year is now confirmed in its utter futility, did not even mention Israel's military assault in her first official statement on the situation.

Rice's exact words were: "The US strongly condemns the repeated rocket and mortar attacks against Israel and holds Hamas responsible for breaking the ceasefire and for the renewal of violence in Gaza. The ceasefire should be restored immediately. The US calls on all concerned to address the urgent humanitarian needs of the innocent people of Gaza."

Barack Obama's aides, in explaining the US president-elect's silence, are meanwhile sticking to their mantra that the US only has one president at a time. But as the carnage and the outrage mount, this hands-off stance begins to look less like tact and more like a sign of a man who, confronted by a raw conflict that has defeated many more experienced statesmen before him, lacks new ideas.

Obama and his replacement for Rice, Hillary Clinton, have closely followed the Bush line on the ostracism of Hamas as an illegitimate terrorist organisation. He condemned Hamas rocket attacks in emotive, personalised terms during a visit to Sderot in southern Israel earlier this year.

"If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing," Obama said. Arab critics suggested at the time that a balancing line or two about the impact of the Israeli army on Palestinian family life in besieged Gaza would have been welcome.

All the same, some Israeli officials suspect Obama may prove more sympathetic to the Palestinians' overall predicament than his predecessor. That's given as a reason for them to act now in Gaza, while the more pliable George Bush is still notionally at the helm.

The initial response to the crisis from European countries, including Britain, has been mostly formulaic, comprising routine expressions of dismay at the loss of civilian life, harsh words for Hamas, and a gentle tap on Israel's shoulder. British prime minister Gordon Brown's words typified this tiptoeing.

Brown said: "I understand the Israeli government's sense of obligation to its population. Israel needs to meet its humanitarian obligations, act in a way to further the long-term vision of a two-state solution, and do everything in its power to avoid civilian casualties."

Brown added that "Gazan militants" should stop their rocket attacks immediately. But he did not specifically call on Israel to halt military operations. That bias was corrected today by foreign secretary David Miliband. He has been pushing hard in recent months to revive a plan for a comprehensive peace agreement between Israel and all its Arab foes. Miliband demanded both sides should now stop fighting to prevent further "unacceptable" loss of life.

Although Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, criticised what he called Israel's "excessive use of force", the UN security council was, as usual in the case of Israel-Palestine, too divided to agree on anything but a bland expression of concern. The responses of Arab governments, the Arab League, and Organisation of the Islamic Conference have also been generally strong on words but weak on action.

This familiar lack of courage reflects multiple, long-standing divisions between pro-western and non-aligned Arab governments, between supporters of the rival Fatah and Hamas factions, and more broadly between the alienated "Arab street" and the region's mostly unelected, mostly unloved leaders.

But whatever its origins, the practical effect of this collective impotence, coupled with the US and Europe's mealy mouthed approach, is to give Israel a free hand for almost as long as it wants.

The other main consequence is even more disturbing. To the people most affected by the violence, and to Arabs more generally, international inaction looks like complicity with Israel. It looks like collaboration.

All peace talks, bilateral or otherwise, are now on indefinite hold. And the longer the killing continues unchecked, the more radicalising and polarising its impact on ordinary people. It has been a dreadful few days in Gaza. But Iran's Revolutionary Guards and others of their militantly confrontational ilk in Syria and Lebanon must be loving every minute of it.

2009-01-13T14:30:00.001-05:00

Oxford professor of international relations Avi Shlaim served in the Israeli army and has never questioned the state's legitimacy. But its merciless assault on Gaza has led him to devastating conclusions

Avi Shlaim
The Guardian, Wednesday 7 January 2009
Article history

A wounded Palestinian policeman gestures while lying on the ground outside Hamas police headquarters following an Israeli air strike in Gaza City. Photograph: Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images

The only way to make sense of Israel's senseless war in Gaza is through understanding the historical context. Establishing the state of Israel in May 1948 involved a monumental injustice to the Palestinians. British officials bitterly resented American partisanship on behalf of the infant state. On 2 June 1948, Sir John Troutbeck wrote to the foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, that the Americans were responsible for the creation of a gangster state headed by "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". I used to think that this judgment was too harsh but Israel's vicious assault on the people of Gaza, and the Bush administration's complicity in this assault, have reopened the question.

I write as someone who served loyally in the Israeli army in the mid-1960s and who has never questioned the legitimacy of the state of Israel within its pre-1967 borders. What I utterly reject is the Zionist colonial project beyond the Green Line. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the June 1967 war had very little to do with security and everything to do with territorial expansionism. The aim was to establish Greater Israel through permanent political, economic and military control over the Palestinian territories. And the result has been one of the most prolonged and brutal military occupations of modern times.

Four decades of Israeli control did incalculable damage to the economy of the Gaza Strip. With a large population of 1948 refugees crammed into a tiny strip of land, with no infrastructure or natural resources, Gaza's prospects were never bright. Gaza, however, is not simply a case of economic under-development but a uniquely cruel case of deliberate de-development. To use the Biblical phrase, Israel turned the people of Gaza into the hewers of wood and the drawers of water, into a source of cheap labour and a captive market for Israeli goods. The development of local industry was actively impeded so as to make it impossible for the Palestinians to end their subordination to Israel and to establish the economic underpinnings essential for real political independence.

Gaza is a classic case of colonial exploitation in the post-colonial era. Jewish settlements in occupied territories are immoral, illegal and an insurmountable obstacle to peace. They are at once the instrument of exploitation and the symbol of the hated occupation. In Gaza, the Jewish settlers numbered only 8,000 in 2005 compared with 1.4 million local residents. Yet the settlers controlled 25% of the territory, 40% of the arable land and the lion's share of the scarce water resources. Cheek by jowl with these foreign intruders, the majority of the local population lived in abject poverty and unimaginable misery. Eighty per cent of them still subsist on less than $2 a day. The living conditions in the strip remain an affront to civilised values, a powerful precipitant to resistance and a fertile breeding ground for political extremism.

In August 2005 a Likud government headed by Ariel Sharon staged a unilateral Israeli pullout from Gaza, withdrawing all 8,000 settlers and destroying the houses and farms they had left behind. Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement, conducted an effective campaign to drive the Israelis out of Gaza. The withdrawal was a humiliation for the Israeli Defence Forces. To the world, Sharon presented the withdrawal from Gaza as a contribution to peace based on a two-state solution. But in the year after, another 12,000 Israelis settled on the West Bank, further reducing the scope for an independent Palestinian state. Land-grabbing and peace-making are simply incompatible. Israel had a choice and it chose land over peace.

The real purpose behind the move was to redraw unilaterally the borders of Greater Israel by incorporating the main settlement blocs on the West Bank to the state of Israel. Withdrawal from Gaza was thus not a prelude to a peace deal with the Palestinian Authority but a prelude to further Zionist expansion on the West Bank. It was a unilateral Israeli move undertaken in what was seen, mistakenly in my view, as an Israeli national interest. Anchored in a fundamental rejection of the Palestinian national identity, the withdrawal from Gaza was part of a long-term effort to deny the Palestinian people any independent political existence on their land.

Israel's settlers were withdrawn but Israeli soldiers continued to control all access to the Gaza Strip by land, sea and air. Gaza was converted overnight into an open-air prison. From this point on, the Israeli air force enjoyed unrestricted freedom to drop bombs, to make sonic booms by flying low and breaking the sound barrier, and to terrorise the hapless inhabitants of this prison.

Israel likes to portray itself as an island of democracy in a sea of authoritarianism. Yet Israel has never in its entire history done anything to promote democracy on the Arab side and has done a great deal to undermine it. Israel has a long history of secret collaboration with reactionary Arab regimes to suppress Palestinian nationalism. Despite all the handicaps, the Palestinian people succeeded in building the only genuine democracy in the Arab world with the possible exception of Lebanon. In January 2006, free and fair elections for the Legislative Council of the Palestinian Authority brought to power a Hamas-led government. Israel, however, refused to recognise the democratically elected government, claiming that Hamas is purely and simply a terrorist organisation.

America and the EU shamelessly joined Israel in ostracising and demonising the Hamas government and in trying to bring it down by withholding tax revenues and foreign aid. A surreal situation thus developed with a significant part of the international community imposing economic sanctions not against the occupier but against the occupied, not against the oppressor but against the oppressed.

As so often in the tragic history of Palestine, the victims were blamed for their own misfortunes. Israel's propaganda machine persistently purveyed the notion that the Palestinians are terrorists, that they reject coexistence with the Jewish state, that their nationalism is little more than antisemitism, that Hamas is just a bunch of religious fanatics and that Islam is incompatible with democracy. But the simple truth is that the Palestinian people are a normal people with normal aspirations. They are no better but they are no worse than any other national group. What they aspire to, above all, is a piece of land to call their own on which to live in freedom and dignity.

Like other radical movements, Hamas began to moderate its political programme following its rise to power. From the ideological rejectionism of its charter, it began to move towards pragmatic accommodation of a two-state solution. In March 2007, Hamas and Fatah formed a national unity government that was ready to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with Israel. Israel, however, refused to negotiate with a government that included Hamas.

It continued to play the old game of divide and rule between rival Palestinian factions. In the late 1980s, Israel had supported the nascent Hamas in order to weaken Fatah, the secular nationalist movement led by Yasser Arafat. Now Israel began to encourage the corrupt and pliant Fatah leaders to overthrow their religious political rivals and recapture power. Aggressive American neoconservatives participated in the sinister plot to instigate a Palestinian civil war. Their meddling was a major factor in the collapse of the national unity government and in driving Hamas to seize power in Gaza in June 2007 to pre-empt a Fatah coup.

The war unleashed by Israel on Gaza on 27 December was the culmination of a series of clashes and confrontations with the Hamas government. In a broader sense, however, it is a war between Israel and the Palestinian people, because the people had elected the party to power. The declared aim of the war is to weaken Hamas and to intensify the pressure until its leaders agree to a new ceasefire on Israel's terms. The undeclared aim is to ensure that the Palestinians in Gaza are seen by the world simply as a humanitarian problem and thus to derail their struggle for independence and statehood.

The timing of the war was determined by political expediency. A general election is scheduled for 10 February and, in the lead-up to the election, all the main contenders are looking for an opportunity to prove their toughness. The army top brass had been champing at the bit to deliver a crushing blow to Hamas in order to remove the stain left on their reputation by the failure of the war against Hezbollah in Lebanon in July 2006. Israel's cynical leaders could also count on apathy and impotence of the pro-western Arab regimes and on blind support from President Bush in the twilight of his term in the White House. Bush readily obliged by putting all the blame for the crisis on Hamas, vetoing proposals at the UN Security Council for an immediate ceasefire and issuing Israel with a free pass to mount a ground invasion of Gaza.

As always, mighty Israel claims to be the victim of Palestinian aggression but the sheer asymmetry of power between the two sides leaves little room for doubt as to who is the real victim. This is indeed a conflict between David and Goliath but the Biblical image has been inverted - a small and defenceless Palestinian David faces a heavily armed, merciless and overbearing Israeli Goliath. The resort to brute military force is accompanied, as always, by the shrill rhetoric of victimhood and a farrago of self-pity overlaid with self-righteousness. In Hebrew this is known as the syndrome of bokhim ve-yorim, "crying and shooting".

To be sure, Hamas is not an entirely innocent party in this conflict. Denied the fruit of its electoral victory and confronted with an unscrupulous adversary, it has resorted to the weapon of the weak - terror. Militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad kept launching Qassam rocket attacks against Israeli settlements near the border with Gaza until Egypt brokered a six-month ceasefire last June. The damage caused by these primitive rockets is minimal but the psychological impact is immense, prompting the public to demand protection from its government. Under the circumstances, Israel had the right to act in self-defence but its response to the pinpricks of rocket attacks was totally disproportionate. The figures speak for themselves. In the three years after the withdrawal from Gaza, 11 Israelis were killed by rocket fire. On the other hand, in 2005-7 alone, the IDF killed 1,290 Palestinians in Gaza, including 222 children.

Whatever the numbers, killing civilians is wrong. This rule applies to Israel as much as it does to Hamas, but Israel's entire record is one of unbridled and unremitting brutality towards the inhabitants of Gaza. Israel also maintained the blockade of Gaza after the ceasefire came into force which, in the view of the Hamas leaders, amounted to a violation of the agreement. During the ceasefire, Israel prevented any exports from leaving the strip in clear violation of a 2005 accord, leading to a sharp drop in employment opportunities. Officially, 49.1% of the population is unemployed. At the same time, Israel restricted drastically the number of trucks carrying food, fuel, cooking-gas canisters, spare parts for water and sanitation plants, and medical supplies to Gaza. It is difficult to see how starving and freezing the civilians of Gaza could protect the people on the Israeli side of the border. But even if it did, it would still be immoral, a form of collective punishment that is strictly forbidden by international humanitarian law.

The brutality of Israel's soldiers is fully matched by the mendacity of its spokesmen. Eight months before launching the current war on Gaza, Israel established a National Information Directorate. The core messages of this directorate to the media are that Hamas broke the ceasefire agreements; that Israel's objective is the defence of its population; and that Israel's forces are taking the utmost care not to hurt innocent civilians. Israel's spin doctors have been remarkably successful in getting this message across. But, in essence, their propaganda is a pack of lies.

A wide gap separates the reality of Israel's actions from the rhetoric of its spokesmen. It was not Hamas but the IDF that broke the ceasefire. It di d so by a raid into Gaza on 4 November that killed six Hamas men. Israel's objective is not just the defence of its population but the eventual overthrow of the Hamas government in Gaza by turning the people against their rulers. And far from taking care to spare civilians, Israel is guilty of indiscriminate bombing and of a three-year-old blockade that has brought the inhabitants of Gaza, now 1.5 million, to the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.

The Biblical injunction of an eye for an eye is savage enough. But Israel's insane offensive against Gaza seems to follow the logic of an eye for an eyelash. After eight days of bombing, with a death toll of more than 400 Palestinians and four Israelis, the gung-ho cabinet ordered a land invasion of Gaza the consequences of which are incalculable.

No amount of military escalation can buy Israel immunity from rocket attacks from the military wing of Hamas. Despite all the death and destruction that Israel has inflicted on them, they kept up their resistance and they kept firing their rockets. This is a movement that glorifies victimhood and martyrdom. There is simply no military solution to the conflict between the two communities. The problem with Israel's concept of security is that it denies even the most elementary security to the other community. The only way for Israel to achieve security is not through shooting but through talks with Hamas, which has repeatedly declared its readiness to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with the Jewish state within its pre-1967 borders for 20, 30, or even 50 years. Israel has rejected this offer for the same reason it spurned the Arab League peace plan of 2002, which is still on the table: it involves concessions and compromises.

This brief review of Israel's record over the past four decades makes it difficult to resist the conclusion that it has become a rogue state with "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". A rogue state habitually violates international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction and practises terrorism - the use of violence against civilians for political purposes. Israel fulfils all of these three criteria; the cap fits and it must wear it. Israel's real aim is not peaceful coexistence with its Palestinian neighbours but military domination. It keeps compounding the mistakes of the past with new and more disastrous ones. Politicians, like everyone else, are of course free to repeat the lies and mistakes of the past. But it is not mandatory to do so.

• Avi Shlaim is a professor of international relations at the University of Oxford and the author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World and of Lion of Jordan: King Hussein's Life in War and Peace.

"We Will Not Go Down" dedicated to Gaza

2009-01-13T14:19:00.003-05:00

(Composed by Michael Heart)
Copyright 2009

A blinding flash of white light
Lit up the sky over Gaza tonight
People running for cover
Not knowing whether they’re dead or alive

They came with their tanks and their planes
With ravaging fiery flames
And nothing remains
Just a voice rising up in the smoky haze

We will not go down
In the night, without a fight
You can burn up our mosques and our homes and our schools
But our spirit will never die
We will not go down
In Gaza tonight

Women and children alike
Murdered and massacred night after night
While the so-called leaders of countries afar
Debated on who’s wrong or right

But their powerless words were in vain
And the bombs fell down like acid rain
But through the tears and the blood and the pain
You can still hear that voice through the smoky haze

We will not go down
In the night, without a fight
You can burn up our mosques and our homes and our schools
But our spirit will never die
We will not go down
In Gaza tonight

Sderot and Gaza: Second letters

2008-04-22T21:43:00.001-04:00

Anav Silverman, a young Israeli woman who works in Sderot and Mona Yousef, a young Palestinian woman in Gaza, exchange letters for a second time via the BBC website.

Mona is an English Literature graduate who works as a freelance translator in the northern Gaza Strip. Anav is studying English literature and political science at Bar Ilan university. She works part time in Sderot's media centre.

Read their first letters
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Mona,

I hope it is more quiet for you when you read this.

War is devastating to all and I have been going through this hellish experience myself this past year.

I want to tell you that from my side in Sderot I see the same kind of pain, trauma and death that you described in your email.

Hamas's resistance is not "symbolic" for the Israelis living in southern Israel.

Take Osher Twito. This eight year-old boy can no longer walk because shrapnel from a rocket explosion severed his left leg, which had to be amputated.

Sderot was once a city of 24,000 people. These "homemade rockets" have forced close to 5,000 people to relocate elsewhere in Israel over the past seven years.

Although the weaponry of Palestinian terror groups may be crude and inexpensive, it has wreaked devastation for the Israelis in this region, as any advanced military weaponry would.

I know this may be difficult to believe based on the way Israel is presented in the Arab world, but the Israeli army does not intend nor want to kill innocent Palestinian women and children. The IDF enters Gaza to eliminate the terrorists who terrorise Israelis.

I feel your pain at the innocent lives taken in this warfare. And remember that most of the rockets are launched from civilian areas like schoolyards and hospitals.

Do you believe that the Jewish people have a right to live in this land? Do you recognise Israel as a Jewish state?

It is very difficult to target Palestinian terrorists when they use women and children as human shields.

Hamas times its rocket fire so that Jewish children will be the most likely targets. It fires Qassam rockets early in the morning when they go to school and in the afternoon when their parents pick them up.

This "symbolic" war by Hamas is not being waged solely against our soldiers, but against us - the Jewish people.

You say your family originally came from Ashkelon. I am curious, where did your great-great-great grandparents originally come from? How long had they been here?

I too have family who were displaced. My grandmother left Poland because of the growing fear of Nazi control. She managed to escape to Israel but her entire family was killed in the Holocaust before they could join her. She never went back to Poland.

Do you believe that the Jewish people have a right to live in this land? Do you recognise Israel as a Jewish state?

I know that Ashkelon to you is al-Majdal. If the Hebrew names of these cities are not recognised and the Jewish presence in this land not tolerated among the Arabs - how do you conceive that there will be peace with Israel?

Outside the conflict, I was wondering what English books you like reading? This year, Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte, is one of my favourites. I can't decide if Heathcliff is truly a villain!

Best wishes and keep well,

Anav

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Dear Anav,

It is pleasure to write to you again.

Yes, it is more quiet now in terms of military attacks.

Heathcliff is a victim of his tyrannical society, but when he is in power, he becomes a victimiser himself. Do you notice, the victim always becomes the bully when he has control?

I don't care where my great-great-great grandparents came from, or when. History is full of migration and the movement of peoples, including yours.

After three thousand years living around the world, suddenly you remembered your homeland!

You said your family came to Palestine because of the spread of Nazism, to escape the Holocaust.

Why should we Palestinians have to pay the price of others' crimes? If the Nazis killed your grandmother's family, why do you kill us in return?

I don't mean you personally of course, but the Israeli state.

If we had had advanced weaponry... it would have become a war between two nations - with no mention of terrorism

How can I accept the existence of a state which has occupied our land for 40 years, an occupation which has resulted in so many Palestinians being killed?

On terrorism... why is launching "crude and inexpensive" weaponry on the children of Sderot considered terrorism, when F16s and Mercava tanks killing children inside their homes in Gaza is not?

Samar and Samah were two sisters, aged 13 and 23, who were together at home in Gaza when an Israeli shell killed them last month. They weren't resisting anyone.

I think the term "terrorism" is connected to a level of sophistication in the weapons used. If we had had advanced weaponry, this whole thing would have been managed differently. It would have become a war between two nations - with no mention of terrorism.

Another point, what do you call the prevention of food and medical supplies entering the Gaza Strip? Is this not a kind of terrorism?

Peace is always possible everywhere if attention is paid to it, and if rights are returned to people who have lost them. I believe in peace, as we are exchanging letters.

I think peace is what makes us human. You, the Jew, and I, the Arab Muslim, are humans, so there is place for peace.

But can you tell me why Israel closes the borders and prevents people from travelling?

Don't you think that the international community (the UN) handles the conflict unfairly - and has actually made it worse?

Do you see this as a struggle for survival, between me and you?

My favourite English novel is Heart of Darkness for Joseph Conrad. Don't you think, colonialism in all ages has the same ideology?

Do you like Shakespeare? Hamlet is one of my favourites. Every time I read it I discover that he has a new problem.

Best wishes,

Mona

Sderot and Gaza: letter exchange

2008-04-20T20:47:00.002-04:00

Against the backdrop of continuing violence between Hamas militants in Gaza and the Israeli army, two young women, an Israeli and a Palestinian, have agreed to exchange letters via the BBC website.

Mona is an English Literature graduate who works as a freelance translator in the northern Gaza Strip. Just a few kilometres separate her from Anav, a university student who spends part of her time in Sderot.

Dear Mona,

I have been working in Sderot since August 2007.

Anav does not discuss politics with her Arab university friends

Life in Sderot is life in a war-zone. For over seven years, the people of Sderot and the western Negev have lived with rocket fire from Gaza daily, and the rocket terror worsens each month.

I work at the Sderot Media Center. Our aim is to raise awareness of this reality both in Israel and internationally.

I chose to work here because the residents of this city under fire need support.

I used to sleep in Sderot until I heard the whoosh of the Qassam rockets over the roof a couple of times.

The bomb shelter is downstairs, and I cannot make it down within 15 seconds of the siren sounding.

So for my sanity and safety, I decided it would be best to sleep outside Sderot in a neighbouring kibbutz during the nights I spend in the area.

I feel very fortunate that I have this option to leave when I want because the families of Sderot are not able to do so.

Do I see Israelis and Palestinians living side by side in peace? No

Most of the residents are financially tied to the area and are on the lower economic scale.

Sderot is a warm and tight-knit community of rooted families who have lived in the city for several generations.

It is not unusual to find a family of grandparents, children, and grandchildren all living on the same street.

I was born in Jerusalem, but I moved to the United States with my family when I was two. I grew up in the USA in Maine, which is on the Canadian border. Maine is a beautiful state surrounded by lakes and forests and wildlife.

I left this peaceful way of life after I graduated high school four years ago and moved to Israel.

Growing up, it was always clear to me that I would come back to Israel.

Reading the Biblical stories of my ancestors and their life in Israel two thousand years ago gave me a sense of a homeland that was finally accessible to me.

As a family, we would also visit Israel every year. My mom is Israeli and she has a lot of family here.

Do I see Palestinians and Israelis living side by side in peace? No. I am very cautious of the word peace, because it is an abstract idea that has different meanings for people of different cultures.

Peace as I understand it, is based on love and mutual respect - and most importantly respect for an ideology and belief that is different from your own.

People expect Israel to give away land and then there will be instant peace.

Years of educating Palestinian children to hate and terrorize Israeli civilians cannot be reversed by simply giving away land.

The Gaza Strip was given away with the idea that there would be peace, but the Qassam terror has only increased dramatically since the disengagement.

I would like to ask you Mona, what is it like living in Gaza? What was your education like when you were growing up? What is your family like?

I look forward to hearing from you and send you warm regards.

Anav.

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Dear Anav

It is very kind of you to write from Sderot.

Mona has lost a grandfather and a brother in the conflict

Before I tell you about life in Gaza, I would like to tell you that I am originally from what is now the Israeli city of Ashkelon.

My family left with thousands of others after 1948 and my grandfather was one of many killed in fighting the Israelis.

My grandmother is still alive. She tells in detail how peaceful life was before the Israeli thugs attacked.

I grew up during the first Intifada [Palestinian uprising against Israeli rule 1987-1993].

I can't remember how many times the Israeli forces attacked my home, but I remember one time hiding under my bed, trembling with fear.

I have three younger brothers who are all at school. I used to have four - my brother Amer was shot dead by an Israeli soldier in 1992. He was 12 years old.

Scenes of blood and death are fixed in my mind. I have to say, Israel taught us how to hate it, no-one else.

Is life in Sderot a war-zone?! Then what words should I use to describe Gaza?

If you contrast the weaponry of Israel with Hamas - you see Hamas' resistance is symbolic, nothing more

Life in Gaza is like hell.

Israel killed more than 60 people in Gaza on Saturday 1 March alone. Many were civilians and children.

Are there any similarities between the power of the weapons that do this - and Hamas' home made Qassam rockets?

How many people have they killed since Hamas started launching them? How many houses have they destroyed?

If you contrast the two, I think you can see that Hamas' manner of resistance is symbolic, nothing more than that.

When Israel dismantled its illegal settlements and disengaged from the Gaza Strip in 2005, I was happy that I would finally be able to visit my friend who lives in the middle of the Strip whenever I wanted.

But Israel didn't leave us peace, it left us sonic booms. The occupation forces use this to shatter our nerves. The sound of the aircraft is so loud it can break windows.

How would you feel if someone else controlled your every movement? How would you feel if you didn't have the right to move inside your country; if you were prevented from travelling abroad for study; if the cost of food and fuel was determined by someone else closing your borders; if you spent most of your nights in darkness?

I had severe headaches last month because I spent several hours studying by faint candlelight.

Why are we punished with darkness? Why are patients prevented from having medicine?

It is our land and we have the right to dismiss anyone who shows aggression towards us.

Shelling has been going on while I have been writing this. I just heard my mother asking "What will happen tonight"?

I hope your night is quiet.

Warmest regards,

Mona.

Israel using psychological torture

2008-04-18T21:10:00.000-04:00

Martin Asser
BBC News, Jerusalem

Gheith Nasr's parents were taken to the police station a day after his arrest

Gheith Nasr, 18, of the Burj Luqluq neighbourhood in East Jerusalem, has not had the ideal preparation for his high-school graduation exams in a few weeks time.

Since January, he says, he has been arrested four times by the Israeli security services, accused of stone-throwing and vandalising security cameras in the Old City.

He says he has been detained each time for a few days in one of Jerusalem's interrogation centres, and then sent home under orders not to leave the house for another few days.

The muscular, but shy and inarticulate teenager says he regularly suffered violent treatment as interrogators tried to get him to own up to crimes he says he didn't commit - but one of his arrests stands out from the others.

"When I saw my mother being brought into the cell with handcuffs, I tell you, I would have told them anything just to save her, anything," he said.

It happened a day after Gheith was taken off to Qishlik police station. Plainclothes officers and troops returned to the house and searched through the family's belongings.

I was only in the room for a few seconds; we looked at each other but we were both too shocked to say anything

- Um Gheith, mother of prisoner

Already in possession of their ID cards, one of the officers told the parents they must now go down to the police station where they would see their son.

'Too shocked'

The parents were taken into separate rooms at Qishlik station. Um Gheith - the mother - takes up the story.

"There were two men in the room. I sat down and one stood behind me while the other started shouting in my face in a most aggressive and intimidating way.

"I was shocked, it was the first time I had even set foot in a police station and this man was saying horrible things about what they were going to do to Gheith.

"Then the one behind said: 'Cuff her hands for the night' and they put handcuffs on me and then took me along to another room, where I was surprised to see Gheith sitting.

"I was only in the room for a few seconds; we looked at each other but we were both too shocked to say anything. Then they took me out and took off the handcuffs."

After an hour Mrs Nasr was brought back into the cell for another short and wordless encounter. Then she and her husband were given back their IDs and released.

In the meantime, Mr Nasr had also been taken in to see Gheith, minus handcuffs and an initial "softening up", but with instructions from a secret service man to encourage the boy to confess.

"I did nothing of the kind," the genial hospital goods supplier told me. "I sat together with my son for about 10 minutes, asking him how he was and how they were treating him, and saying a few things to keep his morale up.

"Then the officer came back and Gheith was then taken away. The officer asked whether my son was going to own up. I said: 'He has done nothing' and the officer replied: 'You are a liar!'

Suicide attempts

In a statement, Israel's domestic security agency, the GSS or Shin Bet, said it never detains suspects' relatives or gives false information to detainees to obtain confessions.

"Terrorist investigations are conducted by the Shin Bet according to the [1999] Supreme Court ruling [limiting interrogation methods], under the restrictions of the law and the tight supervision of the Justice Ministry and the courts," the statement said.

Human rights group the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) says a pattern has emerged recently of the security forces using such tactics with Palestinian interrogees.

It has published detailed evidence of six sample cases from the last year by the GSS.

The parliamentary constitutional and legal committee has taken the unusual step of scheduling a hearing hours after publication.

Manipulating innocent family members is morally reprehensible whatever the danger

-Eliahu Abram, PCATI

The cases are all far more serious than that of Gheith Nasr in security terms, involving terrorism charges, but the interrogation tactics appear exactly the same.

When Mahmoud Sweiti, accused of belonging to the Hamas military wing in Hebron, was shown his wife and father, who was dressed in a prison coat, he twice attempted suicide, the report says.

In another testimony, the mother and brother of another prisoner - Said Diab - say they were both detained and that he was forced to secretly watch them being violently interrogated, as he claimed to have been himself.

"Presenting close family members as suspects or under interrogation puts the real suspect under incredible psychological pressure, which can be as bad - if not worse - than physical torture," says PCATI legal consultant Eliahu Abram.

"The General Security Service may think that between beating a prisoner and showing him his mother crying in detention, the latter is the more non-abusive way, but it is not," he told the BBC.

Violent techniques

Israel says it adheres to regulations concerning the treatment of detainees

"The prisoner feels a sense of powerlessness and responsibility for what is happening to their loved-one - there is no telling whether information obtained in this way is reliable," Mr Abram said.

He agrees the domestic intelligence service has to do all it can to investigate the terrorism threat which Israel faces from resourceful and determined foes.

"But that is no justification; manipulating innocent family members is morally reprehensible whatever the danger."

The use of violent interrogation techniques is prohibited under Israeli and international anti-torture laws, but Mr Abram says the Supreme Court has allowed the use of "trickery" to obtain information.

PCATI believes the domestic intelligence agency is breaking the rules on physical abuse and is acting in an atmosphere of impunity because it says the legal authorities do not investigate accusations made by human rights groups.

Day of Gaza unrest leaves 22 dead

2008-04-18T00:47:00.001-04:00

Watch video.

The aftermath of the attacks in Gaza

At least 22 people, including five Palestinian children, have died in Gaza's worst day of fighting since Israeli incursions in early March.

A Hamas ambush in northern Gaza killed three Israeli troops, Israel's highest daily loss in the area for 3 years.

That sparked Israeli air strikes near Bureij refugee camp, which Israel said targeted gunmen, but which left five children among 11 people killed.

A cameraman also died when his car was apparently fired on by an Israeli tank.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he was gravely concerned by the escalation of fighting and urged both sides to show restraint.

Thin hopes

At least 100 people were killed during operations launched by Israel in early March after Palestinian rocket attacks on its territory.

DAY OF BLOODSHED IN GAZA

Children among 11 killed by Israeli air strike near Bureij

Three Israeli soldiers killed near Nahal Oz

Four Hamas militants killed by Israeli troops east of Gaza City

Reuters cameraman (above) and two others killed in apparent tank-strike

One man killed on air strike on car near Beit Lahyia

Since then, casualty figures had dwindled in Gaza with Egypt attempting to broker some sort of ceasefire, the BBC's Tim Franks reports.

Now the chances of that appear slimmer than ever, our Middle East correspondent says.

Wednesday's highest death-toll came when Israel launched air-strikes near the Bureij camp. According to Hamas, Israeli helicopters launched four missiles.

Earlier, three Israeli soldiers were killed and three wounded when Hamas gunmen approached the security fence near the Nahal Oz crossing, Israel's army said.

The deaths were Israel's highest daily toll in the area since 2006.

Pursuing two Hamas fighters who had planted a bomb, the soldiers were ambushed by a second Hamas group lying in wait, Israel's military said.

Hamas said it had mounted a "sophisticated ambush".

'Dangerous warfare'

In other violence throughout the day, a Reuters cameraman was among three killed when his car exploded, apparently after being hit by an Israeli tank shell.

Two others died in the blast that killed the Reuters cameraman

Fadel Shana, 23, was killed along with two bystanders after he got out of a car marked "TV" and "Press" in central Gaza, the agency reports.

Film recovered from his camera shows an Israeli tank opening fire several hundred metres away, Reuters adds.

It goes blank about two seconds after the shell is fired - apparently at the moment it hit the car.

An Israeli military official later expressed regret at the cameraman's death.

"The presence of media, photographers and other uninvolved individuals in areas of warfare is extremely dangerous and poses a threat to their lives," he told Reuters.

Lengthy campaign?

In other fighting on Wednesday, four Hamas militants were killed by Israeli troops east of Gaza City.

An air strike on a car also killed one Palestinian near Beit Lahyia, in the north of the strip.

It is hard to say whether the recent spike in Israeli military casualties is down to more effective tactics by Hamas or simply the result of increased Israeli activity in Gaza and therefore increased exposure, says BBC defence and security correspondent Rob Watson.

A recent Israeli study by a research group with close ties to Israel's defence establishment said Hamas was currently engaged in the broadest and most significant military build-up in its history.

Some generals argue a major Israeli incursion will eventually be needed to prevent Hamas growing even stronger militarily.

But they also fear the possible consequences of a lengthy campaign in the crowded cities and refugee camps of Gaza, our correspondent says.

U.S. Labor and Gaza

2008-04-02T18:48:00.000-04:00

By Larry Adams, Michael Letwin, and Brenda Stokely
New York City Labor Against the War

[To endorse the following statement, please click here]

March 23, 2008

New York City Labor Against the War joins the Congress of South Africa Trade Unions in denouncing Israel's recent massacres in Gaza, the victims of which include at least 130 Palestinians -- half of them civilians, including dozens of women and children -- since February 27.

WHO ARE THE TERRORISTS?

Israel claims that it is fighting "terrorism" in Gaza. This is the same hollow excuse with which the U.S. seeks to justify war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the erosion of civil liberties and labor rights at home.

In fact, Israel's attacks are part of a relentless, U.S.-orchestrated campaign of collective punishment -- with complicity of the corrupt Palestinian Authority -- to overthrow the democratically-elected Hamas government.

Long before its latest massacres, Israel had turned Gaza into the world's "largest open air prison," assassinating activists, and cutting off essential goods and services to 1.5 million people. Only as a result did Hamas abandon a unilateral two-year truce.

Even now, Israel seeks to derail Hamas truce offers by escalating arrests, home demolitions, settlements, and murder in the West Bank -- from which no rockets have been fired.

Despite media portrayals, this violence is overwhelmingly one-sided against Palestinians, who have no aircraft, artillery, or tanks.

Thus, while only one Israeli has been killed by rockets launched from Gaza since May 2007, Israel's modern arsenal killed 60 Palestinians on March 1 alone.

On February 29, Israel's Deputy Defense Minister, Matan Valnai, threatened a bigger "Shoah" -- a reference to the Nazi Holocaust.

As UN official John Dugard has pointed out, Palestinian rockets are not the cause, but the "inevitable consequence," of Israeli state terror in Gaza, the slow-motion genocide which human rights organizations describe as "worse than at any time since the beginning of the Israeli military occupation in 1967."

Following the latest attacks, a Council on Foreign Relations expert explained, "You have Palestinians who wouldn't necessarily support the violence but they are saying, 'Well, what choice do we have?'"

SIXTY YEARS OF ETHNIC CLEANSING AND GENOCIDE

Israel's war on Gaza can only be understood as an attempt to stamp out all resistance -- including nonviolent protest -- to Israel's ongoing ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.

Indeed, most of Gaza's population are survivors of Zionist expulsions since the Nakba (Catastrophe) of 1948, when 13,000 Palestinians were massacred, 531 towns and villages erased, 11 urban neighborhoods emptied, and more than 750,000 (85 percent) driven from 78 percent of their country.

In 1967, Israel seized the remaining 22 percent of Palestine -- including East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza -- which, in violation of UN resolutions, remains under Israeli military rule.

Today, as a result of these policies, at least 70 percent of the 10 million Palestinians are refugees -- the largest such population in the world. Despite other UN resolutions, Israel vows that it will never allow them to return.

Palestinians who managed to remain within the 1948 areas -- today, 1.4 million (or 20 percent of the population in Israel) -- are permanently separated from their families in exile, subject to more than 20 discriminatory laws, treated as a "demographic threat," and threatened with mass expulsion.

In East Jerusalem and the West Bank, 140 illegal, ever-expanding Jewish-only settlements and road systems dominate the water resources and control 40 percent of the land. Palestinians are confined, separated, denied medical treatment, and degraded by an 8-meter-high separation wall, pass laws, curfews and 600 military checkpoints.

From 2000-2007, 4,274 Palestinians in these 1967 territories were killed, compared with 1,024 Israelis. The military has seized 60,000 political prisoners; it still holds and tortures 11,000.

All of these conditions have dramatically worsened since the Annapolis "peace conference" in November.

U.S. SPONSORSHIP

Israel's war on Palestine depends completely on U.S. money, weapons, and approval.

Since 1948, Israel -- the top foreign aid recipient -- has received at least $108 billion from the U.S. government. In the past ten years alone, U.S. military aid was $17 billion; over the next decade, it will be $30 billion.

Israel's recent assault on Gaza was endorsed by a Congressional vote of 404-1. Democratic and Republican presidential candidates fall over themselves to offer more of the same.

On March 22, Dick Cheney reassured Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of "America's. . . . commitment to Israel's right to defend itself always against terrorism, rocket attacks and other threats," and that the U.S. and Israel are "friends -- special friends."

This "special friendship" means that, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is U.S. aircraft, cluster bombs, and bullets that kill and maim on behalf of the occupiers. Just one of many targets was the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions headquarters in Gaza City, destroyed by F-16s on February 28.

Such support bolsters Israel's longstanding role as watchdog and junior partner for U.S. domination over the oil-rich Middle East -- and beyond. In that capacity, Israel was apartheid South Africa's closest ally.

After 9/11, it helped intensify the demonization of Arabs and Muslims. It has 200 nuclear weapons, but helped manufacture "evidence" of Iraqi WMD. With U.S. weapons and support, it invaded Lebanon in 2006.

Together, these wars and occupations have killed, maimed, and displaced millions of people, thereby creating the world's largest humanitarian crisis. Now, Israel is the cutting edge of threats against Syria and Iran.

In other words, oppression and resistance in Palestine is the epicenter of U.S.-Israeli war throughout the Middle East. These stakes are reflected in the ferocity of Israel's attacks against Gaza.

LABOR'S ROLE

In Palestine, South Africa, Britain, Canada, and other countries, labor has condemned Israeli Apartheid.

Workers in the United States pay a staggering human and financial price, including deepening economic crisis, for U.S.-Israeli war and occupation.

But through a combination of intent, ignorance, and/or expediency, much of labor officialdom in this country -- often without the knowledge or consent of union members -- is an accomplice of Israeli Apartheid.

Some 1,500 labor bodies have plowed at least $5 billion of union pension funds and retirement plans into State of Israel Bonds.

In April 2002, while Israel butchered Palestinian refugees at Jenin in the West Bank, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney was a featured speaker at a belligerent "National Solidarity Rally for Israel." In 2006, leadership of the American Federation of Teachers embraced Israel's war on Lebanon.

These same leaders collaborate with attempts by the Jewish Labor Committee (JLC) to silence Apartheid Israel's opponents -- many of whom are Jewish.

In July 2007, top officials of the AFL-CIO and Change to Win signed a JLC statement that condemned British unions for even considering the nonviolent campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel.

Just days ago, the JLC and the leadership of UNITE-HERE bullied a community organization in Boston into revoking space for a conference on "Zionism and the Repression of Anti-Colonial Movements."

Even the leadership of U.S. Labor Against the War, which receives funding from several major unions, remains adamantly silent about U.S. government, corporate, and labor support for Israeli Apartheid.

Labor leaders' complicity parallels infamous "AFL-CIA" support for U.S. war and dictatorship in Vietnam, Latin America, Gulf War I, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. It strengthens the U.S.-Israel war machine and labor's corporate enemies, reinforces racism and Islamophobia, and makes a mockery of international solidarity.

A NECESSARY STAND

More than forty years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came under intense public attack for opposing the Vietnam war. Even within the Civil Rights Movement, some dismissed his position as too "divisive" and "unpopular."

In his famous speech at the Riverside Church in April 1967, Dr. King answered these critics by pointing out that "silence is betrayal," and that "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today . . . [is] my own government."

At the National Labor Leadership Assembly for Peace in November 1967, he reiterated the most basic principles of labor solidarity: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. . . . Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus."

These principles are no less relevant today.

Yes, the Israel lobby seeks to silence opponents of Israeli Apartheid. All the more need for trade unionists to break that silence by speaking out against Israeli military occupation, for the right of Palestinian refugees to return, and for the elimination of apartheid throughout historic Palestine.

Therefore, we reaffirm our support for an immediate and total:

1. End to U.S. military and economic support for Israel.
2. Divestment of business and labor investments in Israel.
3. Withdrawal of U.S. and allied forces from the Middle East.

Larry Adams
Former President, NPMHU Local 300

Michael Letwin
Former President, UAW Local 2325/Assn. of Legal Aid Attorneys

Brenda Stokely
Former President, AFSCME DC 1707; Co-Chair, Million Worker March

NYCLAW, with Al-Awda-NY The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, is a cofounder of Labor for Palestine.

All the links lead to other articles that are extremely informative. I suggest you follow them all and read them.

The original article can be found here

Burning Conscience: Israeli Soldiers Speak Out

2008-03-16T17:37:00.000-04:00

A searing interview with Avichai Sharon and Noam Chayut, both veterans of the Israeli Defense Forces and members of Breaking the Silence. Sharon and Chayut served during the second intifada, an on-going bloodbath that has claimed the lives of over three thousand Palestinians and nine-hundred-fifty Israelis. After thorough introspection, these young men have chosen to speak out about their experiences as self-described "brutal occupiers of a disputed land." Producer: Sat Gwin

Alternate Focus is available on the Dish Network, Free Speech TV, Channel 9415, Saturdays at 8:00pm EST and on cable stations near you. Check website for details.

Click here to watch the video

To Blame the Victims for This Killing Spree,both Morality & Sense

2008-03-13T23:49:00.000-04:00

Originally posted by Samar Ahmad: "It was publishd last week but its a good article.." =)

By Seumas Milne
Published on Wednesday, March 5, 2008 by The Guardian/UK

Washington's covert attempts to overturn an election result lie behind the crisis in Gaza, as leaked papers show

The attempt by western politicians and media to present this week’s carnage in the Gaza Strip as a legitimate act of Israeli self-defence - or at best the latest phase of a wearisome conflict between two somehow equivalent sides - has reached Alice-in-Wonderland proportions. Since Israel’s deputy defence minister, Matan Vilnai, issued his chilling warning last week that Palestinians faced a “holocaust” if they continued to fire home-made rockets into Israel, the balance sheet of suffering has become ever clearer. More than 120 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza by Israeli forces in the past week, of whom one in five were children and more than half were civilians, according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. During the same period, three Israelis were killed, two of whom were soldiers taking part in the attacks.

So what was the response of the British foreign secretary, David Miliband, to this horrific killing spree? It was to blame the “numerous civilian casualties” on the week’s “significant rise” in Palestinian rocket attacks “and the Israeli response”, condemn the firing of rockets as “terrorist acts” and defend Israel’s right to self-defence “in accordance with international law”. But of course it has been nothing of the kind - any more than has been Israel’s 40-year occupation of the Palestinian territories, its continued expansion of settlements or its refusal to allow the return of expelled refugees.

Nor is the past week’s one-sided burden of casualties and misery anything new, but the gap is certainly getting wider. After the election of Hamas two years ago, Israel - backed by the US and the European Union - imposed a punitive economic blockade, which has hardened over the past months into a full-scale siege of the Gaza Strip, including fuel, electricity and essential supplies. Since January’s mass breakout across the Egyptian border signalled that collective punishment wouldn’t work, Israel has opted for military escalation. What that means on the ground can be seen from the fact that at the height of the intifada, from 2000 to 2005, four Palestinians were killed for every Israeli; in 2006 it was 30; last year the ratio was 40 to one. In the three months since the US-sponsored Middle East peace conference at Annapolis, 323 Palestinians have been killed compared with seven Israelis, two of whom were civilians.

But the US and Europe’s response is to blame the principal victims for a crisis it has underwritten at every stage. In interviews with Palestinian leaders over the past few days, BBC presenters have insisted that Palestinian rockets have been the “starting point” of the violence, as if the occupation itself did not exist. In the West Bank, from which no rockets are currently fired and where the US-backed administration of Mahmoud Abbas maintains a ceasefire, there have been 480 Israeli military attacks over the past three months and 26 Palestinians killed. By contrast, the rockets from Gaza which are supposed to be the justification for the latest Israeli onslaught have killed a total of 14 people over seven years.

Like any other people, the Palestinians have the right to resist occupation - or to self-defence - whether they choose to exercise it or not. In spite of Israel’s disengagement in 2005, Gaza remains occupied territory, both legally and in reality. It is the world’s largest open-air prison, with land, sea and air access controlled by Israel, which carries out military operations at will. Palestinians may differ about the tactics of resistance, but the dominant view (if not that of Abbas) has long been that without some armed pressure, their negotiating hand will inevitably be weaker. And while it might be objected that the rockets are indiscriminate, that is not an easy argument for Israel to make, given its appalling record of civilian casualties in both the Palestinian territories and Lebanon.

The truth is that Hamas’s control of Gaza is the direct result of the US refusal to accept the Palestinians’ democratic choice in 2006 and its covert attempt to overthrow the elected administration by force through its Fatah placeman Muhammad Dahlan. As confirmed by secret documents leaked to the US magazine Vanity Fair - and also passed to the Guardian - George Bush, Condoleezza Rice and Elliott Abrams, the US deputy national security adviser (of Iran-Contra fame), funnelled cash, weapons and instructions to Dahlan, partly through Arab intermediaries such as Jordan and Egypt, in an effort to provoke a Palestinian civil war. As evidence of the military buildup emerged, Hamas moved to forestall the US plan with its own takeover of Gaza last June. David Wurmser, who resigned as Dick Cheney’s chief Middle East adviser the following month, argues: “What happened wasn’t so much a coup by Hamas but an attempted coup by Fatah that was pre-empted before it could happen.”

Yesterday, Rice attempted to defend the failed US attempt to reverse the results of the Palestinian elections by pointing to Iran’s support for Hamas. Meanwhile, Israel’s attacks on Gaza are expected to resume once she has left the region, even if no one believes they will stop the rockets. Some in the Israeli government hope that they can nevertheless weaken Hamas as a prelude to pushing Gaza into Egypt’s unwilling arms; others hope to bring Abbas and his entourage back to Gaza after they have crushed Hamas, perhaps with a transitional international force to save the Palestinian president’s face.

Neither looks a serious option, not least because Hamas cannot be crushed by force, even with the bloodbath that some envisage. The third, commonsense option, backed by 64% of Israelis, is to take up Hamas’s offer - repeated by its leader Khalid Mish’al at the weekend - and negotiate a truce. It’s a move that now attracts not only left-leaning Israeli politicians such as Yossi Beilin, but also a growing number of rightwing establishment figures, including Ariel Sharon’s former security adviser Giora Eiland, the former Mossad boss Efraim Halevy, and the ex-defence minister Shaul Mofaz.

The US, however, is resolutely opposed to negotiating with what it has long branded a terrorist organisation - or allowing anyone else to do so, including other Palestinians. As the leaked American papers confirm, Rice effectively instructed Abbas to “collapse” the joint Hamas-Fatah national unity government agreed in Mecca early last year, a decision carried out after Hamas’s pre-emptive takeover. But for the Palestinians, national unity is an absolute necessity if they are to have any chance of escaping a world of walled cantons, checkpoints, ethnically segregated roads, dispossession and humiliation.

What else can Israel do to stop the rockets, its supporters ask. The answer could not be more obvious: end the illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories and negotiate a just settlement for the Palestinian refugees, ethnically cleansed 60 years ago - who, with their families, make up the majority of Gaza’s 1.5 million people. All the Palestinian factions, including Hamas, accept that as the basis for a permanent settlement or indefinite end of armed conflict. In the meantime, agree a truce, exchange prisoners and lift the blockade. Israelis increasingly seem to get it - but the grim reality appears to be that a lot more blood is going to have to flow before it’s accepted in Washington.

s.milne@guardian.co.uk

© Guardian News and Media Limited 2008

Wave of arrests at Birzeit University

2008-03-12T18:13:00.000-04:00

Right to Education, R2E, 3 March 2008

Since January 2008, eight Birzeit University students and one employee have been arrested by the Israeli army. None of whom have been charged. This comes amongst a wave of arrests all over the West Bank under the pretext of the person belonging to a political party.

Three of the eight arrests are held under administrative detention - a system of incarceration without trial based on 'secret' evidence Â– meaning there was no evidence to suggest they violated any Israeli laws at the time of the arrest. Administrative Detention is detention authorized by administrative order rather than by judicial decree under the pretext that there is not yet sufficient evidence to merit a case but that the person should be incarcerated until enough evidence is found. Prisoners can spend many years in prison waiting for a charge to be brought against them. Birzeit University currently has a student who has been under administrative detention for 2.5 years.

The arrests include the acting head of the Student Council, Abdullah Owais, who replaced Fadi Hamad after he was detained in December 2007 and charged with belonging to an illegal organization and holding a position of responsibility while belonging to this organization. Fadi was arrested on Sunday 25 November 2007 by Israeli military Special Forces while on the road linking the Al-Jalazoon refugee camp with the West Bank city of Ramallah. On Thursday 6 December he was sentenced to a year imprisonment on the grounds that he belongs to the Islamic Bloc student group, which under Israeli military law is an illegal organization like any other student group affiliated to a political party.

The sentencing came as a result of an earlier probation order which required Fadi to give up membership to any political party for three years. In December 2004, Fadi had been arrested for being a member of the Islamic Bloc and sentenced to 10 months in prison. Since he had never been connected with any armed activity, he was released on probation early, in September 2005, on the condition that he did not engage with a student group for the next three years.

Birzeit's Right to Education Campaign lawyer explained that Fadi fell victim to a wave of politically motivated arrests which rest on flimsy legal proceedings, "His charge this time was based on a prisoner's confession obtained by Shin Bet [an Israeli intelligence agency], stating that Fadi was a member of 'Al Qutleh Islamieh' [Islamic Bloc] in 2006, but the army only chose to make a case of it now. They are using Administrative Detention more loosely than usual, not even bothering to claim they have 'secret evidence'."

Israeli military law criminalises membership to student councils which are politically affiliated to the major parties, but focus on the welfare and support for students. The continual arrest of student members is a means of crippling Palestinian political resistance. In Fadi's case, he was arrested for his political ideas alone because there were no charges of connection to an armed movement. It serves as a warning to all Palestinian students: 'today it is Fadi, but tomorrow it could be you.'

Administrative detentions and arrests of student council activists are a legalistic means to punish young Palestinians engaged in political activity. Birzeit University currently has 15 students held under administrative detention, and 95 students and employees in prison - 38 of whom have not yet been charged.

This article was posted on the Birzet University Right to Education Campaign website.
Click here to go directly to the original article.

The Wall

2008-03-09T23:37:00.000-04:00

The full recap of the documentary "The Wall"
Click here to view the video.

[The Wall of Hate]

Occupation is a fluid term that can be easily manipulated by the powerful and occupying powers. When the occupied is portrayed as violent, and the occupier as victim, then democracy and justice have to be redefined. If the international community cannot stop Israel’s Apartheid Wall and the destruction of people and their livelihood, then humanity is at stake.

In June 2000, and while the international community is pushing to promote freedom, and install democracies throughout the Middle East, Israel decides to reinforce its occupation by encircling the West Bank and Palestinian towns with a separation barrier that is meant to choke the Palestinian population and deprive them from their livelihood. Compared to the 96 mile, 11.8 feet high Berlin Wall that was destroyed in 1989, the Israel Separation Wall extends more than 408 miles, and reaches between 6 and 24 feet high. It consists of solid concrete in some areas and a 40 metre complex of trenches, 6 to 8 feet deep, barred wires, electric surveillance fences and patrol roads in other areas.

The wall which swallows more than 42% of the West Bank is in most areas not on or near the 1967 Green Line that divides Palestine from Israel. It snakes its path as deep as 10 miles inside the West Bank and encircles cities like TulKarm and Qalqilya entirely, thus trapping all in its path and separating Palestinians from their families, homes, land, water and livelihoods.

Numerous villages have already been confiscated, 200,000 people separated, 35,000 metres of irrigation that worked ceased, 11,400 donums of agricultural lands confiscated, and 100,000 ancient olive trees destroyed; that’s impacting life, agriculture, freedom of movement, water usage and income. By the time The Wall is completed, the numbers will triple.

The Ramallah district has been totally separated from nearby Jerusalem. It has been sliced from multiple directions. Massive land grabbing in most fertile areas and expulsion from areas around Ramallah city have occurred. More than twenty two villages have been affected and entire communities have been imprisoned. In nearby Budres, the wall has engulfed most of its fertile land, separating farmers from their agricultural fields and leaving more people with refugee status.

As if occupation is not enough to inflict hardship on Palestinians; the whole population now lives in ghettos, with freedom of movement restricted to those who possess hard-to-obtain-passes from the occupying power. Several neighbourhoods have been entirely cut off and farmers now require permits to go to their fields.

Intimidation by Israeli Soldiers and Settlers is becoming a daily reality for everybody, and a simple trip to school or hospital is becoming a risky adventure and ordeal. Immediately after its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967, Israel took control of all water resources and prohibited Palestinians from water development and drilling their required infrastructure. To date, not a single permit issued for agriculture or domestic use in Palestinian areas has been granted.

In addition to its undeclared agenda of confiscating more land and forcing people to become refugees for the third time, The Separation Wall aims at isolating more natural water wells owned by Palestinians. More than 31 natural water wells producing 3.8 million cubic metres that serve thousands of Palestinians for agricultural and domestic use have been confiscated. While the annual rain fall accumulation in the region is: 47.8% in Palestine, 29.7% in Israel, 22.5% in Jordan, Israel’s domestic water use per capita reaches more than 52%, leaving 30% for Jordan and 18% for Palestine. The hardest hit communities are Qalqilya, TulKarm and Jenin.

In 1948, Qalqilya, the second largest accessible water resource in the region after the Jordan River, lost 80% of its land to Israel, and 70% of its residents became refugees. Today, with 34 natural water wells, Qalqilya district is losing 50% of the remaining 20% of its water-rich land to Israel, leaving 36 towns confiscated and 90,000 residents unemployed.

With the construction of The Wall, Israel’s policy of home demolition has intensified. The Wall devours everything in its path, including agricultural fields and olive groves, as well as inhabited homes. Since its occupation of The West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967, Israel has demolished more than 10,000 Palestinian homes as collective punishment, and now the number is dramatically increasing. More Palestinian homes will be demolished to leave room for The Wall, and Palestinians are required to foot the bill. The games for Israel, however, are tremendous; Israel now gained more land for agriculture, land for settlement expansion, total control of all water resources, a direct link to the Jordan Valley slicing through the West Bank, and most importantly, an end of a viable Palestinian State.

Welcome to the new democracies of The World..
Welcome to The War on Terrorism..
Welcome to The Blind Justice..
and Welcome to your tax dollars at work...

[On July 9th, 2004, the highest United Nations Court – the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague – and despite intense pressure from Israel, the US and EU Governments issued a sweeping condemnation of The Wall and declared that The Wall is illegal!

With a vote of 14 to 1, The Court stated that Israel must immediately cease construction of The Wall in all areas, dismantle parts already built and repeal any legislation or regulation relating to The Wall. It further stated that Israel must make reparations to Palestinians for the damages caused by the construction of The Wall.]

[The Wall of Hate]

Producer: Issa Eways.
Production Assistants: Fadi Amro, Saleem Rabadi and Tariq Amro.
Editing and 3D Animation: Saleem Rabadi.
Directed By: Fadi Amro.
Chromo Vision. Copyright, 2004.

Opinion: The Truth of Israel's Cruelty

2008-03-09T07:10:00.000-04:00

Can you believe that this is actually happening in our world, while some people have no clue about it?

Last time I checked, a "childhood" should be full of candy and toys.. but instead, in Palestine:

This is how they make sure that Palestinian kids get to school:

This is how they "help Palestinian women cross the streets":

This is how they "provide Palestinian children with childcare"..

.."provide them with a place to rest"; permanently..

"Full access to Healthcare":

"Construction Projects":

"Respecting" American and British pacifist resisters [such as the 23-year-old American Peace Activist Rachael Corrie]:

.. and others...

Are you still dissatisfied by the truth of those pictures; which, by the definitions of the UN, The Hague and The Geneva Convention are defined to be war crimes?

Well what about the violation of taking such inhuman pictures?

3 Israeli Soldiers standing by each other near the corpse of a dead Palestinian man to take a photo. This is how much respect they have for Human Life. Typically, the US media never shows such pictures.

How about the violation of using Human Shields?

.. and Live Burial Tortures?

Now add on top of all of that: Execution..

"These IDF soldiers have faces... I can clearly see them...Can't you?

Why are they not being prosecuted?

Because it is a systematic process that is being driven by the Israeli Government, and it is designed to force Palestinians into exile, so that Israel can claim all the land and resources.

Do you know where your tax dollars are going?

This is where all the American tax dollars are going.

Learn to take the time, to find The Truth.
So many lives depend on it. I, like so many Americans, am Caucasian, non-Arab, and religious. I can no longer sit back with a good conscience and do nothing while my government is supporting the types of terrorist actions that we have condemned Muslim Fundamentalists for. Call your Congressman and Senator, send an email to the White House and demand that our government negotiates FAIRLY with both sides and brings a Fair and a Just solution to Palestine and Israel."

- This is a rewritten version of an opinion posted on ccun.org
- Refer to the note "Israeli Jews Zionist Occupation 101" to read Rachel Corrie's final thoughts e-mail to her mother prior to her death.

Artworks condemning Israeli holocaust of Gaza

2008-03-08T16:51:00.000-05:00

Brazilian cartoonist Carlos Latuff creates artworks that call on the world to condemn Israeli holocaust of Gaza

Nepos Libertas's blog

WUFYS

Carlos Latuff's statement:

"I'd like to beg all viewers to spread this image anywhere, as a way to expose Israeli war crimes against Palestinians. Use it on t-shirts, posters, banners. Reproduce it in zines, papers, magazines, and make it visible everywhere. Here is the high-resolution version for printing purposes: [link]

Thank you in the name of every suffering Palestinian."

'Restraint' is deceitful, and 'forbearance' is vain

2008-03-05T18:08:00.000-05:00

From Israel's leading daily newspaper Haaretz.

By Gideon Levy
Tags: Sderot, Gaza, IDF, victimhood

Even yesterday evening, after the IDF already had killed about 50 Palestinians, at least half of them unarmed, and including quite a number of women and children, Jerusalem continued to claim, "At present there will be no major ground operation." It's incredible: The IDF penetrates the heart of a crowded refugee camp, kills in a terrifyingly wholesale manner, with horrible bloodshed, and Israel continues to disseminate the lie of restraint. Two days earlier Israel killed more Palestinians than have been killed by all the Qassams over the past seven years. Among the dead were four children and an infant. The next day Israel killed another five boys. And who is the victim? Israel. And who is cruel? The Palestinians.

This victimhood is not new, nor is our self-deception. The current lie: 'restraint.' Israel is demonstrating 'restraint' in the face of the Qassams; this assertion continues to spur the commentators and security experts to urge it to embark on the anticipated 'major operation.' But this operation began long ago. It reached its peak yesterday.

Our desperate attempt to have our cake and eat it, too, to claim that there is no 'major operation' at a time when the IDF is killing dozens every day, is nothing new. It has existed since the days of the 'enlightened occupation' and 'purity of arms,' through 'the major operation that has yet to begin' - all of them impossible desires. A senior minister who was asked last week about the siege on Gaza replied: 'Occupation of Gaza is less moral.' In this way, we have once again established ourselves a relative and distorted values system, with no absolute morality, only a double standard. Behind every action of ours in Gaza, even the terrible one this weekend, hides an option that is even worse. The fact that we are not yet carrying it out helps us to present ourselves in a positive light, to boast how moral we are.

During the past two years, we have killed almost 900 Gaza residents. About half of them were people who did not take part in the fighting. That is how restraint looks. At a time when we are counting the Qassams and their victims, in Gaza they are counting the dead. Presenting things as though we have not yet entered Gaza or "beaten the hell out of Gaza" is meant to deceive. Yes, more can be done.

Imagine if the Palestinians were to kill dozens of Israelis, including women and children, in one week, as the IDF did. What an international outcry we would raise, and justifiably. Only in our own eyes can we still adhere to our restrained, forbearing image. All the talk about the 'major operation' is designed to achieve only one goal: to show it is possible to be even more violent and cruel.

That is an extremely pathetic consolation. The siege, the assassinations and the raid this weekend are terrifying enough. The claim that as opposed to them, we do not intend to kill children and citizens, is also overused and deceptive. The gun sights of Israeli weaponry are sophisticated. If the Palestinians had Apache helicopters and sophisticated drones like ours, we can assume that they would choose more strategic targets than the yard of a hospital in Ashkelon or a parking lot in Sderot. The Qassam is the weapon of the poor and helpless.

In the South, a war of attrition is taking place between the strong and the weak. It will not be stopped by military means. It is therefore surprising and depressing to see the uniform chorus of the residents of the Western Negev, city dwellers and kibbutzniks, the direct victims, in favor of the IDF's pointless fighting. How is it that in the entire South, not a single different voice can be heard, calling for a change in direction? How is it that no group of Sderot residents, yes, they of all people, is shouting in protest? Demonstrating in the city squares, not in favor of more of the same, but in favor of a different, much more promising approach? After all, they are the ones who are paying the heavy price, and they should be the first to see what the residents of the center of the country cannot see.?

The residents of Sderot, and now Ashkelon as well, have to look and see beyond the fence that is meant to protect them, and is imprisoning their neighbors. To understand that as long as things are so bad there, things will be bitter for them as well. That as long as we don't talk to them, nothing will change. They, who know that every assassination is followed by the 'Color Red' Qassam alert, fear and anxiety, who know that dozens of assassinations have not improved their lives at all, that the present raid will not help either, should be the pioneers who bring about the change we need.?

A large operation is now at its height. It has not helped at all so far; it will never help. Neither will the siege, the assassinations, the raids or the bombings. Perhaps the good will originate from the South, and someone there will call for something else?

Refer to original source of article: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/959643.html

A FEW of the photos from the Massacre taking place in Gaza

2008-03-05T01:04:00.000-05:00

"رائحة القرفة"

2008-03-04T15:02:00.000-05:00

The Day The Earth and Sky Traded Places

2008-03-04T13:02:00.000-05:00

Gazan Holocaust
By JENNIFER LOEWENSTEIN

Around 10:30pm on the night of February 28, M and his wife S spoke in low tones in a dark room dimly lit by a battery-operated lamp. They were trying to decide if it was still safe to send their children to school and decided in favor because the elementary school building is in a safer part of the city near a number of international offices. The electricity in the building had been out 10 hours by then and the couple pulled blankets around them to keep warm in the damp winter air. They live on the 6th floor of Shifa Tower, an 11-story apartment building housing more than a hundred families.

When the blast occurred that took out the Interior Ministry building across the street, there was no time to think about what to do. M flew into his children's bedroom and threw himself over the sleeping body of his son, Basel, to shield the young boy's body from the glass shattering in the windows beside his bed. Then after a matter of seconds the three young children, two girls and the boy, were taken to the windowless kitchen, all of them now fully awake and crying out in terror. M threw blankets and pillows around them where they huddled for the night in restless sleep and dreams of horror, their mother sobbing silently over them as she caressed their faces.

M returned to the children's room in time for the second deafening blast that made him put up his arms instinctively. When he let them down and looked out into the night sky, it was all brown, the earth from underneath the destroyed buildings was swirling around outside the bedroom windows and he could see nothing but flying debris, smoke and a wall of dirt. For some time he could not hear well, only watch-dazed- hypnotized by the silence after the aerial strikes.
In the morning, no one went outside. "This is a black day in Gaza," M wrote; "a holocaust as (Israeli deputy defense minister Matan) Vilnai put it. There is an attack every five or ten minutes. It keeps our nerves on edge and our senses strained. There is so much rage at what is happening; especially the scenes of murdered children and babies. I am so busy I don't know how to describe my feelings. I work to avoid feeling because right now that's too unbearable."

Watch as A, a Hamas soldier, runs for his life into his house. His pursuers miss shooting him so they launch three rockets into the house on the edge of Jabalya camp killing everyone inside (four family members). They are angry now so every house in the way gets the same treatment and without the "militant" to guide their next moves: rockets fired into the interiors of homes with no knowledge of who is inside. Eye-witnesses report this and worse: a six month old baby girl becomes tiny body parts with her mother and brother. A small child is cut apart by shrapnel and screams that she doesn't want to die just before leaving this world. The mothers and fathers cannot protect them so they weep and scream at the funerals that this side of the world never views, especially during basketball season.

Who really cares about these children? Every Palestinian is a militant because everyone (sooner or later) wants Israel off their land, out of their lives, and forgotten like a horrible dream. It is for this reason that they are all equal targets: none of them is intelligent enough to understand that their land isn't their land, their lives are not their lives, and their horrible dream is their present and future. Have no pity on those who don't get it.

The night strikes from F-16s and helicopter missiles continued throughout the day on Friday the 29 and into the first weekend in March, unceasing in their ferocity and indiscriminate killing revenge for the death early last week of an Israeli student at Sapir College outside Sderot. For every one Israeli life, scores of Palestinians must die. God help us now that two Israeli soldiers have been killed fighting on occupied land, against unwilling slaves; killing innocent people to maintain a 60-year-old injustice. Brace yourself, Gaza. You will pay dearly for the continuation of this crime.

Let us not reflect too much on what all this means. How, for example, would the 47-year-old Sapir College student like to know that his death has been far more useful to his State than his life? For in death he provided another pretext to carry out mass murder of the Arab Untermenschen blocking the otherwise pleasant view to the sea in the southeastern Promised Land. His death challenged the Israeli rules of combat: the "We kill and You Die" warfare, the only type allowed by the Neo-Jewish Masters and their allies in the United States who have no intention of making a just peace with the lower forms of life in their midst. The sanctimonious demand that the Qassams must be stopped is a deliberate lie intended to make you forget that the Qassams provide a near fool-proof pretext for grabbing more of Gaza and setting more of it to ruin; and that the Qassams are the result of systematic national torture and evisceration, borne themselves of occupation, caused by it, improved upon by periods of siege, sadism and mass killing.

Peace would require relinquishing regional hegemony. Peace would demand sharing the land and the resources equally. Peace might, heaven forbid, require democratic decision making in a region where the Israelis are not better, more entitled, more deserving of Their Way than everyone else in the neighborhood. Well, sorry, but these are not on Israel's agenda. The leaders of the hapless Sderot student's racially pure dreamland are grateful for his dying: Now the angry flames of intolerance can burn on feverishly. Into those flames the bodies of each dead Gazan man, woman or child should be flung, like books, to consecrate the ritual, the burnt offering, of those who owe the latter-day Israelites their Modern Day Zion. In Holy Victimhood shall We Reign Supreme.

Surely this would satisfy Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit who bellowed that if it were up to him, Israeli soldiers going into Gaza should shoot "everything that moves" like babies and toddlers, grandfathers and mothers, orange trees and wasted-away donkeys pulling cartloads of rotten vegetables; like flowers and seabirds, chickens and goats, rats and cockroaches. A scorched-earth policy will suffice. They'll create their apocalyptic wilderness and will call it peace.
No one needed Sheetrit to legitimize the strategy of creating oblivion from hell. Untermenschen who can be denied food, water, fuel, electricity, medical supplies, the right to leave and return home, the right to not to die in an ambulance that without the proper permits, the right to their own land and their own nationhood precisely because they are lesser human beings can also be picked off one by one or in groups or in families or because they are "militants," or all of the above, who deserve no fair hearing, due process, photographs, names, headlines, stories, grief or televised tear-jerker funerals to commemorate their sacrifices. In such a world contexts are an insult to the intelligence of the policy-makers.

Plea after plea from human rights organizations, legal organizations, religious charities and leaders, children's welfare organizations, medical aid projects, refugee relief societies, international humanitarian agencies, celebrities, parliamentarians, foreign policy analysts and countless others go not only unheeded but unread, unheard, a waste of one's time. Is there a reason why the carnage in Gaza is continuing before our very eyes and no State or Non-state actor strong enough to make a difference is bothering to step in? The shame is ours, for Israel and its US Master have long since resided in the lowest circle of Hell for betraying the name of humanity.

Jennifer Loewenstein is the Associate Director of the Middle East Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is a member of the board of the Israeli Coalition against House Demolitions-USA branch, founder of the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project and a freelance journalist. She can be reached at: amadea311@earthlink.net

Free-speech forum gets nasty: Mac security steps in after debate

2008-03-03T17:49:00.000-05:00

Wade Hemsworth
The Hamilton Spectator
(Mar 1, 2008)

[Photo: Palestinian Students from Ryerson University, York University, UofT University and McMaster University holding up the Palestinian Flags and other banners. ]

A heated forum on free speech at McMaster University took a few nasty turns yesterday, but finished without boiling over entirely.

While there was shouting, complaints of unfairness and even some tense moments for university security, a deeply divided group of more than 300 students, faculty members and visitors emerged from nearly three hours of passionate, emotional speeches without anyone being arrested or hurt.

Yesterday's audience was sprinkled with men in Jewish yarmulkes and women and men in Arabic kaffiyeh scarves, all packed together in the lobby of the student centre to talk about the fallout from a decision the university had made last month to disallow a poster or banner featuring the controversial term "Israeli apartheid," on the basis it was unduly inflammatory.

About two dozen speakers rose to address the issue, including representatives of pro-Palestinian, Muslim and labour groups, who complained the phrase is justified and the university's decision was unfair, arbitrary and high-handed.

Speakers from pro-Israel and some Jewish groups applauded the university for adhering to its code of student conduct, which prohibits behaviour that could be intimidating to other students.

A moderator timed the speakers and warned them to stick to the topic of free speech and not to use hateful language, though some contested his neutrality after he halted a speaker from the Jewish Faculty Association.

Immediately after the forum ended, several dozen people who had supported the pro-Palestinian side pulled out flags and placards, and unfurled banners featuring messages such as "Death to Apartheid" and "Zionism is racism."

One hand-painted banner showed an Israeli flag planted in the bloody back of a dead Palestinian. The group shouted slogans that included a call for intefadeh or uprising.

That, in turn, caused a group of Jewish students, who had been drifting toward the exits, to turn back and start singing Hebrew songs, including the Israeli national anthem.

"They're calling for the death of my country," shouted McMaster student Snir Seitelbach.

Campus security officers lined up between them until the tension subsided.

whemsworth@thespec.com

Refer to http://www.thespec.com/News/Local/article/333095 for original source of the article.

Israeli Minister Threatens "Holocaust" as Public Demand Ceasefire

2008-03-03T17:30:00.000-05:00

Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 29 February 2008

[ Photo Caption: Palestinian medics carry a wounded child after an Israeli missile destroyed the labor union headquarters in Gaza, 28 February 2008. (Wissam Nassar/MaanImages)]

Israeli officials began damage limitation efforts after the country's deputy defense minister Matan Vilnai threatened Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip with a "holocaust."

The comments came a day after Israeli occupation forces killed 31 Palestinians, nine of them children, one a six-month-old baby, in a series of air raids across the Gaza Strip. Israel claimed that the attacks were in retaliation for a barrage of rockets fired by resistance fighters in the Gaza Strip which killed one Israeli in the town of Sderot on Wednesday, 27 February. Palestinian resistance groups, including Hamas, said the rockets were in retaliation for the extrajudicial execution of five Hamas members carried out by Israel on Wednesday morning. Israeli occupation forces have killed more than 200 Palestinians since the US-sponsored Annapolis peace summit last November. In the same period, five Israelis have been killed by Palestinians.

Speaking to Israeli army radio today, Vilnai said, "the more Qassam [rocket] fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, [the Palestinians] will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves."

A report on the BBC News website headlined "Israel warns of Gaza 'holocaust'" noted that the word "holocaust" -- shoah in Hebrew -- is "a term rarely used in Israel outside discussions of the Nazi genocide during World War II."

The BBC later reported that "many of Mr. Vilnai's colleagues have quickly distanced themselves from his comments and also tried to downplay them saying he did not mean genocide." An Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, Arye Mekel, claimed that Vilnai used the word "in the sense of a disaster or a catastrophe, and not in the sense of a holocaust."

The attempt to limit the damage of Vilnai's comments is not surprising. It was recently revealed how another Israeli official, Major-General Doron Almog, narrowly escaped arrest at London's Heathrow airport in September 2005, in connection with allegations of war crimes committed against Palestinians in the occupied territories. British police feared a gunfight if they attempted to board the El Al civilian aircraft on which Almog had arrived and on which he hid until he fled the United Kingdom back to Israel as a fugitive from justice.

Incitement to genocide is a punishable crime under the international Genocide Convention, adopted in 1948 after the Nazi holocaust.

"The 8 Stages of Genocide," written by Greg Stanton, President of Genocide Watch, sets out a number of warning signs of an impending genocide, which include "dehumanization" of potential victim groups and preparation, whereby potential victims "are often segregated into ghettoes, deported into concentration camps, or confined to a famine-struck region and starved." [1]

Vilnai's holocaust threat, however much Israeli officials attempt to qualify it, fits into a consistent pattern of belligerent statements and actions by Israeli officials. Israel has attempted to isolate the population of Gaza, deliberately restricting essential supplies, such as food, medicines and energy, a policy endorsed by the Israeli high court but condemned by international officials as illegal collective punishment.

As The Electronic Intifada has previously reported, dehumanizing statements by Israeli political and religious leaders directed at Palestinians are common (see "Top Israeli rabbis advocate genocide," The Electronic Intifada, 31 May 2007 and "Dehumanizing the Palestinians," Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 21 September 2007)

On 28 February, Vilnai's colleagues added their own inflammatory statements. Cabinet minister Meir Sheetrit stated that Israel should "hit everything that moves" in Gaza "with weapons and ammunition," adding, "I don't think we have to show pity for anyone who wants to kill us."

And today, Tzachi Hanegbi, a senior member of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's Kadima party said that Israel should invade Gaza to "topple the Hamas terror regime" and that Israeli forces, which now enforce the occupation of Gaza from the periphery and air, should prepare to remain in the interior of the territory "for years."

While Israeli leaders escalate the violence and threats, some other top officials and a vast majority of the Israeli public support direct talks with Hamas to achieve a mutual ceasefire, something Hamas has repeatedly offered for months.

"Sixty-four percent of Israelis say the government must hold direct talks with
the Hamas government in Gaza toward a cease-fire and the release of captive
soldier Gilad Shalit," the Israeli daily Haaretz reported on 27 February citing a Tel Aviv University poll. The report noted that half of Likud supporters and large majorities of Kadima and Labor party voters support such talks and only 28 percent of Israelis still oppose them.

Knesset Member Yossi Beilin, leader of the left-Zionist Meretz-Yahad party, called for an agreed ceasefire with Hamas, noting that "there have been at least two requests from Hamas, via a third party, to accept a cease-fire," Haaretz reported on 29 February. Israel's public security minister, Avi Dichter, visiting Sderot the previous day, criticized Israel's military escalation, saying, "Whoever talks about entering and occupying the Gaza Strip, these are populist ideas which I don't connect to, and in my opinion, no intelligent person does either." And, in an interview with the American magazine Mother Jones, published on 19 February, the former head of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, Efraim Halevy, repeated calls for Israel and the US to negotiate a ceasefire with Hamas. Dismissing lurid rhetoric about the group, Halevy stated that "Hamas is not al-Qaida," and "is not subservient to Tehran."

The question remains as to why when the vast majority of Israelis and Palestinians, some senior Israeli officials, and Hamas leaders are all talking about a ceasefire, the Israeli government refuses to accept one and the US refuses to call for one. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has blamed the escalating bloodshed entirely on Hamas, and has failed to call for a ceasefire. This echoes her support for Israel's merciless 2006 bombardment of Lebanon which she notoriously celebrated as being "the birth pangs of a new Middle East."

The Palestinian and Israeli populations are exhausted by the relentless bloodshed, however unequal its toll. They are paying the price of a failed policy, pushed by Washington and its local clients, which attempts to demonize, isolate and destroy any movement that resists the order that the United States seeks to impose on the region.

Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse (Metropolitan Books, 2006).

Refer to http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9354.shtml for original source.

Israeli missiles silence baby's laughter in Gaza

2008-03-02T01:42:00.000-05:00

[Nasser al-Bor'i holds the body of his six-month-old son, Mohammed, outside the morgue at the Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. (Wissam Nassar/MaanImages)]

Sami Abu Salem writing from the occupied Gaza Strip, Live from Palestine, 28 February 2008

The innocent laughter of six-month-old baby Mohammed al-Bor'i stopped forever on Wednesday night when shrapnel from an Israeli missile and rubble struck the infant in the head, minutes after he enjoyed his last meal.

"The baby sucked milk, he was playing with his mother; I was reading a book when a rocket hit the Ministry of Interior," said Nasser al-Bor'i, the baby's father.

With the first missile, the electricity was cut and darkness filled the ill-fated house. Stones and pieces of the asbestos ceiling fell onto the head of the laughing child. The explosions continued as two other missiles hit the building.

"I looked for my baby in the darkness between the rubble; I did not know where he was. When he cried once I followed the direction of his voice," Nasser al-Bor'i said. "My hands touched my baby who was breathing hard; I felt warm liquid on my two hands and realized that he was wounded."

Al-Bor'i carried his son to the nearby Shifa Hospital as the blood streamed from his tiny head. In the hospital, al-Bor'i became hysterical when he realized that his only child had been killed.

Tears poured from al-Bor'i's eyes when he saw Mohammed's shoes. "After five years of treatment for sterility, [my wife and] I had a baby. I can't imagine that I lost him in a second."

Toys, a plastic bike, a crib and clothes were covered by the heap of rubble inside Mohammed's bedroom. Cutout magazine pictures of laughing babies decorated the walls, a sad reminder of the joy lost in the strike.

Mohammed's mother sufered shock and fell unconscious when she realized that the child had died. She laid on a hospital bed while her baby was in the morgue. On Thursday morning she cried when she returned home from the hospital to see Mohammed's empty crib.

Mohammed al-Bor'i was not the only child to be killed in the series of Israeli air strikes across the Gaza strip on Wednesday. In the northern Gaza Strip town of Jabalia, three other children, Anas al-Manama, 10, Bilal Hijazi, 11, and Mohammed Hamada, 11, were also killed in an Israeli air strike, Palestinian medical sources reported.

At least 19 Palestinian civilians and militants were killed and dozens wounded by the continuing Israeli air strikes on Gaza in the last two days.

Sami Abu Salem lives in Jabalia Refugee Camp and works as an English news and features writer at the Palestine News Agency (WAFA). He has also worked at the International Press Center of the Palestinian Authority State Information Service, and works as a freelance writer for local newspapers, focusing on literature and arts. This article was originally published by Ramattan News Agency and is republished with the author's permission.

Pictures of Gaza's Darkness

2008-02-02T18:24:00.000-05:00

Note originally posted by Ziad Siddiq ;)

A Letter from a Woman in Gaza

2008-01-21T23:20:00.000-05:00

Two complete days without electricity or water. My life is paralyzed.

My kids are bored. I’ve run out of ideas for how to make them have fun. Nothing keeps them occupied anymore. When there’s no electricity and only candlelight, you have to be creative to keep children busy; you have to be patient, telling them stories, encouraging them to play with the shadows cast by the candles. No point in worrying about the housework in those moments - the laundry, cooking, ironing. I used to fill the bathtub for the kids and they would play in the water for hours. They loved that, especially when it was hot. It gave me time to do some work around the house too. Now, with the water shortage, I can’t do that anymore. I ask myself, are we really living in the 21st century where all people have an equal right to their basic needs?

When my husband arrived home last night, he felt sorry for the kids. Without electricity for days on end, they hadn’t been able to watch their favourite cartoons or to play on the computer. Although it was already 7 p.m., my husband convinced me to go for a walk. The kids were so excited to go out. We went to the market. Just imagine, there were crowds of people everywhere, groups of young and old men sitting in the streets, looking for respite. There were some old women there too, though the younger ones had to stay in their homes, in the dark and the cold.

I thought to myself, well, the good thing about the international community’s halting of fuel supplies to Gaza is that people have time now to see their relatives, friends and neighbours, to sit together. That’s something we haven’t done for ages. Maybe it would be a good time to build bridges in Gaza, to bring together families that have been divided by factional differences, brothers who no longer speak to brothers, and friends who no longer say hello to friends.

My son Mustafa asked me if we would remain without electricity forever. "Perhaps," I replied. Then my five-year-old son Ahmed said that he wished he had a spaceship so he could leave the whole universe - not just the earth. I felt sad - aged only five and six my children have already had enough of this life.

Israeli Jews Zionist Occupation 101

2007-12-20T23:01:00.000-05:00

I have come across this AMAZING documentary film through YouTube.com and I think everyone should take the time to watch it. ESPECIALLY you my friends here in Canada from all around the western world, because I think that the media that you all are exposed to hides the horrific truth of the brutal reality that's going on Palestinian grounds. I posted the 11 parts of the film on my profile hoping to get as many people as I can to watch it...

If it were not for the sake of us, Palestinians, then please, at least listen to the American 23 year old activist, Rachael Corrie, who was killed by Israeli troops while she was trying to protect a Palestinian's family's home from being destroyed.Those were her final thoughts e-mailed to her mother prior to her death:

"No amount of reading, attendance at conferences, documentary viewing and word of mouth could have prepared me for the reality of the situation here. You just can't imagine it unless you see it. This is not at all what I asked for when I came into this world.. This not at all what the people here asked for when they came into this world.. This is not the world you and dad wanted me to come into when you decided to have me. This has to stop. I think it is a good idea for us all to drop everything and devote our lives to making this stop."

This film is approximately 1 hour 30 minutes. It's not much to ask of your time, really. Please do share this video with other people if you think its contents are worth it.

Help spread the word about the tragedy of Palestine.

Thank you!

* This film was produced and directed by Sufyan Omeish and Abdallah Omeish.