Activism / Solidarity / Boycott, Divestment, & Sanctions
Israeli soldiers forcibly dispersed a rally against settlement expansion in Beit Ummar village in the southern West Bank district of Hebron, participants said ... [Awwad] said a 21-year-old British national sustained bruises to the head and back after being hit by a tear-gas canister and stun grenade, adding that she was taken to hospital for treatment. The spokesman added that Palestinian journalist Najih Hashlamoun fainted after being hit in the back with a tear-gas canister and that several suffered tear-gas inhalation. Khader Zeidan, 65, was hospitalized after inhaling tear gas, Awwad added.
23 July - Israeli soldiers detained the former Vice President of the European Parliament, Luisa Morgantini, in Bil’in this afternoon, injured one Israeli activist., and arrested another. Sixty nine-year-old Morgantini, an Italian Member of the Euopean Parliament (MEP) has long been an outspoken supporter of Palestinians ... The demonstration called for the release of prisoners Adeeb Abu Rahma, Abdullah Abu Rahme, Ibrahim al-Bornat, and Ahmed al-Bornat – all Bil’in residents jailed by Israel for resisting the occupation.
Israeli forces detained two young Palestinian men at a flying checkpoint installed outside a village south of Nablus on Saturday, in what witnesses called an attempt to prevent demonstrators from entering the area. The village, Iraq Burin, hosts weekly anti wall protests, and locals said the checkpoint was set up to prevent Palestinian and international supporters joining the rally. One woman, Muyassar Atiyani, planning to attend the protest, said the checkpoint was erected at 8am at the entrance to the village and said soldiers held a booklet with a list of names. She said she believed that the booklet held the names and photos of activists who frequent the protest.
"European Solidarity" was the theme of Friday’s anti-wall protest in Al-Ma’sara village south of Bethlehem, which saw one person injured and two detained. The popular committee against the wall reported more than 100 demonstrators, including a six piece drumming band, and a strong French contingent at the weekly rally ... A French woman was taken to hospital to have shrapnel removed from her ear after a sound bomb exploded by her head. The injury required four stitches, and she will be kept overnight to test for hearing problems, the committee said. Soldiers detained, and later released, a journalist and a photographer in what the committee described as an "unwarranted attack on freedom of the press."
Bogus charges - As part of Israel’s increased attempt at hindering the work of Palestine solidarity activists, an Israeli court yesterday dealt a further blow. Marcus Rednander, a 26-year-old activist and nursing student from Sweden, was arrested by Israeli forces on the night of Tues. July 20. He was initially accused of assaulting an Israeli soldier during a demonstration in Hebron earlier this month. Rednander first saw a judge at the Court of Peace in the Russian Compound in Jerusalem on Wed. July 21. Although there was no proof of the accusations against him, Rednander was escorted away in handcuffs and shackles.
Transformation. Fabulous video of the strong young artist Emily Henochowicz singing an anthem to Palestine she wrote for her friend. A lot of great rage here, toward the state that destroyed her eye during a demonstration on May 31. Some of the lyrics, about 2-1/2 minutes in: In Palestine, oh I miss you Palestine. And you know I think back to the memory of my grandparents in Poland And I think of what they suffered through in Europe. It makes me sad I think they would be sad how all those Jews who died in the Holocaust would be so very sad If they knew that this is how their memory was being used....
On July 11, 2010, members of Adalah-NY, the New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel, and other members of the New York community participated in a tour of companies profiting from and financially enabling the Israeli occupation and repression of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The stores visited include Aroma, Ricky’s, Max Brenner, and Best Buy (Motorola).
Aid ships / Flotilla aftermath
Official in Jerusalem says Human Right Council's decision to look into May 31 raid on Gaza-bound Turkish ship shows body 'obsessed with Israel.' Kadima MK: Investigate Shalit's captivity
...HRW has been mostly silent on the horrific attack. When they have spoken out, they have been notably timid, essentially sharing the same positions as the US government, Israel's closest ally. According to a search of the group's website, the flotilla attack has only been addressed four times. By contrast, Amnesty International (the organization's closest peer) has tackled the issue 17 times, issuing much stronger statements of condemnation than those released by HRW. The jarring difference in how these two human rights organizations have responded to the flotilla attack raises important questions about the functioning of the largest and most reputed human rights organization in the United States.
After Israel says it 'reserves the right' to prevent Lebanese ships from accessing Hamas-ruled enclave, Ban's spokesman says world body's stated preference remains that aid to Strip should be delivered by established routes
Under the Law of Maritime Navigation, Israel has no right to intercept aid ships bound for Gaza, head of the Popular Committee against the siege Jamal Al-Khoudari said Friday. Speaking most immediately about the Lebanese aid ships The Mariam and The Naji Al-Ali, both scheduled to lift anchor and sail toward Gaza within the week, Al-Khudari said it was the right and the duty of nations to ensure the laws of the sea were properly applied, and to embark toward Gaza shores ...
Protesters use Palestinian flags to pound police shields while carrying posters of activists killed during Israel's raid on a Gaza aid flotilla.
Siege (Gaza & West Bank) / Restriction on movement
Palestinian officials facilitated the passage of travelers to Jordan who had been delayed by Israeli authorities on Thursday. Eight buses of mostly women and children were turned back from the Allenby Bridge on Thursday evening and sent back to Jericho by Israeli soldiers. Crossings director Nathmi Muhana said the Palestinian Red Crescent were on hand for passengers spending Thursday night at the terminal, and reported that all travelers had been able to leave the West Bank on Friday. [End]
A second group of Umrah pilgrims from the Gaza Strip were set to depart for Egypt on Saturday via Rafah, the crossings monitoring department in the coastal enclave reported. Approximately 650 pilgrims were given the okay to travel by Gaza officials, and were lined onto buses ready to depart Saturday, and an additional 450 were scheduled to leave on Sunday, officials said. Setting a promising precedent, the first group of 177 Umrah pilgrims left Gaza for Egypt on Monday, after a deal was reached between the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah and the Hamas-run government in Gaza.
Ten children returned to Gaza from Slovenia on Friday, fitted with prosthetic limbs thanks to a rehabilitation project initiated by Slovenia’s president, Danilo Turk. The children, who lost limbs in Israel’s attack on the Strip in December 2008, were treated at Ljubljana’s Institute for Rehabilitation ... Child amputees constantly outgrow their prosthetic limbs, and need regular re-fittings. The ongoing campaign, co-sponsored by the US, Sweden, and South Korea, has also brought physiotherapists and doctors from Gaza to Slovenia to receive advanced specialist training.
Detainees
A 57-year-old woman from Tulkarem was tortured by Israeli detectives while detained in Al-Jalama military prison, the Ahrar Center for prisoners in Tulkarem alleged. Fouad Al-Khafsh, director of the Center, said the woman, Fathia Sweis, was detained on 19 July, and has since been forced to stand for many hours with her eyes closed and suffered sleep deprivation under questioning.
Israeli authorities on Wednesday released three detainees who have completed their sentences. Foad Al-Khafsh of the Detainees Society said As-Sumu village mayor Musa Abu Al-Hadayel was released after spending 19 months in an Israeli prison. It was not clear why he was jailed. Al-Khafsh added that father-of-eight Al-Hadayel, 45, had previously spent six years in Israeli jail, and has a degree in physics. The reason for his detention was not specified. Ahmad Hmeidan, 27, from Hebron, and Isam Def Allah, 24, from Ramallah, were released from Negev prison, Al-Khafsh said, without mentioning charges. Both men had been detained for 30 months.
War crimes and criminals
For a whole year Judge Goldstone was attacked ... The Goldstone Report was continually denounced as a collection of lies and vicious propaganda. Still, now the Israel Defense Forces officially informed the UN that in future wars it will take greater care not to use White Phosphorus bombs in civilian areas. It is no coincidence that this was one of the main points in the much-maligned Goldstone Report. This came too late for the residents of Gaza who got Israeli White Phosphorus burning deep into their living flesh, in a fire which cannot be extinguished. But those who will in the future get visited by the most moral army in the world can give heartfelt thanks to Judge Richard Goldstone.
Israelis wanted for war crimes can sleep easier thanks to their friends and admirers in the British Establishment. Yes, our brand-new coalition government intends providing a safe haven for the vilest of criminals. When Israel’s ex-foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, and other architects of the terror campaign against Palestinian civilians, recently cancelled trips to the UK for fear of being arrested under universal jurisdiction laws on charges of war crimes, it sparked a diplomatic row.
Politics / Diplomacy
Palestinian diplomatic missions enjoyed upgrades to their statuses in France and the US this week, Israeli press reported. The French government officially upgraded the Palestinian general commission in Paris to the status of Palestine Mission on Thursday, Israeli daily Haaretz said Friday. The head of the mission, as an ambassador, will present his credentials to the French president. The move supports Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s plan to establish a Palestinian state by 2012.
Israel's Arab helpers
Egyptian forces took control of three smuggling tunnels along the Gaza border, Egyptian security sources said Friday. The seizures were part of a new campaign underway to expose tunnels used by Palestinians to smuggle goods into Gaza
Egyptian authorities seized 20 cars which were to be smuggled into Gaza, security sources said. The cars, without plates, were found in a warehouse in Ad-Duhneyeh near the Rafah crossing on the Egypt-Gaza border. The sources added that the cars were stolen from citizens in the Egyptian city Al-Arish. [though the cars in the photo look brand new]
Other news
The Islamist movement Hizb Ut-Tahrir held dozens of marches and rallies across the West Bank after Friday prayers, a party statement said. The organization claimed that Palestinian Authority security forces arrested thousands of its members en route to the party's annual meeting one week ago, adding that further arrests were made at an event to mark the 89th anniversary of the fall of the last caliphate on Saturday. The group, which promotes the re-establishment of an Islamic Caliphate in the Middle East, said Friday's rallies were to "confirm to the PA that their repressive measures will not prevent us from carrying out our message and goals." [End]
While unemployment in Gaza remains as high as 70 percent, women have become breadwinners for families as traditional jobs in factories and construction disappear in the thick of Israel's siege ... Aminah Abu Maghasib, 37, is one of a growing number of women who has started digging small water reservoirs for Gaza homes. She is proud of her work, and says it not only helps families access water when they need it, but also provides some income for herself and others ... Aminah has seven children. She sat down with Ma'an and explained why she, and not her husband, was working as a laborer.
Factions in the Gaza Strip united Thursday to congratulate students for their scores on the annual high school exit tests ... Usually with a near 50 percent pass rate, the 2010 results had 85 percent achieve a pass in the Scientific Stream while 60.6 percent passed in the Literary Stream and 63 percent in the Professional Branches.
Two high school girls were rushed to Qalqiliya hospitals on Thursday after medics said they overdosed on medication in what were believed to be suicide attempts. Locals said the girls did not see their names of the lists of successful candidates in the 2010 national Tawjihi exams, and told Ma'an that they believed their failure in the high school exit exam lead them to make the attempts on their lives.
De facto government detectives in the Gaza Strip seized inventory from several shops and vendors on Saturday, which a police report said displayed "immoral words." The clothing, manufactured in Gaza City, was mostly cotton shirts with the words "Porn Man Clothing" written on them in bold letters ... Investigators said charges would likely be laid. The seizure on grounds of immorality is the latest in a string of small measures being taken by the Gaza government to enforce what critics call inappropriate laws on personal status.
Visit to Holocaust museum in Jerusalem arranged by 28-year-old Ramallah area resident who seeks to learn about Shoah ... "I believe that the pain is the same pain when it comes to people," A. said. "Most Palestinians and Arabs don't even believe there was a Holocaust. Most Palestinians know Israelis as occupiers and nothing beyond that. Israelis don't know Palestinians and their suffering. I hope this visit will help both our peoples to think ahead. We need to build a common future." Despite these statements, A. claims he wasn't surprised by the tough images he saw in the museum. "I saw the tough pictures from Auschwitz, but I'm used to images of violence from our reality here," he said.
The government on Thursday reached a deal to suspend planned legislation that would hand the Chief Rabbinate a monopoly on overseeing conversions to Judaism in Israel. Acting on instructions from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Cabinet Secretary Zvi Hauser reached an agreement with Israel Reform and Masorti (traditional) Jewish movements, persuading them to drop a petition to the High Court in exchange for a six-month freeze on enacting the law in the Knesset.
Official at Interior Minister Yishai's office says decision to delay vote on controversial bill by six month was not coordinated with haredi party
Immigrants applying for marriage licenses are being asked by local rabbinical courts to produce ritual wedding contracts from their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents or other often unattainable documents to prove their Jewishness, Anglo File has learned. One rabbi close to the affair called the new process "unprecedented humiliation," and said it was the direct consequence of new guidelines to prove Jewishness the Chief Rabbinate recently implemented.
Activists of all parts of political spectrum rally near defense minister's house against law exempting yeshiva students from IDF service. MK Nitzan Horowitz: Law discriminates between citizens
Analysis / Opinion / Human interest
Since I witnessed the rise of the Nazis during my childhood in Germany, my nose always tickles when it smells something fascist, even when the odor is still faint. When the debate about the “one-state solution” began, my nose tickled ... This is not the first time that a kosher leftist plan leads towards extreme rightist consequences. That happened, for example, to the ugliest symbol of the occupation: the separation wall. It was invented by the Left ... Ethnic cleansing can be carried out dramatically (as in this country in 1948 and in Kosovo in 1998) or in a quiet and systematic way, by dozens of sophisticated methods, as is happening now in East Jerusalem. But there cannot be the slightest doubt that this is the final stage of the one-state vision of the rightists. The first stage will be an effort to fill the entire country with settlements, and to demolish any chance of implementing the two-state solution, which is the only realistic basis for peace.
Every June, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) releases its Annual Survey of Violations of Trade Union Rights. According to a press release that accompanied the 2010 publication (which reports on events in 2009), "the Middle East remains among the regions of the world where union rights are least protected." The report describes repression meted out to Palestinian workers and trade unionists by both the Israeli authorities and the Palestinian factions. But ITUC's omissions and brevity both disguise the complexity of life for Palestinian workers, and reveal some of the union confederation's own biases.
In April 2003 the British peace activist Tom Hurndall was fatally wounded at Rafah in the Gaza Strip ... Sergeant Taysir Hayb, who killed Tom Hurndall, was a member of the Desert Patrol Battalion of the Israeli Defense Forces - the official name of the unit in which are concentrated most of the Bedouins who join the army, hoping (usually in vain) to come nearer to a situation of equality in the country of which they are citizens ... the IDF is no longer in Rafah. But it is still stationed in many other locations on the border of the Gaza Strip. And it still declares "red lines" the passing of which causes one to enter a "fire zone", to be suspected of being terrorist and to be liable to be shot on the spot. But the army has advanced, and the task is no longer given to the Bedouins of the Desert Patrol Battalion.
...I examined Chomsky’s history in some detail in an article that I wrote for Left Curve in 2005 that called attention to the destructive role he has played regarding the Palestinian-based boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign targeting Israel and the equally destructive impact of his dismissal of the pro-Israel lobby as an influential force in shaping US Middle East policy. That he is still at it, and that his influence among what are considered “progressives” has lessened only imperceptibly, requires another look at the professor’s fierce and unyielding opposition to the BDS campaign launched by the leading organizations of Palestinian civil society. [See Rejoinder to this controversial article - by Jeremy R. Hammond - here ]
Imagine this, imagine that Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress negotiated a deal with the South African Apartheid regime and settled for a “two-state solution.” Imagine Mandela negotiating with the Apartheid regime a land deal in which less than 15% of current day South Africa went to the black South Africans, the remaining 85% to the inherently racist Apartheid government and its people. With that in mind, I ask, is there any real difference between that scenario and the idea of a “two-state solution” today?
Every once in a while, I return to Henry Labouchère's poem, 'The Brown Man's Burden.' It was written in 1899 and a response to another, much more famous poem. To read it with the conflict of the last seventy or eighty years in mind (and for that matter, the Second Iraq War) is an interesting experience. An anti-colonial piece, it is eerily prophetic of the shape that arguments and justifications put forth by Zionists have taken ... And it was not even written about the Arab-Israeli conflict. Which makes the anti-colonial critique of the Zionist enterprise and the discourse it has spawned to justify its behavior all the more fitting and appropriate. Written 111 years ago, it might easily have been written today.
I like the Liberty story because it's so grotesque: 34 Americans killed and dozens wounded in daylight on the Mediterranean during the Six-Day War in a savage and repeated attack on an intelligence vessel. Officially described as a mistake, but few of the survivors believe it. Didn't the Israelis know what they were doing? But if it was deliberate, what was the motive? Lately I've been reading The Passionate Attachment, by the late former under secretary of State George W. Ball and his son Douglas Ball, and it argues that the Israelis were fearful that the U.S. would report on continued Israeli hostilities at a time when the U.N. had voted for a ceasefire.
The State of Israel has just passed a 'loyalty oath' required of all prospective citizens living in Israel illegally to swear allegiance to a “Jewish democratic state.” Concurrently, “an academic backlash has erupted in Israel over proposed new laws, backed by the government of Binyamin Netanyahu, to criminalise a handful of Israeli professors who openly support a campaign against the continuing occupation of the West Bank.1 It would appear that Israel is in need of a lesson on the virtues of democracy as they are anathema to tyrannical rule. Harry S. Truman vetoed the McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950 with this observation: "In a free country, we punish men for the crimes they commit, but never for the opinions they have."
Boney M asked to skip hit in West Bank gig (AP)
When the iconic 1970s disco group Boney M rocked Ramallah this week, the local music festival prevented the band from performing one of its biggest hits. Lead singer Maizie Williams said Palestinian concert organizers told her not to sing [their cover of the Melodians'] "Rivers of Babylon".The song's chorus quotes from the Book of Psalms [#137], referring to the exiled Jewish people's yearning to return to the biblical land of Israel. [what a conundrum -- for African-Americans the song is a metaphor for their captivity in the Americas and their longing for their African homeland. This song could perhaps also have been used for Palestinian exiles' longing for their own lost homes, if it were not for the fact that the Jews' longing for Zion was the cause of the Palestinians' exile. Perhaps it is fitting, given the current situation, that the last lines of this psalm are about revenge: "Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones."]
Ramallah is in fashion, it's clear. For anyone who's had his fill of the Berlin scene and is sick of India already, Ramallah is waiting. On Tuesday toward evening you could see them - the trend-hunters from Tel Aviv, promenading in the streets of Ramallah, speaking English just to be on the safe side, without realizing that their Israeliness sticks out a mile, in the way they walk, in their body language. They came for a performance by Boney M which was due to start at 8:30 P.M. in the plaza of the Ramallah Cultural Palace.
The genius of [Sayed Kashua's] "Arab Labor" is its ability to use sitcom set-ups to pinpoint both the most banal and torturous dilemmas facing Israel's Palestinian citizens ... The genius of "Arab Labor" is its ability to use sitcom set-ups to pinpoint both the most banal and torturous dilemmas facing Israel's Palestinian citizens. In Saturday night's episode, Amjad's desire to have sufficient water pressure to allow a decent shower leads him to pop naked into a stranger's bathroom while apartment-hunting - a classic sitcom situation. But when Amjad tries some "Jewish" assertiveness at the Water Authority, instead of improved pressure he gets a demolition order.
Two years ago, this magazine exposed a dark chapter in the life of Nahi Alon, a clinical psychologist who ordered the killing of Palestinians in the Six-Day War. Now he describes the personal journey that resulted, which included emotional encounters with Arab friends and a new approach to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
IDF Spokesman Avi Benayahu is the man who introduced the concept of a silent army and a mute chief of staff - the new formula for victory in the battle for public opinion. But what happened to investigative journalism along the way?
Iraq
Excerpt: Only one Iraqi death was reported today, but 33 Iraqis were wounded in new attacks. Three U.S. soldiers who were wounded at their base in Nasariya as well. Meanwhile, Iraq trudged on another day without a new government, but the United States continued pressure on the leading contenders for prime minister.
Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study ... Of particular significance was the finding that the sex ratio between newborn boys and girls had changed. In a normal population this is 1,050 boys born to 1,000 girls, but for those born from 2005 there was an 18 per cent drop in male births, so the ratio was 850 males to 1,000 females. The sex-ratio is an indicator of genetic damage that affects boys more than girls.
In March 2006, four US soldiers, strung out after months in the deadly battleground south of Baghdad, hatched a plan: to carry out one of the worst war crimes ever committed in Iraq
Other Mideast
The head of Hezbollah has said that some of its members will be among those charged with the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005.
...No reason for the cancellation was given, with state media saying only that Mr Mubarak had delegated the prime minister to represent Egypt in Kampala. Egyptian officials said earlier that Mr Mubarak's planned trip would show that he was in good health.
Is Hosni Mubarak dying? Ill? The panic in Egypt surrounding the health of the president, in power for 29 years, is less about the fact that he will die at some point and more about his legacy and his successor - most likely his son Gamal.
Former Iran navy chief says U.S. ships would be 'morsels for Iran to target'; finance official says Tehran will halt trade with countries that impose recent UN sanctions.
U.S. and other world news
Efforts to censor websites considered pro-terror, even tenuously so, are hardly restricted to Britain and an increasing number of Western nations have sought to dramatically expand control over the internet in the name of targeting them.
France's National Assembly last week passed the "burka law," which bans wearing the full-body veil in public. Although the law passed with an overwhelming majority, other Western countries are hesitant to join the campaign. Their hesitation is understandable. The burka law touches a sensitive junction in the Western conscience, in which classic feminism meets radical postmodernism, also known as cultural relativism.
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