By DIAA HADID, Associated Press Writer Diaa Hadid, Associated Press Writer
JERUSALEM – A former Israeli soldier posted photos on Facebook of herself in uniform smiling beside bound and blindfolded Palestinian prisoners, drawing sharp criticism Monday from the Israeli military and Palestinian officials.

Israeli news websites and blogs showed two photographs of the woman. In one, she is sitting legs crossed beside a blindfolded Palestinian man who is slumped against a concrete barrier. His face is turned downwards, while she leans toward him with her face upturned. Another shows her smiling at the camera with three Palestinian men with bound hands and blindfolds behind her.

The incident was a reminder of the fraught relations between Israeli soldiers and the West Bank Palestinians under their control.

Israeli soldiers have run into trouble on the social media sites like Facebook and YouTube before. Most recently a group of combat soldiers were reprimanded for breaking into choreographed dance moves while on patrol in the West Bank town of Hebron. The dance featured prominently on YouTube.

Palestinian Authority spokesman Ghassan Khatib condemned the photos and said they pointed to a deeper malaise — how Israel’s 43-year-old occupation of Palestinians has affected the Israelis who enforce it.

“This shows the mentality of the occupier,” Khatib said, “to be proud of humiliating Palestinians. The occupation is unjust, immoral and, as these pictures show, corrupting.”

The Israeli military also criticized the young woman, who Israeli news media and bloggers identified from her Facebook page as Eden Aberjil of the southern Israeli port town of Ashdod. No official confirmed her identity.

“These are disgraceful photos,” said Capt. Barak Raz, an Israeli military spokesman. “Aside from matters of information security, we are talking about a serious violation of our morals and our ethical code and should this soldier be serving in active duty today, I would imagine that no doubt she would be court-martialed immediately,” he told Associated Press Television News.

It was not clear whether the army could punish the woman, because she has finished her compulsory military service.

The comments by the woman and her friend in an exchange below one photograph suggested how casually the picture was treated, including jokes and sexual innuendoes.

“You’re the sexiest like that,” her friend wrote.

“I wonder if he’s got Facebook!” the woman in the photograph responded. “I have to tag him in the picture!”

Aberjil did not respond to reporters’ questions Monday.

The photographs were a reminder of snapshots taken in 2003 by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq that showed Iraqi detainees naked, humiliated and terrified. In that case, some soldiers went to prison after the photos came to light.

The photographs of the Israeli soldier and the Palestinians, by contrast, show no overt physical abuse or coercion of the prisoners, although they are ridiculed in the comments between the soldier and her friends.

Palestinians are routinely handcuffed and blindfolded when they are arrested to stop them from trying to flee.

By: Ihsan Alkhatib, PhD, Esq.

Understanding the (mis)behavior of the Christian right wing
In writing about the Palestinian refugees’ suffering in Lebanon, the Lebanese weekly Al- Shiraa resurrected a quote for Hamid Frangieh, former Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Education from a 1948 speech before the Lebanese parliament: “We will welcome the Palestinian refugees regardless of their number. They can stay in Lebanon as long as they need to. We will not allow their mistreatment. We will share with them our last crumb of bread.” http://www.alshiraa.com/details.php?id=4479. Needless to say, the way the refugees were treated was always atrocious and never came close to the lofty promises of Hamid Frangieh.
Walid Jumblatt attempts change, parliament divides
Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt tried to change the sixty years of Palestinian suffering in Lebanon. The result was a scandalous division in the Lebanese parliament over the bills presented by his parliamentary bloc. These bills proposed to end policies of discrimination in housing ownership and employment. This Lebanese scandal came up in a phone conversation I had with a relative of mine, a Palestinian refugee from Syria. My relative was puzzled by the treatment of the refugees in Lebanon and by what happened in the parliament. The country of his family’s forced refuge, Syria, gives the refugees all the rights Syrians have except the right to vote and to run for office. “The world has moved away from such blatant discrimination, how could those so-called Cedar revolutionaries who speak of democracy and human rights shamelessly act the way they did?” he asked.
Any Muslim, any Arab but not a Palestinian Muslim
This phone conversation got me thinking of a situation that puzzled a friend of mine from Dearborn, a Muslim Palestinian attorney born in the US whose parents were from the West Bank, with no ties to Lebanon. Learning that Lebanon was seeking basketball players from overseas, this man wanted to take a break after law school and play basketball in Lebanon. He asked for my help. I called a Christian Lebanese friend of mine of Palestinian origin and asked him to help. He said his cousin works in recruitment of basketball talent and he would see what he could do. Then almost as an afterthought he asked me where the player was from. I told him he is an American born to a Palestinian Muslim family from the West Bank. There was an awkward silence. “It won’t work,” he said. A Muslim American of any other nationality would do, he said. A Christian Palestinian would do but not a Muslim Palestinian even if he and his family have nothing to do with Lebanon. “Sorry.”
Right- wing Christian Lebanese and the chosen hated other
Why a Christian Palestinian would be acceptable but not a Muslim one? If the Christian Lebanese right wing still has a vendetta from the civil war, why would a Christian Palestinian be ok and not a Muslim one, if the issue is the Palestinians as a people? This mystery is demystified by two interactions I had. On a flight from Amman to Beirut I was sitting next to a Lebanese Christian man. Our small talk, predictably, ended in politics. We talked about the war and the aftermath. We spoke about the different players in the civil war. To my surprise when he spoke about Palestinians he meant Muslim Palestinians. To him the Christian Palestinians were not “Palestinians.” This realization is validated by the treatment of Christian Palestinians during the civil war. I once asked a Christian Palestinian friend who lived in the Christian sector of the city if the Christian militias bothered his family. He told not at all. He thought a little bit and said the neighbor’s sometimes mocked his grandfather’s Palestinians dialect. But that was it. He was accepted in Christian Lebanon. Even the few Christian Palestinians who were not naturalized were accepted in the turf of the Lebanese Christian right.
The beginning and end of the war began with a myth ended with a founding lie
The civil war of Lebanon that broke out in the 1970s began with a myth and ended with a grand lie. The war began with the myth/blatant lie that the Palestinians want to “take over” Lebanon. It ended with the grand lie; the founding lie of the Taif Republic, that the Lebanese are innocent from the war and its atrocities and it’s the Palestinians’ entire fault. The Lebanese Christian right wing needed an “other” that draws attention away from Lebanese vicious disputes and conflicts. During the Lebanese civil war and the Syrian-imposed peace the right wing chose to have the “Palestinians” as the enemy within.
More importantly, the Lebanese civil war ended not because the Lebanese saw the light and resolved their disagreements. It ended by an imposed Syrian peace with Syrian troops and intelligence agents imposing order on the always feuding Lebanese factions. Unwilling to examine the war period, or to have a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to unearth crimes and bring war criminals to justice, the Taif Republic chose national amnesia , to “let bygones be bygones” as the late President Elias El Hrawi put it. Given that the Lebanese people, especially the youths who did not experience the war, needed a war narrative, a villain and a victim, there was a need for a unifying imagined history of the war era that deflects attention from unresolved Lebanese problems. The right-wing Christian narrative that carried the day was that the Palestinian was the villain and the Lebanese people the innocent victim of the “wars of others” and that the war “was a big conspiracy against the peaceful Lebanese.” Vindictive policies toward the Palestinians followed.
Christian Lebanon and Muslim Lebanon
At the heart of the division over the issue of the Palestinian refugees’ basic rights and the stupid policy toward the Palestinians is an existential question regarding Lebanon itself as a polity. Whose Lebanon is it? I worked in California with a Lebanese Christian of Syrian origin, a man who loved Lebanon, Syria and Palestine and considered them one homeland and one people despite the Sykes-Picot folly. He said that the religious divide in Lebanon is sickening. He related how in college a Christian Lebanese girl one time stated that she is annoyed by how “Muslims are acting as if they owned Lebanon.” My secular Syrian nationalist friend replied that Christians too act as if they own Lebanon. She replied, without hesitation, “We do!” Lebanese media report that the Palestinian issue divided the Lebanese in parliament along communal religious lines. The reality is that the Lebanese are divided along religious lines and the treatment of the Palestinians is a manifestation of this awful division. If the Lebanese truly believed and acted as if Lebanon is their country, regardless of sect and religion, these bills would not have been before parliament at all. The Palestinians would have been dealt with decently and honorably from their day one of forced refuge in Lebanon.

By: Michael Gillespie

United for Justice and Peace, the largest peace coalition in Greater Boston and Eastern Massachusetts, met at the Friends Center in Cambridge on June 19 to explore responses to Israel’s continuing siege of Gaza in the aftermath of the massacre of peace activists taking part in a Free Gaza flotilla on May 31. About 50 activists attended.
The three-hour meeting featured a panel discussion with Ann Wright (Col. U.S. Army, Ret.), a distinguished U.S. foreign service officer who resigned in protest from the Department of State in March 2003, the day before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and Husam Zomlot, a Palestinian scholar and diplomat. Zomlot served as PLO Representative to the UK from 2003 to 2008 and is currently a Research Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. The discussion was moderated by Jeff Klein, a retired machinist, union leader, and activist with Dorchester People for Peace.
“The sequence of events has been quite remarkable in the last two years,” said Wright. “The international community is putting pressure on the Israelis and the Egyptians and the American government to end the siege of Gaza.”
“It’s taking the people of the world, it’s a citizens’ action that is forcing governments to listen to the people. We in the United States have had a particularly bad run of governments listening to us over the last 10 years. The Bush administration didn’t listen to us on anything, and, tragically, the Obama administration is not listening to us much either,” said Wright.
“I’ll tell you what: When the citizens of the world start getting together on these things, well, things happen. What happened with the Gaza Flotilla, where we had six ships that finally started sailing toward Gaza, was tragic. All were attacked in international waters 70 miles off the coast of Gaza in an act of piracy, an act of kidnapping, an act of murder, an act of theft, all crimes by anyone’s estimation.
“That’s what happened on six ships, three of which were passenger ships, two of which were cargo ships. Passengers numbered 600 on the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish ferry boat that was leased by a huge Turkish international NGO, the Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (IHH). If you go on their web site, www.IHH.org.tr, you’ll see that in contrast to what the Israeli government talks about this IHH as being a terrorist organization that does nothing but support Hamas, you’ll see that that organization that brought over 400 people from Turkey and over 200 people from other countries in the region, it is an organization that has world-wide reach similar to CARE, Catholic Relief Services, International Rescue Committee, all of those organizations that work internationally, IHH is one of them,” the retired U.S. Army Colonel and foreign service officer told her audience.
“[IHH] does work in Gaza, and, like virtually every organization that works in Gaza, it has to have dealings with the government, and that’s [the basis of the false Israeli charge that] IHH is an international terrorist organization.
“Actually, the U.S. government calls other people terrorists. We have three Congressmen and women now who are calling people like me, who were on the flotilla, and like you, who have been to Gaza, people like you all who support the right of Palestinians to have a life, we are called terrorists by Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Brad Sherman (D-CA-27), Carolyn Maloney (D-NY-14). Sherman demanded that we be arrested and that we be charged with crimes of terrorism for taking part in the Gaza flotilla, so, last Thursday we had a giant protest in his office, but they refused to arrest us!
“It was really good. We had media like you wouldn’t believe. They were there to see what was going to happen when a U.S. Congressman calls for the arrest of American citizens. So we said, ‘OK! Arrest us! Come on!’ We had a press conference in the hallway. The police [that] were there, said ‘You can’t do this, you can’t do that,’ and we said ‘We’re going in the Congressman’s office. He wants to arrest us. We’re presenting ourselves!’
“It all goes to show that now we’ve got people on the run. We’ve got an Israeli government that, after that attack—it was a criminal attack—it was an attack that did not have to happen. If the Israeli navy wanted to stop those ships, there were other ways. As a military officer, I know there are other ways to stop ships besides boarding them forcefully and using live ammunition and killing people—killing nine unarmed people!
“There were no weapons on any of those ships. If there had been, we would have seen them. The Israeli military would have been parading them. Instead the only photos are of kitchen knives that were on the ship because they part of kitchens to feed 600 people. There was one ax that was onboard, an ax that every boat is required to carry because in case lines get tangled you have to chop them,” explained Wright.
Wright said there was violence on the Mavi Marmara after fire from the Israeli helicopters killed and wounded unarmed activists on the ship. Three masked Israeli commandos who rappelled onto the upper decks were overpowered and beaten, but the Captain of the ship and the director of IHH put a stop to all physical resistance and ordered that the three Israelis be treated by doctors onboard and promptly returned to Israeli control, said Wright.
“The tragedy on the Mavi Marmara was that the Israeli commandos killed people, shot people. They could have stopped the boat in a variety of other ways but the Israeli government chose to have a major confrontation, a confrontation that has really backfired on them, a confrontation that has governments of the world, to include by some miracle the United States government, finally saying that the blockade, the siege of Gaza is ‘unsustainable’ and that the deaths were ‘regrettable.’
“That’s in contrast to what the White House has been saying about Helen Thomas’s comments that [have been described as] ‘reprehensible.’ You would think that perhaps murdering people would be called ‘reprehensible,’ but no, that’s not quite where the U.S. government has gotten yet,” said Wright in part.
Zomlot began by offering his heartfelt thanks for all the people who have given their lives for the sake of a resolution of the humanitarian crisis in Palestine, and condolences to their families.
“The attacks on the flotilla and what happened with Ann and her group have really broken through to the core of the issue of the blockade of Gaza. These heroic acts of universalism, people coming together as civilians to break the siege, one of the most draconian sieges of modern history, are already bearing fruit. The siege, as we speak, is crumbling,” said the Palestinian scholar and diplomat.
“The moment I heard of what happened on the high seas off of Gaza I knew that it was the end of one of the most illegal, inhumane blockades of modern history. Your message has been heard. While your goods, your humanitarian supplies, your gifts for the Palestinian babies of Gaza, your pencils and tablets for schools, your medicines did not arrive, your message has arrived.
“It is a very loud and clear message. The message is that the agony and the suffering of the Palestinians is not only Palestinian. It is universal,” said the Palestinian diplomat, who noted that he was born in Gaza and lived there for many years.
Zomlot offered a brief overview of Israeli policy in Gaza, which he noted had always had two elements. One has been the effort to stifle Palestine’s economy.
“The Israeli policy has always been to ensure that Palestinians, as a political society, would not have an economy they could rely on. From 1991 onward until today, there was a policy of closure, a policy of individual deprivation and collective deprivation. … All those who wish to leave or enter Gaza, all those who wish to import or export from Gaza, would have to obtain an Israeli permit. And believe you me, that was not easy to get. It was extremely difficult. The last three or four years has only witnessed a heightening of that system of closure,” said Zomlot.
“The second goal of Israeli policy is political and geographical fragmentation. This is a classic policy of divide and rule as we all know. This policy has been in place at least since the Oslo Accords. Unfortunately, with the help of some major international actors, it has borne fruits of Palestinian political and geographic divisions,” said Zomlot, who added that rather than speak about the morality or the legality of Israel’s policies, he would address instead the practicalities.
“What is it you seek by creating a poor, deprived, leaderless, divided neighbor? What is it? Is it really to soften their position to strike a deal with them? It doesn’t work. You can always defeat an army, but you can’t defeat a nation, a society of mothers and teachers and lawyers. And even if you want to soften their position and you want to crush their will and their determination, what is the alternative you are offering? What is it that Palestinians are asked to concede? More than they have done so several years ago, conceding 70 percent of their land? It is very impractical, because we are all witnessing the backlash!” said Zomlot.
The Israeli goal was to isolate Gaza from the West Bank and divide the Palestinian people, said the Palestinian diplomat. “That’s the main policy!”
“I believe that if Israel intends to liquidate the Palestinian polity, the Palestinian society, for the sake of finishing off the job they started in 1948, then [Israeli policy] makes sense, and what is happening now makes a lot of sense. But if Israel intends to really strike a deal with its neighbor and create the two-state solution that Israel has been talking about all these years, then what is happening does not make sense,” said Zomlot.
The Palestinian scholar and diplomat told his audience he fears that Israeli leaders have no intention of striking a deal with Palestinians on any terms, that they have no intention of allowing a viable, peaceful Palestinian state.
Zomlot identified four principles as a way forward. Palestinians, he said, are moving toward national unity. “Everybody realizes that fragmentation of our polity and out land is only playing into the hands of those who do not wish us well.”
As Palestinians move toward national unity, they are adopting a policy of non-violent popular resistance, said Zomlot. “It’s a universal Palestinian conclusion that non-violent resistance that is popular and peaceful—the best example is the flotilla and what happened—is the most effective way of confronting Israel.”
Third, said Zomlot, is national institution building. “The most important thing right now is to try and empower Palestinians to continue living on their land by creating institutions for health, education, etcetera that will enable Palestinians to survive, to be steadfast where they are.”
“And last, and most important in my opinion, is you,’ said Zomlot. “All of you. That is, the International Solidarity Movement, justice groups, peace groups. This new movement, that we see everywhere in Europe, in the U.S., in Australia, in Asia, and in Africa is forming and taking a very solid shape. Believe you me, the more assertive you are, the more vocal you are, the more strong you are, the more united you are, the more Palestinians are reaching into the non-violent side of the story. Because this alliance brings strength to face the violence that Palestinians are suffering,” said Zomlot.
“This movement is growing,” declared moderator Jeff Klein, “not as big and as fast as we would like, but nevertheless it is clear that this movement is growing.”
Klein reminded his audience that it wasn’t so long ago that many activists who recognized the importance of a just resolution of the Israel/Palestine conflict were reluctant to speak out and engage on the issue in the larger peace movement and at the big antiwar rallies.
“I’m happy to say I think that’s largely over with. The Palestine issue has become one of the core issues of the activist community on the Left, and that’s a big step forward,” said Klein.
One result of the solidarity movement to break the siege of Gaza its unexpected and powerful effects in the Middle East, noted Klein.
Subsequent events underscore Klein’s remarks and those of Wright and Zomlot. As counterproductive wars and a failed U.S. foreign policy driven by a bloated defense industry and the malignant influence of Tel Aviv and its pro-Israel lobby play havoc with Washington’s legitimate interests in the Middle East, Ankara’s principled policies and diplomatic initiatives are finding favor as Turkey’s influence in the region and beyond increases.
On July 8, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said during a visit to London that Israel would have to lift its blockade and be “held accountable” for its attack on the aid ships of the Gaza flotilla or face gradual stages of disengagement if it did not respond to Turkey’s demands. Ankara has closed Turkish airspace to Israeli military aircraft, withdrawn its ambassador to Israel, and said the envoy will not return until Israel meets Turkish demands.
“Time is running out for a two-state solution. It is in Israel’s interest to make sure that it is still possible,” warned British Foreign Secretary William Hague.
Hague described the blockade of Gaza as “unacceptable and unsustainable,” according a report in the Guardian (UK) by Ian Black, Middle East editor.
Wise diplomats and statesmen are now working for the welfare of all humanity, even as they strive to promote the interests of their own national and racial groups. They recognize that selfish political sagacity is ultimately suicidal, destructive of all those enduring qualities that insure planetary group survival.

By: Tammy Obeidallah

Over the years, I have lambasted the U.S. government, particularly in the area of foreign policy. Wars, copious amounts of taxpayer dollars in aid to an apartheid state, inherent racism and hypocrisy have provided endless fodder for constant criticism.
Has that criticism been aimed at the right place? The motivations behind the aforementioned institutionalized evils are elementary: money, power and greed; however the real problem is much deeper. A government that—at least in principle—is supposed to be “for the people, by the people” must relinquish some of the responsibility for erroneous policy to the people. Whether we feel the need to acquiesce out of fear or out of apathy, we are equally culpable.
The first great enemy to humanity is fear. It is fear that ultimately leads to racism, bigotry, hatred and any number of social ills. Those in power are well aware of this, and will use any means to instill fear in their citizenry in order to manipulate them. Recently, Israeli schoolchildren underwent numerous air raid drills, supposedly in the event of an attack by Hezbollah, or maybe Iran, or just in case the resistance groups in Gaza finally develop a rocket that can hit the broadside of a barn.
Of course, a country which touts itself as a premier tourist destination cannot be under the threat of imminent attacks from Hezbollah, Syria, Iran and Gaza, yet these brainwashed youngsters will—like us—be taught not to question, only to fear and to support their government’s attacks on Palestinian civilians and humanitarian activists under the guise of self-defense.
The tragic absurdity was compounded when Israeli commandos stormed a Gaza-bound humanitarian cargo ship, murdering unarmed activists, only to make outlandish claims that they were ambushed and attacked with knives, pipes and clubs. According to the increasingly preposterous hasbara machine, the Free Gaza movement is tied to Al-Qaeda and hate-filled passengers had prepared themselves for a violent confrontation. Logic dictates that if a group of activists plans a violent confrontation against one of the most advanced and trigger-happy armies in the world, they will carry at least a couple of AK-47s rather than knives and pipes.
However, fear leaves us with the inability to reason, thus it is the most important weapon in the propagandists’ arsenal. Common sense becomes an early casualty. Traveling on internal flights within Ecuador during a recent trip served as a blissful reminder that in other places in the world, travelers do not have to dump their water and liquids in larger-than-three-ounce containers at the door, nor remove their shoes. Yet fear-mongering has convinced us that there is a bomb in every bottle of baby oil and we are poised to submit to even more indignities after the infamous alleged “underwear bomber.” It is truly amazing what people will tolerate.
The Obama administration is poised to give Israel an additional $205 million for a missile defense shield, while the state of California has announced budget cuts eliminating programs such as welfare-to-work and home health care. The vicious cycle continues: give money to Israel, cut program funding for poor and destitute Americans to keep them busy with basic survival so there is no concern for what is going on overseas.
Such apathy, like fear, is equally debilitating. Whether it is the amount of gratuitous violence in news and entertainment, or simply that we are too busy trying to find employment, pay mortgages, maintain health coverage, gas the car and put food on the table, we are losing our uniquely human ability to empathize. Our government’s endless quest for global hegemony has created these conditions—instead of focusing on our own job creation, inner cities, education and health care, foreign wars and entanglements have drained our resources, leaving our citizens to die at hospital doors and our desperate youth to gun down each other in the streets.
I ran into a former coworker at a wedding recently. Sitting together at the reception, three year-old grandson on her lap in his crisp white tuxedo, I showed her pictures of my children while listing the major life changes that had taken place in the eleven years since I had seen her. She spoke of retirement with an air of sadness not usually associated with a comfortable pension after a lifetime of hard work and then informed me quietly that her youngest son—the father of the little boy seated so solemnly in her lap—had been shot and killed in 2007.
After heartfelt yet inadequate and clichéd expressions of sympathy, I realized that I had most likely seen reports of his murder on the news, but had given it little attention: it wasn’t in my part of town and I would not have recognized the name. In other words, it didn’t affect me.
Only then did I come to the disturbing realization that I am not immune to the sickness that has infected us all to one degree or another: the apathetic tolerance that we afford such untimely loss of human life. The people in neighborhoods and situations who have to worry about getting gunned down in front of their own homes cannot be bothered with the gross oppression going on in Palestine. More ignorance and apathy allows the government to continue unabated the flow of economic and military aid to the apartheid state of Israel.
To combat these dual forces of fear and apathy, we must remember the words of the 17th Century English poet John Donne: “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less…any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind…” We must afford each priceless human life the reverence it commands and refuse to succumb to the irrational scare tactics used by our government to justify mass murder.

By Amira Hass
The IDF’s Civil Administration destroyed a Palestinian village Monday morning that had earlier been cleared out when its water supply was cut off.
The IDF demolished about 55 structures in the West Bank village of Farasiya, including tents, tin shacks, plastic and straw huts, clay ovens, sheep pens and bathrooms. These structures served the 120 farmers, hired workers and their families who lived in the Jordan Valley village.
The Civil Administration said they had declared the area a live fire zone and posted eviction orders for 10 families in tents on June 27.
“Since no appeal was filed in the following three weeks, and given the danger posed by the location of the tents, they were removed,” they said in response.
The villagers made a living by sheep farming and working land owned by families in the town of Tubas. Some of them have been living in Farasiya for decades.
A packaging warehouse that was built together with Agrexco in the late 1970s was also torn down.
Atef Abu al-Rob, a photographer for the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, who arrived at the village hours after the demolition, said mattresses, pipes and broken furniture were lying on the ground in the debris.
Since 1967, Israel has prevented Palestinian communities in the Jordan Valley from growing, whether by cutting off their water supply, declaring large areas as live fire zones or banning all construction.
About a year ago the IDF set up hundreds of warning signs near Palestinian farming communities, marking them closed military areas. Such a sign was set up at the entrance to Farasiya.
The families had recently been forced to leave the village when the Israeli authorities cut it off from its water sources, said the popular committees’ coordinator in the valley, Fathi Hadirat. The villagers were forbidden to use the water wells the Mekorot Water Company had dug in the area.
Hadirat said a few years ago the Civil Administration destroyed the pipe the villages had laid from a nearby stream used for drinking water and irrigation.
Since then they have been watering the sheep and fields with water unfit for human consumption, pumped from a salt water source. They received drinking water in tanks.
About four months ago the IDF confiscated their pumps. On Sunday, 10 families from Bardala, a village north of Farasiya, were given demolition notices.
A farmer who owns 300 sheep was told to leave in 24 hours or his herd would be confiscated.

Occupation of Palestinians hurts Israel

Ghassan Michel Rubeiz, June 19, 2010,

East Meredith

A festering military occupation may end up doing more harm to the occupier than to the occupied. Since 1967, Israel has held tenaciously to the occupied Palestinian territories and to the Syrian Golan Heights.

The 1967 war suddenly made Israel a regional superpower. But this sudden change occurred before Israel had matured in the process of state-building. Israel has not yet been able to integrate its Jewish character with its democratic principles; it has no formally proclaimed clear borders. Israel is too busy fighting with Arabs to pay full attention to serious unresolved issues of its identity. The recent Israeli news about Ultra-Orthodox Jews of European origin objecting fiercely to their children’s required attendance of schools with Jews of Arab descent is symptomatic of the dormant and explosive issue of Jewish identity.

The 1967 occupation changed Israel from a society that had been creatively busy in building a liberal democracy to one that tries the impossible to rationalize and secure the occupation. This occupation prevents the birth of a Palestinian state, deprives the two neighboring states of Syria and Lebanon from reclaiming lost land and provokes the entire region.

On at least seven accounts Israel is expected by the international community to modify its position: prolonging a military occupation, expanding settlements, building an intrusive wall of separation, annexing territories, maintaining the Gaza siege, launching devastating pre-emptive wars and starting the regional nuclear race. One wonders if Israel is gradually falling into perilous political self isolation through an occupation which it cannot, and should not, sustain.

Despite its highly controversial occupation of vast foreign land, Israel remains an example of a liberal democracy in a region that is largely authoritarian. But an open-ended and worsening occupation could lead Israel into a hodge-podge society with various standards of human rights.

Israel seems to forget that it is a small country surrounded by a vast Arab region. It is not well known that nearly half of the current citizens of Israel have Arab roots. A significant section of Israel’s population is composed of Arab Jews who migrated from Arab countries. And there are many Palestinians who stayed on land which became part of the state of Israel in 1948.

The Jews who migrated from the Arab world to Israel in the early stage of state formation constituted the majority of the population. In later decades, the European Ashkenazi sector of the population became the majority in Israel proper.   

Middle Eastern Jews are part of the “Sephardic” community; Jews with Western backgrounds are known as the “Ashkenazis”. Palestinian Israelis are known as “Arab Israelis”.  Cultural backgrounds have strong political relevance in many newly formed states. The Sephardic community speaks some Arabic, in addition to Hebrew, the national language. The Sephardis love Middle Eastern ethnic food and enjoy other aspects of the past, such as Arabic music. However, on the whole, many have a cultural amnesia of their Arab background. The Brooklyn-based scholar David Shasha has written extensively on Ashkenazi dominance in Israeli life and politics. Shasha explains that in seeking rapid and superficial modernity, the Sephardi Jews have suppressed their Arab cultural roots and identified too strongly with the powerful Western side of Israel.

On the other hand, Palestinian Israelis speak Arabic at home and Hebrew in school and the workplace. Combined, these two contrasting ethno-religious minorities, who are roughly equal in size, constitute more than three million citizens. Unfortunately, these two minority communities are alienated from one another and mutually suspicious.

People with Arab roots constitute the majority of the population of the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Thus, the Ashkenazi Jews have actually now become a cultural-minority in post 1967 Israel. The Ashkenazi subculture represents nearly a third of the population between the River and the Sea, three out of eleven million residents.

Israel has a problem which cannot be ignored for too long. The Arab population will increase within Israel proper and in the occupied areas.  The Palestinians have finally discovered the power of nonviolent resistance. This discovery alone will give the Palestinians what they have lacked for a long time: moral power in the face of brutal force. If only Hamas could appropriate this time-tested resistance model.

The world is increasingly questioning the occupation and its consequences. The US government is now desperate to find a way to maintain its close alliance with Israel and live up to its commitment to justice and to better relations with the Muslim world.

Even mainline Jewish writers, like Peter Beinart, the former editor of the New Republic, have recently turned critical of Israel’s current government. Beinart expressed concern that the American Jewish community has failed to pressure Israel to make peace and explained why the young generation of American Jews is gradually losing interest in Zionism. For more on this article, see The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment, in The New York Review of Books, May 18, 2010.

The current Flotilla crisis has brought additional burden unto Israel; the siege on Gaza is partially lifted; the word is out that Israel’s current government is risk-prone.

Will Israel sober up in time and terminate an occupation which degrades the occupier and hurts the occupied?

By Aluf Benn

Courtesy of Haartz.com

 The United Nations fact-finding mission into the Gaza offensive describes Israel as perpetrating war crimes – a police state which persecutes minorities – and tars the Palestinian leadership in the Gaza Strip and West Bank with similar accusations. Read the full story

Leonard Cohen (Photo courtesy of shilohmusings.blogspot.com)

Courtesy of pacbi.org

New York, NY, August 18 – Amnesty International has announced today that it will abstain from any involvement in the Leonard Cohen concert in Tel Aviv and will not be party to any fund that benefits from the concert’s proceeds. A number of media accounts had reported that Amnesty International was to manage or otherwise partner in a fund created from the proceeds of Cohen’s concert in Israel that would be used to benefit Israeli and Palestinian groups. Amnesty International’s announcement today followed an international outcry over the human rights organization’s reported involvement in the Leonard Cohen concert fund, and an earlier international call for Cohen to boycott apartheid Israel.

Omar Barghouti from the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) commented, “We welcome Amnesty International’s withdrawal from this ill-conceived project which is clearly intended to whitewash Israel’s violations of international law and human rights. By abandoning the Leonard Cohen project in Tel Aviv, Amnesty International has dealt Cohen and his public Read the full story

Courtesy of www.stopthewall.org

In June 2008, Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa visited Israel with a delegation of top municipal officials. Following the visit, Villaraigosa announced that the city of Los Angeles would engage in joint cooperation with Israel on water issues. This involves both working with Kinrot and Mekorot National Water Company.

The agreement:
*Provides Israeli companies with access to Los Angeles Department of Water & Power (DWP) facilities for pilot projects.
*Foresees the installation of Israeli technologies in the DWP facilities.
*Entails cooperation in water R&D ventures and academic studies, which will encompass the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA).
*Includes the transfer of know how from Kinrot to the Los Angeles municipality on how to set up a water technology incubator.

Via this agreement, Los Angeles and its institutions legitimize, finance and profit from Israel’s experience of water management – the “world leader in water technology and conservation” – which is Read the full story

By Ihsan Alkhatib, Ph.D.
Staff Writer

Zionist Propaganda vs Zionist Reality
President Barack Obama gives the Arabs, especially Palestinians, hope that real progress could be made on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Not surprisingly, Obama’s speech has unleashed a campaign of lies from the supporters of Israel, Christian and Jewish fanatics, who have a near monopoly in presenting their side in the media as the truth. Simply put: those fanatics repeat the lies of the Zionist propaganda machine. From the scholarly Orbis editor to the Wall Street Journal pages to lesser publications, Zionist lies are repeated in the hope of continuing the false reality that the Zionists are the victims and the Arabs are the aggressors who want to throw the Jews in the sea. The reality is the Zionists want to grab Arab land and throw the non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine in the sea.

Jerusalem 1913 and Herzl’s Nightmare
It is not possible to understand the conflict by just reading newspapers and watching the news. It is important to understand the history of the conflict. The Israelis have been better at Read the full story