NOVANEWS

 

• ‘Gay Girl in Damascus’ deceit has damaged the cause

• Jack Ross, new author, says Israel lobby captured the Jewish establishment in ’58 but here come the ruby slippers

• Over 1,180 Palestinians displaced and affected by Israeli demolitions in the West Bank so far in 2011

• Nabi Saleh attempts to peacefully protest for its water rights and against the occupation

• May was deadliest month for civilians in Afghanistan (and US-NATO role is whitewashed!)

• ‘Gay Girl in Damascus’ is a hoax — Electronic Intifada

• ‘We will boycott Israel’ –a cappella flashmob in Brisbane

• What is the living ethos in Jewish communal politics other than Zionism? (More dialogue about David Simon)

• The conscience stirs… Uri Avnery confronts the refugees’ dream… and Israel’s ‘nightmare’

‘Gay Girl in Damascus’ deceit has damaged the cause
Jun 12, 2011 11:55 pm | Eleanor K

Following a successful investigation by Ali Abunimah and Benjamin Doherty at the Electronic Intifada, the writer behind the ‘A Gay Girl in Damascus’ blog, which purported to be by a Syrian-American woman, ‘Amina Arraf’, has revealed himself to be an American man, Tom MacMaster.

It was this part of Tom MacMaster’s non-apology that rankled in particular: “I feel that I have created an important voice for issues that I feel strongly about”. Those issues are brutal state repression, feminism, homophobia, pinkwashing, and so on – all undeniably important. But solidarity does not confer on the person ‘feeling’ it an entitlement to speak in the place of those subjected to violence and prejudice, to assume their identity. The suffering of another – however it is borne – is humbling and deserving of respect. We show our solidarity by bearing witness, offering support, drawing attention to the hypocrisies of our leaders and commentators, insisting on a path to justice.

MacMaster created a fictional character, ‘Amina’, that belonged in a novel not on the international and Syrian socio-political stage. A writer of fiction lays her/himself open to criticism of plot, tone and characterization; the hoaxer demands unquestioning loyalty and reverence.

This deceit of MacMaster is damaging to the causes he claims to support. It is also an imperialist venture of sorts by a white male. By merely approximating the real challenges of a queer woman in an undemocratic Arab country, he obscures a diversity of struggles – many of which are undertaken at a low register and command far less attention.

Jack Ross, new author, says Israel lobby captured the Jewish establishment in ’58 but here come the ruby slippers

Jun 12, 2011

Philip Weiss

“Rabbi Outcast,” Jack Ross’s biography of the late anti-Zionist rabbi Elmer Berger, was published this weekend and is already being cheered. There’s a coming out party next Sunday in Brooklyn for the book; details at the end of this post. I’ll try and get a review/summary of the bio up in the next few days, though I’d point to passages like this one, in the Epilogue, that typify Ross’s preternatural ability to crunch large diverse trends into pithy ideas:

[T]he peace process was only interpreted as a license for American Judaism to become more closely and intensely identified with Zionism than ever before. Multiple factors contributed to this reality. One was the increasing prevalence of the Holocaust in defining American Jewish identity, peaking right around the time of the 1993 [Oslo] accord with the film Schindler’s List and the opening of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. Another was the dramatic increase of Israeli influences on the religious practices of American Jews, whether directly from Israelis themselves or through the intensely Zionist-oriented Jewish summer camps, which defined the exposure of whole generations to Judaism.

Smart. Ross also has a fine historical analysis of the Israel lobby up at the History New Network tonight. More smarts. Here are two excerpts, on the rise and (predicted) fall of the American Zionist Jewish establishment. Rise:

When the Eisenhower administration came to office in 1953, it looked on the [anti-Zionist] American Council for Judaism as a valuable ally.  Officials hoped that Israel could be recognized by the Arab states within the 1949 armistice lines in exchange for a reasonable settlement of the refugee problem and that Israel could become, in the words of John Foster Dulles, “a part of the Middle East community and cease looking upon itself as alien to that community.”  In practice, this meant that Israel would have become integrated into a regional anti-Communist bloc that came into a brief dubious existence as the Baghdad Pact.  The American Council for Judaism also closely collaborated with the CIA-backed American Friends of the Middle East.  But the Israel lobby, in its early gestations, protested these policies vigorously.The turning point in the history of an American Jewish establishment came in 1958, when the very thing feared by its opponents from the outset came to pass.  The Eisenhower Administration, bowing to the premise that Zionists spoke for all American Jewry, requested the merger of the the governing bureaucracy of the various Jewish organizations to represent the American Jewish community as Zionists.  The Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations was formed, taking over the functions of the NCRAC [National Community Relations Advisory Council]. If the status of the Conference of Presidents as an ecumenical body should strike the casual observer as absurd, it was taken with absolute seriousness by its leaders.  The leader of AIPAC in this era, Philip Bernstein, would describe the [anti-Zionist] American Council for Judaism in all necessary statements as having arisen to oppose “the united program of the American Jewish community adopted in 1943,” as though this carried something like the force of law….

Fall:

[T]he most fateful factor [in the dissolution of that establishment] has been the alliance of the American Jewish establishment with the neoconservatives.  It has been said that with friends like the neocons, Israel does not need enemies, and this is if anything even more true of the American Jewish establishment.  Norman Podhoretz wrote frankly in his memoir Breaking Ranks that the opposition of the emerging neoconservatives to George McGovern was motivated in great measure by a concern that a less militarist America would be bad for Israel, and this was repeated at the time by many of his colleagues such as Irving Kristol and John Roche.

In neocon polemics against their political near-neighbors who remained on the left in the 1970s and 80s, we can see the origins of their present unmitigated hysteria toward progressive Zionists such as J Street and Peter Beinart.  As early as this period, any suggestion by critics on the left that they cared more deeply about Israel and for that reason wanted it to make the necessary sacrifices to survive as a Jewish state touched a very raw nerve for the neocons.  The great irony, however, is that the deep commitment to Israel and to Zionist first principles by the democratic left of this era, reflected in the present day by J Street, may have been the very thing that ensured the marriage of the American Jewish establishment and the neoconservatives.  This commitment to Israel was not the only factor, but a critical factor, in the failure of principled non-interventionism to take hold on the left in the aftermath of Vietnam, thereby pulling American politics to the point where by the 1990s the left-most reach of political respectability was the Democratic Leadership Council.

In short, the American Jewish establishment based so much of its program on the assumption that this would be the case indefinitely, and a generation later it is paying dearly for it.  The American Jewish establishment may still have all the friends it needs and more in the Democratic Party, but American liberalism has changed profoundly since the 1990s, to say nothing of the 1970s.  The writer Irving Howe, who came to bitterly regret his alliance with the neoconservatives in his final years, gave a speech in 1989 foreseeing that “because the religion of most American Jews is not serious, it has become almost totally defined by Israel, and a major crisis will erupt as Israel’s actions become less and less defensible.”

Oh and here’s the party:
Sunday, June 19
2-5 PM
Jalopy Theater
315 Columbia Street
Brooklyn

Over 1,180 Palestinians displaced and affected by Israeli demolitions in the West Bank so far in 2011
Jun 12, 2011 08:37 pm | Kate

The number of people displaced and affected by demolitions in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since the start of 2011. Displaced means people whose homes have been demolished. Affected is when a demolition has had an impact in other ways such as on people’s livelihoods or on basic services and utilities. (Source: UNRWA)

UNRWA: Demolition watch
The Israeli practice of demolishing homes, basic infrastructure and sources of livelihoods continues to devastate Palestinian families and communities in East Jerusalem and the 60 per cent of the West Bank controlled by Israel, known as Area C.  Demolition = Dispossession: Many of the people affected already live in poverty, and demolitions are a leading cause of their ongoing displacement and dispossession in the West Bank. The impact of home demolitions on children can be particularly devastating. Many children affected by demolitions show signs of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety. Their academic achievement often suffers … The stats:The table and graph above shows the number of people displaced and affected by demolitions in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since the start of 2011.
Bedouin children hope their West Bank school will be spared Israel’s bulldozers / Harriet Sherwood
Guardian 12 June — Each morning, they scrabble through a drainage pipe under a busy main road slicing through the unforgiving landscape between Jerusalem and Jericho, where hard-baked stony hills roll down to the Dead Sea. At the end of the school day, they clamber back down to the drainage pipe to pass beneath the thundering traffic on their way home. But, after today, the last school day in the academic year, the pupils of Khan al-Ahmar primary in the West Bank cannot be certain their school will still be standing come September. Head teacher Hanan Awad fears that if the building is left empty, bulldozers will rumble up the hill from the main road to tear down the illegal two-year-old structure built out of old car tyres and mud. So she and her team of nine women teachers are planning a programme of children’s summer activities to keep the building occupied.

And more from Today in Palestine:

Absent military escort endangers Palestinian children of Tuba and Maghayir Al-Abeed
Operation Dove 11 June — At-Tuwani – On the morning of Saturday June 11th, the military escort which accompanies the Palestinian schoolchildren of the village of Tuba and Maghayir Al-Abeed to their school in At-Tuwani did not arrive. The children had to walk to school alone, thereby risking attack by settlers from the Ma’on settlement and the Havat Ma’on outpost. Usually there is no school on Saturday, but today was the last day of final exams, therefore the schoolchildren of Tuba and Maghayir Al-Abeed had a normal school day, which was known by the military escort … For further information about the trend of the military escort during the school year 2009/2010, the report “The Dangerous Road to Education. Palestinian Students Suffer Under Settler Violence and Military Negligence” is available at the URL: link to goo.gl
link to www.operationdove.org
Poll: Most Israelis don’t know Jordan Valley is occupied / Dimi Reider
972mag 12 June —  A poll conducted by our esteemed Dahlia Scheindlin(for ACRI’s Action a Day campaign) indicates a sweeping majority of Israelis – 63.5%, to be exact – think the Jordan valley is part of Israel; in other words, not part of the West Bank; or, in plain words, don’t understand why or how Israeli presence there is being called into question. The special status of the valley in the Israeli collective consciousness is nothing new. Partly thanks to a highly successful campaign of displacement, Palestinian residents of this occupied territory — as occupied as Jenin or East Jerusalem — are rarely heard about in the Israeli media, and Palestinian political violence of the kind that makes Israelis notice Palestinians has been negligible in the valley through both Intifadas. The Palestinians of the valley are so invisible to most Israelis that the poll indicates 34.5% thought Israelis formed an overwhelming majority in the valley, while in fact it’s the other way around, with Palestinians outnumbering Israelis 6 to 1.
link to 972mag.com
Israel to demolish three buildings in illegal Migron outpost
Haaretz 12 June — State Attorney’s Office informs High Court that Ministry of Defense ‘will not put up with construction of new buildings in the outpost,’ and will be demolished within 45 days … The outpost was erected on private Palestinian land. In 2006, the Peace Now movement filed a petition on behalf of the land owners, demanding the outpost be evacuated and the land returned to its owners. After lengthy proceedings, the state reached a compromise with the Yesha Council, permitting it to build a neighborhood for the Migron residents in the Geva Binyamin settlement. The compromise was rejected by the residents … Barak’s order reflects a current trend in the Palestinian territories, whereby the Civil Administration demolishes buildings in outposts that are not backed by the Yesha Council [price-tag attack on some village to follow, no doubt] 
link to www.haaretz.com
Settler ‘price tag’ pogroms against Palestinians go under the radar / Yossi Gurvitz
972mag 11 June — With violence against Palestinians becoming commonplace and essentially condoned, it begins vanishing from the media and becomes a non-issue — When a post mortem on Israeli democracy takes place, there’s a good chance that the “Ha’Kol Ha’Yehudi” will be considered akin to Radio Rwanda, which encouraged and led the murderers to the victims during that country’s genocide … Ha’Kol Hayehudi reports steadily and enthusiastically about the pogroms carried out by settlers, under the code name of ‘price tag’ — referring to acts carried out against Palestinian in revenge of government actions harming the settler enterprise.
link to 972mag.com
From: Interior Ministry Re: Ruth the Moabite
978mag 12 June — Last week, Israel celebrated Shavuot, the holiday on which we read the Book of Ruth. The following is a take on how correspondence between Anat Hoffman of the Israel Religious Action Center and the Ministry of Interior would look like if the Biblical Ruth, the great-grandmother of King David and Judaism’s first convert, were to be seeking legal status in Israel today. Chag sameach! [Happy Holiday!]
link to 972mag.com
Israeli army, police

OCHA report: IOF injured 88 Palestinians June 1-7
RAMALLAH (PIC) 11 June — A report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the occupied Palestinian territories says that Israeli occupation forces (IOF) injured 88 Palestinians during the first week of June 2011 most of them Naksa Day protesters. The alarmingly high number brings the count to 787 injuries this year, the OCHA report says, a 17 percent increase from the equivalent period in 2010. The majority of this week’s injuries (76) took place during June 5 protests at the Qalandiya checkpoint in East Jerusalem as the IOF fired gas canisters and rubber-coated bullets at protesters.
The official report also marks an increase in violence by Jewish settlers that week, with 15 attacks that caused six injuries on Palestinians and the torching of a mosque in Al-Mughayyir village near Ramallah.
link to www.palestine-info.co.uk
Israel kills Palestinian at Golan border
PressTV 12 June — Israeli military forces have opened fire on a group of Palestinian refugees in Syria’s Golan Heights, killing at least one and injuring five others, a Syrian state TV report says. According to the report, a number of Palestinian youth were targeted by Israeli forces after they approached the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights border line.
link to www.presstv.ir
Bil‘in residents say regular incursions are intimidation tactic
RAMALLAH (Ma‘an) 12 June — The day after anti-wall protests in Bil‘in, Israeli forces enter the village causing anger amongst residents, leading to the throwing of rocks and glass bottles at patrol cars. The coordinator of the local popular committee against the wall, Ratib Abu Rahma, told Ma‘an that several military vehicles and infantrymen entered the village and started firing live ammunition, tear gas, and stun grenades at the young men. Abu Rahma condemned what he called a “provocation,” saying there was no reason for the troops to be in the village, and accusing the soldiers of attempting to intimidate villagers and keep them away from the weekly demonstrations against the wall.
link to www.maannews.net
Cop guilty of sex crime against Palestinian
Ynet 12 June — Within the framework of a plea bargain, the Kfar Saba Magistrates Court convicted Khader Eldin, a police officer from the Druze town of Daliat el-Carmel, of committing indecent acts against a Palestinian woman who requested an Israeli ID in order to be united with her husband. [and would he have been indicted if he’d been Jewish instead of Druze?]
link to www.ynetnews.com

Detention
Israel army detains 3 Palestinians in southern West Bank
BETHLEHEM (Ma‘an) 12 June — Israeli armed forces detained two Palestinians from Bethlehem Sunday morning and officially summoned a third to the intelligence office for interrogation. According to witnesses, seven military jeeps invaded Al-Khas village east of Bethlehem and detained 21-year-old Ahmad Naji Salman after ransacking his home.
In a separate incident, Israeli forces also raided the As-Saff neighborhood of Bethlehem and detained 23-year-old Tamer Mahmoud Hamoud.
In Hebron, Israeli forces detained 22-year-old Saddam Abdul-Aziz from Beit Ummar in the north.
Israeli troops also stormed Al-Azza refugee camp near Bethlehem and delivered a warrant to a young man asking him to appear before the Etzion intelligence office.
link to www.maannews.net
Palestinian woman detained at Jenin checkpoint
JENIN (Ma‘an) 12 June — Israeli forces on Sunday detained a Palestinian woman at a checkpoint near Jenin in the northern West Bank, Palestinian security sources said. Kifah Imad Zeid, a university student, was trying to cross Umm Ar-Rayhan checkpoint into Israel with her father. Soldiers detained her and said the ID card and entry permit she presented did not belong to her, security officials told Ma‘an.
Meanwhile, three Israeli military jeeps stormed Zububa village in the northern West Bank, witnesses said. No injuries or detentions were reported.
link to www.maannews.net
Activism / Solidarity
Video: Nabi Saleh attempts to peacefully protest for its water rights and against the occupation / Jenny Levin
My first taste of ‘fire’ today, 10 June 2011, in solidarity with the pastoral Palestinian village of Nebi Saleh. Like everyone else, first-timers and seasoned demonstrators, I was shocked at the violence used by the soldiers against non-violent protesters – men, women and children, Palestinians, Israelis, and foreigners alike! I can confirm that there was absolutely no provocation on the part of the demonstrators. We’d hardly taken our first steps through this sleepy village when tear gas canisters started falling all around us, the air became filled with the acrid smoke, and our eyes, mouths and skin took the impact of the tear gas. Is this not chemical warfare? Personally, I can’t think of any other description that fits.
link to mondoweiss.net
Fear and tear gas in Nabi Saleh: a coward’s story / Shoshana London Sappir
11 June — Today I had a small taste of confronting the Israeli occupation from the Palestinian side, and I confess that even my brief exposure was traumatic. Heeding the invitation of my friend Gershon Baskin for Israelis to join him at the weekly non-violent protest in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, in the hope of mitigating the brutal force the Israeli army exerts against the protesters, I set out early Friday morning with most of the things on the list Gershon sent me — food, water, sunscreen, a towel against tear gas – in my backpack, and a sense of foreboding in my heart … Gershon told us that at first a lot of Israelis had signed up for this action, but as the week went on they started cancelling out of fear. He said he didn’t blame them.
link to www.didyoulearnanything.net
Flash mob – We will boycott Israel – Brisbane Australia 3 June 2011
Brisbane BDS Campaign activists surprise shoppers by performing “we will boycott Israel” to the tune of a popular music anthem in the Myer centre food court below the Seacret Dead Sea Cosmetics stall.[no dancing in this one – clapping while seated]
link to www.youtube.com
Gaza
Forced to fish in swimming waters
[with photos] GAZA CITY (IPS) 12 June – In Gaza’s main port, beyond the newly-built memorial to the Freedom Flotilla martyrs, Gaza’s fishermen prepare to go out trawling at shallow depths in Palestinian waters. Other fishers stay on land to mend nets and fix boats damaged or destroyed by Israeli navy gunfire, shelling, water cannoning and even ramming. Such moves as the opening of Rafah have done nothing for Gaza’s fishermen. [at the end of the story, 5 links to other articles, with photos, about the plight of Gaza fishermen]
link to ingaza.wordpress.com
Despite paralysis, he works in wheelchair to support his poor family
Gaza (Alresalah.ps) 9 June — When ”hope of [for?] pain”‘ team visited Abo Alabed , a 50-year-old paralyzed man, received us with big smile, which reflected his happiness and hope of help by our visit that he still believes in.  In spite of being disabled, Abo Alabed gets out every day in the early morning on his wheelchair, moving  between markets and alleys to sell local newspapers. He has no work except this to feed his 11-member poor family. Abo Alabed, who got wounded  in 2006 in Israeli shelling that targeted civilians including him, has been working in selling newspapers since 18 years, whereas he gets 30 shekels (some 8 dollars) every week which does not meet the minimum limit of his family’s basic life needs. [contains interview video (in Arabic) which shows his home]
link to www.alresalah.ps
Israel to allow limited goods into Gaza
GAZA CITY (Ma‘an) 12 June — Israeli authorities will allow limited deliveries of goods and humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip on Sunday, Palestinian officials said. Liaison officer Raed Fattouh told Ma‘an that Israeli officials decided to allow 230 truckloads of supplies to enter Gaza through the southernmost Kerem Shalom crossing.
link to www.maannews.net
Suppression of dissent
Israeli rights groups that cooperated with Goldstone may no longer get National Service volunteers
Haaretz 12 June — Association for Civil Rights, Amnesty, Public Committee Against Torture and Physicians for Human Rights could lose eligibility under new proposed criteria … Behind the initiative is MK Israel Hasson (Kadima) … Hasson accused the organizations of slandering the IDF and its officers … The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) was not surprised by the new initiative. According to Hagai El-Ad, Executive Director, “Hasson’s initiative joins in with Yisrael Beitenu’s Parliamentary Inquiry Committees and other recent legislative initiatives, in a similar spirit. Several MKs have chosen the persecution of human rights NGOs as a goal — just because these organizations fulfill their societal roles — to criticize government policy when it harms human rights.”
link to www.haaretz.com
Volunteers protest National Service bill
Ynet 12 June —  Israeli organizations which contributed to theGoldstone Report criticized a proposal by MK Israel Hasson (Kadima) to revoke their right to use National Service volunteers on Sunday. Some claimed a deliberate witch hunt is being held against them. “I feel persecuted,” says Dr. Yishai Menuchin, director of the Public Committee Against Torture. “The rightist MKs continue to persecute human rights groups. They want to prevent us from being heard.”
link to www.ynetnews.com
Political / Diplomatic / International news
Fatah wants Fayyad to stay Palestinian PM
RAMALLAH (AFP) 12 June — Fatah will seek to keep on prime minister Salam Fayyad to head a Palestinian unity government, an official said on Sunday, in a nomination immediately rejected by Hamas. The central committee of Fatah, headed by president Mahmud Abbas, agreed at a Saturday night meeting to throw their support behind Fayyad, a committee member told AFP on condition of anonymity … And on Sunday, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri downplayed the nomination, warning that his movement had made its opposition clear. “Hamas informed Fatah during the last meeting of its rejection of the choice of Salam Fayyad to head the new government,” Zuhri told AFP.
link to news.yahoo.com
Hamas: No role for Fayyad in unity govt
GAZA CITY (Ma‘an) 12 June …”Hamas will not agree on Salam Fayyad as a prime minister, or even a minister in the upcoming unity government,” Al-Bardawil said in a statement … “Hamas’ activists and leaders have had enough suffering, enough torture during the four years Fayyad served as prime minister. He is also responsible for accumulated debts the Palestinian people have.” He said the nomination of Fayyad crossed a “red line” and that his “presence provokes and hurts the Palestinians.” Fatah and Hamas are scheduled to meet in Cairo on Tuesday, as the two groups try to agree the make-up of a transitional government mandated by a unity deal they inked last month.
link to www.maannews.net
Palestinian Fatah movement removes once-powerful official, charging corruption
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) 12 June — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has booted a once-powerful official from his Fatah movement. Abbas announced Sunday that Fatah’s central committee has dismissed Mohammed Dahlan. The statement referred to “criminal, financial and other charges” made against Dahlan by an investigative committee. The move marks another stage in the fall of Dahlan, once the powerful security chief in Gaza, a Western darling and a potential successor to Abbas.Dahlan lost Gaza to Hamas forces in 2007  [if you’ve never seen Hamas’s 2007 ‘Lion King’ video starring Dahlan as the Chief Rat, see it here]
link to www.washingtonpost.com
Erekat to diplomats: Peace talks, UN move not exclusive
JERICHO (Ma‘an) 12 June — In a series of meetings with UN, US and French officials, PLO leader Saeb Erekat stressed the centrality of the 1967 borders in both continued efforts toward peace talks and a simultaneous move to garner UN support. “Settlement construction must end and a two-state solution must be based on the 1967 borders,” Erekat insisted during meetings with UN Middle East envoy Robert Serry, US General Consul Daniel Rubenstein and French Consul General Frederic Desagneaux.
link to www.maannews.net
Palestinian PM supports Israel’s Stanley Fischer for IMF top job
Haaretz 12 June — Bank of Israel governor Stanley Fischer has a new and unexpected supporter in his bid to head the International Monetary Fund: the Palestinian prime minister. Salam Fayyad says Stanley Fischer would make a “great managing director” for the world financial body and is a “superb human being.”
link to www.haaretz.com
European Jewish Congress lobbies against unilateral Palestinian state
JTA 12 June — The European Jewish Congress has contacted leaders on the continent in a bid to prevent recognition of a unilaterally declared Palestinian state in the United Nations. Dr. Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress, wrote a letter to all European heads of state, foreign affairs ministers and EU leaders explaining the problems with recognizing a Palestinian state when the issue comes before the United Nations in September.
link to www.jta.org
Egypt detains Israeli man on suspicion of spying
Reuters 12 June — State news agency reports that the man will be detained for 15 days on suspicion of trying to recruit Egyptian youth to act against the authorities … MENA said the man worked for Israel’s Mossad intelligence service. 
link to www.haaretz.com
Shas members meet Palestinian officials
Ynet 11 June —  Minister of Religious Affairs Yakov Margi, of the Shas Party, took part in a two-day seminar recently attended by other party members and a number of former Palestinian officials. The seminar, which was organized by the Geneva Initiative, included a tour of the future separation fence near Jerusalem. “We didn’t change the world, but it is definitely important to talk,” said former Palestinian negotiator Sufian Abu Zaida.
link to www.ynetnews.com
Other news
US investing $9 million in Israeli alternative fuels start-up companies
Haaretz 12 June — A joint Israeli-American venture developing alternative fuels from cellulosic feedstocks has scored a $9 million investment by the U.S. Department of Energy … The investment by the Energy Department is part of the Obama administration’s plan to reduce America’s dependence on oil.
link to english.themarker.com
Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood attends Gaza funeral of Hamas leader
12 June — Representing the brotherhood were former legislator Hazem Faruq and a member of the group’s policy office, Sa’d Al-Huseini.
link to www.maannews.net
Red Crescent medics treat settler woman after crash
BETHLEHEM (Ma‘an) 12 June — Medical staff with the Palestinian Red Crescent treated a settler woman Sunday afternoon when she was injured in a car accident near the Palestinian city of Bethlehem … After receiving primary care from Palestinian medics, who were called onto the scene by residents who witnessed the car crash, an Israeli medical team was called in to transfer her to hospital.
link to www.maannews.net
Analysis / Opinion
The quiet corner of the Mideast (Surprise)
WASHINGTON (NYTimes) 11 June — Helene Cooper — In the Arab democracy movement, there is a dog that has not yet barked. And whether or not it does — and how loudly — is causing a lot of heartburn among American policy makers. Egyptians, Tunisians, Libyans and Syrians gathered in their respective city squares and neighborhood streets to demand democratic rights, and the Western world cheered, if with varying degrees of diplomatic or military support. But by and large, so far, the Palestinians in the West Bank, who see Israel as the source of their grievances, have not. Yet. … “If you’re looking for a game-changer, that would be it,” says Robert Malley, the program director for the Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group. “At a time when the entire world, including President Obama, is applauding nonviolent popular protests from Cairo to Tehran, it would put Israel in an acute dilemma about how to react if tens of thousands of Palestinians started organizing protests in the West Bank, or marching on Israeli settlements or on Jerusalem demanding an end to the Israeli military occupation.”
link to www.nytimes.com
Is the Palestinian Authority doing enough to stop honor killings? / Amira Hass
Haaretz 12 June — Mahmoud Abbas recently announced his intent to crack down on those who murder women to preserve ‘family honor.’ But women’s advocacy groups say the legal changes he proposes are too little and too late … Women’s advocacy groups have found that men exploit the “family honor” clause in order to murder women in their families over disagreements involving inheritance or the desire of a woman to marry someone of her own free choice, as well as to conceal acts of rape or incest. The Israel Defense Forces, which in a series of military orders changed various articles in the Jordanian and Mandatory laws that were in force in the territories occupied by Israel in 1967, left in place those laws that discriminate against women. 
link to www.haaretz.com
US TV: CBS ’60 minutes’: Jerusalem, City of David
5 June — Lesley Stahl reports from under the city of Jerusalem from a controversial archaeological dig that has become a flashpoint in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. [Sam Bahour adds: If you are interested in knowing more about this settler organization, ELAD, see this excellent documentary: http://www.eastsidestory.ps/ ]
link to www.cbsnews.com
Film trailer: A Third Way – Settlers and Palestinians as Neighbors
10 June — A feature documentary in-progress: about courageous Palestinians and Israelis in the West Bank, who decide, whatever the future holds, they need to get to know the strangers who live so close to them. Please support us finishing this film by contributing here: link to goo.gl
https://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/video/video.php?v=10150210879534628&comments
groups.yahoo.com/group/f_shadi (listserv)
www.theheadlines.org (archive)

Nabi Saleh attempts to peacefully protest for its water rights and against the occupation

Jun 12, 2011

Jenny Levin

Video from the June 10 protest in Nabi Saleh.

My first taste of ‘fire’ today, 10 June 2011, in solidarity with the pastoral Palestinian village of Nebi Saleh. Like everyone else, first-timers and seasoned demonstrators, I was shocked at the violence used by the soldiers against non-violent protesters – men, women and children, Palestinians, Israelis, and foreigners alike!

I can confirm that there was absolutely no provocation on the part of the demonstrators. We’d hardly taken our first steps through this sleepy village when tear gas canisters started falling all around us, the air became filled with the acrid smoke, and our eyes, mouths and skin took the impact of the tear gas.

Is this not chemical warfare? Personally, I can’t think of any other description that fits. No matter what you call it, it is being used in the most vengeful way imaginable against an innocent, civilian population who want nothing other than to legitimately walk down to their spring of water without harassment by the settlers who have built a village on their land (the red-roofed settlement of Halamish) or the soldiers who use sophisticated chemical weaponry to prevent them from even walking down the road in their own village.

Aside from the tear gas and rubber bullets, there’s also – by way of a grande finale – the notorious ‘skunk’, which is driven through the village spraying homes and people with a putrid, sticky chemical concoction, the ingredients of which are a mystery. Fortunately, I didn’t get to smell it at close range. It was bad enough to get a whiff of it from afar as our group, like the sheep ahead of us, eventually turned tail, and made our way back across country to our cars, leaving Nebi Saleh’s brave inhabitants behind us.

Next Friday, they will once again find themselves in a “closed military zone” face-to-face with a force that with impunity douses them, their children, their homes and village with chemicals and sows confusion and chaos. As we seem to be unable to stop the establishment’s terrible tactics, I think the very least we can do is be there with the Tamimi clan in Nebi Saleh. It’s scary, I know. But if you live in Israel, you should at least experience it once. That way you will know and never forget.
If you have never heard of Nebi Saleh (alternative spelling Nabi Salah), allow me to introduce the village, which is based deep in the heart of the West Bank or Palestine, for the many who already call it by that name. The village is home to just over 500 members of the Tamimi clan.

In 1976, the Israeli government appropriated swathes of Nebi Saleh land to build the settlement of Hallamish – hundreds of spacious red-roofed villas for religious settlers. Further encroachments of Nebi Saleh land followed, with settlers’ bravado very much on the rise since 2000. In the summer of 2008, the settlers laid claim to the fresh spring fountain and pools belonging to one of the Tamimi family and used by the villagers to water the flocks that are the main source of their livelihood.
Hallamish youths – by this time the settlement was calling itself Neve Tsuf – thought a spa would be a nice thing to have on their doorstep and so simply took over the site, walling it in, building, renovating and doing as they pleased, even going so far as to list it on an Israeli portal of springs and water sources! There the spring is listed as the Meir Spring, thus named in memory of one of their kind, ‘who bravely fought for the unification of the whole of Israel’.

Nebi Saleh opted for peaceful protest against the appropriation of the spring and ever since, the villagers and their Israeli and international supporters, have been trying every Friday to walk en masse to the waters. They never get there. Each week, the army and the Border Police appear to be curtailing their march and using more and more force to keep them ever further away from their spring.

Jenny Levin first came to Israel with a youth leadership course in 1968, and she moved there in 1969. After a decade in England she has been back in Israel since 2009 and is increasingly active in trying to stop “our downward spiral into the racist, apartheid, bigotted society that is all too reminiscent of the apartheid South Africa of my childhood and Fascist Germany, which my father managed to leave in 1935.”

May was deadliest month for civilians in Afghanistan (and US-NATO role is whitewashed!)

Jun 12, 2011

Martin Iqbal

This piece was posted at Martin Iqbal’s Empirestrikesblack:

A 11 June press statement from the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan slates May 2011 as the deadliest month for Afghan civilians since at least 2007. However this big-hearted announcement conceals a grossly pernicious attempt to cover up US-NATO killings of civilians in occupied Afghanistan.

In its report, UNAMA documents 368 conflict-related civilian deaths and 593 civilian injuries in May 2011. Georgette Gagnon, Director of Human Rights for UNAMA states that, “More civilians were killed in May than in any other month since 2007 when UNAMA began documenting civilian casualties”.

The UN’s disgusting attempt at whitewashing US-NATO’s killing of civilians is revealed in UNAMA’s breakdown of the causes of the deaths (emphasis mine):

Anti-government elements were responsible for 301 civilian deaths (82 per cent of all civilian deaths in May).

Forty-five civilian deaths (12 per cent of all civilian deaths in May 2011) were attributed to pro government forces.

Twenty-two deaths or six per cent of civilian deaths in May 2011 could not be attributed to any party to the conflict as most of these deaths were caused by crossfire.

So according to this statement from the UN, 94% of Afghan civilian deaths are caused by other Afghans, and 6% could not be attributed to any party. The press release contains no mention of the terms “US” or “NATO” whatsoever.

Then, hidden away towards the end of the statement (still without mentioning the words “US” or “NATO” at all), is a single sentence which lays in direct contradiction to the ‘could not be attributed’ claim:

Air strikes caused three per cent of the total civilian deaths in May.

Let’s compare and contrast this with the following reports of civilian deaths caused by NATO in May 2011:

• 15 May 2011: Afghanistan: US troops kill several women and children

• 29 May 2011: Nato air strikes kill 52 Afghans

• 29 May 2011: NATO airstrikes kill 32 Afghan civilians, 20 police

These two incidents alone would put the May 2011 US-NATO civilian death toll at a number closer to fifteen per cent – far higher than the three per cent figure buried in the UN’s ‘could not be attributed to any party‘ deception.

UNAMA’s shameless statement reflects the US policy of discounting civilians whom they murder as being ‘insurgents’, and it draws attention to the fact that the UN is totally complicit in the whitewashing of NATO war crimes in Afghanistan and beyond.

‘Gay Girl in Damascus’ is a hoax — Electronic Intifada

Jun 12, 2011

Philip Weiss

Ali Abunimah and Benjamin Doherty at Electronic Intifada say that the Gay Girl in Damascus is a hoax — one that I fell for. The evidence, which they say the Washington Post has also been digging at, is fairly complicated and inconclusive as to the perpetrators of Gay Girl but it creates the strong impression that the persona was fabricated in the west:

We believe that the person or persons responsible should end this deception which has been harmful to individuals who trusted and believed in “Amina” and more broadly has sown confusion, distraction and absorbed energy and attention at a time when real people are in danger in Syria and in other countries in the region.

We are sharing the information we have gathered here not in order to level accusations, but so that others might pursue these leads to conclusive ends. The best outcome would be if the person or persons behind the hoax would take responsibility themselves to bring the matter to a close and provide all doubters with reassurance that “Amina” is not in danger because she is a fictitious character.

While we believe that the information gathered here is compelling in its own right, we have managed to corroborate additional information from several independent sources that we are not publishing and that significantly increases our confidence in the information we have. We do not know the motives of the person or persons behind this hoax.

The information presented below connects the “Amina” blogger to two people in real life: Thomas (Tom) J MacMaster and Britta Froelicher who are married to each other.

Their conclusion:

The information we have collected here is not intended as either an accusation or final, conclusive proof of who may be behind the Amina hoax. However taken together we felt it was compelling enough that we had to publish it as soon as possible. This is primarily because we believe, and have observed, that the hoaxer(s) is both attempting to hide information that could lead to discovery and furthering the hoax with other false personas. By sharing this information we want to provide the best chance that this story can be brought to closure and people’s attention directed back toward real world events.

‘We will boycott Israel’ –a cappella flashmob in Brisbane
Jun 12, 2011 09:56 am | Philip Weiss

Creative. Seated. Aimed at a cosmetics company called Secret. June 3. Good streetcorner speaker at 4:00, “many miles from that troubled land.” “If they stop us singing, we will come back dancing.”

What is the living ethos in Jewish communal politics other than Zionism? (More dialogue about David Simon)

Jun 12, 2011

Philip Weiss

More than a month ago here, Lizzy Ratner defended David Simon, creator of the Wire, from criticism by Weiss that Simon self-censors on the Palestine issue. At last, a response.

Your piece praising David Simon of the Wire ends with a challenge to me that you say “scratches” at you: Am I Progressive Only on Palestine? Do I ever talk about American domestic injustices in between my endless talk about Israel and Palestine? And really, as you know, the answer is that I don’t.

Now by and large I think you’re right to be itchy. I ought to be a progressive in other ways. I have tunnel vision, even I get sick of it. But let me try and explain if not wholly justify my silence, and in doing so explore my confusion about American Jewish political identity in 2011.

The context for your challenge was your thanks to David Simon, whose work you love, for daring Jews to give up their legacy of unrivaled persecution, the Holocaust narrative, and notice the people suffering just a few miles away in the American inner cities. Now I don’t know David Simon’s work, but this political stance leaves me cold for two reasons, 1, the suggestion that the problem of the American ghettoes is one that Jews somehow have a special role to play in addressing. And 2, the idea that a Jew can engage as a Jew on the great political problems of our time—or as Simon says, “Surely, the world needs the Jewish mind and spirit for something… fundamental,”—without talking about Israel.

First fallacy. At the Jewish Federations last fall (the same conclave famous for the brave Jewish hecklers of Netanyahu, of whom David Simon was not one) Simon called on the charity to stop giving so much help to Jews and to take on the “Holocaust in slow-motion” that is enveloping blacks in the ghettoes, and in doing so he invoked a special Jewish tradition of social justice– our role to be “a light unto the nations”– and I don’t buy it. I think the call should be to all empowered Americans to do something about the ghettoes. And in fact, the call on Jews to do so, as Jews, seems to me to express a vanity about our political presence that is undeserved given our position in society– and truly my cynicism about our posture and our presence is at the heart of my argument.

Surely there was a time that Jews could speak of a leftwing ethos as Jews. Behind his words, I sense that Simon is invoking a socialist tradition that began in Eastern Europe in the nineteenth century when it was the bundists stiring things up. Jews were committed to reforming societies, and while I believe there was a selfish Jewish interest in this reform—we were being denied opportunities, we were an “intellectual proletariat” hanging around the stock markets in the big cities because we couldn’t get jobs (as Herzl put it)—still, there is no doubt we were a central part of that leftwing tradition right up through our presence in communist parties in the 50s and 60s in Europe. And yes we brought that leftwing tradition to the U.S. and played a significant part in left movements, including the communist party, and the civil rights movement. My mother expresses pride in these traditions. Though, saddling my cynicism, I don’t see purely altruistic motives. We were outsiders. And we identified with blacks as an oppressed minority and signed on to their struggle because we wanted to open American society for ourselves too.

Tony Kushner describes the end of this ethos (in a 1998 interview lately flung against him by CAMERA):

I feel that I’m very much a product of what I consider the most important tradition – I’m not a religious Jew and I think the Diasporan Jewish culture has a magnificent history of progressive involvement with the cultures that Jews have found themselves in and interacting with. It’s very much a part of who I am. So yes. It’s a very distressing thing to me that American Jews have lost contact with the traditions of socialism and humanism – I don’t consider myself a humanist but I probably am – but there are important progressive and radical European traditions that arrived with Jews in the U.S. from Germany to Russia that really informed American Jewish consciousness all the way up to the 1950’s, and Roy [Cohn’s] generation is really the generation that succeeded in beginning the severance of that. It still continued in a very lively way which manifested itself most obviously in Jewish support for the Civil Rights movement, but at the same time that that was happening there was this tremendous support for Israel and that’s been part of this calamity– it’s driven international Jewish culture from its progressive base. I don’t know what’s to be done about it, what recourse progressive Jews have to call…I’m sort of floundering for words because I don’t know what to call us at this point.

Surely that progressive ethos had great achievements. We opened American society, we fostered civil rights, gay rights, women’s rights– and yes, our matriarchalism played a role. And today David Simon has incredible status and cultural power.

And this is what leaves me really confused. Apart from voting Democrat and supporting a socially-liberal blue state program, I don’t see the living Jewish ethos that Simon sees. And I’m not really persuaded that he’s doing that much to change our society to be a fairer one. OK, he’s a progressive director who is highlighting progressive themes in his show, but I don’t see much sacrifice or commitment. When Simon praises the service of Catholic workers in the ghettoes, I agree, there is a living ethos drawing on an active spiritual tradition. But show me such a populist ethos in Jewish life.

Yes, Jews have a special status in our society as storytellers; we are as often as not the mediators of the poor’s experience to the ruling class. Lately, for instance, I was very moved by Daniel Zwerdling’s reports on Iraq veterans post-traumatic stress disorder on NPR. They were loving pieces. I’m guessing he’s Jewish; and his role seemed to me a Jewish role; but honestly I don’t see the political dimension of such work. We are not the ones serving in Iraq, by and large, we are not the ones serving in the ghettoes; and telling these stories will in no way alter the structure that preserves us from that service.

We get to tell the horrifying stories about these conditions, and I suppose that is a liberal value; but, here is where I am cynical, I can’t help noticing that it sort of cements our status as privileged mediators. As Tom Stoppard said when someone asked him What’s “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” about, “It’s about to make me very rich.” And so I’m balked by the most salient fact about the Jewish presence in society, we’re privileged. In that Tablet interview that sparked this dialogue, Simon says that the average Jewish family in New Orleans makes $180,000 a year while the overall average for N.O. families is $30,000; and to address such a privileged community and say that it has a collective special religious obligation to deal with the urban Holocaust seems to me an ethnocentric fantasy. I just don’t see that Jews have a special role to play as social justicers.

Why not appeal to corporate bosses or some other privileged group that is equally implicated in the existing structure? Better yet– why not invoke noblesse oblige—an ethos that actually takes into account these differences?

So while I think you’re right to fault me for not speaking out about these conditions as a leftist, and a progressive, I don’t see why I should be speaking out as a Jew. And I’d note that this website, or my posts on it, have a Jewish character.

Which brings me to the second fallacy.

There is a special Jewish character to political engagement, and that is Israel. You have acknowledged this in your own work, and it’s one reason I admire you. You are taking on elements in the community we both came out of, and you’ve done so with humility, passion and sincerity.

David Simon also comes out of a pro-Israel tradition. In this interview by Vince Beiser at Tablet, we learn that Simon’s father worked on the Soviet Jewry issue for the B’nai Brith and that Elie Wiesel and Teddy Kollek supped at young Simon’s table, and a couple of times Simon mentions the Jewish “nation” and people as having an essential role to play on the world stage. Well, I’m sorry, I’ve seen the role, and I can’t read this without thinking that his family is Zionist and Simon is not engaging on the central Jewish political question that is his inheritance. In fact, in his description of the American ghetto as being the true scene of Jewish engagement, which if Jews don’t follow through on, young Jews will turn away from the whole Jewish project, well, this strikes me as a giant evasion. The real source of disaffection from Jewish communal life, as the sociologists tell us, is the Jewish marriage to Israel.

I would go further and say that an honest assessment of the Jewish presence in American political life right now—when Obama is getting hammered for even mentioning the 1967 lines—is what Israel is doing to American foreign policy in the Middle East. The fact that 9 of 15 congresspeople who call on Obama to expunge the Goldstone Report are Jewish. The fact that Obama’s mild gestures towards fairness (1967) in his speech to AIPAC were said by a Jewish publication to cost him $10 million in contributions. This speaks not just to Zionism’s effect on Jewish life, but the impact of pro-Israel Jews on American policy.

At the risk of relating thrice-told tales, let me say more about my cynicism. I got engaged on these issues because in 2003 my brother said to me that while he had demonstrated against the Vietnam war he wasn’t sure about the Iraq war, because his Jewish newspaper said it could be good for Israel. I found his statement deeply upsetting. It reversed everything I understood to be Jewish traditional political engagement, and it suggested that the “severance” Kushner addresses above is monstrous. It suggested that killing tens of thousands of Iraqis, as the US was bound to do, was justifiable in the name of Israel’s security—just as Egyptian oppression can be endlessly justified for the sake of Israel, or the killing of Rachel Corrie, or the killing of Furkan Dogan.

Whenever I think of my brother’s revelation, I think about one of my favorite descriptions of political emotion, how Christopher Isherwood described fleeing his beloved Berlin in 1933– a place that had given him personal freedom–when the Nazis came to power. He rode a train south with Jews fearing arrest and wrote:

“I feel like a cupboard in which all the clothes are mixed up; everything has got to be thrown out on the floor and sorted. I must stop wondering what I ought to think, how I ought to feel. I must try to discover some basis of genuine feeling and begin with that, no matter how small it is.”

That is the way I felt about Jewishness and the Iraq war. I thought the Iraq war so horrifying that I stopped thinking all those things I OUGHT to think or ought to feel – Jews have been blamed for wars forever, and Jews had nothing to do with the dreadful decision to invade Iraq, polling shows that Jews were against the war more than any other American group—and tried to get to a genuine thought. And that genuine thought was simply this: that support for Israel was hugely important to American Jews and that many of them would justify ANYTHING in its name, and even those who didn’t justify anything in its name would be pretty quiet when the ANYTHING-goes types were standing up pushing for war, and would certainly not say anything about the Israel stuff. The organizations that supported the Iraq war inside Jewish life are pretty staggering, including Reform Jews, the Union for Reform Judaism, as well as leading publications edited by Jews, such as the New Yorker. And of course Bush’s braintrust for the war included many pro-Israel thinkers, including Elliott Abrams and Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith.

And these people didn’t just happen to be Jewish and in the Establishment. No, they felt a special Jewish obligation to help Israel, one that synagogues impart every Saturday. And this obligation among neoconservatives was a strong propellent of the war.

The Jewish community has still not come to terms with this transformational event in the American Jewish experience: the fact that the neoconservatives could advocate destroying an Arab society in part— in part I emphasize—because it would help Israel. And I can’t get away from its monstrousness. The same monstrousness that is involved in supporting Egyptian dictatorship for decades because it would shore up Israel, and monarchy in Jordan for the same reason, and rightslessness and statelessness across Palestine forever in the name of Jewish freedom.

And another genuine thought I had around the Iraq question was that liberal Jews who understood what Zionism had done to some members of the Jewish community – unhinged them, produced Douglas Feiths with their One Jerusalems and Richard Perles with their 1967 is indefensible, and Chuck Schumers screaming at AIPAC that he is pledged to be Israel’s guardian or Anthony Weiner ranting at the New School that there is no occupation—that liberal Jews have failed their storytelling role, of explaining to Americans what was going on. Lately Paul Krugman wrote another column attacking the elites that got America into the mess in the Middle East. Well, it is only fair for him to speak openly about one elite that he knows well, that component of the Jewish elite whose alpha and omega is support for Israel. I know why he does not do so, because he is afraid of revenge against Jews, because he is concerned with anti-semitism, because he does not want to feed Protocols-like conspiracy thinking. But the result is that Thomas Friedman will talk about the mostly-Jewish neoconservative intellectual role in plotting the Iraq war in Haaretz and not in the New York Times.

And on May 19 when you spoke in New York about our Goldstone book, you were asked why the United States crushed the Goldstone Report and you gave lip service to the Israel lobby as a factor—one line—and then went after your theory, that the U.S. is trying to escape accountability itself in its war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. I believe you referred to the military-industrial complex.

Well I’m just not convinced by that 60-year-old phrase. The military has been among the strongest advocates for doing something about Israel/Palestine—notably Mike Mullen and General Jones, with their statements along the lines that if there was one thing God could do to make the world a safer place it would be to do something about Israel /Palestine—so that leaves the industrial complex. A nameless corporate entity, and god knows a powerful one.

But writers are charged to write about what they know, and you and I actually know the Israel lobby. We know who those people are. They are part of our community. They are terrible hawks. They would justify the crackdown in Syria if it would just preserve Israel. They would rationalize an attack on Iran. They helped reduce Iraq to chaos. So why talk about a nameless corporate boogie man?

I think the Jewish support for Zionism as a sacred charge in American political life, a charge that David Simon’s father accepted when he was freeing Soviet Jewry and hosting Teddy Kollek, has deeply affected our political presence. As a Jewish political writer, this is my inheritance—it’s something I can’t escape. While the charge to look into the ghettoes is my responsibility in a different way, as a privileged American with greater access than others.

Wrapping it up on a personal note: I think you’re right to be scratched by my tunnel vision, I respect the way you can write about the inner cities and also focus on Palestine. I’ve seen the way your breadth touches people – when we spoke about Goldstone at Northeastern Law School, an Israeli came up to you afterward with a confession—and for myself, I get sick of hearing myself talk about Israel and Palestine and my goddamn Jewish identity.

I want to change the channel, I would like to go wider in life. But right now the Jewish community has got a monkey on its back…

The conscience stirs… Uri Avnery confronts the refugees’ dream… and Israel’s ‘nightmare’

Jun 12, 2011

Kate

and other news from Today in Palestine:

Land, property, resources theft & destruction / Ethnic cleansing / Settlers
Israel bans exit of Jerusalem mufti to attend Jordan conference
AMMAN (PIC) 11 June — Israeli authorities have prohibited Jerusalem’s grand mufti Ikrima Sabri from going to the Jordanian capital Amman to take part in a conference that started Saturday on human rights in Jerusalem. It was announced during the conference titled “Jerusalem: the right of man, the responsibility of a nation” that Sh. Sabri would not be able to attend because he was barred from exiting the Palestinian territories. The conference was slated to shed light on the displacement of Palestinians and Judaization in Jerusalem.
link to www.palestine-info.co.uk
2 detained, blindfolded by Israeli military in illegal demolition near Al Hadidya
JVS 11 June — At 3pm yesterday 2 army jeeps carrying 8 soldiers came to the home of the Oudeh family. They demanded that the family take down their tent house and their two animal shelters. The army did not present the family with a demolition order or any other documents requiring the family to leave their land. … Talib Oudeh, the father of the household, refused to demolish his own home. He and his son Tariq were handcuffed, blindfolded and taken outside. Two of the women from the family were also detained. The soldiers spent over an hour taking down the family’s tent and animal shelters.
link to www.jordanvalleysolidarity.org
B’Tselem: Map of area in the Jordan Valley and the northern Dead Sea closed to Palestinians
link to www.btselem.org
PA: Armed settlers raid Nablus village
NABLUS (Ma‘an) 11 June — Dozens of armed Israeli settlers on Saturday attacked residents of Qusra village in the northern West Bank, Palestinian officials said. PA settlement affairs official Ghassan Doughlas said settlers beat several residents at the entrance of the village, south of Nablus, and smashed the windscreen of a truck belonging to Husni Abu Reeda. Doughlas said the settlers were from an illegal outpost Alei Ayin, which the Israeli army recently evacuated. Settlers from the outpost were suspected of torching and vandalizing a mosque near Ramallah on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, in the nearby village ‘Iraq Burin, Israeli forces sprayed tear gas and stun grenades at protesters in an weekly anti-settlement rally, residents said. Locals told Ma‘an that Israeli forces surrounded the village on Saturday morning to stop activists joining the protest.
link to www.maannews.net
Gaza
Gaza tunnel worker dies from electric shock
GAZA CITY (Ma‘an) 11 June — A Palestinian died Saturday from an electric shock while working in a smuggling tunnel under the Gaza-Egypt border, medics said. Gaza medical services spokesman Adham Abu Salmiya identified the victim as Mahmoud Abed, 23. Medics say over 160 Palestinians have died in the network of underground tunnels since Israel imposed a siege on the Gaza Strip in 2006.
link to www.maannews.net
Rafah crossing operates despite works [construction]
GAZA CITY (Ma‘an) 11 June — Four busloads of passengers will leave Gaza to Egypt through the Rafah crossing on Saturday, Palestinian officials said. The terminal will then close for maintenance work, but will operate normally on Sunday. Travelers at the crossing said scaffolding was erected on the Egyptian side, but that buses could still pass.
link to www.maannews.net
Israeli occupation navy boats fire at Palestinian fishermen off the coast of Rafah
RAFAH (PIC) 10 June — Israeli occupation naval boats opened fire on Thursday evening at Palestinian fishing boats off the southern Gaza Strip Rafah coast. Palestinian naval police in the Gaza Strip said that the Israeli boats opened machine gun fire at the fishing boats forcing the Palestinian fishermen to flee to the shores, no casualties among the fishermen were reported.
link to www.palestine-info.co.uk
Minister: Gaza medical crisis ‘unprecedented’
GAZA CITY (Ma‘an) 11 June — Hospitals in the Gaza Strip are suffering a critical shortage of medicine and medical supplies, Hamas Health Minister Bassem Na‘em said Saturday.
The crisis was unprecedented even during Israel’s massive offensive on Gaza in December 2008, Na‘em said, adding that the situation was worsening by the day.
link to www.maannews.net
Health minister says crisis worsened after unity deal
GAZA (PIC) 11 June — Gaza health minister Bassem Na‘im said Saturday that the health crisis in Gaza has taken a turn for the worse following the unity deal signed by factions ruling the Palestinian territories in May. ‘We have called on our brothers in Ramallah in order to solve the crisis and quickly send Gaza’s share of medicine provided by the health ministry at the soonest time. But that hasn’t happened so far, ‘ Na‘im said.  “I want to emphasize here that we don’t want to politicize the issue at all, but rather to end it for the benefit of the Palestinian citizen firstly, ‘ he added … Na‘im said that the Palestinian government in Gaza is trying to resolve the crisis quickly by using a million dollars deducted from the salaries of the health ministry’s staff in an emergency measure. But he said the move would not be enough to solve the entire problem.
link to www.palestine-info.co.uk
The sea
I was recently forwarded an email with numerous photos of Gaza, most of them old, pre-siege, late 90s even.  A few photos included Palestinians at the sea, as if to say since they are under siege they should not take advantage of the one resource left to them, albeit massively polluted by their own sewage. The point of the photo email was to accuse Palestinians in Gaza of lying: “you are not under siege, you have 3, 4, even 10 storey buildings, there are hotels and nice cafes… how dare you lie to us and pretend you are suffering”… There is food in Gaza, therefore there is no siege. Wrong. There is food — much of it smuggled through the tunnels from Egypt — which that vast majority (80%) of severely impoverished food-aid dependent population could never afford.
link to ingaza.wordpress.com
Video: Europe, Israel’s biggest trading partner
PressTV 11 June — A new report compiled by 80 international aid organizations sheds light on Israeli restrictions on the transfer of goods and aid to the West Bank and Gaza. The report reveals this is costing NGOs at least 4.5 million dollars every year. Press TV has conducted an interview with Andrea Becker, the head of advocacy for Medical Aid for Palestinians [MAP]. Following is a transcript of that interview.
link to www.presstv.ir
Israeli army
A dozen Palestinians hurt in Israeli chase of their vehicle
HEBRON (WAFA) 11 June — Twelve Palestinians were hurt, five seriously, after their cars crashed into a valley following an Israeli army chase east of Yatta, a village south of Hebron, according to medical sources. They told WAFA that two vehicles carrying 12 workers fell into a valley following a chase by Israeli army vehicles. Palestinian and Israeli ambulances helped evacuate the wounded to hospitals while an Israeli army helicopter moved the five seriously injured to hospitals in Israel, said the sources. No reason was given for the chase.
link to english.wafa.ps
Activism / Solidarity
Video: Bil‘in protest 10 June 2011 – Haitham Khatib
Bilin-ffj 10 June — In spite of the scalding heat, dozens of villagers from Bil‘in marched once again together with international and Israeli solidarity activists to the Apartheid Wall in protest to its illegal annexation of 60% of the village’s land for the construction of Jewish-only settlements.
link to www.bilin-ffj.org
IOF cracks down on peaceful protests in West Bank
WEST BANK (PIC) 11 June — Dozens suffered the effects of breathing tear gas after the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) cracked down Friday on a weekly rally in Bil‘in protesting Jewish settlement construction and the separation barrier erected there.
Elsewhere on Friday, the IOF used fists and rifle butts to hamper the progression of local and foreign activists during more marches in Al-Ma‘sara village in Bethlehem province.
More peaceful marches were launched in Shukba and nearby villages west of Ramallah to protest a crushing plant recently erected in the village. They marched toward the hundreds of dunums of land that Israel had confiscated to build the crusher a year ago. The IOF stopped them before they reached the crusher using tear gas and rubber bullets as several protesters sustained breathing difficulties. Explosions made by the crusher have caused heavy damage to nearby homes.
link to www.palestine-info.co.uk
Israeli soldier to activists who were detained near Beit Ommar: ‘I could kill you’
ISM 11 June — On Saturday June 11 three ISM activists were stopped by the Israeli army when trying to enter the village of Beit Ommar in the southern West Bank. The activists were going to participate in a non-violent demonstration against the illegal settlements in the area. As the activists tried to enter the village Israeli soldiers stopped them and claimed that the area had been declared a closed military zone … The activists then attempted to leave the village when the soldiers apparently changed their mind and dragged them from the bus they had boarded. No explanation was given when the activists asked why they were being detained. One of the soldiers had a more aggressive approach than the others, and was interested in discussing politics with the activists. He called them “leftist shits,” and told them “I could kill you,” before spitting at them and cursing them in Hebrew. He also told the activists that Palestinians were terrorists and that Beit Ommar was a dangerous village … The demonstration in Beit Ommar went ahead as planned and protesters managed to successfully reach and work on the land belonging to the farmers of Beit Ommar.
link to palsolidarity.org
From Palestine to Tucson, solidifying the bonds of solidarity
EI 11 June — As youth activists organizing to defend and preserve Ethnic Studies in Arizona, we’d like to highlight some related, global issues in our struggle. Arizona residents alert to the history of these lands know very well the issues of human displacement, expulsion, transfer, ethnic cleansing and extermination. More importantly, they know of the historical consequences of equality denied and justice delayed. Speaking as Arizona youth intermingled with indigenous, white, Arab, Jewish and Chicana/Mexicana roots, Arizona’s history relates to us as descendants of both settler and indigenous peoples. This history can provide insight into the Israel-Palestine conflict and prospects for peace in those torn borderlands of 1948,1967, and today. A review of the history of modern Palestine reflects a startling image of the conquest and colonization of traditional indigenous lands settled by the US.
link to electronicintifada.net
Naksa Day
Families of Naksa Day martyrs deny ties with deadly Yarmouk clashes
DAMASCUS, (PIC) 11 June — The families of those killed on Israeli borders during Naksa Day protests on June 5 have denied ties with the strife in the Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus that left some 14 dead. Palestinians angrily mourning the reported 23 who died while trying to make the Palestinian refugees’ right of return a reality were said to have rushed the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command headquarters at the camp, blaming the leading faction for egging on the Naksa Day protests. The PFLP-GC  security guards were forced to respond with fire as the protesters torched the headquarters building.
link to www.palestine-info.co.uk
Majdal Shams lawyer to sue gov’t for Naksa Day violence
JPost 10 June — “You don’t use a hammer to kill flies,” says Rami Abu Gabel, stressing that protesters, both on the Syrian and Israeli sides were unarmed — Rami Abu Gabel, a lawyer from Majdal Shams in the Golan, announced on Thursday that he would submit a petition to the High Court over the use of what he termed “excessive force” bysecurity forces against demonstrators during the Naksa Day protestson the Syrian border.
link to www.jpost.com
IDF not expecting additional border riots
Ynet 11 June —  IDF officials postulated Saturday that the violent protests that took place on ‘Nakba Day’ and ‘Naksa Day’ respectively are not likely to reoccur in the near future, though the army is maintaining a state of alert. The ‘Naksa Day’ protests, they add, were not a battle for Palestinian right of return but rather an organized attempt by the Syrian regime to deflect attention from its brutal crackdown on anti-government protesters.
link to www.ynetnews.com
US media buys Israel’s Naksa spin, ignoring contrary evidence / Alex Kane
7 June — Variations on the line the Israeli government fed to Israeli media yesterday about the killings of demonstrators in the Golan Heights Sunday [5 June] have made its way to the U.S. media, despite there being little evidence produced to support their claims … The Israeli disinformation about the Naksa Day killings are similar to what happened after the flotilla raid and the death of Jawaher Abu Rahmah.  But the U.S. media continues to print Israeli spin without investigating what really happened.
link to alexbkane.wordpress.com
Detention
Hunger strike by detainee with untreated brain tumor enters second week
IMEMC 10 June — A Palestinian man being held in an Israeli prison has entered the second week of hunger strike after Israeli authorities refused to allow him to receive treatment for a recently diagnosed brain tumor … In March he was rushed to Soroka hospital in Beersheva, south of Israel, where his brain tumor was diagnosed. Since that time, [Akram] Mansour has been requesting medical treatment for the tumor, which causes frequent fainting spells. Israeli authorities have denied his requests for medical care, and have denied requests by Mansour’s family for his early released – he has served 33 years of his 35 year sentence. Other prisoners have also offered to join the hunger strike if Mansour is not provided with medical treatment.
link to www.imemc.org
Report: Egypt takes lead on Shalit deal
Ynet 10 June — Egyptian source tells London-based al-Hayat newspaper Cairo is currently studying Israel and Hamas’ positions after which indirect negotiations will commence. Meanwhile, Hamas official Moussa Abu Marzouk says no chance German mediator would rejoin talks
link to www.ynetnews.com
Political / Diplomatic / International news
White House waiting for Netanyahu to accept Obama’s peace principles
Haaretz 11 June — There is a chance to avert the UN General Assembly vote in September on the recognition of the Palestinian state, said the White House official in a conference call with U.S. Jewish leaders. The Palestinians have been “fairly forthcoming on this score,” he stressed, and now the ball is in Netanyahu’s court.
link to www.haaretz.com
Former diplomats: Recognize Palestine
Ynet 11 June — Amid Jerusalem’s efforts to block international recognition of a Palestinian state in September, former senior Israeli diplomats warned Saturday that Israel’s current strategy might cause more harm than expected. In a conversation with Ynet, Prof. Ruby Seibel, the former legal adviser to the Foreign Ministry and an international law expert said, “We must say ‘yes’ to a Palestinian state, but set the conditions.
link to www.ynetnews.com
US congresswoman seeks to deny UN aid if Palestinian state recognized
PNN 9 June — Leading Republican congresswoman, chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida [who else?], plans to introduce legislation which would prevent any US funding to any UN body that would recognize a Palestinian state or would change the status of the PLO observer mission. Any UN entity that would grant such recognition, either by passing a UN resolution or through granting membership to Palestine in any participating agencies, would then no longer receive US funding.According to Capitol Hill aides, the measure would be included in a comprehensive bill for reforming the UN which she expects to file in the next few weeks.
link to english.pnn.ps
Hamas: European recommendation proves West’s boycott ‘mistake’
GAZA (PIC) 11 June — Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said Saturday that calls by former European officials to end the western boycott of Hamas shows that Europe has realized its mistake in cutting Hamas out of the regional arena. Abu Zuhri called on the EU to respond to the calls and honor the results of Palestinian elections of 2006 … Twenty-four former European premiers and foreign ministers have called on the US and EU foreign policy chief Katherine Ashton to support the Palestinian unity deal and change foreign policy in the Mideast.
link to www.palestine-info.co.uk
Iran to host conference targeting Israel’s nuclear program
dpa 11 June — Iran will host a conference on nuclear disarmament that will target the international community’s policy of overlooking Israel’s nuclear programs, official media reported Saturday. Deputy Foreign Minister Mehdi Akhoundzadeh, who will chair the conference, said the focus would be on Israel’s policy of nuclear ambiguity and its refusal to neither confirm nor deny its alleged possession of nuclear weapons.
link to www.haaretz.com
Moussa committed to Palestinian-Israeli peace but not at any price
Haaretz 10 June — Amr Moussa, the Arab League’s outgoing chief and leading Egyptian presidential candidate told French television on Thursday that he is committed to working toward a Palestinian-Israeli peace, but not at any price, according to an AFP report. “Egypt’s position will have to get back to a position of influence in the region and to follow the right policy, which is to establish peace, not at any price,” he told France 24 during a visit to Paris.
link to www.haaretz.com
US arms deal with Egypt to continue
Reuters 11 June — Pentagon official says upheavals and regime changes in Middle East will not affect U.S. military sales to Egypt.
link to www.haaretz.com
Jordan, Israel affirm resumption of Egyptian gas supply
AMMAN (PIC) 11 June– Jordanian official sources and Hebrew media affirmed that the supply of Egyptian gas to both Jordan and Israel was renewed as of Friday night after one and half month of halt due to an explosion that targeted the pipeline in northern Sinai.[and the unfair price paid by Israel that was supposed to be adjusted?]
link to www.palestine-info.co.uk
‘Abbas shuts down web sites run by Dahlan supporters’
JPost 11 June — Activists claim move is part of PA president’s punitive measures against former Fatah security commander; five sites blocked in total.
link to www.jpost.com
Other news
US Homeland Security asks Jewish groups to be vigilant for terrorists
Haaretz 11 June — Jewish Federations are the first faith-based group to partner with the security agency in its campaign urging Americans to keep a watchful eye on others for potential involvement in terror crimes.
link to www.haaretz.com
Anti-conversion group to soldiers: Don’t convert
Ynet 11 June — A group challenging the legitimacy of State-controlled conversions circulated thousands of flyers in synagogues across Israel this week, urging non-Jewish soldiers not to convert and to demand that military clergymen be installed according to their various denominations. The group — “Jews against Conversion” — stated that the State of Israel is virtually compelling hundreds of thousand of immigrants to convert to Judaism, thus infringing on their rights.
link to www.ynetnews.com
Suspected Arab hackers target right-wing MKs
JPost 9 June — ..Cyber-vandals calling themselves “Team Kuwait Hackers” replaced the usual contents of Hotovely’s site with a picture of a man in a keffiyeh waving a Palestinian flag and holding a Koran …Eldad’s site was apparently taken down by hackers from Syria.
“If Syrian hackers found time to break into my web site — which explains that there is no need for another Palestinian state because there already is one in Jordan — Assad will apparently have to kill thousands more in order for Syrians to understand what’s really important,” he said..
link to www.jpost.com
Palestinian artists unveils world’s largest oil painting
BETHLEHEM (Ma‘an) 11 June — Ukraine-based Palestinian artist Dr Jamal Badwan on Wednesday unveiled the biggest oil painting in the world in a public park in Kiev. Palestinian Authority Minister of Tourism Khloud Daibes and hundreds of Ukrainians and Palestinians attended the show … Badwan told Al-Jazeera’s Arabic-language website that the painting was inspired by Noah’s Ark.
link to www.maannews.net
Israeli and Palestinian students to study entrepreneurship and launch businesses at Babson College
Newswise 10 June — 44 Israeli and Palestinian students (20 Palestinians, 17 Israeli Jews, and 7 Israeli Arabs) will learn entrepreneurship skills and establish businesses this summer at Babson College [Wellesley, Massachusetts], building a spirit of peace and understanding through entrepreneurship to bring back to their countries.
link to www.newswise.com
Analysis / Opinion
End these settlers’ attacks against our mosques and churches / Khalid Amayreh
9 June — On Tuesday, 7 June, illegal Jewish settlers under the full protection of the Israeli army set fire to yet another mosque in the occupied West Bank, the fifth in less than two years. Responsibility for security in all of the villages where these attacks took place lies exclusively with the Israeli army… Not surprisingly, Muslims are not the only victims of Zionist Jewish terror and racism. In recent months, there have been several attempts by Jewish settlers to burn down churches in Jerusalem. The settlers’ religious hostility towards Christians, Christianity and Jesus exceeds by far their hostility to Islam. Some settlers, for example, believe that Jesus is the most evil being ever created and upon uttering or hearing his name recite, “May his name be damned and memory erased.” One settler leader, who is also a rabbi, once referred to Christ as “the Hitler of Bethlehem.” Some people might think that words, even such emotionally charged words, are innocuous. But words can and do kill. The path to the Holocaust began with words, and we all know how that ended.
link to www.uruknet.info
A brown-haired young man / Uri Avnery
11 June — MY HERO of the year (for now) is a young brown-haired Palestinian refugee living in Syria called Hassan Hijazi … The border crossing of the refugees near Majdal Shams caused near panic in Israel. First there were the usual recriminations. Why was the army not prepared for this event? Who was to blame — Northern Command or Army Intelligence? Behind all the excitement was the nightmare that has haunted Israel since 1948: that the 750,000 refugees and their descendants, some five million by now, will one day get up and march to the borders of Israel from North, East and South, breach the fences and flood the country. This nightmare is the mirror-image of the refugees’ dream.
link to zope.gush-shalom.org
U.S.
Statement on Malek Jandali and ADC / Josh Ruebner
10 June — For more than one decade, I have worked closely with the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) … As the National Advocacy Director of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, I have worked with ADC – an important member of our coalition – on innumerable initiatives and campaigns to challenge U.S. support for Israeli occupation and apartheid … It is within this context that I wish to express my deep disappointment that ADC asked Malek Jandali not to perform his song Watani Ana (I Am My Homeland) at this year’s convention. Jandali’s hauntingly beautiful composition is an anthem for the Arab Spring. [“I am my homeland, and my homeland is me. The fire in my heart burns with love for you! Oh my homeland, when will I see you free? …”]
link to endtheoccupationblog.blogspot.com
‘The War You Don’t See’ – Pilger film banned by Lannan Foundation
[with videos] An open letter to Noam Chomsky and the general public. Dear Noam –  I am writing to you and a number of other friends mostly in the US to alert you to the extraordinary banning of my film on war and media, ‘The War You Don’t See’, and the abrupt cancellation of a major event at the Lannan Foundation in Santa Fe in which David Barsamian and I were to discuss free speech, US foreign policy and censorship in the media.
link to www.uruknet.info
WikiLeaks: The unknown prisoners of Guantánamo (Part 4) / Andy Worthington
9 June …In the years since the documents relating to the CSRTs were released (and information relating to their annual follow-ups, the Administrative Review Boards, or ARBs), I attempted to track down the stories of these 201 men, and managed … to discover information about 112 of these prisoners, but nothing at all was known about 89 others (except for their names, and, in some cases, their date of birth and place of birth). With the release of the WikiLeaks files, all but three of these 89 stories have emerged for the very first time, and in this series of articles, I am transcribing and condensing these stories, and providing them with some necessary context. The first 51 stories were in Part One, Part Two, and Part Three, and the penultimate installment is below.
link to www.uruknet.info
groups.yahoo.com/group/f_shadi (listserv)
www.theheadlines.org (archive)

NOVANEWS

Dear Fiends,

This evening’s message contains 6 items, all from our domestic press.  I haven’t had a chance yet to check out the international media.  But even if I’ve missed something, the 6 below cover grounds that are worth reporting.

Item 1 is about new proposed Israeli legislation, which seeks to deny human rights groups that cooperated with the Goldstone commission from having National Service volunteers.  I had intended to ask several of these organizations what percentage of National Service volunteers make up their teams.  But the truth is, even if none do, the issue at stake is political (as the editorial that comes after the report states), and the intention is to besmirch the human rights organizations that do so much to inform us of violations and also act to prevent them.  This legislation is another right-wing move on the way to fascism!

Item 2 is a Haaretz editorial on the same subject, which opposes the proposed legislation.

In item 3 Merav Michaeli demands from Netanyahu to tell us “what yes?” after all the ‘nos.’   We need to know, she insists.  We, the Israeli people, repress our fears, our feelings.  For this to end we have to know what ‘yes’ Netanyahu has in mind for us.  The trouble is, as Merav Michael implies, that he has no ‘yes,’ only ‘no.’

Akiva Eldar in item 4 (“With Netanyahu, the world is always against us”)

likewise criticizes Netanyahu.  But he also criticizes the Palestinians for hedging about going to the UN to ask it to recognize a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders.  My feeling is that this is a tactic on their part to put the onus of no talks on Netanyahu.  Palestinians have said that they are ready to talk.  Netanyahu has hedged with his demands, first and foremost that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state, and secondly that all of Jerusalem be in Israel.  Netanyahu knows full well that these are demands that the Palestinians cannot and will not accept.  So it is smart of them, I  think, to say we prefer talks to going to the UN.  They know before hand that the chances for deliberation with Netanyahu and his crew are nil.

Item 5 claims that anti-Israel sentiment and anti-Semitism are on the rise in Italy, but also confounds anti-Israel with anti-Jewish feeling.  It might very well be true that both exist.  I would not be surprised to learn that Israel’s conduct is the leading cause of sentiments as anti-Semitism as well as anti-Zionism and anti-Israel attitudes.

Item 6 takes pains to tell us that the 2^nd flotilla will be coming without weapons, but with many people from different countries, and the reasons for coming.  The propaganda that Israelis get about the flotilla, about Gaza are lies about Gaza not needing humanitarian aid, that the situation is so improved (that’s why there is a desperate lack of medical supplies in Gaza!), etc etc etc.  The flotilla could be made of angels but Israelis would still believe that the aim is provocation, pure and simple.  Thank goodness for people willing to stand up for right, for justice, and to face the consequences.

Keep your fingers and toes crossed that there will be no more murders on this upcoming flotilla, please.  If you can do more, for instance convincing your governments to place sanctions on Israel if it acts brutally to the flotilla, please do.

Thanks,

Dorothy

——————————-

1.  Haaretz,

June 12, 2011

Israeli rights groups that cooperated with Goldstone may no longer get National Service volunteers

Association for Civil Rights, Amnesty, Public Committee Against Torture and Physicians for Human Rights could lose eligibility under new proposed criteria.

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/israeli-rights-groups-that-cooperated-with-goldstone-may-no-longer-get-national-service-volunteers-1.367163

By Jonathan Lis

A new initiative could deprive Israeli human rights organizations that cooperated with the Goldstone Commission from benefiting from National Service civilian volunteers.

Behind the initiative is MK Israel Hasson (Kadima ), who recently asked Prof. Daniel Hershkowitz (Habayit Hayehudi ), the minister responsible for the National Service administration, to formulate new criteria for determining which organizations in the country are eligible to receive National Service volunteers, as part of new legislation that will govern the activities of the National Service.

After conducting an initial investigation, Hershkowitz discovered that among those organizations that receive National Service volunteers are the Association for Civil Rights Israel (ACRI ), Amnesty Israel, The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel and Physicians for Human Rights Israel. Hasson’s initiative comes on the heels of similar attempts to impinge on the activities of Israeli organizations that provided information to the Goldstone Commission, while it was compiling its report on IDF activities in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead.

Ever since the Im Tirtzu movement published a list of such organizations, focusing in particular on support they received from the New Israel Fund, a number of MKs have put forward proposals aimed at cutting their funding.

In his letter to Hershkowitz, Hasson accused the organizations of slandering the IDF and its officers and called for new criteria to be set to prevent such organizations from benefiting from National Service volunteers in the future. He noted that the groups “urged the UN inquiry committee headed by Judge Goldstone to accuse Israel of anti-humanitarian activities and severe violations of human rights during Operation Cast Lead.”

“The organizations have made statements based on mere assumptions regarding the motives of the IDF actions against Hamas,” Hasson wrote. “They claimed the operation was a punitive one, which used destruction as a means of deterrence and punishment, not as a means for attaining any real military objectives. As a result, it raises serious suspicions about the legality of the entire operation. This was said despite the fact that these organizations did not have the information on which to base such statements.”

Hasson also specifically accused Physicians for Human Rights of meeting with Goldstone in Switzerland in 2009 and of playing an active role in composing a letter to the foreign minister of the then-president state of the European Union, Sweden, “urging him to bring Israel to trial for war crimes and grave violations of human rights.”

========================

2.  Haaretz Editorial,

June 13, 2011

Legislation against human rights groups is political persecution

The new legislative initiative which would ban human rights organizations from employing national service volunteers ignores their democratic mission.

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/legislation-against-human-rights-groups-is-political-persecution-1.367368

Haaretz Editorial

Kadima MK Israel Hasson’s new initiative under which human rights organizations would be denied the right to employ national service volunteers is pure political persecution.

The proposal is based almost entirely on the claim that these organizations “besmirched the Israel Defense Forces, its officers and its soldiers.”

According to Hasson, certain organizations – first and foremost, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, the local chapters of Physicians for Human Rights and Amnesty, and the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel – sought to persuade Judge Richard Goldstone to investigate whether Israel committed war crimes during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza in early 2009, and even urged the UN inquiry committee he headed “to accuse Israel of anti-humanitarian activity and of grave violations of human rights.”

Hasson is ignoring the nature of the mission that human rights organizations have taken upon themselves – namely, a constant battle to uphold the ethical, humanist values without which a democratic society cannot exist, or, at the very least, could not maintain its democratic image.

Demanding an investigation of the army is neither treason nor slander, as Hasson and his supporters are trying to paint it. Indeed, given that both the army and the political decision-makers shunned a courageous and thorough probe of what happened during Cast Lead – an operation in which hundreds of Palestinians were killed – their application to Goldstone was essential.

Moreover, it’s clear that their involvement with the Goldstone Report is nothing but a transparent excuse on which Hasson sought to hang his desire to embitter the lives of these organizations and intensify the delegitimization campaign against them. And he is not alone. He is supported by more than just a handful of Knesset members, most of them from the extreme right.

But Hasson, the bill’s sponsor, is not a delusional extremist; he belongs to a party that defines itself as Israel’s main centrist party. Yet so far, Kadima chairwoman and opposition leader Tzipi Livni has not responded to Hasson’s proposal. Her silence is particularly worrying because she has until now been viewed as a rock standing firm against the recent wave of anti-democratic legislation.

If Livni truly sees herself and her party as an alternative to the present government, she can no longer remain silent in the face of this campaign of silencing and intimidation.

======================================

3. Haaretz,

June 13, 2011

Palestinians march, Israelis repress

The Israeli public has been repressing the big drama of the Nakba and Naksa day marches and the arrival of the Palestinians at the fences on the border with Israel, no one is arguing about it or complaining about it, the public is simply not saying a word.

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/palestinians-march-israelis-repress-1.367367

By Merav Michaeli

Sources in the Israel Defense Forces are of the opinion that the scenes of Nakba Day and Naksa Day are unlikely to repeat themselves. The marches undertaken on those two days by Palestinian refugees to the border with Israel, they say, were not an act of solidarity with the Palestinians and a demand to realize the Right of Return, but rather an attempt to divert attention away from what is happening in Syria.

This is how the army wraps up the events in its familiar language – just as it did on the days when the events took place. Then, military officials and the media first spoke about a surprise in terms of intelligence and then about dealing with it in terms of armed forces and shooting. This is how the army assists the Israeli public in repressing.

And the public in Israel does repress. It denies and completely ignores the big drama of the march and the arrival of the Palestinians at the fences on the border with Israel – not then and not once since then. No one is arguing about it or complaining about it. The Israeli public, which is au courant with media developments, which by and large watches news broadcasts, and which is used to chatting about the headlines as part of everyday small talk, is simply not saying a word about it. Total repression.

At first glance, this is surprising. On second thought, it is completely understandable: It is terribly frightening. It is frightening because that is what they frightened us with. Here they are about to rise up against us – as we say every year during the Passover meal – and more specifically, to throw us into the sea.

On Nakba Day, I wrote here that the citizens of Israel were suffering from schizophrenia. How am I? “Personally, excellent.” Personally it can’t be anything less than excellent because collectively we are a-f-r-a-i-d (as Netanyahu once said about his critics in the media ). But the truth is that personally, we are afraid too. So we don’t speak about it, about how the mass marches by Palestinians to the border are a watershed event that have suddenly created a new option, and a very concrete one at that. It has also created a new level of repression because in addition to being terribly frightening, there is no answer to it.

No answer not as in shooting at legs or firing tear gas, but an answer in terms of what do we say to them. What shall we say to their demands that seem to be so much more justified from close up? And most of all, they are suddenly seen.

This march to the border has turned the words “refugees” and “borders”, which had become cliches, into something totally concrete – flesh and blood, human and close, very close.

Writing on these pages, Aluf Benn compared the Palestinians’ march on Nakba Day to the illegal Jewish immigrants’ boats [during the time of the British Mandate in Palestine] that created an awareness of homeless refugees who wished to find refuge in their land. (Haaretz, 18.5 )

The Palestinians are frustrated and helpless. There is no longer terrorism, there is an initiative by the Arab League, there is an agreement between Hamas and Fatah. What more do you want?

Out of this frustration and sense of helplessness, they are going to the United Nations, out of this frustration and sense of helplessness they come here in their masses and stand at the border and ask: “What yes?”

The citizens of Israel are also frustrated and feel helpless. It is “no” to a Palestinian state, “no” to an agreement about the 1967 borders, “no” to dividing Jerusalem. Okay, fine; but what yes?

Benjamin Netanyahu is certainly not the first to reject all these ideas – far from it. Except for Yitzhak Rabin, all Israel’s leaders since 1967 have rejected them, either explicitly or by holding barren negotiations, or by disengaging.

But what can one do: It so happened that on his watch, the Palestinians started marching on the borders that he calls defensible.

Repression is an effective mechanism that makes it possible for the individual to function despite a trauma. But many times, at a certain stage, the repression and denial are likely to lead to disaster. Netanyahu must stop repressing and denying, and must respond – not to them, to us: What yes?

=================================

4.  Haaretz,

June 13, 2011

With Netanyahu, the world is always against us

Benjamin Netanyahu will not miss an opportunity to remind Israel that the world is against us. Never fear, though: he will find some suitable retaliatory measure to straighten up Jewish heads in the face of Israel’s oppressors.

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/with-netanyahu-the-world-is-always-against-us-1.367369

By Akiva Eldar

Benjamin Netanyahu really is no man’s fool. Why should he miss a rare opportunity to remind the people of Israel that the world is against us and that we have to “join hands” in the struggle against delegitimization?

When the uncle in America promises to use his veto power at the UN Security Council, Netanyahu may very well joke that the “automatic anti-Israel majority at the UN” can also vote that the world is flat. The most important thing is that Israel has a guaranteed majority in the U.S. Congress. It’s a shame that all “UN boulevards” across Israel were renamed “Zionism boulevards” back in 1975, in response to a UN resolution that described Zionism as racism. Never fear, though: Netanyahu will find some suitable retaliatory measure to straighten up Jewish heads in the face of Israel’s oppressors.

If the Palestinians didn’t go to the UN, Netanyahu would need to invent this maneuver himself. The sterile attempt to internationalize the conflict rescues the right-wing government from its crash course on the path of negotiating over the partitioning of the West Bank and Jerusalem. As far as Netanyahu is concerned, whatever price Israel would pay (in foreign coins, too ) for yet another toothless UN resolution that would run against the position of the United States and will most probably lack the support of key European states, would still be many times lower than the price of a ticket into the political trap of negotiating on the basis of principles presented by U.S. President Barack Obama.

Accepting Obama’s formula of conducting the talks on the basis of the June 4, 1967 lines, with agreed land swaps, is no mean feat. Netanyahu’s ideological alma mater and the political camp in which he dwells today hold that the lands of the West Bank (or, in their terms, Judea and Samaria, ) are not “occupied territories.” For them, they are “disputed territories,” and therefore any Israeli claim of sovereignty over these areas is every bit as legitimate as a similar claim by Palestinians.

As far as they’re concerned, the Old City and the Arab villages annexed to Jerusalem are not negotiable, as they are “an inseparable part of Israel.” Entering negotiations based on the 1967 borders will soon uncover the fact that the myth of “defensible borders” conceals a real-estate craving. It will quickly become apparent that Netanyahu’s settlement blocs are many times bigger than the lands on the Israeli side of the Green Line that he is willing to hand over to the Palestinians.

And we haven’t yet said anything about the eastern ridge and about the demand that the Israel Defense Forces will keep its troops in the Jordan Valley for decades to come.

Considering the enormous gaps between the parties, the United States, as main bridesmaid of the move, will need to suggest a compromise. On Obama’s desk lies the outline charted by former president Bill Clinton in 2000 – 94-96 percent of the West Bank will become Palestine, in addition to 1-3 percent ratio land swaps, including the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem and sovereignity over the Temple Mount (except the Western Wall ).

Even if Obama could squeeze a generous discount out of the Palestinians, Netanyahu would find it easier to convert to Islam than to sign any such agreement – even if the cost is a break with the United States and a session at Massada.

Fortunately for Netanyahu, the Palestinians are yet again obligingly delaying the moment of truth (or lie ). Steven Simon, the new Middle East advisor at the White House, said this weekend that top Palestinian advisor Saeb Erekat told him that the Palestinians would give up on the UN move if Israel accepted the Obama principles. In other words, the Palestinians are handing Netanyahu the power of veto over the negotiations he’s avoiding like the plague.

When I interviewed Erekat on the 15th anniversary of the Madrid Conference of 1991, he told me that the Palestine Liberation Organization leadership had joined the move because it didn’t believe for a second that then prime minister Yitzhak Shamir actually intended to negotiate the future of the territories.

Yasser Arafat skipped over all the obstacles piled up by Shamir, including the integration of the Palestinian delegates into the Jordanian delegation. “He didn’t understand what we did understand – that things will evolve naturally and that those trying to stop the move will disappear,” Erekat told me, before summing up: “I know Israelis and I know most of them are interested in peace and that Shamir will lose his seat.”

So why are Erekat and his colleagues so interested in keeping Shamir’s latter-day twin in power?

===============================

5.  Ynet,

June 13, 2011

Special: Murky wave of anti-Israel zeal, demonization of Jews growing at alarming rate in Italy

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4081264,00.html

Giulio Meotti

The first months of 2011 have confirmed Italy’s status as one of Iran’s biggest European trade partners, all while the ayatollahs pursue the means to perpetuate a second Holocaust. Rome is doing business as usual with the greatest totalitarian threat to international peace and security since the defeats of Soviet communism and Nazi fascism, providing a lifeline to an Iranian regime that is cruel at home, sponsors terror abroad and preaches anti-Jewish revolt.

Meanwhile, a murky wave of anti-Israel zeal is also growing at an alarming rate in Italy. “The old anti-Jewish libels are now aimed at the State of Israel”, says Stefano Gatti, one of the top researchers at the Center for Documentation in Milan.

Pro-Palestinian activists are threatening to “ignite” Milan, the financial capital of Italy where an Israeli exhibit is going displayed in a central square. Meanwhile, the city of Turin hosted a “cultural festival” where the image of Shimon Peres was used as a shoe-throwing target. For one euro, Italian students had the chance to hit the face of Israel’s president, who was fitted with a Nazi-style Jewish nose.

An Israeli student at the University of Genoa has been harassed and threatened with death by Arab students. Muslim students shouted at him “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) and “Itbach el Yahud” (slaughter the Jews.) Another Israeli student at the University of Turin, Amit Peer, confessed that “the Jews here are hiding their own identity because they risk becoming a target.”

Meanwhile, demonization of the Jews is spreading in the liberal media. Leftist newspaper “Il Manifesto” published a caricature of a Jewish candidate for parliament, Fiamma Nirenstein, with Fascist insignia, a campaign button and a Star of David. The cartoon “Electoral Monsters” was dubbed “Fiamma Frankenstein.”

L’Unità, the official newspaper of the leftist Democratic Party, published an interview with anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes, where she claimed that Israel is a world leader in organ trafficking. The accusation resembled that of the Middle Ages blood libel whereby Jews were accused of kidnapping Christian and Muslim children before Passover in order to murder them and use their blood for matza.

Lists of boycotted Israeli products

Ucoii, the largest Islamic organization in Italy, published an ad in many mainstream newspapers entitled “Nazi Bloodshed Yesterday, Israeli Bloodshed Today.” An Italian court ruled that the Nazification of Israel came under “freedom of expression” and was not a case of incitement to hatred.

In 2009, Italy sent the largest European delegation of artists to an Iranian cartoonist festival on the Holocaust. The cartoons presented the Holocaust as an invention of Jews with hooked noses typical of Nazi propaganda.

Pisa, Rome and Bologna are among the most prestigious Italian universities that annually host anti-Zionist conferences and pro-Intifada speakers. Israeli attaché Shai Cohen was prevented from speaking at Pisa University after a violent attack by students, who called out “butcher, fascist, assassin.” The Israeli ambassador, Ehud Gol, fled Florence University after a similar “protest.”

Meanwhile, the Riccione city council sponsored a meeting against “the militarism of Israel,” explaining that “Israeli governments don’t represent the Jewish people.” The Coop and Conad, two of the largest supermarket chains in Italy, for some weeks last year removed Israeli products from their shelves in the name of a boycott of Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria. Lists of boycotted Israeli products have been launched also by local Christian communities and leftist groups, targeting L’Oreal, Ahava and other firms.

Flaica, a trade union with 8,000 members working in large-scale retail, promoted the boycott of “all Rome shops managed by Jews” and drew up lists of Jewish-owned shops to be avoided, because of “what is happening in Gaza.” In Rome, a new pro-Hamas Freedom Flotilla has just been presented in the official buildings of the Professional Order of the Journalists, a body financed by the Italian government. Some members of Turkish terror group IHH were also on hand.

Anti-Semitism becoming fashionable

The Foreign Press Association in Rome, a state-funded institution, suspended two journalists, both Jews: Yedioth Ahronoth correspondent Menachem Gantz and French journalist Ariel Dumont. Iranian journalist Masoumi Nejad, who has been arrested for a arms trading involving Italy and Iran, has never been expelled by the association.

Anti-Semitism is becoming fashionable also among the “chattering classes”, intellectuals and academicians. Actress Sabina Guzzanti attacked the “Jewish race” in a primetime television program. Literary guru Alberto Asor Rosa wrote in a book on the transformation of the Jews from “a persecuted race” to “a warrior persecutor race.” Renowned leftist philosopher Gianni Vattimo declared that he had “re-evaluated” “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and now felt they largely reflect the truth about the Jews.

The slandering of Israel is also growing among the most important Catholic journalists. Vittorio Messori, who conducted the first book-length interview with Pope John Paul II, recently wrote an editorial for the Italian daily “Il Corriere della sera” where he stated: “All governments of all Muslim nations are under the tsunami of the violent intrusion of Zionism that has come to put its capital in Jerusalem.”

The growing anti-Semitism is also evident by the security around the largest synagogue in Rome, one of the oldest in the world. The Jewish temple looks like a military outpost: Private guards everywhere, metal detectors and policemen at every corner. The Jewish school looks like a “sterilized area” protected by policemen, bodyguards and cameras. All school windows are plumbed with iron grates. I saw the same in the Jewish homes of Hebron and in the schools of Sderot.

Pro-Palestinian groups just recently marched into the ghetto, shouting “Fascist” and “Assassins” to the Jews, some of them Holocaust survivors. It was here, on 16 October 1943, that 1,200 Jews were deported to Auschwitz; none of the 200 Jewish children came back home. It was here, on 9 October 1982, that an Arab terrorist opened fire on Jews; a two-year old baby, Stefano Taché, became the first Italian victim of anti-Jewish violence since the war.

Not far from the ghetto, in the lower part of the Titus Gate, named after the Roman emperor who destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem, someone wrote in Hebrew: “Am Yisrael Chai.” The people of Israel not only had not been destroyed, but defiantly remained alive. It’s comforting to know that there is still someone with the courage to write it.

Giulio Meotti, a journalist with Il Foglio, is the author of the book A New Shoah: The Untold Story of Israel’s Victims of Terrorism

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6.  [thanks to Pnina for calling my attention to this.]

Jerusalem Post,

June 12, 2011

Who we are and what we seek

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=224713

By ANN IGHE

12/06/2011

What participants in the upcoming flotilla to Gaza want Israelis to know.

In a recent op-ed by Yossi Alpher in The Jerusalem Post (“In Gaza, time to try a new option,” June 10) he describes the Freedom Flotilla Two as “Turkishled,” and also concludes that: “the flotilla organizers seek, not the well-being of Gazans, but rather once again to delegitimize and isolate Israel, with Gaza as the excuse.”

These two assertions are not true. It may be that they are not at the heart of Alpher’s text, but this simplified perception of the flotilla is very odd to find in a piece that purports to be analytical. Evaluation of what we do is a matter of judgement and opinion, but the descriptions offered are conspicuously off the point.

So, who are we, and what is driving us?

OUR CRITICISM of the Israeli blockade of Gaza arises first and foremost from the fact that it is unjust, and a violation of human rights. Alpher challenges the blockade as a strategic failure from an Israeli perspective, which certainly seems to be a correct judgement.

From this position, Alpher proceeds to propose different scenarios for action in relation to Gaza: 1. Status quo, 2. a “sealing” of the land borders between Israel and Gaza but without the blockade of the air and sea, or 3. a radical relaxation of the blockade – the alternative he favors – but in a way that would still effectively cut off the two major parts of Palestinian society.

The article by Alpher is in fact actively seeking to delegitimize us, our actions as well as our motives. Of course, that is a problem for us, in our work to restore respect for the human rights of the civilian population in Gaza. But we suggest that this is also a problem for the people of Israel. Far too many analysts, military officers and politicians fail to see the depth and width of public discontent with the Israeli and Egyptian blockade of Gaza in many countries across the world.

Maybe we can stop labeling the flotilla as “Turkish-led”? Yes, the Turkish organization IHH is a partner of Freedom Flotilla Two. Yes, it has a large ship and is involved in humanitarian projects in several parts of the world. Yes, eight Turkish citizens and one American citizen of Turkish descent were killed when the IDF intercepted their ship last year. But IHH is just one of several partners in the flotilla, and the Mavi Marmara will this year – like last year – carry passengers from many parts of the world. Turkey as a state is neither leading nor participating in the flotilla. All the initiators are civil society actors, but with bases in different countries and traditions around the world.

What if the Israeli media on Freedom Flotilla also started to recognize that one of the initiatives of FFII is in fact from the US, and that this boat will have a large contingent of American Jews? There are Jews, Muslims and Christians among the passengers from many other countries too, as well as a considerable number of people who probably are not comfortable with being defined as belonging to any of these groups.

We are not bringing weapons. We are not a “flotilla of hate.”

We are not aiming for the shores of Israel, but for the shores of Gaza. We are not interested in discussing exactly what calorie levels the children and civilians of Gaza can justly be kept at by their Israeli guardians. They have the right to trade, to travel and to build and develop their society.

These are human rights, and the blockade violates every one of them. We are sailing to break the blockade, to practice what most of our governments say: Not only is the blockade not legitimate – it is illegal.

We are not expecting wide support or applause from the Israeli leadership or public.

But we are certain that it can and should handle a reasonably truthful description of the manifold motives that make people unite for this one cause – to end the blockade.

The writer is a spokesperson for the Ship to Gaza Sweden, one of the partner organizations of Freedom Flotilla Two – Stay Human. She has a PhD and works as a researcher and lecturer in economic history at the University of Gothenburg. She is also a member of the editorial committee of the Swedish cultural journal Ord&Bild.