NOVANEWS

Posted by: Sammi Ibrahem

Chair of West Midland Palestine Solidarity Campaign
 

[Thanks to all who informed me that only the introductory remarks had come through in yesterday’s message.  Hopefully everything will be there now.  It is on the page, at least.  Have no idea of what happened yesterday.  I apologize. D]

Dear Friends,

A rather long message tonight.  9 items, and some of them (particularly the final 2) are not short.

I debated with myself about including the initial report from Richard Silverstein.  Yes the story is horrid.  An attractive young woman behaves as a hardened racist and brutal beast.  In the end, I leave it up to you whether to read or not. Wonder what kind of wife, mother, etc she will be.

Item 2 is brief but a welcome relief after the first item: conductor Barenboim and his orchestra made it to Gaza via Rafa. The Egyptians who barely opened the crossing during Cast Lead, now opened it wide to allow an orchestra and its conductor in.  May miracles never end!

In item 3 the PCHR sketches the trials and tribulations of the Palestinian laborer living under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza.

Item 4 is the ‘Today in Palestine’ compilation of events.  Do please at least glance through its summaries so as to have at least an inkling about what goes on in this small but bloody part of the world.

Item 5 relates that Egypt has urged the US to recognize the Palestinian state.

Item 6 relates that Netanyahu has suspended building construction in East Jerusalem.  Wonder if someone is putting pressure on him???  We’ll perhaps know more from his conduct after he returns from his trips abroad.

In item 7 Netanyahu calls on Abbas to break the agreement with Hamas.  The government’s slogan has become ‘either Hamas or peace’—as though peace with a government in which Hamas sat were impossible.  Imagine Abbas telling Netanyahu ‘either peace or your foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman!’  But then Netanyahu no more desires peace than does Lieberman.  They both want land—and by continued colonizing they clearly say ‘we don’t want peace.’

Item 8 is a longish piece by Fisk on his meeting with and interview of Bin Laden.  But you won’t notice the length.  Fisk is always easy to read.

Item 9 is a criticism of the assassination of Bin Laden by Arab citizens of the US.  It is a very strong piece.

All the best,

Dorothy

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1. [May 3, 2011 From Richard Silverstein re a woman who during her service in the Border Police apparently tortured a young Palestinian and also during that period and after at checkpoints working for a private company she evidences strong racist and intimidating tendencies.]

I swear to you each time I come across a story like this I swear there can’t possibly be one worse, but inevitably there is…and this is surely one of them:

http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2011/05/02/israeli-border-policewoman-as-stone-cold-killer/

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2. Haaretz Tuesday, May 03, 2011

Daniel Barenboim and orchestra perform Mozart in Gaza

Israel and Egypt imposed a blockade on Gaza in 2007 after Islamic Hamas militants seized control from the Western-backed Fatah.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/daniel-barenboim-and-orchestra-perform-mozart-in-gaza-1.359658

By The Associated Press

Tags: Israel news Gaza

Famed Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim and a European orchestra performed Tuesday in the al-Madha centre in northern Gaza to show solidarity with its Palestinian residents.

Barenboim briefly entered Gaza through the Egyptian border crossing and conducted two pieces by Mozart before a small audience. International performances are rare in Gaza.

Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza in 2007 after Islamic Hamas militants seized control from the Western-backed Fatah but eased the blockade last year.

His visit to the Gaza Strip was in violation of an Israeli law which bans its citizens from entering the coastal enclave.

Barenboim, born in Argentina, grew up in Israel. The conductor is a controversial figure in Israel, both for his promotion of 19th-century composer Richard Wagner – whose music and anti-Semitic writings influenced Adolf Hitler – and vocal opposition to Israeli policies in the Palestinian territories.

In 2008 Barenboim took Palestinian citizenship and said he believed his rare new status could serve a model for peace between the two peoples.

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3.

PCHR Palestinian Centre for Human Rights Press Release

http://www.pchrgaza.org/portal/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=7422%3Aon-international-workers-day-pchr-denounces-israels-systematic-violation-of-palestinians-human-right-to-work-&catid=131%3Anew&Itemid=191

Ref: 40/2011

Date: 2 May 2011

Time: 11:30 GMT

On International Workers’ Day PCHR denounces Israel’s systematic violation of Palestinians’ human right to work

Since 1891, 1 May has been celebrated as International Workers’ Day, a public holiday throughout the world commemorating and reaffirming workers’ struggle for labor rights and decent working conditions.

The primary responsibility to protect and implement workers’ rights lies with nation states, since they are responsible for the implementation of international labor standards within the territories under their jurisdiction. As the occupying power Israel has the responsibility to ensure the right to work in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), comprised of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), inter alia, have confirmed the binding legal responsibilities of Israel vis a vis the entire spectrum of human rights of the Palestinian population under occupation.

However, the human right to work, which includes each individual’s right to the opportunity to gain their living by work which they freely choose or accept,[1][1] as well as the right to safe and healthy working conditions[2][2], remains out of reach for many Palestinians as result of Israeli policies enforced during its long standing belligerent occupation of the oPt.

In the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the approximately 585 checkpoints and other restrictions[3][3]inhibit the free movement of people to get to and from work and make trade difficult and costly. Confiscation of land and settlement activity have also taken economic opportunity away from Palestinians who make their living from agriculture or animal husbandry. As consequence, the unemployment rate has reached 17.2% and this has had an impact on the food-security level of the population (22% of households are food-insecure and an additional 12% are vulnerable to food insecurity[4][4]).

In the Gaza Strip, the Israeli-imposed total closure, tightened in June 2007 as means of “economic warfare” and collective punishment of the civilian population – and thus illegal under the Fourth Geneva Conventions of 1949 – has affected negatively all sectors of the economy

which were already damaged by the Israeli military operations of December 2008-January 2009. This has resulted in a corresponding rise in unemployment (now at 37.4%[5][5] compared to pre-closure figures of 26.4%) and in a sharp increase in poverty (65%[6][6]) and food insecurity (52% of the population is food insecure and an additional 13% is vulnerable to food insecurity[7][7]). Should the illegal closure be kept in force, the plight of unemployed workers will inevitably further deteriorate with evident implications on the workers and their families’ human dignity.

Unavoidably, since working opportunities in the formal economy are limited, thousands of people have found no alternatives but to risk their own lives working in the tunnels along the border with Egypt. According to PCHR documentation, since 2006 165 workers, including 8 children, have been killed in these circumstances. Furthermore, farmers and rubble collectors are affected  by Israeli unilaterally declared “no-go areas” on land located up to 1,500 meters from the fence dividing Israel and the Gaza Strip. Anyone entering or present in these areas – which comprise approximately 17% of Gaza’s territory and 35% of Gaza’s agricultural land[8][8] – is under high risk of being shot by Israeli border patrols. Likewise, Gaza fishermen, today only 3,700 compared to 10,000 in 2000[9][9], are often attacked by Israeli war vessels when fishing 3 nautical miles from the shore, although they are entitled to fish up to 20 nautical miles according to the Oslo Agreements.

In 2010[10][10], at least 15 Palestinian workers, including four children, were killed by Israeli forces while working in the  “no-go areas” on the land and at sea. Another 169 workers, including 45 children, were injured.

PCHR reiterates its condemnation of these crimes which are part of a long-standing pattern of violations perpetrated by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory and denounces the infringement of the inalienable human rights of the Palestinian population.

Public Document

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For more information please call PCHR office in Gaza, Gaza Strip, on +972 8 2824776 – 2825893

PCHR, 29 Omer El Mukhtar St., El Remal, PO Box 1328 Gaza, Gaza Strip. E-mail: pchr@pchrgaza.org, Webpage http://www.pchrgaza.org

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4. http://www.theheadlines.org/11/02-05-11.shtml

compilation of events in the West Bank, Gaza, and at times also elsewhere

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5.  Independent.co.uk Tuesday, 3 May 2011

US urged to recognise Palestinian state as Fatah and Hamas end rift

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/us-urged-to-recognise-palestinian-state-as-fatah-and-hamas-end-rift-2278066.html

By Catrina Stewart in Jerusalem

Egypt has urged the United States to recognise a united Palestinian state as warring factions Fatah and Hamas prepare to sign a landmark reconciliation pact in Cairo.

The appeal comes as the Palestinians indicated that they will ask the United Nations in September to recognise an independent state based on 1967 borders, a move condemned by both Israel and the United States.

Nabil al-Arabi, Egypt’s Foreign Minister, told visiting US congressman Steve Chabot that recognising the state “would correspond with previous statements by the American administration supporting peace based on two states”.

The US has so far appeared lukewarm on the preliminary reconciliation deal between Fatah, the party that dominates the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, and Islamist Hamas, which controls Gaza. Along with Israel, the US shuns Hamas as a terrorist group. But

the deal that ends a four-year rift has been greeted with relief by ordinary Palestinians, who see it as essential to achieving a peace deal that brings together the West Bank and Gaza.

Egypt has played a critical role in forging the deal between the two sides, signalling a thaw in Cairo towards Hamas, which received shorter shrift during the Mubarak era for its links with the Muslim Brotherhood, and a less conciliatory stance towards Israel.

In a sign of that, Egypt said last week it would shortly open its Rafah border crossing with Gaza, a move received with alarm in Israel, which has tried to weaken Hamas through a land and naval blockade of Gaza.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian President and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas and the Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, are to attend a ceremony in Cairo tomorrow to mark the signing of the reconciliation pact, which envisages the formation of an interim government.

But even as the deal is signed, key questions remain over whether Fatah and Hamas can reconcile their very deep-rooted differences, not least over who has control of the security forces.

The Palestinian Prime Minister, Salaam Fayyad, was able to offer few assurances on that point yesterday, saying only that the two parties must overcome their differences if they are to achieve a unified Palestinian state.

His own political future will be in doubt when the new transitional government is formed and set the task of preparing for general elections within the year. Hamas said yesterday that the next prime minister should come from Gaza, although not necessarily from the Islamist party.

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6.  Ynet Tuesday, May 03, 2011

Har Homa neighborhood Photo: AP

Netanyahu suspends east J’lem construction plan

PM orders discussion on massive east J’lem construction projects to be taken off planning committee’s agenda – ahead of US trip

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4064026,00.html

Ronen Medzini

The Prime Minister’s Office on Tuesday decided to postpone plans to build housing units in Jewish neighborhoods beyond Jerusalem’s Green Line for the second time in less than a month, Ynet has learned.

Discussion on the two projects for the construction of more than 900 housing units in east Jerusalem was taken off the District Planning and Construction Committee’s agenda for Thursday.

One project is a plan to build 930 homes at the neighborhood of Har Homa, and the other is slated to see the construction of dozens of units in Pisgat Ze’ev.

Thursday’s hearing was meant to address objections that were raised against the projects – one of the final stages before construction permits are issued. The postponement of the hearing delays the projects indefinitely.

The Interior Ministry confirmed that the order to bump the discussion came from the Prime Minister’s Office, which only three weeks ago rejected four major construction plans for the neighborhoods of Gilo, Har Homa, Pisgat Ze’ev and Ramot.

Political measure?

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to visit the United States at the end of the month, prompting the assumption that the latest measure aims to avoid nembarrassment during the visit.

The neighborhood of Har Homa was officially renamed Homat Shmuel in 1997 during Netanyahu’s first term as prime minister, despite US objection. Since the Jewish neighborhood is located beyond the Green Line, every action that aims to expand it provokes an international outcry, as it upsets the status quo in the capital.

“The plan (to build 930 units in Har Homa) gives preference to construction on east Jerusalem territories which have been taken over by Israel in 1967, and which stand at the heart of the political process,” wrote the Ir Amim organization, which promotes Palestinian-Israeli coexistence in Jerusalem. “This kind of preferential treatment can cause severe harm to the political process.”

The organization responded to the dismissal of the issue from Thursday’s agenda, saying that “the consideration of the political sensitivities of construction beyond the Green Line should thwart such plans from the start, instead of playing cat-and-mouse games with the international arena.”

Yair Gabay, a member of the District Planning and Construction Committee, told Ynet that the board did not yet receive the announcement that the hearing was cancelled, but noted that he saw it coming.

“I don’t see all of the systems mobilizing to promote new massive construction in Jerusalem, in order to respond to the plight of so many young couples that want to buy a home at a reasonable price in the city,” he said.

“If the state and municipal elements don’t reconsider the cause, we will lose Jerusalem, and that’s a shame,” he added.

The Prime Minister’s Office did not immediately respond.

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7.   Haaretz Tuesday, May 03, 2011

Netanyahu calls on Abbas to cancel Hamas unity deal

After meeting with Mideast envoy Tony Blair, the prime minister says the Hamas-Fatah unity deal will sabotage peace efforts; Netanyahu points to Hamas’ recent praise of bin Laden as reason for concern.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/netanyahu-calls-on-abbas-to-cancel-hamas-unity-deal-1.359641

By Barak Ravid and Reuters

Tags: Israel news Hamas Mahmoud Abbas

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to step away from a unity deal with the Islamist group Hamas a day before it was due to be signed.

“I call on Abu Mazen (Abbas) to cancel the agreement with Hamas immediately and to choose the way of peace with Israel,” Netanyahu said in a statement after meeting Middle East envoy Tony Blair.

Israel has said the surprise deal announced last week, which is meant to reconcile the rival Palestinian factions, will sabotage peace efforts. Most recently, it has pointed to Hamas’s condemnation of the killing of al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden by U.S. forces as reason for concern.

“The agreement between Abu Mazen and Hamas deals a tough blow to the peace process. How can peace be reached with a government in which half of it calls to destroy Israel and even praises mass-murderer Osama bin Laden,” Netanyahu said.

Palestinian leaders have defended the unity agreement, which will be signed at a ceremony in Cairo on Wednesday, saying reconciliation with Hamas reflects a deep-seated public desire to end internal differences.

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8.  Independent.co.uk  Tuesday, 3 May 2011

Robert Fisk: A close encounter with the man who shook the world

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-a-close-encounter-with-the-man-who-shook-the-world-2278035.html

One hot evening in late June 1996, the telephone on my desk in Beirut rang with one of the more extraordinary messages I was to receive as a foreign correspondent. “Mr Robert, a friend you met in Sudan wants to see you,” said a voice in English but with an Arabic accent. At first I thought he meant another man, whose name I suggested. “No, no, Mr Robert, I mean the man you interviewed. Do you understand?” Yes, I understood. And where could I meet this man? “The place where he is now,” came the reply. I knew that Bin Laden was rumoured to have returned to Afghanistan but there was no confirmation of this. So how do I reach him? I asked. “Go to Jalalabad – you will be contacted.”

A month later. “CLACK-CLACK-CLACK.” It was as if someone was attacking my head with an ice-pick. “CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK.” I sat up. Someone was banging a set of car keys against the window of my room in the Spinghar Hotel. “Misssster Robert,” a voice whispered urgently. “Misssster Robert.” He hissed the word “Mister.” Yes, yes, I’m here. “Please come downstairs, there is someone to see you.” It registered only slowly that the man must have climbed the ancient fire escape to reach the window of my room. I dressed, grabbed a coat – I had a feeling we might travel in the night – and almost forgot my old Nikon. I walked as calmly as I could past the reception desk and out into the early afternoon heat.

The man wore a grubby, grey Afghan robe and a small round cotton hat but he was an Arab and he greeted me formally, holding my right hand in both of his. He smiled. He said his name was Mohamed, he was my guide. “To see the Sheikh?” I asked. He smiled but said nothing.

I followed Mohamed all the way through the dust of Jalalabad’s main street until we arrived next to a group of gunmen in a pick-up truck in the ruins of an old Soviet army base, a place of broken armoured vehicles with a rusting red star on a shattered gateway. There were three men in Afghan hats in the back of the pick-up. One held a Kalashnikov rifle, another clutched a grenade-launcher along with six rockets tied together with Scotch tape. The third nursed a machine gun on his lap, complete with tripod and a belt of ammunition. “Mr Robert, these are our guards,” the driver said quietly, as if it was the most normal thing in the world to set off across the wilds of Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province under a white-hot afternoon sun with three bearded guerrillas. A two-way radio hissed and crackled on the shoulder of the driver’s companion as another truckload of Afghan gunmen drove up behind us.

We were about to set off when Mohamed climbed back down from the pick-up along with the driver, walked to a shaded patch of grass and began to pray. For five minutes, the two men lay half-prostrate, facing the distant Kabul Gorge and, beyond that, a far more distant Mecca. We drove off along a broken highway and then turned on to a dirt track by an irrigation canal, the guns in the back of the truck bouncing on the floor, the guards’ eyes peering from behind their chequered scarves. We travelled like that for hours, past half-demolished mud villages and valleys and towering black rocks, a journey across the face of the moon.

By dusk, we had reached a series of cramped earthen villages, old men burning charcoal fires by the track, the shadow of women cowled in the Afghan burka standing in the alleyways. There were more guerrillas, all bearded, grinning at Mohamed and the driver. It was night before we stopped, in an orchard where wooden sofas had been covered in army blankets piled with belts and webbing and where armed men emerged out of the darkness, some holding rifles, others machine guns. They were the Arab mujahedin, the Arab “Afghans” denounced by the presidents and kings of half the Arab world and by the United States of America. Very soon, the world would know them as al-Qa’ida.

Mohamed beckoned me to follow him and we skirted a small river and jumped across a stream until, in the insect-filled darkness ahead, we could see a sputtering paraffin lamp. Beside it sat a tall, bearded man in Saudi robes. Osama bin Laden stood up, his two teenage sons, Omar and Saad, beside him. “Welcome to Afghanistan,” he said.

He was now 40 but looked much older than at our last meeting in the Sudanese desert late in 1993. Walking towards me, he towered over his companions, tall, slim, with new wrinkles around those narrow eyes. Leaner, his beard longer but slightly flecked with grey, he had a black waistcoat over his white robe and a red-chequered kuffiah on his head, and he seemed tired. When he asked after my health, I told him I had come a long way for this meeting. “So have I,” he muttered. There was also an isolation about him, a detachment I had not noticed before, as if he had been inspecting his anger, examining the nature of his resentment; when he smiled, his gaze would move towards his 16-year-old son Omar – round eyes with dark brows and his own kuffiah – and then off into the hot darkness where his armed men were patrolling the fields.

Just 10 days before, a truck bomb had torn down part of the US Air Force housing complex at al-Khobar in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, and we were speaking in the shadow of the deaths of the 19 US soldiers killed there. And Bin Laden knew what he wanted to say. “Not long ago, I gave advice to the Americans to withdraw their troops from Saudi Arabia. Now let us give some advice to the governments of Britain and France to take their troops out – because what happened in Riyadh and al-Khobar showed that the people who did this have a deep understanding in choosing their targets. They hit their main enemy, which is the Americans. They killed no secondary enemies, nor their brothers in the army or the police in Saudi Arabia… I give this advice to the government of Britain.” He said the Americans must leave Saudi Arabia, must leave the Gulf. The “evils” of the Middle East arose from America’s attempt to take over the region and from its support for Israel. Saudi Arabia had been turned into “an American colony”.

***

Bin Laden was speaking slowly and with precision, an Egyptian taking notes in a large exercise book by the lamplight like a Middle Ages scribe. “This doesn’t mean declaring war against the West and Western people – but against the American regime which is against every American.” I interrupted Bin Laden. Unlike Arab regimes, I said, the people of the United States elected their government. They would say that their government represents them. He disregarded my comment. I hope he did. For in the years to come, his war would embrace the deaths of thousands of American civilians. “The explosion in al-Khobar did not come as a direct reaction to the American occupation,” he said, “but as a result of American behaviour against Muslims, its support of Jews in Palestine and of the massacres of Muslims in Palestine and Lebanon – of Sabra and Chatila and Qana – and of the Sharm el-Sheikh conference.”

But what Bin Laden really wanted to talk about was Saudi Arabia. Since our last meeting in Sudan, he said, the situation in the kingdom had grown worse. The ulema, the religious leaders, had declared in the mosques that the presence of American troops was not acceptable and the government took action against these ulema “on the advice of the Americans”. For Bin Laden, the betrayal of the Saudi people began 24 years before his birth, when Abdul Aziz al-Saud proclaimed his kingdom in 1932. “The regime started under the flag of applying Islamic law and under this banner all the people of Saudi Arabia came to help the Saud family take power. But Abdul Aziz did not apply Islamic law; the country was set up for his family. Then after the discovery of petroleum, the Saudi regime found another support – the money to make people rich and to give them the services and life they wanted and to make them satisfied.” Bin Laden was picking away at his teeth with that familiar twig of mishwak wood, but history – or his version of it – was the basis of almost all his remarks. The Saudi royal family had promised sharia laws while at the same time allowing the United States “to Westernise Saudi Arabia and drain the economy”. He blamed the Saudi regime for spending $25bn in support of Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war and a further $60bn in support of the Western armies in the 1991 war against Iraq, “buying military equipment which is not needed or useful for the country, buying aircraft by credit” while at the same time creating unemployment, high taxes and a bankrupt economy. But for Bin Laden, the pivotal date was 1990, the year Saddam invaded Kuwait. “When the American troops entered Saudi Arabia, the land of the two Holy places, there was a strong protest from the ulema and from students of sharia law all over the country against the interference of American troops. This big mistake by the Saudi regime of inviting the American troops revealed their deception. They were giving their support to nations which were fighting against Muslims.”

Bin Laden paused to see if I had listened to his careful, if frighteningly exclusive history lesson. “The Saudi people have remembered now what the ulema told them and they realise America is the main reason for their problems… the ordinary man knows that his country is the largest oil producer in the world yet at the same time he is suffering from taxes and bad services. Now the people understand the speeches of the ulemas in the mosques – that our country has become an American colony. What happened in Riyadh and al-Khobar is clear evidence of the huge anger of Saudi people against America. The Saudis now know their real enemy is America.” The overthrow of the Saudi regime and the eviction of US forces from the kingdom were one and the same for Bin Laden. He was claiming that the real religious leadership of Saudi Arabia – among whom he clearly saw himself – was an inspiration to Saudis, that Saudis themselves would drive out the Americans, that Saudis – hitherto regarded as a rich and complacent people – might strike at the United States. Could this be true?

Bin Laden sometimes stopped speaking for all of 60 seconds in order to reflect on his words. Most Arabs, faced with a reporter’s question, would say the first thing that came into their heads for fear that they would appear ignorant if they did not. Bin Laden was different. He was alarming because he was possessed of that quality which leads men to war: total self-conviction.

Bin Laden had asked me – a routine of every Palestinian under occupation – if Europeans did not resist occupation during the Second World War. I told him no Europeans would accept this argument over Saudi Arabia – because the Nazis killed millions of Europeans yet the Americans had never murdered a single Saudi. Such a parallel was historically and morally wrong. Bin Laden did not agree. “We as Muslims have a strong feeling that binds us together… We feel for our brothers in Palestine and Lebanon… When 60 Jews are killed inside Palestine” – he was talking about Palestinian suicide bombings in Israel – “all the world gathers within seven days to criticise this action, while the deaths of 600,000 Iraqi children did not receive the same reaction.” It was Bin Laden’s first reference to Iraq and to the United Nations sanctions that were to result, according to UN officials themselves, in the death of more than half a million children. “Killing those Iraqi children is a crusade against Islam,” Bin Laden said. “We, as Muslims, do not like the Iraqi regime but we think that the Iraqi people and their children are our brothers and we care about their future.” It was the first time I heard him use the word “crusade”.

***

For some time, there had been a steadily growing thunderstorm to the east of Bin Laden’s camp and we could see the bright orange flash of lightning over the mountains on the Pakistan border. But Bin Laden thought this might be artillery fire, the continuation of the inter-mujahedin battles that had damaged his spirit after the anti-Soviet war. He was growing uneasy. He broke off his conversation to pray. Then, on the straw mat, several young and armed men served dinner – plates of yoghurt and cheese and Afghan naan bread and more tea. Bin Laden sat between his sons, silent, eyes on his food.

I said to Bin Laden that Afghanistan was the only country left to him after his exile in Sudan. He agreed. “The safest place in the world for me is Afghanistan.” It was the only place, I repeated, in which he could campaign against the Saudi government. Bin Laden and several of his Arab fighters burst into laughter. “There are other places,” he replied. Did he mean Tajikistan? I asked. Or Uzbekistan? Kazakhstan? “There are several places where we have friends and close brothers – we can find refuge and safety in them.” I told Bin Laden he was already a hunted man. “Danger is a part of our life,” he snapped back.

He began talking to his men about amniya, security, and repeatedly looked towards those flashes in the sky. Now the thunder did sound like gunfire. I tried to ask one more question. What kind of Islamic state would Bin Laden wish to see? Would thieves and murderers still have their hands or heads cut off in his Islamic sharia state, just as they do in Saudi Arabia today? There came an unsatisfactory reply. “Islam is a complete religion for every detail of life. If a man is a real Muslim and commits a crime, he can only be happy if he is justly punished. This is not cruelty. The origin of these punishments comes from God through the Prophet Mohamed, peace be upon him.” Dissident Osama bin Laden may be, but moderate never. I asked permission to take his photograph, and while he debated this with his companions I scribbled into my notebook the words I would use in the last paragraph of my report on our meeting: “Osama bin Laden believes he now represents the most formidable enemy of the Saudi regime and of the American presence in the Gulf. Both are probably right to regard him as such.” I was underestimating the man.

Yes, he said, I could take his picture. I opened my camera and allowed his armed guards to watch me as I threaded a film into the spool. Without warning, Bin Laden moved his head back and the faintest smile moved over his face, along with that self-conviction and that ghost of vanity which I found so disturbing. He called his sons Omar and Saad and they sat beside him as I took more pictures and Bin Laden turned into the proud father, the family man, the Arab at home.

Then his anxiety returned. The thunder was continuous now and it was mixed with the patter of rifle fire. I should go, he urged, and I realised that what he meant was that he must go, that it was time for him to return to the fastness of Afghanistan. When we shook hands, he was already looking for the guards who would take him away.

This is an edited extract from ‘The Great War For Civilisation’, by Robert Fisk, published by Harper Perennial (£13.99)

Like Robert Fisk on Facebook for updates

[You might also wish to see Rupert Cromwell ‘America must end its 9-11 mindset’

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/rupert-cornwell/rupert-cornwell-america-must-end-its-911-mindset-2278096.html ]

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9.  [forwarded by Elana W]

The Statement House Arabs and House Muslims Never Released about OBL

http://ikhras.com/2011/05/the-statement-house-arabs-and-house-muslims-never-released-about-obl/

May 2, 2011

We are US-based Arab and Muslim organizations. We feel a compelling obligation to explain to our fellow Americans the meaning of the US killing of Osama bin Laden.

We take this opportunity to revisit the inconvenient fact that Osama Bin Laden and the Mujahideen were funded and supported by the US to fight the USSR in Afghanistan in the eighties. We recall that Ronald Reagan had called the Mujahideen “freedom fighters” when their interests coincided with the US’s. We remind ourselves that “Between 1978 and 1992, the US government poured at least US$6 billion (some estimates range as high as $20 billion) worth of arms, training and funds to prop up the mujaheddin factions.”

We note that the Mujahideen aligned themselves with the US, convincing themselves of the “lesser of two evils” argument. We recall that Zbigniew Brzezinski said:

The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.

We learn an important lesson from this history and note that collaboration with the US is an immoral and counterproductive effort. Collaboration does not shield one from US persecution, neither is it a smart “strategy.” Aligning with powerful empires is foolish and self-defeating. The logic of House Muslims (or “House Negroes” as Malcolm X called the collaborators of his era) is short-sighted and idiotic.

We abhor the subtext of President Obamaand Secretary Clinton‘s remarks, implying that the lives of millions of Afghanis, Iraqis and Pakistanis were worth somehow sacrificing in order to locate one ex-”freedom fighter” (as per Reagan’s words). Indeed, the President and Secretary of State did not even pay lip service to the countless lives devastated, weddings bombarded, children orphaned, spouses widowed, natural resources stolen. We condemn the hypocrisy of Secretary Clinton, who feigned concern for “innocent people” who were killed by OBL but not the innocent people in Afghanistan and Iraq for whose death she caused as Senator then as Secretary of State, or the innocent people in Palestine and Lebanon whose death by Israeli warplanes she supported. We cannot expect Obama and Clinton to apologize for the war crimes the US committed in pursuit of OBL, as it is not in empires’ nature to condemn themselves.

We are still haunted by the images of our sisters and brothers tortured in Abu Ghraib. The stench of scores of corpses from years of war, occupations and sanctions still fills the air. The emotional trauma of drones still terrorizes children. The dreary, bleak future facing millions of displaced Afghani and Iraqi refugees still shakes our conscience. White phosphorus and depleted uranium’s effects on public health and the environment will last for generations to come. That the US eliminated one of its ex-agents and claimed it was not waging war on Islam while war criminals continue to hold power in Washington and Tel Aviv offers us no relief.

We regret having spent the last decade begging for approval from the US mainstream, inviting US politicians to our conventions, having Ramadan iftars in the White House and embarrassing ourselves in a myriad of other ways. Now that OBL is finally dead, we look forward to freeing up the time we’d spent assuring everyone of our patriotism and swearing on the Qur’an that OBL did not represent us. We will no longer construct our discourse to sooth islamophobes’ racist anxieties. We will spend no more time emphasizing that OBL didn’t represent us than Christians assert that Obama, Clinton, Bush and Blair do not represent Christianity.

Instead, we will work on more urgent matters than pursuing the material comforts of the American dream, such as ending the occupation of Afghanistan, ending the occupation of Iraq, boycotting and dismantling “Israel,” closing Guantanamo, restoring civil liberties, ending US hegemony and racism.

Signed,

American Arab Anti Discrimination Committee, Arab American Institute, American Task Force for Palestine, Council on American-Islamic Relations, Islamic Society of North America, Park51

---

[1][1] Art. 6, UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR)

[2][2] Art. 7, Ibid.

[3][3] PCHR, Weekly Report On Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, 21 – 27 April 2011.

[4][4] FAO-WFP-oPt, 2010 Socio-Economic and Food Security Survey, West Bank and the Gaza Strip, oPt.

[5][5] UN OCHA-oPt, Easing the Blockade, Assessing the Humanitarian Impact on the Population of the Gaza Strip, Special Focus, March 2011.

[6][6] PCHR, State of the Border Crossings, 16-30 September 2010.

[7][7] UN OCHA-oPt, Easing the Blockade, Assessing the Humanitarian Impact on the Population of the Gaza Strip, Special Focus, March 2011.

[8][8] PCHR, The Buffer-zone in the Gaza Strip, August 2010, Facts Sheet section.

[9][9] PCHR, Israeli Attacks on Palestinian Fishermen at Gaza Sea, February 2011, Facts Sheet section.

[10][10] UN OCHA-oPt, Easing the Blockade, Assessing the Humanitarian Impact on the Population of the Gaza Strip, Special Focus, March 2011.

NOVANEWS

 
—
 

NOVANEWS

Posted by: Sammi Ibrahem

Chair of West Midland Palestine Solidariet Campaign

Dear Friends,

7 items in this message, but only one (item 3) touches on the big story of  the day: the assassination of Osama Bin Laden. You have enough of that in your local newspapers, and I have had enough of it here.  As one good friend, Greg, wrote (my paraphrase)—‘would have been wiser to do away with the causes that create the Bin Ladens than to kill him.’  Of course, because unless the causes are eliminated they will create more Bin Ladens!  We are a long way from eliminating the causes.

Nonetheless, item 1 is, for a change, on a positive note.  It tells us that Daniel Barenboim will defy Israeli law to perform with an orchestra (not the Divan) in Gaza.

In item 2 Akiva Eldar insists that Palestinian reconciliation is good for peace.

Item 3 uses the killing of Bin Laden to strongly censor the misuse of sport to encourage enlisting in the military.

Item 4 is longish but revealing as it shows us that there is panic in the Houses of Congress and AIPAC over the recent events in Tunisia, Egypt, etc (the ‘Arab spring’) and the reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas.  May such panic increase, while the move towards justice and peace continue to progress!

Item 5 is the human rights report for March by OCHA.  It was written prior to the ‘finding’ of the 2 young men who supposedly killed the family in the colony of Itamar, and therefore says that the culprits have not been apprehended, when, in fact, two young men have since been charged—whether rightly so or not, is another question.  Much of the report is about Israel’s killing and wounding Palestinian youngsters.  The report is long, but informative. To read it, click on the language that you prefer.

Item 6 brings us back to the days when New Profile was accused and investigated.  Now the target is Machsom Watch, and for what?  For going to Awarta when it was under curfew!  Wow! What a crime.  Would that those who accuse Machsom Watch do nothing worse than these humane and informative and caring individuals and their organization!  Wishing them the same result as New Profile—being found not guilty.

Item 7 is brief, and from a reader (Aruna) who sent it to me over a month ago.  I apologize for not sending sooner.  A group of children from Shatila refugee camp were on tour, performing,   Shatila is one of the two camps in Lebanon that were attacked by Lebanese Falange, under the watching and supportive eye of Israel while the Falange massacred the inhabitants.  It’s good to know that some of the children are positively engaged in an activity that is reminiscent of the Freedom Theatre.  Click on the link for more details.

All the best,

Dorothy

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

1. Haaretz Monday, May 02, 2011

Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim to perform with orchestra in Gaza

European musicians will enter Gaza with Barenboim through Egypt-Gaza border crossing after concert coordinated in secret with the UN, the Wall Street Journal reports.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/israeli-conductor-daniel-barenboim-to-perform-with-orchestra-in-gaza-1.359476

By Haaretz Service

Tags: Israel news Palestinian Gaza Palestinians

Renowned Jewish conductor and Palestinian rights activist Daniel Barenboim will perform with an orchestra of European musicians in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

According to the report, the concert was coordinated in secret with the United Nations until invitations were distributed earlier this week, and would mark a rare solidarity visit from a major international cultural figure to the blockaded Palestinian territory since Hamas went into power in 2007.

Musicians from across European countries such as Germany, Austria, France and Italy have been enlisted for the Barenboim’s project, and he has even, according to the WSJ, assembled an outfit dubbed the “Orchestra for Gaza.”

According to French news agency AFP, the orchestra will fly from Berlin to Egypt and then cross the border into Gaza for the concert.

“We are very happy to come to Gaza. We are playing this concert as a sign of our solidarity and friendship with the civil society of Gaza,” Barenboim said in a statement released by the UN.

His visit to the Gaza Strip will violate an Israeli law which bans its citizens from entering the coastal enclave.

Barenboim, an Argentine-born Jew who was raised in Israel, and has Israel citizenship, took Palestinian citizenship in 2008 and said he believed his rare new status could serve a model for peace between the two peoples.

The conductor is a controversial figure in Israel, both for his promotion of 19th-century composer Richard Wagner – whose music and anti-Semitic writings influenced Adolf Hitler – and vocal opposition to Israeli policies in the Palestinian territories.

Along with the late Palestinian academic Edward Said, he co-founded the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, made up of young musicians from Israel, the Palestinian territories and neighboring Arab countries.

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

2,  Haaretz Monday, May 02, 2011

Palestinian reconciliation is good news for Mideast peace

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/palestinian-reconciliation-is-good-news-for-mideast-peace-1.359278

By Akiva Eldar

What do they have in common – the hawks of Iz al-Din al-Qassam, the military wing of Hamas; Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; his bodyguard, Defense Minister Ehud Barak; and Nobel Peace Prize laureate President Shimon Peres ? They all threw a fit over the reconciliation agreement between Fatah and Hamas.

The protest from the Palestinian rejectionist front is obvious; the Egyptian document is Hamas’ deed of surrender. It obligates the militant organization to accept the authority of the security forces subordinate to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, without giving it any purchase in the political arena.

From Israel’s perspective, the agreement appears to be too good for Hamas political head Khaled Meshal to sign.

So why were Israeli politicians who purport to be peace-loving statesmen so quick to go after Abbas? In the worst case, they realize, the agreement puts paid to the government’s claim that Abbas “represents only half of the Palestinian people.” If the conditions that Abbas set are observed – “one authority, one law, one gun [army]” – this could ruin the main mantra of the Israeli right: “We left Gaza and got Qassam rockets in return.”

The right, knowing that internal Palestinian reconciliation could expedite international recognition for a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, intentionally depicts the unity move as anti-Israel. A Fatah-Hamas accord is likely to cool down the Gaza border, but the right is consciously heightening panic by raising the specter of “Qassams in Judea and Samaria.”

In the less-than-worst (or perhaps worse than “worst” ) case, Netanyahu, Barak and Peres did not bother to read the agreement nor wanted to hear Abbas’ clear explication. The document specifies that the Palestinian provisional unity government will only be authorized to deal with the unification and operation of the security forces, the restoration of buildings and infrastructure damaged during Operation Cast Lead and preparations for the election scheduled for May 2012.

Abbas has repeatedly stressed that it was the Palestine Liberation Organization that has signed treaties with Israel since the Oslo Accords, and that the government of technocrats it will appoint will not be able to prevent him from negotiating with the Netanyahu government on the basis of the 1967 borders, territorial exchanges, an agreed solution to the refugee problem and a moratorium on construction in the settlements and in East Jerusalem for a period of three months. Thus, Hamas recognition of the conditions put forth by the Quartet, which include honoring all previous agreements with Israel, is all but meaningless.

If the leaders of the state and their loyal servant in the President’s Residence did read the text of the reconciliation agreement, they did not delve into the conditions that made it possible. Middle East expert Matti Steinberg, currently a visiting scholar at Princeton, would be happy to explain to them that the text is the very same one submitted to Hamas months ago – only its context has changed. Steinberg, who has advised several Shin Bet security service chiefs on Palestinian affairs, could refer them to the loud, pointed criticism voiced by Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Islamic scholar of the Muslim Brotherhood – Hamas’ big sister – of the massacre of Sunni Muslims by Syria’s Alawite regime.

The ground is trembling in Syria. Bashar Assad, the patron of Meshal and his colleagues, has become a clone of Muammar Gadhafi in the eyes of the world. Signing the reconciliation agreement is the price paid by the Hamas refugees from Damascus for the trip to Cairo. The decision to open the gates of Rafah, like the pressure on Hamas to sign the treaty, reflect Egypt’s desire to create a context that will enable the Palestinians to resume negotiations with Israel; it will obviate the planned flotilla to Gaza and hurt the tunnel trade that funds Hamas forces in Gaza.

If Israel causes the reconciliation to fail, this would perpetuate the violence along the border with Gaza. Injury to the agreement would rock the delicate relationship being formed with the new regime in Cairo and improve the position of Iran.

The reconciliation agreement and the closing of ranks in the occupied territories are the best news possible for seekers of peace – on both sides of the Green Line. I only hope that Hamas does not get cold feet at the last minute, and that it honors both the spirit and the letter of the agreement.

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

3.  [forwarded by Elana]

From: edgeofsports

Sent: Monday, May 02, 2011 7:24 PM

Subject: [E of S] Sports, bin Laden, and the New Normal

Folks – please clink on the link, share on Facebook and twitter, and let’s get the word out.

In struggle and sports,

Dave Z

http://bit.ly/irIvue

Sports, bin Laden, and the New Normal

by Dave Zirin

Howard Cosell said that “rule number one of the sports jockocracy” was that sports and politics didn’t mix. And yet last night, at the ballpark in Philadelphia, we received another reminder that some political expression is deemed not just acceptable but glorious.

When the killing of Osama bin Laden reached the Philadelphia Phillies fans, amidst their 14-inning loss to the New York Mets, boisterous chants of “U-S-A“ filled the park. This was praised across the sports landscape as a remarkable, yet altogether appropriate moment of national joy. “It was beautiful,” said one radio commentator. “It reminded all of us what is so wonderful about sports in our society.”

The eruption of patriotic emotion at the park should surprise no one. Since 9/11, the sports arena has been an organizer of patriotism, a recruiter for the US armed forces, and at times a funhouse mirror, reflecting the principles of freedom in a manner so misshapen and distorted as to rise to the level of farce.

As the Phillies faithful cheered, I thought about the NFL postponing games following 9/11, but only after a players revolt led by Vinny Testaverde made clear to Paul Tagliabue that no one was in a condition to play a game. I thought about the spread of “Military Appreciation Nights” at the stadium and the increased prevalence of jet flyovers and troops processions in the field. I thought about the military recruitment stations organized outside preseason NFL games.

I thought about Major League Baseball adding the second national anthem, “God Bless America” to the 7th inning stretch. I thought about the late Yankee owner George Steinbrenner having chains put up along the side of the bleachers and hiring off-duty police to make sure no one did anything but pay fealty to the flag. I thought about a young man named Bradley Campeau-Laurion who was led from the park in handcuffs because he left his seat to use the bathroom during this celebration of freedom. I thought about ESPN’s week of SportsCenter from Iraq in September of 2004, which allowed the network to do what George W. Bush couldn’t: connect Iraq to 9/11.

I also thought about the athletic-dissenters. I thought about then Toronto Blue Jay Carlos Delgado who refused to come out for the second 7th inning stretch anthem, saying, “I don’t (stand) because I don’t believe it’s right, I don’t believe in the war. It’s a very terrible thing that happened on September 11. It’s (also) a terrible thing that happened in Afghanistan and Iraq. I just feel so sad for the families that lost relatives and loved ones in the war. But I think it’s the stupidest war ever.”

I thought about then Washington Wizards forward Etan Thomas electrifying a mass anti-war rally in DC in September 2005. I thought about Steve Nash wearing a t-shirt at the start of the Iraq invasion that read “No war. Shoot for peace.” I thought about NASCAR’s Dale Earnhardt. Jr. imploring people to see “Fahrenheit 9/11”. I thought about the fiercely brave Manhattanville women’s basketball captain Toni Smith turning her back on the anthem and igniting a firestorm with her courage. I thought of Adalius Thomas, Josh Howard, Nick Van Exel, and all athletes who used their platform and spoke out.

But more than anyone, I thought about Pat Tillman. I found myself wondering [if] the 19 year olds who were turning Ground Zero and the White House into a frat party last night even knew who Pat Tillman was. And if they were aware that a man named Pat Tillman once walked among us, which Tillman did they know? Did they know the Tillman the NFL wants us to remember? That Tillman was a star safety who turned down a multi-million-dollar contract after 9/11 to join the Army Rangers, only do die in combat 22 months after enlisting. In the immediate aftermath of his death Tillman became a caricature, used to promote and encourage war.

But the Pat Tillman his family has fought to be known is the actual, thinking, opinionated human being. This Pat Tillman believed that 9/11 had been manipulated to justify an illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. As journalist Jon Krakauer said, “He thought the war was illegal. He thought it was a mistake.  He thought it was going to be a disaster. And in the Army, you’re not supposed to talk about that. You’re not supposed to talk politics. And Pat didn’t shut up. He told everyone he encountered, ‘This war is illegal as hell.’” He started reading the anti-war theorist Noam Chomsky and sent word that he wanted to meet Chomsky upon returning to the states. This Pat Tillman died not at the hands of the Taliban but in an incident of “friendly fire”, a fact hidden from his own family for weeks after his nationally televised funeral. Pat’s family has spent years fighting to

get the true facts of his case known. I thought about Pat’s brave mother Mary and I was just so sad. We killed bin Laden and all it took was three wars, a million deaths, a trillion dollars, and infinite broken families and broken hearts.

Yes, sports has been co-opted, exploited, scarred, and turned inside out by the aftermath of 9/11 and the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Some have wondered if now that bin Laden is dead, life will “go back to normal.” But as we saw in Philly last night, this is the new normal and will continue to be so, until every last troop is home. Maybe then we can enjoy sports as an escape from, rather than a promoter of, this country’s culture of war.

[Dave Zirin is the author of “Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games we Love” (Scribner) and just made the new documentary “Not Just a Game.” Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.]

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

4.  Forwarded via Paula to David

Almanar May 2, 2011

Panic in the Houses of Congress and AIPAC?

http://www.almanar.com.lb/english/adetails.php?fromval=1&cid=41&eid=13761&frid=41

Franklin Lamb

Beirut

On April 13, 2011, more than a dozen Israel “First, last and always” US congressional leaders from both houses of Congress held an urgent conference call organized by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Their purpose was to discuss how best to promote Israel during next month’s US visit by Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu and more importantly how to confront the rapidly changing Middle East political landscape. One consensus was that no one saw it coming and that is was dangerous for Israel.

Among those participating were former Jewish Chairman of powerful committees including Reps. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who headed the Banking Committee; Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), ex-chairman of the Commerce and Energy committee; Howard Berman (D-Calif.), ex-chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee; and Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), ex-chairwoman of the foreign operations subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee as well as Eric Cantor, House Majority leader, the highest rankling Jewish member of Congress in history.

What AIPAC operatives reportedly told the conferees was that Netanyahu is once again furious with President Barack Obama and outraged by what he sees as a vacillating US Government attitude towards Israeli needs. They were told that the Israeli PM sees real political danger for Israel in the shifting US public opinion in favor of the young sophisticated attractive Arab and Muslims increasingly seen on satellite channels from the region who remind the American public of their own ideals.

Netanyahu, the conferees were told, wants Congress to flex its muscle with the White House and deliver a strong message to President Obama that his political future is tied to Israel’s. Hence, the current “America needs Israel more than ever stupid!” campaign is wafting from the Israel lobby across the talk radio airwaves.

Abe Foxman Caricature

In addition, as more Israeli officials are indicted for various domestic crimes, and some harbor fears of arrest for international ones, 68% of the American Jewish community, according to one by poll commissioned last month by Forward, believe the US Israel lobby is increasingly fossilized with the likes of ADL (Anti-Defamation League) director Abe Foxman’s vindictive infighting among several of the largest Jewish lobby organizations which continue to lose  memberships, especially among the young.

Congressman Eric Cantor lamented that “Israel is badly losing the US College campuses”, despite heavy financial investments the past few years to curb American students growing support for Gaza, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, all dreaded symbols of the growing opposition to the 19th Century Zionist colonial enterprise. “Support for Palestine is skyrocketing,” he claimed. “Until Palestine is freed from Zionist occupation no Arab or Muslim is truly free of Western hegemony,” according to one assistant editor of Harvard University’s student newspaper, the Crimson.

Admitting that the Mossad did not foresee even the Tunisian or Egyptian uprisings some AIPAC staffers, of whom there are more than 100, admit to not knowing how to react to the topics they were presented with for discussion, some of which included:

• The Egyptian public emphatic insistence that the 1978 Camp David Accords be scrapped and that the Rafah crossing be opened. The latter has just been announced and the former is expected to be achieved before the end of the year.

• The change of regimes and the dramatic rise in publicly expressed anti-Israel sentiment and insistence that Israel close its embassy and Egypt withdraw its recognition of the Zionist state.

• The apparent rapprochement between Fatah and Hamas which has been increasingly demanded by the Palestinians under occupation and in the Diaspora.

• The fact that the new regime in Cairo is seeking to upgrade its ties with Gaza’s Hamas rulers as well as Iran.

• With respect to possible PA-Hamas rapprochement, U.S. National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor is trying to reassure Israel before Netanyahu’s visit by announcing this week that “The United States supports Palestinian reconciliation on terms which promote the cause of peace, but to play a constructive role in achieving peace, any Palestinian government must renounce violence, abide by past agreements, and recognize Israel’s right to exist.”

AIPAC’s Howard Kohr

AIPAC, frequently knocks heads with the Israeli embassy in Washington for control of visiting Israeli PM’s and important governments schedules will control what Netanyahu says and does.  AIPAC Executive Director Howard Kohr recently told a group of visiting Jewish student activists from California that “sometimes there is confusion in this town over just where the Israeli Embassy is located, but let me assure you it’s no more than 300 yards from the Capitol Dome on North Capitol Street, NW.”

AIPAC, not the Israeli Embassy will write the final draft of Netanyahu’s speeches including the themes he will emphasize. According to a Congressional source with AIPAC connections, Netanyahu’s visit will focus on the following:

• Bashing Iran to please the White House. However, this mantra will have to compete with   the democratic revolutions that are sweeping the Arab world and which are terrifying not just Netanyahu, but also AIPAC and their hirelings in congress.

• Warning against the dangers to “the peace process” of any PA-Hamas unity government.

• Warnings about the threats to Israel from Egypt and popular calls for scrapping of the 1978 Camp David Accords, ending the Egyptian subsidy and supply of 40% of Israel’s natural gas, closing the Israeli Embassy, the dangers of permanently opening the Rafah border crossing over concern of building up a “dangerous military machine” in northern Sinai, according to an Israeli official speaking on condition of anonymity to the Washington Post.

• The tried and tested bromide that “Israel has no peace partner to negotiate with,” will be used, but this too has lost its bite given that the Palestine Papers have shown that the PA has for five years habitually caved into Israel demands and are widely viewed as collaborators with Israel in preserving the status quo– so what more could be expected from them? The truth is that Mahmoud Abbas and Salem Fayyad are Netanyahu, Liberman’s and Barak’s favorite “peace partners.”

• Netanyahu will hint at – and AIPAC will drill in – the idea that the Obama administration has been too hard on Israel.

While Netanyahu announced this week that “I will have the opportunity to air the main parts of Israel’s diplomatic and defense policies during my visit in the United States”, he informed sources that his main goal and timing of his visit is to undermine a rumored initiative that President Obama’s team has been working on.

Netanyahu, according to AIPAC, also plans to attack the UN’s plan to admit Palestine and its offices are preparing a media blitz in an attempt to undermine the U.N. recognition of Palestine by arguing that such a General Assembly action would not in reality mean Palestinian sovereignty over the West Bank and East Jerusalem because of the fact that Israel currently controls those territories. AIPAC is arguing that such United Nations recognition of Palestine would only reiterate the principle, previously articulated by the U.N which denies the legitimacy of Israel’s claim to territories acquired by force in the war of June 1967.

In reality, and as AIPAC well knows, UN recognition of Palestine would have a devastating effect on Israel’s legitimacy and would fuel an international campaign to force every colonist out of the West Bank. Given the feelings of virtually all people in the Middle East and North Africa toward Israel, this could dramatically undermine the apartheid state. AIPAC and Israel’s agents in Congress also ignore the fact that the U.N. is the only the international body that admitted Israel as a member state in May 1949, although the resolution noted a connection between Israel’s recognition and the implementation of resolution 181 of November 1947, which called for partition of what had been British Mandate Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states.

The reason that intense angst and even fear stalks the Houses of Congress and AIPAC is that Netanyahu will remind his hosts in the coming days that Israel has always called “home” is that some US officials are starting to express treasonous thoughts long kept to themselves.

One seemingly shocking statement was made to a visiting Oregon delegation during a recent visit to Congressional offices by a Member of Congress never known for being publicly critical of Israel. As reported via email: “He said recent events suggest that while (the revolts spreading across the Middle East) are not the immediate  end of the State of Israel, he believes they are harbingers and signal the ‘beginning of the end of the State of Israel as we have known it. And that will be good for America and humanity.”

“What seems to have particularly upset him was his own mentioning to the group of a recent report about a conference of Rabbis in Israel who are demanding the expulsion of non-Jews, especially Palestinians, from occupied Palestine in order to maintain the “ethnical and religious purity of the peoples of Israel.”

He quoted Dov Lior, the rabbi of Kiryat Araba, an illegal settlement near Al-Khalil (Hebron), who according to media reports told a conference organized to discuss how to get non-Jews in mandatory Palestine to leave the country for the sake of Jewish immigrants who had no roots in Palestine:

“Today there is a lot of land in Saudi Arabia and in Libya, too. There is a lot of land in other places. Send them there.” As scholar Khalid Amayreh reminds us, it was Lior, who in 1994 praised arch-terrorist Baruch Goldstein for massacring 29 Arab worshipers at the Ibrahimi Mosque in downtown Hebron, said peace in the Holy Land was out of question because the Arabs wouldn’t allow Jews to usurp the land.

Meanwhile, a large coalition of pro peace and pro-Palestinian organizations, under the umbrella of http://www.moveoverAIPAC.org/ is preparing a new and different American reception for the Israeli Prime Minister.

Source: Al-Manar Website

30-04-2011 – 22:09 | 3095 View

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

5.

	Published: 2011-04-12
	The Monthly Humanitarian Monitor | March 2011 With the highest number of Palestinian casualties by Israeli forces in a single month since the end of the “Cast Lead” offensive, the violent repression of demonstrators by Hamas security forces in Gaza, the killing of an Israeli settler family and a subsequent wave of settler attacks against Palestinians and their property throughout the West Bank, the events of March 2011 continued to point to the heightened vulnerability of civilians in the occupied Palestinian territory. English | Hebrew

United Nations Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Mac House
P.O.Box 38712
Jerusalem
Tel:++ 972-2-5829962/5853
Fax:++972-2-5825841
email:ochaopt@un.org
www.ochaopt.org

To unsubscribe from the ISR list, click the following link:
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6.  [forwarded by Annelien]

Jerusalem Post,

May 2, 2011 23:52 IST

Photo by: REUTERS/Abed Omar Qusini

Im Tirtzu calls for criminal investigation of Machsom Watch  [Im Tirtzu in English is ‘If you will’ apparently refering to Theodore Herzl’s insistance on the possibility of establishing a Jewish State, ‘If you will it, it need be no dream’]

http://www.jpost.com/Defense/Article.aspx?id=218747

By YAAKOV KATZ

02/05/2011

Zionist extra-parliamentary group asks A-G Weinstein to launch probe into activists who allegedly entered Palestinian village of Awarta in violation of IDF order.

Im Tirtzu, a self-described Zionist extra-parliamentary group, has asked Attorney- General Yehuda Weinstein to open a criminal investigation against activists from Machsom Watch who allegedly entered the Palestinian village of Awarta last month in violation of an IDF order.

The letter was sent to the Justice Ministry last week and officials said that it would be reviewed and handled according to protocol, and a decision on whether to open a criminal investigation would be made at a later date.

Last year, Im Tirtzu released a report accusing the New Israel Fund of funding NGOs like Machsom Watch, which it said penned much of the material critical of Israel in the United Nation’s Goldstone Report.

Machsom Watch, a group of Israeli women who monitor treatment of Palestinians at IDF checkpoints, came under fire last week after a picture was published showing senior activist Raya Yaron hugging the mother of one of the men who allegedly murdered five members of the Fogel family in Itamar on March 11. The picture was taken about a week before the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) revealed the identities of the suspects.

In his letter to Weinstein, Im Tirtzu chairman Ronen Shoval wrote that a group of Machsom Watch activists entered Awarta, home to the two alleged murders, in violation of an IDF order. The military had imposed a curfew on the village near Nablus.

Shoval cited a blog post found on the Machsom Watch website in which several activists describe a visit to Awarta in mid-April.

“We stood next to the store when three military jeeps arrived. The soldiers told us by loudspeaker to close the store and to leave Awarta. They showed us a document which said that a curfew was in place from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.,” the blog post read.

The post described the empty streets and how the group left the village but then decided to return. “We looked back and saw that the military vehicles had left and we decided to take a chance and go back to Awarta. We drove again through the streets of the paralyzed village that was under curfew. From a distance we saw a house surrounded by military and we did not go near it.”

According to Shoval, the blog post verifies a violation of the law, warranting a criminal investigation.

“Ignoring this will make the orders of the IDF and its officers who are there to protect Israeli lives worthless, and will encourage those organizations which believe they are above the law,” Shoval said in the letter.

In response to Im Tirtzu, Yaron said on Sunday that Machsom Watch had visited the village just as many other human rights organizations had.

“I was there like other human rights organizations on April 11, a week before the names of the suspects were published, and there were no soldiers in the area, and therefore the claim that we disrupted the soldiers’ work is baseless,” she said.

Ron Friedman contributed to this report.

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

7.  Hi Dorothy,
. . . we had children from Shatila camp here in Edinburgh, Scotland, tonight, giving a show at The Scottish Story Telling Centre. The children’s play is called Croak, The King & a Change in The Weather, by English writer Peter Mortimer, who is to be much thanked for his compassion.
The children were enthralled by the grass in the city centre park they were in this spring afternoon. This is their first time outside the camp I gather.
This is undoubtably the most important thing that will happen in Scotland this year; much more important than the current Scottish Parliament elections. None of the candidates for First Minister was there!
More details of the project can be found at www.shatilatheatre.btck.co.uk. More things are planned.
The tour ends in Liverpool tomorrow. Maybe John Lennon will make a visit to be with them.
Maybe you would like  to include this news in your mailings, if you also judge it important.
Salaam Sophia x X, Aruna