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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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. |
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