NOVANEWS
Dear Friends,
In item 1 Ben White defends Adalah against smears by the European Jewish Congress, and does so very well.
Item 2 is one of the best argued and absolutely correct case setting things right regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict. You may recall that a few days ago I mentioned an article that set the whole conflict as resulting from the differences between Bibi and Barak (Obama), and stated that I felt that it was not worth sending, but gave you the link in case you wished to check it out. Phyllis Bennis responds to that op-ed and does so excellently. She puts the blame elsewhere. I agree with her 100%. There is also another article on the conflict by Dennis Ross. I did not expect to agree with it, as I am all too familiar with Ross’s views. By comparison to Bennis, Ross comes out looking silly—regardless of his intention, in the end he simply ‘reveals’ how to keep the occupation going more smoothly, Here’s the link in case you are interested
How to break a Middle East stalemate
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-to-unfreeze-a-middle-east-stalemate/2011/12/21/gIQAdhZdfP_story.html
Item 3 shows that Israel, either via private companies or otherwise, gets its finger in many pies. This particular pie is Latin America, and the finger is security Israeli style.
In item 4 Iyad Burnat reports of Friday’s weekly protest demonstration at Bil’in.
Item 5 is ‘Today in Palestine’ for January 6, and item 6 is a link to the latest from Mondoweiss.
That’s it for tonight. Am still hoping that the war on Iran will not happen. Keep your fingers and toes crossed.
Dorothy
1The smear against Adalah
The Guardian
Wednesday, January 4, 2011
This smear against Israeli human rights activists is all too familiar
Adalah defends Palestinian rights. The European Jewish Congress attack on it reflects a wider pattern of bullying
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/04/israeli-human-rights-activists-adalah
Ben White
‘Adalah is a legal rights centre in Israel that works to promote and defend the rights of Palestinian citizens.’ Photograph: APAimages/Rex Features
Last week, the president of the European Jewish Congress (EJC) launched an extraordinary attack on an Israeli human rights organisation, Adalah, comparing the NGO to the far-right French National Front and British National party.
Moshe Kantor, who heads the umbrella organisation for elected representatives of Europe’s Jewish communities, was responding to a leaked EU document that expressed concern for Israel’s treatment of Palestinian citizens (EJC declined to comment for this article). Claiming that the report had used Adalah as a source, Kantor said:
“Adalah, an extremist organisation on the margins of society, openly declares a radical political agenda to change the nature of the state of Israel and has worked alongside some of the most radical elements in the region. It is like using sources from Front National to understand French society or the British National party to understand British society.”
Adalah is a well-established legal rights centre in Israel that works to promote and defend the rights of Palestinian citizens (“Israeli Arabs”). It has special consultative status with the UN’s economic and social council (ECOSOC), and has received funding over the years from the likes of Oxfam, New Israel Fund and Christian Aid.
Just last month, as Adalah co-founder Hassan Jabareen received an award for his work, the NGO was described by retired Israeli supreme court judge Ayala Procaccia as working “to advance human rights” with “outstanding intellectual power” and “high moral commitment”.
Why, then, would the EJC president compare this respected defender of minority rights to a party that Britain’s prime minister has previously described as “a bunch of fascists”?
In a disturbing parallel with the attacks on NGOs in Israel itself, the answer lies in Adalah’s record of defending Palestinian rights against human rights abuses and discrimination perpetrated by the Israeli government.
Kantor’s rhetoric is all too familiar for human rights defenders in Israel in recent times. Last July the foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, described a number of human rights groups as “terror organisations”. Pressure groups such as NGO Monitor boast of “naming and shaming” those (like Adalah) who they say are “demonising Israel”.
There are now legislative moves to restrict foreign funding of human rights groups, in a move that a former Israeli ambassador to South Africa says is “strikingly similar” to laws that applied during the apartheid era. The “targets” of the law in both cases are “those consistent voices of conscience which had become a problem for the regime”.
Two aspects of Adalah’s work cause particular offence for some of Israel’s apologists. First, it challenges a status quo that discriminates against Israel’s Palestinian citizens, by pursuing legal cases to the highest levels in the country’s courts.
Adalah has highlighted the root causes of discrimination by proposing a “democratic constitution” for Israel “based on the concept of a democratic, bilingual, multicultural state”. The perception of equality as a threat, Adalah notes, is “characteristic of colonial regimes”, not of a genuine democracy.
The second aspect is that Adalah works through the Israeli courts and at the UN to protect civilians in the occupied Palestinian territories on the basis of international humanitarian law and seeks accountability for war crimes – for example, during the attack on Gaza three years ago. This is deemed beyond the pale for those leading the offensive against Israeli human rights organisations.
Kantor’s comments reflect a wider pattern, where even small efforts to do something constructive about challenging human rights abuses or discriminatory practices in Israel are met with smears, bullying and over-the-top bluster.
Documenting the facts and confronting injustice has never been without consequences (particularly for Palestinians) but the climate of paranoia and retribution is steadily growing.
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2 LA Times
Friday, January 6, 2012
Obama’s real Israel problem — and it isn’t Bibi [Blowback]
http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/2012/01/blowback.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpinionLa+%28L.A.+Times+-+Opinion+Blog%29
Phyllis Bennis, director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, responds to The Times’ Jan. 2 Op-Ed article, “Bibi and Barack.” Bennis is the coauthor of “Ending the U.S. War in Afghanistan: A Primer” and the author of “Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer.”
Aaron David Miller is right: President Obama does have an Israel problem. But Miller is wrong about the roots of the problem.
The problem isn’t Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or his Likud Party, or even Israel’s current extreme right-wing government. Israel’s fundamental policy toward the Palestinians is the problem, and that policy has hardly changed, despite the seemingly diverse sequence of left, right and center parties that have been in power.
Just look at the occupation of the territories seized in 1967 — the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. Settlement building, along with all the land and water theft that goes with it, began just weeks after the Six-Day War. And a right-wing government wasn’t in power; it was Mapai, the left-wing precursor to today’s Labor Party. The right wing wouldn’t come to power until almost three decades after Israel’s founding, when Menachem Begin led the Likud coalition to victory in 1977.
Settlement construction and expansion started right after the war and continued under all the leftist (in the Israeli context) governments. By the time Likud came to power 10 years after the 1967 war, there were already more than 50,000 Israeli settlers living in Jews-only settlements in the occupied territories, most of them in occupied East Jerusalem, with smaller numbers in the West Bank and Gaza. Settlement expansion advanced under Labor, Likud and Kadima-led governments. Now there are more than 600,000 settlers living illegally in Palestinian territory, divided between the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
As Moshe Dayan, a former defense and foreign minister, explained, the settlements were necessary “not because they can ensure security better than the army but because without them we cannot keep the army in those territories. Without them the [Israel Defense Forces] would be a foreign army ruling a foreign population.”
The different parties, prime ministers and officials sometimes used different language. Some repeated the words the international community wanted, a “land for peace” deal and “two states”; others insisted that only “peace for peace” or “Jordan is Palestine” was acceptable. Some spoke loudly in defense of settlements, while others only whispered.
But there was no diversity of substance. What happened in the real world, the “facts on the ground,” continued regardless of which party was in power.
Other things continued too — settler violence against Palestinians, expropriation of Palestinian land and water, illegal closures, collective punishments including massive armed assault, arrest without charge, extra-judicial assassinations and the siege of Gaza.
Of course, that’s just in the occupied territories. Inside Israel, Arab Israelis — those who survived the dispossession of 1947-48 — live as second-class citizens. They have the right to vote, but they are subject to legalized discrimination in favor of the Jewish majority. The Israeli human rights organization Adalah reported to the United Nations more than 20 such discriminatory laws, the most important of which deny Palestinian citizens equal rights on issues of immigration and citizenship as well as land ownership. And outside, the Palestinian refugees, now numbering in the millions, have been denied their internationally guaranteed right of return by Israeli governments of every political stripe.
The whole range of Israeli political parties has continued to implement these same policies. They may talk a different talk, but they all walk the same walk.
What none of these governments is prepared to acknowledge is what it will take for a real solution, one that is lasting, comprehensive and just: human rights and equality for all based on international law. It shouldn’t be more complicated than that. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights specifies everyone has the right to return to their home country, no exceptions; that everyone has the right to live in safety, no exceptions; that everyone has the right to an equal say in the government that rules their country, no exceptions.
Every law should treat all citizens the same, no exceptions. Every government has the obligation to live up to the treaties it has signed, including the U.N. conventions on human rights, against racism, the Geneva Conventions and more. Israel has signed them all. Yet not one Israeli government, of any party, has implemented them.
As long as the United States provides the Israeli government more than $3 billion in aid every year, regardless of those violations, and protects Israel from being held accountable in the U.N., regardless of those violations, no Israeli prime minister has much reason to change. That’s Obama’s Israel problem — not Netanyahu. Changing U.S. policy should provide the solution.
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3. Al Jazeera
Friday 06 Jan 2012
Private security and ‘the Israelites of Latin America’
An Israeli defence consultancy is assisting with dirty work in Colombia previously monopolised by the United States.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/01/2012157415226260.html
Belen Fernandez