Mondoweiss Online Newsletter

NOVANEWS

Haaretz: Greek move against boats was born of Netanyahu campaign for Greek financial rescue

Jul 01, 2011

Philip Weiss

Can you think of a more dismal day in recent months? Do you feel powerless? Do you know where the power lies? From Barak Ravid’s report, “Netanyahu’s big fat Greek wedding,” inHaaretz (thanks to Noam Sheizaf at 972):

Many of Netanyahu and Papandreou’s talks in the past few months have revolved around the severe financial crisis Greece is currently suffering. Netanyahu recently decided to come to the aid of his newfound friend in a meeting of foreign ministers and European leaders, imploring them to provide Greece with financial aid.

“Netanyahu has become Greece’s lobbyist to the European Union,” an Israeli diplomat said.

In recent weeks, as efforts to stop the impending pro-Palestinian flotilla to Gaza came to a head, Netanyahu reaped the benefits of his investment in Israel-Greece ties and his gamble on the European country paid off.

He was able to create a viable alternative to relations with Turkey in several regards, showing Erdogan that Israel will not hesitate to become close to its greatest enemy in the West.

And when the moment of truth came, Greece followed through and ordered all Gaza-bound departures be blocked from leaving its ports. 

Update: US Boat to Gaza returns to port after being stopped by Greek Coast Guard

Jul 01, 2011

Adam Horowitz

Update: Here is an update that Audacity of Hope passenger Medea Benjamin recorded for theInstitute for Middle East Understanding at 3:10pm ET:

Listen to internet radio with IMEU on Blog Talk Radio

Update: Here is the Greek order against boats leaving its ports for Gaza, “the area of maritime blockade by Israel.” (thanks to Ali Abunimah):

Pursuant to a decision by the Minister of Citizen Protection Mr. C. Papoutsis, the departure of ships with Greek and foreign flags from Greek ports to the maritime area of Gazahas been prohibited today.

By orders of the Hellenic Coast Guard Head Quarters to all local Hellenic Coast Guard Authorities, all appropriate measures are taken for the implementation of the said decision.

Here’s video of the American boat leaving port before it was stopped by Greek Coast Guard:

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(The Audacity of Hope leaving the port in Athens. Photo: US Boat to Gaza)

From the US Boat to Gaza website:

At 4:45 pm Athens time The Audacity of Hope left the dock to set sail for Gaza. We are awaiting news to see if they are stopped by Greek authorities or allowed to sail.

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Passengers waving goodbye moments before the US Boat to Gaza set sail. (Photo: US Boat to Gaza)

Update: After sailing for 15 minutes the US Boat to Gaza was stopped by the Greek Coast Guard. Joseph Dana is tweeting from on board:

@ibnezra Joseph Dana
The coast guard is demanding that we return to port. “we are forbidden to leave” passengers are chanting and screaming at them

Update: US Boat to Gaza is urging you to call the Embassy of Greece in Washington.
Tel.  202.939.1300  202.939.1300
Fax. 202.939.1324

From the US Boat: “We are getting reports that people are having a hard time getting through to the Greek Embassy in Washington, DC….that just means lots of folks are making calls!! It also would be good to have people sending email messages. We understand they are all being forwarded to Athens. Here’s that email address: nycons@greekembassy.org”

Here is the latest from Twitter:

In the cover of darkness

Jul 01, 2011

annie

A representative of the the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the same center constructing a museum of intolerance on top of the ancient Mamilla Cemetery in Jerusalem that has already resulted in the destruction and disinterment of thousands of Muslim graves and human remains, has called on the UN to dissolve the United Nations Committee for the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP) because it “works to delegitimize the Jewish state”.

Shimon Samuels, the Wiesenthal Center’s director for international relations attended a meeting in Brussels hosted by CEIRPP titled “The role of Europe in advancing Palestinian statehood and achieving peace between Israelis and Palestinians” which he later characterized in a letter he wrote to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as “a ‘gangbang’ against the State of Israel.”

I kid you not, check out how The Jerusalem Post spells out the meaning for their readership by quoting Merriam-Webster.com.

Meanwhile a forwarded email arrived in my inbox last night originating from Laura Raymond of the Center for Constitutional Rights in NYC:

I’m writing to share an alarming development regarding the Mamilla Cemetery in Jerusalem. This past weekend, only weeks after a Jerusalem Municipal planning committee granted final permission for construction of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s so-called “Museum of Tolerance” atop the oldest Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem, Israeli bulldozers entered the part of the ancient Mamilla Cemetery that remained intact to destroy and dispose of nearly 100 grave markers, both ancient and renovated. The bulldozers worked under the cover of night (from 11pm to 1am on June 25-26, 2011), and retreated hastily when their operators realized that they were being filmed by local media and activists, as can be seen in the coverage broadcast by Al-Arabiya and Al-Jazeera

This just happened a couple nights ago. In the middle of the night, in the cover of darkness they went in and destroyed the remaining intact portions of the cemetery. I’m aghast, it breaks my heart.  The photos in the (Arabic only) newsreels are horrific.

Raymond’s email:

Gideon Suleimani, the chief archaeologist appointed by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) to excavate the site, concluded after a review of the site that construction should not continue and that the IAA’s conduct on the site, which contains “tens of thousands of skeletons,” constituted an “archeological crime.”

She implored us for help:

Can you help get the word out to archeologists and anthropologists and see if any network or group would be willing to organize against this- either through a statement, an open letter, or any other ideas that might emerge? I think it would be very powerful to have that sector of academics and professionals speak out on this. If you know of any groups that are concerned about cemetery desecrations please send this email to them.

Who’s protecting Palestine? Protection for Palestine needs to grow not shrink. This is an ugly ploy. As September draws near and Israel watches support for a Palestinian State swell, they try to create another opening for themselves again at the expense of the Palestinian people.

Samuels also wrote that the “General Assembly September vote on Palestinian status should be conditioned on prior dismantling of [the] pernicious UN Committee for the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People,” and told Ban that his representative had opened the meeting with a message conveying support for Palestinian unity with Hamas.

“The very existence of the United Nations Committee for the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People continually violates the United Nations Charter,” Samuels wrote. “By its delegitimization of the Jewish state, it is a political instrument that threatens a sovereign UN member, impugning its right to selfdefense under Article 51 of the Charter.”

(my bold throughout)

Huwaida Arraf: ‘[The flotilla] is not about aid, this is about Palestinian human rights, this is about liberation’

Jul 01, 2011

Adam Horowitz

Jack Ross’s glorious biography of the prophetic anti-Zionist Elmer Berger

Jul 01, 2011

Philip Weiss

Jack Ross was one of the first people to reach out to me on this site four years ago. We met at a chocolate bar near Union Square then at Junior’s on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn. Jack was built like a lineman, with an Abe Lincoln beard, and was just 22 but if you shut your eyes and listened to him you would think he was 50. Later Jack brought me to meet an anti-Zionist leader of the 50s and 60s named Leonard Sussman, and Sussman expressed the same surprise. From the telephone he’d thought Jack was 50, his voice was so deep and his thinking so complex. He had graduated from the National Labor College in Washington but everything he knew he seemed to have taught himself.  “I can’t get over the fact that you… never heard of the draft riots,” he said to me on our second or third meeting.

That winter I met his rabbi Ellen Lippmann, from Kolot Chayeinu in Brooklyn. “So you know our silent genius,” she said. Jack was clad that day as he often is, in Birkenstocks without socks, in a black bowler hat straight out of the old country, in a long black coat from a Ben Shahn lithograph. Who could doubt that this youth was a prodigy. His writing for this site was always so compressed and layered and pointed. Who at his age was capable of such focus?

Now Ross is 26 and has written a book on the career of the anti-Zionist rabbi, Elmer Berger (1908-1996), with the same fierce focus and concision. Rabbi Outcast is an independent and glorious intellectual achievement. I was sorry it was over so quickly. I wanted more than 189 pages. The book begins with a dedication to the memory of Tony Judt and ends in the triumphantly optimistic spirit that Ross often signs his emails with: Flourish! It ends with a commandment to himself and to young Americans to heed the prophecies of Rabbi Elmer Berger and Isaiah and Judah Magnes — “those who warned against the madness.”

I can’t say that Ross ever fully captures the personality of Berger, a thrice-married chainsmoking outsider– that would be tough work for a young man– but who cares about personality, it is Berger’s political visions that so resonate. And this is a work of intellectual and religious history; Ross has disinterred a rich living tradition of Reform anti-Zionism in the 1930s-1970s, culminating with Berger’s friendships with Jim Abourezk, Edward Said and Walid Khalidi, a tradition that fully anticipates the non-Zionism and Palestinian solidarity movement we are in today. I am including a list of Ross’s discovered quotations at the bottom of this review, including a juicy Hannah Arendt misstep.

Berger was there first. He was thinking through all the issues that Jews who are freeing themselves of Zionism today are thinking of but decades ahead of us: he developed a religious philosophy of integration and not nationalism, he understood the refugee issue in all its vast moral squalor in the moment, he was crushed by the nascent Israel lobby that took over American Jewish life in the 50s, and he understood as an American that the issue was not just what Zionism was doing to Palestine but what it was doing to the United States.

Jack Ross has the unqiue ability to walk a reader through these religious and political awakenings in a brisk knowing way. His account is distinguished by two qualities, laserlike focus on a group of anti-Zionist rabbis of the American Council for Judaism (yes, honored by Thomas Kolsky’s book). And second, by its moral clangor. Jack Ross is taking on the neoconservative conspiracy that began in the 1940s or the 1880s, he is taking on the nationalist spirit that corrupted Jewish religious authorities and then American politics and played a role in the Iraq war and that he now declares is at an end. Ross is not a cautious thinker, he is a silent genius at a soapbox, and the moral clangor of his own writing is thrilling. Like this, for instance: When in 1999 the Reform rabbis declared that Israeli and Diaspora Jews were “interdependent communities,”

The leadership for the Reform mvomeent thus pledged its devotion to a faith owing more to Moses Hess and Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel than any authentically Judaic source, essentially reducible to the proposition that God so loved the Jews that He sent unto them His only begotten nation-state so that ‘the Jewish people’ would not perish but have everlasting life.

The book is occasionally marred by Ross’s dense style and preference for the conditional over the past tense (Berger would do this, would do that; when I upbraided Ross about this in a note, he said, “What are ‘woulds’ to all your never ending cheesy non-sequitur rhetorical devices?”) but I don’t know that it matters much in the end. This book will be read because it is so taut and ambitious, and though wide readership is as much as anyone could want for it, I am also pushing attention for my prodigious and unconventional friend. He didn’t go to graduate school, he didn’t have a mentor, he mentored himself, with his book-filled apartment in Brooklyn and rows of file cabinets, he has followed no ordinary path to these insights. I hope that more prominent publications than this one will review Ross’s book and meet the author, that Ross will not just be read, but that he will gain attention so that he might flourish.

To that end, the best service I can do to the book is to quote some of its many scholarly gems. Here are a few, most of them Berger quotes:

Berger, 1942:

The “Jewish problem” is not realy Jewish at all, though the Zionist is well on his way to making it so by seeking this thoroughgoing exclusiveness of Jewish life. The destiny of the Jew still lies with the destiny of the liberal world. Because fundamentally, Zionism has no faith with that world, I am a non-Zionist.

Berger, 1943:

I oppose Zionism because I deny that Jews are a nation. We were a nation for perhaps two hundred years in a history of four thousand years. Before that we were a group of warring Semitic tribes whse only tenuous bond of unity was a national deity—a religious unity… Certainly since the Dispersion we have not been a nation. We have belonged to every nation of the world. We have mixed our blood with all peoples. Jewish nationalism is a fabrication woven from the thinnest kind of threads and strengthened only in those eras of human history in which reaction has been dominant and anti-Semites in full cry.

Rabbi Morris Lazaron, 1952:

Let us pray that some generous proposal will be made by the state of Israel to the Arab and Muslim peoples to help solve their refugee problem…

Rabbi Irving Reichert of the American Council for Judaism in a 1936 sermon in San Francisco:

If my reading of Jewish history is correct, Israel took upon itself the yoke of the Law not in Palestine, but in the wilderness at Mount Sinai… There is too dangerous a parallel between the insistence sof some Zionist spokesmen upon nationality and race and blood, and similar pronouncements by Fasicst leaders in European dictatorships. Some types of propaganda may prove too tragically successful for our comfort.. If we succeed in teaching America that Zionism is the only instrument of our political salvation, we may live to regret it…

Norman Thomas, the American socialist leader, in 1952, on the new Israeli Law of Return:

Even more dangerous will be the consequences of this new law in fanning the flames of Arab chauvinism and Muslim fanaticism.

Berger, 1955:

The Old Testament Prophets wrote the most significant pages in the development of Judaism. They first conceived and articulated a religion dependent upon inner, moral strength, rather than upon land, nation or ritual. In Prophetic Judaism, as well as in the noblest conceptions of theAmerican dream, God is conceived as ‘indwelling’ within man.

Ross’s commentary: “It should be noted thought htat while it has gained vogue in recent generations as a position of quasi-agnosticism, the concept of the ‘indwelling God’ has an ancient pedigree in Judaism, originating at the shekhina of kabbalah.”

Berger on visiting Israel and Arab neighbors in 1955:

“I am more than ever concvinced of the absolute necessity for Jews outside of Israel to divorce themselves completely from a situation of moral degradation apparent in the Arab refugee problem.”

Frank Chodorov of ACJ in the 50s.

Israel is only part Israel, the rest being world-wide Zionism, and it is not certain which part wags which. Until this uncertainty is resolved, peace in the Middle East will be precarious, and American foreign policy will be in a similar state of turmoil.

Hannah Arendt in the early 1960s, writing to Berger. This quote should be hung around her reputation like a cowbell:

I am not really an anti-Zionist, and when Ben-Gurion passes from the scene Zionism will revert to the kind of broad, liberal movement it was as I first knew it in Germany.

Berger, followed by Ross:

“We could afford to lose, as we did, the battle against Jewish nationalism in far off Palestine… But we cannot afford to lose the battle against Jewish nationalism in America.” But this had always been the more hopeless battle. One way or another, the great majority of American Jews at the midpoint of the twentieth century were emphatically determined not be be ‘Americans of Jewish faith,” the identity that had meant so much to those who formed the Council [ACJ]. Zionism would give the most compelling answer to the anxieties of that generation, as it was inevitably becoming more Americanized.

Lessing Rosenwald of the ACJ on opposing Zionists:

We had to oppose them as undemocratic in conception and in operation, as archaic, attuned to medieval times rather than to the aspirations of the 20th century.

Ross  comparing Theodor Herzl to Marcus Garvey

Garvey packed Madison Square Garden in 1921 to proclaim himself “Provisional President of Africa” in a stunning echo of Herzl’s declaration to have founded the Jewish State at Basel in 1897. Like Herzl, Garvey had a conspicuous taste for pompous dress and manner… The Garveyites, in turn, were no less fanatical than the Zionists against their adversaries, disparaging them in racially charged terms as ‘mulattoes’ and ‘octoroons.’”

And on the goal of Jews in the civil rights movement: “the complete integration into U.S. society of African Americans, a goal that, at least in theory, they had rejected for themselves.”

Berger in 1969 on the urgency of discussing the lobby. If Zionism is not ‘ventilated,” Mr [Abba] Eban will become again Assistant Secretary of State for the Near East.

Ross on recent history:

If anything, the peace process was only interpreted as a license for American Judaism to become more closely and intensely identified with Zionism than ever before…  [The new prevalence of Holocaust awareness was a factor.] Another was the dramatic increase of Israeli influences on the religious practices of American Jews, whether directly from Israelis themselves or through the intensely Zionist-oriented Jewish summer camps, which defined the exposure of whole generations to Judaism….

Ross on Berger’s understanding of Jewish history:

The Old Testament reflected little more than a long saga of tribal warfare though the Iron and Bronze Ages …and that fundamentally the Jewish religion is not the tribal religion of this history but the faith of the prophets who proclaimed the possibility of a more just and righteous way of life.

BDS will free both the oppressed, and the oppressor

Jul 01, 2011

Rachel Giora

On June 27, the bill “to protect the state of Israel from damage caused by boycott” was approved by the Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee for second and third readings in the plenum. The bill passed its first reading in the Knesset plenum on March 7, 2011, despite severe criticism from governmental ministries, the legal advisor of the Ministry of Justice, and leading civil society organizations. Regardless, Israel is determined to resist international pressure even at the cost of extreme penalties for legitimate, non-violent means used by citizens to protest government policies, such as the refusal of Israeli artists to perform in a theatre located in an Israeli settlement in the occupied Palestinian territory. The bill will become law when its second and third readings take place early in July.

This legislation together with a long series of bills, some already enacted, aim to intimidate critics and silence protest. In March 2010, the Israeli parliament enacted the Nakba law allowing the State to revoke government funding for groups that mark Israeli Arabs’ Day of Destruction (Nakba). These measures of political repression show that Israel is willing to go to a great length in undermining basic rights and freedoms such as the freedom of expression and association, wrecking havoc on its civil society and Palestinian minority.

To meet with retribution and attempts at repression, resistance need not be violent. And when it unites people, it cannot be silenced. Exemplary in this respect is the feminist revolution. It has been liberating women as well as men everywhere, without bloodshed. In the same spirit of solidarity and non-violent resistance, the Palestinian civil society called in July 2005 for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel “until it complies with international law and universal principles of human rights.” The effect of this call has been immense and is still growing, so much so that Israel can no longer turn a blind eye to it. Israeli leaders acknowledge that the boycott movement against Israel is effective. Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned of “a political tsunami” against Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu considered boycotting the Mideast Quartet meeting for fear of international pressure.

Indeed, the Palestinian nonviolent struggle made its mark and global solidarity with the Palestinians is soaring while Israel’s international status is plummeting. The EU is considering sanctions against Israel. The UN singled out Israel for human rights abuse. Several South American and Latin American states already recognized Palestinian independence and this trend is now on the rise in Europe. According to a recent BBC poll surveying 27 countries, Israel is grouped with Iran and North Korea as “the world’s least popular countries” and viewed as having a negative influence in the world. According to an ICM European poll carried out in January 2011, European public opinion is swaying against Israel. This may suggest that the international community is approaching the point of finally having enough of Israel’s entrenched policies of occupation and settlement.

Rather than addressing and redressing the real issues Israel is now targeting peace activists and human rights defenders, suggesting they are to blame for Israel’s loss of legitimacy. The incarceration of Palestinian popular struggle leaders Abdullah Abu Rahmah and Bassam Tamimi and of Israeli activist Jonathan Pollak are just a few instances, clearly indicating a move towards severe harassment of activists engaged in popular protest. Those who raise their voice against government policies are denounced as enemies of the state. At the same time, it is worth noting that Israelis of all walks of life responded to the boycott prohibition bill with disdain and anger. Over 50 Israeli civil society organizations, headed by the Coalition of Women for Peace, have signed an urgent appeal to the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee of the Knesset calling the committee to halt the legislative proceedings of the Boycott Prohibition bill. Israel Prize laureates and eminent cultural icons protested the bill, describing it as suicidal. Israel, they have stated, is acting like a criminal state. Israel’s international isolation is now recognized by some prominent Israelis to be a result of misguided, “hysterical” even, actions of a reckless government willing to further sacrifice its commitment to democracy for a commitment to maintaining the occupation.

Outlawing boycotts against Israel and similar measures of repression will not turn the tide. These are rightfully perceived as pathetic and desperate attempts at silencing legitimate dissent. The intensifying pressure of the international community should support the resolve of Israeli and international civil society to continue resisting occupation policies. It should eventually force Israel to come to its senses. As Reverend Samuel Kyles, speaking on the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, said: “You can kill the dreamer…but you cannot kill the dream.” The Palestinian struggle for freedom and justice, like the feminist movement, is bound to redeem both the oppressed and the oppressor; may they free themselves from slavery and the enslaver from tyranny.

Rachel Giora is a Professor of Linguistics at Tel Aviv University and a member of BOYCOTT! Supporting the Palestinian BDS call from within.

Ackerman says effort to hold Israel to int’l law is ‘anti-Semitism’

Jul 01, 2011

Philip Weiss

Here’s Gary Ackerman, congressman from Long Island, in the Jerusalem Post, professing his Zionism. A lot of excerpts because this is so crazy. The Jews are a “separate” people, Jewish legislators from around the world must represent Israel, Palestinian statehood initiative is devastating…

While many differences exist among Jewish parliamentarians, the concept ofahavat Yisrael – literally, “love of Israel” – is common to us all. It is for this reason that 55 Jewish parliamentarians from 22 countries have assembled in Jerusalem under the auspices of the World Jewish Congress….

I don’t believe that increasing attacks on Israel’s right to exist and efforts to label its acts of self-defense “war-crimes” or even “crimes against humanity” are actually rooted in a belief in international law, or a principled evaluation of Israeli military operations.

What I believe is really driving most of these claims is a deep-seated and stubborn refusal to see Jews as a people. This conceptual failure – whether rooted in anti-Semitism (which it is) or ignorance (which it is) – leads to a refusal to accept Israel as a Jewish state, or to accept that it, like every state, has a fundamental right to self-defense.
Only Israel, the one and only Jewish state, is subjected to the humiliation of having its right to exist routinely questioned, and the right of its people to be free from violence openly rejected. Only Israel is the permanent whipping boy of the United Nations.
So we are faced with a paradox: While the anti-Semitism and discrimination Jews have historically faced (and in some places rightfully continue to fear) are based on the view of Jews as a people apart, the ongoing assault on Israel’s legitimacy is built upon the idea that the Jews are not a separate people at all, and are thus not entitled to self-determination…

THE PALESTINIAN plan to take their case for statehood to the UN General Assembly poses great danger for Israel. If this initiative were to succeed– or worse, to slip out of control, – the results could be devastating. Israel could be exposed to sanctions and pressures beyond the wildest hopes of its worst enemies.
But in addition to these external challenges, we face a more intimate one that we share with the entire Jewish people. How do those of us who are representatives from all over the world and every part of the political spectrum come together to protect and advance our common interests?

State Department says it opposes sabotaging flotilla boats

Jul 01, 2011

Philip Weiss

Well it took some badgering, but State Department spokesman Mark Toner conceded as muchyesterday. Apparently this was the work of the great Matt Lee of AP.

QUESTION: Slightly related, on the Gaza flotilla, are you concerned at all that there seem – that some of these ships appear to be sabotaged?

MR. TONER: I really don’t have any comment on that. I’ve seen the press reports and haven’t had any other confirmation beyond that.

QUESTION: So it wouldn’t bother you at all if this was happening?

MR. TONER: I just can’t speak to whether – the veracity, I guess, of these claims that they’ve been sabotaged. Our opinion – that’s been stated very clearly from the State Department, both from the Secretary down to this podium – is that these flotillas are a bad idea, and there’s other ways to get this kind of assistance to the people of Gaza.

QUESTION: So preventing the flotilla from leaving by a —

MR. TONER: I didn’t say – I am in no way condoning any sabotage of these vessels.

QUESTION: Well, are —

MR. TONER: But I’m saying these vessels, these flotillas, in and of themselves, are not a good idea.

QUESTION: Well, can you say that you would be opposed to anyone trying to sabotage these – trying to sabotage these ships?

MR. TONER: Again —

QUESTION: It’s my understanding that you’re concerned about the safety of everyone involved —

MR. TONER: Precisely.

QUESTION: — and that if there’s someone running around and trying to —

MR. TONER: Precisely. We’re concerned. This is about —

QUESTION: — sabotaging these ships, that’s a safety issue.

MR. TONER: This is about people’s safety. Again, I just – it’s hard for me to speak to because we don’t have any independent confirmation these ships have actually been sabotaged. We’ve just seen press reports and what these flotilla representatives have said. But certainly, we don’t want to see – you’re absolutely right; our emphasis is on the safety of the individuals involved.

QUESTION: Just a quick follow-up. Yesterday it was the Greek ship, Giuliano; today it was the Irish ship. So there are more than one incident. And then yesterday, there were fishermans in waters where there are no fish. I mean, I know it is – gasoline and things like this, so they appear suddenly. So you must be keeping tabs on that, or someone must be? Do you —

MR. TONER: I don’t have any comment.

QUESTION: Okay. Would you equally also say that it is not a good idea to sabotage these ships in any way?

MR. TONER: I would just reiterate what I just said to Matt, is – our bottom line is we don’t want to see anyone put at risk, and that would include any action to sabotage these boats, but also the boats themselves, the flotillas themselves, will put these individuals at risk.

Yeah. Go ahead.

QUESTION: Change of topic?

MR. TONER: Sure.

Europe embraces the silences of Aharon Appelfeld

Jul 01, 2011

Eleanor Kilroy

“Is the genocide of European Jewry being used as part of the negation of what is happening to the Palestinians?” Yitzhak Laor asks, rhetorically, in The Myths of Liberal Zionism (Verso, 2010), his book on the Jewish Israeli literati and the European press that courts them. Laor continues:

Who can doubt it? When Eli Wiesel or Claude Lanzmann or any other of the most distinguished bearers of Holocaust memory are recruited to defend Israel, everyone knows they do so on behalf of the Holocaust survivors and victims, namely the State of Israel. Again, this is all part of the blurred lines between Jews and Israelis, the mixed roles they play, all under one title: victims.

Reading Yitzhak Laor earlier this year, I was at times physically shaken by his searing narrative, and it was his thesis that came to mind last week while reading the French press on a short visit to Brussels. Israeli writer and Holocaust survivor, Aharon Appelfeld, is in France promoting the translation of his book with the French title of Le Garçon qui voulait dormir (The boy who wanted to sleep), from the Hebrew, Ha-ish She-Lo Passak Lishon (literally: The Man who would not cease to sleep). Several reverential reviews and interviews have appeared in the French press, notably Le Monde, which dedicated two pages of its broadsheet ‘Des Livres’ (Books) section on Friday 24 June to the author. The novel’s male protagonist, Erwin-Aharon, is – like the author – an adolescent escapee from the Nazi concentration camps, and at the end of the war, he is taken to Italy, then British mandate Palestine. It is at this moment that the novel is set; recruited with other young people by the Jewish Agency, Erwin, who changes his name to Aharon, and spoke German, Ukranian and Yiddish, learns Hebrew to prepare himself for the future State of Israel. Erwin has, however, taken refuge in almost constant slumber, conversing in dreams with family members murdered during the Holocaust.

One book review/interview resembles another – in part because Appelfeld has some stock phrases: he never speaks of the Holocaust, but always of the ‘catastrophe’. “Look, he says ‘Holocaust’ is like ‘anti-Semitism’: these words are too small!”; and he defines himself as ‘a Jew writing in Israel’ (se définit comme “un juif écrivant en Israël”). Not one of the interviewees asks him about Israel’s occupation of Palestine – something that would be improbable with his Palestinian counterpart, regardless of the subject of her/his book. In all these pages and audio minutes of interviews, the colonised Palestinians cease to exist and Appelfeld is simply a ‘Jew’. Appelfeld is understandably content to play along: if he can tour France promoting his book and avoid questions on the Nakba, and Israel’s military occupation and apartheid policies, so much the better. I shared my exasperation with Yitzhak Laor, and he responded that,

the discourse is not the Israeli writer’s, but rather his Western interlocutors’ construction. Of course, those writers who managed to become what is known today as International Writers play the game, either for very practical reasons or [because they] happen to be just the subject of such a discourse. This discourse is: We are part of you, the West. Don’t spoil that with questions that remind us and you of the colonial division between West and East (within or without the West).

Aharon Appelfeld was born to assimilated Jewish parents in 1932 near Czernowitz, Romania (now Ukraine), and was just a child when he witnessed the assassination of his mother. Together with his father, he was transported to a Nazi concentration camp, and his autobiography, The Story of a Life picks up the story from after his courageous escape from the camp. The book profoundly affected me when I read it – to the extent that I failed to question the absence of any reference to the Palestinian Nakba when, in the second part of the book, Appelfeld’s 14 year old self arrives as a refugee in British mandate Palestine in 1946.

Appelfeld is a complex character, with an openly ambivalent attitude to Israeli identity and to Zionist ideology, which he has nevertheless defended as ‘necessary’. In a 2004 interview with Haaretz, in Hebrew (English translation), he criticized “an aggressive element” in Zionism, whilst yet being openly indifferent to the fate of the Palestinians: “I am not familiar with the Arabs. For me they are an abstraction”. He also expressed anger towards Europe for its continuing failure to acknowledge its full role in the Holocaust and was resentful of any criticism of Israel, which he dismissed as anti-Semitism: “Europe has not given itself a full reckoning of what happened between 1939 and 1945… because to this day they haven’t made a confession, the Europeans feel the need to say of the Jews that they are no better than them… They are already preparing the argument that if something happens to the Jews again, it will be the Jews’ fault, not theirs.” Empathy for the plight of non-Jews is severely lacking:

Week after week the newspapers write about some Palestinian disaster. Very faithfully. Week after week, some Palestinian disaster is described. And I ask myself why isn’t some Jewish disaster written up once in a while? Is there a shortage of Jewish disasters here? Isn’t there Jewish pain here? On every street, there is pain like that. In every house, there is a disaster like that. Wouldn’t it be good to write about a Jewish disaster one week and a Palestinian disaster the next week? Wouldn’t that put things in a more correct perspective?

(A. Shavit, “Not Good for the Jews: An Interview with Aharon Appelfeld,” Haaretz, Feb. 13, 2004)
While Appelfeld cannot be considered a member of the ‘Israeli Peace Camp’, Laor’s examination of the reception Israeli writers get in Europe in The Myths of Liberal Zionism also applies to him:

Of course the Israeli Peace Camp figures do not have the same values as the liberal readers of Le MondeLiberation, the Guardian, or La Repubblica. Of course, not one of those readers would publically demand the kind of constitution those writers support in Israel… property laws under which Arabs are prevented from purchasing land, not to mention Israel’s laws of citizenship that discriminate against non-Jews.

During an audio interview with France Culture, Appelfeld elaborates on the theme of his Jewish identity, and to the question, “What does it mean for you today to be Israeli?”, he answers:

I am a Jew and I stay a Jew. Jewish is a much wider, extensive notion that Israeli; an Israeli means that I am a Jew in a specific place; I am Jewish and I exist in many places… One cannot describe modern life without the Jews, like Marx, Freud, Wittgenstein, Kafka… and I am linked to them all, like I am linked to Maimonides.

He later adds: “I am very Jewish and therefore very European.” Although the 79 year-old author of several novels and books of essays has lived for 64 years in the State of Israel, he refuses to be drawn on what this citizenship means.
The French journalist Marc Weitzmann takes an admiring look at ‘The Appelfeld paradox’ in Le Monde: “If all his work is centered around a historic cataclysm, each of this books, however, erases as much as possible all reference to the history… and [there is a] radical absence of causality.” Weitzmann is referring to the silences in Appelfeld’s narratives on the Holocaust itself – his books are set during the aftermath of WWII in displacement camps in Europe, then in Palestine and Israel after the creation of the Zionist State in 1948. Regarding Appelfeld’s mantra he is a Jew more than an Israeli, he adds: “If the creation of the State of Israel is the means by which Jews entered into history, Appelfeld cannot but feel exiled from history”. Elsewhere, journalists speculate on whether his “silence was the price paid for building his new country”. Indeed they refer to his own explanation that he had to “create his country”. These writers fail to interrogate the absurd notion that the terrible crimes committed against the young Appelfeld, his family and millions of European Jews can be healed with nation-building.
Examining the complex relations Israeli culture maintains with Western culture in The Myths of Liberal Zionism, Laor finds

Our forefathers adjusted their culture to a foreign model, in a long and torturous process, with physical extermination as one of its stages, and this dislocation has never been mended. On the contrary – Zionism took it one step further when it promised the Jews that it would be mended through the colonization of another people.

The author exposes the role of Israeli writers Amos Oz, A.B. Yeshoshua and David Grossman in Israeli propaganda overseas, warning us: “Dear reader, do not look down on intellectuals. Their words have an aura of Truth, and their truth is made of words, and these words are cheap, very cheap”. On reflection I do not blame Appelfeld for his silences on Palestinian suffering – his very career is built on them; rather I hold the French media responsible for their absurd tone of reverence, for not daring to consider the Palestinian narrative in the presence of a story of European Jewish suffering.

IDF soldiers wear t-shirts saying they refuse to evict settlers, and are forgiven

Jul 01, 2011

Kate

and other news from Today in Palestine:

Land, property, resources theft & destruction / Ethnic cleansing / Apartheid
Palestine Crisis Map
This site was created in late May, 2011, to begin mapping news reports of human rights violations, along with rebuilding efforts, in Palestine/Israel. The site is not comprehensive in either the categories covered, or the stories archived.  The articles here point to but a fraction of the ongoing civil and human rights violations occurring daily in Israel and the Occupied Territories.
link to bindup.crowdmap.com
Jordan Valley settlements double in size / Dimi Reider
972mag 29 June — The government and the Zionist Federation casually double the size of the Jordan Valley settlement project, to very little attention from Israelis or the international community. Israel’s de-facto annexation of the West Bank’s only bridge to the rest of the Middle East takes a giant leap … Naturally, this massive expansion – doubling the settlements in size overnight – is meant precisely to cement the future and ensure the Jordan Valley will remain forever under Israeli control. This does not bode well for those of us who still believe anyone has any intention of allowing a sovereign Palestinian state with control of its own borders and economy to appear here … On top of that, the casual appearance of the doubling of the size of settlements in a such a strategically vital area in a financial daily rather than on the front pages of the newspapers teaches us a great deal about just how normalised the occupation of the valley has become in the Israeli mind.
link to 972mag.com
Israel: No place for Bedouin / Jillian Kestler-D’Amours
AJE 29 June — Bedouin living in the Negev desert often lack even basic services, something Israel appears to promote — …Today, nearly half of the entire Bedouin population in the Negev – approximately 80,000 people – lives in 45 Bedouin villages that are unrecognized by the Israeli government. Despite being Israeli citizens, the state views the Bedouin residents of these villages as illegal squatters and does not provide them with basic services or infrastructure, including electricity, water, sewage systems, roads, schools or hospitals. On June 5, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled on an appeal filed five years ago on behalf of 128 Bedouin families living in six different unrecognized villages, including al-Atrash, who asked to be connected to the area’s water distribution network.
link to english.aljazeera.net
Israel bulldozes ancient Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem
[23 Aug 2010 — this is the part that was to become a ‘Museum of Tolerance’, but the destruction goes on – see next video] — Israeli authorities continued bulldozing dozens of graves in the historic Islamic Ma’man Allah cemetery, and have bulldozed dozens of graves on Wednesday, while preventing journalists and photographers from filming the bulldozing and demolition, and assaulting some of them. Israel deliberately carries out the demolitions at night to avoid encountering journalists and Palestinians. Graves that were still standing were marked to complete their demolition on the following night … The cemetery – which lies between east and west Jerusalem – contains the remains of more than 70 thousand, including notable historical and sacred religious figures buried more than 1400 years ago.
link to www.youtube.com
Israeli bulldozers smash more Muslim graves in Jerusalem
Al Jazeera 29 June 2011 [in Arabic] — Quite shocking video of Israeli bulldozers smashing more Muslim graves in Mamilla [Ma’man Allah] Cemetery last weekend – Saree Makdisi tweet. Report: Elias Cram – Broadcast Date 27/06/2011
link to www.youtube.com
Hamas: Banishing native Jerusalemites racist policy
DAMASCUS (PIC) 30 June — Hamas hailed the steadfastness of the Jerusalemite lawmakers who have been staging a sit-in at the Red Cross in occupied Jerusalem for the past year to abort the Israeli policy of banishing Jerusalemites. The movement said, in a statement on Thursday on the occasion of the first anniversary of the sit-in staged to protest the Israeli occupation authority’s decision to exile three Jerusalemite MPs and a former Jerusalem affairs minister, that the sit-in would eventually thwart the IOA decision.
link to www.palestine-info.co.uk
PA: Farmer ordered to uproot trees
RAMALLAH (Ma‘an) 30 June — Israeli authorities handed military orders Thursday to a resident of Nabi Samwil, northwest of Jerusalem, ordering him to uproot 100 trees on his land, a Palestinian Authority statement said.  Israeli authorities say that the land is part of 1,100 dunums declared as a national park, despite the farmer claiming ownership, the PA said.
link to www.maannews.net
Heavy fire in Baten el Awa burning a section of the settlers’ building Beit Yonatan
Silwan, Jerusalem (SILWANIC) 26 June posted 30 June — We can still hear the sounds of live bullets being fired from Baten el Awa neighborhood by the militia of the settlers. The private security guards and police officers are working to ensure the protection of the inhabitant of a settlement called Beit Yonatan, as well as soldiers from the military barrack erected on the roof of a Palestinian housing building. Clashes erupted earlier this evening and Beit Yonatan have been the target of some Molotov cocktails causing the fire of an external part of the building.
link to silwanic.net
Abduction of minors from Issawiya – taken to an unknown destination
Silwan, Jerusalem (SILWANIC)  26 June posted 30 June — This evening a large troop of undercover police kidnapped some minors from the town of Issawiya and  took them away to an unknown destination for hours without reporting advising the parents of where their children were taken. After conducting some recherche,  the relatives of one witness discovered that they had been taken to a police station called Mekpalan. As the troops who kidnapped the two minors had covered their faces, the witnesses could not recognized them and therefor cannot be investigated about their actions. The two minors are from the neighborhood of Abu Ghosh: Ahmed Muheisen 15 years and Ali, 16 years old.
link to silwanic.net
April and May Report
[photos] Mada information center in Wadi Hilwa – Silwan during the months of April and May recorded the following: Arrests and detention: …53 cases of arrest, and detention in addition to 33 cases of the interrogation among them for kids under 16 and scored 13 arrest of a failed attempts by the undercover unit. four young men from Silwan, ranging from five to ten years claiming the text of their illegal activities … Confrontations and clashes: There wasn’t any day went by during the months of April and May without confrontation or clashes between Palestinians and Israeli forces … Burning houses and the refusal of fire stations to participate to put out fires: The center registered burning four houses of Palestinians in Silwan because of the heavy and indiscriminative use of tear gas and one fire vehicle rejected to put off the fire justifying that it was barred from entering the town of Silwan…  Keeping hostages: The center also recorded one case at least of arresting a child as a hostage until his child brother handed over himself into police on the grounds that it involved the clashes in Silwan Town…. [the translation is hard to understand, but the article is worth reading]
link to silwanic.net
Settlers
15-year-old injured after attack with stones in Hebron
ISM 30 June — On Sunday June 25, 15-year-old Muhammed Jabari was attacked by settlers throwing stones in Hebron, causing injuries to his wrist and leg. The land and house of the Jabari family is situated between the illegal settlements of Kiryat Arba and Givat Ha’avot in east Hebron, making the family exposed to harassment and attacks by settlers as reported previously. On Sunday settlers from Givat Ha’avot took one duck and four goslings from the land of the Jabari family, stealing them away to the illegal settlement. Muhammed and his younger brother were allowed by settler guards to go inside and get the birds. Bystanders were prevented from filming by soldiers guarding the illegal settlement. They returned after they heard the 15 year old boy screaming in pain. Approximately seven teenage settlers threw stones at him, injuring his wrist and his leg. No one interfered when the boy was attacked. At least one soldier was watching the attack, and there are several surveillance cameras covering the area. Additionally, the site of the attack is about two minutes away from the Israeli police station of Kiryat Arba. Muhammed was taken to hospital after the attack.
link to palsolidarity.org
IDF pardons soldiers photographed with pro-settler shirts
Ynet 30 June — GOC Northern Command Gadi Eizenkot decided Thursday to pardon five IDF soldiers after they were sentenced to 20 days in jail for photographing themselves wearing t-shirts that read “The Golani Brigade does not evict Jews.” … Furthermore, it was reported that the leniency with which the case was handled was due to the fact that a group of settlers, rather than the soldiers, were behind the incident.  An investigation indicated that the ones responsible are a family in Alon Shvut of the Gush Etzion settlement bloc, as well as a former resident of Homesh (a settlement that was demolished as part of the 2005 disengagement plan from the Gaza Strip and the Northern West Bank).
link to www.haaretz.com
Violence / Incursions
Troops assault local official
BETHLEHEM (Ma‘an) 30 June — Israeli forces entered the village of Husan, west of Bethlehem, Wednesday evening and physically assaulted the head of the village council Adli Hamamra, witnesses said.  Village residents told Ma‘an that Israeli jeeps entered the Husan on in the late evening and began asking for the identity cards of local residents. Hamamra tried to prevent a confrontation between the Israeli army and local youths but was attacked by soldiers and assaulted, according to witnesses in the village.
link to www.maannews.net
Activism / Solidarity
New neighborhood in Bil‘in after Wall moved
RAMALLAH (Ma‘an) 30 June — Bil‘in residents are due to start the construction of a new neighborhood on land returned to them following the re-routing of Israel’s separation barrier. Villagers will start building “Bil‘in West” on Friday as part of the weekly demonstration against the wall, a statement from the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee said Thursday.  The Popular Committee announced a new strategy of building community and public buildings on lands that were returned as a way to assert their possession of them.
link to www.maannews.net
UK Minister for Middle East met in Nabi Saleh: ‘We defend the right to protest’
PS 30 June — Alistair Burt, the Foreign Office Minister for Middle East, attended a meeting with community organizers and wives of political prisoners, Bassem and Naji Tamimi, in the village of Nabi Saleh today … During the meeting, the minister said that “From what I have seen the IDF have acted extremely strongly against peaceful protesters including chasing children and, in one instance striking a woman. We entirely defend people’s rights to peacefully protest and the role of the international community in helping protect this…”
https://www.popularstruggle.org/content/uk-minister-middle-east-met-nabi-saleh-%E2%80%9Cwe-defend-right-protest%E2%80%9D
Volunteers needed to rebuild Fasayel Wasta
JVS 29 June — Today, JVS, with fundings of the Danish Churches, will build new houses for the families who faced Israeli demolitions two weeks ago. At 3pm we will start building new structures for the 18 families who remained homeless after the Israeli army demolished 21 structures. JVS is calling all its friends and supporters to join the rebuilding.
link to www.jordanvalleysolidarity.org
Gaza
NGO: Israel responsible for Gaza aid crisis
TEL AVIV, Israel (Ma‘an) 30 June — The focus on humanitarian aid by flotilla organizers is misleading and neglects the real obstacles to development in the Gaza Strip, Israeli organization Gisha said Wednesday in a statement. “The problem in Gaza is not a shortage of food but rather a violation of the right to productive, dignified work” executive director of Gisha Sari Bashi said. “There is just one solution that will respect the rights of Gaza residents to freedom of movement and livelihood while protecting Israel’s legitimate security interests: Israel must lift the ban on construction materials, exit of goods and travel between Gaza and the West Bank.”
link to www.maannews.net
Making points in Gaza / Paul Pillar
Nat Int 29 June — The story of Palestinian Arab refugees forms a backdrop to an interesting observation in a story by Ethan Bronner in Wednesday’s New York Times, about the revival of agriculture in a portion of the Gaza Strip that used to be occupied by an Israeli settlement bloc. Israel extracted its 9,000 settlers when it left Gaza in 2005. According to Bronner, “Many of those settlers remain in transitional housing inside Israel and in West Bank settlements. The failure of the Israeli government to resettle them properly has been yet one more argument offered in Israel against settler withdrawals for a Palestinian state.” There is no moral or legal equivalence between the fate of refugees forced by a conquering army from homes their families had occupied for generations, and the status of settlers installed by a conquering regime that later pulls them out. Nonetheless, it is ironic that the Israeli government appears to be employing the same technique — of using displaced persons to support an argument about an international dispute — that Israelis have long accused Arab regimes of utilizing.
link to nationalinterest.org
Videos: The free runners of Gaza / Mariam Shahin
AJE — For young, often unemployed Palestinians in Gaza’s Khan Younis camp, parkour has become the ultimate means of escape — In the narrow sandy alleys of the Khan Younis refugee camp Mohammed al-Jakhbeer and Abdallah Enshsi, both 22, navigate their path out of the camp and into the many corners and open spaces of the tiny strip of land which is famous for being the most densely populated in the world.
link to english.aljazeera.net
Flotillas
Watch: Palestinians await the Gaza flotilla
Haaretz 30 June — Gaza residents say the hope the current attempt of pro-Palestinian activists to breach the blockade will bring international attention to their situation.
link to www.haaretz.com
Irish Ship to Gaza: MV Saoirse sabotage photos and video
30 June — On Monday the ship’s 3 crew members, Shane Dillon, John Hearne and Pat Fitzgerald; along with Clr Gerry MacLochlainn, Charlie McMenamin (both from Derry) with John Mallon and Phil McCullough (both from Belfast) set sail on the MV Saoirse for re-fueling and a test run. On the way back to port Pat Fitzgerald, ship’s engineer, noticed that something was very wrong with the boat. Upon returning to the dock the first inspections began, it was then we realised that sabotage had been done to Ireland’s boat. Pat and the crew then hired experts to dive down and inspect the damage closer, upon their return to land it was noted that the boat has very serious damage done and that a piece was missing from one of the propeller shafts.
link to irishshiptogaza.org
Irish ship will not sail to Gaza after ‘sabotage’
Irish Times 30 June — AN IRISH ship, the MV Saoirse , will not take part in the planned freedom flotilla which is preparing to sail to Gaza because it has been sabotaged, according to one of the ship’s intended passengers … “This was the type of sabotage that endangered human life,” Mr Lane said last night. “They put divers under the boat who cut a piece out of the propeller shaft. That means that the damage would have happened gradually and what would have happened eventually is that the propeller would have come up through the bottom of the boat, caused a flood in the engine room and would have caused the boat to sink.”
link to www.irishtimes.com
Gaza flotilla organizers claimed Israel sabotaged second vessel in Turkey’s territorial waters
[photo] ISTANBUL (Hurriyet DN) 30 June — Organizers of a flotilla to Gaza accused Israel on Thursday of sabotaging the Irish aid ship Saoirse (Freedom) in Turkey’s territorial waters, the second allegation of its type this week. The engine of the Irish vessel was damaged in such a way that the ship would have sunk in the middle of the ocean. The ship was docked in Turkey’s territorial waters when the tampering occurred, according to an activist. Earlier this week, activists accused Israel of sabotaging the Greek-Swedish ship Juliano in Piraeus, Greece.
link to www.hurriyetdailynews.com
Irish aid ship to Gaza sabotaged — Mac Lochlainn calls on Taoiseach to demand answers from the Israeli prime minister
Sinn Féin 30 June — Following reports from the crew of MV Saoirse, the Irish aid ship to Gaza, that their boat has been maliciously and recklessly sabotaged, Sinn Féin spokesperson for Foreign Affairs, Pádraig Mac Lochlainn, TD, has called on An Taoiseach [prime minister of Ireland] to immediately demand answers from the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu … “The Irish Government has a solemn responsibility to ensure the safety of its citizens and the only party with an obvious interest in sabotaging this boat and recklessly endangering the lives of those on board are the Israeli Government”.
link to www.sinnfein.ie
Ireland: Avoid harming flotilla activists
AFP 29 June — PM Kenny urges Israel not to take any action that could cause injury or harm to people seeking to challenge naval blockade of Gaza. Despite his ‘sympathy’ for Gazans, his government’s advice is not to travel to Strip at this time, he adds
link to www.ynetnews.com
Flotilla organizers: Greece complicit with Israel in delaying departure / Joseph Dana
972mag 30 June — Athens — At a press conference held at 3pm local time on Thursday, organizers of the US boat to Gaza, The Audacity of Hope, unveiled their ship to international press corps. Roughly 70 journalists , including a news crew from Israel’s Channel 10 as well as other Israeli journalists, were in attendance. Organizers defiantly called on the government of Greece to allow their boats safe deployment and passage. Former US army colonel Anne Wright, speaking on behalf of the US ship, demanded that the Greek government follow through with inspection of the ship, following an Israeli legal organization’s accusation that it is not seaworthy. Wright insisted it is seaworthy and that “The Greek government is complicit with the Israeli government in delaying and trying to stop our boat from sailing.” During the press conference, all 35 passengers of The Audacity of Hope stood in front of the ship draped in American flags. Wright specifically called on the Greek government to protect the US boat from acts of “state terrorism,” referencing the alleged sabotage of Irish boat. According to Wright, the Irish boat has 20,000 Euros worth of damage and would have sunk if it left port.
link to 972mag.com
Live update from Aaron Maté and Hedy Epstein on US ship in Gaza flotilla
Democracy Now 30 June (with transcript) Democracy Now! producer Aaron Maté and 86-year-old Jewish Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein are on the U.S. ship, “The Audacity of Hope,” as it sits moored in an Athens port, draped in American flags, waiting to set sail for Gaza, joining nine other ships in a humanitarian flotilla to challenge the Israeli naval blockade of Palestine.
link to www.democracynow.org
Video: Canadian aid convoy to head for Gaza
GTV 30 June – A Canadian aid convoy prepares to set sail for the blockaded Gaza Strip despite Israeli threats to confront activists aboard a Gaza-bound international flotilla. The Canadian boat, Tahrir, is now under a 24-hour security watch before its planned journey to the impoverished coastal sliver, as another vessel in the Freedom Flotilla II was sabotaged while docked at Greek ports, a Press TV correspondent reported on Wednesday.
link to gazatvnews.com
Flotilla passenger on why she’s sailing to Palestine / Mya Guarnieri
ATHENS, Greece (Ma‘an) 28 June — At 33, Megan Horan is one of the younger passengers on the US Boat to Gaza. She admits that she is also a newcomer to the issues surrounding Israel and the Palestinians. After attending an interfaith conference last summer, soon after the Israeli raid on the flotilla that left nine activists on the Mavi Marmara dead, Horan’s interest was piqued by a Palestinian speaker who mentioned the attempt to break the blockade [and] Ann Wright who spoke of her experience on last year’s US boat, the Challenger 1. “When I returned to Seattle, I started to really dig,” says Horan, who works in hi-tech.  Because it was important to Horan to get a “balanced” look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, she explored many sources on different sides of the issue.
link to www.maannews.net
Constituents aboard Audacity of Hope challenge Sen. Mark Kirk’s call for US to disable flotilla vessels / Lizzy Ratner
Mondo 30 June — Several weeks ago, Mark Kirk, the Republican senator from Illinois who inherited Barack Obama’s seat with the help of wads of pro-Israel cash, called for the American government to supply special ops forces and “naval support” to Israel to help stop the flotilla. In a report titled “The Future of Israel’s Security and the U.S.-Israel Relationship” that Kirk drafted this past June after a junket, er, trip to Israel with the Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago, the senator urged the US to “… make available all necessary special operations and naval support to the Israeli Navy to effectively disable flotilla vessels before they can pose a threat to Israeli coastal security or put Israeli lives at risk”  This is a stunning comment, not only because it blithely puts US lives at risk to protect Israeli ones, but because it bluntly advocates that the US break international and maritime law by knowingly endangering civilians and assaulting foreign flagged boats in international waters.
link to mondoweiss.net
Israel army uses fabrications to assert flotilla financial links to Hamas / Ali Abunimah
EI blog 30 June — The Israeli military claimed today that it had “uncovered financial links” between the Gaza-bound flotilla and the Palestinian movement Hamas. But their claims are based on unsubstantiated assertions and outright fabrications. In a press release, the Israeli military made the following sensational claim: According to Israeli military intelligence, the terrorist organization Hamas and several organizations behind the 2011 Gaza flotilla have similar funding sources. Three Islamic charity funds from the Hamas-affiliated Charity Coalition directly fund Hamas and some of the organizations connected to the 2011 Gaza flotilla
link to electronicintifada.net
AG to rule on MK Zoabi probe soon
Ynet 29 June — Weinstein still waiting for legal clarifications before deciding whether to launch criminal investigation against Arab lawmaker for participating in Gaza-bound flotilla last year
link to www.ynetnews.com
Racism / Discrimination / Incitement
Haifa café to compensate soldier for discrimination
Ynet 30 June — Court orders restaurant that refused service to uniformed IDF soldier to pay him NIS 15,000 — …When Sergeant Major Raviv Rot arrived at the Hillel Street restaurant Azad [apparently an Arab restaurant] in Haifa in February 2010, the hostess refused to allow him to enter because he was wearing his uniform. The incident caused a public outcry,
link to www.ynetnews.com
Police using kid gloves in Rabbi Yosef inquiry
Ynet 30 June — Rabbi Dov Lior arrest, riots that followed lead police to take different approach in arrest of Rabbi Yosef who is also suspected of incitement — After the storm that broke out when Rabbi Dov Lior was detained for questioning, police are using kid gloves in their handling of Rabbi Yaakov Yosef who has so far evaded a police request that he present himself for questioning with regards to the “Kings Torah” affair.
link to www.ynetnews.com
Political / Diplomatic / International news
Palestinians defy US warning to drop statehood bid
RAMALLAH (AFP) 30 June — The Palestinians on Thursday brushed off pressure from the US Senate to drop their bid for UN recognition of a future state, saying it sprang from pro-Israel bias.
link to www.maannews.net
Abbas inclined to put off unity talks with Hamas until after UN vote
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) 30 June — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas might put off the formation of a unity government with the Islamic militant group Hamas to avoid alienating his Western allies ahead of a U.N. vote on statehood, a senior PLO official said Thursday. Palestinian leaders apparently underestimated international opposition, particularly from the U.S., to any Hamas involvement in government and are afraid that will derail efforts to win the U.N. nod to establish a Palestinian state.
link to www.washingtonpost.com
Abbas urges Israel to reciprocate recognition
BETHLEHEM (Ma‘an) 30 June — President Mahmoud Abbas said Thursday that Israel should recognize a Palestinian state “in response to our people’s recognition of Israel’s right to exist,” the official Palestinian Authority news agency Wafa reported. In a speech to the Dutch parliament, Abbas reiterated his commitment to the two-state solution, which he said must be achieved through talks and not violence.
link to www.maannews.net
‘Israel tries to strike deal with Europe, US’
Ynet 30 June — Government sources on Wednesday confirmed that Israeli and American officials are continuing their efforts to jump-start negotiations with the Palestinians, while Jerusalem is hoping to secure France and Britain’s objection at a United Nations vote on the declaration of a Palestinian state. Germany and Italy have already announced that they will object to a unilateral declaration of statehood, while France and Britain are eager to push Israel and the Palestinians back to the negotiations table.
link to www.ynetnews.com
In numbers: How does the US embassy in Israel celebrate the Fourth of July?
Haaretz 30 June — Join Haaretz.com at 7 P.M. on Thursday as we stream live the biggest U.S. Independence Day Bash in Israel 2,200 guests … Who’s going to be there? President Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Members of the government and Knesset, IDF, the diplomatic corps, top local and international media, senior academics, non-governmental organizations, and more…
link to www.haaretz.com
Obama may be losing the faith of Jewish Democrats / Ben Smith
Politico 29 June — David Ainsman really began to get worried about President Barack Obama’s standing with his fellow Jewish Democrats when a recent dinner with his wife and two other couples — all Obama voters in 2008 — nearly turned into a screaming match. Ainsman, a prominent Democratic lawyer and Pittsburgh Jewish community leader, was trying to explain that Obama had just been offering Israel a bit of “tough love” in his May 19 speech on the Arab Spring. His friends disagreed — to say the least. One said he had the sense that Obama “took the opportunity to throw Israel under the bus.” … If several dozen interviews with POLITICO are any indication, a similar conversation is taking place in Jewish communities across the country.
link to www.politico.com

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