NOVANEWS
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Netanyahu seeks to preempt Palestinian statehood initiative w/ plan that entails settlements and ‘Jewish state’ preconditions
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Of you, everything around reminds me
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At Daily Kos, ‘cyclonbabe’ says the Israel/Palestine issue has split the progressive movement
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A representation of Israeli soldiers
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Is Yerushalmi’s motive for anti-Shariah campaign his contempt for Palestinians, ‘a murderous non-People’? ‘NYT’ can’t touch it
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Hanin Zoabi: ”irrational racism’ is part of the new ruling consensus in Israel . . . It’s a psychological ethnic cleansing.’
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Al Jazeera comes to NY
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The Larry David peace plan
Netanyahu seeks to preempt Palestinian statehood initiative w/ plan that entails settlements and ‘Jewish state’ preconditions
Aug 01, 2011
Philip Weiss
Israeli television is reporting that Netanyahu is going out with a peace plan that refers to the ’67 borders, apparently in an effort to stem the Palestinian bid for statehood at the U.N. I’m told that the plan is much like a US plan given to the Quartet in July, which Daniel Levy described last week at Foreign Policy– yes referring to the ’67 lines but annulling them by asserting that settlements must be part of the future Israeli state. The draft also says that Israel is the state of the Jewish people. And honors Israel’s refusal to negotiate with the new Palestinian unity government!
Below are accounts of the news at AP and Reuters, and then Levy’s description of the U.S. draft plan.
Associated Press:
In a speech about the Middle East in May [May 19], Obama proposed negotiations based on the pre-1967 line with agreed swaps of territory between Israel and a Palestinian state. Netanyahu reacted angrily, insisting that Israel would not withdraw from all of the West Bank, though that was not what Obama proposed.
Now Netanyahu is basically accepting that framework, according to Channel 2 TV, offering to trade Israeli territory on its side of the line for West Bank land where its main settlements are located.
The official [who confirmed the TV report to AP], who has been briefed on the talks, spoke on condition of anonymity because the contacts are still in progress. He said he would not deny the TV report, while refusing to confirm the specifics. He emphasized that Israel would not withdraw from all of the West Bank.
“We are willing in a framework of restarting the peace talks to accept a proposal that would contain elements that would be difficult for Israel and we would find very difficult to endorse,” he said, answering a question about the Obama proposal.
Part of the reason, he said, was that Israel is seeking to persuade the Palestinians to drop their initiative to win U.N. recognition of their state next month, something the Palestinians are doing out of frustration with stalled peace efforts.
Palestinian officials said they had not received such a proposal from Israel.
Reuters:
Israel has told Middle East power brokers it was ready to discuss a proposed package on borders with Palestinians to help Western powers revive stalled peace talks, an Israeli official said Monday.
The official denied reports by Israeli and other media outlets that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had backed down from an earlier rejection of President Barack Obama’s proposal to negotiate a pullback to so-called 1967 borders.
But he suggested Netanyahu had signaled a new readiness to aid last-ditch U.S. and European efforts to renew talks frozen since last year in anticipation of a Palestinian threat to seek a unilateral United Nations mandate for statehood in September.
Levy in Foreign Policy:
The U.S. presented to its Quartet “partners” a suggested one page text that looked rather like an exercise in cherry picking Obama’s recent speeches by the Israeli Prime Minister’s office (given the recent traffic between Jerusalem and Washington and the end product it is reasonable to speculate that that is precisely what happened). The American pitch went something like the following: the proposed text is a reflection of the President’s speech, the Quartet had encouraged the President to give such a speech, the President had taken some political heat for the speech, the Quartet had even endorsed the speech (which it did in a May 20 statement), therefore the Quartet should now stand united behind the American draft, demonstrate to the Palestinians that they have no alternative but to accept the Quartet position, resume negotiations, and drop the U.N. idea. The text was quite clearly pre-cooked with the Israeli leadership, so no problem of acceptance from Israel.
Except that the U.S. text was not a faithful rendition of what the Quartet had endorsed — namely, the May 19 State Department speech of the president — but rather a hodgepodge of language from that speech, from the May 22 speech at the AIPAC conference, and of elements never before endorsed by the Quartet and even contradicting the existing positions of the EU and others. Hence the stalemate — and not altogether a shock given Jerusalem’s apparent co-authorship of the text.
So here are the details. To recap: President Obama’s May 19 speech spent 1,040 words addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Obama described the conflict, touched on Israeli and Palestinian aspirations, and made a case for a solution being more urgent than ever in the context of the Arab awakening. The President then made news when, in calling for a resumption of negotiations, he stated that “the basis of those negotiations is clear,” and then spent 170 words providing the parameters of a borders and security first approach to achieving two-states (his reference of the 1967 lines in particular drew attention). He closed out this part of the speech by saying “these principles provide a foundation for negotiations.” The U.S. draft proposal presented to the Quartet did include the President’s language from the May 19 speech, but it also included a whole lot more, all of it skewing, extremely uni-directionally, in Israel’s favor. To the simple May 19 border language of “based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps,” the U.S. added the following from the May 22 speech:
“The parties themselves will negotiate a border between Israel and Palestine that is different than the one that existed on June 4, 1967, to take account of changes that have taken place over the last 44 years, including the new demographic realities on the ground and the needs of both sides.”
This is essentially America asking the Quartet to endorse illegal Israeli settlement activity that has taken place since 1967 (and in phrasing this as “the parties themselveswill negotiate a border…” the U.S. is deviating from its own previous policy of not dictating to the parties). Compare that to the official position of the European Union: “The European Union will not recognize any changes to the pre-1967 borders including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties.”
Remember, the Quartet issued a statement endorsing the president’s May 19 speech; it has never endorsed the May 22 speech.
The U.S. text also included language about Israel that was spoken on both May 19 and May 22 but was not part of the principles or foundations for negotiations set out on May 19 (and it is these principles that the Quartet endorsed). As follows:
“A lasting peace will involve two states for two peoples: Israel as a Jewish state and the homeland of the Jewish people.”
Again, this is terminology that neither the EU nor the Quartet has endorsed in the past.
Of you, everything around reminds me
Aug 01, 2011
Yousef M. Aljamal
כל דבר מסביבי מזכיר לי אותך
In Limbo, I loved to live and carry on. In love, I fell with him. He was everything to me, a brother, a friend, a man, a shaman. All efforts and time I have exerted, by doing my best to spend the rest of my life without him, were in vain. They ended up with failure. He follows me everywhere I go like a shadow, a destiny. His picture appears to me wherever I direct my eyes. He is not dead.
The street, the room, the moon, the school, his books and notes, his old friends, his pictures while smiling, Baba and our new born youngest brother remind me of him. Every day I leave home and see his friends, who insist on reminding me of him, I forget him not. Everywhere, I see him, I feel him.
The other day as I was making some potatoes to kill my hunger, he approached and asked for some. I refused. Someone pressured me; I accepted. It was by sunset when he added sugar to the potatoes instead of salt, mistakenly. Remembering him doing so unintentionally adds insult to my great injury for losing him, intentionally. Trying to forget him reminds me of him again and again.
A riddle: who is he?
It would be no exaggeration to say that he was my past, present and future. He was the one who corrected me, preached me and sometimes got mad at me. I wish that he could live longer to get mad at me more and more. He was not an ordinary man. His life was short and swift as summer’s clouds. Life without him, to me, is as long as eternity.
He was the salt of this land, the hope of hopeless and the relief of souls, the helping hand of powerless and the smile of those who always burst into tears in wars, for losing their beloved. I still remember him coming to his friends and throwing a kettle of tea at them. They escaped, however it was empty!
Had not the murderers thought of all these merits before claiming his life by the dawn? They would not. I bet. They were asked to shoot to kill. I assure. It was not enough for them to murder him in darkness. They were not satisfied with this. Now, they are carrying out a new war against us, a war on our memories to forget their crime. We insist not to forget. We will not forget. We will remember him twice, YES, twice.
We lived for a while together in love. Today, I look around, I don’t see him. Eye and heart weep for him. Sadness winds as a storm. His love nests at my heart and will never leave. Hours in waiting for him lasts days. We, Palestinians, are used to wait. We wait our beloved to return, our injury to be hailed and our tears to be draught on our cheeks before enemies see them. We wait for the crossing to be open, the permission to be issued, the bullet to be fired at us and FREEDOM and JUSTICE to prevail. Brother, Will not you return back along with freedom? Hopefully, I am still waiting for you, period.
Crossposted at Yousef M. Aljamal’s blog He who is brave is free
At Daily Kos, ‘cyclonbabe’ says the Israel/Palestine issue has split the progressive movement
Aug 01, 2011
annie
We’ve run a few posts responding to the banning of Mondoweiss from the popular website Daily Kos.Weiss response. And mine. Well yesterday I lifted another comment straight out of the ‘diary’ where the announcement of the banning occurred. I urge everyone to open the link and view the hostile response to this comment. I’m posting it here because I agree with cyclonbabe, I think the Israel/Palestine issue threatens to split the progressive movement right up the middle. The Mondo ban is a polarizing move and I believe America’s support for Zionism continues to rip and tear at the foundation of our democracy.
MW is one of the Best sites on the web
by cyclonbabe
It is one of the few that has not given in to the angry posse of defenders of the indefensible, MW provides a living record of the slow, painful take over of the West Bank, the strangulation of Gaza, the colonialist-settlement xenophobic movement that’s taking over Israel, aided and abetted by the israel-right-or-wrong crowd in the US and elsewhere. true to the historical task that good jewish people took upon themselves throughout history, MW is bearing witness to a slowly advancing horror show, one in which the jewish people of this country are deeply complicit.
By banning [parts of] MW the zionist hasbara does not want people to see, by taking sides with the ones who justify – or prefer to hide – the horrible things Israel is doing, the enormity of the human rights violations committed by – and supported by jewish people – MB – and DK have now taken sides. And in so doing open up the yawning gap that has been splitting up the progressive movement for a long time.
I expect that whatever McCarthyte policies take over in in Israel – which they are – as we all see – they will seed off-shoots in this country, as they are in canada and Australia, and we, who care about liberal values and human rights, will have to stand and watch as reactionary forces rip what they helped sow..
We, who resist the march of oppression and slide into the deepest darkness of the soul – the Conradian disintegration of morals and conscience now unfolding – should be prepared for what’s to come.
Unfortunately, the I/P issue has split the progressive movement already – and it is one of the reasons we can never have any real influence in this country. Just watch some of our “heroes” in congress and see them dangle, helpless, before the march of the know-nothing right. They – and us – and Obama – will all continue to be be cowed, because we are split right in the middle, because honesty and openness have been banished from our midst..
When a progressive like MB seeks to tar – and bar – a truly progressive exercise in progressive discourse like MW, then we should know that the center – our center, the Bernie Sanders center – cannot hold. Our energies, our donations, our discourse will be sapped. And there, in the breech – the crazy shall walk among among us. Look to washington politics if you really want to see what rabid, israel-firstism has wrought. m
(I’d like to add that I appreciate the opportunity to post these recent threads. Sometimes we miss opportunities to speak directly to progressives from the other side of this divide and I think I can speak for many supporters of this site in claiming this banning has provided an avenue for important discourse. I’m planning on making the most of it! signed, annie)
A representation of Israeli soldiers
Aug 01, 2011
Audrey Farber
If this is what happens to photographers who “misrepresent Israeli soldiers,” here is my rebuttal:
In the last eight or nine months, Nabi Saleh has become more and more the epicenter of military violence against non-violent protesters in the West Bank. In a situation where protesting is not just against the wall but against the very nature of the occupation, the soldiers have become more and more brazen in their aggression against the villagers and the protesters.
From the start, non-violent protesters are surrounded by heavily armed soldiers.
Tear gas is launched from army trucks blocking the road out of the village before anything other than marching and chanting has taken place.
The soldiers begin their game of cat-and-mouse.
Children are targeted, only temporarily at an advantage for better knowing shortcuts through the homes and streets of Nabi Saleh, a village on a hill.
The onslaught begins, and continues.
Soldiers try to force their way into a home…
…and watch the house from the outside. When it gets too crowded with protesters seeking refuge from the gas, they command the house be emptied.
A woman is chased back into her house; perhaps her garden is deemed closed military territory by the power-drunk young soldier in charge.
This was the last time I was allowed so close to him.
B’Tselem watches as his hand is checked for rocks. In a few minutes his father will have to present the soldier with the boy’s papers.
As the soldiers gain the upper hand in the maze of homes, they begin shooting from roofs rather than below walls.
A young Nabi Saleh boy shows me bullet casings he has found in the streets around his home left by weeks and weeks on end of soldiers. (And I thought West Philly was dangerous.)
A young man from Nabi Saleh drops to the ground. A tear gas canister has grazed the back of his head, and within minutes he will be surrounded by a pool of blood. Spent tear gas grenades litter the square around him. If you could see, not fifty yards to the left, a troop of soldiers stands with guns at the ready. I stand in their way, in front of the fallen, banking on the fact that 1. I am white, 2. I am a girl, and 3. I have a camera.
All photos are from Nabi Saleh, December 17, 2010. All photos are my own.
This is a crosspost from Audrey Farber’s blog.
Is Yerushalmi’s motive for anti-Shariah campaign his contempt for Palestinians, ‘a murderous non-People’? ‘NYT’ can’t touch it
Aug 01, 2011
Philip Weiss
Over the weekend, there was a long, somewhat-helpful piece in the Times about David Yerushalmi, the Hasidic Jew who is leading the campaign against supposed “Shariah law” in the U.S., a campaign that demonizes Muslims. But the article left me wondering: how much of Yerushalmi’s campaign has to do with Israel, and why doesn’t the Times ever go near that angle? Reporter Andrea Elliott does write:
His interest in Islamic law began with the Sept. 11 attacks, he said, when he was living in Ma’ale Adumim, a large Jewish settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. At the time, Mr. Yerushalmi, a native of South Florida, divided his energies between a commercial litigation practice in the United States and a conservative research institute based in Jerusalem, where he worked to promote free-market reform in Israel. After moving to Brooklyn the following year, Mr. Yerushalmi said he began studying Arabic and Shariah under two Islamic scholars, whom he declined to name. He said his research made clear that militants had not “perverted” Islamic law, but were following an authoritative doctrine that sought global hegemony…
If you want to know what Yerushalmi thinks about Israel and the occupied territories he lived in, you have to go to other sources. Richard Silverstein says that Yerushalmi is a Kahanist. He writes:
Even Yerushalmi’s name is fake. His family birth name is Beychok, born of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants to America. To be clear, I’m not saying that Yerushalmi’s legal name isn’t that. I’m talking about the underlying motivations regarding Jewish nationalist identity that are involved in such a name change. Yerushalmi means “from Jerusalem.” Yerushalmi is as much a resident of Jerusalem as I am. He doesn’t live in Jerusalem nor do I. Let me make clear that I have no problem with Jewish olim changing their name once they move to Israel, taking Hebrew names such as Yerushalmi. But to do so when you live in America is pure preciousness. He wants to tell you that he supports the settler concept of the eternal inviolability of Jerusalem as a Jewish city and capital. He wants to tell you he believes in the whole nine yards of ultra-Orthodox extremism regarding God’s sacred gift of all of the Land of Israel to the entire Jewish people in perpetuity.)
And here is Paul Berger writing in The Forward about Yerushalmi a couple weeks back and making it clear that Yerushalmi is a Jewish fundamentalist on his view of the “chosen people.” Berger found a 2007 article by Yerushalmi that says:
“One must admit readily that the radical liberal Jew is a fact of the West and a destructive one. Indeed, Jews in the main have turned their backs on the belief in G-d and His commandments as a book of laws for a particular and chosen people. These Jews, the overwhelming majority, have embraced modernity in its entirety.”
I found that Yerushalmi article here, and it’s clear that the dude is a wild-eyed zealot on Israel– and that he (like me) regards the Palestinian issue as a core issue between the west and Asia.
…Jimmy Carter’s (yes, Jimmy Carter’s!) analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian problem is a heroic effort to detach reality from the blanket of lies and deceptions known as the Israeli response to the Palestinians. In what one might describe as a curious oddity, a non-People with the most murderous of intentions created almost single-handedly by the 20th century’s greatest terrorist has become the cause célèbre of white Christian and non-Christian conservatives. For these conservatives, much like the Jew hating Leftists, the Palestinians and their righteous claim for national political existence has been despicably denied them because Jews ran from Europe during and after the Second World War to take land which they had not occupied in any real way since the destruction of the Second Temple. And the kicker for this brand of conservative is that but for the presence and despicable behavior of the Zionists, the West would be living quite peaceably with the 1.3 billion Muslims the world over.
If you are reading this essay and don’t understand this position is so contrary to fact that it can only be plausibly described as blindness, then either you know nothing of the history of this region or of the people and faiths which populate it, which in and of itself says much given its centrality in our lives, or you too are blinded to what should be obvious to any serious and reasonable mind.…[The] Leftist or Elitist critique… reduces its claims to one of two positions on the Jewish State: either the Jews have no business in Palestine and that this vicious, murderous non-people of clans and tribes known as Palestinians do; or, the Jews might have some right to a small, indefensible Jewish State but the Palestinian claim is “equally” valid and the UN vote on the Partition Plan was the world’s resolution of these equally competing claims and therefore Israel ought to retreat to the original borders determined by the world body in a democratic vote or minimally to the pre-1967 armistice lines.
I would argue, although I will not do more than merely assert it to be so here, that for a Christian to take the position that the Jewish homeland is not Israel or that it is not even what is derisively described as “Greater Israel” is something akin to a positive result on a Litmus test for the dark forces which have themselves contributed over the years of the Jewish Diaspora to the problem we all face today with Jewish liberalism.