NOVANEWS
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Today in Nabi Saleh
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Israel’s Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi to Glenn Beck: ‘G-d will bless you for what you did’
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‘BDS brides’ bring boycott to Bed Bath & Beyond
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In Israel, Steny Hoyer promises, US financial crisis won’t cut our aid package by a dime
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Needed: ‘worldwide external pressure’
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State Department beneficiary, MEMRI, is dedicated to bringing Israeli ideas about Arab world and Iran into U.S. establishment
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In Honolulu Star-Advertiser: they tried to suppress MLK’s boycott too, but nothing can defeat this movement
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Israel approves 1000s more homes in E Jerusalem as UN envoy is shocked and US says nothing
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In 1950, Avnery offered first Israeli corroboration of ‘the Palestinian narrative’
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Martin in Palestine
Today in Nabi Saleh
Aug 12, 2011
Kate
Nabi Saleh consumed with raids while fasting
ISM posted 11 Aug — Following the unusually short demonstration on the first Friday of Ramadan, the Israeli army raided the village of Nabi Saleh just before Iftar, the Muslim time for breaking fast during Ramadan, resulting in the detaining of a 14 year old boy for approximately two hours and an excessive amount of tear gas in the village …Manal Tamimi’s child was sleeping in the living room alone where he inhaled a large amount of tear gas for half an hour resulting in him vomiting for over an hour while the army was still in the village. Tamimi states in an interview with ISM that she was scared of the thought that she may have been outside of her home, visiting her mother, and no one would have heard the scream of her child. Without her presence at home, she says, this invasion might have ended with a fatality within her family.
Video interview with Manal Tamimi: They try to steal our history, not just our land
ISM posted 11 Aug — The demonstrations in Nabi Saleh started the 21 of November 2009, after the illegal settlement of Halamish expanded, costing locals in land and their source of water for home and agricultural use, a spring declared holy by the settlers … More then 220 people have been injured since the beginning of their peaceful resistance to illegal Israeli occupation of their land. Some of the injured include an 11 year old boy who was shot with a rubber coated steel bullet in his head and is still paralyzed.
And more news from Today in Palestine:
Land theft / Ethnic cleansing / Apartheid
Israel’s new settlement plans irk US and EU
AJ 11 Aug — Israel’s approval of construction plans for 1,600 homes in East Jerusalem has reignited a dispute with Washington over the threat of new settlements to the upcoming Palestinian statehood debate. The White House on Thursday urged Israel and the Palestinians to avoid any actions that jeopardize efforts to restart stalled peace talks. The press briefing did not specifically mention the new approval, but the announcement of the same project last year during a visit by Vice President Biden caused a diplomatic rift. Jay Carney, White House spokesperson, ducked a question on Thursday about whether Israel’s approval for the construction of the new settler homes would make it harder to convince the Palestinians not to seek statehood at the United Nations.
http://english.aljazeera.net//news/middleeast/2011/08/2011811145657455249.html
Envoy: World must act against ‘colonization campaign’
BETHLEHEM (Ma‘an) 12 Aug — Palestinian Ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour on Friday urged the international community to compel Israel to end its colonization campaign if it really believes in the two-state solution, reports said. In letters to the UN secretary-general and the presidents of the Security Council and the General Assembly, Mansour said “the international community must compel Israel to end its illegal occupation,” a Kuwaiti news outlet reported. This includes Israel’s “colonization campaign and must seriously begin to take further effective measures to end the Israeli occupation which began in 1967 to salvage the possibility of the two-state solution.” The letter came in reaction to Israel’s “arrogant” and “shameless” announcement to develop 1,600 settlement units in East Jerusalem
link to www.maannews.net
Area C feels the effects of Israel’s power
The Australian 13 Aug — ONLY 5km separates the offices of two mayors on one of the planet’s most contested pieces of land, but they may as well be at opposite ends of the earth. Next month, the 193 countries of the UN are set to vote on a Palestinian state. Any decision will not be binding on Israel but any pressure point that does arise will be here, in the heart of the West Bank’s “Area C”, which is deemed under the Oslo accords to be under full Israeli control … David Elhaiini is a Jewish settler who is Mayor of the Jordan Valley Regional Council, which covers 21 settlements … Area C amounts to 60 per cent of the West Bank. Israel has complete power over which Palestinian homes will be built or demolished in the area. Far more Palestinian homes are demolished than approved. Asked what he thinks about the demolitions, Elhaiini replies: “I believe in law.” … Palestinian Mayor Abed Kassab says when Israel took control of his village, Jiftlik, in 1967, the population was more than 25,000. It is now 5,000. He gives a range of reasons: lack of water and electricity; Israelis killing some of the villagers’ animals; Israelis taking sheep from villagers, putting them into Jewish settlements and presenting the villagers with fees for feeding them.
link to www.theaustralian.com.au
Racism in the Galilee Part 1: Caging in Palestinians / Sophie Crowe
PalMon 11 Aug — Many Palestinians have been forced to leave Nazareth, the primary Palestinian city in Israel, and its satellite villages due to the absence of planning and lack of resources allotted by the government, which prohibits development and results in overcrowding. … Upper Nazareth, the fastest growing town in the north of the country, illustrates clearly the disparity in development of Israeli and Palestinian towns. The largely Jewish city is home to fifty thousand people and was able to quadruple in size since its establishment in the late fifties by appropriating surrounding lands. According to a 2010 report by Middle East Monitor, a British-based news source, the number of Jews living in the Galilee tripled between the sixties and nineties. ‘The whole city is built on land confiscated from the Palestinians of Nazareth,’ explains Sawsan Zaher, a lawyer with Adalah, a Palestinian rights NGO. Nazareth has seventy thousand people living on half the area of land as the new city and is prevented from expanding. The new town flourishes and thrives at the expense of the original Palestinian one and its villages, which are in contraction.
link to www.palestinemonitor.org
Settlers
On patrol in the streets of Hebron
PalMon 10 Aug — A car stops in front of a house in Beit Hadassah, a part of the Israeli settlement inside the Old City of Hebron. Three settlers get out. Observers from Temporary International Presence in the City of Hebron (TIPH) stand nearby and watch closely. This is part of TIPH’s daily foot patrol of the city. In Hebron, settler violence could strike any time. Settlers are steadily expanding into new parts of Hebron, Per Enerud, an observer with TIPH says. Due to the Israeli occupation of the area, many Palestinian families have been forced out of their homes and shops and cannot return to their land. Settlers then move into their vacant property. Standing on the hillside with a good view of the Israeli settlement, Enerud points out a group of Israeli children playing on top of an empty building. While seemingly harmless, Enerud explains, this is a new method of the same, aggressive settler expansion that’s been happening in Hebron since 1967. “Even though the deed to the house is Palestinian,” Enerud says, “the settlers build their way into the empty houses.”
http://www.palestinemonitor.org/?p=1393
Fanatic Jewish settlers regularly attack Palestinians at iftar time
AL-KHALIL/HEBRON (PIC) 12 Aug — Fanatic Jewish settlers attacked Palestinian homes in the old city in al-Khalil on Wednesday evening for the second time in two days. The attacks take place when families gather at sunset to break their fast (Iftar) …A Palestinian resident who lives at Jabal al-Rahma said that a group of settlers from the Yeshai settlement crossed lands belonging to local residents, threw stones at Palestinian homes in the vicinity and chanted anti-Arab slogans. Meanwhile, settlers in Tel al-Rumaida attacked the home of Muhammad Abu Eisheh with stones and destroyed a support wall belonging to the family of Sayyed Ahmad.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2
Israeli forces
PCHR weekly report : Israeli forces injure 3, abduct 35 Palestinians this week
IMEMC 12 Aug — In its Weekly Report On Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territories for the week of 04-10 Aug. 2011, Israeli forces wounded three Palestinians with gunfire, and injured dozens more with tear gas at non-violent demonstrations. One of those injured was a Palestinian woman herding sheep in Gaza. The Israeli troops also killed some of her sheep. Two Palestinian resistance fighters were wounded by Israeli forces in the east of Gaza City. Israeli warplanes bombarded a number of civilian facilities in the Gaza Strip. Two bird farms were completely destroyed and a third one was damaged, 500 chickens were killed and a room was destroyed. Israeli attacks in the West Bank: Israeli forces conducted 31 incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank, during which they abducted 31 Palestinian civilians, including 5 children. 17 of the detainees were abducted in Hebron….[details follow]
link to www.imemc.org
Restriction of movement
Thousands attend Friday prayers at Al-Aqsa
BETHLEHEM (Ma‘an) — More than 125,000 Palestinians came to Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque for prayers on the second Friday of Ramadan, Israeli radio reported. Over 24,000 West Bank Palestinians entered through Bethlehem’s main checkpoint on Friday, the report said, noting the lack of clashes during the passage of worshipers. Thousands of Israeli soldiers and security were stationed at the entrance of Jerusalem’s Old City, the radio station said, adding that Palestinians were searched by security before permitted entrance to the Haram Ash-Sharif compound housing the mosque and the Dome of the Rock. Israel’s permit system barred men aged under 45, and women under 30 years, from travel to Jerusalem.
link to www.maannews.net
Gaza
USAID halts aid to Gaza
AFP 12 Aug — The US Agency for International Development is halting humanitarian assistance to the Gaza Strip over alleged meddling by the enclave’s rulers, Hamas, a US official said Friday … “We deeply regret that USAID-funded partner organisations operating in Gaza are forced by Hamas’s actions to suspend their assistance work,” the official said on condition of anonymity. “USAID assistance programs were put on hold effective August 12,” he added … Another official in Washington said he understood that Hamas has been demanding access to physically search files and records of NGOs, which would be unprecedented … Hamas insisted on Friday that it should be able to verify the accounts of NGOs financed by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in the Palestinian territories..
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/us-warns-hamas-could-pause-aid-official-141133718.html
Yearning for work in a Gaza under siege / Eva Bartlett
[photos] It’s a weekday morning, the beach is yet to fill with crowds seeking a break from the heat, but already the odd-jobbers are at work selling toys, clothes and food along the coast. Shariff Abu Kass, 27, walks the stretch of seaside in Sheik Rajleen every day from morning to evening with two armfuls of lightweight sports pants to sell. “I have two young children and no other work, so I do this every day. Usually I earn around 40 shekels (13 dollars) a day, but Fridays are better because so many come to the sea.” … In Gaza’s municipal park, Issa Ghoul, 19, sells chips and chocolates to park-goers to support his family. “I quit school and started working when I was 14. My father died when I was young and no one else works in my family,” says Ghoul. Many children younger than Ghoul zig-zag between cars at traffic stops selling one-shekel items like gum, cheap chocolates and fresh mint in order to add to their families’ incomes. “I can’t find any other jobs,” says Ghoul. “My mother is ill, my three-year-old sister is ill, what can I do but hope people will buy from me?” Most Palestinians take pride in their education, and Ghoul is no different, except that his impossible situation denied him the opportunity to study. “I would have liked to have finished school like everyone, I would have liked to have been a teacher.”
link to ingaza.wordpress.com
Electricity crisis, heat disturb Ramadan atmosphere in Gaza
GAZA CITY (Xinhua) 12 Aug — As soon as a hot summer day ends and the sun goes for sunset, dozens of Palestinian families set on the clean off-white sands of Gaza City’s beach, not only for recuperation or enjoying a soft breeze, but also to break the fast of one of Ramadan month of fasting days. Going to Gaza seaside is like hitting two birds with one stone; first is to enjoy the beach and the less warm weather, and second is to avoid the daily ongoing electricity blackouts. The heat and the blackout had obliged the Gaza residents to temporarily flee their homes and go to Gaza beach.
link to news.xinhuanet.com
Delays continue at Rafah crossing
GAZA CITY (Ma‘an) 12 Aug — The Gaza Ministry of Interior said Friday that passengers registered on August 7 could travel through the Rafah crossing to Egypt on Saturday. Recent delays at the crossing have prevented registered passengers from traveling on their scheduled journeys, with daily lists prescribing who will be given passage … Ministry of Interior undersecretary Kamel Abu Madi said Friday that no progress had been made in resolving areas of conflict with Egypt over the last months, including the number of travelers permitted per day, and criteria for passage.
link to www.maannews.net
Frustration simmers over Egypt-Gaza border closure / Jared Malsin
[with video] EI 11 Aug — In late April, Egypt’s acting foreign minister Nabil el-Arabi promised to ease the closure of his country’s sole border crossing with the Gaza Strip, reversing years of policy set by the regime of former president Hosni Mubarak. But Palestinians in Gaza are still waiting for that promise to materialize.
link to electronicintifada.net
Japan contributes $1.6 million to Gaza private sector
RAMALLAH (Ma‘an) 11 Aug — The Japanese government donated over 1.1 million euros ($1.6 million) to private sector reconstruction in the Gaza Strip, a statement said Thursday. The Palestinian Authority established the “Private Sector Reconstruction in Gaza” programme in the aftermath of Israel’s “Operation Cast Lead” to provide financial support to private sector businesses that were destroyed or damaged during the war, the EU release added. Japan’s payment will contribute to 21 Gaza businesses, it said.
link to www.maannews.net
Activism / Solidarity
Israeli troops attack West Bank anti-Wall protests; 3 children injured
Ramallah – PNN – On Friday three children were injured and many were treated for the effects of tear gas inhalation as Israeli troops attacked anti-wall protests organized in a number of West Bank communities. Protests took place in the central West Bank villages of al-Nabi Salleh, Bil‘in, and Ni‘lin in addition to al-Ma‘ssara in the southern West Bank. Three children were lightly wounded as Israeli troops attacked the weekly anti-wall protest at the village of al-Ma‘sara, southern West Bank. As soon as people marched to the land where Israel is building the wall troops attacked people with rifle butts and batons injuring Abada Brijiyah, 11, Osama Brijiyah,9, and Hareth Brijiyah,10, witnesses reported.
link to english.pnn.ps
Demonstration in Kafr Qaddum
QALQILIYA (Ma‘an) 12 Aug — Palestinians inhaled tear gas which the Israeli forces shot to disperse the weekly demonstration in Kafr Qaddum east of Qalqiliya on Friday, activists and witnesses said. The demonstration started after Friday prayer toward the eastern entrance of the village. Eyewitnesses told Ma‘an the Israeli forces who were on the entrance fired tear gas toward the demonstrators. The grenades started a fire in the lands of the villagers which caused damage, they said.
link to www.maannews.net
Hundreds of international activists at Nablus peace rally
NABLUS (Ma‘an) 12 Aug — Hundreds of international activists descended on the northern West Bank city of Nablus on Thursday to hold a peace rally. Around 1,200 people from over 22 countries gathered in the city center, wearing white with peace written in Arabic, English and Hebrew emblazoned on their clothes. They sang songs about freedom and peace, raised Palestinian flags and were joined by Nablus governor Jibril Al-Bakri, his deputy Anan Al-Ateera, heads of security and local organization directors.
link to www.maannews.net
US Palestinians on inaugural ‘know thy heritage’ tour
RAMALLAH (AFP) 12 Aug — Olga Kishek was just a child when her family left the West Bank, but a Palestinian programme encouraging participants to “know thy heritage” has brought her back to her birthplace … The “Know Thy Heritage” programme that Kishek applied to is the work of Rateb Rabie, a Jordanian-born, Palestinian-American who is founder and president of the Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation, a US-headquartered Christian group. He said he wanted to provide an in-depth experience that would expose participants to their cultural heritage and the political situation.
link to www.maannews.net
Detention
Israeli intelligence tried to recruit Al-Jazeera journalist
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (PIC) 12 Aug — Samer Allawi, who is detained by the Israeli occupation authorities said that the Israeli intelligence tried to recruit him but he refused and that he was threatened with being accused of something serious. Allawi, a Palestinian journalist who works as al-Jazeera’s correspondent in Afghanistan, was visited by the lawyer of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society in Betah Tekva detention centre where he is being detained. Allawi told the lawyer that his detention is to do with his work as a journalist in Afghanistan and called on human rights organisations and international journalist bodies to pressure the Israeli occupation to release him … He was detained on Tuesday at the Allenby Bridge on his way to Jordan after the end of a visit he made to his family in the village of Sabastya near Nablus.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcO
IOF troops arrest imam of Tulkarem mosque
TULKAREM (PIC) 12 Aug — IOF troops on Thursday arrested Sheikh Laith Attili, Imam of the Ali Ibn Abu Taleb Mosque, in the village of Attil in the northern West Bank district of Tulkarem, according to Ahrar centre for prisoners’ studies.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2
Families of [PA] political prisoners rally in Hebron
HEBRON (Ma‘an) 12 Aug — Relatives of political prisoners organized a sit-in and rally in the West Bank city of Hebron on Thursday, protesting an escalation in arrests by Palestinian Authority security forces. Hamas officials said the rally demanded the release of prisoners and an end to arrests, particularly as Palestinian factions meet in Cairo to discuss ending the politically motivated harassment … “With each session of conciliation, arrests and summonses increase in the West Bank,” said another protester. “It’s shameful how security departments chase after the participants of peaceful sit-ins.” Children of several prisoners chained themselves together during the rally, which was attended by Palestinian lawmaker Samira Halayqa and other representatives of the Palestinian Legislative Council.
link to www.maannews.net
Refugees
UNRWA operations in Jenin suspended indefinitely
JENIN (Ma‘an) 12 Aug — UNRWA announced on Thursday the suspension of its operations indefinitely in the West Bank city of Jenin and its refugee camp beginning Friday. The organization called the step “regrettable” and said it came in response to “continued threats to our employees and staff in the area” without elaborating on the nature of the threats. The statement added that suspension of its operations includes relief and social services. An employment assistance office and the office of its refugee camp manager will also close.
link to www.maannews.net
UNRWA suspends services in Jenin
JENIN (WAFA) 12 Aug — A decision by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) to suspend services in the northern West Bank city of Jenin on Friday had upset local activists. Adnan Hindi, head of the popular services committee in Jenin refugee camp, condemned UNRWA’s decision, saying it was unjustified. UNRWA suspended its operations in the Jenin area refugee camps following allegation of threats received by its staff. It said that while it was suspending services as of Friday in most of its offices, this will not affect the health services. Hindi denied allegations that UNRWA staff had been threatened, stressing that UNRWA had been serving Jenin refugee camp and its 16,000 registered refugees for many years and no one had attempted to attack or harm its staff. He said, however, that camp residents have been complaining that UNRWA stopped hiring them through a special work fund that provides temporary jobs to thousands of refugees.
link to english.wafa.ps
Saudi Arabia funds refugee housing in Gaza
Jerusalem (WAFA) 12 Aug — Saudi Arabia through the Saudi Fund for Development (SFD) will finance refugee housing in Rafah, Gaza, to the tune of $71.5 million, said a press release by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) published Wednesday. The Rafah housing project, which began in 2005 but has been halted for over three years by the Israeli blockade, will be restarted following the announcement in July of a partial lifting of the blockade to allow a number of UNRWA housing and school projects to go ahead … Overall the project will comprise a minimum of 1,500 houses and associated facilities including schools, health and social service facilities, roads, sewage and electricity
link to english.wafa.ps
Hamas calls on Lebanon to adopt civil rights of Palestinian refugees
BEIRUT (PIC) 12 Aug — Hamas has called on the Lebanese government to rectify its relationship with the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon by adopting their civil and social rights and rebuilding the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp. These remarks were made in a statement issued by the movement’s refugees’ affairs office in Lebanon on the anniversary of the Tal al-Zatar refugee camp massacre
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2b
Political / Diplomatic / International
Abbas: UN bid for recognition not meant to delegitimize Israel
RAMALLAH (Ma‘an) 12 Aug — President Mahmoud Abbas said Thursday that going to the UN to achieve recognition of a Palestinian state did not conflict with the goals of the peace process. The move is not aimed at isolating Israel or delegitimizing it, he said during a meeting with a delegation of US lawmakers headed by representative Steny Hoyer in Ramallah. Instead, it would solidify the two-state solution and send an encouraging message in the event Israel became ready to return to serious talks, Abbas said, according to the official news agency Wafa.
link to www.maannews.net
Abbas tells US lawmakers: NATO role in Palestinian state
RAMALLAH (Ma‘an) 12 Aug — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told visiting US Congressmen on Thursday that the security of the future Palestinian state will be handed to NATO under US command, his adviser said Friday. The Palestinian state must also be “empty of [Israeli] settlements,” the President said, according to official Palestinian Authority news agency WAFA. Members of the US Congress and Senate delegation, headed by Democratic Senator Steny Hoyer, met with the President in Ramallah on Thursday, and quizzed Abbas on Israel’s designation as a Jewish state, the status of refugees, and reconciliation between the President’s Fatah party and rival Hamas, Presidential adviser Nimir Hamad said.
link to www.maannews.net
September rallies to avoid confronting Israel army
BETHLEHEM (Ma‘an) 12 Aug — All rallies in support of the Palestinian bid for UN membership in September will be confined to areas where the Palestinian Authority has security control, thus avoiding confrontation with the Israeli army, high-ranking Palestinian Authority sources told Ma’an Thursday. “Ramallah rallies will be carried out in Manara square, Bethlehem rallies will be carried out in yard of the Nativity Church and so on,” the sources said, adding “we will not give the [Israeli] occupation any excuse to abuse our children or to kill our residents.” The locations are in the heart of urban areas that were designated “Area A” under the 1993 Oslo agreement — and thus formally under full Palestinian Authority civil and security control, making up 17.2 percent of the West Bank.
link to www.maannews.net
Lebanon set to establish diplomatic ties with Palestine
BEIRUT (Ma‘an) 12 Aug — The Lebanese cabinet has decided to implement its agreement to establish diplomatic ties with Palestine, ministers said Thursday in a meeting headed by President Michel Suleiman. [End]
link to www.maannews.net
Hamas: Reconciliation committees will start in September
GAZA CITY (Ma‘an) 12 Aug — Hamas leader Ismail Radwan said Friday that committees established to progress the reconciliation deal between his party and Fatah would not begin work until September … Radwan told a Ma‘an correspondent in Gaza that only the issue of freeing political prisoners, imprisoned during the years of rivalry by factions in their respective territories, is set for conclusion by the end of the month.
link to www.maannews.net
Egypt targets al-Qa‘eda-inspired militants in Sinai
Ynet 12 Aug — Thousands of troops deployed in el-Arish; to target Islamist extremists in Rafah and Sheikh Zawiyed. Militants involved in bombings of gas pipelines … Al-Qaeda-inspired militants have been increasingly active in Sinai since the ouster of former President Hosni Mubarak in February … There are no known groups in Egypt with direct organizational links to al-Qaeda, although several senior members of the group, including current chief Ayman al-Zawahri, are Egyptian.
link to www.ynetnews.com
Analysis / Opinion
Embracing the settlers / Orni Petruschka
Haaretz 12 Aug — Most settlers will not welcome opening the discussion over the economic toll that Israeli society has paid for the continued occupation, as it inevitably opens the issue of the future of the territories, but no serious discussion about Israel’s future can exclude the settlements from this discussion.
link to www.haaretz.com
Trying to put a price on Middle East peace / Elizabeth Dwoskin
Business Week 11 Aug — Israeli and Palestinian economists look for solutions in hard numbers — In July 2002 a small group of Israeli and Palestinian economists sat down for a rare meeting in the idyllic French village of Aix-en-Provence. It was the height of the violent Palestinian uprising known as the Second Intifada …The economists believed they could help. They concluded that translating the conflict into the data-driven language of economics might enable the two sides to cut through the rhetoric and begin to think dispassionately about the details of what peace would look like and cost in actual shekels. The leaders of the Aix Group, as it came to be known, were two economists — a Palestinian and a Jewish Israeli … In the decade since, despite spotty economic data and a political environment that changes month to month, they have slowly set about trying to put a price tag on peace. Every two years, Bamya and Arnon select a new problem for the group to sort out. They meet at least twice a year to discuss their findings. The future of the 5 million Palestinian refugees recognized by the United Nations was among the most difficult issues the group tackled.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/trying-to-put-a-price-on-middle-east-peace-08112011.html
The greatest elected body that money can buy / Stephen Walt
Foreign Police 11 Aug — Just when you think your contempt for Congress could not get any higher, our elected representatives manage to do something to ratchet it up another notch. After congressional shenanigans helped spark a major market sell-off and sparked fears of a double-dip recession, you’d think every single one of them would be heading back to their districts to figure out what their constituents wanted and to try to explain how they were going to help make things better. Or maybe a few of them would even spend the recess taking a crash course in macroeconomics and public finance, so that they could start exercising their public duties more responsibly. But what did 81 of them decide to do instead? You guessed it: they are off on junkets to Israel, paid for by the American Israel Education Foundation, an AIPAC spinoff that has been funding such trips for years. That’s right: during the August recess nearly a fifth of the U.S. Congress will visit a single country whose entire population is less than that of New York City.
link to walt.foreignpolicy.com
groups.yahoo.com/group/f_shadi (listserv)
www.theheadlines.org (archive)
Israel’s Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi to Glenn Beck: ‘G-d will bless you for what you did’
Aug 12, 2011
Lizzy Ratner
It’s T minus twelve days until Glenn Beck’s big End Times powwow in Jerusalem (an event he has predicted “will change the direction of the world”), and the wing-nuts are coming out of the, well, wings to support it. Tea Bagger-turned-Presidential candidate Herman Cain is set to attend, and everyone from Rick Santorum to Ted Nugent to Mad Michelle Bachmann have offered their blessings. And now?
Glenn Beck has reached deep into the central-casting closet and pulled out a rabbi — and not just any rabbi, but Israel’s Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi, Yona Metzger — to perform the prayer for the State of Israel at the rally. Never mind that Metzger has been implicated in bribery, groping, and sexual harrasment scandals. Or that he advised “transferring” Palestinians living in Gaza to the Sinai peninsula, where they could enjoy “a wonderful new modern country with trains, buses, cars, like in Arizona.” When it comes to these characters, Zionism is next to Godliness. And Glenn Beck is next to saintliness.
Herewith, the magic moment when Beck convinced Rabbi Metzger to join his Restoring Courage crusade. Klezmer soundtrack courtesy of GBTV.
(Note: All evidence to the contrary, this is not a long-lost Annie Hall outtake. No matter how many times you blink, rub your eyes, or look away and look back, the man in the black hat does not turn into Woody Allen.)
‘BDS brides’ bring boycott to Bed Bath & Beyond
Aug 12, 2011
Adam Horowitz
In Israel, Steny Hoyer promises, US financial crisis won’t cut our aid package by a dime
Aug 12, 2011
Philip Weiss
Huh. Steny Hoyer is in Israel, with 25 other Democratic congresspeople. Jerusalem Post:
The current economic crisis in the US will have no impact on US financial assistance to Israel, US Congressman Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland) said Wednesday.
Hoyer said he wanted to “make it clear” that the financial challenges confronting the US will not “have any adverse effect on America’s determination to meet its promise to Israel in the form of aid for its qualitative [military] superiority, or for its economic security.”
Hoyer said he did not believe America’s financial challenges would have “any adverse effect on the economic relationship, or assistance, that we give to Israel.”
Hoyer is leading a delegation on a tour paid for by the American Israel Education Foundation, a charitable spinoff of AIPAC. Writes Steve Walt, in “The Greatest Elected Body that Money Can Buy”:
I suppose I ought to be grateful that AIPAC and its sister organizations continue to work overtime to prove me and my co-author right. But there are bigger issues at stake here, which is why I hope that every one of those eighty-plus Congressmen faces a lot of nasty questions from their constituents upon their return.
As they say in Israel/Palestine, imshallah.
By the way, Hoyer also retrenched on Obama’s line– the 1967 borders– in conversation with Bibi Netanyahu. A congressional leader, abandoning the president for a foreign prime minister:
Hoyer said that Netanyahu brought up in their discussion President Barack Obama’s call for a return to negotiations to be based on the 1967 lines, with mutually agreed swaps, and said that Netanyahu believed that consistent with discussions he had with the president on this matter, that “they were in agreement, essentially.”..
[Hoyer went on,] “I think it’s clear that the president did not mean the 1967 borders [will be the final borders], he made it clear that this was subject to additional modifications, and I think the prime minister believed that to be the case as well.”
Needed: ‘worldwide external pressure’
Aug 12, 2011
annie
Joseph Dana’s new article @ The National has a twist at the end:
But fundamental questions remain. How can a protest in Israel, borrowing the revolutionary energy of the Arab Spring, ignore Israel’s military control of the Palestinians? Israel may be seeing a challenge to its security-led ideology, or this could be a “social justice” protest in name only, which will continue to ignore the occupation. The only way to know is if the protests continue and develop a coherent underlying strategy.
If these protests, some of the largest in Israel’s history, dissolve without addressing Israel’s fundamental crisis, it will be difficult to convince anyone that the occupation will end without worldwide external pressure.
Although there’s a glimmer of possibility the protesters will realize there can be no social justice unless it addresses the equality of everyone under Israeli rule, it seems doubtful. Israel needs an intervention. Call it tough love, call it worldwide external pressure, WEP, how’s that for an acronym? I don’t care what it’s called, it needs to happen.
State Department beneficiary, MEMRI, is dedicated to bringing Israeli ideas about Arab world and Iran into U.S. establishment
Aug 12, 2011
Philip Weiss
Yesterday’s $200,000 grant from the State Department to the Middle East Media Research Institute, or MEMRI, whose boards are loaded with Bush-era neocons, including Elliott Abrams, John Bolton and Bernard Lewis, is shocking news. Some developments:
The shop is is run by Yigal Carmon, who had a long career in Israeli intelligence. Ali Gharib at Think Progress adds this information:
The organization was founded as a U.S. tax-exempt non-profit in 1998 by now-Hudson Institute Mideast policy chief Meyrav Wurmser, an Israeli-American [married to former Bush adviser David Wurmser], and current MEMRI president, Israeli Yigal Carmon, a 20-year veteran of the Israel Defense Forces (where he spent five years running Israel’s occupation of the West Bank) and top adviser to two Likud governments. An early archived version of the “about page” of MEMRI’s website lists five staff members, three of whom (including Carmon) have backgrounds in Israeli military intelligence. The same page lists one of MEMRI’s missions as “emphasiz(ing) the continuing relevance of Zionism to the Jewish people and to the state of Israel” — though the line has since disappeared from the website.
The grant is one more step toward what a friend calls “the Israelification of US govt information and intelligence.” See this from MEMRI’s Anti-Terrorism page, emphasizing the Arab world and Iran…
MEMRI’s Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor (JTTM) scrutinizes Islamist terrorism worldwide, with a special focus on the Arab world, Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. …
Or this unreconstructed neoconservative cant:
MEMRI’s work directly supports fighting the U.S. War on Terror. Highly trained staff thoroughly translate and analyze open-source materials that include television programming, radio, newspapers, textbooks, and websites.
Every single day, MEMRI receives requests from members of the U.S. government, military, and legislature. Since September 11, 2001, the demand for this material has significantly increased – providing thousands of pages of translated documents of Arab, Iranian, Urdu, Pashtu, Hindi, Dari, and Turkish print media, terrorist websites, school books, and tens of thousands of hours of translated footage from Arab and Iranian television.
The grant is a political gesture. It cannot be separated from the large role of conservative Jewish money in our political process and the necessity of signalling to those donors that the Obama administration is down with the pro-Israel program.
As Scott McConnell wrote last year, the “special relationship” between Israel and the U.S.
is at bottom a transmission belt, conveying Israeli ideas on how the United States should conduct itself in a contested and volatile part of the world. To a great extent, a receptive American political class now views the Middle East and their country’s role in it through Israel’s eyes.
Thus the grant is of a piece with: 1, 20 percent of Congress is going to Israel for the summer recess, 2, the leading Middle East policy-maker in the Obama administration is Dennis Ross, who lately headed a Jerusalem thinktank dedicated to the future of the Jewish people, 3, the leader of our Iran policy under Obama was a neocon holdover from the Bush administration who was a friend of AIPAC, and his replacement is his former law partner.
All these facts are stunning. Yet they are not really touched by the mainstream media, which goes to show that the Israel lobby is still a live force inside the establishment, though it faces inevitable collapse given the grassroots and historical forces working to undermine it.
Oh and Gharib hits the anti-semitism focus.
Finding examples of anti-Semitism is already a robust MEMRI project and one wonders why exactly they needed the cash: According to publicly available tax filings, MEMRI had nearly $5 million in revenue in 2007 and more than $4.5 million in revenue in 2008.
What’s more troubling, MEMRI has faced accusations of mistranslating items and cherry-picking incendiary sources to portray regional media and attitudes in an overly-negative fashion. ….MEMRI has been accused of twisting translations to portray criticisms of Israel and its driving ideology, Zionism, as anti-Semitic. In 2006, Rima Barakat, a Palestinian and Muslim activist and one-time Republican candidate for the Colorado state assembly, wrote in the Rocky Mountain News:
“Halim Barakat (no relation), a professor at Georgetown University, published an article in Al-Hayat Daily of London titled ‘The wild beast that Zionism created: Self-destruction.’ By the time MEMRI ‘translated’ it, the title was distorted to ‘Jews have lost their humanity.’ Barakat objected, ‘Every time I wrote Zionism, MEMRI replaced the word by Jew or Judaism. They want to give the impression that I’m not criticizing Israeli policy, but that what I’m saying is anti-Semitic.’ It seems obvious that MEMRI is adamant on stigmatizing anyone who criticizes Israel and/or Zionism as being anti Jewish.
In a 2002 article, then-Middle East editor of the British Guardian newspaper Brian Whitaker criticized MEMRI for inaccuracies that reflected an agenda:
“As far as relations between the west and the Arab world are concerned, language is a barrier that perpetuates ignorance and can easily foster misunderstanding.
“All it takes is a small but active group of Israelis to exploit that barrier for their own ends and start changing western perceptions of Arabs for the worse.”
In Honolulu Star-Advertiser: they tried to suppress MLK’s boycott too, but nothing can defeat this movement
Aug 12, 2011
Philip Weiss
I can’t get a link, but I gather that the Honolulu Star-Advertiser lately ran an op-ed by flotilla activists Carol Murry and Greta Berlin that included the passages below. It’s a breakthrough whenever any mainstream paper puts this kind of stuff out there:
The boat and its passengers were forced into a locked compound, and our captain was jailed with no food, water, bed or toilet. A group of passengers who fasted in protest over mistreatment of the captain were repeatedly taken by force to the Greek police station and held without charges for hours… When asked, the Greek police said they were acting at the direction of the U.S. Embassy, supposedly charged with protecting, not imprisoning, U.S. citizens.
Ironically, at the same time, Israeli Knesset members passed legislation banning Palestinian calls for economic, cultural and academic boycott of Israel and its settlements due to its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory, violations of international law and treatment of Palestinians as inferiors before the law. This legislation mandated monetary penalties for Palestinian or Israeli offenders even if no damages could be proved and is reminiscent of when Martin Luther King Jr. faced a fine or imprisonment under an old anti-boycott law during the Montgomery bus boycott.
….The good news in the overreactions of the U.S. and Israel to Freedom Flotilla 2 and the Boycott, Sanctions, and Divestment (BDS) movement is that both countries have suffered a significant loss to their international standing, a sign of the success of both movements.
…The BDS movement and flotillas cannot be stopped. Both movements will persist until the oppression of Gaza and occupation of the West Bank cease.
Israel approves 1000s more homes in E Jerusalem as UN envoy is shocked and US says nothing
Aug 12, 2011
Kate
and other news from Today in Palestine:
Land, property, resources theft and destruction / Ethnic cleansing / Apartheid
Israel approves 1,600 Jerusalem settler homes
JERUSALEM (AFP) 11 Aug — Israel’s interior minister Eli Yishai has given final approval for the construction of 1,600 new settler homes in east Jerusalem, his spokesman told AFP on Thursday … Roei Lachmanovich also said the interior minister was set to give final approval for another 2,700 settler homes in east Jerusalem neighborhoods in “a couple of days.” “He has approved 1,600 homes in Ramat Shlomo and will approve 2,000 more in Givat Hamatos and 700 in Pisgat Zeev,” Lachmanovich said … Lachmanovich said the final approvals were “economic” not political, tying the final go-ahead to protests over housing prices and the cost of living that have shaken Israel in recent weeks. “These are being approved because of the economic crisis here in Israel, they are looking for a place to build in Jerusalem, and these will help,” he said. “This is nothing political, it’s just economic.”
link to www.maannews.net
Another announcement on construction in East Jerusalem
Maps, explanations of plans from Peace Now Settlement Watch E. Jerusalem 11 Aug
link to settlementwatcheastjerusalem.wordpress.com
UN envoy alarmed by ‘provocative’ settlement plan
BETHLEHEM (Ma‘an) 11 Aug — United Nations envoy for the peace process expressed alarm on Thursday over the announcement by the Israeli government of plans to develop new housing units in occupied East Jerusalem. Robert Serry said in a statement that “this provocative action undermines ongoing efforts by the international community to bring the parties back to negotiations and shape a positive agenda for September.”
link to www.maannews.net
Ashrawi: Israel’s de facto policy destroys the peace process
RAMALLAH (WAFA) 11 Aug — Hanan Ashrawi, PLO Executive Committee member, Thursday warned that Israel’s unilateral measures in Jerusalem are a violation of international resolutions and will destroy the peace process. Commenting on Israeli plans to build thousand of housing units in East Jerusalem, Ashrawi said that “this new crime which Israel is seeking to carry out in full view of the world, aims at changing the city’s demographic, cultural and historical reality, terminating Palestinian presence in the city and expelling its original residents without accountability from the international community.” She said the Israeli housing problem resulted from investing the money to serve settlements and occupation projects instead of treating and resolving the social injustice.
link to english.wafa.ps
Fatah says it will fight Israeli settlement plans
RAMALLAH (WAFA) 11 Aug — Fatah movement, headed by President Mahmoud Abbas, said Thursday that it will fight Israeli settlement plans in the Palestinian Territory through legitimate means. It said Israeli government approval of building 4,300 units in occupied Jerusalem “is a new aggression against the Palestinian land and scorns the international community and United Nations resolutions.”
link to english.wafa.ps
IOA flattens Palestinian home in occupied Jerusalem
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (PIC) 11 Aug — The Israeli occupation authority (IOA) razed the home of Majed Al-Rajabi in Baka’a area to the southwest of occupied Jerusalem on Wednesday due to the usual pretext of lack of construction permit. Rajabi said that the IOA glued a demolition order on his 60 square meter home a week ago, adding that he had purchased the house seven years ago when it was a deserted shop. The IOA had razed another home for Rajabi in 2009 in Beit Hanina in occupied Jerusalem at the same pretext. Rajabi said that his son-in-law, who lives near him, has received a similar demolition notice,
link to www.palestine-info.co.uk
Palestine’s UN observer calls to stop destruction of historic cemetery in Jerusalem
NEW YORK (WAFA) 10 Aug — Palestine’s Permanent Observer to the United Nations (UN), Riyad Mansour urged Wednesday the international community to take action to stop the continued destruction of ‘Ma’man Allah’ historic cemetery in East Jerusalem by the Israeli government. Mansour urged the international community to condemn the Israeli construction of the so-called “Center for Human Dignity — Museum of Tolerance” over the buried Muslims in the cemetery.
link to english.wafa.ps
IOF serves demolition notice to owner of water well
JERICHO (PIC) 11 Aug — Israeli occupation forces (IOF) served a notice to a Palestinian citizen in Nuwaima village, Jericho province, that his water well would be razed because it was built without permit in area C of the West Bank … Zuhair Manasra, the head of the society of palm growers in Jericho, refuted the IOA claim that the water well was located in C area, adding that it is located in A area. He said that the IOA decision would lead to the death of palm trees in the entire area, noting that it contains 4000 trees. The IOA seeks to redirect all water resources in the Jordan Valley to serve 30 Jewish settlements there inhabited by 9500 settlers who consume double the consumption of the entire Palestinian population in the West Bank.
link to www.palestine-info.co.uk
Settlers have other rules / Sima Kadmon
Ynet 11 Aug — Op-ed: While housing protesters struggle, outpost dwellers get quick government solutions … The Migron story is a small illustration of a big policy, says Peace Now Secretary General Yariv Oppenheimer. Those who take over private land in the territories do not only avoid eviction — the State offers them a rapid solution. The protesters at the tents, says Oppenheimer, are hereby invited to build outposts in the settlements and then watch as the State enlists to the cause of finding housing solutions for them.
link to www.ynetnews.com
Settlers
Jewish settlers seize Palestinian homes by force
AL-KHALIL/HEBRON (PIC) 11 Aug — Jewish settlers forced their way into Palestinian homes in the Old City of Al-Khalil and expelled their inhabitants at dawn Thursday, eyewitnesses said. They said that the settlers used digging tools to force their way into those homes overlooking the settlement outposts in the city.
link to www.palestine-info.co.uk
Israeli forces
Kfir Brigade soldier’s conviction overturned
Ynet 11 Aug — The Military Appellate Court on Wednesday overturned the conviction of a Kfir Brigade paramedic charged with attacking Palestinian residents during 2008 operational activity in Kfar Kadum, referring the case back to the Jaffa Military Court. The judges ruled that because the Brigade Commander, Colonel Itai Virob, was reprimanded prior to the opening of Sergeant G.’s trial, his testimony may have directly or indirectly influenced the sentencing and subsequent punishment of 65 days in prison.
link to www.ynetnews.com
American olim seek combat service
Ynet 11 Aug — Some 100 young Jewish adults from US, Canada to join IDF immediately after arriving in Israel next week; nearly all of them want to be combat soldiers … These young Jews are immigrating to Israel as part of a joint campaign launched by the Nefesh B’Nefesh organization, the Jewish Agency, Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF), Garin Tzabar of the Friends of Israel Scouts and the Immigrant Absorption Ministry.
link to www.ynetnews.com
Detention
Israel uses “primitive, racist” policies against Palestinian prisoners / Mel Frykberg
RAMALLAH (IPS) 10 Aug — ““I’m sick with worry about my daughter,” Yehiya al-Shalabi says. “I’m afraid of what they are doing to her. She has done nothing to deserve this. If they have anything against her why don’t they bring her to trial?” Hana al-Shalabi, Yehiya’s 27-year-old daughter, has been languishing in Israeli administrative detention for more than two years. She is the longest serving Palestinian female political prisoner in administrative detention. According to her lawyer, the young woman from Jenin in the northern West Bank does not know why Israeli soldiers arrested her several years ago. She also does not know how long they will keep her in jail or what they will charge her with.
link to electronicintifada.net
Longest held administrative detainee arrested again
AL-KHALIL/HEBRON (PIC) 11 Aug — The longest held Palestinian prisoner in administrative detention Ayed Dudin, 44, has once again been arrested just 40 days after being released. Prior to the incident, Dudin had been kept in administrative detention without an indictment for four years … At around 2am Tuesday morning, the Dudins’ residence in Al-Khalil governorate was raided by an Israeli force of 50 soldiers, the family said. Everyone was ordered to evacuate the home as items in it were manhandled and people terrified during a search. In addition, rocks were reported to have been thrown at the residence by soldiers and one of the doors was left broken. A computer and two mobile phones were also confiscated during the search. But the officers failed to inform the family the reason for the arrest or where Dudin would be taken.
link to www.palestine-info.co.uk
In prison, and denied education / Mohammed Omer
GAZA CITY (IPS) 11 Aug — Access to education for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails is getting worse as international organisations remain unwilling or unable to intervene. Secondary- school students here completed their exams in June, and received their results by end of July. However, the 1,800 Palestinian prisoners who were supposed to complete their exams were not permitted to do so by the Israeli Prison Service.
link to ipsnews.net
International abduction
Report: ‘Hamas engineer’ cooperating with interrogators
TEL AVIV (Ma’an) 11 Aug — A Gaza engineer kidnapped by Israel earlier this year in the Ukraine has provided interrogators information on Hamas’ technical capabilities, an Israeli newspaper said Thursday. Dirar Abu Sisi, head of the Gaza power plant, was kidnapped in Kiev in February … Israel claims Abu Sisi served as a kind of consultant for Hamas’ rocket manufacturers. “I assisted Hamas in developing their missile capabilities, by identifying and handing over mathematical equations that improve the metal pipe’s ability to withstand pressure and heat,” he is quoted as saying. … According to the report, Abu Sisi has expressed regret for assisting Hamas. But his family and Palestinian officials have denied any connection to Hamas. Abu Sisi’s sister Suzanne said earlier this year that he was “not linked in any way to any political faction, he was working as the head of the operations of the plant before Hamas came to power, and he continues his work as a university professor.” The Palestinian Authority’s ambassador in the Ukraine has also disputed Israel’s claims …
His Israeli lawyer, Smadar Ben-Natan, said in April that her client had made confessions “under very heavy duress which I would characterise as torture.” Hamas denies that Abu Sisi had any connection to the organization.
link to www.maannews.net
Gaza
US warns Hamas on possible withdrawal of Gaza aid over audit dispute / Ethan Bronner
JERUSALEM (NYT) 11 Aug — The State Department sent a message to Hamas rulers in Gaza on Thursday that it would withdraw some $100 million it is spending in Gaza on health care, agriculture and water infrastructure if they did not back off a demand to audit the books of American-financed charities operating there … For American organizations, United States policy forbids direct contact with Hamas, labeled by the State Department as a terrorist group. As a result on-site audits by Hamas officials would lead to suspension of activity, American officials said. The United States accounts for a large share of the money foreign governments spend on humanitarian assistance in Gaza.
link to www.nytimes.com
Hamas militant killed in ‘mystery’ Gaza blast
GAZA CITY: A member of Hamas’ armed wing was killed Thursday in a “mysterious explosion” in the southern Gaza town of Rafah, the group and Palestinian medical sources said. The Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades announced the death in a statement, naming the militant as 20-year-old Ali Nayef al-Haj. “Ali Nayef al-Haj of Yebna refugee camp was martyred on Thursday in an accidental internal explosion,” the group said. The group gave no additional details, but it also made no accusations that Israel was involved in the death.
link to www.dailystar.com.lb
Gaza Ramadan, hard, meaningful / Eva Bartlett
In Gaza 11 Aug — The Muslim holy month of Ramadan began six days ago here in Gaza, and this year it’s scorching (it’s based on the lunar cycle, so varies yearly). I’ve dabbled in Ramadan before, but have never had the privilege of spending it with a family for more than one iftar (the celebratory evening ‘breakfast’). Living with a fasting family is insightful in many ways. I see the considerable willpower they exhibit to ensure nothing passes their lips. For many going without water is the hardest. For the smokers, it’s the lack of nicotine that causes nerves to fray. And as the countdown to the evening call-to-prayer rolls on, drivers get more irritable and distracted. Were this any other time I’d assume that the many strained faces and lethargic movements I see from mid-afternoon to sunset were due to illness. Despite the serious challenge of abstaining from consuming anything for what amounts to about 14 hours in Palestine (this period differs depending on geographic location), everyone tells me Ramadan is the most beautiful month. And while I was initially skeptical, I see their happiness at iftar and throughout the night as people meet with friends or sit through the late hours with family.
link to ingaza.wordpress.com
Qassam rocket explodes near kibbutz
Ynet 11 Aug — A Qassam rocket fired from the Gaza Strip Thursday evening exploded near a kibbutz in the Shaar HaNegev regional council. Local residents rushed to take shelter as the Color Red anti-rocket alert system was activated. No injuries or damages were reported in the latest attack.
link to www.ynetnews.com
Racism
Britain denies entry to Israeli rabbi who advocated killing of non-Jews
Haaretz 11 Aug — The U.K. Border Agency is prohibiting fundamentalist Rabbi Yosef Elitzur, co-author of the controversial book “The King’s Torah” (“Torat Hamelech” ), from entering Britain, the Jewish Voice website reported on Wednesday. Elitzur received a letter last month from the U.K. Border Agency, signed by the home secretary, informing him that he could not enter Britain for the next three years. The July 20 letter, which appears on the website, cites the British law forbidding entry to anyone who writes, publishes or distributes material “fomenting or justifying terrorist violence … and seeking to provoke others to commit terrorist acts.” The book says Jews may kill gentiles, among other things.
link to www.haaretz.com
Political / Diplomatic / International
Abbas tells US lawmakers he wants state empty of settlements
RAMALLAH (WAFA) 11 Aug — President Mahmoud Abbas Thursday told a delegation from the United States Senate and House of Representatives that he is seeking a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with Jerusalem as its capital, empty of settlements. The delegation, led by Senator Steny Hoyer, is on an official visit to Israel and the Palestinian Territory … He said that the security of the upcoming Palestinian state will be the responsibility of a third party made of NATO forces with US command.
link to english.wafa.ps
Arabs to urge yes vote on Palestinian UN bid
RAMALLAH (AFP) 11 Aug — A delegation of Arab foreign ministers will urge permanent members of the Security Council next week to vote for Palestinian UN membership, a top Palestinian official said Thursday. Negotiator Saeb Erekat said the group would talk with representatives from the veto-wielding Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States in a bid to sway them in favor of the Palestinian request for membership.
link to www.maannews.net
Republican presidential candidate wants to destroy UN if it recognizes Palestine / Noam Sheizaf
+972mag 11 Aug — In an op-ed published by the pro-Netanyahu tabloid Yisrael Hayom, Republican Newt Gingrich calls upon the United States to stop supporting the United Nations if it votes for Palestinian independence. “We don’t need to fund a corrupt institution to beat up on our allies,” says Gingrich.
link to 972mag.com
Erekat: UN vote not coordinated with Hamas
BETHLEHEM (Ma‘an) 11 Aug — There has been no coordination between Fatah and Hamas over the Palestinian UN bid for statehood in September, PA official Saeb Erekat told Ma‘an on Wednesday. “Unfortunately, there has been no coordination so far with Hamas, but the door is open and we welcome them any time.”
link to www.maannews.net
PA rejects Israeli sanction threats
BETHLEHEM (Ma‘an) 11 Aug– Adviser to President Abbas, Nimir Hammad, said Thursday that the PA will not be intimidated by threats, after Israeli media reported that the government is considering sanctions against the PA if it continues with the September UN bid.
link to www.maannews.net
India to vote in UN for Palestinians state in September
NEW DELHI (WAFA) 11 Aug — India will vote in favor of the Palestinian request to gain full membership of an independent Palestinian state within 1967 borders at the United Nations General Assembly when it comes up for a vote in September, said Indian External Affairs Minister E. Ahamed.
link to english.wafa.ps
Barak warns Israeli ministers sanctions could lead to the Palestinian Authority’s collapse
Haaretz 11 Aug — Ministers hope preemptive sanctions against PA will pressure Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to back down over UN statehood bid … Among the preemptive sanctions discussed was a proposal by Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz to stop transferring the customs duties that Israel collects at its ports on the PA’s behalf. The PA is suffering a severe cash shortage and is having a hard time paying its employees; the taxes Israel passes over are used to pay the lion’s share of those salaries. For this reason, Barak vehemently objected to the measure, saying it could lead to the PA’s collapse, which would leave the territories in a state of anarchy. Representatives of the Justice Ministry and the military prosecution also warned against taking such unilateral steps.
link to www.haaretz.com
IDF concerned UN vote on Palestinian state may lead to tensions with Syria
Haaretz 11 Aug — The Israel Defense Forces is readying for possible engagement with the Syrian military in September, should the latter involve itself in new attempts by Palestinians in Syria to storm the border with the Golan Heights in connection with a UN vote on recognizing a Palestinian state. The IDF acknowledges it may be necessary to deal with Syrian military intervention in such a scenario, which could occur if Syria tried to deflect world attention from the ongoing demonstrations in that country – and their bloody suppression – by creating an incident on the border.
link to www.haaretz.com
Israel offers to double restitution instead of apology to Turkey
ANKARA (PIC) 11 Aug — Israel has offered to double compensation to the families of those killed in the May 2010 Mavi Marmara attack instead of officially apologizing for the attack as demanded by Turkey, the Israeli daily Ma’ariv reported on Thursday, quoting an Israeli political official. The new proposal states that the amount to be paid to each of the nine Turkish victims’ families would be raised from US $50,000 to $100,000 in a bid to dodge the apology demand. The official said Turkey has yet to respond to the offer
link to www.palestine-info.co.uk
Other news
Young make up one-third of Palestinian population
BETHLEHEM (Ma‘an) 11 Aug — The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics released a demographic study Thursday which showed that young people form one third of the Palestinian population. The results were published on the eve of International Youth Day … Results showed that around 45% of young people (15-29) were enrolled in education in 2010, with one fifth of graduates studying business and administration. Almost 50% of young people do not read newspapers and magazines and more than one quarter of male youth smoke. One third of young people were unemployed during the first quarter of 2011, the study found. The highest unemployment rate was 38.4% in the 20-24 age group compared with 28.2% for 25-29. In addition, 40.1% of those unemployed had completed at least 13 years of education.
link to www.maannews.net
Hamas: PA is clamping down on our preachers
JPost 11 Aug — They want to isolate us because they fear our influence. People won’t give up on us Islamists because we’re credible, legislator says — The Palestinian Authority has been barring Hamas affiliated imams and members of parliament from delivering sermons during the month of Ramadan and have also threatened mosque leaders from associating with them, Hamas MPs have claimed.
link to www.jpost.com
Sweden contributes €4 million to pay PA salaries
RAMALLAH (Ma’an) — … Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad signed the agreement on Thursday with Swedish consul to the PA Axel Wernhoff. The Ramallah PM thanked the Swedish government for their economic support at a time in which the PA is trying to overcome a financial crisis.
link to www.maannews.net
Iran names street after Rachel Corrie
AP 11 Aug — Tehran city council has named a street after an American activist who was crushed to death by an Israeli military bulldozer in the Gaza Strip in 2003, a local newspaper has reported. The report in the Hamshahri, a daily affiliated with Tehran’s authorities, said the council has named the street Rachel Aliene Corrie … The decision marked the first time an Iranian street has been named after a US national since the 1979 Islamic revolution that ousted the pro-west shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi.
link to www.guardian.co.uk
VIDEO: Tourists impressed by tent city in Tel Aviv
Ynet 11 Aug — Foreigners used to hearing about Israel in a political context are being exposed for the first time to Israel’s social agenda. Ynet spoke to some at Rothschild Blvd’s tent city
link to www.ynetnews.com
Haredim protest Jerusalem summer events
Ynet 11 Aug — The ultra-Orthodox Eda Haredit faction is planning a mass protest against the Jerusalem Municipality on Thursday evening. According to the organizers, the summer events held in the capital are inappropriate for a holy city, and in some cases even lead to Shabbat desecration. Thursday’s rally is expected to be led by Eda Haredit rabbis — including the extreme faction’s leader, Rabbi Yitzchok Tuvia Weiss.
link to www.ynetnews.com
Analysis / Opinion
Analysis: ‘Prisoners’ of Israeli airspace / Alaa Tartir
Ma‘an 11 Aug — I never thought it was possible to be in prison in the sky. I always thought that prisons needed to be on the ground. I also never thought that the prison could move and even fly: I always believed that cells needed to be rooted in the ground. However, these two assumptions which I have believed for the last 26 years proved recently to be ‘wrong.’ On a recent journey from Ramallah to London — of course through the compulsory Amman route as the West Bank is not allowed an airport — I experienced a new form of Israeli detention, this time in Israeli airspace. It was an unpleasant experience, as passengers were forbidden from fulfilling basic human needs such as using the toilet, receiving food or water, or moving between seats to chat with friends.
link to www.maannews.net
Why the US must support bid for Palestinian statehood / Ibrahim Sharqieh
CSM 9 Aug — Palestinian leaders need equal footing with Israeli leaders – not to mention popular backing – for any peace process to succeed. Statehood sets the stage not only for productive negotiations, but also for lasting regional peace … US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s invitation for Palestinian and Israeli negotiators to come to Washington for talks to resolve the negotiations impasse is certainly the wrong approach. It seems that the lessons of the Arab Spring have not yet been learned: The leaders are replaceable, but the people are not. Ms. Clinton should be paying attention to what the Palestinian people want (the declaration of a Palestinian state), rather than heeding only what negotiators are saying. The most recent poll shows that 65 percent of Palestinians support a bid for statehood.
link to news.yahoo.com
What would UN recognition of a Palestinian state mean? / Dr. Naji Sadeq Shurrab
MEMO 10 Aug — There is no doubt about the importance of the UN recognising Palestine as a state, and more importantly its acceptance as a full member state. If such recognition is given in September, it will confirm the importance of activating the option of international legitimacy. However, we should not get too excited about possible UN recognition; it would not mean an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory, for example, but it could be the start of a long political process. At the same time, it would shift some of the responsibility to bring about an end to the occupation on to the United Nations, for it is inconceivable that a member state of the UN could be occupied by another member; that would be contrary to the organisation’s Charter, and is contrary to the conditions of accession, which provide for the independence of the country requesting membership.
link to www.middleeastmonitor.org.uk
In Egypt’s Bedouin badlands: no police allowed
TIME 11 Aug — Quseima is a quiet village built along a desert valley where a natural spring bubbles forth from the ground, feeding a modest crop of olive groves and date palms where the local Bedouin community ekes out an existence. Its outward appearance is unremarkable in this remote section of the eastern Sinai Peninsula, known to three decades of international peacekeeping forces as “Zone C.” But Quseima’s police headquarters, like those of others in the zone, is a startling sight: gutted by flames and pockmarked by rocket-propelled grenade fire. The burned carcass of an armored personnel carrier sits outside in the blazing sunlight; its turret, guns and interior parts all looted. Zone C is the last bit of Egyptian territory before the international border with Israel and the Gaza Strip, and it’s a zone where – under a long-standing Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty – only Egyptian civilian police are allowed to conduct security. But it has been months since the police have set foot in these parts.
link to old.news.yahoo.com
California’s West Bank: Tribes vs. residents on the Colorado River
Capitol Weekly 10 Aug — Last month, Jim Foley got evicted from the land where he’s had a home since 1979 — land that he cleared himself, with 120 feet of shoreline on the Colorado River. He and his wife had lived there full time since retiring in 2000. It had a mobile home and a garage on it, along with other improvements he left in place. But he went without a fight. After all, he hadn’t paid rent in 21 years. “I decided not to pay them,” Foley said. “They did not belong there in the first place. I’m not going to pay somebody for something that doesn’t belong to them.” “Them” is the Colorado River Indian Tribes, a collection of Chemehuevi, Hopi, Mohave and Navajo Indians collective known as “CRIT.” They’re based across the river in Arizona, and have been involved in a decades-long dispute with leaseholders along a 25-mile section of the California side of the river.
link to www.capitolweekly.net
groups.yahoo.com/group/f_shadi (listserv)
www.theheadlines.org (archive)
In 1950, Avnery offered first Israeli corroboration of ‘the Palestinian narrative’
Aug 12, 2011
Ira Glunts
A couple of weeks ago, I read an English translation of The Other Side of the Coin by the well–known Israeli journalist and political activist Uri Avnery. This memoir describes the experiences of the author during the Israeli War of Independence, which is known to Palestinians as the Nakba or Catastrophe. The book first appeared in Hebrew in 1950. An English translation was published in 2008 in a volume titled, 1948: A Soldier’s Tale, The Bloody Road to Jerusalem. Also included in this volume are dispatches from the front, which were initially published in the newspaper Ha’aretz, and then were subsequently collected and published in 1949 as a book titled In the Fields of the Philistines. This latter volume became a much- lauded overnight bestseller, and as a result, Avnery came to symbolize the Israeli warrior hero for much of the Israeli public.
In the preface to the English volume, Avnery states that he wrote The Other Side of the Coin because he was disappointed that most understood his first book to be a glorification of the 1948 War. He stated that he wanted to also show the “dark side of the war.” Avnery felt that “since the war was over [he] could [now] write the whole truth.”
Despite the enormous success of In the Fields of the Philistines and his new-found celebrity, Avnery had great difficulty finding a publisher for his second memoir. The book eventually had two small printings in the 50s. It was attacked by critics as deceitful and “full of lies.”
The Other Side of the Coin contains a surprisingly stark and shocking view of what happened when the Samson’s Foxes (the author’s unit) invaded a series of Arab villages in what is currently southern Israel. In this book, Avnery portrays the Jewish army’s looting, raping, and killing of prisoners and civilians as commonplace and widely accepted occurrences among the Jewish fighters.
The following segment is Avnery’s depiction of the execution of an 80-year-old woman who had remained in the village of Daba after everyone else had fled. This memoir may be the first published Israeli corroboration of what many euphemistically call the Palestinian narrative.
Suddenly we saw someone. We were astonished to see a living creature here. It was an old woman. At least eighty years old. Wrapped in rags she sat in front of her house. When they run away the Fellaheen often leave the old and the blind behind.
We in the first jeep stopped immediately. Looked at each other.
“Not worth it,” Sancho answered the unspoken question. We drove on.
At the next crossroads we noticed that the second jeep, with Nachshe, Tarzan and Jamus, was no longer following us. With difficulty we turned back. The second jeep was standing by the old woman’s house. Nachshe stood in front of her waving his pistol.
“Hat Masari! Hat Masari! Fi, Fi!” [trans. Hand over the money!] he shouted. Like all of us, he believed that every Arab must have a treasure buried somewhere.
“Ma feesh, y khawaja!” [I have nothing, sir.] moaned the old woman in a whiny voice.
“Fi! Fi!” Nachshe shouted angrily and fired four bullets into the old woman. The shots threw her body upwards, as if she was jumping, then she fell dead into the same position we had first seen her in—leaning against the door frame.
Now Nachshe felt ashamed and didn’t want to be reminded of what he had done. It’s always like that with him. He can’t simply kill for pleasure and then feel like a hero the way Kebab can. Whenever he has killed a Fellah or a prisoner, he tries to forget about it and gets annoyed if you remind him.
Kebab won’t leave him alone. Nachshe is a member of the “intelligentsia” and has a big office. Kebab finds this murder reassuring. Because if a person like Nachshe is allowed to kill Fellaheen, then he himself, who is just an unskilled worker, can also be counted as a respectable person.
Actually you can’t hold it against Nachshe. It is not his fault. Homicidal urges come on him like an illness. He can’t do anything about it. Besides that he is a nice fellow. He would never abandon a wounded comrade in the field. At Position 125, did he not get out of his jeep at the worst moment and right between the Egyptian positions, in order to recover Nino’s body? I am not so sure about Kebab. I wouldn’t be very keen to find myself on patrol behind enemy lines with him.
“What’s the matter?” Kebab asks. “Are you ashamed that you finished off this stinking Arab woman?”
“That’s enough! Don’t you spend your whole day dreaming of Arab women?” Tarzan says in support of Nachshe.
“What has it got to do with you?” Kebab turns on him. “You are not brave enough to finish off just one Arab!” The truth, of course, is that Tarzan cannot kill an Arab, except in battle. Despite his enormous physical power he has a gentle soul, which he finds very embarrassing.
Avnery, Uri, The Other Side of the Coin, in 1948: A Soldier’s Tale, The Bloody Road To Jerusalem, One World, Oxford, 2008, p. 322-323.
Martin in Palestine
Aug 12, 2011
annie
Martin Luther King Jr. In Palestine is a documentary project by filmmaker Connie Field, director-producer of both Have You Heard From Johannesburg and the Academy Award nominated Freedom On My Mind about the civil rights movement in the US.
The film documents the Palestinian production of Passages of Martin Luther King by esteemed King Scholar Clayborne Carson.
Stanford’s Martin Luther King scholar Clay Carson took his play, Passages of Martin Luther King, to the Palestinian National Theatre in East Jerusalem and West Bank communities in March and early April. The production, translated into Arabic and directed by Kamel El Basha, featured eight Palestinian actors, along with six African American singers who depicted King’s Ebenezer Baptist Church choir and civil rights freedom fighters.
Field is raising funds thru a Kickstarter project, she’s got 15 days left.
This is a great story that can reach new audiences who would not necessarily come see a film about Palestine, incorporating the inherent drama of the theatre and propelled by the foot-stomping rhythms of gospel music. It was an intense cultural exchange between two peoples encompassing the joy of new friendships, creative collaborations and eye opening experiences. No one who participated remained unchanged.
We traveled through the Holy Land that the Christian choir were so passionately excited to see, as they were introduced to the other side of the land where Jesus once walked: a man whose front yard has been bisected by the Security Wall and whose children have to play in the dust of its continued construction; the ease with which they as foreigners were able to pass through checkpoints while their Palestinian counterparts took hours to navigate the same distance; a home which had no water because a settlement had taken over their well, where Palestinian women teach them songs in Arabic and join them in singing American gospel songs. And yet, amidst the hardships of occupied life, the choir is greeted with food, humor, and generosity, a mixture that brought some of them to tears.