MONDOWEISS ONLINE NEWSLETTER

NOVANEWS

08/27/2010

• Top ten reasons for skepticism on Israeli-Palestinian talks
• Israeli theater actors refuse to perform at new cultural center in West Bank settlement
• When will the ‘Washington Post’ Op-Ed page provide space to Palestinian voices?
• After Birthright: Dangerous conversations and the stifling of dissent
• Gilbert Achcar’s book on Arabs and the Holocaust
• In English publication, Israeli Palestinian pol calls for — sit down — liberal democracy
• Don’t forget ‘The Atlantic’’s pieties about who destroyed Palestine
• Settlement boycott causing ‘enormous damage’ to Israeli companies operating in the West Bank

Top ten reasons for skepticism on Israeli-Palestinian talks
Aug 26, 2010 
 Josh Ruebner
 

On August 20, the Obama Administration announced that it will reconvene under its auspices direct Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations beginning on September 2.

While a just and lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace is in everyone’s interest, there are profound reasons to be skeptical about the likelihood of success for the following reasons (not necessarily listed in order of importance):

1. No more photo-ops, please. There is a desperate need for a just, comprehensive and lasting peace in the Middle East. Negotiations can be a key to that. But the last thing Palestinians and Israelis need are phony negotiations. They only breed disillusionment, resentment, and cynicism about the possibility of Israeli-Palestinian peace based on human rights and justice. So rather than enter into negotiations for the sake of negotiations, the Obama Administration should exert real political pressure on Israel by cutting off military aid to once and for all get it to commit to dismantling its regime of occupation and apartheid against Palestinians, and make clear that the framework for all negotiations will be based on international law, human rights, and UN resolutions. As long as it fails to do so, U.S. civil society must keep up the pressure through campaigns of boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) to change these dynamics and by joining up with the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation.

2. The United States is not evenhanded. For decades, the United States has arrogated the role of convening Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. To convince the world that it is suitable to play this role, the United States declares that it is evenhanded, when it in fact arms Israel to the teeth and is aware that Israel will employ these U.S. weapons to conduct its human rights abuses of and apartheid policies toward Palestinians. Under international law, an outside party that provides weapons to a party in an armed conflict violates laws of neutrality. The United States is scheduled to provide Israel with $30 billion in weapons from 2009-2018 (part and parcel of a broader strategy to further militarize the region with an additional $60 billion in weapons sales to Gulf States). The United States cannot credibly broker Israeli-Palestinian peace while bankrolling Israel’s military machine and simultaneously ignoring Israel’s human rights violations.

3. Israeli colonization of Palestinian land continues. In one of its most abject policy failures, the Obama Administration has contented itself with resuming direct negotiations without securing an Israeli freeze on the colonization of Palestinian land, despite spending an initial nine months trying to do so. Israeli colonization of Palestinian land, including the expansion of settlements, the eviction of Palestinians from their homes, the building of the Apartheid Wall, continues apace. Previous failed rounds of negotiations have demonstrated that Israel utilizes negotiations as a fig leaf to actually increase its pace of colonization of Palestinian land, and there is every reason to believe that it will continue to do so. Meanwhile, Israel’s ongoing colonization of Palestinian land creates difficult-to-reverse “facts on the ground” that only make a two-state solution–purportedly the end game of the negotiations–less achievable.

4. Negotiations supersede accountability. The Obama Administration, building on decades of previous U.S. efforts to shield Israel from accountability, has worked actively to scuttle international attempts to hold Israel accountable for its previous violations of international law and human rights, and its commission of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity. Both after the Goldstone Report and Israel’s attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, the United States used its leverage at the United Nations to prevent Israel from being held accountable, arguing that accountability undermines prospects for peace negotiations. On the contrary, for peace negotiations to be successful, Israel must be held accountable for its actions and shown that it will pay a price for its illegal policies. Otherwise, it has no reason to alter its behavior.

5. No terms of reference. In his August 20 press briefing, Special Envoy for Middle East Peace George Mitchell confirmed that the United States is not insisting on any guiding principles for the negotiations, or “terms of references” in diplomatic parlance, and that these terms will be worked out by the parties themselves. In other words, Israel will be free to marshal its overwhelming power to refuse to negotiate on the basis of human rights, international law, and UN resolutions, the only viable basis for a just and lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace. Instead, Israel–backed by the United States–will negotiate based on its own exclusive terms of reference, namely what is in Israel’s “security interests.” As in previous failed rounds of negotiations, Palestinian rights will not enter into the conversation.

 

6. No timeline. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton believes that negotiations “could” be concluded within a year. Of course, successful Israeli-Palestinian negotiations could be wrapped up within in a year. In contrast to “peace process industry” pundits, there is nothing intrinsically complex or complicated about resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict if Israel were to negotiate in good faith by declaring an end to its policies of occupation and apartheid against Palestinians. After all, South Africa concluded negotiations to end apartheid within a few months once the decision had been made to transition to democracy. However, Israel has given no indication whatsoever that it is prepared to alter its policies toward Palestinians, setting the stage for prolonged and fruitless negotiations.

7. Can a leopard change its spots? A recently-leaked video from 2001 shows current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrogantly bragging that “I actually stopped the Oslo Accord [shorthand for the failed 1993-2000 Israeli-Palestinian “peace process’].” (The Institute for Middle East Understanding has provided a useful translation and transcript of the video here.) His current Foreign Minister, Avigdor Leiberman, lives in an illegal Israeli colony built on stolen Palestinian land and has openly declared his support for ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. With this negotiating team in place, how can Palestinians expect even a bare modicum of fairness and justice to emerge from these negotiations?

8. Increased U.S. military aid to and cooperation with Israel make it less likely to negotiate in good faith. In July, Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs Andrew Shapiro told the Brookings Institution that “I’m proud to say that as a result of this commitment [to Israel’s security], our security relationship with Israel is broader, deeper, and more intense than ever before.” Indeed, it is. President Obama has requested record-breaking levels of military aid to Israel, and stepped up joint U.S.-Israeli military projects, such as the missile defense system “Iron Dome.” This increased level of military aid only makes Israel more reliant on military might in its attempt to subdue Palestinians into submission, and less likely to negotiate with them fairly as equals.

9. All the parties are not at the negotiating table. Special Envoy for Middle East Peace George Mitchell, who previously brokered a peace agreement in Northern Ireland, when discussing its success often referred to the necessity of having all the parties to the conflict around the negotiating table. What held true though for negotiations in Northern Ireland, apparently doesn’t apply to Israel/Palestine since Hamas, which currently governs the Israeli-occupied and -besieged Gaza Strip and legitimately won the 2006 legislative elections held at the behest of the United States, was not invited to participate in the negotiations. If, by some long-shot, an agreement were to emerge from these negotiations, it is difficult to see how it would be implemented without having Hamas as part of the discussions.

10. Negotiations help Israel mitigate its growing international isolation. Last, but certainly not least, images of Israeli and Palestinian political leaders negotiating presents the world with a false sense of normalcy and allows Israel the opportunity to state that it is making a legitimate effort to achieve peace. With Israel as the party pressing for direct negotiations, it is quite transparent that its desire for these talks has more to do with easing its growing international isolation and defusing the energy from the international movement for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS), rather than with genuinely negotiating a just and lasting peace. This point brings the analysis full circle: advocates for changing U.S. policy toward Israel/Palestine to support human rights, international law, and equality should not be lulled into complacency by the resumption of negotiations, but need to keep up the pressure with campaigns of BDS to change the dynamics that will eventually lead to the possibility of a just and lasting peace.

Sign a petition to the Obama Administration, which states that Israeli-Palestinian negotiations must be based on human rights, international law, and UN resolutions to be successful by clicking here.
Josh Ruebner is the National Advocacy Director of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, a national coalition of more than 325 organizations working to change U.S. policy to support human rights, international law, and equality.

Israeli theater actors refuse to perform at new cultural center in West Bank settlement
Aug 26, 2010  Seham

And other news from Today in Palestine:

Land and Property Theft and Destruction/Ethnic Cleansing
Palestinians: Freeze must include East Jerusalem, Akiva Eldar

The Palestinian Authority has told the U.S. administration that an Israeli commitment to continuing the freeze on settlement construction must include East Jerusalem.  During preparatory talks ahead of the summit due in Washington next week, the Palestinians made it clear they refuse to accept any softer formula on the building freeze. They expect that even after the September 26 deadline, when the 10-month moratorium ends, the United States will support their demand to continue the ban on all construction outside the Green Line, including in the settlement blocs.
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/palestinians-freeze-must-include-east-jerusalem-1.310242

Al-Araqib residents fear fourth demolition

Jerusalem – On the eve of the start of Ramadan last week, Israeli police demolished the Bedouin village of al-Araqib in the Negev desert. It was the third time within two weeks that the village had been razed.  Unfazed, the Bedouin villagers immediately began rebuilding.  “We have already put back up some twenty of our huts, and we’re putting up more every day — despite the fast,” village leader Sheikh Sayyah Abu Drim told IPS when reached by telephone a week after the last police action.  “We have nowhere else to go,” said the Sheikh. More than forty families live in al-Araqib.
http://www.tadamon.ca/post/7825
Under cover of darkness, Ta’ayush activists expose the stealing of more Palestinian land, Joseph Dana

Ta’ayush activists have uncovered information that the Southern West Bank settlement of Susya is illegal stealing Palestinian land to increase the production of their Carmel Wine. Last week, under cover of darkness, a group of Jerusalem activists went to explore the vineyards. What they found was that many settlers are in fact stealing land in order to produce wine. This is nothing new however it is important to keep pressure on the settler groups through the dissemination of video and press about their illegal actions. Below is a video of their journey from Jerusalem. While the video is not full of the same type of action as the Friday demonstration videos, it is amazing to see how much work Israel in the middle of the night. Most of the illegal settlement construction, the stealing of land and the creation of the Separation Wall happens in the darkness. What does this country have to hid?
http://josephdana.com/2010/08/under-cover-of-darkness-taayush-activists-expose-the-stealing-of-more-palestinian-land/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=under-cover-of-darkness-taayush-activists-expose-the-stealing-of-more-palestinian-land
Solidarity/Activism/Boycott, Sanctions & Divestment

EU slams Israel’s verdict on Palestinian activist (AP)

AP – The European Union’s top diplomat has slammed Israel for convicting a Palestinian activist who leads protests against the West Bank separation barrier.
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/mideast/*http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100825/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_palestinians_protest_crackdown
Church boycott calls ring louder

The world’s churches have long been one of the battlegrounds of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement. With the strengthening of the BDS movement, a number of churches across the globe have seen the boycott of Israeli and Israeli settlement goods hotting up, and recent weeks have witnessed some notable victories.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11482.shtml?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+electronicIntifadaPalestine+%28Electronic+Intifada+%3A+Palestine+News%29
Canadian postal union joins Gaza flotilla

TORONTO (JTA) — The Canadian Union of Postal Workers has joined a coalition of Muslim, Arab and human rights groups that plans on taking a boat to Gaza this autumn.  “Canadian civil society has a responsibility to fight the illegal Israeli blockade of Gaza and to expose the Canadian government’s unjustified support for Israel,” the coalition, which calls itself Canada Boat Gaza, said in a statement on its website. “The time has come to send a Canadian boat to challenge the blockade of Gaza, in coordination with similar international efforts.”
http://www.jta.org/news/article/2010/08/25/2740628/canadian-postal-union-joins-gaza-flotilla
Eyewitness to the Gaza Siege

“When they brought us into port, they asked, ‘Why did you want to enter Israel illegally,” recalled Ann Wright. “We said, ‘We did not want to come here. You boarded us seventy miles offshore in international waters and outside your self-declared security zone. We did not want to come to Israel. You kidnapped us and brought us here.'”  Wright, a Honolulu resident, former U.S. Army colonel and diplomat who resigned her diplomatic post to protest the U.S. invasion in Iraq, was in Hilo to give a talk about her experiences on an international aid convoy that attempted to break through the Israeli blockade of Gaza last May. The six ships were boarded and captured by Israeli commandos, then taken to the Israeli port of Ashdod. During the assault, nine flotilla participants aboard the Turkish ferry Mavi Marmara were killed and approximately 50 were reported injured.
http://www.bigislandweekly.com/articles/2010/08/25/read/news/news02.txt
Hip-Hop Intifada Internationalized!

We received the following charming note along with this guest post submission: Peace. I hope you will publish this on your website. For this is soo much better then some of the trash you publish on it anyways.
http://www.kabobfest.com/2010/08/hip-hop-intifada-internationalized.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+kabobfest%2FGrillMe+%28KABOBfest%29

The Politics of economics: The boycott on Israel is expanding

The decision made on Monday by the Norwegian oil fund to divest from Africa Israel and Danya Cebus on the grounds that they are involved in illegal construction in the territories, is only the latest in a long series of decisions by governmental and private companies in Europe to boycott Israeli companies for political reasons.
http://coteret.com/2010/08/26/yediot-reports-on-damage-to-settlement-industry-caused-by-targeted-boycott/

Israeli theater actors refuse to perform at new West Bank cultural center

Leading settler responds to refusal by Yousef Sweid and Rami Heuberger by saying that ‘Israel is much stronger than such boycotts.’
http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/israeli-theater-actors-refuse-to-perform-at-new-west-bank-cultural-center-1.310314?localLinksEnabled=false
Veolia whitewashes illegal light rail project

Last week the Israeli daily Haaretz reported that the consortium holding the contract to the controversial Jerusalem light rail project surveyed city residents on whether they would feel comfortable sharing rail service with Palestinians. The bad publicity around the survey — described as racist by even members of the Israeli government — is an ironic turn of events. Adri Nieuwhof reports for The Electronic Intifada.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11488.shtml?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+electronicIntifadaPalestine+%28Electronic+Intifada+%3A+Palestine+News%29

Haifa University students prepare to rally against leftist teachers

Students at Haifa University reportedly prepared a list of “Pro-Palestinian” professors and a group of activists were preparing a boycott campaign targeting their classes and lectures., Israel’s Hebrew Language daily newspaper Ma’ariv said a campaign began on Tuesday, targeting 20 lecturers from the sociology and political science departments who they said “participate in demonstrations against Israeli troops and the Israeli government” or who have publicly spoken out against them.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=310780
‘McCarthyism’ Rises in Israel, Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler

JERUSALEM, Aug 26, 2010 (IPS) – Rightwing Israeli groups financially supported by Jewish and fundamentalist Christian groups from abroad are on a campaign to undermine free thought in Israeli universities. Collaterally, a move is under way by right-wing parties in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, to limit the freedom of action of civil and human rights-minded NGOs.
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=52614

Israel‘s Arab Helpers

Journalists said assaulted by PA forces in anti-talks rally

RAMALLAH (Ma’an) – The administration at the Government-affiliated Watan TV station condemned a Wednesday police incident in which they said a network cameraman was assaulted.  A statement from the organization said Khalid Milham and his colleague Aysar Al-Barghouthi were assaulted and their equipment confiscated as they filmed an event that was quashed by PA police as an illegal rally.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=310767
PA forces raid meeting as dissent grows

Palestinian Authority forces today forcibly dispersed a meeting organized by Palestinian parties opposed to the Palestine Liberation Organization’s scheduled direct talks with Israel. The meeting was held at the same time as a conference in Gaza City, where officials of various Palestinian parties also discussed their opposition to the PLO’s plans for direct talks.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11489.shtml?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+electronicIntifadaPalestine+%28Electronic+Intifada+%3A+Palestine+News%29
Tennenbaum’s kidnapper recruiting for Hezbollah

Palestinian Authority security apparatus arrests dozens of young adults on suspicion of being tied to Nasrallah’s organization. Man organizing recruitment believed to be Kais Obeid, who kidnapped Israeli businessman to Lebanon
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3943850,00.html
PA arrests dozens of Hamas, Islamic Jihad militants in West Bank

Hamas arrests in Gaza Islamic Jihad militants during mission to free a Gazan believed to have been abducted by the Islamic Jihad men.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/pa-arrests-dozens-of-hamas-islamic-jihad-militants-in-west-bank-1.310200

The Siege (Gaza & West Bank)/Humanitarian/Restriction of Movement/Human Rights/Racism

Weekly Report On Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (19 -25 August 2010)
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/MCOI-88PJGW?OpenDocument&RSS20=02-P
Gaza supplies dip as week ends

GAZA CITY (Ma’an) — A single Gaza crossing was opened for the transport of commercial goods, fuel and supplies for the Palestinian Energy Authority on Thursday, an official said.  Chairman of the Goods Coordination Committee for Gaza crossings Raed Fattouh said the southernmost crossing at Kerem Shalom was set to be opened partially for an expected 180-190 truckloads of goods.  Three of the trucks would be filled with steel columns and spare parts for the maintenance of the power plant and electricity grid, and limited amounts of cooking gas and industrial diesel would also be pumped in.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=310831
Former Bethlehem mayor denied Jerusalem access

BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Former Bethlehem mayor Salah Ta’mari was denied permission from Israeli officials for medical treatment for a persistent heart condition, the Fatah member said.  The official told Ma’an that he applied one week earlier and was refused, noting that Israeli officials at the Civil Administration office cited security concerns for the denial.  Two years earlier, Ta’mari requested a permit and was refused, but President Mahmoud Abbas intervened and secured him a permit, at which time he went into Jerusalem for heart surgery.  Ta’mari said he was denied despite having all of his medical papers and doctors recommendations in order.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=310653
Gaza power plant reopens after Hamas does deal (AFP)

AFP – The Gaza Strip’s sole power plant resumed generating on Wednesday after the territory’s Hamas rulers reached agreement on fuel payments to the rival Palestinian Authority, both sides said.
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/mideast/*http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100825/wl_mideast_afp/mideastgazaelectricitypalestinianpolitics
The Stink of Control

Sewage thickens the waters of the once pristine Zomar river in northwestern West Bank. With no nearby treatment plants, sludge like this coats the lands, poisoning wells and aquifers, polluting fields and infecting children.  “There is no real life there – it is just waste water,” said Iyad Aburdeieneh, Palestinian Deputy Director of Friends of the Earth Middle East.  Called The Alexander in Israel, the rancid Zomar is not unique in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). Twenty-five million cubic meters of untreated sewage – or five Zomar rivers – leak into the West Bank’s environment every year, according to the World Bank.
http://www.palestinemonitor.org/spip/spip.php?article1526
French NGO says Hamas stole equipment

GAZA CITY (Ma’an) — The French organization Help Doctors operating a clinic in Gaza said that members of the Hamas government security forces seized the remainder of its equipments on Monday.  The seizure came one week after the organization said Gaza government police entered the clinic and began confiscating supplies.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=310645

Mitri Ghounam: ‘When you have finished your wall, you will have finished me’

Mitri Ghounam’s land can be accessed only via a metal gate and fenced off road. The house is surrounded on three sides by either a concrete wall or a metal fence. Beyond the fence there appears to be a construction site. Although the machinery is quiet today because works are stopped for the weekend, one can only imagine the noise that must come from it during the rest of the week.  Mitri sits under grapevines hosting us with lemonade and water, a relief from a very hot day. Behind him sits a statute of the Virgin Mary that over looks a fountain, St. George killing the serpent stands over his family home.
http://stopthewall.org/communityvoices/2354.shtml
For Gaza Tailors, Market is Flooded, External Markets Are Banned

What happens to industry when you open a market to consumer products but restrict raw materials and ban export? What doesn’t happen is economic recovery.  The Israeli cabinet decision to ease the closure on the Gaza Strip did not change the sweeping ban on Gaza exports. While industrial raw materials were allowed into Gaza beginning in July, the limited capacity of the crossings meant only small quantities entered (raw materials were 4% of the total amount of goods that entered in July), while at the same time Israeli-made consumer products, no longer banned, flooded the market. The combination does not bode well for manufacturers in particular and the economy in general, as evidenced by the story of Jihad Abu Dan, aged 22, married and the father of two, whose family owns a textile factory in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Lahiya. His father was a textile worker who built a two-story factory that spans an area of 1,500 m², meant to support the extended family.
http://www.gazagateway.org/2010/08/for-gaza-tailors-market-is-flooded-external-markets-are-banned/

Violence (Past and Present)/Provocations

Armed settler guards attack mosque in Wadi Hilweh, shots fired at Palestinian residents

Violence has swept through Wadi Hilweh again as Israeli settler security guards attempted to storm the neighborhood mosque last night, in what marks the third time such an attack has been launched on the local religious site. Settler guards fired live ammunition at Palestinian residents in the ensuing clashes that erupted.
http://palsolidarity.org/2010/08/14020/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+palsolidarity+%28International+Solidarity+Movement%29
Israel closes Ibrahimi mosque for 10 days, prevents Muslims and lets Israelis in

Hebron, August 26, (Pal Telegraph) Israeli Occupation authorities announced yesterday that it will fully open the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron before the Israeli settlers in the holy month of Ramadan, on the occasion of the Jewish “forgiveness” Day, in reference to fully close the campus before the Muslim worshipers.  Israel Radio said that the Israeli army allowed the opening of the Mosque’s campus round the clock during the period of ten days starting with the Jewish New Year and ending with the Day of Atonement (Forgiveness Day).  Israeli Radio added that the decision was made in response to the request filed by the Local Council of Kiryat Arba settlement.
http://www.paltelegraph.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6851:israel-closes-ibrahimi-mosque-for-10-days-prevents-muslims-and-lets-israelis-in&catid=59:west-bank&Itemid=135
Israeli settlers try to seize lands in Jerusalem

Jerusalem, August 26, (Pal Telegraph) Local sources said that a number of Israeli settlers tried to storm the mosque named Eein-Silwan East of Jerusalem, and broke the locks of the mosque, but Palestinian young men stood up to this attack and besieged the Israeli settlers in the yard.  The sources added that Israeli soldiers intervened by throwing gas and sound bombs in addition to rubber bullets to keep the young Palestinians and Israeli settlers out of the courtyard of the mosque, causing no injuries. http://www.paltelegraph.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6853:israeli-settlers-try-to-seize-lands-in-jerusalem&catid=59:west-bank&Itemid=135
IOF raids a mosque in Hebron

Hebron, August 26, (Pal Telegraph) Israeli occupation forces raided at dawn today the “Hamza” mosque in the town of “Seir”, east of Hebron in the West Bank.  Security sources said that the Israeli occupation forces raided the mosque in the early dawn, and searched and tampered with its contents, and searched a number of houses in the town of “Seir”.  Sources pointed out that the Israeli occupation forces raided the Ras Al-Jura area towns of Nuba, Seir, Halhoul, Samoa and Al-Thahereyah without reported arrests. In the Old City of Hebron, Israeli soldiers detained six inspectors from the Municipality of Hebron for two hours, before releasing them.
http://www.paltelegraph.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6852:iof-raids-a-mosque-in-hebron&catid=59:west-bank&Itemid=135
Palestinians clash with settlers, Border Police in East Jerusalem

Arab Silwan residents say settlers, taking a shortcut to a spring, tried to break down a mosque gate; settlers: We don’t know what happened.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/palestinians-clash-with-settlers-border-police-in-east-jerusalem-1.310339?localLinksEnabled=false

Hebron massacre remembered

Palestinian’s flock to Hebron city to mark Ramadan in defiance of Israel’s restriction.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNbonDKqw28&feature=youtube_gdata
Detainees

Israel raids Hebron, arrests 3

Hebron, August 26, (Pal Telegraph) Israeli occupation forces arrested today three people after raiding their homes in the village of “Baq’a”, east of Hebron in the West Bank.  According to local sources the Israeli occupation forces arrested both Ahed Hisham Mustafa Jaber and his brother Muhannad Mahmoud Mohammed Mustafa Jaber and transferred them to an unknown destination.  Citizen Samer Nayef Rajaby was also admitted to Hebron Govermental hospitl as a result of injury and bruises after being attacked by Israeli soldiers near the Ibrahimi Mosque.  In Arroub camp north of Hebron, sporadic clashes took place between young Palestinians and the Israeli occupation soldiers there who fired rubber bullets and gas and sound bombs on those young Palestinians.
http://www.paltelegraph.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6850:israel-raids-hebron-arrests-3&catid=59:west-bank&Itemid=135
Israel arrests two members of Palestinian Tanzim militia

Steven Anbatawai and Wazir Isa arrested in joint raid by IDF, Shin Bet and police north of Nablus.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/israel-arrests-two-members-of-palestinian-tanzim-militia-1.310228?localLinksEnabled=false
Political/Flotilla Developments

Report: Top US officials to arrive ahead of talks

BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Two senior US officials were due to arrive in Israel on Wednesday to begin preliminary negotiations ahead of next week’s peace summit in Washington, Israeli media reported.  Daniel Shapiro, a member of the National Security Council for Israel and the near East, and David Hale, deputy to Middle East envoy George Mitchell, will both meet with chief PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat, Israeli daily Haaretz reported.  The two will also meet with Isaac Molho, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and head of the Israeli negotiating team.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=310541
Palestinians warn Israel peace talks could be quickly derailed (The Christian Science Monitor)

The Christian Science Monitor – For more than a year, the Palestinians insisted on an Israeli settlement freeze as a precondition to entering direct talks with Israel. But recently they dropped their demand, paving the way for the first direct peace talks with the Israelis since early 2009.
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/mideast/*http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20100825/wl_csm/321987

Abbas: Direct negotiations historic opportunity

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said that renewing direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians was an “historic opportunity” to achieve peace.  Abbas, who spoke during a diplomatic reception ceremony in Ramallah, urged the Israeli government “not to miss out on this historic opportunity.” He also stressed that the demand to freeze the construction in settlements came from the international community as a whole. (AFP)
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3944046,00.html

Abbas: Negotiations despite opposition

RAMALLAH (Ma’an) — President Mahmoud Abbas said he would go to negotiations in Washington next week despite heavy opposition to the resumption of peace talks with Israel.  Speaking at an iftar meal honoring religious figures and diplomatic officials in Palestine, Abbas said he hoped Israeli negotiators would grasp what he termed the “current opportunity to achieve peace.”
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=310903
PA Claims US Threatened to Withdraw Aid

Palestinian Authority officials claim that the United States threatened PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas with ending financial aid if he did not agree to direct negotiations with Israel.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/Flash.aspx/192890
Abbas’ Position Isn’t as Weak as It May Appear, George S. Hishmeh – Washington, D.C.

Palestinians will begin heading home a year from now to reclaim property in their homeland, which they have not seen for 62 years since the state of Israel was established there. They will be welcomed at the border by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and thousands of cheering Israelis.  Much to their joy, the Palestinians will discover that Lieberman has relinquished his house in a colony on the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. But they will have to wait and see whether their own homes, in Haifa or Nazareth for example, will still be standing, along with their traditional lemon, olive and fig trees and grape vines, which their parents have longed to see since the beginning of their tortuous exile in neighbouring Arab countries and elsewhere.
http://palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=16222
WEST BANK: Anti-negotiations conference broken up

Crowds started to arrive at the Protestant church hall in downtown Ramallah in the West Bank shortly after midday Wednesday to attend an anti-negotiations conference. They were responding to a call by local Palestinian leaders opposed to plans by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to start direct negotiations with Israel before the latter halts all settlement activities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.  To the surprise of the attendees, dozens of young Palestinians, believed to be members of Abbas’ Fatah movement and his security forces, moved in waving pictures of Abbas and chanting his name, disrupting the meeting even before it had started.  Their entrance and the disruption was clearly premeditated, according to the organizers of the conference, and their purpose was to make sure the conference will not be held. When the organizers, mainly leaders of left-wing Palestinian factions, realized that it would be impossible to proceed with their conference, they took to the streets of Ramallah in a protest march and to let the public know their views on the negotiations.  Palestinian police intervened to stop the march, charging that the protestors did not have a permit. Stunned by the developments, the organizers of the conference, some of them members of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee, which on Friday voted to start direct negotiations with Israel on Sept. 2 in ceremonies to be held in Washington, then took their meeting to a local TV station, where they held a news conference.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2010/08/west-bank-anti-negotiations-conference-broken-up.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BabylonBeyond+%28Babylon+%26+Beyond+Blog%29
Military Advocate General: Gaza blockade entirely legal

Brig. Gen. Avichai Mendelblit to panel probing May 31 Gaza flotilla raid: No one in the IDF would think to violate international law.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/military-advocate-general-gaza-blockade-entirely-legal-1.310346?localLinksEnabled=false
Turkish officials: We’re committed to preserving friendly Israel ties

Turkish diplomat visiting U.S. tells Turkish paper Gaza flotilla raid bears no ill effect on Turkey’s attitude toward Israel or Jews, only Israel’s gov’t.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/turkish-officials-we-re-committed-to-preserving-friendly-israel-ties-1.310341?localLinksEnabled=false
Turkey officials discuss Gaza flotilla, Iran nukes on U.S. visit

Visit comes after the U.S. denied a report stating it had warned Turkey strained ties with Israel, support of Iran could hinder a significant arms deal between Washington and Ankara.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/turkey-officials-discuss-gaza-flotilla-iran-nukes-on-u-s-visit-1.310318?localLinksEnabled=false

Other News

Hamas mourns death of Muslim Brotherhood founder

GAZA CITY (Ma’an) – Hamas members in Rafah announced the death of Muslim Brotherhood official Hajj Lutfi Al-Hums, 81, in Rafah on Thursday. The group said Al-Hums was considered a founder of the Muslim Brotherhood movement, now a central party in Egypt and influential throughout the region. A statement said prayers for his soul would be offered in the Al-Hudna Mosque in Rafah city.Hajj Lutfi was born in 1929 in Yibna village southwest of Ramla, and was expelled from there on 4 June 1949 by Jewish forces. From Yibna, Al-Hums traveled to Gaza.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=310876
Netanyahu wants Shin Bet protection for 15 years after leaving office

Under the existing rules, the Shin Bet would provide the prime minister with security for only five years after he leaves office.
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/netanyahu-wants-shin-bet-protection-for-15-years-after-leaving-office-1.310243?localLinksEnabled=false
Amnesty Int’l Finland: Israel scum state

The head of Amnesty International’s Finnish branch, Frank Johansson, told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday that he stands by his statement that Israel is a “scum state.”
http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=185846
Pro-Israel group claims IRS persecution

A hawkish pro-Israel group today filed a lawsuit against the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service containing the explosive allegation that the IRS is devoting special scrutiny to pro-Israel groups whose policies conflict with that of the administration.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0810/ProIsrael_group_claims_IRS_persecution.html#
Israeli education ministry approves new ‘whites-only’ settlement school

Several months ago, a religious school in the illegal Israeli settlement of Immanuel was criticized for segregating white Jewish students from non-white Jewish students in classes.
http://www.imemc.org/article/59331
A Few Non-Jews Are Human Beings: Chief Rabbi of Hebron

There are some honorable people among the goyim. A few, but they exist. I think that even in Hebron there are a few who are human beings – which doesn’t mean I’m saying they shouldn’t all be sent to Saudi Arabia. They should all be sent to Saudi Arabia!”
http://www.haaretz.com/culture/arts-leisure/those-noisy-barbarians-1.309629
West Bank rabbis: Only Jews to renovate Joseph’s Tomb

Following Ynet report on plans for Palestinians to restore tomb’s compound, group of Samaria rabbis sends strident letter against plan, claiming it gives PA de facto ownership of site.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3943656,00.html
Military prosecution: Israel under a moral blockade

Military prosecution cites international public opinion as grounds for arrest in hearing of Nahal Haredi soldiers suspected of being photographed pointing a weapon at handcuffed Palestinian.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3944076,00.html
Gay teen kidnapped by family: They threatened to kill me

Nineteen-year-old drag queen says was beaten, kidnapped twice by relatives who want to ‘set him back on right path’.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3943931,00.html
Israel offers Intel $110 million for commitment to stay in the country

Intel plans to expand its plant in Kiryat Gat at an investment of $2.7 billion, initially requesting a $400 million government grant.
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/business/israel-offers-intel-110-million-for-commitment-to-stay-in-the-country-1.310270?localLinksEnabled=false
Analysis/Opinion/Human Interest

The NS interview with Haneen Zoabi

What is it like being a Palestinian in Israel?
Israel did everything it could to make us forget our history: controlling education and the media, putting us in a ghetto, preventing us from having normal relations with the Arab world and visiting our families in Syria and Lebanon. 
Are Arab members of parliament treated differently?
Of course. The state treats all Jews and Palestinians differently. Israel doesn’t recognise us as the owners of this homeland. The theory is that we have equal civil rights, but the practice is very far from this.
http://www.paltelegraph.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6856:the-ns-interview-with-haneen-zoabi&catid=91:pal-telegraph-featured-articles&Itemid=149
Don’t Look Too Excited about Negotiations!

We swear that we didn’t alter this photo released by the State Department from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s and Special Envoy for Middle East Peace George Mitchell’s press briefing on August 20 announcing the resumption of direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.  Yikes! They look about as happy as two people being led to the guillotine. Can you just sense their enthusiasm and excitement for yet another round of more process, less peace? If the two of them can’t get jazzed, then it looks like it’s a foregone conclusion that the September 2 negotiations will be just as much of a photo-op–nothing more, nothing less–than President Bush’s belated attempt at peacemaking at Annapolis in 2007.
http://endtheoccupationblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/dont-look-too-excited-about.html

The ‘real agenda’ of the BBC’s Jane Corbin, who calls herself a ‘Journalist’

On August 19, the Israeli consulate in New York tweeted: #BBC “Panorama” presents arguably the most complete & thorough account of the #Flotilla.  The documentary has not received much endorsement elsewhere. Instead there have been loud protests of bias, especially among those aboard the Mavi Marmara, the largest vessel in the Gaza-bound aid flotilla that Israeli commandos raided on May 31, killing nine activists.
http://pulsemedia.org/2010/08/26/the-real-agenda-of-the-bbcs-jane-corbin-who-calls-herself-a-journalist/

The ‘memoricide’ of Palestine, Matthew Taylor

In a little-noted decision, a few weeks ago Netanyahu’s government extended by an additional twenty years Israel’s classification of sensitive documents. It is suspected that these documents tell the story of the the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in far more detail than currently declassified documents.
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/08/the-memoricide-of-palestine.html
The Israeli right’s secret strategy to promote ‘Greater Israel’, Shalom Boguslavsky

Introducing Moshe Klughaft: Forbes magazine has crowned him the second most influential strategic consultant in Israel, and one of the 300 most influential young adults. He is the man behind the campaigns against the New Israel Fund, both the one by Im Tirzu and the Arab Gas campaign. Obviously, all links between the two campaigns have been denied. Later on we’ll see just why such denial is one of the cornerstones of the system.
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/08/the-israeli-rights-secret-strategy-to-promote-greater-israel.html
Don’t forget ‘The Atlantic’’s pieties about who destroyed Palestine, Matthew Taylor

Some around here are just shocked, shocked at the transparently pro-Israel propaganda masquerading as journalism in The Atlantic… but it seems to me this pub has been a tool of Israel’s Ministry of Disinformation for years.  For instance, let’s go back to David Samuels’ September 2005 cover story about how Yasser Arafat (and not Zionist militias/the U.S.-backed Israeli military) somehow “destroyed” Palestine.
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/08/dont-forget-the-atlantics-pieties-about-who-destroyed-palestine.html

Iraq

Police: 6 Sunni fighters killed in ambush in Iraq (AP)

AP – Insurgents killed six members of a government-allied Sunni militia in an ambush northeast of Baghdad on Thursday, police said, offering no respite to a nation still reeling from a spate of attacks on police and soldiers a day earlier that left at least 56 dead.
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/iraq/*http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100826/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iraq
Wednesday: 86 Iraqis Killed, 371 Wounded

A two-hour long, apparently coordinated attack against Iraq’s fragile security forces took place across the country, leaving no region untouched. At least 86 Iraqis were killed and 371 more were wounded in the attacks. The bloodiest attacks took place in relatively quiet Kut and in the capital. Meanwhile, a member of the Iraqiya list, which won the most seats in parliament, called for an emergency session to discuss today’s development.
http://original.antiwar.com/updates/2010/08/25/wednesday-86-iraqis-killed-371-wounded/
Wave of Iraq suicide bombings target police

A wave of Iraq suicide bombings and other attacks largely targeted the police on Wednesday, leaving at least 41 Iraqis dead in 7 different provinces. A poll shows that a majority of Iraqis say the US is withdrawing combat troops too soon.
http://rss.csmonitor.com/%7Er/feeds/world/%7E3/Q7Jx1eeIz6o/Wave-of-Iraq-suicide-bombings-target-police

Iraq arrests 15 suspects in Wednesday blasts

Iraqi security Forces arrested 15 suspects on account of Wednesday’s bombings, a police source reported. Baghdad Operations Command Forces cracked down on Thursday dawn Al Melhaniya neighborhood in Al Amel District, southern Baghdad.
http://www.alsumaria.tv/en/Iraq-News/1-53615-Iraq-arrests-15-suspects-in-Wednesday-blasts.html
‘Sons of Iraq’ feel betrayed by motherland (AFP)

AFP – The Sunni Arab militiamen who sided with American soldiers against Al-Qaeda during Iraq’s brutal insurgency fear the exit of thousands of US troops will herald a surge in bloody revenge attacks against them.
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/iraq/*http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100826/wl_mideast_afp/iraqusmilitarypulloutsahwa

Who cares about the average Iraqi? | Sazan Mandalawi

Iraqis are suffering huge physical and psychological pain, but nothing changes as politicians just fight among themselves.  As a proofreader in a news agency in Iraq’s Kurdistan region I feel like a doctor, but the type of patients I indirectly meet every day are average Iraqis. Unlike a doctor I cannot cure their illnesses or prescribe medication but I have managed to identify the cause of their psychological illnesses.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/26/who-cares-average-iraqi
Lebanon

Hizbullah, foreign minister unaware of Sadr’s ‘plans’

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s foreign minister and Hizbullah have said neither was informed of Iraqi cleric and political leader Muqtada al-Sadr’s intention to relocate to Beirut. Sources from the Foreign Ministry told pan Arab-daily Ash-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper they were neither informed by Iraqi authorities nor by Sadr himself of such an intention.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=2&article_id=118606

US military aid cut would strengthen Hizbullah; Move would erode American credibility, drive LAF toward United States’ foes

PRAGUE/BEIRUT: While some US congressmen are pushing to cut $100 million in military assistance budgeted for Lebanon over fears of Israel’s security and Hizbullah’s leading role here, slashing the aid would only make Hizbullah stronger, drive the army toward US rivals and erode US credibility here, a number of analysts told The Daily Star on Wednesday.  The issue erupted in Congress after an August 3 incident in Adaysseh near the Lebanese-Israeli border, where Israel’s cutting down of a tree sparked a firefight which killed two Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) soldiers, a Lebanese journalist, and an Israeli officer. Some US lawmakers voiced objections to the aid on the grounds that US weapons could wind up being used by the LAF against Israel, the closest US ally in the region.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=2&article_id=118605#axzz0xfeOQIwH
Israeli Intelligence Infiltrated Throughout Lebanese Government, Wayne Madsen  

WMR has learned from its Lebanese intelligence sources that the Lebanese government is coming to realize that Israeli intelligence penetration of all political groups in the country is worse than originally believed.  Israel’s Mossad, once content on penetrating the Christian and Druze parties in the country, has now thoroughly infiltrated the top echelons of Sunni and Shi’a parties, as well. Recently, Lebanon charged retired General Fayez Karam, a senior member of retired General Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement, which is allied with Hezbollah, with spying for Mossad.
http://oilprice.com/Geo-Politics/Middle-East/Israeli-Intelligence-Infiltrated-Throughout-Lebanese-Government.html
Robert Worth’s definitions

“Hezbollah, the Shiite movement that is committed to Israel’s destruction.”  I mean, if that is the case, why would not Worth identifies Israel as the “Jewish state that is committed to the destruction of Hizbullah, Hamas, PFLP, and various other Arab organizations and Iran as well?  Or the destructive urges of Israel can’t be reported because that would reflect negatively on the image of the terrorist Israeli state?
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2010/08/robert-worths-definitions.html
Iran

Iran seeks to produce its own nuclear fuel

Iran submits proposal to Russia to produce nuclear fuel for the Bushehr nuclear power plant and any future facilities built in the country, Iran’s state media reports.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/international/iran-seeks-to-produce-its-own-nuclear-fuel-1.310359?localLinksEnabled=false

U.S. and Other World News

After Katrina, New Orleans Cops Were Told They Could Shoot Looters
In the chaotic days after Hurricane Katrina, an order circulated among New Orleans police authorizing officers to shoot looters, according to present and former members of the department.
http://www.propublica.org/nola/story/nopd-order-to-shoot-looters-hurricane-katrina
ACLU Report: Spying on Free Speech Nearly At Cold War Level

Political spying is nearly as bad now as it was during the Cold War. The ACLU reports that Americans are harrassed and under surveillance for exercising their First Amendment rights.
http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/aclu-report-spying-free-speech-nearly-cold-wa?source=nww_rss

WikiLeaks releases CIA memo on U.S. terror recruits

* New WikiLeaks release follows U.S. Afghan war documents
* CIA plays down report by “Red Cell” analysts
* Report eyes fallout if US seen as exporter of terrorism
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N25140776.htm
‘Secret’ CIA memo on WikiLeaks is not very revelatory

It considers what might happen if other nations viewed the U.S. as an ‘exporter of terrorism.’  The latest U.S. government document posted by WikiLeaks is marked “secret,” but it contains no new revelations, startling or otherwise.
http://feeds.latimes.com/%7Er/latimes/middleeast/%7E3/KVYBTZeNdLs/la-fg-wikileaks-20100826,0,7574693.story

Sweden to continue Assange inquiry

Eva Finne said she had questioned the woman who had filed the rape complaint and decided that there were no grounds to suspect Assange of any type of crime, but that she was still examining the molestation claim brought by a different lady.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2010/08/201082516445262780.html
In Pictures: Pakistan drowns in misery
http://english.aljazeera.net/photo_galleries/centralsasia/201089161838709557.html
Egypt announces site of its first planned nuclear power plant

Hassan Younis, the Egyptian minister of electricity, said the decision is meant to prioritize national interests and gives a big boost to the Egyptian nuclear program.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/international/egypt-announces-site-of-its-first-planned-nuclear-power-plant-1.310207?localLinksEnabled=false
Afghans protest against Spanish after deadly shooting; Hundreds of men try to overrun NATO base following officer’s killing

HERAT, Afghanistan: Hundreds of angry Afghans tried to storm a small NATO base in the far northwest Wednesday after a shootout left three Spaniards and an Afghan police trainee dead, officials said.  The Afghan policeman killed two Spanish paramilitary police officers and a Spanish interpreter during a training session at the base in the province of Badghis before he was himself shot dead, Afghan and Spanish authorities said.  Hundreds of Afghan men then tried to overrun the Spanish-administered base in protest at the killing of the local officer, in an incident that left more than two dozen men injured, police and doctors said.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=2&article_id=118643#ixzz0xfHEPlHy
Mohammed Zia Salehi, Top Karzai Aide, Appears To Have Been On CIA Payroll For Years

KABUL, Afghanistan — The aide to President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan at the center of a politically sensitive corruption investigation is being paid by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to Afghan and American officials.  Mohammed Zia Salehi, the chief of administration for the National Security Council, appears to have been on the payroll for many years, according to officials in Kabul and Washington. It is unclear exactly what Mr. Salehi does in exchange for his money, whether providing information to the spy agency, advancing American views inside the presidential palace, or both.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/25/mohammed-zia-salehi-karzai-aide-cia_n_695052.html
Marines likely to stay in Afghanistan for years

It will likely be a few years before Afghanistan is secure enough for the U.S. Marines to leave, Commandant Gen. James Conway said Tuesday, adding his voice to a growing chorus of military leaders warning of a long fight ahead.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iqyaFh_efr-brDq0rMLF1hkop0tgD9HQ3QHG2
Poison gas hits Afghan schoolgirls

At least 70 students and teachers at an all girls school in Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, have been sickened by an unknown gas that spread through classrooms. School authorities evacuated everyone from the building and many of the girls were taken to hospitals. It is still not clear who is behind the incident, but there is suspicion that the Taliban, who has opposed sending girls to schools, is responsible. Hoda Abdel-Hamid reports from Kabul on what has become a part of a pattern of attacks on schoolgirls in the country. [August 25, 2010]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUpcy_4b11Q&feature=youtube_gdata
Saudi store breaks taboo with female cashiers

RIYADH: Saudi Arabia’s leading supermarket chain has broken the country’s strict taboo on women working in public with a pilot program of female cashiers, a company official said.  Panda hypermarkets has put 16 Saudi women to work at one store in the Red Sea city of Jeddah as a test, in a country where Islamic conservatives have prevented women from working in gender-mixed environments.  “The women, compared to men, are really hard workers,” Panda spokesman Tarik Ismail told AFP.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=2&article_id=118635#axzz0xfeZqBKo
An Egyptian ‘Mother Teresa’

Most people have heard of Mother Teresa, the Christian nun who spent her life helping the poor and needy in the slums of India. As the world marks one hundred years since her birth, Al Jazeera is looking at people around the world who have devoted their lives to helping others. One of those unsung heroes is a 91-year-old Egyptian women from Alexandria. Inaya Essafti works to empower women by teaching them how to read. Al Jazeera’s Ayman Mohyeldin has her story.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_ds1apYcBU&feature=youtube_gdata
Is the United States in Danger of Collapse?, Stephen M. Walt

Earlier this summer I mentioned that I was reading Jared Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, and I promised to sum up the insights that I had gleaned from it. The book is well-worth reading — if not quite on a par with his earlier Guns, Germs, and Steel — and you’ll learn an enormous amount about a diverse set of past societies and the range of scientific knowledge (geology, botany, forensic archaeology, etc.) that is enabling us to understand why they prospered and/or declined.  
http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/08/25/what_i_learned_from_jared_diamond
Islam in America

New York: “Religions for Peace” Reject Planned “International Burn a Quran Day”

Riyadh, Asharq Al-Awsat – The Secretary General for the New York-based World Conference of Religions for Peace [WCRP], and which is the largest international coalition of representatives of international religions in the world, rejected the public call made by a Church in the state of Florida for an “International Burn a Quran Day” on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, saying that this was a dangerous act to deliberately insult what is holy to the Muslims.
http://www.aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=1&id=22092
Residents cheer as Kentucky town rejects mosque

For Mayfield’s zoning board, it was about parking spaces. For the 250 residents of this western Kentucky town who reportedly cheered when the zoning board rejected a building permit for a new mosque, it was clearly about something else.  On Tuesday night, the Mayfield Board of Zoning Adjustment rejected a request from a local Somali group to build a mosque along the city’s East Broadway, a strip of commercial and industrial properties. According to the Louisville Courier-Journal, the board rejected the mosque application because of concerns there wouldn’t be enough parking in the area. (The area in question is pictured on the right.)
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/0825/residents-cheer-town-rejects-mosque/
Muslim Cab Driver Attacked In New York City

A New York City taxi cab driver was reportedly stabbed on Monday night by a customer riding in his vehicle after being questioned about his religious beliefs. According to NY1, police say the passenger in the backseat of the cab asked the 43-year-old driver, “Are you Muslim?” After the driver responded affirmatively, the passenger wielded a knife and cut the driver’s neck.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/25/cab-driver-attacked-stabbed-new-york-muslim_n_694091.html
Colleague of NYC Taxi Driver Stabbed in Anti-Muslim Attack Describes What Happened

A New York City taxi driver was stabbed multiple times Tuesday after a drunken passenger determined he is a Muslim. The victim, Ahmed Sharif, was slashed across his face, neck and hands. Sharif says the suspect, Michael Enright, had asked him several questions about his religion, including whether he’s a Muslim and observing Ramadan. Bhairavi Desai of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance spoke with Sharif at his hospital bed. She describes what he said happened.
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/26/colleague_of_nyc_taxi_driver_stabbed
9/11 Families, Others Rally In Support Of Park51 Islamic Center

NEW YORK — The planned mosque and Islamic center blocks from ground zero got a new boost Wednesday from a coalition of supporters that includes families of Sept. 11 victims.  New York Neighbors for American Values rallied for the first time at a municipal building near ground zero.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/25/911-families-support-park51-islamic-cultural-center_n_694029.html
Anti-Mosque Coalition’s Website Owned By Neo-Conservative Islamophobe Frank Gaffney

The Coalition to Honor Ground Zero, appears to be funded by a major neo-conservative advocacy group, with deep-pocketed donors, and extensive connections to the conservative establishment.
http://thinkprogress.org/2010/08/24/gaffney-mosque-website/
Maddow: Fox News Made Me Cover Mosque Story, ‘Maybe’ I’ll Get Married

Rachel Maddow says she didn’t want to cover the controversy over the proposed Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero, but Fox News left her no choice.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/25/maddow-fox-news-made-me-c_n_694327.html
House of prayer near Ground Zero? Yes!, Padraic O’Hare

A mosque – like a church or a synagogue or an ashram – is a house of prayer.  We need more mosques – as well as churches, synagogues and ashrams – at Ground Zero; in Bay Ridge in my beloved hometown of Brooklyn; on Staten Island, and all over! We need them to bring prayer to that place as a way of bringing healing there. Like the mosque here in Boston, at which the Center for the Study of Jewish-Christian-Muslims Relations of Merrimack College (a small Catholic and Augustinian college) recently – intentionally, pointedly, and proudly – announced and introduced the recipient of a major new award for scholarship – the Goldziher Prize – which promotes reverence, understanding and willingness to collaborate in works of justice and peace between Jews and Muslims. The prize is named after Ignac Goldziher, a Hungarian Jew and leading 19th century scholar who revered Islam and who validated Islamic studies in the universities of Europe.
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2010/07/house_of_prayer_near_ground_zero_yes.html
Jon Soltz: The Muslim Community Center Debate — Continuing Our Duty

When we signed up for service, we swore to uphold the Constitution. Some have tried to claim that the construction of the community center at its currently planned site is “anti-America.” We don’t believe that to the be case, at all.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-soltz/the-muslim-community-cent_b_694621.html
www.TheHeadlines.org

When will the ‘Washington Post’ Op-Ed page provide space to Palestinian voices?
Aug 26, 2010  Philip Weiss

A fifth consecutive vicious piece about Palestinians by George Will.

After Birthright: Dangerous conversations and the stifling of dissent
Aug 26, 2010  Rachel Marcuse

Last month, activist Rachel Marcuse spent 10 days in Israel as part of the Taglit-Birthright program — a fully sponsored trip for young North American Jews to learn more about the country. She went to bear witness and ask questions about the Israeli state’s treatment of Palestinians, and to learn about other complex issues in Israel today. After the program, she spent another 10 days elsewhere in Israel and the West Bank of Palestine talking to Israeli Jews, Palestinian citizens of Israel, international activists, and Palestinians in the occupied territories. This is the fifth of a seven-part series on what she found. You can read the entire series here. This series first appeared in rabble.ca and this story can be found here.

After a couple of relaxing days on the beach in Tel Aviv, I’ve come out of the “Birthright haze” sufficiently to try to begin to engage with the “pluralism” that exists in Israel and Palestine. In this post-Birthright portion of my trip, I’ve decided to travel to Haifa, which I am told is the most integrated Arab-Jewish city in the country. I’m looking forward to talking with Jafar Farah, the director of the Mossawa Centre, The Advocacy Centre for Arab Citizens in Israel.

According to the report “The Palestinian Arab Citizens of Israel: Status, Opportunities and Challenges for an Israeli-Palestinian Peace” written by Mossawa staff and released in June, 2006:

“The Palestinian-Arab community, about 20 per cent of the Israeli population and 10 per cent of the Palestinian people, is a potentially formidable force for coexistence between Palestinians and Israeli Jews….

“Despite a growing trend of racism and systemic and institutional discrimination against the community, the overwhelming majority of Palestinian Arabs in Israel wish to remain citizens of Israel, and believe in future friendly relations between Jews and Arabs in Israel. As the community forms part of the Palestinian nation, it is often seen as part of the “problem,” but not as an integral part of the solution….

“Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel struggle on all fronts to be treated as equal citizens and a distinct minority group of the state. Israel defines itself as both Jewish and democratic…. However, the term ‘democratic’ in the Israeli reality translates into rule by the majority, often at the expense of the needs and rights of the minority — primarily the Palestinian Arab community.”

As we sit in his office, Farah elaborates on the issue of Israel’s drive to be recognized as the Jewish state: “This is a problem for all secular people,” he says. “For example, a non-practicing Jew wanting to have something other than an Orthodox Jewish wedding must leave the country to do so. It’s like telling you, as a Canadian Jew, that you can only marry another Canadian Jew.”

He estimates that about 30 per cent of the population of Israel has very practical problems with the country’s increasing religiosity as they’re not “sufficiently Jewish.” Many immigrants face this problem, especially newcomers from the former Soviet Union, as do the Ethiopian Jews who, the Chief Rabbinate has ruled, have to be converted formally, and then, of course, there is the 20 per cent of the population who are Arab….

Mossawa’s advocacy work and research highlights a long list of inequities: land grabs and population displacement (its website cites a study by New York University showing that Arabs who remained in Israel after 1948 lost between 40 and 60 per cent of their land); military rule (based on the belief that Arabs constitute “security risks” with “suspect” loyalty to the state); incomplete civil rights legislation (which allows for abridgement of the rights of the Basic Law on Dignity to fit the “values of the State of Israel”); restricted political representation (the definition of political parties which support “terrorism” is sufficiently vague to allow for exclusion along ideological lines); education (underfunding and curricula which privilege Jewish culture over the Arab community); in religion (including access to religious sites); in socio-economic status (in 2003, poverty among Palestinian Arab families was 3.2 times that of Jewish families); and more.

What strikes me in particular, though, is the stifling of dissent faced by both the Arab and Jewish populations within Israel. According to Farah, there’s little space to express your views — sometimes, you can’t even say “Nakba” (the Arabic word for “catastrophe,” referring to the massive displacement of Palestinians in 1948), lest it “interfere with [collective Jewish] memories.” While almost half of the Haifa civilians killed by missiles during the 2006 Second Lebanon War were Arab, Farah summed up the prevailing attitude: if you opposed the Israeli military action, you deserved to be killed… or you were a “traitor.” When Farah, the head of a long-established NGO, visited activists from the Turkish flotilla this June, he was arrested and held for seven hours. A conversation can be dangerous.

The issue of dissent comes up frequently in conversation with both Jews and Arabs. After my meeting with Farah, Dani Grimblat, a Jewish activist, takes me on a walk in his Haifa neighbourhood, Hadar (which interestingly translates to “glamour”), known by many as a progressive enclave. At a local café, I sit down with two of his friends, both Christian Arabs, who have been playing chess. We talk about why Haifa is better integrated than other places in Israel (it seems it’s connected to a history of labour organizations working together and some progressive municipal politicians), but our conversation quickly turns to the issue of dissent. A couple of months ago, I’m told, a street concert was taking place. From the stage, one of the musicians made some political comments in an act of Palestinian solidarity: not exactly a call to arms, I understand, but something considered provocative and problematic by one of the men I’m chatting with (“I like provocation!” says the other one). Long story short, the sound was cut on his microphone.

A young bar owner at a “non-partisan” place down the street — most of the bars in this neighbourhood seem to have political affiliations — tells me that “tension breeds dialogue.” This might be the case in Haifa where there is a relaxed level of tolerance for political difference, but it doesn’t feel that way in other places I visit; typically, I feel, space for tolerance is privileged for Jews over Arabs. Jews are allowed the luxury of dialogue, while Arabs are thought of as “terrorists” and too-often all but excluded from discussions around a peace process.

There is also an interesting distinction between discussion that occurs within Israel and discussion originating from outside the country, whether within the Jewish Diaspora or the international community as a whole. Progressive North American Jews are becoming accustomed to being labeled “self-hating” and are subject to a special level of venom when criticizing Israel or asking provocative questions about the conflict. I have received some lovely “hate tweets” since writing this series along these lines. The hostility I’ve faced has largely come from other North Americans — Israelis seemed to appreciate that I was genuinely listening and able to shift my opinions — but there is nonetheless an underlying sense that criticism should stay within Israel.

Near the end of my trip, I’m back in Tel Aviv, staying with one of the soldiers from the Taglit group. He and some friends are watching the World Cup, while I — not a soccer fan — chat with some friends on Facebook and respond to an e-mail from a person from Breaking the Silence with whom I’ve been corresponding.

Breaking the Silence is made up of soldiers who have been stationed in Hebron. These soldiers now give tours of the city, illustrating the horrific treatment of the resident Palestinians by the small group of fundamentalist Jews who have “settled” in the town. (I will write more about this group in the final piece in this series.)

During a lull in the soccer game, I ask one of my friend’s comrades what people think of the Breaking the Silence soldiers. “It’s good, what they’re doing,” he says, and adds that most Israelis think the situation in Hebron is really bad and should be fixed. “But,” he says, Israelis also think, “don’t ever do these tours in English!” So, just as with a family reluctant “to wash its dirty linen in public,” it seems that dialogue can be good, and useful, but it also needs to stay “in the tent,” — and a Jewish-Israeli tent, at that.

Rachel Marcuse is a Vancouver-based activist, facilitator and apparatchick. The executive director of the Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE), a municipal political party, she also freelances, focussing on facilitation skills, youth-engagement and strategic planning. Her views do not necessarily represent the positions of any organization whatsoever.

Gilbert Achcar’s book on Arabs and the Holocaust
Aug 26, 2010  Miriyam Aouragh

A review of Gilbert Achcar’s book, The Arabs and the Holocaust: the Arab-Israeli War of Narratives (Metropolitan Books; in England, from Saqi).

Gilbert Achcar is a Lebanese Professor based at SOAS (University of London) and writer of numerous books on geopolitical power relations and imperialism in the Arab world. His new book is a reasoned intervention that at once disputes anti-Arab racism and develops a strong set of arguments against the notion ‘Arab anti-Semitism’. It brings together sources from English, French and Arabic archives and engages with contemporary debates. Doing so, he both deepens and broadens the important contributions on this theme by Philip Matar and Joseph Massad. This book will undoubtedly become a basic reference both to activists and academics working on the Middle East. With more than 70 pages of notes and literary references, Achcar engages in an almost breathless historical and empirical untwisting of the massive body of counter-truths stemming from polemic writings in academia, such as Harkabi’s constantly recycled classic Arab Attitudes to Israel and in popular media, detritus from the pro-Israel watchdog MEMRI. The book is at its most relevant where it steps outside the ‘academic discourse’ and engages with Arab social movements.

An examination of religious sources brings down important stereotypes about the region’s most important religion. To put it crudely, Achcar makes clear that anti-Semitism is rather insignificant in Islam compared to the deeply ingrained anti-Jewish tradition in Christianity. European anti-Semitic racism is a fantasy-based hatred of the Jews. Hatred felt by Arabs is relatively new and stems from the oppression by a state that defines itself, above all, as Jewish. Xenophobia was and is undoubtedly present. But as even the orientalist historian, and inventor of the ‘clash of civilisation’ thesis, Bernard Lewis admitted: “For [European] Christian anti-Semites the Palestinian problem is a pretext and outlet of their hatred; for Muslim anti-Semites it is the cause.”

Despite their insignificant role in Nazi politics, thousands of pages have been written about Arab collaboration with Nazism. As Philip Mattar showed in his important study, it is not true that often-mentioned Amin al-Hussaini – the Mufti of Jerusalem from the influential Hussaini family – wholeheartedly identified with the Nazi war effort, nor was he a fervent supporter of the mass murder of Jews. Astonishingly the article on al-Hussaini in the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust is much longer than that of Goebbels, Himmler and Eichmann. Some did have fascination from a distance, but Achcar makes an important distinction between ideological apologists and those acting in a calculated manner. The tactics of al-Hussaini basically mirror Churchill’s ‘I would ally with the devil himself against Hitler’ after being deceived over and again by the British (Balfour Declaration and the Peel Commission). He then demonstrates that such reactionary tactical alliances were mostly proposed by rightwing and Arabs and in line with their letdown of the 1936 Palestinian uprising (sabotaging the general strike in specific). Achcar argues there is no point to refute that some political figures were copying the Italian fascist style and admired the Führer – not unlike Zionist admiration for and collaboration with Nazis. A fascinating example Achcar notes is the origin of the ‘Zionism = Nazism’ slogan. This often misconstrued equation was invented by Arab communists in the 1930s to call for equal aversion for both: as a way to bend the stick against anti-Semitism. This was important because right-wing tendencies diverted popular resentment against Britain and later Israel and its backers towards Jews.

Thus, in essence, this was, and still is, a debate about and between the right and the left of the political spectrum. Achcar has been dusting off the archives of the main political journals. The Holocaust-denial thesis is easily disproved: there was no doubt about the reality of Nazism from which millions perished, and the majority of the independence movement in the Arab world unconditionally rejected Nazism and explicitly condemned those who flirted with Mussolini for instance. Achcar tackles the orientalist notion of a single Arab discourse. Instead, his unfolding displays that most movements were (and still are) informed by local, regional and global power relations. The first half of the book is a synchronous study of the main ideological currents (Western liberals, pan-Islamists, nationalists, communists) that formed Arab politics from the beginning of the 20th century until WWII and the influx of more and more Jews to Palestine. Much changed as the traumatic 1948 events catalysed crucial political transformations. The Nakba dealt a heavy blow to the main ideological currents as we observe in the second half of the book; right wing Islamist regimes were condemned for allying with imperial forces, and communists who were guilty by association—with a few exceptions that Achcar discusses, most communists followed the political zigzags of Stalin and hardly engaged (this explains the curious gap in archival material from that period). Incidentally the damage to the main currents and the political vacuum it produced helps explain the popularity of Arab Nationalism a decade later.

The Holocaust discourse has become part of a propaganda industry, the anti-Arab outcry particular, and has become malicious. One wonders why there is little outcry about Indian leaders having welcomed the Japanese during independent struggle against the British Empire. Achcar’s book offers an answer to this, seemingly contradictory, stance: it is not relevant to contemporary imperialism. Zionist exploitation of the Holocaust could grow more out of proportion because of what is called ‘philosemitism’: any critique of Israel is dealt with panic and exaggerated caution, it is a form of anti-Semitism; one put on its head. It has been quite simple to maintain the Arab phantom: polemics are deliberately racialised by entwining Zionism with Judaism while categorically refusing to contextualise the linguistic Arab tradition.

Arabs have lived with Jews for centuries and ‘Jew’ was the common reference, not a slander, and unsurprisingly, as Israeli politicians consistently call Israel a Jewish state ‘Jew’ becomes the norm. Confusing references to Jew, Israeli, and Zionism muddle the debate. Another explanation is the political refusal to use the term ‘Israel’ for it implies an acknowledgement of the loss of Palestine. These linguistic muddles are rather innocent but become dangerous when it is part of such enormous power differences.

An important historical era that Achcar scrutinises is the Nasser period when Arab nationalism became increasingly leftist. It was also a political turn vis-à-vis the Jewish question. Nasser formed a threat to Western imperialism, now the ‘Nasser = Hitler’ dictum began to be deployed. This was outrageous. It was not only the period when the linguistic reference was the least muddled – Zionism was the common term – Nasser publicly repudiated the ‘throwing Jews into the sea’ mantra and consistently identified imperialism as the key enemy. By doing so he targeted Arab lackeys: ‘… Arab leaders say Israel and the Jews. They are afraid to say England’. Even after Israel’s direct involvement with Britain and France as part of 1956 tripartite attack on Egypt over the Suez canal, the main enemy remained imperialism. Nasserism did not credit the explanation that an international Zionist movement controlled the US. Israel was considered the ‘imperialist base in the heart of Arab homeland’. One of the events causing enormous outcries was Nasser’s authorization in 1955 of death sentences against two Egyptian Jews. But Achcar offers an indispensable account that puts the event in a new light. Firstly, the Egyptian Jews were convicted because they were spies and part of a large scale terrorist operation prepared by Israel. Secondly, Egyptian Muslims convicted of espionage were also executed. Moreover, many of the Egyptian opposition (mainly communists and Islamists) suffered this fate too. I found the enormous international uproar about the judicial killing of the Jewish spies mindboggling, as merely two years before that case two Jewish (communist) Americans, the Rosenbergs, were executed in the United States for conspiracy.

Not a competition of tragedies

Overall, the Nazi genocide in mainstream Arab discourse during and after WW2 was certainly not disputed, in fact rather than minimising the Holocaust, Arabs began employing it. Frustrated by the international/Western silence, they used Western references, hoping it might remove the blinders. This appropriation is often condemned, although condemning a reference to Nazis become trivial coming from the crafters of this reference, most notably David Ben Gurion calling Menachem Begin ‘another Hitler’. There is another example of the analogy between Israel as Nazism but one which (pro-) Israel pundits never mention, that of conservative Jews: for instance orthodox Jewish philosopher Yeshaayahu Leibowitz compared the IDF to Nazism by calling the soldiers ‘Judeo-Nazis’ during the First Intifada. Today not only anti-Zionist but practically any outspoken Jew and leftist Israeli gets the label ‘anti-Semite’. Such Israeli smear campaigns devalue the history of anti-Semitism and thereby complicate the recognition of present forms of racism.

Political failures lead to intellectual defeatism and in turn removed the earlier ethical compass of Arab politics. Achcar argues there is an important connection with a deterioration of the principal rejection of anti-Semitism. The prevalent double standard in international politics regarding the right to self-determination and any other basic human right spurred again with the Second Intifada and the 2006 war on Lebanon. And the Gaza conflict of ’08-’09 further feeds anti-Semitic conspiracies. In light of these conditions there has been troubling incidences of holocaust denial – as illustrated by popularity of the pseudo-intellectual Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy. As Joseph Massad argued before, it comes down to a twist of logic, that if recognising the holocaust means accepting a colonial-settler racist state, then the holocaust must be denied or at least questioned. In other wordsm they fall right in the Zionist ideological trap of linking the Jewish genocide to Israeli statehood.

A complacent attitude (and terms like ‘Hollow-cause’ and ‘Holo-hoax’ slipping into political discourses) finds its way through the back door and amount to condoning anti-Semitism. Achcar identifies several such examples and argues that for all the anti-imperialist rhetoric the ultimate tragedy is that anti-Semitic language helps Israel produce anti-Arab propaganda, which in turn undermines Palestinian resistance and pro-Palestinian solidarity.

Achcar touches a sensitive nerve; the deterioration of political currents shows a dynamic that is also visible on smaller scales in the Western context. But here too the dubious forms of Holocaust-denial rarely come from anti-Semitic incentives. Protest movements experienced a down-turn and in some cases suffer state oppression, it has become difficult to organise outward-looking grassroots activism. Some have been indulging in inward-looking (and time-consuming) campaigns to prove a pro-Jewish bias. Among Muslim migrants in Europe it clearly relates to condoning Islamophobia in the name of free speech while condemning critique on Israel. An important conclusion is that the struggle against Islamophobia cannot be separated from struggle against anti-Semitism.

During mass protests against the Israeli invasions of the West Bank in 2002, banners were carried with swastikas drawn on Ariel Sharon’s face, meant to underscore the magnitude of Israel’s crimes—and the savage irony being that these crimes were committed by Jews. Achcar shows an appalling transformation: the targeting of the use of such symbols, which are not acts of anti-Semitism, and the targeting of the (anti-Zionist) critique of Israel as anti-Semitism has gained official status, when the European Union’s Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia incorporated this logic in its 2005 definition of racism. On the one hand, such (dangerous) redefinitions explain the increase of anti-Semitism. On the other hand it helps cleanse European anti-Semitism by disparaging Muslims as the real perpetrator of such attitudes–the enemy within.

The aim for many Muslims has become to unveil the hypocrisy of Western liberal ideals. The racist assumptions about Arabs that underlie such debates make it uncomfortable to speak out: there is a growing discontent and to some extent a legitimate refusal, to apologise on command. Yet speaking as an Arab public intellectual Achcar himself is uncompromising, he shows that recognising the tragedy of the other side without attaching conditions to it (let alone ridicule it) and keeping the debate political rather than cultural is the only appropriate strategy. 

By mentioning the Hussaini-Nazi flirtation Achcar opens a can of worms, and raising the issue of Holocaust denial is an invitation for attack. Some of those mentioned in his naming and shaming will undoubtedly be upset. But, like other Arab outspoken critics (Joseph Samaha, Azmi Bishara and others), Achcar does not shy away. The most inspiring part of the book is where he shows that the best advance is to reclaim the progressive traditions. It brings back to the public domain what was there all along and it offers inspiring lessons for today.

Although the traumatic crushing in 1967 exhausted the potentials of a progressive Arab national project in the 1970s, Palestinian politics secured the progressive Arab intellectual mindset emerging under Nasser. Intellectuals took pains to differentiate between Jews and Zionists, and Palestine had the most radical analyses concerning anti-Semitism/Israel of the whole Arab/Muslim world. Those continuous debates concerning a democratic, secular, state for all inhabitants were a far cry from today’s Abbas-based PLO. These heated debates were discussed openly in Arabic and English magazines. To the Zionists, progressives thinkers like Abu Iyad and Ghassan Ghanafani were a bigger threat than any reactionary conspiracy theory. Israel assassinated them one after the other in a liquidation campaign of its political cadres. Western states too have been complicit, in supporting right-wing dictators subservient to them; while actively helping to crush left-wing movements. This brings to mind another bias that will lurch people: the West’s hugging and handshaking of those dictators that entertain anti-Jewish conspiracy, while calling independent leaders the latest Hitler.

Although the PLO lent credit to its avant-garde thinkers, it was not immune to the deadly blows from Israel and the Arab regimes: all had its toll. Many of the progressive Arabs had in any case disproved the idea that it is ‘impossible to see Jews as victims while you are victimised by them’. Everyone who spends time in OPT or the overpopulated poor refugee camps, knows that the racist approaches are not embraced, perhaps precisely because they know what subjugation is. A powerful quote from Mahmoud Darwish in Achcar is telling: “However intense the hostility between Israelis and Arabs no Arab has the right to feel that his enemy’s enemy is his friend, for Nazism is the enemy of all the worlds’ peoples.”

From the progressive anti-colonial nationalism of Nasser to the more recent shift in the discourse of the Islamic resistance movements described by Achcar, one can conclude that a crucial link in the shift is the success, or prospect, of a grassroots movement which includes broad sections of society that shape the movement’s general ideology. For a long time the overall approach was avoidance, but an important move is taking place. They are not Achcar’s favourites, but he acknowledges that the surge of Islamic resistance also shows a shift towards a clearer stance. This is notable in the political evolution of Hezbollah leader Nassrallah (his famous speeches undermine anti-Semitism) of which Achcar gives fascinating examples.

At the outset of the book Achar offers a way to avoid the heavily laden term Holocaust and proposes ‘Jewish genocide’ from the French variant shoah. Towards the end of the book Achcar raises a difficult issue: is the Holocaust comparable to other events? To my surprise, Achcar complicates the debate: it should not be compared and the arguments given are confusing. One can emphasise the unique quantitative or technical parameters of WWII, but I do not think this should mean it therefore is incomparable. Firstly, this stance does not allow space to analyse comparable experiences—the transatlantic slavery, the wiping out of Native Americans, the Armenian genocide, and so on—but turns these historical episodes into metaphysical events. Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman (1989) argues that the holocaust was the act of human beings against other human beings, a historical event, exceptional as it was, that must be compared. True; for Palestinians the numbers are unequal, and the methods incomparable with the Jewish genocide, but with ¾ of the native population disappeared through killing and forced exile, for many Palestinians the Nakba was a genocidal extermination. That is why Darwish added to the aforementioned quote: ‘It is not overly severe to say that the Israeli Zionist behaviour towards the original people of Palestine resembles Nazism’.

All the same, Achcar’s argument about the unprecedented methods and scale in combination with Nazi ideology is indeed convincing. Rather than methods or scale, it was the plan to wipe out an entire population not because they are an obstacle to an expansionist settler colony; or they resist imperialism or acts of state aggression– Nazism was about the industrial mass murder to satisfy a sadistic desire born of ethnic hatred and the fantasy of breeding a pure race and wiping out Jews, and also Roma, Sinti, gays, and disabled (and all political opposition standing in its way such as trade unionists and communists). This is undeniably exceptional and belittling this is a sin.

To Arabs the holocaust debate is tied with the Nakba in two consecutive ways. First, the Nakba is itself denied and ridiculed and now being banned from Israeli curriculum. The denial of the Nakba provokes another denial. But an important difference is that the Nakba is not a matter of the past. Nevertheless, it requires moral bravery to rise above one’s own identity in a time when anti-racist voices are drowned out by the noise of bombs. The old adage ‘No justice, no peace’ has never been so relevant.

Miriyam Aouragh is a a Dutch-Moroccan anthropologist and activist. She got her Ph.D. at the University of Amsterdam in study on the social implications of the internet for Palestinians both in Palestine and the diaspora. She has a book coming out this fall with I.B. Tauris. She is currently a research fellow at Oxford University working on the impact of web 2.0 for activist politics [‘Cyber Initifada’] in Palestine and Lebanon, where she has done fieldwork.

In English publication, Israeli Palestinian pol calls for — sit down — liberal democracy
Aug 26, 2010  Philip Weiss

Oh my, why isn’t this in the American press? The New Statesman interviews Haneen Zoabi, the Palestinian Member of the Knesset who went on the Gaza flotilla and is now a subject of widespread hatred in Israel. The New Statesman even has a nice picture of her. Jeez. Oh and I wonder: Did the flotilla experience transform Zoabi’s views? Every day are more Palestinians losing faith in the idea of freedom through Partition? And if so, why should liberal Americans adhere to that idea? But how can we even discuss these ideas if our journalists regard the following sort of conversation as taboo? So many questions! Samira Shackle of NS, asks Zoabi:

Do you endorse a two-state solution?
The reality of Israel’s actions shows us that it’s unrealistic to have a real sovereign state in the West Bank and Gaza with Jerusalem as the capital. The more realistic solution is one state with full national equality for both national groups.

Is the west right to refuse to engage with Hamas?
No one can tell the Palestinian people whom to choose as a government. Hamas is not a terrorist organisation. I don’t think that Hamas has a clear political vision, but regardless of whether I disagree [with it], the international community cannot mediate neutrally if it starts to label the organisations of the Palestinians as illegitimate.

Are you against the very idea of Israel?
We do not want to throw Jews into the sea. We are not against Jews. We are against Israeli policies and the definition of Israel as a Jewish state.

How does the struggle in the Palestinian territories compare to your own in Israel?
This is the difference – as citizens of Israel, we are utilising all the tools that we have, but those in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have given up resisting occupation.

What about the Palestinian Authority?
The PA seems more focused on building a state than ending the occupation. It’s irrational; you can’t negotiate borders while Palestinians are under siege and Israel is expanding settlements.

What is your hope for Arab citizens in Israel?
I have a vision of our rights as indigenous people. We didn’t migrate to Israel; it is Israel that migrated to us.

You’ve been quoted as saying that it would be a good thing for Iran to have nuclear weapons.
That is inaccurate. It cannot be that someone who is struggling against oppression is calling for nuclear weapons. But if the world doesn’t prevent Israel from having nuclear weapons, why does it prevent others.

Don’t forget ‘The Atlantic’’s pieties about who destroyed Palestine
Aug 26, 2010  Matthew Taylor

Some around here are just shocked, shocked at the transparently pro-Israel propaganda masquerading as journalism in The Atlantic… but it seems to me this pub has been a tool of Israel’s Ministry of Disinformation for years.

For instance, let’s go back to David Samuels’ September 2005 cover story about how Yasser Arafat (and not Zionist militias/the U.S.-backed Israeli military) somehow “destroyed” Palestine.

Joseph Glatzer might point out that DJ Samuels is in Da House, spinning us some of the greatest Zionist hits for the ladies. For example, check out the opening paragraph:

The war for Jerusalem that began after Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s failed peace offer at Camp David in the summer of 2000 has become the subject of legends and fables, each one of which is colored in the distinctive shades of the political spectrum from which it emerged: Yasir Arafat tried to control the violence. Arafat was behind the violence. Arafat was the target of the violence, which he deflected onto the Israelis. Depending on which day of the week it was, any combination of these statements might have been true.

So according to Samuels, there are legends and myths, but they’re all about Palestinian violence.

Serious reporting had debunked the myth of Barak’s peace offer a year before Samuels published, but Samuels speaks of the “offer” as if it were an incontrovertible fact. Sharon’s intentional provocation, and Israel’s brutal crushing of an uprising that in its first weeks was largely non-violent or at most armed with non-lethal weapons (stones), is of course not mentioned. 

Another mega-hit, really I’d call this the all time Platinum smash hit Zionist propaganda chart-topper: the Palestinians/Arafat are the source of all the violence in the Middle East.

After Arafat died, on November 11, 2004, there were some who believed that the chaos and violence that he had brought with him to the Palestinian territories might follow him to the grave, and that peace between Israelis and Palestinians might finally be at hand.

Some believed? Who exactly? Certainly not the Palestinians suffering under the brutality of occupation. Anyway, this kind of argument seems indistinguishable from what someone at CAMERA (an Israel propaganda outfit) might have faxed Samuels as a suggestion for his article. The chaos and violence in the territories are the fault of, and originate from…Arafat! Never say the words “military occupation,” “house demolitions,” “ethnic cleansing,” “land confiscation,” or “illegal wall.”

The article mucks into a detailed discussion of Arafat’s alleged corruption and cronyism. I can’t say whether or not that stuff is true. But who cares, really? If The Atlantic had run a 12-page story about the true causes of the destruction of Palestine, then perhaps it would be fair to also run an exposé of Palestinian Authority corruption. But the magazine’s front cover headline, “How Arafat Destroyed Palestine,” is part of that other time-worn classic Zionist hit, The Palestinians Are To Blame for Their Own Suffering.

The Atlantic should be reporting the reality, the facts, international law… If the mainstream media reported that story, on a regular basis, perhaps lockstep support for Israel’s suicidal project of military conquest and descent into fascism wouldn’t be so easy for the U.S. Congress to support. But thank goodness we have magazines like The Atlantic, to help indoctrinate the American public and ensure the billions of military aid continue to flow.

P.S. – Who remembers the 2004 scene when Jon Stewart confronted the Crossfire bloviators and asked them why they were hurting America? I’d like to do the same with mainstream editors: Why are you hurting Palestinians? Israelis? Americans? Iranians?

P.P.S. – Here’s Samuels on the same topic as Goldberg, why Israel will attack Iran. An example of his blinders:

The key fact of the American-Israeli alliance that most commentators seem eager to elide is that Israel is America’s leading ally in the Middle East because it is the most powerful country in the Middle East.

Eager to elide? How can you be so righteous about elisions when your reporting on “the destruction of Palestine” contains so many of them? And in this particular example, U.S. support for Israel has nothing to do with the pro-Israel Lobby and conservative Jewish donors? Since when has the mainstream media reported on either?

Settlement boycott causing ‘enormous damage’ to Israeli companies operating in the West Bank
Aug 26, 2010 Adam Horowitz

The following article originally appeared in Hebrew on the Ynet website on August 25, 2010. It was translated by Dena Shunra.

Damage to Israeli Companies exacts a heavy price

It’s not only Norway: Israeli companies are boycotted by many countries for political reasons. Glass factory owner: the boycott has caused me enormous damage.

Yesterday’s decision by the Norwegian Oil Foundation to remove its investments from Africa-Israel and from Denia-Seabus, claiming that they are involved in illegal construction in the Territories is only the last of a long and growing line of decisions taken by governmental and private companies in Europe to boycott Israeli companies for political reasons.

In most cases, the claims are that the products were manufactured beyond the Green Line and thus, in “occupied territories”. Sometimes it is a political protest against Israel’s policy against the Palestinians, as in the response to the flotilla events. One thing is not in doubt: in the past few months, boycott of Israeli brands for political reasons has become markedly increased.

“Since the Palestinians declared a boycott on Territories products, I’ve had a 40% drop in production over the past few months,” said Avi Ben-Zvi, owner of the Plastco company which produces glassware in Ariel. “Export to Europe has entirely cased, and traders in the Territories have stopped working with us. The damage is enormous.”

According to Ariel mayor Ron Nachman, the damage to local factories is immense: “broad-reaching government activity should be initiated, to contact the boycotting countries and threaten them that they will not be party to the political process.”

Human Rights Organization Applied Pressure – Sweden Apologized

Norway’s decision, the day before yesterday, was preceded last March by a decision by a large Swedish pension fund to boycott Israeli company Elbit Systems, due to its role in constructing the Separation Fence. The fund announced that it had sold its holdings in Elbit following a recommendation by the fund’s ethics committee to refrain from investing in the shares of companies that are involved in the violation of international treaties.

Elbit had also been hurt by a boycott before then: the Norwegian government pension fund announced last September that it would stop investing in Elbit due to its role in construction of the fence. Late last May the German Deutschebank announced that it had sold all of its shares in Elbit, probably after great pressure had been applied on the directors of the bank by representatives of anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian organizations.

Two years ago giant Swedish corporation Assa Abloy, owner of Israeli Mul-T-Lock, was criticized for the fact that its production plant was operating in the Barkan industrial park, which is located beyond the Green Line. The company promised to transfer the plant “into the boundaries of Israel,” following pressure by a Swedish Christian human rights organization.

Specific Events

Shraga Brosh [owner of the “Ayelet Barkan” factory in the Barkan industrial zone in the West Bank], chairman of the Industrialist Association, yesterday said that “every now and then organizations, especially from Scandinavia, boycott one or another organization from Israel. All told, these are specific events which have no effect on the overall trade with Israel.”

Soda Club was also hurt by the boycott: the Paris municipality had to deny the participation of that Israeli company in a large fair promoting the drinking of tap water after having received threats from pro-Palestinian organizations.

In July 2009 it was also discovered that French transportation company Veolia, operator of the Jerusalem light rail project, had decided to sell its shares in the project. Veolia did not specify the reason for this sale, but the fact that a French court agreed several months before that to hear a suit filed against Veolia due to the construction of part of the light rail line inside East Jerusalem, to connect Jewish neighborhoods in the east of the city to the west, could be seen as a clue.

Africa-Israel: “Africa and its subsidiaries have not been involved for a while in developing real-estate or residential construction in the West Bank. Thus, there is no foundation to the claims.”

This item was initially published in the Yediot Acharonot Mammon supplement; Daniel Beittini, Navit Zomer, and Offer Petersburg took part in its preparation.

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