NOVANEWS
Safed, a war story
A campaign of racism and anti-Arab incitement is turning one of Israel’s holy cities into a ticking bomb
by Gideon Levy
The telephone rings. “Hello, this is Mustafa, I’m calling about the apartment.” The response comes quickly and emphatically: “No, it’s already been rented.” Or, “I only rent to women,” or “I only rent to families.” Or, in an angry tone: “Heaven forbid, do you want to stop me from reading the Torah on Shabbat,” or “I’m afraid of the rabbis.”
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Abu Salah. Sometimes he introduces himself as “Tomer”. |
Photo by: Miki Kratsman |
For an entire hour, student Mustafa Shahin, a resident of Sakhnin who studies sociology and human resources at Safed College, made telephone inquiries – in vain. Because he is an Arab, the rental listings on the college bulletin boards are irrelevant. Mahmoud Abu Salah, Shahin’s representative in the student union (there are a total of eight representatives, but only one is an Arab ), says that he sometimes introduces himself on the phone as “Tomer” to get the conversation started. Now everyone has started calling Mahmoud “Tomer.” But that doesn’t mean people want to rent to Arab college students in Safed.
The city is roiling: It recently hosted an “emergency conference” of 18 rabbis and 400 of their followers on this issue. There was an armed attack on an Arab student apartment. A Jewish legal ruling was handed down by the city’s chief rabbi, Shmuel Eliyahu. Mayor Ilan Shohat and veteran resident Eliyahu Tzvieli, who rented an apartment to Bedouin students, have received threats. The message is: Arabs, go home.
In response to plans for establishing a medical school in Safed, flyers were circulated last week by some sort of “campaign headquarters,” declaring: “The smokescreen called a medical school obscures an evil scheme: to establish a refugee camp for psychotic, sadistic and debased Arabs, whose deceptiveness is, and always has been, aimed at tempting [Jewish women] and cruelly abusing them. On orders of the great rabbis of Safed, may they be blessed with a long life, we declare our protest and vehement resistance, and reiterate that it is forbidden under the law of the Torah to offer these people apartments for sale, rent, work or any form of entry. Our city will not succumb to wanton behavior – go back to your own locales and do not defile our camp.”
The language of this flyer slams the Safed College Internet site, which touts “a city that blends academia, tradition, kabbala and a magical atmosphere.”
Abu Salah reads the flyer and puts it in his pocket without uttering a word. For the time being, he and his peers are showing restraint, but a time bomb is ticking here. Safed is a war story in the making.
Kabbalist Rabbi Isaac Luria was born on Safed’s slopes, and Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas was born nearby. Today, the town’s artists’ quarter is being snuffed out by ultra-nationalist zeal. On Jerusalem Street, where Safed College is located, there is a Rav Hesed supermarket; a Galgal Hakodesh store that sells Jewish religious articles; and a furniture store with a special “bride-and-groom” deal for furnishing an entire apartment for NIS 8,888.
Safed College, operated under the auspices of Bar-Ilan University, has 1,700 students, and the whole campus seems to speak Arabic. Indeed, when we visited the institution last week, it seemed to have an absolute Arab majority. The most obvious exceptions were a policeman and a prison warden, both enrolled as students, and two lecturers who wore skullcaps and ritual fringes. Strolling around the sun-drenched campus, with its olive and cypress trees, were dozens of Arab students from the Galilee. Some, but not all, of the female students wore traditional head coverings; male students had hair gel. On the lawn, next to the modest library, a student set down his jacket, and kneeled to pray in the direction of Mecca.
The whole area is full of surreal contradictions: There is the bearded driver who shouts threateningly, in Arabic, at what he calls “el Yahud [the Jews]” – a group of Arab students, who cross the street and stare at him apathetically. The campus seems tranquil, while the city seethes with racist hatred. One sees Bratslav Hasidim and newly Orthodox and other pious Jews roam the streets along with hijab-clad, traditional Muslims.
A recent editorial, titled “The Ishmaelites,” in the Hamevaser newspaper proclaimed that one of the city’s rabbis conducted an inquiry and discovered that funding from the European Union and Saudi Arabia finance the college’s Arab students.
“I wish they did support us,” reflects the student activist, Mahmoud Abu Salah, aka Tomer, with a wistful smile. He embodies several contradictions: He claims that he served in the Israel Defense Forces as an undercover soldier, yet he is the student union delegate of the “Arab sector” (an Israeli expression ), and his dream is to become the state comptroller or an ambassador. “I don’t have any problem representing the state – this is my state,” he says wanly.
Not exactly minted in the “Danny the Red” mold, the young man allowed himself to be photographed in a triumphant pose, alongside the memorial to the “Liberators” who expelled his forefathers from the city. A second-year law student who already has a degree in social work from the college, he wears preppy white shoes and a Puma belt.
Abu Salah has already resided in four apartments in Safed. At present, he is compelled to commute each day from his village because it is nearly impossible for Arabs to find a room to rent in the city. Out of the college’s 900 Arab students, he says, only a few live in rented apartments, not including the 120 who live in the dormitories.
On a recent Saturday, Abu Salah met MK Ahmed Tibi in Jenin’s market, and asked the parliamentarian not to visit the college.
“We don’t need Arab MKs here,” he explains now. “We keep things quiet on our own. I think the college should take care of things here. I don’t want to organize demonstrations; I want to keep things calm. I stay silent, but the college has to do something. That’s what I told the college president. We have never encountered racism on the campus grounds – so they [Knesset members] can come make the rounds in Safed, but shouldn’t come here.”
This week Abu Salah met the Arab students’ representative at Netanya Academic College, and learned that it is also nearly impossible for Arab students in that coastal town to rent an apartment. He says he has Jewish friends who signed a rental contract in the name of Arab students. But after it was discovered, the landlord was threatened; he was told that his own house would be burned down if Arab tenants were to remain in the Safed apartment.
Abu Salah: “Rabbi Eliyahu thinks that we want to return Safed to the Arabs. They think that we want to remain in the city after our studies. But only a few [Arab students] remain here on Saturdays. An [Arab] student comes here solely for the purpose of studying. After that he’ll go anywhere, to get the hell out of here – what is there for us in such a poor town? A student spends an average of NIS 50 a day in the city, not including rent. We help Safed’s economy. I’m not even talking about the money they make from parking fees. Most come to study here, and are not looking for trouble.
Nobody comes looking to compile a criminal record … They [those who object to the Arab students] want us to organize; they want to remove us from here. But we want to be smarter than that, to show them that we exist, without causing an uproar,” explains Abu Sabah.
During his studies, he says, he has been employed in two local hotels, Rimonim and Canaan Spa, working as a shabbas goy – someone who assists devout Jewish guests on the Sabbath. He has provided similar services for neighbors: “I would return home, and a neighbor would tell me, ‘It’s cold.’ At first, I didn’t get it. What was I supposed to do, warm him up? But they spoke to me with gestures, so that I’d understand what they meant and light their furnace on Shabbat.”
He also has stories of residents spitting at Arab students, and of students entering stores and being told that they were “closed.” He has heard chants on streets, like: “An Arab is a son of a bitch.” I asked him how he would respond were someone to call him a dirty Arab. “I would ask him, am I really dirty? I take a shower twice a day and dress better than you,” Abu Salah quips.
At Hummus Atika, an ultra-Orthodox waiter served a smooth, kosher version of the chickpea paste, which was actually pretty tasty. The restaurant walls were covered with colorful portraits of past and present rabbinical sages, including the late Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, father of the Safed rabbi who is spearheading the Arab expulsion.
Haaretz’s Galilee correspondent, Eli Ashkenazi, told us he heard recently from Eliyahu Tzvieli, 89, the resident who was threatened after he rented an apartment to Bedouin students, that an Arab student entered a falafel joint Tzvieli rents to a Jewish proprietor, and ordered a meal. “I’ll give you poison,” was the response. Tzvieli tried to cancel the rental contract for the falafel stand, but was unsuccessful.
The student Mustafa Shahin lived last year in rental apartments located off Safed’s main pedestrian thoroughfare, and also in the Canaan neighborhood. This year, he spends 70 NIS a day on bus travel to and from his home. He has phoned dozens of landlords, explaining, “This is Mustafa, I’m calling about the apartment.” He was always rejected.
He phones a man named Viktor, who has an apartment for rent.
“Only women,” says Viktor.
“But I live alone,” pleads Mustafa. “I don’t make trouble and keep quiet.”
Viktor responds: “I have a problem. I would take you, but there are the rabbis. They give me problems. I would rent to women, I’m not afraid, but not to men. Good luck, Mustafa.”
Then there was a “fully furnished” apartment.
“Good afternoon, this is Mustafa, I’m calling about the apartment,” the student says.
“Try calling at night, I’m driving right now,” replies the landlord.
After several more fruitless phone calls, Mustafa gives up. Some students come up to us and relate their own experiences. A college bulletin board lists some living-room furniture for sale, and a wooden kitchen cabinet. Mustafa calls up, but is told the furnishings are no longer for sale.
Shinseki: Suicide Rates Soar Among US Vets
Agence France-Presse
The economic downturn and the trauma of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have pushed more US veterans to suicide, Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki said Thursday.
As Americans across the United States and around the world celebrated the contributions of men and women in uniform on Veterans Day, Shinseki outlined a sobering picture for the approximately 23 million veterans in the United States.
Only eight million of those veterans are currently registered with the Department of Veterans Affairs, Shinseki said. Many slip through the cracks due to crippling mental health problems, homelessness, alcohol and illegal drug abuse or crime.
Several studies have shown that suicides are on the rise among youths who have left the military.
“It’s compounded by the stress, the trauma that goes with the current operations, where we have a much smaller military being asked to do so much and then repeat it tour after tour,” Shinseki told National Public Radio (NPR).
“I know the suicide numbers are up.”
In January, he indicated that 20 percent of some 30,000 suicides in the United States each year are committed by veterans.
Suicides claimed the lives of a record 309 servicemembers last year, up from 267 in 2008, according to Pentagon numbers. The number of suicides between 2005 and 2009 — 1,100 — exceeded that of the number of US military members killed in Afghanistan since 2001.
The Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs do not keep statistics on veteran deaths.
Shinseki pointed to a backlog of Veterans Affairs cases or disability claims that has soared to over 700,000 this year, up from 400,000 to 500,000 the year before.
He noted that the number of new cases has increased faster than his agency’s capacity. Even though the Department of Veterans Affairs closed out 977,000 cases last year, it got another million new cases.
A large number of the new cases involve younger veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
The Department of Veterans Affairs has changed its requirements regarding PTSD claims, so that veterans no longer have to prove they got the disorder because they served in a warzone. There has also long been a stigma in the military associated with psychological problems.”If it’s verified, that connection is now automatic, it’s provided,” Shinseki explained, noting this had increased the number of cases he has to address.
“We have PTSD treatment going on with veterans that go back to World War II, Korea, Vietnam. So it’s a large generational issue.”
Asked whether the dour economy had increased veterans’ reliance on his agency, Shinseki noted that “the economic downturn has had that impact on families” over the past year and half, while he has struggled to meet a goal to end homelessness among veterans in five years.
“We’re doing fine, just not going fast enough,” he added.
A July report by the army on suicide prevention found that senior leaders have failed to track reckless behavior and monitor alcohol and drug abuse among soldiers back home as the military focused on fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan over nearly a decade.
Repeated deployments with shortened dwell time have also strained the military, and the army hopes to soon give soldiers two years at home for every year deployed.
Netanyahu exploited his U.S. trip to embarrass Obama
(Haaretz) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trip to the United States this week damaged Israel diplomatically, undermined the country’s relations with the U.S. administration and showed Netanyahu up again as a rejectionist who does nothing but look for excuses and delays to avoid making decisions.
Netanyahu flew to the annual conference of the United Jewish Communities and the Jewish Federations of North America in New Orleans; from there he went on to New York. Strengthening ties with Diaspora Jewry is certainly a worthy cause, but Netanyahu took advantage of the stage he was given to embarrass the Obama administration.
His public call on the Americans to create a “credible military threat” against Iran merely exposed the disagreements between him and the administration, portraying Israel as a warmonger trying to drag America into another entanglement in the Middle East. No wonder Netanyahu’s declaration evoked a dismissive response from Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
Netanyahu focused on issuing warnings about Iran and the “delegitimization” of Israel, pushing the peace process with the Palestinians to the sidelines. His messages sounded coordinated with the scandalous speech by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman at the UN General Assembly.
Then came the reports about Israel’s approval of large construction plans in Har Homa and other East Jerusalem neighborhoods. Netanyahu again found himself in a public controversy with U.S. President Barack Obama and insulted Vice President Joe Biden, shortly after Biden had praised him enthusiastically in a speech.
Netanyahu was then forced to have “clarification talks” with Biden, whom he had embarrassed in similar circumstances only eight months ago with the declaration of the building plan in East Jerusalem’s Ramat Shlomo neighborhood during the vice president’s visit to the capital.
Toward the end of the visit, Netanyahu hinted he would agree to an additional construction freeze in the settlements, but in exchange for some far-reaching demands. He wants extensive American security assistance and all the Arab states (apart from Saudi Arabia ) to sign peace agreements with Israel at the same time as the Palestinians.
Netanyahu apparently tried to show that the Republicans’ victory in the congressional elections rendered him immune to the administration’s pressures and that he had the upper hand in the controversy over the settlements. This is a shortsighted approach that endangers Israel’s interests. Israel needs a steadfast friendship with the United States.
REMEMBERING A MARTYR FOR PALESTINE: TO A CHILD WHO DREAMT OF FREEDOM
by Reham al Helsi
Faris Odeh
You dreamt of playing with your friends in the streets and alleys of Palestine, you dreamt of playing without fear of F-16s and tanks, you dreamt of playing without blood and tears. You dreamt of running in the streets, up the hills and on the beach. You dreamt of playing hide and seek in a world where playing wars and soldier and civilian would be just a game, an uninteresting game. You dreamt of a Palestine that is free.
You dreamt of Hebron, Haifa and Al-Jalil. You yearned for Jerusalem; spoke to its ancient houses and beautiful arches, you wished you were a bird to fly over its old city, kiss its sky and touch its hills, caress its houses, its mosques and its churches, and hug the city you love so much.
You stood steadfast in your land, the land of your parents, your grandparents and the generations that were before them and those that will follow. You confronted the occupier with your bare body, stood tall in the battlefield, armed only with a stone and the just cause. You stood in the face of the coward soldier hiding behind a killing machine, afraid of the truth that you incarnate, the truth that is moving to sweep away the occupation, the oppression and Zionism.
You refused to accept the status quo, you refused to be intimidated by armed soldiers, you refused to forget. You refused to accept the lie, refused to accept the distortion of history, you knew that the land is ours no matter how many massacres the occupier commits, no matter how many times the occupier bombs our homes, no matter how many of our villages the occupier deletes. You stood up to a Zionist soldier and told him in a strong clear voice: what are doing here? This is my land!
You feared Zion not, feared no merkava, no F-16 and no bomb. You knew no fear, for you are the owner of the land, the son of the land, and the land knows you, the land is part of you. You confronted the fully-armed soldier of Zion, you refused to be harassed or ordered around in your own country by a colonizer, a Zionist soldier whose hands are stained with the blood of your siblings, your friends, your comrades, your neighbours.
You refused to be oppressed by a Zionist land-thieve whose alien caravans are built on the ruins of the sitting room and playgrounds of Palestinian families. You feared this soldier not. You refused to be intimidated by his gun, by his tank and by his warplane. You held your little stone, aimed and shot, and watched as the fully-armed soldier fled in fear to hide behind his tank.
You stood steadfast as the Zionist soldier watched you from behind his fortress, trying to threaten you with his tank. You stood steadfast facing his fortress, armed with your thirst for freedom and your little stone. You saw the realization in his eyes; that this is a war the Zionists will never win, that this is a land the Zionists will never have, that this is a people the Zionists will never break, that this is a land that will never be anything but Palestine, that this is a people willing to fight to the last drop of blood for the sake of this land.
You stood facing the fire, saw your homeland, stood within your homeland, stood on its sacred soil and knew that no fire, no matter how strong, would be able to swallow up the courage in our heart, nor be able to erase the little home with the orange tree printed in your mind. You refused to run away, you refused to fear them, but stood tall and walked. And with every firm step you took, with every resolute look you gave them, you marched towards Nablus, marched towards Haifa, marched towards Al-Jalil, marched towards Jerusalem.
You marched between the killers, you marched and saw the fear and cowardice in their eyes as you passed them, you marched and marched until you saw the blue sky over Jerusalem and knew that the stone has triumphed.
You believed in the strength of a stone, a tiny stone capable of shaking the thrones of Zion. You held the stone in your little palm, caressed it and kissed it for it is a weapon more powerful than bombs and tanks and warplanes, and in your heart there is more courage than is in their army of cowards. Your words are painted in our books, are carved on the walls of our homes, printed in the sand along the Palestinian shore and mixed with the oil running through the olive trees decorating Palestinian hills.
Words your little mind memorized, words your little heart often sang, words you left us for safekeeping until return: even if they break my bones I am not afraid, even if they demolish my home I am not afraid.
You taught the world that had long lost its conscience the meaning of determination, courage and dignity. You taught the world that is hypocrite to the bone the meaning of steadfastness in the face of oppression, that rights are never begged, that the oppressed can never be equated with the oppressor. You showed the world that speaks a thousand tongues that for courage there is only one name, and for freedom there is only one name, and for the land between the River and the Sea there always was and will always be one name: Palestine.
You forced the blind world to open its eyes and see you walk in confidence, full of determination towards your oppressors, confront them, dance the Palestinian dance of resistance, of victory and show them who owns the land and to whom the land will always belong. You forced the blind world to open its eyes and see your sling confront the Zionist merkava and defeat it. You forced the deaf world to open its ears and hear your words about a little boy who wanted to know no fear of bullets that come raining every day, the words of a boy who wanted to know no fear of flying monsters that bomb homes at night.
You forced the world to hear your songs about a little bird that wants to fly high over the sky of Jerusalem, wants to kiss Al-Aqsa and the Holy Sepulcher, wants to engulf the smells of the Jerusalem’s old city and swim in its colours. You forced them to listen to your voice, the voice that was louder than the fire, than the tank, than the occupiers, than the collaborators and the sellers and the bidders.
You challenged them all, showed them who is the owner of the land, whom the lands welcomes and embraces and who it vomits and rejects. Your only weapon was your heart, your love, your belief in the just cause that is ours. Your only weapon was your little stone, your constant companion in all the battlefields. With your weapon, the little stone, powerful than any other weapon, you confronted the occupier, you challenged their killing machine, your challenged the whole blind and deaf world. You showed them that your stone, your weapon, the weapon of a fighter for a just cause, is much stronger and powerful than all their weapons.
And as you lie on the ground, your blood streaming to water the sacred soil, your little heart beating slower and slower, you smell the poppies of Palestine, you feel the sea breeze in Akka, you see the blue sky over Jerusalem and you know that Palestine is forever yours.
They left you to bleed to death. They watched as your innocent soul left your little body. They watched as your little loving heart stopped beating. They did nothing to save you. They feared you. They feared the little boy who stood up to their might, stood up to their tyranny, stood up to their killing machine and feared it not. They feared you because you are the generation that should have forgotten Palestine, that should have forgotten Jerusalem, that should have forgotten how sacred a stone is.
They feared you because with your little heart and your little stone you told them a reality that haunts them: you won’t be able to delete our memory no matter how hard you try, you won’t be able to delete our history no matter how hard you try. We are here to stay and Palestine will forever be from the River to the Sea.
Faris Odeh
You dreamt of freedom and you got it, you reached for freedom and you got it. You snatched it from the mouth of the monster, you snatched it for it is your right. You are free.
And as Jerusalem fills our hearts, and as Palestine thrives with our steadfastness, you will forever be remembered, you will forever live in our hearts, in our minds and in our Palestine.
You will forever remain, Faris Odeh, the 15 year old Palestinian hero who confronted the Zionist tank with his little stone and won.
Source: My Palestine
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Reham Alhelsi is a Jerusalem-born Palestinian. She has worked extensively in the Palestinian Broadcasting Company and since 2000, when she moved to Germany, has trained at various radio and TV networks including Deutsche Welle, SWR and WDR. She is currently writing her PhD in Regional Planning with a focus on Palestinian Land Management and local government.
Cornerstone of Zionism is to Conquer, Not Negotiate
Violence–an inevitability in the Zionist project..
by Hasan Afif El-Hasan
Only through force and sheer violence, not negotiations, an exclusively Jewish state could be established in a country inhabited and owned by another people. It is humanly inconceivable that people surrender their country to strangers through negotiations. Thus violence against the indigenous Palestinians has been a central component of the Zionist movement since it was conceived as a colonial enterprise. Violence as an instrument to intimidate the Palestinians has been embedded in the Zionist ideology and in its popular culture.
Since they started colonizing Palestine, the Zionists have planted and cultivated a culture loaded with provocative racial themes in the daily life of the Jewish colonizers that dehumanize the Palestinians, like “the Arabs understand only the language of force” and “a good Arab is a dead Arab.” The Zionists’ myth refers to the Jews as superiors, “heroes” and the Arabs as inferiors, “villains” and “cowards” who have to be terminated. The Israeli Zionists educate their children to hate the Palestinians. Grammar-school children were pictured signing the bombs that killed Gaza children in 2008-09.
Violence to coerce the Palestinians to submit, accept and acclimate took many forms including physical, political, cultural, legal, financial and symbolic. Violence has been inevitable in the Zionist project since it is required to create and maintain an ethnic Jewish home-land in a country where Jews constituted a tiny minority and owned a small percentage of its land.
Israel could not have been established with a Jewish majority as planned by the Zionist elites without using brutal force to cleanse the Palestinians from their home-land. According to Ilan Pappe, Ben-Gurion’s approach to the ethnic cleansing was to use force to reduce the number of Palestinians who constituted seventy percent of the total population in 1948 to “less than twenty percent of the overall population in Israel.”
Yediot Achrinot newspaper quoted Binyamin Netanyahu saying on December 17, 2003 that “if the relationship with these 20 percent Palestinians [in Israel] becomes problematic, the state is entitled to employ extreme measures.” Aron Soffer, a Professor of Geography at Haifa University, was inciting extreme violence according to the Jerusalem Post on May 10, 2004 saying, “So, if we want to remain alive, we have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day….If we don’t kill, we will cease to exist.”
The Zionist armies and militias used the massacres, terror and the threat of more violence to expel the Palestinians from their homes in 1947-48 war. They destroyed hundreds of Palestinian villages completely including their cemeteries and created a hegemonic political culture to maintain the Jewish character of the state and dominate its Arab citizens. They enacted laws to legalize the expropriation of the Palestinian refugees’ lands and prevent their return. Refugees who tried to return were killed on the spot.
The Zionist foundational strategy has been to create the state of Israel in Palestine and exclude any reference to its indigenous population in its history. It tries to wipe out any physical evidence that may suggest that people other than Jews lived in Palestine. A team of archaeologists and biblical experts, called “the Naming Committee” was created for the only task of Judaizing Palestine’s geography.
After destroying the fabric of the Palestinians’ society, the Zionist colonialists built Jewish settlements and national parks on the sites of eradicated Palestinian villages. They replaced the Arabic names of the towns, streets, mountains and landscape with Biblical names; thus denying the existence of Arab history in those lands where Palestinian villages had been bustling with life before their people were expelled in 1947-48.
The native Palestinians who survived the ethnic cleansing in Israel have been subjected to legal and institutional terror and discrimination. They were placed under martial laws for almost two decades and have been subjected to laws that deprived them of their lands, violated their civil rights and relegated them to second class citizens. The Israeli “Law of Return” gives Jews all over the world, regardless of their connection to the land, the right to be Israeli citizens while denying the same right to any relative of an Israeli-Arab citizen who had been born and raised in Palestine. Laws that discriminate against the Palestinians are manifestation of legalizing racism.
For further maintaining the domination of the ethnic Jewish character, the Israeli Zionists degraded the usage of the Arabic language in the Arab schools curriculum; and they organized the official national calendar according to the Jewish religion and the Zionist movement history. They enacted laws to prohibit any reference to the Palestinians’ national movement and their long struggle against the British and the Zionists. The Israeli Ministry of Education issued a decree forcing school children including the Arabs to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel by signing the Independence declaration which praises the founding fathers who planned and executed the massacres, the expulsion and the destruction of the Palestinian society.
The most hideous form of the Zionists symbolic violence is their obsession with the Palestinians demography in all historical Palestine especially in Israel proper. The increase of the Palestinians numbers is called “demographic threat” by all Zionist political parties, groups, individuals and the press. An Arab baby born anywhere in Palestine is viewed by the Zionists as a “malignant cancer” rather than a human being. When he was minister of finance in 2003, Benjamin Netanyahu said “Israel’s big problem is its own Arabs not the Palestinian Arabs.” The Israelis call the ethnic Palestinians of Israel “Arabs” and those in the occupied lands “Palestinians”.
The Zionists spend time and resources planning and implementing strategies to control the perceived “demographic danger”. Roth Gabison, a candidate for Israel’s Supreme Court viewed the Palestinians growth as a problem that requires radical solution. She declared on December 1st, 2007 that “Israel has the right to control Palestinian natural growth.” Israeli Zionists have many blueprints for solving the “demographic problem” based on the usage of force not negotiations. The Israeli-Russian ethnic party of Avigador Lieberman and religious parties openly promote the “voluntary transfer” of the Israeli Arabs to the West Bank, a euphemism for ethnic cleansing.
Their solution in Gaza has been the unilateral withdrawal and placing the Palestinians in the Strip under all-out siege, daily targeted assassinations and bombardments, invasions and massacres. The Zionists do not hesitate to execute those trying to deliver symbolic humanitarian aid to the besieged Palestinians. As for the occupied West Bank, the plan is to annex large parts of the Palestinian lands while leaving large population centers outside direct Israeli control. They built the 8 meters high separation barbed wall in the Palestinians’ land. To carve areas with least Palestinian population the wall 670 kilometer serpentine rout is twice the length of the border of Israel proper.
The Israeli military and the settlers confiscated Palestinian lands and built Jewish only settlements and roads; they caged the Palestinians into few Bantustans; enforced a South African apartheid system; and they threaten to withhold the Palestinians’ taxes, prevent foreign donors’ aid to reach the Palestinian Authority (PA) and starve its population should they resist the occupation.
The Israeli Zionists annexed East Jerusalem and its surroundings, declared it the eternal capital of Israel, built settlements on confiscated lands, demolished Palestinians’ houses, deported elected Palestinian legislators and passed laws and regulations to ethnic cleanse its Palestinian residents.
And in Israel proper, if it was not for the Palestinian minority own steadfastness and courage, the world would have witnessed the ethnic cleansing of the last Palestinian now living within Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is demanding that the Palestinians must recognize Israel as a “state of the Jewish people”. The Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman demanded that the settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict “must not be land for peace, but an exchange of land and people.” The Israeli-Arabs have been paying a heavy price for their determination to challenge the Israeli plans to expel them. Their land has been appropriated; they were victims of discrimination and even bloody massacres by the Israeli military. They have been forced to witness the loss of their heritage, history and future.
The Zionists established Israel over Seventy-eight Percent of historical Palestine in 1948 using force and they are following the same strategy to swallow the remaining twenty-two percent. If the Palestinian leaders still believe that “life is negotiations” even in dealing with the Israeli Zionists, they have not learnt their lesson that the cornerstone of Zionism has always been to conquer, not to negotiate.
– Hasan Afif El-Hasan, Ph.D. is a political analyst. His latest book, Is the Two-State Solution Already Dead? (Algora Publishing, New York), now available on Amazon.com. He contributed this article to www.PalestineChronicle.com.
Obama’s Fake Muslim Outreach
(C) 2010 Omar Ghraieb
US, November 10, (Pal Telegraph – Stephen Lendman) While slaughtering Muslims abroad, supporting Israeli’s illegal occupation and genocidal Gaza siege, as well as waging domestic war on Islam, Reuters, on November 9, headlined, “Obama says US earnest, reaching out to Muslim world,” saying:
From Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country, “President Barack Obama said Tuesday that Washington’s effort to reach out to the Muslim world was earnest and would help improve security, although he acknowledged that there was still more work to do.”
At a news conference with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhovono, he said, “With respect to outreach to the Muslim world, I think that our efforts have been earnest and sustained. We don’t expect that we are going to completely eliminate some of the misunderstandings and mistrust that have developed over a long period of time, but we do think that we’re on the right path.”
On August 31, he wreaked of duplicitity declaring an “end to the combat mission in Iraq,” saying:
“Throughout this remarkable chapter in the history of the United States and Iraq, we have met our responsibility.”
No matter that after two decades of war, sanctions, occupation, millions of deaths and displacements, disease, and insecurity, Iraq no longer exists. Divided in three parts (the Basra south, Kurdish north, and Baghdad center), it’s unsafe, corrupt, terrorized, tyrannized, contaminated, and permanently occupied like Afghanistan and wherever else America shows up, the scourge of the Muslim world.
On November 9, New York Times writer Sheryl Gay Stolberg headlined, “Obama, in Indonesia, Criticizes Israel on Housing,” saying:
“This kind of activity is never helpful when it comes to peace negotiations, and I’m concerned that we’re not seeing each side make the extra effort involved to get a breakthrough.”
More duplicity by a president who partnered with Israel’s occupation project, funds its wars, supplies billions of dollars in annual aid, more on request, plus the latest weapons and technology. A president with no interest in peace or Palestinian rights. One spurning his own people, especially the poor, disadvantaged, and millions of American Muslims. Who chides Netanyahu’s construction plan for 1,000 new homes in the West Bank Ariel settlement, besides 800 more in East Jerusalem (all on stolen land). Who provides annual aid to fund them. Who now extends outreach to world Muslims with policies that betray them.
Obama plans a formal November 10 address, either at the University of Indonesia or a Jakarta mosque, venues that should spurn, not welcome him. So should Seoul, South Korea when he arrives Thursday for the G-20 conference, its agenda planning exploitation, not help for global millions in need, especially victims of US imperialism and persecuted Muslims everywhere who reject Obama’s rhetoric, the same fake populism his agenda exposes.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
Iran Accuses IAEA of Leaking Info to US
Slams Amano Demand to Accept Additional Protocol
by Jason Ditz, www.Antiwar.com
Faced with a new series of demands from IAEA chief Amano Yukiya, including a reiteration of the call for them to aceept the controversial “Additional Protocol,” the Iranian government rejected the calls, saying the IAEA can’t be trusted to conduct even wider inspections.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused the international nuclear watchdog of leaking secret information regarding its civilian program to the United States. The United States has repeatedly threatened to attack Iran over its program.
The Additional Protocol would give the IAEA far greater rights of access to facilities, including the ability to probe any “suspected location” on short notice. Though Iran voluntarily complied with the protocol for a time, their parliament never ratified it, and ordered the government to stop complying with it in retaliation for UN sanctions.
Allegations of one or several secret nuclear weapons sites have endured, but barring specific evidence Iranian officials have repeatedly expressed concerns that the IAEA could be used to spy en masse against Iranian military sites simply by claiming those sites are “suspect.”
Interpol hunts two Israelis for Kosovo organ trafficking
Moshe Harel among seven indicted for membership of a criminal group trafficking people into Kosovo to remove human organs for transplant; another Israeli citizen, Zaki Shapira, identified as co-conspirator.
(Haaretz) — At least seven people, including an Israeli citizen, are suspected of involvement in an international network that falsely promised poor people payment for their kidneys and then sold the organs for as much as 100,000 euros ($137,000), according to an indictment obtained by The Associated Press.
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A sign shows indicates the Medicus polyclinic in Kosovo’s capital Pristina, Friday, Nov. 12, 2010. |
Photo by: AP |
The indictment is the starkest revelation of the extent of organized crime in the country since Kosovo declared independence in 2008.
Five Kosovo nationals, including Ilir Rrecaj, a former senior health ministry official, have been charged with five counts, ranging from trafficking in persons to unlawful exercise of medical activity and abuse of power. None of the suspects are in custody
Moshe Harel, an Israeli citizen, and Turkish doctor Yusuf Sonmez – are listed as wanted by Interpol. Sonmez is the subject of several criminal proceedings in other countries, including Turkey, for human trafficking and removal of organs, according to the indictment.
Both Sonmez and Harel are fugitive from justice, the indictment said.
Two other doctors, Israeli national Zaki Shapira and Turkish national Kenan Demirkol are identified in the 46-page document as unindicted co-conspirators.
The organized criminal group trafficked people into Kosovo for the purpose of removing human organs for transplant, EU prosecutor Jonathan Ratel said in the indictment. “Some 20 foreign nationals were recruited with false promises of payments in 2008,” he wrote.
Victims were promised up to $20,000 (14,500 euros), while recipients were required to pay between 80,000 and 100,000 euros ($110,000-$137,000).
According to the indictment obtained by the AP on Thursday, the victims came from Moldova, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkey and lived in extreme poverty or acute financial distress.
The EU prosecution has made requests to secure evidence from authorities in Canada, Germany, Kazakhstan and Turkey, including access to e-mails of two suspects on servers in the United States.
The prosecution alleges that one of the five, Kosovo surgeon Lutfi Dervishi was the ringleader of the criminal group. It said Dervishi attended a medical conference in Istanbul in 2006 and asked for someone who could perform organ transplants. He was contacted by Sonmez six months later.
Dervishi and Sonmez then carried out the operations in the private medical clinic Medicus, managed by Dervishi’s son, Arban Dervishi, who is also indicted. Harel was involved in identifying, recruiting and transporting victims and ensuring the delivery of cash payments by electronic bank transfer prior to surgery, the indictment said. Two other doctors, Sokol Hajdini and Driton Jilta are also indicted.
Kosovo law forbids the removal and transplant of organs.
In 2008 investigators closed down the private health clinic where the doctors worked as part of the initial investigation. Kosovo police launched a raid triggered by suspicions that a Turkish man had sold his kidney to an Israeli recipient after he appeared fatigued at Pristina airport trying to board a flight to Turkey.
The man, identified in the indictment as Yilman Altun, told Kosovo police at the airport he came to the Balkan country to donate his kidney on invitation from the private clinics. A doctor found Altun was not in good medical condition, and sent him to the Pristina hospital for treatment.
When police searched the clinic in November 2008 they found an Israeli citizen in postoperative care, according to the indictment. Police seized medical records and supplies.
Rrecaj was fired from his governmental post after the raids and the suspects were arrested on Nov. 4, 2008. They denied all accusations and were released after 30 days in detention.
Soon after the raid, the Belgrade-based daily newspaper Blic alleged that Dervishi was linked to allegations that members of the Kosovo Liberation Army kidnapped Serb civilians and killed them for their organs, which they later sold.
The allegations of the trade stemmed from a book by former U.N. War Crimes tribunal prosecutor Carla Del Ponte who claimed that organ harvesting took place in Albania’s remote north. Subsequent investigations did not substantiate the claims.
The indictment has been filed in a local court, according to EU officials who asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the case. The officials said the prosecution can still add he names of other suspects to the indictment and details of their alleged crimes. A preliminary hearing is expected to be held by the end of the month, officials said.
The EU has 2,000 justice workers in Kosovo, including police, judges and prosecutors.
Kan. lawmaker: Muslim e-mail taken out of context
