The initial item is about demolitions in E. Jerusalem. The acts of demolitions of Palestinian residents, wherever they may be make me sick to the stomach! And the world says nothing, does nothing.
Dorothy
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Haaretz Tuesday, July 13, 2010
For first time in nine months, Israel razes Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem
Municipality says structures were not homes but witnesses report Palestinian family removing belongings.
Israel razed on Tuesday an inhabited Palestinian home in East Jerusalem for the first time in eight months, effectively ending an unofficial freeze of such internationally condemned demolitions.
A Reuters photographer witnessed a Palestinian family removing its belongings from the house in East Jerusalem’s Beit Hanina neighborhood before an Israeli excavator tore into the dwelling.
“They can build hundreds of settlements but I’m not entitled to live in a shack?” asked Linda al-Rajabi outside the demolished dwelling she shared with her husband and their five children.
Israel’s Jerusalem municipality said the home was built without a city permit.
The demolition seemed certain to draw a new wave of international criticism of Israeli policy toward Palestinians in East Jerusalem, an area captured in the 1967 Six-Day War and annexed by Israel in a move that has not won international recognition.
The dwelling was razed a week after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held White House talks with U.S. President Barack Obama to patch up relations strained by Israeli settlement policy in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Netanyahu promised Obama “concrete steps” – confidence-building measures – within weeks to try to coax the Palestinians back into direct peace negotiations.
Washington has publicly urged Israel not to demolish Palestinian homes built without permits. Palestinians, who want East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, say it is impossible to obtain construction approval from Israeli authorities.
Israel had refrained from implementing demolition orders since November in the politically sensitive Jerusalem area, after U.S. pressure not to take steps that could jeopardize peace talks with the Palestinians.
Netanyahu intervened several months ago to postpone city plans to demolish about 20 homes in another part of East Jerusalem, where the Israeli municipality is planning a new housing project.
Earlier on Tuesday, Israel razed two unfinished Palestinian homes and part of a factory in East Jerusalem.
Dozens of armed border police guarded an excavator as it tore apart the foundations of the cement structures in the Issawiya section of East Jerusalem. There was no violence, a police spokesman said.
Palestinian resident Basem Isawi, 48, an unemployed contractor, said one of the structures was his own unfinished home. He built it illegally, he said, spending about $25,000, because he knew the municipality would not give him a permit.
He had been notified of the impending demolition but did not know when it was slated to happen, he said.
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Haaretz Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Israel navy makes contact with Libya-sponsored Gaza aid ship
The Al-Amal, carrying 15 pro-Palestinian activists, 12 crew members and 2,000 tons of food and medicine reportedly ignores Israeli request to divert to Egyptian port of El-Arish.
By Anshel Pfeffer and News Agencies
Tags: Israel news Gaza flotilla
The Israeli navy on Tuesday made radio contact with a Libyan-sponsored ship sailing for Gaza in defiance of a maritime blockade, a military spokeswoman said.
“The navy just began its process of trying to stop the ship,” she said. “At this time the process of communicating with them has begun.”
An Israeli ship warned the Moldovan-flagged, Greek-registered Al-Amal that it was entering a closed military zone.
The ship, which left Greece on Saturday afternoon, was commissioned by the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation, headed by Saif Al-Islam Gaddafi, second son of Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi.
“The ship’s captain was asked by the gunboat crew to go to El-Arish port instead, stressing that the vessel will not be allowed to go into Gaza at all,” the foundation said in a statement on its website.
“The captain and the head of the foundation’s team on board affirmed that the Ship’s sole destination is Gaza, asserting that it is carrying humanitarian aid and has no other purpose whatsoever, while the gunboat is still present near the ship,” it added.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces prepared to board the boat, seeking to avoid confrontation. Six weeks ago, nine pro-Palestinian activists were killed when navy commandos stormed a Turkish aid ship, prompting international condemnation and two national inquiries.
Israel Radio reported that the government was also exploring diplomatic channels in an attempt to persuade the Al-Amal to turn back.
The Al-Amal, carrying 15 pro-Palestinian activists and 12 crew members and 2,000 tons of food and medicine is expected to arrive off the coast of Gaza by Wednesday morning.
On Monday the Foreign Ministry advised the defense establishment to wait until the ship approaches or enters the coastal strip’s territorial waters before making any attempt to stop it, to avoid the risk of breaking international law.
Aboard the 92-meter vessel are a crew of 12 from Haiti, India and Syria, under the command of a Cuban-born captain. Most of the activists on board are from Libya, except for one Nigerian, one Algerian and one Moroccan.
In Gaza, preparations for the ship’s arrival were already underway on Tuesday, with local residents adorning the main harbor with Libyan flags and posters bearing the image of the Libyan leader.
This story is by:
Anshel Pfeffer
=======================================
Haaretz Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Israel navy makes contact with Libya-sponsored Gaza aid ship
The Al-Amal, carrying 15 pro-Palestinian activists, 12 crew members and 2,000 tons of food and medicine reportedly ignores Israeli request to divert to Egyptian port of El-Arish.
By Anshel Pfeffer and News Agencies
Tags: Israel news Gaza flotilla
The Israeli navy on Tuesday made radio contact with a Libyan-sponsored ship sailing for Gaza in defiance of a maritime blockade, a military spokeswoman said.
“The navy just began its process of trying to stop the ship,” she said. “At this time the process of communicating with them has begun.”
An Israeli ship warned the Moldovan-flagged, Greek-registered Al-Amal that it was entering a closed military zone.
The ship, which left Greece on Saturday afternoon, was commissioned by the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation, headed by Saif Al-Islam Gaddafi, second son of Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi.
“The ship’s captain was asked by the gunboat crew to go to El-Arish port instead, stressing that the vessel will not be allowed to go into Gaza at all,” the foundation said in a statement on its website.
“The captain and the head of the foundation’s team on board affirmed that the Ship’s sole destination is Gaza, asserting that it is carrying humanitarian aid and has no other purpose whatsoever, while the gunboat is still present near the ship,” it added.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces prepared to board the boat, seeking to avoid confrontation. Six weeks ago, nine pro-Palestinian activists were killed when navy commandos stormed a Turkish aid ship, prompting international condemnation and two national inquiries.
Israel Radio reported that the government was also exploring diplomatic channels in an attempt to persuade the Al-Amal to turn back.
The Al-Amal, carrying 15 pro-Palestinian activists and 12 crew members and 2,000 tons of food and medicine is expected to arrive off the coast of Gaza by Wednesday morning.
On Monday the Foreign Ministry advised the defense establishment to wait until the ship approaches or enters the coastal strip’s territorial waters before making any attempt to stop it, to avoid the risk of breaking international law.
Aboard the 92-meter vessel are a crew of 12 from Haiti, India and Syria, under the command of a Cuban-born captain. Most of the activists on board are from Libya, except for one Nigerian, one Algerian and one Moroccan.
In Gaza, preparations for the ship’s arrival were already underway on Tuesday, with local residents adorning the main harbor with Libyan flags and posters bearing the image of the Libyan leader.
More on this topic
IDF preparing for forceful interception of Libya-sponsored aid ship bound for Gaza
Barak: Gaza-bound Libyan aid mission – unnecessary provocation
Libyan aid ship bound for Gaza to be rerouted to Egypt, Israeli sources say
This story is by:
Anshel Pfeffer
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Sent: Monday, July 12, 2010 6:34 PM
Subject: [AJJP] Really Good Article
The Hypocrisy of Preaching Nonviolence to Palestinians
Nicholas Kristof is in Palestine, though like all mass media journalists he calls it “the West Bank.” He has just discovered that many Palestinians are resisting the Israeli occupation nonviolently, though scholars of nonviolence started writing about the Palestinian resistance over 20 years ago. So Kristof is “waiting for Gandhi,” as the title of his latest New York Times column puts it, or at least a “Palestinian version of Martin Luther King Jr.”
Perhaps I should not be so cynical. Kristof has gained fame as a crusader for human rights, especially women’s rights. Now he’s taking a real risk by advocating for Palestinian rights and praising Palestinian resistance. Any hint of Israeli wrong-doing has undone many U.S. liberals in the past. And Kristof is giving more than a hint. His previous column detailed Israeli settler violence against Palestinians and clearly sympathized with their plight. He praised the work of Rabbis for Human Rights as “courageous and effective voices on behalf of oppressed Palestinians.”
Kristof himself deserves praise for placing the Palestinians alongside all the other victims of oppression he has written about so eloquently. He’s moving the mass media one more tiny step toward more honest and balanced reporting on the Israel/Palestine conflict.
But if a writer is not careful, every step forward can also be a step backward. By calling for a Palestinian Gandhi, Kristof clearly suggests that Palestinian resistance so far has fallen short of his high moral standards. He complains that “many Palestinians define ‘nonviolence’ to include stone-throwing,” so even when they claim to eschew violence their protests “aren’t truly nonviolent.”
That reinforces a self-serving stereotype we’ve been hearing from supporters of Israeli policy for decades: We Jews want peace, they say. We’ve even got an organized peace movement. But there’s no Palestinian equivalent. It seems like those Palestinians are all a bunch hot-heads, implacably bent on violence. How can we make peace with them?
That kind of stereotyping spurs even more extreme views that are all too familiar: There’s “no partner for peace” on the Palestinian side. “Those people” are so steeped in violence, there’s no reasoning with them. They only understand one thing: force. And at their worst they ask: What else can you expect from Muslims?
I’m sure Nick Kristof didn’t mean to promote that kind of simplistic anti-Palestinian prejudice. He sees good guys and bad guys on both sides. But when you are a top columnist for the nation’s top newspaper, you are supposed to be smart enough to understand the implications of your words, to know what people can (and some inevitably will) read between the lines.
I don’t know Kristof, so I can’t say why he might have fallen into this trap. But I know the U.S. mass media coverage of the issue pretty well. Even when they begin to break out of their reflexive “pro-Israel” shell, mass media journalists are still plagued by lines of thinking that are so old, so deeply ingrained, that they go unnoticed. “Ain’t it a shame those Palestinians are so violent. If only they’d turn to more peaceful ways, all would be well,” is perhaps the oldest and deepest of those lines.
So it’s not surprising that, even when a prominent columnist appeals for sympathy for the victims of oppression, he ends up indirectly but all too obviously blaming the victims.
Palestinians might well ask, “Who the hell is Nicholas Kristof to tell us how to resist the occupation anyway?” That’s a good question. What can he really know about their situation after being with them for a day or two? Critics of American journalism have long noted the declining quality of our news from other countries. The main culprit, many say, is the ignorance of journalists who show up in a place for a few days or even a few weeks and write for the folks back home as if they were experts.
At a deeper level, there’s the ever-present tendency among the stenographers of imperial power to assume that they’ve got the right to preach truth to “the natives” and tell them how to live their lives.
Even if Kristof had been living in Palestine for years, though, the question would still remain: Does he, or any non-Palestinian, have the right to tell an oppressed people how to resist their oppression? Maybe they do, if they’ve joined the resistance and taken all the risks involved for a long enough time to earn that right. But neither Kristof nor most any of the other non-Palestinians who call for a Palestinian Gandhi fit that description.
I’ve been teaching and writing about, and advocating nonviolence for a long time. From the beginning, I felt in my gut that I don’t have the right to tell oppressed people to keep their resistance nonviolent, since I haven’t shared in their suffering.
Eventually, I found in Gandhi’s own writings a powerful theoretical argument to explain my gut feeling. It starts with the heart of Gandhi’s teachings. He would have rejected the premise of Kristof’s column: that nonviolence is a smarter tactic for the Palestinians, the best way to get what they want. For Gandhi, nonviolence was never a tactic or a way to win anything. It was a way — the only way, he insisted — to act out moral truth in daily life. The core principle of Gandhian nonviolence is to do the right thing in every situation, regardless how painful or even lethal the consequences.
In other words, nonviolence is not about figuring out how to make the other side — even when they are brutal oppressors — change their ways. It’s not about making others change their ways at all. Gandhi said that such efforts are senseless, because we cannot control the choices of others. All we can control is our own choices, trying to make sure that they are as morally correct as possible.
So telling other people what to do, how to live their lives, or even how to resist oppression simply doesn’t fit Gandhi’s vision of nonviolence. It’s only about changing our own ways.
But when Gandhi spoke about controlling our own choices, he included in “our” not just himself as an individual but his people. That’s why, in the vast corpus of Gandhi’s writings, you’ll sometimes find indictments of British colonialism and insistence that the British must leave India — in effect, telling the other side what to do — but far more often you’ll find indictments of Gandhi’s own Indian people and insistence that they (Gandhi said “we”) stop cooperating with oppression.
If you’re looking for another Gandhi, then, look for someone who addresses his own people’s policy choices rather than telling others about what they’re doing wrong and how to fix it. Kristof made a nod in that direction when he repeated the words of Palestinian nonviolence advocates like Moustafa Barghouthi, Ayad Morrar, and Iltezam Morrar. He could have found plenty of others. They’ve got the right to call for a Palestinian Gandhi, since they are talking to their own people.
The only thing Nick Kristof has the right to do — and the obligation, Gandhi would have added — is to address his own American people about the choices that Americans are making. If any Americans are publicly waiting for the next Gandhi to appear, they should be waiting and hoping for him or her not in Palestine or any foreign country, but right here in the U.S. of A.
Kristof, given his immense readership and influence, has a special responsibility. Rather than flying half-way around the world for a few days and lamenting his failure to find another Gandhi, he could be doing what Gandhi did: writing about America’s failure to stand on the side of justice, which is the only way to stand on the side of peace.
As Gershon Baskin, Israel’s leading expert on conflict resolution, recently wrote, the U.S. must play a central role if Israel and Palestine are to forge a just peace settlement. The two parties mistrust each other so deeply that they need a truly even-handed third party to bring them together and guarantee adherence to a peace agreement.
Though the Obama administration has moved a bit closer than its predecessors to an even-handed approach, it is still far from the genuine neutrality that the Palestinians must see if they are to come to any negotiating table. Foolish steps like bolstering Israel’s nuclear arsenal are bound to move Israel and Palestine away from the peace that both sides need so badly.
For the sake of that peace, it’s we Americans, not the Palestinians, who need to take up the torch of nonviolence. Until we do, it seems hypocritical to be blaming Palestinians for failing to live up to Gandhian standards.
But that does not mean we should sit around “waiting for Gandhi.” The Mahatma surely would have scolded Nick Kristof and all of us who waiting for some extraordinary charismatic leader to rescue us from our wars and injustice. It’s easier to wait for someone else to do the job than to heed the charge Gandhi famously left us: Be the change you want to see in the world.
We Americans have already had our Gandhi. And while we elevated him to the status of a heroic King, most of us conveniently forgot the most difficult parts of his message, his call to recognize our own nation as the greatest purveyor of violence in the world and to practice nonviolence no matter what the consequences.
Now, instead of waiting for another miraculously gifted leader, we should each be speaking out and acting up, doing whatever little bit we can. We may not see the greatness of a Gandhi or King again for a very long time. But that’s no reason to give up the quest for nonviolent resolution of our problems. It’s all the more reason for each of us to take responsibility for ourselves and our own people, to stop telling others what they should do and start, right now, changing what we do.
Meanwhile, when oppressed, militarily occupied people resist, let’s recognize that it’s not our place to tell them what means they should or should not use — and certainly not when our own nation is contributing so much to their oppression.
Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Read more of his writing on Israel, Palestine, and American Jews at http://chernus.wordpress.com. Contact him atchernus@colorado.edu
Mark Marshall adds this excellent suggestion:
“A couple of years ago Prof Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions came here to speak in Toronto. He said, “every now and then when I give a talk, somebody in the audience asks me, ‘why can’t the Palestinians be nonviolent?’ ” They’re asking him, an Israeli, why the Palestinians can’t be nonviolent.
Try this for fun sometime: next time a Palestinian representative gives a lecture or a speech, after it’s over and he or she invites questions from the audience, raise your hand and ask him or her: “Why can’t the Israelis be nonviolent?”
