Statehood for the Palestinians
Re: Statehood for the Palestinians
http://en.alalam.ir/news/1670942#.dpuf
17 Zionist forces killed in missile attacks at military vehicle near Lebanese border.
According to Lebanese Al-Nashra 17 Zionist army killed in the attacks.
It is reported later 1 Zionist Soldier Capture in Lebanese Border and 6 soldiers seriously injured.
Zionist military says anti-tank missile fired at military vehicle near Lebanese border.
The Zionist military says the attack on Wednesday took place near Mount Dov and Shebaa Farms, a disputed tract of land where the borders of Israel, Lebanon and Syria meet, AP reports.
- See more at: http://en.alalam.ir/news/1670942#.dpuf
17 Zionist forces killed in missile attacks at military vehicle near Lebanese border.
According to Lebanese Al-Nashra 17 Zionist army killed in the attacks.
It is reported later 1 Zionist Soldier Capture in Lebanese Border and 6 soldiers seriously injured.
Zionist military says anti-tank missile fired at military vehicle near Lebanese border.
The Zionist military says the attack on Wednesday took place near Mount Dov and Shebaa Farms, a disputed tract of land where the borders of Israel, Lebanon and Syria meet, AP reports.
- See more at: http://en.alalam.ir/news/1670942#.dpuf
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Re: Statehood for the Palestinians
From Albert Einstein to Noam Chomsky: famous Jews who have opposed Israel
There is a long tradition among prominent Jewish figures opposing the Israeli state, who found themselves, like Isaac Asimov, "in the odd position of not being a Zionist".
ON 9 AUGUST 2014, 150 000 protesters marched in London in solidarity with the people of Gaza who were suffering a barbaric assault by Israel which had killed over 2000 people, most of them civilians, and over 400 of them children.
Numerous Jewish groups joined the march. They marched as Jews to show their opposition to the state of Israel, which for 66 years has endlessly stolen Palestinian land and imposed the most brutal occupation and siege on Palestinians. Jewish marchers saying "not in my name" included, the Jewish Bloc, The International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, Jews for Justice for Palestinians and Jews Against the war on Gaza.
These Jewish marchers were part of a long and honourable tradition. Many prominent Jewish figures over the past century -- from Albert Einstein to holocaust survivor Primo Levi -- have opposed the idea of an ethnically exclusive Israeli state.
Sigmund Freud :
“I concede with sorrow that the baseless fanaticism of our people is in part to be blamed for the awakening of Arab distrust. I can raise no sympathy at all for the misdirected piety which transforms a piece of a Herodian wall into a national relic, thereby offending the feelings of the natives.”
Albert Einstein:
“The (Israeli) state idea is not according to my heart. I cannot understand why it is needed. It is connected with many difficulties and a narrow-mindedness. I believe it is bad.”
Erich Fromm, social psychologist:
“The claim of the Jews to the Land of Israel cannot be a realistic political claim. If all nations would suddenly claim territories in which their forefathers lived two thousand years ago, this world would be a madhouse.”
Primo Levi, writer and Auschwitz survivor:
"Everyone has their Jews. For the Israelis they are the Palestinians."
Marek Edelman, last surviving leader of the 1943 Warsaw uprising:
Edelman wrote a letter in support of the Palestine resistance, comparing them to ZOB, the Jewish fighters in Warsaw. He opened with, "Commanders of the Palestine military, paramilitary and partisan operations - to all the soldiers of the Palestine fighting organisations.”
Isaac Asimov, novelist:
“I find myself in the odd position of not being a Zionist ... I think it is wrong for anyone to feel that there is anything special about any one heritage of whatever kind. It is delightful to have the human heritage exist in a thousand varieties, for it makes for greater interest, but as soon as one variety is thought to be more important than another, the groundwork is laid for destroying them all.”
Hannah Arendt, political scientist:
“The trouble is that Zionism has often thought and said that the evil of antisemitism was necessary for the good of the Jewish people. In the words of a well-known Zionist in a letter to me discussing the original Zionist argumentation: 'The antisemites want to get rid of the Jews, the Jewish State wants to receive them, a perfect match.' “
.F. Stone, US journalist:
“Israel is creating a kind of moral schizophrenia in world Jewry. In the outside world the welfare of Jewry depends on the maintenance of secular, non-racial, pluralistic societies. In Israel, Jewry finds itself defending a society in which mixed marriages cannot be legalized, in which the ideal is racial and exclusionist.”
Noam Chomsky:
“In the Occupied Territories, what Israel is doing is much worse than apartheid. To call it apartheid is a gift to Israel, at least if by "apartheid" you mean South African-style apartheid. What’s happening in the Occupied Territories is much worse.”
Gabriel Kolko, one of the leading historians on modern warfare:
“The large majority of Israelis are not in the least Jewish in the cultural sense, are scarcely socialist in any sense, and daily life and the way people live is no different in Israel than it is in Chicago or Amsterdam. There is simply no rational reason that justifies the state’s creation.”
Miriam Margolyes, actor:
“The black South Africans asked for our support and now it's the Palestinians who are asking for our support. I hate what Israel is doing over there to the Palestinians. I think that boycotting is a very active and non-violent way of protesting."
Uri Avnery, ex-Israeli army officer:
Avnery wrote that after an Israeli military victory, “What will be seared into the consciousness of the world will be the image of Israel as a blood-stained monster, ready at any moment to commit war crimes and not prepared to abide by any moral restraints.”
Henry Siegman, Rabbi and director of the U.S./Middle East Project:
“Israel has crossed the threshold from ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’ to the only apartheid regime in the Western world.”
Richard Cohen, US columnist:
“The greatest mistake Israel could make at the moment is to forget that Israel itself is a mistake … the idea of creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians) has produced a century of warfare and terrorism of the sort we are seeing now. Israel fights Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south, but its most formidable enemy is history itself.”
Roseanne Barr, US comedian, writer, director, presidential candidate:
“I am sick of Israel and I am sick of Zionists. They are propped up by evangelical Christians who cannot wait for the Arabs to kill them so that their genocidal war god whom they misname Jesus can come back."
Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun Magazine:
“If a Jew today goes into any synagogue in the U.S. or around the world and says, 'I don’t believe in God or Torah and I don’t follow the commandments,' most will still welcome you in and urge you to become involved. But say, 'I don’t support the State of Israel,' and you are likely to be labeled a 'self-hating Jew' or anti-Semite, scorned and dismissed."
Richard Falk, the former UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories:
Falk has called Israeli policies in the Occupied Territories “a crime against humanity.” Falk also has compared Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians to the Nazi treatment of the Jews. Falk has said, “I think the Palestinians stand out as the most victimized people in the world.”
http://stopwar.org.uk/news/from-albert- ... sed-israel
There is a long tradition among prominent Jewish figures opposing the Israeli state, who found themselves, like Isaac Asimov, "in the odd position of not being a Zionist".
ON 9 AUGUST 2014, 150 000 protesters marched in London in solidarity with the people of Gaza who were suffering a barbaric assault by Israel which had killed over 2000 people, most of them civilians, and over 400 of them children.
Numerous Jewish groups joined the march. They marched as Jews to show their opposition to the state of Israel, which for 66 years has endlessly stolen Palestinian land and imposed the most brutal occupation and siege on Palestinians. Jewish marchers saying "not in my name" included, the Jewish Bloc, The International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, Jews for Justice for Palestinians and Jews Against the war on Gaza.
These Jewish marchers were part of a long and honourable tradition. Many prominent Jewish figures over the past century -- from Albert Einstein to holocaust survivor Primo Levi -- have opposed the idea of an ethnically exclusive Israeli state.
Sigmund Freud :
“I concede with sorrow that the baseless fanaticism of our people is in part to be blamed for the awakening of Arab distrust. I can raise no sympathy at all for the misdirected piety which transforms a piece of a Herodian wall into a national relic, thereby offending the feelings of the natives.”
Albert Einstein:
“The (Israeli) state idea is not according to my heart. I cannot understand why it is needed. It is connected with many difficulties and a narrow-mindedness. I believe it is bad.”
Erich Fromm, social psychologist:
“The claim of the Jews to the Land of Israel cannot be a realistic political claim. If all nations would suddenly claim territories in which their forefathers lived two thousand years ago, this world would be a madhouse.”
Primo Levi, writer and Auschwitz survivor:
"Everyone has their Jews. For the Israelis they are the Palestinians."
Marek Edelman, last surviving leader of the 1943 Warsaw uprising:
Edelman wrote a letter in support of the Palestine resistance, comparing them to ZOB, the Jewish fighters in Warsaw. He opened with, "Commanders of the Palestine military, paramilitary and partisan operations - to all the soldiers of the Palestine fighting organisations.”
Isaac Asimov, novelist:
“I find myself in the odd position of not being a Zionist ... I think it is wrong for anyone to feel that there is anything special about any one heritage of whatever kind. It is delightful to have the human heritage exist in a thousand varieties, for it makes for greater interest, but as soon as one variety is thought to be more important than another, the groundwork is laid for destroying them all.”
Hannah Arendt, political scientist:
“The trouble is that Zionism has often thought and said that the evil of antisemitism was necessary for the good of the Jewish people. In the words of a well-known Zionist in a letter to me discussing the original Zionist argumentation: 'The antisemites want to get rid of the Jews, the Jewish State wants to receive them, a perfect match.' “
.F. Stone, US journalist:
“Israel is creating a kind of moral schizophrenia in world Jewry. In the outside world the welfare of Jewry depends on the maintenance of secular, non-racial, pluralistic societies. In Israel, Jewry finds itself defending a society in which mixed marriages cannot be legalized, in which the ideal is racial and exclusionist.”
Noam Chomsky:
“In the Occupied Territories, what Israel is doing is much worse than apartheid. To call it apartheid is a gift to Israel, at least if by "apartheid" you mean South African-style apartheid. What’s happening in the Occupied Territories is much worse.”
Gabriel Kolko, one of the leading historians on modern warfare:
“The large majority of Israelis are not in the least Jewish in the cultural sense, are scarcely socialist in any sense, and daily life and the way people live is no different in Israel than it is in Chicago or Amsterdam. There is simply no rational reason that justifies the state’s creation.”
Miriam Margolyes, actor:
“The black South Africans asked for our support and now it's the Palestinians who are asking for our support. I hate what Israel is doing over there to the Palestinians. I think that boycotting is a very active and non-violent way of protesting."
Uri Avnery, ex-Israeli army officer:
Avnery wrote that after an Israeli military victory, “What will be seared into the consciousness of the world will be the image of Israel as a blood-stained monster, ready at any moment to commit war crimes and not prepared to abide by any moral restraints.”
Henry Siegman, Rabbi and director of the U.S./Middle East Project:
“Israel has crossed the threshold from ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’ to the only apartheid regime in the Western world.”
Richard Cohen, US columnist:
“The greatest mistake Israel could make at the moment is to forget that Israel itself is a mistake … the idea of creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians) has produced a century of warfare and terrorism of the sort we are seeing now. Israel fights Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south, but its most formidable enemy is history itself.”
Roseanne Barr, US comedian, writer, director, presidential candidate:
“I am sick of Israel and I am sick of Zionists. They are propped up by evangelical Christians who cannot wait for the Arabs to kill them so that their genocidal war god whom they misname Jesus can come back."
Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun Magazine:
“If a Jew today goes into any synagogue in the U.S. or around the world and says, 'I don’t believe in God or Torah and I don’t follow the commandments,' most will still welcome you in and urge you to become involved. But say, 'I don’t support the State of Israel,' and you are likely to be labeled a 'self-hating Jew' or anti-Semite, scorned and dismissed."
Richard Falk, the former UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories:
Falk has called Israeli policies in the Occupied Territories “a crime against humanity.” Falk also has compared Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians to the Nazi treatment of the Jews. Falk has said, “I think the Palestinians stand out as the most victimized people in the world.”
http://stopwar.org.uk/news/from-albert- ... sed-israel
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Re: Statehood for the Palestinians
In Israel, torture is actually legal, sanctified by Courts
Israel’s ill-treatment and abuse of Palestinian detainees is widespread and systematic and typically starts from the moment of arrest. Most detainees, including children, report being beaten, kicked, threatened, having their property illegally searched and confiscated and their family home destroyed.
Some also report the Israeli army’s use of police dogs and “sound bombs” on arrest. On occasions, relatives and neighbors of detainees report being used as human shields. The Israeli soldiers routinely fail to present arrest orders.
Once bound and blindfolded, detainees typically are not informed of the reason for their arrest and neither they nor their families are informed where they will be taken. Detainees may be kept waiting, standing or kneeling for long periods of time before being thrown on the floor of a military jeep, sometimes face down, for transfer to an interrogation center. During the transfer, which can take up to several hours, the abuse continues and usually takes the form of beatings, insults, threats and deliberate humiliation.
Upon arrival to a detention centre, the detainee is either placed in a cell, often in solitary confinement, or taken straight for interrogation. During the interrogation period, he/she is typically subjected to some form of either physical or psychological cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. The methods of ill-treatment most frequently alleged to be used during interrogation include:
Routine methods: Sleep deprivation by means of continuous and prolonged interrogation sessions, excessive use of handcuffs for extensive periods and their tightening to cut off circulation; beatings; slapping; kicking; verbal abuse and intentional humiliation; and the use of threats directed at the detainee or a family member, including threats of arrest of a family member, threats of sexual assault against the detainee or his/her family member, threats of house demolitions, and mass killings.
Special methods also referred to as "military interrogation techniques" used in "ticking bomb" cases and justified under the banner of "necessary defense"-- the use of painful stress positions, where the detainee is bent backwards over the seat of a chair causing back pain, or forced to stand for prolonged periods against a wall with bent knees; pressure on different parts of the body; shaking the detainee; strangulation and other means of suffocation.
Inside the cells: long periods of solitary confinement in small, windowless and, often, cold cells; deprivation of the right to basic hygiene.
DENIAL OF FAIR TRIAL RIGHTS AND LACK OF PROTECTION UNDER INTERROGATION
Palestinian facing charges in military courts can be held in custody for eight days before being brought before a judge. An Israeli citizen, however, can be held in custody for only a maximum of 24 hours before being brought before a judge.
A Palestinian can be held without charge, by order of a military judge, for an initial period of up to 90 days. This period can be extended for another period of up to 90 days by request of the Chief Area Legal Advisor via an order from the military court of appeals.
In total, a Palestinian can be held for the purpose of interrogation for 180 days. By comparison, an Israeli citizen can be held without indictment for an initial period of 30 days, which can be extended three times in 15 day increments on the authority of the Attorney General.
A Palestinian detainee can be held for up to 90 days without access to a lawyer. By comparison, in the Israeli civil courts, a detainee charged with a security offense can be prevented from consulting an attorney only for up to 21 days.
DETENTION CONDITIONS USED AS PRESSURE DURING INTERROGATION
READ FULL ARTICLE :-
http://medhajnews.com/article.php?id=NzMxMA==
Israel’s ill-treatment and abuse of Palestinian detainees is widespread and systematic and typically starts from the moment of arrest. Most detainees, including children, report being beaten, kicked, threatened, having their property illegally searched and confiscated and their family home destroyed.
Some also report the Israeli army’s use of police dogs and “sound bombs” on arrest. On occasions, relatives and neighbors of detainees report being used as human shields. The Israeli soldiers routinely fail to present arrest orders.
Once bound and blindfolded, detainees typically are not informed of the reason for their arrest and neither they nor their families are informed where they will be taken. Detainees may be kept waiting, standing or kneeling for long periods of time before being thrown on the floor of a military jeep, sometimes face down, for transfer to an interrogation center. During the transfer, which can take up to several hours, the abuse continues and usually takes the form of beatings, insults, threats and deliberate humiliation.
Upon arrival to a detention centre, the detainee is either placed in a cell, often in solitary confinement, or taken straight for interrogation. During the interrogation period, he/she is typically subjected to some form of either physical or psychological cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. The methods of ill-treatment most frequently alleged to be used during interrogation include:
Routine methods: Sleep deprivation by means of continuous and prolonged interrogation sessions, excessive use of handcuffs for extensive periods and their tightening to cut off circulation; beatings; slapping; kicking; verbal abuse and intentional humiliation; and the use of threats directed at the detainee or a family member, including threats of arrest of a family member, threats of sexual assault against the detainee or his/her family member, threats of house demolitions, and mass killings.
Special methods also referred to as "military interrogation techniques" used in "ticking bomb" cases and justified under the banner of "necessary defense"-- the use of painful stress positions, where the detainee is bent backwards over the seat of a chair causing back pain, or forced to stand for prolonged periods against a wall with bent knees; pressure on different parts of the body; shaking the detainee; strangulation and other means of suffocation.
Inside the cells: long periods of solitary confinement in small, windowless and, often, cold cells; deprivation of the right to basic hygiene.
DENIAL OF FAIR TRIAL RIGHTS AND LACK OF PROTECTION UNDER INTERROGATION
Palestinian facing charges in military courts can be held in custody for eight days before being brought before a judge. An Israeli citizen, however, can be held in custody for only a maximum of 24 hours before being brought before a judge.
A Palestinian can be held without charge, by order of a military judge, for an initial period of up to 90 days. This period can be extended for another period of up to 90 days by request of the Chief Area Legal Advisor via an order from the military court of appeals.
In total, a Palestinian can be held for the purpose of interrogation for 180 days. By comparison, an Israeli citizen can be held without indictment for an initial period of 30 days, which can be extended three times in 15 day increments on the authority of the Attorney General.
A Palestinian detainee can be held for up to 90 days without access to a lawyer. By comparison, in the Israeli civil courts, a detainee charged with a security offense can be prevented from consulting an attorney only for up to 21 days.
DETENTION CONDITIONS USED AS PRESSURE DURING INTERROGATION
READ FULL ARTICLE :-
http://medhajnews.com/article.php?id=NzMxMA==
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Re: Statehood for the Palestinians
Egypt court labels Palestine's Hamas as terrorist group
A court in Egypt has labeled the Palestinian resistance movement of Hamas a “terrorist” organization, judicial sources say.
http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2015/02/28 ... rror-group
A court in Egypt has labeled the Palestinian resistance movement of Hamas a “terrorist” organization, judicial sources say.
http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2015/02/28 ... rror-group
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Re: Statehood for the Palestinians
Vatican to Recognize Palestinian State in New Treaty
ROME — The Vatican said Wednesday that it had concluded a treaty to recognize Palestinian statehood, a symbolic but significant step welcomed by Palestinians but upsetting to the Israeli government.
Formal recognition of a Palestinian state by the Vatican, which has deep religious interests in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories that include Christian holy sites, lends a powerful signal of moral authority and legitimacy to the efforts by the Palestinian Authority’s president, Mahmoud Abbas, to achieve statehood despite the long paralyzed Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
Israel has grown increasingly alarmed about the increased international acceptance of Palestine as a state since the United Nations upgraded the Palestinian delegation’s status in 2012 to that of a nonmember observer state. A number of European countries have also signaled their acceptance of Palestinian statehood.
A statement from a joint commission of Vatican and Palestinian diplomatic officials, posted on the Vatican news website, said “the work of the commission on the text of the agreement has been concluded,” and that it would be submitted for formal approval and for signing “in the near future.”
Hanna Amireh, head of a Palestinian committee on church affairs, said the treaty was a broad one regarding the Vatican’s interests in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, including the standing of churches and church courts and taxes on church charities, institutions and lands, as well as other cultural and diplomatic matters. He said it had been under negotiation for about a year.
“The Vatican is the spiritual capital of the Catholics, and they are recognizing Palestine, that’s the chief importance,” said Mr. Amireh, who is also a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee. The move counters an image of Palestinians as militants or terrorists, he added, as a “recognition of the Palestinian character that has a clear message for coexistence and peace.”
A senior Israeli Foreign Ministry official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under diplomatic protocol, said Israel was “disappointed to hear” about the Vatican’s use of the term “state” in its new treaty.
”This step does not advance the peace process and pushes the Palestinian leadership further away from returning to a direct and bilateral negotiation,” the official said in a statement, echoing Israel’s reactions to a series of recent parliamentary resolutions on Palestinian statehood in European nations. “Israel will study the agreement and consider its next steps accordingly.”
Pope Francis, the leader of the world’s 1 billion Catholics, has long signaled his wish for a Palestinian state. For the past year, the Vatican had informally referred to the country as “state of Palestine,” in its yearbook as well as in its program for Francis’ 2014 visit to the Holy Land.
During that visit, Francis gave an additional boost to Palestinian sovereignty by flying directly to Bethlehem from Amman, Jordan, rather than stopping first in Israel as his predecessors had done. Francis later hosted the Palestinian and Israeli presidents in a prayer for peace.
It is not the first time Francis has shown a willingness to offend political sensitivities in the name of doing what he thinks is right. Exactly a month ago, for example, the pope angered the Turkish government by calling the 1915 slaughter of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks a genocide. Turkey recalled its Vatican ambassador in response.
A Palestinian spokesman, Xavier Abu Eid, said 135 nations now recognize Palestine as a state.
Jamal Khader, rector of the Latin Patriarchate Seminary in Jerusalem, said that Pope Francis and his secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, had worked closely with the Palestinians and noted that the treaty was finalized just before the canonization of two Palestinian nuns — the first Arabic-speaking saints — scheduled for Sunday. Mr. Abbas is scheduled to attend that ceremony.
Cardinal Parolin “wants to help create a new reality in Palestine here — in the diplomatic way of the Vatican, of course,” Father Khader said in an interview.
“The wider Arab world often thinks that it’s a Christian West against a Muslim East, so this is an important step from the Catholic Church to show that, no, it is standing with the rights of Palestinians, and with the right to a state of Palestine,” he said.
Neville Y. Lamdan, a former Israeli ambassador to the Holy See, said the main importance of the Vatican recognition of Palestinian statehood was the “moral authority and weight” it confers.
“The real question is why the Vatican came round to this step,” Mr. Lamdan said. “It certainly would be a very deliberate and carefully weighed decision; there’s nothing accidental about it.”
Rabbi David Rosen, international director of interreligious affairs for the American Jewish Committee, downplayed the significance of the term “state” in the new treaty, noting that Francis had already used it himself.
“I don’t think it was meant to be something dramatic,” Rabbi Rosen said. “Francis deeply cares about the peoples of this land, and he would very much like to see a peaceful reconciliation, but I don’t see he’s made any changes in terms of Vatican policy.”
As for Israel’s relationship with the Vatican, which officially began with a similar agreement in 1993, Rabbi Rosen said it was “far too strong for it to be hurt by a designation or a terminology.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/14/world ... -news&_r=1
ROME — The Vatican said Wednesday that it had concluded a treaty to recognize Palestinian statehood, a symbolic but significant step welcomed by Palestinians but upsetting to the Israeli government.
Formal recognition of a Palestinian state by the Vatican, which has deep religious interests in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories that include Christian holy sites, lends a powerful signal of moral authority and legitimacy to the efforts by the Palestinian Authority’s president, Mahmoud Abbas, to achieve statehood despite the long paralyzed Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
Israel has grown increasingly alarmed about the increased international acceptance of Palestine as a state since the United Nations upgraded the Palestinian delegation’s status in 2012 to that of a nonmember observer state. A number of European countries have also signaled their acceptance of Palestinian statehood.
A statement from a joint commission of Vatican and Palestinian diplomatic officials, posted on the Vatican news website, said “the work of the commission on the text of the agreement has been concluded,” and that it would be submitted for formal approval and for signing “in the near future.”
Hanna Amireh, head of a Palestinian committee on church affairs, said the treaty was a broad one regarding the Vatican’s interests in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, including the standing of churches and church courts and taxes on church charities, institutions and lands, as well as other cultural and diplomatic matters. He said it had been under negotiation for about a year.
“The Vatican is the spiritual capital of the Catholics, and they are recognizing Palestine, that’s the chief importance,” said Mr. Amireh, who is also a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee. The move counters an image of Palestinians as militants or terrorists, he added, as a “recognition of the Palestinian character that has a clear message for coexistence and peace.”
A senior Israeli Foreign Ministry official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under diplomatic protocol, said Israel was “disappointed to hear” about the Vatican’s use of the term “state” in its new treaty.
”This step does not advance the peace process and pushes the Palestinian leadership further away from returning to a direct and bilateral negotiation,” the official said in a statement, echoing Israel’s reactions to a series of recent parliamentary resolutions on Palestinian statehood in European nations. “Israel will study the agreement and consider its next steps accordingly.”
Pope Francis, the leader of the world’s 1 billion Catholics, has long signaled his wish for a Palestinian state. For the past year, the Vatican had informally referred to the country as “state of Palestine,” in its yearbook as well as in its program for Francis’ 2014 visit to the Holy Land.
During that visit, Francis gave an additional boost to Palestinian sovereignty by flying directly to Bethlehem from Amman, Jordan, rather than stopping first in Israel as his predecessors had done. Francis later hosted the Palestinian and Israeli presidents in a prayer for peace.
It is not the first time Francis has shown a willingness to offend political sensitivities in the name of doing what he thinks is right. Exactly a month ago, for example, the pope angered the Turkish government by calling the 1915 slaughter of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks a genocide. Turkey recalled its Vatican ambassador in response.
A Palestinian spokesman, Xavier Abu Eid, said 135 nations now recognize Palestine as a state.
Jamal Khader, rector of the Latin Patriarchate Seminary in Jerusalem, said that Pope Francis and his secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, had worked closely with the Palestinians and noted that the treaty was finalized just before the canonization of two Palestinian nuns — the first Arabic-speaking saints — scheduled for Sunday. Mr. Abbas is scheduled to attend that ceremony.
Cardinal Parolin “wants to help create a new reality in Palestine here — in the diplomatic way of the Vatican, of course,” Father Khader said in an interview.
“The wider Arab world often thinks that it’s a Christian West against a Muslim East, so this is an important step from the Catholic Church to show that, no, it is standing with the rights of Palestinians, and with the right to a state of Palestine,” he said.
Neville Y. Lamdan, a former Israeli ambassador to the Holy See, said the main importance of the Vatican recognition of Palestinian statehood was the “moral authority and weight” it confers.
“The real question is why the Vatican came round to this step,” Mr. Lamdan said. “It certainly would be a very deliberate and carefully weighed decision; there’s nothing accidental about it.”
Rabbi David Rosen, international director of interreligious affairs for the American Jewish Committee, downplayed the significance of the term “state” in the new treaty, noting that Francis had already used it himself.
“I don’t think it was meant to be something dramatic,” Rabbi Rosen said. “Francis deeply cares about the peoples of this land, and he would very much like to see a peaceful reconciliation, but I don’t see he’s made any changes in terms of Vatican policy.”
As for Israel’s relationship with the Vatican, which officially began with a similar agreement in 1993, Rabbi Rosen said it was “far too strong for it to be hurt by a designation or a terminology.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/14/world ... -news&_r=1
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Re: Statehood for the Palestinians
In Vatican, Abbas Is Praised as ‘Angel of Peace’
VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis praised Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, as an “angel of peace” during a meeting at the Vatican on Saturday. The Vatican also expressed hope that Israel and the Palestinians would resume talks “to find a just and lasting solution to the conflict” that has roiled the Middle East for decades.
The encounter came days after the Vatican announced that it would sign a treaty recognizing the “state of Palestine,” tacitly endorsing the Palestinians’ bid for sovereignty.
Mr. Abbas’s meeting with the pope ended with an exchange of gifts. Presenting Mr. Abbas with a medallion, the pope said it depicted an angel of peace “destroying the bad spirit of war.” It was an appropriate gift, the pope added, since “you are an angel of peace.”
Mr. Abbas gave the pope relics of the two new saints.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/world ... -news&_r=1
VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis praised Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, as an “angel of peace” during a meeting at the Vatican on Saturday. The Vatican also expressed hope that Israel and the Palestinians would resume talks “to find a just and lasting solution to the conflict” that has roiled the Middle East for decades.
The encounter came days after the Vatican announced that it would sign a treaty recognizing the “state of Palestine,” tacitly endorsing the Palestinians’ bid for sovereignty.
Mr. Abbas’s meeting with the pope ended with an exchange of gifts. Presenting Mr. Abbas with a medallion, the pope said it depicted an angel of peace “destroying the bad spirit of war.” It was an appropriate gift, the pope added, since “you are an angel of peace.”
Mr. Abbas gave the pope relics of the two new saints.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/world ... -news&_r=1
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Re: Statehood for the Palestinians
Gazans’ Hopes for Rebuilding After War Give Way to Deeper Despair
With the economy deteriorating, Gazans are growing increasingly frustrated with the standoff between Hamas and its rival Fatah party, led by the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas.
“The citizen is in the middle,” said Omar Shaban, an economist. “Ramallah doesn’t care,” he said, referring to Mr. Abbas’s government in the West Bank. “They have an interest in leaving Gaza like this.”
GAZA CITY — On a street here crammed with glittery clothing and electronic shops, Mahmoud Matar flipped through the receipt book for his appliance store, much of it blank: His lone sale that day was a $7 kettle. It was clear whom he blamed for his poor sales: Gaza’s Islamist Hamas government.
“They should close up shop and go home,” raged Mr. Matar, a chain-smoking 31-year-old with slicked-back hair. “They shouldn’t call themselves a government.”
Early optimism that global powers would intervene forcefully to rebuild the battered coastal enclave after the 50-day summer war between Gaza’s Hamas government and Israel has faded. Hamas’s claim that it won the war simply by surviving has been overwhelmed by a grinding struggle to keep the territory afloat, as living standards for its 1.8 million residents steadily worsen.
Most recently, Hamas quietly initiated new import fees in an effort to cover the salaries of about 40,000 employees who have not been paid for months, raising prices in already-depressed markets. A kilogram of meat, a little over two pounds, increased by 50 cents, black pepper by $1.50 a kilogram and shampoo by 25 cents. Incremental amounts for Western consumers, perhaps, but a blow to Palestinians already barely scraping by.
Pulverized buildings are still scattered along Gaza’s border areas from the last war. In the rubble of Shejaiya, an eastern neighborhood of Gaza City, near the border with Israel, a man swung his mallet to show how he pulverized concrete chunks into rubble that he sold to mix with black-market cement, earning him $15 a day.
Nearby, a woman walked into a badly damaged house, the windows bricked over. Some residents have returned to living in wrecked homes, despairing of having them repaired. Others have received small amounts of United Nations-donated cement to repair less-damaged homes. A few thousand homeless people still live in United Nations-run schools.
Many of the newly unemployed are former construction laborers. Desperate to find work, they turn to any sort of activity they can think of.
Abdul-Munim Omrani, 33, persuaded a charity to give him a peddler’s cart. He now uses it to sell hot drinks near a beach at a cheaper price than the seaside cafes skirting the shore.
He can make around $12 a day, he said, but he was chased away by the municipal police. His rust-streaked cart, with a deflated wheel, was parked near his peeling pastel-painted home. “I felt defeated,” he said. “That man took away my livelihood.”
On a recent day at the Gaza port, men pushed children in toy cars decked with flowers and glitter, charging 50 cents a ride.
Boys work, too, making up for absent, sick or dead fathers. Mohammad al-Ahl, 13, sells polka-dot balloons for 25 cents each, cheaper than the Bugs Bunny-shaped balloons that older men typically offer for a dollar. On this day, business was quiet. He sat silently by the port’s cheery blue, pink and green wall.
Israel places severe restrictions on the import of building materials, saying they have been used to build tunnels to conduct attacks on Israel. The Egyptian government, a bitter enemy of its homegrown Islamist party, the Muslim Brotherhood, has taken extraordinary steps to shut down the tunnels that were the lifeblood of the Gaza economy.
Egypt has opened its border only five times this year, part of a broader policy to punish Hamas, which aligned itself with the Brotherhood, Egypt’s former ruling party, a decision that backfired when the military seized power in mid-2013. The tunnels were Hamas’s chief source of revenue. It was their closing that set off the new import fees in May.
Visiting Gaza on Monday, the German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, called on Israel to ease restrictions on imports to Gaza. But he acknowledged that was unlikely to happen until Gaza was no longer “a launching pad for rockets.”
While Gaza’s unemployment rate has risen to 44 percent, the highest in the world, and many Gazan workers go unpaid, tens of thousands of employees who were hired by Mr. Abbas’s government when it controlled the territory are paid to stay home rather than work for Hamas.
“It’s not logical at all,” said Ashraf al-Qedra, spokesman for Gaza’s Health Ministry. “The one sitting at home is paid, but if he has a problem, he goes to a hospital to be treated by a doctor who hasn’t taken a salary.”
The family of Mr. Omrani, the would-be hawker, still squeaks by. His wife sometimes finds casual work as a physiotherapist. They live rent-free with his mother, Fathiya, 63, who shares her $60 monthly widow’s pension. They occasionally get rice and sugar from the nearby mosque, and they do not eat much, Mr. Omrani said. Recently, the World Bank reported that three-quarters of all residents rely on aid this way.
But there is not enough for Mr. Omrani to pay a bribe for the right doctor to issue a certificate for his mother to obtain treatment in Egypt or Israel. She has cancer and several other ailments, he said, presenting a sheaf of medical documents. Fathiya, too weak to stand, wept in the tiny living room, partly in panic, partly from pain.
In the postwar malaise, some young men appear zombielike. Some are addicted to powerful painkillers generically called “tramal,” that promise hours of hazy escape from a place they cannot flee.
“It’s the unemployment, the lack of security, the pressure, the blockade. Imagine waiting for months to leave Gaza,” said a 24-year-old former user. He spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not want to be identified by government officials. “Imagine waiting and waiting.”
Many children still carry the trauma inflicted during the conflict.
Hamada Zaim, 4, has already lived through two short wars, in 2012 and 2014. He wets his bed and wakes up screaming at night, said his mother, Reem. Between wars, he went bald and his head began swelling. Before Egypt tightened movement across the border, his mother took him there to see specialists. They could not give her a diagnosis, and they told her to return, but now it is nearly impossible.
Hamada sat on his sister Sally’s lap on a recent day, snacking on chips in the Gaza port. He pointed to a hulking, rusting boat. “Is it Jewish?” he asked. His sister asked what a Jewish boat would look like.
“Takh!” he said. “Bang!”
Gaza’s only optimist seemed to be Musab Daher, 23, a Hamas loyalist and university student, a double amputee, one of about 3,700 Palestinians moderately to severely wounded in the last conflict.
“This is God’s will,” Mr. Daher said, smiling, in a Doctors Without Borders outpatient clinic in a Gaza City villa. He spoke of his hopes to marry; his friend, another double amputee from a previous war, now has two children.
Yet every night, he said, he relives the blast that severed his legs. He remembers the pain and his temporary deafness. He smiled. “I think that’s normal, right?”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/02/world ... -news&_r=1
With the economy deteriorating, Gazans are growing increasingly frustrated with the standoff between Hamas and its rival Fatah party, led by the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas.
“The citizen is in the middle,” said Omar Shaban, an economist. “Ramallah doesn’t care,” he said, referring to Mr. Abbas’s government in the West Bank. “They have an interest in leaving Gaza like this.”
GAZA CITY — On a street here crammed with glittery clothing and electronic shops, Mahmoud Matar flipped through the receipt book for his appliance store, much of it blank: His lone sale that day was a $7 kettle. It was clear whom he blamed for his poor sales: Gaza’s Islamist Hamas government.
“They should close up shop and go home,” raged Mr. Matar, a chain-smoking 31-year-old with slicked-back hair. “They shouldn’t call themselves a government.”
Early optimism that global powers would intervene forcefully to rebuild the battered coastal enclave after the 50-day summer war between Gaza’s Hamas government and Israel has faded. Hamas’s claim that it won the war simply by surviving has been overwhelmed by a grinding struggle to keep the territory afloat, as living standards for its 1.8 million residents steadily worsen.
Most recently, Hamas quietly initiated new import fees in an effort to cover the salaries of about 40,000 employees who have not been paid for months, raising prices in already-depressed markets. A kilogram of meat, a little over two pounds, increased by 50 cents, black pepper by $1.50 a kilogram and shampoo by 25 cents. Incremental amounts for Western consumers, perhaps, but a blow to Palestinians already barely scraping by.
Pulverized buildings are still scattered along Gaza’s border areas from the last war. In the rubble of Shejaiya, an eastern neighborhood of Gaza City, near the border with Israel, a man swung his mallet to show how he pulverized concrete chunks into rubble that he sold to mix with black-market cement, earning him $15 a day.
Nearby, a woman walked into a badly damaged house, the windows bricked over. Some residents have returned to living in wrecked homes, despairing of having them repaired. Others have received small amounts of United Nations-donated cement to repair less-damaged homes. A few thousand homeless people still live in United Nations-run schools.
Many of the newly unemployed are former construction laborers. Desperate to find work, they turn to any sort of activity they can think of.
Abdul-Munim Omrani, 33, persuaded a charity to give him a peddler’s cart. He now uses it to sell hot drinks near a beach at a cheaper price than the seaside cafes skirting the shore.
He can make around $12 a day, he said, but he was chased away by the municipal police. His rust-streaked cart, with a deflated wheel, was parked near his peeling pastel-painted home. “I felt defeated,” he said. “That man took away my livelihood.”
On a recent day at the Gaza port, men pushed children in toy cars decked with flowers and glitter, charging 50 cents a ride.
Boys work, too, making up for absent, sick or dead fathers. Mohammad al-Ahl, 13, sells polka-dot balloons for 25 cents each, cheaper than the Bugs Bunny-shaped balloons that older men typically offer for a dollar. On this day, business was quiet. He sat silently by the port’s cheery blue, pink and green wall.
Israel places severe restrictions on the import of building materials, saying they have been used to build tunnels to conduct attacks on Israel. The Egyptian government, a bitter enemy of its homegrown Islamist party, the Muslim Brotherhood, has taken extraordinary steps to shut down the tunnels that were the lifeblood of the Gaza economy.
Egypt has opened its border only five times this year, part of a broader policy to punish Hamas, which aligned itself with the Brotherhood, Egypt’s former ruling party, a decision that backfired when the military seized power in mid-2013. The tunnels were Hamas’s chief source of revenue. It was their closing that set off the new import fees in May.
Visiting Gaza on Monday, the German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, called on Israel to ease restrictions on imports to Gaza. But he acknowledged that was unlikely to happen until Gaza was no longer “a launching pad for rockets.”
While Gaza’s unemployment rate has risen to 44 percent, the highest in the world, and many Gazan workers go unpaid, tens of thousands of employees who were hired by Mr. Abbas’s government when it controlled the territory are paid to stay home rather than work for Hamas.
“It’s not logical at all,” said Ashraf al-Qedra, spokesman for Gaza’s Health Ministry. “The one sitting at home is paid, but if he has a problem, he goes to a hospital to be treated by a doctor who hasn’t taken a salary.”
The family of Mr. Omrani, the would-be hawker, still squeaks by. His wife sometimes finds casual work as a physiotherapist. They live rent-free with his mother, Fathiya, 63, who shares her $60 monthly widow’s pension. They occasionally get rice and sugar from the nearby mosque, and they do not eat much, Mr. Omrani said. Recently, the World Bank reported that three-quarters of all residents rely on aid this way.
But there is not enough for Mr. Omrani to pay a bribe for the right doctor to issue a certificate for his mother to obtain treatment in Egypt or Israel. She has cancer and several other ailments, he said, presenting a sheaf of medical documents. Fathiya, too weak to stand, wept in the tiny living room, partly in panic, partly from pain.
In the postwar malaise, some young men appear zombielike. Some are addicted to powerful painkillers generically called “tramal,” that promise hours of hazy escape from a place they cannot flee.
“It’s the unemployment, the lack of security, the pressure, the blockade. Imagine waiting for months to leave Gaza,” said a 24-year-old former user. He spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not want to be identified by government officials. “Imagine waiting and waiting.”
Many children still carry the trauma inflicted during the conflict.
Hamada Zaim, 4, has already lived through two short wars, in 2012 and 2014. He wets his bed and wakes up screaming at night, said his mother, Reem. Between wars, he went bald and his head began swelling. Before Egypt tightened movement across the border, his mother took him there to see specialists. They could not give her a diagnosis, and they told her to return, but now it is nearly impossible.
Hamada sat on his sister Sally’s lap on a recent day, snacking on chips in the Gaza port. He pointed to a hulking, rusting boat. “Is it Jewish?” he asked. His sister asked what a Jewish boat would look like.
“Takh!” he said. “Bang!”
Gaza’s only optimist seemed to be Musab Daher, 23, a Hamas loyalist and university student, a double amputee, one of about 3,700 Palestinians moderately to severely wounded in the last conflict.
“This is God’s will,” Mr. Daher said, smiling, in a Doctors Without Borders outpatient clinic in a Gaza City villa. He spoke of his hopes to marry; his friend, another double amputee from a previous war, now has two children.
Yet every night, he said, he relives the blast that severed his legs. He remembers the pain and his temporary deafness. He smiled. “I think that’s normal, right?”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/02/world ... -news&_r=1
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Re: Statehood for the Palestinians
Gaza Strip Economy on ‘Verge of Collapse,’ World Bank Says
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/23/world ... pe=article
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/23/world ... pe=article
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- Joined: Tue Oct 07, 2008 5:34 pm
Re: Statehood for the Palestinians
Vatican recognises state of Palestine; Israel irked
Israel expressed disappointment when the Vatican announced last month that it had reached final agreement with the "State of Palestine" on the treaty.
The Vatican signed a treaty with the “State of Palestine” on Friday, saying it hoped its legal recognition of the state would help stimulate peace with Israel and that the treaty itself would serve as a model for other Mideast countries.
Vatican Foreign Minister Paul Gallagher and his Palestinian counterpart, Riad al-Malki, signed the treaty at a ceremony inside the Vatican.
Israel expressed disappointment when the Vatican announced last month that it had reached final agreement with the “State of Palestine” on the treaty regulating the life of the Catholic Church in the Palestinian territories.
It repeated that regret in a Foreign Ministry statement on Friday, saying the move hurt peace prospects and would discourage the Palestinians from returning to direct negotiations. It warned that it would study the agreement “and its implications for future cooperation between Israel and the Vatican.”
Gallagher, though, said he hoped the Vatican’s recognition “may in some way be a stimulus to bringing a definitive end to the long-standing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which continues to cause suffering for both parties.”
The Vatican had welcomed the decision by the U.N. General Assembly in 2012 to recognize a Palestinian state and had referred to the Palestine state since. But the treaty marked its first legal recognition of the Palestinian territory as a state.
Mr. Al-Malki called the treaty an “historic agreement” and said it marked “a recognition of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, freedom and dignity in an independent state of their own, free from the shackles of occupation.”
The United States and Israel oppose recognizing the Palestinian state, arguing that it undermines U.S.-led efforts to negotiate an Israeli-Palestinian deal on the terms of Palestinian statehood. Most countries in Western Europe have held off on recognition, but some have hinted that their position could change if peace efforts remain deadlocked.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon called the treaty itself one-sided, saying the text ignored “the historic rights of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel and to the places holy to Judaism in Jerusalem.”
http://www.thehindu.com/news/internatio ... epage=true
Israel expressed disappointment when the Vatican announced last month that it had reached final agreement with the "State of Palestine" on the treaty.
The Vatican signed a treaty with the “State of Palestine” on Friday, saying it hoped its legal recognition of the state would help stimulate peace with Israel and that the treaty itself would serve as a model for other Mideast countries.
Vatican Foreign Minister Paul Gallagher and his Palestinian counterpart, Riad al-Malki, signed the treaty at a ceremony inside the Vatican.
Israel expressed disappointment when the Vatican announced last month that it had reached final agreement with the “State of Palestine” on the treaty regulating the life of the Catholic Church in the Palestinian territories.
It repeated that regret in a Foreign Ministry statement on Friday, saying the move hurt peace prospects and would discourage the Palestinians from returning to direct negotiations. It warned that it would study the agreement “and its implications for future cooperation between Israel and the Vatican.”
Gallagher, though, said he hoped the Vatican’s recognition “may in some way be a stimulus to bringing a definitive end to the long-standing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which continues to cause suffering for both parties.”
The Vatican had welcomed the decision by the U.N. General Assembly in 2012 to recognize a Palestinian state and had referred to the Palestine state since. But the treaty marked its first legal recognition of the Palestinian territory as a state.
Mr. Al-Malki called the treaty an “historic agreement” and said it marked “a recognition of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, freedom and dignity in an independent state of their own, free from the shackles of occupation.”
The United States and Israel oppose recognizing the Palestinian state, arguing that it undermines U.S.-led efforts to negotiate an Israeli-Palestinian deal on the terms of Palestinian statehood. Most countries in Western Europe have held off on recognition, but some have hinted that their position could change if peace efforts remain deadlocked.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon called the treaty itself one-sided, saying the text ignored “the historic rights of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel and to the places holy to Judaism in Jerusalem.”
http://www.thehindu.com/news/internatio ... epage=true
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Re: Statehood for the Palestinians
Palestine ‘shocked’ at Indian abstention
Palestinian Ambassador Adnan Abu Alhaija says India’s decision has been “affected” by its “burgeoning military relationship with Israel”.
Hitting out at India’s decision to abstain from the U.N. Human Rights Council vote because of “technical reasons,” Palestine has said the abstention “marks a departure” from Delhi’s “traditional position.”
In an exclusive interview to The Hindu, the Palestinian Ambassador to India, Adnan Abu Alhaija, said India’s decision has been “affected” by its “burgeoning military relationship with Israel.”
“We were shocked. The Palestinian people and leaders were very happy with the U.N. resolution, but the voting of India has broken our happiness,” Ambassador Alhaija said.
On Friday, India refused to vote against Israel in a resolution related to strikes in Gaza over a period of two months in 2014 that left more than 2,200 dead, including 1,462 Palestinian civilians. The vote was on a report, submitted during the UNHRC’s summer session in Geneva a year later, that blamed Israel for what it called “extensive use of weapons with a wide kill and injury radius.”
India was among five countries which abstained, while 41 countries voted in favour of the resolution, and the United States remained the only country to vote against it.
Israeli newspapers have credited the Indian position to Israeli diplomacy led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who called up Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the eve of the vote.
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/intervi ... epage=true
Palestinian Ambassador Adnan Abu Alhaija says India’s decision has been “affected” by its “burgeoning military relationship with Israel”.
Hitting out at India’s decision to abstain from the U.N. Human Rights Council vote because of “technical reasons,” Palestine has said the abstention “marks a departure” from Delhi’s “traditional position.”
In an exclusive interview to The Hindu, the Palestinian Ambassador to India, Adnan Abu Alhaija, said India’s decision has been “affected” by its “burgeoning military relationship with Israel.”
“We were shocked. The Palestinian people and leaders were very happy with the U.N. resolution, but the voting of India has broken our happiness,” Ambassador Alhaija said.
On Friday, India refused to vote against Israel in a resolution related to strikes in Gaza over a period of two months in 2014 that left more than 2,200 dead, including 1,462 Palestinian civilians. The vote was on a report, submitted during the UNHRC’s summer session in Geneva a year later, that blamed Israel for what it called “extensive use of weapons with a wide kill and injury radius.”
India was among five countries which abstained, while 41 countries voted in favour of the resolution, and the United States remained the only country to vote against it.
Israeli newspapers have credited the Indian position to Israeli diplomacy led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who called up Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the eve of the vote.
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/intervi ... epage=true
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Re: Statehood for the Palestinians
Sanhedrin Warns Pope Francis: Godly Judgment May Prove “Very Risky”
A recent Breaking Israel News article about the nascent Sanhedrin’s intention to put Pope Francis on trial in absentia for his recognizing the Palestinian state has caused quite a ruckus.
Though it may seem shocking to many that a group of rabbis would interfere in international policy, or exert authority over the Pope, the Sanhedrin feels compelled to do so. Rabbi Dov Stein, the secretary of the Sanhedrin, explained to Breaking Israel News that he feels it is their duty to bring God’s law into this world.
Thus far, the Vatican has not responded to the Sanhedrin’s letter. “As expected, no. It would seem that the Pope has chosen to ignore the letter. But a trial will be held anyway, and the result may be very risky for the Pope,” Stein said.
“God in heaven is listening and obeys the Sanhedrin because the Torah interpretation is in the hands of the Sanhedrin here in this physical world, not in the heaven in the hands of the angels.”
Not just a court for Jews, the rabbis on the Sanhedrin believe they are commanded by God to right injustice wherever it appears, regardless of religion or country.
“It has happened in the past that people have ignored the Sanhedrin, which is a mistake, because the Sanhedrin is vital to the proper functioning of the world. Only when the Jewish nation will heed the Sanhedrin of the Torah, will the Torah be one. Today God’s Torah is not the same Torah for all the Jews. Our unity is damaged because of this, because of people ignoring the Sanhedrin,” Stein explained.
Read more at http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/45320 ... FXCHp7W.99
A recent Breaking Israel News article about the nascent Sanhedrin’s intention to put Pope Francis on trial in absentia for his recognizing the Palestinian state has caused quite a ruckus.
Though it may seem shocking to many that a group of rabbis would interfere in international policy, or exert authority over the Pope, the Sanhedrin feels compelled to do so. Rabbi Dov Stein, the secretary of the Sanhedrin, explained to Breaking Israel News that he feels it is their duty to bring God’s law into this world.
Thus far, the Vatican has not responded to the Sanhedrin’s letter. “As expected, no. It would seem that the Pope has chosen to ignore the letter. But a trial will be held anyway, and the result may be very risky for the Pope,” Stein said.
“God in heaven is listening and obeys the Sanhedrin because the Torah interpretation is in the hands of the Sanhedrin here in this physical world, not in the heaven in the hands of the angels.”
Not just a court for Jews, the rabbis on the Sanhedrin believe they are commanded by God to right injustice wherever it appears, regardless of religion or country.
“It has happened in the past that people have ignored the Sanhedrin, which is a mistake, because the Sanhedrin is vital to the proper functioning of the world. Only when the Jewish nation will heed the Sanhedrin of the Torah, will the Torah be one. Today God’s Torah is not the same Torah for all the Jews. Our unity is damaged because of this, because of people ignoring the Sanhedrin,” Stein explained.
Read more at http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/45320 ... FXCHp7W.99
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Re: Statehood for the Palestinians
Amnesty International
Why #50Days4Gaza explained in 3 posters, a map and a video
Over 50 days of war in July-August 2014, both Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups committed war crimes and other serious breaches of international law. To date, neither side has held anyone to account.
During the war, Israeli forces fired tens of thousands of artillery and tank shells into densely populated residential areas, and launched air strikes on homes across the Gaza Strip, killing families inside in many cases. They struck schools sheltering civilians and attacked hospitals and medical workers, including ambulance staff trying to evacuate the dead and wounded.
On the other side, Palestinian armed groups fired thousands of rockets and mortars towards Israel, and also stored and fired munitions from residential areas of Gaza. Hamas forces executed at least 23 people in Gaza they accused of “collaborating”, and arrested and tortured others.
The evidence suggests that the Israeli military had a deliberate policy of targeting family homes. They continued to target homes throughout the war, even after it became clear how many civilians were being killed. Over the 50 days, more than 19,000 homes were destroyed or damaged beyond repair.
There is also a pattern of attacks on health workers and facilities. In some cases, the Israeli army repeatedly fired at clearly marked ambulances and paramedics wearing recognizable fluorescent vests.
Paramedic Mohammad al-Abadlah was killed by Israeli gunfire while attempting to rescue an injured man on 25 July 2014 in al-Qarara. “Suddenly we were being fired at directly,” his co-worker Hassan al-Attal told us. “My colleague screamed and said ‘I’ve been shot’… When colleagues got out to try to reach him, they too were fired at.”
1462 Palestinian civilians killed, 551 of whom were children. Of over 11,200 Palestinians injured, more than 3400 included children
Not convinced?
Amnesty International has worked with Forensic Architecture to create an interactive online map and database of Israeli attacks on Gaza during the conflict. Using data collected by Al Mezan and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights and witness testimonies collected by Amnesty International, the Gaza Platform documents significant patterns in the Israeli attacks which point to likely war crimes.
While a vast amount of multimedia information, including testimony, photos, videos and satellite imagery, is still being processed, the Gaza Platform currently shows that more than 270 Israeli attacks were carried out using artillery fire during the 2014 conflict, killing more than 320 civilians. The repeated use of artillery, an imprecise explosive weapon, in densely populated civilian areas constitutes indiscriminate attacks that should be investigated as war crimes.
The Platform also clearly illustrates an overwhelming pattern of targeting residential homes, with more than 1,200 Israeli attacks on houses resulting in more than 1,100 civilian deaths. Direct attacks on civilians not directly participating in hostilities and on civilian objects are prohibited under international humanitarian law, or “the laws of war”. Amnesty International, the UN Commission of Inquiry and other conflict monitoring organizations have raised the alarm about the high number of such attacks during the 2014 conflict.
Disturbing patterns, such as Israeli attacks striking first responders, medical workers and facilities, as well as the extensive use of “knock on the roof” warning attacks, where a missile fired from a drone is followed shortly afterwards by a larger bomb. Amnesty International does not consider that such strikes constitute an effective warning, nor do they absolve Israel from the clear obligation not to direct attacks at civilians or civilian property.
Today, we’re calling on the Israeli and Palestinian authorities to genuinely investigate all possible crimes and prosecute those responsible. Tweet at @JohnKerry, @PHammondMP and @HonRobNicholson to them that US, UK and Canada (respectively) must tell Israel and Palestine to investigate war #50Days4Gaza
Deaths. Destruction. And no accountability. Get the picture now?
http://amnesty.org.in/show/blog/why-50d ... d-a-video/
Why #50Days4Gaza explained in 3 posters, a map and a video
Over 50 days of war in July-August 2014, both Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups committed war crimes and other serious breaches of international law. To date, neither side has held anyone to account.
During the war, Israeli forces fired tens of thousands of artillery and tank shells into densely populated residential areas, and launched air strikes on homes across the Gaza Strip, killing families inside in many cases. They struck schools sheltering civilians and attacked hospitals and medical workers, including ambulance staff trying to evacuate the dead and wounded.
On the other side, Palestinian armed groups fired thousands of rockets and mortars towards Israel, and also stored and fired munitions from residential areas of Gaza. Hamas forces executed at least 23 people in Gaza they accused of “collaborating”, and arrested and tortured others.
The evidence suggests that the Israeli military had a deliberate policy of targeting family homes. They continued to target homes throughout the war, even after it became clear how many civilians were being killed. Over the 50 days, more than 19,000 homes were destroyed or damaged beyond repair.
There is also a pattern of attacks on health workers and facilities. In some cases, the Israeli army repeatedly fired at clearly marked ambulances and paramedics wearing recognizable fluorescent vests.
Paramedic Mohammad al-Abadlah was killed by Israeli gunfire while attempting to rescue an injured man on 25 July 2014 in al-Qarara. “Suddenly we were being fired at directly,” his co-worker Hassan al-Attal told us. “My colleague screamed and said ‘I’ve been shot’… When colleagues got out to try to reach him, they too were fired at.”
1462 Palestinian civilians killed, 551 of whom were children. Of over 11,200 Palestinians injured, more than 3400 included children
Not convinced?
Amnesty International has worked with Forensic Architecture to create an interactive online map and database of Israeli attacks on Gaza during the conflict. Using data collected by Al Mezan and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights and witness testimonies collected by Amnesty International, the Gaza Platform documents significant patterns in the Israeli attacks which point to likely war crimes.
While a vast amount of multimedia information, including testimony, photos, videos and satellite imagery, is still being processed, the Gaza Platform currently shows that more than 270 Israeli attacks were carried out using artillery fire during the 2014 conflict, killing more than 320 civilians. The repeated use of artillery, an imprecise explosive weapon, in densely populated civilian areas constitutes indiscriminate attacks that should be investigated as war crimes.
The Platform also clearly illustrates an overwhelming pattern of targeting residential homes, with more than 1,200 Israeli attacks on houses resulting in more than 1,100 civilian deaths. Direct attacks on civilians not directly participating in hostilities and on civilian objects are prohibited under international humanitarian law, or “the laws of war”. Amnesty International, the UN Commission of Inquiry and other conflict monitoring organizations have raised the alarm about the high number of such attacks during the 2014 conflict.
Disturbing patterns, such as Israeli attacks striking first responders, medical workers and facilities, as well as the extensive use of “knock on the roof” warning attacks, where a missile fired from a drone is followed shortly afterwards by a larger bomb. Amnesty International does not consider that such strikes constitute an effective warning, nor do they absolve Israel from the clear obligation not to direct attacks at civilians or civilian property.
Today, we’re calling on the Israeli and Palestinian authorities to genuinely investigate all possible crimes and prosecute those responsible. Tweet at @JohnKerry, @PHammondMP and @HonRobNicholson to them that US, UK and Canada (respectively) must tell Israel and Palestine to investigate war #50Days4Gaza
Deaths. Destruction. And no accountability. Get the picture now?
http://amnesty.org.in/show/blog/why-50d ... d-a-video/
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Re: Statehood for the Palestinians
It's Time to Admit It. Israeli Policy Is What It Is: Apartheid
I used to be one of those people who took issue with the label of apartheid as applied to Israel. Not anymore.
What I'm about to write will not come easily for me.
I used to be one of those people who took issue with the label of apartheid as applied to Israel. I was one of those people who could be counted on to argue that, while the country's settlement and occupation policies were anti-democratic and brutal and slow-dose suicidal, the word apartheid did not apply.
I'm not one of those people any more. Not after the last few weeks.
Not after terrorists firebombed a West Bank Palestinian home, annihilating a family, murdering an 18-month-old boy and his father, burning his mother over 90 percent of her body - only to have Israel's government rule the family ineligible for the financial support and compensation automatically granted Israeli victims of terrorism, settlers included.
I can't pretend anymore. Not after Israel's Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, explicitly declaring stone-throwing to be terrorism, drove the passage of a bill holding stone-throwers liable to up to 20 years in prison. The law did not specify that it targeted only Palestinian stone-throwers. It didn't have to.
Just one week later, pro-settlement Jews hurled rocks, furniture, and bottles of urine at Israeli soldiers and police at a West Bank settlement, and in response, Benjamin Netanyahu immediately rewarded the Jewish stone-throwers with a pledge to build hundreds of new settlement homes.
This is what has become of the rule of law. Two sets of books. One for Us, and one to throw at Them. Apartheid. We are what we have created. We are what we do, and the injury we do in a thousand ways to millions of others. We are what we turn a blind eye to. Our Israel is what it has become: Apartheid. There was a time when I drew a distinction between Benjamin Netanyahu's policies and this country I have loved so long.
No more. Every single day we wake to yet another outrage. I used to be a person who wanted to believe that there were moral and
democratic limits – or, failing that, pragmatic constraints - to how low the prime minister was willing to go, how far he was willing to bend to the proud proponents of apartheid, in order to bolster his power.
Not any more. Not after Danny Danon.
Not when the prime minister's choice to represent all of us, all of Israel at the United Nations, is a man who proposed legislation to annex the West Bank, effectively creating Bantustans for Palestinians who would live there stateless, deprived of basic human rights. The man who will represent all of us at the United Nations, the man who will speak to the Third World on our behalf, is the same man who called African asylum seekers in Israel "a national plague."
The man who will represent all of us at the United Nations is the same politician who proposed legislation aimed at crippling left-leaning NGOs which come to the aid of Palestinian civilians and oppose the institution of occupation, while giving the government a green light to keep financially supporting right-wing NGOs suspected of channeling funds to support violence by pro-settlement Jews.
What does apartheid mean, in Israeli terms?
Apartheid means fundamentalist clergy spearheading the deepening of segregation, inequality, supremacism, and subjugation. Apartheid means Likud lawmaker and former Shin Bet chief Avi Dichter calling Sunday for separate, segregated roads and highways for Jews and Arabs in the West Bank. Apartheid means hundreds of attacks by settlers targeting Palestinian property, livelihoods, and lives, without convictions, charges, or even suspects. Apartheid means uncounted Palestinians jailed without trial, shot dead without trial, shot dead in the back while fleeing and without just cause.
Apartheid means Israeli officials using the army, police, military courts, and draconian administrative detentions, not only to head off terrorism, but to curtail nearly every avenue of non-violent protest available to Palestinians.
Late last month, over the explicit protest of the head of the Israeli Medical Association and human rights groups combatting torture, Israel
enacted the government's "Law to Prevent Harm Caused by Hunger Strikes." The law allows force-feeding of prisoners, even if the prisoner refuses, if the striker's life is deemed in danger.
Netanyahu's Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, who pushed hard for passage of the bill, has called hunger strikes by Palestinian security
prisoners jailed for months without charge or trial "a new type of suicide terrorist attack through which they will threaten the State of Israel".
Only under a system as warped as apartheid, does a government need to label and treat non-violence as terrorism. Years ago, in apartheid South Africa, Jews who loved their country and hated its policies, took courageous roles in defeating with non-violence a regime of racism and denial of human rights.
May we in Israel follow their example.
http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/a-special- ... m-1.671538
I used to be one of those people who took issue with the label of apartheid as applied to Israel. Not anymore.
What I'm about to write will not come easily for me.
I used to be one of those people who took issue with the label of apartheid as applied to Israel. I was one of those people who could be counted on to argue that, while the country's settlement and occupation policies were anti-democratic and brutal and slow-dose suicidal, the word apartheid did not apply.
I'm not one of those people any more. Not after the last few weeks.
Not after terrorists firebombed a West Bank Palestinian home, annihilating a family, murdering an 18-month-old boy and his father, burning his mother over 90 percent of her body - only to have Israel's government rule the family ineligible for the financial support and compensation automatically granted Israeli victims of terrorism, settlers included.
I can't pretend anymore. Not after Israel's Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, explicitly declaring stone-throwing to be terrorism, drove the passage of a bill holding stone-throwers liable to up to 20 years in prison. The law did not specify that it targeted only Palestinian stone-throwers. It didn't have to.
Just one week later, pro-settlement Jews hurled rocks, furniture, and bottles of urine at Israeli soldiers and police at a West Bank settlement, and in response, Benjamin Netanyahu immediately rewarded the Jewish stone-throwers with a pledge to build hundreds of new settlement homes.
This is what has become of the rule of law. Two sets of books. One for Us, and one to throw at Them. Apartheid. We are what we have created. We are what we do, and the injury we do in a thousand ways to millions of others. We are what we turn a blind eye to. Our Israel is what it has become: Apartheid. There was a time when I drew a distinction between Benjamin Netanyahu's policies and this country I have loved so long.
No more. Every single day we wake to yet another outrage. I used to be a person who wanted to believe that there were moral and
democratic limits – or, failing that, pragmatic constraints - to how low the prime minister was willing to go, how far he was willing to bend to the proud proponents of apartheid, in order to bolster his power.
Not any more. Not after Danny Danon.
Not when the prime minister's choice to represent all of us, all of Israel at the United Nations, is a man who proposed legislation to annex the West Bank, effectively creating Bantustans for Palestinians who would live there stateless, deprived of basic human rights. The man who will represent all of us at the United Nations, the man who will speak to the Third World on our behalf, is the same man who called African asylum seekers in Israel "a national plague."
The man who will represent all of us at the United Nations is the same politician who proposed legislation aimed at crippling left-leaning NGOs which come to the aid of Palestinian civilians and oppose the institution of occupation, while giving the government a green light to keep financially supporting right-wing NGOs suspected of channeling funds to support violence by pro-settlement Jews.
What does apartheid mean, in Israeli terms?
Apartheid means fundamentalist clergy spearheading the deepening of segregation, inequality, supremacism, and subjugation. Apartheid means Likud lawmaker and former Shin Bet chief Avi Dichter calling Sunday for separate, segregated roads and highways for Jews and Arabs in the West Bank. Apartheid means hundreds of attacks by settlers targeting Palestinian property, livelihoods, and lives, without convictions, charges, or even suspects. Apartheid means uncounted Palestinians jailed without trial, shot dead without trial, shot dead in the back while fleeing and without just cause.
Apartheid means Israeli officials using the army, police, military courts, and draconian administrative detentions, not only to head off terrorism, but to curtail nearly every avenue of non-violent protest available to Palestinians.
Late last month, over the explicit protest of the head of the Israeli Medical Association and human rights groups combatting torture, Israel
enacted the government's "Law to Prevent Harm Caused by Hunger Strikes." The law allows force-feeding of prisoners, even if the prisoner refuses, if the striker's life is deemed in danger.
Netanyahu's Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, who pushed hard for passage of the bill, has called hunger strikes by Palestinian security
prisoners jailed for months without charge or trial "a new type of suicide terrorist attack through which they will threaten the State of Israel".
Only under a system as warped as apartheid, does a government need to label and treat non-violence as terrorism. Years ago, in apartheid South Africa, Jews who loved their country and hated its policies, took courageous roles in defeating with non-violence a regime of racism and denial of human rights.
May we in Israel follow their example.
http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/a-special- ... m-1.671538
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- Posts: 11653
- Joined: Tue Oct 07, 2008 5:34 pm
Re: Statehood for the Palestinians
Petition to arrest Netanyahu gains momentum in UK
With 76,000 signatures, petition calls for Israeli PM's arrest for alleged Gaza war crimes upon UK arrival in September.
London, United Kingdom - An online petition urging the arrest of Israel's prime minister for alleged war crimes over the 2014 Gaza assault is on course to hit the 100,000 signatures needed to have it debated in the UK parliament.
"I honestly don't expect him to get arrested because of the universal jurisdiction laws," said Damian Moran, who created the petition in response to Benjamin Netanyahu's announcement he would visit the United Kingdom in September.
"It is a clear message to him that there's a massive amount of people who don't want him here."
Published on August 7, the petition has already gathered more than 76,000 supporters, well past the 10,000 required to get a formal government response.
Petitions that pass the 100,000 mark are considered for debate in parliament.
Arms deal
The main focus of Moran's petition is the 51-day bombardment of Gaza that started in July 2014 and left more than 2,200 Palestinians dead, including 1,492 civilians.
In the same conflict, 66 Israeli soldiers and five civilians were killed.
"Benjamin Netanyahu is to hold talks in London this September. Under international law he should be arrested for war crimes upon arrival in the UK for the massacre of over 2,000 civilians in 2014," the introduction to the campaign reads.
Moran, a Derry-born software developer now living in Manchester, told Al Jazeera he didn't expect anything to come of the campaign, but he wanted to "shine a spotlight" on Israel's military action in Gaza.
"Politicians in the UK support Israel, [Prime Minister] David Cameron supports Israel. The British government has made fresh arms deals with Israel and they can't say for sure whether British weapons were used in the assault on Gaza," Moran said.
"There was a deal approved by David Cameron within weeks of the conflict. It just shouldn't be happening. The people don't want it so why is the government doing it - who works for who here?" Moran said, referring to a $6.3m arms deal approved by the UK, which included components for air-to-surface missiles.
In July this year, the UK government lifted all remaining restrictions over selling arms to Israel. The UK's export criteria is meant to ban sales to anywhere there is a "clear risk" the weapons will be used in human rights abuses.
Weeks have passed since the petition signatures surpassed the number required for a government response, but Moran is still waiting for the government. But he said the main aim is to get the subject debated in parliament - even though he does not expect it to be addressed.
"They'll just say 'blah blah blah, universal jurisdiction, good luck,'" said Moran.
In an email to Al Jazeera, a spokesman for the Embassy of Israel in London called the petition "a meaningless publicity stunt".
"The relationship between the Israeli and UK governments has never been closer; mutual trade has doubled over recent years, while academic, scientific and cultural cooperation is constantly growing," it said.
"Against this backdrop, the petition you refer to can only be viewed as a meaningless publicity stunt."
War crimes?
It is not the first time the issue of war crimes has been raised in relation to Operation Protective Edge, as it was dubbed by the Israeli armed forces.
Shortly after the bombardment ended, Amnesty International said "it appears that the attacks directly and deliberately targeted civilians or civilian objects, which would constitute war crimes".
Following the 2014 war the human rights organisation released a report chronicling the actions of the Israelis towards Palestinian citizens.
"Israeli forces … brazenly flouted the laws of war by carrying out a series of attacks on civilian homes, displaying callous indifference to the carnage caused," said Philip Luther, Amnesty's director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme.
"The report exposes a pattern of attacks on civilian homes by Israeli forces which have shown a shocking disregard for the lives of Palestinian civilians, who were given no warning and had no chance to flee.
"The repeated, disproportionate attacks on homes indicate that Israel's current military tactics are deeply flawed and fundamentally at odds with the principles of international humanitarian law," Luther added.
Netanyahu, however, defended Israel's actions and dismissed criticism from international organisations, including the United Nations.
"Israel defends itself according to international law and we are not the only ones to say so," the prime minister said in a public address in 2014.
Regardless of the validity of the online petition, it is unlikely to yield any real results.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office told Al Jazeera that under international law, "visiting heads of foreign governments have immunity from legal process, and cannot be arrested or detained".
For Moran, however, the point was not the actions of the government, but the reaction of the public.
"I wasn't expecting to get much more than 10,000 [signatures]," he said. "I just wanted to shed some light on things. I don't want it to be ignored."
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/featur ... 07233.html
With 76,000 signatures, petition calls for Israeli PM's arrest for alleged Gaza war crimes upon UK arrival in September.
London, United Kingdom - An online petition urging the arrest of Israel's prime minister for alleged war crimes over the 2014 Gaza assault is on course to hit the 100,000 signatures needed to have it debated in the UK parliament.
"I honestly don't expect him to get arrested because of the universal jurisdiction laws," said Damian Moran, who created the petition in response to Benjamin Netanyahu's announcement he would visit the United Kingdom in September.
"It is a clear message to him that there's a massive amount of people who don't want him here."
Published on August 7, the petition has already gathered more than 76,000 supporters, well past the 10,000 required to get a formal government response.
Petitions that pass the 100,000 mark are considered for debate in parliament.
Arms deal
The main focus of Moran's petition is the 51-day bombardment of Gaza that started in July 2014 and left more than 2,200 Palestinians dead, including 1,492 civilians.
In the same conflict, 66 Israeli soldiers and five civilians were killed.
"Benjamin Netanyahu is to hold talks in London this September. Under international law he should be arrested for war crimes upon arrival in the UK for the massacre of over 2,000 civilians in 2014," the introduction to the campaign reads.
Moran, a Derry-born software developer now living in Manchester, told Al Jazeera he didn't expect anything to come of the campaign, but he wanted to "shine a spotlight" on Israel's military action in Gaza.
"Politicians in the UK support Israel, [Prime Minister] David Cameron supports Israel. The British government has made fresh arms deals with Israel and they can't say for sure whether British weapons were used in the assault on Gaza," Moran said.
"There was a deal approved by David Cameron within weeks of the conflict. It just shouldn't be happening. The people don't want it so why is the government doing it - who works for who here?" Moran said, referring to a $6.3m arms deal approved by the UK, which included components for air-to-surface missiles.
In July this year, the UK government lifted all remaining restrictions over selling arms to Israel. The UK's export criteria is meant to ban sales to anywhere there is a "clear risk" the weapons will be used in human rights abuses.
Weeks have passed since the petition signatures surpassed the number required for a government response, but Moran is still waiting for the government. But he said the main aim is to get the subject debated in parliament - even though he does not expect it to be addressed.
"They'll just say 'blah blah blah, universal jurisdiction, good luck,'" said Moran.
In an email to Al Jazeera, a spokesman for the Embassy of Israel in London called the petition "a meaningless publicity stunt".
"The relationship between the Israeli and UK governments has never been closer; mutual trade has doubled over recent years, while academic, scientific and cultural cooperation is constantly growing," it said.
"Against this backdrop, the petition you refer to can only be viewed as a meaningless publicity stunt."
War crimes?
It is not the first time the issue of war crimes has been raised in relation to Operation Protective Edge, as it was dubbed by the Israeli armed forces.
Shortly after the bombardment ended, Amnesty International said "it appears that the attacks directly and deliberately targeted civilians or civilian objects, which would constitute war crimes".
Following the 2014 war the human rights organisation released a report chronicling the actions of the Israelis towards Palestinian citizens.
"Israeli forces … brazenly flouted the laws of war by carrying out a series of attacks on civilian homes, displaying callous indifference to the carnage caused," said Philip Luther, Amnesty's director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme.
"The report exposes a pattern of attacks on civilian homes by Israeli forces which have shown a shocking disregard for the lives of Palestinian civilians, who were given no warning and had no chance to flee.
"The repeated, disproportionate attacks on homes indicate that Israel's current military tactics are deeply flawed and fundamentally at odds with the principles of international humanitarian law," Luther added.
Netanyahu, however, defended Israel's actions and dismissed criticism from international organisations, including the United Nations.
"Israel defends itself according to international law and we are not the only ones to say so," the prime minister said in a public address in 2014.
Regardless of the validity of the online petition, it is unlikely to yield any real results.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office told Al Jazeera that under international law, "visiting heads of foreign governments have immunity from legal process, and cannot be arrested or detained".
For Moran, however, the point was not the actions of the government, but the reaction of the public.
"I wasn't expecting to get much more than 10,000 [signatures]," he said. "I just wanted to shed some light on things. I don't want it to be ignored."
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/featur ... 07233.html
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- Posts: 11653
- Joined: Tue Oct 07, 2008 5:34 pm
Re: Statehood for the Palestinians
GAZA MAY BE UNLIVABLE BY 2020, WARNS UN
WORLD BODY SLAMS ISRAEL FOR ITS BRUTAL SIEGE AND WARS THAT HAVE DESTROYED GAZA AND ITS ECONOMY
NEW YORK — Gaza could be “uninhabitable” in less than five years if current economic trends continue, according to a new United Nations report.
The report released on Tuesday by the UN Conference on Trade and Development points to the eight-year economic blockade of Gaza as well as the three wars there over the past six years.
Last year’s Israeli war on Gaza displaced half a million people and left parts of the strip destroyed.
The war “has effectively eliminated what was left of the middle class, sending almost all of the population into destitution and dependence on international humanitarian aid,” the new report says.
Gaza’s GDP dropped 15 percent last year, and unemployment reached a record high of 44 percent. Seventy-two percent of households are food insecure.
The wars have shattered Gaza’s ability to export and produce for the domestic market and left no time for reconstruction, the report says. It notes that Gaza’s “de-development,” or development in reverse, has been accelerated.
Israel and Egypt have maintained a blockade of Gaza since the armed group Hamas seized control of the territory in 2007.
“The humanitarian catastrophe is man-made. The answer is only through are man-made policies,” Hamdi Shaqqura, the deputy director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, told Al Jazeera.
Shaqqura said that donations from the international community have been “very useful”, but need to be coupled with “real political policies” to effectively help Gaza.
“The answer to Gaza is not dumping money into it. We have great potentials in Gaza for economic policies. What hinder economic development is merely Israeli policies, the closure (blockade) and other restrictions imposed on Gaza.”
A year after the war on Gaza, less than 2 percent of the required materials have been allowed into Gaza.
The report calls the economic prospects for 2015 for the Palestinian territories “bleak” because of the unstable political situation, reduced aid and the slow pace of reconstruction.
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development also said that the number of Jewish settlers in Area C of the West Bank — 61 per cent of the entire territory — had quadrupled since 1994, after the Oslo Accords, to 340,000 — meaning they now outnumber Palestinians there.
“Socioeconomic conditions are at their lowest point since 1967,” the report stated.
Overall, the Palestinian economy entered recession for the first time since 2006 by shrinking 0.4 per cent in 2014, with per capita income falling for the second consecutive year. Unemployment among Palestinians living in the occupied territories grew by three points to reach 30 per cent. The direct effects could be seen in the inability of a third of households to properly feed themselves.
The economic and development crisis in Gaza is much more acute than the West Bank, and the territory will be “uninhabitable by 2020 if current economic trends persist”, the report stated.
Eight years of economic blockade of the Hamas-ruled enclave and three major Israeli military invasions since 2008 have “shattered its ability to export and produce for the domestic market, ravaged its already debilitated infrastructure, left no time for reconstruction and economic recovery.”
Last year’s Israeli military operation displaced 500,000 of Gaza’s 1.8 million residents, destroyed or severely damaged 20,000 homes, power plants, 60 hospitals and health centres, 247 factories and hundreds of shops and businesses. The direct economic toll — not counting deaths and indirect losses — since 2008 is triple Gaza’s GDP. At 44 per cent, unemployment was the highest ever recorded.
A total of 2,200 Palestinians died in last year’s conflict.
Ninety-five per cent of Gaza’s available drinking water, from coastal aquifers, is also unsafe to drink, according to the report. Food insecurity affects 72 per cent of Gazan households, and 868,000 residents relied solely on UN-supplied rations by May 2015, up from 72,000 in 2000.
To secure the interests of the settlers, a large Israeli infrastructure has been erected in the West Bank that takes an economic toll by obstructing the flow of people and goods across the territory and into Gaza. There are now nearly 500 Israeli barriers that include checkpoints, the separation wall, roadblocks and trenches that “unilaterally redefines the borders of the West Bank” and erases the internationally recognised 1967 lines.
The report concludes that the staggering numbers are due primarily to Israeli policies, both through the usurpation of land and resources by settlers but also through the withholding of vital Palestinian tax revenues on imported goods that accounted for three quarters of the Palestinian Authority budget in 2014.–Agencies
http://caravandaily.com/portal/gaza-may ... -warns-un/
WORLD BODY SLAMS ISRAEL FOR ITS BRUTAL SIEGE AND WARS THAT HAVE DESTROYED GAZA AND ITS ECONOMY
NEW YORK — Gaza could be “uninhabitable” in less than five years if current economic trends continue, according to a new United Nations report.
The report released on Tuesday by the UN Conference on Trade and Development points to the eight-year economic blockade of Gaza as well as the three wars there over the past six years.
Last year’s Israeli war on Gaza displaced half a million people and left parts of the strip destroyed.
The war “has effectively eliminated what was left of the middle class, sending almost all of the population into destitution and dependence on international humanitarian aid,” the new report says.
Gaza’s GDP dropped 15 percent last year, and unemployment reached a record high of 44 percent. Seventy-two percent of households are food insecure.
The wars have shattered Gaza’s ability to export and produce for the domestic market and left no time for reconstruction, the report says. It notes that Gaza’s “de-development,” or development in reverse, has been accelerated.
Israel and Egypt have maintained a blockade of Gaza since the armed group Hamas seized control of the territory in 2007.
“The humanitarian catastrophe is man-made. The answer is only through are man-made policies,” Hamdi Shaqqura, the deputy director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, told Al Jazeera.
Shaqqura said that donations from the international community have been “very useful”, but need to be coupled with “real political policies” to effectively help Gaza.
“The answer to Gaza is not dumping money into it. We have great potentials in Gaza for economic policies. What hinder economic development is merely Israeli policies, the closure (blockade) and other restrictions imposed on Gaza.”
A year after the war on Gaza, less than 2 percent of the required materials have been allowed into Gaza.
The report calls the economic prospects for 2015 for the Palestinian territories “bleak” because of the unstable political situation, reduced aid and the slow pace of reconstruction.
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development also said that the number of Jewish settlers in Area C of the West Bank — 61 per cent of the entire territory — had quadrupled since 1994, after the Oslo Accords, to 340,000 — meaning they now outnumber Palestinians there.
“Socioeconomic conditions are at their lowest point since 1967,” the report stated.
Overall, the Palestinian economy entered recession for the first time since 2006 by shrinking 0.4 per cent in 2014, with per capita income falling for the second consecutive year. Unemployment among Palestinians living in the occupied territories grew by three points to reach 30 per cent. The direct effects could be seen in the inability of a third of households to properly feed themselves.
The economic and development crisis in Gaza is much more acute than the West Bank, and the territory will be “uninhabitable by 2020 if current economic trends persist”, the report stated.
Eight years of economic blockade of the Hamas-ruled enclave and three major Israeli military invasions since 2008 have “shattered its ability to export and produce for the domestic market, ravaged its already debilitated infrastructure, left no time for reconstruction and economic recovery.”
Last year’s Israeli military operation displaced 500,000 of Gaza’s 1.8 million residents, destroyed or severely damaged 20,000 homes, power plants, 60 hospitals and health centres, 247 factories and hundreds of shops and businesses. The direct economic toll — not counting deaths and indirect losses — since 2008 is triple Gaza’s GDP. At 44 per cent, unemployment was the highest ever recorded.
A total of 2,200 Palestinians died in last year’s conflict.
Ninety-five per cent of Gaza’s available drinking water, from coastal aquifers, is also unsafe to drink, according to the report. Food insecurity affects 72 per cent of Gazan households, and 868,000 residents relied solely on UN-supplied rations by May 2015, up from 72,000 in 2000.
To secure the interests of the settlers, a large Israeli infrastructure has been erected in the West Bank that takes an economic toll by obstructing the flow of people and goods across the territory and into Gaza. There are now nearly 500 Israeli barriers that include checkpoints, the separation wall, roadblocks and trenches that “unilaterally redefines the borders of the West Bank” and erases the internationally recognised 1967 lines.
The report concludes that the staggering numbers are due primarily to Israeli policies, both through the usurpation of land and resources by settlers but also through the withholding of vital Palestinian tax revenues on imported goods that accounted for three quarters of the Palestinian Authority budget in 2014.–Agencies
http://caravandaily.com/portal/gaza-may ... -warns-un/
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Re: Statehood for the Palestinians
Palestinian Flag Now Flies at the United Nations
Despite staunch opposition from Israel and the U.S., the Palestinian flag was raised Wednesday for the first time at the United Nations.
"It's something unbelievable," said Ahmad Mansour, a Palestinian student who goes to NYU. "Twenty years ago, you couldn't dream of this moment!"
Mansour celebrated the event at Dag Hammarskjold plaza with Imed Abujaish, a civil engineer who'd flown out from Detroit for the occasion.
"On one side, I'm really happy for this huge victory," said Abujaish, "but at the same time, kind of confused about the United Nations, trying to give the Palestinian just a baby step for such a huge case. It's like throwing a bone to a dog."
The flag-raising has alarmed a number of pro-Israel groups.
"It gives greater legitimacy to the Palestinian authority," said Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America. "And it legitimizes this entity, even though they promote hatred and violence against Jews in their schools, their streets, their sports teams."
Klein said his organization is lobbying Congress to reduce funding for the Palestinian Authority.
The U.N. recently voted to fly the flags of non-member observer States, such as the Palestinian Authority and the Vatican. The U.S. and Israel were among a handful of nations that voted against the measure.
http://www.wnyc.org/story/palestinian-f ... d-nations/
Despite staunch opposition from Israel and the U.S., the Palestinian flag was raised Wednesday for the first time at the United Nations.
"It's something unbelievable," said Ahmad Mansour, a Palestinian student who goes to NYU. "Twenty years ago, you couldn't dream of this moment!"
Mansour celebrated the event at Dag Hammarskjold plaza with Imed Abujaish, a civil engineer who'd flown out from Detroit for the occasion.
"On one side, I'm really happy for this huge victory," said Abujaish, "but at the same time, kind of confused about the United Nations, trying to give the Palestinian just a baby step for such a huge case. It's like throwing a bone to a dog."
The flag-raising has alarmed a number of pro-Israel groups.
"It gives greater legitimacy to the Palestinian authority," said Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America. "And it legitimizes this entity, even though they promote hatred and violence against Jews in their schools, their streets, their sports teams."
Klein said his organization is lobbying Congress to reduce funding for the Palestinian Authority.
The U.N. recently voted to fly the flags of non-member observer States, such as the Palestinian Authority and the Vatican. The U.S. and Israel were among a handful of nations that voted against the measure.
http://www.wnyc.org/story/palestinian-f ... d-nations/
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- Joined: Tue Oct 07, 2008 5:34 pm
Re: Statehood for the Palestinians
Israel harvesting slain Palestinians' organs: Palestine’s UN envoy
The Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations (UN) says the Tel Aviv regime is harvesting the organs of Palestinians killed in clashes with Israeli forces in the occupied territories.
Riyad Mansour said in a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday that the bodies of the Palestinians killed by Israeli forces are “returned with missing corneas and other organs, further confirming past reports about organ harvesting by the occupying power.”
“A medical examination conducted on bodies of Palestinians returned after they were killed by the occupying power found that they were missing organs,” Mansour wrote in the letter.
The Palestinian envoy further protested Israel’s “persistent aggression against the Palestinian people” over the past month and the regime’s “insistence on use of violent force and oppressive measures.”
The issue of organ theft by Israel was first brought to the fore in a report published by Sweden’s most highly-circulated daily Aftonbladet in 2009.
US daily The New York Times also said in an August 2014 report that transplant brokers in Israel have pocketed enormous sums of money. Based on the Times analysis of major organ trafficking cases since 2000, Israelis have played a ‘disproportionate role’ in organ trafficking.
The Palestinians whom Mansour was referring to were killed amid tensions in the occupied territories, which have dramatically escalated in recent weeks.
According to the latest figures by the Palestinian Health Ministry, at least 74 Palestinians have lost their lives at the hands of Israeli forces since the beginning of October. At least 11 Israelis have also been killed during that period.
The bodies of the Palestinian victims are most often held in Israeli custody for long periods of time before they are returned to relatives.
http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2015/11/05 ... rafficking
The Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations (UN) says the Tel Aviv regime is harvesting the organs of Palestinians killed in clashes with Israeli forces in the occupied territories.
Riyad Mansour said in a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday that the bodies of the Palestinians killed by Israeli forces are “returned with missing corneas and other organs, further confirming past reports about organ harvesting by the occupying power.”
“A medical examination conducted on bodies of Palestinians returned after they were killed by the occupying power found that they were missing organs,” Mansour wrote in the letter.
The Palestinian envoy further protested Israel’s “persistent aggression against the Palestinian people” over the past month and the regime’s “insistence on use of violent force and oppressive measures.”
The issue of organ theft by Israel was first brought to the fore in a report published by Sweden’s most highly-circulated daily Aftonbladet in 2009.
US daily The New York Times also said in an August 2014 report that transplant brokers in Israel have pocketed enormous sums of money. Based on the Times analysis of major organ trafficking cases since 2000, Israelis have played a ‘disproportionate role’ in organ trafficking.
The Palestinians whom Mansour was referring to were killed amid tensions in the occupied territories, which have dramatically escalated in recent weeks.
According to the latest figures by the Palestinian Health Ministry, at least 74 Palestinians have lost their lives at the hands of Israeli forces since the beginning of October. At least 11 Israelis have also been killed during that period.
The bodies of the Palestinian victims are most often held in Israeli custody for long periods of time before they are returned to relatives.
http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2015/11/05 ... rafficking
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- Joined: Tue Oct 07, 2008 5:34 pm
Re: Statehood for the Palestinians
MSNBC, Martin Fletcher Disavow Image of Palestine Being Wiped Off the Map
A recent sequence of events reveals what happens when U.S. media depart from the pro-Israel narrative.
Following an unusually honest report on Israel-Palestine, MSNBC Live backpedaled to Israeli talking points that were both illogical and uninformed. Let us look at what happened.
During its Thursday, Oct. 15th news broadcast, MSNBC Live broadcast an accurate and revealing image of four maps entitled “Palestinian loss of land 1946 – present.” Host Kate Snow commented that the maps showed “that the land where the Palestinians live has grown increasingly smaller.”
NBC’s longtime correspondent for the area, Martin Fletcher, agreed, saying: “Absolutely, this is what it’s all about; it’s about the land. What this map shows you, and it’s pretty shocking when you present it in this way, what it clearly shows is that if there is no peace agreement between Palestinians and Israel, more of those green areas, more of that Palestinian land, will be eaten up by Jewish settlements.”
There was an immediate onslaught against the show by Israelis and Israel partisans, including Israeli media and such pro-Israel organizations as “Honest Reporting” and Mediate.
An Israel partisan (and possibly citizen) tagged Fletcher in a criticism of the broadcast on Facebook Saturday, and Fletcher responded, “You’re right. I should have corrected the first map, which I didn’t see until I was on air. No excuses.”
By Sunday, a pro-Israel website reported that an MSNBC spokesperson said the network would broadcast an apology for showing the maps and called them “factually wrong.” Fletcher was quoted as saying they were “dead wrong.”
On Monday, MSNBC broadcast the promised apology for showing the maps. Host Kate Snow said: “We realized after we went off the air that the maps were not factually accurate and we regret using them.”
She then brought on Fletcher “to help clarify and give perspective on the issue.” Snow introduced him and said, “You’ve been covering the Middle East for 40 years now. Clearly that set of maps was wrong. Tell us why.”
Fletcher responds, “Well, first of all, I wish I’d said it right away, when I first saw them. The bottom line is that the first map showed the area as if it was a Palestinian state. The word across the map was ‘Palestine.’”
He continues: “It was all—it looked as if it was all full of Arabs. And then the succeeding maps then showed fewer and fewer—less and less land all the time…. The bottom line is it was completely wrong. I mean, there was no Palestinian—there was no state called Palestine.”
He goes on to say, “At that time, roughly, in that area … there was about half a million Jews living there and about a million Arabs. So if anything, the map should have reflected that demographic reality. And it didn’t. And it gave the wrong impression.”
Host Kate Snow then says, “It points to how complex it is.”
Fletcher agrees and says that the conflict is all over a tiny piece of land: “The Jews and the Muslims both believe that God gave them the land. It’s that one piece of land for two peoples. That’s what the conflict’s been about for a very long time.” [Full transcript]
Fletcher’s “clarification” is wrong on several points. Below are some of them:
(1) First, he claims that the first map was “inaccurate” because it was labeled Palestine, and Palestine was not a state. While this is a standard Israeli talking point, it is illogical and irrelevant.
To demonstrate this point, let us examine a hypothetical parallel. A map of Puerto Rico, for example, would not be “factually inaccurate” because Puerto Rico is not an independent state recognized by the Western political system.
If more and more non-Puerto Rican Americans moved into Puerto Rico and increasingly dispossessed the Puerto Rican population, often violently expelling them from the land, maps depicting Puerto Rican loss of land would not be “inaccurate.”
The fact is that virtually all maps of the area prior to 1948 were labeled Palestine. Does Fletcher maintain that these are all “factually inaccurate?”
(2) Fletcher’s second point is similarly irrelevant, because he mixes apples and oranges. The maps are clearly labeled “Palestinian loss of land.” Claiming that the maps were “factually inaccurate” because they didn’t cover a different topic –demographics – is a little like complaining that a map of climate zones is inaccurate because it doesn’t depict geologic zones.
In actuality, the maps correctly depict, as the title makes clear, expropriation of Palestinian land.
In the late 1800s, Arab Muslims and Christians lived on about 99 percent of the land of Palestine. The Jewish population, mostly Arab too, was a largely urban population and owned about 1 percent of the land.
Over the coming decades, Jews mostly from Europe and the U.S. immigrated to Palestine in a political movement whose goal was to take over the land for an ethnically-exclusive state. (This movement, called political Zionism, was originally opposed by most Jewish people, including those living in Palestine.)
There were intense efforts to acquire land by any means, and by 1946 Jewish ownership in Palestine was, at most, 8 percent of the land; most historians put it at about 5-6 percent. This 1946 land ownership is accurately depicted in the first map in the series.
These colonists then worked to foist a newly invented, exclusivist Jewish state on the indigenous population and ethnically cleansed large swathes of land. The UN General Assembly was pressured to recommend giving 55 percent of Palestine to the Jewish population that owned well under 10 percent of the land, instead of allowing self-determination and self-government in this traditionally diverse and pluralist society. (Map #2)
This never went to the Security Council and has no force of law, so in the end Israel was created through a war in which Zionist forces pushed out native Palestinians and acquired 78 percent of the land. (Map #3) (Although Arab armies eventually came in on the side of the native Palestinians, their overall troop strength was smaller than the Zionist/Israeli forces.)
In 1967 Israel attacked its neighbors in the Six Day War, and began a military occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Syrian Golan Heights that continues to this day. Since that time it has confiscated more and more Palestinian land for Jewish-only colonies. (Map #4)
The maps accurately reflect this land dispossession. They do not claim to discuss a different aspect of this history, population percentage.
However, if Fletcher wishes a sequence of maps depicting this different subject – population change in Palestine – these could be provided and would be similarly revealing.
The first map would show that at the time the world Zionist Organization decided to create a Jewish state in Palestine, 1897, the Jewish population in Palestine was about 4 percent. The plan was to push out the 96 percent of the population that was not Jewish (mostly Muslim and Christian), either though financial dispossession or violent expulsion, and replace it with massive Jewish colonization and immigration.
The next map would show that, 50 years later, this strategy had swelled the 4 percent Jewish population to 30 percent.
A third map, for 1949, would contain for the first time a state called Israel. This new state would be on 78 percent of the land and contain a population that was over 85 percent Jewish following Israel’s founding war, when Zionist/Israeli forces ethnically cleansed between 750,000 and one million indigenous Palestinian Muslims and Christians.
(The survivors of that war became life-long refugees, and live in the West Bank, Gaza, and beyond to this day, along with their children and grandchildren. Israel, counter to international law, still refuses to allow them to return to their homes. After the war, Palestinian homes and land, worth $5.2 trillion in today’s dollars, were confiscated by the new state as “absentee property” and retained officially for Jewish-only habitation. Palestinians who had temporarily fled their homes during the fighting but were within Israel’s borders when the war ended were designated “present absentees” and prohibited from returning to their homes, a situation that continues through today.)
(3) Fletcher’s statement about the nature of the conflict also contains erroneous claims.
Fletcher’s assertion that Muslims believe “God gave them the land” is bizarre; I’ve never seen this claim before. While Jerusalem is profoundly holy to Palestinian Muslims (and Christians), Palestinians’ land claims are rooted in the same very basic concept held by people around the world: that they owned and lived on the land.
Fletcher’s statement that Jews believe God gave them the land is more accurate, though he fails to note that there are some religious Jews who believe that the ancient Israelites’ violations of this covenant caused God to disperse them; they consider the Zionist movement extremely heretical. In fact, history indicates this was the prevailing view among observant Jews when the political Zionist movement began.
(4) Fletcher’s suggestion that this is a conflict between “two peoples… “Jews and Muslims,” is also inaccurate.
First of all, it omits the fact that many Palestinians are Christian and that Christians have had a significant presence in the land ever since Christianity was born there and many Palestinians’ ancestors became followers of Jesus of Nazareth.
Second, Fletcher’s statement ignores the many Jewish groups and individuals who do not support Zionism.
Third, it suggests a religious interpretation for a conflict that was created by a secular political movement and land theft.
Ironically, Fletcher missed the two errors that the maps actually did contain:
The map of 1947 uses the term “Israel” for the 55 percent of Palestine that the UN General Assembly, under political pressure, recommended be given to a Jewish state. In reality, Israel did not yet exist and was not created until 1948.
The first maps appear to include the Golan Heights under the Israel label, when in fact this was Syrian land. Israel conquered this land in 1967 and illegally annexed it in 1981. Appropriation of land through force is illegal under international law and the international community does not recognize Israeli sovereignty there.
Fletcher’s ties to Israel and his initial, unscripted response
It’s unclear when and why Fletcher decided to make his follow-up retraction, and it’s interesting to ponder what his full thoughts might be. It may be relevant that he only discusses the first map in the sequence of four.
Fletcher, who also works for PBS, has been covering this issue for at least 40 years, has written a book about Israel, and is considered an expert on it. Fletcher’s wife and children are Israeli, he is Jewish himself, and he has said that he “loves” Israel. His book “Walking Israel,” won the National Jewish Book Award.
Despite these potential obstacles to full objectivity, Fletcher’s first, unscripted response upon seeing the maps (which he had clearly not viewed before) is accurate and fair, to his credit. Without any hesitation he acknowledged that they correctly depicted the nature of the conflict: a conflict over land in which one party is truly being wiped off the map.
Despite his subsequent quibbling, that is a powerful statement about the reality of what has been done—and continues to be done—to Palestinians.
The Israel lobby may pervade U.S. news media and dominate what it may say, but the real facts about Palestine are increasingly leaking out to Americans. And that is what most scares those who wish Israeli power over Palestinians, which is only possible through U.S. support, to continue.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/23/ ... f-the-map/
A recent sequence of events reveals what happens when U.S. media depart from the pro-Israel narrative.
Following an unusually honest report on Israel-Palestine, MSNBC Live backpedaled to Israeli talking points that were both illogical and uninformed. Let us look at what happened.
During its Thursday, Oct. 15th news broadcast, MSNBC Live broadcast an accurate and revealing image of four maps entitled “Palestinian loss of land 1946 – present.” Host Kate Snow commented that the maps showed “that the land where the Palestinians live has grown increasingly smaller.”
NBC’s longtime correspondent for the area, Martin Fletcher, agreed, saying: “Absolutely, this is what it’s all about; it’s about the land. What this map shows you, and it’s pretty shocking when you present it in this way, what it clearly shows is that if there is no peace agreement between Palestinians and Israel, more of those green areas, more of that Palestinian land, will be eaten up by Jewish settlements.”
There was an immediate onslaught against the show by Israelis and Israel partisans, including Israeli media and such pro-Israel organizations as “Honest Reporting” and Mediate.
An Israel partisan (and possibly citizen) tagged Fletcher in a criticism of the broadcast on Facebook Saturday, and Fletcher responded, “You’re right. I should have corrected the first map, which I didn’t see until I was on air. No excuses.”
By Sunday, a pro-Israel website reported that an MSNBC spokesperson said the network would broadcast an apology for showing the maps and called them “factually wrong.” Fletcher was quoted as saying they were “dead wrong.”
On Monday, MSNBC broadcast the promised apology for showing the maps. Host Kate Snow said: “We realized after we went off the air that the maps were not factually accurate and we regret using them.”
She then brought on Fletcher “to help clarify and give perspective on the issue.” Snow introduced him and said, “You’ve been covering the Middle East for 40 years now. Clearly that set of maps was wrong. Tell us why.”
Fletcher responds, “Well, first of all, I wish I’d said it right away, when I first saw them. The bottom line is that the first map showed the area as if it was a Palestinian state. The word across the map was ‘Palestine.’”
He continues: “It was all—it looked as if it was all full of Arabs. And then the succeeding maps then showed fewer and fewer—less and less land all the time…. The bottom line is it was completely wrong. I mean, there was no Palestinian—there was no state called Palestine.”
He goes on to say, “At that time, roughly, in that area … there was about half a million Jews living there and about a million Arabs. So if anything, the map should have reflected that demographic reality. And it didn’t. And it gave the wrong impression.”
Host Kate Snow then says, “It points to how complex it is.”
Fletcher agrees and says that the conflict is all over a tiny piece of land: “The Jews and the Muslims both believe that God gave them the land. It’s that one piece of land for two peoples. That’s what the conflict’s been about for a very long time.” [Full transcript]
Fletcher’s “clarification” is wrong on several points. Below are some of them:
(1) First, he claims that the first map was “inaccurate” because it was labeled Palestine, and Palestine was not a state. While this is a standard Israeli talking point, it is illogical and irrelevant.
To demonstrate this point, let us examine a hypothetical parallel. A map of Puerto Rico, for example, would not be “factually inaccurate” because Puerto Rico is not an independent state recognized by the Western political system.
If more and more non-Puerto Rican Americans moved into Puerto Rico and increasingly dispossessed the Puerto Rican population, often violently expelling them from the land, maps depicting Puerto Rican loss of land would not be “inaccurate.”
The fact is that virtually all maps of the area prior to 1948 were labeled Palestine. Does Fletcher maintain that these are all “factually inaccurate?”
(2) Fletcher’s second point is similarly irrelevant, because he mixes apples and oranges. The maps are clearly labeled “Palestinian loss of land.” Claiming that the maps were “factually inaccurate” because they didn’t cover a different topic –demographics – is a little like complaining that a map of climate zones is inaccurate because it doesn’t depict geologic zones.
In actuality, the maps correctly depict, as the title makes clear, expropriation of Palestinian land.
In the late 1800s, Arab Muslims and Christians lived on about 99 percent of the land of Palestine. The Jewish population, mostly Arab too, was a largely urban population and owned about 1 percent of the land.
Over the coming decades, Jews mostly from Europe and the U.S. immigrated to Palestine in a political movement whose goal was to take over the land for an ethnically-exclusive state. (This movement, called political Zionism, was originally opposed by most Jewish people, including those living in Palestine.)
There were intense efforts to acquire land by any means, and by 1946 Jewish ownership in Palestine was, at most, 8 percent of the land; most historians put it at about 5-6 percent. This 1946 land ownership is accurately depicted in the first map in the series.
These colonists then worked to foist a newly invented, exclusivist Jewish state on the indigenous population and ethnically cleansed large swathes of land. The UN General Assembly was pressured to recommend giving 55 percent of Palestine to the Jewish population that owned well under 10 percent of the land, instead of allowing self-determination and self-government in this traditionally diverse and pluralist society. (Map #2)
This never went to the Security Council and has no force of law, so in the end Israel was created through a war in which Zionist forces pushed out native Palestinians and acquired 78 percent of the land. (Map #3) (Although Arab armies eventually came in on the side of the native Palestinians, their overall troop strength was smaller than the Zionist/Israeli forces.)
In 1967 Israel attacked its neighbors in the Six Day War, and began a military occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Syrian Golan Heights that continues to this day. Since that time it has confiscated more and more Palestinian land for Jewish-only colonies. (Map #4)
The maps accurately reflect this land dispossession. They do not claim to discuss a different aspect of this history, population percentage.
However, if Fletcher wishes a sequence of maps depicting this different subject – population change in Palestine – these could be provided and would be similarly revealing.
The first map would show that at the time the world Zionist Organization decided to create a Jewish state in Palestine, 1897, the Jewish population in Palestine was about 4 percent. The plan was to push out the 96 percent of the population that was not Jewish (mostly Muslim and Christian), either though financial dispossession or violent expulsion, and replace it with massive Jewish colonization and immigration.
The next map would show that, 50 years later, this strategy had swelled the 4 percent Jewish population to 30 percent.
A third map, for 1949, would contain for the first time a state called Israel. This new state would be on 78 percent of the land and contain a population that was over 85 percent Jewish following Israel’s founding war, when Zionist/Israeli forces ethnically cleansed between 750,000 and one million indigenous Palestinian Muslims and Christians.
(The survivors of that war became life-long refugees, and live in the West Bank, Gaza, and beyond to this day, along with their children and grandchildren. Israel, counter to international law, still refuses to allow them to return to their homes. After the war, Palestinian homes and land, worth $5.2 trillion in today’s dollars, were confiscated by the new state as “absentee property” and retained officially for Jewish-only habitation. Palestinians who had temporarily fled their homes during the fighting but were within Israel’s borders when the war ended were designated “present absentees” and prohibited from returning to their homes, a situation that continues through today.)
(3) Fletcher’s statement about the nature of the conflict also contains erroneous claims.
Fletcher’s assertion that Muslims believe “God gave them the land” is bizarre; I’ve never seen this claim before. While Jerusalem is profoundly holy to Palestinian Muslims (and Christians), Palestinians’ land claims are rooted in the same very basic concept held by people around the world: that they owned and lived on the land.
Fletcher’s statement that Jews believe God gave them the land is more accurate, though he fails to note that there are some religious Jews who believe that the ancient Israelites’ violations of this covenant caused God to disperse them; they consider the Zionist movement extremely heretical. In fact, history indicates this was the prevailing view among observant Jews when the political Zionist movement began.
(4) Fletcher’s suggestion that this is a conflict between “two peoples… “Jews and Muslims,” is also inaccurate.
First of all, it omits the fact that many Palestinians are Christian and that Christians have had a significant presence in the land ever since Christianity was born there and many Palestinians’ ancestors became followers of Jesus of Nazareth.
Second, Fletcher’s statement ignores the many Jewish groups and individuals who do not support Zionism.
Third, it suggests a religious interpretation for a conflict that was created by a secular political movement and land theft.
Ironically, Fletcher missed the two errors that the maps actually did contain:
The map of 1947 uses the term “Israel” for the 55 percent of Palestine that the UN General Assembly, under political pressure, recommended be given to a Jewish state. In reality, Israel did not yet exist and was not created until 1948.
The first maps appear to include the Golan Heights under the Israel label, when in fact this was Syrian land. Israel conquered this land in 1967 and illegally annexed it in 1981. Appropriation of land through force is illegal under international law and the international community does not recognize Israeli sovereignty there.
Fletcher’s ties to Israel and his initial, unscripted response
It’s unclear when and why Fletcher decided to make his follow-up retraction, and it’s interesting to ponder what his full thoughts might be. It may be relevant that he only discusses the first map in the sequence of four.
Fletcher, who also works for PBS, has been covering this issue for at least 40 years, has written a book about Israel, and is considered an expert on it. Fletcher’s wife and children are Israeli, he is Jewish himself, and he has said that he “loves” Israel. His book “Walking Israel,” won the National Jewish Book Award.
Despite these potential obstacles to full objectivity, Fletcher’s first, unscripted response upon seeing the maps (which he had clearly not viewed before) is accurate and fair, to his credit. Without any hesitation he acknowledged that they correctly depicted the nature of the conflict: a conflict over land in which one party is truly being wiped off the map.
Despite his subsequent quibbling, that is a powerful statement about the reality of what has been done—and continues to be done—to Palestinians.
The Israel lobby may pervade U.S. news media and dominate what it may say, but the real facts about Palestine are increasingly leaking out to Americans. And that is what most scares those who wish Israeli power over Palestinians, which is only possible through U.S. support, to continue.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/23/ ... f-the-map/
-
- Posts: 11653
- Joined: Tue Oct 07, 2008 5:34 pm
Re: Statehood for the Palestinians
Number of Palestinian children in Israeli prisons doubles
Minors represent approximately a fifth of the 2,000 Palestinians Israel has detained since violence escalated at the beginning of October. Palestinian children from occupied East Jerusalem form a large part of this group.
With the surge in arrests, the number of Palestinian children in Israeli detention doubled to 307 at the end of October compared with 155 at the end of August.
While children living under Israeli military rule in most of the occupied West Bank have long been denied basic rights, those in East Jerusalem are ostensibly subject to the same civil laws and judicial system as Israeli citizens and have access to Israel’s national insurance system.
But human rights groups have documented a deterioration in their treatment and conditions in Israeli detention as well.
In order to accommodate the large number of children it is arresting, Israel opened a new wing for Palestinian minors at Givon prison in October.
According to Addameer’s Rafat Sub Laban, there are now approximately 75 children at Givon, most of them from Jerusalem.
The facility has a maximum of 12 cells, each with six beds, indicating that even Givon is at capacity.
As The Electronic Intifada reported last month, the conditions at the prison are abysmal.
Lawyers from human rights groups, including the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, Addameer and Defense for Children International–Palestine, have all collected testimonies from children, who report being beaten, denied adequate food and held in moldy and frigid jail cells.
Children told Addameer’s lawyer during a 3 December visit that they suffer from nightmares, sleep disorders and are subjected to beatings, threats and sleep deprivation.
As in the cases of Marah Bakir and Istabraq Nour, some children at Givon are not receiving adequate medical attention.
Addameer’s Sub Laban told The Electronic Intifada that normally there is a Palestinian adult stationed in prisons with Palestinian children to act as a liaison with prison authorities. But no such person exists in Givon.
The youngest Palestinian alleged by Israel to be involved in a stabbing is 12-year-old Ali Alqam.
Ali and his 14-year-old cousin, Muawiya, are accused of stabbing and lightly wounding a security guard on a light rail train near Beit Hanina in occupied East Jerusalem on 10 November.
Ali was hit by three bullets in his abdomen, pelvis and right hand.
Even before the recent escalation, Israeli violence against Palestinian minors in custody was on the rise.
Since Israel’s intensified crackdown on Palestinians began more than two months ago, violations of the rights of Palestinian children in Israel’s civil court system have sharply increased.
In November, Israel’s parliament approved a series of harsh measures.
The Knesset gave preliminary approval to a bill to imprison children as young as 12 who are accused of terrorism. The law will affect Palestinian citizens of Israel and Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem.
Israel’s current laws bar imprisonment of children under the age of 14.
Earlier in the month, the Knesset passed a law mandating sentences of 4 to 10 years for throwing stones at moving vehicles.
Israeli lawmakers also amended the national insurance law so that benefits can be revoked from children convicted of “nationalistic-motivated” offenses or “terrorist activities.”
They also raised the fines courts can impose on their families to more than $2,500 dollars.
Palestinian children have also not escaped Israel’s policy of extrajudicial executions.
Of more than 100 Palestinians killed in October and November, 23 were children, according to the United Nations monitoring group OCHA.
In some instances, like in the killings in separate incidents of 16-year-olds Mutaz Uweisat and Ahmad Abu al-Rab, Israel has denied requests by families and human rights groups for autopsies or independent investigations.
Israel is also still withholding the bodies of dozens of Palestinians killed in such incidents, making it even harder to independently determine what happened.
FULL ARTICLE :-
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ch ... ns-doubles
Minors represent approximately a fifth of the 2,000 Palestinians Israel has detained since violence escalated at the beginning of October. Palestinian children from occupied East Jerusalem form a large part of this group.
With the surge in arrests, the number of Palestinian children in Israeli detention doubled to 307 at the end of October compared with 155 at the end of August.
While children living under Israeli military rule in most of the occupied West Bank have long been denied basic rights, those in East Jerusalem are ostensibly subject to the same civil laws and judicial system as Israeli citizens and have access to Israel’s national insurance system.
But human rights groups have documented a deterioration in their treatment and conditions in Israeli detention as well.
In order to accommodate the large number of children it is arresting, Israel opened a new wing for Palestinian minors at Givon prison in October.
According to Addameer’s Rafat Sub Laban, there are now approximately 75 children at Givon, most of them from Jerusalem.
The facility has a maximum of 12 cells, each with six beds, indicating that even Givon is at capacity.
As The Electronic Intifada reported last month, the conditions at the prison are abysmal.
Lawyers from human rights groups, including the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, Addameer and Defense for Children International–Palestine, have all collected testimonies from children, who report being beaten, denied adequate food and held in moldy and frigid jail cells.
Children told Addameer’s lawyer during a 3 December visit that they suffer from nightmares, sleep disorders and are subjected to beatings, threats and sleep deprivation.
As in the cases of Marah Bakir and Istabraq Nour, some children at Givon are not receiving adequate medical attention.
Addameer’s Sub Laban told The Electronic Intifada that normally there is a Palestinian adult stationed in prisons with Palestinian children to act as a liaison with prison authorities. But no such person exists in Givon.
The youngest Palestinian alleged by Israel to be involved in a stabbing is 12-year-old Ali Alqam.
Ali and his 14-year-old cousin, Muawiya, are accused of stabbing and lightly wounding a security guard on a light rail train near Beit Hanina in occupied East Jerusalem on 10 November.
Ali was hit by three bullets in his abdomen, pelvis and right hand.
Even before the recent escalation, Israeli violence against Palestinian minors in custody was on the rise.
Since Israel’s intensified crackdown on Palestinians began more than two months ago, violations of the rights of Palestinian children in Israel’s civil court system have sharply increased.
In November, Israel’s parliament approved a series of harsh measures.
The Knesset gave preliminary approval to a bill to imprison children as young as 12 who are accused of terrorism. The law will affect Palestinian citizens of Israel and Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem.
Israel’s current laws bar imprisonment of children under the age of 14.
Earlier in the month, the Knesset passed a law mandating sentences of 4 to 10 years for throwing stones at moving vehicles.
Israeli lawmakers also amended the national insurance law so that benefits can be revoked from children convicted of “nationalistic-motivated” offenses or “terrorist activities.”
They also raised the fines courts can impose on their families to more than $2,500 dollars.
Palestinian children have also not escaped Israel’s policy of extrajudicial executions.
Of more than 100 Palestinians killed in October and November, 23 were children, according to the United Nations monitoring group OCHA.
In some instances, like in the killings in separate incidents of 16-year-olds Mutaz Uweisat and Ahmad Abu al-Rab, Israel has denied requests by families and human rights groups for autopsies or independent investigations.
Israel is also still withholding the bodies of dozens of Palestinians killed in such incidents, making it even harder to independently determine what happened.
FULL ARTICLE :-
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ch ... ns-doubles
-
- Posts: 11653
- Joined: Tue Oct 07, 2008 5:34 pm
Re: Statehood for the Palestinians
US Treasury Sued over Donations for Israeli Squatter Settlements in Palestine
A lawsuit has been filed in a US court seeking to stop non-profit groups from sending billions of dollars worth of tax-exempt donations to support illegal Israeli settlements and the Israeli army.
A group of American citizens filed the suit on December 21 against the US Department of Treasury, claiming about 150 non-profits have sent an estimated $280bn to Israel over the past two decades.
The lawsuit claims, according to Al Jazeera, that the donations were “pass-throughs” and “funnels” to support the Israeli army and the illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The lawsuit claims that certain non-profit groups (including the Falic Family Foundation, FIDF (Friends of the Israeli Defence Force), American Friends of Ariel, Gush Etzion Foundation, American Friends of Har Homa, and Hebron Fund) directly contributed, tax-exempt, to violations of US law and international law, subverted US foreign policy, and contributed to countless crimes and human rights abuses targeting Palestinians.
The Treasury Department, which has 60 days to respond to the lawsuit, declined to comment, stating in an email to Al Jazeera: “We don’t comment on pending litigation.”
http://www.juancole.com/2016/01/us-trea ... stine.html
A lawsuit has been filed in a US court seeking to stop non-profit groups from sending billions of dollars worth of tax-exempt donations to support illegal Israeli settlements and the Israeli army.
A group of American citizens filed the suit on December 21 against the US Department of Treasury, claiming about 150 non-profits have sent an estimated $280bn to Israel over the past two decades.
The lawsuit claims, according to Al Jazeera, that the donations were “pass-throughs” and “funnels” to support the Israeli army and the illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The lawsuit claims that certain non-profit groups (including the Falic Family Foundation, FIDF (Friends of the Israeli Defence Force), American Friends of Ariel, Gush Etzion Foundation, American Friends of Har Homa, and Hebron Fund) directly contributed, tax-exempt, to violations of US law and international law, subverted US foreign policy, and contributed to countless crimes and human rights abuses targeting Palestinians.
The Treasury Department, which has 60 days to respond to the lawsuit, declined to comment, stating in an email to Al Jazeera: “We don’t comment on pending litigation.”
http://www.juancole.com/2016/01/us-trea ... stine.html
-
- Posts: 11653
- Joined: Tue Oct 07, 2008 5:34 pm
Re: Statehood for the Palestinians
IDF admits spraying herbicides inside the Gaza Strip
The army says aerial spraying was meant to ‘enable security operations.’ Palestinian farmers say hundreds of acres of crops were damaged or destroyed.
The Israel army has confirmed that it used crop-dusters to kill off vegetation — and perhaps inadvertently, agricultural crops — inside the Gaza Strip last week. According to Palestinian officials, over 420 acres of land were damaged by the spraying.
For years now, the IDF has unilaterally maintained a lethal “no-go zone” on the Palestinian side of the border with Gaza. Now, it seems, it has also implemented a “no-grow zone.”
“The aerial spraying of herbicides and germination inhibitors was conducted in the area along the border fence last week in order to enable optimal and continuous security operations,” an IDF Spokesperson told +972 on Sunday.
Palestinian Agricultural Ministry officials told Ma’an news that farmers said Israeli planes had been spraying their agricultural lands adjacent to the border fence for several days straight. Spinach, pea, parsley and bean crops were reportedly destroyed around the al-Qarrara area in eastern Khan Younis and the Wadi al-Salqa area in central Gaza, according to the report.
The military spokesperson did not respond to a follow-up question about the destruction of agricultural crops.
The spraying of herbicides in Gaza was not reported in the Israeli media.
The IDF has for years imposed a lethal no-go buffer zone along the Gaza border. The army killed at least 16 Palestinians and wounded at least 379 more who entered or approached the no-go zone in recent months, most of whom were participating in demonstrations along the fence.
Farmers and scrap collectors are also regularly targeted as they approach the fence. Palestinians often claim that those shot were outside the restricted area. Rarely are there any allegations that those shot were armed.
During the Vietnam war, the United States famously sprayed Agent Orange, napalm and other herbicides and defoliants to destroy vast swathes of jungle in Vietnam for military purposes. After the health and environmental effects such practices became clearer, however, the international community initiated the Environmental Modification Convention restricting the use of herbicidal warfare, which came into force in 1978. Israel is not a party to the convention.
In addition to enforcing a lethal buffer zone along its land border with Gaza affecting Palestinian farmers, the Israeli army also imposes strict, and sometimes deadly restrictions on the maritime areas in which Palestinian fisherman may fish.
Israel withdrew its troops from the Gaza Strip 10 years ago but its military still controls its land and sea borders, airspace, maritime zone, population registry, and decides which people and what goods may enter and exit the Strip. While Gaza also has a land border with Egypt, the Rafah crossing is a passenger terminal only, is often closed, and only lets through a limited number of people.
http://972mag.com/idf-admits-spraying-h ... ip/115290/
The army says aerial spraying was meant to ‘enable security operations.’ Palestinian farmers say hundreds of acres of crops were damaged or destroyed.
The Israel army has confirmed that it used crop-dusters to kill off vegetation — and perhaps inadvertently, agricultural crops — inside the Gaza Strip last week. According to Palestinian officials, over 420 acres of land were damaged by the spraying.
For years now, the IDF has unilaterally maintained a lethal “no-go zone” on the Palestinian side of the border with Gaza. Now, it seems, it has also implemented a “no-grow zone.”
“The aerial spraying of herbicides and germination inhibitors was conducted in the area along the border fence last week in order to enable optimal and continuous security operations,” an IDF Spokesperson told +972 on Sunday.
Palestinian Agricultural Ministry officials told Ma’an news that farmers said Israeli planes had been spraying their agricultural lands adjacent to the border fence for several days straight. Spinach, pea, parsley and bean crops were reportedly destroyed around the al-Qarrara area in eastern Khan Younis and the Wadi al-Salqa area in central Gaza, according to the report.
The military spokesperson did not respond to a follow-up question about the destruction of agricultural crops.
The spraying of herbicides in Gaza was not reported in the Israeli media.
The IDF has for years imposed a lethal no-go buffer zone along the Gaza border. The army killed at least 16 Palestinians and wounded at least 379 more who entered or approached the no-go zone in recent months, most of whom were participating in demonstrations along the fence.
Farmers and scrap collectors are also regularly targeted as they approach the fence. Palestinians often claim that those shot were outside the restricted area. Rarely are there any allegations that those shot were armed.
During the Vietnam war, the United States famously sprayed Agent Orange, napalm and other herbicides and defoliants to destroy vast swathes of jungle in Vietnam for military purposes. After the health and environmental effects such practices became clearer, however, the international community initiated the Environmental Modification Convention restricting the use of herbicidal warfare, which came into force in 1978. Israel is not a party to the convention.
In addition to enforcing a lethal buffer zone along its land border with Gaza affecting Palestinian farmers, the Israeli army also imposes strict, and sometimes deadly restrictions on the maritime areas in which Palestinian fisherman may fish.
Israel withdrew its troops from the Gaza Strip 10 years ago but its military still controls its land and sea borders, airspace, maritime zone, population registry, and decides which people and what goods may enter and exit the Strip. While Gaza also has a land border with Egypt, the Rafah crossing is a passenger terminal only, is often closed, and only lets through a limited number of people.
http://972mag.com/idf-admits-spraying-h ... ip/115290/
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Re: Statehood for the Palestinians
If You Show Interest in Palestine, You Could be a Terrorist, Says Government
United Kingdom — Most would agree that the issue of Palestine and Israel is one that should be discussed in all schools, particularly in Britain, which has played no small part in one of the most grave injustices in history. Last week, CAGE — an advocacy group for those affected by the ‘War on Terror’ — leaked a number of training documents that revealed teaching staff are being encouraged to consider Muslim students who display an interest in Palestinian issues as vulnerable to being drawn into terrorism.
We have previously reported on the creeping use of counter-terrorism policies in the U.K. being used to clamp down on civil liberties by way of the PREVENT programme, which is operated across the U.K. through the government’s Workshop to Raise Awareness of Prevent, commonly referred to as WRAP.
Recently leaked training materials include workshop plans, video clips, and software programmes that are being used to train public sector workers in spotting signs of radicalisation.
Alongside the absurdity of putting Palestine and the Islamic State in the same category, is it any wonder that cases of misreporting have plagued the education system since the introduction of PREVENT? According to CAGE, public sector workers are being trained in “empirically flawed reasoning,” which only reiterates the government’s own flawed thinking around extremism.
For concrete evidence of the climate of fear being created, look no further than schoolboy Rahmaan Mohammadi from Luton, who was questioned by anti-terrorism police for wearing a “Free Palestine” badge to school.
Mohammadi appears to have aroused suspicion in hyper-vigilant teaching staff for carrying a leaflet advocating Palestinian human rights and asking for permission to fundraise for Palestinian children. The Independent reports that Bedfordshire police visited Mohammadi’s home with a folder of information about the schoolboy, and after speaking with him and his parents, concluded he was not at risk and no further action was taken.
Singling out Palestine as an issue potentially linked to extremism not only risks problematising an issue of grave concern for many British Muslims, but has the potential to make people afraid of openly discussing the plights of those suffering from oppression.
http://theantimedia.org/if-you-show-int ... overnment/
United Kingdom — Most would agree that the issue of Palestine and Israel is one that should be discussed in all schools, particularly in Britain, which has played no small part in one of the most grave injustices in history. Last week, CAGE — an advocacy group for those affected by the ‘War on Terror’ — leaked a number of training documents that revealed teaching staff are being encouraged to consider Muslim students who display an interest in Palestinian issues as vulnerable to being drawn into terrorism.
We have previously reported on the creeping use of counter-terrorism policies in the U.K. being used to clamp down on civil liberties by way of the PREVENT programme, which is operated across the U.K. through the government’s Workshop to Raise Awareness of Prevent, commonly referred to as WRAP.
Recently leaked training materials include workshop plans, video clips, and software programmes that are being used to train public sector workers in spotting signs of radicalisation.
Alongside the absurdity of putting Palestine and the Islamic State in the same category, is it any wonder that cases of misreporting have plagued the education system since the introduction of PREVENT? According to CAGE, public sector workers are being trained in “empirically flawed reasoning,” which only reiterates the government’s own flawed thinking around extremism.
For concrete evidence of the climate of fear being created, look no further than schoolboy Rahmaan Mohammadi from Luton, who was questioned by anti-terrorism police for wearing a “Free Palestine” badge to school.
Mohammadi appears to have aroused suspicion in hyper-vigilant teaching staff for carrying a leaflet advocating Palestinian human rights and asking for permission to fundraise for Palestinian children. The Independent reports that Bedfordshire police visited Mohammadi’s home with a folder of information about the schoolboy, and after speaking with him and his parents, concluded he was not at risk and no further action was taken.
Singling out Palestine as an issue potentially linked to extremism not only risks problematising an issue of grave concern for many British Muslims, but has the potential to make people afraid of openly discussing the plights of those suffering from oppression.
http://theantimedia.org/if-you-show-int ... overnment/
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Re: Statehood for the Palestinians
Critics Aghast at 'Disgusting Speech' Clinton Just Gave to AIPAC
Democratic presidential candidate speech praises "everything that is bad about Israeli policy and U.S. imperialism"
Palestinian and human rights advocates were aghast over remarks made by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton at the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) convention on Monday, saying that her speech represented "everything that is bad" with U.S. imperialism and policy in the Middle East.
During the address, Clinton vowed to take the U.S.-Israel relationship to "the next level"—a level which seemingly includes more war and imperialism, few, if any, rights for Palestinians, and definitely no economic boycotts of Israel.
Striking a hawkish tone, Clinton warned the powerful lobby group against rival candidates who want to "outsource Middle East security to dictators" and "cede the mantle of leadership for global peace and security," and instead vowed even more "security and intelligence cooperation."
"As president, I will make a firm commitment to ensure Israel maintains its qualitative military edge," she said. "The United States should provide Israel with the most sophisticated defense technology so it can deter and stop any threats. That includes bolstering Israeli missile defenses with new systems like the Arrow Three and David’s Sling. And we should work together to develop better tunnel detection, technology to prevent armed smuggling, kidnapping and terrorist attacks."
As observers noted, as she ran down the list of "evolving threats," the former U.S. secretary of state resorted to common neoconservative talking points, declaring:
As we gather here, three evolving threats — Iran’s continued aggression, a rising tide of extremism across a wide arc of instability, and the growing effort to de-legitimize Israel on the world stage — are converging to make the U.S.-Israel alliance more indispensable than ever.
We have to combat all these trends with even more intense security and diplomatic cooperation. The United States and Israel must be closer than ever, stronger than ever and more determined than ever to prevail against our common adversaries and to advance our shared values.
Touting her "deep, personal commitment" to the "Jewish state," Clinton then said that "one of the first things I’ll do in office is invite Israeli Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] to visit the White House."
The speech proved that, on matters of Israel, Clinton is "running to the right" of GOP front-runner Donald Trump, as noted by Mondoweiss' Philip Weiss, who wrote that the remarks were "filled with red meat for Israel supporters" and "contained scant reference to the peace process."
Later, Clinton doubled down on her previous pledge to dismantle the growing international Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, linking the campaign against Palestinian apartheid to anti-Semitism, saying "we must repudiate all efforts to malign, isolate and undermine Israel and the Jewish people."
"I’ve been sounding the alarm for a while now," Clinton continued. "As I wrote last year in a letter to the heads of major American Jewish organizations, we have to be united in fighting back against BDS."
Clinton then specifically called on young people "on the front lines" to resist efforts to boycott Israel, saying: "I hope you stay strong. Keep speaking out. Don’t let anyone silence you, bully you or try to shut down debate"
Though unsurprised by the candidate's vigorous support for the policies and tactics of the Israeli state, observers pointed to the remarks as a frightening indicator of what a Clinton presidency could mean for the Middle East.
In a statement to Common Dreams, Rebecca Vilkomerson, executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace, said that the dialogue at the convention "is a reminder of the current limits of the mainstream discourse on Israel, which rely on racist and Islamophobic tropes to justify unquestioning support for Israel."
"From Democrats to Republicans, the message is the same," Vilkomerson continued. "More arms for Israel, a stronger relationship between Israel and the U.S., no mention of Palestinian rights, and no recognition of the impossible contradiction of being both democratic and Jewish when the state is predicated on maintaining systems of unequal rights and rule by military occupation."
Watch the entire speech below:
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/0 ... ialnetwork
Democratic presidential candidate speech praises "everything that is bad about Israeli policy and U.S. imperialism"
Palestinian and human rights advocates were aghast over remarks made by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton at the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) convention on Monday, saying that her speech represented "everything that is bad" with U.S. imperialism and policy in the Middle East.
During the address, Clinton vowed to take the U.S.-Israel relationship to "the next level"—a level which seemingly includes more war and imperialism, few, if any, rights for Palestinians, and definitely no economic boycotts of Israel.
Striking a hawkish tone, Clinton warned the powerful lobby group against rival candidates who want to "outsource Middle East security to dictators" and "cede the mantle of leadership for global peace and security," and instead vowed even more "security and intelligence cooperation."
"As president, I will make a firm commitment to ensure Israel maintains its qualitative military edge," she said. "The United States should provide Israel with the most sophisticated defense technology so it can deter and stop any threats. That includes bolstering Israeli missile defenses with new systems like the Arrow Three and David’s Sling. And we should work together to develop better tunnel detection, technology to prevent armed smuggling, kidnapping and terrorist attacks."
As observers noted, as she ran down the list of "evolving threats," the former U.S. secretary of state resorted to common neoconservative talking points, declaring:
As we gather here, three evolving threats — Iran’s continued aggression, a rising tide of extremism across a wide arc of instability, and the growing effort to de-legitimize Israel on the world stage — are converging to make the U.S.-Israel alliance more indispensable than ever.
We have to combat all these trends with even more intense security and diplomatic cooperation. The United States and Israel must be closer than ever, stronger than ever and more determined than ever to prevail against our common adversaries and to advance our shared values.
Touting her "deep, personal commitment" to the "Jewish state," Clinton then said that "one of the first things I’ll do in office is invite Israeli Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] to visit the White House."
The speech proved that, on matters of Israel, Clinton is "running to the right" of GOP front-runner Donald Trump, as noted by Mondoweiss' Philip Weiss, who wrote that the remarks were "filled with red meat for Israel supporters" and "contained scant reference to the peace process."
Later, Clinton doubled down on her previous pledge to dismantle the growing international Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, linking the campaign against Palestinian apartheid to anti-Semitism, saying "we must repudiate all efforts to malign, isolate and undermine Israel and the Jewish people."
"I’ve been sounding the alarm for a while now," Clinton continued. "As I wrote last year in a letter to the heads of major American Jewish organizations, we have to be united in fighting back against BDS."
Clinton then specifically called on young people "on the front lines" to resist efforts to boycott Israel, saying: "I hope you stay strong. Keep speaking out. Don’t let anyone silence you, bully you or try to shut down debate"
Though unsurprised by the candidate's vigorous support for the policies and tactics of the Israeli state, observers pointed to the remarks as a frightening indicator of what a Clinton presidency could mean for the Middle East.
In a statement to Common Dreams, Rebecca Vilkomerson, executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace, said that the dialogue at the convention "is a reminder of the current limits of the mainstream discourse on Israel, which rely on racist and Islamophobic tropes to justify unquestioning support for Israel."
"From Democrats to Republicans, the message is the same," Vilkomerson continued. "More arms for Israel, a stronger relationship between Israel and the U.S., no mention of Palestinian rights, and no recognition of the impossible contradiction of being both democratic and Jewish when the state is predicated on maintaining systems of unequal rights and rule by military occupation."
Watch the entire speech below:
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/0 ... ialnetwork
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Re: Statehood for the Palestinians
Sephardi Chief Rabbi Says non-Jews Forbidden From Living in the Land of Israel
Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef argues that Jewish law prohibits non-Jews from living in Israel unless they have accepted Noachide laws, adding that some non-Jews live in Israel to serve the Jewish population.
Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef said Saturday night that many non-Jews should be forbidden from living in the Land of Israel according to Jewish law.
In a recording of Yosef’s weekly Saturday night lecture obtained by Channel 10, the rabbi can be heard saying, “According to Jewish law, it’s forbidden for a non-Jew to live in the Land of Israel – unless he has accepted the seven Noachide laws.”
“If he’s not willing to accept one of them, [which is] not to commit suicide, if he’s not willing to accept this, you send him to Saudi Arabia,” Yosef continued, apparently referring to suicide attackers.
The seven Noachide laws include prohibitions on idolatry, blasphemy, murder, illicit sexual relations, stealing and eating the limb of a living animal, plus a positive commandment to establish court systems.
“If our hands were strong, if we had governing power, then non-Jews shouldn’t live in the Land of Israel,” Yosef added. “But our hands aren’t strong. We’re awaiting our righteous Messiah, who will be the true and complete redemption, and then they’ll do this.”
The reason some non-Jews are allowed to live in Israel, Yosef continued, is to serve the Jewish population. “Who will be the servers? Who will be our assistants? Therefore, we leave them here in the land,” he said.
Two weeks ago, Yosef sparked a storm when he used his weekly lecture to discuss the recent wave of Palestinian stabbing attacks.
“If someone is coming with a knife – it’s a commandment to kill him,” Yosef said. “If someone is coming to kill you, kill him first. Don’t start being afraid of all kinds of ... that they’ll make a court case against you afterward, or that some [Israel Defense Forces] chief of staff will come and say something different.”
“This also deters them,” he added. “The moment a terrorist knows that if he comes with a knife, he won’t return alive, this will deter them. Therefore, it’s a commandment to kill him.”
In that lecture, Yosef was responding to remarks made by IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot last month. During a meeting with students in Bat Yam, Eisenkot was asked by one student about the army’s rules of engagement. The student charged that these rules endanger the soldiers. But Eisenkot said the rules are satisfactory as they are, adding, “The IDF can’t speak in slogans, like ‘If someone is coming to kill you, kill him first.’ I don’t want a soldier to empty a clip into a girl with a pair of scissors.”
Several Knesset members from the Likud and Habayit Hayehudi parties criticized Eisenkot for that statement.
http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.711199
Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef argues that Jewish law prohibits non-Jews from living in Israel unless they have accepted Noachide laws, adding that some non-Jews live in Israel to serve the Jewish population.
Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef said Saturday night that many non-Jews should be forbidden from living in the Land of Israel according to Jewish law.
In a recording of Yosef’s weekly Saturday night lecture obtained by Channel 10, the rabbi can be heard saying, “According to Jewish law, it’s forbidden for a non-Jew to live in the Land of Israel – unless he has accepted the seven Noachide laws.”
“If he’s not willing to accept one of them, [which is] not to commit suicide, if he’s not willing to accept this, you send him to Saudi Arabia,” Yosef continued, apparently referring to suicide attackers.
The seven Noachide laws include prohibitions on idolatry, blasphemy, murder, illicit sexual relations, stealing and eating the limb of a living animal, plus a positive commandment to establish court systems.
“If our hands were strong, if we had governing power, then non-Jews shouldn’t live in the Land of Israel,” Yosef added. “But our hands aren’t strong. We’re awaiting our righteous Messiah, who will be the true and complete redemption, and then they’ll do this.”
The reason some non-Jews are allowed to live in Israel, Yosef continued, is to serve the Jewish population. “Who will be the servers? Who will be our assistants? Therefore, we leave them here in the land,” he said.
Two weeks ago, Yosef sparked a storm when he used his weekly lecture to discuss the recent wave of Palestinian stabbing attacks.
“If someone is coming with a knife – it’s a commandment to kill him,” Yosef said. “If someone is coming to kill you, kill him first. Don’t start being afraid of all kinds of ... that they’ll make a court case against you afterward, or that some [Israel Defense Forces] chief of staff will come and say something different.”
“This also deters them,” he added. “The moment a terrorist knows that if he comes with a knife, he won’t return alive, this will deter them. Therefore, it’s a commandment to kill him.”
In that lecture, Yosef was responding to remarks made by IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot last month. During a meeting with students in Bat Yam, Eisenkot was asked by one student about the army’s rules of engagement. The student charged that these rules endanger the soldiers. But Eisenkot said the rules are satisfactory as they are, adding, “The IDF can’t speak in slogans, like ‘If someone is coming to kill you, kill him first.’ I don’t want a soldier to empty a clip into a girl with a pair of scissors.”
Several Knesset members from the Likud and Habayit Hayehudi parties criticized Eisenkot for that statement.
http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.711199
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Re: Statehood for the Palestinians
Everything Israel does is part of a plan, not a forced ‘response’ to ‘terrorism’
On the 68th anniversary of the Nakba (Catastrophe), when the Zionist State of Israel was created on Palestinian land, it is worth reflecting on the propaganda that the world has been fed ever since. Arguably the most pervasive is the perennial claim that Israel only ever “responds” to Palestinian “terrorism” every time it sends its tanks, jets and drones over the border into the Gaza Strip, or its troops into the West Bank and East Jerusalem to destroy Palestinian homes and lives.
Let’s put aside for one moment the fact that the Palestinians have a legal right – some would say obligation – to resist Israel’s brutal military occupation of their land with all means at their disposal. Their legitimate resistance is neither “terrorism” nor mindless violence; it is focused and with a clear purpose in mind: the liberation of Palestine. This is a fact that is ignored by media and politicians alike when they back Israel’s offensives against Palestinian civilians with the claim that Israel has a “right to defend itself”. It certainly does if it is attacked by a belligerent state, but not, in law, to defend itself against the people living under its military occupation. Statements by Western politicians dismiss the Palestinians’ legal rights at a stroke, exposing their blatant support for Zionism in the process.
READ FULL ARTICLE :-
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20160 ... terrorism/
On the 68th anniversary of the Nakba (Catastrophe), when the Zionist State of Israel was created on Palestinian land, it is worth reflecting on the propaganda that the world has been fed ever since. Arguably the most pervasive is the perennial claim that Israel only ever “responds” to Palestinian “terrorism” every time it sends its tanks, jets and drones over the border into the Gaza Strip, or its troops into the West Bank and East Jerusalem to destroy Palestinian homes and lives.
Let’s put aside for one moment the fact that the Palestinians have a legal right – some would say obligation – to resist Israel’s brutal military occupation of their land with all means at their disposal. Their legitimate resistance is neither “terrorism” nor mindless violence; it is focused and with a clear purpose in mind: the liberation of Palestine. This is a fact that is ignored by media and politicians alike when they back Israel’s offensives against Palestinian civilians with the claim that Israel has a “right to defend itself”. It certainly does if it is attacked by a belligerent state, but not, in law, to defend itself against the people living under its military occupation. Statements by Western politicians dismiss the Palestinians’ legal rights at a stroke, exposing their blatant support for Zionism in the process.
READ FULL ARTICLE :-
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20160 ... terrorism/
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Re: Statehood for the Palestinians
The Hijacking of Palestinian History
Settler colonialism, usually technologically and militarily more advanced, is based on the erasure of already existent people, their culture and their memory, and substituting it with new foreign national entity that builds new culture, new history and new memory. To do this, settler colonialists have to get rid of the native people, their physical evidence, their history and their memory. They have to wipe off their existence from the world collective memory. To colonize the land, settlers’ elite/leaders need political/religious ideology to brainwash their soldiers/settlers to get them to fight aggressively for the land. Greater Israel in the Middle East is a settler colonialist project, and Zionism/Judaism/Talmudism is its driving ideology
Zionism is a settler colonialist movement based on Judaism with two major mythical religious pillars: Jewish god’s Promised Land and the rebuilding of the alleged Solomon temple in Al-Quds (Jerusalem) so that the Jewish god would descend from his mighty heaven and live in this mundane temple, wherefrom he would subjugate all gentiles under the Jewish New World Order.
To accomplish this Zionist project it was vital for the Judaic/Talmudist elite to religiously brainwash the Jews, generations after generations, to convince them that they are God’s Chosen People, and that Palestine is their god’s promised land, and that their religious duty is to reclaim it no matter what the cost is. The Jewish invaders need to feel that the land belongs to them, and that they have a 3000-year-old continuity in the land. Without that “belonging” feeling the Jews would always feel themselves as foreigners to the land. This was expressed by the remark of Menachem Begin, once an Israeli president, in 1969:
“If this is Palestine and not the land of Israel, then you are conquerors and not tillers of the land; you are invaders. If this is Palestine, then it belongs to a people who lived here before you came.”
Brainwashing the Jews with the Talmudic teachings and ingraining its supremacist, anti-gentile, and satanically genocidal terrorist spirit in their hearts and minds were not enough. The Christian Western World, who, throughout history, had persecuted the Jews and evicted them out of many Christian countries, needed also to be programmed.
READ FULL ARTICLE :-
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2016/07/10 ... n-history/
Settler colonialism, usually technologically and militarily more advanced, is based on the erasure of already existent people, their culture and their memory, and substituting it with new foreign national entity that builds new culture, new history and new memory. To do this, settler colonialists have to get rid of the native people, their physical evidence, their history and their memory. They have to wipe off their existence from the world collective memory. To colonize the land, settlers’ elite/leaders need political/religious ideology to brainwash their soldiers/settlers to get them to fight aggressively for the land. Greater Israel in the Middle East is a settler colonialist project, and Zionism/Judaism/Talmudism is its driving ideology
Zionism is a settler colonialist movement based on Judaism with two major mythical religious pillars: Jewish god’s Promised Land and the rebuilding of the alleged Solomon temple in Al-Quds (Jerusalem) so that the Jewish god would descend from his mighty heaven and live in this mundane temple, wherefrom he would subjugate all gentiles under the Jewish New World Order.
To accomplish this Zionist project it was vital for the Judaic/Talmudist elite to religiously brainwash the Jews, generations after generations, to convince them that they are God’s Chosen People, and that Palestine is their god’s promised land, and that their religious duty is to reclaim it no matter what the cost is. The Jewish invaders need to feel that the land belongs to them, and that they have a 3000-year-old continuity in the land. Without that “belonging” feeling the Jews would always feel themselves as foreigners to the land. This was expressed by the remark of Menachem Begin, once an Israeli president, in 1969:
“If this is Palestine and not the land of Israel, then you are conquerors and not tillers of the land; you are invaders. If this is Palestine, then it belongs to a people who lived here before you came.”
Brainwashing the Jews with the Talmudic teachings and ingraining its supremacist, anti-gentile, and satanically genocidal terrorist spirit in their hearts and minds were not enough. The Christian Western World, who, throughout history, had persecuted the Jews and evicted them out of many Christian countries, needed also to be programmed.
READ FULL ARTICLE :-
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2016/07/10 ... n-history/
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Re: Statehood for the Palestinians
Israel’s stolen babies remains the state’s darkest secret
It is Israel’s darkest secret – or so argues one Israeli journalist – in a country whose short history is replete with dark episodes.
Last month Tzachi Hanegbi, minister for national security, became the first government official to admit that hundreds of babies had been stolen from their mothers in the years immediately following Israel’s creation in 1948. In truth, the number is more likely to be in the thousands.
For nearly seven decades, successive governments – and three public inquiries – denied there had been any wrongdoing. They concluded that almost all the missing babies had died, victims of a chaotic time when Israel was absorbing tens of thousands of new Jewish immigrants.
But as more and more families came forward – lately aided by social media – to reveal their suffering, the official story sounded increasingly implausible.
Although many mothers were told their babies had died during or shortly after delivery, they were never shown a body or grave, and no death certificate was ever issued. Others had their babies snatched from their arms by nurses who berated them for having more children than they could properly care for.
According to campaigners, as many as 8,000 babies were seized from their families in the state’s first years and either sold or handed over to childless Jewish couples in Israel and abroad. To many, it sounds suspiciously like child trafficking.
A few of the children have been reunited with their biological families, but the vast majority are simply unaware they were ever taken. Strict Israeli privacy laws mean it is near-impossible for them to see official files that might reveal their clandestine adoption.
Did Israeli hospitals and welfare organisations act on their own or connive with state bodies? It is unclear. But it is hard to imagine such mass abductions could have occurred without officials at the very least turning a blind eye.
Testimonies indicate that lawmakers, health ministry staff, and senior judges knew of these practices at the time. And the decision to place all documents relating to the children under lock untl 2071 hints at a cover-up.
Mr Hanegbi, who was given the task of re-examining the classified material by prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has been evasive on the question of official involvement. “We may never know,” he has said.
By now, Israel’s critics are mostly inured to the well-known litany of atrocities associated with the state’s founding. Not least, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled from their homeland in 1948 to make way for Israel and its new Jewish immigrants.
The story of the stolen babies, however, offers the shock of the unexpected. These crimes were committed not against Palestinians but other Jews. The parents whose babies were abducted had arrived in the new state lured by promises that they would find in Israel a permanent sanctuary from persecution.
But the kidnapping of the children and the mass expulsion of Palestinians at much the same time are not unrelated events. In fact, the babies scandal sheds light not only on Israel’s past but on its present.
The stolen babies were not randomly seized. A very specific group was targeted: Jews who had just immigrated from the Middle East. Most were from Yemen, with others from Iraq, Morocco and Tunisia.
The Arabness of these Jews was viewed as a direct threat to the Jewish state’s survival, and one almost as serious as the presence of Palestinians. Israel set about “de-Arabising” these Middle Eastern Jews with the same steely determination with which it had just driven out most of the area’s Palestinians.
Like most of Israel’s founding generation, David Ben Gurion, the first prime minister, was from Eastern Europe. He accepted the racist, colonial notions dominant in Europe. He regarded European Jews as a civilised people coming to a primitive, barbarous region.
But the early European Zionists were not simply colonists. They were unlike the British in India, for example, who were interested chiefly in subduing the natives and exploiting their resources. If Britain found “taming” the Indians too onerous, as it eventually did, it could pack up and leave.
That was never a possibility for Ben Gurion and his followers. They were coming not only to defeat the indigenous people, but to replace them. They were going to build their Jewish state on the ruins of Arab society in Palestine.
Scholars label such enterprises – those intending to create a permanent homeland on another people’s land – as “settler colonialism”. Famously, European settlers took over the lands of North America, Australia and South Africa.
The Israeli historian Ilan Pappe has observed that settler colonial movements are distinguished from ordinary colonialism by what he terms the “logic of elimination” that propels them.
Such groups have to adopt strategies of extreme violence towards the indigenous population. They may commit genocide, as happened to the Native American peoples and to the Australian Aborigines. If genocide is not possible, they may instead forcefully impose segregation based on racial criteria, as happened in apartheid South Africa. Or they may commit large-scale ethnic cleansing, as Israel did in 1948. They may adopt more than one strategy.
Ben Gurion needed not only to destroy Palestinian society, but to ensure that “Arabness” did not creep into his new Jewish state through the back door.
The large numbers of Arab Jews who arrived in the first decade were needed in his demographic war against the Palestinians and as a labour force, but they posed a danger too. Ben Gurion feared that, whatever their religion, they might “corrupt” his Jewish state culturally by importing what he called the “spirit of the Levant”.
Adult Jews from the region, he believed, could not be schooled out of their “primitiveness”. But the Zionist leadership hoped the next generation – their offspring – could. They would be reformed through education and the cultivation of a loathing for everything Arab. The task would be made easier still if they were first detached from their biological families.
Israeli campaigners seeking justice for the families of the stolen babies point out that the forcible transfer of children from one ethnic group to another satisfies the United Nation’s definition of genocide.
Certainly, the theft of the Arab Jewish children and their reallocation to European Jews chimed neatly with settler colonialism’s logic of elimination. Such abductions were not unique to Israel. Australia and Canada, for example, seized babies from their surviving native populations in a bid to “civilise” them.
The “re-education” of Israel’s Arab Jews has been largely a success. Mr Netanyahu’s virulently anti-Palestinian Likud party draws heavily on this group’s backing. In fact, it was only because he dares not alienate such supporters that Mr Netanyahu agreed to a fresh examination of the evidence concerning the stolen babies.
But if there is a lesson to be drawn from the government’s partial admission about the abductions, it is not that Mr Netanyahu and Israel’s European elite are now ready to change their ways.
Rather, it should alert Israel’s Arab Jews to the fact that they face the same enemy as the Palestinians: a European Jewish establishment that remains resolutely resistant to the idea of living in peace and respect with either Arabs or the region.
http://www.intifada-palestine.com/2016/ ... st-secret/
It is Israel’s darkest secret – or so argues one Israeli journalist – in a country whose short history is replete with dark episodes.
Last month Tzachi Hanegbi, minister for national security, became the first government official to admit that hundreds of babies had been stolen from their mothers in the years immediately following Israel’s creation in 1948. In truth, the number is more likely to be in the thousands.
For nearly seven decades, successive governments – and three public inquiries – denied there had been any wrongdoing. They concluded that almost all the missing babies had died, victims of a chaotic time when Israel was absorbing tens of thousands of new Jewish immigrants.
But as more and more families came forward – lately aided by social media – to reveal their suffering, the official story sounded increasingly implausible.
Although many mothers were told their babies had died during or shortly after delivery, they were never shown a body or grave, and no death certificate was ever issued. Others had their babies snatched from their arms by nurses who berated them for having more children than they could properly care for.
According to campaigners, as many as 8,000 babies were seized from their families in the state’s first years and either sold or handed over to childless Jewish couples in Israel and abroad. To many, it sounds suspiciously like child trafficking.
A few of the children have been reunited with their biological families, but the vast majority are simply unaware they were ever taken. Strict Israeli privacy laws mean it is near-impossible for them to see official files that might reveal their clandestine adoption.
Did Israeli hospitals and welfare organisations act on their own or connive with state bodies? It is unclear. But it is hard to imagine such mass abductions could have occurred without officials at the very least turning a blind eye.
Testimonies indicate that lawmakers, health ministry staff, and senior judges knew of these practices at the time. And the decision to place all documents relating to the children under lock untl 2071 hints at a cover-up.
Mr Hanegbi, who was given the task of re-examining the classified material by prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has been evasive on the question of official involvement. “We may never know,” he has said.
By now, Israel’s critics are mostly inured to the well-known litany of atrocities associated with the state’s founding. Not least, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled from their homeland in 1948 to make way for Israel and its new Jewish immigrants.
The story of the stolen babies, however, offers the shock of the unexpected. These crimes were committed not against Palestinians but other Jews. The parents whose babies were abducted had arrived in the new state lured by promises that they would find in Israel a permanent sanctuary from persecution.
But the kidnapping of the children and the mass expulsion of Palestinians at much the same time are not unrelated events. In fact, the babies scandal sheds light not only on Israel’s past but on its present.
The stolen babies were not randomly seized. A very specific group was targeted: Jews who had just immigrated from the Middle East. Most were from Yemen, with others from Iraq, Morocco and Tunisia.
The Arabness of these Jews was viewed as a direct threat to the Jewish state’s survival, and one almost as serious as the presence of Palestinians. Israel set about “de-Arabising” these Middle Eastern Jews with the same steely determination with which it had just driven out most of the area’s Palestinians.
Like most of Israel’s founding generation, David Ben Gurion, the first prime minister, was from Eastern Europe. He accepted the racist, colonial notions dominant in Europe. He regarded European Jews as a civilised people coming to a primitive, barbarous region.
But the early European Zionists were not simply colonists. They were unlike the British in India, for example, who were interested chiefly in subduing the natives and exploiting their resources. If Britain found “taming” the Indians too onerous, as it eventually did, it could pack up and leave.
That was never a possibility for Ben Gurion and his followers. They were coming not only to defeat the indigenous people, but to replace them. They were going to build their Jewish state on the ruins of Arab society in Palestine.
Scholars label such enterprises – those intending to create a permanent homeland on another people’s land – as “settler colonialism”. Famously, European settlers took over the lands of North America, Australia and South Africa.
The Israeli historian Ilan Pappe has observed that settler colonial movements are distinguished from ordinary colonialism by what he terms the “logic of elimination” that propels them.
Such groups have to adopt strategies of extreme violence towards the indigenous population. They may commit genocide, as happened to the Native American peoples and to the Australian Aborigines. If genocide is not possible, they may instead forcefully impose segregation based on racial criteria, as happened in apartheid South Africa. Or they may commit large-scale ethnic cleansing, as Israel did in 1948. They may adopt more than one strategy.
Ben Gurion needed not only to destroy Palestinian society, but to ensure that “Arabness” did not creep into his new Jewish state through the back door.
The large numbers of Arab Jews who arrived in the first decade were needed in his demographic war against the Palestinians and as a labour force, but they posed a danger too. Ben Gurion feared that, whatever their religion, they might “corrupt” his Jewish state culturally by importing what he called the “spirit of the Levant”.
Adult Jews from the region, he believed, could not be schooled out of their “primitiveness”. But the Zionist leadership hoped the next generation – their offspring – could. They would be reformed through education and the cultivation of a loathing for everything Arab. The task would be made easier still if they were first detached from their biological families.
Israeli campaigners seeking justice for the families of the stolen babies point out that the forcible transfer of children from one ethnic group to another satisfies the United Nation’s definition of genocide.
Certainly, the theft of the Arab Jewish children and their reallocation to European Jews chimed neatly with settler colonialism’s logic of elimination. Such abductions were not unique to Israel. Australia and Canada, for example, seized babies from their surviving native populations in a bid to “civilise” them.
The “re-education” of Israel’s Arab Jews has been largely a success. Mr Netanyahu’s virulently anti-Palestinian Likud party draws heavily on this group’s backing. In fact, it was only because he dares not alienate such supporters that Mr Netanyahu agreed to a fresh examination of the evidence concerning the stolen babies.
But if there is a lesson to be drawn from the government’s partial admission about the abductions, it is not that Mr Netanyahu and Israel’s European elite are now ready to change their ways.
Rather, it should alert Israel’s Arab Jews to the fact that they face the same enemy as the Palestinians: a European Jewish establishment that remains resolutely resistant to the idea of living in peace and respect with either Arabs or the region.
http://www.intifada-palestine.com/2016/ ... st-secret/
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Re: Statehood for the Palestinians
FIFA: Give Israeli Settlements the Red Card
151,969 have signed. Let's get to 200,000
Israel set up six soccer clubs on stolen Palestinian land. The illegal outposts are an obstacle to peace and are condemned by everyone from the European Union to the USA. Palestinians aren’t allowed into the stadiums, let alone allowed to play football there! Now, FIFA is investigating whether these teams should be allowed to participate in international football -- let's demand the decision helps pave the way for equality.
FIFA laws prohibit using another country’s land without consent, and South African FIFA official, Tokyo Sexwale, just led a delegation to the region to investigate.
Israel is trying to persuade him to do nothing. But if enough of us raise our voices and make this a massive call to Sexwale, who has lofty political ambitions, we could push FIFA to hold the Israeli Football Association accountable. But he submits his recommendation this week -- we have to make this big, fast -- join now.
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/red_card_oc ... l/?kLpTYhb
151,969 have signed. Let's get to 200,000
Israel set up six soccer clubs on stolen Palestinian land. The illegal outposts are an obstacle to peace and are condemned by everyone from the European Union to the USA. Palestinians aren’t allowed into the stadiums, let alone allowed to play football there! Now, FIFA is investigating whether these teams should be allowed to participate in international football -- let's demand the decision helps pave the way for equality.
FIFA laws prohibit using another country’s land without consent, and South African FIFA official, Tokyo Sexwale, just led a delegation to the region to investigate.
Israel is trying to persuade him to do nothing. But if enough of us raise our voices and make this a massive call to Sexwale, who has lofty political ambitions, we could push FIFA to hold the Israeli Football Association accountable. But he submits his recommendation this week -- we have to make this big, fast -- join now.
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/red_card_oc ... l/?kLpTYhb
Re: Statehood for the Palestinians
"Well, well.. Who would have guessed and thought that the wahabbis pigs, the gutter and slime of human-waste, whom were all hearted for the Palestinians were the first ones to backstab them?? I guess this is the result of preaching the rotten version of Islam. The snakes are showing there true colour."
Saudis ‘don’t give a damn’ about Palestinians, want Israel’s help with Iran – fmr Netanyahu adviser
Riyadh, and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in particular, would approve any kind of Israeli-Palestinian deal to finally get rid of this “PR obstacle” and unite with Tel Aviv against Tehran, a former security advisor to Benjamin Netanyahu believes.
While officially Israel and Saudi Arabia do not have diplomatic relations, more than a decade ago Riyadh proposed an initiative which would see the normalization of relations between Arab nations and Israel. Among its demands, the Arab Peace Initiative, endorsed by the Arab League, calls on the Jewish state to withdraw from the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem, and achieve “a just solution to the Palestinian Refugee problem.”
Continue reading here: https://www.rt.com/news/410964-saudis-i ... ians-iran/
Saudis ‘don’t give a damn’ about Palestinians, want Israel’s help with Iran – fmr Netanyahu adviser
Riyadh, and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in particular, would approve any kind of Israeli-Palestinian deal to finally get rid of this “PR obstacle” and unite with Tel Aviv against Tehran, a former security advisor to Benjamin Netanyahu believes.
While officially Israel and Saudi Arabia do not have diplomatic relations, more than a decade ago Riyadh proposed an initiative which would see the normalization of relations between Arab nations and Israel. Among its demands, the Arab Peace Initiative, endorsed by the Arab League, calls on the Jewish state to withdraw from the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem, and achieve “a just solution to the Palestinian Refugee problem.”
Continue reading here: https://www.rt.com/news/410964-saudis-i ... ians-iran/