Posted on 05/23/2011 by RamallahOnline

June 5th support the Palestinian refugees

On June 5th support the Palestinian refugees’ right to return

22 May 2011 | International Solidarity Movement

The right to return is a core goal of the Palestinian liberation struggle. Since 1947-1948, when over 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homes – and more than 700,000 were ethnically cleansed from their country altogether – they and their descendants have organized to demand the rectification of this historic injustice. The refugees of the Six-Day War in 1967 (after which Israeli forces drove 300,000 Palestinians out of the occupied Gaza Strip and West Bank ), the 1967-1994 Israeli administration of the occupied territories (during which Israel stripped 140,000 Palestinians of their residency rights), and the ongoing colonization of Palestine and displacement of its indigenous inhabitants, have added their voices to the growing global movement for return.

In recent years, the right to return has also emerged as a key demand of international solidarity activists supporting Palestinian aspirations for freedom. On July 9, 2005, for example, the Palestinian Civil Society Call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) – the founding document of a Palestinian-led global movement for justice in Palestine – stated that “non-violent punitive measures should be maintained until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law by … respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties.”

Today the seven million Palestinian refugees are the world’s largest group of refugees, comprising one-third of the total refugee population. Their right to return to their homes, and to receive compensation for the damages inflicted on them, are enshrined in international law. Resolution 194, which the United Nations General Assembly adopted on 11 December 1948 and Israel agreed to implement as a condition of its subsequent admission to the United Nations,

resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.

Additionally, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the General Assembly on December 10, 1948, states that “everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.” And Resolution 3236, which the General Assembly adopted on November 22, 1974, “reaffirms … the inalienable right of the Palestinians to return to the homes and property from which they have been displaced and uprooted, and calls for their return.”

Despite its clear obligations under international law, Israel continues to resist demands by Palestinian refugees that they are allowed to return to their homes. Most recently, on Sunday, May 15, the 63rd commemoration of the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” of the 1947-1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine, Israeli troops responded to demonstrations by unarmed refugees marching towards their homes with lethal force.

Israeli forces killed at least 15 demonstrators on three borders (with occupied Gaza, Lebanon, and between Syria and the occupied Golan Heights), wounded hundreds more with live gunfire, artillery shells, and tear gas, and unleashed a wave of arrests and repression in the occupied West Bank. This massive violence could only have been planned as a show of brute force, intended, along with Benjamin Netanyahu’s repeated assertions that “it’s not going to happen,” to dissuade Palestinian refugees from asserting their historic rights and the global consensus for the right of return.

Yet the most enduring story from May 15 may be that of Hassan Hijazi. A 28-year old Palestinian refugee living in Syria, he braved the gunfire that killed four others along the border with the occupied Golan Heights, then hitchhiked, and finally took a bus, to his family’s home in Jaffa. Before turning himself in to Tel Aviv police, he told Israeli reporters, “I wasn’t afraid and I’m not afraid. On the bus to Jaffa, I sat next to Israeli soldiers. I realized that they were more afraid than I was.”

Millions more are resolved to follow Hijazi’s path. On Sunday, June 5, the 44th commemoration of the Naksa, or setback, Israel’s 1967 expulsion of 300,000 Palestinians following the Six-Day War, Palestinian refugees will return en masse to the borders. Announcing the mobilization on May 18, the Third Intifada Youth Coalition said, “The last few days proved that the liberation of Palestine is possible and very achievable even with an unarmed massive march if the nation decides it is ready to pay all at once for the liberation of Palestine.”

The Preparatory Commission for the Right to Return, a nonpartisan coordinating body, has requested that supporters of the Palestinian liberation struggle also take action on June 5, by staging rallies, marches, and protests throughout the world demanding Palestinian refugees’ right to return. Appropriate venues could include Israeli embassies, consulates, and missions, BDS campaign targets, and foreign governments and international organizations that enable Israeli crimes.

”The May 15 marches were not an isolated incident, but were rather a declaration of the foundation of a new stage of struggle in the history of the Palestinian cause, entitled: ‘The refugees’ right to return to their homes,’” a statement by the Commission says.

For the first time ever, the Palestinians have switched from commemorating their displacement with statements, festivals, and speeches, to actual attempts to return to their homes.

The scene of refugees marching from all directions towards their homeland of Palestine sent a powerful message to the entire world that the refugees are determined to return to their homes however long it may take; and that 63 years were not enough to kill their dream of return; and that the new generations born in forced exile who have never seen their homeland are no less attached than their grandparents and fathers who witnessed the Nakba.

What happened on May 15 was only a microcosm of the larger march soon to come, a march that will be made by Palestinian refugees and those who support them. They will pass the barbed wire and return to their occupied villages and cities.

The crowds will head out from everywhere there are Palestinian refugees toward the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and occupied Palestine’s borders with Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, in peaceful marches raising the Palestinian flag and the names of their villages and towns, the keys to their homes, and certification papers.

The Arab Spring’s “winds of change” are blowing through the refugee camps, no less than the Arab capitals, toward Palestine. And they show no signs of stopping.

Posted on 07/03/2010 by RamallahOnline

A Broomstick Can Shoot

Uri Avnery, 3 July 2010

A victory is a victory. A big victory is better than a small one, but a small victory is better than a defeat.

This week we won.

Immediately after the Turkel Commission was set up to investigate the flotilla incident, Gush Shalom filed a petition to the Supreme Court of Justice against its appointment. We demanded its replacement by a full-fledged State Commission of Inquiry. The court hearing was fixed for last Wednesday. But on Tuesday afternoon, the Attorney General’s office called our lawyer, Gabi Lasky: the Prime Minister had decided at the last moment to increase the powers of the commission, and the government was about to confirm the change. Therefore, the Attorney General asked us to agree to a postponement of the hearing for ten days.

Not a single Israeli newspaper had published a word about our application – something unthinkable if it had been the initiative of a right-wing organization. But after the change, it became impossible to ignore it anymore: almost all papers pointed out that our application had played an important role in Netanyahu’s decision.

Jacob Turkel and his friend, Jacob Neeman, the Minister of Justice who appointed him, had come to the conclusion that they would be defeated in court. That’s why Turkel demanded an enlargement of the number of the commission members as well as its powers.

At the beginning, the commission had not been accorded any legal standing at all. Netanyahu just asked three nice people to find out if the government’s actions were consistent with international law, nothing more. Now, it seems, it will be given the legal standing of a “Government Commission of Inquiry”, but definitely not of a “State Commission of Inquiry”. There is a huge difference between the two.

The institution called a “State Commission of Inquiry” is uniquely Israeli. It is based on a special law, which all of us can be proud of.

It has an interesting historical background. In the early 60s, the country was riven by controversy about the Lavon Affair, concerning a number of terrorist attacks carried out by an Israeli spy-ring in Egypt. The operation miscarried, the members of the ring were caught, two were hanged, and the question arose: Who Had Given The Order? The Minister of Defense, Pinhas Lavon, and the chief of army intelligence, Binyamin Gibli, blamed each other. (Later I asked Yitzhak Rabin about it and he told me: “When you are dealing with two pathological liars, how can you know?”)

David Ben-Gurion passionately demanded a “Judicial Commission of Inquiry”. It became almost an obsession with him. But at the time, Israeli law did not know such a creature. Emotion flared, the government fell, and the lawyer of the Labor Party, Jacob Shimshon Shapira, accused Ben-Gurion of fascism.

It seems that Shapira felt remorse for this accusation, and so, when he became Minister of Justice soon after, he worked out an exemplary bill for the appointment of a “State Commission of Inquiry”, which would resemble a regular court. He proposed that such a commission would have the power to summon witnesses, have them testify under oath (with the usual penalties for perjury), cross-examine them, subpoena documents, etc. Also, that the commission would warn in advance any persons whose interests could be harmed by its findings and accord them the right to be represented by a lawyer.

As a member of the Knesset at the time, I submitted two amendments that seemed important to me. The proposed law did provide that the Supreme Justice would appoint the members of the commission, but left it to the government to decide upon the setting up of a commission and its terms of reference. I argued that this would open the door to political manipulations, and proposed to confer upon the Supreme Court also the power to set up a commission and set its terms of reference. My amendments were voted down. The present affair shows how necessary they were.

The law provides an alternative – the appointment of a “Government Commission of Inquiry”, which enjoys a far lower standing. It differs from a “state” commission in one extremely important aspect: its members are not appointed by the Chief Justice, but by the government itself.

That is, of course, a huge difference. Anyone with an elementary grasp of politics understands that he who appoints the members of a commission strongly influences its conclusions in advance. If a settler from Qiryat-Arba is appointed to head a commission about the legality of the settlements, its conclusion may not be quite the same as those of a commission chaired by a member of Peace Now.

That has been proven in the past. After the Sabra and Shatila massacre, Prime Minister Menachem Begin initially refused to appoint a State Commission of Inquiry. However, under the intense pressure of Israeli public opinion he was compelled to do so, and the commission removed Ariel Sharon from the Ministry of Defense. Ehud Olmert remembered this and drew the conclusion: after Lebanon War II he obstinately refused the set up a “State Commission” and agreed merely to a “Government Commission”, whose members he appointed himself. Not surprisingly, he got away almost unscathed.

The appointment of the Turkel commission was greeted by the Israeli public with unveiled cynicism. The same media which had almost unanimously supported the attack on the flotilla, were now united in their attack on poor Turkel and his commission. They joked about the advanced age of its members, one of whom can move only with the assistance of a Filipino helper. All commentators agree that the commission was not set up to clarify the affair, but only to help President Barack Obama to obstruct the appointment of an international inquiry commission.

All agreed that this is a ridiculous commission without teeth, that its composition is pathetic and the terms of reference marginal. It seems that Judge Turkel himself felt ashamed. After accepting the appointment on Netanyahu’s terms, this week he threatened to resign if his powers were not extended. Netanyahu gave in.

Jacob Turkel, 75, is a decent person, born in the country, son of immigrants from Austria (Turkel, actually Türkel, is a German name meaning “little Turk” - rather ironic for a person charged with investigating the attack on a Turkish ship). He is religious, and his record as a judge discloses a rightist orientation. For example: he decided that the criminal behavior of the extreme rightist Moshe Feiglin was not “dishonorable”, thus enabling him to run for election. He refused to condemn Rabbi Ido Alba for incitement, after the rabbi had pronounced that killing non-Jews is approved by the Jewish religion. He decided to acquit Binyamin Ze’ev Kahane, the son of Meir Kahane, from a charge of incitement. When Ehud Barak was prime minister, Turkel decided that he was not entitled to conduct peace negotiations because of approaching elections. And so on.

Netanyahu’s decision to enlarge the powers of the commission, so that it will be able to summon witnesses, is far from what is needed. The commission will be unable to investigate how and by whom it was decided to impose the blockade on Gaza, how it was decided to attack the flotilla, how the operation was planned and how it was carried out. We therefore see no reason to withdraw our Supreme Court petition to disband the Turkel commission and to appoint an official State Commission of Inquiry. The more so since Turkel himself, a week before his appointment, had also called for the appointment of a State Commission of Inquiry.

The chances? Not the best. The Supreme Court can interfere in this matter only if we prove that the government’s decision is “extremely unreasonable”. And indeed, in the past, State Commissions of Inquiry have been appointed for far less important matters than this affair, which has undermined the Israeli public’s confidence in the army and the government, aroused the entire world against us and dealt a heavy blow to our relations with Turkey. If this is not a matter of “public interest”, as the law demands, what is?

A Jewish joke tells about a woman who dropped a dish of meat in the toilet bowl. When she asked the rabbi whether it was still kosher, he replied: “kosher but stinking”. The court may decide in this spirit.

Turkel and his colleagues can, of course, surprise those who appointed them and arbitrarily enlarge the scope of their inquiry. Such things have already happened in the past. As another Jewish saying goes: “If God wills, even a broomstick can shoot.” But chances are slim.

This affair has much wider implications than the flotilla incident. It is worthwhile to dwell on them.

Most of Israel’s critics, especially abroad, see the country as a one-dimensional monolith. As they see it, all its (Jewish) citizens are marching in lockstep behind their rightist government, consumed by a dark ideology, supporting occupation and settlements and committing war crimes. This, by the way, is a mirror image of the admirers of Israel in the world, who also see Israel as a one-dimensional monolith, with all citizens marching proudly behind their brave and determined leaders – Binyamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak and Avigdor Lieberman.

The truth is far removed from both these caricatures. It is enough for a foreign visitor to stay a few weeks in Israel and come in contact with its population, to see that reality is far, far more complex. (Indeed, I dare say that anyone who has not done so cannot possibly understand what’s happening here.)

All human societies are complex and many-faceted, and Israeli society, with its unique past, is more complex than most. The flotilla affair – relatively small but very typical – shows this again.

The demand to reveal the truth about this affair is a part of the battle for Israeli democracy, for the standing of the Supreme Court, and indeed concerns the essence of the state.

Some see this struggle as a battle between two big blocs – on one side, the nationalist, religious, militaristic, anti-democratic right, and on the other, the liberal, democratic, secular, peace-loving left.

Anyone with such a picture in his head imagines something like the battle of Waterloo, when two big armies clash on the battlefield and one overcomes the other. But the struggle for Israel is more like a medieval battle, when the clash of two armies turns into a melee of thousands of duels, one to one, and can go on for a long time.

The battle for Israel is indeed composed of hundreds of thousands of small battles, which are being fought out in a thousand and one different arenas. All Israeli citizens are involved – either actively or passively, judges and professors, army officers and politicians, voters and soldiers, activists and onlookers, journalists and youth idols, laborers and tycoons, rabbis and the anti-religious, environment activists and social activists – everyone of us, by his deeds and omissions, takes part in this battle over the character of our state.

The struggle against the occupation and against the settlements is a part of this war. The war itself is for the personality of Israeli society, a society still in the making. This war is far from decided. Anyone who believes that the end is foreseeable, that this or that “must” happen, thus and not otherwise, is mistaken. A defeat in one battle, and even in a series of battles, will not be decisive, because there will be more battles in the days to come. When millions of people are involved – men and women, young and old, Jews and Arabs, Westerners and Orientals, orthodox and secular, rich and poor, old-timers and new immigrants, all the vast spectrum of Israeli society – nothing is certain in advance.

The controversy over the Turkel commission, as well as the fight for freeing Gilad Shalit and all the other struggles taking place in Israel at this moment , must be seen in this light – as small fragments of a big, long and continuous struggle , in which our acts of commission and omission will decide the future of our state.

This, after all, was the aim of the entire historic exercise of creating Israel: to take our fate in our own hands and be responsible for the consequences.

Posted on 07/01/2010 by RamallahOnline

State Terror, Israeli Style

Stephen Lendman, 1 July 2010

Ongoing since its May 14, 1948 “Declaration of Independence,” Israel systematically reigned terror against Palestinians and neighboring states, always claiming self-defense – bogus then, bogus now, historian Ilan Pappe describing Israel as a “settler Prussian state: a combination of colonialist policies….manifested in the dominance of the army over political, cultural and economic life,” then adding:

“You probably have to be born in Israel, as I was, and go through the whole process of socialisation (sic) and education – including serving in the army – to grasp the power of this militarist mentality and its dire consequences. And you need such a background to understand why the whole premise on which the international community’s approach to the Middle East is based, is utterly and disastrously wrong,” so much so that Israel is slowly self-destructing, preventable only by an entirely new mindset.

Public discourse won’t admit it or that Palestinians “lost 80% of their homeland” in a few short months, about 800,000 of them either dispossessed or massacred. Then in 1967, “they lost the remaining 20%,” not recovered after 43 years, nor have they received any measure of justice, Cast Lead and Gaza’s siege the most extreme recent examples.

On May 31, no wonder Israeli commandos attacked peaceful activists trying to deliver humanitarian aid to Gazans. Defense Minister Ehud Barak once commanded a similar unit, and Benjamin Netanyahu’s eldest brother, Yonatan (a martyr and national hero), led 100 commandos in Operation Entebbe, the July 4, 1976 hostage rescue mission at Uganda’s Entebbe Airport.

That was heroic, not murdering unarmed, peaceful activists in international waters, an unconscionable crime, one the Turkish-based Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (IHH) calls a premeditated terrorist attack in a newly issued report titled, “Palestine Our Route, Humanitarian Aid Our Load Flotilla Campaign Summary Report,” saying:

“While Israel continues to distort the truth….this report provides information about (the flotilla’s) purpose and content,” its humanitarian mission, and “the Israeli attack it was subjected to, the way in which the attack took place and the losses” as a result.

Why Gaza?

Under embargo since Hamas’ January 2006 election and a suffocating three year siege, 1.5 million Gazans (900,000 in eight refugee camps), have suffered months under a humanitarian nightmare, slow-motion genocide, acknowledged by Pappe and international law expert Francis Boyle, citing the provisions of the 1948 Genocide Convention, saying prior to the siege:

“Israel has indeed perpetrated the international crime of genocide against the Palestinian people (and a) lawsuit would….demonstrate that undeniable fact to the entire world,” more than ever today after Cast Lead and Gaza’s strangulation under siege.

Why a Humanitarian Aid Flotilla?

It tried “to pierce the blockade….with 9 ships full of humanitarian aid….to bring some (relief) to the people of Gaza, who have lived for many years in such deprivation….People from South America, Africa, the Balkans, Central Asia, the Middle East….the Far East (and North America) came together, people with different languages, religions and races, all came together to bring (desperately needed) aid….”

Items included were 10,000 tons of:

– food;

– clothes, towels, bedding, shoes, fabrics, carpets, kitchenware, quilts, blankets, couches and beds;

– ultrasound scan devices, x-ray equipment, electric patient beds, dentistry units and gear, doppler echocardiography devices, regular and electric wheelchairs, electric scooters for the disabled, stretchers, deambulators, autoclaves, mammography devices, microscopes, blood circulating and hemodialysis machines, radiology monitors, crutches, ENT units, cat scan machines, operating beds, gynecological couches, and various medical supplies;

– medicines;

– 750 tons of iron;

– 100 precast home units;

– tiles, timber, fiberboard, cage, plumbing supplies, electric equipment, plastic window frames, glass, steel cables, measuring tools, hand carts, nails, mountings, bathroom fittings, paint, power distribution units, ladders, insolation materials, and other construction supplies;

– 3,500 tons of cement;

– 50 tons of ceramic tile adhesive;

– units compromising 16 children’s playgrounds;

– two truckloads of wood;

– two electrical power generators;

– electric hand tools, machines, ovens, and other hardware supplies;

– power units (one of 35 kws, five of 85 kws, one of 100 kws, two of 145 kws, six of 150 kws, and three of 165 kws;

– another 80 one, two and five kws power units;

– an ETC;

– two desalination units; and

– 20 tons of paper.

Israel confiscated the entire cargo, claiming it would deliver select items through the UN, meaning only permitted foods, fabric items, and some medicines, most everything in all categories strictly prohibited – thousands of non-military items in total.

Summary of Events – the Mavi Marmarra Mother Ship

Its 600 passengers were attacked in international waters after its Turksat satellite frequency and satellite telephone communications were blocked to prevent massacre reports getting out and connections to other ships.

Late at night, Israeli ships surrounded the Mavi Marmarra, including one or two submarines, after which helicopters circled overhead. After warning passengers, “masked, armed soldiers….tr(ied) to grab onto the boat with heavy grappling irons,” at the same time live fire began, including high frequency sounds, machine guns, and loud noises resembling gas bombs, after which soldiers descended from helicopters, shooting before landing on deck.

There was no provocation, and no warning was given. Unarmed civilians were attacked, some at point blank range, at least nine of them murdered in cold blood, some shot in the head multiple times, perhaps more as bodies were dumped overboard, and some passengers remain missing. Dozens more were injured, at least 20 seriously. Everyone was taken prisoner.

The few Israeli soldiers hurt were treated by the ship’s doctor. Confirming video showed it. On board, after hearing about civilian deaths, IHH President, Bulent Yildirim, told passengers over a loud speaker to sit in the lounge and not resist, except for medical workers continuing their work. He, in turn, removed his white shirt, waved it at soldiers, asking for a ceasefire. He was ignored.

Despite good faith efforts, “the Israeli soldiers, who had surrounded the lounge, continued” firing live rounds – even at medical workers treating their own injured comrades. A doctor providing aid was shot in the arm.

More soldiers boarded the ship with specially trained K9 dogs. Passengers were searched and handcuffed. Their possessions, including passports were confiscated. Women were seated on benches, men forced to kneel uncomfortably on deck. No one was allowed “to fulfill their most basic needs.” It became a “long war of nerves….”

Throughout the ordeal, soldiers were hostile and abusive, “trying to agitate (passengers) to create problems.” In control of the ship, they took it (and the others) to Israel’s Ashdod Port, a trip taking 10 hours, passengers not knowing their destination or fate once they arrived.

En route, “Some of the wounded were purposefully mistreated, kicked and hit with weapons, while others were shot at, despite being wounded. Some wounded people” weren’t taken to the hospital. Although bleeding and needing treatment, they were kept on board, doctors not allowed to help them.

At Ashdod, passengers were taken off in handcuffs, accompanied by policemen. Interrogations and security checks followed, including strip searches down to underwear, fingerprinting, and photographing. Then a health check, after which participants were told told to sign “certain documents,” to be released. Otherwise, they faced prison and confinement for at least two months for entering Israel illegally despite being taken there forcibly.

Most refused, were put on freezing cold buses, taken to Beer Sheva prison, and placed in two to four-person cells, separated from others, given no information about them or allowed to make phone calls. Instead they were told: “This is now your home, forget going back.”

Requests to meet consular officials were refused. Sleep was denied for two nights. Harassment was punishing, including repeated (day and night) interrogations to state their names, and explain where they came from, and why – besides being forced to “carry out every type duty,” including “carrying things, distributing things, (and) cleaning up after dinner, etc.”

After nearly a day, consular officials got in. Then by noon the next day, passengers began being released to be deported. Others waited an extra day, some longer. The entire procedure was made as arduous, demeaning, and degrading as possible, the slightest reaction met by blows.

Some participants “who had left the prison unharmed arrived at the airport with injuries.” Others before and during detention were seriously beaten, some tortured. Five stayed behind hospitalized too injured to leave. The whereabouts of six or more remains unknown. Likely they’re dead, murdered in cold blood.

Events on Other Ships

On May 30 evening and throughout the early morning May 31 hours, before the Mavi Marmarra massacre, the Defne was harassed, told to change course, and abandon its mission, what it and other vessels refused to do.

At 6:10 AM, commandos stormed the ship, took it to Ashdod, imprisoned its passengers, confiscated their possessions and the cargo. No one on board was killed, nor on other vessels who were treated like Defne’s, all personal property and aid items seized, the entire ordeal (from boarding to imprisonment to deportation) made as uncomfortable and painful as possible, a lesson Israelis hoped would intimidate others from coming, an experience emboldening participants to come back, undaunted by their intimidating experience.

Eight of the nine known dead were Turks. The ninth was a Turkish American. Most of those wounded were also Turks or of Turkish or Arabic origin. Clearly they were identified in advance. Commandos had names and photos of assassination targets, ordered by top Israeli officials, including IDF commanders to commit cold-blooded murder.

A Final Comment

Besides violating maritime law in international waters, Israel massacred as many as 15 or more passengers in cold blood, injured dozens more, some seriously. In addition, ship communications were cut off, participants illegally arrested, repeatedly interrogated, initially denied consular contact, intimidated, imprisoned, and treated horrifically for two – three days, including harassment, humiliation, and physical abuse involving beatings, in some cases torture.

Further, their passports and personal possessions were stolen. Permission “to fulfill their basic needs” was denied. Humanitarian aid cargo was confiscated. Individual testimonies bore witness to Israel’s lawless, callous, and degrading treatment.

Mevlut Yurtseven, the Mavi Marmarra’s doctor, said dozens were wounded, at least 20 seriously. “They forced the wounded to stand up and tried to make them walk. They did not bring stretchers. Because I protested (I) was handcuffed.”

Press TV – UK’s Hassan al Banna Ghani said “They set attack dogs against me and another (UK) volunteer. They gave us nothing to eat for 20 hours on the ship. They stole our personal belongings and damaged them.” Volunteers were treated violently.

UK emergency aid worker Nur Choodhury explained “We were physically abused: kicked, slapped, pinched, and elbowed. Our hands were tied tightly with cables; this was extremely painful and caused us to lose feeling in our hands.” They were prevented from using toilets or phoning families.

Sema Islek, a Turkish nurse, called their “psychological oppression and physical torture….very great.” Turks and other Muslims were treated the worst, former German MP Norman Paech said “Israeli soldiers displayed openly raci(st) behavior….treat(ing) us much better than the Turkish and Arab passengers.”

Those waging war on peace will lose, the report concluded, legal professionals already enlisted to represent families of those killed, the injured, and everyone imprisoned, tortured, abused, robbed, and subjected to cruel and humiliating treatment – crimes against humanity by a nation mocking democratic freedoms, defiling the rule of law, affording rights solely to Jews, and endorsing racism, extremism, violence and torture as official state policies, including against peaceful activists bringing essential humanitarian aid to Gazans in desperate need.

The report’s final comment wondered what kind of a world they’d be “if other countries….follow(ed) the path of Israel….? What kind also when leaders committing these crimes aren’t held accountable, world leaders turning a blind eye, some providing active support, making them culpable – complicit in crimes of war and against humanity, including against activists bringing humanitarian aid.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/

Posted on 06/28/2010 by RamallahOnline

Lieberman’s ‘peace’ plan: Strip Palestinians of citizenship

Jonathan Cook in Nazareth, 28 June 2010

Blueprint requires pure Jewish state

Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s far-right foreign minister, set out last week what he called a “blueprint for a resolution to the conflict” with the Palestinians that demands most of the country’s large Palestinian minority be stripped of citizenship and relocated outside Israel’s future borders.

Warning Israel faced growing diplomatic pressure for a full withdrawal to the Green Line, the pre-1967 border, Mr Lieberman said that, if such a partition were implemented, “the conflict will inevitably pass beyond those borders and into Israel”.

He accused many of Israel’s 1.3 million Palestinian citizens of acting against Israel while their leaders “actively assist those who want to destroy the Jewish state”.

Mr Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party campaigned in last year’s elections on a platform of “No loyalty, no citizenship” and has proposed a raft of loyalty laws over the past year targeted at the Palestinian minority.

True peace, the foreign minister claimed, would come only with land swaps, or “an exchange of populated territories to create two largely homogeneous states, one Jewish Israeli and the other Arab Palestinian”. He added that under his plan “those Arabs who were in Israel will now receive Palestinian citizenship”.

Unusually, Mr Lieberman, who is also deputy prime minister, offered his plan in a commentary for the English-language Jerusalem Post daily newspaper, apparently in an attempt to make maximum impact on the international community.

He has spoken repeatedly in the past about drawing the borders in a way to forcibly exchange Palestinian communities in Israel for the Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

But under orders from Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, he has kept a relatively low profile on the conflict’s larger issues since his controversial appointment to head the foreign ministry more than a year ago.

In early 2009, Mr Lieberman, who lives in the West Bank settlement of Nokdim, upset his own supporters by advocating the creation of “a viable Palestinian state”, though he has remained unclear about what it would require in practice.

Mr Lieberman’s revival of his “population transfer” plan — an idea he unveiled six years ago — comes as the Israeli leadership has understood that it is “isolated like never before”, according to Michael Warschawski, an Israeli analyst.

Mr Netanyahu’s government has all but stopped paying lip service to US-sponsored “proximity talks” with the Palestinians after outraging global public opinion with attacks on Gaza 18 months ago and on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla four weeks ago in which nine peace activists were killed.

Israel’s relations with the international community are likely to deteriorate further in late summer when a 10-month partial freeze on settlement expansion in the West Bank expires. Last week, Mr Netanyahu refused to answer questions about the freeze, after a vote by his Likud party’s central committee to support renewed settlement building from late September.

Other looming diplomatic headaches for Israel are the return of the Goldstone Report, which suggested Israel committed war crimes in its attack on Gaza, to the United Nations General Assembly in late July, and Turkey’s adoption of the rotating presidency of the Security Council in September.

Mr Warschawski, a founder of the Alternative Information Centre, a joint Israeli-Palestinian advocacy group, said that, faced with these crises, Israel’s political elite had split into two camps.

Most, including Mr Lieberman, believed Israel should “push ahead” with its unilateral policies towards the Palestinians and refuse to engage in a peace process regardless of the likely international repercussions.

“Israel’s ruling elite knows that the only solution to the conflict acceptable to the international community is an end to the occupation along the lines of the Clinton parameters,” he said, referring to the two-state solution promoted by former US president Bill Clinton in late 2000.

“None of them, not even Ehud Barak [the defence minister and head of the centrist Labour Party], are ready to accept this as the basis for negotiations.”

On the other hand, Tzipi Livni, the head of the centre-right opposition Kadima party, Mr Warschawski said, wanted to damp down the international backlash by engaging in direct negotiations with the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank under Mahmoud Abbas.

Mr Lieberman’s commentary came a day after he told Ms Livni that she could join the government only if she accepted “the principle of trading territory and population as the solution to the Palestinian issue, and give up the principle of land for peace”.

Mr Lieberman is reportedly concerned that Mr Netanyahu might seek to bring Ms Livni into a national unity government to placate the US and prop up the legitimacy of his coalition.

The Labour Party has threatened to quit the government if Kadima does not join by the end of September, and Ms Livni is reported to want the foreign ministry.

Mr Lieberman’s position is further threatened by a series of corruption investigations.

However, he also appears keen to take the initiative from both Washington and Ms Livni with his own “peace plan”. An unnamed aide to Mr Lieberman told the Jerusalem Post that, with a vacuum in the diplomatic process, the foreign minister “thinks he can convince the government to adopt the plan”.

However, Mr Warschawski said there were few indications that Mr Netanyahu wanted to be involved in any peace process, even Mr Lieberman’s.

Last week Uzi Arad, the government’s shadowy national security adviser and a long-time confidant of Mr Netanyahu, made a rare public statement at a meeting of the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem to attack Ms Livni for “political adventurism” and believing in the “magic” of a two-state solution.

Apparently reflecting Mr Netanyahu’s own thinking, he said: “The more you market Palestinian legitimacy, the more you bring about a detraction of Israel’s legitimacy in certain circles. [The Palestinians] are accumulating legitimacy, and we are being delegitimised.”

Mr Warschawski doubted that Mr Lieberman believed his blueprint for population exchanges could be implemented but was promoting it chiefly to further damage the standing of Israel’s Palestinian citizens and advance his own political ambitions.

In his commentary, Mr Lieberman said the international community’s peace plan would lead to “the one-and-a-half to half state solution”: “a homogeneous, pure Palestinian state”, from which Jewish settlers were expelled, and “a binational state in Israel”, which included many Palestinian citizens.

Palestinians, in both the territories and inside Israel, he said, could not “continue to incite against Israel, glorify murder, stigmatise Israel in international forums, boycott Israeli goods and mount legal offensives against Israeli officials”.

International law, he added, sanctioned the partition of territory in which ethnic communities were broken up into different states, including in the case of the former Yugoslavia. “In most cases there is no physical population transfer or the demolition of houses, but creating a border where none existed, according to demographics,” he wrote.

Surveys have shown that Palestinian citizens are overwhelming opposed to “population transfer” schemes like Mr Lieberman’s.

Critics note that Mr Lieberman has failed to show how the many Palestinian communities inside Israel that are located far from the Green Line could be incorporated into a Palestinian state without expulsions.

Legal experts also point out that, even if Israel managed to trade territory as part of a peace agreement, stripping Palestinians of their Israeli citizenship as a result of such a deal would violate international law.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.

A version of this article originally appeared in The National (www.thenational.ae), published in Abu Dhabi.

Posted on 06/26/2010 by RamallahOnline

Israelis, Internationals Take Action Against Silwan Demolitions

Palestine Monitor, 26 June 2010
Hundreds of Israelis joined Palestinians and international peace activists in the streets of Silwan, East Jerusalem yesterday in protest against the decision to destroy 22 Palestinian homes. The historic show of support coincides with UN and US condemnation of the Municipality‘s provocative scheme. Written by Michael Carpenter. Photography by Rebecca Fudala.

Take Action Against Silwan Demolitions. (June 26, 2010, Rebecca Fudala)

“The state of Israel has taken a bad path in the last several decades, and we are here to say that not all Israelis support it.” Said Shira Wilkof, one of seven principle organisers of the Israeli-led protests in Sheikh Jarrah. This week they lent their support to the people of Silwan. Speaking just before the march began, she explained, “This is going to be one of the biggest demonstrations in one of the most sensitive and complex neighbourhoods where I would say some of the most evil occupation is taking place. For me, this is an historic event, because Israelis do not come to these areas, and today we expect between four and five hundred.”

Estimates say at least 500 protesters joined the march. As the demonstrators passed, Palestinians cheered from their windows and balconies.

Under international law, East Jerusalem belongs to the Palestinians, but the since the 1967 war, Israel has occupied the city and conducted an illegal campaign of transferring its own population onto the Palestinian side.

Hajj Fahkri Abu Diab, head of the popular committee of Silwan.

Silwan residents. The baby’s shirt reads ’I love you Silwan’.

The IDF monitor proceedings.

Silwan is a particularly contentious area of East Jerusalem, because the beautiful valley neighbourhood lies just south of the old city and on top of the ancient remains of the 3000-year old city of David. Jewish development companies have wedged settlers into the Palestinian neighbourhood and funded archaeological digging where Palestinian buildings once stood. Earlier this week, after several years of controversy, the city formally approved an incendiary plan to raze 22 homes in the el-Bustan block of Silwan to make way for tourist sites and urban development.

Settlers observe from a distance.

Local Palestinians and Israeli peace activists, with international support, hope to reverse the decision. The event was a success by both its size and peaceful nature, but this does not mean the houses of Silwan will be saved.

“I have no expectations or hope from the current government or the municipality,” Shira says sadly. Referring more broadly to the last few decades, she laments, “Its basically a collective suicide what we’re doing. Its like Barbara Tuchman’s famous book The March of Folly. She analysed the causes of the first World War, and she analysed the stupid actions taken by governments that led to the inevitability of destruction.”

Silwan - Palestine Flag (June 26 2010, Rebecca Fudala)

Children spread the message. (June 26 2010, Rebecca Fudala)

Read more about house demolitions here http://www.icahd.org/eng/

Source: Palestine Monitor

Posted on 06/26/2010 by RamallahOnline

Rehabilitating Torture Victims And Their Families

Palestine Monitor, Kara Newhouse, 26 June 2010
“Ex-prisoners feel that they are strange. Everything around them has changed—the society, the people,” says psychologist Wail Dawabsha. Almost 95% of detained Palestinians experience some form of torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in Israeli prisons. With 20 percent of the general population and 40 percent of the male population imprisoned, these experiences continue to impact the individual and the community long after being released. This Saturday the UN will mark its International Day to Support Victims of Torture. Palestine Monitor sat down with two mental health specialists to hear about the effects of torture and the rehabilitation process.

“He [the ex-prisoner] feels he is alone. He wants to start his life. He doesn’t have a job. He couldn’t go to school to continue his study. He is suffering from many symptoms like sleep disorder, anger, anxiety, all of the time,” explains Dawabsha, who works at the Nablus office of the Treatment and Rehabilitation Centre for Victims of Torture (TRC), the West Bank’s only non-profit, non-governmental treatment centre for torture victims. The TRC offers a range of therapy treatments to ex-detainees, wounded persons, and bereaved families at no cost. One of those treatments, which Dawabsha described, is narrative therapy:

“In the beginning, because they are traumatized, the people are always sharing their bad stories. In narrative therapy after three or four sessions, we ask them to speak about the successful stories in their life, to support them. And to share with them how to plan for the future.”

Re-establishing a normal life and being able to talk about their experiences are two major ways in which psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers support torture victims, who typically suffer from symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, such as depression and anxiety. Dawabsha said, “Some of our cases say to us, this is the first time I am speaking to any person about my experience or my stay within the prison. I think others won’t understand me when I speak, but because you are a psychologist and you ask me about these methods of torture I speak about these things.”

Because of the family problems that can arise when an ex-detainee or otherwise tortured person returns to their home, only about half of the cases seen at the TRC in 2009 were direct victims of torture. The other half of individual and group therapy sessions serve indirect victims of torture, such as the children and spouses of the ex-detainees.

“Some of the prisoners were gone for six or seven years,” said Dawabsha. “His kids, they were six, and now they are thirteen. So the father comes back home—how will they accept him? How can he deal with them? We support him and support the family how to deal with this person.”

According to Dr. Mahmud Sehwail, who founded the centre in 1997, the TRC’s outreach program comprises the bulk of their work. TRC staff members conduct workshops in villages throughout the West Bank, during which torture victims and their relatives learn about the centre’s work and the consequences of torture. Some participants share their experiences. When the workshop ends they leave with contact information for the TRC and the knowledge that it exists to support them.

Recognising the need for awareness of torture and its effects across Palestinian society, the TRC also leads trainings for students, organisations, and professionals in the fields of mental health and human rights. They conduct preventive trainings for Palestinian law enforcement agencies. Dr. Sehwail explained the purpose of this work: “We observed that those who are torturing in the Palestinian Authority, themselves were tortured in Israeli jails. Sixty percent of Palestinian law enforcement agencies are ex-detainees and might torture others in the community in the same way. So we train them in civil law, international law, crisis intervention, conflict resolution, role-playing, demonstrations.”

Preventive trainings point to the TRC’s larger visions of “a society free from torture.” Although Dawabsha said that the majority of people receiving treatment improve greatly within four months, reoccurrences of imprisonment or traumatic experiences from checkpoints and raids present a common challenge to their work. “Torture, ill treatment, is practiced on the whole Palestinian community,” Dr. Sehwail said.

“I remember one child, he told me he woke up in the morning and found out that his home was demolished. His family was evacuated during the night. He had been sleeping. He woke up and he was searching for his sister. His mother was absent. He was terrified. The house represents the security for the child, for the family. I would consider this torture—not only ill treatment, it is torture.”

Israel is the only state party to the UN Convention Against Torture that prevents the Committee Against Torture from freely entering its prisons. No Israeli official has ever been charged and sentenced for torture-related crimes. According to Dr. Sehwail, “Israel is above the law, with the consent of some European countries and mainly the United States. Palestinians alone cannot struggle to stop torture. You cannot build a democratic system under occupation.”

Thus, until the 43-year occupation ends, the services of the Torture and Rehabilitation Centre for Victims of Torture will continue to be necessary. As Dr. Sehwail put it, “The aim of torture is not to kill the body. It is to kill the spirit of the person—to split the person from the family and the whole community.”

More info: http://www.trc-pal.org/en/

Posted on 06/25/2010 by RamallahOnline

Occupied Palestine: Good News and Bad

United Nations Building hit with white phosphors during Gaza war (Sameh Habeeb, 2009)

Stephen Lendman, 25 June 2010

First the good.

On June 22, the International Middle East Media Center reported that the UN Human Rights Council (that established the Goldstone Commission) approved “forming an international committee to probe the deadly Israeli” Flotilla attack, massacring and injuring dozens of nonviolent activists on board. Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak urged Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to shelve it, saying:

“We expressed our view that for the time being, as long as….new flotillas are in the preparation, it’s probably better to leave (an investigation) on the shelf for a certain time” – in other words, postpone it long enough to forget, letting Israel’s self-examination whitewash top officials’ culpability, a vain hope given world outrage, mushrooming toward universally branding Israel a pariah rogue state.

The Human Rights Council (HRC) said committee officials will include lawyers and international law and human rights experts, the body to present its findings in September.

The European Campaign Against the Siege said the International Committee will contact Israel, Greece, Turkey, and the Freedom Flotilla coalition. It will also visit Gaza and urge Tel Aviv’s cooperation, what wasn’t given the Goldstone Commission, nor will be this time. However, with or without it, the investigation will proceed, exposing Israel’s culpability.

On June 1, the Russell Tribunal on Palestine (RTP) responded to the Flotilla massacre headlining, “All States and the international community must urgently take measures against Israel’s violations of international law,” explaining that:

Throughout its history, Israel has willfully, arrogantly, and repeatedly violated core international law principles without accountability. “These violations….involve Israel’s international responsibility, its obligation to make reparations for the damage resulting from these violations and the obligation of all States to prosecute and punish those responsible for these violations when they concern crimes against international law,” especially ones against peace – the supreme international crime.

RTP “insists” on the immediate and unconditional:

– “lifting of the blockade by Israel of humanitarian aid,” what Fourth Geneva and other international laws prohibit;

– ending the Gaza siege, also lawless and prohibited;

– “full and independent inquiry into the” Flotilla attack;

– “suspend(ing) of the EU/Israel Association Agreement in accordance with” its provisions; and

– implementation of the Goldstone Commission conclusions and recommendations.

Global human rights organizations agree, including BRussells Tribunal Executive Committee member, Dr. Ian Douglas, saying:

“Israel simply cannot face up to its own bloody origin. It is a settler state, founded in violence by individuals who came from outside Arab countries,” under rogue governments that support and instigate “terrorism.” The solution:

“The international community must cut all economic ties, all defense coordination and contracts, and all diplomatic, intellectual and cultural links with Israel until Zionism is recognized as racism. Until this happens, Israel continues to be the single biggest threat to world peace. The possibility of a better society will keep being suffocated by the black hole of Israel’s insistence on perpetuating injustice against the Palestinians,” – partnered with Washington, “indistinguishable from Tel Aviv, or vice versa. Obama is either unwilling (or) unable….to break from that….Palestinians have no hope in (him). He won’t help them, and never intended to.”

More good news – a first in America against Israel.

On June 20 in Oakland, CA, over 800 longshoremen pickets blocked the unloading of an Israeli ship, the ZIM Shenhen, chanting:

“Free, free Palestine. Don’t cross the picket line. An injury to one is an injury to all – the Israeli apartheid wall will fall.”

An ad hoc Labor/Community Committee in Solidarity with the People of Palestine organized the action. Allied groups included the Transport Workers Solidarity Committee, several Palestinian solidarity groups, the Bay Area ANSWER Coalition, and local labor activists.

Their boycott followed the earlier June International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 10 motion condemning the Flotilla massacre, “call(ing) for unions to protest (by) any action they choose to take.”

Organizations supporting the boycott included the Oakland Educational Association, San Francisco Labor Council, Alameda County Labor Council, Cuban Labor Federation, Labor for Palestine, the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions, and numerous other groups – in solidarity with Occupied Palestinians.

Good news from Sweden – another boycott

On June 23, the Swedish Dock Workers Union announced a weeklong nationwide blockade in all unionized ports, refusing to handle goods from or to Israel until June 29, and demanding more, including lifting the Gaza siege and allowing an independent international investigation of the Flotilla massacre.

Still more – cancellation of Turkey’s water sales to Israel.

On June 20, Israel National News.com’s Maayana Miskin reported that Turkey “cancelled the planned sale of 1.75 billion cubic feet of water per year to Israel,” a 20-year agreement abandoned over the Flotilla massacre, Turkish Energy and Natural Resources Minister, Taner Yildiz, saying sales have been halted unless Israel “apologizes and expresses its regret.”

Turkey also recalled its ambassador and froze a plan to supply Israel with Russian natural gas through an underwater pipeline.

Now the bad – a litany of Israeli crimes, some recent ones explained below.

On June 10, Palestine Think Tank.com contributor Kawther Salam headlined, “107 Israeli Crimes Against Palestinian Journalists,” saying:

Since January 2010, Israeli attacks included beatings, “breaking their cameras, preventing them from covering events, shooting at them deliberately, arresting and jailing them, fabricating serious charges, fining them, imposing high financial fines before releasing them from detention,” denying them access to East Jerusalem and other areas, and let “dozens of armed extremist settlers assault them and damage their cameras.”

This is how a police state operates when not waging all out war.

More bad news.

On June 22, the Palestine Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) headlined, “Continued Ethnic Cleansing and Measures Aimed at Creating Jewish Majority in Occupied Jerusalem,” in fact, an agenda to make all Jerusalem exclusively Jewish, dispossessing all non-Jews living there.

PCHR responded saying:

It “strongly condemns aggressive (Israeli) measures in East Jerusalem, which are part of a series of (others) aimed at ethnic cleansing,” and have included:

– bulldozing Palestinian houses on lands between Pisgat Ze’ev and Neve Ya’kov settlements to build 600 new units – approved a year earlier to link the two communities;

– the June 21 implemented “Israeli Municipality in Jerusalem decision to demolish 22 houses in al-Bustan neighborhood in Salwan village (to) establish ‘King David’s Garden’ ” on expropriated Palestinian land; on June 23, Haaretz writer Nir Hassan reported that East Jerusalem settlers “threatened to (hire private security firms to) forcibly evict four Palestinian families they claim are living on” Jewish Silwan property; East Jerusalem, in fact, is Occupied Palestinian territory, not belonging to invaders who have no business being there or legal right to the land;

– the June 20 Israeli High Court ruling, affirming the deportation of PLC member, Mohammed Abu Tir, a member of the Hamas-affiliated Change and Reform Bloc;

– the June 20 closing of the Ilaf Association for Education Support in Jerusalem, using falsified documents to claim Hamas held meetings there; and

– Israel’s ongoing lawlessness in violation of international law, including expropriating Palestinian land, what, so far, the international community won’t stop.

More bad.

On June 20, the US State Department Bureau of Consular Affairs warned Americans against traveling to Gaza, stopping short of saying those doing it will be prosecuted, but calling it “infiltrating” by flotillas or other means.

The warning “applies to all US citizens, including journalists and aid workers,” with no mention of the illegal siege, the Flotilla massacre, or repeated attacks against defenseless civilians. A week earlier, Britain issued a similar alert, suggesting UK citizens doing it wouldn’t be welcomed back home. Israel endorsed both statements from its closest allies, together comprising the real axis of evil.

Still more.

On June 20, Haaretz writer Barak Ravid exposed Netanyahu’s bogus siege easing, headlining “Netanyahu: Security blockade on Gaza will get stronger,” quoting him saying that despite letting in more “civilian” goods:

The “security closure will be tightened from now on (to) keep (weapons and “dual use” goods) out of Gaza,” claiming “Our friends around the world are getting behind our decision and giving international legitimacy to the security blockade on Hamas.”

So though designated foods, housewares, writing implements, mattresses and toys can enter, cement and shoes (among hundreds of other non-military items) remain banned, Israel bogusly calling them “dual use,” meaning materials potentially for violence and conflict.

On June 24, Gaza Gateway.org reported “no significant change in the volume of trucks entering Gaza,” despite the supposed easing – last week, 654, fewer than before the Flotilla massacre when 662 entered; this week through four of five allowed crossing days, 567, “consistent with the (imposed) policy since June 2007.”

Gaza Gateway said only one crossing operates at near capacity of about 110 trucks a day, five days a week permitted – Kerem Shalom (Kerem Abu Salam). Karni Crossing, Gaza’s commercial lifeline, able to handle 1,000 trucks per day, remains closed.

The Obama administration and virtually all members of Congress support the most lawless Israeli policies, including the siege, subsidizing them with billions of dollars annually, the latest weapons and technology, and virtually any special requests – to wage war, commit violence, maintain an illegal occupation against Palestinian civilians and the legitimate Hamas government, bogusly called terrorist.

Confirmation of PA/Israeli/Washington Complicity

According to a June 22 Asa Winstanley Electronic Intifada (EI) article headlined, “Exclusive: Leaked documents show PA undermined Turkey’s push for UN flotilla probe:”

“A document sent to Ibrahim Khraishi, (PA UN) representative in Geneva,” shows its officials tried but failed to “neutralize a (UN) Human Rights Council (HRC) resolution condemning” the Flotilla massacre, by preventing an independent investigation and endorsing an Israeli one – a thinly veiled scheme to whitewash premeditated murder and absolve high-level culpability. Turkey rejected it out of hand. HRC approved an independent committee proceed and report back by September.

EI’s article and one document can be accessed through the following link:

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11350.shtml

Last year, Fatah officials tried to undermine the Goldstone Commission’s findings, proving they ally with Israel against their own people.

Last October, however, when the Commission’s findings were adopted, Mahmound Abbas “was forced into a humiliating U-turn after an outpouring of disgust and protest from Palestinians around the world,” not diminishing his contempt for his own people. Perhaps theirs now for him enough to elect a new president serving them, not their oppressive occupier in league with its Washington paymaster/partner.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/

Posted on 06/25/2010 by RamallahOnline

Blockade ‘eased’ as Gaza starves more slowly

Jonathan Cook, 25 June 2010

As Israel this week declared the ‘easing’ of the four-year blockade of Gaza, an official explained the new guiding principle: ‘Civilian goods for civilian people.’ The severe and apparently arbitrary restrictions on foodstuffs entering the enclave – coriander bad, cinnamon good – will finally end, we are told. Gaza’s 1.5 million inhabitants will have all the coriander they want.

This “adjustment”, as the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu termed it, is aimed solely at damage limitation. With Israel responsible for killing nine civilians aboard a Gaza-bound aid flotilla three weeks ago, the world has finally begun to wonder what purpose the siege serves. Did those nine really need to die to stop coriander, chocolate and children’s toys from reaching Gaza? And, as Israel awaits other flotillas, will more need to be executed to enforce the policy?

Faced with this unwelcome scrutiny, Israel – as well as the United States and the European states that have been complicit in the siege – desperately wants to deflect attention away from demands for the blockade to be lifted entirely. Instead it prefers to argue that the more liberal blockade for Gaza will distinguish effectively between a necessary “security” measures and an unfair “civilian” blockade. Israel has cast itself as the surgeon who, faced with Siamese twins, is mastering the miraculous operation needed to decouple them.

The result, Mr Netanyahu told his cabinet, would be a “tightening of the security blockade because we have taken away Hamas’ ability to blame Israel for harming the civilian population”. Listen to Israeli officials and it sounds as if thousands of “civilian” items are ready to pour into Gaza. No Qassam rockets for Hamas but soon, if we are to believe them, Gaza’s shops will be as well-stocked as your average Wal-Mart.

Be sure, it won’t happen.

Even if many items are no longer banned, they still have to find their way into the enclave. Israel controls the crossing points and determines how many trucks are allowed in daily. Currently, only a quarter of the number once permitted are able to deliver their cargo, and that is unlikely to change to any significant degree. Moreover, as part of the “security” blockade, the ban is expected to remain on items such as cement and steel desperately needed to build and repair the thousands of homes devastated by Israel’s attack 18 months ago.

In any case, until Gaza’s borders, port and airspace are its own, its factories are rebuilt, and exports are again possible, the hobbled economy has no hope of recovering. For the overwhelming majority of Palestinians in Gaza, mired in poverty, the new list of permissible items – including coriander – will remain nothing more than an aspiration.

But more importantly for Israel, by concentrating our attention on the supposed ending of the “civilian” blockade, Israel hopes we will forget to ask a more pertinent question: what is the purpose of this refashioned “security” blockade?

Over the years Israelis have variously been told that the blockade was imposed to isolate Gaza’s “terrorist” rulers, Hamas; to serve as leverage to stop rocket attacks on nearby Israeli communities; to prevent arms smuggling into Gaza; and to force the return of the captured soldier Gilad Shalit.

None of the reasons stands up to minimal scrutiny. Hamas is more powerful than ever; the rocket attacks all but ceased long ago; arms smugglers use the plentiful tunnels under the Egyptian border, not Erez or Karni crossings; and Sgt Shalit would already be home had Israel seriously wanted to trade him for an end to the siege.

The real goal of the blockade was set out in blunt fashion at its inception, in early 2006, shortly after Hamas won the Palestinian elections. Dov Weisglass, the government’s chief adviser at the time, said it would put Palestinians in Gaza “on a diet, but not make them die of hunger”. Aid agencies can testify to the rampant malnutrition that followed. The ultimate aim, Mr Weisglass admitted, was to punish ordinary Gazans in the hope that they would overthrow Hamas.

Is Mr Weisglass a relic of the pre-Netanyahu era, his blockade-as-diet long ago superseded? Not a bit. Only last month, during a court case against the siege, Mr Netanyahu’s government justified the policy not as a security measure but as “economic warfare” against Gaza. One document even set out the minimum calories – or “red lines”, as they were also referred to – needed by Gazans according to their age and sex.

In truth, Israel’s “security” blockade is, in both its old and new incarnations, every bit a “civilian” blockade. It was designed and continues to be “collective punishment” of the people of Gaza for electing the wrong rulers. Helpfully, international law defines the status of Israel’s policy: it is a crime against humanity.

Easing the siege so that Gaza starves more slowly may be better than nothing. But breaking 1.5 million Palestinians out of the prison Israel has built for them is the real duty of the international community.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.

Posted on 06/23/2010 by RamallahOnline

The Knesset Comes to Westminster

Stuart Littlewood, 23 June 2010

The new line-up at Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office looks like this:

Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs – William Hague
Minister of State – Jeremy Browne
Minister of State – David Lidington
Minister of State – Lord Howell of Guildford
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State – Henry Bellingham
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State – Alistair Burt

Hague has been a Friend of Israel since the age of 15. Burt is an officer of the Conservative Friends of Israel. Naturally he’s in charge of Middle East affairs. Lidington also frolics with the Israel flag wavers.

Before his elevation to the House of Lords Howell was MP for Guildford, in the south of England. His daughter is Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne’s wife.

Here is Howell in action in a House of Lords debate on the Free Gaza flotilla a couple of weeks ago…

Lord Howell – My Lords, the United Kingdom is in regular contact with the Israeli and Palestinian Governments and our international allies regarding the current humanitarian situation in Gaza and the wider issues relating to the peace process. As my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary said… it is essential that there should be unfettered access to Gaza, not only to meet the humanitarian needs of the people of Gaza but to enable reconstruction of homes and livelihoods and permit trade to take place.

Lord Campbell-Savours (Labour) – My Lords, in the face of threats to intervene and break the blockade by Iranian Revolutionary Guard naval units, why cannot the United Kingdom Government announce that they are prepared to challenge the blockade by providing a naval escort for a flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian aid into Gaza, aid which has been given prior clearance by the European Union in the way that Bernard Kouchner has suggested? Would that not be a far better way to proceed? The Israeli Government are far more likely to heed that kind of initiative.

Lord Howell – I recognise the noble Lord’s strong feelings on this matter, but we simply do not think that that is the right way to proceed. We think that the right way is for the restrictions and the so-called blockade to be lifted beyond the present arrangements, by which some humanitarian supplies get in but not enough. We think that the right way forward is to put maximum pressure on Israel to do that. That is the sensible way forward…

Lord Hylton (Crossbench) – I agree entirely with the Minister about unrestricted access to Gaza, but are there not immediate questions to be discussed with the Government of Israel concerning the ships themselves, their cargoes, now under arrest, and possibly the personal possessions of persons who have been arrested?

Lord Howell – I cannot answer the noble Lord on the personal possessions issue. With regard to the humanitarian goods on these ships, the idea is that they should be shipped on into Gaza. However, unfortunately, it appears that the Hamas group has not been very keen on accepting all that aid at the moment. But that is the procedure that the Government of Israel are trying to adopt in the face of attempts to run the blockade or break the restrictions, which are apparently to be promoted by a number of countries, including some of the Iranian authorities.

Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale (Labour) – Does the Minister agree that, while there is a great need to improve the access for aid and commercial goods into Gaza, it still requires any new regime allowing new materials into Gaza to take great care not to allow in weapons that might be used against Israel?

Lord Howell – The noble Baroness is absolutely right. This is the dilemma. Israel does have the right to restrain the import of weapons, bombs and so on into the control of Hamas. At the same time, we all want to see the sufferings of the people of Gaza minimised and the maximum supplies of food, building materials, medical supplies and so on imported into Gaza. That is the dilemma that must be solved. The right way forward is along the lines proposed, with pressure on Israel to do that rather than creating some head-on conflict with Israel when it is the country with which we need to co-operate to achieve the two-state solution that we all want to see.

Lord Dykes (Liberal Democrat) – In the mean time, my Lords, will my noble friend confirm that the peace talks and the proximity talks are proceeding apace, despite the continuing weakness of the quartet mechanism, which is deeply disappointing to all observers? Will he reassure us that the sinister rumours that George Mitchell is less than even-handed between Israel and Palestinian lobbies are not true?

Lord Howell – I can give that reassurance…

Lord Anderson of Swansea (Labour) – The Minister must recognise that Israel has legitimate security concerns and cannot be expected to allow unfettered access. How, then, do the Government respond to the specific proposal from Bernard Kouchner that the European Union offers to provide some form of border monitoring for material entering Gaza to ensure that it is only for humanitarian purposes?

Lord Howell – There may well be something in that idea. Of course there is the other border on the Egyptian side, which was open temporarily and has now been closed. All these matters are to be pursued to see whether we can find that key reconciliation between the need to end the suffering of the people of Gaza and Israel’s legitimate security concerns.

The Bishop of Bath and Wells – My Lords, while I recognise the appropriate need for Israel to be protected, the issue of building materials in relation to the people of Gaza is nevertheless important, given the recent campaign against Gaza involving bombing and the destruction of houses. What can Her Majesty’s Government do in the interim to encourage the Israeli Government to allow building materials to go into that country? Surely they are fundamental to the humanitarian effort.

Lord Howell – The answer has to be that maximum pressure and encouragement must be placed on the Government of Israel to do what is actually in their own interest, which is to minimise the restrictions, to lift the blockade as far as they can consistent with their security and to continue to expand the amount of provisions already going into Gaza from Israel as well as from Egypt. That is the way forward and we should not be deflected from it.

He veers from saying there should be unfettered access to Gaza to saying the blockade should be lifted only as far as it suits Israel’s “security”. He thinks pressure on the Israeli government rather than action will work when decades of experience tells us it won’t. He fails to understand how Israel sees its own interest. He says Israel has the right to “restrain” the importation of weapons. Is he sure about that? I don’t think he knows international law or the UN Charter or the Geneva Conventions as well as he should. Palestinians, as an illegally occupied people, have a right to take up arms to defend themselves.

And why can’t he make it his business to answer the simple question about the personal property of British nationals stolen by the Israelis on the high seas?

Eighty per cent of Conservative MPs are claimed to be signed-up Friends of Israel. Now, for your entertainment, let’s see how their website reports a recent House of Commons debate on Middle East Policy …

Supporting Israel

• Conservative MPs voice support for Israel in House debate on Middle East Policy.
• On Monday, the Government held a debate in the House of Commons on UK policy towards the Middle East.
• The debate was well attended by Conservative MPs, and provided an excellent opportunity for MPs discuss events surrounding the flotilla incident of Monday 31 May, as well a wider issues of the Middle East Peace Process.
• Israel received positive support from a number of Conservative MPs, with many contributors displaying a considerable understanding of the wider issues at play in the region such as the Iranian smuggling of arms into Gaza, Hamas ideology of violence and the need to bolster the moderate Palestinian Authority.
• Alistair Burt MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, led the debate for the government and presented an even-handed case, whilst expressing support for Israel.
• Alistair Burt began by reassuring the House that the government would “engage with as much energy as we can in the Middle East Peace Process” to bring about a lasting two-state solution to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict.

“The only long-term solution to the conflict is a secure Israel living alongside a sovereign and viable Palestinian state. We will continue to press for progress, working with the US and through the EU, while supporting Prime Minister Fayyad’s work to build the institutions of a future Palestinian state… The UK is a committed friend of Israel and a friend to the region”.

• Re-stating the government’s resolve to continue pressuring Iran to end her nuclear programme, Burt welcomed the UN Security Council resolution recently passed.

“We remain resolved to address concerns through a twin-track process of preventing a nuclear-weapons-capable Iran while reaching out with an offer for constructive engagement. We cannot allow Iran to act with impunity”.

• CFI’s Parliamentary Chairman and Chairman of the Defence Select Committee, Rt Hon James Arbuthnot MP presented an authoritative account of Israel’s predicament and began by praising Israel for embodying many of the values that exist with Britain.

“Everyone in this House should have an interest in Israel, because it is a country that embodies the values that we should stand for. Israel [has] become a bastion of the rule of law, democracy, free speech, business enterprise and family values. If that is not what this country also stands for, I am disappointed.”

• Applauding “Israel’s determination to stand up for its continued right to exist in peace and security”, Arbuthnot lamented at the difficult position Israel faces as a result of Hamas’ belligerency.

“When peace is destroyed by Hamas kidnapping Gilad Shalit and continuing to hold him prisoner for years, nobody should expect Israel just to accept it. When that peace is destroyed by rocketing from Gaza, nobody should expect Israel to say, ‘Yes, flotillas can be allowed to import whatever they like into Gaza, including perhaps explosives and rockets’.”

• James Arbuthnot also spoke of Israel’s difficulty in preventing smuggling of weaponry into Gaza, citing the case of Karine A.

“On one ship, the Karine A, which was not involved in this convoy, the Israelis found tons of weapons for Hamas. Were they simply to assume that this particular flotilla contained no such weapons to be used by Hamas against both Israel and the population of Gaza, whom Hamas treats so cruelly? Surely not. So obviously the flotilla was going to be stopped and boarded”.

• James Arbuthnot also cited the fact that Israel’s military had not sought violence, as seen by the peaceful boarding of five of the six flotilla ships.
• He noted that the flotilla was a deliberately calculated attempt to create publicity and that violence resistance aboard the Mavi Marmara had been premeditated.

“Given that the flotilla was designed to be provocative and to end in violence, we should not blame Israel for the violence against which it failed to guard itself; the blame lies with those who went on to the flotilla expressly seeking martyrdom.”

• Bob Blackman MP assessed the problematic role of Hamas, which presents a considerable obstacle to not only the peace process, but progress for the Palestinian people.

“We are challenged on the position of humanitarian aid, yet the state of Israel allows some 15,000 tonnes per week of humanitarian aid to enter Gaza. However, there is the role of Hamas: it holds up the aid. It uses it as an incentive to control the people of Palestine, and as a means of repression. Until it ceases its repression, the people of Palestine will not see the benefit of having a properly, democratically elected Government who truly represent them.”

• Bob Blackman urged the House to be clear on the dangers of negotiating with Hamas without pre-conditions.

“It is very difficult to negotiate with people whose fundamental aim is to destroy one’s Government and one’s very being”.

• Lastly, Nick Boles MP gave the House a fascinating speech on Israel’s excellent record of democracy, freedom and human rights.

“In Israel, Israeli Arabs have always had all rights-the same as Israeli Jews-except for one: they do not have to serve in the armed forces, because the state of Israel recognises that it would be unfair to set them against their Arab brothers. However, they can vote and be elected, and many have been. There is even an Arab-Israeli serving on the Supreme Court in Israel… Israel is an oasis in a desert-an oasis of freedom, democracy and human rights in the Middle East”.

• Robert Halfon MP was not called upon by the speaker but had prepared a fantastic speech, which he has since published on his online blog.

The whole thing can be seen here at where you’ll also find the comical “Israel’s legitimate right to impose the blockade”.

I offer no comment other than to say that Mark Regev, Israel’s propaganda specialist, must be exceedingly proud of his pupils. They now speak it fluently. Readers with only the slightest knowledge of the situation in the Holy Land will be aching with laughter and howling in derision at the tosh these stooges put around.

Yes, the Knesset has come to Westminster.

Let’s end with Halfon, the former political director of Conservative Friends of Israel, who is especially well versed. Here’s a flavour of that “fantastic” speech he so wanted to make:

• In 2005 when Israeli PM Ariel Sharon oversaw Israeli withdrawal from every inch of the Gaza Strip…
• Gaza has become a terrorist state. Over 5,000 missiles have been fired into Israel since Hamas takeover in June 2007. Terrorists continue to infiltrate Israel from Gaza to execute brutal terror attacks. Weapons and explosives – supplied by backers Iran and Syria – are continuously smuggled into the Strip to be used against Israeli citizens and territory. This sort of situation is untenable. No country can be expected to live under this sort of pressure.
• It must be noted that 5 of the 6 ships were peacefully intercepted and safely docked at the Israeli port of Ashdod without incident. Unfortunately, a significant minority of ‘activists’ on the Mavi Marmara reacted with extreme violence to the Israeli military personnel… it has become apparent that these ‘activists’ had prepared for violence by accruing various weapons, amongst which were knives and sharpened metal bars.
• Security footage on the boat shows these men preparing their ambush and television images have shown these same individuals chanting horrific anti-Semitic songs. Before the incident, various spokesmen for the flotilla stressed that the intention was to make a political statement and “break the siege” rather than delivering the aid itself.
• Flotilla or no Flotilla, blockade or no blockade, we must never forget that Israel, a democratic state, is battling for its survival against an enemy that seeks its destruction. The West faces the same enemy on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq. A free and just Palestinian State and a secure Israel will only come about, when these terrorist movements have been vanquished…

Every line a gem. Vintage Regev…almost.

Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. For further information please visit www.radiofreepalestine.co.uk.

Posted on 06/22/2010 by RamallahOnline

Israeli blockade: Pasta YES, People NO

Sherine Tadros, 21 June 2010

What should we make of Israel’s change in strategy towards the Gaza blockade?

It really depends on what you see as the aim - saving face amidst intense international (Turkish and US) pressure or allowing people in Gaza to live a normal life.

Not only is it clear that it is the former not the latter (otherwise why not let people leave the Strip?) but through a change in semantics, Israel has managed to checkmate the world.

Photo by AFP

In the lead-up to what became Israel’s Freedom Flotilla PR disaster, a debate erupted as to the arbitrary and ambiguous nature with which goods are allowed into Gaza.

In the press conferences I attended days before the flotilla’s arrival, journalists grilled the army on why there was seemingly no logic behind what is let in - one journalist friend of mine remarked that while pasta was sometimes allowed through, gluten-free pasta was disallowed. It didn’t make sense, and more importantly authorities were increasingly finding it hard to explain (and justify) the policy.

With the decision to publish a list of prohibited items (rather than the ever-changing, inconsistent list of allowed goods) should come a debate on what the endgame of the Gaza siege is for Israel.

Former ministers and commentators have blamed Ehud Barak, the defence minister, as well as Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, for this “pasta and coriander” policy, which made a mockery out of the idea of a blockade on what Israel insists are security grounds.

Progress, really?

Put these small grumblings aside and Israel has done what Israel does best in defining what “progress” entails on its terms.

The siege on Gaza is illegal under international law – 1.7 million civilians not allowed to exit a plot of land that has become one of the poorest and congested places in the world.

Yet Israel’s decision to allow in a few more types of goods (with caveats) is hailed as progress by an American administration also desperate to start seeing positive signs in this part of the world.

Maybe this is a sceptical point of view, maybe we should see this as a step in the right direction, or maybe we should realise that by worsening the situation to crisis point, anything short of war is now considered progress.

Perhaps we should aim higher and the world should demand more of Israel. Just like they can ease the siege, they can end it too.

A ‘legitimate’ blockade

What the change in policy also does is legitimise the illegal blockade – giving it official status now endorsed by the Quartet and the Americans separately.

By changing it from a “civilian” blockade to a “military” one, in one stroke Israel pacified the international community and gained their approval (or at least a nod) for its continuing policy in Gaza.

But even if more goods are let in, even if the UN is finally able to finish its projects in the Strip, even if the land crossings start working efficiently and for longer hours – the people of Gaza are still under the whim of Israel’s decisions and 1.7 million people cannot leave.

For people there, this is often what they will tell you is the most difficult aspect of life under siege – entrapment and lack of control over the simplest of things like whether fresh meat will be available in Gaza tomorrow.

The naval blockade is still in place, exports are not allowed so the economy cannot recover, people are still trapped by air land and sea and Gazans are still 100 per cent reliant on Israel to survive. The new “military” blockade looks an awful lot like the old one, and it’s the “civilians” that bare the brunt of the siege, whatever name it goes by.

Source: aljazeera

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