Archive for the ‘Palestine’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

The United Nations’ Darkest Day

November 30, 2008

By Robert Thompson | Axis of Logic, Nov 27, 2008

This Saturday, 29th November, is the sixty-first anniversary of the darkest day in the history of the then still youthful United Nations.   The Organisation then member states carelessly breached the provisions of the Charter by voting in favour of a partition of Palestine without any attempt at asking the population what it wished to have as a future, after the British Empire wished to give up its mandate due to a general desire on the part of the government headed by Clement Atlee to decolonise, cut expenses and end the terrorism of the Zionist gangs, Irgun Zwai Leumi, the Strern Gang and Haganah. The British Empire had been bled dry by the cost incurred for the supply of very expensive arms from the USA manufacturers before their country finally joined in the Second World War half-way through. Also the cost in British lives and injuries at the hands of the terrorists was a strong argument in favour of leaving what had become a hell-hole not only for the indigenous people but also for the British before, during and after the War, as a result of the attrocities committed by these de facto allies of the Nazis.


For those who do not understand the extent of the injustice of the Proposition for which the United Nations then voted, the Zionist occupied land in Palestine was approximately 7% and that occupied by indigenous Palestinians some 93%, whereas, apart from the proposal to make Jerusalem and its immediate neighbourhood into an international area, the land was attributed almost equally between the indigenous people and the incoming Zionists, with the latter being given areas largely occupied by the former, especially in the centre and in the south, including the Naqab (or in Hebrew Negev) giving access to the Gulf of Aqaba.

We should all condemn this terrible breach of justice, as well as of their Charter, by the United Nations and work towards the establishment in all of Palestine of a single democratic state, where all those driven out by force in 1947-1948 (and their descendants) can, as the United Nations did later resolve, return and recover their homes and lands, and where full citizenship rights do not depend on one’s belonging to any specific religious group.

© Copyright 2008 by AxisofLogic.com

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Commentary, Human rights, Palestine, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »

Israel’s Settlement on Capitol Hill

November 29, 2008

Robert Weitzel | November 28, 2008


“With [traditional Israeli defense strategists] it’s all about tanks and land and controlling territories . . . and this hilltop and that hilltop. All these things are worthless.” -Incumbent Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert-

Soon after the sand settled following the Six Day War in 1967, Jewish settlements began dotting the hills in the occupied territories. These settlements are typically located on the high ground to better control the surrounding landscape. Today there are 127 Jewish settlements with a population exceeding 468,000 in the West Bank, the Golan Heights and in the suburbs of East Jerusalem—the last of nearly 8,000 settlers were removed from the Gaza Strip in 2005.

According to a recent Amnesty International report, “In the first six months of 2008 Israel has expanded settlements in the West Bank/East Jerusalem at a faster rate than in the previous seven years.”

Unbeknownst to most Americans, Israel’s westernmost settlement is not located in Palestine-Israel, but is 6000 miles away on the high ground overlooking Foggy Bottom in Washington D.C.

This Capital Hill settlement of pro-Israel lobbies and think tanks strategically controls the high ground overlooking the United States’ Middle East policy landscape by having made kibbutzniks of most members of the executive and legislative branches of the government—including President-elect Obama, Vice President-elect Biden (a wannabe Zionist), and future Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel (a born Zionist).

While Israel’s hilltop settlements in the occupied territories—violating over 30 UN Security Council resolutions since 1968—are “facts on the ground” that make the two state peace solution unlikely, their hilltop settlement in the center of the world’s only superpower makes it equally unlikely that Israel’s right-wing government will feel compelled to end their “self defensive” brutalization of the Palestinian people, which has been condemned by the international community (UN, EU) as crimes against humanity.

John Holmes, UN Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, said that Israel’s blockade of vital supplies to the Gaza Strip in retaliation for rocket attacks “amounts to collective punishment and is contrary to international humanitarian law.”

Collective punishment is forbidden by Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which states, “No protected person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed.” A “protected person” is someone who is under the control of an “Occupying Power of which they are not nationals.” Only the most ideologically blinkered individual would fail to recognize the Gaza Strip as occupied territory.

Israel’s current blockade of Gaza, which began on November 4, is resulting in what the UN Relief and Works Agency is calling a humanitarian catastrophe. Before the blockade, 1000 truckloads of food, fuel and essential supplies per day were necessary to sustain the 1.5 million Palestinians imprisoned behind the concrete and barbed wire of the 25-mile long border. Eighty percent of Gazans live on two dollars a day and depend on international aid to survive. Since the border crossings were sealed, less than 100 truckloads have been permitted through.

The imprisoned Palestinians—50 percent of whom are younger than 15—are slowly starving. They lack the fuel to generate electricity for lighting, water purification, and sewage treatment. The erratic, intermittent electrical power puts the lives of patients in intensive care wards and those who are connected to live-sustaining equipment in grave peril. The lack of basic medicines such as antibiotics and insulin pose an equally fatal threat.

Twenty human rights organizations and all Israeli and international journalists have been barred from entering the Gaza Strip since the blockade began. A letter of protest signed by most major news organizations was sent to Prime Minister Olmert. Israeli Defense Ministry spokesman Shlomo Dror responded to the letter by saying that Israel was afraid journalists would inflate the Palestinians’ suffering. No one is allow to speak out on behalf of this beleaguered population.

President-elect Obama has been speaking out “swiftly and boldly” about the economic catastrophe threatening our 401Ks, but his silence regarding the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe threatening the lives of Palestinians is both deafening and telling of the price he’s willing to pay to maintain his status as kibbutznik-in-good-standing in Israel’s westernmost hilltop settlement.

Obama’s unconditional support for Israel’s policy of “self defense,” preemptive attacks, and repressive occupations is not one iota different from that of George W. Bush, an internationally recognized war criminal. This is not an encouraging beginning for a man whose battle cry was “change we can believe in.”

By any rational, humanitarian standard, Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians amounts to collective punishment and crimes against humanity. Perpetrators of such crimes, whether they are individuals or governments or willing allies, are criminals who should one day sit in the dock of the International Court of Justice in The Hague—just as defendants sat in a Nuremberg court 60 years ago—and be held accountable for their crimes.

Until Israel’s hilltop settlement in our nation’s capital is dismantled, allowing for the possibility of a just and lasting peace in Palestine-Israel, its influence on both branches of our government and its insidious affect on US Middle East policy will continue to make willing—or unwitting—kibbutzniks of all Americans. We will be held as complicit, and as culpable, as the citizens of the country whose leaders sat in the dock at Nuremberg.

The world will ask, “Why didn’t you do something to stop it?” The majority of us will reply, “We didn’t know!”

Robert Weitzel is a contributing editor to Media With a Conscience (www.mwcnews.net). His essays regularly appear in The Capital Times in Madison, WI. He can be contacted at: robertweitzel@mac.com

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Palestine, Uncategorized, US policy, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »

Amy Goodman: Media silence doesn’t mean all’s well in Gaza

November 28, 2008

Amy Goodman | The Capital Times, Nov 27, 2008

As President-elect Barack Obama focuses on the meltdown of the U.S. economy, another fire is burning: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

You may not have heard much lately about the disaster in the Gaza Strip. That silence is intentional: The Israeli government has barred international journalists from entering the occupied territory. Last week, executives from the Associated Press, New York Times, Reuters, CNN, BBC and other news organizations sent a letter of protest to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert criticizing his government’s decision to bar journalists from entering Gaza.

Israel has virtually sealed off the Gaza Strip and cut off aid and fuel shipments. A spokesman for Israel’s Defense Ministry said Israel was displeased with international media coverage, which he said inflated Palestinian suffering and did not make clear that Israel’s measures were in response to Palestinian violence.

A cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, the group that won Palestinian elections nearly three years ago and controls Gaza, broke down after an Israeli raid killed six Hamas militants two weeks ago. More Israeli raids have followed, killing approximately 17 Hamas members, and Palestinian militants have fired dozens of rockets into southern Israel, injuring several people.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has criticized Israel over its blockade of the overcrowded Gaza, home to close to 1.5 million Palestinians. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency is warning that Gaza faces a humanitarian “catastrophe” if Israel continues to blockade aid from reaching the territory.

The sharply divided landscape of Israel and the occupied territories is familiar ground for South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He won the Nobel Peace Prize for his opposition to apartheid in South Africa. Tutu was in New York last week to receive the Global Citizens Circle award. I sat down with him at the residence of the South African vice consul.

Tutu reflected on the Israeli occupation: “Coming from South Africa … and looking at the checkpoints … when you humiliate a people to the extent that they are being — and, yes, one remembers the kind of experience we had when we were being humiliated — when you do that, you’re not contributing to your own security.”

Tutu said the embargo must be lifted. “The suffering is unacceptable. It doesn’t promote the security of Israel or any other part of that very volatile region,” he said. “There are very, very many in Israel who are opposed to what is happening.”

Tutu points to the outgoing Israeli prime minister. In September, Olmert made a stunning declaration to Yedioth Ahronoth, the largest Israeli newspaper. He said that Israel should withdraw from nearly all territory captured in the 1967 Middle East war in return for peace with the Palestinians and Syria: “I am saying what no previous Israeli leader has ever said: We should withdraw from almost all of the territories, including in East Jerusalem and in the Golan Heights.” Olmert said that traditional Israeli defense strategists had learned nothing from past experiences and that they seemed stuck in the considerations of the 1948 War of Independence. He said: “With them, it is all about tanks and land and controlling territories and controlled territories and this hilltop and that hilltop. All these things are worthless.”

Olmert appears to have come closer to his daughter’s point of view. In 2006, Dana Olmert was among 200 people who gathered outside the home of the Israeli army chief of staff and chanted “murderer” as they protested Israeli killings of Palestinians (Archbishop Tutu was blocked from entering Gaza in his U.N.- backed attempts to investigate those killings). Ehud Olmert recently resigned over corruption allegations, but remains prime minister until a new government is approved by parliament.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al- Maliki criticized Olmert for waiting until now to call for an end to the settlements: “We wish we heard this personal opinion when Olmert was prime minister, not after he resigned. I think it is a very important commitment, but it came too late. We hope this commitment will be fulfilled by the new Israeli government.”

Israel is a top recipient of U.S. military aid. Archbishop Tutu says of the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, “When that is resolved, what we will find (is) that the tensions between the West and … a large part of the Muslim world … evaporates.” He said of Obama, “I pray that this new president will have the capacity to see we’ve got to do something here … for the sake of our children.”

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 700 stations, including WYOU cable access TV and WORT-FM/89.9 radio here. You can hear her podcast at captimes.com. Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.

Tags:, , , , , ,
Posted in Palestine, USA, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »

Foreign Press in Israel Fight Gaza Entry Ban

November 26, 2008

JERUSALEM – International journalists based in Israel appealed to the country’s Supreme Court on Monday to overturn a government decision barring foreign correspondents from entering the Gaza Strip.

The Foreign Press Association filed the court petition against the military’s Gaza commander, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit after the government failed to heed a letter signed by heads of the world’s largest news organizations calling for the ban to be lifted.

The court petition charged the media ban constitutes “a grave and mortal blow against freedom of the press and other basic rights and gives the unpleasant feeling that the state of Israel has something to hide.” It requested an urgent hearing.

The Tel Aviv-based Foreign Press Association represents foreign correspondents working in Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Israel has long restricted movement across its border with Gaza, but it closed the area to all but essential supplies on Nov. 5 after an upsurge in Palestinian rocket fire. For the first time, that included a blanket ban on foreign reporters entering the territory.

The government routinely prevents Israeli journalists from entering Gaza because of fears for their safety, but up to now foreign reporters had been permitted in, even during times of heavy fighting.

Since the ban, coverage in Gaza has been largely left to local Palestinian staff and a handful of foreign journalists who entered before the ban took effect, including two Associated Press reporters.

Israel’s Defense Ministry says foreign journalists will be allowed in only once Gaza militants stop shooting.

The letter protesting the ban, signed by The AP, Reuters, the New York Times, the BBC, CNN and other major news organizations, was sent last week to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

In responding to the letter, Defense Ministry spokesman Shlomo Dror said Israel was displeased with international media coverage, which he said inflated Palestinian suffering and did not make clear that Israel’s measures were in response to Palestinian violence.

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Commentary, Human rights, Palestine, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »

Top UN official: Israel’s policies are like apartheid of bygone era

November 25, 2008

United Nations General Assembly President Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann. (Reuters)

Last update – 15:07 25/11/2008
By Shlomo Shamir, Haaretz Correspondent and Haaretz Service
Tags: Palestinian Solidarity, UN
United Nations General Assembly President Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann on Monday likened Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians to South Africa’s treatment of blacks under apartheid.Israel’s actions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip were like “the apartheid of an earlier era,” said Brockmann, of Nicaragua, speaking at the annual debate marking the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.

He added: “We must not be afraid to call something what it is.”

Advertisement

Brockmann stressed that it was important for the United Nations to use the heavily-charged term since it was the institution itself that had passed the International Convention against the crime of apartheid.

Israeli ambassador to the UN Gabriela Shalev in September called Brockmann an “Israel hater” for having hugged Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a vocal enemy of Israel.

Meanwhile, other diplomatic attacks against Israel were expected Tuesday on the second day of the annual debate.

The event is usually observed on November 29, to coincide with the UN’s resolution in 1947 to establish a Jewish and an Arab state in Palestine.

The Palestinians, along with a group of Arab states, intend to use Tuesday’s debate, entitled “the Palestinian question and the situation in the Middle East,” for a public campaign directed at the international community about the the suffering of the Palestinian people under Israeli occupation. They will also denounce Israel as responsible for the lack of a solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Speakers at the debate are expected to harshly criticize Israel for its policy in the territories, especially following UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s complaint that Israel refused his request to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.

Shalev will ask in her address Tuesday why the UN has turned November 29 into a day of mourning, but does not mention that on this day a resolution to establish two states was adopted with Israel’s consent.

“The UN must adopt new content and no longer accept the agenda foisted on it by the automatic majority, which sabotages the peace process’ progress in the region,” Shalev will say.

The two-day event includes several events and ceremonies at the UN headquarters, including movies and photography exhibitions showing alleged Palestinian hardships under Israeli occupation.

The debate is expected to end with the adoption of some 20 anti-Israel resolutions. In the past, these included denouncing Israel for annexing East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights in separate resolutions.

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Commentary, Human rights, Palestine, Uncategorized, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »

Deprivation and Desperation in Gaza

November 25, 2008

By JOE MOWREY | Counterpunch, Nov  24, 2008

As conditions in the Gaza strip approach a catastrophic level of deprivation, the world media, and in particular the U.S. media, remain largely silent. The United Nations, whose truckloads of food and medical supplies continue to be denied entry into Gaza by Israel, appears to be one of the few international voices of dissent concerning the collective punishment of 1.5 million human beings. This, despite the fact that more than 50% of the population in Gaza is comprised of children under the age of 15.

Israel claims to be defending itself against the crude, often homemade rockets which militant factions in Gaza fire randomly into southern Israel. Though it may be considered politically incorrect, this writer refuses to precede his remarks with the requisite, “It’s wrong for militant Palestinians to be firing rockets into Israel.” The ethics of Palestinian resistance to the Zionist colonization of Palestine and the dispossession of the Palestinian people is a subject for another article. The issue at hand is one of collective punishment. Regardless of the actions of certain factions in Gaza, the fact remains that Israel (with the approval of the U.S.and the world community) is depriving an entire civilian population of food, medicine and clean drinking water in response to the violent actions of a few among that population. By any civilized standard this behavior is wrong and should be condemned vociferously. To paraphrase the words of an alien from another planet in a not-so-great Hollywood movie of some years ago, every sentient being knows the difference between right and wrong.

Apparently not. Israel’s Foreign Minister and likely future Prime Minister, Tzipi Livni, recently dismissed the notion that Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to collective punishment and claimed those actions were a justifiable response to the rocket attacks on Israel. She stated, “The international community must be more decisive in making itself heard and in using its influence in the face of these attacks.”

To suggest that the international community should condemn “these attacks” by militant Palestinian factions, yet ignore the humanitarian disaster being imposed on Gaza by the government of Israel demonstrates a nearly incomprehensible level of hypocrisy. But more importantly, the fact that Jews are the ones perpetrating these unconscionable actions in Gaza is a tragedy of historic proportions. The Geneva Conventions, particularly those articles addressing the  of civilian populations, were largely crafted in response to the treatment of Jews by the Nazis during World War II. Has the sense of exclusivity and entitlement created by the Zionist experiment in Israel become so great that people there no longer see themselves in the mirror of their own history? The irony of Jews, among the most egregiously persecuted and maligned people in history, denying food to hundreds of thousands of children in order, allegedly, to insure their own security, is breathtaking. Who could ever have imagined such a thing?

As people of Gaza suffer, here in the U.S., the vast majority of so-called progressives continue to revel in the recent election of the first Black man to the Presidency. While Obama has garnered a great deal of political and financial support by pledging his unconditional support for the Zionist regime in Israel, he remains completely silent on the plight of the children of Gaza. Our first Black President not only refuses to speak out against the collective punishment of an oppressed people, he actively supports and encourages the regime responsible for this behavior. This too is a tragedy of historic proportions. Have we come this far in the struggle against racism in our country only to see Barack Obama put a minority face on U.S. support for violations of international law and essential human dignity by Israel? Again, one has to say, who could ever have imagined such a thing?

Each morning I peruse the alternative media online and hope to see at least some minor degree of outrage at the situation in Gaza. A small but courageous handful of progressive web sites dare to criticize Israel and speak out against the abuse of the Palestinian people. But for the most part, the glorious and powerful “NetRoots” movement is too busy congratulating itself on the so-called victory it has achieved in the recent elections, too busy celebrating the illusion of change which Barack Obama represents, to admit the absence of any indication of substantive change in U.S. foreign policy in Palestine or the Middle East under his coming administration.

Does it ever occur to those who so blindly and passionately rallied ‘round their candidate for the Presidency that they might now use their voices to encourage him to oppose the human rights abuses being orchestrated in Gaza? The sad reality is, not even a chorus of such voices is likely to alter the course Obama appears to have taken. He has surrounded himself with a familiar cast of armchair militarists, corporatists and hard core pro-Zionist zealots who will continue to give their unconditional support to Israel regardless of what barbaric tactics the government there uses to advance the colonization of Palestine. He is choosing to turn his back on the men, women and children in Gaza and the West Bank who suffer chronic malnutrition, desperate poverty, dispossession and daily humiliation at the hands of the Israeli military.

We should stand up in opposition to instances of human rights abuses whenever and wherever they occur. The situation in Gaza is only one on an unfortunately long list, locally, nationally and internationally. And U.S. government (that means you and me) support for and complicity in many such instances is no secret. If each of us were to do just one thing per week to address these issues, the result might surprise us all. Take a minute out from the long and endless chatter of day to day living and speak to a friend about the idea of social equality. Write one letter to the editor of your local paper in support of human rights. Spend just one percent of your online hours learning the truth about our complicity as U.S. citizens in the exploitation and degradation of other people and their cultures. Turn off your television. Go stand on a corner with a sign to protest war. Wear a button promoting peace and justice. One small thing at a time.

To those who became politically active, possibly for the first time, and expended their valuable enthusiasm and energy in order to see Barack Obama elected: thank you for being a part of history. Now why not try on the mantel of social activism? Write our President-elect a letter and suggest that he at least acknowledge the suffering of the people in Gaza. It is doubtful it will change him or his policies, but it may change you. And that truly is “change we can believe in.”

Every sentient being knows the difference between right and wrong. The question is, why do so few of us act on that knowledge?

Joe Mowrey is an anti-war and Palestinian rights activist. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with his spouse, Janice, and their three canine enablers. You can write to him at jmowrey@ix.netcom.com.

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Commentary, Human rights, imperialism, Islam and Muslims, Palestine, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »

The slow death of Gaza

November 24, 2008

The collective punishment of Gaza’s civilian population is illegal. But international law was tossed aside long ago

It has been two weeks since Israel imposed a complete closure of Gaza, after months when its crossings have been open only for the most minimal of humanitarian supplies. Now it is even worse: two weeks without United Nations food trucks for the 80% of the population entirely dependent on food aid, and no medical supplies or drugs for Gaza’s ailing hospitals. No fuel (paid for by the EU) for Gaza’s electricity plant, and no fuel for the generators during the long blackouts. Last Monday morning, 33 trucks of food for UN distribution were finally let in – a few days of few supplies for very few, but as the UN asks, then what?

Israel’s official explanation for blocking even minimal humanitarian aid, according to IDF spokesperson Major Peter Lerner, was “continued rocket fire and security threats at the crossings”. Israel’s blockade, in force since Hamas seized control of Gaza in mid-2007, can be described as an intensification of policies designed to isolate the population of Gaza, cripple its economy, and incentivise the population against Hamas by harsh – and illegal – measures of collective punishment. However, these actions are not all new: the blockade is but the terminal end of Israel’s closure policy, in place since 1991, which in turn builds on Israel’s policies as occupier since 1967.

In practice, Israel’s blockade means the denial of a broad range of items – food, industrial, educational, medical – deemed “non-essential” for a population largely unable to be self-sufficient at the end of decades of occupation. It means that industrial, cooking and diesel fuel, normally scarce, are virtually absent now. There are no queues at petrol stations; they are simply shut. The lack of fuel in turn means that sewage and treatment stations cannot function properly, resulting in decreased potable water and tens of millions of litres of untreated or partly treated sewage being dumped into the sea every day. Electricity cuts – previously around eight hours a day, now up to 16 hours a day in many areas – affect all homes and hospitals. Those lucky enough to have generators struggle to find the fuel to make them work, or spare parts to repair them when they break from overuse. Even candles are running out.

There can be no dispute that measures of collective punishment against the civilian population of Gaza are illegal under international humanitarian law. Fuel and food cannot be withheld or wielded as reward or punishment. But international law was tossed aside long ago. The blockade has been presented as punishment for the democratic election of Hamas, punishment for its subsequent takeover of Gaza, and punishment for militant attacks on Israeli civilians. The civilians of Gaza, from the maths teacher in a United Nations refugee camp to the premature baby in an incubator, properly punished for actions over which they have no control, will rise up and get rid of Hamas. Or so it goes.

And so what of these civilian agents of political change?

For all its complexities and tragedies, the over-arching effect of Israel’s blockade has been to reduce the entire population to survival mode. Individuals are reduced to the daily detail of survival, and its exhaustions.

Consider Gaza’s hospital staff. In hospitals, the blockade is as seemingly benign as doctors not having paper upon which to write diagnostic results or prescriptions, and as sinister as those seconds – between power cut and generator start – when a child on life support doesn’t have the oxygen of a mechanical ventilator. A nurse on a neo-natal ward rushes between patients, battling the random schedule of power cuts. A hospital worker tries to keep a few kidney dialysis machines from breaking down, by farming spare parts from those that already have. The surgeon operates without a bulb in the surgery lamp, across from the anaesthetist who can no longer prevent patient pain. The hospital administrator updates lists of essential drugs and medical supplies that have run out, which vaccines from medical fridges are now unusable because they can’t be kept cold, and which procedures must be cancelled altogether. The ambulance driver decides whether to respond to an emergency call, based on dwindling petrol in the tank.

By reducing the population to survival mode, the blockade robs people of the time and essence to do anything but negotiate the minutiae of what is and isn’t possible in their personal and professional lives. Whether any flour will be available to make bread, where it might be found, how much it now costs. Rich or poor, taxi drivers, human rights defenders, and teachers alike spend hours speculating about where a canister of cooking gas might be found. Exhaustion is gripping hold of all in Gaza. Survival leaves little if no room for political engagement – and beyond exhaustion, anger and frustration are all that is left.

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Human rights, Palestine, War Criminals, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »

Israel continues starvation of Gazans despite UN pleas

November 23, 2008

Irish Sun, Friday 21st November, 2008

In what the UN has described as collective punishment, the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip continues.

Notwithstanding 56% of the 1.5 million Gazan population consists of children, Israel has shut down access to the region refusing to allow desperately needed food trucks to reach their destination.

UN food agencies in Gaza that have had their food supply cut by the Israeli blockade say they are facing a “humanitarian catastrophe.”

World media continues to ignore the desperate situation, Israel however has contributed to that by barring journalists from entering Gaza, a move condemned earlier this week by the Foreign Press Association. The UN appears to be a lone voice in trying to engineer some relief.

Karen AbuZayd, commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, said the human toll of this month’s sealing of Gaza’s goods crossings was the gravest in eight years.

“It’s been closed for so much longer than ever before and we have nothing in our warehouses. It will be a catastrophe if this persists, a disaster,” said AbuZayd, whose agency is the largest aid body providing services to Palestinian refugees.

“They are not just under occupation, they are under siege, it’s a word I don’t usually use, they are completely closed off,” she added.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who issued a statement saying he supported statements by the Gazan office, telephoned Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Tuesday urging him to provide access for UN food trucks. Olmert said he would look into the situation on an urgent basis.

By Friday Ban had received no word back from Olmert, so he bypassed him and telephoned Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni to stress the urgency of the situation. Livni however rebuffed the UN Secretary-General’s plea saying the world should be condemning Palestinian rocket attacks.

“Whoever thinks that a situation of them firing at us, while everything continues as usual, can exist is mistaken,” her office said in a statement. “The international community must be more decisive in making itself heard, and in using its influence, in the face of these attacks.”

Israeli human rights organization Gisha in a letter to the Israeli army on Thursday from its attorney Yadin Elam said the closure of crossings, “is done with the illegal intention of inflicting pressure on the civilian population in an attempt to affect the behavior of militants and political elements. The closure of the crossings is therefore in violation of the absolute prohibition in International Law against collective punishment.” THe UN also this week described the Israeli crackdown as collective punishment.

The blockade is now putting Gaza at breaking point which many believe is the objective of the Jewish nation. A ceasefire, between Hamas and Israel, which had largely held until November 4, was broken when the Israeli army entered Gaza and carried out a raid which killed five militants. Rocket fire into Israel followed, and since then the Israeli army has stepped up activities and closed off more access points. A further 12 Palestinian militants have died. There have been no casualties on the Israeli side as most of the 140 rockets fired into the country have failed to hit any tangible targets.

In addition to preventing access for food supplies Israel has refused to allow European Union-funded fuel supplies into Gaza, starving the power generation plant of fuel which has caused widespread blackouts up to 16 hours a day. Water facilities, including access to clean drinking water, and the treatment of raw sewage continue is also being severely disrupted by fuel shortages. Fifty to sixty million liters of untreated and partially treated sewage are being dumped into the Gaza Strip Mediterranean Sea daily, posing a public health risk.

On Thursday the Associated Press, Reuters, CNN, the BBC and other major news organizations wrote a joint letter to Olmert, protesting the ban on journalists entering Gaza to cover events there. “We are gravely concerned about the prolonged and unprecedented denial of access to the Gaza Strip for the international media,” the letter said.

“We would welcome an assurance that access to Gaza for international journalists will be restored immediately in the spirit of Israel’s long-standing commitment to a free press.”

The letter has been ignored.

Tags:, ,
Posted in Palestine, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »

MIDEAST: On Top of Humanitarian Disaster, A News Blackout

November 20, 2008

By Cherrie Heywood | Inter Press Service


RAMALLAH, West Bank, Nov 18 – Israel has imposed a virtual news blackout on the Gaza Strip. For the last ten days no foreign journalists have been able to enter the besieged territory to report on the escalating humanitarian crisis caused by Israel’s complete closure of Gaza’s borders for the last two weeks.

Steve Gutkin, the AP bureau chief in Jerusalem and head of Israel’s Foreign Press Association, said that he personally “knows of no foreign journalist that has been allowed into Gaza in the last week.”

Gutkin said that “while Israel has barred foreign press from entering Gaza in the past, the length of the current ban makes it unprecedented.” He added that he has received no “plausible or acceptable” explanation for the ban from the Israeli government.

AP has relied on reports from two of its journalists who were able to enter Gaza days before the closure began and are currently stuck there.

A delegation of European Union parliamentarians was also prevented from entering Gaza to assess the situation on the ground and to hold talks with Hamas leaders. They subsequently broke the naval siege of Gaza by entering the coast’s territorial waters from Cyprus by boat, defying the Israeli navy.

During talks held with Hamas, the EU parliamentarians were able to get a historic commitment from the Islamic organisation to recognise Israel’s right to exist within the internationally recognised 1967 borders. Hamas further offered a long-term ceasefire in return for Israel legitimising Palestinian rights.

Israel also prevented 20 European Union consul-generals from entering Gaza on Thursday. On Sunday Israeli border police prevented 15 trucks loaded with medication from entering the Gaza Strip.

EU commissioner for external relations and European neighbourhood policy, Bentita Ferrero-Waldner, has expressed strong reservations. “I am profoundly concerned about the consequences for the Gazan population of the complete closure of all Gaza crossings for deliveries of fuel and basic humanitarian assistance,” Ferrero-Waldner said in a statement Friday.

Karen AbuZayd, head of the UN Relief and Welfare Agency (UNRWA) which cares for Palestinian refugees, added that it was unusual for Israel not to let basic food and medicines in. “This has alarmed us more than usual because it’s never been quite so long and so bad, and there has never been so much negative response on what we need,” she said.

Israel closed the borders following a barrage of rockets fired by Palestinian resistance fighters at Israeli towns bordering the Gaza Strip.

The tit-for-tat violence began on Nov. 4 when the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) launched a cross-border raid into Gaza, breaking a shaky five-month ceasefire with Hamas. The purpose was ostensibly to destroy a tunnel built by Palestinians allegedly to smuggle captured Israeli soldiers.

More than 20 Palestinians were killed in Israeli raids. Two Israelis were lightly injured in the subsequent rocket attacks.

The timing of Israel’s breach of the ceasefire is curious in that hundreds of these smuggling tunnels have existed ever since Hamas took over the strip in June last year. They have been used to smuggle everyday necessities as well as arms because the territory is hermetically sealed by Israel.

John Ging, director of UNRWA in Gaza, who has lived there for the past three years, questioned the alleged security reasoning behind the closure. Since the ceasefire went into place this summer, Ging said, fewer supplies have passed through the crossing than in the beginning of 2006, when the western Negev in Israel suffered incessant rocket fire from Gaza.

At that time the Palestinian Authority (PA), which is supported by Israel and the international community, was ruling Gaza in a unity government with Hamas.

“Last week we were unable to feed 60,000 of Gaza’s neediest refugees due to our warehouses running out of food. UNRWA supplies half of Gaza’s population of 1.5 million people with emergency rations, and 20,000 people are fed per day when there are adequate supplies,” Ging told IPS.

Seventy percent of Gaza experienced electricity blackouts after Israel prevented deliveries of diesel fuel, forcing Gaza’s main power plant to close down.

“The Israelis were only allowing 2.2 to 2.5 million litres of fuel in per week prior to the closure, which was the minimum required to operate the power plant. The plant has a capacity for 20 million litres and this would last two months under normal circumstances and tide over emergency periods. But this has all run out,” Ging said.

Kan’an Ubeid, deputy chief of the Palestinian Energy Authority, said at a press conference in Gaza that in addition to the shutdown of the diesel-fuelled power plant, the electric network bringing in power from Israel collapsed due to increased pressure on the system.

Gazans also ran out of cooking gas while Gaza’s Coastal Municipalities Water Utility (CMWU) was forced to pump tonnes of untreated sewage into the ocean due to fuel shortages and the lack of spare parts for equipment in need of repairs and new parts.

Much of this will flow back into Gaza’s underground water table, and the threat of contaminated drinking water spreading diseases has increased.

Meanwhile, the emergency and ambulance services director-general, Mu’awiyya Hassanein, says Gaza’s health ministry is short of more than 300 types of necessary medication.

Sammy Hassan, a spokesman from Gaza city’s main Shifa hospital said only urgent surgery was being carried out. “We have delayed all non-urgent surgery as our small generator has stopped working, as we can’t import a vital spare part.

“We are down to 30,000 litres of fuel left to run the larger generator which is used when electricity is cut. Under the current circumstances with no electricity we require 10,000 litres per day,” Hassan told IPS.

Philip Luther, deputy director of Amnesty International’s Middle East programme, said that Israel’s latest tightening of the blockade had “made an already dire humanitarian situation markedly worse. This is nothing short of collective punishment on Gaza’s civilian population, and it must stop immediately.”

Following international pressure and protests from the EU, Israel allowed 30 trucks of humanitarian aid to enter the strip Monday. “It will last a matter of days,” said UNRWA spokesman Christopher Gunness. “But then what?”

Oxfam’s spokesman in Jerusalem Michael Bailey, who coordinates a number of humanitarian projects in Gaza, said this response was entirely inadequate.

“Thirty trucks of aid after a closure of 10 days is insufficient. What we need is a complete revision of the embargo on Gaza. Dialogue with the relevant political leaders is the only way forward,” Bailey told IPS.

“Both Israel and Gaza’s other neighbours need to put the human rights and essential needs of Gazans above all considerations if there is to be a way out of this quagmire.”

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Human rights, Palestine, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »

The end of Israel as a Jewish state?

November 19, 2008


By Anthony Loewenstein | Axis of Logic, Nov 15, 2008

The vast majority of Israeli citizens oppose the settler movement. Despite this, the colonialists recently launched a campaign to lure Israelis to visit the West Bank, the Jewish Forward newspaper reported. “Some 1,000 billboards have gone up across the country, showing photographs of cherubic settler children dressed in biblical costumes and carrying the slogan ‘Judea and Samaria – the story of every Jew’.”

The gulf between a sizable, vocal and often violent minority and the vast bulk of the population is growing by the day. Just last month a handful of Jewish radicals rioted near the West Bank town of Kiryat Arba and desecrated a Muslim graveyard after the Israel Defence Forces removed an illegal outpost.

Such actions are now occurring many times every week and the Israeli government seems powerless or unwilling to act decisively against it. Fundamentalist Zionists no longer recognise the authority of the Jewish state and demand the establishment of a Taliban-style, rabbinical entity in its place. Arabs will either be forcibly removed or live under authoritarianism.

How did Israel get to this point? Decades of funding and indulging the settler movement have resulted in the current crisis. As Gideon Levy writes in Haaretz: “Every class and institution of Israeli society defends the settlements, finances them from its own pockets, and is a full partner in the [land] theft, even if some of them are disgusted by it.”

The West Bank has become a Hobbesian land. Barely a day goes by without yet another report of settlers and the IDF impeding the daily lives of Palestinians on the “disputed” land.

In the 15 years since the Oslo peace talks, the colonies have multiplied in size and the settlers have more than doubled in number. A two-state solution is now impossible due to the presence of over 400,000 Jewish settlers on Palestinian land. A World Bank report recently revealed that property prices in the West Bank have rocketed out of the reach of most local businesses.

The September pipe bombing by Jewish radicals of Israeli historian Ze’ev Sternhell’s home in Jerusalem – a long-time critic of the settler movement – signalled a profound shift in the struggle against Israel’s internal enemies, a point powerfully made by leading peace activist Uri Avnery. “Israeli fascism is alive and kicking”, Avnery warned. “It is growing in the flowerbed that produced the various religious-nationalist underground groups of the past.” And yet the vast majority of the international Jewish Diaspora is tellingly silent on these issues, preferring to protest against Hamas “terrorism” and Iranian “provocation”. Thankfully Haaretz is unafraid to editorialise on the failure of Israel to uphold its own laws when broken.

Sternhell, even more determined to warn the world against the Jewish state’s threats, has argued since the attack against him and his family that “If Israeli society is unable to muster the courage necessary to put an end to the settlements, the settlements will put an end to the state of the Jews and will turn it into a bi-national state”.

As a believer in this solution, I don’t fear Sternhell’s thesis, but settler violence undoubtedly threatens the (long-discredited) claim that Israel is a Jewish democracy.

The challenge for the international community is to pressure Israel to decide what kind of state it wants to be and enforce its borders. Only a nation where all citizens are treated equally should be acceptable and the ever-growing tensions in cities where Jews and Arabs uncomfortably co-exist is worsening.

Ironically, before Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recently resigned, he told a leading Israeli newspaper that the country must withdraw from the vast majority of occupied territory. They were fighting words from a disgraced leader and unlikely to be heeded any time soon.

The UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied territories reported last month that Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and, until 2005, the Gaza Strip represented elements of colonialism and apartheid. Despite the current truce between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights found that 68 children had been killed in Gaza in the 12 months to June this year because of “disproportionate and excessive lethal force” by the IDF.

The settler militants are one of the leading impediments to peace in the region yet much of the mainstream media and Zionist leadership remain in denial. The Jerusalem Post editorialised last month that “radical” settlers were “undermining the case for Jewish rights in the West Bank… and harden hearts to Israel’s legitimate security concerns and historic civilisational ties to the land.” International law is clear: every settlement beyond the 1967 Green Line is illegal and must be removed. There can be no lasting peace and justice without this.

It was a point equally ignored by one of America’s leading Zionist leaders, Morton Klein, who wrote recently that, “it is simply a flat-earth statement to describe Judea, Samaria and Gaza as occupied”.

His statement is categorically incorrect though represents the official position of the vocal international Zionist Diaspora: the rampaging settlers, land annexation and anti-Palestinian discrimination is a merely defensive position by Israel. The forthcoming election may set back prospects for peace even further.

The time is approaching soon when the world will recognise what has been clear for decades: the Jewish state has neither the interest nor desire to end its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory. The alternative is now inevitable: the end of Israel as a Jewish entity.

http://antonyloewenstein.com/blog/2008/11/07/the-end-of-israel-as-a-jewish-state/

Tags:, , , , , ,
Posted in Commentary, Human rights, Palestine, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »