Month: February 2009

Israeli university welcomes “war crimes” colonel

For those thus far unconvinced of the reasons for the boycott of Israeli academics, Jonathan Cook reports about the recent appointment of Colonel Pnina Sharvit-Baruch, the IDF’s senior adviser on international law, to a teaching post at Tel Aviv University. Some of Col Sharvit-Baruch’s most notable achievements are “to have ‘relaxed’ the rules of engagement, approved widespread house demolitions and the uprooting of farmland, and sanctioned the use of incendiary weapons such as white phosphorus over the densely populated enclave [Gaza]”, in addition to having “offered legal justification for the targeting of buildings in which civilians were known to be located as long as they had been warned first to leave.”

See also Gideon Levy’s article about the silent complicity of Israel’s jurists in the IDF’s war crimes.

The Israeli government has moved quickly to quash protests over the appointment of the army’s senior adviser on international law to a teaching post at Tel Aviv University. Col Pnina Sharvit-Baruch is thought to have provided legal cover for war crimes during the recent Gaza offensive.

Government officials fear that recent media revelations relating to Col Sharvit-Baruch’s role in the Gaza operation may assist human rights groups seeking to bring Israeli soldiers to trial abroad.

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‘Screwing People Honestly’

Vodpod videos no longer available.

‘Porn Star for Senate‘, by Max Blumenthal

Sen. David Vitter’s phone number was found in the records of the notorious D.C. madam. Now he faces re-election (and massive karmic payback) against a sultry adult entertainer named Stormy. Max Blumenthal has an exclusive interview.

With 2010 midterm elections approaching, Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter is positioning himself as a leading conservative stalwart. In July 2008, Vitter joined accused bathroom-stall sex solicitor Sen. Larry Craig in co-sponsoring the anti-gay-marriage Marriage Protection Amendment, then addressed a massive antiabortion rally on the National Mall three days after Barack Obama’s inauguration. Vitter was also the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s lone vote against sending Hillary Clinton’s secretary of State nomination to the Senate floor.

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Glasgow University Student Occupation

glasgow universiy student occupation

Glasgow University students have entered into an occupation and have a facebook group and blog for keeping track of events.

Glasgow University students have entered into occupation

We are currently occupying the top floor of the Computer Science building in solidarity with the Gazan people, and in protest to the war crimes committed by the state of Israel against the Palestinian people, the University’s complicity in this via links to the arms trade, and the BBC’s refusal to show the DEC appeal.
If you want to join the occupation, or show your support outside, the Computer Science building is located behind the Queen Margaret Union, and opposite the Boyd Orr building.
In Solidarity,
The Occupying Students of Glasgow University

Kahane won

Gideon Levy in the Haaretz:

Rabbi Meir Kahane can rest in peace: His doctrine has won. Twenty years after his Knesset list was disqualified and 18 years after he was murdered, Kahanism has become legitimate in public discourse. If there is something that typifies Israel’s current murky, hollow election campaign, which ends the day after tomorrow, it is the transformation of racism and nationalism into accepted values.
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Dubai’s architecture is beyond crass

‘For all its extravagant novelties and its masses of petunias, Dubai is a city with neither charm nor character’, writes Germaine Greer. ‘From its artificial islands to its boring new skycraper, Dubai’s architecture is beyond crass’.

If Monaco is, in Jack Nicholson’s phrase, Alcatraz for the rich, what shall we make of Dubai? Dubai is a city built between the desert and the pale blue sea, that uses more water per capita than anywhere else in the world, and derives 97% of it from desalination, which means that it is the most expensive water in the world. Much of that water is being used to create a garden in the desert. All across the sprawling conurbation, labourers can be seen planting out millions, possibly billions, of bedding plants, into sand banks perpetually moistened by drip irrigation. Dubai has been built on the premise that nothing succeeds like excess.

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Student Occupations Reach American Academia

Spreading like wildfire, student university occupations in solidarity with the people of Gaza have finally reached the shores of American academia. Students at the University of Rochester, inspired by their peers in the UK, staged a sit-in and after only 9 hours marched out victorious having won all of their demands.

1. Divestment: We demand the University of Rochester to adopt the “UR-Peaceful Investing Initiative” which institutes a peaceful investment policy to the university’s endowment which includes divestment from corporations that manufacturer weapons and profit from war. (For example, the U of R invests in General Dynamics which manufactures weapons to maintain a 41-year occupation of the Palestinian territories and wars which slaughter Palestinian civilians by the 100s)

2. Humanitarian aid: We demand that the University of Rochester commit to a day of fundraising for humanitarian aid in Gaza within the next two weeks, as part of an ongoing commitment to provide financial support for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

3. Academic aid: We demand that the University of Rochester twin with the devastated Gaza University and provide the necessary academic aid (e.g., recycled computers, books, etc. ).

4. Scholarships: We demand that the University of Rochester grant a minimum of five scholarships to Palestinian students every year.

Day 5: Growing Support for University of Manchester Occupation

Students at the University of Manchester have just entered their fifth day of occupying university premises.

Latest update:

Today [Saturday] at 2pm around 60 people from around Manchester and beyond came to a protest outside the occupied Simon Building in a show of support for us and the struggle of the people of Palestine. Both campaigners outside and students inside spoke on many subjects ranging from the situation in Gaza now, to the experiences we’ve had in our occupation. During the course of the protest a handful of the scores of messages of support we have received from around the world were read out. This included messages from Palestinian students, the UCU union and other students in Britain campaigning for Palestine. Today’s protest was a continuation of the widespread support that we have from all over.

See the students’ blog from inside the occupation for more information, list of demands and upcoming events.

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‘Intense, focused and targeted’

Rahimullah Yusufzai on developments in Swat and the delusions of the armchair militarists.

Unlike the earlier two phases of the military operations in Swat in 2007 and 2008, the latest one initiated in late January is being praised by the ANP-PPP government in the NWFP and sections of the population opposed to the militants. The more discerning elements of the civil society, who tend to criticise almost anything that doesn’t conform to their political and intellectual orientation, are also backing the intensified military action. The main reason for the support to the armed forces this time is due to the belief that the latest military operation is intense, focused and targeted.

This reminds one of a statement made by Gen Pervez Musharraf on the eve of the US invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001. In a bid to win public support for his unpopular decision to ally Pakistan with the US at the time, he had argued that the American military action in the neighbouring, Taliban-ruled country would be quick, focused and targeted. Obviously, the General was trying to reassure Pakistanis that this was going to be over soon as he calculated the Taliban regime would collapse and the US troops would go home after installing a pro-West government in Kabul. Though President George W Bush contradicted his Pakistani counterpart, Gen Musharraf didn’t correct his flawed assessment. Supremely confident of his military knowledge and intellectual prowess, he even claimed at the time that the Taliban could not fight a guerrilla war and, therefore, would soon become irrelevant.

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Non-Violence? Finkelstein and Gandhi

When Western liberals call on the Palestinians to renounce violence and to adopt Gandhian passive resistance instead, I usually become enraged. My first response is, they’ve tried non-violence, and you failed to notice.

For the first two decades after the original ethnic cleansing of 1947 and 48, almost all Palestinian resistance was non-violent. From 1967 until 1987 Palestinians resisted by organising tax strikes, peaceful demonstrations, petitions, sit-down protests on confiscated lands and in houses condemned to demolition. The First Intifada was almost entirely non-violent on the Palestinian side; the new tactic of throwing stones at tanks (which some liberals consider violent) was almost entirely symbolic. In every case, the Palestinians were met with fanatical violence. Midnight arrest, beatings, and torture were the lot of most. Many were shot. Yitzhak Rabin ordered occupation troops to break the bones of the boys with stones. And despite all this sacrifice, Israeli Jews were not moved to recognise the injustice of occupation and dispossession, at least not enough to end it. The first weeks of the Second Intifada were also non-violent on the Palestinian side. Israel responded by murdering tens of unarmed civilians daily, and the US media blamed the victims. Then the Intifada was miltarised.

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Zionism: the Zionist Victims

How could 94% of Israeli Jews have supported the massacre in Gaza? How is it that many Israeli Jews quite genuinely see themselves as the victims, even when the death count is one Israeli to a hundred Palestinians, even when their ethnically-cleansed enemy starves in refugee camps? An incredible statistic: 40 percent of Israeli Jews are unaware that at the end of the 19th century, the Arabs were an absolute majority in Palestine. Having just watched Norman Finkelstein’s thought-provoking lecture on the use of Ghandian tactics to change Israeli Jewish as well as international opinion on Palestine, I find the below article, in which the great Israeli journalist Akiva Eldar throws some light on the indoctrination of Israeli Jews, to be particularly interesting. We have to work to educate Israelis as much as anyone else.

A new study of Jewish Israelis shows that most accept the ‘official version’ of the history of the conflict with the Palestinians. Is it any wonder, then, that the same public also buys the establishment explanation of the operation in Gaza?

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