Category: Gaza

Egyptians to mark Nakba with a march to Palestine

This article first appeared on Gaza TV:

On 15 May, the annual commemoration of the creation of the state of Israel and the expulsion of Palestinians, known as Nakba, Egyptians plan to march to Palestine under the slogan “Cairo’s liberation will not be complete without the liberation of Al-Quds [Jerusalem].”

Following Egypt’s January 25 Revolution, Egyptians are pushing for some of the country’s foreign relations policies to change, especially those related to Israel and Palestine. Aid or protest convoys to Gaza were frequently stopped or arrested during the Mubarak era by the ousted president’s regime, and now for the first time since the revolution thousands of activists are planning to march to the Rafah border town.

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Gaza Strip

James Longley, the acclaimed director of the Oscar-nominated Iraq in Fragments (an award the film should have won, but for political reasons was instead handed to Al Gore), has generously made available his acclaimed 2002 film Gaza Strip for online viewing. (via Joseph Dana at +972)

In early 2001 I spent three months in Gaza filming material for this documentary, GAZA STRIP, working with local fixer and translator, Mohammed Mohanna. The second Palestinian uprising against Israeli military occupation had begun in September, 2000, and there had already been large numbers of deaths in Gaza when I started this project.

Though the period this documentary covers includes the election of Ariel Sharon as Israeli Prime Minister and large incursions by the Israeli Defense Forces into Gaza, in retrospect the time depicted here is one of relative quiet. More recent Israeli attacks against Gaza have been far more destructive and deadly than what falls into the scope of this film.

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The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict

Adam Horowitz and Philip Weiss

Our dear friends Phil Weiss and Adam Horowitz of Mondoweiss at an event organized by Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) to launch of their new book The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict, an edited version of Judge Goldstone’s U.N. report documenting war crimes during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. It includes essays by Raji Sourani, Leila El-Haddad, Ali Abunimah, Rashid Khalidi, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Brian Baird, with a forward by Desmond Tutu and an introduction by Naomi Klein.

The event was chaired by Penny Rosenwasser of MECA. Also speaking at the event were Prof. George Bisharat of UC Hastings Law School and Barbara Lubin of MECA.

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Helen Thomas and the Political Cleansing of America

by James Abourezk

You remember Helen Thomas?  She was the senior White House Correspondent who always opened Presidential press conferences and closed them by saying the magic words:  “Thank you Mr. President.”  Her Wikipedia entry cites her professional accomplishments:

“Helen Thomas (born August 4, 1920) is an American author and former news service reporter, member of the White House Press Corps and opinion columnist.[1] She worked for the United Press International (UPI) for 57 years, first as a correspondent, and later as White House bureau chief. She was a columnist for Hearst Newspapers from 2000 to 2010, writing on national affairs and the White House. She covered every President of the United States from the last years of the Eisenhower administration until the second year of the Obama administration. She was the first female officer of the National Press Club, the first female member and president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, and the first female member of the Gridiron Club. She has written six books; her latest, with co-author Craig Crawford, is Listen Up, Mr. President: Everything You Always Wanted Your President to Know and Do (2009).”

Helen was cashiered from her position as a Hearst columnist after she answered a question by a Rabbi with a video camera who asked her to talk about Israel.  She answered—honestly—that the Israelis should get the hell out of Palestine.  The Rabbi’s follow up question was, “Where should they go?”

“Back where they came from,” she answered, citing Germany, Poland, and elsewhere.

Now, we all know that those countries that were so murderous and cruel to European Jews are not what they were in the 1940s.  But, judging from the reaction of the media, and from Abe Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League, one would have thought that she was sending Israeli Jews back to the 1940s.  It was a media firestorm that engulfed her, sending a message to anyone else who might stray from the official party line on Israel.

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Gaza children caught in the crossfire

In three days of fighting 18 Palestinians have been killed and dozens injured, while two Israelis have been wounded.

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Israel’s new assault on Gaza

Israeli air strikes on Gaza killed five and injured dozens more on Thursday, 7 April. (Ismael Mohamad/UPI)

The densely populated Gaza enclave is once again under Israeli aerial attack. Five people have been killed and over 30 injured already. Max Blumenthal calls the assault ‘Operation Goldstone,’ since Israel seems to be taking encouragement from the Judge’s partial retraction of his earlier report. Over at the Electronic Intifada Rami Almeghari reports:

As Palestinians were preparing for their weekend this Thursday afternoon, all of a sudden barrages of Israeli artillery fire and air raids by warplanes struck several regions of the Gaza Strip. Five Palestinians were killed and about thirty more injured.

Israeli shells struck farm land, homes, a mosque and an ambulance, and the injured were evacuated to al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza and the Abu Yousif al-Najjar hospital in southern Gaza…

Sources at the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City said that they received six injuries earlier this afternoon; among them were two women and several children.

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Open Letter to Justice Richard Goldstone

Reposted from the Coalition of Women for Peace website in response to Goldstone’s “reconsiderations” of the UN fact finding mission of the bloody incursion into Gaza.

 

April 5, 2011

Dear Justice Richard Goldstone,

The recent escalation in the Israeli army incursions into the Gaza strip is of grave concern to us at the Coalition of Women for Peace. The prospect of yet another flare out of large scale violence against civilians is alarming. Your recent comments on the Goldstone report are already interpreted by Israeli officials and the mainstream media channels as complete and full absolution of Israel’s military conduct in its entirety. Yet, the conclusions drawn from your statement with respect to Israel’s conduct during the Cast Lead military campaign and especially its aftermath are not backed by any new facts or findings. This seriously undermines the international, Israeli and Palestinian civil society struggle for accountability and against impunity from grave violations of human rights and humanitarian law.

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Conversations with History — Richard J. Goldstone

Justice Richard J. Goldstone discusses “The Rule of Law” with Harry Kreisler on Conversations with History.

Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Justice Richard J. Goldstone for a discussion of the role of law in transitions to democracy, in the prosecution of war crimes, and in the enforcement of the rules of war in the post 911 environment. Drawing on his experiences in South Africa, on his work as special prosecutor for the Bosnia and Rwanda tribunals, and for his leadership of the UN commission on the Gaza War, Justice Goldstone discusses the distinctive features of the South African transition, the ground breaking work that facilitated a breakthrough in the Bosnia conflict, and the goals and accomplishments of the commission examining the conduct of Hamas and Israel in the Gaza War. He concludes with lessons learned from his efforts to insure the rule of law.

My Journey to BDS

by Roger Waters

In 1980, a song I wrote, “Another Brick in the Wall Part 2,” was banned by the government of South Africa because it was being used by Black South African children to advocate their right to equal education. That apartheid government imposed a cultural blockade, so-to-speak, on certain songs, including mine.

Twenty-five years later, in 2005, Palestinian children participating in a West Bank festival used the song to protest Israel’s apartheid wall.  They sang “We don’t need no occupation! We don’t need no racist wall!”  At the time, I hadn’t seen first-hand what they were singing about.

A year later in 2006, I contracted to perform in Tel Aviv.

Palestinians from the movement advocating an academic and cultural boycott of Israel urged me to reconsider.  I had already spoken out against the wall, but I was unsure whether a cultural boycott was the right way to go. The Palestinian advocates of a boycott asked that I visit the occupied Palestinian territory, to see the Wall for myself before I made up my mind.  I agreed.

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