Category: Israel

The Real Bibi: Netanyahu Brags About Manipulating US, Sabotaging Oslo Accords

Recorded in 2001 during the second intifada, Netanyahu is captured on film bragging about destroying Oslo whilst visiting Israelis on a ‘condolence call’ in the occupied Palestinian West Bank. Israel’s Channel 10 recently broadcast the video, which records Netanyahu’s unguarded comments about his first term as prime minister from 1996-99, including a boast that America can “easily be moved”.

Gideon Levy notes in ‘Tricky Bibi‘: “No more claims that the Palestinians are to blame for the failure of the Oslo Accords. Netanyahu exposed the naked truth to his hosts at Ofra: he destroyed the Oslo accords with his own hands and deeds, and he’s even proud of it. After years in which we were told that the Palestinians are to blame, the truth has emerged from the horse’s mouth.”

Also check out John Cole’s ‘Flying the flag‘ cartoon in The Times-Tribune.

Translation by Dena Shunra (via Richard Silverstein):

Bibi:…The Arabs are currently focusing on a war of terror and they think it will break us. The main thing, first of all, is to hit them. Not just one blow, but blows that are so painful that the price will be too heavy to be borne. The price is not too heavy to be borne, now. A broad attack on the Palestinian Authority. To bring them to the point of being afraid that everything is collapsing…

Woman: Wait a moment, but then the world will say “how come you’re conquering again?”

Netanyahu: the world won’t say a thing. The world will say we’re defending.

Woman: Aren’t you afraid of the world, Bibi?

Netanyahu: Especially today, with America. I know what America is. America is something that can easily be moved. Moved to the right direction.

Continue reading “The Real Bibi: Netanyahu Brags About Manipulating US, Sabotaging Oslo Accords”

Is the spray can mightier than the sword?

This is the question posed by photojournalist William Parry at the start of his new book Against the Wall: The Art of Resistance in Palestine (Pluto Press, May 2010), in which he documents graffiti artwork on the West Bank Wall and the stories of Palestinians whose lives are affected by said monstrosity.

Below is the introduction to the book, which has been endorsed by political cartoonist Joe Sacco, among others.

Check back early next week for a selection of images from Against the Wall.

***

In December 2007, the celebrated and famously elusive British street artist, Banksy, and a London-based organisation called Pictures on Walls, relocated their annual ‘squat art concept store’ called Santa’s Ghetto from London to Bethlehem and invited 14 other international street artists to join him to work with Palestinian artists. The concept was simple: the artists would make artwork available for sale by auction to the public – but those wanting to buy an original work of art by Banksy or the others had to physically go to Bethlehem, witness Israel’s occupation and checkpoints, and bid in person. The artists also used the opportunity to utilise the Wall as a giant billboard for their own political messages with some massive, stunning images – wall spaces throughout the city were also populated with work that challenged or subverted understandings about the reality faced by Palestinians under occupation. Within a few short weeks, Santa’s Ghetto had raised over $1 million from art sales for local charities and brought Bethlehem and the Wall to the world’s attention in a way that transcended language and engaged millions who wouldn’t ordinarily take an interest in Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. Just as important, it sent a message to the people of Palestine: you are not alone in your struggle.

Continue reading “Is the spray can mightier than the sword?”

Vote Sestak!

There presumably were not enough organizations lobbying for Israel. The neoconservatives — i.e., the Likud wing of the Israel lobby — have established a new one: the Emergency Committee for Israel. They have just smoked out their first ‘terrorist lover’: Admiral Joe Sestak. It turns out the man doesn’t put the interests of a foreign country ahead of his own. One would have thought such rogues were permanently banished from the Senate. What next: a patriot? (more here, here, here, and here).

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It’s all about the lobby: Finkelstein on the Bibi-Obama lovefest

Obama’s pandering was all about concern over losing campaign contributions from wealthy Jewish donors in the upcoming elections, says Finkelstein.

Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu, suffering on the global front after a string of setbacks, is meeting with US President Barack Obama in Washington to discuss a range of thorny issues. Norman Finkelstein, author of “A Farewell to Israel: The coming break-up of American Zionism”, shares his view on US-Israeli ‘unbreakable’ bond.

Gaza farmers risk being shot

And the world continues to tolerate all this…

As a Libyan backed aid ship sails for the Gaza Strip, another group of international activists has been defying the blockade, but this time on the land. Foreigners acting as human shields have been helping farmers in Gaza harvest their crops. About 30 per cent of Gaza’s arable land is on the border with Israel and the area has been declared a buffer zone by the Israeli army. Palestinian farmers risk being shot with live fire for working their fields.

Nicole Johnston reports from Bani Salah.

The Ghetto in the Ghetto

by Michal Schwartz

The past year has witnessed two cases of discrimination in the religious schools [in Israel]: ultraorthodox Jews of West European descent (Ashkenazis) discriminating against ultraorthodox Jews of darker hues. In August 2009, private religious schools in Petach Tikva refused to admit Ethiopian Jews. In response, the Education Ministry threatened to withdraw financial support for these schools and even to shut them down. In this way it compelled them to admit a hundred pupils.

The second, more recent instance occurred at the ultraorthodox West Bank settlement of Immanuel, where a Hasidic group known as the Slonim is dominant. In September 2008 the Slonim separated their daughters from the Mizrahi girls in the settlement’s school. (Mizrahis, also known as Sephardim, derive from North Africa and Arab lands.) The Slonim built a plaster wall the length of the school and put a fence through its yard, covering it with canvas so that their daughters wouldn’t see the Mizrahis. They changed the hours of the breaks and forbade association between the groups.

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Israel: A Failing Colonial Project

by M. Shahid Alam

Increasingly, despite its early military and political successes, Israel cannot for long endure as a colonial project. It must choose between wars – and destruction – or transition to a state for all its peoples.

In order to firmly secure its existence – as firmly as that is possible for any state – a settler state has to overcome three challenges. It has to solve the native problem; break away from its mother country; and gain the recognition of neighboring states and peoples. It can be shown that Israel has not met any of these conditions.

Consider Israel’s native problem. In 1948, in the months before and after its creation, Israel appeared to have solved its native problem in one fell swoop. It had expelled 80 percent of the Palestinians from the territories it had conquered. In addition, with the rapid influx of Arab Jews, Palestinians were soon reduced to less than ten percent of Israel’s population.

So, had Israel licked its native problem for good? Not really.

The Palestinians inside Israel pushed back with a high natural rate of growth in their numbers. As a result, despite the continuing influx of Jewish immigrants, the Palestinian share in Israel’s population has grown to above 20 percent. Increasingly, Jews in Israel see Israeli Arabs as a threat to their Jewish state. Some are advocating a fresh round of ethnic cleansing. Others are calling for a new partition to exclude areas with Arab majorities.

The Palestinians expelled from Israel in 1948 did not go away either. Most of them set up camp in areas around Israel – the West Bank, Gaza, southern Lebanon and Jordan. In 1967, when Israel conquered Gaza and the West Bank, it could expel a much smaller fraction of the Palestinians from these territories. In consequence, with more than a million additional Palestinians under its control, Israeli had recreated its native problem.

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How Gilad Shalit Will Save Netanyahu

Mosaic Intelligence Report: Netanyahu says he will release 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in return for Gilad Shalit. 
Why the sudden change of heart? And will Netanyahu survive?

Palestinian homes under threat

A tragedy for the Palestinians, an outrage for the world, and another slap in the face of the American president.

In Silwan, a Palestinian neighbourhood near Jerusalem’s Old City, Israeli settlers are increasingly encroaching on Palestinians’ land. Tension there are high after the Jerusalem municipality approved a controversial plan to demolish 22 Palestinian homes to make way for a park and shopping complex. The European Union has warned Israel over its plans to demolish dozens of Palestinian homes in occupied East Jerusalem. “Settlements and the demolition of homes are illegal under international law, constitute an obstacle to peace, and threaten to make a two-state solution impossible,” a statement issued by Catherine Ashton, the EU’s foreign policy chief, said.

Al Jazeera’s Sherine Tadros visited the families whose homes are threatened by Israel’s demolition plans.

Brand Israel: I Hear the Congo Has Some Lovely Views

Gaza Views

Israel’s (fishy) acceptance into the OECD isn’t really a surprise, when you look into this Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development:

It defines itself as a forum of countries committed to democracy and the market economy… [Wikipedia]

“Democracy” and “market economy” (aka “capitalism”) have long been Israel’s reiterated mantras, in an attempt to cosy up to other “developed” countries of the world, that use the same phrasing in order to back up their military or economic exploitation of “less developed” people within and without. In fact, this seems to be a very natural coupling.

Continue reading “Brand Israel: I Hear the Congo Has Some Lovely Views”