Al Jazeera’s Inside Story features interviews on regional and US responses to Netanyahu’s US-pitched speech, though the episode has the somewhat overstated title ‘US-Israeli ties under pressure’ (would that they were!). Kamahl Santamaria talks to Abdul-Bari Atwan, Editor-in-chief of Al Quds Al-Arabi; Patrick Seale, veteran Middle East analyst; and Aaron Miller, former US State Department adviser. While Al Jazeera is not without its own editorial biases, Abdul-Bari Atwan’s views are well aired and merit attention here.
Category: Israel
On the pretence of peace
A guest op-ed from Brenda Heard of Friends of Lebanon.
On Sunday 14 June 2009, hours before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a statement announcing his expectations of the international community, Israeli F-16 jets dropped several bombs along the southern Gaza border. The Israeli military said it was targeting underground tunnels. Four Palestinians were wounded. (More on the exchange of hostilities here and here.)
As the Palestinians were being treated in hospital, Netanyahu proclaimed, “Peace has always been our people’s most ardent desire.” In fact the speech was interwoven with Hallmark-Greeting-Card-messages of tranquil harmony. “If we join hands and work together for peace. . . .”
Cut the violins. In essence, Netanyahu stated that he expected the international community to support his desire to turn his holy land into his Disney land so as to regain the tourist trade needed to bolster an ailing Israeli economy. We could make this whole Palestinian problem go away, he said, if we simply ignore those we forced out and bend those remaining into complete submission. Lest anyone get the wrong idea, though, we’ll let them keep a flag and a song. Just to prove how civilised we are.
The winds of change?
Two bits of very good news emerge today.
First, following on the publication of Dennis Ross’ new book on how to use negotiations to launch a war against Iran, Haaretz is reporting that Ross is being relieved of his duties as Obama’s point man on Iran. It is as if this current Obama administration will not offer all the support possible to warmongers to kill as much Muslims as possible! Poor Ross must be pining for the good days of American foreign policy, where lust for war against Muslims seemed like a precondition for joining any foreign policy team.
Second, the American people, it seems, have had enough with the incestuous relationship of their government with the regime of Tel Aviv. In a few months, the percentage of Americans who say the US should support Israel has dropped from 71% to 44%. The Israel Project (a propaganda outfit that makes AIPAC look reasoned) conducted the poll, though it refuses to publish its results officially. Could it be the mass murder in Gaza? The apartheid in the West Bank? Or could it be the rhetoric of Bibi and his fascist buddies? Or was it, perhaps, the Israeli ministerial calls for regime change in America?
Not all is well in America’s Zionistan. Are these two bits of news a turning point in the American-Israeli relationship? We’ll have to wait and see.
Phyllis Bennis on Obama’s Cairo speech
This week from CounterSpin – “Barack Obama has either been currying favor with Muslims or extending an olive branch in the Middle East depending on which media you consume. We’ll talk with Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies about Obama’s major speech in Cairo, and the size of the gap between words and actions.”
Phyllis Bennis on CounterSpin (9:46): MP3
Smile on the face of the tiger
In his latest column, John Pilger de-codes the Obama’s “historic” speech in Cairo “reaching out to the Muslim world”. However seductive, its content was as morally bankrupt as any of Bush’s spiels.
At 7.30 in the morning on 3 June, a seven-month-old baby died in the intensive care unit of the European Gaza Hospital in the Gaza Strip. His name was Zein Ad-Din Mohammed Zu’rob, and he was suffering from a lung infection which was treatable.
Denied basic equipment, the doctors in Gaza could do nothing. For weeks, the child’s parents had sought a permit from the Israelis to allow them to take him to a hospital in Jerusalem, where he would have been saved. Like many desperately sick people who apply for these permits, the parents were told they had never applied. Even if they had arrived at the Erez Crossing with an Israeli document in their hands, the odds are that they would have been turned back for refusing the demands of officials to spy or collaborate in some way.
Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid
For those who refuse to accept the brutal reality on the ground, the Human Sciences Research Council of South 
Africa has produced a new detailed legal report which confirms “that Israel is practicing both colonialism and apartheid in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).” The study was commissioned to “test the hypothesis posed by Professor John Dugard in the report he presented to the UN Human Rights Council in January 2007, in his capacity as UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the OPT:
Israel is clearly in military occupation of the OPT. At the same time, elements of the occupation constitute forms of colonialism and of apartheid, which are contrary to international law. What are the legal consequences of a regime of prolonged occupation with features of colonialism and apartheid for the occupied people, the Occupying Power and third States?
On the specific question of colonialism the report unambiguously states that:
“Five issues, which are unlawful in themselves, taken together make it evident that Israel’s rule in the OPT has assumed such a colonial character: namely, violations of the territorial integrity of occupied territory; depriving the population of occupied territory of the capacity for selfgovernance; integrating the economy of occupied territory into that of the occupant; breaching the principle of permanent sovereignty over natural resources in relation to the occupied territory; and denying the population of occupied territory the right freely to express, develop and practice its culture” (pp. 15-16). Furthermore, “Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem is manifestly an act based on colonial intent” (ibid.).
Concerning the charge of apartheid, the report states:
By examining Israel’s practices in the light of Article 2 of the Apartheid Convention, this study concludes that Israel has introduced a system of apartheid in the OPT (p. 17)
The Israel democracy fraud
Caryl Churchill’s play, Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza, is due to be performed in Israel and directed by Samieh Jabbarin. Jabbarin is a Palestinian citizen of Israel political prisoner, and he will direct the play via telephone. Seldom one hears about the conditions of the Palestinians living in what is considered to be Israel. Jabbarin’s case illustrates the fraud implied by the term “Israeli democracy” or, even worse, “Jewish democracy”.
Jabbarin was imprisoned because he was demonstrating against the appointment of a notorious Jewish fascist as election observer in Um al Fahm, a Palestinian city in Israel. A petition on Jabbarin’s case demonstrates the Kafkaesque nature of what passes for “democracy” and “justice” in Israel:
Continue reading “The Israel democracy fraud”
Regime change comes home to roost
Antiwar.com brings us news that Israeli minister Yossi Peled is seeking sanctions and regime change… against the USA!
Peled is calling for the Israeli government to seek to influence American elections and cutting trade ties with America. This, let’s remember, is coming from a minister of the country that has received more aid from the US than all of Sub-Saharan Africa combined. Israeli politicians are now so comfortable with their relationship with America they talk about America in the same way America talks about minor Latin American rogue states.
For those, like me, who are skeptical of whether the Obama Administration is going to offer any real change on US policy towards Israel, stories like this offer cause for optimism.
Team Obama may not do enough to pressure Israel, but with fundamentalist misanthropes filling every cabinet post in Israel, there is every chance that it is the Israelis who will bring about an Israeli-American split with their antagonism.
Destroying houses and lives, the israeli way
Two videos highlight the plight of Palestinians whose homes have been destroyed. The first features the courageous activism of israeli Ezra Nawi, who had tried to stop military bulldozers from destroying the homes of Palestinian Bedouins in the South Hebron region. (Yes, those are IOF soldiers callously laughing in the aftermath of home demolitions). Nawi, a Jewish Israeli of Iraqi descent, is viewed as a threat because he has brought international attention to efforts to illegally remove Palestinians from the Hebron region. He will be sentenced in July and a campaign is underway to rally to his cause. The second clip is from the Guardian’s Inigo Gilmore who visits the devastated neighbourhoods in Gaza to find that families are still living among the rubble, in tents.
Support Israeli Human Rights Activist Ezra Nawi – http://www.supportezra.net
Continue reading “Destroying houses and lives, the israeli way”
Israel lobby descends on UC-Santa Barbara
The Anti-Defamation League and the Israel advocacy group “Stand With Us” are leading an aggressive, direct campaign to pressure UCSB administrators and faculty to investigate and discipline Professor of Sociology William I. Robinson for having introduced materials critical of Israel in a course on global affairs. The UCSB academic senate opened an official inquiry alleging “academic misconduct” and “anti-semitism”, following complaints by two students in response to an email Robinson sent out to his class during Israel’s war on Gaza. The email consisted of an article published in the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle by Judith Stone, who had recently returned from the occupied territories (the editor responsible was fired the next day), a photo essay which juxtaposed Nazi atrocities against Jews in WWII and Israeli atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza and the following commentary:
If Martin Luther King, Jr. Were alive on this day of January 19, 2009, there is no doubt that he would be condemning the Israeli aggression against Gaza along with u.s. military and political support for Israeli war crimes, or that he would be standing shoulder to shoulder with the Palestinians. I am forwarding some horrific, parallel images of Nazi atrocities against the Jews and Israeli atrocities against the Palestinians. Perhaps the most frightening are not those providing a graphic depiction of the carnage but that which shows Israeli children writing “with love” on a bomb that will tear apart Palestinian children.
Continue reading “Israel lobby descends on UC-Santa Barbara”
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