Category: Israel

Raw Story: Congressional leaders inadvertently expose Israeli lobbyists behind letter to Obama

Oops! The lobby leaves its imprint revealing inappropriate machinations in writing letters for members of Congress (for starters). Raw Story’s John Byrne has the story (thanks Christian):

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GOP House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) circulated a letter to colleagues this week urging President Obama to support Israel when moving forward with any Israeli peace process.

Trouble is, they forgot to delete the name of the lobbying group involved in the letter from the document.

Attached to the email message they circulated when seeking signatures from other members of Congress was the document, titled, “AIPAC Letter Hoyer Cantor May 2009.pdf.”

AIPAC stands for the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, a powerful bipartisan pro-Israel lobbying group. Recently, the group found itself in the news over allegations that two former staff members were involved in espionage — though the Justice Department recently dropped the case against them and no wrongdoing was alleged against the group itself.

Continue reading “Raw Story: Congressional leaders inadvertently expose Israeli lobbyists behind letter to Obama”

Trivializing the Holocaust

The framing of Iran as an “existential threat” to Israel is shown up for the sham that it is in this critique by Israeli journalist Uri Avnery.

First of all, I want to apologize to all the good women who are engaged in the world’s oldest profession.

I recently described Shimon Peres as a political prostitute. One of my female readers has protested vigorously. Prostitutes, she pointed out, earn their money honestly. They deliver what they promise. Continue reading “Trivializing the Holocaust”

Breaking News: Journalist Amira Hass arrested while leaving Gaza

Amira Hass

This just in. Ha’aretz reports:

Israel Police on Tuesday detained Haaretz correspondent Amira Hass upon her exit from the Gaza Strip, where she had been living and reporting over the last few months.

Hass was arrested and taken in for questioning immediately after crossing the border, for violating a law which forbids residence in an enemy state. She was released on bail after promising not to enter the Gaza Strip over the next 30 days.

Hass is the first Israeli journalist to enter the Gaza Strip in more than two years, since the Israel Defense Forces issued an entry ban following the abduction of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit in a 2006 cross-border raid by Palestinian militants.

Last December, Hass was arrested by soldiers at the Erez Checkpoint as she tried to cross into Israel after having entered the Gaza Strip aboard a ship run by peace activists from Europe.

Upon discovering that she had no permit to be in Gaza, the soldiers transferred her to the Sderot police.

When questioned, Hass pointed out that no one had stopped her from entering the Strip, which she did for work purposes.

To read the rest click here.

‘Go back and die in Gaza’

Since Israel’s closure of the Gaza Strip in 2007, only severely sick Palestinians have been allowed to seek medical attention elsewhere provided they receive authorisation and security clearances from the Israeli authorities.However, getting the special permit that allows patients to leave Gaza for medical treatment is a bureaucratic hassle and, many Gazans say, comes with strings attached. According to the Israeli organisation Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), Palestinian patients are increasingly being asked to make an impossible choice: Either to become collaborators with the Israeli intelligence apparatus – or to remain in Gaza without medical treatment.

Al Jazeera spoke with Hadas Ziv, the director of PHR.

Al Jazeera: Your organisation has collected dozens of testimonies of patients who were pressured to collaborate with the Israeli General Security Services. How did you find out about this? A Palestinian will not easily admit he or she has been asked to become an informant.

Ziv: True; it is not a subject people talk about easily and it happened gradually. Our organisation tries to support Gazan patients who were prevented by the Israeli authorities from treatment in Israel, or from crossing Israel on their way to hospitals in the West Bank.

Instead of clear rejection or admittance, the Israelis started saying: “permit pending interrogation”. The permit became conditional – not so much on individual health conditions, but on the outcome of the interrogation at the Erez Crossing.

Continue reading “‘Go back and die in Gaza’”

Assault Leaves Debris in the Mind

Off the radar of the mainstream media, IPS’ David Cronin reports about the material and psychological traumas Palestinians are having to deal with in the aftermath of Israel’s brutal onslaught on Gaza.

GAZA CITY, May 11 (IPS) – Gazans have a colloquial term to describe the buzzing of Israeli warplanes that is an ever-present feature of their lives: zanana.

The gallows humour of likening instruments of death to honey bees might suggest that the people of this crowded sliver of land on the Mediterranean have found a way of coping with the occupation that has lasted more than four decades. Yet the planes also remind Palestinians of what they fear most: that they could come under fresh attack at any time.

The destruction to property caused by the 23-day bombardment which the Gaza Strip endured in December and January remains visible in many parts of its main city.

Continue reading “Assault Leaves Debris in the Mind”

US: Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who’s the Greatest Threat of All?

Daniel Luban and Jim Lobe of Inter Press Service give an insightful analysis of events in Washington over the past week. At the AIPAC conference Israel hawks espoused hyperbole towards the “existential threat” that Iran poses towards Israel in the fight to secure foreign policy agenda ahead of the more pressing ‘Af-Pak’ issue, as Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari conducted summit talks with President Obama.

WASHINGTON, May 10 (IPS) – A potentially major clash appears to be developing between powerful factions inside and outside the U.S. government, pitting those who see the Afghanistan/Pakistan (“AfPak”) theatre as the greatest potential threat to U.S. national security against those who believe that the danger posed by a nuclear Iran must be given priority.

The Iran hawks, concentrated within the Israeli government and its U.S. supporters in the so-called “Israel lobby” here, want to take aggressive action against Iran’s nuclear programme by moving quickly to a stepped-up sanctions regime. Continue reading “US: Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who’s the Greatest Threat of All?”

Israel ‘using tourist sites to assert control over East Jerusalem’

The Judaisation of Jersusalem continues reports Rory McCarthy. Israel is using its well-known tactic of building tourist sites on falsified Jewish ‘historical spots’ to erase the past of the indiginous population. Unfortunately McCarthy’s own historical account of the Israel-Palestine conflict only starts with Israel’s annexation of Gaza and the West Bank in 1967, rather than extending back to 1948 with the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, which would provide readers with the context required to understand how that same policy has continued since.

Israel is quietly extending its control over East Jerusalem in alliance with rightwing Jewish settler groups, by developing parks and tourist sites that would bring a “drastic change of the status quo in the city”, according to two Israeli groups.

Ir Amin, a group working for a shared Jerusalem, said the purpose of the “confidential” plan was to link up several areas of East Jerusalem surrounding the Old City with the goal of asserting Israeli control and strengthening its claim to Jerusalem as its capital city. Israel captured East Jerusalem in 1967 and later annexed it, a move not recognised by the international community. Continue reading “Israel ‘using tourist sites to assert control over East Jerusalem’”

Israel ‘targeted UN buildings’ during Gaza war

The UN has accused Israel of failing to respect its property and assets during the Gaza war early this year.

In a damning report, a UN panel review of nine incidents blamed the Israeli army’s direct and intentional strikes in seven of them, and recommended further investigations into alleged war crimes.

UN chief denies Gaza report ‘watered down’

Continue reading “Israel ‘targeted UN buildings’ during Gaza war”

David Hare performs ‘Wall’

Playwright David Hare reads his monologue Wall, an exploration of the impact—on both Israelis and Palestinians—of the barrier built to divide Israel from the West Bank. Hare will be performing Wall, along with a companion monologue, Berlin, at the Public Theater in New York City, May 14-17.