Category: Israel

Gaza, remember?

Gideon Levy writes that “it’s exactly three months since the much-talked-about war, and Gaza is once again forgotten. Israel has never taken an interest in the welfare of its victims. Now the world has forgotten, too.”

Alyan Abu-Aun is lying in his tent, his crutches beside him. He smokes cigarettes and stares into the tiny tent’s empty space. His young son sits on his lap. Ten people are crammed into the tent, about the size of a small room. It has been their home for three months. Nothing remains of their previous home, which the Israel Defense Forces shelled during Operation Cast Lead. They are refugees for a second time; Abu-Aun’s mother still remembers her home in Sumsum, a town that once stood near Ashkelon.
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Israel’s Racist in Chief

Chris Hedges on Israel’s Racist in Chief Avigdor Lieberman.

Israel’s new foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, stands in a field just outside the Gaza Strip. Lieberman’s right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu Party had an impressive showing in Israel’s recent election, campaigning with the slogan “Without loyalty, there is no citizenship.”
Israel’s new foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, stands in a field just outside the Gaza Strip. Lieberman’s right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu Party had an impressive showing in Israel’s recent election, campaigning with the slogan “Without loyalty, there is no citizenship.”

It was unthinkable, when I was based as a correspondent in Jerusalem two decades ago, that an Israeli politician who openly advocated ethnically cleansing the Palestinians from Israeli-controlled territory, as well as forcing Arabs in Israel to take loyalty oaths or be forcibly relocated to the West Bank, could sit on the Cabinet. The racist tirades of Jewish proto-fascists like Meir Kahane stood outside the law, were vigorously condemned by most Israelis and were prosecuted accordingly. Kahane’s repugnant Kach Party, labeled by the United States, Canada and the European Union as a terrorist organization, was outlawed by the Israeli government in 1988 for inciting racism.
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Support Grows for One Democratic State in Palestine

Nadia Hijab loses her agnosticism concerning the one-state solution.

Ehud Olmert’s nightmare is at hand. Not only does the former Israeli prime minister now really have to fight those corruption charges. He also faces the realization of his fears that the Palestinians might give up on a two-state solution in favor of a struggle for equal rights that would mean, as he put it, the “end of the Jewish state.”
Yo, Ehud, that struggle is a growing movement, and it isn’t a threat to Jews – on the contrary, Jews are very much a part of it.

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Obama Team Debates Stance on Israeli Attack Threat

And another excellent analysis of the US-Israel-Iran triangle and the machinations within the new Obama administration concerning a possible Israeli ‘pre-emptive’ strike against Iran by Jim Lobe and Gareth Porter

A recent statement by the chief of the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), Gen. David Petraeus, that Israel may decide to attack Iranian nuclear sites has been followed by indications of a debate within the Barack Obama administration on whether Israel’s repeated threats to carry out such a strike should be used to gain leverage in future negotiations with Tehran.

In the latest twist, Vice President Joseph Biden, who has been put in charge of the administration’s non-proliferation agenda, appeared to reject the idea. “I don’t believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu would [launch a strike],” he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Tuesday. “I think he would be ill-advised to do that.”
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Israel created ‘terror without mercy’ in Gaza

More evidence of Israel’s state terrorism comes to light. Following charges of war crimes by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Guardian’s own investigative team, a new report commissioned by Physicians for Human Rights-Israel and the Palestinian Medical Relief Society accuses Israel of  “creating terror without mercy to anyone” and “terrorising the population.” Here’s a rather bland summary of the report by the Guardian’s Rory McCarthy:

The Israeli military attacked civilians and medics and delayed – sometimes for hours – the evacuation of the injured during the January war in Gaza, according to an independent fact-finding mission commissioned by Israeli and Palestinian medical human rights groups.

Physicians for Human Rights-Israel and the Palestinian Medical Relief Society yesterday said their findings showed Israel’s military committed serious violations of international humanitarian law. In their 92-page report, compiled by five senior health experts from across the world, they documented several specific attacks, with interviews from 44 separate witnesses.

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Focus on Gaza – Legacy of war

Focus on Gaza takes a closer look at one deadly legacy of the war on Gaza – unexploded munitions. Plus, we examine the obstacles facing young Gazans as they attempt to pursue an education.

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Suicide Bombers and their Families

681686_02Amira Hass speaking at the University of California, Berkeley, in October 2003, on suicide bombers and their families.

Hass has gained a deep understanding of the phenomenon of suicide bombing and explains her intriguing findings; such as that often families of would-be bombers alert the police themselves, jail being preferable to the death of a loved one.

Suicide Bombers and their Families (58:04): MP3


Lost in the Buffer Zone

Editors Note: In the light of Bartlett’s recent activities and reporting, we believe there is reason to be sceptical of her commitment to truth so we cannot vouch for any of her past claims. 

Eva Bartlett’s latest report from Gaza, this time describing the struggles for survival of Palestinian farmers living in the ‘buffer zone’ border area with Israel.

“They’re always shooting at us. Every day they shoot at us,” says Alaa Samour (19), pulling aside his shirt to show a scar on his shoulder. Samour said he was shot on Dec. 28 last year by Israeli soldiers positioned along the border fence near New Abassan village, east of Khan Younis in the south of the Gaza Strip.

“We were cutting parsley like we do almost every day, and the soldiers began shooting. We started crawling away. When I got out of the line of fire I realised my shoulder was bleeding and that I had been shot.”

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It’s a Lieberman Government

Uri Avnery opines that “on the first day of the new Israeli government, the fog cleared: it’s a Lieberman government. ”

The day started with a celebration at the president’s office. All the members of this bloated government – 30 ministers and eight deputy ministers – were dressed up in their best finery and posed for a group photo. Binyamin Netanyahu read an uninspired speech, which included the worn-out clichés that are necessary to set the world at ease: the government is committed to peace, it will negotiate with the Palestinian Authority, blah, blah, blah.

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Changing the rules of war

An excellent article by George Bisharat, Professor of Law at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, on the possibly disastrous implications of Israel’s latest attack on Gaza for international law. Israel has long sought to frame its actions as falling under the legal doctrines of ‘armed conflict’ instead of ones governed by the laws of occupation – the former permitting far greater uses of force. Bisharat warns that “this shift, if accepted, would encourage occupiers to follow Israel’s lead, externalizing military control while shedding all responsibilities to occupied populations.”

The extent of Israel’s brutality against Palestinian civilians in its 22-day pounding of the Gaza Strip is gradually surfacing. Israeli soldiers are testifying to lax rules of engagement tantamount to a license to kill. One soldier commented: “That’s what is so nice, supposedly, about Gaza: You see a person on a road, walking along a path. He doesn’t have to be with a weapon, you don’t have to identify him with anything and you can just shoot him.”

What is less appreciated is how Israel is also brutalizing international law, in ways that may long outlast the demolition of Gaza.

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