Category: Occupation

Feeling the Loyalty to the Jewish State of Israel

By Max Blumenthal and Joseph Dana

The Israeli Knesset is debating a bill proposed by David Rotem of the extreme right Yisrael Beiteinu party that would require all Israeli citizens to swear loyalty to Israel as a “Jewish and democratic state.” This bill is targeted at increasing pressure on the twenty percent of Israelis who are Palestinian citizens while forcing the ultra Orthodox Jewish minority who reject the legitimacy of any state not based on Jewish biblical law to accept Zionism. If passed in its proposed form, citizens unwilling to take the loyalty oath would be at risk of losing citizenship.

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Iraq War reparations

You thought it won’t happen. You were wrong. Finally reparations for the suffering caused by the war are in order…by the Iraqis to the United States! Yes–you heard it right. The United States–which has killed over 2.4 million Iraqis since 1991 and displaced 5 million more–will be paid $400 million by the Iraqis in war reparations.

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Jamal Juma: The real obstacle to peace in the Levant is the presence of a criminal, racist state

Illegal settlements on Palestinian land are one of the biggest stumbling blocks for these talks. The Palestinians have warned that they will walk out of talks if a freeze on settlement construction, which is set to expire at the end of the month, is not extended. Danni Dayan, Chairman of the Settlers Council in Jerusalem, and Jamal Jumaa, a Palestinian activist in Ramallah, debate the issues facing their leaders.

Thousands join Kashmir protests

Tens of thousands of people across Indian-administered Kashmir have joined protests against Indian rule in the Himalayan region. The Indian police has been battling to contain demonstrations for months, ignited by the killing of a 17-year-old student by police in June.

Al Jazeera’s Nilanjan Chowdhury reports.

“Truth Alone Triumphs”: of David, Goliath, Stones, and Speech

“Azadi” is also the chant whose echoes swirl in the Kashmir Valley with greater resonance each day, from the minarets and playgrounds, boulevards and alleys, schools and courts, despite the crushing screeches of teargas and bullets of the Indian (in)security forces. It is “scriptured” into utterance by each breath of Kashmiri women, children, and men; calligraphed by their blood on their emerald valley; embroidered by their bones in Kashmiri Arabesque on worn cobblestones of the downtown; and papier-mâchéd in paisley tears on the blue of their beloved lakes.

by Huma Dar

“A Defiant Kashmiri woman being frisked by Indian Security Forces.” 2007. Uncredited photograph from a Kashmiri blogger

 

And the night’s sun there in Srinagar?  Guns shoot stars into the sky, the storm of constellations night after night, the infinite that rages on.  It was Id-uz-Zuha: a record of God’s inability, for even He must melt sometimes, to let Ishmael be executed by the hand of his father.  Srinagar was under curfew.  The identity pass may or may not have helped in the crackdown.  Son after son–never to return from the night of torture–was taken away.

… But the reports are true, and without song: mass rapes in the villages, towns left in cinders, neighborhoods torched.  “Power is hideous / like a barber’s hands.”  The rubble of downtown Srinagar stares at me from the Times.

… And that blesséd word with no meaning–who will utter it?  What is it?  Will the women pronounce it, as if scripturing the air, for the first time?  Or the last?

… What is the blesséd word?  Mandelstam gives no clue.  One day the Kashmiris will pronounce that word truly for the first time.  (Excerpt from Agha Shahid Ali’s “The Blesséd Word: A Prologue,” in The Country Without A Post Office,  1997: 16-17)

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Peaches

by Arif Ayaz Parrey

Can I tell how much I love peaches?
Not ordinary ones
But those plucked from
The orchards along Jhelum

The ones in the basket before me
Are nebrim for sure
But they blush like a home-grown innocence
And hold as many juicy promises

I wonder what tree bore them
I wonder if it’s wise to ignore them

The tree of life
Has many buried roots

It is said that my only son
Was killed under the canopy
Of the branches of one such tree
By the army
Also known as the security forces
An old joke
What do they secure
These so-called security forces?
Not the people, not our lives, not our liberty
Not our sentiments, nor our emotions, not our sanity
Not our sons who are shot
Nor our daughters who are raped
Not the truth, not the facts, not humanity

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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.

Getting Out of Palestine?

by M. Shahid Alam

When veteran journalist Helen Thomas was asked recently if she had any comments on Israel, she shot back, “Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine.” She apologized for the remark, but, as the campaign against her escalated, she chose to retire from her position as White House correspondent.

Putting aside the edginess in her words, does Helen Thomas’s remark deserve serious consideration?

Over the years, it has been receiving just that from many tens of thousands of Israelis, who have been emigrating from Israel, applying for emigration, or staying in Israel but holding or applying for dual citizenship. According to Arnaud de Borchgrave, half a million Israelis hold dual citizenship.

Although the Israel lobby expressed particular outrage at Helen Thomas’ suggestion that Israelis go back to Germany and Poland, many Israelis have done precisely that. In his book, The Seventh Million, Tom Segev writes that many thousands of Israelis have “requested and received German passports.” According to the Jewish Virtual Library, there were 118,000 Jews living in Germany in 2006. Another 49,700 lived in Hungary and 3,200 in Poland.

Disconcerting as some Zionists may find this, Jews have not stayed away from countries where they faced near extermination under the Nazis. Does this mean that these countries are now safer for Jews than Israel?

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Occupation 101 by Jimmy Carter

Also, check out the recent article by the brilliant Amira Hass, Lexicon of most misleading terms in Israeli-Palestinian conflict, for a much-needed factual and historical corrective to the amnesia that too often afflicts mainstream journalists covering the issue. Incidentally, she has this to say about the discourse of “(non-)violent resistance”, raised by Robin Yassin-Kassab in an essay published earlier on P U L S E:

When we define the struggle against foreign rule as “non-violent” or “violent,” it’s as if we asked the occupied to prove their resistance is kosher (or not ). And to whom? The very foreign ruler who considers boycotting settlement products to be unkosher. The adjectives “non-violent” or “violent” presume that the occupation is a natural state of affairs, whose violence is permitted, a civilized norm meant to tame its subjects. “A non-violent struggle” therefore diverts attention from the fact that forced rule is based on the use of violence. Every soldier at a roadblock, every camera on the separation fence, every military edict, a supermarket in a settlement and an Israeli diaper factory on Palestinian land – they are all part of the nonstop violence.

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Can Obama make “peace” in the Middle East

Our dear friend Phil Weiss makes the most impressive interventions in this debate. He is also the first we have seen who knows how to handle Tim Sebastien well.

Doha Debates takes on the potential for a US brokered deal in the Middle East.