Category: Palestine

Concerns over Gaza blockade “ease”

Is it just me or does tony blair look like a dog being led around by Netanyahu?

AlJazeeraEnglish — 21 June 2010 — Israel has announced it will loosen its blockade on the Gaza Strip by allowing a greater variety of goods to enter the territory, which has been deprived of basic imports including medicine and construction material for more than three years.

The Israeli prime minister’s office said it will start prohibiting only items deemed as “weapons or war material” to mitigate security risks.

But specifics as to what constitutes “war material” have not been mentioned, fueling widespread fears that much needed items will remain banned from entering Gaza.

Al Jazeera’s Sherine Tadros reports from Jerusalem.

An AIPAC tool in progressive clothing

Florida Congressman Alan Grayson has emerged as something of a progressive hero in recent months. He also made a cameo on Democracy Now. Some of his initiatives, such as the “War Is Making You Poor” do indeed merit support. But as our friend Max Blumenthal revealed, the man moonlights as an AIPAC tool while off camera. In the US it is not uncommon for people to be progressive and extreme Zionists at the same time. They rarely get called on it (I don’t believe Bill Maher or Greg Palast have ever been). But Grayson finally had his comeuppance when he appeared on Scott Horton’s Antiwar Radio. Listen for yourself:

First ever boycott at US port in solidarity with Palestine

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Irish folk legend Tommy Sands joins the Sheikh Jarrah Protest

mariosavio — 19 June 2010 — Irish folk legend Tommy Sands performed in front of a crowd of hundreds of Israelis and Palestinians who came to the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood in East Jerusalem for the weekly Friday demonstration to protest against house evictions of Palestinians by Israeli courts and settlers.

After the performance, the demonstrators marched in the streets of the neighbourhood. Israeli police tried to prevent them from marching, but was unable to stop them due to the large numbers of demonstrators.

Football on the wall in Bethlehem

AlJazeeraEnglish — June 19, 2010 — Israel’s separation apartheid wall, twice the height of the former Berlin Wall and more than 750km-long, is a much hated barrier in the Palestinian West Bank.

Now, a restaurant owner in the occupied Palestinian West Bank has come up with unique way to please World Cup fans: he has been showing every match of the tournament on a section of the wall, transforming it into a giant screen.

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Lebanese aid flotilla “Virgin Mary” sets sail for Gaza


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Turkey’s regional popularity soars

AlJazeeraEnglish — 18 June 2010 — Turkey’s popularity in the Middle East has soared following its denunciation of Israel’s deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla last month. Turkish flags and posters of Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, have been prominent in demonstrations around the world protesting the Israeli attack. In the Gaza Strip, a growing number of newborn babies have been named after Erdogan. Meanwhile Turkey says it will not send its ambassador back to Israel unless it receives a formal apology for the attack, that left nine people, mostly Turks, dead.

Al Jazeera’s Rula Amin reports on Turkey’s rising popularity in the region.

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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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The housing apartheid in Palestine

Amnesty International has called on the Israeli authorities to end house demolitions which leave thousands of Palestinians living in daily fear of eviction from their homes…

According to the UN, in 2009 more than 600 Palestinians – over half of them children – lost their homes after they were demolished on order from the Israeli authorities.

“Palestinians living under Israeli occupation face such tight restrictions on what they can build and where that their right to adequate housing is being violated,” said Philip Luther, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

“The Israeli authorities are putting Palestinians in an impossible situation. Whatever choice they make, they face homelessness.

“The majority of people are denied building permits by Israel, even after lengthy and expensive bureaucratic and legal processes, so they have little choice but to go ahead without official permission. But as they do so, they know that these buildings may soon be flattened by Israeli bulldozers.”

Demolitions are generally carried out with no warning of the date, giving no opportunity for Palestinians to salvage their possessions or find elsewhere to shelter. The UN has estimated that some 4,800 demolition orders are pending.

Under Israeli law, evicted families are not entitled to alternative housing or compensation, meaning many would face homelessness and destitution were it not for relatives, friends and charities.

While homes are often targeted, Israeli authorities have also issued demolition orders against Palestinian schools, clinics, roads, water cisterns, electricity pylons, sheds and animal shelters.

You can view and download the report here (PDF).

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A Zionist State of Mind, A Dreamscape Of Ghosts: One Jew’s Hard Awakening

by Phil Rockstroh

Although my mother fled Nazi Germany, as a child, on a Kindertransport, with a few family valuables sewn into her clothing, and I was brought up on the myths and hagiography of the Zionist state, I, over time, came to recognize the folly of the whole colonialist enterprise — the folly of ethnic exclusion and expulsion, the inherent tragedy of nationalism based on the delusion of religious birthright. With much sorrow, I came to the sad realization that the dream of the State of Israel was based on European chauvinism and exceptionalism. This reckoning has been a difficult one for me to bear — the hardest awakening of my adult life.

My father was born on a Reservation in the American mid-west. His people, like the Palestinians, resisted invaders of European ancestry and were crushed. At present, both peoples remain exiled and caged in their native land.

The Jewish side of myself understands the historical traumas that gave rise to the yearning for a tribal Homeland.  Atavistically, I suffer the Jewish state’s collective night terrors and reel in its daylight rationalizations for its brutalities. But the Native American in me knows the rage of those crushed by the heartless force of an invading people.

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