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Erasing the Nakba

By Neve Gordon

I first heard about the Nakba in the late 1980s, while I was an undergraduate student of philosophy at Hebrew University. This, I believe, is a revealing fact, particularly since, as a teenager, I was a member of Peace Now and was raised in a liberal home. I grew up in the southern city of Be'er-Sheva, which is just a few kilometres from several unrecognised Bedouin villages that, today, are home to thousands of residents who were displaced in 1948. I now know that the vast majority of the Negev's Bedouin population was not as lucky, and that, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, most Bedouin either fled or were expelled from their ancestral lands to Jordan or Gaza.

How is it possible that a left-leaning Israeli teenager who was living in the Negev during the early 1980s (I graduated from high-school in 1983) had never heard the word "Nakba"?

How, in other words, is collective amnesia engendered?

There are many explanations of how master narratives are created and how they suppress and marginalise competing historical accounts. In addition to the work carried out by state institutions and apparata, this careful erasure also demands the ongoing mobilisation of scholars, novelists and artists - as well as other producers of popular culture.

When I was growing up, the history depicted in Israeli high-school textbooks, as well as the historical narrative promulgated by the mass media (there was only one television channel in Israel at the time, which was government run), was validated by famous novelists and public intellectuals. According to a PhD thesis written by Alon Gan from Tel Aviv University, Amos Oz, for example, interviewed soldiers after the 1967 war and used his editorial prerogative to excise descriptions of abuse in order to produce an image of the moral Israeli combatant.

Thinking back to the days when I was involved in Peace Now, I now realise that, even for most Israeli doves at the time, a conflicted history only emerged post-1967 - with the occupation of the Sinai, West Bank, Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights. Accordingly, the solution offered by Peace Now addressed the wrongs created in 1967, but had nothing to say about 1948. Indeed, I do not recall any reference to the Palestinian refugees in their publications. The seamless way in which the state had managed to completely suture the happenings of 1948, even among the Israeli peace camp, was indeed remarkable.

To be sure, the Nakba existed in the landscape. There are hundreds of ruined Palestinian villages throughout Israel, many of which are still surrounded by the sabra cactus. The Nakba also emerged in a handful of literary works. S Yizhar's novella Khirbet Khizehre counts, for instance, how a group of Israeli soldiers laid siege to a Palestinian village and how they meticulously followed their "operation orders" by clearing the area of "hostile forces". The unnamed narrator details how they "assemble the inhabitants of the area ... load them onto transports, and convey them across [the] lines", and, finally, they "blow up the stone houses, and burn the huts". Published a few months after the 1948 war, the novella aroused a public debate, but for some reason neither the novella nor the ruins of villages across the countryside managed to register among the Jewish Israeli population.

Despite the Nakba's immediacy, many tactics have been successfully deployed to hide its traces. Often critics mention in this context Israel's ongoing scheme of planting forests on ruined Palestinian villages, but in my view the severe segregation characterising Israeli society has a much more profound impact. The actual geographical distance separating me from Bedouin youth my age was negligible, but the social spaces we occupied were worlds apart. The segregation was so intense that I never actually met, needless to say, played with, Bedouin children. I accordingly did not have any opportunity to hear their stories.

After all, history often emerges from quotidian details, like where one's grandparents came from. Mine emigrated to Mandate Palestine from Russia and Poland and I went to visit them at their kibbutz on most school vacations. Tragically, Jewish and Bedouin youth never had the occasion to share such information with each other.

Palestinian Rights

The Nakba, both as a word and as a historical phenomenon, began to surface among Jews in Israel - and indeed in the international arena - following a series of publications by the "new historians", whose writings spurred ferocious debates about Israel's role in creating the Palestinian refugee problem. Perhaps the most influential of these was Benny Morris' The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, which appeared in 1987 - almost four decades after Yizhar's novella.

Other historians such as Ilan Pappe, sociologists such as Baruch Kimmerling and geographers such as Oren Yiftachel took part in this debate, and, despite harsh attacks (often of a personal nature), they began to disrupt Israel's master narrative - which, until then, had placed all of the blame on Arab leaders. These Israeli academics were following in the footsteps of Palestinian intellectuals such as Walid Khalidi, Sami Hadawi, Ghassan Kanafani and Lebanon's Elias Khoury. But, because the claims were being made by Israeli Jews, their impact in Israel and abroad was much greater.

At around the same time, the first intifada erupted (December 1987). Images of brutal repression of nonviolent resistance prompted a discussion of Palestinian human and national rights in Israeli society. Within a period of four years (1988-1991), numerous Israeli NGOs were established in order to help protect different Palestinian rights. The Jewish Israeli rights practitioners then had the occasion to meet thousands of Palestinians who had suffered abuse at the hands of the Israeli military; they heard their stories about the present, but from these stories, alternative narratives of the past also emerged. In Gaza, after all, 75 per cent of the residents are refugees from the 1948 war.

During the Oslo years, new textbooks, which discussed the Palestinian refugee problem and mentioned, even if in passing, Israel's role in its creation, began to appear. In 2002, a group of Israelis created Zochrot (remembering), whose goal was to introduce the Palestinian Nakba to the Israeli-Jewish public, to express the Nakba in Hebrew, and to create a place for the Nakba in the intellectual environment. As one of its founders explained: "This is in order to promote an alternative memory to the hegemonic Zionist memory. The Nakba is the disaster of the Palestinian people: the destruction of the villages and cities, the killing, the expulsion, the erasure of Palestinian culture. But the Nakba, I believe, is also our story, the story of the Jews who live in Israel, who enjoy the privileges of being the 'winners'."

These developments have led to a profound change in awareness among the Jewish Israeli public, so that, over the years more and more Israeli Jews have become familiar with the word "Nakba" and the historical events which it denotes. I see the difference among my students today. When I used to say the word "Nakba" in class in the late 1990s, hardly anyone knew what I was talking about; however, if I were to say "Nakba" today, there is hardly a student who would not know what I was referring to. This, it is important to emphasise, does not reflect a change in the views of Israelis towards the conflict, but the understanding of its historical origins is, nonetheless, less naive.

Nakba Backlash

It is precisely within this context that one should understand the state's decision to reassert itself in an attempt to silence, once again, all talk of the Nakba. One strategy it adopted was the passing of the Nakba law, which was approved by the Knesset in March 2011. The law is actually an amendment to the Budget Foundation Law, and states that the minister of finance is entitled to reduce funds to any public institution, such as a school or university, if it commemorates "Independence Day or the day of the establishment of the state as a day of mourning... "

The legislation process itself was covered by the media, provoking a lively discussion, which in effect rendered the Nakba visible to a much wider audience than ever before. Furthermore, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and Adalah (The Legal Center for the Arab Minority in Israel) immediately filed a petition with the supreme court, arguing that the new law constituted a grave violation of the freedom of speech and was part of "a political persecution campaign that aims to de-legitimise an entire population of Israel's citizenry".

The two rights groups went on to claim that the commemoration of Nakba Day in no way denies the existence of the state of Israel, as the language of the bill attempts to suggest. Moreover, according to these organisations, the bill blatantly violates the rights of a minority to preserve its history and culture as well as to determine the stories it wants to tell about itself. They further argued that the bill seeks to single out and mark Israel's Arab citizens as dangerous and disloyal to the state, in that they seek to express their own narrative and interpretation of historical events (Independence Day/Nakba Day), a narrative that is frowned upon by certain political groups in the country.

This is a clear example of a "tyranny of the majority", where the political majority would violate the basic rights of the minority - in this case their freedom of speech - and consequently also their cultural freedom and freedom to interpret history in ways that offend the majority.

On January 5, 2012, the Supreme Court published its ruling, rejecting the appeal, and upholding the Nakba Law. President Dorit Beinisch and Justices Eliezer Rivlin and Miriam Naor concluded: "The declarative level of the law does indeed raise difficult and complex questions. However, from the outset, the constitutionality of the law depends largely upon the interpretation given to the law's directives." In other words, the court refrained from judging the constitutionality of the law before it was implemented in a concrete case.

In this way, as Dan Yakir from the Association for Civil Rights stated: "The court completely ignored the claims regarding the chilling effect of this law, which forces state-supported entities to risk a significant reduction in their budgets before the law will be considered for judicial review. In this, it limits free speech." Yakir's point was that the law harms both the freedom of expression and the civil rights of Arab citizens, even before its implementation, because the law's formulation is so broad and vague, many institutions have already begun to censor themselves so as not to risk incurring penalties.

Truth Goes both Ways

Despite the legal setback with respect to the Nakba Law, as well as the well-orchestrated attack against organisations like Zochrot, the Israeli government's concerted effort to reinitiate national amnesia is futile. As the great Jewish political philosopher Hannah Arendt once put it, the fact that Leon Trotsky does not appear in Soviet Russian history books does not mean that he did not exist. "The trouble with lying and deceiving," Arendt explains, "is that their efficiency depends entirely upon a clear notion of the truth that the liar and deceiver wishes to hide. In this sense, truth, even if it does not prevail in public, possesses an ineradicable primacy over all falsehoods."

The Nakba is a truth, and while the efforts to expose the unfolding historical events have recently experienced a fierce legal assault, its primacy over falsehoods guarantees that it will prevail. Jewish Israeli society needs to confront the Nakba for what it was, as well as its ongoing ramifications, whether in the refugee camps across the Levant or in the hills of south Hebron, where Palestinians are under constant threat of expulsion; we need to recognise that the Palestinians have suffered - and still suffer - and that they have been stripped of basic rights by successive Israeli governments for more than half a century. This recognition is the condition of possibility for a better future.

But if there is any hope for this region, the recognition must be reciprocal. The Palestinians, who have no doubt been wronged, must concede, as the late Edward Said urged them to do, that two wrongs do not make a right. Only once there is mutual recognition of the two historical narratives will an opportunity for reconciliation truly emerge.

- Neve Gordon is the author of Israel's Occupation and can be reached through his website: www.israelsoccupation.info. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. (This article first appeared in Al Jazeera.)

palestinechronicle.com | 16-May-2012 22:19

Europe's Southern Mediterranean Priorities

By Stuart Reigeluth

Last month the European Parliament postponed the vote at the Committees on Foreign Affairs and International Trade on whether or not to enhance trade relations even further with Israel. This is good news for now is the time for the EU to focus on other southern Mediterranean partners.
 
Since the winter of 2010/11, momentum towards democratic representation has been growing and spreading steadily across North Africa and West Asia. Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya have experienced different levels of regime change with varying degrees of violence and turmoil.
 
The monarchies of Morocco and Jordan have remained in power with constitutional amendments which may seem superficial but they are positive steps towards greater democratic constitutional rights and political plurality – comparable at some level to Spain in the 1970s, though much slower.
 
Syria is sadly holding on to power by using the most repressive means yet: over 10,000 civilians have been killed, cities besieged and bombarded, cease-fires are not being respected, Arab League and UN observers are being ignored. And the EU imposes sanctions on the Syrian regime.
 
EU-Syrian trade was already floundering due to previous restrictions so the current sanctions imposed by Brussels do not really affect Assad’s iron rule. Syria’s biggest trading partners are neighbouring Turkey and Iraq with tourism from Iran and the Gulf states.
 
After the example of Libya and the US-coordinated NATO campaign, Europe is not prepared to enter Syria. The most member states may do is send civilians to buttress the United Nations monitoring team. But besides that Brussels will just watch since overall trade is not damaged.
 
EU priorities in the southern Mediterranean are really all about trade. The amount of  €30 million pledged by the European Commission, to support democratic change and the emerging Arab civil society, pales in comparison to bilateral trade agreements.
 
The following figures help depict the imbalance in bilateral trade in the south-eastern Mediterranean:

-  In 2010, EU exports to Lebanon were €4.7 billion while Lebanese imports were €0.33 billion.
 
-  In 2009, EU exports to Jordan were €2.6 billion while Jordanian imports were €200 million.
 
-  In 2008, EU exports to Israel were €14 billion while Israeli imports to Europe were €11.2 billion.
 
-  In 2011, EU exports to Palestine were €87 million while imported Palestinian products were €12 million.
 
These figures do not include the science and technology research grants allocated to Israel with the EU FP7 programme which go into the billions of euros as well. Israel actually won more grants worth more than all other European member states together.
 
And this is where the Agreements on Conformity Assessment and Acceptance of Industrial Products (ACAAs) come in. ACAAs are based on mutual recognition and alignment of legislative systems and infrastructure between the partner country and the European community.
 
Since Israel is so far ahead of other Mediterranean neighbours, advanced amendments and protocols to the EU-Israel ACAA is rather banal business. The latest protocol aims to liberalize the bilateral trade of industrial products, namely pharmaceuticals
 
Some European Parliamentarians are worried – and rightly so – that these Israeli industrial products may come from the Jewish settlements built illegally on occupied Palestinian territories in the West Bank. Europe already imports wine from the Golan Heights that Israel annexed in 1981…
 
Besides the fact that Europe should stop importing such annexed wines, the point being made is that Israel needs to answer to repeated international calls and actually respect international law by ending once and for all its military occupation and Jewish colonisation of Palestinian territory.
 
Israel also needs to be held accountable for the ongoing neglect to meet basic human rights standards in the treatment of thousands of Palestinian prisoners in its jails, and for avoiding basic democratic civil rights in the second-tier treatment of Arab citizens within Israeli society and politics.
 
European conditionality should therefore be predicated on the implementation of international standards for democratic norms and human rights. Until Israel shows proof of implementing these standards, Brussels should prioritize its efforts on building new rapports with emerging partners.
 
The adoption and advancement of EU association agreements and ACAAs by other southern Mediterranean countries will contribute to the elimination of technical barriers to trade thereby increasing the accessibility and exchange of products across the sea.
 
Current negotiations for ACAAs with Lebanon, Tunisia, Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority need to move forward faster now to encourage the democratic openings in the southern Mediterranean region. In tandem with the potential for trade to flourish, this is an opportunity Europe cannot afford to miss.
 
- Stuart Reigeluth is editor of Revolve Magazine and works at the Council for European Palestinian Relations. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. (This article appeared in http://esharp.eu.)

palestinechronicle.com | 16-May-2012 21:46

Peace-making without Mediators

By Nicola Nasser

A surplus of mediators have been around all the time, including the heavy weight Quartet of the UN, U.S., EU and Russia, as well as heaps of terms of reference of UNSC resolutions, bilateral signed accords and 'roadmaps,' in addition to marathon bilateral talks that have left no stone unearthed, international as well as regional conferences were never on demand to facilitate the 'peace process,' which has been lavishly financed to keep moving.

However the Palestinian – Israeli peace-making is still elusive as ever as Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” has been, without a glimpse of light at the end of the endless tunnel of Israeli military occupation of Palestinian territory and people.

Palestinian – Israeli peace-making has been for all practical reasons on hold since 2000, and bilateral peace contacts have been dormant since Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu came to power in 2009 except for a failed five-round “exploratory” talks hosted by Jordan last January.

The latest indirect exchange of letters between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and PM Netanyahu and the joint statement issued by their corriers pledging mutual commitment to peace are no less misleading: “No peace No War” is still the name of the only game in town, which is in fact the ideal prescription for the implosion or explosion of an unsustainable status quo in the Israeli – occupied Palestinian territories.

And the almost twenty-year old U.S.-led and EU-financed “peace process” is still a non-starter for any feasible, credible or sustainable peace-making in any foreseeable future.

Failure of the “peace process” to deliver is proof enough that it is inherently infertile, but most importantly it is proof enough that there has never been any serious mediation, or the mediators themselves were only either managing a process instead of trying to solve a conflict, were unqualified, or the parameters of their approach were the wrong ones.

The end result however is that all mediators have failed and it is the time to acknowledge their failure and to make room for other options, like sending back the file of the Palestinian – Israeli conflict to the United Nations, which was responsible for creating the conflict in the first place when the UN General Assembly adopted the non-binding resolution No. 181 for partitioning Palestine in 1947, which triggered a series of Arab – Israeli wars, thus undermining its own main mission as the organization created for the sole purpose of maintaining world peace.

Since 1947, the “two-state solution” has been on the agenda. Sixty five years on, none is closer to that end. The U.S. and EU conduct over those years has been in effect to reinforce the “one state solution”, i.e. Israel.

Olivia Ward speculated in the Canadian “The Star” on May 1 that the “one-state solution to Mideast peace may arrive by default,” but she might not have anticipated it to be a bi-national, bilingual and bi-religious one state for Israelis and Arab Palestinians, Arabic and Hebrew and Jews and Muslims, which is a recipe for apartheid in view of the prevailing balance of power in favor of Israeli Jews in historic Palestine.   

I wonder whether U.S. Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Pa.) was completely out of touch with a major foreign-policy reality or was he satirically sarcastic when he responded to a constituent last April by a letter calling for peace negotiations between deceased Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who has been in a coma since 2006?!

The UN option is obviously what President Abbas is left to try now as the only option available for a man of peace like him, and this is exactly the door which the U.S. administration is determined to close; for this purpose, according to Esther Brimmer, the Assistant Secretary for International Organizations Affairs, in Miami on April 24 this year:

“Over the past several months, we have engaged in a global diplomatic marathon to oppose the Palestinian” option, “because, … the United States strongly opposes efforts to address final status issues at the United Nations rather than in direct negotiations,” which Brimmer’s country failed to mediate, revive and resume through the terms of the last three presidents who collectively failed to deliver on their promises to the Palestinians to conclude negotiations on final status issues in 1999 (Bill Clinton), in 2005 (George W. Bush), in 2008 (G.W. Bush again) and within two years of his assuming office (Barak Obama).

Not to honor U.S. promises and pledges to Palestinians could only be interpreted as out of bad faith, bad management of the “peace process” or failure to deliver, which all dictate, as another option, a change of course and that the US monopoly of the sponsorship of peace-making should be discarded and replaced by more efficient peace makers, or that the current U.S.-led peace mediators should be replaced by peace enforcers.

Aaron David Miller of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars noted on May 11 that, “The only three breakthroughs in the history of Arab-Israeli peacemaking - involving Israeli deals with the Egyptians, Jordanians, and Palestinians - came about through secret diplomacy in which Washington wasn't even involved.” Miller stopped short of saying that the U.S. and Quartet mediation is no more needed. 

The International Crisis Group, in an executive summary on May 7, 2012, concluded that the U.S.-led mediation efforts have “become a collective addiction, … And so the illusion continues,” adding: “All actors are now engaged in a game of make-believe: that a resumption of talks in the current context can lead to success; that an agreement can be reached within a short timeframe; that the Quartet is an effective mediator, …” On April 26, the American Jewish newspaper “Algemeiner” described the “Middle East Quartet” as “An Institutionalized Failure.”

Israel, U.S. and the Quartet mediators are all winners in this “make-believe” non-delivering mediation; the Palestinian people are the only losers.

Palestinians have had enough and now saying enough is enough: Peace is a mirage, peace-making is a failure, peace process is a sham, peace mediators are a fake, and if all the parties involved can enjoy the luxury of “addiction” to the status quo, Palestinians cannot; their survival is at stake.

- Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Bir Zeit, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Contact him at: nassernicola@ymail.com.

palestinechronicle.com | 16-May-2012 21:35

Israel Must be Forced to Implement Prisoner Agreement

By Julie Webb-Pullman - Gaza

Despite repeatedly stating that a key demand was an end to administrative detention, and that no partial offer would be accepted, an Israeli offer was yesterday accepted by the Higher Committee for the Hunger Strikers on behalf of the prisoners.

Although Israel has agreed to release 19 prisoners from solitary confinement – several of whom have been in isolation for more than ten years – and to lift the ban on family visits for prisoners from Gaza, the agreement states only that administrative detention will not be ‘renewed’ automatically and that after six months, the prisoner must be released, or charged. Current administrative detainees will be released, or charged, at the end of their current sentence.

This is a far cry from the ban prisoners were demanding. Palestinians can still be ‘administratively detained’ for at least six months. Current prisoners will not be immediately released, including those on the verge of death, but must wait until their current sentence expires – and even then, it is not guaranteed. An official at the Palestinian Legislative Council, Mohammad Radwan, told me today that in his opinion Israel will just charge them all.

“You can never have 100% confidence in the Israeli’s,” he said, referring to the fact that most of the prisoners’ demands had already been agreed to by Israel in the Gilad Shalit prisoner swap deal in October 2011, but which Israel did not fully implement.

“We hope Israel will comply, but as Palestinians we have no more than Israel’s guarantee – it will require the international community to continue to apply pressure to force Israel to.”

Radwan noted that at the time of signing the deal, Israel also extended the administrative detention of a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Ismail Rajoup. Hardly a sign of good faith negotiations…

For families especially, any deal that did not win freedom fell short.

“Will they release Bilal? Is it over?” asked his mother Missadeh Diab. Not until June, apparently…

Whilst in Gaza the solidarity tents and their occupants had disappeared by dawn, there remains a lot of doubt in many peoples’ minds as to whether the deal will be fully implemented, or if, like the last, Israel will simply do the least they can to get the international community off their back, and return to business – administrative, of course – as usual.

- Julie Webb-Pullman is a New Zealand activist and writer currently based in Gaza. She has written on social and political justice issues for New Zealand Independent News website SCOOP since 2003, as well as for websites in Australia, Canada, the US, and Latin America, and participated in several human rights observation missions. She contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. (This article was first published in Scoop - http://gaza.scoop.ps.)

palestinechronicle.com | 16-May-2012 21:24

Israelis Not Keen on Changing the Status Quo

By Stuart Reigeluth

The Israelis are anything but stupid. However their cleverness and innovation in perfecting the technological, logistical and financial dimensions of the military occupation and colonisation of Palestinian land make the situation nearly impossible to reverse — but not impossible, if it weren’t for European endorsement.
 
While the United States continues with its carte blanche foreign policy of supporting Israel blindly in all forms of security and military material, Europe — that has much more to gain from changing its policies towards the Palestinians — is still essentially paying for the continuation of the Israeli occupation by covering costs to maintain the Palestinian National Authority.
 
Besides around €500 million per year to sustain the Palestinian institutional apparatus in Ramallah and the West Bank. European countries also contribute over €500 million to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees, which provides education and jobs to thousands of disenfranchised Palestinians in Gaza, as well as to refugee camps in the West Bank and in neighbouring camps in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. While Israel continues to colonise and annex occupied Jerusalem, the question must be asked: is Europe not encouraging the status quo?
 
The problem with the Palestinian disaster is that there is no closure. Prior to and during Second World War, the population of Silesia experienced deportations and transfers. After the war, most of Silesia went to Poland; a smaller part went to Czechoslovakia. There was no Silesia any longer. Prussia also disappeared, as have other states.

Humiliation

Whatever remains now of British mandate Palestine is evidence of more spoils of war. With the creation of modern Israel in 1947-49, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled by force or fled from marauding Jewish militias that blew up and razed over 400 villages. This is all well known, and yet the Palestinian disaster persists.

These formative years of the Palestinian national consciousness became known as the Nakba (catastrophe). This catastrophe continues to be present in the hearts and minds of Arabs because the same humiliation, the same intention to expel the Palestinians and to colonise Palestinian territory is still ongoing today. Nasserism, Baathism and other attempts to unify the Arabs and rectify Palestinian loss all flopped. The rise of Jamal Abdul Nasser in the 1950s and his hero stature in the 1960s culminated in massive pre-emptive strikes by Israel in 1967 that decimated neighbouring Arab armies, expanding the territorial control of ‘Greater Israel’ to biblical dimensions.
 
With the 1967 Naksa (set-back), it’s been a series of defeats for the Arabs, until the stand-off between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006 and between Hamas and Israel in 2008-09. Whether these were ‘divine’ victories is debatable, but one thing is for sure: neither Islamist groups lost as the national armies previously had — on the contrary they resisted.
 
Financial Support

Now we have this face-off between Islamist groups and an increasingly strong far-right bloc in Israeli politics — not a particularly conducive scenario for negotiations to take hold. Caught in this vicious cycle now of accusing the other of having no partner with whom to negotiate, each side will resort to violence until the stronger wins or the weaker surrenders.
 
Since the Islamists are on the rise and have justice and truth on their side — everyone agrees that the Israeli occupation is illegal and morally repugnant (even Israelis) — then Hamas and their allies are not about to surrender.
 
But neither is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (who has been dubbed ‘King of Israel’), and his newly consolidated control of Israeli politics — with the entry of the more centrist opposition of Kadima into his coalition — about to end the occupation and colonisation of Palestine. It’s simply too lucrative for Israel: there is a big business to the military occupation, which has become so fine-tuned that it has become normal.
 
Of course the argument in favour of European financial support is that without the euros coming in the PNA would crumble. The problem is not so much in European financial support but rather in the fact that there is no political strength to enforce that support. Israel is not held accountable for destroying EU-funded projects for example.
 
The European Commission announced that nearly ¤50 million worth of Palestinian projects were destroyed over the past 10 years by Israel. Meanwhile, Israel enjoys tremendous trade relations with the European Union. These economic ties are subject to next to no conditionality from Brussels. Conditionality and accountability need to be implemented to change the status quo.
 
This is a status quo ‘plus colonies’ that depicts Israeli intentions to keep colonising Palestine while only being slapped on the wrist by political denunciations made by Europe and Washington. Then there is the diversion of potential war with Iran that most of Netanyahu’s cabinet seems rather excited to promote to avoid nuclear parity in the region.
 
Above all there is no interest from any Israeli leader to change this status quo because they benefit in every way. And there is no Israeli leader with enough courage to see that the long-term benefits of reconciling with the Arab world outweigh by far the current gains. With no closure from Israel, the Palestinian disaster continues.
 
-  Stuart Reigeluth is editor of Revolve Magazine and works at the Council for European Palestinian Relations in Brussels. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. (This article was originally published in Gulf News – www.gulfnews.com)

palestinechronicle.com | 15-May-2012 20:03

The Palestinian Nakba: The Resolve of Memory

By Ramzy Baroud

Many Palestinians remember and reference al-Nakba, also known as the Catastrophe, on May 15 every year. The event marks the expulsion of nearly a million Palestinians, while their villages were destroyed. The destruction of Palestine in 1947-48 ushered in the birth of Israel. Older generations relay the harsh and oppressive memory of their collective experience to younger Palestinians, many of whom live their own Nakbas today.

In covering al-Nakba, sympathetic Arab and other media play sad music and show black and white footage of displaced, frightened refugees. They rightly emphasize the concept of Sumud, steadfastness, as they show Palestinian of all ages holding unto the rusty keys of their homes and insisting on their right of return. Other, less sympathetic media discuss al-Nakba, if at all, as a side note – a nuisance in the Israeli narrative of a nation's supposedly miraculous birth and its progression to an idyllic oasis of democracy. What such reductionist representations often fail to show is that while al-Nakba started, it never truly finished.

Those who underwent the pain, harm and loss of al-Nakba are yet to receive the justice that was promised to them by the international community. UN Resolution 194 states that “the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date” (Article 11). Those who wrought this injustice are also yet to achieve their ultimate objectives in Palestine. After all, Israel doesn’t have defined boundaries by accident.

David Ben Gurion, first Prime Minister of Israel, once prophesized that “the old (refugees) will die and the young will forget.” He spoke with the harshness of a conqueror. Ben Gurion carried out his war plans to the furthest extent possible. Every region in Palestine that was meant to be taken was captured, its people were expelled or massacred in their homes and villages. Ben Guiron ‘cleansed’ the land, but he failed to cleanse Israel’s past. Memory persists.

Ben Gurion referenced my own family’s village – Beit Daras – which witnessed three battles and a massacre. In an entry in his diaries on May 12, 1948, he wrote: “Beit Daras was mortared. Fifty Arabs (were killed). The (villages of) Bashit and Sawafir were occupied. There is mass exodus from nearby areas (neighbors in Majdal). We sustained 5 dead and 15 wounded. ” (War Diaries, 1947-1949).

More than fifty people were killed in Beit Daras that day. An old Gaza woman, Um Mohammed – who I discussed in my last book, My Father was a Freedom Fighter – refers to what is likely the same event:

“The town was under bombardment, and it was surrounded from all directions. There was no way out. The armed men (the Beit Daras fighters) said they were going to check on the road to Isdud, to see if it was open. They moved forward and shot few shots to see if someone would return fire. No one did. But they (the Zionist forces) were hiding and waiting to ambush the people. The armed men returned and told the people to evacuate the women and children. The people went out (including) those who were gathered at my huge house, the family house. There were mostly children and kids in the house. The Jewish (soldiers) let the people get out, and then they whipped them with bombs and machine guns. More people fell than those who were able to run. My sister and I…started running through the fields; we’d fall and get up. My sister and I escaped together holding each other’s hands. The people who took the main road were either killed or injured. The firing was falling on the people like sand. The bombs from one side and the machine guns from the other.”

Ben Gurion would not necessarily doubt Um Mohammed’s account. He candidly stated: “Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves...politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves...The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country” (as quoted in Chomsky's Fateful Triangle, pp. 91-2).

It is precisely for this reason that neither the old nor the young have forgotten. Every day is another manifestation of the same protracted al-Nakba that has lasted 64 years now. Young people's hardships today are inextricably linked to the violent and horrific uprooting decades ago.

Al-Nakba has also remained an ongoing project through generations of Israeli Zionists. When Ben Gurion died in 1973, current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in his mid-twenties. He was then serving his last year in the Israeli army, and today he rules Israel with a coalition that includes almost three quarters of the Israeli parliament. Like most Israeli leaders, he continues to contribute to the very discourse by which Palestine was conquered. He speaks of peace, while his soldiers and armed settlers take over Palestinian homes and farms. He makes repeated offers to Palestinians for ‘unconditional’ talks, as he repeats his violent rejection of every Palestinian aspiration. His lobby in Washington is much stronger than ever before. He reigns supreme, as he continues to fulfill the ‘vision’ of early Zionists.

Old keys and deeds of stolen lands attest to the intergenerational experience that is Al-Nakba. Today Palestinians continue to be herded behind military checkpoints. They are denied the right to proper medical care, and their ancient olive trees are ruthlessly bulldozed. What Israel has not been able to control, however, is the resolve of Palestinians. The prison, the checkpoint and the gun reside in our collective memory in a way that cannot be held captive, controlled, or shot.

In fact, al-Nakba is not a specific date or an estimation of time, but the entirety of those 64 years and counting. The event must not be assigned to the shelves of history, not as long as refugees are still refugees and settlers continue to rob Palestinian land. As long as Netanyahu speaks the language of Ben Gurion, other ‘catastrophic’ episodes will follow. And as long as Palestinians hold on to their keys and deeds, the old may die but the young will never forget.

- RamzyBaroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story (Pluto Press, London).

palestinechronicle.com | 15-May-2012 19:54

Domestic Focus for Israel's Coalition

Benjamin Netanyahu's agreement with the Kadima Party reflects a public more concerned about economic and social issues than whether to strike Iran, says CFR's Robert M. Danin.

cfr.org | 14-May-2012 23:06

Israel's Buffoon: The UN Nakba

By Vacy Vlazna
 
On May 15, 1948 the unilateral proclamation of the State of Israel which erupted into the brutal Palestinian Nakba or Catastrophe was also catastrophic for United Nations (UN) ringing the death knell for its stature and authority.
 
Like medieval kings, the US and Israel employed the UN to be its fool running around with a cap o' bells and sceptre (rendered useless by US veto) beginning with the 1947 Resolution 181, passed on 29 February by members (under coercion) recommending the partition of the British Mandate of Palestine into Jewish and Palestinian states which was understandably rejected by Palestine but accepted by Israel as a step toward its Zionist expansionist goal for the full realisation of a Jewish Eretz Israel.
 
Ironically, on 30th February Menachem Begin, head of the terrorist gang, Irgun, brazenly announced the Zionist immutable dogma, "The partition of Palestine is illegal. It will never be recognised... Jerusalem was and forever will be our capital. Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And forever."
 
Disregarding Begin's rant, apart from having no mandate to approve or enforce the partition, 'the United Nations had no business offering the nation of one people to the people of many nations. Its General Assembly had neither the legal nor the legislative powers to impose such a resolution or to convey title of a territory; Articles 10, 11 and 14 of the UN Charter bestows the right on the General Assembly merely to recommend resolutions.'
 
The Nakba marks the onset of Israel's systematic ethnic cleansing strategy with the destruction of over 500 Palestinian villages and the forced expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinian civilians fleeing Haganah, Irgun and Lehi units that carried out the savage and systematic military offensives codenamed Plan Dalet:
 
These operations can be divided into the following categories:

Destruction of villages (setting fire to, blowing up, and planting mines in the debris), especially those population centers which are difficult to control continuously.

Mounting search and control operations according to the following guidelines: encirclement of the village and conducting a search inside it. In the event of resistance, the armed force must be destroyed and the population must be expelled outside the borders of the state.
 
Forced to leave their cherished lands, the Palestinian exodus dispersed to 58 squalid refugee camps in Gaza and the West Bank as well as in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. All 4.9 million Palestinian refugees come under the authority of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNWRA). Its provision of health, education and humanitarian aid is vastly inadequate to the needs of the camps' three generations of desperate people.

UNRWA is funded mainly by the USA, the EU Commission, UK and Germany. This cabal of collaborators which has ignored Palestinian human and political rights since 1948, are in fact, the camps' prison guards perpetuating the normalisation of the Israeli occupation thus relieving Israel of its obligation to honour the Palestinian right of return set down in Resolution 194 (December 1948 ) of which Article 11 reads;
 
(The General Assembly) Resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.
 
Israel dismissed Resolution 194, then flagrantly legislated in 1950 The Law of Return that gives all Jews the right to emigrate to and settle in Israel (aliyah) and obtain citizenship. Billions of  dollars are spent promoting aliyah, the zenith of Zionism, and spent establishing 200 illegal colonies for over 500,000 illegal, mainly thuggish, colonists on occupied Palestinian land protected by the nuclear might of the Israeli military.

Within days after Palestine's failed bid to have its right to membership of the UN passed in September 2011, Israel insolently announced a further 1100 units to be built in the Gilo colony, and weeks later announced the future expansion of 50,000 illegal Israeli houses in Palestinian East Jerusalem. In April 2012, another three colony outposts, Bruchin, Rechelim and Sansana were approved flying in the face of Palestine's prime condition for resuming the 'peace process'  - that Israel stops colony expansion.
 
The end of November 2011, saw Israel's houseboy, the Leader of the Free World and Honest Peace Broker, spit out his dummy summarily withdrawing the US and funding from UNESCO because it approved Palestinian membership to its organisation thereby jeopardising thousands of UNESCO's humanitarian projects.

Since 1948, there have been over 105 General Assembly UN resolutions and over 224 Security Council resolutions passed against Israel in relation to Palestine, Lebanon and Syria condemning or deploring Israel for deportations of Palestinians, for refusal to cooperate with the UN, for assassinations, for killing Palestinian students, for denying human rights of Palestinians, for raids on Gaza, for Israel's use of resources from occupied territories, for failure to abide by the Geneva Conventions, for repeated military interventions in Lebanon and Syria, reiterating Israel's claim to Jerusalem is null and void, calling on Israel to cease building settlements in occupied territories, to comply with UN decisions, reaffirming the "inalienable rights of the Palestinian people", including the right to national sovereignty and the right of return...to name a few.
 
Most have have been ignored and /or vetoed by the USA.....
 
8 years ago, the UN's International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled on the matter of the  Israeli Annexation/Apartheid Wall that 'Israel is under an obligation to terminate its breaches of international law;  it is under an obligation to cease forthwith the works of construction of the wall being built in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in and around East Jerusalem, to dismantle forthwith the structure therein situated, and to repeal or render ineffective forthwith all legislative and regulatory acts relating thereto, in accordance with paragraph 151 of this Opinion".

To this day, brave Palestinians demonstrate and struggle against the relentless encroachment of the Annexation Wall on their lands.
 
In 2009, Resolution 1860 calling for the full cessation of war between Israel and Hamas was passed on the 9th January - TWO WEEKS after the war began with 200 Palestinians slaughtered on the first day. Ignoring the resolution Israel leisurely prolonged its Operation Cast Lead against unarmed and trapped Gazan families with another 9 days of hellish attacks. It ended the war a discreet two days before Obama's inauguration.
 
In March 2012, Michael Mandel, law professor at  Canada's York University stridently criticised the UN's International Criminal Court (ICC) decision to refuse jurisdiction over Gaza war crimes:
 
"It's disgraceful but not surprising that the ICC has dismissed Palestine's complaint against Israel. It sat on the complaint for over three years, always proudly announcing that it was investigating it to give the appearance of impartiality. Meanwhile the ICC jumped to attention in less than three weeks when the US government, which is not a signatory to the treaty, wanted to go to war against Libya, justifying Western aggression with bogus charges against the Libyan regime...Ocampo [ICC prosecutor]and company have been busy putting Africa on trial for crimes aided, abetted and exploited by the rich countries, while the US government killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and tens of thousands of Afghans, and Israel has been committing Nuremberg's 'supreme international crime' of aggression against the Palestinians for 45 years."

Also on May 10, the Electronic Intifada reported that UNRWA's Commissioner General, Filippo Grandi's appeal "to the Israeli government to find an acceptable solution, noting that the [2000 Palestinian political prisoners] hunger strikers' demands are generally related to the basic rights of prisoners, as stipulated in the Geneva Conventions." was hastily removed from UNRWA's website.
 
Israel's impunity to commit war crimes, crimes against humanity, its 64 year defiance of UN resolutions amplify the UN's lethal incompetence. 187 member nations, (not including Israel's quislings and human rights hypocrites; USA, UK, Australia, Germany, France), are too gutless or subservient or self-serving to protect and enforce the international laws for which they are legally obligated;
 
International human rights law lays down obligations which States are bound to respect. By becoming parties to international treaties, States assume obligations and duties under international law to respect, to protect and to fulfil human rights. The obligation to respect means that States must refrain from interfering with or curtailing the enjoyment of human rights. The obligation to protect requires States to protect individuals and groups against human rights abuses. The obligation to fulfil means that States must take positive action to facilitate the enjoyment of basic human rights.
 
The 64 years of the uninterrupted Palestinian Nakba with its sweeping scale of tragic suffering challenges the UN's moral and political credibility and its very existence as Israel's buffoon.

- Dr. Vacy Vlazna is Coordinator of Justice for Palestine Matters. She was Human Rights Advisor to the GAM team in the second round of the Acheh peace talks, Helsinki, February 2005 then withdrew on principle. Vacy was coordinator of the East Timor Justice Lobby as well as serving in East Timor with UNAMET and UNTAET from 1999-2001. She contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

palestinechronicle.com | 14-May-2012 04:41

Punished over Iran: S. Africa Petrol under Threat

By Iqbal Jassat- Pretoria

Amidst reports that pro-Israeli lobbies in the United States have secured an assurance from the Obama administration to relentlessly pursue countries seen to be wavering in their compliance with rigorous sanctions on Iran, South Africa has been singled out for punishment. Though largely under-reported in the local media, pressure is building on the ANC-led government to immediately suspend its economic ties with Iran or risk being barred from US economy.

While there were initial signs of panic with different government departments giving contradictory statements on this highly contentious US demand to shut off the country’s petroleum lifeline from the Islamic Republic, very little is currently known about South Africa’s ultimate decision as the deadline grows closer. However, a recent statement issued by the South African Petroleum Industry Association [PIA] gives a clue of frantic behind-the-scenes talks. Claiming that it sought to expedite requests to the United States for a postponement and temporary exemption from the sanctions, it also clearly alludes to political pressure.

PIA Executive Director Avhapfani Tshifularo is reported to have said: “This is not a business decision for us. It involves a political decision about political pressure”. Following the initial flurry of uncertainty as to whether the SA government had succumbed to demands made by clandestine visits by senior US Treasury Department officials, it now appears that a formal decision by the Zuma Cabinet has yet to be made.

What may have irked Israeli lobbyists in America is that South Africa’s crude oil imports from Iran have increased to $434.8 million in March from $364 million in February. Instead of a reduction, imports from the Islamic Republic represent 32% of the country’s total crude oil supplies, suggesting that the ANC-led government is reluctant to have America dictate its economic policy.

While these figures project a country unwilling to disrupt its trade with a stable reliable source such as Iran, it is aware of the enormous power possessed by Israeli-lobbies that in effect have manipulated US domestic and foreign policies. It certainly would be aware that the push for war on Iran is high on the agenda of these lobbies and that a unilaterally imposed sanctions by the US therefore cannot be treated lightly.

While this conundrum confronts decision makers in Pretoria, it is equally intriguing that the European Union has called on South Africa for funding to bolster the banking systems of some EU member states on the brink of collapse. Commenting on this, the convener of UCT’s Applied Economics for Smart Decision Making course Pierre Heistein, said that there is something inherently perverse about this situation.

He explains that looking for $400 billion to prevent the collapse of a few EU member economies causing the others to fold like a pack of cards, the International Monetary Fund [IMF] has turned to Brics for aid after the US and Canada refused to contribute. It appears that Brics economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa have between them agreed to provide funding to the tune of $72bn, though exact individual amounts will only be released next month, according to Heistein.

He speculates that South Africa’s proportionate share of the Brics amount could amount to R16bn. Though not a “crippling sum of money” it could increase spending on economic infrastructure by as much as 10 percent or lift health and education by 5 percent. “But does it make sense that a country as poor as South Africa should be contributing funds to traditionally wealthy European states? Consider that in order for South African farmers to export to Spain they have to compete with annual farming subsidies amounting to more than E7 billion [R72.7bn] and now Spain is calling for South Africa’s financial aid”, is the all important question posed by Heistein.

This question alongside others including whether President Zuma and his cabinet will succumb to Washington’s blackmail ought to feature in the national discourse related to socio-economic challenges. Global disparities as they exist in both political and economic spheres make it imperative for emerging economies to jealously guard their capacity to grow. This means that they must shun foreign interference especially if such meddling undermines job creation and service delivery.

While the IMF’s stretched hand may provide South Africa to enhance its leverage within this seat of power, it may be short-lived if American pressure becomes more ruthless to force it to abandon Iran. Unfortunately, the current malaise in which the ANC finds itself – both as a formidable political formation and as the de facto government, may not allow it to snub either the US or the IMF. After all such firmness of principle requires a strong moral underpinning.

- Iqbal Jassat is an executive member of the advocacy group, the Media Review Network. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

palestinechronicle.com | 14-May-2012 04:26

'Being Palestinian': Global Citizenship Available

By Frank Barat

Before I start, I’d like to make it clear that not all views/takes on the subject will be mentioned in this piece. I will not talk about the 'views from Mars' (actually if there is 'people' on Mars they will probably be offended by the comparison. So if you do indeed exist, please forgive me) of certain 'Palestinian People deniers' US politicians that manage to be lunatic and mainstream at the same time. The fact that those views are hardly challenged and condemned in mainstream US politics and media says a lot about the 'land of the free'.

The easiest way to define Palestinian is to say that 'a Palestinian' is either someone coming from historical Palestine, born from a Palestinian mother or a Palestinian father or someone born from a Palestinian father and mother but leaving outside of Palestine. A land, in its historical sense, extending from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River.

A land full of history, conflicts and occupations.

Without going too far back in history, the land of Palestine has been, throughout the 20th century, occupied by the Ottoman Empire, followed by the British (the Brits did not like the word occupation much so found a nicer name to describe it: A mandate.), the Kingdom of Jordan and Egypt. From 1948, something else happened with the creation, on top of ethnically cleansed Palestinian villages, of the State of Israel.

This State then went on to occupy from 1968 till now, what is today known as the West Bank and Gaza (including East Jerusalem that Israel illegally annexed, also in 1968).

People saying that the Palestinians never saw themselves as a People, or waited till 1964 to adopt the flag of the 1916 Arab revolt as their flag, are missing the point.

The concepts of land ownership and Nation States, represented by flags, are not part of what Native people believe (being Palestinians, American Indians, Australian Aboriginals...). Those concepts where forced upon them by colonialism, imperialism and the self-proclaimed 'enlightened people' of the West.
 
Before they were forced to adopt a flag to justify their existence, the indigenous People of Palestine, relied on logic and respect. If a particular family had cultivated its olive trees in one place for a generation, then others will not intrude into that place. On the other hand, if a land was not cultivated for a few years, others could start using it. They felt as a People. They just did not feel the need to justify it, either by proclaiming a State, raising a flag or singing a national anthem. Their link to the land and their neighbours was, and still is, organic.

That's what we could call, the broadly accepted (outside of lunatic circles) definition of 'being a Palestinian'. (Pardon me for the use of shortcuts in the story).

Now, let's try to push the envelope further. What if 'being a Palestinian' was much more than that, and included in fact, many, many more people.

What if, the 'we are all Palestinians' that we often hear in demonstrations, actually meant something a lot deeper than we think.

With the exportation and reproduction of the occupation in the daily lives of millions of people throughout the world, the words Palestine and Palestinian, resonates in thousands of different places, in hundreds of different ways and have out-lived their more historical definition.

Could 'being palestinian' over write DNA, genes, place of birth, Nation State and flag?

The Palestine issue has truly become a global issue. The Palestine struggle is nowadays a symbolic cause that has brought thousands, millions of people, all over the world, together. People fighting for the right of the Palestinian People to be free, but also for a better, fairer, more beautiful world. Finding the key to the Palestine question could have repercussions for millions of people around the globe. Finding this key, will not only open the door of Palestine for millions of Palestinian refugees, it will also open a door, a window, in everyone's consciousness. This key could also free us from the chains of vulture capitalism, globalisation, individualism and neo-liberalism.

It will open a window of solidarity, change and hope for the future.

'Being Palestinian', before having anything to do with nationality, means being someone that stands for justice, freedom and equality for all of us, regardless of our religion, ethnicity and place of birth. 'Being Palestinian' is someone that stands for the oppressed, against the oppressor.

'Being Palestinian' could be the first truly global and free worldwide citizenship based on ethics instead of 'race' or nationality.

The question facing us now is how to convince millions more people to adopt this citizenship.

You can agree or disagree of course, but please, don't call me a lunatic.

- Frank Barat is a Human Rights activist based in London. He has edited two books; 'Gaza in Crisis' with Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappe, and 'Corporate Complicity in Israel's Occupation' with Asa Winstanley. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

palestinechronicle.com | 14-May-2012 04:14

Sins of Our Fathers

By William A. Cook

'We dance round in a ring and suppose/ But the secret sits in the middle and knows.' - Robert Frost

Victors' celebrations harbor shadows that lurk in the soul as revelers dance in remembrance, burying in laughter the suffering screams of those displaced and destroyed, furiously hiding   forgotten faces framed in fear from mocking the glorious dance should they be awakened once more by the reverie. May 14 and 15 are paradoxically days of celebration and catastrophe; victors “dance round in a ring and suppose,” caught in a never ending quest to know if indeed this celebration is for victory or for defeat, while those vanquished understand “the secret that sits in the middle and knows.” Are the secrets Truth that we are afraid to delve into, too ashamed to acknowledge, or fear of a pending Nakba for the victor signaled by a merciful and just God?

As this May day approaches, a Biblical age of three score and four for the state of Israel, only six years short of Biblical death, an appropriate time for reflection about judgment and retribution, about peace and justice lest the sins of the fathers remain the curse of the children. What is the secret that sits in the middle and knows? What is it keeping secret? Who is it, since it is personified and knows? Who are the dancers this May 14? Are they the children of the next generations whose fathers sinned? What do they suppose? What do they suppose the victory remembrance celebrates? Does it celebrate the men, the fathers and husbands and sons that massacred the fathers and husbands and sons at Deir Yassin? Do they meditate on those relatives of the dead who live now in refugee camps in foreign countries who have not been home for 64 years, nor seen the town now transformed into a psychiatric institution, nor visited the graves across the street, tombstones upended and defaced? What minds contemplated the barbarity of Deir Yassin a month and five days before the state of Israel declared its freedom as a democratic country desiring recognition by the nations of the world? What minds could lie to the President of the United States,  even as they laid waste the town and its people, appealing to him to immediately recognize Israel because they would bring peace to Palestine by obeying the Charter and Declaration of Human Rights held sacred by the United Nations?

What personified being knows? Is it the omniscient and just God who heard the voices of the dying mothers and children and the lamentations of the men trucked through the streets of Jerusalem, living proof of Israeli might, mocked and ridiculed as inferior beings before they were returned to their town for execution? What is it about secrets that stir such fear in the hearts of the revelers? Certainly they know the faces of the dead do not die to the mind of the reaper; they live just below the twisted thoughts that gave rise to the slaughter, for why kill if remembrance of that fulfilled savagery is not possible? And isn’t that after all what the Almighty meant when he proclaimed the “sins of the father are visited upon the children”?   

But what if we turn to the ring; what does it represent? Perhaps it’s the Wall that Israel built to hide the enemy they have been unable to cleanse in the manner of Deir Yassin and the other known and unknown massacres recorded by Benny Morris and Ilan Pappe. Perhaps the Wall does not hide the indigenous people as it was supposed to do; that may be what they suppose as they dance round in a ring. Perhaps it rather makes obvious that lives exist beyond that wall, that freedom to move is curtailed for them, that hours can pass attempting to get permission slips to visit Jerusalem, and hours more can pass to travel the seven miles to their former home. Perhaps this is more than just an “inconvenience” as explained by Michael Oren on 60 Minutes, perhaps it’s an intentional and calculated inhuman interference in personal lives that casts as dirty an image on the occupiers as the affront casts on those dispossessed of rights. 

How unfortunate that those who dance must have their backs to something or someone they cannot see; how disturbing that must feel since it is the unknown that raises fear and turns it inward corroding the comfort that comes with openness and friendship. What peace of mind exists when one knows that life has been made miserable for people beyond the Wall; what peace blossoms when fear circles behind the back because the government determines the on-going need for greater and greater military power making a police state of a nation inside and outside the Walls built to contain both the body and the soul. What hope evaporates for a future without the shadows that the Wall casts on both those hemmed in and those cut out and life becomes a constant search for unknowns that threaten life and limb even as the very protection the Wall supposes to create destroys friendships with others and isolates each citizen in the sick minds of those who rule the country.

The sins of the fathers began 64 years ago when they swore allegiance to a group of men who had taken control of Palestine from the British Government laying waste both the Arab people and the Mandate government of Britain regardless of agreements made and pledges of cooperation signed between the Mandate authorities and the Jewish Agency. It began with an oath that necessitated selling the soul.

“From the moment an individual takes the oath,* they are committed to a life of secrecy and hence of disloyalty and betrayal to those they are most intimate with in their day to day life. Neither their actions nor their true identity is discernible to those with whom they interact regularly. This is a life that encapsulates the necessity of lies, deceit, coercion, extortion, and obedience to a group that dictates the actions one must pursue; freedom no longer exists, self-direction no longer exists, loyalty to others no longer exists, indeed, friendship with others is compromised or impossible, one becomes the subject of that group, a veritable slave to their desires and wills. The mindset that promotes such control allows for spying, for deception of friends, for ostracism in one’s own community for thinking differently, for imprisonment without due process, for torture, even for extrajudicial executions. It is a total commitment to a cause that supersedes all others determined and dictated by an oligarchy in silence and subject to no legitimate institution and to no one.

“The darkness of the Zionists’ deceit was and is camouflaged by the appearance of civil structures existing within the framework of a legal authority, the Mandatory Government’s accepted agency for the Jewish community in Palestine and, today the presence of lobbies, think tanks, controlled media of communication, and legalization of policies that allow for dual citizenship among others. Fear still operates, fear of the non-friendly, enemy states that surround the friendly, democratic state of Israel promoted as existentially threatening to America’s security, fear for representatives in Congress who dare not confront the desires of AIPAC and its affiliates lest they find themselves bereft of political support and consequently bereft of their position, and fear induced by corporate media that fears offending the power base represented by the lobby.

“Until Israel’s fall 2006 blitzkrieg of Lebanon, when the world had an opportunity to witness the ruthlessness of Israeli Zionist violence unimpeded by concern for helpless civilians fleeing for their lives or orphans unable to take shelter from missiles or children returning home after fearful flight from invading forces only to find toy-like cluster bombs left intentionally to maim or slaughter, the world’s communities felt a sympathy for the offspring of those victimized by the Nazis. Prior to that destruction wrought by a military of enormous power, the people of the world knew little of what went on in Palestine and knew only that the Jews of Palestine in 1948 and 1967 had to fight against overwhelming odds against Arabs of many nations intent on pushing them into the sea, victims of human violence once again. Then came December 27, 2008, Israel’s Christmas bombing of Gaza, Holiday giving with a vengeance. Once again, the might of Israel’s state of the art military – its air force, navy, army – invaded the defenseless, imprisoned, physically destitute residents of Gaza. Once again, the world witnessed the ruthlessness of Israel’s Zionist intent to subjugate, humiliate, and obliterate the indigenous people of Palestine.

Now the world knows the truth: the Zionist Consultancy that ruled the Jewish people in Palestine in 1930s and 1940s, like their counterparts in the Israeli government of Ehud Olmert in December of 2008 and January of 2009, intended to expel the people of Palestine from their land and had the military means to do it against an anemic enemy incapable of defending the people.

“There is an unraveling of the lies of omission that have quilted the truth these many years. As each square rots in the sun now shed on it, the plight of the people of Palestine becomes more and more apparent. Benny Morris revealed in June of 2009 that “there were far more acts of massacre than I had previously thought (with the new documents made available) … and many cases of rape … and (between April-May 1948) units of Haganah were given operational orders that stated explicitly that they were to uproot the villagers, expel them and destroy the villages themselves.” He continued in response to the interviewer’s questions: “Because neither the victims nor the rapists liked to report these events, we have to assume that the dozen cases of rape that were reported ... are not the whole story. They are just the tip of the iceberg.”; “The worst cases (of massacre) were Saliha (70-80 killed, Deir Yassin (100-110), Lod (250), Dawayima (hundreds) and perhaps Abu Shusha (70); Ben Gurion “covered up for the officers who did the massacres.”; “Yes … the commander of the Northern Front, Moshe Carmel, issued an order in writing to his units to expedite the removal of the Arab population.”; “From April 1948, Ben-Gurion is projecting a message of transfer. .. The entire leadership understands that this is the idea.”; and quoting Morris himself, “Without the uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here.”

“In The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Ilan Pappe states: “The Zionist project could only be realized through the creation in Palestine of a purely Jewish state, both as a safe haven for Jews from persecution and a cradle for a new Jewish nationalism. And such a state had to be exclusively Jewish not only in its socio-political structure but also in its ethnic composition.” Pappe’s accounting of the ethnic cleansing is not pleasant reading. It is a detailed presentation of calculated ruthlessness. Considered alongside Walid Khalidi’s All That Remains, it provides the reader with a visual context that forces consideration of the mothers and fathers and children who once lived and worked and played and prayed in the 418 villages destroyed. It is that human element that can give meaning to “Never Again.”” (Introduction The Plight of the Palestinians, section “Selling the Soul). Such is the sorrowful tale of the sins of the father.

*The Hagana Oath (Secret files of Sir Richard C. Catling, Deouty Head CID, Mandate Police)
For those entering the military forces of the Jewish Agency, the Hagana, the badge is replaced with the Hagana Oath (XVI A 157).

I hereby declare that of my own free will and in free recognition I enter the Jewish defence organization of the Land of Israel, (Irgun Haganana Haivri Be’Eretz Israel).

I hearby swear to remain loyal all the days of my life to the defense organization, its laws and its tasks as defined in its basic regulations by the High Command.

I hearby swear to remain at the disposal of the defense organization all my life, to accept its discipline unconditionally and without limit, and at its call to enlist for active service at any time and in any place, to obey all its orders and to fulfill all its instructions.

I hearby swear to devote all my strength, and even to sacrifice my life, to defense and battle for my people and my Homeland, for the freedom of Israel and for the redemption of Zion.

- William A. Cook is a Professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California. His works include Psalms for the 21st Century, Mellon Poetry Press, Tracking Deception: Bush Mid-East Policy, The Rape of Palestine, The Chronicles of Nefaria, and most recently in 2010, The Plight of the Palestinians. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Contact him at: wcook@laverne.edu or visit: www.drwilliamacook.com.

palestinechronicle.com | 14-May-2012 04:04

The Palestine Nakba: The Past is Now

By Ludwig Watzal

The establishment of the State of Israel in Palestine and the myth of Jewish return after two thousand years of exile to a 'land without a people, for a people without a land' were accompanied by a great injustice. The diplomatic success of the Zionist movement in close cooperation with the leading imperial powers caused, however, a catastrophe for the indigenous population and the owners of the land, the Palestinian people. 'Palestine' was wiped off the map. Since then, the Palestinians commemorate this historical event for the 64th time as al-Nakba (the catastrophe). And this catastrophe continues until today.

The creation of the State of Israel led to the destruction of 500 Palestinian villages and towns, and the whole population disappeared from the political map. Out of 900,000 only 160,000 remained in what was called Israel. They had to endure 18 years of harsh military rule, with severe restrictions on their movement. The bulk of their land was expropriated based on dubious laws. After the Six Day War in 1967, Israel occupied the rest of historical Palestine and expelled another 300,000 people. Since this “glorious” victory, left and right-wing Israeli governments alike, colonized the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) and transferred 500,000 their own population against international law in what was left of Palestine.

On Israel’s Independence Day, May 15, 1948, the Israeli government encourages the so-called “Israeli Arabs” to celebrate the Zionist colonization of their land and the destruction of historic Palestine. In Israeli school books, the Nakba is just not mentioned. The Palestinian kids get a special treatment of Zionist ideological indoctrination. They are educated according to the Zionist narrative that distains their cultural heritage and comes close to a “cultural genocide” (Raphael Lemkin). According to Lemkin, it means the destruction and elimination of the cultural patterns of a group or of the “soul of a nation”, which is exactly, what happens in Palestine.

The policies of the Israeli governments have always aimed at a “memoricide” and the de-Arabisation of Palestine. The policy of renaming and the self-reinvention of a Hebrew terminology started already long before the State of Israel was established. After 1948 the Israeli government under David Ben-Gurion started a “biblicisation” of the Arab geography by placing events, actions and places in-line with biblical terminology, such as the transformation from al-Majdal to biblical Ashkelon. A political misleading role is being played by the Jewish National Fund (JNF) through the so-called reforestation or the “green-washing” of the Nakba. The JNF collects donations that are tax-privileged in the United States or in Western Europe, although the JNF is not a charitable Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) but a part-state institution. The organization has always been and continues to be instrumental in the colonization of Palestine and the expropriation of Palestinian land.

In the late 1980s, it had the impression as if some Israeli historians, sociologists and political scientists came to grips with the crimes and injustices that were committed by the Israeli army in the cause of the establishment of Israel. “New historians” emerged on the scene and published books, in which the dominant Zionist historic narrative was rejected or at least put into perspective. Leading in the rewriting of Zionist history were Simcha Flapan, Benny Morris, Avi Shlaim and Ilan Pappé. In the decade of the “New Historians” between 1990 and 2000 they made good progress in exposing the true face of Zionism and its ideological underpinnings. But with the final collapse of the so-called peace process at Camp David in July 2000 and Ehud Barak’s statement that there is no peace-partner on the Palestinian side, the whole of the so-called Zionist left and the peace-camp switched sides and blamed PLO-chief Yasser Arafat for the failure, although Barak was the main rejectionist and U. S. President Bill Clinton his partner. In the cause of time, the “new historians” felt strong headwind not only from the political but also from the scientific establishment. Especially, the public mobbing of Ilan Pappé forced him out of the country. In British exile, he can continue to work and teach freely as a historian.

In contrast, Benny Morris returned to the Zionist consensus and exposed himself as a supporter of the idea of “transfer”. In his infamous interview with Ari Shavit in the Israeli daily “Haaretz” from January 9, 2004, Morris justified the “ethnic cleansing” done by David Ben-Gurion. And if there is “the choice between ethnic cleansing and genocide (…) I prefer ethnic cleansing.” The so-called liberal Zionism with which the Zionist left is identified, sees Israel’s injustices beginning with the occupation of June 1967, whereas historians like Ilan Pappé makes 1948 events the vocal point of the Israel Palestinian conflict.

Without addressing the Nakba, the key site of the Palestinian consciousness and the most important event that links the Palestinians in Israel, the refugees and the Palestinians under Israel colonization in the OPT together, the Palestinian victims have strong reservations to forgive their Israeli perpetrators. The history of the conflict must be decolonized because it has been predominantly written by Zionist historians. To accept the Palestinian narrative in Israeli school books should be self-evidence because almost 25 % of Israel’s citizens are Palestinians. “While the Holocaust is an event in the past”, writes Nur Masalha in his worth reading book “The Palestine Nakba”, the Nakba did not end in 1948 but continues through forced displacement and continued colonization of the West Bank to this day.

- Dr. Ludwig Watzal works as a journalist and editor in Bonn, Germany. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

palestinechronicle.com | 14-May-2012 03:51

Palestine Nakba 64 Years Later

By Jamal Kanj

Each year on May 15 Palestinians commemorate the Nakba or Catastrophe. On that May Day, Palestine ceased to exist from the world’s map and 85 percent of its natives were evicted from their historical homes and villages.

The expulsion of Palestinians was part of Zionism’s early obsession with creating a nation with a Jewish majority. Their increasing preoccupation with changing the population demography in Palestine was envisaged by the World Zionist Organization (WZO) in the late 1800s. In his writings in 1896 Herzl, founder of WZO foretold expelling “… the poor [native] population across the border unnoticed.”

Immediately following the UN’s vote to divide Palestine between native inhabitants and European immigrants, Israel’s founder Ben-Gurion declared before the Central Committee of the Histadrut− the Eretz Israel Workers Party− in December 1947 that the UN vote makes “the total population of the Jewish State at the time of its establishment… almost 40% non-Jews. There can be no stable and strong Jewish state so long as it has a Jewish majority of only 60%.” 

Newly released secret Israeli archives have revealed that under the leadership of the “Transfer Committee,” Zionist paramilitary organizations waged conscientious terrorist campaign to fulfill the vision of a “strong Jewish state.”

The Transfer Committee led by the first Israeli Prime Minister Ben Gurion, consciously or unconsciously, assigned Hebrew names tantamount to ethnic cleansing for their military operations: matateh (broom), tihur (cleansing), biur (a Passover expression meaning “to cleanse the leaven”) and niku (a Hebrew word for cleaning up).

Joseph Weitz− head of the National Jewish Fund in the 1940s− outlined the plan in his diary “Not one village must be left, not one tribe. The transfer must be directed at Iraq, Syria, and even Transjordan.”

Investigating Transfer Committee’s declassified documents for his book “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine,” Israeli historian Ilan Pappé references a solemn quote from Ben Gurion’s diary “We need to harm them without mercy, women and children included. Otherwise, this is not an effective reaction. During the operation there is no need to distinguish between guilty and not guilty.”

Zionism’s terror campaign resulted in the forced eviction of 805,067 Palestinians, razing 531 indigenous villages and the seizure of 92 per cent of the land. It is worth noting that more than fifty per cent (413,790) of the refugees were displaced while Palestine was ostensibly a British protectorate.

Approximately 150,000 Palestinians who remained on what became Israel had to apply for citizenship in the new state; natives who failed to register were considered trespassers. 

A renowned “trespasser” was Palestinian poet Mahmood Darwish who when accused by an immigrant military judge of being illegal, he retorted: God gave me birth on this land before your state was born at the UN. 

In analyzing Palestinian refugees after 1948, an Israeli Foreign Ministry official document projected that “The most adaptable and best survivors would ‘manage’ by a process of natural selection… Some will die but most will turn into human debris and social outcasts… in the Arab countries.”

Today, the endurance of these refugees continues to prove the fallacy of Israel’s prophecy sixty four years earlier. For Palestinians have remained part of a nation, but without the state− or as aptly depicted by Israeli writer Danny Rubinstein:
 
“Every people in the world lives in a place. For Palestinians, the place lives in them.”

- Jamal Kanj writes frequently on Arab World issues and the author of “Children of Catastrophe, Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America”, Garnet Publishing, UK. Jamal’s articles can be read at www.jamalkanj.com. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Contact him at: jkanj@yahoo.com.

palestinechronicle.com | 11-May-2012 19:54

Nuclear Israel: Image of Apocalyptic Horror

By Ismail Salami

Imagine a world plunged in darkness and extreme cold with the sunlight screened off by a thick pall of dust cloud. Imagine a world flung back into chaos. This is an image conceived of a world abandoned to dereliction by doomsday weapons.

According to Samson Option theory, Israel reserves the option to retaliate massively with nuclear weapons when its existence is gravely endangered by the military might of another country although the regime refuses to admit to the possession of a huge nuclear arsenal.

As a first sign of a nuclear threat, in the 1973 Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) War considered to be the fiercest Arab-Israeli conflict, when Arab forces were about to defeat Israeli forces, the Zionist Prime Minister Golda Meir ordered that 13 nuclear bombs be readied to be used either by missiles or by aircraft. And President Nixon agreed to the Israeli demand. In fact, the Samson Option is a horrific plan drawn up by Israel leaders to take down the Middle East and the entire world if necessary and proclaimed 'kosher'. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Seymour M. Hersh hypothesized that "Should war break out in the Middle East again and should the Syrians and the Egyptians break through again as they did in 1973 [Yom Kippur War], or should any Arab nation fire missiles again at Israel, as Iraq did [in the 1991 Gulf War], a nuclear escalation, once unthinkable except as a last resort, would now be a strong possibility."

Israel test-fired a missile on November 2, 2011 which it said was capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and targeting any part of the Middle East including Iran.

Israeli officials maintain that the nuclear-capable missile can hit any target within the range of 10,000 kilometers. In other words, it can hit even Russia, China or any part in Europe.

It is now public knowledge that Tel Aviv is a powerful nuclear regime which has at its disposal a huge arsenal surmised to accommodate 300 to 400 nuclear warheads. Israelis have long been mum on the issue and still decline to acknowledge the existence of this nuclear arsenal.

In his revealing book “The Samson Option” (1991), Seymour Hersh argues that the idea of producing nuclear weapons was initially articulated by Israeli military leader Moshe Dayan in early 1968. Since then, Israel began to produce three to five bombs a year. After all, Israel started its illegal nuclear activities back in 1950 in Dimona, an Israeli city in the Negev desert, as it was geographically ideal for such clandestine activities. If we take Hersh's words for granted, Israel is expected to possess more than 200 nuclear bombs by now. The Zionist regime inked an agreement with France early in the sixties and received required materials for commencing a nuclear weapons program including a reactor, a factory for extracting plutonium and the design. The French helped build an underground plutonium processing facility for Israel in 1962 which was completed 1965. The Israelis kept tight security in and around the perimeter of the nuclear facility and in 1973 they shot down a passenger Libyan plane flying in the vicinity and killed 104 passengers. The regime was reportedly ranked sixth in producing nuclear bombs in the sixties. Other required materials such as uranium and heavy water were also provided by Norway, France, and the United States.

An operation codenamed Plumbat was jointly carried out by Mossad and LAKAM (An intelligence-gathering agency of Israel's Defense Ministry for stealing technology for Dimona.) in spearheading the Israeli nuclear weapons efforts. A German freighter with a cargo of 200 tons of uranium oxide suddenly disappeared. When it was found in a Turkish port, the cargo was gone. Later, it became obvious that it had been transferred to an Israeli ship thanks to the joint efforts of Mossad and LAKAM.

Before Seymour Hersh shed light on the nightmarish aspects of the Israeli nuclear bombs, it was Mordechai Vanunu, a former technician at Dimona who brought Israel's nuclear weapons program to the attention of international community. In 1986, Mordechai Vanunu, a leftist supporter of Palestinian rights, smuggled dozens of pictures and documents out of Dimona and gave them to the London Sunday Times. The pictures and documents proved that Israel was in possession of a sizeable nuclear arsenal i.e. as many as 200 highly sophisticated thermonuclear bombs. The documents also revealed that the Dimona's capacity had increased drastically over the years and that Israel was producing 1.2 kilograms of plutonium on a weekly basis, enough to make 10 to 12 bombs per year. However, Vanunu paid the price for these disclosures and spent 18 years in prison including 11 years in solitary confinement.

Israel follows a policy of nuclear opacity. In other words, the regime is advised not to acknowledge or deny the possession of nuclear weapons. Mum is the word in Israeli nuclear policy. In a secret meeting in 1968 between Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir and US President Richard Nixon, the two parties came to the agreement that as long as Israel refused to declare the possession of nukes publicly or test them, the United States would endure and screen the regime's nuclear program. This has ever since become an indispensable part of US-Israeli policy. However, in 2006, incoming US Defense Secretary Robert Gates told a senate committee in a momentary lapse of reason (?) that Israel has nuclear weapons.

This has actually changed nothing concerning Israel's nuclear program over the years and Washington's officials have voiced their constant support for Israel and its security. In July, 2011, US President Barack Obama even reassured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Washington's unreserved support for the regime, "We strongly believe that, given its size, its history, the region that it's in . . . Israel has unique security requirements. It's got to be able to respond to threats. . . . And the United States will never ask Israel to take any steps that would undermine [its] security interests."

The tale of Israel's nuclear weapons program is a painfully sad one and the fact that some European countries secretly catapulted this regime into a nuclear nightmare is a shame. However, it is more than a shame when one contemplates that during all these years the US has been aware of these clandestine illegal activities and even supported them.

The worst is yet to come.

With over 300 to 400 nuclear bombs, Israel has been translated into an image of apocalyptic horror for the entire Middle East if not for the world.

- Dr. Ismail Salami is an Iranian writer, Middle East expert, Iranologist and lexicographer. He writes extensively on the US and Middle East issues and his articles have been translated into a number of languages. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

palestinechronicle.com | 11-May-2012 19:47

Operetta in 5 Acts: Netanyahu's Own Theater

By Uri Avnery

The master magician has drawn another rabbit from his top hat. A real and very lively rabbit.

He has confounded everybody, including the leaders of all parties, the top political pundits and his own cabinet ministers.

He has also shown that in politics, everything can change – literally – overnight.

At 2 a.m. the Knesset was busy putting the finishing touches to a law to dissolve itself – condemning half of its members to political oblivion.

At 3 a.m. there was a huge new government coalition. No elections, thank you very much.

An operetta in 5 acts.

Act one: Everything tranquil. Public opinion polls show Binyamin Netanyahu in absolute control. His popularity is approaching 50%; nobody else’s even approaches 20%.

The largest party in the Knesset, Kadima, sinks in the polls from 28 seats to 11, with all indications that it will continue to fall. Its new leader, former Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz, gets even less points as candidate for Prime Minister.

Netanyahu could sun himself on the roof of his luxury villa and contemplate the future with equanimity. All is well in the best of all Jewish states.

Act two: Sudden clouds darken the sky.

The Supreme Court, headed by a new president hand-picked by the settlers and the extreme right, hands down a decision: a new neighborhood in Bet-El settlement has to be demolished within two weeks. No ifs and buts, this is a final decision. Also, another settlement, Migron, has to be gone in two months.

Netanyahu is faced with several disastrous possibilities: carry out the court’s order, which would break up his coalition, enact a new law that would circumvent the court and be unconstitutional, or ignore the court altogether, which would mark the end of democracy in the ‘Only Democracy in the Middle East.’

Like in the book of Job, disaster follows disaster. The term of the temporary law that excuses Orthodox yeshiva students from military service – about 7000 this year – has come to an end, and an overwhelming majority in the country demands its abolition altogether. That would inevitably break up the coalition.

And then something incredible happens. Netanyahu arrives at the inaugural meeting of the new Likud convention. This convention is traditionally a rough and tumultuous scene, resembling the Roman arena in ancient times. Netanyahu is a master of these assemblies. This time, too, he is warmly received and, on live TV, proclaims to the nation the fabulous achievements of his 3-year-old government. He then asks to be elected convention chairman, which would give him control over the candidates’ list in the next elections.

Then the really unbelievable happens. Half the members in the hall jump up and start shouting at him. Like Nicolae Ceausescu on a memorable occasion, Netanyahu stares at his underlings uncomprehendingly. 

It appears that in the recent Likud registration drive, the settlers made a concerted effort to stuff the party with their people. These have no intention of ever voting for the Likud (they vote for the more extreme Right) but want to blackmail Netanyahu. Coming early, they pack the much-too-small hall in which the convention takes place. Since they all wear a kippah, they are easily recognizable. They shout demands for the election of the chairman by secret ballot. Netanyahu surrenders and the convention is postponed.

Smarting from this public humiliation, Netanyahu swears revenge.

Act three: Out of the blue, Netanyahu announces his decision to dissolve the Knesset and call a quick general election.

Everybody flabbergasted. It is still a year and a half before the end of the legislative term. In a comic reversal, it is the opposition leaders who object to the election, but Netanyahu is determined.

The outlook is bleak: a Netanyahu landslide is inevitable. There is no credible candidate to compete for the prime minister’s office. Kadima is about to disappear almost entirely. Expected small gains by Labor are unimportant. In the polls, Yair Lapid’s new party (to be called “There is a Future”) is hovering around 10%. In the next Knesset, there will be no effective opposition at all.

For the Left, it looks like an unmitigated disaster – four more years of the Rightist-Orthodox-settler coalition.

Act four: envied by all, assured of a landslide victory, Netanyahu is in a black mood.

He is obliged to remove the settlements in the middle of the election campaign. In his own party, the extreme right, led by the settlers, is gaining strength, jeopardizing his pretension of leading the party towards the center. The time bomb of the Orthodox army service shirkers can explode any moment.

And then in a flash comes the stunning idea – something that will pull the rug from under the feet of everybody else and form an entire new political landscape.

Somewhere around, there lie 28 unused Kadima Knesset members, headed by a hungry ex-general. All of them are faced with political oblivion. They can be bought for next to nothing – just giving them another year and a half of political life is quite enough.

Lo and behold, while one set of Likudniks are still laboring in a Knesset committee finalizing the law for the dispersal of the Knesset, another set of Likudniks are signing an agreement with Kadima. The enlarged coalition will encompass 75% of the Knesset. Nobody in the existing coalition is leaving, 28 new members are joining. That leaves the opposition with just 26 members (8 Labor, 3 Meretz, 7 Arab parties, 4 Communists, 4 National Front).   
 
Act five: This changes the picture completely. The extreme right wing, outside and inside the Likud, have lost their veto power. So have the religious parties. Yair Lapid, the promising shining torch (that’s what his name means) is being extinguished before he really ignited. 

During the next year and a half, Netanyahu can do whatever he wants, play one against another, maneuver at will. The Leftist opposition is even more powerless than before, if that is possible. King Bibi rules supreme.

End (for the time being.)

At the first moment, some feared that the entire exercise was directed against Iran.

Governments of National Unity are generally set up in times of war. Britain in 1939, Israel in 1967. But, like almost all the generals and ex-generals, Mofaz has unequivocally rejected an attack on Iran. However, he changes his opinions more frequently than his socks. 

As the argument goes, the opportunity is there. An overwhelming Knesset majority will support any decision of Netanyahu's. Barack Obama, in the middle of his crucial reelection campaign, will not dare to object. The Republicans will support Netanyahu through thick and thin.

(This is an established strategic assumption in Israel. Many risky Israeli initiatives have been timed for the eve of US elections. The state was founded in 1948 when Harry Truman was fighting for his political life. The 1956 Sinai war was started when Dwight D. Eisenhower was in the middle of his reelection campaign. This ploy, by the, way misfired – Eisenhower was furious and did not need Jewish votes and money. He drove Israel out of its newly acquired territories.)

However, it can be said with near certainty that Netanyahu’s move had nothing to do with Iran – though its anti-hero is Iranian-born. Mofaz may not look much like a general, but he does look and move like a merchant in the bazaar.

American party politicians of either side may sound irresponsible, but when vital US security interests are at stake, their talk is not reflected in action. Even at the height of an election campaign, America will not allow Israel to push it into a world-wide disaster.

Netanyahu sounds more and more like a man resigned to this reality. No war in sight. During the whole operetta, Iran was hardly mentioned. No smoking gun in the first act.

Most pundits and politicians on the left condemned the Netanyahu-Mofaz pact as something odious. “Dirty trick” was one of the more moderate terms used.

I am not a partner to this outcry. Dirty tricks are the usual trade of politicians, and this one is no dirtier than many others.

On the whole, the extended government is more moderate and less exposed to the blackmail of the settlers and the Orthodox than the smaller one was. Fascist laws may have less chance of being passed. The position of the Supreme Court may be less endangered. As of November, a reelected Obama may exert real pressure for peace.

But the main thing is that the elections have been postponed. It is up to the partisans of peace and social justice to use the time gained to put together a real political force, ready for the test. After having peered into the face of near-certain electoral disaster, they must now get together and prepare themselves for the fight. There is a chance, it must not be squandered.

And if there is somebody out there who wants to set the libretto of the operetta to music – he or she is very welcome.

- Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

palestinechronicle.com | 11-May-2012 05:21

Bean Counting States

By Sam Bahour

As the Israeli-Palestinian conflict faces hunger strikes and the threat of renewed conflict, the question being tirelessly reiterated is whether a two-state solution is beyond us. The answer is "Yes" and "No." But counting the number of states required for bringing about a final status solution is entirely misguided.

It is past time to take a fresh approach to resolving the conflict. Instead we should focus on two clear milestones. First, there should be an end to Israel's 45-year military occupation of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Then, and only then, can Palestinians be expected to negotiate in good faith toward the second milestone, which is a negotiated final status agreement that would end the conflict and launch a process of historic reconciliation. Ending the occupation—or the bulk of it—can be done immediately; resolving the conflict may take decades.

The status quo, which involves holding Palestinian emancipation hostage to an unachievable, all-encompassing final status agreement, is paramount to a war crime. After two decades of failed bilateral negotiations under international auspices, no one should expect Palestinians to continue playing the game by Israeli rules.

Continued bilateral negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis will result in more wasted time and, sadly, more loss of life and hope on both sides. Palestinians can only be expected to negotiate in good faith once the boot of Israeli military occupation is removed from their necks and should not be asked to negotiate an end to the occupation imposed upon them, but rather a political settlement with Israel post-occupation. Otherwise, Palestinian freedom (not to mention movement, access, economy, natural resources, airspace, water, etc.) is merely a card Israel will use to affect a final status agreement. The prolonged military occupation is a state of affairs that has bypassed even the definition of occupation, which by law is temporary and an extension of war. Is anyone convinced that after 45 years and the installing of 500,000 Jewish settlers in the occupied territory that the current state of occupation is "temporary?"

One fact accepted by all parties involved—Israelis, Palestinians and the United States—is that if affairs remain on their current track, the default result will be a single state, comprising of Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza Strip. This will not be a single state for all its citizens, but rather a harsh Apartheid state, in which one part of the nation, the majority, is ruled by the minority. Even the current Israeli Defense Minister and former Israeli Prime Minister have used the "A" word to explain what Israel will face if things remain on their current course.

Palestinians could accelerate the default single state option by unilaterally redefining their notion of self-determination and calling for civil rights in their ancestral homeland, instead of maintaining their current demand for national sovereignty in merely 22% of their original homeland—in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Many observers view Palestinians and Israelis sharing all of historic Palestine as a doomsday scenario. This knee-jerk reaction may prevail, especially given that very little serious thought has been invested in what a non-Apartheid one-state—a state respecting equal rights for all its citizens—would look like.

The more fashionable outcome revolves around two states, Israel on 78% of historic Palestine, and Palestine on 22%. This two-state solution was the expected outcome of the infamous, and now failed (multiple times), Oslo peace process. A contributing factor to this failure could be that the definition of a two-state solution, itself, is an ever moving target.

The two states being entertained today, for example, are a far cry from the two states that were defined, in great detail, in UN Resolution 181 (known as the Partition Plan), a non-binding General Assembly resolution. In that 1947 plan, Israel was envisioned to be established on 56% of British-mandated Palestine. Instead, by acts of armed aggression, Israel assumed 100% of the land, some gained in 1948, some by annexation in 1980, and the remaining parts by military occupation in 1967.

Today there is a single source of authority between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River: the State of Israel, despite the fact that there exists a banana republic entity called the Palestinian Authority, which, by using the word "Authority" in its name, gives a false impression that it actually has sovereign control over anything.

So, given this reality, can two states be realized? Yes. A two-state solution can be imposed if the U.S. makes the decision to have it so. Place at my disposal the U.S. military and economic weight, along with NATO forces, and I’ll bring two states to reality by the end of the month. That said, this is a seriously flawed and unjust solution and its sustainability is questionable, at best.

But feasibility aside, the U.S. does not seem anywhere near such a decision, especially given that the U.S. political system has been hijacked by a powerful pro-Israel lobby and blinded by very short-term bipartisan political interests. Israel and Palestine are supposedly a U.S. foreign affairs issue, but the fact is that Israel has become an awkwardly domestic issue that muddles in internal U.S. politics and misguides U.S. strategic interests in the region since its inception.

A glimmer of hope may be found in the so-called Arab Spring movement across the Middle East. Past U.S. allies and dictators are falling a dime a dozen, and one can imagine the day when the U.S. will need to do more than pay lip service to peace in the Middle East. When that day comes, the low hanging fruit will be to bring its strategic ally, Israel, in line with international law and the will of the community of nations, and allow for the creation of a Palestinian state. But if the Palestinians redefine their self-determination based on civil, not national, rights before the U.S. awakes from its slumber, it may be too late for two states.

- Sam Bahour is a Palestinian-American business consultant based in Al-Bireh/Ramallah, Palestine. He is co-editor of HOMELAND: Oral Histories of Palestine and Palestinians and blogs at www.epalestine.com. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

palestinechronicle.com | 11-May-2012 01:08

Prisoners Uphold Palestinian Cause

By Ramzy Baroud

A critical shift in the Palestine-Israeli conflict is now underway. The shift promises an endgame for the Israeli plot in Palestine, and a possible collective response from the Palestinian people.

Every Palestinian uprising in the past — from as far back as the late 1920s to the second Intifada in 2000 — has been sparked by a single event, which was a critical accumulation of numerous prior events that forced Palestinians to act en masse. Such a moment is now approaching.

Current developments in Palestine include the complete bankruptcy of the Palestinian leadership, futile unity talks between major Palestinian factions, Israeli attempts to finalise its long-orchestrated colonial designs in the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem, and a failure of the international community to impose any real pressure on Israel. The high hopes some Palestinians pinned on Arab revolutions — and their sense of political clarity — have also been dissipating.

Since its establishment in 1994, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) was a lost cause. Palestinian novelist Susan Abulhawa aptly described the Palestinian leadership as “doing little more than pick up the trash and keep people in line while Israel steals more and more of our land.” In fact, the PNA has done a terrific job in that regard, as many of the Palestinian inmates in Israeli prisons have also served time in PNA jails.

Israeli politician Yossi Beilin, one of the original manufacturers of the Oslo accords, is pleading with PNA President Mahmoud Abbas to disown Oslo, which he describes as a ‘farce’. “Dissolving the Palestinian National Authority and returning daily control to Israel would be an action nobody could ignore...Do not hesitate for a moment!” he wrote, as quoted in the Christian Science Monitor on May 3. Expectedly, Abbas refused. His government is busy shutting down media outlets affiliated with Abbas’ rivals. So much for the institutional and political reforms promised early last year.

The PNA is politically bankrupt as well. After months of heightened expectations surrounding Abbas’ moving UN speech last September, the big finale was a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this month. According to the letter, Israel is undermining the PNA’s power (cited in Bloomberg, April 17). Now the PNA is playing the waiting game. “The Palestinians will wait for the Israeli response and also will wait for the Americans to come up with any ideas to help push forward the peace process,” opined Palestinian political analyst Khalil Shaheen. As if not enough waiting has already taken place for the last two decades.

Meanwhile, Israel is moving forward with a clear vision regarding its overall objectives in the Occupied Territories. On April 24, an Israeli ministerial committee approved three colony outposts — Bruchin and Rechelim in the northern part of the West Bank, and Sansana in the south. Although all colony activities in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem are considered illegal by international law, Israeli law differentiates between sanctioned colonies and ‘illegal’ ones. This distinction has actually proved to be no more than a disingenuous attempt at conflating international law and Israeli law.

Since 1967, Israel placed occupied Palestinian land, privately owned or otherwise, into various categories. One of these categories is ‘state-owned’, as in obtained by virtue of military occupation. For many years, the ‘state-owned’ occupied land was allotted to various purposes. Since 1990, however, the Israeli government refrained from establishing colonies, at lease formally. Now, according to the Israeli anti-colonist group, Peace Now, “instead of going to peace the government is announcing the establishment of three new colonies.” Every physical space in the Occupied Territories — whether privately owned or ‘state owned’, ‘legally’ obtained or ‘illegally’ obtained — is fair game. The extremist Jewish colonists haven’t received such empowering news since the heyday of Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon.

The move regarding colonies is not an isolated one. The Israeli government is now challenging the very decisions made by the Israeli Supreme Court. On April 27, the Israeli government reportedly asked the high court to delay the demolition of an ‘unauthorised’ West Bank outpost in the Beit El colony which was scheduled to take place on May 1. The land, even by Israeli legal standards, is considered private Palestinian land, and the Israeli government had committed to the court to take down the illegal outposts — again, per Israeli definition — on the specified date.

Michael Sfard, an attorney with Yesh Din, which reportedly advocates Palestinian rights, described the request as “an announcement of war by the Israeli government against the rule of law.” More specifically, “they said clearly that they have reached a decision not to evacuate illegal construction on private Palestinian property.”

Abbas is not just ‘out of ideas’, as described by the CSM, but is desperate for a lifeline that could breathe some life into his authority. The Palestinian people, however, seem eager to find an alternative that transcends the PNA. The irony is that Palestinian resistance is resurfacing among the most physically confined: hunger strikers in Israeli prisons, whose numbers on April 17 included over 1,500 inmates. “The newest heroes of the Palestinian cause are not burly young men hurling stones or wielding automatic weapons. They are gaunt adults, wrists in chains, starving themselves inside Israeli prisons,” reported Jodi Rudoren in the New York Times on May 3.

These gaunt, chained adults are finally succeeding in unifying Palestinians in the occupied territories and the diaspora. As tens of thousands rally in solidarity with their cause, factionalism and politics are taking a backseat, at least for now.

Palestinian uprisings don’t necessary regain stolen land, or free long-incarcerated prisoners. What they do often achieve is the mending of divisions, the reassertion of national rights and the re-articulation of political discourses. More importantly, a new uprising produces a new generation of leaders. This will come as an urgently needed change in Palestine’s political and revolutionary landscape.

- Ramzy Baroud is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story. (This article was originally published in Gulf News – http://gulfnews.com)

palestinechronicle.com | 09-May-2012 20:13

Empty Stomachs, Palestinian Spring

By Patrick O. Strickland – Ramallah, The West Bank

Following the examples of Khader Adnan and Hana Shalabi, 1,500 Palestinian prisoners have joined a mass hunger strike campaign inside Israeli military prisons. They are calling for an immediate termination of the policy of administrative detention and the excessive use of solitary confinement, and demanding humane living conditions, family visits, and reasonable access to educational materials.

In short, Palestinian hunger strikers are reclaiming something which they have been systematically denied—their dignity.

It is not Israel alone that stands between Palestinians and their basic human rights: neither the media nor the Western governments have bothered to comment much on the plight of Palestinian prisoners conducting a mass campaign of peaceful resistance.

In the media, Egypt, Tunisia, and Syria have been repackaged and price-marked. The highly commercialized depiction of the Arab Spring—large crowds of youngsters overthrowing repressive dictators only with the help of Iphones and Facebook—has increased media profits.

Palestinians, however, continue to be portrayed as nothing more than ragtag bands of stone-throwers, hijackers, and suicide bombers.

The Obama administration’s endorsement of Arab uprisings has been limited to those countries which allowed it to secure its hegemony in the Middle East. Hosni Mubarak and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali were urged to step down and make way for democracy only after it was clear that their ousters were imminent. In Libya, where Gaddafi had a stubborn grasp on the country’s oil, NATO provided its humble services to hasten the regime change by the rebels.

As in Bahrain—where protesters threatened a monarchy that permits the US Navy to park its 5th Fleet between Iran and the plentiful oil fields of Saudi Arabia—the United States has calculated that American imperial designs benefit more from Israel’s suffocating military occupation than Palestinian self-determination.

When Palestinian activists challenge segregation polices and board Jewish-only buses in the West Bank, their arrest goes unreported in the West. When young women from villages near Ramallah peacefully march on a freshwater spring that ideologically-intoxicated settlers had wrangled from them years ago, there was no corporate media coverage. When imprisoned Fatah figure Marwan Barghouti released an appeal to Palestinians to engage in widespread civil resistance to the policies of the occupation, the popular Western understanding remained: Palestinians are still “terrorists.”

And when over 1,500 Palestinians challenge their oppressors by launching a mass hunger strike, pundits ignorantly continue to assume that Palestinians are immune from the “Arab Spring.”

Palestinians are not immune from the infectious revolutionary fervor that has disseminated throughout the Middle East. In a sense, Palestinians set the example when they launched the First Intifada in 1987.

Imagine if Gilad Shalit had announced that he was on hunger strike while he held in captivity by Hamas. Imagine if 1,500 imprisoned Iranians were to stop taking food in protest of their regime. The front pages of every newspaper would be riddled with words of outrage against their jailers.

Palestinian poet Rafeef Ziadah said, “Our spring in Palestine is born shackled to a hospital bed.” Over ten hunger strikers have already been admitted to the hospital. Bilal Diab and Thaer Halalheh, both of whom have passed the 70 day mark, are reported to be in critical condition and near death. Their empty stomachs confirm the world’s indifference to the Palestinian Spring.

- Patrick O. Strickland is a freelance writer and living and traveling in Israel and Palestine. He writes on-the-ground dispatches on his blog, www.patrickostrickland.com. He is presently working towards an MA in Middle Eastern Studies. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

palestinechronicle.com | 09-May-2012 20:09

Netanyahu Crowns Himself King of Israel: Will Israeli Left Finally Stir?
By Jonathan Cook
 
Israelis barely had time to absorb the news that they were heading into a summer election when Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu yesterday pulled the rug from underneath the charade. Rancourous early electioneering had provided cover for a secret agreement between Netanyahu and the main opposition party, Kadima, to form a new, expanded coalition government.
 
Rather than facing the electorate in September, Netanyahu and his hardline rightwing government are expected to comfortably see out the remaining 18 months of his term of office. Not only that, but he will now have the backing of more than three-quarters of the 120-seat Israeli parliament, leading one commentator to crown him the “King of Israel”.
 
The announcement may have taken Israelis by surprise but it fully accorded with the logic of an increasingly dysfunctional Israeli political culture.
 
Shaul Mofaz, who a few weeks ago ousted Tzipi Livni as head of the centre-right Kadima party, had been vitriolic in denouncing Netanyahu. He called the prime minister a “liar” and went to the trouble of posting on his Facebook page a pledge that he would never make a deal with this “weak, incompetent and deaf government”.
 
He also boasted in a recent interview that he would topple Netanyahu by leading the revival of mass social protests expected in the summer.
 
Last year hundreds of thousands took to the streets to demand an end to the rocketing cost of living, much of it caused by business cartels that were empowered by Netanyahu and his Likud party in privatisation programmes years ago.
 
But the reality was that Mofaz, a hawkish former army chief of staff who is seen as a lacklustre, power-hungry and slippery politician, had no credibility with either the demonstrators or the wider electorate.
 
Kadima, which has never strayed far from its ideological roots in the Likud, from which it split several years ago, is currently the largest faction in the parliament. But polls suggested Mofaz would lead it to electoral oblivion.
 
The deal will win him a temporary reprieve, with a seat in the inner circle alongside Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, the long-time defence minister whose own party was expected to vanish if the September election had taken place.
 
Kadima will get no ministries but Mofaz will have a say in the biggest issues facing Israel: its dealings with Iran and the Palestinians.
 
This may be good for Mofaz personally but most likely his act of supreme duplicity will finish off Kadima as an independent party. The next year and a half may see him try to return to the Likud fold.
 
Netanyahu, meanwhile, has created a national unity government that more precisely reflects the majority mood: an unalloyed, aggressive and xenophobic rightwing consensus.
 
There was little need for Netanyahu to bring Kadima into the coalition. He was racing ahead in the polls, his popularity outstripping that of all the other major party leaders combined. And he had won this scale of support even as senior security officials, including the former heads of the Mossad and the Shin Bet, questioned his rationality on the issue of whether to attack Iran.
 
But there are advantages to Netanyahu in postponing an election he was expected to win.
 
Not least, it gives him time to entrench moves towards authoritarianism. Netanyahu has been behind a series of measures to weaken the media, human rights groups, and the courts. At the moment his government is defying a series of Supreme Court rulings to dismantle several small Jewish settlements on Palestinian land that are illegal even under Israeli law.
 
An uninterrupted 18 months will allow him to further undermine these rival centres of power. One of the promises he and Mofaz made yesterday was to overhaul the system of government. Netanyahu now has enough MPs to overturn even the most sacrosanct of Israel’s Basic Laws.
 
In addition, the new coalition will face an all but non-existent parliamentary opposition: a shrivelled centre-left of the Labor and Meretz parties, with only a handful of seats; a few noisy ultra-nationalists who would be more trouble in government than Netanyahu needs; and the Arab parties, who are reviled by Jewish public and politicians alike.
 
Labor’s new leader, Shelly Yacimovich, was expected to partially revive her party’s fortunes on the back of the social protests and might have been joined in a potentially confrontational opposition by a new centrist party, headed by TV news anchor and heart-throb Yair Lapid. Now both are relegated to the political margins.
 
Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister and leader of the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party, whom Netanyahu fears most as a potential challenger, has also been defanged. His current, pivotal role in the coalition will be savagely diminished by the bulky presence of Kadima.
 
Another bonus for Netayahu is that he is now better situated to see off the potentially dangerous early days of a Barack Obama second term, if the US president is re-elected in November. This is when some observers believed the US president, serially humiliated by Netanyahu over the settlements and the peace process, might seek his revenge.
 
But should Obama choose a fight on the Palestinian issue, he will be facing a prime minister whose position in Israel is unassailable.
 
What does all this mean for Iran and the Palestinians?
 
Regarding the former, several commentators and some of his own ministers have argued that Netanyahu now has a free hand to launch a go-it-alone attack on Iran and destroy what he claims is a nuclear weapons programme that might one day rival Israel's own secret arsenal.
 
More likely, the expanded coalition will make little difference to Israeli calculations over Iran, one way or the other. Mofaz, like most of the security establishment, opposes an attack unless it is headed by the US.
 
But Netanyahu will doubtless exploit his strengthened position to up the rhetoric against Tehran and add to the pressure for intensified action from the US and Europe.
 
As for the Palestinians, it can mean only more of the same -- or worse. Mofaz, who tried to distinguish himself in opposition by proposing a miserly peace plan that would see the Palestinians holed up in a series of enclaves, lacks the political weight to deflect Netanyahu from his even more intransigent approach.
 
But at least for Netanyahu, the Kadima leader will cut a more presentable figure in Washington than Lieberman as an advocate for Israel’s hard line.
 
The Israeli prime minister’s claim yesterday that he was about to unveil a “responsible peace process” should be taken no more seriously than his professed commitment, abandoned the same day, to submit himself to the judgment of the Israeli electorate.
 
The one small sliver of light is that what remains of the Israeli left, so long in hibernation or denial, may finally be stirred into a response by the antics of this ugly ruling cabal.
 
Last year’s social protests remained, in a great Israeli tradition, studiously “apolitical”, unlike their counterparts, the Occupy movements, in the United States and Europe.
 
The demonstrators refused to draw any connection between the rapidly polarised economic situation -- the gap between Israel’s rich and poor is now as bad as in the US -- and either the right’s self-serving neoliberal policies or the occupation that has channelled endless resources to the settlers and the security establishment.
 
This summer Israel may finally get its own Occupy movement -- one prepared to tackle the real occupation.
 
- Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net . He contributed this article to Palestine Chronicle.com. A version of this article originally appeared in The National - www.thenational.ae .
palestinechronicle.com | 09-May-2012 20:06

'Back-to-Back' Procedure: Patients at Checkpoints

By Tamar Fleishman - The West Bank

The detainment of a person that is being transferred by an ambulance to one of the six Palestinian hospitals in East Jerusalem, until the completion of the bureaucratic procedures, falls under the euphemistic title of: "co-ordinations". These entail nothing more than the authorization of the secret services that grant the patient permission to pass through the checkpoint, but they are only the first step on the Via Dolorosa unfolding before the patient until he does (or does not) arrive at his destination.

Despite the fact that the patient's rights act determines that in cases of medical emergency a person is entitled to receive urgent medical treatment without any preconditions or discriminations, in reality it would take time, in some incidents time that the patient doesn't have, before he is granted passage. 

The mechanism of the occupation is organized so as to make the daily life of the occupied population harder, by rising demands from the individual to carry an innumerable amount of permits that enwrap his existence like layers of an onion. Layer on top of another layer and upon removing them all the naked truth is revealed- the operators of this complex mechanism aren't the ones to come in contact with the people applying for permits. Those who give the verdict for better or for worse, are the invisibly present- the secret services, who are the only ones to decide if an ill or injured person will arrive at the hospital and receive the treatment he is entitled to by his right and not as some act of  kindness.

In the Name of Security

Security is a general code word which is used to prevent the patient from passing the checkpoint. The health coordinators inquire whether the person falls under the laconic category known as: "prevented". Meaning: anyone who had been defined by the GSS as "not clean" and whose entrance into Israel/Greater Jerusalem is strictly prohibited. This prevention requires no explanations. Ambiguity is an efficient tool for establishing authority and creating fear.

In an incident (not an unusual one) that demonstrates how wide is the spread of this arbitrariness, an ambulance from the occupied territories arrived at Qalandiya checkpoint, transferring for urgent treatment at Mokased hospital, a 73 years old heart patient in critical condition. The man, whose life was hanging by a thread, was between life and death and connected to a respiration machine. The ambulance driver had to stop at the entrance of the checkpoint where he phoned the health coordinator and was told that: "no co-ordinations had been preformed". I phoned as well, perhaps attempting to understand or perhaps to influence them, and the replay was: "who does he think he is… that he could just arrive at Qalandiya and pass through to Jerusalem?" This man, like many others- didn't pass.

"Back-to-Back"

Once all the co-ordinations had been completed, and all the centers had already checked, assessed and affirmed that the patient is not a security threat, that he is "clean" and may cross through the checkpoint, the way is yet to be paved and open before him.

In 2005 an agreement for cooperation in urgent cases was signed between the Israeli Red Star of David and the Palestinian Red Crescent, according to which six Red Crescent ambulances would be permitted immediate passage to the Palestinian hospitals without the prior arrangement of any co-ordinations. Nonetheless, according the OCHA (the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs), the agreement wasn't honored and the passage of the patient, regardless of the urgency of his condition, is preformed only by using a procedure known as: "Back-to-Back". The meaning of this is that an ambulance from Jerusalem is sent for, it is then parked by the Palestinian one, the patient is shifted from one stretcher to the other, from one ambulance to the other, the blanket from the occupied territories is taken off his body and a blanket from Jerusalem takes its place, the eyes of unfamiliar soldiers and security guards follow and scan his body and unfamiliar hands rummage through his personal belongings.

Where occupation resides, rights vanish and among them is the right to privacy.

Escorting the Patient
 
According to the regulations of the occupation, only one person is allowed to escort the patient. A woman's "dangerousness assessment" is lower than a man's. That is why in most cases a woman (a mother or a wife) would receive a permit to escort the patient on his way to the hospital, while a man (a father or a husband) would be rejected. But this right as well, as limited as it already is, doesn't obligate the authorities. The common argument is: "prevented", and it holds more power than the right for an escort and therefore annuls it. I was once present when a baby of seven months, sedated and on life support, was being transferred on her own. Her tiny body lied inside an intensive care unit and a doctor that was summoned was striving to keep her alive. "Where are the parents?" I asked the ambulance driver whom I knew. "They are prevented passage" he replied.

The High Court of Justice

The security mantra that the Israeli society worships, the mantra that causes it to blindly believe anything spokesmen say on behalf of security is also part of the considerations of the High Court of Justice that favors the argument of the military system over the fundamental rights of the Palestinians.

As a result, in April 2008 the HCJ dismissed a petition filed by the Physicians for Human Rights, regarding the regulations for the entrance of Palestinian ambulances into Jerusalem that necessitates the use of the "Back-to-Back" procedure, which in itself may only be preformed after the health coordinator at the civil administration grants her authorization. The court accepted the state's argument that it fears the possibility that humanitarian gestures could be exploited for acts of terrorism.

Indeed, the judges didn't ignore the state's obligation in accordance to the international law, to allow every medical treatment that a patient requires for his recovery, but they fully accepted the position of the Israeli Security Forces regarding the danger that entails a direct passage of patients from the occupied territories to the hospitals in East Jerusalem, and understood the current state to be: "a balance between medical requirements and security requirements".

(Translated by Ruth Fleishman)

- As a member of Machsomwatch, once a week Tamar Fleishman heads out to document the checkpoints between Jerusalem and Ramallah. This documentation (reports, photos and videos) can be found on the organization's site: www.machsomwatch.org. She is also a member of the Coalition of Women for Peace and volunteer in Breaking the Silence. She contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

palestinechronicle.com | 09-May-2012 20:03

Tumultuous Israeli Politics Will Not Usher Peace

By Ramzy Baroud

Israel is currently experiencing the kind of turmoil that may or may not affect its political hierarchy following the next general election. However, there is little reason to believe that any major transformations in the Israeli political landscape could be of benefit to Palestinians.

Former politicians and intelligence bosses have been challenging the conventional wisdom of right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu through a series of charged statements and political rhetoric.

A few weeks ago it sounded rather like a political fluke when former chief of the Israeli Mossad, Meir Dagan called an attack on Iran “the stupidest thing I have ever heard.” His comment was then widely dismissed, but other voices have since joined the discussion. Yuval Diskin, former head of the Israeli internal intelligence, the Shin Bet, went even further, as he questioned the abilities of both Netanyahu and Barak, accusing them of promoting ‘messianic sentiments’ regarding Iran.

“I saw them up close, they are not Messiahs...These are not people whose hands I would like to have on the steering- wheel,” he said. Dagan, who remains insistent on the ‘stupidity’ of the Israeli government, came to Diskin’s support. He told the New York Times on April 29 that “Diskin is a very serious man, a very talented man, he has a lot of experience in countering terrorism.”

Netanyahu’s exaggeration of the supposed ‘existential danger’ posed by Iran’s nuclear program is clearly political – ultimately aimed at weakening another regional foe and appeasing his hard-line coalition. The invoking of holocaust analogies over a ‘threat’ that various international agencies have disputed, is a clear sign of the government’s political and moral bankruptcy.

Awareness of Netanyahu’s ineptness is not confined to former heads of Israel’s intelligence, but the military itself. In a highly publicized interview in Haaretz in April, Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Benny Gantz disputed the government’s conventional wisdom – both by attesting to the rationality of Iranians leaders and discounting the very claim that Iran is on the road to manufacturing nuclear weapons. “Iran is going step by step to the place where it will be able to decide whether to manufacture a nuclear bomb. It hasn't yet decided whether to go the extra mile,” he said.

The timing of this stream of focused criticism, emanating from some of Israel’s most decorated intelligence and army men, is not coincidental. Yes, there may be a major political upheaval underway regarding Iran, but considering the fact that Netanyahu still possesses the upper hand in Israeli politics, one must neither delve too far into optimism nor subsist in perpetual cynicism.

In ‘Changing Course in Israel’ (Gulf News, May 4), Patrick Seale wrote, “The challenge to Netanyahu could have far-reaching consequences. For one thing, it appears to have removed any likelihood of an early Israeli attack on Iran, such as Netanyahu has threatened and trumpeted for a year and more; for another, it has revived the possibility of a two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a solution many had thought moribund, if not actually dead.”

It is difficult to ascertain whether the threat of war against Iran has been ‘removed’ based on statements made during an election season in Israel. Israeli politics is particularly known for its underhandedness, and parties vying for power understand that focusing their attack on Netanyahu is the only way to reinforce their candidate’s chances in the upcoming elections. This is not the first time that former heads of Israel’s intelligence and military have adopted such a charged position against a standing prime minister.

Yet, regardless of the motive, the move against Netanyahu may be backfiring. According to a recent Haaretz poll, Netanyahu is ‘the clear favorite heading into Israel's upcoming elections.’ Yossi Verter wrote on May 5, “Netanyahu can rest easy after reading the results of the latest Haaretz-Dialog poll: Not only does he trounce all his rivals on the question of who is most fit to lead the country, but an absolute majority of Israelis reject the aspersions cast on him last week by former Shin Bet security service chief Yuval Diskin.”

The poll indicates that the clearly coordinated statements regarding Iran are yet to shake Netanyahu’s throne. That said, such criticism could represent the start of political friction around Iran’s war. The friction could either move the next government further to the right or to the center. Until the nature of the next Israeli political formation becomes clearer, German commentator Ludwig Watzal is maybe closest to the right assessment. “The power struggle between Israel’s security establishments should tell the international public that an attack on Iran’s civilian nuclear program would be highly dangerous and politically irresponsible,” he wrote.

Iran aside, what about other major maneuvers in Israeli politics preceding the probable elections few months from now? Tzipi Livni, former head of Israel's biggest opposition party, Kadima, has left the Knesset with a bang, although her resignation had been anticipated following her major defeat by challenger Shaul Mofaz in primary party elections last March. Once more, Livni assigned herself the role of the visionary, warning that Israel was sitting ‘on a volcano’. “The international clock is ticking and the existence of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state is in danger,” she suggested.

Livni may have left the Knesset, but she has not left ‘political life.’ That declaration was enticing to the media which began speculating on what role Livni now sees for herself. According to the Haaretz poll, Mofaz, who defeated Livni, enjoys a minuscule approval rating of 6 percent.

The frenzy of statements and political realignments preceding Israel’s elections are typical, and should not indicate major shifts in policies. Mistaking all of this to signal the return of the two state options is too hopeful, to say at least.

The fact remains that Israel is unlikely to shift its aggressive policies from within. What is being promoted as the moral awakening, or political sensibility of some influential Israelis might merely be political maneuvers aimed at helping Israel find an exit strategy from delving further into war rhetoric. It could also be an attempt to challenge Netanyahu’s stronghold on Israeli politics. Quarreling within the ruling class in Israel during an election is almost a requirement. It neither ushers a new era of peace, nor does it signal a serious change from the constant saber-rattling against Iran.

- Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story (Pluto Press, London).

palestinechronicle.com | 08-May-2012 20:44

Demographic Majority: At What Cost?

By Jamal Kanj

In the US, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a Jewish Human Rights organization, prescribes racial integration, equality and multiculturalism for America society. ADL and other Jewish organizations work closely at local levels with school administrators throughout the US educating young children the virtues of tolerance and multiculturalism.

Naturally and as a promoter of racial equality, ADL wouldn’t shy away from denouncing or calling leaders and presidential candidates racists if they were perceived insensitive for the concerns of the Jewish community or other minorities in the US and Europe.

In Europe, French Jewish leaders, including ADL condemned Marie Le Pen the founder of the National Front (FN) as racist and anti-Semite for calling to protect the French Christian culture from nonwhites and non-Christian’s influence.

In the US, Jewish organizations and other mainstream political parties would have no qualm calling White politicians racists, should any of these politicians dare describing the birthrate, for example, of Hispanics or African Americans a “demographic problem.”

Actually less acute, but similar statements were attributed to 1990s newsletter by Ron Paul, a Republican US presidential candidate. For which the ADL national director Abraham Foxman conferred the title “racist” on Mr. Paul even after he disavowed any editorial kinship for the referenced publications.

Yet, other elected government officials had been able to use, with impunity, more shrilling language in a place where ADL not to be feared. It was used by leaders that could do no wrong in ADL’s book of virtues. To be precise, during a speech in Jerusalem before Israel's parliament in 2007, then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called the birthrate of non-Jewish citizens “demographic battle, drowned in blood and tears."

In a presentation at the Herzliya Conference on security in 2003, the current Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was more overt by declaring "If there is a demographic problem, and there is, it is with the Israeli Arabs who will remain Israeli citizens… if the percentage of Arab citizens rises above its current level of about 20 percent, Israel will not be able to maintain a Jewish demographic majority."

At the same annual gathering of senior Israeli and international Jewish policy-makers, Israel's current Foreign Minister, the Moldavian ex nightclub bouncer, proposed exchanging native Palestinian with illegal Jewish residents in the West Bank if Israel to remain a viable "Jewish state."

As if it was copied directly from a Nazi tutorial book, Dr. Yitzhak Ravid, an Israeli government official in the 1990s suggested combating Palestinian’s birthrate “terrorism” by implementing “stringent policy of family planning in relation to its Muslim population."

By definition, ethnocentric “demographic majority” is a racial collective dictatorship preserved only by direct collective repression. Hence Israel’s fixation with maintaining an exclusionist ethnic majority is the impetus for its eternal xenophobic insecurity. Consequently, turning this into a phobic fanatical obsession with security manifested by separation walls, armed subjugation and military superiority, which ultimately derailed the peace process in the Middle East.

Fortunately, priori exclusionist projects in Germany and White South Africa were eventually unsuccessful. But before failing, the German design resulted in the Holocaust, while the current Zionist demographic project culminated in the catastrophe of ethnic cleansing in Palestine on 15 May 1948.

- Jamal Kanj writes frequently on Arab World issues and the author of “Children of Catastrophe, Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America,” Garnet Publishing, UK. Jamal’s articles can be read at www.jamalkanj.com. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Contact him at: jkanj@yahoo.com.

palestinechronicle.com | 08-May-2012 20:35

Time for the Palestinian Oslo Team to Leave!

By Hasan Afif El-Hasan

The current leaders of the West Bank Palestinians are physically, politically and financially taken hostages by the Oslo agreements that they negotiated, signed and promoted. Oslo City was the venue of the secret Israeli-Palestinian 'peace agreement.' Israeli Premier Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leader Yasser Arafat signed the agreement's 'Declaration of Principles' on the lawns of the White House, hosted by US President Clinton on Sep 13, 1993. Arafat who sold Oslo to his people as 'the peace of the brave' was jailed in his Ramallah headquarters and he allegedly was executed by his Israeli Oslo partners after fulfilling his role in recognizing the State of Israel.

The Palestinian Oslo negotiators promised their people that Oslo was a plan to create an independent Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza while some senior PLO members rejected the agreements and many Palestinian intellectuals and foreign observers concluded that Oslo would lead the Palestinians to nowhere. Edward Said, Palestine’s most prominent intellectual, criticized the agreement because it had not addressed the refugees and Jerusalem questions. Edward Said was ridiculed by members of the Oslo team and his books were banned in the West Bank and Gaza by orders from Arafat as a retaliation measure.

It was a common knowledge that Israel had absolutely no intention of conceding Jerusalem or the Palestinian refugee right of return, but the two issues were shelved by Oslo agreements until the so-called “final status talks” which was nothing but a fig leaf to surrender to Israel the most important issues. The UN Resolution 194 of December 11, 1948 affirmed the right of Palestinian refugees who had fled or had been expelled during the war to return to their homes. Resolution 194, a direct application of Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, was adopted by the United Nations unanimously in 1948. After signing Oslo agreements, the US Administration under President Clinton that was the main sponsor of Oslo argued at the UN, that past UN resolutions on Palestine were “obsolete and anachronistic” after the signing of Oslo.

The American journalist Tomas Friedman who is known for his pro-Israel writings described Arafat’s letter to Rabin recognizing Israel as a humiliation for Arafat and the PLO and an Israeli decisive victory over the Palestinian national movement. He wrote that the letter was “not a statement of recognition. It is a letter of surrender, a type-written white flag in which the PLO chairman renounced every political position on Israel he has held since the PLO’s foundation in 1964.” Arafat’s letter to Rabin promised to assume responsibility over all PLO elements and personnel in order to assure their compliance with Oslo agreements; prevent violations and discipline violators; and declared inoperative all the articles in the Palestinian Covenant which denied Israel’s right to exist.  

The Israeli journalist Danny Rubenstein predicted at the time of Oslo signing and the establishment of the Palestine Authority (PA) that the “autonomy” which the Israelis accepted for the Palestinians was the autonomy “of a POW camp, where the prisoners are autonomous to cook their meals without interference and to organize cultural events.”

On August 8, 1995, the Financial Times was dismayed that the unfair pattern of water seizure by Israel had not been changed years after Oslo agreements: “Nothing symbolizes the inequality of water consumption more than the fresh green lawns, irrigated flower beds, blooming gardens and swimming pools of Jewish settlements in the West Bank”, while nearby Palestinian villages were denied the right to drill wells. Professor Noam Chomsky, a sympathizer with the Palestinians was not happy by the turn of events few months after Oslo signing. He wrote, : “The Israeli government [under Rabin] had plans to extend the integration of great Jerusalem virtually to Jericho, with vast construction projects, plans for tourist sites along the northern shore of the Dead sea, some 700 million dollars of investment in new roads to connect settlements with Israel.”

After giving Oslo team the benefit of the doubt, the Palestinian leader, Haidar Abdel-Shafi concluded that Oslo agreements and the PA would fail the Palestinian national cause. For those who do not know, Haidar Abdel-Shafi was the head of the Palestinian negotiating team in Washington that was boycotted by Israel for insisting on having a commitment by Israel to withdraw from East Jerusalem and dismantling the settlements as part of any acceptable interim agreements. Israel chose to negotiate with Oslo team which agreed to Israel’s demand to leave Jerusalem, the refugees and the settlements issues until the “final status talk” of the negotiations.

The Oslo agreements partitioned the occupied lands into zones where the Palestinian Authority is allowed to have different administrative and security powers. Besides the towns and malls and highways built on Palestinian lands in the West Bank and Jerusalem for Jews only, there are many other visible failures of Oslo agreements. Oslo gave Israel the power to divide the Palestinians into groups with different gradation of legal statuses and different security regimes depending on where they live. There are the Israeli Palestinians, Jerusalem Palestinians, Palestinians who reside between the apartheid wall and the green line, Palestinians in zone A or B or C, Gaza Strip Palestinians, the 1948 refugees, the 1967 refugees and the Palestinians who came with Arafat from Tunisia.

The Oslo team in the West Bank still believes the Palestinian issue is a border dispute between two states, but the facts on the ground suggest the Palestinians’ struggle today is an existential. The Israelis including the left have adopted the theology of the rabbis that calls for Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians to be based on “Jewish history”, Jewish ethnicity and Jewish religion. The Israelis perceive the settlements, especially in Jerusalem, as an integral part of their national heritage closely tied to the Jews “glorious past.” Some Israelis liken the Palestinians to the biblical Philistines or Amalek, a nation that, in the Torah, “God’s Commands” the Israelites to “expunge!!” Rabbi Dov Lior, the chief rabbi of Kiryat Arba settlement wrote in 2009: “We must cleanse the country of Arabs and resettle them where they came from, if necessary by paying.” Due to the military training indoctrination and religious beliefs, the attitude of the Israeli young generation toward the Palestinians is more radical than their parents.

The news from Israel suggests the right-wing government is popular and if a new parliamentary election takes place today, Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud Party will be a winner. As long as the majority of the Israeli people support the ethno-security regime and do not pay the cost of occupation, the status quo in the occupied lands will continue. Due to its success in ruling the West Bank Palestinian population through the proxy of the Palestinian Authority that is financed by the donor countries and the siege of Gaza, Israel does not feel a need for making any concession to the Palestinians as long as the Oslo team controls the Palestinian population. The Israelis believe they can manage the conflict until the Palestinians are ready to settle the conflict on Israel’s own terms.

The Israeli architect of Oslo, Yossi Beilin, wrote a letter dated April 4, 2012 to his Palestinian Oslo partner, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), the president of the Palestinian Authority. The letter stated that the Oslo agreements were based on “the Beilin-Abu Mazen talks” and described the agreements as “a process that promised to lead to a partition of the land in a few years [not the withdrawal from the occupied lands] ……and a fitting symbolic and economic resolution to the problem of the Palestinian refugees [not according to the UN resolution 194].” Beilin reminded Abbas that the PA was an interim phase of the agreement and "One simply cannot continue with an interim agreement for more than 20 years." Beilin’s letter suggests that if the PA is not dissolved after two decades of signing the Oslo agreements the territory administered by the PA will become the de facto Palestinian state.

The Oslo team has failed to deliver on its promises to establish an independent Palestinian state. Under Oslo team leadership, the vast majority of the Palestinians in the occupied lands are poor, living on donors’ handouts, fearing the confiscation of their land, subjected to ethnic cleansing, family separation and home demolition. They experience daily humiliation creeping for hours along the pocked, blockaded roads assigned to them by the Israelis. The Palestinians are living under military rule in disconnected enclaves, surrounded by sprawling massive Jewish settlements, Jewish only roads, and the separation wall; or they are living in the besieged Gaza and millions are left homeless without citizenship in refugee camps.

Due to their failed policies, the Oslo team has disqualified themselves politically and legally from leading their people. Time has come to declare the Oslo “peace process” is over and allow a new leadership that thinks differently to step in. The new team should reject imposing Jewish hegemonic conceptions on the millions of Palestinians as individuals or groups. They should demand equality within the framework of one state over all historical Palestine.

- Hasan Afif El-Hasan is a political analyst. His latest book, Is The Two-State Solution Already Dead? (Algora Publishing, New York), now available on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

palestinechronicle.com | 08-May-2012 00:00

Zionist History: A Short Quiz

By Neve Gordon

Take this test to find out how much you know about the gradual shift in Israeli political thought over the decades.

Not long after Israel celebrated its 64th Independence Day on April 26, a friend prepared a quiz of sorts. She read out loud political quotes to about ten guests who were having dinner at my house, and asked us to identify the politician who had uttered each statement.

Truth be told, none of my guests did very well on the quiz, but I thought that readers acquainted with Zionist history might do better and would be able to identify the source of each of the following statements. There is only one rule to this game: all search engines, including Google, are off limits.

* "Does a bad law become a good one just because Jews apply it? I say that this law is bad from its very foundation and does not become good because it is practiced by Jews ... We oppose administrative detention in principle. There is no place for such detention."

* "We do not accept the semi-official view ... wherein the state grants rights and is entitled to rescind them. We believe that there are human rights that precede the human form of life called a state."

* "We have learned that an elected parliamentary majority can be an instrument in the hands of a group of rulers and act as camouflage for their tyranny. Therefore, the nation must, if it chooses freedom, determine its rights also with regard to the House of Representatives in order that the majority thereof, that serves the regime more than it oversees it, should not negate these rights."

* "We would propose that the Knesset enact a law of its own free will, limiting its authority and stipulating that it will not tolerate any legislation that limits oral or written freedom of expression or association, or other basic civil and human rights to be enumerated before the Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee."

* "The day will come when a government elected by our people will fulfill the first promise made to the people on the establishment of the state, namely: To elect a founding assembly whose chief function - in any country on earth - is to provide the people with a constitution and issue legislative guarantees of civil liberties and national liberty... For the nation will then be free - above all, free of fear, free of hunger, free of the fear of starvation. That day will come. I can sense that it is coming soon."

* "Some say that it is impossible for us to provide full equal rights to Arab citizens of the state because they do not fulfill full equal obligations. But this is a strange claim. True, we decided not to obligate Arab residents, as distinguished from the Druze, to perform military service. But we decided this of our own free will, and I believe that the moral reason for it is valid. Should war break out, we would not want one Arab citizen to face the harsh human test that our own people had experienced for generations."

Confused yet?

If you are having trouble identifying the author, you are not alone. After hearing the quotes, I, too, wondered why they were so difficult to decipher. But, following a few misguided guesses, I recognised the source of the difficulty. The quiz was counterintuitive, and not only because all of the statements were uttered by a single politician.

No doubt, time has done its work and what was once pronounced by the undisputed leader of the Israeli right, now sounds more like declarations coming out of the liberal and far left - such as Knesset Members from Meretz and Hadash. Even the head of the Labor Party, Sheli Yichimovich, does not oppose administrative detention, and does not dare to claim that "there are human rights that precede the human form of life called a state", probably for fear of losing potential voters.

My friend's quiz managed to expose just how far right Israeli politics, as well as the public discourse informing it, have shifted over the years; so much so that, within the current political climate, declarations once uttered by former Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who passed away 20 years ago, can now only be reiterated by leftists.

I have no doubt that if Menachem Begin, commander of the infamous Irgun militia from 1943-1948, were alive today and would utter these very same statements in the Knesset, his own party members from the Likud - as well as the Israeli majority - would condemn him. Today, citizens who hold such positions are simply called "traitors".

- Neve Gordon is the author of Israel's Occupation and can be reached through his website www.israelsoccupation.info. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. (This article first appeared in Al Jazeera.)

palestinechronicle.com | 07-May-2012 23:47

This Year on Nakba, I Am Celebrating!

By Samah Sabawi

The passengers' names have finally appeared on the exit list and they have lined up to board the bus in the early hours of the morning. They were finally given permission to leave Gaza, a Palestinian city that has been under Israeli occupation for 44 years and has often been described as the world's largest open-air jail. But things got complicated and the line was held up for nearly one hour as an elderly man insisted on boarding the bus even though he had no travel documents and his name didn't appear on the list.

The officials in charge spoke to him at length and with a great deal of patience and respect. In Palestinian customs it is considered a disgrace to disrespect elders. After nearly one hour, the man finally stepped away and the line began to move again. But the feisty old man didn’t really give up; he somehow managed to sneak on board.  Unfortunately for the old man, there was one last check before the loaded bus was ready to depart and he was spotted by the officials, who even though were exasperated still exhibited an incredible amount of patience and once again tried to politely convince him that he can’t travel, but the old man refused to budge.  He was pleading with them, it was a matter of life or death and he had to leave for an urgent personal matter.  This caused an additional hour of delay as the officers negotiated with the old man.

Now imagine if this was to happen anywhere else in this world, what do you expect the other passengers to do? Riot? Lose their temper? Yell at the old man to leave? Would you not expect the officers to carry him off the bus? In Gaza where people are most desperate to get out, this was not the case. The amazing part of this story is that the other passengers who were truly eager to start their long journey were not angry at the old man or upset that the officials didn’t just drag him out. They were patient and in fact were all showing signs of sympathy toward the man. Once in a while, you would hear a deep sigh or someone saying “Poor man!” or “Let him stay on the bus and may Allah take care of the rest” or “He is just an old man just leave him alone” and so on. Finally, the old man was convinced he had to leave the bus, he was not forced out, carried out, pushed out, but respectfully talked into leaving the bus as everyone looked on with sadness for his plight including the officers. 

This is an incredible story! It is incredible when you consider that the people on that bus have for decades suffered the worst kinds of physical and psychological abuse at the hands of a viscous Israeli occupying army. Abuse that include random regular shelling, bombardment of entire neighborhoods, a crippling siege that imprisoned them behind high walls, economic deprivation, 44 years of occupation and 64 years of living in refugee camps stateless and without citizenship.  

This simple story is incredible when you consider how anxious the chosen few would have been to make it on the exit list, and to get to Egypt’s borders before the gates shut again, yet how much patience they still had for an old man who has no documents. 

This is an incredible story of survival of humanity in my beloved Gaza!

So this year, as we commemorate the past, let us celebrate the fact that despite it all, we held on to our dignity and our compassion. Let us celebrate our humanity. They have not broken us and they never will!

- Samah Sabawi is a Palestinian freelance writer. She contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

palestinechronicle.com | 07-May-2012 23:44

Zionism, Israel, and Occupation – Book Review

Reviewed by Ludwig Watzal

(Speaking the Truth. Zionism, Israel, and Occupation, edited by Michael Prior, Interlink Publishing, Northampton, MA, 2005, 254 pp.)

When the South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu paid his first visit to Palestine, he was shocked by the similarities between his former Apartheid South Africa and the dismal situation under which occupied Palestinians have been living since the establishment of the State of Israel. In his foreword to this outstanding collection of essays, written by 12 internationally respected scholars and experts, he stated: “Now, alas, we see apartheid in Israel, complete with the ‘Separation Wall’ and Bantustans that keep Palestinians rounded up in prisons. History tragically repeats itself. Yet, injustice and oppression will never prevail.”

What makes these essays important and overly worth reading is the fact that several are dealing with the ineffable role played not only by a certain brand of Christianity in their religiously dressed up rhetoric but also especially the juggernaut of the so-called Christian Zionists who are playing an infamous role in legitimizing every action of this dehumanizing occupation enterprise. For example, late reverend Michael Prior challenges in his essay “Zionism and the challenge of historical truth and morality” the “canonical secular Zionist narrative” and the “canonical religious Zionist narrative” head-on. Although the injustices committed by the Zionist colonizer in the course of the establishment of the State of Israel are historically well known and documented, they had been “passed over in much Western discourse. Indeed, in some religious circles the Zionist enterprise is even clothed in the garment of piety (...) Whereas elsewhere the perpetrators of colonial plunder are objects of opprobrium, the Zionist conquest is widely judged to be a just and appropriate accomplishment, with even unique religious significance.” (33/34) According to Prior, the answers to this opinion lay in the bible and its religious authority.

The “ironclad” support by the West of Israel’s colonial endeavor is not only propagated among secular lobbyists but is also rooted in the “link between the Bible and Zionism” that is deeply established in the popular mind, writes Prior. Although, biblical research shows no evidence in support of the claim that the Bible provides legitimacy to the “canonical” Zionist narrative for the State of Israel, it seems as if for some Christian sects and the Christian-Jewish dialogue groups the removal of the indigenous people becomes an “object of honor”. “It is in the unique case of Zionism that ethnic cleansing is applauded. It would be a pity if mutually respected Jewish-Christian relations demanded the suspension of the moral rules of a universalist morality.” (44)

The political and religious intensions of Christian Zionists and the policy of the International Christian Embassy” (ICEJ) in Jerusalem are revealed by author Vicar Stephen Sizer. The ICEJ is probably the most influential and controversial among Christian Zionist institutions. It is located close to the Israeli Prime Minister’s office. Ironically, this “embassy’s” building had originally been the home of the family of the late Edward W. Said, before being confiscated in 1948 when it was first given to Martin Buber, the Jewish philosopher. The ICEJ goes with Israel’s colonial land grab policy in occupied Palestine through thick and thin. Admittedly, it has disavowed preaching the gospel among Jews, in part for pragmatic reasons, since this ensures the support of the political establishment in Israel. Beyond that, it opposes criticism of Israel’s policy towards the Palestinians. ICEJ’s strange theological interpretation of the Bible does not make missionary work necessary because the ICEJ believes that once the Jewish nation is restored to the Land of Israel, the Jews will collectively acknowledge the Christian Messiah when he returns, writes Sizer. How “sophisticated” the Christian Zionist’s intentions are, is shown in an interview with its founder, Jan Willam van der Hoeven, in the “Jerusalem Post” concerning the “covert” Christian missionary. Van der Hoeven denied that ICEJ engages in missionary work and conversion but added: “The Jewish religion must modify itself in the course of time – but on one point only, the identity of the Messiah (…) they must make the modification as a collective entity.” Although, the U. S. American and Israeli political establishments probably realize that this position is in fact “anti-Semitic” they closely cooperate with the ICEJ according to the motto: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Concluding his article, Sizer writes: “The ICEJ, it appears, is a sectarian, pseudo-Christian organization of dispensational origin which has unconditionally endorsed contemporary political Israel as the exclusive fulfillment of God´s promises and purposes made under the Old Covenant.”

For another author, the Reverend Peter J. Miano, the main problems are not “Jewish Zionists” but “Christian Zionists”. Before there were Jewish Zionists, there were Christian ones. “For every Jewish Zionist, there are at least ten Christian Zionists.” (126) Miano`s article is especially useful because it makes an important distinction between fundamentalist and mainstream Christian Zionism. Where the first is a bizarre and obscure ideology, the later is very well established in the halls of the U. S. Congress, the churches, the Christian academia and the biblical academies. 

The fundamentalist Christian Zionist doctrine sees the establishment of the State of Israel as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy occurring in the end time. Accordingly, God has a special role for the Jewish people in their covenanted land, and Christian devotion to God requires support for God´s plan of salvation. This religious mythology is being actualized in modern-day Israel. For this special brand of “Christians”, the violence associated with the State of Israel and its victims, the Palestinians, is not understood as a struggle between colonizer and colonized, but as necessary birth pangs of a new eschatological age. The struggle between Israelis and Palestinians is interpreted in apocalyptic terms as part of a broader struggle between the forces of good and evil. The final battle will take place on the plain of Armageddon. (129)

On the other hand, mainstream Christian Zionism is “far more pervasive, fare more mercurial and far more pernicious. It is also much more difficult to expose and critique,” (130) Because Christian Zionists outnumber Jewish Zionists by some one hundred to one, it makes the success of the Zionist agenda much easier to understand, writes Miano. All brands of Zionism possess, however, two characteristics in common: the establishment of the Jewish State of Israel is both a moral imperative and a political necessity. (134) It seems to the reader as if mainstream Christian Zionists resemble the so-called Israeli Zionist Left: They often oppose the Israeli policies in the Palestinian Occupied Territories but they do not mind the violence that took place during the 1948 war. They often recognize the legitimate demands of the Palestinian people for justice even while rationalizing Jewish nationalism by appeal to justice and morality. In addition, mainstream Christian Zionists display no regard for the plight of the Palestinians while staunchly advocating solidarity with the suffering endured by Jews. These wishy-washy Christians pervade “one of the most hallowed precincts of liberal, mainstream Christianity, namely the Jewish-Christian dialogue”. (142) According to the author, this in-group revolves around themselves and is hardly concerned with the suffering of the Palestinians who “experience Zionism as an instrument of catastrophe.” The focus of attention should shift, according to Miano, from the fundamentalist Christian Zionists to mainstream Christian Zionism.

Besides these refreshing articles on the destructive role played by some brands of Christianity in support the Zionist conquest of Palestine, the anthology includes articles by Ilan Pappé, Daniel McGowan, Naseer Aruri, Betsy Barlow, Paul Eisen and others who describe the historical and political implications of the Zionist colonial enterprise for the Palestinian people. The two essays on the meaning of the massacre of Deir Yassin are impressive. For example, Daniel McGowan writes: “Remembering Deir Yassin is for Palestinians what remembering the massacre at Kelcie is for Jews.” (103) On April 9, 1948 a massacre by two Jewish factions, Irgun and the Stern Gang, was committed in a small village on the west side of Jerusalem, only a stone’s throw away from Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Memorial. The murderers of Irgun and Stern Gang had herded women, children, and the old man into the village school in order to massacre them. This envisaged atrocity was prevented by unarmed Jewish settlers from the adjacent settlement Giv’at Sha’ul. They faced down the murderers of Irgun and Stern Gang and demanded that the lives of the victims be spared. “The true Judaism of these brave people outweighed the extreme Zionism witnessed earlier that fateful day.” (93)

In order to reach a kind of fair agreement between the Israeli and the Palestinian peoples the political cocoon, in which the Zionist mythology is woven in, has to be dissolved. In this endeavor, the Christians can do their bit. They have to shed their self-portrayal of the “Beautiful Israel” or the “light onto the nations” rhetoric and see what Israel really is: a brutal occupying power for the last 45 years that has nothing to do with religion, let alone with redemption. The articles in this book support the thesis that the Hebrew Bible debunks the ‘”canonical” Zionist narrative according to which the Bible provides legitimization for the State of Israel. This claim should pull the rug under the feet of all religious Israel fans. And the secular ones should concentrate on historical facts and not on Zionist fairy-tales. The essay in the book give both groups plenty of arguments at hand to argue for justice and the right of self-determination of the oppressed Palestinian people. All essays are very worth reading.

- Dr. Ludwig Watzal works as a journalist and editor in Bonn, Germany. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

palestinechronicle.com | 07-May-2012 23:42

How 60 Minutes Became a Terrorist Attack

By Lo Yuk Fai

Bob Simon: Mr. Ambassador, I've been doing this a long time. And I've received lots of reactions from just about everyone I've done stories about. But I've never gotten a reaction before from a story that hasn't been broadcast yet.

Michael Oren: Well, there's a first time for everything, Bob.
 
Above is an excerpt of the conversation between the host of 60 Minutes and the Israeli ambassador to the United States, from the 22-Apr installment about the dwindling local Christian community in Palestine/Israel.
 
Governments’ manipulation and influence of the press is nothing new, but why would the Israeli government, an administration considered a friend by many Christians, regarded this program as a “potential strategic terrorist attack”, and went out of its way to interfere with a show which aimed to expose the difficulties faced by the local Christians?
 
Even more bizarre, a Christian organization in the United States joined the effort and mobilized its members in a writing campaign, who then sent more than 16,000 emails to the TV network in just four hours. Why would a “Christian” organization deter a show which sought to raise the awareness of the plight of its fellow brothers and sisters in Christ?
 
For years, the Israeli government’s propaganda machine (hasbara) has been successfully in articulating a version of history suited to her needs, while discrediting or outright removing the Palestinian narrative from discussion altogether. And many Christians, knowingly or unknowingly influenced by certain interpretations of dispensationalism and Christian Zionism, adopted a pre-millennialist view which consider the founding of the modern State of Israel an act of God and a pre-requisite for the second coming of Christ.
 
To that end, it’s preferable that people aren’t aware of the existence of the Palestinian people who have been unjustly dispossessed by the State of Israel. Failing that, to portray the Palestinian people as backward, stubborn, warmongers, terrorists, the Canaanites of old, haters of democracy and Christianity. Consequently, the mere mentioning of Palestinian Christians (or Arab Christians) is already a significant attack on the public image of the State of Israel among the Christian community – First, it acknowledges the existence of the Palestinian people, second, it challenges their stereotype.
 
To mitigate this problem, the State of Israel and her supporters again tried to control the rhetoric and presented them as victims of Muslim oppression, which was an easy sell in the post-9/11 world when Islamphobia ran amok.
 
Therefore, the main issue of this show with the Israeli authorities was that, it let the Palestinian Christians speak for themselves. And according to them, the primary cause of the fleeing of the Arab Christians in Palestine aren’t their Muslim neighbors. Instead, they are being marginalized and their presence threatened by the Israeli occupation and policies.
 
This gives rise to a serious problem to those Christians who buy into the belief that the State of Israel is a manifestation of the end time plans of God – Why and how can God persecute Christians Himself…?
 
Here are a few methods to avoid or answer the above question:

 - Pretend that the problem doesn’t exist.
- Question the accuracy of the show and similar reports.
- Accuse these Arab Christians as being ‘out of touch’ with God’s will.
- Consider their suffering as an undue but inevitable side effect for the more important issue - The security of the Jewish people.
- Re-consider the unchallenged support for the State of Israel.
 
The last option is problematic to many individuals as it ultimately strikes the very nerves of their core beliefs, eschatological views, ways to understand and interpret the Bible, and even the foundation of their faith, of which the State of Israel is objectified as a vindication. It’s no fun when one’s hope for pre-tribulations rapture is being dashed, not to mention that Christians are not always as reasonable and peace-loving as self-perceived. Nevertheless, after learning of the situation in Palestine, or having seen the realities on the ground, many began to question some of their beliefs and support for the State of Israel.
 
And considering Christians are some of the most staunch supporters for the State of Israel, if more and more of them find out what’s actually happened and happening in Palestine, the mostly unquestioned support for the State of Israel from the Western world, in particular the United States, may start to wane and eventually collapse.
 
In turn, without this unchallenged support, without the United States’ vetos in the Security Council, many of the oppressive policies of the State of Israel, in particular the military occupation in the West Bank and the blockade of Gaza, will not be able to sustain.
 
Hence, it’s no wonder why the Israeli government considered this show a grave concern, so much so as to call it a “hatchet job” – Rarely the Palestinian narrative enters the mainstream media.
 
Besides, the document Kairos Palestine mentioned in the show lent a strong credibility to this narrative. Signed by 13 patriarchs and heads of churches in Jerusalem, and endorsed by numerous other Christian leaders from various denominations, it advocates peaceful resistance. The signees include members from the Greek Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church, the Lutheran Church and the Anglican Church.
 
There are things in or not in the show that still leave much to be desired though. For example, it failed to take into account the Messianic Jews (a sect of Jewish Christians) and the other subtle ways the Christians are being persecuted which, according to an Israeli reporter, include:

- Denial of visas to Christian workers.
- Refusal to recognize the legal status of churches.
- Missionary activities being monitored and sabotaged.
- Interference of clergy appointment.
- Molestations and even terrorist attack.
- Spitting on priests, urinating and defecating on churches.
 
With all of the above carried out directly by Israel’s Ministry of the Interior (MOI), or by extreme Orthodox Jews under tacit approval by and/or subtle collaboration with the MOI.
 
Besides, it implied that the separation barrier was the only reason terrorist attacks were subdued, without attributing the truce with Hamas and Palestinian Authority’s co-operation, and that, as of today, there are still Palestinians living on both sides of the wall (one-fifth of the Israeli citizens are Palestinian Arabs). Also, it failed to mention that the wall, if indeed intended purely for security, could have been built along the Green Line, or on the Israel side. Instead, it’s being built on the Palestinian side, and often on lands confiscated from the Palestinians.
 
Moreover, the show failed to address the wider problem that, the Palestinian Christians are not suffering at the hands of the Israeli government for being Christians, but because they’re part of the larger Palestinian population, whose suffering is still in many cases disguised as an “undesirable” result of the security measures “necessary” for the security of the State of Israel. The security of the Israeli Jews, while important, is often used as a get-out-of-jail-free card without any critical examination.
 
Furthermore, it still painted a largely dichotomous picture between the Muslims and Christians, between the Israelis and the Palestinians, between political Islam and political Judaism with Christians squeezed in the middle. Failing to mention that some of the Palestinian political figures are Christians themselves; Palestinian Muslims and Christians often struggle together against the occupation; And the grassroot campaigns consisting of Arabs, Jews and internationals. Not to mention that there are extremists in every religion and ethnic group, including Christianity itself.
 
Nonetheless, the show still gave the audience a refreshing perspective from most of the Western world used to see and believe.
 
With the mainstream media began to pick up the realities in the Holy Land, we Christians can no longer afford to look the other way and pretend the problem doesn’t exist. And how the church respond to this challenge shall be a testimony of its role as a peacemaker on earth.

- Lo Yuk Fai is a Christian from Hong Kong who’s concerned about the injustice in the Holy Land and the misrepresentation of the situation in the Western media, hoping to do his little part. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Contact him at: ByFai.com.

palestinechronicle.com | 07-May-2012 23:39

Decision of the United Methodist Church Will Live in Ignominy

By Susan Abulhawa
    
This week, amidst the incredible ongoing mass hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners, some of them on the brink of starvation, the Methodist Church failed to pass a resolution to divest from three major beneficiaries of the most incendiary human rights abuses and colonial crimes of our time. 

Among the heartbreaking collection of ignorant statements, delegates had the audacity to claim that divestment was divisive and counterproductive to peace. Many things in this conflict are divisive and counterproductive to peace. A 30-foot concrete wall with guard towers not unlike those that once encircled the Warsaw ghetto, is divisive and counterproductive to peace. Policies of the state purposely designed to make human beings, entire Palestinian families and communities, homeless, through systematic and regular home demolitions, is divisive and counterproductive to peace. The arrest, detention, torture of Palestinian children is divisive and counterproductive to peace. The indefinite imprisonment of Palestinians without charge or trial is divisive and counterproductive to peace. Outright land theft, that Israel makes no pretense of hiding, is divisive and counterproductive to peace.  Siphoning of water so Jews can have swimming pools while Palestinians must ration water is divisive and counterproductive to peace.  954 checkpoints and barriers peppered throughout the West Bank to impede movement of Palestinians, is divisive and counterproductive to peace. “Battle testing” new weaponry on a principally unarmed civilian population with no place to run or hide is divisive and counterproductive to peace. Jewish-only housing and roads are divisive and counterproductive to peace. They are the epitome of Apartheid and Apartheid is divisive and counter basic human dignity.

Divesting from three of the chief corporate beneficiaries of these crimes that aim to wipe an entire native population off the map is NOT divisive. It is, in fact, a token expression of decency that acknowledges the basic humanity of Palestinians. It is a symbolic show of solidarity with an oppressed people who are facing imminent demise. And in that way, it was the smallest test of morality, which the United Methodist Church has so shamefully failed.  

So there is no mistake of what this decision means, let me be very clear. Through their words, actions, and financial investment, the United Methodist Church supports:

1)   Caterpillar, for supplying the bulldozers and other earth eviscerating equipment used by Israel to demolish the homes, farms, and orchards of human beings whose primary crime (let us not lie!) is that they are non-Jewish natives living on property Israel wants to steal and hand over to Jewish residents, most often imported from other countries.

2)   Hewlett-Packard, for providing advanced biometric technology that effectively monitor and confine 5 million human beings (all non-Jewish, of course) into small enclaves and open-air prisons.

3)  and Motorola, for furnishing surveillance equipment for illegal, Jewish-only colonies built on confiscated Palestinian land.

For an analogy of the meaning, change the date and the names of companies, perhaps to those that benefited from transporting Jews to death camps, or those that supplied weapons used to mow down schoolboys in Soweto, or bus lines that made Black folk sit in the back and give up their seats for Whites. Who would call divesting from such abominations divisive and counterproductive to peace? And tell me the difference between the behavior of those companies and the three aforementioned.

Kairos, and people of conscience tried to find something positive in this ignominy, claiming it a victory for those fighting for justice because the divestment debate itself ignites a conversation from which there is no retreat. I don’t deny the truth in that. But it is wrong to stop there because it was so much more than that. It was an utter disgrace, blight on the church of the same magnitude as that which comes from the institutional failure to speak up for Jews in the late 1930s.

And when juxtaposed to the courage, principled fortitude, and ineffable will of 1500 human beings with nothing but their hunger to protest Israel’s systematic destruction of Palestinian society, the actual natives of the Holy Land, the decision of the United Methodist Church delegates becomes vulgar and unforgivable.

Just this week alone, a woman in Gaza was shot by Israeli soldiers, who opened fire on farmers working on their own land in Khuzaa, east of Khan Younis.  In a previous incident of Israeli target practice on Monday, another Palestinian farmer was short in the same area.

On Wednesday, Israeli bulldozers demolished 13 sheds and tents belonging to the Al-Jahalin Bedouin tribe, near Jerusalem, leaving several families without shelter for themselves of their livestock. These ancient dwellers of the land have been particularly hard hit by Israel’s ethnic cleansing policies, as their homes are routinely destroyed and they are pushed off their lands as if cattle in broad daylight.

Also on Wednesday, soldiers forcibly evicted a Palestinian family from their home in Beit Hanina and moved Jewish settlers in their place, a scandalously racist Israeli practice that has escalated in and around Jerusalem to Judaize historically Palestinian areas.

At the same time, Israeli settlers this week constructed 20 new homes on privately owned Palestinian land in an illegal outpost known as Ulpana, in Beit El settlement northeast of Ramallah.

There were at least 57 military incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip just this week alone!

Reverend Alex Joyner, who opposed the resolution said, “We are all concerned about the suffering and the ongoing occupation, because it is hurting Israeli and Palestinian society. But what the church has said is we want a positive step, and we reject punitive measures as a way of trying to bring peace.”

His platitudes and patronizing drivel aside, what measures, pray tell, does the Reverend Joyner propose to bring peace to Palestinian children who are systematically terrorized and traumatized by Israel to the point that 98.6% of them suffer from symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)? Or to the hundreds of children kidnapped in the middle of the night from their families and thrown into jails where their fragile spirits waste away without charge, without trial, without mercy?

The United Methodist Church had a historic opportunity to take a moral stand, however unpopular but undoubtedly moral. Instead, they took a decision that moves them toward the realm of moral irrelevancy.

But to all Palestinians, to all people of conscience and to those Methodists who stood on the right side of justice, where Jesus would undoubtedly stand, take heart! Take heart!   Palestinians may be starving, languishing, and bleeding, but Israel and her backers are rotting at their core, because that’s what racism, self-interest at all costs, and cowardice does to the soul. 

Take heart and do not despair. We have not reached the end of history. There is still blood in our veins, air in our lungs, and brilliant souls in our wombs. They have but the cold steel of death machines and the moral void of lies, which cannot and will not prevail against naked hearts and empty stomachs taking up the good fight for freedom. 

- Susan Abulhawa is the author of Mornings in Jenin (Bloomsbury 2010) and the founder of Playgrounds for Palestine (www.playgroundsforpalestine.org). She contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

palestinechronicle.com | 05-May-2012 20:38

We Shall Return: The Story of Iqritþ

By Fida Jiryis

'I don't want to open all my wounds…,' says Maher Daoud, a descendent of Iqrit refugees, as we drive to the site where the village of his parents once stood. I wince and apologize, aware of how difficult the subject must be for him.
 
Iqrit is one of the 350 or so Palestinian villages that were completely destroyed and ethnically cleansed in 1948, its residents barred from returning but turned, overnight, into internal refugees in their own country.

Maher, 43, is married to my cousin, Njoud, and they live in Mi’ilya, a village in the Galilee. They regularly drive up to Iqrit, whose church is all that remains today, to partake in religious celebrations at Christmas and Easter and to visit dead relatives in Iqrit’s cemetery. The occasion of our visit now is sombre: Maher’s mother passed away two years ago, and we are here to visit her grave on the occasion of Good Friday, as is the custom among Palestinian Christians.
 
The drive to Iqrit takes a mere twenty minutes from my village, Fassouta. Both are in the Galilee: the north of historical Palestine, a few kilometres from the Lebanese border. During Israel’s “War of Independence” in 1948, or the Nakba (Catastrophe) as Palestinians refer to it, the residents of Iqrit and Biram, another nearby village, were uprooted from their homes on “security grounds,” presumably for Israel to protect its northern border. The residents of Iqrit were bussed to Rama village, twenty kilometers south in the Galilee, and told it would be for a few weeks, until the security situation was calm and they could return. But they never did.
 
On Christmas Eve, 1950, the Israeli army blew up all the houses of Iqrit, in a timely “Christmas gift” to its expelled Christian residents. My father, a boy of 12 at the time, saw the smoke rising above the village in the distance, and, in panic and haste, told a man named Tu’meh from Iqrit, who had taken refuge in Fassouta. Tu’meh’s eyes filled with tears.
 
In 1951, the Israeli High Court ruled that the villagers be allowed to return “as long as no emergency decree” existed against the village. With cold predictability, the government was quick to issue such a decree against the Iqrit evacuees. In 1953, it blew up the houses of Biram, too, leaving only the churches of the two villages standing. Two years later, the theft was completed: the land of the two villages - 16,000 dunams (4,000 acres) in Iqrit and 12,000 dunams (3000 acres) in Biram - was expropriated for establishing Jewish settlements, which are there today:            Even Menahem, Shlomi, and Shtula.
 
I’d read about this before; Israel coldly and ruthlessly destroyed about 350 Palestinian villages and turned close to 700,000 Palestinians into homeless refugees during the Nakba. I had visited Suhmata, another such village, already, so I was prepared for what I expected to see.
 
Nothing stopped the flood of goose bumps, though, when my cousin whispered: “Here it is. The village starts here.”
 
“The village” that she was referring to “started” as a small pile of rubble by the roadside. Maher was quick to point to the church atop a hill in the distance. “That’s Iqrit,” he said.
 
I experienced the same sickening disbelief I’d felt when an old relative had pointed to a tree-covered hill and told me: “Here it is. This is Suhmata.”
 
In fact, it is completely surreal: all you see are shrubs and trees, thick greenery as is characteristic of the wilderness of Galilee. The small piles of rubble dotted periodically around are the only small reason to believe that those speaking to you are not deranged or delusional.
 
As we climb up the winding road in Maher’s car, I notice piles of fresh rubble by the side. He says: “We put asphalt on the road a few years ago, just to be able to drive up to the cemetery because the old people can’t walk up this far. But the Jewish settlers came and tore up the road. You can see the piles every few meters.” Such is the refusal and phobia of Israel that Palestinians may exercise their right of return to their stolen homes: even a simple road to get to a cemetery is torn apart, lest it become a precedent
 
We reach the cemetery and walk in with flowers and candles to pay our respects. I notice a large stone at the entrance with these words on it: “We remember and will not forget - This stone was erected in memory of our fathers and mothers who staged a sit-in in Iqrit Church, in the hope of returning alive, as the highest judicial authority in the country deemed, to rebuild what the hands of decision makers have destroyed. But the policy of rights abuses and land confiscation did not allow them to do so, and they died refugees in their own land.”
 
I start to read the names that follow… Elias Yousef Daoud, Atallah Mousa Atallah, Elias Diab Sbeit, Najib Jiryis Khayyat, and on it goes… Eighteen names of people who tried desperately to undo the cruel fate that they had been dealt by Israel and return to their homes, but whose efforts were in vain, until they could only return as dead to be buried in their village.
 
In fact, such was not even the case: from the time Iqrit was ethnically cleansed in 1948 until 1972, its scattered residents were not even allowed to bury their dead in the village. This posed a serious problem, for they had to rely on the kindness of the people of Rama to give them a space in its cemetery. Suddenly, a death was not only cause for mourning but for logistical worry as well. In a sad story that Maher told me, a group of young men once decided to break the rule and took the body of one of their dead for burial at night in Iqrit. Israeli soldiers heard of the matter and followed them, then forced them to dig the ground again, retrieve the coffin and take it to be buried elsewhere.
 
Life for the living wasn’t much easier. The people of Iqrit settled in Rama in harsh conditions. With the sudden influx of refugees, daily living was crowded and difficult, and jobs were scarce. The pain of having just lost, overnight, everything that they owned was compounded by this new and harsh reality. Maher, for example, was the grandson of the mukhtar, or head of the village, of Iqrit. His grandfather was very well off, owned a shop and an olive oil press, and traded in tobacco. The shock of losing all that he owned - his home, lands, and businesses - and being turned into a homeless, penniless refugee overnight was overwhelming. Maher’s father lived in denial. “For years, all the time that I was growing up, my father refused to paint the house or do any badly needed renovation to it. Why? Because he feared that in doing so, he would be seen as acclimatising to his new home, having forgotten Iqrit or his hope of returning.”
 
The people of Iqrit proved themselves in Rama, taking menial work and enduring difficult conditions to support their families. Eventually, the next generations moved to Haifa and elsewhere in search of work.
 
Do they feel a connection to Rama, now, as their surrogate home? I pose the question to Maher and he says, “Sure, I was born in Rama and grew up there, I have memories there and feel some belonging. But I’m not from Rama. I’m from Iqrit.” He tells me that the people of Rama also add to this feeling; when he asked for directions to someone’s house, for example, the man in the street responded with: “Oh! The man from Iqrit…” before giving him directions. This was despite the man in question having lived in Rama for more than sixty years.

Maher was sorely reminded of this misfit when he decided to build a house for himself and his family. His father had no land in Rama. When Maher got married, he rented a flat in Kfar Veradim, a Jewish locale near the Palestinian village of Tarshiha where he works, and lived there for a number of years. Then, with rent becoming too high for him, he moved to Mi’ilya, another nearby Arab village, where he bought land to buy a house. He then faced a problem that he had never thought of: some residents of Mi’ilya did not want him. He was labelled a stranger, and an uproar ensued on his owning land in the village, including threats and slander against him. Maher comments bitterly: “If I were still in Iqrit, my grandfather’s land would have been more than enough. I would not have needed to beg anyone for a corner to live in with my family!”
 
“Every day, I feel that I’m a living testimony to the injustice that was done to us,” he continues. I ask him how he reconciles, internally, living in Israel, alongside the people who took away his village and committed this injustice. “It’s a huge contradiction,” he says painfully. “They are the ones who did this to me, to us, yet they are my customers in my hummus shop; I need them to survive.” He finds it emotionally difficult to separate work from the personal, though. Sometimes, he enters into political discussions with Jewish customers, but is frustrated because he can’t say everything he wants. He cites an incident that took place when he was living in Kefar Veradim. One of his neighbours had come to his shop to buy food and inquired, “So, what’s it like living in our place?” Maher quickly looked at her and replied, “Actually, you’re the ones living in my place. You’re the guests in this country, and unwanted ones at that.” The customer did not return.

The people of Iqrit are remarkably tight-knit and steadfast in their resolution to return to their village. Six decades after they were ousted from their homes and lands, they still pray in their church, bury their dead in Iqrit, and hold summer camps there annually for their children, to teach them about their village. A famous poet from Iqrit, Aouni Sbeit, was once quoted telling a reporter, during a demonstration of the people of Iqrit in front of the Israeli prime minister’s office: “If you put your ear to the belly of a pregnant woman from Iqrit, you will hear the baby saying that we shall return!”
 
Powerful words, but whether they will ever come true for these internal refugees is anyone’s guess. Despite an on-going legal battle, Israel will not allow them to return, lest it set a precedent for the return of other Palestinian refugees to their homes. Despite the fact that, in 1998, then-justice minister Tzachi Hanegbi recommended to the Netanyahu government that “no obstacles should be placed in the way of the return of the evacuees,” the final settlement offered to them in 1995 and 1996 was that Iqrit and Biram be re-established as community settlements on the basis of long-term land leases. In other words, the residents would have to “rent” their own lands from the state. Not surprisingly, they refused. The case has since been at a stalemate. Maher remarks bitterly: “How many articles have been written about Iqrit… How much material circulated… And we still can’t go home.”
 
The story of Iqrit, though, illustrates the power of home and belonging. No one, not even Israel, can take that away. Palestinians have been connected to this land for generations; it’s not a connection that they can sever or replace. They know no other home and ask only for their basic human right: to return to this home that they were so cruelly ousted from. “My father has lived a temporary existence for sixty-four years,” Maher says. “Because, for sixty-four years, he’s been sitting on his suitcase, waiting to go home.”

- Fida Jiryis is a Palestinian writer from the Arab village of Fassuta in the Galilee. She is the author of the forthcoming book, '˜My Return to Galilee,' which chronicles her return from the Diaspora to Israel. She contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Contact him at: fida_jiryis@hotmail.com.

palestinechronicle.com | 05-May-2012 20:16

Solidarity and Realpolitik: My Response to Jeff Halper

By Susan Abulhawa

Some years ago, I was on a panel with three men, Jeff Halper among them, at a Sabeel conference in Pennsylvania. Each panelist was asked to give their vision for a solution to the 'Palestine/Israel conflict'.  Because I was sitting at the end of the table, I was the last to speak.  I listened to each one of my fellow participants lay out different versions of a two-state solution, each more depressing than the other, each with irrelevant nuances (all previously articulated by Israel, by the way) on how to make the refugee problem just go away.  They spoke the tired talk of land swaps, compromise, several surreal highways that bypass humanity for miles on end, and more creative solutions designed to circumvent the application of human rights where Palestinians are concerned. 

When my turn came, I spoke of Palestinians being accorded the same basic rights that apply to the rest of humanity, including the right to return to one’s home after fleeing a conflict.  I spoke of equality under the law regardless of religion.  I spoke of a construct that would prevent one group from systematically oppressing another.  I spoke of human dignity and the universal right to it.  I spoke of equal access to resources, including water, regardless of religion. 

I will never forget Jeff Halper’s response, which he was eager to voice even before I had finished speaking.  He began with a smile, the way an adult might smile at the naive remarks of a small child.  He needed to give me a lesson in reality, and proceed to tell me, in the patronizing way of someone who knows best, that my vision lacked “how shall I say it…Realpolitik”. 

I did not waiver then, nor have I since, on my position that Palestinians are not a lesser species who should be required to aspire to compromised human dignity in order to accommodate someone else’s racist notions of divine entitlement.

That said, I do not consider Jeff Halper racist and I acknowledge the mostly positive impact he has had in bringing attention to one of Israel’s enduring cruelties, namely the systematic demolition of Palestinian homes as a tool to effectuate ethnic cleansing of the native non-Jewish population.  But in my view, that does not entitle him to speak of what Palestinians should or shouldn’t do.  I also don’t think it qualifies him as an anti-zionist when he clearly accepts the privilege accorded to Jews only.  After all, Jeff Halper is an American from Minnesota who made aliyah (Israel’s entitlement program that allows Jews from all over the world to take up residence in my homeland, ultimately in place of the expelled natives). Perhaps is it my lack of Realpolitik, but I cannot reconcile embracing the very foundation of zionism on one hand, and calling oneself an anti-zionist on the other. 

In a recent interview on Al Jazeera’s website with Frank Barat, he did just that.  He also laid out a dismal scenario for the future of Palestinians, based on what Israel is very likely plotting, namely the annexation of Area C and the pacifying of the Palestinian Authority (also likely) with economic incentives and mini Bantustans they can call a state.  But he missed the mark, repeatedly, when it came to Palestinians themselves, as if he sized us all up with a glance and decided he was not impressed. Despite the burgeoning nonviolent resistance taking place all over Palestine, in various forms ranging from demonstrations, significant solidarity campaigns, hunger strikes, and more, he says that “[Palestinian] resistance is impossible” now.  At best, he trivializes the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which is the first coordinated nonviolent movement of Palestinians inside and outside of Palestine that has also managed to inspire and capture imaginations of individuals and organizations all over the world to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for freedom.  Again, my lack of Realpolitik here, but to me, creating a situation where it is possible to force the implementation of human rights and restore dignity to Palestinian society is in itself an end.  Jeff Halper seems unable to consider anything other than a negotiated agreement to be an end. 

He enumerates all that is wrong with internal Palestinian issues.  Of course there are problems. We know our leadership is doing little more than pick up the trash and keep people in line while Israel steals more and more of our land.  We are not happy about it either.  But he seems to suggest that he, along with other Israelis I presume, have been carrying the burden of resolving this conflict.  In one instance he says:

“We’ve (I assume Israeli leftists?) brought this to governments, we've raised public awareness, we've had campaigns, we've done this for decades, we've made this collectively, one of two or three really global issues. But without Palestinians we can only take it so far.”

Then he adds:

“I am trying to challenge a little bit my Palestinian counterparts.  Where are you guys?”

If I read this correctly (and I will grant the benefit of the doubt that it was not meant as it reads), then he clearly sees himself at the forefront of the Palestinian struggle where his Palestinians counterparts are disorganized, haphazard, or not present.  He even suggests that at this crucial time, “Palestinians have to take over,” further supporting the suggestion that Palestinians are not at the helm of the resistance. 

He also asserts that importing Jews from all over the world to live in colonies built on land confiscated from private Palestinian owners is “not settler colonialism”.  What is it then? 

But back to his strange assertion that Palestinians “should take over” (from whom?), he describes an instance where he refused to participate in the global march to Jerusalem because the Palestinian organizers (who took over?) did not want to include the world “Israel,” the name of the country that denies our very existence and seeks in every way to eradicate us.  Is it that Jeff Halper wants “Palestinians to take over” as long as Palestinians do so in a way that does not offend the sensitivities of the very people deriving privilege at their expense?  That is not how solidarity works. 

I don’t presume to tell Israelis what they should or should not do but I would like to see Israelis concentrate on their own failures rather than ours.  I would sure like to hear those who have made aliyah acknowledge that it was not their right to do so; that making aliyah is a crime against the native people who have been and continue to be forcibly expelled to make way for those making aliyah. I would like to hear an apology. The trauma that Palestinians feel is very much part of the Realpolitik and it is not unlike the trauma in the Jewish psyche.  It comes from the same humiliation and anguish of not being considered fully human. Of being treated like vermin by those with the guns. If Halper truly understood that, perhaps dropping the word “Israel” – a word that hovers over the rubble of our destroyed homes and suffuses the pain at our collective core – would have been a no brainer expression of solidarity. 

- Susan Abulhawa is the author of Mornings in Jenin (Bloomsbury 2010) and the founder of Playgrounds for Palestine (www.playgroundsforpalestine.org). She contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

palestinechronicle.com | 04-May-2012 21:58

A Putsch against War

By Uri Avnery

Generals and secret police chiefs get together for an attack on the politicians.

In some countries, they arrest the president, occupy government offices and TV stations and annul the constitution. They then publish Communique No. 1, explaining the dire need to save the nation from perdition and promising democracy, elections etc.

In other countries, they do it more quietly. They just inform the elected leaders that, if they don’t desist from their disastrous policies, the officers will make their views public and precipitate their downfall.

Such officers are generally called a “junta”, the Spanish word for “committee” used by South American generals. Their method is usually called a “putsch”, a German-Swiss term for a sudden blow. (Yes, the Swiss actually had revolts some 170 years ago.)

What almost all such coups have in common is that their instigators thrive on the demagoguery of war. The politicians are invariably accused of cowardice in face of the enemy, failure to defend national honor, and such.

Not in Israel. In our country we are now seeing a kind of verbal uprising against the elected politicians by a group of current and former army generals, foreign intelligence and internal security chiefs. All of them condemn the government’s threat to start a war against Iran, and some of them condemn the government’s failure to negotiate with the Palestinians for peace.

Only in Israel.

It started with the most unlikely candidate to lead such a rebellion: the ex-Mossad chief, Meir Dagan.

For eight years, longer than most of his predecessors, Dagan led the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, comparable to the British MI6.  (“Mossad” means “institute”. The official name is “The Institute for intelligence and Special Operations”.)

Nobody ever accused Dagan of pacifism. During his term, the Mossad carried out many assassinations, several against Iranian scientists, as well as cyber[ ]attacks. A protégé of Ariel Sharon, he was considered a champion of the most aggressive policies.

And here, after leaving office, he speaks out in the harshest terms against the government’s plans for an attack on Iran’s nuclear installations. Not mincing words, he said: “This is the stupidest idea I have heard in my life.”

This week he was overshadowed by the recently relieved chief of the Shin Bet. (Shin Bet and Shabak are different ways of pronouncing the initials of the official Hebrew name “General Security Service.”) It is equivalent to the British MI5, but deals mostly with the Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories.

For six years, Yuval Diskin was the silent chief of the silent service. His shaved head could be seen entering and leaving meetings of secret committees. He is considered the real father of “targeted eliminations”, and his service has been widely accused of extensive use of torture. Nobody ever accused him of being soft on Arabs.

And now he has spoken out. Choosing a most unusual venue – a get together of some two dozen pensioners in a small-town cafe - he let fly.

According to Diskin – and who would know better? – Israel is now led by two incompetent politicians with messianic delusions and a poor grasp of reality. Their plan to attack Iran is leading to a world-wide catastrophe. Not only will it fail to prevent the production of an Iranian atom bomb, but, on the contrary, it will hasten this effort, this time with the support of the world community.

Going further than Dagan, he stated that the only factor preventing peace negotiations with the Palestinians is Netanyahu himself. Israel can make peace with Mahmoud Abbas at any time, and missing this historic opportunity will bring disaster upon Israel.

As chief of the Shin Bet, Diskin was the No. 1 official government expert on Palestinians. His agency receives and collates all the evidence, spy reports, interrogation results and information gathered from listening devices.

Leaving no room for doubt, Diskin said that he knew Netanyahu and Barak from close up, did not trust them and thought they were unfit to lead the nation in a crisis. He also said that they are deliberately deceiving the people. He did not omit to mention that they live in extreme luxury.

Anyone who thought that these accusers were lone voices, and that the whole choir of current and past security chiefs would rise and condemn them unanimously, was disappointed. One after another these experts were quoted by the media as agreeing with the two in substance, though not necessarily on their style. Not a single one questioned their assertions or denied what they said.

The current Chief of Staff and the Mossad and Shin Bet chiefs let it be known that they share the views of the two on Iran. Almost all their predecessors, including all the recent military Chiefs of Staff, told the media that they agree, too. Suddenly there was a united front of experienced security leaders against a war with Iran. 

The counter-attack was not late in coming. The entire battery of politicians and media hacks went into action.

They did what Israelis almost always do: when faced with serious problems or serious arguments, they don’t get to grips with the matter itself, but select some minor detail and belabor it endlessly.

Practically no one tried to disprove the assertions of the officers, neither concerning the proposed attack on Iran nor concerning the Palestinian issue. They focused on the speakers, not on what they said.

Both Dagan and Diskin, it was asserted, were embittered because their terms of office were not extended. They felt humiliated. They are venting their personal frustration. They are speaking out of sheer spite.

If they did not trust the Prime Minister, why did they not get up and resign while they were in office? Why didn’t they speak out before? If this was a matter of life and death, why did they wait?

Alternatively, why don’t they continue to shut up? Where is their sense of responsibility? Why do they help the enemy? Why don’t they speak only behind closed doors?

Diskin, it was added, has no idea about Iran. It was not in his area of responsibility at all. Dagan knew about Iran, but had a limited view. Only Netanyahu and Barak knew all the facts and the entire spectrum of opportunities and risks.

Sources “close to the Prime Minister’s office” also had another explanation: Dagan and Diskin, as well as their predecessors, were just stupid. Taken together with Dagan’s and Diskin’s assertion that Netanyahu and Barak are not rational (and perhaps not quite mentally balanced) this means that our national security depends entirely on a group of irrational and stupid leaders – and that this has been the case for years.

A frightening thought: what if everything they say about each other is true?

The man accused by his security advisers[ ]of messianic tendencies was exposed to personal scrutiny by another event this week.

His father, Ben-Zion Netanyahu, died at age 102, having remained of clear mind to the end. At the public funeral, he was eulogized by Binyamin. As could be expected, it was a kitschy speech. The son addressed his dead father in the second person – (“You taught me”…”You formed my character” etc) - a vulgar practice I find particularly distasteful. He also shed tears on camera.     

There is no doubt that the father had a huge influence on his son. He was a professor of history, whose whole intellectual life was centered on one topic: the Spanish inquisition – a traumatic chapter in Jewish history comparable only to the Holocaust.

Ben-Zion Netanyahu was an extreme rightist, obsessed by the idea that Jews might be exterminated at any moment, and therefore cannot trust any Goy. He held Menachem Begin in contempt, considering him a softy, and never joined his party. His intellectual attitude was reinforced by a personal trauma: his eldest son, Yoni, the commander of the spectacular Entebbe raid, was the only soldier killed in this operation.

It seems that he didn't have such a high opinion of his second son. He once remarked publicly that Binyamin was unfit to be prime minister, but would make a good foreign minister – an uncannily accurate judgment, if one sees the job of the foreign minister as marketing.

The home in which “Bibi” grew up was not a very happy one. The father was a deeply embittered man. As a historian, he was never accepted by the academic world in Jerusalem, who disavowed his theories. (Mainly, that the Inquisition did not persecuted the Marranos – Jews who had accepted Christianity rather than leave Spain – because they practiced Judaism in secret, but out of pure anti-Semitism. This was an attack on one of the most cherished tenets of Jewish mythology: that these Jews had remained true to their faith to the point of sacrificing their lives at the stake.) Not getting a professorship in Jerusalem, the father emigrated to the US, where Binyamin grew up. The father never forgave the Israeli establishment.

The myth of the Great Historian laboring at his titanic task was a daily reality at home, in America and, later, back in Jerusalem. The three sons had to walk on tiptoe, not being allowed to make any noise that could disturb the great man, nor to bring their friends home.

All this shaped the character and world view of “Bibi” – the specter of imminent national annihilation, the role model of the fiercely rightist father, the shadow of the older and much more admired brother. When Binyamin now speaks endlessly about the coming Second Holocaust and his historical role in preventing it, this need not be just a ploy to divert attention from the Palestinian issue or to safeguard his political survival. He may – frightening thought!!! – actually believe it.

The picture that emerges is exactly that painted by Yuval Diskin: a Holocaust-obsessed fantasist, out of contact with reality, distrusting all Goyim, trying to follow in the footsteps of a rigid and extremist father – altogether a dangerous person to lead a nation in a real crisis.

Yet this is the man who, according to all opinion polls, is going to win the upcoming elections, just four months from now.  

- Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

palestinechronicle.com | 04-May-2012 21:56

United Methodists Call for Boycott

Adopting the 'Kairos Palestine' document, Methodists Elevate Palestinian Rights and Israel Divestment to Mainstream Prominence

By Palestinian BDS National Committee
 
“Every worthwhile accomplishment, big or little, has its stages of drudgery and triumph; a beginning, a struggle and a victory.” – Gandhi
 
Occupied Palestine – The General Conference of the United Methodist Church decided yesterday to call for an explicit boycott of all Israeli companies “operating in the occupied Palestinian territories,” knowing that this constitutes the absolute majority of Israeli corporations. This and the overwhelming support for the “Kairos Palestine” document and its call “for an end to military occupation and human rights violations through nonviolent actions,” which include boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS), will pave the way forward for further action by the Church to hold Israel accountable for its colonial and apartheid regime.
 
Although the General Conference of the United Methodist Church (UMC) fell short of voting for divestment from three U.S. corporations that are actively complicit in Israel’s protracted occupation and serious violations of international law, the inspiring awareness raising and advocacy campaign waged by human rights activists within the Church and in many communities outside it has succeeded in elevating Israel divestment and the struggle for Palestinian rights to mainstream prominence. Notwithstanding this decision, four annual (regional) conferences within the UMC have already adopted Israel divestment resolutions.
 
The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC), the broadest coalition of Palestinian political parties, trade unions, NGOs and networks, whose BDS Call is supported by Palestinian church groups from all major Christian denominations, salutes all the people of conscience, especially within the UMC, who relentlessly, meticulously and with immense selflessness labored to convince the Church to align its investment policy with its ethical principles that reject injustice and oppression. Caterpillar, Motorola and Hewlett Packard should not take too much comfort in this temporary setback; while they are off the hook for now, many more people today know exactly what these companies are doing in violation of international law and will soon hold them accountable.
 
As a result of repeated disinformation and fear mongering by some Church officials responsible for its investment branch, a majority of UMC delegates still feel that divesting from companies profiting from human rights violations is a considerable and unnecessary sacrifice. The widely expressed solidarity with the Palestinian people, and with Palestinian Christians in particular, who overwhelmingly called on the Church to divest, was thus not translated into action that heeds the moral obligation to do no harm. By continuing to invest in companies that profit from the Israeli occupation and human rights violations, and despite all intentions, the UMC is still doing harm to the Palestinian people through its financial complicity in maintaining the occupation.
 
Efforts by BDS activists from around the world are sending a strong message to corporations that their collusion in Israel’s unlawful occupation and serious violations of international law is under scrutiny and will not be tolerated. A recent research report exposed Hewlett Packard’s role in sustaining the occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people, with its supply of biometric monitoring systems to Israeli military checkpoints inside the occupied West Bank and technological solutions to Israel’s army and illegal colonial settlements, contributing to the caging of Palestinians in fragmented ghettos [1]. Motorola provides surveillance systems for Israeli settlements, military bases and the apartheid wall, and communications equipment to the Israeli occupation army. [2]
 
The General Conference, taking place this year in Tampa, FL, meets every four years and is the only entity that speaks for The United Methodist Church. The process and international debates leading to the vote on this divestment resolution mark a milestone in the persistent efforts of Christians around the world and Methodists in particular to bring concrete meaning to a long-standing ethical Church position in support of ending Israel’s occupation and human rights violations. The setback notwithstanding, this debate over how best to hold Israel accountable for human rights violations is largely viewed as ushering in a new phase in faith groups’ activism for Palestinian rights reminiscent of similar measures that eventually contributed to dismantling South African apartheid.
 
The impressive mobilization in support of this divestment resolution united people from diverse backgrounds, including scores of Jewish human rights activists, mostly associated with Jewish Voice for Peace, who proudly spoke out for an end to church material support to Israel’s occupation. It constitutes a distinguished contribution to the Palestinian people’s struggle to achieve its full set of human rights, which includes also full equality for Palestinians citizens of Israel, and the right of return of Palestinian refugees as guaranteed by international law. UMC activists, who led this effort with diligence and utmost attention to accuracy, moral consistency and effective advocacy, deserve warm praise and gratitude from all of us struggling for a just peace in Palestine and the region. The supportive role of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation in this mobilization must also be acknowledged and commended. While the profound obligation to “do no harm” was not honored by many in the General Conference, it has become a rallying cry for human rights activists everywhere, including within the Church. This setback notwithstanding, we are confident that campaigns of misinformation and vilification by well-oiled pro-Israel lobbies and putting profit ahead of principle by some will not for long drown the voices of the many Methodists who stand, in word and in deed, behind Palestinian freedom, justice and equality.
 
In 2009, prominent Palestinian Christians issued the “Kairos Palestine” document, a historic theological manifesto that seeks inspiration from a similar document issued in 1985 by South African theologians, detailing their vision for justice and the obligation to resist injustice. Kairos Palestine explicitly advocates BDS against Israel until it meets its obligations under international law. The following year, United Methodist clergy and laity from the US responded to the “Kairos Palestine” document with grassroots educational and research efforts to understand the full extent of the impact of UMC investments that directly result in the oppression of Palestinians. These efforts culminated in the resolution presented at this year’s General Conference and voted upon by the 988 delegates present from around the world.
 
A recent report by the Presbyterian Church (USA), whose divestment resolution will come to a vote at the general assembly scheduled for July, shows that years of engagement — 8 years, to be exact — with Caterpillar, which supplies Israel with bulldozers used to wantonly destroy Palestinian property and build apartheid infrastructure, have failed to convince the company to change its behavior thus making divestment an imperative. Targeted divestment is, therefore, the minimum required to express effective solidarity with Palestinians languishing under and resisting Israel’s occupation, colonization and apartheid.
 
The BDS movement has opened space for much needed debate in the U.S. public sphere about Israel’s three-tiered system of oppression against Palestinians and is now becoming a household name. The road to ultimate victory over oppression, as Mandela and Martin Luther King, Jr. teach us, is never straight or paved with flowers; every turn and decline are opportunities to learn how to persevere and to rise stronger against the challenges ahead.
 
We salute the genuine moral voices in the United Methodist Church for their sincere efforts to put truth to action, to bring justice and freedom for all in the land that is the birthplace of Christianity.  

Notes:

[1] WhoProfits.org
[2] EndtheOccupation.org

palestinechronicle.com | 03-May-2012 20:56

Gaza's Energy Crisis: Blame Game Defers Solution

By IRIN

From factories to the fishing industry, the Gaza Strip economy is being affected by more than two months of fuel shortages and power outages, taking a toll on the livelihoods of its 1.6 million inhabitants.

To make a living on the sea, Madlene Kollab needs 20 litres of fuel each day. Unable to afford that, the Gaza Strip's only fisherwoman has seen her catch halve to just 1.5 kilos per day. "I [began] fishing with my father when I was six years old, but without fuel I can hardly survive."
 
The 10-week fuel crisis has hit power generation, with Gaza's diesel-fired power station forced to make daily electricity cuts lasting for up to 12 hours.
 
Thabit Tarturi, who runs a beach-side restaurant in Gaza City, is seeing his earnings eaten up by the cost of the fuel needed to run his generators. “There is absolutely no profit at the moment. Our only [earnings go to] food and survival, that’s it,” he told IRIN.
 
The power cuts are also "disrupting the delivery of basic services, including water and healthcare”, Ramesh Rajasingham, head of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the oPt has warned.
 
Gaza’s only power station was forced to shut down on 14 February due to the lack of fuel, which has previously been imported in amounts of up to one million litres a day, smuggled through underground tunnels from the Egyptian border post of Rafah. OCHA estimates that less than 100,000 litres is now arriving.

The dramatic fall-off is reportedly linked to a clampdown by the Egyptian authorities on smuggling in the Sinai Peninsula by Bedouin tribes, who took advantage of the insecurity following the fall of Hosni Mubarak to extend their criminal influence. The fuel is pumped from trucks on the Egyptian side into Gaza through pipes in the tunnels.

The Hamas government in Gaza began to use the tunnels after Israel imposed a tight blockade on the Strip in mid-2007. Despite the easing of restrictions by Israel in 2010, that trade has continued as fuel from Egypt is significantly cheaper. Two kinds of tunnels exist: those that are taxed and controlled by Hamas, and the others which are non-affiliated. But in both cases, "the electrical connections are courtesy of Rafah municipality, to which the smugglers pay a license fee", according to Foreign Policy magazine.

Solution?
 
A sustainable solution to the current crisis means agreement among the four main players: Hamas, the Palestinian Authority (PA), Israel and Egypt.
 
On 13 April, Egypt brokered a deal in which Hamas would channel money to an Israeli company through the PA, given that Israel has no direct links with Hamas. Upon payment, the Israeli company would deliver fuel through the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza. So far, about US$8.9 million has been paid, Palestinian officials in Ramallah said.

As a result, some 6.1 million litres of fuel in 13 separate consignments have been delivered to the Gaza power plant via the Kerem Shalom crossing between 4-23 April, according to OCHA. Fuel brought in from Israel is twice as expensive as that smuggled from Egypt.
 
The Gaza power station requires more than 400,000 litres of diesel a day, and currently operates just two of its four turbines, producing 35 megawatts (MW) instead of 80-85 MW. It has managed to reduce power outages from the 18 hours a day that prevailed in February and March.
 
But “a legitimate solution for the transfer of sufficient fuel is imperative to ensure that the most basic services can be maintained", said OCHA's Rajasingham.

In its absence, humanitarian efforts have brought some short-term relief. A delivery of 150,000 litres of fuel by the International Committee of the Red Cross on 2 April restored the fuel reserves of Gaza's  hospitals for an estimated two more weeks.

“The current agreement is not a long term solution. It only serves the people of Gaza until other solutions are in place," said a senior PA official, Ghassan Khatib.
 
According to Khatib, only the terms of a previous agreement between Egypt and Hamas, announced on 23 February, could provide a sustainable solution. “This includes building a gas pipeline from Egypt to the Gaza Strip and linking the two electricity grids with each other. But this will take at least eight months.”
 
However, the conditions under which this agreement will be implemented, if at all, remain unclear.
 
Blame Game
 
“Each side in this game is trying to pressure the other, and Egypt is in the middle of it, trying to solve the problem. But Egypt is also cautious and angry about Hamas, because smuggling through the tunnels has caused troubles in Egypt,” Abdel Monem Saed, president of the Egyptian Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, told IRIN, adding: “Multiple parties are involved in the same problem and that makes it all complicated.”
 
The Egyptian government is reluctant to accept responsibility for Gaza’s energy crisis, but rather holds Israel responsible as it controls the main entry point to the territory at Karem Shalom, said Sami Abu Sultan, a humanitarian aid worker from Gaza. “It is clear for Egypt that Israel is trying to push the responsibility about Gaza towards it.”
 
Hamas objects to a solution involving Israel, arguing that this could give Israel the opportunity to cut supplies in times of political tension. Instead, it wants direct trade with Egypt via the Rafah crossing, according to Ahmad Abu Al-Amreen, spokesperson of the Energy Authority in the Gaza Strip.
 
Analysts think that is unlikely to happen. “Egypt has no interest in delivering fuel directly to the Gaza Strip via the Rafah crossing or the underground tunnels. Rafah is a crossing for persons, not for goods. And the tunnels are not an acceptable way of transfer,” said Monem Saed.
 
Amreen said some fuel was also expected from Qatar. "A ship loaded with about 30 million liters of fuel as a donation from Qatar is currently waiting at Suez port...Negotiations with Egypt are underway to facilitate the delivery to the Gaza Strip."
 
Meanwhile, Egyptian parliamentarians are also exerting some pressure. “We, in the Egyptian parliament, are trying to pressure the government to act for the sake of the people in Gaza. I believe that Rafah is an option, simply because it’s the quickest way,” Sayed Majida, chairman of the parliamentary energy committee, told IRIN.
 
A direct deal between Egypt and Hamas is also supported by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which denies any responsibility for the energy crisis. That deal, observers believe, is in line with Israel's shared interest with Egypt on threats to stability coming out of Gaza.

“We are not at all involved in this crisis. We bear no responsibility and we think that fuel should be supplied to Gaza directly from Egypt. That would make things a lot easier,” said Yigal Primor, spokesperson of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
 
“All players have roles in this crisis," Samer Zaqot, field work coordinator at Al-Mezan Centre for Human Rights in Gaza, told IRIN . "But if we go back to the roots, we need to ask why Hamas decided to become dependent on smuggled fuel from Egypt.”

(IRIN – www.irinnews.org)

palestinechronicle.com | 03-May-2012 20:51

Palestinian Prisoners Remembered

By Yousef M. Aljamal, CPDS

On Wednesday 2nd May the Gaza Center for Political and Development Studies staged a ceremony to award a group of writers and activists addressing prisoners' issues. The ceremony, sponsored by The Islamic Society-Jabalyia (ISJ) and Viva Palestina-Malaysia, was attended by dozens of activists at the prisoners' tent at the Square of the Unknown Soldier in Gaza City.   

"This event takes place in order to support Palestinian political prisoners in their struggle for their inalienable human rights. A year ago, CPDS announced a creative writing contest to promote prisoners rights. We received more than 20 submissions by activists from different countries. This competition is to encourage people to keep telling the story of Palestinians' suffering. Today we are celebrating those activists and encouraging other young writers who can convey the message of those who sacrificed their happiness, families and future to defend our collective rights as Palestinians," said Dr Mahmoud Alhirthani, CPDS chairman.

"Without the support of different bodies, this effort would not have succeeded. Thanks to the Islamic Society in Jabalia and thanks to Viva Palestina Malaysia, who help CPDS and provide us with the support necessary to stand by the prisoners. This support is enabling an Arabic opera to be subtitled in English and a number of reports on the prisoners to be translated into English," he added.

The event, the first of its kind in Gaza, was attended by ex-prisoner Chris Bandak, who was freed in the last swap which took place in October 2011 and deported to Gaza. In his speech, Bandak highlighted the importance of supporting prisoners.

"Palestinian prisoners expect us to stand by them. They have nothing to fight the armed soldiers with but their stomachs and resilience. If you fail them, you fail Palestine. They are the symbol of our eternal struggle," he noted.

Eng. Abdul-Reheem Shihab, ISJ chairman, stressed the importance of supporting prisoners who are subjected to humiliation in the occupation jails. "The Society supported prisoners-related activities and will keep doing that," he concluded.

The ceremony is one in a series CPDS has held to award young writers who write about Palestine. The center is set to hold a course on Writing Press Releases for the Western Media to get the word about Palestine out to the English speaking world and western media outlets.

palestinechronicle.com | 03-May-2012 20:49

Illegal Settlements Bonanza: Israel Plots an Endgame

By Ramzy Baroud

Israel's colonization policies are entering an alarming new phase, comparable in historic magnitude to the original plans to colonize Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem following the war of 1967.

On April 24, an Israeli ministerial committee approved three settlement outposts - Bruchin and Rechelim in the northern part of the West Bank, and Sansana in the south. Although all settlement activities in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem are considered illegal by international law, Israeli law differentiates between sanctioned settlements and ‘illegal’ ones. This distinction has actually proved to be no more than a disingenuous attempt at conflating international law, which is applicable to occupied lands, and Israeli law, which is in no way relevant.

Since 1967, Israel placed occupied Palestinian land, privately owned or otherwise, into various categories. One of these categories is ‘state-owned’, as in obtained by virtue of military occupation. For many years, the ‘state-owned’ occupied land was allotted to various purposes. Since 1990, however, the Israeli government refrained from establishing settlements, at lease formally. Now, according to the Israeli anti-settlement group, Peace Now,  “instead of going to peace the government is announcing the establishment of three new settlements…this announcement is against the Israeli interest of achieving peace and a two states solution”

Although the group argues that the four-man committee did not have the authority to make such a decision, it actually matters little. Every physical space in the occupied territories – whether privately owned or ‘state owned’, ‘legally’ obtained or ‘illegally’ obtained – is free game. The extremist Jewish settlers, whose tentacles are reaching far and wide, chasing out Palestinians at every corner, haven’t received such empowering news since the heyday of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

The move regarding settlements is not an isolated one. The Israeli government is now challenging the very decisions made by the Israeli Supreme Court, which has been used as a legitimization platform for many illegal settlements that drove Palestinians from their land.

On April 27, the Israeli government reportedly asked the high court to delay the demolition of an ‘unauthorized’ West Bank outpost in the Beit El settlement which was scheduled to take place on May 1st. The land, even by Israeli legal standards, is considered private Palestinian land, and the Israeli government had committed to the court to take down the illegal outposts – again, per Israeli definition – on the specified date. 

Now the rightwing Netanyahu government is having another change of heart. In its request to the court, the government argued: “The evacuation of the buildings could carry social, political and operational ramifications for construction in Beit El and other settlements.” Such an argument, if applied in the larger context of the occupied territories, could easily justify why no outposts should be taken down. It could eradicate, once and for all, such politically inconvenient terms such as ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’.

“Previous Israeli governments have pledged to demolish the unauthorized settler outposts in the West Bank, but only a handful have been removed,” according to CNN online. In fact, that ‘handful’ are likely to be rebuilt, amongst many more new outposts, now that the new legal precedence is underway.

Michael Sfard, an attorney with Yesh Din, which reportedly advocates Palestinian rights, described the request as “an announcement of war by the Israeli government against the rule of law.” More specifically, “they said clearly that they have reached a decision not to evacuate illegal construction on private Palestinian property.”

Some analysts suggested that Netanyahu was bowing down to the more rightwing elements in his cabinet – as if the man had, till now, been a peacemaker. The bottom line is that Israel has decided embark on a new and dangerous phase, one that violates not only international law, but Israel’s own self-tailored laws that were designed to colonize the occupied territories. It appears that even those precarious ‘laws’ are no longer capable of meeting the colonial appetite of Israeli settlers and the ruling class.

Israeli settlements have been contextualized through Israeli legal and political references, as opposed to references commonly accepted in international law. The emphasis on differences between Israeli governments, political parties and religious/ultra-nationalist settlement movements is distracting and misleading; colonizing the rest of historic Palestine has been and remains a national Israeli project.

An article in the rightwing Israeli Jerusalem Post agrees. “Support for settlement is not simply a program of right-of-center Likud. Its history has firm roots in Labor party activity during the periods of its governments, and activities by predecessors of the Labor party going back before the creation of the Israeli state” (April 27).

The only variable that might be worth examining is the purpose of the settlement, not the settlement itself. Following the war of 1967, the Allon plan sought to annex more than 30 percent of the West Bank and all of Gaza for security purposes.  It stipulated the establishment of a “security corridor” along the Jordan River, as well outside the “Green Line”, a one-sided Israeli demarcation of its borders with the West Bank. Then, there was no Likud party to demonize, for that was the Labor party’s vision for the newly occupied territories.

While the Israeli settlement drive since then has swallowed much of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, populating them with over half a million Israelis, the international community’s response was as moot in 1967 as it is now in 2012. Responding to the latest sanctioning of illegal outposts, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon declared that he was “deeply troubled” by the news. Meanwhile, Russia was ‘deeply concerned’ and so was the EU’s Catherine Ashton. As for the US, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland insisted that the Israeli measure is not “helpful to the process.” What process?

While Israel has now showed all of its cards, and the international community declared its complacency or impotence, the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah continues to plan some kind of UN censure of the settlements. Even if a watered-down version of some UN draft managed to survive the US veto, what are the chances of Israel heeding the call of international community?

There is no doubt that Israel is plotting its version of the endgame in Palestine, which sees Palestinians continuing to subsist in physical fragmentation and permanent occupation. Unless a popular Palestinian uprising takes hold, no one is likely to challenge what is actually an Israeli declaration of war against the Palestinian people.

- Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story (Pluto Press, London).

palestinechronicle.com | 02-May-2012 19:43

Israeli Hawkademia in Australian Universities

By Vacy Vlazna

The Israeli 'defense' industry is embedded in Israeli universities and in universities around the world including Australia. It plunders overseas intellectual property for Israel’s military research-and-development (R&D) programs while strategic bi-lateral research and exchange missions deliberately whitewash or ‘normalize’ the Zionist military occupation of Palestine and her people.

In Israel, Zionism and the military are undifferentiated. The IOF (Israeli Occupation Forces), the world’s fourth most powerful (nuclear) army, since the inception of the state of Israel, is duty bound to secure the fanatical Zionist goal of Eretz Yisrael or Greater Israel, which incorporates the whole of historic Palestine and beyond (from the Nile to the Euphrates).

The 1948 Nakba, the Catastrophe, which accounted  for the destruction of 500 Palestinian villages and the forceful expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinians by Israeli terrorist militia (Irgun, Lehi, and Haganah) that metamorphosed  into the Israeli army, has never ended with Israel’s relentless policies of ethnic cleansing through the expansion of its illegal colonies and the illegal Annexation Wall on stolen Palestinian land perforated moreover by hundreds of checkpoints and roadblocks manned by belligerent IOF.

Under international law, Israel’s military occupation of Palestine is illegal and yet it has impunity to defy UN Resolutions and to daily commit war crimes because of US, EU, Canadian and Australian support as well as the $3.1 billion in Israeli military assistance granted annually from the US State Department budget.

“Israeli defense sales in 2010 totaled 7.2 billion U.S. dollars, making the small nation the world's fourth largest exporter...Most of the sales are from four leading companies: Elbit Systems, Israeli Aerospace Industries (IAI), Rafael, and Israel Military Industries ..Strong points of Israel's arms industry include unmanned aerial vehicles, armoured vehicles, smart munitions, military and civilian aircraft avionics, weapons platforms and structural upgrades for foreign governments and private clients.”

It is Palestinian men, women, teenagers and children who are the guinea pigs of Israel’s 'battle-tested' weaponry.

Israeli defense companies as well as their joint venture US/UK defense partners have subsidiaries in Australia- Elbit Australia, Oracle Australia, Thales Australia, Raytheon Australia and have footholds in and associations with Australian universities.

In November 2011, Elbit Systems joined the Australian Defense Department's Rapid Prototyping, Development and Evaluation Program. The University of Western Australia and Edith Cowan University also joined. “Elbit Systems and its subsidiaries contribute directly to two of the most insidious facets of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory: the indiscriminate assaults on civilian populations, through the provision of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV's or ‘drones') and other military equipment to Occupation forces; and the ever-tightening ghettoization of the West Bank, through the provision of surveillance and electronics systems along the Apartheid Wall and settlements. During Israel's 23-day assault in Gaza in 2008-09, missiles fired from drones were directly attributed to the killing of 78 Palestinians, including 29 children. Like all Israeli firms operating the military technology sector, endless war and occupation create valuable marketing opportunities. Elbit UAVs, for example, can be sold on the global market as ‘battle tested' devices, significantly increasing their appeal and leading to their adoption by a number of militaries.”

The ZEN Entrepreneurs’ Challenge is a student business planning competition run by the Entrepreneurship, Commercialization and Innovation Centre at the University of Adelaide. ‘Participants work with dedicated mentors to cultivate their entrepreneurial plans including marketing thanks to Dr. Ben-Ari who joined Elbit Systems in 1978 and is, since 2001, Managing Director of Elbit Systems Singapore.

The Edith Cowan University’s Security Management program is offering academic credit to delegates on completion of the 2013 “Security Fundamentals Tour of Israel designed to provide a select group of security specialists and professionals with an insight into Israel’s critical infrastructure security and what continues to drive Israel to be one of the leading security technology providers.” The tour includes the euphemistically named ‘Separation’ Wall which is in fact an Apartheid/Annexation Wall deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004 and also includes the security, passenger screening and deterrence applications of Ben Gurion Airport which last month detained and deported volunteers invited to Palestine to help build a school for blind children. Last year, Australians Vivienne Porzsolt and Sylvia Hale were also arrested and detained at Ben Gurion for having the temerity of wanting to visit Marrickville’s sister city, Bethlehem.

In February, a guest speaker at Deakin University’s 7th Annual International Electromaterials Science Symposium was A/Prof. Yair Ein - Eli, He had been Director of Research and Battery Technology at Electric Fuel Ltd before joining the Department of Materials Engineering at the Technion. Electric Fuel Ltd is a subsidiary of the Arotech Corporation which has facilities in Israel and “operates through three major business divisions: High-level armoring for military and nonmilitary air and ground vehicles; interactive simulation for military, law enforcement and commercial markets, and batteries and charging systems for the military’.

Each Israeli university has societies worldwide that encourage and facilitate academic and scientific exchanges and collaboration. ‘Recent exchanges organized by The Technion Society of Australia have included Technion staff at Sydney University, University of NSW, University of Newcastle, Victoria University, University of Adelaide and Australian National University.’ On staff at the University of Western Sydney is a professor with Technion associations and experience in military and civilian R&D. Both Elbit and Rafael Advanced Systems (run by the Israeli Ministry for Defence)have long-standing partnerships with the hawkish Technion.

In May 2008 was the launch of the AICC s inaugural WA Innovation and Business Development Mission to Israel, supported by the WA State Governments Department of Industry and Resources and coordinated by the Australia Israel Chamber of Commerce (WA) Inc. (AICC). Among delegates were representatives from the University of Western Australia and Murdoch University. Mr R McCulloch representing Murdoch University’s interest in water research and renewable energy institutes praised Israel’s “immediate interest and openness to finding partners” though, of course this excludes Palestinians whose critical water resources are stolen, controlled and/or demolished by Israel.

The University of Johannesburg which had a joint water project with Ben Gurion University severed links in 2011 because it found "detailed, factual evidence and information regarding Ben Gurion's direct and indirect role in further entrenching the violations of human rights and international law by the Israeli state".

Innocuous academic interchange can promote normalization whereby Israeli oppression, racism and apartheid is accepted as the ‘normal’ status quo.

The Yachad Accelerated Learning Project designed to improve outcomes and address inequalities in Indigenous and Remote education was set up with the support of  Melbourne and Monash Universities and The Hebrew University (Michael Federmann, the Chairman of Elbit Systems is a member of the Executive Committee of the Board of Governors of Hebrew University). In 2007 an Australian Yachad delegation enthusiastically visited the Bedouin village of Kseyfeh aware or unaware that the per capita spending per Bedouin student is less than half Israel’s average and that 40% of indigenous Bedouins are threatened by forced transfer policies and live in Unrecognized Villages systematically deprived of water, electricity, health care, education yet not deprived of incessant home demolitions.

The information presented here about the relationship between Australian universities and the Israeli occupation of Palestine is merely the tip of a very grubby iceberg. Australian universities by their degrading prostration to funding donors associated with Zionist Israel have lost their moral equilibrium and the purpose and ideals of academia. Dissenting academics are rare. Few emulate Professor Jake Lynch’s protest of the 2011 Israel Research Forum at the University of Sydney with guest experts from the The Weizmann Institute of Science, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, and Tel Aviv University, all of which collaborate with the Israeli military industry.

Academics and students, concerned for the human rights of the people of Palestine, must investigate their university finances and demand divestment from and boycott of companies and Israeli universities that are implicated in the war crimes and crimes against humanity that Palestinians suffer daily.

- Dr. Vacy Vlazna is Coordinator of Justice for Palestine Matters. She was Human Rights Advisor to the GAM team in the second round of the Acheh peace talks, Helsinki, February 2005 and was coordinator of the East Timor Justice Lobby as well as serving in East Timor with UNAMET and UNTAET from 1999-2001.

palestinechronicle.com | 02-May-2012 19:33

Israel under Intelligence Fire over Iran

By Ismail Salami – Tehran

Producing from his pocket a sheet of paper which contained a biblical quote from the Prophet Zachariah, former Shin Bet chief said, 'I will tell you things that might be harsh. I cannot trust Netanyahu and Barak at the wheel in confronting Iran. They are infected with messianic feelings over Iran,' thereby dealing a heavy blow to the Israeli regime.

A rift the size of a potential coup is taking shape between the Israeli government and the military-intelligence men over Iran, a fact which threatens the ruling Israeli political apparatus on the one hand and exonerates Iran of all years-long groundless allegations on the other.

In fact, Iran has become a recent obsession with the present and past Israeli intelligence men insofar as the very mention of the name is enough to cause anger in the Israeli officials. 

In point of fact, the fire started when Israel’s Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Benny Gantz said he does not believe Iran will pursue nuclear weapons after years of efforts made by Tel Aviv and its allies to convince the world otherwise and swept through the Zionist barley. In an interview with the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, he described Iran's leadership as “very rational” who would not make such a decision.

Also speaking at the Majdi Forum in Kfar Saba, a Tel Aviv suburb on Friday, former Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) director Yuval Diskin said Barak and Netanyahu are deluded into believing that they have “messianic” missions and added that they lie about the projected effectiveness of an Israeli strike on Iran.

“There’s a false image being presented to public and that’s what bothers me. They [Netanyahu and Barak] are giving the sense that if Israel doesn’t act, Iran will have nuclear weapons. This part of the sentence apparently has an element of truth. But in the second part of the sentence, they turn to the – sorry for the expression – the ‘stupid public’ or the layman public... and tell them if Israel acts, there won’t be [an Iranian] nuclear program. And that’s the incorrect part of the sentence,” Diskin said.

Iran is a taboo word in the dictionary of the Zionists and anyone who speaks a word or words implicating a defense of or support for the Islamic Republic is considered an enemy. That is why Diskin’s scathing comments were interpreted as stemming from ‘personal desperation’. Some described him as being the latest in a line of “moronic intelligence chiefs”. Israeli Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz called his remarks “crude and inappropriate”, saying it is “clear that the timing and style of his comments stem from personal rather than substantive motives.” However, Israeli opposition leader Shaul Mofaz said Sunday he took Diskin's criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak very seriously and rejected claims that the comments were made out of personal, political considerations.

On the other hand, some Israeli military and intelligence people joined in sympathy and supported Diskin in his criticism of Netanyahu. Former Mossad chief Meir Dagan expressed support for Diskin, saying he was a serious man and spoke his own "internal truth." Also, Former IDF chief of staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi defended Diskin on Sunday and said, “I know Diskin and he spoke what was on his heart out of genuine concern." In the meantime, Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert joined a chorus of voices warning against rushing into war with Iran, saying, "There is enough time to try different avenues of pressure to change the balance of power with Iran without the need for a direct military confrontation with Iran."
 
Generally, there are two different fronts concerning Diskin: the first group includes those who have served in the intelligence organizations and are cognizant of the true nature of Iran nuclear program and therefore silently or loudly criticize their government for its ‘bomb, bomb Iran’ rhetoric. And the second group includes those who follow the Zionist leaders including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who lie about the Iranian nuclear program and serve as nuclear Pinocchios in the international arena and play an important role in misleading the international community on Iran. 

A strong feeling of fear is eroding the Israeli regime from within and without. On the one hand, the regime has come under the close scrutiny of the intelligence people who are exposing the lies of the regime about Iran which is per se a very bad sign for Israel. On the other hand, the Zionist regime is fearful that the talks (slated for May 23 in Baghdad) between Iran and the P5+1 group of world powers could ultimately end with a deal that would allow Tehran to continue enriching uranium. At all events, the regime is toddling on political razor’s edge and that it is already caught between a rock and a hard place.

So, in order to sabotage the 5+1 talks, the Israeli regime has sent National Security Adviser Yaakov Amidror to Europe to hold talks with European officials. Amidror arrived in Brussels on Monday and held talks with Helga Schmid, the EU deputy secretary general for political affairs, who is responsible for preparatory talks with Iran ahead of the Baghdad meeting. Amidror was also expected to travel on Wednesday to Berlin where he was to meet top German officials, among them Hans-Dieter Lucas, Germany's representative to the Iran talks. A top Israeli official has described Amidror’s Europe tour as "extremely sensitive,” saying his visits are aimed at obtaining more information about the contents of the previous round of talks in the Turkish city of Istanbul and knowing the P5+1’s strategy about the Baghdad meeting.

Apparently, what is happening is not in the least in the best interests of Israel.

By way of countering the anti-regime remarks by the top military and intelligence people in Israel, Netanyahu and Barak have in recent days embarked on toning up their war rhetoric against Iran. In fact, the Zionist duo are steadfast in sowing the seeds of extremism, fear and hatred in order to give a cloak of legitimacy to a possible strike against the Islamic Republic.

- Dr. Ismail Salami is an Iranian writer, Middle East expert, Iranologist and lexicographer. He writes extensively on the US and Middle East issues and his articles have been translated into a number of languages. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

palestinechronicle.com | 02-May-2012 19:30

Israel and the Power Struggle over Iran

By Ludwig Watzal

Should Israel attack Iran's nuclear installations?

Over this question, a fierce dispute flared up among Israel's security establishment. In the beginning of the year, the former chief of the Israeli Mossad, Meir Dagan, was a lone voice in the wilderness. He called an Israeli attack “the stupidest thing I have ever heard”. Slowly but surely, opposition by reasonable people amongst Israel’s political and military establishment started growing, the more alarmist Benyamin Netanyahu’s and Ehud Barak’s rhetoric towards Iran became. Particularly inclined were Netanyahu’s historical comparisons between Nazi-Germany and the current Iranian leadership.

There is hardly anybody among the serious political analysts in Israel who see the phantom Iranian civilian nuclear program as an “existential threat” to Israel. All the expertise of the 17 U. S. intelligence agencies, the IAEA reports and others leave no doubt that Iran does not peruse a nuclear program that will lead to a nuclear bomb. Even the hardliners in Israel and their belligerent neoconservative supporters in the United States can only warn the public of Iran’s possible “nuclear capability” that does not mean anything at all. Even if Iran’s leadership would decide to go nuclear they still lack the launcher system to carry a nuclear device. This means, Iran is light years away to be an “existential threat” to Israel, not to speak to the world as propagandists’ tries to pretend. Beyond that, the Iranian leadership has not decided to build a nuclear bomb. They have religious and ethical reservations that the West should take serious. Out of racist prejudices, the West defames this religious statement by the supreme religious authority, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, by insinuating that he would deceive the public. Aren’t the Western politicians the ones who are misleading their constituency all the time?

What got the Israeli government so infuriated is the fact that more and more former intelligence people, military men and even a former prime minister are speaking out against an Israeli attack on Iran. The latest opposition voice came from the former head of the Israel Shin Bet, Yuval Diskin. In a meeting with residents of the city of Kfar Sava on Friday, April 27, 2012, Diskin said that Netanyahu and Barak are not worthy of leading the country. How dangerous both are for world peace shows the following: “I don't believe in either the prime minister or the defense minister. I don't believe in a leadership that makes decisions based on messianic feelings.” He named both the “two messianics“. Translated into political language: both behave irrational. And he continued saying: “Believe me; I have observed them from up close ... They are not people who I, on a personal level, trust to lead Israel to an event on that scale and carry it off. These are not people who I would want to have holding the wheel in such an event. They are misleading the public on the Iran issue. They tell the public that if Israel acts, Iran won't have a nuclear bomb. This is misleading. Actually, many experts say that an Israeli attack would accelerate the Iranian nuclear race." Some henchmen of the Israeli government were ready for battle and implied Diskin personal frustrations about of not being promoted to head the Israeli spy-organization Mossad.  Letting these political gimmicks aside, the following question is still important to ask:  How can it be that high ranking security people served over many years “irrational leaders” so servilely?

Even the current chief of staff of the IDF, General Benny Gantz, in an interview with the Israeli daily “Haaretz” in an Independence Day interview stated that the diplomatic and economic sanctions are bearing fruit. And in contrast to the alarmism spread by Netanyahu and Barak he said:” The military option is the last chronologically but the first in terms of its credibility. If it's not credible it has no meaning. We are preparing for it in a credible manner. That's my job, as a military man." And Gantz added: “Iran is going step by step to the place where it will be able to decide whether to manufacture a nuclear bomb. It hasn't yet decided whether to go the extra mile."

The most important opponent of an attack on Iran is Meir Dagan. Few weeks ago, on “60 minutes” he admitted as the first high-ranking Israeli from the security establishment that the Iranian leadership acts rationally. It’s “not exactly our rational, but I think he (Ahmadinejad L. W.) is rational”. The Iranian leadership takes all “implications of their actions” into account before they decide. Among Western pundits and media people, the Iranian leadership is considered “crazy”. At a conference, sponsored by the right-wing Israeli newspaper “Jerusalem Post” in New York on April, 29, 2012, Dagan supported Yuval Diskin by saying, as a “friend” he “spoke his own truth”. And he added: "Diskin is a very serious man, a very talented man, he has a lot of experience in countering terrorism” and he "talked about a matter that is close to his heart." He also criticized both behind “close quarters and on many occasions” before he left office. Environmental Protection Minister Gilad Erdan, who also attended the conference, had the thankless task defending Netanyahu and Barak. He did not just cut an unfortunate figure, but Dagan had accused him even of lying, while Erdan accused Dagan of sabotaging Netanyahu’s efforts of halting Iran’s nuclear aspirations. Also the former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the former IDF chief, General Gabi Ashkenasi, attended the conference, and they did not defend convincingly the government’s position.

Iran’s civilian nuclear program poses no threat to any country, and everybody knows it. The Iranians should feel threatened by Israel and the United States. Looking at their military might and their spending for deadly weaponry is frightening. The U. S. spends for its military machineries more than all the 193 Members of the United Nations combined. And Israel’s defense budget surpasses that of Iran by 10 to 1. Who are the countries that pose an “existential threat” to world peace? Didn’t the German Nobel laureate Guenter Grass ask the right question about Israel’s threat to world peace? Already in 2004, an opinion poll conducted by the European Union revealed that two third of the European public considered Israel the greatest threat to world peace, followed by North Korea, Iran and the United States!   

The power struggle between Israel’s security establishments should tell the international public that an attack on Iran’s civilian nuclear program would be highly dangerous and politically irresponsible. Despite the belligerent rhetoric, the U. S. and Israel are already fighting a cyber war and a war on sanctions against Iran. How come, that despite knowing better, the public is led astray by two Israeli “messianics”?

- Dr. Ludwig Watzal works as a journalist and editor in Bonn, Germany. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

palestinechronicle.com | 01-May-2012 23:50

64 Years of Racism

By Jamal Kanj

Much has been written on Israeli policies seizing Palestinian land and building illegal 'Jewish only' colonies in the West Bank. However the discrimination against the original natives, the non-Jewish Israeli citizens, has gone unnoticed for 64 years.

The creation of Israel in May 1948 on the land of Palestine resulted in the expulsion of roughly 85 per cent of the indigenous and the annexation of 92 per cent of their land. Nearly 150,000 Palestinians remained in what later became Israel.

The vast majority of them were displaced in their own country and relocated to the handful of Palestinian towns spared destruction like Nazareth, Um al-Faham, Shifa-Amr and on the periphery of what were once large cities such as Acre, Haifa and Jaffa. This is in addition to several thousand semi nomadic Bedouin tribes in a sundry of “unrecognized” villages in the arid Negev region.

The original inhabitants of the land, otherwise known by the nomenclature Israeli Arabs, have endured Israeli institutional racism since 1948. The supposed Israeli citizens lived under separate military law until 1965. Representing approximately 20 per cent of Israel’s population today, the aboriginals have access to only 2 per cent of the total land mass.

Their properties were confiscated for the benefit of new Jewish immigrants and turned over to the Jewish National Fund (JNF) as part of a program legally denying non-Jews the right to use or lease JNF administered land.

Addressing their predicament, Walter Leh, then a professor of linguistics at the University of Minnesota wrote in 1974 “…the [Israeli] state under color of law effectively prevents any non-Jews from leasing or holding any rights … to 90 Per cent of the [JNF administered] land in Israel.”

In a recent interview Haneen Zoabi who is one of the small marginalized Knesset representatives of the Palestinians, akn Israeli Arabs, declared that “… since 1948, Israel has confiscated  our land and turned it over to the exclusive use of the Jews. …We don’t have permission to build our own houses on our own land and thus have no rights to use our land that hasn’t been confiscated” 

Israeli official program for the Judaization of areas with high native inhabitants such as the Galilee and the Negev region was not limited to physical properties, but extended to robbing the “historical memory” of the natives by altering the original historic names of landmarks, villages and roads.

As part of Israel’s forged historical project, Israel bestowed Hebrew pseudonyms on locations which were once flourishing Palestinian villages and towns. Thus, Tel Rabi became Tel Aviv, Lubya turned into Lavi, Al Zeeb transpired into Gesher Haziv, and Saffuriyya into Tzippori and Beit Jala metamorphosed into Gilo.

Despite all this, Israel has failed to defuse, what it termed, the “demographic bomb” threatening Israel’s Jewish ethnocentricity. This racial paranoia is the impetus behind the new stratagem to sideline natives by proclaiming Israel officially as a state of the Jewish people. 

Ms Zoabi cautioned of grave injustice violating basic human rights for the non-Jewish original inhabitants if Israel was defined by the ethno religious identity of the new immigrants, declaring that: “I am the indigenous people. I did not immigrate to Israel; it was Israel that immigrated to me”

- Jamal Kanj writes frequently on Arab World issues and the author of “Children of Catastrophe, Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America,” Garnet Publishing, UK. Jamal’s articles can be read at www.jamalkanj.com. He contributed this article to Palestine Chronicle.com. Contact him at: jkanj@yahoo.com.

palestinechronicle.com | 01-May-2012 23:46

Humanity, Pixels in a Shrinking Kill Chain

By Zaakir Ahmed Mayet

In late 2002 an article entitled 'The Changing World of Electronic Games' appeared in a popular publication. The article proceeded to outline the disastrous effects of gaming. However it was the side effect of a break down between the realm of fiction and reality that caught my attention. The article postulated that gamers run the risk of translating that which occurs in the digital world to reality. I relegated these warnings assuming that the effects would only be experienced by hardened gamers.

Enter 2001 when global combat operations reached a turning point. The advent of the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki marked a watershed in history whereby the destruction of human life on a mass scale could be achieved whilst in the same attack destroy the genetic code for generations to come. But the developments in 2001 ushered in a far more sinister and destructive reality. The development of the UCAV (Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle) revolutionized warfare and the terms on which modern war would be fought. It reduced losses of personnel to a few mechanical parts and sensors while providing the ability to utilize modern weapons systems and payloads. As with every massive leap in warfare, there are side effects. The side effect of these UCAVs has been the lack of accountability.

When the United States invaded Iraq under the false pretext of nuclear weapons they entered with a handful of UCAVS. In 2009, the US had close to 5300 units operating in Iraqi airspace. As the war continued to rage on and morphed from a war to a one-sided massacre against the Iraqi people the use of these UCAVs became more pronounced. The ability to kill remotely was gaining favour in the Bush regime. Under G.W. Bush combat drone strike were launched every 47 days.

In 2009 Barak Obama entered the White House carrying with him much hope as the man that will steer the world away from war, senseless murder and torture, yet the opposite prevailed. The Obama regime began to rely heavily on UCAVs. Where Bush launched a combat drone every 47 days, Obama launches a combat drone every 4 days. The lack of accountability has been a prominent feature of Obama’s tenure. The lack of accountability regarding the drone strikes has been clearly demonstrated by the expansion into Pakistan. In January 2012 is was said that strikes had killed between 2,383 and 3,109 people, yet to date no drone pilot, no instructing generals nor any element of the command structure had been prosecuted for war crimes.

The impunity with which these drones are being dispatched and used was evidenced by the assassination of the US citizen, Anwar al Awlaki. Investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill reported that Awlaki had never been formally charged for any crime nor could any substantive link be established to any attacks directed against the US. Anwar al Awlaki was killed not in a designated war zone such as Iraq or Afghanistan but rural Yemen. Shortly after the assassination of Anwar al Awlaki his 16 year old son Abdulrahman Awlaki was murdered at a family barbecue via drone strike. Once again there has been no shred of accountability nor has there be any legal recourse for those affected by this form of remote murder.

The lack of accountability in this new form was highlighted in 2009 by Philip Alston, UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. He said “Otherwise you have the really problematic bottom line, which is that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is running a programme that is killing a significant number of people, and there is absolutely no accountability in terms of the relevant international law.”

As the CIA requests more drone strikes in countries such as Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan, the USA continues to directly contravene the tenets of international principles of State sovereignty.  Furthermore the hosting of conventions such as the Full-Motion Video where drone warfare policy and the expansion of their use will be decided, indicates that the lack of accountability appears to be the status quo as well as the future.

As the world moves away from the foundational elements of democracy namely due process, we begin to question issues of stability and justice. The realization dawns that the world has become a place in which torture, remote murder and assassination with zero accountability is acceptable. A reality in which human rights and the protection thereof is three steps behind the reality and were human life is reduced to pixels on a computer screen. The2002 article’s feared of what would happen if the gaming world translates into reality was incorrect. Little did we know that reality would be translated into a computer game were murder truly is as simple as playing Call of Duty.

As the kill chain gets shorter the question truly is, have we advanced at all when the killing human beings has become nothing more than pressing a button with no consequences?

- Zaakir Ahmed Mayet Chairperson of South Africa-based Media Review Network. This article was contributed to PalestineChronicle.com.

palestinechronicle.com | 01-May-2012 23:44

The Ghost of Osama bin Laden

By Ralph Nader

(The imagined conversation between the Ghost of Osama bin Laden and President Barack Obama)

The Ghost of Osama bin Laden swirled into the Oval Office where Barack Obama was spending the evening going over a pile of requested sign-offs for drone missions.

Osama’s Ghost: “Mind if we have a conversation one year after you dispatched my body to the ocean sharks?”

With curiosity reigning supreme, President Obama replied, “Ok, so long as you remain hovering and do not alight to defile this solemn room.”

Osama’s Ghost: “Thank you. After your SEALs bravely shot, rather than captured, me while I was defenseless in my bedroom, you told your nation that ‘for the first time in two decades, Osama bin Laden is not a threat to this country.’”

“Correct, the form of your presence now attests to that fact,” the President curtly declared.

Osama’s Ghost: “You completely misunderstood. You see my work was completed by the evening of September 11, 2001. After that, the terror that I wanted to implant in American hearts was continued and intensified by George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and you far, far beyond what our little, exaggerated al-Qaeda could ever dream of doing.”

“How so? Make it short!” Obama demanded.

Osama’s Ghost: “Okay, you want it short? You and your predecessors are ones who, for over a decade, starved your domestic needs in favor of huge military adventures in Asia and Africa, took away the freedoms of your people and replaced them with fear and anxiety over the wildly overblown but very profitable war on terror. You destroyed the esteem of the world’s people by reacting to 9/11 with aggressive attacks, torture, indefinite imprisonment without charges, secret laws, secret evidence, secret prisons and routine violations of national borders. You backed tyrants in these countries who slay and loot their own people with U.S. weapons, predatory corporations and political cover. You spy everywhere on the American people and watch your own soldiers commit suicide in record numbers. Do you know why these American soldiers are killing themselves, Mr. President?”

“You tell me, Dr. Freud,” said President Obama.

Osama’s Ghost: “Because when you send them to Iraq and Afghanistan for wars not of defense but of aggression, and they end up killing so many innocent women, children and men, their consciences are traumatized. Your generals like to say their brains are physically traumatized. By what? Your adversaries have no artillery, bombers and missiles to do that job. It is the trauma of their conscience when they see the burned, broken and dismembered bodies of little children and their mothers and fathers in their homes, mosques, or markets. People were blown up while just gathering together to collect wood or participate in wedding processions. In addition, they see the daily suffering of millions who are maimed and homeless.”

“You should talk, after the massacre of my people on 9/11,” exclaimed President Obama.

Osama’s Ghost: “But at least the attackers went ‘down with the ship’, as you Americans say, and this attack was designed to make you suffer like you have made us suffer a millionfold over the decades. As a scholar and a son of Africa, you should understand what life is like under American-supported tyrants. Imagine American military bases – even in our holy lands – and the brutal suppression of any resistance to overturn these puppet dictators and expel their infidel masters from the West. If you were not in our backyard, including the Palestinian nakba, or catastrophe, which the U.S. made happen, our martyrs would never have gone to New York and Washington on 9/11.”

“Do not lump me in the same room with Bush and Cheney,” said an irritated Obama. “They lied this great nation into the invasion of Iraq and played right into your hands, as Bush’s own anti-terrorism advisor, Richard Clarke wrote. I opposed this war but vowed to clear al-Qaeda out of Afghanistan by shifting our soldiers from Iraq. You know what happened to you all after that, don’t you, Ghost?”

Osama’s Ghost: “Yes, Mr. President. Al-Qaeda is not much in Afghanistan, having decided to migrate its activities to Pakistan and encourage our brothers in Yemen, Somalia and North Africa. They are moving into Syria from al-Qaeda in Iraq where it first surfaced thanks to your invasion. The word used by the CIA is ‘blowback.’ But no one is furthering our basic mission of weakening the U.S. more than the rulers of the country are themselves. Look at your rich-poor economy; Wall Street’s destructive greed; crumbling schools, roads, transit, clinics, drinking water facilities; and starved public budgets for the most basic necessities of your people – food for the hungry, healing for the sick, shelter for the homeless.”

Osama’s Ghost: “Even your people overwhelmingly say that America is going in the wrong direction and they want out of Afghanistan. What is a democracy for anyway, Mr. President? Again, you’re doing al-Qaeda’s job – weakening your country to bankruptcy until it can no longer continue ‘messing in our business’ as the Presidential candidate, Ron Paul, says daily. You see, at my compound in Abbottabad, reading occupied me. There was nothing left to do because you Americans cannot resist doing it to yourselves year after year. Given my lack of precautions, I didn’t care if I was executed because my mission was fulfilled. Near the end, grieving over Muslims killing Muslims, I became a fatalistic mystic.”

“Are you finished, Ghost? I have to decide on some high value targets in three countries. The hunt will never cease,” said President Obama.

Osama’s Ghost: “But, Mr. President, you had the highest value target of all and you eliminated the chance to interrogate me. Think what I could have told you about the past 30 years for your intelligence services.”

“Tell me what, in a phrase. Your time is up!” declared President Obama.

Osama’s Ghost: “Well…thank you, thank you for all that you, Mr. Bush, and Mr. Cheney have done, Mr. President.”

Whereupon the Ghost evaporated into the ether and the president started signing.

- Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer and author of 'Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us'. Visit: www.nader.org.

palestinechronicle.com | 30-Apr-2012 23:24

American Methodists Must Be Fearless about Divestment

By Stuart Littlewood

Why is the United Methodist Church apparently making such heavy weather of voting for divestment from corporates – specifically Caterpillar, Motorola and Hewlett-Packard - that profiteer from the brutal Israeli occupation of Palestine?

Americans can surely learn from their British brethren who blazed a trail through this minefield at their annual conference nearly two years ago. They voted to boycott products from Israeli settlements in Occupied Palestine, regarded as illegal under international law, and to encourage Methodists across the country to do the same.

Been There, Done That

Their action answered a call from Palestinian Christians, a growing number of Jewish organisations both inside Israel and worldwide, and the World Council of Churches.

Christine Elliott, Secretary for External Relationships, explained: “The goal of the boycott is to put an end to the existing injustice. It reflects the challenge that settlements present to a lasting peace in the region."
 
Yes, they got some flak. Right on cue, the Board of Deputies of British Jews blew a fuse. In a joint statement with the Jewish Leadership Council they said the Methodists should "hang their heads in shame". The Chief Rabbi led the charge warning that the implications would “reverberate across the hitherto harmonious relationship between the faith communities in the UK”.

Ah, those precious inter-faith relationships... The truth is, Israeli Jews simply don’t do “harmonious relationship” out there in the Occupied Territories. Terror, oppression and dispossession are more their style.

What upset the Chief Rabbi most was the report 'Justice for Palestine and Israel' submitted to the Methodist Conference. Its recommendations included the following...

“In listening to Church Leaders and our fellow-Christians in Israel Palestine as well as leaders of Palestinian civil society we hear an increasing consensus calling for the imposition of boycott, divestment and sanctions as a major strategy of non-violent resistance to the Occupation. The Conference notes the call of the WCC [World Council of Churches] in 2009 for an ‘international boycott of settlement produce and services’ and calls on the Methodist people to support and engage with this boycott of Israeli goods emanating from illegal settlements (some Methodists would advocate a total boycott of Israeli goods until the Occupation ends).”

It also said that the Methodist Church had consistently expressed its concern over the illegal Occupation of Palestinian lands by the State of Israel, and that its continuation not only compounded Israel’s illegal and immoral action but also made any accommodation with the Palestinian people and future peace in the region less likely.

The Chief Rabbi declared the report “unbalanced, factually and historically flawed” without saying in what way it was inaccurate. The Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council said the authors of the report had “abused the goodwill of the Jewish community”. Here is their full text:

“This is a very sad day, both for Jewish-Methodist relations and for everyone who wants to see positive engagement with the complex issues of Israeli-Palestinian relations. The Methodist Conference has swallowed hook, line and sinker a report full of basic historical inaccuracies, deliberate misrepresentations and distortions of Jewish theology and Israeli policy. The deeply flawed report is symptomatic of a biased process: The working group which wrote the report had already formed its conclusions at the outset. External readers were brought in to give the process a veneer of impartiality, but their criticisms were rejected. The report’s authors have abused the trust of ordinary members of the Methodist Church, who assumed that they were reading and voting on an impartial and comprehensive paper, and they have abused the goodwill of the Jewish community, which tried to engage with this issue, only to find that our efforts were treated as an unwelcome distraction.

“This outcome is extremely serious and damaging, as we and others have explained repeatedly over recent weeks. Israel is at the root of the identity of Jews and of Judaism, and as an expression of Jewish spiritual, national and emotional aspirations, Zionism cannot simply be ruled as illegitimate in the way that the Methodist Conference has purported to do. This smacks of breathtaking insensitivity, as crass as it is misinformed. That this position should now form the basis of Methodist Church policy should cause the Conference to hang its head in shame, just as surely as it will cause the enemies of peace and reconciliation to cheer from the sidelines.”

If Israel is at the root of their identity you’d think they’d demand from the regime the sort of conduct that projected a better image. For 46 years the “goodwill” of the Jewish community has counted for nothing in securing justice for the Palestinians and bringing to an end their misery at the hands of the State if Israel. Who are they to talk of “breathtaking insensitivity”?

If arrogance is the only response to serious concerns about Israel’s barbarity towards Muslims and Christians in the Holy Land, perhaps it’s time that implications did indeed “reverberate” across the faith communities, not only in the UK but around the world including (and especially) the US.

Infiltrators Avidly Support “Unrighteous Nation” of Israel

It’s no surprise to hear that the United Methodists, and even their legislative body, have been infiltrated by Zionists. They should expect it and be ready to throw them out.

Over here the grit in the Methodists’ vaseline call themselves Methodist Friends of Israel. "We are Christians who are members or adherents of the Methodist Church, who love Israel and want to bless her and who fully accept God’s everlasting covenant with His chosen people,” they say. “While recognising that the nation of Israel is, like all nations of the world, an unrighteous nation that does not always get things right, we firmly stand with her at all times and continue to support her in an increasingly hostile world.  We will not turn our backs as so many did in the 1930s.

"We see that anti Semitism is on the rise throughout the world with synagogues and graveyards vandalised and Jews being attacked both verbally and physically and that there appears to be a direct relationship between the increased attacks on Jews and the blanket condemnation of Israel by the media, many charitable organizations and world bodies such as the UN. We are concerned that the whole, true picture of what life is like in Israel is given to the world rather than the biased half truths, distortions and lies that are presently reported.

"We are concerned that many churches are going down the politically correct line of condemning Israel’s policies and are thus contributing to the strong anti Semitic views of the world."

Note that they are concerned only with “what life is like in Israel”, not the hell Israel has created in the Occupied Territories for Christian and Muslim Palestinians. They blame others for rising anti-Semitic sentiment and fail to see that the lawless thuggery of the Israeli regime is the problem.

What else do these deviant Methodists believe in?

• They believe the Scripture prophesy restoring the Jews to the land of Israel. What we see today is a fulfilment of the prophecy and it is a privilege to witness this fulfillment.
• They believe Israel is central in the enactment of God’s purposes as we move in these “last days”.
• They believe in blessing Israel however possible including buying goods and produce from Israel and resisting all calls for boycotts.
• They believe in supporting Israel’s defence of its people and their right to live without the threat of missile attacks, homicide bombings etc.
• They believe in standing against libelous attacks against Israel.
• They believe in fully supporting Israel’s right to the land given them by God.

Needless to say, the Methodist Friends of Israel website reads like pages from some Zionist propaganda rag. At this very moment they are running a tour of Israel. Of Israel, mark you, not Palestine. What sort of view of the Holy Land will that give their pilgrims?

Enough of This Inter-faith lah-di-dah?

Having taken their bold decision at the conference and bravely flown through the flak, UK Methodists let themselves down somewhat by turning wimpish. They began trying to mend fences with the Board of Deputies of British Jews.

Why bother, one is tempted to ask. Why demean themselves? Have the Board of Deputies ever condemned or punished the Israeli regime’s crimes against humanity?

Until they do, let them stew.

Nevertheless the President of the Methodist Conference wrote to the Board of Deputies and the President of the Board of Deputies, we’re told, welcomed the opportunity for a constructive conversation. They explored in particular, said a statement, the need to clarify the use of specific words and phrases such as Zionism and Christian Zionism. And they expressed their gratitude for the support given by the Council of Christians and Jews.

So they’re friends again and all’s well that ends well. Which must be gratifying for Palestinians as they continue to starve under the jackboot and fry or be parted from their limbs under almost daily air-strikes.

It’s not good enough. True Christians everywhere - not just the Methodists - need to stiffen the sinew and toughen up. Why continue this inter-faith lah-di-dah with religious delinquents? Decent and sensible people from all faiths get along just fine without help from religious busybodies and loudmouths.

But if the irredeemable hardcore are determined to stir up “reverberations” they are of course free to do so, within the limits of the law.

- Stuart Littlewood's book Radio Free Palestine can now be read on the internet by visiting www.radiofreepalestine.org.uk. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

palestinechronicle.com | 30-Apr-2012 20:17

The Struggle for Power in Jordan

By Ali Younes

When Jordan's Prime Minister Awn Khasawneh took office six months ago, he was hailed as a much needed reformer with a clean slate in Jordanian politics after spending 10 years as a judge at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. It turned out that his very asset that propelled him to power, turned out to be his undoing when he resigned abruptly last Thursday.

The chain of events that triggered the tumultuous Jordanian weekend unfolded when the King’s aids summoned the deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister to the Palace, while their boss, the Prime Minister, was abroad. The two men were called in to sign the King’s Royal decree to extend the current Parliament session in order to pass the controversial election law and carry on with the King’s vision for political reform.

Press reports said that the two men were given a dire choice of either sign the document or choose their boss over the King. Constitutionally, the Royal decree requires the signature of the prime minister or his deputy in order for it to take effect.

For Khasawneh, however, that was a public humiliation to his authority and flies in the face of his original mission which was to restore the public authority to the office of the Prime Minister. As a result, he tendered his resignation to the king while traveling in Turkey on a state visit.

King Abdullah II, then, immediately, asked former Prime Minister and regime insider Fayez Tarawneh to form the new government. Tarawneh had spent his 40- year career working at the Royal Palace, Foreign Minister and Prime Minister. Many Jordanian writers and analysts regard him as an old guard and an ultra- conservative bureaucrat.

Columnist Rakan Saaydeh said to me that there is a fundamental difference between Khasawneh and Tarawneh. The First, according to Saaydeh who writes for the largest Jordanian daily, Al Rai, was eager to restore the constitutional powers to the office of Prime Minister, while for the second, it is a non-issue.

From the perspective of the pro-reform and pro-democracy movement in Jordan, this appointment is considered bad news.

Reporter and TV Journalist Rasha Alwahsh said when I asked her what this appointment means for the activists and pro-democracy movement, she said: “Tarawneh’s appointment is an insult to the Jordanians because he considers political reform, freedom of speech and freedom of the press as a security threat, instead of being building blocks of a democratic state.” Alwahsh, who is prominent in the freedom of the press movement, added that “with a prime minister like that, it is hard to think that the country is moving forward.”

This, despite that Jordanian prime ministers are practically powerless and only serve to be “sacked “and as “buffer” between the king and the people.

The past events, however, were unusual for the conservative Jordanian politics. The context and the dislocation of Khasawneh’s letter of resignation can be understood as subtle and rare challenge to the King’s authority despite its polite and loyalist language.

The King, meanwhile, accepted the resignation, with an equally rare, open and harsh rebuke of his prime minister, charging him of “ stalling reform” and being” slow” in carrying out the reforms the King had wanted.

Al Quds Al Arabi reporter and political analyst Bassam Badareen, who first broke the story of Khasawneh’s resignation, reported that Khasawneh was angered when king decided to extend the ordinary session of the Parliament without consulting with him.

Badareen suggested that he was facing a trench-warfare from the Military-Intelligence elites. He was, however, counting on the support from the European Union for his reforms. Khasawneh simply miscalculated his cards.

More tellingly, the King in a sleight of hand, outfoxed his prime minister “by accepting his resignation right after a meeting with ambassadors of the EU, the same people Khasawneh was hoping they would back him up,” said Badareen.

Jordanian politicians however blamed Khasawneh for being unrealistic in his expectations of political reform in Jordan and for not resisting the new election law, and for trying to engage the Muslim Brotherhood Movement to try to bring it back into the political process.

Thus, even his own Foreign Minister, Nasser Judeh, appeared on Al Jazeera, on the same day, attacking his own boss publically after the government resigned. Judeh, who was married to the royal family, is expected to retain his job in the next government.

The election law, in addition, had caused friction within the Jordanian political system and society because of its discriminatory nature against population centers like Amman and Zarka where the majority of the Palestinian-Jordanian citizens reside.

Hamza Mansour the 68 years old Secretary General of the Islamic Action Front (IAF) the Political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, commented on the unfolding events in Jordan and said me that Khasawneh’s resignation was a bit too late. “He should have resigned a month ago when they [the General Intelligence Department, GID] forced this unconstitutional and un-modern law on the Jordanian people”

A former educator and three-term Member of Parliament, and a powerful leader, Mansour argued that “This law, if passed by the current parliament will undermine democratic reform and is a setback to democracy and civil liberties of the Jordanian people”

Lt. General Faisal Al Shoubaki,the Director of the Mukhabarat, ( GID) wrote, however, in his “Welcome Note” on his department web site that the mission of the GID is to carry the King’s vision that will “help it achieve its role in the service of country and citizens, respect of human rights and citizens' dignity, and act as a pillar of support for process of comprehensive reform led by His Majesty the King.”

Mansour also lambasted the manner in which Tarawneh was picked as Prime Minister. “The Prime Ministers of Jordan are still being chosen from within exclusive club with total disregard to the people of Jordan.” He said.

When I told Mr. Mansour, however, that King Abdullah II had stated, here in Washington, last year that he wanted to have the prime minister of Jordan elected in 2012 and that he would give up some of his powers to the parliament and the prime minister in the near future.  Mr. Mansour responded “Actions are more important than theories.”

Washington- based Freedom House Foundation agrees with Mr. Mansour’s assessment with regards to political freedoms and civil liberties in Jordan.

In its 2011 global report, Jordan was designated as “Not Free” country, which is the worst of the other two categories of “Free” and “Partially Free”

Freedom House mission, according to its web site is to “support democratic change, monitors freedom, and advocates for democracy and human rights around the world.”

As for Freedom rating, Jordan was rated at 5.5, while Civil liberties rated at 5 and political Rights at 6. (7 is the highest and worst rating while 1 is the lowest and the best rating)

According to the report “a Not Free country is one where basic political rights are absent, and basic civil liberties are widely and systematically denied.”

In 2012 report, Jordan’s ratings did not improve and remained the same as the year before.

This rating puts Jordan in the same category with 47 other countries around the world, half of which are the Arab League states and countries like Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and North Korea.

While Bangladesh, for example, had much better ratings than Jordan as a “Partly Free” country with Freedom ratings of 3.5, civil Liberties, 4 and Political Rights 3.

Although King Abdullah II appears to be more progressive in his thinking than his aids according to his statements, he is, however surrounded, according to local Jordanian analysts; by old guard conservatives who resist change.

Political analyst Saaydeh explains that power centers in Jordan are not interested in opening up the country to reform. “The power centers [Military-intelligence-tribal elites] feel that it is their God-given right to have this overarching power, under the justification that they are the guardians of the regime.”

Badareen, in the meantime, thinks that Jordanian prime ministers are appointed to serve one specific mission at a time. They are an exclusive club of “Mission-Men”. “The new Prime Minister”, he continued, “will only last few months, accomplish what he is tasked to do, then he will clear the way for yet another man, and another mission.

- Ali Younes is a writer and Middle Eastern affairs analyst based in Washington D.C.  He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Contact him at: aliyounes98@gmail.com and on twitter at @clearali.

palestinechronicle.com | 30-Apr-2012 19:57

Madeleine Albright Gets Humanitarian Award

By Felicity Arbuthnot

'There is a special place in hell for women who don't help other women.' (Madeleine Albright, 1937 - )

As the anniversary of probably one of the most infamous responses in broadcasting history approaches, the woman who uttered it is shortly to be awarded “the highest honour” that America bestows upon civilians: the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Madeleine Albright, Iraq’s “Grim Reaper”, of course confirmed on “Sixty Minutes” (12th May 1996) that the deaths of half a million children as a result of the absolute, all-embracing deprivations of the UN embargo were: “A hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it.”

Her comment also further endorsed the extent to which the United Nations had soiled its own founding affirmation to: “Save succeeding generations from the scourge of war..” by declaring a new method of warfare, the withdrawal and denial of all life-sustaining necessities. Albright, at the time of her astonishing statement was US Ambassador the UN (1993-1997).

Ironically, as a child she and her Czechoslovak family, her father a diplomat, lived in London during the 1939-’45 war, and whilst there she appeared in a film on the plight of children in war. 

In her autobiography, she describes how her experience and knowledge of the horrors and repercussions of war were also shaped by the terrible consequences for a small state when it collides with the ambitions of interests of a big one. Iraq’s twenty five million population and America’s three hundred and fifty million again come to mind.

She enjoined in further heaping misery on Iraq’s most vulnerable as US Secretary of State (1997-2001.) Perhaps, as many, for good or ill, she was shaped by her childhood. When her family returned to Prague after the war, controversy was caused by their being given a home owned by a wealthy German family. Germans were expelled from the country, by Prime Ministerial decree after the war.

At least it was only a house. The government she had served went on to take over - and comprehensively ruin plunder and further impoverish - two countries and their peoples.

For the annals of: “You Could Not Make It Up”, Ms Albright’s current positions include being Co-Chair of the United Nations Development Programme’s Commission for Legal Empowerment of the poor, which: “works to make real improvements in people’s lives (fostering) economic growth, poverty reduction, human development” and making the: “law work for everyone.”

In Sept 2006 she received Menschen in Europe Award for furthering the cause of international understanding. Orwell strikes again.

On 26th April, announcing the thirteen recipients of the 2012 Presidential Medal of Freedom Award, President Obama commended Madeleine Albright for her efforts to bring peace to the Middle East …. Reduce the spread of nuclear weapons, and for her role as a longtime champion of democracy and human rights all over the world. (The Daily Beast, April 26)

“These extraordinary honorees (have) challenged us … inspired us, and they’ve made the world a better place”, said the President.

The Medal honours those who have significantly contributed to: “world peace.”

Reading this “Adventures of a Heroine” fantasy story, the memories of the Iraqi mothers I have held, their tears mingling with mine, or dampening my shoulder, as they watched helplessly as their children faded away in front of us, for want of medications, denied by Albright’s country and the UN she served, flooded back. 

The funerals, with the litany of coffins, so small, the impossibly little grave sites beyond counting, throughout Iraq, witness to unique wickedness.

But Madam Albright is right on one thing. There is indeed: “a special place in hell, for women who don’t help other women.” Her Award may yet haunt her to become the ultimate poisoned chalice. Here’s hoping.

- Felicity Arbuthnot is a journalist with special knowledge of Iraq. Author, with Nikki van der Gaag, of Baghdad in the Great City series for World Almanac books, she has also been Senior Researcher for two Award winning documentaries on Iraq, John Pilger's Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq and Denis Halliday Returns for RTE (Ireland.) She contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

palestinechronicle.com | 30-Apr-2012 19:44

Not A Happy 64th B'day Israel!

By Samah Sabwai

Peeling off the artificial sugar layers and the dazzling celebratory ornaments, Israel on its 64th birthday stands fragile, isolated and exposed in a way it has never been since its foundation.

This has not been a good year for the Jewish state. Anti-normalization movements have picked up steam in the Arab world while the global campaign for Boycott Divestments and Sanctions continues to present a serious challenge, with a long list of artists refusing to entertain apartheid. Israeli Apartheid Week continues to grow on university campuses around the world despite Israel’s failed effort to counter it and non-violent resistance in Palestine which is often met with Israeli brutality is no longer the hidden secret it once was with more international activists witnessing and at times experiencing the brutality first hand.  The year ended with the a major announcement from the Methodist Church that they will divest from Israel.

On the diplomatic front, the PA took its bid for statehood to the UN.  Mahmoud Abbas’s moving speech at the UNGA  on November 23, 2011 was met with rapturous applause.  More than one month later, Palestine was admitted  into the first UN body UNESCO with an overwhelming international show of support further exposing the isolation of the Zionist state in the international arena.

Israel is also losing the media war as mainstream television networks and newspapers are becoming more daring in their criticism. For example 60 Minutes recently aired a program about Israel’s discrimination of Christian Palestinians, a show that Israeli officials objected to and tried to stop before it was even aired. But the real highlight for the year on the drama front was the broadcasting of the British TV series  The Promise on networks around the world.  Israeli supporters were furious and have tried in various countries to stop the show from screening.  In its final episode, The Promise brings to life scenes of the ethnic cleansing of 1948 Palestine.

Another sign of Israel losing its grip on the media front was evident when The Economist published this editorial  (March 6, 2012), holding Netanyahu responsible for the demise of the peace process  “No one bears greater responsibility for the trap Israel finds itself in today than Mr Netanyahu. As prime minister in the late 1990s, he did more than any other Israeli leader to destroy the peace process.”

And if all of this is not enough, even Israel’s powerful allies, including Australia  and the US have grown impatient with its behavior especially its derailment of the peace process, its continued settlements expansion and its appetite for attacking Iran.  Indeed Israel is losing friends fast.  Two other traditional allies have also been lost this past year as we saw the expulsion of Israel's ambassador to Ankara following a row with Netanyahu’s government over Israel’s deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla and the evacuation of Israeli diplomats from Egypt after Egyptian protestors stormed the Israeli embassy in Cairo.  Worth mentioning is that until now, the Israeli embassy stands vacant as anti-normalization movements in the Arab world continue to gain strength and yield various victories from Morocco where activists are calling to criminalize normalization to Egypt where they have succeeded in cancelling the gas deal with Israel and are now calling for an end to the peace treaty with the Zionist state.

This year, more than ever, people have began to question Isreal's democracy especially as the Israeli government moved to reinstate its infiltrator law, a 50 year old law that targets not only Palestinians but also all asylum seekers regardless of age.  Israel was also criticized for a barrage of other draconian laws reflecting its insecurity and discriminatory nature, like the law that was passed allowing communities in the Negev and Galilee regions smaller than 400 households to refuse potential residents on the basis of their ethnicity or religion.  And for those who find such acts reprehensible and would like to do something about it…say like boycotting Israeli settlement goods, Israel is ready for that too.  They have also passed a law that gives settlers the right to claim economic injury from a call to boycott and to actually sue the organizers of the boycott without needing to have any proof of such damages. 

Perhaps most telling of all is Israel’s passing of legislation that calls for withdrawal of government funding to any organization or institution that marks commemorating Nakba, that is remembering how Israel was founded on the ruins of more than 400 Palestinian villages and cities which were ethnically cleansed by the Jewish army, forcing more than 750,000 Palestinians into exile in order to pave the way for a Jewish majority.  In fact this year some people were arrested because they dared remember this part of Israel’s history!
So all in all, a very bad 64th birthday!

- Samah Sabawi is a Palestinian writer. She contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

palestinechronicle.com | 28-Apr-2012 19:46

Jabal-Nablus, a Page from Palestine's History

By Hasan Afif El-Hasan

Prior to Israel's occupation of the West Bank, the ancient City of Nablus had been a Palestinian principal trade and manufacturing center for centuries. Nablus natural beauty captured the imagination of visitors throughout recorded history. With its twenty gushing springs, fruit gardens, public fountains and mosques courtyards, Nablus City, embedded in a valley between two steep mountains, Jerzeem and Eibal, was described by Shams al-Din al-Ansari back in the fourteenth century as “a palace in a garden”.

After visiting Nablus in 1881, the English clergyman and renowned traveler Henry Baker Tristram described the city as “its beauty can hardly be exaggerated…Clusters of white-roofed houses nestling in the bosom of a mass of trees, olive, palm, orange, apricot, and many another varying the carpet with every shade of green…..Everything fresh, green, and picturesque with verdure, shade and water everywhere”.

The British Reverend John Mills, visited Palestine twice in the 1850’s and published a geography book, “Palestina”. He wrote about the Palestinians of Nablus as “most proud of it [their City], and [they] think there is no place in the world equal to it.” John Mills was impressed by the mutual respect and harmony among the town’s communities, Muslim majority, the Christian and the Samaritan minorities. The Samaritans consider one of Nablus two mountains, Mt. Jerzeem, their spiritual center.

Nablus City has always been a farmers-town or as Professor Beshara Doumani described it as “a very large village” where the cycles of business activities are at peak during the agriculture production seasons. The City has been the anchor for hundreds of villages in the hills, the valleys and the plains that stretch from Jenin in the north to the hills of Ramallah and al-Bireh in the south. As a geographic and population unit, Nablus and its hinterland has been known as Jabal-Nablus. The “Jabal” in Jabal-Nablus literally means “mountain”, but in this context it suggests tough, enduring, regionally based merchant-farmer society actively involved in the productive capacity of the land. The farmers of Jabal-Nablus learnt over the millennia to exploit every geographical feature of their land. The flat land has been sown with grain and planted with vegetables and legumes; hills have been terraced and planted with trees; and the high stony land has been utilized for grazing cows, lambs and goats. The popularity of the Nabulsi cheese in the families’ pantries and the sweet pastry shops is matched only by the French cheese in Europe or the mozzarella cheese in the US pizza eateries.  

The land is famous for its plentiful olive for pickling and oil, table grape and raisin, different kinds of fig fruit and sweet dry fig, hazel nuts, apricot, pomegranate, grain, tobacco, watermelon, cotton, summer vegetables and the famous wild thyme. The olive tree has been the symbol of Palestinian nationalism and economic independence since thousands of years when the Palestinians lived off the land and before they became refugees or dependent on the hand outs of foreign donors.

During the olive harvest season in autumn of every year, the villagers’ families get busy collecting the olive from the groves that cover the slopes in a festival atmosphere. Olive oil mills are the center of the next level of activities. Quality and price of the olive becomes the talk of the farmers, the merchants, the money lenders and the consumers in town. Tons of olive oil are being transported from the villages, sold for consumption, deposited daily in the soap factories underground wells or exported to Syria, Iraq, the Arabian Peninsula and Egypt. The farmers spend the olive-oil money buying clothes, shoes, rice, sugar, coffee, cooking utensils, work tools and other items and payoff loans. The olive season is the time when many eligible young people and the young in heart tie the knot buying wedding clothes, gifts, gold and wedding candy. Good olive season is a happy time for the cloth merchants, the tailors, the goldsmith craftsmen and perfume businesses.

The Palestinian farmers proved they had nothing to fear from free trade when the free trade Anglo-Turkish commercial Convention was signed in 1838. Professor Beshara Doumani wrote that in the nineteenth century, “large agricultural surpluses were generated as Palestinian wheat, barley, sesame, olive oil, soap and cotton were sold on the world market. Exports exceeded the imports of European machine-manufactured goods.”  

The olive oil-based soap industry of Nablus expanded significantly beyond the local market in the nineteenth century, exporting a variety of the product to many Middle East countries. Huge soap-factories were built and a class of rich industrial families was created.

Jabal-Nablus also has another name, “Jabal-al-nar” which literally means “the mountain of fire” because its inhabitants played leading roles in fighting invaders through history since the periods of the Egyptian pharaohs.  In recent history, they lived up to their reputation when they fought against the invading Egyptian forces in 1834; they rebelled against the British rule in 1936-39; The first armed uprising against the British was led by Sheikh Izeddin al-Qassam who set his headquarters in the wooded hills of Ya’bad village; and the Palestinians of Jabal-Nablus led the intifada against the Israeli occupation in 1987-88.

In 1799, when Napoleon Bonaparte landed in Cairo and was planning to invade Palestine that was part of the Ottoman Empire, Shaikh Yousuf Jarrar of Jenin, a member of a local prominent family and a Turkish official appointee wrote a poem in which he exhorted leading families of Jabal-Nablus to get their men ready to repel the French once they landed in Palestine:
House of Tuqan, draw your swords,
And mount your precious saddles.
House of Nimr, you mighty tigers,
Straighten your courageous lines.
Muhammmed Uthman, mobilize your men,
Mobilize the heroes from all directions.
Ahmad al-Qasim, you bold lion,
Prow of the advancing lines. 

The Palestinian Yusuf Diya, was elected to the Ottoman Parliament in 1877 and later on became a professor of Arabic in Vienna. He was described by an American diplomat as “the finest orator and ablest debater in the chamber [the Ottoman Parliament].” Diya communicated with Theodor Herzl, the father of Zionism, in 1899 via the Chief Rabbi in France, telling Herzl, “Palestine was heavily populated by non-Jews…[and asked] By what right do the Jews demand it for themselves?” The colonialist Great Britain granted the Jews a homeland in Palestine. Britain Foreign Minister Arthur James Balfour submitted “Balfour Declaration” in a letter to Lord Rothschild in 1917 that became the basis for creating the State of Israel and disrupting the Palestinians’ life that survived thousands of years.  

- Hasan Afif El-Hasan is a political analyst. His latest book, Is The Two-State Solution Already Dead? (Algora Publishing, New York), now available on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble. He was born in Beit-Eiba, a small village near Nablus. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

palestinechronicle.com | 28-Apr-2012 19:31