While Occupation and blockade are business as usual for Israel, there should be no business with Israel

In Occupied Palestine

Zionism in practice

Israel’s Daily Toll on Palestinian Life, Limb, Liberty and Property

24 hours to 8am 7 February 2010

Main source of statistics: Palestinian Monitoring Group (PMG).   

Israeli Navy opens fire on and hijacks fishing boats

Israeli Army opens fire on villagers in support of marauding settlers

Invading Israeli troops injure 2 children – beat up mentally-handicapped villager

Youngsters abducted by Israeli troops this year now total over 50

Night peace disruption and/or home invasions in refugee camp and 7 towns and villages

3 attacks – 20 raids – 4 beatings – 6 injured

7 taken prisoner – 15 detained – 88 restrictions of movement

Home invasions: 07:30, the town of Abu Dis - 02:00, El Bireh - 22:50, Tulkarem - 22:50, the Tulkarem refugee camp.

Peace disruption raids: 12:25, the village of Iraq Burin - 12:20, the town of Deir Ghassana - 12:40, the town of Beit Rima - 09:40, the village of Sanur - 14:00, the village of Zububa - 15:20, the town of Az Zababida - 20:55-23:00, the town of Az Zababida - 18:00, Tubas - 20:10, the town of Azzun - 18:05, the town of Qabalan - 16:00, the village of Marda - 20:45-22:00, the town of Bruqin - 12:50, the village of Safa - 00:40, the town of Ash Shuyukh - 00:40, the town of Sa’ir - 00:40, the town of Halhul.

Palestinian attacks: none

Israeli attack – hijacking – economic sabotage: Northern Gaza – 06:00, Israeli gunboats opened fire on and hijacked two Palestinian fishing boats at sea off As-Sudaniya. Four fishermen were taken prisoner.

Israeli attack: Jerusalem – 04:30, Israeli troops pursued and opened fire on a vehicle while chasing it near the village of Mikhmas. The occupants managed to escape unharmed.

Israeli attack – settler violence: Nablus – 12:25, the Israeli Army invaded the village of Iraq Burin, opening fire and firing tear gas grenades at villagers who were trying to defend their homes against marauding Zionist militants from the settlement of Brakha. Two villagers were overcome by Israeli tear gas.

Beatings – abductions: Jerusalem – 23:20, Israeli soldiers took prisoner two Palestinian 15-year-olds, Muhammad Mahmoud Dawoud Hlabiyeh and Anas Muhammad Abdulrazeq Ayad, and beat them up. One of the boys was admitted to hospital with severe injuries. Note: These latest bring the number of youngsters under the age of 18 abducted this year by Israeli soldiers to 51. To date, twelve 15-year-olds have been abducted.

Beating: Jerusalem – 17:25, Muhammad Abdulfattah AtTmaizi was admitted to the Government Hospital in the city of Beit Jala with severe injuries following a beating by Israeli troops in Jerusalem.

Israeli Army vandalism: Jenin – 09:40, Occupation troops invaded the village of Sanur and vandalised a disused UNRWA school.

Israeli Army brutality: Hebron – 12:50, Israeli troops injured two children during an incursion into the village of Safa and beat up a mentally-handicapped man, Ibrahim Muhammad Elayan, leaving him with severe injuries.

Israeli Army Raids Ramallah to capture International Activists in Violation of Oslo Accords. Israeli soldiers raided a Ramallah apartment around 3am to arrest a Spanish and an Australian activist over expired visas in direct violation of the Oslo Accords. Israeli troops forced their way into an apartment in the Area A city of Ramallah and arrested two activists from the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) on suspicion of overstaying their visas. The two, Ariadna Jove Marti, a Spanish journalist, and Bridgette Chappell, an Australian student at Beir Zeit university, were then taken to the Ofer military prison in Occupied Territory where they were handed over to the Israeli immigration police unit “Oz”. The raid and the detentions are in direct violation of the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, which clearly forbids any Israeli incursion into Area A for reasons not directly and urgently related to security. Even the conduct of “hot pursuit” is disallowed in non-security related matters such as overstayed visas. These 'arrests' tonight follow the unlawful detention and deportation of Czech citizen Eva Nováková under similar circumstances last month. Her arrest stirred controversy over the misuse of the “Oz” unit inside Occupied Territory [1].

For more information, please contact:  Neta Golan +972.598.184.169  – Adv. Omer Shatz +972.507.547.079 - Ryan Olander +972.548.838.369 or +972.224.106.04

    According to Ryan Olander, an American solidarity activist who was at the scene during the raid, around ten soldiers forcefully entered the apartment and demanded to see the passports of everyone who was present and informed the two of their detention on the grounds of overstayed visas. The soldiers took away cameras, a computer, pro-Palestinian banners and ISM volunteers' registration forms. Olander said that, “This raid is a continuation of Israel's attempts to quash the grass roots movement against the Occupation. This is a cynical and unjust attempt to hide the reality of the Occupation and further bar access to information from the international community”.

    Israeli attempts to deport foreigners involved with Palestinian solidarity work are part of a recent campaign to end non-violent Palestinian resistance [2], with the mass arrests of Palestinian protesters and organisers. Over the last ten months, the "Oz" immigration unit illegally arrested and attempted to deport four other international activists. Eva Nováková, a Czech national and former ISM media co-ordinator, was arrested in Ramallah on 11 January 2010, and deported the next day, before the deportation could be appealed. Nováková's lawyer is currently in the process of preparing an appeal to the Israeli High Court to challenge the legality of her arrest. Additionally, American solidarity activist, Ryan Olander, was twice arrested illegally by the "Oz" Immigration unit, but his deportation was prevented after a judge ruled his detention illegal. Similar appeals to the court have also annulled the deportations of other American and British activists in recent months.

Background links: [1] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArtStEngPE.jhtml?itemNo=1144105

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/world/middleeast/29palestine.html

Recent news updates:

Israeli Army Central Command threatens: “Our army can reach Damascus, Syria cannot stop us”. The Head of Israeli Army Central Command, Avi Mizrahi, is reported by the online daily, Maariv, to have made the threat during a visit to the Occupation settlement of Efrat during a meeting with students last Wednesday.
http://imemc.org/index.php?obj_id=53&story_id=57883

Outrage at UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon delay over the war crimes issue. – The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights is http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=259324

Blair: Gaza's great betrayer. It's more than a year since Israel launched its immoral attack on Gaza and Palestinians are still living on the verge of a humanitarian disaster. So what has Tony Blair done to further peace in the region? Virtually nothing, argues the historian Avi Shlaim. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/03/gaza-tony-blair-betrayal

The presence of the Palestinian in the Israeli painter's eye / Robert Fisk. Many of the Tel Aviv paintings show an emergent Israel with fewer Arabs – . . . And as the years pass, Arab villages are no longer inhabited by Arabs. There's a magnificent landscape of Jerusalem in 1960 – Blum again – in which, I suddenly realised, the Al-Aqsa Mosque does not exist. It should lie, from the painter's location in the west of the city, on the horizon to the left of the King David Hotel, above and to the right of the Jaffa Gate. But it is not there. It has disappeared.

No relief for the Palestinians while Israel enjoys impunity/ Andrew Phillips. To visit Gaza for a third time in five years still induces a gut reaction of pity, depression and anger – pity at the hopeless, helpless plight of the Palestinians; depression about their future and, ironically, that of Israel too; and anger at the latter's cynical policies – and impunity . . . Following the Gaza blitz the UN raised a $4.5bn restoration fund. Not one dollar has been spent, so vindictive is Israel's siege by land, sea and air. Bare survival is thanks to the tunnels under the Egyptian border, but they are now being blocked off.

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The Zionist Story

Must see videos in 8 parts – approx. 90 mins total: Australians for Palestine website comment:

    The following 8-part video gives a riveting overview of Zionist history and the catastrophe wrought on the majority Palestinian population in their own homeland for more than 60 years to the present day. The whole calculated Zionist enterprise leaves one gasping at the audacity of its founders to deliberately rid Palestine of its population and perpetually ensnare the Western world in its savage undertaking, demanding nothing less than total commitment to, and veneration for, the state of Israel. Includes commentary from courageous Israelis like Prof Ilan Pappe and Prof Jeff Halper who constantly challenge the Zionist lies and myths that have so successfully hijacked world media. It is time for us to speak out in support of the Palestinians as well. Their situation is continuously deteriorating as Israel takes more land for new settlers while reducing the Palestinians to a wretched state without homes, water or any kind of security or hope for the future. Their survival depends on dismantling Israel’s apartheid regime that not only oppresses, divides and discriminates, but also carries out a deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing. http://australiansforpalestine.com/

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Please, Mr. President, Stop Talking Nonsense

By Alan Hart February 06, 2010 ""Information Clearing House"

    At a town hall meeting in Tampa, Florida on 28 January, President Obama explained what in his view had to happen if there is to be a two-state solution which would see Israel and the Palestinians living side by side in peace and security. He said, “Both sides are going to have to make concessions”. My own view is that Israel’s still on-going colonisation of the occupied West Bank has destroyed the prospect of a two-state solution on any basis the Palestinians could accept. But for the sake of discussion I’ll pretend that is not necessarily so.

    Israel is not required to make concessions. Israel is required to accept and implement UN Security Council resolutions which call for an end to its occupation and, more generally, to cease regarding itself as being exceptional (because of the suffering of the Jews in times past) and therefore above and beyond international law. The Palestinians made the concession necessary from their side long ago. There were three related reasons why Yasser Arafat and his mainstream PLO leadership colleagues decided that they had got to compromise with Israel if their Palestinian people were ever to obtain a minimum but just about acceptable amount of justice.

    The first was the reality of the existence of the nuclear-armed Zionist state – not a legitimate existence (as the true story of its creation proves) but a fact of life. The second was the knowledge that the Arab regimes were never going to fight Israel to liberate Palestine, and, would collude with Zionism-and-America to prevent the PLO becoming an effective resistance movement in terms of guerrilla activities. The third was the realisation that all the major powers of the world were committed to Israel’s existence inside its borders as they were on the eve of the 1967 war.

    It took the pragmatic Arafat six long years, from 1973 to 1979, to sell the idea of compromise with Israel first to his Fatah leadership colleagues and then to the Palestine National Council (PNC), the highest decision-making body on the Palestinian side. And it was a mission that Arafat knew from the start could cost him his credibility with his own people and perhaps even his life. Why? Because he was asking them to accept what most believed to be “unthinkable” - recognising and thus legitimising Israel’s existence inside its pre-1967 borders in return for only 22% of all the land the Palestinians were claiming. In fact the full extent of the concessions Arafat persuaded his leadership colleagues to accept and be prepared to make went even further than that. Though they could not say so in public until they had something concrete to show for their policy of politics and compromise, they accepted, and Israel was informed, that the Palestinian right of return would have to be limited to the territory of the Palestinian mini-state on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem its capital or the whole of Jerusalem an open, undivided city and the capital of two states.

    At the end of 1979, shortly after Arafat had persuaded the PNC to endorse his policy of politics and compromise with Israel, I had the first of many meetings with him. His comment on the PNC vote - 296 for his policy and only four against - was this: “How far we have travelled in six years. No more this silly talk of driving the Jews into the sea. (A statement Arafat and his Fatah colleagues never made). Now we are prepared to live side by side with them in a mini-state of our own. It is a miracle.” It was the miracle of Arafat’s leadership. What he needed thereafter was an Israeli partner for peace. At a point it seemed that Israeli Prime Minister Rabin might be the partner, but he was assassinated by a Zionist zealot. The assassin was not de-ranged. He knew exactly what he was doing. Killing the peace process Arafat’s policy of politics and compromise had set in motion.

    There are no more concessions the Palestinians can make for peace. President Obama’s statement that they must is absurd and obscene. Unclear is whether he was speaking out of ignorance of real history or from Zionism’s script.

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Alan Hart, author of Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews - http://www.alanhart.net/

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Knesset committee's fascist vitriol

From Mazin Qumsiyeh:

    As the descent into the slippery slope of racism continues unabated in this land of apartheid, the angle and degree of the slide seem to surprise many. The Israeli parliament (Knesset) has a "Constitution, Law and Justice Committee" terms that only sound similar to what exists in a Western democracy. But the "Jewish state" is "special" where a committee with this name drafts laws to discourage inter-religious marriages, to deny Jerusalemites residency rights, to declare it legal to take land for Jewish development from those natives who happen to be non-Jews, and to flaunt many other basic rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In the last election, the Israeli public split their votes between right and radical right and fascist right parties. The Israeli government shifted from right to ultra-fascist and with it this Knesset Committee. For example, since coming to power the Netanyahu apartheid government froze Palestinian family reunifications that involve Palestinians were frozen (including my wife's) and withdrew residency rights from thousands of Palestinians in Jerusalem.

    It has been so bizarre to watch the level of vitriol emanating from this Knesset committee. They felt emboldened by public support, a public lulled by racist education and by inculcated fear in a similar way that Germans were lulled into accepting the Nazi programmes. The party most influential in the committee wants Muslims and Christians, the minority who remained after all the ethnic cleansing, to publicly pledge allegiance to the Jewish (nature of the) state, thus legitimising their 10th class "citizenship". The committee has now set-up a sub-committee to target even Zionist groups that are deemed not going far enough in their support of a homogeneous Jewish state in all of historic Palestine. They want to examine what can be done about European and North American support for Israeli groups that support a two-state solution or even begin to suggest that Israeli system needs a reform. We are not talking here about funding for Israeli-Jewish groups that are anti-Zionist or that support a democratic state in all of historic Palestinian. They want a cut-off of funding for Israeli groups that simply want an Israel on 78% of historic Palestine and let the Palestinians live somewhat left alone on the 22% that is the West Bank and Gaza (occupied in 1967).

    Most of the groups targeted for being not right enough are also happy to leave most of the 450,000 illegal colonial settlers inside the West Bank. In exchange, they are willing to allow us a little desert land from the 78% that they took in 1948 (in the process ethnically cleansing 530 towns and villages; see Ilan Pappe, "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine"). Some targeted groups believe in philosophies of Ben Gurion but not Zeev Jabotinsky (founder of revisionist Zionism and Zionist terror groups in the 1930s and 1940s). Ben Gurion with a wave of his hand ordered the expulsion of residents of Lydda and Ramla and had a saying that "Im tirtzu, ain zoagada" (If you will it it is no dream) [IT here is now clear with the outcome, a Jewish state in historic Palestine to replace the native population and living by the sword behind walls in a large Jewish ghetto]. Ben Gurion does look moderate compared to Avigdor Lieberman, Menachem Begin and Zeev Jabotinsky. The latter's philosophy does not believe in even using accommodating (diplomatic) rhetoric let alone trying to work with the International powers to achieve the Zionist objectives. By contrast, the late Ben Gurion and Yitzhaq Rabin believed in a mix of violence and political/diplomatic activism (and of course media work).

    But Zionism has always been an International movement with only a part of it here in Palestine (a part that has been growing but increasingly facing stiffer resistance). Sometimes we find more moderate Zionists here that, say in the USA, American Jews who support Zionism are a bit more radical on average than the average Israeli. That is why the most extreme colonial settlers that are right in the middle of Palestinian towns like Hebron are American Jews. These ultra extremists vandalise mosques and cemeteries, attack Palestinians and their property regularly, uproot trees, steel crops, set fire to homes, and much more. The Israeli government does not intend to investigate the foreign source of funding for these groups but of the groups that are hoping for a two state solution. In the US there is a new campaign to look into the tax-exempt status of groups that support these settlers (see http://www.adc.org/index.php?id=3437 and tax exempt and support this action). Those Americans get a cosy life on tax-deductible donations from other Americans and are paid by the Israeli government to live on stolen Palestinian land. The settlers also inadvertently expose the inconsistency in the positions that say we think Palestinians should not be removed from their land in the Ramallah area but it is OK to remove them from their land in Galilee and the Negev (see http://rcuv.wordpress.com/ Yet, there are many Jews and those who come from Jewish backgrounds who join our struggle here and abroad for restoring the rights to the natives. Palestinians for their part have always welcomed immigrants who come not to control (before Zionism came we welcomed: Jewish European, Circasians, Armenians, Roma, and other groups).  Working together for one democratic state in historic Palestine has become to many of us the only way forward that guarantees the natural rights of natives and the wishes of those immigrants who want to live here in peace without denying us basic rights (see my book Sharing the Land of Canaan for details).

Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD A Bedouin in Cyberspace, a villager at home http://www.qumsiyeh.org

http://www.pcr.ps/

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A Brief Chronology of the Israeli BDS Movement: Distinctly present today on the political map of worldwide civil society is a rapidly growing movement supporting Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel until it complies with international law, including a long list of UN resolutions that its successive governments continue to resist. To many, Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions represent a compound strategy for counteracting the impunity granted persistently to Israel by US and European regimes. It is a strategy employing and rallying economic grassroots resistance which it sometimes channels through (sections of) the very governments ensuring Israel's impunity, but also applying its economic and political pressures to Israel directly. In an international political climate that allows Israel to evade accountability, the movement utilises citizen's options for making its economy accountable. Necessarily, advancing support for BDS also serves as a focal point for a broader international educational effort, spreading civil society debate and discussion.

    One component of the BDS movement and of the educational effort it generates is a group currently working in Israel to support the call of Palestinian civil society for BDS. For some, both in Israel and abroad, the very existence of such a group inside Israel plays a specific role in the world wide work of movement-building. As Rachel Giora points out, the movement is inspired and, to some extent formed, by the precedent of world wide BDS against apartheid South Africa, which, in turn, underlines the great significance of historical-political documentation. For both reasons, then, the following piece, painstakingly compiled and authored by BDS activist Rachel Giora, may be of specific interest to those already involved or interested in this work. Giora's "brief chronology" outlines the evolution of the Israel-based component of the BDS movement, culminating with the present group (whose declaration I too have signed). As the entire piece is quite long, I've posted the first page and a half. The full chronology, posted on the website of the group Boycott! Supporting the Palestinian BDS Call from Within (http://www.boycottisrael.info/), is exhaustively hyperlinked to a long list of documents and includes extensive footnotes.

    I leave it to interested readers to follow the link to the rest of this (to me) meaningful and fascinating piece of documentation.

Rela Mazali

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Rela Mazali is a Jewish Peace News editor (See below)

Milestones in the history of the Israeli BDS movement: A brief chronology

http://boycottisrael.info/content/milestones-history-israeli-bds-movement-brief-chronology

By Rachel Giora – 18 January 2010 – updated 27 January 2010

The emergence of the Israeli boycott, divestment, and sanction (BDS) movement has been influenced by a number of factors. In essence, however, the movement in Israel has been basically reactive – a response to (a) international calls following traumas, and to (b) ideas, primarily those introducing the South African model into the international and Israeli discourse; and perhaps most significantly, it has evolved in response to (c) calls by Palestinians to the international community to boycott Israel, divest and disinvest from it, and sanction it. Although the history of the BDS movement in Israel is reviewed here chronologically, the assumption is that all these factors have worked interactively and in tandem to influence the development of the BDS movement worldwide as well as in Israel.

The major role of the Israeli BDS movement has been to support international BDS calls against Israel and legitimise them both as clearly not anti-Semitic, as not working against Israelis but against Israeli governmental policies, and as supporting a legitimate non-violent means by which Palestinian civil society can reclaim and re-own its people’s rights and freedoms. Alongside solidarity with the Palestinians, the driving force behind the Israeli BDS movement has been the realisation that the criminal occupation and repression of the Palestinian people, as practised by Israeli governments, will not be redressed without significant international pressure.

1. The awakening

Al-Aqsa Intifada

The first BDS call in Israel was initiated by Matzpen during the first year of the first intifada, in February 1988.1 It called on Israelis not to buy products made in Jewish settlements. This was how Israelis could divest from the settlements in the occupied territories including the Golan Heights. This call, which included a list of settlements’ products, was also distributed among foreign missions in East Jerusalem. In March 1988, a group called The 21st Year published a Covenant for the Struggle Against the Occupation wherein its members declared their refusal “to collaborate with the Occupation and pledged to do either part or all of the following: never enter the occupied territories without an invitation from their Arab inhabitants, not allow their children to be exposed to the racist bias of the school system, boycott institutions and products of companies whose Palestinian employees are denied human dignity and decent working conditions, boycott goods produced by Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, never confuse acts of protest and resistance by Palestinians with acts of terror, refuse any military command ordering them to take part in acts of repression or policing in the occupied territories and protest every act of violence and injustice committed by the Israeli regime in the occupied territories”.2

In September 1997, Gush Shalom launched a call asking Israelis as well as the US, the European countries, and others having trade treaties with Israel to boycott products of the Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory. The call proffered a provisional list in Hebrew, Arabic, and English of products produced in the settlements.3

However, the first Israeli initiatives supporting international calls for comprehensive boycott against Israel emerged only following the outbreak of the second intifada known as the Al-Aqsa Intifada, in September 2000. They were mostly responses, by a few individuals, to international calls for BDS against Israel. At the time, support for such calls did not come from Israeli organisations. On the whole, the Israeli left shunned such initiatives. The first boycott support action by Israelis that I recall, which again attracted few other Israelis, was the one initiated by the late Tel Aviv University linguist, Professor Tanya Reinhart, and myself, in April 2001, demanding that the city of Ann Arbor divest itself of Israeli investments.4 . . .

[To read more see:

http://boycottisrael.info/content/milestones-history-israeli-bds-movement-brief-chronology]

The chronology is also posted at: http://www.bricup.org.uk/documents/history/IsraeliBDS.pdf

on the website of BRICUP – British Committee for the Universities of Palestine at http://www.bricup.org.uk/#012

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Jewish Peace News editors:

Joel Beinin

Racheli Gai

Rela Mazali

Sarah Anne Minkin

Judith Norman

Lincoln Shlensky

Rebecca Vilkomerson

Alistair Welchman

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Jewish Peace News sends its news clippings only to subscribers. To subscribe, unsubscribe, or manage your subscription, go to www.jewishpeacenews.net