| IOP Report {2} April 2014 |
| Thursday, 10 April 2014 | |
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UN International Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People 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 (Compiled by Leslie Bravery, Palestine Human Rights Campaign POB 56150, Dominion Rd, Auckland, New Zealand www.palestine.org.nz) NB: We shall always do our utmost to verify the accuracy of all items in these IOP newsletters/reports wherever possible – but please forgive us for any errors or omissions (not of our own making) that may occur! L & M. IOP Report {2} | April 2014 Recent news updates: Economic sabotage: Gaza — the Israeli Navy continues to enforce a three-nautical-mile Gaza fishing limit. Israel isolated and condemned in Geneva – 46 to 1. (See article below.) Deir Yassin desecration. Palestinian graves have been desecrated in Deir Yassin on the eve of the anniversary of the 1948 massacre. http://972mag.com/nstt_feeditem/palestinian-graves-desecrated-at-site-of-1948-massacre/ Maisoun al-Haj ‘Ali and her children live in Gaza, while her husband works in the West Bank. They’ve seen him only once since 2008. Maisoun al-Haj ‘Ali: “I live with my four children – my daughters Aya, 11, and Inas, 8; and my sons Muhammad, 6, and Rami, 5 – in an apartment in a-Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood in Gaza City....”http://www.btselem.org/testimonies/gaza_families_maysoun_al_haj_ali More threats from Palestine’s nasty neighbour. http://www.intifada-palestine.com/2014/04/threats-palestines-nasty-neigbour/ Gaza: Hamas to launch new satellite TV channel Hazem Balousha Contributor, Palestine Pulse Palestinian Christians denied access to religious sites in Jerusalem. 6 April 2014. Christian institutions and denominations in Occupied East Jerusalem are complaining about denial of access to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and its locality during Easter. The Israeli action targeting this season is racist. Checkpoints preventing worshippers from gaining access to the Via Dolorosa are designed to severely limit the presence of native Christians in order to create the impression of an exclusively Jewish city. These measures have been escalating over recent years. Israelis denying recognition of local traditions and heritage that date back many hundreds of years. None of the powers that came to rule Jerusalem except Israel have ever suppressed the local tradition. Christians around the world – please take note and protest appropriately. For me, Palestine is paradise – interview with Palestinian refugee, Leila Khaled. http://mondoweiss.net/2014/04/palestine-paradise-interview.html Israeli army attacks two elementary schools in Salfit. |7 April 2014 | International Solidarity Movement | Two educational institutions were attacked with tear gas and stun grenades by the Israeli army yesterday morning in Salfit. At least ten female students required medical attention after suffering from tear gas inhalation. More: http://palsolidarity.org/2014/04/israeli-army-attacks-two-elementary-schools-in-salfit/ The Israeli Army also raided the university campus: http://www.imemc.org/article/67491 Young family threatened with destruction of their home. |8 April 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Khalil Team | Idhna, Occupied Palestine | After just three weeks in their new home, the Slemiah family from the village of Idhna have received a demolition order from the Israeli army. The newly-built house is on land which has been owned by the family for centuries, and the family has now been forced … palsolidarity The scars of Deir Yassin and our determination to survive. http://electronicintifada.net/content/scars-deir-yassin-and-our-determination-survive/13298 Thousands of Palestinians without water in Jerusalem . Chris Carlson – IMEMC | "Basic daily tasks, like brushing one's teeth, have become a challenge – showers, a luxury. Families often send their clothes to relatives, elsewhere in the city, to wash them." http://www.imemc.org/article/67487 Escalating attacks by Occupation forces and settlers. Wednesday: an Israeli Army position behind the Green Line opened fire on a residential area near Khan Yunis. The Israeli Army continued its daily incursions and agricultural sabotage in the Gaza Strip while Israeli war-planes terrorised the south of the Gaza Strip. The Israeli Navy opened fire in the early morning hours on fishing boats off Khan Yunis and Rafah, forcing them to return to shore. In the West Bank, also on Wednesday, in the morning, Israeli forces bulldozed crops in the Abu al-Zuluf area, to the west of Hebron. Settler militants from Adora and Telem installed power poles and lines on Palestinian land as a prelude to further settlement expansion. The Israeli Army destroyed Palestinian Bedouin houses in the Negev Desert and police vehicles escorted Israeli bulldozers across the Negev on their way to demolish structures in other Bedouin villages. The Israeli vandalism was also directed at the destruction of trees. In the al-Tawani area, to the east of Yatta, schoolchildren were attacked by Israeli settlers, injuring two children. The co-ordinator of the Anti-wall and Settlement Popular Committee, Rateb Jabour, said that settlers, escorted by Israeli troops, physically attacked and stoned students at the al-Tawani School, injuring two 13-year-old girl pupils. Two children were also severely beaten and hospitalised outside their house by Israeli settlers. In Hebron, on Wednesday, WAFA reports that an elderly Palestinian was attacked and severely injured by both Israeli settlers and soldiers in al-Tawani and Um al-Kahir, to the east of Yatta. In Jerusalem, Israeli settlers, accompanied by police, raided the al-Aqsa Mosque, assaulting and harassing female students in the compound. The settlers spat at worshippers and abused them with foul language. Israeli police abducted four minors in Jerusalem, after raiding their houses in the Old City. There have been 14 such abductions in less than a month. In Hebron, Israeli soldiers abducted a 16-year-old youth in the village of Tabaqa, near Dora. The Israeli Army invaded the nearby village of Deir Samet and issued destruction orders on two shops. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The real story of the UN Human Rights Council: Europe slams Israeli crimes By Ben White Last week, Israel found itself isolated and condemned in Geneva, as the United Nations Human Rights Council passed four damning resolutions, each by 46-1. The resolutions testify to grave violations of international law, including the Geneva Conventions, as well as systematic discrimination and wide-scale human rights abuses. Settlements, whose illegality is confirmed in the resolutions, are described as entailing “the confiscation of land, the forced displacement of Palestinian civilians, including Bedouin families, the exploitation of natural resources and other actions against the Palestinian civilian population”. The resolutions also cite “the continuing demolition of Palestinian homes and eviction of Palestinian families from [East Jerusalem]“, “the destruction of orchards and crops”, the “expulsion of Palestinians”, a “two-tier legal system”, and a “discriminatory allocation of water resources”. Importantly, the UNHRC’s resolutions contextualise the litany of abuses as part of a “systematic violation” of Palestinians’ human rights. Israeli policies “discriminate against” an occupied people, while settlers are afforded “preferential treatment over the Palestinian population in terms of access to roads, infrastructure, land, property, housing, natural resources and judicial mechanisms”. And who condemned Israeli policies in these terms? 46 of 47 members of the UN Human Rights Council – everyone, in other words, bar the USA. What’s noteworthy about this consensus (Washington aside) is that it included nine European Union member states: Austria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Romania, and the UK. Even before the vote, Italy’s representative Maurizio Enrico Serra told the council that the EU supports the motions and member states would be voting accordingly. This united stance by European members of the Council was lamented by Israeli officials, and well they might – for it undermines a key part of the propaganda campaign against the UNHRC. Netanyahu, and others like UN Watch, typically lambaste the Council as a hypocritical body dominated by serial human rights abusers – yet for the votes of nine EU member states they have no rejoinder. These are the countries who Israel has looked to in the UN for a so-called “quality minority” of support. Last week in Geneva, Israel’s ‘quality minority’ consisted solely of the US delegation – while on the other side were countries from Europe, South America, Africa and Asia. Another accusation levelled at the UNHRC by Israeli officials and Zionist lobby groups is that the body is, in the words of American Jewish Committee head David Harris, obsessed with “singling out” Israel. Netanyahu complained that while human rights abuses afflict the region, Israel is condemned “for closing off a balcony” (a reference to settlement construction). Yet the claim is disingenuous. During its 25th session, the UNHRC passed 42 resolutions – five of which pertained to Israel. A whole host of issues came under the spotlight: Syria, torture, Burma, violence against children, Libya, South Sudan, Mali, drones, sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran, Guinea, and more. As a senior Amnesty campaigner drily put it, “Netanyahu wants the UN to condemn every single human rights violation in the world before he ignores them on Israel’s abuses”. The UNHRC also decided to launch an investigation into alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka. In response, the country’s president Mahinda Rajapaksa claimed that the resolution “hurts our reconciliation efforts“, while Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Ravinatha Aryasinha, slammed the resolution as “partisan“. Compare this to remarks made by World Jewish Congress CEO Robert Singer, who described UNHRC resolutions on Israel as “one-sided” and “harmful to the peace process”. Israel and its lobbyists are in awkward company. Forty-six countries, including nine EU member states, have endorsed four resolutions that describe Israel as a persistent violator of international law and guilty of systematic discrimination. This is, in other words, reflective of the EU’s understanding of what is happening on the ground. Holding Europe back from taking punitive measures against such a reality is Kerry’s peace process. With the talks in deep trouble, last week’s resolutions augur something more serious for Israel than yet more condemnation in an international forum. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Introducing: Lenni Brenner's Zionism In The Age Of The Dictators Who told a Berlin audience in March 1912 that "each country can absorb only a limited number of Jews, if she doesn't want disorders in her stomach. Germany already has too many Jews"? No, not Adolf Hitler but Chaim Weizmann, later president of the World Zionist Organisation and later still the first president of the state of Israel. And where might you find the following assertion, originally composed in 1917 but republished as late as 1936: "The Jew is a caricature of a normal, natural human being, both physically and spiritually. As an individual in society he revolts and throws off the harness of social obligation, knows no order nor discipline"? Not in Der Sturmer but in the organ of the Zionist youth organisation, Hashomer Hatzair. As the above quoted statement reveals, Zionism itself encouraged and exploited self-hatred in the Diaspora. It started from the assumption that anti-Semitism was inevitable and even in a sense justified so long as Jews were outside the land of Israel. It is true that only an extreme lunatic fringe of Zionism went so far as to offer to join the war on Germany's side in 1941, in the hope of establishing "the historical Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis, and bound by a treaty with the German Reich." Unfortunately this was the group which the present Prime Minister of Israel chose to join. That fact gives an extra edge of topicality to what would in any case be a highly controversial study of the Zionist record in the heyday of European fascism by Lenni Brenner, an American Trotskyist writer who happens also to be Jewish. It is short, crisp and carefully documented. Mr Brenner is able to cite numerous cases where Zionists collaborated with anti-Semitic regimes, including Hitler's; he is careful also to put on record the opposition to such policies within the Zionist movement. In retrospect these activities have been defended as a distasteful but necessary expedient to save Jewish lives. But Brenner shows that most of the time this aim was secondary. The Zionist leaders wanted to help young, skilled and able-bodied Jews to emigrate to Palestine. They were never in the forefront of the struggle against fascism in Europe. That in no way absolves the wartime Allies for their callous refusal to make any serious effort to save European Jewry. As Brenner says, "Britain must be condemned for abandoning the Jews of Europe"; but, "it is not for the Zionists to do it." [Note: Edward Mortimer later became the United Nations Director of Communications.] ********** Note (Lenni Brenner): I’m American, but US publishers wouldn’t dare sell an expose of Zionist collaboration with Hitler. It was published in Britain in 1983 by Croom Helm Ltd. When Yitzhak Shamir became Israel’s 2nd Likud Party Prime Minister in 1983, I had an English-language Jerusalem weekly print his 1940s Lehi organisation’s “Proposal of the National Military Organisation… Concerning the Solution of the Jewish Question in Europe and the Participation of the NMO in the War on the side of Germany”: “The establishment of the historical Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis, and bound by a treaty with the German Reich, would be in the interest of a maintained and strengthened future German position of power in the Near East. Proceeding from these considerations, the NMO in Palestine, under the condition the above-mentioned national aspirations of the Israeli freedom movement are recognised on the side of the German Reich, offers to actively take part in the war on Germany’s side.” The 21 October, 1983, London Times ran the Prime Minister’s response: “Shamir… denied that he had any part in the efforts by Mr Abraham Stern… to establish contact with the Nazis and Italian Fascists. 'There was a plan to turn to Italy for help and to make contact with Germany on the assumption that these could bring about a massive Jewish immigration to Palestine. I opposed this… but I did join Lehi after the idea of contacts with the Axis countries was dropped'.” The Times ran a letter by me on 4 November: “Away from my files, I cannot be certain exactly when in 1940 Shamir joined the group. But in any case, isn’t he confessing that he knowingly joined an organisation of traitors which had offered to ally itself to the arch-enemy of the Jews? Nor can there be any doubt that he joined up with Stern before December 1941, when the Sternists tried to send Nathan Yallin-Mor to Turkey to contact the German ambassador there with the same proposal.” In his 1994 autobiography, Summing Up, Shamir admitted the truth: “In September 1940…. I left the Irgun with Yair” (Stern’s underground name) “to enter the deeper underground from which Lehi fought our outlawed war against the British.” In the 1930s, Shamir was active in Vladimir Jabotinsky’s “Zionist Revisionist” movement. (Benjamin Netanyahu’s father was Jabotinsky’s secretary.) In 1934, Mussolini authorised a Revisionist unit at his maritime academy. It marched in victory parades after his 1935 conquest of Ethiopia, but he closed it down after he united with Hitler during the Spanish Civil War. The Revisionists explained Mussolini’s turn: “For years we have warned the Jews not to insult the fascist regime in Italy. Let us be frank before we accuse others of the recent anti-Jewish laws in Italy; why not first accuse our own radical groups who are responsible for what happened.” Stern and Shamir’s “totalitarian” proposal to Hitler was an extension of their Fascist fanaticism. On December 4, 1948, the New York Times ran a letter by Albert Einstein and other Jews, exposing Menachem Begin: “Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our time is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the ‘Freedom Party’ (Tnuat HaHerut), a political party closely akin in its organisation, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties….They have preached an admixture of ultranationalism, religious mysticism and racial superiority… it is imperative that the truth about Mr Begin and his movement be made known in this country.” Herut evolved into today’s ruling Likud Party and Begin became Likud’s 1st Prime Minister. Einstein was correct, it is still “imperative” that Likud’s history be made known, world-wide. Indeed, after you read Zionism In The Age Of The Dictators, you will encourage others to read it. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ On Our Own Authority! Publishing, Atlanta - 2014 - 341 pages - paperback. The retail price is $22.00. Single copies can be purchased online via www.oooabooks.org. For information about wholesale pricing and bulk discounts please contact the publisher at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . Contact the publisher for international sales at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . For the author’s lectures on the book, contact This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . Edward Mortimer, Contradiction, collusion and controversy" The Times (London), 11 February 1984. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Further news sources Today in Palestine! www.groups.yahoo.com/group/f_shadi PNEWS Vacy Vlazna This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Behind the Wall Rich Wiles is a photographic artist who has been living and working in Palestine for some years. His photographic work has been shown around Europe, the US, Australia and in Palestine itself. Since 2006 he has been writing from Occupied Palestine under the title Behind the Wall. Much of this work is based in and around the refugee camps in Palestine, highlighting daily life and memories of refugees who still live in forced exile for over 60 years since Al Nakba (The Catastrophe). www.richwiles.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ See this In Occupied Palestine Report at: the PHRC website: www.palestine.org.nz - and you can check out previous editions by clicking on In Occupied Palestine listed under Contents ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If you have friends who would also like to receive these newsletters, please ask them to contact us. |