Today Al Mezan releases ‘Children in the Gaza Strip’s Access to Medical Care’ a factsheet published under the Save the Children UK funded project ‘Child Rights at the Centre: Enhancing National Capacities to Monitor, Document, and Report on Child Rights Issues in the oPt.’ The factsheet documents Israel’s policies towards the Gaza Strip which result in children being denied the right to access proper medical care.
The ongoing siege on Gaza which stops essential medical equipment and drugs from entering and causes sporadic fuel and electricity cuts combined with the closure system which prevents medical professionals from travelling abroad to access advanced training outside Gaza. These policies have resulted in a medical system in Gaza which cannot provide care and procedures for many patients. Children requiring care that is unavailable have to go outside Gaza, usually to hospitals in Israel, Jerusalem or the West Bank (as well as to Egypt and Jordan). In order to access these hospitals children require a permit from the Israeli authorities. The process for acquiring a permit is long and complex and often results in denials. Since January 2008, 4 children have died because their application was denied or took too long to be approved.
Israel also denies children’s access to medical care when it prevents ambulances from accessing the Buffer Zone. Ambulances require prior coordination with the Israeli military authorities before they can access the sick or injured in the Buffer Zone. 173 children have died because ambulances have been denied access to reach them (throughout the Gaza Strip, not just in the Buffer Zone).
The policies outlined in this factsheet result in serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law which Israel, as the Occupying Power in the Gaza Strip, has an obligation to uphold.
“Children in the Gaza Strip are deprived from receiving quality medical treatment and access to procedures that can save their lives. The right to access medical treatment and to enjoy the highest attainable physical and psychological health is one of the Israeli systematic violations of children’s rights in the Gaza Strip,” Samir Zaqout, Al Mezan’s fieldwork coordinator, states. “This has particularly been the case in the last five years since Israel tightened its siege on the Gaza Strip.”
In addition to the polices outlined in this factsheet which directly affect access to medical care Samir Zaqout says that “the Israeli siege has caused a deterioration in the health of children due to increasing poverty levels and diseases among children such as anemia. Israeli military attacks have also injured thousands of children, hundreds of them sustaining permanent physical disabilities.”
the UN General Assembly has adopted a new Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) establishing a complaints procedure for violations of children’s rights.
The new treaty will enable children, or their representatives, claiming that their rights have been violated to bring a complaint to an international committee of children’s rights experts if they have not been able to get remedies for these violations in their countries. A coalition of over 80 international and national NGOs, coordinated by the NGO Group for the CRC, which has been actively campaigning for the treaty since 2006, welcomed the news.
‘Israeli children are educated to see the Palestinians as a problem that must be solved and as a threat that must be eliminated. They can go through life, as I did growing up in Jerusalem, without ever meeting a Palestinian child. They know nothing of the life or culture of Palestinians who quite often live only several hundred meters from them.’
The fact she was a MediaCentral employee is what I reported and focused on, mainly because the Jewish Chronicle failed to even mention this basic fact. The problem with Marcus Dysch’s story is that it failed to mention Bakovic works for what is essentially a PR agency that aims to improve Israel’s image in the world.
…
This also calls into question the professionalism of Jewish Chronicle journalist Marcus Dysch. He’s entitled to promote a pro-Israel viewpoint, but that’s no excuse for dishonesty or (at best) poor journalism. The omission of such a salient point means he either didn’t do the five minutes of research it took to find out who Bakovic works for, or that he knew and covered it up.
Today, I asked Dysch on Twitter why he didn’t mention it, but he hasn’t replied (he’s unlikely to have seen this question, however, because he’s preemptively blocked me, despite the fact I’m pretty sure I’ve never Tweeted at him before).
If I had written an analogous story about a Palestinian student who was an employee of, say, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, without mentioning who he or she worked for, that would have been sloppy at best and dishonest at worst.
If Bakovic’s campaign against Professor Pratt has “no connection whatsoever” to her employer, as Plosker claims, why not simply say as much in the Jewish Chronicle article? Why did they wait till after Abraham Greenhouse and myself wrote about the case on Electronic Intifada to admit the fact?
Dysch’s reporting has also been called into question after he claimed in a second article that the agency which reviews the performance of universities in the UK “would conduct a preliminary investigation” into Pratt’s behavior. The Quality Assurance Agency soon denied this to the Times Higher Education magazine. They reported that: “no official complaint has yet been made and the QAA will require more details over the allegations before it could proceed with any investigation”.
UPDATE 5th January, 2012 Dysch publishes in the JC a story full of dire innuendo, sinisterly entitled “Performers deny ‘dark art’ funding”.
Dysch insinuates misdoing with the frightening news that ‘At least 34 artists (out of 150) who supported it [the cultural boycott campaign] have received funding to help pay for tours, running costs or fund individual projects’ and refers to Raymond Deane.
Composer Raymond Deane, a founding member of the IPSC, has received around £76,000 from the council during the past five years.
He said: “Neither I, nor the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, receives a penny from the Irish government for our activities in defence of Palestinian rights.”
Well, I hope that clears up Dysch’s confusion.
[UPDATE 28th December: Raymond Deane is contacted by a journalist from the Jewish Chronicle, Marcus Dysch.
"Mr Deane - I'd like to speak to you about reports in the Israeli media which name you and others involved in the IPSC and claim you are receiving Irish government funding for your pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel activities. We are likely to run a story in our newspaper this week which includes Israeli officials suggesting you are knowingly using funds from the Arts Council for these activities. I'd like to speak to you about this and hear your reaction. Please let me know if we can speak in the next 24 hours.
Marcus Dysch
Reporter
Jewish Chronicle
Tel: 020 7415 1665
@MarcusDysch
Been in office 25 minutes and already had three emails accusing me of being an Israeli government agent. (I'm not, if you were wondering.) #
Ilan Pappe draws attention to the campaign of intimidation conducted by the zionist lobby in his article today in the Electronic Intifada, noting
"What you learn is that once you cower, you become prey to continued and relentless bashing until you sing the Israeli national anthem. If once you do not cave in, you discover that as time goes by, the ability of Zionist lobbies of intimidation around the world to affect you gradually diminishes."
[UPDATE 25th December: Recently, zionists made hacking threats against BDS activists. The Amnesty International UK site was compromised on or before December 16th. According to Paul Royal of Barracuda Labs,
So, if you have visited the website anytime between and has out-dated Java software, there’s a good chance that your computer is infected. In that case, run a complete system scan using your updated anti-virus. It is also a good idea to change the passwords of your online accounts.
...
This exploit will not affect you if you had already installed the latest Java updates or if you don’t have Java installed.
Paul also says:
The working theory for this anomaly relates to Amnesty International as a human rights non-governmental organization. To explain, certain countries use zero day exploits and other techniques to gain electronic information about the activities of human rights activists. Of course, a subset of these activists are too smart to click on links in even well-worded spearphishing emails. But what if you compromised a website frequented by these activists (e.g., Amnesty International)? Then your targets come to you. The context-specific damage potential is significant.
Amnesty International is currently being asked to disassociate itself with Arch Enemy lead singer Angela Gossow's claim that they will accompany the band in Israel. Amnesty International withdrew its support from a boycott breaking Leonard Cohen concert in 2009.]
[UPDATE 23rd December: On Ynet, world-renowned Irish composer Raymond Deane is "price-tagged" at the mammoth sum of $119 million (now amended to $119,000) over the past 5 years, which he has, according to the shameless libeller Itamar Eichner, received from the Irish government (are oil companies involved here as well?) to 'subject to verbal attacks and letters of incitement' 'Irish elements interested in sustaining ties with Israel', and 'in a bid to free him from the need to work for a living so that he could devote his time and energy to the creation of music.' For zionist propaganderists, music isn't considered a "real job", at least if the targeted musician has private activities which include solidarity in campaigns for Palestinian human rights. And here's the zionist veiled threats against a musician's livelihood for daring to exercise conscience to support boycotts, divestment and sanctions from apartheid, colonial Israel:
The Foreign Ministry report also reveals that although the Irish foreign minister has voiced his objection to any type of boycott against Israeli culture, Deane is still receiving government funding.
...
"The ongoing funding of a person who has been conducting a hostile, public and aggressive campaign against Israel from Irish taxpayers' money raises very difficult questions," says a source in the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem.
The propaganderist ends on a softened tone which only serves to highlight the previous attempt at intimidation of an individual of conscience in a foreign country:
"Nonetheless, an artist's breach of trust toward Ireland's authorities is an internal Irish matter which we cannot and do not wish to intervene in, despite its harsh implications on us."
]
In November, Palestinian Solidarity activists in Ireland protested the holding of an Israeli film event at Filmbase in Dublin which was sponsored and funded by the Israeli Embassy.
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) also issued an “Open Letter to Filmbase“, expressing its surprise
“that a prominent Irish cultural institution would allow the Israeli embassy to carry out this audacious ‘Brand Israel’ activity on its premises hardly two weeks after Irish peace activists were illegally apprehended by the Israeli navy in international waters, humiliated, and imprisoned in Israel…”
These approaches were rejected by Filmbase, despite much dissension among its employees, not all of whom supported the decision to host the event. The opening of the festival, a wet and miserable evening, saw Filmbase “defended” by a force of at least two dozen Gardaí. Members of the IPSC, the Irish Anti-War Movement, Act for Palestine and others demonstrated noisily and peacefully, displaying Palestinian flags and placards with such slogans as “End the Siege of Gaza” and “Boycott Israel”. The arrivals of the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore, and the Minister for Defence and Justice Alan Shatter were greeted with particularly vociferous cries of ”shame! shame!”
These state marketing events are mooted by Israeli propaganderists (hasbarists) as effective tools to whitewash Israeli crimes of apartheid, colonialism and Occupation and to counter what they cast as “delegitimization”, although through its ongoing crimes against humanity, Israel accomplishes singlehanded its own delegitimization. Attempting to address “the BDS delegitimization network”, the Reut Institute which develops propaganda strategy for Israel crows that ‘it takes a network to fight a network’. What a tawdry network the hasbarist network is! Some elements supportive of Israel of late have taken to using dirty tricks, as evidenced below from Filmbase to the present, fabricating threats supposedly made by BDS activists against venues and performers that are unsubstantiated, despite repeated challenge.
Now the tactic of falsely accusing BDS people of threats has resurfaced on the facebook wall of Joker, who announced his decision not to play Israel a few days ago, following information about racism the last time he played there. Joker has said several times since he is not going to play Israel, while Israel’s hasbarists have continued to claim that he is not cancelling, on twitter and facebook. The Israeli media has also published a misleading and unsubstantiated story about the cancellation claiming Joker and his girlfriend had received threats on their lives. An email was also circulated from CLUTCH – Electronic, claiming that ‘Joker was very frustrated from the situation and said to tell everyone that the decision was very hard for him and was directly because of death threats and his girlfriend lives.’ They accuse BDS supporters, then admit they made massive efforts to convince Joker to play, including direct conversation with Joker and all those around him – euphemisms for bothering his girlfriend and libellous attacks against people who supported Joker’s decision to cancel.
‘Politically savvy and passionate, Noa Tishby is a Member of AIPAC (The American Israel Public Relations Committee) and has traveled to Washington DC to lobby on Capitol Hill. She is also a member of The Israeli Consulate Speakers Bureau, a member of “Summit Series” organization for young entrepreneurs, a member of the ILC (Israeli Leadership Council) and is a mentor for Women In Film.’
Israel Leadership Council (ILC) of Los Angeles partners with the taskforce – As part of its current strategic re-visioning effort, the ILC invited the taskforce to think about its potential leadership role. In this context, a report was written and presented to ILC board members in Israel. The report includes both a theoretical framework describing the fledgling phenomenon called the organized Israeli Diaspora, as well as guidelines for how the ILC can best fit into this emerging reality. The report aimed to address the following question: How can the ILC leverage the Israeli Diaspora in the US?
Act for Israel concocts lists of spurious ‘talking points’ for Israel’s hasbara borg hubs to proliferate, while spreading malicious interpretations of BDS activists’ tweets, misspelling Palestinian rights advocate Ali Abunimah’s name and labelling him an ‘antisemite’.
Below is the evidence of the malicious Israeli campaign against activists for Palestinian human rights which ironically attests to the effectiveness of the Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions movement, otherwise these reprobate zionists would be otherwise occupied.
The lying Nutanyahoo attempts to avoid the lobster quadrille with the Quartet, preferring to commence a secret hasbara tango with an illegitimate Abbas, who is making offers without consultation again. Anyone who’s read the Liekud Party platform, which remains unchanged, or Nutanyahoo’s Bar Ilan speech of June 09, knows how disingenuous Nutanyahoo really is. He can’t go against his own party platform which says, amongst other chauvinist, colonialist drivel that flies in the face of international law:
The Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza are the realization of Zionist values. Settlement of the land is a clear expression of the unassailable right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and constitutes an important asset in the defense of the vital interests of the State of Israel. The Likud will continue to strengthen and develop these communities and will prevent their uprooting.
…
The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river.
The Palestinians can run their lives freely in the framework of self-rule, but not as an independent and sovereign state. Thus, for example, in matters of foreign affairs, security, immigration and ecology, their activity shall be limited in accordance with imperatives of Israel’s existence, security and national needs.
Palestine / Gaza Links
Viva Palestina is finalising plans for the Kick Off for Palestine campaign to construct and maintain links with sporting venues in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Ali Abunimah makes a terrific post examining the differentiation between criticism of jewishness and zionism in matters of dual loyalty:
I agree fully with Jones’ reading of Flynn’s reported comments. If accurate it is indeed outrageous to suggest that a British person cannot be loyal to the UK just because he or she is also Jewish. And it’s even more outrageous to suggest that a Jewish person has no “roots” in the UK, just as it would be to suggest the same of a British Muslim or any other person.
But what Jones – and perhaps other critics of Flynn’s comments – have missed, is that the claims Flynn reportedly made have always been at the very heart of Zionism.
Joseph Massad has noted this in his crucial book The Persistence of the Palestinian Question as has international law expert Victor Kattan.
The basic idea is simple enough: Zionists, just like anti-Semites, believed that Jews were inherently alien and rootless in Europe and needed to be expelled physically. The “father” of Zionism, Theodor Herzl in his seminal tract, Der Judenstaat, wrote this nauseatingly anti-Semitic passage:
The Jewish question exists wherever Jews live in perceptible numbers. Where it does not exist, it is carried by Jews in the course of their migrations. We naturally move to those places where we are not persecuted, and there our presence produces persecution. This is the case in every country, and will remain so, even in those highly civilized—for instance, France—until the Jewish question finds a solution on a political basis. The unfortunate Jews are now carrying the seeds of Anti-Semitism into England; they have already introduced it into America.
Of course the “political solution” of which Herzl spoke was – Zionism – the removal of Jews from Europe and America so that they could not carry with them the “seeds” of their own persecution.Greatest British Zionist hero a vile anti-Semite
It is no coincidence then that the greatest British hero of Zionists to this day is Lord Arthur Balfour whose eponymous Balfour Declaration promised the Zionist movement that to which it had no right: the land of Palestine.
As Kattan points out in his book From Coexistence to Conquest: International Law and the Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1891-1949, Balfour’s anti-Semitism was well documented and expressed in his writings. From Kattan:
Zionism actually provided Balfour and those who thought like him with the perfect pretext to reduce Jewish immigration into Britain whilst portraying themselves, falsely, as ‘humanitarians’ concerned about their welfare. This is what Balfour wrote in the conclusion to his introduction to Nahum Sokolow’s epic book, the History of Zionism, 1600–1918 (1919):
If [Zionism] succeeds, it will do a great spiritual and material work for the Jews, but not for them alone. For as I read its meaning it is, among other things, a serious endeavour to mitigate the age-long miseries created for western civilisation by the presence in its midst of **a Body which it too long regarded as alien and even hostile, but which it was equally unable to expel or absorb. Surely, for this if for no other reason, it should receive our support.
That Balfour had the gall to write this in a book on Zionism was foreboding. One can only imagine what he wrote about the Jews in private or in correspondence that was destroyed or lost.
Indeed. And, as Kattan documents, such sentiments were shared by German anti-Semites who in the same period became enthusiastic supporters of Zionism.
He said the United States was convinced that sanctions and diplomatic pressure was the right path to take on Iran, along with “the stated intent not to take any options off the table” – language that leaves open the possibility of future military action.
“I’m not sure the Israelis share our assessment of that.
And because they don’t and because to them this is an existential threat, I think probably that it’s fair to say that our expectations are different right now,” Dempsey said in an interview as he flew to Washington from London.
Asked whether he was talking about the differences between Israeli and U.S. expectations over sanctions, or differences in perspective about the future course of events, Dempsey said:
“All of the above.” He did not elaborate.
He also did not disclose whether he believed Israel was prepared to strike Iran.
On the 20th September, Australian ABC TV’s Foreign Correspondent broadcast a programme titled “Follow the Money”, mainly focussing on the impact of BDS on Daniel Birnbaum, the Israeli US immigrant business owner of Soda Stream, an Israeli factory illegally located in one of the neoliberal industrial zones in the Occupied West Bank. The show offered a token ‘balance’ with a Palestinian US immigrant family who supported boycott, divestment and sanctions of Israeli apartheid and occupation. The mother, Cairo Arafat, emphasised her support for two states, whilst her daughter Semma, was less enthusiastic, opining that “Two states will not work. Two states would just be a phase into Palestine being wiped off the map, into creating a one state that is an Israeli state”. The programme lacked considerable depth and sensitivity on the BDS issue within Palestine and Israel, and made some glaring factual errors – such as failing to note that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is illegal under international law, that instead of “Thirteen per cent of it [the apartheid wall] … being constructed inside the West Bank”, the apartheid barrier is built mainly in the West Bank and only partly along the 1949 Armistice line, or “Green Line” between Israel and Palestinian West Bank, with 12% of the entire West Bank area illegally annexed across into the Israel side of the barrier. Further, despite the new anti-boycott law passed by Israel’s far right extremist Knesset, which has been condemned by Amnesty International as “an attack on freedom of expression”, there are a growing number of Israelis who are in solidarity with the call of Palestinian people for BDS.
Foreign Correspondent programmes are re-broadcast regularly “by more than 20 international networks, including CNN International, Al Jazeera, NHK Japan and TV NZ”. Al Jazeera English re-broadcasted “Follow the Money” retitled as “About a boycott” on its “People & Power” show on October 6, 2011. So who inserted the ubiquitous fake Max Brenner this time – for this is not the first occasion that Max Brenner has been anthropomorphised.
The “Max Brenner Shop Owner” title pops up in the screenshot opposite at about 10.07 minutes into Al Jazeera English’s slightly truncated re-broadcast version. This individual is named in the Foreign Correspondent transcript as “GRAHAM WEINBERG (IN CROWD)”. Now we know which balding lookalike Max Brenner is this month. The Max Brenner site states “ALL AUSTRALIAN MAX BRENNER CHOCOLATE BARS ARE COMPANY OWNED & WE DO NOT CURRENTLY FRANCHISE”.
Foreign Correspondent Eric Campbell captures some correct information from a protester at a recent rally against the Israeli occupation-supporting Max Brenner business in Newtown.
CAMPBELL: “And what’s Max Brenner doing?”
PROTESTOR: “Max Brenner is financially and morally supporting the Israeli defence forces, particularly two brigades – the Golani and the Givati”.
Like Max Brenner, Sodastream is bound to the illegal, brutal Israeli military occupation, and is a legitimate boycott target.
“Al Jazeera is a vital component to the USG’s strategy in communicating with the Arab world.” — Joseph E. LeBaron, U.S. Ambassador to Qatar, November 6, 2008
“Al Jazeera Board Chairman Hamed bin Thamer Al Thani has proven open to creative uses of Al Jazeera’s airwaves by the USG beyond straightforward interviews.” — Joseph E. LeBaron, U.S. Ambassador to Qatar, February 10, 2009
Might the omnipresent bald man be such an example of ‘creative uses’ of Al Jazeera’s airwaves by the US or was the inserted caption a plausibly deniable slipup?
You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.
Palestine / Israel Links
The hand of a thief: Taking a page from Nixon (“If the president does it, that means it’s not illegal!”) Netanyahu instructed Justice Minister Ya’acov Ne’eman, a religious ultra-nationalist, to come up with a legal way for Israel to keep even the radical hilltop settlement outposts built on land that Israel itself recognizes as being owned by Palestinians.
Countering the hasbaroid ‘Judenrein’ accusation against Maen Areikat, Mahmoud Habbash, the Palestinian minister of religious affairs, stated:
“The future Palestinian state will be open to all its citizens, regardless of their religion,” Habbash said, according to USA Today. “We want a civil state, which in it live all the faiths, Muslim, Christian and Jews also if they agree, (and) accept to be Palestinian citizens.”
Maen Areikat, the Palestine Liberation Organization’s ambassador to the United States, told POLITICO that his comments earlier this week which some interpreted as meaning Jews would not be welcome were misconstrued.
“In no way was there a suggestion that Jews cannot enter Palestine or be in Palestinian state in the future,” Areikat said.
The officials’ comments follow a controversy the ambassador’s remarks at a breakfast on Tuesday hosted by the Christian Science Monitor in which he said that Jews and Palestinians “need to be totally separated.”
USA Today reported that Areikat was calling for the future Palestinian state to “free of Jews.”
In the headline and story, Palestinian Ambassador Maen Areikat says he was referring to Israelis, not Jews, when he stated that “it would be in the best interest of the two people to be separated first.”
For future reference, the US tabloids might care to comprehend Dr Saree Makdisi’s analysis about the PA:
“The PA has become what it was always intended to be; a full blown collaborationist apparatus whose main function is to facilitate the occupation and colonization of the West Bank not to challenge it or end it … The unelected leadership in Ramallah which having been swept from office by elections in 2006 was brought back to office almost literally on the turret of an Israeli tank remains completely uninterested in any accounting for the scandal of the Palestinian Papers or anything else for that matter.”
The 2011 Edward Said Memorial Lecture with Dr. Saree Makdisi “Palestine: Epicenter of the Arab Revolutions”
Israeli police evict a Palestinian family from their home in Jaffa.
All the perfumes of Brand Israel will not wash off Israel’s apartheid and brutal occupation. Despite, Yigal Caspi, deputy director general of media and public affairs at the Israeli Foreign Ministry explains the new soft sell approach (as if it hasn’t already been part of Israel’s dominant whitewashing strategy):
“This move doesn’t have a down-side… For a year we’ve been explaining our political policies and virtually ignoring everything else. I’m not sure that the first thing Europeans want to see when they open their morning newspaper is news about the conflict with the Arab world.”
“If we tell them about all the other interesting things here – about culinary and fashion, agriculture, innovations and high-tech – they’ll see us differently.”
Considering that the Foreign Minister of Israel is, in fact, a settler living in Noqdim, and that the state is addicted to building settlements while rent costs in major Israeli cities is causing nationwide protest, it is a safe bet that the interests of the state are in line with the settlers.
to move to outlying areas like Upper Nazareth, instead of demanding an apartment in “the state of Tel Aviv.” Speaking to Arutz 7, Sofer said “I would not build even one apartment in ‘the state of Tel Aviv,’ which extends from Hadera to Ashdod. Someone must tell the ‘yuppie youth’ that they should not bother fighting for an apartment there, because they will not get them.”
Sofer suggested instead that those seeking an apartment move to the south or the north. “If they all move to the periphery, the jobs will follow them. Pressure can be put on the billionaires who got rich off the rest of us to move their factories to these areas,” he said.
While Israeli hasbaraboffins plot and scheme their next apartheid-washing ad campaign, Israel is starving Gazan hospitals of fuel. Israel’s collective punishment of the people of Gaza centres again on those least able to defend themselves – the sick.
Bassam Barhum, who oversees ministry of health supplies in Gaza, said electricity generators would stop within a day or two if fuel was not delivered.
Every hospital in the coastal strip was vulnerable, Barhum said, adding that operation rooms had already closed in Gaza City’s Ash-Shifa hospital and the European hospital in Khan Younis due to the chronic energy supply shortage.
In 2011, the Ministry of Health in Gaza received less than 400 thousand liters of fuel, but the hospitals need 1.5 to 2 million liters, he said.
Barhum said Gaza hospitals received just 25.84 percent of required fuel in 2010, and more than 10 percent was unusable.
A critical shortage of medical supplies in the coastal strip led the Hamas-led authorities to declare a state of emergency in the medical sector in June, and doctors and nurses took to the streets to protest against the ongoing crisis.
“This was done by hostile divers and identical sabotage was carried out to the Swedish ship, Juliana,” ISG spokesman Raymond Deane told DPA. “The inference is that the saboteurs were Israeli,” he said.
“This is attempted murder. The damage done to the propeller means that the ship could have sailed but the propeller would have come up through the hull after some time. We are a small ship and we would have gone down,” Deane added.
The Israeli embassy in Dublin said it had no connection with the incident and no information on it, Ireland’s national broadcaster RTE reported.
Six of the 20 crew and passengers who intended to sail on the MV Saoiree will transfer to another ship in the flotilla, ISG said. Those include former Ireland rugby player Trevor Hogan and Paul Murphy, a Socialist Party Member of the European Parliament, as well as ISG campaign coordinator Fintan Lane. They are joining activists on board the joint Italian and Dutch ship in the flotilla.
State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner said Thursday the U.S. has seen no independent confirmation of the ships having been sabotaged, yet nevertheless stated that “our opinion that’s been stated very clearly from the State Department, both from the secretary down to this podium, is that these flotillas are a bad idea.”
The sabotage against the Irish and Swedish boat, both of whose propeller shafts were similarly damaged, could just as well have been done by US navy divers, as a favour to Israel.
Minister Gilmore said he takes the matter seriously.
“I do have concerns about it, and that is something that is going to have to be investigated initially by the Turkish authorities,” the Tánaiste said.
“I would take a very serious view of it, if it turned out that there was sabotage of that vessel.”
Mr Gilmore last week told Israeli ambassador to Ireland, Boaz Modai, that any interception of the flotilla must be peaceful.
He said while the activists were well intended and well motivated, they had been warned it would it would be dangerous to travel on the MV Saoirse vessel and on the mission.
“I met with a delegation from the people who are travelling a couple of weeks ago and subsequent to that I met with the Israeli ambassador and made it clear to him both what our travel advice was but also our expectation that there would not be a repeat of last year and that people who engaged in what is essentially a form of peaceful protest activity, that there is not to be a disproportionate response to that activity,” he added.
Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams has also called for a probe into the incident.
“The Irish government has a responsibility to protect Irish citizens abroad and must demand answers from the Israeli government on this matter,” Deputy Adams said.
“I would also urge the government to ask the Turkish authorities to carry out a full and thorough investigation into what has occurred.”
This is a recurring pattern: first demonization, then legitimization (to act violently ). Remember the tall tales about sophisticated Iranian weaponry coming through arms-smuggling tunnels in Gaza, or those about how the Strip was booby-trapped? Then Operation Cast Lead came along and the soldiers hardly encountered anything like that.
The attitude toward the flotilla is a continuation of the same behavior.
“The arrival of thousands of Muslim infiltrators to Israeli territory is a clear threat to the state’s Jewish identity,” Danon told The Jerusalem Post.
“The refugees’ place is not among us, and the initiative to transfer them to Australia is the right and just solution.
“On the one hand, it treats the refugees and migrants in a humane way. On the other hand, it does not threaten Israel’s future and our goal to maintain a clear and solid Jewish majority,” he explained.
The PLO General Delegation to the U.S. said in response that while it respects the right of Senate members to pass resolutions expressing their views, “we urge them to use an even-handed, fair, and unbiased approach when addressing their concerns on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.”
The delegation added that “the Israeli government has failed to reciprocate, and Prime Minister Netanyahu has repeatedly chosen a policy of land grabbing and settlement expansion over a just solution to the conflict and an end to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.”
‘Black is also expected to speak on the roiling issue of BDS, the anti-Israel Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanction movement. The BDS coalition of left-wing Jewish groups and Arab economic jihadis, traces its direct roots to the aggressive adoption of Hitler’s anti-Jewish boycott by Arabs in Palestine during the Holocaust.’
‘I found the viewpoint expressed overlooking settled history. Arabs have been mass murdering Jews in Palestine since the Balfour Declaration. The pogroms of 1920 and 1921 saw Arabs in well-documented internationally condemned orgies of death including mass battering skulls, hatchet attacks and mutilations. British commission responded but did not stem the violence. Student journalists should check it out. In 1929, because Jews sat down at the Wailing Wall while praying instead of remaining in a standing position, Arabs mercilessly massacred Jews with knives, swords, clubs and guns. In Hebron, eyes were poked out, babies cut in half, one man was crucified, another had his brains extracted and used for sport, one was cut open and his papers burned, one had his head was baked in an oven, Torahs burned–all for sitting down during prayer–all in a globally documented massacre. There have been many more attacks. Student journalists should check it out.
Does the BDS movement own up to this enormous record of mass murder and Torah desecration? Can BDS assure the world that they succeed and have their way, that Jews will no longer be mass murdered merely because they sat down during prayer?’
edwin black
http://www.edwinblack.com/
Black is poisoning the well, creating a lurid illusion that BDS, which was initiated by Palestinian civil society in 2005 because all other methods have failed to restrain the crimes against humanity continuously perpetrated by Israel, is retrospectively guilty of events which if they are factual, occurred nearly 80 years ago. Over the top and out the window. What’s this guy on?
More from the erudite Edwin:
‘If all Arabs want peace, it only takes a handshake and a pen to make it happen. Sadat and King Hussein proved that. Until that courageous moment occurs, all the BDS agitation,including BDS against peacemakers, is just in furtherance of the dark tendency of history to make us perpetuate and repeat all prior unhappiness. Don’t be fooled students. Peace has a chance if you give peace a chance. Good bye Harpo and all those who think BDS is an answer. Better to invest in mutual peace then endless economic jihad.
edwin’
So BDS makes the zionists continue their genocide of Palestinians. And pigs fly because BDS makes them.
‘On the opening night international panel discussion scheduled for Saturday, June 11, Black will speak on the topic “Who is a Friend of Israel?” The much anticipated panel of international figures is expected to confront the BDS issue head on, with Black giving the historical perspective as it applies to today’s Arab Spring.’
Let’s hope there’s folks present to ask suitable questions in response.
Other Limmud-Oz speakers who will ‘deal’ with BDS are :
“2. ‘Beyond the Pale: Disagreeing about Israel’ with Tommy Sterling, Larry Stillman and Mark Baker. 3. ‘From BDS to Burqas! Grassroots Community Action’ with Elaine Black, Shirlee Finn, Danny
Kidron, Gael Kennedy and Sergio Redegalli. 4. ‘BDS Movement, Councils, and the art of conversation’ with Donna Jacobs Sife, Lyndall Katz, Gael
Kennedy and David Knoll. 5. ‘Is Israel an apartheid state?’ with Andrew Markus. 6. ‘Narrative Wars: A Brief History of an Enduring Conflict’ with Mark Baker.”
“Criticism of Israel or the policies of its government similar to that levelled against any other country is entirely acceptable, and is an everyday occurrence within Israel itself. However, the Executive of Limmud-Oz in Sydney believes that the BDS campaign is an attack on Israel’s basic legitimacy and harms the Jewish people as a whole, as does the singling out of Israel for unjust criticism.
Contrary to the BDS call for a cultural boycott of Israel, Limmud-Oz supports engagement with Israeli academic and artistic institutions and we have a number of their representatives involved in Limmud-Oz this year. BDS therefore undermines this crucial aspect of Limmud-Oz.
Limmud-Oz does not deny that proponents of BDS have the right to express their views to whomever they like. But that right does not impose an obligation on us to provide them with a space to do so.
This is not about censorship, nor are we seeking to stifle dissenting views. Limmud-Oz is proud of the principles of pluralism and inclusiveness which guide us and Limmuds around the world.”
‘Limmud-Oz, the Australian arm of the global festival of Jewish learning, is at the centre of controversy after organisers banned two presenters who “publicly advocate a total boycott against Israel” and a major donor threatened to withdraw funding.
The executive of Limmud-Oz released a statement last week saying it believes that the Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) campaign is “an attack on Israel’s basic legitimacy and harms the Jewish people as a whole”.
Programme director Michael Misrachi confirmed that, as a result, Peter Slezak, a co-founder of Australian Independent Jewish Voices, and Vivienne Porzsolt, a spokeswoman for Jews Against The Occupation, were disinvited from the two-day festival in Sydney in mid-June.
Mr Slezak accused organisers of “moral and intellectual weakness” while Ms Porzsolt said the ban “smacks of excommunication”‘
…
But Mr Immerman defended the decision to drop the two BDS proponents. “In supporting BDS, these individuals advocate denying free speech to Israeli academics and performers, on whom we depend for Limmud-Oz, yet, ironically, claim this right for themselves.”
They may, however, attend the festival, he added. “Limmud-Oz remains a very broad tent – the programme includes and celebrates a wide diversity of opinions.”
The “boycott of the boycotters” prompted two other presenters to withdraw last week in protest.
“We abhor the idea of being associated with an event that bans ideas,” Jenny Green and Joel Nothman said in a letter to the Limmud executive.’
Considering Black’s odd reinterpretations of history and the misconception Mr. Immerman has about BDS as well, it’s most unfortunate that those who would provide a more informed and balanced view are censored from attending causing others to chose to cancel as a matter of principle.
‘On Saturday, a senior Palestinian official said Abbas has concluded that a statehood push at the U.N. would not advance the Palestinians’ cause.
Abbas’ initiative, he said, will be compromised by the fact that the Palestinians first have to seek support from the Security Council before going to the General Assembly, where the Palestinians are more confident of obtaining majority support.’
A member of the PLO negotiating team, however, denied the report saying some of the world’s most important international lawyers are backing the initiative and the Palestinians are hopeful they will succeed.
“President Abbas knows getting recognition will be difficult, which is something quite different,” the official said on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record.
Here comes Abass’s sellout of Palestinians right of return? Ya’alon’s view:
‘Ya’alon said that there were “paradigm differences between the two sides.” He stated that while Abbas had expressed willingness to go to Paris, the PA president had not agreed to begin negotiations with Israel.
“We are ready to go to the table. We have been waiting for Abu Mazen [Abbas] for two years,” Ya’alon told Channel 2.’
Maybe it’s posturing – the Israelis don’t sound keen, despite the overly generous starting point.
Ya’alon says:
‘that a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood in the UN General Assembly would not lead to Israel’s isolation or have any concrete effect on the country. ‘
Then what’s the problem in a Palestinian state being declared?
Major ziotroll effort on Ya’alon’s part? Danny Danon’s NYTimes piece and the Legal Forum of Israel’s complementary advices about Israel’s annexation options might be very tempting to the expansionist Israelis.
“Such unilateral action by the Palestinians could give rise to reciprocal initiatives in the Israeli Parliament (Knesset) which could include proposed legislation to declare Israel’s sovereignty over extensive parts of Judea and Samaria, if and when the Palestinians carry out their unilateral action.”
‘The absence of any workable plan, he said, will leave Israel in a dangerous and weak situation if the Palestinians push for UN recognition of a state later this year.’
There’s legal dispute about whether Res 377, which is the Uniting for Peace resolution would be applicable in the case of recognising a state. It is used to resolve the peace not recognise states – yes, Israel is conducting a military occupation of Palestinians, but as long as Israel whines deceitfully that they are ‘willing to negotiate’ why, firstly would Res 377 be invoked, secondly, how could res 377 be used to form a state – that is not its role.
There are arguments for both positions. I tend to think that there will be no use of res 377 in this case, but Israel will use the situation to bleat victim again. I am of course willing to be persuaded, but then again, do we really think the sort of Palestinian ‘state’ which is on the table is actually a viable, sovereign state? As Grinstein of the Reut Institute says:
‘Despite Obama’s speeches, the diplomatic process will remain at a dead end as the moment of decision in September approaches. Then the United States will have another opportunity to do the right thing: to ensure that the establishment of a Palestinian state conforms to Israel’s needs.’
Neither Danny Danon in his NY Times article nor the Legal Forum of Israel on the face of it *want* Abass to declare a state – while the Reut Institute (hasbara central) does – yet if Israel refuses to attend the OH NO not more peas talks in Paris, Abass seems to be going to proceed with the declaration – yet this will be blocked by US veto, but may give Israel the excuse, even if it is broached, to commence annexation of all lands except for where Palestinians are living at present – the formalisation of discontinuous powerless bantustans, leaving Palestinian people without rights, presenting an opportunity to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Israel also – but of course, making Israel’s position completely untenable, except in Ya’alon’s, and the Reut Institute’s eyes.
‘Grinstein hopes that UN recognition will set rolling a bandwagon that limits any Palestinian state to precisely the kind of demilitarized bantustan under overall Israeli control that will “solve” Israel’s legitimacy and diplomatic problems while marginalizing Palestinian rights, especially refugee rights.’
‘Since the Hamas victory in the January 2006 elections, there is not and cannot be a Palestinian partner to such a diplomatic process. On the one hand, a Palestine that includes Hamas, which refuses to recognize Israel and existing agreements, cannot be a partner to negotiations on a final-status agreement. On the other hand, without Hamas, the Palestinian system lacks internal legitimacy, which prevents a historic concession. That’s why all the calls out of Washington, Brussels and Jerusalem for a renewal of talks between Israel and the Palestinians are hollow, and the negotiations that were conducted during the Annapolis process had no chance of success in the first place. ‘
The last paragraph is the most sinister:
”Despite Obama’s speeches, the diplomatic process will remain at a dead end as the moment of decision in September approaches. Then the United States will have another opportunity to do the right thing: to ensure that the establishment of a Palestinian state conforms to Israel’s needs.’
‘In the Palestinian arena, we continued to meet with members of the political, diplomatic, and security establishment, and also key figures of influence from other arenas. Of particular note, we have begun the process of mapping the vast and complex political-diplomatic terrain ahead of the expected September UN General Assembly declaration of an independent Palestinian state, and the likely Durban III conference taking in New York at the same time. ‘
What Res 377 MIGHT be used for, though, is in regard to Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. I’ve written previously about this here.
Significantly, this issue also comes up in September, so Grinstein is doubtless correct when he has determined the diplomatic process will remain at a dead end till near September.
I also wrote about Professor Francis Boyle’s interpretation of the use of 377 here.
‘The statement emphasizes that however one feels about the issue of diplomatic recognition of a Palestinian “state,” the campaign to achieve such recognition cannot stand as a substitute for the global struggle for Palestinian rights in all their aspects. Here are some key passages with highlighting added:
” This September will mark the 20th anniversary of the start of the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” that is widely recognized as a total failure, by any objective standard. This sham process has served as a cover for Israel’s intensive colonization of Palestinian lands, continued denial of Palestinian basic rights, and gradual ethnic cleaning of Palestinians, while simultaneously giving a false impression of peacemaking. In this context, the BNC welcomes the recognition of a great majority of states around the world that the Palestinian right to statehood and freedom from Israeli occupation are long overdue and should no longer to be held hostage to fanatically biased US “diplomacy” in defense of Israeli expansionism. However, recognition of Palestinian statehood is clearly insufficient, on its own, in bringing about a real end to Israel’s occupation and colonial rule. Neither will it end Israel’s decades-old system of legalized racial discrimination, which fits the UN definition of apartheid, or allow the millions of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes of origin from which they were violently uprooted and exiled.
Diplomatic recognition must result in protection of the inalienable right to self-determination of the entire Palestinian people represented by a democratized and inclusive PLO that represents not just Palestinians under occupation, but also the the exiled refugees, the majority of the Palestinian people, as well as the discriminated citizens of Israel.. For it to go beyond symbolism, this recognition must be a prelude to effective and sustained sanctions against Israel aimed at bringing about its full compliance with its obligations under international law. As shown in the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa, as well as in the current struggles for freedom and justice in the Arab region, world governments do not turn against a patently illegal and immoral regime of oppression simply on ethical grounds; economic interests and hegemonic power dynamics are far weightier in their considerations.”
The statement continues:
” The key lesson learned from South Africa is that, in order for world governments to end their complicity with Israel’s grave and persistent violations of human rights and international law, they must be compelled to do so through mass, well organized grassroots pressure by social movements and other components of civil society. In this context, BDS has proven to be the most potent and promising strategy of international solidarity with the Palestinian people in our struggle for self determination, freedom, justice and equality.
In light of the above, and inspired by the will and the power of the people which have given rise to the Arab spring, the BNC calls upon people of conscience and international solidarity groups to proceed with building a mass BDS movement in the US and elsewhere in the world’s most powerful countries before and after September. Only such a mass movement can ensure that whatever diplomatic recognition transpires at the UN in September on Palestinian statehood will advance the rights of the Palestinian people and raise the price of Israel’s occupation, colonialism and apartheid by further isolating it and those complicit in its crimes”.’
Channel 10 quoted sources close to Netanyahu as saying that Dagan had “gone crazy” and had “compromised state secrets” by speaking out against an Israeli attack on Iran.
Just-recently retired Mossad chief Meir Dagan, who had already come out publicly in favor of the Ofers a day earlier, wrote an op-ed on Israel’s leading Internet portal, YNET, saying that it’s not illegal to trade with Iran (technically false, practically speaking sometimes true, depending on the whims of the authorities) and that Iran isn’t even considered an “enemy country” (false, it’s specifically referred to as such in several laws, including one that bans anyone who visited it from running for Knesset for seven years). Then, to change the subject and get the Ofers off the front pages, he went on to say it would be “stupid” to attack Iran and expressed grave concerns as to the judgment of PM Netanyahu* and Defense Minister Ehud Barak**. In addition, Dagan also said that Israel should have accepted the Saudi (Arab League) peace proposal, but then said that once it became an Arab League proposal it became “verboten”. Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, I know.
The Government could not support the part of Ms Bishop’s motion because it stated there was a “fraying of the traditionally bipartisan support amongst Australia’s political parties for the State of Israel”. This statement is false. Bipartisan support for the State of Israel is strong and undiminished. Israel is fully supported by the Government, and we are not aware of any fraying of support from the Opposition.
Government members today voted in favour of the following motion in Parliament today.
[The Parliament]
“(1) restates its support for the motion moved by the then Prime Minister and passed by this House on the sixtieth anniversary of the State of Israel, and in particular:
(a) acknowledges the unique relationship which exists between Australia and Israel, a bond highlighted by the commitment of both societies to the rights and liberty of our citizens and to cultural diversity;
(b) commends the State of Israel’s commitment to democracy, the rule of law and pluralism; and
(c) reiterates Australia’s commitment to Israel’s right to exist in peace and security, and our continued support for a peaceful two-state resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian issue. ”
The motion should have had the word ‘unique’ changed for ‘special’ so it more closely aligned with the US commensalist position. Australia, the US, Canada and Israel – all settler colonial entities in denial of their ongoing genocide of their indigenous peoples. Israel differs from the rest of course in its ‘cultural diversity’ because there are no equal rights under the law in Israel – non-jews are discriminated against by more than 30 laws. Can equality exist in the Jewish state? After 44 years of occupation: where is the Israeli Peace Camp?
Israeli peace activists do not need to dictate to the Palestinians how to run their resistance; they have their own work to do.
If they are truly worried about a one state solution, they need to organise and take to the streets to protest Netanyahu’s fatal blow to the two-state solution and to force their government to change its course.
After 44 years of occupation, what are they still waiting for?
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