True, the last time you famously did something about it, the man for whom you went to bat (and whom you got a retrial and an eventual acquittal by reminding the world of how he was railroaded) threatened to sue you for using his life story without permission. But in this case you don’t have to write a song. You don’t even have to sing a song. What you have to do is simply NOT sing – at least not in Israel.
Mr Merkel said the forcible removal of Aboriginal children from their families had roots in the eugenics movement of the 1930s. Informing that policy, he said, was a view that Aboriginal children with any trace of white blood were “savable” by virtue of being not entirely aboriginal.
In his articles, Mr Merkel said, “Bolt has taken us back to that view of Aboriginality”.
Mr Merkel claimed the case was not about free speech, as had been argued in some corners. Nor was it about Bolt’s right to hold the views he expressed in his articles. Rather it was about whether Bolt had acted in good faith in balancing the expression of those views with the offence and hurt they were likely to cause.
“The Holocaust started with words and ended in violence,” Mr Merkel said.
Within-gender analysis shows that 78 percent of female victims (n=87) of homicide in 2007–08 were killed by an offender with whom they shared a domestic relationship. This was not the case for
of male victims who were actually more likely to have been killed by an acquaintance or stranger (n=92, 84%) than by someone with whom they shared a domestic relationship (n=57, 35%).
First, we must immediately move for the de facto suspension of Israel throughout the entirety of the United Nations System, including the General Assembly and all U.N. subsidiary organs and bodies. We must do to Israel what the U.N. General Assembly has done to the genocidal rump Yugoslavia and to the criminal apartheid regime in South Africa! Here the legal basis for the de facto suspension of Israel at the U.N. is quite simple:
As a condition for its admission to the United Nations Organization, Israel formally agreed to accept General Assembly Resolution 181 (II) (1947) (partition/Jerusalem trusteeship) and General Assembly Resolution 194 (III) (1948) (Palestinian right of return), inter alia. Nevertheless, the government of Israel has expressly repudiated both Resolution 181 (II) and Resolution 194 (III).
Therefore, Israel has violated its conditions for admission to U.N. membership and thus must be suspended on a de facto basis from any participation throughout the entire United Nations System.
Second, any further negotiations with Israel must be conducted on the basis of Resolution 181 (II) and its borders; Resolution 194 (III); subsequent General Assembly resolutions and Security Council resolutions; the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions of 1949; the 1907 Hague Regulations; and other relevant principles of public international law.
Third, we must abandon the fiction and the fraud that the United States government is an “honest broker.” The United States government has never been an honest broker from well before the very outset of these negotiations in 1991. Rather, the United States has invariably sided with Israel against the Palestinians. We need to establish some type of international framework to sponsor these negotiations where the Palestinian negotiators will not be subjected to the continual bullying, threats, harassment, intimidation and outright lies perpetrated by the United States government.
Fourth, we must move to have the U.N. General Assembly impose economic, diplomatic, and travel sanctions upon Israel pursuant to the terms of the Uniting for Peace Resolution (1950), whose Emergency Special Session on Palestine is now in recess.
Fifth, the Provisional Government of the State of Palestine must sue Israel before the International Court of Justice in The Hague for inflicting acts of genocide against the Palestinian People in violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention!
Sixth, An International Criminal Tribunal for Israel (ICTI) can be established by the UN General Assembly as a “subsidiary organ” under article 22 of the UN Charter. Article 22 of the UN Charter states the UN General Assembly may establish such subsidiary organs as it deems necessary for the performance of its functions. The purpose of the ICTI would be to investigate and Prosecute suspected Israeli war criminals for offences against the Palestinian people.
In the JPost story, ex-UN Israeli ambassador Gabriela Shalev says:
If the Palestinians can gain General Assembly recognition for statehood under a “Uniting for Peace” resolution, she warned, “it would be a real obstacle… not just a public relations setback. This would seek to impose on us some kind of Palestinian state.”
It is made clear again that, as the Palestine Papers highlighted, Israel is terrified of the concept of a Palestinian state, despite all its protestations of being a genuine partner in peace processes aimed at producing one, though not the sort of state which Palestinian people would like, nor one with sovereign powers, but rather a tripartite bantustan system.
So what do the zionists want? Patently, the default position – to continue expansionism as long as possible while pretending to be honest ‘peace partners’ – expansionism as ever is zionists’ primary strategy, tactic and aim, to take all the land, to drive out and dispossess as many Palestinians as possible while making life discriminatory and uncomfortable for Palestinians who remain on their indigenous land, the same as zionists have been doing for more than 63 years.
Now Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak is warning of even tougher action.
“Israel will not tolerate these terror attacks and we will not allow terror to rise once again,” he said.
At a joint press conference in Ashdod with US defence secretary Robert Gates, Mr Barak said Israel had no choice but to respond to the latest violence.
But he is yet to reveal the timing or nature of the response.
Mr Gates says the violence is all the more reason to reopen the peace process which collapsed late last year.
“There is a need and an opportunity for bold action to move toward a two-state solution,” he said.
Despite the escalation, Hamas does not seem to want large-scale clashes yet. The organization actually has good reasons to believe that Israel is the one heating up the southern front. It began with a bombardment a few weeks ago that disrupted the transfer of a large amount of money from Egypt to the Gaza Strip, continued with the interrogation of engineer and Hamas member Dirar Abu Sisi in Israel, and ended with last week’s bombing of a Hamas training base in which two Hamas militants were killed.
It is noteworthy that Hamas has not fired at Israel over the past two days, even after four Palestinian civilians were killed by errant IDF mortar fire on Tuesday.
Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh’s office said yesterday that Haniyeh had phoned the secretary general of Islamic Jihad, Abdallah Ramadan Salah, in Damascus. Pundits in Gaza said Haniyeh asked Salah to stop the escalation, for which Islamic Jihad is mainly responsible.
Bob Dylan has donated to the World Food Programme which says ‘Palestinians are experiencing a dramatic decline in their living standards and a regression of the economy due to internal and external movement restrictions, limited control over natural resources, restricted access to local and international markets, low rates of economic production and limited access of Palestinian labourers to their former work in Israel’ yet he’s still planning to play Israel on June 20th. Please, Bob, boycott Israel, which deliberately creates the problems for Palestinians identified by the WFP, whilst practising the three pillars of apartheid.
True, the last time you famously did something about it, the man for whom you went to bat (and whom you got a retrial and an eventual acquittal by reminding the world of how he was railroaded) threatened to sue you for using his life story without permission. But in this case you don’t have to write a song. You don’t even have to sing a song. What you have to do is simply NOT sing – at least not in Israel.
The debate, said Stephen Hazan Arnoff, executive director of New York’s 14th Street Y, a community center not targeted by protesters, reflects similar trends in Israel, where tolerance of dissenting views is in decline. Attacks on JCCs and Jewish cultural institutions, he said, “are a sign of weakness” of the community. “If the community cannot accommodate diversity, the community is not healthy.”
In addition to tightening the siege on the Palestinians in Gaza,the Israeli army commenced a new military offensive against the population in mid-March.
On 16 March the Israeli air force attacked a Hamas training base near the former settlement of Netzarim. Two Hamas militants, Adana Eshtaiwi, 27 years old, and Ghassan Abu Amro, 25 years old, were killed in the attack, while a third person was injured.
The Israeli military claimed the strike was in response to a single mortar projectile launched from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel. No Palestinian faction claimed responsibility for the firing, and the Israeli press reported that the projectile was launched by a small, unknown organization.
Since Operation Cast Lead, Hamas has generally abstained from firing into Israeli territory while Israel has refrained from targeting manned Hamas facilities.
Two days later the Israeli military reported that its soldiers were attacked by Gaza fighters while “performing a routine activity”. Again, no Palestinian faction took responsibility for the attack.
Normally Palestinian factions take responsibility and credit for their attacks on Israeli targets. There have also been cases in which Palestinian military factions claimed attacks that never actually occurred.
The next day, on 19 March, Israeli tanks shot at targets in the Gaza Strip. Five people were injured in this attack, while additional shelling destroyed power lines.
In response to Israeli attacks, Hamas fired mortars into Israel on Saturday 20 March. According to the Israeli police, at least 49 mortars exploded within the regional councils bordering Gaza, including Sdot Negev and Eshkol. Two Israelis were lightly hurt by shrapnel.
What gives us room for optimism is that this running amok has awakened Israeli public opinion against the murky fascistic wave. Perhaps this absurd law will provoke a dialogue about the events that took place in 1948, as a way to reconcile the two peoples.
The government’s ambassadors and its propagandists can barely persuade anyone in the world, except themselves. The destroyers of Israeli democracy can only stoke the fire higher and higher against it. The critical voices still being heard, in commendable freedom, arouse the world’s esteem. The dissidents are now the best explainers of Israel, whose regime is still to its credit.
‘The revolutionary leadership has said that even if there are civilian casualties, they will be a necessary price to prevent even greater loss of life if Gaddafi’s forces had continued their assault on Misrata and exacted revenge against the residents for their support of the uprising.’
The fact is that access to water and sanitation in Israel and the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip is based upon a discriminatory system, which privileges Israeli institutions while denying Palestinians their basic human rights to water and sanitation. Palestinians are not suffering human rights violations due to a lack of technology or scientific advancement. Palestinians are suffering because of the Israeli occupation that will not allow them to enjoy their full rights to their groundwater and surface water, and will not even allow them to construct facilities for treating wastewater. We are committed to taking nonviolent action to bring these and other human rights violations to an end.
Water resources in Palestine and Israel are shared on a vastly inequitable basis – “Israelis consume on average more than 3.5 times as much water per capita than Palestinians”.
The Bedouin village of Al Araqib in the Negev has been demolished 18 times by the Israeli Army, to make way for Jewish National Fund plantations which serve to obliterate visually the indigenous presence on the land as deliberately as the new racist Knesset law to cover up and outlaw acknowledgment of the history of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians – the Nakba . The JNF partners blatantly with Ben Gurion University – if Bob accepts an award from them, he will be complicit directly with ethnic cleansing.
The “Nakba bill”, proposed by Yisrael Beiteinu, requires the state to fine local authorities and other state-funded bodies for holding events marking the Palestinian Nakba Day by supporting armed resistance or racism against Israel, or desecrating the state flag or national symbols.
On Nakba Day Palestinians mark the “catastrophe” of Israel’s inception in 1948.
The bill, which was reworked before its final passing, states that the finance minister will be charged with deciding when to withdraw funds from various groups after considering the opinions of the attorney general and a professional team comprised of members of the ministries of finance and justice.
Thirty-seven MKs supported the bill in its final form, while 25 opposed it.
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MK Hanin Zoabi (Balad) was also outraged. “You are creating a monstrous state that will enter the thoughts and emotions of citizens. Is accepting my history considered incitement?” she asked. “The Nakba is a historic truth, not a position or freedom of expression.”
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The second bill, which passed by a majority of 35 to 20, formalizes the establishment of admission committees to review potential residents of Negev and Galilee communities that have fewer than 400 families. It was passed after 2 am.
After the passing of the bill the Knesset erupted in riots as MK Ahmed Tibi (United Arab List-Ta’al), refusing to limit himself to the comparison of the bill to South Africa’s apartheid,mentioned the Wannsee Conference in which the Nazis decided on the Holocaust’s “final solution” – or the gassing of Jews.
Arab and left-wing MKs claim the bill, which was proposed by MKs from Yisrael Beiteinu and Kadima, is aimed at preventing Arabs from residing in the communities that choose to adopt admission committees.
But its initiators claim in their explanation of the bill that it is “a balanced bill and not racist, and does not intend to harm the Arabs or the weaker members of society”.
MK Taleb El-Sana (United Arab List-Ta’al) said the bill’s initiators should be ashamed. “How can a country determine for its citizens where to live and die?” he asked.
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MK Hanna Swaid (Hadash) announced “the clinical death of the State of Israel.” He added that although the law prohibits denying anyone residence based on his race, it was still possible to do so on cultural grounds. “We will make sure the towns, local authorities, and communities that adopt the law are boycotted in the world,” he said.
Tibi: Read Jewish history
But the Knesset truly erupted in violence when MK Tibi took the stand. “You must read Jewish history well and learn which laws you suffered from. Do you remember anything about the prohibition of interracial marriage? Do you need an Arab on the stand to remind you of your history?” he asked.
“When 14 representatives gathered in Berlin, they discussed which policy to use against the Jews. It was then they discussed pushing them aside and limiting their living space…”
At this point MKs from other parties interrupted Tibi, yelling at him to leave the podium. MK Uri Ariel (National Union) refused to let him continue, yelling out, “Go back to Ramallah.”
Tibi was eventually allowed to continue, and said Arabs felt as though they were being pushed aside. He said he was not comparing the law to the final solution, but that he had brought it up in order to stress the level of hatred.
The death of two Gaza teens on Saturday, killed by Israeli fire 300 meters from the border area was an act of “excessive and lethal force,” a condemnation from the Palestinian Center for Human Rights said.
The two, both 17, were killed east of Johur Ad-Dik in the central Gaza Strip. Medics were only permitted to retrieve their bodies more than 12 hours after they had been killed
Addressing comments from Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said earlier in the week that Abbas could choose between “peace with Israel or Hamas,” the president said “Israel has no right to object to Palestinian conciliation, it has no stake in Palestinian national unity. Netanyahi has always wept in front of the Americans, saying the Palestinians are divided and he can’t negotiate with them like this,” adding that unity would make the prospect of a Palestinian state stronger.
The current tensions began exactly a week ago when Israel launched an air attack on a Hamas base in the ruins of the settlement of Netzarim, killing two Hamas men. That attack came in response to a Qassam fired from Gaza that landed in an open area. Hamas then responded with a barrage of 50 mortars on communities south of the Gaza Strip. Israel delayed its response so as not to disrupt the Purim festivities in the Sderot area.
But on Monday evening Israel launched a series of air attacks in which a number of Hamas militants were wounded. Things worsened yesterday afternoon. After a round of mortar fire on kibbutzim east of Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces fired its own mortars right back at the source of the firing – at the Sajaiyeh neighborhood east of Gaza City, killing four members of a family, including two children.
Southern Command’s initial investigation indicates that the mortars’ launching point, an olive grove on the edge of a residential quarter, had been clearly identified. It seems that a number of the IDF’s mortars went off course and hit a house in Sajaiyeh, a few dozen meters from the grove.
With Gaddafi perched on a massive stockpile of gold, enough to pay his troops and buy more for years, the prospect of a quick end to the west’s assault on Gaza seems remote despite Gate’s intonations that the campaign will slow in the next few days.
The gold reserves are believed to have been moved from the central bank in the capital, Tripoli, to another city such as Sebha in the south, which is near Libya’s African neighbours Chad and Niger, after fighting broke out, the Times reported.
While bankers told the Times that international banks or trading houses were unlikely to buy any gold believed to be from Libya, Colonel Gaddafi may find buyers in Chad or Niger.
Senior figures in Washington have also emphasised that the coalition is barred by the UN from attempting to hit Gaddafi; the issue is sensitive because of fears that talk of toppling the regime could alienate Arab supporters of the action.
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The controversy was sparked when Liam Fox, the Defence Secretary, signalled that Gaddafi could be a “legitimate target”. William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, also left open the possibility in a BBC interview yesterday.
But Gen Richards, speaking after a meeting of ministers and military chiefs on Libya, was adamant that Gaddafi could not be targeted. Asked if it could happen, he replied: “Absolutely not. It is not allowed under the UN resolution and it is not something I want to discuss any further.”
In an emergency Commons debate, David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said any military action had to be consistent with the UN mandate, but stopped short of ruling out an attack on Gaddafi under any circumstances.
He said: “Targets must be fully consistent with the UN Security Council resolution. We choose our targets to stop attacks on civilians and to implement the no-fly zone. But we should not give a running commentary on targeting.”
Sir Menzies Campbell, former Liberal Democrat leader, said: “Neither the resolution nor international law would justify the specific targeting or, in truth, assassination of Colonel Gaddafi. But if he were engaged in direct control of military occupations contrary to the resolution, and the command and control centre in which he was to be found were the subject of attack, then he would be a legitimate target.”
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Last night, the Government won clear backing for the military action, with 557 supporting the involvement of UK forces, and 13 MPs voting against.
A ComRes poll last night for ITV found that public support for the action in Libya is lukewarm, with only 35 per cent believing it was right for the UK to take action against Gaddafi forces and 53 per cent saying it would be unacceptable for British personnel to risk death or injury.
In 2005, the UK licensed the sale of £29.5m worth of “military transport aircraft” to the colonel; and in 2009 and 2010 licensed the sale of “bombing computers” and “military aircraft ground equipment” too.
In addition, between 2005 and 2007, sales of armoured all-wheel drive vehicles, armoured personnel carriers, night vision goggles and water cannon got the go-ahead.
The biggest shipments (and most alarming ones, given how Gaddafi’s forces are repressing the population) suggest that the exports didn’t even help boost British manufacturing. In 2007, for example, a job lot of “anti-riot shields, body armour, anti-riot guns, crowd control ammunition, smoke ammunition, tear gas/irritant ammunition, smoke hand grenades & CS hand grenades” were licensed for export to Libya by British businessmen. The materials, however, were from Serbia.
In 2005, a £41m package of battlefield weapons, including heavy machine guns, armour for tanks, day and night sights for weapons and military image intensifier equipment, originally from the Ukraine, was also licensed.
The oddest export, however, was licensed between July and September last year when the Foreign Office approved the sale of what it describes as “spacecraft”. Perhaps this offers a possible way out for Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s Mad Dog chum.
WESTERN Cape high court judge Siraj Desai and former intelligence minister Ronnie Kasrils have come out in support of a Holocaust survivors’ South African campaign for a boycott of Israel.
Speaking at a dinner in Cape Town on Sunday night, Hajo Meyer, an 86-year-old Jewish scientist and a survivor of Nazi Germany’s Auschwitz concentration camp, called for a concentrated cultural and academic boycott against Israel.
Investigator Richard Falk says settlement expansion, consequent evicting of Palestinians ‘intolerable’ : The “continued pattern of settlement expansion in East Jerusalem combined with the forcible eviction of long-residing Palestinians are creating an intolerable situation” in the part of the city previously controlled by Jordan, he said.
This situation “can only be described in its cumulative impact as a form of ethnic cleansing,” Falk declared.
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Israel declines to deal with Falk or even allow him into the country, accusing him of bias against the Jewish state.
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In his speech, Falk said he would like the Human Rights Council to ask the International Court of Justice to look at Israeli behaviour in the occupied territories.
This should focus on whether the prolonged occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem had elements of “colonialism, apartheid and ethnic cleansing inconsistent with international humanitarian law,” the investigator declared.
