I thought this article was interesting, in part because Human Rights Watch is often accused by NGO Monitor, an organization whose sole function seems to be to attack any group that reports on human rights violations by Israel, is often complaining that HRW has a pro-Palestinian bias.
I'd be interesting in hearing opinions from visitors and subscribers, not just on any perceived bias one way or the other by HRW, but also on the greater issue of bias and perceived biases by all human rights & humanitarian groups. You can comment here or e-mail me.
One thing I will note is that every time I have commented on human rights violations by Israel, someone has accused me of being an anti-semite, not a pleasant thing at all.
Marga Lacabe
----
By MOUIN RABBANI
The Middle East has always been a difficult challenge for Western human
rights organizations, particularly those seeking influence or funding in
the United States. The pressure to go soft on US allies is in some
respects reminiscent of Washington's special pleading for Latin American
terror regimes in the 1970s and 1980s. In the case of Israel such
organizations also face a powerful and influential domestic
constituency, which often extends to senior echelons of such
organizations, for whom forthright condemnation of Israel is anathema.
Given that Israel is reliant on US subventions and public goodwill to a
degree without precedent in the history of American foreign policy,
there is considerably more than vanity at stake. If Israel's stature in
the United States were to be reduced to that of South Africa during the
apartheid era, or Serbia during the Balkan wars, this would almost
certainly have material consequences for the "special relationship". It
is a reality very unlike that between the US and Saudi Arabia, for
example, in which the American public's longstanding contempt for the
House of Saud has proven basically inconsequential. In Israel's case,
image is a political resource of the first order, and its preservation a
matter of national security.
Until the mid-1980s, before which Israel's human rights violations
from deportation to area bombing and all in-between were generally
several orders of magnitude worse than during the subsequent quarter
century, the human rights community simply ignored the question of
Israel. If challenged, organizations would respond that in view of
limited resources they had to go after serious violators, like Ba'thist
Iraq and Iran under the Shah, or hide behind an Israeli judiciary that
although essential to the machinery of occupation at least went through
the motions of oversight, or express fears of being tarred with the
brush of anti-Semitism (or all of the above). In private, such
justifications would be augmented by references to political pressures
and funding issues, often with a barb at one or more director or board
members' Zionist sympathies thrown in. That the first widespread
exposure of the systematic application of torture in Israel's prison
system was reported by the London Sunday Times rather than Amnesty
International was no mere coincidence.
The eruption of the Palestinian uprising in December 1987 made it
impossible for human rights organizations to continue relegating the
question of Israel to the backburner. With Israeli leaders like Yitzhak
Rabin publicly exhorting Israel's soldiers to "break the bones" of
unarmed Palestinian protestors, and television images that made it
impossible to explain away such barbarism as a mistranslated rhetorical
flourish, human rights organizations faced a real quandary: ignore the
question of Israel and lose credibility, or confront it and lose
support.
By and large they chose a third way, producing reports that were often
strong on documentation but exceptionally weak when it came to
conclusions and consequences. No less importantly, they adopted the
criteria of 'balance'. In effect, a Hubble telescope was deployed to
discover Palestinian actions that could in any way be considered
violations of International Humanitarian Law, with these subsequently
placed under an industrial-strength microscope. Treatment of Israeli
actions was rather more selective and careful. Primary issues such as
the legality of Israel's presence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, or
its settlement enterprise in the occupied territories were avoided;
detailed analysis of Israeli abuses, like deportation and summary
executions, that indisputably constituted "grave breaches" of the Fourth
Geneva Convention (the latter's equivalent of war crimes) steered clear
of unambiguous conclusions; and on the key issue of how to resolve the
human rights emergency, such reports typically ended with exhortations
to the Israeli government and military to show greater concern for
Palestinian rights as opposed to demands that Western governments use
their various forms of aid to Israel as leverage to halt abuses.
In the process any sense of context, of this being a struggle for
freedom by a dispossessed and occupied people against a colonial army
a context that in other cases the human rights community communicated so
well was entirely lost. All the more so because Israel was
systematically spared the type of rhetoric and denunciations typically
deployed with respect to similar situations in other continents and
domestic repression in Arab states. If it was an approach that left
neither the victims nor apologists of Israeli human rights violations
satisfied, it at least met their minimal requirements unprecedented
exposure for the Palestinians, continued impunity for Israel. More
importantly, it enabled the human rights organizations in question to
navigate the storm and emerge relatively unscathed.
The Oslo agreements of 1993 provided a welcome development in this
respect. Henceforth, 'balance' could be maintained by releasing reports
on both the Israeli and Palestinian Authority judiciary, discrimination
against Arabs in Israel and of violence against women in the occupied
territories, torture in Israeli as well as Palestinian prisons. The idea
of an overarching regime of occupation primarily responsible for both
sets of violations a concept that came so naturally when discussing
the brutalities inflicted on the residents of South Africa's ethnic
homelands rarely entered into the fray.
The onset of the Al-Aqsa Uprising in September 2000 posed a new set of
challenges. Israel's image was once again under unprecedented pressure
on account of its savage attacks on Palestinians throughout the occupied
territories, while committed staff on the ground motivated by a
combination of genuine concern and professional honor exercised
significant pressure on human rights organizations to step up to the
plate. At the same time, particularly after September 11, 2001, such
organizations were under massive pressure by right-wing and pro-Israeli
forces the latter of whom often tended towards the liberal end of the
spectrum to toe the line. Nowhere was this more true than at Human
Rights Watch, an American organization that by the late 1990s had
emerged as the industry leader.
In the years since 2000, HRW pursued a consistent and consistently
effective formula: criticize Israel, but condemn the Palestinians.
Challenge the legality of an Israeli aerial bombardment, preferably in
polite, technical terms, and vociferously denounce the Palestinian
suicide bomber in unambiguous language especially when raising
questions about the latest Israeli atrocity. In HRW publications,
explicit condemnations and accusations of war crimes were almost wholly
monopolized by Palestinians. With Israeli citizenship a seeming
precondition for the right to self-defense, the right to resist was for
all intents and purposes non-existent.
Where as with the obliteration of a good portion of the Jenin Refugee
Camp in 2002 accusations of Israeli war crimes could not be avoided,
HRW diluted these by just as prominently reporting that it did not find
evidence of much worse atrocities. Its major report on the issue, Jenin:
IDF Military Operations, was several months later 'balanced' by Erased
in a Moment: Suicide Bombing Attacks Against Israeli Civilians.
One need only compare the titles of these two reports to surmise which
party to the conflict stands accused of perpetrating "atrocities" that
HRW "unreservedly condemns", "war crimes", and indeed "crimes against
humanity"; in which of the two cases HRW repeatedly demands that all
those with command or operational responsibility and they are many
indeed face "criminal liability"; whose nationHRW's finding no
evidence of command responsibility, face
"accountability" for not preventing the acts of others, as well as
for "significant political responsibility for the deliberate killing of
civilians"; and whose actions HRW concludes "are among the worst crimes
that can be committed, crimes of universal jurisdiction that the
international community as a whole has an obligation to punish and
prevent".
A comparison of the two reports' covers might also help readers judge
whether it was Israel or the Palestinians who are merely referred for
further examination: "Every case in the report listed below warrants
additional thorough, transparent, and impartial investigation, with the
results of such an investigation made public. Where wrongdoing is found,
those responsible should be held accountable".
Needless to say the press release accompanying Erased in a Moment did
not, as in the case of the Jenin report, use the opening paragraph to
shift discussion to more sensational allegations for which no evidence
could be found such as "HRW researchers were unable to substantiate
published claims by prominent advocates of Israel that Palestinian
suicide bombers have been lacing their explosives with AIDS, hepatitis
and rat poison". Its summary did however focus extensively in fact
primarily on the person of Yasir Arafat, even though most suicide
bombings were carried out by rival organizations and HRW concluded he
was not involved in attacks carried out by his Fatah organization. It
was presumably a simple coincidence that HRW's highly critical account
of the late Palestinian leader occupying significantly more space in
the report summary than Hamas and Islamic Jihad combined was published
at the height of the Bush administration's campaign for Palestinian
regime change.
Moving forward, and in an incident that might otherwise be considered
comic, HRW in November 2006 went so far as to denounce Palestinians who
refused to vacate homes threatened with imminent aerial bombardment,
rather than the state bent on obliterating their houses, as war
criminals. By the time it retracted its claims in a rare recantation
the howls of outrage from less partisan lawyers and human rights
professionals were simply too loud to be ignored the damage had
already been done.
Interestingly, Palestinians were denounced by HRW on the legally correct
(but in this case factually inaccurate) assumption that "It is a war
crime to seek to use the presence of civilians to render certain points
or areas immune from military operations or to direct the movement of
the civilian population or individual civilians in order to attempt to
shield military objectives from attack". Yet HRW's 2002 report, In a
Dark Hour: The Use of Civilians During IDF Arrest Operations which,
according to the accompanying press release, "documents how the IDF
routinely has taken civilians at gunpoint to open suspicious packages,
knock on doors of suspects, and search the houses of 'wanted'
Palestinians during its military operations", pointedly declines to
define human shielding as a war crime. Indeed, the only differences
between the documented 2002 cases and falsely alleged 2006 incidents are
that the former were conducted by Israel and reached the level of
systematic practice.
In 2006 HRW additionally leveled war crimes charges against Palestinian
militants who captured Gilad Shalit a uniformed soldier on active duty
on the grounds that they intended to exchange him for Palestinians
imprisoned by Israel. Consequently, the main and clearest finding of
"Israel: Gaza Offensive Must Limit Harm to Civilians" (June 28,
2006), is that "A hostage is a person held in the power of an adversary
in order to obtain specific actions, such as the release of prisoners,
from the other party to the conflict … which is a war crime under the
laws of war". Against this apparently unprecedented act in the annals of
military history, Israel's own actions, which included the mass arrest
of Palestinian parliamentarians and in some respects resembled a test
run for Israel's latest onslaught on the Gaza Strip (and which were the
alleged subject of the press release), elicited only legal exegesis,
shorn of meaningful conclusions.
More recently, the organization has issued a fatwa that any Arab
launching a projectile at an Israeli target is by definition a war
criminal, because such rockets and mortars are unlike the
state-of-the-art shells and missiles fired by Israel at apartment
blocks, schools, hospitals, and UN facilities not precision-guided and
therefore according to HRW incapable of distinguishing between a
military and civilian target. Such gunners can also not hide behind the
excuse that they hit an empty field or even that they successfully aimed
at and struck a legitimate military target; for HRW it is the act of
using yesterday's weapon rather than its impact that defines the crime.
(There is, parenthetically, no record of HRW condemning Israel or the US
of committing war crimes by virtue of using unguided projectiles).
Asked about this rather bizarre state of affairs, every current and
former HRW staff member spoken to over many years most of them in
rather senior positions - point at least two fingers at HRW director
Kenneth Roth's affinity for Israel. At least as important, apparently,
is Roth's exceptional ability to divine the political wind, and do
whatever is necessary to ensure that HRW retains the resources and
credentials to remain the industry leader. It is that rare case where
principle and opportunism merge rather than collide. (While Roth
undoubtedly has allies on the organization's board and among its staff
for his approach to the question of Israel, these are easily outnumbered
by critics who would like to see a more uniform standard applied by
their organisation).
Thus, in a 2006 missive to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on
the eve of her Mideast sojourn at the height of Israel's US-sponsored
onslaught on Lebanon, Roth, in perhaps the outstanding act of political
courage during the Bush years, insisted on drawing her attention to the
war crimes being perpetrated in the conflict by Hizballah. According
to several senior HRW employees, Roth subsequently tried to arrange for
a critic who questioned HRW's partisanship to be fired by filing a
written complaint to the critic's director.
As a case study of HRW's response to the question of Israel, its
publications during the recent Israeli onslaught on the Gaza Strip - all
of which were consulted on www.hrw.org on January 25, 2009 only
confirm the pattern discussed above, and in some respects go beyond it
as well.
True to form, HRW's first pronouncement on the conflict, issued on
December 30, 2008 and entitled "Israel: Artillery Poses Risk to Gaza
Civilians", despite its brevity meticulously documents relevant Israeli
practice and the cost it has exacted in Palestininian life and limb.
That said, there is no condemnation to be found. "In assessing the
legality of the IDF's artillery fire under international humanitarian
law, or the laws of war", it politely concludes, "it is necessary to
determine for each attack whether it was targeted at a specific military
objective; whether the weapon used could be aimed with sufficient
accuracy to differentiate between the military objective and civilians;
and whether the anticipated civilian casualties were not
disproportionate to the expected military gain from the attack".
Turning next to a subject entirely unrelated to the publication's
title
namely Palestinian rocket attacks the arcane technical analysis
suddenly comes to a screeching halt. Rather than 'if on the one hand,
but then on the other', we read the following: "Human Rights Watch has
repeatedly condemned the launching of rockets at population centers in
Israel by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups. The rockhighly
inaccurate, and those launching them cannot accurately target
military objects. Deliberately firing indiscriminate weapons into
civilian-populated areas, as a matter of policy, constitutes a war
crime".
For good measure HRW that same day released "Israel/Hamas: Civilians
Must Not be Targets". On the one hand, "Human Rights Watch investigated
three Israeli attacks that raise particular concern about Israel's
targeting decisions and require independent and impartial inquiries to
determine whether the attacks violated the laws of war. In three
incidents detailed below, 18 civilians died, among them at least seven
children". Indeed, "Some other Israeli targets may have also been
unlawful under the laws of war".
Yet, on the other hand, "Human Rights Watch has long criticized
Palestinian rocket attacks against Israeli civilians - most recently, in
a public letter to Hamas on November 20
(http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2008/11/20/letter-hamas-stop-rocket- attacks).
The rockets are highly inaccurate, and those launching them cannot
accurately target military objects. Deliberately firing indiscriminate
weapons into civilian populated areas, as a matter of policy,
constitutes a war crime".
Nevertheless by the following day, in the lengthy "Q&A: Hostilities
between Israel and Hamas" Hamas leaders were no longer being led to a
war crimes tribunal in HRW chains. Confronted with evidence too
overwhelming to ignore that Israel was deliberately firing much greater
quantities of precision-guided weapons not only into civilian-populated
areas, but directly at the civilian population and to much greater
effect, HRW was confronted with a stark choice: accuse Israel of war
crimes, or change Hamas's rap sheet. It prudently opted for the latter,
accusing Israel only of "indiscriminate attacks in violation of the laws
of war".
For the rest of the conflict, Hamas was able to "deliberately fire
indiscriminate weapons into civilian populated areas, as a matter of
policy", with total impunity, not once being denounced by HRW for
committing war crimes. Roth apparently believed no one would notice this
sudden about-face.
As the devastation of the Gaza Strip continued apace, and the death toll
reached horrific levels, it was becoming increasingly clear that
civilians were very much in Israel's crosshairs. In an orgy of organized
savagery entire families were obliterated with the press of a button;
refugees were herded into buildings, the premises shelled, and survivors
denied medical care and essential supplies for days afterward; UN
facilities, including the UNRWA headquarters and schools transformed
into safe havens (whose precise coordinates and functions were
communicated to the Israeli military) were repeatedly bombed; women and
children seeking refuge with white flags raised were summarily gunned
down; and entire neighborhoods were systematically razed to the ground.
Yet, from HRW's perspective, none of these acts whether individually
or collectively merited the same characterization that had until
December 30, 2008 been routinely meted out to their Palestinian
adversaries.
As part of its response, the organization simply feigned ignorance.
"Israel's refusal to grant access to Gaza for all international media
and human rights monitors since the fighting began on December 27", it
complained on January 12, "has limited severely the flow of information
and investigation from impartial observers into events on the ground".
"Human Rights Watch," it had the cheek to report on January 16, "is
unable to conduct full investigations into alleged laws of war
violations by either side because of Israel's continuing denial of
access to Gaza". This despite the fact that the Gaza Strip was saturated
with Arab journalists, local and international humanitarian staff,
medical personnel including several Europeans, and approximately 1.5
million residents most of whom had at least intermittent access to
telecommunications. Yet none of these, apparently, met the criteria of
credible witness. Indeed, HRW's main and almost exclusive source of
reliable information consisted of staff located on the Israeli side of
the boundary on account of Israel and Egypt's ban on entry to the Gaza
Strip.
HRW's insistence on the most scrupulous standards of quality control for
information emanating from the Gaza Strip, while in principle laudable,
stands in rather sharp contrast to its operations in Ba'thist Iraq,
where much more severe restrictions didn't preclude the organization
from concocting stories about babies thrown out of incubators and
issuing detailed accounts of genocide. Similarly, even during the Gaza
conflict HRW had no problem lending its imprimatur to reports of state
repression of pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Iran, Saudi Arabia, and
Tunisia countries in which it was also denied access. "Gaza Crisis:
Regimes React with Routine Repression", issued on January 21, didn't
hesitate to assert as fact various beatings and arrests in the darker
parts of the Middle East, using precisely those forensic methods deemed
insufficiently impartial in the Gaza Strip. Nor did denial of access
prevent HRW from denouncing such regimes for throwing not one but two
shoes at their people a wholly appropriate turn of phrase but also the
type of rhetoric one never sees deployed when addressing the question of
Israel.
At several points HRW's coverage of the conflict descended to the level
of obscenity. On January 16, in a press release entitled "Israel: Stop
Shelling Crowded Gaza City", the organization once again provides an
accurate account, based primarily on the testimony of HRW senior
military analyst Marc Garlasco, of the facts in this case Israel's use
of heavy artillery against the centre of Gaza City, including the
shelling of UNRWA headquarters with white phosphorous. Yet rather than
conclude that a war crime had been perpetrated, or even suggest that the
time may be ripe for investigation and accountability, the microphone is
handed to Israel's Prime Minister: "Ehud Olmert apologized for the
attack, but said Israeli forces had come under fire from the UN
compound. 'It is absolutely true that we were attacked from that place,
but the consequences are very sad and we apologize for it', he said".
Curiously, UNRWA officials, who are quoted elsewhere in the press
release describing the attack, are not cited as "categorically rul[ing]
out any possibility that militants had been firing from the compound,"
as they had to the Associated Press and other media. Nor is the lay
reader informed about the legality of the attack even if Olmert's
version of events was substantiated, or of the consequences in terms of
accountability even if he was genuinely saddened and apologetic. Indeed,
the only reference to an investigation is to the one HRW was purportedly
unable to conduct.
Further down the same press release reports: "Israeli fire also hit the
al-Shurouq tower, which houses media outlets such as Reuters,
al-Arabiyya Television, and al-Hayat newspaper, causing substantial
damage and wounding at least two journalists … Media organizations had
provided the Israeli military with the GPS locations of all their
offices. Israeli forces told the media that they had come under fire
from the building". Seemingly, the recently pardoned war criminals of
Hamas successfully transformed the building into the headquarters of
their rocket battalion without even being noticed by the dozens of
journalists and their dozens of cameras in, on and around the building -
though a more likely explanation is that the journalists, all of them
Arab, fail to meet Roth's standards for "impartial observers into events
on the ground".
The press release then states, ""Human Rights Watch is unable to conduct
full investigations into alleged laws of war violations by either side
because of Israel's continuing denial of access to Gaza. Hamas and
Palestinian armed groups have also violated the laws of war by
continuing to fire unguided Qassam and Grad rockets at population
centers in Israel." Once again, HRW insists on having it both ways: If
violations can only be alleged pending confirmation by exhaustive
investigations in situ, how can a mere reference to the type of weapon
used by one party prove sufficient for finding that it has in fact
committed such violations? By the time the reader gets to the final
paragraph of the press release, a recommendation to Israel to "Collect
and analyze data regarding Palestinian civilian casualties from
artillery shelling in order to assess the harm to civilians caused by
the use of artillery in particular locales and situations, and thus to
base targeting decisions on a proper weighing of foreseeable civilian
harm", the reader could be forgiven for reading this as an exhortation
for further Israeli shelling to ensure sufficient data are collected.
The low point of HRW's coverage of Israel's onslaught on the Gaza Strip
was not its consistent refusal to apply a single standard whether
legal or rhetorical to Israel and the Palestinians, nor its effective
contribution to Israeli impunity, but rather a personal betrayal of an
HRW colleague in his hour of greatest need.
"On the afternoon of January 3, 2009", according to HRW's "Israel:
Investigate Former Judge's Killing in Gaza" (issued on 9 January), "an
Israeli bomb or missile from an F-16 jet fighter killed the two Gazans
at the al-Ghoul farm, northwest of Beit Lahiya and close to Gaza's
border with Israel. Akram al-Ghoul was a judge who worked in the
Palestinian Authority courts and resigned after Hamas took over the Gaza
Strip in June 2007. He is the father of Fares Akram, Human Rights
Watch's research consultant in Gaza. Mahmoud al-Ghoul, 17, was a
student".
One aspect of the question of Israel on which HRW has pulled
considerably fewer punches than others concerns internal investigations
conducted by the Israeli military. Only two days before it issued the
above press release, in fact, in a separate press release entitled
"Gaza: Israeli Attack on School Needs Full Investigation", the
organization noted that according to its previous studies of the matter,
"IDF investigations into alleged laws-of-war violations, when they have
occurred, have been deeply flawed … To Human Rights Watch's knowledge,
Israel never conducted impartial and thorough investigations of those
[previously recounted] incidents or held any of its military personnel
accountable. During Israel's last major ground offensive in Gaza in
March 2008, Human Rights Watch found that Israeli forces committed
several targeted killings and other serious violations of the laws of
war. To date, no IDF investigation has taken place in these cases".
Yet how did Kenneth Roth and the world's leading human rights
organization respond to the killing of their colleague's father and
relative? "Human Rights Watch today called on the Israel Defense Forces
(IDF) to conduct a thorough and impartial investigation into the deaths
by an Israeli airstrike of Akram al-Ghoul, 48, and Mahmoud Salah Ahman
al-Ghoul, 17, the father and cousin of Human Rights Watch's research
consultant in Gaza. In a letter to Brig.-Gen. Avichai Mandelblit, IDF
Military Advocate General, Human Rights Watch urged the military to
investigate the attack, make the results of the investigation public,
and prosecute any persons it finds to have acted in serious violation of
international humanitarian law". HRW didn't even bother to go through
the motions of calling for an "independent" investigation of the killing
of their Arab informant's father.
In doing so, HRW chose to pursue justice for a colleague by steering his
case into what they better than perhaps any others know to be
meaningless dead end. The impression that the murder of Fares Akram's
father was instrumentalised by HRW to lend a much-needed veneer of
respectability to the Israeli military's investigations of itself is
particularly reprehensible.
(Mouin Rabbani is a Contributing Editor to Middle East Report.)
By Osha Neumann
Thursday January 15, 2009
Oh Father, I cried. There was no shame in your confusion. Just as there had been no shame in your father’s before you. No shame in the fear, or in the fear of his father before him. There was only shame in the silence fear had produced. It was the silence that betrayed us.
—Barack Obama, from Dreams from My Father
The silence of Obama is deafening. Continents of misery are swallowed in his silence.
On the deaths of Palestinian children, the murder of mothers, the dismemberment of grandfathers, on the pools of blood on the hospital floor, the bombed and mangled ambulances, the screams of terror—he is silent.
But in fact his silence is incomplete. He is briefed on a daily basis, kept abreast of events. What does he say in those secret conversations? Does he remain silent? Certainly not. He ascents. Yes, Hamas must be crushed. It’s a price that needs to be paid. He does not say, or perhaps he does say, he hopes it will be over before the inaugural balls begin. The mafia don does not wish to have his party spoiled. He has prepared his speech. The soaring rhetoric. The reference to Martin Luther King.
But should even a drop of Palestinian blood touch those soaring phrases, they will fall to earth like a stone.
“Change we can believe in”? All the empty rhetoric of the presidential campaign is a gaping maw into which the lives of Palestinians fall without a sound.
The blood of Palestinians is the touchstone. The slogans touch the stone, shrivel and die. “Yes we can!” Yes we can what? Crush the Palestinians into a bloody pulp?
Israel can not kill all the Palestinians or drive those who are still alive into yet deeper exile. Palestinians will survive and they will haunt us, and when the next terrorist attack comes who will weep for us, who will shed tears, and who will say we got what we deserved? The chickens will come home to roost. Those terrible, cannibalistic, angry chickens will come home to roost.
Obama is silent. He must not endanger his legislative agenda. It’s the economy stupid. Remember. But I would rather the engines of the commerce grind to a halt, the shelves of the stores yawn empty, and a terrible gloom descend on Wall Street, than that one more Palestine child be torn to bits. Or live, but clutch her mother in fear, wetting herself, covering her eyes and her ears to block out the terrible racket, or that one more Palestinian mother weep over the grave of her child or weep for the fear of her living child.
At this point. An interruption.
“You forget about the poor terrified Israeli children. The rain of rockets from Gaza.” Never for a moment are they forgotten. On the pain of Israelis Obama is voluble.
Haaretz reports:
“He expressed his admiration for the citizens of Sderot who remained in place even though their homes had come under fire. ‘Israelis must not suffer a threat to their lives, to their schools,’ he said, adding that ‘if missiles were falling where my two daughters sleep, I would do everything in order to stop that.’”
I do not join in his admiration or extend my hand in sympathy. For three reasons:
First: I cannot mourn the suffering of Israelis until the suffering Palestinians is mourned in just proportion—100 to 1, 1000 to 1, so much louder should the wails of mourning be for the Palestinians. Second: I refuse to equate the violence with which an oppressed people resists oppression with the violence of their oppressors. That terrible equation—“both sides this,” “both sides that”— is corrupt and pernicious moral algebra. And third: so long as Israel uses the victimhood of Jews as a shield, excuse, and weapon to continue the oppression of the Palestinians, I will not, can not, add my voice to the chorus of sympathy for Israeli dead and wounded, for that chorus will be used to further a terrible agenda which I oppose.
May there come a time when my grief can flow freely and equally toward all suffering. But that time is not now. I have chosen sides.
Obama is a complex man, capable of holding ambiguities and contradictions, aware of the vast abundant varieties of experience, knowing otherness, knowing the pain and anger of outsiders, knowing what happens when dreams are shattered. I know he knew these things, perhaps knows them still, because I’ve read his Dreams from My Father. The man who receives dreams from his father, knew—knows—how to hear all sides of himself and others. It is not easy to be angry with him. I want to love him. But I fear that he has signed a terrible bargain with his silence, a pact with the devil of power and empire: His dream for the dreams of the Palestinians. Their death warrant is signed. He is complicit. He has learned what presidents must do. Sign death warrants. For multitudes. For generations upon generations.
This is his first lesson in killing. After the first, it becomes easier.
Osha Neumann’s memoir, Up Against the Wall Motherf**er: A Memoir of the Sixties with Notes for Next Time, was recently published by Seven Stories Press.
Dear Friends of Gaza,
The Free Gaza mercy ship, SPIRIT OF HUMANITY, left port in Cyprus this
morning on an emergency mission to besieged Gaza. Aboard the ship are
desperately needed medical supplies and 21 passengers and crew, including
doctors, human rights workers, journalists, and two parliamentarians from
Spain and Italy.
We've just received word from the ship (as of 3:15am UST / 1:15am GMT)
that they are surrounded by Israeli Naval gunboats. The warships are
demanding that the SPIRIT OF HUMANITY return to Cyprus. We are insisting
to reach Gaza and complete our peaceful mission.
The Israelis have not yet attacked our unarmed ship, but it is URGENT that
everyone immediately CALL the Israeli government and demand that they STOP
threatening the SPIRIT OF
HUMANITY!
CALL
Mark Regev in the Prime Minister's office:
+972 2670 5354 or +972 5 0620 3264
mark.regev@it.pmo.gov.il
Shlomo Dror in the Ministry of Defence:
+972 3697 5339 or +972 50629 8148
mediasar@mod.gov.il
The Israeli Navy Spokesperson:
+ 972 5 781 86248
There is a good article today in the Guardian on how human rights organizations are pressuring the UN to investigate the war crimes being committed by Israel. These include:
• Using powerful shells in civilian areas which the army knew would cause large numbers of innocent casualties;
• Using banned weapons such as phosphorus bombs;
• Holding Palestinian families as human shields;
• Attacking medical facilities, including the killing of 12 ambulance men in marked vehicles;
• Killing large numbers of police who had no military role.
You can find the article at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/13/gaza-israel-war-crimes
It was not possible to sleep here for two nights now. The events and the images of death and carnage of children, of policemen, of people that look like my mother and my son and my sister and my friends were simply too much. Gaza has run out of stretchers and many are now carried to hospitals (which are running out of supplies) and morgues on commercial street signs, in blankets or simply by their limp limbs. Three mosques were destroyed. I recalled the Israeli attacks on the Church of Nativity which was minor compared to this. I was watching Israel shell the University in Gaza city including its faculty of science and a residence dorm for female students and was thinking of my university and my lab and office at Bethlehem University. I was then shocked into more horrific scenes and news. In one house five young sisters killed. In another six family members including four children killed while eating breakfast. In a scene that haunted me where four children were killed with their mother, I saw rescue workers try frantically to pull the remaining surviving girl whose legs were crushed under a huge boulder from the roof. As some of them were calming her down and working hard, just next to them other workers pulled the dead body of her sister (looked like 3-4 year old). They quickly covered her but I think her sister noticed. Sometimes the dead are envied for their suffering has ended. Her suffering is just beginning. I thought of all the thousands of relatives of all the victims and how they feel…..I thought of friends I lost and talks with people in Gaza...I thought of my mother who at 76 has seen so much suffering and still she cried at the new images of new atrocities…
My heart aches and struggles with my scientist brain. The latter wants to focus on facts and figures. The attack in its second day was in the words of Israeli leaders “the beginning” and is intended “to send Gaza back decades”. So far over 300 were killed and over 1000 injured (200 of those critically), 35% women, children and elderly. I examine numbers of homes, police stations, civil society building destroyed. I read the Al Mezan Center for human rights which rationally states that most Gaza victims are civilians. But even my rational mind refuses to deal with these things. How could it handle just that one image of the young girl’s anguished pained look under the rubble of her house and so tears stream down again to to try to wash the image to no avail…..How could my mind examine rationally the statements of “leaders” saying this carnage is not the fault of the bombers and war criminals, but of Hamas!
Protests were organized around the world and more are being planned. The demonstrations helped vent some frustration and we hope will herald a reawakening of the heart of humanity that has been sputtering. But we hope it will go much farther to changing the rotted system of elites in power ignoring people’s rights for political expediency and for profit.
In the Bethlehem demonstration, we pounded on the permanently closed gate of the apartheid wall with deafening sound and the soldiers in the tower started to through stun grenades and tear gas. Injuries were sustained for activists....Our lungs still ache but our hearts ache more for the criminality of the apartheid regime, and the collaboration of the world governments. The Israeli occupation army killed two protesters with live ammunition in other parts of the West Bank.
Can someone asks western media or the Wetsern governments ruled by elite racists who keep spouting the nonsense about "Hamas" and "rockets" (projectiles that are militarily of little use and have no explosives, killed one person this year), why targeting civilian police stations, mosques, homes with children, ports, fishing vessels, streets, and more in one of the most densely populated areas on earth murdering hundreds of civilians would be an acceptable action (I don’t say response because Israel was killing people and massacring them for 60 years before)? And what would they expect from a starving 1.5 million people to do? Especially when one million of those are refugees or displaced people denied their rights to return to their homes and lands for 60 years while settlers live across the borders on their lands in areas like “Sderot” and “Netviot”? Would they not expect some resistance from some of those? Isn’t that codified in International law for the right of occupied people to resist including violently? (note that I personally support civil forms of resistance). Even if one buys the US/Israeli government propaganda, would it be acceptable to bomb cities in Europe and the US for any perceived or actual crime of a portion of their society or even their leaders (Bush and Blair in Iraq?)?
But again I think it is not best for me to try and reason things through in such times of calamities and little sleep. I got so many letters of support but please redirect your letters and energies elsewhere. Redirect them to challenge the injustice directly. Jesus made a statement directly relevant for us today:
"You are the earth's salt. But if the salt should become tasteless, what can make it salt again? It is completely useless and can only be thrown out of doors and stamped under foot. You are the world's light - it is impossible to hide a town built on the top of a hill. Men do not light a lamp and put it under a bucket. They put it on a lamp-stand and it gives light for everybody in the house.”
It is thus the time when people who claim they want peace and justice to stop talking about it and actually work for it. Put your lamp higher. It is time for real change...It is time for a world Intifada (uprising against injustice). It is time to do something concrete (like throwing our shoes at someone?)
Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD
In Bethlehem, Occupied Palestine
http://qumsiyeh.org
LONDON
Wednesday 31 December, 2 - 4pm outside Israeli Embassy
Thursday 1 January 2 - 4pm outside Israeli Embassy
Friday 2 January 2 - 4 pm. Outside the Egyptian Embassy, . 26 South Street, London, W1K 1DW. Call for Egypt to open the border immediately.
SATURDAY 3 JANUARY. DEMONSTRATION AND RALLY. Assemble 2pm Parliament Square, W1. Nearest tube Westminster
GLASGOW
Saturday 3 January 12 noon. Outside Lloyds TSB St Vincent Street then assemble for demo at Blytheswood Square 2pm
EDINBURGH
Saturday 3 January 12 noon. Foot of the Mound, Princes Street
BRISTOL
Centre, opposite the Hippodrome, Tuesday - Friday 5.00 - 6.00 and Saturday 3.00 - 4.00.
CARDIFF
Wednesday 31 December New Year Vigil. Nye Bevan Statue, Queen Street
PORTSMOUTH
Saturday 3 January 11am, Guildhall Square
Organised by Portsmouth Network for a Just Settlement of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, and Portsmouth Stop the War Coalition
HULL
Saturday 3 January, 11am. Queen Victoria Square.
The following is a list of vigils and demonstrations to take place this week in different US cities against the Israeli attacks on Gaza, which have resulted in the death of dozens, if not hundreds, of civilians. The list was compiled by the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation.
Most of the demonstrations are today, so please take a quick look at what's going on in your city.
ARIZONA
Tucson
Tuesday, December 30, 5:00PM-6:00PM
Vigil in front of the Israel Center, 3822 E River Rd
Contact: Racheli Gai racheli@sonoracohousing.com
CALIFORNIA
Los Angeles
Tuesday, December 30, 4:30 pm
Israeli Consulate: 6380 Wilshire Blvd.
Contact: 213-251-1025, answerla@answerla.org
San Diego
Tuesday, December 30, 4PM
Federal Building, Broadway and First, Downtown
San Francisco
Tuesday, December 30, 5:00PM
Israeli Consulate, 456 Montgomery St
Powell and Market
Contact: 415-821-6545 answer@answersf.org
COLORADO
Colorado Springs
Tuesday, December 30, 2008, 4:30PM-5:30PM
Protest, Acacia Park, corner of Nevada Ave and Bijou St
Sponsored by: Colorado Antiwar Coalition and CSaction.org
Contact: info@protestcolorado.org, 719-460-2836
Denver
Tuesday, December 30, 5:00PM
Meet on the West side of the Capitol
Contact: Rima, 303-829-5848
CONNECTICUT
New Haven
Wednesday, December 31, 12PM
Federal Building, 141 Church St (between Chapel and Elm Sts.)
Sponsored by Middle East Crisis Committee, ANSWER-CT and other local organizations
Contact: 203-606-0319, connecticut@answercoalition.org
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
Washington, DC
Tuesday, December 30, 4:30 pm
State Department: 22nd St & C St NW
Contact: 202-544-3389 x14, dc@answercoalition.org
Friday, January 9, 12:00PM
Lafayette Square and march to Upper Senate Park
Contact: National Association of Muslim Women, namaw01@gmail.com
FLORIDA
Fort Lauderdale
Tuesday, December 30, 5:00 pm
Federal Building: 299 E. Broward Blvd.
Contact: 954-707-0155, FtLauderdale@answerfl.org
Ocala
Tuesday, December 30, 12:00 pm
Cather near the Ocala Lockheed facility, located in the SE quadrant of the county just off Maricamp Road (Rte 464) near Emerald and Oak
Sponsored by: Marions for Peace, CFCC students and Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW)
Contact: Marions for Peace, Delphine Herbert, MarionsforPeace@gmail.com
Tampa
Tuesday, December 30, 4:30 pm
N Dale Mabry Hwy and W Spruce St
GEORGIA
Atlanta
Tuesday, December 30, 4:00PM
Outside the Israeli Consulate, 1100 Spring St. NW
Organizers: Emory Advocate for Justice in Palestine and other local groups
Contact details:Saba Khalid, 770-597-0276, skhali3@emory.edu
HAWAII
Honolulu
Tuesday, December 30, 4-6PM
At the Federal Building (along Ala Moana Blvd.), 300 Ala Moana Blvd
Initiated by Friends of Sabeel Hawaii, with support from World Can't Wait-Hawaii, and others.
Contact details: Margaret Brown, mbrown@lava.net
ILLINOIS
Chicago
Friday, January 2, 2009, 3:00PM
Tribune Plaza, 435 N Michigan
IOWA
Cedar Rapids
Tuesday, December 30, 12-2PM
150 1st Ave. NE, Wells Fargo Building
Contact: Jeremy J. Brigham, 319-363-7675
MARYLAND
Baltimore
Tuesday, December 30, 4-5PM
War Memorial Plaza
N. Gay and E. Lexington
Contact: Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 410-366-163
MASSACHUSETTS
Boston
Wednesday, December 31, 2:00PM
Copley Square
Contact: Boston Coalition for Palestinian Rights, info@bcpr.net, (617) 491-2313
Details to be announced
Contact: 857-334-5084, boston@answercoalition.org
MICHIGAN
Dearborn
Tuesday, December 30, 4PM
Human Chain Protest
Gathering at corner of Warren and Chase in Dearborn. Following the protest a memorial service will be held at Byblos Banquet Hall, 7258 Chase Road in Dearborn at 5:15 PM. Program will end at 6:30 PM.
Contact: Congress of Arab American Organizations, Osama Siblani / 313.505.4889
Kalamazoo
Tuesday, December 30, 4PM
Michigan Ave in front of the Federal Building
Lansing
Friday, January 2, 12:00-1:00PM
In front of the State Capital Building, Michigan & Capital Aves.
Vigil for Peace
Contact: Michigan Peace Team, 517-484-3178,
www.michiganpeaceteam.org
MINNESOTA
Various
Protests at Senator Amy Klobuchar and Congressman Keith Ellison's offices
Tuesday December 30th
10 am-closing
No "holding their feet to the fire" but instead hold them accountable.
U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar
Office of Senator Klobuchar
Minneapolis
1200 Washington Avenue South, Suite 250
Minneapolis, MN 55415
Main Line: 612-727-5220
Main Fax: 612-727-5223
Toll Free: 1-888-224-9043
Rochester Office
1134 7th Street NW
Rochester, MN 55901
Main Line: 507-288-5321
Fax: 507-288-2922
Moorhead Office
121 4th Street South
Moorhead, MN 56560
Main Line: 218-287-2219
Fax: 218-287-2930
Iron Range Office
Olcott Plaza, Suite 105
820 9th Street North
Virginia, MN 55792
Main Line: 218-741-9690
Fax:218-741-3692
Keith Ellison office
Minneapolis office is located at:
2100 Plymouth Ave North
Minneapolis, MN 55411
For directions you can call our office, 612-522-1212
NEW HAMPSHIRE
Concord
Tuesday, December 30, 3PM
In front of the State House
Contact: New Hampshire Peace Action, 603-228-0559
NEW JERSEY
New Brunswick
Tuesday, December 30, 4-6PM
Corner of Albany and George Sts.
NEW MEXICO
Albuquerque
Tuesday, December 30, 12-2PM
New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science
1801 Mountain Rd, NW (in Old Town)
Contact: Called by Stop the War Machine, 505-401-4808,
stopthewarmachine@comcast.net
Tuesday, December 30, Evening
Candlelight vigil in front of the Federal Courthouse (near Lomas and 3rd St.)
Contact: Middle East Peace and Justice Alliance, Katherine Hughes- Fraitekh 480-9008, kcelav@aol.com or Iris Keltz 220-1994, of the Middle East Peace & Justice Alliance
NEW YORK
Buffalo
Tuesday, December 30, 4:30PM
Corner of Elmwood and Bidwell Aves.
NY City
Tuesday, December 30, 5:00 pm
Israeli Consulate: 800 2nd Ave (b/w 42nd and 43rd Sts)
Contact: 212-694-8720, nyc@answercoalition.org
Rochester
Tuesday, December 30, 4:00PM-5:00PM
Demonstration in front of Federal Building
Contact: Mike Connely, 271-2678
OHIO
Toledo
Tuesday, December 30, 5-7PM
Secor and Central
Contact: Northwest Ohio Peace Coalition
Youngstown
Tuesday, December 30, 1-3PM
Demonstration
In front of the Thomas D. Lambros Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse, 125 Market St
Contact: Arab American Community Center, 330-759-9186
OREGON
Portland
Tuesday December 30, 2008
Gather at 4:30 and Rally 5:00 pm
Where: Federal Building, Downtown Portland, SW 3rd & Madison
Organized by: Americans United for Palestinian Human Rights, Portland
Peaceful Response Coalition, and others.
Contact: (503) 344-5078
PENNSYLVANIA
Philadelphia
Tuesday, December 30, 4:30PM
Demonstration at Israeli Consulate, 1880 JFK Blvd
Contact: Sue Rouda, 215-724-1618, sue.rouda@gmail.com
Friday, January 2, 12 Noon
S. 15th Street between Walnut and Locust Streets
Contact: Bubbes and Zaydes for Peace in the Middle East, phillyjewishpeace.org
Pittsburgh
Wednesday, December 31, 2008, 4:00PM-6:00PM
Rally at the Federal Building, 1000 Liberty Ave
Sponsors: Pittsburgh Palestine Solidarity Committee, Unitarian Universalists for Justice in the Middle East,
Muslim American Society - Pittsburgh Chapter, CAIR Pittsburgh Chapter,
Middle East Peace Forum - Pittsburgh
Contact: Kate, pittsburgh-psc.org, 412-614-0264
RHODE ISLAND
Providence
Wednesday, December 31, 6-7PM
Burnside Park (opposite Kennedy Plaza)
Contact: Martha Yager, AFSC-SENE, 401-521-3584 or MYager@afsc.org
SOUTH CAROLINA
Columbia
Wednesday, December 31, 5-6PM
In front of the State Capitol Building
Gervais and Main St.
Contact: Women in Black, 803-446-2772
TEXAS
Dallas
Tuesday, December 30, 2008, 12:00PM-3:00PM
In front of JFK Memorial on the Grassy Knoll
Friday, January 2, 2009, 3:30PM
Dallas Forth Worth Protest, Earl Cabell Federal Building, 1100 Commerce St
Contact: Suha Suleiman, drsuha@tm.blackberry.net
Houston
Tuesday, December 30, 2008, 4-5:30PM
Gather at Mandell Bridge (Mandell St at Highway 59)
Contact: rwcsr1@yahoo.com
San Antonio
Tuesday, December 30, 6-7PM
Candle Light Silent Prayer Vigil for Peace
Around the Peace Pole in front of the Brackenridge Village, University of the Incarnate Word, enter at 4301 Broadway
You are invited to bring candles.
VERMONT
Burlington
Tuesday, December 30, 4:15PM
Main St. Landing, Burlington
1 Main St.; corner of Main & Battery Sts.)
MEET in Burlington at Main Street Landing at 4:15 to march to Representative
Welch’s, Senator Leahy’s, and to Senator Bernie Sander's offices, to
arrive at the top of Church St. at 5pm to stand in solidarity with the
vigil opposing further war profiteering and war crimes--the US Occupation
of Iraq.
This march is endorsed by Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel
(VTJP), Peace and Justice Center, and the International Socialist
Organization (ISO).
TO ENDORSE THIS ACTION OR FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:
hilarymartin@riseup.net or gypsy7@riseup.net
Montpellier
Tuesday, December 30, 4:30PM
Vigil in front of City Hall on Main St
Contact: Debra, 802-476-3154, debra@vtlink.net
VIRGINIA
Norfolk
Tuesday, December 30, 4:30-6:30PM
St. Paul's Blvd. and City Hall Ave. across from the old St. Paul's Church
Contact: Christine Hoppe, 757-628-8279, cthoppe10@yahoo.com
WASHINGTON
Bellingham
Tuesday, December 30, 12 Noon
Federal Building, corner of Magnolia and Cornwall
Contact: Whatcom Peace and Justice Center
Seattle
Saturday, January 3, 12:00 noon - 2:00 pm
Westlake Park: 4th and Pine
Initiated by Voices of Palestine
Contact: general@voicesofpalestine.org
Tacoma
Tuesday, December 30, 2008, 5:00pm
In front of the Courthouse at Pacific Ave and 19th St
TAKE ACTION
1. Contact the White House to protest the attack and demand an immediate cease-fire. Call 202-456-1111 or send an email to comments@whitehouse.gov.
2. Contact the State Department at 202-647-6575
3. Contact your Representative and Senators in Congress at 202-224-3121 or find contact info for your Members of Congress by clicking here.
4. Contact your local media by phoning into a talk show or writing a letter to the editor. To find contact info for your local media, click here.
5. Organize a local protest or vigil and tell us about it by clicking here.
FPIF Commentary
Apartheid By Any Other Name
Ronald Bruce St John | February 1, 2007
Editor: John Feffer, IRC
Former President Jimmy Carter’s latest book, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, has generated considerable comment, most of it negative. Articles and reviews run a narrow gamut from circumspect criticism to personal attacks on the author. Virtually no one has addressed the core argument of the book: that Israeli policy toward the Palestinian population in the West Bank is akin to South African policy toward the non-White majority during the apartheid era. A reasoned discussion of this question has serious implications for any attempt to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.
The Practice of Apartheid
The term “apartheid” is of Dutch-Afrikaans origin and translates literally as “apartness.” Apartheid was a system of racial segregation enforced in South Africa from 1948 to 1994 to provide a legal framework for perpetual economic, political, and social dominance by people of European descent. The creation of bantustans, tribal reserves for the indigenous Black inhabitants of South Africa and South-West Africa, was an integral part of the apartheid’s racial segregation policies. The White minority in South Africa considered the 10 bantustans as “homelands” -- nominally sovereign nations -- for the Black majority. Actually, they operated more like the Indian reservations in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
To the casual visitor, apartheid could appear to be a relatively benign system. In practice, however, it was a brutal regime in which a minority employed the full resources of the state to control, dominate, and oppress the majority.
Resident in South Africa in 1983-85, I experienced apartheid first hand. It was a system in which White people lived in large houses with swimming pools, and Black people lived in shacks, often made from flattened tin cans. White people drove fancy cars, like a Mercedes Benz or BMW. Black people walked long distances to work or to return to their “homeland.” In a restaurant, no Black server would dare to look a White customer in the eye. If a Black server spilled a dish or broke a plate, he was often cashiered on the spot. “After all,” one White restaurant owner once told me, “there are plenty more where he came from.”
Israeli Policy in the Occupied Territories
In Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, Jimmy Carter portrays the dramatic growth in Israeli settlements over the last three decades, together with the road system and utilities built to support them. Outside East Jerusalem, there were some 7,000 settlers in the Occupied Territory in 1977. Today, 260,000 settlers live in the West Bank along with 2.5 million Palestinians. Exact figures are difficult to obtain, but it would appear that the more than 200 Israeli settlements on the West Bank occupy less than 10% of the land. But because their footprint does not reflect land set aside for security barriers, roads, and utilities, the settlements control more than 40% of the land.
This settlement process has regularly deprived Palestinians of basic human rights and freedoms, including the right to life and liberty of person, the right to work, and the right to freedom of movement. Palestinians are prohibited from using or even crossing many of the key roads connecting the settlements with each other and with Israel itself. And dozens of Israeli checkpoints are in place on roads the Palestinians can use, inhibiting vehicular and pedestrian traffic. The impact on Palestinians of this spider web of barriers, restrictions, and controls became clear when I worked in early 2002 with the Adam Smith Institute in London to develop parameters for a future land corridor, linking the Gaza Strip and West Bank in an independent Palestinian state.
In mid-November 2006, Peace Now, an Israeli group advocating Palestinian self-determination in the West Bank, leaked official information that documented widespread land theft by Israel. The data showed that Palestinians privately owned 39% of the land held by Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including large blocs Israel planned to keep in any future peace agreement. Nevertheless, settlement construction has continued in the West Bank. In early September 2006, the Housing Ministry issued tenders for the construction of 690 new housing units in the West Bank. In late December 2006, Israel announced plans to construct a Jewish settlement at Maskiot, the first new settlement in the West Bank in 10 years. While Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was visiting Israel in mid-January 2007, the Ministry of Construction and Housing, issued a tender for the construction of 44 new housing units in the settlement city of Ma’aleh Adumim.
Construction of the so-called security fence, what Carter terms the “imprisonment wall,” accentuates the impact of new and expanded settlements in the West Bank. The fence weaves in and out, sometimes following the pre-1967 boundary, more often not. Largely built on Palestinian land, it separates Palestinians from Palestinians, dividing and compartmentalizing them. Javier Solana, the European Union foreign policy chief, said he was “shocked” when he visited Israel in late January 2007 and saw the extent to which the combination of Jewish settlement and security fence construction was cutting into land Palestinians wanted – and needed – for a two-state solution. He urged the Israelis to freeze West Bank settlements and stop construction of the security fence.
Critics Abound
Jimmy Carter is many things -- an ex-president, Nobel laureate, humanist, and author -- but he is not an academician or scholar, something he readily admits. His book includes numerous quotes, with no footnotes, and it contains errors of fact that greater documentation would likely have corrected. It also includes controversial interpretations, based on his intimate knowledge of the region and its leaders, that a more disciplined approach could have strengthened. Unapologetic, Carter has defended his work with the exception of a single sentence on page 213 that implies Palestinians would not have to end their suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism until Israel accepts international law and the goals of the 2003 roadmap for peace. Carter has admitted his phraseology here was faulty and told his publishers to remove the sentence from subsequent editions.
The controversy Carter’s book has raised, primarily among American Jews and a few Middle East experts, is surprising. An early critic, Emory University professor Kenneth W. Stein, resigned in protest from the Carter Center, charging Carter with factual errors, omissions, and plagiarism in the book. The Simon Wiesenthal Center, which describes itself as “one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations,” issued a press release claiming that Carter had abandoned all objectivity, unabashedly acting as a “virtual spokesman for the Palestinian cause.” Dennis Ross, long-time Middle East envoy, claimed Carter used maps in the book that Ross had created, mislabeling them in the process. Carter denied the charge.
Other commentators have traveled a lower road. Alan M. Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor, first described Carter’s use of the word apartheid as “outrageous.” In a more recent article, “Ex-President for Sale,” he charged that Carter had “been bought and paid for by Arab money.” In an article in the English language edition of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, journalist Shmuel Rosner asked rhetorically if Carter was anti-Semitic, suggesting in a circumspect conclusion that he was not as anti-Semitic as some people but any trace of anti-Semitism in a former president “is much more important.” An unidentified guest on a recent Fox News talk show spent over five minutes criticizing the book because its timeline did not mention the holocaust, suggesting that was sufficient reason to consign it to the trash bin. Finally, an anonymous columnist for Asia Times, writing under the nom de plume Spengler, described Carter as “the most egregious dork in US politics” and the Palestinians as “the exemplar of a self-exterminating people in the modern world.”
These attacks and many others demonstrate that the commentary to date has centered on almost every aspect of the book and its author except the important issue it raises. Have successive Israeli governments pursued a settlement policy in the West Bank intentionally designed to thwart the creation of an economically and politically viable Palestinian state with secure, contiguous borders? Does Israeli policy in this regard constitute apartheid?
Is Israeli Policy Apartheid?
In 1973, the UN General Assembly adopted the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. In Article III, it defined the “crime of apartheid” as applying to “inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group…over another racial group…and systematically oppressing them.” Based on this definition, Israeli policy in the West Bank cannot technically be defined as apartheid because it lacks the racial component.
This is not to say racism is not an issue in Israel. Consider the public statements of Avigdor Lieberman, the most recent member of Ehud Olmert’s governing coalition. Lieberman’s most provocative plan calls for dividing Arabs and Jews into two homogenous states, a policy Arab Israeli critics describe as racist. When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice hastened to meet with Lieberman during her mid-January 2007 visit to Israel, a Haaretz editorial entitled “Down with Racism” commented: “Rice’s meeting with Lieberman was like giving a stamp of approval to the racist policies he and his party have adopted.”
About the same time, a clandestine videotape appearing on Israeli television showed a Jewish settler in Hebron confronting, cursing, and spitting on an Arab neighbor. In a mid-January 2007 op-ed in the Jerusalem Post, Yosef (Tommy) Lapid, a former deputy prime minister and justice minister under Ariel Sharon, expressed the thinking of many Israelis: “there is no reason or justification for the thuggery of the kind demonstrated time after time by the residents of the Jewish settlement in Hebron toward their Arab neighbors.” While the video was news, the behavior it captured was not new. I witnessed something similar 30 years ago during my first visit to Hebron.
Article 7 of the 2002 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court lists apartheid as one of several “crimes against humanity.” In so doing, it sheds new light on the Israeli case. The crime of apartheid is defined as inhumane acts such as torture, imprisonment, or the persecution of an identifiable group on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, or other grounds “committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.” When the emphasis shifts to an identifiable national, ethnic or cultural group, as opposed to a racial group, Israeli policy in the West Bank clearly constitutes a form of apartheid with an effect on the Palestinian people much the same as apartheid had on the non-White population in South Africa.
In any case, the media storm in the United States over Carter’s use of the word apartheid remains difficult to understand since Israelis themselves have long used the word to describe Israeli policy in the Occupied Territory. This helps explains why the book has drawn so little attention in Israel. As one example, Shulamit Aloni, a former education minister under Yitzhak Rabin, in early January 2007 published an article, “Yes, There is Apartheid in Israel,” in which she candidly acknowledged “the government of Israel practices a brutal form of Apartheid in the territory it occupies. Its army has turned every Palestinian village and town into a fenced-in, or blocked-in, detention camp.”
Some critics go further in applying the term apartheid beyond the occupied territories. UCLA professor Saree Makdisi, in a mid-December op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle, criticized Carter’s book because the author limited his discussion of apartheid to the West Bank. Makdisi argued the concept of apartheid was equally applicable to Jewish and non-Jewish citizens within Israel itself. On that score, the Arab Center for Alternative Planning in mid-January 2007 revealed the results of a recent poll that showed that per capita Gross Domestic Product in the Israeli Jewish sector was three times that of the Israeli Arab sector.
What Next?
That which we call apartheid, to echo Shakespeare, by any other name would smell as rotten. Israeli policy in the West Bank is a form of apartheid in intent and implementation. Ethnic-based, as opposed to race-based, it shares an important characteristic with the South African model. Both have their genesis in the desire by the minority to control land occupied by the majority. To achieve this result, the Israelis have imposed a legal framework on the Palestinians in the West Bank that ensures perpetual economic, political, and social dominance.
Guarded optimism surrounds the proposed resurrection of stalled Mideast peace talks with members of the international quartet, the European Union, UN, United States, and Russia. Negotiators propose to leapfrog the moribund road map and move the parties toward direct negotiations aimed at a final resolution of the conflict. In so doing, the Bush administration talks of increasing Palestinian confidence in a two-state solution, thereby elevating those Palestinians who advocate such a solution and undermining those who reject a permanent peace. To progress toward this result, the first step must be to separate myth from reality. The West Bank has become a place of bantustans, isolated cantons, that divide and constrict, often illegally, historic Arab lands. If not dismantled, Jewish settlements and the security fence under construction collectively will doom any chance for a durable peace based on a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians.
Ronald Bruce St John, an analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus (www.fpif.org) has published extensively on Middle East issues for almost three decades. His recent publications include the Historical Dictionary of Libya (1991, 1998, 2006) and Libya and the United States: Two Centuries of Strife (2002).
Published by Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF), a joint project of the International Relations Center (IRC, online at www.irc-online.org) and the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS, online at www.ips-dc.org). ©Creative Commons - some rights reserved.
Recommended citation:
Ronald Bruce St John, "Apartheid by Any Other Name," (Silver City, NM and Washington, DC: Foreign Policy In Focus, February 1, 2007).
Web location:
http://fpif.org/fpiftxt/3951
http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/stories/ 2006/11/29/1129edcarter.html
APARTHEID
Israelis adopt what South Africa dropped
By JOHN DUGARD
Published on: 11/29/06
Former President Jimmy Carter's new book, "Palestine: Peace Not
Apartheid," is igniting controversy for its allegation that Israel
practices a form of apartheid.
As a South African and former anti-apartheid advocate who visits the
Palestinian territories regularly to assess the human rights
situation for the U.N. Human Rights Council, the comparison to South
African apartheid is of special interest to me.
On the face of it, the two regimes are very different. Apartheid was
a system of institutionalized racial discrimination that the white
minority in South Africa employed to maintain power over the black
majority. It was characterized by the denial of political rights to
blacks, the fragmentation of the country into white areas and black
areas (called Bantustans) and by the imposition on blacks of
restrictive measures designed to achieve white superiority, racial
separation and white security.
The "pass system," which sought to prevent the free movement of
blacks and to restrict their entry to the cities, was rigorously
enforced. Blacks were forcibly "relocated," and they were denied
access to most public amenities and to many forms of employment. The
system was enforced by a brutal security apparatus in which torture
played a significant role.
The Palestinian territories - East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza
- have been under Israeli military occupation since 1967. Although
military occupation is tolerated and regulated by international law,
it is considered an undesirable regime that should be ended as soon
as possible. The United Nations for nearly 40 years has condemned
Israel's military occupation, together with colonialism and
apartheid, as contrary to the international public order.
In principle, the purpose of military occupation is different from
that of apartheid. It is not designed as a long-term oppressive
regime but as an interim measure that maintains law and order in a
territory following an armed conflict and pending a peace settlement.
But this is not the nature of the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
Since 1967 Israel has imposed its control over the Palestinian
territories in the manner of a colonizing power, under the guise of
occupation. It has permanently seized the territories' most desirable
parts - the holy sites in East Jerusalem, Hebron and Bethlehem and
the fertile agricultural lands along the western border and in the
Jordan Valley - and settled its own Jewish "colonists" throughout the
land.
Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories has many features
of colonization. At the same time it has many of the worst
characteristics of apartheid. The West Bank has been fragmented into
three areas - north (Jenin and Nablus), center (Ramallah) and south
(Hebron) - which increasingly resemble the Bantustans of South Africa.
Restrictions on freedom of movement imposed by a rigid permit system
enforced by some 520 checkpoints and roadblocks resemble, but in
severity go well beyond, apartheid's "pass system." And the security
apparatus is reminiscent of that of apartheid, with more than 10,000
Palestinians in Israeli prisons and frequent allegations of torture
and cruel treatment.
Many aspects of Israel's occupation surpass those of the apartheid
regime. Israel's large-scale destruction of Palestinian homes,
leveling of agricultural lands, military incursions and targeted
assassinations of Palestinians far exceed any similar practices in
apartheid South Africa. No wall was ever built to separate blacks and
whites.
Following the worldwide anti-apartheid movement, one might expect a
similarly concerted international effort united in opposition to
Israel's abhorrent treatment of the Palestinians. Instead one finds
an international community divided between the West and the rest of
the world. The Security Council is prevented from taking action
because of the U.S. veto and European Union abstinence. And the
United States and the European Union, acting in collusion with the
United Nations and the Russian Federation, have in effect imposed
economic sanctions on the Palestinian people for having, by
democratic means, elected a government deemed unacceptable to Israel
and the West. Forgotten is the commitment to putting an end to
occupation, colonization and apartheid.
In these circumstances, the United States should not be surprised if
the rest of the world begins to lose faith in its commitment to human
rights. Some Americans - rightly - complain that other countries are
unconcerned about Sudan's violence-torn Darfur region and similar
situations in the world. But while the United States itself maintains
a double standard with respect to Palestine it cannot expect
cooperation from others in the struggle for human rights.
John Dugard is a South African law professor teaching in the
Netherlands. He is currently Special Rapporteur (reporter) on
Palestine to the United Nations Human Rights Council.
--
Yesterday, Israel invaded the Gaza Strip, from where they had withdrawn 9 months ago. Isralei forces have Access for journalists was restricted in anticipation of the invasion. Israeli forces arrested a third of the Palestinian parliament, and have Several organizations have issued statements condemning it.
Here are some news and statements on the invasion.
Derechos Human Rights strongly condemns the invasion, the restrictions on press freedom and the violations to the democratic process.
Israeli Troops and Armor Surge Into Gaza
By Laura King and Ken Ellingwood
The Los Angeles Times
Wednesday 28 June 2006
The Jewish state presses for release of a soldier captured by militants. Officials say there is no plan to seize the Palestinian territory.
Gaza City - Israeli troops and tanks, backed by fierce aerial bombardment, punched their way into the southern Gaza Strip early today, hours after Israel declared that time was running out for Palestinian militants to free an Israeli soldier seized in a cross-border raid.
The offensive was by far the largest since Israel unilaterally pulled its troops out of the seaside territory more than nine months ago. In the intervening months, Israel has responded to Palestinian militants' rocket attacks with airstrikes and artillery barrages.
But this is the first time since the withdrawal that large concentrations of Israeli forces have entered the restive, densely populated coastal territory.
The attack began late Tuesday when Israeli warplanes blew up a bridge in central Gaza, with loud booms reverberating across Gaza City - a move Israeli military officials said was meant to prevent the captors of Cpl. Gilad Shalit, 19, from moving him.
Later, two other bridges and a power plant were struck, sending billows of white smoke into a night sky lighted by flames and flares.
The air offensive in effect sliced Gaza into three sectors and knocked out power to large swaths, though electricity was restored at least temporarily in Gaza City and other northern areas. There was no immediate word on any Palestinian casualties or the number of Israeli troops that crossed into Gaza.
Military analysts said the incursion was the first phase of an operation that would intensify, possibly to include targeting Hamas leaders, unless Shalit is released.
"We are trying to make it clear to the Palestinian Authority and terrorist organizations that we're very serious about this and about Cpl. Shalit's safety and quick return home," said Capt. Noa Meir, an Israeli military spokeswoman.
Officials said Israel did not want to seize the Gaza Strip, which it occupied for 38 years.
"We have no interest in returning to a place we have left. We seek dialogue, not a bloodbath," Israel's infrastructure minister, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, said early today. "If they return the soldier, sit down at the negotiating table - we're out. There's nothing for us there."
In the hours before the strike, Palestinians girded for attack, topping bulldozed mounds of sand along urban thoroughfares with barbed wire and laying what appeared to be homemade explosives in the expected path of Israeli tanks massed just across the border.
Against the backdrop of battle preparations by both sides, the Palestinians' ruling Hamas movement and the rival Fatah faction announced Tuesday that they had tentatively agreed on a political platform that could lead to negotiations with Israel.
However, the move appeared to be more of an effort to present a symbolic united front at a time of crisis than to genuinely alter the hard-line stance that has led to the Hamas-dominated government's diplomatic and economic isolation. The Islamist Hamas movement emphasized that it was still not willing to acknowledge Israel's right to exist.
The offensive was sparked by an audacious cross-border raid Sunday in which Palestinian militants captured Shalit and killed two other soldiers. Two of the Palestinian attackers were killed.
The consortium of Hamas-linked groups claiming to hold Shalit warned Tuesday against any attempt to rescue him, saying it would result in failure and bloodshed. That was a chilling and probably deliberate reminder to Israelis that the last time Palestinian militants managed to seize an Israeli soldier, in 1994, he was subsequently killed in an Israeli rescue raid.
"The soldier is in a secure location to which the Zionists' reach does not extend," Mohammed Abdelal, a spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees, one of three groups thought to have taken part in the raid, told reporters in Gaza City.
The purported captors have demanded the release of Palestinian prisoners who are female or younger than 18 in exchange for information about Shalit, but have provided no proof he is alive.
Israel said no prisoner exchange was being contemplated.
Israeli military sources said they believed Shalit was being held in southern Gaza, a stronghold for militant Palestinian groups that have engaged in abductions of foreigners and Palestinian political rivals.
The Israeli troop incursion was concentrated east of the southern border town of Rafah. But the scale and intended duration of the military push were not clear.
In the initial offensive, Israeli soldiers did not enter Gaza City or its immediate environs, where in some neighborhoods masked militants flooded the streets and mosque loudspeakers called on people to resist.
"Take up your rifles and fight!" a senior leader of Hamas' military wing, Nizar Rayan, said in a broadcast exhortation.
Complex mediation efforts led by Egypt continued Tuesday. Because Shalit holds dual French-Israeli citizenship, French diplomats were also involved, but they were close-mouthed about their role.
The United States also urged restraint on Israel's part.
"There really needs to be an effort now to try and calm the situation," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters en route to Pakistan.
Seeking to step up the pressure on the Hamas government, Israel closed its border crossings with Gaza on Monday. Combined with a naval blockade, the closure has effectively barred the importation of food, fuel and other goods. Israeli media reported that government leaders also were considering cutting off electricity and water.
Vice Premier Shimon Peres said Israel was asking governments to withhold donations to the Palestinian Authority until the soldier is freed.
Peres also said it appeared that Hamas' political leader, Khaled Meshaal, a hard-liner who is based in Damascus, the Syrian capital, was responsible for Sunday's attack - the most explicit public accusation against Meshaal from a senior Israeli official.
"It's clear that Khaled Meshaal gave the order for this operation, and he wants to destroy prospects for peace," Peres told reporters after visiting Shalit's parents in the Galilee region.
In the streets of Gaza City on Tuesday, the mood was one of anger and defiance, with many saying that Palestinians should not free the Israeli soldier without getting something in return.
Atop makeshift barricades of sand, concrete blocks and debris, young Palestinian boys played with toy rifles. Aerial drones and other aircraft could be heard circling overhead, and Israeli gunships were visible through the heat haze offshore in the Mediterranean.
Adding to the jittery atmosphere, a car exploded Tuesday close to the Gaza City residence of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who was not in the building at the time.
One man, described as a Hamas militant, was killed and several others were wounded. Palestinians called it an assassination by Israel, but the Israeli military denied any involvement.
The announcement of a political agreement by Hamas and Fatah came after weeks of negotiations, and after Abbas said last month that he would put the question of whether to recognize Israel to Palestinian voters in a referendum.
Under the tentative agreement, Abbas would be empowered to hold negotiations with Israel but any agreements reached would require the approval of the Hamas-dominated parliament.
The document appeared to fall far short of international and Israeli demands on Hamas. Israel dismissed the accord as a "diplomatic non-starter."
The negotiations over a Hamas-Fatah political pact and the capture of Shalit have laid bare the divisions within Hamas.
The group's military wing, thought to report primarily to exiled leaders in Damascus, said it took part in the raid that brought about the soldier's capture. The Hamas-led government, meanwhile, urged that the soldier not be harmed.
"We don't want to reach a situation of bloodshed," government spokesman Ghazi Hamad, who speaks fluent Hebrew, told Israel's Army Radio.
Defense Minister Amir Peretz said during a visit Tuesday to the agricultural community of Kerem Shalom, where the Palestinian attack took place, that Israel had no choice but to respond decisively to a raid on its soil.
---------
King reported from Gaza City and Ellingwood from Jerusalem.
Wednesday 28 June 2006
Gaza City, Gaza Strip - Israeli forces arrested one-third of the Hamas-led Palestinian Cabinet and 20 lawmakers early Thursday and pressed their incursion into Gaza, responding to the abduction of one of its soldiers.
Israeli warplanes also buzzed the summer home of Syria's president, accused by Israel of harboring the hard-line Hamas leaders its blames for masterminding the kidnapping.
Palestinian witnesses told The Associated Press that Israeli tanks and bulldozers entered northern Gaza before daybreak Thursday, adding a second front to the Israeli action in Gaza that began early Wednesday when thousands of Israeli troops crossed into southern Gaza.
The Israeli military denied it moved into northern Gaza.
Adding to the tension, a Palestinian militant group said it killed an 18-year-old Jewish settler kidnapped in the West Bank. Israeli security officials said Eliahu Asheri's body was found buried near Ramallah. They said he was shot in the head, apparently soon after he was abducted on Sunday.
Army Radio said the arrested Hamas leaders might be used to trade for the captured soldier. Israel had refused earlier to trade prisoners for the soldier's release.
Palestinian security officials said eight ministers of the 24-member Hamas-led Cabinet and 20 lawmakers were arrested, among them Deputy Prime Minister Nasser Shaer and Labor Minister Mohammed Barghouti.
No deaths or injuries were reported in the Israeli actions. But the warplanes knocked out Gaza's electric power plant, raising the specter of a humanitarian crisis. The Hamas-led government warned of "epidemics and health disasters" because of damaged water pipes to central Gaza and the lack of power to pump water.
Although the Israeli action was sparked by the abduction of the soldier, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government also is alarmed by the firing of homemade rockets on Israeli communities around Gaza and support for Hamas in the Arab world, especially from Syria.
In a clear warning to Syrian President Bashar Assad, Israeli airplanes flew ovecr his seaside home near the Mediterranean port city of Latakia in northwestern Syria, military officials confirmed, citing the "direct link" between his government and Hamas. Israeli television reports said four planes were involved in the low-altitude flight, and that Assad was there at the time.
Syria confirmed Israeli warplanes entered its airspace, but said its air defenses forced the Israeli aircraft to flee.
In Gaza late Wednesday, Israeli missiles also hit two empty Hamas training camps, a rocket-building factory and several roads. Warplanes flew low over the coastal strip, rocking it with sonic booms and shattering windows. Troops in Israel backed up the assault with artillery fire.
The area's normally bustling streets were eerily deserted, with people taking refuge inside their homes.
Witnesses reported heavy shelling around Gaza's long-closed airport, which Israeli troops took over. Dozens of people living near the airport fled to nearby Rafah.
The militant Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades said it fired a rocket with a chemical warhead at the Israeli town of Sderot Wednesday night, the first such claim. The Israeli military said it did not detect a rocket fired then. Al Aqsa is linked to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah faction.
In Rafah, Nivine Abu Shbeke, a 23-year-old mother of three, hoarded bags of flour, boxes of vegetables and other supplies. "We're worried about how long the food will last," she said. "The children devour everything."
Prior to the latest incursion into northern Gaza, the Israeli army dropped leaflets warning residents of impending military activity.
Dozens of Palestinian militants - armed with automatic weapons and grenades - took up positions, bracing for the attack.
Anxious Palestinians pondered whether the incursion, the first large-scale ground offensive since Israel withdrew from Gaza last year, was essentially a "shock and awe" display designed to intimidate militants, or the prelude to a full-scale invasion.
Olmert threatened harsher action, though he said there was no plan to reoccupy Gaza. Abbas deplored the incursion as a "crime against humanity."
The Israeli assault came as diplomatic efforts to free the 19-year-old Israeli soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, bogged down with Hamas demanding a prisoner swap and Israel refusing, demanding Shalit's unconditional release. Shalit was abducted by Hamas-linked militants on Sunday and is believed to be in southern Gaza.
"We won't hesitate to carry out extreme action to bring Gilad back to his family," Olmert declared.
Abbas and Egyptian dignitaries urged Assad to use his influence with Khaled Mashaal, the Hamas leader exiled in Syria, to free Shalit. Assad agreed, but without results, said a senior Abbas aide.
As for Mashaal, Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon said the hard-line Hamas leader, who appears to be increasingly at odds with more moderate Hamas politicians in Gaza, is in Israel's sights for assassination.
"Khaled Mashaal, as someone who is overseeing, actually commanding the terror acts, is definitely a target," Ramon told Army Radio.
Israel tried to kill Mashaal in a botched assassination attempt in Jordan in 1997. Two Mossad agents injected Mashaal with poison, but were caught. As Mashaal lay in a Jordanian hospital, King Hussein of Jordan forced Israel to provide the antidote in return for the release of the Mossad agents.
The United Nations and European Union on Wednesday urged both Israel and the Palestinians to step back from the brink and, echoing a statement from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, to give diplomacy a chance.
The White House kept up its pressure on Hamas, saying the Palestinian government must "stop all acts of violence and terror." But the U.S. also urged Israel to show restraint.
"In any actions the government of Israel may undertake, the United States urges that it ensures that innocent civilians are not harmed, and also that it avoid the unnecessary destruction of property and infrastructure," said White House press secretary Tony Snow.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged restraint in a phone call to Olmert, saying he had spoken with Assad and Abbas and asked them to do everything possible to release the soldier. Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa called on the U.S. to assume its role as "honest broker" and to make the Palestinian-Israeli conflict its top priority in the Middle East.
Hamas' negotiators' tentative acceptance Tuesday of a document that Abbas allies claimed implicitly recognizes Israel appeared beside the point a day later, with Israel saying no political agreement can substitute for Shalit's freedom.
On Wednesday, Palestinian militants braced for a major strike, fanning out across neighborhoods, taking up positions behind sand embankments and firing several rockets into Israeli communities bordering Gaza. Civilians stockpiled food, water, batteries and candles after warplanes destroyed the coastal strip's only power plant, and main roads linking north to south.
Gaza's economy was already in the doldrums before the Israeli assault, a result of five years of Israeli-Palestinian violence and an international aid boycott that followed Hamas' parliamentary election victory in January. The Israeli assault threatened to turn a bad situation into a disaster - underscoring the extent to which hopes have been dashed following the optimism that accompanied Israel's pullout.
Palestinian plans for high-rise apartments, sports complexes and industrial parks in lands evacuated by Israel have given way to despair, with rising poverty, increasingly violent relations with Israel and a looming threat of civil war.
ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN ADVOCACY GROUP CONDEMNS GAZA INVASION
June 29, 2006, Jerusalem and Washington, DC: The Alternative Information Center (AIC), a joint Palestinian-Israeli organization, has demanded that the Israeli army immediately withdraw from Gaza.
A statement released Thursday by the AIC, a partner of the Advocacy Project, describes the invasion as part of a larger plan by the Israeli government to overthrow the new Hamas-led Palestinian government. The statement also calls for the withdrawal of Israeli settlers from the Palestinian Occupied Territories and the release of Palestinian prisoners.
According to reports, the Israeli authorities arrested more than 60 Hamas officials Thursday, including Palestinian Deputy Prime Minister Nasser Shaer.
AIC's statement follows, unedited:
Stop the Attack in Gaza Immediately
The Alternative Information Center (AIC) strongly condemns the Israeli army's invasion of the Gaza Strip. This invasion is a punishment for the results of the democratic Palestinian elections held in January and is irrelevant to the security of the state of Israel and that of its citizens. Moreover, in the course of this invasion, civilians have been, and will continue to be, killed by Israeli soldiers, Palestinian infrastructure has been destroyed and houses demolished. These practices are in violation of the Geneva Convention and should be considered crimes of war.
Since the Palestinian elections, Israel has consistently escalated the military tension, assassinating, injuring and kidnapping Palestinians. Since January, Israel has assassinated 172 Palestinians, mostly unarmed civilians, 50 of whom were killed during the month of June alone.
Israeli attacks against the Palestinians were especially felt in Gaza, which has suffered massive artillery bombing and a continued siege by Israeli forces. Only a few dozen trucks have been allowed to pass through the Karni crossing each day, to feed a population of over 1.3 million people (who normally require hundreds of trucks per day for a steady food supply). So far, even threats of starvation have failed to convince the Palestinian people to overthrow its democratically elected government.
Israeli attacks on the Palestinian population have nothing to do with the security of Israeli citizens, but rather are part of Prime Minister Olmert's war against a democratically elected government, with the objective to overthrow it.
The kidnapping of 8 Palestinian ministers and 21 members of Parliament, as well as threats to assassinate Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Hanie, make it clear that Israeli Prime Minister Olmert and his Minister of Defense Amir Peretz plan to forcibly topple the Palestinian government.
The current incursion in the Gaza Strip does not concern the safety of POW Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier. This incursion unnecessarily risks Shalit's life and safety. The use of force prior to even considering an exchange of prisoners demonstrates that Israel's political goals are of higher priority than Shalit's life.
The Alternative Information Center maintains that the only way to peace in the region is through the complete withdrawal of the Israeli army and Israeli settlers from all of the Palestinian Occupied Territories, including occupied Jerusalem; the liberation of all Palestinian political prisoners; recognition of the Right of Return of the Palestinian refugees according to UN Resolutions 194 and 242; and full respect for the individual and national rights of the Palestinian people.
The Alternative Information Center calls on the international community to condemn the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip and to demand their immediate withdrawal.
* For the Alternative Information Center, visit http://www.alternativenews.org/
* For AP intern Sarah Sach's blogs from Jerusalem, visit http://www.advocacynet.org/cpage_view/06aic_SarahsBlogs_67_430.html
* For AP's work on civil society in Palestine, visit http://www.advocacynet.org/cpage_view/palestine_palestinehome_16_55.html
#
The Advocacy Project is based in Washington DC. Phone +1 202 332 3900; fax +1 202 332 4600. To visit the AP web site for information about our current projects and to make a donation online, please go to: www.advocacynet.org. For questions or comments about the AP and its projects, please email us at info@advocacynet.org.
Israel is also threatening to widen the war, sending war planes over Syria to buzz the home of Syrian President Bashir al-Assad, whose government the U.S. has been actively working to bring down for more than two years.
The Palestinian population of Gaza, one of the poorest and most densely populated areas of the world, was already suffering severe shortages of food, medicine and other necessities due to Israels blockade of Gaza and the cut-off of international aid to the West Bank and Gaza, in effect since January 2006. The new Israeli assault has resulted in the cut-off of power, water and food supplies to most of the people in Gaza. The situation constitutes a deliberately created humanitarian disaster.
The A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition (http://www.answercoalition.org/ ), which has organized the largest anti-war protests in Washington, DC and in other U.S. cities over the past five years, including the historic demonstration of over 100,000 people supporting Palestinian rights in Washington on April 20, 2002, is calling for and supporting protests at Israeli embassies, consulates and U.S. federal buildings, to demand:
The immediate end to the U.S.-supplied Israeli assault on Gaza
The release of all Palestinian political prisoners from Israeli jails
An end to all U.S. aid to Israel
An end to colonial occupation, support for self-determination for the Palestinian people including the right of return.
No new U.S.-Israeli war against Syria.
A.N.S.W.E.R is also calling on justice-minded individuals and organizations to contact Congress and the White House demanding an immediate end to U.S. aid to Israel. Click here to send your message. For more information go to http://www.answercoalition.org/
The ANSWER Coalition and the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation are initiating a protest/press conference at 12 noon at the Israeli Embassy in Washington DC. For more information, contact ANSWER at 202-544-3389 or or MAS Freedom Foundation at 202-396-1288.
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
Act Now to Stop War & End Racism
http://www.answercoalition.org/
dc@internationalanswer.org
National Office in Washington DC: 202-544-3389
ALERT - ISRAEL/PALESTINE
27 June 2006
Israeli authorities restrict Gaza press access
SOURCE: Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), New York
(CPJ/IFEX) - The following is a CPJ press release:
Israeli authorities restrict Gaza press access
New York, June 27, 2006 - The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned about Israeli government restrictions on journalists attempting to report from the Gaza Strip.
The Israel Defense Forces announced on Monday that Israeli passport holders and dual nationals would be prohibited from entering Gaza. "Due to the current security assessments journalists with Israeli citizenship or those holding a dual citizenship cannot enter the Gaza Strip at the present time," a statement said.
The restriction followed an attack on Sunday by Palestinian militants on an Israeli military post in which two soldiers were killed and a third abducted. Citing security concerns, Israeli authorities that day closed to all media the Erez crossing, the main passage from Israel into the Gaza Strip. The travel ban was lifted on Monday morning after protests from foreign journalists and the Foreign Press Association in Israel.
Authorities have often banned Israeli citizens from entering the West Bank and Gaza, but journalists are typically allowed to cross the border if they sign waivers absolving Israeli authorities of responsibility.
"While we appreciate Israel's security concerns in light of Sunday's attack, there can be no justification for keeping journalists from doing their jobs," CPJ Executive Director Ann Cooper said. "We call on Israel to put an immediate end to all restrictions on journalists seeking to cover Gaza."
CPJ is a New York-based, independent, nonprofit organization that works to safeguard press freedom worldwide. For more information, visit http://www.cpj.org
For further information, contact Joel Campagna (x103) or Ivan Karakashian (x104) at CPJ, 330 Seventh Ave., New York, NY 10001, U.S.A., tel: +1 212 465 1004, fax: +1 212 465 9568, e-mail: mideast@cpj.org, jcampagna@cpj.org, ivan@cpj.org; Internet: http://www.cpj.org
This is a message I got forwarded:
WANTED EYE WITNESS TESTIMONY TO ISRAELI WAR CRIMES
In a continuing effort to obtain the arrest of
high-ranking Israeli officers, when they travel
outside of Israel, several legal organisations are
looking to receive testimonies from internationals who
witnessed war crimes, whilst in the West Bank or Gaza.
These organisations are aware that every international
who has travelled to Palestine will have witnessed the
crimes of the occupation, however lawyers are seeking
cases which are strong enough to be submitted to
court, based on evidence provided by actual witnesses
to crimes.
The crimes they are looking for are:
House Demolitions particularly where they were
extensive or carried out deliberately as a form of
punishment
Killings
Torture.
If you witnessed any of these, please write a short
email to the UK lawyer Daniel Machover at
dmachover@hickmanandrose.co.uk. You will need to
state:
1. Who was the victim
2. The date and time it happened
3. What happened preceding and after the event
4. Whether any Palestinians made a complaint at the time
and who has their testimony such as a local lawyer or
human rights organisation
5. What supporting evidence you have, such as photos or
video footage (please state whether this is unedited
or not.)
Cases are being prepared in several countries around
the world, so it doesnt matter which country you are
living in, your testimony could prove useful
somewhere.
You do not have to make a decision now as to whether
you want to be a witness in court. This is a long-term
legal project, with the possibility that your
testimony might never be used - the lawyers at this
point are gathering information in order to build
cases. Lawyers will not use your name without your
permission
We are also seeking information on which commanders
and which military units were operating in which areas
at which times (now and in the past.) If you can
provide any names, even if you were not a witness to a
crime, this could prove useful.
For more information about this, please read news
story at
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3221339,00.html
If English is not your first language, help will be
given with translation. Please also forward this
email to any Palestinian living abroad who witnessed
or was a victim of war crimes and would like to
participate.