Report, The Electronic Intifada, 22 February 2010
A fellow at Harvard University's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Martin Kramer, has called for "the West" to take measures to curb the births of Palestinians, a proposal that appears to meet the international legal definition of a call for genocide.
Kramer, who is also a fellow at the influential Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), made the call early this month in a speech at Israel's Herzliya conference, a video of which is posted on his blog ("Superfluous young men," 7 February 2010).
In the speech Kramer rejected common views that Islamist "radicalization" is caused by US policies such as support for Israel, or propping up despotic dictatorships, and stated that it was inherent in the demography of Muslim societies such as Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip. Too many children, he argued, leads to too many "superfluous young men" who then become violent radicals.
Kramer proposed that the number of Palestinian children born in the Gaza Strip should be deliberately curbed, and alleged that this would "happen faster if the West stops providing pro-natal subsidies to Palestinians with refugee status."
Due to the Israeli blockade, the vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza are now dependent on UN food aid. Neither the UN, nor any other agencies, provide Palestinians with specifically "pro-natal subsidies." Kramer appeared to be equating any humanitarian assistance at all with inducement for Palestinians to reproduce.
He added, "Israel's present sanctions on Gaza have a political aim -- undermine the Hamas regime -- but if they also break Gaza's runaway population growth, and there is some evidence that they have, that might begin to crack the culture of martyrdom which demands a constant supply of superfluous young men." This, he claimed, would be treating the issue of Islamic radicalization "at its root."
The 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, created in the wake of the Nazi holocaust, defines genocide to include measures "intended to prevent births within" a specific "national, ethnic, racial or religious group."
The Weatherhead Center at Harvard describes itself as "the largest international research center within Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences." In addition to his positions at Harvard and WINEP, Kramer is "president-designate" of Shalem College in Jerusalem, a far-right Zionist institution that aspires to be the "College of the Jewish People."
Pro-Israel speakers from the United States often participate in the the Herzliya conference, an influential annual gathering of Israel's political and military establishment. This year's conference was also addressed by The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and, in a first for a Palestinian official, by Salam Fayyad, appointed prime minister of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority.
Kramer's call to prevent Palestinian births reflects a long-standing Israeli and Zionist concern about a so-called "demographic threat" to Israel, as Palestinians are on the verge of outnumbering Israeli Jews within Israel, and the occupied Palestinian territories combined.
Such extreme racist views have been aired at the Herzliya conference in the past. In 2003, for example, Dr. Yitzhak Ravid, an Israeli government armaments expert, called on Israel to "implement a stringent policy of family planning in relation to its Muslim population," a reference to the 1.5 million Palestinian citizens of Israel.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11091.shtml
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Monday, February 22, 2010
Public Service: Watch Mohammad Bakri's Jenin Jenin
By Gilad Atzmon
February 21, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- Jenin Jenin depicts the true story of Israeli colossal barbarism. There is no doubt left, the Jewish State is the ultimate enemy of humanity and humanism. It also presents the Palestinian ordeal facing the Zionist evil. Clearly, surviving the Israeli occupation is nothing but heroism.
February 21, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- Jenin Jenin depicts the true story of Israeli colossal barbarism. There is no doubt left, the Jewish State is the ultimate enemy of humanity and humanism. It also presents the Palestinian ordeal facing the Zionist evil. Clearly, surviving the Israeli occupation is nothing but heroism.
Soon after Jenin Jenin was released, after only three showings, the film was banned by the Israeli Film Board (2002), accusing the film of being libellous for calling itself a documentary despite documenting only one 'side' of the story. One may ask the Israeli Film Board whether they also ban holocaust documentaries for failing to present the Nazi or even the SS ‘side’ of the story.
Bakri petitioned the High Court of Justice against the censor for prohibiting the screening of the film on the grounds that it distorted the truth. After a long fight, the court rejected the censor's decision.
In 2004, the Israeli High Court finally upheld its earlier overturn of the ban, but joined the Film Board in labelling the film a "propagandistic lie," based on Israeli sources which acknowledged only 52 Palestinian deaths, 38 of whom Israeli sources argued were armed fighters.
In 2007, five IDF soldiers who participated in the Jenin refugee camp massacre sued the Cinamatheques in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem for screening the film in the midst of the ban, and sued Bakri for 2.5 million NIS for producing the film. In July 2008 Bakri was acquitted of the charges.
Jenin-Jenin earned two awards: the "Best Film" award at the Carthage International Film Festival, 2002, and the International Prize for Mediterranean Documentary Filmmaking and Reporting.
Lyad Samoudi the film's Executive Producer, was killed at Alyamoun at the end of the filming by Israeli soldiers on 23 June 2002.
Posted February 21, 2010
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Thursday, February 18, 2010
How Israel’s Lobby Challenges Rule of Law in America [Video]
This week the Iranian satellite television channel PressTV is broadcasting a 25 minute interview with IRmep director Grant F. Smith about the Israel lobby’s history of challenges to rule of law and governance in the United States. “Autograph” with Susan Modaress reviews key findings from the book “Spy Trade
Part 1:
Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F185JEbDvjc
Part 2:
Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-d9uq0QWjk
Part 3:
Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq1Rp4wD80E
The full video of this program may also be downloaded and viewed with the Windows Media Player at:
http://217.218.67.244:8181/getfile?file=program/Autograph/0208_ATG.wmv
or online with the MS Silverlight plug-in at:
http://www.presstv.com/programs/detail.aspx?sectionid=3510529
Audio MP3 files are available at:
http://www.IRmep.org/mp3/02082010PressTV_lo.mp3 (AM quality)
http://www.IRmep.org/mp3/02082010PressTV.mp3 (FM stereo quality)
Sunday, February 14, 2010
CALIFORNIA STUDENTS REFUSE TO SWALLOW ISRAEL’S LIES
Michael Oren: sorry, but you represent a Nazi state
By Khalid Amayreh
Michael Oren In trying to whitewash Israel’s cruel crimes against the Palestinian people, including the ongoing cruel campaign against the Gaza Strip, Israel’s ambassador to the United States Michael Oren made a mockery of human decency, freedom of speech and objective truth.During a lecture at the University of California-Irvine on Monday, 8 February, Oren tried to present Israel’s ugly face as that of a civilized, democratic state that shares basic western values such as human rights and civil liberties.
However, many students in the audience couldn’t just bear hearing the pornographic lies.
They heckled him, shouting “killers” and “how many Palestinians did you kill.”
Some of the pro-Zionist officials of UC-Irvine lost their nerves as the hasbara activity was transformed into a great embarrassment.
Earlier, the Muslim Students Union at the UC-Irvine condemned the presence of the ambassador of the apartheid state on campus.
“Oren personally participated in the Israeli Defense forces in wars that took place in Lebanon and Palestine. Oren and his partners should only be granted a speakers platform in the International Criminal Court.”
Infuriated by the students’ outcry against Israel’s nefarious crimes against the people of Gaza and other Palestinians and Lebanese, Zionist apologists have accused Muslim students on UC-Irvine campus of “demonizing Israel.”
Well, the truth of the matter is that it is not the students who are demonizing Israel; it is Israel that is demonizing itself by acting and behaving like a criminal, murderous state that murders children by the hundreds and then claims it did by mistake.
Hence, we can say that Oren was interrupted not because he was Jewish, but rather because he represented a criminal state.
In fact, the students who confronted the representative of the thuggish entity should be applauded, cheered and saluted for their very moral behavior.
Indeed, if sufficient people would act similarly, namely confront and disrupt Israeli representatives wherever they set foot in the capitals of the world and on campuses, perhaps the lives of many helpless children, women and other civilians can be saved.
Some Zionist supremacists would invoke freedom of speech as if defending mass murder and genocide was protected by the American First Amendment. Well, the issue here is not freedom of speech; the issue is defending and justifying genocide.
Moreover, if Zionism and its evil representatives have a right to freedom of speech, then Nazism and its representatives should be accorded a similar right. After all, Zionism and Nazism are very much like tweedledee and tweedledum. They are two sides of the same coin.
Besides, since when did the Judeo-Nazi regime in occupied Palestine respect freedom of speech or any other freedom whenever non-Jews are concerned? Didn’t Israel bomb and destroy the Palestinian Radio station in Ramallah at the beginning of the Aqsa intifada? Didn’t the Israeli air force bomb and destroy the Aqsa TV studios and transmitters during Israel’s genocidal campaign last year?
More than two decades ago, Israel actually went as far as imposing a general power blackout all over the West Bank and Gaza Strip in order to prevent Palestinians from watching a speech by the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in Geneva. Hence, Israel is probably the last country on earth which can claim to be truly concerned about freedom of speech and other civil liberties.
Today, the Zionist messengers of lie, people such Michael Oren, are trying rather doggedly to justify or whitewash organized Jewish terror, which often assume a genocidal scale. Hence, good and honest people who value truth, peace and justice must challenge these evil and professional liars who are trying to turn the black into white and the murderers into victims.
The forces of peace and justice must strive as much as possible to narrow the horizons of these cruel racists and hateful liars.
Don’t let them get away with mendacity. Surround them wherever they go, make your presence felt in halls where they give lectures, confront them with the facts about what their Nazi state is doing, don’t hesitate to call the spade a spade. Be aggressive when need be, don’t be afraid to speak up, for it may very well be up to you whether a second genocidal onslaught against the already thoroughly tormented Gazans will be carried out.
The Palestinian people rely almost completely on the good will of honest people, very much like those brave students who confronted Oren, the ambassador of the country that thrives on murder, land theft and mendacious propaganda.
Finally, we must never underestimate the impact of student actions, especially on campuses in Europe and North America and elsewhere.
There go the people who will shape the future of the world in a few years’ time. These are the next generation of public-opinion shapers in our world.
We should also remember that it was very much thanks to campus action that the defunct apartheid regime in south Africa was isolated and finally defeated and dismantled.
More to the point, don’t you ever get confused between Judaism and Zionism? Judaism is not our enemy. Our problem with Zionist Jews is not because they are Jews, but rather because they are murderers, oppressors and land thieves. We don’t hate Israel because it is predominantly Jewish; we hate it because it is overwhelmingly evil.
Zionist Hasbara officials would love to hear pro-Palestinian activists attack or vilify Jews in order to smack the anti-Semitism canard in their faces. So, be careful, don’t play into their hands.
In fact, there are many conscientious Jews who sincerely support the Palestinian cause. We must never ever lump those good people with racist Zionists who embrace the Nazi-like Israeli policies against the Palestinians and other peoples of the Middle East.
Finally, never break the law, since doing so would be a self-defeating act. In the final analysis, our goal is not just to vent our frustration, but rather to expose the Nazi nature of the Israeli state.
http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2010/02/14/california-students-refuse-to-swallow-israels-lies/Israeli cult leader charged with enslavement, rape
Goel Ratzon has allegedly fathered 59 children by 23 wives.
Jerusalem (CNN) -- An Israeli man accused of having 23 wives and fathering 59 children was charged Sunday in a Tel Aviv court with multiple counts of sexual assault, rape, sodomy and enslavement.
Goel Ratzon, 60, was arrested last month.
Authorities charge that he lived in a compound with the 23 wives, having convinced them that he was omnipotent.
All the wives tattooed Ratzon's name and picture on their arms and the children's names are all derivatives of his name, according to the court papers.
Ratzon married his first wife in 1972, added a second wife in the early 1980s, and from 1991 added another 21 wives, according to the indictment.
He persuaded the women that he had the power to heal and curse, through which he gained "complete control of their lives, desires, thoughts, emotions and actions," the court papers say.
Ratzon spoke in court for first time last week, saying he was innocent, that everything was done with consent, and that any women who wished to leave could do so, Israeli media reported.
The indictment charges that the defendant "captured the women in a 'pseudo-family' structure that revolved around the worship of his image, making the birth of his children a supreme goal that the women must aspire to, and all this was to glorify him while serving and fulfilling all his needs."
Ratzon demanded that his wives and children completely obey all of his orders and has stringent rules and had a penalty system if they disobeyed him, the indictment alleges.
He also "abused his wives by trampling their self-worth and cut them off from any outside social contact including their families, and by this enslaved them to him and his desires," the court papers say.
The indictment includes allegations of rape and sodomy of two of his daughters, sexual assault of another daughter, and rape, assault and sodomy of four other girls.
Beyond the mental and physical control Ratzon had over his wives, he effectively controlled all of their finances, the indictment says. The women deposited major chunks of their social security payments and salaries into the family's account, paid for all of his living expenses and bought him all his property and anything he demanded, authorities charge.
Ratzon's cult has been known to the authorities for about 10 years, they said, but it was only about six months ago they succeeded in convincing one of the women to file a complaint. That brought about his arrest last month.
Zionism unmasked
By Jeff Gates
15 February 2010
Jeff Gates analyses Zionism as “a strategy for targeting thought and emotion as a means to influence behaviour” and “a mental state that manifests as a dispersed form of internalized nationalism—a diaspora—that binds to an extremist enclave those who may never set foot there”. He argues that Zionism "relies for its success on deception and self-deceit".
”Law is irrelevant to those who consider themselves above the law. Morality and conscience are of no concern to those who consider themselves The Chosen—by a god of their own choosing. Such a nationalist ideology has no place in a system of nation states dedicated to the rule of law.”
While Zionism is clearly a nationalist ideology, that narrow framing does the term an injustice as it is so much more.
Zionism is more accurately described as a strategy for targeting thought and emotion as a means to influence behaviour. Naïve Jews were its first victims when induced to identify with an enclave in the Middle East that President Harry Truman, a Christian Zionist, was induced to recognize as a “state”.
Zionism is first and foremost a mental state that manifests as a dispersed form of internalized nationalism—a diaspora—that binds to an extremist enclave those who may never set foot there. After 1967, this “state” became the “Land of Israel” based on a more expansive area seized by the Israel Defence Forces along with other occupied lands that Zionists claim a god gave them.
Zionism recruits by sustaining a shared sense of insecurity within the broader Jewish community. It progresses by marketing its perceived vulnerability and victimhood among those on whom it relies for financial, military and diplomatic support.
When, as now, policies of the Zionist state come under attack, media campaigns herald an outbreak of anti-Semitism and hatred—not for Zionism but for Jews, enhancing recruitment.
By choosing to identify their interests with those of Zionism, Jews choose to make themselves feel insecure. Zionism relies for its success not only on deception but also on self-deceit.
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Many well-informed Jews opposed Israel’s founding in 1948. By 1967, Jewish-Americans were active in the civil rights movement. With the Six-Day War, that activism became problematic. How could Jews back civil rights for Blacks while Zionism denied those rights to Palestinians?
That era marked a turning point both for Zionism and legitimate Judaism as many Jews abandoned civil rights activism when they could no longer reconcile their activism with Israeli oppression. Thus the present mental state of Barack Obama’s many Jewish Zionist advisers.
The Six-Day War induced more Jews to identify with Zionism as a defender of Jews. Yet now we know that war was a long-planned land grab destined to outrage Arabs and Muslims. When combined with a murderous occupation, decades of Israeli provocations were guaranteed to evoke the violent reactions required to rationalize a “war on terrorism”.
In terms of game theory war planning, today’s results were perfectly predictable—mathematically model-able within an acceptable range of probabilities. Once again Zionism targeted thought and emotion to manipulate behaviour by provoking antagonism and evoking extremism—the two key ingredients required to plausibly proclaim their insecurity.
When your numbers are few and your ambitions vast, what choice did Zionists have but to seduce and deceive a superpower so that our military would wage their wars for Greater Israel?
Peace is the opponent
Peace is a perilous “state” to be avoided at any cost by a nationalist ideology that thrives on serial crises wed to a perpetual state of conflict and fear. To realize the Zionist goal of hegemony over the Middle East requires a series of plausible “evil doers” and a persuasive narrative. Could Zionism be the reason we segued so seamlessly from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism? (See How Israel wages war on the US.)
Instead of the anticipated post-Cold War “peace dividend”, the US finds itself waging what Nobel economist Joe Stiglitz calls The three trillion dollar war—all of it borrowed, including 700 billion in interest expense.
In hindsight, the phony intelligence that induced us to war in the Middle East was traceable to Israelis, pro-Israelis or assets developed for that purpose such as Iraqi liar Ahmad Chalabi.
Other than those sharing a Zionist mental state, who had the means, motive, opportunity and, importantly, the stable nation-state intelligence to conduct such operations inside the US?
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Yet even now those responsible elude accountability and even scrutiny as cries of “anti-Semitism” are deployed to intimidate and misdirect—by manipulating thought and emotion.
At the end of World War II, the US claimed 50 per cent of the world’s productive power, ensuring we would have the world’s top-rated government bonds for at least two generations. When the Cold War drew to a costly close in 1989, the US had spent 15.9 trillion dollars on defence since 1948 (in 2010 dollars). Now a potential war without end has taken its place.
Americans have been induced to believe that the Zionist state is an ally. We are not alone in viewing Israel as a legitimate nation and a noble experiment to provide a “homeland” for a victimized people. That alluring storyline victimized the broader Jewish community while also laying waste to the nation that was first deceived to extend to Zionists the hand of friendship.
To escape the ravages of Zionism requires that we concede its duplicitous nature and make its operations transparent so that its perpetrators become apparent. As a long-deceived global public grasps its costs in blood and treasure, this mental state will be seen for what it is: a criminal state.
The psychopath within
In the clinical psychiatric literature, this “state” features interpersonal traits such as superficial charm, pathological lying, egocentricity, lack of remorse, and callousness that are regarded as characteristic of psychopaths. In order to betray, psychopaths first befriend. In order to defraud, they first establish a relationship of trust. Sound familiar?
Those who share such a mental state will happily incite hatred to catalyze a reaction and then claim they are the victims of hate. For those inhabiting this mental state, it appears rational and even desirable to provoke a response and then claim to be a target of anti-Semites. Inside this internal state, self-absorption is all-encompassing with arrogance its most visible trait.
Law is irrelevant to those who consider themselves above the law. Morality and conscience are of no concern to those who consider themselves The Chosen—by a god of their own choosing. Such a nationalist ideology has no place in a system of nation states dedicated to the rule of law.
Those sharing such a “state” pose too great a peril to be an object of pity or compassion. Accountability is the only appropriate response along with an initiative—deploying force as required—to secure any weapons of mass destruction that may be in their possession.
Such a state cannot be delegitimized because any legitimacy attained was integral to the fraud it inflicted on the community of nations. The issue at hand is how best to protect a peace-seeking world from a psychopathic ideology that assumed the appearance of legitimacy so that a Christian Zionist president could be deceived to recognize as a nation a criminal state.
Racist Israeli Occupation Violates The Dead As Well As The Living
The Wiesenthal Center is notorious for its pro-Israeli propaganda. It publishes flagrant lies, exaggerations and half-truths which are often presented as “academic and objective facts.” However, in truth, many of these findings are actually fabrications. This recently came to light with the publication, in June 2009, of Hunting Evil, by British Author Guy Walters, in which he characterized Simon Wiesenthal as “a liar-and a bad one at that.”
Moreover, the Center is notorious for trying to hide facts that would expose Israel’s ugly face. For example, the center is now objecting to the appearance of Richard Goldstone, the South African Jewish judge who investigated Israel’s crimes in Gaza last year, at New York University.
In a statement, the Los Angeles-based Center reportedly urged NYU President John Sexton, to deny Goldstone a platform to tell students what Israel really did in the Gaza Strip.
“Should Goldstone’s outrageous recommendations be adopted, international law will be used to render defenseless Israel against onslaught by non-state adversaries against its civilians.”
Well, the depravity and utter mendacity of the above statement should give us a clear idea about this evil body (the Wiesenthal Center) which claims to be dedicated to fighting racism and anti-Semitism while effectively promoting Israeli Nazism, even in its ugliest forms.
In the final analysis, what credibility does a “research center” that calls Israel “a defenseless state” have? A center as such has actually more to do with fornicating with language than with searching for the facts.
Lies, lies and lies
There is no doubt that lying is the modus operandi at the Wiesenthal Center. In recent years, the center has spearheaded a campaign to build “a Museum of Tolerance” right on top of a huge Muslim cemetery in the heart of Jerusalem.
The brutal ugliness of the Center’s behavior just goes beyond the pale of anything related to human decency. On the one hand, the center sees nothing wrong with crushing the bones and skulls of more than 70,000 human beings, buried in that ancient cemetery, known as Mamanullah (Sanctuary of God) or Mamilla. On the other, the rabbis at the center had the audacity and shamelessness to name the planned building “a museum of tolerance.” I believe that in a certain sense, not even the Nazis reached this level of mental depravity.
Needless to say, a museum of tolerance built on the crushed remains of the dead is the ultimate oxymoron.
Nonetheless, the barking dogs of Zionism don’t tire, trying to falsify the facts. In an article entitled “A proper site for a Museum of Tolerance,” published in the pro-Israeli Los Angeles Times on 12 February, Rabbi Marvin Hier claims that the planned construction of this Museum of Shame is perfectly legal and legitimate. To corroborate his morbid views, the founder and dean of the Wiesenthal Center cited verdicts by the Israeli supreme court authorizing the center to begin construction.
Well, since when can the courts system of a manifestly racist and criminal state be entrusted to establish and uphold justice? Do we always have to remind ourselves and the world that these are the very same courts that repeatedly authorized the Israeli army, the Jewish Wehrmacht, to commit atrocities, murder children, destroy homes, bulldoze farms, and carry out crimes against humanity?
Indeed, if Israel is a criminal state (numerous Jewish and Israeli intellectuals don’t dispute this characterization), then Israeli courts can very well be described as courts that legitimize the manifestly criminal policies and murderous practices of the thuggish state. They are criminal courts used as rubber stamps by criminal governments to effect decidedly criminal policies, very much like the Nazi justice system operated.
Hier dotes extensively on the rulings of Israeli courts, as if non-Jews could obtain true justice under these courts.
And in a cynical attempt to give a false impression that only a small minority of Muslims are objecting to the construction of a propaganda museum on the Muslim cemetery, the so-called rabbi also highlights opposition to the racist project by Islamic leader Sheikh Ra’ed Salah, whom he calls “notorious and extremist.”
It is very sad indeed that these openly-racist pseudo religious leaders are allowed to have their way, because then the message that this criminal act would communicate is that Zionism will not be content with hounding the living by incinerating them with White Phosphorus and banishing them to the four corners of the world, but will also go after the dead by crushing their bones and skulls and dumping their remains, well, God knows where.
It is also sad that these rabbis, such as Hier, who would leave no stone unturned when and if a Jewish cemetery is slightly desecrated any where in the world, feels perfectly comfortable playing the devil’s lawyer by making all sorts of satanic arguments about the permissibility of desecrating non-Jewish cemeteries.
Hier is a Chabad rabbi whose sect of Judaism views non-Jews in general as “lesser human beings,” or even animals. This should explain the logic of his center’s behavior and approach toward this issue.
There is no doubt that the construction of the evil museum right on top of the cemetery will be a criminal act with few parallels in the annals of history.
But it will also be a curse upon Zionism from now to the end of time since the ugly structure would embody man’s cruelty and intolerance toward his fellow man.
It would also vindicate the increasingly widespread view that Zionism is actually nothing less than Jewish Nazism, which means the world should deal with it with the same determination and same strength it dealt with Aryan Nazism.
http://www.politicaltheatrics.net/2010/02/racist-israeli-occupation-violates-the-dead-as-well-as-the-living/Homes Of 32 Palestinian Families In Jerusalem Face The Nightmare Of Demolition
Published: February 14, 2010
The Jerusalem-based Jerusalemite Foundation for Community Development has confirmed Saturday that the Israeli occupation authority (IOA) had notified 32 Palestinian families to vacate their homes before next week.
According to a statement issued by the foundation on Saturday, big numbers of IOF troops accompanied employees of the Jewish administration of Jerusalem municipality who posted the demolition notice at the entrance of a building in Beit Haneina suburb where 160 Palestinian individuals, half of them children, are living.
The demolition order, the foundation added, is set for execution next week, leaving the 32 families confused of what to do especially that all of them were Palestinian refugees who lost their homes in 1967 after the IOF troops occupied Jerusalem.
“We don’t want to experience another exodus, we have experienced more than enough… we have no alternative homes to go to”, said Roudha Abu Snene, one of the residents in the building in reaction to the note.
“I feel I am lost after reading that notice because I would lose the only home for me and for my family… they (Israelis) have imposed high taxes against me ten years ago which until now I am still paying.. I don’t know what to do or where to go? … I have bought this home with my own money … I thought I would be settled and I would live in peace with my family here, but it seems that my dream is starting to vanish”, underlined Hamadah, 55, also a resident of the building.
However, the lawyer of the building appealed the demolition order and filed a petition for temporary restraining order till all legal and engineering procedures are completed, asserted Muath Al-Zatari, the head of the foundation.
Za’atari accused the IOA of exploiting the current Palestinian political rift to demolish as many Palestinian homes in Jerusalem as it could, asserting that the IOA issued hundreds of demolition orders against Palestinian homes, and that it indeed demolished 104 homes of them over the past year.
He also shrugged off the allegations of the municipal mayor that the demolitions were meant to beautify the city, stressing that such statements were meant to ease international pressures against the IOA policies against the Palestinian people in the city.
http://www.politicaltheatrics.net/2010/02/homes-of-32-palestinian-families-in-jerusalem-face-the-nightmare-of-demolition/Tuesday, February 2, 2010
COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT CONTINUES IN THE GAZA STRIP
“Together we can end this occupation”
Jody McIntyre writing from Beit Hanoun, occupied Gaza Strip
Jody McIntyre writing from Beit Hanoun, occupied Gaza Strip
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| Saber Zanin volunteering in an orchard. (Beit Hanoun Local Initiative) |
The Israeli military recently dropped hundreds of leaflets warning Palestinian residents from the village of Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip not to travel within 300 meters of the border — the distance of Israel’s so-called “buffer zone.” In response, local activists marched to and nonviolently demonstrated inside the “buffer zone” against the illegal action. The Electronic Intifada contributor Jody McIntyre recently spoke with demonstration organizer Saber Zanin.
Jody McIntyre: Can you tell us about yourself?
Saber Zanin: My name is Saber Zanin. I am 31 years old, living in Beit Lahiya, in the northern Gaza Strip. I am a Palestinian who loves life, peace, justice and equal rights for all.
I come from a poor family, around 20 of us in all, from Beit Hanoun. In November 2006, our house, the house I lived in my whole life, was completely destroyed by Israeli air strikes, and then by a tank which came to finish the job. We don’t know why they chose to target our home, but this is an example of the collective punishment we face living in Gaza.
I had the idea to create a group of volunteers, to work together in the local community, to resist Israel’s occupation through nonviolent methods, and to encourage others to do the same. In September 2007, the “Local Initiative” was formed. Rather than relying on governmental institutions or foreign agencies, we work in a personal capacity, and rely on ourselves for everything we need. Altogether the group now consists of around 60 young men and women, from 17-35 years of age, and although we have no political affiliation, we all agree on socialist principles of helping those most in need, and on each individual’s freedom to express their own views.
The group works with all sections of society: women, children, people with disabilities and teenagers. In particular, we give priority to the farmers and residents working and living in the so-called “buffer zone.” As a group, we visit the residents and offer them aid brought by charities to Gaza (although this is small in amount, and limited in effect) for nothing in return, and we accompany the farmers who continue to work on their land, despite regularly being shot at by the Israeli military for doing so. We also work with the young kids in their area, taking them presents, playing games with them and making parties for them, as well as practicalities such as not going out onto the street in certain areas.
The people living in the “buffer zone” are the foundation of the Local Initiative. If there are any farmers who want help working on their land, we will go to help them. We have also organized protests against Israel’s wall in the occupied West Bank and the “buffer zone.”
We are always looking for ways to encourage others to join us in our popular resistance against the occupation, and as part of this we try to teach the local community about the human rights they possess: the right to freedom of expression, the right to live freely, the right to an education, to work, to health care, and to a home. We want people to know about their rights so that when they are taken away from them, they will fight for them.
JM: As someone who used to participate in armed resistance against the occupation, what made you adopt nonviolent resistance?
SZ: Any occupied people have the right to resist, and Palestinians are occupied by the Israelis. It is our fundamental right to resist against this occupation. I used to participate in armed resistance, but armed resistance isn’t everything. I am convinced that popular resistance, and protesting against the occupation through nonviolent methods, can actually achieve more than armed resistance, by gaining the sympathy and support for our struggle from people around the world. When we go to protest against Israel’s wall in the occupied West Bank, as they do in the villages of Bilin and Nilin, and now here in Beit Hanoun in Gaza as well, we have international activists marching with us, and the whole world is watching. Our demonstrations are nonviolent, so the Israeli army has no excuse to shoot at us and to kill us. I believe that this is one of the noblest ways of protesting against the occupation.
Last week, the Israeli military dropped hundreds of leaflets near the “buffer zone,” instructing residents not to go within 300 meters of the border. We reject this illegal de facto land grab, and in response organized a march to the “buffer zone” on Monday [11 January]. The march was under the slogan: “With popular resistance, we challenge the decisions of the Israeli occupiers.” We protested against the occupation through nonviolent means.
We will now be marching to the “buffer zone” every Monday. We will not be intimidated by the Israeli army’s threat, and we will never give up until the occupation is over.
JM: How can people living abroad support your struggle?
SZ: As we move into the new year, the Local Initiative is in urgent need of funds, in order to continue supporting the families living in the “buffer zone,” and to purchase materials in order to document the ongoing crimes of the Israeli occupation forces.
We truly hope that activists from around the world will support us. They could also write in the media against Israel’s crimes, organize demonstrations outside the Israeli embassy — some governments have even expelled the Israeli ambassador! In the UK an arrest warrant was issued for Tzipi Livni for the war crimes she committed against the people of Gaza, and this should serve as an inspiration for others to follow. Together, we can end this occupation.
Jody McIntyre is a journalist from the United Kingdom, currently living in Beit Lahiya in the occupied Gaza Strip. Jody has cerebral palsy, and travels in a wheelchair. He writes a blog for Ctrl.Alt.Shift, entitled “Life on Wheels,” which can be found at www.ctrlaltshift.co.uk. To contact Jody, and for more information about the Local Initiative, email jody.mcintyre AT gmail DOT com.
Israeli Court: Firing On Unarmed Peace Activists Is OK
Published: February 1, 2010
Israel: No Indictments in Tristan Anderson Shooting Case
Israels Justice Ministry has announced no soldiers will be indicted for shooting an American activist last March in the West Bank. The activist, Tristan Anderson, was critically injured when Israeli soldiers fired a high-velocity tear gas canister directly at his head in March. Anderson was taking part in a weekly nonviolent protest against Israels separation wall in the West Bank village of Nilin.
This is Tristan Anderson Before:
This is the heroic,non-violent protester After:
Israeli Police Who Put US Man In Coma Get Off Scot-Free
Published: February 1, 2010
Israeli authorities have cleared the police of the charge of inflicting coma-inducing head injury to an American during a protest against the erection of an Israeli barrier.
The officials claimed that there was no criminal intent on the part of the police, said The Washington Post, reporting on the follow-up to the March 2009 incident in the West Bank in which the 38-year-old Tristan Anderson was hit in the head with a high-velocity tear gas canister.
The victim has finally emerged from a months-long coma and can only communicate with basic sounds.
After the incident, the Israeli government said that the law enforcement agents could not be held responsible for the crime as the victim was injured at a demonstration against the Israeli-built apartheid wall in the West Bank village of Ni’lin.
Tel Aviv has also labeled the protest in question as ‘an act of war’ although Anderson’s head injury was sustained during a peaceful demonstration.
The family members of the peace activist have vowed to file a lawsuit against Tel Aviv.
Andersons’ lawyer, Michael Sfard, has argued that branding a civil demonstration as an ‘act of war’ could only mean that Israel is at war with civilians. “International law identifies the incident as a clear case of human rights abuse,” he said. “We will pursue this matter and take the government of Israel to court.”
The Post also reported that the rally Anderson attended was sponsored by the International Solidarity Movement, which has had legal battles with the Israeli regime, and two of its members have been killed in unrelated incidents involving Israeli forces in recent years.
Monday, February 1, 2010
VIOLENCE INTENSIFIES IN EAST JERUSALEM
Yesterday, we spent the day visiting with one of the evicted families in Sheikh Jarrah, today circumstances have changed as can be seen in the report and video below……
Nasser Gawi expelled from Sheikh Jarrah – settler detained, weapon seized
Settler attacks young boy in Sheikh Jarrah. Nasser Gawi and one settler have been expelled from the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah for 15 days after the settler attacked local residents and threatened them with an M-16.
At 7PM on Sunday night a settler occupying the Palestinian Gawi family house in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah fought neighborhood residents and threatened them with an M-16 automatic rifle.
The settler first threw rocks at the tent the Gawi family has stayed in since being evicted, provoking angry shouts from the family. When the settler descended to the street, he physically attached a neighborhood boy, shaking and pushing him. Other adults stepped in and the settler began pushing and eventually punched Nasser Gawi. Numerous blows were exchanged before the settler began wildly waving his M-16 rifle, he then cocked the gun and pointed it at neighborhood residents and internationals who were present.
The incident ended when the police arrived and after a few minutes siezed the settler’s gun. Though both Nasser Gawi and the settler were barred from returning to the neighborhood for 15 days, the settler returned to pick up personal belongings.
After his family was expelled in 1948 from what is now the state of Israel, the Gawi family was relocated to a refugee camp in East Jerusalem. The UN and Jordan allowed them to trade their food aid for permanent residence in houses in Sheikh Jarrah. After building a life in East Jerusalem the family was forcefully evicted from their house on 9 August 2009 and took residence in a tent outside their house. Now, after being attacked and threatened by a settler with a gun, Nasser Gawi has been expelled again from his living space yet again.
Read Maan post about the incident.
Background on Sheikh Jarrah
Approximately 475 Palestinian residents living in the Karm Al-Ja’ouni neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, located directly north of the Old City, face imminent eviction from their homes in the manner of the Hannoun and Gawi families, and the al-Kurd family before them. All 28 families are refugees from 1948, mostly from West Jerusalem and Haifa, whose houses in Sheikh Jarrah were built and given to them through a joint project between the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and the Jordanian government in 1956.
So far, settlers took over houses of four Palestinian families, displacing around 60 residents, including 20 children. At present, settlers occupy all these houses and the whole area is patrolled by armed private security 24 hours a day. The evicted Palestinian families, some of whom have been left without suitable alternative accommodation since August, continue to protest against the unlawful eviction from the sidewalk across the street from their homes, facing regular violent attacks from the settlers and harassment from the police.
The Gawi family, for example, had their only shelter, a small tent built near their house, destroyed by the police and all their belongings stolen five times. In addition, the al-Kurd family has been forced to live in an extremely difficult situation, sharing the entrance gate and the backyard of their house with extremist settlers, who occupied a part of the al-Kurd home in December 2009. The settlers subject the Palestinian family to regular violent attacks and harassment, making their life a living hell.
The ultimate goal of the settler organizations is to evict all Palestinians from the area and turn it into a new Jewish settlement and to create a Jewish continuum that will effectively cut off the Old City form the northern Palestinian neighborhoods. On 28 August 2008, Nahalat Shimon International filed a plan to build a series of five and six-story apartment blocks – Town Plan Scheme (TPS) 12705 – in the Jerusalem Local Planning Commission. If TPS 12705 comes to pass, the existing Palestinian houses in this key area would be demolished, about 500 Palestinians would be evicted, and 200 new settler units would be built for a new settlement: Shimon HaTzadik.
Implanting new Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank is illegal under many international laws, including Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The plight of the Gawi, al-Kurd and the Hannoun families is just a small part of Israel’s ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people from East Jerusalem.
Legal background
The eviction orders, issued by Israeli courts, are a result of claims made in 1967 by the Sephardic Community Committee and the Knesseth Yisrael Association (who since sold their claim to the area to Nahalat Shimon) – settler organizations whose aim is to take over the whole area using falsified deeds for the land dating back to 1875. In 1972, these two settler organizations applied to have the land registered in their names with the Israel Lands Administration (ILA). Their claim to ownership was noted in the Land Registry; however, it was never made into an official registry of title. The first Palestinian property in the area was taken over at this time.
The case continued in the courts for another 37 years. Amongst other developments, the first lawyer of the Palestinian residents reached an agreement with the settler organizations in 1982 (without the knowledge or consent of the Palestinian families) in which he recognized the settlers’ ownership in return for granting the families the legal status of protected tenants. This affected 23 families and served as a basis for future court and eviction orders (including the al-Kurd family house take-over in December 2009), despite the immediate appeal filed by the families’ new lawyer. Furthermore, a Palestinian landowner, Suleiman Darwish Hijazi, has legally challenged the settlers’ claims. In 1994 he presented documents certifying his ownership of the land to the courts, including tax receipts from 1927. In addition, the new lawyer of the Palestinian residents located a document, proving the land in Sheikh Jarrah had never been under Jewish ownership. The Israeli courts rejected these documents.
The first eviction orders were issued in 1999 based on the (still disputed) agreement from 1982 and, as a result, two Palestinian families (Hannoun and Gawi) were evicted in February 2002. After the 2006 Israeli Supreme Court finding that the settler committees’ ownership of the lands was uncertain, and the Lands Settlement officer of the court requesting that the ILA remove their names from the Lands Registrar, the Palestinian families returned back to their homes. The courts, however, failed to recognize new evidence presented to them and continued to issue eviction orders based on decisions from 1982 and 1999 respectively. Further evictions followed in November 2008 (Kamel al-Kurd family) and August 2009 (Hannoun and Gawi families for the second time). An uninhabited section of a house belonging to the al-Kurd family was taken over by settlers on 1 December 2009.
After verbal taunting, a settler in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah left the Gawi house which he and other settlers have occupied since August 2009. He descended the stairs with an M-16 and pushed a teenage boy. When neighborhood adults stepped in to protect the teenager, he pushed Nasser Gawi and then punched him. Seconds later the settler cocked his M-16 and pointed it wildly at the crowd that had gathered. In this video you can clearly see the first punch thrown by the settler and clearly hear the cock of his gun.
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