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This week, Israel turned 60 and with it came the 60th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba—the destruction and systemic expulsion of the Palestinian community. No other event has so drastically altered the course of events in the Middle-East and the scars of Palestinian dispossession continue to be the cause of great consternation across the region and the world today.

I have always found that while most people possess only a very basic understanding of the conflict, it is a subject for which they hold firm and emotionally stubborn opinions. Very few topics change a conversation into an argument so efficiently—even among those with no ethnic, religious or otherwise personal connection to the conflict. (more…)

The dark-haired 22-year-old in black T-shirt, blue jeans and red Crocs is understandably hesitant as he sits at a picnic table in the incongruous setting of a beauty spot somewhere in Israel. We know his name and if we used it he would face a criminal investigation and a probable prison sentence.

The birds are singing as he describes in detail some of what he did and saw others do as an enlisted soldier in Hebron. And they are certainly criminal: the incidents in which Palestinian vehicles are stopped for no good reason, the windows smashed and the occupants beaten up for talking back – for saying, for example, they are on the way to hospital; the theft of tobacco from a Palestinian shopkeeper who is then beaten “to a pulp” when he complains; the throwing of stun grenades through the windows of mosques as people prayed. And worse.

The young man left the army only at the end of last year, and his decision to speak is part of a concerted effort to expose the moral price paid by young Israeli conscripts in what is probably the most problematic posting there is in the occupied territories. Not least because Hebron is the only Palestinian city whose centre is directly controlled by the military, 24/7, to protect the notably hardline Jewish settlers there. He says firmly that he now regrets what repeatedly took place during his tour of duty. (more…)

The frontrunner for the Democratic U.S. Presidential nomination, Barack Obama, was apparently very impressed with the killing of Palestinian children and a Reuters cameraman yesterday. Obama voiced his support for Israel’s “right to defend itself” and condemned Jimmy Carter’s meeting with Hamas leader, Khaled Mashaal—even as bombs rained down on Gaza’s refugee camps.

Immediately following Wednesday’sskirmish near the Gazan border which resulted in the deaths of three IOF soldiers at the hands of Hamas fighters, Israel retaliated by… bombing the densely populated al-Bureij refugee camp.

I am always struck by the sensitivity of politicians when they choose to praise Israel in the midst of such glaring atrocities. (more…)

Israelis have no moral right to fight the Chinese occupation of Tibet. The president of the Israeli Friends of the Tibetan People, the psychologist Nahi Alon, who was involved in the murder of two Palestinians in Gaza in 1967 - as was revealed in Haaretz Magazine last weekend - chose to make his private “atonement” by fighting to free Tibet, of all places. He is not alone among Israelis calling to stop the occupation - but not ours. No small number of other good Israelis have recently joined the wave of global protest that broke out over the Olympics, set to take place in Beijing this summer. It is easy; it engenders no controversy - who would not be in favor of liberating Tibet? But that is not the fight that Israeli human rights supporters should be waging.

To fight for Tibet, Israel needs no courage, because there is no price to pay. On the contrary, this is part of a fashionable global trend, almost as much as the fight against global warming or the poaching of sea lions.

These fights are just, and must be undertaken. But in Israel they are deluxe fights, which are unthinkable. When one comes to the fight with hands that are collectively, and sometimes individually, so unclean, it is impossible to protest a Chinese occupation. Citizens of a country that maintains a military subjugation in its backyard that is no less cruel than that of the Chinese, and by some parameters even more so, and against which there is practically no more protest here, have no justification in denouncing another occupation. (more…)

“Archaeology has become a weapon of dispossession,” Yonathan Mizrachi, an Israeli archaeologist, said in a recent telephone interview with us. He was referring to the way archaeology is being used in Silwan, a Palestinian neighborhood in the oldest part of Jerusalem, where, we believe, archaeological digs are being carried out as part of a concerted campaign to expel Palestinians from their ancestral home.

That effort is orchestrated by an Israeli settler organization called Elad, a name formed from Hebrew letters that stand for “to the City of David.” For several years, Elad has used a variety of means to evict East Jerusalem Palestinians from their homes and replace them with Jewish settlers. Today Silwan is dotted with about a dozen such outposts. Moreover, practically all the green areas in the densely populated neighborhood have been transformed into new archaeological sites, which have then been fenced and posted with armed guards. On two of these new archaeological sites, Jewish homes have already been built. (more…)

At a time when a majority of Israelis support an open dialog with Hamas, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter is on his way to Damascus to meet with exiled Hamas leader, Khaled Mashaal.

Now don’t get me wrong: I am not at all impressed by Carter’s lukewarm criticism of the Israeli occupation (yes, I read his book) and Khaled Mashaal should be slapped for his pontifications about a third Palestinian uprising from the comfort Damascus while the people of Gaza are starving and exhausted. So in my opinion, the meeting will do little good. Nevertheless, if they want to meet, so be it.

But the stonewall face of Israel’s opposition to Palestinian democracy cannot stomach such a meeting and neither can their counterparts in Washington (including all three of the main Presidential candidates):

“US government policy is that Hamas is a terrorist organization and we don’t believe it is in the interest of our policy or in the interest of peace to have such a meeting,” spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.

(more…)

Today marks the anniversary of the Nazi German invasion and subsequent occupation of Denmark in 1940—the so-called Operation Weserübung. Early that morning 68 years ago, German warships entered Copenhagen harbor in violation of a German-Danish non-aggression treaty signed the prior year. The Danish military was in no condition to pose a serious obstacle to German forces; Copenhagen was taken in a matter of hours and by dawn, Denmark had capitulated. Only 39 Danish soldiers were killed in the short battle.

Of course, Denmark was not strategically crucial to Hitler’s plans and was only occupied “on the way” to Norway, where the Nazis secured critical iron-ore reserves. By all accounts, Hitler intended the occupation in Denmark to be a “model protectorate” in Europe and because Danes were “fellow Nordic Aryans”, they could be trusted to handle their own domestic affairs. For this and a number of other reasons, the Nazis were inclined to be lenient with Denmark. Besides, the official reason for the occupation provided by Germany was to safeguard Denmark from a potential British invasion… But the Danes had other plans. (more…)

“There have been rapid price increases over the last few months because of the closure. Three months ago, for instance, a litre of corn oil cost 19 Shekels (the equivalent of $4.5). Now it costs 29 Shekels ($7). The price of flour has also doubled; three months ago a kilo of flour was 2 Shekels. Now our customers have to pay 4 Shekels.”

The Abu-Alkass mini-market has been a popular feature of central Gaza city for more than thirty years. Anwar Abu-Alkass has worked here since he was a teenager, and now manages the mini-market with his brother. “We used to have a lot of fresh goods on sale, but now the majority of our goods are dry products” he explains, as we wander round the mini-market aisles. “Every business has been affected by the closure – we used to sell lots of fresh milk and different kinds of cheese – but now we are forced to depend on two Israeli companies for our dairy imports. Their products are expensive for us, but we have no choice.” (more…)

Chairman John Conyers
House Judiciary Committee
U.S. House of Representatives
U.S. Congress
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Chairman Conyers:

Prominent Constitutional law experts believe President Bush has engaged in at least, five categories of repeated, defiant “high crimes and misdemeanors”, which separately or together would allow Congress to subject the President to impeachment under Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution. The sworn oath of members of Congress is to uphold the Constitution. Failure of the members of Congress to pursue impeachment of President Bush is an affront to the founding fathers, the Constitution, and the people of the United States.

In addition to a criminal war of aggression in Iraq, in violation of our constitution, statutes and treaties, there are the arrests of thousands of Americans and their imprisonment without charges, the spying on Americans without juridical warrant, systematic torture, and the unprecedented wholesale, defiant signing statements declaring that the President, in his unbridled discretion, is the law. (more…)

AMY GOODMAN: [Five years ago] on March 19th, 2003, the US began bombing Baghdad. The invasion was on. Six weeks later, President Bush stood under a banner reading “Mission Accomplished” and declared an end to major military combat operations in Iraq. Now, half a decade later, the war continues with no end in sight.

In a speech today to mark the fifth anniversary, the President, who leaves office in less than eleven months, will again give an upbeat assessment of the war. According to released excerpts of his address, Bush will insist the so-called troop surge in Iraq has opened the door to a “major strategic victory in the broader war on terror.”

But by most accounts, the war has been an unmitigated disaster. Up to one million Iraqis have been killed, with no estimates on the number of those wounded. Up to 2.5 million people are estimated to be displaced inside Iraq, and more than two million have fled to neighboring countries. Meanwhile, nearly 4,000 US soldiers have been killed and tens of thousands more wounded. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz estimates the overall cost of this war will be $3 trillion. (more…)

AMY GOODMAN: [Tonight] the US invasion and occupation of Iraq will enter its sixth year. On Monday, at least seventy-two Iraqis were killed in violence around Iraq, including forty-two Shiite worshippers in a suicide bombing in Karbala. Two US troops were also killed, bringing the US death toll to 3,990, ten deaths away from the 4,000 mark.

If the Bush administration’s drive to invade Iraq was aided by corporate media cheerleading, the five-year mark today is being met with near-silence by the corporate media. According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, the US occupation of Iraq has accounted for just three percent of news stories in television, print and online media so far this year. On cable news networks, it’s accounted for just one percent.

That silence was on display this past weekend when the corporate media largely ignored a monumental gathering just outside the nation’s capital. For four days, Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and active-duty soldiers convened at the National Labor College in Silver Spring, Maryland for Winter Soldier, an eyewitness indictment of atrocities committed by US troops during the ongoing occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War, the event was modeled after the historic 1971 Winter Soldier hearings that took place in Detroit held during the Vietnam War. (more…)

AMY GOODMAN: Iraq and Afghanistan veterans gathered in Maryland this past weekend to testify at Winter Soldier, an eyewitness indictment of atrocities committed by US troops during the ongoing occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War, the event was modeled after the historic 1971 Winter Soldier hearings held during the Vietnam War.

Over the weekend, war veterans spoke of free-fire zones, the shootings and beatings of innocent civilians, racism at the highest levels of the military, sexual harassment and assault within the military, and the torturing of prisoners.

Although Winter Soldier was held just outside the nation’s capital, it was almost entirely ignored by the American corporate media. A search on the Lexis database found that no major television network or cable news network even mentioned Winter Soldier over the weekend, neither did the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times or most other major newspapers in the country. The editors of the Washington Post chose to cover Winter Soldier but placed the article in the local section. (more…)

Around 10:30pm on the night of February 28, M and his wife S spoke in low tones in a dark room dimly lit by a battery-operated lamp. They were trying to decide if it was still safe to send their children to school and decided in favor because the elementary school building is in a safer part of the city near a number of international offices. The electricity in the building had been out 10 hours by then and the couple pulled blankets around them to keep warm in the damp winter air. They live on the 6th floor of Shifa Tower, an 11-story apartment building housing more than a hundred families.

When the blast occurred that took out the Interior Ministry building across the street, there was no time to think about what to do. M flew into his children’s bedroom and threw himself over the sleeping body of his son, Basel, to shield the young boy’s body from the glass shattering in the windows beside his bed. Then after a matter of seconds the three young children, two girls and the boy, were taken to the windowless kitchen, all of them now fully awake and crying out in terror. M threw blankets and pillows around them where they huddled for the night in restless sleep and dreams of horror, their mother sobbing silently over them as she caressed their faces. (more…)

Apparently, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has ordered a halt to Israeli attacks in Gaza and has instead entered into talks with Hamas via Egyptian mediators.

It should not be necessary to point out that Hamas has previously offered to talk with Israel on more than one occasion and that it was Israel, not Hamas, that finally broke the ceasefire in October 2006. Nevertheless, Olmert’s detractors cried for blood and he delivered. Over 125 Palestinians (half of whom were children) killed last week is enough to satiate the wolves for now, so this week why not put on the mask of peacemaker? Israel is no stranger to playing Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in this way.

“We certainly appear to have entered a period of talking rather than fighting now,” Al Jazeera’s Jacky Rowland reported from Gaza.

“For more than three days now there have been virtually no rocket attacks into Israel … and also there have been no Israeli air strikes, no overflights of Gaza.”

(more…)

“I heard shooting, then screaming. I rushed upstairs to see what had happened, and they were both on the floor. Jaqueline was already dead, but Iyad was still alive. The neighbours called an ambulance and we ran to the hospital with him, but he died as soon as we arrived.”

East Jabaliya in the northern Gaza Strip bore the brunt of Israel’s latest military incursion into Gaza. The incursion, which was launched in the early hours of Thursday February 28, lasted four days and nights. In that time Israeli troops killed 108 Palestinians, including 54 unarmed civilians, 26 of whom were children. The Palestinians who live in and around Abed Rabbo Street in east Jabaliya suffered intense air strikes by F16 planes and helicopters, tank shelling, snipers, and having their houses invaded and vandalised by Israeli soldiers, who tied adults up with ropes, or else locked whole families into single rooms in order to use their homes as sniper towers to target local Palestinian fighters. Sixteen year old Jaqueline Abu Shebak and her fourteen year old brother, Iyad both lived on Abed Rabbo Street with their mother and three other young brothers and sisters. The children’s uncle, Hatem Hosni Abu shebak, who lives next door, found the bodies of Jaqueline and Iyad in the early hours of Saturday March 1st, when he rushed upstairs after hearing intense shooting and then screaming. (more…)

Reflecting on the massive Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip this past week, which left over 120 dead and scores wounded, I can only sit back in frustration at Israel’s sheer blindness and cruelty. Even as the U.S. House of Representatives arrogantly passes a resolution “strongly defending how Israel has repelled rocket attacks” and even as both Democratic contenders for the Presidential candidacy openly approve of Israel’s aggression by blaming Hamas, Human Rights groups including Amnesty International, Oxfam and Save the Children have issued a report highlighting the dire situation in Gaza—the “worst humanitarian crisis since the 1967 war”. (more…)

IOF Launches Fifth Day of Open War on the Gaza Strip
Death Toll Rises to 101, with Hundreds of Injuries

[The Palestinian Center for Human Rights] condemns in the strongest possible terms the continuing IOF open war on the civilians of the Gaza Strip. Air and land bombardments have killed 101 Palestinians since 27 February, and injured hundreds of others. The Centre also denounces continuing international silence over the carnage which has effectively encouraged the IOF to commit additional war crimes against Palestinian civilians and their property. The Centre warns that deaths and injuries will undoubtedly rise if the IOF operation continues, and reiterates its demand that the international community act immediately and effectively to put an end to these crimes, and to protect the lives of Palestinian civilians.

During the last 24 hours, another 39 Palestinians were killed throughout the Gaza Strip. Twenty-two of them were unarmed civilians, including 9 children. Six of the victims were from one family, including 3 women and 3 men who were killed in an air strike in Gaza City. The death toll since 27 February currently stands at 101 victims, including 49 unarmed civilians. The civilians who have been killed include 25 children and 5 women. In addition, more than 250 other people have been injured, mostly unarmed civilians. IOF have also destroyed houses and property across the Gaza Strip. (more…)

A year ago I applied for the job of Occupied Territories correspondent at Ma’ariv, an Israeli newspaper. I speak Arabic and have taught in Palestinian schools and taken part in many joint Jewish-Palestinian projects. At my interview the boss asked how I could possibly be objective. I had spent too much time with Palestinians; I was bound to be biased in their favour. I didn’t get the job. My next interview was with Walla, Israel’s most popular website. This time I did get the job and I became Walla’s Middle East correspondent. I soon understood what Tamar Liebes, the director of the Smart Institute of Communication at the Hebrew University, meant when she said: ‘Journalists and publishers see themselves as actors within the Zionist movement, not as critical outsiders.’

This is not to say that Israeli journalism is not professional. Corruption, social decay and dishonesty are pursued with commendable determination by newspapers, TV and radio. That Israelis heard exactly what former President Katsav did or didn’t do with his secretaries proves that the media are performing their watchdog role, even at the risk of causing national and international embarrassment. Ehud Olmert’s shady apartment deal, the business of Ariel Sharon’s mysterious Greek island, Binyamin Netanyahu’s secret love affair, Yitzhak Rabin’s secret American bank account: all of these are freely discussed by the Israeli media. (more…)

It’s almost impossible to comprehend the hypocrisy behind American actions in the Middle-East. U.S. Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice—a woman whose grasp of Middle-Eastern issues was made acutely apparent during Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon in 2006 (birth pangs, remember?)—recently appealed to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on behalf of the Palestinian civilians currently being bombed into a powder by the IAF.

“I am concerned about the humanitarian condition there and innocent people in the Gaza who are being hurt. We have to remember that the Hamas activities there are responsible for what has happened in Gaza … But, of course, we are concerned about innocent people and we are concerned about the humanitarian situation,” she said after the one-hour breakfast meeting. <<< more

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Israel issued a warning to Hamas on Sunday that the organization would be responsible for any injuries or deaths resulting from a mass demonstration against the blockade of Gaza held yesterday.

If necessary, IDF artillery will fire warning shots at open areas, and should the protestors continue their advance, troops will employ riot dispersal methods.

As a last resort, snipers will open fire at protestors legs. The orders were approved by senior General Staff officers as well as Defense Minister Ehud Barak. <<< more

Of course, it is ridiculous to claim that Hamas would be responsible for the killing of innocent civilians authorized by the Israeli military, but the logic of the blockade encourages these inanities. We are also meant to accept that Hamas is actually responsible for the international economic boycott on Gaza as well as for the severe shortage of food products and power resources. (more…)