Tens of thousands of Palestinian books destroyed after Israel’s establishment, Ben-Gurion University researcher says
(full article…)

The New York Times has all but confirmed to The Electronic Intifada (EI) that the son of its Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner was recently inducted into the Israeli army.

Over the weekend, EI received a tip suggesting this had been the case and wrote to Bronner to ask him to confirm or deny the information and to seek his opinion on whether, if true, he thought it would be a conflict of interest. (full article…)

Israel-Arab claims she was humiliated by two security guards who ordered her off bus after hearing her speak Arabic on cell phone. College: First such incident in 15 years (full article…)

Such a remarkable story could only happen in the midst of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A young gay Palestinian man, who is in grave, life-threatening danger and cannot return to his home with his Israeli partner, was saved by a stranger who came to his aid – a religious West Bank settler. (full article…)

Look at this morally narcissistic story. Does the Israeli media also report that their noble military uses sexual identity as blackmail against Palestinians they hope to use as collaborators? Do they report that Palestinian/Israeli couples (of any sexual orientation) are barred from residence in that racist state?

The residents of Gaza are not waiting on the Goldstone Report to take action. The Defense Ministry and the Tel Aviv Prosecution have reportedly received some 1,500 notices of future civil lawsuits against the IDF over damage caused during Operation Cast Lead. (full article…)

Human rights group Amnesty International said in a report published Tuesday that Israeli restrictions prevented Palestinians from receiving enough water in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The report said Israel’s daily water consumption per capita was four times higher than that in the Palestinian territories. (full article…)

Israeli authorities demolished two Palestinian homes near east Jerusalem on Tuesday, ignoring international concern about the practice. (full article…)

With the 2009-2010 academic year under way, 838 Palestinian university students are still waiting for the authorization that will enable them to leave the Gaza Strip in favor of overseas universities. (full article…)

I mean, I read the article [by HRW founder Richard Bernstein]. The word “occupation” does not appear there even one time. He says that Israel is a democracy of seven-million-point-something Israeli citizens. He forgets four million Palestinians, who have to be registered in the Israeli population registry in order to exist. All the Palestinians are registered. He forgot the four million. So what kind of democracy it is, where four million who are in the Israeli Ministry of Interior have to be registered and Israel decides if they are – if they exist? How can you call it a democracy, when half of – when one-third, not to mention the one million Israeli Palestinians, don’t have rights, the same rights? What kind of democracy it is? (full article…)

The fact that the divided Palestinian political leadership is silent about the mistreatment of the refugees by Arab states does not make such behaviour any less reprehensible – or less dangerous. Some 250,000 Palestinians were chased out of Kuwait and other Gulf States to punish the Palestinian political leadership for supporting Saddam Hussein. Tens of thousands of Palestinian residents of Iraq were similarly dispossessed after the second Gulf war.

In 2001, Palestinians in Lebanon were stripped of the right to own property, or to pass on the property that they already owned to their children – and banned from working as doctors, lawyers, pharmacists or in 20 other professions. Even the Palestinian refugee community in Jordan, historically the most welcoming Arab state, has reason to feel insecure in the face of official threats to revoke their citizenship. The systematic refusal of Arab governments to grant basic human rights to Palestinians who are born and die in their countries – combined with periodic mass expulsions of entire Palestinian communities – recalls the treatment of Jews in medieval Europe. (full article…)

Court orders IDF to reopen road closed for Palestinian use (full article…)

Any time I see a story like this I can’t help laughing… So the court rules that this single road cannot be part of the apartheid structure? Big deal. What about the hundreds of others illegally constructed roads in the West Bank that have been designated “Israeli only”?

During a previous harvest she had to be taken to hospital after she was hit over the head with an iron bar by an Israeli security guard from one of the nearby settlements. On another occasion settlers threw stones and human excreta at her and other volunteers, while shooting into the air. (full article…)

The State Prosecutor’s Office has decided to close a criminal investigation against Border Guard officers documented beating Palestinians. (full article…)

While the IDF has expressed objection to the formation of an external inquiry committee to probe Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, a top General Staff official told Ynet on Wednesday that more could be done on the PR front. (full article…)

“What peace process are they talking about? There isn’t one. The Israeli foreign minister doesn’t want one at all.” (full article…)

A U.N. investigation into explosions in south Lebanon indicated on Sunday that Israel had planted spy devices on Lebanese land in what a senior U.N. official said would be a violation of a ceasefire agreement.

The UNIFIL peacekeeping force in Lebanon said its preliminary probe into two explosions in the south showed they had been caused by the detonation of underground sensor devices.

…

UNIFIL was investigating what had caused the devices to blow up. A Lebanese security official said they appeared to have been detonated by remote control from Israel after their discovery by Lebanese security forces. (full article…)

The council has a long history of focusing on Israel, while ignoring human rights abuses in other member states like China and Saudi Arabia. (full article…)

A Palestinian taken by ambulance to a Jerusalem hospital was denied entry by hospital security, which may have been a factor in his death, according to a suit filed last week in the Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court. (full article…)

An Israeli Foreign Ministry official rebuked Turkey’s acting ambassador on Thursday over a Turkish television series that, among other things, appears to depict an Israeli soldier murdering a Palestinian child. (full article…)

The vandals came at night from Adei Ad, a Jewish settlers’ outpost deemed “illegal” even by the Israeli government, near Shvut Rachel, an established West Bank settlement that is judged illegal in international but not Israeli law. Working fast, unnoticed by Palestinian landowners in the nearby Arab village of al-Mughayir, the settlers cut down nearly 200 olive trees, of which 70 belonged to Mr Abu Awad. As a result, he reckons to have lost income worth around $3,400 that he would have earned from this year’s harvest. But that is not all. “I planted these trees with my own hands 35 years ago”, he says, wistfully touching the stumps, now wrapped in sackcloth to protect them from the sun. Mr Abu Awad hopes his trees will recover and one day bear fruit again. . . . Mr Abu Awad says he is determined to fight to keep his land. “I’ll sleep on my land to protect it,” he says. “I tell my children: if I die, they should bury me where my blood was spilled. I’m in love with my land.” (full article…)

American officials say Washington will likely exercise its veto power if report accusing Israel of war crimes in Gaza is brought to a Security Council vote. (full article…)

A wonderful war. (full article…)

Gaza has managed to replenish its fuel supply by using smuggling tunnels from Egypt, and residents of the Strip rejoiced as benzene prices hit a low of just NIS 1.5 (around 40 cents) per liter, after having previously paid up to NIS 7 (around $1.9). (full article…)

By the Israeli military’s count, 1,166 people were killed in the war: 295 noncombatants, 709 of what it called Hamas terrorist operatives, and 162 men whose affiliations remain undetermined.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza said 1,417 died: 926 civilians, 236 combatants and 255 police officers.

Israel says about 400 Gazans die of natural causes every month, possibly accounting for the discrepancy in the numbers. (full article…)

Of course the NYT fails to mention that hundreds of sick Palestinians have died after being denied permission to leave Gaza by the Israeli government. The author also does not write that Israel’s manipulation of figures was rejected by Israeli human rights organizations.

Throughout Israel, young Jewish men are forming vigilante groups to end interracial relationships between Arab men and Jewish women, which are occurring with increased frequency as Jewish settlements dig deeper into Arab territory. The vigilantes say Arabs lure Jewish women with money and “bad boy” personalities. (full article…)

According to the United Nations Relief Web news, 3,900 truckloads entered Gaza from January to May 2007. Over the same period this year, six trucks were allowed in. These carried material for water projects, greatly in need and long awaiting completion. (full article…)

Yousef Abu Zuhri, a Hamas member and brother of the movement’s spokesperson Sami Abu Zuhri, died in an Egyptian jail. Hamas is outraged, claiming he was tortured to death. (full article…)

The operation was aimed at the rockets and those who fired them (full article…)

Netanyahu: PA must recognize Israel as Jewish state for there to be peace (full article…)

Didn’t he just say that there weren’t going to be preconditions? It’s not fun exposing Netanyahu’s contradictions, because they occur so frequently.

I have a precondition for you… Since you are infatuated with the whole “right to exist” (something no other state has, by the way) why not recognize the Palestinians’ “right to exist” as a sign of reciprocity. No, of course you won’t.

“We are facing very large challenges. The first is renewing peace talks; they should be renewed without any preconditions,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a Likud faction meeting on Monday.
(full article…)

He added, “However, the peace process will not go forward unless the Goldstone Report is dropped. That’s our only precondition, even if in principle we agree that there should be no preconditions…”

“We Jewish and Arab teens from throughout Israel hereby announce that we object to Israel’s oppressive policy in the occupied territories and within the state of Israel, and therefore we will refuse to take part in these activities, which are carried out in our name by the Israel Defense Army,” says the letter, signed by 80 students. (full article…)

More than a month into the school year, the Israeli restrictions have caused severe shortages that leave students unable to afford supplies such as notebooks. Students are obliged to share or take turns studying from used textbooks and workbooks. Some did not receive any books for this year’s classes. Supplies smuggled through tunnels underneath Gaza’s southern border with Egypt have failed to make up for the shortages caused by Israel’s arbitrary restrictions on imports of educational materials. (full article…)

“The Arabs were beaten just because they are Arabs,” claimed a resident of Neve Shalom, whom the students turned to for help. Neve Shalom is a joint-Arab-Jewish cooperative village next to Latrun built around the idea of coexistence. (full article…)

One element of the blackmail, which reportedly has been exercised by the Israelis on the Palestinian Authority in order to persuade them not to go forward with consideration of the Goldstone report in Geneva, was a denial of the granting of a license to a second Palestinian cell phone company in the Occupied Territories. (full article…)

Israel had repeatedly warned the PA that if it continued to support Goldstone’s report it would withdraw permission for a second cellular telephone company to be established in the West Bank, an issue of critical economic importance to the PA leadership and to the civilian infrastructure of the West Bank. (full article…)

According to Israeli press reports, Israel is planning a massive new settlement in the vicinity of Jerusalem, on land owned by Palestinians of al-Walajah. The project, expected to be approved by the Israeli ministry of the Interior, could become the single most populous settlement built in the occupied Palestinian territories since 1967 according to the Israeli daily Maariv. The project plans prepared by the ministry of the Interior and the Jerusalem municipality call for 14,000 housing units for 40,000 settlers on 3,000 dunums of land which would require the demolition of al-Walajah residents’ homes, according to the paper. (full article…)

Jewish settlers on Tuesday cut off 250 Palestinian fruitful olive trees in Deir Ammar village, west of Ramallah city, local sources reported. (full article…)

The U.S. administration is furious over Israeli incitement against President Barack Obama, Democratic congressmen close to Obama told an Israeli source who returned from a visit to Washington this week. (full article…)

“I am very sorry for all those who were killed in Gaza,” Ms. Malka said, “but I expect my country to defend me no matter how.” (full article…)

In Gaza, posters appeared on walls on Wednesday calling Mr. Abbas a traitor and saying he should be consigned to “the trash heap of history.” Gaza is controlled by Hamas, the militant Islamic group that is the Palestinian Authority’s main rival. (full article…)

…then they would mention that resentment of the Mahmoud Abbas and the Zionist Collaboration Regime is not confined to Hamas, but most sectors of Palestinian society. Reading this in the Times, you would imagine the poster is simply political posturing by Hamas (which certainly exists), but faced with a regime that runs the Israeli occupation by proxy and crumbles to US/Zionist demands almost without exception, Palestinians of all stripes oppose this clown. Imagine that Richard Goldstone cares more about pursuing justice in Gaza than the lousy regime in Ramallah!

Stockholm’s foreign minister urges UN human rights council to discuss report probing Gaza war despite expressed reservations as to its credibility (full article…)

Israeli youth who refuse to cooperate with Israel’s military occupation are sent into a lengthy and relentless labyrinth of court martials and consecutive jail terms in what Israeli lawyer Michael Sfard, representing Shministim, calls a “price tag” meant to deter other young Israelis from non-participation. “Otherwise,” he says, “[the Israeli government's] argument says, everyone — of ideological or personal reasons — will refuse to serve.” (full article…)

The decision by the United Nations Human Rights Council to delay the vote on the findings of its report into the Gaza conflict – in line with a request by the Palestinian Authority – has shocked the Palestinian public.

Palestinian sources told Haaretz that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas made the decision to delay the vote immediately after meeting with the U.S. Consul General last Thursday, without the knowledge of the PLO leadership or the government of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, and without any consultation. (full article…)

According to the latest figures compiled by DCI-Palestine from sources including the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) and temporary Israeli army detention facilities, the number of Palestinian children detained in Israeli prisons and detention centres inside Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory at the end of September, was 326. (full article…)

Commander Aharon Franco slams Arab protestors, calls them ‘ungrateful’ for rioting during High Holidays after allowing to attend Ramadan prayers; says steps will be taken against Sheikh Raed Salah who is believed to have instigated recent rioting (full article…)

He’s right. They should grateful for any crumb Israel tosses to them. In fact, they should be happy Israel hasn’t slaughtered them en masse as in Gaza.

After Ehud Barak nearly arrested in London, Minister Ya’alon cancels his trip to Britain ‘in light of legal recommendation.’ However, together with Mazuz, only two lawyers handling some 1,000 foreign lawsuits against politicians and military officers. ‘Situation intolerable,’ said a senior official in Jerusalem (full article…)

The brewery was started in 1995 by David Khoury and his brother Nadim, who had returned from the United States with his head full of ideas about hops and German beer-purity laws as well as his own recipes. They almost went broke during the intifada that erupted in 2000, and while never directly challenged by Islamist groups, they feared that the enterprise would be pushed to the fringes of Palestinian society. (full article…)

Reading this article, you would imagine that the second intifada was a conflict between Islamists and these friendly beer-brewing Christian Palestinians. Israel is not even mentioned. But according to the standards of the Washington Post, Israel posed no threat at all to Palestinian businesses with is random demolition of buildings, destruction of numerous offices and all-out assault on large parts of West Bank civilian areas. No, these nice Christians only faced difficulties from the Islamists.

PA source: US to press Israel on settlements (full article…)

In August the charismatic Dahlan, 47, who has worked closely with the Israelis and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, was elected to Fatah’s 18-member Central Committee, the movement’s executive body, at landmark legislative elections. (full article…)

I suppose they already forgot that this “charismatic” figure was the force behind the U.S.-backed failed coup in Gaza… not to mention that there was nothing “legislative” about the “elections”.

“We need to ask you some questions,” she said. She took me aside. I was so nervous. She clarified my name and email, then she asked me about my time in Beirut. I told her it was a study program, organized by a translation service.She frowned. “Why do you like Arabs?” I didn’t know what to say. Is it a crime in Israel to love Arabs? Is it a crime to study Palestinian art?

“Palestinian art?” she said, “like what?” “Lots of stuff,” I said, ” Plays, movies, books; everywhere, all over the world.” (full article…)

It was misleading for the commission to examine only the 13 months from June 2008 to July 2009, she said. Palestinians in Gaza had fired rockets into Israel for eight years. (full article…)

“A culture of impunity in the region has existed for too long,” Goldstone, a former UN war crimes prosecutor, told the UN Human Rights Council.

“The lack of accountability for war crimes and possible war crimes against humanity has reached a crisis point; the ongoing lack of justice is undermining any hope for a successful peace process and reinforcing an environment that fosters violence.” (full article…)

“No arrest warrant has been issued, and in any event, he has immunity due to his being a minister in the government,” the bureau said in a statement. “Therefore, his program will continue without disturbance.” (full article…)

Hostility to intimate relationships developing across Israel’s ethnic divide is shared by many Israeli Jews, who regard such behavior as a threat to the state’s Jewishness. One of the few polls on the subject, in 2007, found that more than half of Israeli Jews believed intermarriage should be equated with “national treason.”
(full article…)

At 8:00 am, on 22 September 2009, Mohammad arrived at the Allenby Bridge Crossing. He was returning home, to the West Bank, via Jordan, from his travels in Norway where he attended several speaking events and advocacy meetings. At the Israeli border control, Mohammad’s passport was taken away, and he was asked to wait on the side. Mohammad waited until 10pm at the Allenby Bridge Border Crossing without any information for the reasons of his detention. At 10pm, he was arrested and transferred to Huwwara provisional detention center, located on the outskirts of Nablus. Two days later, on 24 September, he received a visit from an International Committee of the Red Cross delegate and was allowed to see a lawyer. Since the moment of his arrest, he has not been either questioned or interrogated once. Mohammad is due to appear before the military court on Tuesday, 29 September 2009. (full article…)

A new report from Adalah shows how the courts and police attempted to stamp out opposition to Operation Cast Lead. “This is a time of war, and every incident harms the people’s morale.”

This was not a sentence in a right-wing journal, but rather a statement by an Israel Police representative during Operation Cast Lead seeking to persuade the Tel Aviv District Court to block anti-war protesters from the city. (full article…)

But it was Cohen who “missed the point,” Hever said. “Palestinians don’t want appeasement, they want recognition of their rights.” Israelis “point out the willingness of people like Madonna and Leonard Cohen to give shows as a sign that Israel is normal, like a European country. It evades responsibility,” he added.(full article…)

The Israeli press loves the Washington Post’s ridiculous editorial.(full article…)

The administration also concluded, wrongly, that obtaining an unconditional Israeli settlement freeze was an essential first step. In fact settlements are no longer a strategic obstacle to peace; as a practical matter, most of the construction is in areas that will not be part of a Palestinian state. (full article…)

This is the kind of absurd editorial that can only appear in the U.S. media. Who says that the illegally settled West Bank enclaves will remain in Israel’s hands? Who but the Israeli government? I suppose the Washington Post doesn’t mind that East Jerusalem is being depopulated of its Palestinian population as families are thrown out of houses they have lived in for fifty years. No that’s the kinds of ethnic cleansing they like.

Every single settlement is illegal, including all the building in East Jerusalem. Every new housing unit is a slap in the face of international law and to initiate peace talks while this continues is to repeat the conditions of every single episode of bilateral talks for the past 40+ years. The only way the settlements can be ignored is if the talks address borders immediately. Once the prospect of remaining under Palestinian rule dawns on the settlers, they will stop of their own accord.

Of course, Al Jazeera has some overt prejudices. In covering the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, for example, it is clearly on the Palestinian side. Tear-jerking features about the sufferings of the Palestinians are not matched with equal coverage of the Israeli human terrain. What you get from Al Jazeera is the developing-world point of view, or, more specifically, that of the emerging developing-world bourgeoisie; and that outlook is inherently pro-Palestinian, as well as deeply hostile to American military power. (full article…)

Yet the American media is not biased because it overwhelmingly sides with a brutal occupying power. Apparently that’s not bias; that’s what this author would condescendingly call the “developed-world” media.

Israel has reportedly agreed to freeze West Bank settlement activity for up to 9 months in exchange for normalizing relations with some North African and Gulf Arab states, according to a Washington Times exclusive published on Tuesday. (full article…)

Nonetheless, it was disappointing that the Obama administration felt it had to denounce the report within days of its release, despite Goldstone’s impeccable credentials (former member of South Africa’s Constitutional Court and chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for Bosnia and Rwanda) and his strong Zionist convictions. Israeli PM Netanyahu hasn’t been doing Obama any favors of late, and the release of the report would have been a golden opportunity for Obama to play a little hardball and remind him that stiffing your principal patron has a price. And the Administration didn’t even have to endorse the report; all they had to do was refrain from criticizing it. (full article…)

A new organization of several Israeli and Jewish student groups is working to help young people who are thousands of kilometers away — in Iran. Ahead of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s upcoming address at the United Nations General Assembly, Israelis have increased their PR activity in favor of Iranians being oppressed by their regime. (full article…)

“We want to create facts on the ground,” he said. (full article…)

“Thus, he is interested in allowing them to rule themselves, provided they are not given any authority that would endanger the security of Israel.” (full article…)

“He sees the settlements in Judea and Samaria as a Zionist enterprise and the settlers in Judea and Samaria as his – our – brothers.” (full article…)

For most Palestinians in Gaza, there is no escaping the constraints of a suffocating Israeli-imposed siege that, with the complicity of the Egyptian government and the international community, has tightened since June 2007 when Hamas took over the Gaza Strip. The siege goes further back from that time two years ago to shortly after Hamas was elected in early 2006. Since then, Palestinians have lived under increasingly choking restrictions on what can enter and leave Gaza.

In the Rimal shopping area, a growing number of Palestinians have resorted to begging. Among them are widows trying to provide for their children, and children themselves begging to contribute to family income. (full article…)

Tel Aviv is, in fact, the most politically liberal city in Israel and offers a sharp contrast to the spirit of religious conservatism that informs Jerusalem. It votes to the left and looks to Europe. Many inhabitants yearn for nothing more than to live the life of a hot Mediterranean city, to be, say, the Barcelona of the Middle East and forget the conflict a dozen miles away. (full article…)

The difference between an Israeli dove and an Israeli hawk is the amount of “anguish” they feel when they kill 1,400 Palestinians in the course of a few days.

They expected the military operation to be condemned as grossly disproportionate. They expected Israel to be lambasted for not taking sufficient care to avoid civilian casualties. But they never imagined that the report would accuse the Jewish state of intentionally aiming at civilians. (full article…)

Acutely conscious that Israel’s Arab population considers itself to be the victim of discrimination, Peres made the point that the Arabs would live better if they had fewer children. Parents of ten or more children cannot necessarily give them the education they deserve. Cutting down on the Arab birth rate, he suggested, would raise the standard of living of each Arab family, and would make education for all the children in each family much more affordable. (full article…)

“The Israelis and the United States are close to a deal and are agreed in principle on the broad strokes, but Israel’s piece is contingent on similar gestures from the Palestinians and the Arabs. And the Palestinians are refusing to deal,” is how one source characterized the current state of play.

The drive to blame the Palestinians is already underway, with some saying that the administration let them off the hook by not requiring any confidence-building measures up front. (full article…)

Every night, dozens of young men in Jerusalem’s Pisgat Ze’ev neighborhood take to the streets and go out searching for girls.

But theirs is not a promiscuous search. In fact, the group of some 35 volunteers is looking to prevent such interaction and to stop what neighborhood residents have overwhelmingly complained is a growing problem in Pisgat Ze’ev – Arab men going out with Jewish girls. (full article…)

Perhaps next time we set out to wage another vain and miserable war, we will take into account not only the number of fatalities we are likely to sustain, but also the heavy political damage such wars cause.

On the eve of the Jewish New Year, Israel, deservedly, is becoming an outcast and detested country. We must not forget it for a minute. (full article…)

Israel’s hermetic sealing of the strip, as part of its blockade against Hamas, has prevented most supplies of paper, textbooks, notebooks, ink cartridges, stationery, school uniforms, school bags, and computers and their spare parts. (full article…)

“The mandate of the Goldstone Commission was one-sided from the outset. The initiative to establish the commission came from the UN Human Rights Council which is known for its routine condemnation of Israel.” (full article…)

Khatib claims a soldier then hit him from behind with the butt of his rifle. “Then the nightmare began,” he said. “All of the soldiers in the apartment began to beat me with everything possible – hands, rifles, feet. They kicked me in the head, the face, the stomach.” (full article…)

“Any comparison of Israel’s fight on terror with recent conflicts in Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan etc. immediately shows that Israel holds itself to the highest ethical standard.” (full article…)

My Lords, I think it is important and is a reflection of the fact that there are people of good will on all sides of this who, whatever their views about the conflict and its origins or long-term peace, recognise that in today%u2019s world these kinds of crimes, whether they occur in Gaza, northern Sri Lanka, or Darfur, must be subject to international accountability. (full article…)

“The Israeli investigations have been conducted secretly by the military,” which “relied only on the evidence given to them by their own soldiers,” he said, comparing that strategy to a “domestic police force in Manhattan investigating murders by only speaking to murderers.” (full article…)

“It wasn’t easy [for him],” Nicole Goldstone said. “My father did not expect to see and hear what he saw and heard.” (full article…)