Sunday, October 29, 2006

[ePalestine] TELEGRAPH: Israel backs down on visas for Palestinians from US

This issue is far from over, but it is clear we are making progress: 



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Thursday, October 26, 2006

[ePalestine] AFSC: Ramallah Friends School Hit by Denial of Entry Policy

American Friends Service Committee
News from the Region

Ramallah Friends School Hit by Denial of Entry Policy

By Paul D. Pierce, Quaker International Affairs Representative - Jerusalem 
October 2006 

When Renee Bowyer left Ramallah for Jordan at the beginning of October, she thought she would spend a couple of days in Amman, Jordan and return to teaching English at The Friends School in Ramallah the following week. Unfortunately, when she tried to re-enter Israel and renew her three-month visa at the Allenby Bridge in the middle of October, she was denied entry. Her 7th grade students at the Friends School would have to do without their teacher as a result.

FOR FULL STORY SEE:


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[ePalestine] Ali Abunimah: World silent as fascists join Israel government

World silent as fascists join Israel government

Ali Abunimah
The Electronic Intifada
24 October 2006


-------------------------

See Ali's new book: "One Country"



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Tuesday, October 24, 2006

[ePalestine] Behind the news with Gershon Baskin...The campaign for re-entry...Interior Committee of the Knesset

Jerusalem Times: Opinion

October 24, 2006

This week in Israel….. Behind the news with Gershon Baskin

The campaign for re-entry 

At the urging of IPCRI, the Interior Committee of the Knesset will hold a public hearing on the issue of Palestinian residents of the territories who hold foreign passports and are being denied the right to remain in their homes.   Two members of Knesset enlisted by IPCRI,  Ephraim Sneh (Labour party faction leader) and Avigdor Yitzhaki (Kadima faction leader and coalition whip) have agreed to work on resolving this issue.  The best solution is for the Palestinian Ministry of Interior to have to right to issue these Palestinian residents of the territories identity cards and Palestinian passports. That would be a recognition of reality and would end the charade of issuing them tourist visas.  Thousands of people have been living in the territories for years having to leave the area every three months to renew their visas. They have built homes, families and businesses.  They overwhelmingly represent moderate political views and have been central in supporting peace with Israel.  The issue also relates to thousands of non-Palestinian foreign citizens who are spouses of Palestinian residents of the territories, they too are being denied the right of re-entry into the territories and over the past months their families have been torn apart by this harsh policy of denying them the right to live in their homes.  This is not an issue of “right of return” – these people are not asking to be residents of the State of Israel.  They live in Palestine and they wish to continue to live there.  IPCRI is taking a key role in leading the behind the scenes aspects of the campaign and will continue to do so until a positive resolution is found and  implemented. 

Gershon Baskin is the Co-CEO of IPCRI – the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information.  www.ipcri.org



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[ePalestine] Settlements grow on Arab land, despite vow to U.S. (A MUST READ)

...the material is "political and diplomatic dynamite."

Ha'aretz

Settlements grow on Arab land, despite vow to U.S. 

By Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondent 

A secret, two year investigation by the defense establishment shows that there has been rampant illegal construction in dozens of settlements and in many cases involving privately owned Palestinian properties. 

The information in the study was presented to two defense ministers, Amir Peretz and his predecessor Shaul Mofaz, but was not released in public and a number of people participating in the investigations were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements. 

According to security sources familiar with the study, the material is "political and diplomatic dynamite." 

In conversations with Haaretz, the sources maintained that the report is not being made public in order to avoid a crisis with the U.S. government. 

Brigadier General Baruch Spiegel, assistant to the Defense Minister, retired earlier this month. Spiegel was also in charge of the various issues relating to the territories, which Dov Weisglass, chief of staff in prime minister Ariel Sharon's office, promised Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in writing that Israel would deal with. These commitments included illegal settlement building, improvements in the conditions of Palestinian civilians, and a closer oversight over the conduct of soldiers at IDF roadblocks. 

One of Spiegel's tasks was to update the data base on settlement activities. During talks with American officials and non-government organizations such as Peace Now, it emerged that the defense establishment lacked up to date information on the settlements, which was mostly based on data provided by the Civil Administration in the territories. 

The lack of updated information stemmed from the fact that the defense establishment preferred not to know what was going on, but was also linked to a number of key officials in the Civil Administration actively deleting information from the data base out of ideological allegiance with the settlers. 

Spiegel and his team compared the data available from the Civil Administration to that of the Americans, and carried out dozens of overflights of the territories, using private aircraft at great expense, in order to complete the data base. 

The findings of the study, security sources say, show an amazing discrepancy between the Civil Administration's data and the reality on the ground. The data in Spiegel's investigation served as the basis for the report on the illegal outposts prepared by attorney Talya Sasson and made public in March 2005. 

"Everyone is talking about the 107 outposts," said a source familiar with the data, "but that is small change. The really big picture is the older settlements, the 'legal' ones. The construction there has been ongoing for years, in blatant violation of the law and the regulations of proper governance." 

Three years ago, in talks with the Americans, Israel promised that all new construction in the older settlements would take place near existing neighborhoods. The idea was that construction would be limited to meeting the needs of the settlements' natural growth, and bringing to an end the out-of-control expansion over territory. 

In practice, the data shows that Israel failed to meet its commitments: many new neighborhoods were systematically built on the edge of areas of the settlement's jurisdiction, which is a much larger territory than the actual planning charts account for. 

The data also shows that in many cases the construction was carried out on private Palestinian land. In the masterplans, more often than not, Palestinian properties were included in the construction planned for the future. These included Palestinian properties to which the state had promised access. 

However, exploiting the intifada and arguing that the settlers should not be exposed to security risks, Palestinian farmers were prevented access to their properties that were annexed by Israeli settlements. 

In many settlements, including Ofra and Mevo Horon, homes have been constructed on private Palestinian land. 

"The media is busy with the outposts, but how many of these are really large settlements like Migron? In most cases, it's a matter of a few mobile homes. Spiegel's study shows the real situation in the settlements themselves - and it is a lot more serious than what we knew to date," one of the sources said. 

A senior security official expressed concern that with Spiegel's retirement, the data base will not be updated and the data will be lost. 

"The [defense] establishment does not necessarily have an interest in preserving this information. It may cause diplomatic embarrassment vis-a-vis the Americans and cause a political scandal. It is not unlikely that there will be those who will seek to destroy the data," the senior officer says. 

Other relevant sources said it is necessary for an objective, external source, like the State Comptroller's office, to intervene in this matter. 

A statement issued by the Defense Minister's office in response said that "the matter is being examined internally and staff work will be completed soon, and the parts of the report that can be published will be made available. The Defense Minister will discuss the matter with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert." 

Meanwhile, construction in the new outposts has intensified. Sources in the Yesha Council say that since the Lebanon War, "Junior officers on the ground are in our favor and in many instances turn a blind eye regarding mobile homes in place." 



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Sunday, October 22, 2006

[ePalestine] Karen Redleaf: Summit (Ave.) vigilence...Macalester College (St. Paul, MN)

Dear friends,  

For all those that still feel staring at the nightly news and sitting behind PC screens and keyboards are the most they can do to express their outrage for what is happening in Palestine/Lebanon/Iraq with their taxdollars and in their name, I urge you to read this concise opinion that comes to me from The Mac Weekly, a student newspaper of Macalester College (St. Paul, MN).   

My challenge to each of you: submit a letter to the editor to your local newspaper. Demand that they report the facts of Palestine's systematic destruction!

Vigilance is a virtue,
Sam

-----------------------------------------------

Summit (Ave.) vigilence 

I join with other Twin Cities residents weekly to make the invisible horrible daily reality of the Palestinian plight more visible

By Karen Redleaf

In 2003, the Media Education Foundation made a documentary called “Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land: U.S. Media & the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.”  Anyone concerned with truth and the role that our media plays in keeping us from grasping the truth about this conflict needs to see this film.  Essentially, the role that the U.S. media plays is to take “real world” events and run them through a series of filters.  After the filtering process is complete the resulting product is called “the news” and reported as such.  A la George Orwell’s 1984 under “the Ministry of Truth,” “the news” may have nothing in common with reality.

I experienced this recently when I made “the news” on your campus.  With a small group of local area residents, I participate in a weekly vigil held at the intersection of Summit and Snelling Avenues.  This vigil has been going on for several years now.  It is a vigil in solidarity with the people of Palestine as they struggle for justice and self-determination.  The people of Palestine are up against an Israeli occupation of their land which is illegal, immoral and exceedingly brutal.  They are also up against a media machine which renders their horrific daily reality INVISIBLE.  So we vigil.  We vigil to make the invisible visible.  We vigil to try to create dialogue where there is only a monologue or silence.  We vigil because it is one of the only tools we have to get the word out.  We are often misunderstood, misrepresented, even demonized.  That makes sense.  When you raise your voice to speak up for people who are invisible, misunderstood, misrepresented, and demonized, you are also misunderstood, misrepresented, and demonized, if you are not rendered invisible.  For those of us with lots of privilege this is a new and painful experience.  For the oppressed peoples of the world it is a very old story.

So why show up at 4:15 every Friday afternoon to face the weather and the ignorance.  I can only speak for myself.  I am Jewish.  I was raised Zionist.  I am a tax-paying U.S. citizen.  I am well educated.  I know that the occupation of Palestine is illegal, immoral, and exceedingly brutal, and I am complicit.  I am complicit because all the brutality is rationalized in the name of security for the Jewish people.  My security.  This is a myth, a lie.  I am complicit because Israeli brutality is funded by U.S. taxpayers—my tax dollars at work, 15 million dollars a day.  This is the truth.  There is a mythology constructed by intellectuals to rationalize spending U.S. taxpayer dollars at the rate of 5 billion per year supposedly to protect the security of the Jewish people.  I need to stand up against this gigantic academic- military-media machine to say “NO.”  No, I will not allow you to pretend this misguided policy makes me more secure.  The Israeli state, born out of genocide, is now committing genocide.  Growing up, I heard the phrase “never again” constantly.  I took it to heart.  I was raised to wonder how the Germans could stand by while the Jews were exterminated.  I don’t wonder anymore.  I know what is happening in Gaza, in the West Bank, and in Lebanon while “good” people across this country and around the world stand by and watch or refuse to see.  I do see, and I stand on the corner so that you will see too.  Stop by and talk to us.  Join us.

vegan14ever@riseup.net



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Saturday, October 21, 2006

[ePalestine] ALISON WEIR: Just Another Mother Murdered

October 6, 2006 

Gunning Down Itemad Ismail Abu Mo'ammar 

Just Another Mother Murdered 

By ALISON WEIR 

Almost no one bothered to report it. A search of the nation's largest newspapers turned up nothing in USA Today, the Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Chicago Sun-Times, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle Times, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Houston Chronicle, Tampa Tribune, etc. 

There was nothing on CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, PBS, NPR, Fox News. Nothing. 

The LA Times, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and Associated Press each had one sentence, at most, telling about her. All three left out the details, the LA Times had her age significantly off, and the Washington Post reported that she had been killed by an Israeli tank shell. 

It hadn't been a tank shell that had killer her, according to witnesses. It had been bullets, multiple ones, fired up close. 

Neighbors report that Israeli soldiers had been beating her husband because he wasn't answering their questions. Foolishly or valiantly, how is one to say, the 35-year-old woman had interfered. She tried to explain that her husband was deaf, screamed at the soldiers that her husband couldn't hear them and attempted to stop them from hitting him. So they shot her. Several times. 

Her name was Itemad Ismail Abu Mo'ammar. 

She didn't die, though. That took longer. It required her life to flow out of her in the form of blood for several hours, as Israeli soldiers refused to allow an ambulance to transport her to help. Her husband and children could do nothing to save her. 

Finally, after approximately five hours, an ambulance was allowed to take her to a hospital, where physicians were able to render one service: pronounce her dead, a few days before the commencement of Ramadan, a season of family gatherings much like the Christmas season for Americans. She left 11 children. None of this was in the Washington Post story, which had reported her death in one half of one sentence. 

Her husband's brother, who lived in the same house, was also killed. He was a 28-year-old farmer. 

Why did this all happen? The family lived behind a resistance fighter wanted by Israel. They were simply "collateral damage" in a failed Israeli assassination/kidnapping operation. 

All together, five Palestinians were killed that day. The other three were young shepherds killed in another area, two 15 years old and one 14, who seem to have simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Gaza. 

None of this was reported in most of America's news media, and so the American public never learned about a mother bleeding to death in front of her children, or young shepherds being blown to pieces. Apparently, it just wasn't newsworthy. 

A Case Study of "Good" News Coverage 

The Washington Post at least mentioned these deaths, so perhaps those who care about journalistic standards should laud the Post for its coverage. 

And yet, the Post in its short report got so much so wrong. 

In addition to misreporting Itemad's cause of death and omitting critical facts, the Post's story portrayed the entire context incorrectly, telling readers that these five deaths had broken a period of "relative calm." 

The fact is that while it was true that in the previous six months not a single Israeli child had been killed by Palestinians, during this period Israelis had killed 75 Palestinian young people, including an 8-month-old and several three-year-olds. 

I phoned the Post and spoke to a foreign editor about the need to run a correction, providing information on Itemad's murder. The editor said that she would pass this on to their correspondent (who is based in Israel), but explained that it was "impossible for him to go to Gaza." When I disagreed, she amended the "impossible" to "very difficult." She neglected to mention that the Post has access to stringers in Gaza available to check out any incident the editors deem important. 

Next, I wrote a letter to the paper containing the above information. Happily, the Post letters department apparently checked it out and decided it was a good letter. They sent an email informing me that they were considering my letter for publication and needed to confirm that I was the one who had written it, and that I had not sent the information elsewhere. 

I replied in the affirmative, we exchanged a few more messages, and everything appeared on target. Normally, when publications contact you in this way, your letter is published shortly thereafter. I waited in anticipation. And waited. 

It is now almost two weeks after their report, and I have just been informed that the paper has decided not to print my letter. The Post has apparently determined that there is no need to run a correction. 

I think I understand. 

Although the Washington Post's statement of principles proclaims, "This newspaper is pledged to minimize the number of errors we make and to correct those that occur... Accuracy is our goal; candor is our defense," the American Society of Newspaper Editors clarifies these ethical requirements: corrections need only be printed when the error of commission or omission is "significant." 

And, after all, these were only Palestinians, and it was just another mother dead. 

Alison Weir is Executive Editor of If Americans Knew, which has produced in-depth studies and illustrative videos on American news coverage of Israel-Palestine. 



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[ePalestine] The Guardian: Art of resistance

Commentary 

Art of resistance 

Ahdaf Soueif on how Palestinians are reaching out across the globe creatively 

Saturday October 21, 2006
The Guardian 

Last Saturday at the Festival of Palestinian Literature in Manchester, Salma Khadra Jayyusi walked slowly to a microphone in a large auditorium. Poet, critic, academic and translator, Professor Jayyusi, now frail and a little hard of hearing, is the undisputed doyenne of Palestinian letters. In 1980 she founded the Project for the Translation of Arabic Literature (PROTA) and set about compiling and editing critical anthologies of Arabic poetry and fiction, now the cornerstones of Palestinian and Arabic literature in English. Last week, she read her poems in both languages and spoke with passion of the world's receptivity to Palestinian literature, citing the warm welcome that Mourid Barghouti's memoir, I Saw Ramallah, has received: "The world can never be our enemy," she said, "if it sees that we have a just cause." 

Political and economic tracts describe fragmentation and corruption in Palestinian ranks, but the Palestinian people have responded to their threatened position by becoming stronger and more creative, as the amount of their art moving around the globe shows. In the last 12 months, for example, Hani Abu Assad's film Paradise Now won the Golden Globe and was nominated for an Academy Award in March; Made in Palestine, an exhibition spanning three generations of Palestinian artists living in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, parts of Israel, Syria, Jordan and the United States took New York by storm; and Sovereign Threads, a collection of embroidery that ran from July to October at the Craft Museum in LA got rave reviews. 

Palestinians are using technology to reach each other in different countries and the rest of the world: a concert in solidarity with Lebanon in September was "headquartered" in Ramallah, but most of the performers were in Cairo, Paris, New York, Dubai and Durban and the whole thing, plus shots of the Ramallah audience, was transmitted live by satellite TV. 

Palestinian organisations, such as the Qattan Foundation, are putting money into art and art education. The Edward Said National Conservatory in Ramallah with Dar al-Nadwa in Bethlehem and Yabous Productions in Jeruslaem has set up an ambitious annual programme of concerts for all three cities. The Sakakini Cultural Centre in Ramallah and the Ma'mal Foundation for Contemporary Art in Jerusalem post detailed weekly programmes. Although they often have to cancel performances because of Israeli closures or curfews, they simply reschedule them. 

There is now a vibrant and growing body of work that can be said to be an art "of Palestine". Created by Palestinians and non-Palestinians, it is essentially an art of resistance. This has existed for decades in the Arab world but now it's coming from the west as well. One thinks of Joe Sacco's graphic novel Palestine; graffiti artist Banksy's paintings on Israel's "security" wall; and, of course, the East-West Divan Orchestra, co-founded by Daniel Barenboim and the late Edward Said. The "Palestine" contribution to the Venice Biennale a few years ago took the form of a number of human-sized travel documents that the viewer came across, one by one, stranded between the pavilions of different states. The documents were from different countries but their bearer was always born in Palestine. In contrast, at the British Museum's recent Word into Art exhibition you could find a pocket-sized installation of an open page of a dictionary in which a wall of sturdy black nails imprisoned and bore in upon the word "philistine". 

Framing all this creativity, though, still poses problems. With the best will in the world, it seems that arts managers cannot escape some obvious pitfalls, such as the academic who treats an audience to a parody lecture on their own history and ethnicity. But at the festival last week, Nicholas Blincoe read from his novels The Dope Priest and Paris Burning, both of which deal with aspects of the Palestinian situation. His reading showed (if it needs showing) that fiction can be clever, funny and edgy and still have a heart and an ethical position. Both Salma Khadra Jayyusi and Palestinian novelist Liana Badr mentioned the "just cause" and the "collective identity", but Palestinian artists have often rebelled against both, against the demand that their art be "committed". 

In the opening session of the festival someone asked - as you'd expect - what function poetry has in Palestinian life now? What was poetry's contribution to the Palestinian struggle today? Mourid Barghouti said what he must be weary of saying: that poetry is not a civil servant, it's not a soldier, it's in nobody's employ. 

Palestine's laureate, Mahmoud Darwish, has been outspoken about his right to write about things that are not Palestine. He has also raised questions about the poet's role in a time of crisis, a time when he has to shift his focus from his inner-self to the world. Barghouti, Darwish and other Palestinian artists have engaged creatively with the claims of community and cause by simultan-eously acknowledging and kicking against them. 

In the latest edition of the Palestinian literary magazine, al-Karmel, Darwish's "Diary" (responding to the Israeli bombing of Lebanon) takes the form of 15 short pieces of prose and poetry. The fifth piece holds the self and the world in balance: 

"Smoke rises from me, I reach out a hand to collect my limbs scattered from so many bodies, besieged from land and sky and sea and language. The last plane has taken off from Beirut airport and left me in front of the screen to watch / with millions of viewers / the rest of my death / As for my heart, I see it roll, like a pine cone, from Mount Lebanon, to Gaza." 

· Ahdaf Soueif will be giving the Edward Said Memorial Lecture at Warwick University on October 31.



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Friday, October 20, 2006

[ePalestine] CNN & Yedioth: U.S. to Israel: Ease up on Arab-Americans

CNN 

U.S. to Israel: Ease up on Arab-Americans   

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The State Department has complained to the Israeli government about its discriminatory treatment of Arab-Americans traveling to the Palestinian territories, senior State Department officials said Thursday. 

Officials said that despite a longstanding policy of issuing visas to Americans traveling to the West Bank and Gaza, the Israeli government has recently denied Palestinian-Americans and certain other Americans entry. 

During her recent trip to Israel, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice raised the issue with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, and U.S. diplomats have also recently complained to the Israeli Embassy in Washington, officials said. 

"They are being treated as Arabs and not Americans," one senior official said. "They basically treat them as second-class citizens." 

In a speech October 11 before the American Task Force on Palestine, Rice acknowledged "continuing problems of security" faced by Palestinian- Americans living and working in Gaza and the West Bank and pledged "to ensure that all American travelers receive fair and equal treatment." 

David Siegel, a spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington, told CNN in a phone interview, "We are aware of the issue and it is being treated at senior levels, but we are waiting for more details from the administration on specific cases they have raised." 

The Arab American Institute issued a statement Thursday thanking Rice for her efforts to defend the rights of Palestinian-Americans. 

"Arab-Americans have been regularly traveling to their ancestral homelands for generations and they have a significant role to play in the reconstruction of the economic and social life in the Occupied Territories," Arab American Institute President James Zogby wrote. "It is important that their right and ability to continue to do so be reaffirmed."

Find this article at:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

YNET

US: Israel discriminating against Arab-Americans   

CNN reports senior US officials claim State Department has complained to Israeli government about its 'discriminatory treatment of Arab-Americans traveling to the Palestinian territories'; 'They basically treat them as second-class citizens,' one official says Ynet  

Ynet
Published: 10.20.06, 10:52 

CNN reported that senior US officials said Thursday that the State Department has complained to the Israeli government about its 'discriminatory treatment of Arab-Americans traveling to the Palestinian territories.'    

CNN quoted the officials as saying that despite a longstanding policy of issuing visas to Americans traveling to the West Bank and Gaza, the Israeli government has recently denied Palestinian-Americans and certain other Americans entry.  

According to the report, the officials said that during her recent trip to Israel, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice raised the issue with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, adding that US diplomats have also recently complained to the Israeli Embassy in Washington.  

"They are being treated as Arabs and not Americans," one senior official was quoted by CNN as saying. "They basically treat them as second-class citizens."  

'We are waiting for more details'    

The report said that in a speech delivered October 11 before the American Task Force on Palestine, Rice said that "continuing problems of security" faced by Palestinian-Americans living and working in Gaza and the West Bank and pledged "to ensure that all American travelers receive fair and equal treatment."  

David Siegel, a spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington, told CNN in a phone interview, "We are aware of the issue and it is being treated at senior levels, but we are waiting for more details from the administration on specific cases they have raised."  

According to CNN, the Arab American Institute issued a statement Thursday thanking Rice for her efforts to defend the rights of Palestinian-Americans.  

"Arab-Americans have been regularly traveling to their ancestral homelands for generations and they have a significant role to play in the reconstruction of the economic and social life in the occupied territories," Arab American Institute President James Zogby wrote. "It is important that their right and ability to continue to do so be reaffirmed."



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Thursday, October 19, 2006

[ePalestine] BBC: The World Tonight

BBC: The World Tonight

22:21 The slow death of the Gaza economy as Israel clamps down on allowing foreign nationals visas to the West Bank.


LISTEN at: AUDIO


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Wednesday, October 18, 2006

[ePalestine] VOA: US Raises Concerns Over Israeli Visa Policies

US Raises Concerns Over Israeli Visa Policies

By Jim Teeple
Jerusalem
18 October 2006



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[ePalestine] ZOA vs. Rice: Live example of political arm twisting (breaking) + update on denied entry

ZOA Condemns Sec'y Rice For Making Most Pro-Palestinian Speech In Memory By U.S. Administration Official 

October 16, 2006
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Morton A. Klein, 212-481-1500


Friends, don't waste your time responding to ZOA, instead, take their arguments and Rice's words and write your local paper.  Also, be SURE to share the ZOA attack on Rice with your pro-Israeli policy and lawmakers, especially US Republican ones.

The only issue the ZOA skipped, in their reply to Rice, is the DENIED ENTRY issue...note this news from today's Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth:

-----------------

US Complains: Israel Discriminates Against Americans

Yedioth Ahronoth 18.10.2006 (p. 2) by Itamar Eichner - The United States State Department lodged a formal complaint with the Israeli authorities via the Israeli embassy in Washington, asserting that Israel has obstructed and restricted the entry and exit of American citizens of Palestinian origins to and from the territories. 

The complaint was lodged at the personal request of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. American officials allege that Israel has adopted a new and deliberate policy that amounts to discrimination against American citizens. 

A wave of complaints began in April 2006, and it has not abated since. Many of the people in question are affluent Americans of Palestinian origin who acceded the call that was made by the US administration to help build the Palestinian Authority and to invest in its economy. Diplomatic officials said these were precisely the people whose favor the United States wanted to curry. 

A spokesman at the US embassy in Tel Aviv said last night in response: "we are aware that American citizens suffer difficulties entering and leaving the West Bank and Gaza, but we have not received any formal information about a change in Israeli policy. We leave it to the Israeli government to explain its policy." 

-----------------

WE MUST ALL REDOUBLE OUR EFFORTS THIS WEEK TO REVERSE THIS DENIED ENTRY POLICY.

Awaiting US action on DENIED ENTRY,
Sam


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[ePalestine] Canada blocks bid by Arab countries for vote Israel's nuclear capabilities

Canada blocks bid by Arab countries for vote Israel's nuclear capabilities

Canadian Press  
Saturday, September 23, 2006 

VIENNA, Austria (AP) - More than a dozen Arab countries were blocked by a Canadian motion in their bid to have a vote on a resolution labelling Israel's nuclear capabilities a threat on the final day of the International Atomic Energy Agency's annual meeting. 

The draft resolution, which also called upon Israel to join the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, was blocked from going to a vote Friday by the Canadian delegate. 

The final session of the UN nuclear watchdog agency's weeklong meeting did adopt a separate, non-binding resolution calling on all Middle Eastern countries to accept IAEA safeguards and take steps toward the establishment of a nuclear weapons-free zone. Israel and the United States were the only two countries that voted against it. Three countries abstained. 

The measure calling Israel's program a threat, which was co-sponsored by Iran, was kept from going to a vote after 45 countries backed a no-action motion by the Canadian delegate, effectively adjourning the debate Friday evening. 

Among those supporting the effort to block the vote were the United States, Israel, France, Germany and Britain. Those abstaining included China, Russia and Nigeria, among others. 

The 15 Arab countries behind the resolution, which would also have been non-binding, had hoped to send a signal to Israel following its monthlong war with Hezbollah, which killed hundreds of people - most of them civilians - in Lebanon. 

"Peace and nuclear weapons are two enemies - there is no cohabitation," said Ramzy Ramzy, head of the Egyptian delegation to the meeting and his country's ambassador to Austria. 

In co-sponsoring the resolution, Iran was also seeking to counter criticism of its own nuclear program, which the United States and others insist is aimed at the production of atomic weapons. Iran insists it only wants to generate power. 

"Iran...has always called for establishing a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction...It is of profound regret that this issue is trapped in a vicious cycle," said Ali Ashgar Soltanieh, Iran's ambassador to the IAEA. 

Arab countries at the annual conference have regularly threatened to submit such a resolution but in past years have opted instead to voice their concerns about Israel's nuclear program through a statement from the conference president, which carries less weight than a resolution. 

The last time such a resolution was submitted at the annual IAEA conference was in 1991. It passed. 

Israel neither confirms nor denies its nuclear status but is considered to be the only country in the region with nuclear weapons. Israel does not accept IAEA controls on its nuclear activities. 

Israel's ambassador to the IAEA said efforts to bring security to the Middle East should be focused on peace efforts, not necessarily arms control. 

"The fundamental goal in the Middle East, as in other regions, is obtaining regional peace, security and stability, not arms control per se," Israel Michaeli said. 

The draft resolution was submitted earlier this week by 15 countries: Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. 

© The Canadian Press 2006 



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Sunday, October 15, 2006

[ePalestine] Ha'aretz: Foreign reporter challenges GPO over visa policy

w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m 
Last update - 15:08 15/10/2006 
Foreign reporter challenges GPO over visa policy 
By Shahar Ilan 

Could a situation arise in which a senior foreign correspondent posted here is arrested as an illegal resident, jailed and then deported? This scenario seems fictional, but what is not fictional is the fact that Joerg Bremer, correspondent for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, one of the most important newspapers in the world, was in Israel for several weeks as an illegal resident. He left Friday for a vacation, and does not know whether he will be allowed back in. A correspondent for another world-class newspaper told Haaretz that he has been in Israel for the past year on a tourist visa, a status that ostensibly bars him from working. 

The director of the Government Press Office (GPO), Danny Seaman, said that in the past few years, over 60 foreign journalists have encountered problems in extending their work visas. "There have been many cases when journalists have been illegal residents," he said. "They have my phone number, and if they have a problem they call me." 

Those affected are among the longest-serving correspondents, and sometimes the most senior ones. What is special about Bremer's case is that he decided to fight the phenomenon, not just his own private battle. Two weeks ago, the state secretary of the German Federal Foreign Office, Georg Boomgaarden (number three in the office), formally appealed to Israel's Ambassador to Germany, Shimon Stein, to resolve the problem. Nothing has been solved. 

The story began in 2003 when the Entry into Israel Law was enacted to improve the situation of foreign workers. Previously, such workers were allowed to stay in Israel for two periods of 27 months each, but were required to exit and re-enter the country in the interim. The amendment enabled them to stay in Israel for up to 63 months without having to leave in the middle. Apparently no one noticed that the law would apply to foreign professors and correspondents working here. 

Since then, the lives of Israel's foreign reporters have become bureaucratic nightmares, being forced to jump through the hoops of the Population Registry of the Interior Ministry and remain with just a tourist visa, or no visa at all, for months at a time. 

Bremer has been posted in Israel for 15 years, and until last year, his work visa was extended as needed without a problem. He applied for another extension in September. 

"They told me it would go to a committee that would decide," Bremer said. "I contacted Danny Seaman. He told me: 'Of course you'll get it, but there are some we don't want, and that's why I like the committee.' I told him the motive was political. It's not right for the permit to be a matter for a committee, a favor. The foreign journalists can't have the same status as foreign workers," Bremer said. 

A Foreign Press Association source also believes the five-year restriction for work visas can be a tool for getting rid of journalists that the state does not like. "They all blame each other," says a source who tried to broker a solution. "The Foreign Ministry washes its hands of the matter, and doesn't understand why people come to it." 

Seaman says the GPO sought a solution, including suggesting the issuing of special visas for journalists, but "each time we approached the final stage, the interior minister was replaced." Seaman notes that the Population Registry's Jerusalem office is stricter than its Tel Aviv counterpart. He says that when a journalist hires an attorney, the Interior Ministry finds a way to issue the visa. 

Attorney Richard Bardenstein, who represents several foreign correspondents, says the problem can be solved by issuing guidelines for granting a special status to foreign journalists. He said this could happen if an interior minister remained in office for two or three years. 

The legal counsel of Kav La'oved - Workers' Hotline, Dr. Yuval Livnat, believes that journalists have a good chance of winning their case if it goes to court. Another person close to the matter says that turning the issue into a court case could hurt Israel's public image. 

According to a response issued by the Population Registry's spokeswoman, the Entry into Israel Law "does not distinguish among the professions of foreign workers, with the exception of home health care. Out of awareness of the issue of foreign reporters, a joint procedure was established with the GPO, according to which requests by journalists who receive the GPO's recommendation to receive an extension of their work visa beyond the five years on the grounds of their professional necessity will be considered thoroughly in a positive spirit and in accordance with circumstances." 

Haddad added that "since the procedure was mutually agreed upon, there should be no problems." She rejects the charge that the process violates journalistic freedom. "In every country, work visas are limited in duration." 

Seaman confirms that he issues letters to journalists, but says he was "never officially informed that there was a procedure." The Population Registry is known to keep its procedures secret to give itself more room to maneuver. 

Now it's getting personal 

Government Press Office Director Danny Seaman responded with extreme bluntness to the charges of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung correspondent Joerg Bremer. 

He said he finds the storm kicked up by Bremer annoying, because he has yet to receive a definitive answer. "I told him not to make noise," Seaman said. "I kind of don't like his attitude, his concealed threats of intervention by the German government." 

The German government did interfere. 

"I feel like screwing him over just because of this. What kind of gall is this, for the German government to interfere in Israel's internal affairs? How are journalists different from any other foreign workers?" 

He maintains that these problems have a political basis. 

"I maintain that he's an idiot. That's ridiculous. If I issued press cards according to content, no one at Haaretz would get a card." 

"There are very pro-Israeli journalists who are [also] given problems. 

"My approach is starting to be to recommend to everyone not to help him. Now it's not political, it's starting to be personal." 

He says that you told him that this arrangement suits you, because it gives you control over the journalists. 

"I told him something like that? He's a piece of shit. When there were discussions [over a solution], I said I wasn't willing for the GPO to be the one that decides, so no one could say that there was any scheming. He's just a miserable liar. He's a piece of shit." 

Bremer said in response to the above: "Seaman wants journalists to lick his feet. He gets enjoyment from the situation, and uses his power instead of helping. It's harmful to Israel." 



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