Monday, April 27, 2009

[ePalestine] ISRAEL: New Profile Movement: Harsh Police Attack on Freedom of Expression

Dear friends,

First, a follow-up to the video I posted yesterday, Seven Jewish Children.  If you are interested in the full story read: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090413/kushner_solomon

Next, the Israeli police state is on the move, in Israel.  See press release below from the group New ProfileNew Profile is a leading Israeli org that supports conscientious objectors in Israel.

In solidarity, on both sides of the Apartheid Wall,
Sam

---

Press Statement

26 April 2009 

New Profile Movement: Harsh Police Attack on Freedom of Expression 

The [Israeli] Police Detained Political Activists from Ramat Hasharon, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Beer Sheva 

•ᾉ“One who believed that criminal cases due to political activism are conjured up “only” for Arab citizens discovers that s/he is also liable to be detained due to the expression of opinions concerning the failures of the society and rule in Israel.”

•ᾉAmongst the detainees – a 70 year old ceramic artist, the daughter of a family of “Righteous among the Nations” from Holland, a grandmother to six Israeli grandchildren 

This morning the Israeli police descended upon the homes of political activists, members of the feminist movement New Profile, which acts for the civil-ization of society in Israel and against the undue influence of the military on life in the country. 

The police demanded that the activists turn over the computers located in their homes, and among other things took the computers of partners of the detainees and in one case also the computer of a fourth grade pupil, the daughter of one of those interrogated. The computers of family members were returned after the activists were released on bail. 

Amongst those interrogated: Analeen Kish, aged 70, a ceramics artist, daughter of a family of the the “Righteous among the Nations” who converted to Judaism after her marriage to Holocaust survivor Dr. Eldad Kish, active in organizations of Dutch Holocaust survivors in Israel. The pair have six grandchildren; Miriam Hadar, age 51, an editor and translator, mother of two, married to professor of psychology Uri Hadar. The two women were born in Holland and continue to hold Dutch citizenship. 

Additionally detained for interrogation were Amir Givol, a resident of Jerusalem, Sergei Sandler, a resident of Beer Sheva, and Roni Barkan, a resident of Tel Aviv. The computers of all those interrogated were taken by the police, who presented search warrants. 

All five were interrogated in the Ramat Hachiyal station in the Yarkon Region of the police. At the conclusion of the interrogation they were released on bail and under limitng conditions, and all were told that during the next 30 days they are forbidden to contact other members of the movement. 

The New Profile Movement expressed rage over the interrogation and the demand to not have contact with other members, which means a partial paralysis of the activities of this important organization in civil society in Israel. 

Attorney Smadar Ben Nathan, who is representing New Profile, said that the investigation of the police is focusing on the website of New Profile, which has links to other sites on the internet. Ben Nathan added that the New Profile Movement is a recognized non-profit association which acts openly and publicly, in accordance with the law, and the use of a criminal investigation in this context is invalid and exaggerated, and stands in opposition to freedom of expression. 

New Profile is a feminist movement established ten years ago. The movement has been warning for years of the exaggerated and destructive influence of Israeli militarism on civilian life, and provides legal aid and social support to young people desiring not to do military service, both for political and personal reasons. 

The New Profile Movement noted today: “These recent acts confirm what we have been contending for many years: the militarism of society in Israel harms the sacred principles of democracy, freedom of expression and freedom of political association. One who believed that until now criminal files were conjured up “only” for Arab citizens of Israel saw this morning that none of us can be certain that s/he can freely express an opinion concerning the failures of society and rule in Israel.” 

For interviews:              Dr. Diana Dolev, telephone: 052 872 8300
                                    Attorney Smadar Ben Nathan, telephone: 052 358 9775 

For further details:         Ofra Leith, telephone: 050 552 4372
                                    Eilat Maoz, Coordinator of the Women’s Coalition for Peace, telephone: 050 857 5729 




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Sunday, April 26, 2009

[ePalestine] VIDEO: Seven Jewish Children...in response to the situation in Gaza (9min)

Seven Jewish Children 

Watch Caryl Churchill's play, Seven Jewish Children, which was written in response to the situation in Gaza in January this year 


Source: guardian.co.uk

No Comment,
Sam



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Tuesday, April 21, 2009

[ePalestine] Palestine Mobile Cinema to be on CNN International


Dear friends,

By sheer coincidence, I met Yousef al-Deek, who's mentioned below, for coffee today. He wanted to introduce me to his work to build the Palestine Mobile Cinema. Below are the times you can learn more about it on CNN International. I urge you to listen in or catch it online and tell your friends to tune in.

If anyone would like to assist this project just let me know and I'll put you in touch with Yousef directly.

Yearning to bring a normal childhood to Palestine's children,
Sam

------- Forwarded message follows -------

April 20, 2009

Social Innovator to be Showcased on CNN International

This week Yousef al-Deek, one of 22 Synergos Arab World Social Innovators, will be featured on CNN International. A special edition of CNN's The Screening Room will showcase the work of filmmakers who are documenting efforts to promote social justice and defend human rights in places from Afghanistan to Myanmar to the Netherlands.

Al-Deek is the founder of the Palestine Mobile Cinema Project, which brings films to communities in the Palestinian territories that have never enjoyed the cultural experience of cinema. CNN followed al-Deek and his volunteer crew as they traveled to the West Bank city of Jenin armed with a projector and screen to share the joy of cinema as an escape for the harsh realities of daily life.

Please check your local cable listings for CNN International's The Screening Room, which will the run the program on the following days and times

All times are Greenwich Mean Time
Wednesday, April 22: 0830 and 1730
Saturday, April 25: 0730 and 1800
Sunday, April 26: 0430 and 1730
Monday, April 27: 0300

Beginning April 22, the program will also be available at CNN's website.

* * *

To learn more about Yousef and the work of our other Innovators in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco and Palestine, visit www.synergos.org/socialinnovators.

------- End of forwarded message -------



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Saturday, April 18, 2009

[ePalestine] Bouncer in Jerusalem (by Sam Bahour)

April 18, 2009 

Bouncer in Jerusalem 

By Sam Bahour

Though hawkish Benjamin Netanyahu came in second in Israel’s last elections, he was tapped by Israel’s president to form a new government. With his coalition now in place, he is off and running. But where is he running to? Netanyahu is no newcomer to Israeli politics. He has even been prime minister before, at a rather pivotal point in history. He led the government from 1996 to 1999 when a Jewish extremist assassinated Yitzhak Rabin for signing a peace agreement with the Palestinians. 

Many see Netanyahu as culpable in the collapse of the Oslo Peace Accords, since he had rejected them from the outset. Some even found Netanyahu culpable in Rabin’s death by inciting public fears that the peace process left Israel at risk. This time around, post-Oslo, he is making history again by joining forces with another Israeli party leader who did well in Israel’s latest elections, Moldova-born Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's David Duke. 

Lieberman has many problems with the Palestinians of the occupied territory, but is most conspicuously known for his desire to offload the Palestinians still residing inside Israel (one- fifth of Israel's citizenry, albeit third-or fourth-class). In the pure Jewish state of Lieberman's fantasy, these people contribute no added value whatever. 

This is the man who will be the lynchpin of Netanyahu’s coalition. 

For anyone yearning for an Israeli government with the courage and the will to end Israel's 41-year military occupation of Palestinians, the long-anticipated appointment of Lieberman to Minister of Foreign Affairs leaves much to be desired. The former nightclub bouncer is referred to, only half in jest, by an Israeli friend of mine as “Doberman.” 

For western onlookers, it was undoubtedly odd that the top vote-getter, Tzipi Livni, was marginalized in favor of the runner-up, said to be in a stronger position to form a governing coalition. 

Livni rather quickly conceded, opting to join the opposition. She made a smart move as much of the world repudiates Israel's dangerous drift to the right. Livni, at best, would have been a mere fig leaf for an extremist government. For Palestinians, meantime, none of the political acrobatics means much. Livni's entire political history is just as violent toward Palestinians as Netanyahu's, despite her peace-lexicon façade. 

Palestinians find themselves in a familiar posture, waiting—or more like Waiting for Godot. I daresay even Beckett would have balked at this one. Palestinians have been dispossessed, occupied and brutalized year in, year out since 1948 by an Israel that continues to talk peace while waging war. The roster of political players changes, but Israeli intransigence remains. 

One thing Palestinians are not waiting for is some enlightened Israeli prime minister who will step forward and end their misery; they've already seen all kinds: from Israel’s first prime minister, Polish-born David Ben-Gurion, who candidly said "We must expel the Arabs and take their places"; to Israel’s first woman prime minister, Ukrainian-born Golda Meir, acclaimed for her infamous remark that "There is no such thing as Palestinians"; to Israel’s first native-born prime minister Yitzhak Rabin who, during the first intifada, ordered his military to "break the [Palestinian demonstrators'] bones" and then went on several years later to sign the historic Oslo peace agreement—which was inordinately date-driven—only to announce a few days after signing it that there are no sacred dates. Palestinians have also been around the track once before with Netanyahu’s overly-sleek, propaganda-driven personality. 

Now Netanyahu seems to have a new gambit: diverting our attention from the ever-more- entrenched military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip with an "economy first" approach to peace. 

The message, today, is clearer than ever before: Israel’s new government will let the occupied Palestinians live, but just barely, and in a political headlock. Netanyahu and Lieberman evidently forget one revealing chapter in their own history, a lesson accidentally taught, and at great cost to all, by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon: There cannot be peace and security until Israel ends its occupation. 

For true negotiations to begin, the Israelis must remove the boot of military occupation from the necks of Palestinians.  Then and only then can these two Semitic cousins sit down and carve out a model for peaceful co-existence.  If international law was respected, the framework for a final resolution to this pestering conflict is already on the books by way of dozens of UN resolutions dating back to 1947; however, today, the final number of states to emerge from peace negotiations is less important than making sure the Palestinian people survive to enjoy a post-conflict reality. 

We are left with the central axiom Israeli prime ministers love to deny: There is no military solution to this conflict. Israel has proved beyond a reasonable doubt that it cannot win by relentless military force, and the Palestinians—against all odds—refuse to lose the quest for their freedom and equal rights. One more campaign to cover up Israel’s continuing occupation and the attendant war crimes only sets the stage for more death, more destruction, and more fruitless waiting. The world must act rationally today to salvage what remains to be salvaged. President Obama has better roles to play than a 21st century Godot

Sam Bahour is a Palestinian-American businessman from Youngstown, Ohio who lives in the occupied West Bank and is co-editor of "Homeland: Oral History of Palestine and Palestinians." He may be reached at sbahour@gmail.com. 

Copyright 2009 Sam Bahour.  Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.





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[ePalestine] Solving Palestine While Israel Destroys It (By KATHLEEN and BILL CHRISTISON)

CounterPunch 

April 15, 2009 

Obama's Bubble of Ignorance 

Solving Palestine While Israel Destroys It 

By KATHLEEN and BILL CHRISTISON 

To a greater degree than perhaps ever before, Washington today is engulfed in denial about Israel and its stupefying behavior, about its murderous policies toward the Palestinians, about the efforts of Israel and its U.S. defenders to force us to ignore its atrocities.  Blinders have always been part of the attire of U.S. policymakers and politicians with regard to Israel and Israeli actions, but in the wake of the three-week Israeli assault that laid waste to the tiny territory of Gaza -- an assault ended very conveniently just before Barack Obama was inaugurated, so that he has been able to act as though it never occurred -- the perspective from which Washington operates is strikingly more blinkered than ever in the past. 

At a symposium on Capitol Hill sponsored by the Middle East Policy Council just days before Obama took office, Ali Abunimah, a sharp Palestinian-American commentator who runs the website ElectronicIntifada.net, declared frankly that Washington exists in a bubble of ignorance and denial.  While the rest of the world, particularly at the level of civil society, is talking about war crimes tribunals for Israeli leaders and about sanctions against Israel, Abunimah observed, Washington and those world leaders beholden to it are trying to move ahead as if nothing had changed.  “We have to expect,” he said, “that the official apparatus of the peace-process industry -- the Hillary Clintons, the Quartets, the Tony Blairs, the Javier Solanas, the Ban Ki-Moons, the whole panoply of official and semi-official Washington think tanks -- will carry on with business as usual, trying to make believe that, through their ministrations, a Palestinian state will come into being.”  But in the real world, this state won’t happen, he said, and the time has come to speak frankly about what is going on. 

So far, three months into the Obama administration, there is little evidence that Obama sees clearly or is ready to speak frankly.  Another very savvy Palestinian political commentator and activist, Haidar Eid, who lives and endures Israel’s constant punishments in Gaza, recently told an interviewer that the international reaction to Israel’s Gaza assault was like the reaction to some kind of natural disaster -- as if no human hand had had a role in the destruction and nothing but money and aid was required to resolve the problem.  As if, he said, the disaster had not been “created by the state of Israel to annihilate the Palestinian resistance and Palestinian society.” 

Eid was commenting on an international conference of donors that convened in Sharm el- Sheikh in early March and made themselves feel magnanimous by pledging almost $5 billion in aid to relieve the “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza -- but not to do anything to resolve the political reality of Israeli occupation that is at the root of Gaza’s humanitarian plight.  The donors -- the same “peace-process industry” leaders Abunimah spoke of -- were there only to pretend concern and to dole out money, always the easiest way in the minds of political elites to make messy human problems go away.  Thus do they relieve their own consciences and at the same time tell Israel it can proceed with impunity to destroy Palestine and Palestinians; the international community will pick up the pieces and pick up the tab.  Israel has not failed to get the picture. 

Any thought of forcing Israel to cease its gross oppression of Palestinians, any thought of doing anything to deprive Israel of the carte blanche it enjoys, was apparently beyond these do-gooders.  Any realization that their aid pledge was merely part of an endless destructive cycle was also lost on them -- a cycle in which these same donors, led by the United States, arm Israel with the world’s most advanced weapons and the absolute political power that comes with the weapons, and Israel then uses the arms and the political license to destroy the Palestinians, and the donors convene again to pay to repair the destruction.  The hypocrisy was further underlined by the firm U.S. demand that, before Gazans receive any of this international largesse, Hamas must recognize Israel’s right to exist -- in other words, Hamas must recognize the right to exist of the very state that just tried to destroy it and its people, and even the land they live on. 

Were Israel’s behavior not so loathsome, the U.S. and international denial would be something to laugh at.  But the aid pledge and the endless loop of Western-financed misery - - and the myopia they signify -- together constitute but one striking example of the willful ignorance, arising from a thought process wholly oriented toward Israel’s perspective, from which the United States and the international community always approach this conflict.  The end of George W. Bush’s long tenure and the advent of Barack Obama have now given rise to other initiatives that are as naïve and myopic as the aid pledges -- myopic because, wittingly or not, they come from a starting point that is totally centered on Israel and its demands and totally oblivious to Israel’s barbaric behavior. 

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton speak earnestly of the “inevitability” and the “inescapability” of a solution based on two states, without regard to the growing impossibility of a real Palestinian state or to the fact that Israel is killing off any prospect for such a state and is in fact openly killing off the Palestinians.  The early months of the administration, and the appointment of George Mitchell as special Middle East envoy, are bringing out others who, more enamored of the process than of any prospect of genuine peace, blindly pursue the “peace-process industry” regardless of realities on the ground or the virtual guarantee of failure. 

Probably the most detailed plan purporting to lay out a path toward a two-state solution was actually written before Obama took office and is only now being publicized.  This plan -- entitled “ A Last Chance for a Two-State Israel-Palestine Agreement ” -- was drawn up in December by a group of well meaning U.S. elder statesmen, including Brent Scowcroft, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Lee Hamilton, and Paul Volcker, the only one of the ten to enter the Obama administration.  The elders were drawn together by Henry Seigman, a former head of the American Jewish Committee and scholar of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict who has distinguished himself in recent years by his frank, realistic criticism of the Israeli occupation. 

The proposal is a 17-page blueprint for achieving the impossible.  It approaches the conflict from an Israel-centered perspective and indeed, by heavily emphasizing the need to meet Israel’s security needs, contains the prescription for its own failure.  The report devotes a remarkable one-fifth of its entire length to an annex on “Addressing Israel’s Security Challenges,” in addition to considerable verbiage devoted to this subject in the body of the document.  There is no mention whatsoever of any need to ensure Palestine’s security against threats from Israel. 

The impulse behind this plan is admirable: it recognizes the centrality of the Palestinian- Israeli conflict to other issues and U.S. interests in the Middle East; it urges that the new administration overturn the Bush administration’s eight years of disengagement from the conflict and do so quickly; it calls for engaging Hamas; and it urges that the peace effort be undertaken even at the cost of angering “certain domestic constituencies.”  But the plan itself is naïve and oblivious to the brutal realities of the situation, which existed even before the Gaza assault.  Because it takes no account of Israel’s lethal intentions toward the Palestinians or its responsibility for the current level of violence, the report actually encourages Israeli intransigence while blithely assuming that this rigidity can be overcome by issuing a plan on a few pieces of paper while the U.S. continues to send Israel the arms necessary to destroy Palestine. 

The report exists in a never-never land in which Israel has no responsibility for occupying Palestinian land and has concerns only for its own security but no obligations to the Palestinians.  The report refers repeatedly to the “chicken and egg” security situation in the occupied territories -- as if it cannot be determined whether Israel’s occupation or Palestinian resistance to it came first, as if the occupation is not the reason for Palestinian resistance, as if the Palestinian suicide bombings that the report says cause Israel “understandable anxiety” might have arisen out of nowhere rather than precisely out of Israel’s oppression. 

The plan addresses the requirements of peace between the two envisioned states almost solely in terms of Israel’s needs -- not only its security needs, but its settlements needs and its concerns about Palestinian refugees’ right of return.  For instance, while it calls for the border between the two states to be “based on” the lines of June 1967 with only minor reciprocal modifications, it recommends that the United States “take into account areas heavily populated by Israelis in the West Bank.”  Although the language minimizes the magnitude of this issue, this passage means that accommodation must be made for major Israeli settlement blocs, which include approximately ten percent of the small Delaware-sized West Bank, cover virtually the entirety of East Jerusalem, and include fully 85 percent of the 475,000 settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. 

In April 2004, George Bush gave Ariel Sharon a letter that officially granted U.S. approval to Israel’s retention of what Bush called “major [Jewish] population centers” in the West Bank, thus altering what had been almost 40 years of U.S. policy supporting a virtually full Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories.  Bill Clinton’s “parameters” outlined in 2000 had done the same on a somewhat smaller scale by proposing to allow Israel to retain its settlements -- referred to by the anodyne term “neighborhoods” -- in East Jerusalem.  The latest proposal by the elder statesmen repeats this Clinton dictum and in general endorses both Clinton’s and Bush’s declarations unilaterally ceding Palestinian land to Israel, without negotiation or consultation with Palestinians. 

This proposal also gives away the Palestinians’ right of return.  Although it gives a nod to the refugees’ “sense of injustice” and calls for “meaningful financial compensation,” it declares, again unilaterally and pre-emptively, that resolution of the refugee problem should “protect Israel from an influx of refugees” -- meaning that the right would not be available to all or even most refugees who might choose to return to the homes and land inside Israel from which they were expelled.  This provision would “protect” Israel from any requirement that it rectify the massive injustice it perpetrated in 1948 and would require that the victims be satisfied, after 60-plus years, with a little money and a home somewhere outside their own homeland. 

The major element of the elders’ report proposes that the Palestinian state would be non- militarized and would be policed by a U.S.-led, UN-mandated multinational force that would function for five years but would have a renewable mandate, the intention being to permit Palestinians to control their own security affairs (and of course be able to guarantee Israel’s security) within 15 years.  The force would be a NATO force supplemented by Jordanian, Egyptian and -- amazingly enough -- Israeli troops.  The Alice-in-Wonderland aspect of this particular proposal is the elders’ assumption that Palestinian sovereignty would somehow be respected even as the Palestinians were being forced to turn their security over to a multinational force that included not merely elements of multiple outside armies, but troops from the very oppressor the Palestinians are presumed to have just shed by attaining statehood.  This is the kind of “peace-process industry” nonsense that renders proposals such as this utterly meaningless. 

The proposal gives away, before negotiations have begun, more than any state-to-be could ever possibly afford to give.  It cedes territory in what would be the Palestinian state before Palestinians are even able to sit down at the negotiating table.  It cedes, without cavil or apology, the Palestinians’ right to redress of a gross injustice that is, and has been from the beginning 60-plus years ago, the fundamental Palestinian grievance against Israel.  It cedes Palestinian sovereignty and security by inviting in an international security force including troops of precisely the occupying force that the Palestinians seek to be rid off.  And it cedes any viability in the new so-called state. 

The elders who composed this document should know better.  Some of them have actually worked as specialists on the Arab-Israeli conflict in the past, and the proposal’s convener Henry Siegman has been working on this issue for decades.  But the proposal exhibits so little understanding of the extent to which Israel has already absorbed the West Bank into itself that it would appear that none of these individuals has ever even visited the region. Nor, in its blithe assessment that it will be possible to induce Israel to agree to any withdrawal at all from the occupied territories, is there much understanding that no Israeli government of any political stripe, and particularly none of the rightwing governments that have led Israel for the last decade and more, has any intention of permitting the Palestinians any degree of true independence and sovereignty anywhere in Palestine. 

Finally, just like the donors’ conference that treated the Gaza disaster as if some natural force beyond human control had descended like a hurricane on the territory, this proposal gives no sign of recognition that Israel is the responsible party in this conflict.  Israel is the party with all the power, controlling all the territory; Israel is the party that is in occupation over the Palestinians, in defiance of international law; Israel is the party that demolishes homes, bombs civilian residential neighborhoods, drops white phosphorus on civilians, imposes checkpoints and roadblocks and other movement restrictions, builds walls to close off Palestinians, blocks imports of food to an entire Palestinian population, confiscates land to build settlements and roads for Israeli Jews only.  Israel is the party that has carried out 85 percent of the killings in the conflict since the intifada began eight and a half years ago. 

But the ignorance of these statesmen and their denial of the realities of Israeli occupation, Israeli brutality, Israeli aggression are indicative of just how much Israel is able to get away with in the atmosphere of adulation for Israel that prevails in the United States.  One wonders, in fact, if these people are truly as ignorant as they seem to be of what is going on, with U.S. facilitation, in Palestine.  Do they believe it is all right and that it advances U.S. national interests in some way to continue arming Israel and grant it total carte blanche to continue oppressing Palestinians?  Or have they been so sucked into the Israel-centered discourse in this country that they are literally afraid to oppose Israel and confront its U.S. lobbyists? 

The house of cards that is the “peace-process industry” that Abunimah referred to -- that house of cards that pretends Israel is not a rogue nation rampaging through its neighborhood whenever it feels like it -- must soon collapse.  As Abunimah told the Capitol Hill conference, what people know in Europe and in Chicago, where he lives and works, is quite different from what people in Washington and New York think they know and, as he noted, silence about the realities on the ground in Palestine is no longer an option.  When the history of this period is written, Abunimah said, “Gaza will be seen as the moment after which it became impossible for Israel to be integrated into the region as a so-called Jewish-Zionist state.” 

Kathleen and Bill Christison have been writing on the Middle East for several years and have co-authored a book, forthcoming in June from Pluto Press, on the Israeli occupation and its impact on Palestinians.  Thirty years ago, they were analysts for the CIA.  They can be reached at kb.christison@earthlink.net. 




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Friday, April 10, 2009

[ePalestine] American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)...COULD IT BE IMPLODING?!

"Not since former attorney general Robert F. Kennedy ordered AIPAC’s parent organization to register as a foreign agent has the Israel lobby been as existentially threatened by rule of law in America."

"The real issue isn’t whether AIPAC failed its lobbyists by jettisoning them in a panic; it is whether the Department of Justice failed Americans when it didn’t indict the entire American Israel Public Affairs Committee."

Full article at:

Why Steve Rosen is Suing AIPAC 
The Samson Gambit 
by Grant F. Smith / April 8th, 2009 



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Thursday, April 09, 2009

[ePalestine] Chicago Tribune: Nuclear restraints

Dear friends, 

After you read the below op-ed I strongly recommend spending 4.40 minutes to view a chilling video featuring 3-D simulations of Israel's nuclear facilities at Dimona, based on information and photographs from Mordechai Vanunu.  You can view it here in Hebrew with English subtitles...the pictures speak volumes so don't worry about language: 


Nuclear occupiers are a threat to the world,
Sam

---

chicagotribune.com

Nuclear restraints 

By Yousef Munayyer 
April 9, 2009 

It was nearly 25 years ago when Israeli nuclear scientist Mordechai Vanunu exposed his nation's secret nuclear weapons program to the world through The Sunday Times of London. Now, days before he is due to be released from captivity in Israel, an American president dared to envision a world free of nuclear weapons. In the Middle East, however, things seem to be heading in the opposite direction. 

While the Israelis have stuck to a strategy of nuclear ambiguity, neither confirming or denying possession of nuclear weapons, experts around the globe estimate the Israeli stockpile to be in the range of 70 to 300 nuclear warheads, reports the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The Israelis have also taken pre-emptive and provocative steps to ensure nuclear dominance in the region by carrying out attacks in Iraq and Syria. 

Despite the fact that the Israeli nuclear capability has contributed to the end of conventional interstate war in the region, animosity remains steady as battlefields shift. Increased asymmetrical warfare is on the rise and although Israel remains conventionally superior to its non-state enemies in the region, it has failed in eliminating the threats they pose. 

Iran also continues to test Western patience by perpetuating its nuclear program. While Iran claims its nuclear program is peaceful, policymakers here often suspect otherwise. 

The Middle East has enough problems and certainly does not need another, deadlier, weapons race. But an Iran-centric non-proliferation policy is myopic and dangerous and will likely lead the region into further destabilizing conflict. 

A better approach is reviving an effort for a Middle East free of all weapons of mass destruction. Recalled in UN Security Council Resolution 687, the creation of a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East would go a great distance toward providing security for states in the region and re-establishing faith in the international legal system. 

To do this, the international community, led by the United States, would have to put equal pressure on Iran and Israel to open their facilities for full inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency and dismantle all nuclear weapons programs and eliminate all stockpiles. 

This will not be easy for Israel to accept considering its history in the region and the solid track record of deterrence its weapons program has had with surrounding states. 

However, these concerns can be allayed by strong security guarantees by the United States to retaliate against any state that launches a nuclear attack against Israel. A nuclear attack on Israel by a Muslim majority state is also deterred by the significant, and larger, number of Muslim kin who would be killed in such an attack. 

This policy would have to go hand in hand with a resolution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, which has in recent years become a proxy battleground for the United States and Iran and has only resulted in the unnecessary deaths of countless innocents. 

The alternatives to a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East are grim. It is unlikely that sanctions will halt a hurting but sustainable oil-exporting Iran, and military options cannot guarantee the desired outcome without the likelihood of ground operations or regional conflagration. 

Eight years of disastrous U.S. foreign policy has contributed to the rise of a defensive Iran, the realignment of states in the Middle East, a perpetuated Israeli/Palestinian conflict and an increase in asymmetrical war throughout the region. The U.S. has a responsibility and a major national security and economic stake in setting the Middle East on a different course. 

If President Barack Obama envisions a world free of nuclear weapons, he can begin by evenhandedly enforcing non-proliferation policy in the Middle East with Iran and Israel. Obama will get much further with this strategy than an Iran-only approach, which comes off to Middle Easterners as hypocritical, hegemonic and deceitful. 

Yousef Munayyer is a policy analyst at the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Washington. 

Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune




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Saturday, April 04, 2009

[ePalestine] JPOST: Exporters suffer anti-Israel boycotts

Dear friends,  

Non-violent resistance works!  Keep it up!

I make the same case for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)  in the following interview conducted yesterday:  Crossing The Line .

In an interest-based world, interests must be targeted, 
Sam 

---

The Jerusalem Post Internet Edition 

Exporters suffer anti-Israel boycotts 
Mar. 30, 2009 
Sharon Wrobel , THE JERUSALEM POST 

Local exporters are losing foreign markets and customers because of the global economic crisis and a growing anti-Israel boycott of locally made products following Operation Cast Lead, the Israel Manufacturers Association said Sunday. 

"In addition to the problems and difficulties arising from the global economic crisis, 21 percent of local exporters report that they are facing problems in selling Israeli goods because of an anti-Israel boycott, mainly from the UK and Scandinavian countries ," said Yair Rotloi, chairman of the association's foreign-trade committee. 

A survey conducted among 90 exporters from a variety of sectors found that 53% had lost foreign markets and customers as a result of the global economic crisis. In addition, 62% said they were having trouble collecting payments from foreign clients, while 49% said their customers have asked to pay in installments. 

Foreign customers had forced 66% of Israeli exporters to cut prices because of the economic climate, the survey showed. 

Twenty-nine percent of exporters reduced business travel abroad by more than 30%, 11% cut it 20%, 6.5% reduced it 10% and 43% reported no change. Twenty-six percent of exporters said business visits by their foreign customers had declined

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[ePalestine] NYT: Israel on Trial [A MUST READ & ACT ON]

Dear friends,

This is groundbreaking!

George Bisharat has broken through in the Saturday New York Times with a devastating op- ed detailing Israel's violations of international law in Gaza. This is a potential turning point in Americans' understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The New York Times will surely be flooded with letters. Please write your letter supporting Bisharat's position today.

Letters to the editor should be under 150 words and include your name, address, and phone number(s) for verification purposes.  Please send your letter to letters@nytimes.com today.

May justice prevail,
Sam

---

The New York Times

April 4, 2009
Op-Ed Contributor
Israel on Trial
By GEORGE BISHARAT

San Francisco 

CHILLING testimony by Israeli soldiers substantiates charges that Israel’s Gaza Strip assault entailed grave violations of international law. The emergence of a predominantly right-wing, nationalist government in Israel suggests that there may be more violations to come. Hamas’s indiscriminate rocket attacks on Israeli civilians also constituted war crimes, but do not excuse Israel’s transgressions. While Israel disputes some of the soldiers’ accounts, the evidence suggests that Israel committed the following six offenses: 

• 

Violating its duty to protect the civilian population of the Gaza Strip. Despite Israel’s 2005 “disengagement” from Gaza, the territory remains occupied. Israel unleashed military firepower against a people it is legally bound to protect. 

• 

Imposing collective punishment in the form of a blockade, in violation of Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. In June 2007, after Hamas took power in the Gaza Strip, Israel imposed suffocating restrictions on trade and movement. The blockade — an act of war in customary international law — has helped plunge families into poverty, children into malnutrition, and patients denied access to medical treatment into their graves. People in Gaza thus faced Israel’s winter onslaught in particularly weakened conditions. 

• 

Deliberately attacking civilian targets. The laws of war permit attacking a civilian object only when it is making an effective contribution to military action and a definite military advantage is gained by its destruction. Yet an Israeli general, Dan Harel, said, “We are hitting not only terrorists and launchers, but also the whole Hamas government and all its wings.” An Israeli military spokeswoman, Maj. Avital Leibovich, avowed that “anything affiliated with Hamas is a legitimate target.” 

Israeli fire destroyed or damaged mosques, hospitals, factories, schools, a key sewage plant, institutions like the parliament, the main ministries, the central prison and police stations, and thousands of houses. 

• 

Willfully killing civilians without military justification. When civilian institutions are struck, civilians — persons who are not members of the armed forces of a warring party, and are not taking direct part in hostilities — are killed. 

International law authorizes killings of civilians if the objective of the attack is military, and the means are proportional to the advantage gained. Yet proportionality is irrelevant if the targets of attack were not military to begin with. Gaza government employees — traffic policemen, court clerks, secretaries and others — are not combatants merely because Israel considers Hamas, the governing party, a terrorist organization. Many countries do not regard violence against foreign military occupation as terrorism. 

Of 1,434 Palestinians killed in the Gaza invasion, 960 were civilians, including 121 women and 288 children, according to a United Nations special rapporteur, Richard Falk. Israeli military lawyers instructed army commanders that Palestinians who remained in a targeted building after having been warned to leave were “voluntary human shields,” and thus combatants. Israeli gunners “knocked on roofs” — that is, fired first at corners of buildings, before hitting more vulnerable points — to “warn” Palestinian residents to flee. 

With nearly all exits from the densely populated Gaza Strip blocked by Israel, and chaos reigning within it, this was a particularly cruel flaunting of international law. Willful killings of civilians that are not required by military necessity are grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, and are considered war crimes under the Nuremberg principles. 

• 

Deliberately employing disproportionate force. Last year, Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, head of Israel’s northern command, speaking on possible future conflicts with neighbors, stated, “We will wield disproportionate power against every village from which shots are fired on Israel, and cause immense damage and destruction.” Such a frank admission of illegal intent can constitute evidence in a criminal prosecution. 

• 

Illegal use of weapons, including white phosphorus. Israel was finally forced to admit, after initial denials, that it employed white phosphorous in the Gaza Strip, though Israel defended its use as legal. White phosphorous may be legally used as an obscurant, not as a weapon, as it burns deeply and is extremely difficult to extinguish. 

Israeli political and military personnel who planned, ordered or executed these possible offenses should face criminal prosecution. The appointment of Richard Goldstone, the former war crimes prosecutor from South Africa, to head a fact-finding team into possible war crimes by both parties to the Gaza conflict is an important step in the right direction. The stature of international law is diminished when a nation violates it with impunity. 

George Bisharat is a professor at the University of California Hastings College of the Law. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/04/opinion/04bisharat.html



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