Saturday, March 29, 2008

"We’re pressured to ignore the current state of colonization and occupation..."



THE JOURNAL; QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY
March 28, 2008
Vol. 135, Issue 39

"Remembering Palestine"

On Israel’s anniversary, Palestinians commemorate Al Nakba—the Catastrophe

On the Web at:

Dana Olwan, PhD ’09


On May 15, Israel will celebrate its 60th anniversary. Palestinians around the world will commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba or the “Catastrophe.” Among other things, Al-Nakba marks the forced expulsion and destitution of 750,000 Palestinians from their indigenous homeland and the destruction of 418 villages in 1948. Its aftermath effectively decimated Palestinian identity, culture and life.


While Israelis are exhorted to remember this day and mark the sixth decade of Israel’s creation and independence as a celebratory occasion, Palestinians are encouraged to forget their past and their historic link with their homeland.


We’re instructed to concede to traditional Zionist myths that have depicted the land of Palestine as empty prior to the arrival of Zionist settlers. We’re expected to accept that Israel’s creation did not alter or disrupt the lives of the land’s indigenous Palestinian inhabitants.


Today, we’re reminded Israel is the only country anxious for peace with its Palestinian and Arab neighbors. We’re told the building of the apartheid wall upon Palestinian territories, the repeated military incursions into the West Bank and Gaza, the expansion of illegal settlements in the occupied territories in contravention of international law, the displacement of Palestinians through the confiscation of ID cards and the targeting and collective punishment of Palestinian civilians—including the latest massacre on Gaza, which resulted in the death of at least 106 Palestinian civilians—are all justifiable and “measured” acts. We’re pressured to ignore the current state of colonization and occupation and focus instead on unbalanced attempts at peace and reconciliation that privilege Israeli security over Palestinian sovereignty and human rights, including their UN-sanctioned right of return.


Ironically, in the U.S., it’s no longer possible to celebrate Columbus Day without acknowledging the considerable toll of European settlement. Likewise, 1948 shouldn’t be celebrated as a realization of a dream without recognizing its catastrophic consequences for Palestinians. Yet Israel continually refuses to acknowledge any culpability for Palestinians’ plight.


One can only celebrate the creation of the Israeli state through the deliberate burying of the following historical facts: that the creation of the Israeli state was made possible at the expense of the indigenous population; that its creation was legitimized through racist Zionist narratives that depicted Palestinians in the words of Zionist leader Moshe Smilansky as “semi-savage” and incapable of self-governance; that it actively engages in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Palestine through expulsion, massacre and state terrorism; that Israeli “democracy” privileges its Jewish citizens and actively discriminates against Palestinians; that it has left Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza cut off economically and politically; and finally that Israel continues to employ racist and exclusionary legislative policies that prevent the seven million Palestinians living in the diaspora from returning to their homeland.


Palestinians will mark the 60th anniversary of Israel’s creation by remembering these painful historic facts. They will remember the names of the villages that were destroyed, record the names of those who were killed and lament the loss of their inherent right to a dignified life in their homeland. They will challenge efforts to deny Israeli abuses of Palestinian human rights and oppose attempts to silence Israel’s critics by deliberately conflating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. They will recognize the contributions and sacrifices of those Palestinians who live under Israeli occupation and languish in refugee camps. They will speak against Israel’s present and continuing crimes in the West Bank and Gaza. When 1.4 million Palestinian women, men and children living in Gaza are deprived of water, electricity and medical care and are subject to brutal military attacks, how can we ignore the pain and suffering the formation of the state of Israel has wrought on Palestinians?


Palestinians everywhere will mark May 15 by celebrating the enduring spirit of Palestinian resistance. They will remember by engaging their communities, by educating others about their plight and by working in solidarity with other marginalized indigenous groups in Canada and elsewhere. They will remember Al Nakba by asserting their right to remember Palestine.


Acts of remembrance involve a conscious effort to resist erasures or commit them.


How will you choose to remember Palestine?


--Dana Olwan is national chair of Students for Palestinian Human Rights.


Have questions or comments about this piece? Send them to journal_editors@ams.queensu.ca. Go to queensjournal.ca March 31 for an online discussion.

Discuss this story

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

"Israel's Holocaust against Gaza"


"Israel's Holocaust against Gaza"

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/newsfull.php?newid=95407



04/03/2008 03:54:00 PM GMT
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(Reuters) The body of a 6-month-old Palestinian baby killed in an Israeli attack on Gaza last Wednesday.


"What Israel is doing to these helpless Palestinians in Gaza is a virtual Holocaust or at least a Holocaust in the making.
"

By Khalid Amayreh


In June, 1942, in reprisal for the assassination of the Nazi commander Reinhard Heydrich, the Germans carried out a murderous rampage of murder and terror throughout Czechoslovakia. The small Czech village of Lidice bore the brunt of the German revenge, with the SS killing all the men, deported all women and children and razed the village to the ground.


Similarly, in March 1944, thirty-three German soldiers were killed when members of an Italian resistance group set off a bomb close to a column of German troops who were marching on via Rasella in Rome. Adolph Hitler got furious and ordered that within 24 hours, ten Italians were to be shot for each German soldier that had been killed. Herbert Kappler, the local German commander, quickly compiled a list of 320 civilians who were to be assassinated as vengeance. On March 24, the victims were transported to the Ardeatine caves where they were summarily executed by the SS.


Numerous other ‘pacification operations’ were carried out by the Nazi armies against civilians throughout Nazi-occupied Europe, in which men, women and children were brutally killed to avenge the death of German occupation soldiers by local resistance fighters.


Now what is the difference between these Nazi atrocities and what Israel, the “only democracy in the Middle East” is doing in the Gaza Strip, where “the most moral army in the world” is slaughtering babies as young as six-months’ old? I know that many Zionists have developed almost instinctive knee- jerk defensive reactions to any comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany. However, the truth must be proclaimed aloud, irrespective of how many Zionists will get angry.


Israel claims that it doesn’t murder innocent civilians deliberately. But this is a big, obscene lie, of which even most Israelis are aware. Mistakes happen a few times, but when the wanton slaughter of children occurs each day and every day of the year, it means it is policy.


In addition, when the number of victims, especially innocent victims, as in Gaza, even intent itself becomes irrelevant.


In the final analysis, murdering knowingly is murdering deliberately, regardless of the prevarication and the verbal juggling.


What Israel is doing to these helpless Palestinians is a virtual Holocaust or at least a Holocaust in the making.


(Watch video: Israel's Holocaust against Gaza)

(Watch video: Israel steps up Gaza attacks)


This is not a war. Wars occur between armies and states.


What is happening in Gaza is actually a merciless and brutal rampage of murder and terror waged by a Wehrmacht-like army against a blockaded, beleaguered and starved people who want to survive and be free, very much like Jews did under the Nazi occupation of Europe.


Indeed, when Israel murders a hundred Palestinian, mostly innocent civilians, for every Israeli killed, there is a name for that, it is massacre.


It is conscionable that honest people around the world, including many conscientious Jews who can’t bear watching the heinous crimes Israel is committing in their collective name, must call the spade a spade. A Holocaust, after all, doesn’t become lesser when perpetrated by Jews.


  • Vilnai


Once again, human decency is being affronted and insulted by Matan Vilnai, Israel’s deputy defense minister, who has gone as far as threatening the thoroughly tormented Gazans with a Holocaust.


Speaking to the Israeli army radio Friday morning, 29 February, Vilnai said “the more Qassam rockets fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, the Palestinians will bring upon themselves a bigger Holocaust because we will use all our power to defend ourselves.”


Is Vilnai vindicating the Nazi Holocaust?


Today, people around the world, including millions of Jews, are watching the slaughter in Gaza live on their TV screens. And no amount of spin, lie, or hasbara will make the images of mutilated babies look innocuous.


Finally, the people of the world will not be duped by the propagandistic lies about so-called rocket attacks on Israeli towns, which are meant first and foremost to create an artificial equation between the wanton extermination of Gazans and the mainly psychological discomfort experienced by some Israeli citizens as a result of the fall of these nearly innocuous fire-crackers, fired by some desperate Gazans in order to deter Israel from killing more of their children.


This is because Israel knows very well how calm and peace can be restored for both the people of Gaza and Israelis across the border: Lift the criminal siege on Gaza, allow Gazans to access food and to travel, allow them to export and import, and stop these daily massacres. And then not a single Qassam will be fired onto Israel.


True, Israel had not introduced gas chambers in Beit Hanun and Khan Younis or Rafah. But we have F-16s raining down bombs and death on sleeping children and women and innocent civilians.

Source: Middle East Online

Monday, March 24, 2008

Israel: "the only state where snipers shoot down little girls outside their school gates."


Bruno Guigue, deputy prefect of the southwestern French town of Saintes.
He wrote that Israel was the only regime that allows "snipers shoot down little girls outside their school gates."




"French official sacked for anti-Israeli diatribe"

PARIS (AFP) — A French senior civil servant has been sacked for publishing a violent anti-Israeli diatribe on a web site, the interior ministry said.


Bruno Guigue, deputy prefect of the southwestern town of Saintes, wrote in an online column this month that Israel was "the only state where snipers shoot down little girls outside their school gates."


The author of several books on the Israli-Palestinian conflict, Guigue wrote of the "Israeli jails where -- thanks to religious law -- they stop torturing on the Sabbath."


Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie dismissed the official after learning of the column on Wednesday, the ministry said.


________________________

Sunday, March 23, 2008

Cairo conference, for freedom, against Zionism:


http://www.cairoconference.net/



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6th Cairo Conference –
4th Cairo Forum - Press Syndicate
27 – 30 March 2008


http://www.cairoconference.net/


Thursday 27 March 2008

5.00 – 6.00 Registration

6.00 – 9.00 Opening session (Theater – 1st floor)

Friday 28 March 2008

Hall

10.00

12.30

1.00

1.30

2.00

2.30

3.00

3.30

4.00

4.30

5.00

5.30

6.00

6.30

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8.00

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9.00

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10.00

10.30

11.00

3rd floor


Peasants Forum: Building alliances between peasants and fishermen


Women Forum: Women.. from strike to disobedience


Forum against Dictatorship (1)


Forum against Dictatorship (2)


4-main

Coordination

meetings of

different groups

and

regional alliances

(Optional

Against the Israeli and Zionist project: Political views

Workers Forum: Free unions and fair wages

Forum against Torture: Torture and resistance

Art performances

4-1

Sawaseya Center: Legitimacy of military trials

Towards an international network for academic boycott of Israel


Labor party (Egypt) Human right violations in Egypt


Karama party (Egypt): Reflections on the proposed terrorism law


4-2

People's association against corruption (Egypt): Necessity and legitimacy of civil disobedience

Mediterranean agency for international cooperation (Morocco): For the release of Arab and Palestinian prisoners of war

HOC (Front of the Rights and Liberties) (Turkey): American Imperialism is the Common Enemy of the Peoples of the World

Hands off Venezuela campaign (Belgium): The Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela and the struggle for socialism

4-3

Socialist newspaper (Egypt): Class struggle in Egypt

Food without borders (Libya): Siege for a siege

Tadamon (Egypt): Lessons of popular struggle

International Jewish Solidarity Network: Against the Pending Holocaust in Gaza

4-4

Poetry Contest

Brothers, friends and colleagues of Jose Couso campaign (Spain): The media and the war: the battle of control information

Jafra Palestinian cultural forum: Apartheid wall

Forum of Palestine Solidarity Committees (Egypt): Revival of the role of resistance in support of the Palestinian people

4-5

Moslem sisterhood students (Egypt): Western culture and its impact on youth

"We are grown ups" alliance (Egypt): Violence in Egyptian universities

Justice Supporters Center (Egypt): Economic crisis and its impact on youth

Socialist Thought Forum (Jordan): Outside the smoke screen: The Palestinian Question Revisited

4-6

Film shows

Art Exhibition

Film shows

Saturday 29 March 2008

Hall

10.00

11.30

12.00

12.30

1.00

1.30

2.00

2.30

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10.00

10.30

11.00

3rd floor


Against all forms of racism


Forum against privatization: Health services


Forum against privatization: Water and housing


Forum against privatization: Education



4-main

Struggle against Israel and Zionism: testimonies


Iraq: The humanitarian tragedy under occupation

Students Forum: 100 years of student activism


National unity forum: against religious discrimination in Egypt


Art performances

4-1


Moslem Brotherhood students: 100th anniversary of Cairo university

Islamic parliamentarians


Socialist Studies Center (Egypt): The struggle against Zionism – which direction. The one state solution.


Wasat Party (Egypt): Party's vision in politics and society


4-2

Students Islamic Alliance (Palestine): Testimonies from within and the role of youth

Arab media watch (UK): Informing the west about the Arab culture

Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign: Answering Palestinian call for boycott: results & prospects

Ajras El Awda (Palestine): One democratic state for all its citizens on all Palestinian land

4-3

Karama newspaper (Egypt): Freedom of Press

Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine: Latest developments on the Palestinian scene

Sawaseya center (Egypt) Creative means of resisting despotism

Hewar center (Egypt): Role of literature in the struggle against the US Zionist project

4-4

Maram center (Egypt): Women against globalization

Arab Palestinian Democratic Union (Italy): Suggestions to commemorate el Nakba

Women from Palestine: Women against the siege

Egyptian Studies Center (Egypt): Creative means in the resistance of despotism

4-5

Committee for defense of pensions (Egypt): Where did the pension money go?

"Intifada" (Greece) + ISM (France) +Campo Anti-Imperialista (Europe): Role of International Anti-war Movement in Supporting the Resistance

Nation's memory group: Colonialism 1798 - 2008

Bent Jbeil organization (Lebanon): Bent Jbeil – the Arab victory

4-6

Film Shows




























Sunday 30 March 2008 (4th floor – Main Hall)

10.00

10.30

11.00

11.30

12.00

12.30

1.00

1.30

2.00

2.30

3.00

3.30

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4.30

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6.30

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9.00

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10.30

11.00

Strategies for struggle against Israel and Zionism


Towards an international campaign against war in Lebanon, Iran, Syria and Sudan


Closing session


Meeting of international coordinating committee


Closing ceremony with Tanbura Band

www.cairoconference.net