Palestinian children confront Israeli occupation troops in Bethlehem.

Palestinian children confront Israeli occupation troops in Bethlehem.

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British UCU debates boycotting Israel, due to "humanitarian catastrophe imposed on Gaza"

"Israel boycott row reignites:

"Academics will consider a boycott of Israeli universities, just 12 months after similar calls provoked international outrage."

May 8, 2008

On the Web at:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1939169/Israel-boycott-row-reignites.html

Members of the University and College Union, which represents 120,000 lecturers, will discuss whether to continue links with Israeli institutions in the light of what they call the "humanitarian catastrophe imposed on Gaza" at the union's annual conference in Manchester later this month.

Sally Hunt, the UCU general secretary, said: "There is no call for a boycott; the motions to congress call for a wider debate about what is happening over there."

A spokesman for Stop the Boycott said they were seeking legal advice.

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Protest outside Zionist celebration: Zionists deny that Israel Commits Genocide against the Palestinians

"Hundreds show up to Celebrate Israel:

"Meanwhile, about 15 protesters march outside the gates"

Monday, May 05, 2008

BY AMANDA HAMON

The Ann Arbor News (Ann Arbor, Michigan)

Full article on the Web at:
http://www.mlive.com/news/annarbornews/index.ssf?/base/news-27/1209998428190970.xml&coll=2

Article and photos at:
http://blog.mlive.com/annarbornews/2008/05/hundreds_show_up_to_celebrate.html

A celebration of Israel's independence on Sunday attracted 400 to 500 people to an Ann Arbor festival filled with children's games, ethnic food and music.

"We're here to celebrate 60 years of a vibrant, energetic democracy, and also the culture, the food, the society of Israel,'' said Eileen Freed, acting executive director of the Jewish Community Center, which hosted the festival.

But the fourth annual Celebrate Israel event also drew about 15 pro-Palestinian protesters outside the center on Birch Hollow Drive.

The protesters, who marched outside the center while chanting and holding Palestinian flags and protest signs, said the celebration is not one of Israeli independence but of Palestinians being forced from their homes after Israel's creation.

"To the Palestinians, it's the commemoration of a nakba,'' or catastrophe, said Ann Arbor resident Farouq Shafie, who fled the area with his wife in 1966.

"I remember the horrors of the exodus caused by the creation of Israel,'' Shafie said. " ... To me, it's the saddest day of my life. It's not a day for celebration, it's a day for mourning.''

The protesters chanted anti-Israeli sayings in front of a chain-link fence covered in painted panels, some of which showed Palestinian flags flying beside Israeli flags. Although the protesters sometimes exchanged heated barbs between passersby behind the fence, police stationed near the area said the demonstration remained peaceful. The protesters' chants couldn't be heard in the center's yard, where most of the festivities took place.

Freed said members of local Jewish organizations painted the murals on the fence under the theme "Peace in Israel.'' She said although the protesters have a right to be there, their charges that Israel commits genocide against the Palestinians isn't true.

"They think there should be peace, (but) the protesters are protesting Israel's very right to exist,'' she said. "They're in favor of there not being an Israel.''

Ann Arbor resident and festival attendee Uzi Sasson, who used to live in Israel, said he wants the protesters to understand both sides of the conflict.

"As someone who's served in the army and as an Israeli, I can assure you that those people only know part of the truth,'' he said. "I wish someone could sit with them and educate them with the big picture.''

Sasson said he hopes that there can be open dialogue between local Israelis and Palestinians, so that the two groups can achieve peace.

"I believe that individuals can change the big picture,'' he said.

Henry Herskovitz of the Middle East Task Force of Ann Arbor said he was protesting the mistreatment of Palestinians by Israelis.

"Everyone speaks of white supremacy in South Africa, but few dare call Israel what it is, which is a Jewish supremacy state,'' he said. "I'm a Jew and I'm appalled at the racist ideology that Zionism is, which resulted in the Jewish state of Israel.''

Protester Laura Hampton of Toledo said she often pickets area events because of what she calls the illegal occupation of Israelis in Palestine and human rights abuses against Palestinians.

"And the U.S. supports it, big time, with money,'' she said. "It makes me angry ... it's disgusting.''

Festival activities included a Middle Eastern lounge with percussion instruments, backgammon and belly-dancing, and a guided "tour of Israel,'' in which participants visited areas of the center that represented sites in Israel.

Boris Bondin of Ann Arbor said he brought his two children to the event so they could have fun in a family-friendly environment.

"I really enjoy this place and this event,'' he said. "I think it's a good idea to make it once a year.''

Freed said that although the protest at the annual festival draws attention, the family activities of the event should be the focus of the day. "This is what it's all about,'' she said, gesturing to the people milling about the tent-covered yard.

Amanda Hamon can be reached at 734-994-6852 or ahamon@annarbornews.com.

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Israel allows "only a trickle of medicine, food, fuel and other goods" into Gaza

May 2, 2008

"After almost a year of siege Gaza closer than ever to total breakdown:

"Agencies challenge Mid-East Quartet to break its collective complacency over Gaza's suffering"

Published by Oxfam at:

http://www.oxfam.org.uk/applications/blogs/pressoffice/2008/05/after_almost_a_year_of_siege_g.html

UK agencies today called on members of the Mid-East Quartet - the US, EU, Russia and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon - to end its complacency by putting the highest diplomatic pressure on the Israeli government to lift the blockade on Gaza and allow in adequate supplies to stop an impending humanitarian crisis. Quartet members will be meeting in London today (Friday).

The agencies, including Oxfam, Christian Aid, CARE International UK, CAFOD and Medecins du Monde UK, said that the stranglehold on Gaza's borders has made life for ordinary people in Gaza intolerable, and the work of the UN and other humanitarian agencies has been made virtually impossible. Only a trickle of medicine, food, fuel and other goods is being allowed in. It has made people highly dependent on food aid, and brought the health system and basic services such as water and sanitation near to collapse.

Two months ago, the agencies released a detailed report saying conditions in Gaza were the worst since 1967. Now it is worse still. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) last week was forced to temporarily suspend the distribution of food aid to 650,000 people due to lack of fuel and has reported that 300,000 people only have drinking water for 4 hours every 4 days. Meanwhile, rubbish from one million people piles up in the streets because there is no fuel to collect it.

"The collective complacency of the Quartet is putting the future of the people of Gaza on the line. We need the immediate unimpeded import of fuel, humanitarian supplies and essential equipment and materials that have been withheld by Israel for more than 9 months to ease this human suffering and avert a disaster. It is well within the power of the EU and the US to make this happen. Instead of wringing hands and wagging fingers they should insist on an immediate end to Gaza's suffering," said Oxfam GB Director Barbara Stocking.

There are three essential elements. A guarantee that all the fuel Gaza needs will be delivered and that fuel will no longer be withheld to punish the people of Gaza for illegal acts they cannot control; clearance of food, medicines, spare parts for water systems and hospital equipment and everyday items such as toilet rolls, sanitary pads and paper for school books that have no security relevance but have been banned by Israel from entering Gaza; to secure full re-opening of all crossings for passage of goods and of people.

"Peace will not be achieved by locking 1.5 million people into a prison of spiralling poverty and misery. Strong leadership is needed from within the Quartet to convince Israel of the need to chart a new direction on Gaza," said Geoffrey Dennis, Chief Executive of CARE International UK.

Plans exist that would enable the reopening of the crossings in the matter of days. All that is needed is political will and agreement to make this happen and return to the Agreement on Movement and Access.

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The United States is Always Killing Africans-- and is officially proud of it:

"US air strike kills Al-Qaeda leader in Somalia: officials"

01/05/2008 16h33

Agence France-Presse (AFP)

On the Web at:
http://www.afp.com/english/news/stories/newsmlmmd.d6f900ba6711035aadccd43f389ae2fd.651.html

Somali soldiers patrol the war-torn capital Mogadishu
©AFP/File - Jose Cendon

MOGADISHU (AFP) - A US air strike in Somalia killed at least 12 people on Thursday, including a man said to be Al-Qaeda's military leader in the war-torn country, Ethiopian officials and rebels said.

The militant leader was named as Moalim Aden Hashi Ayro who trained with Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and had been linked to the deaths of foreign aid workers in Somalia. He had been a target of a US air strike in 2007.

In Washington, the Pentagon confirmed an attack on an Al-Qaeda military leader in Somalia but declined to identify him and would not initially say whether the mission had been successful.

"Until we have an opportunity to analyze the strike, we don't want to reveal any information," spokesman for the Defense Department's Central Command Lieutenant Joe Holstead told AFP.

The Ethiopian government, a key US ally in Africa and the main supporter of Somalia's embattled government, said the United States staged the raid on a house in Dhusamareb, in the Galgudud region of central Somalia.

Civilians flee Somalia's capital Mogadishu
©AFP/File - Abdirashid Abdulle

"This attack was purely performed by the Americans," Ethiopia's Information Minister Berhane Hailu told AFP in Addis Ababa. "It will further weaken the cells of Al-Qaeda in Somalia. It has some value for peace and stability in Somalia."

A war plane dropped three large bombs on the house at about 2:00 am (2300 GMT Wednesday), according to resident Jamal Mohamoud.

"We are still digging debris at the house that was totally demolished. We have so far recovered 10 bodies, including that of Ayro. Three people who were injured have been taken to hospital," Abshir Moalim Ali, an elder in Dhusamareb told AFP.

"Two more people who were admitted in a hospital died of injuries. They were civilians seriously wounded in a nearby house," another elder Hussein Haji Mohamed said later Thursday.

Ayro was military leader of the Shabab, a group on the US government's terrorist list. Another senior Islamist was among the dead, the militant group said.

Map of Somalia locating Dhusamareb
©AF

Shabab spokesman Sheikh Mukhtar Robow said Ayro and another senior Islamist, Sheikh Muhyadin Omar, were among the dead from the air strike.

"A US warplane bombed us in Dhusamareb district and there were casualties. This was an unprovoked attack," said Robow, whose group is a radical wing of the Islamist movement which is fighting the Somalia's Ethiopian-backed transitional government.

Ayro and Omar are "the most important Shabab members who were victims of this foreign aggression. They passed away as they were fighting the liberation of their land," the spokesman added.

In March last year, the Somali government said Al-Qaeda had named Aryo as its leader in the country. In his early 30s, he carried out insurgency training in Afghanistan in the 1990s and ran a secret militia training centre.

The US government added Shabab to its list of terrorist organisations in March, saying its senior leaders were believed to have trained and fought with Osama bin Laden's network in Afghanistan.

The attack was the fourth of its kind staged by the United States inside Somalia since the start of 2007.

-- In March, the US military fired at least one cruise missile into southern Somalia near the Kenyan border, targeting Al-Qaeda leaders and operatives believed hiding there.

Heavily-armed Somali soldiers patrol Mogadishu in 2007
©AFP/File

-- In June last year, a US Navy destroyer shelled suspected Al-Qaeda targets in mountainous and remote areas in northeastern Somalia where local Islamist militants are also believed to have bases.

-- In January 2007, a US helicopter gunship hit insurgent positions in southern Somalia to help Somali government forces.

US officials said the previous attacks were aimed at "high-value" Al-Qaeda militants.

Among them were Comoros islander Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Kenyan Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan and Sudanese Abu Talha al-Sudani, blamed for the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people and the 2002 bombing of a Kenyan coastal hotel that killed 15 people.

Officials said Ayro survived the January 2007 US airstrike in southern Somalia but left behind blood-stained identification documents.

Ayro is said to have overseen the desecration of an Italian cemetery in Mogadishu, exhuming and throwing into the sea the remains of hundreds of corpses. He reportedly ordered a makeshift mosque erected there.

The Islamists were ousted from Mogadishu in 2007
©AFP/File - Jose Cendon

In addition to leading operations against Somali and Ethiopian troops and African Union peacekeepers, Ayro has also been linked to the murders of foreign aid workers in Somalia.

Since the Islamists were ousted from Mogadishu in early 2007, they have carried out attacks against government officials, Ethiopian forces backing the Somali government and African Union peacekeepers.

Western intelligence has accused Somali Islamists of having links to Al-Qaeda, which is believed to want to use war-shattered Somalia as a haven.

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Ben-Gurion said:"The Arabs will have to go, but one needs an opportune moment for making it happen, such as a war."

"Israel is suppressing a secret it must face:

"How did a Jewish state founded 60 years ago end up throwing filth at cowering Palestinians?"

by Johann Hari

Monday, 28 April 2008

On the Web at:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-israel-is-suppressing-a-secret-it-must-face-816661.html

When you hit your 60th birthday, most of you will guzzle down your hormone replacement therapy with a glass of champagne and wonder if you have become everything you dreamed of in your youth. In a few weeks, the state of Israel is going to have that hangover.

She will look in the mirror and think – I have a sore back, rickety knees and a gun at my waist, but I'm still standing. Yet somewhere, she will know she is suppressing an old secret she has to face. I would love to be able to crash the birthday party with words of reassurance. Israel has given us great novelists like Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua, great film-makers like Joseph Cedar, great scientific research into Alzheimer's, and great dissident journalists like Amira Hass, Tom Segev and Gideon Levy to expose her own crimes.

She has provided the one lonely spot in the Middle East where gay people are not hounded and hanged, and where women can approach equality.

But I can't do it. Whenever I try to mouth these words, a remembered smell fills my nostrils. It is the smell of shit.

Across the occupied West Bank, raw untreated sewage is pumped every day out of the Jewish settlements, along large metal pipes, straight onto Palestinian land. From there, it can enter the groundwater and the reservoirs, and become a poison.

Standing near one of these long, stinking brown-and-yellow rivers of waste recently, the local chief medical officer, Dr Bassam Said Nadi, explained to me: "Recently there were very heavy rains, and the shit started to flow into the reservoir that provides water for this whole area. I knew that if we didn't act, people would die. We had to alert everyone not to drink the water for over a week, and distribute bottles. We were lucky it was spotted. Next time..." He shook his head in fear. This is no freak: a 2004 report by Friends of the Earth found that only six per cent of Israeli settlements adequately treat their sewage.

Meanwhile, in order to punish the population of Gaza for voting "the wrong way", the Israeli army are not allowing past the checkpoints any replacements for the pipes and cement needed to keep the sewage system working. The result? Vast stagnant pools of waste are being held within fragile dykes across the strip, and rotting. Last March, one of them burst, drowning a nine-month-old baby and his elderly grandmother in a tsunami of human waste. The Centre on Housing Rights warns that one heavy rainfall could send 1.5m cubic metres of faeces flowing all over Gaza, causing "a humanitarian and environmental disaster of epic proportions".

So how did it come to this? How did a Jewish state founded 60 years ago with a promise to be "a light unto the nations" end up flinging its filth at a cowering Palestinian population?

The beginnings of an answer lie in the secret Israel has known, and suppressed, all these years. Even now, can we describe what happened 60 years ago honestly and unhysterically? The Jews who arrived in Palestine throughout the twentieth century did not come because they were cruel people who wanted to snuffle out Arabs to persecute. No: they came because they were running for their lives from a genocidal European anti-Semitism that was soon to slaughter six million of their sisters and their sons.

They convinced themselves that Palestine was "a land without people for a people without land". I desperately wish this dream had been true. You can see traces of what might have been in Tel Aviv, a city that really was built on empty sand dunes. But most of Palestine was not empty. It was already inhabited by people who loved the land, and saw it as theirs. They were completely innocent of the long, hellish crimes against the Jews.

When it became clear these Palestinians would not welcome becoming a minority in somebody else's country, darker plans were drawn up. Israel's first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, wrote in 1937: "The Arabs will have to go, but one needs an opportune moment for making it happen, such as a war."

So, for when the moment arrived, he helped draw up Plan Dalit. It was – as Israeli historian Ilan Pappe puts it – "a detailed description of the methods to be used to forcibly evict the people: large-scale intimidation; and laying siege to and bombarding population centres". In 1948, before the Arab armies invaded, this began to be implemented: some 800,000 people were ethnically cleansed, and Israel was built on the ruins. The people who ask angrily why the Palestinians keep longing for their old land should imagine an English version of this story. How would we react if the 30m stateless, persecuted Kurds in the world sent armies and settlers into this country to seize everything in England below Leeds, and swiftly established a free Kurdistan from which we were expelled? Wouldn't we long forever for our children to return to Cornwall and Devon and London? Would it take us only 40 years to compromise and offer to settle for just 22 per cent of what we had?

If we are not going to be endlessly banging our heads against history, the Middle East needs to excavate 1948, and seek a solution. Any peace deal – even one where Israel dismantled the wall and agreed to return to the 1967 borders – tends to crumple on this issue. The Israelis say: if we let all three million come back, we will be outnumbered by Palestinians even within the 1967 borders, so Israel would be voted out of existence. But the Palestinians reply: if we don't have an acknowledgement of the Naqba (catastrophe), and our right under international law to the land our grandfathers fled, how can we move on?

It seemed like an intractable problem – until, two years ago, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research conducted the first study of the Palestinian Diaspora's desires. They found that only 10 per cent – around 300,000 people – want to return to Israel proper. Israel can accept that many (and compensate the rest) without even enduring much pain. But there has always been a strain of Israeli society that preferred violently setting its own borders, on its own terms, to talk and compromise. This weekend, the elected Hamas government offered a six-month truce that could have led to talks. The Israeli government responded within hours by blowing up a senior Hamas leader and killing a 14-year-old girl.

Perhaps Hamas' proposals are a con; perhaps all the Arab states are lying too when they offer Israel full recognition in exchange for a roll-back to the 1967 borders; but isn't it a good idea to find out? Israel, as she gazes at her grey hairs and discreetly ignores the smell of her own stale shit pumped across Palestine, needs to ask what kind of country she wants to be in the next 60 years.

j.hari@independent.co.uk

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Statement by British Jews:Israel was "founded on terrorism, massacres and the dispossession of another people from their land."

"We're not celebrating Israel's anniversary"

April 30, 2008

Published in "The Guardian", at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/30/israelandthepalestinians/print

"In May, Jewish organisations will be celebrating the 60th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel. This is understandable in the context of centuries of persecution culminating in the Holocaust. Nevertheless, we are Jews who will not be celebrating. Surely it is now time to acknowledge the narrative of the other, the price paid by another people for European anti-semitism and Hitler's genocidal policies. As Edward Said emphasised, what the Holocaust is to the Jews, the Naqba is to the Palestinians.

"In April 1948, the same month as the infamous massacre at Deir Yassin and the mortar attack on Palestinian civilians in Haifa's market square, Plan Dalet was put into operation. This authorised the destruction of Palestinian villages and the expulsion of the indigenous population outside the borders of the state. We will not be celebrating.

"In July 1948, 70,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes in Lydda and Ramleh in the heat of the summer with no food or water. Hundreds died. It was known as the Death March. We will not be celebrating.

"In all, 750,000 Palestinians became refugees. Some 400 villages were wiped off the map. That did not end the ethnic cleansing. Thousands of Palestinians (Israeli citizens) were expelled from the Galilee in 1956. Many thousands more when Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza. Under international law and sanctioned by UN resolution 194, refugees from war have a right to return or compensation. Israel has never accepted that right. We will not be celebrating.

"We cannot celebrate the birthday of a state founded on terrorism, massacres and the dispossession of another people from their land. We cannot celebrate the birthday of a state that even now engages in ethnic cleansing, that violates international law, that is inflicting a monstrous collective punishment on the civilian population of Gaza and that continues to deny to Palestinians their human rights and national aspirations.

"We will celebrate when Arab and Jew live as equals in a peaceful Middle East."

Seymour Alexander
Ruth Appleton
Steve Arloff
Rica Bird
Jo Bird
Cllr Jonathan Bloch
Ilse Boas
Prof. Haim Bresheeth
Tanya Bronstein
Sheila Colman
Ruth Clark
Sylvia Cohen
Judith Cravitz
Mike Cushman
Angela Dale
Ivor Dembina
Dr. Linda Edmondson
Nancy Elan
Liz Elkind
Pia Feig
Colin Fine
Deborah Fink
Sylvia Finzi
Brian Fisher MBE
Frank Fisher
Bella Freud
Catherine Fried
Uri Fruchtmann
Stephen Fry
David Garfinkel
Carolyn Gelenter
Claire Glasman
Tony Greenstein
Heinz Grunewald
Michael Halpern
Abe Hayeem
Rosamine Hayeem
Anna Hellman
Amy Hordes
Joan Horrocks
Deborah Hyams
Selma James
Riva Joffe
Yael Oren Kahn
Michael Kalmanovitz
Paul Kaufman
Prof. Adah Kay
Yehudit Keshet
Prof. Eleonore Kofman
Rene Krayer
Stevie Krayer
Berry Kreel
Leah Levane
Les Levidow
Peter Levin
Louis Levy
Ros Levy
Prof. Yosefa Loshitzky
Catherine Lyons
Deborah Maccoby
Daniel Machover
Prof. Emeritus Moshe Machover
Miriam Margolyes OBE
Mike Marqusee
Laura Miller
Simon Natas
Hilda Meers
Martine Miel
Laura Miller
Arthur Neslen
Diana Neslen
Orna Neumann
Harold Pinter
Roland Rance
Frances Rivkin
Sheila Robin
Dr. Brian Robinson
Neil Rogall
Prof. Steven Rose
Mike Rosen
Prof. Jonathan Rosenhead
Leon Rosselson
Michael Sackin
Sabby Sagall
Ian Saville
Alexei Sayle
Anna Schuman
Sidney Schuman
Monika Schwartz
Amanda Sebestyen
Sam Semoff
Linda Shampan
Sybil Shine
Prof. Frances Stewart
Inbar Tamari
Ruth Tenne
Martin Toch
Tirza Waisel
Stanley Walinets
Martin White
Ruth Williams
Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi
Devra Wiseman
Gerry Wolff
Sherry Yanowitz

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