The Cowards of Zion

Today I witnessed a Palestinian child being abducted by the Israeli Occupation Forces. This, of course, is not the first time that a Palestinian child has been abducted in such a manner. It happens every single day in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). Since the beginning of the Al Aqsa Intifada in September 2000, more than 2500 Palestinian children have been arrested by the Israeli forces [1]. Thousands more have been abducted and detained for several hours, often beaten and then released. In May 2007, there were 416 Palestinian child political prisoners in Israeli jails, while today of the 11,000 Palestinians being held in Israeli prisons, more than 380 of them are children [2]

Despite being aware of these facts, it still came as a shock to see the young boy, aged 14, sitting hunched over and blind folded on a rock with his hands tied behind his back. It seemed a surreal and sickening image to me.

For several months now the village of Marda, which is located directly below the illegal Israeli colony of Ariel and two kilometers from where the International Women's Peace Service is based in the village of Haris, has been subject to a systematic campaign of harassment by the Israeli occupation forces. This campaign of harassment has included almost daily and nightly incursions, searching and occupation of family houses, throwing sound bombs and teargas, imposing curfews and blocking off the only entrance left to the village that is not permanently closed by barbed wire and iron gates. The campaign has sought to target the village youth under the pretext of preventing stones being thrown at the settler road. Teenagers and young men from Marda are frequently detained, threatened and abused to try to pressure them to inform on other youth of the village.

The young 14 year old boy had been snatched from his grandfather’s house, detained and abducted under this usual pretext. Two hours earlier, Israeli occupation forces had invaded two homes in the village in search of a “stone thrower” in an orange t-shirt. At the first home, they detained a mother and her six children, aged between 6 and 16 years and interrogated the oldest son, aged 11 years, demanding he tell them who had been allegedly throwing stones. The child, however, was unable and unwilling to give them any information. When the father of the family, who had been at work in another village arrived home, the soldiers tried to prevent him from approaching the house, aiming a gun at him and threatening to shoot him. When the father insisted on joining his family, the occupation soldier opened fire with live ammunition, the bullet only missing the father’s head by centimeters.

At the same time the first house was being invaded, in another part of the village, another group of Israeli occupation soldiers randomly entered a second house looking for the same alleged stone thrower. The soldiers ransacked the house, again detaining the family and terrifying the children inside the house. At this house, however, they detained and abducted the 14 year old grandson of the house owner, despite the fact the child had been wearing a different color shirt to the alleged suspect the soldiers were looking for.

By the time my IWPS team mate and I had arrived at the village, after being called by the father of the first family whose house had been invaded, the terrified young boy from the second house had already been snatched by the occupation soldiers. As we arrived in the taxi/car from our village, we saw the young boy bound and blindfolded next to an Israeli military jeep on the side of the illegal settler highway which runs past our village and Marda. After making sure the family of the first invaded home was alright (we were unaware at this time that a second home had been invaded) we began to walk to where the boy was being held. However, before we could get close enough the military jeep suddenly speed off with the boy inside. Two soldiers remained on the side of the road. It was clear when we spoke to them, that they had absolutely no proof of the boy having thrown any stones, instead the boy's detention and abduction was purely random. He had simply been at the wrong place at the wrong time.

The child, they said, was being held by other soldiers from their unit who would determine whether or not he had indeed thrown stones and whether or not they would formally arrest him. Our request for a phone number to speak to the other soldiers was denied, as was our request for name of the soldier's unit. The child will not be hurt they assured us. “We don’t do things like ‘that’ ”, they said. Refusing to give us any more information on the boy's whereabouts, the soldiers began to pack up and leave as we took down the unit identification numbers stenciled on their jeep.

We spent the next four hours in Marda village, determining the identity of the child, visiting his family, getting the relevant information – his name, age and identification number – and making phone calls to Israeli anti-occupation activists and the Israeli military trying find out the whereabouts of the child. When we arrived at the child’s home, we found his mother - a woman in her mid 30s - laying distraught on a mattress in the family’s living room, being comforted by her 16 year old son and her daughter. She had been crying for several hours and was suffering shortness of breath and arm pains having gone into shock after hearing about her son’s abduction.

Her other son, aged16 years, was solemn and quietly angry, while sadness and concern for her mother flowed from the woman's daughter's face. Her son who had been snatched, she told us, had been in the house all day studying and only left the house just before he was abducted, to visit his uncle who was at his grandfather’s house. A week or two earlier, she informed us, his 16 year old brother had also been abducted for more than 12 hours by the soldiers, interrogated at the illegal settlement of Qedumim. He had been badly beaten and required medical attention for a facial injury he had received during the beating.

We collected the relevant information and drank tea with the family. Even in times of great stress and sorrow, Palestinian hospitality is never forgotten. We then went to visit the grandfather's house. As we left the village at 10.30pm, we saw an Israeli military jeep drive up to the entrance. We soon discovered, after making several phone calls to contacts in the village and ringing the boy’s mother, that the soldiers had released the boy. The boy had been detained and interrogated from more than 6 hours. He had been beaten, but luckily did not require medical attention.

According to the Convention of the Rights of the Child, to which Israel is a signatory, a child is every human being under the age of 18 years. However, Palestinian children from the age of 16 years are considered adults under Israeli military regulations governing the Occupied Palestinian Territories. In violation of both the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child and the Israeli military's own operating orders, Israeli occupation forces regularly detain, abduct and arrest Palestinian children as young as 11 or 12 years old from checkpoints, their homes, schools and from the street.

The Freedom Now campaign run by the Palestinian section of Defense for Children International (DCI-P), which campaigns for the release of Palestinian child political prisoners has noted that Palestinian children are detained, abducted and arrested by the Israeli occupation forces for four main reasons [3]. The first reason being to intimidate and threaten those who are active against the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine by conducting widespread arrests of both children and adults. By imposing harsh treatment and maltreating prisoners, the occupation forces are attempting to discourage Palestinians from engaging in struggle against the occupation. The second reason cited by DCI-P is in order for the Israeli occupation forces to obtain confessions to incriminate others. According to DCI-P large numbers of confessions are extracted from Palestinian children under duress and torture conditions, with the children being forced to sign confessions that they cannot read, as they are often written in Hebrew. A third reason for the abduction, detention and arrest of Palestinian children is so the Israeli occupation forces can hold them as "bargaining chips" with the aim of pressuring not only their family, but their village and the Palestinian population as a whole. Such collective punishment is illegal under international law. The fourth and final reason, notes DCI-P, is in order to recruit future "collaborators" who can used by the occupation forces as informers. DCI-P documentation of abduction and arrest cases has found that Israeli occupation forces use threats of force against the children, telling them they will be transfer or not be released or they will be killed if they did not agree to work as collaborators for the Israeli military.

Similarly, Addmmeer, the Palestinian Prisoner's support and human rights association notes that “Palestinian child detainees are subject to physical and psychological torture during their interrogation in order to force them to confess to activities they may or may not have done. The majority of confessions and sentences are related to throwing stones. Under extreme physical and psychological pressure, children often confess to such activities to end the circumstances they find themselves, often confessing to things they didn't do” [4]. During interrogation, notes Addameer, the "children are isolated from their families and lawyers are often not informed of the place of their detention. The child is usually not allowed to meet with a lawyer during the first period of interrogation, confining the child's world to the interrogation room and the interrogator, adding to the psychological stress the child already finds himself/herself in".

The 14 year old boy from Marda was "lucky". He was released after 6 hours of abduction and detention, with only a beating. Many other Palestinian male children who have been detained but have never been charged or sent to trail are held under "administrative detention" in adult prisons for extended periods of time, ranging from months to years. Currently there are around 30 Palestinian children being held in such a manner [5]. Other male Palestinian children who are abducted, arrested and found guilty of some crime, usually stone throwing, are transfered to adult military prisons such as Meggido military prison. Currently more than more than 80 male child prisoners are being held behind these prison walls, often forced to live in tents. Female Palestinian child political prisoners are often held in the Neve Tertza prison near Ramleh. In 2005, there were 11 Palestinian girl political prisoners being held in Israeli prisons [6].

While held in prison, Palestinian child prisoners are often subject to deliberate sleep deprivation, lack of adequate food, forced to remain in dirty clothing, live in unsanitary conditions and are refused toilet breaks. In addition, they are subject to medical neglect and educational neglect with no provisions made for their schooling while they remain prisoners [7].

This Thursday, April 17, will marks the International Day in Solidarity with Palestinian Political Prisoners. Through out the Occupied Palestinian Territories demonstrations will be held, with families demanding the release of their loved ones. This year, Palestinian political prisoner support groups and their families are calling on all Palestine solidarity groups and prisoner solidarity groups to hold vigils, actions and demonstrations in support of both adult and child political prisoners being held in Israeli jails.

Palestinian children, like all children around the world deserve to live in freedom and in dignity and without fear. However, as long as the Israeli occupation continues, this will be an impossibility. This Thursday, we will stand in solidarity with Palestinian political prisoners – children and adults – and call for their freedom. We will also call for and continue the campaign to end Israel’s illegal occupation. Only then will the children of Palestine have a chance to live in freedom, in dignity and without fear.

[1] The politics of prisoners by Bex Tyrer and Tone Anderson, Alternative Information Centre
http://www.alternativenews.org/aic-publications/other-publications/the-politics-of-prisoners-20050922.html

[2] Palestinian Child Political Prisoners: Semi Annual Report 2007, Defence for Children-Palestine
http://www.dci-pal.org/english/display.cfm?DocId=605&CategoryId=2

[3] Defence for Children-Palestine, Freedom Now campaign
http://www.dci-pal.org/english/camp/freedom/display.cfm?docid=244&categoryid=14

[4] and [6]ADDAMEER, Prisoner's support and human rights association
http://www.addameer.org/index_eng.html

[5] Palestinian Children's Day 2008, Press Release, Defence for Children International – Palestine http://www.dci-pal.org/english/home.cfm

[7] and [8] Palestinian Political Child Prisoners in Israeli Prisons,
Child &Youth Department, Ministry of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, UNDP http://www.amin.org/look/amin/en.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=7&NrArticle=14514&NrIssue=1&NrSection=3

This Week in Apartheid Propoganda

During the week of April 10–16, the state of Israel kicked up its U.S. taxpayer-funded terror campaign against the Palestinian people.

29 Palestinians—including 10 children and a journalist—were killed by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) in the Gaza Strip. Two of the victims were extra-judicially executed. On April 16 alone, 13 of the victims—including eight children, two brothers and a journalist—were killed in Juhor al-Dikvillage in the central Gaza Strip, and a farmer was killed in the northern Gaza Strip. For the week, 81 Palestinians, mostly civilians—including 41 children, three women and a journalist—were wounded. ¹

In that span, The Associated Press ratcheted up its own campaign of sorts—Israeli damage control—wherein some of the most blatant examples of unethical news reporting were used in an obvious effort to take the focus off Israel’s crimes and marginalize the Palestinian resistance. This is nothing new to those familiar with the state-worshiping m.o. of corporate media and news agencies covering the Middle East.

Death of a Cameraman

An April 16, AP headline out of Gaza City reads: "Gaza fighting kills 20 Palestinians, including news cameraman." ²

The only thing is, it was actually Israeli aggression that killed 20 Palestinians, as the opening paragraph reveals:

Israel struck hard against targets in Gaza on Wednesday, killing at least 20 Palestinians in a day of heavy fighting that also saw three Israeli soldiers die in a Hamas ambush.

This is an example of a conniving headline. The absence of the word Israel or Israeli—along with the double mention of Israel’s enemies (Gaza and Palestinians)—in the title of the report keeps the headline-perusing reader unaware of the Israeli role in all of it. A more appropriate title would be "3 Israelis, 20 Palestinians, news cameraman killed in Gaza," or "Israeli strikes kill 20 Palestinians, including news cameraman."

While this seems like a minor thing, it sets a zero-sum tone and frames the context from the start. So, if the reader decides not to read the body of the report, he goes away with the impression that the only candidates for culpability are Gaza and Palestinians. No-one else was involved. And even if the reader does read the report, then at the very least, he is unsure as to who murdered the cameraman.

From the same report:

Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana was killed while filming Israeli tank movements, apparently in an airstrike in the same area. Two bystanders also died. . . . Other cameramen who rushed to the scene said they saw the Reuters jeep on fire, and Shana’s body lying next to it. They said that his jeep was marked "press" and that the cameraman was wearing an identifying flak jacket. As colleagues rushed toward Shana, another missile was fired, said Wissam Nassar, a photographer with the Maan news agency. "There was an airstrike. We were thrown back, myself and another person."

So according to AP, perhaps a fighter plane or a helicopter gunship not only fired at a clearly-marked press vehicle, killing the cameraman and two bystanders: it fired a second time, at or near the rescuers. (This is a common Israeli practice, btw.) But AP gives barely a hint at who fired the deadly shells. The word Israeli is selectively used throughout the report, so as not to allow the reader to draw a definite conclusion that Israel is at fault. Which wouldn’t be so bad if not for the fact that Reuters and Ma’an news agencies published earlier accounts that make the origin of the deadly strike quite clear.

From Reuters:

Two youths passing by died in the same explosion that killed Shana, witnesses said. The cameraman had stepped from his car to film an Israeli tank dug in several hundred meters (yards) away.

Video from Shana’s camera showed the tank opening fire. Two seconds after the shot raises dust around its gun, the tape goes blank — seemingly at the moment Shana was hit. ³

And from Ma’an:

A cameramen for the news agency Reuters was killed and five others wounded, including two journalists, when Israeli tanks fired at a bridge in Wadi Gaza, the valley in the central Gaza Strip. . . .

An eyewitness, journalist Yassir Qadih, said, "Reuters journalist Fadil Shana’a was killed while he was in a jeep which was clearly marked ‘Press’. There was nobody around us except a group of children who we were going to film. There were no resistance groups in the area" he added. ⁴

So those "bystanders" were children. And apparently, there was no reason for the press members to fear being hit by any crossfire—much less, be targeted by either side— because the fighting nearby had subsided, there were no Palestinian fighters around, and the press members were merely filming the aftermath from a safe distance (or so they thought).

AP cites both Reuters and Ma’an in their report; so why don’t they cite the accounts of those Reuters and Ma’an staffers who were eye witnesses to the incident? Why not mention the authoritative and empirical camera footage of the murdered cameraman? It could be for the same reason they had to tell an outright falsehood about the frequency of such incidents.

Claims AP:

Despite near daily Israeli-Palestinian violence, casualties among journalists are rare. Only three others have been killed covering the West Bank and Gaza Strip since 1992, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

But when you check AP’s source (CPJ), you get this:

At least eight journalists have been killed in the West Bank and Gaza since 2001, and seven of them were killed in attacks by Israeli Defense Forces, according to CPJ research. ⁵

And when you read the last page of the previously-cited, 3-page Reuters report, you get this:

Journalists have become casualties on numerous occasions in the Palestinian territories. Media watchdogs estimate that nine have been killed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip since 2000. ⁶

Let’s compare.

— AP cites a third-party (CPJ), saying four have been killed since 1992.

— CPJ’s press release states that at least eight have been killed since 2001.

— Reuters cites a third-party, saying nine have been killed since 2000.

So, either AP is knowingly lying to its readers, or the editor committed an honest typo. Either way, the damage is done, just as is the case in the conniving headline, only worse. This time, the reader isn’t afforded the courtesy of a further-elaborating body of text. That is, until a more accurate account arrives the next day, buried as a penultimate in an unrelated report that closes with a "so what" account of the latest victims of Israeli aggression:

Eight other journalists have been killed covering the West Bank and Gaza Strip since 1992, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. Also Thursday, Israeli troops killed two Palestinian militants in a raid in the West Bank town of Qabatiya. ⁷

Now, AP is up to speed on the number killed. But it was not denoted as being a correction to the previous version: it was just tucked into an unrelated story as if no error was committed in the report from the day before. True, CPJ’s records go back to 1992; but, nowhere on their website do they release a talley that draws on stats going back that far. As quoted above, CPJ’spress release goes back as far as 2001 because that’s when the first of the last nine journalists’ deaths occurred. There were no press deaths for nine years between 1992 and 2001. And while it’s not a lie, AP’s use of the longer 1992 span serves one purpose: Israeli damage-control.

AP has a troubling history of omitting authoritative sources and vital historical context when reporting on Israeli crimes. Deaths of Palestinians—especially children—at the hands of Israelis are grossly unreported; while the deaths of Israelis at the hands of Palestinians are grossly overreported. References to pertinent international law and human rights statistics are routinely ignored in favor of official Israeli sources. Sometimes, entire accounts of Israeli atrocities in the Palestinian Territories go unreported, to wit:

On Nov. 1, 2004, while we were in the Palestinian territories meeting with the AP bureau chief in the West Bank, he received a phone call from a correspondent. Israeli military forces occupying the area had just killed a 12-year-old Palestinian boy who had been throwing stones from approximately 300 meters away. A soldier had shot the boy in the throat with live ammunition. The bureau chief immediately phoned the bureau in Israel with all the details.

Later, back in the U.S., we looked up AP coverage of the killing of this child. We found no story. We did find an AP photo on the internet, but could not find a single American publication that had printed it – perhaps because there was no news story accompanying it. ⁸

Third-world Existential Threat

Farther down the April 16 report, AP quotes a Hamas spokesman's comments on the recent Israeli aggression. There, we see offensive journalism:

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said the violence cast doubt on Egyptian cease-fire efforts. "There can be no discussion of a truce in the midst of these crimes," he said, threatening revenge against Israel.

Now, I personally don’t agree with the spokesman’s opinion: I believe reconciliation can be reached despite the ongoing violence. So at worst, he is guilty of rank pessimism. But that’s not the point here.

Nowhere else in the report is there a mention of Mr. Abu Zuhri or his sentiments; yet, drawing from that short quote, the editor of the AP report personally asserts that Mr. Abu Zuhri is threatening revenge against Israel. This is a example of an editor or reporter injecting extraneous editorial content and basically acting as a war propagandist.

Farther down the report, near the bottom, AP inserts some rather rare-form Israeli propaganda typically used by pundits and reserved for the editorials:

Hamas, considered a terrorist group by Israel, the U.S. and European Union, is committed to Israel’s destruction.

That’s nothing short of hackneyed neocon talking point—a total inversion of reality that focuses on virtually irrelevant 1988 Hamas charter while ignoring the decades-long accumulation of facts-on-the-ground which reveal that Israel is not only dedicated to the destruction of the Palestinian people, but has successfully carried out a policy of ethnic cleansing against them.

And how does AP reason away the notion of Hamas being a serious existential threat to Israel, when the Palestinians have no standing army, no navy, no helicopters, no tanks, no aircraft, no steady flow of armaments? They are at the mercy of the Israeli occupiers, who control the flow of food, dry goods, human traffic, electricity, fuel, and humanitarian aid in and out of Gaza and the West Bank. So please explain, AP, how masked gunmen in their own backyards, using second-rate smuggled guns and homemade rockets, will destroy the fourth-ranked military superpower on earth that wields hundreds of nuclear weapons and the best ghetto-razing technology U.S. taxpayers can buy.

Hamas’s charter states in so many words the mission of eliminating the Zionist enemy; it’s a mission statement on their dedication to armed resistance against the illegal Israeli occupation. Under international law, Palestinian armed resistance is certainly more lawful than the IDF and settler aggression Israel calls self-defense. The charter states the intent of violently taking back all of Palestine, including that area currently called "Israel"—and the terminology used in the charter is certainly extreme in places—but to legitimize the notion that Hamas of today is "committed to Israel’s destruction" is a dark irony and an dumb over-simplification which appeals to the emotional psyche of the reader and proactively distorts the balance of the report.

AP and corporate media never mention the stated goals of the Zionist movement—the foundation for the establishment of Israel. Those statements are as bad as anything Hamas leaders have uttered. AP and corporate media never stress that Hamas held a self-imposed truce with Israel from late 2004 to June 2006 when an Israeli gunboat killed 8 Palestinians picknicking on a Gaza beach. Hamas’ military wing has also claimed responsibility for deadly attacks on Israeli militants and civilians since 2006. But in the same spane, Hamas has, on several occasions, expressed a willingness to revise the charter, recognize Israel along the internationally-recognized 1967 Green Line, and negotiate a resolution to the conflict. Their 2006 election manifesto omitted the original intent of taking all of historic Palestine by force. By demonizing only Hamas, and playing PR agent to the Israeli government in their reporting, AP does an injustice not only to the Palestinian people but to everyone reading the report.

Why does AP conceal the facts that show Hamas embracing diplomacy? Could it be the same reason they parrot Israeli press releases as fact when reporting that Israel and the U.S. are "committed to peace"?

When describing Israel’s illegal aggression and intent, AP simply takes Israeli officials at their word when they say they are "rooting out terrorists," "conducting routine incursions," or "defending themselves against extremist militants bent on their destruction"; while Palestinians are always portrayed as the doers of unprecedented violence to which poor Israel must reluctantly respond. It’s a total journalistic fraud and a sick joke on their readers and to U.S. taxpayers whose money is looted to the tune of billions every year to subsidize the neverending cycle of violence. But if AP’s readers were to research the historical and contemporary records of the conflict from many sources, they will find that the Israeli occupation and expropriation of Palestinian land and resources is at the root of the conflict, and that the U.S. and Israeli governments have been the greatest rejectionists bent on the destruction of Palestine—not the other way around.

Unless Hamas trains their fighters on how to disarm nuclear bombs and somehow gets every nation in the Middle East and South Asia to join in the attack, one must conclude that the notion of a Palestinian faction of society taken as a serious threat to the existence of Israel is silly as silly gets. AP knows this, yet they continue to peddle this and other neocon-Likudnik talking points unfazed by reader complaints and well-sourced correction-requests.

Descriptive Double-standard

Another bit of tired state propaganda comes next:

Hamas seized control of Gaza last June from forces loyal to Abbas. Its control of the territory, along with near-daily fighting with Israel, has jeopardized Mideast peace efforts led by the United States.

Israel hopes to reach a peace agreement with Abbas’ West Bank government by year’s end, as both sides promised Bush last November. But Israel says it will not carry out any accord until Abbas regains control of Gaza.

This is nothing better than guilt-transference and reality-inversion. It’s an example of the U.S. and Israeli governments speaking directly through a media mouthpiece and telling flat-out lies. It’s also an example of cookie-cutter editing. The "Hamas takeover of Gaza" is a staple talking point recycled in every AP report on Israel-Palestine. You’ll see it in several reports per day out of the region. In fact, the same day AP produced the report cited in footnote 2, they produced another one with the same line about Hamas, except this time, they added extraneous modifying phrases (my emphasis):

Hamas, a violent group committed to Israel’s destruction, seized control of Gaza last June. Its continued control of the area, along with the near-daily fighting with Israel, has jeopardized Mideast peace efforts.

Israel hopes to reach a peace agreement with the moderate West Bank government of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas by the end of the year. But it says it will not carry out any accord until Abbas regains control of Gaza. ⁹

Think that’s something? Search for phrases like "committed to Israel’s destruction, AP" and "violent, hamas, takeover, AP" and "moderate, Abbas, AP" on Google and see how many documents come up. A lot. Now, pick a few of them and scan through the body of each, looking for paragraphs mentioning Israel, the IDF, or Israeli leaders. What adjectives are inserted before those words? That’s right: there are usually no adjectives there. That’s the descriptive double-standard.

It’s "Israeli soldiers (troops)" and never "masochistic Israeli militants dedicated to Palestine’s ethnic cleansing." The same is true for mentions of U.S. government entities: it’s simply "President George Bush" and never "fast and loose President George Bush" or "preemptively-warring Bush." U.S., Israeli, and allied entities are never modified beyond a benign personality trait, like "eccentric," "radical," "hard-line," etc., and it is a rare occurance. Adjectives like "violent," "extremist," "Islamist," and "terrorist" all strike a darker, more emotional and anxious chord; they are reserved for those individuals and groups relegated to the marginalization bin.

Is it just a coincidence that neocon-Likudnik foreign policy aligns perfectly with the way AP casts the neocon-Likudniks’ enemies?

And are we not supposed to believe that the Israeli "Defense" Forces and Zionist squatters are also "violent"? The Palestinian-to-Israeli death ratio is something like 30–1 since Hamas won the elections back in January ‘06. Apparently, according to AP and corporate media, F-16 airstrikes into crowded civilian neighborhoods aren’t "violent" if you’re one of God’s chosen terrorists.

But the use of the descriptive double-standard and other propaganda techniques has been a common theme for years in corporate media reporting of Israeli-Palestinian issues. Whenever the IDF suffers casualties at the hands of Palestinian fighters, it’s an "ambush" or "terrorist attack"; whereas, when many Palestinians and zero Israelis are killed and injured, it’s called a "clash"; when no Israelis die for a period of time, it’s called "relative calm." This is a fraud. If they were clashes, then it is implied that both sides squared off and returned fire; in which case, Israeli fighters would suffer some casualties. The word relative in "relative calm" really means "zeroed-out at Israeli losses."

And about that Hamas seizure of Gaza and the peace efforts they’re always ruining…

In reality, it has been the United States and Israel who have "jeopardized peace efforts." U.S., Israeli, Jordanian, and Egyptian state entities funded, armed, and trained Fatah militants as part of a neocon-Likudnik plan to overthrow Hamas. The plan failed because Hamas caught wind of it months in advance. The budding story was first reported in January 2007 (about a year after the plan’s conception) by Conflicts Forum. And all this time, the evidence of the plot has been readily available for consumption by mainstream news outlets, but they have ignored it. Instead, news agencies and corporate media outlets have chosen to flood the Internet, newspapers, and periodicals with the falsehood about Hamas being the coup-conspirators, and the double-standard casting them as peace-saboteurs.

This is especially unforgivable considering that the conspiracy has been reported more than once by another international news agency—Inter Press News Service (IPS)—beginning in August 2007. Though it was more than a year belated, even the mainstream publication Vanity Fair published a lengthy write-up of the whole affair for their April 2008 issue, using official sources and documents from all parties involved, as well as third-party testimonies. No solid refutation of Vanity Fair’s or Conflict Forum’s reportage has been offered by any of the parties allegedly involved in the plan, except a brief, blunt White House denial accusing the Vanity Fair author of fabrication. So, there is no excuse for AP and corporate media to ignore the evidence, except to save face for members of state whose turncoat conspiracy turned out to be an embarrassing failure.

Who Calls the Tune?

AP doesn’t just sell press reports to corporate media and others: it peddles U.S. and Israeli policy to the world. AP and corporate media are acting as the Ministry of Propaganda for the U.S. and Israeli regimes by manipulating public opinion in their favor. AP is the number-one, go-to source for all U.S. corporate news media. It is unrivaled in its ability to mold public opinion on a global scale: they report from more locations and put out more wire reports per day than any other agency in the world. AP’s homepage, under "Facts & Figures," states: "On any given day, more than half the world’s population sees news from AP." (This helps to explain to me why the people of the United States and the world are generally apathetic or pro-Israel toward the U.S.-sanctioned prison-camp conditions of everyday Palestinian life under Israeli occupation.)

And while its homepage says AP doesn’t operate for profit, the whole operation is run by editors, publishers, and CEOs of mainstream corporate media, who themselves are driven by profits. Those corporate media members of the AP Board of Directors are also on the receiving end of the AP news wire, as editors and producers at outlets like CNN or the New York Times; so if they want to keep their corporate sponsors and their special government contracts and such (see next ‘graph), they must make sure those news reports are edited down to talking points favoring the corporatist and militarist policies of the state and its friends in the fascism who are, of course, also the corporate sponsors of the mainstream news media that subscribe to the AP news wire.

U.S. politicians, think-tankers, and high-level media personnel on the Boards of Directors of those corporations make sure the "defense" contractors owned by said conglomerates get the sweetest tax breaks and no-bid (no-competition/exclusive) contracts for work in Iraq, Afghanistan, and who-knows-where-else. This incestuous monstrosity of malfeasance is known by many names: the Military-Industrial-Media Complex, corporatocracy, fascistic militarism, etc. (Go here for a simple breakdown of how it works.)

And when you consider that a few corporate conglomerates (a.k.a., "clusterfucks") own almost every corporation of measurable size and influence in the United States—and that each conglomerate owns at least one TV media corporation, several film production and book-publishing companies, and countless newspapers and periodicals—you begin to realize just who controls the message and why that message has been so easily delivered as a monologue of state-worship and corporate whoredom.

And just in case anybody gets any bright ideas, aggressive pressure groups make sure the news is edited using only approved language and content, at all levels of news dissemination. This is especially prevalent in coverage of Israeli-Palestinian news. Journalists and editors are basically told what to write; if they don’t write what they’re told, they’re harassed and threatened until they do, or until they resign or are fired.

These pressure groups are numerous, well-organized, and well-funded, and they exert their influence at all levels of news dissemination. Major ones include CAMERA and The Israeli Project; they are basically the PR wing of the greater "Israel Lobby." Another wing of the Lobby—the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)—owns an infamous reputation of buying and coercing U.S. politicians into supporting unAmerican and self-destructive measures and policies put forward by hawkish factions of the Israeli government. They are so aggressive and carelessly unethical in their approach that, on several occasions, they have been caught passing U.S. nuclear secrets and other classified intelligence to Israel. And while AIPAC claims that they are lobbying on behalf of Israeli and American Jews and Jews everywhere, the policies they champion have been anything but good for Jews. AIPAC represents fringe minority Jewish sentiment—that of the Israeli Likudniks and Zionist settlers in the West Bank who advocate permanent war, occupation, colonial expansion, land and and resource expropriation—which has lent itself to the constant state of threat of Palestinian attacks experienced by Israelis, as well as the negative image of Jews the world over.

The worst part in all this is that U.S. citizens are being extorted to subsidize it all—the Israeli occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the oppression exacted upon the people of other nations that are ruled by neocon-Likudnik puppet regimes, and the media "coverage" of it all. U.S. taxpayers are looted for billions of dollars every year to subsidize the apartheid, ethnic cleansings, the U.S.-induced civil wars, and other illegal and self-destructive policies and measures. Every time we purchase a product or service from a corporate sponsor of the major TV networks or daily newspapers, we contribute to the endless cycle of tyranny and death and disinformation.

Without compliant mainstream media and think-tanks covering their every act and peddling their illicit policies, intervention-profiteers within the U.S. and Israeli governments would be the marginalized ones, because they would be widely seen as the war criminals they truly are. But because the corporations that sponsor the news own almost every brand name, and because Israel enjoys a practically indomitable PR campaign that manifests everywhere the issues are discussed, boycotts are mostly ineffective. That’s why exposing the corporate media disinformation is so vital; it’s as important as exposing corrupt politicians.

People need to know what is really going on in their names. The best thing to do is to get your information from a wide variety of more independent and reliable news media, news agencies, and private humanitarian groups. Knowledge is power. My advice: Ignore the major U.S. dailies, like the New York Times, the Washington Post, the War State Journal, et al. Mostly, what you get from them is state-worshiping agitprop. Only seek news from those crooks if you have no alternative source.

I’ve found the following sources to be very helpful, though you should still tread with caution. On any given day, any of these sources will run stories that are shamefully biased toward the U.S. and Israeli governments; but overall, they have been fair and trustworthy sources of news and analysis:

News Agencies: IPS, AFP, Ma'an, XinHua, AINA, Thomson Reuters*
Print/Internet News: CBC, The Independent, The Guardian, The Christian Science Monitor, Asia Times, Ha'aretz, Al-Jazeera.net, Yahoo! News, Google News
Periodicals & Newsletters: Information Clearing House, Lew Rockwell, MWC News, Cursor, The American Conservative, The Raw Story, WhatReallyHappened, AntiWar.com, Muckraker Report, Al-Jazeera.com, Al-Ahram Weekly
TV/Internet Streaming: The Real News Network, CBC, LinkTV MOSAIC, Democracy Now!
Humanitarian: B'Tselem, PCHR, Friends of Lebanon, ICAHD, Jewish Voice for Peace, Palestine Monitor, Gush Shalom

---

* Reuters news agency has historically been a toss-up, but usually fairer than (or at least, not seemingly as beholden to corrupt state power as) The Associated Press.

[1] http://www.pchrgaza.org/files/W_report/English/2008/17-04-2008.htm
(This is on top of the ongoing, US/Israeli/EU forced-mass-starvation, including economic sanctions, embargoes, fuel cut-offs, and total military lock-down of the territory by air, land, and sea.)
[2] http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jD4YSkDPlclqd9dHvg2f0Ij18zEgD9036QDG0
[3] http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSL1632826120080416
[4] http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=28808
[5] http://www.cpj.org/news/2008/mideast/gaza16apr08na.html
[6] http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSL1632826120080416?pageNumber=3&virtualBrandChannel=0
[7] http://apnews.myway.com//article/20080417/D903RCQ81.html
[8] http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/clues.html
[9] http://www.pr-inside.com/gaza-fighting-killed-4-hamas-gunmen-r540556.htm

No Peace Without Hamas

By Mahmoud al-Zahar

Thursday, April 17, 2008; Page A23

GAZA -- President Jimmy Carter's sensible plan to visit the Hamas leadership this week brings honesty and pragmatism to the Middle East while underscoring the fact that American policy has reached its dead end. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acts as if a few alterations here and there would make the hideous straitjacket of apartheid fit better. While Rice persuades Israeli occupation forces to cut a few dozen meaningless roadblocks from among the more than 500 West Bank control points, these forces simultaneously choke off fuel supplies to Gaza; blockade its 1.5 million people; approve illegal housing projects on West Bank land; and attack Gaza City with F-16s, killing men, women and children. Sadly, this is "business as usual" for the Palestinians.

Last week's attack on the Nahal Oz fuel depot should not surprise critics in the West. Palestinians are fighting a total war waged on us by a nation that mobilizes against our people with every means at its disposal -- from its high-tech military to its economic stranglehold, from its falsified history to its judiciary that "legalizes" the infrastructure of apartheid. Resistance remains our only option. Sixty-five years ago, the courageous Jews of the Warsaw ghetto rose in defense of their people. We Gazans, living in the world's largest open-air prison, can do no less.

The U.S.-Israeli alliance has sought to negate the results of the January 2006 elections, when the Palestinian people handed our party a mandate to rule. Hundreds of independent monitors, Carter among them, declared this the fairest election ever held in the Arab Middle East. Yet efforts to subvert our democratic experience include the American coup d'etat that created the new sectarian paradigm with Fatah and the continuing warfare against and enforced isolation of Gazans.

Now, finally, we have the welcome tonic of Carter saying what any independent, uncorrupted thinker should conclude: that no "peace plan," "road map" or "legacy" can succeed unless we are sitting at the negotiating table and without any preconditions.

Israel's escalation of violence since the staged Annapolis "peace conference" in November has been consistent with its policy of illegal, often deadly collective punishment -- in violation of international conventions. Israeli military strikes on Gaza have killed hundreds of Palestinians since then with unwavering White House approval; in 2007 alone the ratio of Palestinians to Israelis killed was 40 to 1, up from 4 to 1 during the period from 2000 to 2005.

Only three months ago I buried my son Hussam, who studied finance at college and wanted to be an accountant; he was killed by an Israeli airstrike. In 2003, I buried Khaled -- my first-born -- after an Israeli F-16 targeting me wounded my daughter and my wife and flattened the apartment building where we lived, injuring and killing many of our neighbors. Last year, my son-in-law was killed.

Hussam was only 21, but like most young men in Gaza he had grown up fast out of necessity. When I was his age, I wanted to be a surgeon; in the 1960s, we were already refugees, but there was no humiliating blockade then. But now, after decades of imprisonment, killing, statelessness and impoverishment, we ask: What peace can there be if there is no dignity first? And where does dignity come from if not from justice?

Our movement fights on because we cannot allow the foundational crime at the core of the Jewish state -- the violent expulsion from our lands and villages that made us refugees -- to slip out of world consciousness, forgotten or negotiated away. Judaism -- which gave so much to human culture in the contributions of its ancient lawgivers and modern proponents of tikkun olam -- has corrupted itself in the detour into Zionism, nationalism and apartheid.

A "peace process" with Palestinians cannot take even its first tiny step until Israel first withdraws to the borders of 1967; dismantles all settlements; removes all soldiers from Gaza and the West Bank; repudiates its illegal annexation of Jerusalem; releases all prisoners; and ends its blockade of our international borders, our coastline and our airspace permanently. This would provide the starting point for just negotiations and would lay the groundwork for the return of millions of refugees. Given what we have lost, it is the only basis by which we can start to be whole again.

I am eternally proud of my sons and miss them every day. I think of them as fathers everywhere, even in Israel, think of their sons -- as innocent boys, as curious students, as young men with limitless potential -- not as "gunmen" or "militants." But better that they were defenders of their people than parties to their ultimate dispossession; better that they were active in the Palestinian struggle for survival than passive witnesses to our subjugation.

History teaches us that everything is in flux. Our fight to redress the material crimes of 1948 is scarcely begun, and adversity has taught us patience. As for the Israeli state and its Spartan culture of permanent war, it is all too vulnerable to time, fatigue and demographics: In the end, it is always a question of our children and those who come after us.

Mahmoud al-Zahar, a surgeon, is a founder of Hamas. He is foreign minister in the government of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, which was elected in January 2006.

Our debt to Jimmy Carter

By Haaretz Editorial

The government of Israel is boycotting Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States, during his visit here this week. Ehud Olmert, who has not managed to achieve any peace agreement during his public life, and who even tried to undermine negotiations in the past, "could not find the time" to meet the American president who is a signatory to the peace agreement with Egypt. President Shimon Peres agreed to meet Carter, but made sure that he let it be known that he reprimanded his guest for wishing to meet with Khaled Meshal, as if the achievements of the Carter Center fall short of those of the Peres Centre for Peace. Carter, who himself said he set out to achieve peace between Israel and Egypt from the day he assumed office, worked incessantly toward that goal and two years after becoming president succeeded - was declared persona non grata by Israel.

The boycott will not be remembered as a glorious moment in this government's history. Jimmy Carter has dedicated his life to humanitarian missions, to peace, to promoting democratic elections, and to better understanding between enemies throughout the world. Recently, he was involved in organizing the democratic elections in Nepal, following which a government will be set up that will include Maoist guerrillas who have laid down their arms. But Israelis have not liked him since he wrote the book "Palestine: Peace not Apartheid."

Israel is not ready for such comparisons, even though the situation begs it. It is doubtful whether it is possible to complain when an outside observer, especially a former U.S. president who is well versed in international affairs, sees in the system of separate roads for Jews and Arabs, the lack of freedom of movement, Israel's control over Palestinian lands and their confiscation, and especially the continued settlement activity, which contravenes all promises Israel made and signed, a matter that cannot be accepted. The interim political situation in the territories has crystallized into a kind of apartheid that has been ongoing for 40 years. In Europe there is talk of the establishment of a binational state in order to overcome this anomaly. In the peace agreement with Egypt, 30 years ago, Israel agreed to "full autonomy" for the occupied territories, not to settle there.

These promises have been forgotten by Israel, but Carter remembers.

Whether Carter's approach to conflict resolution is considered by the Israeli government as appropriate or defeatist, no one can take away from the former U.S. president his international standing, nor the fact that he brought Israel and Egypt to a signed peace that has since held. Carter's method, which says that it is necessary to talk with every one, has still not proven to be any less successful than the method that calls for boycotts and air strikes. In terms of results, at the end of the day, Carter beats out any of those who ostracize him. For the peace agreement with Egypt, he deserves the respect reserved for royalty for the rest of his life.

AIRPORT CITY, Israel - Former President Jimmy Carter defended his plan to meet with the top leader of the violently anti-Israel Hamas movement, saying Monday he hopes to become a conduit between the Islamic militant group and Washington and Israel.

Isolating Hamas is counterproductive, Carter said. Hamas rules the Gaza Strip but is ostracized by Israel, the U.S. and European Union as a terrorist group.

"I think it is absolutely crucial that in the final and dreamed-about and prayed-for peace agreement for this region that Hamas be involved and Syria will be involved," he told a business conference outside Tel Aviv.

"I can't say that they will be amenable to any suggestions, but at least after I meet with them I can go back and relay what they say, as just a communicator, to the leaders of the United States," he said.

The U.S., EU and Israel have blacklisted Hamas for its history of killing some 250 Israelis with suicide bomber attacks and its refusal to renounce violence and recognize the Jewish state.

Again - how many children has Israel killed in the last week? And when has Israel ever recognized the sovereignty of Palestine?

Israel's top leaders are boycotting Carter during his nine-day Mideast trip, in part because he plans to meet later in the week in Syria with Hamas' exiled supreme leader, Khaled Mashaal.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Tom Casey said the U.S. government has "made clear our views that we did not think now is the moment for him or anyone to be talking with Hamas."

U.S. officials will be "happy to hear" Carter's reflections on his visit with Hamas, but that they aren't likely to change the administration's views on the militant group, Casey said.

The Democratic chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee criticized Carter for meeting with Hamas. Carter "in effect is undermining a current policy which is not just American but held by many others," Rep. Howard Berman of California told The Associated Press.

Carter also offered to relay Hamas' views to Israel. If the U.S. agrees to hear what Hamas says, "I hope then the Israeli government will deign to meet with me — they have so far refused," he said.

President Shimon Peres, Israel's ceremonial head of state, was the only leader to meet with Carter since he arrived Sunday. Peres, a fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate, criticized Carter for planning to meet with Mashaal, calling it a "very big mistake," a Peres spokeswoman said.

A schedule released by Carter's aides showed no plans for talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni or Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

The cold shoulder is a highly unusual brush-off to a former U.S. leader — especially one so closely linked to Mideast peacemaking.

A disproportionate response is always indicative of an ulterior motive. Israel does not want peace. They seek to maximize Israeli geography and minimize Palestinian demography, pure and simple. They do not desire peace.

Carter brokered Israel's historic peace accord with Egypt in 1979, the first treaty it signed with an Arab country. But his popularity fell in Israel after he published a book two years ago drawing comparisons between Israeli policies in Palestinian areas and apartheid in South Africa. The planned talks with Mashaal only fueled Israeli anger.

In an interview published Monday in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Carter said he intended to use his meeting with Mashaal to press for return of three Israeli soldiers captured by Hamas and the Lebanese Hezbollah militia. He said he would also try to get Hamas to accept an Arab plan for peace with Israel.

"The most important single foreign policy goal in my life has been to bring peace to Israel, and peace and justice to Israel's neighbors. I have done everything I could in office and since I left office to do that," the paper quoted Carter as saying.

On Monday, Carter toured Sderot, the southern Israeli town targeted most frequently by Palestinian rocket squads in the Gaza Strip. He was shown a house badly damaged by a rocket strike and piles of rusting projectiles collected after hitting the town. More than 1,000 rockets have exploded in Sderot in the past year.

"I think it's a despicable crime for any deliberate effort to be made to kill innocent civilians, and my hope is there will be a cease-fire soon," Carter told reporters.

Israel kills seven, mostly civilian teenagers, in Gaza invasion
Report, Al Mezan, 14 April 2008

A relative mourns next to the lifeless body of the child Riyad al-Owais, lying on the bed at his family house in al-Bureij refugee camp, Gaza Strip, 11 April 2008. (Wissam Nassar/MaanImages)

At approximately 4am 11 April 2008, a special unit of the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) penetrated on foot into the Gaza Strip. The force mobilized at the Gaza border and moved one kilometer into northeastern al-Bureij refugee camp, where it broke into a number of houses and took positions atop them. This force was backed by many tanks, military vehicles, and drones. IOF tanks opened fire indiscriminately in the area and bulldozed fields planted with olive trees. At approximately 1pm, IOF opened fire at a group of children, who are residents of the nearby area. As a result, 13-year-old Riyad Sherif al-Owais was killed and five other children were injured. In all, seven people were killed in this incursion.

At approximately 2:20pm later that day, IOF fired an artillery shell at a group of children and teenagers who gathered to watch the incursion. As a result, four of them were killed immediately and were identified as:

• 18-year-old Shihab Mohammad Ahmad Abu Zubeida of al-Bureij refugee camp;
• 19-year-old Jihad Mohammad Salem Abu Zubeida of al-Bureij refugee camp;
• 18-year-old Yousif Ali al-Maghari of al-Bureij refugee camp; and,
• 18-year-old Abdul-Raziq Atta Nofal of al-Nuseirat refugee camp.

Three others were injured and one, 15-year-old Yousif Sarhan, sustained serious injury. He was transferred to al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City for treatment, where medical sources later pronounced his death. He was from al-Bureij refugee camp.

IOF continued to fire at crowds, causing injury to 31 people including 15 children. The injured were transferred to al-Shadha'a al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah for treatment. Due to the seriousness of their wounds, eight of those injured were transferred to al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

Later that day, at approximately 8pm, an IOF warplane fired one missile at a group of armed resistance members. As a result, 28-year-old Munzir Abu Howeshl, from al-Nuseriat refugee camp, was killed.

At approximately 10:30am on 12 April 2008, IOF began to withdraw and pulled out completely by 2pm that afternoon.

Al Mezan documented that IOF bulldozed 50 dunams of olive trees and one water well. The forces destroyed three homes and one private vehicle. In what appears to be random, indiscriminate detention of civilians, IOF arrested 17 Palestinians during the incursion. They were interrogated and all but one were released later that day. This represents a standard policy practiced by IOF that humiliates and encroaches upon the dignity of Gazans.

In addition, IOF continue to deny the entry of fuel into the strip and this severely delays medical treatment for the wounded. During this incursion, medical crews had severe difficulty transferring the critically injured from al-Shadha'a al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah to al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. It is noteworthy that the hospital in Deir al-Balah cannot treat severe injuries due to lack of medicines and specialized health care.

Al Mezan Center for Human Rights condemns strongly IOF's escalation of acts of murder in the Gaza Strip, particularly civilians and children. As this press release shows, the majority of people killed in the al-Bureij incursion were civilian children and teenagers. Furthermore, homes were targeted and farms were bulldozed, denying hundreds of people their source of livelihood. Al Mezan emphasizes that IOF's conducts constitute grave breaches of the rules of international humanitarian law (IHL).

The Center demands immediate action to investigate IOF's conducts and to lift the siege imposed on the Gaza Strip. The ongoing blockade of goods, particularly fuel, harms peoples' lives and threatens to stop the work of hospitals and medical crews. Al Mezan warns that the international community's ongoing silence in regard to IOF's crimes will have major consequences on the civilian population, especially since the Israelis repeatedly threaten to launch severe, brutal attacks on Gaza.

Al Mezan calls on the international community to act effectively and urgently to stop Israel's grave breaches of IHL and provide international protection for the civilians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. In addition, as part of their legal and moral obligations towards these civilians, they must act urgently to end the siege on the Gaza Strip that affects their humanitarian needs.

Carter wants US talks with Hamas

By BETH MARLOWE, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 14 minutes ago

AIRPORT CITY, Israel - Former President Jimmy Carter said he hoped to help open talks between Hamas and U.S. leaders, saying Washington's policy of not meeting with people it labeled terrorists was counterproductive.

The group, which rules Gaza and is largely responsible for rocket fire against Israeli towns. Hamas has killed some 250 Israelis in suicide bombings and has been blacklisted by the U.S. and Israel as a terrorist organization.

How many children has the IOA killed in the last month?

Speaking at an event organized by an Israeli financial newspaper, Carter said he wanted to become a "communicator" between Hamas and the U.S.

"I hope then the Israeli government will deign to meet with me — they have so far refused," he said.

State Department spokesman Tom Casey told reporters that the U.S. has "made clear our views that we did not think now is the moment for him or anyone to be talking with Hamas."

Casey said any meeting with Hamas officials is "something we've counseled against. But he is a private citizen, and it certainly is his decision."

Carter earlier toured a rocket-battered Israeli town and deplored Palestinian attacks as a "despicable crime."

Carter met with police officials and with the mayor of Sderot, a southern town a mile from the Gaza Strip border. He was shown a house badly damaged by a rocket strike and rusting piles of rusting projectiles that had hit town.

"I think it's a despicable crime for any deliberate effort to be made to kill innocent civilians, and my hope is there will be a cease-fire soon," Carter told reporters. He left Sderot with a gilded rocket fragment presented to him by town officials.

Carter brokered Israel's historic peace accord with Egypt in 1979, the first treaty it signed with an Arab country. But he has been unpopular in Israel since publishing a book two years ago drawing comparisons between Israeli policies in the West Bank and Gaza and apartheid in South Africa.

Sderot mayor Eli Moyal said he met with Carter to present Israel's side, even though he said he was "upset" about Carter's scheduled meeting with the Hamas leader, Khaled Mashaal.

"I don't think he should meet with killers," Moyal said.

He is meeting with the Israelis!

At a later stop at Barzilai Medical Center in nearby Ashkelon, doctors detailed the injuries and post-traumatic stress caused by the Palestinian rocket attacks, which have killed 13 people over the past seven years. Carter visited privately with three Gaza children who Israel has allowed in for treatment at the hospital, two of them suffering from congenital diseases and the third hurt in a traffic accident.

Carter has been snubbed so far by Israel's senior leadership, including Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. He met Sunday with Israel's ceremonial president, Shimon Peres, who told him that meeting Mashaal was "a very big mistake," according to Peres spokeswoman Ayelet Frisch.

In an interview with the Israeli daily Haaretz published Monday, Carter said he intended to use the Mashaal meeting to press for the return of three Israeli soldiers captured by Hamas and the Lebanese Hezbollah militia. He said he would also try to get Hamas to accept a pan-Arab plan for peace with Israel.

"The most important single foreign policy goal in my life has been to bring peace to Israel, and peace and justice to Israel's neighbors. I have done everything I could in office and since I left office to do that," the paper quoted Carter as saying.

On the ground

Dear comrades, friends and supporters,

Just a quick update to let you know that I am in Palestine and hope to keep you updated on what is happening on the ground here over the next few weeks with emails and blog entries.

I am currently in Palestine 48 (Israel) but will be heading out to the Occupied Palestinian Territories soon.

Over the past few days, however, Israel has once begun carrying out military attacks on the besieged Gaza Strip. Yesterday, at least 7 people were killed, including three children in Khan Younis when Israeli warplanes and tanks launched attacks along the northern and eastern border of the Gaza Strip. On the same day, two Israelis were killed when Palestinian resistance members entered the Gaza Strip's Nahal Oz crossing point. The Popular Resistance Committee's An Nasser Salah Addin Brigades said the raid had been aimed at abducting Israeli soldiers. Two resistance fighters were also killed in the fire fight.

On the same day, Shimon Peres, Israel's President and former Prime Minister, called for a full Israeli invasion of the Gaza and for Israel to reoccupy the region. Israel also moved on Wednesday to deny entry to the incoming UN Human Rights investigator for the OPT, Richard Falk. Falk, a Jewish –American professor of international law at the prestigious Princeton University in June 2007 compared Israel's ongoing siege and occupation of Palestine as similar to what happened to Jews under Nazi Germany. Israel says it will attempt to prevent him from taking up his position because of his prejudice against Israel.

Despite the ongoing siege of Gaza and the everyday sorrows and hardship that the illegal and brutal Israeli occupation continues to bring both there and in the West Bank, the Palestinian people remain sumoud (steadfast) in their refusal to give up their land, their culture and their heritage. And like the Palestinian people, we too must remain sumoud in to opposition to oppression, human rights violations and the dehumanization of more than 4 million people living in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

This year, as no doubt, many of you will be aware, marks the 60^th anniversary of Al Nakba (the catastrophe) which saw more than 700,000 Palestinian people were ethnically cleansed from their homeland. In the lead up to the 60^th anniversary of Al Nakba in May, the Palestinian people and Palestine solidarity activists around the world will once again organizing actions and activities which will be calling for an end to Israeli brutal and illegal occupation. While our governments stand by and do little, it is up to us to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people, so please consider how you can be part of this.

It can be a simple as writing a letter to the newspaper and/or to your local politician. It could be joining in with or organizing a stall near a busy shopping mall or on your campus to inform people about what is happening in Palestine or it could be holding a film showing or a forum on Palestine. Or starting a Palestine solidarity group on your campus, in your town or city, at your church, if there is not already one there. It could be joining or organizing a speakout or a rally or a vigil to mark Al Nakba.

Whatever it is, no matter how big or small, it makes a difference. As Australian Aboriginal songwriter and singer, Kev Carmody and Paul Kelly, once penned about the struggle of our people in Australia, "From little things big things grow" **

For an end to the Israeli occupation and for a Free Palestine NOW!

** For the non-Australians on the mailing list, From Little Things Big Things Grow is a song about Aboriginal leader Vincent Lingiari and the Gurindji people who carried out a 8 year strike at Wave Hill Station in the Northern Territory from 1966. In 1975, the then Prime Minister of Australia, Gough Whitlam, handed back some of the land to the Gurindi people. Whitlam famously poured sand from the land into Vincent Lingiari's hands, singling the recognition of the Gurindji's ownership of the land. It was the first time any Australian government recognized the rights the Aboriginal people, the claim to land and the right to practice cultural and law on those lands.

Song Lyrics can be found at: http://unionsong.com/u036.html

--
There will be a day for the oppressor when he will be crushed like garlic - Palestinian proverb.

Some came and took our land, forced us to leave, forced us to live in camps. I think this is terrorism. Using means to resist this terrorism and stop its effects - this is called struggle." — Leila Khaled

Remember the solidarity shown to Palestine here and everywhere... and remember also that there is a cause to which many people have committed themselves, difficulties and terrible obstacles notwithstanding. Why? Because it is a just cause, a noble ideal, a moral quest for equality and human rights - Edward Said

Go, Jimmy Part 2

WASHINGTON - Former President Carter said he feels "quite at ease" about meeting Hamas militants over the objections of Washington because the Palestinian group is essential to a future peace with Israel.

Carter, interviewed Saturday for ABC News' "This Week," airing Sunday, also said he would oppose a U.S. Olympic boycott and hopes all countries will join in the Beijing games.

He spoke from Katmandu, Nepal, where his team of observers from the Carter Center monitored an election that appeared likely to transform rule by royal dynasty into a democracy with former Maoist rebels in a strong position, judging by incomplete returns.

Several State Department officials, including the secretary, Condoleezza Rice, criticized Carter's plans to talk in Syria this week with exiled Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal in the first public contact in two years between a prominent American figure and the group. Carter said he had not heard the objections directly, although a State Department spokesman said earlier that a senior official from the department had called the former president.

"President Carter is a private citizen. We respect his views," Stephen Hadley, President Bush's national security adviser, said Sunday on ABC.

"The position of the government is that Hamas is a terrorist organization and we don't negotiate with terrorists. We think that's a very important principle to maintain," Hadley said. "The State Department made clear we think it's not useful for people to be running to Hamas at this point and having meetings."

Carter demurred.

"I feel quite at ease in doing this," he said. "I think there's no doubt in anyone's mind that, if Israel is ever going to find peace with justice concerning the relationship with their next-door neighbors, the Palestinians, that Hamas will have to be included in the process."

Although he said the meeting would not be a negotiation, he outlined distinct goals.

"I think that it's very important that at least someone meet with the Hamas leaders to express their views, to ascertain what flexibility they have, to try to induce them to stop all attacks against innocent civilians in Israel and to cooperate with the Fatah as a group that unites the Palestinians, maybe to get them to agree to a cease-fire — things of this kind," he said.

The State Department says it advised Carter twice against meeting representatives of Hamas, which Washington considers a terrorist organization.

"I find it hard to understand what is going to be gained by having discussions with Hamas about peace when Hamas is, in fact, the impediment to peace," Rice said Friday, after reports of the planned meeting surfaced.

Carter said he'd be meeting Syrians, Egyptians, Jordanians, Saudi Arabians and others "who might have to play a crucial role in any future peace agreement that involves the Middle East."

Asked whether it was right to meet a group that has not renounced violence or recognized Israel, he said, "Well, you can't always get prerequisites adopted by other people before you even talk to them."

Pressure to drop the meeting has come from his own party. Democratic Reps. Artur Davis of Alabama, Shelley Berkley of Nevada, Adam Schiff of California and Adam Smith of Washington state wrote a letter to Carter saying the meeting could confer legitimacy on a group that embraces violence.

"I've been meeting with Hamas leaders for years," Carter said.

The Carter Center said his "study mission" was taking him to Israel, the West Bank, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Jordan this week.

Carter, a broker of the 1978 Camp David peace accords between Egypt and Israel, won the Nobel Peace Prize for his conflict mediation as president and since.

As president, Carter led the boycott of the Moscow Olympics in protest against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. "That was a totally different experience in 1980, when the Soviet Union had brutally invaded and killed thousands and thousands of people," he said, rejecting the idea of boycotting the Beijing games to protest China's crackdown in Tibet. He did not address whether just the opening ceremonies should be boycotted.