This trash is real...

I Just Got Push-Polled on Obama and Israel

My caller ID said "CENTRAL RESEARC 212-777-1645." Ugh, I figured. Another telemarketer. It was 6:43 pm and, under normal circumstances, I would have let it go to voice mail.

But it came on my home office line and I happened to be expecting a call from New York. So I answered.

It turned out to be a political poll. And not just any old poll.

It started off in the usual way. Am I registered to vote? Do I plan to vote on election day? How do I label myself politically?

A few seemingly innocuous questions about religion followed. What was my faith? What was my denomination? How often did I attend services? From there, the focus became more explicitly political--and, again, perfectly typical. Was I Democrat or Republican? Etc.

The caller ran through a list of politicians, to ask whether I viewed them favorably or unfavorably. All the people you'd expect were on the list: George W. Bush. Barack Obama. John McCain. Sarah Palin. Hillary Clinton. Joe Biden. Joe Lieberman.

But then there was an odd inclusion: Jimmy Carter.

I can't say I made much of it at the time. To be quite honest--and this won't surprise my regular readers--I was more worked up over the fact that, when asked about the broad issues that concerned me most, the poll categorized health care as a social concern rather than an economic one. (I asked if I could change the categories; the caller said I couldn't.)

But soon enough I understood why they were asking about Carter. After going over some more issues and confirming the fact that I was likely to vote for Obama, the caller made a series of rather pointed inquiries. Would it affect my vote, he said, if I knew that

Obama has had a decade long relationship with pro-Palestinian leaders in Chicago

the leader of Hamas, Ahmed Yousef, expressed support for Obama and his hope for Obama's victory

the church Barack Obama has attended is known for its anti-Israel and anti-American remarks

Jimmy Carter's anti-Israel national security advisor is one of Barack Obama's foreign policy advisors

Barack Obama was the member of a board (sic) that funded a pro-Palestinian chartiable organization

Barack Obama called for holding a summit of Muslim nations exlcuding Israel if elected president

My notes are pretty close to verbatim. (I started typing as soon as I realized I was getting polled.) When the caller was finished, I got a supervisor on the phone and asked if he would tell me who was sponsoring the survey. He said he couldn't reveal that information.

All he would tell me was that he was calling from Central Marketing Research Inc. in New York City. And that makes sense. It seems that the same organization has been involved in these sorts of efforts before.

Update: Ben Smith at Politico reports that other Jewish voters are getting these calls, too. Based on his reporting and a comment from TNR reader "amstern," it sounds like the calls are going out to Jews in Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Michigan (which is where I live).

Also, I corrected the improper use of "exorcised" in my original item.

Update 2: Over at Talking Points Memo, David Kurtz suggests these calls are too long to be true push polls. Instead, he says, they are testing negative messages against Obama.

--Jonathan Cohn

More trash is real...

GOP Jewish Group Calling Jewish Voters with Questions Some Find Meshugah

September 16, 2008 9:36 PM

A Jewish Republican organization has polled 750 Jewish voters in five key battleground states -- Florida, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, and Pennsylvania -- to test messages that would cause them not to vote for Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.

Matthew Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, told ABC News Tuesday evening that despite complaints by some liberal Jewish organizations that the calls were part of a "push poll" -- that is, designed to spread salacious information as opposed to collect views of voters -- this was a "traditional poll of issues," with 82 questions using "standard polling methodology."

The point of the calls were to explore "why Obama continues to have significant problems with Jewish voters," Brooks said.

The calls have caused some outrage among members of the Jewish community and have been reported as far away as Israel. The fact that the RJC is behind the calls was first reported this evening by Ben Smith of the Politico.

Ben Cohen, a 37-year-old lawyer in Ohio received one of the calls last night and he was clearly offended.

"It was evocative of a time and a kind of politics that I would never want to see rise in America," Cohen told ABC News. "You shouldn't scare people to get elected -- Jewish people have experienced that before really horrifically."

Cohen received the call at his Cleveland Heights home Monday night. The third question, he recalled, was what religion he is. After telling the woman polling him he's Jewish, Cohen was asked how often he attends synagogue -- daily, frequently, or only on the High Holidays.

"That was a little odd," Cohen said. But then the poll turned into more standard questions such as which issue was most important to him.

After Cohen said he was leaning towards voting for Obama -- he was undecided until McCain picked Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice presidential nominee, Cohen said -- the questions took what he called an "inflammatory" turn.

"Would you still vote for Barack Obama if you knew he'd been endorsed by Hamas?" Cohen said the questioner asked.

"Would you still vote for Barack Obama if you knew he had given money to the PLO?" Cohen said the question asked.

"Would you still vote for Barack Obama if you knew he supported a divided Jerusalem?" the questioner asked, Cohen recalled.

Recalled Cohen, "as the questions became a little more untoward," he reminded the pollster that she'd said the call would be brief.

"She said she was half done," Cohen said. "And I waited because I wanted to see if she would ask the same questions about McCain that they did with Obama."

She didn't.

"Then someone else gets on the phone," Cohen said. "And he said, 'I just wanted to check: Are you Jewish?' That was one of first questions the poll asked but at that point I felt uncomfortable answering it. it was odd. I felt like I was being targeted in the poll."

Brooks would not share the list of 82 questions from the RJC poll, but he said the three questions as Cohen recalled them were not precisely the ones asked.

Instead, Brooks said, those being polled were asked how their support for Obama would be affected if they knew that a leader of Hamas, Ahmed Yousef, had expressed support for Obama.

Yousef, a political adviser to Hamas in Gaza, said in April, "We like Mr. Obama, and we hope that he will win the election," but after Obama delivered a pro-Israel speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said the group had changed its mind: "Hamas does not differentiate between the two presidential candidates, Obama and McCain, because their policies regarding the Arab-Israel conflict are the same and are hostile to us, therefore we do have no preference and are not wishing for either of them to win."

Brooks said the poll "absolutely did not" say Obama gave money to the PLO, but he said a question may have addressed that when Obama was on the board of the Woods Fund, the philanthropic group gave a grant to an Arab-American community organization in Chicago that Brooks characterized as anti-Israel.

After initially declaring before the AIPAC audience that Israel's capital must remained an undivided Jerusalem, Obama backed off that pronouncement, saying it's a matter to be decided by the Israelis and Palestinians in the final stages of a peace process. Brooks insisted his poll stated merely that Obama had flip flopped on the issue.

Obama supporter Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Florida, in a statement, said that "the fact that the Republican Jewish Coalition is targeting Jewish Americans with these disgraceful and deceitful tactics fits in perfectly with the dishonorable campaign that John McCain has chosen to run. Peddling lies and hateful distortions to scare Jewish voters is reprehensible and deeply disrespectful to Jewish Americans."

Said Brooks, "What's really interesting is the reaction from Jews who are supporting Obama. The questions we asked are all legitimate. Why don’t they like us asking these questions? Because they don't like the answers."

Brooks acknowledged that much of the leadership of the RJC has ties to the McCain campaign, but he said his organization does not coordinate in any way with the McCain campaign and anyone who "has a title" in the McCain campaign who is also active with his organization "has taken a leave of absence from the RJC so there's no question whatsoever of any integration or any overlap."

But even though Brooks stands by his poll and says it's no different from any other poll of the Jewish community, it has rubbed many voters the wrong way.

"I lived in New Orleans for nine or ten years," Cohen said, "and I would often get polls with salacious or inflammatory information. This one made the hair on the back of my neck stand up."

- jpt

International Jewish Solidarity Network: opposing Zionism, racism and colonism

Monday, September 15, 2008

International Jewish Solidarity Network: opposing Zionism, racism and colonism

Dear friends,

The International Jewish Solidarity Network is a growing international coalition of anti-Zionist Jews. After two years of hard work, the Interntional Jewish Solidarity Network will be launched internationally on September 29.

According to IJSN Vision statement (on their website):
The International Jewish Solidarity Network (IJSN) envisions the building of just societies in historic Palestine, the larger region, and other places in which we live. In these societies, safety is sought in joint liberation, not in isolation. We seek to contribute to the global struggles for justice in accordance with our locations and ally ourselves with other liberation and social justice movements. This participation is first and foremost an uncompromising commitment to the liberation of Palestine. We also seek to extricate Jewish identities, histories, cultural and religious practices and politics from Zionism, thus allowing for Jewish plurality and the reemergence of broader Jewish participation in emancipation struggles. The next generation of people of Jewish descent will build continuity with this commitment to justice for all people, in Palestine and beyond.

Please find below the newsletter issued by the IJSN about their upcoming launch and activities including their call for 10 days of solidarity actions with resistance to Zionism and imperialism in Palestine between Rosh Hashana to Yom Kippur: September 30 through October 8, 2008

For more information on IJSN you can visit their website at http://www.ijsn.net/en/

ps: the wonderful photographs are from the NO TIME TO CELEBRATE: Jews remember the Nakba website: www.notimetocelebrate.org

***

from: www.notimetocelebrate.org

International Jewish Solidarity Network
Jews Honor Resistance to Zionism, Racism, Colonialism Network will launch
internationally on 29 September, 2008 with the release of our Charter and our Week of Action: Confront Zionism - Divest from Israel

In This Newsletter

+ Who is the International Jewish Solidarity Network?

+ International building

+ Activities moving forward

+ GET INVOLVED

+ Work-to-Date

+ "International Resistance to Zionism"

+ The LAUNCH - Give input and join us!

+ Developing a new structure

+ Finding a symbolic name and logo

+ Contact Information

***

Join us in launching the network!

IJSN will officially launch over the 2008 High Holidays: 1 - 7 October

Launch will begin with the release of our founding Charter and week of actions in support of Boycott, Divestment and Sanction against Israel and confronting Zionism.

Please click here to see an excerpt of the Charter and join us from 10 - 17 September to give your input.

***

from: www.notimetocelebrate.org


International Organizing Update

September 2008

WE WELCOME YOUR PARTICIPATION AND PARTNERSHIP!

Who is the International Jewish Solidarity Network?

This a growing international network of Jews whose identities are not based on Jewish nationalism but on long histories of Jewish participation in liberation struggles from Eastern Europe and Iraq to Brooklyn and Mississippi. In this year of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the colonial State of Israel, we pledge to struggle against both the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the designation of Israel as a Jewish State.

For the past two years, the network has been building an international network of anti-Zionist Jews to support existing and seed new Jewish anti-Zionist organizing in solidarity with Palestinian resistance. As with any other struggle for justice, working locally or even nationally is not enough.

The enemy we face is international, and what we can do is limited unless we find ways to work together across boundaries and regions. We are building an international voice which challenges Zionism and its claim to speak on behalf of Jews worldwide. As an international force, we can contribute to the movement to defeat US-backed Israeli imperialism.

We do this through the following strategies: 1) solidarity with the struggle for Palestinian self-determination, 2) participation in broader anti-imperialist movements, and 3) the extrication of Jewish history, politics, community, and culture from Zionism.

To read more about the network, go to www.ijsn.net.


from: www.notimetocelebrate.org

***
International building

From July 31 to August 3, 2008, in Berkeley, California, IJSN gathered anti-Zionist activists from continental Europe and the UK, India, Israel, the US and Canada. This first international organizing meeting was preparation for the public launch of the network over the 2008 Jewish high holidays. To read more about the meeting, go to www.ijsn.net/en/ijsn/first_international/M36.

Since the international meeting we have engaged activists in Morocco and Argentina. The network seeks to expand its work to other parts of the US, Europe, Canada, South and West Asia, South America, South Africa, Australia, and Eastern Europe.

If you are interested in building the work of the network in your city or region, please email us at ijsn@ijsn.net.

***

We hope you will join us in the following activities moving forward...

To join us in any of this work, or if you have other ideas for the role and work of the network, please email ijsn@ijsn.net to share your interest, input and thoughts.

* Charter release and Week of Action: On 29 September, 2008, the network will put out its founding Charter with a clear anti-Zionist Jewish analysis and a call for a Week of Action. See sidebar for more information and click here to read more about the Week of Action and add your ideas.

* Popular Tribunals: Over the next 2-3 years the network will organize tribunals that gather testimony in order to expose the tactics of and demand accountability from Zionist institutions and individuals. Visit www.ijsn.net/en/ijsn/popular_tribunals/M36 to read more.

* Consciousness Raising: We will continue to engage in public education including forums, art exhibits, digital stories and workshops to the increase visibility of anti-Zionist narratives.

* Cross-movement building: Through supporting an anti-Zionist politic in the movements our members already participate in for racial, economic and gender justice, IJSN seeks to broaden support for the Palestinian struggle for justice.

* North American Organizing Meeting: At this gathering, activists from the US and Canada will develop long-term strategy, campaigns, and programs for partnership with broader Palestine solidarity work in the region.

* Education and Leadership Development: Through Unlearning Zionism workshops, Organizing Institutes, mentorship systems, and our Study to Action curriculum, study group program and educational resource website, the network will build the collective analysis, strategy and capacity of anti-Zionist Jewish participation in Palestine solidarity organizing. Read more about the Study to Action program at www.ijsn.net/en/ijsn/study_to_action/M16.

* Participation in existing Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) campaigns and other efforts to challenge Zionism: The network will not lead BDS efforts, but will encourage and support participation of its members in local, national and international campaigns.

* Supporting joint struggle between Jews of Arab, Persian and Asian descent and Palestinians: IJSN activists in Israel are developing relationships of joint struggle against Zionism and Israeli apartheid.

* Building of Academic, Jews of Color and Jews of Arab descent, Student, Cultural/Artist, Youth, Spiritual/Religious Sector Networks.


from: www.notimetocelebrate.org

***

Participate and partner with us as we launch!

We need your participation and partnership in launching and evolving the programs and infrastructure of the network

Give input into the charter, week of action, symbolic name, logo and structure by clicking on the following links:

* Charter
* Week of Action
* Symbolic name and logo
* Structure

Visit www.ijsn.net/en/ijsn/C15/ to sign up for updates on the Charter release and Week of Action.

***

Previous Work

To read about the network's previous activities - including the Study to Action program, Nakba at 60 organizing, and participation in the Palestinian Popular Conference, the Cairo Conference and Liberation Forum and the US Social Forum - please visit www.ijsn.net/en/ijsn/C31/.

****

"International Resistance to Zionism"

Leading up to our first international meeting, IJSN held forums in London, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. These events were very well received, with 120, 100 and 40 attendees respectively. Watch footage of the forum in London. Read and view photos from the forum in San Francisco. Listen to radio broadcasts from Los Angeles.



from: www.notimetocelebrate.org

***

Please join us in a week of action from
1 - 7 October: Confront Zionism - Divest from Israel

Confront Zionism: Support the Palestinian call for boycotting Zionist and Israeli cultural, educational, sporting and political events and the academic boycott. Confront Zionist organizations that support Israeli Apartheid, censor and target individuals and organizations for criticism of Israel, and collaborate in US-European Islamophobia. Expose Jewish organizations that confuse support of Israel with defense of Jews and disguise economic and political support for Israel and Zionism as Jewish cultural and community work.

Divest from Israel: Support the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israelthrough actions that target Israeli goods.

*Put the Charter out into the World:
Use the founding Charter as an opportunity to voice and bring visibility to anti-Zionist politics through educational, cultural and spiritual events and creative action.

*Please click here to see a full description of the Week of Action.

*Help us develop a new structure

*Toward preparing for broader participation in the network, IJSN is developing a representative structure for coordination, consultation and communication across and between local, regional and international organizing.

*Over the next year we hope to evolve and practice this representative structure to support and increase the connections across local and regional self-organizing, while continuing to grow our capacity for internationally coordinated actions and campaigns (initiated at any level of the network).We need your help as we figure out how to do this.

*Finding a symbolic name and logo for the network

In the coming month we will be searching for a symbolic name and logo for the network.

Join us in an online brainstorm and discussion of possible symbolic names and logos for the network.

Contact Information

You can reach the network at: Email - ijsn@ijsn.net, Web - www.ijsn.net.

Thank you for your contributions and support in building this network!

Thursday, September 11, 2008

All the hearts of the people are my identity: the life and death of a poet

Mahmoud Darwish - the voice of a dispossessed people

By Kim Bullimore, September 2008
www.directaction.org.au


In 1964, a 22-year-old Palestinian poet named Mahmoud Darwish shared the struggle of his people with the world, writing: “Record!/ I am an Arab/ And my identity card is number fifty thousand/ I have eight children/ And the ninth is coming after a summer/ Will you be angry? … Record! I am an Arab/ I have a name without a title/ ... My roots/ Were entrenched before the birth of time/ And before the opening of the eras/ Before the pines, and the olive trees/ And before the grass grew ... Record!/ I am an Arab/ You have stolen the orchards of my ancestors/ And the land which I cultivated/ Along with my children/ And you left nothing for us/ Except for these rocks./ ... Record on the top of the first page: I do not hate people/ Nor do I encroach/ But if I become hungry/ The usurper’s flesh will be my food/ Beware/ Beware/ Of my hunger/ And my anger!”

The poem, “Identity Card”, was to become one of Darwish’s most famous, a symbol of cultural and political resistance to Israel’s forced dispossession of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians of their homeland. Darwish’s poetry, filled with Arab romanticism, political insight and protest, and often transformed into song, spoke to millions of Palestinians and Arabs around the world, resulting in him becoming the most well known and loved of Palestinian poets.

Darwish died in Houston, Texas, on August 9, age 67, as a result of complications from heart surgery. Like many of his generation, he was not a spectator but an active participant in the modern history of Palestine. His poetry recorded the losses of the Palestinian people as well as their resistance and refusal to bow to the calamity that befell them in 1948. His death therefore has come as a shock to millions of Palestinians worldwide. More than 10,000 turned out to pay their respects to their poet on August 14, when his body was brought home to be buried within the grounds of Ramallah Cultural Palace in the Occupied West Bank.
Refugee childhood

Born in 1941 in the village of al-Birwa in northern Palestine, Darwish became a refugee in 1948, when his family was forced to flee Zionist terror gangs that attacked and destroyed their village. In 1949, Darwish and his family returned from Lebanon to live “illegally” as “internally displaced” refugees in the new Israeli state. In an interview with the British Guardian daily in 2002, he recounted: “We lived again as refugees, this time in our own country. It’s a collective experience. This wound I’ll never forget.”



Along with more than 150,000 other internally displaced Palestinians, Darwish experienced the harshness of Israeli military rule from 1948 to 1966. Palestinians with Israeli residency or citizenship endured harsh restrictions on their movements, including being forced to obtain special permits to travel to and from their villages, limitations on where they could work, restrictions on their political and civil rights to freedom of speech and to organise politically. During this period, more than 80% of Palestinian-owned land within Israel was confiscated and placed under exclusive Jewish control and use.

In 1960, at the age of 19, Darwish published his first collection of poems, Asafir Bil Ajniha (Wingless Birds). The following year, he joined the Israeli Communist Party and began to publish his poetry in a range of leftist newspapers. In 1964, his second anthology of poetry, Awraq Al Zaytun (Leaves of Olives) was published; it included the celebrated “Identity Card”. As a result of his poetry and political activity from 1961 to 1970, Darwish was repeatedly arrested and imprisoned. When “Identity Card” was transformed into a protest song in 1967, becoming a collective cry of defiance against the Israeli oppressor, Darwish was again arrested.
First intifada

In 1970, he travelled to the USSR to study political economy. A year later, however, he left Moscow for Egypt. In 1973, he joined the Palestine Liberation Organisation, resulting in Israel banning him from re-entering his homeland for more than 26 years. Darwish served on the PLO executive committee from 1987 to 1993 and wrote the 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence, which was announced by Yasser Arafat in Algeria.

In 1988, at the height of the first Palestinian intifada, Darwish wrote a poem that shook Israeli society to its core. The poem, “Those Who Pass Between Fleeting Words”, aimed at Israel’s occupation army, which was violently putting down the unarmed Palestinian intifada. It was direct and uncompromising: “O those who pass between fleeting words/ Carry your names, and be gone/ Rid our time of your hours, and be gone/ Steal what you will from the blueness of the sea/ And the sand of memory/ Take what pictures you will, so that you understand/ That which you never will:/ How a stone from our land builds the ceiling of our sky/”

Darwish concluded: “It is time for you to be gone/ Live wherever you like, but do not live among us/ It is time for you to be gone/ Die wherever you like, but do not die among us/ For we have work to do on our land/ We have a past here/ We have the first cry of life/ We the present, the present and a future/ We have the world here and the hereafter/ So leave our country/ Our land, our sea/ Our wheat, our salt, our wounds/ Everything, and leave/ The memories of memory/ Those who pass between fleeting words!”

Although Darwish was later to say the poem was not one of his best, he was amazed at the fear the poem aroused in both the Israeli “left” and those in control of the Zionist state. In the grip of the intifada, Israel’s then prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir, quoted the poem in the Israeli Knesset (parliament) to “prove” that the PLO posed a threat to existence of the Zionist state. In response, Darwish said that he found it “difficult to believe that the most militarily powerful country in the Middle East is threatened by a poem”.
Oslo

The first intifada forced Israel to the negotiating table. However, the resultant Oslo Accords signed by PLO leader Yasser Arafat in 1993 caused Darwish to resign from the PLO executive committee in protest. In the 2002 interview with the Guardian, he stated that with the signing of the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian people “woke up to find that they had no past”. Oslo, Darwish believed, would do little to bring justice, peace or a national homeland to the Palestinian people. In the wake of the failure of the accords, Darwish later said: “I hoped I was wrong. I am very sad that I was right!”

He returned to live in his homeland finally in the late 1990s, continuing to be a voice of his people, giving expression to their pain, yearnings and joys. The words within his 30 collections of poetry and prose, published in 35 languages, reflected the experience of millions of his countrymen and women and were their collective memory.

When Darwish wrote in the poem “Passport” that he carried within his identity, “All the wheat fields/ All the prisons/ All the white tombstones/ All the barbed boundaries/ All the waving handkerchiefs” and that “all the hearts of the people are my identity”, he spoke in the collective voice of his people. And while death has claimed him, his words of struggle and resistance will live on among his people, giving them a voice that can never be taken from them.

To listen to Mahmoud Darwish reading his poetry visit his official website at:
http://www.mahmouddarwish.com/english/audio.htm

Israeli soldiers stop a Palestinian man after Israel settlers attacked two Palestinian villages near the West Bank city of Nablus, 15 September 2008. (Rami Swidan/MaanImages)

For years, Israeli authorities have both barred Palestinian access to rings of land surrounding settlements, and have not acted to eliminate settlers' piratical closing of lands adjacent to settlements and blocking of Palestinian access to them. Blocking access is one of the many ways used to expand settlements. In recent years, Israel has institutionalized the closing of such lands in an attempt to retroactively sanction the unauthorized placement of barriers far from the houses at the edge of the settlements.

Settlers pave patrol roads and place physical obstructions on Palestinian lands adjacent to settlements, at times with the authorities' approval, at others not. Settlers also forcibly remove Palestinians, primarily farmers, from their lands. B'Tselem - The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, has documented cases of gunfire, threats of gunfire and killing, beatings, stone throwing, use of attack dogs, attempts to run over Palestinians, destruction of farming equipment and crops, theft of crops, killing and theft of livestock and animals used in farming, unauthorized demands to see identification cards, and theft of documents.

The authorities entrusted with enforcing the law not only fail to take sufficient action to end the violence and prosecute lawbreakers, they join them and block Palestinian access themselves. Soldiers regularly expel Palestinians from their farmland, often under the direction of settlers. Israel has also established a physical system of barriers -- barbed-wire fences, patrol roads, illumination and electronic sensory devices -- far from the homes at the edge of the settlements, in effect annexing large swaths of land to the settlements.

Especially blatant in this context is the "Special Security Area" (SSA) plan, in which framework Israel surrounded 12 settlements east of the Separation Barrier with rings of land that are closed as a rule to Palestinian entry. As a result of the plan, the overall area of these settlements is 2.4 times larger, having increased from 3,325 dunams (a dunam is the equivalent of 1,000 square meters) to 7,793 dunams. More than half of this ring land is under private Palestinian ownership. The amount of land attached to settlements other than through the SSA plan is much larger, given there are no official limitations and less supervision of the piratical closing of land by settlers. B'Tselem estimates that such piratical closing has blocked Palestinian entry to tens of thousands of dunams, thus annexing them de facto to the settlements. Experience shows that this land grab will be perpetuated and become part of official policy to the extent that the plan is implemented at additional settlements.

Palestinian farmers seeking access to their lands must cope with a complex bureaucracy and meet a number of conditions. First and foremost, they must prove ownership of the land. They also have to "pressure" the Civil Administration time and again to set times for them to enter. Also, the defense establishment subjects Palestinian access to the good will and caprice of the settlers. On this background, many farmers give up and stop trying to gain access and to work their land.

Official spokespersons justify some of the closing of land, primarily the land closed as a result of the SSA plan, on security needs. They contend that, after Israel's wall was built in the West Bank, settlements east of it were left exposed to violent attacks by Palestinians, and that rings of land could provide a warning area. Indeed, in 2002-2004, Palestinians killed 31 Israeli citizens and injured many others inside settlements in the West Bank. But Israel allows settlers to enter freely, without supervision, the land, which ostensibly was meant to serve as a warning area free of people, but is, in effect, closed only to Palestinians. As a result, settlers move about on the Palestinian land regularly, steal their crops, and even live on and work the land. This practice breaches both the logic of a "warning zone" and the military orders closing the area.

The land adjacent to the settlement is part of a long list of areas that Israel closes to Palestinians in the West Bank: the Jordan Valley, East Jerusalem, military-training areas, the settlement areas themselves, and others. Every piece of land that Israel closes to Palestinians joins those areas previously taken, and together they limit the possibilities of millions of persons, principal harm being suffered by farmers and those who rely of farming for a living. In this context, it should be recalled that the poverty level of Palestinians in the West Bank is extremely high, and that agriculture is the main sector of the Palestinian economy. Blocking access also impedes urban development and limits recreation in the form of nature hikes and enjoyment of land resources.

Blocking Palestinian access to land adjacent to settlements is the direct result, and an integral part, of the illegal settlement enterprise. This enterprise continuously violates the absolute prohibition specified in international humanitarian law on settlements in occupied territory. Consequently, Israel is obligated to evacuate the settlers and return them to sovereign Israeli soil. If the settlers are not evacuated, there are ways, which are presented in the report, to protect them in ways that will harm Palestinians to a lesser extent. But the government of Israel is obligated to evacuate them in any case, and evacuation is the only legal way to meet the security need that stands, according to official spokespersons, at the basis of the regulated closing of the land.

Palestinian children play on the beach in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip

By Khalid Amayreh in the West Bank The Egyptian-mediated ceasefire agreement between Israel and the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) is, ostensibly at least, a wise, dignified and expedient step for several reasons. To begin with, the ceasefire deal would suspend the daily acts of murder and terror carried out by the Israeli occupation forces against the nearly totally unprotected people of the Gaza Strip. For years, the Gestapo-like Israeli army used excessive force, including tanks, warplanes, heavy artillery and other lethal machines of death to wreak death, havoc and terror on the civilian population of Gaza, resulting in the murder and maiming of thousands of innocent people. Thus, the latest arrangement would give the thoroughly tormented Gazans a certain respite, however uncertain, from Israeli terror and criminality. Moreover, the arrangement, which is due to go into effect Thursday morning, is also supposed to lead to the gradual lifting of the 18-month-old harsh and callous blockade Israel has been imposing on 1.5 million Palestinians of the Gaza Strip. This alone should be viewed as a worthy achievement if only because Gaza was being decimated by a genocidal siege unprecedented since the Nazi blockade of Ghetto Warsaw in 1943. It is therefore hoped that the gradual dissipation of the nefarious blockade, which really reflects the brutal ugliness of the Zionist mentality, will allow Gaza to revive and rehabilitate itself and bring a smile back on the faces of its tormented children and savaged men and women. Needless to say, the decision by Hamas to accept the ceasefire is a strong proof that Hamas is not a nihilistic organization, e.g. like al Qaeda, as Israeli and Zionist hasbara has been trying to portray the Palestinian-Islamic movement. In fact, Hamas had always called for a cessation of violence in Gaza whereby both sides would refrain from targeting innocent civilians. However, it was always Israel, not Hamas, that rejected such calls by keeping up murderous attacks on Palestinian civilians. Israel, especially when addressing western audiences, repeatedly but mendaciously claimed that its army didn’t deliberately target innocent Palestinians civilians. However, that fact that hundreds of Palestinian children and other civilians continued to be killed and maimed throughout the Gaza Strip, and else where, eviscerated the Israeli pretensions of innocence of any veracity and credibility. In the final analysis, Israel was not only a brutal murderer, but a big a liar as well. After all, killing knowingly is killing deliberately, and when the number of innocent victims is so high, even intent becomes irrelevant. There is no doubt that Hamas’s heroic steadfastness, resilience and patience are being vindicated. Thus, the enduring vigor of Hamas and the people of Gaza, who defied death and clang to life, should serve as a lesson for the Palestinian people that steadfastness in the face of brute power eventually pays off. This is also a lesson for the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority (PA) that the stubbornness of justice can eventually triumph over the arrogance of oppression. Winners and losers There is no doubt that the forces of peace and reason on all sides have won against the forces of bellicosity, hatred and terror, especially in Washington and Tel Aviv and some other regional capitals as well. The people of Gaza, the victims of American-Israeli criminality, are undoubtedly the biggest winners of this deal. At least, they can breathe again, following 18 nightmarish months of unimagined brutality and ruthlessness. In addition to the gung-ho neocons in Washington and war-drummers in Tel Aviv who wanted to exterminate Hamas, not a small amount of consternation is also likely to be permeating now in Ramallah where a Zionized group within Fatah had been hoping to see the Israeli army overrun Gaza, murder hundreds, and then hand Gaza over to the Fatah leadership on a silver platter. On this occasion, one feels prompted to call on Fatah to eject these traitors from their midst for the sake of Fatah itself and for the sake of Palestine. Vigilance Nonetheless, it would be naïve, even stupid, to be carried away or give Israel the benefit of the doubt by thinking that the Zionist regime is going to abide by the agreement and terminate its murderous aggressions on our people. Israel, after all, has repeatedly proven itself to be a venomous snake which must never be trusted. Hence, Palestinians, especially Hamas, ought to be constantly vigilant and ready to repulse any Israeli aggression. However, Hamas should make meticulous efforts to preserve the ceasefire since doing so is first and foremost a supreme and paramount Palestinian interest. Hamas should also make it abundantly clear to the military wings of other Palestinian factions that the security and safety of the people of Gaza must not be subject to the whims of this or that faction. In fact, preserving the ceasefire would send a positive message to the international community that Hamas is responsible organization with which “business can be made.” Moreover, a careful abidance by the agreement on Hamas’s part would show good- will toward Egypt whose support and backing is essential for the survival of the Gaza Strip, at least at this juncture of the Palestinian struggle for freedom and liberation from Zionism.

Palestine Inside Out – An Everyday Occupation. Saree Makdisi. W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 2008.

This has been one of the most difficult books that I have ever read. It removed me from my academic detachment with which I read the majority of books and took me into emotions ranging from frustration, sadness, melancholy through to anger and belligerence. A compelling read, yet at the same time I had to put it down every so many pages in order to contemplate, digest, or simply escape what in sum could be called the constant inhuman brutality of one human against another. It is a brutality that is as much psychological as physical, as much emotional as bodily. While the media presents a relatively constant stream of news violence from Israel-Palestine, with the Israelis purportedly “responding” to Palestinian “terrorists”, the truth of life for the average Palestinian is not just this asymmetrical violence, but the daily violence perpetrated by the occupation, a collective punishment on the Palestinian population that “because the destruction is routine, it generally takes place out of the view of the global media.” It is death, destruction, eviction, genocide by a million cuts, applied over and over and over with full control of the geographical and cultural landscapes under the rule of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF).

Demographics

The underlying theme of the book is of demographics, the Israeli project to empty the land of Palestinians and not allow the right of return under any circumstances. This is accomplished by using not only pure physical force, but also by using cultural, social, and economic disenfranchisement using a “complex series of bureaucratic and administrative hurdles”, the main one being to prove that one has land in the first place.

Saree Makdisi’s conclusion to her first section of the book is that the whole extended Peace Process “has been a fiction that has served primarily to provide cover for its systematic confiscation of Palestinian land,” with the result that “the Israeli occupation has slowly and methodically accomplished precisely what it set out to do forty-one years ago.” As the oft quoted Dov Weisglass stated, “this whole package [of Palestine] has been removed from our agenda indefinitely…with authority and permission...with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress.”

Those are not the statements that raise my emotions – rather they rile my intellect at the culpability and ignorance of the political elites in all parties involved, Palestinian included as Makdisi treats the PA and Fateh harshly. What does raise the emotions is the writing that relates the daily trials and tribulations that the Palestinians suffer under the occupation of the IDF, the ever-changing rules and regulations, the whim of any Israeli who can do whatever to a Palestinian and suffer no consequences for that action. The daily frustrations of life under occupation are immense as presented in the anecdotal accounts and the summary statistics of each section of this book.

Attending school, growing food, tending one’s gardens and fields, getting married, visiting a neighbour, a market, a business, going to university, a hospital, travelling to another country, are all under the combination of strict and confusing regulations combined with the whim of the IDF soldiers and commanding officers in the field (always a Palestinian field at that). Nightly raids, curfews, harassment by settlers, home invasions, tear gas attacks, rubber coated metal bullets, sonic boom attacks at night to disrupt sleep, legalized torture, arrests, human shields, beatings, bulldozers smashing homes with or without occupants, uprooting and burning of agricultural production, machine guns, tanks, armoured vehicles and tanks invading streets, helicopters and jets patrolling overhead – there does not appear to be a moment that the Palestinian people are not subject to some form of humiliation, deprivation, and cruelty from the Israeli occupiers. “The double process of Jewish settlement and Palestinian unsettlement, is played out on an intimately small scale, and on a daily basis throughout the West Bank.” [italics added] As for Gaza, “it is a controlled strangulation that apparently falls within the generous limits of international toleration,” a toleration abetted by a compliant media that does not put it all into the context of a ‘Washington consensus’, occupation, and international law.

International war crimes

As a secondary but very strong theme the above all come under international war crimes. While Makdisi does not state it, it could be said the whole of the Israeli State is guilty of war crimes, either under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, the UN Charter with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva conventions, and other international resolutions, conventions, and agreements. These agreements are abrogated unilaterally, constantly, and with the current full approval of the United States government, and the European governments who all buy into the “terrorist” war either through their own ignorance or their own unstated hidden benefits.

It does not help that they are aided and abetted in this by other countries in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia is no more than a quisling state under the influence of the U.S., seeking its own influential advantage in the area. Egypt, having settled on “peace” with its former opponent, also receives large sums of American money and does not seem terribly interested at the governmental level in the situation if Palestine. They had a tremendous opportunity when Hamas forced open the Rafah gates to allow humanitarian assistance of basic food stuffs and medicines and energy supplies into Gaza, instead opting to kowtow to the wishes of the Israelis and Americans in continuing the oppression and illegality of the occupation (Abbas is also implicated in supporting the closing as it “also punished Hamas”). (Okay, Gaza is not “occupied” but is still under full concentration camp style control of the IDF). Jordan has always sought its own betterment in its ongoing engagement with Israel, securing its own position in the West Bank during the nakba, and combating its large internal displaced Palestinian population after the 1967 war.

Finally, the United States provides a generous $3 billion in aid a year, money that releases other money to help subsidize the settlements that have caused the disintegration of a contiguous Palestinian state. This is an error of omission by Makdisi that may or may not be purposeful for several possible reasons, but is not included in her historical and foreign policy discussions. Following on that is the fleeting mention of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, probably the most influential lobby group in the world today, effectively keeping the U.S. congress in captivity to Israel’s own viewpoint. My reading coincided with the finale of the American primaries ending with Obama’s speech to AIPAC (how timely is that!) stating his unwavering support for Israel and the status quo, with his sights set further out towards Iran. I do not have the audacity to hope that any significant change will occur with Obama as president. The United States remains culpable of war crimes along with Israel.

More ethnic cleansing

Makdisi covers many other sub-topics and themes throughout the work. The wall, the nature and processes of the settlements, the concept of “equality” in relation to the concept of Jewishness and a Jewish state, the use of the military as ‘global’ torture on the whole population are all covered throughout the work, both in anecdotal form and in essay-documentary form.

The idea of “voluntary transfer” occurs throughout the book, supported mainly from quotes from Israeli sources, with the concept described such that the Palestinians “will not be able to continue living under these sorts of conditions. They will abandon their homes and go to the big cities at which point it will be possible to expand the borders of the State of Israel without paying the demographic price.” It is not terribly “voluntary” when such extreme asymmetrical pressure is applied by one group on another.

This latter idea leads into the nakba and its current historical revisions with more modern historians accessing information from the IDF archives and using Israeli sources that clearly outline the intent to clear much of Palestine of its population, even before the Israeli declaration of itself as a state. All these topics are related under the overall idea of the demographic problem, and other discussions focus on the goals of Zionism as being integrated with that of imperialism, occupation, and settlement, all necessitating the use of force in order to achieve the given goals. Another way of defining the demographic pursuits of the Israeli government is as expressed by an Israeli school director, Yair Farjun who stated, “Anyone who tells you that there was no ethnic cleansing here will be lying.”

Context and solutions

Hamas and Hezbollah enter the discussion most forcefully in the “Coda” the books final section discussing possible solutions. With a great assist from the Washington consensus media, both groups are identified out of context as terrorist groups that hate us for what we are and thus use fanatical suicide bomb terrorists to destroy innocent civilians, without considering in context the “aerial and artillery bombings, fuel-air explosives, flechette rounds, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, phosphorous and napalm” as well as new experimental weapons including the “dense inert metal explosive” by Israel that are equally as indiscriminate but hugely more powerful and destructive. The Israeli weapons are used over a much broader section of the Palestinian population without any real concern for civilian deaths. Within context, suicide bombers can be viewed as “an almost inevitable product of forty years of military occupation.”

As for the solution itself, Makdisi views the one state solution as the most realistic. In a de facto manner, there already is one state, Israel, with many little prison like cantons scattered in parts of the West Bank, segregated by the wall, the bypass roads, and the settlements along with the associated rules and regulations that trap the Palestinians in an ever decreasing realm of violent non-mobility. Different authors have different opinions on the best solution to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, some supporting the two state solution, others identifying the one state solution as the best. Somehow under current circumstances, neither seems practicable or achievable without a major dynamic shift in either the Israeli viewpoint or that of the United States and its European allies. The status quo of forty years of “negotiations” has served Israel well as it slowly and criminally cut away at the Palestinian landscape: the current lack of any united Palestinian governmental structure and over-whelming American support for Israel would indicate that this process will only continue.

As pessimistic as that view is (and it is mine, not the authors), books such as Saree Makdisi’s Palestine Inside Out will add to the growing list of works that nibble away at the American-Israeli decontextualized and international criminal actions that sustain the repression of the Palestinian people. It should not be an easy read – it is more than history and current events, but should reach the soul of the reader, awakening or revitalizing a basic revulsion of man’s incomprehensibly stupid emotional, physical and spiritual brutality against other humans.

Blue sky, toxic sea
Nora Barrows-Friedman writing from the occupied Gaza Strip, Live from Palestine, 9 June 2008

Palestinian fishing boats in a Gaza City port, May 2008. (Wissam Nassar/ MaanImages)

For the three days I've been in Gaza I've heard nothing but horror stories. My friends, the journalists, the health workers, the students, the taxi drivers, the intellectuals, they all speak with a certain heaviness and a guttural frustration that gets trapped in the back of throats, in the smoke they exhale from chain-smoked cigarettes, over and over and over.

Last night I saw a friend, Mohammed, whom I haven't seen in three years and sadly lost touch with in between. Since I was here last, he got married, had a baby, and now has one more on the way. After a week-long trip to Europe last year as a part of his work with an international aid organization, he was held first for five days at the Cairo airport, in a small room with ten other Palestinians from Gaza, before they were transfered to a detention center and held for 60 days in al-Arish, in the seam zone between Egypt and Rafah crossing in southern Gaza. The Egyptians did this in an act of collaboration with the Israelis. With friends in the West Bank, the Jordanians use the same tactics of interrogation and humiliation at the border, but detention without reason doesn't happen. Yet.

But Mohammed said that he'd do it again, just to get out. He told me between cigarettes that he'd be happy to spend three days out in the world even if it meant another 60 days in an Egyptian detention center.

On a massive and wide-ranging scale, every single aspect of life in Gaza is punctuated by the Israeli occupation and the blockade. There are 1.5 million people here, trapped and hermetically sealed, in this 22-mile by 6-mile strip of devastated open-air prison compound. Fuel is scarce and the streets are thick with the soupy smoke of cooking gas, falafel oil and benzene as Israel's collective punishment policies force people to fill their cars with their families' gas rations.

This trickles down. Hospitals, grocery stores, butcheries, fishing boats, administrative centers, schools, factories, clinics, they all either run on generators or have been forced to quit operations altogether because of the fuel crisis. In the sewage treatment facilities, the fuel shortages mean that sewage plants can't operate at full capacity -- and remember, there are 1.5 million people here -- so millions of gallons of raw sewage are being dumped into the sea, untreated, making the ocean extremely toxic.

Giardia, dysentery, cholera -- diseases not known just five miles up the beach, in the cities of historic Palestine (some call it Israel), where toilets flush and water is safe to drink, where people lay in the mid-day sun getting tan and drinking pina coladas and speaking a language resurrected just in the last hundred years, unknown to the indigenous and dispossessed here in Gaza -- are now common. And once Palestinians get really sick, hospitals try to do all they can to alleviate the pain and eradicate the disease, but, as my friend told me, since the blockade began last summer, there are 95 medicines on the "blacklist" -- prohibited from entering Gaza.

The number one medicine that is becoming scarce? Try to guess.

I visited al-Awda hospital in the northern Gaza Strip. The pharmacist took me into his small supply warehouse and showed me around. He took me to the small shelf where they store all the anesthesia medications, and said that they have only a two-week supply left. Israel is banning anesthetics from reaching patients in Gaza, as well as chemotherapy and heart medications.

Banning anesthetics -- a sadistic, wretched, unbearable policy. It's clear that the Zionists want the Palestinians in Gaza to feel as much pain as possible, literally. "We can't even live month-to-month," the doctor told me. "We have to just live day by day, hour by hour."

We honor the doctors and medical workers at al-Awda. We praise their work. We pray that their ambulance, a donation from the Spanish government, has enough fuel to reach the injured in the next Israeli air strike or gunship attack or sniper assault.

It's hard not to lose sight. It's hard being here. It's painful to see friends and colleagues suffer like this, uncontrollably and unmitigated.

People can't hang on much longer. There is a collective buzzing in the bones. This is an untenable situation. Human beings should never have to live like this, oppressed and sickened and terrified and malnourished and imprisoned in the eastern Mediterranean, while up the beach a nuclear-saddled military occupier state congratulates itself for possessing the "most moral army in the world." Shame on Barack Obama for slithering up to Israel and its financial enablers.

So Palestinians in Gaza, 1.5 million people, the vast majority of them dependent on foreign aid, 60 percent unemployed and 100 percent depressed and traumatized in one way or another, keep struggling and looking up toward the endless sky. Even though the sea is toxic, they still swim and fish and fly kites above the waves. I am trying to figure out what it is that sustains them. Every time I ask someone how they cope, they smile and say, "Because I have to -- for my children, my spouse, myself."

A resilience, a steadfastness -- sumoud -- that we westerners can't even fathom.

Musa Keilani

Despite any level of objectivity it may have and of understanding American politics, it is difficult to find fault with the Palestinian Hamas’ assertion that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has confirmed US “hostility” to Arabs and Muslims in a speech to the pro-Israeli lobby in Washington. That “confirmation”, if you will, underlines the reality that prospects for Middle East peace remain as grim as ever even if Obama makes history by becoming the next president of the US.

Indeed, Obama was only reaffirming the steady and consistent political line adopted by almost every US presidential candidate, whether Democrat or Republican, when he told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee on Wednesday that he supported Israel and that occupied Jerusalem should “remain” the “undivided” capital of the Jewish state. It was only expected of him to say so, particularly at a forum like AIPAC, without whose support no presidential candidate stands any chance of making his way to the White House, as past elections have shown.

However, it was disappointing to see and hear Obama, the first black American to secure nomination as presidential candidate representing one of the two major parties in the US, follow the same line, given the assumption of many that he has his own mind when it comes to dealing with foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East.

Hamas responded immediately, saying it considered Obama’s statements “to be further evidence of the hostility of the American administration to Arabs and Muslims”.

Hamas leader Sami Abu Zuhri said Obama’s statements on Jerusalem “confirm the consensus of the two American political parties on unlimited aid to the (Israeli) occupation at the expense of Palestinians and Arabs”. The speech, he said, “destroys any hope for change in American policies towards the Arab-Israeli conflict”.

Such thoughts are of course shared by a majority in the Middle East. The Arab world is resigned to the reality that nothing the Arabs do - short of blindly accepting Israel’s terms and give up most of their legitimate rights - would ever lead to any shift in the present US approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Of course, Hamas could not claim it has offered anything new and has met the minimum requirements of any hope in a change in the US policy. That was underlined when Obama reiterated that he would not deal with Hamas until it recognises Israel and renounces “violence” - read armed resistance against the Israeli military occupation of Palestinian lands. He added that engaging Hamas would only take place at a time and location chosen by the United States, and would only go forward if it served US foreign policy goals.

Well, the rest of the world is wondering about what US foreign policy goals are and whether those goals have any relevance to the foundations for international conduct and the rights of people and countries.

It was also a stock phrase that Obama used when he said he would push for a negotiated settlement to the Arab-Israeli conflict if he were elected to the White House in November and declared that “Israel’s security is sacrosanct. It is non-negotiable”.

The catch here is rather simple: Israel’s security is not determined by whatever parameters the international community considers as the basis for any country’s security. Israel has set its own “security” parameters and considerations and refuses to budge, a position that is wholeheartedly endorsed and supported without question by the US.

Reason, logic, fairness, objectivity and international legitimacy are not applied to question Israel’s insistence that occupation of Arab territories is vital to its “security”. Indeed, Hamas is only strengthening Israel’s argument by repeatedly declaring that it is not ready to enter a permanent peace agreement with the Jewish state and that the best it would accept is a long-term truce.

To be fair to Obama, he displayed a clear understanding of the situation on the ground in the Middle East in one part of his AIPAC speech.

He said: “Hamas now controls Gaza. Hizbollah has tightened its grip on southern Lebanon, and is flexing its muscles in Beirut. Because of the war in Iraq, Iran - which always posed a greater threat to Israel than Iraq - is emboldened, and poses the greatest strategic challenge to the United States and Israel in the Middle East in a generation. Iraq is unstable, and Al Qaeda has stepped up its recruitment....”

Obama blamed the Bush administration’s policy and approach for the setbacks Washington suffered in the Middle East. However, he used it as a weapon to attack his Republican rival John McCain, who is known to be an ardent supporter of the Bush administration’s policy and approach in the Middle East.

We in Jordan and elsewhere in the Arab world would have been elated had Obama referred to the fundamental flaws in the decades-old US approach to the Middle East and pledged to address them in a just and fair manner so that his country could regain the trust, respect and admiration it once enjoyed as the “leader of the free world”. Nowhere in his statements have we found any such hint, and that only adds to the pessimism over prospects for fair and just peace in the Middle East under a possible Obama administration.


* Published in the JORDAN TIMES on June 8, 2008.

May Day 2008 - Nazareth and Tel Aviv

May Day 2008 - Nazareth and Tel Aviv

May Day demonstration - Tel Aviv, May 2


May Day demonstration - Tel Aviv, May 2


May Day demonstration - Tel Aviv, May 2


May Day demonstration - Tel Aviv, May 2


Vetrans of the 1958 May strike, May Day demonstration - Nazareth


May Day demonstration - Nazareth, May 3


Young communists at the Nazareth May Day Rally


May Day rally, Nazareth


Banner in support of the Venezuelan revolution, Nazareth May Day
The banner says in Arabic: "The message of Venezuela to the poor and oppressed of the world - the future is ours".


May Day rally, Nazareth

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Summer Against Israeli Apartheid

Dear Friends,
the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) has issued two calls for volunteers to come to Palestine -one for volunteers to join them as part of their regular "Freedom Summer Campaign" and one is for a new Gaza Solidarity campaign. Details of both are below...


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SUMMER CAMPAIGN 2008 - 'Summer Against Apartheid'

The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) is issuing a call-out for office and field volunteers for its "Summer Against Apartheid" in the West Bank and Gaza strip. Whether it's for a week or three months, you can help provide protection during non-violent demonstrations as well as help ensure that Palestinian voices will be heard. The 2008 'Summer Against Apartheid' runs from May 28th until August 2nd, with volunteer training sessions to be held every Wednesday and Thursday.

Why are so so urgently needed? Below are just four reasons.

1. The recent Israeli orders to use live ammunition against demonstrations close to the apartheid wall, unless there are internationals or Israelis present (http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=28361), means an international presence offers some protection for the basic rights of Palestinians to nonviolently protest against injustice.

2. In the West Bank ISM will support Palestinians challenging the apartheid road system. Watch this video (http://youtube.com/watch?v=i14gFMXtVMc) for a short film about the injustice of Road 443 and a previous action ISM participated in. Joining Palestinians in non-violent actions against Israeli-only roads, will increase the exposure of the road system that runs throughout the West Bank, and to link it to the wider implications of the Israeli apartheid system, including the expansion of illegal settlements as well as the checkpoints that cripple Palestinian's freedom of movement.

3. ISM volunteers will stand side by side with villagers in Bil'in, Tul Karem, Nablus, and Tel Rumeida, Hebron as Palestinians continue their tireless struggle to save their land from Israel's apartheid wall and the expanding settlements. In addition, ISM will be joining the third inter-national conference in Bil'in, Palestine from 4-6 June 2008.

4.In Gaza, ISM will continue our campaign to fight against the Israel's extreme collective punishment of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. We will demonstrate in Egypt on the 30th May 2008 where we will aim to break the siege on Gaza. 'Put Your Body Where Your Heart Is - Break The Siege On Gaza', will be the starting point for the 'Summer Against Apartheid'. See here (there will be a link to the call-out that will be on the website) for more details regarding this action. In addition, many former ISM volunteers will take part in breaking the siege of Gaza by sailing into its port during the first week of August. See www.freegaza.org.

Witness first-hand the suffering, the courage and the generosity of the Palestinian people under Israeli occupation. Experiencing the situation for yourself is vital in the aim of conveying the reality of life in Palestine to your home communities and re-framing the debate to expose Israel's Apartheid policies, including creeping ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, as well as it's collective punishment and genocidal practices in Gaza.

For more information on how to Join Us in Palestine or contact info@palsolidarity.org

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Put Your Body Where Your Heart Is - Break The Siege On Gaza!

On May 30th 2008, people of conscience from around the world will gather in Egypt to break through to the imprisoned people living inside the Gaza Strip. People will attempt to enter Gaza in an act to break the murderous siege and to stand in solidarity with those inside.

The siege, brutally imposed by the Israeli government in June 2007, following over a year of sanctions has resulted in lethal denial of medical access, shortages of food, fuel and electricity, and stands as a grave act of collective punishment.

It is time to stand up and shout, "No more!" It is time to show that we will not simply stand by while this atrocity is carried out, as our governments do nothing. It is time to use our bodies to prove what we believe is just in this world.

Our governments have backtracked on their responsibility, as stipulated in past agreements, to facilitate and over see the flow of people through the Rafah border crossing, making us complicit with the murderous acts of the Israeli government.

We call on international human right activists and lawmakers to join us in breaking the siege, entering Gaza, and standing in solidarity with the people imprisoned there. Join us in Egypt, come with us to Gaza and put your body where your heart is.

What you can do?

1. Join us in this act of solidarity with the people of Gaza, come to Egypt before the end of May, preferably as early as possible to help with preparations.

2. Have your organization endorse and circulate this call

3. Support this initiative financially - email gazasolidarity@gmail.com for more information

Signed: The International Solidarity Movement - Palestine

Falling from Heaven: the ethnic cleansing of Palestine

Friday, May 9, 2008

Falling from Heaven: the ethnic cleansing of Palestine

8 May, 2008

Abu Zureyk, Al Abbasiyya, Abu Shusha, Ayan az Zaytun, Awlam, Azz Zema, AHaiqia, Balad ash Sheikh, Bayt Daras, Beer Sheba, Bi'ne, Burayr, al Dawayima, Dayr el Asad, Deir Yassin, Eilbourn, Haifa, Hawwassa, Husayniyya, Ilut, Ijzim, Isdud, Jish, al Kabri, al Khisas, Khibbyza, Lydda, Majd al Kurum, Mansura al Khayt, Nasir ad Din Khribet, Qazaza, Qisarya, Sa'sa, Safsaf, Saliha, Sha'b, Al Samiyya, al Tantoura, al Tira, Tel, Geze, Umm al, Shauf, al Wa’ra al-Sawda, Wadi ‘Ara.

Like the names of the dead, the names of these villages bring heartbreak to all Palestinians. Sixty years ago, last month, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine began.

Sixty years ago, up to six weeks before the British mandate of Palestine was terminated and the state of Israeli was even declared, Zionist terror gangs began their forcible expulsion of more than 122 Palestinian villages and began carrying out military assaults on more than 270 other villages [1].

Sixty years ago on April 9, 1948, 254 unarmed Palestinian men, women and children were murdered in the village of Dier Yassin by Zionist terror gangs - the Irgun (aka as Etzel) lead by Menachin Begin (who was to become a later Prime Minister of Israel) and the Stern Gang (aka as the Lehi). More than 40 other Palestinian villages and towns were to suffer the same fate as Dier Yassin.

The massacre that took place at Dier Yassin was just one of many carried out, as part of a co-ordinated effort between the Zionist terror gangs, the Irgun and the Stern Gang and the Haganah (which was the main Jewish underground organisation which later became the present day Israeli Defence Force) to ethnically cleanse indigenous Palestinians from historic Palestine prior to the UN partition in May 1948. “Plan Dalet” as the operation was known, was carried out under the authority and leadership of David Ben Gurion, the future first Prime Minister of Israel. Its aim was to strike fear and terror into the indigenous Palestinian population in order to ethnically cleanse them from the new state of Israel and to gain even more land for the Zionist state than had been designated under the UN partition plan.

According to the operational orders listed under Plan Dalet, Zionist forces were to carry out the “destruction of [Palestinian] villages (setting fire to, blowing up, and planting mines in the debris), especially those populations centres which are difficult to control continuously”. The operational orders went on to state that the Zionist terror forces should mount “search and control operations according to the following guidelines: encirclement of the village and conducting a search inside it. In the event of resistance, the armed forces must be destroyed and the population expelled outside the borders of the state. The villages which are emptied in the manner described above must be included in the fixed defensive system and must be fortified as necessary” [2]

The plan stated “in the absence of resistance, garrison troops will enter the village and take up positions in it or in locations which enable complete tactical control. The officer in command of the unit will confiscate all weapons, wireless devices, and motor vehicles in the village. In addition, he will detain all politically suspect individuals. After consultation with the [Jewish] political authorities, bodies will be appointed consisting of people from the village to administer the internal affairs of the village. In every region, a Jewish] person will be appointed to be responsible for arranging the political and administrative affairs of all [Palestinian Arab] villages and population centers which are occupied within that region”.

The absence of resistance, however, did not save Dier Yassin, just as it did not save dozens of other Palestinian villages and towns. According to Israeli Zionist historian, Benny Morris, the Zionist terror forces carried out at least 24 massacres against Palestinians between April and May 1948 before the declaration of the state of Israel. Palestinians, however, put the number of massacres as being as high as 40.

Morris notes in a 2004 interview with Ha’aretz reporter, Ari Shavit, that “In the months of April-May 1948, units of the Haganah given operational orders that stated explicitly that they were to uproot the villagers, expel them and destroy the villages themselves”. Morris goes onto note, that the action took place as a direct result of orders given by David Ben Gurion. According to Morris, “various officers who took part in the operation understood that the expulsion order they received permitted them to do these deeds in order to encourage the population to take to the roads. The fact is that no one was punished for these acts of murder. Ben-Gurion silenced the matter. He covered up for the officers who did the massacres” [3]

Upon hearing of the massacre, which took place at Dier Yassin and other villages, thousands of Palestinians in more than 85 other villages and towns fled their homes in fear of their lives [4]. The Zionist terror forces then wiped Dier Yassin off the map, as it did with hundreds of other Palestinian villages and built new Zionists towns and cities in their place. On the ground where Dier Yassin, once stood, now stands the Israel town of Givat Shul and the settlement of Har Nof.

The Zionist reign of terror against the indigenous Palestinian population in 1948, however, did not end with Dier Yassin. On April 18, Zionist gangs stormed the Palestinian city of Tiberias in the Galilee, ethnically expelling more than 5,500 Palestinians from their homes. Four days later, 70,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homes in the port city of Haifa [5]. In the months prior to the assault, the Zionist terror gangs had carried out a series of bombings against Haifa’s Palestinian residents [6]. On December 30, the previous year, a Zionist bomb planted in a Palestinian residential neighbourhood killed 6 and injured 41 others. The Zionist bombing sparked riots amongst Palestinian workers at a nearby oil refinery and resulted in the killing of 41 Jewish workers. The Haganah and the Irgun (Etzel) planted a second bomb the following evening resulting what became known as the New Years Massacre at Balad al Shayk, killing more than 60 people. Two months later in February 1948, the Irgun (Etzel) rolled barrels packed with gasoline and explosives down Haifa’s hills into the Palestinian al’ Abasayah Arab neighbourhood. The barrels exploded in an inferno of flames, destroying most of the residential area, causing its residents to flee in terror. One month later on March 22, ten weeks before the state of Israel was declared, the Zionist terror gangs disguised as British officers planted a car bomb, killing 36 Palestinians, the majority of whom were women and children. The bomb blast was so intense it destroyed several public buildings.

Not satisfied with only ethnically cleansing indigenous Palestinians from the land designated as part of a new Jewish state under the UN Partition plan, the Zionist forces moved to begin ethnically cleansing Palestinians from towns and cities which UN had deemed part of a Palestinian state under partition. On April 25, the Irgun (Etzel) began a three week bombing campaign of the “Bride of Palestine”, the port city of Jaffa, which was supposed to be part of a UN sanctioned Palestinian state. Jaffa, which was often referred to as the “centre of heaven” by its residents because of its beauty and location half way between Haifa and Gaza, was the most populous centre in British Mandate Palestine: home to 90,000 Palestinians. With the advent of the Zionist terror campaign, however, the city was to fall from heaven. The assault was so fierce that in the Manshiyyeh quarter, every single building except one was obliterated (the one building left partly standing has since been turned into a museum to glorify the military prowess of the Irgun/Etzel). As the bombing continued, more than 55,000 people fled in terror.

Over the next weeks, more and more villages and towns were to “fall from heaven”. In addition to Dier Yassin, Tiberas, Haifa and Jaffa, more than 400 other Palestinian villages and townships were ethnically cleansed during Plan Dalet and the subsequent war which took place. More than 700,000 Palestinians fled their homes, never allowed to return.

Today, as Israel celebrates “60 years of independence”, the Al Nakba of the Palestinian people continues. On May 5, the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz published a report which noted that since the creation of the Israeli state 60 years ago, there have been 1,634 Israeli civilians killed and 14,000 injured by “acts of terror” [7]. What the article did not mention, however, was that in the much shorter period of 7.5 years (from September 2000 to March 2008 since the beginning of the Al Aqsa intifada) that more than 3615 Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israeli state “acts of terror” and 25,650 Palestinian civilians had been wounded [8]

The Haaretz article, also failed to mention that since its creation 60 years ago, the Israeli state has continued the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people via a war of attrition and in the name of “security”. The illegal Israeli occupation which is now in its 40th year, along with all its manifestations – the checkpoints, the wall, the illegal settlements, the illegal confiscation of land, the restriction of freedom of movement, arbitary arrest and administrative detention, target assassinations, aerial bombing, the siege of Gaza – while all aimed at controlling the Palestinian population is also aimed at systematically driving the Palestinian people off their land.

Since the beginning of the Al Aqsa Intifada, Israel has destroyed more than 13% of Gaza’s agricultural land alone. During the same period the Israeli state, via its occupation forces, has demolished completely more than 2932 Palestinian homes in the Gaza Strip alone, while a further 2848 were partially demolished [9]. These acts of terror against a Palestinian civilian population were carried out as illegal and punitive collective punishment or in order to make way for the illegal expansion of illegal Israeli settlements and the infrastructure needed to serve these colonies. According to B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights, house demolitions have resulted in more than 13,000 Palestinians being left homeless [10]. In addition, through out the Occupied West Bank, dozens of dozens of Palestinian villages remained “unrecognised” and deemed illegal by the Israeli occupier, although they have existed for decades and even hundreds of years prior to the establishment of the Israeli state. The Israeli state’s refusal to recognise these villages is designed to legitimise the ongoing, systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the traditional homes and lands by its occupation forces and its “civil administration” in the OPT.

Israel continues its policy of ethnic cleansing by also regularly restricting the freedom of movement of Palestinians. Israel’s policy while carried out in the name of “security” is designed to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian population through “quiet transfer” by making life so difficult for Palestinians that they will “voluntarily” leave. According to B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the OPT, “the restrictions of movement that Israel has imposed on the Palestinian population in the Occupied Territories over the past five years are unprecedented in the history of the Israeli occupation in their scope, durations and in the severity of damage that they have caused to the three and half million Palestinians who reside there” [11].

Today, Israel will ‘celebrate’ its creation and as we hear the fire works the illegal settlements around us, the Palestinian people will remember their dead, their imprisoned and their loved ones in refugee camps through out the Middle East and their family and friends who make up the 7 million strong Palestinian Diaspora around the world. Today, as Israel baths itself in vulgar nationalism and the glorification of its military prowess, the Palestinian people will recall the Nakba and the ethnic cleansing of their home land. And today, as the Israel celebrates the ethnic cleansing of another people in order to create “a homeland for the Jews”, the Palestinian people will remain in a state of sumoud (steadfastness) in their determination to remain on what is left of their traditional land and to be a free people once again.

Notes:

[1] Palestine 1948: Map of towns and villages depopulated by Zionist Invasion
Prepared by Salman Abu-Sitta, 1998. Produced by Palestine Land Society.
[2] Sefer Toldot Hahaganah [History of the Haganah], vol. 3, ed, by Yehuda Slutsky (TelAviv: Zionist Library, 1972), Appendix 48, pp 1955-60.
[3] Survival of the Fittest? An Interview with Benny Morris by Ari Shavit, 16 January 2004
[4] Palestine 1948: Map of towns and villages depopulated by Zionist Invasion
Prepared by Salman Abu-Sitta, 1998. Produced by Palestine Land Society.
[5] Neff, D., (1994) Arab Jaffa Seized Before Israel's Creation in 1948 in Washington Report on Middle East Affairs
[6] Haifa Refinery Riots, Middle East Web
[7] Haaretz, 5 May, 2008, 16 Israeli civilians killed this year in terror acts, 1,634 since May, '48
[8] and [9] Palestinian Centre for Human Rights www.pchrgaza.org/PCHR/statistics.html
[10] and [11] B’Tselem: Israeli information centre for human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories www.btselem.org/English/